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Title: The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham,
   Vol. III
Author: Maugham, W. Somerset [William Somerset] (1874-1965)
Date of first publication: 1951
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Heinemann, 1961
Date first posted: 7 October 2018
Date last updated: 7 October 2018
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1569

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




TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Preface
    Footprints in the Jungle
    The Door of Opportunity
    The Book-Bag
    French Joe
    German Harry
    The Four Dutchmen
    The Back of Beyond
    P. & O.
    Episode
    The Kite
    A Woman of Fifty
    Mayhew
    The Lotus Eater
    Salvatore
    The Wash-Tub
    A Man with a Conscience
    An Official Position
    Winter Cruise
    Mabel
    Masterson
    Princess September
    A Marriage of Convenience
    Mirage
    The Letter
    The Outstation
    The Portrait of a Gentleman
    Raw Material
    Straight Flush
    The End of the Flight
    A Casual Affair
    Red
    Neil Macadam




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




PREFACE


In this final volume I have placed the rest of my stories the scene of
which is set in Malaya. They were written long before the Second World
War and I should tell the reader that the sort of life with which they
deal no longer exists. When I first visited those countries the lives
the white men and their wives led there differed but little from what
they had been twenty-five years before. They got home leave once in five
years. They had besides a few weeks leave every year. If they lived
where the climate was exhausting they sought the fresh air of some
hill-station not too far away; if, like some of the government servants,
they lived where they might not see another white man for weeks on end,
they went to Singapore so that they might consort for a time with their
kind. _The Times_ when it arrived at a station up-country, in Borneo for
instance, was six weeks old and they were lucky if they received the
Singapore paper in a fortnight.

Aviation has changed all that. Even before the war people who could
afford it were able to spend even their short leave at home. Papers,
illustrated weeklies, magazines reached them fresh from the press. In
the old days Sarawak, say, or Selangor were where they expected to spend
their lives till it was time for them to retire on a pension; England
was very far away and when at long intervals they went back was
increasingly strange to them; their real home, their intimate friends,
were in the land in which the better part of their lives was spent. But
with the rapidity of communication it remained an alien land, a
temporary rather than a permanent habitation, which circumstances
obliged them for a spell to occupy; it was a longish halt in a life that
had its roots in the Sussex downs or on the moors of Yorkshire. Their
ties with the homeland, which before had insensibly loosened and
sometimes broke asunder, remained fast. England, so to speak, was round
the corner. They no longer felt cut off. It changed their whole outlook.

The countries of which I wrote were then at peace. It may be that some
of those peoples, Malays, Dyaks, Chinese, were restive under the British
rule, but there was no outward sign of it. The British gave them
justice, provided them with hospitals and schools, and encouraged their
industries. There was no more crime than anywhere else. An unarmed man
could wander through the length of the Federated Malay States in perfect
safety. The only real trouble was the low price of rubber.

There is one more point I want to make. Most of these stories are on the
tragic side. But the reader must not suppose that the incidents I have
narrated were of common occurrence. The vast majority of these people,
government servants, planters and traders, who spent their working lives
in Malaya were ordinary people ordinarily satisfied with their station
in life. They did the jobs they were paid to do more or less
competently. They were as happy with their wives as are most married
couples. They led humdrum lives and did very much the same things every
day. Sometimes by way of a change they got a little shooting; but as a
rule, after they had done their day's work, they played tennis if there
were people to play with, went to the club at sundown if there was a
club in the vicinity, drank in moderation and played bridge. They had
their little tiffs, their little jealousies, their little flirtations,
their little celebrations. They were good, decent, normal people.

I respect, and even admire, such people, but they are not the sort of
people I can write stories about. I write stories about people who have
some singularity of character which suggests to me that they may be
capable of behaving in such a way as to give me an idea that I can make
use of, or about people who by some accident or another, accident of
temperament, accident of environment, have been involved in unusual
contingencies. But, I repeat, they are the exception.




FOOTPRINTS IN THE JUNGLE


There is no place in Malaya that has more charm than Tanah Merah. It
lies on the sea and the sandy shore is fringed with casuarinas. The
government offices are still in the old Raad Huis that the Dutch built
when they owned the land, and on the hill stand the grey ruins of the
fort by aid of which the Portuguese maintained their hold over the
unruly natives. Tanah Merah has a history and in the vast labyrinthine
houses of the Chinese merchants, backing on the sea so that in the cool
of the evening they may sit in their loggias and enjoy the salt breeze,
families dwell that have been settled in the country for three
centuries. Many have forgotten their native language and hold
intercourse with one another in Malay and pidgin English. The
imagination lingers here gratefully, for in the Federated Malay States
the only past is within the memory for the most part of the fathers of
living men.

Tanah Merah was for long the busiest mart of the Middle East and its
harbour was crowded with shipping when the clipper and the junk still
sailed the China seas. But now it is dead. It has the sad and romantic
air of all places that have once been of importance and live now on the
recollection of a vanished grandeur. It is a sleepy little town and
strangers that come to it, losing their native energy, insensibly drop
into its easy and lethargic ways. Successive rubber booms bring it no
prosperity and the ensuing slumps hasten its decay.

The European quarter is very silent. It is trim and neat and clean. The
houses of the white men--government servants and agents of
companies--stand round an immense padang, agreeable and roomy bungalows
shaded by great cassias, and the padang is vast and green and well cared
for, like the lawn of a cathedral close, and indeed there is in the
aspect of this corner of Tanah Merah something quiet and delicately
secluded that reminds you of the precincts of Canterbury.

The club faces the sea; it is a spacious but shabby building; it has an
air of neglect and when you enter you feel that you intrude. It gives
you the impression that it is closed really, for alterations and
repairs, and that you have taken indiscreet advantage of an open door to
go where you are not wanted. In the morning you may find there a couple
of planters who have come in from their estates on business and are
drinking a gin-sling before starting back again; and latish in the
afternoon a lady or two may perhaps be seen looking with a furtive air
through old numbers of the _Illustrated London News_. At nightfall a few
men saunter in and sit about the billiard-room watching the play and
drinking sukus. But on Wednesdays there is a little more animation. On
that day the gramophone is set going in the large room upstairs and
people come in from the surrounding country to dance. There are
sometimes no less than a dozen couples and it is even possible to make
up two tables of bridge.

It was on one of these occasions that I met the Cartwrights. I was
staying with a man called Gaze who was head of the police and he came
into the billiard-room, where I was sitting, and asked me if I would
make up a four. The Cartwrights were planters and they came in to Tanah
Merah on Wednesdays because it gave their girl a chance of a little fun.
They were very nice people, said Gaze, quiet and unobtrusive, and played
a very pleasant game of bridge. I followed Gaze into the card-room and
was introduced to them. They were already seated at a table and Mrs.
Cartwright was shuffling the cards. It inspired me with confidence to
see the competent way in which she did it. She took half the pack in
each hand, and her hands were large and strong, deftly inserted the
corners of one half under the corners of the other, and with a click and
a neat bold gesture cascaded the cards together.

It had all the effect of a conjuring trick. The card-player knows that
it can be done perfectly only after incessant practice. He can be fairly
sure that anyone who can so shuffle a pack of cards loves cards for
their own sake.

"Do you mind if my husband and I play together?" asked Mrs. Cartwright.
"It's no fun for us to win one another's money."

"Of course not."

We cut for deal and Gaze and I sat down.

Mrs. Cartwright drew an ace and while she dealt, quickly and neatly,
chatted with Gaze of local affairs. But I was aware that she took stock
of me. She looked shrewd, but good-natured.

She was a woman somewhere in the fifties (though in the East, where
people age quickly, it is difficult to tell their ages), with white hair
very untidily arranged, and a constant gesture with her was an impatient
movement of the hand to push back a long wisp of hair that kept falling
over her forehead. You wondered why she did not, by the use of a hairpin
or two, save herself so much trouble. Her blue eyes were large, but pale
and a little tired; her face was lined and sallow; I think it was her
mouth that gave it the expression which I felt was characteristic of
caustic but tolerant irony. You saw that here was a woman who knew her
mind and was never afraid to speak it. She was a chatty player (which
some people object to strongly, but which does not disconcert me, for I
do not see why you should behave at the card-table as though you were at
a memorial service) and it was soon apparent that she had an effective
knack of badinage. It was pleasantly acid, but it was amusing enough to
be offensive only to a fool. If now and then she uttered a remark so
sarcastic that you wanted all your sense of humour to see the fun in it,
you could not but quickly see that she was willing to take as much as
she gave. Her large, thin mouth broke into a dry smile and her eyes
shone brightly when by a lucky chance you brought off a repartee that
turned the laugh against her.

I thought her a very agreeable person. I liked her frankness. I liked
her quick wit. I liked her plain face. I never met a woman who obviously
cared so little how she looked. It was not only her head that was
untidy, everything about her was slovenly; she wore a high-necked silk
blouse, but for coolness had unbuttoned the top buttons and showed a
gaunt and withered neck; the blouse was crumpled and none too clean, for
she smoked innumerable cigarettes and covered herself with ash. When she
got up for a moment to speak to somebody I saw that her blue skirt was
rather ragged at the hem and badly needed a brush, and she wore heavy,
low-heeled boots. But none of this mattered. Everything she wore was
perfectly in character.

And it was a pleasure to play bridge with her. She played very quickly,
without hesitation, and she had not only knowledge but flair. Of course
she knew Gaze's game, but I was a stranger and she soon took my measure.
The team-work between her husband and herself was admirable; he was
sound and cautious, but knowing him, she was able to be bold with
assurance and brilliant with safety. Gaze was a player who founded a
foolish optimism on the hope that his opponents would not have the sense
to take advantage of his errors, and the pair of us were no match for
the Cartwrights. We lost one rubber after another, and there was nothing
to do but smile and look as if we liked it.

"I don't know what's the matter with the cards," said Gaze at last,
plaintively. "Even when we have every card in the pack we go down."

"It can't be anything to do with your play," answered Mrs. Cartwright,
looking him full in the face with those pale blue eyes of hers, "it must
be bad luck pure and simple. Now if you hadn't had your hearts mixed up
with your diamonds in that last hand you'd have saved the game."

Gaze began to explain at length how the misfortune, which had cost us
dear, occurred, but Mrs. Cartwright, with a deft flick of the hand,
spread out the cards in a great circle so that we should cut for deal.
Cartwright looked at the time.

"This will have to be the last, my dear," he said.

"Oh, will it?" She glanced at her watch and then called to a young man
who was passing through the room. "Oh, Mr. Bullen, if you're going
upstairs tell Olive that we shall be going in a few minutes." She turned
to me. "It takes us the best part of an hour to get back to the estate
and poor Theo has to be up at the crack of dawn."

"Oh, well, we only come in once a week," said Cartwright, "and it's the
one chance Olive gets of being gay and abandoned."

I thought Cartwright looked tired and old. He was a man of middle
height, with a bald, shiny head, a stubbly grey moustache, and
gold-rimmed spectacles. He wore white ducks and a black-and-white tie.
He was rather neat and you could see he took much more pains with his
clothes than his untidy wife. He talked little, but it was plain that he
enjoyed his wife's caustic humour and sometimes he made quite a neat
retort. They were evidently very good friends. It was pleasing to see so
solid and tolerant an affection between two people who were almost
elderly and must have lived together for so many years.

It took but two hands to finish the rubber and we had just ordered a
final gin and bitters when Olive came down.

"Do you really want to go already, Mumsey?" she asked.

Mrs. Cartwright looked at her daughter with fond eyes.

"Yes, darling. It's nearly half-past eight. It'll be ten before we get
our dinner."

"Damn our dinner," said Olive, gaily.

"Let her have one more dance before we go," suggested Cartwright

"Not one. You must have a good night's rest."

Cartwright looked at Olive with a smile.

"If your mother has made up her mind, my dear, we may just as well give
in without any fuss."

"She's a determined woman," said Olive, lovingly stroking her mother's
wrinkled cheek.

Mrs. Cartwright patted her daughter's hand, and kissed it.

Olive was not very pretty, but she looked extremely nice. She was
nineteen or twenty, I suppose, and she had still the plumpness of her
age; she would be more attractive when she had fined down a little. She
had none of the determination that gave her mother's face so much
character, but resembled her father; she had his dark eyes and slightly
aquiline nose, and his look of rather weak good nature. It was plain
that she was strong and healthy. Her cheeks were red and her eyes
bright. She had a vitality that he had long since lost. She seemed to be
the perfectly normal English girl, with high spirits, a great desire to
enjoy herself, and an excellent temper.

When we separated, Gaze and I set out to walk to his house.

"What did you think of the Cartwrights?" he asked me.

"I liked them. They must be a great asset in a place like this."

"I wish they came oftener. They live a very quiet life."

"It must be dull for the girl. The father and mother seem very well
satisfied with one another's company."

"Yes, it's been a great success."

"Olive is the image of her father, isn't she?"

Gaze gave me a sidelong glance.

"Cartwright isn't her father. Mrs. Cartwright was a widow when he
married her. Olive was born four months after her father's death."

"Oh!"

I drew out the sound in order to put in it all I could of surprise,
interest and curiosity. But Gaze said nothing and we walked the rest of
the way in silence. The boy was waiting at the door as we entered the
house and after a last gin pahit we sat down to dinner.

At first Gaze was inclined to be talkative. Owing to the restriction of
the output of rubber there had sprung up a considerable activity among
the smugglers and it was part of his duty to circumvent their
knavishness. Two junks had been captured that day and he was rubbing his
hands over his success. The go-downs were full of confiscated rubber and
in a little while it was going to be solemnly burnt. But presently he
fell into silence and we finished without a word. The boys brought in
coffee and brandy and we lit our cheroots. Gaze leaned back in his
chair. He looked at me reflectively and then looked at his brandy. The
boys had left the room and we were alone.

"I've known Mrs. Cartwright for over twenty years," he said slowly. "She
wasn't a bad-looking woman in those days. Always untidy, but when she
was young it didn't seem to matter so much. It was rather attractive.
She was married to a man called Bronson. Reggie Bronson. He was a
planter. He was manager of an estate up in Selantan and I was stationed
at Alor Lipis. It was a much smaller place than it is now; I don't
suppose there were more than twenty people in the whole community, but
they had a jolly little club, and we used to have a very good time. I
remember the first time I met Mrs. Bronson as though it was yesterday.
There were no cars in those days and she and Bronson had ridden in on
their bicycles. Of course then she didn't look so determined as she
looks now. She was much thinner, she had a nice colour, and her eyes
were very pretty--blue, you know--and she had a lot of dark hair. If
she'd only taken more trouble with herself she'd have been rather
stunning. As it was she was the best-looking woman there."

I tried to construct in my mind a picture of what Mrs. Cartwright--Mrs.
Bronson as she was then--looked like from what she was now and from
Gaze's not very graphic description. In the solid woman, with her
well-covered bones, who sat rather heavily at the bridge-table, I tried
to see a slight young thing with buoyant movements and graceful, easy
gestures. Her chin now was square and her nose decided, but the
roundness of youth must have masked this: she must have been charming
with a pink-and-white skin and her hair, carelessly dressed, brown and
abundant. At that period she wore a long skirt, a tight waist and a
picture hat. Or did women in Malaya still wear the topees that you see
in old numbers of the illustrated papers?

"I hadn't seen her for--oh, nearly twenty years," Gaze went on. "I knew
she was living somewhere in the F.M.S., but it was a surprise when I
took this job and came here to run across her in the club just as I had
up in Selantan so many years before. Of course she's an elderly woman
now and she's changed out of all recognition. It was rather a shock to
see her with a grown-up daughter, it made me realise how the time had
passed; I was a young fellow when I met her last and now, by Jingo, I'm
due to retire on the age limit in two or three years. Bit thick, isn't
it?"

Gaze, a rueful grin on his ugly face, looked at me with faint
indignation, as though I could help the hurrying march of the years as
they trod upon one another's heels.

"I'm no chicken myself," I replied.

"You haven't lived out East all your life. It ages one before one's
time. One's an elderly man at fifty and at fifty-five one's good for
nothing but the scrap-heap."

But I did not want Gaze to wander off into a disquisition on old age.

"Did you recognise Mrs. Cartwright when you saw her again?" I asked.

"Well, I did and I didn't. At the first glance I thought I knew her, but
couldn't quite place her. I thought perhaps she was someone I'd met on
board ship when I was going on leave and had known only by sight. But
the moment she spoke I remembered at once. I remembered the dry twinkle
in her eyes and the crisp sound of her voice. There was something in her
voice that seemed to mean: You're a bit of a damned fool, my lad, but
you're not a bad sort and upon my soul I rather like you."

"That's a good deal to read into the sound of a voice," I smiled.

"She came up to me in the club and shook hands with me. 'How do you do,
Major Gaze? Do you remember me?' she said.

"'Of course I do.'

"'A lot of water has passed under the bridge since we met last. We're
none of us as young as we were. Have you seen Theo?'

"For a moment I couldn't think whom she meant. I suppose I looked rather
stupid, because she gave a little smile, that chaffing smile that I knew
so well, and explained.

"'I married Theo, you know. It seemed the best thing to do. I was lonely
and he wanted it.'

"'I heard you married him,' I said. 'I hope you've been very happy.'

"'Oh, very. Theo's a perfect duck. He'll be here in a minute. He'll be
so glad to see you.'

"I wondered. I should have thought I was the last man Theo would wish to
see. I shouldn't have thought she would wish it very much either. But
women are funny."

"Why shouldn't she wish to see you?" I asked.

"I'm coming to that later," said Gaze. "Then Theo turned up. I don't
know why I call him Theo; I never called him anything but Cartwright, I
never thought of him as anything but Cartwright. Theo was a shock. You
know what he looks like now; I remembered him as a curly-headed
youngster, very fresh and clean-looking he was always neat and dapper,
he had a good figure and he held himself well, like a man who's used to
taking a lot of exercise. Now I come to think of it he wasn't
bad-looking, not in a big, massive way, but graceful, you know, and
lithe. When I saw this bowed, cadaverous, bald-headed old buffer with
spectacles I could hardly believe my eyes. I shouldn't have known him
from Adam. He seemed pleased to see me, at least, interested; he wasn't
effusive, but he'd always been on the quiet side and I didn't expect him
to be.

"'Are you surprised to find us here?' he asked me.

"'Well, I hadn't the faintest notion where you were.'

"'We've kept track of your movements more or less. We've seen your name
in the paper every now and then. You must come out one day and have a
look at our place. We've been settled there a good many years, and I
suppose we shall stay there till we go home for good. Have you ever been
back to Alor Lipis?'

"'No, I haven't,' I said.

"'It was a nice little place. I'm told it's grown. I've never been
back.'

"'It hasn't got the pleasantest recollections for us,' said Mrs.
Cartwright.

"I asked them if they'd have a drink and we called the boy. I dare say
you noticed that Mrs. Cartwright likes her liquor; I don't mean that she
gets tight or anything like that, but she drinks her stengah like a man.
I couldn't help looking at them with a certain amount of curiosity. They
seemed perfectly happy; I gathered that they hadn't done at all badly,
and I found out later that they were quite well off. They had a very
nice car, and when they went on leave they denied themselves nothing.
They were on the best of terms with one another. You know how jolly it
is to see two people who've been married a great many years obviously
better pleased with their own company than anyone else's. Their marriage
had evidently been a great success. And they were both of them devoted
to Olive and very proud of her, Theo especially."

"Although she was only his step-daughter?" I said.

"Although she was only his step-daughter," answered Gaze. "You'd think
that she would have taken his name. But she hadn't. She called him
Daddy, of course, he was the only father she'd ever known, but she
signed her letters, Olive Bronson."

"What was Bronson like, by the way?"

"Bronson? He was a great big fellow, very hearty, with a loud voice and
a bellowing laugh, beefy, you know, and a fine athlete. There was not
very much to him, but he was as straight as a die. He had a red face and
red hair. Now I come to think of it I remember that I never saw a man
sweat as much as he did. Water just poured off him, and when he played
tennis he always used to bring a towel on the court with him."

"It doesn't sound very attractive."

"He was a handsome chap. He was always fit. He was keen on that. He
hadn't much to talk about but rubber and games, tennis, you know, and
golf and shooting; and I don't suppose he read a book from year's end to
year's end. He was the typical public-school boy. He was about
thirty-five when I first knew him, but he had the mind of a boy of
eighteen. You know how many fellows when they come out East seem to stop
growing."

I did indeed. One of the most disconcerting things to the traveller is
to see stout, middle-aged gentlemen, with bald heads, speaking and
acting like schoolboys. You might almost think that no idea has entered
their heads since they first passed through the Suez Canal. Though
married and the fathers of children, and perhaps in control of a large
business, they continue to look upon life from the standpoint of the
sixth form.

"But he was no fool," Gaze went on. "He knew his work from A to Z. His
estate was one of the best managed in the country and he knew how to
handle his labour. He was a damned good sort, and if he did get on your
nerves a little you couldn't help liking him. He was generous with his
money, and always ready to do anybody a good turn. That's how Cartwright
happened to turn up in the first instance."

"Did the Bronsons get on well together?"

"Oh, yes, I think so. I'm sure they did. He was good-natured and she was
very jolly and gay. She was very outspoken, you know. She can be damned
amusing when she likes even now, but there's generally a sting lurking
in the joke; when she was a young woman and married to Bronson it was
just pure fun. She had high spirits and liked having a good time. She
never cared a hang what she said, but it went with her type, if you
understand what I mean; there was something so open and frank and
careless about her that you didn't care what she said to you. They
seemed very happy.

"Their estate was about five miles from Alor Lipis. They had a trap and
they used to drive in most evenings about five. Of course it was a very
small community and men were in the majority. There were only about six
women. The Bronsons were a god-send. They bucked things up the moment
they arrived. We used to have very jolly times in that little club. I've
often thought of them since and I don't know that on the whole I've ever
enjoyed myself more than I did when I was stationed there. Between six
and eight-thirty the club at Alor Lipis twenty years ago was about as
lively a place as you could find between Aden and Yokohama.

"One day Mrs. Bronson told us that they were expecting a friend to stay
with them and a few days later they brought Cartwright along. It
appeared that he was an old friend of Bronson's, they'd been at school
together, Marlborough, or some place like that, and they'd first come
out East on the same ship. Rubber had taken a toss and a lot of fellows
had lost their jobs. Cartwright was one of them. He'd been out of work
for the greater part of a year and he hadn't anything to fall back on.
In those days planters were even worse paid than they are now and a man
had to be very lucky to put by something for a rainy day. Cartwright had
gone to Singapore. They all go there when there's a slump, you know.
It's awful then, I've seen it; I've known of planters sleeping in the
street because they hadn't the price of a night's lodging. I've known
them stop strangers outside the Europe and ask for a dollar to get a
meal, and I think Cartwright had had a pretty rotten time.

"At last he wrote to Bronson and asked him if he couldn't do something
for him. Bronson asked him to come and stay till things got better, at
least it would be free board and lodging, and Cartwright jumped at the
chance, but Bronson had to send him the money to pay his railway fare.
When Cartwright arrived at Alor Lipis he hadn't ten cents in his pocket.
Bronson had a little money of his own, two or three hundred a year, I
think, and though his salary had been cut, he'd kept his job, so that he
was better off than most planters. When Cartwright came Mrs. Bronson
told him that he was to look upon the place as his home and stay as long
as he liked."

"It was very nice of her, wasn't it?" I remarked.

"Very."

Gaze lit himself another cheroot and filled his glass. It was very still
and but for the occasional croak of the chik-chak the silence was
intense. We seemed to be alone in the tropical night and heaven only
knows how far from the habitations of men. Gaze did not speak for so
long that at last I was forced to say something.

"What sort of a man was Cartwright at that time?" I asked. "Younger, of
course, and you told me rather nice-looking; but in himself?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I never paid much attention to him. He was
pleasant and unassuming. He's very quiet now, as I dare say you noticed;
well, he wasn't exactly lively then. But he was perfectly inoffensive.
He was fond of reading and he played the piano rather nicely. You never
minded having him about, he was never in the way, but you never bothered
very much about him. He danced well and the women rather liked that, but
he also played billiards quite decently and he wasn't bad at tennis. He
fell into our little groove very naturally. I wouldn't say that he ever
became wildly popular, but everybody liked him. Of course we were sorry
for him, as one is for a man who's down and out, but there was nothing
we could do, and, well, we just accepted him and then forgot that he
hadn't always been there. He used to come in with the Bronsons every
evening and pay for his drinks like everyone else, I suppose Bronson had
lent him a bit of money for current expenses, and he was always very
civil. I'm rather vague about him, because really he didn't make any
particular impression on me; in the East one meets such a lot of people,
and he seemed very much like anybody else. He did everything he could to
get something to do, but he had no luck; the fact is, there were no jobs
going, and sometimes he seemed rather depressed about it. He was with
the Bronsons for over a year. I remember his saying to me once:

"'After all I can't live with them for ever. They've been most awfully
good to me, but there are limits.'

"'I should think the Bronsons would be very glad to have you,' I said.
'It's not particularly gay on a rubber estate, and as far as your food
and drink go, it must make precious little difference if you're there or
not.'"

Gaze stopped once more and looked at me with a sort of hesitation.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"I'm afraid I'm telling you this story very badly," he said. "I seem to
be just rambling on. I'm not a damned novelist, I'm a policeman, and I'm
just telling you the facts as I saw them at the time; and from my point
of view all the circumstances are important; it's important, I mean, to
realise what sort of people they were."

"Of course. Fire away."

"I remember someone, a woman, I think it was, the doctor's wife, asking
Mrs. Bronson if she didn't get tired sometimes of having a stranger in
the house. You know, in places like Alor Lipis there isn't very much to
talk about, and if you didn't talk about your neighbours there'd be
nothing to talk about at all.

"'Oh, no,' she said, 'Theo's no trouble.' She turned to her husband, who
was sitting there mopping his face. 'We like having him, don't we?'

"'He's all right,' said Bronson.

"'What does he do with himself all day long?'

"'Oh, I don't know,' said Mrs. Bronson. 'He walks round the estate with
Reggie sometimes, and he shoots a bit. He talks to me.'

"'He's always glad to make himself useful,' said Bronson. 'The other day
when I had a go of fever, he took over my work and I just lay in bed and
had a good time.'"

"Hadn't the Bronsons any children?" I asked.

"No," Gaze answered. "I don't know why, they could well have afforded
it."

Gaze leant back in his chair. He took off his glasses and wiped them.
They were very strong and hideously distorted his eyes. Without them he
wasn't so homely. The chik-chak on the ceiling gave its strangely human
cry. It was like the cackle of an idiot child.

"Bronson was killed," said Gaze suddenly.

"Killed?"

"Yes, murdered. I shall never forget that night. We'd been playing
tennis, Mrs. Bronson and the doctor's wife, Theo Cartwright and I; and
then we played bridge. Cartwright had been off his game and when we sat
down at the bridge-table Mrs. Bronson said to him: 'Well, Theo, if you
play bridge as rottenly as you played tennis we shall lose our shirts.'

"We'd just had a drink, but she called the boy and ordered another
round.

"'Put that down your throat,' she said to him, 'and don't call without
top honours and an outside trick.'

"Bronson hadn't turned up, he'd cycled in to Kabulong to get the money
to pay his coolies their wages and was to come along to the club when he
got back. The Bronsons' estate was nearer Alor Lipis than it was to
Kabulong, but Kabulong was a more important place commercially, and
Bronson banked there.

"'Reggie can cut in when he turns up,' said Mrs. Bronson.

"'He's late, isn't he?' said the doctor's wife.

"'Very. He said he wouldn't get back in time for tennis, but would be
here for a rubber. I have a suspicion that he went to the club at
Kabulong instead of coming straight home and is having drinks, the
ruffian.'

"'Oh, well, he can put away a good many without their having much effect
on him,' I laughed.

"'He's getting fat, you know. He'll have to be careful.'

"We sat by ourselves in the card-room and we could hear the crowd in the
billiard-room talking and laughing. They were all on the merry side. It
was getting on to Christmas Day and we were all letting ourselves go a
little. There was going to be a dance on Christmas Eve.

"I remembered afterwards that when we sat down the doctor's wife asked
Mrs. Bronson if she wasn't tired.

"'Not a bit,' she said. 'Why should I be?'

"I didn't know why she flushed.

"'I was afraid the tennis might have been too much for you,' said the
doctor's wife.

"'Oh, no,' answered Mrs. Bronson, a trifle abruptly, I thought, as
though she didn't want to discuss the matter.

"I didn't know what they meant, and indeed it wasn't till later that I
remembered the incident.

"We played three or four rubbers and still Bronson didn't turn up.

"'I wonder what's happened to him,' said his wife. 'I can't think why he
should be so late.'

"Cartwright was always silent, but this evening he had hardly opened his
mouth. I thought he was tired and asked him what he'd been doing.

"'Nothing very much,' he said. 'I went out after tiffin to shoot
pigeon.'

"'Did you have any luck?' I asked.

"'Oh, I got half a dozen. They were very shy.'

"But now he said: 'If Reggie got back late, I dare say he thought it
wasn't worth while to come here. I expect he's had a bath and when we
get in we shall find him asleep in his chair.'

"'It's a good long ride from Kabulong,' said the doctor's wife.

"'He doesn't take the road, you know,' Mrs. Bronson explained. 'He takes
the short cut through the jungle.'

"'Can he get along on his bicycle?' I asked.

"'Oh, yes, it's a very good track. It saves about a couple of miles.'

"We had just started another rubber when the bar-boy came in and said
there was a police-sergeant outside who wanted to speak to me.

"'What does he want?' I asked.

"The boy said he didn't know, but he had two coolies with him.

"'Curse him,' I said. 'I'll give him hell if I find he's disturbed me
for nothing.'

"I told the boy I'd come and I finished playing the hand. Then I got up.

"'I won't be a minute,' I said. 'Deal for me, will you?' I added to
Cartwright.

"I went out and found the sergeant with two Malays waiting for me on the
steps. I asked him what the devil he wanted. You can imagine my
consternation when he told me that the Malays had come to the
police-station and said there was a white man lying dead on the path
that led through the jungle to Kabulong. I immediately thought of
Bronson.

"'Dead?' I cried.

"'Yes, shot. Shot through the head. A white man with red hair.'

"Then I knew it was Reggie Bronson, and indeed, one of them naming his
estate said he'd recognised him as the man. It was an awful shock. And
there was Mrs. Bronson in the card-room waiting impatiently for me to
sort my cards and make a bid. For a moment I really didn't know what to
do. I was frightfully upset. It was dreadful to give her such a terrible
and unexpected blow without a word of preparation, but I found myself
quite unable to think of any way to soften it. I told the sergeant and
the coolies to wait and went back into the club. I tried to pull myself
together. As I entered the card-room Mrs. Bronson said: 'You've been an
awful long time.' Then she caught sight of my face. 'Is anything the
matter?' I saw her clench her fists and go white. You'd have thought she
had a presentiment of evil.

"'Something dreadful has happened,' I said, and my throat was all closed
up so that my voice sounded even to myself hoarse and uncanny. 'There's
been an accident. Your husband's been wounded.'

"She gave a long gasp, it was not exactly a scream, it reminded me oddly
of a piece of silk torn in two.

"'Wounded?'

"She leapt to her feet and with her eyes starting from her head stared
at Cartwright. The effect on him was ghastly, he fell back in his chair
and went as white as death.

"'Very, very badly, I'm afraid,' I added.

"I knew that I must tell her the truth, and tell it then, but I couldn't
bring myself to tell it all at once.

"'Is he,' her lips trembled so that she could hardly form the words, 'is
he--conscious?'

"I looked at her for a moment without answering. I'd have given a
thousand pounds not to have to.

"'No, I'm afraid he isn't.'

"Mrs. Bronson stared at me as though she were trying to see right into
my brain.

"'Is he dead?'

"I thought the only thing was to get it out and have done with it.

"'Yes, he was dead when they found him.'

"Mrs. Bronson collapsed into her chair and burst into tears.

"'Oh, my God,' she muttered. 'Oh, my God.'

"The doctor's wife went to her and put her arms round her. Mrs. Bronson
with her face in her hands swayed to and fro weeping hysterically.
Cartwright, with that livid face, sat quite still, his mouth open, and
stared at her. You might have thought he was turned to stone.

"'Oh, my dear, my dear,' said the doctor's wife, 'you must try and pull
yourself together.' Then, turning to me. 'Get her a glass of water and
fetch Harry.'

"Harry was her husband and he was playing billiards. I went in and told
him what had happened.

"'A glass of water be damned,' he said. 'What she wants is a good long
peg of brandy.'

"We took it in to her and forced her to drink it and gradually the
violence of her emotion exhausted itself. In a few minutes the doctor's
wife was able to take her into the ladies' lavatory to wash her face.
I'd made up my mind now what had better be done. I could see that
Cartwright wasn't good for much; he was all to pieces. I could
understand that it was a fearful shock to him, for after all Bronson was
his greatest friend and had done everything in the world for him.

"'You look as though you'd be all the better for a drop of brandy
yourself, old man,' I said to him.

"He made an effort.

"'It's shaken me, you know,' he said. 'I... I didn't...' He
stopped as though his mind was wandering; he was still fearfully pale;
he took out a packet of cigarettes and struck a match, but his hand was
shaking so that he could hardly manage it.

"'Yes, I'll have a brandy.'

"'Boy,' I shouted, and then to Cartwright: 'Now, are you fit to take
Mrs. Bronson home?'

"'Oh, yes,' he answered.

"'That's good. The doctor and I will go along with the coolies and some
police to where the body is.'

"'Will you bring him back to the bungalow?' asked Cartwright.

"'I think he'd better be taken straight to the mortuary,' said the
doctor before I could answer. 'I shall have to do a P.M.'

"When Mrs. Bronson, now so much calmer that I was amazed, came back, I
told her what I suggested. The doctor's wife, kind woman, offered to go
with her and spend the night at the bungalow, but Mrs. Bronson wouldn't
hear of it. She said she would be perfectly all right, and when the
doctor's wife insisted--you know how bent some people are on forcing
their kindness on those in trouble--she turned on her almost fiercely.

"'No, no, I must be alone,' she said. 'I really must. And Theo will be
there.'

"They got into the trap. Theo took the reins and they drove off. We
started after them, the doctor and I, while the sergeant and the coolies
followed. I had sent my seis to the police-station with instructions to
send two men to the place where the body was lying. We soon passed Mrs.
Bronson and Cartwright.

"'All right?' I called.

"'Yes,' he answered.

"For some time the doctor and I drove without saying a word; we were
both of us deeply shocked. I was worried as well. Somehow or other I'd
got to find the murderers and I foresaw that it would be no easy matter.

"'Do you suppose it was gang robbery?' said the doctor at last.

"He might have been reading my thoughts.

"'I don't think there's a doubt of it,' I answered. 'They knew he'd gone
into Kabulong to get the wages and lay in wait for him on the way back.
Of course he should never have come alone through the jungle when
everyone knew he had a packet of money with him.'

"'He'd done it for years,' said the doctor. 'And he's not the only one.'

"'I know. The question is, how we're going to get hold of the fellows
that did it.'

"'You don't think the two coolies who say they found him could have had
anything to do with it?'

"'No. They wouldn't have the nerve. I think a pair of Chinks might think
out a trick like that, but I don't believe Malays would. They'd be much
too frightened. Of course we'll keep an eye on them. We shall soon see
if they seem to have any money to fling about.'

"'It's awful for Mrs. Bronson,' said the doctor. 'It would have been bad
enough at any time, but now she's going to have a baby...'

"'I didn't know that,' I said, interrupting him.

"'No, for some reason she wanted to keep it dark. She was rather funny
about it, I thought.'

"I recollected then that little passage between Mrs. Bronson and the
doctor's wife. I understood why that good woman had been so anxious that
Mrs. Bronson should not overtire herself.

"'It's strange her having a baby after being married so many years.'

"'It happens, you know. But it was a surprise to her. When first she
came to see me and I told her what was the matter she fainted, and then
she began to cry. I should have thought she'd be as pleased as Punch.
She told me that Bronson didn't like children and he'd be awfully bored
at the idea, and she made me promise to say nothing about it till she
had had a chance of breaking it to him gradually.'

"I reflected for a moment.

"'He was the kind of breezy, hearty cove whom you'd expect to be as keen
as mustard on having kids.'

"'You never can tell. Some people are very selfish and just don't want
the bother.'

"'Well, how did he take it when she did tell him? Wasn't he rather
bucked?'

"'I don't know that she ever told him. Though she couldn't have waited
much longer; unless I'm very much mistaken she ought to be confined in
about five months.'

"'Poor devil,' I said. 'You know, I've got a notion that he'd have been
most awfully pleased to know.'

"We drove in silence for the rest of the way and at last came to the
point at which the short cut to Kabulong branched off from the road.
Here we stopped and in a minute or two my trap, in which were the
police-sergeant and the two Malays, came up. We took the head-lamps to
light us on our way. I left the doctor's seis to look after the ponies
and told him that when the policemen came they were to follow the path
till they found us. The two coolies, carrying the lamps, walked ahead
and we followed them. It was a fairly broad track, wide enough for a
small cart to pass, and before the road was built it had been the
highway between Kabulong and Alor Lipis. It was firm to the foot and
good walking. The surface here and there was sandy and in places you
could see quite plainly the mark of a bicycle wheel. It was the track
Bronson had left on his way to Kabulong.

"We walked twenty minutes, I should think, in single file, and on a
sudden the coolies, with a cry, stopped sharply. The sight had come upon
them so abruptly that notwithstanding they were expecting it they were
startled. There, in the middle of the pathway lit dimly by the lamps the
coolies carried, lay Bronson; he'd fallen over his bicycle and lay
across it in an ungainly heap. I was too shocked to speak, and I think
the doctor was, too. But in our silence the din of the jungle was
deafening; those damned cicadas and the bull-frogs were making enough
row to wake the dead. Even under ordinary circumstances the noise of the
jungle at night is uncanny; because you feel that at that hour there
should be utter silence it has an odd effect on you, that ceaseless and
invisible uproar that beats upon your nerves. It surrounds you and hems
you in. But just then, believe me, it was terrifying. That poor fellow
lay dead and all round him the restless life of the jungle pursued its
indifferent and ferocious course.

"He was lying face downwards. The sergeant and the coolies looked at me
as though awaiting an order. I was a young fellow then and I'm afraid I
felt a little frightened. Though I couldn't see the face I had no doubt
that it was Bronson, but I felt that I ought to turn the body over to
make sure. I suppose we all have our little squeamishnesses; you know,
I've always had a horrible distaste for touching dead bodies. I've had
to do it fairly often now, but it still makes me feel slightly sick.

"'It's Bronson, all right,' I said.

"The doctor--by George, it was lucky for me he was there--the doctor
bent down and turned the head. The sergeant directed the lamp on the
dead face.

"'My God, half his head's been shot away,' I cried.

"'Yes.'

"The doctor stood up straight and wiped his hands on the leaves of a
tree that grew beside the path.

"'Is he quite dead?' I asked.

"'Oh, yes. Death must have been instantaneous. Whoever shot him must
have fired at pretty close range.'

"'How long has he been dead, d'you think?'

"'Oh, I don't know, several hours.'

"'He would have passed here about five o'clock, I suppose, if he was
expecting to get to the club for a rubber at six.'

"'There's no sign of any struggle,' said the doctor.

"'No, there wouldn't be. He was shot as he was riding along.'

"I looked at the body for a little while. I couldn't help thinking how
short a time ago it was since Bronson, noisy and loud-voiced, had been
so full of hearty life.

"'You haven't forgotten that he had the coolies' wages on him,' said the
doctor.

"'No, we'd better search him.'

"'Shall we turn him over?'

"'Wait a minute. Let us just have a look at the ground first.'

"I took the lamp and as carefully as I could looked all about me. Just
where he had fallen the sandy pathway was trodden and confused; there
were our footprints and the footprints of the coolies who had found him.
I walked two or three paces and then saw quite clearly the mark of his
bicycle wheels; he had been riding straight and steadily. I followed it
to the spot where he had fallen, to just before that, rather, and there
saw very distinctly the prints on each side of the wheels of his heavy
boots. He had evidently stopped there and put his feet to the ground,
then he'd started off again, there was a great wobble of the wheel, and
he'd crashed.

"'Now let's search him,' I said.

"The doctor and the sergeant turned the body over and one of the coolies
dragged the bicycle away. They laid Bronson on his back. I supposed he
would have had the money partly in notes and partly in silver. The
silver would have been in a bag attached to the bicycle and a glance
told me that it was not there. The notes he would have put in a wallet.
It would have been a good thick bundle. I felt him all over, but there
was nothing; then I turned out the pockets, they were all empty except
the right trouser pocket, in which there was a little small change.

"'Didn't he always wear a watch?' asked the doctor.

"'Yes, of course he did.'

"I remembered that he wore the chain through the buttonhole in the lapel
of his coat and the watch and some seals and things in his handkerchief
pocket. But watch and chain were gone.

"'Well, there's not much doubt now, is there?' I said.

"It was clear that he had been attacked by gang robbers who knew he had
money on him. After killing him they had stripped him of everything. I
suddenly remembered the footprints that proved that for a moment he had
stood still. I saw exactly how it had been done. One of them had stopped
him on some pretext and then, just as he started off again, another,
slipping out of the jungle behind him, had emptied the two barrels of a
gun into his head.

"'Well,' I said to the doctor, 'it's up to me to catch them, and I'll
tell you what, it'll be a real pleasure to me to see them hanged.'

"Of course there was an inquest. Mrs. Bronson gave evidence, but she had
nothing to say that we didn't know already. Bronson had left the
bungalow about eleven, he was to have tiffin at Kabulong and was to be
back between five and six. He asked her not to wait for him, he said he
would just put the money in the safe and come straight to the club.
Cartwright confirmed this. He had lunched alone with Mrs. Bronson and
after a smoke had gone out with a gun to shoot pigeon. He had got in
about five, a little before perhaps, had a bath and changed to play
tennis. He was shooting not far from the place where Bronson was killed,
but never heard a shot. That, of course, meant nothing; what with the
cicadas and the frogs and the other sounds of the jungle, he would have
had to be very near to hear anything; and besides, Cartwright was
probably back in the bungalow before Bronson was killed. We traced
Bronson's movements. He had lunched at the club, he had got money at the
bank just before it closed, had gone back to the club and had one more
drink, and then started off on his bicycle. He had crossed the river by
the ferry; the ferryman remembered distinctly seeing him, but was
positive that no one else with a bicycle had crossed. That looked as
though the murderers were not following, but lying in wait for him. He
rode along the main road for a couple of miles and then took the path
which was a short cut to his bungalow.

"It looked as though he had been killed by men who knew his habits, and
suspicion, of course, fell immediately on the coolies of his estate. We
examined them all--pretty carefully--but there was not a scrap of
evidence to connect any of them with the crime. In fact, most of them
were able satisfactorily to account for their actions and those who
couldn't seemed to me for one reason and another out of the running.
There were a few bad characters among the Chinese at Alor Lipis and I
had them looked up. But somehow I didn't think it was the work of the
Chinese; I had a feeling that Chinese would have used revolvers and not
a shotgun. Anyhow, I could find out nothing there. So then we offered a
reward of a thousand dollars to anyone who could put us in the way of
discovering the murderers. I thought there were a good many people to
whom it would appeal to do a public service and at the same time earn a
tidy sum. But I knew that an informer would take no risks, he wouldn't
want to tell what he knew till he knew he could tell it safely, and I
armed myself with patience. The reward had brightened the interest of my
police and I knew they would use every means they had to bring the
criminals to trial. In a case like this they could do more than I.

"But it was strange, nothing happened; the reward seemed to tempt no
one. I cast my net a little wider. There were two or three kampongs
along the road and I wondered if the murderers were there; I saw the
headmen, but got no help from them. It was not that they would tell me
nothing, I was sure they had nothing to tell. I talked to the bad hats,
but there was absolutely nothing to connect them with the murder. There
was not the shadow of a clue.

"'Very well, my lads,' I said to myself, as I drove back to Alor Lipis,
'there's no hurry; the rope won't spoil by keeping.'

"The scoundrels had got away with a considerable sum, but money is no
good unless you spend it. I felt I knew the native temperament enough to
be sure that the possession of it was a constant temptation. The Malays
are an extravagant race, and a race of gamblers, and the Chinese are
gamblers, too; sooner or later someone would start flinging his money
about, and then I should want to know where it came from. With a few
well-directed questions I thought I could put the fear of God into the
fellow and then, if I knew my business, it shouldn't be hard to get a
full confession.

"The only thing now was to sit down and wait till the hue and cry had
died down and the murderers thought the affair was forgotten. The itch
to spend those ill-gotten dollars would grow more and more intolerable
till at last it could be resisted no longer. I would go about my
business, but I meant never to relax my watch, and one day, sooner or
later, my time must come.

"Cartwright took Mrs. Bronson down to Singapore. The company Bronson had
worked for asked him if he would care to take Bronson's place, but he
said, very naturally, that he didn't like the idea of it; so they put
another man in and told Cartwright that he could have the job that
Bronson's successor had vacated. It was the management of the estate
that Cartwright lives on now. He moved in at once. Four months after
this Olive was born at Singapore, and a few months later, when Bronson
had been dead just over a year, Cartwright and Mrs. Bronson were
married. I was surprised; but on thinking it over I couldn't help
confessing that it was very natural. After the trouble Mrs. Bronson had
leant much on Cartwright and he had arranged everything for her; she
must have been lonely, and rather lost, and I dare say she was grateful
for his kindness, he did behave like a brick; and so far as he was
concerned I imagined he was sorry for her, it was a dreadful position
for a woman, she had nowhere to go, and all they'd gone through must
have been a tie between them. There was every reason for them to marry
and it was probably the best thing for them both.

"It looked as though Bronson's murderers would never be caught, for that
plan of mine didn't work; there was no one in the district who spent
more money than he could account for, and if anyone had that hoard
buried away under his floor he was showing a self-control that was
superhuman. A year had passed and to all intents and purposes the thing
was forgotten. Could anyone be so prudent as after so long not to let a
little money dribble out? It was incredible. I began to think that
Bronson had been killed by a couple of wandering Chinese who had got
away, to Singapore perhaps, where there would be small chance of
catching them. At last I gave it up. If you come to think of it, as a
rule, it's just those crimes, crimes of robbery, in which there is least
chance of getting the culprit; for there's nothing to attach suspicion
to him, and if he's caught it can only be by his own carelessness. It's
different with crimes of passion or vengeance, then you can find out who
had a motive to put the victim out of the way.

"It's no use grizzling over one's failures, and bringing my common sense
to bear I did my best to put the matter out of my mind. No one likes to
be beaten, but beaten I was and I had to put as good a face on it as I
could. And then a Chinaman was caught trying to pawn poor Bronson's
watch.

"I told you that Bronson's watch and chain had been taken, and of course
Mrs. Bronson was able to give us a fairly accurate description of it. It
was a half-hunter, by Benson, there was a gold chain, three or four
seals and a sovereign purse. The pawnbroker was a smart fellow and when
the Chinaman brought the watch he recognised it at once. On some pretext
he kept the man waiting and sent for a policeman. The man was arrested
and immediately brought to me. I greeted him like a long-lost brother. I
was never so pleased to see anyone in my life. I have no feeling about
criminals, you know; I'm rather sorry for them, because they're playing
a game in which their opponents hold all the aces and kings; but when I
catch one it gives me a little thrill of satisfaction, like bringing off
a neat finesse at bridge. At last the mystery was going to be cleared
up, for if the Chinaman hadn't done the thing himself we were pretty
sure through him to trace the murderers. I beamed on him.

"I asked him to account for his possession of the watch. He said he had
bought it from a man he didn't know. That was very thin. I explained the
circumstances briefly and told him he would be charged with murder. I
meant to frighten him and I did. He said then that he'd found the watch.

"'Found it?' I said. 'Fancy that. Where?'

"His answer staggered me; he said he'd found it in the jungle, I laughed
at him; I asked him if he thought watches were likely to be left lying
about in the jungle; then he said he'd been coming along the pathway
that led from Kabulong to Alor Lipis, and had gone into the jungle and
caught sight of something gleaming and there was the watch. That was
odd. Why should he have said he found the watch just there? It was
either true or excessively astute. I asked him where the chain and the
seals were, and he produced them immediately. I'd got him scared, and he
was pale and shaking; he was a knock-kneed little fellow and I should
have been a fool not to see that I hadn't got hold of the murderer
there. But his terror suggested that he knew something.

"I asked him when he'd found the watch.

"'Yesterday,' he said.

"I asked him what he was doing on the short-cut from Kabulong to Alor
Lipis. He said he'd been working in Singapore and had gone to Kabulong
because his father was ill, and that he himself had come to Alor Lipis
to work. A friend of his father, a carpenter by trade, had given him a
job. He gave me the name of the man with whom he had worked in Singapore
and the name of the man who had engaged him at Alor Lipis. All he said
seemed plausible and could so easily be verified that it was hardly
likely to be false. Of course it occurred to me that if he had found the
watch as he said, it must have been lying in the jungle for more than a
year. It could hardly be in very good condition; I tried to open it, but
couldn't. The pawnbroker had come to the police-station and was waiting
in the next room. Luckily he was also something of a watch-maker. I sent
for him and asked him to look at the watch; when he opened it he gave a
little whistle, the works were thick with rust.

"'This watch no good,' he said, shaking his head. 'Him never go now.'

"I asked him what had put it in such a state, and without a word from me
he said that it had been long exposed to wet. For the moral effect I had
the prisoner put in a cell and I sent for his employer. I sent a wire to
Kabulong and another to Singapore. While I waited I did my best to put
two and two together. I was inclined to believe the man's story true;
his fear might be ascribed to no more guilt than consisted in his having
found something and tried to sell it. Even quite innocent persons are
apt to be nervous when they're in the hands of the police; I don't know
what there is about a policeman, people are never very much at their
ease in his company. But if he really had found the watch where he said,
someone had thrown it there. Now that was funny. Even if the murderers
had thought the watch a dangerous thing to possess, one would have
expected them to melt down the gold case; that would be a very simple
thing for any native to do; and the chain was of so ordinary a pattern
they could hardly have thought it possible to trace that. There were
chains like it in every jeweller's shop in the country. Of course there
was the possibility that they had plunged into the jungle and having
dropped the watch in their hurry had been afraid to go back and look for
it. I didn't think that very likely: the Malays are used to keeping
things tucked away in their sarongs, and the Chinese have pockets in
their coats. Besides, the moment they got into the jungle they knew
there was no hurry; they probably waited and divided the swag then and
there.

"In a few minutes the man I had sent for came to the police-station and
confirmed what the prisoner had said, and in an hour I got an answer
from Kabulong. The police had seen his father, who told them that the
boy had gone to Alor Lipis to get a job with a carpenter. So far
everything he had said seemed true. I had him brought in again, and told
him I was going to take him to the place where he said he had found the
watch and he must show me the exact spot. I handcuffed him to a
policeman, though it was hardly necessary, for the poor devil was
shaking with fright, and took a couple of men besides. We drove out to
where the track joined the road and walked along it; within five yards
of the place where Bronson was killed the Chinaman stopped.

"'Here,' he said.

"He pointed to the jungle and we followed him in. We went in about ten
yards and he pointed to a chink between two large boulders and said that
he found the watch there. It could only have been by the merest chance
that he noticed it, and if he really had found it there it looked very
much as though someone had put it there to hide it."

Gaze stopped and gave me a reflective look.

"What would you have thought then?" he asked.

"I don't know," I answered.

"Well, I'll tell you what I thought. I thought that if the watch was
there the money might be there, too. It seemed worth while having a
look. Of course, to look for something in the jungle makes looking for a
needle in a bundle of hay a drawing-room pastime. I couldn't help that.
I released the Chinaman, I wanted all the help I could get, and set him
to work. I set my three men to work, and I started in myself. We made a
line--there were five of us--and we searched from the road; for fifty
yards on each side of the place at which Bronson was murdered and for a
hundred yards in we went over the ground foot by foot. We routed among
dead leaves and peered in bushes, we looked under boulders and in the
hollows of trees. I knew it was a foolish thing to do, for the chances
against us were a thousand to one; my only hope was that anyone who had
just committed a murder would be rattled and if he wanted to hide
anything would hide it quickly; he would choose the first obvious
hiding-place that offered itself. That is what he had done when he hid
the watch. My only reason for looking in so circumscribed an area was
that as the watch had been found so near the road, the person who wanted
to get rid of the things must have wanted to get rid of them quickly.

"We worked on. I began to grow tired and cross. We were sweating like
pigs. I had a maddening thirst and nothing in the world to drink. At
last I came to the conclusion that we must give it up as a bad job, for
that day at least, when suddenly the Chinaman--he must have had sharp
eyes, that young man--uttered a guttural cry. He stooped down and from
under the winding root of a tree drew out a messy, mouldering, stinking
thing. It was a pocket-book that had been out in the rain for a year,
that had been eaten by ants and beetles and God knows what, that was
sodden and foul, but it was a pocket-book all right, Bronson's, and
inside were the shapeless, mushed-up, fetid remains of the Singapore
notes he had got from the bank at Kabulong. There was still the silver
and I was convinced that it was hidden somewhere about, but I wasn't
going to bother about that. I had found out something very important;
whoever had murdered Bronson had made no money out of it.

"Do you remember my telling you that I'd noticed the print of Bronson's
feet on each side of the broad line of the pneumatic tyre, where he had
stopped, and presumably spoken to someone? He was a heavy man and the
prints were well marked. He hadn't just put his feet on the soft sand
and taken them off, but must have stopped at least for a minute or two.
My explanation was that he had stopped to chat with a Malay or a
Chinaman, but the more I thought of it the less I liked it. Why the
devil should he? Bronson wanted to get home, and though a jovial chap,
he certainly was not hail-fellow-well-met with the natives. His
relations towards them were those of master and servants. Those
footprints had always puzzled me. And now the truth flashed across me.
Whoever had murdered Bronson hadn't murdered him to rob and if he'd
stopped to talk with someone it could only be with a friend. I knew at
last who the murderer was."

I have always thought the detective story a most diverting and ingenious
variety of fiction, and have regretted that I never had the skill to
write one, but I have read a good many, and I flatter myself it is
rarely that I have not solved the mystery before it was disclosed to me;
and now for some time I had foreseen what Gaze was going to say, but
when at last he said it I confess that it gave me, notwithstanding,
somewhat of a shock.

"The man he met was Cartwright. Cartwright was pigeon-shooting. He
stopped and asked him what sport he had had, and as he rode on
Cartwright raised his gun and discharged both barrels into his head.
Cartwright took the money and the watch in order to make it look like
the work of gang robbers and hurriedly hid them in the jungle, then made
his way along the edge till he got to the road, went back to the
bungalow, changed into his tennis things and drove with Mrs. Bronson to
the club.

"I remembered how badly he'd played tennis, and how he'd collapsed when,
in order to break the news more gently to Mrs. Bronson, I said Bronson
was wounded and not dead. If he was only wounded he might have been able
to speak. By George, I bet that was a bad moment. The child was
Cartwright's. Look at Olive: why, you saw the likeness yourself. The
doctor had said that Mrs. Bronson was upset when he told her she was
going to have a baby and made him promise not to tell Bronson. Why?
Because Bronson knew that he couldn't be the father of the child."

"Do you think that Mrs. Bronson knew what Cartwright had done?" I asked.

"I'm sure of it. When I look back on her behaviour that evening at the
club I am convinced of it. She was upset, but not because Bronson was
killed; she was upset because I said he was wounded; on my telling her
that he was dead when they found him she burst out crying, but from
relief. I know that woman. Look at that square chin of hers and tell me
that she hasn't got the courage of the devil. She has a will of iron.
She made Cartwright do it. She planned every detail and every move. He
was completely under her influence; he is now."

"But do you mean to tell me that neither you nor anyone else ever
suspected that there was anything between them?"

"Never. Never."

"If they were in love with one another and knew that she was going to
have a baby, why didn't they just bolt?"

"How could they? It was Bronson who had the money; she hadn't a bean and
neither had Cartwright. He was out of a job. Do you think he would have
got another with that story round his neck? Bronson had taken him in
when he was starving and he'd stolen his wife from him. They wouldn't
have had a dog's chance. They couldn't afford to let the truth come out,
their only chance was to get Bronson out of the way, and they got him
out of the way."

"They might have thrown themselves on his mercy."

"Yes, but I think they were ashamed. He'd been so good to them, he was
such a decent chap, I don't think they had the heart to tell him the
truth. They preferred to kill him."

There was a moment's silence while I reflected over what Gaze said.

"Well, what did you do about it?" I asked.

"Nothing. What was there to do? What was the evidence? That the watch
and notes had been found? They might easily have been hidden by someone
who was afterwards afraid to come and get them. The murderer might have
been quite content to get away with the silver. The footprints? Bronson
might have stopped to light a cigarette or there might have been a
tree-trunk across the path and he waited while the coolies he met there
by chance moved it away. Who could prove that the child that a perfectly
decent, respectable woman had had four months after her husband's death
was not his child? No jury would have convicted Cartwright. I held my
tongue and the Bronson murder was forgotten."

"I don't suppose the Cartwrights have forgotten," I suggested.

"I shouldn't be surprised. Human memory is astonishingly short and if
you want my professional opinion I don't mind telling you that I don't
believe remorse for a crime ever sits very heavily on a man when he's
absolutely sure he'll never be found out."

I thought once more of the pair I had met that afternoon, the thin,
elderly, bald man with gold-rimmed spectacles, and that white-haired
untidy woman with her frank speech and kindly, caustic smile. It was
almost impossible to imagine that in the distant past they had been
swayed by so turbulent a passion, for that alone made their behaviour
explicable, that it had brought them in the end to such a pass that they
could see no other issue than a cruel and cold-blooded murder.

"Doesn't it make you feel a little uncomfortable to be with them?" I
asked Gaze. "For, without wishing to be censorious, I'm bound to say
that I don't think they can be very nice people."

"That's where you're wrong. They are very nice people; they're about the
pleasantest people here. Mrs. Cartwright is a thoroughly good sort and a
very amusing woman. It's my business to prevent crime and to catch the
culprit when crime is committed, but I've known far too many criminals
to think that on the whole they're worse than anybody else. A perfectly
decent fellow may be driven by circumstances to commit a crime and if
he's found out he's punished; but he may very well remain a perfectly
decent fellow. Of course society punishes him if he breaks its laws, and
it's quite right, but it's not always his actions that indicate the
essential man. If you'd been a policeman as long as I have, you'd know
it's not what people do that really matters, it's what they are. Luckily
a policeman has nothing to do with their thoughts, only with their
deeds; if he had, it would be a very different, a much more difficult
matter."

Gaze flicked the ash from his cheroot and gave me his wry, sardonic, but
agreeable smile.

"I'll tell you what, there's one job I _shouldn't_ like," he said.

"What is that?" I asked.

"God's, at the Judgment Day," said Gaze. "No, sir."




THE DOOR OF OPPORTUNITY


They got a first-class carriage to themselves. It was lucky, because
they were taking a good deal in with them, Alban's suit-case and a
hold-all, Anne's dressing-case and her hat-box. They had two trunks in
the van, containing what they wanted immediately, but all the rest of
their luggage Alban had put in the care of an agent who was to take it
up to London and store it till they had made up their minds what to do.
They had a lot, pictures and books, curios that Alban had collected in
the East, his guns and saddles. They had left Sondurah for ever. Alban,
as was his way, tipped the porter generously and then went to the
bookstall and bought papers. He bought the _New Statesman_ and the
_Nation_, and the _Tatler_ and the _Sketch_, and the last number of the
_London Mercury_. He came back to the carriage and threw them on the
seat.

"It's only an hour's journey," said Anne.

"I know, but I wanted to buy them. I've been starved so long. Isn't it
grand to think that to-morrow morning we shall have to-morrow's _Times_,
and the _Express_ and the _Mail_?"

She did not answer and he turned away, for he saw coming towards them
two persons, a man and his wife, who had been fellow-passengers from
Singapore.

"Get through the Customs all right?" he cried to them cheerily.

The man seemed not to hear, for he walked straight on, but the woman
answered.

"Yes, they never found the cigarettes."

She saw Anne, gave her a friendly little smile, and passed on. Anne
flushed.

"I was afraid they'd want to come in here," said Alban. "Let's have the
carriage to ourselves if we can."

She looked at him curiously.

"I don't think you need worry," she answered. "I don't think anyone will
come in."

He lit a cigarette and lingered at the carriage door. On his face was a
happy smile. When they had passed through the Red Sea and found a sharp
wind in the Canal, Anne had been surprised to see how much the men who
had looked presentable enough in the white ducks in which she had been
accustomed to see them, were changed when they left them off for warmer
clothes. They looked like nothing on earth then. Their ties were awful
and their shirts all wrong. They wore grubby flannel trousers and shabby
old golf-coats that had too obviously been bought off the nail, or blue
serge suits that betrayed the provincial tailor. Most of the passengers
had got off at Marseilles, but a dozen or so, either because after a
long period in the East they thought the trip through the Bay would do
them good, or, like themselves, for economy's sake, had gone all the way
to Tilbury, and now several of them walked along the platform. They wore
solar topees or double-brimmed terais, and heavy greatcoats, or else
shapeless soft hats or bowlers, not too well brushed, that looked too
small for them. It was a shock to see them. They looked suburban and a
trifle second-rate. But Alban had already a London look. There was not a
speck of dust on his smart greatcoat, and his black Homburg hat looked
brand-new. You would never have guessed that he had not been home for
three years. His collar fitted closely round his neck and his foulard
tie was neatly tied. As Anne looked at him she could not but think how
good-looking he was. He was just under six feet tall, and slim, and he
wore his clothes well, and his clothes were well cut. He had fair hair,
still thick, and blue eyes and the faintly yellow skin common to men of
that complexion after they have lost the pink-and-white freshness of
early youth. There was no colour in his cheeks. It was a fine head,
well-set on rather a long neck, with a somewhat prominent Adam's apple;
but you were more impressed with the distinction than with the beauty of
his face. It was because his features were so regular, his nose so
straight, his brow so broad that he photographed so well. Indeed, from
his photographs you would have thought him extremely handsome. He was
not that, perhaps because his eyebrows and his eyelashes were pale, and
his lips thin, but he looked very intellectual. There was refinement in
his face and a spirituality that was oddly moving. That was how you
thought a poet should look; and when Anne became engaged to him she told
her girl friends who asked her about him that he looked like Shelley. He
turned to her now with a little smile in his blue eyes. His smile was
very attractive.

"What a perfect day to land in England!"

