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Title: The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham,
   Vol. I
Author: Maugham, W. Somerset [William Somerset] (1874-1965)
Date of first publication: 1951
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Heinemann, 1967
Date first posted: 14 September 2018
Date last updated: 14 September 2018
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1564

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THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES OF W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, VOL. I




TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Preface
    Rain
    The Fall of Edward Barnard
    Honolulu
    The Luncheon
    The Ant and the Grasshopper
    Home
    The Pool
    Mackintosh
    Appearance and Reality
    The Three Fat Women of Antibes
    The Facts of Life
    Gigolo and Gigolette
    The Happy Couple
    The Voice of the Turtle
    The Lion's Skin
    The Unconquered
    The Escape
    The Judgment Seat
    Mr. Know-All
    The Happy Man
    The Romantic Young Lady
    The Point of Honour
    The Poet
    The Mother
    A Man from Glasgow
    Before the Party
    The Vessel of Wrath
    Louise
    The Promise
    A String of Beads
    The Yellow Streak
    The Force of Circumstance
    Flotsam and Jetsam




THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES OF W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM




PREFACE


This is the first volume of my collected short stories. In my early
youth I wrote a number, but they are so immature that I have preferred
not to reprint them. A few are in a book that has long remained out of
print, a few others are scattered in various magazines. They are best
forgotten. The first of the stories in this collection, _Rain_, was
written in 1920 in Hong Kong, but I had hit upon the idea for it during
a journey I took in the South Seas during the winter of 1916. The last
of my stories was written in New York in 1945 from a brief note that I
found by chance among my papers and which I made as far back as 1901. I
do not expect ever to write another.

One of the most difficult things that an author has to deal with when he
wants to gather together a quantity of stories into a volume is to
decide in what order to place them. It is fairly simple when the stories
are of about the same length or are placed in the same local (I should
have liked to use the word _locale_, but the Oxford Dictionary says that
this, though commonly used, is erroneous); then the pattern is easy to
form. And it is a satisfaction to an author if he can so arrange his
material that the book he finally offers to his readers has a pattern,
even though they do not notice it. The pattern of a novel is of course
plain; it has a beginning, a middle and an end; and so, for the matter
of that, has a well-constructed story.

But my stories are of very different lengths. Some are as short as
sixteen hundred words, some are ten times as long, and one is just over
twenty thousand. I have sojourned in most parts of the world, and while
I was writing stories I could seldom stay anywhere for any length of
time without getting the material for one or more tales. I have written
tragic stories and I have written humorous ones. It has been an arduous
task to get some kind of symmetry and at least the semblance of a
pattern into a collection of a large number of stories of such different
lengths, placed in so many different countries and of such different
character; and at the same time to make it as easy as possible for the
reader to read them. For though to be read is not the motive which
impels the author to write, his motive is other, once he has written his
desire is to be read, and in order to achieve that he must do his best
to make what he writes readable.

With this intention, where I could I have followed a group of long
stories with a group of short ones, sometimes very short, sometimes of
five or six thousand words, and so that the reader should not be
required to leap suddenly from China to Peru and back again, I have
grouped, as well as I conveniently could, stories of which the local (or
locale) was in one particular country. In that way I hoped to give the
reader a chance to take his bearings in whatever distant land I chose to
lead him to.




RAIN


It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in
sight. Dr. Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched
the heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at the front and a
wound that had taken longer to heal than it should, he was glad to
settle down quietly at Apia for twelve months at least, and he felt
already better for the journey. Since some of the passengers were
leaving the ship next day at Pago-Pago they had had a little dance that
evening and in his ears hammered still the harsh notes of the mechanical
piano. But the deck was quiet at last. A little way off he saw his wife
in a long chair talking with the Davidsons, and he strolled over to her.
When he sat down under the light and took off his hat you saw that he
had very red hair, with a bald patch on the crown, and the red, freckled
skin which accompanies red hair; he was a man of forty, thin, with a
pinched face, precise and rather pedantic; and he spoke with a Scots
accent in a very low, quiet voice.

Between the Macphails and the Davidsons, who were missionaries, there
had arisen the intimacy of shipboard, which is due to propinquity rather
than to any community of taste. Their chief tie was the disapproval they
shared of the men who spent their days and nights in the smoking-room
playing poker or bridge and drinking. Mrs. Macphail was not a little
flattered to think that she and her husband were the only people on
board with whom the Davidsons were willing to associate, and even the
doctor, shy but no fool, half unconsciously acknowledged the compliment.
It was only because he was of an argumentative mind that in their cabin
at night he permitted himself to carp.

"Mrs. Davidson was saying she didn't know how they'd have got through
the journey if it hadn't been for us," said Mrs. Macphail, as she neatly
brushed out her transformation. "She said we were really the only people
on the ship they cared to know."

"I shouldn't have thought a missionary was such a big bug that he could
afford to put on frills."

"It's not frills. I quite understand what she means. It wouldn't have
been very nice for the Davidsons to have to mix with all that rough lot
in the smoking-room."

"The founder of their religion wasn't so exclusive," said Dr. Macphail
with a chuckle.

"I've asked you over and over again not to joke about religion,"
answered his wife. "I shouldn't like to have a nature like yours, Alec.
You never look for the best in people."

He gave her a sidelong glance with his pale, blue eyes, but did not
reply. After many years of married life he had learned that it was more
conducive to peace to leave his wife with the last word. He was
undressed before she was, and climbing into the upper bunk he settled
down to read himself to sleep.

When he came on deck next morning they were close to land. He looked at
it with greedy eyes. There was a thin strip of silver beach rising
quickly to hills covered to the top with luxuriant vegetation. The
coconut trees, thick and green, came nearly to the water's edge, and
among them you saw the grass houses of the Samoans; and here and there,
gleaming white, a little church. Mrs. Davidson came and stood beside
him. She was dressed in black and wore round her neck a gold chain, from
which dangled a small cross. She was a little woman, with brown, dull
hair very elaborately arranged, and she had prominent blue eyes behind
invisible pince-nez. Her face was long, like a sheep's, but she gave no
impression of foolishness, rather of extreme alertness; she had the
quick movements of a bird. The most remarkable thing about her was her
voice, high, metallic, and without inflection; it fell on the ear with a
hard monotony, irritating to the nerves like the pitiless clamour of the
pneumatic drill.

"This must seem like home to you," said Dr. Macphail, with his thin,
difficult smile.

"Ours are low islands, you know, not like these. Coral. These are
volcanic. We've got another ten days' journey to reach them."

"In these parts that's almost like being in the next street at home,"
said Dr. Macphail facetiously.

"Well, that's rather an exaggerated way of putting it, but one does look
at distances differently in the South Seas. So far you're right."

Dr. Macphail sighed faintly.

"I'm glad we're not stationed here," she went on. "They say this is a
terribly difficult place to work in. The steamers' touching makes the
people unsettled; and then there's the naval station; that's bad for the
natives. In our district we don't have difficulties like that to contend
with. There are one or two traders, of course, but we take care to make
them behave, and if they don't we make the place so hot for them they're
glad to go."

Fixing the glasses on her nose she looked at the green island with a
ruthless stare.

"It's almost a hopeless task for the missionaries here. I can never be
sufficiently thankful to God that we are at least spared that."

Davidson's district consisted of a group of islands to the North of
Samoa; they were widely separated and he had frequently to go long
distances by canoe. At these times his wife remained at their
headquarters and managed the mission. Dr. Macphail felt his heart sink
when he considered the efficiency with which she certainly managed it.
She spoke of the depravity of the natives in a voice which nothing could
hush, but with a vehemently unctuous horror. Her sense of delicacy was
singular. Early in their acquaintance she had said to him:

"You know, their marriage customs when we first settled in the islands
were so shocking that I couldn't possibly describe them to you. But I'll
tell Mrs. Macphail and she'll tell you."

Then he had seen his wife and Mrs. Davidson, their deck-chairs close
together, in earnest conversation for about two hours. As he walked past
them backwards and forwards for the sake of exercise, he had heard Mrs.
Davidson's agitated whisper, like the distant flow of a mountain
torrent, and he saw by his wife's open mouth and pale face that she was
enjoying an alarming experience. At night in their cabin she repeated to
him with bated breath all she had heard.

"Well, what did I say to you?" cried Mrs. Davidson, exultant next
morning. "Did you ever hear anything more dreadful? You don't wonder
that I couldn't tell you myself, do you? Even though you are a doctor."

Mrs. Davidson scanned his face. She had a dramatic eagerness to see that
she had achieved the desired effect.

"Can you wonder that when we first went there our hearts sank? You'll
hardly believe me when I tell you it was impossible to find a single
good girl in any of the villages."

She used the word _good_ in a severely technical manner.

"Mr. Davidson and I talked it over, and we made up our minds the first
thing to do was to put down the dancing. The natives were crazy about
dancing."

"I was not averse to it myself when I was a young man," said Dr.
Macphail.

"I guessed as much when I heard you ask Mrs. Macphail to have a turn
with you last night. I don't think there's any real harm if a man dances
with his wife, but I was relieved that she wouldn't. Under the
circumstances I thought it better that we should keep ourselves to
ourselves."

"Under what circumstances?"

Mrs. Davidson gave him a quick look through her pince-nez, but did not
answer his question.

"But among white people it's not quite the same," she went on, "though I
must say I agree with Mr. Davidson, who says he can't understand how a
husband can stand by and see his wife in another man's arms, and as far
as I'm concerned I've never danced a step since I married. But the
native dancing is quite another matter. It's not only immoral in itself,
but it distinctly leads to immorality. However, I'm thankful to God that
we stamped it out, and I don't think I'm wrong in saying that no one has
danced in our district for eight years."

But now they came to the mouth of the harbour and Mrs. Macphail joined
them. The ship turned sharply and steamed slowly in. It was a great
land-locked harbour big enough to hold a fleet of battleships; and all
around it rose, high and steep, the green hills. Near the entrance,
getting such breeze as blew from the sea, stood the governor's house in
a garden. The Stars and Stripes dangled languidly from a flagstaff. They
passed two or three trim bungalows, and a tennis-court, and then they
came to the quay with its warehouses. Mrs. Davidson pointed out the
schooner, moored two or three hundred yards from the side, which was to
take them to Apia. There was a crowd of eager, noisy, and good-humoured
natives come from all parts of the island, some from curiosity, others
to barter with the travellers on their way to Sydney; and they brought
pineapples and huge bunches of bananas, tapa cloths, necklaces of shells
or sharks' teeth, _kava_-bowls, and models of war canoes. American
sailors, neat and trim, clean-shaven and frank of face, sauntered among
them, and there was a little group of officials. While their luggage was
being landed the Macphails and Mrs. Davidson watched the crowd. Dr.
Macphail looked at the yaws from which most of the children and the
young boys seemed to suffer, disfiguring sores, like torpid ulcers, and
his professional eyes glistened when he saw for the first time in his
experience cases of elephantiasis, men going about with a huge, heavy
arm or dragging along a grossly disfigured leg. Men and women wore the
lava-lava.

"It's a very indecent costume," said Mrs. Davidson. "Mr. Davidson thinks
it should be prohibited by law. How can you expect people to be moral
when they wear nothing but a strip of red cotton round their loins?"

"It's suitable enough to the climate," said the doctor, wiping the sweat
off his head.

Now that they were on land the heat, though it was so early in the
morning, was already oppressive. Closed in by its hills, not a breath of
air came in to Pago-Pago.

"In our islands," Mrs. Davidson went on in her high-pitched tones,
"we've practically eradicated the lava-lava. A few old men still
continue to wear it, but that's all. The women have all taken to the
Mother Hubbard, and the men wear trousers and singlets. At the beginning
of our stay Mr. Davidson said in one of his reports: the inhabitants of
these islands will never be thoroughly Christianised till every boy of
more than ten years is made to wear a pair of trousers."

But Mrs. Davidson had given two or three of her birdlike glances at
heavy grey clouds that came floating over the mouth of the harbour. A
few drops began to fall.

"We'd better take shelter," she said.

They made their way with all the crowd to a great shed of corrugated
iron, and the rain began to fall in torrents. They stood there for some
time and then were joined by Mr. Davidson. He had been polite enough to
the Macphails during the journey, but he had not his wife's sociability,
and had spent much of his time reading. He was a silent, rather sullen
man, and you felt that his affability was a duty that he imposed upon
himself Christianly; he was by nature reserved and even morose. His
appearance was singular. He was very tall and thin, with long limbs
loosely jointed; hollow cheeks and curiously high cheek-bones; he had so
cadaverous an air that it surprised you to notice how full and sensual
were his lips. He wore his hair very long. His dark eyes, set deep in
their sockets, were large and tragic; and his hands with their big, long
fingers, were finely shaped; they gave him a look of great strength. But
the most striking thing about him was the feeling he gave you of
suppressed fire. It was impressive and vaguely troubling. He was not a
man with whom any intimacy was possible.

He brought now unwelcome news. There was an epidemic of measles, a
serious and often fatal disease among the Kanakas, on the island, and a
case had developed among the crew of the schooner which was to take them
on their journey. The sick man had been brought ashore and put in
hospital on the quarantine station, but telegraphic instructions had
been sent from Apia to say that the schooner would not be allowed to
enter the harbour till it was certain no other member of the crew was
affected.

"It means we shall have to stay here for ten days at least."

"But I'm urgently needed at Apia," said Dr. Macphail.

"That can't be helped. If no more cases develop on board, the schooner
will be allowed to sail with white passengers, but all native traffic is
prohibited for three months."

"Is there a hotel here?" asked Mrs. Macphail.

Davidson gave a low chuckle.

"There's not."

"What shall we do then?"

"I've been talking to the governor. There's a trader along the front who
has rooms that he rents, and my proposition is that as soon as the rain
lets up we should go along there and see what we can do. Don't expect
comfort. You've just got to be thankful if we get a bed to sleep on and
a roof over our heads."

But the rain showed no signs of stopping, and at length with umbrellas
and waterproofs they set out. There was no town, but merely a group of
official buildings, a store or two, and at the back, among the coconut
trees and plantains, a few native dwellings. The house they sought was
about five minutes' walk from the wharf. It was a frame house of two
storeys, with broad verandahs on both floors and a roof of corrugated
iron. The owner was a half-caste named Horn, with a native wife
surrounded by little brown children, and on the ground-floor he had a
store where he sold canned goods and cottons. The rooms he showed them
were almost bare of furniture. In the Macphails' there was nothing but a
poor, worn bed with a ragged mosquito net, a rickety chair, and a
washstand. They looked round with dismay. The rain poured down without
ceasing.

"I'm not going to unpack more than we actually need," said Mrs.
Macphail.

Mrs. Davidson came into the room as she was unlocking a portmanteau. She
was very brisk and alert. The cheerless surroundings had no effect on
her.

"If you'll take my advice you'll get a needle and cotton and start right
in to mend the mosquito net," she said, "or you'll not be able to get a
wink of sleep to-night."

"Will they be very bad?" asked Dr. Macphail.

"This is the season for them. When you're asked to a party at Government
House at Apia you'll notice that all the ladies are given a pillowslip
to put their--their lower extremities in."

"I wish the rain would stop for a moment," said Mrs. Macphail. "I could
try to make the place comfortable with more heart if the sun were
shining."

"Oh, if you wait for that, you'll wait a long time. Pago-Pago is about
the rainiest place in the Pacific. You see, the hills, and that bay,
they attract the water, and one expects rain at this time of year
anyway."

She looked from Macphail to his wife, standing helplessly in different
parts of the room, like lost souls, and she pursed her lips. She saw
that she must take them in hand. Feckless people like that made her
impatient, but her hands itched to put everything in the order which
came so naturally to her.

"Here, you give me a needle and cotton and I'll mend that net of yours,
while you go on with your unpacking. Dinner's at one. Dr. Macphail,
you'd better go down to the wharf and see that your heavy luggage has
been put in a dry place. You know what these natives are, they're quite
capable of storing it where the rain will beat in on it all the time."

The doctor put on his waterproof again and went downstairs. At the door
Mr. Horn was standing in conversation with the quartermaster of the ship
they had just arrived in and a second-class passenger whom Dr. Macphail
had seen several times on board. The quartermaster, a little, shrivelled
man, extremely dirty, nodded to him as he passed.

"This is a bad job about the measles, doc," he said. "I see you've fixed
yourself up already."

Dr. Macphail thought he was rather familiar, but he was a timid man and
he did not take offence easily.

"Yes, we've got a room upstairs."

"Miss Thompson was sailing with you to Apia, so I've brought her along
here."

The quartermaster pointed with his thumb to the woman standing by his
side. She was twenty-seven perhaps, plump, and in a coarse fashion
pretty. She wore a white dress and a large white hat. Her fat calves in
white cotton stockings bulged over the tops of long white boots in glac
kid. She gave Macphail an ingratiating smile.

"The feller's tryin' to soak me a dollar and a half a day for the
meanest-sized room," she said in a hoarse voice.

"I tell you she's a friend of mine, Jo," said the quartermaster. "She
can't pay more than a dollar, and you've sure got to take her for that."

The trader was fat and smooth and quietly smiling.

"Well, if you put it like that, Mr. Swan, I'll see what I can do about
it. I'll talk to Mrs. Horn and if we think we can make a reduction we
will."

"Don't try to pull that stuff with me," said Miss Thompson. "We'll
settle this right now. You get a dollar a day for the room and not one
bean more."

Dr. Macphail smiled. He admired the effrontery with which she bargained.
He was the sort of man who always paid what he was asked. He preferred
to be over-charged than to haggle. The trader sighed.

"Well, to oblige Mr. Swan I'll take it."

"That's the goods," said Miss Thompson. "Come right in and have a shot
of hooch. I've got some real good rye in that grip if you'll bring it
along, Mr. Swan. You come along too, doctor."

"Oh, I don't think I will, thank you," he answered. "I'm just going down
to see that our luggage is all right."

He stepped out into the rain. It swept in from the opening of the
harbour in sheets and the opposite shore was all blurred. He passed two
or three natives clad in nothing but the lava-lava, with huge umbrellas
over them. They walked finely, with leisurely movements, very upright;
and they smiled and greeted him in a strange tongue as they went by.

It was nearly dinner-time when he got back, and their meal was laid in
the trader's parlour. It was a room designed not to live in but for
purposes of prestige, and it had a musty, melancholy air. A suite of
stamped plush was arranged neatly round the walls, and from the middle
of the ceiling, protected from the flies by yellow tissue-paper, hung a
gilt chandelier. Davidson did not come.

"I know he went to call on the governor," said Mrs. Davidson, "and I
guess he's kept him to dinner."

A little native girl brought them a dish of Hamburger steak, and after a
while the trader came up to see that they had everything they wanted.

"I see we have a fellow lodger, Mr. Horn," said Dr. Macphail.

"She's taken a room, that's all," answered the trader. "She's getting
her own board."

He looked at the two ladies with an obsequious air.

"I put her downstairs so she shouldn't be in the way. She won't be any
trouble to you."

"Is it someone who was on the boat?" asked Mrs. Macphail.

"Yes, ma'am, she was in the second cabin. She was going to Apia. She has
a position as cashier waiting for her."

"Oh!"

When the trader was gone Macphail said:

"I shouldn't think she'd find it exactly cheerful having her meals in
her room."

"If she was in the second cabin I guess she'd rather," answered Mrs.
Davidson. "I don't exactly know who it can be."

"I happened to be there when the quartermaster brought her along. Her
name's Thompson."

"It's not the woman who was dancing with the quartermaster last night?"
asked Mrs. Davidson.

"That's who it must be," said Mrs. Macphail. "I wondered at the time
what she was. She looked rather fast to me."

"Not good style at all," said Mrs. Davidson.

They began to talk of other things, and after dinner, tired with their
early rise, they separated and slept. When they awoke, though the sky
was still grey and the clouds hung low, it was not raining and they went
for a walk on the high road which the Americans had built along the bay.

On their return they found that Davidson had just come in.

"We may be here for a fortnight," he said irritably. "I've argued it out
with the governor, but he says there is nothing to be done."

"Mr. Davidson's just longing to get back to his work," said his wife,
with an anxious glance at him.

"We've been away for a year," he said, walking up and down the verandah.
"The mission has been in charge of native missionaries and I'm terribly
nervous that they've let things slide. They're good men, I'm not saying
a word against them, God-fearing, devout, and truly Christian men--their
Christianity would put many so-called Christians at home to the
blush--but they're pitifully lacking in energy. They can make a stand
once, they can make a stand twice, but they can't make a stand all the
time. If you leave a mission in charge of a native missionary, no matter
how trustworthy he seems, in course of time you'll find he's let abuses
creep in."

Mr. Davidson stood still. With his tall, spare form, and his great eyes
flashing out of his pale face, he was an impressive figure. His
sincerity was obvious in the fire of his gestures and in his deep,
ringing voice.

"I expect to have my work cut out for me. I shall act and I shall act
promptly. If the tree is rotten it shall be cut down and cast into the
flames."

And in the evening after the high-tea which was their last meal, while
they sat in the stiff parlour, the ladies working and Dr. Macphail
smoking his pipe, the missionary told them of his work in the islands.

"When we went there they had no sense of sin at all," he said. "They
broke the commandments one after the other and never knew they were
doing wrong. And I think that was the most difficult part of my work, to
instil into the natives the sense of sin."

The Macphails knew already that Davidson had worked in the Solomons for
five years before he met his wife. She had been a missionary in China,
and they had become acquainted in Boston, where they were both spending
part of their leave to attend a missionary congress. On their marriage
they had been appointed to the islands in which they had laboured ever
since.

In the course of all the conversations they had had with Mr. Davidson
one thing had shone out clearly and that was the man's unflinching
courage. He was a medical missionary, and he was liable to be called at
any time to one or other of the islands in the group. Even the whaleboat
is not so very safe a conveyance in the stormy Pacific of the wet
season, but often he would be sent for in a canoe, and then the danger
was great. In cases of illness or accident he never hesitated. A dozen
times he had spent the whole night baling for his life, and more than
once Mrs. Davidson had given him up for lost.

"I'd beg him not to go sometimes," she said, "or at least to wait till
the weather was more settled, but he'd never listen. He's obstinate, and
when he's once made up his mind, nothing can move him."

"How can I ask the natives to put their trust in the Lord if I am afraid
to do so myself?" cried Davidson. "And I'm not, I'm not. They know that
if they send for me in their trouble I'll come if it's humanly possible.
And do you think the Lord is going to abandon me when I am on his
business? The wind blows at his bidding and the waves toss and rage at
his word."

Dr. Macphail was a timid man. He had never been able to get used to the
hurtling of the shells over the trenches, and when he was operating in
an advanced dressing-station the sweat poured from his brow and dimmed
his spectacles in the effort he made to control his unsteady hand. He
shuddered a little as he looked at the missionary.

"I wish I could say that I've never been afraid," he said.

"I wish you could say that you believed in God," retorted the other.

But for some reason, that evening the missionary's thoughts travelled
back to the early days he and his wife had spent on the islands.

"Sometimes Mrs. Davidson and I would look at one another and the tears
would stream down our cheeks. We worked without ceasing, day and night,
and we seemed to make no progress. I don't know what I should have done
without her then. When I felt my heart sink, when I was very near
despair, she gave me courage and hope."

Mrs. Davidson looked down at her work, and a slight colour rose to her
thin cheeks. Her hands trembled a little. She did not trust herself to
speak.

"We had no one to help us. We were alone, thousands of miles from any of
our own people, surrounded by darkness. When I was broken and weary she
would put her work aside and take the Bible and read to me till peace
came and settled upon me like sleep upon the eyelids of a child, and
when at last she closed the book she'd say: 'We'll save them in spite of
themselves.' And I felt strong again in the Lord, and I answered: 'Yes,
with God's help I'll save them. I must save them.'"

He came over to the table and stood in front of it as though it were a
lectern.

"You see, they were so naturally depraved that they couldn't be brought
to see their wickedness. We had to make sins out of what they thought
were natural actions. We had to make it a sin, not only to commit
adultery and to lie and thieve, but to expose their bodies, and to dance
and not to come to church. I made it a sin for a girl to show her bosom
and a sin for a man not to wear trousers."

"How?" asked Dr. Macphail, not without surprise.

"I instituted fines. Obviously the only way to make people realise that
an action is sinful is to punish them if they commit it. I fined them if
they didn't come to church, and I fined them if they danced. I fined
them if they were improperly dressed. I had a tariff, and every sin had
to be paid for either in money or work. And at last I made them
understand."

"But did they never refuse to pay?"

"How could they?" asked the missionary.

"It would be a brave man who tried to stand up against Mr. Davidson,"
said his wife, tightening her lips.

Dr. Macphail looked at Davidson with troubled eyes. What he heard
shocked him, but he hesitated to express his disapproval.

"You must remember that in the last resort I could expel them from their
church membership."

"Did they mind that?"

Davidson smiled a little and gently rubbed his hands.

"They couldn't sell their copra. When the men fished they got no share
of the catch. It meant something very like starvation. Yes, they minded
quite a lot."

"Tell him about Fred Ohlson," said Mrs. Davidson.

The missionary fixed his fiery eyes on Dr. Macphail.

"Fred Ohlson was a Danish trader who had been in the islands a good many
years. He was a pretty rich man as traders go and he wasn't very pleased
when we came. You see, he'd had things very much his own way. He paid
the natives what he liked for their copra, and he paid in goods and
whisky. He had a native wife, but he was flagrantly unfaithful to her.
He was a drunkard. I gave him a chance to mend his ways, but he wouldn't
take it. He laughed at me."

Davidson's voice fell to a deep bass as he said the last words, and he
was silent for a minute or two. The silence was heavy with menace.

"In two years he was a ruined man. He'd lost everything he'd saved in a
quarter of a century. I broke him, and at last he was forced to come to
me like a beggar and beseech me to give him a passage back to Sydney."

"I wish you could have seen him when he came to see Mr. Davidson," said
the missionary's wife. "He had been a fine, powerful man, with a lot of
fat on him, and he had a great big voice, but now he was half the size,
and he was shaking all over. He'd suddenly become an old man."

With abstracted gaze Davidson looked out into the night. The rain was
falling again.

Suddenly from below came a sound, and Davidson turned and looked
questioningly at his wife. It was the sound of a gramophone, harsh and
loud, wheezing out a syncopated tune.

"What's that?" he asked.

Mrs. Davidson fixed her pince-nez more firmly on her nose.

"One of the second-class passengers has a room in the house. I guess it
comes from there."

They listened in silence, and presently they heard the sound of dancing.
Then the music stopped, and they heard the popping of corks and voices
raised in animated conversation.

"I daresay she's giving a farewell party to her friends on board," said
Dr. Macphail. "The ship sails at twelve, doesn't it?"

Davidson made no remark, but he looked at his watch.

"Are you ready?" he asked his wife.

She got up and folded her work.

"Yes, I guess I am," she answered.

"It's early to go to bed yet, isn't it?" said the doctor.

"We have a good deal of reading to do," explained Mrs. Davidson.
"Wherever we are, we read a chapter of the Bible before retiring for the
night and we study it with the commentaries, you know, and discuss it
thoroughly. It's a wonderful training for the mind."

The two couples bade one another good-night. Dr. and Mrs. Macphail were
left alone. For two or three minutes they did not speak.

"I think I'll go and fetch the cards," the doctor said at last.

Mrs. Macphail looked at him doubtfully. Her conversation with the
Davidsons had left her a little uneasy, but she did not like to say that
she thought they had better not play cards when the Davidsons might come
in at any moment. Dr. Macphail brought them and she watched him, though
with a vague sense of guilt, while he laid out his patience. Below the
sound of revelry continued.

It was fine enough next day, and the Macphails, condemned to spend a
fortnight of idleness at Pago-Pago, set about making the best of things.
They went down to the quay and got out of their boxes a number of books.
The doctor called on the chief surgeon of the naval hospital and went
round the beds with him. They left cards on the governor. They passed
Miss Thompson on the road. The doctor took off his hat, and she gave him
a "Good-morning, doc," in a loud, cheerful voice. She was dressed as on
the day before, in a white frock, and her shiny white boots with their
high heels, her fat legs bulging over the tops of them, were strange
things on that exotic scene.

"I don't think she's very suitably dressed, I must say," said Mrs.
Macphail. "She looks extremely common to me."

When they got back to their house, she was on the verandah playing with
one of the trader's dark children.

"Say a word to her," Dr. Macphail whispered to his wife. "She's all
alone here, and it seems rather unkind to ignore her."

Mrs. Macphail was shy, but she was in the habit of doing what her
husband bade her.

"I think we're fellow lodgers here," she said, rather foolishly.

"Terrible, ain't it, bein' cooped up in a one-horse burg like this?"
answered Miss Thompson. "And they tell me I'm lucky to have gotten a
room. I don't see myself livin' in a native house, and that's what some
have to do. I don't know why they don't have a hotel."

They exchanged a few more words. Miss Thompson, loud-voiced and
garrulous, was evidently quite willing to gossip, but Mrs. Macphail had
a poor stock of small-talk and presently she said:

"Well, I think we must go upstairs."

In the evening when they sat down to their high-tea Davidson on coming
in said:

"I see that woman downstairs has a couple of sailors sitting there. I
wonder how she's gotten acquainted with them."

"She can't be very particular," said Mrs. Davidson.

They were all rather tired after the idle, aimless day.

"If there's going to be a fortnight of this I don't know what we shall
feel like at the end of it," said Dr. Macphail.

"The only thing to do is to portion out the day to different
activities," answered the missionary. "I shall set aside a certain
number of hours to study and a certain number to exercise, rain or
fine--in the wet season you can't afford to pay any attention to the
rain--and a certain number to recreation."

Dr. Macphail looked at his companion with misgiving. Davidson's
programme oppressed him. They were eating Hamburger steak again. It
seemed the only dish the cook knew how to make. Then below the
gramophone began. Davidson started nervously when he heard it, but said
nothing. Men's voices floated up. Miss Thompson's guests were joining in
a well-known song and presently they heard her voice too, hoarse and
loud. There was a good deal of shouting and laughing. The four people
upstairs, trying to make conversation, listened despite themselves to
the clink of glasses and the scrape of chairs. More people had evidently
come. Miss Thompson was giving a party.

"I wonder how she gets them all in," said Mrs. Macphail suddenly
breaking into a medical conversation between the missionary and her
husband.

It showed whither her thoughts were wandering. The twitch of Davidson's
face proved that, though he spoke of scientific things, his mind was
busy in the same direction. Suddenly, while the doctor was giving some
experience of practice on the Flanders front, rather prosily, he sprang
to his feet with a cry.

"What's the matter, Alfred?" asked Mrs. Davidson.

"Of course! It never occurred to me. She's out of Iwelei."

"She can't be."

"She came on board at Honolulu. It's obvious. And she's carrying on her
trade here. Here."

He uttered the last word with a passion of indignation.

"What's Iwelei?" asked Mrs. Macphail.

He turned his gloomy eyes on her and his voice trembled with horror.

"The plague spot of Honolulu. The Red Light district. It was a blot on
our civilisation."

Iwelei was on the edge of the city. You went down side streets by the
harbour, in the darkness, across a rickety bridge, till you came to a
deserted road, all ruts and holes, and then suddenly you came out into
the light. There was parking room for motors on each side of the road,
and there were saloons, tawdry and bright, each one noisy with its
mechanical piano, and there were barbers' shops and tobacconists. There
was a stir in the air and a sense of expectant gaiety. You turned down a
narrow alley, either to the right or to the left, for the road divided
Iwelei into two parts, and you found yourself in the district. There
were rows of little bungalows, trim and neatly painted in green, and the
pathway between them was broad and straight. It was laid out like a
garden-city. In its respectable regularity, its order and spruceness, it
gave an impression of sardonic horror; for never can the search for love
have been so systematised and ordered. The pathways were lit by a rare
lamp, but they would have been dark except for the lights that came from
the open windows of the bungalows. Men wandered about, looking at the
women who sat at their windows, reading or sewing, for the most part
taking no notice of the passers-by; and like the women they were of all
nationalities. There were Americans, sailors from the ships in port,
enlisted men off the gunboats, sombrely drunk, and soldiers from the
regiments, white and black, quartered on the island; there were
Japanese, walking in twos and threes; Hawaiians, Chinese in long robes,
and Filipinos in preposterous hats. They were silent and as it were
oppressed. Desire is sad.

"It was the most crying scandal of the Pacific," exclaimed Davidson
vehemently. "The missionaries had been agitating against it for years,
and at last the local press took it up. The police refused to stir. You
know their argument. They say that vice is inevitable and consequently
the best thing is to localise and control it. The truth is, they were
paid. Paid. They were paid by the saloon-keepers, paid by the bullies,
paid by the women themselves. At last they were forced to move."

"I read about it in the papers that came on board in Honolulu," said Dr.
Macphail.

"Iwelei, with its sin and shame, ceased to exist on the very day we
arrived. The whole population was brought before the justices. I don't
know why I didn't understand at once what that woman was."

"Now you come to speak of it," said Mrs. Macphail, "I remember seeing
her come on board only a few minutes before the boat sailed. I remember
thinking at the time she was cutting it rather fine."

"How dare she come here!" cried Davidson indignantly. "I'm not going to
allow it."

He strode towards the door.

"What are you going to do?" asked Macphail.

"What do you expect me to do? I'm going to stop it. I'm not going to
have this house turned into--into..."

He sought for a word that should not offend the ladies' ears. His eyes
were flashing and his pale face was paler still in his emotion.

"It sounds as though there were three or four men down there," said the
doctor. "Don't you think it's rather rash to go in just now?"

The missionary gave him a contemptuous look and without a word flung out
of the room.

"You know Mr. Davidson very little if you think the fear of personal
danger can stop him in the performance of his duty," said his wife.

She sat with her hands nervously clasped, a spot of colour on her high
cheek-bones, listening to what was about to happen below. They all
listened. They heard him clatter down the wooden stairs and throw open
the door. The singing stopped suddenly, but the gramophone continued to
bray out its vulgar tune. They heard Davidson's voice and then the noise
of something heavy falling. The music stopped. He had hurled the
gramophone on the floor. Then again they heard Davidson's voice, they
could not make out the words, then Miss Thompson's, loud and shrill,
then a confused clamour as though several people were shouting together
at the top of their lungs. Mrs. Davidson gave a little gasp, and she
clenched her hands more tightly. Dr. Macphail looked uncertainly from
her to his wife. He did not want to go down, but he wondered if they
expected him to. Then there was something that sounded like a scuffle.
The noise now was more distinct. It might be that Davidson was being
thrown out of the room. The door was slammed. There was a moment's
silence and they heard Davidson come up the stairs again. He went to his
room.

"I think I'll go to him," said Mrs. Davidson.

She got up and went out.

"If you want me, just call," said Mrs. Macphail, and then when the other
was gone: "I hope he isn't hurt."

"Why couldn't he mind his own business?" said Dr. Macphail.

They sat in silence for a minute or two and then they both started, for
the gramophone began to play once more, defiantly, and mocking voices
shouted hoarsely the words of an obscene song.

Next day Mrs. Davidson was pale and tired. She complained of headache,
and she looked old and wizened. She told Mrs. Macphail that the
missionary had not slept at all; he had passed the night in a state of
frightful agitation and at five had got up and gone out. A glass of beer
had been thrown over him and his clothes were stained and stinking. But
a sombre fire glowed in Mrs. Davidson's eyes when she spoke of Miss
Thompson.

"She'll bitterly rue the day when she flouted Mr. Davidson," she said.
"Mr. Davidson has a wonderful heart and no one who is in trouble has
ever gone to him without being comforted, but he has no mercy for sin,
and when his righteous wrath is excited he's terrible."

"Why, what will he do?" asked Mrs. Macphail.

"I don't know, but I wouldn't stand in that creature's shoes for
anything in the world."

Mrs. Macphail shuddered. There was something positively alarming in the
triumphant assurance of the little woman's manner. They were going out
together that morning, and they went down the stairs side by side. Miss
Thompson's door was open, and they saw her in a bedraggled
dressing-gown, cooking something in a chafing-dish.

"Good-morning," she called. "Is Mr. Davidson better this morning?"

They passed her in silence, with their noses in the air, as if she did
not exist. They flushed, however, when she burst into a shout of
derisive laughter. Mrs. Davidson turned on her suddenly.

"Don't you dare to speak to me," she screamed. "If you insult me I shall
have you turned out of here."

"Say, did I ask Mr. Davidson to visit with me?"

"Don't answer her," whispered Mrs. Macphail hurriedly.

They walked on till they were out of earshot.

"She's brazen, brazen," burst from Mrs. Davidson.

Her anger almost suffocated her.

And on their way home they met her strolling towards the quay. She had
all her finery on. Her great white hat with its vulgar, showy flowers
was an affront. She called out cheerily to them as she went by, and a
couple of American sailors who were standing there grinned as the ladies
set their faces to an icy stare. They got in just before the rain began
to fall again.

"I guess she'll get her fine clothes spoilt," said Mrs. Davidson with a
bitter sneer.

Davidson did not come in till they were half-way through dinner. He was
wet through, but he would not change. He sat, morose and silent,
refusing to eat more than a mouthful, and he stared at the slanting
rain. When Mrs. Davidson told him of their two encounters with Miss
Thompson he did not answer. His deepening frown alone showed that he had
heard.

"Don't you think we ought to make Mr. Horn turn her out of here?" asked
Mrs. Davidson. "We can't allow her to insult us."

"There doesn't seem to be any other place for her to go," said Macphail.

"She can live with one of the natives."

"In weather like this a native hut must be a rather uncomfortable place
to live in."

"I lived in one for years," said the missionary.

When the little native girl brought in the fried bananas which formed
the sweet they had every day, Davidson turned to her.

"Ask Miss Thompson when it would be convenient for me to see her," he
said.

The girl nodded shyly and went out.

"What do you want to see her for, Alfred?" asked his wife.

"It's my duty to see her. I won't act till I've given her every chance."

"You don't know what she is. She'll insult you."

"Let her insult me. Let her spit on me. She has an immortal soul, and I
must do all that is in my power to save it."

Mrs. Davidson's ears rang still with the harlot's mocking laughter.

"She's gone too far."

"Too far for the mercy of God?" His eyes lit up suddenly and his voice
grew mellow and soft. "Never. The sinner may be deeper in sin than the
depth of hell itself, but the love of the Lord Jesus can reach him
still."

The girl came back with the message.

"Miss Thompson's compliments and as long as Rev. Davidson don't come in
business hours she'll be glad to see him any time."

The party received it in stony silence, and Dr. Macphail quickly effaced
from his lips the smile which had come upon them. He knew his wife would
be vexed with him if he found Miss Thompson's effrontery amusing.

They finished the meal in silence. When it was over the two ladies got
up and took their work, Mrs. Macphail was making another of the
innumerable comforters which she had turned out since the beginning of
the war, and the doctor lit his pipe. But Davidson remained in his chair
and with abstracted eyes stared at the table. At last he got up and
without a word went out of the room. They heard him go down and they
heard Miss Thompson's defiant "Come in" when he knocked at the door. He
remained with her for an hour. And Dr. Macphail watched the rain. It was
beginning to get on his nerves. It was not like our soft English rain
that drops gently on the earth; it was unmerciful and somehow terrible;
you felt in it the malignancy of the primitive powers of nature. It did
not pour, it flowed. It was like a deluge from heaven, and it rattled on
the roof of corrugated iron with a steady persistence that was
maddening. It seemed to have a fury of its own. And sometimes you felt
that you must scream if it did not stop, and then suddenly you felt
powerless, as though your bones had suddenly become soft; and you were
miserable and hopeless.

Macphail turned his head when the missionary came back. The two women
looked up.

"I've given her every chance. I have exhorted her to repent. She is an
evil woman."

He paused, and Dr. Macphail saw his eyes darken and his pale face grow
hard and stern.

"Now I shall take the whips with which the Lord Jesus drove the usurers
and the money-changers out of the Temple of the Most High."

He walked up and down the room. His mouth was close-set, and his black
brows were frowning.

"If she fled to the uttermost parts of the earth I should pursue her."

With a sudden movement he turned round and strode out of the room. They
heard him go downstairs again.

"What is he going to do?" asked Mrs. Macphail.

"I don't know." Mrs. Davidson took off her pince-nez and wiped them.
"When he is on the Lord's work I never ask him questions."

She sighed a little.

"What is the matter?"

"He'll wear himself out. He doesn't know what it is to spare himself."

Dr. Macphail learnt the first results of the missionary's activity from
the half-caste trader in whose house they lodged. He stopped the doctor
when he passed the store and came out to speak to him on the stoop. His
fat face was worried.

"The Rev. Davidson has been at me for letting Miss Thompson have a room
here," he said, "but I didn't know what she was when I rented it to her.
When people come and ask if I can rent them a room all I want to know is
if they've the money to pay for it. And she paid me for hers a week in
advance."

Dr. Macphail did not want to commit himself.

"When all's said and done it's your house. We're very much obliged to
you for taking us in at all."

Horn looked at him doubtfully. He was not certain yet how definitely
Macphail stood on the missionary's side.

"The missionaries are in with one another," he said, hesitatingly. "If
they get it in for a trader he may just as well shut up his store and
quit."

"Did he want you to turn her out?"

"No, he said so long as she behaved herself he couldn't ask me to do
that. He said he wanted to be just to me. I promised she shouldn't have
no more visitors. I've just been and told her."

"How did she take it?"

"She gave me Hell."

The trader squirmed in his old ducks. He had found Miss Thompson a rough
customer.

"Oh, well, I daresay she'll get out. I don't suppose she wants to stay
here if she can't have anyone in."

"There's nowhere she can go, only a native house, and no native'll take
her now, not now that the missionaries have got their knife in her."

Dr. Macphail looked at the falling rain.

"Well, I don't suppose it's any good waiting for it to clear up."

In the evening when they sat in the parlour Davidson talked to them of
his early days at college. He had had no means and had worked his way
through by doing odd jobs during the vacations. There was silence
downstairs. Miss Thompson was sitting in her little room alone. But
suddenly the gramophone began to play. She had set it on in defiance, to
cheat her loneliness, but there was no one to sing, and it had a
melancholy note. It was like a cry for help. Davidson took no notice. He
was in the middle of a long anecdote and without change of expression
went on. The gramophone continued. Miss Thompson put on one reel after
another. It looked as though the silence of the night were getting on
her nerves. It was breathless and sultry. When the Macphails went to bed
they could not sleep. They lay side by side with their eyes wide open,
listening to the cruel singing of the mosquitoes outside their curtain.

"What's that?" whispered Mrs. Macphail at last.

They heard a voice, Davidson's voice, through the wooden partition. It
went on with a monotonous, earnest insistence. He was praying aloud. He
was praying for the soul of Miss Thompson.

Two or three days went by. Now when they passed Miss Thompson on the
road she did not greet them with ironic cordiality or smile; she passed
with her nose in the air, a sulky look on her painted face, frowning, as
though she did not see them. The trader told Macphail that she had tried
to get lodging elsewhere, but had failed. In the evening she played
through the various reels of her gramophone, but the pretence of mirth
was obvious now. The ragtime had a cracked, heartbroken rhythm as though
it were a one-step of despair. When she began to play on Sunday Davidson
sent Horn to beg her to stop at once since it was the Lord's day. The
reel was taken off and the house was silent except for the steady
pattering of the rain on the iron roof.

"I think she's getting a bit worked up," said the trader next day to
Macphail. "She don't know what Mr. Davidson's up to and it makes her
scared."

Macphail had caught a glimpse of her that morning and it struck him that
her arrogant expression had changed. There was in her face a hunted
look. The half-caste gave him a sidelong glance.

"I suppose you don't know what Mr. Davidson is doing about it?" he
hazarded.

"No, I don't."

It was singular that Horn should ask him that question, for he also had
the idea that the missionary was mysteriously at work. He had an
impression that he was weaving a net around the woman, carefully,
systematically, and suddenly, when everything was ready would pull the
strings tight.

"He told me to tell her," said the trader, "that if at any time she
wanted him she only had to send and he'd come."

"What did she say when you told her that?"

"She didn't say nothing. I didn't stop. I just said what he said I was
to and then I beat it. I thought she might be going to start weepin'."

"I have no doubt the loneliness is getting on her nerves," said the
doctor. "And the rain--that's enough to make anyone jumpy," he continued
irritably. "Doesn't it ever stop in this confounded place?"

"It goes on pretty steady in the rainy season. We have three hundred
inches in the year. You see, it's the shape of the bay. It seems to
attract the rain from all over the Pacific."

"Damn the shape of the bay," said the doctor.

He scratched his mosquito bites. He felt very short-tempered. When the
rain stopped and the sun shone, it was like a hot-house, seething,
humid, sultry, breathless, and you had a strange feeling that everything
was growing with a savage violence. The natives, blithe and childlike by
reputation, seemed then, with their tattooing and their dyed hair, to
have something sinister in their appearance; and when they pattered
along at your heels with their naked feet you looked back instinctively.
You felt they might at any moment come behind you swiftly and thrust a
long knife between your shoulder-blades. You could not tell what dark
thoughts lurked behind their wide-set eyes. They had a little the look
of ancient Egyptians painted on a temple wall, and there was about them
the terror of what is immeasurably old.

The missionary came and went. He was busy, but the Macphails did not
know what he was doing. Horn told the doctor that he saw the governor
every day, and once Davidson mentioned him.

"He looks as if he had plenty of determination," he said, "but when you
come down to brass-tacks he has no backbone."

"I suppose that means he won't do exactly what you want," suggested the
doctor facetiously.

The missionary did not smile.

"I want him to do what's right. It shouldn't be necessary to persuade a
man to do that."

"But there may be differences of opinion about what is right."

"If a man had a gangrenous foot would you have patience with anyone who
hesitated to amputate it?"

"Gangrene is a matter of fact."

"And Evil?"

What Davidson had done soon appeared. The four of them had just finished
their mid-day meal, and they had not yet separated for the siesta which
the heat imposed on the ladies and on the doctor. Davidson had little
patience with the slothful habit. The door was suddenly flung open and
Miss Thompson came in. She looked round the room and then went up to
Davidson.

"You low-down skunk, what have you been saying about me to the
governor?"

She was spluttering with rage. There was a moment's pause. Then the
missionary drew forward a chair.

"Won't you be seated, Miss Thompson? I've been hoping to have another
talk with you."

"You poor low-life bastard."

She burst into a torrent of insult, foul and insolent. Davidson kept his
grave eyes on her.

"I'm indifferent to the abuse you think fit to heap on me, Miss
Thompson," he said, "but I must beg you to remember that ladies are
present."

Tears by now were struggling with her anger. Her face was red and
swollen as though she were choking.

"What has happened?" asked Dr. Macphail.

"A feller's just been in here and he says I gotter beat it on the next
boat."

Was there a gleam in the missionary's eyes? His face remained impassive.

"You could hardly expect the governor to let you stay here under the
circumstances."

"You done it," she shrieked. "You can't kid me. You done it."

"I don't want to deceive you. I urged the governor to take the only
possible step consistent with his obligations."

"Why couldn't you leave me be? I wasn't doin' you no harm."

"You may be sure that if you had I should be the last man to resent it."

"Do you think I want to stay on in this poor imitation of a burg? I
don't look no busher, do I?"

"In that case I don't see what cause of complaint you have," he
answered.

She gave an inarticulate cry of rage and flung out of the room. There
was a short silence.

"It's a relief to know that the governor has acted at last," said
Davidson finally. "He's a weak man and he shilly-shallied. He said she
was only here for a fortnight anyway, and if she went on to Apia, that
was under British jurisdiction and had nothing to do with him."

The missionary sprang to his feet and strode across the room.

"It's terrible the way the men who are in authority seek to evade their
responsibility. They speak as though evil that was out of sight ceased
to be evil. The very existence of that woman is a scandal and it does
not help matters to shift it to another of the islands. In the end I had
to speak straight from the shoulder."

Davidson's brow lowered, and he protruded his firm chin. He looked
fierce and determined.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Our mission is not entirely without influence at Washington. I pointed
out to the governor that it wouldn't do him any good if there was a
complaint about the way he managed things here."

"When has she got to go?" asked the doctor, after a pause.

"The San Francisco boat is due here from Sydney next Tuesday. She's to
sail on that."

That was in five days' time. It was next day, when he was coming back
from the hospital where for want of something better to do Macphail
spent most of his mornings, that the half-caste stopped him as he was
going upstairs.

"Excuse me, Dr. Macphail, Miss Thompson's sick. Will you have a look at
her."

"Certainly."

Horn led him to her room. She was sitting in a chair idly, neither
reading nor sewing, staring in front of her. She wore her white dress
and the large hat with the flowers on it. Macphail noticed that her skin
was yellow and muddy under her powder, and her eyes were heavy.

"I'm sorry to hear you're not well," he said.

"Oh, I ain't sick really. I just said that, because I just had to see
you. I've got to clear on a boat that's going to 'Frisco."

She looked at him and he saw that her eyes were suddenly startled. She
opened and clenched her hands spasmodically. The trader stood at the
door, listening.

"So I understand," said the doctor.

She gave a little gulp.

"I guess it ain't very convenient for me to go to 'Frisco just now. I
went to see the governor yesterday afternoon, but I couldn't get to him.
I saw the secretary, and he told me I'd got to take that boat and that
was all there was to it. I just had to see the governor, so I waited
outside his house this morning, and when he come out I spoke to him. He
didn't want to speak to me, I'll say, but I wouldn't let him shake me
off, and at last he said he hadn't no objection to my staying here till
the next boat to Sydney if the Rev. Davidson will stand for it."

She stopped and looked at Dr. Macphail anxiously.

"I don't know exactly what I can do," he said.

"Well, I thought maybe you wouldn't mind asking him. I swear to God I
won't start anything here if he'll just only let me stay. I won't go out
of the house if that'll suit him. It's no more'n a fortnight."

"I'll ask him."

"He won't stand for it," said Horn. "He'll have you out on Tuesday, so
you may as well make up your mind to it."

"Tell him I can get work in Sydney, straight stuff, I mean. 'Tain't
asking very much."

"I'll do what I can."

"And come and tell me right away, will you? I can't set down to a thing
till I get the dope one way or the other."

It was not an errand that much pleased the doctor, and,
characteristically perhaps, he went about it indirectly. He told his
wife what Miss Thompson had said to him and asked her to speak to Mrs.
Davidson. The missionary's attitude seemed rather arbitrary and it could
do no harm if the girl were allowed to stay in Pago-Pago another
fortnight. But he was not prepared for the result of his diplomacy. The
missionary came to him straightway.

"Mrs. Davidson tells me that Thompson has been speaking to you."

Dr. Macphail, thus directly tackled, had the shy man's resentment at
being forced out into the open. He felt his temper rising, and he
flushed.

"I don't see that it can make any difference if she goes to Sydney
rather than to San Francisco, and so long as she promises to behave
while she's here it's dashed hard to persecute her."

The missionary fixed him with his stern eyes.

"Why is she unwilling to go back to San Francisco?"

"I didn't enquire," answered the doctor with some asperity. "And I think
one does better to mind one's own business."

Perhaps it was not a very tactful answer.

"The governor has ordered her to be deported by the first boat that
leaves the island. He's only done his duty and I will not interfere. Her
presence is a peril here."

"I think you're very harsh and tyrannical."

The two ladies looked up at the doctor with some alarm, but they need
not have feared a quarrel, for the missionary smiled gently.

"I'm terribly sorry you should think that of me, Dr. Macphail. Believe
me, my heart bleeds for that unfortunate woman, but I'm only trying to
do my duty."

The doctor made no answer. He looked out of the window sullenly. For
once it was not raining and across the bay you saw nestling among the
trees the huts of a native village.

"I think I'll take advantage of the rain stopping to go out," he said.

"Please don't bear me malice because I can't accede to your wish," said
Davidson, with a melancholy smile. "I respect you very much, doctor, and
I should be sorry if you thought ill of me."

"I have no doubt you have a sufficiently good opinion of yourself to
bear mine with equanimity," he retorted.

"That's one on me," chuckled Davidson.

When Dr. Macphail, vexed with himself because he had been uncivil to no
purpose, went downstairs, Miss Thompson was waiting for him with her
door ajar.

"Well," she said, "have you spoken to him?"

"Yes, I'm sorry, he won't do anything," he answered, not looking at her
in his embarrassment.

But then he gave her a quick glance, for a sob broke from her. He saw
that her face was white with fear. It gave him a shock of dismay. And
suddenly he had an idea.

"But don't give up hope yet. I think it's a shame the way they're
treating you and I'm going to see the governor myself."

"Now?"

He nodded. Her face brightened.

"Say, that's real good of you. I'm sure he'll let me stay if you speak
for me. I just won't do a thing I didn't ought all the time I'm here."

Dr. Macphail hardly knew why he had made up his mind to appeal to the
governor. He was perfectly indifferent to Miss Thompson's affairs, but
the missionary had irritated him, and with him temper was a smouldering
thing. He found the governor at home. He was a large, handsome man, a
sailor, with a grey tooth-brush moustache; and he wore a spotless
uniform of white drill.

"I've come to see you about a woman who's lodging in the same house as
we are," he said. "Her name's Thompson."

"I guess I've heard nearly enough about her, Dr. Macphail," said the
governor, smiling. "I've given her the order to get out next Tuesday and
that's all I can do."

"I wanted to ask you if you couldn't stretch a point and let her stay
here till the boat comes in from San Francisco so that she can go to
Sydney. I will guarantee her good behaviour."

The governor continued to smile, but his eyes grew small and serious.

"I'd be very glad to oblige you, Dr. Macphail, but I've given the order
and it must stand."

The doctor put the case as reasonably as he could, but now the governor
ceased to smile at all. He listened sullenly, with averted gaze.
Macphail saw that he was making no impression.

"I'm sorry to cause any lady inconvenience, but she'll have to sail on
Tuesday and that's all there is to it."

"But what difference can it make?"

"Pardon me, doctor, but I don't feel called upon to explain my official
actions except to the proper authorities."

Macphail looked at him shrewdly. He remembered Davidson's hint that he
had used threats, and in the governor's attitude he read a singular
embarrassment.

"Davidson's a damned busybody," he said hotly.

"Between ourselves, Dr. Macphail, I don't say that I have formed a very
favourable opinion of Mr. Davidson, but I am bound to confess that he
was within his rights in pointing out to me the danger that the presence
of a woman of Miss Thompson's character was to a place like this where a
number of enlisted men are stationed among a native population."

He got up and Dr. Macphail was obliged to do so too.

"I must ask you to excuse me. I have an engagement. Please give my
respects to Mrs. Macphail."

The doctor left him crest-fallen. He knew that Miss Thompson would be
waiting for him, and unwilling to tell her himself that he had failed,
he went into the house by the back door and sneaked up the stairs as
though he had something to hide.

At supper he was silent and ill-at-ease, but the missionary was jovial
and animated. Dr. Macphail thought his eyes rested on him now and then
with triumphant good-humour. It struck him suddenly that Davidson knew
of his visit to the governor and of its ill success. But how on earth
could he have heard of it? There was something sinister about the power
of that man. After supper he saw Horn on the verandah and, as though to
have a casual word with him, went out.

"She wants to know if you've seen the governor," the trader whispered.

"Yes. He wouldn't do anything. I'm awfully sorry, I can't do anything
more."

"I knew he wouldn't. They daren't go against the missionaries."

"What are you talking about?" said Davidson affably, coming out to join
them.

"I was just saying there was no chance of your getting over to Apia for
at least another week," said the trader glibly.

He left them, and the two men returned into the parlour. Mr. Davidson
devoted one hour after each meal to recreation. Presently a timid knock
was heard at the door.

"Come in," said Mrs. Davidson, in her sharp voice.

The door was not opened. She got up and opened it. They saw Miss
Thompson standing at the threshold. But the change in her appearance was
extraordinary. This was no longer the flaunting hussy who had jeered at
them in the road, but a broken, frightened woman. Her hair, as a rule so
elaborately arranged, was tumbling untidily over her neck. She wore
bedroom slippers and a skirt and blouse. They were unfresh and
bedraggled. She stood at the door with the tears streaming down her face
and did not dare to enter.

"What do you want?" said Mrs. Davidson harshly.

"May I speak to Mr. Davidson?" she said in a choking voice.

The missionary rose and went towards her.

"Come right in, Miss Thompson," he said in cordial tones. "What can I do
for you?"

She entered the room.

"Say, I'm sorry for what I said to you the other day an' for--for
everythin' else. I guess I was a bit lit up. I beg pardon."

"Oh, it was nothing. I guess my back's broad enough to bear a few hard
words."

She stepped towards him with a movement that was horribly cringing.

"You've got me beat. I'm all in. You won't make me go back to 'Frisco?"

His genial manner vanished and his voice grew on a sudden hard and
stern.

"Why don't you want to go back there?"

She cowered before him.

"I guess my people live there. I don't want them to see me like this.
I'll go anywhere else you say."

"Why don't you want to go back to San Francisco?"

"I've told you."

He leaned forward, staring at her, and his great, shining eyes seemed to
try to bore into her soul. He gave a sudden gasp.

"The penitentiary."

She screamed, and then she fell at his feet, clasping his legs.

"Don't send me back there. I swear to you before God I'll be a good
woman. I'll give all this up."

She burst into a torrent of confused supplication and the tears coursed
down her painted cheeks. He leaned over her and, lifting her face,
forced her to look at him.

"Is that it, the penitentiary?"

"I beat it before they could get me," she gasped. "If the bulls grab me
it's three years for mine."

He let go his hold of her and she fell in a heap on the floor, sobbing
bitterly. Dr. Macphail stood up.

"This alters the whole thing," he said. "You can't make her go back when
you know this. Give her another chance. She wants to turn over a new
leaf."

"I'm going to give her the finest chance she's ever had. If she repents
let her accept her punishment."

She misunderstood the words and looked up. There was a gleam of hope in
her heavy eyes.

"You'll let me go?"

"No. You shall sail for San Francisco on Tuesday."

She gave a groan of horror and then burst into low, hoarse shrieks which
sounded hardly human, and she beat her head passionately on the ground.
Dr. Macphail sprang to her and lifted her up.

"Come on, you mustn't do that. You'd better go to your room and lie
down. I'll get you something."

He raised her to her feet and partly dragging her, partly carrying her,
got her downstairs. He was furious with Mrs. Davidson and with his wife
because they made no effort to help. The half-caste was standing on the
landing and with his assistance he managed to get her on the bed. She
was moaning and crying. She was almost insensible. He gave her a
hypodermic injection. He was hot and exhausted when he went upstairs
again.

"I've got her to lie down."

The two women and Davidson were in the same positions as when he had
left them. They could not have moved or spoken since he went.

"I was waiting for you," said Davidson, in a strange, distant voice. "I
want you all to pray with me for the soul of our erring sister."

He took the Bible off a shelf, and sat down at the table at which they
had supped. It had not been cleared, and he pushed the tea-pot out of
the way. In a powerful voice, resonant and deep, he read to them the
chapter in which is narrated the meeting of Jesus Christ with the woman
taken in adultery.

"Now kneel with me and let us pray for the soul of our dear sister,
Sadie Thompson."

He burst into a long, passionate prayer in which he implored God to have
mercy on the sinful woman. Mrs. Macphail and Mrs. Davidson knelt with
covered eyes. The doctor, taken by surprise, awkward and sheepish, knelt
too. The missionary's prayer had a savage eloquence. He was
extraordinarily moved, and as he spoke the tears ran down his cheeks.
Outside, the pitiless rain fell, fell steadily, with a fierce malignity
that was all too human.

At last he stopped. He paused for a moment and said:

"We will now repeat the Lord's prayer."

They said it and then, following him, they rose from their knees. Mrs.
Davidson's face was pale and restful. She was comforted and at peace,
but the Macphails felt suddenly bashful. They did not know which way to
look.

"I'll just go down and see how she is now," said Dr. Macphail.

When he knocked at her door it was opened for him by Horn. Miss Thompson
was in a rocking-chair, sobbing quietly.

"What are you doing there?" exclaimed Macphail. "I told you to lie
down."

"I can't lie down. I want to see Mr. Davidson."

"My poor child, what do you think is the good of it? You'll never move
him."

"He said he'd come if I sent for him."

Macphail motioned to the trader.

"Go and fetch him."

He waited with her in silence while the trader went upstairs. Davidson
came in.

"Excuse me for asking you to come here," she said, looking at him
sombrely.

"I was expecting you to send for me. I knew the Lord would answer my
prayer."

They stared at one another for a moment and then she looked away. She
kept her eyes averted when she spoke.

"I've been a bad woman. I want to repent."

"Thank God! thank God! He has heard our prayers."

He turned to the two men.

"Leave me alone with her. Tell Mrs. Davidson that our prayers have been
answered."

They went out and closed the door behind them.

"Gee whizz," said the trader.

That night Dr. Macphail could not get to sleep till late, and when he
heard the missionary come upstairs he looked at his watch. It was two
o'clock. But even then he did not go to bed at once, for through the
wooden partition that separated their rooms he heard him praying aloud,
till he himself, exhausted, fell asleep.

When he saw him next morning he was surprised at his appearance. He was
paler than ever, tired, but his eyes shone with inhuman fire. It looked
as though he were filled with an overwhelming joy.

"I want you to go down presently and see Sadie," he said. "I can't hope
that her body is better, but her soul--her soul is transformed."

The doctor was feeling wan and nervous.

"You were with her very late last night," he said.

"Yes, she couldn't bear to have me leave her."

"You look as pleased as Punch," the doctor said irritably.

Davidson's eyes shone with ecstasy.

"A great mercy has been vouchsafed me. Last night I was privileged to
bring a lost soul to the loving arms of Jesus."

Miss Thompson was again in the rocking-chair. The bed had not been made.
The room was in disorder. She had not troubled to dress herself, but
wore a dirty dressing-gown, and her hair was tied in a sluttish knot.
She had given her face a dab with a wet towel, but it was all swollen
and creased with crying. She looked a drab.

She raised her eyes dully when the doctor came in. She was cowed and
broken.

"Where's Mr. Davidson?" she asked.

"He'll come presently if you want him," answered Macphail acidly. "I
came here to see how you were."

"Oh, I guess I'm O.K. You needn't worry about that."

"Have you had anything to eat?"

"Horn brought me some coffee."

She looked anxiously at the door.

"D'you think he'll come down soon? I feel as if it wasn't so terrible
when he's with me."

"Are you still going on Tuesday?"

"Yes, he says I've got to go. Please tell him to come right along. You
can't do me any good. He's the only one as can help me now."

"Very well," said Dr. Macphail.

During the next three days the missionary spent almost all his time with
Sadie Thompson. He joined the others only to have his meals. Dr.
Macphail noticed that he hardly ate.

"He's wearing himself out," said Mrs. Davidson pitifully. "He'll have a
breakdown if he doesn't take care, but he won't spare himself."

She herself was white and pale. She told Mrs. Macphail that she had no
sleep. When the missionary came upstairs from Miss Thompson he prayed
till he was exhausted, but even then he did not sleep for long. After an
hour or two he got up and dressed himself, and went for a tramp along
the bay. He had strange dreams.

"This morning he told me that he'd been dreaming about the mountains of
Nebraska," said Mrs. Davidson.

"That's curious," said Dr. Macphail.

He remembered seeing them from the windows of the train when he crossed
America. They were like huge mole-hills, rounded and smooth, and they
rose from the plain abruptly. Dr. Macphail remembered how it struck him
that they were like a woman's breasts.

Davidson's restlessness was intolerable even to himself. But he was
buoyed up by a wonderful exhilaration. He was tearing out by the roots
the last vestiges of sin that lurked in the hidden corners of that poor
woman's heart. He read with her and prayed with her.

"It's wonderful," he said to them one day at supper. "It's a true
rebirth. Her soul, which was black as night, is now pure and white like
the new-fallen snow. I am humble and afraid. Her remorse for all her
sins is beautiful. I am not worthy to touch the hem of her garment."

"Have you the heart to send her back to San Francisco?" said the doctor.
"Three years in an American prison. I should have thought you might have
saved her from that."

"Ah, but don't you see? It's necessary. Do you think my heart doesn't
bleed for her? I love her as I love my wife and my sister. All the time
that she is in prison I shall suffer all the pain that she suffers."

"Bunkum," cried the doctor impatiently.

"You don't understand because you're blind. She's sinned, and she must
suffer. I know what she'll endure. She'll be starved and tortured and
humiliated. I want her to accept the punishment of man as a sacrifice to
God. I want her to accept it joyfully. She has an opportunity which is
offered to very few of us. God is very good and very merciful."

Davidson's voice trembled with excitement. He could hardly articulate
the words that tumbled passionately from his lips.

"All day I pray with her and when I leave her I pray again, I pray with
all my might and main, so that Jesus may grant her this great mercy. I
want to put in her heart the passionate desire to be punished so that at
the end, even if I offered to let her go, she would refuse. I want her
to feel that the bitter punishment of prison is the thank-offering that
she places at the feet of our Blessed Lord, who gave his life for her."

The days passed slowly. The whole household, latent on the wretched,
tortured woman downstairs, lived in a state of unnatural excitement. She
was like a victim that was being prepared for the savage rites of a
bloody idolatry. Her terror numbed her. She could not bear to let
Davidson out of her sight; it was only when he was with her that she had
courage, and she hung upon him with a slavish dependence. She cried a
great deal, and she read the Bible, and prayed. Sometimes she was
exhausted and apathetic. Then she did indeed look forward to her ordeal,
for it seemed to offer an escape, direct and concrete, from the anguish
she was enduring. She could not bear much longer the vague terrors which
now assailed her. With her sins she had put aside all personal vanity,
and she slopped about her room, unkempt and dishevelled, in her tawdry
dressing-gown. She had not taken off her night-dress for four days, nor
put on stockings. Her room was littered and untidy. Meanwhile the rain
fell with a cruel persistence. You felt that the heavens must at last be
empty of water, but still it poured down, straight and heavy, with a
maddening iteration, on the iron roof. Everything was damp and clammy.
There was mildew on the walls and on the boots that stood on the floor.
Through the sleepless nights the mosquitoes droned their angry chant.

"If it would only stop raining for a single day it wouldn't be so bad,"
said Dr. Macphail.

They all looked forward to the Tuesday when the boat for San Francisco
was to arrive from Sydney. The strain was intolerable. So far as Dr.
Macphail was concerned, his pity and his resentment were alike
extinguished by his desire to be rid of the unfortunate woman. The
inevitable must be accepted. He felt he would breathe more freely when
the ship had sailed. Sadie Thompson was to be escorted on board by a
clerk in the governor's office. This person called on the Monday evening
and told Miss Thompson to be prepared at eleven in the morning. Davidson
was with her.

"I'll see that everything is ready. I mean to come on board with her
myself."

Miss Thompson did not speak.

When Dr. Macphail blew out his candle and crawled cautiously under his
mosquito curtains, he gave a sigh of relief.

"Well, thank God that's over. By this time to-morrow she'll be gone."

"Mrs. Davidson will be glad too. She says he's wearing himself to a
shadow," said Mrs. Macphail. "She's a different woman."

"Who?"

"Sadie. I should never have thought it possible. It makes one humble."

Dr. Macphail did not answer, and presently he fell asleep. He was tired
out, and he slept more soundly than usual.

He was awakened in the morning by a hand placed on his arm, and,
starting up, saw Horn by the side of his bed. The trader put his finger
on his mouth to prevent any exclamation from Dr. Macphail and beckoned
to him to come. As a rule he wore shabby ducks, but now he was barefoot
and wore only the lava-lava of the natives. He looked suddenly savage,
and Dr. Macphail, getting out of bed, saw that he was heavily tattooed.
Horn made him a sign to come on to the verandah. Dr. Macphail got out of
bed and followed the trader out.

"Don't make a noise," he whispered. "You're wanted. Put on a coat and
some shoes. Quick."

Dr. Macphail's first thought was that something had happened to Miss
Thompson.

"What is it? Shall I bring my instruments?"

"Hurry, please, hurry."

Dr. Macphail crept back into the bedroom, put on a waterproof over his
pyjamas, and a pair of rubber-soled shoes. He rejoined the trader, and
together they tiptoed down the stairs. The door leading out to the road
was open and at it were standing half a dozen natives.

"What is it?" repeated the doctor.

"Come along with me," said Horn.

He walked out and the doctor followed him. The natives came after them
in a little bunch. They crossed the road and came on to the beach. The
doctor saw a group of natives standing round some object at the water's
edge. They hurried along, a couple of dozen yards perhaps, and the
natives opened out as the doctor came up. The trader pushed him
forwards. Then he saw, lying half in the water and half out, a dreadful
object, the body of Davidson. Dr. Macphail bent down--he was not a man
to lose his head in an emergency--and turned the body over. The throat
was cut from ear to ear, and in the right hand was still the razor with
which the deed was done.

"He's quite cold," said the doctor. "He must have been dead some time."

"One of the boys saw him lying there on his way to work just now and
came and told me. Do you think he did it himself?"

"Yes. Someone ought to go for the police."

Horn said something in the native tongue, and two youths started off.

"We must leave him here till they come," said the doctor.

"They mustn't take him into my house. I won't have him in my house."

"You'll do what the authorities say," replied the doctor sharply. "In
point of fact I expect they'll take him to the mortuary."

They stood waiting where they were. The trader took a cigarette from a
fold in his lava-lava and gave one to Dr. Macphail. They smoked while
they stared at the corpse. Dr. Macphail could not understand.

"Why do you think he did it?" asked Horn.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. In a little while native police came
along, under the charge of a marine, with a stretcher, and immediately
afterwards a couple of naval officers and a naval doctor. They managed
everything in a business-like manner.

"What about the wife?" said one of the officers.

"Now that you've come I'll go back to the house and get some things on.
I'll see that it's broken to her. She'd better not see him till he's
been fixed up a little."

"I guess that's right," said the naval doctor.

When Dr. Macphail went back he found his wife nearly dressed.

"Mrs. Davidson's in a dreadful state about her husband," she said to him
as soon as he appeared. "He hasn't been to bed all night. She heard him
leave Miss Thompson's room at two, but he went out. If he's been walking
about since then he'll be absolutely dead."

Dr. Macphail told her what had happened and asked her to break the news
to Mrs. Davidson.

"But why did he do it?" she asked, horror-stricken.

"I don't know."

"But I can't. I can't."

"You must."

She gave him a frightened look and went out. He heard her go into Mrs.
Davidson's room. He waited a minute to gather himself together and then
began to shave and wash. When he was dressed he sat down on the bed and
waited for his wife. At last she came.

"She wants to see him," she said.

"They've taken him to the mortuary. We'd better go down with her. How
did she take it?"

"I think she's stunned. She didn't cry. But she's trembling like a
leaf."

"We'd better go at once."

When they knocked at her door Mrs. Davidson came out. She was very pale,
but dry-eyed. To the doctor she seemed unnaturally composed. No word was
exchanged, and they set out in silence down the road. When they arrived
at the mortuary Mrs. Davidson spoke.

"Let me go in and see him alone."

They stood aside. A native opened a door for her and closed it behind
her. They sat down and waited. One or two white men came and talked to
them in undertones. Dr. Macphail told them again what he knew of the
tragedy. At last the door was quietly opened and Mrs. Davidson came out.
Silence fell upon them.

"I'm ready to go back now," she said.

Her voice was hard and steady. Dr. Macphail could not understand the
look in her eyes. Her pale face was very stern. They walked back slowly,
never saying a word, and at last they came round the bend on the other
side of which stood their house. Mrs. Davidson gave a gasp, and for a
moment they stopped still. An incredible sound assaulted their ears. The
gramophone which had been silent for so long was playing, playing
ragtime loud and harsh.

"What's that?" cried Mrs. Macphail with horror.

"Let's go on," said Mrs. Davidson.

They walked up the steps and entered the hall. Miss Thompson was
standing at her door, chatting with a sailor. A sudden change had taken
place in her. She was no longer the cowed drudge of the last days. She
was dressed in all her finery, in her white dress, with the high shiny
boots over which her fat legs bulged in their cotton stockings; her hair
was elaborately arranged; and she wore that enormous hat covered with
gaudy flowers. Her face was painted, her eyebrows were boldly black, and
her lips were scarlet. She held herself erect. She was the flaunting
queen that they had known at first. As they came in she broke into a
loud, jeering laugh; and then, when Mrs. Davidson involuntarily stopped,
she collected the spittle in her mouth and spat. Mrs. Davidson cowered
back, and two red spots rose suddenly to her cheeks. Then, covering her
face with her hands, she broke away and ran quickly up the stairs. Dr.
Macphail was outraged. He pushed past the woman into her room.

"What the devil are you doing?" he cried. "Stop that damned machine."

He went up to it and tore the record off. She turned on him.

"Say, doc, you can that stuff with me. What the hell are you doin' in my
room?"

"What do you mean?" he cried. "What d'you mean?"

She gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her
expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer.

"You men! You filthy, dirty pigs! You're all the same, all of you. Pigs!
Pigs!"

Dr. Macphail gasped. He understood.




THE FALL OF EDWARD BARNARD


Bateman Hunter slept badly. For a fortnight on the boat that brought him
from Tahiti to San Francisco he had been thinking of the story he had to
tell, and for three days on the train he had repeated to himself the
words in which he meant to tell it. But in a few hours now he would be
in Chicago, and doubts assailed him. His conscience, always very
sensitive, was not at ease. He was uncertain that he had done all that
was possible, it was on his honour to do much more than the possible,
and the thought was disturbing that, in a matter which so nearly touched
his own interest, he had allowed his interest to prevail over his
quixotry. Self-sacrifice appealed so keenly to his imagination that the
inability to exercise it gave him a sense of disillusion. He was like
the philanthropist who with altruistic motives builds model dwellings
for the poor and finds that he has made a lucrative investment. He
cannot prevent the satisfaction he feels in the ten per cent which
rewards the bread he had cast upon the waters, but he has an awkward
feeling that it detracts somewhat from the savour of his virtue. Bateman
Hunter knew that his heart was pure, but he was not quite sure how
steadfastly, when he told her his story, he would endure the scrutiny of
Isabel Longstaffe's cool grey eyes. They were far-seeing and wise. She
measured the standards of others by her own meticulous uprightness and
there could be no greater censure than the cold silence with which she
expressed her disapproval of a conduct that did not satisfy her exacting
code. There was no appeal from her judgment, for, having made up her
mind, she never changed it. But Bateman would not have had her
different. He loved not only the beauty of her person, slim and
straight, with the proud carriage of her head, but still more the beauty
of her soul. With her truthfulness, her rigid sense of honour, her
fearless outlook, she seemed to him to collect in herself all that was
most admirable in his countrywomen. But he saw in her something more
than the perfect type of the American girl, he felt that her
exquisiteness was peculiar in a way to her environment, and he was
assured that no city in the world could have produced her but Chicago. A
pang seized him when he remembered that he must deal so bitter a blow to
her pride, and anger flamed up in his heart when he thought of Edward
Barnard.

But at last the train steamed in to Chicago and he exulted when he saw
the long streets of grey houses. He could hardly bear his impatience at
the thought of State and Wabash with their crowded pavements, their
hustling traffic, and their noise. He was at home. And he was glad that
he had been born in the most important city in the United States. San
Francisco was provincial, New York was effete; the future of America lay
in the development of its economic possibilities, and Chicago, by its
position and by the energy of its citizens, was destined to become the
real capital of the country.

"I guess I shall live long enough to see it the biggest city in the
world," Bateman said to himself as he stepped down to the platform.

His father had come to meet him, and after a hearty handshake, the pair
of them, tall, slender, and well-made, with the same fine, ascetic
features and thin lips, walked out of the station. Mr. Hunter's
automobile was waiting for them and they got in. Mr. Hunter caught his
son's proud and happy glance as he looked at the street.

"Glad to be back, son?" he asked.

"I should just think I was," said Bateman.

His eyes devoured the restless scene.

"I guess there's a bit more traffic here than in your South Sea island,"
laughed Mr. Hunter. "Did you like it there?"

"Give me Chicago, dad," answered Bateman.

"You haven't brought Edward Barnard back with you."

"No."

"How was he?"

Bateman was silent for a moment, and his handsome, sensitive face
darkened.

"I'd sooner not speak about him, dad," he said at last.

"That's all right, my son. I guess your mother will be a happy woman
to-day."

They passed out of the crowded streets in the Loop and drove along the
lake till they came to the imposing house, an exact copy of a chteau on
the Loire, which Mr. Hunter had built himself some years before. As soon
as Bateman was alone in his room he asked for a number on the telephone.
His heart leaped when he heard the voice that answered him.

"Good-morning, Isabel," he said gaily.

"Good-morning, Bateman."

"How did you recognise my voice?"

"It is not so long since I heard it last. Besides, I was expecting you."

"When may I see you?"

"Unless you have anything better to do perhaps you'll dine with us
to-night."

"You know very well that I couldn't possibly have anything better to
do."

"I suppose that you're full of news?"

He thought he detected in her voice a note of apprehension.

"Yes," he answered.

"Well, you must tell me to-night. Good-bye."

She rang off. It was characteristic of her that she should be able to
wait so many unnecessary hours to know what so immensely concerned her.
To Bateman there was an admirable fortitude in her restraint.

At dinner, at which beside himself and Isabel no one was present but her
father and mother, he watched her guide the conversation into the
channels of an urbane small-talk, and it occurred to him that in just
such a manner would a marquise under the shadow of the guillotine toy
with the affairs of a day that would know no morrow. Her delicate
features, the aristocratic shortness of her upper lip, and her wealth of
fair hair suggested the marquise again, and it must have been obvious,
even if it were not notorious, that in her veins flowed the best blood
in Chicago. The dining-room was a fitting frame to her fragile beauty,
for Isabel had caused the house, a replica of a palace on the Grand
Canal at Venice, to be furnished by an English expert in the style of
Louis XV; and the graceful decoration linked with the name of that
amorous monarch enhanced her loveliness and at the same time acquired
from it a more profound significance. For Isabel's mind was richly
stored, and her conversation, however light, was never flippant. She
spoke now of the Musicale to which she and her mother had been in the
afternoon, of the lectures which an English poet was giving at the
Auditorium, of the political situation, and of the Old Master which her
father had recently bought for fifty thousand dollars in New York. It
comforted Bateman to hear her. He felt that he was once more in the
civilised world, at the centre of culture and distinction; and certain
voices, troubling and yet against his will refusing to still their
clamour, were at last silent in his heart.

"Gee, but it's good to be back in Chicago," he said.

At last dinner was over, and when they went out of the dining-room
Isabel said to her mother:

"I'm going to take Bateman along to my den. We have various things to
talk about."

"Very well, my dear," said Mrs. Longstaffe. "You'll find your father and
me in the Madame du Barry room when you're through."

Isabel led the young man upstairs and showed him into the room of which
he had so many charming memories. Though he knew it so well he could not
repress the exclamation of delight which it always wrung from him. She
looked round with a smile.

"I think it's a success," she said. "The main thing is that it's right.
There's not even an ash-tray that isn't of the period."

"I suppose that's what makes it so wonderful. Like all you do it's so
superlatively right."

They sat down in front of a log fire and Isabel looked at him with calm
grave eyes.

"Now what have you to say to me?" she asked.

"I hardly know how to begin."

"Is Edward Barnard coming back?"

"No."

There was a long silence before Bateman spoke again, and with each of
them it was filled with many thoughts. It was a difficult story he had
to tell, for there were things in it which were so offensive to her
sensitive ears that he could not bear to tell them, and yet in justice
to her, no less than in justice to himself, he must tell her the whole
truth.

It had all begun long ago when he and Edward Barnard, still at college,
had met Isabel Longstaffe at the tea-party given to introduce her to
society. They had both known her when she was a child and they
long-legged boys, but for two years she had been in Europe to finish her
education and it was with a surprised delight that they renewed
acquaintance with the lovely girl who returned. Both of them fell
desperately in love with her, but Bateman saw quickly that she had eyes
only for Edward, and, devoted to his friend, he resigned himself to the
role of confidant. He passed bitter moments, but he could not deny that
Edward was worthy of his good fortune, and, anxious that nothing should
impair the friendship he so greatly valued, he took care never by a hint
to disclose his own feelings. In six months the young couple were
engaged. But they were very young and Isabel's father decided that they
should not marry at least till Edward graduated. They had to wait a
year. Bateman remembered the winter at the end of which Isabel and
Edward were to be married, a winter of dances and theatre-parties and of
informal gaieties at which he, the constant third, was always present.
He loved her no less because she would shortly be his friend's wife; her
smile, a gay word she flung him, the confidence of her affection, never
ceased to delight him; and he congratulated himself, somewhat
complacently, because he did not envy them their happiness. Then an
accident happened. A great bank failed, there was a panic on the
exchange, and Edward Barnard's father found himself a ruined man. He
came home one night told his wife that he was penniless, and after
dinner, going into his study, shot himself.

A week later, Edward Barnard, with a tired, white face, went to Isabel
and asked her to release him. Her only answer was to throw her arms
round his neck and burst into tears.

"Don't make it harder for me, sweet," he said.

"Do you think I can let you go now? I love you."

"How can I ask you to marry me? The whole thing's hopeless. Your father
would never let you. I haven't a cent."

"What do I care? I love you."

He told her his plans. He had to earn money at once, and George
Braunschmidt, an old friend of his family, had offered to take him into
his own business. He was a South Sea merchant, and he had agencies in
many of the islands of the Pacific. He had suggested that Edward should
go to Tahiti for a year or two, where under the best of his managers he
could learn the details of that varied trade, and at the end of that
time he promised the young man a position in Chicago. It was a wonderful
opportunity, and when he had finished his explanations Isabel was once
more all smiles.

"You foolish boy, why have you been trying to make me miserable?"

His face lit up at her words and his eyes flashed.

"Isabel, you don't mean to say you'll wait for me?"

"Don't you think you're worth it?" she smiled.

"Ah, don't laugh at me now. I beseech you to be serious. It may be for
two years."

"Have no fear. I love you, Edward. When you come back I will marry you."

Edward's employer was a man who did not like delay and he had told him
that if he took the post he offered he must sail that day week from San
Francisco. Edward spent his last evening with Isabel. It was after
dinner that Mr. Longstaffe, saying he wanted a word with Edward, took
him into the smoking-room. Mr. Longstaffe had accepted good-naturedly
the arrangement which his daughter had told him of and Edward could not
imagine what mysterious communication he had now to make. He was not a
little perplexed to see that his host was embarrassed. He faltered. He
talked of trivial things. At last he blurted it out.

"I guess you've heard of Arnold Jackson," he said, looking at Edward
with a frown.

Edward hesitated. His natural truthfulness obliged him to admit a
knowledge he would gladly have been able to deny.

"Yes, I have. But it's a long time ago. I guess I didn't pay very much
attention."

"There are not many people in Chicago who haven't heard of Arnold
Jackson," said Mr. Longstaffe bitterly, "and if there are they'll have
no difficulty in finding someone who'll be glad to tell them. Did you
know he was Mrs. Longstaffe's brother?"

"Yes, I knew that."

"Of course we've had no communication with him for many years. He left
the country as soon as he was able to, and I guess the country wasn't
sorry to see the last of him. We understand he lives in Tahiti. My
advice to you is to give him a wide berth, but if you do hear anything
about him Mrs. Longstaffe and I would be very glad if you'd let us
know."

"Sure."

"That was all I wanted to say to you. Now I daresay you'd like to join
the ladies."

There are few families that have not among their members one whom, if
their neighbours permitted, they would willingly forget, and they are
fortunate when the lapse of a generation or two has invested his
vagaries with a romantic glamour. But when he is actually alive, if his
peculiarities are not of the kind that can be condoned by the phrase,
"he is nobody's enemy but his own", a safe one when the culprit has no
worse to answer for than alcoholism or wandering affections, the only
possible course is silence. And it was this which the Longstaffes had
adopted towards Arnold Jackson. They never talked of him. They would not
even pass through the street in which he had lived. Too kind to make his
wife and children suffer for his misdeeds, they had supported them for
years, but on the understanding that they should live in Europe. They
did everything they could to blot out all recollection of Arnold Jackson
and yet were conscious that the story was as fresh in the public mind as
when first the scandal burst upon a gaping world. Arnold Jackson was as
black a sheep as any family could suffer from. A wealthy banker,
prominent in his church, a philanthropist, a man respected by all, not
only for his connections (in his veins ran the blue blood of Chicago),
but also for his upright character, he was arrested one day on a charge
of fraud; and the dishonesty which the trial brought to light was not of
the sort which could be explained by a sudden temptation; it was
deliberate and systematic. Arnold Jackson was a rogue. When he was sent
to the penitentiary for seven years there were few who did not think he
had escaped lightly.

When at the end of this last evening the lovers separated it was with
many protestations of devotion. Isabel, all tears, was consoled a little
by her certainty of Edward's passionate love. It was a strange feeling
that she had. It made her wretched to part from him and yet she was
happy because he adored her.

This was more than two years ago.

He had written to her by every mail since then, twenty-four letters in
all, for the mail went but once a month, and his letters had been all
that a lover's letters should be. They were intimate and charming,
humorous sometimes, especially of late, and tender. At first they
suggested that he was homesick, they were full of his desire to get back
to Chicago and Isabel; and, a little anxiously, she wrote begging him to
persevere. She was afraid that he might throw up his opportunity and
come racing back. She did not want her lover to lack endurance and she
quoted to him the lines:

              "_I could not love thee, dear, so much,_
              _Loved I not honour more._"

But presently he seemed to settle down and it made Isabel very happy to
observe his growing enthusiasm to introduce American methods into that
forgotten corner of the world. But she knew him, and at the end of the
year, which was the shortest time he could possibly stay in Tahiti, she
expected to have to use all her influence to dissuade him from coming
home. It was much better that he should learn the business thoroughly,
and if they had been able to wait a year there seemed no reason why they
should not wait another. She talked it over with Bateman Hunter, always
the most generous of friends (during those first few days after Edward
went she did not know what she would have done without him), and they
decided that Edward's future must stand before everything. It was with
relief that she found as the time passed that he made no suggestion of
returning.

"He's splendid, isn't he?" she exclaimed to Bateman.

"He's white, through and through."

"Reading between the lines of his letter I know he hates it over there,
but he's sticking it out because..."

She blushed a little and Bateman, with the grave smile which was so
attractive in him, finished the sentence for her.

"Because he loves you."

"It makes me feel so humble," she said.

"You're wonderful, Isabel, you're perfectly wonderful."

But the second year passed and every month Isabel continued to receive a
letter from Edward, and presently it began to seem a little strange that
he did not speak of coming back. He wrote as though he were settled
definitely in Tahiti, and what was more, comfortably settled. She was
surprised. Then she read his letters again, all of them, several times;
and now, reading between the lines indeed, she was puzzled to notice a
change which had escaped her. The later letters were as tender and as
delightful as the first, but the tone was different. She was vaguely
suspicious of their humour, she had the instinctive mistrust of her sex
for that unaccountable quality, and she discerned in them now a
flippancy which perplexed her. She was not quite certain that the Edward
who wrote to her now was the same Edward that she had known. One
afternoon, the day after a mail had arrived from Tahiti, when she was
driving with Bateman he said to her:

"Did Edward tell you when he was sailing?"

"No, he didn't mention it. I thought he might have said something to you
about it."

"Not a word."

"You know what Edward is," she laughed in reply, "he has no sense of
time. If it occurs to you next time you write you might ask him when
he's thinking of coming."

Her manner was so unconcerned that only Bateman's acute sensitiveness
could have discerned in her request a very urgent desire. He laughed
lightly.

"Yes. I'll ask him. I can't imagine what he's thinking about."

A few days later, meeting him again, she noticed that something troubled
him. They had been much together since Edward left Chicago; they were
both devoted to him and each in his desire to talk of the absent one
found a willing listener; the consequence was that Isabel knew every
expression of Bateman's face, and his denials now were useless against
her keen instinct. Something told her that his harassed look had to do
with Edward and she did not rest till she had made him confess.

"The fact is," he said at last, "I heard in a roundabout way that Edward
was no longer working for Braunschmidt and Co., and yesterday I took the
opportunity to ask Mr. Braunschmidt himself."

"Well?"

"Edward left his employment with them nearly a year ago."

"How strange he should have said nothing about it!"

Bateman hesitated, but he had gone so far now that he was obliged to
tell the rest. It made him feel dreadfully embarrassed.

"He was fired."

"In heaven's name what for?"

"It appears they warned him once or twice, and at last they told him to
get out. They say he was lazy and incompetent."

"Edward?"

They were silent for a while, and then he saw that Isabel was crying.
Instinctively he seized her hand.

"Oh, my dear, don't, don't," he said. "I can't bear to see it."

She was so unstrung that she let her hand rest in his. He tried to
console her.

"It's incomprehensible, isn't it? It's so unlike Edward. I can't help
feeling there must be some mistake."

She did not say anything for a while, and when she spoke it was
hesitatingly.

"Has it struck you that there was anything queer in his letters lately?"
she asked, looking away, her eyes all bright with tears.

He did not quite know how to answer.

"I have noticed a change in them," he admitted. "He seems to have lost
that high seriousness which I admired so much in him. One would almost
think that the things that matter--well, don't matter."

Isabel did not reply. She was vaguely uneasy.

"Perhaps in his answer to your letter he'll say when he's coming home.
All we can do is to wait for that."

Another letter came from Edward for each of them, and still he made no
mention of his return; but when he wrote he could not have received
Bateman's enquiry. The next mail would bring them an answer to that. The
next mail came, and Bateman brought Isabel the letter he had just
received; but the first glance of his face was enough to tell her that
he was disconcerted. She read it through carefully and then, with
slightly tightened lips, read it again.

"It's a very strange letter," she said. "I don't quite understand it."

"One might almost think that he was joshing me," said Bateman, flushing.

"It reads like that, but it must be unintentional. That's so unlike
Edward."

"He says nothing about coming back."

"If I weren't so confident of his love I should think... I hardly
know what I should think."

It was then that Bateman had broached the scheme which during the
afternoon had formed itself in his brain. The firm, founded by his
father, in which he was now a partner, a firm which manufactured all
manner of motor vehicles, was about to establish agencies in Honolulu,
Sydney, and Wellington; and Bateman proposed that himself should go
instead of the manager, who had been suggested. He could return by
Tahiti; in fact, travelling from Wellington, it was inevitable to do so;
and he could see Edward.

"There's some mystery and I'm going to clear it up. That's the only way
to do it."

"Oh, Bateman, how can you be so good and kind?" she exclaimed.

"You know there's nothing in the world I want more than your happiness,
Isabel."

She looked at him and she gave him her hands.

"You're wonderful, Bateman. I didn't know there was anyone in the world
like you. How can I ever thank you?"

"I don't want your thanks. I only want to be allowed to help you."

She dropped her eyes and flushed a little. She was so used to him that
she had forgotten how handsome he was. He was as tall as Edward and as
well made, but he was dark and pale of face, while Edward was ruddy. Of
course she knew he loved her. It touched her. She felt very tenderly
towards him.

It was from this journey that Bateman Hunter was now returned.

The business part of it took him somewhat longer than he expected and he
had much time to think of his two friends. He had come to the conclusion
that it could be nothing serious that prevented Edward from coming home,
a pride, perhaps, which made him determined to make good before he
claimed the bride he adored; but it was a pride that must be reasoned
with. Isabel was unhappy. Edward must come back to Chicago with him and
marry her at once. A position could be found for him in the works of the
Hunter Motor Traction and Automobile Company. Bateman, with a bleeding
heart, exulted at the prospect of giving happiness to the two persons he
loved best in the world at the cost of his own. He would never marry. He
would be godfather to the children of Edward and Isabel, and many years
later when they were both dead he would tell Isabel's daughter how long,
long ago he had loved her mother. Bateman's eyes were veiled with tears
when he pictured this scene to himself.

Meaning to take Edward by surprise he had not cabled to announce his
arrival, and when at last he landed at Tahiti he allowed a youth, who
said he was the son of the house, to lead him to the Hotel de la Fleur.
He chuckled when he thought of his friend's amazement on seeing him, the
most unexpected of visitors, walk into his office.

"By the way," he asked, as they went along, "can you tell me where I
shall find Mr. Edward Barnard?"

"Barnard?" said the youth. "I seem to know the name."

"He's an American. A tall fellow with light brown hair and blue eyes.
He's been here over two years."

"Of course. Now I know who you mean. You mean Mr. Jackson's nephew."

"Whose nephew?"

"Mr. Arnold Jackson."

"I don't think we're speaking of the same person," answered Bateman,
frigidly.

He was startled. It was queer that Arnold Jackson, known apparently to
all and sundry, should live here under the disgraceful name in which he
had been convicted. But Bateman could not imagine whom it was that he
passed off as his nephew. Mrs. Longstaffe was his only sister and he had
never had a brother. The young man by his side talked volubly in an
English that had something in it of the intonation of a foreign tongue,
and Bateman, with a sidelong glance, saw, what he had not noticed
before, that there was in him a good deal of native blood. A touch of
hauteur involuntarily entered into his manner. They reached the hotel.
When he had arranged about his room Bateman asked to be directed to the
premises of Braunschmidt & Co. They were on the front, facing the
lagoon, and, glad to feel the solid earth under his feet after eight
days at sea, he sauntered down the sunny road to the water's edge.
Having found the place he sought, Bateman sent in his card to the
manager and was led through a lofty barn-like room, half store and half
warehouse, to an office in which sat a stout, spectacled, bald-headed
man.

"Can you tell me where I shall find Mr. Edward Barnard? I understand he
was in this office for some time."

"That is so. I don't know just where he is."

"But I thought he came here with a particular recommendation from Mr.
Braunschmidt. I know Mr. Braunschmidt very well."

The fat man looked at Bateman with shrewd, suspicious eyes. He called to
one of the boys in the warehouse.

"Say, Henry, where's Barnard now, d'you know?"

"He's working at Cameron's, I think," came the answer from someone who
did not trouble to move.

The fat man nodded.

"If you turn to your left when you get out of here you'll come to
Cameron's in about three minutes."

Bateman hesitated.

"I think I should tell you that Edward Barnard is my greatest friend. I
was very much surprised when I heard he'd left Braunschmidt & Co."

The fat man's eyes contracted till they seemed like pin-points, and
their scrutiny made Bateman so uncomfortable that he felt himself
blushing.

"I guess Braunschmidt & Co. and Edward Barnard didn't see eye to eye on
certain matters," he replied.

Bateman did not quite like the fellow's manner, so he got up, not
without dignity, and with an apology for troubling him bade him
good-day. He left the place with a singular feeling that the man he had
just interviewed had much to tell him, but no intention of telling it.
He walked in the direction indicated and soon found himself at
Cameron's. It was a trader's store, such as he had passed half a dozen
of on his way, and when he entered the first person he saw, in his
shirt-sleeves, measuring out a length of trade cotton, was Edward. It
gave him a start to see him engaged in so humble an occupation. But he
had scarcely appeared when Edward, looking up, caught sight of him, and
gave a joyful cry of surprise.

"Bateman! Who ever thought of seeing you here?"

He stretched his arm across the counter and wrung Bateman's hand. There
was no self-consciousness in his manner and the embarrassment was all on
Bateman's side.

"Just wait till I've wrapped this package."

With perfect assurance he ran his scissors across the stuff, folded it,
made it into a parcel, and handed it to the dark-skinned customer.

"Pay at the desk, please."

Then, smiling, with bright eyes, he turned to Bateman.

"How did you show up here? Gee, I am delighted to see you. Sit down, old
man. Make yourself at home."

"We can't talk here. Come along to my hotel. I suppose you can get
away?"

This he added with some apprehension.

"Of course I can get away. We're not so business-like as all that in
Tahiti." He called out to a Chinese who was standing behind the opposite
counter. "Ah-Ling, when the boss comes tell him a friend of mine's just
arrived from America and I've gone out to have a dram with him."

"All-light," said the Chinese, with a grin.

Edward slipped on a coat and, putting on his hat, accompanied Bateman
out of the store. Bateman attempted to put the matter facetiously.

"I didn't expect to find you selling three and a half yards of rotten
cotton to a greasy nigger," he laughed.

"Braunschmidt fired me, you know, and I thought that would do as well as
anything else."

Edward's candour seemed to Bateman very surprising, but he thought it
indiscreet to pursue the subject.

"I guess you won't make a fortune where you are," he answered, somewhat
dryly.

"I guess not. But I earn enough to keep body and soul together, and I'm
quite satisfied with that."

"You wouldn't have been two years ago."

"We grow wiser as we grow older," retorted Edward, gaily.

Bateman took a glance at him. Edward was dressed in a suit of shabby
white ducks, none too clean, and a large straw hat of native make. He
was thinner than he had been, deeply burned by the sun, and he was
certainly better-looking than ever. But there was something in his
appearance that disconcerted Bateman. He walked with a new jauntiness;
there was a carelessness in his demeanour, a gaiety about nothing in
particular, which Bateman could not precisely blame, but which
exceedingly puzzled him.

"I'm blest if I can see what he's got to be so darned cheerful about,"
he said to himself.

They arrived at the hotel and sat on the terrace. A Chinese boy brought
them cocktails. Edward was most anxious to hear all the news of Chicago
and bombarded his friend with eager questions. His interest was natural
and sincere. But the odd thing was that it seemed equally divided among
a multitude of subjects. He was as eager to know how Bateman's father
was as what Isabel was doing. He talked of her without a shade of
embarrassment, but she might just as well have been his sister as his
promised wife; and before Bateman had done analysing the exact meaning
of Edward's remarks he found that the conversation had drifted to his
own work and the buildings his father had lately erected. He was
determined to bring the conversation back to Isabel and was looking for
the occasion when he saw Edward wave his hand cordially. A man was
advancing towards them on the terrace, but Bateman's back was turned to
him and he could not see him.

"Come and sit down," said Edward gaily.

The newcomer approached. He was a very tall, thin man, in white ducks,
with a fine head of curly white hair. His face was thin too, long, with
a large, hooked nose and a beautiful, expressive mouth.

"This is my old friend Bateman Hunter. I've told you about him," said
Edward, his constant smile breaking on his lips.

"I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Hunter. I used to know your father."

The stranger held out his hand and took the young man's in a strong,
friendly grasp. It was not till then that Edward mentioned the other's
name.

"Mr. Arnold Jackson."

Bateman turned white and he felt his hands grow cold. This was the
forger, the convict, this was Isabel's uncle. He did not know what to
say. He tried to conceal his confusion. Arnold Jackson looked at him
with twinkling eyes.

"I daresay my name is familiar to you."

Bateman did not know whether to say yes or no, and what made it more
awkward was that both Jackson and Edward seemed to be amused. It was bad
enough to have forced on him the acquaintance of the one man on the
island he would rather have avoided, but worse to discern that he was
being made a fool of. Perhaps, however, he had reached this conclusion
too quickly, for Jackson, without a pause, added:

"I understand you're very friendly with the Longstaffes. Mary Longstaffe
is my sister."

Now Bateman asked himself if Arnold Jackson could think him ignorant of
the most terrible scandal that Chicago had ever known. But Jackson put
his hand on Edward's shoulder.

"I can't sit down, Teddie," he said. "I'm busy. But you two boys had
better come up and dine to-night."

"That'll be fine," said Edward.

"It's very kind of you, Mr. Jackson," said Bateman, frigidly, "but I'm
here for so short a time; my boat sails to-morrow, you know; I think if
you'll forgive me, I won't come."

"Oh, nonsense. I'll give you a native dinner. My wife's a wonderful
cook. Teddie will show you the way. Come early so as to see the sunset.
I can give you both a shake-down if you like."

"Of course we'll come," said Edward. "There's always the devil of a row
in the hotel on the night a boat arrives and we can have a good yarn up
at the bungalow."

"I can't let you off, Mr. Hunter," Jackson continued with the utmost
cordiality. "I want to hear all about Chicago and Mary."

He nodded and walked away before Bateman could say another word.

"We don't take refusals in Tahiti," laughed Edward. "Besides, you'll get
the best dinner on the island."

"What did he mean by saying his wife was a good cook? I happen to know
his wife's in Geneva."

"That's a long way off for a wife, isn't it?" said Edward. "And it's a
long time since he saw her. I guess it's another wife he's talking
about."

For some time Bateman was silent. His face was set in grave lines. But
looking up he caught the amused look in Edward's eyes, and he flushed
darkly.

"Arnold Jackson is a despicable rogue," he said.

"I greatly fear he is," answered Edward, smiling.

"I don't see how any decent man can have anything to do with him."

"Perhaps I'm not a decent man."

"Do you see much of him, Edward?"

"Yes, quite a lot. He's adopted me as his nephew."

Bateman leaned forward and fixed Edward with his searching eyes.

"Do you like him?"

"Very much."

"But don't you know, doesn't everyone here know, that he's a forger and
that he's been a convict? He ought to be hounded out of civilised
society."

Edward watched a ring of smoke that floated from his cigar into the
still, scented air.

"I suppose he is a pretty unmitigated rascal," he said at last. "And I
can't flatter myself that any repentance for his misdeeds offers one an
excuse for condoning them. He was a swindler and a hypocrite. You can't
get away from it. I never met a more agreeable companion. He's taught me
everything I know."

"What has he taught you?" cried Bateman in amazement.

"How to live."

Bateman broke into ironical laughter.

"A fine master. Is it owing to his lessons that you lost the chance of
making a fortune and earn your living now by serving behind a counter in
a ten-cent store?"

"He has a wonderful personality," said Edward, smiling goodnaturedly.
"Perhaps you'll see what I mean to-night."

"I'm not going to dine with him if that's what you mean. Nothing would
induce me to set foot within that man's house."

"Come to oblige me, Bateman. We've been friends for so many years, you
won't refuse me a favour when I ask it."

Edward's tone had in it a quality new to Bateman. Its gentleness was
singularly persuasive.

"If you put it like that, Edward, I'm bound to come," he smiled.

Bateman reflected, moreover, that it would be as well to learn what he
could about Arnold Jackson. It was plain that he had a great ascendency
over Edward, and if it was to be combated it was necessary to discover
in what exactly it consisted. The more he talked with Edward the more
conscious he became that a change had taken place in him. He had an
instinct that it behooved him to walk warily, and he made up his mind
not to broach the real purport of his visit till he saw his way more
clearly. He began to talk of one thing and another, of his journey and
what he had achieved by it, of politics in Chicago, of this common
friend and that, of their days together at college.

At last Edward said he must get back to his work and proposed that he
should fetch Bateman at five so that they could drive out together to
Arnold Jackson's house.

"By the way, I rather thought you'd be living at this hotel," said
Bateman, as he strolled out of the garden with Edward. "I understand
it's the only decent one here."

"Not I," laughed Edward. "It's a deal too grand for me. I rent a room
just outside the town. It's cheap and clean."

"If I remember right those weren't the points that seemed most important
to you when you lived in Chicago."

"Chicago!"

"I don't know what you mean by that, Edward. It's the greatest city in
the world."

"I know," said Edward.

Bateman glanced at him quickly, but his face was inscrutable.

"When are you coming back to it?"

"I often wonder," smiled Edward.

This answer, and the manner of it, staggered Bateman, but before he
could ask for an explanation Edward waved to a half-caste who was
driving a passing motor.

"Give us a ride down, Charlie," he said.

He nodded to Bateman, and ran after the machine that had pulled up a few
yards in front. Bateman was left to piece together a mass of perplexing
impressions.

Edward called for him in a rickety trap drawn by an old mare, and they
drove along a road that ran by the sea. On each side of it were
plantations, coconut and vanilla; and now and then they saw a great
mango, its fruit yellow and red and purple among the massy green of the
leaves, now and then they had a glimpse of the lagoon, smooth and blue,
with here and there a tiny islet graceful with tall palms. Arnold
Jackson's house stood on a little hill and only a path led to it, so
they unharnessed the mare and tied her to a tree, leaving the trap by
the side of the road. To Bateman it seemed a happy-go-lucky way of doing
things. But when they went up to the house they were met by a tall,
handsome native woman, no longer young, with whom Edward cordially shook
hands. He introduced Bateman to her.

"This is my friend Mr. Hunter. We're going to dine with you, Lavina."

"All right," she said, with a quick smile. "Arnold ain't back yet."

"We'll go down and bathe. Let us have a couple of pareos."

The woman nodded and went into the house.

"Who is that?" asked Bateman.

"Oh, that's Lavina. She's Arnold's wife."

Bateman tightened his lips, but said nothing. In a moment the woman
returned with a bundle, which she gave to Edward; and the two men,
scrambling down a steep path, made their way to a grove of coconut trees
on the beach. They undressed and Edward showed his friend how to make
the strip of red trade cotton which is called a pareo into a very neat
pair of bathing-drawers. Soon they were splashing in the warm, shallow
water. Edward was in great spirits. He laughed and shouted and sang. He
might have been fifteen. Bateman had never seen him so gay, and
afterwards when they lay on the beach, smoking cigarettes, in the limpid
air, there was such an irresistible light-heartedness in him that
Bateman was taken aback.

"You seem to find life mighty pleasant," said he.

"I do."

They heard a soft movement and looking round saw that Arnold Jackson was
coming towards them.

"I thought I'd come down and fetch you two boys back," he said. "Did you
enjoy your bath, Mr. Hunter?"

"Very much," said Bateman.

Arnold Jackson, no longer in spruce ducks, wore nothing but a pareo
round his loins and walked barefoot. His body was deeply browned by the
sun. With his long, curling white hair and his ascetic face he made a
fantastic figure in the native dress, but he bore himself without a
trace of self-consciousness.

"If you're ready we'll go right up," said Jackson.

"I'll just put on my clothes," said Bateman.

"Why, Teddie, didn't you bring a pareo for your friend?"

"I guess he'd rather wear clothes," smiled Edward.

"I certainly would," answered Bateman, grimly, as he saw Edward gird
himself in the loincloth and stand ready to start before he himself had
got his shirt on.

"Won't you find it rough walking without your shoes?" he asked Edward.
"It struck me the path was a trifle rocky."

"Oh, I'm used to it."

"It's a comfort to get into a pareo when one gets back from town," said
Jackson. "If you were going to stay here I should strongly recommend you
to adopt it. It's one of the most sensible costumes I have ever come
across. It's cool, convenient, and inexpensive."

They walked up to the house, and Jackson took them into a large room
with white-washed walls and an open ceiling in which a table was laid
for dinner. Bateman noticed that it was set for five.

"Eva, come and show yourself to Teddie's friend, and then shake us a
cocktail," called Jackson.

Then he led Bateman to a long low window.

"Look at that," he said, with a dramatic gesture. "Look well."

Below them coconut trees tumbled down steeply to the lagoon, and the
lagoon in the evening light had the colour, tender and varied, of a
dove's breast. On a creek, at a little distance, were the clustered huts
of a native village, and towards the reef was a canoe, sharply
silhouetted, in which were a couple of natives fishing. Then, beyond,
you saw the vast calmness of the Pacific and twenty miles away, airy and
unsubstantial like the fabric of a poet's fancy, the unimaginable beauty
of the island which is called Murea. It was all so lovely that Bateman
stood abashed.

"I've never seen anything like it," he said at last.

Arnold Jackson stood staring in front of him, and in his eyes was a
dreamy softness. His thin, thoughtful face was very grave. Bateman,
glancing at it, was once more conscious of its intense spirituality.

"Beauty," murmured Arnold Jackson. "You seldom see beauty face to face.
Look at it well, Mr. Hunter, for what you see now you will never see
again, since the moment is transitory, but it will be an imperishable
memory in your heart. You touch eternity."

His voice was deep and resonant. He seemed to breathe forth the purest
idealism, and Bateman had to urge himself to remember that the man who
spoke was a criminal and a cruel cheat. But Edward, as though he heard a
sound, turned round quickly.

"Here is my daughter, Mr. Hunter."

Bateman shook hands with her. She had dark, splendid eyes and a red
mouth tremulous with laughter; but her skin was brown, and her curling
hair, rippling down her shoulders, was coal-black. She wore but one
garment, a Mother Hubbard of pink cotton, her feet were bare, and she
was crowned with a wreath of white scented flowers. She was a lovely
creature. She was like a goddess of the Polynesian spring.

She was a little shy, but not more shy than Bateman, to whom the whole
situation was highly embarrassing, and it did not put him at his ease to
see this sylph-like thing take a shaker and with a practised hand mix
three cocktails.

"Let us have a kick in them, child," said Jackson.

She poured them out and smiling delightfully handed one to each of the
men. Bateman flattered himself on his skill in the subtle art of shaking
cocktails and he was not a little astonished, on tasting this one, to
find that it was excellent. Jackson laughed proudly when he saw his
guest's involuntary look of appreciation.

"Not bad, is it? I taught the child myself, and in the old days in
Chicago I considered that there wasn't a bar-tender in the city that
could hold a candle to me. When I had nothing better to do in the
penitentiary I used to amuse myself by thinking out new cocktails, but
when you come down to brass-tacks there's nothing to beat a dry
Martini."

Bateman felt as though someone had given him a violent blow on the
funny-bone and he was conscious that he turned red and then white. But
before he could think of anything to say a native boy brought in a great
bowl of soup and the whole party sat down to dinner. Arnold Jackson's
remark seemed to have aroused in him a train of recollections, for he
began to talk of his prison days. He talked quite naturally, without
malice, as though he were relating his experiences at a foreign
university. He addressed himself to Bateman and Bateman was confused and
then confounded. He saw Edward's eyes fixed on him and there was in them
a flicker of amusement. He blushed scarlet, for it struck him that
Jackson was making a fool of him, and then because he felt absurd--and
knew there was no reason why he should--he grew angry. Arnold Jackson
was impudent--there was no other word for it--and his callousness,
whether assumed or not, was outrageous. The dinner proceeded. Bateman
was asked to eat sundry messes, raw fish and he knew not what, which
only his civility induced him to swallow, but which he was amazed to
find very good eating. Then an incident happened which to Bateman was
the most mortifying experience of the evening. There was a little
circlet of flowers in front of him, and for the sake of conversation he
hazarded a remark about it.

"It's a wreath that Eva made for you," said Jackson, "but I guess she
was too shy to give it you."

Bateman took it up in his hand and made a polite little speech of thanks
to the girl.

"You must put it on," she said, with a smile and a blush.

"I? I don't think I'll do that."

"It's the charming custom of the country," said Arnold Jackson.

There was one in front of him and he placed it on his hair. Edward did
the same.

"I guess I'm not dressed for the part," said Bateman, uneasily.

"Would you like a pareo?" said Eva quickly. "I'll get you one in a
minute."

"No, thank you. I'm quite comfortable as I am."

"Show him how to put it on, Eva," said Edward.

At that moment Bateman hated his greatest friend. Eva got up from the
table and with much laughter placed the wreath on his black hair.

"It suits you very well," said Mrs. Jackson. "Don't it suit him,
Arnold?"

"Of course it does."

Bateman sweated at every pore.

"Isn't it a pity it's dark?" said Eva. "We could photograph you all
three together."

Bateman thanked his stars it was. He felt that he must look prodigiously
foolish in his blue serge suit and high collar--very neat and
gentlemanly--with that ridiculous wreath of flowers on his head. He was
seething with indignation, and he had never in his life exercised more
self-control than now when he presented an affable exterior. He was
furious with that old man, sitting at the head of the table, half-naked,
with his saintly face and the flowers on his handsome white locks. The
whole position was monstrous.

Then dinner came to an end, and Eva and her mother remained to clear
away while the three men sat on the verandah. It was very warm and the
air was scented with the white flowers of the night. The full moon,
sailing across an unclouded sky, made a pathway on the broad sea that
led to the boundless realms of Forever. Arnold Jackson began to talk.
His voice was rich and musical. He talked now of the natives and of the
old legends of the country. He told strange stories of the past, stories
of hazardous expeditions into the unknown, of love and death, of hatred
and revenge. He told of the adventurers who had discovered those distant
islands, of the sailors who, settling in them, had married the daughters
of great chieftains, and of the beach-combers who had led their varied
lives on those silvery shores. Bateman, mortified and exasperated, at
first listened sullenly, but presently some magic in the words possessed
him and he sat entranced. The mirage of romance obscured the light of
common day. Had he forgotten that Arnold Jackson had a tongue of silver,
a tongue by which he had charmed vast sums out of the credulous public,
a tongue which very nearly enabled him to escape the penalty of his
crimes? No one had a sweeter eloquence, and no one had a more acute
sense of climax. Suddenly he rose.

"Well, you two boys haven't seen one another for a long time. I shall
leave you to have a yarn. Teddie will show you your quarters when you
want to go to bed."

"Oh, but I wasn't thinking of spending the night, Mr. Jackson," said
Bateman.

"You'll find it more comfortable. We'll see that you're called in good
time."

Then with a courteous shake of the hand, stately as though he were a
bishop in canonicals, Arnold Jackson took leave of his guest.

"Of course I'll drive you back to Papeete if you like," said Edward,
"but I advise you to stay. It's bully driving in the early morning."

For a few minutes neither of them spoke. Bateman wondered how he should
begin on the conversation which all the events of the day made him think
more urgent.

"When are you coming back to Chicago?" he asked, suddenly.

For a moment Edward did not answer. Then he turned rather lazily to look
at his friend and smiled.

"I don't know. Perhaps never."

"What in heaven's name do you mean?" cried Bateman.

"I'm very happy here. Wouldn't it be folly to make a change?"

"Man alive, you can't live here all your life. This is no life for a
man. It's a living death. Oh, Edward, come away at once, before it's too
late. I've felt that something was wrong. You're infatuated with the
place, you've succumbed to evil influences, but it only requires a
wrench, and when you're free from these surroundings you'll thank all
the gods there be. You'll be like a dope-fiend when he's broken from his
drug. You'll see then that for two years you've been breathing poisoned
air. You can't imagine what a relief it will be when you fill your lungs
once more with the fresh, pure air of your native country."

He spoke quickly, the words tumbling over one another in his excitement,
and there was in his voice sincere and affectionate emotion. Edward was
touched.

"It is good of you to care so much, old friend."

"Come with me to-morrow, Edward. It was a mistake that you ever came to
this place. This is no life for you."

"You talk of this sort of life and that. How do you think a man gets the
best out of life?"

"Why, I should have thought there could be no two answers to that. By
doing his duty, by hard work, by meeting all the obligations of his
state and station."

"And what is his reward?"

"His reward is the consciousness of having achieved what he set out to
do."

"It all sounds a little portentous to me," said Edward, and in the
lightness of the night Bateman could see that he was smiling. "I'm
afraid you'll think I've degenerated sadly. There are several things I
think now which I daresay would have seemed outrageous to me three years
ago."

"Have you learnt them from Arnold Jackson?" asked Bateman, scornfully.

"You don't like him? Perhaps you couldn't be expected to. I didn't when
I first came. I had just the same prejudice as you. He's a very
extraordinary man. You saw for yourself that he makes no secret of the
fact that he was in a penitentiary. I do not know that he regrets it or
the crimes that led him there. The only complaint he ever made in my
hearing was that when he came out his health was impaired. I think he
does not know what remorse is. He is completely unmoral. He accepts
everything and he accepts himself as well. He's generous and kind."

"He always was," interrupted Bateman, "on other people's money."

"I've found him a very good friend. Is it unnatural that I should take a
man as I find him?"

"The result is that you lose the distinction between right and wrong."

"No, they remain just as clearly divided in my mind as before, but what
has become a little confused in me is the distinction between the bad
man and the good one. Is Arnold Jackson a bad man who does good things
or a good man who does bad things? It's a difficult question to answer.
Perhaps we make too much of the difference between one man and another.
Perhaps even the best of us are sinners and the worst of us are saints.
Who knows?"

"You will never persuade me that white is black and that black is
white," said Bateman.

"I'm sure I shan't, Bateman."

Bateman could not understand why the flicker of a smile crossed Edward's
lips when he thus agreed with him. Edward was silent for a minute.

"When I saw you this morning, Bateman," he said then, "I seemed to see
myself as I was two years ago. The same collar, and the same shoes, the
same blue suit, the same energy. The same determination. By God, I was
energetic. The sleepy methods of this place made my blood tingle. I went
about and everywhere I saw possibilities for development and enterprise.
There were fortunes to be made here. It seemed to me absurd that the
copra should be taken away from here in sacks and the oil extracted in
America. It would be far more economical to do all that on the spot,
with cheap labour, and save freight, and I saw already the vast
factories springing up on the island. Then the way they extracted it
from the coconut seemed to me hopelessly inadequate, and I invented a
machine which divided the nut and scooped out the meat at the rate of
two hundred and forty an hour. The harbour was not large enough. I made
plans to enlarge it, then to form a syndicate to buy land, put up two or
three large hotels, and bungalows for occasional residents; I had a
scheme for improving the steamer service in order to attract visitors
from California. In twenty years, instead of this half-French, lazy
little town of Papeete I saw a great American city with ten-storey
buildings and street-cars, a theatre and an opera house, a stock
exchange and a mayor."

"But go ahead, Edward," cried Bateman, springing up from the chair in
excitement. "You've got the ideas and the capacity. Why, you'll become
the richest man between Australia and the States."

Edward chuckled softly.

"But I don't want to," he said.

"Do you mean to say you don't want money, big money, money running into
millions? Do you know what you can do with it? Do you know the power it
brings? And if you don't care about it for yourself think what you can
do, opening new channels for human enterprise, giving occupation to
thousands. My brain reels at the visions your words have conjured up."

"Sit down, then, my dear Bateman," laughed Edward. "My machine for
cutting the coconuts will always remain unused, and so far as I'm
concerned street-cars shall never run in the idle streets of Papeete."

Bateman sank heavily into his chair.

"I don't understand you," he said.

"It came upon me little by little. I came to like the life here, with
its ease and its leisure, and the people, with their good-nature and
their happy smiling faces. I began to think. I'd never had time to do
that before. I began to read."

"You always read."

"I read for examinations. I read in order to be able to hold my own in
conversation. I read for instruction. Here I learned to read for
pleasure. I learned to talk. Do you know that conversation is one of the
greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure. I'd always been too
busy before. And gradually all the life that had seemed so important to
me began to seem rather trivial and vulgar. What is the use of all this
hustle and this constant striving? I think of Chicago now and I see a
dark, grey city, all stone--it is like a prison--and a ceaseless
turmoil. And what does all that activity amount to? Does one get there
the best out of life? Is that what we come into the world for, to hurry
to an office, and work hour after hour till night, then hurry home and
dine and go to a theatre? Is that how I must spend my youth? Youth lasts
so short a time, Bateman. And when I am old, what have I to look forward
to? To hurry from my home in the morning to my office and work hour
after hour till night, and then hurry home again, and dine and go to a
theatre? That may be worth while if you make a fortune; I don't know, it
depends on your nature; but if you don't, is it worth while then? I want
to make more out of my life than that, Bateman."

"What do you value in life then?"

"I'm afraid you'll laugh at me. Beauty, truth, and goodness."

"Don't you think you can have those in Chicago?"

"Some men can, perhaps, but not I." Edward sprang up now. "I tell you
when I think of the life I led in the old days I am filled with horror,"
he cried violently. "I tremble with fear when I think of the danger I
have escaped. I never knew I had a soul till I found it here. If I had
remained a rich man I might have lost it for good and all."

"I don't know how you can say that," cried Baseman indignantly. "We
often used to have discussions about it."

"Yes, I know. They were about as effectual as the discussions of deaf
mutes about harmony. I shall never come back to Chicago, Bateman."

"And what about Isabel?"

Edward walked to the edge of the verandah and leaning over looked
intently at the blue magic of the night. There was a slight smile on his
face when he turned back to Bateman.

"Isabel is infinitely too good for me. I admire her more than any woman
I have ever known. She has a wonderful brain and she's as good as she's
beautiful. I respect her energy and her ambition. She was born to make a
success of life. I am entirely unworthy of her."

"She doesn't think so."

"But you must tell her so, Bateman."

"I?" cried Bateman. "I'm the last person who could ever do that."

Edward had his back to the vivid light of the moon and his face could
not be seen. Is it possible that he smiled again?

"It's no good your trying to conceal anything from her, Bateman. With
her quick intelligence she'll turn you inside out in five minutes. You'd
better make a clean breast of it right away."

"I don't know what you mean. Of course I shall tell her I've seen you."
Bateman spoke in some agitation. "Honestly I don't know what to say to
her."

"Tell her that I haven't made good. Tell her that I'm not only poor, but
that I'm content to be poor. Tell her I was fired from my job because I
was idle and inattentive. Tell her all you've seen to-night and all I've
told you."

The idea which on a sudden flashed through Bateman's brain brought him
to his feet and in uncontrollable perturbation he faced Edward.

"Man alive, don't you want to marry her?"

Edward looked at him gravely.

"I can never ask her to release me. If she wishes to hold me to my word
I will do my best to make her a good and loving husband."

"Do you wish me to give her that message, Edward? Oh, I can't. It's
terrible. It's never dawned on her for a moment that you don't want to
marry her. She loves you. How can I inflict such a mortification on
her?"

Edward smiled again.

"Why don't you marry her yourself, Bateman? You've been in love with her
for ages. You're perfectly suited to one another. You'll make her very
happy."

"Don't talk to me like that. I can't bear it."

"I resign in your favour, Bateman. You are the better man."

There was something in Edward's tone that made Bateman look up quickly,
but Edward's eyes were grave and unsmiling. Bateman did not know what to
say. He was disconcerted. He wondered whether Edward could possibly
suspect that he had come to Tahiti on a special errand. And though he
knew it was horrible he could not prevent the exultation in his heart.

"What will you do if Isabel writes and puts an end to her engagement
with you?" he said, slowly.

"Survive," said Edward.