It was October. They had steamed up the Channel on a grey sea under a
grey sky. There was not a breath of wind. The fishing boats seemed to
rest on the placid water as though the elements had for ever forgotten
their old hostility. The coast was incredibly green, but with a bright
cosy greenness quite unlike the luxuriant, vehement verdure of Eastern
jungles. The red towns they passed here and there were comfortable and
homelike. They seemed to welcome the exiles with a smiling friendliness.
And when they drew into the estuary of the Thames they saw the rich
levels of Essex and in a little while Chalk Church on the Kentish shore,
lonely in the midst of weather-beaten trees, and beyond it the woods of
Cobham. The sun, red in a faint mist, set on the marshes, and night
fell. In the station the arc-lamps shed a light that spotted the
darkness with cold hard patches. It was good to see the porters
lumbering about in their grubby uniforms and the stationmaster fat and
important in his bowler hat. The stationmaster blew a whistle and waved
his arm. Alban stepped into the carriage and seated himself in the
corner opposite to Anne. The train started.

"We're due in London at six-ten," said Alban. "We ought to get to Jermyn
Street by seven. That'll give us an hour to bath and change and we can
get to the Savoy for dinner by eight-thirty. A bottle of pop to-night,
my pet, and a slap-up dinner." He gave a chuckle. "I heard the Strouds
and the Maundys arranging to meet at the Trocadero Grill-Room."

He took up the papers and asked if she wanted any of them. Anne shook
her head.

"Tired?" he smiled.

"No."

"Excited?"

In order not to answer she gave a little laugh. He began to look at the
papers, starting with the publishers' advertisements, and she was
conscious of the intense satisfaction it was to him to feel himself
through them once more in the middle of things. They had taken in those
same papers in Sondurah, but they arrived six weeks old, and though they
kept them abreast of what was going on in the world that interested them
both, they emphasised their exile. But these were fresh from the press.
They smelt different. They had a crispness that was almost voluptuous.
He wanted to read them all at once. Anne looked out of the window. The
country was dark, and she could see little but the lights of their
carriage reflected on the glass, but very soon the town encroached upon
it, and then she saw little sordid houses, mile upon mile of them, with
a light in a window here and there, and the chimneys made a dreary
pattern against the sky. They passed through Barking and East Ham and
Bromley--it was silly that the name on the platform as they went through
the station should give her such a tremor--and then Stepney. Alban put
down his papers.

"We shall be there in five minutes now."

He put on his hat and took down from the racks the things the porter had
put in them. He looked at her with shining eyes and his lips twitched.
She saw that he was only just able to control his emotion. He looked out
of the window, too, and they passed over brightly lighted thoroughfares,
close packed with tram-cars, buses and motor-vans, and they saw the
streets thick with people. What a mob! The shops were all lit up. They
saw the hawkers with their barrows at the kerb.

"London," he said.

He took her hand and gently pressed it. His smile was so sweet that she
had to say something. She tried to be facetious.

"Does it make you feel all funny inside?"

"I don't know if I want to cry or if I want to be sick."

Fenchurch Street. He lowered the window and waved his arm for a porter.
With a grinding of brakes the train came to a standstill. A porter
opened the door and Alban handed him out one package after another. Then
in his polite way, having jumped out, he gave his hand to Anne to help
her down to the platform. The porter went to fetch a barrow and they
stood by the pile of their luggage. Alban waved to two passengers from
the ship who passed them. The man nodded stiffly.

"What a comfort it is that we shall never have to be civil to those
awful people any more," said Alban lightly.

Anne gave him a quick glance. He was really incomprehensible. The porter
came back with his barrow, the luggage was put on and they followed him
to collect their trunks. Alban took his wife's arm and pressed it.

"The smell of London. By God, it's grand."

He rejoiced in the noise and the bustle, and the crowd of people who
jostled them; the radiance of the arc-lamps and the black shadows they
cast, sharp but full-toned, gave him a sense of elation. They got out
into the street and the porter went off to get them a taxi. Alban's eyes
glittered as he looked at the buses and the policemen trying to direct
the confusion. His distinguished face bore a look of something like
inspiration. The taxi came. Their luggage was stowed away and piled up
beside the driver, Alban gave the porter half-a-crown, and they drove
off. They turned down Gracechurch Street and in Cannon Street were held
up by a block in the traffic. Alban laughed out loud.

"What's the matter?" said Anne.

"I'm so excited."

They went along the Embankment. It was relatively quiet there. Taxis and
cars passed them. The bells of the trams were music in his ears. At
Westminster Bridge they cut across Parliament Square and drove through
the green silence of St. James's Park. They had engaged a room at a
hotel just off Jermyn Street. The reception clerk took them upstairs and
a porter brought up their luggage. It was a room with twin beds and a
bathroom.

"This looks all right," said Alban. "It'll do us till we can find a flat
or something."

He looked at his watch.

"Look here, darling, we shall only fall over one another if we try to
unpack together. We've got oodles of time and it'll take you longer to
get straight and dress than me. I'll clear out. I want to go to the club
and see if there's any mail for me. I've got my dinner jacket in my
suit-case and it'll only take me twenty minutes to have a bath and
dress. Does that suit you?"

"Yes. That's all right."

"I'll be back in an hour."

"Very well."

He took out of his pocket the little comb he always carried and passed
it through his long fair hair. Then he put on his hat. He gave himself a
glance in the mirror.

"Shall I turn on the bath for you?"

"No, don't bother."

"All right. So long."

He went out.

When he was gone Anne took her dressing-case and her hat-box and put
them on the top of her trunk. Then she rang the bell. She did not take
off her hat. She sat down and lit a cigarette. When a servant answered
the bell she asked for the porter. He came. She pointed to the luggage.

"Will you take those things and leave them in the hall for the present.
I'll tell you what to do with them presently."

"Very good, ma'am."

She gave him a florin. He took the trunk out and the other packages and
closed the door behind him. A few tears slid down Anne's cheeks, but she
shook herself; she dried her eyes and powdered her face. She needed all
her calm. She was glad that Alban had conceived the idea of going to his
club. It made things easier and gave her a little time to think them
out.

Now that the moment had come to do what she had for weeks determined,
now that she must say the terrible things she had to say, she quailed.
Her heart sank. She knew exactly what she meant to say to Alban, she had
made up her mind about that long ago, and had said the very words to
herself a hundred times, three or four times a day every day of the long
journey from Singapore, but she was afraid that she would grow confused.
She dreaded an argument. The thought of a scene made her feel slightly
sick. It was something at all events to have an hour in which to collect
herself. He would say she was heartless and cruel and unreasonable. She
could not help it.

"No, no, no," she cried aloud.

She shuddered with horror. And all at once she saw herself again in the
bungalow, sitting as she had been sitting when the whole thing started.
It was getting on towards tiffin time and in a few minutes Alban would
be back from the office. It gave her pleasure to reflect that it was an
attractive room for him to come back to, the large verandah which was
their parlour, and she knew that though they had been there eighteen
months he was still alive to the success she had made of it. The
jalousies were drawn now against the midday sun and the mellowed light
filtering through them gave an impression of cool silence. Anne was
house-proud, and though they were moved from district to district
according to the exigencies of the Service and seldom stayed anywhere
very long, at each new post she started with new enthusiasm to make
their house cosy and charming. She was very modern. Visitors were
surprised because there were no knick-knacks. They were taken aback by
the bold colour of her curtains and could not at all make out the tinted
reproductions of pictures by Marie Laurencin and Gauguin in silvered
frames which were placed on the walls with such cunning skill. She was
conscious that few of them quite approved and the good ladies of Port
Wallace and Pemberton thought such arrangements odd, affected and out of
place; but this left her calm. They would learn. It did them good to get
a bit of a jolt. And now she looked round the long, spacious verandah
with the complacent sigh of the artist satisfied with his work. It was
gay. It was bare. It was restful. It refreshed the spirit and gently
excited the fancy. Three immense bowls of yellow cannas completed the
colour scheme. Her eyes lingered for a moment on the bookshelves filled
with books; that was another thing that disconcerted the colony, all the
books they had, and strange books too, heavy they thought them for the
most part; and she gave them a little affectionate look as though they
were living things. Then she gave the piano a glance. A piece of music
was still open on the rack, it was something of Debussy, and Alban had
been playing it before he went to the office.

Her friends in the colony had condoled with her when Alban was appointed
D.O. at Daktar, for it was the most isolated district in Sondurah. It
was connected with the town which was the headquarters of the Government
neither by telegraph nor telephone. But she liked it. They had been
there for some time and she hoped they would remain till Alban went home
on leave in another twelve months. It was as large as an English county,
with a long coast-line, and the sea was dotted with little islands. A
broad, winding river ran through it and on each side of this stretched
hills densely covered with virgin forest. The station, a good way up the
river, consisted of a row of Chinese shops and a native village nestling
amid coconut trees, the District Office, the D.O.'s bungalow, the
clerk's quarters and the barracks. Their only neighbours were the
manager of a rubber estate a few miles up the river and the manager and
his assistant, Dutchmen both, of a timber camp on one of the river's
tributaries. The rubber estate's launch went up and down twice a month
and was their only means of regular communication with the outside
world. But though they were lonely they were not dull. Their days were
full. Their ponies waited for them at dawn and they rode while the day
was still fresh and in the bridle-paths through the jungle lingered the
mystery of the tropical night. They came back, bathed, changed and had
breakfast, and Alban went to the office. Anne spent the morning writing
letters and working. She had fallen in love with the country from the
first day she arrived in it and had taken pains to master the common
language spoken. Her imagination was inflamed by the stories she heard
of love and jealousy and death. She was told romantic tales of a time
that was only just past. She sought to steep herself in the lore of
those strange people. Both she and Alban read a great deal. They had for
the country a considerable library and new books came from London by
nearly every mail. Little that was noteworthy escaped them. Alban was
fond of playing the piano. For an amateur he played very well. He had
studied rather seriously, and he had an agreeable touch and a good ear;
he could read music with ease, and it was always a pleasure to Anne to
sit by him and follow the score when he tried something new. But their
great delight was to tour the district. Sometimes they would be away for
a fortnight at a time. They would go down the river in a prahu and then
sail from one little island to another, bathe in the sea, and fish, or
else row up-stream till it grew shallow and the trees on either bank
were so close to one another that you only saw a slim strip of sky
between. Here the boatmen had to pole and they would spend the night in
a native house. They bathed in a river pool so clear that you could see
the sand shining silver at the bottom; and the spot was so lovely, so
peaceful and remote, that you felt you could stay there for ever.
Sometimes, on the other hand, they would tramp for days along the jungle
paths, sleeping under canvas, and notwithstanding the mosquitoes that
tormented them and the leeches that sucked their blood, enjoy every
moment. Whoever slept so well as on a camp-bed? And then there was the
gladness of getting back, the delight in the comfort of the well-ordered
establishment, the mail that had arrived with letters from home and all
the papers, and the piano.

Alban would sit down to it then, his fingers itching to feel the keys,
and in what he played, Stravinsky, Ravel, Darius Miehaud, she seemed to
feel that he put in something of his own, the sounds of the jungle at
night, dawn over the estuary, the starry nights and the crystal
clearness of the forest pools.

Sometimes the rain fell in sheets for days at a time. Then Alban worked
at Chinese. He was learning it so that he could communicate with the
Chinese of the country in their own language, and Anne did the
thousand-and-one things for which she had not had time before. Those
days brought them even more closely together; they always had plenty to
talk about, and when they were occupied with their separate affairs they
were pleased to feel in their bones that they were near to one another.
They were wonderfully united. The rainy days that shut them up within
the walls of the bungalow made them feel as if they were one body in
face of the world.

On occasion they went to Port Wallace. It was a change, but Anne was
always glad to get home. She was never quite at her ease there. She was
conscious that none of the people they met liked Alban. They were very
ordinary people, middle-class and suburban and dull, without any of the
intellectual interests that made life so full and varied to Alban and
her, and many of them were narrow-minded and ill-natured; but since they
had to pass the better part of their lives in contact with them, it was
tiresome that they should feel so unkindly towards Alban. They said he
was conceited. He was always very pleasant with them, but she was aware
that they resented his cordiality. When he tried to be jovial they said
he was putting on airs, and when he chaffed them they thought he was
being funny at their expense.

Once they stayed at Government House, and Mrs. Hannay, the Governor's
wife, who liked her, talked to her about it. Perhaps the Governor had
suggested that she should give Anne a hint.

"You know, my dear, it's a pity your husband doesn't try to be more
come-hither with people. He's very intelligent; don't you think it would
be better if he didn't let others see he knows it quite so clearly? My
husband said to me only yesterday: Of course I know Alban Torel is the
cleverest young man in the Service, but he does manage to put my back up
more than anyone I know. I am the Governor, but when he talks to me he
always gives me the impression that he looks upon me as a damned fool."

The worst of it was that Anne knew how low an opinion Alban had of the
Governor's parts.

"He doesn't mean to be superior," Anne answered, smiling. "And he really
isn't in the least conceited. I think it's only because he has a
straight nose and high cheek-bones."

"You know, they don't like him at the club. They call him Powder-Puff
Percy."

Anne flushed. She had heard that before and it made her very angry. Her
eyes filled with tears.

"I think it's frightfully unfair."

Mrs. Hannay took her hand and gave it an affectionate little squeeze.

"My dear, you know I don't want to hurt your feelings. Your husband
can't help rising very high in the Service. He'd make things so much
easier for himself if he were a little more human. Why doesn't he play
football?"

"It's not his game. He's always only too glad to play tennis."

"He doesn't give that impression. He gives the impression that there's
no one here who's worth his while to play with."

"Well, there isn't," said Anne, stung.

Alban happened to be an extremely good tennis-player. He had played a
lot of tournaments in England and Anne knew that it gave him a grim
satisfaction to knock those beefy, hearty men all over the court. He
could make the best of them look foolish. He could be maddening on the
tennis court and Anne was aware that sometimes he could not resist the
temptation.

"He does play to the gallery, doesn't he?" said Mrs. Hannay.

"I don't think so. Believe me, Alban has no idea he isn't popular. As
far as I can see he's always pleasant and friendly with everybody."

"It's then he's most offensive," said Mrs. Hannay dryly.

"I know people don't like us very much," said Anne, smiling a little.
"I'm very sorry, but really I don't know what we can do about it."

"Not you, my dear," cried Mrs. Hannay. "Everybody adores you. That's why
they put up with your husband. My dear, who could help liking you?"

"I don't know why they should adore me," said Anne.

But she did not say it quite sincerely. She was deliberately playing the
part of the dear little woman and within her she bubbled with amusement.
They disliked Alban because he had such an air of distinction, and
because he was interested in art and literature; they did not understand
these things and so thought them unmanly; and they disliked him because
his capacity was greater than theirs. They disliked him because he was
better bred than they. They thought him superior; well, he was superior,
but not in the sense they meant. They forgave her because she was an
ugly little thing. That was what she called herself, but she wasn't
that, or if she was it was with an ugliness that was most attractive.
She was like a little monkey, but a very sweet little monkey and very
human. She had a neat figure. That was her best point. That and her
eyes. They were very large, of a deep brown, liquid and shining; they
were full of fun, but they could be tender on occasion with a charming
sympathy. She was dark, her frizzy hair was almost black, and her skin
was swarthy; she had a small fleshy nose, with large nostrils, and much
too big a mouth. But she was alert and vivacious. She could talk with a
show of real interest to the ladies of the colony about their husbands
and their servants and their children in England, and she could listen
appreciatively to the men who told her stories that she had often heard
before. They thought her a jolly good sort. They did not know what
clever fun she made of them in private. It never occurred to them that
she thought them narrow, gross and pretentious. They found no glamour in
the East because they looked at it vulgarly with material eyes. Romance
lingered at their threshold and they drove it away like an importunate
beggar. She was aloof. She repeated to herself Landor's line:

"Nature I loved, and next to nature, art."

She reflected on her conversation with Mrs. Hannay, but on the whole it
left her unconcerned. She wondered whether she should say anything about
it to Alban; it had always seemed a little odd to her that he should be
so little aware of his unpopularity; but she was afraid that if she told
him of it he would become self-conscious. He never noticed the coldness
of the men at the club. He made them feel shy and therefore
uncomfortable. His appearance then caused a sort of awkwardness, but he,
happily insensible, was breezily cordial to all and sundry. The fact was
that he was strangely unconscious of other people. She was in a class by
herself, she and a little group of friends they had in London, but he
could never quite realise that the people of the colony, the government
officials and the planters and their wives, were human beings. They were
to him like pawns in a game. He laughed with them, chaffed them, and was
amiably tolerant of them; with a chuckle Anne told herself that he was
rather like the master of a preparatory school taking little boys out on
a picnic and anxious to give them a good time.

She was afraid it wasn't much good telling Alban. He was incapable of
the dissimulation which, she happily realised, came so easily to her.
What was one to do with these people? The men had come out to the colony
as lads from second-rate schools, and life had taught them nothing. At
fifty they had the outlook of hobbledehoys. Most of them drank a great
deal too much. They read nothing worth reading. Their ambition was to be
like everybody else. Their highest praise was to say that a man was a
damned good sort. If you were interested in the things of the spirit you
were a prig. They were eaten up with envy of one another and devoured by
petty jealousies. And the women, poor things, were obsessed by petty
rivalries. They made a circle that was more provincial than any in the
smallest town in England. They were prudish and spiteful. What did it
matter if they did not like Alban? They would have to put up with him
because his ability was so great. He was clever and energetic. They
could not say that he did not do his work well. He had been successful
in every post he had occupied. With his sensitiveness and his
imagination he understood the native mind and he was able to get the
natives to do things that no one in his position could. He had a gift
for languages, and he spoke all the local dialects. He not only knew the
common tongue that most of the government officials spoke, but was
acquainted with the niceties of the language and on occasion could make
use of a ceremonial speech that flattered and impressed the chiefs. He
had a gift for organisation. He was not afraid of responsibility. In due
course he was bound to be made a Resident. Alban had some interest in
England; his father was a brigadier-general killed in the war, and
though he had no private means he had influential friends. He spoke of
them with pleasant irony.

"The great advantage of democratic government," he said, "is that merit,
with influence to back it, can be pretty sure of receiving its due
reward."

Alban was so obviously the ablest man in the Service that there seemed
no reason why he should not eventually be made Governor. Then, thought
Anne, his air of superiority, of which they complained, would be in
place. They would accept him as their master and he would know how to
make himself respected and obeyed. The position she foresaw did not
dazzle her. She accepted it as a right. It would be fun for Alban to be
Governor and for her to be the Governor's wife. And what an opportunity!
They were sheep, the government servants and the planters; when
Government House was the seat of culture they would soon fall into line.
When the best way to the Governor's favour was to be intelligent,
intelligence would become the fashion. She and Alban would cherish the
native arts and collect carefully the memorials of a vanished past. The
country would make an advance it had never dreamed of. They would
develop it, but along lines of order and beauty. They would instil into
their subordinates a passion for that beautiful land and a loving
interest in these romantic races. They would make them realise what
music meant. They would cultivate literature. They would create beauty.
It would be the golden age.

Suddenly she heard Alban's footstep. Anne awoke from her day-dream. All
that was far away in the future. Alban was only a District Officer yet
and what was important was the life they were living now. She heard
Alban go into the bath-house and splash water over himself. In a minute
he came in. He had changed into a shirt and shorts. His fair hair was
still wet.

"Tiffin ready?" he asked.

"Yes."

He sat down at the piano and played the piece that he had played in the
morning. The silvery notes cascaded coolly down the sultry air. You had
an impression of a formal garden with great trees and elegant pieces of
artificial water and of leisurely walks bordered with pseudo-classical
statues. Alban played with a peculiar delicacy. Lunch was announced by
the head-boy. He rose from the piano. They walked into the dining-room
hand in hand. A punkah lazily fanned the air. Anne gave the table a
glance. With its bright-coloured tablecloth and the amusing plates it
looked very gay.

"Anything exciting at the office this morning?" she asked.

"No, nothing much. A buffalo case. Oh, and Prynne has sent along to ask
me to go up to the estate. Some coolies have been damaging the trees and
he wants me to come along and look into it."

Prynne was manager of the rubber estate up the river and now and then
they spent a night with him. Sometimes when he wanted a change he came
down to dinner and slept at the D.O.'s bungalow. They both liked him. He
was a man of five-and-thirty, with a red face, with deep furrows in it,
and very black hair. He was quite uneducated, but cheerful and easy, and
being the only Englishman within two days' journey they could not but be
friendly with him. He had been a little shy of them at first. News
spreads quickly in the East and long before they arrived in the district
he heard that they were highbrows. He did not know what he would make of
them. He probably did not know that he had charm, which makes up for
many more commendable qualities, and Alban with his almost feminine
sensibilities was peculiarly susceptible to this. He found Alban much
more human than he expected, and of course Anne was stunning. Alban
played ragtime for him, which he would not have done for the Governor,
and played dominoes with him. When Alban was making his first tour of
the district with Anne, and suggested that they would like to spend a
couple of nights on the estate, he had thought it as well to warn him
that he lived with a native woman and had two children by her. He would
do his best to keep them out of Anne's sight, but he could not send them
away, there was nowhere to send them. Alban laughed.

"Anne isn't that sort of woman at all. Don't dream of hiding them. She
loves children."

Anne quickly made friends with the shy, pretty little native woman and
soon was playing happily with the children. She and the girl had long
confidential chats. The children took a fancy to her. She brought them
lovely toys from Port Wallace. Prynne, comparing her smiling tolerance
with the disapproving acidity of the other white women of the colony,
described himself as knocked all of a heap. He could not do enough to
show his delight and gratitude.

"If all highbrows are like you," he said, "give me highbrows every
time."

He hated to think that in another year they would leave the district for
good and the chances were that, if the next D.O. was married, his wife
would think it dreadful that, rather than live alone, he had a native
woman to live with him and, what was more, was much attached to her.

But there had been a good deal of discontent on the estate of late. The
coolies were Chinese and infected with communist ideas. They were
disorderly. Alban had been obliged to sentence several of them for
various crimes to terms of imprisonment.

"Prynne tells me that as soon as their term is up he's going to send
them all back to China and get Javanese instead," said Alban. "I'm sure
he's right. They're much more amenable."

"You don't think there's going to be any serious trouble?"

"Oh, no. Prynne knows his job and he's a pretty determined fellow. He
wouldn't put up with any nonsense and with me and our policemen to back
him up I don't imagine they'll try any monkey tricks." He smiled. "The
iron hand in the velvet glove."

The words were barely out of his mouth when a sudden shouting arose.
There was a commotion and the sound of steps. Loud voices and cries.

"Tuan, Tuan."

"What the devil's the matter?"

Alban sprang from his chair and went swiftly on to the verandah. Anne
followed him. At the bottom of the steps was a group of natives. There
was the sergeant, and three or four policemen, boatmen and several men
from the kampong.

"What is it?" called Alban.

Two or three shouted back in answer. The sergeant pushed others aside
and Alban saw lying on the ground a man in a shirt and khaki shorts. He
ran down the steps. He recognised the man as the assistant manager of
Prynne's estate. He was a half-caste. His shorts were covered with blood
and there was clotted blood all over one side of his face and head. He
was unconscious.

"Bring him up here," called Anne.

Alban gave an order. The man was lifted up and carried on to the
verandah. They laid him on the floor and Anne put a pillow under his
head. She sent for water and for the medicine-chest in which they kept
things for emergency.

"Is he dead?" asked Alban.

"No."

"Better try to give him some brandy."

The boatmen brought ghastly news. The Chinese coolies had risen suddenly
and attacked the manager's office. Prynne was killed and the assistant
manager, Oakley by name, had escaped only by the skin of his teeth. He
had come upon the rioters when they were looting the office, he had seen
Prynne's body thrown out of the window, and had taken to his heels. Some
of the Chinese saw him and gave chase. He ran for the river and was
wounded as he jumped into the launch. The launch managed to put off
before the Chinese could get on board and they had come down-stream for
help as fast as they could go. As they went they saw flames rising from
the office buildings. There was no doubt that the coolies had burned
down everything that would burn.

Oakley gave a groan and opened his eyes. He was a little, dark-skinned
man, with flattened features and thick coarse hair. His great native
eyes were filled with terror.

"You're all right," said Anne. "You're quite safe."

He gave a sigh and smiled. Anne washed his face and swabbed it with
antiseptics. The wound on his head was not serious.

"Can you speak yet?" said Alban.

"Wait a bit," she said. "We must look at his leg."

Alban ordered the sergeant to get the crowd out of the verandah. Anne
ripped up one leg of the shorts. The material was clinging to the
coagulated wound.

"I've been bleeding like a pig," said Oakley.

It was only a flesh wound. Alban was clever with his fingers, and though
the blood began to flow again they stanched it. Alban put on a dressing
and a bandage. The sergeant and a policeman lifted Oakley on to a long
chair. Alban gave him a brandy and soda, and soon he felt strong enough
to speak. He knew no more than the boatmen had already told. Prynne was
dead and the estate was in flames.

"And the girl and the children?" asked Anne.

"I don't know."

"Oh, Alban."

"I must turn out the police. Are you sure Prynne is dead?"

"Yes, sir. I saw him."

"Have the rioters got fire-arms?"

"I don't know, sir."

"How d'you mean, you don't know?" Alban cried irritably. "Prynne had a
gun, hadn't he?"

"Yes, sir."

"There must have been more on the estate. You had one, didn't you? The
head overseer had one."

The half-caste was silent. Alban looked at him sternly.

"How many of those damned Chinese are there?"

"A hundred and fifty."

Anne wondered that he asked so many questions. It seemed waste of time.
The important thing was to collect coolies for the transport up-river,
prepare the boats and issue ammunition to the police.

"How many policemen have you got, sir?" asked Oakley.

"Eight and the sergeant."

"Could I come too? That would make ten of us. I'm sure I shall be all
right now I'm bandaged."

"I'm not going," said Alban.

"Alban, you must," cried Anne. She could not believe her ears.

"Nonsense. It would be madness. Oakley's obviously useless. He's sure to
have a temperature in a few hours. He'd only be in the way. That leaves
nine guns. There are a hundred and fifty Chinese and they've got
fire-arms and all the ammunition in the world."

"How d'you know?"

"It stands to reason they wouldn't have started a show like this unless
they had. It would be idiotic to go."

Anne stared at him with open mouth. Oakley's eyes were puzzled.

"What are you going to do?"

"Well, fortunately we've got the launch. I'll send it to Port Wallace
with a request for reinforcements."

"But they won't be here for two days at least."

"Well, what of it? Prynne's dead and the estate burned to the ground. We
couldn't do any good by going up now. I shall send a native to
reconnoitre so that we can find out exactly what the rioters are doing."
He gave Anne his charming smile. "Believe me, my pet, the rascals won't
lose anything by waiting a day or two for what's coming to them."

Oakley opened his mouth to speak, but perhaps he hadn't the nerve. He
was a half-caste assistant manager and Alban, the D.O., represented the
power of the Government. But the man's eyes sought Anne's and she
thought she read in them an earnest and personal appeal.

"But in two days they're capable of committing the most frightful
atrocities," she cried. "It's quite unspeakable what they may do."

"Whatever damage they do they'll pay for. I promise you that."

"Oh, Alban, you can't sit still and do nothing. I beseech you to go
yourself at once."

"Don't be so silly. I can't quell a riot with eight policemen and a
sergeant. I haven't got the right to take a risk of that sort. We'd have
to go in boats. You don't think we could get up unobserved. The lalang
along the banks is perfect cover and they could just take pot shots at
us as we came along. We shouldn't have a chance."

"I'm afraid they'll only think it weakness if nothing is done for two
days, sir," said Oakley.

"When I want your opinion I'll ask for it," said Alban acidly. "So far
as I can see when there was danger the only thing you did was to cut and
run. I can't persuade myself that your assistance in a crisis would be
very valuable."

The half-caste reddened. He said nothing more. He looked straight in
front of him with troubled eyes.

"I'm going down to the office," said Alban. "I'll just write a short
report and send it down the river by launch at once."

He gave an order to the sergeant, who had been standing all this time
stiffly at the top of the steps. He saluted and ran off. Alban went into
a little hall they had to get his topee. Anne swiftly followed him.

"Alban, for God's sake listen to me a minute," she whispered.

"I don't want to be rude to you, darling, but I am pressed for time. I
think you'd much better mind your own business."

"You can't do nothing, Alban. You must go. Whatever the risk."

"Don't be such a fool," he said angrily.

He had never been angry with her before. She seized his hand to hold him
back.

"I tell you I can do no good by going."

"You don't know. There's the woman and Prynne's children. We must do
something to save them. Let me come with you. They'll kill them."

"They've probably killed them already."

"Oh, how can you be so callous! If there's a chance of saving them it's
your duty to try."

"It's my duty to act like a reasonable human being. I'm not going to
risk my life and my policemen's for the sake of a native woman and her
half-caste brats. What sort of a damned fool do you take me for?"

"They'll say you were afraid."

"Who?"

"Everyone in the colony."

He smiled disdainfully.

"If you only knew what a complete contempt I have for the opinion of
everyone in the colony."

She gave him a long searching look. She had been married to him for
eight years and she knew every expression of his face and every thought
in his mind. She stared into his blue eyes as if they were open windows.
She suddenly went quite pale. She dropped his hand and turned away.
Without another word she went back on to the verandah. Her ugly little
monkey face was a mask of horror.

Alban went to his office, wrote a brief account of the facts, and in a
few minutes the motor launch was pounding down the river.

The next two days were endless. Escaped natives brought them news of
happenings on the estate. But from their excited and terrified stories
it was impossible to get an exact impression of the truth. There had
been a good deal of bloodshed. The head overseer had been killed. They
brought wild tales of cruelty and outrage. Anne could hear nothing of
Prynne's woman and the two children. She shuddered when she thought of
what might have been their fate. Alban collected as many natives as he
could. They were armed with spears and swords. He commandeered boats.
The situation was serious, but he kept his head. He felt that he had
done all that was possible and nothing remained but for him to carry on
normally. He did his official work. He played the piano a great deal. He
rode with Anne in the early morning. He appeared to have forgotten that
they had had the first serious difference of opinion in the whole of
their married life. He took it that Anne had accepted the wisdom of his
decision. He was as amusing, cordial and gay with her as he had always
been. When he spoke of the rioters it was with grim irony: when the time
came to settle matters a good many of them would wish they had never
been born.

"What'll happen to them?" asked Anne.

"Oh, they'll hang." He gave a shrug of distaste. "I hate having to be
present at executions. It always makes me feel rather sick."

He was very sympathetic to Oakley, whom they had put to bed and whom
Anne was nursing. Perhaps he was sorry that in the exasperation of the
moment he had spoken to him offensively, and he went out of his way to
be nice to him.

Then on the afternoon of the third day, when they were drinking their
coffee after luncheon, Alban's quick ears caught the sound of a motor
boat approaching. At the same moment a policeman ran up to say that the
government launch was sighted.

"At last," cried Alban.

He bolted out of the house. Anne raised one of the jalousies and looked
out at the river. Now the sound was quite loud and in a moment she saw
the boat come round the bend. She saw Alban on the landing-stage. He got
into a prahu and as the launch dropped her anchor he went on board. She
told Oakley that the reinforcements had come.

"Will the D.O. go up with them when they attack?" he asked her.

"Naturally," said Anne coldly.

"I wondered."

Anne felt a strange feeling in her heart. For the last two days she had
had to exercise all her self-control not to cry. She did not answer. She
went out of the room.

A quarter of an hour later Alban returned to the bungalow with the
captain of constabulary who had been sent with twenty Sikhs to deal with
the rioters. Captain Stratton was a little red-faced man with a red
moustache and bow legs, very hearty and dashing, whom she had met often
at Port Wallace.

"Well, Mrs. Torel, this is a pretty kettle of fish," he cried, as he
shook hands with her, in a loud jolly voice. "Here I am, with my army
all full of pep and ready for a scrap. Up, boys, and at 'em. Have you
got anything to drink in this benighted place?"

"Boy," she cried, smiling.

"Something long and cool and faintly alcoholic, and then I'm ready to
discuss the plan of campaign."

His breeziness was very comforting. It blew away the sullen apprehension
that had seemed ever since the disaster to brood over the lost peace of
the bungalow. The boy came in with a tray and Stratton mixed himself a
stengah. Alban put him in possession of the facts. He told them clearly,
briefly and with precision.

"I must say I admire you," said Stratton. "In your place I should never
have been able to resist the temptation to take my eight cops and have a
whack at the blighters myself."

"I thought it was a perfectly unjustifiable risk to take."

"Safety first, old boy, eh, what?" said Stratton jovially. "I'm jolly
glad you didn't. It's not often we get the chance of a scrap. It would
have been a dirty trick to keep the whole show to yourself."

Captain Stratton was all for steaming straight up the river and
attacking at once, but Alban pointed out to him the inadvisability of
such a course. The sound of the approaching launch would warn the
rioters. The long grass at the river's edge offered them cover and they
had enough guns to make a landing difficult. It seemed useless to expose
the attacking force to their fire. It was silly to forget that they had
to face a hundred and fifty desperate men and it would be easy to fall
into an ambush. Alban expounded his own plan. Stratton listened to it.
He nodded now and then. The plan was evidently a good one. It would
enable them to take the rioters on the rear, surprise them, and in all
probability finish the job without a single casualty. He would have been
a fool not to accept it.

"But why didn't you do that yourself?" asked Stratton.

"With eight men and a sergeant?"

Stratton did not answer.

"Anyhow it's not a bad idea and we'll settle on it. It gives us plenty
of time, so with your permission, Mrs. Torel, I'll have a bath."

They set out at sunset, Captain Stratton and his twenty Sikhs, Alban
with his policemen and the natives he had collected. The night was dark
and moonless. Trailing behind them were the dug-outs that Alban had
gathered together and into which after a certain distance they proposed
to transfer their force. It was important that no sound should give
warning of their approach. After they had gone for about three hours by
launch they took to the dug-outs and in them silently paddled up-stream.
They reached the border of the vast estate and landed. Guides led them
along a path so narrow that they had to march in single file. It had
been long unused and the going was heavy. They had twice to ford a
stream. The path led them circuitously to the rear of the coolie lines,
but they did not wish to reach them till nearly dawn and presently
Stratton gave the order to halt. It was a long cold wait. At last the
night seemed to be less dark; you did not see the trunks of the trees,
but were vaguely sensible of them against its darkness. Stratton had
been sitting with his back to a tree. He gave a whispered order to a
sergeant and in a few minutes the column was once more on the march.
Suddenly they found themselves on a road. They formed fours. The dawn
broke and in the ghostly light the surrounding objects were wanly
visible. The column stopped on a whispered order. They had come in sight
of the coolie lines. Silence reigned in them. The column crept on again
and again halted. Stratton, his eyes shining, gave Alban a smile.

"We've caught the blighters asleep."

He lined up his men. They inserted cartridges in their guns. He stepped
forward and raised his hand. The carbines were pointed at the coolie
lines.

"Fire."

There was a rattle as the volley of shots rang out. Then suddenly there
was a tremendous din and the Chinese poured out, shouting and waving
their arms, but in front of them, to Alban's utter bewilderment,
bellowing at the top of his voice and shaking his fist at them, was a
white man.

"Who the hell's that?" cried Stratton.

A very big, very fat man, in khaki trousers and a singlet, was running
towards them as fast as his fat legs would carry him and as he ran
shaking both fists at them and yelling:

"_Smerige flikkers! Verlockte ploerten!_"

"My God, it's Van Hasseldt," said Alban.

This was the Dutch manager of the timber camp which was situated on a
considerable tributary of the river about twenty miles away.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he puffed as he came up to
them.

"How the hell did you get here?" asked Stratton in turn.

He saw that the Chinese were scattering in all directions and gave his
men instructions to round them up. Then he turned again to Van Hasseldt.

"What's it mean?"

"Mean? Mean?" shouted the Dutchman furiously. "That's what I want to
know. You and your damned policemen. What do you mean by coming here at
this hour in the morning and firing a damned volley. Target practice?
You might have killed me. Idiots!"

"Have a cigarette," said Stratton.

"How did you get here, Van Hasseldt?" asked Alban again, very much at
sea. "This is the force they've sent from Port Wallace to quell the
riot."

"How did I get here? I walked. How did you think I got here? Riot be
damned. I quelled the riot. If that's what you came for you can take
your damned policemen home again. A bullet came within a foot of my
head."

"I don't understand," said Alban.

"There's nothing to understand," spluttered Van Hasseldt, still fuming.
"Some coolies came to my estate and said the Chinks had killed Prynne
and burned the bally place down, so I took my assistant and my head
overseer and a Dutch friend I had staying with me and came over to see
what the trouble was."

Captain Stratton opened his eyes wide.

"Did you just stroll in as if it was a picnic?" he asked.

"Well, you don't think after all the years I've been in this country I'm
going to let a couple of hundred Chinks put the fear of God into me? I
found them all scared out of their lives. One of them had the nerve to
pull a gun on me and I blew his bloody brains out. And the rest
surrendered. I've got the leaders tied up. I was going to send a boat
down to you this morning to come up and get them."

Stratton stared at him for a minute and then burst into a shout of
laughter. He laughed till the tears ran down his face. The Dutchman
looked at him angrily, then began to laugh too; he laughed with the big
belly laugh of a very fat man and his coils of fat heaved and shook.
Alban watched them sullenly. He was very angry.

"What about Prynne's girl and the kids?" he asked.

"Oh, they got away all right."

It just showed how wise he had been not to let himself be influenced by
Anne's hysteria. Of course the children had come to no harm. He never
thought they would.

Van Hasseldt and his little party started back for the timber camp, and
as soon after as possible Stratton embarked his twenty Sikhs and leaving
Alban with his sergeant and his policemen to deal with the situation
departed for Port Wallace. Alban gave him a brief report for the
Governor. There was much for him to do. It looked as though he would
have to stay for a considerable time; but since every house on the
estate had been burned to the ground and he was obliged to instal
himself in the coolie lines he thought it better that Anne should not
join him. He sent her a note to that effect. He was glad to be able to
reassure her of the safety of poor Prynne's girl. He set to work at once
to make his preliminary enquiry. He examined a host of witnesses. But a
week later he received an order to go to Port Wallace at once. The
launch that brought it was to take him and he was able to see Anne on
the way down for no more than an hour. Alban was a trifle vexed.

"I don't know why the Governor can't leave me to get things straight
without dragging me off like this. It's extremely inconvenient."

"Oh, well, the Government never bothers very much about the convenience
of its subordinates, does it?" smiled Anne.

"It's just red-tape. I would offer to take you along, darling, only I
shan't stay a minute longer than I need. I want to get my evidence
together for the Sessions Court as soon as possible. I think in a
country like this it's very important that justice should be prompt."

When the launch came in to Port Wallace one of the harbour police told
him that the harbour-master had a chit for him. It was from the
Governor's secretary and informed him that His Excellency desired to see
him as soon as convenient after his arrival. It was ten in the morning.
Alban went to the club, had a bath and shaved, and then in clean ducks,
his hair neatly brushed, he called a rickshaw and told the boy to take
him to the Governor's office. He was at once shown in to the secretary's
room. The secretary shook hands with him.

"I'll tell H.E. you're here," he said. "Won't you sit down?"

The secretary left the room and in a little while came back.

"H.E. will see you in a minute. Do you mind if I get on with my
letters?"

Alban smiled. The secretary was not exactly come-hither. He waited,
smoking a cigarette, and amused himself with his own thoughts. He was
making a good job of the preliminary enquiry. It interested him. Then an
orderly came in and told Alban that the Governor was ready for him. He
rose from his seat and followed him into the Governor's room.

"Good-morning, Torel."

"Good-morning, sir."

The Governor was sitting at a large desk. He nodded to Alban and
motioned to him to take a seat. The Governor was all grey. His hair was
grey, his face, his eyes; he looked as though the tropical suns had
washed the colour out of him; he had been in the country for thirty
years and had risen one by one through all the ranks of the Service; he
looked tired and depressed. Even his voice was grey. Alban liked him
because he was quiet; he did not think him clever, but he had an
unrivalled knowledge of the country, and his great experience was a very
good substitute for intelligence. He looked at Alban for a full moment
without speaking and the odd idea came to Alban that he was embarrassed.
He very nearly gave him a lead.

"I saw Van Hasseldt yesterday," said the Governor suddenly.

"Yes, sir?"

"Will you give me your account of the occurrences at the Alud Estate and
of the steps you took to deal with them."

Alban had an orderly mind. He was self-possessed. He marshalled his
facts well and was able to state them with precision. He chose his words
with care and spoke them fluently.

"You had a sergeant and eight policemen. Why did you not immediately go
to the scene of the disturbance?"

"I thought the risk was unjustifiable."

A thin smile was outlined on the Governor's grey face.

"If the officers of this Government had hesitated to take unjustifiable
risks it would never have become a province of the British Empire."

Alban was silent. It was difficult to talk to a man who spoke obvious
nonsense.

"I am anxious to hear your reasons for the decision you took."

Alban gave them coolly. He was quite convinced of the rightness of his
action. He repeated, but more fully, what he had said in the first place
to Anne. The Governor listened attentively.

"Van Hasseldt, with his manager, a Dutch friend of his, and a native
overseer, seems to have coped with the situation very efficiently," said
the Governor.

"He had a lucky break. That doesn't prevent him from being a damned
fool. It was madness to do what he did."

"Do you realise that by leaving a Dutch planter to do what you should
have done yourself, you have covered the Government with ridicule?"

"No, sir."

"You've made yourself a laughing-stock in the whole colony."

Alban smiled.

"My back is broad enough to bear the ridicule of persons to whose
opinion I am entirely indifferent."

"The utility of a government official depends very largely on his
prestige, and I'm afraid his prestige is likely to be inconsiderable
when he lies under the stigma of cowardice."

Alban flushed a little.

"I don't quite know what you mean by that, sir."

"I've gone into the matter very carefully. I've seen Captain Stratton,
and Oakley, poor Prynne's assistant, and I've seen Van Hasseldt. I've
listened to your defence."

"I didn't know that I was defending myself, sir."

"Be so good as not to interrupt me. I think you committed a grave error
of judgment. As it turns out, the risk was very small, but whatever it
was, I think you should have taken it. In such matters promptness and
firmness are essential. It is not for me to conjecture what motive led
you to send for a force of constabulary and do nothing till they came. I
am afraid, however, that I consider that your usefulness in the Service
is no longer very great."

Alban looked at him with astonishment.

"But would you have gone under the circumstances?" he asked him.

"I should."

Alban shrugged his shoulders.

"Don't you believe me?" rapped out the Governor.

"Of course I believe you, sir. But perhaps you will allow me to say that
if you had been killed the colony would have suffered an irreparable
loss."

The Governor drummed on the table with his fingers. He looked out of the
window and then looked again at Alban. When he spoke it was not
unkindly.

"I think you are unfitted by temperament for this rather
rough-and-tumble life, Torel. If you'll take my advice you'll go home.
With your abilities I feel sure that you'll soon find an occupation much
better suited to you."

"I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean, sir."

"Oh, come, Torel, you're not stupid. I'm trying to make things easy for
you. For your wife's sake as well as for your own I do not wish you to
leave the colony with the stigma of being dismissed from the Service for
cowardice. I'm giving you the opportunity of resigning."

"Thank you very much, sir. I'm not prepared to avail myself of the
opportunity. If I resign I admit that I committed an error and that the
charge you make against me is justified. I don't admit it."

"You can please yourself. I have considered the matter very carefully
and I have no doubt about it in my mind. I am forced to discharge you
from the Service. The necessary papers will reach you in due course.
Meanwhile you will return to your post and hand over to the officer
appointed to succeed you on his arrival."

"Very good, sir," replied Alban, a twinkle of amusement in his eyes.
"When do you desire me to return to my post?"

"At once."

"Have you any objection to my going to the club and having tiffin before
I go?"

The Governor looked at him with surprise. His exasperation was mingled
with an unwilling admiration.

"Not at all. I'm sorry, Torel, that this unhappy incident should have
deprived the Government of a servant whose zeal has always been so
apparent and whose tact, intelligence and industry seemed to point him
out in the future for very high office."

"Your Excellency does not read Schiller, I suppose. You are probably not
acquainted with his celebrated line: _mit der Dummheit kmpfen die
Gtter selbst vergebens_."

"What does it mean?"

"Roughly: Against stupidity the gods themselves battle in vain."

"Good-morning."

With his head in the air, a smile on his lips, Alban left the Governor's
office. The Governor was human, and he had the curiosity to ask his
secretary later in the day if Alban Torel had really gone to the club.

"Yes, sir. He had tiffin there."

"It must have wanted some nerve."

Alban entered the club jauntily and joined the group of men standing at
the bar. He talked to them in the breezy, cordial tone he always used
with them. It was designed to put them at their ease. They had been
discussing him ever since Stratton had come back to Port Wallace with
his story, sneering at him and laughing at him, and all who had resented
his superciliousness, and they were the majority, were triumphant
because his pride had had a fall. But they were so taken aback at seeing
him now, so confused to find him as confident as ever, that it was they
who were embarrassed.

One man, though he knew perfectly, asked him what he was doing in Port
Wallace.

"Oh, I came about the riot on the Alud Estate. H.E. wanted to see me. He
does not see eye to eye with me about it. The silly old ass has fired
me. I'm going home as soon as he appoints a D.O. to take over."

There was a moment of awkwardness. One, more kindly disposed than the
others, said:

"I'm awfully sorry."

Alban shrugged his shoulders.

"My dear fellow, what can you do with a perfect damned fool? The only
thing is to let him stew in his own juice."

When the Governor's secretary had told his chief as much of this as he
thought discreet, the Governor smiled.

"Courage is a queer thing. I would rather have shot myself than go to
the club just then and face all those fellows."

A fortnight later, having sold to the incoming D.O. all the decorations
that Anne had taken so much trouble about, with the rest of their things
in packing-cases and trunks, they arrived at Port Wallace to await the
local steamer that was to take them to Singapore. The padre's wife
invited them to stay with her, but Anne refused; she insisted that they
should go to the hotel. An hour after their arrival she received a very
kind little letter from the Governor's wife asking her to go and have
tea with her. She went. She found Mrs. Hannay alone, but in a minute the
Governor joined them. He expressed his regret that she was leaving and
told her how sorry he was for the cause.

"It's very kind of you to say that," said Anne, smiling gaily, "but you
mustn't think I take it to heart. I'm entirely on Alban's side. I think
what he did was absolutely right and if you don't mind my saying so I
think you've treated him most unjustly."

"Believe me, I hated having to take the step I took."

"Don't let's talk about it," said Anne.

"What are your plans when you get home?" asked Mrs. Hannay.

Anne began to chat brightly. You would have thought she had not a care
in the world. She seemed in great spirits at going home. She was jolly
and amusing and made little jokes. When she took leave of the Governor
and his wife she thanked them for all their kindness. The Governor
escorted her to the door.

The next day but one, after dinner, they went on board the clean and
comfortable little ship. The padre and his wife saw them off. When they
went into their cabin they found a large parcel on Anne's bunk. It was
addressed to Alban. He opened it and saw that it was an immense
powder-puff.

"Hullo, I wonder who sent us this," he said, with a laugh. "It must be
for you, darling."

Anne gave him a quick look. She went pale. The brutes! How could they be
so cruel? She forced herself to smile.

"It's enormous, isn't it? I've never seen such a large powder-puff in my
life."

But when he had left the cabin and they were out at sea, she threw it
passionately overboard.

And now, now that they were back in London and Sondurah was nine
thousand miles away, she clenched her hands as she thought of it.
Somehow, it seemed the worst thing of all. It was so wantonly unkind to
send that absurd object to Alban, Powder-Puff Percy; it showed such a
petty spite. Was that their idea of humour? Nothing had hurt her more
and even now she felt that it was only by holding on to herself that she
could prevent herself from crying. Suddenly she started, for the door
opened and Alban came in. She was still sitting in the chair in which he
had left her.

"Hullo, why haven't you dressed?" He looked about the room. "You haven't
unpacked."

"No."

"Why on earth not?"

"I'm not going to unpack. I'm not going to stay here. I'm leaving you."

"What are you talking about?"

"I've stuck it out till now. I made up my mind I would till we got home.
I set my teeth, I've borne more than I thought it possible to bear, but
now it's finished. I've done all that could be expected of me. We're
back in London now and I can go."

He looked at her in utter bewilderment.

"Are you mad, Anne?"

"Oh, my God, what I've endured! The journey to Singapore, with all the
officers knowing, and even the Chinese stewards. And at Singapore, the
way people looked at us at the hotel, and the sympathy I had to put up
with, the bricks they dropped and their embarrassment when they realised
what they'd done. My God, I could have killed them. That interminable
journey home. There wasn't a single passenger on the ship who didn't
know. The contempt they had for you and the kindness they went out of
their way to show me. And you so self-complacent and so pleased with
yourself, seeing nothing, feeling nothing. You must have the hide of a
rhinoceros. The misery of seeing you so chatty and agreeable. Pariahs,
that's what we were. You seemed to ask them to snub you. How can anyone
be so shameless?"

She was flaming with passion. Now that at last she need not wear the
mask of indifference and pride that she had forced herself to assume she
cast aside all reserve and all self-control. The words poured from her
trembling lips in a virulent stream.

"My dear, how can you be so absurd?" he said good-naturedly, smiling.
"You must be very nervous and high-strung to have got such ideas in your
head. Why didn't you tell me? You're like a country bumpkin who comes to
London and thinks everyone is staring at him. Nobody bothered about us,
and if they did what on earth did it matter? You ought to have more
sense than to bother about what a lot of fools say. And what do you
imagine they were saying?"

"They were saying you'd been fired."

"Well, that was true," he laughed.

"They said you were a coward."

"What of it?"

"Well, you see, that was true too."

He looked at her for a moment reflectively. His lips tightened a little.

"And what makes you think so?" he asked acidly.

"I saw it in your eyes, that day the news came, when you refused to go
to the estate and I followed you into the hall when you went to fetch
your topee. I begged you to go, I felt that whatever the danger you must
take it, and suddenly I saw the fear in your eyes. I nearly fainted with
the horror."

"I should have been a fool to risk my life to no purpose. Why should I?
Nothing that concerned me was at stake. Courage is the obvious virtue of
the stupid. I don't attach any particular importance to it."

"How do you mean that nothing that concerned you was at stake? If that's
true then your whole life is a sham. You've given away everything you
stood for, everything we both stand for. You've let all of us down. We
did set ourselves up on a pinnacle, we did think ourselves better than
the rest of them because we loved literature and art and music, we
weren't content to live a life of ignoble jealousies and vulgar
tittle-tattle, we did cherish the things of the spirit, and we loved
beauty. It was our food and drink. They laughed at us and sneered at us.
That was inevitable. The ignorant and the common naturally hate and fear
those who are interested in things they don't understand. We didn't
care. We called them Philistines. We despised them and we had a right to
despise them. Our justification was that we were better and nobler and
wiser and braver than they were. And you weren't better, you weren't
nobler, you weren't braver. When the crisis came you slunk away like a
whipped cur with his tail between his legs. You of all people hadn't the
right to be a coward. They despise us now and they have the right to
despise us. Us and all we stood for. Now they can say that art and
beauty are all rot; when it comes to a pinch people like us always let
you down. They never stopped looking for a chance to turn and rend us
and you gave it to them. They can say that they always expected it. It's
a triumph for them. I used to be furious because they called you
Powder-Puff Percy. Did you know they did?"

"Of course. I thought it very vulgar, but it left me entirely
indifferent."

"It's funny that their instinct should have been so right."

"Do you mean to say you've been harbouring this against me all these
weeks? I should never have thought you capable of it."

"I couldn't let you down when everyone was against you. I was too proud
for that. Whatever happened I swore to myself that I'd stick to you till
we got home. It's been torture."

"Don't you love me any more?"

"Love you? I loathe the very sight of you."

"Anne!"

"God knows I loved you. For eight years I worshipped the ground you trod
on. You were everything to me. I believed in you as some people believe
in God. When I saw the fear in your eyes that day, when you told me that
you weren't going to risk your life for a kept woman and her half-caste
brats, I was shattered. It was as though someone had wrenched my heart
out of my body and trampled on it. You killed my love there and then,
Alban. You killed it stone-dead. Since then when you've kissed me I've
had to clench my hands so as not to turn my face away. The mere thought
of anything else makes me feel physically sick. I loathe your
complacence and your frightful insensitiveness. Perhaps I could have
forgiven it if it had been just a moment's weakness and if afterwards
you'd been ashamed. I should have been miserable, but I think my love
was so great that I should only have felt pity for you. But you're
incapable of shame. And now I believe in nothing. You're only a silly,
pretentious vulgar poseur. I would rather be the wife of a second-rate
planter so long as he had the common human virtues of a man than the
wife of a fake like you."

He did not answer. Gradually his face began to discompose. Those
handsome, regular features of his horribly distorted and suddenly he
broke out into loud sobs. She gave a little cry.

"Don't, Alban, don't."

"Oh, darling, how can you be so cruel to me? I adore you. I'd give my
whole life to please you. I can't live without you."

She put out her arms as though to ward off a blow.

"No, no, Alban, don't try to move me. I can't. I must go. I can't live
with you any more. It would be frightful. I can never forget. I must
tell you the truth, I have only contempt for you and repulsion."

He sank down at her feet and tried to cling to her knees. With a gasp
she sprang up and he buried his head in the empty chair. He cried
painfully with sobs that tore his chest. The sound was horrible. The
tears streamed from Anne's eyes and, putting her hands to her ears to
shut out that dreadful, hysterical sobbing, blindly stumbling she rushed
to the door and ran out.




THE BOOK-BAG


Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for
pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I
suppose that this is neither innocent nor praiseworthy. Of that
lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire
me, and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of
a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the
opium-smoker to his pipe. I would sooner read the catalogue of the Army
and Navy Stores or Bradshaw's Guide than nothing at all, and indeed I
have spent many delightful hours over both these works. At one time I
never went out without a second-hand bookseller's list in my pocket. I
know no reading more fruity. Of course to read in this way is as
reprehensible as doping, and I never cease to wonder at the impertinence
of great readers who, because they are such, look down on the
illiterate. From the standpoint of what eternity is it better to have
read a thousand books than to have ploughed a million furrows? Let us
admit that reading with us is just a drug that we cannot do without--who
of this band does not know the restlessness that attacks him when he has
been severed from reading too long, the apprehension and irritability,
and the sigh of relief which the sight of a printed page extracts from
him?--and so let us be no more vainglorious than the poor slaves of the
hypodermic needle or the pint-pot.

And like the dope-fiend who cannot move from place to place without
taking with him a plentiful supply of his deadly balm I never venture
far without a sufficiency of reading matter. Books are so necessary to
me that when in a railway train I have become aware that
fellow-travellers have come away without a single one I have been seized
with a veritable dismay. But when I am starting on a long journey the
problem is formidable. I have learnt my lesson. Once, imprisoned by
illness for three months in a hill-town in Java, I came to the end of
all the books I had brought with me, and knowing no Dutch was obliged to
buy the school-books from which intelligent Javanese, I suppose,
acquired knowledge of French and German. So I read again after
five-and-twenty years the frigid plays of Goethe, the fables of La
Fontaine and the tragedies of the tender and exact Racine. I have the
greatest admiration for Racine, but I admit that to read his plays one
after the other requires a certain effort in a person who is suffering
from colitis. Since then I have made a point of travelling with the
largest sack made for carrying soiled linen and filling it to the brim
with books to suit every possible occasion and every mood. It weighs a
ton and strong porters reel under its weight. Custom-house officials
look at it askance, but recoil from it with consternation when I give
them my word that it contains nothing but books. Its inconvenience is
that the particular work I suddenly hanker to read is always at the
bottom and it is impossible for me to get it without emptying the
book-bag's entire contents upon the floor. Except for this, however, I
should perhaps never have heard the singular history of Olive Hardy.

I was wandering about Malaya, staying here and there, a week or two if
there was a rest-house or a hotel, and a day or so if I was obliged to
inflict myself on a planter or a District Officer whose hospitality I
had no wish to abuse; and at the moment I happened to be at Penang. It
is a pleasant little town, with a hotel that has always seemed to me
very agreeable, but the stranger finds little to do there and time hung
a trifle heavily on my hands. One morning I received a letter from a man
I knew only by name. This was Mark Featherstone. He was Acting Resident,
in the absence on leave of the Resident, at a place called Tenggarah.
There was a sultan there and it appeared that a water festival of some
sort was to take place which Featherstone thought would interest me. He
said that he would be glad if I would come and stay with him for a few
days. I wired to tell him that I should be delighted and next day took
the train to Tenggarah. Featherstone met me at the station. He was a man
of about thirty-five, I should think, tall and handsome, with fine eyes
and a strong, stern face. He had a wiry black moustache and bushy
eyebrows. He looked more like a soldier than a government official. He
was very smart in white ducks, with a white topee, and he wore his
clothes with elegance. He was a little shy, which seemed odd in a
strapping fellow of resolute mien, but I surmised that this was only
because he was unused to the society of that strange fish, a writer, and
I hoped in a little to put him at his ease.

"My boys'll look after your barang," he said. "We'll go down to the
club. Give them your keys and they'll unpack before we get back."

I told him that I had a good deal of luggage and thought it better to
leave everything at the station but what I particularly wanted. He would
not hear of it.

"It doesn't matter a bit. It'll be safer at my house. It's always better
to have one's barang with one."

"All right."

I gave my keys and the ticket for my trunk and my book-bag to a Chinese
boy who stood at my host's elbow. Outside the station a car was waiting
for us and we stepped in.

"Do you play bridge?" asked Featherstone.

"I do."

"I thought most writers didn't."

"They don't," I said. "It's generally considered among authors a sign of
deficient intelligence to play cards."

The club was a bungalow, pleasing but unpretentious; it had a large
reading-room, a billiard-room with one table, and a small card-room.
When we arrived it was empty but for one or two persons reading the
English weeklies, and we walked through to the tennis courts, where a
couple of sets were being played. A number of people were sitting on the
verandah, looking on, smoking and sipping long drinks. I was introduced
to one or two of them. But the light was failing and soon the players
could hardly see the ball. Featherstone asked one of the men I had been
introduced to if he would like a rubber. He said he would. Featherstone
looked about for a fourth. He caught sight of a man sitting a little by
himself, paused for a second, and went up to him. The two exchanged a
few words and then came towards us. We strolled in to the card-room. We
had a very nice game. I did not pay much attention to the two men who
made up the four. They stood me drinks and I, a temporary member of the
club, returned the compliment. The drinks were very small, quarter
whiskies, and in the two hours we played each of us was able to show his
open-handedness without an excessive consumption of alcohol. When the
advancing hour suggested that the next rubber must be the last we
changed from whisky to gin pahits. The rubber came to an end.
Featherstone called for the book and the winnings and losings of each
one of us were set down. One of the men got up.

"Well, I must be going," he said.

"Going back to the estate?" asked Featherstone.

"Yes," he nodded. He turned to me. "Shall you be here to-morrow?"

"I hope so."

He went out of the room.

"I'll collect my mem and get along home to dinner," said the other.

"We might be going too," said Featherstone.

"I'm ready whenever you are," I replied.

We got into the car and drove to his house. It was a longish drive. In
the darkness I could see nothing much, but presently I realised that we
were going up a rather steep hill. We reached the Residency.

It had been an evening like any other, pleasant, but not at all
exciting, and I had spent I don't know how many just like it. I did not
expect it to leave any sort of impression on me.

Featherstone led me into his sitting-room. It looked comfortable, but it
was a trifle ordinary. It had large basket arm-chairs covered with
cretonne and on the walls were a great many framed photographs; the
tables were littered with papers, magazines and official reports, with
pipes, yellow tins of straight-cut cigarettes and pink tins of tobacco.
In a row of shelves were untidily stacked a good many books, their
bindings stained with damp and the ravages of white ants. Featherstone
showed me my room and left me with the words:

"Shall you be ready for a gin pahit in ten minutes?"

"Easily," I said.

I had a bath and changed and went downstairs. Featherstone, ready before
me, mixed our drink as he heard me clatter down the wooden staircase. We
dined. We talked. The festival which I had been invited to see was the
next day but one, but Featherstone told me he had arranged for me before
that to be received by the Sultan.

"He's a jolly old boy," he said. "And the palace is a sight for sore
eyes."

After dinner we talked a little more, Featherstone put on the
gramophone, and we looked at the latest illustrated papers that had
arrived from England. Then we went to bed. Featherstone came to my room
to see that I had everything I wanted.

"I suppose you haven't any books with you," he said. "I haven't got a
thing to read."

"Books?" I cried.

I pointed to my book-bag. It stood upright, bulging oddly, so that it
looked like a humpbacked gnome somewhat the worse for liquor.

"Have you got books in there? I thought that was your dirty linen or a
camp-bed or something. Is there anything you can lend me?"

"Look for yourself."

Featherstone's boys had unlocked the bag, but quailing before the sight
that then discovered itself had done no more. I knew from long
experience how to unpack it. I threw it over on its side, seized its
leather bottom and, walking backwards, dragged the sack away from its
contents. A river of books poured on to the floor. A look of
stupefaction came upon Featherstone's face.

"You don't mean to say you travel with as many books as that? By George,
what a snip!"

He bent down and turning them over rapidly looked at the titles. There
were books of all kinds. Volumes of verse, novels, philosophical works,
critical studies (they say books about books are profitless, but they
certainly make very pleasant reading), biographies, history; there were
books to read when you were ill and books to read when your brain, all
alert, craved for something to grapple with; there were books that you
had always wanted to read, but in the hurry of life at home had never
found time to; there were books to read at sea when you were meandering
through narrow waters on a tramp steamer, and there were books for bad
weather when your whole cabin creaked and you had to wedge yourself in
your bunk in order not to fall out; there were books chosen solely for
their length, which you took with you when on some expedition you had to
travel light, and there were the books you could read when you could
read nothing else. Finally Featherstone picked out a life of Byron that
had recently appeared.

"Hullo, what's this?" he said. "I read a review of it some time ago."

"I believe it's very good," I replied. "I haven't read it yet."

"May I take it? It'll do me for to-night at all events."

"Of course. Take anything you like."

"No, that's enough. Well, good-night. Breakfast at eight-thirty."

When I came down next morning the head-boy told me that Featherstone,
who had been at work since six, would be in shortly. While I waited for
him I glanced at his shelves.

"I see you've got a grand library of books on bridge," I remarked as we
sat down to breakfast.

"Yes, I get every one that comes out. I'm very keen on it."

"That fellow we were playing with yesterday plays a good game."

"Which? Hardy?"

"I don't know. Not the one who said he was going to collect his wife.
The other."

"Yes, that was Hardy. That was why I asked him to play. He doesn't come
to the club very often."

"I hope he will to-night."

"I wouldn't bank on it. He has an estate about thirty miles away. It's a
longish ride to come just for a rubber of bridge."

"Is he married?"

"No. Well, yes. But his wife is in England."

"It must be awfully lonely for those men who live by themselves on those
estates," I said.

"Oh, he's not so badly off as some. I don't think he much cares about
seeing people. I think he'd be just as lonely in London."

There was something in the way Featherstone spoke that struck me as a
little strange. His voice had what I can only describe as a shuttered
tone. He seemed suddenly to have moved away from me. It was as though
one were passing along a street at night and paused for a second to look
in at a lighted window that showed a comfortable room and suddenly an
invisible hand pulled down a blind. His eyes, which habitually met those
of the person he was talking to with frankness, now avoided mine and I
had a notion that it was not only my fancy that read in his face an
expression of pain. It was drawn for a moment as it might be by a twinge
of neuralgia. I could not think of anything to say and Featherstone did
not speak. I was conscious that his thoughts, withdrawn from me and what
we were about, were turned upon a subject unknown to me. Presently he
gave a little sigh, very slight, but unmistakable, and seemed with a
deliberate effort to pull himself together.

"I'm going down to the office immediately after breakfast," he said.
"What are you going to do with yourself?"

"Oh, don't bother about me. I shall slack around. I'll stroll down and
look at the town."

"There's not much to see."

"All the better. I'm fed up with sights."

I found that Featherstone's verandah gave me sufficient entertainment
for the morning. It had one of the most enchanting views I had seen in
the F.M.S. The Residency was built on the top of a hill and the garden
was large and well-cared for. Great trees gave it almost the look of an
English park. It had vast lawns and there Tamils, black and emaciated,
were scything with deliberate and beautiful gestures. Beyond and below,
the jungle grew thickly to the bank of a broad, winding and swiftly
flowing river, and on the other side of this, as far as the eye could
reach, stretched the wooded hills of Tenggarah. The contrast between the
trim lawns, so strangely English, and the savage growth of the jungle
beyond pleasantly titillated the fancy. I sat and read and smoked. It is
my business to be curious about people and I asked myself how the peace
of this scene, charged nevertheless with a tremulous and dark
significance, affected Featherstone who lived with it. He knew it under
every aspect: at dawn when the mist rising from the river shrouded it
with a ghostly pall; in the splendour of noon; and at last when the
shadowy gloaming crept softly out of the jungle, like an army making its
way with caution in unknown country, and presently enveloped the green
lawns and the great flowering trees and the flaunting cassias in the
silent night. I wondered whether, unbeknownst to him, the tender and yet
strangely sinister aspect of the scene, acting on his nerves and his
loneliness, imbued him with some mystical quality so that the life he
led, the life of the capable administrator, the sportsman and the good
fellow, on occasion seemed to him not quite real. I smiled at my own
fancies, for certainly the conversation we had had the night before had
not indicated in him any stirrings of the soul. I had thought him quite
nice. He had been at Oxford and was a member of a good London club. He
seemed to attach a good deal of importance to social things. He was a
gentleman and slightly conscious of the fact that he belonged to a
better class than most of the Englishmen his life brought him in contact
with. I gathered from the various silver pots that adorned his
dining-room that he excelled in games. He played tennis and billiards.
When he went on leave he hunted and, anxious to keep his weight down, he
dieted carefully. He talked a good deal of what he would do when he
retired. He hankered after the life of a country gentleman. A little
house in Leicestershire, a couple of hunters and neighbours to play
bridge with. He would have his pension and he had a little money of his
own. But meanwhile he worked hard and did his work, if not brilliantly,
certainly with competence. I have no doubt that he was looked upon by
his superiors as a reliable officer. He was cut upon a pattern that I
knew too well to find very interesting. He was like a novel that is
careful, honest and efficient, yet a little ordinary, so that you seem
to have read it all before, and you turn the pages listlessly, knowing
that it will never afford you a surprise or move you to excitement.

But human beings are incalculable and he is a fool who tells himself
that he knows what a man is capable of.

In the afternoon Featherstone took me to see the Sultan. We were
received by one of his sons, a shy, smiling youth who acted as his
A.D.C. He was dressed in a neat blue suit, but round his waist he wore a
sarong, white flowers on a yellow ground, on his head a red fez, and on
his feet knobby American shoes. The palace, built in the Moorish style,
was like a very big doll's house and it was painted bright yellow, which
is the royal colour. We were led into a spacious room, furnished with
the sort of furniture you would find in an English lodging-house at the
seaside, but the chairs were covered with yellow silk. On the floor was
a Brussels carpet and on the walls photographs in very grand gilt frames
of the Sultan at various state functions. In a cabinet was a large
collection of all kinds of fruit done entirely in crochet work. The
Sultan came in with several attendants. He was a man of fifty, perhaps,
short and stout, dressed in trousers and tunic of a large
white-and-yellow check; round his middle he wore a very beautiful yellow
sarong and on his head a white fez. He had large handsome friendly eyes.
He gave us coffee to drink, sweet cakes to eat and cheroots to smoke.
Conversation was not difficult, for he was affable, and he told me that
he had never been to a theatre or played cards, for he was very
religious, and he had four wives and twenty-four children. The only bar
to the happiness of his life seemed to be that common decency obliged
him to divide his time equally between his four wives. He said that an
hour with one was a month and with another five minutes. I remarked that
Professor Einstein--or was it Bergson?--had made similar observations
upon time and indeed on this question had given the world much to ponder
over. Presently we took our leave and the Sultan presented me with some
beautiful white Malaccas.

In the evening we went to the club. One of the men we had played with
the day before got up from his chair as we entered.

"Ready for a rubber?" he said.

"Where's our fourth?" I asked.

"Oh, there are several fellows here who'll be glad to play."

"What about that man we played with yesterday?" I had forgotten his
name.

"Hardy? He's not here."

"It's not worth while waiting for him," said Featherstone.

"He very seldom comes to the club. I was surprised to see him last
night."

I did not know why I had the impression that behind the very ordinary
words of these two men there was an odd sense of embarrassment. Hardy
had made no impression on me and I did not even remember what he looked
like. He was just a fourth at the bridge table. I had a feeling that
they had something against him. It was no business of mine and I was
quite content to play with a man who at that moment joined us. We
certainly had a more cheerful game than before. A good deal of chaff
passed from one side of the table to the other. We played less serious
bridge. We laughed. I wondered if it was only that they were less shy of
the stranger who had happened in upon them or if the presence of Hardy
had caused in the other two a certain constraint. At half-past eight we
broke up and Featherstone and I went back to dine at his house.

After dinner we lounged in arm-chairs and smoked cheroots. For some
reason our conversation did not flow easily. I tried topic after topic,
but could not get Featherstone to interest himself in any of them. I
began to think that in the last twenty-four hours he had said all he had
to say. I fell somewhat discouraged into silence. It prolonged itself
and again, I did not know why, I had a faint sensation that it was
charged with a significance that escaped me. I felt slightly
uncomfortable. I had that queer feeling that one sometimes has when
sitting in an empty room that one is not by oneself. Presently I was
conscious that Featherstone was steadily looking at me. I was sitting by
a lamp, but he was in shadow so that the play of his features was hidden
from me. But he had very large brilliant eyes and in the half darkness
they seemed to shine dimly. They were like new boot-buttons that caught
a reflected light. I wondered why he looked at me like that. I gave him
a glance and catching his eyes insistently fixed upon me faintly smiled.

"Interesting book that one you lent me last night," he said suddenly,
and I could not help thinking his voice did not sound quite natural. The
words issued from his lips as though they were pushed from behind.

"Oh, the _Life of Byron_?" I said breezily. "Have you read it already?"

"A good deal of it. I read till three."

"I've heard it's very well done. I'm not sure that Byron interests me so
much as all that. There was so much in him that was so frightfully
second-rate. It makes one rather uncomfortable."

"What do you think is the real truth of that story about him and his
sister?"

"Augusta Leigh? I don't know very much about it. I've never read
A_starte_."

"Do you think they were really in love with one another?"

"I suppose so. Isn't it generally believed that she was the only woman
he ever genuinely loved?"

"Can you understand it?"

"I can't really. It doesn't particularly shock me. It just seems to me
very unnatural. Perhaps 'unnatural' isn't the right word. It's
incomprehensible to me. I can't throw myself into the state of feeling
in which such a thing seems possible. You know, that's how a writer gets
to know the people he writes about, by standing himself in their shoes
and feeling with their hearts."

I knew I did not make myself very clear, but I was trying to describe a
sensation, an action of the subconscious, which from experience was
perfectly familiar to me, but which no words I knew could precisely
indicate. I went on:

"Of course she was only his half-sister, but just as habit kills love I
should have thought habit would prevent its arising. When two persons
have known one another all their lives and lived together in close
contact I can't imagine how or why that sudden spark should flash that
results in love. The probabilities are that they would be joined by
mutual affection and I don't know anything that is more contrary to love
than affection."

I could just see in the dimness the outline of a smile flicker for a
moment on my host's heavy, and it seemed to me then, somewhat saturnine
face.

"You only believe in love at first sight?"

"Well, I suppose I do, but with the proviso that people may have met
twenty times before seeing one another. 'Seeing' has an active side and
a passive one. Most people we run across mean so little to us that we
never bestir ourselves to look at them. We just suffer the impression
they make on us."

"Oh, but one's often heard of couples who've known one another for years
and it's never occurred to one they cared two straws for each other and
suddenly they go and get married. How do you explain that?"

"Well, if you're going to bully me into being logical and consistent, I
should suggest that their love is of a different kind. After all,
passion isn't the only reason for marriage. It may not even be the best
one. Two people may marry because they're lonely or because they're good
friends or for convenience's sake. Though I said that affection was the
greatest enemy of love, I would never deny that it's a very good
substitute. I'm not sure that a marriage founded on it isn't the
happiest."

"What did you think of Tim Hardy?"

I was a little surprised at the sudden question, which seemed to have
nothing to do with the subject of our conversation.

"I didn't think of him very much. He seemed quite nice. Why?"

"Did he seem to you just like everybody else?"

"Yes. Is there anything peculiar about him? If you'd told me that, I'd
have paid more attention to him."

"He's very quiet, isn't he? I suppose no one who knew nothing about him
would give him a second thought."

I tried to remember what he looked like. The only thing that had struck
me when we were playing cards was that he had fine hands. It passed idly
through my mind that they were not the sort of hands I should have
expected a planter to have. But why a planter should have different
hands from anybody else I did not trouble to ask myself. His were
somewhat large, but very well formed with peculiarly long fingers, and
the nails were of an admirable shape. They were virile and yet oddly
sensitive hands. I noticed this and thought no more about it. But if you
are a writer instinct and the habit of years enable you to store up
impressions that you are not aware of. Sometimes of course they do not
correspond with the facts and a woman for example may remain in your
subconsciousness as a dark, massive and ox-eyed creature when she is
indeed rather small and of a nondescript colouring. But that is of no
consequence. The impression may very well be more exact than the sober
truth. And now, seeking to call up from the depths of me a picture of
this man I had a feeling of some ambiguity. He was clean-shaven and his
face, oval but not thin, seemed strangely pale under the tan of long
exposure to the tropical sun. His features were vague. I did not know
whether I remembered it or only imagined now that his rounded chin gave
one the impression of a certain weakness. He had thick brown hair, just
turning grey, and a long wisp fell down constantly over his forehead. He
pushed it back with a gesture that had become habitual. His brown eyes
were rather large and gentle, but perhaps a little sad; they had a
melting softness which, I could imagine, might be very appealing.

After a pause Featherstone continued:

"It's rather strange that I should run across Tim Hardy here after all
these years. But that's the way of the F.M.S. People move about and you
find yourself in the same place as a man you'd known years before in
another part of the country. I first knew Tim when he had an estate near
Sibuku. Have you ever been there?"

"No. Where is it?"

"Oh, it's up north. Towards Siam. It wouldn't be worth your while to go.
It's just like every other place in the F.M.S. But it was rather nice.
It had a very jolly little club and there were some quite decent people.
There was the schoolmaster and the head of the police, the doctor, the
padre and the government engineer. The usual lot, you know. A few
planters. Three or four women. I was A.D.O. It was one of my first jobs.
Tim Hardy had an estate about twenty-five miles away. He lived there
with his sister. They had a bit of money of their own and he'd bought
the place. Rubber was pretty good then and he wasn't doing at all badly.
We rather cottoned on to one another. Of course it's a toss-up with
planters. Some of them are very good fellows, but they're not
exactly..." he sought for a word or a phrase that did not sound
snobbish.  "Well, they're not the sort of people you'd be likely to
meet at home.  Tim and Olive were of one's own class, if you understand
what I mean."

"Olive was the sister?"

"Yes. They'd had a rather unfortunate past. Their parents had separated
when they were quite small, seven or eight, and the mother had taken
Olive and the father had kept Tim. Tim went to Clifton, they were West
Country people, and only came home for the holidays. His father was a
retired naval man who lived at Fowey. But Olive went with her mother to
Italy. She was educated in Florence; she spoke Italian perfectly and
French too. For all those years Tim and Olive never saw one another
once, but they used to write to one another regularly. They'd been very
much attached when they were children. As far as I could understand,
life when their people were living together had been rather stormy with
all sorts of scenes and upsets, you know the sort of thing that happens
when two people who are married don't get on together, and that had
thrown them on their own resources. They were left a good deal to
themselves. Then Mrs. Hardy died and Olive came home to England and went
back to her father. She was eighteen then and Tim was seventeen. A year
later the war broke out. Tim joined up and his father, who was over
fifty, got some job at Portsmouth. I take it he had been a hard liver
and a heavy drinker. He broke down before the end of the war and died
after a lingering illness. They don't seem to have had any relations.
They were the last of a rather old family; they had a fine old house in
Dorsetshire that had belonged to them for a good many generations, but
they had never been able to afford to live in it and it was always let.
I remember seeing photographs of it. It was very much a gentleman's
house, of grey stone and rather stately, with a coat of arms carved over
the front door and mullioned windows. Their great ambition was to make
enough money to be able to live in it. They used to talk about it a lot.
They never spoke as though either of them would marry, but always as
though it were a settled thing that they would remain together. It was
rather funny considering how young they were."

"How old were they then?" I asked.

"Well, I suppose he was twenty-five or twenty-six and she was a year
older. They were awfully kind to me when I first went up to Sibuku. They
took a fancy to me at once. You see, we had more in common than most of
the people there. I think they were glad of my company. They weren't
particularly popular."

"Why not?" I asked.

"They were rather reserved and you couldn't help seeing that they liked
their own society better than other people's. I don't know if you've
noticed it, but that always seems to put people's backs up. They resent
it somehow if they have a feeling that you can get along very well
without them."

"It's tiresome, isn't it?" I said.

"It was rather a grievance to the other planters that Tim was his own
master and had private means. They had to put up with an old Ford to get
about in, but Tim had a real car. Tim and Olive were very nice when they
came to the club and they played in the tennis tournaments and all that
sort of thing, but you had an impression that they were always glad to
get away again. They'd dine out with people and make themselves very
pleasant, but it was pretty obvious that they'd just as soon have stayed
at home. If you had any sense you couldn't blame them. I don't know if
you've been much to planters' houses. They're a bit dreary. A lot of
gimcrack furniture and silver ornaments and tiger skins. And the food's
uneatable. But the Hardys had made their bungalow rather nice. There was
nothing very grand in it; it was just easy and homelike and comfortable.
Their living-room was like a drawing-room in an English country house.
You felt that their things meant something to them and that they had had
them a long time. It was a very jolly house to stay at. The bungalow was
in the middle of the estate, but it was on the brow of a little hill and
you looked right over the rubber trees to the sea in the distance. Olive
took a lot of trouble with her garden and it was really topping. I never
saw such a show of cannas. I used to go there for week-ends. It was only
about half an hour's drive to the sea and we'd take our lunch with us
and bathe and sail. Tim kept a small boat there. Those days were grand.
I never knew one could enjoy oneself so much. It's a beautiful bit of
coast and it was really extraordinarily romantic. Then in the evenings
we'd play patience and chess or turn on the gramophone. The cooking was
damned good too. It was a change from what one generally got. Olive had
taught their cook to make all sorts of Italian dishes and we used to
have great wallops of macaroni and risotto and gnocchi and things like
that. I couldn't help envying them their life, it was so jolly and
peaceful, and when they talked of what they'd do when they went back to
England for good I used to tell them they'd always regret what they'd
left.

"'We've been very happy here,' said Olive.

"She had a way of looking at Tim, with a slow, sidelong glance from
under her long eyelashes, that was rather engaging.

"In their own house they were quite different from what they were when
they went out. They were so easy and cordial. Everybody admitted that
and I'm bound to say that people enjoyed going there. They often asked
people over. They had the gift of making you feel at home. It was a very
happy house, if you know what I mean. Of course no one could help seeing
how attached they were to one another. And whatever people said about
their being stand-offish and self-centred, they were bound to be rather
touched by the affection they had for one another. People said they
couldn't have been more united if they were married, and when you saw
how some couples got on you couldn't help thinking they made most
marriages look rather like a wash-out. They seemed to think the same
things at the same time. They had little private jokes that made them
laugh like children. They were so charming with one another, so gay and
happy, that really to stay with them was, well, a spiritual refreshment.
I don't know what else you could call it. When you left them, after a
couple of days at the bungalow, you felt that you'd absorbed some of
their peace and their sober gaiety. It was as though your soul had been
sluiced with cool clear water. You felt strangely purified."

It was singular to hear Featherstone talking in this exalted strain. He
looked so spruce in his smart white coat, technically known as a
bum-freezer, his moustache was so trim, his thick curly hair so
carefully brushed, that his high-flown language made me a trifle
uncomfortable. But I realised that he was trying to express in his
clumsy way a very sincerely felt emotion.

"What was Olive Hardy like?" I asked.

"I'll show you. I've got quite a lot of snapshots."

He got up from his chair and going to a shelf brought me a large album.
It was the usual thing, indifferent photographs of people in groups and
unflattering likenesses of single figures. They were in bathing dress or
in shorts or tennis things, generally with their faces screwed up
because the sun blinded them, or puckered by the distortion of laughter.
I recognised Hardy, not much changed after ten years, with his wisp of
hair hanging across his forehead. I remembered him better now that I saw
the snapshots. In them he looked nice and fresh and young. He had an
alertness of expression that was attractive and that I certainly had not
noticed when I saw him. In his eyes was a sort of eagerness for life
that danced and sparkled through the fading print. I glanced at the
photographs of his sister. Her bathing dress showed that she had a good
figure, well-developed, but slender; and her legs were long and slim.

"They look rather alike," I said.

"Yes, although she was a year older they might have been twins, they
were so much alike. They both had the same oval face and that pale skin
without any colour in the cheeks, and they both had those soft brown
eyes, very liquid and appealing, so that you felt whatever they did you
could never be angry with them. And they both had a sort of careless
elegance that made them look charming whatever they wore and however
untidy they were. He's lost that now, I suppose, but he certainly had it
when I first knew him. They always rather reminded me of the brother and
sister in _Twelfth Night_. You know whom I mean."

"Viola and Sebastian."

"They never seemed to belong quite to the present. There was something
Elizabethan about them. I don't think it was only because I was very
young then that I couldn't help feeling they were strangely romantic
somehow. I could see them living in Illyria."

I gave one of the snapshots another glance.

"The girl looks as though she had a good deal more character than her
brother," I remarked.

"She had. I don't know if you'd have called Olive beautiful, but she was
awfully attractive. There was something poetic in her, a sort of lyrical
quality, as it were, that coloured her movements, her acts and
everything about her. It seemed to exalt her above common cares. There
was something so candid in her expression, so courageous and independent
in her bearing, that--oh, I don't know, it made mere beauty just flat
and dull."

"You speak as if you'd been in love with her," I interrupted.

"Of course I was. I should have thought you'd guessed that at once. I
was frightfully in love with her."

"Was it love at first sight?" I smiled.

"Yes, I think it was, but I didn't know it for a month or so. When it
suddenly struck me that what I felt for her--I don't know how to explain
it, it was a sort of shattering turmoil that affected every bit of
me--that that was love, I knew I'd felt it all along. It was not only
her looks, though they were awfully alluring, the smoothness of her pale
skin and the way her hair fell over her forehead and the grave sweetness
of her brown eyes, it was more than that; you had a sensation of
well-being when you were with her, as though you could relax and be
quite natural and needn't pretend to be anything you weren't. You felt
she was incapable of meanness. It was impossible to think of her as
envious of other people or catty. She seemed to have a natural
generosity of soul. One could be silent with her for an hour at a time
and yet feel that one had had a good time."

"A rare gift," I said.

"She was a wonderful companion. If you made a suggestion to do something
she was always glad to fall in with it. She was the least exacting girl
I ever knew. You could throw her over at the last minute and however
disappointed she was it made no difference. Next time you saw her she
was just as cordial and serene as ever."

"Why didn't you marry her?"

Featherstone's cheroot had gone out. He threw the stub away and
deliberately lit another. He did not answer for a while. It may seem
strange to persons who live in a highly civilised state that he should
confide these intimate things to a stranger; it did not seem strange to
me. I was used to it. People who live so desperately alone, in the
remote places of the earth, find it a relief to tell someone whom in all
probability they will never meet again the story that has burdened
perhaps for years their waking thoughts and their dreams at night. And I
have an inkling that the fact of your being a writer attracts their
confidence. They feel that what they tell you will excite your interest
in an impersonal way that makes it easier for them to discharge their
souls. Besides, as we all know from our own experience, it is never
unpleasant to talk about oneself.

"Why didn't you marry her?" I had asked him.

"I wanted to badly enough," Featherstone answered at length. "But I
hesitated to ask her. Although she was always so nice to me and so easy
to get on with, and we were such good friends, I always felt that there
was something a little mysterious in her. Although she was so simple, so
frank and natural, you never quite got over the feeling of an inner
kernel of aloofness, as if deep in her heart she guarded, not a secret,
but a sort of privacy of the soul that not a living person would ever be
allowed to know. I don't know if I make myself clear."

"I think so."

"I put it down to her upbringing. They never talked of their mother, but
somehow I got the impression that she was one of those neurotic,
emotional women who wreck their own happiness and are a pest to everyone
connected with them. I had a suspicion that she'd led rather a hectic
life in Florence and it struck me that Olive owed her beautiful serenity
to a disciplined effort of her own will and that her aloofness was a
sort of citadel she'd built to protect herself from the knowledge of all
sorts of shameful things. But of course that aloofness was awfully
captivating. It was strangely exciting to think that if she loved you,
and you were married to her, you would at last pierce right into the
hidden heart of that mystery; and you felt that if you could share that
with her it would be as it were a consummation of all you'd ever desired
in your life. Heaven wouldn't be in it. You know, I felt about it just
like Bluebeard's wife about the forbidden chamber in the castle. Every
room was open to me, but I should never rest till I had gone into that
last one that was locked against me."

My eye was caught by a chik-chak, a little brown house lizard with a
large head, high up on the wall. It is a friendly little beast and it is
good to see it in a house. It watched a fly. It was quite still. On a
sudden it made a dart and then as the fly flew away fell back with a
sort of jerk into a strange immobility.

"And there was another thing that made me hesitate. I couldn't bear the
thought that if I proposed to her and she refused me she wouldn't let me
come to the bungalow in the same old way. I should have hated that, I
enjoyed going there so awfully. It made me so happy to be with her. But
you know, sometimes one can't help oneself. I did ask her at last, but
it was almost by accident. One evening, after dinner, when we were
sitting on the verandah by ourselves, I took her hand. She withdrew it
at once.

"'Why did you do that?' I asked her.

"'I don't very much like being touched,' she said. She turned her head a
little and smiled. 'Are you hurt? You mustn't mind, it's just a funny
feeling I have. I can't help it.'

"'I wonder if it's ever occurred to you that I'm frightfully fond of
you,' I said.

"I expect I was terribly awkward about it, but I'd never proposed to
anyone before." Featherstone gave a little sound that was not quite a
chuckle and not quite a sigh. "For the matter of that, I've never
proposed to anyone since. She didn't say anything for a minute. Then she
said:

"'I'm very glad, but I don't think I want you to be anything more than
that.'

"'Why not?' I asked.

"'I could never leave Tim.'

"'But supposing he marries?'

"'He never will.'

"I'd gone so far then that I thought I'd better go on. But my throat was
so dry that I could hardly speak. I was shaking with nervousness.

"'I'm frightfully in love with you, Olive. I want to marry you more than
anything in the world.'

"She put her hand very gently on my arm. It was like a flower falling to
the ground.

"'No, dear, I can't,' she said.

"I was silent. It was difficult for me to say what I wanted to. I'm
naturally rather shy. She was a girl. I couldn't very well tell her that
it wasn't quite the same thing living with a husband and living with a
brother. She was normal and healthy; she must want to have babies; it
wasn't reasonable to starve her natural instincts. It was such waste of
her youth. But it was she who spoke first.

"'Don't let's talk about this any more,' she said. 'D'you mind? It did
strike me once or twice that perhaps you cared for me. Tim noticed it. I
was sorry because I was afraid it would break up our friendship. I don't
want it to do that, Mark. We do get on so well together, the three of
us, and we have such jolly times. I don't know what we should do without
you now.'

"'I thought of that too,' I said.

"'D'you think it need?' she asked me.

"'My dear, I don't want it to,' I said. 'You must know how much I love
coming here. I've never been so happy anywhere before!'

"'You're not angry with me?'

"'Why should I be? It's not your fault. It only means that you're not in
love with me. If you were you wouldn't care a hang about Tim.'

"'You are rather sweet,' she said.

"She put her arm round my neck and kissed me lightly on the cheek. I had
a notion that in her mind it settled our relation. She adopted me as a
second brother.

"A few weeks later Tim went back to England. The tenant of their house
in Dorset was leaving and though there was another in the offing, he
thought he ought to be on the spot to conduct negotiations. And he
wanted some new machinery for the estate. He thought he'd get it at the
same time. He didn't expect to be gone more than three months and Olive
made up her mind not to go. She knew hardly anyone in England, and it
was practically a foreign country to her, she didn't mind being left
alone, and she wanted to look after the estate. Of course they could
have put a manager in charge, but that wasn't the same thing. Rubber was
falling and in case of accidents it was just as well that one or other
of them should be there. I promised Tim I'd look after her and if she
wanted me she could always call me up. My proposal hadn't changed
anything. We carried on as though nothing had happened. I don't know
whether she'd told Tim. He made no sign that he knew. Of course I loved
her as much as ever, but I kept it to myself. I have a good deal of
self-control, you know. I had a sort of feeling I hadn't a chance. I
hoped eventually my love would change into something else and we could
just be wonderful friends. It's funny, it never has, you know. I suppose
I was hit too badly ever to get quite over it.

"She went down to Penang to see Tim off and when she came back I met her
at the station and drove her home. I couldn't very well stay at the
bungalow while Tim was away, but I went over every Sunday and had tiffin
and we'd go down to the sea and have a bathe. People tried to be kind to
her and asked her to stay with them, but she wouldn't. She seldom left
the estate. She had plenty to do. She read a lot. She was never bored.
She seemed quite happy in her own company, and when she had visitors it
was only from a sense of duty. She didn't want them to think her
ungracious. But it was an effort and she told me she heaved a sigh of
relief when she saw the last of them and could again enjoy without
disturbance the peaceful loneliness of the bungalow. She was a very
curious girl. It was strange that at her age she should be so
indifferent to parties and the other small gaieties the station
afforded. Spiritually, if you know what I mean, she was entirely
self-supporting. I don't know how people found out that I was in love
with her; I thought I'd never given myself away in anything, but I had
hints here and there that they knew. I gathered they thought Olive
hadn't gone home with her brother on my account. One woman, a Mrs.
Sergison, the policeman's wife, actually asked me when they were going
to be able to congratulate me. Of course I pretended I didn't know what
she was talking about, but it didn't go down very well. I couldn't help
being amused. I meant so little to Olive in that way that I really
believe she'd entirely forgotten that I'd asked her to marry me. I can't
say she was unkind to me, I don't think she could have been unkind to
anyone; but she treated me with just the casualness with which a sister
might treat a younger brother. She was two or three years older than I.
She was always terribly glad to see me, but it never occurred to her to
put herself out for me; she was almost amazingly intimate with me, but
unconsciously, you know, as you might be with a person you'd known so
well all your life that you never thought of putting on frills with him.
I might not have been a man at all, but an old coat that she wore all
the time because it was easy and comfortable and she didn't mind what
she did in it. I should have been crazy not to see that she was a
thousand miles away from loving me.

"Then one day, three or four weeks before Tim was due back, when I went
to the bungalow I saw she'd been crying. I was startled. She was always
so composed. I'd never seen her upset over anything.

"'Hullo, what's the matter?' I said.

"'Nothing.'

"'Come off it, darling,' I said. 'What have you been crying about?'

"She tried to smile.

"'I wish you hadn't got such sharp eyes,' she said. 'I think I'm being
silly. I've just had a cable from Tim to say he's postponed his
sailing.'

"'Oh, my dear, I am sorry,' I said. 'You must be awfully disappointed.'

"'I've been counting the days. I want him back so badly.'

"'Does he say why he's postponing?' I asked.

"'No, he says he's writing. I'll show you the cable.'

"I saw that she was very nervous. Her slow quiet eyes were filled with
apprehension and there was a little frown of anxiety between her brows.
She went into her bedroom and in a moment came back with the cable. I
felt that she was watching me anxiously as I read. So far as I remember
it ran: _Darling, I cannot sail on the seventh after all. Please forgive
me. Am writing fully. Fondest love. Tim._

"'Well, perhaps the machinery he wanted isn't ready and he can't bring
himself to sail without it,' I said.

"'What could it matter if it came by a later ship? Anyhow, it'll be hung
up at Penang.'

"'It may be something about the house.'

"'If it is why doesn't he say so? He must know how frightfully anxious I
am.'

"'It wouldn't occur to him,' I said. 'After all, when you're away you
don't realise that the people you've left behind don't know something
that you take as a matter of course.'

"She smiled again, but now more happily.

"'I dare say you're right. In point of fact Tim is a little like that.
He's always been rather slack and casual. I dare say I've been making a
mountain out of a molehill. I must just wait patiently for his letter.'

"Olive was a girl with a lot of self-control and I saw her by an effort
of will pull herself together. The little line between her eyebrows
vanished and she was once more her serene, smiling and kindly self. She
was always gentle: that day she had a mildness so heavenly that it was
shattering. But for the rest of the time I could see that she kept her
restlessness in check only by the deliberate exercise of her common
sense. It was as though she had a foreboding of ill. I was with her the
day before the mail was due. Her anxiety was all the more pitiful to see
because she took such pains to hide it. I was always busy on mail day,
but I promised to go up to the estate later on and hear the news. I was
just thinking of starting when Hardy's seis came along in the car with a
message from the amah asking me to go at once to her mistress. The amah
was a decent, elderly woman to whom I had given a dollar or two and said
that if anything went wrong on the estate she was to let me know at
once. I jumped into my car. When I arrived I found the amah waiting for
me on the steps.

"'A letter came this morning,' she said.

"I interrupted her. I ran up the steps. The sitting-room was empty.

"'Olive,' I called.

"I went into the passage and suddenly I heard a sound that froze my
heart. The amah had followed me and now she opened the door of Olive's
room. The sound I had heard was the sound of Olive crying. I went in.
She was lying on her bed, on her face, and her sobs shook her from head
to foot. I put my hand on her shoulder.

"'Olive, what is it?' I asked.

"'Who's that?' she cried. She sprang to her feet suddenly, as though she
were scared out of her wits. And then: 'Oh, it's you,' she said. She
stood in front of me, with her head thrown back and her eyes closed, and
the tears streamed from them. It was dreadful. 'Tim's married,' she
gasped, and her face screwed up in a sort of grimace of pain.

"I must admit that for one moment I had a thrill of exultation, it was
like a little electric shock tingling through my heart; it struck me
that now I had a chance, she might be willing to marry me; I know it was
terribly selfish of me; you see, the news had taken me by surprise; but
it was only for a moment, after that I was melted by her awful distress
and the only thing I felt was deep sorrow because she was unhappy. I put
my arm round her waist.

"'Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry,' I said. 'Don't stay here. Come into the
sitting-room and sit down and we'll talk about it. Let me give you
something to drink.'

"She let me lead her into the next room and we sat down on the sofa. I
told the amah to fetch the whisky and syphon and I mixed her a good
strong stengah and made her drink a little. I took her in my arms and
rested her head on my shoulder. She let me do what I liked with her. The
great tears streamed down her poor face.

"'How could he?' she moaned. 'How could he?'

"'My darling,' I said, 'it was bound to happen sooner or later. He's a
young man. How could you expect him never to marry? It's only natural.'

"'No, no, no,' she gasped.

"Tight-clenched in her hand I saw that she had a letter and I guessed
that it was Tim's.

"'What does he say?' I asked.

"She gave a frightened movement and clutched the letter to her heart as
though she thought I would take it from her.

"'He says he couldn't help himself. He says he had to. What does it
mean?'

"'Well, you know, in his way he's just as attractive as you are. He has
so much charm. I suppose he just fell madly in love with some girl and
she with him.'

"'He's so weak,' she moaned.

"'Are they coming out?' I asked.

"'They sailed yesterday. He says it won't make any difference. He's
insane. How _can_ I stay here?'

"She began to cry hysterically. It was torture to see that girl, usually
so calm, utterly shattered by her emotion. I had always felt that her
lovely serenity masked a capacity for deep feeling. But the abandon of
her distress simply broke me up. I held her in my arms and kissed her,
her eyes and her wet cheek and her hair. I don't think she knew what I
was doing. I was hardly conscious of it myself. I was so deeply moved.

"'What shall I do?' she wailed.

"'Why won't you marry me?' I said.

"She tried to withdraw herself from me, but I wouldn't let her go.

"'After all, it would be a way out,' I said.

"'How can I marry you?' she moaned. 'I'm years older than you are.'

"'Oh, what nonsense, two or three. What do I care?'

"'No, no.'

"'Why not?' I said.

"'I don't love you,' she said.

"'What does that matter? I love you.'

"I don't know what I said. I told her that I'd try to make her happy. I
said I'd never ask anything from her but what she was prepared to give
me. I talked and talked. I tried to make her see reason. I felt that she
didn't want to stay there, in the same place as Tim, and I told her that
I'd be moved soon to some other district. I thought that might tempt
her. She couldn't deny that we'd always got on awfully well together.
After a time she did seem to grow a little quieter. I had a feeling that
she was listening to me. I had even a sort of feeling that she knew that
she was lying in my arms and that it comforted her. I made her drink a
drop more whisky. I gave her a cigarette. At last I thought I might be
just mildly facetious.

"'You know, I'm not a bad sort really,' I said. 'You might do worse.'

"'You don't know me,' she said. 'You know nothing whatever about me.'

"'I'm capable of learning,' I said.

"She smiled a little.

"'You're awfully kind, Mark,' she said.

"'Say yes, Olive,' I begged.

"She gave a deep sigh. For a long time she stared at the ground. But she
did not move and I felt the softness of her body in my arms. I waited. I
was frightfully nervous and the minutes seemed endless.

"'All right,' she said at last, as though she were not conscious that
any time had passed between my prayer and her answer.

"I was so moved that I had nothing to say. But when I wanted to kiss her
lips, she turned her face away, and wouldn't let me. I wanted us to be
married at once, but she was quite firm that she wouldn't. She insisted
on waiting till Tim came back. You know how sometimes you see so clearly
in people's thoughts that you're more certain of them than if they'd
spoken them; I saw that she couldn't quite believe that what Tim had
written was true and that she had a sort of miserable hope that it was
all a mistake and he wasn't married after all. It gave me a pang, but I
loved her so much, I just bore it. I was willing to bear anything, I
adored her. She wouldn't even let me tell anyone that we were engaged.
She made me promise not to say a word till Tim's return. She said she
couldn't bear the thought of the congratulations and all that. She
wouldn't even let me make any announcement of Tim's marriage. She was
obstinate about it. I had a notion that she felt if the fact were spread
about it gave it a certainty that she didn't want it to have.

"But the matter was taken out of her hands. News travels mysteriously in
the East. I don't know what Olive had said in the amah's hearing when
first she received the news of Tim's marriage; anyhow, the Hardy's seis
told the Sergisons' and Mrs. Sergison attacked me the next time I went
into the club.

"'I hear Tim Hardy's married,' she said.

"'Oh?' I answered, unwilling to commit myself.

"She smiled at my blank face, and told me that her amah having told her
the rumour she had rung up Olive and asked her if it was true. Olive's
answer had been rather odd. She had not exactly confirmed it, but said
that she had received a letter from Tim telling her he was married.

"'She's a strange girl,' said Mrs. Sergison. 'When I asked her for
details she said she had none to give and when I said: "Aren't you
thrilled?" she didn't answer.'

"'Olive's devoted to Tim, Mrs. Sergison,' I said. 'His marriage has
naturally been a shock to her. She knows nothing about Tim's wife. She's
nervous about her.'

"'And when are you two going to be married?' she asked me abruptly.

"'What an embarrassing question!' I said, trying to laugh it off.

"She looked at me shrewdly.

"'Will you give me your word of honour that you're not engaged to her?'

"I didn't like to tell her a deliberate lie, nor to ask her to mind her
own business, and I'd promised Olive faithfully that I would say nothing
till Tim got back. I hedged.

"'Mrs. Sergison,' I said, 'when there's anything to tell I promise that
you'll be the first person to hear it. All I can say to you now is that
I do want to marry Olive more than anything in the world.'

"'I'm very glad that Tim's married,' she answered. 'And I hope she'll
marry you very soon. It was a morbid and unhealthy life that they led up
there, those two, they kept far too much to themselves and they were far
too much absorbed in one another.'

"I saw Olive practically every day. I felt that she didn't want me to
make love to her, and I contented myself with kissing her when I came
and when I went. She was very nice to me, kindly and thoughtful; I knew
she was glad to see me and sorry when it was time for me to go.
Ordinarily, she was apt to fall into silence, but during this time she
talked more than I had ever heard her talk before. But never of the
future and never of Tim and his wife. She told me a lot about her life
in Florence with her mother. She had led a strange lonely life, mostly
with servants and governesses, while her mother, I suspected, engaged in
one affair after another with vague Italian counts and Russian princes.
I guessed that by the time she was fourteen there wasn't much she didn't
know. It was natural for her to be quite unconventional: in the only
world she knew till she was eighteen conventions weren't mentioned
because they didn't exist. Gradually, Olive seemed to regain her
serenity and I should have thought that she was beginning to accustom
herself to the thought of Tim's marriage if it hadn't been that I
couldn't but notice how pale and tired she looked. I made up my mind
that the moment he arrived I'd press her to marry me at once. I could
get short leave whenever I asked for it, and by the time that was up I
thought I could manage a transfer to some other post. What she wanted
was change of air and fresh scenes.

"We knew, of course, within a day when Tim's ship would reach Penang,
but it was a question whether she'd get in soon enough for him to catch
the train and I wrote to the P. & O. agent asking him to telegraph as
soon as he had definite news. When I got the wire and took it up to
Olive I found that she'd just received one from Tim. The ship had docked
early and he was arriving next day. The train was supposed to get in at
eight o'clock in the morning, but it was liable to be anything from one
to six hours late, and I bore with me an invitation from Mrs. Sergison
asking Olive to come back with me to stay the night with her so that she
would be on the spot and need not go to the station till the news came
through that the train was coming.

"I was immensely relieved. I thought that when the blow at last fell
Olive wouldn't feel it so much. She had worked herself up into such a
state that I couldn't help thinking that she must have a reaction now.
She might take a fancy to her sister-in-law. There was no reason why
they shouldn't all three get on very well together. To my surprise Olive
said she wasn't coming down to the station to meet them.

"'They'll be awfully disappointed,' I said.

"'I'd rather wait here,' she answered. She smiled a little. 'Don't argue
with me, Mark, I've quite made up my mind.'

"'I've ordered breakfast in my house,' I said.

"'That's all right. You meet them and take them to your house and give
them breakfast, and then they can come along here afterwards. Of course
I'll send the car down.'

"'I don't suppose they'll want to breakfast if you're not there,' I
said.

"'Oh, I'm sure they will. If the train gets in on time they wouldn't
have thought of breakfasting before it arrived and they'll be hungry.
They won't want to take this long drive without anything to eat.'

"I was puzzled. She had been looking forward so intensely to Tim's
coming, it seemed strange that she should want to wait all by herself
while the rest of us were having a jolly breakfast. I supposed she was
nervous and wanted to delay as long as possible meeting the strange
woman who had come to take her place. It seemed unreasonable, I couldn't
see that an hour sooner or an hour later could make any difference, but
I knew women were funny, and anyhow I felt Olive wasn't in the mood for
me to press it.

"'Telephone when you're starting so that I shall know when to expect
you,' she said.

"'All right,' I said, 'but you know I shan't be able to come with them.
It's my day for going to Lahad.'

"This was a town that I had to go to once a week to take cases. It was a
good way off and one had to ferry across a river, which took some time,
so that I never got back till late. There were a few Europeans there and
a club. I generally had to go on there for a bit to be sociable and see
that things were getting along all right.

"'Besides,' I added, 'with Tim bringing his wife home for the first time
I don't suppose he'll want me about. But if you'd like to ask me to
dinner I'll be glad to come to that.'

"Olive smiled.

"'I don't think it'll be my place to issue any more invitations, will
it?' she said. 'You must ask the bride.'

"She said this so lightly that my heart leaped. I had a feeling that at
last she had made up her mind to accept the altered circumstances and,
what was more, was accepting them with cheerfulness. She asked me to
stay to dinner. Generally I left about eight and dined at home. She was
very sweet, almost tender, and I was happier than I'd been for weeks. I
had never been more desperately in love with her. I had a couple of gin
pahits and I think I was in rather good form at dinner. I know I made
her laugh. I felt that at last she was casting away the load of misery
that had oppressed her. That was why I didn't let myself be very much
disturbed by what happened at the end.

"'Don't you think it's about time you were leaving a presumably maiden
lady?' she said.

"She spoke in a manner that was so quietly gay that I answered without
hesitation:

"'Oh, my dear, if you think you've got a shred of reputation left you
deceive yourself. You're surely not under the impression that the ladies
of Sibuku don't know that I've been coming to see you every day for a
month. The general feeling is that if we're not married it's high time
we were. Don't you think it would be just as well if I broke it to them
that we're engaged?'

"'Oh, Mark, you mustn't take our engagement very seriously,' she said.

"I laughed.

"'How else do you expect me to take it? It is serious.'

"She shook her head a little.

"'No. I was upset and hysterical that day. You were being very sweet to
me. I said yes because I was too miserable to say no. But now I've had
time to collect myself. Don't think me unkind. I made a mistake. I've
been very much to blame. You must forgive me.'

"'Oh, darling, you're talking nonsense. You've got nothing against me.'

"She looked at me steadily. She was quite calm. She had even a little
smile at the back of her eyes.

"'I can't marry you. I can't marry anyone. It was absurd of me ever to
think I could.'

"I didn't answer at once. She was in a queer state and I thought it
better not to insist.

"'I suppose I can't drag you to the altar by main force,' I said.

"I held out my hand and she gave me hers. I put my arm round her, and
she made no attempt to withdraw. She suffered me to kiss her as usual on
her cheek.

"Next morning I met the train. For once in a way it was punctual. Tim
waved to me as his carriage passed the place where I was standing, and
by the time I had walked up he had already jumped out and was handing
down his wife. He grasped my hand warmly.

"'Where's Olive?' he said, with a glance along the platform. 'This is
Sally.'

"I shook hands with her and at the same time explained why Olive was not
there.

"'It was frightfully early, wasn't it?' said Mrs. Hardy.

"I told them that the plan was for them to come and have a bit of
breakfast at my house and then drive home.

"'I'd love a bath,' said Mrs. Hardy.

"'You shall have one,' I said.

"She was really an extremely pretty little thing, very fair, with
enormous blue eyes and a lovely little straight nose. Her skin, all milk
and roses, was exquisite. A little of the chorus girl type, of course,
and you may happen to think that rather namby-pamby, but in that style
she was enchanting. We drove to my house, they both had a bath and Tim a
shave; I just had two minutes alone with him. He asked me how Olive had
taken his marriage. I told him she'd been upset.

"'I was afraid so,' he said, frowning a little. He gave a short sigh. 'I
couldn't do anything else.'

"I didn't understand what he meant. At that moment Mrs. Hardy joined us
and slipped her arm through her husband's. He took her hand in his and
gently pressed it. He gave her a look that had in it something pleased
and humorously affectionate, as though he didn't take her quite
seriously, but enjoyed his sense of proprietorship and was proud of her
beauty. She really was lovely. She was not at all shy, she asked me to
call her Sally before we'd known one another ten minutes, and she was
quick in the uptake. Of course, just then she was excited at arriving.
She'd never been East and everything thrilled her. It was quite obvious
that she was head over heels in love with Tim. Her eyes never left him
and she hung on his words. We had a jolly breakfast and then we parted.
They got into their car to go home and I into mine to go to Lahad. I
promised to go straight to the estate from there and in point of fact it
was out of my way to pass by my house. I took a change with me. I didn't
see why Olive shouldn't like Sally very much, she was frank and gay, and
ingenuous; she was extremely young, she couldn't have been more than
nineteen, and her wonderful prettiness couldn't fail to appeal to Olive.
I was just as glad to have had a reasonable excuse to leave the three of
them by themselves for the day, but as I started out from Lahad I had a
notion that by the time I arrived they would all be pleased to see me. I
drove up to the bungalow and blew my horn two or three times, expecting
someone to appear. Not a soul. The place was in total darkness. I was
surprised. It was absolutely silent. I couldn't make it out. They must
be in. Very odd, I thought. I waited a moment, then got out of the car
and walked up the steps. At the top of them I stumbled over something. I
swore and bent down to see what it was; it had felt like a body. There
was a cry and I saw it was the amah. She shrank back cowering as I
touched her and broke into loud wails.

"'What the hell's the matter?' I cried, and then I felt a hand on my arm
and heard a voice: Tuan, Tuan. I turned and in the darkness recognised
Tim's head boy. He began to speak in little frightened gasps. I listened
to him with horror. What he told me was unspeakable. I pushed him aside
and rushed into the house. The sitting-room was dark. I turned on the
light. The first thing I saw was Sally huddled up in an arm-chair. She
was startled by my sudden appearance and cried out. I could hardly
speak. I asked her if it was true. When she told me it was I felt the
room suddenly going round and round me. I had to sit down. As the car
that bore Tim and Sally drove up the road that led to the house and Tim
sounded the claxon to announce their arrival and the boys and the amah
ran out to greet them there was the sound of a shot. They ran to Olive's
room and found her lying in front of the looking-glass in a pool of
blood. She had shot herself with Tim's revolver.

"'Is she dead?' I said.

"'No, they sent for the doctor, and he took her to the hospital.'

"I hardly knew what I was doing. I didn't even trouble to tell Sally
where I was going. I got up and staggered to the door. I got into the
car and told my seis to drive like hell to the hospital. I rushed in. I
asked where she was. They tried to bar my way, but I pushed them aside.
I knew where the private rooms were. Someone clung to my arm, but I
shook him off. I vaguely understood that the doctor had given
instructions that no one was to go into the room. I didn't care about
that. There was an orderly at the door; he put out his arm to prevent me
from passing. I swore at him and told him to get out of my way. I
suppose I made a row, I was beside myself; the door was opened and the
doctor came out.

"'Who's making all this noise?' he said. 'Oh, it's you. What do you
want?'

"'Is she dead?' I asked.

"'No. But she's unconscious. She never regained consciousness. It's only
a matter of an hour or two.'

"'I want to see her.'

"'You can't.'

"'I'm engaged to her.'

"'You?' he cried, and even at that moment I was aware that he looked at
me strangely. 'That's all the more reason.'

"I didn't know what he meant. I was stupid with horror.

"'Surely you can do something to save her,' I cried.

"He shook his head.

"'If you saw her you wouldn't wish it,' he said.

"I stared at him aghast. In the silence I heard a man's convulsive
sobbing.

"'Who's that?' I asked.

"'Her brother.'

"Then I felt a hand on my arm. I looked round and saw it was Mrs.
Sergison.

"'My poor boy,' she said, 'I'm so sorry for you.'

"'What on earth made her do it?' I groaned.

"'Come away, my dear,' said Mrs. Sergison. 'You can do no good here.'

"'No, I must stay,' I said.

"'Well, go and sit in my room,' said the doctor.

"I was so broken that I let Mrs. Sergison take me by the arm and lead me
into the doctor's private room. She made me sit down. I couldn't bring
myself to realise that it was true. I thought it was a horrible
nightmare from which I must awake. I don't know how long we sat there.
Three hours. Four hours. At last the doctor came in.

"'It's all over,' he said.

"Then I couldn't help myself, I began to cry. I didn't care what they
thought of me. I was so frightfully unhappy.

"We buried her next day.

"Mrs. Sergison came back to my house and sat with me for a while. She
wanted me to go to the club with her. I hadn't the heart. She was very
kind, but I was glad when she left me by myself. I tried to read, but
the words meant nothing to me. I felt dead inside. My boy came in and
turned on the lights. My head was aching like mad. Then he came back and
said that a lady wished to see me. I asked who it was. He wasn't quite
sure, but he thought it must be the new wife of the tuan at Putatan. I
couldn't imagine what she wanted. I got up and went to the door. He was
right. It was Sally. I asked her to come in. I noticed that she was
deathly white. I felt sorry for her. It was a frightful experience for a
girl of that age and for a bride a miserable homecoming. She sat down.
She was very nervous. I tried to put her at her ease by saying
conventional things. She made me very uncomfortable because she stared
at me with those enormous blue eyes of hers, and they were simply
ghastly with horror. She interrupted me suddenly.

"'You're the only person here I know,' she said. 'I had to come to you.
I want you to get me away from here.'

"I was dumbfounded.

"'What _do_ you mean?' I said.

"'I don't want you to ask me any questions. I just want you to get me
away. At once. I want to go back to England!'

"'But you can't leave Tim like that just now,' I said. 'My dear, you
must pull yourself together. I know it's been awful for you. But think
of Tim. I mean, he'll be miserable. If you have any love for him the
least you can do is to try and make him a little less unhappy.'

"'Oh, you don't know,' she cried. 'I can't tell you. It's too horrible.
I beseech you to help me. If there's a train to-night let me get on it.
If I can only get to Penang I can get a ship. I can't stay in this place
another night. I shall go mad.'

"I was absolutely bewildered.

"'Does Tim know?' I asked her.

"'I haven't seen Tim since last night. I'll never see him again. I'd
rather die.'

"I wanted to gain a little time.

"'But how can you go without your things? Have you got any luggage?'

"'What does that matter?' she cried impatiently. 'I've got what I want
for the journey.'

"'Have you any money?'

"'Enough. Is there a train to-night?'

"'Yes,' I said. 'It's due just after midnight.'

"'Thank God. Will you arrange everything? Can I stay here till then?'

"'You're putting me in a frightful position,' I said. 'I don't know what
to do for the best. You know, it's an awfully serious step you're
taking.'

"'If you knew everything you'd know it was the only possible thing to
do.'

"'It'll create an awful scandal here. I don't know what people'll say.
Have you thought of the effect on Tim?' I was worried and unhappy. 'God
knows I don't want to interfere in what isn't my business. But if you
want me to help you I ought to know enough to feel justified in doing
so. You must tell me what's happened.'

"'I can't. I can only tell you that I know everything.'

"She hid her face with her hands and shuddered. Then she gave herself a
shake as though she were recoiling from some frightful sight.

"'He had no right to marry me. It was monstrous.'

"And as she spoke her voice rose shrill and piercing. I was afraid she
was going to have an attack of hysterics. Her pretty doll-like face was
terrified and her eyes stared as though she could never close them
again.

"'Don't you love him any more?' I asked.

"'After that?'

"'What will you do if I refuse to help you?' I said.

"'I suppose there's a clergyman here or a doctor. You can't refuse to
take me to one of them.'

"'How did you get here?'

"'The head boy drove me. He got a car from somewhere.'

"'Does Tim know you've gone?'

"'I left a letter for him.'

"'He'll know you're here.'

"'He won't try to stop me. I promise you that. He daren't. For God's
sake don't you try either. I tell you I shall go mad if I stay here
another night.'

"I sighed. After all she was of an age to decide for herself."

I, the writer of this, hadn't spoken for a long time.

"Did you know what she meant?" I asked Featherstone.

He gave me a long, haggard look.

"There was only one thing she could mean. It was unspeakable. Yes, I
knew all right. It explained everything. Poor Olive. Poor sweet. I
suppose it was unreasonable of me, at that moment I only felt a horror
of that little pretty fair-haired thing with her terrified eyes. I hated
her. I didn't say anything for a while. Then I told her I'd do as she
wished. She didn't even say thank you. I think she knew what I felt
about her. When it was dinner-time I made her eat something and then she
asked me if there was a room she could go and lie down in till it was
time to go to the station. I showed her into my spare room and left her.
I sat in the sitting-room and waited. My God, I don't think the time has
ever passed so slowly for me. I thought twelve would never strike. I
rang up the station and was told the train wouldn't be in till nearly
two. At midnight she came back to the sitting-room and we sat there for
an hour and a half. We had nothing to say to one another and we didn't
speak. Then I took her to the station and put her on the train."

"Was there an awful scandal?"

Featherstone frowned.

"I don't know. I applied for short leave. After that I was moved to
another post. I heard that Tim had sold his estate and bought another.
But I didn't know where. It was a shock to me at first when I found him
here."

Featherstone, getting up, went over to a table and mixed himself a
whisky and soda. In the silence that fell now I heard the monotonous
chorus of the croaking frogs. And suddenly the bird that is known as the
fever-bird, perched in a tree close to the house, began to call. First,
three notes in a descending, chromatic scale, then five, then four. The
varying notes of the scale succeeded one another with maddening
persistence. One was compelled to listen and to count them, and because
one did not know how many there would be it tortured one's nerves.

"Blast that bird," said Featherstone. "That means no sleep for me
to-night."




FRENCH JOE


It was Captain Bartlett who told me of him. I do not think that many
people have been to Thursday Island. It is in the Torres Straits and is
so called because it was discovered on a Thursday by Captain Cook. I
went there since they told me in Sydney that it was the last place God
ever made. They said there was nothing to see and warned me that I
should probably get my throat cut. I had come up from Sydney in a
Japanese tramp and they put me ashore in a small boat. It was the middle
of the night and there was not a soul on the jetty. One of the sailors
who landed my kit told me that if I turned to the left I should
presently come to a two-storey building and this was the hotel. The boat
pushed off and I was left alone. I do not much like being separated from
my luggage, but I like still less to pass the night on a jetty and sleep
on hard stones; so I shouldered a bag and set out. It was pitch dark. I
seemed to walk much more than a few hundred yards which they had spoken
of and was afraid I had missed my way, but at last saw dimly a building
which seemed to be important enough to suggest that it might be the
hotel. No light showed, but my eyes by now were pretty well accustomed
to the darkness and I found a door. I struck a match, but could see no
bell. I knocked; there was no reply; I knocked again, with my stick, as
loudly as I could, then a window above me was opened and a woman's voice
asked me what I wanted.

"I've just got off the _Shika Maru_," I said. "Can I have a room?"

"I'll come down."

I waited a little longer, and the door was opened by a woman in a red
flannel dressing-gown. Her hair was hanging over her shoulders in long
black wisps. In her hand she held a paraffin lamp. She greeted me
warmly, a little stoutish woman, with keen eyes and a nose suspiciously
red, and bade me come in. She took me upstairs and showed me a room.

"Now you sit down," she said, "and I'll make up the bed before you can
say Jack Robinson. What will you 'ave? A drop of whisky would do you
good, I should think. You won't want to be washing at this time of
night, I'll bring you a towel in the morning."

And while she made the bed she asked me who I was and what I had come to
Thursday Island for. She could see I wasn't a sea-faring man--all the
pilots came to this hotel and had done for twenty years--and she didn't
know what business could have brought me. I wasn't that fellow as was
coming to inspect the Customs, was I? She'd 'eard they were sending
someone from Sydney. I asked her if there were any pilots staying there
then. Yes, there was one, Captain Bartlett, did I know him? A queer fish
he was and no mistake. Hadn't got a hair on his head, but the way he
could put his liquor away, well, it was a caution. There, the bed was
ready and she expected I'd sleep like a top and one thing she could say
was, the sheets were clean. She lit the end of a candle and bade me
good-night.

Captain Bartlett certainly was a queer fish, but he is of no moment to
my present purpose; I made his acquaintance at dinner next day--before I
left Thursday Island I had eaten turtle soup so often that I have ceased
to look upon it as a luxury--and it was because in the course of
conversation I mentioned that I spoke French that he asked me to go and
see French Joe.

"It'll be a treat to the old fellow to talk his own lingo for a bit.
He's ninety-three, you know."

For the last two years, not because he was ill but because he was old
and destitute, he had lived in the hospital and it was here that I
visited him. He was lying in bed, in flannel pyjamas much too large for
him, a little shrivelled old man with vivacious eyes, a short white
beard and bushy black eyebrows. He was glad to speak French with me,
which he spoke with the marked accent of his native isle, for he was a
Corsican, but he had dwelt so many years among English-speaking people
that he no longer spoke his mother tongue with accuracy. He used English
words as though they were French, making verbs of them with French
terminations. He talked very quickly, with broad gestures, and his voice
for the most part was clear and strong; but now and then it seemed
suddenly to fade away so that it sounded as though he spoke from the
grave. The hushed and hollow sound gave me an eerie feeling. Indeed I
could not look upon him still as of this world. His real name was Joseph
de Paoli. He was a nobleman and a gentleman. He was of the same family
as the general we have all read of in Boswell's Johnson, but he showed
no interest in his famous ancestor.

"We have had so many generals in our family," he said. "You know, of
course, that Napoleon Bonaparte was a connection of mine. No, I have
never read Boswell. I have not read books. I have lived."

He had entered the French army in 1851. Seventy-five years ago. It is
terrifying. As a lieutenant of artillery ("like my cousin Bonaparte," he
said) he had fought the Russians in the Crimea and as a captain the
Prussians in 1870. He showed me a scar on his bald pate from an Uhlan's
lance and then with a dramatic gesture told how he had thrust his sword
in the Uhlan's body with such violence that he could not withdraw it.
The Uhlan fell dead and the sword remained in the body. But the Empire
perished and he joined the communists. For six weeks he fought against
the government troops under Monsieur Thiers. To me Thiers is but a
shadowy figure, and it was startling and even a trifle comic to hear
French Joe speak with passionate hatred of a man who has been dead for
half a century. His voice rose into a shrill scream as he repeated the
insults, Oriental in their imagery, which in the council he had flung at
the head of this mediocre statesman. French Joe was tried and sentenced
to five years in New Caledonia.

"They should have shot me," he said, "but, dirty cowards, they dared
not."

Then came the long journey in a sailing vessel, and the antipodes, and
his wrath flamed out again when he spoke of the indignity thrust upon
him, a political prisoner, when they herded him with vulgar criminals.
The ship put in at Melbourne and one of the officers, a fellow-Corsican,
enabled him to slip over the side. He swam ashore and, taking his
friend's advice, went straight to the police-station. No one there could
understand a word he said, but an interpreter was sent for, his dripping
papers were examined and he was told that so long as he did not set foot
on a French ship he was safe.

"Freedom," he cried to me. "Freedom."

Then came a long series of adventures. He cooked, taught French, swept
streets, worked in the gold mines, tramped, starved, and at last found
his way to New Guinea. Here he underwent the most astonishing of his
experiences, for drifting into the savage interior, and they are
cannibals there still, after a hundred desperate adventures and
hair-breadth escapes he made himself king of some wild tribe.

"Look at me, my friend," he said, "I who lie here on a hospital bed, the
object of charity, have been monarch of all I surveyed. Yes, it is
something to say that I have been a king."

But eventually he came into collision with the British and his
sovereignty passed from him. He fled the country and started life once
more. It is clear that he was a fellow of resource for eventually he
came to own a fleet of pearling luggers on Thursday Island. It looked as
though at last he had reached a haven of peace and, an elderly man now,
he looked forward to a prosperous and even respectable old age. A
hurricane destroyed his boats and ruin fell upon him. He never
recovered. He was too old to make a fresh start, and since then had
earned as best he could a precarious livelihood till at last, beaten, he
had accepted the hospital's kindly shelter.

"But why did you not go back to France or Corsica? An amnesty was
granted to the communists a quarter of a century ago."

"What are France and Corsica to me after fifty years? A cousin of mine
seized my land. We Corsicans never forget and never forgive. If I had
gone back I should have had to kill him. He had his children."

"Funny old French Joe," smiled the hospital nurse who stood at the end
of the bed.

"At all events you have had a fine life," I said.

"Never. Never. I have had a frightful life. Misfortune has followed me
wherever I turned my steps and look at me now: I am rotten, fit for
nothing but the grave. I thank God that I had no children to inherit the
curse that is upon me."

"Why, Joe, I thought you didn't believe in God," said the nurse.

"It is true. I am a sceptic. I have never seen a sign that there is in
the scheme of things an intelligent purpose. If the universe is the
contrivance of some being, that being can only be a criminal imbecile."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Anyhow, I have not got much longer in this
filthy world and then I shall go and see for myself what is the real
truth of the whole business."

The nurse told me it was time to leave the old man and I took his hand
to bid him farewell. I asked him if there was anything I could do for
him.

"I want nothing," he said. "I only want to die." His black shining eyes
twinkled. "But meanwhile I should be grateful for a packet of
cigarettes."




GERMAN HARRY


I was in Thursday Island and I wanted very much to go to New Guinea. Now
the only way in which I could do this was by getting a pearling lugger
to take me across the Arafura Sea. The pearl fishery at that time was in
a bad way and a flock of neat little craft lay anchored in the harbour.
I found a skipper with nothing much to do (the journey to Merauke and
back could hardly take him less than a month) and with him I made the
necessary arrangements. He engaged four Torres Straits islanders as crew
(the boat was but nineteen tons) and we ransacked the local store for
canned goods. A day or two before I sailed a man who owned a number of
pearlers came to me and asked whether on my way I would stop at the
island of Trebucket and leave a sack of flour, another of rice, and some
magazines for the hermit who lived there.

I pricked up my ears. It appeared that the hermit had lived by himself
on this remote and tiny island for thirty years, and when opportunity
occurred provisions were sent to him by kindly souls. He said that he
was a Dane, but in the Torres Straits he was known as German Harry. His
history went back a long way. Thirty years before, he had been an able
seaman on a sailing vessel that was wrecked in those treacherous waters.
Two boats managed to get away and eventually hit upon the desert island
of Trebucket. This is well out of the line of traffic and it was three
years before any ship sighted the castaways. Sixteen men had landed on
the island, but when at last a schooner, driven from her course by
stress of weather, put in for shelter, no more than five were left. When
the storm abated the skipper took four of these on board and eventually
landed them at Sydney. German Harry refused to go with them. He said
that during those three years he had seen such terrible things that he
had a horror of his fellow-men and wished never to live with them again.
He would say no more. He was absolutely fixed in his determination to
stay, entirely by himself, in that lonely place. Though now and then
opportunity had been given him to leave he had never taken it.