Bateman was so agitated that he did not hear the answer.

"I wish you had ordinary clothes on," he said, somewhat irritably. "It's
such a tremendously serious decision you're taking. That fantastic
costume of yours makes it seem terribly casual."

"I assure you, I can be just as solemn in a pareo and a wreath of roses,
as in a high hat and a cut-away coat."

Then another thought struck Bateman.

"Edward, it's not for my sake you're doing this? I don't know, but
perhaps this is going to make a tremendous difference to my future.
You're not sacrificing yourself for me? I couldn't stand for that, you
know."

"No, Bateman, I have learnt not to be silly and sentimental here. I
should like you and Isabel to be happy, but I have not the least wish to
be unhappy myself."

The answer somewhat chilled Bateman. It seemed to him a little cynical.
He would not have been sorry to act a noble part.

"Do you mean to say you're content to waste your life here? It's nothing
less than suicide. When I think of the great hopes you had when we left
college it seems terrible that you should be content to be no more than
a salesman in a cheap-John store."

"Oh, I'm only doing that for the present, and I'm gaining a great deal
of valuable experience. I have another plan in my head. Arnold Jackson
has a small island in the Paumotas, about a thousand miles from here, a
ring of land round a lagoon. He's planted coconut there. He's offered to
give it to me."

"Why should he do that?" asked Bateman.

"Because if Isabel releases me I shall marry his daughter."

"You?" Bateman was thunderstuck. "You can't marry a half-caste. You
wouldn't be so crazy as that."

"She's a good girl, and she has a sweet and gentle nature. I think she
would make me very happy."

"Are you in love with her?"

"I don't know," answered Edward reflectively. "I'm not in love with her
as I was in love with Isabel. I worshipped Isabel. I thought she was the
most wonderful creature I had ever seen. I was not half good enough for
her. I don't feel like that with Eva. She's like a beautiful exotic
flower that must be sheltered from bitter winds. I want to protect her.
No one ever thought of protecting Isabel. I think she loves me for
myself and not for what I may become. Whatever happens to me I shall
never disappoint her. She suits me."

Bateman was silent.

"We must turn out early in the morning," said Edward at last. "It's
really about time we went to bed."

Then Bateman spoke and his voice had in it a genuine distress.

"I'm so bewildered, I don't know what to say. I came here because I
thought something was wrong. I thought you hadn't succeeded in what you
set out to do and were ashamed to come back when you'd failed. I never
guessed I should be faced with this. I'm so desperately sorry, Edward.
I'm so disappointed. I hoped you would do great things. It's almost more
than I can bear to think of you wasting your talents and your youth and
your chance in this lamentable way."

"Don't be grieved, old friend," said Edward. "I haven't failed. I've
succeeded. You can't think with what zest I look forward to life, how
full it seems to me and how significant. Sometimes, when you are married
to Isabel, you will think of me. I shall build myself a house on my
coral island and I shall live there, looking after my trees--getting the
fruit out of the nuts in the same old way that they have done for
unnumbered years--I shall grow all sorts of things in my garden, and I
shall fish. There will be enough work to keep me busy and not enough to
make me dull. I shall have my books and Eva, children, I hope, and above
all, the infinite variety of the sea and the sky, the freshness of the
dawn and the beauty of the sunset, and the rich magnificence of the
night. I shall make a garden out of what so short a while ago was a
wilderness. I shall have created something. The years will pass
insensibly, and when I am an old man I hope that I shall be able to look
back on a happy, simple, peaceful life. In my small way I too shall have
lived in beauty. Do you think it is so little to have enjoyed
contentment? We know that it will profit a man little if he gain the
whole world and lose his soul. I think I have won mine."

Edward led him to a room in which there were two beds and he threw
himself on one of them. In ten minutes Bateman knew by his regular
breathing, peaceful as a child's, that Edward was asleep. But for his
part he had no rest, he was disturbed in mind, and it was not till the
dawn crept into the room, ghostlike and silent, that he fell asleep.

Bateman finished telling Isabel his long story. He had hidden nothing
from her except what he thought would wound her or what made himself
ridiculous. He did not tell her that he had been forced to sit at dinner
with a wreath of flowers round his head and he did not tell her that
Edward was prepared to marry her uncle's half-caste daughter the moment
she set him free. But perhaps Isabel had keener intuitions than he knew,
for as he went on with his tale her eyes grew colder and her lips closed
upon one another more tightly. Now and then she looked at him closely,
and if he had been less intent on his narrative he might have wondered
at her expression.

"What was this girl like?" she asked when he finished. "Uncle Arnold's
daughter. Would you say there was any resemblance between her and me?"

Bateman was surprised at the question.

"It never struck me. You know I've never had eyes for anyone but you and
I could never think that anyone was like you. Who could resemble you?"

"Was she pretty?" said Isabel, smiling slightly at his words.

"I suppose so. I daresay some men would say she was very beautiful."

"Well, it's of no consequence. I don't think we need give her any more
of our attention."

"What are you going to do, Isabel?" he asked then.

Isabel looked down at the hand which still bore the ring Edward had
given her on their betrothal.

"I wouldn't let Edward break our engagement because I thought it would
be an incentive to him. I wanted to be an inspiration to him. I thought
if anything could enable him to achieve success it was the thought that
I loved him. I have done all I could. It's hopeless. It would only be
weakness on my party not to recognise the facts. Poor Edward, he's
nobody's enemy but his own. He was a dear, nice fellow, but there was
something lacking in him, I suppose it was backbone. I hope he'll be
happy."

She slipped the ring off her finger and placed it on the table. Bateman
watched her with a heart beating so rapidly that he could hardly
breathe.

"You're wonderful, Isabel, you're simply wonderful."

She smiled, and, standing up, held out her hand to him.

"How can I ever thank you for what you've done for me?" she said. "You
have done me a great service. I knew I could trust you."

He took her hand and held it. She had never looked more beautiful.

"Oh, Isabel, I would do so much more for you than that. You know that I
only ask to be allowed to love and serve you."

"You're so strong, Bateman," she sighed. "It gives me such a delicious
feeling of confidence."

"Isabel, I adore you."

He hardly knew how the inspiration had come to him, but suddenly he
clasped her in his arms; she, all unresisting, smiled into his eyes.

"Isabel, you know I wanted to marry you the very first day I saw you,"
he cried passionately.

"Then why on earth didn't you ask me?" she replied.

She loved him. He could hardly believe it was true. She gave him her
lovely lips to kiss. And as he held her in his arms he had a vision of
the works of the Hunter Motor Traction and Automobile Company growing in
size and importance till they covered a hundred acres, and of the
millions of motors they would turn out, and of the great collection of
pictures he would form which should beat anything they had in New York.
He would wear horn spectacles. And she, with the delicious pressure of
his arms about her, sighed with happiness, for she thought of the
exquisite house she would have, full of antique furniture, and of the
concerts she would give, and of the _ths dansants_, and the dinners to
which only the most cultured people would come.

"Poor Edward," she sighed.




HONOLULU


The wise traveller travels only in imagination. An old Frenchman (he was
really a Savoyard) once wrote a book called _Voyage autour de ma
Chambre_. I have not read it and do not even know what it is about, but
the title stimulates my fancy. In such a journey I could circumnavigate
the globe. An eikon by the chimneypiece can take me to Russia with its
great forests of birch and its white, domed churches. The Volga is wide,
and at the end of a straggling village, in the wine-shop, bearded men in
rough sheepskin coats sit drinking. I stand on the little hill from
which Napoleon first saw Moscow and I look upon the vastness of the
city. I will go down and see the people whom I know more intimately than
so many of my friends, Alyosha, and Vronsky, and a dozen more. But my
eyes fall on a piece of porcelain and I smell the acrid odours of China.
I am borne in a chair along a narrow causeway between the padi fields,
or else I skirt a tree-clad mountain. My bearers chat gaily as they
trudge along in the bright morning and every now and then, distant and
mysterious, I hear the deep sound of a monastery bell. In the streets of
Peking there is a motley crowd and it scatters to allow passage to a
string of camels, stepping delicately, that bring skins and strange
drugs from the stony deserts of Mongolia. In England, in London, there
are certain afternoons in winter when the clouds hang heavy and low and
the light is so bleak that your heart sinks, but then you can look out
of your window, and you see the coconut trees crowded upon the beach of
a coral island. The strand is silvery and when you walk along in the
sunshine it is so dazzling that you can hardly bear to look at it.
Overhead the mynah birds are making a great to-do, and the surf beats
ceaselessly against the reef. Those are the best journeys, the journeys
that you take at your own fireside, for then you lose none of your
illusions.

But there are people who take salt in their coffee. They say it gives it
a tang, a savour, which is peculiar and fascinating. In the same way
there are certain places, surrounded by a halo of romance, to which the
inevitable disillusionment which you must experience on seeing them
gives a singular spice. You had expected something wholly beautiful and
you get an impression which is infinitely more complicated than any that
beauty can give you. It is like the weakness in the character of a great
man which may make him less admirable but certainly makes him more
interesting.

Nothing had prepared me for Honolulu. It is so far away from Europe, it
is reached after so long a journey from San Francisco, so strange and so
charming associations are attached to the name, that at first I could
hardly believe my eyes. I do not know that I had formed in my mind any
very exact picture of what I expected, but what I found caused me a
great surprise. It is a typical western city. Shacks are cheek by jowl
with stone mansions: dilapidated frame houses stand next door to smart
stores with plate-glass windows; electric cars rumble noisily along the
streets; and motors, Fords, Buicks, Packards, line the pavement. The
shops are filled with all the necessities of American civilisation.
Every third house is a bank and every fifth the agency of a steamship
company.

Along the streets crowd an unimaginable assortment of people. The
Americans, ignoring the climate, wear black coats and high, starched
collars, straw hats, soft hats, and bowlers. The Kanakas, pale brown,
with crisp hair, have nothing on but a shirt and a pair of trousers; but
the half-breeds are very smart with flaring ties and patent-leather
boots. The Japanese, with their obsequious smile, are neat and trim in
white duck, while their women walk a step or two behind them, in native
dress, with a baby on their backs. The Japanese children, in bright
coloured frocks, their little heads shaven, look like quaint dolls. Then
there are the Chinese. The men, fat and prosperous, wear their American
clothes oddly, but the women are enchanting with their tightly-dressed
black hair, so neat that you feel it can never be disarranged, and they
are very clean in their tunics and trousers, white, or powder-blue, or
black. Lastly there are the Filipinos, the men in huge straw hats, the
women in bright yellow muslin with great puffed sleeves.

It is the meeting-place of East and West. The very new rubs shoulders
with the immeasurably old. And if you have not found the romance you
expected you have come upon something singularly intriguing. All these
strange people live close to each other, with different languages and
different thoughts; they believe in different gods and they have
different values; two passions alone they share, love and hunger. And
somehow as you watch them you have an impression of extraordinary
vitality. Though the air is so soft and the sky so blue, you have, I
know not why, a feeling of something hotly passionate that beats like a
throbbing pulse through the crowd. Though the native policeman at the
corner, standing on a platform, with a white club to direct the traffic,
gives the scene an air of respectability, you cannot but feel that it is
a respectability only of the surface; a little below there is darkness
and mystery. It gives you just that thrill, with a little catch at the
heart, that you have when at night in the forest the silence trembles on
a sudden with the low, insistent beating of a drum. You are all
expectant of I know not what.

If I have dwelt on the incongruity of Honolulu, it is because just this,
to my mind, gives its point to the story I want to tell. It is a story
of primitive superstition, and it startles me that anything of the sort
should survive in a civilisation which, if not very distinguished, is
certainly very elaborate. I cannot get over the fact that such
incredible things should happen, or at least be thought to happen, right
in the middle, so to speak, of telephones, tram-cars, and daily papers.
And the friend who showed me Honolulu had the same incongruity which I
felt from the beginning was its most striking characteristic.

He was an American named Winter and I had brought a letter of
introduction to him from an acquaintance in New York. He was a man
between forty and fifty, with scanty black hair, grey at the temples,
and a sharp-featured, thin face. His eyes had a twinkle in them and his
large horn spectacles gave him a demureness which was not a little
diverting. He was tall rather than otherwise and very spare. He was born
in Honolulu and his father had a large store which sold hosiery and all
such goods, from tennis racquets to tarpaulins, as a man of fashion
could require. It was a prosperous business and I could well understand
the indignation of Winter _pre_ when his son, refusing to go into it,
had announced his determination to be an actor. My friend spent twenty
years on the stage, sometimes in New York, but more often on the road,
for his gifts were small; but at last, being no fool, he came to the
conclusion that it was better to sell sock-suspenders in Honolulu than
to play small parts in Cleveland, Ohio. He left the stage and went into
the business. I think after the hazardous existence he had lived so
long, he thoroughly enjoyed the luxury of driving a large car and living
in a beautiful house near the golf-course, and I am quite sure, since he
was a man of parts, he managed the business competently. But he could
not bring himself entirely to break his connection with the arts and
since he might no longer act he began to paint. He took me to his studio
and showed me his work. It was not at all bad, but not what I should
have expected from him. He painted nothing but still life, very small
pictures, perhaps eight by ten; and he painted very delicately, with the
utmost finish. He had evidently a passion for detail. His fruit pieces
reminded you of the fruit in a picture by Ghirlandajo. While you
marvelled a little at his patience, you could not help being impressed
by his dexterity. I imagine that he failed as an actor because his
effects, carefully studied, were neither bold nor broad enough to get
across the footlights.

I was entertained by the proprietary, yet ironical air with which he
showed me the city. He thought in his heart that there was none in the
United States to equal it, but he saw quite clearly that his attitude
was comic. He drove me round to the various buildings and swelled with
satisfaction when I expressed a proper admiration for their
architecture. He showed me the houses of rich men.

"That's the Stubbs' house," he said. "It cost a hundred thousand dollars
to build. The Stubbses are one of our best families. Old man Stubbs came
here as a missionary more than seventy years ago."

He hesitated a little and looked at me with twinkling eyes through his
big round spectacles.

"All our best families are missionary families," he said. "You're not
very much in Honolulu unless your father or your grandfather converted
the heathen."

"Is that so?"

"Do you know your Bible?"

"Fairly," I answered.

"There is a text which says: The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the
children's teeth are set on edge. I guess it runs differently in
Honolulu. The fathers brought Christianity to the Kanaka and the
children jumped his land."

"Heaven helps those who help themselves," I murmured.

"It surely does. By the time the natives of this island had embraced
Christianity they had nothing else they could afford to embrace. The
kings gave the missionaries land as a mark of esteem, and the
missionaries bought land by way of laying up treasure in heaven. It
surely was a good investment. One missionary left the business--I think
one may call it a business without offence--and became a land agent, but
that is an exception. Mostly it was their sons who looked after the
commercial side of the concern. Oh, it's a fine thing to have a father
who came here fifty years ago to spread the faith."

But he looked at his watch.

"Gee, it's stopped. That means it's time to have a cocktail."

We sped along an excellent road, bordered with red hibiscus, and came
back into the town.

"Have you been to the Union Saloon?"

"Not yet."

"We'll go there."

I knew it was the most famous spot in Honolulu and I entered it with a
lively curiosity. You get to it by a narrow passage from King Street,
and in the passage are offices, so that thirsty souls may be supposed
bound for one of these just as well as for the saloon. It is a large
square room, with three entrances, and opposite the bar, which runs the
length of it, two corners have been partitioned off into little
cubicles. Legend states that they were built so that King Kalakaua might
drink there without being seen by his subjects, and it is pleasant to
think that in one or other of these he may have sat over his bottle, a
coal-black potentate, with Robert Louis Stevenson. There is a portrait
of him, in oils, in a rich gold frame; but there are also two prints of
Queen Victoria. On the walls, besides, are old line engravings of the
eighteenth century, one of which, and heaven knows how it got there, is
after a theatrical picture by De Wilde; and there are oleographs from
the Christmas supplements of the _Graphic_ and the _Illustrated London
News_ of twenty years ago. Then there are advertisements of whisky, gin,
champagne, and beer; and photographs of baseball teams and of native
orchestras.

The place seemed to belong not to the modern, hustling world that I had
left in the bright street outside, but to one that was dying. It had the
savour of the day before yesterday. Dingy and dimly lit, it had a
vaguely mysterious air and you could imagine that it would be a fit
scene for shady transactions. It suggested a more lurid time, when
ruthless men carried their lives in their hands, and violent deeds
diapered the monotony of life.

When I went in, the saloon was fairly full. A group of business men
stood together at the bar, discussing affairs, and in a corner two
Kanakas were drinking. Two or three men who might have been
store-keepers were shaking dice. The rest of the company plainly
followed the sea; they were captains of tramps, first mates, and
engineers. Behind the bar, busily making the Honolulu cocktail for which
the place was famous, served two large half-castes, in white, fat,
clean-shaven and dark-skinned, with thick, curly hair and large bright
eyes.

Winter seemed to know more than half the company, and when we made our
way to the bar a little fat man in spectacles, who was standing by
himself, offered him a drink.

"No, you have one with me, Captain," said Winter.

He turned to me.

"I want you to know Captain Butler."

The little man shook hands with me. We began to talk, but, my attention
distracted by my surroundings, I took small notice of him, and after we
had each ordered a cocktail we separated. When we had got into the motor
again and were driving away, Winter said to me:

"I'm glad we ran up against Butler. I wanted you to meet him. What did
you think of him?"

"I don't know that I thought very much of him at all," I answered.

"Do you believe in the supernatural?"

"I don't exactly know that I do," I smiled.

"A very queer thing happened to him a year or two ago. You ought to have
him tell you about it."

"What sort of thing?"

Winter did not answer my question.

"I have no explanation of it myself," he said. "But there's no doubt
about the facts. Are you interested in things like that?"

"Things like what?"

"Spells and magic and all that."

"I've never met anyone who wasn't."

Winter paused for a moment.

"I guess I won't tell you myself. You ought to hear it from his own lips
so that you can judge. How are you fixed up for to-night?"

"I've got nothing on at all."

"Well, I'll get hold of him between now and then and see if we can't go
down to his ship."

Winter told me something about him. Captain Butler had spent all his
life on the Pacific. He had been in much better circumstances than he
was now, for he had been first officer and then captain of a
passenger-boat plying along the coast of California, but he had lost his
ship and a number of passengers had been drowned.

"Drink, I guess," said Winter.

Of course there had been an enquiry, which had cost him his certificate,
and then he drifted further afield. For some years he had knocked about
the South Seas, but he was now in command of a small schooner which
sailed between Honolulu and the various islands of the group. It
belonged to a Chinese to whom the fact that his skipper had no
certificate meant only that he could be had for lower wages, and to have
a white man in charge was always an advantage.

And now that I had heard this about him I took the trouble to remember
more exactly what he was like. I recalled his round spectacles and the
round blue eyes behind them, and so gradually reconstructed him before
my mind. He was a little man, without angles, plump, with a round face
like the full moon and a little fat round nose. He had fair short hair,
and he was red-faced and clean-shaven. He had plump hands, dimpled on
the knuckles, and short fat legs. He was a jolly soul, and the tragic
experience he had gone through seemed to have left him unscarred. Though
he must have been thirty-four or thirty-five he looked much younger. But
after all I had given him but a superficial attention, and now that I
knew of this catastrophe, which had obviously ruined his life, I
promised myself that when I saw him again I would take more careful note
of him. It is very curious to observe the differences of emotional
response that you find in different people. Some can go through terrible
battles, the fear of imminent death and unimaginable horrors, and
preserve their soul unscathed, while with others the trembling of the
moon on a solitary sea or the song of a bird in a thicket will cause a
convulsion great enough to transform their entire being. Is it due to
strength or weakness, want of imagination or instability of character? I
do not know. When I called up in my fancy that scene of shipwreck, with
the shrieks of the drowning and the terror, and then later, the ordeal
of the enquiry, the bitter grief of those who sorrowed for the lost, and
the harsh things he must have read of himself in the papers, the shame
and the disgrace, it came to me with a shock to remember that Captain
Butler had talked with the frank obscenity of a schoolboy of the
Hawaiian girls and of Iwelei, the Red Light district, and of his
successful adventures. He laughed readily, and one would have thought he
could never laugh again. I remembered his shining, white teeth; they
were his best feature. He began to interest me, and thinking of him and
of his gay insouciance I forgot the particular story, to hear which I
was to see him again. I wanted to see him rather to find out if I could
a little more what sort of man he was.

Winter made the necessary arrangements and after dinner we went down to
the water front. The ship's boat was waiting for us and we rowed out.
The schooner was anchored some way across the harbour, not far from the
breakwater. We came alongside, and I heard the sound of a ukalele. We
clambered up the ladder.

"I guess he's in the cabin," said Winter, leading the way.

It was a small cabin, bedraggled and dirty, with a table against one
side and a broad bench all round upon which slept, I supposed, such
passengers as were ill-advised enough to travel in such a ship. A
petroleum lamp gave a dim light. The ukalele was being played by a
native girl and Butler was lolling on the seat, half lying, with his
head on her shoulder and an arm round her waist.

"Don't let us disturb you, Captain," said Winter, facetiously.

"Come right in," said Butler, getting up and shaking hands with us.
"What'll you have?"

It was a warm night, and through the open door you saw countless stars
in a heaven that was still almost blue. Captain Butler wore a sleeveless
undershirt, showing his fat white arms, and a pair of incredibly dirty
trousers. His feet were bare, but on his curly head he wore a very old,
a very shapeless felt hat.

"Let me introduce you to my girl. Ain't she a peach?"

We shook hands with a very pretty person. She was a good deal taller
than the captain, and even the Mother Hubbard, which the missionaries of
a past generation had, in the interests of decency, forced on the
unwilling natives, could not conceal the beauty of her form. One could
not but suspect that age would burden her with a certain corpulence, but
now she was graceful and alert. Her brown skin had an exquisite
translucency and her eyes were magnificent. Her black hair, very thick
and rich, was coiled round her head in a massive plait. When she smiled
in a greeting that was charmingly natural, she showed teeth that were
small, even, and white. She was certainly a most attractive creature. It
was easy to see that the captain was madly in love with her. He could
not take his eyes off her; he wanted to touch her all the time. That was
very easy to understand; but what seemed to me stranger was that the
girl was apparently in love with him. There was a light in her eyes that
was unmistakable, and her lips were slightly parted as though in a sigh
of desire. It was thrilling. It was even a little moving, and I could
not help feeling somewhat in the way. What had a stranger to do with
this lovesick pair? I wished that Winter had not brought me. And it
seemed to me that the dingy cabin was transfigured and now it seemed a
fit and proper scene for such an extremity of passion. I thought I
should never forget that schooner in the harbour of Honolulu, crowded
with shipping, and yet, under the immensity of the starry sky, remote
from all the world. I liked to think of those lovers sailing off
together in the night over the empty spaces of the Pacific from one
green, hilly island to another. A faint breeze of romance softly fanned
my cheek.

And yet Butler was the last man in the world with whom you would have
associated romance, and it was hard to see what there was in him to
arouse love. In the clothes he wore now he looked podgier than ever, and
his round spectacles gave his round face the look of a prim cherub. He
suggested rather a curate who had gone to the dogs. His conversation was
peppered with the quaintest Americanisms, and it is because I despair of
reproducing these that, at whatever loss of vividness, I mean to narrate
the story he told me a little later in my own words. Moreover he was
unable to frame a sentence without an oath, though a good-natured one,
and his speech, albeit offensive only to prudish ears, in print would
seem coarse. He was a mirth-loving man, and perhaps that accounted not a
little for his successful amours; since women, for the most part
frivolous creatures, are excessively bored by the seriousness with which
men treat them, and they can seldom resist the buffoon who makes them
laugh. Their sense of humour is crude. Diana of Ephesus is always
prepared to fling prudence to the winds for the red-nosed comedian who
sits on his hat. I realised that Captain Butler had charm. If I had not
known the tragic story of the shipwreck I should have thought he had
never had a care in his life.

Our host had rung the bell on our entrance and now a Chinese cook came
in with more glasses and several bottles of soda. The whisky and the
captain's empty glass stood already on the table. But when I saw the
Chinese I positively started, for he was certainly the ugliest man I had
ever seen. He was very short, but thick-set, and he had a bad limp. He
wore a singlet and a pair of trousers that had been white, but were now
filthy, and, perched on a shock of bristly, grey hair, an old tweed
deer-stalker. It would have been grotesque on any Chinese, but on him it
was outrageous. His broad, square face was very flat as though it had
been bashed in by a mighty fist, and it was deeply pitted with smallpox;
but the most revolting thing in him was a very pronounced harelip which
had never been operated on, so that his upper lip, cleft, went up in an
angle to his nose, and in the opening was a huge yellow fang. It was
horrible. He came in with the end of a cigarette at the corner of his
mouth and this, I do not know why, gave him a devilish expression.

He poured out the whisky and opened a bottle of soda.

"Don't drown it, John," said the captain.

He said nothing, but handed a glass to each of us. Then he went out.

"I saw you lookin' at my Chink," said Butler, with a grin on his fat,
shining face.

"I should hate to meet him on a dark night," I said.

"He sure is homely," said the captain, and for some reason he seemed to
say it with a peculiar satisfaction. "But he's fine for one thing, I'll
tell the world; you just have to have a drink every time you look at
him."

But my eyes fell on a calabash that hung against the wall over the
table, and I got up to look at it. I had been hunting for an old one and
this was better than any I had seen outside the museum.

"It was given me by a chief over on one of the islands," said the
captain, watching me. "I done him a good turn and he wanted to give me
something good."

"He certainly did," I answered.

I was wondering whether I could discreetly make Captain Butler an offer
for it, I could not imagine that he set any store on such an article,
when, as though he read my thoughts, he said:

"I wouldn't sell that for ten thousand dollars."

"I guess not," said Winter. "It would be a crime to sell it."

"Why?" I asked.

"That comes into the story," returned Winter. "Doesn't it, Captain?"

"It surely does."

"Let's hear it then."

"The night's young yet," he answered.

The night distinctly lost its youth before he satisfied my curiosity,
and meanwhile we drank a great deal too much whisky while Captain Butler
narrated his experiences of San Francisco in the old days and of the
South Seas. At last the girl fell asleep. She lay curled up on the seat,
with her face on her brown arm, and her bosom rose and fell gently with
her breathing. In sleep she looked sullen, but darkly beautiful.

He had found her on one of the islands in the group among which,
whenever there was cargo to be got, he wandered with his crazy old
schooner. The Kanakas have little love for work, and the laborious
Chinese, the cunning Japs, have taken the trade out of their hands. Her
father had a strip of land on which he grew taro and bananas and he had
a boat in which he went fishing. He was vaguely related to the mate of
the schooner, and it was he who took Captain Butler up to the shabby
little frame house to spend an idle evening. They took a bottle of
whisky with them and the ukalele. The captain was not a shy man and when
he saw a pretty girl he made love to her. He could speak the native
language fluently and it was not long before he had overcome the girl's
timidity. They spent the evening singing and dancing, and by the end of
it she was sitting by his side and he had his arm round her waist. It
happened that they were delayed on the island for several days and the
captain, at no time a man to hurry, made no effort to shorten his stay.
He was very comfortable in the snug little harbour and life was long. He
had a swim round his ship in the morning and another in the evening.
There was a chandler's shop on the water front where sailormen could get
a drink of whisky, and he spent the best part of the day there, playing
cribbage with the half-caste who owned it. At night the mate and he went
up to the house where the pretty girl lived and they sang a song or two
and told stories. It was the girl's father who suggested that he should
take her away with him. They discussed the matter in a friendly fashion,
while the girl, nestling against the captain, urged him by the pressure
of her hands and her soft smiling glances. He had taken a fancy to her
and he was a domestic man. He was a little dull sometimes at sea and it
would be very pleasant to have a pretty little creature like that about
the old ship. He was of a practical turn too, and he recognised that it
would be useful to have someone around to darn his socks and look after
his linen. He was tired of having his things washed by a Chink who tore
everything to pieces; the natives washed much better, and now and then
when the captain went ashore at Honolulu he liked to cut a dash in a
smart duck suit. It was only a matter of arranging a price. The father
wanted two hundred and fifty dollars, and the captain, never a thrifty
man, could not put his hand on such a sum. But he was a generous one,
and with the girl's soft face against his, he was not inclined to
haggle. He offered to give a hundred and fifty dollars there and then
and another hundred in three months. There was a good deal of argument
and the parties could not come to any agreement that night, but the idea
had fired the captain, and he could not sleep as well as usual. He kept
dreaming of the lovely girl and each time he awoke it was with the
pressure of her soft, sensual lips on his. He cursed himself in the
morning because a bad night at poker the last time he was at Honolulu
had left him so short of ready money. And if the night before he had
been in love with the girl, this morning he was crazy about her.

"See here, Bananas," he said to the mate, "I've got to have that girl.
You go and tell the old man I'll bring the dough up to-night and she can
get fixed up. I figure we'll be ready to sail at dawn."

I have no idea why the mate was known by that eccentric name. He was
called Wheeler, but though he had that English surname there was not a
drop of white blood in him. He was a tall man, and well-made though
inclined to stoutness, but much darker than is usual in Hawaii. He was
no longer young, and his crisply curling, thick hair was grey. His upper
front teeth were cased in gold. He was very proud of them. He had a
marked squint and this gave him a saturnine expression. The captain, who
was fond of a joke, found in it a constant source of humour and
hesitated the less to rally him on the defect because he realised that
the mate was sensitive about it. Bananas, unlike most of the natives,
was a taciturn fellow and Captain Butler would have disliked him if it
had been possible for a man of his good nature to dislike anyone. He
liked to be at sea with someone he could talk to, he was a chatty,
sociable creature, and it was enough to drive a missionary to drink to
live there day after day with a chap who never opened his mouth. He did
his best to wake the mate up, that is to say, he chaffed him without
mercy, but it was poor fun to laugh by oneself, and he came to the
conclusion that, drunk or sober, Bananas was no fit companion for a
white man. But he was a good seaman and the captain was shrewd enough to
know the value of a mate he could trust. It was not rare for him to come
aboard, when they were sailing, fit for nothing but to fall into his
bunk, and it was worth something to know that he could stay there till
he had slept his liquor off, since Bananas could be relied on. But he
was an unsociable devil, and it would be a treat to have someone he
could talk to. That girl would be fine. Besides, he wouldn't be so
likely to get drunk when he went ashore if he knew there was a little
girl waiting for him when he came on board again.

He went to his friend the chandler and over a peg of gin asked him for a
loan. There were one or two useful things a ship's captain could do for
a ship's chandler, and after a quarter of an hour's conversation in low
tones (there is no object in letting all and sundry know your business),
the captain crammed a wad of notes in his hip-pocket, and that night,
when he went back to his ship, the girl went with him.

What Captain Butler, seeking for reasons to do what he had already made
up his mind to, had anticipated, actually came to pass. He did not give
up drinking, but he ceased to drink to excess. An evening with the boys,
when he had been away from town two or three weeks, was pleasant enough,
but it was pleasant too to get back to his little girl; he thought of
her, sleeping so softly, and how, when he got into his cabin and leaned
over her, she would open her eyes lazily and stretch out her arms for
him: it was as good as a full hand. He found he was saving money, and
since he was a generous man he did the right thing by the little girl:
he gave her some silver-backed brushes for her long hair, and a gold
chain, and a reconstructed ruby for her finger. Gee, but it was good to
be alive.

A year went by, a whole year, and he was not tired of her yet. He was
not a man who analysed his feelings, but this was so surprising that it
forced itself upon his attention. There must be something very wonderful
about that girl. He couldn't help seeing that he was more wrapped up in
her than ever, and sometimes the thought entered his mind that it might
not be a bad thing if he married her.

Then, one day the mate did not come in to dinner or to tea. Butler did
not bother himself about his absence at the first meal, but at the
second he asked the Chinese cook:

"Where's the mate? He no come tea?"

"No wantchee," said the Chink.

"He ain't sick?"

"No savvy."

Next day Bananas turned up again, but he was more sullen than ever, and
after dinner the captain asked the girl what was the matter with him.
She smiled and shrugged her pretty shoulders. She told the captain that
Bananas had taken a fancy to her and he was sore because she had told
him off. The captain was a good-humoured man and he was not of a jealous
nature; it struck him as exceeding funny that Bananas should be in love.
A man who had a squint like that had a precious poor chance. When tea
came round he chaffed him gaily. He pretended to speak in the air, so
that the mate should not be certain that he knew anything, but he dealt
him some pretty shrewd blows. The girl did not think him as funny as he
thought himself, and afterwards she begged him to say nothing more. He
was surprised at her seriousness. She told him he did not know her
people. When their passion was aroused they were capable of anything.
She was a little frightened. This was so absurd to him that he laughed
heartily.

"If he comes bothering round you, you just threaten to tell me. That'll
fix him."

"Better fire him, I think."

"Not on your sweet life. I know a good sailor when I see one. But if he
don't leave you alone I'll give him the worst licking he's ever had."

Perhaps the girl had a wisdom unusual in her sex. She knew that it was
useless to argue with a man when his mind was made up, for it only
increased his stubbornness, and she held her peace. And now on the
shabby schooner, threading her way across the silent sea, among those
lovely islands, was enacted a dark, tense drama of which the fat little
captain remained entirely ignorant. The girl's resistance fired Bananas
so that he ceased to be a man, but was simply blind desire. He did not
make love to her gently or gaily, but with a black and savage ferocity.
Her contempt now was changed to hatred and when he besought her she
answered him with bitter, angry taunts. But the struggle went on
silently, and when the captain asked her after a little while whether
Bananas was bothering her, she lied.

But one night, when they were in Honolulu, he came on board only just in
time. They were sailing at dawn. Bananas had been ashore, drinking some
native spirit, and he was drunk. The captain, rowing up, heard sounds
that surprised him. He scrambled up the ladder. He saw Bananas, beside
himself, trying to wrench open the cabin door. He was shouting at the
girl. He swore he would kill her if she did not let him in.

"What in hell are you up to?" cried Butler.

The mate let go the handle, gave the captain a look of savage hate, and
without a word turned away.

"Stop here. What are you doing with that door?"

The mate still did not answer. He looked at him with sullen, bootless
rage.

"I'll teach you not to pull any of your queer stuff with me, you dirty,
cross-eyed nigger," said the captain.

He was a good foot shorter than the mate and no match for him, but he
was used to dealing with native crews, and he had his knuckle-duster
handy. Perhaps it was not an instrument that a gentleman would use, but
then Captain Butler was not a gentleman. Nor was he in the habit of
dealing with gentlemen. Before Bananas knew what the captain was at, his
right arm had shot out and his fist, with its ring of steel, caught him
fair and square on the jaw. He fell like a bull under the pole-axe.

"That'll learn him," said the captain.

Bananas did not stir. The girl unlocked the cabin door and came out.

"Is he dead?"

"He ain't."

He called a couple of men and told them to carry the mate to his bunk.
He rubbed his hands with satisfaction and his round blue eyes gleamed
behind his spectacles. But the girl was strangely silent. She put her
arms round him as though to protect him from invisible harm.

It was two or three days before Bananas was on his feet again, and when
he came out of his cabin his face was torn and swollen. Through the
darkness of his skin you saw the livid bruise. Butler saw him slinking
along the deck and called him. The mate went to him without a word.

"See here, Bananas," he said to him, fixing his spectacles on his
slippery nose, for it was very hot. "I ain't going to fire you for this,
but you know now that when I hit, I hit hard. Don't forget it and don't
let me have any more funny business."

Then he held out his hand and gave the mate that good-humoured, flashing
smile of his which was his greatest charm. The mate took the
outstretched hand and twitched his swollen lips into a devilish grin.
The incident in the captain's mind was so completely finished that when
the three of them sat at dinner he chaffed Bananas on his appearance. He
was eating with difficulty and, his swollen face still more distorted by
pain, he looked truly a repulsive object.

That evening, when he was sitting on the upper deck, smoking his pipe, a
shiver passed through the captain.

"I don't know what I should be shiverin' for on a night like this," he
grumbled. "Maybe I've gotten a dose of fever. I've been feelin' a bit
queer all day."

When he went to bed he took some quinine, and next morning he felt
better, but a little washed out, as though he were recovering from a
debauch.

"I guess my liver's out of order," he said, and he took a pill.

He had not much appetite that day and towards evening he began to feel
very unwell. He tried the next remedy he knew, which was to drink two or
three hot whiskies, but that did not seem to help him much, and when in
the morning he surveyed himself in the glass he thought he was not
looking quite the thing.

"If I ain't right by the time we get back to Honolulu I'll just give Dr.
Denby a call. He'll sure fix me up."

He could not eat. He felt a great lassitude in all his limbs. He slept
soundly enough, but he awoke with no sense of refreshment; on the
contrary he felt a peculiar exhaustion. And the energetic little man,
who could not bear the thought of lying in bed, had to make an effort to
force himself out of his bunk. After a few days he found it impossible
to resist the languor that oppressed him, and he made up his mind not to
get up.

"Bananas can look after the ship," he said. "He has before now."

He laughed a little to himself as he thought how often he had lain
speechless in his bunk after a night with the boys. That was before he
had his girl. He smiled at her and pressed her hand. She was puzzled and
anxious. He saw that she was concerned about him and tried to reassure
her. He had never had a day's illness in his life and in a week at the
outside he would be as right as rain.

"I wish you'd fired Bananas," she said. "I've got a feeling that he's at
the bottom of this."

"Damned good thing I didn't, or there'd be no one to sail the ship. I
know a good sailor when I see one." His blue eyes, rather pale now, with
the whites all yellow, twinkled. "You don't think he's trying to poison
me, little girl?"

She did not answer, but she had one or two talks with the Chinese cook,
and she took great care with the captain's food. But he ate little
enough now, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that she
persuaded him to drink a cup of soup two or three times a day. It was
clear that he was very ill, he was losing weight quickly, and his chubby
face was pale and drawn. He suffered no pain, but merely grew every day
weaker and more languid. He was wasting away. The round trip on this
occasion lasted about four weeks and by the time they came to Honolulu
the captain was a little anxious about himself. He had not been out of
his bed for more than a fortnight and really he felt too weak to get up
and go to the doctor. He sent a message asking him to come on board. The
doctor examined him, but could find nothing to account for his
condition. His temperature was normal.

"See here, Captain," he said, "I'll be perfectly frank with you. I don't
know what's the matter with you, and just seeing you like this don't
give me a chance. You come into the hospital so that we can keep you
under observation. There's nothing organically wrong with you, I know
that, and my impression is that a few weeks in hospital ought to put you
to rights."

"I ain't going to leave my ship."

Chinese owners were queer customers, he said; if he left his ship
because he was sick, his owner might fire him, and he couldn't afford to
lose his job. So long as he stayed where he was his contract safeguarded
him, and he had a first-rate mate. Besides, he couldn't leave his girl.
No man could want a better nurse; if anyone could pull him through she
would. Every man had to die once and he only wished to be left in peace.
He would not listen to the doctor's expostulations, and finally the
doctor gave in.

"I'll write you a prescription," he said doubtfully, "and see if it does
you any good. You'd better stay in bed for a while."

"There ain't much fear of my getting up, doc," answered the captain. "I
feel as weak as a cat."

But he believed in the doctor's prescription as little as did the doctor
himself, and when he was alone amused himself by lighting his cigar with
it. He had to get amusement out of something, for his cigar tasted like
nothing on earth, and he smoked only to persuade himself that he was not
too ill to. That evening a couple of friends of his, masters of tramp
steamers, hearing he was sick came to see him. They discussed his case
over a bottle of whisky and a box of Philippine cigars. One of them
remembered how a mate of his had been taken queer just like that and not
a doctor in the United States had been able to cure him. He had seen in
the paper an advertisement of a patent medicine, and thought there'd be
no harm in trying it. That man was as strong as ever he'd been in his
life after two bottles. But his illness had given Captain Butler a
lucidity which was new and strange, and while they talked he seemed to
read their minds. They thought he was dying. And when they left him he
was afraid.

The girl saw his weakness. This was her opportunity. She had been urging
him to let a native doctor see him, and he had stoutly refused; but now
she entreated him. He listened with harassed eyes. He wavered. It was
very funny that the American doctor could not tell what was the matter
with him. But he did not want her to think that he was scared. If he let
a damned nigger come along and look at him, it was to comfort _her_. He
told her to do what she liked.

The native doctor came the next night. The captain was lying alone, half
awake, and the cabin was dimly lit by an oil lamp. The door was softly
opened and the girl came in on tip-toe. She held the door open and
someone slipped in silently behind her. The captain smiled at this
mystery, but he was so weak now, the smile was no more than a glimmer in
his eyes. The doctor was a little, old man, very thin and very wrinkled,
with a completely bald head, and the face of a monkey. He was bowed and
gnarled like an old tree. He looked hardly human, but his eyes were very
bright, and in the half darkness they seemed to glow with a reddish
light. He was dressed filthily in a pair of ragged dungarees, and the
upper part of his body was naked. He sat down on his haunches and for
ten minutes looked at the captain. Then he felt the palms of his hands
and the soles of his feet. The girl watched him with frightened eyes. No
word was spoken. Then he asked for something that the captain had worn.
The girl gave him the old felt hat which the captain used constantly and
taking it he sat down again on the floor, clasping it firmly with both
hands; and rocking backwards and forwards slowly he muttered some
gibberish in a very low tone.

At last he gave a little sigh and dropped the hat. He took an old pipe
out of his trouser pocket and lit it. The girl went over to him and sat
by his side. He whispered something to her, and she started violently.
For a few minutes they talked in hurried undertones, and then they stood
up. She gave him money and opened the door for him. He slid out as
silently as he had come in. Then she went over to the captain and leaned
over him so that she could speak into his ear.

"It's an enemy praying you to death."

"Don't talk fool stuff, girlie," he said impatiently.

"It's truth. It's God's truth. That's why the American doctor couldn't
do anything. Our people can do that. I've seen it done. I thought you
were safe because you were a white man."

"I haven't an enemy."

"Bananas."

"What's he want to pray me to death for?"

"You ought to have fired him before he had a chance."

"I guess if I ain't got nothing more the matter with me than Bananas'
hoodoo I shall be sitting up and taking nourishment in a very few days."

She was silent for a while and she looked at him intently.

"Don't you know you're dying?" she said to him at last.

That was what the two skippers had thought, but they hadn't said it. A
shiver passed across the captain's wan face.

"The doctor says there ain't nothing really the matter with me. I've
only to lie quiet for a bit and I shall be all right."

She put her lips to his ear as if she were afraid that the air itself
might hear.

"You're dying, dying, dying. You'll pass out with the old moon."

"That's something to know."

"You'll pass out with the old moon unless Bananas dies before."

He was not a timid man and he had recovered already from the shock her
words, and still more her vehement, silent manner, had given him. Once
more a smile flickered in his eyes.

"I guess I'll take my chance, girlie."

"There's twelve days before the new moon."

There was something in her tone that gave him an idea.

"See here, my girl, this is all bunk. I don't believe a word of it. But
I don't want you to try any of your monkey tricks with Bananas. He ain't
a beauty, but he's a first-rate mate."

He would have said a good deal more, but he was tired out. He suddenly
felt very weak and faint. It was always at that hour that he felt worse.
He closed his eyes. The girl watched him for a minute and then slipped
out of the cabin. The moon, nearly full, made a silver pathway over the
dark sea. It shone from an unclouded sky. She looked at it with terror,
for she knew that with its death the man she loved would die. His life
was in her hands. She could save him, she alone could save him, but the
enemy was cunning, and she must be cunning too. She felt that someone
was looking at her, and without turning, by the sudden fear that seized
her, knew that from the shadow the burning eyes of the mate were fixed
upon her. She did not know what he could do; if he could read her
thoughts she was defeated already, and with a desperate effort she
emptied her mind of all content. His death alone could save her lover,
and she could bring his death about. She knew that if he could be
brought to look into a calabash in which was water so that a reflection
of him was made, and the reflection were broken by hurtling the water,
he would die as though he had been struck by lightning; for the
reflection was his soul. But none knew better than he the danger, and he
could be made to look only by a guile which had lulled his least
suspicion. He must never think that he had an enemy who was on the watch
to cause his destruction. She knew what she had to do. But the time was
short, the time was terribly short. Presently she realised that the mate
had gone. She breathed more freely.

Two days later they sailed, and there were ten now before the new moon.
Captain Butler was terrible to see. He was nothing but skin and bone,
and he could not move without help. He could hardly speak. But she dared
do nothing yet. She knew that she must be patient. The mate was cunning,
cunning. They went to one of the smaller islands of the group and
discharged cargo, and now there were only seven days more. The moment
had come to start. She brought some things out of the cabin she shared
with the captain and made them into a bundle. She put the bundle in the
deck cabin where she and Bananas ate their meals, and at dinner time,
when she went in, he turned quickly and she saw that he had been looking
at it. Neither of them spoke, but she knew what he suspected. She was
making her preparations to leave the ship. He looked at her mockingly.
Gradually, as though to prevent the captain from knowing what she was
about, she brought everything she owned into the cabin, and some of the
captain's clothes, and made them all into bundles. At last Bananas could
keep silence no longer. He pointed to a suit of ducks.

"What are you going to do with that?" he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I'm going back to my island."

He gave a laugh that distorted his grim face. The captain was dying and
she meant to get away with all she could lay hands on.

"What'll you do if I say you can't take those things? They're the
captain's."

"They're no use to you," she said.

There was a calabash hanging on the wall. It was the very calabash I had
seen when I came into the cabin and which we had talked about. She took
it down. It was all dusty, so she poured water into it from the
water-bottle, and rinsed it with her fingers.

"What are you doing with that?"

"I can sell it for fifty dollars," she said.

"If you want to take it you'll have to pay me."

"What d'you want?"

"You know what I want."

She allowed a fleeting smile to play on her lips. She flashed a quick
look at him and quickly turned away. He gave a gasp of desire. She
raised her shoulders in a little shrug. With a savage bound he sprang
upon her and seized her in his arms. Then she laughed. She put her arms,
her soft, round arms, about his neck, and surrendered herself to him
voluptuously.

When the morning came she roused him out of a deep sleep. The early rays
of the sun slanted into the cabin. He pressed her to his heart. Then he
told her that the captain could not last more than a day or two, and the
owner wouldn't so easily find another white man to command the ship. If
Bananas offered to take less money he would get the job and the girl
could stay with him. He looked at her with lovesick eyes. She nestled up
against him. She kissed his lips, in the foreign way, in the way the
captain had taught her to kiss. And she promised to stay. Bananas was
drunk with happiness.

It was now or never.

She got up and went to the table to arrange her hair. There was no
mirror and she looked into the calabash, seeking for her reflection. She
tidied her beautiful hair. Then she beckoned to Bananas to come to her.
She pointed to the calabash.

"There's something in the bottom of it," she said.

Instinctively, without suspecting anything, Bananas looked full into the
water. His face was reflected in it. In a flash she beat upon it
violently, with both her hands, so that they pounded on the bottom and
the water splashed up. The reflection was broken in pieces. Bananas
started back with a sudden hoarse cry and he looked at the girl. She was
standing there with a look of triumphant hatred on her face. A horror
came into his eyes. His heavy features were twisted in agony, and with a
thud, as though he had taken a violent poison, he crumpled up on the
ground. A great shudder passed through his body and he was still. She
leaned over him callously. She put her hand on his heart and then she
pulled down his lower eye-lid. He was quite dead.

She went into the cabin in which lay Captain Butler. There was a faint
colour in his cheeks and he looked at her in a startled way.

"What's happened?" he whispered.

They were the first words he had spoken for forty-eight hours.

"Nothing's happened," she said.

"I feel all funny."

Then his eyes closed and he fell asleep. He slept for a day and a night,
and when he awoke he asked for food. In a fortnight he was well.

It was past midnight when Winter and I rowed back to shore and we had
drunk innumerable whiskies and sodas.

"What do you think of it all?" asked Winter.

"What a question! If you mean, have I any explanation to suggest, I
haven't."

"The captain believes every word of it."

"That's obvious; but, you know, that's not the part that interests me
most: whether it's true or not, and what it all means; the part that
interests me is that such things should happen to such people. I wonder
what there is in that common-place little man to arouse such a passion
in that lovely creature. As I watched her, asleep there, while he was
telling the story I had some fantastic idea about the power of love
being able to work miracles."

"But that's not the girl," said Winter.

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Didn't you notice the cook?"

"Of course I did. He's the ugliest man I ever saw."

"That's why Butler took him. The girl ran away with the Chinese cook
last year. This is a new one. He's only had her there about two months."

"Well, I'm hanged."

"He thinks this cook is safe. But I wouldn't be too sure in his place.
There's something about a Chink, when he lays himself out to please a
woman she can't resist him."




THE LUNCHEON


I caught sight of her at the play and in answer to her beckoning I went
over during the interval and sat down beside her. It was long since I
had last seen her and if someone had not mentioned her name I hardly
think I would have recognised her. She addressed me brightly.

"Well, it's many years since we first met. How time does fly! We're none
of us getting any younger. Do you remember the first time I saw you? You
asked me to luncheon."

Did I remember?

It was twenty years ago and I was living in Paris. I had a tiny
apartment in the Latin Quarter overlooking a cemetery and I was earning
barely enough money to keep body and soul together. She had read a book
of mine and had written to me about it. I answered, thanking her, and
presently I received from her another letter saying that she was passing
through Paris and would like to have a chat with me; but her time was
limited and the only free moment she had was on the following Thursday;
she was spending the morning at the Luxembourg and would I give her a
little luncheon at Foyot's afterwards? Foyot's is a restaurant at which
the French senators eat and it was so far beyond my means that I had
never even thought of going there. But I was flattered and I was too
young to have learned to say no to a woman. (Few men, I may add, learn
this until they are too old to make it of any consequence to a woman
what they say.) I had eighty francs (gold francs) to last me the rest of
the month and a modest luncheon should not cost more than fifteen. If I
cut out coffee for the next two weeks I could manage well enough.

I answered that I would meet my friend--by correspondence--at Foyot's on
Thursday at half-past twelve. She was not so young as I expected and in
appearance imposing rather than attractive. She was in fact a woman of
forty (a charming age, but not one that excites a sudden and devastating
passion at first sight), and she gave me the impression of having more
teeth, white and large and even, than were necessary for any practical
purpose. She was talkative, but since she seemed inclined to talk about
me I was prepared to be an attentive listener.

I was startled when the bill of fare was brought, for the prices were a
great deal higher than I had anticipated. But she reassured me.

"I never eat anything for luncheon," she said.

"Oh, don't say that!" I answered generously.

"I never eat more than one thing. I think people eat far too much
nowadays. A little fish, perhaps. I wonder if they have any salmon."

Well, it was early in the year for salmon and it was not on the bill of
fare, but I asked the waiter if there was any. Yes, a beautiful salmon
had just come in, it was the first they had had. I ordered it for my
guest. The waiter asked her if she would have something while it was
being cooked.

"No," she answered, "I never eat more than one thing. Unless you had a
little caviare. I never mind caviare."

My heart sank a little. I knew I could not afford caviare, but I could
not very well tell her that. I told the waiter by all means to bring
caviare. For myself I chose the cheapest dish on the menu and that was a
mutton chop.

"I think you're unwise to eat meat," she said. "I don't know how you can
expect to work after eating heavy things like chops. I don't believe in
overloading my stomach."

Then came the question of drink.

"I never drink anything for luncheon," she said.

"Neither do I," I answered promptly.

"Except white wine," she proceeded as though I had not spoken. "These
French white wines are so light. They're wonderful for the digestion."

"What would you like?" I asked, hospitable still, but not exactly
effusive.

She gave me a bright and amicable flash of her white teeth.

"My doctor won't let me drink anything but champagne."

I fancy I turned a trifle pale. I ordered half a bottle. I mentioned
casually that my doctor had absolutely forbidden me to drink champagne.

"What are you going to drink, then?"

"Water."

She ate the caviare and she ate the salmon. She talked gaily of art and
literature and music. But I wondered what the bill would come to. When
my mutton chop arrived she took me quite seriously to task.

"I see that you're in the habit of eating a heavy luncheon. I'm sure
it's a mistake. Why don't you follow my example and just eat one thing?
I'm sure you'd feel ever so much better for it."

"I _am_ only going to eat one thing," I said, as the waiter came again
with the bill of fare.

She waved him aside with an airy gesture.

"No, no, I never eat anything for luncheon. Just a bite, I never want
more than that, and I eat that more as an excuse for conversation than
anything else. I couldn't possibly eat anything more--unless they had
some of those giant asparagus. I should be sorry to leave Paris without
having some of them."

My heart sank. I had seen them in the shops and I knew that they were
horribly expensive. My mouth had often watered at the sight of them.

"Madame wants to know if you have any of those giant asparagus," I asked
the waiter.

I tried with all my might to will him to say no. A happy smile spread
over his broad, priest-like face, and he assured me that they had some
so large, so splendid, so tender, that it was a marvel.

"I'm not in the least hungry," my guest sighed, "but if you insist I
don't mind having some asparagus."

I ordered them.

"Aren't you going to have any?"

"No, I never eat asparagus."

"I know there are people who don't like them. The fact is, you ruin your
palate by all the meat you eat."

We waited for the asparagus to be cooked. Panic seized me. It was not a
question now how much money I should have left over for the rest of the
month, but whether I had enough to pay the bill. It would be mortifying
to find myself ten francs short and be obliged to borrow from my guest.
I could not bring myself to do that. I knew exactly how much I had and
if the bill came to more I made up my mind that I would put my hand in
my pocket and with a dramatic cry start up and say it had been picked.
Of course it would be awkward if she had not money enough either to pay
the bill. Then the only thing would be to leave my watch and say I would
come back and pay later.

The asparagus appeared. They were enormous, succulent and appetising.
The smell of the melted butter tickled my nostrils as the nostrils of
Jehovah were tickled by the burned offerings of the virtuous Semites. I
watched the abandoned woman thrust them down her throat in large
voluptuous mouthfuls and in my polite way I discoursed on the condition
of the drama in the Balkans. At last she finished.

"Coffee?" I said.

"Yes, just an ice-cream and coffee," she answered.

I was past caring now, so I ordered coffee for myself and an ice-cream
and coffee for her.

"You know, there's one thing I thoroughly believe in," she said, as she
ate the ice-cream. "One should always get up from a meal feeling one
could eat a little more."

"Are you still hungry?" I asked faintly.

"Oh, no, I'm not hungry; you see, I don't eat luncheon. I have a cup of
coffee in the morning and then dinner, but I never eat more than one
thing for luncheon. I was speaking for you."

"Oh, I see!"

Then a terrible thing happened. While we were waiting for the coffee,
the head waiter, with an ingratiating smile on his false face, came up
to us bearing a large basket full of huge peaches. They had the blush of
an innocent girl; they had the rich tone of an Italian landscape. But
surely peaches were not in season then? Lord knew what they cost. I knew
too--a little later, for my guest, going on with her conversation,
absentmindedly took one.

"You see, you've filled your stomach with a lot of meat"--my one
miserable little chop--"and you can't eat any more. But I've just had a
snack and I shall enjoy a peach."

The bill came and when I paid it I found that I had only enough for a
quite inadequate tip. Her eyes rested for an instant on the three francs
I left for the waiter and I knew that she thought me mean. But when I
walked out of the restaurant I had the whole month before me and not a
penny in my pocket.

"Follow my example," she said as we shook hands, "and never eat more
than one thing for luncheon."

"I'll do better than that," I retorted. "I'll eat nothing for dinner
to-night."

"Humorist!" she cried gaily, jumping into a cab, "You're quite a
humorist!"

But I have had my revenge at last. I do not believe that I am a
vindictive man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it
is pardonable to observe the result with complacency. To-day she weighs
twenty-one stone.




THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER


When I was a very small boy I was made to learn by heart certain of the
fables of La Fontaine, and the moral of each was carefully explained to
me. Among those I learnt was _The Ant and The Grasshopper_, which is
devised to bring home to the young the useful lesson that in an
imperfect world industry is rewarded and giddiness punished. In this
admirable fable (I apologise for telling something which everyone is
politely, but inexactly, supposed to know) the ant spends a laborious
summer gathering its winter store, while the grasshopper sits on a blade
of grass singing to the sun. Winter comes and the ant is comfortably
provided for, but the grasshopper has an empty larder: he goes to the
ant and begs for a little food. Then the ant gives him her classic
answer:

"What were you doing in the summer time?"

"Saving your presence, I sang, I sang all day, all night."

"You sang. Why, then go and dance."

I do not ascribe it to perversity on my part, but rather to the
inconsequence of childhood, which is deficient in moral sense, that I
could never quite reconcile myself to the lesson. My sympathies were
with the grasshopper and for some time I never saw an ant without
putting my foot on it. In this summary (and as I have discovered since,
entirely human) fashion I sought to express my disapproval of prudence
and commonsense.

I could not help thinking of this fable when the other day I saw George
Ramsay lunching by himself in a restaurant. I never saw anyone wear an
expression of such deep gloom. He was staring into space. He looked as
though the burden of the whole world sat on his shoulders. I was sorry
for him: I suspected at once that his unfortunate brother had been
causing trouble again. I went up to him and held out my hand.

"How are you?" I asked.

"I'm not in hilarious spirits," he answered.

"Is it Tom again?"

He sighed.

"Yes, it's Tom again."

"Why don't you chuck him? You've done everything in the world for him.
You must know by now that he's quite hopeless."

I suppose every family has a black sheep. Tom had been a sore trial to
his for twenty years. He had begun life decently enough: he went into
business, married and had two children. The Ramsays were perfectly
respectable people and there was every reason to suppose that Tom Ramsay
would have a useful and honourable career. But one day, without warning,
he announced that he didn't like work and that he wasn't suited for
marriage. He wanted to enjoy himself. He would listen to no
expostulations. He left his wife and his office. He had a little money
and he spent two happy years in the various capitals of Europe. Rumours
of his doings reached his relations from time to time and they were
profoundly shocked. He certainly had a very good time. They shook their
heads and asked what would happen when his money was spent. They soon
found out: he borrowed. He was charming and unscrupulous. I have never
met anyone to whom it was more difficult to refuse a loan. He made a
steady income from his friends and he made friends easily. But he always
said that the money you spent on necessities was boring; the money that
was amusing to spend was the money you spent on luxuries. For this he
depended on his brother George. He did not waste his charm on him.
George was a serious man and insensible to such enticements. George was
respectable. Once or twice he fell to Tom's promises of amendment and
gave him considerable sums in order that he might make a fresh start. On
these Tom bought a motor-car and some very nice jewellery. But when
circumstances forced George to realise that his brother would never
settle down and he washed his hands of him, Tom, without a qualm, began
to blackmail him. It was not very nice for a respectable lawyer to find
his brother shaking cocktails behind the bar of his favourite restaurant
or to see him waiting on the box-seat of a taxi outside his club. Tom
said that to serve in a bar or to drive a taxi was a perfectly decent
occupation, but if George could oblige him with a couple of hundred
pounds he didn't mind for the honour of the family giving it up. George
paid.

Once Tom nearly went to prison. George was terribly upset. He went into
the whole discreditable affair. Really Tom had gone too far. He had been
wild, thoughtless and selfish, but he had never before done anything
dishonest, by which George meant illegal; and if he were prosecuted he
would assuredly be convicted. But you cannot allow your only brother to
go to gaol. The man Tom had cheated, a man called Cronshaw, was
vindictive. He was determined to take the matter into court; he said Tom
was a scoundrel and should be punished. It cost George an infinite deal
of trouble and five hundred pounds to settle the affair. I have never
seen him in such a rage as when he heard that Tom and Cronshaw had gone
off together to Monte Carlo the moment they cashed the cheque. They
spent a happy month there.

For twenty years Tom raced and gambled, philandered with the prettiest
girls, danced, ate in the most expensive restaurants, and dressed
beautifully. He always looked as if he had just stepped out of a
bandbox. Though he was forty-six you would never have taken him for more
than thirty-five. He was a most amusing companion and though you knew he
was perfectly worthless you could not but enjoy his society. He had high
spirits, an unfailing gaiety and incredible charm. I never grudged the
contributions he regularly levied on me for the necessities of his
existence. I never lent him fifty pounds without feeling that I was in
his debt. Tom Ramsay knew everyone and everyone knew Tom Ramsay. You
could not approve of him, but you could not help liking him.

Poor George, only a year older than his scapegrace brother, looked
sixty. He had never taken more than a fortnight's holiday in the year
for a quarter of a century. He was in his office every morning at
nine-thirty and never left it till six. He was honest, industrious and
worthy. He had a good wife, to whom he had never been unfaithful even in
thought, and four daughters to whom he was the best of fathers. He made
a point of saving a third of his income and his plan was to retire at
fifty-five to a little house in the country where he proposed to
cultivate his garden and play golf. His life was blameless. He was glad
that he was growing old because Tom was growing old too. He rubbed his
hands and said:

"It was all very well when Tom was young and good-looking, but he's only
a year younger than I am. In four years he'll be fifty. He won't find
life so easy then. I shall have thirty thousand pounds by the time I'm
fifty. For twenty-five years I've said that Tom would end in the gutter.
And we shall see how he likes that. We shall see if it really pays best
to work or be idle."

Poor George! I sympathised with him. I wondered now as I sat down beside
him what infamous thing Tom had done. George was evidently very much
upset.

"Do you know what's happened now?" he asked me.

I was prepared for the worst. I wondered if Tom had got into the hands
of the police at last. George could hardly bring himself to speak.

"You're not going to deny that all my life I've been hard-working,
decent, respectable and straightforward. After a life of industry and
thrift I can look forward to retiring on a small income in gilt-edged
securities. I've always done my duty in that state of life in which it
has pleased Providence to place me."

"True."

"And you can't deny that Tom has been an idle, worthless, dissolute and
dishonourable rogue. If there were any justice he'd be in the
workhouse."

"True."

George grew red in the face.

"A few weeks ago he became engaged to a woman old enough to be his
mother. And now she's died and left him everything she had. Half a
million pounds, a yacht, a house in London and a house in the country."

George Ramsay beat his clenched fist on the table.

"It's not fair, I tell you, it's not fair. Damn it, it's not fair."

I could not help it. I burst into a shout of laughter as I looked at
George's wrathful face, I rolled in my chair, I very nearly fell on the
floor. George never forgave me. But Tom often asks me to excellent
dinners in his charming house in Mayfair, and if he occasionally borrows
a trifle from me, that is merely from force of habit. It is never more
than a sovereign.




HOME


The farm lay in a hollow among the Somersetshire hills, an old-fashioned
stone house surrounded by barns and pens and out-houses. Over the
doorway the date when it was built had been carved in the elegant
figures of the period, 1673, and the house, grey and weather-beaten,
looked as much a part of the landscape as the trees that sheltered it.
An avenue of splendid elms that would have been the pride of many a
squire's mansion led from the road to the trim garden. The people who
lived here were as stolid, sturdy and unpretentious as the house; their
only boast was that ever since it was built from father to son in one
unbroken line they had been born and died in it. For three hundred years
they had farmed the surrounding land. George Meadows was now a man of
fifty, and his wife was a year or two younger. They were both fine,
upstanding people in the prime of life; and their children, two sons and
three girls, were handsome and strong. They had no newfangled notions
about being gentlemen and ladies; they knew their place and were proud
of it. I have never seen a more united household. They were merry,
industrious and kindly. Their life was patriarchal. It had a
completeness that gave it a beauty as definite as that of a symphony by
Beethoven or a picture by Titian. They were happy and they deserved
their happiness. But the master of the house was not George Meadows (not
by a long chalk, they said in the village); it was his mother. She was
twice the man her son was, they said. She was a woman of seventy, tall,
upright and dignified, with grey hair, and though her face was much
wrinkled, her eyes were bright and shrewd. Her word was law in the house
and on the farm; but she had humour, and if her rule was despotic it was
also kindly. People laughed at her jokes and repeated them. She was a
good business woman and you had to get up very early in the morning to
best her in a bargain. She was a character. She combined in a rare
degree good will with an alert sense of the ridiculous.

One day Mrs. George stopped me on my way home. She was all in a flutter.
(Her mother-in-law was the only Mrs. Meadows we knew; George's wife was
only known as Mrs. George.)

"Whoever do you think is coming here to-day?" she asked me. "Uncle
George Meadows. You know, him as was in China."

"Why, I thought he was dead."

"We all thought he was dead."

I had heard the story of Uncle George Meadows a dozen times, and it had
amused me because it had the savour of an old ballad: it was oddly
touching to come across it in real life. For Uncle George Meadows and
Tom, his younger brother, had both courted Mrs. Meadows when she was
Emily Green, fifty years and more ago, and when she married Tom, George
had gone away to sea.

They heard of him on the China coast. For twenty years now and then he
sent them presents; then there was no more news of him; when Tom Meadows
died his widow wrote and told him, but received no answer; and at last
they came to the conclusion that he must be dead. But two or three days
ago to their astonishment they had received a letter from the matron of
the sailors' home at Portsmouth. It appeared that for the last ten years
George Meadows, crippled with rheumatism, had been an inmate and now,
feeling that he had not much longer to live, wanted to see once more the
house in which he was born. Albert Meadows, his great-nephew, had gone
over to Portsmouth in the Ford to fetch him and he was to arrive that
afternoon.

"Just fancy," said Mrs. George, "he's not been here for more than fifty
years. He's never even seen my George, who's fifty-one next birthday."

"And what does Mrs. Meadows think of it?" I asked.

"Well, you know what she is. She sits there and smiles to herself. All
she says is, 'He was a good-looking young fellow when he left, but not
so steady as his brother.' That's why she chose my George's father. 'But
he's probably quietened down by now,' she says."

Mrs. George asked me to look in and see him. With the simplicity of a
country woman who had never been further from her home than London, she
thought that because we had both been in China we must have something in
common. Of course I accepted. I found the whole family assembled when I
arrived; they were sitting in the great old kitchen, with its stone
floor, Mrs. Meadows in her usual chair by the fire, very upright, and I
was amused to see that she had put on her best silk dress, while her son
and his wife sat at the table with their children. On the other side of
the fireplace sat an old man, bunched up in a chair. He was very thin
and his skin hung on his bones like an old suit much too large for him;
his face was wrinkled and yellow and he had lost nearly all his teeth.

I shook hands with him.

"Well, I'm glad to see you've got here safely, Mr. Meadows," I said.

"Captain," he corrected.

"He walked here," Albert, his great-nephew, told me. "When he got to the
gate he made me stop the car and said he wanted to walk."

"And mind you, I've not been out of my bed for two years. They carried
me down and put me in the car. I thought I'd never walk again, but when
I see them elm trees, I remember my father set a lot of store by them
elm trees, I felt I could walk. I walked down that drive fifty-two years
ago when I went away and now I've walked back again."

"Silly, I call it," said Mrs. Meadows.

"It's done me good. I feel better and stronger than I have for ten
years. I'll see you out yet, Emily."

"Don't you be too sure," she answered.

I suppose no one had called Mrs. Meadows by her first name for a
generation. It gave me a little shock, as though the old man were taking
a liberty with her. She looked at him with a shrewd smile in her eyes
and he, talking to her, grinned with his toothless gums. It was strange
to look at them, these two old people who had not seen one another for
half a century, and to think that all that long time ago he had loved
her and she had loved another. I wondered if they remembered what they
had felt then and what they had said to one another. I wondered if it
seemed to him strange now that for that old woman he had left the home
of his fathers, his lawful inheritance, and lived an exile's life.

"Have you ever been married, Captain Meadows?" I asked.

"Not me," he said, in his quavering voice, with a grin. "I know too much
about women for that."

"That's what you say," retorted Mrs. Meadows. "If the truth was known I
shouldn't be surprised to hear as how you'd had half a dozen black wives
in your day."

"They're not black in China, Emily, you ought to know better than that,
they're yellow."

"Perhaps that's why you've got so yellow yourself. When I saw you, I
said to myself, why, he's got jaundice."

"I said I'd never marry anyone but you, Emily, and I never have."

He said this not with pathos or resentment, but as a mere statement of
fact, as a man might say, "I said I'd walk twenty miles and I've done
it." There was a trace of satisfaction in the speech.

"Well, you might have regretted it if you had," she answered.

I talked a little with the old man about China.

"There's not a port in China that I don't know better than you know your
coat pocket. Where a ship can go I've been. I could keep you sitting
here all day long for six months and not tell you half the things I've
seen in my day."

"Well, one thing you've not done, George, as far as I can see," said
Mrs. Meadows, the mocking but not unkindly smile still in her eyes, "and
that's to make a fortune."

"I'm not one to save money. Make it and spend it; that's my motto. But
one thing I can say for myself: if I had the chance of going through my
life again I'd take it. And there's not many as'll say that."

"No, indeed," I said.

I looked at him with admiration and respect. He was a toothless,
crippled, penniless old man, but he had made a success of life, for he
had enjoyed it. When I left him he asked me to come and see him again
next day. If I was interested in China he would tell me all the stories
I wanted to hear.

Next morning I thought I would go and ask if the old man would like to
see me. I strolled down the magnificent avenue of elm trees and when I
came to the garden saw Mrs. Meadows picking flowers. I bade her
good-morning and she raised herself. She had a huge armful of white
flowers. I glanced at the house and I saw that the blinds were drawn: I
was surprised, for Mrs. Meadows liked the sunshine.

"Time enough to live in the dark when you're buried," she always said.

"How's Captain Meadows?" I asked her.

"He always was a harum-scarum fellow," she answered. "When Lizzie took
him a cup of tea this morning she found he was dead."

"Dead?"

"Yes. Died in his sleep. I was just picking these flowers to put in the
room. Well, I'm glad he died in that old house. It always means a lot to
them Meadows to do that."

They had had a good deal of difficulty in persuading him to go to bed.
He had talked to them of all the things that had happened to him in his
long life. He was happy to be back in his old home. He was proud that he
had walked up the drive without assistance, and he boasted that he would
live for another twenty years. But fate had been kind: death had written
the full-stop in the right place.

Mrs. Meadows smelt the white flowers that she held in her arms.

"Well, I'm glad he came back," she said. "After I married Tom Meadows
and George went away, the fact is I was never quite sure that I'd
married the right one."




THE POOL


When I was introduced to Lawson by Chaplin, the owner of the Hotel
Metropole at Apia, I paid no particular attention to him. We were
sitting in the lounge over an early cocktail and I was listening with
amusement to the gossip of the island.

Chaplin entertained me. He was by profession a mining engineer and
perhaps it was characteristic of him that he had settled in a place
where his professional attainments were of no possible value. It was,
however, generally reported that he was an extremely clever mining
engineer. He was a small man, neither fat nor thin, with black hair,
scanty on the crown, turning grey, and a small, untidy moustache; his
face, partly from the sun and partly from liquor, was very red. He was
but a figurehead, for the hotel, though so grandly named but a frame
building of two storeys, was managed by his wife, a tall, gaunt
Australian of five and forty, with an imposing presence and a determined
air. The little man, excitable and often tipsy, was terrified of her,
and the stranger soon heard of domestic quarrels in which she used her
fist and her foot in order to keep him in subjection. She had been known
after a night of drunkenness to confine him for twenty-four hours to his
own room, and then he could be seen, afraid to leave his prison, talking
somewhat pathetically from his verandah to people in the street below.

He was a character, and his reminiscences of a varied life, whether true
or not, made him worth listening to, so that when Lawson strolled in I
was inclined to resent the interruption. Although not mid-day, it was
clear that he had had enough to drink, and it was without enthusiasm
that I yielded to his persistence and accepted his offer of another
cocktail. I knew already that Chaplin's head was weak. The next round
which in common politeness I should be forced to order would be enough
to make him lively, and then Mrs. Chaplin would give me black looks.

Nor was there anything attractive in Lawson's appearance. He was a
little thin man, with a long, sallow face and a narrow, weak chin, a
prominent nose, large and bony, and great shaggy black eyebrows. They
gave him a peculiar look. His eyes, very large and very dark, were
magnificent. He was jolly, but his jollity did not seem to me sincere;
it was on the surface, a mask which he wore to deceive the world, and I
suspected that it concealed a mean nature. He was plainly anxious to be
thought a "good sport" and he was hail-fellow-well-met; but, I do not
know why, I felt that he was cunning and shifty. He talked a great deal
in a raucous voice, and he and Chaplin capped one another's stories of
beanos which had become legendary, stories of "wet" nights at the
English Club, of shooting expeditions where an incredible amount of
whisky had been consumed, and of jaunts to Sydney of which their pride
was that they could remember nothing from the time they landed till the
time they sailed. A pair of drunken swine. But even in their
intoxication, for by now, after four cocktails each, neither was sober,
there was a great difference between Chaplin, rough and vulgar, and
Lawson: Lawson might be drunk, but he was certainly a gentleman.

At last he got out of his chair, a little unsteadily.

"Well, I'll be getting along home," he said. "See you before dinner."

"Missus all right?" said Chaplin.

"Yes."

He went out. There was a peculiar note in the monosyllable of his answer
which made me look up.

"Good chap," said Chaplin flatly, as Lawson went out of the door into
the sunshine. "One of the best. Pity he drinks."

This from Chaplin was an observation not without humour.

"And when he's drunk he wants to fight people."

"Is he often drunk?"

"Dead drunk, three or four days a week. It's the island done it, and
Ethel."

"Who's Ethel?"

"Ethel's his wife. Married a half-caste. Old Brevald's daughter. Took
her away from here. Only thing to do. But she couldn't stand it, and now
they're back again. He'll hang himself one of these days, if he don't
drink himself to death before. Good chap. Nasty when he's drunk."

Chaplin belched loudly.

"I'll go and put my head under the shower. I oughtn't to have had that
last cocktail. It's always the last one that does you in."

He looked uncertainly at the staircase as he made up his mind to go to
the cubby hole in which was the shower, and then with unnatural
seriousness got up.

"Pay you to cultivate Lawson," he said. "A well-read chap. You'd be
surprised when he's sober. Clever too. Worth talking to."

Chaplin had told me the whole story in these few speeches.

When I came in towards evening from a ride along the sea-shore Lawson
was again in the hotel. He was heavily sunk in one of the cane chairs in
the lounge and he looked at me with glassy eyes. It was plain that he
had been drinking all the afternoon. He was torpid, and the look on his
face was sullen and vindictive. His glance rested on me for a moment,
but I could see that he did not recognise me. Two or three other men
were sitting there, shaking dice, and they took no notice of him. His
condition was evidently too usual to attract attention. I sat down and
began to play.

"You're a damned sociable lot," said Lawson suddenly.

He got out of his chair and waddled with bent knees towards the door. I
do not know whether the spectacle was more ridiculous than revolting.
When he had gone one of the men sniggered.

"Lawson's fairly soused to-day," he said.

"If I couldn't carry my liquor better than that," said another, "I'd
climb on the waggon and stay there."

Who would have thought that this wretched object was in his way a
romantic figure or that his life had in it those elements of pity and
terror which the theorist tells us are necessary to achieve the effect
of tragedy?

I did not see him again for two or three days.

I was sitting one evening on the first floor of the hotel on a verandah
that overlooked the street when Lawson came up and sank into a chair
beside me. He was quite sober. He made a casual remark and then, when I
had replied somewhat indifferently, added with a laugh which had in it
an apologetic tone:

"I was devilish soused the other day."

I did not answer. There was really nothing to say. I pulled away at my
pipe in the vain hope of keeping the mosquitoes away, and looked at the
natives going home from their work. They walked with long steps, slowly,
with care and dignity, and the soft patter of their naked feet was
strange to hear. Their dark hair, curling or straight, was often white
with lime, and then they had a look of extraordinary distinction. They
were tall and finely built. Then a gang of Solomon Islanders, indentured
labourers, passed by, singing; they were shorter and slighter than the
Samoans, coal-black, with great heads of fuzzy hair dyed red. Now and
then a white man drove past in his buggy or rode into the hotel yard. In
the lagoon two or three schooners reflected their grace in the tranquil
water.

"I don't know what there is to do in a place like this except to get
soused," said Lawson at last.

"Don't you like Samoa?" I asked casually, for something to say.

"It's pretty, isn't it?"

The word he chose seemed so inadequate to describe the unimaginable
beauty of the island that I smiled, and smiling I turned to look at him.
I was startled by the expression in those fine sombre eyes of his, an
expression of intolerable anguish; they betrayed a tragic depth of
emotion of which I should never have thought him capable. But the
expression passed away and he smiled. His smile was simple and a little
nave. It changed his face so that I wavered in my first feeling of
aversion from him.

"I was all over the place when I first came out," he said.

He was silent for a moment.

"I went away for good about three years ago, but I came back." He
hesitated. "My wife wanted to come back. She was born here, you know."

"Oh yes."

He was silent again, and then hazarded a remark about Robert Louis
Stevenson. He asked me if I had been up to Vailima. For some reason he
was making an effort to be agreeable to me. He began to talk of
Stevenson's books, and presently the conversation drifted to London.

"I suppose Covent Garden's still going strong," he said. "I think I miss
the opera as much as anything here. Have you seen _Tristan and Isolde_?"

He asked me the question as though the answer were really important to
him, and when I said, a little casually I daresay, that I had, he seemed
pleased. He began to speak of Wagner, not as a musician, but as the
plain man who received from him an emotional satisfaction that he could
not analyse.

"I suppose Bayreuth was the place to go really," he said. "I never had
the money, worse luck. But of course one might do worse than Covent
Garden, all the lights and the women dressed up to the nines, and the
music. The first act of the _Walkre's_ all right, isn't it? And the end
of _Tristan_. Golly!"

His eyes were flashing now and his face was lit up so that he hardly
seemed the same man. There was a flush on his sallow, thin cheeks, and I
forgot that his voice was harsh and unpleasant. There was even a certain
charm about him.

"By George, I'd like to be in London to-night. Do you know the Pall Mall
restaurant? I used to go there a lot. Piccadilly Circus with the shops
all lit up, and the crowd. I think it's stunning to stand there and
watch the buses and taxis streaming along as though they'd never stop.
And I like the Strand too. What are those lines about God and Charing
Cross?"

I was taken aback.

"Thompson's, d'you mean?" I asked.

I quoted them.

             "_And when so sad, thou canst not sadder,_
             _Cry, and upon thy so sore loss_
             _Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder_
             _Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross._"

He gave a faint sigh.

"I've read _The Hound of Heaven_. It's a bit of all right."

"It's generally thought so," I murmured.

"You don't meet anybody here who's read anything. They think it's
swank."

There was a wistful look on his face, and I thought I divined the
feeling that made him come to me. I was a link with the world he
regretted and a life that he would know no more. Because not so very
long before I had been in the London which he loved, he looked upon me
with awe and envy. He had not spoken for five minutes perhaps when he
broke out with words that startled me by their intensity.

"I'm fed up," he said. "I'm fed up."

"Then why don't you clear out?" I asked.

His face grew sullen.

"My lungs are a bit dicky. I couldn't stand an English winter now."

At that moment another man joined us on the verandah and Lawson sank
into a moody silence.

"It's about time for a dram," said the newcomer. "Who'll have a drop of
Scotch with me? Lawson?"

Lawson seemed to arise from a distant world. He got up.

"Let's go down to the bar," he said.

When he left me I remained with a more kindly feeling towards him than I
should have expected. He puzzled and interested me. And a few days later
I met his wife. I knew they had been married for five or six years, and
I was surprised to see that she was still extremely young. When he
married her she could not have been more than sixteen. She was adorably
pretty. She was no darker than a Spaniard, small and very beautifully
made, with tiny hands and feet, and a slight, lithe figure. Her features
were lovely; but I think what struck me most was the delicacy of her
appearance; the half-caste as a rule have a certain coarseness, they
seem a little roughly formed, but she had an exquisite daintiness which
took your breath away. There was something extremely civilised about
her, so that it surprised you to see her in those surroundings, and you
thought of those famous beauties who had set all the world talking at
the Court of the Emperor Napoleon III. Though she wore but a muslin
frock and a straw hat she wore them with an elegance that suggested the
woman of fashion. She must have been ravishing when Lawson first saw
her.

He had but lately come out from England to manage the local branch of an
English bank, and, reaching Samoa at the beginning of the dry season, he
had taken a room at the hotel. He quickly made the acquaintance of all
and sundry. The life of the island is pleasant and easy. He enjoyed the
long idle talks in the lounge of the hotel and the gay evenings at the
English Club when a group of fellows would play pool. He liked Apia
straggling along the edge of the lagoon, with its stores and bungalows,
and its native village. Then there were week-ends when he would ride
over to the house of one planter or another and spend a couple of nights
on the hills. He had never before known freedom or leisure. And he was
intoxicated by the sunshine. When he rode through the bush his head
reeled a little at the beauty that surrounded him. The country was
indescribably fertile. In parts the forest was still virgin, a tangle of
strange trees, luxuriant undergrowth, and vine; it gave an impression
that was mysterious and troubling.

But the spot that entranced him was a pool a mile or two away from Apia
to which in the evenings he often went to bathe. There was a little
river that bubbled over the rocks in a swift stream, and then, after
forming the deep pool, ran on, shallow and crystalline, past a ford made
by great stones where the natives came sometimes to bathe or to wash
their clothes. The coconut trees, with their frivolous elegance, grew
thickly on the banks, all clad with trailing plants, and they were
reflected in the green water. It was just such a scene as you might see
in Devonshire among the hills and yet with a difference, for it had a
tropical richness, a passion, a scented languor which seemed to melt the
heart. The water was fresh, but not cold; and it was delicious after the
heat of the day. To bathe there refreshed not only the body but the
soul.

At the hour when Lawson went, there was not a soul and he lingered for a
long time, now floating idly in the water, now drying himself in the
evening sun, enjoying the solitude and the friendly silence. He did not
regret London then, nor the life that he had abandoned, for life as it
was seemed complete and exquisite.

It was here that he first saw Ethel.

Occupied till late by letters which had to be finished for the monthly
sailing of the boat next day, he rode down one evening to the pool when
the light was almost failing. He tied up his horse and sauntered to the
bank. A girl was sitting there. She glanced round as he came and
noiselessly slid into the water. She vanished like a naiad startled by
the approach of a mortal. He was surprised and amused. He wondered where
she had hidden herself. He swam downstream and presently saw her sitting
on a rock. She looked at him with uncurious eyes. He called out a
greeting in Samoan.

"_Talofa._"

She answered him, suddenly smiling, and then let herself into the water
again. She swam easily and her hair spread out behind her. He watched
her cross the pool and climb out on the bank. Like all the natives she
bathed in a Mother Hubbard, and the water had made it cling to her
slight body. She wrung out her hair, and as she stood there,
unconcerned, she looked more than ever like a wild creature of the water
or the woods. He saw now that she was half-caste. He swam towards her
and, getting out, addressed her in English.

"You're having a late swim."

She shook back her hair and then let it spread over her shoulders in
luxuriant curls.

"I like it when I'm alone," she said.

"So do I."

She laughed with the childlike frankness of the native. She slipped a
dry Mother Hubbard over her head and, letting down the wet one, stepped
out of it. She wrung it out and was ready to go. She paused a moment
irresolutely and then sauntered off. The night fell suddenly.

Lawson went back to the hotel and, describing her to the men who were in
the lounge shaking dice for drinks, soon discovered who she was. Her
father was a Norwegian called Brevald who was often to be seen in the
bar of the Hotel Metropole drinking rum and water. He was a little old
man, knotted and gnarled like an ancient tree, who had come out to the
islands forty years before as mate of a sailing vessel. He had been a
blacksmith, a trader, a planter, and at one time fairly well-to-do; but,
ruined by the great hurricane of the nineties, he had now nothing to
live on but a small plantation of coconut trees. He had had four native
wives and, as he told you with a cracked chuckle, more children than he
could count. But some had died and some had gone out into the world, so
that now the only one left at home was Ethel.

"She's a peach," said Nelson, the supercargo of the _Moana_. "I've given
her the glad eye once or twice, but I guess there's nothing doing."

"Old Brevald's not that sort of a fool, sonny," put in another, a man
called Miller. "He wants a son-in-law who's prepared to keep him in
comfort for the rest of his life."

It was distasteful to Lawson that they should speak of the girl in that
fashion. He made a remark about the departing mail and so distracted
their attention. But next evening he went again to the pool. Ethel was
there; and the mystery of the sunset, the deep silence of the water, the
lithe grace of the coconut trees, added to her beauty, giving it a
profundity, a magic, which stirred the heart to unknown emotions. For
some reason that time he had the whim not to speak to her. She took no
notice of him. She did not even glance in his direction. She swam about
the green pool. She dived, she rested on the bank, as though she were
quite alone: he had a queer feeling that he was invisible. Scraps of
poetry, half forgotten, floated across his memory, and vague
recollections of the Greece he had negligently studied in his school
days. When she had changed her wet clothes for dry ones and sauntered
away he found a scarlet hibiscus where she had been. It was a flower
that she had worn in her hair when she came to bathe and, having taken
it out on getting into the water, had forgotten or not cared to put in
again. He took it in his hands and looked at it with a singular emotion.
He had an instinct to keep it, but his sentimentality irritated him, and
he flung it away. It gave him quite a little pang to see it float down
the stream.

He wondered what strangeness it was in her nature that urged her to go
down to this hidden pool when there was no likelihood that anyone should
be there. The natives of the islands are devoted to the water. They
bathe, somewhere or other, every day, once always, and often twice; but
they bathe in bands, laughing and joyous, a whole family together; and
you often saw a group of girls, dappled by the sun shining through the
trees, with the half-castes among them, splashing about the shallows of
the stream. It looked as though there were in this pool some secret
which attracted Ethel against her will.

Now the night had fallen, mysterious and silent, and he let himself down
in the water softly, in order to make no sound, and swam lazily in the
warm darkness. The water seemed fragrant still from her slender body. He
rode back to the town under the starry sky. He felt at peace with the
world.

Now he went every evening to the pool and every evening he saw Ethel.
Presently he overcame her timidity. She became playful and friendly.
They sat together on the rocks above the pool, where the water ran fast,
and they lay side by side on the ledge that overlooked it, watching the
gathering dusk envelop it with mystery. It was inevitable that their
meetings should become known--in the South Seas everyone seems to know
everyone's business--and he was subjected to much rude chaff by the men
at the hotel. He smiled and let them talk. It was not even worth while
to deny their coarse suggestions. His feelings were absolutely pure. He
loved Ethel as a poet might love the moon. He thought of her not as a
woman but as something not of this earth. She was the spirit of the
pool.

One day at the hotel, passing through the bar, he saw that old Brevald,
as ever in his shabby blue overalls, was standing there. Because he was
Ethel's father he had a desire to speak to him, so he went in, nodded
and, ordering his own drink, casually turned and invited the old man to
have one with him. They chatted for a few minutes of local affairs, and
Lawson was uneasily conscious that the Norwegian was scrutinising him
with sly blue eyes. His manner was not agreeable. It was sycophantic,
and yet behind the cringing air of an old man who had been worsted in
his struggle with fate was a shadow of old truculence. Lawson remembered
that he had once been captain of a schooner engaged in the slave trade,
a blackbirder they call it in the Pacific, and he had a large hernia in
the chest which was the result of a wound received in a scrap with
Solomon Islanders. The bell rang for luncheon.

"Well, I must be off," said Lawson.

"Why don't you come along to my place one time?" said Brevald, in his
wheezy voice. "It's not very grand, but you'll be welcome. You know
Ethel."

"I'll come with pleasure."

"Sunday afternoon's the best time."

Brevald's bungalow, shabby and bedraggled, stood among the coconut trees
of the plantation, a little away from the main road that ran up to
Vailima. Immediately around it grew huge plantains. With their tattered
leaves they had the tragic beauty of a lovely woman in rags. Everything
was slovenly and neglected. Little black pigs, thin and high-backed,
rooted about, and chickens clucked noisily as they picked at the refuse
scattered here and there. Three or four natives were lounging about the
verandah. When Lawson asked for Brevald the old man's cracked voice
called out to him, and he found him in the sitting-room smoking an old
briar pipe.

"Sit down and make yerself at home," he said. "Ethel's just titivating."

She came in. She wore a blouse and skirt and her hair was done in the
European fashion. Although she had not the wild, timid grace of the girl
who came down every evening to the pool, she seemed now more usual and
consequently more approachable. She shook hands with Lawson. It was the
first time he had touched her hand.

"I hope you'll have a cup of tea with us," she said.

He knew she had been at a mission school, and he was amused, and at the
same time touched, by the company manners she was putting on for his
benefit. Tea was already set out on the table and in a minute old
Brevald's fourth wife brought in the tea-pot. She was a handsome native,
no longer very young, and she spoke but a few words of English. She
smiled and smiled. Tea was rather a solemn meal, with a great deal of
bread and butter and a variety of very sweet cakes, and the conversation
was formal. Then a wrinkled old woman came in softly.

"That's Ethel's granny," said old Brevald, noisily spitting on the
floor.

She sat on the edge of a chair, uncomfortably, so that you saw it was
unusual for her and she would have been more at ease on the ground, and
remained silently staring at Lawson with fixed, shining eyes. In the
kitchen behind the bungalow someone began to play the concertina and two
or three voices were raised in a hymn. But they sang for the pleasure of
the sounds rather than from piety.

When Lawson walked back to the hotel he was strangely happy. He was
touched by the higgledy-piggledy way in which those people lived; and in
the smiling good-nature of Mrs. Brevald, in the little Norwegian's
fantastic career, and in the shining mysterious eyes of the old
grandmother he found something unusual and fascinating. It was a more
natural life than any he had known, it was nearer to the friendly,
fertile earth; civilisation repelled him at that moment, and by mere
contact with these creatures of a more primitive nature he felt a
greater freedom.

He saw himself rid of the hotel which already was beginning to irk him,
settled in a little bungalow of his own, trim and white, in front of the
sea so that he had before his eyes always the multi-coloured variety of
the lagoon. He loved the beautiful island. London and England meant
nothing to him any more, he was content to spend the rest of his days in
that forgotten spot, rich in the best of the world's goods, love and
happiness. He made up his mind that whatever the obstacles nothing
should prevent him from marrying Ethel.

But there were no obstacles. He was always welcome at the Brevalds'
house. The old man was ingratiating and Mrs. Brevald smiled without
ceasing. He had brief glimpses of natives who seemed somehow to belong
to the establishment, and once he found a tall youth in a _lava-lava_,
his body tattooed, his hair white with lime, sitting with Brevald, and
was told he was Mrs. Brevald's brother's son; but for the most part they
kept out of his way. Ethel was delightful with him. The light in her
eyes when she saw him filled him with ecstasy. She was charming and
nave. He listened enraptured when she told him of the mission school at
which she was educated, and of the sisters. He went with her to the
cinema which was given once a fortnight and danced with her at the dance
which followed it. They came from all parts of the island for this,
since gaieties are few in Upolu; and you saw there all the society of
the place, the white ladies keeping a good deal to themselves, the
half-castes very elegant in American clothes, the natives, strings of
dark girls in white Mother Hubbards and young men in unaccustomed ducks
and white shoes. It was all very smart and gay. Ethel was pleased to
show her friends the white admirer who did not leave her side. The
rumour was soon spread that he meant to marry her and her friends looked
at her with envy. It was a great thing for a half-caste to get a white
man to marry her, even the less regular relation was better than
nothing, but one could never tell what it would lead to; and Lawson's
position as manager of the bank made him one of the catches of the
island. If he had not been so absorbed in Ethel he would have noticed
that many eyes were fixed on him curiously, and he would have seen the
glances of the white ladies and noticed how they put their heads
together and gossiped.

Afterwards, when the men who lived at the hotel were having a whisky
before turning in, Nelson burst out with:

"Say, they say Lawson's going to marry that girl."

"He's a damned fool then," said Miller.

Miller was a German-American who had changed his name from Mller, a big
man, fat and bald-headed, with a round, clean-shaven face. He wore large
gold-rimmed spectacles, which gave him a benign look, and his ducks were
always clean and white. He was a heavy drinker, invariably ready to stay
up all night with the "boys", but he never got drunk; he was jolly and
affable, but very shrewd. Nothing interfered with his business; he
represented a firm in San Francisco, jobbers of the goods sold in the
islands, calico, machinery and what not; and his good-fellowship was
part of his stock-in-trade.

"He don't know what he's up against," said Nelson. "Someone ought to put
him wise."

"If you'll take my advice you won't interfere in what don't concern
you," said Miller. "When a man's made up his mind to make a fool of
himself, there's nothing like letting him."

"I'm all for having a good time with the girls out here, but when it
comes to marrying them--this child ain't taking any, I'll tell the
world."

Chaplin was there, and now he had his say.

"I've seen a lot of fellows do it, and it's no good."

"You ought to have a talk with him, Chaplin," said Nelson. "You know him
better than anyone else does."

"My advice to Chaplin is to leave it alone," said Miller.

Even in those days Lawson was not popular and really no one took enough
interest in him to bother. Mrs. Chaplin talked it over with two or three
of the white ladies, but they contented themselves with saying that it
was a pity; and when he told her definitely that he was going to be
married it seemed too late to do anything.

For a year Lawson was happy. He took a bungalow at the point of the bay
round which Apia is built, on the borders of a native village. It
nestled charmingly among the coconut trees and faced the passionate blue
of the Pacific. Ethel was lovely as she went about the little house,
lithe and graceful like some young animal of the woods, and she was gay.
They laughed a great deal. They talked nonsense. Sometimes one or two of
the men at the hotel would come over and spend the evening, and often on
a Sunday they would go for a day to some planter who had married a
native; now and then one or other of the half-caste traders who had a
store in Apia would give a party and they went to it. The half-castes
treated Lawson quite differently now. His marriage had made him one of
themselves and they called him Bertie. They put their arms through his
and smacked him on the back. He liked to see Ethel at these gatherings.
Her eyes shone and she laughed. It did him good to see her radiant
happiness. Sometimes Ethel's relations would come to the bungalow, old
Brevald of course, and her mother, but cousins too, vague native women
in Mother Hubbards and men and boys in _lava-lavas_, with their hair
dyed red and their bodies elaborately tattooed. He would find them
sitting there when he got back from the bank. He laughed indulgently.

"Don't let them eat us out of hearth and home," he said.

"They're my own family. I can't help doing something for them when they
ask me."

He knew that when a white man marries a native or a half-caste he must
expect her relations to look upon him as a gold mine. He took Ethel's
face in his hands and kissed her red lips. Perhaps he could not expect
her to understand that the salary which had amply sufficed for a
bachelor must be managed with some care when it had to support a wife
and a house. Then Ethel was delivered of a son.

It was when Lawson first held the child in his arms that a sudden pang
shot through his heart. He had not expected it to be so dark. After all
it had but a fourth part of native blood, and there was no reason really
why it should not look just like an English baby; but, huddled together
in his arms, sallow, its head covered already with black hair, with huge
black eyes, it might have been a native child. Since his marriage he had
been ignored by the white ladies of the colony. When he came across men
in whose houses he had been accustomed to dine as a bachelor, they were
a little self-conscious with him; and they sought to cover their
embarrassment by an exaggerated cordiality.

"Mrs. Lawson well?" they would say. "You're a lucky fellow. Damned
pretty girl."

But if they were with their wives and met him and Ethel they would feel
it awkward when their wives gave Ethel a patronising nod. Lawson had
laughed.

"They're as dull as ditchwater, the whole gang of them," he said. "It's
not going to disturb my night's rest if they don't ask me to their dirty
parties."

But now it irked him a little.

The little dark baby screwed up its face. That was his son. He thought
of the half-caste children in Apia. They had an unhealthy look, sallow
and pale, and they were odiously precocious. He had seen them on the
boat going to school in New Zealand, and a school had to be chosen which
took children with native blood in them; they were huddled together,
brazen and yet timid, with traits which set them apart strangely from
white people. They spoke the native language among themselves. And when
they grew up the men accepted smaller salaries because of their native
blood; girls might marry a white man, but boys had no chance; they must
marry a half-caste like themselves or a native. Lawson made up his mind
passionately that he would take his son away from the humiliation of
such a life. At whatever cost he must get back to Europe. And when he
went in to see Ethel, frail and lovely in her bed, surrounded by native
women, his determination was strengthened. If he took her away among his
own people she would belong more completely to him. He loved her so
passionately he wanted her to be one soul and one body with him; and he
was conscious that here, with those deep roots attaching her to the
native life, she would always keep something from him.

He went to work quietly, urged by an obscure instinct of secrecy, and
wrote to a cousin who was partner in a shipping firm in Aberdeen, saying
that his health (on account of which like so many more he had come out
to the islands) was so much better, there seemed no reason why he should
not return to Europe. He asked him to use what influence he could to get
him a job, no matter how poorly paid, on Deeside, where the climate was
particularly suitable to such as suffered from diseases of the lungs. It
takes five or six weeks for letters to get from Aberdeen to Samoa, and
several had to be exchanged. He had plenty of time to prepare Ethel. She
was as delighted as a child. He was amused to see how she boasted to her
friends that she was going to England; it was a step up for her; she
would be quite English there; and she was excited at the interest the
approaching departure gave her. When at length a cable came offering him
a post in a bank in Kincardineshire she was beside herself with joy.

When, their long journey over, they were settled in the little Scots
town with its granite houses Lawson realised how much it meant to him to
live once more among his own people. He looked back on the three years
he had spent in Apia as exile, and returned to the life that seemed the
only normal one with a sigh of relief. It was good to play golf once
more, and to fish--to fish properly, that was poor fun in the Pacific
when you just threw in your line and pulled out one big sluggish fish
after another from the crowded sea--and it was good to see a paper every
day with that day's news, and to meet men and women of your own sort,
people you could talk to; and it was good to eat meat that was not
frozen and to drink milk that was not canned. They were thrown upon
their own resources much more than in the Pacific, and he was glad to
have Ethel exclusively to himself. After two years of marriage he loved
her more devotedly than ever, he could hardly bear her out of his sight,
and the need in him grew urgent for a more intimate communion between
them. But it was strange that after the first excitement of arrival she
seemed to take less interest in the new life than he had expected. She
did not accustom herself to her surroundings. She was a little
lethargic. As the fine autumn darkened into winter she complained of the
cold. She lay half the morning in bed and the rest of the day on a sofa,
reading novels sometimes, but more often doing nothing. She looked
pinched.

"Never mind, darling," he said. "You'll get used to it very soon. And
wait till the summer comes. It can be almost as hot as in Apia."

He felt better and stronger than he had done for years.

The carelessness with which she managed her house had not mattered in
Samoa, but here it was out of place. When anyone came he did not want
the place to look untidy; and, laughing, chaffing Ethel a little, he set
about putting things in order. Ethel watched him indolently. She spent
long hours playing with her son. She talked to him in the baby language
of her own country. To distract her, Lawson bestirred himself to make
friends among the neighbours, and now and then they went to little
parties where the ladies sang drawing-room ballads and the men beamed in
silent good nature. Ethel was shy. She seemed to sit apart. Sometimes
Lawson, seized with a sudden anxiety, would ask her if she was happy.

"Yes, I'm quite happy," she answered.

But her eyes were veiled by some thought he could not guess. She seemed
to withdraw into herself so that he was conscious that he knew no more
of her than when he had first seen her bathing in the pool. He had an
uneasy feeling that she was concealing something from him, and because
he adored her it tortured him.

"You don't regret Apia, do you?" he asked her once.

"Oh, no--I think it's very nice here."

An obscure misgiving drove him to make disparaging remarks about the
island and the people there. She smiled and did not answer. Very rarely
she received a bundle of letters from Samoa and then she went about for
a day or two with a set, pale face.

"Nothing would induce me ever to go back there," he said once. "It's no
place for a white man."

But he grew conscious that sometimes, when he was away, Ethel cried. In
Apia she had been talkative, chatting volubly about all the little
details of their common life, the gossip of the place; but now she
gradually became silent, and, though he increased his efforts to amuse
her, she remained listless. It seemed to him that her recollections of
the old life were drawing her away from him, and he was madly jealous of
the island and of the sea, of Brevald, and all the dark-skinned people
whom he remembered now with horror. When she spoke of Samoa he was
bitter and satirical. One evening late in the spring when the birch
trees were bursting into leaf, coming home from a round of golf, he
found her not as usual lying on the sofa, but at the window, standing.
She had evidently been waiting for his return. She addressed him the
moment he came into the room. To his amazement she spoke in Samoan.

"I can't stand it. I can't live here any more. I hate it. I hate it."

"For God's sake speak in a civilised language," he said irritably.

She went up to him and clasped her arms around his body awkwardly, with
a gesture that had in it something barbaric.

"Let's go away from here. Let's go back to Samoa. If you make me stay
here I shall die. I want to go home."

Her passion broke suddenly and she burst into tears. His anger vanished
and he drew her down on his knees. He explained to her that it was
impossible for him to throw up his job, which after all meant his bread
and butter. His place in Apia was long since filled. He had nothing to
go back to there. He tried to put it to her reasonably, the
inconveniences of life there, the humiliation to which they must be
exposed, and the bitterness it must cause their son.

"Scotland's wonderful for education and that sort of thing. Schools are
good and cheap, and he can go to the University at Aberdeen. I'll make a
real Scot of him."

They had called him Andrew. Lawson wanted him to become a doctor. He
would marry a white woman.

"I'm not ashamed of being half native," Ethel said sullenly.

"Of course not, darling. There's nothing to be ashamed of."

With her soft cheek against his he felt incredibly weak.

"You don't know how much I love you," he said. "I'd give anything in the
world to be able to tell you what I've got in my heart."

He sought her lips.

The summer came. The highland valley was green and fragrant and the
hills were gay with the heather. One sunny day followed another in that
sheltered spot, and the shade of the birch trees was grateful after the
glare of the high road. Ethel spoke no more of Samoa and Lawson grew
less nervous. He thought that she was resigned to her surroundings, and
he felt that his love for her was so passionate that it could leave no
room in her heart for any longing. One day the local doctor stopped him
in the street.

"I say, Lawson, your missus ought to be careful how she bathes in our
highland streams. It's not like the Pacific, you know."

Lawson was surprised, and had not the presence of mind to conceal the
fact.

"I didn't know she was bathing."

The doctor laughed.

"A good many people have seen her. It makes them talk a bit, you know,
because it seems a rum place to choose, the pool up above the bridge,
and bathing isn't allowed there, but there's no harm in that. I don't
know how she can stand the water."

Lawson knew the pool the doctor spoke of, and suddenly it occurred to
him that in a way it was just like that pool at Upolu where Ethel had
been in the habit of bathing every evening. A clear highland stream ran
down a sinuous course, rocky, splashing gaily, and then formed a deep,
smooth pool, with a little sandy beach. Trees overshadowed it thickly,
not coconut trees, but beeches, and the sun played fitfully through the
leaves on the sparkling water. It gave him a shock. With his imagination
he saw Ethel go there every day and undress on the bank and slip into
the water, cold, colder than that of the pool she loved at home, and for
a moment regain the feeling of the past. He saw her once more as the
strange, wild spirit of the stream, and it seemed to him fantastically
that the running water called her. That afternoon he went along to the
river. He made his way cautiously among the trees and the grassy path
deadened the sound of his steps. Presently he came to a spot from which
he could see the pool. Ethel was sitting on the bank, looking down at
the water. She sat quite still. It seemed as though the water drew her
irresistibly. He wondered what strange thoughts wandered through her
head. At last she got up, and for a minute or two she was hidden from
his gaze; then he saw her again, wearing a Mother Hubbard, and with her
little bare feet she stepped delicately over the mossy bank. She came to
the water's edge, and softly, without a splash, let herself down. She
swam about quietly, and there was something not quite of a human being
in the way she swam. He did not know why it affected him so queerly. He
waited till she clambered out. She stood for a moment with the wet folds
of her dress clinging to her body, so that its shape was outlined, and
then, passing her hands slowly over her breasts, gave a little sigh of
delight. Then she disappeared. Lawson turned away and walked back to the
village. He had a bitter pain in his heart, for he knew that she was
still a stranger to him and his hungry love was destined ever to remain
unsatisfied.

He did not make any mention of what he had seen. He ignored the incident
completely, but he looked at her curiously, trying to divine what was in
her mind. He redoubled the tenderness with which he used her. He sought
to make her forget the deep longing of her soul by the passion of his
love.

Then one day, when he came home, he was astonished to find her not in
the house.

"Where's Mrs. Lawson?" he asked the maid.

"She went into Aberdeen, Sir, with the baby," the maid answered, a
little surprised at the question. "She said she would not be back till
the last train."

"Oh, all right."

He was vexed that Ethel had said nothing to him about the excursion, but
he was not disturbed, since of late she had been in now and again to
Aberdeen, and he was glad that she should look at the shops and perhaps
visit a cinema. He went to meet the last train, but when she did not
come he grew suddenly frightened. He went up to the bedroom and saw at
once that her toilet things were no longer in their place. He opened the
wardrobe and the drawers. They were half empty. She had bolted.

He was seized with a passion of anger. It was too late that night to
telephone to Aberdeen and make enquiries, but he knew already all that
his enquiries might have taught him. With fiendish cunning she had
chosen a time when they were making up their periodical accounts at the
bank and there was no chance that he could follow her. He was imprisoned
by his work. He took up a paper and saw that there was a boat sailing
for Australia next morning. She must be now well on the way to London.
He could not prevent the sobs that were wrung painfully from him.

"I've done everything in the world for her," he cried, "and she had the
heart to treat me like this. How cruel, how monstrously cruel!"

After two days of misery he received a letter from her. It was written
in her school-girl hand. She had always written with difficulty:

    _Dear Bertie,_

    _I couldn't stand it any more. I'm going back home. Good-bye._

                                                         _Ethel._

She did not say a single word of regret. She did not even ask him to
come too. Lawson was prostrated. He found out where the ship made its
first stop and, though he knew very well she would not come, sent a
cable beseeching her to return. He waited with pitiful anxiety. He
wanted her to send him just one word of love; she did not even answer.
He passed through one violent phase after another. At one moment he told
himself that he was well rid of her, and at the next that he would force
her to return by withholding money. He was lonely and wretched. He
wanted his boy and he wanted her. He knew that, whatever he pretended to
himself, there was only one thing to do and that was to follow her. He
could never live without her now. All his plans for the future were like
a house of cards and he scattered them with angry impatience. He did not
care whether he threw away his chances for the future, for nothing in
the world mattered but that he should get Ethel back again. As soon as
he could he went into Aberdeen and told the manager of his bank that he
meant to leave at once. The manager remonstrated. The short notice was
inconvenient. Lawson would not listen to reason. He was determined to be
free before the next boat sailed; and it was not until he was on board
of her, having sold everything he possessed, that in some measure he
regained his calm. Till then to those who had come in contact with him
he seemed hardly sane. His last action in England was to cable to Ethel
at Apia that he was joining her.

He sent another cable from Sydney, and when at last with the dawn his
boat crossed the bar at Apia and he saw once more the white houses
straggling along the bay he felt an immense relief. The doctor came on
board and the agent. They were both old acquaintances and he felt kindly
towards their familiar faces. He had a drink or two with them for old
times' sake, and also because he was desperately nervous. He was not
sure if Ethel would be glad to see him. When he got into the launch and
approached the wharf he scanned anxiously the little crowd that waited.
She was not there and his heart sank, but then he saw Brevald, in his
old blue clothes, and his heart warmed towards him.

"Where's Ethel?" he said, as he jumped on shore.

"She's down at the bungalow. She's living with us."

Lawson was dismayed, but he put on a jovial air.

"Well, have you got room for me? I daresay it'll take a week or two to
fix ourselves up."

"Oh, yes, I guess we can make room for you."

After passing through the custom-house they went to the hotel and there
Lawson was greeted by several of his old friends. There were a good many
rounds of drinks before it seemed possible to get away and when they did
go out at last to Brevald's house they were both rather gay. He clasped
Ethel in his arms. He had forgotten all his bitter thoughts in the joy
of beholding her once more. His mother-in-law was pleased to see him,
and so was the old, wrinkled beldame, her mother; natives and
half-castes came in, and they all sat round, beaming on him. Brevald had
a bottle of whisky and everyone who came was given a nip. Lawson sat
with his little dark-skinned boy on his knees, they had taken his
English clothes off him and he was stark, with Ethel by his side in a
Mother Hubbard. He felt like a returning prodigal. In the afternoon he
went down to the hotel again and when he got back he was more than gay,
he was drunk. Ethel and her mother knew that white men got drunk now and
then, it was what you expected of them, and they laughed good-naturedly
as they helped him to bed.

But in a day or two he set about looking for a job. He knew that he
could not hope for such a position as that which he had thrown away to
go to England; but with his training he could not fail to be useful to
one of the trading firms, and perhaps in the end he would not lose by
the change.

"After all, you can't make money in a bank," he said. "Trade's the
thing."

He had hopes that he would soon make himself so indispensable that he
would get someone to take him into partnership, and there was no reason
why in a few years he should not be a rich man.

"As soon as I'm fixed up we'll find ourselves a shack," he told Ethel.
"We can't go on living here."

Brevald's bungalow was so small that they were all piled on one another,
and there was no chance of ever being alone. There was neither peace nor
privacy.

"Well, there's no hurry. We shall be all right here till we find just
what we want."

It took him a week to get settled and then he entered the firm of a man
called Bain. But when he talked to Ethel about moving she said she
wanted to stay where she was till her baby was born, for she was
expecting another child. Lawson tried to argue with her.

"If you don't like it," she said, "go and live at the hotel."

He grew suddenly pale.

"Ethel, how can you suggest that!"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"What's the good of having a house of our own when we can live here."

He yielded.

When Lawson, after his work, went back to the bungalow he found it
crowded with natives. They lay about smoking, sleeping, drinking _kava_;
and they talked incessantly. The place was grubby and untidy. His child
crawled about, playing with native children, and it heard nothing spoken
but Samoan. He fell into the habit of dropping into the hotel on his way
home to have a few cocktails, for he could only face the evening and the
crowd of friendly natives when he was fortified with liquor. And all the
time, though he loved her more passionately than ever, he felt that
Ethel was slipping away from him. When the baby was born he suggested
that they should get into a house of their own, but Ethel refused. Her
stay in Scotland seemed to have thrown her back on her own people, now
that she was once more among them, with a passionate zest, and she
turned to her native ways with abandon. Lawson began to drink more.
Every Saturday night he went to the English Club and got blind drunk.

He had the peculiarity that as he grew drunk he grew quarrelsome and
once he had a violent dispute with Bain, his employer. Bain dismissed
him, and he had to look out for another job. He was idle for two or
three weeks and during these, sooner than sit in the bungalow, he
lounged about in the hotel or at the English Club, and drank. It was
more out of pity than anything else that Miller, the German-American,
took him into his office; but he was a business man, and though Lawson's
financial skill made him valuable, the circumstances were such that he
could hardly refuse a smaller salary than he had had before, and Miller
did not hesitate to offer it to him. Ethel and Brevald blamed him for
taking it, since Pedersen, the half-caste, offered him more. But he
resented bitterly the thought of being under the orders of a half-caste.
When Ethel nagged him he burst out furiously:

"I'll see myself dead before I work for a nigger."

"You may have to," she said.

And in six months he found himself forced to this final humiliation. The
passion for liquor had been gaining on him, he was often heavy with
drink, and he did his work badly. Miller warned him once or twice and
Lawson was not the man to accept remonstrance easily. One day in the
midst of an altercation he put on his hat and walked out. But by now his
reputation was well known and he could find no one to engage him. For a
while he idled, and then he had an attack of delirium tremens. When he
recovered, shameful and weak, he could no longer resist the constant
pressure and he went to Pedersen and asked him for a job. Pedersen was
glad to have a white man in his store and Lawson's skill at figures made
him useful.

From that time his degeneration was rapid. The white people gave him the
cold shoulder. They were only prevented from cutting him completely by
disdainful pity and by a certain dread of his angry violence when he was
drunk. He became extremely susceptible and was always on the lookout for
affront.

He lived entirely among the natives and half-castes, but he had no
longer the prestige of the white man. They felt his loathing for them
and they resented his attitude of superiority. He was one of themselves
now and they did not see why he should put on airs. Brevald, who had
been ingratiating and obsequious, now treated him with contempt. Ethel
had made a bad bargain. There were disgraceful scenes and once or twice
the two men came to blows. When there was a quarrel Ethel took the part
of her family. They found he was better drunk than sober, for when he
was drunk he would lie on the bed or on the floor, sleeping heavily.

Then he became aware that something was being hidden from him.

When he got back to the bungalow for the wretched, half-native supper
which was his evening meal, often Ethel was not in. If he asked where
she was Brevald told him she had gone to spend the evening with one or
other of her friends. Once he followed her to the house Brevald had
mentioned and found she was not there. On her return he asked her where
she had been and she told him her father had made a mistake; she had
been to so-and-so's. But he knew that she was lying. She was in her best
clothes; her eyes were shining, and she looked lovely.

"Don't try any monkey tricks on me, my girl," he said, "or I'll break
every bone in your body."

"You drunken beast," she said, scornfully.

He fancied that Mrs. Brevald and the old grandmother looked at him
maliciously and he ascribed Brevald's good-humour with him, so unusual
those days, to his satisfaction at having something up his sleeve
against his son-in-law. And then, his suspicions aroused, he imagined
that the white men gave him curious glances. When he came into the
lounge of the hotel the sudden silence which fell upon the company
convinced him that he had been the subject of the conversation.
Something was going on and everyone knew it but himself. He was seized
with furious jealousy. He believed that Ethel was carrying on with one
of the white men, and he looked at one after the other with scrutinising
eyes; but there was nothing to give him even a hint. He was helpless.
Because he could find no one on whom definitely to fix his suspicions,
he went about like a raving maniac, looking for someone on whom to vent
his wrath. Chance caused him in the end to hit upon the man who of all
others least deserved to suffer from his violence. One afternoon, when
he was sitting in the hotel by himself, moodily, Chaplin came in and sat
down beside him. Perhaps Chaplin was the only man on the island who had
any sympathy for him. They ordered drinks and chatted a few minutes
about the races that were shortly to be run. Then Chaplin said:

"I guess we shall all have to fork out money for new dresses."

Lawson sniggered. Since Mrs. Chaplin held the purse-strings, if she
wanted a new frock for the occasion she would certainly not ask her
husband for the money.

"How is your missus?" asked Chaplin, desiring to be friendly.

"What the hell's that got to do with you?" said Lawson, knitting his
dark brows.

"I was only asking a civil question."

"Well, keep your civil questions to yourself."

Chaplin was not a patient man; his long residence in the tropics, the
whisky bottle, and his domestic affairs had given him a temper hardly
more under control than Lawson's.

"Look here, my boy, when you're in my hotel you behave like a gentleman
or you'll find yourself in the street before you can say knife."

Lawson's lowering face grew dark and red.

"Let me just tell you once for all and you can pass it on to the
others," he said, panting with rage. "If any of you fellows come messing
round with my wife he'd better look out."

"Who do you think wants to mess around with your wife?"

"I'm not such a fool as you think. I can see a stone wall in front of me
as well as most men, and I warn you straight, that's all. I'm not going
to put up with any hanky-panky, not on your life."

"Look here, you'd better clear out of here, and come back when you're
sober."

"I shall clear out when I choose and not a minute before," said Lawson.

It was an unfortunate boast, for Chaplin in the course of his experience
as a hotel-keeper had acquired a peculiar skill in dealing with
gentlemen whose room he preferred to their company, and the words were
hardly out of Lawson's mouth before he found himself caught by the
collar and arm and hustled not without force into the street. He
stumbled down the steps into the blinding glare of the sun.

It was in consequence of this that he had his first violent scene with
Ethel. Smarting with humiliation and unwilling to go back to the hotel,
he went home that afternoon earlier than usual. He found Ethel dressing
to go out. As a rule she lay about in a Mother Hubbard, barefoot, with a
flower in her dark hair; but now, in white silk stockings and
high-heeled shoes, she was doing up a pink muslin dress which was the
newest she had.

"You're making yourself very smart," he said. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to the Crossleys."

"I'll come with you."

"Why?" she asked coolly.

"I don't want you to gad about by yourself all the time."

"You're not asked."

"I don't care a damn about that. You're not going without me."

"You'd better lie down till I'm ready."

She thought he was drunk and if he once settled himself on the bed would
quickly drop off to sleep. He sat down on a chair and began to smoke a
cigarette. She watched him with increasing irritation. When she was
ready he got up. It happened by an unusual chance that there was no one
in the bungalow. Brevald was working on the plantation and his wife had
gone into Apia. Ethel faced him.

"I'm not going with you. You're drunk."

"That's a lie. You're not going without me."

She shrugged her shoulders and tried to pass him, but he caught her by
the arm and held her.

"Let me go, you devil," she said, breaking into Samoan.

"Why do you want to go without me? Haven't I told you I'm not going to
put up with any monkey tricks?"

She clenched her fist and hit him in the face. He lost all control of
himself. All his love, all his hatred, welled up in him and he was
beside himself.

"I'll teach you," he shouted. "I'll teach you."

He seized a riding-whip which happened to be under his hand, and struck
her with it. She screamed, and the scream maddened him so that he went
on striking her, again and again. Her shrieks rang through the bungalow
and he cursed her as he hit. Then he flung her on the bed. She lay there
sobbing with pain and terror. He threw the whip away from him and rushed
out of the room. Ethel heard him go and she stopped crying. She looked
round cautiously, then she raised herself. She was sore, but she had not
been badly hurt, and she looked at her dress to see if it was damaged.
The native women are not unused to blows. What he had done did not
outrage her. When she looked at herself in the glass and arranged her
hair, her eyes were shining. There was a strange look in them. Perhaps
then she was nearer loving him than she had ever been before.

But Lawson, driven forth blindly, stumbled through the plantation and
suddenly exhausted, weak as a child, flung himself on the ground at the
foot of a tree. He was miserable and ashamed. He thought of Ethel, and
in the yielding tenderness of his love all his bones seemed to grow soft
within him. He thought of the past, and of his hopes, and he was aghast
at what he had done. He wanted her more than ever. He wanted to take her
in his arms. He must go to her at once. He got up. He was so weak that
he staggered as he walked. He went into the house and she was sitting in
their cramped bedroom in front of her looking-glass.

"Oh, Ethel, forgive me. I'm so awfully ashamed of myself. I didn't know
what I was doing."

He fell on his knees before her and timidly stroked the skirt of her
dress.

"I can't bear to think of what I did. It's awful. I think I was mad.
There's no one in the world I love as I love you. I'd do anything to
save you from pain and I've hurt you. I can never forgive myself, but
for God's sake say you forgive me."

He heard her shrieks still. It was unendurable. She looked at him
silently. He tried to take her hands and the tears streamed from his
eyes. In his humiliation he hid his face in her lap and his frail body
shook with sobs. An expression of utter contempt came over her face. She
had the native woman's disdain of a man who abased himself before a
woman. A weak creature! And for a moment she had been on the point of
thinking there was something in him. He grovelled at her feet like a
cur. She gave him a little scornful kick.

"Get out," she said. "I hate you."

He tried to hold her, but she pushed him aside. She stood up. She began
to take off her dress. She kicked off her shoes and slid the stockings
off her feet, then she slipped on her old Mother Hubbard.

"Where are you going?"

"What's that got to do with you? I'm going down to the pool."

"Let me come too," he said.

He asked as though he were a child.

"Can't you even leave me that?"

He hid his face in his hands, crying miserably, while she, her eyes hard
and cold, stepped past him and went out.

From that time she entirely despised him; and though, herded together in
the small bungalow, Lawson and Ethel with her two children, Brevald, his
wife and her mother, and the vague relations and hangers-on who were
always in and about, they had to live cheek by jowl, Lawson, ceasing to
be of any account, was hardly noticed. He left in the morning after
breakfast, and came back only to have supper. He gave up the struggle,
and when for want of money he could not go to the English Club he spent
the evening playing hearts with old Brevald and the natives. Except when
he was drunk he was cowed and listless. Ethel treated him like a dog.
She submitted at times to his fits of wild passion, and she was
frightened by the gusts of hatred with which they were followed; but
when, afterwards, he was cringing and lachrymose she had such a contempt
for him that she could have spat in his face. Sometimes he was violent,
but now she was prepared for him, and when he hit her she kicked and
scratched and bit. They had horrible battles in which he had not always
the best of it. Very soon it was known all over Apia that they got on
badly. There was little sympathy for Lawson, and at the hotel the
general surprise was that old Brevald did not kick him out of the place.

"Brevald's a pretty ugly customer," said one of the men. "I shouldn't be
surprised if he put a bullet into Lawson's carcass one of these days."

Ethel still went in the evenings to bathe in the silent pool. It seemed
to have an attraction for her that was not quite human, just that
attraction you might imagine that a mermaid who had won a soul would
have for the cool salt waves of the sea; and sometimes Lawson went also.
I do not know what urged him to go, for Ethel was obviously irritated by
his presence; perhaps it was because in that spot he hoped to regain the
clean rapture which had filled his heart when first he saw her; perhaps
only, with the madness of those who love them that love them not, from
the feeling that his obstinacy could force love. One day he strolled
down there with a feeling that was rare with him now. He felt suddenly
at peace with the world. The evening was drawing in and the dusk seemed
to cling to the leaves of the coconut trees like a little thin cloud. A
faint breeze stirred them noiselessly. A crescent moon hung just over
their tops. He made his way to the bank. He saw Ethel in the water
floating on her back. Her hair streamed out all round her, and she was
holding in her hand a large hibiscus. He stopped a moment to admire her;
she was like Ophelia.

"Hulloa, Ethel," he cried joyfully.

She made a sudden movement and dropped the red flower. It floated idly
away. She swam a stroke or two till she knew there was ground within her
depth and then stood up.