A strange man and a strange story. I learned more about him as we sailed
across the desolate sea. The Torres Straits are peppered with islands
and at night we anchored on the lee of one or other of them. Of late new
pearling grounds have been discovered near Trebucket and in the autumn
pearlers, visiting it now and then, have given German Harry various
necessities so that he has been able to make himself sufficiently
comfortable. They bring him papers, bags of flour and rice, and canned
meats. He has a whale boat and used to go fishing in it, but now he is
no longer strong enough to manage its unwieldy bulk. There is abundant
pearl shell on the reef that surrounds his island and this he used to
collect and sell to the pearlers for tobacco, and sometimes he found a
good pearl for which he got a considerable sum. It is believed that he
has, hidden away somewhere, a collection of magnificent pearls. During
the war no pearlers came out and for years he never saw a living soul.
For all he knew, a terrible epidemic had killed off the entire human
race and he was the only man alive. He was asked later what he thought.

"I thought something had happened," he said.

He ran out of matches and was afraid that his fire would go out, so he
only slept in snatches, putting wood on his fire from time to time all
day and all night. He came to the end of his provisions and lived on
chickens, fish and coconuts. Sometimes he got a turtle.

During the last four months of the year there may be two or three
pearlers about and not infrequently after the day's work they will row
in and spend an evening with him. They try to make him drunk and then
they ask him what happened during those three years after the two
boat-loads came to the island. How was it that sixteen landed and at the
end of that time only five were left? He never says a word. Drunk or
sober he is equally silent on that subject and if they insist grows
angry and leaves them.

I forget if it was four or five days before we sighted the hermit's
little kingdom. We had been driven by bad weather to take shelter and
had spent a couple of days at an island on the way. Trebucket is a low
island, perhaps a mile round, covered with coconuts, just raised above
the level of the sea and surrounded by a reef so that it can be
approached only on one side. There is no opening in the reef and the
lugger had to anchor a mile from the shore. We got into a dinghy with
the provisions. It was a stiff pull and even within the reef the sea was
choppy. I saw the little hut, sheltered by trees, in which German Harry
lived, and as we approached he sauntered down slowly to the water's
edge. We shouted a greeting, but he did not answer. He was a man of over
seventy, very bald, hatchet-faced, with a grey beard, and he walked with
a roll so that you could never have taken him for anything but a
sea-faring man. His sunburn made his blue eyes look very pale and they
were surrounded by wrinkles as though for long years he had spent
interminable hours scanning the vacant sea. He wore dungarees and a
singlet, patched, but neat and clean. The house to which he presently
led us consisted of a single room with a roof of corrugated iron. There
was a bed in it, some rough stools which he himself had made, a table,
and his various household utensils. Under a tree in front of it was a
table and a bench. Behind was an enclosed run for his chickens.

I cannot say that he was pleased to see us. He accepted our gifts as a
right, without thanks, and grumbled a little because something or other
he needed had not been brought. He was silent and morose. He was not
interested in the news we had to give him, for the outside world was no
concern of his: the only thing he cared about was his island. He looked
upon it with a jealous, proprietary right; he called it "my health
resort" and he feared that the coconuts that covered it would tempt some
enterprising trader. He looked at me with suspicion. He was sombrely
curious to know what I was doing in these seas. He used words with
difficulty, talking to himself rather than to us, and it was a little
uncanny to hear him mumble away as though we were not there. But he was
moved when my skipper told him that an old man of his own age whom he
had known for a long time was dead.

"Old Charlie dead--that's too bad. Old Charlie dead."

He repeated it over and over again. I asked him if he read.

"Not much," he answered indifferently.

He seemed to be occupied with nothing but his food, his dogs and his
chickens. If what they tell us in books were true his long communion
with nature and the sea should have taught him many subtle secrets. It
hadn't. He was a savage. He was nothing but a narrow, ignorant and
cantankerous sea-faring man. As I looked at the wrinkled, mean old face
I wondered what was the story of those three dreadful years that had
made him welcome this long imprisonment. I sought to see behind those
pale blue eyes of his what secrets they were that he would carry to his
grave. And then I foresaw the end. One day a pearl fisher would land on
the island and German Harry would not be waiting for him, silent and
suspicious, at the water's edge. He would go up to the hut and there,
lying on the bed, unrecognisable, he would see all that remained of what
had once been a man. Perhaps then he would hunt high and low for the
great mass of pearls that has haunted the fancy of so many adventurers.
But I do not believe he would find it: German Harry would have seen to
it that none should discover the treasure, and the pearls would rot in
their hiding place. Then the pearl fisher would go back into his dinghy
and the island once more be deserted of man.




THE FOUR DUTCHMEN


The Van Dorth Hotel at Singapore was far from grand. The bedrooms were
dingy and the mosquito nets patched and darned; the bath-houses, all in
a row and detached from the bedrooms, were dank and smelly. But it had
character. The people who stayed there, masters of tramps whose round
ended at Singapore, mining engineers out of a job and planters taking a
holiday, to my mind bore a more romantic air than the smart folk,
globe-trotters, government officials and their wives, wealthy merchants,
who gave luncheon-parties at the Europe and played golf and danced and
were fashionable. The Van Dorth had a billiard-room, with a table with a
threadbare cloth, where ships' engineers and clerks in insurance offices
played snooker. The dining-room was large and bare and silent. Dutch
families on the way to Sumatra ate solidly through their dinner without
exchanging a word with one another, and single gentlemen on a business
trip from Batavia devoured a copious meal while they intently read their
paper. On two days a week there was rijstafel and then a few residents
of Singapore who had a fancy for this dish came for tiffin. The Van
Dorth Hotel should have been a depressing place, but somehow it wasn't;
its quaintness saved it. It had a faint aroma of something strange and
half-forgotten. There was a scrap of garden facing the street where you
could sit in the shade of trees and drink cold beer. In that crowded and
busy city, though motors whizzed past and rickshaws passed continuously,
the coolies' feet pattering on the road and their bells ringing, it had
the remote peacefulness of a corner of Holland. It was the third time I
had stayed at the Van Dorth. I had been told about it first by the
skipper of a Dutch tramp, the S.S. _Utrecht_, on which I had travelled
from Merauke in New Guinea to Macassar. The journey took the best part
of a month, since the ship stopped at a number of islands in the Malay
Archipelago, the Aru and the Kei Islands, Banda-Neira, Amboina and
others of which I have even forgotten the names, sometimes for an hour
or two, sometimes for a day, to take on or discharge cargo. It was a
charming, monotonous and diverting trip. When we dropped anchor the
agent came out in his launch, and generally the Dutch Resident, and we
gathered on deck under the awning and the captain ordered beer. The news
of the island was exchanged for the news of the world. We brought papers
and mail. If we were staying long enough the Resident asked us to dinner
and, leaving the ship in charge of the second officer, we all (the
captain, the chief officer, the engineer, the supercargo and I) piled
into the launch and went ashore. We spent a merry evening. These little
islands, one so like another, allured my fancy just because I knew that
I should never see them again. It made them strangely unreal, and as we
sailed away and they vanished into the sea and sky it was only by an
effort of the imagination that I could persuade myself that they did not
with my last glimpse of them cease to exist.

But there was nothing illusive, mysterious or fantastic about the
captain, the chief officer, the chief engineer and the supercargo. Their
solidity was amazing. They were the four fattest men I ever saw. At
first I had great difficulty in telling them apart, for though one, the
supercargo, was dark and the others were fair, they looked astonishingly
alike. They were all big, with large round bare red faces, with large
fat arms and large fat legs and large fat bellies. When they went ashore
they buttoned up their stengah-shifters and then their great double
chins bulged over the collars and they looked as though they would
choke. But generally they wore them unbuttoned. They sweated freely and
wiped their shiny faces with bandanas and vigorously fanned themselves
with palm-leaf fans.

It was a treat to see them at tiffin. Their appetites were enormous.
They had rijstafel every day, and each seemed to vie with the other how
high he could pile his plate. They loved it hot and strong.

"In dis country you can't eat a ting onless it's tasty," said the
skipper.

"De only way to keep yourself up in dis country is to eat hearty," said
the chief.

They were the greatest friends, all four of them; they were like
schoolboys together, playing absurd little pranks with one another. They
knew each other's jokes by heart and no sooner did one of them start the
familiar lines than he would splutter with laughter so violently, the
heavy shaking laughter of the fat man, that he could not go on, and then
the others began to laugh too. They rolled about in their chairs, and
grew redder and redder, hotter and hotter, till the skipper shouted for
beer, and each, gasping but happy, drank his bottle in one enchanted
draught. They had been on this run together for five years and when, a
little time before, the chief officer had been offered a ship of his own
he refused it. He would not leave his companions. They had made up their
minds that when the first of them retired they would all retire.

"All friends and a good ship. Good grub and good beer. Vot can a
sensible man vant more?"

At first they were a little stand-offish with me. Although the ship had
accommodation for half a dozen passengers, they did not often get any,
and never one whom they did not know. I was a stranger and a foreigner.
They liked their bit of fun and did not want anyone to interfere with
it. But they were all of them very fond of bridge, and on occasion the
chief and the engineer had duties that prevented one or the other from
playing. They were willing to put up with me when they discovered that I
was ready to make a fourth whenever I was wanted. Their bridge was as
incredibly fantastic as they were. They played for infinitesimal stakes,
five cents a hundred: they did not want to win one another's money, they
said, it was the game they liked. But what a game! Each was wildly
determined to play the hand and hardly one was dealt without at least a
small slam being declared. The rule was that if you could get a peep at
somebody else's cards you did and if you could get away with a revoke
you told your partner when there was no danger it could be claimed and
you both roared with laughter till the tears rolled down your fat
cheeks. But if your partner had insisted on taking the bid away from you
and had called a grand slam on five spades to the queen, whereas you
were positive on your seven little diamonds you could have made it
easily, you could always score him off by redoubling without a trick in
your hand. He went down two or three thousand and the glasses on the
table danced with the laughter that shook your opponents.

I could never remember their difficult Dutch names, but knowing them
anonymously as it were, only by the duties they performed, as one knows
the characters Pantaloon, Harlequin and Punchinello, of the old Italian
comedy, added grotesquely to their drollery. The mere sight of them, all
four together, set you laughing, and I think they got a good deal of
amusement from the astonishment they caused in strangers. They boasted
that they were the four most famous Dutchmen in the East Indies. To me
not the least comic part of them was their serious side. Sometimes late
at night, when they had given up all pretence of still wearing their
uniforms, and one or the other of them lay by my side on a long chair in
a pyjama-jacket and a sarong, he would grow sentimental. The chief
engineer, due to retire soon, was meditating marriage with a widow whom
he had met when last he was home and spending the rest of his life in a
little town with old red-brick houses on the shores of the Zuyder Zee.
But the captain was very susceptible to the charms of the native girls
and his thick English became almost unintelligible from emotion when he
described to me the effect they had on him. One of these days he would
buy himself a house on the hills in Java and marry a pretty little
Javanese. They were so small and so gentle and they made no noise, and
he would dress her in silk sarongs and give her gold chains to wear
round her neck and gold bangles to put on her arms. But the chief mocked
him.

"Silly all dat is. Silly. She goes mit all your friends and de
house-boys and everybody. By de time you retire, my dear, vot you'll
vant vill be a nurse, not a vife."

"Me?" cried the skipper. "I shall want a vife ven I'm eighty!"

He had picked up a little thing last time the ship was at Macassar and
as we approached that port he began to be all of a flutter. The chief
officer shrugged fat and indulgent shoulders. The captain was always
losing his head over one brazen hussy after another, but his passion
never survived the interval between one stop at a port and the next, and
then the chief was called in to smooth out the difficulties that ensued.
And so it would be this time.

"De old man suffers from fatty degeneration of de heart. But so long as
I'm dere to look after him not much harm comes of it. He vastes his
money and dat's a pity, but as long as he's got it to vaste, why
shouldn't he?"

The chief officer had a philosophic soul.

At Macassar then I disembarked, and bade farewell to my four fat
friends.

"Make another journey with us," they said. "Come back next year or the
year after. You'll find us all here just the same as ever."

A good many months had passed since then and I had wandered through more
than one strange land. I had been to Bali and Java and Sumatra; I had
been to Cambodia and Annam; and now, feeling as though I were home
again, I sat in the garden of the Van Dorth Hotel. It was cool in the
very early morning and having had breakfast I was looking at back
numbers of the _Straits Times_ to find out what had been happening in
the world since last I had been within reach of papers. Nothing very
much. Suddenly my eyes caught a headline: _The_ Utrecht _Tragedy_.
_Supercargo and Chief Engineer. Not Guilty._ I read the paragraph
carelessly and then I sat up. The _Utrecht_ was the ship of my four fat
Dutchmen and apparently the supercargo and the chief engineer had been
on trial for murder. It couldn't be my two fat friends. The names were
given, but the names meant nothing to me. The trial had taken place in
Batavia. No details were given in this paragraph; it was only a brief
announcement that after the judges had considered the speeches of the
prosecution and of the defence their verdict was as stated. I was
astounded. It was incredible that the men I knew could have committed a
murder. I could not find out who had been murdered. I looked through
back numbers of the paper. Nothing.

I got up and went to the manager of the hotel, a genial Dutchman, who
spoke admirable English, and showed him the paragraph.

"That's the ship I sailed on. I was in her for nearly a month. Surely
these fellows aren't the men I knew. The men I knew were enormously
fat."

"Yes, that's right," he answered. "They were celebrated all through the
Dutch East Indies, the four fattest men in the service. It's been a
terrible thing. It made a great sensation. And they were friends. I knew
them all. The best fellows in the world."

"But what happened?"

He told me the story and answered my horrified questions. But there were
things I wanted to know that he couldn't tell me. It was all confused.
It was unbelievable. What actually had happened was only conjecture.
Then someone claimed the manager's attention and I went back to the
garden. It was getting hot now and I went up to my room. I was strangely
shattered.

It appeared that on one of the trips the captain took with him a Malay
girl that he had been carrying on with and I wondered if it was the one
he had been so eager to see when I was on board. The other three had
been against her coming--what did they want with a woman in the ship? it
would spoil everything--but the captain insisted and she came. I think
they were all jealous of her. On that journey they didn't have the fun
they generally had. When they wanted to play bridge the skipper was
dallying with the girl in his cabin; when they touched at a port and
went ashore the time seemed long to him till he could get back to her.
He was crazy about her. It was the end of all their larks. The chief
officer was more bitter against her than anybody: he was the captain's
particular chum, they had been shipmates ever since they first came out
from Holland; more than once high words passed between them on the
subject of the captain's infatuation. Presently those old friends spoke
to one another only when their duties demanded it. It was the end of the
good fellowship that had so long obtained between the four fat men.
Things went from bad to worse. There was a feeling among the junior
officers that something untoward was pending. Uneasiness. Tension. Then
one night the ship was aroused by the sound of a shot and the screams of
the Malay girl. The supercargo and the chief engineer tumbled out of
their bunks and they found the captain, a revolver in his hand, at the
door of the chief officer's cabin. He pushed past them and went on deck.
They entered and found the chief officer dead and the girl cowering
behind the door. The captain had found them in bed together and had
killed the chief. How he had discovered what was going on didn't seem to
be known, nor what was the meaning of the intrigue. Had the chief
induced the girl to come to his cabin in order to get back on the
captain, or had she, knowing his ill-will and anxious to placate him,
lured him to become her lover? It was a mystery that would never be
solved. A dozen possible explanations flashed across my mind. While the
engineer and the supercargo were in the cabin, horror-struck at the
sight before them, another shot was heard. They knew at once what had
happened. They rushed up the companion. The captain had gone to his
cabin and blown his brains out. Then the story grew dark and enigmatic.
Next morning the Malay girl was nowhere to be found and when the second
officer, who had taken command of the ship, reported this to the
supercargo, the supercargo said: "She's probably jumped overboard. It's
the best thing she could have done. Good riddance to bad rubbish." But
one of the sailors on the watch, just before dawn, had seen the
supercargo and the chief engineer carry something up on deck, a bulky
package, about the size of a native woman, look about them to see that
they were unobserved, and drop it overboard; and it was said all over
the ship that these two to avenge their friends had sought the girl out
in her cabin and strangled her and flung her body into the sea. When the
ship arrived at Macassar they were arrested and taken to Batavia to be
tried for murder. The evidence was flimsy and they were acquitted. But
all through the East Indies they knew that the supercargo and the chief
engineer had executed justice on the trollop who had caused the death of
the two men they loved.

And thus ended the comic and celebrated friendship of the four fat
Dutchmen.




THE BACK OF BEYOND


George Moon was sitting in his office. His work was finished, and he
lingered there because he hadn't the heart to go down to the club. It
was getting on towards tiffin time, and there would be a good many
fellows hanging about the bar. Two or three of them would offer him a
drink. He could not face their heartiness. Some he had known for thirty
years. They had bored him, and on the whole he disliked them, but now
that he was seeing them for the last time it gave him a pang. To-night
they were giving him a farewell dinner. Everyone would be there and they
were presenting him with a silver tea-service that he did not in the
least want. They would make speeches in which they would refer
eulogistically to his work in the colony, express their regret at his
departure and wish him long life to enjoy his well-earned leisure. He
would reply suitably. He had prepared a speech in which he surveyed the
changes that had taken place in the F.M.S. since first, a raw cadet, he
had landed at Singapore. He would thank them for their loyal
co-operation with him during the term which it had been his privilege to
serve as Resident at Timbang Belud, and draw a glowing picture of the
future that awaited the country as a whole and Timbang Belud in
particular. He would remind them that he had known it as a
poverty-stricken village with a few Chinese shops and left it now a
prosperous town with paved streets down which ran trams, with stone
houses, a rich Chinese settlement and a club-house second in splendour
only to that of Singapore. They would sing "For he's a jolly good
fellow" and "Auld Lang Syne". Then they would dance and a good many of
the younger men would get drunk. The Malays had already given him a
farewell party and the Chinese an interminable feast. To-morrow a vast
concourse would see him off at the station and that would be the end of
him. He wondered what they would say of him. The Malays and the Chinese
would say that he had been stern, but acknowledge that he had been just.
The planters had not liked him. They thought him hard because he would
not let them ride roughshod over their labour. His subordinates had
feared him. He drove them. He had no patience with slackness or
inefficiency. He had never spared himself and saw no reason why he
should spare others. They thought him inhuman. It was true that there
was nothing come-hither in him. He could not throw off his official
position when he went to the club and laugh at bawdy stories, chaff and
be chaffed. He was conscious that his arrival cast a gloom, and to play
bridge with him (he liked to play every day from six to eight) was
looked upon as a privilege rather than an entertainment. When at some
other table a young man's four as the evening wore on grew hilarious, he
caught glances thrown in his direction and sometimes an older member
would stroll up to the noisy ones and in an undertone advise them to be
quiet. George Moon sighed a little. From an official standpoint his
career had been a success, he had been the youngest Resident ever
appointed in the F.M.S., and for exceptional services a C.M.G. had been
conferred upon him; but from the human it had perhaps been otherwise. He
had earned respect, respect for his ability, industry and
trustworthiness, but he was too clear-sighted to think for a moment that
he had inspired affection. No one would regret him. In a few months he
would be forgotten.

He smiled grimly. He was not sentimental. He had enjoyed his authority,
and it gave him an austere satisfaction to know that he had kept
everyone up to the mark. It did not displease him to think that he had
been feared rather than loved. He saw his life as a problem in higher
mathematics, the working-out of which had required intense application
of all his powers, but of which the result had not the least practical
consequence. Its interest lay in its intricacy and its beauty in its
solution. But like pure beauty it led nowhither. His future was blank.
He was fifty-five, and full of energy, and to himself his mind seemed as
alert as ever, his experience of men and affairs was wide: all that
remained to him was to settle down in a country town in England or in a
cheap part of the Riviera and play bridge with elderly ladies and golf
with retired colonels. He had met, when on leave, old chiefs of his, and
had observed with what difficulty they adapted themselves to the change
in their circumstances. They had looked forward to the freedom that
would be theirs when they retired and had pictured the charming uses to
which they would put their leisure. Mirage. It was not very pleasant to
be obscure after having dwelt in a spacious Residency, to make do with a
couple of maids when you had been accustomed to the service of half a
dozen Chinese boys and, above all, it was not pleasant to realise that
you did not matter a row of beans to anyone when you had grown used to
the delicate flattery of knowing that a word of praise could delight and
a frown humiliate all sorts and conditions of men.

George Moon stretched out his hand and helped himself to a cigarette
from the box on his desk. As he did so he noticed all the little lines
on the back of his hand and the thinness of his shrivelled fingers. He
frowned with distaste. It was the hand of an old man. There was in his
office a Chinese mirror-picture that he had bought long ago and that he
was leaving behind. He got up and looked at himself in it. He saw a thin
yellow face, wrinkled and tight-lipped, thin grey hair and grey tired
eyes. He was tallish, very spare, with narrow shoulders, and he held
himself erect. He had always played polo and even now could beat most of
the younger men at tennis. When you talked to him he kept his eyes fixed
on your face, listening attentively, but his expression did not change,
and you had no notion what effect your words had on him. Perhaps he did
not realise how disconcerting this was. He seldom smiled.

An orderly came in with a name written on a chit. George Moon looked at
it and told him to show the visitor in. He sat down once more in his
chair and looked with his cold eyes at the door through which in a
moment the visitor would come. It was Tom Saffary, and he wondered what
he wanted. Presumably something to do with the festivity that night. It
had amused him to hear that Tom Saffary was the head of the committee
that had organised it, for their relations during the last year had been
far from cordial. Saffary was a planter and one of his Tamil overseers
had lodged a complaint against him for assault. The Tamil had been
grossly insolent to him and Saffary had given him a thrashing. George
Moon realised that the provocation was great, but he had always set his
face against the planters taking the law in their own hands, and when
the case was tried he sentenced Saffary to a fine. But when the court
rose, to show that there was no ill-feeling he asked Saffary to
luncheon: Saffary, resentful of what he thought an unmerited affront,
curtly refused and since then had declined to have any social relations
with the Resident. He answered when George Moon, casually, but resolved
not to be affronted, spoke to him; but would neither play bridge nor
tennis with him. He was manager of the largest rubber estate in the
district, and George Moon asked himself sardonically whether he had
arranged the dinner and collected subscriptions for the presentation
because he thought his dignity required it or whether, now that his
Resident was leaving, it appealed to his sentimentality to make a noble
gesture. It tickled George Moon's frigid sense of humour to think that
it would fall to Tom Saffary to make the principal speech of the
evening, in which he would enlarge upon the departing Resident's
admirable qualities and voice the community's regret at their
irreparable loss.

Tom Saffary was ushered in. The Resident rose from his chair, shook
hands with him and thinly smiled.

"How do you do? Sit down. Won't you have a cigarette?"

"How do you do?"

Saffary took the chair to which the Resident motioned him, and the
Resident waited for him to state his business. He had a notion that his
visitor was embarrassed. He was a big, burly, stout fellow, with a red
face and a double chin, curly black hair and blue eyes. He was a fine
figure of a man, strong as a horse, but it was plain that he did himself
too well. He drank a good deal and ate too heartily. But he was a good
business man and a hard worker. He ran his estate efficiently. He was
popular in the community. He was generally known as a good chap. He was
free with his money and ready to lend a helping hand to anyone in
distress. It occurred to the Resident that Saffary had come in order
before the dinner to compose the difference between them. The emotion
that might have occasioned such a desire excited in the Resident's
sensibility a very faint, good-humoured contempt. He had no enemies
because individuals did not mean enough to him for him to hate any of
them, but if he had, he thought, he would have hated them to the end.

"I dare say you're a bit surprised to see me here this morning, and I
expect, as it's your last day and all that, you're pretty busy."

George Moon did not answer, and the other went on.

"I've come on rather an awkward business. The fact is that my wife and I
won't be able to come to the dinner to-night, and after that
unpleasantness we had together last year I thought it only right to come
and tell you that it has nothing to do with that. I think you treated me
very harshly; it's not the money I minded, it was the indignity, but
bygones are bygones. Now that you're leaving I don't want you to think
that I bear any more ill-feeling towards you."

"I realised that when I heard that you were chiefly responsible for the
send-off you're giving me," answered the Resident civilly. "I'm sorry
that you won't be able to come to-night."

"I'm sorry, too. It's on account of Knobby Clarke's death." Saffary
hesitated for a moment. "My wife and I were very much upset by it."

"It was very sad. He was a great friend of yours, wasn't he?"

"He was the greatest friend I had in the colony."

Tears shone in Tom Saffary's eyes. Fat men are very emotional, thought
George Moon.

"I quite understand that in that case you should have no heart for what
looks like being a rather uproarious party," he said kindly. "Have you
heard anything of the circumstances?"

"No, nothing but what appeared in the paper."

"He seemed all right when he left here."

"As far as I know he'd never had a day's illness in his life."

"Heart, I suppose. How old was he?"

"Same age as me. Thirty-eight."

"That's young to die."

Knobby Clarke was a planter and the estate he managed was next door to
Saffary's. George Moon had liked him. He was a rather ugly man, sandy,
with high cheek-bones and hollow temples, large pale eyes in deep
sockets and a big mouth. But he had an attractive smile and an easy
manner. He was amusing and could tell a good story. He had a careless
good-humour that people found pleasing. He played games well. He was no
fool. George Moon would have said he was somewhat colourless. In the
course of his career he had known a good many men like him. They came
and went. A fortnight before, he had left for England on leave and the
Resident knew that the Saffarys had given a large dinner-party on his
last night. He was married and his wife of course went with him.

"I'm sorry for her," said George Moon. "It must have been a terrible
blow. He was buried at sea, wasn't he?"

"Yes. That's what it said in the paper."

The news had reached Timbang the night before. The Singapore papers
arrived at six, just as people were getting to the club, and a good many
men waited to play bridge or billiards till they had had a glance at
them. Suddenly one fellow had called out:

"I say, do you see this? Knobby's dead."

"Knobby who? Not Knobby Clarke?"

There was a three-line paragraph in a column of general intelligence.

"_Messrs. Star, Mosley & Co. have received a cable informing them that
Mr. Harold Clarke of Timbang Batu died suddenly on his way home and was
buried at sea._"

A man came up and took the paper from the speaker's hand, and
incredulously read the note for himself. Another peered over his
shoulder. Such as happened to be reading the paper turned to the page in
question and read the three indifferent lines.

"By George," cried one.

"I say, what tough luck," said another.

"He was as fit as a fiddle when he left here."

A shiver of dismay pierced those hearty, jovial, careless men, and each
one for a moment remembered that he too was mortal. Other members came
in and as they entered, braced by the thought of the six o'clock drink,
and eager to meet their friends, they were met by the grim tidings.

"I say, have you heard? Poor Knobby Clarke's dead."

"No? I say, how awful!"

"Rotten luck, isn't it?"

"Rotten."

"Damned good sort."

"One of the best."

"It gave me quite a turn when I saw it in the paper just by chance."

"I don't wonder."

One man with the paper in his hand went into the billiard-room to break
the news. They were playing off the handicap for the Prince of Wales's
Cup. That august personage had presented it to the club on the occasion
of his visit to Timbang Belud. Tom Saffary was playing against a man
called Douglas, and the Resident, who had been beaten in the previous
round, was seated with about a dozen others watching the game. The
marker was monotonously calling out the score. The newcomer waited for
Saffary to finish his break and then called out to him.

"I say, Tom, Knobby's dead."

"Knobby? It's not true."

The other handed him the paper. Three or four gathered round to read
with him.

"Good God!"

There was a moment's awed silence. The paper was passed from hand to
hand. It was odd that none seemed willing to believe till he saw it for
himself in black and white.

"Oh, I am sorry."

"I say, it's awful for his wife," said Tom Saffary. "She was going to
have a baby. My poor missus'll be upset."

"Why, it's only a fortnight since he left here."

"He was all right then."

"In the pink."

Saffary, his fat red face sagging a little, went over to a table and,
seizing his glass, drank deeply.

"Look here, Tom," said his opponent, "would you like to call the game
off?"

"Can't very well do that." Saffary's eye sought the score board and he
saw that he was ahead. "No, let's finish. Then I'll go home and break it
to Violet."

Douglas had his shot and made fourteen. Tom Saffary missed an easy
in-off, but left nothing. Douglas played again, but did not score and
again Saffary missed a shot that ordinarily he could have been sure of.
He frowned a little. He knew his friends had betted on him pretty
heavily and he did not like the idea of failing them. Douglas made
twenty-two. Saffary emptied his glass and by an effort of will that was
quite patent to the sympathetic onlookers settled down to concentrate on
the game. He made a break of eighteen and when he just failed to do a
long Jenny they gave him a round of applause. He was sure of himself now
and began to score quickly. Douglas was playing well too, and the match
grew exciting to watch. The few minutes during which Saffary's attention
wandered had allowed his opponent to catch up with him, and now it was
anybody's game.

"Spot two hundred and thirty-five," called the Malay, in his queer
clipped English. "Plain two hundred and twenty-eight. Spot to play."

Douglas made eight, and then Saffary, who was plain, drew up to two
hundred and forty. He left his opponent a double balk. Douglas hit
neither ball, and so gave Saffary another point.

"Spot two hundred and forty-three," called the marker. "Plain two
hundred and forty-one. Plain to play."

Saffary played three beautiful shots off the red and finished the game.

"A popular victory," the bystanders cried.

"Congratulations, old man," said Douglas.

"Boy," called Saffary, "ask these gentlemen what they'll have. Poor old
Knobby."

He sighed heavily. The drinks were brought and Saffary signed the chit.
Then he said he'd be getting along. Two others had already begun to
play.

"Sporting of him to go on like that," said someone when the door was
closed on Saffary.

"Yes, it shows grit."

"For a while I thought his game had gone all to pieces."

"He pulled himself together in grand style. He knew there were a lot of
bets on him. He didn't want to let his backers down."

"Of course it's a shock, a thing like that."

"They were great pals. I wonder what he died of."

"Good shot, sir."

George Moon, remembering this scene, thought it strange that Tom
Saffary, who on hearing of his friend's death had shown such
self-control, should now apparently take it so hard. It might be that
just as in the war a man when hit often did not know it till some time
afterwards, Saffary had not realised how great a blow to him Harold
Clarke's death was till he had had time to think it over. It seemed to
him, however, more probable that Saffary, left to himself, would have
carried on as usual, seeking sympathy for his loss in the company of his
fellows, but that his wife's conventional sense of propriety had
insisted that it would be bad form to go to a party when the grief they
were suffering from made it only decent for them to eschew for a little
festive gatherings. Violet Saffary was a nice little woman, three or
four years younger than her husband; not very pretty, but pleasant to
look at and always becomingly dressed; amiable, ladylike and unassuming.
In the days when he had been on friendly terms with the Saffarys the
Resident had from time to time dined with them. He had found her
agreeable, but not very amusing. They had never talked but of
commonplace things. Of late he had seen little of her. When they chanced
to meet she always gave him a friendly smile, and on occasion he said
one or two civil words to her. But it was only by an effort of memory
that he distinguished her from half a dozen of the other ladies in the
community whom his official position brought him in contact with.

Saffary had presumably said what he had come to say and the Resident
wondered why he did not get up and go. He sat heaped up in his chair
oddly, so that it gave you the feeling that his skeleton had ceased to
support him and his considerable mass of flesh was falling in on him. He
looked dully at the desk that separated him from the Resident. He sighed
deeply.

"You must try not to take it too hard, Saffary," said George Moon. "You
know how uncertain life is in the East. One has to resign oneself to
losing people one's fond of."

Saffary's eyes slowly moved from the desk, and he fixed them on George
Moon's. They stared unwinking. George Moon liked people to look him in
the eyes. Perhaps he felt that when he thus held their vision he held
them in his power. Presently two tears formed themselves in Saffary's
blue eyes and slowly ran down his cheeks. He had a strangely puzzled
look. Something had frightened him. Was it death? No. Something that he
thought worse. He looked cowed. His mien was cringing so that he made
you think of a dog unjustly beaten.

"It's not that," he faltered. "I could have borne that."

George Moon did not answer. He held that big, powerful man with his cold
level gaze and waited. He was pleasantly conscious of his absolute
indifference. Saffary gave a harassed glance at the papers on the desk.

"I'm afraid I'm taking up too much of your time."

"No, I have nothing to do at the moment."

Saffary looked out of the window. A little shudder passed between his
shoulders. He seemed to hesitate.

"I wonder if I might ask your advice," he said at last.

"Of course," said the Resident, with the shadow of a smile, "that's one
of the things I'm here for."

"It's a purely private matter."

"You may be quite sure that I shan't betray any confidence you place in
me."

"No, I know you wouldn't do that, but it's rather an awkward thing to
speak about, and I shouldn't feel very comfortable meeting you
afterwards. But you're going away to-morrow, and that makes it easier,
if you understand what I mean."

"Quite."

Saffary began to speak, in a low voice, sulkily, as though he were
ashamed, and he spoke with the awkwardness of a man unused to words. He
went back and said the same thing over again. He got mixed up. He
started a long, elaborate sentence and then broke off abruptly because
he did not know how to finish it. George Moon listened in silence, his
face a mask, smoking, and he only took his eyes off Saffary's face to
reach for another cigarette from the box in front of him and light it
from the stub of that which he was just finishing. And while he listened
he saw, as it were a background, the monotonous round of the planter's
life. It was like an accompaniment of muted strings that threw into
sharper relief the calculated dissonances of an unexpected melody.

With rubber at so low a price every economy had to be exercised and Tom
Saffary, notwithstanding the size of the estate, had to do work which in
better times he had had an assistant for. He rose before dawn and went
down to the lines where the coolies were assembled. When there was just
enough light to see he read out the names, ticking them off according to
the answers, and assigned the various squads to their work. Some tapped,
some weeded, and others tended the ditches. Saffary went back to his
solid breakfast, lit his pipe and sallied forth again to inspect the
coolies' quarters. Children were playing and babies sprawling here and
there. On the sidewalks Tamil women cooked their rice. Their black skins
shone with oil. They were draped about in dull red cotton and wore gold
ornaments in their hair. There were handsome creatures among them,
upright of carriage, with delicate features and small, exquisite hands;
but Saffary looked upon them only with distaste. He set out on his
rounds. On his well-grown estate the trees planted in rows gave one a
charming feeling of the prim forest of a German fairy-tale. The ground
was thick with dead leaves. He was accompanied by a Tamil overseer, his
long black hair done in a chignon, barefooted, in sarong and baju, with
a showy ring on his finger. Saffary walked hard, jumping the ditches
when he came to them, and soon he dripped with sweat. He examined the
trees to see that they were properly tapped, and when he came across a
coolie at work looking at the shavings and if they were too thick swore
at him and docked him half a day's pay. When a tree was not to be tapped
any more he told the overseer to take away the cup and the wire that
held it to the trunk. The weeders worked in gangs.

At noon Saffary returned to the bungalow and had a drink of beer which,
because there was no ice, was luke-warm. He stripped the khaki shorts,
the flannel shirt, the heavy boots and stockings in which he had been
walking, and shaved and bathed. He lunched in a sarong and baju. He lay
off for half an hour, and then went down to his office and worked till
five; he had tea and went to the club. About eight he started back for
the bungalow, dined, and half an hour after went to bed.

But last night he went home immediately he had finished his match.
Violet had not accompanied him that day. When the Clarkes were there
they had met at the club every afternoon, but now they had gone home she
came less often. She said there was no one there who much amused her and
she had heard everything everyone had to say till she was fed to the
teeth. She did not play bridge and it was dull for her to wait about
while he played. She told Tom he need not mind leaving her alone. She
had plenty of things to do in the house.

As soon as she saw him back so early she guessed that he had come to
tell her that he had won his match. He was like a child in his
self-satisfaction over one of these small triumphs. He was a kindly,
simple creature and she knew that his pleasure at winning was not only
on his own account, but because he thought it must give her pleasure
too. It was rather sweet of him to hurry home in order to tell her all
about it without delay.

"Well, how did your match go?" she said as soon as he came lumbering
into the sitting-room.

"I won."

"Easily?"

"Well, not as easily as I should have. I was a bit ahead, and then I
stuck, I couldn't do a thing, and you know what Douglas is, not at all
showy, but steady, and he pulled up with me. Then I said to myself,
well, if I don't buck up I shall get a licking, I had a bit of luck here
and there, and then, to cut a long story short, I beat him by seven."

"Isn't that splendid? You ought to win the cup now, oughtn't you?"

"Well, I've got three matches more. If I can get into the semifinals I
ought to have a chance."

Violet smiled. She was anxious to show him that she was as much
interested as he expected her to be.

"What made you go to pieces when you did?"

His face sagged.

"That's why I came back at once. I'd have scratched only I thought it
wasn't fair on the fellows who'd backed me. I don't know how to tell
you, Violet."

She gave him a questioning look.

"Why, what's the matter? Not bad news?"

"Rotten. Knobby's dead."

For a full minute she stared at him, and her face, her neat friendly
little face, grew haggard with horror. At first it seemed as though she
could not understand.

"What _do_ you mean?" she cried.

"It was in the paper. He died on board. They buried him at sea."

Suddenly she gave a piercing cry and fell headlong to the floor. She had
fainted dead away.

"Violet," he cried, and threw himself down on his knees and took her
head in his arms. "Boy, boy."

A boy, startled by the terror in his master's voice, rushed in and
Saffary shouted to him to bring brandy. He forced a little between
Violet's lips. She opened her eyes, and as she remembered they grew dark
with anguish. Her face was screwed up like a little child's when it is
just going to burst into tears. He lifted her up in his arms and laid
her on the sofa. She turned her head away.

"Oh, Tom, it isn't true. It can't be true."

"I'm afraid it is."

"No, no, no."

She burst into tears. She wept convulsively. It was dreadful to hear
her. Saffary did not know what to do. He knelt beside her and tried to
soothe her. He sought to take her in his arms, but with a sudden gesture
she repelled him.

"Don't touch me," she cried, and she said it so sharply that he was
startled.

He rose to his feet.

"Try not to take it too hard, sweetie," he said. "I know it's been an
awful shock. He was one of the best."

She buried her face in the cushions and wept despairingly. It tortured
him to see her body shaken by those uncontrollable sobs. She was beside
herself. He put his hand gently on her shoulder.

"Darling, don't give way like that. It's so bad for you."

She shook herself free from his hand.

"For God's sake leave me alone," she cried. "Oh, Hal, Hal." He had never
heard her call the dead man that before. Of course his name was Harold,
but everyone called him Knobby. "What shall I do?" she wailed. "I can't
bear it. I can't bear it."

Saffary began to grow a trifle impatient. So much grief did seem to him
exaggerated. Violet was not normally so emotional. He supposed it was
the damned climate. It made women nervous and high-strung. Violet hadn't
been home for four years. She was not hiding her face now. She lay,
almost falling off the sofa, her mouth open in the extremity of her
pain, and the tears streamed from her staring eyes. She was distraught.

"Have a little more brandy," he said. "Try and pull yourself together,
darling. You can't do Knobby any good by getting in such a state."

With a sudden gesture she sprang to her feet and pushed him aside. She
gave him a look of hatred.

"Go away, Tom. I don't want your sympathy. I want to be left alone."

She walked swiftly over to an arm-chair and threw herself down in it.
She flung back her head and her poor white face was wrenched into a
grimace of agony.

"Oh, it's not fair," she moaned. "What's to become of me now? Oh, God, I
wish I were dead."

"Violet."

His voice quavered with pain. He was very nearly crying too. She stamped
her foot impatiently.

"Go away, I tell you. Go away."

He started. He stared at her and suddenly gasped. A shudder passed
through his great bulk. He took a step towards her and stopped, but his
eyes never left her white, tortured face; he stared as though he saw in
it something that appalled him. Then he dropped his head and without a
word walked out of the room. He went into a little sitting-room they had
at the back, but seldom used, and sank heavily into a chair. He thought.
Presently the gong sounded for dinner. He had not had his bath. He gave
his hands a glance. He could not be bothered to wash them. He walked
slowly into the dining-room. He told the boy to go and tell Violet that
dinner was ready. The boy came back and said she did not want any.

"All right. Let me have mine then," said Saffary.

He sent Violet in a plate of soup and a piece of toast, and when the
fish was served put some on a plate for her and gave it to the boy. But
the boy came back with it at once.

"Mem, she say no wantchee," he said.

Saffary ate his dinner alone. He ate from habit, solidly, through the
familiar courses. He drank a bottle of beer. When he had finished the
boy brought him a cup of coffee and he lit a cheroot. Saffary sat still
till he had finished it. He thought. At last he got up and went back
into the large verandah which was where they always sat. Violet was
still huddled in the chair in which he had left her. Her eyes were
closed, but she opened them when she heard him come. He took a light
chair and sat down in front of her.

"What _was_ Knobby to you, Violet?" he said.

She gave a slight start. She turned away her eyes, but did not speak.

"I can't quite make out why you should have been so frightfully upset by
the news of his death."

"It was an awful shock."

"Of course. But it seems very strange that anyone should go simply all
to pieces over the death of a friend."

"I don't understand what you mean," she said.

She could hardly speak the words and he saw that her lips were
trembling.

"I've never heard you call him Hal. Even his wife called him Knobby."

She did not say anything. Her eyes, heavy with grief, were fixed on
vacancy.

"Look at me, Violet."

She turned her head slightly and listlessly gazed at him.

"Was he your lover?"

She closed her eyes and tears flowed from them. Her mouth was strangely
twisted.

"Haven't you got anything to say at all?"

She shook her head.

"You must answer me, Violet."

"I'm not fit to talk to you now," she moaned. "How can you be so
heartless?"

"I'm afraid I don't feel very sympathetic at the moment. We must get
this straight now. Would you like a drink of water?"

"I don't want anything."

"Then answer my question."

"You have no right to ask it. It's insulting."

"Do you ask me to believe that a woman like you who hears of the death
of someone she knew is going to faint dead away and then, when she comes
to, is going to cry like that? Why, one wouldn't be so upset over the
death of one's only child. When we heard of your mother's death you
cried of course, anyone would, and I know you were utterly miserable,
but you came to me for comfort and you said you didn't know what you'd
have done without me."

"This was so frightfully sudden."

"Your mother's death was sudden, too."

"Naturally I was very fond of Knobby."

"How fond? So fond that when you heard he was dead you didn't know and
you didn't care what you said? Why did you say it wasn't fair? Why did
you say, 'What's going to become of me now?'"

She sighed deeply. She turned her head this way and that like a sheep
trying to avoid the hands of the butcher.

"You mustn't take me for an utter fool, Violet. I tell you it's
impossible that you should be so shattered by the blow if there hadn't
been something between you."

"Well, if you think that, why do you torture me with questions?"

"My dear, it's no good shilly-shallying. We can't go on like this. What
d'you think I'm feeling?"

She looked at him when he said this. She hadn't thought of him at all.
She had been too much absorbed in her own misery to be concerned with
his.

"I'm so tired," she sighed.

He leaned forward and roughly seized her wrist.

"Speak," he cried.

"You're hurting me."

"And what about me? D'you think you're not hurting me? How can you have
the heart to let me suffer like this?"

He let go of her arm and sprang to his feet. He walked to the end of the
room and back again. It looked as though the movement had suddenly
roused him to fury. He caught her by the shoulders and dragged her to
her feet. He shook her.

"If you don't tell me the truth I'll kill you," he cried.

"I wish you would," she said.

"He was your lover?"

"Yes."

"You swine."

With one hand still on her shoulder so that she could not move he swung
back his other arm and with a flat palm struck her repeatedly, with all
his strength, on the side of her face. She quivered under the blows, but
did not flinch or cry out. He struck her again and again. All at once he
felt her strangely inert, he let go of her and she sank unconscious to
the floor. Fear seized him. He bent down and touched her, calling her
name. She did not move. He lifted her up and put her back into the chair
from which a little while before he had pulled her. The brandy that had
been brought when first she fainted was still in the room and he fetched
it and tried to force it down her throat. She choked and it spilt over
her chin and neck. One side of her pale face was livid from the blows of
his heavy hand. She sighed a little and opened her eyes. He held the
glass again to her lips, supporting her head, and she sipped a little of
the neat spirit. He looked at her with penitent, anxious eyes.

"I'm sorry, Violet. I didn't mean to do that. I'm dreadfully ashamed of
myself. I never thought I could sink so low as to hit a woman."

Though she was feeling very weak and her face was hurting, the flicker
of a smile crossed her lips. Poor Tom. He did say things like that. He
felt like that. And how scandalised he would be if you asked him why a
man shouldn't hit a woman. But Saffary, seeing the wan smile, put it
down to her indomitable courage. By God, she's a plucky little woman, he
thought. Game isn't the word.

"Give me a cigarette," she said.

He took one out of his case and put it in her mouth. He made two or
three ineffectual attempts to strike his lighter. It would not work.

"Hadn't you better get a match?" she said.

For the moment she had forgotten her heart-rending grief and was faintly
amused at the situation. He took a box from the table and held the
lighted match to her cigarette. She inhaled the first puff with a sense
of infinite relief.

"I can't tell you how ashamed I am, Violet," he said. "I'm disgusted
with myself. I don't know what came over me."

"Oh, that's all right. It was very natural. Why don't you have a drink?
It'll do you good."

Without a word, his shoulders all hunched up as though the burden that
oppressed him were material, he helped himself to a brandy and soda.
Then, still silent, he sat down. She watched the blue smoke curl into
the air.

"What are you going to do?" she said at last.

He gave a weary gesture of despair.

"We'll talk about that to-morrow. You're not in a fit state to-night. As
soon as you've finished your cigarette you'd better go to bed."

"You know so much, you'd better know everything."

"Not now, Violet."

"Yes, now."

She began to speak. He heard her words, but could hardly make sense of
them. He felt like a man who has built himself a house with loving care
and thought to live in it all his life, and then, he does not understand
why, sees the housebreakers come and with their picks and heavy hammers
destroy it room by room, till what was a fair dwelling-place is only a
heap of rubble. What made it so awful was that it was Knobby Clarke who
had done this thing. They had come out to the F.M.S. on the same ship
and had worked at first on the same estate. They call the young planter
a creeper and you can tell him in the streets of Singapore by his double
felt hat and his khaki coat turned up at the wrists. Callow youths who
saunter about staring and are inveigled by wily Chinese into buying
worthless truck from Birmingham which they send home as Eastern curios,
sit in the lounges of cheap hotels drinking innumerable stengahs, and
after an evening at the pictures get into rickshaws and finish the night
in the Chinese quarter. Tom and Knobby were inseparable. Tom, a big,
powerful fellow, simple, very honest, hard-working; and Knobby,
ungainly, but curiously attractive, with his deep-set eyes, hollow
cheeks and large humorous mouth. It was Knobby who made the jokes and
Tom who laughed at them. Tom married first. He met Violet when he went
on leave. The daughter of a doctor killed in the war, she was governess
in the house of some people who lived in the same place as his father.
He fell in love with her because she was alone in the world, and his
tender heart was touched by the thought of the drab life that lay before
her. But Knobby married because Tom had and he felt lost without him, a
girl who had come East to spend the winter with relations. Enid Clarke
had been very pretty then in her blonde way, and full-face she was
pretty still, though her skin, once so clear and fresh, was already
faded; but she had a very weak, small, insignificant chin and in profile
reminded you of a sheep. She had pretty flaxen hair, straight, because
in the heat it would not keep its wave, and china-blue eyes. Though but
twenty-six, she had already a tired look. A year after marriage she had
a baby, but it died when only two years old. It was after this that Tom
Saffary managed to get Knobby the post of manager of the estate next his
own. The two men pleasantly resumed their old familiarity, and their
wives, who till then had not known one another very well, soon made
friends. They copied one another's frocks and lent one another servants
and crockery when they gave a party. The four of them met every day.
They went everywhere together. Tom Saffary thought it grand.

The strange thing was that Violet and Knobby Clarke lived on these terms
of close intimacy for three years before they fell in love with one
another. Neither saw love approaching. Neither suspected that in the
pleasure each took in the other's company there was anything more than
the casual friendship of two persons thrown together by the
circumstances of life. To be together gave them no particular happiness,
but merely a quiet sense of comfort. If by chance a day passed without
their meeting they felt unaccountably bored. That seemed very natural.
They played games together. They danced together. They chaffed one
another. The revelation came to them by what looked like pure accident.
They had all been to a dance at the club and were driving home in
Saffary's car. The Clarkes' estate was on the way and he was dropping
them at their bungalow. Violet and Knobby sat in the back. He had had a
good deal to drink, but was not drunk; their hands touched by chance,
and he took hers and held it. They did not speak. They were all tired.
But suddenly the exhilaration of the champagne left him and he was cold
sober. They knew in a flash that they were madly in love with one
another and at the same moment they realised that they had never been in
love before. When they reached the Clarkes's Tom said:

"You'd better hop in beside me, Violet."

"I'm too exhausted to move," she said.

Her legs seemed so weak that she thought she would never be able to
stand.

When they met next day neither referred to what had happened, but each
knew that something inevitable had passed. They behaved to one another
as they had always done, they continued to behave so for weeks, but they
felt that everything was different. At last flesh and blood could stand
it no longer and they became lovers. But the physical tie seemed to them
the least important element in their relation, and indeed their way of
living made it impossible for them, except very seldom, to enjoy any
intimate connection. It was enough that they saw one another, though in
the company of others, every day; a glance, a touch of the hand, assured
them of their love, and that was all that mattered. The sexual act was
no more than an affirmation of the union of their souls.

They very seldom talked of Tom or Enid. If sometimes they laughed
together at their foibles it was not unkindly. It might have seemed odd
to them to realise how completely these two people whom they saw so
constantly had ceased to matter to them if they had given them enough
thought to consider the matter. Their relations with them fell into the
routine of life that nobody notices, like shaving oneself, dressing and
eating three meals a day. They felt tenderly towards them. They even
took pains to please them, as you would with a bed-ridden invalid,
because their own happiness was so great that in charity they must do
what they could for others less fortunate. They had no scruples. They
were too much absorbed in one another to be touched even for a moment by
remorse. Beauty now excitingly kindled the pleasant humdrum life they
had led so long.

But then an event took place that filled them with consternation. The
company for which Tom worked entered into negotiations to buy extensive
rubber plantations in British North Borneo and invited Tom to manage
them. It was a better job than his present one, with a higher salary,
and since he would have assistants under him he would not have to work
so hard. Saffary welcomed the offer. Both Clarke and Saffary were due
for leave and the two couples had arranged to travel home together. They
had already booked their passages. This changed everything. Tom would
not be able to get away for at least a year. By the time the Clarkes
came back the Saffarys would be settled in Borneo. It did not take
Violet and Knobby long to decide that there was only one thing to do.
They had been willing enough to go on as they were, notwithstanding the
hindrances to the enjoyment of their love, when they were certain of
seeing one another continually; they felt that they had endless time
before them and the future was coloured with a happiness that seemed to
have no limit; but neither could suffer for an instant the thought of
separation. They made up their minds to run away together, and then it
seemed to them on a sudden that every day that passed before they could
be together always and all the time was a day lost. Their love took
another guise. It flamed into a devouring passion that left them no
emotion to waste on others. They cared little for the pain they must
cause Tom and Enid. It was unfortunate, but inevitable. They made their
plans deliberately. Knobby on the pretence of business would go to
Singapore and Violet, telling Tom that she was going to spend a week
with friends on an estate down the line, would join him there. They
would go over to Java and thence take ship to Sydney. In Sydney Knobby
would look for a job. When Violet told Tom that the Mackenzies had asked
her to spend a few days with them, he was pleased.

"That's grand. I think you want a change, darling," he said. "I've
fancied you've been looking a bit peaked lately."

He stroked her cheek affectionately. The gesture stabbed her heart.

"You've always been awfully good to me, Tom," she said, her eyes
suddenly filled with tears.

"Well, that's the least I could be. You're the best little woman in the
world."

"Have you been happy with me these eight years?"

"Frightfully."

"Well, that's something, isn't it? No one can ever take that away from
you."

She had told herself that he was the kind of man who would soon console
himself. He liked women for themselves and it would not be long after he
had regained his freedom before he found someone that he would wish to
marry. And he would be just as happy with his new wife as he had been
with her. Perhaps he would marry Enid. Enid was one of those dependent
little things that somewhat exasperated her and she did not think her
capable of deep feeling. Her vanity would be hurt; her heart would not
be broken. But now that the die was cast, everything settled and the day
fixed, she had a qualm. Remorse beset her. She wished that it had been
possible not to cause those two people such fearful distress. She
faltered.

"We've had a very good time here, Tom," she said. "I wonder if it's wise
to leave it all. We're giving up a certainty for we don't know what."

"My dear child, it's a chance in a million and much better money."

"Money isn't everything. There's happiness."

"I know that, but there's no reason why we shouldn't be just as happy in
B.N.B. And besides, there was no alternative. I'm not my own master. The
directors want me to go and I must, and that's all there is to it."

She sighed. There was no alternative for her either. She shrugged her
shoulders. It was hateful to cause others pain; sometimes you couldn't
help yourself. Tom meant no more to her than the casual man on the
voyage out who was civil to you: it was absurd that she should be asked
to sacrifice her life for him.

The Clarkes were due to sail for England in a fortnight and this
determined the date of their elopement. The days passed. Violet was
restless and excited. She looked forward with a joy that was almost
painful to the peace that she anticipated when they were once on board
the ship and could begin the life which she was sure would give her at
last perfect happiness.

She began to pack. The friends she was supposed to be going to stay with
entertained a good deal and this gave her an excuse to take quite a lot
of luggage. She was starting next day. It was eleven o'clock in the
morning and Tom was making his round of the estate. One of the boys came
to her room and told her that Mrs. Clarke was there and at the same
moment she heard Enid calling her. Quickly closing the lid of her trunk,
she went out on to the verandah. To her astonishment Enid came up to
her, flung her arms round her neck and kissed her eagerly. She looked at
Enid and saw that her cheeks, usually pale, were flushed and that her
eyes were shining. Enid burst into tears.

"What on earth's the matter, darling?" she cried.

For one moment she was afraid that Enid knew everything. But Enid was
flushed with delight and not with jealousy or anger.

"I've just seen Dr. Harrow," she said. "I didn't want to say anything
about it. I've had two or three false alarms, but this time he says it's
all right."

A sudden coldness pierced Violet's heart.

"What do you mean? You're not going to..."

She looked at Enid and Enid nodded.

"Yes, he says there's no doubt about it at all. He thinks I'm at least
three months gone. Oh, my dear, I'm so wildly happy."

She flung herself again into Violet's arms and clung to her, weeping.

"Oh, darling, don't."

Violet felt herself grow pale as death and knew that if she didn't keep
a tight hold of herself she would faint.

"Does Knobby know?"

"No, I didn't say a word. He was so disappointed before. He was so
frightfully cut up when baby died. He's wanted me to have another so
badly."

Violet forced herself to say the things that were expected of her, but
Enid was not listening. She wanted to tell the whole story of her hopes
and fears, of her symptoms, and then of her interview with the doctor.
She went on and on.

"When are you going to tell Knobby?" Violet asked at last. "Now, when he
gets in?"

"Oh, no, he's tired and hungry when he gets back from his round. I shall
wait till to-night after dinner."

Violet repressed a movement of exasperation; Enid was going to make a
scene of it and was choosing her moment; but after all, it was only
natural. It was lucky, for it would give her the chance to see Knobby
first. As soon as she was rid of her she rang him up. She knew that he
always looked in at his office on his way home, and she left a message
asking him to call her. She was only afraid that he would not do so till
Tom was back, but she had to take her chance of that. The bell rang and
Tom had not yet come in.

"Hal?"

"Yes."

"Will you be at the hut at three?"

"Yes. Has anything happened?"

"I'll tell you when I see you. Don't worry."

She rang off. The hut was a little shelter on Knobby's estate which she
could get to without difficulty and where they occasionally met. The
coolies passed it while they worked and it had no privacy; but it was a
convenient place for them without exciting comment to exchange a few
minutes' conversation. At three Enid would be resting and Tom at work in
his office.

When Violet walked up Knobby was already there. He gave a gasp.

"Violet, how white you are."

She gave him her hand. They did not know what eyes might be watching
them and their behaviour here was always such as anyone could observe.

"Enid came to see me this morning. She's going to tell you to-night. I
thought you ought to be warned. She's going to have a baby."

"Violet!"

He looked at her aghast. She began to cry. They had never talked of the
relations they had, he with his wife and she with her husband. They
ignored the subject because it was to each horribly painful. Violet knew
what her own life was; she satisfied her husband's appetite, but, with a
woman's strange nonchalance, because to do so gave her no pleasure,
attached no importance to it; but somehow she had persuaded herself that
with Hal it was different. He felt now instinctively how bitterly what
she had learned wounded her. He tried to excuse himself.

"Darling, I couldn't help myself."

She cried silently and he watched her with miserable eyes.

"I know it seems beastly," he said, "but what could I do? It wasn't as
if I had any reason to..."

She interrupted him.

"I don't blame you. It was inevitable. It's only because I'm stupid that
it gives me such a frightful pain in my heart."

"Darling!"

"We ought to have gone away together two years ago. It was madness to
think we could go on like this."

"Are you sure Enid's right? She thought she was in the family way three
or four years ago."

"Oh, yes, she's right. She's frightfully happy. She says you wanted a
child so badly."

"It's come as such an awful surprise. I don't seem able to realise it
yet."

She looked at him. He was staring at the leaf-strewn earth with harassed
eyes. She smiled a little.

"Poor Hal." She sighed deeply. "There's nothing to be done about it.
It's the end of us."

"What do you mean?" he cried.

"Oh, my dear, you can't very well leave her now, can you? It was all
right before. She would have been unhappy, but she would have got over
it. But now it's different. It's not a very nice time for a woman
anyhow. For months she feels more or less ill. She wants affection. She
wants to be taken care of. It would be frightful to leave her to bear it
all alone. We couldn't be such beasts."

"Do you mean to say you want me to go back to England with her?"

She nodded gravely.

"It's lucky you're going. It'll be easier when you get away and we don't
see one another every day."

"But I can't live without you now."

"Oh, yes, you can. You must. I can. And it'll be worse for me, because I
stay behind and I shall have nothing."

"Oh, Violet, it's impossible."

"My dear, it's no good arguing. The moment she told me I saw it meant
that. That's why I wanted to see you first. I thought the shock might
lead you to blurt out the whole truth. You know I love you more than
anything in the world. She's never done me any harm. I couldn't take you
away from her now. It's bad luck on both of us, but there it is, I
simply wouldn't dare to do a filthy thing like that."

"I wish I were dead," he moaned.

"That wouldn't do her any good, or me either," she smiled.

"What about the future? Have we got to sacrifice our whole lives?"

"I'm afraid so. It sounds rather grim, darling, but I suppose sooner or
later we shall get over it. One gets over everything."

She looked at her wrist-watch.

"I ought to be getting back. Tom will be in soon. We're all meeting at
the club at five."

"Tom and I are supposed to be playing tennis." He gave her a pitiful
look. "Oh, Violet, I'm so frightfully unhappy."

"I know. So am I. But we shan't do any good by talking about it."

She gave him her hand, but he took her in his arms and kissed her, and
when she released herself her cheeks were wet with his tears. But she
was so desperate she could not cry.

Ten days later the Clarkes sailed.

While George Moon was listening to as much of this story as Tom Saffary
was able to tell him, he reflected in his cool, detached way how odd it
was that these commonplace people, leading lives so monotonous, should
have been convulsed by such a tragedy. Who would have thought that
Violet Saffary, so neat and demure, sitting in the club reading the
illustrated papers or chatting with her friends over a lemon squash,
should have been eating her heart out for love of that ordinary man?
George Moon remembered seeing Knobby at the club the evening before he
sailed. He seemed in great spirits. Fellows envied him because he was
going home. Those who had recently come back told him by no means to
miss the show at the Pavilion. Drink flowed freely. The Resident had not
been asked to the farewell party the Saffarys gave for the Clarkes, but
he knew very well what it had been like, the good cheer, the cordiality,
the chaff, and then after dinner the gramophone turned on and everyone
dancing. He wondered what Violet and Clarke had felt as they danced
together. It gave him an odd sensation of dismay to think of the despair
that must have filled their hearts while they pretended to be so gay.

And with another part of his mind George Moon thought of his own past.
Very few knew that story. After all, it had happened twenty-five years
ago.

"What are you going to do now, Saffary?" he asked.

"Well, that's what I wanted you to advise me about. Now that Knobby's
dead I don't know what's going to happen to Violet if I divorce her. I
was wondering if I oughtn't to let her divorce me."

"Oh, you want to divorce?"

"Well, I must."

George Moon lit another cigarette and watched for a moment the smoke
that curled away into the air.

"Did you ever know that I'd been married?"

"Yes, I think I'd heard. You're a widower, aren't you?"

"No, I divorced my wife. I have a son of twenty-seven. He's farming in
New Zealand. I saw my wife the last time I was home on leave. We met at
a play. At first we didn't recognise one another. She spoke to me. I
asked her to lunch at the Berkeley."

George Moon chuckled to himself. He was alone. It was a musical comedy.
He found himself sitting next to a large fat dark woman whom he vaguely
thought he had seen before, but the play was just starting and he did
not give her a second look. When the curtain fell after the first act
she looked at him with bright eyes and spoke.

"How are you, George?"

It was his wife. She had a bold, friendly manner and was very much at
her ease.

"It's a long time since we met," she said.

"It is."

"How has life been treating you?"

"Oh, all right."

"I suppose you're a Resident now. You're still in the Service, aren't
you?"

"Yes. I'm retiring soon, worse luck."

"Why? You look very fit."

"I'm reaching the age limit. I'm supposed to be an old buffer and no
good any more."

"You're lucky to have kept so thin. I'm terrible, aren't I?"

"You don't look as though you were wasting away."

"I know. I'm stout and I'm growing stouter all the time. I can't help it
and I love food. I can't resist cream and bread and potatoes."

George Moon laughed, but not at what she said; at his own thoughts. In
years gone by it had sometimes occurred to him that he might meet her,
but he had never thought that the meeting would take this turn. When the
play was ended and with a smile she bade him good-night, he said:

"I suppose you wouldn't lunch with me one day?"

"Any day you like."

They arranged a date and duly met. He knew that she had married the man
on whose account he had divorced her, and he judged by her clothes that
she was in comfortable circumstances. They drank a cocktail. She ate the
_hors-d'oeuvres_ with gusto. She was fifty if she was a day, but she
carried her years with spirit. There was something jolly and careless
about her, she was quick on the uptake, chatty, and she had the hearty,
infectious laugh of the fat woman who has let herself go. If he had not
known that her family had for a century been in the Indian Civil Service
he would have thought that she had been a chorus girl. She was not
flashy, but she had a sort of flamboyance of nature that suggested the
stage. She was not in the least embarrassed.

"You never married again, did you?" she asked him.

"No."

"Pity. Because it wasn't a success the first time there's no reason why
it shouldn't have been the second."

"There's no need for me to ask if you've been happy."

"I've got nothing to complain of. I think I've got a happy nature. Jim's
always been very good to me; he's retired now, you know, and we live in
the country, and I adore Betty."

"Who's Betty?"

"Oh, she's my daughter. She got married two years ago. I'm expecting to
be a grandmother almost any day."

"That ages us a bit."

She gave a laugh.

"Betty's twenty-two. It was nice of you to ask me to lunch, George.
After all, it would be silly to have any feelings about something that
happened so long ago as all that."

"Idiotic."

"We weren't fitted to one another and it's lucky we found it out before
it was too late. Of course I was foolish, but then I was very young.
Have you been happy too?"

"I think I can say I've been a success."

"Oh, well, that's probably all the happiness you were capable of."

He smiled in appreciation of her shrewdness. And then, putting the whole
matter aside easily, she began to talk of other things. Though the
courts had given him custody of their son, he, unable to look after him,
had allowed his mother to have him. The boy had emigrated at eighteen
and was now married. He was a stranger to George Moon, and he was aware
that if he met him in the street he would not recognise him. He was too
sincere to pretend that he took much interest in him. They talked of
him, however, for a while, and then they talked of actors and plays.

"Well," she said at last, "I must be running away. I've had a lovely
lunch. It's been fun meeting you, George. Thanks so much."

He put her into a taxi and taking off his hat walked down Piccadilly by
himself. He thought her quite a pleasant, amusing woman: he laughed to
think that he had ever been madly in love with her. There was a smile on
his lips when he spoke again to Tom Saffary.

"She was a damned good-looking girl when I married her. That was the
trouble. Though, of course, if she hadn't been I'd never have married
her. They were all after her like flies round a honeypot. We used to
have awful rows. And at last I caught her out. Of course I divorced
her."

"Of course."

"Yes, but I know I was a damned fool to do it." He leaned forward. "My
dear Saffary, I know now that if I'd had any sense I'd have shut my
eyes. She'd have settled down and made me an excellent wife."

He wished he were able to explain to his visitor how grotesque it had
seemed to him when he sat and talked with that jolly, comfortable and
good-humoured woman that he should have made so much fuss about what now
seemed to him to matter so little.

"But one has one's honour to think of," said Saffary.

"Honour be damned. One has one's happiness to think of. Is one's honour
really concerned because one's wife hops into bed with another man?
We're not crusaders, you and I, or Spanish grandees. I _liked_ my wife.
I don't say I haven't had other women. I have. But she had just that
something that none of the others could give me. What a fool I was to
throw away what I wanted more than anything in the world because I
couldn't enjoy exclusive possession of it!"

"You're the last man I should ever have expected to hear speak like
that."

George Moon smiled thinly at the embarrassment that was so clearly
expressed on Saffary's fat troubled face.

"I'm probably the first man you've heard speak the naked truth," he
retorted.

"Do you mean to say that if it were all to do over again you would act
differently?"

"If I were twenty-seven again I suppose I should be as big a fool as I
was then. But if I had the sense I have now I'll tell you what I'd do if
I found my wife had been unfaithful to me. I'd do just what you did last
night: I'd give her a damned good hiding and let it go at that."

"Are you asking me to forgive Violet?"

The Resident shook his head slowly and smiled.

"No. You've forgiven her already. I'm merely advising you not to cut off
your nose to spite your face."

Saffary gave him a worried look. It disconcerted him to know that this
cold precise man should see in his heart emotions which seemed so
unnatural to himself that he thrust them out of his consciousness.

"You don't know the circumstances," he said. "Knobby and I were almost
like brothers. I got him this job. He owed everything to me. And except
for me Violet might have gone on being a governess for the rest of her
life. It seemed such a waste; I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. If
you know what I mean, it was pity that first made me take any notice of
her. Don't you think it's a bit thick that when you've been thoroughly
decent with people they should go out of their way to do the dirty on
you? It's such awful ingratitude."

"Oh, my dear boy, one mustn't expect gratitude. It's a thing that no one
has a right to. After all, you do good because it gives you pleasure.
It's the purest form of happiness there is. To expect thanks for it is
really asking too much. If you get it, well, it's like a bonus on shares
on which you've already received a dividend; it's grand, but you mustn't
look upon it as your due."

Saffary frowned. He was perplexed. He could not quite make it out that
George Moon should think so oddly about things that it had always seemed
to him there were no two ways of thinking about. After all there were
limits. I mean, if you had any sense of decency you had to behave like a
tuan. There was your own self-respect to think of. It was funny that
George Moon should give reasons that looked so damned plausible for
doing something that, well, damn it, you had to admit you'd be only too
glad to do if you could see your way to it. Of course George Moon was
queer. No one ever quite understood him.

"Knobby Clarke is dead, Saffary. You can't be jealous of him any more.
No one knows a thing except you and me and your wife, and to-morrow I'm
going away for ever. Why don't you let bygones be bygones?"

"Violet would only despise me."

George Moon smiled and, unexpectedly on that prim, fastidious face, his
smile had a singular sweetness.

"I know her very little. I always thought her a very nice woman. Is she
as detestable as that?"

Saffary gave a start and reddened to his ears.

"No, she's an angel of goodness. It's me who's detestable for saying
that of her." His voice broke and he gave a little sob. "God knows I
only want to do the right thing."

"The right thing is the kind thing."

Saffary covered his face with his hands. He could not curb the emotion
that shook him.

"I seem to be giving, giving all the time, and no one does a God-damned
thing for me. It doesn't matter if my heart is broken, I must just go
on." He drew the back of his hand across his eyes and sighed deeply.
"I'll forgive her."

George Moon looked at him reflectively for a little.

"I wouldn't make too much of a song and dance about it, if I were you,"
he said. "You'll have to walk warily. She'll have a lot to forgive too."

"Because I hit her, you mean? I know, that was awful of me."

"Not a bit. It did her a power of good. I didn't mean that. You're
behaving very generously, old boy, and, you know, one needs a devil of a
lot of tact to get people to forgive one one's generosity. Fortunately
women are frivolous and they very quickly forget the benefits conferred
upon them. Otherwise, of course, there'd be no living with them."

Saffary looked at him open-mouthed.

"Upon my word you're a rum 'un, Moon," he said. "Sometimes you seem as
hard as nails and then you talk so that one thinks you're almost human,
and then, just as one thinks one's misjudged you and you have a heart
after all, you come out with something that just shocks one. I suppose
that's what they call a cynic."

"I haven't deeply considered the matter," smiled George Moon, "but if to
look truth in the face and not resent it when it's unpalatable, and take
human nature as you find it, smiling when it's absurd and grieved
without exaggeration when it's pitiful, is to be cynical, then I suppose
I'm a cynic. Mostly human nature is both absurd and pitiful, but if life
has taught you tolerance you find in it more to smile at than to weep."

When Tom Saffary left the room the Resident lit himself with
deliberation the last cigarette he meant to smoke before tiffin. It was
a new rle for him to reconcile an angry husband with an erring wife and
it caused him a discreet amusement. He continued to reflect upon human
nature. A wintry smile hovered upon his thin and pallid lips. He
recalled with what interest in the dry creeks of certain places along
the coast he had often stood and watched the Jumping Johnnies. There
were hundreds of them sometimes, from little things of a couple of
inches long to great fat fellows as long as your foot. They were the
colour of the mud they lived in. They sat and looked at you with large
round eyes and then with a sudden dash buried themselves in their holes.
It was extraordinary to see them scudding on their flappers over the
surface of the mud. It teemed with them. They gave you a fearful feeling
that the mud itself was mysteriously become alive and an atavistic
terror froze your heart when you remembered that such creatures, but
gigantic and terrible, were once the only inhabitants of the earth.
There was something uncanny about them, but something amusing too. They
reminded you very much of human beings. It was quite entertaining to
stand there for half an hour and observe their gambols.

George Moon took his topee off the peg and not displeased with life
stepped out into the sunshine.




P. & O.


Mrs. Hamlyn lay on her long chair and lazily watched the passengers come
along the gangway. The ship had reached Singapore in the night, and
since dawn had been taking on cargo; the winches had been grinding away
all day, but by now her ears were accustomed to their insistent clamour.
She had lunched at the Europe, and for lack of anything better to do had
driven in a rickshaw through the gay, multitudinous streets of the city.
Singapore is the meeting-place of many races. The Malays, though natives
of the soil, dwell uneasily in towns, and are few; and it is the
Chinese, supple, alert and industrious, who throng the streets; the
dark-skinned Tamils walk on their silent, naked feet, as though they
were but brief sojourners in a strange land, but the Bengalis, sleek and
prosperous, are easy in their surroundings, and self-assured; the sly
and obsequious Japanese seem busy with pressing and secret affairs; and
the English in their topees and white ducks, speeding past in motor-cars
or at leisure in their rickshaws, wear a nonchalant and careless air.
The rulers of these teeming peoples take their authority with a smiling
unconcern. And now, tired and hot, Mrs. Hamlyn waited for the ship to
set out again on her long journey across the Indian Ocean.

She waved a rather large hand, for she was a big woman, to the doctor
and Mrs. Linsell as they came on board. She had been on the ship since
she left Yokohama, and had watched with acid amusement the intimacy
which had sprung up between the two. Linsell was a naval officer who had
been attached to the British Embassy at Tokio, and she had wondered at
the indifference with which he took the attentions that the doctor paid
his wife. Two men came along the gangway, new passengers, and she amused
herself by trying to discover from their demeanour whether they were
single or married. Close by, a group of men were sitting together on
rattan chairs, planters she judged by their khaki suits and wide-brimmed
double felt hats, and they kept the deck-steward busy with their orders.
They were talking loudly and laughing, for they had all drunk enough to
make them somewhat foolishly hilarious, and they were evidently giving
one of their number a send-off; but Mrs. Hamlyn could not tell which it
was that was to be a fellow-passenger. The time was growing short. More
passengers arrived, and then Mr. Jephson with dignity strolled up the
gangway. He was a consul and was going home on leave. He had joined the
ship at Shanghai and had immediately set about making himself agreeable
to Mrs. Hamlyn. But just then she was disinclined for anything in the
nature of a flirtation. She frowned as she thought of the reason which
was taking her back to England. She would be spending Christmas at sea,
far from anyone who cared two straws about her, and for a moment she
felt a little twist at her heartstrings; it vexed her that a subject
which she was so resolute to put away from her should so constantly
intrude on her unwilling mind.

But a warning bell clanged loudly, and there was a general movement
among the men who sat beside her.

"Well, if we don't want to be taken on we'd better be toddling," said
one of them.

They rose and walked towards the gangway. Now that they were all shaking
hands she saw who it was that they had come to see the last of. There
was nothing very interesting about the man on whom Mrs. Hamlyn's eyes
rested, but because she had nothing better to do she gave him more than
a casual glance. He was a big fellow, well over six feet high, broad and
stout; he was dressed in a bedraggled suit of khaki drill and his hat
was battered and shabby. His friends left him, but they bandied chaff
from the quay, and Mrs. Hamlyn noticed that he had a strong Irish
brogue; his voice was full, loud and hearty.

Mrs. Linsell had gone below and the doctor came and sat down beside Mrs.
Hamlyn. They told one another their small adventures of the day. The
bell sounded again and presently the ship slid away from the wharf. The
Irishman waved a last farewell to his friends, and then sauntered
towards the chair on which he had left papers and magazines. He nodded
to the doctor.

"Is that someone you know?" asked Mrs. Hamlyn.

"I was introduced to him at the club before tiffin. His name is
Gallagher. He's a planter."

After the hubbub of the port and the noisy bustle of departure, the
silence of the ship was marked and grateful. They steamed slowly past
green-clad, rocky cliffs (the P. & O. anchorage was in a charming and
secluded cove), and came out into the main harbour. Ships of all nations
lay at anchor, a great multitude, passenger boats, tugs, lighters,
tramps; and beyond, behind the breakwater, you saw the crowded masts, a
bare straight forest, of the native junks. In the soft light of the
evening the busy scene was strangely touched with mystery, and you felt
that all those vessels, their activity for the moment suspended, waited
for some event of a peculiar significance.

Mrs. Hamlyn was a bad sleeper and when the dawn broke she was in the
habit of going on deck. It rested her troubled heart to watch the last
faint stars fade before the encroaching day, and at that early hour the
glassy sea had often an immobility which seemed to make all earthly
sorrows of little consequence. The light was wan, and there was a
pleasant shiver in the air. But next morning, when she went to the end
of the promenade deck, she found that someone was up before her. It was
Mr. Gallagher. He was watching the low coast of Sumatra which the
sunrise like a magician seemed to call forth from the dark sea. She was
startled and a little vexed, but before she could turn away he had seen
her and nodded.

"Up early," he said. "Have a cigarette?"

He was in pyjamas and slippers. He took his case from his coat pocket
and handed it to her. She hesitated. She had on nothing but a
dressing-gown and a little lace cap which she had put over her tousled
hair, and she knew that she must look a sight; but she had her reasons
for scourging her soul.

"I suppose a woman of forty has no right to mind how she looks," she
smiled, as though he must know what vain thoughts occupied her. She took
the cigarette. "But you're up early too."

"I'm a planter. I've had to get up at five in the morning for so many
years that I don't know how I'm going to get out of the habit."

"You'll not find it will make you very popular at home."

She saw his face better now that it was not shadowed by a hat. It was
agreeable without being handsome. He was of course much too fat, and his
features, which must have been good enough when he was a young man, were
thickened. His skin was red and bloated. But his dark eyes were merry;
and though he could not have been less than five and forty his hair was
black and thick. He gave you an impression of great strength. He was a
heavy, ungraceful, commonplace man, and Mrs. Hamlyn, except for the
promiscuity of ship-board, would never have thought it worth while to
talk to him.

"Are you going home on leave?" she hazarded.

"No, I'm going home for good."

His black eyes twinkled. He was of a communicative turn, and before it
was time for Mrs. Hamlyn to go below in order to have her bath he had
told her a good deal about himself. He had been in the Federated Malay
States for twenty-five years, and for the last ten had managed an estate
in Selantan. It was a hundred miles from anything that could be
described as civilisation and the life had been lonely; but he had made
money; during the rubber boom he had done very well, and with an
astuteness which was unexpected in a man who looked so happy-go-lucky he
had invested his savings in government stock. Now that the slump had
come he was prepared to retire.

"What part of Ireland do you come from?" asked Mrs. Hamlyn.

"Galway."

Mrs. Hamlyn had once motored through Ireland and she had a vague
recollection of a sad and moody town with great stone warehouses,
deserted and crumbling, which faced the melancholy sea. She had a
sensation of greenness and of soft rain, of silence and of resignation.
Was it here that Mr. Gallagher meant to spend the rest of his life? He
spoke of it with boyish eagerness. The thought of his vitality in that
grey world of shadows was so incongruous that Mrs. Hamlyn was intrigued.

"Does your family live there?" she asked.

"I've got no family. My mother and father are dead. So far as I know I
haven't a relation in the world."

He had made all his plans, he had been making them for twenty-five
years, and he was pleased to have someone to talk to of all these things
that he had been obliged for so long only to talk to himself about. He
meant to buy a house and he would keep a motor-car. He was going to
breed horses. He didn't much care about shooting; he had shot a lot of
big game during his first years in the F.M.S.; but now he had lost his
zest. He didn't see why the beasts of the jungle should be killed; he
had lived in the jungle so long. But he could hunt.

"Do you think I'm too heavy?" he asked.

Mrs. Hamlyn, smiling, looked him up and down with appraising eyes.

"You must weigh a ton," she said.

He laughed. The Irish horses were the best in the world, and he'd always
kept pretty fit. You had a devil of a lot of walking exercise on a
rubber estate and he'd played a good deal of tennis. He'd soon get thin
in Ireland. Then he'd marry. Mrs. Hamlyn looked silently at the sea
coloured now with the tenderness of the sunrise. She sighed.

"Was it easy to drag up all your roots? Is there no one you regret
leaving behind? I should have thought after so many years, however much
you'd looked forward to going home, when the time came at last to go it
must have given you a pang."

"I was glad to get out. I was fed up. I never want to see the country
again or anyone in it."

One or two early passengers now began to walk round the deck and Mrs.
Hamlyn, remembering that she was scantily clad, went below.

During the next day or two she saw little of Mr. Gallagher, who passed
his time in the smoking-room. Owing to a strike the ship was not
touching at Colombo and the passengers settled down to a pleasant voyage
across the Indian Ocean. They played deck games, they gossiped about one
another, they flirted. The approach of Christmas gave them an
occupation, for someone had suggested that there should be a fancy-dress
dance on Christmas Day, and the ladies set about making their dresses. A
meeting was held of the first-class passengers to decide whether the
second-class passengers should be invited, and notwithstanding the heat
the discussion was animated. The ladies said that the second-class
passengers would only feel ill-at-ease. On Christmas Day it was to be
expected that they would drink more than was good for them and
unpleasantness might ensue. Everyone who spoke insisted that there was
in his (or her) mind no idea of class distinction, no one would be so
snobbish as to think there was any difference between first and
second-class passengers as far as that went, but it would really be
kinder to the second-class passengers not to put them in a false
position. They would enjoy themselves much more if they had a party of
their own in the second-class cabin. On the other hand, no one wanted to
hurt their feelings, and of course one had to be more democratic
nowadays (this was in reply to the wife of a missionary in China who
said she had travelled on the P. & O. for thirty-five years and she had
never heard of the second-class passengers being invited to a dance in
the first-class saloon) and even though they wouldn't enjoy it, they
might like to come. Mr. Gallagher, dragged unwillingly from the
card-table, because it had been foreseen that the voting would be close,
was asked his opinion by the consul. He was taking home in the
second-class a man who had been employed on his estate. He raised his
massive bulk from the couch on which he sat.

"As far as I'm concerned I've only got this to say: I've got the man who
was looking after our engines with me. He's a rattling good fellow, and
he's just as fit to come to your party as I am. But he won't come
because I'm going to make him so drunk on Christmas Day that by six
o'clock he'll be fit for nothing but to be put to bed."

Mr. Jephson, the consul, gave a distorted smile. On account of his
official position, he had been chosen to preside at the meeting and he
wished the matter to be taken seriously. He was a man who often said
that if a thing was worth doing it was worth doing well.

"I gather from your observations," he said, not without acidity, "that
the question before the meeting does not seem to you of great
importance."

"I don't think it matters a tinker's curse," said Gallagher, with
twinkling eyes.

Mrs. Hamlyn laughed. The scheme was at last devised to invite the
second-class passengers, but to go to the captain privily and point out
to him the advisability of withholding his consent to their coming into
the first-class saloon. It was on the evening of the day on which this
happened that Mrs. Hamlyn, having dressed for dinner, came on deck at
the same time as Mr. Gallagher.

"Just in time for a cocktail, Mrs. Hamlyn," he said jovially.

"I'd like one. To tell you the truth I need cheering up."

"Why?" he smiled.

Mrs. Hamlyn thought his smile attractive, but she did not want to answer
his question.

"I told you the other morning," she answered cheerfully. "I'm forty."

"I never met a woman who insisted on the fact so much."

They went into the lounge and the Irishman ordered a dry Martini for her
and a gin pahit for himself. He had lived too long in the East to drink
anything else.

"You've got hiccups," said Mrs. Hamlyn.

"Yes, I've had them all the afternoon," he answered carelessly. "It's
rather funny, they came on just as we got out of sight of land."

"I daresay they'll pass off after dinner."

They drank, the second bell rang, and they went into the dining-saloon.

"You don't play bridge?" he said, as they parted.

"No."

Mrs. Hamlyn did not notice that she saw nothing of Gallagher for two or
three days. She was occupied with her own thoughts. They crowded upon
her when she was sewing; they came between her and the novel with which
she sought to cheat their insistence. She had hoped that as the ship
took her further away from the scene of her unhappiness, the torment of
her mind would be eased; but contrariwise, each day that brought her
nearer England increased her distress. She looked forward with dismay to
the bleak emptiness of the life that awaited her; and then, turning her
exhausted wits from a prospect that made her flinch, she considered, as
she had done she knew not how many times before, the situation from
which she had fled.

She had been married for twenty years. It was a long time and of course
she could not expect her husband to be still madly in love with her; she
was not madly in love with him; but they were good friends and they
understood one another. Their marriage, as marriages go, might very well
have been looked upon as a success. Suddenly she discovered that he had
fallen in love. She would not have objected to a flirtation, he had had
those before, and she had chaffed him about them; he had not minded
that, it somewhat flattered him, and they had laughed together at an
inclination which was neither deep nor serious. But this was different.
He was in love as passionately as a boy of eighteen. He was fifty-two.
It was ridiculous. It was indecent. And he loved without sense or
prudence: by the time the hideous fact was forced upon her all the
foreigners in Yokohama knew it. After the first shock of astonished
anger, for he was the last man from whom such a folly might have been
expected, she tried to persuade herself that she could have understood,
and so have forgiven, if he had fallen in love with a girl. Middle-aged
men often make fools of themselves with flappers, and after twenty years
in the Far East she knew that the fifties were the dangerous age for
men. But he had no excuse. He was in love with a woman eight years older
than herself. It was grotesque, and it made her, his wife, perfectly
absurd. Dorothy Lacom was hard on fifty. He had known her for eighteen
years, for Lacom, like her own husband, was a silk merchant in Yokohama.
Year in, year out, they had seen one another three or four times a week,
and once, when they happened to be in England together, had shared a
house at the seaside. But nothing! Not till a year ago had there been
anything between them but a chaffing friendship. It was incredible. Of
course Dorothy was a handsome woman; she had a good figure,
over-developed, perhaps, but still comely; with bold black eyes and a
red mouth and lovely hair; but all that she had had years before. She
was forty-eight. Forty-eight!

Mrs. Hamlyn tackled her husband at once. At first he swore that there
was not a word of truth in what she accused him of, but she had her
proofs; he grew sulky; and at last he admitted what he could no longer
deny. Then he said an astonishing thing.

"Why should you care?" he asked.

It maddened her. She answered him with angry scorn. She was voluble,
finding in the bitterness of her heart wounding things to say. He
listened to her quietly.

"I've not been such a bad husband to you for the twenty years we've been
married. For a long time now we've only been friends. I have a great
affection for you, and this hasn't altered it in the very smallest
degree. I'm giving Dorothy nothing that I take away from you."

"But what have you to complain of in me?"

"Nothing. No man could want a better wife."

"How can you say that when you have the heart to treat me so cruelly?"

"I don't want to be cruel to you. I can't help myself."

"But what on earth made you fall in love with her?"

"How can I tell? You don't think I wanted to, do you?"

"Couldn't you have resisted?"

"I tried. I think we both tried."

"You talk as though you were twenty. Why, you're both middle-aged
people. She's eight years older than I am. It makes me look such a
perfect fool."

He did not answer. She did not know what emotions seethed in her heart.
Was it jealousy that seemed to clutch at her throat, anger, or was it
merely wounded pride?

"I'm not going to let it go on. If only you and she were concerned I
would divorce you, but there's her husband, and then there are the
children. Good heavens, does it occur to you that if they were girls
instead of boys she might be a grandmother by now?"

"Easily."

"What a mercy that we have no children!"

He put out an affectionate hand as though to caress her, but she drew
back with horror.

"You've made me the laughing-stock of all my friends. For all our sakes
I'm willing to hold my tongue, but only on the condition that everything
stops now, at once, and for ever."

He looked down and played reflectively with a Japanese knick-knack that
was on the table.

"I'll tell Dorothy what you say," he replied at last.

She gave him a little bow, silently, and walked past him out of the
room. She was too angry to observe that she was somewhat melodramatic.

She waited for him to tell her the result of his interview with Dorothy
Lacom, but he made no further reference to the scene. He was quiet,
polite and silent; and at last she was obliged to ask him.

"Have you forgotten what I said to you the other day?" she inquired,
frigidly.

"No. I talked to Dorothy. She wished me to tell you that she is
desperately sorry that she has caused you so much pain. She would like
to come and see you, but she is afraid you wouldn't like it."

"What decision have you come to?"

He hesitated. He was very grave, but his voice trembled a little.

"I'm afraid there's no use in our making a promise we shouldn't be able
to keep."

"That settles it then," she answered.

"I think I should tell you that if you brought an action for divorce we
should have to contest it. You would find it impossible to get the
necessary evidence and you would lose your case."

"I wasn't thinking of doing that. I shall go back to England and consult
a lawyer. Nowadays these things can be managed fairly easily, and I
shall throw myself on your generosity. I dare say you will enable me to
get my freedom without bringing Dorothy Lacom into the matter."

He sighed.

"It's an awful muddle, isn't it? I don't want you to divorce me, but of
course I'll do anything I can to meet your wishes."

"What on earth do you expect me to do?" she cried, her anger rising
again. "Do you expect me to sit still and be made a damned fool of?"

"I'm awfully sorry to put you in a humiliating position." He looked at
her with harassed eyes. "I'm quite sure we didn't want to fall in love
with one another. We're both of us very conscious of our age. Dorothy,
as you say, is old enough to be a grandmother and I'm a baldish,
stoutish gentleman of fifty-two. When you fall in love at twenty you
think your love will last for ever, but at fifty you know so much, about
life and about love, and you know that it will last so short a time."
His voice was low and rueful. It was as though before his mind's eye he
saw the sadness of autumn and the leaves falling from the trees. He
looked at her gravely. "And at that age you feel that you can't afford
to throw away the chance of happiness which a freakish destiny has given
you. In five years it will certainly be over, and perhaps in six months.
Life is rather drab and grey, and happiness is so rare. We shall be dead
so long."

It gave Mrs. Hamlyn a bitter sensation of pain to hear her husband, a
matter-of-fact and practical man, speak in a strain which was quite new
to her. He had gained on a sudden a wistful and tragic personality of
which she knew nothing. The twenty years during which they had lived
together had no power over him and she was helpless in face of his
determination. She could do nothing but go, and now, resentfully
determined to get the divorce with which she had threatened him, she was
on her way to England.

The smooth sea, upon which the sun beat down so that it shone like a
sheet of glass, was as empty and hostile as life in which there was no
place for her. For three days no other craft had broken in upon the
solitariness of that expanse. Now and again its even surface was
scattered for the twinkling of an eye by the scurry of flying fish. The
heat was so great that even the most energetic of passengers had given
up deck games, and now (it was after luncheon) such as were not resting
in their cabins lay about on chairs. Linsell strolled towards her and
sat down.

"Where's Mrs. Linsell?" asked Mrs. Hamlyn.

"Oh, I don't know. She's about somewhere."

His indifference exasperated her. Was it possible that he did not see
that his wife and the surgeon were falling in love with one another?
Yet, not so very long ago, he must have cared. Their marriage had been
romantic. They had become engaged when Mrs. Linsell was still at school
and he little more than a boy. They must have been a charming, handsome
pair, and their youth and their mutual love must have been touching. And
now, after so short a time, they were tired of one another. It was
heartbreaking. What had her husband said?

"I suppose you're going to live in London when you get home?" asked
Linsell lazily, for something to say.

"I suppose so," said Mrs. Hamlyn.

It was hard to reconcile herself to the fact that she had nowhere to go,
and where she lived mattered not in the least to anyone alive. Some
association of ideas made her think of Gallagher. She envied the
eagerness with which he was returning to his native land, and she was
touched, and at the same time amused, when she remembered the exuberant
imagination he showed in describing the house he meant to live in and
the wife he meant to marry. Her friends in Yokohama, apprised in
confidence of her determination to divorce her husband, had assured her
that she would marry again. She did not much want to enter a second time
upon a state which had once so disappointed her, and besides, most men
would think twice before they suggested marriage to a woman of forty.
Mr. Gallagher wanted a buxom young person.

"Where is Mr. Gallagher?" she asked the submissive Linsell. "I haven't
seen him for the last day or two."

"Didn't you know? He's ill."

"Poor thing. What's the matter with him?"

"He's got hiccups."

Mrs. Hamlyn laughed.

"Hiccups don't make one ill, do they?"

"The surgeon is rather worried. He's tried all sorts of things, but he
can't stop them."

"How very odd."

She thought no more about it, but next morning, chancing upon the
surgeon, she asked him how Mr. Gallagher was. She was surprised to see
his boyish, cheerful face darken and grow perplexed.

"I'm afraid he's very bad, poor chap."

"With hiccups?" she cried in amazement.

It was a disorder that really it was impossible to take seriously.

"You see, he can't keep any food down. He can't sleep. He's fearfully
exhausted. I've tried everything I can think of." He hesitated. "Unless
I can stop them soon--I don't quite know what'll happen."

Mrs. Hamlyn was startled.

"But he's so strong. He seemed so full of vitality."

"I wish you could see him now."

"Would he like me to go and see him?"

"Come along."

Gallagher had been moved from his cabin into the ship's hospital, and as
they approached it they heard a loud hiccup. The sound, perhaps owing to
its connection with insobriety, had in it something ludicrous. But
Gallagher's appearance gave Mrs. Hamlyn a shock. He had lost flesh and
the skin hung about his neck in loose folds; under the sunburn his face
was pale. His eyes, before, full of fun and laughter, were haggard and
tormented. His great body was shaken incessantly by the hiccups and now
there was nothing ludicrous in the sound; to Mrs. Hamlyn, for no reason
that she knew, it seemed strangely terrifying. He smiled when she came
in.

"I'm sorry to see you like this," she said.

"I shan't die of it, you know," he gasped. "I shall reach the green
shores of Erin all right."

There was a man sitting beside him and he rose as they entered.

"This is Mr. Pryce," said the surgeon. "He was in charge of the
machinery on Mr. Gallagher's estate."

Mrs. Hamlyn nodded. This was the second-class passenger to whom
Gallagher had referred when they had discussed the party which was to be
given on Christmas Day. He was a very small man, but sturdy, with a
pleasantly impudent countenance and an air of self-assurance.

"Are you glad to be going home?" asked Mrs. Hamlyn.

"You bet I am, lady," he answered.

The intonation of the few words told Mrs. Hamlyn that he was a cockney
and, recognising the cheerful, sensible, good-humoured and careless
type, her heart warmed to him.

"You're not Irish?" she smiled.

"Not me, miss. London's my 'ome and I shan't be sorry to see it again, I
can tell you."

Mrs. Hamlyn never thought it offensive to be called miss.

"Well, sir, I'll be getting along," he said to Gallagher, with the
beginning of a gesture as though he were going to touch a cap which he
hadn't got on.

Mrs. Hamlyn asked the sick man whether she could do anything for him and
in a minute or two left him with the doctor. The little cockney was
waiting outside the door.

"Can I speak to you a minute or two, miss?" he asked.

"Of course."

The hospital cabin was aft and they stood, leaning against the rail, and
looked down on the well-deck where lascars and stewards off duty were
lounging about on the covered hatches.

"I don't know exactly 'ow to begin," said Pryce, uncertainly, a serious
look strangely changing his lively, puckered face. "I've been with Mr.
Gallagher for four years now and a better gentleman you wouldn't find in
a week of Sundays."

He hesitated again.

"I don't like it and that's the truth."

"What don't you like?"

"Well, if you ask me 'e's for it, and the doctor don't know it. I told
'im, but 'e won't listen to a word I say."

"You mustn't be too depressed, Mr. Pryce. Of course the doctor's young,
but I think he's quite clever, and people don't die of hiccups, you
know. I'm sure Mr. Gallagher will be all right in a day or two."

"You know when it come on? Just as we was out of sight of land. She said
'e'd never see 'is 'ome."

Mrs. Hamlyn turned and faced him. She stood a good three inches taller
than he.

"What do you mean?"

"My belief is, it's a spell been put on 'im, if you understand what I
mean. Medicine's going to do 'im no good. You don't know them Malay
women like what I do."

For a moment Mrs. Hamlyn was startled, and because she was startled she
shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

"Oh, Mr. Pryce, that's nonsense."

"That's what the doctor said when I told 'im. But you mark my words,
'e'll die before we see land again."

The man was so serious that Mrs. Hamlyn, vaguely uneasy, was against her
will impressed.

"Why should anyone cast a spell on Mr. Gallagher?" she asked.

"Well, it's a bit awkward speakin' of it to a lady."

"Please tell me."

Pryce was so embarrassed that at another time Mrs. Hamlyn would have had
difficulty in concealing her amusement.

"Mr. Gallagher's lived a long time up-country, if you understand what I
mean, and of course it's lonely, and you know what men are, miss."

"I've been married for twenty years," she replied, smiling.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am. The fact is he had a Malay girl living with
him. I don't know 'ow long, ten or twelve years, I think. Well, when 'e
made up 'is mind to come 'ome for good she didn't say nothing. She just
sat there. He thought she'd carry on no end, but she didn't. Of course
'e provided for 'er all right, 'e gave 'er a little 'ouse for herself,
an' 'e fixed it up so as so much should be paid 'er every month. 'E
wasn't mean, I will say that for 'im, an' she knew all along as 'e'd be
going some time. She didn't cry or anything. When 'e packed up all 'is
things and sent them off, she just sat there an' watched 'em go. And
when 'e sold 'is furniture to the Chinks she never said a word. He'd
give 'er all she wanted. And when it was time for 'im to go so as to
catch the boat she just kep' on sitting on the steps of the bungalow,
you know, and she just looked an' said nothing. He wanted to say
good-bye to 'er, same as anyone would, an', would you believe it? she
never even moved. 'Aren't you going to say good-bye to me,' he says. A
rare funny look come over 'er face. And do you know what she says? 'You
go,' she says; they 'ave a funny way of talking, them natives, not like
we 'ave, 'you go,' she says, 'but I tell you that you will never come to
your own country. When the land sinks into the sea, death will come upon
you, an' before them as goes with you sees the land again, death will
have took you.' It gave me quite a turn."

"What did Mr. Gallagher say?" asked Mrs. Hamlyn.

"Oh, well, you know what 'e is. He just laughed. 'Always merry and
bright,' 'e says and 'e jumps into the motor, an' off we go."

Mrs. Hamlyn saw the bright and sunny road that ran through the rubber
estates, with their trim green trees, carefully spaced, and their
silence, and then wound its way up hill and down through the tangled
jungle. The car raced on, driven by a reckless Malay, with its white
passengers, past Malay houses that stood away from the road among the
coconut trees, sequestered and taciturn, and through busy villages where
the market-place was crowded with dark-skinned little people in gay
sarongs. Then towards evening it reached the trim, modern town, with its
clubs and its golf links, its well-ordered rest-house, its white people,
and its railway-station, from which the two men could take the train to
Singapore. And the woman sat on the steps of the bungalow, empty till
the new manager moved in, and watched the road down which the car had
panted, watched the car as it sped on, and watched till at last it was
lost in the shadow of the night.

"What was she like?" Mrs. Hamlyn asked.

"Oh, well, to my way of thinking them Malay women are all very much
alike, you know," Pryce answered. "Of course she wasn't so young any
more, and you know what they are, them natives, they run to fat
something terrible."

"Fat?"

The thought, absurdly enough, filled Mrs. Hamlyn with dismay.

"Mr. Gallagher was always one to do himself well, if you understand what
I mean."

The idea of corpulence at once brought Mrs. Hamlyn back to common sense.
She was impatient with herself because for an instant she had seemed to
accept the little cockney's suggestion.

"It's perfectly absurd, Mr. Pryce. Fat women can't throw spells on
people at a distance of a thousand miles. In fact life is very difficult
for a fat woman anyway."

"You can laugh, miss, but unless something's done, you mark my words,
the governor's for it. And medicine ain't goin' to save him, not white
man's medicine."

"Pull yourself together, Mr. Pryce. This fat lady had no particular
grievance against Mr. Gallagher. As these things are done in the East he
seems to have treated her very well. Why should she wish him any harm?"

"We don't know 'ow they look at things. Why, a man can live there for
twenty years with one them natives, and d'you think 'e knows what's
goin' on in that black heart of hers? Not 'im!"

She could not smile at his melodramatic language, for his intensity was
impressive. And she knew, if anyone did, that the hearts of men, whether
their skins are yellow or white or brown, are incalculable.

"But even if she felt angry with him, even if she hated him and wanted
to kill him, what could she do?" It was strange that Mrs. Hamlyn with
her questions was trying now, unconsciously, to reassure herself.
"There's no poison that could start working after six or seven days."

"I never said it was poison."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Pryce," she smiled, "but I'm not going to believe in a
magic spell, you know."

"You've lived in the East?"

"Off and on for twenty years."

"Well, if you can say what they can do and what they can't, it's more
than I can." He clenched his fist and beat it on the rail with sudden,
angry violence. "I'm fed up with the bloody country. It's got on my
nerves, that's what it is. We're no match for them, us white men, and
that's a fact. If you'll excuse me I think I'll go an' 'ave a tiddley.
I've got the jumps."

He nodded abruptly and left her. Mrs. Hamlyn watched him, a sturdy,
shuffling little man in shabby khaki, slither down the companion into
the waist of the ship, walk across it with bent head, and disappear into
the second-class saloon. She did not know why he left with her a vague
uneasiness. She could not get out of her mind that picture of a stout
woman, no longer young, in a sarong, a coloured jacket and gold
ornaments, who sat on the steps of a bungalow looking at an empty road.
Her heavy face was painted, but in her large, tearless eyes there was no
expression. The men who drove in the car were like schoolboys going home
for the holidays. Gallagher gave a sigh of relief. In the early morning,
under the bright sky, his spirits bubbled. The future was like a sunny
road that wandered through a wide-flung, wooded plain.

Later in the day Mrs. Hamlyn asked the doctor how his patient did. The
doctor shook his head.

"I'm done. I'm at the end of my tether." He frowned unhappily. "It's
rotten luck, striking a case like this. It would be bad enough at home,
but on board ship..."

He was an Edinburgh man, but recently qualified, and he was taking this
voyage as a holiday before settling down to practice. He felt himself
aggrieved. He wanted to have a good time and, faced with this mysterious
illness, he was worried to death. Of course he was inexperienced, but he
was doing everything that could be done and it exasperated him to
suspect that the passengers thought him an ignorant fool.

"Have you heard what Mr. Pryce thinks?" asked Mrs. Hamlyn.

"I never heard such rot. I told the captain and he's right up in the
air. He doesn't want it talked about. He thinks it'll upset the
passengers."

"I'll be as silent as the grave."

The surgeon looked at her sharply.

"Of course you don't believe that there can be any truth in nonsense of
that sort?" he asked.

"Of course not." She looked out at the sea, which shone, blue and oily
and still, all round them. "I've lived in the East a long time," she
added. "Strange things happen there."

"This is getting on my nerves," said the doctor.

Near them two little Japanese gentlemen were playing deck quoits. They
were trim and neat in their tennis shirts, white trousers and buckram
shoes. They looked very European, they even called the score to one
another in English, and yet somehow to look at them filled Mrs. Hamlyn
at that moment with a vague disquiet. Because they seemed to wear so
easily a disguise there was about them something sinister. Her nerves
too were on edge.

And presently, no one quite knew how, the notion spread through the ship
that Gallagher was bewitched. While the ladies sat about on their
deck-chairs, stitching away at the costumes they were making for the
fancy-dress party on Christmas Day, they gossiped about it in
undertones, and the men in the smoking-room talked of it over their
cocktails. A good many of the passengers had lived long in the East and
from the recesses of their memory they produced strange and inexplicable
stories. Of course it was absurd to think seriously that Gallagher was
suffering from a malignant spell, such things were impossible, and yet
this and that was a fact and no one had been able to explain it. The
doctor had to confess that he could suggest no cause for Gallagher's
condition, he was able to give a physiological explanation, but why
these terrible spasms should have suddenly assailed him he did not say.
Feeling vaguely to blame, he tried to defend himself.

"Why, it's the sort of case you might never come across in the whole of
your practice," he said. "It's rotten luck."

He was in wireless communication with passing ships, and suggestions for
treatment came from here and there.

"I've tried everything they tell me," he said irritably. "The doctor of
the Japanese boat advised adrenalin. How the devil does he expect me to
have adrenalin in the middle of the Indian Ocean?"

There was something impressive in the thought of this ship speeding
through a deserted sea, while to her from all parts came unseen
messages. She seemed at that moment strangely alone and yet the centre
of the world. In the lazaret the sick man, shaken by the cruel spasms,
gasped for life. Then the passengers became conscious that the ship's
course was altered, and they heard that the captain had made up his mind
to put in at Aden. Gallagher was to be landed there and taken to the
hospital, where he could have attention which on board was impossible.
The chief engineer received orders to force his engines. The ship was an
old one and she throbbed with the greater effort. The passengers had
grown used to the sound and feel of her engines, and now the greater
vibration shook their nerves with a new sensation. It would not pass
into each one's unconsciousness, but beat on their sensibilities so that
each felt a personal concern. And still the wide sea was empty of
traffic, so that they seemed to traverse an empty world. And now the
uneasiness which had descended upon the ship, but which no one had been
willing to acknowledge, became a definite malaise. The passengers grew
irritable, and people quarrelled over trifles which at another time
would have seemed insignificant. Mr. Jephson made his hackneyed jokes,
but no one any longer repaid him with a smile. The Linsells had an
altercation, and Mrs. Linsell was heard late at night walking round the
deck with her husband and uttering in a low, tense voice a stream of
vehement reproaches. There was a violent scene in the smoking-room one
night over a game of bridge, and the reconciliation which followed it
was attended with general intoxication. People talked little of
Gallagher, but he was seldom absent from their thoughts. They examined
the route map. The doctor said now that Gallagher could not live more
than three or four days, and they discussed acrimoniously what was the
shortest time in which Aden could be reached. What happened to him after
he was landed was no affair of theirs; they did not want him to die on
board.

Mrs. Hamlyn saw Gallagher every day. With the suddenness with which
after tropical rain in the spring you seem to see the herbage grow
before your very eyes, she saw him go to pieces. Already his skin hung
loosely on his bones, and his double chin was like the wrinkled wattle
of a turkey-cock. His cheeks were sunken. You saw now how large his
frame was, and through the sheet under which he lay his bony structure
was like the skeleton of a prehistoric giant. For the most part he lay
with his eyes closed, torpid with morphia, but shaken still with
terrible spasms, and when now and again he opened his eyes they were
preternaturally large; they looked at you vaguely, perplexed and
troubled, from the depths of their bony sockets. But when, emerging from
his stupor, he recognised Mrs. Hamlyn, he forced a gallant smile to his
lips.

"How are you, Mr. Gallagher?" she said.

"Getting along, getting along. I shall be all right when we get out of
this confounded heat. Lord, how I look forward to a dip in the Atlantic.
I'd give anything for a good long swim. I want to feel the cold grey sea
of Galway beating against my chest."

Then the hiccup shook him from the crown of his head to the sole of his
foot. Mr. Pryce and the stewardess shared the care of him. The little
cockney's face wore no longer its look of impudent gaiety, but instead
was sullen.

"The captain sent for me yesterday," he told Mrs. Hamlyn when they were
alone. "He gave me a rare talking to."

"What about?"

"He said 'e wouldn't 'ave all this hoodoo stuff. He said it was
frightening the passengers and I'd better keep a watch on me tongue or
I'd 'ave 'im to reckon with. It's not my doing. I never said a word
except to you and the doctor."

"It's all over the ship."

"I know it is. D'you think it's only me that's saying it? All them
Lascars and the Chinese, they all know what's the matter with him. You
don't think you can teach them much, do you? They know it ain't a
natural illness."

Mrs. Hamlyn was silent. She knew through the amahs of some of the
passengers that there was no one on the ship, except the whites, who
doubted that the woman whom Gallagher had left in distant Selantan was
killing him with her magic. All were convinced that as they sighted the
barren rocks of Arabia his soul would be parted from his body.

"The captain says if he hears of me trying any hanky-panky he'll confine
me to my cabin for the rest of the voyage," said Pryce, suddenly, a
surly frown on his puckered face.

"What do you mean by hanky-panky?"

He looked at her for a moment fiercely as though she too were an object
of the anger he felt against the captain.

"The doctor's tried every damned thing he knows, and he's wirelessed all
over the place, and what good 'as 'e done? Tell me that. Can't 'e see
the man's dying? There's only one way to save him now."

"What do you mean?"

"It's magic what's killing 'im, and it's only magic what'll save him.
Oh, don't you say it can't be done. I've seen it with me own eyes." His
voice rose, irritable and shrill. "I've seen a man dragged from the jaws
of death, as you might say, when they got in a _pawang_, what we call a
witch-doctor, an' 'e did 'is little tricks. I seen it with me own eyes,
I tell you."

Mrs. Hamlyn did not speak. Pryce gave her a searching look.

"One of them Lascars on board, he's a witch-doctor, same as the _pawang_
that we 'ave in the F.M.S. An' 'e says he'll do it. Only he must 'ave a
live animal. A cock would do."

"What do you want a live animal for?" Mrs. Hamlyn asked, frowning a
little.

The cockney looked at her with quick suspicion.

"If you take my advice you won't know anything about it. But I tell you
what, I'm going to leave no stone unturned to save my governor. An' if
the captain 'ears of it and shuts me up in me cabin, well, let 'im."

At that moment Mrs. Linsell came up and Pryce with his quaint gesture of
salute left them. Mrs. Linsell wanted Mrs. Hamlyn to fit the dress she
had been making herself for the fancy-dress ball, and on the way down to
the cabin she spoke to her anxiously of the possibility that Mr.
Gallagher might die on Christmas Day. They could not possibly have the
dance if he did. She had told the doctor that she would never speak to
him again if this happened, and the doctor had promised her faithfully
that he would keep the man alive over Christmas Day somehow.

"It would be nice for him, too," said Mrs. Linsell.

"For whom?" asked Mrs. Hamlyn.

"For poor Mr. Gallagher. Naturally no one likes to die on Christmas Day.
Do they?"

"I don't really know," said Mrs. Hamlyn.

That night, after she had been asleep a little while, she awoke weeping.
It dismayed her that she should cry in her sleep. It was as though then
the weakness of the flesh mastered her, and, her will broken, she were
defenceless against a natural sorrow. She turned over in her mind, as so
often before, the details of the disaster which had so profoundly
affected her; she repeated the conversations with her husband, wishing
she had said this and blaming herself because she had said the other.
She wished with all her heart that she had remained in comfortable
ignorance of her husband's infatuation, and asked herself whether she
would not have been wiser to pocket her pride and shut her eyes to the
unwelcome truth. She was a woman of the world, and she knew too well how
much more she lost in separating herself from her husband than his love;
she lost the settled establishment and the assured position, the ample
means and the support of a recognised background. She had known of many
separated wives, living equivocally on smallish incomes, and knew how
quickly their friends found them tiresome. And she was lonely. She was
as lonely as the ship that throbbed her hasting way through an unpeopled
sea, and lonely as the friendless man who lay dying in the ship's
lazaret. Mrs. Hamlyn knew that her thoughts had got the better of her
now and that she would not easily sleep again. It was very hot in her
cabin. She looked at the time; it was between four and half-past; she
must pass two mortal hours before broke the reassuring day.

She slipped into a kimono and went on deck. The night was sombre and
although the sky was unclouded no stars were visible. Panting and
shaking, the old ship under full steam lumbered through the darkness.
The silence was uncanny. Mrs. Hamlyn with bare feet groped her way
slowly along the deserted deck.

It was so black that she could see nothing. She came to the end of the
promenade deck and leaned against the rail. Suddenly she started and her
attention was fixed, for on the lower deck she caught a fitful glow. She
leaned forward cautiously. It was a little fire, and she saw only the
glow because the naked backs of men, crouched round, hid the flame. At
the edge of the circle she divined, rather than saw, a stocky figure in
pyjamas. The rest were natives, but this was a European. It must be
Pryce and she guessed immediately that some dark ceremony of exorcism
was in progress. Straining her ears she heard a low voice muttering a
string of secret words. She began to tremble. She was aware that they
were too intent upon their business to think that anyone was watching
them, but she dared not move. Suddenly, rending the sultry silence of
the night like a piece of silk violently torn in two, came the crowing
of a cock. Mrs. Hamlyn almost shrieked. Mr. Pryce was trying to save the
life of his friend and master by a sacrifice to the strange gods of the
East. The voice went on, low and insistent. Then in the dark circle
there was a movement, something was happening, she knew not what; there
was a cluck-cluck from the cock, angry and frightened, and then a
strange, indescribable sound; the magician was cutting the cock's
throat; then silence; there were vague doings that she could not follow,
and in a little while it looked as though someone were stamping out the
fire. The figures she had dimly seen were dissolved in the night and all
once more was still. She heard again the regular throbbing of the
engines.

Mrs. Hamlyn stood still for a little while, strangely shaken, and then
walked slowly along the deck. She found a chair and lay down in it. She
was trembling still. She could only guess what had happened. She did not
know how long she lay there, but at last she felt that the dawn was
approaching. It was not yet day, and it was no longer night. Against the
darkness of the sky she could now see the ship's rail. Then she saw a
figure come towards her. It was a man in pyjamas.

"Who's that?" she cried nervously.

"Only the doctor," came a friendly voice.

"Oh! What are you doing here at this time of night?"

"I've been with Gallagher." He sat down beside her and lit a cigarette.
"I've given him a good strong hypodermic and he's quiet now."

"Has he been very ill?"

"I thought he was going to pass out. I was watching him, and suddenly he
started up on his bed and began to talk Malay. Of course I couldn't
understand a thing. He kept on saying one word over and over again."

"Perhaps it was a name, a woman's name."

"He wanted to get out of bed. He's a damned powerful man even now. By
George, I had a struggle with him. I was afraid he'd throw himself
overboard. He seemed to think someone was calling him."

"When was that?" asked Mrs. Hamlyn, slowly.

"Between four and half-past. Why?"

"Nothing."

She shuddered.

Later in the morning when the ship's life was set upon its daily round,
Mrs. Hamlyn passed Pryce on the deck, but he gave her a brief greeting
and walked on with quickly averted gaze. He looked tired and
overwrought. Mrs. Hamlyn thought again of that fat woman, with golden
ornaments in her thick, black hair, who sat on the steps of the deserted
bungalow and looked at the road which ran through the trim lines of the
rubber trees.

It was fearfully hot. She knew now why the night had been so dark. The
sky was no longer blue, but a dead, level white; its surface was too
even to give the effect of cloud; it was as though in the upper air the
heat hung like a pall. There was no breeze and the sea, as colourless as
the sky, was smooth and shining like the dye in a dyer's vat. The
passengers were listless; when they walked round the deck they panted,
and beads of sweat broke out on their foreheads. They spoke in
undertones. Something uncanny and disquieting brooded over the ship, and
they could not bring themselves to laugh. A feeling of resentment arose
in their hearts; they were alive and well, and it exasperated them that,
so near, a man should be dying and by the fact (which was after all no
concern of theirs) so mysteriously affect them. A planter in the
smoking-room over a gin-sling said brutally what most of them felt,
though none had confessed.

"Well, if he's going to peg out," he said, "I wish he'd hurry up and get
it over. It gives me the creeps."

The day was interminable. Mrs. Hamlyn was thankful when the dinner hour
arrived. So much time, at all events, was passed. She sat at the
doctor's table.

"When do we reach Aden?" she asked.

"Some time to-morrow. The captain says we shall sight land between five
and six in the morning."

She gave him a sharp look. He stared at her for a moment, then dropped
his eyes and reddened. He remembered that the woman, the fat woman
sitting on the bungalow steps, had said that Gallagher would never see
the land. Mrs. Hamlyn wondered whether he, the sceptical, matter-of-fact
young doctor, was wavering at last. He frowned a little and then, as
though he sought to pull himself together, looked at her once more.

"I shan't be sorry to hand over my patient to the hospital people at
Aden, I can tell you," he said.

Next day was Christmas Eve. When Mrs. Hamlyn awoke from a troubled sleep
the dawn was breaking. She looked out of her port-hole and saw that the
sky was clear and silvery; during the night the haze had melted, and the
morning was brilliant. With a lighter heart she went on deck. She walked
as far forward as she could go. A late star twinkled palely close to the
horizon. There was a shimmer on the sea as though a loitering breeze
passed playful fingers over its surface. The light was wonderfully soft,
tenuous like a budding wood in spring, and crystalline so that it
reminded you of the bubbling of water in a mountain brook. She turned to
look at the sun rising rosy in the east, and saw coming towards her the
doctor. He wore his uniform; he had not been to bed all night; he was
dishevelled and he walked, with bowed shoulders, as though he were
dog-tired. She knew at once that Gallagher was dead. When he came up to
her she saw that he was crying. He looked so young then that her heart
went out to him. She took his hand.

"You poor dear," she said. "You're tired out."

"I did all I could," he said. "I wanted so awfully to save him."

His voice shook and she saw that he was almost hysterical.

"When did he die?" she asked.

He closed his eyes, trying to control himself, and his lips trembled.

"A few minutes ago."

Mrs. Hamlyn sighed. She found nothing to say. Her gaze wandered across
the calm, dispassionate and ageless sea. It stretched on all sides of
them as infinite as human sorrow. But on a sudden her eyes were held,
for there, ahead of them, on the horizon was something which looked like
a precipitous and massy cloud. But its outline was too sharp to be a
cloud's. She touched the doctor on the arm.

"What's that?"

He looked at it for a moment and under his sunburn she saw him grow
white.

"Land."

Once more Mrs. Hamlyn thought of the fat Malay woman who sat silent on
the steps of Gallagher's bungalow. Did she know?

They buried him when the sun was high in the heavens. They stood on the
lower deck and on the hatches, the first- and second-class passengers,
the white stewards and the European officers. The missionary read the
burial service.

"_Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full
of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it
were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay._"

Pryce looked down at the deck with knit brows. His teeth were tight
clenched. He did not grieve, for his heart was hot with anger. The
doctor and the consul stood side by side. The consul bore to a nicety
the expression of an official regret, but the doctor, clean-shaven now,
in his neat fresh uniform and his gold braid, was pale and harassed.
From him Mrs. Hamlyn's eyes wandered to Mrs. Linsell. She was pressed
against her husband, weeping, and he was holding her hand tenderly. Mrs.
Hamlyn did not know why this sight singularly affected her. At that
moment of grief, her nerves distraught, the little woman went by
instinct to the protection and support of her husband. But then Mrs.
Hamlyn felt a little shudder pass through her and she fixed her eyes on
the seams in the deck, for she did not want to see what was toward.
There was a pause in the reading. There were various movements. One of
the officers gave an order. The missionary's voice continued.

"_Forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take
unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed: we therefore
commend his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for
the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up its dead._"

Mrs. Hamlyn felt the hot tears flow down her cheeks. There was a dull
splash. The missionary's voice went on.

When the service was finished the passengers scattered; the second-class
passengers returned to their quarters and a bell rang to summon them to
luncheon. But the first-class passengers sauntered aimlessly about the
promenade deck. Most of the men made for the smoking-room and sought to
cheer themselves with whiskies and sodas and with gin slings. But the
consul put up a notice on the board outside the dining-saloon summoning
the passengers to a meeting. Most of them had an idea for what purpose
it was called, and at the appointed hour they assembled. They were more
cheerful than they had been for a week and they chattered with a gaiety
which was only subdued by a mannerly reserve. The consul, an eyeglass in
his eye, said that he had gathered them together to discuss the question
of the fancy-dress dance on the following day. He knew they all had the
deepest sympathy for Mr. Gallagher and he would have proposed that they
should combine to send an appropriate message to the deceased's
relatives; but his papers had been examined by the purser and no trace
could be found of any relative or friend with whom it was possible to
communicate. The late Mr. Gallagher appeared to be quite alone in the
world. Meanwhile he (the consul) ventured to offer his sincere sympathy
to the doctor, who, he was quite sure, had done everything that was
possible in the circumstances.

"Hear, hear," said the passengers.

They had all passed through a very trying time, proceeded the consul,
and to some it might seem that it would be more respectful to the
deceased's memory if the fancy-dress ball were postponed till New Year's
Eve. This, however, he told them frankly was not his view, and he was
convinced that Mr. Gallagher himself would not have wished it. Of course
it was a question for the majority to decide. The doctor got up and
thanked the consul and the passengers for the kind things that had been
said of him, it had of course been a very trying time, but he was
authorised by the captain to say that the captain expressly wished all
the festivities to be carried out on Christmas Day as though nothing had
happened. He (the doctor) told them in confidence that the captain felt
the passengers had got into a rather morbid state, and thought it would
do them all good if they had a jolly good time on Christmas Day. Then
the missionary's wife rose and said they mustn't think only of
themselves; it had been arranged by the Entertainment Committee that
there should be a Christmas Tree for the children, immediately after the
first-class passengers' dinner, and the children had been looking
forward to seeing everyone in fancy-dress; it would be too bad to
disappoint them; she yielded to no one in her respect for the dead, and
she sympathised with anyone who felt too sad to think of dancing just
then, her own heart was very heavy, but she did feel it would be merely
selfish to give way to a feeling which could do no good to anyone. Let
them think of the little ones. This very much impressed the passengers.
They wanted to forget the brooding terror which had hung over the boat
for so many days, they were alive and they wanted to enjoy themselves;
but they had an uneasy notion that it would be decent to exhibit a
certain grief. It was quite another matter if they could do as they
wished from altruistic motives. When the consul called for a show of
hands everyone, but Mrs. Hamlyn and one old lady who was rheumatic, held
up an eager arm.

"The ayes have it," said the consul. "And I venture to congratulate the
meeting on a very sensible decision."

It was just going to break up when one of the planters got on his feet
and said he wished to offer a suggestion. Under the circumstances didn't
they all think it would be as well to invite the second-class
passengers? They had all come to the funeral that morning. The
missionary jumped up and seconded the motion. The events of the last few
days had drawn them all together, he said, and in the presence of death
all men were equal. The consul again addressed them. This matter had
been discussed at a previous meeting, and the conclusion had been
reached that it would be pleasanter for the second-class passengers to
have their own party, but circumstances alter cases, and he was
distinctly of opinion that their previous decision should be reversed.

"Hear, hear," said the passengers.

A wave of democratic feeling swept over them and the motion was carried
by acclamation. They separated light-heartedly, they felt charitable and
kindly. Everyone stood everyone else drinks in the smoking-room.

And so, on the following evening, Mrs. Hamlyn put on her fancy-dress.
She had no heart for the gaiety before her, and for a moment had thought
of feigning illness, but she knew no one would believe her, and was
afraid to be thought affected. She was dressed as Carmen and she could
not resist the vanity of making herself as attractive as possible. She
darkened her eyelashes and rouged her cheeks. The costume suited her.
When the bugle sounded and she went into the saloon she was received
with flattering surprise. The consul (always a humorist) was dressed as
a ballet-girl and was greeted with shouts of delighted laughter. The
missionary and his wife, self-conscious but pleased with themselves,
were very grand as Manchus. Mrs. Linsell, as Columbine, showed all that
was possible of her very pretty legs. Her husband was an Arab sheik and
the doctor was a Malay sultan.

A subscription had been collected to provide champagne at dinner and the
meal was hilarious. The company had provided crackers in which were
paper hats of various shapes and these the passengers put on. There were
paper streamers too which they threw at one another and little balloons
which they beat from one to the other across the room. They laughed and
shouted. They were very gay. No one could say that they were not having
a good time. As soon as dinner was finished they went into the saloon,
where the Christmas Tree, with candles lit, was ready, and the children
were brought in, shrieking with delight, and given presents. Then the
dance began. The second-class passengers stood about shyly round the
part of the deck reserved for dancing and occasionally danced with one
another.

"I'm glad we had them," said the consul, dancing with Mrs. Hamlyn. "I'm
all for democracy, and I think they're very sensible to keep themselves
to themselves."

But she noticed that Pryce was not to be seen, and when an opportunity
presented asked one of the second-class passengers where he was.

"Blind to the world," was the answer. "We put him to bed in the
afternoon and locked him up in his cabin."

The consul claimed her for another dance. He was very facetious.
Suddenly Mrs. Hamlyn felt that she could not bear it any more, the noise
of the amateur band, the consul's jokes, the gaiety of the dancers. She
knew not why, but the merriment of those people passing on their ship
through the night and the solitary sea affected her on a sudden with
horror. When the consul released her she slipped away and, with a look
to see that no one had noticed her, ascended the companion to the boat
deck. Here everything was in darkness. She walked softly to a spot where
she knew she would be safe from all intrusion. But she heard a faint
laugh and she caught sight in a hidden corner of a Columbine and a Malay
sultan. Mrs. Linsell and the doctor had resumed already the flirtation
which the death of Gallagher had interrupted.

Already all those people had put out of their minds with a kind of
ferocity the thought of that poor lonely man who had so strangely died
in their midst. They felt no compassion for him, but resentment rather,
because on his account they had been ill-at-ease. They seized upon life
avidly. They made their jokes, they flirted, they gossiped. Mrs. Hamlyn
remembered what the consul had said, that among Mr. Gallagher's papers
no letters could be found, not the name of a single friend to whom the
news of his death might be sent, and she knew not why this seemed to her
unbearably tragic. There was something mysterious in a man who could
pass through the world in such solitariness. When she remembered how he
had come on deck in Singapore, so short a while since, in such rude
health, full of vitality, and his arrogant plans for the future, she was
seized with dismay. Those words of the burial service filled her with a
solemn awe: _Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live,
and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower_...
Year in, year out, he had made his plans for the future, he wanted
to live so much and he had so much to live for, and then just when he
stretched out his hand--oh, it was pitiful; it made all the other
distresses of the world of small account. Death with its mystery was the
only thing that really mattered. Mrs. Hamlyn leaned over the rail and
looked at the starry sky. Why did people make themselves unhappy? Let
them weep for the death of those they loved, death was terrible always,
but for the rest, was it worth while to be wretched, to harbour malice,
to be vain and uncharitable? She thought again of herself and her
husband and the woman he so strangely loved. He too had said that we
live to be happy so short a time and we are so long dead. She pondered
long and intently, and suddenly, as summer lightning flashes across the
darkness of the night, she made a discovery which filled her with
tremulous surprise; for she found that in her heart was no longer anger
with her husband nor jealousy of her rival. A notion dawned on some
remote horizon of her consciousness and like the morning sun suffused
her soul with a tender, blissful glow. Out of the tragedy of that
unknown Irishman's death she gathered elatedly the courage for a
desperate resolution. Her heart beat quickly, she was impatient to carry
it into effect. A passion for self-sacrifice seized her.