"Go away," she said. "Go away."

He laughed.

"Don't be selfish. There's plenty of room for both of us."

"Why can't you leave me alone? I want to be by myself."

"Hang it all, I want to bathe," he answered, good-humouredly.

"Go down to the bridge. I don't want you here."

"I'm sorry for that," he said, smiling still.

He was not in the least angry, and he hardly noticed that she was in a
passion. He began to take off his coat.

"Go away," she shrieked. "I won't have you here. Can't you even leave me
this? Go away."

"Don't be silly, darling."

She bent down and picked up a sharp stone and flung it quickly at him.
He had no time to duck. It hit him on the temple. With a cry he put his
hand to his head and when he took it away it was wet with blood. Ethel
stood still, panting with rage. He turned very pale, and without a word,
taking up his coat, went away. Ethel let herself fall back into the
water and the stream carried her slowly down to the ford.

The stone had made a jagged wound and for some days Lawson went about
with a bandaged head. He had invented a likely story to account for the
accident when the fellows at the club asked him about it, but he had no
occasion to use it. No one referred to the matter. He saw them cast
surreptitious glances at his head, but not a word was said. The silence
could only mean that they knew how he came by his wound. He was certain
now that Ethel had a lover, and they all knew who it was. But there was
not the smallest indication to guide him. He never saw Ethel with
anyone; no one showed a wish to be with her, or treated him in a manner
that seemed strange. Wild rage seized him, and having no one to vent it
on he drank more and more heavily. A little while before I came to the
island he had had another attack of delirium tremens.

I met Ethel at the house of a man called Caster, who lived two or three
miles from Apia with a native wife. I had been playing tennis with him
and when we were tired he suggested a cup of tea. We went into the house
and in the untidy living-room found Ethel chatting with Mrs. Caster.

"Hulloa, Ethel," he said, "I didn't know you were here."

I could not help looking at her with curiosity. I tried to see what
there was in her to have excited in Lawson such a devastating passion.
But who can explain these things? It was true that she was lovely; she
reminded one of the red hibiscus, the common flower of the hedgerow in
Samoa, with its grace and its languor and its passion; but what
surprised me most, taking into consideration the story I knew even then
a good deal of, was her freshness and simplicity. She was quiet and a
little shy. There was nothing coarser or loud about her; she had not the
exuberance common to the half-caste; and it was almost impossible to
believe that she could be the virago that the horrible scenes between
husband and wife, which were now common knowledge, indicated. In her
pretty pink frock and high-heeled shoes she looked quite European. You
could hardly have guessed at that dark background of native life in
which she felt herself so much more at home. I did not imagine that she
was at all intelligent, and I should not have been surprised if a man,
after living with her for some time, had found the passion which had
drawn him to her sink into boredom. It suggested itself to me that in
her elusiveness, like a thought that presents itself to consciousness
and vanishes before it can be captured by words, lay her peculiar charm;
but perhaps that was merely fancy, and if I had known nothing about her
I should have seen in her only a pretty little half-caste like another.

She talked to me of the various things which they talk of to the
stranger in Samoa, of the journey, and whether I had slid down the water
rock at Papaseea, and if I meant to stay in a native village. She talked
to me of Scotland, and perhaps I noticed in her a tendency to enlarge on
the sumptuousness of her establishment there. She asked me navely if I
knew Mrs. This and Mrs. That, with whom she had been acquainted when she
lived in the north.

Then Miller, the fat German-American, came in. He shook hands all round
very cordially and sat down, asking in his loud, cheerful voice for a
whisky and soda. He was very fat and he sweated profusely. He took off
his gold-rimmed spectacles and wiped them; you saw then that his little
eyes, benevolent behind the large round glasses, were shrewd and
cunning; the party had been somewhat dull till he came, but he was a
good story-teller and a jovial fellow. Soon he had the two women, Ethel
and my friend's wife, laughing delightedly at his sallies. He had a
reputation on the island of a lady's man, and you could see how this
fat, gross fellow, old and ugly, had yet the possibility of fascination.
His humour was on a level with the understanding of his company, an
affair of vitality and assurance, and his Western accent gave a peculiar
point to what he said. At last he turned to me:

"Well, if we want to get back for dinner we'd better be getting. I'll
take you along in my machine if you like."

I thanked him and got up. He shook hands with the others, went out of
the room, massive and strong in his walk, and climbed into his car.

"Pretty little thing, Lawson's wife," I said, as we drove along.

"Too bad the way he treats her. Knocks her about. Gets my dander up when
I hear of a man hitting a woman."

We went on a little. Then he said:

"He was a darned fool to marry her. I said so at the time. If he hadn't,
he'd have had the whip hand over her. He's yaller, that's what he is,
yaller."

The year was drawing to its end and the time approached when I was to
leave Samoa. My boat was scheduled to sail for Sydney on the fourth of
January. Christmas Day had been celebrated at the hotel with suitable
ceremonies, but it was looked upon as no more than a rehearsal for New
Year, and the men who were accustomed to foregather in the lounge
determined on New Year's Eve to make a night of it. There was an
uproarious dinner, after which the party sauntered down to the English
Club, a simple little frame house, to play pool. There was a great deal
of talking, laughing, and betting, but some very poor play, except on
the part of Miller, who had drunk as much as any of them, all far
younger than he, but had kept unimpaired the keenness of his eye and the
sureness of his hand. He pocketed the young men's money with humour and
urbanity. After an hour of this I grew tired and went out. I crossed the
road and came on to the beach. Three coconut trees grew there, like
three moon maidens waiting for their lovers to ride out of the sea, and
I sat at the foot of one of them, watching the lagoon and the nightly
assemblage of the stars.

I do not know where Lawson had been during the evening, but between ten
and eleven he came along to the club. He shambled down the dusty, empty
road, feeling dull and bored, and when he reached the club, before going
into the billiard-room, went into the bar to have a drink by himself. He
had a shyness now about joining the company of white men when there were
a lot of them together and needed a stiff dose of whisky to give him
confidence. He was standing with the glass in his hand when Miller came
in to him. He was in his shirt-sleeves and still held his cue. He gave
the bar-tender a glance.

"Get out, Jack," he said.

The bar-tender, a native in a white jacket and a red lava-lava, without
a word slid out of the small room.

"Look here, I've been wanting to have a few words with you, Lawson,"
said the big American.

"Well, that's one of the few things you can have free, gratis, and for
nothing on this damned island."

Miller fixed his gold spectacles more firmly on his nose and held Lawson
with his cold determined eyes.

"See here, young fellow, I understand you've been knocking Mrs. Lawson
about again. I'm not going to stand for that. If you don't stop it right
now I'll break every bone of your dirty little body."

Then Lawson knew what he had been trying to find out so long. It was
Miller. The appearance of the man, fat, bald-headed, with his round bare
face and double chin and the gold spectacles, his age, his benign,
shrewd look, like that of a renegade priest, and the thought of Ethel,
so slim and virginal, filled him with a sudden horror. Whatever his
faults Lawson was no coward, and without a word he hit out violently at
Miller. Miller quickly warded the blow with the hand that held the cue,
and then with a great swing of his right arm brought his fist down on
Lawson's ear. Lawson was four inches shorter than the American and he
was slightly built, frail and weakened not only by illness and the
enervating tropics, but by drink. He fell like a log and lay half dazed
at the foot of the bar. Miller took off his spectacles and wiped them
with his handkerchief.

"I guess you know what to expect now. You've had your warning and you'd
better take it."

He took up his cue and went back into the billiard-room. There was so
much noise there that no one knew what had happened. Lawson picked
himself up. He put his hand to his ear, which was singing still. Then he
slunk out of the club.

I saw a man cross the road, a patch of white against the darkness of the
night, but did not know who it was. He came down to the beach, passed me
sitting at the foot of the tree, and looked down. I saw then that it was
Lawson, but since he was doubtless drunk, did not speak. He went on,
walked irresolutely two or three steps, and turned back. He came up to
me and bending down stared in my face.

"I thought it was you," he said.

He sat down and took out his pipe.

"It was hot and noisy in the club," I volunteered.

"Why are you sitting here?"

"I was waiting about for the midnight mass at the Cathedral."

"If you like I'll come with you."

Lawson was quite sober. We sat for a while smoking in silence. Now and
then in the lagoon was the splash of some big fish, and a little way out
towards the opening in the reef was the light of a schooner.

"You're sailing next week, aren't you?" he said.

"Yes."

"It would be jolly to go home once more. But I could never stand it now.
The cold, you know."

"It's odd to think that in England now they're shivering round the
fire," I said.

There was not even a breath of wind. The balminess of the night was like
a spell. I wore nothing but a thin shirt and a suit of ducks. I enjoyed
the exquisite languor of the night, and stretched my limbs voluptuously.

"This isn't the sort of New Year's Eve that persuades one to make good
resolutions for the future," I smiled.

He made no answer, but I do not know what train of thought my casual
remark had suggested in him, for presently he began to speak. He spoke
in a low voice, without any expression, but his accents were educated,
and it was a relief to hear him after the twang and the vulgar
intonations which for some time had wounded my ears.

"I've made an awful hash of things. That's obvious, isn't it? I'm right
down at the bottom of the pit and there's no getting out for me. '_Black
as the pit from pole to pole._'" I felt him smile as he made the
quotation. "And the strange thing is that I don't see how I went wrong."

I held my breath, for to me there is nothing more awe-inspiring than
when a man discovers to you the nakedness of his soul. Then you see that
no one is so trivial or debased but that in him is a spark of something
to excite compassion.

"It wouldn't be so rotten if I could see that it was all my own fault.
It's true I drink, but I shouldn't have taken to that if things had gone
differently. I wasn't really fond of liquor. I suppose I ought not to
have married Ethel. If I'd kept her it would be all right. But I did
love her so."

His voice faltered.

"She's not a bad lot, you know, not really. It's just rotten luck. We
might have been as happy as lords. When she bolted I suppose I ought to
have let her go, but I couldn't do that--I was dead stuck on her then;
and there was the kid."

"Are you fond of the kid?" I asked.

"I was. There are two, you know. But they don't mean so much to me now.
You'd take them for natives anywhere. I have to talk to them in Samoan."

"Is it too late for you to start fresh? Couldn't you make a dash for it
and leave the place?"

"I haven't the strength. I'm done for."

"Are you still in love with your wife?"

"Not now. Not now." He repeated the two words with a kind of horror in
his voice. "I haven't even got that now. I'm down and out."

The bells of the Cathedral were ringing.

"If you really want to come to the midnight mass we'd better go along,"
I said.

"Come on."

We got up and walked along the road. The Cathedral, all white, stood
facing the sea not without impressiveness, and beside it the Protestant
chapels had the look of meeting-houses. In the road were two or three
cars, and a great number of traps, and traps were put up against the
walls at the side. People had come from all parts of the island for the
service, and through the great open doors we saw that the place was
crowded. The high altar was all ablaze with light. There were a few
whites and a good many half-castes, but the great majority were natives.
All the men wore trousers, for the Church has decided that the lava-lava
is indecent. We found chairs at the back, near the open door, and sat
down. Presently, following Lawson's eyes, I saw Ethel come in with a
party of half-castes. They were all very much dressed up, the men in
high, stiff collars and shiny boots, the women in large, gay hats. Ethel
nodded and smiled to her friends as she passed up the aisle. The service
began.

When it was over Lawson and I stood on one side for a while to watch the
crowd stream out, then he held out his hand.

"Good-night," he said. "I hope you'll have a pleasant journey home."

"Oh, but I shall see you before I go."

He sniggered.

"The question is if you'll see me drunk or sober."

He turned and left me. I had a recollection of those very large black
eyes, shining wildly under the shaggy brows. I paused irresolutely. I
did not feel sleepy and I thought I would at all events go along to the
club for an hour before turning in. When I got there I found the
billiard-room empty, but half-a-dozen men were sitting round a table in
the lounge, playing poker. Miller looked up as I came in.

"Sit down and take a hand," he said.

"All right."

I bought some chips and began to play. Of course it is the most
fascinating game in the world and my hour lengthened out to two, and
then to three. The native bar-tender, cheery and wide-awake
notwithstanding the time, was at our elbow to supply us with drinks and
from somewhere or other he produced a ham and a loaf of bread. We played
on. Most of the party had drunk more than was good for them and the play
was high and reckless. I played modestly, neither wishing to win nor
anxious to lose, but I watched Miller with a fascinated interest. He
drank glass for glass with the rest of the company, but remained cool
and level-headed. His pile of chips increased in size and he had a neat
little paper in front of him on which he had marked various sums lent to
players in distress. He beamed amiably at the young men whose money he
was taking. He kept up interminably his stream of jest and anecdote, but
he never missed a draw, he never let an expression of the face pass him.
At last the dawn crept into the windows, gently, with a sort of
deprecating shyness, as though it had no business there, and then it was
day.

"Well," said Miller, "I reckon we've seen the old year out in style. Now
let's have a round of jackpots and me for my mosquito net. I'm fifty,
remember, I can't keep these late hours."

The morning was beautiful and fresh when we stood on the verandah, and
the lagoon was like a sheet of multicoloured glass. Someone suggested a
dip before going to bed, but none cared to bathe in the lagoon, sticky
and treacherous to the feet. Miller had his car at the door and he
offered to take us down to the pool. We jumped in and drove along the
deserted road. When we reached the pool it seemed as though the day had
hardly risen there yet. Under the trees the water was all in shadow and
the night had the effects of lurking still. We were in great spirits. We
had no towels or any costume and in my prudence I wondered how we were
going to dry ourselves. None of us had much on and it did not take us
long to snatch off our clothes. Nelson, the little supercargo, was
stripped first.

"I'm going down to the bottom," he said.

He dived and in a moment another man dived too, but shallow, and was out
of the water before him. Then Nelson came up and scrambled to the side.

"I say, get me out," he said.

"What's up?"

Something was evidently the matter. His face was terrified. Two fellows
gave him their hands and he slithered up.

"I say, there's a man down there."

"Don't be a fool. You're drunk."

"Well, if there isn't I'm in for D.T.s. But I tell you there's a man
down there. It just scared me out of my wits."

Miller looked at him for a moment. The little man was all white. He was
actually trembling.

"Come on, Caster," said Miller to the big Australian, "we'd better go
down and see."

"He was standing up," said Nelson, "all dressed. I saw him. He tried to
catch hold of me."

"Hold your row," said Miller. "Are you ready?"

They dived in. We waited on the bank, silent. It really seemed as though
they were under water longer than any men could breathe. Then Caster
came up, and immediately after him, red in the face as though he were
going to have a fit, Miller. They were pulling something behind them.
Another man jumped in to help them, and the three together dragged their
burden to the side. They shoved it up. Then we saw that it was Lawson,
with a great stone tied up in his coat and bound to his feet.

"He was set on making a good job of it," said Miller, as he wiped the
water from his short-sighted eyes.




MACKINTOSH


He splashed about for a few minutes in the sea; it was too shallow to
swim in and for fear of sharks he could not go out of his depth; then he
got out and went into the bath-house for a shower. The coldness of the
fresh water was grateful after the heavy stickiness of the salt Pacific,
so warm, though it was only just after seven, that to bathe in it did
not brace you but rather increased your languor; and when he had dried
himself, slipping into a bath-gown, he called out to the Chinese cook
that he would be ready for breakfast in five minutes. He walked barefoot
across the patch of coarse grass which Walker, the administrator,
proudly thought was a lawn, to his own quarters and dressed. This did
not take long, for he put on nothing but a shirt and a pair of duck
trousers and then went over to his chief's house on the other side of
the compound. The two men had their meals together, but the Chinese cook
told him that Walker had set out on horseback at five and would not be
back for another hour.

Mackintosh had slept badly and he looked with distaste at the paw-paw
and the eggs and bacon which were set before him. The mosquitoes had
been maddening that night; they flew about the net under which he slept
in such numbers that their humming, pitiless and menacing, had the
effect of a note, infinitely drawn out, played on a distant organ, and
whenever he dozed off he awoke with a start in the belief that one had
found its way inside his curtains. It was so hot that he lay naked. He
turned from side to side. And gradually the dull roar of the breakers on
the reef, so unceasing and so regular that generally you did not hear
it, grew distinct on his consciousness, its rhythm hammered on his tired
nerves and he held himself with clenched hands in the effort to bear it.
The thought that nothing could stop that sound, for it would continue to
all eternity, was almost impossible to bear, and, as though his strength
were a match for the ruthless forces of nature, he had an insane impulse
to do some violent thing. He felt he must cling to his self-control or
he would go mad. And now, looking out of the window at the lagoon and
the strip of foam which marked the reef, he shuddered with hatred of the
brilliant scene. The cloudless sky was like an inverted bowl that hemmed
it in. He lit his pipe and turned over the pile of Auckland papers that
had come over from Apia a few days before. The newest of them was three
weeks old. They gave an impression of incredible dullness.

Then he went into the office. It was a large, bare room with two desks
in it and a bench along one side. A number of natives were seated on
this, and a couple of women. They gossiped while they waited for the
administrator, and when Mackintosh came in they greeted him.

"_Talofa-li._"

He returned their greeting and sat down at his desk. He began to write,
working on a report which the governor of Samoa had been clamouring for
and which Walker, with his usual dilatoriness, had neglected to prepare.
Mackintosh as he made his notes reflected vindictively that Walker was
late with his report because he was so illiterate that he had an
invincible distaste for anything to do with pens and paper; and now when
it was at last ready, concise and neatly official, he would accept his
subordinate's work without a word of appreciation, with a sneer rather
or a gibe, and send it on to his own superior as though it were his own
composition. He could not have written a word of it. Mackintosh thought
with rage that if his chief pencilled in some insertion it would be
childish in expression and faulty in language. If he remonstrated or
sought to put his meaning into an intelligible phrase, Walker would fly
into a passion and cry:

"What the hell do I care about grammar? That's what I want to say and
that's how I want to say it."

At last Walker came in. The natives surrounded him as he entered, trying
to get his immediate attention, but he turned on them roughly and told
them to sit down and hold their tongues. He threatened that if they were
not quiet he would have them all turned out and see none of them that
day. He nodded to Mackintosh.

"Hulloa, Mac; up at last? I don't know how you can waste the best part
of the day in bed. You ought to have been up before dawn like me. Lazy
beggar."

He threw himself heavily into his chair and wiped his face with a large
bandana.

"By heaven, I've got a thirst."

He turned to the policeman who stood at the door, a picturesque figure
in his white jacket and lava-lava, the loincloth of the Samoan, and told
him to bring kava. The kava bowl stood on the floor in the corner of the
room, and the policeman filled a half coconut shell and brought it to
Walker. He poured a few drops on the ground, murmured the customary
words to the company, and drank with relish. Then he told the policeman
to serve the waiting natives, and the shell was handed to each one in
order of birth or importance and emptied with the same ceremonies.

Then he set about the day's work. He was a little man, considerably less
than of middle height, and enormously stout; he had a large, fleshy
face, clean-shaven, with the cheeks hanging on each side in great
dew-laps, and three vast chins; his small features were all dissolved in
fat; and, but for a crescent of white hair at the back of his head, he
was completely bald. He reminded you of Mr. Pickwick. He was grotesque,
a figure of fun, and yet, strangely enough, not without dignity. His
blue eyes, behind large gold-rimmed spectacles, were shrewd and
vivacious, and there was a great deal of determination in his face. He
was sixty, but his native vitality triumphed over advancing years.
Notwithstanding his corpulence his movements were quick, and he walked
with a heavy, resolute tread as though he sought to impress his weight
upon the earth. He spoke in a loud, gruff voice.

It was two years now since Mackintosh had been appointed Walker's
assistant. Walker, who had been for a quarter of a century administrator
of Talua, one of the larger islands in the Samoan group, was a man known
in person or by report through the length and breadth of the South Seas;
and it was with lively curiosity that Mackintosh looked forward to his
first meeting with him. For one reason or another he stayed a couple of
weeks at Apia before he took up his post and both at Chaplin's hotel and
at the English Club he heard innumerable stories about the
administrator. He thought now with irony of his interest in them. Since
then he had heard them a hundred times from Walker himself. Walker knew
that he was a character and, proud of his reputation, deliberately acted
up to it. He was jealous of his "legend" and anxious that you should
know the exact details of any of the celebrated stories that were told
of him. He was ludicrously angry with anyone who had told them to the
stranger incorrectly.

There was a rough cordiality about Walker which Mackintosh at first
found not unattractive, and Walker, glad to have a listener to whom all
he said was fresh, gave of his best. He was good-humoured, hearty, and
considerate. To Mackintosh, who had lived the sheltered life of a
government official in London till at the age of thirty-four an attack
of pneumonia, leaving him with the threat of tuberculosis, had forced
him to seek a post in the Pacific, Walker's existence seemed
extraordinarily romantic. The adventure with which he started on his
conquest of circumstance was typical of the man. He ran away to sea when
he was fifteen and for over a year was employed in shovelling coal on a
collier. He was an undersized boy and both men and mates were kind to
him, but the captain for some reason conceived a savage dislike of him.
He used the lad cruelly so that, beaten and kicked, he often could not
sleep for the pain that racked his limbs. He loathed the captain with
all his soul. Then he was given a tip for some race and managed to
borrow twenty-five pounds from a friend he had picked up in Belfast. He
put it on the horse, an outsider, at long odds. He had no means of
repaying the money if he lost, but it never occurred to him that he
could lose. He felt himself in luck. The horse won and he found himself
with something over a thousand pounds in hard cash. Now his chance had
come. He found out who was the best solicitor in the town--the collier
lay then somewhere on the Irish coast--went to him, and, telling him
that he heard the ship was for sale, asked him to arrange the purchase
for him. The solicitor was amused at his small client, he was only
sixteen and did not look so old, and, moved perhaps by sympathy,
promised not only to arrange the matter for him but to see that he made
a good bargain. After a little while Walker found himself the owner of
the ship. He went back to her and had what he described as the most
glorious moment of his life when he gave the skipper notice and told him
that he must get off _his_ ship in half an hour. He made the mate
captain and sailed on the collier for another nine months, at the end of
which he sold her at a profit.

He came out to the islands at the age of twenty-six as a planter. He was
one of the few white men settled in Talua at the time of the German
occupation and had then already some influence with the natives. The
Germans made him administrator, a position which he occupied for twenty
years, and when the island was seized by the British he was confirmed in
his post. He ruled the island despotically, but with complete success.
The prestige of this success was another reason for the interest that
Mackintosh took in him.

But the two men were not made to get on. Mackintosh was an ugly man,
with ungainly gestures, a tall thin fellow, with a narrow chest and
bowed shoulders. He had sallow, sunken cheeks, and his eyes were large
and sombre. He was a great reader, and when his books arrived and were
unpacked Walker came over to his quarters and looked at them. Then he
turned to Mackintosh with a coarse laugh.

"What in Hell have you brought all this muck for?" he asked.

Mackintosh flushed darkly.

"I'm sorry you think it muck. I brought my books because I want to read
them."

"When you said you'd got a lot of books coming I thought there'd be
something for me to read. Haven't you got any detective stories?"

"Detective stories don't interest me."

"You're a damned fool then."

"I'm content that you should think so."

Every mail brought Walker a mass of periodical literature, papers from
New Zealand and magazines from America, and it exasperated him that
Mackintosh showed his contempt for these ephemeral publications. He had
no patience with the books that absorbed Mackintosh's leisure and
thought it only a pose that he read Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ or
Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_. And since he had never learned to put
any restraint on his tongue, he expressed his opinion of his assistant
freely. Mackintosh began to see the real man, and under the boisterous
good-humour he discerned a vulgar cunning which was hateful; he was vain
and domineering, and it was strange that he had notwithstanding a
shyness which made him dislike people who were not quite of his kidney.
He judged others, navely, by their language, and if it was free from
the oaths and the obscenity which made up the greater part of his own
conversation, he looked upon them with suspicion. In the evening the two
men played piquet. He played badly but vaingloriously, crowing over his
opponent when he won and losing his temper when he lost. On rare
occasions a couple of planters or traders would drive over to play
bridge, and then Walker showed himself in what Mackintosh considered a
characteristic light. He played regardless of his partner, calling up in
his desire to play the hand, and argued interminably, beating down
opposition by the loudness of his voice. He constantly revoked, and when
he did so said with an ingratiating whine: "Oh, you wouldn't count it
against an old man who can hardly see." Did he know that his opponents
thought it as well to keep on the right side of him and hesitated to
insist on the rigour of the game? Mackintosh watched him with an icy
contempt. When the game was over, while they smoked their pipes and
drank whisky, they would begin telling stories. Walker told with gusto
the story of his marriage. He had got so drunk at the wedding feast that
the bride had fled and he had never seen her since. He had had
numberless adventures, commonplace and sordid, with the women of the
island and he described them with a pride in his own prowess which was
an offence to Mackintosh's fastidious ears. He was a gross, sensual old
man. He thought Mackintosh a poor fellow because he would not share his
promiscuous amours and remained sober when the company was drunk.

He despised him also for the orderliness with which he did his official
work. Mackintosh liked to do everything just so. His desk was always
tidy, his papers were always neatly docketed, he could put his hand on
any document that was needed, and he had at his fingers' ends all the
regulations that were required for the business of their administration.

"Fudge, fudge," said Walker. "I've run this island for twenty years
without red tape, and I don't want it now."

"Does it make it any easier for you that when you want a letter you have
to hunt half an hour for it?" answered Mackintosh.

"You're nothing but a damned official. But you're not a bad fellow; when
you've been out here a year or two you'll be all right. What's wrong
about you is that you won't drink. You wouldn't be a bad sort if you got
soused once a week."

The curious thing was that Walker remained perfectly unconscious of the
dislike for him which every month increased in the breast of his
subordinate. Although he laughed at him, as he grew accustomed to him,
he began almost to like him. He had a certain tolerance for the
peculiarities of others, and he accepted Mackintosh as a queer fish.
Perhaps he liked him, unconsciously, because he could chaff him. His
humour consisted of coarse banter and he wanted a butt. Mackintosh's
exactness, his morality, his sobriety, were all fruitful subjects; his
Scots name gave an opportunity for the usual jokes about Scotland; he
enjoyed himself thoroughly when two or three men were there and he could
make them all laugh at the expense of Mackintosh. He would say
ridiculous things about him to the natives, and Mackintosh, his
knowledge of Samoan still imperfect, would see their unrestrained mirth
when Walker had made an obscene reference to him. He smiled
good-humouredly.

"I'll say this for you, Mac," Walker would say in his gruff loud voice,
"you can take a joke."

"Was it a joke?" smiled Mackintosh. "I didn't know."

"Scots wha hae!" shouted Walker, with a bellow of laughter. "There's
only one way to make a Scotchman see a joke and that's by a surgical
operation."

Walker little knew that there was nothing Mackintosh could stand less
than chaff. He would wake in the night, the breathless night of the
rainy season, and brood sullenly over the gibe that Walker had uttered
carelessly days before. It rankled. His heart swelled with rage, and he
pictured to himself ways in which he might get even with the bully. He
had tried answering him, but Walker had a gift of repartee, coarse and
obvious, which gave him an advantage. The dullness of his intellect made
him impervious to a delicate shaft. His self-satisfaction made it
impossible to wound him. His loud voice, his bellow of laughter, were
weapons against which Mackintosh had nothing to counter, and he learned
that the wisest thing was never to betray his irritation. He learned to
control himself. But his hatred grew till it was a monomania. He watched
Walker with an insane vigilance. He fed his own self-esteem by every
instance of meanness on Walker's part, by every exhibition of childish
vanity, of cunning and of vulgarity. Walker ate greedily, noisily,
filthily, and Mackintosh watched him with satisfaction. He took note of
the foolish things he said and of his mistakes in grammar. He knew that
Walker held him in small esteem, and he found a bitter satisfaction in
his chief's opinion of him; it increased his own contempt for the
narrow, complacent old man. And it gave him a singular pleasure to know
that Walker was entirely unconscious of the hatred he felt for him. He
was a fool who liked popularity, and he blandly fancied that everyone
admired him. Once Mackintosh had overheard Walker speaking of him.

"He'll be all right when I've licked him into shape," he said. "He's a
good dog and he loves his master."

Mackintosh silently, without a movement of his long, sallow face,
laughed long and heartily.

But his hatred was not blind; on the contrary, it was peculiarly
clear-slighted, and he judged Walker's capabilities with precision. He
ruled his small kingdom with efficiency. He was just and honest. With
opportunities to make money he was a poorer man than when he was first
appointed to his post, and his only support for his old age was the
pension which he expected when at last he retired from official life.
His pride was that with an assistant and a half-caste clerk he was able
to administer the island more competently than Upolu, the island of
which Apia is the chief town, was administered with its army of
functionaries. He had a few native policemen to sustain his authority,
but he made no use of them. He governed by bluff and his Irish humour.

"They insisted on building a jail for me," he said. "What the devil do I
want a jail for? I'm not going to put the natives in prison. If they do
wrong I know how to deal with them."

One of his quarrels with the higher authorities at Apia was that he
claimed entire jurisdiction over the natives of his island. Whatever
their crimes he would not give them up to courts competent to deal with
them, and several times an angry correspondence had passed between him
and the governor at Upolu. For he looked upon the natives as his
children. And that was the amazing thing about this coarse, vulgar,
selfish man; he loved the island on which he had lived so long with
passion, and he had for the natives a strange rough tenderness which was
quite wonderful.

He loved to ride about the island on his old grey mare and he was never
tired of its beauty. Sauntering along the grassy roads among the coconut
trees he would stop every now and then to admire the loveliness of the
scene. Now and then he would come upon a native village and stop while
the headman brought him a bowl of kava. He would look at the little
group of bell-shape huts with their high thatched roofs, like beehives,
and a smile would spread over his fat face. His eyes rested happily on
the spreading green of the bread-fruit trees.

"By George, it's like the garden of Eden."

Sometimes his rides took him along the coast and through the trees he
had a glimpse of the wide sea, empty, with never a sail to disturb the
loneliness; sometimes he climbed a hill so that a great stretch of
country, with little villages nestling among the tall trees, was spread
out before him like the kingdom of the world, and he would sit there for
an hour in an ecstasy of delight. But he had no words to express his
feelings and to relieve them would utter an obscene jest; it was as
though his emotion was so violent that he needed vulgarity to break the
tension.

Mackintosh observed this sentiment with an icy disdain. Walker had
always been a heavy drinker, he was proud of his capacity to see men
half his age under the table when he spent a night in Apia, and he had
the sentimentality of the toper. He could cry over the stories he read
in his magazines and yet would refuse a loan to some trader in
difficulties whom he had known for twenty years. He was close with his
money. Once Mackintosh said to him:

"No one could accuse you of giving money away."

He took it as a compliment. His enthusiasm for nature was but the
drivelling sensibility of the drunkard. Nor had Mackintosh any sympathy
for his chief's feelings towards the natives. He loved them because they
were in his power, as a selfish man loves his dog, and his mentality was
on a level with theirs. Their humour was obscene and he was never at a
loss for the lewd remark. He understood them and they understood him. He
was proud of his influence over them. He looked upon them as his
children and he mixed himself in all their affairs. But he was very
jealous of his authority; if he ruled them with a rod of iron, brooking
no contradiction, he would not suffer any of the white men on the island
to take advantage of them. He watched the missionaries suspiciously and,
if they did anything of which he disapproved, was able to make life so
unendurable to them that if he could not get them removed they were glad
to go of their own accord. His power over the natives was so great that
on his word they would refuse labour and food to their pastor. On the
other hand he showed the traders no favour. He took care that they
should not cheat the natives; he saw that they got a fair reward for
their work and their copra and that the traders made no extravagant
profit on the wares they sold them. He was merciless to a bargain that
he thought unfair. Sometimes the traders would complain at Apia that
they did not get fair opportunities. They suffered for it. Walker then
hesitated at no calumny, at no outrageous lie, to get even with them,
and they found that if they wanted not only to live at peace, but to
exist at all, they had to accept the situation on his own terms. More
than once the store of a trader obnoxious to him had been burned down,
and there was only the appositeness of the event to show that the
administrator had instigated it. Once a Swedish half-caste, ruined by
the burning, had gone to him and roundly accused him of arson. Walker
laughed in his face.

"You dirty dog. Your mother was a native and you try to cheat the
natives. If your rotten old store is burned down it's a judgment of
Providence; that's what it is, a judgment of Providence. Get out."

And as the man was hustled out by two native policemen the administrator
laughed fatly.

"A judgment of Providence."

And now Mackintosh watched him enter upon the day's work. He began with
the sick, for Walker added doctoring to his other activities, and he had
a small room behind the office full of drugs. An elderly man came
forward, a man with a crop of curly grey hair, in a blue lava-lava,
elaborately tattooed, with the skin of his body wrinkled like a
wine-skin.

"What have you come for?" Walker asked him abruptly.

In a whining voice the man said that he could not eat without vomiting
and that he had pains here and pains there.

"Go to the missionaries," said Walker. "You know that I only cure
children."

"I have been to the missionaries and they do me no good."

"Then go home and prepare yourself to die. Have you lived so long and
still want to go on living? You're a fool."

The man broke into querulous expostulation, but Walker, pointing to a
woman with a sick child in her arms, told her to bring it to his desk.
He asked her questions and looked at the child.

"I will give you medicine," he said. He turned to the half-caste clerk.
"Go into the dispensary and bring me some calomel pills."

He made the child swallow one there and then and gave another to the
mother.

"Take the child away and keep it warm. To-morrow it will be dead or
better."

He leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe.

"Wonderful stuff, calomel. I've saved more lives with it than all the
hospital doctors at Apia put together."

Walker was very proud of his skill, and with the dogmatism of ignorance
had no patience with the members of the medical profession.

"The sort of case I like," he said, "is the one that all the doctors
have given up as hopeless. When the doctors have said they can't cure
you, I say to them, 'come to me.' Did I ever tell you about the fellow
who had a cancer?"

"Frequently," said Mackintosh.

"I got him right in three months."

"You've never told me about the people you haven't cured."

He finished this part of the work and went on to the rest. It was a
queer medley. There was a woman who could not get on with her husband
and a man who complained that his wife had run away from him.

"Lucky dog," said Walker. "Most men wish their wives would too."

There was a long complicated quarrel about the ownership of a few yards
of land. There was a dispute about the sharing out of a catch of fish.
There was a complaint against a white trader because he had given short
measure. Walker listened attentively to every case, made up his mind
quickly, and gave his decision. Then he would listen to nothing more; if
the complainant went on he was hustled out of the office by a policeman.
Mackintosh listened to it all with sullen irritation. On the whole,
perhaps, it might be admitted that rough justice was done, but it
exasperated the assistant that his chief trusted his instinct rather
than the evidence. He would not listen to reason. He browbeat the
witnesses and when they did not see what he wished them to called them
thieves and liars.

He left to the last a group of men who were sitting in the corner of the
room. He had deliberately ignored them. The party consisted of an old
chief, a tall, dignified man with short, white hair, in a new lava-lava,
bearing a huge fly wisp as a badge of office, his son, and half a dozen
of the important men of the village. Walker had had a feud with them and
had beaten them. As was characteristic of him he meant now to rub in his
victory, and because he had them down to profit by their helplessness.
The facts were peculiar. Walker had a passion for building roads. When
he had come to Talua there were but a few tracks here and there, but in
course of time he had cut roads through the country, joining the
villages together, and it was to this that a great part of the island's
prosperity was due. Whereas in the old days it had been impossible to
get the produce of the land, copra chiefly, down to the coast where it
could be put on schooners or motor launches and so taken to Apia, now
transport was easy and simple. His ambition was to make a road right
round the island and a great part of it was already built.

"In two years I shall have done it, and then I can die or they can fire
me, I don't care."

His roads were the joy of his heart and he made excursions constantly to
see that they were kept in order. They were simple enough, wide tracks,
grass-covered, cut through the scrub or through the plantations; but
trees had to be rooted out, rocks dug up or blasted, and here and there
levelling had been necessary. He was proud that he had surmounted by his
own skill such difficulties as they presented. He rejoiced in his
disposition of them so that they were not only convenient, but showed
off the beauties of the island which his soul loved. When he spoke of
his roads he was almost a poet. They meandered through those lovely
scenes, and Walker had taken care that here and there they should run in
a straight line, giving you a green vista through the tall trees, and
here and there should turn and curve so that the heart was rested by the
diversity. It was amazing that this coarse and sensual man should
exercise so subtle an ingenuity to get the effects which his fancy
suggested to him. He had used in making his roads all the fantastic
skill of a Japanese gardener. He received a grant from headquarters for
the work but took a curious pride in using but a small part of it, and
the year before had spent only a hundred pounds of the thousand assigned
to him.

"What do they want money for?" he boomed. "They'll only spend it on all
kinds of muck they don't want; what the missionaries leave them, that is
to say."

For no particular reason, except perhaps pride in the economy of his
administration and the desire to contrast his efficiency with the
wasteful methods of the authorities at Apia, he got the natives to do
the work he wanted for wages that were almost nominal. It was owing to
this that he had lately had difficulty with the village whose chief men
now were come to see him. The chief's son had been in Upolu for a year
and on coming back had told his people of the large sums that were paid
at Apia for the public works. In long, idle talks he had inflamed their
hearts with the desire for gain. He held out to them visions of vast
wealth and they thought of the whisky they could buy--it was dear, since
there was a law that it must not be sold to natives, and so it cost them
double what the white man had to pay for it--they thought of the great
sandalwood boxes in which they kept their treasures, and the scented
soap and potted salmon, the luxuries for which the Kanaka will sell his
soul; so that when the administrator sent for them and told them he
wanted a road made from their village to a certain point along the coast
and offered them twenty pounds, they asked him a hundred. The chief's
son was called Manuma. He was a tall, handsome fellow, copper-coloured,
with his fuzzy hair dyed red with lime, a wreath of red berries round
his neck, and behind his ear a flower like a scarlet flame against his
brown face. The upper part of his body was naked, but to show that he
was no longer a savage, since he had lived in Apia, he wore a pair of
dungarees instead of a lava-lava. He told them that if they held
together the administrator would be obliged to accept their terms. His
heart was set on building the road and when he found they would not work
for less he would give them what they asked. But they must not move;
whatever he said they must not abate their claim; they had asked a
hundred and that they must keep to. When they mentioned the figure,
Walker burst into a shout of his long, deep-voiced laughter. He told
them not to make fools of themselves, but to set about the work at once.
Because he was in a good humour that day he promised to give them a
feast when the road was finished. But when he found that no attempt was
made to start work, he went to the village and asked the men what silly
game they were playing. Manuma had coached them well. They were quite
calm, they did not attempt to argue--and argument is a passion with the
Kanaka--they merely shrugged their shoulders: they would do it for a
hundred pounds, and if he would not give them that they would do no
work. He could please himself. They did not care. Then Walker flew into
a passion. He was ugly then. His short fat neck swelled ominously, his
red face grew purple, he foamed at the mouth. He set upon the natives
with invective. He knew well how to wound and how to humiliate. He was
terrifying. The older men grew pale and uneasy. They hesitated. If it
had not been for Manuma, with his knowledge of the great world, and
their dread of his ridicule, they would have yielded. It was Manuma who
answered Walker.

"Pay us a hundred pounds and we will work."

Walker, shaking his fist at him, called him every name he could think
of. He riddled him with scorn. Manuma sat still and smiled. There may
have been more bravado than confidence in his smile, but he had to make
a good show before the others. He repeated his words.

"Pay us a hundred pounds and we will work."

They thought that Walker would spring on him. It would not have been the
first time that he had thrashed a native with his own hands; they knew
his strength, and though Walker was three times the age of the young man
and six inches shorter they did not doubt that he was more than a match
for Manuma. No one had ever thought of resisting the savage onslaught of
the administrator. But Walker said nothing. He chuckled.

"I am not going to waste my time with a pack of fools," he said. "Talk
it over again. You know what I have offered. If you do not start in a
week, take care."

He turned round and walked out of the chief's hut. He untied his old
mare and it was typical of the relations between him and the natives
that one of the elder men hung on to the off stirrup while Walker from a
convenient boulder hoisted himself heavily into the saddle.

That same night when Walker according to his habit was strolling along
the road that ran past his house, he heard something whizz past him and
with a thud strike a tree. Something had been thrown at him. He ducked
instinctively. With a shout, "Who's that?" he ran towards the place from
which the missile had come and he heard the sound of a man escaping
through the bush. He knew it was hopeless to pursue in the darkness, and
besides he was soon out of breath, so he stopped and made his way back
to the road. He looked about for what had been thrown, but could find
nothing. It was quite dark. He went quickly back to the house and called
Mackintosh and the Chinese boy.

"One of those devils has thrown something at me. Come along and let's
find out what it was."

He told the boy to bring a lantern and the three of them made their way
back to the place. They hunted about the ground, but could not find what
they sought. Suddenly the boy gave a guttural cry. They turned to look.
He held up the lantern, and there, sinister in the light that cut the
surrounding darkness, was a long knife sticking into the trunk of a
coconut tree. It had been thrown with such force that it required quite
an effort to pull it out.

"By George, if he hadn't missed me I'd have been in a nice state."

Walker handled the knife. It was one of those knives, made in imitation
of the sailor knives brought to the islands a hundred years before by
the first white men, used to divide the coconuts in two so that the
copra might be dried. It was a murderous weapon, and the blade, twelve
inches long, was very sharp. Walker chuckled softly.

"The devil, the impudent devil."

He had no doubt it was Manuma who had flung the knife. He had escaped
death by three inches. He was not angry. On the contrary, he was in high
spirits; the adventure exhilarated him, and when they got back to the
house, calling for drinks, he rubbed his hands gleefully.

"I'll make them pay for this!"

His little eyes twinkled. He blew himself out like a turkey-cock, and
for the second time within half an hour insisted on telling Mackintosh
every detail of the affair. Then he asked him to play piquet, and while
they played he boasted of his intentions. Mackintosh listened with
tightened lips.

"But why should you grind them down like this?" he asked. "Twenty pounds
is precious little for the work you want them to do."

"They ought to be precious thankful I give them anything."

"Hang it all, it's not your own money. The government allots you a
reasonable sum. They won't complain if you spend it."

"They're a bunch of fools at Apia."

Mackintosh saw that Walker's motive was merely vanity. He shrugged his
shoulders.

"It won't do you much good to score off the fellows at Apia at the cost
of your life."

"Bless you, they wouldn't hurt me, these people. They couldn't do
without me. They worship me. Manuma is a fool. He only threw that knife
to frighten me."

The next day Walker rode over again to the village. It was called
Matautu. He did not get off his horse. When he reached the chief's house
he saw that the men were sitting round the floor in a circle, talking,
and he guessed they were discussing again the question of the road. The
Samoan huts are formed in this way: trunks of slender trees are placed
in a circle at intervals of perhaps five or six feet; a tall tree is set
in the middle and from this downwards slopes the thatched roof. Venetian
blinds of coconut leaves can be pulled down at night or when it is
raining. Ordinarily the hut is open all round so that the breeze can
blow through freely. Walker rode to the edge of the hut and called out
to the chief.

"Oh, there, Tangatu, your son left his knife in a tree last night. I
have brought it back to you."

He flung it down on the ground in the midst of the circle, and with a
low burst of laughter ambled off.

On Monday he went out to see if they had started work. There was no sign
of it. He rode through the village. The inhabitants were about their
ordinary avocations. Some were weaving mats of the pandanus leaf, one
old man was busy with a kava bowl, the children were playing, the women
went about their household chores. Walker, a smile on his lips, came to
the chief's house.

"_Talofa-li_," said the chief.

"_Talofa_," answered Walker.

Manuma was making a net. He sat with a cigarette between his lips and
looked up at Walker with a smile of triumph.

"You have decided that you will not make the road."

The chief answered.

"Not unless you pay us one hundred pounds."

"You will regret it." He turned to Manuma. "And you, my lad, I shouldn't
wonder if your back was very sore before you're much older."

He rode away chuckling. He left the natives vaguely uneasy. They feared
the fat sinful old man, and neither the missionaries' abuse of him nor
the scorn which Manuma had learnt in Apia made them forget that he had a
devilish cunning and that no man had ever braved him without in the long
run suffering for it. They found out within twenty-four hours what
scheme he had devised. It was characteristic. For next morning a great
band of men, women, and children came into the village and the chief men
said that they had made a bargain with Walker to build the road. He had
offered them twenty pounds and they had accepted. Now the cunning lay in
this, that the Polynesians have rules of hospitality which have all the
force of laws; an etiquette of absolute rigidity made it necessary for
the people of the village not only to give lodging to the strangers, but
to provide them with food and drink as long as they wished to stay. The
inhabitants of Matautu were outwitted. Every morning the workers went
out in a joyous band, cut down trees, blasted rocks, levelled here and
there and then in the evening tramped back again, and ate and drank, ate
heartily, danced, sang hymns, and enjoyed life. For them it was a
picnic. But soon their hosts began to wear long faces; the strangers had
enormous appetites, and the plantains and the bread-fruit vanished
before their rapacity; the alligator-pear trees, whose fruit sent to
Apia might sell for good money, were stripped bare. Ruin stared them in
the face. And then they found that the strangers were working very
slowly. Had they received a hint from Walker that they might take their
time? At this rate by the time the road was finished there would not be
a scrap of food in the village. And worse than this, they were a
laughing-stock; when one or other of them went to some distant hamlet on
an errand he found that the story had got there before him, and he was
met with derisive laughter. There is nothing the Kanaka can endure less
than ridicule. It was not long before much angry talk passed among the
sufferers. Manuma was no longer a hero; he had to put up with a good
deal of plain speaking, and one day what Walker had suggested came to
pass: a heated argument turned into a quarrel and half a dozen of the
young men set upon the chief's son and gave him such a beating that for
a week he lay bruised and sore on the pandanus mats. He turned from side
to side and could find no ease. Every day or two the administrator rode
over on his old mare and watched the progress of the road. He was not a
man to resist the temptation of taunting the fallen foe, and he missed
no opportunity to rub into the shamed inhabitants of Matautu the
bitterness of their humiliation. He broke their spirit. And one morning,
putting their pride in their pockets--a figure of speech, since pockets
they had not--they all set out with the strangers and started working on
the road. It was urgent to get it done quickly if they wanted to save
any food at all, and the whole village joined in. But they worked
silently, with rage and mortification in their hearts, and even the
children toiled in silence. The women wept as they carried away bundles
of brushwood. When Walker saw them he laughed so much that he almost
rolled out of his saddle. The news spread quickly and tickled the people
of the island to death. This was the greatest joke of all, the crowning
triumph of that cunning old white man whom no Kanaka had ever been able
to circumvent; and they came from distant villages, with their wives and
children, to look at the foolish folk who had refused twenty pounds to
make the road and now were forced to work for nothing. But the harder
they worked the more easily went the guests. Why should they hurry, when
they were getting good food for nothing and the longer they took about
the job the better the joke became? At last the wretched villagers could
stand it no longer, and they were come this morning to beg the
administrator to send the strangers back to their own homes. If he would
do this they promised to finish the road themselves for nothing. For him
it was a victory complete and unqualified. They were humbled. A look of
arrogant complacence spread over his large, naked face, and he seemed to
swell in his chair like a great bullfrog. There was something sinister
in his appearance, so that Mackintosh shivered with disgust. Then in his
booming tones he began to speak.

"Is it for my good that I make the road? What benefit do you think I get
out of it? It is for you, so that you can walk in comfort and carry your
copra in comfort. I offered to pay you for your work, though it was for
your own sake the work was done. I offered to pay you generously. Now
_you_ must pay. I will send the people of Manua back to their homes if
you will finish the road and pay the twenty pounds that I have to pay
them."

There was an outcry. They sought to reason with him. They told him they
had not the money. But to everything they said he replied with brutal
gibes. Then the clock struck.

"Dinner time," he said. "Turn them all out."

He raised himself heavily from his chair and walked out of the room.
When Mackintosh followed him he found him already seated at table, a
napkin tied round his neck, holding his knife and fork in readiness for
the meal the Chinese cook was about to bring. He was in high spirits.

"I did 'em down fine," he said, as Mackintosh sat down. "I shan't have
much trouble with the roads after this."

"I suppose you were joking," said Mackintosh icily.

"What do you mean by that?"

"You're not really going to make them pay twenty pounds?"

"You bet your life I am."

"I'm not sure you've got any right to."

"Ain't you? I guess I've got the right to do any damned thing I like on
this island."

"I think you've bullied them quite enough."

Walker laughed fatly. He did not care what Mackintosh thought.

"When I want your opinion I'll ask for it."

Mackintosh grew very white. He knew by bitter experience that he could
do nothing but keep silence, and the violent effort at self-control made
him sick and faint. He could not eat the food that was before him and
with disgust he watched Walker shovel meat into his vast mouth. He was a
dirty feeder, and to sit at table with him needed a strong stomach.
Mackintosh shuddered. A tremendous desire seized him to humiliate that
gross and cruel man; he would give anything in the world to see him in
the dust, suffering as much as he had made others suffer. He had never
loathed the bully with such loathing as now.

The day wore on. Mackintosh tried to sleep after dinner, but the passion
in his heart prevented him; he tried to read, but the letters swam
before his eyes. The sun beat down pitilessly, and he longed for rain;
but he knew that rain would bring no coolness; it would only make it
hotter and more steamy. He was a native of Aberdeen and his heart
yearned suddenly for the icy winds that whistled through the granite
streets of that city. Here he was a prisoner, imprisoned not only by
that placid sea, but by his hatred for that horrible old man. He pressed
his hands to his aching head. He would like to kill him. But he pulled
himself together. He must do something to distract his mind, and since
he could not read he thought he would set his private papers in order.
It was a job which he had long meant to do and which he had constantly
put off. He unlocked the drawer of his desk and took out a handful of
letters. He caught sight of his revolver. An impulse, no sooner realised
than set aside, to put a bullet through his head and so escape from the
intolerable bondage of life flashed through his mind. He noticed that in
the damp air the revolver was slightly rusted, and he got an oil rag and
began to clean it. It was while he was thus occupied that he grew aware
of someone slinking round the door. He looked up and called:

"Who is there?"

There was a moment's pause, then Manuma showed himself.

"What do you want?"

The chief's son stood for a moment, sullen and silent, and when he spoke
it was with a strangled voice.

"We can't pay twenty pounds. We haven't the money."

"What am I to do?" said Mackintosh. "You heard what Mr. Walker said."

Manuma began to plead, half in Samoan and half in English. It was a
sing-song whine, with the quavering intonations of a beggar, and it
filled Mackintosh with disgust. It outraged him that the man should let
himself be so crushed. He was a pitiful object.

"I can do nothing," said Mackintosh irritably. "You know that Mr. Walker
is master here."

Manuma was silent again. He still stood in the doorway.

"I am sick," he said at last. "Give me some medicine."

"What is the matter with you?"

"I do not know. I am sick. I have pains in my body."

"Don't stand there," said Mackintosh sharply. "Come in and let me look
at you."

Manuma entered the little room and stood before the desk.

"I have pains here and here."

He put his hands to his loins and his face assumed an expression of
pain. Suddenly Mackintosh grew conscious that the boy's eyes were
resting on the revolver which he had laid on the desk when Manuma
appeared in the doorway. There was a silence between the two which to
Mackintosh was endless. He seemed to read the thoughts which were in the
Kanaka's mind. His heart beat violently. And then he felt as though
something possessed him so that he acted under the compulsion of a
foreign will. Himself did not make the movements of his body, but a
power that was strange to him. His throat was suddenly dry, and he put
his hand to it mechanically in order to help his speech. He was impelled
to avoid Manuma's eyes.

"Just wait here," he said, his voice sounded as though someone had
seized him by the windpipe, "and I'll fetch you something from the
dispensary."

He got up. Was it his fancy that he staggered a little? Manuma stood
silently, and though he kept his eyes averted, Mackintosh knew that he
was looking dully out of the door. It was this other person that
possessed him that drove him out of the room, but it was himself that
took a handful of muddled papers and threw them on the revolver in order
to hide it from view. He went to the dispensary. He got a pill and
poured out some blue draught into a small bottle, and then came out into
the compound. He did not want to go back into his own bungalow, so he
called to Manuma.

"Come here."

He gave him the drugs and instructions how to take them. He did not know
what it was that made it impossible for him to look at the Kanaka. While
he was speaking to him he kept his eyes on his shoulder. Manuma took the
medicine and slunk out of the gate.

Mackintosh went into the dining-room and turned over once more the old
newspapers. But he could not read them. The house was very still. Walker
was upstairs in his room asleep, the Chinese cook was busy in the
kitchen, the two policemen were out fishing. The silence that seemed to
brood over the house was unearthly, and there hammered in Mackintosh's
head the question whether the revolver still lay where he had placed it.
He could not bring himself to look. The uncertainty was horrible, but
the certainty would be more horrible still. He sweated. At last he could
stand the silence no longer, and he made up his mind to go down the road
to the trader's, a man named Jervis, who had a store about a mile away.
He was a half-caste, but even that amount of white blood made him
possible to talk to. He wanted to get away from his bungalow, with the
desk littered with untidy papers, and underneath them something, or
nothing. He walked along the road. As he passed the fine hut of a chief
a greeting was called out to him. Then he came to the store. Behind the
counter sat the trader's daughter, a swarthy broad-featured girl in a
pink blouse and a white drill skirt. Jervis hoped he would marry her. He
had money, and he had told Mackintosh that his daughter's husband would
be well-to-do. She flushed a little when she saw Mackintosh.

"Father's just unpacking some cases that have come in this morning. I'll
tell him you're here."

He sat down and the girl went out behind the shop. In a moment her
mother waddled in, a huge old woman, a chiefess, who owned much land in
her own right; and gave him her hand. Her monstrous obesity was an
offence, but she managed to convey an impression of dignity. She was
cordial without obsequiousness; affable, but conscious of her station.

"You're quite a stranger, Mr. Mackintosh. Teresa was saying only this
morning: 'Why, we never see Mr. Mackintosh now.'"

He shuddered a little as he thought of himself as that old native's
son-in-law. It was notorious that she ruled her husband, notwithstanding
his white blood, with a firm hand. Hers was the authority and hers the
business head. She might be no more than Mrs. Jervis to the white
people, but her father had been a chief of the blood royal, and his
father and his father's father had ruled as kings. The trader came in,
small beside his imposing wife, a dark man with a black beard going
grey, in ducks, with handsome eyes and flashing teeth. He was very
British, and his conversation was slangy, but you felt he spoke English
as a foreign tongue; with his family he used the language of his native
mother. He was a servile man, cringing and obsequious.

"Ah, Mr. Mackintosh, this is a joyful surprise. Get the whisky, Teresa;
Mr. Mackintosh will have a gargle with us."

He gave all the latest news of Apia, watching his guest's eyes the
while, so that he might know the welcome thing to say.

"And how is Walker? We've not seen him just lately. Mrs. Jervis is going
to send him a sucking-pig one day this week."

"I saw him riding home this morning," said Teresa.

"Here's how," said Jervis, holding up his whisky.

Mackintosh drank. The two women sat and looked at him, Mrs. Jervis in
her black Mother Hubbard, placid and haughty, and Teresa anxious to
smile whenever she caught his eye, while the trader gossiped
insufferably.

"They were saying in Apia it was about time Walker retired. He ain't so
young as he was. Things have changed since he first come to the islands
and he ain't changed with them."

"He'll go too far," said the old chiefess. "The natives aren't
satisfied."

"That was a good joke about the road," laughed the trader. "When I told
them about it in Apia they fair split their sides with laughing. Good
old Walker."

Mackintosh looked at him savagely. What did he mean by talking of him in
that fashion? To a half-caste trader he was Mr. Walker. It was on his
tongue to utter a harsh rebuke for the impertinence. He did not know
what held him back.

"When he goes I hope you'll take his place, Mr. Mackintosh," said
Jervis. "We all like you on the island. You understand the natives.
They're educated now, they must be treated differently to the old days.
It wants an educated man to be administrator now. Walker was only a
trader same as I am."

Teresa's eyes glistened.

"When the time comes if there's anything anyone can do here, you bet
your bottom dollar we'll do it. I'd get all the chiefs to go over to
Apia and make a petition."

Mackintosh felt horribly sick. It had not struck him that if anything
happened to Walker it might be he who would succeed him. It was true
that no one in his official position knew the island so well. He got up
suddenly and scarcely taking his leave walked back to the compound. And
now he went straight to his room. He took a quick look at his desk. He
rummaged among the papers.

The revolver was not there.

His heart thumped violently against his ribs. He looked for the revolver
everywhere. He hunted in the chairs and in the drawers. He looked
desperately, and all the time he knew he would not find it. Suddenly he
heard Walker's gruff, hearty voice.

"What the devil are you up to, Mac?"

He started. Walker was standing in the doorway and instinctively he
turned round to hide what lay upon his desk.

"Tidying up?" quizzed Walker. "I've told 'em to put the grey in the
trap. I'm going down to Tafoni to bathe. You'd better come along."

"All right," said Mackintosh.

So long as he was with Walker nothing could happen. The place they were
bound for was about three miles away, and there was a fresh-water pool,
separated by a thin barrier of rock from the sea, which the
administrator had blasted out for the natives to bathe in. He had done
this at spots round the island, wherever there was a spring; and the
fresh water, compared with the sticky warmth of the sea, was cool and
invigorating. They drove along the silent grassy road, splashing now and
then through fords, where the sea had forced its way in, past a couple
of native villages, the bell-shaped huts spaced out roomily and the
white chapel in the middle, and at the third village they got out of the
trap, tied up the horse, and walked down to the pool. They were
accompanied by four or five girls and a dozen children. Soon they were
all splashing about, shouting and laughing, while Walker, in a
lava-lava, swam to and fro like an unwieldy porpoise. He made lewd jokes
with the girls, and they amused themselves by diving under him and
wriggling away when he tried to catch them. When he was tired he lay
down on a rock, while the girls and children surrounded him; it was a
happy family; and the old man, huge, with his crescent of white hair and
his shining bald crown, looked like some old sea god. Once Mackintosh
caught a queer soft look in his eyes.

"They're dear children," he said. "They look upon me as their father."

And then without a pause he turned to one of the girls and made an
obscene remark which sent them all into fits of laughter. Mackintosh
started to dress. With his thin legs and thin arms he made a grotesque
figure, a sinister Don Quixote, and Walker began to make coarse jokes
about him. They were acknowledged with little smothered laughs.
Mackintosh struggled with his shirt. He knew he looked absurd, but he
hated being laughed at. He stood silent and glowering.

"If you want to get back in time for dinner you ought to come soon."

"You're not a bad fellow, Mac. Only you're a fool. When you're doing one
thing you always want to do another. That's not the way we live."

But all the same he raised himself slowly to his feet and began to put
on his clothes. They sauntered back to the village, drank a bowl of kava
with the chief, and then, after a joyful farewell from all the lazy
villagers, drove home.

After dinner, according to his habit, Walker, lighting his cigar,
prepared to go for a stroll. Mackintosh was suddenly seized with fear.

"Don't you think it's rather unwise to go out at night by yourself just
now?"

Walker stared at him with his round blue eyes.

"What the devil do you mean?"

"Remember the knife the other night. You've got those fellows' backs
up."

"Pooh! They wouldn't dare."

"Someone dared before."

"That was only a bluff. They wouldn't hurt me. They look upon me as a
father. They know that whatever I do is for their own good."

Mackintosh watched him with contempt in his heart. The man's
self-complacency outraged him, and yet something, he knew not what, made
him insist.

"Remember what happened this morning. It wouldn't hurt you to stay at
home just to-night. I'll play piquet with you."

"I'll play piquet with you when I come back. The Kanaka isn't born yet
who can make me alter my plans."

"You'd better let me come with you."

"You stay where you are."

Mackintosh shrugged his shoulders. He had given the man full warning. If
he did not heed it that was his own lookout. Walker put on his hat and
went out. Mackintosh began to read; but then he thought of something;
perhaps it would be as well to have his own whereabouts quite clear. He
crossed over to the kitchen and, inventing some pretext, talked for a
few minutes with the cook. Then he got out the gramophone and put a
record on it, but while it ground out its melancholy tune, some comic
song of a London music-hall, his ear was strained for a sound away there
in the night. At his elbow the record reeled out its loudness, the words
were raucous, but notwithstanding he seemed to be surrounded by an
unearthly silence. He heard the dull roar of the breakers against the
reef. He heard the breeze sigh, far up, in the leaves of the coconut
trees. How long would it be? It was awful.

He heard a hoarse laugh.

"Wonders will never cease. It's not often you play yourself a tune,
Mac."

Walker stood at the window, red-faced, bluff and jovial.

"Well, you see I'm alive and kicking. What were you playing for?"

Walker came in.

"Nerves a bit dicky, eh? Playing a tune to keep your pecker up?"

"I was playing your requiem."

"What the devil's that?"

"'Alf o' bitter an' a pint of stout."

"A rattling good song too. I don't mind how often I hear it. Now I'm
ready to take your money off you at piquet."

They played and Walker bullied his way to victory, bluffing his
opponent, chaffing him, jeering at his mistakes, up to every dodge,
browbeating him, exulting. Presently Mackintosh recovered his coolness,
and standing outside himself, as it were, he was able to take a detached
pleasure in watching the overbearing old man and in his own cold
reserve. Somewhere Manuma sat quietly and awaited his opportunity.

Walker won game after game and pocketed his winnings at the end of the
evening in high good-humour.

"You'll have to grow a little bit older before you stand much chance
against me, Mac. The fact is I have a natural gift for cards."

"I don't know that there's much gift about it when I happen to deal you
fourteen aces."

"Good cards come to good players," retorted Walker. "I'd have won if I'd
had your hands."

He went on to tell long stories of the various occasions on which he had
played cards with notorious sharpers and to their consternation had
taken all their money from them. He boasted. He praised himself. And
Mackintosh listened with absorption. He wanted now to feed his hatred;
and everything Walker said, every gesture, made him more detestable. At
last Walker got up.

"Well, I'm going to turn in," he said with a loud yawn, "I've got a long
day to-morrow."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm driving over to the other side of the island. I'll start at five,
but I don't expect I shall get back to dinner till late."

They generally dined at seven.

"We'd better make it half-past seven then."

"I guess it would be as well."

Mackintosh watched him knock the ashes out of his pipe. His vitality was
rude and exuberant. It was strange to think that death hung over him. A
faint smile flickered in Mackintosh's cold, gloomy eyes.

"Would you like me to come with you?"

"What in God's name should I want that for? I'm using the mare and
she'll have enough to do to carry me; she don't want to drag you over
thirty miles of road."

"Perhaps you don't quite realise what the feeling is at Matautu. I think
it would be safer if I came with you."

Walker burst into contemptuous laughter.

"You'd be a fine lot of use in a scrap. I'm not a great hand at getting
the wind up."

Now the smile passed from Mackintosh's eyes to his lips. It distorted
them painfully.

"_Quem deus vult perdere prius dementat._"

"What the hell is that?" said Walker.

"Latin," answered Mackintosh as he went out.

And now he chuckled. His mood had changed. He had done all he could and
the matter was in the hands of fate. He slept more soundly than he had
done for weeks. When he awoke next morning he went out. After a good
night he found a pleasant exhilaration in the freshness of the early
air. The sea was a more vivid blue, the sky more brilliant, than on most
days, the trade wind was fresh, and there was a ripple on the lagoon as
the breeze brushed over it like velvet brushed the wrong way. He felt
himself stronger and younger. He entered upon the day's work with zest.
After luncheon he slept again, and as evening drew on he had the bay
saddled and sauntered through the bush. He seemed to see it all with new
eyes. He felt more normal. The extraordinary thing was that he was able
to put Walker out of his mind altogether. So far as he was concerned he
might never have existed.

He returned late, hot after his ride, and bathed again. Then he sat on
the verandah, smoking his pipe, and looked at the day declining over the
lagoon. In the sunset the lagoon, rosy and purple and green, was very
beautiful. He felt at peace with the world and with himself. When the
cook came out to say that dinner was ready and to ask whether he should
wait, Mackintosh smiled at him with friendly eyes. He looked at his
watch.

"It's half-past seven. Better not wait. One can't tell when the boss'll
be back."

The boy nodded, and in a moment Mackintosh saw him carry across the yard
a bowl of steaming soup. He got up lazily, went into the dining-room,
and ate his dinner. Had it happened? The uncertainty was amusing and
Mackintosh chuckled in the silence. The food did not seem so monotonous
as usual, and even though there was Hamburger steak, the cook's
invariable dish when his poor invention failed him, it tasted by some
miracle succulent and spiced. After dinner he strolled over lazily to
his bungalow to get a book. He liked the intense stillness, and now that
the night had fallen the stars were blazing in the sky. He shouted for a
lamp and in a moment the Chink pattered over on his bare feet, piercing
the darkness with a ray of light. He put the lamp on the desk and
noiselessly slipped out of the room. Mackintosh stood rooted to the
floor, for there, half hidden by untidy papers, was his revolver. His
heart throbbed painfully, and he broke into a sweat. It was done then.

He took up the revolver with a shaking hand. Four of the chambers were
empty. He paused a moment and looked suspiciously out into the night,
but there was no one there. He quickly slipped four cartridges into the
empty chambers and locked the revolver in his drawer.

He sat down to wait.

An hour passed, a second hour passed. There was nothing. He sat at his
desk as though he were writing, but he neither wrote nor read. He merely
listened. He strained his ears for a sound travelling from a far
distance. At last he heard hesitating footsteps and knew it was the
Chinese cook.

"Ah-Sung," he called.

The boy came to the door.

"Boss velly late," he said. "Dinner no good."

Mackintosh stared at him, wondering whether he knew what had happened,
and whether, when he knew, he would realise on what terms he and Walker
had been. He went about his work, sleek, silent, and smiling, and who
could tell his thoughts?

"I expect he's had dinner on the way, but you must keep the soup hot at
all events."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the silence was suddenly
broken into by a confusion, cries, and a rapid patter of naked feet. A
number of natives ran into the compound, men and women and children;
they crowded round Mackintosh and they all talked at once. They were
unintelligible. They were excited and frightened and some of them were
crying. Mackintosh pushed his way through them and went to the gateway.
Though he had scarcely understood what they said he knew quite well what
had happened. And as he reached the gate the dog-cart arrived. The old
mare was being led by a tall Kanaka, and in the dog-cart crouched two
men, trying to hold Walker up. A little crowd of natives surrounded it.

The mare was led into the yard and the natives surged in after it.
Mackintosh shouted to them to stand back and the two policemen,
appearing suddenly from God knows where, pushed them violently aside. By
now he had managed to understand that some lads, who had been fishing,
on their way back to their village had come across the cart on the home
side of the ford. The mare was nuzzling about the herbage and in the
darkness they could just see the great white bulk of the old man sunk
between the seat and the dashboard. At first they thought he was drunk
and they peered in, grinning, but then they heard him groan, and guessed
that something was amiss. They ran to the village and called for help.
It was when they returned, accompanied by half a hundred people, that
they discovered Walker had been shot.

With a sudden thrill of horror Mackintosh asked himself whether he was
already dead. The first thing at all events was to get him out of the
cart, and that, owing to Walker's corpulence, was a difficult job. It
took four strong men to lift him. They jolted him and he uttered a dull
groan. He was still alive. At last they carried him into the house, up
the stairs, and placed him on his bed. Then Mackintosh was able to see
him, for in the yard, lit only by half a dozen hurricane lamps,
everything had been obscured. Walker's white ducks were stained with
blood, and the men who had carried him wiped their hands, red and
sticky, on their lava-lavas. Mackintosh held up the lamp. He had not
expected the old man to be so pale. His eyes were closed. He was
breathing still, his pulse could be just felt, but it was obvious that
he was dying. Mackintosh had not bargained for the shock of horror that
convulsed him. He saw that the native clerk was there, and in a voice
hoarse with fear told him to go into the dispensary and get what was
necessary for a hypodermic injection. One of the policemen had brought
up the whisky, and Mackintosh forced a little into the old man's mouth.
The room was crowded with natives. They sat about the floor, speechless
now and terrified, and every now and then one wailed aloud. It was very
hot, but Mackintosh felt cold, his hands and his feet were like ice, and
he had to make a violent effort not to tremble in all his limbs. He did
not know what to do. He did not know if Walker was bleeding still, and
if he was, how he could stop the bleeding.

The clerk brought the hypodermic needle.

"You give it to him," said Mackintosh. "You're more used to that sort of
thing than I am."

His head ached horribly. It felt as though all sorts of little savage
things were beating inside it, trying to get out. They watched for the
effect of the injection. Presently Walker opened his eyes slowly. He did
not seem to know where he was.

"Keep quiet," said Mackintosh. "You're at home. You're quite safe."

Walker's lips outlined a shadowy smile.

"They've got me," he whispered.

"I'll get Jervis to send his motor-boat to Apia at once. We'll get a
doctor out by to-morrow afternoon."

There was a long pause before the old man answered.

"I shall be dead by then."

A ghastly expression passed over Mackintosh's pale face. He forced
himself to laugh.

"What rot! You keep quiet and you'll be as right as rain."

"Give me a drink," said Walker. "A stiff one."

With shaking hand Mackintosh poured out whisky and water, half and half,
and held the glass while Walker drank greedily. It seemed to restore
him. He gave a long sigh and a little colour came into his great fleshy
face. Mackintosh felt extraordinarily helpless. He stood and stared at
the old man.

"If you'll tell me what to do I'll do it," he said.

"There's nothing to do. Just leave me alone. I'm done for."

He looked dreadfully pitiful as he lay on the great bed, a huge,
bloated, old man; but so wan, so weak, it was heart-rending. As he
rested, his mind seemed to grow clearer.

"You were right, Mac," he said presently. "You warned me."

"I wish to God I'd come with you."

"You're a good chap, Mac, only you don't drink."

There was another long silence, and it was clear that Walker was
sinking. There was an internal hmorrhage and even Mackintosh in his
ignorance could not fail to see that his chief had but an hour or two to
live. He stood by the side of the bed stock-still. For half an hour
perhaps Walker lay with his eyes closed, then he opened them.

"They'll give you my job," he said, slowly. "Last time I was in Apia I
told them you were all right. Finish my road. I want to think that'll be
done. All round the island."

"I don't want your job. You'll get all right."

Walker shook his head wearily.

"I've had my day. Treat them fairly, that's the great thing. They're
children. You must always remember that. You must be firm with them, but
you must be kind. And you must be just. I've never made a bob out of
them. I haven't saved a hundred pounds in twenty years. The road's the
great thing. Get the road finished."

Something very like a sob was wrung from Mackintosh.

"You're a good fellow, Mac. I always liked you."

He closed his eyes, and Mackintosh thought that he would never open them
again. His mouth was so dry that he had to get himself something to
drink. The Chinese cook silently put a chair for him. He sat down by the
side of the bed and waited. He did not know how long a time passed. The
night was endless. Suddenly one of the men sitting there broke into
uncontrollable sobbing, loudly, like a child, and Mackintosh grew aware
that the room was crowded by this time with natives. They sat all over
the floor on their haunches, men and women, staring at the bed.

"What are all these people doing here?" said Mackintosh. "They've got no
right. Turn them out, turn them out, all of them."

His words seemed to rouse Walker, for he opened his eyes once more, and
now they were all misty. He wanted to speak, but he was so weak that
Mackintosh had to strain his ears to catch what he said.

"Let them stay. They're my children. They ought to be here."

Mackintosh turned to the natives.

"Stay where you are. He wants you. But be silent."

A faint smile came over the old man's white face.

"Come nearer," he said.

Mackintosh bent over him. His eyes were closed and the words he said
were like a wind sighing through the fronds of the coconut trees.

"Give me another drink. I've got something to say."

This time Mackintosh gave him his whisky neat. Walker collected his
strength in a final effort of will.

"Don't make a fuss about this. In 'ninety-five when there were troubles
white men were killed, and the fleet came and shelled the villages. A
lot of people were killed who'd had nothing to do with it. They're
damned fools at Apia. If they make a fuss they'll only punish the wrong
people. I don't want anyone punished."

He paused for a while to rest.

"You must say it was an accident. No one's to blame. Promise me that."

"I'll do anything you like," whispered Mackintosh.

"Good chap. One of the best. They're children. I'm their father. A
father don't let his children get into trouble if he can help it."

A ghost of a chuckle came out of his throat. It was astonishingly weird
and ghastly.

"You're a religious chap, Mac. What's that about forgiving them! You
know."

For a while Mackintosh did not answer. His lips trembled.

"Forgive them, for they know not what they do?"

"That's right. Forgive them. I've loved them, you know, always loved
them."

He sighed. His lips faintly moved, and now Mackintosh had to put his
ears quite close to them in order to hear.

"Hold my hand," he said.

Mackintosh gave a gasp. His heart seemed wrenched. He took the old man's
hand, so cold and weak, a coarse, rough hand, and held it in his own.
And thus he sat until he nearly started out of his seat, for the silence
was suddenly broken by a long rattle. It was terrible and unearthly.
Walker was dead. Then the natives broke out with loud cries. The tears
ran down their faces, and they beat their breasts.

Mackintosh disengaged his hand from the dead man's and staggering like
one drunk with sleep he went out of the room. He went to the locked
drawer in his writing-desk and took out the revolver. He walked down to
the sea and walked into the lagoon; he waded out cautiously, so that he
should not trip against a coral rock, till the water came to his
arm-pits. Then he put a bullet through his head.

An hour later half a dozen slim brown sharks were splashing and
struggling at the spot where he fell.




APPEARANCE AND REALITY


I do not vouch for the truth of this story, but it was told me by a
professor of French literature at an English university, and he was a
man of too high a character, I think, to have told it to me unless it
were true. His practice was to draw the attention of his students to
three French writers who in his opinion combined the qualities that are
the mainsprings of the French character. By reading them, he said, you
could learn so much about the French people that, if he had the power,
he would not trust such of our rulers as have to deal with the French
nation to enter upon their offices till they had passed a pretty stiff
examination on their works. They are Rabelais, with his _gauloiserie_,
which may be described as the ribaldry that likes to call a spade
something more than a bloody shovel; La Fontaine, with his _bon sens_,
which is just horse sense; and finally Corneille, with his _panache_.
This is translated in the dictionaries as the plume, the plume the
knight at arms wore on his helmet, but metaphorically it seems to
signify dignity and bravado, display and heroism, vainglory and pride.
It was _le panache_ that made the French gentlemen at Fontenoy say to
the officers of King George II, fire first, gentlemen; it was _le
panache_ that wrung from Cambronne's bawdy lips at Waterloo the phrase:
the guard dies but never surrenders; and it is _le panache_ that urges
an indigent French poet, awarded the Nobel prize, with a splendid
gesture to give it all away. My professor was not a frivolous man and to
his mind the story I am about to tell brought out so distinctly the
three master qualities of the French that it had a high educational
value.

I have called it Appearance and Reality. This is the title of what I
suppose may be looked upon as the most important philosophical work that
my country (right or wrong) produced in the nineteenth century. It is
stiff, but stimulating reading. It is written in excellent English, with
considerable humour, and even though the lay reader is unlikely to
follow with understanding some of its very subtle arguments he has
nevertheless the thrilling sensation of walking a spiritual tight-rope
over a metaphysical abyss, and he ends the book with a comfortable
feeling that nothing matters a hang anyway. There is no excuse for my
making use of the title of so celebrated a book except that it so
admirably suits my story. Though Lisette was a philosopher only in the
sense in which we are all philosophers, that she exercised thought in
dealing with the problems of existence, her feeling for reality was so
strong and her sympathy for appearance so genuine that she might almost
claim to have established that reconciliation of irreconcilables at
which the philosophers have for so many centuries been aiming. Lisette
was French, and she passed several hours of every working day dressing
and undressing herself at one of the most expensive and fashionable
establishments in Paris. A pleasant occupation for a young woman who was
well aware that she had a lovely figure. She was in short a mannequin.
She was tall enough to be able to wear a train with elegance and her
hips were so slim that in sports clothes she could bring the scent of
heather to your nostrils. Her long legs enabled her to wear pyjamas with
distinction, and her slim waist, her little breasts, made the simplest
bathing-dress a ravishment. She could wear anything. She had a way of
huddling herself in a chinchilla coat that made the most sensible
persons admit that chinchilla was worth all the money it cost. Fat
women, gross women, stumpy women, bony women, shapeless women, old
women, plain women, sat in the spacious arm-chairs and because Lisette
looked so sweet bought the clothes that so admirably suited her. She had
large brown eyes, a large red mouth and a very clear but slightly
freckled skin. It was difficult for her to preserve that haughty, sullen
and coldly indifferent demeanour that appears to be essential to the
mannequin as she sails in with deliberate steps, turns round slowly and,
with an air of contempt for the universe equalled only by the camel's,
sails out. There was the suspicion of a twinkle in Lisette's large brown
eyes and her red lips seemed to tremble as though on the smallest
provocation they would break into a smile. It was the twinkle that
attracted the attention of Monsieur Raymond Le Sueur.

He was sitting in a spurious Louis XVI chair by the side of his wife (in
another) who had induced him to come with her to see the private view of
the spring fashions. This was a proof of Monsieur Le Sueur's amiable
disposition, for he was an extremely busy man who, one would have
thought, had many more important things to do than to sit for an hour
and watch a dozen beautiful young women parade themselves in a
bewildering variety of costumes. He could not have thought that any of
them could possibly make his wife other than she was, and she was a
tall, angular woman of fifty, with features considerably larger than
life-size. He had not indeed married her for her looks, and she had
never, even in the first delirious days of their honeymoon, imagined
that he had. He had married her in order to combine the flourishing
steel works of which she was the heiress with his equally flourishing
manufactory of locomotives. The marriage had been a success. She had
provided him with a son who could play tennis nearly as well as a
professional, dance quite as well as a gigolo, and hold his own at
bridge with any of the experts; and a daughter whom he had been able to
dower sufficiently to marry to a very nearly authentic prince. He had
reason to be proud of his children. By perseverance and a reasonable
integrity he had prospered sufficiently to gain the controlling interest
in a sugar refinery, a movie company, a firm that built motor-cars and a
newspaper; and finally he had been able to spend enough money to
persuade the free and independent electorate of a certain district to
send him to the Senate. He was a man of a dignified presence, a pleasing
corpulence and a sanguine complexion, with a neat grey beard cut square,
a bald head and a roll of fat at the back of his neck. You had no need
to look at the red button that adorned his black coat to surmise that he
was a person of consequence. He was a man who made up his mind quickly
and when his wife left the dressmaker's to go and play bridge he parted
from her, saying that for the sake of exercise he would walk to the
Senate, where his duty to his country called him. He did not however go
as far as this, but contented himself with taking his exercise up and
down a back street into which he rightly surmised the young ladies of
the dressmaker's establishment would emerge at the close of business
hours. He had barely waited for a quarter of an hour when the appearance
of a number of women in groups, some young and pretty, some not so young
and far from pretty, apprised him that the moment for which he had been
waiting was come, and in two or three minutes Lisette tripped into the
street. The Senator was well aware that his appearance and his age made
it unlikely that young women would find him attractive at first sight,
but he had found that his wealth and his position counterbalanced these
disadvantages. Lisette had a companion with her, which would possibly
have embarrassed a man of less importance, but did not cause the Senator
to hesitate for an instant; he went up to her, raising his hat politely
but not so much as to show how bald he was, and bade her good evening.

"_Bon soir, Mademoiselle_," he said with an ingratiating smile.

She gave him the shortest possible look and, her full red lips just
trembling with a smile, stiffened; she turned her head away and breaking
into conversation with her friend, walked on with a very good assumption
of supreme indifference. Far from disconcerted, the Senator turned round
and followed the two girls at a distance of a few yards. They walked
along the little back street, turned into the boulevard and at the Place
de la Madeleine took a bus. The Senator was well satisfied. He had drawn
a number of correct conclusions. The fact that she was obviously going
home with a girl friend proved that she had no accredited admirer. The
fact that she had turned away when he had accosted her showed that she
was discreet and modest and well behaved, which he liked young women to
be when they were pretty; and her coat and skirt, the plain black hat
and the rayon stockings proclaimed that she was poor and therefore
virtuous. In those clothes she looked just as attractive as in the
splendid garments he had seen her wearing before. He had a funny little
feeling in his heart. He had not had that peculiar sensation,
pleasurable and yet oddly painful, for several years, but he recognised
it at once.

"It's love, by blue," he muttered.

He had never expected to feel it again, and squaring his shoulders he
walked on with a confident step. He walked to the offices of a private
detective and there left instructions that inquiries should be made
about a young person called Lisette, who worked as a mannequin at such
and such an address; and then, remembering that at the Senate they were
discussing the American Debt, took a cab to the impressive building,
entered the library, where there was an arm-chair he very much liked,
and had a pleasant nap. The information he had asked for reached him
three days later. It was cheap at the price. Mademoiselle Lisette Larion
lived with a widowed aunt in a two-room apartment in the district of
Paris known as the Batignolles. Her father, a wounded hero of the great
war, had a _bureau de tabac_ in a small country town in the southwest of
France. The rent of the flat was two thousand francs. She led a regular
life, but was fond of going to the pictures, was not known to have a
lover, and was nineteen years old. She was well spoken of by the
concierge of the apartments and well liked by her companions at the
shop. Obviously she was a very respectable young woman and the Senator
could not but think that she was eminently suited to solace the leisure
moments of a man who wanted relaxation from the cares of state and the
exacting pressure of Big Business.

It is unnecessary to relate in detail the steps that Monsieur Le Sueur
took to achieve the end he had in view. He was too important and too
busy to occupy himself with the matter personally, but he had a
confidential secretary who was very clever at dealing with electors who
had not made up their minds how to vote, and who certainly knew how to
put before a young woman who was honest but poor the advantages that
might ensue if she were lucky enough to secure the friendship of such a
man as his employer. The confidential secretary paid the widowed aunt,
Madame Saladin by name, a visit and told her that Monsieur Le Sueur,
always abreast of the time, had lately begun to take an interest in
films and was indeed about to engage in the production of a picture.
(This shows how much a clever brain can make use of a fact that an
ordinary person would have passed over as insignificant.) Monsieur Le
Sueur had been struck by the appearance of Mademoiselle Lisette at the
dressmaker's and the brilliant way she wore her clothes, and it had
occurred to him that she might very well suit a part he had it in mind
for her to play. (Like all intelligent people the Senator always stuck
as close to the truth as he could.) The confidential secretary then
invited Madame Saladin and her niece to a dinner where they could make
one another's further acquaintance and the Senator could judge whether
Mademoiselle Lisette had the aptitude for the screen that he suspected.
Madame Saladin said she would ask her niece, but for her part seemed to
think the suggestion quite reasonable.

When Madame Saladin put the proposition before Lisette and explained the
rank, dignity and importance of their generous host, that young person
shrugged her pretty shoulders disdainfully.

"_Cette vieille carpe_," she said, of which the not quite literal
translation is: that old trout.

"What does it matter if he's an old trout if he gives you a part?" said
Madame Saladin.

"_Et ta soeur_," said Lisette.

This phrase, which of course means: and your sister, and sounds harmless
enough, and even pointless, is a trifle vulgar and is used by
well-brought-up young women, I think, only if they want to shock. It
expresses the most forcible unbelief, and the only correct translation
into the vernacular is too coarse for my chaste pen.

"Anyhow we should get a slap-up dinner," said Madame Saladin. "After
all, you're not a child any more."

"Where did he say we should dine?"

"The Chteau de Madrid. Everyone knows it's the most expensive
restaurant in the world."

There is no reason why it should not be. The food is very good, the
cellar is famous, and its situation makes it on a fine evening of early
summer an enchanting place to eat at. A very pretty dimple appeared on
Lisette's cheek and a smile on her large red mouth. She had perfect
teeth.

"I can borrow a dress from the shop," she murmured.

A few days later the Senator's confidential secretary fetched them in a
taxi and drove Madame Saladin and her engaging niece to the Bois de
Boulogne. Lisette looked ravishing in one of the firm's most successful
models and Madame Saladin extremely respectable in her own black satin
and a hat that Lisette had made for the occasion. The secretary
introduced the ladies to Monsieur Le Sueur, who greeted them with the
benign dignity of the politician who is behaving graciously to the wife
and daughter of a valued constituent; and this is exactly what he in his
astute way he thought people at adjacent tables who knew him would
imagine his guests to be. The dinner passed off very agreeably, and less
than a month later Lisette moved into a charming little flat at a
convenient distance both from her place of business and from the Senate.
It was decorated in the modern style by a fashionable upholsterer.
Monsieur Le Sueur wished Lisette to continue to work. It suited him very
well that she should have something to do during the hours that he was
obliged to devote to affairs, for it would keep her out of mischief, and
he very well knew that a woman who has nothing to do all day spends much
more money than one who has an occupation. An intelligent man thinks of
these things.

But extravagance was a vice to which Lisette was strange. The Senator
was fond and generous. It was a source of satisfaction to him that
Lisette began very soon to save money. She ran her apartment with thrift
and bought her clothes at trade prices, and every month sent a certain
sum home to her heroic father, who purchased little plots of land with
it. She continued to lead a quiet and modest life and Monsieur Le Sueur
was pleased to learn from the concierge, who had a son she wanted to
place in a government office, that Lisette's only visitors were her aunt
and one or two girls from the shop.

The Senator had never been happier in his life. It was very satisfactory
to him to think that even in this world a good action had its reward,
for was it not from pure kindness that he had accompanied his wife to
the dressmaker's on that afternoon when they were discussing the
American Debt at the Senate and thus seen for the first time the
charming Lisette? The more he knew her the more he doted on her. She was
a delightful companion. She was gay and debonair. Her intelligence was
respectable and she could listen cleverly when he discussed business
matters or affairs of state with her. She rested him when he was weary
and cheered him when he was depressed. She was glad to see him when he
came, and he came frequently, generally from five till seven, and sorry
when he went away. She gave him the impression that he was not only her
lover but her friend. Sometimes they dined together in her apartment,
and the well-appointed meal, the genial comfort, gave him a keen
appreciation of the charm of domesticity. His friends told the Senator
he looked twenty years younger. He felt it. He was conscious of his good
fortune. He could not but feel, however, that after a life of honest
toil and public service it was only his due.

It was thus a shock to him, after things had been proceeding so happily
for nearly two years, on coming back to Paris early one Sunday morning
unexpectedly after a visit to his constituency which was to last over
the week-end, when he let himself into the apartment with his latchkey,
thinking since it was the day of rest to find Lisette in bed, to
discover her having breakfast in her bedroom _tte--tte_ with a young
gentleman he had never seen before who was wearing his (the Senator's)
brand new pyjamas. Lisette was surprised to see him. Indeed she gave a
distinct start.

"_Tiens_," she said. "Where have you sprung from? I didn't expect you
till to-morrow."

"The Ministry has fallen," he answered mechanically. "I have been sent
for. I am to be offered the Ministry of the Interior." But that was not
what he wanted to say at all. He gave the gentleman who was wearing his
pyjamas a furious look. "Who is that young man?" he cried.

Lisette's large red mouth broke into a most alluring smile.

"My lover," she answered.

"Do you think I'm a fool?" shouted the Senator. "I know he's your
lover."

"Why do you ask then?"

Monsieur Le Sueur was a man of action. He went straight up to Lisette
and smacked her hard on her right cheek with his left hand and then
smacked her hard on the left cheek with his right hand.

"Brute," screamed Lisette.

He turned to the young man, who had watched this scene of violence with
some embarrassment, and, drawing himself to his full height, flung out
his arm and with a dramatic finger pointed to the door.

"Get out," he cried. "Get out."

One would have thought, such was the commanding aspect of a man who was
accustomed to sway a crowd of angry tax-payers and who could dominate
with his frown an annual meeting of disappointed shareholders, that the
young man would have made a bolt for the door; but he stood his ground,
irresolutely it is true, but he stood his ground; he gave Lisette an
appealing look and slightly shrugged his shoulders.

"What are you waiting for?" shouted the Senator. "Do you want me to use
force?"

"He can't go out in his pyjamas," said Lisette.

"They're not his pyjamas, they're my pyjamas."

"He's waiting for his clothes."

Monsieur Le Sueur looked round and on the chair behind him, flung down
in a disorderly fashion, was a variety of masculine garments. The
Senator gave the young man a look of contempt.

"You may take your clothes, Monsieur," he said with cold disdain.

The young man picked them up in his arms, gathered up the shoes that
were lying about the floor, and quickly left the room. Monsieur Le Sueur
had a considerable gift of oratory. Never had he made better use of it
than now. He told Lisette what he thought of her. It was not flattering.
He painted her ingratitude in the blackest colours. He ransacked an
extensive vocabulary in order to find opprobrious names to call her. He
called all the powers of heaven to witness that never had a woman repaid
with such gross deception an honest man's belief in her. In short he
said everything that anger, wounded vanity and disappointment suggested
to him. Lisette did not seek to defend herself. She listened in silence,
looking down and mechanically crumbling the roll which the Senator's
appearance had prevented her from finishing. He flung an irritated
glance at her plate.

"I was so anxious that you should be the first to hear my great news
that I came straight here from the station. I was expecting to have my
_petit djeuner_ with you, sitting at the end of your bed."

"My poor dear, haven't you had your breakfast? I'll order some for you
at once."

"I don't want any."

"Nonsense. With the great responsibility you are about to assume you
must keep up your strength."

She rang and when the maid came told her to bring in hot coffee. It was
brought and Lisette poured it out. He would not touch it. She buttered a
roll. He shrugged his shoulders and began to eat. Meanwhile he uttered a
few remarks on the perfidy of women. She remained silent.

"At all events it is something," he said, "that you have not the
effrontery to attempt to excuse yourself. You know that I am not a man
who can be ill-used with impunity. The soul of generosity when people
behave well to me I am pitiless when they behave badly. The very moment
I have drunk my coffee I shall leave this apartment for ever."

Lisette sighed.

"I will tell you now that I had prepared a surprise for you. I had made
up my mind to celebrate the second anniversary of our union by settling
a sum of money on you sufficient to give you a modest independence if
anything happened to me."

"How much?" asked Lisette sombrely.

"A million francs."

She sighed again. Suddenly something soft hit the Senator on the back of
the head and he gave a start.

"What is that?" he cried.

"He's returning your pyjamas."

The young man had opened the door, flung the pyjamas at the Senator's
head, and quickly closed it again. The Senator disengaged himself from
the silk trousers that clung round his neck.

"What a way to return them! It is obvious that your friend has no
education."

"Of course he has not your distinction," murmured Lisette.

"And has he my intelligence?"

"Oh, no."

"Is he rich?"

"Penniless."

"Then, name of a name, what is it you see in him?"

"He's young," smiled Lisette.

The Senator looked down at his plate and a tear rose in his eyes and
rolled down his cheek into the coffee. Lisette gave him a kindly look.

"My poor friend, one can't have everything in this life," she said.

"I knew I was not young. But my situation, my fortune, my vitality. I
thought it made up. There are women who only like men of a certain age.
There are celebrated actresses who look upon it as an honour to be the
little friend of a Minister. I am too well brought up to throw your
origins in your face, but the fact remains that you are a mannequin and
I took you out of an apartment of which the rent is only two thousand
francs a year. It was a step up for you."

"The daughter of poor but honest parents, I have no reason to be ashamed
of my origins, and it is not because I have earned my living in a humble
sphere that you have the right to reproach me."

"Do you love this boy?"

"Yes."

"And not me?"

"You too. I love you both, but I love you differently. I love you
because you are so distinguished and your conversation is instructive
and interesting. I love you because you are kind and generous. I love
him because his eyes are so big and his hair waves and he dances
divinely. It's very natural."

"You know that in my position I cannot take you to places where they
dance and I daresay when he's as old as I am he'll have no more hair
than I have."

"That may well be true," Lisette agreed, but she did not think it much
mattered.

"What will your aunt, the respectable Madame Saladin, say to you when
she hears what you have done?"

"It will not be exactly a surprise to her."

"Do you mean to say that worthy woman countenances your conduct? _O
tempora, o mores!_ How long then has this been going on?"

"Since I first went to the shop. He travels for a big silk firm in
Lyons. He came in one day with his samples. We liked the look of one
another."

"But your aunt was there to defend you from the temptations to which a
young girl is exposed in Paris. She should never have allowed you to
have anything to do with this young man."

"I did not ask her permission."

"It is enough to bring the grey hairs of your poor father to the grave.
Had you no thought of that wounded hero whose services to his country
have been rewarded with a licence to sell tobacco? Do you forget that as
Minister of the Interior the department is under my control? I should be
within my rights if I revoked the licence on account of your flagrant
immorality."

"I know you are too great a gentleman to do a dastardly thing like
that."

He waved his hand in an impressive, though perhaps too dramatic a
manner.

"Don't be afraid, I will never stoop so low as to revenge myself on one
who has deserved well of his country for the misdeeds of a creature my
sense of dignity forces me to despise."

He went on with his interrupted breakfast. Lisette did not speak and
there was silence between them. But his appetite satisfied, his mood
changed; he began to feel sorry for himself rather than angry with her,
and with a strange ignorance of woman's heart he thought to arouse
Lisette's remorse by exhibiting himself as an object of pity.

"It is hard to break a habit to which one has grown accustomed. It was a
relief and a solace to me to come here when I could snatch a moment from
my many occupations. Will you regret me a little, Lisette?"

"Of course."

He gave a deep sigh.

"I should never have thought you capable of so much deception."

"It is the deception that rankles," she murmured thoughtfully. "Men are
funny in that way. They cannot forgive being made fools of. It is
because they are so vain. They attach importance to things that are of
no consequence."

"Do you call it a matter of no consequence that I should find you having
breakfast with a young man wearing my pyjamas?"

"If he were my husband and you were my lover you would think it
perfectly natural."

"Obviously. For then I should be deceiving him and my honour would be
secure."

"In short, I have only to marry him to make the situation perfectly
regular."

For a moment he did not understand. Then her meaning flashed across his
clever brain and he gave her a quick look. Her lovely eyes had the
twinkle he always found so alluring and on her large red mouth was the
suspicion of a roguish smile.

"Do not forget that as a member of the Senate I am by all the traditions
of the Republic the authorised mainstay of morality and good behaviour."

"Does that weigh very heavily with you?"

He stroked his handsome square beard with a composed and dignified
gesture.

"Not a row of beans," he replied, but the expression he used had a
Gallic breadth that would perhaps have given his more conservative
supporters something of a shock.

"Would he marry you?" he asked.

"He adores me. Of course he would marry me. If I told him I had a _dot_
of a million francs he would ask nothing better."

Monsieur Le Sueur gave her another look. When in a moment of anger he
told her it had been his intention to settle a million francs on her he
had exaggerated a good deal in the desire to make her see how much her
treachery was costing her. But he was not the man to draw back when his
dignity was concerned.

"It is much more than a young man in his position of life could aspire
to. But if he adores you he would be always at your side."

"Didn't I tell you that he was a commercial traveller? He can only come
to Paris for the week-end."

"That of course is a horse of another colour," said the Senator. "It
would naturally be a satisfaction to him to know that during his absence
I should be there to keep an eye on you."

"A considerable satisfaction," said Lisette.

To facilitate the conversation she rose from her seat and made herself
comfortable on the Senator's knees. He pressed her hand tenderly.

"I am very fond of you, Lisette," he said. "I should not like you to
make a mistake. Are you sure he will make you happy?"

"I think so."

"I will have proper enquiries made. I would never consent to your
marrying anyone not of exemplary character and unimpeachable morality.
For all our sakes we must make quite sure about this young man whom we
are preparing to bring into our lives."

Lisette raised no objection. She was aware that the Senator liked to do
things with order and method. He now prepared to leave her. He wanted to
break his important news to Madame Le Sueur, and he had to get in touch
with various persons in the parliamentary group to which he belonged.

"There is only one more thing," he said, as he bade Lisette an
affectionate farewell, "if you marry I must insist on your giving up
your work. The place of a wife is the home, and it is against all my
principles that a married woman should take the bread out of a man's
mouth."

Lisette reflected that a strapping young man would look rather funny
walking round the room, with his hips swaying, to show off the latest
models, but she respected the Senator's principles.

"It shall be as you wish, darling," she said.

The enquiries he made were satisfactory and the marriage took place on a
Saturday morning as soon as the legal formalities were completed.
Monsieur Le Sueur, Minister of the Interior, and Madame Saladin were
witnesses. The bridegroom was a slim young man with a straight nose,
fine eyes and black waving hair brushed straight back from his forehead.
He looked more like a tennis-player than a traveller in silk. The Mayor,
impressed by the august presence of the Minister of the Interior, made
according to French practice a speech which he sought to render
eloquent. He began by telling the married couple what presumably they
knew already. He informed the bridegroom that he was the son of worthy
parents and was engaged in an honourable profession. He congratulated
him on entering the bonds of matrimony at an age when many young men
thought only of their pleasures. He reminded the bride that her father
was a hero of the great war, whose glorious wounds had been rewarded by
a concession to sell tobacco, and he told her that she had earned a
decent living since her arrival in Paris in an establishment that was
one of the glories of French taste and luxury. The Mayor was of a
literary turn and he briefly mentioned various celebrated lovers of
fiction, Romeo and Juliet whose short but legitimate union had been
interrupted by a regrettable misunderstanding, Paul and Virginia who had
met her death at sea rather than sacrifice her modesty by taking off her
clothes, and finally Daphnis and Chloe who had not consummated their
marriage till it was sanctioned by the legitimate authority. He was so
moving that Lisette shed a few tears. He paid a compliment to Madame
Saladin whose example and precept had preserved her young and beautiful
niece from the dangers that are likely to befall a young girl alone in a
great city, and finally he congratulated the happy pair on the honour
that the Minister of the Interior had done them in consenting to be a
witness at the ceremony. It was a testimony to their own probity that
this captain of industry and eminent statesman should find time to
perform a humble office to persons in their modest sphere, and it proved
not only the excellence of his heart but his lively sense of duty. His
action showed that he appreciated the importance of early marriage,
affirmed the security of the family and emphasised the desirability of
producing offspring to increase the power, influence and consequence of
the fair land of France. A very good speech indeed.

The wedding breakfast was held at the Chteau de Madrid, which had
sentimental associations for Monsieur Le Sueur. It has been mentioned
already that among his many interests the Minister (as we must now call
him) was interested in a firm of motor-cars. His wedding present to the
bridegroom was a very nice two-seater of his own manufacture, and in
this, when lunch was over, the young couple started off for their
honeymoon. This could only last over the week-end since the young man
had to get back to his work, which would take him to Marseilles, Toulon
and Nice. Lisette kissed her aunt and she kissed Monsieur Le Sueur.

"I shall expect you at five on Monday," she whispered to him.

"I shall be there," he answered.

They drove away and for a moment Monsieur Le Sueur and Madame Saladin
looked at the smart yellow roadster.

"As long as he makes her happy," sighed Madame Saladin, who was not used
to champagne at lunch and felt unreasonably melancholy.

"If he does not make her happy he will have me to count with," said
Monsieur Le Sueur impressively.

His car drove up.

"_Au revoir, chre Madame._ You will get a bus at the Avenue de
Neuilly."

He stepped into his car and as he thought of the affairs of state that
awaited his attention he sighed with content. It was evidently much more
fitting to his situation that his mistress should be, not just a little
mannequin in a dressmaker's shop, but a respectable married woman.




THE THREE FAT WOMEN OF ANTIBES


One was called Mrs. Richman and she was a widow. The second was called
Mrs. Sutcliffe; she was American and she had divorced two husbands. The
third was called Miss Hickson and she was a spinster. They were all in
the comfortable forties and they were all well off. Mrs. Sutcliffe had
the odd first name of Arrow. When she was young and slender she had
liked it well enough. It suited her and the jests it occasioned though
too often repeated were very flattering; she was not disinclined to
believe that it suited her character too: it suggested directness, speed
and purpose. She liked it less now that her delicate features had grown
muzzy with fat, that her arms and shoulders were so substantial and her
hips so massive. It was increasingly difficult to find dresses to make
her look as she liked to look. The jests her name gave rise to now were
made behind her back and she very well knew that they were far from
obliging. But she was by no means resigned to middle age. She still wore
blue to bring out the colour of her eyes and, with the help of art, her
fair hair had kept its lustre. What she liked about Beatrice Richman and
Frances Hickson was that they were both so much fatter than she, it made
her look quite slim; they were both of them older and much inclined to
treat her as a little young thing. It was not disagreeable. They were
good-natured women and they chaffed her pleasantly about her beaux; they
had both given up the thought of that kind of nonsense, indeed Miss
Hickson had never given it a moment's consideration, but they were
sympathetic to her flirtations. It was understood that one of these days
Arrow would make a third man happy.

"Only you mustn't get any heavier, darling," said Mrs. Richman.

"And for goodness' sake make certain of his bridge," said Miss Hickson.

They saw for her a man of about fifty, but well-preserved and of
distinguished carriage, an admiral on the retired list and a good
golfer, or a widower without encumbrances, but in any case with a
substantial income. Arrow listened to them amiably, and kept to herself
that fact that this was not at all her idea. It was true that she would
have liked to marry again, but her fancy turned to a dark slim Italian
with flashing eyes and a sonorous title or to a Spanish don of noble
lineage; and not a day more than thirty. There were times when, looking
at herself in her mirror, she was certain she did not look any more than
that herself.

They were great friends, Miss Hickson, Mrs. Richman and Arrow Sutcliffe.
It was their fat that had brought them together and bridge that had
cemented their alliance. They had met first at Carlsbad, where they were
staying at the same hotel and were treated by the same doctor who used
them with the same ruthlessness. Beatrice Richman was enormous. She was
a handsome woman, with fine eyes, rouged cheeks and painted lips. She
was very well content to be a widow with a handsome fortune. She adored
her food. She liked bread and butter, cream, potatoes and suet puddings,
and for eleven months of the year ate pretty well everything she had a
mind to, and for one month went to Carlsbad to reduce. But every year
she grew fatter. She upbraided the doctor, but got no sympathy from him.
He pointed out to her various plain and simple facts.

"But if I'm never to eat a thing I like, life isn't worth living," she
expostulated.

He shrugged his disapproving shoulders. Afterwards she told Miss Hickson
that she was beginning to suspect he wasn't so clever as she had
thought. Miss Hickson gave a great guffaw. She was that sort of woman.
She had a deep bass voice, a large flat sallow face from which twinkled
little bright eyes; she walked with a slouch, her hands in her pockets,
and when she could do so without exciting attention smoked a long cigar.
She dressed as like a man as she could.

"What the deuce should I look like in frills and furbelows?" she said.
"When you're as fat as I am you may just as well be comfortable."

She wore tweeds and heavy boots and whenever she could went about
bareheaded. But she was as strong as an ox and boasted that few men
could drive a longer ball than she. She was plain of speech, and she
could swear more variously than a stevedore. Though her name was Frances
she preferred to be called Frank. Masterful, but with tact, it was her
jovial strength of character that held the three together. They drank
their waters together, had their baths at the same hour, they took their
strenuous walks together, pounded about the tennis-court with a
professional to make them run, and ate at the same table their sparse
and regulated meals. Nothing impaired their good humour but the scales,
and when one or other of them weighed as much on one day as she had the
day before neither Frank's coarse jokes, the _bonhomie_ of Beatrice nor
Arrow's pretty kittenish ways sufficed to dispel the gloom. Then drastic
measures were resorted to, the culprit went to bed for twenty-four hours
and nothing passed her lips but the doctor's famous vegetable soup which
tasted like hot water in which a cabbage had been well rinsed.

Never were three women greater friends. They would have been independent
of anyone else if they had not needed a fourth at bridge. They were
fierce, enthusiastic players and the moment the day's cure was over they
sat down at the bridge table. Arrow, feminine as she was, played the
best game of the three, a hard, brilliant game, in which she showed no
mercy and never conceded a point or failed to take advantage of a
mistake. Beatrice was solid and reliable. Frank was dashing; she was a
great theorist, and had all the authorities at the tip of her tongue.
They had long arguments over the rival systems. They bombarded one
another with Culbertson and Sims. It was obvious that not one of them
ever played a card without fifteen good reasons, but it was also obvious
from the subsequent conversation that there were fifteen equally good
reasons why she should not have played it. Life would have been perfect,
even with the prospect of twenty-four hours of that filthy soup when the
doctor's rotten (Beatrice) bloody (Frank) lousy (Arrow) scales pretended
one hadn't lost an ounce in two days, if only there had not been this
constant difficulty of finding someone to play with them who was in
their class.

It was for this reason that on the occasion with which this narrative
deals Frank invited Lena Finch to come and stay with them at Antibes.
They were spending some weeks there on Frank's suggestion. It seemed
absurd to her, with her common sense, that immediately the cure was over
Beatrice who always lost twenty pounds should by giving way to her
ungovernable appetite put it all on again. Beatrice was weak. She needed
a person of strong will to watch her diet. She proposed then that on
leaving Carlsbad they should take a house at Antibes, where they could
get plenty of exercise--everyone knew that nothing slimmed you like
swimming--and as far as possible could go on with the cure. With a cook
of their own they could at least avoid things that were obviously
fattening. There was no reason why they should not all lose several
pounds more. It seemed a very good idea. Beatrice knew what was good for
her, and she could resist temptation well enough if temptation was not
put right under her nose. Besides, she liked gambling, and a flutter at
the Casino two or three times a week would pass the time very
pleasantly. Arrow adored Antibes, and she would be looking her best
after a month at Carlsbad. She could just pick and choose among the
young Italians, the passionate Spaniards, the gallant Frenchmen, and the
long-limbed English who sauntered about all day in bathing trunks and
gay-coloured dressing-gowns. The plan worked very well. They had a grand
time. Two days a week they ate nothing but hard-boiled eggs and raw
tomatoes and they mounted the scales every morning with light hearts.
Arrow got down to eleven stone and felt just like a girl; Beatrice and
Frank by standing in a certain way just avoided the thirteen. The
machine they had bought registered kilogrammes, and they got
extraordinarily clever at translating these in the twinkling of an eye
to pounds and ounces.

But the fourth at bridge continued to be the difficulty. This person
played like a foot, the other was so slow that it drove you frantic, one
was quarrelsome, another was a bad loser, a third was next door to a
crook. It was strange how hard it was to find exactly the player you
wanted.

One morning when they were sitting in pyjamas on the terrace overlooking
the sea, drinking their tea (without milk or sugar) and eating a rusk
prepared by Dr. Hudebert and guaranteed not to be fattening, Frank
looked up from her letters.

"Lena Finch is coming down to the Riviera," she said.

"Who's she?" asked Arrow.

"She married a cousin of mine. He died a couple of months ago and she's
just recovering from a nervous breakdown. What about asking her to come
here for a fortnight?"

"Does she play bridge?" asked Beatrice.

"You bet your life she does," boomed Frank in her deep voice. "And a
damned good game too. We should be absolutely independent of outsiders."

"How old is she?" asked Arrow.

"Same age as I am."

"That sounds all right."

It was settled. Frank, with her usual decisiveness, stalked out as soon
as she had finished her breakfast to send a wire, and three days later
Lena Finch arrived. Frank met her at the station. She was in deep but
not obtrusive mourning for the recent death of her husband. Frank had
not seen her for two years. She kissed her warmly and took a good look
at her.

"You're very thin, darling," she said.

Lena smiled bravely.

"I've been through a good deal lately. I've lost a lot of weight."

Frank sighed, but whether from sympathy with her cousin's sad loss, or
from envy, was not obvious.

Lena was not, however, unduly depressed, and after a quick bath was
quite ready to accompany Frank to Eden Roc. Frank introduced the
stranger to her two friends and they sat down in what was known as the
Monkey House. It was an enclosure covered with glass overlooking the
sea, with a bar at the back, and it was crowded with chattering people
in bathing costumes, pyjamas or dressing-gowns, who were seated at the
tables having drinks. Beatrice's soft heart went out to the lorn widow,
and Arrow, seeing that she was pale, quite ordinary to look at and
probably forty-eight, was prepared to like her very much. A waiter
approached them.

"What will you have, Lena dear?" Frank asked.

"Oh, I don't know, what you all have, a dry Martini or a White Lady."

Arrow and Beatrice gave her a quick look. Everyone knows how fattening
cocktails are.

"I daresay you're tired after your journey," said Frank kindly.

She ordered a dry Martini for Lena and a mixed lemon and orange juice
for herself and her two friends.

"We find alcohol isn't very good in all this heat," she explained.

"Oh, it never affects me at all," Lena answered airily. "I like
cocktails."

Arrow went very slightly pale under her rouge (neither she nor Beatrice
ever wet their faces when they bathed and they thought it absurd of
Frank, a woman of her size, to pretend she liked diving) but she said
nothing. The conversation was gay and easy, they all said the obvious
things with gusto, and presently they strolled back to the villa for
luncheon.

In each napkin were two little antifat rusks. Lena gave a bright smile
as she put them by the side of her plate.

"May I have some bread?" she asked.

The grossest indecency would not have fallen on the ears of those three
women with such a shock. Not one of them had eaten bread for ten years.
Even Beatrice, greedy as she was, drew the line there. Frank, the good
hostess, recovered herself first.

"Of course, darling," she said and turning to the butler asked him to
bring some.

"And some butter," said Lena in that pleasant easy way of hers.

There was a moment's embarrassed silence.

"I don't know if there's any in the house," said Frank, "but I'll
enquire. There may be some in the kitchen."

"I adore bread and butter, don't you?" said Lena, turning to Beatrice.

Beatrice gave a sickly smile and an evasive reply. The butler brought a
long crisp roll of French bread. Lena slit it in two and plastered it
with the butter which was miraculously produced. A grilled sole was
served.

"We eat very simply here," said Frank. "I hope you won't mind."

"Oh, no, I like my food very plain," said Lena as she took some butter
and spread it over her fish. "As long as I can have bread and butter and
potatoes and cream I'm quite happy."

The three friends exchanged a glance. Frank's great sallow face sagged a
little and she looked with distaste at the dry, insipid sole on her
plate. Beatrice came to the rescue.

"It's such a bore, we can't get cream here," she said. "It's one of the
things one has to do without on the Riviera."

"What a pity," said Lena.

The rest of the luncheon consisted of lamb cutlets, with the fat
carefully removed so that Beatrice should not be led astray, and spinach
boiled in water, with stewed pears to end up with. Lena tasted her pears
and gave the butler a look of enquiry. That resourceful man understood
her at once and though powdered sugar had never been served at that
table before handed her without a moment's hesitation a bowl of it. She
helped herself liberally. The other three pretended not to notice.
Coffee was served and Lena took three lumps of sugar in hers.

"You have a very sweet tooth," said Arrow in a tone which she struggled
to keep friendly.

"We think saccharine so much more sweetening," said Frank, as she put a
tiny tablet of it into her coffee.

"Disgusting stuff," said Lena.

Beatrice's mouth drooped at the corners, and she gave the lump sugar a
yearning look.

"Beatrice," boomed Frank sternly.

Beatrice stifled a sigh, and reached for the saccharine.

Frank was relieved when they could sit down to the bridge table. It was
plain to her that Arrow and Beatrice were upset. She wanted them to like
Lena and she was anxious that Lena should enjoy her fortnight with them.
For the first rubber Arrow cut with the newcomer.

"Do you play Vanderbilt or Culbertson?" she asked her.

"I have no conventions," Lena answered in a happy-go-lucky way, "I play
by the light of nature."

"I play strict Culbertson," said Arrow acidly.

The three fat women braced themselves to the fray. No conventions
indeed! They'd learn her. When it came to bridge even Frank's family
feeling was forgotten and she settled down with the same determination
as the others to trim the stranger in their midst. But the light of
nature served Lena very well. She had a natural gift for the game and
great experience. She played with imagination, quickly, boldly, and with
assurance. The other players were in too high a class not to realise
very soon that Lena knew what she was about, and since they were all
thoroughly good-natured, generous women, they were gradually mollified.
This was real bridge. They all enjoyed themselves. Arrow and Beatrice
began to feel more kindly towards Lena, and Frank, noticing this, heaved
a fat sigh of relief. It was going to be a success.

After a couple of hours they parted, Frank and Beatrice to have a round
of golf, and Arrow to take a brisk walk with a young Prince Roccamare
whose acquaintance she had lately made. He was very sweet and young and
good-looking. Lena said she would rest.

They met again just before dinner.

"I hope you've been all right, Lena dear," said Frank. "I was rather
conscience-stricken at leaving you with nothing to do all this time."

"Oh, don't apologise. I had a lovely sleep and then I went down to Juan
and had a cocktail. And d'you know what I discovered? You'll be so
pleased. I found a dear little tea-shop where they've got the most
beautiful thick fresh cream. I've ordered half a pint to be sent every
day. I thought it would be my little contribution to the household."

Her eyes were shining. She was evidently expecting them to be delighted.

"How very kind of you," said Frank, with a look that sought to quell the
indignation that she saw on the faces of her two friends. "But we never
eat cream. In this climate it makes one so bilious."

"I shall have to eat it all myself then," said Lena cheerfully.

"Don't you ever think of your figure?" Arrow asked with icy
deliberation.

"The doctor said I must eat."

"Did he say you must eat bread and butter and potatoes and cream?"

"Yes. That's what I thought you meant when you said you had simple
food."

"You'll get simply enormous," said Beatrice.

Lena laughed gaily.

"No, I shan't. You see, nothing ever makes me fat. I've always eaten
everything I wanted to and it's never had the slightest effect on me."

The stony silence that followed this speech was only broken by the
entrance of the butler.

"_Mademoiselle est servie_," he announced.

They talked the matter over late that night, after Lena had gone to bed,
in Frank's room. During the evening they had been furiously cheerful,
and they had chaffed one another with a friendliness that would have
taken in the keenest observer. But now they dropped the mask. Beatrice
was sullen, Arrow was spiteful and Frank was unmanned.

"It's not very nice for me to sit there and see her eat all the things I
particularly like," said Beatrice plaintively.

"It's not very nice for any of us," Frank snapped back.

"You should never have asked her here," said Arrow.

"How was I to know?" cried Frank.

"I can't help thinking that if she really cared for her husband she
would hardly eat so much," said Beatrice. "He's only been buried two
months. I mean, I think you ought to show some respect for the dead."

"Why can't she eat the same as we do?" asked Arrow viciously. "She's a
guest."

"Well, you heard what she said. The doctor told her she must eat."

"Then she ought to go to a sanatorium."

"It's more than flesh and blood can stand, Frank," moaned Beatrice.

"If I can stand it you can stand it."

"She's your cousin, she's not our cousin," said Arrow. "I'm not going to
sit there for fourteen days and watch that woman make a hog of herself."

"It's so vulgar to attach all this importance to food," Frank boomed,
and her voice was deeper than ever. "After all the only thing that
counts really is spirit."

"Are you calling _me_ vulgar, Frank?" asked Arrow with flashing eyes.

"No, of course she isn't," interrupted Beatrice.

"I wouldn't put it past you to go down in the kitchen when we're all in
bed and have a good square meal on the sly."

Frank sprang to her feet.

"How dare you say that, Arrow! I'd never ask anybody to do what I'm not
prepared to do myself. Have you known me all these years and do you
think me capable of such a mean thing?"

"How is it you never take off any weight then?"

Frank gave a gasp and burst into a flood of tears.

"What a cruel thing to say! I've lost pounds and pounds."

She wept like a child. Her vast body shook and great tears splashed on
her mountainous bosom.

"Darling, I didn't mean it," cried Arrow.

She threw herself on her knees and enveloped what she could of Frank in
her own plump arms. She wept and the mascara ran down her cheeks.

"D'you mean to say I don't look thinner?" Frank sobbed. "After all I've
gone through."

"Yes, dear, of course you do," cried Arrow through her tears.
"Everybody's noticed it."

Beatrice, though naturally of a placid disposition, began to cry gently.
It was very pathetic. Indeed, it would have been a hard heart that
failed to be moved by the sight of Frank, that lion-hearted woman,
crying her eyes out. Presently, however, they dried their tears and had
a little brandy and water, which every doctor had told them was the
least fattening thing they could drink, and then they felt much better.
They decided that Lena should have the nourishing food that had been
ordered her and they made a solemn resolution not to let it disturb
their equanimity. She was certainly a first-rate bridge player and after
all it was only for a fortnight. They would do whatever they could to
make her stay enjoyable. They kissed one another warmly and separated
for the night feeling strangely uplifted. Nothing should interfere with
the wonderful friendship that had brought so much happiness into their
three lives.

But human nature is weak. You must not ask too much of it. They ate
grilled fish while Lena ate macaroni sizzling with cheese and butter;
they ate grilled cutlets and boiled spinach while Lena ate _pt de foie
gras_; twice a week they ate hard-boiled eggs and raw tomatoes, while
Lena ate peas swimming in cream and potatoes cooked in all sorts of
delicious ways. The chef was a good chef and he leapt at the opportunity
afforded him to send up one dish more rich, tasty and succulent than the
other.

"Poor Jim," sighed Lena, thinking of her husband, "he loved French
cooking."

The butler disclosed the fact that he could make half a dozen kinds of
cocktail and Lena informed them that the doctor had recommended her to
drink burgundy at luncheon and champagne at dinner. The three fat women
persevered. They were gay, chatty and even hilarious (such is the
natural gift that women have for deception) but Beatrice grew limp and
forlorn, and Arrow's tender blue eyes acquired a steely glint. Frank's
deep voice grew more raucous. It was when they played bridge that the
strain showed itself. They had always been fond of talking over their
hands, but their discussions had been friendly. Now a distinct
bitterness crept in and sometimes one pointed out a mistake to another
with quite unnecessary frankness. Discussion turned to argument and
argument to altercation. Sometimes the session ended in angry silence.
Once Frank accused Arrow of deliberately letting her down. Two or three
times Beatrice, the softest of the three, was reduced to tears. On
another occasion Arrow flung down her cards and swept out of the room in
a pet. Their tempers were getting frayed. Lena was the peacemaker.

"I think it's such a pity to quarrel over bridge," she said. "After all,
it's only a game."

It was all very well for her. She had had a square meal and half a
bottle of champagne. Besides, she had phenomenal luck. She was winning
all their money. The score was put down in a book after each session,
and hers mounted up day after day with unfailing regularity. Was there
no justice in the world? They began to hate one another. And though they
hated her too they could not resist confiding in her. Each of them went
to her separately and told her how detestable the others were. Arrow
said she was sure it was bad for her to see so much of women so much
older than herself. She had a good mind to sacrifice her share of the
lease and go to Venice for the rest of the summer. Frank told Lena that
with her masculine mind it was too much to expect that she could be
satisfied with anyone so frivolous as Arrow and so frankly stupid as
Beatrice.

"I must have intellectual conversation," she boomed. "When you have a
brain like mine you've got to consort with your intellectual equals."

Beatrice only wanted peace and quiet.

"Really I hate women," she said. "They're so unreliable; they're so
malicious."

By the time Lena's fortnight drew to its close the three fat women were
barely on speaking terms. They kept up appearances before Lena, but when
she was not there made no pretences. They had got past quarrelling. They
ignored one another, and when this was not possible treated each other
with icy politeness.

Lena was going to stay with friends on the Italian Riviera and Frank saw
her off by the same train as that by which she had arrived. She was
taking away with her a lot of their money.

"I don't know how to thank you," she said, as she got into the carriage.
"I've had a wonderful visit."

If there was one thing that Frank Hickson prided herself on more than on
being a match for any man it was that she was a gentlewoman, and her
reply was perfect in its combination of majesty and graciousness.

"We've all enjoyed having you here, Lena," she said. "It's been a real
treat."

But when she turned away from the departing train she heaved such a vast
sigh of relief that the platform shook beneath her. She flung back her
massive shoulders and strode home to the villa.

"Ouf!" she roared at intervals. "Ouf!"

She changed into her one-piece bathing-suit, put on her espadrilles and
a man's dressing-gown (no nonsense about it) and went to Eden Roc. There
was still time for a bathe before luncheon. She passed through the
Monkey House, looking about her to say good-morning to anyone she knew,
for she felt on a sudden at peace with mankind, and then stopped dead
still. She could not believe her eyes. Beatrice was sitting at one of
the tables, by herself; she wore the pyjamas she had bought at
Molyneux's a day or two before, she had a string of pearls round her
neck, and Frank's quick eyes saw that she had just had her hair waved;
her cheeks, her eyes, her lips were made up. Fat, nay vast, as she was,
none could deny that she was an extremely handsome woman. But what was
she doing? With the slouching gait of the Neanderthal man which was
Frank's characteristic walk she went up to Beatrice. In her black
bathing-dress Frank looked like the huge cetacean which the Japanese
catch in the Torres Straits and which the vulgar call a sea-cow.

"Beatrice, what are you doing?" she cried in her deep voice.

It was like the roll of thunder in the distant mountains. Beatrice
looked at her coolly.

"Eating," she answered.

"Damn it, I can see you're eating."

In front of Beatrice was a plate of _croissants_ and a plate of butter,
a pot of strawberry jam, coffee and a jug of cream. Beatrice was
spreading butter thick on the delicious hot bread, covering this with
jam, and then pouring the thick cream over all.

"You'll kill yourself," said Frank.

"I don't care," mumbled Beatrice with her mouth full.

"You'll put on pounds and pounds."

"Go to hell!"

She actually laughed in Frank's face. My God, how good those
_croissants_ smelt!

"I'm disappointed in you, Beatrice. I thought you had more character."

"It's your fault. That blasted woman. You would have her down. For a
fortnight I've watched her gorge like a hog. It's more than flesh and
blood can stand. I'm going to have one square meal if I bust."