The music had stopped, the ball was over; most of the passengers would
have gone to bed and the rest would be in the smoking-room. She went
down to her cabin and met no one on the way. She took her writing pad
and wrote a letter to her husband:

    _My dear. It is Christmas Day and I want to tell you that my
    heart is filled with kindly thoughts towards both of you. I have
    been foolish and unreasonable. I think we should allow those we
    care for to be happy in their own way, and we should care for
    them enough not to let it make us unhappy. I want you to know
    that I grudge you none of the joy that has so strangely come
    into your life. I am no longer jealous, nor hurt, nor
    vindictive. Do not think I shall be unhappy or lonely. If ever
    you feel that you need me, come to me, and I will welcome you
    with a cheerful spirit and without reproach or ill-will. I am
    most grateful for all the years of happiness and of tenderness
    that you gave me, and in return I wish to offer you an affection
    which makes no claim on you and is, I hope, utterly
    disinterested. Think kindly of me and be happy, happy, happy._

She signed her name and put the letter into an envelope. Though it would
not go till they reached Port Said she wanted to place it at once in the
letter-box. When she had done this, beginning to undress, she looked at
herself in the glass. Her eyes were shining and under her rouge her
colour was bright. The future was no longer desolate, but bright with a
fair hope. She slipped into bed and fell at once into a sound and
dreamless sleep.




EPISODE


It was quite a small party, because our hostess liked general
conversation; we never sat down to dinner more than eight, and generally
only six, and after dinner when we went up to the drawing-room the
chairs were so arranged that it was impossible for two persons to go
into a huddle in a corner and so break things up. I was glad on arriving
to find that I knew everyone. There were two nice clever women besides
our hostess and two men besides myself. One was my friend Ned Preston.
Our hostess made it a point never to ask wives with their husbands,
because she said each cramped the other's style and if they didn't like
to come separately they needn't come at all. But since her food and her
wine were good and the talk almost always entertaining they generally
came. People sometimes accused her of asking husbands more often than
wives, but she defended herself by saying that she couldn't possibly
help it because more men were husbands than women were wives.

Ned Preston was a Scot, a good-humoured, merry soul, with a gift for
telling a story, sometimes too lengthily, for he was uncommonly
loquacious, but with dramatic intensity. He was a bachelor with a small
income which sufficed for his modest needs, and in this he was lucky
since he suffered from that form of chronic tuberculosis which may last
for years without killing you, but which prevents you from working for
your living. Now and then he would be ill enough to stay in bed for two
or three weeks, but then he would get better and be as gay, cheerful and
talkative as ever. I doubt whether he had enough money to live in an
expensive sanatorium and he certainly hadn't the temperament to suit
himself to its life. He was worldly. When he was well he liked to go
out, out to lunch, out to dinner, and he liked to sit up late into the
night smoking his pipe and drinking a good deal of whisky. If he had
been content to live the life of an invalid he might have been alive
now, but he wasn't; and who can blame him? He died at the age of
fifty-five of a hmorrhage which he had one night after coming home from
some house where, he may well have flattered himself, he was the success
of the party.

He had that febrile vitality that some consumptives have, and was always
looking for an occupation to satisfy his desire for activity. I don't
know how he heard that at Wormwood Scrubs they were in want of prison
visitors, but the idea took his fancy so he went to the Home Office and
saw the official in charge of prisons to offer his services. The job is
unpaid, and though a number of persons are willing to undertake it,
either from compassion or curiosity, they are apt to grow tired of it,
or find it takes up too much time, and the prisoners whose problems,
interests and future they have been concerned with are left somewhat in
the lurch. The Home Office people consequently are wary of taking on
anyone who does not look as if he would persevere, and they make careful
inquiries into the applicant's antecedents, character and general
suitability. Then he is given a trial, is discreetly watched, and if the
impression is unfavourable is politely thanked and told that his
services are no longer required. But Ned Preston satisfied the dour and
shrewd official who interviewed him that he was in every way reliable,
and from the beginning he got on well with the governor, the warders and
the prisoners. He was entirely lacking in class-consciousness, so
prisoners, whatever their station in life, felt at ease with him. He
neither preached nor moralised. He had never done a criminal, or even a
mean, thing in his life, but he treated the crime of the prisoners he
had to deal with as though it were an illness like his own tuberculosis
which was a nuisance you had to put up with, but which it did no good to
talk about.

Wormwood Scrubs is a first offenders' prison and it is a building, grim
and cold, of forbidding appearance. Ned took me over it once and I had
goose-flesh as the gates were unlocked for us and we went in. We passed
through the halls in which the men were working.

"If you see any pals of yours take no notice of them," Ned said to me.
"They don't like it."

"Am I likely to see any pals of mine?" I asked dryly.

"You never can tell. I shouldn't be surprised if you had had friends
who'd passed bad cheques once too often or were caught in a compromising
situation in one of the parks. You'd be surprised how often I run across
chaps I've met out at dinner."

One of Ned's duties was to see prisoners through the first difficult
days of their confinement. They were often badly shaken by their trial
and sentence; and when, after the preliminary proceedings they had to go
through on entering the jail, the stripping, the bath, the medical
examination and the questioning, the getting into prison clothes, they
were led into a cell and locked up, they were apt to break down.
Sometimes they cried hysterically; sometimes they could neither eat nor
sleep. Ned's business then was to cheer them, and his breezy manner, his
natural kindliness, often worked wonders. If they were anxious about
their wives and children he would go to see them and if they were
destitute provide them with money. He brought them news so that they
might get over the awful feeling that they were shut away from the
common interests of their fellow-men. He read the sporting papers to be
able to tell them what horse had won an important race or whether the
champion had won his fight. He would advise them about their future, and
when the time approached for their release see what jobs they were
fitted for and then persuade employers to give them a chance to make
good.

Since everyone is interested in crime it was inevitable that sooner or
later, with Ned there, the conversation should turn upon it. It was
after dinner and we were sitting comfortably in the drawing-room with
drinks in our hands.

"Had any interesting cases at the Scrubs lately, Ned?" I asked him.

"No, nothing much."

He had a high, rasping voice and his laugh was a raucous cackle. He
broke into it now.

"I went to see an old girl to-day who was a packet of fun. Her husband's
a burglar. The police have known about him for years, but they've never
been able to get him till just now. Before he did a job he and his wife
concocted an alibi, and though he's been arrested three or four times
and sent up for trial, the police have never been able to break it and
he's always got off. Well, he was arrested again a little while ago, but
he wasn't upset, the alibi he and his wife had made up was perfect and
he expected to be acquitted as he'd been before. His wife went into the
witness-box and to his utter amazement she didn't give the alibi and he
was convicted. I went to see him. He wasn't so much worried at being in
gaol as puzzled by his wife not having spoken up, and he asked me to go
and see her and ask what the game was. Well I went, and d'you know what
she said to me? She said: 'Well, sir, it's like this; it was such a
beautiful alibi I just couldn't bear to waste it.'"

Of course we all laughed. The story-teller likes an appreciative
audience, and Ned Preston was never disinclined to hold the floor. He
narrated two or three more anecdotes. They tended to prove a point he
was fond of making, that in what till we all got democratic in England
were called the lower orders there was more passion, more romance, more
disregard of consequences than could ever be found in the well-to-do and
presumably educated classes, whom prudence has made timid and convention
inhibited.

"Because the working man doesn't read much," he said, "because he has no
great gift for expressing himself, you think he has no imagination.
You're wrong. He's extravagantly imaginative. Because he's a great husky
brute you think he has no nerves. You're wrong again. He's a bundle of
nerves."

Then he told us a story which I shall tell as best I can in my own
words.

Fred Manson was a good-looking fellow, tall, well-made, with blue eyes,
good features and a friendly, agreeable smile, but what made him
remarkable so that people turned round in the streets to stare at him
was that he had a thick head of hair, with a great wave in it, of a deep
rich red. It was really a great beauty. Perhaps it was this that gave
him so sensual a look. His maleness was like a heady perfume. His
eyebrows were thick, only a little lighter than his hair, and he was
lucky enough not to have the ugly skin that so often disfigures
red-heads. His was a smooth olive. His eyes were bold, and when he
smiled or laughed, which in the healthy vitality of his youth he did
constantly, his expression was wonderfully alluring. He was twenty-two
and he gave you the rather pleasant impression of just loving to be
alive. It was inevitable that with such looks and above all with that
troubling sexuality he should have success with women. He was charming,
tender and passionate, but immensely promiscuous. He was not exactly
callous or brazen, he had a kindly nature, but somehow or other he made
it quite clear to the objects of his passing fancy that all he wanted
was a little bit of fun and that it was impossible for him to remain
faithful to anyone.

Fred was a postman. He worked in Brixton. It is a densely populated part
of London, and has the curious reputation of harbouring more criminals
than any other suburb because trams run to it from across the river all
night long, so that when a man has done a job of housebreaking in the
West End he can be sure of getting home without difficulty. Fred liked
his job. Brixton is a district of innumerable streets lined with little
houses inhabited by the people who work in the neighbourhood and also by
clerks, shop-assistants, skilled workers of one sort or another whose
jobs take them every day across the river. He was strong and healthy and
it was a pleasure to him to walk from street to street delivering the
letters. Sometimes there would be a postal packet to hand in or a
registered letter that had to be signed for, and then he would have the
opportunity of seeing people. He was a sociable creature. It was never
long before he was well known on whatever round he was assigned to.
After a time his job was changed. His duty then was to go to the red
pillar-boxes into which the letters were put, empty them, and take the
contents to the main post-office of the district. His bag would be
pretty heavy sometimes by the time he was through, but he was proud of
his strength and the weight only made him laugh.

One day he was emptying a box in one of the better streets, a street of
semi-detached houses, and had just closed his bag when a girl came
running along.

"Postman," she cried, "take this letter, will you. I want it to go by
this post most particularly."

He gave her his good-natured smile.

"I never mind obliging a lady," he said, putting down his bag and
opening it.

"I wouldn't trouble you, only it's urgent," she said as she handed him
the letter she had in her hand.

"Who is it to--a feller?" he grinned.

"None of your business."

"All right, be haughty. But I tell you this, he's no good. Don't you
trust him."

"You've got a nerve," she said.

"So they tell me."

He took off his cap and ran his hand through his mop of curling red
hair. The sight of it made her gasp.

"Where d'you get your perm?" she asked with a giggle.

"I'll show you one of these days if you like."

He was looking down at her with his amused eyes, and there was something
about him that gave her a funny little feeling in the pit of her
stomach.

"Well, I must be on my way," he said. "If I don't get on with the job
pretty damn quick I don't know what'll happen to the country."

"I'm not detaining you," she said coolly.

"That's where you make a mistake," he answered.

He gave her a look that made her heart beat nineteen to the dozen and
she felt herself blushing all over. She turned away and ran back to the
house. Fred noticed it was four doors away from the pillar-box. He had
to pass it and as he did so he looked up. He saw the net curtains twitch
and knew she was watching. He felt pleased with himself. During the next
few days he looked at the house whenever he passed it, but never caught
a glimpse of the girl. One afternoon he ran across her by chance just as
he was entering the street in which she lived.

"Hulloa," he said, stopping.

"Hulloa."

She blushed scarlet.

"Haven't seen you about lately."

"You haven't missed much."

"That's what you think."

She was prettier than he remembered, dark-haired, dark-eyed, rather
tall, slight, with a good figure, a pale skin and very white teeth.

"What about coming to the pictures with me one evening?"

"Taking a lot for granted, aren't you?"

"It pays," he said with his impudent, charming grin.

She couldn't help laughing.

"Not with me, it doesn't."

"Oh, come on. One's only young once."

There was something so attractive in him that she couldn't bring herself
to give him a saucy answer.

"I couldn't really. My people wouldn't like me going out with a fellow I
don't know. You see, I'm the only one they have and they think a rare
lot of me. Why, I don't even know your name."

"Well, I can tell you, can't I? Fred. Fred Manson. Can't you say you're
going to the pictures with a girl friend?"

She had never felt before what she was feeling then. She didn't know if
it was pain or pleasure. She was strangely breathless.

"I suppose I could do that."

They fixed the night, the time and the place. Fred was waiting for her
and they went in, but when the picture started and he put his arm round
her waist, without a word, her eyes fixed on the screen, she quietly
took it away. He took hold of her hand, but she withdrew it. He was
surprised. That wasn't the way girls usually behaved. He didn't know
what one went to the pictures for if it wasn't to have a bit of a
cuddle. He walked home with her after the show. She told him her name.
Grace Carter. Her father had a shop of his own in the Brixton Road, he
was a draper and he had four assistants.

"He must be doing well," said Fred.

"He doesn't complain."

Gracie was a student at London University. When she got her degree she
was going to be a school teacher.

"What d'you want to do that for when there's a good business waiting for
you?"

"Pa doesn't want me to have anything to do with the shop--not after the
education he's given me. He wants me to better myself, if you know what
I mean."

Her father had started life as an errand boy, then become a draper's
assistant and because he was hard-working, honest and intelligent was
now owner of a prosperous little business. Success had given him grand
ideas for his only child. He didn't want her to have anything to do with
trade. He hoped she'd marry a professional man perhaps, or at least
someone in the City. Then he'd sell the business and retire, and Gracie
would be quite the lady.

When they reached the corner of her street Gracie held out her hand.

"You'd better not come to the door," she said.

"Aren't you going to kiss me good-night?"

"I am not."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to."

"You'll come to the pictures again, won't you?"

"I think I'd better not."

"Oh, come on."

There was such a warm urgency in his voice that she felt as though her
knees would give way.

"Will you behave if I do?" He nodded. "Promise?"

"Swop me bob."

He scratched his head when he left her. Funny girl. He'd never met
anyone quite like her. Superior, there was no doubt about that. There
was something in her voice that got you. It was warm and soft. He tried
to think what it was like. It was like as if the words kissed you.
Sounded silly, that did, but that's just what it was like.

From then on they went to the pictures once or twice a week. After a
while she allowed him to put his arm round her waist and to hold her
hand, but she never let him go farther than that.

"Have you ever been kissed by a fellow?" he asked her once.

"No, I haven't," she said simply. "My ma's funny, she says you've got to
keep a man's respect."

"I'd give anything in the world just to kiss you, Gracie."

"Don't be so silly."

"Won't you let me just once?" She shook her head. "Why not?"

"Because I like you too much," she said hoarsely, and then walked
quickly away from him.

It gave him quite a turn. He wanted her as he'd never wanted a woman
before. What she'd said finished him. He'd been thinking of her a lot,
and he'd looked forward to the evenings they spent together as he'd
never looked forward to anything in his life. For the first time he was
uncertain of himself. She was above him in every way, what with her
father making money hand over fist and her education and everything, and
him only a postman. They had made a date for the following Friday night
and he was in a fever of anxiety lest she shouldn't come. He repeated to
himself over and over again what she'd said: perhaps it meant that she'd
made up her mind to drop him. When at last he saw her walking along the
street he almost sobbed with relief. That evening he neither put his arm
round her nor took her hand and when he walked her home he never said a
word.

"You're very quiet to-night, Fred," she said at last. "What's the matter
with you?"

He walked a few steps before he answered.

"I don't like to tell you."

She stopped suddenly and looked up at him. There was terror on her face.

"Tell me whatever it is," she said unsteadily.

"I'm gone, I can't help myself, I'm so stuck on you I can't see
straight. I didn't know what it was to love like I love you."

"Oh, is that all? You gave me such a fright. I thought you were going to
say you were going to be married."

"Me? Who d'you take me for? It's you I want to marry."

"Well, what's to prevent you, silly?"

"Gracie! D'you mean it?"

He flung his arms round her and kissed her full on the mouth. She didn't
resist. She returned his kiss and he felt in her a passion as eager as
his own.

They arranged that Gracie should tell her parents that she was engaged
to him and that on the Sunday he should come and be introduced to them.
Since the shop stayed open late on Saturday and by the time Mr. Carter
got home he was tired out, it was not till after dinner on Sunday that
Gracie broke her news. George Carter was a brisk, not very tall man, but
sturdy, with a high colour, who with increasing prosperity had put on
weight. He was more than rather bald and he had a bristle of grey
moustache. Like many another employer who has risen from the working
class he was a slave-driver and he got as much work out of his
assistants for as little money as was possible. He had an eye for
everything and he wouldn't put up with any nonsense, but he was
reasonable and even kindly, so that they did not dislike him. Mrs.
Carter was a quiet, nice woman, with a pleasant face and the remains of
good looks. They were both in the early fifties, for they had married
late after "walking out" for nearly ten years.

They were very much surprised when Gracie told them what she had to
tell, but not displeased.

"You are a sly one," said her father. "Why, I never suspected for a
minute you'd taken up with anyone. Well, I suppose it had to come sooner
or later. What's his name?"

"Fred Manson."

"A fellow you met at college?"

"No. You must have seen him about. He clears our pillar-box. He's a
postman."

"Oh, Gracie," cried Mrs. Carter, "you can't mean it. You can't marry a
common postman, not after all the education we've given you."

For an instant Mr. Carter was speechless. He got redder in the face than
ever.

"Your ma's right, my girl," he burst out now. "You can't throw yourself
away like that. Why, it's ridiculous."

"I'm not throwing myself away. You wait till you see him."

Mrs. Carter began to cry.

"It's such a come-down. It's such a humiliation. I shall never be able
to hold up my head again."

"Oh, Ma, don't talk like that. He's a nice fellow and he's got a good
job."

"You don't understand," she moaned.

"How d'you get to know him?" Mr. Carter interrupted. "What sort of a
family's he got?"

"His pa drives one of the post-office vans," Gracie answered defiantly.

"Working-class people."

"Well, what of it? His pa's worked twenty-four years for the post-office
and they think a lot of him."

Mrs. Carter was biting the corner of her handkerchief.

"Gracie, I want to tell you something. Before your pa and me got married
I was in domestic service. He wouldn't ever let me tell you because he
didn't want you to be ashamed of me. That's why we was engaged all those
years. The lady I was with said she'd leave me something in her will if
I stayed with her till she passed away."

"It was that money that gave me my start," Mr. Carter broke in. "Except
for that I'd never have been where I am to-day. And I don't mind telling
you your ma's the best wife a man ever had."

"I never had a proper education," Mrs. Carter went on, "but I always was
ambitious. The proudest moment of my life was when your pa said we could
afford a girl to help me and he said then: 'The time'll come when you
have a cook and a house-maid,' and he's been as good as his word, and
now you're going back to what I come from. I'd set my heart on your
marrying a gentleman."

She began crying again. Gracie loved her parents and couldn't bear to
see them so distressed.

"I'm sorry, Ma, I knew it would be a disappointment to you, but I can't
help it, I can't really. I love him so, I love him so terribly. I'm sure
you'll like him when you see him. We're going for a walk on the Common
this afternoon. Can't I bring him back to supper?"

Mrs. Carter gave her husband a harassed look. He sighed.

"I don't like it and it's no good pretending I do, but I suppose we'd
better have a look at him."

Supper passed off better than might have been expected. Fred wasn't shy,
and he talked to Gracie's parents as though he had known them all his
life. If to be waited on by a maid, if to sup in a dining-room furnished
in solid mahogany and afterwards to sit in a drawing-room that had a
grand piano in it was new to him, he showed no embarrassment. After he
had gone and they were alone in their bedroom Mr. and Mrs. Carter talked
him over.

"He is handsome, you can't deny that," she said.

"Handsome is as handsome does. D'you think he's after her money?"

"Well, he must know that you've got a tidy little bit tucked away
somewhere, but he's in love with her all right."

"Oh, what makes you think that?"

"Why, you've only got to see the way he looks at her."

"Well, that's something at all events."

In the end the Carters withdrew their opposition on the condition that
the young things shouldn't marry until Gracie had taken her degree. That
would give them a year, and at the back of their minds was the hope that
by then she would have changed her mind. They saw a good deal of Fred
after that. He spent every Sunday with them. Little by little they began
quite to like him. He was so easy, so gay, so full of high spirits, and
above all so obviously head over ears in love with Gracie, that Mrs.
Carter soon succumbed to his charm, and after a while even Mr. Carter
was prepared to admit that he didn't seem a bad fellow. Fred and Gracie
were happy. She went to London every day to attend lectures and worked
hard. They spent blissful evenings together. He gave her a very nice
engagement ring and often took her out to dinner in the West End and to
a play. On fine Sundays he drove her out into the country in a car that
he said a friend had lent him. When she asked him if he could afford all
the money he spent on her he laughed, and said a chap had given him a
tip on an outsider and he'd made a packet. They talked interminably of
the little flat they would have when they were married and the fun it
would be to furnish it. They were more in love with one another than
ever.

Then the blow fell. Fred was arrested for stealing money from the
letters he collected. Many people, to save themselves the trouble of
buying postal orders, put notes in their envelopes, and it wasn't
difficult to tell that they were there. Fred went up for trial, pleaded
guilty, and was sentenced to two years' hard labour. Gracie went to the
trial. Up to the last moment she had hoped that he would be able to
prove his innocence. It was a dreadful shock to her when he pleaded
guilty. She was not allowed to see him. He went straight from the dock
to the prison van. She went home and, locking herself up in her bedroom,
threw herself on the bed and wept. When Mr. Carter came back from the
shop Gracie's mother went up to her room.

"Gracie, you're to come downstairs," she said. "Your father wants to
speak to you."

Gracie got up and went down. She did not trouble to dry her eyes.

"Seen the paper?" he said, holding out to her the _Evening News_.

She didn't answer.

"Well, that's the end of that young man," he went on harshly.

They too, Gracie's parents, had been shocked when Fred was arrested, but
she was so distressed, she was so convinced that everything could be
explained, that they hadn't had the heart to tell her that she must have
nothing more to do with him. But now they felt it time to have things
out with her.

"So that's where the money came from for those dinners and theatres. And
the car. I thought it funny he should have a friend who'd lend him a car
on Sundays when he'd be wanting it himself. He hired it, didn't he?"

"I suppose so," she answered miserably. "I just believed what he told
me."

"You've had a lucky escape, my girl, that's all I can say."

"He only did it because he wanted to give me a good time. He didn't want
me to think I couldn't have everything as nice when I was with him as
what I've been used to at home."

"You're not going to make excuses for him, I hope. He's a thief, that's
what he is."

"I don't care," she said sullenly.

"You don't care? What d'you mean by that?"

"Exactly what I say. I'm going to wait for him and the moment he comes
out I'm going to marry him."

Mrs. Carter gave a gasp of horror.

"Gracie, you can't do a thing like that," she cried. "Think of the
disgrace. And what about us? We've always held our heads high. He's a
thief, and once a thief always a thief."

"Don't go on calling him a thief," Gracie shrieked, stamping her foot
with rage. "What he did he did just because he loved me. I don't care if
he is a thief. I love him more than ever I loved him. You don't know
what love is. You waited ten years to marry Pa just so as an old woman
should leave you some money. D'you call that love?"

"You leave your ma out of this," Mr. Carter shouted. Then an idea
occurred to him and he gave her a piercing glance. "Have you got to
marry the feller?"

Gracie blushed furiously.

"No. There's never been anything of that sort. And not through any fault
of mine either. He loved me too much. He didn't want to do anything
perhaps he'd regret afterwards."

Often on summer evenings in the country when they'd been lying in a
field in one another's arms, mouth to mouth, her desire had been as
intense as his. She knew how much he wanted her and she was ready to
give him what he asked. But when things got too desperate he'd suddenly
jump up and say:

"Come on, let's walk."

He'd drag her to her feet. She knew what was in his mind. He wanted to
wait till they were married. His love had given him a delicacy of
sentiment that he'd never known before. He couldn't make it out himself,
but he had a funny sort of feeling about her, he felt that if he had her
before marriage it would spoil things. Because she guessed what was in
his heart she loved him all the more.

"I don't know what's come over you," moaned Mrs. Carter. "You was always
such a good girl. You've never given us a day's uneasiness."

"Stop it, Ma," said Mr. Carter violently. "We've got to get this
straight once and for all. You've got to give up this man, see? I've got
me own position to think of and if you think I'm going to have a
gaol-bird for a son-in-law you'd better think again. I've had enough of
this nonsense. You've got to promise me that you'll have nothing more to
do with the feller ever."

"D'you think I'm going to give him up now? How often d'you want me to
tell you I'm going to marry him the moment he gets out?"

"All right, then you can get out of my house and get out pretty damn
quick. And stay out."

"Pa!" cried Mrs. Carter.

"Shut up."

"I'll be glad to go," said Gracie.

"Oh, will you? And how d'you think you're going to live?"

"I can work, can't I? I can get a job at Payne & Perkins. They'll be
glad to have me."

"Oh, Gracie, you couldn't go and work in a shop. You can't demean
yourself like that," said Mrs. Carter.

"Will you shut up, Ma," shouted Mr. Carter, beside himself now with
rage. "Work, will you? You that's never done a stroke of work in your
life except that tomfoolery at the college. Bright idea it was of your
ma's to give you an education. Fat lot of good it'll be to you when
you've got to stand on your feet for hours and got to be civil and
pleasant to a lot of old trouts who just try and give you all the
trouble they can just to show how superior they are. I bet you'll like
it when you're bawled out by the manageress because you're not bright
and snappy. All right, marry your gaol-bird. I suppose you know you'll
have to keep him too. You don't think anyone's going to give him a job,
do you, not with his record. Get out, get out, get out."

He had worked himself up to such a pitch of fury that he sank panting
into a chair. Mrs. Carter, frightened, poured out a glass of water and
gave him some to drink. Gracie slipped out of the room.

Next day, when her father had gone to work and her mother was out
shopping, she left the house with such effects as she could get into a
suit-case. Payne & Perkins was a large department store in the Brixton
Road, and with her good appearance and pleasant manner she found no
difficulty in getting taken on. She was put in the ladies' lingerie. For
a few days she stayed at the Y.W.C.A. and then arranged to share a room
with one of the girls who worked with her.

Ned Preston saw Fred in the evening of the day he went to gaol. He found
him shattered, but only because of Gracie. He took his thieving very
lightly.

"I had to do the right thing by her, didn't I? Her people, they didn't
think I was good enough for her; I wanted to show them I was just as
good as they were. When we went up to the West End I couldn't give her a
sandwich and half of bitter in a pub, why, she's never been in a pub in
her life, I _had_ to take her to a restaurant. If people are such fools
as to put money in letters, well, they're just asking for it."

But he was frightened. He wasn't sure that Gracie would see it like
that.

"I've got to know what she's going to do. If she chucks me now--well,
it's the end of everything for me, see? I'll find some way of doing
meself in, I swear to God I will."

He told Ned the whole story of his love for Gracie.

"I could have had her over and over again if I'd wanted to. And I did
want to and so did she. I knew that. But I respected her, see? She's not
like other girls. She's one in a thousand, I tell you."

He talked and talked. He stormed, he wept. From that confused torrent of
words emerged one thing very clearly. A passionate, a frenzied love. Ned
promised that he would see the girl.

"Tell her I love her, tell her that what I did I just did because I
wanted her to have the best of everything, and tell her I just can't
live without her."

As soon as he could find time Ned Preston went to the Carters' house,
but when he asked for Gracie the maid who opened the door told him that
she didn't live there any more. Then he asked to see her mother.

"I'll go and see if she's in."

He gave the maid his card, thinking the name of his club engraved in the
corner would impress Mrs. Carter enough to make her willing to see him.
The maid left him at the door, but in a minute or two asked him to come
in. He was shown into the stiff and little-used sitting-room. Mrs.
Carter kept him waiting for some time and when she came in, holding his
card in the tips of her fingers, he guessed it was because she had
thought fit to change her dress. The black silk she wore was evidently a
dress for occasions. He told her his connection with Wormwood Scrubs and
said that he had to do with a man named Frederick Manson. The moment he
mentioned the name Mrs. Carter assumed a hostile attitude.

"Don't speak to me of that man," she cried. "A thief, that's what he is.
The trouble he's caused us. They ought to have given him five years,
they ought."

"I'm sorry he's caused you trouble," said Ned mildly. "Perhaps if you'd
give me a few facts I might help to straighten things out."

Ned Preston certainly had a way with him. Perhaps Mrs. Carter was
impressed because he was a gentleman. "Class he is," she probably said
to herself. Anyhow it was not long before she was telling him the whole
story. She grew upset as she told it and began to cry.

"And now she's gone and left us. Run away. I don't know how she could
bring herself to do a thing like that. God knows, we love her. She's all
we've got and we done everything in the world for her. Her pa never
meant it when he told her to get out of the house. Only she was so
obstinate. He got in a temper, he always was a quick-tempered man, he
was just as upset as I was when we found she'd gone. And d'you know
what's she's been and gone and done? Got herself a job at Payne &
Perkins. Mr. Carter can't abide them. Cutting prices all the time they
are. Unfair competition, he calls it. And to think of our Gracie working
with a lot of shop-girls--oh, it's so humiliating."

Ned made a mental note of the store's name. He hadn't been at all sure
of getting Gracie's address out of Mrs. Carter.

"Have you seen her since she left you?" he asked.

"Of course I have. I knew they'd jump at her at Payne & Perkins, a
superior girl like that, and I went there, and there she was, sure
enough--in the ladies' lingerie. I waited outside till closing time and
then I spoke to her. I asked her to come home. I said her pa was willing
to let bygones be bygones. And d'you know what she said? She said she'd
come home if we never said a word against Fred and if we was prepared to
have her marry him as soon as ever he got out. Of course I had to tell
her pa. I never saw him in such a state, I thought he was going to have
a fit, he said he'd rather see her dead at his feet than married to that
gaol-bird."

Mrs. Carter again burst into tears and as soon as he could Ned Preston
left her. He went to the department store, up to the ladies' lingerie,
and asked for Grace Carter. She was pointed out to him and he went up to
her.

"Can I speak to you for a minute? I've come from Fred Manson."

She went deathly white. For a moment it seemed that she could not utter
a word.

"Follow me, please."

She took him into a passage smelling of disinfectants which seemed to
lead to the lavatories. They were alone. She stared at him anxiously.

"He sends you his love. He's worried about you. He's afraid you're
awfully unhappy. What he wants to know really is if you're going to
chuck him."

"Me?" Her eyes filled with tears, but on her face was a look of ecstasy.
"Tell him that nothing matters to me as long as he loves me. Tell him
I'd wait twenty years for him if I had to. Tell him I'm counting the
days till he gets out so as we can get married."

For fear of the manageress she couldn't stay away from her work for more
than a minute or two. She gave Ned all the loving messages she could get
into the time to give Fred Manson. Ned didn't get to the Scrubs till
nearly six. The prisoners are allowed to put down their tools at
five-thirty and Fred had just put his down. When Ned entered the cell he
turned pale and sank on to the bed as though his anxiety was such that
he didn't trust his legs. But when Ned told him his news he gave a gasp
of relief. For a while he couldn't trust himself to speak.

"I knew you'd seen her the moment you came in. I smelt her."

He sniffed as though the smell of her body were strong in his nostrils,
and his face was as it were a mask of desire. His features on a sudden
seemed strangely blurred.

"You know, it made me feel quite uncomfortable so that I had to look the
other way," said Ned Preston when he told us this, with a cackle of his
shrill laughter. "It was sex in its nakedness all right."

Fred was an exemplary prisoner. He worked well, he gave no trouble. Ned
suggested books for him to read and he took them out of the library, but
that was about as far as he got.

"I can't get on well with them somehow," he said. "I start reading and
then I begin thinking of Gracie. You know, when she kisses you
ordinary-like--oh, it's so sweet, but when she kisses you really, my
God, it's lovely."

Fred was allowed to see Gracie once a month, but their meetings, with a
glass screen between, under the eyes of a warder, were so painful that
after several visits they agreed it would be better if she didn't come
any more. A year passed. Owing to his good behaviour he could count on a
remittance of his sentence and so would be free in another six months.
Gracie had saved every penny she could out of her wages and now as the
time approached for Fred's release she set about getting a home ready
for him. She took two rooms in a house and furnished them on the hire
purchase system. One room of course was to be their bedroom and the
other the living-room and kitchen. There was an old-fashioned range in
it and this she had taken out and replaced by a gas-stove. She wanted
everything to be nice and new and clean and comfortable. She took pains
to make the two little rooms bright and pretty. To do all this she had
to go without all but the barest necessities of existence and she grew
thin and pale. Ned suspected that she was starving herself and when he
went to see her took a box of chocolates or a cake so that she should
have at least something to eat. He brought the prisoner news of what
Gracie was doing and she made him promise to give him accurate accounts
of every article she bought. He took fond, more than fond, passionate
messages from one to the other. He was convinced that Fred would go
straight in future and he got him a job as commissionaire from a firm
that had a chain of restaurants in London. The wages were good and by
calling taxis or fetching cars he would be able to make money on the
side. He was to start work as soon as he came out of gaol. Gracie took
the necessary steps so that they could get married at once. The eighteen
months of Fred's imprisonment were drawing to an end. Gracie was in a
fever of excitement.

It happened then that Ned Preston had one of his periodical bouts of
illness and was unable to go to the prison for three weeks. It bothered
him, for he didn't like to abandon his prisoners, so as soon as he could
get out of bed he went to the Scrubs. The chief warder told him that
Manson had been asking for him.

"I think you'd better go and see him. I don't know what's the matter
with him. He's been acting rather funny since you've been away."

It was just a fortnight before Fred was due to be released. Ned Preston
went to his cell.

"Well, Fred, how are you?" he asked. "Sorry I haven't been able to come
and see you. I've been ill, and I haven't been able to see Gracie
either. She must be all of a dither by now."

"Well, I want you to go and see her."

His manner was so surly that Ned was taken aback. It was unlike him to
be anything but pleasant and civil.

"Of course I will."

"I want you to tell her that I'm not going to marry her."

Ned was so astounded that for a minute he could only stare blankly at
Fred Manson.

"What on earth d'you mean?"

"Exactly what I say."

"You can't let her down now. Her people have thrown her out. She's been
working all this time to get a home ready for you. She's got the licence
and everything."

"I don't care. I'm not going to marry her."

"But why, why, why?"

Ned was flabbergasted. Fred Manson was silent for a bit. His face was
dark and sullen.

"I'll tell you. I've thought about her night and day for eighteen months
and now I'm sick to death of her."

When Ned Preston reached this point of his story our hostess and our
fellow guests broke into loud laughter. He was plainly taken aback.
There was some little talk after that and the party broke up. Ned and I,
having to go in the same direction, walked along Piccadilly together.
For a time we walked in silence.

"I noticed you didn't laugh with the others," he said abruptly.

"I didn't think it funny."

"What d'you make of it?"

"Well, I can see his point, you know. Imagination's an odd thing, it
dries up; I suppose, thinking of her incessantly all that time he'd
exhausted every emotion she could give him, and I think it was quite
literally true, he'd just got sick to death of her. He'd squeezed the
lemon dry and there was nothing to do but throw away the rind."

"I didn't think it funny either. That's why I didn't tell them the rest
of the story. I wouldn't accept it at first. I thought it was just
hysteria or something. I went to see him two or three days running. I
argued with him. I really did my damnedest. I thought if he'd only see
her it would be all right, but he wouldn't even do that. He said he
hated the sight of her. I couldn't move him. At last I had to go and
tell her."

We walked on a little longer in silence.

"I saw her in that beastly, stinking corridor. She saw at once there was
something the matter and she went awfully white. She wasn't a girl to
show much emotion. There was something gracious and rather noble about
her face. Tranquil. Her lips quivered a bit when I told her and she
didn't say anything for a minute. When she spoke it was quite calmly, as
though--well, as though she'd just missed a bus and would have to wait
for another. As though it was a nuisance, you know, but nothing to make
a song and dance about. 'There's nothing for me to do now but put my
head in the gas-oven,' she said.

"And she did."




THE KITE


I know this is an odd story. I don't understand it myself and if I set
it down in black and white it is only with a faint hope that when I have
written it I may get a clearer view of it, or rather with the hope that
some reader, better acquainted with the complications of human nature
than I am, may offer me an explanation that will make it comprehensible
to me. Of course the first thing that occurs to me is that there is
something Freudian about it. Now, I have read a good deal of Freud, and
some books by his followers, and intending to write this story I have
recently flipped through again the volume published by the Modern
Library which contains his basic writings. It was something of a task,
for he is a dull and verbose writer, and the acrimony with which he
claims to have originated such and such a theory shows a vanity and a
jealousy of others working in the same field which somewhat ill become
the man of science. I believe, however, that he was a kindly and benign
old party. As we know, there is often a great difference between the man
and the writer. The writer may be bitter, harsh and brutal, while the
man may be so meek and mild that he wouldn't say boo to a goose. But
that is neither here nor there. I found nothing in my re-reading of
Freud's works that cast any light on the subject I had in mind. I can
only relate the facts and leave it at that.

First of all I must make it plain that it is not my story and that I
knew none of the persons with whom it is concerned. It was told me one
evening by my friend Ned Preston, and he told it me because he didn't
know how to deal with the circumstances and he thought, quite wrongly as
it happened, that I might be able to give him some advice that would
help him. In a previous story I have related what I thought the reader
should know about Ned Preston, and so now I need only remind him that my
friend was a prison visitor at Wormwood Scrubs. He took his duties very
seriously and made the prisoners' troubles his own. We had been dining
together at the Caf Royal in that long, low room with its absurd and
charming decoration which is all that remains of the old Caf Royal that
painters have loved to paint; and we were sitting over our coffee and
liqueurs and, so far as Ned was concerned against his doctor's orders,
smoking very long and very good Havanas.

"I've got a funny chap to deal with at the Scrubs just now," he said,
after a pause, "and I'm blowed if I know how to deal with him."

"What's he in for?" I asked.

"He left his wife and the court ordered him to pay so much a week in
alimony and he's absolutely refused to pay it. I've argued with him till
I was blue in the face. I've told him he's only cutting off his nose to
spite his face. He says he'll stay in jail all his life rather than pay
her a penny. I tell him he can't let her starve, and all he says is:
'Why not?' He's perfectly well-behaved, he's no trouble, he works well,
he seems quite happy, he's just getting a lot of fun out of thinking
what a devil of a time his wife is having."

"What's he got against her?"

"She smashed his kite."

"She did what?" I cried.

"Exactly that. She smashed his kite. He says he'll never forgive her for
that till his dying day."

"He must be crazy."

"No, he isn't, he's a perfectly reasonable, quite intelligent, decent
fellow."

Herbert Sunbury was his name, and his mother, who was very refined,
never allowed him to be called Herb or Bertie, but always Herbert, just
as she never called her husband Sam but only Samuel. Mrs. Sunbury's
first name was Beatrice, and when she got engaged to Mr. Sunbury and he
ventured to call her Bea she put her foot down firmly.

"Beatrice I was christened," she said, "and Beatrice I always have been
and always shall be, to you and to my nearest and dearest."

She was a little woman, but strong, active and wiry, with a sallow skin,
sharp, regular features and small, beady eyes. Her hair, suspiciously
black for her age, was always very neat, and she wore it in the style of
Queen Victoria's daughters, which she had adopted as soon as she was old
enough to put it up and had never thought fit to change. The possibility
that she did something to keep her hair its original colour was, if such
was the case, her only concession to frivolity, for, far from using
rouge or lipstick, she had never in her life so much as passed a
powder-puff over her nose. She never wore anything but black dresses of
good material, but made (by a little woman round the corner) regardless
of fashion after a pattern that was both serviceable and decorous. Her
only ornament was a thin gold chain from which hung a small gold cross.

Samuel Sunbury was a little man too. He was as thin and spare as his
wife, but he had sandy hair, gone very thin now so that he had to wear
it very long on one side and brush it carefully over the large bald
patch. He had pale blue eyes and his complexion was pasty. He was a
clerk in a lawyer's office and had worked his way up from office boy to
a respectable position. His employer called him Mr. Sunbury and
sometimes asked him to see an unimportant client. Every morning for
twenty-four years Samuel Sunbury had taken the same train to the City,
except of course on Sundays and during his fortnight's holiday at the
seaside, and every evening he had taken the same train back to the
suburb in which he lived. He was neat in his dress; he went to work in
quiet grey trousers, a black coat and a bowler hat, and when he came
home he put on his slippers and a black coat which was too old and shiny
to wear at the office; but on Sundays when he went to the chapel he and
Mrs. Sunbury attended he wore a morning coat with his bowler. Thus he
showed his respect for the day of rest and at the same time registered a
protest against the ungodly who went bicycling or lounged about the
streets until the pubs opened. On principle the Sunburys were total
abstainers, but on Sundays, when to make up for the frugal lunch,
consisting of a scone and butter with a glass of milk, which Samuel had
during the week, Beatrice gave him a good dinner of roast beef and
Yorkshire pudding, for his health's sake she liked him to have a glass
of beer. Since she wouldn't for the world have kept liquor in the house,
he sneaked out with a jug after morning service and got a quart from the
pub round the corner; but nothing would induce him to drink alone, so,
just to be sociable-like, she had a glass too.

Herbert was the only child the Lord had vouchsafed to them, and this
certainly through no precaution on their part. It just happened that
way. They doted on him. He was a pretty baby and then a good-looking
child. Mrs. Sunbury brought him up carefully. She taught him to sit up
at table and not put his elbows on it, and she taught him how to use his
knife and fork like a little gentleman. She taught him to stretch out
his little finger when he took his tea-cup to drink out of it and when
he asked why, she said:

"Never you mind. That's how it's done. It shows you know what's what."

In due course Herbert grew old enough to go to school. Mrs. Sunbury was
anxious because she had never let him play with the children in the
street.

"Evil communications corrupt good manners," she said. "I always have
kept myself to myself and I always shall keep myself to myself."

Although they had lived in the same house ever since they were married
she had taken care to keep her neighbours at a distance.

"You never know who people are in London," she said. "One thing leads to
another, and before you know where you are you're mixed up with a lot of
riff-raff and you can't get rid of them."

She didn't like the idea of Herbert being thrown into contact with a lot
of rough boys at the County Council school and she said to him:

"Now, Herbert, do what I do; keep yourself to yourself and don't have
anything more to do with them than you can help."

But Herbert got on very well at school. He was a good worker and far
from stupid. His reports were excellent. It turned out that he had a
good head for figures.

"If that's a fact," said Samuel Sunbury, "he'd better be an accountant.
There's always a good job waiting for a good accountant."

So it was settled there and then that this was what Herbert was to be.
He grew tall.

"Why, Herbert," said his mother, "soon you'll be as tall as your dad."

By the time he left school he was two inches taller, and by the time he
stopped growing he was five feet ten.

"Just the right height," said his mother. "Not too tall and not too
short."

He was a nice-looking boy, with his mother's regular features and dark
hair, but he had inherited his father's blue eyes, and though he was
rather pale his skin was smooth and clear. Samuel Sunbury had got him
into the office of the accountants who came twice a year to do the
accounts of his own firm and by the time he was twenty-one he was able
to bring back to his mother every week quite a nice little sun. She gave
him back three half-crowns for his lunches and ten shillings for
pocket-money, and the rest she put in the Savings Bank for him against a
rainy day.

When Mr. and Mrs. Sunbury went to bed on the night of Herbert's
twenty-first birthday, and in passing I may say that Mrs. Sunbury never
went to bed, she retired, but Mr. Sunbury, who was not quite so refined
as his wife, always said: "Me for Bedford,"--when then Mr. and Mrs.
Sunbury went to bed, Mrs. Sunbury said:

"Some people don't know how lucky they are; thank the Lord, I do. No
one's ever had a better son than our Herbert. Hardly a day's illness in
his life and he's never given me a moment's worry. It just shows if you
bring up somebody right they'll be a credit to you. Fancy him being
twenty-one, I can hardly believe it."

"Yes, I suppose before we know where we are he'll be marrying and
leaving us."

"What should he want to do that for?" asked Mrs. Sunbury with asperity.
"He's got a good home here, hasn't he? Don't you go putting silly ideas
into his head, Samuel, or you and me'll have words and you know that's
the last thing I want. Marry indeed! He's got more sense than that. He
knows when he's well off. He's got sense, Herbert has."

Mr. Sunbury was silent. He had long ago learnt that it didn't get him
anywhere with Beatrice to answer back.

"I don't hold with a man marrying till he knows his own mind," she went
on. "And a man doesn't know his own mind till he's thirty or
thirty-five."

"He was pleased with his presents," said Mr. Sunbury to change the
conversation.

"And so he ought to be," said Mrs. Sunbury still upset.

They had in fact been handsome. Mr. Sunbury had given him a silver
wrist-watch, with hands that you could see in the dark, and Mrs. Sunbury
had given him a kite. It wasn't by any means the first one she had given
him. That was when he was seven years old, and it happened this way.
There was a large common near where they lived and on Saturday
afternoons when it was fine Mrs. Sunbury took her husband and son for a
walk there. She said it was good for Samuel to get a breath of fresh air
after being cooped up in a stuffy office all the week. There were always
a lot of people on the common, but Mrs. Sunbury who liked to keep
herself to herself kept out of their way as much as possible.

"Look at them kites, Mum," said Herbert suddenly one day.

There was a fresh breeze blowing and a number of kites, small and large,
were sailing through the air.

"_Those_, Herbert, not them," said Mrs. Sunbury.

"Would you like to go and see where they start, Herbert?" asked his
father.

"Oh, yes, Dad."

There was a slight elevation in the middle of the common and as they
approached it they saw boys and girls and some men racing down it to
give their kites a start and catch the wind. Sometimes they didn't and
fell to the ground, but when they did they would rise, and as the owner
unravelled his string go higher and higher. Herbert looked with
ravishment.

"Mum, can I have a kite?" he cried.

He had already learnt that when he wanted anything it was better to ask
his mother first.

"Whatever for?" she said.

"To fly it, Mum."

"If you're so sharp you'll cut yourself," she said.

Mr. and Mrs. Sunbury exchanged a smile over the little boy's head. Fancy
him wanting a kite. Growing quite a little man he was.

"If you're a good boy and wash your teeth regular every morning without
me telling you I shouldn't be surprised if Santa Claus didn't bring you
a kite on Christmas Day."

Christmas wasn't far off and Santa Claus brought Herbert his first kite.
At the beginning he wasn't very clever at managing it, and Mr. Sunbury
had to run down the hill himself and start it for him. It was a very
small kite, but when Herbert saw it swim through the air and felt the
little tug it gave his hand he was thrilled; and then every Saturday
afternoon, when his father got back from the City, he would pester his
parents to hurry over to the common. He quickly learnt how to fly it,
and Mr. and Mrs. Sunbury, their hearts swelling with pride, would watch
him from the top of the knoll while he ran down and as the kite caught
the breeze lengthened the cord in his hand.

It became a passion with Herbert, and as he grew older and bigger his
mother bought him larger and larger kites. He grew very clever at
gauging the winds and could do things with his kite you wouldn't have
thought possible. There were other kite-flyers on the common, not only
children, but men, and since nothing brings people together so naturally
as a hobby they share it was not long before Mrs. Sunbury,
notwithstanding her exclusiveness, found that she, her Samuel and her
son were on speaking terms with all and sundry. They would compare their
respective kites and boast of their accomplishments. Sometimes Herbert,
a big boy of sixteen now, would challenge another kite-flyer. Then he
would manoeuvre his kite to windward of the other fellow's, allow his
cord to drift against his, and by a sudden jerk bring the enemy kite
down. But long before this Mr. Sunbury had succumbed to his son's
enthusiasm and he would often ask to have a go himself. It must have
been a funny sight to see him running down the hill in his striped
trousers, black coat and bowler hat. Mrs. Sunbury would trot sedately
behind him and when the kite was sailing free would take the cord from
him and watch it as it soared. Saturday afternoon became the great day
of the week for them, and when Mr. Sunbury and Herbert left the house in
the morning to catch their train to the City the first thing they did
was to look up at the sky to see if it was flying weather. They liked
best of all a gusty day, with uncertain winds, for that gave them the
best chance to exercise their skill. All through the week, in the
evenings, they talked about it. They were contemptuous of smaller kites
than theirs and envious of bigger ones. They discussed the performances
of other flyers as hotly, and as scornfully, as boxers or
football-players discuss their rivals. Their ambition was to have a
bigger kite than anyone else and a kite that would go higher. They had
long given up a cord, for the kite they gave Herbert on his twenty-first
birthday was seven feet high, and they used piano wire wound round a
drum. But that did not satisfy Herbert. Somehow or other he had heard of
a box-kite which had been invented by somebody, and the idea appealed to
him at once. He thought he could devise something of the sort himself
and since he could draw a little he set about making designs of it. He
got a small model made and tried it out one afternoon, but it wasn't a
success. He was a stubborn boy and he wasn't going to be beaten.
Something was wrong, and it was up to him to put it right.

Then an unfortunate thing happened. Herbert began to go out after
supper. Mrs. Sunbury didn't like it much, but Mr. Sunbury reasoned with
her. After all, the boy was twenty-two, and it must be dull for him to
stay home all the time. If he wanted to go for a walk or see a movie
there was no great harm. Herbert had fallen in love. One Saturday
evening, after they'd had a wonderful time on the common, while they
were at supper, out of a clear sky he said suddenly:

"Mum, I've asked a young lady to come in to tea to-morrow. Is that all
right?"

"You done what?" said Mrs. Sunbury, for a moment forgetting her grammar.

"You heard, Mum."

"And may I ask who she is and how you got to know her?"

"Her name's Bevan, Betty Bevan, and I met her first at the pictures one
Saturday afternoon when it was raining. It was an accident-like. She was
sitting next me and she dropped her bag and I picked it up and she said
thank you and so naturally we got talking."

"And d'you mean to tell me you fell for an old trick like that? Dropped
her bag indeed!"

"You're making a mistake, Mum, she's a nice girl, she is really and well
educated too."

"And when did all this happen?"

"About three months ago."

"Oh, you met her three months ago and you've asked her to come to tea
to-morrow?"

"Well, I've seen her since of course. That first day, after the show, I
asked her if she'd come to the pictures with me on the Tuesday evening,
and she said she didn't know, perhaps she would and perhaps she
wouldn't. But she came all right."

"She would. I could have told you that."

"And we've been going to the pictures about twice a week ever since."

"So that's why you've taken to going out so often?"

"That's right. But, look, I don't want to force her on you, if you don't
want her to come to tea I'll say you've got a headache and take her
out."

"Your mum will have her to tea all right," said Mr. Sunbury. "Won't you,
dear? It's only that your mum can't abide strangers. She never has liked
them."

"I keep myself to myself," said Mrs. Sunbury gloomily. "What does she
do?"

"She works in a typewriting office in the City and she lives at home, if
you call it home; you see, her mum died and her dad married again, and
they've got three kids and she doesn't get on with her step-ma. Nag,
nag, nag all the time, she says."

Mrs. Sunbury arranged the tea very stylishly. She took the knick-knacks
off a little table in the sitting-room, which they never used, and put a
tea-cloth on it. She got out the tea-service and the plated tea-kettle
which they never used either, and she made scones, baked a cake, and cut
thin bread-and-butter.

"I want her to see that we're not just nobody," she told her Samuel.

Herbert went to fetch Miss Bevan, and Mr. Sunbury intercepted them at
the door in case Herbert should take her into the dining-room where
normally they ate and sat. Herbert gave the tea-table a glance of
surprise as he ushered the young woman into the sitting-room.

"This is Betty, Mum," he said.

"Miss Bevan, I presume," said Mrs. Sunbury.

"That's right, but call me Betty, won't you?"

"Perhaps the acquaintance is a bit short for that," said Mrs. Sunbury
with a gracious smile. "Won't you sit down, Miss Bevan?"

Strangely enough, or perhaps not strangely at all, Betty Bevan looked
very much as Mrs. Sunbury must have looked at her age. She had the same
sharp features and the same rather small beady eyes, but her lips were
scarlet with paint, her cheeks lightly rouged and her short black hair
permanently waved. Mrs. Sunbury took in all this at a glance, and she
reckoned to a penny how much her smart rayon dress had cost, her
extravagantly high-heeled shoes and the saucy hat on her head. Her frock
was very short and she showed a good deal of flesh-coloured stocking.
Mrs. Sunbury, disapproving of her make-up and of her apparel, took an
instant dislike to her, but she had made up her mind to behave like a
lady, and if she didn't know how to behave like a lady nobody did, so
that at first things went well. She poured out tea and asked Herbert to
give a cup to his lady friend.

"Ask Miss Bevan if she'll have some bread-and-butter or a scone, Samuel,
my dear."

"Have both," said Samuel, handing round the two plates, in his coarse
way. "I like to see people eat hearty."

Betty insecurely perched a piece of bread-and-butter and a scone on her
saucer and Mrs. Sunbury talked affably about the weather. She had the
satisfaction of seeing that Betty was getting more and more ill-at-ease.
Then she cut the cake and pressed a large piece on her guest. Betty took
a bite at it and when she put it in her saucer it fell to the ground.

"Oh, I am sorry," said the girl, as she picked it up.

"It doesn't matter at all, I'll cut you another piece," said Mrs.
Sunbury.

"Oh, don't bother, I'm not particular. The floor's clean."

"I hope so," said Mrs. Sunbury with an acid smile, "but I wouldn't dream
of letting you eat a piece of cake that's been on the floor. Bring it
here, Herbert, and I'll give Miss Bevan some more."

"I don't want any more, Mrs. Sunbury, I don't really."

"I'm sorry you don't like my cake. I made it specially for you." She
took a bit. "It tastes all right to me."

"It's not that, Mrs. Sunbury, it's a beautiful cake, it's only that I'm
not hungry."

She refused to have more tea and Mrs. Sunbury saw she was glad to get
rid of the cup. "I expect they have their meals in the kitchen," she
said to herself. Then Herbert lit a cigarette.

"Give us a fag, Herb," said Betty. "I'm simply dying for a smoke."

Mrs. Sunbury didn't approve of women smoking, but she only raised her
eyebrows slightly.

"We prefer to call him Herbert, Miss Bevan," she said.

Betty wasn't such a fool as not to see that Mrs. Sunbury had been doing
all she could to make her uncomfortable, and now she saw a chance to get
back on her.

"I know," she said. "When he told me his name was Herbert I nearly burst
out laughing. Fancy calling anyone Herbert. A scream, I call it."

"I'm sorry you don't like the name my son was given at his baptism. I
think it's a very nice name. But I suppose it all depends on what sort
of class of people one is."

Herbert stepped in to the rescue.

"At the office they call me Bertie, Mum."

"Then all I can say is, they're a lot of very common men."

Mrs. Sunbury lapsed into a dignified silence and the conversation, such
as it was, was maintained by Mr. Sunbury and Herbert. It was not without
satisfaction that Mrs. Sunbury perceived that Betty was offended. She
also perceived that the girl wanted to go, but didn't quite know how to
manage it. She was determined not to help her. Finally Herbert took the
matter into his own hands.

"Well, Betty, I think it's about time we were getting along," he said.
"I'll walk back with you."

"Must you go already?" said Mrs. Sunbury, rising to her feet. "It's been
a pleasure, I'm sure."

"Pretty little thing," said Mr. Sunbury tentatively after the young
things had left.

"Pretty my foot. All that paint and powder. You take my word for it,
she'd look very different with her face washed and without a perm.
Common, that's what she is, common as dirt."

An hour later Herbert came back. He was angry.

"Look here, Mum, what d'you mean by treating the poor girl like that? I
was simply ashamed of you."

"Don't talk to your mother like that, Herbert," she flared up. "You
didn't ought to have brought a woman like that into my house. Common,
she is, common as dirt."

When Mrs. Sunbury got angry not only did her grammar grow shaky, but she
wasn't quite safe on her aitches. Herbert took no notice of what she
said.

"She said she'd never been so insulted in her life. I had a rare job
pacifying her."

"Well, she's never coming here again, I tell you that straight."

"That's what you think. I'm engaged to her, so put that in your pipe and
smoke it."

Mrs. Sunbury gasped.

"You're not?"

"Yes, I am. I've been thinking about it for a long time, and then she
was so upset to-night I felt sorry for her, so I popped the question and
I had a rare job persuading her, I can tell you."

"You fool," screamed Mrs. Sunbury. "You fool."

There was quite a scene then. Mrs. Sunbury and her son went at it hammer
and tongs, and when poor Samuel tried to intervene they both told him
roughly to shut up. At last Herbert flung out of the room and out of the
house and Mrs. Sunbury burst into angry tears.

No reference was made next day to what had passed. Mrs. Sunbury was
frigidly polite to Herbert and he was sullen and silent. After supper he
went out. On Saturday he told his father and mother that he was engaged
that afternoon and wouldn't be able to come to the common with them.

"I dare say we shall be able to do without you," said Mrs. Sunbury
grimly.

It was getting on to the time for their usual fortnight at the seaside.
They always went to Herne Bay, because Mrs. Sunbury said you had a nice
class of people there, and for years they had taken the same lodgings.
One evening, in as casual a way as he could, Herbert said:

"By the way, Mum, you'd better write and tell them I shan't be wanting
my room this year. Betty and me are getting married and we're going to
Southend for the honeymoon."

For a moment there was dead silence in the room.

"Bit sudden-like, isn't it, Herbert?" said Mr. Sunbury uneasily.

"Well, they're cutting down at Betty's office and she's out of a job, so
we thought we'd better get married at once. We've taken two rooms in
Dabney Street and we're furnishing out of my Savings Bank money."

Mrs. Sunbury didn't say a word. She went deathly pale and tears rolled
down her thin cheeks.

"Oh, come on, Mum, don't take it so hard," said Herbert. "A fellow has
to marry sometime. If Dad hadn't married you, I shouldn't be here now,
should I?"

Mrs. Sunbury brushed her tears away with an impatient hand.

"Your dad didn't marry me; I married 'im. I knew he was steady and
respectable. I knew he'd make a good 'usband and father. I've never 'ad
cause to regret it and no more 'as your dad. That's right, Samuel, isn't
it?"

"Right as rain, Beatrice," he said quickly.

"You know, you'll like Betty when you get to know her. She's a nice
girl, she is really. I believe you'd find you had a lot in common. You
must give her a chance, Mum."

"She's never going to set foot in this house only over my dead body."

"That's absurd, Mum. Why, everything'll be just the same if you'll only
be reasonable. I mean, we can go flying on Saturday afternoons same as
we always did. Just this time I've been engaged it's been difficult. You
see, she can't see what there is in kite-flying, but she'll come round
to it, and after I'm married it'll be different, I mean I can come and
fly with you and Dad; that stands to reason."

"That's what you think. Well, let me tell you that if you marry that
woman you're not going to fly my kite. I never gave it you, I bought it
out of the housekeeping money, and it's mine, see."

"All right then, have it your own way. Betty says it's a kid's game
anyway and I ought to be ashamed of myself, flying a kite at my age."

He got up and once more stalked angrily out of the house. A fortnight
later he was married. Mrs. Sunbury refused to go to the wedding and
wouldn't let Samuel go either. They went for their holiday and came
back. They resumed their usual round. On Saturday afternoons they went
to the common by themselves and flew their enormous kite. Mrs. Sunbury
never mentioned her son. She was determined not to forgive him. But Mr.
Sunbury used to meet him on the morning train they both took and they
chatted a little when they managed to get into the same carriage. One
morning Mr. Sunbury looked up at the sky.

"Good flying weather to-day," he said.

"D'you and Mum still fly?"

"What do you think? She's getting as clever as I am. You should see her
with her skirts pinned up running down the hill. I give you my word, I
never knew she had it in her. Run? Why, she can run better than what I
can."

"Don't make me laugh, Dad!"

"I wonder you don't buy a kite of your own, Herbert. You've been always
so keen on it."

"I know I was. I did suggest it once, but you know what women are, Betty
said: 'Be your age,' and oh, I don't know what all. I don't want a kid's
kite, of course, and them big kites cost money. When we started to
furnish Betty said it was cheaper in the long run to buy the best and so
we went to one of them hire purchase places and what with paying them
every month and the rent, well, I haven't got any more money than just
what we can manage on. They say it doesn't cost any more to keep two
than one, well, that's not my experience so far."

"Isn't she working?"

"Well, no, she says after working for donkeys' years as you might say,
now she's married she's going to take it easy, and of course someone's
got to keep the place clean and do the cooking."

So it went on for six months, and then one Saturday afternoon when the
Sunburys were as usual on the common Mrs. Sunbury said to her husband:

"Did you see what I saw, Samuel?"

"I saw Herbert, if that's what you mean. I didn't mention it because I
thought it would only upset you."

"Don't speak to him. Pretend you haven't seen him."

Herbert was standing among the idle lookers-on. He made no attempt to
speak to his parents, but it did not escape Mrs. Sunbury that he
followed with all his eyes the flight of the big kite he had flown so
often. It began to grow chilly and the Sunburys went home. Mrs.
Sunbury's face was brisk with malice.

"I wonder if he'll come next Saturday," said Samuel.

"If I didn't think betting wrong I'd bet you sixpence he will, Samuel.
I've been waiting for this all along."

"You have?"

"I knew from the beginning he wouldn't be able to keep away from it."

She was right. On the following Saturday and on every Saturday after
that when the weather was fine Herbert turned up on the common. No
intercourse passed. He just stood there for a while looking on and then
strolled away. But after things had been going on like this for several
weeks, the Sunburys had a surprise for him. They weren't flying the big
kite which he was used to, but a new one, a box-kite, a small one, on
the model for which he had made the designs himself. He saw it was
creating a lot of interest among the other kite-flyers; they were
standing round it and Mrs. Sunbury was talking volubly. The first time
Samuel ran down the hill with it the thing didn't rise, but flopped
miserably on the ground, and Herbert clenched his hands and ground his
teeth. He couldn't bear to see it fail. Mr. Sunbury climbed up the
little hill again, and the second time the box-kite took the air. There
was a cheer among the bystanders. After a while Mr. Sunbury pulled it
down and walked back with it to the hill. Mrs. Sunbury went up to her
son.

"Like to have a try, Herbert?"

He caught his breath.

"Yes, Mum, I should."

"It's just a small one because they say you have to get the knack of it.
It's not like the old-fashioned sort. But we've got specifications for a
big one, and they say when you get to know about it and the wind's right
you can go up to two miles with it."

Mr. Sunbury joined them.

"Samuel, Herbert wants to try the kite."

Mr. Sunbury handed it to him, a pleased smile on his face, and Herbert
gave his mother his hat to hold. Then he raced down the hill, the kite
took the air beautifully, and as he watched it rise his heart was filled
with exultation. It was grand to see that little black thing soaring so
sweetly, but even as he watched it he thought of the great big one they
were having made. They'd never be able to manage that. Two miles in the
air, mum had said. Whew!

"Why don't you come back and have a cup of tea, Herbert," said Mrs.
Sunbury, "and we'll show you the designs for the new one they want to
build for us. Perhaps you could make some suggestions."

He hesitated. He'd told Betty he was just going for a walk to stretch
his legs, she didn't know he'd been coming to the common every week, and
she'd be waiting for him. But the temptation was irresistible.

"I don't mind if I do," he said.

After tea they looked at the specifications. The kite was huge, with
gadgets he had never seen before, and it would cost a lot of money.

"You'll never be able to fly it by yourselves," he said.

"We can try."

"I suppose you wouldn't like me to help you just at first?" he asked
uncertainly.

"Mightn't be a bad idea," said Mrs. Sunbury.

It was late when he got home, much later than he thought, and Betty was
vexed.

"Wherever have you been, Herb? I thought you were dead. Supper's waiting
and everything."

"I met some fellows and got talking."

She gave him a sharp look, but didn't answer. She sulked.

After supper he suggested they should go to a movie, but she refused.

"You go if you want to," she said. "I don't care to."

On the following Saturday he went again to the common and again his
mother let him fly the kite. They had ordered the new one and expected
to get it in three weeks. Presently his mother said to him:

"Elizabeth is here."

"Betty?"

"Spying on you."

It gave him a nasty turn, but he put on a bold front.

"Let her spy. I don't care."

But he was nervous and wouldn't go back to tea with his parents. He went
straight home. Betty was waiting for him.

"So that's the fellows you got talking to. I've been suspicious for some
time, you going for a walk on Saturday afternoons, and all of a sudden I
tumbled to it. Flying a kite, you, a grown man. Contemptible I call it."

"I don't care what you call it. I like it, and if you don't like it you
can lump it."

"I won't have it and I tell you that straight. I'm not going to have you
make a fool of yourself."

"I've flown a kite every Saturday afternoon ever since I was a kid, and
I'm going to fly a kite as long as ever I want to."

"It's that old bitch, she's just trying to get you away from me. I know
her. If you were a man you'd never speak to her again, not after the way
she's treated me."

"I won't have you call her that. She's my mother and I've got the right
to see her as often as ever I want to."

The quarrel went on hour after hour. Betty screamed at him and Herbert
shouted at her. They had had trifling disagreements before, because they
were both obstinate, but this was the first serious row they had had.
They didn't speak to one another on the Sunday, and during the rest of
the week, though outwardly there was peace between them, their
ill-feeling rankled. It happened that the next two Saturdays it poured
with rain. Betty smiled to herself when she saw the downpour, but if
Herbert was disappointed he gave no sign of it. The recollection of
their quarrel grew dim. Living in two rooms as they did, sleeping in the
same bed, it was inevitable that they should agree to forget their
differences. Betty went out of her way to be nice to her Herb, and she
thought that now she had given him a taste of her tongue and he knew she
wasn't going to be put upon by anyone, he'd be reasonable. He was a good
husband in his way, generous with his money and steady. Give her time
and she'd manage him all right.

But after a fortnight of bad weather it cleared.

"Looks as if were going to have good flying weather to-morrow," said Mr.
Sunbury as they met on the platform to await their morning train. "The
new kite's come."

"It has?"

"Your mum says of course we'd like you to come and help us with it, but
no one's got the right to come between a man and his wife, and if you're
afraid of Betty, her kicking up a rumpus, I mean, you'd better not come.
There's a young fellow we've got to know on the common who's just mad
about it, and he says he'll get it to fly if anybody can."

Herbert was seized with a pang of jealousy.

"Don't you let any strangers touch our kite. I'll be there all right."

"Well, you think it over, Herbert, and if you don't come we shall quite
understand."

"I'll come," said Herbert.

So next day when he got back from the City he changed from his business
clothes into slacks and an old coat. Betty came into the bedroom.

"What are you doing?"

"Changing," he answered gaily. He was so excited, he couldn't keep the
secret to himself. "Their new kite's come and I'm going to fly it."

"Oh no, you're not," she said. "I won't have it."

"Don't be a fool, Betty. I'm going, I tell you, and if you don't like it
you can do the other thing."

"I'm not going to let you, so that's that."

She shut the door and stood in front of it. Her eyes flashed and her jaw
was set. She was a little thing and he was a tall strong man. He took
hold of her two arms to push her out of the way, but she kicked him
violently on the shin.

"D'you want me to give you a sock on the jaw?"

"If you go you don't come back," she shouted.

He caught her up, though she struggled and kicked, threw her on to the
bed and went out.

If the small box-kite had caused an excitement on the common it was
nothing to what the new one caused. But it was difficult to manage, and
though they ran and panted and other enthusiastic flyers helped them
Herbert couldn't get it up.

"Never mind," he said, "we'll get the knack of it presently. The wind's
not right to-day, that's all."

He went back to tea with his father and mother and they talked it over
just as they had talked in the old days. He delayed going because he
didn't fancy the scene Betty would make him, but when Mrs. Sunbury went
into the kitchen to get supper ready he had to go home. Betty was
reading the paper. She looked up.

"Your bag's packed," she said.

"My what?"

"You heard what I said. I said if you went you needn't come back. I
forgot about your things. Everything's packed. It's in the bedroom."

He looked at her for a moment with surprise. She pretended to be reading
again. He would have liked to give her a good hiding.

"All right, have it your own way," he said.

He went into the bedroom. His clothes were packed in a suit-case, and
there was a brown-paper parcel in which Betty had put whatever was left
over. He took the bag in one hand, the parcel in the other, walked
through the sitting-room without a word and out of the house. He walked
to his mother's and rang the bell. She opened the door.

"I've come home, Mum," he said.

"Have you, Herbert? Your room's ready for you. Put your things down and
come in. We were just sitting down to supper." They went into the
dining-room. "Samuel, Herbert's come home. Run out and get a quart of
beer."

Over supper and during the rest of the evening he told them the trouble
he had had with Betty.

"Well, you're well out of it, Herbert," said Mrs. Sunbury when he had
finished. "I told you she was no wife for you. Common she is, common as
dirt, and you who's always been brought up so nice."

He found it good to sleep in his own bed, the bed he'd been used to all
his life, and to come down to breakfast on the Sunday morning, unshaved
and unwashed, and read the _News of the World_.

"We won't go to chapel this morning," said Mrs. Sunbury. "It's been an
upset to you, Herbert; we'll all take it easy to-day."

During the week they talked a lot about the kite, but they also talked a
lot about Betty. They discussed what she would do next.

"She'll try and get you back," said Mrs. Sunbury.

"A fat chance she's got of doing that," said Herbert.

"You'll have to provide for her," said his father.

"Why should he do that?" cried Mrs. Sunbury. "She trapped him into
marrying her and now she's turned him out of the home he made for her."

"I'll give her what's right as long as she leaves me alone."

He was feeling more comfortable every day, in fact he was beginning to
feel as if he'd never been away, he settled in like a dog in its own
particular basket; it was nice having his mother to brush his clothes
and mend his socks; she gave him the sort of things he'd always eaten
and liked best; Betty was a scrappy sort of cook, it had been fun just
at first, like picnicking, but it wasn't the sort of eating a man could
get his teeth into, and he could never get over his mother's idea that
fresh food was better than the stuff you bought in tins. He got sick of
the sight of tinned salmon. Then it was nice to have space to move about
in rather than be cooped up in two small rooms, one of which had to
serve as a kitchen as well.

"I never made a bigger mistake in my life than when I left home, Mum,"
he said to her once.

"I know that, Herbert, but you're back now and you've got no cause ever
to leave it again."

His salary was paid on Friday and in the evening when they had just
finished supper the bell rang.

"That's her," they said with one voice.

Herbert went pale. His mother gave him a glance.

"You leave it to me," she said. "I'll see her."

She opened the door. Betty was standing on the threshold. She tried to
push her way in, but Mrs. Sunbury prevented her.

"I want to see Herb."

"You can't. He's out."

"No, he isn't. I watched him go in with his dad and he hasn't come out
again."

"Well, he doesn't want to see you, and if you start making a disturbance
I'll call the police."

"I want my week's money."

"That's all you've ever wanted of him." She took out her purse. "There's
thirty-five shillings for you."

"Thirty-five shillings? The rent's twelve shillings a week."

"That's all you're going to get. He's got to pay his board here, hasn't
he?"

"And then there's the instalments on the furniture."

"We'll see about that when the time comes. D'you want the money or don't
you?"

Confused, unhappy, browbeaten, Betty stood irresolutely. Mrs. Sunbury
thrust the money in her hand and slammed the door in her face. She went
back to the dining-room.

"I've settled her hash all right," she said.

The bell rang again, it rang repeatedly, but they did not answer it, and
presently it stopped. They guessed that Betty had gone way.

It was fine next day, with just the right velocity in the wind, and
Herbert, after failing two or three times, found he had got the knack of
flying the big box-kite. It soared into the air and up and up as he
unreeled the wire.

"Why, it's a mile up if it's a yard," he told his mother excitedly.

He had never had such a thrill in his life.

Several weeks passed by. They concocted a letter for Herbert to write in
which he told Betty that so long as she didn't molest him or members of
his family she would receive a postal order for thirty-five shillings
every Saturday morning and he would pay the instalments on the furniture
as they came due. Mrs. Sunbury had been much against this, but Mr.
Sunbury, for once at variance with her, and Herbert agreed that it was
the right thing to do. Herbert by then had learnt the ways of the new
kite and was able to do great things with it. He no longer bothered to
have contests with the other kite-flyers. He was out of their class.
Saturday afternoons were his moments of glory. He revelled in the
admiration he aroused in the bystanders and enjoyed the envy he knew he
excited in the less fortunate flyers. Then one evening when he was
walking back from the station with his father Betty waylaid him.

"Hulloa, Herb," she said.

"Hulloa."

"I want to talk to my husband alone, Mr. Sunbury."

"There's nothing you've got to say to me that my dad can't hear," said
Herbert sullenly.

She hesitated. Mr. Sunbury fidgeted. He didn't know whether to stay or
go.

"All right, then," she said. "I want you to come back home, Herb. I
didn't mean it that night when I packed your bag. I only did it to
frighten you. I was in a temper. I'm sorry for what I did. It's all so
silly, quarrelling about a kite."

"Well, I'm not coming back, see. When you turned me out you did me the
best turn you ever did me."

Tears began to trickle down Betty's cheeks.

"But I love you, Herb. If you want to fly your silly old kite, you fly
it, I don't care so long as you come back."

"Thank you very much, but it's not good enough. I know when I'm well off
and I've had enough of married life to last me a lifetime. Come on,
Dad."

They walked on quickly and Betty made no attempt to follow them. On the
following Sunday they went to chapel and after dinner Herbert went to
the coal-shed where they kept the kite to have a look at it. He just
couldn't keep away from it. He doted on it. In a minute he rushed back,
his face white, with a hatchet in his hand.

"She's smashed it up. She did it with this."

The Sunburys gave a cry of consternation and hurried to the coal-shed.
What Herbert had said was true. The kite, the new, expensive kite, was
in fragments. It had been savagely attacked with the hatchet, the
woodwork was all in pieces, the reel was hacked to bits.

"She must have done it while we were at chapel. Watched us go out,
that's what she did."

"But how did she get in?" asked Mr. Sunbury.

"I had two keys. When I came home I noticed one was missing, but I
didn't think anything about it."

"You can't be sure she did it, some of them fellows on the common have
been very snooty, I wouldn't put it past them to have done this."

"Well, we'll soon find out," said Herbert. "I'll go and ask her, and if
she did it I'll kill her."

His rage was so terrible that Mrs. Sunbury was frightened.

"And get yourself hung for murder? No, Herbert, I won't let you go. Let
your dad go, and when he comes back we'll decide what to do."

"That's right, Herbert, let me go."

They had a job to persuade him, but in the end Mr. Sunbury went. In half
an hour he came back.

"She did it all right. She told me straight out. She's proud of it. I
won't repeat her language, it fair startled me, but the long and short
of it was she was jealous of the kite. She said Herbert loved the kite
more than he loved her and so she smashed it up and if she had to do it
again she'd do it again."

"Lucky she didn't tell me that. I'd have wrung her neck even if I'd had
to swing for it. Well, she never gets another penny out of me, that's
all."

"She'll sue you," said his father.

"Let her."

"The instalment on the furniture is due next week, Herbert," said Mrs.
Sunbury quietly. "In your place I wouldn't pay it."

"Then they'll just take it away," said Samuel, "and all the money he's
paid on it so far will be wasted."

"Well, what of it?" she answered. "He can afford it. He's rid of her for
good and all and we've got him back and that's the chief thing."

"I don't care twopence about the money," said Herbert. "I can see her
face when they come and take the furniture away. It meant a lot to her,
it did, and the piano, she set a rare store on that piano."

So on the following Friday he did not send Betty her weekly money, and
when she sent him on a letter from the furniture people to say that if
he didn't pay the instalment due by such and such a date they would
remove it, he wrote back and said he wasn't in a position to continue
the payments and they could remove the furniture at their convenience.
Betty took to waiting for him at the station, and when he wouldn't speak
to her followed him down the street screaming curses at him. In the
evenings she would come to the house and ring the bell till they thought
they would go mad, and Mr. and Mrs. Sunbury had the greatest difficulty
in preventing Herbert from going out and giving her a sound thrashing.
Once she threw a stone and broke the sitting-room window. She wrote
obscene and abusive postcards to him at his office. At last she went to
the magistrate's court and complained that her husband had left her and
wasn't providing for her support. Herbert received a summons. They both
told their story and if the magistrate thought it a strange one he
didn't say so. He tried to effect a reconciliation between them, but
Herbert resolutely refused to go back to his wife. The magistrate
ordered him to pay Betty twenty-five shillings a week. He said he
wouldn't pay it.

"Then you'll go to prison," said the magistrate. "Next case."

But Herbert meant what he said. On Betty's complaint he was brought once
more before the magistrate, who asked him what reason he had for not
obeying the order.

"I said I wouldn't pay her and I won't, not after she smashed my kite.
And if you send me to prison I'll go to prison."

The magistrate was stern with him this time.

"You're a very foolish young man," he said. "I'll give you a week to pay
the arrears, and if I have any more nonsense from you you'll go to
prison till you come to your senses."

Herbert didn't pay, and that is how my friend Ned Preston came to know
him and I heard the story.

"What d'you make of it?" asked Ned as he finished. "You know, Betty
isn't a bad girl. I've seen her several times, there's nothing wrong
with her except her insane jealousy of Herbert's kite; and he isn't a
fool by any means. In fact he's smarter than the average. What d'you
suppose there is in kite-flying that makes the damned fool so mad about
it?"

"I don't know," I answered. I took my time to think. "You see, I don't
know a thing about flying a kite. Perhaps it gives him a sense of power
as he watches it soaring towards the clouds and of mastery over the
elements as he seems to bend the winds of heaven to his will. It may be
that in some queer way he identifies himself with the kite flying so
free and so high above him, and it's as it were an escape from the
monotony of life. It may be that in some dim, confused way it represents
an ideal of freedom and adventure. And you know, when a man once gets
bitten with the virus of the ideal not all the King's doctors and not
all the King's surgeons can rid him of it. But all this is very fanciful
and I dare say it's just stuff and nonsense. I think you'd better put
your problem before someone who knows a lot more about the psychology of
the human animal than I do."




A WOMAN OF FIFTY


My friend Wyman Holt is a professor of English Literature in one of the
smaller universities of the Middle West, and hearing that I was speaking
in a near-by city--near-by as distances go in the vastness of
America--he wrote to ask me if I would come and give a talk to his
class. He suggested that I should stay with him for a few days so that
he could show me something of the surrounding country. I accepted the
invitation, but told him that my engagements would prevent me from
spending more than a couple of nights with him. He met me at the
station, drove me to his house and after we had had a drink we walked
over to the campus. I was somewhat taken aback to find so many people in
the hall in which I was to speak, for I had not expected more than
twenty at the outside and I was not prepared to give a solemn lecture,
but only an informal chat. I was more than a little intimidated to see a
number of middle-aged and elderly persons, some of whom I suspected were
members of the faculty, and I was afraid they would find what I had to
say very superficial. However, there was nothing to do but to start and,
after Wyman had introduced me to the audience in a manner that I very
well knew I couldn't live up to, that is what I did. I said my say, I
answered as best I could a number of questions, and then I retired with
Wyman into a little room at the back of the stage from which I had
spoken.

Several people came in. They said the usual kindly things to me that are
said on these occasions, and I made the usual polite replies. I was
thirsting for a drink. Then a woman came in and held out her hand to me.

"How very nice it is to see you again," she said. "It's years since we
last met."

To the best of my belief I'd never set eyes on her before. I forced a
cordial smile to my tired, stiff lips, shook her proffered hand
effusively and wondered who the devil she was. My professor must have
seen from my face that I was trying to place her, for he said:

"Mrs. Greene is married to a member of our faculty and she gives a
course on the Renaissance and Italian literature."

"Really," I said. "Interesting."

I was no wiser than before.

"Has Wyman told you that you're dining with us to-morrow night?"

"I'm very glad," I said.

"It's not a party. Only my husband, his brother and my sister-in-law. I
suppose Florence has changed a lot since then."

"Florence?" I said to myself. "Florence?"

That was evidently where I'd known her. She was a woman of about fifty
with grey hair simply done and marcelled without exaggeration. She was a
trifle too stout and she was dressed neatly enough, but without
distinction, in a dress that I guessed had been bought ready-made at the
local branch of a big store. She had rather large eyes of a pale blue
and a poor complexion; she wore no rouge and had used a lipstick but
sparingly. She seemed a nice creature. There was something maternal in
her demeanour, something placid and fulfilled, which I found appealing.
I supposed that I had run across her on one of my frequent visits to
Florence and because it was perhaps the only time she had been there our
meeting made more of an impression on her than on me. I must confess
that my acquaintance with the wives of members of a faculty is very
limited, but she was just the sort of person I should have expected the
wife of a professor to be, and picturing her life, useful but
uneventful, on scanty means, with its little social gatherings, its
bickerings, its gossip, its busy dullness, I could easily imagine that
her trip to Florence must linger with her as a thrilling and
unforgettable experience.

On the way back to his house Wyman said to me:

"You'll like Jasper Greene. He's clever."

"What's he a professor of?"

"He's not a professor; he's an instructor. A fine scholar. He's her
second husband. She was married to an Italian before."

"Oh?" That didn't chime in with my ideas at all. "What was her name?"

"I haven't a notion. I don't believe it was a great success." Wyman
chuckled. "That's only a deduction I draw from the fact that she hasn't
a single thing in the house to suggest that she ever spent any time in
Italy. I should have expected her to have at least a refectory table, an
old chest or two and an embroidered cope hanging on the wall."

I laughed. I knew those rather dreary pieces that people buy when
they're in Italy, the gilt wooden candlesticks, the Venetian glass
mirrors and the high-backed, comfortless chairs. They look well enough
when you see them in the crowded shops of the dealers in antiques, but
when you bring them to another country they're too often a sad
disappointment. Even if they're genuine, which they seldom are, they
look ill-at-ease and out of place.

"Laura has money," Wyman went on. "When they married she furnished the
house from cellar to attic in Chicago. It's quite a show place; it's a
little masterpiece of hideousness and vulgarity. I never go into the
living-room without marvelling at the unerring taste with which she
picked out exactly what you'd expect to find in the bridal suite of a
second-class hotel in Atlantic City."

To explain this irony I should state that Wyman's living-room was all
chromium and glass, rough modern fabrics, with a boldly Cubist rug on
the floor, and on the walls Picasso prints and drawings by Tchelicheff.
However, he gave me a very good dinner. We spent the evening chatting
pleasantly about things that mutually interested us and finished it with
a couple of bottles of beer. I went to bed in a room of somewhat
aggressive modernity. I read for a while and then putting out the light
composed myself to sleep.

"Laura?" I said to myself. "Laura what?"

I tried to think back. I thought of all the people I knew in Florence,
hoping that by association I might recall when and where I had come in
contact with Mrs. Greene. Since I was going to dine with her I wanted to
recall something that would prove that I had not forgotten her. People
look upon it as a slight if you don't remember them. I suppose we all
attach a sort of importance to ourselves, and it is humiliating to
realise that we have left no impression at all upon the persons we have
associated with. I dozed off, but before I fell into the blessedness of
deep sleep, my subconscious, released from the effort of striving at
recollection, I suppose, grew active and I was suddenly wide awake, for
I remembered who Laura Greene was. It was no wonder that I had forgotten
her, for it was twenty-five years since I had seen her, and then only
haphazardly during a month I spent in Florence.

It was just after the First World War. She had been engaged to a man who
was killed in it and she and her mother had managed to get over to
France to see his grave. They were San Francisco people. After doing
their sad errand they had come down to Italy and were spending the
winter in Florence. At that time there was quite a large colony of
English and Americans. I had some American friends, a Colonel Harding
and his wife, colonel because he had occupied an important position in
the Red Cross, who had a handsome villa in the Via Bolognese, and they
asked me to stay with them. I spent most of my mornings sightseeing and
met my friends at Doney's in the Via Tornabuoni round about noon to
drink a cocktail. Doney's was the gathering-place of everybody one knew,
Americans, English and such of the Italians as frequented their society.
There you heard all the gossip of the town. There was generally a
lunch-party either at a restaurant or at one or other of the villas with
their fine old gardens a mile or two from the centre of the city. I had
been given a card to the Florence Club, and in the afternoon Charley
Harding and I used to go there to play bridge or a dangerous game of
poker with a pack of thirty-two cards. In the evening there would be a
dinner-party with more bridge perhaps and often dancing. One met the
same people all the time, but the group was large enough, the people
sufficiently various, to prevent it from being tedious. Everyone was
more or less interested in the arts, as was only right and proper in
Florence, so that, idle as life seemed, it was not entirely frivolous.

Laura and her mother, Mrs. Clayton, a widow, lived in one of the better
boarding-houses. They appeared to be comfortably off. They had come to
Florence with letters of introduction and soon made many friends.
Laura's story appealed to the sympathies, and people were glad on that
account to do what they could for the two women, but they were in
themselves nice and quickly became liked for themselves. They were
hospitable and gave frequent lunches at one or other of the restaurants
where one ate macaroni and the inevitable scaloppini, and drank Chianti.
Mrs. Clayton was perhaps a little lost in this cosmopolitan society,
where matters that were strange to her were seriously or gaily talked
about, but Laura took to it as though it were her native element. She
engaged an Italian woman to teach her the language and soon was reading
the _Inferno_ with her; she devoured books on the art of the Renaissance
and on Florentine history, and I sometimes came across her, Baedeker in
hand, at the Uffizzi or in some church studiously examining works of
art.

She was twenty-four or twenty-five then and I was well over forty, so
that though we often met we became cordially acquainted rather than
intimate. She was by no means beautiful, but she was comely in rather an
unusual way; she had an oval face with bright blue eyes and very dark
hair which she wore very simply, parted in the middle, drawn over her
ears and tied in a chignon low on the nape of her neck. She had a good
skin and a naturally high colour; her features were good without being
remarkable and her teeth were even, small and white; but her chief asset
was her easy grace of movement, and I was not surprised when they told
me that she danced "divinely". Her figure was very good, somewhat fuller
than was the fashion of the moment; and I think what made her attractive
was the odd mingling in her appearance of the Madonna in an altar-piece
by one of the later Italian painters and a suggestion of sensuality. It
certainly made her very alluring to the Italians who gathered at Doney's
in the morning or were occasionally invited to lunch or dinner in the
American or English villas. She was evidently accustomed to dealing with
amorous young men, for though she was charming, gracious and friendly
with them she kept them at their distance. She quickly discovered that
they were all looking for an American heiress who would restore the
family fortunes, and with a demure amusement which I found admirable
made them delicately understand that she was far from rich. They sighed
a little and turned their attentions at Doney's, which was their happy
hunting-ground, to more likely objects. They continued to dance with
her, and to keep their hand in flirted with her, but their aspirations
ceased to be matrimonial.

But there was one young man who persisted. I knew him slightly because
he was one of the regular poker-players at the club. I played
occasionally. It was impossible to win and the disgruntled foreigners
used sometimes to say that the Italians ganged up on us, but it may be
only that they knew the particular game they played better than we did.
Laura's admirer, Tito di San Pietro, was a bold and even reckless player
and would often lose sums he could ill afford. (That was not his real
name, but I call him that since his own is famous in Florentine
history.) He was a good-looking youth, neither short nor tall, with fine
black eyes, thick black hair brushed back from his forehead and shining
with oil, an olive skin, and features of classical regularity. He was
poor and he had some vague occupation, which did not seem to interfere
with his amusements, but he was always beautifully dressed. No one quite
knew where he lived, in a furnished room perhaps or in the attic of some
relation; and all that remained of his ancestors' great possessions was
a cinquecento villa about thirty miles from the city. I never saw it,
but I was told that it was of amazing beauty, with a great neglected
garden of cypresses and live oaks, overgrown borders of box, terraces,
artificial grottoes and crumbling statues. His widowed father, the
count, lived there alone and subsisted on the wine he made from the
vines of the small property he still owned and the oil from his olive
trees. He seldom came to Florence, so I never met him, but Charley
Harding knew him fairly well.

"He's a perfect specimen of the Tuscan nobleman of the old school," he
said. "He was in the diplomatic service in his youth and he knows the
world. He has beautiful manners and such an air, you almost feel he's
doing you a favour when he says how d'you do to you. He's a brilliant
talker. Of course he hasn't a penny, he squandered the little he
inherited on gambling and women, but he bears his poverty with great
dignity. He acts as though money were something beneath his notice."

"What sort of age is he?" I asked.

"Fifty, I should say, but he's still the handsomest man I've ever seen
in my life."

"Oh?"

"You describe him, Bessie. When he first came here he made a pass at
Bessie. I've never been quite sure how far it went."

"Don't be a fool, Charley," Mrs. Harding laughed.

She gave him the sort of look a woman gives her husband when she has
been married to him many years and is quite satisfied with him.

"He's very attractive to women and he knows it," she said. "When he
talks to you he gives you the impression that you're the only woman in
the world and of course it's flattering. But it's only a game and a
woman would have to be a perfect fool to take him seriously. He is very
handsome. Tall and spare and he holds himself well. He has great dark
liquid eyes, like the boy's; his hair is snow-white, but very thick
still, and the contrast with his bronzed, young face is really
breath-taking. He has a ravaged, rather battered look, but at the same
time a look of such distinction, it's really quite incredibly romantic."

"He also has his great dark liquid eyes on the main chance," said
Charley Harding dryly. "And he'll never let Tito marry a girl who has no
more money than Laura."

"She has about five thousand dollars a year of her own," said Bessie.
"And she'll get that much more when her mother dies."

"Her mother can live for another thirty years, and five thousand a year
won't go far to keep a husband, a father and two or three children, and
restore a ruined villa with practically not a stick of furniture in it."

"I think the boy's desperately in love with her."

"How old is he?" I asked.

"Twenty-six."

A few days after this Charley, on coming back to lunch, since for once
we were lunching by ourselves, told me that he had run across Mrs.
Clayton in the Via Tornabuoni and she had said that she and Laura were
driving out that afternoon with Tito to meet his father and see the
villa.

"What d'you suppose that means?" asked Bessie.

"My guess is that Tito is taking Laura to be inspected by his old man,
and if he approves he's going to ask her to marry him."

"And will he approve?"

"Not on your life."

But Charley was wrong. After the two women had been shown over the house
they were taken for a walk round the garden. Without exactly knowing how
it had happened Mrs. Clayton found herself alone in an alley with the
old count. She spoke no Italian, but he had been an attach in London
and his English was tolerable.

"Your daughter is charming, Mrs. Clayton," he said. "I am not surprised
that my Tito has fallen in love with her."

Mrs. Clayton was no fool and it may be that she too had guessed why the
young man had asked them to go and see the ancestral villa.

"Young Italians are very impressionable. Laura is sensible enough not to
take their attentions too seriously."

"I was hoping she was not quite indifferent to the boy."

"I have no reason to believe that she likes him any more than any other
of the young men who dance with her," Mrs. Clayton answered somewhat
coldly. "I think I should tell you at once that my daughter has a very
moderate income and she will have no more till I die."

"I will be frank with you. I have nothing in the world but this house
and the few acres that surround it. My son could not afford to marry a
penniless girl, but he is not a fortune-hunter and he loves your
daughter."

The count had not only the grand manner, but a great deal of charm and
Mrs. Clayton was not insensible to it. She softened a little.

"All that is neither here nor there. We don't arrange our children's
marriages in America. If Tito wants to marry her, let him ask her, and
if she's prepared to marry him she'll presumably say so."

"Unless I am greatly mistaken that is just what he is doing now. I hope
with all my heart that he will be successful."

They strolled on and presently saw walking towards them the two young
people hand in hand. It was not difficult to guess what had passed. Tito
kissed Mrs. Clayton's hand and his father on both cheeks.

"Mrs. Clayton, Papa, Laura has consented to be my wife."

The engagement made something of a stir in Florentine society and a
number of parties were given for the young couple. It was quite evident
that Tito was very much in love, but less so that Laura was. He was
good-looking, adoring, high-spirited and gay; it was likely enough that
she loved him; but she was a girl who did not display emotion and she
remained what she had always been, somewhat placid, amiable, serious but
friendly, and easy to talk to. I wondered to what extent she had been
influenced to accept Tito's offer by his great name, with its historical
associations, and the sight of that beautiful house with its lovely view
and the romantic garden.

"Anyhow there's no doubt about its being a love match on his side," said
Bessie Harding, when we were talking it over. "Mrs. Clayton tells me
that neither Tito nor his father has shown any desire to know how much
Laura has."

"I'd bet a million dollars that they know to the last cent what she's
got and they've calculated exactly how much it comes to in _lire_," said
Harding with a grunt.

"You're a beastly old man, darling," she answered.

He gave another grunt.

Shortly after that I left Florence. The marriage took place from the
Hardings' house and a vast crowd came to it, ate their food and drank
their champagne. Tito and his wife took an apartment on the Lungarno and
the old count returned to his lonely villa in the hills. I did not go to
Florence again for three years and then only for a week. I was staying
once more with the Hardings. I asked about my old friends and then
remembered Laura and her mother.

"Mrs. Clayton went back to San Francisco," said Bessie, "and Laura and
Tito live at the villa with the count. They're very happy."

"Any babies?"

"No."

"Go on," said Harding.

Bessie gave her husband a look.

"I cannot imagine why I've lived thirty years with a man I dislike so
much," she said. "They gave up the apartment on the Lungarno. Laura
spent a good deal of money doing things to the villa, there wasn't a
bathroom in it, she put in central heating, and she had to buy a lot of
furniture to make it habitable, and then Tito lost a small fortune
playing poker and poor Laura had to pay up."

"Hadn't he got a job?"

"It didn't amount to anything and it came to an end."

"What Bessie means by that is that he was fired," Harding put in.

"Well, to cut a long story short, they thought it would be more
economical to live at the villa and Laura had the idea that it would
keep Tito out of mischief. She loves the garden and she's made it
lovely. Tito simply worships her and the old count's taken quite a fancy
to her. So really it's all turned out very well."

"It may interest you to know that Tito was in last Thursday," said
Harding. "He played like a madman and I don't know how much he lost."

"Oh, Charley. He promised Laura he'd never play again."

"As if a gambler ever kept a promise like that. It'll be like last time.
He'll burst into tears and say he loves her and it's a debt of honour
and unless he can get the money he'll blow his brains out. And Laura
will pay as she paid before."

"He's weak, poor dear, but that's his only fault. Unlike most Italian
husbands he's absolutely faithful to her and he's kindness itself." She
looked at Harding with a sort of humorous grimness. "I've yet to find a
husband who was perfect."

"You'd better start looking around pretty soon, dear, or it'll be too
late," he retorted with a grin.

I left the Hardings and returned to London. Charley Harding and I
corresponded in a desultory sort of way, and about a year later I got a
letter from him. He told me as usual what he had been doing in the
interval, and mentioned that he had been to Montecatini for the baths
and had gone with Bessie to visit friends in Rome; he spoke of the
various people I knew in Florence, So and So had just bought a Bellini
and Mrs. Such and Such had gone to America to divorce her husband. Then
he went on: "I suppose you've heard about the San Pietros. It's shaken
us all and we can talk of nothing else. Laura's terribly upset, poor
thing, and she's going to have a baby. The police keep on questioning
her and that doesn't make it any easier for her. Of course we brought
her to stay here. Tito comes up for trial in another month."

I hadn't the faintest notion what all this was about. So I wrote at once
to Harding asking him what it meant. He answered with a long letter.
What he had to tell me was terrible. I will relate the bare and brutal
facts as shortly as I can. I learned them partly from Harding's letter
and partly from what he and Bessie told me when two years later I was
with them once more.

The count and Laura took to one another at once and Tito was pleased to
see how quickly they had formed an affectionate friendship, for he was
as devoted to his father as he was in love with his wife. He was glad
that the count began to come more often to Florence than he had been
used to. They had a spare room in the apartment and on occasion he spent
two or three nights with them. He and Laura would go bargain-hunting in
the antique shops and buy old pieces to put in the villa. He had tact
and knowledge and little by little the house, with its spacious rooms
and marble floors, lost its forlorn air and became a friendly place to
live in. Laura had a passion for gardening and she and the count spent
long hours together planning and then supervising the workmen who were
restoring the gardens to their ancient, rather stately, beauty.

Laura made light of it when Tito's financial difficulties forced them to
give up the apartment in Florence; she had had enough of Florentine
society by then and was not displeased to live altogether in the grand
house that had belonged to his ancestors. Tito liked city life and the
prospect dismayed him, but he could not complain since it was his own
folly that had made it necessary for them to cut down expenses. They
still had the car and he amused himself by taking long drives while his
father and Laura were busy, and if they knew that now and then he went
into Florence to have a flutter at the club they shut their eyes to it.
So a year passed. Then, he hardly knew why, he was seized with a vague
misgiving. He couldn't put his finger on anything; he had an uneasy
feeling that perhaps Laura didn't care for him so much as she had at
first; sometimes it seemed to him that his father was inclined to be
impatient with him; they appeared to have a great deal to say to one
another, but he got the impression that he was being edged out of their
conversation, as though he were a child who was expected to sit still
and not interrupt while his elders talked of things over his head; he
had a notion that often his presence was unwelcome to them and that they
were more at their ease when he was not there. He knew his father, and
his reputation, but the suspicion that arose in him was so horrible that
he refused to entertain it. And yet sometimes he caught a look passing
between them that disconcerted him, there was a tender possessiveness in
his father's eyes, a sensual complacency in Laura's, which, if he had
seen it in others, would have convinced him that they were lovers. But
he couldn't, he wouldn't, believe that there was anything between them.
The count couldn't help making love to a woman and it was likely enough
that Laura felt his extraordinary fascination, but it was shameful to
suppose for a moment that they, these two people he loved, had formed a
criminal, almost an incestuous, connection. He was sure that Laura had
no idea that there was anything more in her feeling than the natural
affection of a young, happily-married woman for her father-in-law.
Notwithstanding he thought it better that she should not remain in
everyday contact with his father, and one day he suggested that they
should go back to live in Florence. Laura and the count were astonished
that he should propose such a thing and would not hear of it. Laura said
that, having spent so much money on the villa, she couldn't afford to
set up another establishment, and the count that it was absurd to leave
it, now that Laura had made it so comfortable, to live in a wretched
apartment in the city. An argument started and Tito got rather excited.
He took some remark of Laura's to mean that if she lived at the villa it
was to keep him out of temptation. This reference to his losses at the
poker-table angered him.

"You always throw your money in my face," he said passionately. "If I'd
wanted to marry money I'd have had the sense to marry someone who had a
great deal more than you."

Laura went very pale and glanced at the count.

"You have no right to speak to Laura like that," he said. "You are an
ill-mannered oaf."

"I shall speak to my wife exactly as I choose."

"You are mistaken. So long as you are in my house you will treat her
with the respect which is her right and your duty."

"When I want lessons in behaviour from you, Father, I will let you
know."

"You are very impertinent, Tito. You will kindly leave the room."

He looked very stern and dignified and Tito, furious and yet slightly
intimidated, leapt to his feet and stalked out slamming the door behind
him. He took the car and drove into Florence. He won quite a lot of
money that day (lucky at cards, unlucky in love) and to celebrate his
winnings got more than a little drunk. He did not go back to the villa
till the following morning. Laura was as friendly and placid as ever,
but his father was somewhat cool. No reference was made to the scene.
But from then on things went from bad to worse. Tito was sullen and
moody, the count critical, and on occasion sharp words passed between
them. Laura did not interfere, but Tito gained the impression that after
a dispute that had been more than acrimonious Laura interceded with his
father, for the count thenceforward, refusing to be annoyed, began to
treat him with the tolerant patience with which you would treat a
wayward child. He convinced himself that they were acting in concert and
his suspicions grew formidable. They even increased when Laura in her
good-natured way, saying that it must be very dull for him to remain so
much in the country, encouraged him to go more often to Florence to see
his friends. He jumped to the conclusion that she said this only to be
rid of him. He began to watch them. He would enter suddenly a room in
which he knew they were, expecting to catch them in a compromising
position, or silently follow them to a secluded part of the garden. They
were chatting unconcernedly of trivial things. Laura greeted him with a
pleasant smile. He could put his finger on nothing to confirm his
torturing suspicions. He started to drink. He grew nervous and
irritable. He had no proof, no proof whatever, that there was anything
between them, and yet in his bones he was certain that they were
grossly, shockingly deceiving him. He brooded till he felt he was going
mad. A dark aching fire within him consumed his being. On one of his
visits to Florence he bought a pistol. He made up his mind that if he
could have proof of what in his heart he was certain of, he would kill
them both.

I don't know what brought on the final catastrophe. All that came out at
the trial was that, driven beyond endurance, Tito had gone one night to
his father's room to have it out with him. His father mocked and laughed
at him. They had a furious quarrel and Tito took out his pistol and shot
the count dead. Then he collapsed and fell, weeping hysterically, on his
father's body; the repeated shots brought Laura and the servants rushing
in. He jumped up and grabbed the pistol, to shoot himself he said
afterwards, but he hesitated or they were too quick for him, and they
snatched it out of his hand. The police were sent for. He spent most of
his time in prison weeping; he would not eat and had to be forcibly fed;
he told the examining magistrate that he had killed his father because
he was his wife's lover. Laura, examined and examined again, swore that
there had never been anything between the count and herself but a
natural affection. The murder filled the Florentine public with horror.
The Italians were convinced of her guilt, but her friends, English and
American, felt that she was incapable of the crime of which she was
accused. They went about saying that Tito was neurotic and insanely
jealous and in his stupid way had mistaken her American freedom of
behaviour for a criminal passion. On the face of it Tito's charge was
absurd. Carlo di San Pietro was nearly thirty years older than she, an
elderly man with white hair; who could suppose that there would have
been anything between her and her father-in-law, when her husband was
young, handsome and in love with her?

It was in Harding's presence that she saw the examining magistrate and
the lawyers who had been engaged to defend Tito. They had decided to
plead insanity. Experts for the defence examined him and decided that he
was insane, experts for the prosecution examined him and decided that he
was sane. The fact that he had bought a pistol three months before he
committed the dreadful crime went to prove that it was premeditated. It
was discovered that he was deeply in debt and his creditors were
pressing him; the only means he had of settling with them was by selling
the villa, and his father's death put him in possession of it. There is
no capital punishment in Italy, but murder with premeditation is
punished by solitary confinement for life. On the approach of the trial
the lawyers came to Laura and told her that the only way in which Tito
could be saved from this was for her to admit in court that the count
had been her lover. Laura went very pale. Harding protested violently.
He said they had no right to ask her to perjure herself and ruin her
reputation to save that shiftless, drunken gambler whom she had been so
unfortunate as to marry. Laura remained silent for a while.

"Very well," she said at last, "if that's the only way to save him I'll
do it."

Harding tried to dissuade her, but she was decided.

"I should never have a moment's peace if I knew that Tito had to spend
the rest of his life alone in a prison cell."

And that is what happened. The trial opened. She was called and under
oath stated that for more than a year her father-in-law had been her
lover. Tito was declared insane and sent to an asylum. Laura wanted to
leave Florence at once, but in Italy the preliminaries to a trial are
endless and by then she was near her time. The Hardings insisted on her
remaining with them till she was confined. She had a child, a boy, but
it only lived twenty-four hours. Her plan was to go back to San
Francisco and live with her mother till she could find a job, for Tito's
extravagance, the money she had spent on the villa, and then the cost of
the trial had seriously impoverished her.

It was Harding who told me most of this; but one day when he was at the
club and I was having a cup of tea with Bessie and we were again talking
over these tragic happenings she said to me:

"You know, Charley hasn't told you the whole story because he doesn't
know it. I never told him. Men are funny in some ways; they're much more
easily shocked than women."

I raised my eyebrows, but said nothing.

"Just before Laura went away we had a talk. She was very low and I
thought she was grieving over the loss of her baby. I wanted to say
something to help her. 'You mustn't take the baby's death too hardly,' I
said. 'As things are, perhaps it's better it died.' 'Why?' she said.
'Think what the poor little thing's future would have been with a
murderer for his father.' She looked at me for a moment in that strange
quiet way of hers. And then what d'you think she said?"

"I haven't a notion," said I.

"She said: 'What makes you think his father was a murderer?' I felt
myself grow as red as a turkey-cock, I could hardly believe my ears.
'Laura, what _do_ you mean?' I said. 'You were in court,' she said. 'You
heard me say Carlo was my lover.'"

Bessie Harding stared at me as she must have stared at Laura.

"What did you say then?" I asked.

"What was there for me to say? I said nothing. I wasn't so much
horrified, I was bewildered. Laura looked at me and, believe it or not,
I'm convinced there was a twinkle in her eyes. I felt a perfect fool."

"Poor Bessie," I smiled.

Poor Bessie, I repeated to myself now as I thought of this strange
story. She and Charley were long since dead and by their death I had
lost good friends. I went to sleep then, and next day Wyman Holt took me
for a long drive.

We were to dine with the Greenes at seven and we reached their house on
the dot. Now that I had remembered who Laura was I was filled with an
immense curiosity to see her again. Wyman had exaggerated nothing. The
living-room into which we went was the quintessence of commonplace. It
was comfortable enough, but there was not a trace of personality in it.
It might have been furnished _en bloc_ by a mail-order house. It had the
bleakness of a government office. I was introduced first to my host
Jasper Greene and then to his brother Emery and to his brother's wife
Fanny. Jasper Greene was a large, plump man with a moon face and a shock
of black, coarse, unkempt hair. He wore large cellulose-rimmed
spectacles. I was staggered by his youth. He could not have been much
over thirty and was therefore nearly twenty years younger than Laura.
His brother, Emery, a composer and teacher in a New York school of
music, might have been seven or eight and twenty. His wife, a pretty
little thing, was an actress for the moment out of a job. Jasper Greene
mixed us some very adequate cocktails but for a trifle too much
vermouth, and we sat down to dinner. The conversation was gay and even
boisterous. Jasper and his brother were loud-voiced and all three of
them, Jasper, Emery and Emery's wife, were loquacious talkers. They
chaffed one another, they joked and laughed; they discussed art,
literature, music and the theatre. Wyman and I joined in when we had a
chance, which was not often; Laura did not try to. She sat at the head
of the table, serene, with an amused, indulgent smile on her lips as she
listened to their scatter-brained nonsense; it was not stupid nonsense,
mind you, it was intelligent and modern, but it was nonsense all the
same. There was something maternal in her attitude, and I was reminded
oddly of a sleek dachshund lying quietly in the sun while she looks
lazily, and yet watchfully, at her litter of puppies romping round her.
I wondered whether it crossed her mind that all this chatter about art
didn't amount to much when compared with those incidents of blood and
passion that she remembered. But did she remember? It had all happened a
long time ago and perhaps it seemed no more than a bad dream. Perhaps
these commonplace surroundings were part of her deliberate effort to
forget, and to be among these young people was restful to her spirit.
Perhaps Jasper's clever stupidity was a comfort. After that searing
tragedy it might be that she wanted nothing but the security of the
humdrum.

Possibly because Wyman was an authority on the Elizabethan drama the
conversation at one moment touched on that. I had already discovered
that Jasper Greene was prepared to lay down the law on subjects all and
sundry, and now he delivered himself as follows:

"Our theatre has gone all to pot because the dramatists of our day are
afraid to deal with the violent emotions which are the proper subject
matter of tragedy," he boomed. "In the sixteenth century they had a
wealth of melodramatic and bloody themes to suit their purpose and so
they produced great plays. But where can our playwrights look for
themes? Our Anglo-Saxon blood is too phlegmatic, too supine, to provide
them with material they can make anything of, and so they are condemned
to occupy themselves with the trivialities of social intercourse."

I wondered what Laura thought of this, but I took care not to catch her
eye. She could have told them a story of illicit love, jealousy and
parricide which would have been meat to one of Shakespeare's successors,
but had he treated it, I suppose he would have felt bound to finish it
with at least one more corpse strewn about the stage. The end of her
story, as I knew it now, was unexpected certainly, but sadly prosaic and
a trifle grotesque. Real life more often ends things with a whimper than
with a bang. I wondered too why she had gone out of her way to renew our
old acquaintance. Of course she had no reason to suppose that I knew as
much as I did; perhaps with a true instinct she was confident that I
would not give her away; perhaps she didn't care if I did. I stole a
glance at her now and then while she was quietly listening to the
excited babbling of the three young people, but her friendly, pleasant
face told me nothing. If I hadn't known otherwise I would have sworn
that no untoward circumstance had ever troubled the course of her
uneventful life.

The evening came to an end and this is the end of my story, but for the
fun of it I am going to relate a small incident that happened when Wyman
and I got back to his house. We decided to have a bottle of beer before
going to bed and went into the kitchen to fetch it. The clock in the
hall struck eleven and at that moment the phone rang. Wyman went to
answer it and when he came back was quietly chortling to himself.

"What's the joke?" I asked.

"It was one of my students. They're not supposed to call members of the
faculty after ten-thirty, but he was all hot and bothered. He asked me
how evil had come into the world."

"And did you tell him?"

"I told him that St. Thomas Aquinas had got hot and bothered too about
that very question and he'd better worry it out for himself. I said that
when he found the solution he was to call me, no matter what time it
was. Two o'clock in the morning if he liked."

"I think you're pretty safe not to be disturbed for many a long night,"
I said.

"I won't conceal from you that I have formed pretty much the same
impression myself," he grinned.




MAYHEW


The lives of most men are determined by their environment. They accept
the circumstances amid which fate has thrown them not only with
resignation but even with good will. They are like street-cars running
contentedly on their rails and they despise the sprightly flivver that
dashes in and out of the traffic and speeds so jauntily across the open
country. I respect them; they are good citizens, good husbands, and good
fathers, and of course somebody has to pay the taxes; but I do not find
them exciting. I am fascinated by the men, few enough in all conscience,
who take life in their own hands and seem to mould it to their own
liking. It may be that we have no such thing as free will, but at all
events we have the illusion of it. At a cross-road it does seem to us
that we might go either to the right or to the left and, the choice once
made, it is difficult to see that the whole course of the world's
history obliged us to take the turning we did.

I never met a more interesting man than Mayhew. He was a lawyer in
Detroit. He was an able and a successful one. By the time he was
thirty-five he had a large and a lucrative practice, he had amassed a
competence, and he stood on the threshold of a distinguished career. He
had an acute brain, an attractive personality, and uprightness. There
was no reason why he should not become, financially or politically, a
power in the land. One evening he was sitting in his club with a group
of friends and they were perhaps a little the worse (or the better) for
liquor. One of them had recently come from Italy and he told them of a
house he had seen at Capri, a house on the hill, overlooking the Bay of
Naples, with a large and shady garden. He described to them the beauty
of the most beautiful island in the Mediterranean.

"It sounds fine," said Mayhew. "Is that house for sale?"

"Everything is for sale in Italy."

"Let's send 'em a cable and make an offer for it."

"What in heaven's name would you do with a house in Capri?"

"Live in it," said Mayhew.

He sent for a cable form, wrote it out, and despatched it. In a few
hours the reply came back. The offer was accepted.

Mayhew was no hypocrite and he made no secret of the fact that he would
never have done so wild a thing if he had been sober, but when he was he
did not regret it. He was neither an impulsive nor an emotional man, but
a very honest and sincere one. He would never have continued from
bravado in a course that he had come to the conclusion was unwise. He
made up his mind to do exactly as he had said. He did not care for
wealth and he had enough money on which to live in Italy. He thought he
could do more with life than spend it on composing the trivial quarrels
of unimportant people. He had no definite plan. He merely wanted to get
away from a life that had given him all it had to offer. I suppose his
friends thought him crazy; some must have done all they could to
dissuade him. He arranged his affairs, packed up his furniture and
started.

Capri is a gaunt rock of austere outline, bathed in a deep blue sea; but
its vineyards, green and smiling, give it a soft and easy grace. It is
friendly, remote and debonair. I find it strange that Mayhew should have
settled on this lovely island, for I never knew a man more insensible to
beauty. I do not know what he sought there: happiness, freedom, or
merely leisure; I know what he found. In this place which appeals so
extravagantly to the senses he lived a life entirely of the spirit. For
the island is rich with historic associations and over it broods always
the enigmatic memory of Tiberius the Emperor. From his windows which
overlooked the Bay of Naples, with the noble shape of Vesuvius changing
colour with the changing light, Mayhew saw a hundred places that
recalled the Romans and the Greeks. The past began to haunt him. All
that he saw for the first time, for he had never been abroad before,
excited his fancy; and in his soul stirred the creative imagination. He
was a man of energy. Presently he made up his mind to write a history.
For some time he looked about for a subject, and at last decided on the
second century of the Roman Empire. It was little known and it seemed to
him to offer problems analogous with those of our own day.

He began to collect books and soon he had an immense library. His legal
training had taught him to read quickly. He settled down to work. At
first he had been accustomed to foregather in the evening with the
painters, writers and suchlike who met in the little tavern near the
Piazza, but presently he withdrew himself, for his absorption in his
studies became more pressing. He had been accustomed to bathe in that
bland sea and to take long walks among the pleasant vineyards, but
little by little, grudging the time, he ceased to do so. He worked
harder than he had ever worked in Detroit. He would start at noon and
work all through the night till the whistle of the steamer that goes
every morning from Capri to Naples told him that it was five o'clock and
time to go to bed. His subject opened out before him, vaster and more
significant, and he imagined a work that would put him for ever beside
the great historians of the past. As the years went by he was to be
found seldom in the ways of men. He could be tempted to come out of his
house only by a game of chess or the chance of an argument. He loved to
set his brain against another's. He was widely read now, not only in
history, but in philosophy and science; and he was a skilful
controversialist, quick, logical and incisive. But he had good-humour
and kindliness; though he took a very human pleasure in victory, he did
not exult in it to your mortification.

When first he came to the island he was a big, brawny fellow, with thick
black hair and a black beard, of a powerful physique; but gradually his
skin became pale and waxy; he grew thin and frail. It was an odd
contradiction in the most logical of men that, though a convinced and
impetuous materialist, he despised the body; he looked upon it as a vile
instrument which he could force to do the spirit's bidding. Neither
illness nor lassitude prevented him from going on with his work. For
fourteen years he toiled unremittingly. He made thousands and thousands
of notes. He sorted and classified them. He had his subject at his
finger ends, and at last was ready to begin. He sat down to write. He
died.

The body that he, the materialist, had treated so contumeliously took
its revenge on him.

That vast accumulation of knowledge is lost for ever. Vain was that
ambition, surely not an ignoble one, to set his name beside those of
Gibbon and Mommsen. His memory is treasured in the hearts of a few
friends, fewer, alas! as the years pass on, and to the world he is
unknown in death as he was in life.

And yet to me his life was a success. The pattern is good and complete.
He did what he wanted, and he died when his goal was in sight and never
knew the bitterness of an end achieved.




THE LOTUS EATER


Most people, the vast majority in fact, lead the lives that
circumstances have thrust upon them, and though some repine, looking
upon themselves as round pegs in square holes, and think that if things
had been different they might have made a much better showing, the
greater part accept their lot, if not with serenity, at all events with
resignation. They are like tram-cars travelling for ever on the selfsame
rails. They go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards,
inevitably, till they can go no longer and then are sold as scrap-iron.
It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken the course of
his life into his own hands. When you do, it is worth while having a
good look at him.

That was why I was curious to meet Thomas Wilson. It was an interesting
and a bold thing he had done. Of course the end was not yet and until
the experiment was concluded it was impossible to call it successful.
But from what I had heard it seemed he must be an odd sort of fellow and
I thought I should like to know him. I had been told he was reserved,
but I had a notion that with patience and tact I could persuade him to
confide in me. I wanted to hear the facts from his own lips. People
exaggerate, they love to romanticise, and I was quite prepared to
discover that his story was not nearly so singular as I had been led to
believe.

And this impression was confirmed when at last I made his acquaintance.
It was on the Piazza in Capri, where I was spending the month of August
at a friend's villa, and a little before sunset, when most of the
inhabitants, native and foreign, gather together to chat with their
friends in the cool of the evening. There is a terrace that overlooks
the Bay of Naples, and when the sun sinks slowly into the sea the island
of Ischia is silhouetted against a blaze of splendour. It is one of the
most lovely sights in the world. I was standing there with my friend and
host watching it, when suddenly he said:

"Look, there's Wilson."

"Where?"

"The man sitting on the parapet, with his back to us. He's got a blue
shirt on."

I saw an undistinguished back and a small head of grey hair short and
rather thin.

"I wish he'd turn round," I said.

"He will presently."

"Ask him to come and have a drink with us at Morgano's."

"All right."

The instant of overwhelming beauty had passed and the sun, like the top
of an orange, was dipping into a wine-red sea. We turned round and
leaning our backs against the parapet looked at the people who were
sauntering to and fro. They were all talking their heads off and the
cheerful noise was exhilarating. Then the church bell, rather cracked,
but with a fine resonant note, began to ring. The Piazza at Capri, with
its clock tower over the footpath that leads up from the harbour, with
the church up a flight of steps, is a perfect setting for an opera by
Donizetti, and you felt that the voluble crowd might at any moment break
out into a rattling chorus. It was charming and unreal.

I was so intent on the scene that I had not noticed Wilson get off the
parapet and come towards us. As he passed us my friend stopped him.

"Hulloa, Wilson, I haven't seen you bathing the last few days."

"I've been bathing on the other side for a change."

My friend then introduced me. Wilson shook hands with me politely, but
with indifference; a great many strangers come to Capri for a few days,
or a few weeks, and I had no doubt he was constantly meeting people who
came and went; and then my friend asked him to come along and have a
drink with us.

"I was just going back to supper," he said.

"Can't it wait?" I asked.

"I suppose it can," he smiled.

Though his teeth were not very good his smile was attractive. It was
gentle and kindly. He was dressed in a blue cotton shirt and a pair of
grey trousers, much creased and none too clean, of a thin canvas, and on
his feet he wore a pair of very old espadrilles. The get-up was
picturesque, and very suitable to the place and the weather, but it did
not at all go with his face. It was a lined, long face, deeply
sunburned, thin-lipped, with small grey eyes rather close together and
tight, neat features. The grey hair was carefully brushed. It was not a
plain face, indeed in his youth Wilson might have been good-looking, but
a prim one. He wore the blue shirt, open at the neck, and the grey
canvas trousers, not as though they belonged to him, but as though,
shipwrecked in his pyjamas, he had been fitted out with odd garments by
compassionate strangers. Notwithstanding this careless attire he looked
like the manager of a branch office in an insurance company, who should
by rights be wearing a black coat with pepper-and-salt trousers, a white
collar and an unobjectionable tie. I could very well see myself going to
him to claim the insurance money when I had lost a watch, and being
rather disconcerted while I answered the questions he put to me by his
obvious impression, for all his politeness, that people who made such
claims were either fools or knaves.

Moving off, we strolled across the Piazza and down the street till we
came to Morgano's. We sat in the garden. Around us people were talking
in Russian, German, Italian and English. We ordered drinks. Donna Lucia,
the host's wife, waddled up and in her low, sweet voice passed the time
of day with us. Though middle-aged now and portly, she had still traces
of the wonderful beauty that thirty years before had driven artists to
paint so many bad portraits of her. Her eyes, large and liquid, were the
eyes of Hera and her smile was affectionate and gracious. We three
gossiped for a while, for there is always a scandal of one sort or
another in Capri to make a topic of conversation, but nothing was said
of particular interest and in a little while Wilson got up and left us.
Soon afterwards we strolled up to my friend's villa to dine. On the way
he asked me what I had thought of Wilson.

"Nothing," I said. "I don't believe there's a word of truth in your
story."

"Why not?"

"He isn't the sort of man to do that sort of thing."

"How does anyone know what anyone is capable of?"

"I should put him down as an absolutely normal man of business who's
retired on a comfortable income from gilt-edged securities. I think your
story's just the ordinary Capri tittle-tattle."

"Have it your own way," said my friend.

We were in the habit of bathing at a beach called the Baths of Tiberius.
We took a fly down the road to a certain point and then wandered through
lemon groves and vineyards, noisy with cicadas and heavy with the hot
smell of the sun, till we came to the top of the cliff down which a
steep winding path led to the sea. A day or two later, just before we
got down my friend said:

"Oh, there's Wilson back again."

We scrunched over the beach, the only drawback to the bathing-place
being that it was shingle and not sand, and as we came along Wilson saw
us and waved. He was standing up, a pipe in his mouth, and he wore
nothing but a pair of trunks. His body was dark brown, thin but not
emaciated, and, considering his wrinkled face and grey hair, youthful.
Hot from our walk, we undressed quickly and plunged at once into the
water. Six feet from the shore it was thirty feet deep, but so clear
that you could see the bottom. It was warm, yet invigorating.

When I got out Wilson was lying on his belly, with a towel under him
reading a book. I lit a cigarette and went and sat down beside him.

"Had a nice swim?" he asked.

He put his pipe inside his book to mark the place and closing it put it
down on the pebbles beside him. He was evidently willing to talk.

"Lovely," I said. "It's the best bathing in the world."

"Of course people think those were the Baths of Tiberius." He waved his
hand towards a shapeless mass of masonry that stood half in the water
and half out. "But that's all rot. It was just one of his villas, you
know."

I did. But it is just as well to let people tell you things when they
want to. It disposes them kindly towards you if you suffer them to
impart information. Wilson gave a chuckle.

"Funny old fellow, Tiberius. Pity they're saying now there's not a word
of truth in all those stories about him."

He began to tell me all about Tiberius. Well, I had read my Suetonius
too and I had read histories of the Early Roman Empire, so there was
nothing very new to me in what he said. But I observed that he was not
ill-read. I remarked on it.

"Oh, well, when I settled down here I was naturally interested, and I
have plenty of time for reading. When you live in a place like this,
with all its associations, it seems to make history so actual. You might
almost be living in historical times yourself."

I should remark here that this was in 1913. The world was an easy,
comfortable place and no one could have imagined that anything might
happen seriously to disturb the serenity of existence.

"How long have you been here?" I asked.

"Fifteen years." He gave the blue and placid sea a glance, and a
strangely tender smile hovered on his thin lips. "I fell in love with
the place at first sight. You've heard, I daresay, of the mythical
German who came here on the Naples boat just for lunch and a look at the
Blue Grotto and stayed forty years; well, I can't say I exactly did
that, but it's come to the same thing in the end. Only it won't be forty
years in my case. Twenty-five. Still, that's better than a poke in the
eye with a sharp stick."

I waited for him to go on. For what he had just said looked indeed as
though there might be something after all in the singular story I had
heard. But at that moment my friend came dripping out of the water very
proud of himself because he had swum a mile, and the conversation turned
to other things.

After that I met Wilson several times, either in the Piazza or on the
beach. He was amiable and polite. He was always pleased to have a talk
and I found out that he not only knew every inch of the island but also
the adjacent mainland. He had read a great deal on all sorts of
subjects, but his speciality was the history of Rome and on this he was
very well informed. He seemed to have little imagination and to be of no
more than average intelligence. He laughed a good deal, but with
restraint, and his sense of humour was tickled by simple jokes. A
commonplace man. I did not forget the odd remark he had made during the
first short chat we had had by ourselves, but he never so much as
approached the topic again. One day on our return from the beach,
dismissing the cab at the Piazza, my friend and I told the driver to be
ready to take us up to Anacapri at five. We were going to climb Monte
Solaro, dine at a tavern we favoured, and walk down in the moonlight.
For it was full moon and the views by night were lovely. Wilson was
standing by while we gave the cabman instructions, for we had given him
a lift to save him the hot dusty walk, and more from politeness than for
any other reason I asked him if he would care to join us.

"It's my party," I said.

"I'll come with pleasure," he answered.

But when the time came to set out my friend was not feeling well, he
thought he had stayed too long in the water, and would not face the long
and tiring walk. So I went alone with Wilson. We climbed the mountain,
admired the spacious view, and got back to the inn as night was falling,
hot, hungry and thirsty. We had ordered our dinner beforehand. The food
was good, for Antonio was an excellent cook, and the wine came from his
own vineyard. It was so light that you felt you could drink it like
water and we finished the first bottle with our macaroni. By the time we
had finished the second we felt that there was nothing much wrong with
life. We sat in a little garden under a great vine laden with grapes.
The air was exquisitely soft. The night was still and we were alone. The
maid brought us _bel paese_ cheese and a plate of figs. I ordered coffee
and strega, which is the best liqueur they make in Italy. Wilson would
not have a cigar, but lit his pipe.

"We've got plenty of time before we need start," he said, "the moon
won't be over the hill for another hour."

"Moon or no moon," I said briskly, "of course we've got plenty of time.
That's one of the delights of Capri, that there's never any hurry."

"Leisure," he said. "If people only knew! It's the most priceless thing
a man can have and they're such fools they don't even know it's
something to aim at. Work? They work for work's sake. They haven't got
the brains to realise that the only object of work is to obtain
leisure."

Wine has the effect on some people of making them indulge in general
reflections. These remarks were true, but no one could have claimed that
they were original. I did not say anything, but struck a match to light
my cigar.

"It was full moon the first time I came to Capri," he went on
reflectively. "It might be the same moon as to-night."

"It was, you know," I smiled.

He grinned. The only light in the garden was what came from an oil lamp
that hung over our heads. It had been scanty to eat by, but it was good
now for confidences.