The tears welled up to Frank's eyes. Suddenly she felt very weak and
womanly. She would have liked a strong man to take her on his knee and
pet her and cuddle her and call her little baby names. Speechless she
sank down on a chair by Beatrice's side. A waiter came up. With a
pathetic gesture she waved towards the coffee and _croissants_.

"I'll have the same," she sighed.

She listlessly reached out her hand to take a roll, but Beatrice
snatched away the plate.

"No, you don't," she said. "You wait till you get your own."

Frank called her a name which ladies seldom apply to one another in
affection. In a moment the waiter brought her _croissants_ butter, jam
and coffee.

"Where's the cream, you fool?" she roared like a lioness at bay.

She began to eat. She ate gluttonously. The place was beginning to fill
up with bathers coming to enjoy a cocktail or two after having done
their duty by the sun and the sea. Presently Arrow strolled along with
Prince Roccamare. She had on a beautiful silk wrap which she held
tightly round her with one hand in order to look as slim as possible and
she bore her head high so that he should not see her double chin. She
was laughing gaily. She felt like a girl. He had just told her (in
Italian) that her eyes made the blue of the Mediterranean look like
pea-soup. He left her to go into the men's room to brush his sleek black
hair and they arranged to meet in five minutes for a drink. Arrow walked
on to the women's room to put a little more rouge on her cheeks and a
little more red on her lips. On her way she caught sight of Frank and
Beatrice. She stopped. She could hardly believe her eyes.

"My God!" she cried. "You beasts. You hogs." She seized a chair.
"Waiter."

Her appointment went clean out of her head. In the twinkling of an eye
the waiter was at her side.

"Bring me what these ladies are having," she ordered.

Frank lifted her great heavy head from her plate.

"Bring me some _pt de foie gras_," she boomed.

"Frank!" cried Beatrice.

"Shut up."

"All right. I'll have some too."

The coffee was brought and the hot rolls and cream and the _pt de foie
gras_ and they set to. They spread the cream on the _pt_ and they ate
it. They devoured great spoonfuls of jam. They crunched the delicious
crisp bread voluptuously. What was love to Arrow then? Let the Prince
keep his palace in Rome and his castle in the Apennines. They did not
speak. What they were about was much too serious. They ate with solemn,
ecstatic fervour.

"I haven't eaten potatoes for twenty-five years," said Frank in a
far-off brooding tone.

"Waiter," cried Beatrice, "bring fried potatoes for three."

"_Trs bien, Madame._"

The potatoes were brought. Not all the perfumes of Arabia smelt so
sweet. They ate them with their fingers.

"Bring me a dry Martini," said Arrow.

"You can't have a dry Martini in the middle of a meal, Arrow," said
Frank.

"Can't I? You wait and see."

"All right then. Bring me a double dry Martini," said Frank.

"Bring three double dry Martinis," said Beatrice.

They were brought and drunk at a gulp. The women looked at one another
and sighed. The misunderstandings of the last fortnight dissolved and
the sincere affection each had for the other welled up again in their
hearts. They could hardly believe that they had ever contemplated the
possibility of severing a friendship that had brought them so much solid
satisfaction. They finished the potatoes.

"I wonder if they've got any chocolate clairs," said Beatrice.

"Of course they have."

And of course they had. Frank thrust one whole into her huge mouth,
swallowed it and seized another, but before she ate it she looked at the
other two and plunged a vindictive dagger into the heart of the
monstrous Lena.

"You can say what you like, but the truth is she played a damned rotten
game of bridge, really."

"Lousy," agreed Arrow.

But Beatrice suddenly thought she would like a meringue.




THE FACTS OF LIFE


It was Henry Garnet's habit on leaving the city of an afternoon to drop
in at his club and play bridge before going home to dinner. He was a
pleasant man to play with. He knew the game well and you could be sure
that he would make the best of his cards. He was a good loser; and when
he won was more inclined to ascribe his success to his luck than to his
skill. He was indulgent, and if his partner made a mistake could be
trusted to find an excuse for him. It was surprising then on this
occasion to hear him telling his partner with unnecessary sharpness that
he had never seen a hand worse played; and it was more surprising still
to see him not only make a grave error himself, an error of which you
would never have thought him capable, but when his partner, not
unwilling to get a little of his own back, pointed it out, insist
against all reason and with considerable heat that he was perfectly
right. But they were all old friends, the men he was playing with, and
none of them took his ill-humour very seriously. Henry Garnet was a
broker, a partner in a firm of repute, and it occurred to one of them
that something had gone wrong with some stock he was interested in.

"How's the market to-day?" he asked.

"Booming. Even the suckers are making money."

It was evident that stocks and shares had nothing to do with Henry
Garnet's vexation; but something was the matter; that was evident too.
He was a hearty fellow, who enjoyed excellent health; he had plenty of
money; he was fond of his wife and devoted to his children. As a rule he
had high spirits, and he laughed easily at the nonsense they were apt to
talk while they played; but to-day he sat glum and silent. His brows
were crossly puckered and there was a sulky look about his mouth.
Presently, to ease the tension, one of the others mentioned a subject
upon which they all knew Henry Garnet was glad to speak.

"How's your boy, Henry? I see he's done pretty well in the tournament."

Henry Garnet's frown grew darker.

"He's done no better than I expected him to."

"When does he come back from Monte?"

"He got back last night."

"Did he enjoy himself?"

"I suppose so; all I know is that he made a damned fool of himself."

"Oh. How?"

"I'd rather not talk about it if you don't mind."

The three men looked at him with curiosity. Henry Garnet scowled at the
green baize.

"Sorry, old boy. Your call."

The game proceeded in a strained silence. Garnet got his bid, and when
he played his cards so badly that he went three down not a word was
said. Another rubber was begun and in the second game Garnet denied a
suit.

"Having none?" his partner asked him.

Garnet's irritability was such that he did not even reply, and when at
the end of the hand it appeared that he had revoked, and that his revoke
cost the rubber, it was not to be expected that his partner should let
his carelessness go without remark.

"What the devil's the matter with you, Henry?" he said. "You're playing
like a fool."

Garnet was disconcerted. He did not so much mind losing a big rubber
himself, but he was sore that his inattention should have made his
partner lose too. He pulled himself together.

"I'd better not play any more. I thought a few rubbers would calm me,
but the fact is I can't give my mind to the game. To tell you the truth
I'm in a hell of a temper."

They all burst out laughing.

"You don't have to tell us that, old boy. It's obvious."

Garnet gave them a rueful smile.

"Well, I bet you'd be in a temper if what's happened to me had happened
to you. As a matter of fact I'm in a damned awkward situation, and if
any of you fellows can give me any advice how to deal with it I'd be
grateful."

"Let's have a drink and you tell us all about it. With a K.C., a Home
Office official and an eminent surgeon--if we can't tell you how to deal
with a situation, nobody can."

The K.C. got up and rang the bell for a waiter.

"It's about that damned boy of mine," said Henry Garnet.

Drinks were ordered and brought. And this is the story that Henry Garnet
told them.

The boy of whom he spoke was his only son. His name was Nicholas and of
course he was called Nicky. He was eighteen. The Garnets had two
daughters besides, one of sixteen and the other of twelve, but however
unreasonable it seemed, for a father is generally supposed to like his
daughters best, and though he did all he could not to show his
preference, there was no doubt that the greater share of Henry Garnet's
affection was given to his son. He was kind, in a chaffing, casual way,
to his daughters, and gave them handsome presents on their birthdays and
at Christmas; but he doted on Nicky. Nothing was too good for him. He
thought the world of him. He could hardly take his eyes off him. You
could not blame him, for Nicky was a son that any parent might have been
proud of. He was six foot two, lithe but muscular, with broad shoulders
and a slim waist, and he held himself gallantly erect; he had a charming
head, well placed on the shoulders, with pale brown hair that waved
slightly, blue eyes with long dark lashes under well-marked eyebrows, a
full red mouth and a tanned, clean skin. When he smiled he showed very
regular and very white teeth. He was not shy, but there was a modesty in
his demeanour that was attractive. In social intercourse he was easy,
polite and quietly gay. He was the offspring of nice, healthy, decent
parents, he had been well brought up in a good home, he had been sent to
a good school, and the general result was as engaging a specimen of
young manhood as you were likely to find in a long time. You felt that
he was as honest, open and virtuous as he looked. He had never given his
parents a moment's uneasiness. As a child he was seldom ill and never
naughty. As a boy he did everything that was expected of him. His school
reports were excellent. He was wonderfully popular, and he ended his
career, with a creditable number of prizes, as head of the school and
captain of the football team. But this was not all. At the age of
fourteen Nicky had developed an unexpected gift for lawn tennis. This
was a game that his father not only was fond of, but played very well,
and when he discerned in the boy the promise of a tennis-player he
fostered it. During the holidays he had him taught by the best
professionals and by the time he was sixteen he had won a number of
tournaments for boys of his age. He could beat his father so badly that
only parental affection reconciled the older player to the poor show he
put up. At eighteen Nicky went to Cambridge and Henry Garnet conceived
the ambition that before he was through with the university he should
play for it. Nicky had all the qualifications for becoming a great
tennis-player. He was tall, he had a long reach, he was quick on his
feet and his timing was perfect. He realised instinctively where the
ball was coming and, seemingly without hurry, was there to take it. He
had a powerful serve, with a nasty break that made it difficult to
return, and his forehand drive, low, long and accurate, was deadly. He
was not so good on the backhand and his volleying was wild, but all
through the summer before he went to Cambridge Henry Garnet made him
work on these points under the best teacher in England. At the back of
his mind, though he did not even mention it to Nicky, he cherished a
further ambition, to see his son play at Wimbledon, and who could tell,
perhaps be chosen to represent his country in the Davis Cup. A great
lump came into Henry Garnet's throat as he saw in fancy his son leap
over the net to shake hands with the American champion whom he had just
defeated, and walk off the court to the deafening plaudits of the
multitude.

As an assiduous frequenter of Wimbledon Henry Garnet had a good many
friends in the tennis world, and one evening he found himself at a City
dinner sitting next to one of them, a Colonel Brabazon, and in due
course began talking to him of Nicky and what chance there might be of
his being chosen to play for his university during the following season.

"Why don't you let him go down to Monte Carlo and play in the spring
tournament there?" said the Colonel suddenly.

"Oh, I don't think he's good enough for that. He's not nineteen yet, he
only went up to Cambridge last October; he wouldn't stand a chance
against all those cracks."

"Of course, Austin and von Cramm and so on would knock spots off him,
but he might snatch a game or two; and if he got up against some of the
smaller fry there's no reason why he shouldn't win two or three matches.
He's never been up against any of the first-rate players and it would be
wonderful practice for him. He'd learn a lot more than he'll ever learn
in the seaside tournaments you enter him for."

"I wouldn't dream of it. I'm not going to let him leave Cambridge in the
middle of a term. I've always impressed upon him that tennis is only a
game and it mustn't interfere with work."

Colonel Brabazon asked Garnet when the term ended.

"That's all right. He'd only have to cut about three days. Surely that
could be arranged. You see, two of the men we were depending on have let
us down, and we're in a hole. We want to send as good a team as we can.
The Germans are sending their best players and so are the Americans."

"Nothing doing, old boy. In the first place Nicky's not good enough, and
secondly, I don't fancy the idea of sending a kid like that to Monte
Carlo without anyone to look after him. If I could get away myself I
might think of it, but that's out of the question."

"I shall be there. I'm going as the non-playing captain of the English
team. I'll keep an eye on him."

"You'll be busy, and besides, it's not a responsibility I'd like to ask
you to take. He's never been abroad in his life, and to tell you the
truth, I shouldn't have a moment's peace all the time he was there."

They left it at that and presently Henry Garnet went home. He was so
flattered by Colonel Brabazon's suggestion that he could not help
telling his wife.

"Fancy his thinking Nicky's as good as that. He told me he'd seen him
play and his style was fine. He only wants more practice to get into the
first flight. We shall see the kid playing in the semi-finals at
Wimbledon yet, old girl."

To his surprise Mrs. Garnet was not so much opposed to the notion as he
would have expected.

"After all the boy's eighteen. Nicky's never got into mischief yet and
there's no reason to suppose he will now."

"There's his work to be considered; don't forget that. I think it would
be a very bad precedent to let him cut the end of term."

"But what can three days matter? It seems a shame to rob him of a chance
like that. I'm sure he'd jump at it if you asked him."

"Well, I'm not going to. I haven't sent him to Cambridge just to play
tennis. I know he's steady, but it's silly to put temptation in his way.
He's much too young to go to Monte Carlo by himself."

"You say he won't have a chance against these crack players, but you
can't tell."

Henry Garnet sighed a little. On the way home in the car it had struck
him that Austin's health was uncertain and that von Cramm had his
off-days. Supposing, just for the sake of argument, that Nicky had a bit
of luck like that--then there would be no doubt that he would be chosen
to play for Cambridge. But of course that was all nonsense.

"Nothing doing, my dear. I've made up my mind and I'm not going to
change it."

Mrs. Garnet held her peace. But next day she wrote to Nicky, telling him
what had happened, and suggested to him what she would do in his place
if, wanting to go, he wished to get his father's consent. A day or two
later Henry Garnet received a letter from his son. He was bubbling over
with excitement. He had seen his tutor, who was a tennis-player himself,
and the Provost of his college, who happened to know Colonel Brabazon,
and no objection would be made to his leaving before the end of term;
they both thought it an opportunity that shouldn't be missed. He didn't
see what harm he could come to, and if only, just this once, his father
would stretch a point, well, next term, he promised faithfully, he'd
work like blazes. It was a very pretty letter. Mrs. Garnet watched her
husband read it at the breakfast table; she was undisturbed by the frown
on his face. He threw it over to her.

"I don't know why you thought it necessary to tell Nicky something I
told you in confidence. It's too bad of you. Now you've thoroughly
unsettled him."

"I'm sorry. I thought it would please him to know that Colonel Brabazon
had such a high opinion of him. I don't see why one should only tell
people the disagreeable things that are said about them. Of course I
made it quite clear that there could be no question of his going."

"You've put me in an odious position. If there's anything I hate it's
for the boy to look upon me as a spoil-sport and a tyrant."

"Oh, he'll never do that. He may think you rather silly and
unreasonable, but I'm sure he'll understand that it's only for his own
good that you're being so unkind."

"Christ," said Henry Garnet.

His wife had a great inclination to laugh. She knew the battle was won.
Dear, oh dear, how easy it was to get men to do what you wanted. For
appearance sake Henry Garnet held out for forty-eight hours, but then he
yielded, and a fortnight later Nicky came to London. He was to start for
Monte Carlo next morning, and after dinner, when Mrs. Garnet and her
elder daughter had left them, Henry took the opportunity to give his son
some good advice.

"I don't feel quite comfortable about letting you go off to a place like
Monte Carlo at your age practically by yourself," he finished, "but
there it is and I can only hope you'll be sensible. I don't want to play
the heavy father, but there are three things especially that I want to
warn you against: one is gambling, don't gamble; the second is money,
don't lend anyone money; and the third is women, don't have anything to
do with women. If you don't do any of those three things you can't come
to much harm, so remember them well."

"All right, father," Nicky smiled.

"That's my last word to you. I know the world pretty well and believe
me, my advice is sound."

"I won't forget it. I promise you."

"That's a good chap. Now let's go up and join the ladies."

Nicky beat neither Austin nor von Cramm in the Monte Carlo tournament,
but he did not disgrace himself. He snatched an unexpected victory over
a Spanish player and gave one of the Austrians a closer match than
anyone had thought possible. In the mixed doubles he got into the
semi-finals. His charm conquered everyone and he vastly enjoyed himself.
It was generally allowed that he showed promise, and Colonel Brabazon
told him that when he was a little older and had had more practice with
first-class players he would be a credit to his father. The tournament
came to an end and the day following he was to fly back to London.
Anxious to play his best he had lived very carefully, smoking little and
drinking nothing, and going to bed early; but on his last evening he
thought he would like to see something of the life in Monte Carlo of
which he had heard so much. An official dinner was given to the
tennis-players and after dinner with the rest of them he went into the
Sporting Club. It was the first time he had been there. Monte Carlo was
very full and the rooms were crowded. Nicky had never before seen
roulette played except in the pictures; in a maze he stopped at the
first table he came to; chips of different sizes were scattered over the
green cloth in what looked like a hopeless muddle; the croupier gave the
wheel a sharp turn and with a flick threw in the little white ball.
After what seemed an endless time the ball stopped and another croupier
with a broad, indifferent gesture raked in the chips of those who had
lost.

Presently Nicky wandered over to where they were playing _trente et
quarante_, but he couldn't understand what it was all about and he
thought it dull. He saw a crowd in another room and sauntered in. A big
game of baccara was in progress and he was immediately conscious of the
tension. The players were protected from the thronging bystanders by a
brass rail; they sat round the table, nine on each side, with the dealer
in the middle and the croupier facing him. Big money was changing hands.
The dealer was a member of the Greek Syndicate. Nicky looked at his
impassive face. His eyes were watchful, but his expression never changed
whether he won or lost. It was a terrifying, strangely impressive sight.
It gave Nicky, who had been thriftily brought up, a peculiar thrill to
see someone risk a thousand pounds on the turn of a card and when he
lost make a little joke and laugh. It was all terribly exciting. An
acquaintance came up to him.

"Been doing any good?" he asked.

"I haven't been playing."

"Wise of you. Rotten game. Come and have a drink."

"All right."

While they were having it Nicky told his friends that this was the first
time he had ever been in the rooms.

"Oh, but you must have one little flutter before you go. It's idiotic to
leave Monte without having tried your luck. After all it won't hurt you
to lose a hundred francs or so."

"I don't suppose it will, but my father wasn't any too keen on my coming
at all and one of the three things he particularly advised me not to do
was to gamble."

But when Nicky left his companion he strolled back to one of the tables
where they were playing roulette. He stood for a while looking at the
losers' money being raked-in by the croupier and the money that was won
paid out to the winners. It was impossible to deny that it was
thrilling. His friend was right, it did seem silly to leave Monte
without putting something on the table just once. It would be an
experience, and at his age you had to have all the experience you could
get. He reflected that he hadn't promised his father not to gamble, he'd
promised him not to forget his advice. It wasn't quite the same, was it?
He took a hundred-franc note out of his pocket and rather shyly put it
on number eighteen. He chose it because that was his age. With a wildly
beating heart he watched the wheel turn; the little white ball whizzed
about like a small demon of mischief; the wheel went round more slowly,
the little white ball hesitated, it seemed about to stop, it went on
again; Nicky could hardly believe his eyes when it fell into number
eighteen. A lot of chips were passed over to him and his hands trembled
as he took them. It seemed to amount to a lot of money. He was so
confused that he never thought of putting anything on the following
round; in fact he had no intention of playing any more, once was enough;
and he was surprised when eighteen again came up. There was only one
chip on it.

"By George, you've won again," said a man who was standing near to him.

"Me? I hadn't got anything on."

"Yes, you had. Your original stake. They always leave it on unless you
ask for it back. Didn't you know?"

Another packet of chips was handed over to him. Nicky's head reeled. He
counted his gains: seven thousand francs. A queer sense of power seized
him; he felt wonderfully clever. This was the easiest way of making
money that he had ever heard of. His frank, charming face was wreathed
in smiles. His bright eyes met those of a woman standing by his side.
She smiled.

"You're in luck," she said.

She spoke English, but with a foreign accent.

"I can hardly believe it. It's the first time I've ever played."

"That explains it. Lend me a thousand francs, will you? I've lost
everything I've got. I'll give it you back in half an hour."

"All right."

She took a large red chip from his pile and with a word of thanks
disappeared. The man who had spoken to him before grunted.

"You'll never see that again."

Nicky was dashed. His father had particularly advised him not to lend
anyone money. What a silly thing to do! And to somebody he'd never seen
in his life. But the fact was, he felt at that moment such a love for
the human race that it had never occurred to him to refuse. And that big
red chip, it was almost impossible to realise that it had any value. Oh
well, it didn't matter, he still had six thousand francs, he'd just try
his luck once or twice more and if he didn't win he'd go home. He put a
chip on sixteen, which was his elder sister's age, but it didn't come
up; then on twelve, which was his younger sister's, and that didn't come
up either; he tried various numbers at random, but without success. It
was funny, he seemed to have lost his knack. He thought he would try
just once more and then stop; he won. He had made up all his losses and
had something over. At the end of an hour, after various ups and downs,
having experienced such thrills as he had never known in his life, he
found himself with so many chips that they would hardly go in his
pockets. He decided to go. He went to the changers' office and he gasped
when twenty thousand-franc notes were spread out before him. He had
never had so much money in his life. He put it in his pocket and was
turning away when the woman to whom he had lent the thousand francs came
up to him.

"I've been looking for you everywhere," she said. "I was afraid you'd
gone. I was in a fever, I didn't know what you'd think of me. Here's
your thousand francs and thank you so much for the loan."

Nicky, blushing scarlet, stared at her with amazement. How he had
misjudged her! His father had said, don't gamble; well, he had, and he'd
made twenty thousand francs; and his father had said, don't lend anyone
money; well, he had, he'd lent quite a lot to a total stranger, and
she'd returned it. The fact was that he wasn't nearly such a fool as his
father thought: he'd had an instinct that he could lend her the money
with safety, and you see, his instinct was right. But he was so
obviously taken aback that the little lady was forced to laugh.

"What is the matter with you?" she asked.

"To tell you the truth I never expected to see the money back."

"What did you take me for? Did you think I was a--cocotte?"

Nicky reddened to the roots of his wavy hair.

"No, of course not."

"Do I look like one?"

"Not a bit."

She was dressed very quietly, in black, with a string of gold beads
round her neck; her simple frock showed off a neat, slight figure; she
had a pretty little face and a trim head. She was made up, but not
excessively, and Nicky supposed that she was not more than three or four
years older than himself. She gave him a friendly smile.

"My husband is in the administration in Morocco, and I've come to Monte
Carlo for a few weeks because he thought I wanted a change."

"I was just going," said Nicky because he couldn't think of anything
else to say.

"Already!"

"Well, I've got to get up early to-morrow. I'm going back to London by
air."

"Of course. The tournament ended to-day, didn't it? I saw you play, you
know, two or three times."

"Did you? I don't know why you should have noticed me."

"You've got a beautiful style. And you looked very sweet in your
shorts."

Nicky was not an immodest youth, but it did cross his mind that perhaps
she had borrowed that thousand francs in order to scrape acquaintance
with him.

"Do you ever go to the Knickerbocker?" she asked.

"No. I never have."

"Oh, but you mustn't leave Monte Carlo without having been there. Why
don't you come and dance a little? To tell you the truth, I'm starving
with hunger and I should adore some bacon and eggs."

Nicky remembered his father's advice not to have anything to do with
women, but this was different; you had only to look at the pretty little
thing to know at once that she was perfectly respectable. Her husband
was in what corresponded, he supposed, to the Civil Service. His father
and mother had friends who were Civil Servants and they and their wives
sometimes came to dinner. It was true that the wives were neither so
young nor so pretty as this one, but she was just as ladylike as they
were. And after winning twenty thousand francs he thought it wouldn't be
a bad idea to have a little fun.

"I'd love to go with you," he said. "But you won't mind if I don't stay
very long. I've left instructions at my hotel that I'm to be called at
seven."

"We'll leave as soon as ever you like."

Nicky found it very pleasant at the Knickerbocker. He ate his bacon and
eggs with appetite. They shared a bottle of champagne. They danced, and
the little lady told him he danced beautifully. He knew he danced pretty
well, and of course she was easy to dance with. As light as a feather.
She laid her cheek against his and when their eyes met there was in hers
a smile that made his heart go pit-a-pat. A coloured woman sang in a
throaty, sensual voice. The floor was crowded.

"Have you ever been told that you're very good-looking?" she asked.

"I don't think so," he laughed. "Gosh," he thought, "I believe she's
fallen for me."

Nicky was not such a fool as to be unaware that women often liked him,
and when she made that remark he pressed her to him a little more
closely. She closed her eyes and a faint sigh escaped her lips.

"I suppose it wouldn't be quite nice if I kissed you before all these
people," he said.

"What do you think they would take me for?"

It began to grow late and Nicky said that really he thought he ought to
be going.

"I shall go too," she said. "Will you drop me at my hotel on your way?"

Nicky paid the bill. He was rather surprised at its amount, but with all
that money he had in his pocket he could afford not to care, and they
got into a taxi. She snuggled up to him and he kissed her. She seemed to
like it.

"By Jove," he thought, "I wonder if there's anything doing."

It was true that she was a married woman, but her husband was in
Morocco, and it certainly did look as if she'd fallen for him. Good and
proper. It was true also that his father had warned him to have nothing
to do with women, but, he reflected again, he hadn't actually promised
he wouldn't, he'd only promised not to forget his advice. Well, he
hadn't; he was bearing it in mind that very minute. But circumstances
alter cases. She was a sweet little thing; it seemed silly to miss the
chance of an adventure when it was handed to you like that on a tray.
When they reached the hotel he paid off the taxi.

"I'll walk home," he said. "The air will do me good after the stuffy
atmosphere of that place."

"Come up a moment," she said. "I'd like to show you the photo of my
little boy."

"Oh, have you got a little boy?" he exclaimed, a trifle dashed.

"Yes, a sweet little boy."

He walked upstairs after her. He didn't in the least want to see the
photograph of her little boy, but he thought it only civil to pretend he
did. He was afraid he'd made a fool of himself; it occurred to him that
she was taking him up to look at the photograph in order to show him in
a nice way that he'd made a mistake. He'd told her he was eighteen.

"I suppose she thinks I'm just a kid."

He began to wish he hadn't spent all that money on champagne at the
night-club.

But she didn't show him the photograph of her little boy after all. They
had no sooner got into her room than she turned to him, flung her arms
round his neck, and kissed him full on the lips. He had never in all his
life been kissed so passionately.

"Darling," she said.

For a brief moment his father's advice once more crossed Nicky's mind
and then he forgot it.

****

Nicky was a light sleeper and the least sound was apt to wake him. Two
or three hours later he awoke and for a moment could not imagine where
he was. The room was not quite dark, for the door of the bathroom was
ajar, and the light in it had been left on. Suddenly he was conscious
that someone was moving about the room. Then he remembered. He saw that
it was his little friend, and he was on the point of speaking when
something in the way she was behaving stopped him. She was walking very
cautiously, as though she were afraid of waking him; she stopped once or
twice and looked over at the bed. He wondered what she was after. He
soon saw. She went over to the chair on which he had placed his clothes
and once more looked in his direction. She waited for what seemed to him
an interminable time. The silence was so intense that Nicky thought he
could hear his own heart beating. Then, very slowly, very quietly, she
took up his coat, slipped her hand into the inside pocket and drew out
all those beautiful thousand-franc notes that Nicky had been so proud to
win. She put the coat back and placed some other clothes on it so that
it should look as though it had not been disturbed, then, with the
bundle of notes in her hand, for an appreciable time stood once more
stock-still. Nicky had repressed an instinctive impulse to jump up and
grab her, it was partly surprise that had kept him quiet, partly the
notion that he was in a strange hotel, in a foreign country, and if he
made a row he didn't know what might happen. She looked at him. His eyes
were partly closed and he was sure that she thought he was asleep. In
the silence she could hardly fail to hear his regular breathing. When
she had reassured herself that her movements had not disturbed him she
stepped, with infinite caution, across the room. On a small table in the
window a cineraria was growing in a pot. Nicky watched her now with his
eyes wide open. The plant was evidently placed quite loosely in the pot,
for taking it by the stalks she lifted it out; she put the banknotes in
the bottom of the pot and replaced the plant. It was an excellent
hiding-place. No one could have guessed that anything was concealed
under that richly-flowering plant. She pressed the earth down with her
fingers and then, very slowly, taking care not to make the smallest
noise, crept across the room, and slipped back into bed.

"Chri," she said, in a caressing voice.

Nicky breathed steadily, like a man immersed in deep sleep. The little
lady turned over on her side and disposed herself to slumber. But though
Nicky lay so still his thoughts worked busily. He was extremely
indignant at the scene he had just witnessed, and to himself he spoke
his thoughts with vigour.

"She's nothing but a damned tart. She and her dear little boy and her
husband in Morocco. My eye! She's a rotten thief, that's what she is.
Took me for a mug. If she thinks she's going to get away with anything
like that, she's mistaken."

He had already made up his mind what he was going to do with the money
he had so cleverly won. He had long wanted a car of his own, and had
thought it rather mean of his father not to have given him one. After
all, a feller doesn't always want to drive about in the family bus.
Well, he'd just teach the old man a lesson and buy one himself. For
twenty thousand francs, two hundred pounds roughly, he could get a very
decent second-hand car. He meant to get the money back, but just then he
didn't quite know how. He didn't like the idea of kicking up a row, he
was a stranger, in an hotel he knew nothing of; it might very well be
that the beastly woman had friends there, he didn't mind facing anyone
in a fair fight, but he'd look pretty foolish if someone pulled a gun on
him. He reflected besides, very sensibly, that he had no proof the money
was his. If it came to a showdown and she swore it was hers, he might
very easily find himself hauled off to a police-station. He really
didn't know what to do. Presently by her regular breathing he knew that
the little lady was asleep. She must have fallen asleep with an easy
mind, for she had done her job without a hitch. It infuriated Nicky that
she should rest so peacefully while he lay awake worried to death.
Suddenly an idea occurred to him. It was such a good one that it was
only by the exercise of all his self-control that he prevented himself
from jumping out of bed and carrying it out at once. Two could play at
her game. She'd stolen his money; well, he'd steal it back again, and
they'd be all square. He made up his mind to wait quite quietly until he
was sure that deceitful woman was sound asleep. He waited for what
seemed to him a very long time. She did not stir. Her breathing was as
regular as a child's.

"Darling," he said at last.

No answer. No movement. She was dead to the world. Very slowly, pausing
after every movement, very silently, he slipped out of bed. He stood
still for a while, looking at her to see whether he had disturbed her.
Her breathing was as regular as before. During the time he was waiting
he had taken note carefully of the furniture in the room so that in
crossing it he should not knock against a chair or a table and make a
noise. He took a couple of steps and waited, he took a couple of steps
more; he was very light on his feet and made no sound as he walked; he
took fully five minutes to get to the window, and here he waited again.
He started, for the bed slightly creaked, but it was only because the
sleeper turned in her sleep. He forced himself to wait till he had
counted one hundred. She was sleeping like a log. With infinite care he
seized the cineraria by the stalks and gently pulled it out of the pot;
he put his other hand in, his heart beat nineteen to the dozen as his
fingers touched the notes, his hand closed on them and he slowly drew
them out. He replaced the plant and in his turn carefully pressed down
the earth. While he was doing all this he had kept one eye on the form
lying in the bed. It remained still. After another pause he crept softly
to the chair on which his clothes were lying. He first put the bundle of
notes in his coat pocket and then proceeded to dress. It took him a good
quarter of an hour, because he could afford to make no sound. He had
been wearing a soft shirt with his dinner jacket, and he congratulated
himself on this, because it was easier to put on silently than a stiff
one. He had some difficulty in tying his tie without a looking-glass,
but he very wisely reflected that it didn't really matter if it wasn't
tied very well. His spirits were rising. The whole thing now began to
seem rather a lark. At length he was completely dressed except for his
shoes, which he took in his hand; he thought he would put them on when
he got into the passage. Now he had to cross the room to get to the
door. He reached it so quietly that he could not have disturbed the
lightest sleeper. But the door had to be unlocked. He turned the key
very slowly; it creaked.

"Who's that?"

The little woman suddenly sat up in bed. Nicky's heart jumped to his
mouth. He made a great effort to keep his head.

"It's only me. It's six o'clock and I've got to go. I was trying not to
wake you."

"Oh, I forgot."

She sank back on to the pillow.

"Now that you're awake I'll put on my shoes."

He sat down on the edge of the bed and did this.

"Don't make a noise when you go out. The hotel people don't like it. Oh,
I'm so sleepy."

"You go right off to sleep again."

"Kiss me before you go." He bent down and kissed her. "You're a sweet
boy and a wonderful lover. _Bon voyage._"

Nicky did not feel quite safe till he got out of the hotel. The dawn had
broken. The sky was unclouded, and in the harbour the yachts and the
fishing-boats lay motionless on the still water. On the quay fishermen
were getting ready to start on their day's work. The streets were
deserted. Nicky took a long breath of the sweet morning air. He felt
alert and well. He also felt as pleased as Punch. With a swinging
stride, his shoulders well thrown back, he walked up the hill and along
the gardens in front of the Casino--the flowers in that clear light had
a dewy brilliance that was delicious--till he came to his hotel. Here
the day had already begun. In the hall porters with mufflers round their
necks and berets on their heads were busy sweeping. Nicky went up to his
room and had a hot bath. He lay in it and thought with satisfaction that
he was not such a mug as some people might think. After his bath he did
his exercises, dressed, packed and went down to breakfast. He had a
grand appetite. No continental breakfast for him! He had grape-fruit,
porridge, bacon and eggs, rolls fresh from the oven, so crisp and
delicious they melted in your mouth, marmalade and three cups of coffee.
Though feeling perfectly well before, he felt better after that. He lit
the pipe he had recently learnt to smoke, paid his bill and stepped into
the car that was waiting to take him to the aerodrome on the other side
of Cannes. The road as far as Nice ran over the hills and below him was
the blue sea and the coast-line. He couldn't help thinking it damned
pretty. They passed through Nice, so gay and friendly in the early
morning, and presently they came to a long stretch of straight road that
ran by the sea. Nicky had paid his bill, not with the money he had won
the night before, but with the money his father had given him; he had
changed a thousand francs to pay for supper at the Knickerbocker, but
that deceitful little woman had returned him the thousand francs he had
lent her, so that he still had twenty thousand-franc notes in his
pocket. He thought he would like to have a look at them. He had so
nearly lost them that they had a double value for him. He took them out
of his hip-pocket into which for safety's sake he had stuffed them when
he put on the suit he was travelling in, and counted them one by one.
Something very strange had happened to them. Instead of there being
twenty notes as there should have been there were twenty-six. He
couldn't understand it at all. He counted them twice more. There was no
doubt about it; somehow or other he had twenty-six thousand francs
instead of the twenty be should have had. He couldn't make it out. He
asked himself if it was possible that he had won more at the Sporting
Club than he had realised. But no, that was out of the question; he
distinctly remembered the man at the desk laying the notes out in four
rows of five, and he had counted them himself. Suddenly the explanation
occurred to him; when he had put his hand into the flower-pot, after
taking out the cineraria, he had grabbed everything he felt there. The
flower-pot was the little hussy's money-box and he had taken out not
only his own money, but her savings as well. Nicky leant back in the car
and burst into a roar of laughter. It was the funniest thing he had ever
heard in his life. And when he thought of her going to the flower-pot
some time later in the morning when she awoke, expecting to find the
money she had so cleverly got away with, and finding, not only that it
wasn't there, but that her own had gone too, he laughed more than ever.
And so far as he was concerned there was nothing to do about it; he
neither knew her name, nor the name of the hotel to which she had taken
him. He couldn't return her money even if he wanted to.

"It serves her damned well right," he said.

****

This then was the story that Henry Garnet told his friends over the
bridge-table, for the night before, after dinner when his wife and
daughter had left them to their port, Nicky had narrated it in full.

"And you know what infuriated me is that he's so damned pleased with
himself. Talk of a cat swallowing a canary. And d'you know what he said
to me when he'd finished? He looked at me with those innocent eyes of
his and said: 'You know, father, I can't help thinking there was
something wrong about the advice you gave me. You said, don't gamble;
well, I did, and I made a packet; you said, don't lend money; well, I
did, and I got it back; and you said, don't have anything to do with
women; well, I did, and I made six thousand francs on the deal.'"

It didn't make it any better for Henry Garnet that his three companions
burst out laughing.

"It's all very well for you fellows to laugh, but you know, I'm in a
damned awkward position. The boy looked up to me, he respected me, he
took whatever I said as gospel truth, and now, I saw it in his eyes, he
just looks upon me as a drivelling old fool. It's no good my saying one
swallow doesn't make a summer; he doesn't see that it was just a fluke,
he thinks the whole thing was due to his own cleverness. It may ruin
him."

"You do look a bit of a damned fool, old man," said one of the others.
"There's no denying that, is there?"

"I know I do, and I don't like it. It's so dashed unfair. Fate has no
right to play one tricks like that. After all, you must admit that my
advice was good."

"Very good."

"And the wretched boy ought to have burnt his fingers. Well, he hasn't.
You're all men of the world, you tell me how I'm to deal with the
situation now."

But they none of them could.

"Well, Henry, if I were you I wouldn't worry," said the lawyer. "My
belief is that your boy's born lucky, and in the long run that's better
than to be born clever or rich."




GIGOLO AND GIGOLETTE


The bar was crowded. Sandy Westcott had had a couple of cocktails and he
was beginning to feel hungry. He looked at his watch. He had been asked
to dinner at half-past nine and it was nearly ten. Eva Barrett was
always late and he would be lucky if he got anything to eat by
ten-thirty. He turned to the barman to order another cocktail and caught
sight of a man who at that moment came up to the bar.

"Hullo, Cotman," he said. "Have a drink?"

"I don't mind if I do, sir."

Cotman was a nice-looking fellow, of thirty perhaps, short, but with so
good a figure that he did not look it, very smartly dressed in a
double-breasted dinner jacket, a little too much waisted, and a
butterfly tie a good deal too large. He had a thick mat of black, wavy
hair, very sleek and shiny, brushed straight back from his forehead, and
large flashing eyes. He spoke with great refinement, but with a Cockney
accent.

"How's Stella?" asked Sandy.

"Oh, she's all right. Likes to have a lay-down before the show, you
know. Steadies the old nerves, she says."

"I wouldn't do that stunt of hers for a thousand pounds."

"I don't suppose you would. No one can do it but her, not from that
height, I mean, and only five foot of water."

"It's the most sick-making thing I've ever seen."

Cotman gave a little laugh. He took this as a compliment. Stella was his
wife. Of course she did the trick and took the risk, but it was he who
had thought of the flames, and it was the flames that had taken the
public fancy and made the turn the huge success it was. Stella dived
into a tank from the top of a ladder sixty feet high, and as he said,
there were only five feet of water in the tank. Just before she dived
they poured enough petrol on to cover the surface and he set it alight;
the flames soared up and she dived straight into them.

"Paco Espinel tells me it's the biggest draw the Casino has ever had,"
said Sandy.

"I know. He told me they'd served as many dinners in July as they
generally do in August. And that's you, he says to me."

"Well, I hope you're making a packet."

"Well, I can't exactly say that. You see, we've got our contract and
naturally we didn't know it was going to be a riot, but Mr. Espinel's
talking of booking us for next month, and I don't mind telling you he's
not going to get us on the same terms or anything like it. Why, I had a
letter from an agent only this morning saying they wanted us to go to
Deauville."

"Here are my people," said Sandy.

He nodded to Cotman and left him. Eva Barrett sailed in with the rest of
her guests. She had gathered them together downstairs. It was a party of
eight.

"I knew we should find you here, Sandy," she said. "I'm not late, am I?"

"Only half an hour."

"Ask them what cocktails they want and then we'll dine."

While they were standing at the bar, emptying now, for nearly everyone
had gone down to the terrace for dinner, Paco Espinel passed through and
stopped to shake hands with Eva Barrett. Paco Espinel was a young man
who had run through his money and now made his living by arranging the
turns with which the Casino sought to attract visitors. It was his duty
to be civil to the rich and great. Mrs. Chaloner Barrett was an American
widow of vast wealth; she not only entertained expensively, but also
gambled. And after all, the dinners and suppers and the two cabaret
shows that accompanied them were only provided to induce people to lose
their money at the tables.

"Got a good table for me, Paco?" said Eva Barrett.

"The best." His eyes, fine, dark Argentine eyes, expressed his
admiration of Mrs. Barrett's opulent, ageing charms. This also was
business. "You've seen Stella?"

"Of course. Three times. It's the most terrifying thing I've ever seen."

"Sandy comes every night."

"I want to be in at the death. She's bound to kill herself one of these
nights and I don't want to miss that if I can help it."

Paco laughed.

"She's been such a success, we're going to keep her on another month.
All I ask is that she shouldn't kill herself till the end of August.
After that she can do as she likes."

"Oh, God, have I got to go on eating trout and roast chicken every night
till the end of August?" cried Sandy.

"You brute, Sandy," said Eva Barrett. "Come on, let's go in to dinner.
I'm starving."

Paco Espinel asked the barman if he'd seen Cotman. The barman said he'd
had a drink with Mr. Westcott.

"Oh, well, if he comes in here again, tell him I want a word with him."

Mrs. Barrett paused at the top of the steps that led down to the terrace
long enough for the Press representative, a little haggard woman with an
untidy head, to come up with her note-book. Sandy whispered the names of
the guests. It was a representative Riviera party. There was an English
Lord and his Lady, long and lean both of them, who were prepared to dine
with anyone who would give them a free meal. They were certain to be as
tight as drums before midnight. There was a gaunt Scotch woman, with a
face like a Peruvian mask that has been battered by the storms of ten
centuries, and her English husband. Though a broker by profession, he
was bluff, military and hearty. He gave you an impression of such
integrity that you were almost more sorry for him than for yourself when
the good thing he had put you on to as a special favour turned out to be
a dud. There was an Italian countess who was neither Italian nor a
countess, but played a beautiful game of bridge, and there was a Russian
prince who was ready to make Mrs. Barrett a princess and in the meantime
sold champagne, motor-cars and Old Masters on commission. A dance was in
progress and Mrs. Barrett, waiting for it to end, surveyed with a look
which her short upper lip made scornful the serried throng on the dance
floor. It was a gala night and the dining tables were crowded together.
Beyond the terrace the sea was calm and silent. The music stopped and
the head waiter, affably smiling, came up to guide her to her table. She
swept down the steps with majestic gait.

"We shall have quite a good view of the dive," she said as she sat down.

"I like to be next door to the tank," said Sandy, "so that I can see her
face."

"Is she pretty?" asked the Countess.

"It's not that. It's the expression of her eyes. She's scared to death
every time she does it."

"Oh, I don't believe that," said the City gentleman, Colonel Goodhart by
name, though no one had ever discovered how he came by the title. "I
mean, the whole bally stunt's only a trick. There's no danger really, I
mean."

"You don't know what you're talking about. Diving from that height in as
little water as that, she's got to turn like a flash the moment she
touches the water. And if she doesn't do it right she's bound to bash
her head against the bottom and break her back."

"That's just what I'm telling you, old boy," said the Colonel, "it's a
trick. I mean, there's no argument."

"If there's no danger there's nothing to it, anyway," said Eva Barrett.
"It's over in a minute. Unless she's risking her life it's the biggest
fraud of modern times. Don't say we've come to see this over and over
again and it's only a fake."

"Pretty well everything is. You can take my word for that."

"Well, you ought to know," said Sandy.

If it occurred to the Colonel that this might be a nasty dig he
admirably concealed it. He laughed.

"I don't mind saying I know a thing or two," he admitted. "I mean, I've
got my eyes peeled all right. You can't put much over on me."

The tank was on the far left of the terrace, and behind it, supported by
stays, was an immensely tall ladder at the top of which was a tiny
platform. After two or three dances more, when Eva Barrett's party were
eating asparagus, the music stopped and the lights were lowered. A spot
was turned on the tank, Cotman was visible in the brilliance. He
ascended half a dozen steps so that he was on a level with the top of
the tank.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he cried out, in a loud clear voice, "you are
now going to see the most marvellous feat of the century. Madam Stella,
the greatest diver in the world, is about to dive from a height of sixty
feet into a lake of flames five foot deep. This is a feat that has never
been performed before, and Madam Stella is prepared to give one hundred
pounds to anyone who will attempt it. Ladies and gentlemen, I have the
honour to present Madam Stella."

A little figure appeared at the top of the steps that led on to the
terrace, ran quickly up to the tank, and bowed to the applauding
audience. She wore a man's silk dressing-gown and on her head a
bathing-cap. Her thin face was made up as if for the stage. The Italian
countess looked at her through her _face--main_.

"Not pretty," she said.

"Good figure," said Eva Barrett. "You'll see."

Stella slipped out of her dressing-gown and gave it to Cotman. He went
down the steps. She stood for a moment and looked at the crowd. They
were in darkness and she could only see vague white faces and white
shirt-fronts. She was small, beautifully made, with legs long for her
body and slim hips. Her bathing costume was very scanty.

"You're quite right about the figure, Eva," said the Colonel. "Bit
undeveloped, of course, but I know you girls think that's quite the
thing."

Stella began to climb the ladder and the spot-light followed her. It
seemed an incredible height. An attendant poured petrol on the surface
of the water. Cotman was handed a flaming torch. He watched Stella reach
the top of the ladder and settle herself on the platform.

"Ready?" he cried.

"Yes."

"Go," he shouted.

And as he shouted he seemed to plunge the burning torch into the water.
The flames sprang up, leaping high, and really terrifying to look at. At
the same moment Stella dived. She came down like a streak of lightning
and plunged through the flames, which subsided a moment after she had
reached the water. A second later she was at the surface and jumped out
to a roar, a storm of applause. Cotman wrapped the dressing-gown round
her. She bowed and bowed. The applause went on. Music struck up. With a
final wave of the hand she ran down the steps and between the tables to
the door. The lights went up and the waiters hurried along with their
neglected service.

Sandy Westcott gave a sigh. He did not know whether he was disappointed
or relieved.

"Top hole," said the English peer.

"It's a bally fake," said the Colonel, with his British pertinacity.
"I'll bet you anything you like."

"It's over so quickly," said her English ladyship, "I mean, you don't
get your money's worth really."

Anyhow it wasn't her money. That it never was. The Italian countess
leaned forward. She spoke fluent English, but with a strong accent.

"Eva, my darling, who are those extraordinary people at the table near
the door under the balcony?"

"Packet of fun, aren't they?" said Sandy. "I simply haven't been able to
take my eyes off them."

Eva Barrett glanced at the table the Countess indicated, and the Prince,
who sat with his back to it, turned round to look.

"They can't be true," cried Eva. "I must ask Angelo who they are."

Mrs. Barrett was the sort of woman who knew the head waiters of all the
principal restaurants in Europe by their first names. She told the
waiter who was at that moment filling her glass to send Angelo to her.

It was certainly an odd pair. They were sitting by themselves at a small
table. They were very old. The man was big and stout, with a mass of
white hair, great bushy white eyebrows and an enormous white moustache.
He looked like the late King Humbert of Italy, but much more like a
king. He sat bolt upright. He wore full evening dress, with a white tie
and a collar that has been out of fashion for hard on thirty years. His
companion was a little old lady in a black satin ball dress, cut very
low and tight at the waist. Round her neck were several chains of
coloured beads. She wore what was obviously a wig, and a very
ill-fitting one at that; it was very elaborate, all curls and sausages,
and raven black. She was outrageously made-up, bright blue under the
eyes and on the eyelids, the eyebrows heavily black, a great patch of
very pink rouge on each cheek and the lips a livid scarlet. The skin
hung loosely on her face in deep wrinkles. She had large bold eyes and
they darted eagerly from table to table. She was taking everything in,
and every other minute called the old man's attention to someone or
other. The appearance of the couple was so fantastic in that fashionable
crowd, the men in dinner jackets, the women in thin, pale-coloured
frocks, that many eyes were turned on them. The staring did not seem to
incommode the old lady. When she felt certain persons were looking at
her she raised her eyebrows archly, smiled and rolled her eyes. She
seemed on the point of acknowledging applause.

Angelo hurried up to the good customer that Eva Barrett was.

"You wished to see me, my lady?"

"Oh, Angelo, we're simply dying to know who those absolutely marvellous
people are at the next table to the door."

Angelo gave a look and then assumed a deprecating air. The expression of
his face, the movement of his shoulders, the turn of his spine, the
gesture of his hands, probably even the twiddle of his toes, all
indicated a half-humorous apology.

"You must overlook them, my lady." He knew of course that Mrs. Barrett
had no right to be thus addressed, just as he knew that the Italian
countess was neither Italian nor a countess and that the English lord
never paid for a drink if anyone else would pay for it, but he also knew
that to be thus addressed did not displease her. "They begged me to give
them a table because they wanted to see Madame Stella do her dive. They
were in the profession themselves once. I know they're not the sort of
people one expects to see dining here, but they made such a point of it
I simply hadn't the heart to refuse."

"But I think they're a perfect scream. I adore them."

"I've known them for many years. The man indeed is a compatriot of
mine." The head waiter gave a condescending little laugh. "I told them
I'd give them a table on the condition that they didn't dance. I wasn't
taking any risks, my lady."

"Oh, but I should have loved to see them dance."

"One has to draw the line somewhere, my lady," said Angelo gravely.

He smiled, bowed again and withdrew.

"Look," cried Sandy, "they're going."

The funny old couple were paying their bill. The old man got up and put
round his wife's neck a large white, but not too clean, feather boa. She
rose. He gave her his arm, holding himself very erect, and she, small in
comparison, tripped out beside him. Her black satin dress had a long
train, and Eva Barrett (who was well over fifty) screamed with joy.

"Look, I remember my mother wearing a dress like that when I was in the
school-room."

The comic pair walked, still arm in arm, through the spacious rooms of
the Casino till they came to the door. The old man addressed a
commissionaire.

"Be so good as to direct me to the artistes' dressing-rooms. We wish to
pay our respects to Madame Stella."

The commissionaire gave them a look and summed them up. They were not
people with whom it was necessary to be very polite.

"You won't find her there."

"She has not gone? I thought she gave a second performance at two?"

"That's true. They might be in the bar."

"It won't 'urt us just to go an' 'ave a look, Carlo," said the old lady.

"Right-o, my love," he answered with a great roll of the R.

They walked slowly up the great stairs and entered the bar. It was empty
but for the deputy-barman and a couple sitting in two arm-chairs in the
corner. The old lady released her husband's arm and tripped up with
outstretched hands.

"'Ow are you, dear? I felt I just 'ad to come and congratulate you,
bein' English same as you are. And in the profession meself. It's a
grand turn, my dear, it deserves to be a success." She turned to Cotman.
"And this is your 'usband?"

Stella got out of her arm-chair and a shy smile broke on her lips as she
listened with some confusion to the voluble old lady.

"Yes, that's Syd."

"Pleased to meet you," he said.

"And this is mine," said the old lady, with a little dig of the elbow in
the direction of the tall white-haired man. "Mr. Penezzi. 'E's a count
really, and I'm the Countess Penezzi by rights, but when we retired from
the profession we dropped the title."

"Will you have a drink?" said Cotman.

"No, you 'ave one with us," said Mrs. Penezzi, sinking into an
arm-chair. "Carlo, you order."

The barman came, and after some discussion three bottles of beer were
ordered. Stella would not have anything.

"She never has anything till after the second show," explained Cotman.

Stella was slight and small, about twenty-six, with light brown hair,
cut short and waved, and grey eyes. She had reddened her lips, but wore
little rouge on her face. Her skin was pale. She was not very pretty,
but she had a neat little face. She wore a very simple evening frock of
white silk. The beer was brought and Mr. Penezzi, evidently not very
talkative, took a long swig.

"What was your line?" asked Syd Cotman, politely.

Mrs. Penezzi gave him a rolling glance of her flashing, made-up eyes and
turned to her husband.

"Tell 'em who I am, Carlo," she said.

"The 'uman cannon-ball," he announced.

Mrs. Penezzi smiled brightly and with a quick, birdlike glance looked
from one to the other. They stared at her in dismay.

"Flora," she said. "The 'uman cannon-ball."

She so obviously expected them to be impressed that they did not quite
know what to do. Stella gave her Syd a puzzled look. He came to her
rescue.

"It must have been before our time."

"Naturally it was before your time. Why, we retired from the profession
definitely the year poor Queen Victoria died. It made quite a sensation
when we did too. But you've 'eard of me, of course." She saw the blank
look on their faces; her tone changed a little. "But I was the biggest
draw in London. At the Old Aquarium, that was. All the swells came to
see me. The Prince of Wales and I don't know who all. I was the talk of
the town. Isn't that true, Carlo?"

"She crowded the Aquarium for a year."

"It was the most spectacular turn they'd ever 'ad there. Why, only a few
years ago I went up and introduced meself to Lady de Bathe. Lily
Langtry, you know. She used to live down 'ere. She remembered me
perfectly. She told me she'd seen me ten times."

"What did you do?" asked Stella.

"I was fired out of a cannon. Believe me, it was a sensation. And after
London I went all over the world with it. Yes, my dear, I'm an old woman
now and I won't deny it. Seventy-eight Mr. Penezzi is and I shall never
see seventy again, but I've 'ad me portrait on every 'oardin' in London.
Lady de Bathe said to me: My dear, you was as celebrated as I was. But
you know what the public is, give 'em a good thing and they go mad over
it, only they want change; 'owever good it is, they get sick of it and
then they won't go and see it any more. It'll 'appen to you, my dear,
same as it 'appened to me. It comes to all of us. But Mr. Penezzi always
'ad 'is 'ead screwed on 'is shoulders the right way. Been in the
business since 'e was so 'igh. Circus, you know. Ringmaster. That's 'ow
I first knew 'im. I was in a troupe of acrobacks. Trapeze act, you know.
'E's a fine-lookin' man now, but you should 'ave seen 'im then, in 'is
Russian boots, and ridin' breeches, and a tight-fittin' coat with frogs
all down the front of it, crackin' 'is long whip as 'is 'orses galloped
round the ring, the 'andsomest man I ever see in my life."

Mr. Penezzi did not make any remark, but thoughtfully twisted his
immense white moustache.

"Well, as I was tellin' you, 'e was never one to throw money about and
when the agents couldn't get us bookin's any more 'e said, let's retire.
An 'e was quite right, after 'avin' been the biggest star in London, we
couldn't go back to circus work any more, I mean, Mr. Penezzi bein' a
count really, 'e 'ad 'is dignity to think of, so we come down 'ere and
we bought a 'ouse and started a pension. It always 'ad been Mr.
Penezzi's ambition to do something like that. Thirty-five years we been
'ere now. We 'aven't done so badly not until the last two or three
years, and the slump came, though visitors are very different from what
they was when we first started, the things they want, electric-light and
runnin' water in their bedrooms and I don't know what all. Give them a
card, Carlo. Mr. Penezzi does the cookin' 'imself, and if ever you want
a real 'ome from 'ome, you'll know where to find it. I like professional
people and we'd 'ave a rare lot to talk about, you and me, dearie. Once
a professional always a professional, I say."

At that moment the head barman came back from his supper. He caught
sight of Syd.

"Oh, Mr. Cotman, Mr. Espinel was looking for you, wants to see you
particularly."

"Oh, where is he?"

"You'll find him around somewhere."

"We'll be going," said Mrs. Penezzi, getting up. "Come and 'ave lunch
with us one day, will you? I'd like to show you my old photographs and
me press cuttin's. Fancy you not 'avin' 'eard of the 'uman cannon-ball.
Why, I was as well known as the Tower of London."

Mrs. Penezzi was not vexed at finding that these young people had never
even heard of her. She was simply amused.

They bade one another good-bye, and Stella sank back again into her
chair.

"I'll just finish my beer," said Syd, "and then I'll go and see what
Paco wants. Will you stay here, ducky, or would you like to go to your
dressing-room?"

Stella's hands were tightly clenched. She did not answer. Syd gave her a
look and then quickly glanced away.

"Perfect riot, that old girl," he went on, in his hearty way. "Real
figure of fun. I suppose it's true what she said. It's difficult to
believe, I must say. Fancy 'er drawing all London, what, forty year ago?
And the funny thing is, her thinking anybody remembered. Seemed as
though she simply couldn't understand us not having heard of her even."

He gave Stella another glance, from the corner of his eye so that she
should not see he was looking at her, and he saw she was crying. He
faltered. The tears were rolling down her pale face. She made no sound.

"What's the matter, darling?"

"Syd, I can't do it again to-night," she sobbed.

"Why on earth not?"

"I'm afraid."

He took her hand.

"I know you better than that," he said. "You're the bravest little woman
in the world. Have a brandy, that'll pull you together."

"No, that'd only make it worse."

"You can't disappoint your public like that."

"That filthy public. Swine who eat too much and drink too much. A pack
of chattering fools with more money than they know what to do with. I
can't stick them. What do they care if I risk my life?"

"Of course, it's the thrill they come for, there's no denying that," he
replied uneasily. "But you know and I know, there's no risk, not if you
keep your nerve."

"But I've lost my nerve, Syd. I shall kill myself."

She had raised her voice a little, and he looked round quickly at the
barman. But the barman was reading the _claireur de Nice_ and paying no
attention.

"You don't know what it looks like from up there, the top of the ladder,
when I look down at the tank. I give you my word, to-night I thought I
was going to faint. I tell you I can't do it again to-night, you've got
to get me out of it, Syd."

"If you funk it to-night it'll be worse to-morrow."

"No, it won't. It's having to do it twice kills me. The long wait and
all that. You go and see Mr. Espinel and tell him I can't give two shows
a night. It's more than my nerves'll stand."

"He'll never stand for that. The whole supper trade depends on you. It's
only to see you they come in then at all."

"I can't help it, I tell you I can't go on."

He was silent for a moment. The tears still streamed down her pale
little face, and he saw that she was quickly losing control of herself.
He had felt for some days that something was up and he had been anxious.
He had tried not to give her an opportunity to talk. He knew obscurely
that it was better for her not to put into words what she felt. But he
had been worried. For he loved her.

"Anyhow Espinel wants to see me," he said.

"What about?"

"I don't know. I'll tell him you can't give the show more than once a
night and see what he says. Will you wait here?"

"No, I'll go along to the dressing-room."

Ten minutes later he found her there. He was in great spirits and his
step was jaunty. He burst open the door.

"I've got grand news for you, honey. They're keeping us on next month at
twice the money."

He sprang forward to take her in his arms and kiss her, but she pushed
him away.

"Have I got to go on again to-night?"

"I'm afraid you must. I tried to make it only one show a night, but he
wouldn't hear of it. He says it's quite essential you should do the
supper turn. And after all, for double the money, it's worth it."

She flung herself down on the floor and this time burst into a storm of
tears.

"I can't, Syd, I can't. I shall kill myself."

He sat down on the floor and raised her head and took her in his arms
and petted her.

"Buck up, darling. You can't refuse a sum like that. Why, it'll keep us
all the winter and we shan't have to do a thing. After all there are
only four more days to the end of July and then it's only August."

"No, no, no. I'm frightened. I don't want to die, Syd. I love you."

"I know you do, darling, and I love you. Why, since we married I've
never looked at another woman. We've never had money like this before
and we shall never get it again. You know what these things are, we're a
riot now, but we can't expect it to go on for ever. We've got to strike
while the iron's hot."

"D'you want me to die, Syd?"

"Don't talk so silly. Why, where should I be without you? You mustn't
give way like this. You've got your self-respect to think of. You're
famous all over the world."

"Like the human cannon-ball was," she cried with a laugh of fury.

"That damned old woman," he thought.

He knew that was the last straw. Bad luck, Stella taking it like that.

"That was an eye-opener to me," she went on. "What do they come and see
me over and over again for? On the chance they'll see me kill myself.
And a week after I'm dead they'll have forgotten even my name. That's
what the public is. When I looked at that painted old hag I saw it all.
Oh, Syd, I'm so miserable." She threw her arms round his neck and
pressed her face to his. "Syd, it's no good, I can't do it again."

"To-night, d'you mean? If you really feel like that about it, I'll tell
Espinel you've had a fainting fit. I daresay it'll be all right just for
once."

"I don't mean to-night, I mean never."

She felt him stiffen a little.

"Syd dear, don't think I'm being silly. It's not just to-day, it's been
growing on me. I can't sleep at night thinking of it, and when I do drop
off I see myself standing at the top of the ladder and looking down.
To-night I could hardly get up it, I was trembling so, and when you lit
the flames and said go, something seemed to be holding me back. I didn't
even know I'd jumped. My mind was a blank till I found myself on the
platform and heard them clapping. Syd, if you loved me you wouldn't want
me to go through such torture."

He sighed. His own eyes were wet with tears. For he loved her devotedly.

"You know what it means," he said. "The old life. Marathons and all."

"Anything's better than this."

The old life. They both remembered it. Syd had been a dancing gigolo
since he was eighteen, he was very good-looking in his dark Spanish way
and full of life, old women and middle-aged women were glad to pay to
dance with him, and he was never out of work. He had drifted from
England to the Continent and there he had stayed, going from hotel to
hotel, to the Riviera in the winter, to watering-places in France in the
summer. It wasn't a bad life they led, there were generally two or three
of them together, the men, and they shared a room in cheap lodgings.
They didn't have to get up till late and they only dressed in time to go
to the hotel at twelve to dance with stout women who wanted to get their
weight down. Then they were free till five, when they went to the hotel
again and sat at a table, the three of them together, keeping a sharp
eye open for anyone who looked a likely client. They had their regular
customers. At night they went to the restaurant and the house provided
them with quite a decent meal. Between the courses they danced. It was
good money. They generally got fifty or a hundred francs from anyone
they danced with. Sometimes a rich woman, after dancing a good deal with
one of them for two or three nights, would give him as much as a
thousand francs. Sometimes a middle-aged woman would ask one to spend a
night with her, and he would get two hundred and fifty francs for that.
There was always the chance of a silly old fool losing her head, and
then there were platinum and sapphire rings, cigarette-cases, clothes
and a wrist-watch to be got. One of Syd's friends had married one of
them, who was old enough to be his mother, but she gave him a car and
money to gamble with, and they lived in a beautiful villa at Biarritz.
Those were the good days when everybody had money to burn. The slump
came and hit the gigolos hard. The hotels were empty, and the clients
didn't seem to want to pay for the pleasure of dancing with a
nice-looking young fellow. Often and often Syd passed a whole day
without earning the price of a drink, and more than once a fat old girl
who weighed a ton had had the nerve to give him ten francs. His expenses
didn't go down, for he had to be smartly dressed or the manager of the
hotel made remarks, washing cost a packet, and you'd be surprised the
amount of linen he needed; then shoes, those floors were terribly hard
on shoes, and they had to look new. He had his room to pay for and his
lunch.

It was then he met Stella. It was at Evian, and the season was
disastrous. She was a swimming instructress. She was Australian, and a
beautiful diver. She gave exhibitions every morning and afternoon. At
night she was engaged to dance at the hotel. They dined together at a
little table in the restaurant apart from the guests, and when the band
began to play they danced together to induce the customers to come on to
the floor. But often no one followed them and they danced by themselves.
Neither of them got anything much in the way of paying partners. They
fell in love with one another, and at the end of the season got married.

They had never regretted it. They had gone through hard times. Even
though for business reasons (elderly ladies didn't so much like the idea
of dancing with a married man when his wife was there) they concealed
their marriage, it was not so easy to get an hotel job for the pair of
them and Syd was far from being able to earn enough to keep Stella, even
in the most modest pension, without working. The gigolo business had
gone to pot. They went to Paris and learnt a dancing act, but the
competition was fearful and cabaret engagements were very hard to get.
Stella was a good ballroom dancer, but the rage was for acrobatics, and
however much they practised she never managed to do anything startling.
The public was sick of the apache turn. They were out of a job for weeks
at a time. Syd's wrist-watch, his gold cigarette-case, his platinum
ring, all went up the spout. At last they found themselves in Nice
reduced to such straits that Syd had to pawn his evening clothes. It was
a catastrophe. They were forced to enter for the Marathon that an
enterprising manager was starting. Twenty-four hours a day they danced,
resting every hour for fifteen minutes. It was frightful. Their legs
ached, their feet were numb. For long periods they were unconscious of
what they were doing. They just kept time to the music, exerting
themselves as little as possible. They made a little money, people gave
them sums of a hundred francs, or two hundred, to encourage them, and
sometimes to attract attention they roused themselves to give an
exhibition dance. If the public was in a good humour this might bring in
a decent sum. They grew terribly tired. On the eleventh day Stella
fainted and had to give up. Syd went on by himself, moving, moving
without pause, grotesquely, without a partner. That was the worst time
they had ever had. It was the final degradation. It had left with them a
recollection of horror and misery.

But it was then that Syd had his inspiration. It had come to him while
he was slowly going round the hall by himself. Stella always said she
could dive in a saucer. It was just a trick.

"Funny how ideas come," he said afterwards. "Like a flash of lightning."

He suddenly remembered having seen a boy set fire to some petrol that
had been spilt on the pavement, and the sudden blaze-up. For of course
it was the flames on the water and the spectacular dive into them that
had caught the public fancy. He stopped dancing there and then; he was
too excited to go on. He talked it over with Stella, and she was
enthusiastic. He wrote to an agent who was a friend of his; everyone
liked Syd, he was a nice little man, and the agent put up the money for
the apparatus. He got them an engagement at a circus in Paris, and the
turn was a success. They were made. Engagements followed here and there,
Syd bought himself an entire outfit of new clothes, and the climax came
when they got a booking for the summer casino on the coast. It was no
exaggeration of Syd's when he said that Stella was a riot.

"All our troubles are over, old girl," he said fondly. "We can put a bit
by now for a rainy day, and when the public's sick of this I'll just
think of something else."

And now, without warning, at the top of their boom, Stella wanted to
chuck it. He didn't know what to say to her. It broke his heart to see
her so unhappy. He loved her more now even than when he had married her.
He loved her because of all they'd gone through together; after all, for
five days once they'd had nothing to eat but a hunk of bread each and a
glass of milk, and he loved her because she'd taken him out of all that;
he had good clothes to wear again and his three meals a day. He couldn't
look at her; the anguish in her dear grey eyes was more than he could
bear. Timidly she stretched out her hand and touched his. He gave a deep
sigh.

"You know what it means, honey. Our connection in the hotels has gone
west, and the business is finished, anyway. What there is'll go to
people younger than us. You know what these old women are as well as I
do; it's a boy they want, and besides, I'm not tall enough really. It
didn't matter so much when I was a kid. It's no good saying I don't look
my age because I do."

"Perhaps we can get into pictures."

He shrugged his shoulders. They'd tried that before when they were down
and out.

"I wouldn't mind what I did. I'd serve in a shop."

"D'you think jobs can be had for the asking?"

She began to cry again.

"Don't, honey. It breaks my heart."

"We've got a bit put by."

"I know we have. Enough to last us six months. And then it'll mean
starvation. First popping the bits and pieces, and then the clothes'll
have to go, same as they did before. And then dancing in low-down joints
for our supper and fifty francs a night. Out of a job for weeks
together. And Marathons whenever we hear of one. And how long will the
public stand for them?"

"I know you think I'm unreasonable, Syd."

He turned and looked at her now. There were tears in her eyes. He
smiled, and the smile he gave her was charming and tender.

"No, I don't, ducky. I want to make you happy. After all, you're all
I've got. I love you."

He took her in his arms and held her. He could feel the beating of her
heart. If Stella felt like that about it, well, he must just make the
best of it. After all, supposing she were killed? No, no, let her chuck
it and be damned to the money. She made a little movement.

"What is it, honey?"

She released herself and stood up. She went over to the dressing-table.

"I expect it's about time for me to be getting ready," she said.

He started to his feet.

"You're not going to do a show to-night?"

"To-night, and every night till I kill myself. What else is there? I
know you're right, Syd. I can't go back to all that other, stinking
rooms in fifth-rate hotels and not enough to eat. Oh, that Marathon. Why
did you bring that up? Being tired and dirty for days at a time and then
having to give up because flesh and blood just couldn't stand it.
Perhaps I can go on another month and then there'll be enough to give
you a chance of looking round."

"No, darling. I can't stand for that. Chuck it. We'll manage somehow. We
starved before; we can starve again."

She slipped out of her clothes, and for a moment stood naked but for her
stockings, looking at herself in the glass. She gave her reflection a
hard smile.

"I mustn't disappoint my public," she sniggered.




THE HAPPY COUPLE


I don't know that I very much liked Landon. He was a member of a club I
belonged to, and I had often sat next to him at lunch. He was a judge at
the Old Bailey, and it was through him I was able to get a privileged
seat in court when there was an interesting trial that I wanted to
attend. He was an imposing figure on the bench in his great
full-bottomed wig, his red robes and his ermine tippet; and with his
long, white face, thin lips and pale blue eyes, a somewhat terrifying
one. He was just, but harsh; and sometimes it made me uncomfortable to
hear the bitter scolding he gave a convicted prisoner whom he was about
to sentence to a long term of imprisonment. But his acid humour at the
lunch-table and his willingness to discuss the cases he had tried made
him sufficiently good company for me to disregard the slight malaise I
felt in his presence. I asked him once whether he did not feel a certain
uneasiness of mind after he had sent a man to the gallows. He smiled as
he sipped his glass of port.

"Not at all. The man's had a fair trial; I've summed up as fairly as I
could, and the jury has found him guilty. When I condemn him to death, I
sentence him to a punishment he richly deserves; and when the court
rises, I put the case out of my head. Nobody but a sentimental fool
would do anything else."

I knew he liked to talk to me, but I never thought he looked upon me as
anything but a club acquaintance, so I was not a little surprised when
one day I received a telegram from him saying that he was spending his
vacation on the Riviera, and would like to stay with me for two or three
days on his way to Italy. I wired that I should be glad to see him. But
it was with a certain trepidation that I met him at the station.

On the day of his arrival, to help me out, I asked Miss Gray, a
neighbour and an old friend of mine, to dinner. She was of mature age,
but charming, and she had a flow of lively conversation which I knew
nothing could discourage. I gave them a very good dinner, and though I
had no port to offer the judge, I was able to provide him with a good
bottle of Montrachet and an even better bottle of Mouton Rothschild. He
enjoyed them both; and I was glad of that, because when I had offered
him a cocktail, he had refused with indignation.

"I have never understood," he said, "how people presumably civilised can
indulge in a habit that is not only barbarous but disgusting."

I may state that this did not deter Miss Gray and me from having a
couple of dry Martinis, though it was with impatience and distaste that
he watched us drink them.

But the dinner was a success. The good wine and Miss Gray's sprightly
chatter combined to give Landon a geniality I had never before seen in
him. It was plain to me that notwithstanding his austere appearance he
liked feminine society; and Miss Gray in a becoming dress, with her neat
head only just touched with grey and her delicate features, her
sparkling eyes, was still alluring. After dinner the judge, with some
old brandy still further to mellow him, let himself go, and for a couple
of hours held us entranced while he told us of celebrated trials in
which he had been concerned, I was not surprised therefore that when
Miss Gray asked us to lunch with her next day, Landon, even before I
could answer, accepted with alacrity.

"A very nice woman," he said when she had left us. "And a head on her
shoulders. She must have been very pretty as a girl. She's not bad now.
Why isn't she married?"

"She always says nobody asked her."

"Stuff and nonsense! Women ought to marry. Too many of these women about
who want their independence. I have no patience with them."

Miss Gray lived in a little house facing the sea at St. Jean, which is a
couple of miles from my own house at Cap Ferrat. We drove down next day
at one and were shown into her sitting-room.

"I have a surprise for you," she said to me, as we shook hands. "The
Craigs are coming."

"You've got to know them at last."

"Well, I thought it was too absurd that we should live next door to one
another, and bathe from the same beach every day and not speak. So I
forced myself on them, and they've promised to come to lunch to-day. I
wanted you to meet them, to see what you make of them." She turned to
Landon. "I hope you don't mind."

But he was on his best behaviour.

"I'm sure I shall be delighted to meet any friends of yours, Miss Gray,"
he said.

"But they're not friends of mine. I've seen a lot of them, but I never
spoke to them till yesterday. It'll be a treat for them to meet an
author and a celebrated judge."

I had heard a good deal of the Craigs from Miss Gray during the previous
three weeks. They had taken the cottage next to hers, and at first she
feared they would be a nuisance. She liked her own company and did not
want to be bothered with the trivialities of social intercourse. But she
very quickly discovered that the Craigs were as plainly disinclined to
strike up an acquaintance with her as she with them. Though in that
little place they could not but meet two or three times a day, the
Craigs never by so much a glance gave an indication that they had ever
seen her before. Miss Gray told me she thought it very tactful of them
to make no attempt to intrude upon her privacy, but I had an idea that
she was not affronted, a little puzzled rather, that they apparently
wanted to know her as little as she wanted to know them. I had guessed
some time before that she would not be able to resist making the first
advance. On one occasion, while we were walking, we passed them, and I
was able to have a good look at them. Craig was a handsome man, with a
red, honest face, a grey moustache and thick strong grey hair. He held
himself well, and there was a bluff heartiness of manner about him that
suggested a broker who had retired on a handsome fortune. His wife was a
woman hard of visage, tall and of masculine appearance, with dull, fair
hair too elaborately dressed, a large nose, a large mouth and a
weather-beaten skin. She was not only plain but grim. Her clothes,
pretty, flimsy and graceful, sat oddly upon her, for they would better
have suited a girl of eighteen, and Mrs. Craig was certainly forty. Miss
Gray told me they were well cut and expensive. I thought he looked
commonplace and she looked disagreeable, and I told Miss Gray she was
lucky that they were obviously disposed to keep themselves to
themselves.

"There's something rather sweet about them," she answered.

"What?"

"They love one another. And they adore the baby."

For they had a child that was not more than a year old; and from this
Miss Gray had concluded that they had not long been married. She liked
to watch them with their baby. A nurse took it out every morning in a
pram, but before this, father and mother spent an ecstatic quarter of an
hour teaching it to walk. They stood a few yards apart and urged the
child to flounder from one to the other; and each time it tumbled into
the parental arms it was lifted up and rapturously embraced. And when
finally it was tucked up in the smart pram, they hung over it with
charming baby talk and watched it out of sight as though they couldn't
bear to let it go.

Miss Gray used often to see them walking up and down the lawn of their
garden arm in arm; they did not talk, as though they were so happy to be
together that conversation was unnecessary; and it warmed her heart to
observe the affection which that dour, unsympathetic woman so obviously
felt for her tall, handsome husband. It was a pretty sight to see Mrs.
Craig brush an invisible speck of dust off his coat, and Miss Gray was
convinced that she purposely made holes in his socks in order to have
the pleasure of darning them. And it looked as though he loved her as
much as she loved him. Every now and then he would give her a glance,
and she would look up at him and smile, and he gave her cheek a little
pat. Because they were no longer young, their mutual devotion was
peculiarly touching.

I never knew why Miss Gray had never married; I felt as certain as the
judge that she had had plenty of chances; and I asked myself, when she
talked to me about the Craigs, whether the sight of this matrimonial
felicity didn't give her a slight pang. I suppose complete happiness is
very rare in this world, but these two people seemed to enjoy it, and it
may be that Miss Gray was so strangely interested in them only because
she could not quite suppress the feeling in her heart that by remaining
single she had missed something.

Because she didn't know what their first names were, she called them
Edwin and Angelina. She made up a story about them. She told it to me
one day; and when I ridiculed it, she was quite short with me. This, as
far as I can remember, is how it went: They had fallen in love with one
another years before--perhaps twenty years--when Angelina, a young girl
then, had the fresh grace of her teens and Edwin was a brave youth
setting out joyously on the journey of life. And since the gods, who are
said to look upon young love with kindliness, nevertheless do not bother
their heads with practical matters, neither Edwin nor Angelina had a
penny. It was impossible for them to marry, but they had courage, hope
and confidence. Edwin made up his mind to go out to South America or
Malaya or where you like, make his fortune and return to marry the girl
who had patiently waited for him. It couldn't take more than two or
three years, five at the utmost; and what is that, when you're twenty
and the whole of life is before you? Meanwhile of course Angelina would
live with her widowed mother.

But things didn't pan out according to schedule. Edwin found it more
difficult than he had expected to make a fortune; in fact, he found it
hard to earn enough money to keep body and soul together, and only
Angelina's love and her tender letters gave him the heart to continue
the struggle. At the end of five years he was not much better off than
when he started. Angelina would willingly have joined him and shared his
poverty, but it was impossible for her to leave her mother, bed-ridden
as she was, poor thing, and there was nothing for them to do but have
patience. And so the years passed slowly, and Edwin's hair grew grey,
and Angelina became grim and haggard. Hers was the harder lot, for she
could do nothing but wait. The cruel glass showed such charms as she had
possessed slipping away from her one by one; and at last she discovered
that youth, with a mocking laugh and a pirouette, had left her for good.
Her sweetness turned sour from long tending of a querulous invalid; her
mind was narrowed by the society of the small town in which she lived.
Her friends married and had children, but she remained a prisoner to
duty.

She wondered if Edwin still loved her. She wondered if he would ever
come back. She often despaired. Ten years went by, and fifteen, and
twenty. Then Edwin wrote to say that his affairs were settled, and he
had made enough money for them to live upon in comfort, and if she were
still willing to marry him, he would return at once. By a merciful
interposition of providence, Angelina's mother chose that very moment to
abandon a world in which she had made herself a thorough nuisance. But
when after so long a separation they met, Angelina saw with dismay that
Edwin was as young as ever. It's true his hair was grey, but it
infinitely became him. He had always been good-looking, but now he was a
very handsome man in the flower of his age. She felt as old as the
hills. She was conscious of her narrowness, her terrible provincialism,
compared with the breadth he had acquired by his long sojourn in foreign
countries. He was gay and breezy as of old, but her spirit was crushed.
The bitterness of life had warped her soul. It seemed monstrous to bind
that alert and active man to her by a promise twenty years old, and she
offered him his release. He went deathly pale.

"Don't you care for me any more?" he cried brokenly.

And she realised on a sudden--oh, the rapture, oh, the relief!--that to
him she was just the same as she had ever been. He had thought of her
always as she was; her portrait had been, as it were, stamped on his
heart, so that now, when the real woman stood before him, she was, to
him, still eighteen.

So they were married.

"I don't believe a word of it," I said when Miss Gray had brought her
story to its happy ending.

"I insist on your believing it," she said. "I'm convinced it's true, and
I haven't the smallest doubt that they'll live happily together to a
ripe old age." Then she made a remark that I thought rather shrewd.
"Their love is founded on an illusion, perhaps; but since it has to them
all the appearance of reality, what does it matter?"

While I have told you this idyllic story of Miss Gray's invention, the
three of us, our hostess, Landon and myself, waited for the Craigs to
come.

"Have you ever noticed that if people live next door to you, they're
invariably late?" Miss Gray asked the judge.

"No, I haven't," he answered acidly. "I'm always punctual myself, and I
expect other people to be punctual."

"I suppose it's no good offering you a cocktail?"

"None whatever, madam."

"But I have some sherry that they tell me isn't bad."

The judge took the bottle out of her hands and looked at the label. A
faint smile broke on his thin lips.

"This is a civilised drink, Miss Gray. With your permission I will help
myself. I never knew a woman yet who knew how to pour out a glass of
wine. One should hold a woman by the waist, but a bottle by the neck."

While he was sipping the old sherry with every sign of satisfaction,
Miss Gray glanced out of the window.

"Oh, that's why the Craigs are late. They were waiting for the baby to
come back."

I followed her eyes and saw that the nurse had just pushed the pram past
Miss Gray's house on her way home. Craig took the baby out of the pram
and lifted it high in the air. The baby, trying to tug at his moustache,
crowed gleefully. Mrs. Craig stood by, watching, and the smile on her
face made her harsh features almost pleasant. The window was open, and
we heard her speak.

"Come along, darling," she said, "we're late."

He put the baby back in the pram, and they came up to the door of Miss
Gray's house and rang the bell. The maid showed them in. They shook
hands with Miss Gray, and because I was standing near, she introduced me
to them. Then she turned to the judge.

"And this is Sir Edward Landon--Mr. and Mrs. Craig."

One would have expected the judge to move forward with an outstretched
hand, but he remained stock-still. He put his eyeglass up to his eye,
that eyeglass that I had on more than one occasion seen him use with
devastating effect in court, and stared at the newcomers.

"Gosh, what a dirty customer," I said to myself.

He let the glass drop from his eye.

"How do you do," he said. "Am I mistaken in thinking that we've met
before?"

The question turned my eyes to the Craigs. They stood side by side close
to one another, as though they had drawn together for mutual protection.
They did not speak. Mrs. Craig looked terrified. Craig's red face was
darkened by a purple flush, and his eyes appeared almost to start out of
his head. But that only lasted a second.

"I don't think so," he said in a rich, deep voice. "Of course I've heard
of you, Sir Edward."

"More people know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows," said he.

Miss Gray meanwhile had been giving the cocktail-shaker a shake, and now
she handed cocktails to her two guests. She had noticed nothing. I
didn't know what it all meant; in fact, I wasn't sure it meant anything.
The incident, if incident there was, passed so quickly that I was half
inclined to think that I had read into the strangers' momentary
embarrassment on being introduced to a celebrated man something for
which there was no foundation. I set about making myself pleasant. I
asked them how they liked the Riviera and if they were comfortable in
their house. Miss Gray joined in, and we chatted, as one does with
strangers, of commonplace things. They talked easily and pleasantly.
Mrs. Craig said how much they enjoyed the bathing and complained of the
difficulty of getting fish at the seaside. I was aware that the judge
did not join in the conversation, but looked down at his feet as though
he were unconscious of the company.

Lunch was announced. We went into the dining-room. We were only five,
and it was a small round table, so the conversation could not be
anything but general. I must confess that it was carried on chiefly by
Miss Gray and myself. The judge was silent, but he often was, for he was
a moody creature, and I paid no attention. I noticed that he ate the
omelette with good appetite, and when it was passed round again took a
second helping. The Craigs struck me as a little shy, but that didn't
surprise me, and as the second course was produced they began to talk
more freely. It didn't strike me that they were very amusing people;
they didn't seem interested in very much besides their baby, the
vagaries of the two Italian maids they had, and an occasional flutter at
Monte Carlo; and I couldn't help thinking that Miss Gray had erred in
making their acquaintance. Then suddenly something happened: Craig rose
abruptly from his chair and fell headlong to the floor. We jumped up.
Mrs. Craig threw herself down, over her husband, and took his head in
her hands.

"It's all right, George," she cried in an agonised tone. "It's all
right!"

"Put his head down," I said. "He's only fainted."

I felt his pulse and could feel nothing. I said he had fainted, but I
wasn't sure it wasn't a stroke. He was the sort of heavy, plethoric man
who might easily have one. Miss Gray dipped her napkin into water and
dabbed his forehead. Mrs. Craig seemed distraught. Then I noticed that
Landon had remained quietly sitting in his chair.

"If he's fainted, you're not helping him to recover by crowding round
him," he said acidly.

Mrs. Craig turned her head and gave him a look of bitter hatred.

"I'll ring up the doctor," said Miss Gray.

"No, I don't think that's necessary," I said. "He's coming to."

I could feel his pulse growing stronger, and in a minute or two he
opened his eyes. He gasped when he realised what had happened, and tried
to struggle to his feet.

"Don't move," I said. "Lie still a little longer."

I got him to drink a glass of brandy, and the colour came back to his
face.

"I feel all right now," he said.

"We'll get you into the next room, and you can lie on the sofa for a
bit."

"No, I'd sooner go home. It's only a step."

He got up from the floor.

"Yes, let's go back," said Mrs. Craig. She turned to Miss Gray. "I'm so
sorry; he's never done anything like this before."

They were determined to go, and I thought myself it was the best thing
for them to do.

"Put him to bed and keep him there, and he'll be as right as rain
to-morrow."

Mrs. Craig took one of his arms and I took the other; Miss Gray opened
the door, and though still a bit shaky, he was able to walk. When we
arrived at the Craig's home, I offered to go in and help undress him;
but they would neither of them hear of it. I went back to Miss Gray's
and found them at dessert.

"I wonder why he fainted," Miss Gray was saying. "All the windows are
open, and it's not particularly hot to-day."

"I wonder," said the judge.

I noticed that his thin pale face bore an expression of some
complacency. We had our coffee; and then, since the judge and I were
going to play golf, we got into the car and drove up the hill to my
house.

"How did Miss Gray get to know those people?" Landon asked me. "They
struck me as rather second-rate. I shouldn't have thought they were very
much her mark."

"You know women. She likes her privacy, and when they settled in next
door, she was quite decided that she wouldn't have anything to do with
them; but when she discovered that they didn't want to have anything to
do with her, she couldn't rest till she'd made their acquaintance."

I told him the story she had invented about her neighbours. He listened
with an expressionless face.

"I'm afraid your friend Miss Gray is a sentimental donkey, my dear
fellow," he said when I had come to an end. "I tell you, women ought to
marry. She'd soon have had all that nonsense knocked out of her if she'd
had half a dozen brats."

"What do you know about the Craigs?" I asked.

He gave me a frigid glance.

"I? Why should I know anything about them? I thought they were very
ordinary people."

I wish I knew how to describe the strong impression he gave me, both by
the glacial austerity of his look and by the rasping finality of his
tone, that he was not prepared to say anything more. We finished the
drive in silence.

Landon was well on in his sixties, and he was the kind of golfer who
never hits a long ball but is never off the straight, and he was a
deadly putter, so, though he gave me strokes, he beat me handsomely.
After dinner I took him in to Monte Carlo, where he finished the evening
by winning a couple of thousand francs at the roulette table. These
successive events put him into a remarkably good humour.

"A very pleasant day," he said when we parted for the night. "I've
thoroughly enjoyed it."

I spent the next morning at work, and we did not meet till lunch. We
were just finishing when I was called to the telephone.

When I came back, my guest was drinking a second cup of coffee.

"That was Miss Gray," I said.

"Oh? What had she to say?"

"The Craigs have done a bolt. They disappeared last night. The maids
live in the village; and when they came this morning, they found the
house empty. They'd skipped--the Craigs, the nurse and the baby--and
taken their luggage with them. They left money on the table for the
maids' wages, the rent to the end of their tenancy and the tradesmen's
bills."

The judge said nothing. He took a cigar from the box, examined it
carefully and then lit it with deliberation.

"What have you got to say about that?" I asked.

"My dear fellow, are you obliged to use these American phrases? Isn't
English good enough for you?"

"Is that an American phrase? It expresses exactly what I mean. You can't
imagine I'm such a fool as not to have noticed that you and the Craigs
had met before; and if they've vanished into thin air like figments of
the imagination, it's a fairly reasonable conclusion that the
circumstances under which you met were not altogether pleasant."

The judge gave a little chuckle, and there was a twinkle in his cold
blue eyes.

"That was a very good brandy you gave me last night," he said. "It's
against my principles to drink liqueurs after lunch, but it's a very
dull man who allows his principles to enslave him, and for once I think
I should enjoy one."

I sent for the brandy and watched the judge while he poured himself out
a generous measure. He took a sip with obvious satisfaction.

"Do you remembered the Wingford murder?" he asked me.

"No."

"Perhaps you weren't in England at the time. Pity--you might have come
to the trial. You'd have enjoyed it. It caused a lot of excitement; the
papers were full of it.

"Miss Wingford was a rich spinster of mature age who lived in the
country with a companion. She was a healthy woman for her age; and when
she died rather suddenly, her friends were surprised. Her physician, a
fellow called Brandon, signed the certificate and she was duly buried.
The will was read, and it appeared that she had left everything she had,
something between sixty and seventy thousand pounds, to her companion.
The relations were very sore, but there was nothing they could do about
it. The will had been drawn up by her lawyer and witnessed by his clerk
and Dr. Brandon.

"But Miss Wingford had a maid who had been with her for thirty years and
had always understood that she would be remembered in the will; she
claimed that Miss Wingford had promised to leave her well provided for,
and when she found that she wasn't even mentioned, she flew into a
passion. She told the nephew and the two nieces who had come down for
the funeral that she was sure Miss Wingford had been poisoned, and she
said that if they didn't go to the police, she'd go herself. Well, they
didn't do that, but they went to see Dr. Brandon. He laughed. He said
that Miss Wingford had had a weak heart and he'd been treating her for
years. She died just as he had always expected her to die, peacefully in
her sleep; and he advised them not to pay any attention to what the maid
said. She had always hated the companion, a Miss Starling, and been
jealous of her. Dr. Brandon was highly respected; he had been Miss
Wingford's doctor for a long time, and the two nieces, who'd stayed with
her often, knew him well. He was not profiting by the will, and there
seemed no reason to doubt his word, so the family thought there was
nothing to do but make the best of a bad job and went back to London.

"But the maid went on talking; she talked so much that at last the
police, much against their will, I must admit, were obliged to take
notice, and an order to exhume the body was made. There was an inquest,
and it was found that Miss Wingford had died from an overdose of
veronal. The coroner's jury found that it had been administered by Miss
Starling, and she was arrested. A detective was sent down from Scotland
Yard, and he got together some unexpected evidence. It appeared that
there'd been a good deal of gossip about Miss Starling and Dr. Brandon.
They'd been seen a lot together in places in which there was no reason
for them to be except that they wanted to be together, and the general
impression in the village was that they were only waiting for Miss
Wingford to die to get married. That put a very different complexion on
the case. To make a long story short, the police got enough evidence in
their opinion to justify them in arresting the doctor and charging him
and Miss Starling with the murder of the old lady."

The judge took another sip of brandy.

"The case came up for trial before me. The case for the prosecution was
that the accused were madly in love with one another and had done the
poor old lady to death so that they could marry on the fortune Miss
Starling had wheedled her employer into leaving her. Miss Wingford
always had a cup of cocoa when she went to bed, which Miss Starling
prepared for her; and the counsel for the prosecution claimed that it
was in this that Miss Starling had dissolved the tablets that caused
Miss Wingford's death. The accused elected to give evidence on their own
behalf, and they made a miserable showing in the witness-box. They lied
their heads off. Though witnesses testified they had seen them walking
together at night with their arms round one another's waists, though
Brandon's maid testified she had seen them kissing one another in the
doctor's house, they swore they were no more than friends. And oddly
enough, medical evidence proved that Miss Starling was _virgo intacta_.

"Brandon admitted that he had given Miss Wingford a bottle of veronal
tablets because she complained of sleeplessness, but declared he had
warned her never to take more than one, and then only when absolutely
necessary. The defence sought to prove that she had taken the tablets
either by accident or because she wanted to commit suicide. That didn't
hold water for a moment. Miss Wingford was a jolly, normal old lady who
thoroughly enjoyed life; and her death occurred two days before the
expected arrival of an old friend for a week's visit. She hadn't
complained to the maid of sleeping badly--in fact, her maid had always
thought her a very good sleeper. It was impossible to believe that she
had accidentally taken a sufficient number of tablets to kill herself.
Personally, I had no doubt that it was a put-up job between the doctor
and the companion. The motive was obvious and sufficient. I summed up
and I hope summed up fairly; but it was my duty to put the facts before
the jury, and to my mind the facts were damning. The jury filed out. I
don't suppose you know that when you are sitting on the bench, you
somehow get the feeling of the court. You have to be on your guard
against it, to be sure it doesn't influence you. I never had it more
strongly than on that day that there wasn't a soul in court who wasn't
convinced that those two people had committed the crime with which they
were charged. I hadn't the shadow of a doubt that the jury would bring
in a verdict of guilty. Juries are incalculable. They were out for three
hours, and when they came back I knew at once that I was mistaken. In a
murder case, when a jury is going to bring in a verdict of guilty they
won't look at the prisoner; they look away. I noticed that three or four
of the jurymen glanced at the two prisoners in the dock. They brought in
a verdict of not guilty. The real names of Mr. and Mrs. Craig are Dr.
and Mrs. Brandon. I'm just as certain as I am that I'm sitting here that
they committed between them a cruel and heartless murder and richly
deserved to be hanged."

"What do you think made the jury find them not guilty?"

"I've asked myself that; and do you know the only explanation I can
give? The fact that it was conclusively proved that they had never been
lovers. And if you come to think of it, that's one of the most curious
features of the whole case. That woman was prepared to commit murder to
get the man she loved, but she wasn't prepared to have an illicit
love-affair with him."

"Human nature is very odd, isn't it?"

"Very," said Landon, helping himself to another glass of brandy.




THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE


For some time I could not make up my mind if I liked Peter Melrose or
not. He had had a novel published that had caused some stir among the
rather dreary but worthy people who are always on the lookout for new
talent. Elderly gentlemen with nothing much to do but go to luncheon
parties praised it with girlish enthusiasm, and wiry little women who
didn't get on with their husbands thought it showed promise. I read a
few reviews. They contradicted one another freely. Some of the critics
claimed that with this first novel the author had sprung into the front
rank of English novelists: others reviled it. I did not read it. I have
learnt by experience that when a book makes a sensation it is just as
well to wait a year before you read it. It is astonishing how many books
then you need not read at all. But it chanced that one day I met Peter
Melrose. With some misgiving I had accepted an invitation to a sherry
party. It was in the top flat of a converted house in Bloomsbury, and I
was a trifle out of breath when I had climbed four flights of stairs. My
hostesses were two women, much over life-size, in early middle life, the
sort of women who know all about the insides of motor-cars and like a
good tramp in the rain, but very feminine for all that, fond of eating
out of paper bags. The drawing-room, which they called "our workshop",
though being of independent means neither had ever done a stroke of work
in her life, was large and bare, furnished with rustless-steel chairs,
which looked as though they could with difficulty support the very
substantial weight of their owners, glass-topped tables and a vast divan
covered with zebra-skin. On the walls were book-shelves, and pictures by
the better-known English imitators of Czanne, Braque and Picasso. In
the shelves, besides a number of "curious" books of the eighteenth
century (for pornography is ageless) there were only the works of living
authors, mostly first editions, and it was indeed to sign some of my own
that I had been asked to the party.

It was quite small. There was but one other woman, who might have been a
younger sister of my hostesses, for, though stout, she was not quite so
stout, though tall, not quite so tall, and though hearty, not quite so
hearty. I did not catch her name, but she answered to that of Boofuls.
The only man besides myself was Peter Melrose. He was quite young,
twenty-two or twenty-three, of the middle height, but with an ungainly
figure that made him look squat. He had a reddish skin that seemed to
fit over the bones of his face too tightly, a rather large semitic nose,
though he was not a Jew, and alert green eyes under bushy eyebrows. His
brown hair, cut very short, was scurfy. He was dressed in the brown
Norfolk jacket and grey flannel trousers that are worn by the art
students who wander hatless along King's Road, Chelsea. An uncouth young
man. Nor was there much to attract in his manner. He was self-assertive,
disputatious and intolerant. He had a hearty contempt for his
fellow-writers which he expressed with zest. The satisfaction he gave me
by his breezy attacks on reputations which for my part I considered
exaggerated, but prudently held my tongue about, was only lessened by
the conviction that no sooner was my back turned than he would tear my
own to shreds. He talked well. He was amusing and sometimes witty. I
should have laughed at his sallies more easily if those three ladies had
not been so unreasonably convulsed by them. They roared with laughter at
what he said, whether it was funny or whether it was inept. He said many
silly things, for he talked without stopping, but he also said some very
clever ones. He had a point of view, crude and not so original as he
thought, but sincere. But the most striking thing about him was his
eager, impetuous vitality; it was like a hot flame that burnt him with
an unendurable fury. It even shed a glow on those about him. He had
something, if only that, and when I left it was with a slight sense of
curiosity at what would come of him. I did not know if he had talent; so
many young things can write a clever novel--that means nothing; but it
seemed to me that as a man he was not quite like everybody else. He was
the sort of person who at thirty, when time had softened his asperity
and experience had taught him that he was not quite so intelligent as he
thought, would turn into an interesting and agreeable fellow. But I
never expected to see him again.

It was with surprise that I received two or three days later a copy of
his novel with a very flattering dedication. I read it. It was obviously
autobiographical. The scene was a small town in Sussex, and the
characters of the upper middle class that strives to keep up appearances
on an inadequate income. The humour was rather brutal and rather vulgar.
It grated on me, for it consisted chiefly of mockery at people because
they were old and poor. Peter Melrose did not know how hard those
misfortunes are to bear, and that the efforts made to cope with them are
more deserving of sympathy than of derision. But there were descriptions
of places, little pictures of a room or impressions of the countryside,
which were excellently done. They showed tenderness and a sense of the
spiritual beauty of material things. The book was written easily,
without affectation, and with a pleasant feeling for the sound of words.
But what made it indeed somewhat remarkable, so that I understood why it
had attracted attention, was the passion that quivered in the love story
of which the plot, such as it was, consisted. It was, as is the modern
fashion, more than a trifle coarse and, again in the modern fashion, it
tailed off vaguely, without any particular result, so that everything
was left in the end pretty much as it had been in the beginning; but you
did get the impression of young love, idealistic and yet vehemently
sexual; it was so vivid and so deeply felt that it took your breath
away, it seemed to throb on the printed page like the pulse of life. It
had no reticence. It was absurd, scandalous and beautiful. It was like a
force of nature. That was passion all right. There is nothing, anywhere,
so moving and so awe-inspiring.

I wrote to Peter Melrose and told him what I thought of his book, then
suggested that we might lunch together. He rang me up next day and we
made a date.

I found him unaccountably shy when we sat down opposite one another at a
table in a restaurant. I gave him a cocktail. He talked glibly enough,
but I could not help seeing that he was ill at ease. I gained the
impression that his self-assurance was a pose assumed to conceal, from
himself, maybe, a diffidence that tortured him. His manners were brusque
and awkward. He would say a rude thing and then laugh nervously to cover
his own embarrassment. Though he pretended to be so sure of himself he
wanted all the time to be reassured by you. By irritating you, by saying
the things he thought would annoy, he tried to force from you some
admission, tacit it might be, that he was as wonderful as he longed to
think himself. He wanted to despise the opinion of his fellows, and
nothing was more important to him. I thought him rather an odious young
man, but I did not mind that. It is very natural that clever young men
should be rather odious. They are conscious of gifts that they do not
know how to use. They are exasperated with the world that will not
recognise their merit. They have something to give, and no hand is
stretched out to receive it. They are impatient for the fame they regard
as their due. No, I do not mind odious young men; it is when they are
charming that I button up the pockets of my sympathy.

Peter Melrose was extremely modest about his book. He blushed through
his reddish skin when I praised what I liked in it, and accepted my
strictures with a humility that was almost embarrassing. He had made
very little money out of it, and his publishers were giving him a small
monthly allowance in advance of royalties on the next one. This he had
just started, but he wanted to get away to write it in peace, and
knowing I lived on the Riviera he asked me if I could tell him of a
quiet place where he could bathe and live cheaply. I suggested that he
should come and spend a few days with me so that he could look about
till he found something to suit him. His green eyes sparkled when I
proposed this and he flushed.

"Shouldn't I be an awful nuisance?"

"No. I shall be working. All I can offer you is three meals a day and a
room to sleep in. It'll be very dull, but you can do exactly what you
like."

"It sounds grand. May I let you know if I decide to come?"

"Of course."

We separated, and a week or two later I went home. This was in May.
Early in June I received a letter from Peter Melrose asking, if I had
really meant what I said when I invited him to spend a few days with me,
whether he might arrive on such and such a date. Well, at the time I had
meant it, but now, a month later, I remembered that he was an arrogant
and ill-bred youth, whom I had seen but twice and wasn't in the least
interested in, and I didn't mean it any longer. It seemed to me very
likely that he would be bored stiff. I lived a very quiet life and saw
few people. And I thought it would be a great strain on my nerves if he
were as rude as I knew he could be, and I as his host felt it behoved me
to keep my temper. I saw myself driven beyond endurance, and ringing the
bell to have his clothes packed and the car brought round to take him
away within half an hour. But there was nothing to do about it. It would
save him the cost of board and lodging to spend a short period with me,
and if he was tired and unhappy as he said in his letter it might be
that it would do him good. I sent him a wire and shortly afterwards he
arrived.

He looked very hot and grubby in his grey flannel trousers and brown
tweed coat when I met him at the station, but after a swim in the pool
he changed into white shorts and a Cochet shirt. He looked then quite
absurdly young. He had never been out of England before. He was excited.
It was touching to see his delight. He seemed, amid those unaccustomed
surroundings, to lose his sense of himself, and he was simple, boyish
and modest. I was agreeably surprised. In the evening, after dinner,
sitting in the garden, with only the croaking of the little green frogs
to break the silence, he began talking to me of his novel. It was a
romantic story about a young writer and a celebrated prima donna. The
theme was reminiscent of Ouida, the last thing I should have expected
this hard-boiled youth to write, and I was tickled; it was odd how the
fashion completed the circle and returned generation after generation to
the same themes. I had no doubt that Peter Melrose would treat it in a
very modern way, but there it was, the same old story as had entranced
sentimental readers in the three-volume novels of the eighties. He
proposed to set it in the beginning of the Edwardian era, which to the
young has already acquired the fantastic, far-away feeling of a past
age. He talked and talked. He was not unpleasant to listen to. He had no
notion that he was putting into fiction his own day-dreams, the comic
and touching day-dreams of a rather unattractive, obscure young man who
sees himself beloved, to the admiration of the whole world, by an
incredibly beautiful, celebrated and magnificent woman. I always enjoyed
the novels of Ouida and Peter's idea did not at all displease me. With
his charming gift of description, his vivid, ingenuous way of looking at
material things, fabrics, pieces of furniture, walls, trees, flowers,
and his power of representing the passion of life, the passion of love,
that thrilled every fibre of his own uncouth body, I had a notion that
he might well produce something exuberant, absurd and poetical. But I
asked him a question.

"Have you ever known a prima donna?"

"No, but I've read all the autobiographies and memoirs that I could
find. I've gone into it pretty thoroughly. Not only the obvious things,
you know, but I've hunted around in all sorts of byways to get the
revealing touch or the suggestive anecdote."

"And have you got what you wanted?"

"I think so."

He began to describe his heroine to me. She was young and beautiful,
wilful it is true and with a quick temper, but magnanimous. A woman on
the grand scale. Music was her passion; there was music not only in her
voice, but in her gestures and in her inmost thoughts. She was devoid of
envy, and her appreciation of art was such that when another singer had
done her an injury she forgave her when she heard her sing a role
beautifully. She was of a wonderful generosity, and would give away
everything she possessed when a story of misfortune touched her soft
heart. She was a great lover, prepared to sacrifice the world for the
man she loved. She was intelligent and well-read. She was tender,
unselfish and disinterested. In fact she was much too good to be true.

"I think you'd better meet a prima donna," I said at last.

"How can I?"

"Have you ever heard of La Falterona?"

"Of course I have. I've read her memoirs."

"She lives just along the coast. I'll ring her up and ask her to
dinner."

"Will you really? It would be wonderful."

"Don't blame me if you don't find her quite what you expect."

"It's the truth I want."

Everyone has heard of La Falterona. Not even Melba had a greater
reputation. She had ceased now to sing in opera, but her voice was still
lovely, and she could fill a concert hall in any part of the world. She
went for long tours every winter, and in summer rested in a villa by the
sea. On the Riviera people are neighbours if they live thirty miles from
one another, and for some years I had seen a good deal of La Falterona.
She was a woman of ardent temperament, and she was celebrated not only
for her singing, but for her love affairs: she never minded talking
about them, and I had often sat entranced for hours while with the
humour which to me was her most astonishing characteristic she regaled
me with lurid tales of royal or very opulent adorers. I was satisfied
that there was at least a measure of truth in them. She had been
married, for short periods, three or four times, and in one of these
unions had annexed a Neapolitan prince. Thinking that to be known as La
Falterona was grander than any title, she did not use his name (to which
indeed she had no right, since after divorcing him she had married
somebody else); but her silver, her cutlery and her dinner-service were
heavily decorated with a coat of arms and a crown, and her servants
invariably addressed her as _madame la princesse_. She claimed to be a
Hungarian, but her English was perfect; she spoke it with a slight
accent (when she remembered), but with an intonation suggestive, I had
been told, of Kansas City. This she explained by saying that her father
was a political exile who had fled to America when she was no more than
a child; but she did not seem quite sure whether he was a distinguished
scientist who had got into trouble for his liberal views, or a Magyar of
high rank who had brought down on his head the imperial wrath because he
had had a love affair with an Archduchess. It depended on whether she
was just an artist among artists, or a great lady among persons of noble
birth.

With me she was not natural, for that she could never have been if she
had tried, but franker than with anyone else. She had a natural and
healthy contempt for the arts. She genuinely looked upon the whole thing
as a gigantic bluff, and deep down in her heart was an amused sympathy
for all the people who were able to put it over on the public. I will
admit that I looked forward to the encounter between Peter Melrose and
La Falterona with a good deal of sardonic amusement.

She liked coming to dine with me because she knew the food was good. It
was the only meal she ate in the day, for she took great care of her
figure, but she liked that one to be succulent and ample. I asked her to
come at nine, knowing that was the earliest hour she dreamt of eating,
and ordered dinner for half past. She turned up at a quarter to ten. She
was dressed in apple-green satin, cut very low in front, with no back at
all, and she wore a string of huge pearls, a number of expensive-looking
rings, and on her left arm diamond and emerald bracelets from the wrist
to the elbow. Two or three of them were certainly real. On her
raven-black hair was a thin circlet of diamonds. She could not have
looked more splendid if she had been going to a ball at Stafford House
in the old days. We were in white ducks.

"How grand you are," I said. "I told you it wasn't a party."

She flashed a look of her magnificent black eyes at Peter.

"Of course it's a party. You told me your friend was a writer of talent.
I am only an interpreter." She ran one finger down her flashing
bracelets. "This is the homage I pay to the creative artist."

I did not utter the vulgar monosyllable that rose to my lips, but
offered her what I knew was her favourite cocktail. I was privileged to
call her Maria, and she always called me Master. This she did, first
because she knew it made me feel a perfect fool, and secondly because,
though she was in point of fact not more than two or three years younger
than I, it made it quite clear that we belonged to different
generations. Sometimes, however, she also called me you dirty swine.
This evening she certainly might very well have passed for thirty-five.
She had those rather large features which somehow do not seem to betray
age. On the stage she was a beautiful woman, and even in private life,
notwithstanding her big nose, large mouth and fleshy face, a
good-looking one. She wore a brown make-up, with dark rouge, and her
lips were vividly scarlet. She looked very Spanish and, I suspected,
felt it, for her accent at the beginning of dinner was quite Sevillian.
I wanted her to talk so that Peter should get his money's worth, and I
knew there was but one subject in the world that she could talk about.
She was in point of fact a stupid woman who had acquired a line of glib
chatter which made people on first meeting her think she was as
brilliant as she looked; but it was merely a performance she gave, and
you soon discovered that she not only did not know what she was talking
about, but was not in the least interested in it. I do not think she had
ever read a book in her life. Her knowledge of what was going on in the
world was confined to what she was able to gather by looking at the
pictures in the illustrated press. Her passion for music was complete
bunkum. Once at a concert to which I went with her she slept all through
the Fifth Symphony, and I was charmed to hear her during the interval
telling people that Beethoven stirred her so much that she hesitated to
come and hear him, for with those glorious themes singing through her
head, it meant that she wouldn't sleep a wink all night: I could well
believe she would lie awake, for she had had so sound a nap during the
Symphony that it could not but interfere with her night's rest.

But there was one subject in which her interest never failed. She
pursued it with indefatigable energy. No obstacle prevented her from
returning to it; no chance word was so remote that she could not use it
as a stepping-stone to come back to it, and in effecting this she
displayed a cleverness of which one would never have thought her
capable. On this subject she could be witty, vivacious, philosophic,
tragic and inventive. It enabled her to exhibit all the resources of her
ingenuity. There was no end to its ramifications, and no limit to its
variety. This subject was herself. I gave her an opening at once and
then all I had to do was to make suitable interjections. She was in
great form. We were dining on the terrace and a full moon was obligingly
shining on the sea in front of us. Nature, as though she knew what was
proper to the occasion, had set just the right scene. The view was
framed by two tall black cypresses, and all round us on the terrace the
orange trees in full flower exhaled their heady perfume. There was no
wind, and the candles on the table flamed with a steady softness. It was
a light that exactly suited La Falterona. She sat between us, eating
heartily and thoroughly appreciating the champagne, and she was enjoying
herself. She gave the moon a glance. On the sea was a broad pathway of
silver.

"How beautiful nature is," she said. "My God, the scenery one has to
play in. How can they expect one to sing? You know, really, the sets at
Covent Garden are a disgrace. The last time I sang Juliet I just told
them I wouldn't go on unless they did something about the moon."

Peter listened to her in silence. He ate her words. She was better value
than I had dared to hope. She got a little tight not only on the
champagne but on her own loquaciousness. To listen to her you would have
thought she was a meek and docile creature against whom the whole world
was in conspiracy. Her life had been one long bitter struggle against
desperate odds. Managers treated her vilely, impresarios played foul
tricks on her, singers combined to ruin her, critics bought by the money
of her enemies wrote scandalous things about her, lovers for whom she
had sacrificed everything used her with base ingratitude; and yet, by
the miracle of her genius and her quick wits, she had discomfited them
all. With joyous glee, her eyes flashing, she told us how she had
defeated their machinations and what disaster had befallen the wretches
who had stood in her way. I wondered how she had the nerve to tell the
disgraceful stories she told. Without the smallest consciousness of what
she was doing she showed herself vindictive and envious, hard as nails,
incredibly vain, cruel, selfish, scheming and mercenary. I stole a
glance now and then at Peter. I was tickled at the confusion he must be
experiencing when he compared his ideal picture of the prima donna with
the ruthless reality. She was a woman without a heart. When at last she
left us I turned to Peter with a smile.

"Well," I said, "at all events you've got some good material."

"I know, and it all fits in so beautifully," he said with enthusiasm.

"Does it?" I exclaimed, taken aback.

"She's exactly like my woman. She'll never believe that I'd sketched out
the main lines of the character before I'd ever seen her."

I stared at him in amazement.

"The passion for art. The disinterestedness. She has that same nobility
of soul that I saw in my mind's eye. The small-minded, the curious, the
vulgar put every obstacle in her way and she sweeps them all aside by
the greatness of her purpose and the purity of her ends." He gave a
little happy laugh. "Isn't it wonderful how nature copies art? I swear
to you, I've got her to the life."

I was about to speak; I held my tongue; though I shrugged a spiritual
shoulder I was touched. Peter had seen in her what he was determined to
see. There was something very like beauty in his illusion. In his own
way he was a poet. We went to bed, and two or three days later, having
found a pension to his liking, he left me.

In course of time his book appeared, and like most second novels by
young people it had but a very moderate success. The critics had
overpraised his first effort and now were unduly censorious. It is of
course a very different thing to write a novel about yourself and the
people you have known from childhood and to write one about persons of
your own invention. Peter's was too long. He had allowed his gift for
word-painting to run away with him, the humour was still rather vulgar;
but he had reconstructed the period with skill, and the romantic story
had that same thrill of real passion which in his first book had so much
impressed me.

After the dinner at my house I did not see La Falterona for more than a
year. She went for a long tour in South America and did not come down to
the Riviera till late in the summer. One night she asked me to dine with
her. We were alone but for her companion-secretary, an Englishwoman,
Miss Glaser by name, whom La Falterona bullied and ill-treated, hit and
swore at, but whom she could not do without. Miss Glaser was a haggard
person of fifty, with grey hair and a sallow, wrinkled face. She was a
queer creature. She knew everything there was to be known about La
Falterona. She both adored and hated her. Behind her back she could be
extremely funny at her expense, and the imitation she gave in secret of
the great singer with her admirers was the most richly comic thing I
have ever heard. But she watched over her like a mother. It was she who,
sometimes by wheedling, sometimes by sheer plainness of speech, caused
La Falterona to behave herself something like a human being. It was she
who had written the singer's exceedingly inaccurate memoirs.

La Falterona wore pale-blue satin pyjamas (she liked satin) and,
presumably to rest her hair, a green silk wig; except for a few rings, a
pearl necklace, a couple of bracelets and a diamond brooch at her waist,
she wore no jewellery. She had much to tell me of her triumphs in South
America. She talked on and on. She had never been in more superb voice
and the ovations she had received were unparalleled. The concert halls
were sold out for every performance, and she had made a packet.

"Is it true or is it not true, Glaser?" cried Maria with a strong South
American accent.

"Most of it," said Miss Glaser.

La Falterona had the objectionable habit of addressing her companion by
her surname. But it must long since have ceased to annoy the poor woman,
so there was not much point in it.

"Who was that man we met in Buenos Ayres?"

"Which man?"

"You fool, Glaser. You remember perfectly. The man I was married to
once."

"Pepe Zapata," Miss Glaser replied without a smile.

"He was broke. He had the impudence to ask me to give him back a diamond
necklace he'd given me. He said it had belonged to his mother."

"It wouldn't have hurt you to give it him," said Miss Glaser. "You never
wear it."

"Give it him back?" cried La Falterona, and her astonishment was such
that she spoke the purest English. "Give it him back? You're crazy."

She looked at Miss Glaser as though she expected her there and then to
have an attack of acute mania. She got up from the table, for we had
finished our dinner.

"Let us go outside," she said. "If I hadn't the patience of an angel I'd
have sacked that woman long ago."

La Falterona and I went out, but Miss Glaser did not come with us. We
sat on the verandah. There was a magnificent cedar in the garden, and
its dark branches were silhouetted against the starry sky. The sea,
almost at our feet, was marvellously still. Suddenly La Falterona gave a
start.

"I almost forgot. Glaser, you fool," she shouted, "why didn't you remind
me?" And then again to me: "I'm furious with you."

"I'm glad you didn't remember till after dinner," I answered.

"That friend of yours and his book."

I didn't immediately grasp what she was talking about.

"What friend and what book?"

"Don't be so stupid. An ugly little man with a shiny face and a bad
figure. He wrote a book about me."

"Oh! Peter Melrose. But it's not about you."

"Of course it is. Do you take me for a fool? He had the impudence to
send it me."

"I hope you had the decency to acknowledge it."

"Do you think I have the time to acknowledge all the books
twopenny-halfpenny authors send me? I expect Glaser wrote to him. You
had no right to ask me to dinner to meet him. I came to oblige you,
because I thought you liked me for myself, I didn't know I was just
being made use of. It's awful that one can't trust one's oldest friends
to behave like gentlemen. I'll never dine with you again so long as I
live. Never, never, never."

She was working herself into one of her tantrums, so I interrupted her
before it was too late.

"Come off it, my dear," I said. "In the first place the character of the
singer in that book, which I suppose is the one you're referring to..."

"You don't suppose I'm referring to the charwoman, do you?"

"Well, the character of the singer was roughed out before he'd even seen
you, and besides, it isn't in the least like you."

"How d'you mean, it's not like me? All my friends have recognised me. I
mean, it's the most obvious portrait."

"Mary," I expostulated.

"My name is Maria and no one knows it better than you, and if you can't
call me Maria you can call me Madame Falterona or Princess."

I paid no attention to this.

"Did you read the book?"

"Of course I read it. When everyone told me it was about me."

"But the boy's heroine, the prima donna, is twenty-five."

"A woman like me is ageless."

"She's musical to her finger-tips, gentle as a dove, and a miracle of
unselfishness; she's frank, loyal and disinterested. Is that the opinion
you have of yourself?"

"And what is _your_ opinion of me?"

"Hard as nails, absolutely ruthless, a born intriguer and as
self-centred as they make 'em."

She then called me a name which a lady does not habitually apply to a
gentleman who, whatever his faults, has never had his legitimacy called
in question. But though her eyes flashed I could see that she was not in
the least angry. She accepted my description of her as complimentary.

"And what about the emerald ring? Are you going to deny that I told him
that?"

The story of the emerald ring was this: La Falterona was having a
passionate love-affair with the Crown Prince of a powerful state and he
had made her a present of an emerald of immense value. One night they
had a quarrel, high words passed, and some reference being made to the
ring she tore it off her finger and flung it in the fire. The Crown
Prince, being a man of thrifty habit, with a cry of consternation, threw
himself on his knees and began raking out the coals till he recovered
the ring. The Falterona watched him scornfully as he grovelled on the
floor. She didn't give much away herself, but she could not bear economy
in others. She finished the story with these splendid words:

"After that I _couldn't_ love him."

The incident was picturesque and had taken Peter's fancy. He had used it
very neatly.

"I told you both about that in the greatest confidence and I've never
told it to a soul before. It's a scandalous breach of confidence to have
put it into a book. There are no excuses either for him or for you."

"But I've heard you tell the story dozens of times. And it was told me
by Florence Montgomerie about herself and the Crown Prince Rudolf. It
was one of her favourite stories too. Lola Montez used to tell it about
herself and the King of Bavaria. I have little doubt that Nell Gwyn told
it about herself and Charles II. It's one of the oldest stories in the
world."

She was taken aback, but only for an instant.

"I don't see anything strange in its having happened more than once.
Everyone knows that women are passionate and that men are as mean as
cat's-meat. I could show you the emerald if you liked. I had to have it
reset, of course."

"With Lola Montez it was pearls," I said ironically. "I believe they
were considerably damaged."

"Pearls?" She gave that brilliant smile of hers. "Have I ever told you
about Benjy Riesenbaum and the pearls? You might make a story out of
it."

Benjy Riesenbaum was a person of great wealth, and it was common
knowledge that for a long time he had been the Falterona's lover. In
fact it was he who had bought her the luxurious little villa in which we
were now sitting.

"He'd given me a very handsome string in New York. I was singing at the
Metropolitan, and at the end of the season we travelled back to Europe
together. You never knew him, did you?"

"No."

"Well, he wasn't bad in some ways, but he was insanely jealous. We had a
row on the boat because a young Italian officer was paying me a good
deal of attention. Heaven knows, I'm the easiest woman in the world to
get on with, but I will not be bullied by any man. After all, I have my
self-respect to think of. I told him where he got off, if you understand
what I mean, and he slapped my face. On deck if you please. I don't mind
telling you I was mad. I tore the string of pearls off my neck and flung
it in the sea. 'They cost fifty thousand dollars,' he gasped. He went
white. I drew myself up to my full height. 'I only valued them because I
loved you,' I said. And I turned on my heel."

"You were a fool," I said.

"I wouldn't speak to him for twenty-four hours. At the end of that time
I had him eating out of my hand. When we got to Paris the first thing he
did was to go to Cartier's and buy me another just as good."

She began to giggle.

"Did you say I was a fool? I'd left the real string in the bank in New
York, because I knew I was going back next season. It was an imitation
one that I threw in the sea."

She started to laugh, and her laugh was rich and joyous and like a
child's. That was the sort of trick that thoroughly appealed to her. She
chortled with glee.

"What fools men are," she gasped. "And you, you thought I'd throw a real
string into the sea."

She laughed and laughed. At last she stopped. She was excited.

"I want to sing. Glaser, play an accompaniment."

A voice came from the drawing-room.

"You can't sing after all that food you walloped down."

"Shut up, you old cow. Play something, I tell you."

There was no reply, but in a moment Miss Glaser began to play the
opening bars of one of Schumann's songs. It was no strain on the voice,
and I guessed that Miss Glaser knew what she was doing when she chose
it. La Falterona began to sing, in an undertone, but as she heard the
sounds come from her lips and found that they were clear and pure she
let herself go. The song finished. There was silence. Miss Glaser had
heard that La Falterona was in magnificent voice, and she sensed that
she wished to sing again. The prima donna was standing in the window,
with her back to the lighted room, and she looked out at the darkly
shining sea. The cedar made a lovely pattern against the sky. The night
was soft and balmy. Miss Glaser played a couple of bars. A cold shiver
ran down my spine. La Falterona gave a little start as she recognised
the music, and I felt her gather herself together.

                  "_Mild und leise wie er lchelt_
                  _Wie das Auge er ffnet._"

It was Isolde's death song. She had never sung in Wagner, fearing the
strain on her voice, but this, I suppose, she had often sung in
concerts. It did not matter now that instead of an orchestral
accompaniment she had only the thin tinkle of a piano. The notes of the
heavenly melody fell upon the still air and travelled over the water. In
that too romantic scene, in that starry night, the effect was
shattering. La Falterona's voice, even now, was exquisite in its
quality, mellow and crystalline; and she sang with wonderful emotion, so
tenderly, with such tragic, beautiful anguish that my heart melted
within me. I had a most awkward lump in my throat when she finished, and
looking at her I saw that tears were streaming down her face. I did not
want to speak. She stood quite still looking out at that ageless sea.

What a strange woman! I thought then that I would sooner have her as she
was, with her monstrous faults, than as Peter Melrose saw her, a pattern
of all the virtues. But then people blame me because I rather like
people who are a little worse than is reasonable. She was hateful, of
course, but she was irresistible.




THE LION'S SKIN


A good many people were shocked when they read that Captain Forestier
had met his death in a forest fire when trying to save his wife's dog,
which had been accidentally shut up in the house. Some said they never
knew he had it in him; others said it was exactly what they would have
expected of him, but of these some meant it in one way and some in
another. After the tragic occurrence Mrs. Forestier found shelter in the
villa of some people called Hardy, whose acquaintance she and her
husband had but lately made. Captain Forestier had not liked them, at
any rate he had not liked Fred Hardy, but she felt that if he had lived
through that terrible night he would have changed his mind. He would
have realised how much good there was in Hardy notwithstanding his
reputation, and like the great gentleman he was he would not have
hesitated to admit that he had been mistaken. Mrs. Forestier did not
know how she could ever have kept her reason after the loss of the man
who was everything in the world to her but for the Hardys' wonderful
kindness. In her immense distress their unfailing sympathy had been her
only consolation. They, who had been almost eye-witnesses of her
husband's great sacrifice, knew as did no one else how wonderful he had
been. She could never forget the words dear Fred Hardy had used when he
was breaking the dreadful news to her. It was these words that had
enabled her not only to bear the frightful disaster, but to face the
desolate future with the courage with which she well knew that brave
man, that gallant gentleman, whom she had loved so well, would have
wished her to face it.

Mrs. Forestier was a very nice woman. Kindly people often say that of a
woman when they can say nothing about her, and it has come to be looked
upon as cold praise. I do not mean it as such. Mrs. Forestier was
neither charming, beautiful nor intelligent; on the contrary she was
absurd, homely and foolish; yet the more you knew her, the more you
liked her, and when asked why, you found yourself forced to repeat that
she was a very nice woman. She was as tall as the average man; she had a
large mouth and a great hooked nose, pale-blue short-sighted eyes and
big ugly hands. Her skin was lined and weather-beaten, but she made up
heavily, and her hair, which she wore long, was dyed golden, tightly
marcelled and elaborately dressed. She did everything she could to
counteract the aggressive masculinity of her appearance, and succeeded
only in looking like a vaudeville artist doing a female impersonation.
Her voice was a woman's voice, but you were always expecting her, at the
end of the number as it were, to break into a deep bass, and tearing off
that golden wig, discover a man's bald pate. She spent a great deal of
money on her clothes, which she got from the most fashionable
dressmakers in Paris, but though a woman of fifty she had an unfortunate
taste for choosing dresses that looked exquisite on pretty little
mannequins in the flower of their youth. She always wore a great
quantity of rich jewels. Her movements were awkward and her gestures
clumsy. If she went into a drawing-room where there was a valuable piece
of jade she managed to sweep it on the floor; if she lunched with you
and you had a set of glasses you treasured she was almost certain to
smash one of them to atoms.

Yet this ungainly exterior sheltered a tender, romantic and idealistic
soul. It took you some time to discover this, for when first you knew
her you took her for a figure of fun, and then when you knew her better
(and had suffered from her clumsiness) she exasperated you; but when you
did discover it, you thought yourself very stupid not to have known it
all the time, for then it looked out at you through those pale-blue,
near-sighted eyes, rather shyly, but with a sincerity that only a fool
could miss. Those dainty muslins and spring-like organdies, those
virginal silks, clothed not the uncouth body but the fresh, girlish
spirit. You forgot that she broke your china and looked like a man
dressed up as a woman, you saw her as she saw herself, as indeed she
really was if reality were visible, as a dear little thing with a heart
of gold. When you came to know her you found her as simple as a child;
she was touchingly grateful for any attention you paid her; her own
kindness was infinite, you could ask her to do anything for you, however
tiresome, and she would do it as though by giving her the opportunity to
put herself out you rendered her a service. She had a rare capacity for
disinterested love. You knew that never an unkind nor a malicious
thought had once passed through her head. And having granted all that
you said over again that Mrs. Forestier was a very nice woman.

Unfortunately she was also a damned fool. This you discovered when you
met her husband. Mrs. Forestier was American and Captain Forestier was
English. Mrs. Forestier was born in Portland, Oregon, and had never been
to Europe till the war of 1914, when, her first husband having recently
died, she joined a hospital unit and came to France. She was not rich by
American standards, but by our English ones in affluent circumstances.
From the way the Forestiers lived I should guess that she had something
like thirty thousand dollars a year. Except that she undoubtedly gave
the wrong medicines to the wrong men, put on their bandages so that they
were worse than useless, and broke every utensil that was breakable, I
am sure that she was an admirable nurse. I do not think she ever found
work too revolting for her to do it without hesitation; she certainly
never spared herself and was surely never out of temper; I have a notion
that many a poor wretch had cause to bless the tenderness of her heart,
and it may be that not a few took the last bitter step into the unknown
with more courage because of the loving-kindness of her golden soul. It
was during the last year of the war that Captain Forestier came under
her care, and soon after peace was declared they married. They settled
down in a handsome villa on the hills behind Cannes, and in a short time
became conspicuous in the social life of the Riviera. Captain Forestier
played bridge well and was a keen golfer. He was not a bad tennis player
either. He had a sailing boat, and in the summer the Forestiers gave
very nice parties between the islands. After seventeen years of marriage
Mrs. Forestier still adored her good-looking husband, and you were
unlikely to know her long without being told in that slow Western drawl
of hers the full story of their courtship.

"It was a case of love at first sight," she said. "He was brought in
when I happened to be off duty, and when I came on and found him lying
in one of my beds, oh, my dear, I felt such a pang in my heart, for a
moment I thought I'd been overworking and had strained it. He was the
handsomest man I'd ever seen in my life."

"Was he badly wounded?"

"Well, he wasn't exactly wounded. You know, it's a most extraordinary
thing, he went all through the war, he was under fire for months at a
time, and of course he risked his life twenty times a day, he's one of
those men who simply doesn't know what fear is; but he never even got a
scratch. He had carbuncles."

It seemed an unromantic ailment on which to start a passionate
attachment. Mrs. Forestier was a trifle prudish, and though Captain
Forestier's carbuncles greatly interested her she always found it a
little difficult to tell you exactly where they were.

"They were right down at the bottom of his back, even farther really,
and he hated to have me dress them. Englishmen are curiously modest,
I've noticed that over and over again, and it mortified him terribly.
You'd have thought being on those terms, if you know what I mean, from
our first acquaintance it would have made us more intimate. But somehow
it didn't. He was very stand-offish with me. When I used to get to his
bed on my round I was so breathless and my heart beat so I couldn't make
out what was the matter with me. I'm not naturally a clumsy woman, I
never drop things or break anything; but you wouldn't believe it, when I
had to give Robert his medicine I used to drop the spoon and break the
glass, I couldn't imagine what he must be thinking of me."

It was almost impossible not to laugh when Mrs. Forestier told you this.
She smiled rather sweetly.

"I suppose it sounds very absurd to you, but you see I'd never felt that
way before. When I married my first husband--well, he was a widower with
grown-up children, he was a fine man and one of the most prominent
citizens in the state, but somehow it was different."

"And how did you eventually discover that you were in love with Captain
Forestier?"

"Well, I don't ask you to believe me, I know it sounds funny, but the
fact is that one of the other nurses told me, and as soon as she did of
course I knew it was true. I was terribly upset at first. You see, I
knew nothing about him. Like all Englishmen he was very reserved and for
all I knew he had a wife and half a dozen children."

"How did you find out he hadn't?"

"I asked him. The moment he told me he was a bachelor I made up my mind
that by hook or by crook I was going to marry him. He suffered agonies,
poor darling; you see, he had to lie on his face almost all the time,
lying on his back was torture, and as to sitting down--well, of course
he couldn't even think of that. But I don't believe his agonies were
worse than mine. Men like clinging silks and soft, fluffy things, you
know what I mean, and I was at such a disadvantage in my nurse's
uniform. The matron, one of those New England spinsters, couldn't bear
make-up, and in those days I didn't make-up anyway; my first husband
never liked it; and then my hair wasn't as pretty as it is now. He used
to look at me with those wonderful blue eyes of his, and I felt he must
be thinking I looked a perfect sight. He was very low and I thought I
ought to do all I could to cheer him up, so whenever I had a few minutes
to spare I'd go and talk to him. He said he couldn't bear the thought of
a strong, husky chap like he was lying in bed week after week while all
his pals were in the trenches. You couldn't talk to him without
realising that he was one of those men who never feel the joy of life so
intensely as when the bullets are whistling all round them, and the next
moment may be their last. Danger was a stimulant to him. I don't mind
telling you that when I used to write down his temperature on the chart
I added a point or two so that the doctors should think him a little
worse than he was. I knew he was doing his damnedest to get them to
discharge him, and I thought it only fair to him to make sure that they
wouldn't. He used to look at me thoughtfully while I talked away and I
know he looked forward to our little chats. I told him that I was a
widow and had no one dependent on me, and I told him that I was thinking
of settling down in Europe after the war. Gradually he thawed a little.
He didn't say much about himself, but he began to chaff me, he has a
great sense of humour, you know, and sometimes I really began to think
he rather liked me. At last they reported him fit for duty. To my
surprise he asked me to dine with him on his last evening. I managed to
get leave from the matron and we drove in to Paris. You can't imagine
how handsome he looked in his uniform. I've never seen anyone look so
distinguished. Aristocratic to his finger-tips. Somehow or other he
wasn't in such good spirits as I'd expected. He'd been crazy to get back
to the front.

"'Why are you so down to-night?' I asked him. 'After all, you've got
your wish at last.'

"'I know I have,' he said. 'If for all that I'm a bit blue, can't you
guess why?'

"I simply dared not think what he meant. I thought I'd better make a
little joke.

"'I'm not very good at guessing,' I said, with a laugh. 'If you want me
to know you'd better tell me.'

"He looked down and I could see he was nervous.

"'You've been most awfully good to me,' he said. 'I can never begin to
thank you for all your kindness. You're the grandest woman I've ever
known.'

"It upset me terribly to hear him say that. You know how funny
Englishmen are; he'd never paid me a compliment before.

"'I've only done what any competent nurse would have,' I said.

"'Shall I ever see you again?' he said.

"'That's up to you,' I said.

"I hoped he didn't hear the tremble in my voice.

"'I hate leaving you,' he said.

"I really could hardly speak.

"'Need you?' I said.

"'So long as my King and Country want me I am at their service.'"

When Mrs. Forestier reached this point her pale blue eyes filled with
tears.

"'But the war can't last for ever,' I said.

"'When the war ends,' he answered, 'supposing a bullet hasn't put an end
to me, I shan't have a penny. I don't even know how I shall set about
earning my living. You're a very rich woman; I'm a pauper.'

"'You're an English gentleman,' I said.

"'Will that matter very much when the world has been made safe for
democracy?' he said bitterly.

"I was just crying my eyes out by then. Everything he said was so
beautiful. Of course I saw what he meant. He didn't think it honourable
to ask me to marry him. I felt he'd sooner die than let me think he was
after my money. He was a fine man. I knew that I wasn't worthy of him,
but I saw that if I wanted him I must go out and get him myself.

"'It's no good pretending I'm not crazy about you, because I am,' I
said.

"'Don't make it harder for me,' he said hoarsely.

"I thought I should die, I loved him so much when he said that. It told
me all I wanted to know. I stretched out my hand.

"'Will you marry me, Robert?' I said, very simply.

"'Eleanor,' he said.

"It was then he told me that he'd loved me from the first day he ever
saw me. At first he hadn't taken it seriously, he thought I was just a
nurse and perhaps he'd have an affair with me, and then when he found
out that I wasn't that sort of woman and had a certain amount of money,
he made up his mind that he must conquer his love. You see, he thought
that marriage was quite out of the question."

Probably nothing flattered Mrs. Forestier more than the idea that
Captain Forestier had wanted to have a slap and tickle with her. It was
certain that no one else had ever made dishonourable proposals to her,
and though Forestier hadn't either, the conviction that he had
entertained the notion was a never-failing source of satisfaction to
her. When they were married Eleanor's relations, hard-bitten Western
people, had suggested that her husband should go to work rather than
live on her money, and Captain Forestier was all for it. The only
stipulation he made was this:

"There are some things a gentleman can't do, Eleanor. Anything else I'll
do gladly. God knows, I don't attach any importance to that sort of
thing, but if one's a sahib one can't help it, and damn it all,
especially in these days, one does owe something to one's class."

Eleanor thought he had done enough in risking his life for his country
in one bloody battle after another during four long years, but she was
too proud of him to let it be said that he was a fortune-hunter who had
married her for her money, and she made up her mind not to object if he
found something to do that was worth his while. Unfortunately, the only
jobs that offered were not very important. But he did not turn them down
on his own responsibility.

"It's up to you, Eleanor," he told her. "You've only got to say the word
and I'll take it. It would make my poor old governor turn in his grave
to see me do it, but that can't be helped. My first duty is to you."

Eleanor wouldn't hear of it, and gradually the idea of his working was
dropped. The Forestiers lived most of the year in their villa on the
Riviera. They seldom went to England; Robert said it was no place for a
gentleman since the war, and all the good fellows, white men every one
of them, that he used to go about with when he was "one of the boys",
had been killed. He would have liked to spend his winters in England,
three days a week with the Quorn, that was the life for a man, but poor
Eleanor, she would be so out of it in that hunting set, he couldn't ask
her to make the sacrifice. Eleanor was prepared to make any sacrifice,
but Captain Forestier shook his head. He wasn't as young as he had been,
and his hunting days were over. He was quite satisfied to breed
Sealyhams and raise Buff Orpingtons. They had a good deal of land; the
house stood on the top of a hill, on a plateau, surrounded on three
sides by forest, and in front they had a garden. Eleanor said he was
never so happy as when he was walking round the estate in an old tweed
suit with the kennel-man, who also looked after the chickens. It was
then you saw in him all those generations of country squires that he had
behind him. It touched and amused Eleanor to see the long talks he had
with the kennel-man about the Buff Orpingtons; it was for all the world
as if he were discussing the pheasants with his head keeper: and he
fussed over the Sealyhams as much as if they had been the pack of hounds
you couldn't help feeling he would have been so much more at home with.
Captain Forestier's great-grandfather had been one of the bucks of the
Regency. It was he who had ruined the family so that the estates had to
be sold. They had a wonderful old place in Shropshire, they'd had it for
centuries, and Eleanor, even though it no longed belonged to them, would
have liked to go and see it; but Captain Forestier said it would be too
painful to him and would never take her.

The Forestiers entertained a good deal. Captain Forestier was a
connoisseur of wines and was proud of his cellar.

"His father was well known to have the best palate in England," said
Eleanor, "and he's inherited it."

Most of their friends were Americans, French and Russians. Robert found
them on the whole more interesting than the English, and Eleanor liked
everybody he liked. Robert did not think the English quite up to their
mark. Most of the people he had known in the old days belonged to the
shooting, hunting, and fishing set; they, poor devils, were all broke
now, and though, thank God, he wasn't a snob, he didn't half like the
idea of his wife getting herself mixed up with a lot of _nouveaux
riches_ no one had ever heard of. Mrs. Forestier was not nearly so
particular, but she respected his prejudices and admired his
exclusiveness.

"Of course he has his whims and fancies," she said, "but I think it's
only loyal on my part to defer to them. When you know the sort of people
he comes from you can't help seeing how natural it is he should have
them. The only time I've ever seen him vexed in all the years we've been
married was when once a gigolo came up to me in the Casino and asked me
to dance. Robert nearly knocked him down. I told him the poor little
thing was only doing his job, but he said he wasn't going to have a
damned swine like that even asking his wife to dance."

Captain Forestier had high moral standards. He thanked God that he
wasn't narrow-minded, but one had to draw the line somewhere; and just
because he lived on the Riviera he didn't see why he should hob-nob with
drunks, wastrels and perverts. He had no indulgence for sexual
irregularities and would not allow Eleanor to frequent women of doubtful
reputation.

"You see," said Eleanor, "he's a man of complete integrity; he's the
cleanest man I've ever known; and if sometimes he seems a little
intolerant you must always remember that he never asks of others what he
isn't prepared to do himself. After all, one can't help admiring a man
whose principles are so high and who's prepared to stick to them at any
cost."

When Captain Forestier told Eleanor that such and such a man, whom you
met everywhere, and who you thought was rather pleasant, wasn't a pukkah
sahib, she knew it was no good insisting. She knew that in her husband's
judgment that finished him, and she was prepared to abide by it. After
nearly twenty years of marriage she was sure of one thing, if of no
other, and this was that Robert Forestier was the perfect type of an
English gentleman.

"And I don't know that God has ever created anything finer than that,"
she said.

The trouble was that Captain Forestier was almost too perfect a type of
the English gentleman. He was at forty-five (he was two or three years
younger than Eleanor) still a very handsome man, with his wavy, abundant
grey hair and his handsome moustache; he had the weather-beaten,
healthy, tanned skin of a man who is much in the open air. He was tall,
lean and broad-shouldered. He looked every inch a soldier. He had a
bluff, hearty way with him and a loud, frank laugh. In his conversation,
in his manner, in his dress he was so typical that you could hardly
believe it. He was so much of a country gentleman that he made you think
rather of an actor giving a marvellous performance of the part. When you
saw him walking along the Croisette, a pipe in his mouth, in plus-fours
and just the sort of tweed coat he would have worn on the moors, he
looked so like an English sportsman that it gave you quite a shock. And
his conversation, the way he dogmatised, the platitudinous inanity of
his statements, his amiable, well-bred stupidity, were all so
characteristic of the retired officer that you could hardly help
thinking he was putting it on.

"When Eleanor heard that the house at the bottom of their hill had been
taken by a Sir Frederick and Lady Hardy she was much pleased. It would
be nice for Robert to have as a near neighbour someone of his own class.
She made enquiries about them from her friends in Cannes. It appeared
that Sir Frederick had lately come into the baronetcy on the death of an
uncle and was come to the Riviera for two or three years while he was
paying off the death duties. He was said to have been very wild in his
youth, he was well on in the fifties when he came to Cannes, but now he
was respectably married, to a very nice little woman, and had two small
boys. It was a pity that Lady Hardy had been an actress, for Robert was
apt to be a little stuffy about actresses, but everyone said that she
was very well-mannered and ladylike, and you would never have guessed
she had been on the stage. The Forestiers met her first at a tea-party
to which Sir Frederick did not go, and Robert acknowledged that she
seemed a very decent sort of person; so Eleanor, wishing to be
neighbourly, invited them both to luncheon. A day was arranged. The
Forestiers had asked a good many people to meet them, and the Hardys
were rather late. Eleanor took an immediate fancy to Sir Frederick. He
looked much younger than she expected, he hadn't a white hair on his
close-cropped head; indeed there was about him something boyish that was
rather attractive. He was slightly built, not as tall as she was; and he
had bright friendly eyes and a ready smile. She noticed that he wore the
same Guards tie that Robert sometimes wore; he was not nearly so
well-dressed as Robert, who always looked as though he had stepped out
of a show-window, but he wore his old clothes as though it didn't much
matter what one wore. Eleanor could quite believe he had been a trifle
wild as a young man. She was not inclined to blame him.

"I must introduce my husband to you," she said.

She called him. Robert was talking to some of the other guests on the
terrace, and hadn't noticed the Hardys come in. He came forward and in
his affable, hearty way, with a grace that always charmed Eleanor, shook
hands with Lady Hardy. Then he turned to Sir Frederick. Sir Frederick
gave him a puzzled look.

"Haven't we met before?" he said.

Robert looked at him coolly.

"I don't think so."

"I could have sworn I knew your face."

Eleanor felt her husband stiffen and at once realised that something was
going wrong. Robert laughed.

"It sounds terribly rude, but to the best of my belief I've never set
eyes on you in my life. We may have run across one another in the war.
One met such hosts of fellers, then, didn't one? Will you have a
cocktail, Lady Hardy?"

During luncheon Eleanor noticed that Hardy kept looking at Robert. He
was evidently trying to place him. Robert was busy with the women on
either side of him and did not catch the glances. He was making efforts
to entertain his neighbours; and his loud, ringing laugh rang through
the room. He was a wonderful host. Eleanor had always admired his sense
of social duty; however dull the women were he was sitting next to he
gave them of his best. But when their guests had gone Robert's gaiety
dropped from him like a cloak from his shoulders. She had a feeling that
he was upset.

"Was the princess very boring?" she asked kindly.

"She's a malignant old cat, but otherwise she was all right."

"Funny that Sir Frederick thought he knew you."

"I've never set eyes on him in my life. But I know all about him. I
wouldn't have more to do with him than you can help if I were you,
Eleanor. I don't think he's quite our mark."

"But it's one of the oldest baronetcies in England. We looked it out in
_Who's Who_."

"He's a disreputable scamp. I didn't dream that the Captain Hardy,"
Robert corrected himself, "the Fred Hardy I used to know about in the
old days was now Sir Frederick. I would never have allowed you to ask
him to my house."

"Why, Robert? I'm bound to tell you that I thought him very attractive."

For once Eleanor thought her husband rather unreasonable.

"A great many women have found him so, and a pretty penny it's cost
them."

"You know how people talk. One really can't believe everything one
hears."

He took one of her hands in his and looked earnestly into her eyes.

"Eleanor, you know I'm not the sort of chap to say anything against
another chap behind his back, and I'd rather not tell you what I know
about Hardy; I can only ask you to take my word for it that he isn't a
proper person for you to know."

This was an appeal to which Eleanor was incapable of turning a deaf ear.
It thrilled her to know that Robert placed such confidence in her; he
knew that in a crisis he had only to call on her loyalty and she would
not fail him.

"No one can be better aware than I, Robert," she answered gravely, "of
your perfect integrity; I know that if you could tell me you would, but
even if you wanted to now I wouldn't let you; it would look as if I had
less confidence in you than you have in me. I am willing to abide by
your judgment. I promise you that the Hardys shall never darken these
doors again."

But Eleanor often lunched out without Robert, when he was playing golf,
and so frequently met the Hardys. She was very stiff with Sir Frederick,
because if Robert disapproved of him, she must too; but he either did
not notice or did not care. He went out of his way to be nice to her and
she found him easy to get on with. It was difficult to dislike a man who
plainly thought that no woman was better than she should be, but very
sweet for all that, and who had such delightful manners. It might be
that he was an improper man for her to know, but she couldn't help
liking the look in his brown eyes. It was a mocking look, which put you
on your guard, and yet so caressing that you could not think he meant
you harm. But the more Eleanor heard about him, the more she realised
how right Robert was. He was an unprincipled rascal. They mentioned the
names of women who had sacrificed everything for his sake and whom he
had thrown aside without ceremony the moment he was tired of them. He
seemed to have settled down now, and to be devoted to his wife and
children; but can the leopard change his spots? It was only too probable
that Lady Hardy had more to put up with than anyone suspected.

Fred Hardy was a bad lot. Pretty women, _chemin de fer_, and an unlucky
knack for backing the wrong horse had landed him in the bankruptcy court
by the time he was twenty-five, and he had been forced to resign his
commission. He had seen no shame then in allowing women no longer in
their first youth, who found his charm irresistible, to supply his
wants. But the war came, he rejoined his regiment, and got a D.S.O. Then
he went out to Kenya, where he found occasion to become co-respondent in
a notorious divorce case; he left Kenya over some trouble with a cheque.
His ideas of honesty were lax. It was unsafe to buy a car or a horse off
him, and you did much better to keep away from the champagnes he warmly
recommended to you. When with his persuasive charm he put before you a
speculation by which you and he would make a fortune, you could only be
sure that whatever he made out of it you would make nothing. He was in
turn a motor-salesman, an outside broker, a commission agent and an
actor. Were there any justice in the world he should have ended if not
in gaol at least in the gutter. But by one of fate's monstrous tricks,
having at last inherited his baronetcy and an adequate income, having
married when well over forty a pretty, clever wife to whom were in due
course born two healthy and handsome children, the future offered him
affluence, position and respectability. He had never taken life any more
seriously than he took women, and life had been as kind to him as women.
If he thought of his past it was with complacency; he had had a good
time, he had enjoyed his ups and downs; and now, with good health and a
clear conscience, he was prepared to settle down as a country gentleman,
damn it, bring up the kids as kids should be brought up; and when the
old buffer who sat for his constituency pegged out, by George, go into
Parliament himself.

"I could tell them a thing or two they don't know," he said.

He was probably right, but he did not stop to reflect that perhaps they
were not things they much wanted to know.

One afternoon, about sunset, Fred Hardy went into one of the bars on the
Croisette. He was a sociable creature and did not care to drink alone,
so he looked around to see if there were anyone he knew. He caught sight
of Robert, who had been playing golf and was waiting there for Eleanor.

"Hulloa, Bob, what about having a tiddly?"

Robert gave a start. No one on the Riviera called him Bob. When he saw
who it was he answered stiffly:

"I've got a drink, thanks."

"Have another. My old lady don't approve of my drinking between meals,
but when I can manage to get away from her I generally slip in and have
one about this time. I don't know what you think about it, but my
feeling is that God made six o'clock for man to have a drink at."

He flung himself into a great leather arm-chair next to the one Robert
was sitting in and called a waiter. He gave Robert his good-natured,
engaging smile.

"A lot of water has passed under the bridges since first we met, old
boy, hasn't it?"

Robert, frowning a little, shot a look at him which an observer might
have described as wary.

"I don't know exactly what you mean. To the best of my belief we met for
the first time three or four weeks ago when you and your wife were good
enough to come and have lunch with us."

"Come off it, Bob. I knew I'd seen you before. I was puzzled at first
and then it flashed across me. You were the car-washer at that garage
off Bruton Street where I used to keep my car."

Captain Forestier gave a hearty laugh.

"I'm sorry, but you've made a mistake. I never heard anything so
ridiculous."

"I've got a damned good memory and I never forget a face. I bet you
haven't forgotten me either. Many's the half-crown I've given you for
fetching the car away from my flat when I didn't want to be bothered to
bring it round to the garage myself."

"You're talking absolute rot. I'd never seen you in my life till you
came to my house."

Hardy grinned cheerfully.

"You know I've always been a Kodak-fiend. I've got albums of snaps that
I've taken at one time and another. Would it surprise you to learn that
I've found a snap of you standing by a two-seater I'd just bought? A
damned good-looking fellow you were in those days even though you had
overalls on and your face was none too clean. Of course you've broadened
out, your hair's grey and you've got a moustache, but it's the same
chap. Unmistakably."

Captain Forestier looked at him coolly.

"You must have been misled by an accidental resemblance. It was somebody
else you gave your half-crowns to."

"Well, where were you then, if you weren't a car-washer at the Bruton
Garage between 1913 and 1914?"

"I was in India."

"With your regiment?" asked Fred Hardy with another grin.

"I was shooting."

"You liar."

Robert flushed deeply.

"This isn't quite the place to choose for a scrap, but if you think I'm
going to stay here to be insulted by a drunken swine like you, you're
mistaken."

"Wouldn't you like to hear what else I know about you? You know how
things come back to one, and I've remembered quite a lot."

"I'm not in the least interested. I tell you that you're making an
absolute mistake. You're confusing me with somebody else."

But he made no attempt to go.

"You were a bit of a slacker even in those days. I remember once, when I
was going into the country early, I'd told you to have my car washed by
nine and it wasn't ready, so I kicked up a row and old Thompson told me
then your father had been a pal of his and he'd taken you on out of
charity because you were down and out. Your father had been a wine
waiter at one of the clubs, White's or Brooks's, I forget which, and
you'd been a page-boy there yourself. You enlisted in the Coldstream
Guards, if I remember right, and some chap bought you out and made you
his valet."

"It's too fantastic," said Robert scornfully.

"And I remember, when I was home on leave once and went to the garage,
old Thompson told me you'd enlisted in the A.S.C. You weren't going to
take any more risks than you could help, were you? You've been drawing
the long bow a bit, haven't you, with all those stories I hear of your
gallantry in the trenches? I suppose you did get a commission, or is
that a fake too?"

"Of course I got a commission."

"Well, a lot of funny people did in those days, but you know, old boy,
if it was in the A.S.C. I wouldn't wear a Guards tie if I were you."

Captain Forestier instinctively put his hand up to his tie, and Fred
Hardy, watching him with his mocking eyes, was pretty sure that
notwithstanding his tan he went white.

"It's no business of yours what tie I wear."

"Don't get snotty, old boy. There's no reason to get up on your hind
legs. I've got the goods on you, but I'm not going to give you away, so
why don't you come clean?"

"I've got nothing to come clean about. I tell you it's all an absurd
mistake. And I should tell you that if I find that you've been spreading
these lying stories about me, I shall immediately start proceedings for
slander."

"Stow it, Bob. I'm not going to spread any stories. You don't think I
care? I think the whole thing's rather a lark. I've got no ill-feeling
towards you. I've been a bit of an adventurer myself; I admire you for
carrying off such a stupendous bluff. Starting as a page-boy and then
being a trooper, a valet and a car-washer; and there you are, a fine
gentleman, with a grand house, entertaining all the big bugs of the
Riviera, winning golf tournaments, vice-president of the Sailing Club,
and I don't know what all. You're It in Cannes and no mistake. It's
stupendous. I've done some pretty rum things in my day, but the nerve
you must have; old boy, I take off my hat to you."

"I wish I deserved your compliments. I don't. My father was in the
Indian cavalry and I was at least born a gentleman. I may not have had a
very distinguished career, but I certainly have nothing to be ashamed
of."

"Oh, come off it, Bob. I shan't split, you know, not even to my old
lady. I never tell women anything that they don't know already. Believe
me, I'd have got into even worse scrapes than I have if I hadn't made a
rule of that. I should have thought you'd be glad to have someone around
that you could be yourself with. Isn't it a strain never to let up?
Silly of you to keep me at arm's length. I haven't got anything on you,
old boy. It's true I'm a bart and a landed proprietor now, but I've been
in some pretty tight places in my time, and it's a wonder to me that
I've kept out of gaol."

"It's a wonder to a good many other people."

Fred Hardy broke into a guffaw.

"That's one on me, old boy. All the same, if you don't mind my saying
so, I think it was a bit thick your telling your wife I wasn't a proper
person for her to associate with."

"I never said anything of the sort."

"Oh yes, you did. She's a grand old girl, but a bit garrulous, or am I
mistaken?"

"I'm not prepared to discuss my wife with a man like you," said Captain
Forestier, coldly.

"Oh, don't be so damned gentlemanly with me, Bob. We're a couple of bums
and that's all there is to it. We could have some grand times together
if you'd only have a little sense. You're a liar, a humbug and a cheat,
but you seem to be very decent to your wife, and that's something in
your favour. She just dotes upon you, doesn't she? Funny, women are.
She's a very nice woman, Bob."

Robert's face grew red, he clenched his fist and half rose from his
chair.

"Damn you, stop talking about my wife. If you mention her name again I
swear I'll knock you down."

"Oh no, you won't. You're too great a gentleman to hit a feller smaller
than yourself."

Hardy had said these words mockingly, watching Robert, and quite ready
to dodge if that great fist struck out; he was astounded at their
effect. Robert sank back into his chair and unclenched his fist.

"You're right. But only a mean hound would trade on it."

The reply was so theatrical that Fred Hardy began to chuckle, but then
he saw that the man meant it. He was deadly serious. Fred Hardy was no
fool; he could hardly have lived for twenty-five years on his wits in
tolerable comfort unless he had had them all about him. And now, in
amazement, staring at that heavy, powerful man, who looked so like the
typical English sportsman, sunk back in the chair, he had a sudden flash
of comprehension. He was no common swindler who had got hold of a silly
woman to keep him in luxury and idleness. She was only a means to a
greater end. He had been captivated by an ideal and in pursuit of it had
stuck at nothing. Perhaps the notion had come to him when he was a
page-boy in a smart club; the members, with their lounging ease, their
casual manner, may have seemed very wonderful to him; and afterwards as
a trooper, as a valet, as a car-washer, the many men he ran across,
belonging to a different world and seen through a haze of hero-worship,
had filled him perhaps with admiration and envy. He wanted to be like
them. He wanted to be one of them. That was the ideal that haunted his
dreams. He wanted--it was grotesque, it was pathetic--he wanted to be a
gentleman. The war, with the commission it brought him, gave him his
chance. Eleanor's money provided the means. That wretched fellow had
spent twenty years pretending to be something the only value of which
was that it wasn't a pretence. That was grotesque too; that was
pathetic. Without meaning to, Fred Hardy uttered the thought that passed
through his head.

"Poor old chap," he said.

Forestier looked at him quickly. He could not understand what those
words meant nor the tone in which they were said. He flushed.

"What d'you mean by that?"

"Nothing. Nothing."

"I don't think we need continue this conversation. Apparently there's
nothing I can say to persuade you that you're mistaken. I can only
repeat that there's not a word of truth in it. I am not the fellow you
think I am."

"All right, old boy, have it your own way."

Forestier called the waiter.

"D'you want me to pay for your drink?" he asked icily.

"Yes, old boy."

Forestier somewhat grandly gave the waiter a note and told him to keep
the change, then without a word, without giving Fred Hardy another look,
stalked out of the bar.

They did not meet again till the night on which Robert Forestier lost
his life.

The winter passed into spring, and the gardens on the Riviera were
ablaze with colour. The hillsides were primly gay with wild flowers. The
spring passed into summer. In the towns along the Riviera the streets
were hot with a bright, eager heat that made the blood run faster; and
women walked about in great straw hats and pyjamas. The beaches were
crowded. Men in trunks and women almost naked lay in the sun. In the
evening the bars on the Croisette were thronged by a restless,
chattering crowd as many-coloured as the flowers of spring. It had not
rained for weeks. There had been several forest fires along the coast,
and Robert Forestier in his hearty, joking way had several times said
that they would stand a pretty thin chance if they had a fire in their
woods. One or two people had advised him to cut down some of the trees
at the back of his house; but he couldn't bear to: they had been in poor
condition when the Forestiers bought the place, but now that the dead
wood had been cut away year by year, that they had been given air and
kept clean of pests, they were magnificent.

"Why, it would be like having my leg chopped off to cut one of 'em down.
They must be the best part of a hundred years old."

On the fourteenth of July the Forestiers went over to a gala dinner at
Monte Carlo, and they gave their staff leave to go to Cannes. It was the
national holiday, and in Cannes they danced in the open air under the
plane trees, there were fireworks, and from far and near the people came
in to have a good time. The Hardys had sent their servants out too, but
they were sitting at home, and their two little boys were in bed. Fred
was playing patience and Lady Hardy was working at a piece of tapestry
to cover a chair. Suddenly there was a ring of the bell and a loud
knocking on the door.

"Who the devil's that?"

Hardy went to the door and found a boy who told him that fire had broken
out in the Forestiers' woods. Some men had gone up from the village and
were fighting it, but they needed all the help they could get, and would
he come.

"Of course I'll come." He hurried back to his wife and told her. "Wake
the kids and let them come up and see the fun. By George, after all this
drought it'll be a blaze."

He bolted out. The boy told him they had telephoned to the
police-station and they were going to send along the soldiers. Someone
was trying to get through to Monte Carlo and let Captain Forestier know.

"It'll take him an hour to get here," said Hardy.

As they ran they saw the glow in the sky, and when they came to the top
of the hill, the leaping flames. There was no water and the only thing
was to try to beat them out. Already a number of men were at work. Hardy
joined them. But you had no sooner beat out the flames in one bush than
another began to crackle and before you could look had turned into a
fiery torch. The heat was terrific, and the workers, unable to support
it, were slowly driven, back. A breeze was blowing, and the sparks were
carried from tree to bush. After weeks of drought everything was as dry
as tinder, and the moment a spark fell the tree, the bush, went up in
flames. If it had not been terrifying, it would have been awe-inspiring
to see a great fir-tree, sixty feet high, blazing like match-wood. The
fire roared like the fire in a factory furnace. The best way to put a
stop to it was by cutting down trees and brushwood, but the men were
few, and but two or three had axes. The only hope was in the troops, who
were used to dealing with the forest fires, and the troops did not come.

"Unless they get here soon we shall never save the house," said Hardy.

He caught sight of his wife, who had come up with the two boys, and
waved to them. Already he was black with grime, and the sweat was
pouring down his face. Lady Hardy ran up.

"Oh, Fred, the dogs and the chickens."

"By George, yes."

The kennels and the chicken-run were at the back of the house, in a
clearing that had been cut in the woods, and the wretched animals were
already frantic with terror. Hardy let them out and they rushed to
safety. They could only be left to shift for themselves. They must be
rounded up later. The blaze could be seen now from far away. But the
troops did not come, and the small body of helpers were powerless
against the advancing flames.

"If those damned soldiers don't get here soon the house is for it," said
Hardy. "I think we'd better get what we can out of it."

It was a stone house, but there were wooden verandahs all round it, and
they would burn like kindling. The Forestiers' servants had come by now.
He got them together, his wife gave a hand, and the two boys; they
carried out on to the lawn in front such things as were portable, linen
and silver, clothes, ornaments, pictures, pieces of furniture. At last
the troops came, two lorry-loads of them, and set about systematically
digging trenches and felling trees. There was an officer in charge and
Hardy, pointing out the danger to the house, begged him first of all to
cut down the trees that surrounded it.

"The house must look after itself," he said. "I've got to prevent the
fire spreading beyond the hill."

The lights of a car were seen speeding along the winding road, and a few
minutes later Forestier and his wife sprang out of it.

"Where are the dogs?" he cried.

"I've let them out," said Hardy.

"Oh, it's you."

At first in that filthy fellow, his face begrimed with soot and sweat,
he had not recognised Fred Hardy. He frowned angrily.

"I thought the house might catch. I've got everything out I could."

Forestier looked at the blazing forest.

"Well, that's the end of my trees," he said.

"The soldiers are working on the side of the hill. They're trying to
save the next property. We'd better go along and see if we can save
anything."

"I'll go. You needn't," Forestier cried irritably.

On a sudden Eleanor gave an anguished cry.

"Oh, look. The house."

From where they stood they could see a verandah at the back suddenly
burst into flames.

"That's all right, Eleanor. The house can't burn. It'll only get the
woodwork. Take my coat; I'm going along to help the soldiers."

He took off his dinner jacket and handed it to his wife.

"I'll come with you," said Hardy. "Mrs. Forestier, you'd better go along
to where your things are. I think we've got everything out that's
valuable."

"Thank heaven, I was wearing most of my jewellery."

Lady Hardy was a woman of sense.

"Mrs. Forestier, let's get the servants together and carry what we can
down to our house."

The two men walked towards where the soldiers were at work.

"It's very decent of you to have got that stuff out of my house," said
Robert, stiffly.

"Not at all," answered Fred Hardy.

They had not gone far when they heard somebody calling. They looked
round and vaguely saw a woman running after them.

"_Monsieur, Monsieur._"

They stopped and the woman, her arms outstretched, rushed up. It was
Eleanor's maid. She was distraught.

"_La petite Judy._ Judy. I shut her up when we went out. She's on heat.
I put her in the servants' bathroom."

"My God!" cried Forestier.

"What is it?"

"Eleanor's dog. I must save her at any cost."

He turned round and started to run back to the house. Hardy caught hold
of his arm to hold him.

"Don't be a damned fool, Bob. The house is burning. You can't go into
it."

Forestier struggled to release himself.

"Let me go, damn you. D'you think I'm going to let a dog be burned
alive?"

"Oh, shut up. This is no time for play-acting!"

Forestier shook Hardy off, but Hardy sprang on him and seized him round
the middle. Forestier with his clenched fist hit Hardy in the face as
hard as he could. Hardy staggered, releasing his hold, and Forestier hit
him again; Hardy fell to the ground.

"You rotten bounder. I'll show you how a gentleman behaves."

Fred Hardy picked himself up slowly and felt his face. It hurt him.

"God, the black eye I'm going to have to-morrow." He was shaken and a
trifle dazed. The maid suddenly broke into a storm of hysterical tears.
"Shut up, you slut," he cried crossly. "And don't say a word to your
mistress."

Forestier was nowhere to be seen. It was more than an hour before they
were able to get at him. They found him lying on the landing outside the
bathroom, dead, with the dead Sealyham in his arms. Hardy looked at him
for a long time before speaking.

"You fool," he muttered between his teeth, angrily. "You damned fool!"

That imposture of his had paid him out at last. Like a man who cherishes
a vice till it gets a stranglehold on him so that he is its helpless
slave, he had lied so long that he had come to believe his own lies. Bob
Forestier had pretended for so many years to be a gentleman that in the
end, forgetting that it was all a fake, he had found himself driven to
act as in that stupid, conventional brain of his he thought a gentleman
must act. No longer knowing the difference between sham and real, he had
sacrificed his life to a spurious heroism. But Fred Hardy had to break
the news to Mrs. Forestier. She was with his wife, in their villa at the
bottom of the hill, and she still thought that Robert was with the
soldiers cutting down trees and clearing the brushwood. He told her as
gently as he could, but he had to tell her, and he had to tell her
everything. At first it seemed as though she could not grasp the sense
of what he said.

"Dead?" she cried. "Dead? My Robert?"

Then Fred Hardy, the rip, the cynic, the unscrupulous ruffian, took her
hands in his and said the words that alone enabled her to bear her
anguish.

"Mrs. Forestier, he was a very gallant gentleman."




THE UNCONQUERED


He came back into the kitchen. The man was still on the floor, lying
where he had hit him, and his face was bloody. He was moaning. The woman
had backed against the wall and was staring with terrified eyes at
Willi, his friend, and when he came in she gave a gasp and broke into
loud sobbing. Willi was sitting at the table, his revolver in his hand,
with a half empty glass of wine beside him. Hans went up to the table,
filled his glass and emptied it at a gulp.

"You look as though you'd had trouble, young fellow," said Willi with a
grin.

Hans' face was blood-stained and you could see the gashes of five sharp
finger-nails. He put his hand gingerly to his cheek.

"She'd have scratched my eyes out if she could, the bitch. I shall have
to put some iodine on. But she's all right now. You go along."

"I don't know. Shall I? It's getting late."

"Don't be a fool. You're a man, aren't you? What if it is getting late?
We lost our way."

It was still light and the westering sun streamed into the kitchen
windows of the farm-house. Willi hesitated a moment. He was a little
fellow, dark and thin-faced, a dress designer in civil life, and he
didn't want Hans to think him a cissy. He got up and went towards the
door through which Hans had come. When the woman saw what he was going
to do she gave a shriek and sprang forwards.

"_Non, Non_," she cried.

With one step Hans was in front of her. He seized her by the shoulders
and flung her violently back. She tottered and fell. He took Willi's
revolver.

"Stop still, both of you," he rasped in French, but with his guttural
German accent. He nodded his head towards the door. "Go on. I'll look
after them."

Willi went out, but in a moment was back again.

"She's unconscious."

"Well, what of it?"

"I can't. It's no good."

"Stupid, that's what you are. _Ein Weibchen._ A woman."

Willi flushed.

"We'd better be getting on our way."

Hans shrugged a scornful shoulder.

"I'll just finish the bottle of wine and then we'll go."

He was feeling at ease and it would have been pleasant to linger. He had
been on the job since morning and after so many hours on his motor-cycle
his limbs ached. Luckily they hadn't far to go, only to Soissons--ten or
fifteen kilometres. He wondered if he'd have the luck to get a bed to
sleep in. Of course all this wouldn't have happened if the girl hadn't
been a fool. They had lost their way, he and Willi, they had stopped a
peasant working in a field and he had deliberately misled them, and they
found themselves on a side road. When they came to the farm they stopped
to ask for a direction. They'd asked very politely, for orders were to
treat the French population well as long as they behaved themselves. The
door was opened for them by the girl and she said she didn't know the
way to Soissons, so they pushed in; then the woman, her mother, Hans
guessed, told them. The three of them, the farmer, his wife and
daughter, had just finished supper and there was a bottle of wine on the
table. It reminded Hans that he was as thirsty as the devil. The day had
been sweltering and he hadn't had a drink since noon. He asked them for
a bottle of wine and Willi had added that they would pay them well for
it. Willi was a good little chap, but soft. After all, they were the
victors. Where was the French army? In headlong flight. And the English,
leaving everything behind, had scuttled like rabbits back to their
island. The conquerors took what they wanted, didn't they? But Willi had
worked at a Paris dressmaker's for two years. It's true he spoke French
well, that's why he had his present job, but it had done something to
him. A decadent people. It did a German no good to live among them.

The farmer's wife put a couple of bottles of wine on the table and Willi
took twenty francs out of his pocket and gave it to her. She didn't even
say thank you. Hans' French wasn't as good as Willi's, but he could make
himself understood, and he and Willi spoke it together all the time.
Willi corrected his mistakes. It was because Willi was so useful to him
in this way that he had made him his friend, and he knew that Willi
admired him. He admired him because he was so tall, slim and
broad-shouldered, because his curly hair was so fair and his eyes so
blue. He never lost an opportunity to practise his French, and he tried
to talk now, but those three French people wouldn't meet him half-way.
He told them that he was a farmer's son himself and when the war was
over was going back to the farm. He had been sent to school in Munich
because his mother wanted him to go into business, but his heart wasn't
in it, and so after matriculating he had gone to an agricultural
college.

"You came here to ask your way and now you know it," said the girl.
"Drink up your wine and go."

He had hardly looked at her before. She wasn't pretty, but she had fine
dark eyes and a straight nose. Her face was very pale. She was plainly
dressed, but somehow she didn't look quite like what she evidently was.
There was a sort of distinction about her. Ever since the war started
he'd heard fellows talk about the French girls. They had something the
German girls hadn't. Chic, Willi said it was, but when he asked him just
what he meant by that Willi could only say that you had to see it to
understand. Of course he'd heard others say that they were mercenary and
hard as nails. Well, they'd be in Paris in a week and he'd find out for
himself. They said the High Command had already arranged for houses for
the men to go to.

"Finish your wine and let's go," said Willi.

But Hans was feeling comfortable and didn't want to be hurried.

"You don't look like a farmer's daughter," he said to the girl.

"And so what?" she answered.

"She's a teacher," said her mother.

"Then you've had a good education." She shrugged her shoulders, but he
went on good-humouredly in his bad French. "You ought to understand that
this is the best thing that has ever happened to the French people. We
didn't declare war. You declared war. And now we're going to make France
a decent country. We're going to put order into it. We're going to teach
you to work. You'll learn obedience and discipline."

She clenched her fists and looked at him, her eyes black with hatred.
But she did not speak.

"You're drunk, Hans," said Willi.

"I'm as sober as a judge. I'm only telling them the truth and they may
just as well know it at once."

"He's right," she cried out, unable any longer to contain herself.
"You're drunk. Now go. Go."

"Oh, you understand German, do you? All right, I'll go. But you must
give me a kiss first."

She took a step back to avoid him, but he seized her wrist.

"Father," she cried. "Father."

The farmer flung himself on the German. Hans let go of her and with all
his might hit him in the face. He crumpled up on the floor. Then, before
she could escape him, he caught the girl in his arms. She gave him a
swinging blow on the cheek.... He chuckled grimly.

"Is that how you take it when a German soldier wants to kiss you? You'll
pay for this."

With his great strength he pinioned her arms and was dragging her out of
the door, but her mother rushed at him and catching him by the clothes
tried to pull him away. With one arm holding the girl close to him, with
the flat of his other hand he gave the woman a great push and she
staggered back to the wall.

"Hans, Hans," cried Willi.

"Shut up, damn you."

He put his hands over the girl's mouth to stop her shrieking and carried
her out of the room. That was how it had happened and you had to admit
that she'd brought it on herself. She shouldn't have slapped him. If
she'd given him the kiss he'd asked for he'd have gone away. He gave a
glance at the farmer still lying where he had fallen and he could hardly
help laughing at his funny face. There was a smile in his eyes when he
looked at the woman cowering against the wall. Was she afraid it was her
turn next? Not likely. He remembered a French proverb.

"_C'est le premier pas qui cote._ There's nothing to cry about, old
woman. It had to come sooner or later." He put his hand to his hip
pocket and pulled out a wallet. "Look, here's a hundred francs so that
mademoiselle can buy herself a new dress. There's not much left of that
one." He placed the note on the table and put his helmet back on his
head. "Let's go."

They slammed the door behind them and got on their motorcycles. The
woman went into the parlour. Her daughter was lying on the divan. She
was lying as he had left her and she was weeping bitterly.

Three months later Hans found himself in Soissons again. He had been in
Paris with the conquering army and had ridden through the Arc de
Triomphe on his motor-cycle. He had advanced with the army first to
Tours and then to Bordeaux. He'd seen very little fighting. The only
French soldiers he'd seen were prisoners. The campaign had been the
greatest spree he could ever have imagined. After the armistice he had
spent a month in Paris. He'd sent picture postcards to his family in
Bavaria and bought them all presents. Willi, because he knew the city
like the palm of his hand, had stayed on, but he and the rest of his
unit were sent to Soissons to join the force that was holding it. It was
a nice little town and he was comfortably billeted. Plenty to eat and
champagne for less than a mark a bottle in German money. When he was
ordered to proceed there it had occurred to him that it would be fun to
go and have a look at the girl he'd had. He'd take her a pair of silk
stockings to show there was no ill-feeling. He had a good bump of
locality and he thought he would be able to find the farm without
difficulty. So one afternoon, when he had nothing to do, he put the silk
stockings in his pocket and got on his machine. It was a lovely autumn
day, with hardly a cloud in the sky, and it was pretty, undulating
country that he rode through. It had been fine and dry for so long that,
though it was September, not even the restless poplars gave sign that
the summer was drawing to an end. He took one wrong turning, which
delayed him, but for all that he got to the place he sought in less than
half an hour. A mongrel dog barked at him as he walked up to the door.
He did not knock, but turned the handle and stepped in. The girl was
sitting at the table peeling potatoes. She sprang to her feet when she
saw the uniformed man.

"What d'you want?" Then she recognised him. She backed to the wall,
clutching the knife in her hands. "It's you. _Cochon._"

"Don't get excited. I'm not going to hurt you. Look. I've brought you
some silk stockings."

"Take them away and take yourself off with them."

"Don't be silly. Drop that knife. You'll only get hurt if you try to be
nasty. You needn't be afraid of me."

"I'm not afraid of you," she said.

She let the knife fall to the floor. He took off his helmet and sat
down. He reached out with his foot and drew the knife towards him.

"Shall I peel some of your potatoes for you?" She did not answer. He
bent down for the knife and then took a potato out of the bowl and went
to work on it. Her face hard, her eyes hostile, she stood against the
wall and watched him. He smiled at her disarmingly. "Why do you look so
cross! I didn't do you much harm, you know. I was excited, we all were,
they'd talked of the invincible French army and the Maginot line..."
he finished the sentence with a chuckle. "And the wine went to my head.
You might have fared worse. Women have told me that I'm not a
bad-looking fellow."

She looked him up and down scornfully.

"Get out of here."

"Not until I choose."

"If you don't go my father will go to Soissons and complain to the
general."

"Much he'll care. Our orders are to make friends with the population.
What's your name?"

"That's not your business."

There was a flush in her cheeks now and her angry eyes were blazing. She
was prettier than he remembered her. He hadn't done so badly. She had a
refinement that suggested the city-dweller rather than the peasant. He
remembered her mother saying she was a teacher. Because she was almost a
lady it amused him to torment her. He felt strong and healthy. He passed
his hand through his curly blond hair, and giggled when he thought that
many girls would have jumped at the chance she had had. His face was so
deeply tanned by the summer that his eyes were startlingly blue.

"Where are your father and mother?"

"Working in the fields."

"I'm hungry. Give me a bit of bread and cheese and a glass of wine. I'll
pay."

She gave a harsh laugh.

"We haven't seen cheese for three months. We haven't enough bread to
stay our hunger. The French took our horses a year ago and now the
Boches have taken our cows, our pigs, our chickens, everything."

"Well, they paid you for them."

"Can we eat the worthless paper they gave us?"

She began to cry.

"Are you hungry?"

"Oh, no," she answered bitterly, "we can eat like kings on potatoes and
bread and turnips and lettuce. To-morrow my father's going to Soissons
to see if he can buy some horse meat."

"Listen, Miss. I'm not a bad fellow. I'll bring you a cheese, and I
think I can get hold of a bit of ham."

"I don't want your presents. I'll starve before I touch the food you
swine have stolen from us."

"We'll see," he said good-humouredly.

He put on his hat, got up, and with an _Au revoir, mademoiselle_, walked
out.

He wasn't supposed to go joy-riding round the country and he had to wait
to be sent on an errand before he was able to get to the farm again. It
was ten days later. He walked in as unceremoniously as before and this
time he found the farmer and his wife in the kitchen. It was round about
noon and the woman was stirring a pot on the stove. The man was seated
at table. They gave him a glance when he came in, but there was no
surprise in it. Their daughter had evidently told them of his visit.
They did not speak. The woman went on with her cooking, and the man, a
surly look on his face, stared at the oil-cloth on the table. But it
required more than this to disconcert the good-humoured Hans.

"_Bonjour, la compagnie_," he said cheerfully. "I've brought you a
present."

He undid the package he had with him and set out a sizable piece of
gruyre cheese, a piece of pork and a couple of tins of sardines. The
woman turned round and he smiled when he saw the light of greed in her
eyes. The man looked at the foodstuff sullenly. Hans gave him his sunny
grin.

"I'm sorry we had a misunderstanding the first time I came here. But you
shouldn't have interfered."

At that moment the girl came in.

"What are you doing here?" she cried harshly. Then her eyes fell on the
things he had brought. She swept them together and flung them at him.
"Take them away. Take them."

But her mother sprang forward.

"Annette, you're crazy."

"I won't take his presents."

"It's our own food that they've stolen from us. Look at the sardines.
They're Bordeaux sardines."

She picked the things up. Hans looked at the girl with a mocking smile
in his light blue eyes.

"Annette's your name, is it? A pretty name. Do you grudge your parents a
little food? You said you hadn't had cheese for three months. I couldn't
get any ham; I did the best I could."

The farmer's wife took the lump of meat in her hands and pressed it to
her bosom. You felt that she could have kissed it. Tears ran down
Annette's cheeks.

"The shame of it," she groaned.

"Oh, come now, there's no shame in a bit of gruyre and a piece of
pork."

Hans sat down and lit a cigarette. Then he passed the packet over to the
old man. The farmer hesitated for a moment, but the temptation was too
strong for him; he took one and handed back the packet.

"Keep it," said Hans. "I can get plenty more." He inhaled the smoke and
blew a cloud of it from his nostrils. "Why can't we be friends? What's
done can't be undone. War is war, and, well, you know what I mean. I
know Annette's an educated girl and I want her to think well of me. I
expect we shall be in Soissons for quite a while and I can bring you
something now and then to help out. You know, we do all we can to make
friends with the townspeople, but they won't let us. They won't even
look at us when we pass them in the street. After all, it was an
accident, what happened that time I came here with Willi. You needn't be
afraid of me. I'll respect Annette as if she was my own sister."

"Why do you want to come here? Why can't you leave us alone?" asked
Annette.

He really didn't know. He didn't like to say that he wanted a little
human friendship. The silent hostility that surrounded them all at
Soissons got on his nerves so that sometimes he wanted to go up to a
Frenchman who looked at him as if he wasn't there and knock him down,
and sometimes it affected him so that he was almost inclined to cry. It
would be nice if he had some place to go where he was welcome. He spoke
the truth when he said he had no desire for Annette. She wasn't the sort
of woman he fancied. He liked women to be tall and full-breasted,
blue-eyed and fair-haired like himself; he liked them to be strong and
hefty and well-covered. That refinement which he couldn't account for,
that thin fine nose and those dark eyes, the long pale face--there was
something intimidating about the girl, so that if he hadn't been excited
by the great victories of the German armies, if he hadn't been so tired
and yet so elated, if he hadn't drunk all that wine on an empty stomach,
it would never have crossed his mind that he could have anything to do
with her.

For a fortnight after that Hans couldn't get away. He'd left the food at
the farm and he had no doubt that the old people had wolfed it. He
wondered if Annette had eaten it too; he wouldn't have been surprised to
discover that the moment his back was turned she had set to with the
others. These French people, they couldn't resist getting something for
nothing. They were weak and decadent. She hated him, yes, God, how she
hated him, but pork was pork and cheese was cheese. He thought of her
quite a lot. It tantalised him that she should have such a loathing for
him. He was used to being liked by women. It would be funny if one of
these days she fell in love with him. He'd been her first lover and he'd
heard the students at Munich over their beer saying that it was her
first lover a woman loved, after that it was love. When he'd set his
mind on getting a girl he'd never failed yet. Hans laughed to himself
and a sly look came into his eyes.

At last he got his chance to go to the farm. He got hold of cheese and
butter, sugar, a tin of sausages, and some coffee, and set off on his
motor-cycle. But that time he didn't see Annette. She and her father
were at work in the fields. The old woman was in the yard and her face
lit up when she saw the parcel he was bringing. She led him into the
kitchen. Her hands trembled a little as she untied the string and when
she saw what he had brought her eyes filled with tears.

"You're very good," she said.

"May I sit down?" he asked politely.

"Of course." She looked out of the window and Hans guessed that she
wanted to make sure that Annette was not coming. "Can I offer you a
glass of wine."

"I'd be glad of it."

He was sharp enough to see that her greed for food had made her, if not
friendly to him, at least willing to come to terms with him. That look
out of the window made them almost fellow conspirators.

"Did you like the pork?" he asked.

"It was a treat."

"I'll try to bring you some more next time I come. Did Annette like it?"

"She wouldn't touch a thing you'd left. She said she'd rather starve."

"Silly."

"That's what I said to her. As long as the food is there, I said,
there's nothing to be gained by not eating it."

They chatted quite amicably while Hans sipped his wine. He discovered
that she was called Madame Prier. He asked her whether there were any
other members of the family. She sighed. No, they'd had a son, but he'd
been mobilised at the beginning of the war and he'd died. He hadn't been
killed, he'd got pneumonia and died in the hospital at Nancy.

"I'm sorry," said Hans.

"Perhaps he's better off than if he'd lived. He was like Annette in many
ways. He could never have borne the shame of defeat." She sighed again.
"Oh, my poor friend, we've been betrayed."

"Why did you want to fight for the Poles? What were they to you?"

"You're right. If we had let your Hitler take Poland he would have left
us alone."

When Hans got up to go he said he would come again soon.

"I shan't forget the pork."

Then Hans had a lucky break; he was given a job that took him twice a
week to a town in the vicinity so that he was able to get to the farm
much oftener. He took care never to come without bringing something. But
he made no headway with Annette. Seeking to ingratiate himself with her,
he used the simple wiles that he had discovered went down with women;
but they only excited her derision. Thin-lipped and hard, she looked at
him as though he were dirt. On more than one occasion she made him so
angry that he would have liked to take her by the shoulders and shake
the life out of her. Once he found her alone, and when she got up to go
he barred her passage.

"Stop where you are. I want to talk to you."

"Talk. I am a woman and defenceless."

"What I want to say is this: for all I know I may be here for a long
time. Things aren't going to get easier for you French, they're going to
get harder. I can be useful to you. Why don't you be reasonable like
your father and mother?"

It was true that old Prier had come round. You couldn't say that he was
cordial, he was indeed cold and gruff, but he was civil. He had even
asked Hans to bring him some tobacco, and when he wouldn't accept
payment for it had thanked him. He was pleased to hear the news of
Soissons and grabbed the paper that Hans brought him. Hans, a farmer's
son, could talk about the farm as one who knew. It was a good farm, not
too big and not too small, well watered, for a sizable brook ran through
it, and well wooded, with arable land and pasture. Hans listened with
understanding sympathy when the old man bewailed himself because without
labour, without fertilisers, his stock taken from him, it was all going
to rack and ruin.

"You ask me why I can't be reasonable like my father and mother," said
Annette.

She pulled her dress tight and showed herself to him. He couldn't
believe his eyes. What he saw caused such a convulsion in his soul as he
had never known. The blood rushed to his cheeks.

"You're pregnant."

She sank back on her chair and leaning her head on her hands began to
weep as though her heart would break.

"The shame of it. The shame."

He sprang towards her to take her in his arms.

"My sweet," he cried.

But she sprang to her feet and pushed him away.

"Don't touch me. Go away. Go away. Haven't you done me enough harm
already?"

She flung out of the room. He waited by himself for a few minutes. He
was bewildered. His thoughts in a whirl, he rode slowly back to
Soissons, and when he went to bed he couldn't get to sleep for hours. He
could think of nothing but Annette and her swollen body. She had been
unbearably pathetic as she sat there at the table crying her eyes out.
It was his child she bore in her womb. He began to feel drowsy, and then
with a start he was once more wide awake, for suddenly it came to him,
it came to him with the shattering suddenness of gun-fire: he was in
love with her. It was such a surprise, such a shock that he couldn't
cope with it. Of course he'd thought of her a lot, but never in that
way, he'd thought it would be a great joke if he made her fall in love
with him, it would be a triumph if the time came when she offered what
he had taken by force; but not for a moment had it occurred to him that
she was anything to him but a woman like another. She wasn't his type.
She wasn't very pretty. There was nothing to her. Why should he have all
of a sudden this funny feeling for her? It wasn't a pleasant feeling
either, it was a pain. But he knew what it was all right; it was love,
and it made him feel happier than he had ever felt in his life. He
wanted to take her in his arms, he wanted to pet her, he wanted to kiss
those tear-stained eyes of hers. He didn't desire her, he thought, as a
man desires a woman, he wanted to comfort her, he wanted her to smile at
him--strange, he had never seen her smile, he wanted to see her
eyes--fine eyes they were, beautiful eyes--soft with tenderness.

For three days he could not leave Soissons and for three days, three
days and three nights, he thought of Annette and the child she would
bear. Then he was able to go to the farm. He wanted to see Madame Prier
by herself, and luck was with him, for he met her on the road some way
from the house. She had been gathering sticks in the wood and was going
home with a great bundle on her back. He stopped his motor-cycle. He
knew that the friendliness she showed him was due only to the provisions
he brought with him, but he didn't care; it was enough that she was
mannerly, and that she was prepared to be so as long as she could get
something out of him. He told her he wanted to talk to her and asked her
to put her bundle down. She did as he bade. It was a grey, cloudy day,
but not cold.

"I know about Annette," he said.

She started.

"How did you find out? She was set on your not knowing."

"She told me."

"That was a pretty job of work you did that evening."

"I didn't know. Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

She began to talk, not bitterly, not blaming him even, but as though it
were a misfortune of nature, like a cow dying in giving birth to a calf
or a sharp spring frost nipping the fruit trees and ruining the crop, a
misfortune that human kind must accept with resignation and humility.
After that dreadful night Annette had been in bed for days with a high
fever. They thought she was going out of her mind. She would scream for
hours on end. There were no doctors to be got. The village doctor had
been called to the colours. Even in Soissons there were only two doctors
left, old men both of them, and how could they get to the farm even if
it had been possible to send for them? They weren't allowed to leave the
town. Even when the fever went down Annette was too ill to leave her
bed, and when she got up she was so weak, so pale, it was pitiful. The
shock had been terrible, and when a month went by, and another month,
without her being unwell she paid no attention. She had always been
irregular. It was Madame Prier who first suspected that something was
wrong. She questioned Annette. They were terrified, both of them, but
they weren't certain and they said nothing to Prier. When the third
month came it was impossible to doubt any longer. Annette was pregnant.

They had an old Citron in which before the war Madame Prier had taken
the farm produce into the market at Soissons two mornings a week, but
since the German occupation they had had nothing to sell that made the
journey worth while. Petrol was almost unobtainable. But now they got it
out and drove into town. The only cars to be seen were the military cars
of the Germans. German soldiers lounged about. There were German signs
in the streets, and on public buildings proclamations in French signed
by the Officer Commanding. Many shops were closed. They went to the old
doctor they knew, and he confirmed their suspicions. But he was a devout
Catholic and would not help them. When they wept he shrugged his
shoulders.

"You're not the only one," he said. "_Il faut souffrir._"

They knew about the other doctor too and went to see him. They rang the
bell and for a long time no one answered. At last the door was opened by
a sad-faced woman in black, but when they asked to see the doctor she
began to cry. He had been arrested by the Germans because he was a
freemason, and was held as a hostage. A bomb had exploded in a caf
frequented by German officers and two had been killed and several
wounded. If the guilty were not handed over before a certain date he was
to be shot. The woman seemed kindly and Madame Prier told her of their
trouble.

"The brutes," she said. She looked at Annette with compassion. "My poor
child."

She gave them the address of a midwife in the town and told them to say
that they had come from her. The midwife gave them some medicine. It
made Annette so ill that she thought she was going to die, but it had no
further effect. Annette was still pregnant.

That was the story that Madame Prier told Hans. For a while he was
silent.

"It's Sunday to-morrow," he said then. "I shall have nothing to do. I'll
come and we'll talk. I'll bring something nice."

"We have no needles. Can you bring some?"

"I'll try."

She hoisted the bundle of sticks on her back and trudged down the road.
Hans went back to Soissons. He dared not use his motor-cycle, so next
day he hired a push-bike. He tied his parcel of food on the carrier. It
was a larger parcel than usual because he had put a bottle of champagne
into it. He got to the farm when the gathering darkness made it certain
that they would all be home from work. It was warm and cosy in the
kitchen when he walked in. Madame Prier was cooking and her husband was
reading a _Paris-Soir_. Annette was darning stockings.

"Look, I've brought you some needles," he said, as he undid his parcel.
"And here's some material for you, Annette."

"I don't want it."

"Don't you?" he grinned. "You'll have to begin making things for the
baby."

"That's true, Annette," said her mother, "and we have nothing." Annette
did not look up from her sewing. Madame Prier's greedy eyes ran over
the contents of the parcel. "A bottle of champagne."

Hans chuckled.

"I'll tell you what that's for presently. I've had an idea." He
hesitated for a moment, then drew up a chair and sat down facing
Annette. "I don't know quite how to begin. I'm sorry for what I did that
night, Annette. It wasn't my fault, it was the circumstances. Can't you
forgive me?"

She threw him a look of hatred.

"Never. Why don't you leave me alone? Isn't it enough that you've ruined
my life?"

"Well, that's just it. Perhaps I haven't. When I knew you were going to
have a baby it had a funny effect on me. It's all different now. It's
made me so proud."

"Proud?" she flung at him viciously.

"I want you to have the baby, Annette. I'm glad you couldn't get rid of
it."

"How dare you say that?"

"But listen to me. I've been thinking of nothing else since I knew. The
war will be over in six months. We shall bring the English to their
knees in the spring. They haven't got a chance. And then I shall be
demobilised and I'll marry you."

"You? Why?"

He blushed under his tan. He could not bring himself to say it in
French, so he said it in German. He knew she understood it.

"_Ich liebe dich._"

"What does he say?" asked Madame Prier.

"He says he loves me."

Annette threw back her head and broke into a peal of harsh laughter. She
laughed louder and louder and she couldn't stop and tears streamed from
her eyes. Madame Prier slapped her sharply on both cheeks.

"Don't pay any attention," she said to Hans. "It's hysteria. Her
condition, you know."

Annette gasped. She gained control over herself.

"I brought the bottle of champagne to celebrate our engagement," said
Hans.

"That's the bitterest thing of all," said Annette, "that we were beaten
by fools, by such fools."

Hans went on speaking in German.

"I didn't know I loved you till that day when I found out that you were
going to have a baby. It came like a clap of thunder, but I think I've
loved you all the time."

"What does he say?" asked Madame Prier.

"Nothing of importance."

He fell back into French. He wanted Annette's parents to hear what he
had to say.

"I'd marry you now, only they wouldn't let me. And don't think I'm
nothing at all. My father's well-to-do and we're well thought of in our
commune. I'm the eldest son and you'd want for nothing."

"Are you a Catholic?" asked Madame Prier.

"Yes, I'm a Catholic."

"That's something."

"It's pretty, the country where we live and the soil's good. There's not
better farming land between Munich and Innsbruck, and it's our own. My
grandfather bought it after the war of '70. And we've got a car and a
radio, and we're on the telephone."

Annette turned to her father.

"He has all the tact in the world, this gentleman," she cried
ironically. She eyed Hans. "It would be a nice position for me, the
foreigner from the conquered country with a child born out of wedlock.
It offers me a chance of happiness, doesn't it? A fine chance."

Prier, a man of few words, spoke for the first time.

"No. I don't deny that it's a fine gesture you're making. I went through
the last war and we all did things we wouldn't have done in peace time.
Human nature is human nature. But now that our son is dead, Annette is
all we have. We can't let her go."

"I thought you might feel that way," said Hans, "and I've got my answer
to that. I'll stay here."

Annette gave him a quick look.

"What do you mean?" asked Madame Prier.

"I've got another brother. He can stay and help my father. I like this
country. With energy and initiative a man could make a good thing of
your farm. When the war's over a lot of Germans will be settling here.
It's well known that you haven't got enough men in France to work the
land you've got. A fellow gave us a lecture the other day at Soissons.
He said that a third of the farms were left uncultivated because there
aren't the men to work them."

Prier and his wife exchanged glances and Annette saw that they were
wavering. That was what they'd wanted since their son had died, a
son-in-law who was strong and hefty and could take over when they grew
too old to do more than potter about.

"That changes the case," said Madame Prier. "It's a proposition to
consider."

"Hold your tongue," cried Annette roughly. She leant forward and fixed
her burning eyes on the German. "I'm engaged to a teacher who worked in
the boys' school in the town where I taught, we were to be married after
the war. He's not strong and big like you, or handsome; he's small and
frail. His only beauty is the intelligence that shines in his face, his
only strength is the greatness of his soul. He's not a barbarian, he's
civilised; he has a thousand years of civilisation behind him. I love
him. I love him with all my heart and soul."

Hans's face grew sullen. It had never occurred to him that Annette might
care for anyone else.

"Where is he now?"

"Where do you suppose he is? In Germany. A prisoner and starving. While
you eat the fat of our land. How many times have I got to tell you that
I hate you? You ask me to forgive you. Never. You want to make
reparation. You fool." She threw her head back and there was a look of
intolerable anguish on her face. "Ruined. Oh, he'll forgive me. He's
tender. But I'm tortured by the thought that one day the suspicion may
come to him that perhaps I hadn't been forced--that perhaps I'd given
myself to you for butter and cheese and silk stockings. I shouldn't be
the only one. And what would our life be with that child between us,
your child, a German child? Big like you, and blond like you, and
blue-eyed like you. Oh, my God, why do I have to suffer this?"

She got up and went swiftly out of the kitchen. For a minute the three
were left in silence. Hans looked ruefully at his bottle of champagne.
He sighed and rose to his feet. When he went out Madame Prier
accompanied him.

"Did you mean it when you said you would marry her?" she asked him,
speaking in a low voice.

"Yes. Every word. I love her."

"And you wouldn't take her away? You'd stay here and work on the farm?"

"I promise you."

"Evidently my old man can't last for ever. At home you'd have to share
with your brother. Here you'd share with nobody."

"There's that too."

"We never were in favour of Annette marrying that teacher, but our son
was alive then and he said, if she wants to marry him, why shouldn't
she? Annette was crazy about him. But now that our son's dead, poor boy,
it's different. Even if she wanted to, how could she work the farm
alone?"

"It would be a shame if it was sold. I know how one feels about one's
own land."

They had reached the road. She took his hand and gave it a little
squeeze.

"Come again soon."

Hans knew that she was on his side. It was a comfort to him to think
that as he rode back to Soissons. It was a bother that Annette was in
love with somebody else. Fortunately he was a prisoner; long before he
was likely to be released the baby would be born. That might change her:
you could never tell with a woman. Why, in his village there'd been a
woman who was so much in love with her husband that it had been a joke,
and then she had a baby and after that she couldn't bear the sight of
him. Well, why shouldn't the contrary happen too? And now that he'd
offered to marry her she must see that he was a decent sort of fellow.
God, how pathetic she'd looked with her head flung back, and how well
she'd spoken! What language! An actress on the stage couldn't have
expressed herself better, and yet it had all sounded so natural. You had
to admit that, these French people knew how to talk. Oh, she was clever.
Even when she lashed him with that bitter tongue it was a joy to listen
to her. He hadn't had a bad education himself, but he couldn't hold a
candle to her. Culture, that's what she had.

"I'm a donkey," he said out loud as he rode along. She'd said he was big
and strong and handsome. Would she have said that if it hadn't meant
something to her? And she'd talked of the baby having fair hair and blue
eyes like his own. If that didn't mean that his colouring had made an
impression on her he was a Dutchman. He chuckled. "Give me time.
Patience, and let nature go to work."

The weeks went by. The C.O. at Soissons was an elderly, easy-going
fellow and in view of what the spring had in store for them he was
content not to drive his men too hard. The German papers told them that
England was being wrecked by the Luftwaffe and the people were in a
panic. Submarines were sinking British ships by the score and the
country was starving. Revolution was imminent. Before summer it would be
all over and the Germans would be masters of the world. Hans wrote home
and told his parents that he was going to marry a French girl and with
her a fine farm. He proposed that his brother should borrow money to buy
him out of his share of the family property so that he could increase
the size of his own holding while land, owing to the war and the
exchange, could still be bought for a song. He went over the farm with
Prier. The old man listened quietly when Hans told him his ideas: the
farm would have to be restocked and as a German he would have a pull;
the motor tractor was old, he would get a fine new one from Germany, and
a motor plough. To make a farm pay you had to take advantage of modern
inventions. Madame Prier told him afterwards that her husband had said
he wasn't a bad lad and seemed to know a lot. She was very friendly with
him now and insisted that he should share their mid-day meal with them
on Sundays. She translated his name into French and called him Jean. He
was always ready to give a hand, and as time went on and Annette could
do less and less it was useful to have a man about who didn't mind doing
a job of work.

Annette remained fiercely hostile. She never spoke to him except to
answer his direct questions and as soon as it was possible went to her
own room. When it was so cold that she couldn't stay there she sat by
the side of the kitchen stove, sewing or reading, and took no more
notice of him than if he hadn't been there. She was in radiant health.
There was colour in her cheeks and in Hans's eyes she was beautiful. Her
approaching maternity had given her a strange dignity and he was filled
with exultation when he gazed upon her. Then one day when he was on his
way to the farm he saw Madame Prier in the road waving to him to stop.
He put his brakes on hard.

"I've been waiting for an hour. I thought you'd never come. You must go
back. Pierre is dead."

"Who's Pierre?"

"Pierre Gavin. The teacher Annette was going to marry."

Hans's heart leapt. What luck! Now he'd have his chance.

"Is she upset?"

"She's not crying. When I tried to say something she bit my head off. If
she saw you to-day she's capable of sticking a knife into you."

"It's not my fault if he died. How did you hear?"

"A prisoner, a friend of his, escaped through Switzerland and he wrote
to Annette. We got the letter this morning. There was a mutiny in the
camp because they weren't given enough to eat, and the ringleaders were
shot. Pierre was one of them."

Hans was silent. He could only think it served the man right. What did
they think that a prison camp was--the Ritz?

"Give her time to get over the shock," said Madame Prier. "When she's
calmer I'll talk to her. I'll write you a letter when you can come
again."

"All right. You will help me, won't you?"

"You can be sure of that. My husband and I, we're agreed. We talked it
over and we came to the conclusion that the only thing to do was to
accept the situation. He's no fool, my husband, and he says the best
chance for France now is to collaborate. And take it all in all I don't
dislike you. I shouldn't wonder if you didn't make Annette a better
husband than that teacher. And with the baby coming and all."

"I want it to be a boy," said Hans.

"It's going to be a boy. I know for certain. I've seen it in the coffee
grounds and I've put out the cards. The answer is a boy every time."

"I almost forgot, here are some papers for you," said Hans, as he turned
his cycle and prepared to mount.

He handed her three numbers of _Paris-Soir_. Old Prier read every
evening. He read that the French must be realistic and accept the new
order that Hitler was going to create in Europe. He read that the German
submarines were sweeping the sea. He read that the General Staff had
organised to the last detail the campaign that would bring England to
her knees and that the Americans were too unprepared, too soft and too
divided to come to her help. He read that France must take the
heaven-sent opportunity and by loyal collaboration with the Reich regain
her honoured position in the new Europe. And it wasn't Germans who wrote
it all; it was Frenchmen. He nodded his head with approval when he read
that the plutocrats and the Jews would be destroyed and the poor man in
France would at last come into his own. They were quite right, the
clever fellows who said that France was essentially an agricultural
country and its backbone was its industrious farmers. Good sense, that
was.

One evening, when they were finishing their supper, ten days after the
news had come of Pierre Gavin's death, Madame Prier, by arrangement
with her husband, said to Annette:

"I wrote a letter to Hans a few days ago telling him to come here
to-morrow."

"Thank you for the warning. I shall stay in my room."

"Oh, come, daughter, the time has passed for foolishness. You must be
realistic. Pierre is dead. Hans loves you and wants to marry you. He's a
fine-looking fellow. Any girl would be proud of him as a husband. How
can we restock the farm without his help? He's going to buy a tractor
and a plough with his own money. You must let bygones be bygones."

"You're wasting your breath, Mother. I earned my living before, I can
earn my living again. I hate him. I hate his vanity and his arrogance. I
could kill him: his death wouldn't satisfy me. I should like to torture
him as he's tortured me. I think I should die happy if I could find a
way to wound him as he's wounded me."

"You're being very silly, my poor child."

"Your mother's right, my girl," said Prier. "We've been defeated and we
must accept the consequences. We've got to make the best arrangement we
can with the conquerors. We're cleverer than they are and if we play our
cards well we shall come out on top. France was rotten. It's the Jews
and the plutocrats who ruined the country. Read the papers and you'll
see for yourself!"

"Do you think I believe a word in that paper? Why do you think he brings
it to you except that it's sold to the Germans? The men who write in
it--traitors, traitors. Oh God, may I live to see them torn to pieces by
the mob. Bought, bought every one of them--bought with German money. The
swine."

Madame Prier was getting exasperated.

"What have you got against the boy? He took you by force--yes, he was
drunk at the time. It's not the first time that's happened to a woman
and it won't be the last time. He hit your father and he bled like a
pig, but does your father bear him malice?"

"It was an unpleasant incident, but I've forgotten it," said Prier.

Annette burst into harsh laughter.

"You should have been a priest. You forgive injuries with a spirit truly
Christian."

"And what is there wrong about that?" asked Madame Prier angrily.
"Hasn't he done everything he could to make amends? Where would your
father have got his tobacco all these months if it hadn't been for him.
If we haven't gone hungry it's owing to him."

"If you'd had any pride, if you'd had any sense of decency, you'd have
thrown his presents in his face."

"You've profited by them, haven't you?"

"Never. Never."

"It's a lie and you know it. You've refused to eat the cheese he brought
and the butter and the sardines. But the soup you've eaten, you know I
put the meat in it that he brought; and the salad you ate to-night, if
you didn't have to eat it dry, it's because he brought me oil."

Annette sighed deeply. She passed her hand over her eyes.

"I know. I tried not to, I couldn't help myself, I was so hungry. Yes, I
knew his meat went into the soup and I ate it. I knew the salad was made
with his oil. I wanted to refuse it; I had such a longing for it, it
wasn't I that ate it, it was a ravenous beast within me."

"That's neither here nor there. You ate it."

"With shame. With despair. They broke our strength first with their
tanks and their planes, and now when we're defenceless they're breaking
our spirit by starving us."

"You get nowhere by being theatrical, my girl. For an educated woman you
have really no sense. Forget the past and give a father to your child,
to say nothing of a good workman for the farm who'll be worth two hired
men. That is sense."

Annette shrugged her shoulders wearily and they lapsed into silence.
Next day Hans came. Annette gave him a sullen look, but neither spoke
nor moved. Hans smiled.

"Thank you for not running away," he said.

"My parents asked you to come and they've gone down to the village. It
suits me because I want to have a definite talk with you. Sit down."

He took off his coat and his helmet and drew a chair to the table.

"My parents want me to marry you. You've been clever; with your
presents, with your promises, you've got round them. They believe all
they read in the papers you bring them. I want to tell you that I will
never marry you. I wouldn't have thought it possible that I could hate a
human being as I hate you."

"Let me speak in German. You understand enough to know what I'm saying."

"I ought to. I taught it. For two years I was governess to two little
girls in Stuttgart."

He broke into German, but she went on speaking French.

"It's not only that I love you, I admire you. I admire your distinction
and your grace. There's something about you I don't understand. I
respect you. Oh, I can see that you don't want to marry me now even if
it were possible. But Pierre is dead."

"Don't speak of him," she cried violently. "That would be the last
straw."

"I only want to tell you that for your sake I'm sorry he died."

"Shot in cold blood by his German jailers."

"Perhaps in time you'll grieve for him less. You know, when someone you
love dies, you think you'll never get over it, but you do. Won't it be
better then to have a father for your child?"

"Even if there were nothing else do you think I could ever forget that
you are a German and I'm a Frenchwoman? If you weren't as stupid as only
a German can be you'd see that that child must be a reproach to me as
long as I live. Do you think I have no friends? How could I ever look
them in the face with the child I had with a German soldier? There's
only one thing I ask you; leave me alone with my disgrace. Go, go--for
God's sake go and never come again."

"But he's my child too. I want him."

"You?" she cried in astonishment. "What can a by-blow that you got in a
moment of savage drunkenness mean to you?"

"You don't understand. I'm so proud and so happy. It was when I knew you
were going to have a baby that I knew I loved you. At first I couldn't
believe it; it was such a surprise to me. Don't you see what I mean?
That child that's going to be born means everything in the world to me.
Oh, I don't know how to put it; it's put feelings in my heart that I
don't understand myself."

She looked at him intently and there was a strange gleam in her eyes.
You would have said it was a look of triumph. She gave a short laugh.

"I don't know whether I more loathe the brutality of you Germans or
despise your sentimentality."

He seemed not to have heard what she said.

"I think of him all the time."

"You've made up your mind it'll be a boy?"

"I know it'll be a boy. I want to hold him in my arms and I want to
teach him to walk. And then when he grows older I'll teach him all I
know. I'll teach him to ride and I'll teach him to shoot. Are there fish
in your brook? I'll teach him to fish. I'm going to be the proudest
father in the world."

She stared at him with hard, hard eyes. Her face was set and stern. An
idea, a terrible idea was forming itself in her mind. He gave her a
disarming smile.

"Perhaps when you see how much I love our boy, you'll come to love me
too. I'll make you a good husband, my pretty."

She said nothing. She merely kept on gazing at him sullenly.

"Haven't you one kind word for me?" he said.

She flushed. She clasped her hands tightly together.

"Others may despise me. I will never do anything that can make me
despise myself. You are my enemy and you will always be my enemy. I only
live to see the deliverance of France. It'll come, perhaps not next year
or the year after, perhaps not for thirty years, but it'll come. The
rest of them can do what they like, I will never come to terms with the
invaders of my country. I hate you and I hate this child that you've
given me. Yes, we've been defeated. Before the end comes you'll see that
we haven't been conquered. Now go. My mind's made up and nothing on
God's earth can change it."

He was silent for a minute or two.

"Have you made arrangements for a doctor? I'll pay all the expenses."

"Do you suppose we want to spread our shame through the whole
countryside? My mother will do all that's necessary."

"But supposing there's an accident?"

"And supposing you mind your own business!"

He sighed and rose to his feet. When he closed the door behind him she
watched him walk down the pathway that led to the road. She realised
with rage that some of the things he said had aroused in her heart a
feeling that she had never felt for him before.

"O God, give me strength," she cried.

Then, as he walked along, the dog, an old dog they'd had for years, ran
up to him barking angrily. He had tried for months to make friends with
the dog, but it had never responded to his advances; when he tried to
pat it, it backed away growling and showing its teeth. And now as the
dog ran towards him, irritably giving way to his feeling of frustration,
Hans gave it a savage, brutal kick and the dog was flung into the bushes
and limped yelping away.

"The beast," she cried. "Lies, lies, lies. And I was weak enough to be
almost sorry for him."

There was a looking-glass hanging by the side of the door and she looked
at herself in it. She drew herself up and smiled at her reflection. But
rather than a smile it was a fiendish grimace.

It was now March. There was a bustle of activity in the garrison at
Soissons. There were inspections and there was intensive training.
Rumour was rife. There was no doubt they were going somewhere, but the
rank and file could only guess where. Some thought they were being got
ready at last for the invasion of England, others were of opinion that
they would be sent to the Balkans, and others again talked of the
Ukraine. Hans was kept busy. It was not till the second Sunday afternoon
that he was able to get out to the farm. It was a cold grey day, with
sleet that looked as though it might turn to snow falling in sudden
windy flurries. The country was grim and cheerless.

"You!" cried Madame Prier when he went in. "We thought you were dead."

"I couldn't come before. We're off any day now. We don't know when."

"The baby was born this morning. It's a boy."

Hans's heart gave a great leap in his breast. He hung his arms round the
old woman and kissed her on both cheeks.

"A Sunday child, he ought to be lucky. Let's open the bottle of
champagne. How's Annette?"

"She's as well as can be expected. She had a very easy time. She began
to have pains last night and by five o'clock this morning it was all
over."

Old Prier was smoking his pipe sitting as near the stove as he could
get. He smiled quietly at the boy's enthusiasm.

"One's first child, it has an effect on one," he said.

"He has quite a lot of hair and it's as fair as yours; and blue eyes
just like you said he'd have," said Madame Prier. "I've never seen a
lovelier baby. He'll be just like his papa."

"Oh, my God, I'm so happy," cried Hans. "How beautiful the world is! I
want to see Annette."

"I don't know if she'll see you. I don't want to upset her on account of
the milk."

"No, no, don't upset her on my account. If she doesn't want to see me it
doesn't matter. But let me see the baby just for a minute."

"I'll see what I can do. I'll try to bring it down."

Madame Prier went out and they heard her heavy tread clumping up the
stairs. But in a moment they heard her clattering down again. She burst
into the kitchen.

"They're not there. She isn't in her room. The baby's gone."

Prier and Hans cried out and without thinking what they were doing all
three of them scampered upstairs. The harsh light of the winter
afternoon cast over the shabby furniture, the iron bed, the cheap
wardrobe, the chest of drawers, a dismal squalor. There was no one in
the room.

"Where is she?" screamed Madame Prier. She ran into the narrow passage,
opening doors, and called the girl's name. "Annette, Annette. Oh, what
madness!"

"Perhaps in the sitting-room."

They ran downstairs to the unused parlour. An icy air met them as they
opened the door. They opened the door of a storeroom.

"She's gone out. Something awful has happened."

"How could she have got out?" asked Hans sick with anxiety.

"Through the front door, you fool."

Prier went up to it and looked.

"That's right. The bolt's drawn back."

"Oh, my God, my God, what madness," cried Madame Prier. "It'll kill
her."

"We must look for her," said Hans. Instinctively, because that was the
way he always went in and out, he ran back into the kitchen and the
others followed him "Which way?"

"The brook," the old woman gasped.

He stopped as though turned to stone with horror. He stared at the old
woman aghast.

"I'm frightened," she cried. "I'm frightened."

Hans flung open the door, and as he did so Annette walked in. She had
nothing on but her nightdress and a flimsy rayon dressing, gown. It was
pink, with pale blue flowers. She was soaked, and her hair, dishevelled,
clung damply to her head and hung down her shoulders in bedraggled
wisps. She was deathly white. Madame Prier sprang towards her and took
her in her arms.

"Where have you been? Oh, my poor child, you're wet through. What
madness!"

But Annette pushed her away. She looked at Hans.

"You've come at the right moment, you."

"Where's the baby?" cried Madame Prier.

"I had to do it at once. I was afraid if I waited I shouldn't have the
courage."

"Annette, what have you done?"

"I've done what I had to do. I took it down to the brook and held it
under water till it was dead."

Hans gave a great cry, the cry of an animal wounded to death; he covered
his face with his hands, and staggering like a drunken man flung out of
the door. Annette sank into a chair, and leaning her forehead on her two
fists burst into passionate weeping.




THE ESCAPE


I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to
marry a man nothing but instant flight could save him. Not always that;
for once a friend of mine, seeing the inevitable loom menacingly before
him, took ship from a certain port (with a tooth-brush for all his
luggage, so conscious was he of his danger and the necessity for
immediate action) and spent a year travelling round the world; but when,
thinking himself safe (women are fickle, he said, and in twelve months
she will have forgotten all about me), he landed at the selfsame port
the first person he saw gaily waving to him from the quay was the little
lady from whom he had fled. I have only once known a man who in such
circumstances managed to extricate himself. His name was Roger Charing.
He was no longer young when he fell in love with Ruth Barlow and he had
had sufficient experience to make him careful; but Ruth Barlow had a
gift (or should I call it a quality?) that renders most men defenceless,
and it was this that dispossessed Roger of his commonsense, his prudence
and his worldly wisdom. He went down like a row of ninepins. This was
the gift of pathos. Mrs. Barlow, for she was twice a widow, had splendid
dark eyes and they were the most moving I ever saw; they seemed to be
ever on the point of filling with tears; they suggested that the world
was too much for her, and you felt that, poor dear, her sufferings had
been more than anyone should be asked to bear. If, like Roger Charing,
you were a strong, hefty fellow with plenty of money, it was almost
inevitable that you should say to yourself: I must stand between the
hazards of life and this helpless little thing, oh, how wonderful it
would be to take the sadness out of those big and lovely eyes! I
gathered from Roger that everyone had treated Mrs. Barlow very badly.
She was apparently one of those unfortunate persons with whom nothing by
any chance goes right. If she married a husband he beat her; if she
employed a broker he cheated her; if she engaged a cook she drank. She
never had a little lamb but it was sure to die.

When Roger told me that he had at last persuaded her to marry him, I
wished him joy.

"I hope you'll be good friends," he said. "She's a little afraid of you,
you know; she thinks you're callous."

"Upon my word I don't know why she should think that."

"You do like her, don't you?"

"Very much."

"She's had a rotten time, poor dear. I feel so dreadfully sorry for
her."

"Yes," I said.

I couldn't say less. I knew she was stupid and I thought she was
scheming. My own belief was that she was as hard as nails.

The first time I met her we had played bridge together and when she was
my partner she twice trumped my best card. I behaved like an angel, but
I confess that I thought if the tears were going to well up into
anybody's eyes they should have been mine rather than hers. And when,
having by the end of the evening lost a good deal of money to me, she
said she would send me a cheque and never did, I could not but think
that I and not she should have worn a pathetic expression when next we
met.

Roger introduced her to his friends. He gave her lovely jewels. He took
her here, there, and everywhere. Their marriage was announced for the
immediate future. Roger was very happy. He was committing a good action
and at the same time doing something he had very much a mind to. It is
an uncommon situation and it is not surprising if he was a trifle more
pleased with himself than was altogether becoming.

Then, on a sudden, he fell out of love. I do not know why it could
hardly have been that he grew tired of her conversation, for she had
never had any conversation. Perhaps it was merely that this pathetic
look of hers ceased to wring his heart-strings. His eyes were opened and
he was once more the shrewd man of the world he had been. He became
acutely conscious that Ruth Barlow had made up her mind to marry him and
he swore a solemn oath that nothing would induce him to marry Ruth
Barlow. But he was in a quandary. Now that he was in possession of his
senses he saw with clearness the sort of woman he had to deal with and
he was aware that, if he asked her to release him, she would (in her
appealing way) assess her wounded feelings at an immoderately high
figure. Besides, it is always awkward for a man to jilt a woman. People
are apt to think he has behaved badly.

Roger kept his own counsel. He gave neither by word nor gesture an
indication that his feelings towards Ruth Barlow had changed. He
remained attentive to all her wishes; he took her to dine at
restaurants, they went to the play together, he sent her flowers; he was
sympathetic and charming. They had made up their minds that they would
be married as soon as they found a house that suited them, for he lived
in chambers and she in furnished rooms; and they set about looking at
desirable residences. The agents sent Roger orders to view and he took
Ruth to see a number of houses. It was very hard to find anything that
was quite satisfactory. Roger applied to more agents. They visited house
after house. They went over them thoroughly, examining them from the
cellars in the basement to the attics under the roof. Sometimes they
were too large and sometimes they were too small; sometimes they were
too far from the centre of things and sometimes they were too close;
sometimes they were too expensive and sometimes they wanted too many
repairs; sometimes they were too stuffy and sometimes they were too
airy; sometimes they were too dark and sometimes they were too bleak.
Roger always found a fault that made the house unsuitable. Of course he
was hard to please; he could not bear to ask his dear Ruth to live in
any but the perfect house, and the perfect house wanted finding.
House-hunting is a tiring and a tiresome business and presently Ruth
began to grow peevish. Roger begged her to have patience; somewhere,
surely, existed the very house they were looking for, and it only needed
a little perseverance and they would find it. They looked at hundreds of
houses; they climbed thousands of stairs; they inspected innumerable
kitchens. Ruth was exhausted and more than once lost her temper.

"If you don't find a house soon," she said, "I shall have to reconsider
my position. Why, if you go on like this we shan't be married for
years."

"Don't say that," he answered, "I beseech you to have patience. I've
just received some entirely new lists from agents I've only just heard
of. There must be at least sixty houses on them."

They set out on the chase again. They looked at more houses and more
houses. For two years they looked at houses. Ruth grew silent and
scornful: her pathetic, beautiful eyes acquired an expression that was
almost sullen. There are limits to human endurance. Mrs. Barlow had the
patience of an angel, but at last she revolted.

"Do you want to marry me or do you not?" she asked him.

There was an unaccustomed hardness in her voice, but it did not affect
the gentleness of his reply.

"Of course I do. We'll be married the very moment we find a house. By
the way, I've just heard of something that might suit us."

"I don't feel well enough to look at any more houses just yet."

"Poor dear, I was afraid you were looking rather tired."

Ruth Barlow took to her bed. She would not see Roger and he had to
content himself with calling at her lodgings to enquire and sending her
flowers. He was as ever assiduous and gallant. Every day he wrote and
told her that he had heard of another house for them to look at. A week
passed and then he received the following letter:

    _Roger_,

    _I do not think you really love me. I have found someone who is
    anxious to take care of me and I am going to be married to him
    to-day._

                                                           _Ruth._

He sent back his reply by special messenger:

    _Ruth_,

    _Your news shatters me. I shall never get over the blow, but of
    course your happiness must be my first consideration. I send you
    herewith seven orders to view; they arrived by this morning's
    post and I am quite sure you will find among them a house that
    will exactly suit you._

    _Roger._




THE JUDGMENT SEAT


They awaited their turn patiently, but patience was no new thing to
them; they had practised it, all three of them, with grim determination,
for thirty years. Their lives had been a long preparation for this
moment and they looked forward to the issue now, if not with
self-confidence, for that on so awful an occasion would have been
misplaced, at all events with hope and courage. They had taken the
strait and narrow path when the flowery meads of sin stretched all too
invitingly before them; with heads held high, though with breaking
hearts, they had resisted temptation; and now, their arduous journey
done, they expected their reward. There was no need for them to speak,
since each knew the others' thoughts, and they felt that in all three of
them the same emotion of relief filled their bodiless souls with
thanksgiving. With what anguish now would they have been wrung if they
had yielded to the passion which then had seemed so nearly irresistible
and what a madness it would have been if for a few short years of bliss
they had sacrificed that Life Everlasting which with so bright a light
at long last shone before them! They felt like men who with the skin of
their teeth have escaped a sudden and violent death and touch their feet
and hands and, scarce able to believe that they are still alive, look
about them in amazement. They had done nothing with which they could
reproach themselves and when presently their angels came and told them
that the moment was come, they would advance, as they had passed through
the world that was now so far behind, happily conscious that they had
done their duty. They stood a little on one side, for the press was
great. A terrible war was in progress and for years the soldiers of all
nations, men in the full flush of their gallant youth, had marched in an
interminable procession to the Judgment Seat; women and children too,
their lives brought to a wretched end by violence or, more unhappily, by
grief, disease and starvation; and there was in the courts of heaven not
a little confusion.

It was on account of this war, too, that these three wan, shivering
ghosts stood in expectation of their doom. For John and Mary had been
passengers on a ship which was sunk by the torpedo of a submarine; and
Ruth, broken in health by the arduous work to which she had so nobly
devoted herself, hearing of the death of the man whom she had loved with
all her heart, sank beneath the blow and died. John, indeed, might have
saved himself if he had not tried to save his wife; he hated her; he had
hated her to the depths of his soul for thirty years; but he had always
done his duty by her and now, in the moment of dreadful peril, it never
occurred to him that he could do otherwise.

At last their angels took them by the hand and led them to the Presence.
For a little while the Eternal took not the slightest notice of them. If
the truth must be told he was in a bad humour. A moment before there had
come up for judgment a philosopher, deceased full of years and honours,
who had told the Eternal to his face that he did not believe in him. It
was not this that would have disturbed the serenity of the Kings of
Kings, this could only have made him smile; but the philosopher, taking
perhaps an unfair advantage of the regrettable happenings just then upon
Earth, had asked him how, considering them dispassionately, it was
possible to reconcile his All-Power with his All-Goodness.

"No one can deny the fact of Evil," said the philosopher, sententiously.
"Now, if God cannot prevent Evil he is not all-powerful, and if he can
prevent it and will not, he is not all-good."

This argument was of course not new to the Omniscient, but he had always
refused to consider the matter; for the fact is, though he knew
everything, he did not know the answer to this. Even God cannot make two
and two five. But the philosopher, pressing his advantage, and, as
philosophers often will, drawing from a reasonable premise an
unjustifiable inference--the philosopher had finished with a statement
that in the circumstances was surely preposterous.

"I will not believe," he said, "in a God who is not All-Powerful and
All-Good."

It was not then perhaps without relief that the Eternal turned his
attention to the three shades who stood humbly and yet hopefully before
him. The quick, with so short a time to live, when they talk of
themselves, talk too much; but the dead, with eternity before them, are
so verbose that only angels could listen to them with civility. But this
in brief is the story that these three recounted. John and Mary had been
happily married for five years and till John met Ruth they loved each
other, as married couples for the most part do, with sincere affection
and mutual respect. Ruth was eighteen, ten years younger than he was, a
charming, graceful animal, with a sudden and all-conquering loveliness;
she was as healthy in mind as she was in body, and, eager for the
natural happiness of life, was capable of achieving that greatness which
is beauty of soul. John fell in love with her and she with him. But it
was no ordinary passion that seized them; it was something so
overwhelming that they felt as if the whole long history of the world
signified only because it had led to the time and place that had brought
them together. They loved as Daphnis and Chloe or as Paolo and
Francesca. But after that first moment of ecstasy when each discovered
the other's love they were seized with dismay. They were decent people
and they respected themselves, the beliefs in which they had been bred,
and the society in which they lived. How could he betray an innocent
girl, and what had she to do with a married man? Then they grew
conscious that Mary was aware of their love. The confident affection
with which she had regarded her husband was shaken; and there arose in
her feelings of which she would never have thought herself capable,
jealousy and the fear that he would desert her, anger because her
possession of his heart was threatened, and a strange hunger of the soul
which was more painful than love. She felt that she would die if he left
her; and yet she knew that if he loved it was because love had come to
him, not because he had sought it. She did not blame him. She prayed for
strength; she wept silent, bitter tears. John and Ruth saw her pine away
before their eyes. The struggle was long and bitter. Sometimes their
hearts failed them and they felt that they could not resist the passion
that burned the marrow of their bones. They resisted. They wrestled with
evil as Jacob wrestled with the angel of God and at last they conquered.
With breaking hearts, but proud in their innocence, they parted. They
offered up to God, as it were a sacrifice, their hopes of happiness, the
joy of life and the beauty of the world.

Ruth had loved too passionately ever to love again and with a stony
heart she turned to God and to good works. She was indefatigable. She
tended the sick and assisted the poor. She founded orphanages and
managed charitable institutions. And little by little her beauty which
she cared for no longer left her and her face grew as hard as her heart.
Her religion was fierce and narrow; her very kindness was cruel because
it was founded not on love but on reason; she became domineering,
intolerant and vindictive. And John resigned, but sullen and angry,
dragged himself along the weary years waiting for the release of death.
Life lost its meaning to him; he had made his effort and in conquering
was conquered; the only emotion that remained with him was the
unceasing, secret hatred with which he looked upon his wife. He used her
with kindness and consideration; he did everything that could be
expected of a man who was a Christian and a gentleman. He did his duty.
Mary, a good, faithful and (it must be confessed) exceptional wife,
never thought to reproach her husband for the madness that had seized
him; but all the same she could not forgive him for the sacrifice he had
made for her sake. She grew acid and querulous. Though she hated herself
for it, she could not refrain from saying the things that she knew would
wound him. She would willingly have sacrificed her life for him, but she
could not bear that he should enjoy a moment's happiness when she was so
wretched that a hundred times she had wished she was dead. Well, now she
was and so were they; grey and drab had life been, but that was passed;
they had not sinned and now their reward was at hand.

They finished and there was silence. There was silence in all the courts
of heaven. Go to hell were the words that came to the Eternal's lips,
but he did not utter them, for they had a colloquial association that he
rightly thought unfitting to the solemnity of the occasion. Nor indeed
would such a decree have met the merits of the case. But his brows
darkened. He asked himself if it was for this that he had made the
rising sun shine on the boundless sea and the snow glitter on the
mountain tops; was it for this that the brooks sang blithely as they
hastened down the hillsides and the golden corn waved in the evening
breeze?

"I sometimes think," said the Eternal, "that the stars never shine more
brightly than when reflected in the muddy waters of a wayside ditch."

But the three shades stood before him and now that they had unfolded
their unhappy story they could not but feel a certain satisfaction. It
had been a bitter struggle, but they had done their duty. The Eternal
blew lightly, he blew as a man might blow out a lighted match, and,
behold! where the three poor souls had stood--was nothing. The Eternal
annihilated them.

"I have often wondered why men think I attach so much importance to
sexual irregularity," he said. "If they read my works more attentively
they would see that I have always been sympathetic to that particular
form of human frailty."

Then he turned to the philosopher, who was still waiting for a reply to
his remarks.

"You cannot but allow," said the Eternal, "that on this occasion I have
very happily combined my All-Power with my All-Goodness."




MR. KNOW-ALL


I was prepared to dislike Max Kelada even before I knew him. The war had
just finished and the passenger traffic in the ocean-going liners was
heavy. Accommodation was very hard to get and you had to put up with
whatever the agents chose to offer you. You could not hope for a cabin
to yourself and I was thankful to be given one in which there were only
two berths. But when I was told the name of my companion my heart sank.
It suggested closed port-holes and the night air rigidly excluded. It
was bad enough to share a cabin for fourteen days with anyone (I was
going from San Francisco to Yokohama), but I should have looked upon it
with less dismay if my fellow-passenger's name had been Smith or Brown.

When I went on board I found Mr. Kelada's luggage already below. I did
not like the look of it; there were too many labels on the suitcases,
and the wardrobe trunk was too big. He had unpacked his toilet things,
and I observed that he was a patron of the excellent Monsieur Coty; for
I saw on the washing-stand his scent, his hair-wash and his
brilliantine. Mr. Kelada's brushes, ebony with his monogram in gold,
would have been all the better for a scrub. I did not at all like Mr.
Kelada. I made my way into the smoking-room. I called for a pack of
cards and began to play patience. I had scarcely started before a man
came up to me and asked me if he was right in thinking my name was
so-and-so.

"I am Mr. Kelada," he added, with a smile that showed a row of flashing
teeth, and sat down.

"Oh, yes, we're sharing a cabin, I think."

"Bit of luck, I call it. You never know who you're going to be put in
with. I was jolly glad when I heard you were English. I'm all for us
English sticking together when we're abroad, if you understand what I
mean."

I blinked.

"Are you English?" I asked, perhaps tactlessly.

"Rather. You don't think I look like an American, do you? British to the
backbone, that's what I am."

To prove it, Mr. Kelada took out of his pocket a passport and airily
waved it under my nose.

King George has many strange subjects. Mr. Kelada was short and of a
sturdy build, clean-shaven and dark-skinned, with a fleshy, hooked nose
and very large, lustrous and liquid eyes. His long black hair was sleek
and curly. He spoke with a fluency in which there was nothing English
and his gestures were exuberant. I felt pretty sure that a closer
inspection of that British passport would have betrayed the fact that
Mr. Kelada was born under a bluer sky than is generally seen in England.

"What will you have?" he asked me.

I looked at him doubtfully. Prohibition was in force and to all
appearances the ship was bone-dry. When I am not thirsty I do not know
which I dislike more, ginger-ale or lemon-squash. But Mr. Kelada flashed
an oriental smile at me.

"Whisky and soda or a dry Martini, you have only to say the word."

From each of his hip-pockets he fished a flask and laid them on the
table before me. I chose the Martini, and calling the steward he ordered
a tumbler of ice and a couple of glasses.

"A very good cocktail," I said.

"Well, there are plenty more where that came from, and if you've got any
friends on board, you tell them you've got a pal who's got all the
liquor in the world."

Mr. Kelada was chatty. He talked of New York and of San Francisco. He
discussed plays, pictures, and politics. He was patriotic. The Union
Jack is an impressive piece of drapery, but when it is flourished by a
gentleman from Alexandria or Beirut, I cannot but feel that it loses
somewhat in dignity. Mr. Kelada was familiar. I do not wish to put on
airs, but I cannot help feeling that it is seemly in a total stranger to
put mister before my name when he addresses me. Mr. Kelada, doubtless to
set me at my ease, used no such formality. I did not like Mr. Kelada. I
had put aside the cards when he sat down, but now, thinking that for
this first occasion our conversation had lasted long enough, I went on
with my game.

"The three on the four," said Mr. Kelada.

There is nothing more exasperating when you are playing patience than to
be told where to put the card you have turned up before you have had a
chance to look for yourself.

"It's coming out, it's coming out," he cried. "The ten on the knave."

With rage and hatred in my heart I finished. Then he seized the pack.

"Do you like card tricks?"

"No, I hate card tricks," I answered.

"Well, I'll just show you this one."

He showed me three. Then I said I would go down to the dining-room and
get my seat at table.

"Oh, that's all right," he said. "I've already taken a seat for you. I
thought that as we were in the same state-room we might just as well sit
at the same table."

I did not like Mr. Kelada.

I not only shared a cabin with him and ate three meals a day at the same
table, but I could not walk round the deck without his joining me. It
was impossible to snub him. It never occurred to him that he was not
wanted. He was certain that you were as glad to see him as he was to see
you. In your own house you might have kicked him downstairs and slammed
the door in his face without the suspicion dawning on him that he was
not a welcome visitor. He was a good mixer, and in three days knew
everyone on board. He ran everything. He managed the sweeps, conducted
the auctions, collected money for prizes at the sports, got up quoit and
golf matches, organised the concert and arranged the fancy dress ball.
He was everywhere and always. He was certainly the best-hated man in the
ship. We called him Mr. Know-All, even to his face. He took it as a
compliment. But it was at meal times that he was most intolerable. For
the better part of an hour then he had us at his mercy. He was hearty,
jovial, loquacious and argumentative. He knew everything better than
anybody else, and it was an affront to his overweening vanity that you
should disagree with him. He would not drop a subject, however
unimportant, till he had brought you round to his way of thinking. The
possibility that he could be mistaken never occurred to him. He was the
chap who knew. We sat at the doctor's table. Mr. Kelada would certainly
have had it all his own way, for the doctor was lazy and I was frigidly
indifferent, except for a man called Ramsay who sat there also. He was
as dogmatic as Mr. Kelada and resented bitterly the Levantine's
cocksureness. The discussions they had were acrimonious and
interminable.

Ramsay was in the American Consular Service, and was stationed at Kobe.
He was a great heavy fellow from the Middle West, with loose fat under a
tight skin, and he bulged out of his ready-made clothes. He was on his
way back to resume his post, having been on a flying visit to New York
to fetch his wife, who had been spending a year at home. Mrs. Ramsay was
a very pretty little thing, with pleasant manners and a sense of humour.
The Consular Service is ill paid, and she was dressed always very
simply; but she knew how to wear her clothes. She achieved an effect of
quiet distinction. I should not have paid any particular attention to
her but that she possessed a quality that may be common enough in women,
but nowadays is not obvious in their demeanour. You could not look at
her without being struck by her modesty. It shone in her like a flower
on a coat.

One evening at dinner the conversation by chance drifted to the subject
of pearls. There had been in the papers a good deal of talk about the
culture pearls which the cunning Japanese were making, and the doctor
remarked that they must inevitably diminish the value of real ones. They
were very good already; they would soon be perfect. Mr. Kelada, as was
his habit, rushed the new topic. He told us all that was to be known
about pearls. I do not believe Ramsay knew anything about them at all,
but he could not resist the opportunity to have a fling at the
Levantine, and in five minutes we were in the middle of a heated
argument. I had seen Mr. Kelada vehement and voluble before, but never
so voluble and vehement as now. At last something that Ramsay said stung
him, for he thumped the table and shouted:

"Well, I ought to know what I am talking about. I'm going to Japan just
to look into this Japanese pearl business. I'm in the trade and there's
not a man in it who won't tell you that what I say about pearls goes. I
know all the best pearls in the world, and what I don't know about
pearls isn't worth knowing."

Here was news for us, for Mr. Kelada, with all his loquacity, had never
told anyone what his business was. We only knew vaguely that he was
going to Japan on some commercial errand. He looked round the table
triumphantly.

"They'll never be able to get a culture pearl that an expert like me
can't tell with half an eye." He pointed to a chain that Mrs. Ramsay
wore. "You take my word for it, Mrs. Ramsay, that chain you're wearing
will never be worth a cent less than it is now."

Mrs. Ramsay in her modest way flushed a little and slipped the chain
inside her dress. Ramsay leaned forward. He gave us all a look and a
smile flickered in his eyes.

"That's a pretty chain of Mrs. Ramsay's, isn't it?"

"I noticed it at once," answered Mr. Kelada. "Gee, I said to myself,
those are pearls all right."

"I didn't buy it myself, of course. I'd be interested to know how much
you think it cost."

"Oh, in the trade somewhere round fifteen thousand dollars. But if it
was bought on Fifth Avenue I shouldn't be surprised to hear that
anything up to thirty thousand was paid for it."

Ramsay smiled grimly.

"You'll be surprised to hear that Mrs. Ramsay bought that string at a
department store the day before we left New York, for eighteen dollars."

Mr. Kelada flushed.

"Rot. It's not only real, but it's as fine a string for its size as I've
ever seen."

"Will you bet on it? I'll bet you a hundred dollars it's imitation."

"Done."

"Oh, Elmer, you can't bet on a certainty," said Mrs. Ramsay.

She had a little smile on her lips and her tone was gently deprecating.

"Can't I? If I get a chance of easy money like that I should be all
sorts of a fool not to take it."

"But how can it be proved?" she continued. "It's only my word against
Mr. Kelada's."

"Let me look at the chain, and if it's imitation I'll tell you quickly
enough. I can afford to lose a hundred dollars," said Mr. Kelada.

"Take it off, dear. Let the gentleman look at it as much as he wants."

Mrs. Ramsay hesitated a moment. She put her hands to the clasp.

"I can't undo it," she said. "Mr. Kelada will just have to take my word
for it."

I had a sudden suspicion that something unfortunate was about to occur,
but I could think of nothing to say.

Ramsay jumped up.

"I'll undo it."

He handed the chain to Mr. Kelada. The Levantine took a magnifying glass
from his pocket and closely examined it. A smile of triumph spread over
his smooth and swarthy face. He handed back the chain. He was about to
speak. Suddenly he caught sight of Mrs. Ramsay's face. It was so white
that she looked as though she were about to faint. She was staring at
him with wide and terrified eyes. They held a desperate appeal; it was
so clear that I wondered why her husband did not see it.

Mr. Kelada stopped with his mouth open. He flushed deeply. You could
almost _see_ the effort he was making over himself.

"I was mistaken," he said. "It's a very good imitation, but of course as
soon as I looked through my glass I saw that it wasn't real. I think
eighteen dollars is just about as much as the damned thing's worth."

He took out his pocket-book and from it a hundred-dollar note. He handed
it to Ramsay without a word.

"Perhaps that'll teach you not to be so cocksure another time, my young
friend," said Ramsay as he took the note.

I noticed that Mr. Kelada's hands were trembling.

The story spread over the ship as stories do, and he had to put up with
a good deal of chaff that evening. It was a fine joke that Mr. Know-All
had been caught out. But Mrs. Ramsay retired to her state-room with a
headache.

Next morning I got up and began to shave. Mr. Kelada lay on his bed
smoking a cigarette. Suddenly there was a small scraping sound and I saw
a letter pushed under the door. I opened the door and looked out. There
was nobody there. I picked up the letter and saw that it was addressed
to Max Kelada. The name was written in block letters. I handed it to
him.

"Who's this from?" He opened it. "Oh!"

He took out of the envelope, not a letter, but a hundred-dollar note. He
looked at me and again he reddened. He tore the envelope into little
bits and gave them to me.

"Do you mind just throwing them out of the port-hole?"

I did as he asked, and then I looked at him with a smile.

"No one likes being made to look a perfect damned fool," he said.

"Were the pearls real?"

"If I had a pretty little wife I shouldn't let her spend a year in New
York while I stayed at Kobe," said he.

At that moment I did not entirely dislike Mr. Kelada. He reached out for
his pocket-book and carefully put in it the hundred-dollar note.




THE HAPPY MAN


It is a dangerous thing to order the lives of others and I have often
wondered at the self-confidence of politicians, reformers and suchlike
who are prepared to force upon their fellows measures that must alter
their manners, habits and points of view. I have always hesitated to
give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows
that other as well as one knows oneself? Heaven knows, I know little
enough of myself: I know nothing of others. We can only guess at the
thoughts and emotions of our neighbours. Each one of us is a prisoner in
a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, who form
mankind, by conventional signs that have not quite the same meaning for
them as for himself. And life, unfortunately, is something that you can
lead but once; mistakes are often irreparable, and who am I that I
should tell this one and that how he should lead it? Life is a difficult
business and I have found it hard enough to make my own a complete and
rounded thing; I have not been tempted to teach my neighbour what he
should do with his. But there are men who flounder at the journey's
start, the way before them is confused and hazardous, and on occasion,
however unwillingly, I have been forced to point the finger of fate.
Sometimes men have said to me, what shall I do with my life? and I have
seen myself for a moment wrapped in the dark cloak of Destiny.

Once I know that I advised well.

I was a young man and I lived in a modest apartment in London near
Victoria Station. Late one afternoon, when I was beginning to think that
I had worked enough for that day, I heard a ring at the bell. I opened
the door to a total stranger. He asked me my name; I told him. He asked
if he might come in.

"Certainly."

I led him into my sitting-room and begged him to sit down. He seemed a
trifle embarrassed. I offered him a cigarette and he had some difficulty
in lighting it without letting go of his hat. When he had satisfactorily
achieved this feat I asked him if I should not put it on a chair for
him. He quickly did this and while doing it dropped his umbrella.

"I hope you don't mind my coming to see you like this," he said. "My
name is Stephens and I am a doctor. You're in the medical, I believe?"

"Yes, but I don't practise."

"No, I know. I've just read a book of yours about Spain and I wanted to
ask you about it."

"It's not a very good book, I'm afraid."

"The fact remains that you know something about Spain and there's no one
else I know who does. And I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind giving me
some information."

"I shall be very glad."

He was silent for a moment. He reached out for his hat and holding it in
one hand absent-mindedly stroked it with the other. I surmised that it
gave him confidence.

"I hope you won't think it very odd for a perfect stranger to talk to
you like this." He gave an apologetic laugh. "I'm not going to tell you
the story of my life."

When people say this to me I always know that it is precisely what they
are going to do. I do not mind. In fact I rather like it.

"I was brought up by two old aunts. I've never been anywhere. I've never
done anything. I've been married for six years. I have no children. I'm
a medical officer at the Camberwell Infirmary. I can't stick it any
more."

There was something very striking in the short, sharp sentences he used.
They had a forcible ring. I had not given him more than a cursory
glance, but now I looked at him with curiosity. He was a little man,
thick-set and stout, of thirty perhaps, with a round red face from which
shone small, dark and very bright eyes. His black hair was cropped close
to a bullet-shaped head. He was dressed in a blue suit a good deal the
worse for wear. It was baggy at the knees and the pockets bulged
untidily.

"You know what the duties are of a medical officer in an infirmary. One
day is pretty much like another. And that's all I've got to look forward
to for the rest of my life. Do you think it's worth it?"

"It's a means of livelihood," I answered.

"Yes, I know. The money's pretty good."

"I don't exactly know why you've come to me."

"Well, I wanted to know whether you thought there would be any chance
for an English doctor in Spain?"

"Why Spain?"

"I don't know, I just have a fancy for it."

"It's not like _Carmen_, you know."

"But there's sunshine there, and there's good wine, and there's colour,
and there's air you can breathe. Let me say what I have to say straight
out. I heard by accident that there was no English doctor in Seville. Do
you think I could earn a living there? Is it madness to give up a good
safe job for an uncertainty?"

"What does your wife think about it?"

"She's willing."

"It's a great risk."

"I know. But if you say take it, I will: if you say stay where you are,
I'll stay."

He was looking at me intently with those bright dark eyes of his and I
knew that he meant what he said. I reflected for a moment.

"Your whole future is concerned: you must decide for yourself. But this
I can tell you: if you don't want money but are content to earn just
enough to keep body and soul together, then go. For you will lead a
wonderful life."

He left me, I thought about him for a day or two, and then forgot. The
episode passed completely from my memory.

Many years later, fifteen at least, I happened to be in Seville and
having some trifling indisposition asked the hotel porter whether there
was an English doctor in the town. He said there was and gave me the
address. I took a cab and as I drove up to the house a little fat man
came out of it. He hesitated when he caught sight of me.

"Have you come to see me?" he said. "I'm the English doctor."

I explained my errand and he asked me to come in. He lived in an
ordinary Spanish house, with a patio, and his consulting room which led
out of it was littered with papers, books, medical appliances, and
lumber. The sight of it would have startled a squeamish patient. We did
our business and then I asked the doctor what his fee was. He shook his
head and smiled.

"There's no fee."

"Why on earth not?"

"Don't you remember me? Why, I'm here because of something you said to
me. You changed my whole life for me. I'm Stephens."

I had not the least notion what he was talking about. He reminded me of
our interview, he repeated to me what we had said, and gradually, out of
the night, a dim recollection of the incident came back to me.

"I was wondering if I'd ever see you again," he said, "I was wondering
if ever I'd have a chance of thanking you for all you've done for me."

"It's been a success then?"

I looked at him. He was very fat now and bald, but his eyes twinkled
gaily and his fleshy, red face bore an expression of perfect
good-humour. The clothes he wore, terribly shabby they were, had been
made obviously by a Spanish tailor and his hat was the wide-brimmed
sombrero of the Spaniard. He looked to me as though he knew a good
bottle of wine when he saw it. He had a dissipated, though entirely
sympathetic, appearance. You might have hesitated to let him remove your
appendix, but you could not have imagined a more delightful creature to
drink a glass of wine with.

"Surely you were married?" I said.

"Yes. My wife didn't like Spain, she went back to Camberwell, she was
more at home there."

"Oh, I'm sorry for that."

His black eyes flashed a bacchanalian smile. He really had somewhat the
look of a young Silenus.

"Life is full of compensations," he murmured.

The words were hardly out of his mouth when a Spanish woman, no longer
in her first youth, but still boldly and voluptuously beautiful,
appeared at the door. She spoke to him in Spanish, and I could not fail
to perceive that she was the mistress of the house.

As he stood at the door to let me out he said to me:

"You told me when last I saw you that if I came here I should earn just
enough money to keep body and soul together, but that I should lead a
wonderful life. Well, I want to tell you that you were right. Poor I
have been and poor I shall always be, but by heaven I've enjoyed myself.
I wouldn't exchange the life I've had with that of any king in the
world."




THE ROMANTIC YOUNG LADY


One of the many inconveniences of real life is that it seldom gives you
a complete story. Some incident has excited your interest, the people
who are concerned in it are in the devil's own muddle, and you wonder
what on earth will happen next. Well, generally nothing happens. The
inevitable catastrophe you foresaw wasn't inevitable after all, and high
tragedy, without any regard to artistic decency, dwindles into
drawing-room comedy. Now, growing old has many disadvantages, but it has
this compensation (among, let us admit, not a few others), that
sometimes it gives you the opportunity of seeing what was the outcome of
certain events you had witnessed long ago. You had given up the hope of
ever knowing what was the end of the story, and then, when you least
expected it, it is handed to you on a platter.

These reflections occurred to me when, having escorted the Marquesa de
San Esteban to her car, I went back into the hotel and sat down again in
the lounge. I ordered a cocktail, lit a cigarette and composed myself to
order my recollections. The hotel was new and splendid, it was like
every other first-class hotel in Europe, and I had been regretting that
for the sake of its modern plumbing I had deserted the old-fashioned,
picturesque Hotel de Madrid to which I generally went when I stayed in
Seville. It was true that from my hotel I had a view of the noble river,
the Guadalquivir, but that did not make up for the _ths dansants_ that
filled the bar-lounge two or three days a week with a fashionable crowd
whose exuberant conversation almost drowned the strident din of a jazz
orchestra.

I had been out all the afternoon, and coming in found myself in the
midst of a seething mob. I went to the desk and asked for my key so that
I might go straight up to my room. But the porter, handing it to me,
said that a lady had been asking for me.

"For me?"

"She wants to see you very much. It's the Marquesa de San Esteban."

I knew no one of that name.

"It must be some mistake."

As I said the words, looking rather vaguely around, a lady came up to me
with outstretched hands and a bright smile on her lips. To the best of
my knowledge I had never seen her before in my life. She seized my
hands, both of them, and shook them warmly. She spoke in fluent French.

"How very nice to see you again after all these years. I saw by the
paper that you were staying here and I said to myself: I must look him
up. How many years is it since we danced together? I daren't think. Do
you still dance? I do. And I'm a grandmother. I'm fat of course, I don't
care, and it keeps me from getting fatter."

She talked with such a rush that it took my breath away to listen to
her. She was a stout, more than middle-aged woman, very much made up,
with dark red hair, obviously dyed, cut short; and she was dressed in
the height of Parisian fashion, which never suits Spanish women very
well. But she had a gay, fruity laugh that made you feel you wanted to
laugh too. It was quite obvious that she thoroughly enjoyed life. She
was a fine figure of a woman and I could well believe that in youth she
had been beautiful. But I could not place her.

"Come and drink a glass of champagne with me and we will talk of old
times. Or will you have a cocktail? Our dear old Seville has changed,
you see. _Ths dansants_ and cocktails. It's just like Paris and London
now. We've caught up. We're a civilised people."

She led me to a table near the space where they were dancing and we sat
down. I could not go on pretending I was at ease; I thought I should
only get into a fearful mess.

"It's terribly stupid of me, I'm afraid," I said, "but I don't seem able
to remember ever having known anyone of your name in the old days in
Seville."

"San Esteban?" she interrupted before I could go on. "Naturally. My
husband came from Salamanca. He was in the diplomatic service. I'm a
widow. You knew me as Pilar Carreon. Of course having my hair red
changes me a little, but otherwise I don't think I've altered much."

"Not at all," I said quickly. "It was only the name that bothered me."

Of course now I remembered her, but I was concerned at the moment only
with the effort to conceal from her the mingled consternation and
amusement that filled me as I realised that the Pilar Carreon I had
danced with at the Countess de Marbella's parties and at the Fair had
turned into this stout, flaunting dowager. I could not get over it. But
I had to watch my step. I wondered if she knew how well I recollected
the story that had shaken Seville to its foundations, and I was glad
when after she had finally bidden me an effusive farewell I was able to
recall it at ease.

In those days, forty years ago, Seville had not become a prosperous
commercial city. It had quiet, white streets, paved with cobbles, with a
multitude of churches on the belfries of which storks built their nests.
Bull-fighters, students and loungers sauntered in the Sierpes all day
long. Life was easy. This of course, was before the time of motor-cars,
and the Sevillan would live in penury, practising every possible
economy, in order to have a carriage. For this luxury he was willing to
sacrifice the necessities of life. Everyone who had any claim to
gentility drove up and down the Delicias, the park-like gardens by the
Guadalquivir, every blessed afternoon from five till seven. You saw
carriages of all sorts, from fashionable London victorias to old
broken-down shays that seemed as though they would fall to pieces,
magnificent horses and wretched hacks whose tragic end in the bull-ring
was near at hand. But there was one equipage that could not fail to
attract the stranger's attention. It was a victoria, very smart and new,
drawn by two beautiful mules; and the coachman and the footman wore the
national costume of Andalusia in pale grey. It was the most splendid
turn-out Seville had ever known, and it belonged to the Countess de
Marbella. She was a Frenchwoman married to a Spaniard, who had
enthusiastically adopted the manners and customs of her husband's
country, but with a Parisian elegance that gave them a peculiar
distinction. The rest of the carriages went at a snail's pace so that
their occupants could see and be seen, but the countess, behind her
mules, dashed up between the two crawling lines at a fast trot, went to
the end of the Delicias and back twice and then drove away. The
proceeding savoured somewhat of royalty. When you looked at her
gracefully seated in that swift victoria, her head handsomely poised,
her hair of too brilliant a gold to be natural, you did not wonder that
her French vivacity and determination had given her the position she
held. She made the fashion. Her decrees were law. But the countess had
too many adorers not to have as many enemies, and the most determined of
these was the widowed Duchess de Dos Palos, whose birth and social
consequence made her claim as a right the first place in Society which
the Frenchwoman had won by grace, wit and character.

Now the duchess had an only daughter. This was Doa Pilar. She was
twenty when I first knew her and she was very beautiful. She had
magnificent eyes and a skin that, however hard you tried to find a less
hackneyed way to describe it, you could only call peach-like. She was
very slim, rather tall for a Spanish girl, with a red mouth and
dazzlingly white teeth. She wore her abundant, shining black hair
dressed very elaborately in the Spanish style of the period. She was
infinitely alluring. The fire in her black eyes, the warmth of her
smile, the seductiveness of her movements suggested so much passion that
it really wasn't quite fair. She belonged to the generation which was
straining to break the old conventions that had kept the Spanish girl of
good family hidden away till it was time for her to be married. I often
played tennis with her and I used to dance with her at the Countess de
Marbella's parties. The duchess considered the Frenchwoman's parties,
with champagne and a sit-down supper, ostentatious, and when she opened
her own great house to Society, which was only twice a year, it was to
give them lemonade and biscuits. But she bred fighting-bulls, as her
husband had done, and on the occasions when the young bulls were tried
out, she gave picnic luncheons to which her friends were asked, very gay
and informal, but with a sort of feudal state which fascinated my
romantic imagination. Once, when the duchess's bulls were to fight at a
_corrida_ in Seville, I rode in with them at night as one of the men
escorting Doa Pilar, dressed in a costume that reminded one of a
picture by Goya, who headed the cavalcade. It was a charming experience
to ride through the night, on those prancing Andalusian horses, with the
six bulls, surrounded by oxen, thundering along behind.

A good many men, rich or noble and sometimes both, had asked Doa
Pilar's hand in marriage, but, notwithstanding her mother's
remonstrances, she had refused them. The duchess had been married at
fifteen and it seemed to her really indecent that her daughter at twenty
should be still single. The duchess asked her what she was waiting for;
it was absurd to be too difficult. It was her duty to marry. But Pilar
was stubborn. She found reasons to reject every one of her suitors.

Then the truth came out.

During the daily drives in the Delicias which the duchess, accompanied
by her daughter, took in a great old-fashioned landau, they passed the
countess as she was twice swiftly driven up and down the promenade. The
ladies were on such bad terms that they pretended not to see one
another, but Pilar could not keep her eyes off that smart carriage and
the two beautiful grey mules and, not wishing to catch the countess's
somewhat ironic glance, her own fell on the coachman who drove her. He
was the handsomest man in Seville and in his beautiful uniform he was a
sight to see. Of course no one knew exactly what happened, but
apparently the more Pilar looked at the coachman the more she liked the
look of him, and somehow or other, for all this part of the story
remained a mystery, the pair met. In Spain the classes are strangely
mingled and the butler may have in his veins much nobler blood than the
master. Pilar learnt, not I think without satisfaction, that the
coachman belonged to the ancient family of Leon, than which there is
none in Andalusia more distinguished; and really so far as birth went
there was little to choose between them. Only her life had been passed
in a ducal mansion, while fate had forced him to earn his living on the
box of a victoria. Neither could regret this, since only in that exalted
place could he have attracted the attention of the most difficult young
woman in Seville. They fell madly in love with one another. It so
happened that just then a young man called the Marques de San Esteban,
whom they had met at San Sebastian the summer before, wrote to the
duchess and asked for Pilar's hand in marriage. He was extremely
eligible and the two families had formed alliances from time to time
ever since the reign of Philip II. The duchess was determined not to
stand any more nonsense, and when she told Pilar of the proposal added
that she had shilly-shallied long enough. She must either marry him or
she should go into a convent.

"I'm not going to do either the one or the other," said Pilar.

"What are you going to do then? I have given you a home long enough."

"I'm going to marry Jos Leon."

"Who is he?"

Pilar hesitated for a moment and it may be, it is indeed to be hoped,
that she blushed a little.

"He's the countess's coachman."

"What countess?"

"The Countess de Marbella."

I remembered the duchess well and I am sure that when roused she stuck
at little. She raged, she implored, she cried, she argued There was a
terrific scene. People said that she slapped her daughter and pulled her
hair, but I have an impression that Pilar in such a pass was capable of
hitting back. She repeated that she loved Jos Leon and he loved her.
She was determined to marry him. The duchess called a family council.
The matter was put before them and it was decided that to save them all
from disgrace Pilar should be taken away to the country and kept there
till she had recovered from her infatuation. Pilar got wind of the
scheme and put a stop to it by slipping out of the window of her room
one night when everyone was asleep and going to live with her lover's
parents. They were respectable persons who inhabited a small apartment
on the unfashionable side of the Guadalquivir, in the quarter called
Triana.

After that no concealment was possible. The fat was in the fire and the
clubs along the Sierpes buzzed with the scandal. Waiters were kept busy
bringing trays of little glasses of Manzanilla to the members from the
neighbouring wine-shops. They gossiped and laughed over the scandal and
Pilar's rejected suitors were the recipients of many congratulations.
What an escape! The duchess was in despair. She could think of nothing
better to do than go to the Archbishop, her trusted friend and former
confessor, and beg him himself to reason with the infatuated girl. Pilar
was summoned to the episcopal palace, and the good old man, used to
intervening in family quarrels, did his utmost to show her the folly of
her course. But she would not be persuaded. Nothing that anyone could
say would induce her to forsake the man she loved. The duchess, waiting
in an adjoining room, was sent for and made a final appeal to her
daughter. In vain. Pilar returned to her humble lodging and the duchess
in tears was left alone with the Archbishop. The Archbishop was no less
astute than he was pious, and when he saw that the distracted woman was
in a fit state to listen to him, advised her as a last resource to go to
the Countess de Marbella. She was the cleverest woman in Seville and it
might be that she could do something.

At first the duchess indignantly refused. She would never suffer the
humiliation of appealing to her greatest enemy. Sooner might the ancient
house of Dos Palos fall in ruin. The Archbishop was accustomed to
dealing with tiresome women. He set himself with gentle cunning to
induce her to change her mind and presently she consented to throw
herself on the Frenchwoman's mercy. With rage in her heart she sent a
message asking if she might see her, and that afternoon was ushered into
her drawing-room. The countess of course had been one of the first to
hear the story, but she listened to the unhappy mother as though she had
not known a thing about it. She relished the situation enormously. It
was the crowning triumph to have the vindictive duchess on her knees
before her. But she was at heart a good-natured woman and she had a
sense of humour.

"It's a most unfortunate situation," she said. "And I'm sorry that one
of my servants should be the occasion of it. But I don't exactly see
what I can do."

The duchess would have liked to slap her painted face and her voice
trembled a little with the effort she made to control her anger.

"It is not for my own sake I'm asking you to help. It's for Pilar's. I
know, we all know, that you are the cleverest woman in the city. It
seemed to me, it seemed to the Archbishop, that if there was a way out,
your quick wit would find it."

The countess knew she was being grossly flattered. She did not mind. She
liked it.

"You must let me think."

"Of course, if he'd been a gentleman I could have sent for my son and he
would have killed him, but the Duke of Dos Palos cannot fight a duel
with the Countess de Marbella's coachman."

"Perhaps not."

"In the old days it would have been so simple. I should merely have
hired a couple of ruffians and had the brute's throat cut one night in
the street. But with all these laws they have nowadays decent people
have no way of protecting themselves from insult."

"I should deplore any method of settling the difficulty that deprived me
of the services of an excellent coachman," murmured the countess.

"But if he marries my daughter he cannot continue to be your coachman,"
cried the duchess indignantly.

"Are you going to give Pilar an income for them to live on?"

"Me? Not a peseta. I told Pilar at once that she should get nothing from
me. They can starve for all I care."

"Well, I should think rather than do that he will prefer to stay on as
my coachman. There are very nice rooms over my stables."

The duchess went pale. The duchess went red.

"Forget all that has passed between us. Let us be friends. You can't
expose me to such a humiliation. If I've ever done things to affront you
I ask you on my knees to forgive me."

The duchess cried.

"Dry your eyes, Duchess," the Frenchwoman said at last. "I will do what
I can."

"Is there anything you can do?"

"Perhaps. Is it true that Pilar has and will have no money of her own?"

"Not a penny if she marries without my consent."

The countess gave one of her brightest smiles.

"There is a common impression that southern people are romantic and
northern people matter-of-fact. The reverse is true. It is the
northerners who are incurably romantic. I have lived long enough among
you Spaniards to know that you are nothing if not practical."

The duchess was too broken to resent openly these unpleasant remarks,
but, oh, how she hated the woman! The Countess de Marbella rose to her
feet.

"You shall hear from me in the course of the day."

She firmly dismissed her visitor.

The carriage was ordered for five o'clock and at ten minutes to, the
countess, dressed for her drive, sent for Jos. When he came into the
drawing-room, wearing his pale grey livery with such an air, she could
not deny that he was very good to look upon. If he had not been her own
coachman--well, it was not the moment for ideas of that sort. He stood
before her, holding himself easily, but with a gallant swagger. There
was nothing servile in his bearing.

"A Greek god," the countess murmured to herself. "It is only Andalusia
that can produce such types." And then aloud: "I hear that you are going
to marry the daughter of the Duchess of Dos Palos."

"If the countess does not object."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Whoever you marry is a matter of complete indifference to me. You know
of course that Doa Pilar will have no fortune."

"Yes, madam. I have a good place and I can keep my wife. I love her."

"I can't blame you for that. She is a beautiful girl. But I think it
only right to tell you that I have a rooted objection to married
coachmen. On your wedding-day you leave my service. That is all I had to
say to you. You can go."

She began to look at the daily paper that had just arrived from Paris,
but Jos, as she expected, did not stir. He stared down at the floor.
Presently the countess looked up.

"What are you waiting for?"

"I never knew madam would send me away," he answered in a troubled tone.

"I have no doubt you'll find another place."

"Yes, but..."

"Well, what is it?" she asked sharply.

He sighed miserably.

"There's not a pair of mules in the whole of Spain to come up to ours.
They're almost human beings. They understand every word I say to them."

The countess gave him a smile that would have turned the head of anyone
who was not madly in love already.

"I'm afraid you must choose between me and your betrothed."

He shifted from one foot to the other. He put his hand to his pocket to
get himself a cigarette, but then, remembering where he was, restrained
the gesture. He glanced at the countess and that peculiar shrewd smile
came over his face which those who have lived in Andalusia know so well.

"In that case, I can't hesitate. Pilar must see that this alters my
position entirely. One can get a wife any day of the week, but a place
like this is found only once in a lifetime. I should be a fool to throw
it up for a woman."

That was the end of the adventure. Jos Leon continued to drive the
Countess de Marbella, but she noticed when they sped up and down the
Delicias that thenceforward as many eyes were turned on her handsome
coachman as on her latest hat; and a year later Pilar married the
Marques de San Esteban.




THE POINT OF HONOUR


Some years ago, being engaged on writing a book about Spain in the
Golden Age, I had occasion to read again the plays of Calderon. Among
others I read one called _El Medico de su Honra_, which means the
Physician of his Honour. It is a cruel play and you can hardly read it
without a shudder. But re-reading it, I was reminded of an encounter I
had had many years before which has always remained in my memory as one
of the strangest I have ever known. I was quite young then and I had
gone to Seville on a short visit to see the celebration of the Feast of
Corpus Christi. It was the height of summer and the heat was terrific.
Great sail-cloths were drawn across the narrow streets, giving a
grateful shade, but in the squares the sun beat down mercilessly. In the
morning I watched the procession. It was splendid and impressive. The
crowd knelt down as the Host was solemnly carried past, and the Civil
Guards in full uniform stood at salute to do homage to the heavenly
King. And in the afternoon I joined the dense throng which was making
its way to the bull-ring. The cigarette girls and the sewing girls wore
carnations in their dark hair and their young men were dressed in all
their best. It was just after the Spanish-American war, and the short,
embroidered jacket, the skin-tight trousers and the broad-brimmed,
low-crowned hat were still worn. Sometimes the crowd was scattered by a
picador on the wretched hack that would never survive the afternoon, and
the rider, with conscious pride in his picturesque costume, exchanged
pleasantries with the facetious. A long line of carriages, dilapidated
and shabby, overfilled with _aficionados_, drove noisily along.

I went early, for it amused me to see the people gradually filling the
vast arena. The cheaper seats in the sun were already packed, and it was
a curious effect that the countless fans made, like the fluttering of a
host of butterflies, as men and women restlessly fanned themselves. In
the shade, where I was sitting, the places were taken more slowly, but
even there, an hour before the fight began, one had to look rather
carefully for a seat. Presently a man stopped in front of me and with a
pleasant smile asked if I could make room for him. When he had settled
down, I took a sidelong glance at him and noticed that he was
well-dressed, in English clothes, and looked like a gentleman. He had
beautiful hands, small but resolute, with thin, long fingers. Wanting a
cigarette, I took out my case and thought it would be polite to offer
him one. He accepted. He had evidently seen that I was a foreigner, for
he thanked me in French.

"You are English?" he went on.

"Yes."

"How is it you haven't run away from the heat?"

I explained that I had come on purpose to see the Feast of Corpus
Christi.

"After all, it's something you must come to Seville for."

Then I made some casual remark about the vast concourse of people.

"No one would imagine that Spain was bleeding from the loss of all that
remained of her Empire and that her ancient glory is now nothing but a
name."

"There's a great deal left."

"The sunshine, the blue sky, and the future."

He spoke dispassionately, as though the misfortunes of his fallen
country were no concern of his. Not knowing what to reply, I remained
silent. We waited. The boxes began to fill up. Ladies in their mantillas
of black or white lace entered them and spread their Manila shawls over
the balustrade so as to form a gay and many-coloured drapery. Now and
then, when one of them was of particular beauty, a round of applause
would greet her appearance and she would smile and bow without
embarrassment. At last the president of the bull-fight made his entry,
the band struck up, and the fighters, all glittering in their satin and
gold and silver, marched swaggering across the ring. A minute later a
great black bull charged in. Carried away by the horrible excitement of
the contest, I noticed, notwithstanding, that my neighbour remained
cool. When a man fell and only escaped by a miracle the horns of the
furious beast, and with a gasp thousands sprang to their feet, he
remained motionless. The bull was killed and the mules dragged out the
huge carcass. I sank back exhausted.

"Do you like bull-fighting?" he asked me. "Most English do, though I
have noticed that in their own country they say hard enough things about
it."

"Can one like something that fills one with horror and loathing? Each
time I come to a fight I swear I will never go to another. And yet I
do."

"It's a curious passion that leads us to delight in the peril of others.
Perhaps it's natural to the human race. The Romans had their gladiators
and the moderns have their melodramas. It may be that it is an instinct
in man to find pleasure in bloodshed and torture."

I did not answer directly.

"Don't you think that the bull-fight is the reason why human life is of
so little account in Spain?"

"And do you think human life is of any great account?" he asked.

I gave him a quick look, for there was an ironical tone in his voice
that no one could have missed, and I saw that his eyes were full of
mockery. I flushed a little, for he made me on a sudden feel very young.
I was surprised at the change of his expression. He had seemed rather an
amiable man, with his large soft friendly eyes, but now his face bore a
look of sardonic hauteur which was a trifle disquieting. I shrank back
into my shell. We said little to one another during the rest of the
afternoon, but when the last bull was killed and we all rose to our feet
he shook hands with me and expressed the hope that we might meet again.
It was a mere politeness and neither of us, I imagine, thought that
there was even a remote possibility of it.

But quite by chance, two or three days later, we did. I was in a quarter
of Seville that I did not know very well. I had been that afternoon to
the palace of the Duke of Alba, which I knew had a fine garden and in
one of the rooms a magnificent ceiling reputed to have been made by
Moorish captives before the fall of Granada. It was not easy to gain
admittance, but I wanted very much to see it and thought that now, in
the height of summer when there were no tourists, with two or three
pesetas I might be allowed in. I was disappointed. The man in charge
told me that the house was under repair and no stranger could visit it
without a written permission from the Duke's agent. So, having nothing
else to do, I went to the royal garden of the Alcazar, the old palace of
Don Pedro the Cruel, whose memory lives still among the people of
Seville. It was very pleasant among the orange trees and cypresses. I
had a book with me, a volume of Calderon, and I sat there for a while
and read. Then I went for a stroll. In the older parts of Seville the
streets are narrow and tortuous. It is delicious to wander along them
under the awnings that stretch above, but not easy to find one's way. I
lost mine. When I had just made up my mind that I had no notion in which
direction to turn I saw a man walking towards me and recognised my
acquaintance of the bull-ring. I stopped him and asked whether he could
direct me. He remembered me.

"You'll never find your way," he smiled, turning round. "I'll walk a
little with you until you can't mistake it."

I protested, but he would not listen. He assured me it was no trouble.

"You haven't gone away then?" he said.

"I'm leaving to-morrow. I've just been to the Duke of Alba's house. I
wanted to see that Moorish ceiling of his, but they wouldn't let me in."

"Are you interested in Arabic art?"

"Well, yes. I've heard that that ceiling is one of the finest things in
Seville."

"I think I could show you one as good."

"Where?"

He looked at me for a moment reflectively as though wondering what sort
of a person I was. If he was, he evidently came to a satisfactory
decision.

"If you have ten minutes to spare I will take you to it."

I thanked him warmly and we turned back and retraced our steps. We
chatted of indifferent things till we came to a large house, washed in
pale green, with the Arabic look of a prison, the windows on the street
heavily barred, which so many houses in Seville have. My guide clapped
his hands at the gateway and a servant looked out from a window into the
patio, and pulled a cord.

"Whose house is this?"

"Mine."

I was surprised, for I knew how jealously Spaniards guarded their
privacy and how little inclined they were to admit strangers into their
houses. The heavy iron gate swung open and we walked into the courtyard;
we crossed it and went through a narrow passage. Then I found myself
suddenly in an enchanted garden. It was walled on three sides, with
walls as high as houses; and their old red brick, softened by time, was
covered with roses. They clad every inch in wanton, scented luxuriance.
In the garden, growing wildly, as if the gardeners had striven in vain
to curb the exuberance of nature, were palm-trees rising high into the
air in their passionate desire for the sun, dark orange-trees and trees
in flower whose names I did not know, and among them roses and more
roses. The fourth wall was a Moorish loggia, with horseshoe arches
heavily decorated with tracery, and when we entered this I saw the
magnificent ceiling. It was like a little bit of the Alcazar, but it had
not suffered the restorations that have taken all the charm from that
palace, and the colours were exquisitely tender. It was a gem.

"Believe me, you need not regret that you have not been able to see the
duke's house. Further, you can say that you have seen something that no
other foreigner has seen within living memory."

"It's very kind of you to have shown it to me. I'm infinitely grateful."

He looked about him with a pride with which I could sympathise.

"It was built by one of my own ancestors in the time of Don Pedro the
Cruel. It is very likely that the King himself more than once caroused
under this ceiling with my ancestor."

I held out the book I was carrying.

"I've just been reading a play in which Don Pedro is one of the
important characters."

"What is the book?"

I handed it to him and he glanced at the title. I looked about me.

"Of course, what adds to the beauty is that wonderful garden," I said.
"The whole impression is awfully romantic."

The Spaniard was evidently pleased with my enthusiasm. He smiled. I had
already noticed how grave his smile was. It hardly dispelled the
habitual melancholy of his expression.

"Would you like to sit down for a few minutes and smoke a cigarette?"

"I should love to."

We walked out into the garden and came upon a lady sitting on a bench of
Moorish tiles like those in the gardens of the Alcazar. She was working
at some embroidery. She looked up quickly, evidently taken aback to see
a stranger, and gave my companion an enquiring stare.

"Allow me to present you to my wife," he said.

The lady gravely bowed. She was very beautiful, with magnificent eyes, a
straight nose with delicate nostrils, and a pale smooth skin. In her
black hair, abundant as with most Spanish women, there was a broad white
streak. Her face was quite unlined and she could not have been more than
thirty.

"You have a very lovely garden, Seora," I said because I had to say
something.

She gave it an indifferent glance.

"Yes, it is pretty."

I felt suddenly embarrassed. I did not expect her to show me any
cordiality, and I could not blame her if she thought my intrusion merely
a nuisance. There was something about her that I could not quite make
out. It was not an active hostility. Absurd, as it seemed, since she was
a young woman and beautiful, I felt that there was something dead in
her.

"Are you going to sit here?" she asked her husband.

"With your permission. Only for a few minutes."

"I won't disturb you."

She gathered her silks and the canvas on which she had been working and
rose to her feet. When she stood up I saw that she was taller than
Spanish women generally are. She gave me an unsmiling bow. She carried
herself with a sort of royal composure and her gait was stately. I was
flippant in those days, and I remember saying to myself that she was not
the sort of girl you could very well think of being silly with. We sat
down on the multi-coloured bench and I gave my host a cigarette. I held
a match to it. He still had my volume of Calderon in his hands, and now
he idly turned the pages.

"Which of the plays have you been reading?"

"_El Medico de su Honra._"

He gave me a look, and I thought I discerned in his large eyes a
sardonic glint.

"And what do you think of it?"

"I think it's revolting. The fact is, of course, that the idea is so
foreign to our modern notions."

"What idea?"

"The point of honour and all that sort of thing."

I should explain that the point of honour is the mainspring of much of
the Spanish drama. It is the nobleman's code that impels a man to kill
his wife, in cold blood, not only if she has been unfaithful to him, but
even if, however little she was to blame, her conduct has given rise to
scandal. In this particular play there is an example of this more
deliberate than any I have ever read: the physician of his honour takes
vengeance on his wife, though aware that she is innocent, simply as a
matter of decorum.

"It's in the Spanish blood," said my friend. "The foreigner must just
take it or leave it."

"Oh, come, a lot of water has flowed down the Guadalquivir since
Calderon's day. You're not going to pretend that any man would behave
like that now."

"On the contrary I pretend that even now a husband who finds himself in
such a humiliating and ridiculous position can only regain his
self-respect by the offender's death."

I did not answer. It seemed to me that he was pulling a romantic
gesture, and within me I murmured, Bosh. He gave me an ironic smile.

"Have you ever heard of Don Pedro Aguria?"

"Never."

"The name is not unknown in Spanish history. An ancestor was Admiral of
Spain under Philip II and another was bosom friend to Philip IV. By
royal command he sat for his portrait to Velasquez."

My host hesitated a moment. He gave me a long, reflective stare before
he went on.

"Under the Philips the Agurias were rich, but by the time my friend Don
Pedro succeeded his father their circumstances were much reduced. But
still he was not poor, he had estates between Cordova and Aguilar, and
in Seville his house retained at least traces of its ancient splendour.
The little world of Seville was astonished when he announced his
engagement to Soledad, the daughter of the ruined Count of Acaba, for
though her family was distinguished her father was an old scamp. He was
crippled with debts, and the shifts he resorted to in order to keep his
head above water were none too nice. But Soledad was beautiful and Don
Pedro in love with her. They were married. He adored her with the
vehement passion of which perhaps only a Spaniard is capable. But he
discovered to his dismay that she did not love him. She was kind and
gentle. She was a good wife and a good housekeeper. She was grateful to
him. But that was all. He thought that when she had a child she would
change, but the child came, and it made no difference. The barrier
between them that he had felt from the beginning was still there. He
suffered. At last he told himself that she had a character too noble, a
spirit too delicate, to descend to earthly passion, and he resigned
himself. She was too high above him for mortal love."

I moved a little uneasily in my seat. I thought the Spaniard was unduly
rhetorical. He went on.

"You know that here in Seville the Opera House is open only for the six
weeks after Easter, and since the Sevillans don't care very much for
European music we go more to meet our friends than to listen to the
singers. The Agurias had a box, like everybody else, and they went on
the opening night of the season. _Tannhaser_ was being given. Don Pedro
and his wife, like typical Spaniards, with nothing to do all day but
always late, did not arrive till nearly the end of the first act. In the
interval the Count of Acaba, Soledad's father, came into the box
accompanied by a young officer of artillery whom Don Pedro had never
seen before. But Soledad seemed to know him well.

"'Here is Pepe Alvarez,' said the Count. 'He's just come back from Cuba
and I insisted on bringing him to see you.'

"Soledad smiled and held out her hand, then introduced the newcomer to
her husband.

"'Pepe is the son of the attorney at Carmona. We used to play together
when we were children.'

"Carmona is a small town near Seville, and it was here that the Count
had retired when his creditors in the city grew too troublesome. The
house he owned there was almost all that was left him of the fortune he
had squandered. He lived in Seville now through Don Pedro's generosity.
But Don Pedro did not like him and he bowed stiffly to the young
officer. He guessed that his father the attorney and the count had been
concerned together in transactions that were none too reputable. In a
minute he left the box to talk with his cousin, the Duchess of
Santaguador, whose box was opposite his own. A few days later he met
Pepe Alvarez at his club in the Sierpes and had a chat with him. To his
surprise he found him a very pleasant young fellow. He was full of his
exploits in Cuba and he related them with humour.

"The six weeks about Easter and the great Fair are the gayest in
Seville, and the world meets to exchange gossip and laughter, at one
festivity after another. Pepe Alvarez with his good nature and high
spirits was in great request and the Agurias met him constantly. Don
Pedro saw that he amused Soledad. She was more vivacious when he was
there, and her laughter, which he had so seldom heard, was a delight to
him. Like other members of the aristocracy he took a booth for the Fair,
where they danced, supped and drank champagne till dawn. Pepe Alvarez
was always the life and soul of the parties.

"One night Don Pedro was dancing with the Duchess of Santaguador and
they passed Soledad with Pepe Alvarez.

"'Soledad is looking very beautiful this evening,' she remarked.

"'And happy,' he replied.

"'Is it true that once she was engaged to be married to Pepe Alvarez?'

"'Of course not.'

"But the question startled him. He had known that Soledad and Pepe had
known one another when they were children, but it had never crossed his
mind that there could have been anything between them. The Count of
Acaba, though a rogue, was a gentleman by birth, and it was
inconceivable that he could have thought of marrying his daughter to the
son of a provincial attorney. When they got home Don Pedro told his wife
what the duchess had said and what he had replied.

"'But I was engaged to Pepe,' she said.

"'Why did you never tell me?'

"'It was finished and done with. He was in Cuba. I never expected to see
him again.'

"'There must be people who know you were engaged to him.'

"'I daresay. Does it matter?'

"'Very much. You shouldn't have renewed your acquaintance with him when
he returned.'

"'Does that mean that you have no confidence in me?'

"'Of course not. I have every confidence in you. All the same I wish you
to discontinue it now.'

"'And if I refuse?'

"'I shall kill him.'

"They looked long into one another's eyes. Then she gave him a little
bow and went to her room. Don Pedro sighed. He wondered whether she
still loved Pepe Alvarez and whether it was on account of this that she
had never loved him. But he would not allow himself to give way to the
unworthy emotion of jealousy. He looked into his heart and was sure that
it harboured no feeling of hatred for the young artilleryman. On the
contrary, he liked him. This was not an affair of love or hate, but of
honour. On a sudden he remembered that a few days before when he went to
his club he noticed that the conversation suddenly failed, and, looking
back, he seemed to remember that several of the group who were sitting
there and chatting eyed him curiously. Was it possible that he had been
the subject of their conversation? He shivered a little at the thought.

"The Fair was drawing to its end, and when it was over the Agurias had
arranged to go to Cordova, where Don Pedro had an estate which it was
necessary for him to visit from time to time. He looked forward to the
peace of a country life after the turmoil of Seville. The day after this
conversation Soledad, saying she was not well, stayed in the house, and
she did the same the day following. Don Pedro visited her in her room
morning and evening and they talked of indifferent things. But on the
third day his cousin Conchita de Santaguador was giving a ball. It was
the last of the season and everyone in her exclusive set would be there.
Soledad, saying she was still indisposed, announced that she would stay
at home.

"'Are you refusing to go because of our conversation of the other
night?' Don Pedro asked.

"'I have been thinking over what you said. I think your demand
unreasonable, but I shall accede to it. The only way I can cease my
friendship with Pepe is by not going to places where I am likely to meet
him.' A tremor of pain passed over her lovely face. 'Perhaps it is
best.'

"'Do you love him still?'

"'Yes.'

"Don Pedro felt himself go cold with anguish.

"'Then why did you marry me?'

"'Pepe was away, in Cuba, no one knew when he would come back. Perhaps
never. My father said that I must marry you.'

"'To save him from ruin?'

"'From worse than ruin.'

"'I am very sorry for you.'

"'You have been kind to me. I have done everything in my power to prove
to you that I am grateful.'

"'And does Pepe love you?'

"She shook her head and smiled sadly.

"'Men are different. He's young. He's too gay to love anyone very long.
No, to him I'm just the friend whom he used to play with when he was a
child and flirt with when he was a boy. He can make jokes about the love
he once had for me.'

"He took her hand and pressed it, then kissed it and left her. He went
to the ball by himself. His friends were sorry to hear of Soledad's
indisposition, but after expressing a proper sympathy devoted themselves
to the evening's amusement. Don Pedro drifted into the card-room. There
was room at a table, and he sat down to play _chemin de fer_. He played
with extraordinary luck and made a good deal of money. One of the
players laughingly asked where Soledad was that evening. Don Pedro saw
another give him a startled glance, but he laughed and answered that she
was safely in bed and asleep. Then an unlucky incident occurred. Some
young man came into the room, and addressing an artillery officer who
was playing asked where Pepe Alvarez was.

"'Isn't he here?' said the officer.

"'No.'

"An odd silence fell upon the party. Don Pedro exercised all his
self-control to prevent his face from showing what he suddenly felt. The
thought flashed through his mind that those men at the table suspected
that Pepe was with Soledad, his wife. Oh, the shame! The indignity! He
forced himself to go on playing for another hour and still he won. He
could not go wrong. The game broke up and he returned to the ballroom.
He went up to his cousin.

"'I've hardly had a word with you,' he said. 'Come into another room and
let us sit down for a little.'

"'If you like.'

"The room, Conchita's boudoir, was empty.

"'Where is Pepe Alvarez to-night?' he asked casually.

"'I can't think.'

"'You were expecting him?'

"'Of course.'

"She was smiling as he was, but he noticed that she looked at him
sharply. He dropped his mask of casualness and, though they were alone,
lowered his voice.

"'Conchita, I beseech you to tell me the truth. Are they saying that he
is Soledad's lover?'

"'Pedrito, what a monstrous question to put to me!'

"But he had seen the terror in her eyes and the sudden instinctive
movement of her hand to her face.

"'You've answered it.'

"He got up and left her. He went home and looking up from the patio saw
a light in his wife's room. He went upstairs and knocked at the door.
There was no answer, but he went in. To his surprise, for it was late,
she was sitting up working at the embroidery upon which much of her time
was spent.

"'Why are you working at this hour?'

"'I couldn't sleep, I couldn't read. I thought it would distract my mind
if I worked.'

"He did not sit down.

"'Soledad, I have something to tell you that must cause you pain. I must
ask you to be brave. Pepe Alvarez was not at Conchita's to-night.'

"'What is that to me?'

"'It is unfortunate that you were not there either. Everyone at the ball
thought that you were together.'

"'That's preposterous.'

"'I know, but that doesn't help matters. You could have opened the gate
for him yourself and let him out, or you could have slipped out yourself
without anyone seeing you go or come.'

"'But do you believe it?'

"'No. I agreed with you that the thing was preposterous. Where was Pepe
Alvarez?'

"'How do I know? How should I know?'

"'It is very strange that he should not have come to the most brilliant
party, the last party, of the season.'

"She was silent for a minute.

"'The night after you spoke to me about him I wrote and told him that in
view of the circumstances I thought it would be better if in future we
saw no more of one another than could be helped. It may be that he did
not go to the ball for the same reason that I did not.'

"They were silent for a while. He looked down at the ground, but he felt
that her eyes were fixed on him. I should have told you before that Don
Pedro possessed one accomplishment which raised him above his fellows,
but at the same time was a drawback. He was the best shot in Andalusia.
Everyone knew this and it would have been a brave man who ventured to
offend him. A few days earlier there had been pigeon-shooting at
Tablada, the wide common outside Seville along the Guadalquivir, and Don
Pedro had carried all before him. Pepe Alvarez on the other hand had
shown himself so indifferent a marksman that everyone had laughed at
him. The young artilleryman had borne the chaff with good-humour. Cannon
were his weapon, he said.

"'What are you going to do?' Soledad asked.

"'You know that there is only one thing I can do.'

"She understood. But she tried to treat what he said as a pleasantry.

"'You're childish. We're not living any more in the sixteenth century.'

"'I know. That is why I am talking to you now. If I have to challenge
Pepe I shall kill him. I don't want to do that. If he will resign his
commission and leave Spain I will do nothing."

"'How can he? Where is he to go?'

"'He can go to South America. He may make his fortune.'

"'Do you expect me to tell him that?'

"'If you love him.'

"'I love him too much to ask him to run away like a coward. How could he
face life without honour?'

"Don Pedro laughed.

"'What has Pepe Alvarez, the son of the attorney at Carmona, to do with
honour?'

"She did not answer, but in her eyes he saw the fierce hatred she bore
him. That look stabbed his heart, for he loved her, he loved her as
passionately as ever.

"Next day he went to his club and joined a group who were sitting at the
window looking out at the crowd passing up and down the Sierpes. Pepe
Alvarez was in it. They were talking of last night's party.

"'Where were you, Pepe?' someone asked.

"'My mother was ill. I had to go to Carmona,' he answered. 'I was
dreadfully disappointed, but perhaps it was all for the best.' He turned
laughingly to Don Pedro. 'I hear you were in luck and won everybody's
money.'

"'When are you going to give us our revenge, Pedrito?' asked another.

"'I'm afraid you'll have to wait for that,' he answered. 'I have to go
to Cordova. I find that my attorney has been robbing me. I know that all
attorneys are thieves, but I stupidly thought this one was honest.'

"He seemed to speak quite lightly, and it was as lightly that Pepe
Alvarez put in his word.

"'I think you exaggerate, Pedrito. Don't forget that my father is an
attorney and he at least is honest.'

"'I don't believe it for a minute,' laughed Don Pedro. 'I have no doubt
that your father is as big a thief as any.'

"The insult was so unexpected and so unprovoked that for a moment Pepe
Alvarez was staggered. The others were startled into sudden seriousness.

"'What do you mean, Pedrito?'

"'Exactly what I say.'

"'It's a lie and you know it's a lie. You must withdraw that at once.'

"Don Pedro laughed.

"'Of course I shall not withdraw. Your father is a thief and a rascal.'

"Pepe did the only thing he could do. He sprang from his chair and with
his open hand hit Don Pedro in the face. The outcome was inevitable.
Next day the two men met on the frontier of Portugal. Pepe Alvarez, the
attorney's son, died like a gentleman with a bullet in his heart."

The Spaniard ended his story on such a casual note that for the first
moment I hardly took it in. But when I did I was profoundly shocked.

"Barbarous," I said. "It was just cold-blooded murder."

My host got up.

"You're talking nonsense, my young friend. Don Pedro did the only thing
he could do in the circumstances."

I left Seville next day, and from then till now have never been able to
discover the name of the man who told me this strange story. I have
often wondered whether the lady I saw, the lady with the pale face and
the lock of white hair, was the unhappy Soledad.




THE POET


I am not much interested in the celebrated and I have never had patience
with the passion that afflicts so many to shake hands with the great
ones of the earth. When it is proposed to me to meet some person
distinguished above his fellows by his rank or his attainments, I seek
for a civil excuse that may enable me to avoid the honour; and when my
friend Diego Torre suggested giving me an introduction to Santa Aa I
declined. But for once the excuse I made was sincere; Santa Aa was not
only a great poet but also a romantic figure and it would have amused me
to see in his decrepitude a man whose adventures (in Spain at least)
were legendary; but I knew that he was old and ill and I could not
believe that it would be anything but a nuisance to him to meet a
stranger and a foreigner. Calisto de Santa Aa was the last descendant
of the Grand School; in a world unsympathetic to Byronism he had led a
Byronic existence and he had narrated his hazardous life in a series of
poems that had brought him a fame unknown to his contemporaries. I am no
judge of their value, for I read them first when I was three-and-twenty
and then was enraptured by them; they had a passion, a heroic arrogance
and a multi-coloured vitality that swept me off my feet, and to this
day, so intermingled are those ringing lines and haunting cadences with
the charming memories of my youth, I cannot read them without a beating
heart. I am inclined to think that Calisto de Santa Aa deserves the
reputation he enjoys among the Spanish-speaking peoples. In those days
his verses were on the lips of all young men and my friends would talk
to me endlessly of his wild ways, his vehement speeches (for he was a
politician as well as a poet), his incisive wit and his amours. He was a
rebel and sometimes an outlaw, daring and adventurous; but above all he
was a lover. We knew all about his passion for this great actress or
that divine singer--had we not read till we knew them by heart the
burning sonnets in which he described his love, his anguish and his
wrath?--and we were aware that an infanta of Spain, the proudest
descendant of the Bourbons, having yielded to his entreaties, had taken
the veil when he ceased to love her. When the Philips, her royal
ancestors, tired of a mistress she entered a convent, for it was
unfitting that one whom the King had loved should be loved by another,
and was not Calisto de Santa Aa greater than any earthly king? We
applauded the lady's romantic gesture; it was creditable to her and
flattering to our poet.

But all this took place many years ago and for a quarter of a century
Don Calisto, disdainfully withdrawing from a world that had nothing more
to offer, had lived in seclusion in his native town of Ecija. It was
when I announced my intention of going there (I had been spending a week
or two in Seville) not because of him, but because it is a charming
little Andalusian town with associations that endear it to me, that
Diego Torre offered me this introduction. It appeared that Don Calisto
allowed the younger men of letters occasionally to visit him and now and
then would talk to them with the fire that had electrified his hearers
in the great days of his prime.

"What does he look like now?" I asked.

"Magnificent."

"Have you a photograph of him?"

"I wish I had. He has refused to face the camera since he was
thirty-five. He says he does not wish posterity to know him other than
young."

I confess that I found this suggestion of vanity not a little touching.
I knew that in early manhood he was of extraordinary beauty, and that
moving sonnet of his written when he grew conscious that youth had for
ever left him shows with what a bitter and sardonic pang he must have
watched the passing of those looks that had been so fantastically
admired.

But I refused my friend's offer; I was quite satisfied to read once more
the poems I had known so well and for the rest I preferred to wander
about the silent and sunswept streets of Ecija in freedom. It was with
some consternation therefore that on the evening of my arrival I
received a note from the great man himself. Diego Torre had written to
him of my visit, he said, and it would give him great pleasure if I
would call on him at eleven next morning. In the circumstances there was
nothing for me to do but to present myself at his house at the appointed
hour.

My hotel was in the Plaza and on that spring morning it was animated,
but as soon as I left it I might have walked in a deserted city. The
streets, the tortuous white streets, were empty but for a woman in black
now and then who returned with measured steps from her devotions. Ecija
is a town of churches and you can seldom go far without seeing a
crumbling faade or a tower in which storks have built their nests. Once
I paused to watch a string of little donkeys pass by. Their red
caparisons were faded and they carried I know not what in their
panniers. But Ecija has been a place of consequence in its day and many
of these white houses have gateways of stone surmounted by imposing
coats of arms, for to this remote spot flowed the riches of the New
World and adventurers who had gathered wealth in the Americas spent here
their declining years. It was in one of these houses that Don Calisto
lived and as I stood at the _reja_ after pulling the bell, I was pleased
to think that he lived in such a fitting style. There was a dilapidated
grandeur about the massive gateway that suited my impression of the
flamboyant poet. Though I heard the bell peal through the house no one
answered it and I rang a second and then a third time: at last an old
woman with a heavy moustache, came to the gate.

"What do you want?" she said.

She had fine black eyes, but a sullen look, and I supposed that it was
she who took care of the old man. I gave her my card.

"I have an appointment with your master."

She opened the iron gateway and bade me enter. Asking me to wait she
left me and went upstairs. The patio was pleasantly cool after the
street. Its proportions were noble and you surmised that it had been
built by some follower of the conquistadores; but the paint was
tarnished, the tiles on the floor broken, and here and there great
flakes of plaster had fallen away. There was about everything an air of
poverty but not of squalor. I knew that Don Calisto was poor. Money had
come to him easily at times but he had never attached any importance to
it and had spent it profusely. It was plain that he lived now in a
penury that he disdained to notice. In the middle of the patio was a
table with a rocking-chair on each side of it, and on the table
newspapers a fortnight old. I wondered what dreams occupied his fancy as
he sat there on the warm summer nights, smoking cigarettes. On the walls
under the colonnade were Spanish pictures, dark and bad, and here and
there stood an ancient dusty _bargueo_ and on it a mended lustre plate.
By the side of a door hung a pair of old pistols, and I had a pleasant
fancy that they were the weapons he had used when in the most celebrated
of his many duels, for the sake of Pepa Montaez the dancer (now, I
suppose, a toothless and raddled hag), he had killed the Duke of Dos
Hermanos.

The scene, with its associations which i vaguely divined, so aptly
fitted the romantic poet that I was overcome by the spirit of the place.
Its noble indigence surrounded him with a glory as great as the
magnificence of his youth; in him too there was the spirit of the old
conquistadores, and it was becoming that he should finish his famous
life in that ruined and magnificent house. Thus surely should a poet
live and die. I had arrived cool enough and even somewhat bored at the
prospect of my meeting, but now I began to grow a trifle nervous. I lit
a cigarette. I had come at the time appointed and wondered what detained
the old man. The silence was strangely disturbing. Ghosts of the past
thronged the silent patio and an age dead and gone gained a sort of
shadowy life for me. The men of that day had a passion and a wildness of
spirit that are gone out of the world for ever. We are no longer capable
of their reckless deeds or their theatrical heroics.

I heard a sound and my heart beat quickly. I was excited now and when at
last! saw him coming slowly down the stairs I caught my breath. He held
my card in his hand. He was a tall old man and exceedingly thin, with a
skin the colour of old ivory; his hair was abundant and white, but his
bushy eyebrows were dark still; they made his great eyes flash with a
more sombre fire. It was wonderful that at his age those black eyes
should still preserve their brilliance. His nose was aquiline, his mouth
close-set. His unsmiling eyes rested on me as he approached and there
was in them a look of cool appraisal. He was dressed in black and in one
hand held a broad-brimmed hat. There was in his bearing assurance and
dignity. He was as I should have wished him to be and as I watched him I
understood how he had swayed men's minds and touched their hearts. He
was every inch a poet.

He had reached the patio and came slowly towards me. He had really the
eyes of an eagle. It seemed to a tremendous moment, for there he stood,
the heir of the great old Spanish poets, the magnificent Herrera, the
nostalgic and moving Fray Luis, Juan de la Cruz, the mystic, and the
crabbed and obscure Gongora. He was the last of that long line and he
trod in their steps not unworthily. Strangely in my heart sang the
lovely and tender song which is the most famous of Don Calisto's lyrics.

I was abashed. It was fortunate for me that I had prepared beforehand
the phrase with which I meant to greet him.

"It is a wonderful honour, Maestro, for a foreigner such as I to make
the acquaintance of so great a poet."

A flicker of amusement passed through those piercing eyes and a smile
for an instant curved the lines of that stern mouth.

"I am not a poet, Seor, but a bristle merchant. You have made a
mistake, Don Calisto lives next door."

I had come to the wrong house.




THE MOTHER


Two or three people, hearing sounds of a quarrel in the patio, came out
of their rooms and listened.

"It's the new lodger," said a woman. "She's having a row with the porter
who brought her things."

It was a tenement house of two storeys, built round a patio, in a back
street of La Macarena, which is the roughest quarter in Seville. The
rooms were let to working men and the small functionaries with whom
Spain is overrun, postmen, policemen, or tram-conductors, and the place
swarmed with children. There were twenty families there. They squabbled
and made it up; they chattered their heads off; they helped one another
when help was needed; for the Andalusians are good-natured people, and
on the whole they got on well enough together. One room had been for
some time unlet. A woman had taken it that morning, and an hour later
had brought her bits and pieces, carrying as much as she could herself,
a _gallego_--the Galicians are the general porters of Spain--laden with
the rest.

But the quarrel was growing more violent, and the two women above, on
the first floor, anxious not to miss a word, leant over the balcony.

They heard the newcomer's shrill voice raised in a torrent of abuse and
the man's sullen interjections. The two women nudged one another.

"I shan't go till you pay me," he kept on saying.

"But I've paid you already. You said you'd do it for three reales."

"Never! You promised me four."

They were haggling over rather less than twopence halfpenny.

"Four reales for moving those few things? You're crazy."

She tried to push him away.

"I shan't go till you pay me," he repeated.

"I'll give you a penny more."

"I won't take it."

The dispute grew more and more noisy. The woman screamed at the porter
and cursed him. She shook her fist in his face. At last he lost
patience.

"Oh, all right, give me the penny and I'll go. I'm not going to waste
time on a slut like you."

She paid him, and the man, throwing down her mattress, left her. She
flung a filthy word at him as he went. She came out of the room to drag
the things in, and the two women in the balcony saw her face.

"_Carai_, what an evil face! She looks like a murderess."

A girl came up the stairs at that moment, and her mother called out:
"Did you see her, Rosalia?"

"I asked the _gallego_ where she came from, he says he brought the
things from Triana. She promised him four reales and then wouldn't pay."

"Did he tell you her name?"

"He didn't know. But in Triana they called her La Cachirra."

The vixen appeared again to fetch a bundle she had forgotten. She
glanced at the women in the balcony watching her unconcernedly, but said
nothing. Rosalia shuddered.

"She frightens me."

La Cachirra was forty, haggard and very thin, with bony hands and
fingers like a vulture's claws. Her cheeks were sunken and her skin
wrinkled and yellow. When she opened her mouth, with its pale, heavy
lips, she showed teeth that were pointed like those of a beast of prey.
Her hair was black and coarse; she wore it in a clumsy knot, which
seemed on the point of falling over her shoulders, and in front of each
ear fell a straight wisp. Her eyes, deep-set in their sockets, large and
black, shone fiercely. Her face bore an expression of such ferocity that
no one dared come near to speak with her. She kept entirely to herself.
The curiosity of the neighbours was aroused. They knew she was very
poor, for her clothes were wretched. She went out every morning at six
and did not return till night; but they could not even find out how she
earned her living. They urged a policeman who lived in the house to make
inquiries.

"As long as she doesn't break the peace, I have nothing to do with her,"
said he.

But in Seville scandal travels quickly and in a few days a mason who
lived in an upper room brought the news that a friend in Triana knew her
story. La Cachirra had only come out of prison one month before, and she
had spent seven years there--for murder. She had lodged in a house in
Triana, but the children, finding out what had happened, threw stones at
her and called her names; and she, turning upon them with foul words and
with blows, had filled the whole place with such tumult that the
landlord gave her notice. Cursing him and all who had turned her out, La
Cachirra one morning suddenly disappeared.

"And whom did she murder?" asked Rosalia.

"They say it was her lover," replied the mason.

"She can never have had one," said Rosalia, with a laugh of scorn.

"Santa Maria!" cried Pilar, her mother, "I hope she won't kill any of
us. I said she looked like a murderess!"

Rosalia, shivering, crossed herself. At that moment La Cachirra came in
from her day's work and a sudden oppression fell upon the talkers. They
made a movement as if to huddle together and looked nervously at the
wild-eyed woman. She seemed to see something ominous in their silence
and gave them a rapid, suspicious glance. The policeman, to make
conversation, bade her good-evening.

"_Buena sera_," she replied, with a scowl, and, passing quickly into her
room, slammed the door.

They heard her lock it. The evil, sullen eyes had cast a gloom over them
and they talked in whispers as if under a mischievous spell.

"She has the devil in her," said Rosalia.

"I'm glad you're here to protect us, Manuel," added her mother to the
policeman.

But La Cachirra seemed indisposed to give trouble. She went her way,
unbending, never addressing so much as a word to anyone, and brusquely
cut short every attempt at friendliness. She felt that the neighbours
had discovered her secret, the homicide and the long years of
imprisonment; and the lines in her face grew sterner, the expression of
her deep-set eyes more inhuman. But gradually the anxiety she had caused
was dispelled. Even the garrulous Pilar ceased to pay attention to the
silent gaunt figure who occasionally passed through the group sitting in
the patio.

"I dare say the prison has sent her mad, they say it often does."

But one day an event occurred to revive the gossip. A youth came to the
_reja_--the wrought-iron gate that serves as front door to the Sevillan
house--and asked for Antonia Sanchez. Pilar, who was mending a skirt in
the patio, looked up at her daughter and shrugged her shoulders.

"No one of that names lives here," she said.

"Yes, she does," the young man answered; then, after a pause: "They call
her La Cachirra."

"Ah!" Rosalia opened the gate and pointed to the door. "She's in there."

"Thank you."

The youth gave her a smile. She was a pretty girl, with a high colour
and fine bold eyes. A red carnation threw up the glossy blackness of her
hair. Her breasts were full and the nipples were prominent under her
blouse.

"Blessed be the mother that bore you," he said, using a hackneyed
phrase.

"_Vaya Usted con Dios_, go you with God," answered Pilar.

He passed on and knocked at the door. The two women looked after him
curiously.

"Who can he be?" asked Pilar. "La Cachirra's never had a visitor
before."

There was no reply to his knocking, and he knocked again. They heard La
Cachirra's rasping voice ask who was there.

"_Madre!_" he cried. "Mother."

There was a shriek. The door was burst open.

"Currito!"

The woman threw her arms round his neck and kissed him passionately. She
fondled him and with a loving gesture stroked his face with both her
hands. The girl and her mother who watched would never have thought her
capable of such tenderness. At last, with little sobs of joy, she
dragged him into her room.

"He's her son," said Rosalia, with surprise. "Who'd have thought it! And
a fine fellow like that."

Currito had a lean face and white, even teeth; his hair was cut very
close, shaved on the temples, and set on the scalp with a truly
Andalusian perfection. The shadow of his precocious beard showed blue
beneath his brown skin. And of course he was a dandy. He had the
national love of fine clothes and his trousers were skin-tight; his
short jacket and his frilled shirt were as new as new could be. He wore
a broad-brimmed hat.

At last the door of La Cachirra's room was opened and she appeared,
hanging on her son's arm.

"You'll come again next Sunday?" she asked.

"If nothing stops me."

He glanced at Rosalia and, having bidden his mother good-night, nodded
to her also.

"_Vaya Usted con Dios!_" said she.

She gave him a smile and a flash of her dark eyes. La Cachirra
intercepted the look; and the sullenness which her intense joy had
driven away suddenly darkened her face like a thunder-cloud. She scowled
fiercely at the handsome girl.

"Is that your son?" asked Pilar, when the youth was gone.

"Yes, he's my son," answered La Cachirra gruffly, going back to her
room.

Nothing could soften her, and even when her heart was brimming over with
happiness she repelled the overtures of friendship.

"He's a good-looking fellow," said Rosalia; and she thought of him more
than once during the next few days.

It was a terrible love that La Cachirra had for her son. He was all she
had in the world and she adored him with a fiery, jealous passion that
demanded in return impossible devotion. She wished to be all in all to
him. On account of his work they could not live together and it tortured
her to imagine what he did when he was away from her. She could not bear
him to look at a woman and she writhed at the bare idea that he might
pay court to some girl. No amusement is more common in Seville than the
long flirtation in which the maid sits at her window half the night
long, guarded by iron bars, or stands at the gate, while her lover in
the street pours his rapture into her willing ear. La Cachirra asked the
boy if he had a _novia_, a sweetheart, aware that so attractive a youth
must enjoy the smiles of women, and she knew he lied when he swore he
spent his evenings at work. But his denials gave her a fierce delight.

When she saw Rosalia's provoking glance and Currito's answering smile,
rage leapt to her throat. She had hated her neighbours before, because
they were happy and she was wretched, because they knew her terrible
secret; but now she hated them more, already fancying, half crazily,
that they were conspiring to rob her of her son. On the following
Sunday, in the afternoon, La Cachirra came out of her room, crossed the
patio and stood at the gate. This was a proceeding so unusual that the
neighbours commented upon it.

"Don't you know why she's there?" said Rosalia, with a stifled laugh.
"Her precious son is coming, and she doesn't want us to see him."

"Does she think we'll eat him?"

Currito arrived and his mother took him quickly to her room.

"She's as jealous of him as if he was her lover," said Pilar.

Rosalia looked at the closed door, laughing again, and her shining eyes
were filled with mischief. It occurred to her that it would be very
amusing to have a word with Currito. Rosalia's white teeth gleamed at
the thought of La Cachirra's anger. She stationed herself at the gate,
so that the pair, when they came out, could not help crossing her; but
La Cachirra, seeing the girl, moved to the other side of her son so that
not even a glance should pass between them. Rosalia shrugged her
shoulders.

"You won't beat me so easily as that," she thought.

The Sunday after, when La Cachirra took up her place at the gate,
Rosalia went out into the street and strolled along in the direction
from which she guessed he would come. In a minute she saw Currito, and
walked on, elaborately ignoring him.

"Hola!" said he, stopping.

"Is it you? I thought you were afraid to speak to me."

"I'm afraid of nothing," he answered boastingly.

She walked on, as if she wanted him to leave her; but she knew very well
he would do no such thing.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"What has that to do with you, Currito? Go to your mother, my son, or
she'll beat you. You're afraid to look at me when she's with you."

"What nonsense."

"Well, _vaya Usted con Dios_! I have commissions."

He went off rather sheepishly, and Rosalia laughed to herself. She was
in the courtyard once more when he passed through with La Cachirra on
his way out; and this time, shamed into courage, he stopped and said
good-night. La Cachirra turned red with anger.

"Come, Currito," she cried, with a rasping voice, "what are you waiting
for?"

He went away, and the woman stopped a moment in front of Rosalia as if
she were going to speak, but, with a visible effort, she restrained
herself, and went back to her dark, silent room.

A few days later was the feast of San Isidore, the patron saint of
Seville, and to celebrate the holiday the mason and one or two others
had put a string of Chinese lanterns in the patio. They glowed warmly in
the clear summer night. The sky was soft against the shining stars. The
people of the house were gathered in the middle of the patio, sitting on
chairs; and the women, some with babies at their breasts, fanned
themselves with little paper fans, interrupting their ceaseless
chattering to fling a word of abuse at some older child who was making a
nuisance of himself. The cool air was very pleasant after the day's
breathless heat. Those who had been to the bull-fight were telling the
less fortunate all about it. They described with precise detail a
wonderful feat that Belmonte, the famous matador, had performed. With
their vivid imaginations, the particulars gained every minute in variety
and colour, so that it appeared that never in the history of Seville had
there been a more excellent _corrida_. Everyone was present but La
Cachirra, and in her room they saw the light of a solitary candle.

"And her son?"

"He's in there," answered Pilar. "I saw him pass an hour ago."

"He must be amusing himself," said Rosalia, with a laugh.

"Oh, don't bother about La Cachirra," said another. "Give us a dance,
Rosalia."

"Yes, yes," they cried. "Go on, my girl. You dance."

In Spain they love dancing and they love to look at dancing. Years and
years ago it was said that there was never a Spanish woman that was not
born to dance.

The chairs were quickly set in a ring. The mason and the tram conductor
fetched their guitars. Rosalia got her castanets, and stepping forward
with another girl, began.

Currito, in the poky room, pricked up his ears when he heard the music.

"They're dancing," he said, and an itching shot down his limbs.

He looked through the curtain and saw the group in the mellow light of
the Chinese lanterns. He saw the two girls dancing. Rosalia wore her
Sunday clothes, and, as is customary, she was heavily powdered. A
splendid carnation gleamed in her hair. Currito's heart beat quickly.
Love in Spain grows fast, and he had thought often of the handsome girl
since that day on which he first spoke to her. He moved towards the
door.

"What are you doing?" asked La Cachirra.

"I'm going to look at them dance. You never wish me to amuse myself."

"It's Rosalia you want to see."

He pushed her away as she tried to stop him, and joined the group that
watched the dancers. La Cachirra followed a step or two, and then stood,
half hidden by the gloom, with fury gnawing at her heart. Rosalia saw
him.

"Aren't you frightened to look at me?" she whispered, as she passed him.

The dancing had made her light-headed and she felt no fear of La
Cachirra. When the measure ended and her partner sank into a chair,
Rosalia marched up to Currito and stood in front of him, upright, with
her head thrown back and her breast heaving with the rapid motion.

"Of course, you don't know how to dance," she said.

"Yes, I do."

"Well, come then."

She smiled provokingly, but he hesitated. He looked over his shoulder at
his mother, whom he divined, rather than saw, in the darkness. Rosalia
caught the glance and its meaning.

"Are you afraid?"

"What should I be afraid of?" he asked with a shrug of the shoulders.

He stepped into the ring. The guitarists strummed away and the onlookers
rhythmically clapped their hands, punctuating the time with an
occasional cry of Ol. A girl gave Currito a pair of castanets and the
pair began to dance. They heard a little hiss, as of a serpent in the
darkness, and Rosalia, quite reckless now, looked with a laugh at the
face, ghastly white, that gleamed from the shadows. La Cachirra did not
move. She watched the movements of the dance, the swaying of the bodies,
the intricate steps; she saw Rosalia lean back with a graceful gesture
and smile in Currito's face as he wound about her, clapping his
castanets. Her eyes glowed like coals of fire and she felt them burning
in the sockets; but no one noticed her, and she gave a groan of rage.
The dance came to an end, and Rosalia, smiling with pleasure at the
applause, told Currito she did not know he could dance so well.

La Cachirra flung herself into her room and bolted the door. She gave no
answer when Currito came and bade her open.

"Well, I shall go home," he said.

Her heart bled with pain, but she would not speak. He was all she had,
all she loved in the world; and yet she hated him. She could not sleep
that night, but lay thinking, half-madly, that they were robbing her of
her son. In the morning she did not go to work, but lay in wait for
Rosalia. The girl came out at last, rather bedraggled after the night's
festivities, and she started when La Cachirra suddenly faced her.

"What do you want with my son?"

"What do you mean?" replied Rosalia, assuming an expression of surprise.

La Cachirra quivered with passion and she bit her hand to keep herself
quiet.

"Oh, you know what I mean. You're stealing him from me."

"Do you think I want your son? Keep him away from me. I can't help it if
he runs after me wherever I go."

"That's a lie!"

"Ask him!" And now Rosalia's voice was so scornful that La Cachirra
could hardly contain herself. "He waits an hour in the street to see me.
Why don't you keep him to yourself?"

"You lie, you lie! You throw yourself in his way."

"If I wanted lovers I could get them without asking. I don't want the
son of a murderess."

Then everything grew confused to La Cachirra; the blood leaped to her
head and choked her eyes. She sprang at Rosalia and tore her hair. The
girl gave a shrill cry and sought to defend herself, but immediately a
passer-by wrenched them apart.

"If you don't leave Currito alone, I'll kill you!" cried La Cachirra.

"Do you think I'm frightened? Keep him from me if you can. You fool,
don't you see that he loves me better than his eyes?"

"Now then, go away," said the man. "Don't answer her, Rosalia."

La Cachirra gave a little roar of passion, like a wild beast baulked of
its prey, and pushed past into the street.

But the dance had left Currito madly in love with Rosalia, and all next
day he thought of her red lips; the light of her eyes shone in his heart
and filled him with enchantment. He passionately desired her. At
nightfall he wandered towards the Macarena and presently found himself
at her house. He waited in the darkness of the porch till he saw her in
the patio. At the other end burned his mother's lonely light.

"Rosalia," he called in a low voice.

She turned, stifling a cry of surprise.

"Why are you here to-day?" she whispered, going towards him.

"I couldn't keep away from you."

"Why?" she smiled.

"Because I love you."

"Do you know your mother nearly killed me this morning?"

And with the embellishments necessary to the Andalusian temperament, she
related the occurrence, omitting, however, the final taunt which had
enraged La Cachirra beyond endurance.

"She's got the temper of the devil," said Currito; and then, with
bravado: "I shall tell her that you're my sweetheart."

"She will be pleased," said Rosalia ironically.

"Will you come to the _reja_ to-morrow?"

"Perhaps," she answered.

He gave a little chuckle, for he knew by her tone that she would. He
swaggered even more than usual when he walked through the Sierpes on his
way home. She was waiting for him when he came next day and, as is the
way with lovers in Seville, they talked for hours under their breath,
with the iron gate between them, and it never even occurred to Currito
that it was a needless impediment. When he asked Rosalia if she loved
him she answered with a little amorous sigh. They tried to see the
passion that burnt hotly in one another's eyes. Then he went every
night.

But fearing that his mother knew of his visits, Currito did not go to
see her on the following Sunday. The wretched woman waited for him with
an aching heart. She was ready to fall on her knees and beg him to
forgive her, but then, when he did not come, she hated him; she would
have liked to see him dead at her feet. Her heart sank when she thought
that another week must pass before she could even hope to see him.

The week passed and still he did not come. She could not bear it.
Anguish, anguish! She loved him as no sweetheart could ever love him.
She told herself that this was Rosalia's doing and when she thought of
her, rage filled her heart. At last Currito plucked up his courage and
went to see his mother; but she had waited too long. It seemed as though
her love was dead. She pushed him away when he wanted to kiss her.

"Why haven't you come before?"

"You locked the door on me. I thought you didn't want me!"

"Was it only that? Had you no other reason?"

"I've been busy," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

"Busy? An idle loafer like you. What have you been doing? You wouldn't
have been too busy to come and see Rosalia."

"Why did you hit her?"

"How do you know I hit her? Have you seen her?" La Cachirra strode up to
her son; her eyes flashed. "She called me a murderess."

"Well, what of it?"

"What of it?" she screamed, so that they heard her in the patio. "And if
I am a murderess--it was for you. Yes, I killed Pepe Santi; but it was
because he was beating you. It was for your sake that I lay in prison
for seven years--for seven years. Oh, you fool, you think she cares for
you, and every night she spends hours at the gate."

"I know," Currito answered with a grin.

La Cachirra started violently. She shot a puzzled look at him and then
she understood. She gasped with pain and wrath; she clutched at her
heart as though the agony were too intense to bear.

"You've been coming every night to the _reja_ and you never came near
me? Oh, how cruel! I've done everything in the world for you. Do you
think I loved Pepe Santi? I endured his blows so that I could give you
bread; and I killed him when he beat you. Oh, God, I only lived for you.
But for the thought of you I would have died rather than suffer those
years of prison."

"Come, woman, be reasonable. I'm twenty. What d'you expect? If it wasn't
Rosalia it would be another."

"You beast. I hate you. Get out."

She pushed him violently to the door. Currito shrugged his shoulders.

"You needn't think I want to stay."

He walked jauntily through the patio and slammed the iron gate behind
him. La Cachirra stalked to and fro in her tiny room. The hours passed
slowly. For a long while she remained at the window, watching with the
horrible steadfastness of a savage beast ready to spring. She stood
motionless, repressing the convulsive restlessness that tore at her
heart-strings. There was a clapping of hands at the _reja_ as a signal
that someone was without, and she peered forward with panting mouth, her
fiery eyes almost starting from her head. But it was only the mason. She
waited longer, and Pilar, Rosalia's mother, came in and walked slowly up
the stairs to her room. La Cachirra clutched at her throat to relieve
the intolerable oppression of her breath. Still she waited. Now and then
an extraordinary quiver travelled through all her limbs.

At last! There was a clap of light hands at the gate, and a voice above
called out: "Who is it?"

"Peace!"

La Cachirra recognised Rosalia's voice. She gave a gasp of triumph. The
door was opened from above, and Rosalia, entering, crossed the courtyard
with a buoyant and easy step. The joy of life was in her every motion.
She was about to put her foot on the stair when La Cachirra sprang
forward and stopped her. She caught hold of her arm and the girl could
not shake herself free.

"What do you want?" said Rosalia. "Let me pass."

"What have you been doing with my son?"

"Let me pass, or I shall call out."

"Is it true that you meet at the _reja_ every night?"

"Mother, help! Antonio!" Rosalia cried out shrilly.

"Answer me."

"Well, if you want the truth, you can have it. He's going to marry me.
He loves me, and I--I love him with all my heart." She turned on La
Cachirra, trying to free herself from the vicious grip. "D'you think you
can prevent us? D'you think he's frightened of you? He hates you, he
told me so. He wishes you'd never come out of prison."

"He told you that?"

La Cachirra shrank back. Rosalia pursued the advantage.

"Yes, he told me that; and he told me much more. He told me that you
murdered Pepe Santi; and that you were in prison for seven years; and he
wished you were dead."

Rosalia hissed the words venomously, laughing with shrill voice when she
saw the wretched woman shrink as though struck by palpable blows.

"And you ought to be proud that I don't refuse to marry the son of a
murderess."

Then, giving La Cachirra a push, she leapt to the stairs; but the
movement revived the woman, stunned by the horrible taunts, and with a
cry of brutal rage she sprang upon Rosalia and caught her by the
shoulders and dragged her down. Rosalia turned and hit her in the face.
La Cachirra drew a knife from her bosom, and with an oath buried it in
the girl's neck. Rosalia shrieked.

"Mother, she's killed me."

She fell to the bottom of the stairs and lay huddled up on the stones.
Blood made a little pool on the ground.

Half a dozen doors were flung open at the despairing cry, and people
rushed to seize La Cachirra; but she backed against the wall and faced
them, with an expression of such ferocity on her face that no one dared
approach her. The hesitation was momentary, but Pilar ran from the
balcony shrieking, and the common attention for an instant was
distracted. La Cachirra saw the opportunity and ran forward. She reached
her room and locked and bolted the door behind her.

Suddenly the court was filled with people. Pilar with loud dreadful
cries flung herself down on her daughter and would not let herself be
dragged away. Someone rushed for a doctor and someone else went for the
police. The crowd surged in from the street and collected round the
door. The doctor hurried in with a black bag in his hand. When the
police came a dozen people at once excitedly explained what had
happened. They pointed to the door of La Cachirra's room, and the police
broke in. There was a scuffle and they came out with La Cachirra
handcuffed. The mob rushed forward, but the police surrounded her and
with their scabbards beat the people off; but they shook their fists and
hurled curses at her. She looked at them scornfully. She deigned to make
no answer. Her eyes shone with triumph. The policemen led her through
the patio and they passed by the body of Rosalia.

"Is she dead?" asked La Cachirra.

"Yes," the doctor answered gravely.

"Thanks be to God!" she said.




A MAN FROM GLASGOW


It is not often that anyone entering a great city for the first time has
the luck to witness such an incident as engaged Shelley's attention when
he drove into Naples. A youth ran out of a shop pursued by a man armed
with a knife. The man overtook him and with one blow in the neck laid
him dead on the road. Shelley had a tender heart. He didn't look upon it
as a bit of local colour; he was seized with horror and indignation. But
when he expressed his emotions to a Calabrian priest who was travelling
with him, a fellow of gigantic strength and stature, the priest laughed
heartily and attempted to quiz him. Shelley says he never felt such an
inclination to beat anyone.

I have never seen anything so exciting as that, but the first time I
went to Algeciras I had an experience that seemed to me far from
ordinary. Algeciras was then an untidy, neglected town. I arrived
somewhat late at night and went to an inn on the quay. It was rather
shabby, but it had a fine view of Gibraltar, solid and matter-of-fact,
across the bay. The moon was full. The office was on the first floor,
and a slatternly maid, when I asked for a room, took me upstairs. The
landlord was playing cards. He seemed little pleased to see me. He
looked me up and down, curtly gave me a number, and then, taking no
further notice of me, went on with his game.

When the maid had shown me to my room I asked her what I could have to
eat.

"What you like," she answered.

I knew well enough the unreality of the seeming profusion.

"What have you got in the house?"

"You can have eggs and ham."

The look of the hotel had led me to guess that I should get little else.
The maid led me to a narrow room with white-washed walls and a low
ceiling in which was a long table laid already for the next day's
luncheon. With his back to the door sat a tall man, huddled over a
_brasero_, the round brass dish of hot ashes which is erroneously
supposed to give sufficient warmth for the temperate winter of
Andalusia. I sat down at table and waited for my scanty meal. I gave the
stranger an idle glance. He was looking at me, but meeting my eyes he
quickly turned away. I waited for my eggs. When at last the maid brought
them he looked up again.

"I want you to wake me in time for the first boat," he said.

"_Si, seor._"

His accent told me that English was his native tongue, and the breadth
of his build, his strongly marked features, led me to suppose him a
northerner. The hardy Scot is far more often found in Spain than the
Englishman. Whether you go to the rich mines of Rio Tinto, or to the
bodegas of Jerez, to Seville or to Cadiz, it is the leisurely speech of
beyond the Tweed that you hear. You will meet Scotsmen in the olive
groves of Carmona, on the railway between Algeciras and Bobadilla, and
even in the remote cork woods of Merida.

I finished eating and went over to the dish of burning ashes. It was
midwinter and the windy passage across the bay had chilled my blood. The
man pushed his chair away as I drew mine forwards.

"Don't move," I said. "There's heaps of room for two."

I lit a cigar and offered one to him. In Spain the Havana from Gib is
never unwelcome.

"I don't mind if I do," he said, stretching out his hand.

I recognised the singing speech of Glasgow. But the stranger was not
talkative, and my efforts at conversation broke down before his
monosyllables. We smoked in silence. He was even bigger than I had
thought, with great broad shoulders and ungainly limbs; his face was
sunburned, his hair short and grizzled. His features were hard; mouth,
ears and nose were large and heavy and his skin much wrinkled. His blue
eyes were pale. He was constantly pulling his ragged, grey moustache. It
was a nervous gesture that I found faintly irritating. Presently I felt
that he was looking at me, and the intensity of his stare grew so
irksome that I glanced up expecting him, as before, to drop his eyes. He
did, indeed, for a moment, but then raised them again. He inspected me
from under his long, bushy eyebrows.

"Just come from Gib?" he asked suddenly.

"Yes."

"I'm going to-morrow--on my way home. Thank God."

He said the last two words so fiercely that I smiled.

"Don't you like Spain?"

"Oh, Spain's all right."

"Have you been here long?"

"Too long. Too long."

He spoke with a kind of gasp. I was surprised at the emotion my casual
inquiry seemed to excite in him. He sprang to his feet and walked
backwards and forwards. He stamped to and fro like a caged beast,
pushing aside a chair that stood in his way, and now and again repeated
the words in a groan. "Too long. Too long." I sat still. I was
embarrassed. To give myself countenance I stirred the _brasero_ to bring
the hotter ashes to the top, and he stood suddenly still, towering over
me, as though my movement had brought back my existence to his notice.
Then he sat down heavily in his chair.

"D'you think I'm queer?" he asked.

"Not more than most people," I smiled.

"You don't see anything strange in me?"

He leant forward as he spoke so that I might see him well.

"No."

"You'd say so if you did, wouldn't you?"

"I would."

I couldn't quite understand what all this meant. I wondered if he was
drunk. For two or three minutes he didn't say anything and I had no wish
to interrupt the silence.

"What's your name?" he asked suddenly. I told him.

"Mine's Robert Morrison."

"Scotch?"

"Glasgow. I've been in this blasted country for years. Got any baccy?"

I gave him my pouch and he filled his pipe. He lit it from a piece of
burning charcoal.

"I can't stay any longer. I've stayed too long. Too long."

He had an impulse to jump up again and walk up and down, but he resisted
it, clinging to his chair. I saw on his face the effort he was making. I
judged that his restlessness was due to chronic alcoholism. I find
drunks very boring, and I made up my mind to take an early opportunity
of slipping off to bed.

"I've been managing some olive groves," he went on. "I'm here working
for the Glasgow and South of Spain Olive Oil Company Limited."

"Oh, yes."

"We've got a new process for refining oil, you know. Properly treated,
Spanish oil is every bit as good as Lucca. And we can sell it cheaper."

He spoke in a dry, matter-of-fact, business-like way. He chose his words
with Scotch precision. He seemed perfectly sober.

"You know, Ecija is more or less the centre of the olive trade, and we
had a Spaniard there to look after the business. But I found he was
robbing us right and left, so I had to turn him out. I used to live in
Seville; it was more convenient for shipping the oil. However, I found I
couldn't get a trustworthy man to be at Ecija, so last year I went there
myself. D'you know it?"

"No."

"The firm has got a big estate two miles from the town, just outside the
village of San Lorenzo, and it's got a fine house on it. It's on the
crest of a hill, rather pretty to look at, all white, you know, and
straggling, with a couple of storks perched on the roof. No one lived
there, and I thought it would save the rent of a place in town if I
did."

"It must have been a bit lonely," I remarked.

"It was."

Robert Morrison smoked on for a minute or two in silence. I wondered
whether there was any point in what he was telling me.

I looked at my watch.

"In a hurry?" he asked sharply.

"Not particularly. It's getting late."

"Well, what of it?"

"I suppose you didn't see many people?" I said, going back.

"Not many. I lived there with an old man and his wife who looked after
me, and sometimes I used to go down to the village and play _tresillo_
with Fernandez, the chemist, and one or two men who met at his shop. I
used to shoot a bit and ride."

"It doesn't sound such a bad life to me."

"I'd been there two years last spring. By God, I've never known such
heat as we had in May. No one could do a thing. The labourers just lay
about in the shade and slept. Sheep died and some of the animals went
mad. Even the oxen couldn't work. They stood around with their backs all
humped up and gasped for breath. That blasted sun beat down and the
glare was so awful, you felt your eyes would shoot out of your head. The
earth cracked and crumbled, and the crops frizzled. The olives went to
rack and ruin. It was simply hell. One couldn't get a wink of sleep. I
went from room to room, trying to get a breath of air. Of course I kept
the windows shut and had the floors watered, but that didn't do any
good. The nights were just as hot as the days. It was like living in an
oven.

"At last I thought I'd have a bed made up for me downstairs on the north
side of the house in a room that was never used because in ordinary
weather it was damp. I had an idea that I might get a few hours' sleep
there at all events. Anyhow it was worth trying. But it was no damned
good; it was a wash-out. I turned and tossed and my bed was so hot that
I couldn't stand it. I got up and opened the doors that led to the
verandah and walked out. It was a glorious night. The moon was so bright
that I swear you could read a book by it. Did I tell you the house was
on the crest of a hill? I leant against the parapet and looked at the
olive-trees. It was like the sea. I suppose that's what made me think of
home. I thought of the cool breeze in the fir-trees and the racket of
the streets in Glasgow. Believe it or not, I could smell them, and I
could smell the sea. By God, I'd have given every bob I had in the world
for an hour of that air. They say it's a foul climate in Glasgow. Don't
you believe it. I like the rain and the grey sky and that yellow sea and
the waves. I forgot that I was in Spain, in the middle of the olive
country, and I opened my mouth and took a long breath as though I were
breathing in the sea-fog.

"And then all of a sudden I heard a sound. It was a man's voice. Not
loud, you know, low. It seemed to creep through the silence like--well,
I don't know what it was like. It surprised me. I couldn't think who
could be down there in the olives at that hour. It was past midnight. It
was a chap laughing. A funny sort of laugh. I suppose you'd call it a
chuckle. It seemed to crawl up the hill--disjointedly."

Morrison looked at me to see how I took the odd word he used to express
a sensation that he didn't know how to describe.

"I mean, it seemed to shoot up in little jerks, something like shooting
stones out of a pail, I leant forward and stared. With the full moon it
was almost as light as day, but I'm dashed if I could see a thing. The
sound stopped, but I kept on looking at where it had come from in case
somebody moved. And in a minute it started off again, but louder. You
couldn't have called it a chuckle any more, it was a real belly laugh.
It just rang through the night. I wondered it didn't wake my servants.
It sounded like someone who was roaring drunk.

"'Who's there?' I shouted.

"The only answer I got was a roar of laughter. I don't mind telling you
I was getting a bit annoyed. I had half a mind to go down and see what
it was all about. I wasn't going to let some drunken swine kick up a row
like that on my place in the middle of the night. And then suddenly
there was a yell. By God, I was startled. Then cries. The man had
laughed with a deep bass voice, but his cries were--shrill, like a pig
having his throat cut.

"'My God,' I cried.

"I jumped over the parapet and ran down towards the sound. I thought
somebody was being killed. There was silence and then one piercing
shriek. After that sobbing and moaning. I'll tell you what it sounded
like, it sounded like someone at the point of death. There was a long
groan and then nothing. Silence. I ran from place to place. I couldn't
find anyone. At last I climbed the hill again and went back to my room.

"You can imagine how much sleep I got that night. As soon as it was
light, I looked out of the window in the direction from which the row
had come and I was surprised to see a little white house in a sort of
dale among the olives. The ground on that side didn't belong to us and
I'd never been through it. I hardly ever went to that part of the house
and so I'd never seen the house before. I asked Jos who lived there. He
told me that a madman had inhabited it, with his brother and a servant."

"Oh, was that the explanation?" I said. "Not a very nice neighbour."

The Scot bent over quickly and seized my wrist. He thrust his face into
mine and his eyes were starting out of his head with terror.

"The madman had been dead for twenty years," he whispered.

He let go my wrist and leant back in his chair panting.

"I went down to the house and walked all round it. The windows were
barred and shuttered and the door was locked. I knocked. I shook the
handle and rang the bell. I heard it tinkle, but no one came. It was a
two-storey house and I looked up. The shutters were tight closed, and
there wasn't a sign of life anywhere."

"Well, what sort of condition was the house in?" I asked.

"Oh, rotten. The whitewash had worn off the walls and there was
practically no paint left on the door or the shutters. Some of the tiles
off the roof were lying on the ground. They looked as though they'd been
blown away in a gale."

"Queer," I said.

"I went to my friend Fernandez, the chemist, and he told me the same
story as Jos. I asked about the madman and Fernandez said that no one
ever saw him. He was more or less comatose ordinarily, but now and then
he had an attack of acute mania and then he could be heard from ever so
far laughing his head off and then crying. It used to scare people. He
died in one of his attacks and his keepers cleared out at once. No one
had ever dared to live in the house since.

"I didn't tell Fernandez what I'd heard. I thought he'd only laugh at
me. I stayed up that night and kept watch. But nothing happened. There
wasn't a sound. I waited about till dawn and then I went to bed."

"And you never heard anything more?"

"Not for a month. The drought continued and I went on sleeping in the
lumber-room at the back. One night I was fast asleep, when something
seemed to happen to me; I don't exactly know how to describe it, it was
a funny feeling as though someone had given me a little nudge, to warn
me, and suddenly I was wide awake. I lay there in my bed and then in the
same way as before I heard a long, low gurgle, like a man enjoying an
old joke. It came from away down in the valley and it got louder. It was
a great bellow of laughter. I jumped out of bed and went to the window.
My legs began to tremble. It was horrible to stand there and listen to
the shouts of laughter that rang through the night. Then there was the
pause, and after that a shriek of pain and that ghastly sobbing. It
didn't sound human. I mean, you might have thought it was an animal
being tortured. I don't mind telling you I was scared stiff. I couldn't
have moved if I'd wanted to. After a time the sounds stopped, not
suddenly, but dying away little by little, I strained my ears, but I
couldn't hear a thing. I crept back to bed and hid my face.

"I remembered then that Fernandez had told me that the madman's attacks
only came at intervals. The rest of the time he was quite quiet.
Apathetic, Fernandez said. I wondered if the fits of mania came
regularly. I reckoned out how long it had been between the two attacks
I'd heard. Twenty-eight days. It didn't take me long to put two and two
together; it was quite obvious that it was the full moon that set him
off. I'm not a nervous man really and I made up my mind to get to the
bottom of it, so I looked out in the calendar which day the moon would
be full next and that night I didn't go to bed. I cleaned my revolver
and loaded it. I prepared a lantern and sat down on the parapet of my
house to wait. I felt perfectly cool. To tell you the truth, I was
rather pleased with myself because I didn't feel scared. There was a bit
of a wind, and it whistled about the roof. It rustled over the leaves of
the olive-trees like waves swishing on the pebbles of the beach. The
moon shone on the white walls of the house in the hollow. I felt
particularly cheery.

"At last I heard a little sound, the sound I knew, and I almost laughed.
I was right; it was the full moon and the attacks came as regular as
clockwork. That was all to the good. I threw myself over the wall into
the olive grove and ran straight to the house. The chuckling grew louder
as I came near. I got to the house and looked up. There was no light
anywhere. I put my ears to the door and listened. I heard the madman
simply laughing his bloody head off. I beat on the door with my fist and
I pulled the bell. The sound of it seemed to amuse him. He roared with
laughter. I knocked again, louder and louder, and the more I knocked the
more he laughed. Then I shouted at the top of my voice.

"'Open the blasted door, or I'll break it down.'

"I stepped back and kicked the latch with all my might. I flung myself
at the door with the whole weight of my body. It cracked. Then I put all
my strength into it and the damned thing smashed open.

"I took the revolver out of my pocket and held my lantern in the other
hand. The laughter sounded louder now that the door was opened. I
stepped in. The stink nearly knocked me down. I mean, just think, the
windows hadn't been opened for twenty years. The row was enough to raise
the dead, but for a moment I didn't know where it was coming from. The
walls seemed to throw the sound backwards and forwards. I pushed open a
door by my side and went into a room. It was bare and white and there
wasn't a stick of furniture in it. The sound was louder and I followed
it. I went into another room, but there was nothing there. I opened a
door and found myself at the foot of a staircase. The madman was
laughing just over my head. I walked up, cautiously, you know, I wasn't
taking any risks, and at the top of the stairs there was a passage. I
walked along it, throwing my light ahead of me, and I came to a room at
the end. I stopped. He was in there. I was only separated from the sound
by a thin door.

"It was awful to hear it. A shiver passed through me and I cursed myself
because I began to tremble. It wasn't like a human being at all. By
Jove, I very nearly took to my heels and ran. I had to clench my teeth
to force myself to stay. But I simply couldn't bring myself to turn the
handle. And then the laughter was cut, cut with a knife you'd have said,
and I heard a hiss of pain. I hadn't heard that before, it was too low
to carry to my place, and then a gasp.

"'Ay!' I heard the man speak in Spanish. 'You're killing me. Take it
away. O God, help me!'

"He screamed. The brutes were torturing him. I flung open the door and
burst in. The draught blew a shutter back and the moon streamed in so
bright that it dimmed my lantern. In my ears, as clearly as I hear you
speak and as close, I heard the wretched chap's groans. It was awful,
moaning and sobbing, and frightful gasps. No one could survive that. He
was at the point of death. I tell you I heard his broken, choking cries
right in my ears. And the room was empty."

Robert Morrison sank back in his chair. That huge solid man had
strangely the look of a clay figure in a studio. You felt that if you
pushed him he would fall over in a heap on to the floor.

"And then?" I asked.

He took a rather dirty handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his
forehead.

"I felt I didn't much want to sleep in that room on the north side, so,
heat or no heat, I moved back to my own quarters. Well, exactly four
weeks later, about two in the morning, I was waked up by the madman's
chuckle. It was almost at my elbow. I don't mind telling you that my
nerve was a bit shaken by then, so next time the blighter was due to
have an attack, next time the moon was full, I mean, I got Fernandez to
come and spend the night with me. I didn't tell him anything. I kept him
up playing cards till two in the morning, and then I heard it again. I
asked him if he heard anything. 'Nothing,' he said. 'There's somebody
laughing,' I said. 'You're drunk, man,' he said, and he began laughing
too. That was too much. 'Shut up, you fool,' I said. The laughter grew
louder and louder. I cried out. I tried to shut it out by putting my
hands to my ears, but it wasn't a damned bit of good. I heard it and I
heard the scream of pain. Fernandez thought I was mad. He didn't dare
say so, because he knew I'd have killed him. He said he'd go to bed, and
in the morning I found he'd slunk away. His bed hadn't been slept in.
He'd taken himself off when he left me.

"After that I couldn't stop in Ecija. I put a factor there and went back
to Seville. I felt myself pretty safe there, but as the time came near I
began to get scared. Of course I told myself not to be a damned fool,
but, you know, I damned well couldn't help myself. The fact is, I was
afraid the sounds had followed me, and I knew if I heard them in Seville
I'd go on hearing them all my life. I've got as much courage as any man,
but damn it all, there are limits to everything. Flesh and blood
couldn't stand it. I knew I'd go stark staring mad. I got in such a
state that I began drinking, the suspense was so awful, and I used to
lie awake counting the days. And at last I knew it'd come. And it came.
I heard those sounds in Seville--sixty miles away from Ecija."

I didn't know what to say. I was silent for a while.

"When did you hear the sounds last?" I asked.

"Four weeks ago."

I looked up quickly. I was startled.

"What d'you mean by that? It's not full moon to-night?"

He gave me a dark, angry look. He opened his mouth to speak and then
stopped as though he couldn't. You would have said his vocal cords were
paralysed, and it was with a strange croak that at last he answered.

"Yes, it is."

He stared at me and his pale blue eyes seemed to shine red. I have never
seen in a man's face a look of such terror. He got up quickly and
stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

I must admit that I didn't sleep any too well that night myself.




BEFORE THE PARTY


Mrs. Skinner liked to be in good time. She was already dressed, in black
silk as befitted her age and the mourning she wore for her son-in-law,
and now she put on her toque. She was a little uncertain about it, since
the egrets' feathers which adorned it might very well arouse in some of
the friends she would certainly meet at the party acid expostulations;
and of course it was shocking to kill those beautiful white birds, in
the mating season too, for the sake of their feathers; but there they
were, so pretty and stylish, and it would have been silly to refuse
them, and it would have hurt her son-in-law's feelings. He had brought
them all the way from Borneo and he expected her to be so pleased with
them. Kathleen had made herself rather unpleasant about them, she must
wish she hadn't now, after what had happened, but Kathleen had never
really liked Harold. Mrs. Skinner, standing at her dressing-table,
placed the toque on her head, it was after all the only nice hat she
had, and put in a pin with a large jet knob. If anybody spoke to her
about the egrets she had her answer.

"I know it's dreadful," she would say, "and I wouldn't dream of buying
them, but my poor son-in-law brought them back the last time he was home
on leave."

That would explain her possession of them and excuse their use. Everyone
had been very kind. Mrs. Skinner took a clean handkerchief from a drawer
and sprinkled a little _Eau de Cologne_ on it. She never used scent, and
she had always thought it rather fast, but _Eau de Cologne_ was so
refreshing. She was very nearly ready now, and her eyes wandered out of
the window behind her looking-glass. Canon Heywood had a beautiful day
for his garden-party. It was warm and the sky was blue; the trees had
not yet lost the fresh green of the spring. She smiled as she saw her
little granddaughter in the strip of garden behind the house busily
raking her very own flower-bed. Mrs. Skinner wished Joan were not quite
so pale, it was a mistake to have kept her so long in the tropics; and
she was so grave for her age, you never saw her run about; she played
quiet games of her own invention and watered her garden. Mrs. Skinner
gave the front of her dress a little pat, took up her gloves, and went
downstairs.

Kathleen was at the writing-table in the window busy with lists she was
making, for she was honorary secretary of the Ladies' Golf Club, and
when there were competitions had a good deal to do. But she too was
ready for the party.

"I see you've put on your jumper after all," said Mrs. Skinner.

They had discussed at luncheon whether Kathleen should wear her jumper
or her black chiffon. The jumper was black and white, and Kathleen
thought it rather smart, but it was hardly mourning. Millicent, however,
was in favour of it.

"There's no reason why we should all look as if we'd just come from a
funeral," she said. "Harold's been dead eight months."

To Mrs. Skinner it seemed rather unfeeling to talk like that. Millicent
was strange since her return from Borneo.

"You're not going to leave off your weeds yet, darling?" she asked.

Millicent did not give a direct answer.

"People don't wear mourning in the way they used," she said. She paused
a little and when she went on there was a tone in her voice which Mrs.
Skinner thought quite peculiar. It was plain that Kathleen noticed it
too, for she gave her sister a curious look. "I'm sure Harold wouldn't
wish me to wear mourning for him indefinitely."

"I dressed early because I wanted to say something to Millicent," said
Kathleen in reply to her mother's observation.

"Oh?"

Kathleen did not explain. But she put her lists aside and with knitted
brows read for the second time a letter from a lady who complained that
the committee had most unfairly marked down her handicap from
twenty-four to eighteen. It requires a good deal of tact to be honorary
secretary to a ladies' golf club. Mrs. Skinner began to put on her new
gloves. The sun-blinds kept the room cool and dark. She looked at the
great wooden hornbill, gaily painted, which Harold had left in her
safekeeping; and it seemed a little odd and barbaric to her, but he had
set much store on it. It had some religious significance and Canon
Heywood had been greatly struck by it. On the wall, over the sofa, were
Malay weapons, she forgot what they were called, and here and there on
occasional tables pieces of silver and brass which Harold at various
times had sent to them. She had liked Harold and involuntarily her eyes
sought his photograph which stood on the piano with photographs of her
two daughters, her grandchild, her sister and her sister's son.

"Why, Kathleen, where's Harold's photograph?" she asked.

Kathleen looked round. It no longer stood in its place.

"Someone's taken it away," said Kathleen.

Surprised and puzzled, she got up and went over to the piano. The
photographs had been rearranged so that no gap should show.

"Perhaps Millicent wanted to have it in her bedroom," said Mrs. Skinner.

"I should have noticed it. Besides, Millicent has several photographs of
Harold. She keeps them locked up."

Mrs. Skinner had thought it very peculiar that her daughter should have
no photographs of Harold in her room. Indeed she had spoken of it once,
but Millicent had made no reply. Millicent had been strangely silent
since she came back from Borneo, and had not encouraged the sympathy
Mrs. Skinner would have been so willing to show her. She seemed
unwilling to speak of her great loss. Sorrow took people in different
ways. Her husband had said the best thing was to leave her alone. The
thought of him turned her ideas to the party they were going to.

"Father asked if I thought he ought to wear a top-hat," she said. "I
said I thought it was just as well to be on the safe side."

It was going to be quite a grand affair. They were having ices,
strawberry and vanilla, from Boddy, the confectioner, but the Heywoods
were making the iced coffee at home. Everyone would be there. They had
been asked to meet the Bishop of Hong Kong, who was staying with the
Canon, an old college friend of his, and he was going to speak on the
Chinese missions. Mrs. Skinner, whose daughter had lived in the East for
eight years and whose son-in-law had been Resident of a district in
Borneo, was in a flutter of interest. Naturally it meant more to her
than to people who had never had anything to do with the Colonies and
that sort of thing.

"What can they know of England who only England know?" as Mr. Skinner
said.

He came into the room at that moment. He was a lawyer, as his father had
been before him, and he had offices in Lincoln's Inn Fields. He went up
to London every morning and came down every evening. He was only able to
accompany his wife and daughters to the Canon's garden-party because the
Canon had very wisely chosen a Saturday to have it on. Mr. Skinner
looked very well in his tail-coat and pepper-and-salt trousers. He was
not exactly dressy, but he was neat. He looked like a respectable family
solicitor, which indeed he was; his firm never touched work that was not
perfectly above board, and if a client went to him with some trouble
that was not quite nice, Mr. Skinner would look grave.

"I don't think this is the sort of case that we very much care to
undertake," he said. "I think you'd do better to go elsewhere."

He drew towards him his writing-block and scribbled a name and address
on it. He tore off a sheet of paper and handed it to his client.

"If I were you I think I would go and see these people. If you mention
my name I believe they'll do anything they can for you."

Mr. Skinner was clean-shaven and very bald. His pale lips were tight and
thin, but his blue eyes were shy. He had no colour in his cheeks and his
face was much lined.

"I see you've put on your new trousers," said Mrs. Skinner.

"I thought it would be a good opportunity," he answered, "I was
wondering if I should wear a buttonhole."

"I wouldn't, father," said Kathleen. "I don't think it's awfully good
form."

"A lot of people will be wearing them," said Mrs. Skinner.

"Only clerks and people like that," said Kathleen. "The Heywoods have
had to ask everybody, you know. And besides, we are in mourning."

"I wonder if there'll be a collection after the Bishop's address," said
Mr. Skinner.

"I should hardly think so," said Mrs. Skinner.

"I think it would be rather bad form," agreed Kathleen.

"It's as well to be on the safe side," said Mr. Skinner. "I'll give for
all of us. I was wondering if ten shillings would be enough or if I must
give a pound."

"If you give anything I think you ought to give a pound, father," said
Kathleen.

"I'll see when the time comes. I don't want to give less than anyone
else, but on the other hand I see no reason to give more than I need."

Kathleen put away her papers in the drawer of the writing-table and
stood up. She looked at her wrist-watch.

"Is Millicent ready?" asked Mrs. Skinner.

"There's plenty of time. We're only asked at four, and I don't think we
ought to arrive much before half-past. I told Davis to bring the car
round at four-fifteen."

Generally Kathleen drove the car, but on grand occasions like this
Davis, who was the gardener, put on his uniform and acted as chauffeur.
It looked better when you drove up, and naturally Kathleen didn't much
want to drive herself when she was wearing her new jumper. The sight of
her mother forcing her fingers one by one into her new gloves reminded
her that she must put on her own. She smelt them to see if any odour of
the cleaning still clung to them. It was very slight. She didn't believe
anyone would notice.

At last the door opened and Millicent came in. She wore her widow's
weeds. Mrs. Skinner never could get used to them, but of course she knew
that Millicent must wear them for a year. It was a pity they didn't suit
her; they suited some people. She had tried on Millicent's bonnet once,
with its white band and long veil, and thought she looked very well in
it. Of course she hoped dear Alfred would survive her, but if he didn't
she would never go out of weeds. Queen Victoria never had. It was
different for Millicent; Millicent was a much younger woman; she was
only thirty-six; it was very sad to be a widow at thirty-six. And there
wasn't much chance of her marrying again. Kathleen wasn't very likely to
marry now, she was thirty-five; last time Millicent and Harold had come
home she had suggested that they should have Kathleen to stay with them;
Harold had seemed willing enough, but Millicent said it wouldn't do.
Mrs. Skinner didn't know why not. It would give her a chance. Of course
they didn't want to get rid of her, but a girl ought to marry, and
somehow all the men they knew at home were married already. Millicent
said the climate was trying. It was true she was a bad colour. No one
would think now that Millicent had been the prettier of the two.
Kathleen had fined down as she grew older, of course some people said
she was too thin, but now that she had cut her hair, with her cheeks red
from playing golf in all weathers, Mrs. Skinner thought her quite
pretty. No one could say that of poor Millicent; she had lost her figure
completely; she had never been tall, and now that she had filled out she
looked stocky. She was a good deal too fat; Mrs. Skinner supposed it was
due to the tropical heat that prevented her from taking exercise. Her
skin was sallow and muddy; and her blue eyes, which had been her best
feature, had gone quite pale.

"She ought to do something about her neck," Mrs. Skinner reflected.
"She's becoming dreadfully jowly."

She had spoken of it once or twice to her husband. He remarked that
Millicent wasn't as young as she was; that might be, but she needn't let
herself go altogether. Mrs. Skinner made up her mind to talk to her
daughter seriously, but of course she must respect her grief, and she
would wait till the year was up. She was just as glad to have this
reason to put off a conversation the thought of which made her slightly
nervous. For Millicent was certainly changed. There was something sullen
in her face which made her mother not quite at home with her. Mrs.
Skinner liked to say aloud all the thoughts that passed through her
head, but Millicent when you made a remark (just to say something, you
know) had an awkward habit of not answering, so that you wondered
whether she had heard. Sometimes Mrs. Skinner found it so irritating,
that not to be quite sharp with Millicent she had to remind herself that
poor Harold had only been dead eight months.

The light from the window fell on the widow's heavy face as she advanced
silently, but Kathleen stood with her back to it. She watched her sister
for a moment.

"Millicent, there's something I want to say to you," she said. "I was
playing golf with Gladys Heywood this morning."

"Did you beat her?" asked Millicent.

Gladys Heywood was the Canon's only unmarried daughter.

"She told me something about you which I think you ought to know."

Millicent's eyes passed beyond her sister to the little girl watering
flowers in the garden.

"Have you told Annie to give Joan her tea in the kitchen, mother?" she
said.

"Yes, she'll have it when the servants have theirs."

Kathleen looked at her sister coolly.

"The Bishop spent two or three days at Singapore on his way home," she
went on. "He's very fond of travelling. He's been to Borneo, and he
knows a good many of the people that you know."

"He'll be interested to see you, dear," said Mrs. Skinner. "Did he know
poor Harold?"

"Yes, he met him at Kuala Solor. He remembers him very well. He says he
was shocked to hear of his death."

Millicent sat down and began to put on her black gloves. It seemed
strange to Mrs. Skinner that she received these remarks with complete
silence.

"Oh, Millicent," she said, "Harold's photo has disappeared. Have you
taken it?"

"Yes, I put it away."

"I should have thought you'd like to have it out."

Once more Millicent said nothing. It really was an exasperating habit.

Kathleen turned slightly in order to face her sister.

"Millicent, why did you tell us that Harold died of fever?"

The widow made no gesture, she looked at Kathleen with steady eyes, but
her sallow skin darkened with a flush. She did not reply.

"What _do_ you mean, Kathleen?" asked Mr. Skinner, with surprise.

"The Bishop says that Harold committed suicide."

Mrs. Skinner gave a startled cry, but her husband put out a deprecating
hand.

"Is it true, Millicent?"

"It is."

"But why didn't you tell us?"

Millicent paused for an instant. She fingered idly a piece of Brunei
brass which stood on the table by her side. That too had been a present
from Harold.

"I thought it better for Joan that her father should be thought to have
died of fever. I didn't want her to know anything about it."

"You've put us in an awfully awkward position," said Kathleen, frowning
a little. "Gladys Heywood said she thought it rather nasty of me not to
have told her the truth. I had the greatest difficulty in getting her to
believe that I knew absolutely nothing about it. She said her father was
rather put out. He says, after all the years we've known one another,
and considering that he married you, and the terms we've been on, and
all that, he does think we might have had confidence in him. And at all
events, if we didn't want to tell him the truth we needn't have told him
a lie."

"I must say I sympathise with him there," said Mr. Skinner, acidly.

"Of course I told Gladys that we weren't to blame. We only told them
what you told us."

"I hope it didn't put you off your game," said Millicent.

"Really, my dear, I think that is a most improper observation,"
exclaimed her father.

He rose from his chair, walked over to the empty fireplace, and from
force of habit stood in front of it with parted coat-tails.

"It was my business," said Millicent, "and if I chose to keep it to
myself I didn't see why I shouldn't."

"It doesn't look as if you had any affection for your mother if you
didn't even tell her," said Mrs. Skinner.

Millicent shrugged her shoulders.

"You might have known it was bound to come out," said Kathleen.

"Why? I didn't expect that two gossiping old parsons would have nothing
else to talk about than me."

"When the Bishop said he'd been to Borneo it's only natural that the
Heywoods should ask him if he knew you and Harold."

"All that's neither here nor there," said Mr. Skinner. "I think you
should certainly have told us the truth, and we could have decided what
was the best thing to do. As a solicitor I can tell you that in the long
run it only makes things worse if you attempt to hide them."

"Poor Harold," said Mrs. Skinner, and the tears began to trickle down
her raddled cheeks. "It seems dreadful. He was always a good son-in-law
to me. Whatever induced him to do such a dreadful thing?"

"The climate."

"I think you'd better give us all the facts, Millicent," said her
father.

"Kathleen will tell you."

Kathleen hesitated. What she had to say really was rather dreadful. It
seemed terrible that such things should happen to a family like theirs.

"The Bishop says he cut his throat."

Mrs. Skinner gasped and she went impulsively up to her bereaved
daughter. She wanted to fold her in her arms.

"My poor child," she sobbed.

But Millicent withdrew herself.

"Please don't fuss me, mother. I really can't stand being mauled about."

"Really, Millicent," said Mr. Skinner, with a frown.

He did not think she was behaving very nicely.

Mrs. Skinner dabbed her eyes carefully with her handkerchief and with a
sigh and a little shake of the head returned to her chair. Kathleen
fidgeted with the long chain she wore round her neck.

"It does seem rather absurd that I should have to be told the details of
my brother-in-law's death by a friend. It makes us all look such fools.
The Bishop wants very much to see you, Millicent; he wants to tell you
how much he feels for you." She paused, but Millicent did not speak. "He
says that Millicent had been away with Joan and when she came back she
found poor Harold lying dead on his bed."

"It must have been a great shock," said Mr. Skinner.

Mrs. Skinner began to cry again, but Kathleen put her hand gently on her
shoulder.

"Don't cry, mother," she said. "It'll make your eyes red and people will
think it so funny."

They were all silent while Mrs. Skinner, drying her eyes, made a
successful effort to control herself. It seemed very strange to her that
at this very moment she should be wearing in her toque the egrets that
poor Harold had given her.

"There's something else I ought to tell you," said Kathleen.

Millicent looked at her sister again, without haste, and her eyes were
steady, but watchful. She had the look of a person who is waiting for a
sound which he is afraid of missing.

"I don't want to say anything to wound you, dear," Kathleen went on,
"but there's something else and I think you ought to know it. The Bishop
says that Harold drank."

"Oh, my dear, how dreadful!" cried Mrs. Skinner. "What a shocking thing
to say. Did Gladys Heywood tell you? What did you say?"

"I said it was entirely untrue."

"This is what comes of making secrets of things," said Mr. Skinner,
irritably. "It's always the same. If you try and hush a thing up all
sorts of rumours get about which are ten times worse than the truth."

"They told the Bishop in Singapore that Harold had killed himself while
he was suffering from delirium tremens. I think for all our sakes you
ought to deny that, Millicent."

"It's such a dreadful thing to have said about anyone who's dead," said
Mrs. Skinner. "And it'll be so bad for Joan when she grows up."

"But what is the foundation of this story, Millicent?" asked her father.
"Harold was always very abstemious."

"Here," said the widow.

"Did he drink?"

"Like a fish."

The answer was so unexpected, and the tone so sardonic, that all three
of them were startled.

"Millicent, how can you talk like that of your husband when he's dead?"
cried her mother, clasping her neatly gloved hands. "I can't understand
you. You've been so strange since you came back. I could never have
believed that a girl of mine could take her husband's death like that."

"Never mind about that, mother," said Mr. Skinner. "We can go into all
that later."

He walked to the window and looked out at the sunny little garden, and
then walked back into the room. He took his pince-nez out of his pocket
and, though he had no intention of putting them on, wiped them with his
handkerchief. Millicent looked at him and in her eyes, unmistakably, was
a look of irony which was quite cynical. Mr. Skinner was vexed. He had
finished his week's work and he was a free man till Monday morning.
Though he had told his wife that this garden-party was a great nuisance
and he would much sooner have tea quietly in his own garden, he had been
looking forward to it. He did not care very much about Chinese missions,
but it would be interesting to meet the Bishop. And now this! It was not
the kind of thing he cared to be mixed up in; it was most unpleasant to
be told on a sudden that his son-in-law was a drunkard and a suicide.
Millicent was thoughtfully smoothing her white cuffs. Her coolness
irritated him; but instead of addressing her he spoke to his younger
daughter.

"Why don't you sit down, Kathleen? Surely there are plenty of chairs in
the room."

Kathleen drew forward a chair and without a word seated herself. Mr.
Skinner stopped in front of Millicent and faced her.

"Of course I see why you told us Harold had died of fever. I think it
was a mistake, because that sort of thing is bound to come out sooner or
later. I don't know how far what the Bishop has told the Heywoods
coincides with the facts, but if you will take my advice you will tell
us everything as circumstantially as you can, then we can see. We can't
hope that it will go no further now that Canon Heywood and Gladys know.
In a place like this people are bound to talk. It will make it easier
for all of us if we at all events know the exact truth."

Mrs. Skinner and Kathleen thought he put the matter very well. They
waited for Millicent's reply. She had listened with an impassive face;
that sudden flush had disappeared and it was once more, as usual, pasty
and sallow.

"I don't think you'll much like the truth if I tell it you," she said.

"You must know that you can count on our sympathy and understanding,"
said Kathleen gravely.

Millicent gave her a glance and the shadow of a smile flickered across
her set mouth. She looked slowly at the three of them. Mrs. Skinner had
an uneasy impression that she looked at them as though they were
mannequins at a dressmaker's. She seemed to live in a different world
from theirs and to have no connection with them.

"You know, I wasn't in love with Harold when I married him," she said
reflectively.

Mrs. Skinner was on the point of making an exclamation when a rapid
gesture of her husband, barely indicated, but after so many years of
married life perfectly significant, stopped her. Millicent went on. She
spoke with a level voice, slowly, and there was little change of
expression in her tone.

"I was twenty-seven, and no one else seemed to want to marry me. It's
true he was forty-four, and it seemed rather old, but he had a very good
position, hadn't he? I wasn't likely to get a better chance."

Mrs. Skinner felt inclined to cry again, but she remembered the party.

"Of course I see now why you took his photograph away," she said
dolefully.

"Don't, mother," exclaimed Kathleen.

It had been taken when he was engaged to Millicent and was a very good
photograph of Harold. Mrs. Skinner had always thought him quite a fine
man. He was heavily built, tall and perhaps a little too fat, but he
held himself well, and his presence was imposing. He was inclined to be
bald, even then, but men did go bald very early nowadays, and he said
that topees, sun-helmets, you know, were very bad for the hair. He had a
small dark moustache, and his face was deeply burned by the sun. Of
course his best feature was his eyes; they were brown and large, like
Joan's. His conversation was interesting. Kathleen said he was pompous,
but Mrs. Skinner didn't think him so, she didn't mind it if a man laid
down the law; and when she saw, as she very soon did, that he was
attracted by Millicent she began to like him very much. He was always
very attentive to Mrs. Skinner, and she listened as though she were
really interested when he spoke of his district, and told her of the big
game he had killed. Kathleen said he had a pretty good opinion of
himself, but Mrs. Skinner came of a generation which accepted without
question the good opinion that men had of themselves. Millicent saw very
soon which way the wind blew, and though she said nothing to her mother,
her mother knew that if Harold asked her she was going to accept him.

Harold was staying with some people who had been thirty years in Borneo
and they spoke well of the country. There was no reason why a woman
shouldn't live there comfortably; of course the children had to come
home when they were seven; but Mrs. Skinner thought it unnecessary to
trouble about that yet. She asked Harold to dine, and she told him they
were always in to tea. He seemed to be at a loose end, and when his
visit to his old friends was drawing to a close, she told him they would
be very much pleased if he would come and spend a fortnight with them.
It was towards the end of this that Harold and Millicent became engaged.
They had a very pretty wedding, they went to Venice for their honeymoon,
and then they started for the East. Millicent wrote from various ports
at which the ship touched. She seemed happy.

"People were very nice to me at Kuala Solor," she said. Kuala Solor was
the chief town of the state of Sembulu. "We stayed with the Resident and
everyone asked us to dinner. Once or twice I heard men ask Harold to
have a drink, but he refused; he said he had turned over a new leaf now
he was a married man. I didn't know why they laughed. Mrs. Gray, the
Resident's wife, told me they were all so glad Harold was married. She
said it was dreadfully lonely for a bachelor on one of the outstations.
When we left Kuala Solor Mrs. Gray said good-bye to me so funnily that I
was quite surprised. It was as if she was solemnly putting Harold in my
charge."

They listened to her in silence. Kathleen never took her eyes off her
sister's impassive face; but Mr. Skinner stared straight in front of him
at the Malay arms, krises and parangs, which hung on the wall above the
sofa on which his wife sat.

"It wasn't till I went back to Kuala Solor a year and a half later, that
I found out why their manner had seemed so odd." Millicent gave a queer
little sound like the echo of a scornful laugh. "I knew then a good deal
that I hadn't known before. Harold came to England that time in order to
marry. He didn't much mind who it was. Do you remember how we spread
ourselves out to catch him, mother? We needn't have taken so much
trouble."

"I don't know what you mean, Millicent," said Mrs. Skinner, not without
acerbity, for the insinuation of scheming did not please her. "I saw he
was attracted by you."

Millicent shrugged her heavy shoulders.

"He was a confirmed drunkard. He used to go to bed every night with a
bottle of whisky and empty it before morning. The Chief Secretary told
him he'd have to resign unless he stopped drinking. He said he'd give
him one more chance. He could take his leave then and go to England. He
advised him to marry so that when he got back he'd have someone to look
after him. Harold married me because he wanted a keeper. They took bets
in Kuala Solor on how long I'd make him stay sober."

"But he was in love with you," Mrs. Skinner interrupted. "You don't know
how he used to speak to me about you, and at that time you're speaking
of, when you went to Kuala Solor to have Joan, he wrote me such a
charming letter about you."

Millicent looked at her mother again and a deep colour dyed her sallow
skin. Her hands, lying on her lap, began to tremble a little. She
thought of those first months of her married life. The Government launch
took them to the mouth of the river, and they spent the night at the
bungalow which Harold said jokingly was their seaside residence. Next
day they went up-stream in a prahu. From the novels she had read she
expected the rivers of Borneo to be dark and strangely sinister, but the
sky was blue, dappled with little white clouds, and the green of the
mangroves and the nipahs, washed by the flowing water, glistened in the
sun. On each side stretched the pathless jungle, and in the distance,
silhouetted against the sky, was the rugged outline of a mountain. The
air in the early morning was fresh and buoyant. She seemed to enter upon
a friendly, fertile land, and she had a sense of spacious freedom. They
watched the banks for monkeys sitting on the branches of the tangled
trees, and once Harold pointed out something that looked like a log and
said it was a crocodile. The Assistant Resident, in ducks and a topee,
was at the landing-stage to meet them, and a dozen trim little soldiers
were lined up to do them honour. The Assistant Resident was introduced
to her. His name was Simpson.

"By Jove, sir," he said to Harold, "I'm glad to see you back. It's been
deuced lonely without you."

The Resident's bungalow, surrounded by a garden in which grew wildly all
manner of gay flowers, stood on the top of a low hill. It was a trifle
shabby and the furniture was sparse, but the rooms were cool and of
generous size.

"The kampong is down there," said Harold, pointing.

Her eyes followed his gesture, and from among the coconut trees rose the
beating of a gong. It gave her a queer little sensation in the heart.

Though she had nothing much to do the days passed easily enough. At dawn
a boy brought them their tea and they lounged about the verandah,
enjoying the fragrance of the morning (Harold in a singlet and a sarong,
she in a dressing-gown) till it was time to dress for breakfast. Then
Harold went to his office and she spent an hour or two learning Malay.
After tiffin he went back to his office while she slept. A cup of tea
revived them both, and they went for a walk or played golf on the
nine-hole links which Harold had made on a level piece of cleared jungle
below the bungalow. Night fell at six and Mr. Simpson came along to have
a drink. They chatted till their late dinner hour, and sometimes Harold
and Mr. Simpson played chess. The balmy evenings were enchanting. The
fireflies turned the bushes just below the verandah into
coldly-sparkling, tremulous beacons, and flowering trees scented the air
with sweet odours. After dinner they read the papers which had left
London six weeks before and presently went to bed. Millicent enjoyed
being a married woman, with a house of her own, and she was pleased with
the native servants, in their gay sarongs, who went about the bungalow,
with bare feet, silent but friendly. It gave her a pleasant sense of
importance to be the wife of the Resident. Harold impressed her by the
fluency with which he spoke the language, by his air of command, and by
his dignity. She went into the court-house now and then to hear him try
cases. The multifariousness of his duties and the competent way in which
he performed them aroused her respect. Mr. Simpson told her that Harold
understood the natives as well as any man in the country. He had the
combination of firmness, tact and good-humour which was essential in
dealing with that timid, revengeful and suspicious race. Millicent began
to feel a certain admiration for her husband.

They had been married nearly a year when two English naturalists came to
stay with them for a few days on their way to the interior. They brought
a pressing recommendation from the Governor, and Harold said he wanted
to do them proud. Their arrival was an agreeable change. Millicent asked
Mr. Simpson to dinner (he lived at the Fort and only dined with them on
Sunday nights) and after dinner the men sat down to play bridge.
Millicent left them presently and went to bed, but they were so noisy
that for some time she could not get to sleep. She did not know at what
hour she was awakened by Harold staggering into the room. She kept
silent. He made up his mind to have a bath before getting into bed; the
bath-house was just below their room, and he went down the steps that
led to it. Apparently he slipped, for there was a great clatter, and he
began to swear. Then he was violently sick. She heard him sluice the
buckets of water over himself and in a little while, walking very
cautiously this time, he crawled up the stairs and slipped into bed.
Millicent pretended to be asleep. She was disgusted. Harold was drunk.
She made up her mind to speak about it in the morning. What would the
naturalists think of him? But in the morning Harold was so dignified
that she hadn't quite the determination to refer to the matter. At eight
Harold and she, with their two guests, sat down to breakfast. Harold
looked round the table.

"Porridge," he said. "Millicent, your guests might manage a little
Worcester Sauce for breakfast, but I don't think they'll much fancy
anything else. Personally I shall content myself with a whisky and
soda."

The naturalists laughed, but shamefacedly.

"Your husband's a terror," said one of them.

"I should not think I had properly performed the duties of hospitality
if I sent you sober to bed on the first night of your visit," said
Harold, with his round, stately way of putting things.

Millicent, smiling acidly, was relieved to think that her guests had
been as drunk as her husband. The next evening she sat up with them and
the party broke up at a reasonable hour. But she was glad when the
strangers went on with their journey. Their life resumed its placid
course. Some months later Harold went on a tour of inspection of his
district and came back with a bad attack of malaria. This was the first
time she had seen the disease of which she had heard so much, and when
he recovered it did not seem strange to her that Harold was very shaky.
She found his manner peculiar. He would come back from the office and
stare at her with glazed eyes; he would stand on the verandah, swaying
slightly, but still dignified, and make long harangues about the
political situation in England; losing the thread of his discourse, he
would look at her with an archness which his natural stateliness made
somewhat disconcerting and say:

"Pulls you down dreadfully, this confounded malaria. Ah, little woman,
you little know the strain it puts upon a man to be an empire builder."

She thought that Mr. Simpson began to look worried, and once or twice,
when they were alone, he seemed on the point of saying something to her
which his shyness at the last moment prevented. The feeling grew so
strong that it made her nervous, and one evening when Harold, she knew
not why, had remained later than usual at the office she tackled him.

"What have you got to say to me, Mr. Simpson?" she broke out suddenly.

He blushed and hesitated.

"Nothing. What makes you think I have anything in particular to say to
you?"

Mr. Simpson was a thin, weedy youth of four and twenty, with a fine head
of waving hair which he took great pains to plaster down very flat. His
wrists were swollen and scarred with mosquito bites. Millicent looked at
him steadily.

"If it's something to do with Harold don't you think it would be kinder
to tell me frankly?"

He grew scarlet now. He shuffled uneasily on his rattan chair. She
insisted.

"I'm afraid you'll think it awful cheek," he said at last. "It's rotten
of me to say anything about my chief behind his back. Malaria's a rotten
thing, and after one's had a bout of it one feels awfully down and out."

He hesitated again. The corners of his mouth sagged as if he were going
to cry. To Millicent he seemed like a little boy.

"I'll be as silent as the grave," she said with a smile, trying to
conceal her apprehension. "Do tell me."

"I think it's a pity your husband keeps a bottle of whisky at the
office. He's apt to take a nip more often than he otherwise would."

Mr. Simpson's voice was hoarse with agitation. Millicent felt a sudden
coldness shiver through her. She controlled herself, for she knew that
she must not frighten the boy if she were to get out of him all there
was to tell. He was unwilling to speak. She pressed him, wheedling,
appealing to his sense of duty, and at last she began to cry. Then he
told her that Harold had been drunk more or less for the last fortnight,
the natives were talking about it, and they said that soon he would be
as bad as he had been before his marriage. He had been in the habit of
drinking a good deal too much then, but details of that time,
notwithstanding all her attempts, Mr. Simpson resolutely declined to
give her.

"Do you think he's drinking now?" she asked.

"I don't know."

Millicent felt herself on a sudden hot with shame and anger. The Fort,
as it was called because the rifles and the ammunition were kept there,
was also the court-house. It stood opposite the Resident's bungalow in a
garden of its own. The sun was just about to set and she did not need a
hat. She got up and walked across. She found Harold sitting in the
office behind the large hall in which he administered justice. There was
a bottle of whisky in front of him. He was smoking cigarettes and
talking to three or four Malays who stood in front of him listening with
obsequious and at the same time scornful smiles. His face was red.

The natives vanished.

"I came to see what you were doing," she said.

He rose, for he always treated her with elaborate politeness, and
lurched. Feeling himself unsteady he assumed an elaborate stateliness of
demeanour.

"Take a seat, my dear, take a seat. I was detained by press of work."

She looked at him with angry eyes.

"You're drunk," she said.

He stared at her, his eyes bulging a little, and a haughty look
gradually traversed his large and fleshy face.

"I haven't the remotest idea what you mean," he said.

She had been ready with a flow of wrathful expostulation, but suddenly
she burst into tears. She sank into a chair and hid her face. Harold
looked at her for an instant, then the tears began to trickle down his
own cheeks; he came towards her with outstretched arms and fell heavily
on his knees. Sobbing, he clasped her to him.

"Forgive me, forgive me," he said. "I promise you it shall not happen
again. It was that damned malaria."

"It's so humiliating," she moaned.

He wept like a child. There was something very touching in the
self-abasement of that big dignified man. Presently Millicent looked up.
His eyes, appealing and contrite, sought hers.

"Will you give me your word of honour that you'll never touch liquor
again?"

"Yes, yes. I hate it."

It was then she told him that she was with child. He was overjoyed.

"That is the one thing I wanted. That'll keep me straight."

They went back to the bungalow. Harold bathed himself and had a nap.
After dinner they talked long and quietly. He admitted that before he
married her he had occasionally drunk more than was good for him; in
outstations it was easy to fall into bad habits. He agreed to everything
that Millicent asked. And during the months before it was necessary for
her to go to Kuala Solor for her confinement, Harold was an excellent
husband, tender, thoughtful, proud and affectionate; he was
irreproachable. A launch came to fetch her, she was to leave him for six
weeks, and he promised faithfully to drink nothing during her absence.
He put his hands on her shoulders.

"I never break a promise," he said in his dignified way. "But even
without it, can you imagine that while you are going through so much, I
should do anything to increase your troubles?"

Joan was born. Millicent stayed at the Resident's and Mrs. Gray, his
wife, a kindly creature of middle age, was very good to her. The two
women had little to do during the long hours they were alone but to
talk, and in course of time Millicent learnt everything there was to
know of her husband's alcoholic past. The fact which she found most
difficult to reconcile herself to was that Harold had been told that the
only condition upon which he would be allowed to keep his post was that
he should bring back a wife. It caused in her a dull feeling of
resentment. And when she discovered what a persistent drunkard he had
been, she felt vaguely uneasy. She had a horrid fear that during her
absence he would not have been able to resist the craving. She went home
with her baby and a nurse. She spent a night at the mouth of the river
and sent a messenger in a canoe to announce her arrival. She scanned the
landing-stage anxiously as the launch approached it. Harold and Mr.
Simpson were standing there. The trim little soldiers were lined up. Her
heart sank, for Harold was swaying slightly, like a man who seeks to
keep his balance on a rolling ship, and she knew he was drunk.

It wasn't a very pleasant home-coming. She had almost forgotten her
mother and father and her sister who sat there silently listening to
her. Now she roused herself and became once more aware of their
presence. All that she spoke of seemed very far away.

"I knew that I hated him then," she said. "I could have killed him."

"Oh, Millicent, don't say that," cried her mother. "Don't forget that
he's dead, poor man."

Millicent looked at her mother, and for a moment a scowl darkened her
impassive face. Mr. Skinner moved uneasily.

"Go on," said Kathleen.

"When he found out that I knew all about him he didn't bother very much
more. In three months he had another attack of D.Ts."

"Why didn't you leave him?" said Kathleen.

"What would have been the good of that? He would have been dismissed
from the service in a fortnight. Who was to keep me and Joan? I had to
stay. And when he was sober I had nothing to complain of. He wasn't in
the least in love with me, but he was fond of me; I hadn't married him
because I was in love with him, but because I wanted to be married. I
did everything I could to keep liquor from him; I managed to get Mr.
Gray to prevent whisky being sent from Kuala Solor, but he got it from
the Chinese. I watched him as a cat watches a mouse. He was too cunning
for me. In a little while he had another outbreak. He neglected his
duties. I was afraid complaints would be made. We were two days from
Kuala Solor and that was our safeguard, but I suppose something was
said, for Mr. Gray wrote a private letter of warning to me. I showed it
to Harold. He stormed and blustered, but I saw he was frightened, and
for two or three months he was quite sober. Then he began again. And so
it went on till our leave became due.

"Before we came to stay here I begged and prayed him to be careful. I
didn't want any of you to know what sort of a man I had married. All the
time he was in England he was all right and before we sailed I warned
him. He'd grown to be very fond of Joan, and very proud of her, and she
was devoted to him. She always liked him better than she liked me. I
asked him if he wanted to have his child grow up, knowing that he was a
drunkard, and I found out that at last I'd got a hold on him. The
thought terrified him. I told him that _I_ wouldn't allow it, and if he
ever let Joan see him drunk I'd take her away from him at once. Do you
know, he grew quite pale when I said it. I fell on my knees that night
and thanked God, because I'd found a way of saving my husband.

"He told me that if I would stand by him, he would have another try. We
made up our minds to fight the thing together. And he tried so hard.
When he felt as though he _must_ drink he came to me. You know he was
inclined to be rather pompous; with me he was so humble, he was like a
child; he depended on me. Perhaps he didn't love me when he married me,
but he loved me then, me and Joan. I'd hated him, because of the
humiliation, because when he was drunk and tried to be dignified and
impressive he was loathsome; but now I got a strange feeling in my
heart. It wasn't love, but it was a queer, shy tenderness. He was
something more than my husband, he was like a child that I'd carried
under my heart for long and weary months. He was so proud of me and, you
know, I was proud too. His long speeches didn't irritate me any more,
and I only thought his stately ways rather funny and charming. At last
we won. For two years he never touched a drop. He lost his craving
entirely. He was even able to joke about it.

"Mr. Simpson had left us then and we had another young man called
Francis.

"'I'm a reformed drunkard, you know, Francis,' Harold said to him once.
'If it hadn't been for my wife I'd have been sacked long ago. I've got
the best wife in the world, Francis.'

"You don't know what it meant to me to hear him say that. I felt that
all I'd gone through was worth while. I was so happy."

She was silent. She thought of the broad, yellow and turbid river on
whose banks she had lived so long. The egrets, white and gleaming in the
tremulous sunset, flew down the stream in a flock, flew low and swift,
and scattered. They were like a ripple of snowy notes, sweet and pure
and spring-like, which an unseen hand drew forth, a divine arpeggio,
from an unseen harp. They fluttered along between the green banks,
wrapped in the shadows of evening, like the happy thoughts of a
contented mind.

"Then Joan fell ill. For three weeks we were very anxious. There was no
doctor nearer than Kuala Solor and we had to put up with the treatment
of a native dispenser. When she grew well again I took her down to the
mouth of the river in order to give her a breath of sea air. We stayed
there a week. It was the first time I had been separated from Harold
since I went away to have Joan. There was a fishing village, on piles,
not far from us, but really we were quite alone. I thought a great deal
about Harold, so tenderly, and all at once I knew that I loved him. I
was so glad when the prahu came to fetch us back, because I wanted to
tell him. I thought it would mean a good deal to him. I can't tell you
how happy I was. As we rowed up-stream the headman told me that Mr.
Francis had had to go up-country to arrest a woman who had murdered her
husband. He had been gone a couple of days.

"I was surprised that Harold was not on the landing-stage to meet me; he
was always very punctilious about that sort of thing; he used to say
that husband and wife should treat one another as politely as they
treated acquaintances; and I could not imagine what business had
prevented him. I walked up the little hill on which the bungalow stood.
The ayah brought Joan behind me. The bungalow was strangely silent.
There seemed to be no servants about, and I could not make it out; I
wondered if Harold hadn't expected me so soon and was out. I went up the
steps. Joan was thirsty and the ayah took her to the servants' quarters
to give her something to drink. Harold was not in the sitting-room. I
called him, but there was no answer. I was disappointed because I should
have liked him to be there. I went into our bedroom. Harold wasn't out
after all; he was lying on the bed asleep. I was really very much
amused, because he always pretended he never slept in the afternoon. He
said it was an unnecessary habit that we white people got into. I went
up to the bed softly. I thought I would have a joke with him. I opened
the mosquito curtains. He was lying on his back, with nothing on but a
sarong, and there was an empty whisky bottle by his side. He was drunk.

"It had begun again. All my struggles for so many years were wasted. My
dream was shattered. It was all hopeless. I was seized with rage."

Millicent's face grew once again darkly red and she clenched the arms of
the chair she sat in.

"I took him by the shoulders and shook him with all my might. 'You
beast,' I cried, 'you beast.' I was so angry I don't know what I did, I
don't know what I said. I kept on shaking him. You don't know how
loathsome he looked, that large fat man, half-naked; he hadn't shaved
for days, and his face was bloated and purple. He was breathing heavily.
I shouted at him, but he took no notice. I tried to drag him out of bed,
but he was too heavy. He lay there like a log. 'Open your eyes,' I
screamed. I shook him again. I hated him. I hated him all the more
because for a week I'd loved him with all my heart. He'd let me down.
He'd let me down. I wanted to tell him what a filthy beast he was. I
could make no impression on him. 'You shall open your eyes,' I cried. I
was determined to make him look at me."

The widow licked her dry lips. Her breath seemed hurried. She was
silent.

"If he was in that state I should have thought it best to have let him
go on sleeping," said Kathleen.

"There was a parang on the wall by the side of the bed. You know how
fond Harold was of curios."

"What's a parang?" said Mrs. Skinner.

"Don't be silly, mother," her husband replied irritably. "There's one on
the wall immediately behind you."

He pointed to the Malay sword on which for some reason his eyes had been
unconsciously resting. Mrs. Skinner drew quickly into the corner of the
sofa, with a little frightened gesture, as though she had been told that
a snake lay curled up beside her.

"Suddenly the blood spurted out from Harold's throat. There was a great
red gash right across it."

"Millicent," cried Kathleen, springing up and almost leaping towards
her, "what in God's name do you mean?"

Mrs. Skinner stood staring at her with wide startled eyes, her mouth
open.

"The parang wasn't on the wall any more. It was on the bed. Then Harold
opened his eyes. They were just like Joan's."

"I don't understand," said Mr. Skinner. "How could he have committed
suicide if he was in the state you describe?"

Kathleen took her sister's arm and shook her angrily.

"Millicent, for God's sake explain."

Millicent released herself.

"The parang was on the wall, I told you, I don't know what happened.
There was all the blood, and Harold opened his eyes. He died almost at
once. He never spoke, but he gave a sort of gasp."

At last Mr. Skinner found his voice.

"But, you wretched woman, it was murder."

Millicent, her face mottled with red, gave him such a look of scornful
hatred that he shrank back. Mrs. Skinner cried out.

"Millicent, you didn't do it, did you?"

Then Millicent did something that made them all feel as though their
blood were turned to ice in their veins. She chuckled.

"I don't know who else did," she said.

"My God," muttered Mr. Skinner.

Kathleen had been standing bolt upright with her hands to her heart, as
though its beating were intolerable.

"And what happened then?" she said.

"I screamed. I went to the window and flung it open. I called for the
ayah. She came across the compound with Joan. 'Not Joan,' I cried.
'Don't let her come.' She called the cook and told him to take the
child. I cried to her to hurry. And when she came I showed her Harold.
'The Tuan's killed himself!' I cried. She gave a scream and ran out of
the house.

"No one would come near. They were all frightened out of their wits. I
wrote a letter to Mr. Francis, telling him what had happened and asking
him to come at once."

"How do you mean you told him what had happened?"

"I said, on my return from the mouth of the river, I'd found Harold with
his throat cut. You know, in the tropics you have to bury people
quickly. I got a Chinese coffin, and the soldiers dug a grave behind the
Fort. When Mr. Francis came, Harold had been buried for nearly two days.
He was only a boy. I could do anything I wanted with him. I told him I'd
found the parang in Harold's hand and there was no doubt he'd killed
himself in an attack of delirium tremens. I showed him the empty bottle.
The servants said he'd been drinking hard ever since I left to go to the
sea. I told the same story at Kuala Solor. Everyone was very kind to me,
and the Government granted me a pension."

For a little while nobody spoke. At last Mr. Skinner gathered himself
together.

"I am a member of the legal profession. I'm a solicitor. I have certain
duties. We've always had a most respectable practice. You've put me in a
monstrous position."

He fumbled, searching for the phrases that played at hide and seek in
his scattered wits. Millicent looked at him with scorn.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"It was murder, that's what it was; do you think I can possibly connive
at it?"

"Don't talk nonsense, father," said Kathleen sharply. "You can't give up
your own daughter."

"You've put me in a monstrous position," he repeated.

Millicent shrugged her shoulders again.

"You made me tell you. And I've borne it long enough by myself. It was
time that all of you bore it too."

At that moment the door was opened by the maid.

"Davis has brought the car round, sir," she said.

Kathleen had the presence of mind to say something, and the maid
withdrew.

"We'd better be starting," said Millicent.

"I can't go to the party now," cried Mrs. Skinner, with horror. "I'm far
too upset. How can we face the Heywoods? And the Bishop will want to be
introduced to you."

Millicent made a gesture of indifference. Her eyes held their ironical
expression.

"We must go, mother," said Kathleen. "It would look so funny if we
stayed away." She turned on Millicent furiously. "Oh, I think the whole
thing is such frightfully bad form."

Mrs. Skinner looked helplessly at her husband. He went to her and gave
her his hand to help her up from the sofa.

"I'm afraid we must go, mother," he said.

"And me with the egrets in my toque that Harold gave me with his own
hands."

He led her out of the room, Kathleen followed close on their heels, and
a step or two behind came Millicent.

"You'll get used to it, you know," she said quietly. "At first I thought
of it all the time, but now I forget it for two or three days together.
It's not as if there was any danger."

They did not answer. They walked through the hall and out of the front
door. The three ladies got into the back of the car and Mr. Skinner
seated himself beside the driver. They had no self-starter; it was an
old car, and Davis went to the bonnet to crank it up. Mr. Skinner turned
round and looked petulantly at Millicent.

"I ought never to have been told," he said. "I think it was most selfish
of you."

Davis took his seat and they drove off to the Canon's garden-party.




THE VESSEL OF WRATH


There are few books in the world that contain more meat than the
"Sailing Directions" published by the Hydrographic Department by order
of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. They are handsome volumes,
bound (very flimsily) in cloth of different colours, and the most
expensive of them is cheap. For four shillings you can buy the "Yangtse
Kiang Pilot", 'containing a description of, and sailing directions for,
the Yangtse Kiang from the Wusung river to the highest navigable point,
including the Han Kiang, the Kialing Kiang, and the Min Kiang'; and for
three shillings you can get Part III of the "Eastern Archipelago Pilot",
'comprising the N.E. end of Celebes, Molucca and Gilolo passages, Banda
and Arafura Seas, and North, West, and South-West coasts of New Guinea.'
But it is not very safe to do so if you are a creature of settled habits
that you have no wish to disturb or if you have an occupation that holds
you fast to one place. These business-like books take you upon enchanted
journeys of the spirit; and their matter-of-fact style, the admirable
order, the concision with which the material is set before you, the
stern sense of the practical that informs every line, cannot dim the
poetry that, like the spice-laden breeze that assails your senses with a
more than material languor when you approach some of those magic islands
of the Eastern seas, blows with so sweet a fragrance through the printed
pages. They tell you the anchorages and the landing places, what
supplies you can get at each spot, and where you can get water; they
tell you the lights and buoys, tides, winds and weather that you will
find there. They give you brief information about the population and the
trade. And it is strange when you think how sedately it is all set down,
with no words wasted, that so much else is given you besides. What?
Well, mystery and beauty, romance and the glamour of the unknown. It is
no common book that offers you casually turning its pages such a
paragraph as this: 'Supplies. A few jungle fowl are preserved, the
island is also the resort of vast numbers of sea birds. Turtle are found
in the lagoon, as well as quantities of various fish, including grey
mullet, shark, and dog-fish; the seine cannot be used with any effect;
but there is a fish which may be taken on a rod. A small store of tinned
provisions and spirits is kept in a hut for the relief of shipwrecked
persons. Good water may be obtained from a well near the landing-place'.
Can the imagination want more material than this to go on a journey
through time and space?

In the volume from which I have copied this passage, the compilers with
the same restraint have described the Alas Islands. They are composed of
a group or chain of islands, 'for the most part low and wooded,
extending about 75 miles east and west, and 40 miles north and south'.
The information about them, you are told, is very slight; there are
channels between the different groups, and several vessels have passed
through them, but the passages have not been thoroughly explored, and
the positions of many of the dangers not yet determined; it is therefore
advisable to avoid them. The population of the group is estimated at
about 8000, of whom 200 are Chinese and 400 Mohammedans. The rest are
heathen. The principal island is called Baru, it is surrounded by a
reef, and here lives a Dutch Contrleur. His white house with its red
roof on the top of a little hill is the most prominent object that the
vessels of the Royal Netherlands Steam Packet Company see when every
other month on their way up to Macassar and every four weeks on their
way down to Merauke in Dutch New Guinea they touch at the island.

At a certain moment of the world's history the Contrleur was Mynheer
Evert Gruyter and he ruled the people who inhabited the Alas Islands
with firmness tempered by a keen sense of the ridiculous. He had thought
it a very good joke to be placed at the age of twenty-seven in a
position of such consequence and at thirty he was still amused by it.
There was no cable communication between his islands and Batavia, and
the mail arrived after so long a delay that even if he asked advice, by
the time he received it, it was useless, and so he equably did what he
thought best and trusted to his good fortune to keep out of trouble with
the authorities. He was very short, not more than five feet four in
height, and extremely fat; he was of a florid complexion. For coolness'
sake he kept his head shaved and his face was hairless. It was round and
red. His eyebrows were so fair that you hardly saw them; and he had
little twinkling blue eyes. He knew that he had no dignity, but for the
sake of his position made up for it by dressing very dapperly. He never
went to his office, nor sat in court, nor walked abroad but in spotless
white. His stengah-shifter, with its bright brass buttons, fitted him
very tightly and displayed the shocking fact that, young though he was,
he had a round and protruding belly. His good-humoured face shone with
sweat and he constantly fanned himself with a palm-leaf fan.

But in his house Mr. Gruyter preferred to wear nothing but a sarong and
then with his white podgy little body he looked like a fat funny boy of
sixteen. He was an early riser and his breakfast was always ready for
him at six. It never varied. It consisted of a slice of papaia, three
cold fried eggs, Edam cheese, sliced thin, and a cup of black coffee.
When he had eaten it, he smoked a large Dutch cigar, read the papers if
he had not read them through and through already, and then dressed to go
down to his office.

One morning while he was thus occupied his head boy came into his
bedroom and told him that Tuan Jones wanted to know if he could see him.
Mr. Gruyter was standing in front of a looking-glass. He had his
trousers on and was admiring his smooth chest. He arched his back in
order to throw it out and throw in his belly and with a good deal of
satisfaction gave his breast three or four resounding slaps. It was a
manly chest. When the boy brought the message he looked at his own eyes
in the mirror and exchanged a slightly ironic smile with them. He asked
himself what the devil his visitor could want. Evert Gruyter spoke
English, Dutch and Malay with equal facility, but he thought in Dutch.
He liked to do this. It seemed to him a pleasantly ribald language.

"Ask the tuan to wait and say I shall come directly." He put on his
tunic, over his naked body, buttoned it up, and strutted into the
sitting-room. The Rev. Owen Jones got up.

"Good-morning, Mr. Jones," said the Contrleur. "Have you come in to
have a peg with me before I start my day's work?"

Mr. Jones did not smile.

"I've come to see you upon a very distressing matter, Mr. Gruyter," he
answered.

The Contrleur was not disconcerted by his visitor's gravity nor
depressed by his words. His little blue eyes beamed amiably.

"Sit down, my dear fellow, and have a cigar."

Mr. Gruyter knew quite well that the Rev. Owen Jones neither drank nor
smoked, but it tickled something prankish in his nature to offer him a
drink and a smoke whenever they met. Mr. Jones shook his head.

Mr. Jones was in charge of the Baptist Mission on the Alas Islands. His
headquarters were at Baru, the largest of them, with the greatest
population, but he had meeting-houses under the care of native helpers
in several other islands of the group. He was a tall, thin melancholy
man, with a long face, sallow and drawn, of about forty. His brown hair
was already white on the temples and it receded from the forehead. This
gave him a look of somewhat vacuous intellectuality. Mr. Gruyter both
disliked and respected him. He disliked him because he was narrow-minded
and dogmatic. Himself a cheerful pagan who liked the good things of the
flesh and was determined to get as many of them as his circumstances
permitted, he had no patience with a man who disapproved of them all. He
thought the customs of the country suited its inhabitants and had no
patience with the missionary's energetic efforts to destroy a way of
life that for centuries had worked very well. He respected him because
he was honest, zealous and good. Mr. Jones, an Australian of Welsh
descent, was the only qualified doctor in the group and it was a comfort
to know that if you fell ill you need not rely only on a Chinese
practitioner, and none knew better than the Contrleur how useful to all
Mr. Jones's skill had been and with what charity he had given it. On the
occasion of an epidemic of influenza the missionary had done the work of
ten men and no storm short of a typhoon could prevent him from crossing
to one island or another if his help was needed. He lived with his
sister in a little white house about half a mile from the village and
when the Contrleur had arrived, came on board to meet him and begged
him to stay till he could get his own house in order. The Contrleur had
accepted and soon saw for himself with what simplicity the couple lived.
It was more than he could stand. Tea at three sparse meals a day and
when he lit his cigar Mr. Jones politely but firmly asked him to be good
enough not to smoke, since both his sister and he strongly disapproved
of it. In twenty-four hours Mr. Gruyter moved into his own house. He
fled, with panic in his heart, as though from a plague-stricken city.
The Contrleur was fond of a joke and he liked to laugh; to be with a
man who took your nonsense in deadly earnest and never even smiled at
your best story was more than flesh and blood could stand. The Rev. Owen
Jones was a worthy man, but as a companion he was impossible. His sister
was worse. Neither had a sense of humour, but whereas the missionary was
of a melancholy turn, doing his duty so conscientiously, with the
obvious conviction that everything in the world was hopeless, Miss Jones
was resolutely cheerful. She grimly looked on the bright side of things.
With the ferocity of an avenging angel she sought out the good in her
fellow-men. Miss Jones taught in the mission school and helped her
brother in his medical work. When he did operations she gave the
ansthetic and was matron, dresser and nurse of the tiny hospital which
on his own initiative Mr. Jones had added to the mission. But the
Contrleur was an obstinate little fellow and he never lost his capacity
of extracting amusement from the Rev. Owen's dour struggle with the
infirmities of human nature, and Miss Jones's ruthless optimism. He had
to get his fun where he could. The Dutch boats came in three times in
two months for a few hours and then he could have a good old crack with
the captain and chief engineer, and once in a blue moon a pearling
lugger came in from Thursday Island or Port Darwin and for two or three
days he had a grand time. They were rough fellows, the pearlers, for the
most part, but they were full of guts, and they had plenty of liquor on
board, and good stories to tell, and the Contrleur had them up to his
house and gave them a fine dinner and the party was only counted a
success if they were all too drunk to get back on the lugger again that
night. But beside the missionary the only white man who lived on Baru
was Ginger Ted, and he, of course, was a disgrace to civilisation. There
was not a single thing to be said in his favour. He cast discredit on
the white race. All the same, but for Ginger Ted the Contrleur
sometimes thought he would find life on the island of Baru almost more
than he could bear.

Oddly enough it was on account of this scamp that Mr. Jones, when he
should have been instructing the pagan young in the mysteries of the
Baptist faith, was paying Mr. Gruyter this early visit.

"Sit down, Mr. Jones," said the Contrleur. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, I've come to see you about the man they call Ginger Ted. What are
you going to do now?"

"Why, what's happened?"

"Haven't you heard? I thought the sergeant would have told you."

"I don't encourage the members of my staff to come to my private house
unless the matter is urgent," said the Contrleur rather grandly. "I am
unlike you, Mr. Jones, I only work in order to have leisure and I like
to enjoy my leisure without disturbance."

But Mr. Jones did not care much for small-talk and he was not interested
in general reflections.

"There was a disgraceful row in one of the Chinese shops last night.
Ginger Ted wrecked the place and half killed a Chinaman."

"Drunk again, I suppose," said the Contrleur placidly.

"Naturally. When is he anything else? They sent for the police and he
assaulted the sergeant. They had to have six men to get him to the
jail."

"He's a hefty fellow," said the Contrleur.

"I suppose you'll send him to Macassar."

Evert Gruyter returned the missionary's outraged look with a merry
twinkle. He was no fool and he knew already what Mr. Jones was up to. It
gave him considerable amusement to tease him a little.

"Fortunately my powers are wide enough to enable me to deal with the
situation myself," he answered.

"You have power to deport anyone you like, Mr. Gruyter, and I'm sure it
would save a lot of trouble if you got rid of the man altogether."

"I have the power of course, but I am sure you would be the last person
to wish me to use it arbitrarily."

"Mr. Gruyter, the man's presence here is a public scandal. He's never
sober from morning till night; it's notorious that he has relations with
one native woman after another."

"That is an interesting point, Mr. Jones. I had always heard that
alcoholic excess, though it stimulated sexual desire, prevented its
gratification. What you tell me about Ginger Ted does not seem to bear
out this theory."

The missionary flushed a dull red.

"These are physiological matters which at the moment I have no wish to
go into," he said, frigidly. "The behaviour of this man does
incalculable damage to the prestige of the white race, and his example
seriously hampers the efforts that are made in other quarters to induce
the people of these islands to lead a less vicious life. He's an
out-and-out bad lot."

"Pardon my asking, but have you made any attempts to reform him?"

"When he first drifted here I did my best to get in touch with him. He
repelled all my advances. When there was that first trouble I went to
him and talked to him straight from the shoulder. He swore at me."

"No one has a greater appreciation than I of the excellent work that you
and other missionaries do on these islands, but are you sure that you
always exercise your calling with all the tact possible?"

The Contrleur was rather pleased with this phrase. It was extremely
courteous and yet contained a reproof that he thought worth
administering. The missionary looked at him gravely. His sad brown eyes
were full of sincerity.

"Did Jesus exercise tact when he took a whip and drove the
money-changers from the Temple? No, Mr. Gruyter. Tact is the subterfuge
the lax avail themselves of to avoid doing their duty."

Mr. Jones's remark made the Contrleur feel suddenly that he wanted a
bottle of beer. The missionary leaned forward earnestly.

"Mr. Gruyter, you know this man's transgressions just as well as I do.
It's unnecessary for me to remind you of them. There are no excuses for
him. Now he really has overstepped the limit. You'll never have a better
chance than this. I beg you to use the power you have and turn him out
once for all."

The Contrleur's eyes twinkled more brightly than ever. He was having a
lot of fun. He reflected that human beings were much more amusing when
you did not feel called upon in dealing with them to allot praise or
blame.

"But, Mr. Jones, do I understand you right? Are you asking me to give
you an assurance to deport this man before I've heard the evidence
against him and listened to his defence?"

"I don't know what his defence can be."

The Contrleur rose from his chair and really he managed to get quite a
little dignity into his five feet four inches.

"I am here to administer justice according to the laws of the Dutch
Government. Permit me to tell you that I am exceedingly surprised that
you should attempt to influence me in my judicial functions."

The missionary was a trifle flustered. It had never occurred to him that
this little whipper-snapper of a boy, ten years younger than himself,
would dream of adopting such an attitude. He opened his mouth to explain
and apologise, but the Contrleur raised a podgy little hand.

"It is time for me to go to my office, Mr. Jones. I wish you
good-morning."

The missionary, taken aback, bowed and without another word walked out
of the room. He would have been surprised to see what the Contrleur did
when his back was turned. A broad grin broke on his lips and he put his
thumb to his nose and cocked a snook at the Rev. Owen Jones.

A few minutes later he went down to his office. His head clerk, who was
a Dutch half-caste, gave him his version of the previous night's row. It
agreed pretty well with Mr. Jones's. The court was sitting that day.

"Will you take Ginger Ted first, sir?" asked the clerk.

"I see no reason to do that. There are two or three cases held over from
the last sitting. I will take him in his proper order."

"I thought perhaps as he was a white man you would like to see him
privately, sir."

"The majesty of the law knows no difference between white and coloured,
my friend," said Mr. Gruyter, somewhat pompously.

The court was a big square room with wooden benches on which, crowded
together, sat natives of all kinds, Polynesians, Bugis, Chinese, Malays,
and they all rose when a door was opened and a sergeant announced the
arrival of the Contrleur. He entered with his clerk and took his place
on a little dais at a table of varnished pitch pine. Behind him was a
large engraving of Queen Wilhelmina. He despatched half a dozen cases
and then Ginger Ted was brought in. He stood in the dock, handcuffed,
with a warder on either side of him. The Contrleur looked at him with a
grave face, but he could not keep the amusement out of his eyes.

Ginger Ted was suffering from a hang-over. He swayed a little as he
stood and his eyes were vacant. He was a man still young, thirty
perhaps, of somewhat over the middle height, rather fat, with a bloated
red face and a shock of curly red hair. He had not come out of the
tussle unscathed. He had a black eye and his mouth was cut and swollen.
He wore khaki shorts, very dirty and ragged, and his singlet had been
almost torn off his back. A great rent showed the thick mat of red hair
with which his chest was covered, but showed also the astonishing
whiteness of his skin. The Contrleur looked at the charge sheet. He
called the evidence. When he had heard it, when he had seen the Chinaman
whose head Ginger Ted had broken with a bottle, when he had heard the
agitated story of the sergeant who had been knocked flat when he tried
to arrest him, when he had listened to the tale of the havoc wrought by
Ginger Ted who in his drunken fury had smashed everything he could lay
hands on, he turned and addressed the accused in English.

"Well, Ginger, what have you got to say for yourself?"

"I was blind. I don't remember a thing about it. If they say I half
killed 'im I suppose I did. I'll pay the damage if they'll give me time.

"You will, Ginger," said the Contrleur, "but it's me who'll give you
time."

He looked at Ginger Ted for a minute in silence. He was an unappetising
object. A man who had gone completely to pieces. He was horrible. It
made you shudder to look at him and if Mr. Jones had not been so
officious, at that moment the Contrleur would certainly have ordered
him to be deported.

"You've been a trouble ever since you came to the islands, Ginger.
You're a disgrace. You're incorrigibly idle. You've been picked up in
the street dead drunk time and time again. You've kicked up row after
row. You're hopeless. I told you the last time you were brought here
that if you were arrested again I should deal with you severely. You've
gone the limit this time and you're for it. I sentence you to six
months' hard labour."

"Me?"

"You."

"By God, I'll kill you when I come out."

He burst into a string of oaths both filthy and blasphemous. Mr. Gruyter
listened scornfully. You can swear much better in Dutch than in English
and there was nothing that Ginger Ted said that he could not have
effectively capped.

"Be quiet," he ordered. "You make me tired."

The Contrleur repeated his sentence in Malay and the prisoner was led
struggling away.

Mr. Gruyter sat down to tiffin in high good-humour. It was astonishing
how amusing life could be if you exercised a little ingenuity. There
were people in Amsterdam, and even in Batavia and Surabaya, who looked
upon his island home as a place of exile. They little knew how agreeable
it was and what fun he could extract from unpromising material. They
asked him whether he did not miss the club and the races and the cinema,
the dances that were held once a week at the Casino and the society of
Dutch ladies. Not at all. He liked comfort. The substantial furniture of
the room in which he sat had a satisfying solidity. He liked reading
French novels of a frivolous nature and he appreciated the sensation of
reading one after the other without the uneasiness occasioned by the
thought that he was wasting his time. It seemed to him a great luxury to
waste time. When his young man's fancy turned to thoughts of love his
head boy brought to the house a little dark-skinned bright-eyed creature
in a sarong. He took care to form no connection of a permanent nature.
He thought that change kept the heart young. He enjoyed freedom and was
not weighed down by a sense of responsibility. He did not mind the heat.
It made a sluice over with cold water half a dozen times a day a
pleasure that had almost an sthetic quality. He played the piano. He
wrote letters to his friends in Holland. He felt no need for the
conversation of intellectual persons. He liked a good laugh, but he
could get that out of a fool just as well as out of a professor of
philosophy. He had a notion that he was a very wise little man.

Like all good Dutchmen in the Far East he began his lunch with a small
glass of Hollands gin. It has a musty acrid flavour, and the taste for
it must be acquired, but Mr. Gruyter preferred it to any cocktail. When
he drank it he felt besides that he was upholding the traditions of his
race. Then he had _rystafel_. He had it every day. He heaped a
soup-plate high with rice, and then, his three boys waiting on him,
helped himself to the curry that one handed him, to the fried egg that
another brought, and to the condiment presented by the third. Then each
one brought another dish, of bacon, or bananas, or pickled fish, and
presently his plate was piled high in a huge pyramid. He stirred it all
together and began to eat. He ate slowly and with relish. He drank a
bottle of beer.

He did not think while he was eating. His attention was applied to the
mass in front of him and he consumed it with a happy concentration. It
never palled on him. And when he had emptied the great plate it was a
compensation to think that next day he would have _rystafel_ again. He
grew tired of it as little as the rest of us grow tired of bread. He
finished his beer and lit his cigar. The boy brought him a cup of
coffee. He leaned back in his chair then and allowed himself the luxury
of reflection.

It tickled him to have sentenced Ginger Ted to the richly deserved
punishment of six months' hard labour, and he smiled when he thought of
him working on the roads with the other prisoners. It would have been
silly to deport from the island the one man with whom he could
occasionally have a heart-to-heart talk, and besides, the satisfaction
it would have given the missionary would have been bad for that
gentleman's character. Ginger Ted was a scamp and a scallywag, but the
Contrleur had a kindly feeling for him. They had drunk many a bottle of
beer in one another's company and when the pearl-fishers from Port
Darwin came in and they all made a night of it, they had got gloriously
tight together. The Contrleur liked the reckless way in which Ginger
Ted squandered the priceless treasure of life.

Ginger Ted had wandered in one day on the ship that was going up from
Merauke to Macassar. The captain did not know how he had found his way
there, but he had travelled steerage with the natives, and he stopped
off at the Alas Islands because he liked the look of them. Mr. Gruyter
had a suspicion that their attraction consisted perhaps in their being
under the Dutch flag and so out of British jurisdiction. But his papers
were in order, so there was no reason why he should not stay. He said
that he was buying pearl-shell for an Australian firm, but it soon
appeared that his commercial undertakings were not serious. Drink,
indeed, took up so much of his time that he had little left over for
other pursuits. He was in receipt of two pounds a week, paid monthly,
which came regularly to him from England. The Contrleur guessed that
this sum was paid only so long as he kept well away from the persons who
sent it. It was anyway too small to permit him any liberty of movement.
Ginger Ted was reticent. The Contrleur discovered that he was an
Englishman, this he learnt from his passport, which described him as
Edward Wilson, and that he had been in Australia. But why he had left
England and what he had done in Australia he had no notion. Nor could he
ever quite tell to what class Ginger Ted belonged. When you saw him in a
filthy singlet and a pair of ragged trousers, a battered topee on his
head, with the pearl-fishers and heard his conversation, coarse, obscene
and illiterate, you thought he must be a sailor before the mast who had
deserted his ship, or a labourer, but when you saw his handwriting you
were surprised to find that it was that of a man not without at least
some education, and on occasion when you got him alone, if he had had a
few drinks but was not yet drunk, he would talk of matters that neither
a sailor nor a labourer would have been likely to know anything about.
The Contrleur had a certain sensitiveness and he realised that Ginger
Ted did not speak to him as an inferior to a superior but as an equal.
Most of his remittance was mortgaged before he received it, and the
Chinamen to whom he owed money were standing at his elbow when the
monthly letter was delivered to him, but with what was left he proceeded
to get drunk. It was then that he made trouble, for when drunk he grew
violent and was then likely to commit acts that brought him into the
hands of the police. Hitherto Mr. Gruyter had contented himself with
keeping him in jail till he was sober and giving him a talking to. When
he was out of money he cadged what drink he could from anyone who would
give it him. Rum, brandy, arak, it was all the same to him. Two or three
times Mr. Gruyter had got him work on plantations run by Chinese in one
or other of the islands, but he could not stick to it, and in a few
weeks was back again at Baru on the beach. It was a miracle how he kept
body and soul together. He had, of course, a way with him. He picked up
the various dialects spoken on the islands, and knew how to make the
natives laugh. They despised him, but they respected his physical
strength, and they liked his company. He was as a result never at a loss
for a meal or a mat to sleep on. The strange thing was, and it was this
that chiefly outraged the Rev. Owen Jones, that he could do anything he
liked with a woman. The Contrleur could not imagine what it was they
saw in him. He was casual with them and rather brutal. He took what they
gave him, but seemed incapable of gratitude. He used them for his
pleasure and then flung them indifferently away. Once or twice this had
got him into trouble, and Mr. Gruyter had had to sentence an angry
father for sticking a knife in Ginger Ted's back one night, and a
Chinese woman had sought to poison herself by swallowing opium because
he had deserted her. Once Mr. Jones came to the Contrleur in a great
state because the beachcomber had seduced one of his converts. The
Contrleur agreed that it was very deplorable, but could only advise Mr.
Jones to keep a sharp eye on these young persons. The Contrleur liked
it less when he discovered that a girl whom he fancied a good deal
himself and had been seeing for several weeks had all the time been
according her favours also to Ginger Ted. When he thought of this
particular incident he smiled again at the thought of Ginger Ted doing
six months' hard labour. It is seldom in this life that in the process
of doing your bounden duty you can get back on a fellow who has played
you a dirty trick.

A few days later Mr. Gruyter was taking a walk, partly for exercise and
partly to see that some job he wanted done was being duly proceeded
with, when he passed a gang of prisoners working under the charge of a
warder. Among them he saw Ginger Ted. He wore the prison sarong, a dingy
tunic called in Malay a _baju_, and his own battered topi. They were
repairing the road, and Ginger Ted was wielding a heavy pick. The way
was narrow and the Contrleur saw that he must pass within a foot of
him. He remembered his threats. He knew that Ginger Ted was a man of
violent passion and the language he had used in the dock made it plain
that he had not seen what a good joke it was of the Contrleur's to
sentence him to six months' hard labour. If Ginger Ted suddenly attacked
him with the pick, nothing on God's earth could save him. It was true
that the warder would immediately shoot him down, but meanwhile the
Contrleur's head would be bashed in. It was with a funny little feeling
in the pit of his stomach that Mr. Gruyter walked through the gang of
prisoners. They were working in pairs a few feet from one another. He
set his mind on neither hastening his pace nor slackening it. As he
passed Ginger Ted, the man swung his pick into the ground and looked up
at the Contrleur and as he caught his eye winked. The Contrleur
checked the smile that rose to his lips and with official dignity strode
on. But that wink, so lusciously full of sardonic humour, filled him
with satisfaction. If he had been the Caliph of Bagdad instead of a
junior official in the Dutch Civil Service, he would forthwith have
released Ginger Ted, sent slaves to bath and perfume him, and having
clothed him in a golden robe entertained him to a sumptuous repast.

Ginger Ted was an exemplary prisoner and in a month or two the
Contrleur, having occasion to send a gang to do some work on one of the
outlying islands, included him in it. There was no jail there, so the
ten fellows he sent, under the charge of a warder, were billeted on the
natives and after their day's work lived like free men. The job was
sufficient to take up the rest of Ginger Ted's sentence. The Contrleur
saw him before he left.

"Look here, Ginger," he said to him, "here's ten guilder for you so that
you can buy yourself tobacco when you're gone."

"Couldn't you make it a bit more? There's eight pounds a month coming in
regularly."

"I think that's enough. I'll keep the letters that come for you, and
when you get back you'll have a tidy sum. You'll have enough to take you
anywhere you want to go."

"I'm very comfortable here," said Ginger Ted.

"Well, the day you come back, clean yourself up and come over to my
house. We'll have a bottle of beer together."

"That'll be fine. I guess I'll be ready for a good crack then."

Now chance steps in. The island to which Ginger Ted had been sent was
called Maputiti, and like all the rest of them it was rocky heavily
wooded and surrounded by a reef. There was a village among coconuts on
the sea-shore opposite the opening of the reef and another village on a
brackish lake in the middle of the island. Of this some of the
inhabitants had been converted to Christianity. Communication with Baru
was effected by a launch that touched at the various islands at
irregular intervals. It carried passengers and produce. But the
villagers were seafaring folk, and if they had to communicate urgently
with Baru, manned a prahu and sailed the fifty miles or so that
separated them from it. It happened that when Ginger Ted's sentence had
but another fortnight to run the Christian headman of the village on the
lake was taken suddenly ill. The native remedies availed him nothing and
he writhed in agony. Messengers were sent to Baru imploring the
missionary's help; but as ill luck would have it Mr. Jones was suffering
at the moment from an attack of malaria. He was in bed and unable to
move. He talked the matter over with his sister.

"It sounds like acute appendicitis," he told her.

"You can't go, Owen," she said.

"I can't let the man die."

Mr. Jones had a temperature of a hundred and four. His head was aching
like mad. He had been delirious all night. His eyes were shining
strangely and his sister felt that he was holding on to his wits by a
sheer effort of will.

"You couldn't operate in the state you're in."

"No, I couldn't. Then Hassan must go."

Hassan was the dispenser.

"You couldn't trust Hassan. He'd never dare to do an operation on his
own responsibility. And they'd never let him. I'll go. Hassan can stay
here and look after you."

"You can't remove an appendix?"

"Why not? I've seen you do it. I've done lots of minor operations."

Mr. Jones felt he didn't quite understand what she was saying.

"Is the launch in?"

"No, it's gone to one of the islands. But I can go in the prahu the men
came in."

"You? I wasn't thinking of you. You can't go."

"I'm going, Owen."

"Going where?" he said.

She saw that his mind was wandering already. She put her hand soothingly
on his dry forehead. She gave him a dose of medicine. He muttered
something and she realised that he did not know where he was. Of course
she was anxious about him, but she knew that his illness was not
dangerous, and she could leave him safely to the mission boy who was
helping her nurse him and to the native dispenser. She slipped out of
the room. She put her toilet things, a night-dress, and a change of
clothes into a bag. A little chest with surgical instruments, bandages
and antiseptic dressings was kept always ready. She gave them to the two
natives who had come over from Maputiti, and telling the dispenser what
she was going to do gave him instructions to inform her brother when he
was able to listen. Above all he was not to be anxious about her. She
put on her topee and sallied forth. The mission was about half a mile
from the village. She walked quickly. At the end of the jetty the prahu
was waiting. Six men manned it. She took her place in the stern and they
set off with a rapid stroke. Within the reef the sea was calm, but when
they crossed the bar they came upon a long swell. But this was not the
first journey of the sort Miss Jones had taken and she was confident of
the seaworthiness of the boat she was in. It was noon and the sun beat
down from a sultry sky. The only thing that harassed her was that they
could not arrive before dark, and if she found it necessary to operate
at once she could count only on the light of hurricane lamps.

Miss Jones was a woman of hard on forty. Nothing in her appearance would
have prepared you for such determination as she had just shown. She had
an odd drooping gracefulness, which suggested that she might be swayed
by every breeze; it was almost an affectation; and it made the strength
of character which you soon discovered in her seem positively monstrous.
She was flat-chested, tall and extremely thin. She had a long sallow
face and she was much afflicted with prickly heat. Her lank brown hair
was drawn back straight from her forehead. She had rather small eyes,
grey in colour, and because they were somewhat too close they gave her
face a shrewish look. Her nose was long and thin and a trifle red. She
suffered a good deal from indigestion. But this infirmity availed
nothing against her ruthless determination to look upon the bright side
of things. Firmly persuaded that the world was evil and men unspeakably
vicious, she extracted any little piece of decency she could find in
them with the modest pride with which a conjurer extracts a rabbit from
a hat. She was quick, resourceful and competent. When she arrived on the
island she saw that there was not a moment to lose if she was to save
the headman's life. Under the greatest difficulties, showing a native
how to give the ansthetic, she operated, and for the next three days
nursed the patient with anxious assiduity. Everything went very well and
she realised that her brother could not have made a better job of it.
She waited long enough to take out the stitches and then prepared to go
home. She could flatter herself that she had not wasted her time. She
had given medical attention to such as needed it, she had strengthened
the small Christian community in its faith, admonished such as were lax
and cast the good seed in places where it might be hoped under divine
providence to take root.

The launch, coming from one of the other islands, put in somewhat late
in the afternoon, but it was full moon and they expected to reach Baru
before midnight. They brought her things down to the wharf and the
people who were seeing her off stood about repeating their thanks. Quite
a little crowd collected. The launch was loaded with sacks of copra, but
Miss Jones was used to its strong smell and it did not incommode her.
She made herself as comfortable a place to sit in as she could, and
waiting for the launch to start, chatted with her grateful flock. She
was the only passenger. Suddenly a group of natives emerged from the
trees that embowered the little village on the lagoon and she saw that
among them was a white man. He wore a prison sarong and a baju. He had
long red hair. She at once recognised Ginger Ted. A policeman was with
him. They shook hands and Ginger Ted shook hands with the villagers who
accompanied him. They bore bundles of fruit and a jar which Miss Jones
guessed contained native spirit, and these they put in the launch. She
discovered to her surprise that Ginger Ted was coming with her. His term
was up and instructions had arrived that he was to be returned to Baru
in the launch. He gave her a glance, but did not nod--indeed Miss Jones
turned away her head--and stepped in. The mechanic started his engine
and in a moment they were jug-jugging through the channel in the lagoon.
Ginger Ted clambered on to a pile of sacks and lit a cigarette.

Miss Jones ignored him. Of course she knew him very well. Her heart sank
when she thought that he was going to be once more in Baru, creating a
scandal and drinking, a peril to the women and a thorn in the flesh of
all decent people. She knew the steps her brother had taken to have him
deported and she had no patience with the Contrleur, who would not see
a duty that stared him so plainly in the face. When they had crossed the
bar and were in the open sea Ginger Ted took the stopper out of the jar
of arak and putting his mouth to it took a long pull. Then he handed the
jar to the two mechanics who formed the crew. One was a middle-aged man
and the other a youth.

"I do not wish you to drink anything while we are on the journey," said
Miss Jones sternly to the elder one.

He smiled at her and drank.

"A little arak can do no one any harm," he answered. He passed the jar
to his companion, who drank also.

"If you drink again I shall complain to the Contrleur," said Miss
Jones.

The elder man said something she could not understand, but which she
suspected was very rude, and passed the jar back to Ginger Ted. They
went along for an hour or more. The sea was like glass and the sun set
radiantly. It set behind one of the islands and for a few minutes
changed it into a mystic city of the skies. Miss Jones turned round to
watch it and her heart was filled with gratitude for the beauty of the
world.

"And only man is vile," she quoted to herself.

They went due east. In the distance was a little island which she knew
they passed close by. It was uninhabited. A rocky islet thickly grown
with virgin forest. The boatman lit his lamps. The night fell and
immediately the sky was thick with stars. The moon had not yet risen.
Suddenly there was a slight jar and the launch began to vibrate
strangely. The engine rattled. The head mechanic, calling to his mate to
take the helm, crept under the housing. They seemed to be going more
slowly. The engine stopped. She asked the youth what was the matter, but
he did not know. Ginger Ted got down from the top of the copra sacks and
slipped under the housing. When he reappeared she would have liked to
ask him what had happened, but her dignity prevented her. She sat still
and occupied herself with her thoughts. There was a long swell and the
launch rolled slightly. The mechanic emerged once more into view and
started the engine. Though it rattled like mad they began to move. The
launch vibrated from stem to stern. They went very slowly. Evidently
something was amiss, but Miss Jones was exasperated rather than alarmed.
The launch was supposed to do six knots, but now it was just crawling
along; at that rate they would not get into Baru till long, long after
midnight. The mechanic, still busy under the housing, shouted out
something to the man at the helm. They spoke in Bugi, of which Miss
Jones knew very little. But after a while she noticed that they had
changed their course and seemed to be heading for the little uninhabited
island a good deal to the lee of which they should have passed.

"Where are we going?" she asked the helmsman with sudden misgiving.

He pointed to the islet. She got up and went to the housing and called
to the man to come out.

"You're not going there? Why? What's the matter?"

"I can't get to Baru," he said.

"But you must. I insist. I order you to go to Baru."

The man shrugged his shoulders. He turned his back on her and slipped
once more under the housing. Then Ginger Ted addressed her.

"One of the blades of the propeller has broken off. He thinks he can get
as far as that island. We shall have to stay the night there and he'll
put on a new propeller in the morning when the tide's out."

"I can't spend the night on an uninhabited island with three men," she
cried.

"A lot of women would jump at it."

"I insist on going to Baru. Whatever happens we must get there
to-night."

"Don't get excited, old girl. We've got to beach the boat to put a new
propeller on, and we shall be all right on the island."

"How dare you speak to me like that! I think you're very insolent."

"You'll be O.K. We've got plenty of grub and we'll have a snack when we
land. You have a drop of arak and you'll feel like a house on fire."

"You're an impertinent man. If you don't go to Baru I'll have you all
put in prison."

"We're not going to Baru. We can't. We're going to that island and if
you don't like it you can get out and swim."

"Oh, you'll pay for this."

"Shut up, you old cow," said Ginger Ted.

Miss Jones gave a gasp of anger. But she controlled herself. Even out
there, in the middle of the ocean, she had too much dignity to bandy
words with that vile wretch. The launch, the engine rattling horribly,
crawled on. It was pitch dark now, and she could no longer see the
island they were making for. Miss Jones, deeply incensed, sat with lips
tight shut and a frown on her brow; she was not used to being crossed.
Then the moon rose and she could see the bulk of Ginger Ted sprawling on
the top of the piled sacks of copra. The glimmer of his cigarette was
strangely sinister. Now the island was vaguely outlined against the sky.
They reached it and the boatman ran the launch on to the beach. Suddenly
Miss Jones gave a gasp. The truth had dawned on her and her anger
changed to fear. Her heart beat violently. She shook in every limb. She
felt dreadfully faint. She saw it all. Was the broken propeller a put-up
job or was it an accident? She could not be certain; anyhow, she knew
that Ginger Ted would seize the opportunity. Ginger Ted would rape her.
She knew his character. He was mad about women. That was what he had
done, practically, to the girl at the mission, such a good little thing
she was and an excellent sempstress; they would have prosecuted him for
that and he would have been sentenced to years of imprisonment only very
unfortunately the innocent child had gone back to him several times and
indeed had only complained of his ill usage when he left her for
somebody else. They had gone to the Contrleur about it, but he had
refused to take any steps, saying in that coarse way of his that even if
what the girl said was true, it didn't look very much as though it had
been an altogether unpleasant experience. Ginger Ted was a scoundrel.
And she was a white woman. What chance was there that he would spare
her? None. She knew men. But she must pull herself together. She must
keep her wits about her. She must have courage. She was determined to
sell her virtue dearly, and if he killed her----well, she would rather
die than yield. And if she died she would rest in the arms of Jesus. For
a moment a great light blinded her eyes and she saw the mansions of her
Heavenly Father. They were a grand and sumptuous mixture of a picture
palace and a railway station. The mechanics and Ginger Ted jumped out of
the launch and, waist-deep in water, gathered round the broken
propeller. She took advantage of their preoccupation to get her case of
surgical instruments out of the box. She took out the four scalpels it
contained and secreted them in her clothing. If Ginger Ted touched her
she would not hesitate to plunge a scalpel in his heart.

"Now then, miss, you'd better get out," said Ginger Ted. "You'll be
better off on the beach than in the boat."

She thought so too. At least there she would have freedom of action.
Without a word she clambered over the copra sacks. He offered her his
hand.

"I don't want your help," she said coldly.

"You can go to hell," he answered.

It was a little difficult to get out of the boat without showing her
legs, but by the exercise of considerable ingenuity she managed it.

"Damned lucky we've got something to eat. We'll make a fire and then
you'd better have a snack and a nip of arak."

"I want nothing. I only want to be left alone."

"It won't hurt me if you go hungry."

She did not answer. She walked, with head erect, along the beach. She
held the largest scalpel in her closed fist. The moon allowed her to see
where she was going. She looked for a place to hide. The thick forest
came down to the very edge of the beach; but, afraid of its darkness
(after all, she was but a woman), she dared not plunge into its depth.
She did not know what animals lurked there or what dangerous snakes.
Besides, her instinct told her that it was better to keep those three
bad men in sight; then if they came towards her she would be prepared.
Presently she found a little hollow. She looked round. They seemed to be
occupied with their own affairs and they could not see her. She slipped
in. There was a rock between them and her so that she was hidden from
them and yet could watch them. She saw them go to and from the boat
carrying things. She saw them build a fire. It lit them luridly and she
saw them sit around it and eat, and she saw the jar of arak passed from
one to the other. They were all going to get drunk. What would happen to
her then? It might be that she could cope with Ginger Ted, though his
strength terrified her, but against three she would be powerless. A mad
idea came to her to go to Ginger Ted and fall on her knees before him
and beg him to spare her. He must have some spark of decent feeling in
him and she had always been so convinced that there was good even in the
worst of men. He must have had a mother. Perhaps he had a sister. Ah,
but how could you appeal to a man blinded with lust and drunk with arak?
She began to feel terribly weak. She was afraid she was going to cry.
That would never do. She needed all her self-control. She bit her lip.
She watched them, like a tiger watching his prey; no, not like that,
like a lamb watching three hungry wolves. She saw them put more wood on
the fire, and Ginger Ted, in his sarong, silhouetted by the flames.
Perhaps after he had had his will of her he would pass her on to the
others. How could she go back to her brother when such a thing had
happened to her? Of course he would be sympathetic, but would he ever
feel quite the same to her again? It would break his heart. And perhaps
he would think that she ought to have resisted more. For his sake
perhaps it would be better if she said nothing about it. Naturally the
men would say nothing. It would mean twenty years in prison for them.
But then supposing she had a baby. Miss Jones instinctively clenched her
hands with horror and nearly cut herself with the scalpel. Of course it
would only infuriate them if she resisted.

"What shall I do?" she cried. "What have I done to deserve this?"

She flung herself down on her knees and prayed to God to save her. She
prayed long and earnestly. She reminded God that she was a virgin and
just mentioned, in case it had slipped the divine memory, how much St.
Paul had valued that excellent state. And then she peeped round the rock
again. The three men appeared to be smoking and the fire was dying down.
Now was the time that Ginger Ted's lewd thoughts might be expected to
turn to the woman who was at his mercy. She smothered a cry, for
suddenly he got up and walked in her direction. She felt all her muscles
grow taut, and though her heart was beating furiously she clenched the
scalpel firmly in her hand. But it was for another purpose that Ginger
Ted had got up. Miss Jones blushed and looked away. He strolled slowly
back to the others and sitting down again raised the jar of arak to his
lips. Miss Jones, crouching behind the rock, watched with straining
eyes. The conversation round the fire grew less and presently she
divined, rather than saw, that the two natives wrapped themselves in
blankets and composed themselves to slumber. She understood. This was
the moment Ginger Ted had been waiting for. When they were fast asleep
he would get up cautiously and without a sound, in order not to wake the
others, creep stealthily towards her. Was it that he was unwilling to
share her with them or did he know that his deed was so dastardly that
he did not wish them to know of it? After all, he was a white man and
she was a white woman. He could not have sunk so low as to allow her to
suffer the violence of natives. But his plan, which was so obvious to
her, had given her an idea; when she saw him coming she would scream,
she would scream so loudly that it would wake the two mechanics. She
remembered now that the elder, though he had only one eye, had a kind
face. But Ginger Ted did not move. She was feeling terribly tired. She
began to fear that she would not have the strength now to resist him.
She had gone through too much. She closed her eyes for a minute.

When she opened them it was broad daylight. She must have fallen asleep
and, so shattered was she by emotion, have slept till long after dawn.
It gave her quite a turn. She sought to rise, but something caught in
her legs. She looked and found that she was covered with two empty copra
sacks. Someone had come in the night and put them over her. Ginger Ted!
She gave a little scream. The horrible thought flashed through her mind
that he had outraged her in her sleep. No. It was impossible. And yet he
had had her at his mercy. Defenceless. And he had spared her. She
blushed furiously. She raised herself to her feet, feeling a little
stiff, and arranged her disordered dress. The scalpel had fallen from
her hand and she picked it up. She took the two copra sacks and emerged
from her hiding-place. She walked towards the boat. It was floating in
the shallow water of the lagoon.

"Come on, Miss Jones," said Ginger Ted. "We've finished. I was just
going to wake you up."

She could not look at him, but she felt herself as red as a turkey cock.

"Have a banana?" he said.

Without a word she took it. She was very hungry, and ate it with relish.

"Step on this rock and you'll be able to get in without wetting your
feet."

Miss Jones felt as though she could sink into the ground with shame, but
she did as he told her. He took hold of her arm--good heavens! his hand
was like an iron vice, never, never could she have struggled with
him--and helped her into the launch. The mechanic started the engine and
they slid out of the lagoon. In three hours they were at Baru.

That evening, having been officially released, Ginger Ted went to the
Contrleur's house. He wore no longer the prison uniform, but the ragged
singlet and the khaki shorts in which he had been arrested. He had had
his hair cut and it fitted his head now like a little curly red cap. He
was thinner. He had lost his bloated flabbiness and looked younger and
better. Mr. Gruyter, a friendly grin on his round face, shook hands with
him and asked him to sit down. The boy brought two bottles of beer.

"I'm glad to see you hadn't forgotten my invitation, Ginger," said the
Contrleur.

"Not likely. I've been looking forward to this for six months."

"Here's luck, Ginger Ted."

"Same to you, Contrleur."

They emptied their glasses and the Contrleur clapped his hands. The boy
brought two more bottles.

"Well, you don't bear me any malice for the sentence I gave you, I
hope."

"No bloody fear. I was mad for a minute, but I got over it. I didn't
have half a bad time, you know. Nice lot of girls on that island,
Contrleur. You ought to give 'em a look over one of these days."

"You're a bad lot, Ginger."

"Terrible."

"Good beer, isn't it?"

"Fine."

Ginger Ted's remittance had been arriving every month and the Contrleur
now had fifty pounds for him. When the damage he had done to the
Chinaman's shop was paid for there would still be over thirty.

"That's quite a lot of money. Ginger. You ought to do something useful
with it."

"I mean to," answered Ginger. "Spend it."

The Contrleur sighed.

"Well, that's what money's for, I guess."

The Contrleur gave his guest the news. Not much had happened during the
last six months. Time on the Alas Islands did not matter very much and
the rest of the world did not matter at all.

"Any wars anywhere?" asked Ginger Ted.

"No. Not that I've noticed. Harry Jervis found a pretty big pearl. He
says he's going to ask a thousand quid for it."

"I hope he gets it."

"And Charlie McCormack's married."

"He always was a bit soft."

Suddenly the boy appeared and said Mr. Jones wished to know if he might
come in. Before the Contrleur could give an answer Mr. Jones walked in.

"I won't detain you long," he said. "I've been trying to get hold of
this good man all day and when I heard he was here I thought you
wouldn't mind my coming."

"How is Miss Jones?" asked the Contrleur politely. "None the worse for
her night in the open, I trust."

"She's naturally a bit shaken. She had a temperature and I've insisted
on her going to bed, but I don't think it's serious."

The two men had got up on the missionary's entrance, and now the
missionary went up to Ginger Ted and held out his hand.

"I want to thank you. You did a great and noble thing. My sister is
right, one should always look for the good in their fellow-men; I am
afraid I misjudged you in the past: I beg your pardon."

He spoke very solemnly. Ginger Ted looked at him with amazement. He had
not been able to prevent the missionary taking his hand. He still held
it.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You had my sister at your mercy and you spared her. I thought you were
all evil and I am ashamed. She was defenceless. She was in your power.
You had pity on her. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Neither my
sister nor I will ever forget. God bless and guard you always."

Mr. Jones's voice shook a little and he turned his head away. He
released Ginger Ted's hand and strode quickly to the door. Ginger Ted
watched him with a blank face.

"What the blazes does he mean?" he asked.

The Contrleur laughed. He tried to control himself, but the more he did
the more he laughed. He shook and you saw the folds of his fat belly
ripple under the sarong. He leaned back in his long chair and rolled
from side to side. He did not laugh only with his face, he laughed with
his whole body, and even the muscles of his podgy legs shook with mirth.
He held his aching ribs. Ginger Ted looked at him frowning, and because
he did not understand what the joke was he grew angry. He seized one of
the empty beer bottles by the neck.

"If you don't stop laughing, I'll break your bloody head open," he said.

The Contrleur mopped his face. He swallowed a mouthful of beer. He
sighed and groaned because his sides were hurting him.

"He's thanking you for having respected the virtue of Miss Jones," he
spluttered at last.

"Me?" cried Ginger Ted.

The thought took quite a long time to travel through his head, but when
at last he got it he flew into a violent rage. There flowed from his
mouth such a stream of blasphemous obscenities as would have startled a
marine.

"That old cow," he finished. "What does he take me for?"

"You have the reputation of being rather hot stuff with the girls,
Ginger," giggled the little Contrleur.

"I wouldn't touch her with the fag-end of a barge-pole. It never entered
my head. The nerve. I'll wring his blasted neck. Look here, give me my
money, I'm going to get drunk."

"I don't blame you," said the Contrleur.

"That old cow," repeated Ginger Ted. "That old cow."

He was shocked and outraged. The suggestion really shattered his sense
of decency.

The Contrleur had the money at hand and having got Ginger Ted to sign
the necessary papers gave it to him.

"Go and get drunk, Ginger Ted," he said, "but I warn you, if you get
into mischief it'll be twelve months' next time."

"I shan't get into mischief," said Ginger Ted sombrely. He was suffering
from a sense of injury. "It's an insult," he shouted at the Contrleur.
"That's what it is, it's a bloody insult."

He lurched out of the house, and as he went he muttered to himself:
"Dirty swine, dirty swine." Ginger Ted remained drunk for a week. Mr.
Jones went to see the Contrleur again.

"I'm very sorry to hear that poor fellow has taken up his evil course
again," he said. "My sister and I are dreadfully disappointed. I'm
afraid it wasn't very wise to give him so much money at once."

"It was his own money. I had no right to keep it back."

"Not a legal right, perhaps, but surely a moral right."

He told the Contrleur the story of that fearful night on the island.
With her feminine instinct, Miss Jones had realised that the man,
inflamed with lust, was determined to take advantage of her, and,
resolved to defend herself to the last, had armed herself with a
scalpel. He told the Contrleur how she had prayed and wept and how she
had hidden herself. Her agony was indescribable, and she knew that she
could never have survived the shame. She rocked to and fro and every
moment she thought he was coming. And there was no help anywhere and at
last she had fallen asleep; she was tired out, poor thing, she had
undergone more than any human being could stand, and then when she awoke
she found that he had covered her with copra sacks. He had found her
asleep, and surely it was her innocence, her very helplessness that had
moved him, he hadn't the heart to touch her; he covered her gently with
two copra sacks and crept silently away.

"It shows you that deep down in him there is something sterling. My
sister feels it's our duty to save him. We must do something for him."

"Well, in your place I wouldn't try till he's got through all his
money," said the Contrleur, "and then if he's not in jail you can do
what you like."

But Ginger Ted didn't want to be saved. About a fortnight after his
release from prison he was sitting on a stool outside a Chinaman's shop
looking vacantly down the street when he saw Miss Jones coming along. He
stared at her for a minute and once more amazement seized him. He
muttered to himself and there can be little doubt that his mutterings
were disrespectful. But then he noticed that Miss Jones had seen him and
he quickly turned his head away; he was conscious, notwithstanding, that
she was looking at him. She was walking briskly, but she sensibly
diminished her pace as she approached him. He thought she was going to
stop and speak to him. He got up quickly and went into the shop. He did
not venture to come out for at least five minutes. Half an hour later
Mr. Jones himself came along and he went straight up to Ginger Ted with
outstretched hand.

"How do you do, Mr. Edward? My sister told me I should find you here."

Ginger Ted gave him a surly look and did not take the proffered hand. He
made no answer.

"We'd be so very glad if you'd come to dinner with us next Sunday. My
sister's a capital cook and she'll make you a real Australian dinner."

"Go to hell," said Ginger Ted.

"That's not very gracious," said the missionary, but with a little laugh
to show that he was not affronted. "You go and see the Contrleur from
time to time, why shouldn't you come and see us? It's pleasant to talk
to white people now and then. Won't you let bygones be bygones? I can
assure you of a very cordial welcome."

"I haven't got clothes fit to go out in," said Ginger Ted sulkily.

"Oh, never mind about that. Come as you are."

"I won't."

"Why not? You must have a reason."

Ginger Ted was a blunt man. He had no hesitation in saying what we
should all like to when we receive unwelcome invitations.

"I don't want to."

"I'm sorry. My sister will be very disappointed."

Mr. Jones, determined to show that he was not in the least offended,
gave him a breezy nod and walked on. Forty-eight hours later there
mysteriously arrived at the house in which Ginger Ted lodged a parcel
containing a suit of ducks, a tennis shirt, a pair of socks and some
shoes. He was unaccustomed to receiving presents and next time he saw
the Contrleur asked him if it was he who had sent the things.

"Not on your life," replied the Contrleur. "I'm perfectly indifferent
to the state of your wardrobe."

"Well, then, who the hell can have?"

"Search me."

It was necessary from time to time for Miss Jones to see Mr. Gruyter on
business and shortly after this she came to see him one morning in his
office. She was a capable woman and though she generally wanted him to
do something he had no mind to, she did not waste his time. He was a
little surprised then to discover that she had come on a very trivial
errand. When he told her that he could not take cognizance of the matter
in question, she did not as was her habit try to convince him, but
accepted his refusal as definite. She got up to go and then as though it
were an afterthought said:

"Oh, Mr. Gruyter, my brother is very anxious that we should have the man
they call Ginger Ted to supper with us and I've written him a little
note inviting him for the day after to-morrow. I think he's rather shy,
and I wonder if you'd come with him."

"That's very kind of you."

"My brother feels that we ought to do something for the poor fellow."

"A woman's influence and all that sort of thing," said the Contrleur
demurely.

"Will you persuade him to come? I'm sure he will if you make a point of
it, and when he knows the way he'll come again. It seems such a pity to
let a young man like that go to pieces altogether."

The Contrleur looked up at her. She was several inches taller than he.
He thought her very unattractive. She reminded him strangely of wet
linen hung on a clothes-line to dry. His eyes twinkled, but he kept a
straight face.

"I'll do my best," he said.

"How old is he?" she asked.

"According to his passport he's thirty-one."

"And what is his real name?"

"Wilson."

"Edward Wilson," she said softly.

"It's astonishing that after the life he's led he should be so strong,"
murmured the Contrleur. "He has the strength of an ox."

"Those red-headed men sometimes are very powerful," said Miss Jones, but
spoke as though she were choking.

"Quite so," said the Contrleur.

Then for no obvious reason Miss Jones blushed. She hurriedly said
good-bye to the Contrleur and left his office.

"_Godverdomme_!" said the Contrleur.

He knew now who had sent Ginger Ted the new clothes.

He met him during the course of the day and asked him whether he had
heard from Miss Jones. Ginger Ted took a crumpled ball of paper out of
his pocket and gave it to him. It was the invitation. It ran as follows:

    _Dear Mr. Wilson_,--

    _My brother and I would be so very glad if you would come and
    have supper with us next Thursday at 7.30. The Contrleur has
    kindly promised to come. We have some new records from Australia
    which I am sure you will like. I am afraid I was not very nice
    to you last time we met, but I did not know you so well then,
    and I am big enough to admit it when I have committed an error.
    I hope you will forgive me and let me be your friend,_

                                              _Yours Sincerely,_
                                                   _Martha Jones._

The Contrleur noticed that she addressed him as Mr. Wilson and referred
to his own promise to go, so that when she told him she had already
invited Ginger Ted she had a little anticipated the truth.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm not going, if that's what you mean. Damned nerve."

"You must answer the letter."

"Well, I won't."

"Now look here, Ginger, you put on those new clothes and you come as a
favour to me. I've got to go and, damn it all, you can't leave me in the
lurch. It won't hurt you just once."

Ginger Ted looked at the Contrleur suspiciously, but his face was
serious and his manner sincere: he could not guess that within him the
Dutchman bubbled with laughter.

"What the devil do they want me for?"

"I don't know. The pleasure of your society, I suppose."

"Will there be any booze?"

"No, but come up to my house at seven, and we'll have a tiddly before we
go."

"Oh, all right," said Ginger Ted sulkily.

The Contrleur rubbed his little fat hands with joy. He was expecting a
great deal of amusement from the party. But when Thursday came and seven
o'clock, Ginger Ted was dead drunk and Mr. Gruyter had to go alone. He
told the missionary and his sister the plain truth. Mr. Jones shook his
head.

"I'm afraid it's no good, Martha, the man's hopeless."

For a moment Miss Jones was silent and the Contrleur saw two tears
trickle down her long thin nose. She bit her lip.

"No one is hopeless. Everyone has some good in him. I shall pray for him
every night. It would be wicked to doubt the power of God."

Perhaps Miss Jones was right in this, but the divine providence took a
very funny way of effecting its ends. Ginger Ted began to drink more
heavily than ever. He was so troublesome that even Mr. Gruyter lost
patience with him. He made up his mind that he could not have the fellow
on the islands any more and resolved to deport him on the next boat that
touched at Baru. Then a man died under mysterious circumstances after
having been for a trip to one of the islands and the Contrleur learnt
that there had been several deaths on the same island. He sent the
Chinese who was the official doctor of the group to look into the
matter, and very soon received intelligence that the deaths were due to
cholera. Two more took place at Baru and the certainty was forced upon
him that there was an epidemic.

The Contrleur cursed freely. He cursed in Dutch, he cursed in English
and he cursed in Malay. Then he drank a bottle of beer and smoked a
cigar. After that he took thought. He knew the Chinese doctor would be
useless. He was a nervous little man from Java and the natives would
refuse to obey his orders. The Contrleur was efficient and knew pretty
well what must be done, but he could not do everything single-handed. He
did not like Mr. Jones, but just then he was thankful that he was at
hand, and he sent for him at once. He was accompanied by his sister.

"You know what I want to see you about, Mr. Jones," he said abruptly.

"Yes. I've been expecting a message from you. That is why my sister has
come with me. We are ready to put all our resources at your disposal. I
need not tell you that my sister is as competent as a man."

"I know. I shall be very glad of her assistance."

They set to without further delay to discuss the steps that must be
taken. Hospital huts would have to be erected and quarantine stations.
The inhabitants of the various villages on the islands must be forced to
take proper precautions. In a good many cases the infected villages drew
their water from the same well as the uninfected, and in each case this
difficulty would have to be dealt with according to circumstances. It
was necessary to send round people to give orders and make sure that
they were carried out. Negligence must be ruthlessly punished. The worst
of it was that the natives would not obey other natives, and orders
given by native policemen, themselves unconvinced of their efficacy,
would certainly be disregarded. It was advisable for Mr. Jones to stay
at Baru, where the population was largest and his medical attention most
wanted; and what with the official duties that forced him to keep in
touch with his headquarters, it was impossible for Mr. Gruyter to visit
all the other islands himself. Miss Jones must go; but the natives of
some of the outlying islands were wild and treacherous; the Contrleur
had had a good deal of trouble with them. He did not like the idea of
exposing her to danger.

"I'm not afraid," she said.

"I daresay. But if you have your throat cut I shall get into trouble,
and besides, we're so short-handed I don't want to risk losing your
help."

"Then let Mr. Wilson come with me. He knows the natives better than
anyone and can speak all their dialects."

"Ginger Ted?" The Contrleur stared at her. "He's just getting over an
attack of D.Ts."

"I know," she answered.

"You know a great deal, Miss Jones."

Even though the moment was so serious Mr. Gruyter could not but smile.
He gave her a sharp look, but she met it coolly.

"There's nothing like responsibility for bringing out what there is in a
man, and I think something like this may be the making of him."

"Do you think it would be wise to trust yourself for days at a time to a
man of such infamous character?" said the missionary.

"I put my trust in God," she answered gravely.

"Do you think he'd be any use?" asked the Contrleur. "You know what he
is."

"I'm convinced of it." Then she blushed. "After all, no one knows better
than I that he's capable of self-control."

The Contrleur bit his lip.

"Let's send for him."

He gave a message to the sergeant and in a few minutes Ginger Ted stood
before them. He looked ill. He had evidently been much shaken by his
recent attack and his nerves were all to pieces. He was in rags and he
had not shaved for a week. No one could have looked more disreputable.

"Look here, Ginger," said the Contrleur, "it's about this cholera
business. We've got to force the natives to take precautions and we want
you to help us."

"Why the hell should I?"

"No reason at all. Except philanthropy."

"Nothing doing, Contrleur. I'm not a philanthropist."

"That settles that. That was all. You can go."

But as Ginger Ted turned to the door Miss Jones stopped him.

"It was my suggestion, Mr. Wilson. You see, they want me to go to Labobo
and Sakunchi, and the natives there are so funny I was afraid to go
alone. I thought if you came I should be safer."

He gave her a look of extreme distaste.

"What do you suppose I care if they cut your throat?"

Miss Jones looked at him and her eyes filled with tears. She began to
cry. He stood and watched her stupidly.

"There's no reason why you should." She pulled herself together and
dried her eyes. "I'm being silly. I shall be all right. I'll go alone."

"It's damned foolishness for a woman to go to Labobo."

She gave him a little smile.

"I daresay it is, but, you see, it's my job and I can't help myself. I'm
sorry if I offended you by asking you. You must forget about it. I
daresay it wasn't quite fair to ask you to take such a risk."

For quite a minute Ginger Ted stood and looked at her. He shifted from
one foot to the other. His surly face seemed to grow black.

"Oh, hell, have it your own way," he said at last. "I'll come with you.
When d'you want to start?"

They set out next day, with drugs and disinfectants, in the Government
launch. Mr. Gruyter as soon as he had put the necessary work in order
was to start off in a prahu in the other direction. For four months the
epidemic raged. Though everything possible was done to localise it one
island after another was attacked. The Contrleur was busy from morning
to night. He had no sooner got back to Baru from one or other of the
islands to do what was necessary there than he had to set off again. He
distributed food and medicine. He cheered the terrified people. He
supervised everything. He worked like a dog. He saw nothing of Ginger
Ted, but he heard from Mr. Jones that the experiment was working out
beyond all hopes. The scamp was behaving himself. He had a way with the
natives; and by cajolery, firmness and on occasion the use of his fist,
managed to make them take the steps necessary for their own safety. Miss
Jones could congratulate herself on the success of the scheme. But the
Contrleur was too tired to be amused. When the epidemic had run its
course he rejoiced because out of a population of eight thousand only
six hundred had died.

Finally he was able to give the district a clean bill of health.

One evening he was sitting in his sarong on the verandah of his house
and he read a French novel with the happy consciousness that once more
he could take things easy. His head boy came in and told him that Ginger
Ted wished to see him. He got up from his chair and shouted to him to
come in. Company was just what he wanted. It had crossed the
Contrleur's mind that it would be pleasant to get drunk that night, but
it is dull to get drunk alone, and he had regretfully put the thought
aside. And heaven had sent Ginger Ted in the nick of time. By God, they
would make a night of it. After four months they deserved a bit of fun.
Ginger Ted entered. He was wearing a clean suit of white ducks. He was
shaved. He looked another man.

"Why, Ginger, you look as if you'd been spending a month at a health
resort instead of nursing a pack of natives dying of cholera. And look
at your clothes. Have you just stepped out of a bandbox?"

Ginger Ted smiled rather sheepishly. The head boy brought two bottles of
beer and poured them out.

"Help yourself, Ginger," said the Contrleur as he took his glass.

"I don't think I'll have any, thank you."

The Contrleur put down his glass and looked at Ginger Ted with
amazement.

"Why, what's the matter? Aren't you thirsty?"

"I don't mind having a cup of tea."

"A cup of what?"

"I'm on the wagon. Martha and I are going to be married."

"Ginger!"

The Contrleur's eyes popped out of his head. He scratched his shaven
pate.

"You can't marry Miss Jones," he said. "No one could marry Miss Jones."

"Well, I'm going to. That's what I've come to see you about. Owen's
going to marry us in chapel, but we want to be married by Dutch law as
well."

"A joke's a joke, Ginger. What's the idea?"

"She wanted it. She fell for me that night we spent on the island when
the propeller broke. She's not a bad old girl when you get to know her.
It's her last chance, if you understand what I mean, and I'd like to do
something to oblige her. And she wants someone to take care of her,
there's no doubt about that."

"Ginger, Ginger, before you can say knife she'll make you into a damned
missionary."

"I don't know that I'd mind that so much if we had a little mission of
our own. She says I'm a bloody marvel with the natives. She says I can
do more with a native in five minutes than Owen can do in a year. She
says she's never known anyone with the magnetism I have. It seems a pity
to waste a gift like that."

The Contrleur looked at him without speaking and slowly nodded his head
three or four times. She'd nobbled him all right.

"I've converted seventeen already," said Ginger Ted.

"You? I didn't know you believed in Christianity."

"Well, I don't know that I did exactly, but when I talked to 'em and
they just came into the fold like a lot of blasted sheep, well, it gave
me quite a turn. Blimey, I said, I daresay there's something in it after
all."

"You should have raped her, Ginger. I wouldn't have been hard on you. I
wouldn't have given you more than three years' and three years' is soon
over."

"Look here, Contrleur, don't you ever let on that the thought never
entered my head. Women are touchy, you know, and she'd be as sore as
hell if she knew that."

"I guessed she'd got her eye on you, but I never thought it would come
to this." The Contrleur in an agitated manner walked up and down the
verandah. "Listen to me, old boy," he said after an interval of
reflection, "we've had some grand times together and a friend's a
friend. I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll lend you the launch and you can
go and hide on one of the islands till the next ship comes along and
then I'll get 'em to slow down and take you on board. You've only got
one chance now and that's to cut and run."

Ginger Ted shook his head.

"It's no good, Contrleur, I know you mean well, but I'm going to marry
the blasted woman, and that's that. You don't know the joy of bringing
all them bleeding sinners to repentance, and Christ! that girl can make
a treacle pudding. I haven't eaten a better one since I was a kid."

The Contrleur was very much disturbed. The drunken scamp was his only
companion on the islands and he did not want to lose him. He discovered
that he had even a certain affection for him. Next day he went to see
the missionary.

"What's this I hear about your sister marrying Ginger Ted?" he asked
him. "It's the most extraordinary thing I've ever heard in my life."

"It's true nevertheless."

"You must do something about it. It's madness."

"My sister is of full age and entitled to do as she pleases."

"But you don't mean to tell me you approve of it. You know Ginger Ted.
He's a bum and there are no two ways about it. Have you told her the
risk she's running? I mean, bringing sinners to repentance and all that
sort of thing's all right, but there are limits. And does the leopard
ever change his spots?"

Then for the first time in his life the Contrleur saw a twinkle in the
missionary's eye.

"My sister is a very determined woman, Mr. Gruyter," he replied. "From
that night they spent on the island he never had a chance."

The Contrleur gasped. He was as surprised as the prophet when the Lord
opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done
unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times? Perhaps Mr.
Jones was human after all.

"_Allejesus_!" muttered the Contrleur.

Before anything more could be said Miss Jones swept into the room. She
was radiant. She looked ten years younger. Her cheeks were flushed and
her nose was hardly red at all.

"Have you come to congratulate me, Mr. Gruyter?" she cried, and her
manner was sprightly and girlish. "You see, I was right after all.
Everyone has some good in them. You don't know how splendid Edward has
been all through this terrible time. He's a hero. He's a saint. Even I
was surprised."

"I hope you'll be very happy, Miss Jones."

"I know I shall. Oh, it would be wicked of me to doubt it. For it is the
Lord who has brought us together."

"Do you think so?"

"I know it. Don't you see? Except for the cholera Edward would never
have found himself. Except for the cholera we should never have learnt
to know one another. I have never seen the hand of God more plainly
manifest."

The Contrleur could not but think that it was rather a clumsy device to
bring those two together that necessitated the death of six hundred
innocent persons, but not being well versed in the ways of omnipotence
he made no remark.

"You'll never guess where we're going for our honeymoon," said Miss
Jones, perhaps a trifle archly.

"Java?"

"No, if you'll lend us the launch, we're going to that island where we
were marooned. It has very tender recollections for both of us. It was
there that I first guessed how fine and good Edward was. It's there I
want him to have his reward."

The Contrleur caught his breath. He left quickly, for he thought that
unless he had a bottle of beer at once he would have a fit. He was never
so shocked in his life.




LOUISE


I could never understand why Louise bothered with me. She disliked me
and I knew that behind my back, in that gentle way of hers, she seldom
lost the opportunity of saying a disagreeable thing about me. She had
too much delicacy ever to make a direct statement, but with a hint and a
sigh and a little flutter of her beautiful hands she was able to make
her meaning plain. She was a mistress of cold praise. It was true that
we had known one another almost intimately, for five-and-twenty years,
but it was impossible for me to believe that she could be affected by
the claims of old association. She thought me a coarse, brutal, cynical
and vulgar fellow. I was puzzled at her not taking the obvious course
and dropping me. She did nothing of the kind; indeed, she would not
leave me alone; she was constantly asking me to lunch and dine with her
and once or twice a year invited me to spend a week-end at her house in
the country. At last I thought that I had discovered her motive. She had
an uneasy suspicion that I did not believe in her; and if that was why
she did not like me, it was also why she sought my acquaintance: it
galled her that I alone should look upon her as a comic figure and she
could not rest till I acknowledged myself mistaken and defeated. Perhaps
she had an inkling that I saw the face behind the mask and because I
alone held out was determined that sooner or later I too should take the
mask for the face. I was never quite certain that she was a complete
humbug. I wondered whether she fooled herself as thoroughly as she
fooled the world or whether there was some spark of humour at the bottom
of her heart. If there was it might be that she was attracted to me, as
a pair of crooks might be attracted to one another, by the knowledge
that we shared a secret that was hidden from everybody else.

I knew Louise before she married. She was then a frail, delicate girl
with large and melancholy eyes. Her father and mother worshipped her
with an anxious adoration, for some illness, scarlet fever I think, had
left her with a weak heart and she had to take the greatest care of
herself. When Tom Maitland proposed to her they were dismayed, for they
were convinced that she was much too delicate for the strenuous state of
marriage. But they were not too well off and Tom Maitland was rich. He
promised to do everything in the world for Louise and finally they
entrusted her to him as a sacred charge. Tom Maitland was a big, husky
fellow, very good-looking and a fine athlete. He doted on Louise. With
her weak heart he could not hope to keep her with him long and he made
up his mind to do everything he could to make her few years on earth
happy. He gave up the games he excelled in, not because she wished him
to, she was glad that he should play golf and hunt, but because by a
coincidence she had a heart attack whenever he proposed to leave her for
a day. If they had a difference of opinion she gave in to him at once,
for she was the most submissive wife a man could have, but her heart
failed her and she would be laid up, sweet and uncomplaining, for a
week. He could not be such a brute as to cross her. Then they would have
quite a little tussle about which should yield and it was only with
difficulty that at last he persuaded her to have her own way. On one
occasion seeing her walk eight miles on an expedition that she
particularly wanted to make, I suggested to Tom Maitland that she was
stronger than one would have thought. He shook his head and sighed.

"No, no, she's dreadfully delicate. She's been to all the best heart
specialists in the world and they all say that her life hangs on a
thread. But she has an unconquerable spirit."

He told her that I had remarked on her endurance.

"I shall pay for it to-morrow," she said to me in her plaintive way. "I
shall be at death's door."

"I sometimes think that you're quite strong enough to do the things you
want to," I murmured.

I had noticed that if a party was amusing she could dance till five in
the morning, but if it was dull she felt very poorly and Tom had to take
her home early. I am afraid she did not like my reply, for though she
gave me a pathetic little smile I saw no amusement in her large blue
eyes.

"You can't very well expect me to fall down dead just to please you,"
she answered.

Louise outlived her husband. He caught his death of cold one day when
they were sailing and Louise needed all the rugs there were to keep her
warm. He left her a comfortable fortune and a daughter. Louise was
inconsolable. It was wonderful that she managed to survive the shock.
Her friends expected her speedily to follow poor Tom Maitland to the
grave. Indeed they already felt dreadfully sorry for Iris, her daughter,
who would be left an orphan. They redoubled their attentions towards
Louise. They would not let her stir a finger; they insisted on doing
everything in the world to save her trouble. They had to, because if she
was called upon to do anything tiresome or inconvenient her heart went
back on her and there she was at death's door. She was entirely lost
without a man to take care of her, she said, and she did not know how,
with her delicate health, she was going to bring up her dear Iris. Her
friends asked why she did not marry again. Oh, with her heart it was out
of the question, though of course she knew that dear Tom would have
wished her to, and perhaps it would be the best thing for Iris if she
did; but who would want to be bothered with a wretched invalid like
herself? Oddly enough more than one young man showed himself quite ready
to undertake the charge and a year after Tom's death she allowed George
Hobhouse to lead her to the altar. He was a fine, upstanding fellow and
he was not at all badly off. I never saw anyone so grateful as he for
the privilege of being allowed to take care of this frail little thing.

"I shan't live to trouble you long," she said.

He was a soldier and an ambitious one, but he resigned his commission.
Louise's health forced her to spend the winter at Monte Carlo and the
summer at Deauville. He hesitated a little at throwing up his career,
and Louise at first would not hear of it; but at last she yielded as she
always yielded, and he prepared to make his wife's last few years as
happy as might be.

"It can't be very long now," she said. "I'll try not to be troublesome."

For the next two or three years Louise managed, notwithstanding her weak
heart, to go beautifully dressed to all the most lively parties, to
gamble very heavily, to dance and even to flirt with tall slim young
men. But George Hobhouse had not the stamina of Louise's first husband
and he had to brace himself now and then with a stiff drink for his
day's work as Louise's second husband. It is possible that the habit
would have grown on him, which Louise would not have liked at all, but
very fortunately (for her) the war broke out. He rejoined his regiment
and three months later was killed. It was a great shock to Louise. She
felt, however, that in such a crisis she must not give way to a private
grief; and if she had a heart attack nobody heard of it. In order to
distract her mind she turned her villa at Monte Carlo into a hospital
for convalescent officers. Her friends told her that she would never
survive the strain.

"Of course it will kill me," she said, "I know that. But what does it
matter? I must do my bit."

It didn't kill her. She had the time of her life. There was no
convalescent home in France that was more popular. I met her by chance
in Paris. She was lunching at the Ritz with a tall and very handsome
young Frenchman. She explained that she was there on business connected
with the hospital. She told me that the officers were too charming to
her. They knew how delicate she was and they wouldn't let her do a
single thing. They took care of her, well--as though they were all her
husbands. She sighed.

"Poor George, who would ever have thought that I with my heart should
survive him?"

"And poor Tom!" I said.

I don't know why she didn't like my saying that. She gave me her
plaintive smile and her beautiful eyes filled with tears.

"You always speak as though you grudged me the few years that I can
expect to live."

"By the way, your heart's much better, isn't it?"

"It'll never be better. I saw a specialist this morning and he said I
must be prepared for the worst."

"Oh, well, you've been prepared for that for nearly twenty years now,
haven't you?"

When the war came to an end Louise settled in London. She was now a
woman of over forty, thin and frail still, with large eyes and pale
cheeks, but she did not look a day more than twenty-five. Iris, who had
been at school and was now grown up, came to live with her.

"She'll take care of me," said Louise. "Of course it'll be hard on her
to live with such a great invalid as I am, but it can only be for such a
little while, I'm sure she won't mind."

Iris was a nice girl. She had been brought up with the knowledge that
her mother's health was precarious. As a child she had never been
allowed to make a noise. She had always realised that her mother must on
no account be upset. And though Louise told her now that she would not
hear of her sacrificing herself for a tiresome old woman the girl simply
would not listen. It wasn't a question of sacrificing herself, it was a
happiness to do what she could for her poor dear mother. With a sigh her
mother let her do a great deal.

"It pleases the child to think she's making herself useful," she said.

"Don't you think she ought to go out and about more?" I asked.

"That's what I'm always telling her. I can't get her to enjoy herself.
Heaven knows, I never want anyone to put themselves out on my account."

And Iris, when I remonstrated with her, said: "Poor dear mother, she
wants me to go and stay with friends and go to parties, but the moment I
start off anywhere she has one of her heart attacks, so I much prefer to
stay at home."

But presently she fell in love. A young friend of mine, a very good lad,
asked her to marry him and she consented. I liked the child and was glad
that she was to be given at last the chance to lead a life of her own.
She had never seemed to suspect that such a thing was possible. But one
day the young man came to me in great distress and told me that his
marriage was indefinitely postponed. Iris felt that she could not desert
her mother. Of course it was really no business of mine, but I made the
opportunity to go and see Louise. She was always glad to receive her
friends at teatime and now that she was older she cultivated the society
of painters and writers.

"Well, I hear that Iris isn't going to be married," I said after a
little.

"I don't know about that. She's not going to be married quite as soon as
I could have wished. I've begged her on my bended knees not to consider
me, but she absolutely refuses to leave me."

"Don't you think it's rather hard on her?"

"Dreadfully. Of course it can only be for a few months, but I hate the
thought of anyone sacrificing themselves for me."

"My dear Louise, you've buried two husbands, I can't see the least
reason why you shouldn't bury at least two more."

"Do you think that's funny?" she asked me in a tone that she made as
offensive as she could.

"I suppose it's never struck you as strange that you're always strong
enough to do anything you want to and that your weak heart only prevents
you from doing things that bore you?"

"Oh, I know, I know what you've always thought of me. You've never
believed that I had anything the matter with me, have you?"

I looked at her full and square.

"Never. I think you've carried out for twenty-five years a stupendous
bluff. I think you're the most selfish and monstrous woman I have ever
known. You ruined the lives of those two wretched men you married and
now you're going to ruin the life of your daughter."

I should not have been surprised if Louise had had a heart attack then.
I fully expected her to fly into a passion. She merely gave me a gentle
smile.

"My poor friend, one of these days you'll be so dreadfully sorry you
said this to me."

"Have you quite determined that Iris shall not marry this boy?"

"I've begged her to marry him. I know it'll kill me, but I don't mind.
Nobody cares for me. I'm just a burden to everybody."

"Did you tell her it would kill you?"

"She made me."

"As if anyone ever made you do anything that you were not yourself quite
determined to do."

"She can marry her young man to-morrow if she likes. If it kills me, it
kills me."

"Well, let's risk it, shall we?"

"Haven't you got any compassion for me?"

"One can't pity anyone who amuses one as much as you amuse me," I
answered.

A faint spot of colour appeared on Louise's pale cheeks and though she
smiled still her eyes were hard and angry.

"Iris shall marry in a month's time," she said, "and if anything happens
to me I hope you and she will be able to forgive yourselves."

Louise was as good as her word. A date was fixed, a trousseau of great
magnificence was ordered, and invitations were issued. Iris and the very
good lad were radiant. On the wedding-day, at ten o'clock in the
morning, Louise, that devilish woman, had one of her heart attacks--and
died. She died gently forgiving Iris for having killed her.




THE PROMISE


My wife is a very unpunctual woman, so when, having arranged to lunch
with her at Claridge's, I arrived there ten minutes late and did not
find her I was not surprised. I ordered a cocktail. It was the height of
the season and there were but two or three vacant tables in the lounge.
Some of the people after an early meal were drinking their coffee,
others like myself were toying with a dry Martini; the women in their
summer frocks looked gay and charming and the men debonair; but I could
see no one whose appearance sufficiently interested me to occupy the
quarter of an hour I was expecting to wait. They were slim and pleasant
to look upon, well dressed and carelessly at ease, but they were for the
most part of a pattern and I observed them with tolerance rather than
with curiosity. But it was two o'clock and I felt hungry. My wife tells
me that she can neither wear a turquoise nor a watch, for the turquoise
turns green and the watch stops; and this she attributes to the
malignity of fate. I have nothing to say about the turquoise, but I
sometimes think the watch might go if she wound it. I was engaged with
these reflections when an attendant came up and with that hushed
significance that hotel attendants affect (as though their message held
a more sinister meaning than their words suggested) told me that a lady
had just telephoned to say that she had been detained and could not
lunch with me.

I hesitated. It is not very amusing to eat in a crowded restaurant by
oneself, but it was late to go to a club and I decided that I had better
stay where I was. I strolled into the dining-room. It has never given me
any particular satisfaction (as it appears to do to so many elegant
persons) to be known by name to the head waiters of fashionable
restaurants, but on this occasion I should certainly have been glad to
be greeted by less stony an eye. The _matre d'htel_ with a set and
hostile face told me that every table was occupied. I looked helplessly
round the large and stately room and on a sudden to my pleasure caught
sight of someone I knew. Lady Elizabeth Vermont was an old friend. She
smiled and noticing that she was alone I went up to her.

"Will you take pity on a hungry man and let me sit with you?" I asked.

"Oh, do. But I've nearly finished."

She was at a little table by the side of a massive column and when I
took my place I found that notwithstanding the crowd we sat almost in
privacy.

"This is a bit of luck for me," I said. "I was on the point of fainting
from hunger."

She had a very agreeable smile; it did not light up her face suddenly,
but seemed rather to suffuse it by degrees with charm. It hesitated for
a moment about her lips and then slowly travelled to those great shining
eyes of hers and there softly lingered. No one surely could say that
Elizabeth Vermont was cast in the common mould. I never knew her when
she was a girl, but many have told me that then she was so lovely, it
brought the tears to one's eyes, and I could well believe it; for now,
though fifty, she was still incomparable. Her ravaged beauty made the
fresh and blooming comeliness of youth a trifle insipid. I do not like
these painted faces that look all alike; and I think women are foolish
to dull their expression and obscure their personality with powder,
rouge and lipstick. But Elizabeth Vermont painted not to imitate nature,
but to improve it; you did not question the means but applauded the
result. The flaunting boldness with which she used cosmetics increased
rather than diminished the character of that perfect face. I suppose her
hair was dyed; it was black and sleek and shining. She held herself
upright as though she had never learned to loll and she was very slim.
She wore a dress of black satin, the lines and simplicity of which were
admirable, and about her neck was a long rope of pearls. Her only other
jewel was an enormous emerald which guarded her wedding-ring, and its
sombre fire emphasised the whiteness of her hand. But it was in her
hands with their reddened nails that she most clearly betrayed her age;
they had none of a girl's soft and dimpled roundness; and you could not
but look at them with a certain dismay. Before very long they would look
like the talons of a bird of prey.

Elizabeth Vermont was a remarkable woman. Of great birth, for she was
the daughter of the seventh Duke of St. Erth, she married at the age of
eighteen a very rich man and started at once upon a career of astounding
extravagance, lewdness and dissipation. She was too proud to be
cautious, too reckless to think of consequences, and within two years
her husband in circumstances of appalling scandal divorced her. She
married then one of the three co-respondents named in the case and
eighteen months later ran away from him. Then followed a succession of
lovers. She became notorious for her profligacy. Her startling beauty
and her scandalous conduct held her in the public eye and it was never
very long but that she gave the gossips something to talk about. Her
name stank in the nostrils of decent people. She was a gambler, a
spendthrift and a wanton. But though unfaithful to her lovers she was
constant to her friends and there always remained a few who would never
allow, whatever she did, that she was anything but a very nice woman.
She had candour, high spirits and courage. She was never a hypocrite.
She was generous and sincere. It was at this period of her life that I
came to know her; for great ladies, now that religion is out of fashion,
when they are very much blown upon take a flattering interest in the
arts. When they receive the cold shoulder from members of their own
class they condescend sometimes to the society of writers, painters and
musicians. I found her an agreeable companion. She was one of those
blessed persons who say quite fearlessly what they think (thus saving
much useful time) and she had a ready wit. She was always willing to
talk (with a diverting humour) of her lurid past. Her conversation,
though uninstructed, was good, because, notwithstanding everything, she
was an honest woman.

Then she did a very surprising thing. At the age of forty she married a
boy of twenty-one. Her friends said it was the maddest act of all her
life, and some who had stuck to her through thick and thin, now for the
boy's sake, because he was nice and it seemed shameful thus to take
advantage of his inexperience, refused to have anything more to do with
her. It really was the limit. They prophesied disaster, for Elizabeth
Vermont was incapable of sticking to any man for more than six months,
nay, they hoped for it, since it seemed the only chance for the wretched
youth that his wife should behave so scandalously that he must leave
her. They were all wrong. I do not know whether time was responsible for
a change of heart in her, or whether Peter Vermont's innocence and
simple love touched her, but the fact remains that she made him an
admirable wife. They were poor, and she was extravagant, but she became
a thrifty housewife; she grew on a sudden so careful of her reputation
that the tongue of scandal was silenced. His happiness seemed her only
concern. No one could doubt that she loved him devotedly. After being
the subject of so much conversation for so long Elizabeth Vermont ceased
to be talked about. It looked as though her story were told. She was a
changed woman, and I amused myself with the notion that when she was a
very old lady, with many years of perfect respectability behind her, the
past, the lurid past, would seem to belong not to her but to someone
long since dead whom once she had vaguely known. For women have an
enviable faculty of forgetting.

But who can tell what the fates have in store? In the twinkling of an
eye all was changed. Peter Vermont, after ten years of an ideal
marriage, fell madly in love with a girl called Barbara Canton. She was
a nice girl, the youngest daughter of Lord Robert Canton who was at one
time Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and she was pretty in a fair
and fluffy way. Of course she was not for a moment to be compared with
Lady Elizabeth. Many people knew what had happened, but no one could
tell whether Elizabeth Vermont had any inkling of it, and they wondered
how she would meet a situation that was so foreign to her experience. It
was always she who had discarded her lovers; none had deserted her. For
my part I thought she would make short work of little Miss Canton; I
knew her courage and her adroitness. All this was in my mind now while
we chatted over our luncheon. There was nothing in her demeanour, as
gay, charming and frank as usual, to suggest that anything troubled her.
She talked as she always talked, lightly but with good sense and a
lively perception of the ridiculous, of the various topics which the
course of conversation brought forward. I enjoyed myself. I came to the
conclusion that by some miracle she had no notion of Peter's changed
feelings and I explained this to myself by the supposition that her love
for him was so great, she could not conceive that his for her might be
less.

We drank our coffee and smoked a couple of cigarettes, and she asked me
the time.

"A quarter to three."

"I must ask for my bill."

"Won't you let me stand you lunch?"

"Of course," she smiled.

"Are you in a hurry?"

"I'm meeting Peter at three."

"Oh, how is he?"

"He's very well."

She gave a little smile, that tardy and delightful smile of hers, but I
seemed to discern in it a certain mockery. For an instant she hesitated
and she looked at me with deliberation.

"You like curious situations, don't you?" she said. "You'd never guess
the errand I'm bound on. I rang up Peter this morning and asked him to
meet me at three. I'm going to ask him to divorce me."

"You're not," I cried. I felt myself flush and did not know what to say.
"I thought you got on so well together."

"Do you think it's likely that I shouldn't know what all the world
knows? I'm really not such a fool as all that."

She was not a woman to whom it was possible to say what one did not
believe and I could not pretend that I did not know what she meant. I
remained silent for a second or two.

"Why should you allow yourself to be divorced?"

"Robert Canton is a stuffy old thing. I very much doubt if he'd let
Barbara marry Peter if I divorced him. And for me, you know, it isn't of
the smallest consequence: one divorce more or less..."

She shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"How do you know he wants to marry her?"

"He's head over ears in love with her."

"Has he told you so?"

"No. He doesn't even know that I know. He's been so wretched, poor
darling. He's been trying so hard not to hurt my feelings."

"Perhaps it's only a momentary infatuation," I hazarded. "It may pass."

"Why should it? Barbara's young and pretty. She's quite nice. They're
very well suited to one another. And besides, what good would it do if
it did pass? They love each other now and the present in love is all
that matters. I'm nineteen years older than Peter. If a man stops loving
a woman old enough to be his mother do you think he'll ever come to love
her again? You're a novelist, you must know more about human nature than
that."

"Why should you make this sacrifice?"

"When he asked me to marry him ten years ago I promised him that when he
wanted his release he should have it. You see, there was so great a
disproportion between our ages I thought that was only fair."

"And are you going to keep a promise that he hasn't asked you to keep?"

She gave a little flutter of those long thin hands of hers and now I
felt that there was something ominous in the dark glitter of that
emerald.

"Oh, I must, you know. One must behave like a gentleman. To tell you the
truth, that's why I'm lunching here to-day. It was at this table that he
proposed to me; we were dining together, you know, and I was sitting
just where I am now. The nuisance is that I'm just as much in love with
him now as I was then." She paused for a minute and I could see that she
clenched her teeth. "Well, I suppose I ought to go. Peter hates one to
keep him waiting."

She gave me a sort of little helpless look and it struck me that she
simply could not bring herself to rise from her chair. But she smiled
and with an abrupt gesture sprang to her feet.

"Would you like me to come with you?"

"As far as the hotel door," she smiled.

We walked through the restaurant and the lounge and when we came to the
entrance a porter swung round the revolving doors. I asked if she would
like a taxi.

"No, I'd sooner walk, it's such a lovely day." She gave me her hand.
"It's been so nice to see you. I shall go abroad to-morrow, but I expect
to be in London all the autumn. Do ring me up."

She smiled and nodded and turned away. I watched her walk up Davies
Street. The air was still bland and spring-like and above the roofs
little white clouds were sailing leisurely in a blue sky. She held
herself very erect and the poise of her head was gallant. She was a slim
and lovely figure so that people looked at her as they passed. I saw her
bow graciously to some acquaintance who raised his hat, and I thought
that never in a thousand years would it occur to him that she had a
breaking heart. I repeat, she was a very honest woman.




A STRING OF BEADS


"What a bit of luck that I'm placed next to you," said Laura, as we sat
down to dinner.

"For me," I replied politely.

"That remains to be seen. I particularly wanted to have the chance of
talking to you. I've got a story to tell you."

At this my heart sank a little.

"I'd sooner you talked about yourself," I answered. "Or even about me."

"Oh, but I must tell you the story. I think you'll be able to use it."

"If you must, you must. But let's look at the menu first."

"Don't you want me to?" she said, somewhat aggrieved. "I thought you'd
be pleased.

"I am. You might have written a play and wanted to read me that."

"It happened to some friends of mine. It's perfectly true."

"That's no recommendation. A true story is never quite so true as an
invented one."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing very much," I admitted. "But I thought it sounded well."

"I wish you'd let me get on with it."

"I'm all attention. I'm not going to eat the soup. It's fattening."

She gave me a pinched look and then glanced at the menu. She uttered a
little sigh.

"Oh, well, if you're going to deny yourself I suppose I must too. Heaven
knows, I can't afford to take liberties with my figure."

"And yet is there any soup more heavenly than the sort of soup in which
you put a great dollop of cream?"

"Bortsch," she sighed. "It's the only soup I really like."

"Never mind. Tell me your story and we'll forget about food till the
fish comes."

"Well, I was actually there when it happened. I was dining with the
Livingstones. Do you know the Livingstones?"

"No, I don't think I do."

"Well, you can ask them and they'll confirm every word I say. They'd
asked their governess to come in to dinner because some woman had thrown
them over at the last moment--you know how inconsiderate people are--and
they would have been thirteen at table. Their governess was a Miss
Robinson, quite a nice girl, young, you know, twenty or twenty-one, and
rather pretty. Personally I would never engage a governess who was young
and pretty. One never knows."

"But one hopes for the best."

Laura paid no attention to my remark.

"The chances are that she'll be thinking of young men instead of
attending to her duties and then, just when she's got used to your ways,
she'll want to go and get married. But Miss Robinson had excellent
references, and I must allow that she was a very nice, respectable
person. I believe in point of fact she was a clergyman's daughter.

"There was a man at dinner whom I don't suppose you've ever heard of,
but who's quite a celebrity in his way. He's a Count Borselli and he
knows more about precious stones than anyone in the world. He was
sitting next to Mary Lyngate, who rather fancies herself on her pearls,
and in the course of conversation she asked him what he thought of the
string she was wearing. He said it was very pretty. She was rather
piqued at this and told him it was valued at eight thousand pounds.

"'Yes, it's worth that,' he said.

"Miss Robinson was sitting opposite to him. She was looking rather nice
that evening. Of course I recognised her dress, it was one of Sophie's
old ones; but if you hadn't known Miss Robinson was the governess you
would never have suspected it.

"'That's a very beautiful necklace that young lady has on,' said
Borselli.

"'Oh, but that's Mrs. Livingstone's governess,' said Mary Lyngate.

"'I can't help that,' he said. 'She's wearing one of the finest strings
of pearls for its size that I've ever seen in my life. It must be worth
fifty thousand pounds.'

"'Nonsense.'

"'I give you my word it is.'

"Mary Lyngate leant over. She has rather a shrill voice.

"'Miss Robinson, do you know what Count Borselli says?' she exclaimed.
'He says that string of pearls you're wearing is worth fifty thousand
pounds.'

"Just at that moment there was a sort of pause in the conversation so
that everybody heard. We all turned and looked at Miss Robinson. She
flushed a little and laughed.

"'Well, I made a very good bargain,' she said, 'because I paid fifteen
shillings for it.'

"'You certainly did.'

"We all laughed. It was of course absurd. We've all heard of wives
palming off on their husbands as false a string of pearls that was real
and expensive. That story is as old as the hills."

"Thank you," I said, thinking of a little narrative of my own.

"But it was too ridiculous to suppose that a governess would remain a
governess if she owned a string of pearls worth fifty thousand pounds.
It was obvious that the Count had made a bloomer. Then an extraordinary
thing happened. The long arm of coincidence came in."

"It shouldn't," I retorted. "It's had too much exercise. Haven't you
seen that charming book called _A Dictionary of English Usage_?"

"I wish you wouldn't interrupt just when I'm really getting to the
exciting point."

But I had to do so again, for just then a young grilled salmon was
insinuated round my left elbow.

"Mrs. Livingstone is giving us a heavenly dinner," I said.

"Is salmon fattening?" asked Laura.

"Very," I answered as I took a large helping.

"Bunk," she said.

"Go on," I begged her. "The long arm of coincidence was about to make a
gesture."

"Well, at that very moment the butler bent over Miss Robinson and
whispered something in her ear. I thought she turned a trifle pale. It's
such a mistake not to wear rouge; you never know what tricks nature will
play on you. She certainly looked startled. She leant forwards.

"'Mrs. Livingstone, Dawson says there are two men in the hall who want
to speak to me at once.'

"'Well, you'd better go,' said Sophie Livingstone.

"Miss Robinson got up and left the room. Of course the same thought
flashed through all our minds, but I said it first.

"'I hope they haven't come to arrest her,' I said to Sophie. 'It would
be too dreadful for you, my dear.'

"'Are you sure it was a real necklace, Borselli?' she asked.

"'Oh, quite.'

"'She could hardly have had the nerve to wear it to-night if it were
stolen,' I said.

"Sophie Livingstone turned as pale as death under her make-up, and I saw
she was wondering if everything was all right in her jewel case. I only
had on a little chain of diamonds, but instinctively I put my hand up to
my neck to feel if it was still there.

"'Don't talk nonsense,' said Mr. Livingstone. 'How on earth would Miss
Robinson have had the chance of sneaking a valuable string of pearls?'

"'She may be a receiver,' I said.

"'Oh, but she had such wonderful references,' said Sophie.

"'They always do,' I said."

I was positively forced to interrupt Laura once more.

"You don't seem to have been determined to take a very bright view of
the case," I remarked.

"Of course I knew nothing against Miss Robinson, and I had every reason
to think her a very nice girl, but it would have been rather thrilling
to find out that she was a notorious thief and a well-known member of a
gang of international crooks."

"Just like a film. I'm dreadfully afraid that it's only in films that
exciting things like that happen."

"Well, we waited in breathless suspense. There was not a sound. I
expected to hear a scuffle in the hall or at least a smothered shriek. I
thought the silence very ominous. Then the door opened and Miss Robinson
walked in. I noticed at once that the necklace was gone. I could see
that she was pale and excited. She came back to the table, sat down and
with a smile threw on it..."

"On what?"

"On the table, you fool. A string of pearls."

"'There's my necklace,' she said.

"Count Borselli leant forwards.

"'Oh, but those are false,' he said.

"'I told you they were,' she laughed.

"'That's not the same string that you had on a few moment ago,' he said.

"She shook her head and smiled mysteriously. We were all intrigued. I
don't know that Sophie Livingstone was so very much pleased at her
governess making herself the centre of interest like that and I thought
there was a suspicion of tartness in her manner when she suggested that
Miss Robinson had better explain. Well, Miss Robinson said that when she
went into the hall she found two men who said they'd come from Jarrot's
Stores. She'd bought her string there, as she said, for fifteen
shillings, and she'd taken it back because the clasp was loose and had
only fetched it that afternoon. The men said they had given her the
wrong string. Someone had left a string of real pearls to be re-strung
and the assistant had made a mistake. Of course I can't understand how
anyone could be so stupid as to take a really valuable string to
Jarrot's, they aren't used to dealing with that sort of thing, and they
wouldn't know real pearls from false; but you know what fools some women
are. Anyhow, it was the string Miss Robinson was wearing, and it was
valued at fifty thousand pounds. She naturally gave it back to them--she
couldn't do anything else, I suppose, though it must have been a
wrench--and they returned her own string to her; then they said that
although of course they were under no obligation--you know the silly,
pompous way men talk when they're trying to be business-like--they were
instructed, as a solatium or whatever you call it, to offer her a cheque
for three hundred pounds. Miss Robinson actually showed it to us. She
was as pleased as Punch."

"Well, it was a piece of luck, wasn't it?"

"You'd have thought so. As it turned out it was the ruin of her."

"Oh, how was that?"

"Well, when the time came for her to go on her holiday she told Sophie
Livingstone that she'd made up her mind to go to Deauville for a month
and blue the whole three hundred pounds. Of course Sophie tried to
dissuade her, and begged her to put the money in the savings bank, but
she wouldn't hear of it. She said she'd never had such a chance before
and would never have it again and she meant for at least four weeks to
live like a duchess. Sophie couldn't really do anything and so she gave
way. She sold Miss Robinson a lot of clothes that she didn't want; she'd
been wearing them all through the season and was sick to death of them;
she says she gave them to her, but I don't suppose she quite did that--I
dare say she sold them very cheap--and Miss Robinson started off,
entirely alone, for Deauville. What do you think happened then?"

"I haven't a notion," I replied. "I hope she had the time of her life."

"Well, a week before she was due to come back she wrote to Sophie and
said that she'd changed her plans and had entered another profession,
and hoped that Mrs. Livingstone would forgive her if she didn't return.
Of course poor Sophie was furious. What had actually happened was that
Miss Robinson had picked up a rich Argentine in Deauville and had gone
off to Paris with him. She's been in Paris ever since. I've seen her
myself at Florence's, with bracelets right up to her elbow and ropes of
pearls round her neck. Of course I cut her dead. They say she has a
house in the Bois de Boulogne and I know she has a Rolls. She threw over
the Argentine in a few months and then got hold of a Greek; I don't know
who she's with now, but the long and short of it is that she's far and
away the smartest cocotte in Paris."

"When you say she was ruined you use the word in a purely technical
sense, I conclude," said I.

"I don't know what you mean by that," said Laura. "But don't you think
you could make a story out of it?"

"Unfortunately I've already written a story about a pearl necklace. One
can't go on writing stories about pearl necklaces."

"I've got half a mind to write it myself. Only, of course, I should
change the end."

"Oh, how would you end it?"

"Well, I should have had her engaged to a bank clerk who had been badly
knocked about in the war, with only one leg, say, or half his face shot
away; and they'd be dreadfully poor and there would be no prospect of
their marriage for years, and he would be putting all his savings into
buying a little house in the suburbs, and they'd have arranged to marry
when he had saved the last instalment. And then she takes him the three
hundred pounds and they can hardly believe it, they're so happy, and he
cries on her shoulder. He just cries like a child. And they get the
little house in the suburbs and they marry, and they have his old mother
to live with them, and he goes to the bank every day, and if she's
careful not to have babies she can still go out as a daily governess,
and he's often ill--with his wound, you know--and she nurses him, and
it's all very pathetic and sweet and lovely."

"It sounds rather dull to me," I ventured.

"Yes, but moral," said Laura.




THE YELLOW STREAK


The two prahus were dropping easily down-stream, one a few yards ahead
of the other, and in the first sat the two white men. After seven weeks
on the rivers they were glad to know that they would lodge that night in
a civilised house. To Izzart, who had been in Borneo since the war, the
Dyak houses and their feasts were of course an old story; but Campion,
though new to the country and at first amused by the strangeness,
hankered too now for chairs to sit on and a bed to sleep in. The Dyaks
were hospitable, but no one could say that there was much comfort to be
found in their houses, and there was a monotony in the entertainment
they offered a guest which presently grew somewhat wearisome. Every
evening, as the travellers reached the landing-place, the headman,
bearing a flag, and the more important members of the household came
down to the river to fetch them. They were led up to the long-house--a
village really under one roof, built on piles, to which access was
obtained by climbing up the trunk of a tree rudely notched into
steps--and to the beating of drums and gongs walked up and down the
whole length of it in long procession. On both sides serried throngs of
brown people sat on their haunches and stared silently as the white men
passed. Clean mats were unrolled and the guests seated themselves. The
headman brought a live chicken and, holding it by the legs, waved it
three times over their heads, called the spirits loudly to witness and
uttered an invocation. Then various persons brought eggs. Arak was
drunk. A girl, a very small shy thing with the grace of a flower but
with something hieratic in her immobile face, held a cup to the white
man's lips till it was empty and then a great shout arose. The men began
to dance, one after the other, each treading his little measure, with
his shield and his parang, to the accompaniment of drum and gong. After
this had gone on for some time the visitors were taken into one of the
rooms that led off the long platform on which was led the common life of
the household and found their supper prepared for them. The girls fed
them with Chinese spoons. Then everyone grew a little drunk and they all
talked till the early hours of the morning.

But now their journey was done and they were on their way to the coast.
They had started at dawn. The river then was very shallow and ran clear
and bright over a shingly bottom; the trees leaned over it so that above
there was only a strip of blue sky; but now it had broadened out, and
the men were poling no longer but paddling. The trees, bamboos, wild
sago like huge bunches of ostrich feathers, trees with enormous leaves
and trees with feathery foliage like the acacia, coconut trees and areca
palms, with their long straight white stems, the trees on the banks were
immensely and violently luxuriant. Here and there, gaunt and naked, was
the bare skeleton of a tree struck by lightning or dead of old age, and
its whiteness against all that green was vivid. Here and there, rival
kings of the forest, tall trees soared above the common level of the
jungle. Then there were the parasites; in the fork of two branches great
tufts of lush green leaves, or flowering creepers that covered the
spreading foliage like a bride's veil; sometimes they wound round a tall
trunk, a sheath of splendour, and threw long flowering arms from branch
to branch. There was something thrilling in the passionate wildness of
that eager growth; it had the daring abandon of the nomad rioting in the
train of the god.

The day wore on, and now the heat was no longer so oppressive. Campion
looked at the shabby silver watch on his wrist. It could not be long now
before they reached their destination.

"What sort of a chap is Hutchinson?" he asked.

"I don't know him. I believe he's a very good sort."

Hutchinson was the Resident in whose house they were to spend the night,
and they had sent on a Dyak in a canoe to announce their arrival.

"Well, I hope he's got some whisky. I've drunk enough arak to last me a
lifetime."

Campion was a mining engineer whom the Sultan on his way to England had
met at Singapore, and finding him at a loose end had commissioned to go
to Sembulu and see whether he could discover any mineral which might be
profitably worked. He sent Willis, the Resident at Kuala Solor,
instructions to afford him every facility, and Willis had put him in the
care of Izzart because Izzart spoke both Malay and Dyak like a native.
This was the third trip they had made into the interior, and now Campion
was to go home with his reports. They were to catch the _Sultan Ahmed_,
which was due to pass the mouth of the river at dawn on the next day but
one, and with any luck should reach Kuala Solor on the same afternoon.
They were both glad to get back to it. There was tennis and golf there,
and the club with its billiard tables, food which was relatively good,
and the comforts of civilisation. Izzart was glad, too, that he would
have other society than Campion's. He gave him a sidelong glance. He was
a little man with a big, bald head, and though certainly fifty, strong
and wiry; he had quick, shining blue eyes and a stubbly, grey moustache.
He was seldom without an old briar pipe between his broken and
discoloured teeth. He was neither clean nor neat, his khaki shorts were
ragged and his singlet torn; he was wearing now a battered topee. He had
knocked about the world since he was eighteen and had been in South
Africa, in China and in Mexico. He was good company; he could tell a
story well, and he was prepared to drink and drink again with anyone he
met. They had got on very well together, but Izzart had never felt quite
at home with him. Though they joked and laughed together, got drunk
together, Izzart felt that there was no intimacy between them: for all
the cordiality of their relations they remained nothing but
acquaintances. He was very sensitive to the impression he made on
others, and behind Campion's joviality he had felt a certain coolness;
those shining blue eyes had summed him up; and it vaguely irritated
Izzart that Campion had formed an opinion of him, and he did not quite
know what it was. He was exasperated by the possibility that this common
little man did not think entirely well of him. He desired to be liked
and admired. He wanted to be popular. He wished the people he met to
take an inordinate fancy to him, so that he could either reject them or
a trifle condescendingly bestow his friendship on them. His inclination
was to be familiar with all and sundry, but he was held back by the fear
of a rebuff; sometimes he had been uneasily conscious that his
effusiveness surprised the persons he lavished it on.

By some chance he had never met Hutchinson, though of course he knew all
about him just as Hutchinson knew all about him, and they would have
many common friends to talk of. Hutchinson had been at Winchester, and
Izzart was glad that he could tell him that he had been at Harrow....

The prahu rounded a bend in the river and suddenly, standing on a slight
eminence, they saw the bungalow. In a few minutes they caught sight of
the landing-stage and on it, among a little group of natives, a figure
in white waving to them.

Hutchinson was a tall, stout man with a red face. His appearance led you
to expect that he was breezy and self-confident, so that it was not a
little surprising to discover quickly that he was diffident and even a
trifle shy. When he shook hands with his guests--Izzart introduced
himself and then Campion--and led them up the pathway to the bungalow,
though he was plainly anxious to be civil it was not hard to see that he
found it difficult to make conversation. He took them out on to the
verandah and here they found on the table glasses and whisky and soda.
They made themselves comfortable on long chairs. Izzart, conscious of
Hutchinson's slight embarrassment with strangers, expanded; he was very
hearty and voluble. He began to speak of their common acquaintances at
Kuala Solor, and he managed very soon to slip in casually the
information that he had been at Harrow.

"You were at Winchester, weren't you?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I wonder if you knew George Parker. He was in my regiment. He was at
Winchester. I daresay he was younger than you."

Izzart felt that it was a bond between them that they had been at these
particular schools, and it excluded Campion, who obviously had enjoyed
no such advantage. They drank two or three whiskies. Izzart in half an
hour began to call his host Hutchie. He talked a good deal about "my
regiment" in which he had got his company during the war, and what good
fellows his brother officers were. He mentioned two or three names which
could hardly be unknown to Hutchinson. They were not the sort of people
that Campion was likely to have come across, and he was not sorry to
administer to him a neat snub when he claimed acquaintance with someone
he spoke of.

"Billie Meadows? I knew a fellow called Billie Meadows in Sinaloa many
years ago," said Campion.

"Oh, I shouldn't think it could be the same," said Izzart, with a smile.
"Billie's by way of being a peer of the realm. He's the Lord Meadows who
races. Don't you remember, he owned Spring Carrots?"

Dinner time was approaching, and after a wash and brush-up they drank a
couple of gin pahits. They sat down. Hutchinson had not been to Kuala
Solor for the best part of a year, and had not seen another white man
for three months. He was anxious to make the most of his visitors. He
could give them no wine, but there was plenty of whisky and after dinner
he brought out a precious bottle of Benedictine. They were very gay.
They laughed and talked a great deal. Izzart was getting on famously. He
thought he had never liked a fellow more than Hutchinson, and he pressed
him to come down to Kuala Solor as soon as he could. They would have a
wonderful beano. Campion was left out of the conversation by Izzart with
the faintly malicious intention of putting him in his place, and by
Hutchinson through shyness; and presently, after yawning a good deal, he
said he would go to bed. Hutchinson showed him to his room and when he
returned Izzart said to him:

"You don't want to turn in yet, do you?"

"Not on your life. Let's have another drink."

They sat and talked. They both grew a little drunk. Presently Hutchinson
told Izzart that he lived with a Malay girl, and had a couple of
children by her. He had told them to keep out of sight while Campion was
there.

"I expect she's asleep now," said Hutchinson, with a glance at the door
which Izzart knew led into his room, "but I'd like you to see the
kiddies in the morning."

Just then a faint wail was heard and Hutchinson with a "Hulloa, the
little devil's awake," went to the door and opened it. In a moment or
two he came out of the room with a child in his arms. A woman followed
him.

"He's cutting his teeth," said Hutchinson. "It makes him restless."

The woman wore a sarong and a thin white jacket and she was barefoot.
She was young, with fine dark eyes, and she gave Izzart when he spoke to
her a bright and pleasant smile. She sat down and lit a cigarette. She
answered the civil questions Izzart put to her without embarrassment,
but also without effusion. Hutchinson asked her if she would have a
whisky and soda, but she refused. When the two men began to talk again
in English she sat on quite quietly, faintly rocking herself in her
chair, and occupied with none could tell what calm thoughts.

"She's a very good girl," said Hutchinson. "She looks after the house
and she's no trouble. Of course it's the only thing to do in a place
like this."

"I shall never do it myself," said Izzart. "After all, one may want to
get married and then it means all sorts of botherations."

"But who wants to get married? What a life for a white woman. I wouldn't
ask a white woman to live here for anything in the world."

"Of course it's a matter of taste. If I have any kiddies I'm going to
see that they have a white mother."

Hutchinson looked down at the little dark-skinned child he held in his
arms. He gave a faint smile.

"It's funny how you get to like them," he said. "When they're your own
it doesn't seem to matter that they've got a touch of the tar-brush."

The woman gave the child a look, and getting up said she would take it
back to bed.

"I should think we'd better all turn in," said Hutchinson. "God knows
what the time is."

Izzart went to his room and threw open the shutters which his boy
Hassan, whom he was travelling with, had closed. Blowing out the candle
so that it should not attract the mosquitoes, he sat down at the window
and looked at the soft night. The whisky he had drunk made him feel very
wide awake, and he was not inclined to go to bed. He took off his ducks,
put on a sarong and lit a cheroot. His good-humour was gone. It was the
sight of Hutchinson looking fondly at the half-caste child which had
upset him.

"They've got no right to have them," he said to himself. "They've got no
chance in the world. Ever."

He passed his hands reflectively along his bare and hairy legs. He
shuddered a little. Though he had done everything he could to develop
the calves, his legs were like broomsticks. He hated them. He was
uneasily conscious of them all the time. They were like a native's. Of
course they were the very legs for a top-boot. In his uniform he had
looked very well. He was a tall, powerful man, over six feet high, and
he had a neat black moustache and neat black hair. His dark eyes were
fine and mobile. He was a good-looking fellow and he knew it, and he
dressed well, shabbily when shabbiness was good form, and smartly when
the occasion demanded. He had loved the army, and it was a bitter blow
to him when, at the end of the war, he could not remain in it. His
ambitions were simple. He wanted to have two thousand a year, give smart
little dinners, go to parties and wear a uniform. He hankered after
London.

Of course his mother lived there, and his mother cramped his style. He
wondered how on earth he could produce her if ever he got engaged to the
girl of good family (with a little money) whom he was looking for to
make his wife. Because his father had been dead so long and during the
later part of his career was stationed in the most remote of the Malay
States, Izzart felt fairly sure that no one in Sembulu knew anything
about her, but he lived in terror lest someone, running across her in
London, should write over to tell people that she was a half-caste. She
had been a beautiful creature when Izzart's father, an engineer in the
government service, had married her; but now she was a fat old woman
with grey hair who sat about all day smoking cigarettes. Izzart was
twelve years old when his father died and then he could speak Malay much
more fluently than English. An aunt offered to pay for his education and
Mrs. Izzart accompanied her son to England. She lived habitually in
furnished apartments, and her rooms with their Oriental draperies and
Malay silver were overheated and stuffy. She was for ever in trouble
with her landladies because she would leave cigarette-ends about. Izzart
hated the way she made friends with them: she would be shockingly
familiar with them for a time, then there would be a falling-out, and
after a violent scene she would flounce out of the house. Her only
amusement was the pictures, and to these she went every day in the week.
At home she wore an old and tawdry dressing-gown, but when she went out
she dressed herself--but, oh, how untidily--in extravagant colours, so
that it was a mortification to her dapper son. He quarrelled with her
frequently, she made him impatient and he was ashamed of her; and yet he
felt for her a deep tenderness; it was almost a physical bond between
them, something stronger than the ordinary feeling of mother and son, so
that notwithstanding the failings that exasperated him she was the only
person in the world with whom he felt entirely at home.

It was owing to his father's position and his own knowledge of Malay,
for his mother always spoke it to him, that after the war, finding
himself with nothing to do, he had managed to enter the service of the
Sultan of Sembulu. He had been a success. He played games well, he was
strong and a good athlete; in the rest-house at Kuala Solor were the
cups which he had won at Harrow for running and jumping, and to these he
had added since others for golf and tennis. With his abundant fund of
small-talk he was an asset at parties and his cheeriness made things go.
He ought to have been happy and he was wretched. He wanted so much to be
popular, and he had an impression, stronger than ever at this moment,
that popularity escaped him. He wondered whether by any chance the men
at Kuala Solor with whom he was so hail-fellow-well-met suspected that
he had native blood in him. He knew very well what to expect if they
ever found out. They wouldn't say he was gay and friendly then, they
would say he was damned familiar; and they would say he was inefficient
and careless, as the half-castes were, and when he talked of marrying a
white woman they would snigger. Oh, it was so unfair! What difference
could it make, that drop of native blood in his veins, and yet because
of it they would always be on the watch for the expected failure at the
critical moment. Everyone knew that you couldn't rely on Eurasians,
sooner or later they would let you down; he knew it too, but now he
asked himself whether they didn't fail because failure was expected of
them. They were never given a chance, poor devils.

But a cock crew loudly. It must be very late and he was beginning to
feel chilly. He got into bed. When Hassan brought him his tea next
morning he had a racking headache, and when he went in to breakfast he
could not look at the porridge and the bacon and eggs which were set
before him. Hutchinson too was feeling none too well.

"I fancy we made rather a night of it," said his host, with a smile to
conceal his faint embarrassment.

"I feel like hell," said Izzart.

"I'm going to breakfast off a whisky and soda myself," added Hutchinson.

Izzart asked for nothing better, and it was with distaste that they
watched Campion eat with healthy appetite a substantial meal. Campion
chaffed them.

"By God, Izzart, you're looking green about the gills," he said. "I
never saw such a filthy colour."

Izzart flushed. His swarthiness was always a sensitive point with him.
But he forced himself to give a cheery laugh.

"You see, I had a Spanish grandmother," he answered, "and when I'm under
the weather it always come out. I remember at Harrow I fought a boy and
licked him, because he called me a damned half-caste."

"You are dark," said Hutchinson. "Do Malays ever ask you if you have any
native blood in you?"

"Yes, damn their impudence."

A boat with their kit had started early in the morning in order to get
to the mouth of the river before them, and tell the skipper of the
_Sultan Ahmed_, if by chance he arrived before he was due, that they
were on their way. Campion and Izzart were to set out immediately after
tiffin in order to arrive at the place where they were to spend the
night before the Bore passed. A Bore is a tidal wave that, by reason of
a peculiarity in the lie of the land, surges up certain rivers, and
there happened to be one on the river on which they were travelling.
Hutchinson had talked to them of it the night before and Campion, who
had never seen such a thing, was much interested.

"This is one of the best in Borneo. It's worth looking at," said
Hutchinson.

He told them how the natives, waiting the moment, rode it and were borne
up the river on its crest at a breathless and terrifying speed. He had
done it once himself.

"Never no more for me," he said. "I was scared out of my wits."

"I should like to try it once," said Izzart.

"It's exciting enough, but my word, when you're in a flimsy dug-out and
you know that if the native doesn't get the right moment you'll be flung
in that seething torrent and you won't have a chance in a million...
no, it's not my idea of sport."

"I've shot a good many rapids in my day," said Campion.

"Rapids be damned. You wait till you see the Bore. It's one of the most
terrifying things I know. D'you know that at least a dozen natives are
drowned in it in this river alone every year?"

They lounged about on the verandah most of the morning and Hutchinson
showed them the court-house. Then gin pahits were served. They drank two
or three. Izzart began to feel himself, and when at length tiffin was
ready he found that he had an excellent appetite. Hutchinson had boasted
of his Malay curry and when the steaming, succulent dishes were placed
before them they all set to ravenously. Hutchinson pressed them to
drink.

"You've got nothing to do but sleep. Why shouldn't you get drunk?"

He could not bear to let them go so soon, it was good after so long to
have white men to talk to, and he lingered over the meal. He urged them
to eat. They would have a filthy meal that night at the long-house and
nothing to drink but arak. They had better make hay while the sun shone.
Campion suggested once or twice that they should start, but Hutchinson,
and Izzart too, for now he was feeling very happy and comfortable,
assured him there was plenty of time. Hutchinson sent for his precious
bottle of Benedictine. They had made a hole in it last night; they might
as well finish it before they went.

When at last he walked down with them to the river they were all very
merry and none of them was quite steady on his legs. Over the middle of
the boat was an attap awning, and under this Hutchinson had had a
mattress laid. The crew were prisoners who had been marched down from
the jail to row the white men, and they wore dingy sarongs with the
prison mark. They waited at their oars. Izzart and Campion shook hands
with Hutchinson and threw themselves down on the mattress. The boat
pushed off. The turbid river, wide and placid, glistened in the heat of
that brilliant afternoon like polished brass. In the distance ahead of
them they could see the bank with its tangle of green trees. They felt
drowsy, but Izzart at least found a curious enjoyment in resisting for a
little while the heaviness that was creeping over him, and he made up
his mind that he would not let himself fall asleep till he had finished
his cheroot. At last the stub began to burn his fingers and he flung it
into the river.

"I'm going to have a wonderful snooze," he said.

"What about the Bore?" asked Campion.

"Oh, that's all right. We needn't worry about that."

He gave a long and noisy yawn. His limbs felt like lead. He had one
moment in which he was conscious of his delicious drowsiness and then he
knew nothing more. Suddenly he was awakened by Campion shaking him.

"I say, what's that?"

"What's what?"

He spoke irritably, for sleep was still heavy upon him, but with his
eyes he followed Campion's gesture. He could hear nothing, but a good
way off he saw two or three white-crested waves following one another.
They did not look very alarming.

"Oh, I suppose that's the Bore."

"What are we going to do about it?" cried Campion.

Izzart was scarcely yet quite awake. He smiled at the concern in
Campion's voice.

"Don't worry. These fellows know all about it. They know exactly what to
do. We may get a bit splashed."

But while they were saying these few words the Bore came nearer, very
quickly, with a roar like the roar of an angry sea, and Izzart saw that
the waves were much higher than he had thought. He did not like the look
of them and he tightened his belt so that his shorts should not slip
down if the boat were upset. In a moment the waves were upon them. It
was a great wall of water that seemed to tower over them, and it might
have been ten or twelve feet high, but you could measure it only with
your horror. It was quite plain that no boat could weather it. The first
wave dashed over them, drenching them all, half filling the boat with
water, and then immediately another wave struck them. The boatmen began
to shout. They pulled madly at their oars and the steersman yelled an
order. But in that surging torrent they were helpless, and it was
frightening to see how soon they lost all control of the boat. The force
of the water turned it broadside on and it was carried along, helter
skelter, upon the crest of the Bore. Another great wave dashed over them
and the boat began to sink. Izzart and Campion scrambled out of the
covered place in which they had been lying and suddenly the boat gave
way under their feet and they found themselves struggling in the water.
It surged and stormed around them. Izzart's first impulse was to swim
for the shore, but his boy, Hassan, shouted to him to cling to the boat.
For a minute or two they all did this.

"Are you all right?" Campion shouted to him.

"Yes, enjoying the bath," said Izzart.

He imagined that the waves would pass by as the Bore ascended the river,
and in a few minutes at the outside they would find themselves in calm
water once more. He forgot that they were being carried along on its
crest. The waves dashed over them. They clung to the gunwale and the
base of the structure which supported the attap awning. Then a larger
wave caught the boat and it turned over, falling upon them so that they
lost their hold; there seemed nothing but a slippery bottom to cling to
and Izzart's hands slithered helplessly on the greasy surface. But the
boat continued to turn and he made a desperate grab at the gunwale, only
to feel it slip out of his hands as the turn went on, then he caught the
framework of the awning, and still it turned, turned slowly right round
and once more he sought for a hand-hold on the bottom. The boat went
round and round with a horrible regularity. He thought this must be
because everyone was clinging to one side of it, and he tried to make
the crew go round to the other. He could not make them understand.
Everyone was shouting and the waves beat against them with a dull and
angry roar. Each time the boat rolled over on them Izzart was pushed
under water, only to come up again as the gunwale and the framework of
the awning gave him something to cling to. The struggle was awful.
Presently he began to get terribly out of breath, and he felt his
strength leaving him. He knew that he could not hold on much longer, but
he did not feel frightened, for his fatigue by now was so great that he
did not very much care what happened. Hassan was by his side and he told
him he was growing very tired. He thought the best thing was to make a
dash for the shore, it did not look more than sixty yards away, but
Hassan begged him not to. Still they were being carried along amid those
seething, pounding waves. The boat went round and round and they
scrambled over it like squirrels in a cage. Izzart swallowed a lot of
water. He felt he was very nearly done. Hassan could not help him, but
it was a comfort that he was there, for Izzart knew that his boy, used
to the water all his life, was a powerful swimmer. Then, Izzart did not
know why, for a minute or two the boat held bottom downwards, so that he
was able to hold on to the gunwale. It was a precious thing to be able
to get his breath. At that moment two dug-outs, with Malays in them
riding the Bore, passed swiftly by them. They shouted for help, but the
Malays averted their faces and went on. They saw the white men, and did
not want to be concerned in any trouble that might befall them. It was
agonising to see them go past, callous and indifferent in their safety.
But on a sudden the boat rolled round again, round and round, slowly,
and the miserable, exhausting scramble repeated itself. It took the
heart out of you. But the short respite had helped Izzart, and he was
able to struggle a little longer. Then once more he found himself so
terribly out of breath that he thought his chest would burst. His
strength was all gone, and he did not know now whether he had enough to
try to swim for the shore. Suddenly he heard a cry.

"Izzart, Izzart. Help. Help."

It was Campion's voice. It was a scream of agony. It sent a shock all
through Izzart's nerves. Campion, Campion, what did he care for Campion?
Fear seized him, a blind animal fear, and it gave him a new strength. He
did not answer.

"Help me, quick, quick," he said to Hassan.

Hassan understood him at once. By a miracle one of the oars was floating
quite close to them and he pushed it into Izzart's reach. He placed a
hand under Izzart's arm and they struck away from the boat. Izzart's
heart was pounding and his breath came with difficulty. He felt horribly
weak. The waves beat in his face. The bank looked dreadfully far away.
He did not think he could ever reach it. Suddenly the boy cried that he
could touch bottom and Izzart put down his legs; but he could feel
nothing; he swam a few more exhausted strokes, his eyes fixed on the
bank, and then, trying again, felt his feet sink into thick mud. He was
thankful. He floundered on and there was the bank within reach of his
hands, black mud in which he sank to his knees: he scrambled up,
desperate to get out of the cruel water, and when he came to the top he
found a little flat with tall rank grass all about it. He and Hassan
sank down on it and lay for a while stretched out like dead men. They
were so tired that they could not move. They were covered with black mud
from head to foot.

But presently Izzart's mind began to work, and a pang of anguish on a
sudden shook him. Campion was drowned. It was awful. He did not know how
he was going to explain the disaster when he got back to Kuala Solor.
They would blame him for it; he ought to have remembered the Bore and
told the steersman to make for the bank and tie up the boat when he saw
it coming. It wasn't his fault, it was the steersman's, he knew the
river; why in God's name hadn't he had the sense to get into safety? How
could he have expected that it was possible to ride that horrible
torrent? Izzart's limbs shook as he remembered the wall of seething
water that rushed down upon them. He must get the body and take it back
to Kuala Solor. He wondered whether any of the crew were drowned too. He
felt too weak to move, but Hassan now rose and wrang the water out of
his sarong; he looked over the river and quickly turned to Izzart.

"Tuan, a boat is coming."

The lalang grass prevented Izzart from seeing anything.

"Shout to them," he said.

Hassan slipped out of view and made his way along the branch of a tree
that overhung the water; he cried out and waved. Presently Izzart heard
voices. There was a rapid conversation between the boy and the occupants
of the boat, and then the boy came back.

"They saw us capsize, Tuan," he said, "and they came as soon as the Bore
passed. There's a long-house on the other side. If you will cross the
river they will give us sarongs and food and we can sleep there."

Izzart for a moment felt that he could not again trust himself on the
face of the treacherous water.

"What about the other tuan?" he asked.

"They do not know."

"If he's drowned they must find the body."

"Another boat has gone up-stream."

Izzart did not know what to do. He was numb. Hassan put his arm round
his shoulder and raised him to his feet. He made his way through the
thick grass to the edge of the water, and there he saw a dug-out with
two Dyaks in it. The river now once more was calm and sluggish; the
great wave had passed on and no one would have dreamed that so short a
while before the placid surface was like a stormy sea. The Dyaks
repeated to him what they had already told the boy. Izzart could not
bring himself to speak. He felt that if he said a word he would burst
out crying. Hassan helped him to get in, and the Dyaks began to pull
across. He fearfully wanted something to smoke, but his cigarettes and
his matches, both in a hip-pocket, were soaking. The passage of the
river seemed endless. The night fell and when they reached the bank the
first stars were shining. He stepped ashore and one of the Dyaks took
him up to the long-house. But Hassan seized the paddle he had dropped
and with the other pushed out into the stream. Two or three men and some
children came down to meet Izzart and he climbed to the house amid a
babel of conversation. He went up the ladder and was led with greetings
and excited comment to the space where the young men slept. Rattan mats
were hurriedly laid to make him a couch and he sank down on them.
Someone brought him a jar of arak and he took a long drink; it was rough
and fiery, burning his throat, but it warmed his heart. He slipped off
his shirt and trousers and put on a dry sarong which someone lent him.
By chance he caught sight of the yellow new moon lying on her back, and
it gave him a keen, almost a sensual, pleasure. He could not help
thinking that he might at that moment be a corpse floating up the river
with the tide. The moon had never looked to him more lovely. He began to
feel hungry and he asked for rice. One of the women went into a room to
prepare it. He was more himself now, and he began to think again of the
explanations he would make at Kuala Solor. No one could really blame him
because he had gone to sleep; he certainly wasn't drunk, Hutchinson
would bear him out there, and how was he to suspect that the steersman
would be such a damned fool? It was just rotten luck. But he couldn't
think of Campion without a shudder. At last a platter of rice was
brought him, and he was just about to start eating when a man ran
hurriedly along and came up to him.

"The tuan's come," he cried.

"What tuan?"

He jumped up. There was a commotion about the doorway and he stepped
forward. Hassan was coming quickly towards him out of the darkness, and
then he heard a voice.

"Izzart. Are you there?"

Campion advanced towards him.

"Well, here we are again. By God, that was a pretty near thing, wasn't
it? You seem to have made yourself nice and comfortable. My heavens, I
could do with a drink."

His dank clothes clung round him, and he was muddy and dishevelled. But
he was in excellent spirits.

"I didn't know where the hell they were bringing me. I'd made up my mind
that I should have to spend the night on the bank. I thought you were
drowned."

"Here's some arak," said Izzart.

Campion put his mouth to the jar and drank and spluttered and drank
again.

"Muck, but by God it's strong." He looked at Izzart with a grin of his
broken and discoloured teeth. "I say, old man, you look as though you'd
be all the better for a wash."

"I'll wash later."

"All right, so will I. Tell them to get me a sarong. How did you get
out?" He did not wait for an answer. "I thought I was done for. I owe my
life to these two sportsmen here." He indicated with a cheery nod two of
the Dyak prisoners whom Izzart vaguely recognised as having been part of
their crew. "They were hanging on to that blasted boat on each side of
me and somehow they cottoned on to it that I was down and out. I
couldn't have lasted another minute. They made signs to me that we could
risk having a shot at getting to the bank, but I didn't think I had the
strength. By George, I've never been so blown in all my life. I don't
know how they managed it, but somehow they got hold of the mattress we'd
been lying on, and they made it into a roll. They're sportsmen they are.
I don't know why they didn't just save themselves without bothering
about me. They gave it to me. I thought it a damned poor lifebelt, but I
saw the force of the proverb about a drowning man clutching at a straw.
I caught hold of the damned thing and between them somehow or other they
dragged me ashore."

The danger from which he had escaped made Campion excited and voluble;
but Izzart hardly listened to what he said. He heard once more, as
distinctly as though the words rang now through the air, Campion's
agonised cry for help, and he felt sick with terror. The blind panic
raced down his nerves. Campion was talking still, but was he talking to
conceal his thoughts? Izzart looked into those bright blue eyes and
sought to read the sense behind the flow of words. Was there a hard
glint in them or something of cynical mockery? Did he know that Izzart,
leaving him to his fate, had cut and run? He flushed deeply. After all,
what was there that he could have done? At such a moment it was each for
himself and the devil take the hindmost. But what would they say in
Kuala Solor if Campion told them that Izzart had deserted him? He ought
to have stayed, he wished now with all his heart that he had, but then,
then it was stronger than himself, he couldn't. Could anyone blame him?
No one who had seen that fierce and seething torrent. Oh, the water and
the exhaustion, so that he could have cried!

"If you're as hungry as I am you'd better have a tuck in at this rice,"
he said.

Campion ate voraciously, but when Izzart had taken a mouthful or two he
found that he had no appetite. Campion talked and talked. Izzart
listened suspiciously. He felt that he must be alert and he drank more
arak. He began to feel a little drunk.

"I shall get into the devil of a row at K. S.," he said tentatively.

"I don't know why."

"I was told off to look after you. They won't think it was very clever
of me to let you get nearly drowned."

"It wasn't your fault. It was the fault of the damned fool of a
steersman. After all, the important thing is that we're saved. By
George, I thought I was finished once. I shouted out to you. I don't
know if you heard me."

"No, I didn't hear anything. There was such a devil of a row, wasn't
there?"

"Perhaps you'd got away before. I don't know exactly when you did get
away."

Izzart looked at him sharply. Was it his fancy that there was an odd
look in Campion's eyes?

"There was such an awful confusion," he said. "I was just about down and
out. My boy threw me over an oar. He gave me to understand you were all
right. He told me you'd got ashore."

The oar! He ought to have given Campion the oar and told Hassan, the
strong swimmer, to give _him_ his help. Was it his fancy again that
Campion gave him a quick and searching glance?

"I wish I could have been of more use to you," said Izzart.

"Oh, I'm sure you had enough to do to look after yourself," answered
Campion.

The headman brought them cups of arak, and they both drank a great deal.
Izzart's head began to spin and he suggested that they should turn in.
Beds had been prepared for them and mosquito nets fixed. They were to
set out at dawn on the rest of their journey down the river. Campion's
bed was next to his, and in a few minutes he heard him snoring. He had
fallen asleep the moment he lay down. The young men of the long-house
and the prisoners of the boat's crew went on talking late into the night
Izzart's head now was aching horribly and he could not think. When
Hassan roused him as day broke it seemed to him that he had not slept at
all. Their clothes had been washed and dried, but they were bedraggled
objects as they walked along the narrow pathway to the river where the
prahu was waiting for them. They rowed leisurely. The morning was lovely
and the great stretch of placid water gleamed in the early light.

"By George, it's fine to be alive," said Campion.

He was grubby and unshaved. He took long breaths, and his twisted mouth
was half open with a grin. You could tell that he found the air
singularly good to breathe. He was delighted with the blue sky and the
sunshine and the greenness of the trees. Izzart hated him. He was sure
that this morning there was a difference in his manner. He did not know
what to do. He had a mind to throw himself on his mercy. He had behaved
like a cad, but he was sorry, he would give anything to have the chance
again, but anyone might have done what he did, and if Campion gave him
away he was ruined. He could never stay in Sembulu; his name would be
mud in Borneo and the Straits Settlements. If he made his confession to
Campion he could surely get Campion to promise to hold his tongue. But
would he keep his promise? He looked at him, a shifty little man: how
could he be relied on? Izzart thought of what he had said the night
before. It wasn't the truth, of course, but who could know that? At all
events who could prove that he hadn't honestly thought that Campion was
safe? Whatever Campion said, it was only his word against Izzart's; he
could laugh and shrug his shoulders and say that Campion had lost his
head and didn't know what he was talking about. Besides, it wasn't
certain that Campion hadn't accepted his story; in that frightful
struggle for life he could be very sure of nothing. He had a temptation
to go back to the subject, but was afraid if he did that he would excite
suspicion in Campion's mind. He _must_ hold his tongue. That was his
only chance of safety. And when they got to K. S. he would get in his
story first.

"I should be completely happy now," said Campion, "if I only had
something to smoke."

"We shall be able to get some stinkers on board."

Campion gave a little laugh.

"Human beings are very unreasonable," he said. "At the first moment I
was so glad to be alive that I thought of nothing else, but now I'm
beginning to regret the loss of my notes and my photographs and my
shaving tackle."

Izzart formulated the thought which had lurked at the back of his mind,
but which all through the night he had refused to admit into his
consciousness.

"I wish to God he'd been drowned. Then I'd have been safe."

"There she is," cried Campion suddenly.

Izzart looked round. They were at the mouth of the river and there was
the _Sultan Ahmed_ waiting for them. Izzart's heart sank: he had
forgotten that she had an English skipper and that he would have to be
told the story of their adventure. What would Campion say? The skipper
was called Bredon, and Izzart had met him often at Kuala Solor. He was a
little bluff man, with a black moustache, and a breezy manner.

"Hurry up," he called out to them, as they rowed up, "I've been waiting
for you since dawn." But when they climbed on board his face fell.
"Hulloa, what's the matter with you?"

"Give us a drink and you shall hear all about it," said Campion, with
his crooked grin.

"Come along."

They sat down under the awning. On a table were glasses, a bottle of
whisky and soda-water. The skipper gave an order and in a few minutes
they were noisily under way.

"We were caught in the Bore," said Izzart.

He felt he must say something. His mouth was horribly dry
notwithstanding the drink.

"Were you, by Jove? You're lucky not to have been drowned. What
happened?"

He addressed himself to Izzart because he knew him, but it was Campion
who answered. He related the whole incident, accurately, and Izzart
listened with strained attention. Campion spoke in the plural when he
told the early part of the story, and then, as he came to the moment
when they were thrown into the water, changed to the singular. At first
it was what _they_ had done and now it was what happened to _him_. He
left Izzart out of it. Izzart did not know whether to be relieved or
alarmed. Why did he not mention him? Was it because in that mortal
struggle for life he had thought of nothing but himself or--did he
_know_?

"And what happened to you?" said Captain Bredon, turning to Izzart.

Izzart was about to answer when Campion spoke.

"Until I got over to the other side of the river I thought he was
drowned. I don't know how he got out. I expect he hardly knows himself."

"It was touch and go," said Izzart with a laugh.

Why had Campion said that? He caught his eye. He was sure now that there
was a gleam of amusement in it. It was awful not to be certain. He was
frightened. He was ashamed. He wondered if he could not so guide the
conversation, either now or later, as to ask Campion whether that was
the story he was going to tell in Kuala Solor. There was nothing in it
to excite anyone's suspicions. But if nobody else knew, Campion knew. He
could have killed him.

"Well, I think you're both of you damned lucky to be alive," said the
skipper.

It was but a short run to Kuala Solor, and as they steamed up the
Sembulu river Izzart moodily watched the banks. On each side were the
mangroves and the nipahs washed by the water, and behind, the dense
green of the jungle; here and there, among fruit trees, were Malay
houses on piles. Night fell as they docked. Goring, of the police, came
on board and shook hands with them. He was living at the rest-house just
then, and as he set about his work of seeing the native passengers he
told them they would find another man, Porter by name, staying there
too. They would all meet at dinner. The boys took charge of their kit,
and Campion and Izzart strolled along. They bathed and changed, and at
half-past eight the four of them assembled in the common-room for gin
pahits.

"I say, what's this Bredon tells me about your being nearly drowned?"
said Goring as he came in.

Izzart felt himself flush, but before he could answer Campion broke in,
and it seemed certain to Izzart that he spoke in order to give the story
as he chose. He felt hot with shame. Not a word was spoken in
disparagement of him, not a word was said of him at all; he wondered if
those two men who listened, Goring and Porter, thought it strange that
he should be left out. He looked at Campion intently as he proceeded
with his narration; he told it rather humorously; he did not disguise
the danger in which they had been, but he made a joke of it, so that the
two listeners laughed at the quandary in which they found themselves.

"A thing that's tickled me since," said Campion, "is that when I got
over to the other bank I was black with mud from head to foot. I felt I
really ought to jump in the river and have a wash, but you know I felt
I'd been in that damned river as much as ever I wanted, and I said to
myself: No, by George, I'll go dirty. And when I got into the long-house
and saw Izzart as black as I was, I knew he'd felt just like I did."

They laughed and Izzart forced himself to laugh too. He noticed that
Campion had told the story in precisely the same words as he had used
when he told it to the skipper of the _Sultan Ahmed_. There could be
only one explanation of that; he knew, he knew everything, and had made
up his mind exactly what story to tell. The ingenuity with which Campion
gave the facts and yet left out what must be to Izzart's discredit was
devilish. But why was he holding his hand? It wasn't in him not to feel
contempt and resentment for the man who had callously deserted him in
that moment of dreadful peril. Suddenly, in a flash of inspiration
Izzart understood: he was keeping the truth to tell to Willis, the
Resident. Izzart had goos-flesh as he thought of confronting Willis. He
could deny, but would his denials serve him? Willis was no fool, and he
would get at Hassan; Hassan could not be trusted to be silent; Hassan
would give him away. Then he would be done for. Willis would suggest
that he had better go home.

He had a racking headache, and after dinner he went to his room for he
wanted to be alone so that he could devise a plan of action. And then a
thought came to him which made him go hot and cold: he knew that the
secret which he had guarded so long was a secret to nobody. He was on a
sudden certain of it. Why should he have those bright eyes and that
swarthy skin? Why should he speak Malay with such ease and have learned
Dyak so quickly? Of course they knew. What a fool he was ever to think
that they believed that story of his, about the Spanish grandmother!
They must have laughed up their sleeves when he told it, and behind his
back they had called him a damned nigger. And now another thought came
to him, torturing, and he asked himself whether it was on account of
that wretched drop of native blood in him that when he heard Campion cry
out his nerve failed him. After all, anyone might at that moment have
been seized with panic; and why in God's name should he sacrifice his
life to save a man's whom he cared nothing for? It was insane. But of
course in K. S. they would say it was only what they expected; they
would make no allowances.

At last he went to bed, but when, after tossing about recklessly for God
knows how long, he fell asleep, he was awakened by a fearful dream; he
seemed to be once more in that raging torrent, with the boat turning,
turning; and then there was the desperate clutching at the gunwale, and
the agony as it slipped out of his hands, and the water that roared over
him. He was wide awake before dawn. His only chance was to see Willis
and get his story in first; and he thought over carefully what he was
going to say, and chose the very words he meant to use.

He got up early, and in order not to see Campion went out without
breakfast. He walked along the high road till such time as he knew the
Resident would be in his office, and then walked back again. He sent in
his name and was ushered into Willis's room. He was a little elderly man
with thin grey hair and a long yellow face.

"I'm glad to see you back safe and sound," he said, shaking hands with
Izzart. "What's this I hear about your being nearly drowned?"

Izzart, in clean ducks, his topee spotless, was a fine figure of a man.
His black hair was neatly brushed, and his moustache was trimmed. He had
an upright and soldierly bearing.

"I thought I'd better come and tell you at once, sir, as you told me to
look after Campion."

"Fire away."

Izzart told his story. He made light of the danger. He gave Willis to
understand that it had not been very great. They would never have been
upset if they had not started so late.

"I tried to get Campion away earlier, but he'd had two or three drinks
and the fact is, he didn't want to move."

"Was he tight?"

"I don't know about that," smiled Izzart good-humouredly. "I shouldn't
say he was cold sober."

He went on with his story. He managed to insinuate that Campion had lost
his head a little. Of course it was a very frightening business to a man
who wasn't a decent swimmer: he, Izzart, had been more concerned for
Campion than for himself; he knew the only chance was to keep cool, and
the moment they were upset he saw that Campion had got the wind up.

"You can't blame him for that," said the Resident.

"Of course I did everything I possibly could for him, sir, but the fact
is, there wasn't anything much I could do."

"Well, the great thing is that you both escaped. It would have been very
awkward for all of us if he'd been drowned."

"I thought I'd better come and tell you the facts before you saw
Campion, sir. I fancy he's inclined to talk rather wildly about it.
There's no use exaggerating."

"On the whole your stories agree pretty well," said Willis, with a
little smile.

Izzart looked at him blankly.

"Haven't you seen Campion this morning? I heard from Goring that there'd
been some trouble, and I looked in last night on my way home from the
Fort after dinner. You'd already gone to bed."

Izzart felt himself trembling, and he made a great effort to preserve
his composure.

"By the way, you got away first, didn't you?"

"I don't really know, sir. You see, there was a lot of confusion."

"You must have if you got over to the other side before he did."

"I suppose I did then."

"Well, thanks for coming to tell me," said Willis, rising from his
chair.

As he did so he knocked some books on the floor. They fell with a sudden
thud. The unexpected sound made Izzart start violently, and he gave a
gasp. The Resident looked at him quickly.

"I say, your nerves are in a pretty state."

Izzart could not control his trembling.

"I'm very sorry, sir," he murmured.

"I expect it's been a shock. You'd better take it easy for a few days.
Why don't you get the doctor to give you something?"

"I didn't sleep very well last night."

The Resident nodded as though he understood. Izzart left the room, and
as he passed out some man he knew stopped and congratulated him on his
escape. They all knew of it. He walked back to the rest-house. And as he
walked, he repeated to himself the story he had told the Resident. Was
it really the same story that Campion had told? He had never suspected
that the Resident had already heard it from Campion. What a fool he had
been to go to bed! He should never have let Campion out of his sight.
Why had the Resident listened without telling him that he already knew?
Now Izzart cursed himself for having suggested that Campion was drunk
and had lost his head. He had said this in order to discredit him, but
he knew now that it was a stupid thing to do. And why had Willis said
that about his having got away first? Perhaps he was holding his hand
too; perhaps he was going to make enquiries; Willis was very shrewd. But
what exactly had Campion said? He must know that; at whatever cost he
must know. Izzart's mind was seething, so that he felt he could hardly
keep a hold on his thoughts, but he must keep calm. He felt like a
hunted animal. He did not believe that Willis liked him; once or twice
in the office he had blamed him because he was careless; perhaps he was
just waiting till he got all the facts. Izzart was almost hysterical.

He entered the rest-house and there, sitting on a long chair, with his
legs stretched out, was Campion. He was reading the papers which had
arrived during their absence in the jungle. Izzart felt a blind rush of
hatred well up in him as he looked at the little, shabby man who held
him in the hollow of his hand.

"Hulloa," said Campion, looking up. "Where have you been?"

To Izzart it seemed that there was in his eyes a mocking irony. He
clenched his hands, and his breath came fast.

"What have you been saying to Willis about me?" he asked abruptly.

The tone in which he put the unexpected question was so harsh that
Campion gave him a glance of faint surprise.

"I don't think I've been saying anything very much about you. Why?"

"He came here last night."

Izzart looked at him intently. His brows were drawn together in an angry
frown as he tried to read Campion's thoughts.

"I told him you'd gone to bed with a headache. He wanted to know about
our mishap."

"I've just seen him."

Izzart walked up and down the large and shaded room; now, though it was
still early, the sun was hot and dazzling. He felt himself in a net. He
was blind with rage; he could have seized Campion by the throat and
strangled him, and yet, because he did not know what he had to fight
against, he felt himself powerless. He was tired and ill, and his nerves
were shaken. On a sudden the anger which had given him a sort of
strength left him, and he was filled with despondency. It was as though
water and not blood ran through his veins; his heart sank and his knees
seemed to give way. He felt that if he did not take care, he would begin
to cry. He was dreadfully sorry for himself.

"Damn you, I wish to God I'd never set eyes on you," he cried pitifully.

"What on earth's the matter?" asked Campion, with astonishment.

"Oh, don't pretend. We've been pretending for two days, and I'm fed up
with it." His voice rose shrilly, it sounded odd in that robust and
powerful man. "I'm fed up with it. I cut and run. I left you to drown. I
know I behaved like a skunk. I couldn't help it."

Campion rose slowly from his chair.

"What _are_ you talking about?"

His tone was so genuinely surprised that it gave Izzart a start. A cold
shiver ran down his spine.

"When you called for help I was panic-stricken. I just caught hold of an
oar and got Hassan to help me get away."

"That was the most sensible thing you could do."

"I couldn't help you. There wasn't a thing I could do."

"Of course not. It was damned silly of me to shout. It was waste of
breath, and breath was the very thing I wanted."

"Do you mean to say you didn't know?"

"When those fellows got me the mattress, I thought you were still
clinging to the boat. I had an idea that I got away before you did."

Izzart put both his hands to his head, and gave a hoarse cry of despair.

"My God, what a fool I've been."

The two men stood for a while staring at one another. The silence seemed
endless.

"What are you going to do now?" asked Izzart at last.

"Oh, my dear fellow, don't worry. I've been frightened too often myself
to blame anyone who shows the white feather. I'm not going to tell a
soul."

"Yes, but you _know_."

"I promise you, you can trust me. Besides, my job's done here and I'm
going home. I want to catch the next boat to Singapore." There was a
pause, and Campion looked for a while reflectively at Izzart. "There's
only one thing I'd like to ask you: I've made a good many friends here,
and there are one or two things I'm a little sensitive about; when you
tell the story of our upset, I should be grateful if you wouldn't make
out that I had behaved badly. I wouldn't like the fellows here to think
that I'd lost my nerve."

Izzart flushed darkly. He remembered what he had said to the Resident.
It almost looked as though Campion had been listening over his shoulder.
He cleared his throat.

"I don't know why you think I should do that."

Campion chuckled good-naturedly, and his blue eyes were gay with
amusement.

"The yellow streak," he replied, and then, with a grin that showed his
broken and discoloured teeth: "Have a cheroot, dear boy."




THE FORCE OF CIRCUMSTANCE


She was sitting on the verandah waiting for her husband to come in for
luncheon. The Malay boy had drawn the blinds when the morning lost its
freshness, but she had partly raised one of them so that she could look
at the river. Under the breathless sun of mid-day it had the white
pallor of death. A native was paddling along in a dug-out so small that
it hardly showed above the surface of the water. The colours of the day
were ashy and wan. They were but the various tones of the heat. (It was
like an Eastern melody, in the minor key, which exacerbates the nerves
by its ambiguous monotony; and the ear awaits impatiently a resolution,
but waits in vain.) The cicadas sang their grating song with a frenzied
energy; it was as continual and monotonous as the rustling of a brook
over the stones; but on a sudden it was drowned by the loud singing of a
bird, mellifluous and rich; and for an instant, with a catch at her
heart, she thought of the English blackbird.

Then she heard her husband's step on the gravel path behind the
bungalow, the path that led to the court-house in which he had been
working, and she rose from her chair to greet him. He ran up the short
flight of steps, for the bungalow was built on piles, and at the door
the boy was waiting to take his topee. He came into the room which
served them as a dining-room and parlour, and his eyes lit up with
pleasure as he saw her.

"Hulloa, Doris. Hungry?"

"Ravenous."

"It'll only take me a minute to have a bath and then I'm ready."

"Be quick," she smiled.

He disappeared into his dressing-room and she heard him whistling
cheerily while, with the carelessness with which she was always
remonstrating, he tore off his clothes and flung them on the floor. He
was twenty-nine, but he was still a schoolboy; he would never grow up.
That was why she had fallen in love with him, perhaps, for no amount of
affection could persuade her that he was good-looking. He was a little
round man, with a red face like the full moon, and blue eyes. He was
rather pimply. She had examined him carefully and had been forced to
confess to him that he had not a single feature which she could praise.
She had told him often that he wasn't her type at all.

"I never said I was a beauty," he laughed.

"I can't think what it is I see in you."

But of course she knew perfectly well. He was a gay, jolly little man,
who took nothing very solemnly, and he was constantly laughing. He made
her laugh too. He found life an amusing rather than a serious business,
and he had a charming smile. When she was with him she felt happy and
good-tempered. And the deep affection which she saw in those merry blue
eyes of his touched her. It was very satisfactory to be loved like that.
Once, sitting on his knees, during their honeymoon she had taken his
face in her hands and said to him:

"You're an ugly, little fat man, Guy, but you've got charm. I can't help
loving you."

A wave of emotion swept over her and her eyes filled with tears. She saw
his face contorted for a moment with the extremity of his feeling and
his voice was a little shaky when he answered.

"It's a terrible thing for me to have married a woman who's mentally
deficient," he said.

She chuckled. It was the characteristic answer which she would have
liked him to make.

It was hard to realise that nine months ago she had never even heard of
him. She had met him at a small place by the seaside where she was
spending a month's holiday with her mother. Doris was secretary to a
member of parliament. Guy was home on leave. They were staying at the
same hotel, and he quickly told her all about himself. He was born in
Sembulu, where his father had served for thirty years under the second
Sultan, and on leaving school he had entered the same service. He was
devoted to the country.

"After all, England's a foreign land to me," he told her. "My home's
Sembulu."

And now it was her home too. He asked her to marry him at the end of the
month's holiday. She had known he was going to, and had decided to
refuse him. She was her widowed mother's only child and she could not go
so far away from her, but when the moment came she did not quite know
what happened to her, she was carried off her feet by an unexpected
emotion, and she accepted him. They had been settled now for four months
in the little outstation of which he was in charge. She was very happy.

She told him once that she had quite made up her mind to refuse him.

"Are you sorry you didn't?" he asked, with a merry smile in his
twinkling blue eyes.

"I should have been a perfect fool if I had. What a bit of luck that
fate or chance or whatever it was stepped in and took the matter
entirely out of my hands!"

Now she heard Guy clatter down the steps to the bath-house. He was a
noisy fellow and even with bare feet he could not be quiet. But he
uttered an exclamation. He said two or three words in the local dialect
and she could not understand. Then she heard someone speaking to him,
not aloud, but in a sibilant whisper. Really it was too bad of people to
waylay him when he was going to have his bath. He spoke again and though
his voice was low she could hear that he was vexed. The other voice was
raised now; it was a woman's. Doris supposed it was someone who had a
complaint to make. It was like a Malay woman to come in that
surreptitious way. But she was evidently getting very little from Guy,
for she heard him say: Get out. That at all events she understood, and
then she heard him bolt the door. There was a sound of the water he was
throwing over himself (the bathing arrangements still amused her, the
bath-houses were under the bedrooms, on the ground; you had a large tub
of water and you sluiced yourself with a little tin pail) and in a
couple of minutes he was back again in the dining-room. His hair was
still wet. They sat down to luncheon.

"It's lucky I'm not a suspicious or a jealous person," she laughed. "I
don't know that I should altogether approve of your having animated
conversations with ladies while you're having your bath."

His face, usually so cheerful, had borne a sullen look when he came in,
but now it brightened.

"I wasn't exactly pleased to see her."

"So I judged by the tone of your voice. In fact, I thought you were
rather short with the young person."

"Damned cheek, waylaying me like that!"

"What did she want?"

"Oh, I don't know. It's a woman from the kampong. She's had a row with
her husband or something."

"I wonder if it's the same one who was hanging about this morning."

He frowned a little.

"Was there someone hanging about?"

"Yes, I went into your dressing-room to see that everything was nice and
tidy, and then I went down to the bath-house. I saw someone slink out of
the door as I went down the steps and when I looked out I saw a woman
standing there."

"Did you speak to her?"

"I asked her what she wanted and she said something, but I couldn't
understand."

"I'm not going to have all sorts of stray people prowling about here,"
he said. "They've got no right to come."

He smiled, but Doris, with the quick perception of a woman in love,
noticed that he smiled only with his lips, not as usual with his eyes
also, and wondered what it was that troubled him.

"What have you been doing this morning?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing much. I went for a little walk."

"Through the kampong?"

"Yes. I saw a man send a chained monkey up a tree to pick coconuts,
which rather thrilled me."

"It's rather a lark, isn't it?"

"Oh, Guy, there were two little boys watching him who were much whiter
than the others. I wondered if they were half-castes. I spoke to them,
but they didn't know a word of English."

"There are two or three half-caste children in the kampong," he
answered.

"Who do they belong to?"

"Their mother is one of the village girls."

"Who is their father?"

"Oh, my dear, that's the sort of question we think it a little dangerous
to ask out here." He paused. "A lot of fellows have native wives, and
then when they go home or marry they pension them off and send them back
to their village."

Doris was silent. The indifference with which he spoke seemed a little
callous to her. There was almost a frown on her frank, open, pretty
English face when she replied.

"But what about the children?"

"I have no doubt they're properly provided for. Within his means, a man
generally sees that there's enough money to have them decently educated.
They get jobs as clerks in a government office, you know; they're all
right."

She gave him a slightly rueful smile.

"You can't expect me to think it's a very good system."

"You mustn't be too hard," he smiled back.

"I'm not hard. But I'm thankful you never had a Malay wife. I should
have hated it. Just think if those two little brats were yours."

The boy changed their plates. There was never much variety in their
menu. They started luncheon with river fish, dull and insipid, so that a
good deal of tomato ketchup was needed to make it palatable, and then
went on to some kind of stew. Guy poured Worcester Sauce over it.

"The old Sultan didn't think it was a white woman's country," he said
presently. "He rather encouraged people to--keep house with native
girls. Of course things have changed now. The country's perfectly quiet
and I suppose we know better how to cope with the climate."

"But, Guy, the eldest of those boys wasn't more than seven or eight and
the other was about five."

"It's awfully lonely on an outstation. Why, often one doesn't see
another white man for six months on end. A fellow comes out here when
he's only a boy." He gave her that charming smile of his which
transfigured his round, plain, face. "There are excuses, you know."

She always found that smile irresistible. It was his best argument. Her
eyes grew once more soft and tender.

"I'm sure there are." She stretched her hand across the little table and
put it on his. "I'm very lucky to have caught you so young. Honestly, it
would upset me dreadfully if I were told that you had lived like that."

He took her hand and pressed it.

"Are you happy here, darling?"

"Desperately."

She looked very cool and fresh in her linen frock. The heat did not
distress her. She had no more than the prettiness of youth, though her
brown eyes were fine; but she had a pleasing frankness of expression,
and her dark, short hair was neat and glossy. She gave you the
impression of a girl of spirit and you felt sure that the member of
parliament for whom she worked had in her a very competent secretary.

"I loved the country at once," she said. "Although I'm alone so much I
don't think I've ever once felt lonely."

Of course she had read novels about the Malay Archipelago and she had
formed an impression of a sombre land with great ominous rivers and a
silent, impenetrable jungle. When the little coasting steamer set them
down at the mouth of the river, where a large boat, manned by a dozen
Dyaks, was waiting to take them to the station, her breath was taken
away by the beauty, friendly rather than awe-inspiring, of the scene. It
had a gaiety, like the joyful singing of birds in the trees, which she
had never expected. On each bank of the river were mangroves and nipah
palms, and behind them the dense green of the forest. In the distance
stretched blue mountains, range upon range, as far as the eye could see.
She had no sense of confinement nor of gloom, but rather of openness and
wide spaces where the exultant fancy could wander with delight. The
green glittered in the sunshine and the sky was blithe and cheerful. The
gracious land seemed to offer her a smiling welcome.

They rowed on, hugging a bank, and high overhead flew a pair of doves. A
flash of colour, like a living jewel, dashed across their path. It was a
kingfisher. Two monkeys, with their dangling tails, sat side by side on
a branch. On the horizon, over there on the other side of the broad and
turbid river, beyond the jungle, was a row of little white clouds, the
only clouds in the sky, and they looked like a row of ballet-girls,
dressed in white, waiting at the back of the stage, alert and merry, for
the curtain to go up. Her heart was filled with joy; and now,
remembering it all, her eyes rested on her husband with a grateful,
assured affection.

And what fun it had been to arrange their living-room! It was very big.
On the floor, when she arrived, was a torn and dirty matting; on the
walls of unpainted wood hung (much too high up) photogravures of Academy
pictures, Dyak shields and parangs. The tables were covered with Dyak
cloth in sombre colours, and on them stood pieces of Brunei brass-ware,
much in need of cleaning, empty cigarette tins and bits of Malay silver.
There was a rough wooden shelf with cheap editions of novels and a
number of old travel books in battered leather; and another shelf was
crowded with empty bottles. It was a bachelor's room, untidy but stiff;
and though it amused her she found it intolerably pathetic. It was a
dreary, comfortless life that Guy had led there, and she threw her arms
round his neck and kissed him.

"You poor darling," she laughed.

She had deft hands and she soon made the room habitable. She arranged
this and that, and what she could not do with she turned out. Her
wedding-presents helped. Now the room was friendly and comfortable. In
glass vases were lovely orchids and in great bowls huge masses of
flowering shrubs. She felt an inordinate pride because it was her house
(she had never in her life lived in anything but a poky flat) and she
had made it charming for him.

"Are you pleased with me?" she asked when she had finished.

"Quite," he smiled.

The deliberate understatement was much to her mind. How jolly it was
that they should understand each other so well! They were both of them
shy of displaying emotion, and it was only at rare moments that they
used with one another anything but ironic banter.

They finished luncheon and he threw himself into a long chair to have a
sleep. She went towards her room. She was a little surprised that he
drew her to him as she passed and, making her bend down, kissed her
lips. They were not in the habit of exchanging embraces at odd hours of
the day.

"A full tummy is making you sentimental, my poor lamb," she chaffed him.

"Get out and don't let me see you again for at least two hours."

"Don't snore."

She left him. They had risen at dawn and in five minutes were fast
asleep.

Doris was awakened by the sound of her husband's splashing in the
bath-house. The walls of the bungalow were like a sounding-board and not
a thing that one of them did escaped the other. She felt too lazy to
move, but she heard the boy bring the tea things in, so she jumped up
and ran down into her own bath-house. The water, not cold but cool, was
deliciously refreshing. When she came into the sitting-room Guy was
taking the rackets out of the press, for they played tennis in the short
cool of the evening. The night fell at six.

The tennis-court was two or three hundred yards from the bungalow and
after tea, anxious not to lose time, they strolled down to it.

"Oh, look," said Doris, "there's that girl that I saw this morning."

Guy turned quickly. His eyes rested for a moment on a native woman, but
he did not speak.

"What a pretty sarong she's got," said Doris. "I wonder where it comes
from."

They passed her. She was slight and small, with the large, dark, starry
eyes of her race and a mass of raven hair. She did not stir as they went
by, but stared at them strangely. Doris saw then that she was not quite
so young as she had at first thought. Her features were a trifle heavy
and her skin was dark, but she was very pretty. She held a small child
in her arms. Doris smiled a little as she saw it, but no answering smile
moved the woman's lips. Her face remained impassive. She did not look at
Guy, she looked only at Doris, and he walked on as though he did not see
her. Doris turned to him.

"Isn't that baby a duck?"

"I didn't notice."

She was puzzled by the look of his face. It was deathly white, and the
pimples which not a little distressed her were more than commonly red.

"Did you notice her hands and feet? She might be a duchess."

"All natives have good hands and feet," he answered, but not jovially as
was his wont; it was as though he forced himself to speak.

But Doris was not intrigued.

"Who is she, d'you know?"

"She's one of the girls in the kampong."

They had reached the court now. When Guy went up to the net to see that
it was taut he looked back. The girl was still standing where they had
passed her. Their eyes met.

"Shall I serve?" said Doris.

"Yes, you've got the balls on your side."

He played very badly. Generally he gave her fifteen and beat her, but
to-day she won easily. And he played silently. Generally he was a noisy
player, shouting all the time, cursing his foolishness when he missed a
ball and chaffing her when he placed one out of her reach.

"You're off your game, young man," she cried.

"Not a bit," he said.

He began to slam the balls, trying to beat her, and sent one after the
other into the net. She had never seen him with that set face. Was it
possible that he was a little out of temper because he was not playing
well? The light fell, and they ceased to play. The woman whom they had
passed stood in exactly the same position as when they came and once
more, with expressionless face, she watched them go.

The blinds on the verandah were raised now and on the table between
their two long chairs were bottles and soda-water. This was the hour at
which they had the first drink of the day and Guy mixed a couple of gin
slings. The river stretched widely before them and on the further bank
the jungle was wrapped in the mystery of the approaching night. A native
was silently rowing up-stream, standing at the bow of the boat, with two
oars.

"I played like a fool," said Guy, breaking a silence. "I'm feeling a bit
under the weather."

"I'm sorry. You're not going to have fever, are you?"

"Oh, no. I shall be all right to-morrow."

Darkness closed in upon them. The frogs croaked loudly and now and then
they heard a few short notes from some singing bird of the night.
Fireflies flitted across the verandah and they made the trees that
surrounded it look like Christmas trees lit with tiny candles. They
sparkled softly. Doris thought she heard a little sigh. It vaguely
disturbed her. Guy was always so full of gaiety.

"What is it, old man?" she said gently. "Tell mother."

"Nothing. Time for another drink," he answered breezily.

Next day he was as cheerful as ever and the mail came. The coasting
steamer passed the mouth of the river twice a month, once on its way to
the coalfields and once on its way back. On the outward journey it
brought mail, which Guy sent a boat down to fetch. Its arrival was the
excitement of their uneventful lives. For the first day or two they
skimmed rapidly all that had come, letters, English papers and papers
from Singapore, magazines and books, leaving for the ensuing weeks a
more exact perusal. They snatched the illustrated papers from one
another. If Doris had not been so absorbed she might have noticed that
there was a change in Guy. She would have found it hard to describe and
harder still to explain. There was in his eyes a sort of watchfulness
and in his mouth a slight droop of anxiety.

Then, perhaps a week later, one morning when she was sitting in the
shaded room studying a Malay grammar (for she was industriously learning
the language) she heard a commotion in the compound. She heard the house
boy's voice, he was speaking angrily, the voice of another man, perhaps
it was the water-carrier's, and then a woman's, shrill and vituperative.
There was a scuffle. She went to the window and opened the shutters. The
water-carrier had hold of a woman's arm and was dragging her along,
while the house boy was pushing her from behind with both hands. Doris
recognised her at once as the woman she had seen one morning loitering
in the compound and later in the day outside the tennis-court. She was
holding a baby against her breast. All three were shouting angrily.

"Stop," cried Doris. "What are you doing?"

At the sound of her voice the water-carrier let go suddenly and the
woman, still pushed from behind, fell to the ground. There was a sudden
silence and the house boy looked sullenly into space. The water-carrier
hesitated a moment and then slunk away. The woman raised herself slowly
to her feet, arranged the baby on her arm, and stood impassive, staring
at Doris. The boy said something to her which Doris could not have heard
even if she had understood; the woman by no change of face showed that
his words meant anything to her; but she slowly strolled away. The boy
followed her to the gate of the compound. Doris called to him as he
walked back, but he pretended not to hear. She was growing angry now and
she called more sharply.

"Come here at once," she cried.

Suddenly, avoiding her wrathful glance, he came towards the bungalow. He
came in and stood at the door. He looked at her sulkily.

"What were you doing with that woman?" she asked abruptly.

"Tuan say she no come here."

"You mustn't treat a woman like that. I won't have it. I shall tell the
tuan exactly what I saw."

The boy did not answer. He looked away, but she felt that he was
watching her through his long eyelashes. She dismissed him.

"That'll do."

Without a word he turned and went back to the servants' quarters. She
was exasperated and she found it impossible to give her attention once
more to the Malay exercises. In a little while the boy came in to lay
the cloth for luncheon. On a sudden he went to the door.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Tuan just coming."

He went out to take Guy's hat from him. His quick ears had caught the
footsteps before they were audible to her. Guy did not as usual come up
the steps immediately; he paused, and Doris at once surmised that the
boy had gone down to meet him in order to tell him of the morning's
incident. She shrugged her shoulders. The boy evidently wanted to get
his story in first. But she was astonished when Guy came in. His face
was ashy.

"Guy, what on earth's the matter?"

He flushed a sudden hot red.

"Nothing. Why?"

She was so taken aback that she let him pass into his room without a
word of what she had meant to speak of at once. It took him longer than
usual to have his bath and change his clothes and luncheon was served
when he came in.

"Guy," she said, as they sat down, "that woman we saw the other day was
here again this morning."

"So I've heard," he answered.

"The boys were treating her brutally. I had to stop them. You must
really speak to them about it."

Though the Malay understood every word she said, he made no sign that he
heard. He handed her the toast.

"She's been told not to come here. I gave instructions that if she
showed herself again she was to be turned out."

"Were they obliged to be so rough?"

"She refused to go, I don't think they were any rougher than they could
help."

"It was horrible to see a woman treated like that. She had a baby in her
arms."

"Hardly a baby. It's three years old."

"How d'you know?"

"I know all about her. She hasn't the least right to come here pestering
everybody."

"What does she want?"

"She wants to do exactly what she did. She wants to make a disturbance."

For a little while Doris did not speak. She was surprised at her
husband's tone. He spoke tersely. He spoke as though all this were no
concern of hers. She thought him a little unkind. He was nervous and
irritable.

"I doubt if we shall be able to play tennis this afternoon," he said.
"It looks to me as though we were going to have a storm."

The rain was falling when she awoke and it was impossible to go out.
During tea Guy was silent and abstracted. She got her sewing and began
to work. Guy sat down to read such of the English papers as he had not
yet gone through from cover to cover; but he was restless; he walked up
and down the large room and then went out on the verandah. He looked at
the steady rain. What was he thinking of? Doris was vaguely uneasy.

It was not till after dinner that he spoke. During the simple meal he
had exerted himself to be his usual gay self, but the exertion was
apparent. The rain had ceased and the night was starry. They sat on the
verandah. In order not to attract insects they had put out the lamp in
the sitting-room. At their feet, with a mighty, formidable sluggishness,
silent, mysterious and fatal, flowed the river. It had the terrible
deliberation and the relentlessness of destiny.

"Doris, I've got something to say to you," he said suddenly.

His voice was very strange. Was it her fancy that he had difficulty in
keeping it quite steady? She felt a little pang in her heart because he
was in distress, and she put her hand gently into his. He drew it away.

"It's rather a long story. I'm afraid it's not a very nice one and I
find it rather difficult to tell. I'm going to ask you not to interrupt
me, or to say anything, till I've finished."

In the darkness she could not see his face, but she felt that it was
haggard. She did not answer. He spoke in a voice so low that it hardly
broke the silence of the night.

"I was only eighteen when I came out here. I came straight from school.
I spent three months in Kuala Solor, and then I was sent to a station up
the Sembulu river. Of course there was a Resident there and his wife. I
lived in the court-house, but I used to have my meals with them and
spend the evening with them. I had an awfully good time. Then the fellow
who was here fell ill and had to go home. We were short of men on
account of the war and I was put in charge of this place. Of course I
was very young, but I spoke the language like a native, and they
remembered my father. I was as pleased as punch to be on my own."

He was silent while he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and refilled
it. When he lit a match Doris, without looking at him, noticed that his
hand was unsteady.

"I'd never been alone before. Of course at home there'd been father and
mother and generally an assistant. And then at school naturally there
were always fellows about. On the way out, on the boat, there were
people all the time, and at K.S., and the same at my first post. The
people there were almost like my own people. I seemed always to live in
a crowd. I like people. I'm a noisy blighter. I like to have a good
time. All sorts of things make me laugh and you must have somebody to
laugh with. But it was different here. Of course it was all right in the
day time; I had my work and I could talk to the Dyaks. Although they
were head-hunters in those days and now and then I had a bit of trouble
with them, they were an awfully decent lot of fellows. I got on very
well with them. Of course I should have liked a white man to gas to, but
they were better than nothing, and it was easier for me because they
didn't look upon me quite as a stranger. I liked the work too. It was
rather lonely in the evening to sit on the verandah and drink a gin and
bitters by myself, but I could read. And the boys were about. My own boy
was called Abdul. He'd known my father. When I got tired of reading I
could give him a shout and have a bit of a jaw with him.

"It was the nights that did for me. After dinner the boys shut up and
went away to sleep in the kampong. I was all alone. There wasn't a sound
in the bungalow except now and then the croak of the chik-chak. It used
to come out of the silence, suddenly, so that it made me jump. Over in
the kampong I heard the sound of a gong or fire-crackers. They were
having a good time, they weren't so far away, but I had to stay where I
was. I was tired of reading. I couldn't have been more of a prisoner if
I'd been in jail. Night after night it was the same. I tried drinking
three or four whiskies, but it's poor fun drinking alone, and it didn't
cheer me up; it only made me feel rather rotten next day. I tried going
to bed immediately after dinner, but I couldn't sleep. I used to lie in
bed, getting hotter and hotter, and more wide awake, till I didn't know
what to do with myself. By George, those nights were long. D'you know, I
got so low, I was so sorry for myself that sometimes--it makes me laugh
now when I think of it, but I was only nineteen and a half--sometimes I
used to cry.

"Then, one evening, after dinner, Abdul had cleared away and was just
going off, when he gave a little cough. He said, wasn't I lonely in the
house all night by myself? 'Oh, no, that's all right,' I said. I didn't
want him to know what a damned fool I was, but I expect he knew all
right. He stood there without speaking, and I knew he wanted to say
something to me. 'What is it?' I said. 'Spit it out.' Then he said that
if I'd like to have a girl to come and live with me he knew one who was
willing. She was a very good girl and he could recommend her. She'd be
no trouble and it would be someone to have about the bungalow. She'd
mend my things for me.... I felt awfully low. It had been raining all
day and I hadn't been able to get any exercise. I knew I shouldn't sleep
for hours. It wouldn't cost me very much money, he said, her people were
poor and they'd be quite satisfied with a small present. Two hundred
Straits dollars. 'You look,' he said. 'If you don't like her you send
her away.' I asked him where she was. 'She's here,' he said. 'I call
her.' He went to the door. She'd been waiting on the steps with her
mother. They came in and sat down on the floor. I gave them some sweets.
She was shy, of course, but cool enough, and when I said something to
her she gave me a smile. She was very young, hardly more than a child,
they said she was fifteen. She was awfully pretty, and she had her best
clothes on. We began to talk. She didn't say much, but she laughed a lot
when I chaffed her. Abdul said I'd find she had plenty to say for
herself when she got to know me. He told her to come and sit by me. She
giggled and refused, but her mother told her to come, and I made room
for her on the chair. She blushed and laughed, but she came, and then
she snuggled up to me. The boy laughed too. 'You see, she's taken to you
already,' he said. 'Do you want her to stay?' he asked. 'Do you want
to?' I said to her. She hid her face, laughing, on my shoulder. She was
very soft and small. 'Very well,' I said, 'let her stay.'"

Guy leaned forward and helped himself to a whisky and soda.

"May I speak now?" asked Doris.

"Wait a minute, I haven't finished yet. I wasn't in love with her, not
even at the beginning. I only took her so as to have somebody about the
bungalow. I think I should have gone mad if I hadn't, or else taken to
drink. I was at the end of my tether. I was too young to be quite alone.
I was never in love with anyone but you." He hesitated a moment. "She
lived here till I went home last year on leave. It's the woman you've
seen hanging about."

"Yes, I guessed that. She had a baby in her arms. Is that your child?"

"Yes. It's a little girl."

"Is it the only one?"

"You saw the two small boys the other day in the kampong. You mentioned
them."

"She has three children then?"

"Yes."

"It's quite a family you've got."

She felt the sudden gesture which her remark forced from him, but he did
not speak.

"Didn't she know that you were married till you suddenly turned up here
with a wife?" asked Doris.

"She knew I was going to be married."

"When?"

"I sent her back to the village before I left here. I told her it was
all over. I gave her what I'd promised. She always knew it was only a
temporary arrangement. I was fed up with it. I told her I was going to
marry a white woman."

"But you hadn't even seen me then."

"No, I know. But I'd made up my mind to marry when I was home." He
chuckled in his old manner. "I don't mind telling you that I was getting
rather despondent about it when I met you. I fell in love with you at
first sight and then I knew it was either you or nobody."

"Why didn't you tell me? Don't you think it would have been only fair to
give me a chance of judging for myself? It might have occurred to you
that it would be rather a shock to a girl to find out that her husband
had lived for ten years with another girl and had three children."

"I couldn't expect you to understand. The circumstances out here are
peculiar. It's the regular thing. Five men out of six do it, I thought
perhaps it would shock you and I didn't want to lose you. You see, I was
most awfully in love with you. I am now, darling. There was no reason
that you should ever know. I didn't expect to come back here. One seldom
goes back to the same station after home leave. When we came here I
offered her money if she'd go to some other village. First she said she
would and then she changed her mind."

"Why have you told me now?"

"She's been making the most awful scenes. I don't know how she found out
that you knew nothing about it. As soon as she did she began to
blackmail me. I've had to give her an awful lot of money. I gave orders
that she wasn't to be allowed in the compound. This morning she made
that scene just to attract your attention. She wanted to frighten me. It
couldn't go on like that. I thought the only thing was to make a clean
breast of it."

There was a long silence as he finished. At last he put his hand on
hers.

"You do understand, Doris, don't you? I know I've been to blame."

She did not move her hand. He felt it cold beneath his.

"Is she jealous?"

"I daresay there were all sorts of perks when she was living here, and I
don't suppose she much likes not getting them any longer. But she was
never in love with me any more than I was in love with her. Native women
never do really care for white men, you know."

"And the children?"

"Oh, the children are all right. I've provided for them. As soon as the
boys are old enough I shall send them to school at Singapore."

"Do they mean nothing to you at all?"

He hesitated.

"I want to be quite frank with you. I should be sorry if anything
happened to them. When the first one was expected I thought I'd be much
fonder of it than I ever had been of its mother. I suppose I should have
been if it had been white. Of course, when it was a baby it was rather
funny and touching, but I had no particular feeling that it was mine. I
think that's what it is; you see, I have no sense of their belonging to
me. I've reproached myself sometimes, because it seemed rather
unnatural, but the honest truth is that they're no more to me than if
they were somebody else's children. Of course a lot of slush is talked
about children by people who haven't got any."

Now she had heard everything. He waited for her to speak, but she said
nothing. She sat motionless.

"Is there anything more you want to ask me, Doris?" he said at last.

"No, I've got rather a headache. I think I shall go to bed." Her voice
was as steady as ever. "I don't quite know what to say. Of course it's
been all very unexpected. You must give me a little time to think."

"Are you very angry with me?"

"No. Not at all. Only--only I must be left to myself for a while. Don't
move. I'm going to bed."

She rose from her long chair and put her hand on his shoulder.

"It's so very hot to-night. I wish you'd sleep in your dressing-room.
Good-night."

She was gone. He heard her lock the door of her bedroom.

She was pale next day and he could see that she had not slept. There was
no bitterness in her manner, she talked as usual, but without ease; she
spoke of this and that as though she were making conversation with a
stranger. They had never had a quarrel, but it seemed to Guy that so
would she talk if they had had a disagreement and the subsequent
reconciliation had left her still wounded. The look in her eyes puzzled
him; he seemed to read in them a strange fear. Immediately after dinner
she said:

"I'm not feeling very well to-night. I think I shall go straight to
bed."

"Oh, my poor darling, I'm so sorry," he cried.

"It's nothing. I shall be all right in a day or two."

"I shall come in and say good-night to you later."

"No, don't do that. I shall try and get straight off to sleep."

"Well, then, kiss me before you go."

He saw that she flushed. For an instant she seemed to hesitate; then,
with averted eyes, she leaned towards him. He took her in his arms and
sought her lips, but she turned her face away and he kissed her cheek.
She left him quickly and again he heard the key turn softly in the lock
of her door. He flung himself heavily on the chair. He tried to read,
but his ear was attentive to the smallest sound in his wife's room. She
had said she was going to bed, but he did not hear her move. The silence
in there made him unaccountably nervous. Shading the lamp with his hand
he saw that there was a glimmer under her door; she had not put out her
light. What on earth was she doing? He put down his book. It would not
have surprised him if she had been angry and had made him a scene, or if
she had cried; he could have coped with that; but her calmness
frightened him. And then what was that fear which he had seen so plainly
in her eyes? He thought once more over all he had said to her on the
previous night. He didn't know how else he could have put it. After all,
the chief point was that he'd done the same as everybody else, and it
was all over long before he met her. Of course as things turned out he
had been a fool, but anyone could be wise after the event. He put his
hand to his heart. Funny how it hurt him there.

"I suppose that's the sort of thing people mean when they say they're
heartbroken," he said to himself. "I wonder how long it's going on like
this?"

Should he knock at the door and tell her he must speak to her? It was
better to have it out. He _must_ make her understand. But the silence
scared him. Not a sound! Perhaps it was better to leave her alone. Of
course it had been a shock. He must give her as long as she wanted.
After all, she knew how devotedly he loved her. Patience, that was the
only thing; perhaps she was fighting it out with herself; he must give
her time; he must have patience.

Next morning he asked her if she had slept better.

"Yes, much," she said.

"Are you very angry with me?" he asked piteously.

She looked at him with candid, open eyes.

"Not a bit."

"Oh, my dear, I'm so glad. I've been a brute and a beast. I know it's
been hateful for you. But do forgive me. I've been so miserable."

"I do forgive you. I don't even blame you."

He gave her a little rueful smile, and there was in his eyes the look of
a whipped dog.

"I haven't much liked sleeping by myself the last two nights."

She glanced away. Her face grew a trifle paler.

"I've had the bed in my room taken away. It took up so much space. I've
had a little camp bed put there instead."

"My dear, what are you talking about?"

Now she looked at him steadily.

"I'm not going to live with you as your wife again."

"Never?"

She shook her head. He looked at her in a puzzled way. He could hardly
believe he had heard aright and his heart began to beat painfully.

"But that's awfully unfair to me, Doris."

"Don't you think it was a little unfair to me to bring me out here in
the circumstances?"

"But you just said you didn't blame me."

"That's quite true. But the other's different. I can't do it."

"But how are we going to live together like that?"

She stared at the floor. She seemed to ponder deeply.

"When you wanted to kiss me on the lips last night I--it almost made me
sick."

"Doris."

She looked at him suddenly and her eyes were cold and hostile.

"That bed I slept on, is that the bed in which she had her children?"
She saw him flush deeply. "Oh, it's horrible. How could you?" She wrung
her hands, and her twisting, tortured fingers looked like little
writhing snakes. But she made a great effort and controlled herself. "My
mind is quite made up. I don't want to be unkind to you, but there are
some things that you can't ask me to do. I've thought it all over. I've
been thinking of nothing else since you told me, night and day, till I'm
exhausted. My first instinct was to get up and go. At once. The steamer
will be here in two or three days."

"Doesn't it mean anything to you that I love you?"

"Oh, I know you love me. I'm not going to do that. I want to give us
both a chance. I have loved you so, Guy." Her voice broke, but she did
not cry. "I don't want to be unreasonable. Heaven knows, I don't want to
be unkind. Guy, will you give me time?"

"I don't know quite what you mean."

"I just want you to leave me alone. I'm frightened by the feelings that
I have."

He had been right then; she was afraid.

"What feelings?"

"Please don't ask me. I don't want to say anything to wound you. Perhaps
I shall get over them. Heaven knows, I want to. I'll try, I promise you.
I'll try. Give me six months. I'll do everything in the world for you,
but just that one thing." She made a little gesture of appeal. "There's
no reason why we shouldn't be happy enough together. If you really love
me you'll--you'll have patience."

He sighed deeply.

"Very well," he said. "Naturally I don't want to force you to do
anything you don't like. It shall be as you say."

He sat heavily for a little, as though, on a sudden grown old, it was an
effort to move; then he got up.

"I'll be getting along to the office."

He took his topee and went out.

A month passed. Women conceal their feelings better than men and a
stranger visiting them would never have guessed that Doris was in any
way troubled. But in Guy the strain was obvious; his round, good-natured
face was drawn, and in his eyes was a hungry, harassed look. He watched
Doris. She was gay and she chaffed him as she had been used to do; they
played tennis together; they chatted about one thing and another. But it
was evident that she was merely playing a part, and at last, unable to
contain himself, he tried to speak again of his connections with the
Malay woman.

"Oh, Guy, there's no object in going back on all that," she answered
breezily. "We've said all we had to say about it and I don't blame you
for anything."

"Why do you punish me then?"

"My poor boy, I don't want to punish you. It's not my fault if..."
she shrugged her shoulders. "Human nature is very odd."

"I don't understand."

"Don't try."

The words might have been harsh, but she softened them with a pleasant,
friendly smile. Every night when she went to bed she leaned over Guy and
lightly kissed his cheek. Her lips only touched it. It was as though a
moth had just brushed his face in its flight.

A second month passed, then a third, and suddenly the six months which
had seemed so interminable were over. Guy asked himself whether she
remembered. He gave a strained attention now to everything she said, to
every look on her face and to every gesture of her hands. She remained
impenetrable. She had asked him to give her six months; well, he had.

The coasting steamer passed the mouth of the river, dropped their mail,
and went on its way. Guy busily wrote the letters which it would pick up
on the return journey. Two or three days passed by. It was a Tuesday and
the prahu was to start at dawn on Thursday to await the steamer. Except
at meal time when Doris exerted herself to make conversation they had
not of late talked very much together; and after dinner as usual they
took their books and began to read; but when the boy had finished
clearing away and was gone for the night Doris put down hers.

"Guy, I have something I want to say to you," she murmured.

His heart gave a sudden thud against his ribs and he felt himself change
colour.

"Oh, my dear, don't look like that, it's not so very terrible," she
laughed.

But he thought her voice trembled a little.

"Well?"

"I want you to do something for me."

"My darling, I'll do anything in the world for you."

He put out his hand to take hers, but she drew it away.

"I want you to let me go home."

"You?" he cried, aghast. "When? Why?"

"I've borne it as long as I can. I'm at the end of my tether."

"How long do you want to go for? For always?"

"I don't know. I think so." She gathered determination. "Yes, for
always."

"Oh, my God!"

His voice broke and she thought he was going to cry.

"Oh, Guy, don't blame me. It really is not my fault. I can't help
myself."

"You asked me for six months. I accepted your terms. You can't say I've
made a nuisance of myself."

"No, no."

"I've tried not to let you see what a rotten time I was having."

"I know. I'm very grateful to you. You've been awfully kind to me.
Listen, Guy, I want to tell you again that I don't blame you for a
single thing you did. After all, you were only a boy, and you did no
more than the others; I know what the loneliness is here. Oh, my dear,
I'm so dreadfully sorry for you. I knew all that from the beginning.
That's why I asked you for six months. My commonsense tells me that I'm
making a mountain out of a mole-hill. I'm unreasonable; I'm being unfair
to you. But, you see, commonsense has nothing to do with it; my whole
soul is in revolt. When I see the woman and her children in the village
I just feel my legs shaking. Everything in this house; when I think of
that bed I slept in it gives me goose-flesh.... You don't know what
I've endured."

"I think I've persuaded her to go away. And I've applied for a
transfer."

"That wouldn't help. She'll be there always. You belong to them, you
don't belong to me. I think perhaps I could have stood it if there'd
only been one child, but three; and the boys are quite big boys. For ten
years you lived with her." And now she came out with what she had been
working up to. She was desperate. "It's a physical thing, I can't help
it, it's stronger than I am. I think of those thin black arms of hers
round you and it fills me with a physical nausea. I think of you holding
those little black babies in your arms. Oh, its loathsome. The touch of
you is odious to me. Each night, when I've kissed you, I've had to brace
myself up to it, I've had to clench my hands and force myself to touch
your cheek." Now she was clasping and unclasping her fingers in a
nervous agony, and her voice was out of control. "I know it's I who am
to blame now. I'm a silly, hysterical woman. I thought I'd get over it.
I can't, and now I never shall. I've brought it all on myself; I'm
willing to take the consequences; if you say I must stay here, I'll
stay, but if I stay I shall die. I beseech you to let me go."

And now the tears which she had restrained so long overflowed and she
wept broken-heartedly. He had never seen her cry before.

"Of course I don't want to keep you here against your will," he said
hoarsely.

Exhausted, she leaned back in her chair. Her features were all twisted
and awry. It was horribly painful to see the abandonment of grief on
that face which was habitually so placid.

"I'm so sorry, Guy. I've broken your life, but I've broken mine too. And
we might have been so happy."

"When do you want to go? On Thursday?"

"Yes."

She looked at him piteously. He buried his face in his hands. At last he
looked up.

"I'm tired out," he muttered.

"May I go?"

"Yes."

For two minutes perhaps they sat there without a word. She started when
the chik-chak gave its piercing, hoarse and strangely human cry. Guy
rose and went out on to the verandah. He leaned against the rail and
looked at the softly flowing water. He heard Doris go into her room.

Next morning, up earlier than usual, he went to her door and knocked.

"Yes?"

"I have to go up-river to-day. I shan't be back till late."

"All right."

She understood. He had arranged to be away all day in order not to be
about while she was packing. It was heartbreaking work. When she had
packed her clothes she looked round the sitting-room at the things that
belonged to her. It seemed dreadful to take them. She left everything
but the photograph of her mother. Guy did not come in till ten o'clock
at night.

"I'm sorry I couldn't get back to dinner," he said. "The headman at the
village I had to go to had a lot of things for me to attend to."

She saw his eyes wander about the room and notice that her mother's
photograph no longer stood in its place.

"Is everything quite ready?" he asked. "I've ordered the boatman to be
at the steps at dawn."

"I told the boy to wake me at five."

"I'd better give you some money." He went to his desk and wrote out a
cheque. He took some notes from a drawer. "Here's some cash to take you
as far as Singapore and at Singapore you'll be able to change the
cheque."

"Thank you."

"Would you like me to come to the mouth of the river with you?"

"Oh, I think it would be better if we said good-bye here."

"All right. I think I shall turn in. I've had a long day and I'm dead
beat."

He did not even touch her hand. He went into his room. In a few minutes
she heard him throw himself on his bed. For a little while she sat
looking for the last time round that room in which she had been so happy
and so miserable. She sighed deeply. She got up and went into her own
room. Everything was packed except the one or two things she needed for
the night.

It was dark when the boy awakened them. They dressed hurriedly and when
they were ready breakfast was waiting for them. Presently they heard the
boat row up to the landing-stage below the bungalow, and then the
servants carried down her luggage. It was a poor pretence they made of
eating. The darkness thinned away and the river was ghostly. It was not
yet day, but it was no longer night. In the silence the voices of the
natives at the landing-stage were very clear. Guy glanced at his wife's
untouched plate.

"If you've finished we might stroll down. I think you ought to be
starting."

She did not answer. She rose from the table. She went into her room to
see that nothing had been forgotten and then side by side with him
walked down the steps. A little winding path led them to the river. At
the landing-stage the native guards in their smart uniform were lined up
and they presented arms as Guy and Doris passed. The head boatman gave
her his hand as she stepped into the boat. She turned and looked at Guy.
She wanted desperately to say one last word of comfort, once more to ask
for his forgiveness, but she seemed to be struck dumb.

He stretched out his hand.

"Well, good-bye, I hope you'll have a jolly journey."

They shook hands.

Guy nodded to the head boatman and the boat pushed off. The dawn now was
creeping along the river mistily, but the night lurked still in the dark
trees of the jungle. He stood at the landing-stage till the boat was
lost in the shadows of the morning. With a sigh he turned away. He
nodded absent-mindedly when the guard once more presented arms. But when
he reached the bungalow he called the boy. He went round the room
picking out everything that had belonged to Doris.

"Pack all these things up," he said. "It's no good leaving them about."

Then he sat down on the verandah and watched the day advance gradually
like a bitter, an unmerited and an overwhelming sorrow. At last he
looked at his watch. It was time for him to go to the office.

In the afternoon he could not sleep, his head ached miserably, so he
took his gun and went for a tramp in the jungle. He shot nothing, but he
walked in order to tire himself out. Towards sunset he came back and had
two or three drinks, and then it was time to dress for dinner. There
wasn't much use in dressing now; he might just as well be comfortable;
he put on a loose native jacket and a sarong. That was what he had been
accustomed to wear before Doris came. He was barefoot. He ate his dinner
listlessly and the boy cleared away and went. He sat down to read the
_Tatler_. The bungalow was very silent. He could not read and let the
paper fall on his knees. He was exhausted. He could not think and his
mind was strangely vacant. The chik-chak was noisy that night and its
hoarse and sudden cry seemed to mock him. You could hardly believe that
this reverberating sound came from so small a throat. Presently he heard
a discreet cough.

"Who' there?" he cried.

There was a pause. He looked at the door. The chik-chak laughed harshly.
A small boy sidled in and stood on the threshold. It was a little
half-caste boy in a tattered singlet and a sarong. It was the elder of
his two sons.

"What do you want?" said Guy.

The boy came forward into the room and sat down, tucking his legs away
under him.

"Who told you to come here?"

"My mother sent me. She says, do you want anything?"

Guy looked at the boy intently. The boy said nothing more. He sat and
waited, his eyes cast down shyly. Then Guy in deep and bitter reflection
buried his face in his hands. What was the use? It was finished.
Finished! He surrendered. He sat back in his chair and sighed deeply.

"Tell your mother to pack up her things and yours. She can come back."

"When?" asked the boy, impassively.

Hot tears trickled down Guy's funny, round spotty face.

"To-night."




FLOTSAM AND JETSAM


Norman Grange was a rubber-planter. He was up before day-break to take
the roll-call of his labour and then walked over the estate to see that
the tapping was properly done. This duty performed, he came home, bathed
and changed, and now with his wife opposite him he was eating the
substantial meal, half breakfast and half luncheon, which in Borneo is
called brunch. He read as he ate. The dining-room was dingy. The worn
electro-plate, the shabby cruet, the chipped dishes betokened poverty,
but a poverty accepted with apathy. A few flowers would have brightened
the table, but there was apparently no one to care how things looked.
When Grange had finished he belched, filled his pipe and lit it, rose
from the table and went out on to the verandah. He took no more notice
of his wife than if she had not been there. He lay down in a long rattan
chair and went on reading. Mrs. Grange reached over for a tin of
cigarettes and smoked while she sipped her tea. Suddenly she looked out,
for the house boy came up the steps and accompanied by two men went up
to her husband. One was a Dyak and the other Chinese. Strangers seldom
came and she could not imagine what they wanted. She got up and went to
the door to listen. Though she had lived in Borneo for so many years she
knew no more Malay than was necessary to get along with the boys, and
she only vaguely understood what was said. She gathered from her
husband's tone that something had happened to annoy him. He seemed to be
asking questions first of the Chink and then of the Dyak; it looked as
though they were pressing him to do something he didn't want to do; at
length, however, with a frown on his face he raised himself from his
chair and followed by the men walked down the steps. Curious to see
where he was going she slipped out on to the verandah. He had taken the
path that led down to the river. She shrugged her thin shoulders and
went to her room. Presently she gave a violent start, for she heard her
husband call her.

"Vesta."

She came out.

"Get a bed ready. There's a white man in a prahu at the landing-stage.
He's damned ill."

"Who is he?"

"How the hell should I know? They're just bringing him up."

"We can't have anyone to stay here."

"Shut up and do as I tell you."

He left her on that and again went down to the river. Mrs. Grange called
the boy and told him to put sheets on the bed in the spare room. Then
she stood at the top of the steps and waited. In a little while she saw
her husband coming back and behind him a huddle of Dyaks carrying a man
on a mattress. She stood aside to let them pass and caught a glimpse of
a white face.

"What shall I do?" she asked her husband.

"Get out and keep quiet."

"Polite, aren't you?"

The sick man was taken into the room, and in two or three minutes the
Dyaks and Grange came out.

"I'm going to see about his kit. I'll have it brought up. His boy's
looking after him and there's no cause for you to butt in!"

"What's the matter with him?"

"Malaria. His boatmen are afraid he's going to die and won't take him
on. His name's Skelton."

"He isn't going to die, is he?"

"If he does we'll bury him."

But Skelton didn't die. He woke next morning to find himself in a room,
in bed and under a mosquito-net. He couldn't think where he was. It was
a cheap iron bed and the mattress was hard, but to lie on it was a
relief after the discomfort of the prahu. He could see nothing of the
room but a chest of drawers, roughly made by a native carpenter, and a
wooden chair. Opposite was a doorway, with a blind down, and this he
guessed led on to a verandah.

"Kong," he called.

The blind was drawn aside and his boy came in. The Chinaman's face broke
into a grin when he saw that his master was free from fever.

"You more better, Tuan. Velly glad."

"Where the devil am I?"

Kong explained.

"Luggage all right?" asked Skelton.

"Yes, him all right."

"What's the name of this fellow--the tuan whose house this is?"

"Mr. Norman Glange."

To confirm what he said he showed Skelton a little book in which the
owner's name was written. It was Grange. Skelton noticed that the book
was Bacon's _Essays_. It was curious to find it in a planter's house
away up a river in Borneo.

"Tell him I'd be glad to see him."

"Tuan out. Him come presently."

"What about my having a wash? And by God, I want a shave."

He tried to get out of bed, but his head swam and with a bewildered cry
he sank back. But Kong shaved and washed him, and changed the shorts and
singlet in which he had been lying ever since he fell ill for a sarong
and a baju. After that he was glad to lie still. But presently Kong came
in and said that the tuan of the house was back. There was a knock on
the door and a large stoutish man stepped in.

"I hear you're better," he said.

"Oh, much. It's terribly kind of you to have taken me in like this. It
seems awful, planting myself on you."

Grange answered a trifle harshly.

"That's all right. You were pretty bad, you know. No wonder those Dyaks
wanted to get rid of you."

"I don't want to impose myself on you longer than I need. If I could
hire a launch here, or a prahu, I could get off this afternoon."

"There's no launch to hire. You'd better stay a bit. You must be as weak
as a rat."

"I'm afraid I shall be a frightful bother."

"I don't see why. You've got your own boy and he'll look after you."

Grange had just come in from his round of the estate and wore dirty
shorts, a khaki shirt open at the neck and an old, battered terai hat.
He looked as shabby as a beachcomber. He took off his hat to wipe his
sweating brow; he had close-cropped grey hair; his face was red, a
broad, fleshy face, with a large mouth under a stubble of grey
moustache, a short, pugnacious nose and small, mean eyes.

"I wonder if you could let me have something to read," said Skelton.

"What sort of thing?"

"I don't mind so long as it's lightish."

"I'm not much of a novel reader myself, but I'll send you in two or
three books. My wife can provide you with novels. They'll be trash,
because that's all she reads. But it may suit you."

With a nod he withdrew. Not a very likeable man. But he was obviously
very poor, the room in which Skelton lay, something in Grange's
appearance, indicated that; he was probably manager of an estate on a
cut salary, and it was not unlikely that the expense of a guest and his
servant was unwelcome. Living in that remote spot, and so seeing white
men but seldom, it might be that he was ill at ease with strangers. Some
people improve unbelievably on acquaintance. But his hard, shifty little
eyes were disconcerting; they gave the lie to the red face and the
massive frame which otherwise might have persuaded you that this was a
jolly sort of fellow with whom you could quickly make friends.

After a while the house boy came in with a parcel of books. There were
half a dozen novels by authors he had never heard of, and a glance told
him they were slop; these must be Mrs. Grange's; and then there was a
Boswell's _Johnson_, Borrow's _Lavengro_ and Lamb's _Essays_. It was an
odd choice. They were not the books you would have expected to find in a
planter's house. In most planter's houses there is not more than a shelf
or two of books and for the most part they're detective stories. Skelton
had a disinterested curiosity in human creatures, and he amused himself
now by trying to make out from the books Norman Grange had sent, from
the look of him and from the few words they had exchanged, what sort of
a man he could be. Skelton was a little surprised that his host did not
come to see him again that day; it looked as though he were going to
content himself with giving his uninvited guest board and lodging, but
were not sufficiently interested in him to seek his company. Next
morning he felt well enough to get up, and with Kong's help settled
himself in a long chair on the verandah. It badly needed a coat of
paint. The bungalow stood on the brow of a hill, about fifty yards from
the river; and on the opposite bank, looking very small across that
great stretch of water, you could see native houses on piles nestling
among the greenery. Skelton had not yet the activity of mind to read
steadily, and after a page or two, his thoughts wandering, he found
himself content to watch idly the sluggish flow of the turbid stream.
Suddenly he heard a step. He saw a little elderly woman come towards
him, and knowing that this must be Mrs. Grange tried to get up.

"Don't move," she said. "I only came to see if you had everything you
wanted."

She wore a blue cotton dress, simple enough, but more suited to a young
girl than to a woman of her age; her short hair was tousled, as though
on getting out of bed she had scarcely troubled to pass a comb through
it, and dyed a vivid yellow, but badly, and the roots showed white. Her
skin was raddled and dry, and there was a great dab of rouge on each
cheek-bone, put on however so clumsily that you could not for a moment
take it for a natural colour, and a smear of lipstick on her mouth. But
the strangest thing about her was a tic she had that made her jerk her
head as though she were beckoning you to an inner room. It seemed to
come at regular intervals, perhaps three times a minute, and her left
hand was in almost constant movement; it was not quite a tremble, it was
a rapid twirl as though she wanted to draw your attention to something
behind her back. Skelton was startled by her appearance and embarrassed
by her tic.

"I hope I'm not making myself too great a nuisance," he said. "I think I
shall be well enough to make a move to-morrow or the day after."

"It's not often we see anybody in a place like this, you know. It's a
treat to have someone to talk to."

"Won't you sit down? I'll tell my boy to bring you a chair."

"Norman said I was to leave you alone."

"I haven't spoken to a white person for two years. I've been longing for
a good old talk."

Her head twitched violently, more quickly than usual, and her hand gave
that queer spasmodic gesture.

"He won't be back for another hour. I'll get a chair."

Skelton told her who he was and what he had been doing, but he
discovered that she had questioned his boy and already knew all about
him.

"You must be crazy to get back to England?" she asked.

"I shan't be sorry."

Suddenly Mrs. Grange seemed to be attacked by what one could only
describe as a nerve storm. Her head twitched so madly, her hand shook
with such fury, that it was disconcerting. You could only look away.

"I haven't been to England for sixteen years," she said.

"You don't mean that? Why, I thought all you planters went home every
five years at the longest."

"We can't afford it; we're broke to the wide. Norman put all the money
he had into this plantation, and it hasn't really paid for years. It
only just brings in enough to keep us from starvation. Of course it
doesn't matter to Norman. He isn't English really."

"He looks English enough."

"He was born in Sarawak. His father was in the government service. If
he's anything he's a native of Borneo."

Then, without warning, she began to cry. It was horribly painful to see
the tears running down the raddled, painted cheeks of that woman with
the constant tic. Skelton knew neither what to say nor what to do. He
did what was probably the best thing, he kept silent. She dried her
eyes.

"You must think me a silly old fool. I sometimes wonder that after all
these years I can still cry. I suppose it's in my nature. I always could
cry very easy when I was on the stage."

"Oh, were you on the stage?"

"Yes, before I married. That's how I met Norman. We were playing in
Singapore and he was there on holiday. I don't suppose I shall ever see
England any more. I shall stay here till I die and every day of my life
I shall look at that beastly river. I shall never get away now. Never."

"How did you happen to find yourself in Singapore?"

"Well, it was soon after the war, I couldn't get anything to suit me in
London, I'd been on the stage a good many years and I was fed up with
playing small parts; the agents told me a fellow called Victor Palace
was taking a company out East. His wife was playing lead, but I could
play seconds. They'd got half a dozen plays, comedies, you know, and
farces. The salary wasn't much, but they were going to Egypt and India,
the Malay States and China and then down to Australia. It was a chance
to see the world and I accepted. We didn't do badly in Cairo and I think
we made money in India, but Burma wasn't much good, and Siam was worse;
Penang was a disaster and so were the rest of the Malay States. Well,
one day Victor called us together and said he was bust, he hadn't got
the money for our fares on to Hong Kong, and the tour was a wash-out and
he was very sorry but we'd have to get back home as best we could. Of
course we told him he couldn't do that to us. You never heard such a
row. Well, the long and short of it was that he said we could have the
scenery and the props if we thought they was any good to us, but as to
money it was no use asking for it because he damned well hadn't got it.
And next day we found out that him and his wife, without saying a word
to anybody, had got on a French boat and skipped. I was in a rare state,
I can tell you. I had a few pounds I'd saved out of me salary, and that
was all; somebody told me if we was absolutely stranded the government
would have to send us home, but only steerage, and I didn't much fancy
that. We got the Press to put our plight before the public and someone
came along with the proposition that we should give a benefit
performance. Well, we did, but it wasn't much without Victor or his
wife, and by the time we'd paid the expenses we weren't any better off
than we'd been before. I was at my wits' end, I don't mind telling you.
It was then that Norman proposed to me. The funny thing is that I hardly
knew him. He'd taken me for a drive round the island and we'd had tea
two or three times at the Europe and danced. Men don't often do things
for you without wanting something in return, and I thought he expected
to get a little bit of fun, but I'd had a good deal of experience and I
thought he'd be clever if he got round me. But when he asked me to marry
him, well, I was so surprised, I couldn't hardly believe me own ears. He
said he'd got his own estate in Borneo and it only wanted a little
patience and he'd make a packet. And it was on the banks of a fine river
and all round was the jungle. He made it sound very romantic. I was
getting on, you know, I was thirty, it wasn't going to be any easier to
get work as time went on, and it was tempting to have a house of me own
and all that. Never to have to hang around agents' offices no more.
Never to have to lay awake no more and wonder how you was going to pay
next week's rent. He wasn't a bad-looking chap in those days, brown and
big and virile. No one could say I was willing to marry anybody just
to..." Suddenly she stopped. "There he is. Don't say you've seen me."

She picked up the chair she had been sitting in and quickly slipped away
with it into the house. Skelton was bewildered. Her grotesque
appearance, the painful tears, her story told with that incessant
twitching; and then her obvious fear when she heard her husband's voice
in the compound, and her hurried escape; he could make nothing of it.

In a few minutes Norman Grange stumped along the verandah.

"I hear you're better," he said.

"Much, thanks."

"If you care to join us at brunch I'll have a place laid for you."

"I'd like it very much."

"All right. I'm just going to have a bath and a change."

He walked away. Presently a boy came along and told Skelton his tuan was
waiting for him. Skelton followed him into a small sitting-room, with
the jalousies drawn to keep out the heat, an uncomfortable, overcrowded
room with a medley of furniture, English and Chinese, and occasional
tables littered with worthless junk. It was neither cosy nor cool.
Grange had changed into a sarong and baju and in the native dress looked
coarse but powerful. He introduced Skelton to his wife. She shook hands
with him as though she had never seen him before and uttered a few
polite words of greeting. The boy announced that their meal was ready
and they went into the dining-room.

"I hear that you've been in this bloody country for some time," said
Grange.

"Two years. I'm an anthropologist and I wanted to study the manners and
customs of tribes that haven't had any contact with civilisation."

Skelton felt that he should tell his host how it had come about that he
had been forced to accept a hospitality which he could not but feel was
grudgingly offered. After leaving the village that had been his
headquarters he had journeyed by land for ten days till he reached the
river. There he had engaged a couple of prahus, one for himself and his
luggage and the other for Kong, his Chinese servant, and the camp
equipment, to take him to the coast. The long trek across country had
been hard going and he found it very comfortable to lie on a mattress
under an awning of rattan matting and take his ease. All the time he had
been away Skelton had been in perfect health, and as he travelled down
the river he could not but think that he was very lucky; but even as the
thought passed through his mind, it occurred to him that if he happened
just then to congratulate himself on his good fortune in this respect,
it was because he did not feel quite so well as usual. It was true that
he had been forced to drink a great deal of arak the night before at the
long-house where he had put up, but he was used to it and that hardly
accounted for his headache. He had a general sense of malaise. He was
wearing nothing but shorts and a singlet, and he felt chilly; it was
curious because the sun was shining fiercely and when he put his hand on
the gunwale of the prahu the heat was hardly bearable. If he had had a
coat handy he would have put it on. He grew colder and colder and
presently his teeth began to chatter; he huddled up on his mattress,
shivering all over in a desperate effort to get warm. He could not fail
to guess what was the matter.

"Christ," he groaned. "Malaria."

He called the headman, who was steering the prahu.

"Get Kong."

The headman shouted to the second prahu and ordered his own paddlers to
stop. In a moment the two boats were side by side and Kong stepped in.

"I've got fever, Kong," gasped Skelton. "Get me the medicine chest and,
for God's sake, blankets. I'm freezing to death."

Kong gave his master a big dose of quinine and piled on him what
coverings they had. They started off again.

Skelton was too ill to be taken ashore when they tied up for the night
and so passed it in the prahu. All next day and the day after he was
very ill. Sometimes one or other of the crew came and looked at him, and
often the headman stayed for quite a long while staring at him
thoughtfully.

"How many days to the coast?" Skelton asked the boy.

"Four, five." He paused for a minute. "Headman, he no go coast. He say,
he wantchee go home."

"Tell him to go to hell."

"Headman say, you velly sick, you die. If you die and he go coast he
catchee trouble."

"I'm not thinking of dying," said Skelton. "I shall be all right. It's
just an ordinary go of malaria."

Kong did not answer. The silence irritated Skelton. He knew that the
Chinese had something in mind that he did not like to say.

"Spit it out, you fool," he cried.

Skelton's heart sank when Kong told him the truth. When they reached
their resting-place that night the headman was going to demand his money
and slip away with the two prahus before dawn. He was too frightened to
carry a dying man farther. Skelton had no strength to take the
determined attitude that might have availed him; he could only hope by
the offer of more money to persuade the headman to carry out his
agreement. The day passed in long arguments between Kong and the
headman, but when they tied up for the night the headman came to Skelton
and told him sulkily that he would go no farther. There was a long-house
near-by where he might get lodging till he grew better. He began to
unload the baggage. Skelton refused to move. He got Kong to give him his
revolver and swore to shoot anyone who came near him.

Kong, the crew and the headman went up to the long-house and Skelton was
left alone. Hour after hour he lay there, the fever burning his body and
his mouth parched, while muddled thoughts hammered away in his brain.
Then there were lights and the sound of men talking. The Chinese boy
came with the headman and another man, whom Skelton had not yet seen,
from the neighbouring long-house. He did his best to understand what
Kong was telling him. It appeared that a few hours down-stream there
lived a white man, and to his house, if that would satisfy Skelton, the
headman was willing to take him.

"More better you say yes," said Kong. "Maybe white man has launch, then
we go down to coast chop-chop."

"Who is he?"

"Planter," said Kong. "This fellow say, him have rubber estate."

Skelton was too tired to argue further. All he wanted just then was to
sleep. He accepted the compromise.

"To tell you the truth," he finished, "I don't remember much more till I
woke up yesterday morning to find myself an uninvited guest in your
house."

"I don't blame those Dyaks, you know," said Grange. "When I came down to
the prahu and saw you, I thought you were for it."

Mrs. Grange sat silent while Skelton told his story, her head and her
hand twitching regularly, as though by the action of some invisible
clockwork, but when her husband addressed her, asking for the Worcester
Sauce, and that was the only time he spoke to her, she was seized with
such a paroxysm of involuntary movement that it was horrible to see. She
passed him what he asked for without a word. Skelton got an
uncomfortable impression that she was terrified of Grange. It was odd,
because to all appearance he was not a bad sort. He was knowledgeable
and far from stupid; and though you could not have said that his manner
was cordial, it was plain that he was ready to be of what service he
could.

They finished their meal and separated to rest through the heat of the
day.

"See you again at six for a sun-downer," said Grange.

When Skelton had had a good sleep, a bath and a read, he went out on to
the verandah. Mrs. Grange came up to him. It looked as though she had
been waiting.

"He's back from the office. Don't think it's funny if I don't speak to
you. If he thought I liked having you here he'd turn you out to-morrow."

She said these words in a whisper and slipped back into the house.
Skelton was startled. It was a strange house he had come into in a
strange manner. He went into the overcrowded sitting-room and there
found his host. He had been worried by the evident poverty of the
establishment and he felt that the Granges could ill afford even the
small expense he must be putting them to. But he had already formed the
impression that Grange was a quick-tempered, susceptible man and he did
not know how he would take an offer to help. He made up his mind to risk
it.

"Look here," he said to him, "it looks as though I might have to inflict
myself on you for several days, I'd be so much more comfortable if you'd
let me pay for my board and lodging."

"Oh, that's all right, your lodging costs nothing, the house belongs to
the mortgagees, and your board doesn't come to much."

"Well, there are drinks anyway and I've had to come down on your stores
of tobacco and cigarettes."

"It's not more than once a year that anyone comes up here, and then it's
only the D.O. or someone like that--besides, when one's as broke as I am
nothing matters much."

"Well, then, will you take my camp equipment? I shan't be wanting it any
more, and if you'd like one of my guns, I'd be only too glad to leave it
with you."

Grange hesitated. There was a glimmer of cupidity in those small,
cunning eyes of his.

"If you'd let me have one of your guns you'd pay for your board and
lodging over and over again."

"That's settled, then."

They began to talk over the whisky and sparkler with which, following
the Eastern habit, they celebrated the setting of the sun. Discovering
that they both played chess they had a game. Mrs. Grange did not join
them till dinner. The meal was dull. An insipid soup, a tasteless river
fish, a tough piece of steak and a caramel pudding. Norman Grange and
Skelton drank beer; Mrs. Grange water. She never of her own will uttered
a word. Skelton had again the uncomfortable impression that she was
scared to death of her husband. Once or twice, Skelton from common
politeness sought to bring her into the conversation, addressing himself
to her, telling her a story or asking her a question, but it evidently
distressed her so much, her head twitched so violently, her hand was
agitated by gestures so spasmodic that he thought it kinder not to
insist. When the meal was over she got up.

"I'll leave you gentlemen to your port," she said.

Both the men got up as she left the room. It was rather absurd, and
somehow sinister, to see this social pretence in those poverty-stricken
surroundings on a Borneo river.

"I may add that there is no port. There might be a little Benedictine
left."

"Oh, don't bother."

They talked for a while and Grange began to yawn. He got up every
morning before sunrise and by nine o'clock at night could hardly keep
his eyes open.

"Well, I'm going to turn in," he said.

He nodded to Skelton and without further ceremony left him. Skelton went
to bed, but he could not sleep. Though the heat was oppressive, it was
not the heat that kept him awake. There was something horrible about
that house and those two people who lived in it. He didn't know what it
was that affected him with this peculiar uneasiness, but this he knew,
that he would be heartily thankful to be out of it and away from them.
Grange had talked a good deal about himself, but he knew no more of him
than he had learned at the first glance. To all appearances he was just
the commonplace planter who had fallen upon evil days. He had bought his
land immediately after the war and had planted trees; but by the time
they were bearing the slump had come and since then it had been a
constant struggle to keep going. The estate and the house were heavily
mortgaged, and now that rubber was once more selling profitably all he
made went to the mortgagees. That was an old story in Malaya. What made
Grange somewhat unusual was that he was a man without a country. Born in
Borneo, he had lived there with his parents till he was old enough to go
to school in England; at seventeen he had come back and had never left
it since except to go to Mesopotamia during the war. England meant
nothing to him. He had neither relations nor friends there. Most
planters, like civil servants, have come from England, go back on leave
now and then, and look forward to settling down there when they retire.
But what had England to offer Norman Grange?

"I was born here," he said, "and I shall die here. I'm a stranger in
England. I don't like their ways over there and I don't understand the
things they talk about. And yet I'm a stranger here too. To the Malays
and the Chinese I'm a white man, though I speak Malay as well as they
do, and a white man I shall always be." Then he said a significant
thing. "Of course if I'd had any sense I'd have married a Malay girl and
had half a dozen half-caste kids. That's the only solution really for us
chaps who were born and bred here."

Grange's bitterness was greater than could be explained by his financial
embarrassment. He had little good to say of any of the white men in the
colony. He seemed to think that they despised him because he was
native-born. He was a sour, disappointed fellow, and a conceited one. He
had shown Skelton his books. There were not many of them, but they were
the best on the whole that English literature can show; he had read them
over and over again; but it looked as though he had learnt from them
neither charity nor loving-kindness, it looked as though their beauty
had left him unmoved; and to know them so well had only made him
self-complacent. His exterior, which was so hearty and English, seemed
to have little relation to the man within; you could not resist the
suspicion that it masked a very sinister being.

Early next morning, to enjoy the cool of the day, Skelton, with his pipe
and a book, was sitting on the verandah outside his room. He was still
very weak, but felt much better. In a little while Mrs. Grange joined
him. She held in her hand a large album.

"I thought I'd like to show you some of me old photos and me notices.
You mustn't think I always looked like what I do now. He's off on his
round and he won't be back for two or three hours yet."

Mrs. Grange, in the same blue dress she had worn the day before, her
hair as untidy, appeared strangely excited.

"It's all I have to remind me of the past. Sometimes when I can't bear
life any more I look at my album."

She sat by Skelton's side as he turned the pages. The notices were from
provincial papers, and the references to Mrs. Grange, whose stage name
had been apparently Vesta Blaise, were carefully underlined. From the
photographs you could see that she had been pretty enough in an
undistinguished way. She had acted in musical comedy and revue, in farce
and comedy, and taking the photographs and the notices together it was
easy to tell that here had been the common, dreary, rather vulgar career
of the girl with no particular talent who has taken to the stage on the
strength of a pretty face and a good figure. Her head twitching, her
hand shaking, Mrs. Grange looked at the photographs and read the notices
with as much interest as if she had never seen them before.

"You've got to have influence on the stage, and I never had any," she
said. "If I'd only had my chance I know I'd have made good. I had bad
luck, there's no doubt about that."

It was all sordid and somewhat pathetic.

"I daresay you're better off as you are," said Skelton.

She snatched the book from him and shut it with a bang. She had a
paroxysm so violent that it was really frightening to look at her.

"What d'you mean by that? What d'you know about the life I lead here?
I'd have killed myself years ago only I know he wants me to die. That's
the only way I can get back on him, by living, and I'm going to live;
I'm going to live as long as he does. Oh, I hate him. I've often thought
I'd poison him, but I was afraid. I didn't know how to do it really, and
if he died the Chinks would foreclose and I'd be turned out. And where
should I go then? I haven't a friend in the world."

Skelton was aghast. It flashed through his mind that she was crazy. He
hadn't a notion what to say. She gave him a keen look.

"I suppose it surprises you to hear me talk like that. I mean it, you
know, every word of it. He'd like to kill me too, but he daren't either.
And he knows how to do it all right. He knows how the Malays kill
people. He was born here. There's nothing he doesn't know about the
country."

Skelton forced himself to speak.

"You know, Mrs. Grange, I'm a total stranger. Don't you think it's
rather unwise to tell me all sorts of things there's no need for me to
know? After all, you live a very solitary life. I daresay you get on one
another's nerves. Now that things are looking up perhaps you'll be able
to take a trip to England."

"I don't want to go to England. I'd be ashamed to let them see me like I
am now. D'you know how old I am? Forty-six. I look sixty and I know it.
That's why I showed you those photos, so as you might see I wasn't
always like what I am now. Oh, my God, how I've wasted my life! They
talk of the romance of the East. They can have it. I'd rather be a
dresser in a provincial theatre, I'd rather be one of the sweepers that
keep it clean, than what I am now. Until I came here I'd never been
alone in me life, I'd always lived in a crowd; you don't know what it is
to have nobody to talk to from year's end to year's end. To have to keep
it all bottled up. How would you like to see no one, week in and week
out, day after day for sixteen years, except the man you hate most in
the world? How would you like to live for sixteen years with a man who
hates you so he can't bear to look at you?"

"Oh, come, it can't be as bad as that."

"I'm telling you the truth. Why should I tell you a lie? I shall never
see you again; what do I care what you think of me? And if you tell them
what I've said when you get down to the coast, what's the odds? They'll
say: 'God, you don't mean to say you stayed with those people? I pity
you. He's an outsider and she's crazy; got a tic; they say it looks as
if she was always trying to wipe the blood off her dress. They were
mixed up in a damned funny business, but no one ever really knew the ins
and outs of it; it all happened a long time ago and the country was
pretty wild in those days.' A damned funny business and no mistake. I'd
tell you for two pins. That would be a bit of dirt for them at the club.
You wouldn't have to pay for a drink for days. Damn them. Oh, Christ,
how I hate this country. I hate that river. I hate this house. I hate
that damned rubber. I loathe the filthy natives. And that's all I've got
to look forward to till I die--till I die without a doctor to take care
of me, without a friend to hold me hand."

She began to cry hysterically. Mrs. Grange had spoken with a dramatic
intensity of which Skelton would never have thought her capable. Her
coarse irony was as painful as her anguish. Skelton was young, he was
not yet thirty, and he did not know how to deal with the difficult
situation. But he could not keep silent.

"I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Grange. I wish I could do something to help
you."

"I'm not asking for your help. No one can help me."

Skelton was distressed. From what she said he could not but suspect that
she had been concerned in a mysterious and perhaps dreadful occurrence,
and it might be that to tell him about it without fear of the
consequences was just the relief she needed.

"I don't want to butt into what's no business of mine, but, Mrs. Grange,
if you think it would ease your mind to tell me--what you were referring
to just now, I mean what you said was a damned funny business, I promise
you on my word of honour that I'll never repeat it to a living soul."

She stopped crying quite suddenly and gave him a long, intent look. She
hesitated. He had an impression that the desire to speak was almost
irresistible. But she shook her head and sighed.

"It wouldn't do any good. Nothing can do me any good."

She got up and abruptly left him.

The two men sat down to brunch by themselves.

"My wife asks you to excuse her," said Grange. "She's got one of her
sick headaches and she's staying in bed to-day."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

Skelton had a notion that in the searching look that Grange gave him was
mistrust and animosity. It flashed through his mind that somehow he had
discovered that Mrs. Grange had been talking to him and perhaps had said
things that should have been left unsaid. Skelton made an effort at
conversation, but his host was taciturn, and they ended the meal in a
silence that was only broken by Grange when he got up.

"You seem pretty fit to-day and I don't suppose you want to stay in this
God-forsaken place longer than you must. I've sent over the river to
arrange for a couple of prahus to take you down to the coast. They'll be
here at six to-morrow morning."

Skelton felt sure then that he was right; Grange knew or guessed that
his wife had spoken too freely, and he wanted to be rid as soon as
possible of the dangerous visitor.

"That's terribly kind of you," Skelton answered, smiling. "I'm as fit as
a fiddle."

But in Grange's eyes was no answering smile. They were coldly hostile.

"We might have another game of chess later on," said he.

"All right. When d'you get back from your office?"

"I haven't got much to do there to-day. I shall be about the house."

Skelton wondered if it were only his fancy that there was something very
like a threat in the tone in which Grange uttered these words. It looked
as though he were going to make sure that his wife and Skelton should
not again be left alone. Mrs. Grange did not come to dinner. They drank
their coffee and smoked their cheroots. Then Grange, pushing back his
chair, said:

"You've got to make an early start to-morrow. I daresay you'd like to
turn in. I shall have started out on my round by the time you go, so
I'll say good-bye to you now."

"Let me get my guns. I want you to take the one you like best."

"I'll tell the boy to fetch them."

The guns were brought and Grange made his choice. He gave no sign that
he was pleased with the handsome gift.

"You quite understand that this gun's worth a damned sight more than
what your food and drink and smoke have run me into?" he said.

"For all I know you saved my life. I don't think an old gun is an
over-generous return for that."

"Oh, well, if you like to look at it that way, I suppose it's your own
business. Thank you very much all the same."

They shook hands and parted.

Next morning, while the baggage was being stowed away in the prahus,
Skelton asked the house boy whether, before starting, he could say
good-bye to Mrs. Grange. The house boy said he would go and see. He
waited a little while. Mrs. Grange came out of her room on to the
verandah. She was wearing a pink dressing-gown, shabby, rumpled and none
too clean, of Japanese silk, heavily trimmed with cheap lace. The powder
was thick on her face, her cheeks were rouged and her lips scarlet with
lipstick. Her head seemed to twitch more violently than usual and her
hand was agitated by that strange gesture. When first Skelton saw it he
had thought that it suggested a wish to call attention to something
behind her back, but now, after what she had told him yesterday, it did
indeed look as though she were constantly trying to brush something off
her dress. Blood, she had said.

"I didn't want to go without thanking you for all your kindness to me,"
he said.

"Oh, that's all right."

"Well, good-bye."

"I'll walk down with you to the landing-stage."

They hadn't far to go. The boatmen were still arranging the luggage.
Skelton looked across the river where you could see some native houses.

"I suppose these men come from over there. It looks quite a village."

"No, only those few houses. There used to be a rubber estate there, but
the company went broke and it was abandoned."

"D'you ever go over there?"

"Me?" cried Mrs. Grange. Her voice rose shrill and her head, her hand,
were on a sudden convulsed by a paroxysm of involuntary movement. "No.
Why should I?"

Skelton could not imagine why that simple question, asked merely for
something to say, should so greatly upset her. But by now all was in
order and he shook hands with her. He stepped into the boat and
comfortably settled down. They pushed off. He waved to Mrs. Grange. As
the boat slid into the current she cried out with a harsh, strident
scream:

"Give my regards to Leicester Square."

Skelton heaved a great sigh of relief as with their powerful strokes the
paddlers took him farther and farther away from that dreadful house and
from those two unhappy and yet repellent people. He was glad now that
Mrs. Grange had not told him the story that was on the tip of her tongue
to tell. He did not want some tragic tale of sin or folly to connect him
with them in a recollection that he could not escape. He wanted to
forget them as one forgets a bad dream.

But Mrs. Grange watched the two prahus till a bend of the river took
them out of sight. She walked slowly up to the house and went into her
bedroom. The light was dim because the blinds were drawn to keep out the
heat, but she sat down at her dressing-table and stared at herself in
the glass. Norman had had the dressing-table made for her soon after
they were married. It had been made by a native carpenter, of course,
and they had had the mirror sent from Singapore, but it was made to her
own design, of the exact size and shape she wanted, with plenty of room
for all her toilet things and her make-up. It was the dressing-table she
had hankered after for donkey's years and had never had. She remembered
still how pleased she was when first she had it. She threw her arms
round her husband's neck and kissed him.

"Oh, Norman, you are good to me," she said. "I'm a lucky little girl to
have caught a chap like you, aren't I?"

But then everything delighted her. She was amused by the river life and
the life of the jungle, the teeming growth of the forest, the birds with
their gay plumage and the brilliant butterflies. She set about giving
the house a woman's touch; she put out all her own photographs and she
got vases to put flowers in; she routed around and got a lot of
knick-knacks to place here and there. "They make a room look homey," she
said. She wasn't in love with Norman, but she liked him all right; and
it was lovely to be married; it was lovely to have nothing to do from
morning till night, except play the gramophone, or patience, and read
novels. It was lovely to think one hadn't got to bother about one's
future. Of course it was a bit lonely sometimes, but Norman said she'd
get used to that, and he'd promised that in a year, or two at the
outside, he'd take her to England for three months. It would be a lark
to show him off to her friends. She felt that what had caught him was
the glamour of the stage and she'd made herself out a good deal more
successful than she really had been. She wanted him to realise that
she'd made a sacrifice when she'd thrown up her career to become a
planter's wife. She'd claimed acquaintance with a good many stars that
in point of fact she'd never even spoken to. That would need a bit of
handling when they went home, but she'd manage it; after all, poor
Norman knew no more about the stage than a babe unborn, if she couldn't
cod a simple fellow like that, after twelve years on the stage, well,
she'd wasted her time, that's all she could say. Things went all right
the first year. At one moment she thought she was going to have a baby.
They were both disappointed when it turned out not to be true. Then she
began to grow bored. It seemed to her that she'd done the same damned
thing day after day for ever and it frightened her to think that she'd
have to go on doing the same damned thing day after day for ever more.
Norman said he couldn't leave the plantation that year. They had a bit
of a scene. It was then that he'd said something that scared her.

"I hate England," he said. "If I had my way I'd never set foot in the
damned country again."

Living this lonely life Mrs. Grange got into the habit of talking out
loud to herself. Shut up in her room she could be heard chattering away
hour after hour; and now, dipping the puff in her powder and plastering
her face with it, she addressed her reflection in the mirror exactly as
though she were talking to another person.

"That ought to have warned me. I should have insisted on going by
myself, and who knows, I might have got a job when I got to London. With
all the experience I had and everything. Then I'd have written to him
and said I wasn't coming back." Her thoughts turned to Skelton. "Pity I
didn't tell him," she continued. "I had half a mind to. P'raps he was
right, p'raps it would have eased me mind. I wonder what he'd have
said." She imitated his Oxford accent. "I'm so terribly sorry, Mrs.
Grange. I wish I could help you." She gave a chuckle which was almost a
sob. "I'd have liked to tell him about Jack. Oh, Jack."

It was when they had been married for two years that they got a
neighbour. The price of rubber at that time was so high that new estates
were being put under cultivation and one of the big companies had bought
a great tract of land on the opposite bank of the river. It was a rich
company and everything was done on a lavish scale. The manager they had
put in had a launch at his disposal so that it was no trouble for him to
pop over and have a drink whenever he felt inclined. Jack Carr his name
was. He was quite a different sort of chap from Norman; for one thing he
was a gentleman, he'd been to a public school and a university; he was
about thirty-five, tall, not beefy like Norman, but slight, he had the
sort of figure that looked lovely in evening dress; and he had crisply
curling hair and a laughing look in his eyes. Just her type. She took to
him at once. It was a treat, having someone you could talk about London
to, and the theatre. He was gay and easy. He made the sort of jokes you
could understand. In a week or two she felt more at home with him than
she did with her husband after two years. There had always been
something about Norman that she hadn't quite been able to get to the
bottom of. He was crazy about her, of course, and he'd told her a lot
about himself, but she had a funny feeling that there was something he
kept from her, not because he wanted to, but--well, you couldn't hardly
explain it, because it was so alien, you might say, that he couldn't put
it into words. Later, when she knew Jack better, she mentioned it to
him, and Jack said it was because he was country-born; even though he
hadn't a drop of native blood in his veins, something of the country had
gone to the making of him so that he wasn't white really; he had an
Eastern streak in him. However hard he tried he could never be quite
English.

She chattered away aloud, in that empty house, for the two boys, the
cook and the house boy, were in their own quarters, and the sound of her
voice, ringing along the wooden floors, piercing the wooden walls, was
like the uncanny, unhuman gibber of new wine fermenting in a vat. She
spoke just as though Skelton were there, but so incoherently that if he
had been, he would have had difficulty in following the story she told.
It did not take her long to discover that Jack Carr wanted her. She was
excited. She'd never been promiscuous, but in all those years she'd been
on the stage naturally there'd been episodes. You couldn't hardly have
put up with being on tour month after month if you didn't have a bit of
fun sometimes. Of course now she wasn't going to give in too easily, she
didn't want to make herself cheap, but what with the life she led, she'd
be a fool if she missed the chance; and as far as Norman was concerned,
well, what the eye didn't see the heart didn't grieve over. They
understood one another all right, Jack and her; they knew it was bound
to happen sooner or later, it was only a matter of waiting for the
opportunity; and the opportunity came. But then something happened that
they hadn't bargained for: they fell madly in love with one another. If
Mrs. Grange really had been telling the story to Skelton it might have
seemed as unlikely to him as it did to them. They were two very ordinary
people, he a jolly, good-natured, commonplace planter, and she a
small-part actress far from clever, not even very young, with nothing to
recommend her but a neat figure and a prettyish face. What started as a
casual affair turned without warning into a devastating passion, and
neither of them was of a texture to sustain its exorbitant compulsion.
They longed to be with one another; they were restless and miserable
apart. She'd been finding Norman a bore for some time, but she'd put up
with him because he was her husband; now he irritated her to frenzy
because he stood between her and Jack. There was no question of their
going off together, Jack Carr had nothing but his salary, and he
couldn't throw up a job he'd been only too glad to get. It was difficult
for them to meet. They had to run awful risks. Perhaps the chances they
had to take, the obstacles they had to surmount, were fuel to their
love; a year passed and it was as overwhelming as at the beginning; it
was a year of agony and bliss, of fear and thrill. Then she discovered
that she was pregnant. She had no doubt that Jack Carr was the father
and she was wildly happy. It was true life was difficult, so difficult
sometimes that she felt she just couldn't cope with it, but there'd be a
baby, his baby, and that would make everything easy. She was going to
Kuching for her confinement. It happened about then that Jack Carr had
to go to Singapore on business and was to be away for several weeks; but
he promised to get back before she left and he said he'd send word by a
native the moment he arrived. When at last the message came she felt
sick with the anguish of her joy. She had never wanted him so badly.

"I hear that Jack is back," she told her husband at dinner. "I shall go
over to-morrow morning and get the things he promised to bring me."

"I wouldn't do that. He's pretty sure to drop in towards sundown and
he'll bring them himself."

"I can't wait. I'm crazy to have them."

"All right. Have it your own way."

She couldn't help talking about him. For some time now they had seemed
to have little to say to one another, Norman and she, but that night, in
high spirits, she chattered away as she had done during the first months
of their marriage. She always rose early, at six, and next morning she
went down to the river and had a bathe. There was a little dent in the
bank just there, with a tiny sandy beach, and it was delicious to splash
about in the cool, transparent water. A kingfisher stood on the branch
of a tree overhanging the pool and its reflection was brilliantly blue
in the water. Lovely. She had a cup of tea and then stepped into a
dug-out. A boy paddled her across the river. It took a good half-hour.
As they got near she scanned the bank; Jack knew she would come at the
earliest opportunity; he must be on the lookout. Ah, there he was. The
delicious pain in her heart was almost unbearable. He came down to the
landing-stage and helped her to get out of the boat. They walked hand in
hand up the pathway and when they were out of sight of the boy who had
paddled her over and of prying eyes from the house, they stopped. He put
his arms round her and she yielded with ecstasy to his embrace. She
clung to him. His mouth sought hers. In that kiss was all the agony of
their separation and all the bliss of their reunion. The miracle of love
transfused them so that they were unconscious of time and place. They
were not human any more, but two spirits united by a divine fire. No
thought passed through their minds. No words issued from their lips.
Suddenly there was a brutal shock, like a blow, and immediately, almost
simultaneously, a deafening noise. Horrified, not understanding, she
clung to Jack more tightly and his grip on her was spasmodic, so that
she gasped; then she felt that he was bearing her over.

"Jack."

She tried to hold him up. His weight was too great for her and as he
fell to the ground she fell with him. Then she gave a great cry, for she
felt a gush of heat, and his blood sputtered over her. She began to
scream. A rough hand seized her and dragged her to her feet. It was
Norman. She was distraught. She could not understand.

"Norman, what have you done?"

"I've killed him."

She stared at him stupidly. She pushed him aside.

"Jack. Jack."

"Shut up. I'll go and get help. It was an accident."

He walked quickly up the pathway. She fell to her knees and took Jack's
head in her arms.

"Darling," she moaned. "Oh, my darling."

Norman came back with some coolies and they carried him up to the house.
That night she had a miscarriage and was so ill that for days it looked
as if she would die. When she recovered she had the nervous tic that
she'd had ever since. She expected that Norman would send her away; but
he didn't, he had to keep her to allay suspicion. There was some talk
among the natives, and after a while the District Officer came up and
asked a lot of questions; but the natives were frightened of Norman, and
the D.O. could get nothing out of them. The Dyak boy who paddled her
over had vanished. Norman said something had gone wrong with his gun and
Jack was looking at it to see what was the matter and it went off. They
bury people quickly in that country and by the time they might have dug
him up there wouldn't have been much left to show that Norman's story
wasn't true. The D.O. hadn't been satisfied.

"It all looks damned fishy to me," he said, "but in the absence of any
evidence, I suppose I must accept your version."

She would have given anything to get away, but with that nervous
affliction she had no ghost of a chance any longer of earning a living.
She had to stay--or starve; and Norman had to keep her--or hang. Nothing
had happened since then and now nothing ever would happen. The endless
years one after another dragged out their weary length.

Mrs. Grange on a sudden stopped talking. Her sharp ears had caught the
sound of a footstep on the path and she knew that Norman was back from
his round. Her head twitching furiously, her hand agitated by that
sinister, uncontrollable gesture, she looked in the untidy mess of her
dressing-table for her precious lipstick. She smeared it on her lips,
and then, she didn't know why, on a freakish impulse daubed it all over
her nose till she looked like a red-nose comedian in a music-hall. She
looked at herself in the glass and burst out laughing.

"To hell with life!" she shouted.






[End of The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. I]