"I didn't mean that. I mean, it might be yesterday. Fifteen years it is,
and when I look back it seems like a month. I'd never been to Italy
before. I came for my summer holiday. I went to Naples by boat from
Marseilles and I had a look round, Pompeii, you know, and Paestum and
one or two places like that; then I came here for a week. I liked the
look of the place right away, from the sea, I mean, as I watched it come
closer and closer; and then when we got into the little boats from the
steamer and landed at the quay, with all that crowd of jabbering people
who wanted to take your luggage, and the hotel touts, and the tumbledown
houses on the Marina and the walk up to the hotel, and dining on the
terrace--well, it just got me. That's the truth. I didn't know if I was
standing on my head or my heels. I'd never drunk Capri wine before, but
I'd heard of it; I think I must have got a bit tight. I sat on that
terrace after they'd all gone to bed and watched the moon over the sea,
and there was Vesuvius with a great red plume of smoke rising up from
it. Of course I know now that wine I drank was ink, Capri wine my eye,
but I thought it all right then. But it wasn't the wine that made me
drunk, it was the shape of the island and those jabbering people, the
moon and the sea and the oleander in the hotel garden. I'd never seen an
oleander before."

It was a long speech and it had made him thirsty. He took up his glass,
but it was empty. I asked him if he would have another stregna.

"It's sickly stuff. Let's have a bottle of wine. That's sound, that is,
pure juice of the grape and can't hurt anyone."

I ordered more wine, and when it came filled the glasses. He took a long
drink and after a sigh of pleasure went on.

"Next day I found my way to the bathing-place we go to. Not bad bathing,
I thought. Then I wandered about the island. As luck would have it,
there was a _festa_ up at the Punta di Timberio and I ran straight into
the middle of it. An image of the Virgin and priests, acolytes swinging
censers, and a whole crowd of jolly, laughing, excited people, a lot of
them all dressed up. I ran across an Englishman there and asked him what
it was all about. 'Oh, it's the feast of the Assumption,' he said, 'at
least that's what the Catholic Church says it is, but that's just their
hanky-panky. It's the festival of Venus. Pagan, you know. Aphrodite
rising from the sea and all that.' It gave me quite a funny feeling to
hear him. It seemed to take one a long way back, if you know what I
mean. After that I went down one night to have a look at the Faraglioni
by moonlight. If the fates had wanted me to go on being a bank manager
they oughtn't to have let me take that walk."

"You were a bank manager, were you?" I asked.

I had been wrong about him, but not far wrong.

"Yes. I was manager of the Crawford Street branch of the York and City.
It was convenient for me because I lived up Hendon way. I could get from
door to door in thirty-seven minutes."

He puffed at his pipe and relit it.

"That was my last night, that was. I'd got to be back at the bank on
Monday morning. When I looked at those two great rocks sticking out of
the water, with the moon above them, and all the little lights of the
fishermen in their boats catching cuttlefish, all so peaceful and
beautiful, I said to myself, well, after all, why should I go back? It
wasn't as if I had anyone dependent on me. My wife had died of bronchial
pneumonia four years before and the kid went to live with her
grandmother, my wife's mother. She was an old fool, she didn't look
after the kid properly and she got blood-poisoning, they amputated her
leg, but they couldn't save her and she died, poor little thing."

"How terrible," I said.

"Yes, I was cut up at the time, though of course not so much as if the
kid had been living with me, but I dare say it was a mercy. Not much
chance for a girl with only one leg. I was sorry about my wife too. We
got on very well together. Though I don't know if it would have
continued. She was the sort of woman who was always bothering about what
other people'd think. She didn't like travelling. Eastbourne was her
idea of a holiday. D'you know, I'd never crossed the Channel till after
her death."

"But I suppose you've got other relations, haven't you?"

"None. I was an only child. My father had a brother, but he went to
Australia before I was born. I don't think anyone could easily be more
alone in the world than I am. There wasn't any reason I could see why I
shouldn't do exactly what I wanted. I was thirty-four at that time."

He had told me he had been on the island for fifteen years. That would
make him forty-nine. Just about the age I should have given him.

"I'd been working since I was seventeen. All I had to look forward to
was doing the same old thing day after day till I retired on my pension.
I said to myself, is it worth it? What's wrong with chucking it all up
and spending the rest of my life down here? It was the most beautiful
place I'd ever seen. But I'd had a business training, I was cautious by
nature. 'No,' I said, 'I won't be carried away like this, I'll go
to-morrow like I said I would and think it over. Perhaps when I get back
to London I'll think quite differently.' Damned fool, wasn't I? I lost a
whole year that way."

"You didn't change your mind, then?"

"You bet I didn't. All the time I was working I kept thinking of the
bathing here and the vineyards and the walks over the hills and the moon
and the sea, and the Piazza in the evening when everyone walks about for
a bit of a chat after the day's work is over. There was only one thing
that bothered me: I wasn't sure if I was justified in not working like
everybody else did. Then I read a sort of history book, by a man called
Marion Crawford it was, and there was a story about Sybaris and Crotona.
There were two cities; and in Sybaris they just enjoyed life and had a
good time, and in Crotona they were hardy and industrious and all that.
And one day the men of Crotona came over and wiped Sybaris out, and then
after a while a lot of other fellows came over from somewhere else and
wiped Crotona out. Nothing remains of Sybaris, not a stone, and all
that's left of Crotona is just one column. That settled the matter for
me."

"Oh?"

"It came to the same in the end, didn't it? And when you look back now,
who were the mugs?"

I did not reply and he went on.

"The money was rather a bother. The bank didn't pension one off till
after thirty years' service, but if you retired before that they gave
you a gratuity. With that and what I'd got for the sale of my house and
the little I'd managed to save, I just hadn't enough to buy an annuity
to last the rest of my life. It would have been silly to sacrifice
everything so as to lead a pleasant life and not have a sufficient
income to make it pleasant. I wanted to have a little place of my own, a
servant to look after me, enough to buy tobacco, decent food, books now
and then, and something over for emergencies. I knew pretty well how
much I needed. I found I had just enough to buy an annuity for
twenty-five years."

"You were thirty-five at the time?"

"Yes. It would carry me on till I was sixty. After all, no one can be
certain of living longer than that, a lot of men die in their fifties,
and by the time a man's sixty he's had the best of life."

"On the other hand no one can be sure of dying at sixty," I said.

"Well, I don't know. It depends on himself, doesn't it?"

"In your place I should have stayed on at the bank till I was entitled
to my pension."

"I should have been forty-seven then. I shouldn't have been too old to
enjoy my life here, I'm older than that now and I enjoy it as much as I
ever did, but I should have been too old to experience the particular
pleasure of a young man. You know, you can have just as good a time at
fifty as you can at thirty, but it's not the same sort of good time. I
wanted to live the perfect life while I still had the energy and the
spirit to make the most of it. Twenty-five years seemed a long time to
me, and twenty-five years of happiness seemed worth paying something
pretty substantial for. I'd made up my mind to wait a year and I waited
a year. Then I sent in my resignation and as soon as they paid me my
gratuity I bought the annuity and came on here."

"An annuity for twenty-five years?"

"That's right."

"Have you never regretted?"

"Never. I've had my money's worth already. And I've got ten years more.
Don't you think after twenty-five years of perfect happiness one ought
to be satisfied to call it a day?"

"Perhaps."

He did not say in so many words what he would do then, but his intention
was clear. It was pretty much the story my friend had told me, but it
sounded different when I heard it from his own lips. I stole a glance at
him. There was nothing about him that was not ordinary. No one, looking
at that neat, prim face, could have thought him capable of an
unconventional action. I did not blame him. It was his own life that he
had arranged in this strange manner, and I did not see why he should not
do what he liked with it. Still, I could not prevent the little shiver
that ran down my spine.

"Getting chilly?" he smiled. "We might as well start walking down. The
moon'll be up by now."

Before we parted Wilson asked me if I would like to go and see his house
one day; and two or three days later, finding out where he lived, I
strolled up to see him. It was a peasant's cottage, well away from the
town, in a vineyard, with a view of the sea. By the side of the door
grew a great oleander in full flower. There were only two small rooms, a
tiny kitchen and a lean-to in which firewood could be kept. The bedroom
was furnished like a monk's cell, but the sitting-room, smelling
agreeably of tobacco, was comfortable enough, with two large arm-chairs
that he had brought from England, a large roll-top desk, a cottage piano
and crowded bookshelves. On the walls were framed engravings of pictures
by G. F. Watts and Lord Leighton. Wilson told me that the house belonged
to the owner of the vineyard who lived in another cottage higher up the
hill, and his wife came in every day to do the rooms and the cooking. He
had found the place on his first visit to Capri, and taking it on his
return for good had been there ever since. Seeing the piano and music
open on it, I asked him if he would play.

"I'm no good, you know, but I've always been fond of music and I get a
lot of fun out of strumming."

He sat down at the piano and played one of the movements from a
Beethoven sonata. He did not play very well. I looked at his music,
Schumann and Schubert, Beethoven, Bach and Chopin. On the table on which
he had his meals was a greasy pack of cards. I asked him if he played
patience.

"A lot."

From what I saw of him then and from what I heard from other people I
made for myself what I think must have been a fairly accurate picture of
the life he had led for the last fifteen years. It was certainly a very
harmless one. He bathed; he walked a great deal, and he seemed never to
lose his sense of the beauty of the island which he knew so intimately;
he played the piano and he played patience; he read. When he was asked
to a party he went and, though a trifle dull, was agreeable. He was not
affronted if he was neglected. He liked people, but with an aloofness
that prevented intimacy. He lived thriftily, but with sufficient
comfort. He never owed a penny. I imagine he had never been a man whom
sex had greatly troubled, and if in his younger days he had had now and
then a passing affair with a visitor to the island whose head was turned
by the atmosphere, his emotion, while it lasted, remained, I am pretty
sure, well under his control. I think he was determined that nothing
should interfere with his independence of spirit. His only passion was
for the beauty of nature, and he sought felicity in the simple and
natural things that life offers to everyone. You may say that it was a
grossly selfish existence. It was. He was of no use to anybody, but on
the other hand he did nobody any harm. His only object was his own
happiness, and it looked as though he had attained it. Very few people
know where to look for happiness; fewer still find it. I don't know
whether he was a fool or a wise man. He was certainly a man who knew his
own mind. The odd thing about him to me was that he was so immensely
commonplace. I should never have given him a second thought but for what
I knew, that on a certain day, ten years from then, unless a chance
illness cut the thread before, he must deliberately take leave of the
world he loved so well. I wondered whether it was the thought of this,
never quite absent from his mind, that gave him the peculiar zest with
which he enjoyed every moment of the day.

I should do him an injustice if I omitted to state that he was not at
all in the habit of talking about himself. I think the friend I was
staying with was the only person in whom he had confided. I believe he
only told me the story because he suspected I already knew it, and on
the evening on which he told it me he had drunk a good deal of wine.

My visit drew to a close and I left the island. The year after, war
broke out. A number of things happened to me, so that the course of my
life was greatly altered, and it was thirteen years before I went to
Capri again. My friend had been back some time, but he was no longer so
well off, and had moved into a house that had no room for me; so I was
putting up at the hotel. He came to meet me at the boat and we dined
together. During dinner I asked him where exactly his house was.

"You know it," he answered. "It's the little place Wilson had. I've
built on a room and made it quite nice."

With so many other things to occupy my mind I had not given Wilson a
thought for years; but now, with a little shock, I remembered. The ten
years he had before him when I made his acquaintance must have elapsed
long ago.

"Did he commit suicide as he said he would?"

"It's rather a grim story."

Wilson's plan was all right. There was only one flaw in it and this, I
suppose, he could not have foreseen. It had never occurred to him that
after twenty-five years of complete happiness, in this quiet backwater,
with nothing in the world to disturb his serenity, his character would
gradually lose its strength. The will needs obstacles in order to
exercise its power; when it is never thwarted, when no effort is needed
to achieve one's desires, because one has placed one's desires only in
the things that can be obtained by stretching out one's hand, the will
grows impotent. If you walk on a level all the time the muscles you need
to climb a mountain will atrophy. These observations are trite, but
there they are. When Wilson's annuity expired he had no longer the
resolution to make the end which was the price he had agreed to pay for
that long period of happy tranquillity. I do not think, as far as I
could gather, both from what my friend told me and afterwards from
others, that he wanted courage. It was just that he couldn't make up his
mind. He put it off from day to day.

He had lived on the island for so long and had always settled his
accounts so punctually that it was easy for him to get credit; never
having borrowed money before, he found a number of people who were
willing to lend him small sums when now he asked for them. He had paid
his rent regularly for so many years that his landlord, whose wife
Assunta still acted as his servant, was content to let things slide for
several months. Everyone believed him when he said that a relative had
died and that he was temporarily embarrassed because owing to legal
formalities he could not for some time get the money that was due to
him. He managed to hang on after this fashion for something over a year.
Then he could get no more credit from the local tradesmen, and there was
no one to lend him any more money. His landlord gave him notice to leave
the house unless he paid up the arrears of rent before a certain date.

The day before this he went into his tiny bedroom, closed the door and
the window, drew the curtain and lit a brazier of charcoal. Next morning
when Assunta came to make his breakfast she found him insensible but
still alive. The room was draughty, and though he had done this and that
to keep out the fresh air he had not done it very thoroughly. It almost
looked as though at the last moment, and desperate though his situation
was, he had suffered from a certain infirmity of purpose. Wilson was
taken to the hospital, and though very ill for some time he at last
recovered. But as a result either of the charcoal poisoning or of the
shock he was no longer in complete possession of his faculties. He was
not insane, at all events not insane enough to be put in an asylum, but
he was quite obviously no longer in his right mind.

"I went to see him," said my friend. "I tried to get him to talk, but he
kept looking at me in a funny sort of way, as though he couldn't quite
make out where he'd seen me before. He looked rather awful lying there
in bed, with a week's growth of grey beard on his chin; but except for
that funny look in his eyes he seemed quite normal."

"What funny look in his eyes?"

"I don't know exactly how to describe it. Puzzled. It's an absurd
comparison, but suppose you threw a stone up into the air and it didn't
come down but just stayed there..."

"It would be rather bewildering," I smiled.

"Well, that's the sort of look he had."

It was difficult to know what to do with him. He had no money and no
means of getting any. His effects were sold, but for too little to pay
what he owed. He was English, and the Italian authorities did not wish
to make themselves responsible for him.

The British Consul in Naples had no funds to deal with the case. He
could of course be sent back to England, but no one seemed to know what
could be done with him when he got there. Then Assunta, the servant,
said that he had been a good master and a good tenant, and as long as he
had the money had paid his way; he could sleep in the woodshed in the
cottage in which she and her husband lived, and he could share their
meals. This was suggested to him. It was difficult to know whether he
understood or not. When Assunta came to take him from the hospital he
went with her without remark. He seemed to have no longer a will of his
own. She had been keeping him now for two years.

"It's not very comfortable, you know," said my friend. "They've rigged
him up a ramshackle bed and given him a couple of blankets, but there's
no window, and it's icy cold in winter and like an oven in summer. And
the food's pretty rough. You know how these peasants eat: macaroni on
Sundays and meat once in a blue moon."

"What does he do with himself all the time?"

"He wanders about the hills. I've tried to see him two or three times,
but it's no good; when he sees you coming he runs like a hare. Assunta
comes down to have a chat with me now and then and I give her a bit of
money so that she can buy him tobacco, but God knows if he ever gets
it."

"Do they treat him all right?" I asked.

"I'm sure Assunta's kind enough. She treats him like a child. I'm afraid
her husband's not very nice to him. He grudges the cost of his keep. I
don't believe he's cruel or anything like that, but I think he's a bit
sharp with him. He makes him fetch water and clean the cow-shed and that
sort of thing."

"It sounds pretty rotten," I said.

"He brought it on himself. After all, he's only got what he deserved."

"I think on the whole we all get what we deserve," I said. "But that
doesn't prevent its being rather horrible."

Two or three days later my friend and I were taking a walk. We were
strolling along a narrow path through an olive grove.

"There's Wilson," said my friend suddenly. "Don't look, you'll only
frighten him. Go straight on."

I walked with my eyes on the path, but out of the corners of them I saw
a man hiding behind an olive tree. He did not move as we approached, but
I felt that he was watching us. As soon as we had passed I heard a
scamper. Wilson, like a hunted animal, had made for safety. That was the
last I ever saw of him.

He died last year. He had endured that life for six years. He was found
one morning on the mountainside lying quite peacefully as though he had
died in his sleep. From where he lay he had been able to see those two
great rocks called the Faraglioni which stand out of the sea. It was
full moon and he must have gone to see them by moonlight. Perhaps he
died of the beauty of that sight.




SALVATORE


I wonder if I can do it.

I knew Salvatore first when he was a boy of fifteen with a pleasant,
ugly face, a laughing mouth and care-free eyes. He used to spend the
morning lying about the beach with next to nothing on and his brown body
was as thin as a rail. He was full of grace. He was in and out of the
sea all the time, swimming with the clumsy, effortless stroke common to
the fisher boys. Scrambling up the jagged rocks on his hard feet, for
except on Sundays he never wore shoes, he would throw himself into the
deep water with a cry of delight. His father was a fisherman who owned
his own little vineyard and Salvatore acted as nursemaid to his two
younger brothers. He shouted to them to come inshore when they ventured
out too far and made them dress when it was time to climb the hot,
vineclad hill for the frugal midday meal.

But boys in those Southern parts grow apace and in a little while he was
madly in love with a pretty girl who lived on the Grande Marina. She had
eyes like forest pools and held herself like a daughter of the Csars.
They were affianced, but they could not marry till Salvatore had done
his military service, and when he left the island which he had never
left in his life before, to become a sailor in the navy of King Victor
Emmanuel, he wept like a child. It was hard for one who had never been
less free than the birds to be at the beck and call of others; it was
harder still to live in a battleship with strangers instead of in a
little white cottage among the vines; and when he was ashore, to walk in
noisy, friendless cities with streets so crowded that he was frightened
to cross them, when he had been used to silent paths and the mountains
and the sea. I suppose it had never struck him that Ischia, which he
looked at every evening (it was like a fairy island in the sunset) to
see what the weather would be like next day, or Vesuvius, pearly in the
dawn, had anything to do with him at all; but when he ceased to have
them before his eyes he realised in some dim fashion that they were as
much part of him as his hands and his feet. He was dreadfully homesick.
But it was hardest of all to be parted from the girl he loved with all
his passionate young heart. He wrote to her (in his childlike
handwriting) long, ill-spelt letters in which he told her how constantly
he thought of her and how much he longed to be back. He was sent here
and there, to Spezzia, to Venice, to Bari and finally to China. Here he
fell ill of some mysterious ailment that kept him in hospital for
months. He bore it with the mute and uncomprehending patience of a dog.
When he learnt that it was a form of rheumatism that made him unfit for
further service his heart exulted, for he could go home; and he did not
bother, in fact he scarcely listened, when the doctors told him that he
would never again be quite well. What did he care when he was going back
to the little island he loved so well and the girl who was waiting for
him?

When he got into the rowing-boat that met the steamer from Naples and
was rowed ashore he saw his father and mother standing on the jetty and
his two brothers, big boys now, and he waved to them. His eyes searched
among the crowd that waited there, for the girl. He could not see her.
There was a great deal of kissing when he jumped up the steps and they
all, emotional creatures, cried a little as they exchanged their
greetings. He asked where the girl was. His mother told him that she did
not know; they had not seen her for two or three weeks; so in the
evening when the moon was shining over the placid sea and the lights of
Naples twinkled in the distance he walked down to the Grande Marina to
her house. She was sitting on the doorstep with her mother. He was a
little shy because he had not seen her for so long. He asked her if she
had not received the letter that he had written to her to say that he
was coming home. Yes, they had received a letter, and they had been told
by another of the island boys that he was ill. Yes, that was why he was
back; was it not a piece of luck? Oh, but they had heard that he would
never be quite well again. The doctors talked a lot of nonsense, but he
knew very well that now he was home again he would recover. They were
silent for a little, and then the mother nudged the girl. She did not
try to soften the blow. She told him straight out, with the blunt
directness of her race, that she could not marry a man who would never
be strong enough to work like a man. They had made up their minds, her
mother and father and she, and her father would never give his consent.

When Salvatore went home he found that they all knew. The girl's father
had been to tell them what they had decided, but they had lacked the
courage to tell him themselves. He wept on his mother's bosom. He was
terribly unhappy, but he did not blame the girl. A fisherman's life is
hard and it needs strength and endurance. He knew very well that a girl
could not afford to marry a man who might not be able to support her.
His smile was very sad and his eyes had the look of a dog that has been
beaten, but he did not complain, and he never said a hard word of the
girl he had loved so well. Then, a few months later, when he had settled
down to the common round, working in his father's vineyard and fishing,
his mother told him that there was a young woman in the village who was
willing to marry him. Her name was Assunta.

"She's as ugly as the devil," he said.

She was older than he, twenty-four or twenty-five, and she had been
engaged to a man who, while doing his military service, had been killed
in Africa. She had a little money of her own and if Salvatore married
her she could buy him a boat of his own and they could take a vineyard
that by a happy chance happened at that moment to be without a tenant.
His mother told him that Assunta had seen him at the _festa_ and had
fallen in love with him. Salvatore smiled his sweet smile and said he
would think about it. On the following Sunday, dressed in the stiff
black clothes in which he looked so much less well than in the ragged
shirt and trousers of every day, he went up to High Mass at the parish
church and placed himself so that he could have a good look at the young
woman. When he came down again he told his mother that he was willing.

Well, they were married and they settled down in a tiny whitewashed
house in the middle of a handsome vineyard. Salvatore was now a great
big husky fellow, tall and broad, but still with that ingenuous smile
and those trusting, kindly eyes that he had had as a boy. He had the
most beautiful manners I have ever seen in my life. Assunta was a
grim-visaged female, with decided features, and she looked old for her
years. But she had a good heart and she was no fool. I used to be amused
by the little smile of devotion that she gave her husband when he was
being very masculine and masterful; she never ceased to be touched by
his gentle sweetness. But she could not bear the girl who had thrown him
over, and notwithstanding Salvatore's smiling expostulations she had
nothing but harsh words for her. Presently children were born to them.

It was a hard enough life. All through the fishing season towards
evening he set out in his boat with one of his brothers for the fishing
grounds. It was a long pull of six or seven miles, and he spent the
night catching the profitable cuttlefish. Then there was the long row
back again in order to sell the catch in time for it to go on the early
boat to Naples. At other times he was working in his vineyard from dawn
till the heat drove him to rest and then again, when it was a trifle
cooler, till dusk. Often his rheumatism prevented him from doing
anything at all and then he would lie about the beach, smoking
cigarettes, with a pleasant word for everyone notwithstanding the pain
that racked his limbs. The foreigners who came down to bathe and saw him
there said that these Italian fishermen were lazy devils.

Sometimes he used to bring his children down to give them a bath. They
were both boys and at this time the elder was three and the younger less
than two. They sprawled about at the water's edge stark naked and
Salvatore standing on a rock would dip them in the water. The elder one
bore it with stoicism, but the baby screamed lustily. Salvatore had
enormous hands, like legs of mutton, coarse and hard from constant toil,
but when he bathed his children, holding them so tenderly, drying them
with delicate care, upon my word they were like flowers. He would seat
the naked baby on the palm of his hand and hold him up, laughing a
little at his smallness, and his laugh was like the laughter of an
angel. His eyes then were as candid as his child's.

I started by saying that I wondered if I could do it and now I must tell
you what it is that I have tried to do. I wanted to see whether I could
hold your attention for a few pages while I drew for you the portrait of
a man, just an ordinary fisherman who possessed nothing in the world
except a quality which is the rarest, the most precious and the
loveliest that anyone can have. Heaven only knows why he should so
strangely and unexpectedly have possessed it. All I know is that it
shone in him with a radiance that, if it had not been so unconscious and
so humble, would have been to the common run of men hardly bearable. And
in case you have not guessed what the quality was, I will tell you.
Goodness, just goodness.




THE WASH-TUB


Positano stands on the side of a steep hill, a disarray of huddled white
houses, their tiled roofs washed pale by the suns of a hundred years;
but unlike many of these Italian towns perched out of harm's way on a
rocky eminence it does not offer you at one delightful glance all it has
to give. It has quaint streets that zig-zag up the hill and battered,
painted houses in the baroque style, but very late, in which Neapolitan
noblemen led for a season, lives of penurious grandeur. It is indeed
almost excessively picturesque and in winter its two or three modest
hotels are crowded with painters, male and female, who in their
different ways acknowledge by their daily labours the emotion it has
excited in them. Some take infinite pains to place on canvas every
window and every tile their peering eyes can discover and doubtless
achieve the satisfaction that rewards honest industry. "At all events
it's sincere," they say modestly when they show you their work. Some,
rugged and dashing, in a fine frenzy attack their canvas with a pallet
knife charged with a wad of paint, and they say: "You see, what I was
trying to bring out was my personality." They slightly close their eyes
and tentatively murmur: "I think it's rather me, don't you?" And there
are some who give you highly entertaining arrangements of spheres and
cubes and utter sombrely: "That's how I see it!" These for the most part
are strong silent men who waste no words.

But Positano looks full south and the chances are that in summer you
will have it to yourself. The hotel is clean and cool and there is a
terrace, overhung with vines, where you can sit at night and look at the
sea bespangled with dim stars. Down at the Marina, on the quay, is a
little tavern where you can dine under an archway off anchovies and ham,
macaroni and fresh-caught mullet, and drink cold wine. Once a day the
steamer from Naples comes in, bringing the mail, and for a quarter of an
hour gives the beach (there is no port and the passengers are landed in
small boats) an air of animation.

One August, tiring of Capri where I had been staying, I made up my mind
to spend a few days at Positano, so I hired a fishing-boat and rowed
over. I stopped on the way in a shady cove to bathe and lunch and sleep,
and did not arrive till evening. I strolled up the hill, my two bags
following me on the heads of two sturdy women, to the hotel, and was
surprised to learn that I was not its only guest. The waiter, whose name
was Giuseppe, was an old friend of mine, and at that season he was
boots, porter, chamber-maid and cook as well. He told me that an
American signore had been staying there for three months.

"Is he a painter or a writer or something?" I asked.

"No, _Signore_, he's a gentleman."

Odd, I thought. No foreigners came to Positano at that time of year but
German _Wandervgel_, looking hot and dusty, with satchels on their
backs, and they only stayed overnight. I could not imagine anyone
wishing to spend three months there; unless of course he were hiding.
And since all London had been excited by the flight earlier in the year
of an eminent, but dishonest, financier, the amusing thought occurred to
me that this mysterious stranger was perhaps he. I knew him slightly and
trusted that my sudden arrival would not disconcert him.

"You'll see the _Signore_ at the Marina," said Giuseppe, as I was
setting out to go down again. "He always dines there."

He was certainly not there when I arrived. I asked what there was for
dinner and drank an americano, which is by no means a bad substitute for
a cocktail. In a few minutes, however, a man walked in who could be no
other than my fellow-guest at the hotel and I had a moment's
disappointment when I saw that it was not the absconding financier. A
tall, elderly man, bronzed after his summer on the Mediterranean, with a
handsome, thin face. He wore a very neat, even smart, suit of
cream-coloured silk and no hat. His grey hair was cut very short, but
was still thick. There was ease in his bearing, and elegance. He looked
round the half-dozen tables under the archway at which the natives of
the place were playing cards or dominoes and his eyes rested on me. They
smiled pleasantly. He came up.

"I hear you have just arrived at the hotel. Giuseppe suggested that as
he couldn't come down here to effect an introduction you wouldn't mind
if I introduced myself. Would it bore you to dine with a total
stranger?"

"Of course not. Sit down."

He turned to the maid who was laying a cover for me and in beautiful
Italian told her that I would eat with him. He looked at my americano.

"I have got them to stock a little gin and French vermouth for me. Would
you allow me to mix you a very dry Martini?"

"Without hesitation."

"It gives an exotic note to the surroundings which brings out the local
colour."

He certainly made a very good cocktail and with added appetite we ate
the ham and anchovies with which our dinner began. My host had a
pleasant humour and his fluent conversation was agreeable.

"You must forgive me if I talk too much," he said presently. "This is
the first chance I've had to speak English for three months. I don't
suppose you will stay here long and I mean to make the most of it."

"Three months is a long time to stay at Positano."

"I've hired a boat and I bathe and fish. I read a great deal. I have a
good many books here and if there's anything I can lend you I shall be
very glad."

"I think I have enough reading matter. But I should love to look at what
you have. It's always fun looking at other people's books."

He gave me a sharp look and his eyes twinkled.

"It also tells you a good deal about them," he murmured.

When we finished dinner we went on talking. The stranger was well-read
and interested in a diversity of topics. He spoke with so much knowledge
of painting that I wondered if he was an art critic or a dealer. But
then it appeared that he had been reading Suetonius and I came to the
conclusion that he was a college professor. I asked him his name.

"Barnaby," he answered.

"That's a name that has recently acquired an amazing celebrity."

"Oh, how so?"

"Have you never heard of the celebrated Mrs. Barnaby? She's a compatriot
of yours."

"I admit that I've seen her name in the papers rather frequently of
late. Do you know her?"

"Yes, quite well. She gave the grandest parties all last season and I
went to them whenever she asked me. Everyone did. She's an astounding
woman. She came to London to do the season, and, by George, she did it.
She just swept everything before her."

"I understand she's very rich?"

"Fabulously, I believe, but it's not that that has made her success.
Plenty of American women have money. Mrs. Barnaby has got where she has
by sheer force of character. She never pretends to be anything but what
she is. She's natural. She's priceless. You know her history, of
course?"

My friend smiled.

"Mrs. Barnaby may be a great celebrity in London, but to the best of my
belief in America she is almost inconceivably unknown."

I smiled also, but within me; I could well imagine how shocked this
distinguished and cultured man would be by the rollicking humour, the
frankness, with its tang of the soil, and the rich and vital experience
of the amazing Mrs. Barnaby.

"Well, I'll tell you about her. Her husband appears to be a very rough
diamond; he's a great hulking fellow, she says, who could fell a steer
with his fist. He's known in Arizona as One-Bullet Mike."

"Good gracious! Why?"

"Well, years ago in the old days he killed two men with a single shot.
She says he's handier with his gun even now than any man West of the
Rockies. He's a miner, but he's been a cowpuncher, a gun-runner and God
knows what in his day."

"A thoroughly Western type," said my professor a trifle acidly, I
thought.

"Something of a desperado, I imagine. Mrs. Barnaby's stories about him
are a real treat. Of course everyone's been begging her to let him come
over, but she says he'd never leave the wide open spaces. He struck oil
a year or two ago and now he's got all the money in the world. He must
be a great character. I've heard her keep the whole dinner-table
spellbound when she's talked of the old days when they roughed it
together. It gives you quite a thrill when you see this grey-haired
woman, not at all pretty, but exquisitely dressed, with the most
wonderful pearls, and hear her tell how she washed the miners' clothes
and cooked for the camp. Your American women have an adaptability that's
really stupendous. When you see Mrs. Barnaby sitting at the head of her
table, perfectly at home with princes of the blood, ambassadors, cabinet
ministers and the duke of this and the duke of that, it seems almost
incredible that only a few years ago she was cooking the food of seventy
miners."

"Can she read or write?"

"I suppose her invitations are written by her secretary, but she's by no
means an ignorant woman. She told me she used to make a point of reading
for an hour every night after the fellows in camp had gone to bed."

"Remarkable!"

"On the other hand One-Bullet Mike only learnt to write his name when he
suddenly found himself under the necessity of signing cheques."

We walked up the hill to our hotel and before separating for the night
arranged to take our luncheon with us next day and row over to a cove
that my friend had discovered. We spent a charming day bathing, reading,
eating, sleeping and talking, and we dined together in the evening. The
following morning, after breakfast on the terrace, I reminded Barnaby of
his promise to show me his books.

"Come right along."

I accompanied him to his bedroom, where Giuseppe, the waiter, was making
his bed. The first thing I caught sight of was a photograph in a
gorgeous frame of the celebrated Mrs. Barnaby. My friend caught sight of
it too and suddenly turned pale with anger.

"You fool, Giuseppe. Why have you taken that photograph out of my
wardrobe? Why the devil did you think I put it away?"

"I didn't know, Signore. That's why I put it back on the _Signore's_
table. I thought he liked to see the portrait of his _signora_."

I was staggered.

"Is my Mrs. Barnaby your wife?" I cried.

"She is."

"Good Lord, are you One-Bullet Mike?"

"Do I look it?"

I began to laugh.

"I'm bound to say you don't."

I glanced at his hands. He smiled grimly and held them out.

"No, sir, I have never felled a steer with my naked fist."

For a moment we stared at one another in silence.

"She'll never forgive me," he moaned. "She wanted me to take a false
name, and when I wouldn't she was quite vexed with me. She said it
wasn't safe. I said it was bad enough to hide myself in Positano for
three months, but I'd be damned if I'd use any other name than my own."
He hesitated. "I throw myself on your mercy. I can do nothing but trust
to your generosity not to disclose a secret that you have discovered by
the most unlikely chance."

"I will be as silent as the grave, but honestly I don't understand. What
does it all mean?"

"I am a doctor by profession and for the last thirty years my wife and I
have lived in Pennsylvania. I don't know if I have struck you as a
roughneck, but I venture to say that Mrs. Barnaby is one of the most
cultivated women I have ever known. Then a cousin of hers died and left
her a very large fortune. There's no mistake about that. My wife is a
very, very rich woman. She has always read a great deal of English
fiction and her one desire was to have a London season and entertain and
do all the grand things she had read about in books. It was her money
and although the prospect did not particularly tempt me, I was very glad
that she should gratify her wish. We sailed last April. The young Duke
and Duchess of Hereford happened to be on board."

"I know. It was they who first launched Mrs. Barnaby. They were crazy
about her. They've boomed her like an army of press-agents."

"I was ill when we sailed, I had a carbuncle which confined me to my
stateroom, and Mrs. Barnaby was left to look after herself. Her
deck-chair happened to be next the duchess's, and from a remark she
overheard it occurred to her that the English aristocracy were not so
wrapped up in our social leaders as one might have expected. My wife is
a quick little woman and she remarked to me that if you had an ancestor
who signed Magna Carta perhaps you were not excessively impressed
because the grandfather of one of your acquaintances sold skunks and the
grandfather of another ran ferryboats. My wife has a very keen sense of
humour. Getting into conversation with the duchess, she told her a
little Western anecdote, and to make it more interesting told it as
having happened to herself. Its success was immediate. The duchess
begged for another and my wife ventured a little further. Twenty-four
hours later she had the duke and duchess eating out of her hand. She
used to come down to my stateroom at intervals and tell me of her
progress. In the innocence of my heart I was tickled to death and since
I had nothing else to do, I sent to the library for the works of Bret
Harte and primed her with effective touches."

I slapped my forehead.

"We said she was as good as Bret Harte," I cried.

"I had a grand time thinking of the consternation of my wife's friends
when at the end of the voyage I appeared and we told them the truth. But
I reckoned without my wife. The day before we reached Southampton Mrs.
Barnaby told me that the Herefords were arranging parties for her. The
duchess was crazy to introduce her to all sorts of wonderful people. It
was a chance in a thousand; but of course I should spoil everything, she
admitted that she had been forced by the course of events to represent
me as very different from what I was. I did not know that she had
already transformed me into One-Bullet Mike, but I had a shrewd
suspicion that she had forgotten to mention that I was on board. Well,
to make a long story short, she asked me to go to Paris for a week or
two till she had consolidated her position. I didn't mind that. I was
much more inclined to do a little work at the Sorbonne than to go to
parties in Mayfair, and so leaving her to go on to Southampton, I got
off at Cherbourg. But when I had been in Paris ten days she flew over to
see me. She told me that her success had exceeded her wildest dreams: it
was ten times more wonderful than any of the novels; but my appearance
would ruin it all. Very well, I said, I would stay in Paris. She didn't
like the idea of that; she said she'd never have a moment's peace so
long as I was so near and I might run across someone who knew me. I
suggested Vienna or Rome. They wouldn't do either, and at last I came
here and here have I been hiding like a criminal for three interminable
months."

"Do you mean to say you never killed the two gamblers, shooting one with
your right hand and the other with your left?"

"Sir, I have never fired a pistol in my life."

"And what about the attack on your log-cabin by the Mexican bandits when
your wife loaded your guns for you and you stood the siege for three
days till the Federal troops rescued you?"

Mr. Barnaby smiled grimly.

"I never heard that one. Isn't it a trifle crude?"

"Crude! It was as good as any Wild West picture."

"If I may venture a guess, that is where my wife in all probability got
the idea."

"But the wash-tub. Washing the miners' clothes and all that. You don't
know how she made us roar with that story. Why, she swam into London
Society in her wash-tub."

I began to laugh.

"She's made the most gorgeous fools of us all," I said.

"She's made a pretty considerable fool of me, I would have you observe,"
remarked Mr. Barnaby.

"She's a marvellous woman and you're right to be proud of her. I always
said she was priceless. She realised the passion for romance that beats
in every British heart and she's given us exactly what we wanted. I
wouldn't betray her for worlds."

"It's all very fine for you, sir. London may have gained a wonderful
hostess, but I'm beginning to think that I have lost a perfectly good
wife."

"The only place for One-Bullet Mike is the great open West. My dear Mr.
Barnaby, there is only one course open to you now. You must continue to
disappear."

"I'm very much obliged to you."

I thought he replied with a good deal of acidity.




A MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE


St. Laurent de Maroni is a pretty little place. It is neat and clean. It
has an Htel de Ville and a Palais de Justice of which many a town in
France would be proud. The streets are wide, and the fine trees that
border them give a grateful shade. The houses look as though they had
just had a coat of paint. Many of them nestle in little gardens, and in
the gardens are palm trees and flame of the forest; cannas flaunt their
bright colours and crotons their variety; the bougainvilleas, purple or
red, riot profusely, and the elegant hibiscus offers its gorgeous
flowers with a negligence that seems almost affected. St. Laurent de
Maroni is the centre of the French penal settlements of Guiana, and a
hundred yards from the quay at which you land is the great gateway of
the prison camp. These pretty little houses in their tropical gardens
are the residence of the prison officials, and if the streets are neat
and clean it is because there is no lack of convicts to keep them so.
One day, walking with a casual acquaintance, I came upon a young man, in
the round straw hat and the pink and white stripes of the convict's
uniform, who was standing by the road-side with a pick. He was doing
nothing.

"Why are you idling?" my companion asked him.

The man gave his shoulders a scornful shrug.

"Look at the blade of grass there," he answered. "I've got twenty years
to scratch it away."

St. Laurent de Maroni exists for the group of prison camps of which it
is the centre. Such trade as it has depends on them; its shops, kept by
Chinese, are there to satisfy the wants of the warders, the doctors and
the numerous officials who are connected with the penal settlements. The
streets are silent and deserted. You pass a convict with a dispatch-case
under his arm; he has some job in the administration; or another with a
basket; he is a servant in somebody's house. Sometimes you come upon a
little group in the charge of a warder; often you see them strolling to
or from the prison unguarded. The prison gates are open all day long and
the prisoners freely saunter in and out. If you see a man not in the
prison uniform he is probably a freed man who is condemned to spend a
number of years in the colony and who, unable to get work, living on the
edge of starvation, is drinking himself to death on the cheap strong rum
which is called tafia.

There is an hotel at St. Laurent de Maroni and here I had my meals. I
soon got to know by sight the habitual frequenters. They came in and sat
each at his little table, ate their meals in silence and went out again.
The hotel was kept by a coloured woman, and the man she lived with, an
ex-convict, was the only waiter. But the Governor of the colony, who
lives at Cayenne, had put at my disposal his own bungalow and it was
there I slept. An old Arab looked after it; he was a devout Mahommedan,
and at intervals during the day I heard him say his prayers. To make my
bed, keep my rooms tidy and run errands for me, the commandant of the
prison had assigned me another convict. Both were serving life sentences
for murder; the commandant told me that I could place entire confidence
in them; they were as honest as the day, and I could leave anything
about without the slightest risk. But I will not conceal from the reader
that when I went to bed at night I took the precaution to lock my door
and to bolt my shutters. It was foolish no doubt, but I slept more
comfortably.

I had come with letters of introduction, and both the governor of the
prison settlements and the commandant of the camp at St. Laurent did
everything they could to make my visit agreeable and instructive. I will
not here narrate all I heard and saw. I am not a reporter. It is not my
business to attack or to defend the system which the French have thought
fit to adopt in regard to their criminals. Besides, the system is now
condemned; prisoners will soon cease to be sent out to French Guiana, to
suffer the illnesses incidental to the climate and the work in malarial
jungles to which so many are relegated, to endure nameless degradations,
to lose hope, to rot, to die. I will only say that I saw no physical
cruelty. On the other hand I saw no attempt to make the criminal on the
expiration of his sentence a useful citizen. I saw nothing done for his
spiritual welfare. I heard nothing of classes that he could attend in
order to improve his education or organised games that might distract
his mind. I saw no library where he could get books to read when his
day's work was done. I saw a condition of affairs that only the
strongest character could hope to surmount. I saw a brutishness that
must reduce all but a very few to apathy and despair.

All this has nothing to do with me. It is vain to torment oneself over
sufferings that one cannot alleviate. My object here is to tell a story.
As I am well aware, one can never know everything there is to be known
about human nature. One can be sure only of one thing, and that is that
it will never cease to have a surprise in store for you. When I had got
over the impression of bewilderment, surprise and horror to which my
first visit to the prison camp gave rise, I bethought myself that there
were certain matters that I was interested to enquire into. I should
inform the reader that three-quarters of the convicts at St. Laurent de
Maroni are there for murder. This is not official information and it may
be that I exaggerate; every prisoner has a little book in which are set
down his crime, his sentence, his punishments, and whatever else the
authorities think necessary to keep note of; and it was from an
examination of a considerable number of these that I formed my estimate.
It gave me something of a shock to realise that in England far, far the
greater number of these men whom I saw working in shops, lounging about
the verandahs of their dormitories or sauntering through the streets
would have suffered capital punishment. I found them not at all
disinclined to speak of the crime for which they had been convicted, and
in pursuance of my purpose I spent the better part of one day inquiring
into crimes of passion. I wanted to know exactly what was the motive
that had made a man kill his wife or his girl. I had a notion that
jealousy and wounded honour might not perhaps tell the whole story. I
got some curious replies, and among them one that was not to my mind
lacking in humour. This was from a man working in the carpenter's shop
who had cut his wife's throat; when I asked him why he had done it, he
answered with a shrug of the shoulders: _Manque d'entente_. His casual
tone made the best translation of this: We didn't get on very well. I
could not help observing that if men in general looked upon this as an
adequate reason for murdering their wives, the mortality in the female
sex would be alarming. But after putting a good many questions to a good
many men I arrived at the conclusion that at the bottom of nearly all
these crimes was an economic motive; they had killed their wives or
mistresses not only from jealousy, because they were unfaithful to them,
but also because somehow it affected their pockets. A woman's infidelity
was sometimes an occasion of financial loss, and it was this in the end
that drove a man to his desperate act; or, himself in need of money to
gratify other passions, he murdered because his victim was an obstacle
to his exclusive possession of it. I do not conclude that a man never
kills his woman because his love is spurned or his honour tarnished, I
only offer my observation on these particular cases as a curious
sidelight on human nature. I should not venture to deduce from it a
general rule.

I spent another day inquiring into the matter of conscience. Moralists
have sought to persuade us that it is one of the most powerful agents in
human behaviour. Now that reason and pity have agreed to regard
hell-fire as a hateful myth, many good men have seen in conscience the
chief safeguard that shall induce the human race to walk in the way of
righteousness. Shakespeare has told us that it makes cowards of us all.
Novelists and playwrights have described for us the pangs that assail
the wicked; they have vividly pictured the anguish of a stricken
conscience and the sleepless nights it occasions; they have shown it
poisoning every pleasure till life is so intolerable that discovery and
punishment come as a welcome relief. I had often wondered how much of
all this was true. Moralists have an axe to grind; they must draw a
moral. They think that if they say a thing often enough people will
believe it. They are apt to state that a thing is so when they consider
it desirable that it should be. They tell us that the wages of sin is
death; we know very well that it is not always. And so far as the
authors of fiction are concerned, the playwrights and the novelists,
when they get hold of an effective theme they are disposed to make use
of it without bothering very much whether it agrees with the facts of
life. Certain statements about human nature become, as it were, common
property and so are accepted as self-evident. In the same way painters
for ages painted shadows black, and it was not till the impressionists
looked at them with unprejudiced eyes and painted what they saw that we
discovered that shadows were coloured. It had sometimes struck me that
perhaps conscience was the expression of a high moral development, so
that its influence was strong only in those whose virtue was so shining
that they were unlikely to commit any action for which they could
seriously reproach themselves. It is generally accepted that murder is a
shocking crime, and it is the murderer above all other criminals who is
supposed to suffer remorse. His victim, we have been led to believe,
haunts his dreams in horrifying nightmares, and the recollection of his
dreadful deed tortures his waking hours. I could not miss the
opportunity to enquire into the truth of this. I had no intention of
insisting if I encountered reticence or distress, but I found in none of
those with whom I talked any such thing. Some said that in the same
circumstances they would do as they had done before. Determinists
without knowing it, they seemed to look upon their action as ordained by
a fate over which they had no control. Some appeared to think that their
crime was committed by someone with whom they had no connection.

"When one's young, one's foolish," they said, with a careless gesture or
a deprecating smile.

Others told me that if they had known what the punishment was they would
suffer, they would certainly have held their hands. I found in none any
regret for the human being they had violently bereft of life. It seemed
to me that they had no more feeling for the creature they had killed
than if it had been a pig whose throat they had cut in the way of
business. Far from feeling pity for their victim, they were more
inclined to feel anger because he had been the occasion of their
imprisonment in that distant land. In only one man did I discern
anything that might appropriately be called a conscience, and his story
was so remarkable that I think it well worth narrating. For in this case
it was, so far as I can understand, remorse that was the motive of the
crime. I noticed the man's number, which was printed on the chest of the
pink and white pyjamas of his prison uniform, but I have forgotten it.
Anyhow it is of no consequence. I never knew his name. He did not offer
to tell me and I did not like to ask it. I will call him Jean Charvin.

I met him on my first visit to the camp with the commandant. We were
walking through a courtyard round which were cells, not punishment
cells, but individual cells which are given to well-behaved prisoners
who ask for them. They are sought after by those to whom the promiscuity
of the dormitories is odious. Most of them were empty, for their
occupants were engaged in their various employments. Jean Charvin was at
work in his cell, writing at a small table, and the door was open. The
commandant called him and he came out. I looked into the cell. It
contained a fixed hammock, with a dingy mosquito-net; by the side of
this was a small table on which were his bits and pieces, a shaving-mop
and a razor, a hairbrush and two or three battered books. On the walls
were photographs of persons of respectable appearance and illustrations
from picture papers. He had been sitting on his bed to write and the
table on which he had been writing was covered with papers. They looked
like accounts. He was a handsome man, tall, erect and lean, with
flashing dark eyes and clean-cut, strong features. The first thing I
noticed about him was that he had a fine head of long, naturally-waving
dark brown hair. This at once made him look different from the rest of
the prisoners, whose hair is close-cropped, but cropped so badly, in
ridges, that it gives them a sinister look. The commandant spoke to him
of some official business, and then as we were leaving added in a
friendly way:

"I see your hair is growing well."

Jean Charvin reddened and smiled. His smile was boyish and engaging.

"It'll be some time yet before I get it right again."

The commandant dismissed him and we went on.

"He's a very decent fellow," he said. "He's in the accountant's
department, and he's had leave to let his hair grow. He's delighted."

"What is he here for?" I asked.

"He killed his wife. But he's only got six years. He's clever and a good
worker. He'll do well. He comes from a very decent family and he's had
an excellent education."

I thought no more of Jean Charvin, but by chance I met him next day on
the road. He was coming towards me. He carried a black dispatch-case
under his arm, and except for the pink and white stripes of his uniform
and the ugly round straw hat that concealed his handsome head of hair,
you might have taken him for a young lawyer on his way to court. He
walked with a long, leisurely stride, and he had an easy, you might
almost say a gallant, bearing. He recognised me, and taking off his hat
bade me good-morning. I stopped, and for something to say asked him
where he was going. He told me he was taking some papers from the
governor's office to the bank. There was a pleasing frankness in his
face, and his eyes, his really beautiful eyes, shone with good will. I
supposed that the vigour of his youth was such that it made life,
notwithstanding his position and his surroundings, more than tolerable,
even pleasant. You would have said that here was a young man without a
care in the world.

"I hear you're going to St. Jean to-morrow," he said.

"Yes. It appears I must start at dawn."

St. Jean is a camp seventeen kilometres from St. Laurent, and it is here
that are interned the habitual criminals who have been sentenced to
transportation after repeated terms of imprisonment. They are petty
thieves, confidence men, forgers, tricksters and suchlike; the prisoners
of St. Laurent, condemned for more serious offences, look upon them with
contempt.

"You should find it an interesting experience," Jean Charvin said, with
his frank and engaging smile. "But keep your pocket-book buttoned up,
they'd steal the shirt off your back if they had half a chance. They're
a dirty lot of scoundrels!"

That afternoon, waiting till the heat of the day was less, I sat on the
verandah outside my bedroom and read: I had drawn the jalousies and it
was tolerably cool. My old Arab came up the stairs on his bare feet, and
in his halting French told me that there was a man from the commandant
who wanted to see me.

"Send him up," I said.

In a moment the man came, and it was Jean Charvin. He told me that the
commandant had sent him to give me a message about my excursion next day
to St. Jean. When he had delivered it I asked him if he would not sit
down and have a cigarette with me. He wore a cheap wrist-watch and he
looked at it.

"I have a few minutes to spare. I should be glad to." He sat down and
lit the cigarette I offered him. He gave me a smiling look of his soft
eyes. "Do you know, this is the first time I've ever been asked to sit
down since I was sentenced." He inhaled a long whiff of his cigarette.
"Egyptian. I haven't smoked an Egyptian cigarette for three years."

The convicts make their own cigarettes out of a coarse, strong tobacco
that is sold in square blue packets. Since one is not allowed to pay
them for the services they may render you, but may give them tobacco, I
had bought a good many packets of this.

"How does it taste?"

"One gets accustomed to everything and, to tell you the truth, my palate
is so vitiated, I prefer the stuff we get here."

"I'll give you a couple of packets."

I went into my room and fetched them. When I returned he was looking at
some books that were lying on the table.

"Are you fond of reading?" I asked.

"Very. I think the want of books is what I most suffer from now. The few
I can get hold of I'm forced to read over and over again."

To so great a reader as myself no deprivation seems more insupportable
than the lack of books.

"I have several French ones in my bag. I'll look them out and if you
care to have them I'll give them to you if you can come along again."

My offer was due only in part to kindness; I wanted to have another
chance of a talk with him.

"I should have to show them to the commandant. He would only let me keep
them if there was no doubt they couldn't possibly corrupt my morals. But
he's a good-natured man, I don't think he'll make any difficulties."

There was a hint of slyness in the smile with which he said this, and I
suspected that he had taken the measure of the well-meaning,
conscientious chief of the camp and knew pretty well how to get on the
right side of him. It would have been unjust to blame him if he
exercised tact, and even cunning, to render his lot as tolerable as
might be.

"The commandant has a very good opinion of you."

"He's a fine man. I'm very grateful to him, he's done a great deal for
me. I'm an accountant by profession and he's put me in the accountant's
department. I love figures, it gives me an intense satisfaction to deal
with them, they're living things to me, and now that I can handle them
all day long I feel myself again."

"And are you glad to have a cell of your own?"

"It's made all the difference. To be herded with fifty men, the scum of
the earth, and never to be alone for a minute--it was awful. That was
the worst of all. At home, at Le Havre, that is where I lived, I had an
apartment, modest of course, but my own, and we had a maid who came in
by the day. We lived decently. It made it ten times harder for me than
for the rest, most of them, who have never known anything but squalor,
filth and promiscuity."

I had asked him about the cell in the hope that I could get him to talk
about the life that is led in those vast dormitories in which the men
are locked from five in the evening till five next morning. During these
twelve hours they are their own masters. A warder can enter, they told
me, only at the risk of his life. They have no light after eight
o'clock, but from sardine-tins, a little oil, and a rag they make lamps
by the light of which they can see enough to play cards. They gamble
furiously, not for love, but for the money they keep secreted on their
bodies; they are unscrupulous ruthless men, and naturally enough bitter
quarrels often arise. They are settled with knives. Often in the
morning, when the dormitory is opened, a man is found dead, but no
threats, no promises, will induce anyone to betray the slayer. Other
things Jean Charvin told me which I cannot narrate. He told me of one
young fellow who had come out from France on the same ship with himself
and with whom he had made friends. He was a good-looking boy. One day he
went to the commandant and asked him if he could have a cell to himself.
The commandant asked him why he wanted one. He explained. The commandant
looked through his list and told him that at the moment all were
occupied, but that as soon as there was a vacancy he should have one.
Next morning when the dormitory was opened, he was found dead on his
hammock with his belly ripped open to the breast-bone.

"They're savage brutes, and if one isn't a brute by the time one arrives
only a miracle can save one from becoming as brutal as the rest."

Jean Charvin looked at his watch and got up. He walked away from me and
then, with his charming smile, turned and faced me.

"I must go now. If the commandant gives me permission I will come and
get the books you were kind enough to offer me."

In Guiana you do not shake hands with a convict, and a tactful man,
taking leave of you, puts himself in such a position that there can be
no question of your offering him your hand or of refusing his should he,
forgetting for a moment, instinctively tender it. Heaven knows, it would
have meant nothing to me to shake hands with Jean Charvin; it gave me a
pang to see the care he had taken to spare me embarrassment.

I saw him twice more during my stay at St. Laurent. He told me his
story, but I will tell it now in my words rather than in his, for I had
to piece it together from what he said at one time and another, and what
he left out I have had to supply out of my own imagination. I do not
believe it has led me astray. It was as though he had given me three
letters out of a number of five-letter words; the chances are that I
have guessed most of the words correctly.

Jean Charvin was born and bred in the great seaport of Le Havre. His
father had a good post in the Customs. Having finished his education, he
did his military service, and then looked about for a job. Like a great
many other young Frenchmen he was prepared to sacrifice the hazardous
chance of wealth for a respectable security. His natural gift for
figures made it easy for him to get a place in the accountant's
department of a large exporting house. His future was assured. He could
look forward to earning a sufficient income to live in the modest
comfort of the class to which he belonged. He was industrious and
well-behaved. Like most young Frenchmen of his generation he was
athletic. He swam and played tennis in summer, and in winter he
bicycled. On two evenings a week to keep himself fit he spent a couple
of hours in a gymnasium. Through his childhood, his adolescence and his
young manhood, he lived in the constant companionship of a boy called,
shall we say for the purposes of this narrative, Henri Renard, whose
father was also an official in the Customs. Jean and Riri went to school
together, played together, worked for their examinations together, spent
their holidays together, for the two families were intimate, had their
first affairs with girls together, partnered one another in the local
tennis tournaments, and did their military service together. They never
quarrelled. They were never so happy as in one another's society. They
were inseparable. When the time came for them to start working they
decided that they would go into the same firm; but that was not so easy;
Jean tried to get Riri a job in the exporting house that had engaged
him, but could not manage it, and it was not till a year later that Riri
got something to do. But by then trade was as bad at Le Havre as
everywhere else, and in a few months he found himself once more without
employment.

Riri was a light-hearted youth, and he enjoyed his leisure. He danced,
bathed and played tennis. It was thus that he made the acquaintance of a
girl who had recently come to live at Le Havre. Her father had been a
captain in the colonial army and on his death her mother had returned to
Le Havre, which was her native place. Marie-Louise was then eighteen.
She had spent almost all her life in Tonkin. This gave her an exotic
attraction for the young men who had never been out of France in their
lives, and first Riri, then Jean, fell in love with her. Perhaps that
was inevitable; it was certainly unfortunate. She was a well-brought-up
girl, an only child, and her mother, besides her pension, had a little
money of her own. It was evident that she could be pursued only with a
view to marriage. Of course Riri, dependent for the while entirely on
his father, could not make an offer that there was the least chance of
Madame Meurice, Marie-Louise's mother, accepting; but having the whole
day to himself he was able to see a great deal more of Marie-Louise than
Jean could. Madame Meurice was something of an invalid, so that
Marie-Louise had more liberty than most French girls of her age and
station. She knew that both Riri and Jean were in love with her, she
liked them both and was pleased by their attentions, but she gave no
sign that she was in love with either. It was impossible to tell which
she preferred. She was well aware that Riri was not in a position to
marry her.

"What did she look like?" I asked Jean Charvin.

"She was small, with a pretty little figure, with large grey eyes, a
pale skin and soft, mouse-coloured hair. She was rather like a little
mouse. She was not beautiful, but pretty, in a quaint demure way; there
was something very appealing about her. She was easy to get on with. She
was simple and unaffected. You couldn't help feeling that she was
reliable and would make anyone a good wife."

Jean and Riri hid nothing from one another and Jean made no secret of
the fact that he was in love with Marie-Louise, but Riri had met her
first and it was an understood thing between them that Jean should not
stand in his way. At length she made her choice. One day Riri waited for
Jean to come away from his office and told him that Marie-Louise had
consented to marry him. They had arranged that as soon as he got a job
his father should go to her mother and make the formal offer. Jean was
hard hit. It was not easy to listen with eager sympathy to the plans
that the excitable and enchanted Riri made for the future. But he was
too much attached to Riri to feel sore with him; he knew how lovable he
was and he could not blame Marie-Louise. He tried with all his might to
accept honestly the sacrifice he made on the altar of friendship.

"Why did she choose him rather than you?" I asked.

"He had immense vitality. He was the gayest, most amusing lad you ever
met. His high spirits were infectious. You couldn't be dull in his
company."

"He had pep," I smiled.

"And an incredible charm."

"Was he good-looking?"

"No, not very. He was shorter than me, slight and wiry; but he had a
nice, good-humoured face." Jean Charvin smiled rather pleasantly. "I
think without any vanity I can say that I was better-looking than Riri."

But Riri did not get a job. His father, tired of keeping him in
idleness, wrote to everyone he could think of, the members of his family
and his friends in various parts of France, asking them if they could
not find something, however modest, for Riri to do; and at last he got a
letter from a cousin in Lyons who was in the silk business to say that
his firm were looking for a young man to go out to Phnom-Penh, in
Cambodia, where they had a branch, to buy native silk for them. If Riri
was willing to take the job he could get it for him.

Though like all French parents Riri's hated him to emigrate, there
seemed no help for it, and it was determined, although the salary was
small, that he must go. He was not disinclined. Cambodia was not so far
from Tonkin, and Marie-Louise must be familiar with the life. She had so
often talked of it that he had come to the conclusion that she would be
glad to go back to the East. To his dismay she told him that nothing
would induce her to. In the first place she could not desert her mother,
whose health was obviously declining; and then, after having at last
settled down in France, she was determined never again to leave it. She
was sympathetic to Riri, but resolute. With nothing else in prospect his
father would not hear of his refusing the offer; there was no help for
it, he had to go. Jean hated losing him, but from the moment Riri told
him his bad news, he had realised with an exulting heart that fate was
playing into his hands. With Riri out of his way for five years at
least, and unless he were incompetent with the probability that he would
settle in the East for good, Jean could not doubt that after a while
Marie-Louise would marry him. His circumstances, his settled,
respectable position in Le Havre, where she could be near her mother,
would make her think it very sensible; and when she was no longer under
the spell of Riri's charm there was no reason why her great liking for
him should not turn to love. Life changed for him. After months of
misery he was happy again, and though he kept them to himself he too now
made great plans for the future. There was no need any longer to try not
to love Marie-Louise.

Suddenly his hopes were shattered. One of the shipping firms at Le Havre
had a vacancy, and it looked as though the application that Riri had
quickly made would be favourably considered. A friend in the office told
him that it was a certainty. It would settle everything. It was an old
and conservative house, and it was well known that when you once got
into it you were there for life. Jean Charvin was in despair, and the
worst of it was that he had to keep his anguish to himself. One day the
director of his own firm sent for him.

When he reached this point Jean stopped. A harassed look came into his
eyes.

"I'm going to tell you something now that I've never told to anyone
before. I'm an honest man, a man of principle; I'm going to tell you of
the only discreditable action I've ever done in my life."

I must remind the reader here that Jean Charvin was wearing the pink and
white stripes of the convict's uniform, with his number stencilled on
his chest, and that he was serving a term of imprisonment for the murder
of his wife.

"I couldn't imagine what the director wanted with me. He was sitting at
his desk when I went into his office, and he gave me a searching look.

"'I want to ask you a question of great importance,' he said. 'I wish
you to treat it as confidential. I shall of course treat your answer as
equally so.'

"I waited. He went on:

"'You've been with us for a considerable time. I am very well satisfied
with you, there is no reason why you shouldn't reach a very good
position in the firm. I put implicit confidence in you.'

"'Thank you, sir,' I said. 'I will always try to merit your good
opinion.'

"'The question at issue is this. Monsieur Untel is proposing to engage
Henri Renard. He is very particular about the character of his
employees, and in this case it is essential that he shouldn't make a
mistake. Part of Henri Renard's duties would be to pay the crews of the
firm's ships, and many hundreds of thousand francs will pass through his
hands. I know that Henri Renard is your great friend and that your
families have always been very intimate. I put you on your honour to
tell me whether Monsieur Untel would be justified in engaging this young
man.'

"I saw at once what the question meant. If Riri got the job he would
stay and marry Marie-Louise, if he didn't he would go out to Cambodia
and I should marry her. I swear to you it was not I who answered, it was
someone who stood in my shoes and spoke with my voice, I had nothing to
do with the words that came from my mouth.

"'_Monsieur le directeur_,' I said, 'Henri and I have been friends all
our lives. We have never been separated for a week. We went to school
together; we shared our pocket-money and our mistresses when we were old
enough to have them; we did our military service together.'

"'I know. You know him better than anyone in the world. That is why I
ask you these questions.'

"'It is not fair, _Monsieur le directeur_. You are asking me to betray
my friend. I cannot, and I will not answer your questions.'

"The director gave me a shrewd smile. He thought himself much cleverer
than he really was."

"'Your answer does you credit, but it has told me all I wished to know.'
Then he smiled kindly. I suppose I was pale, I dare say I was trembling
a little. 'Pull yourself together, my dear boy; you're upset and I can
understand it. Sometimes in life one is faced by a situation where
honesty stands on the one side and loyalty on the other. Of course one
mustn't hesitate, but the choice is bitter. I shall not forget your
behaviour in this case and on behalf of Monsieur Untel I thank you.'

"I withdrew. Next morning Riri received a letter informing him that his
services were not required, and a month later he sailed for the far
East."

Six months after this Jean Charvin and Marie-Louise were married. The
marriage was hastened by the increasing gravity of Madame Meurice's
illness. Knowing that she could not live long, she was anxious to see
her daughter settled before she died. Jean wrote to Riri telling him the
facts and Riri wrote back warmly congratulating him. He assured him that
he need have no compunctions on his behalf; when he had left France he
realised that he could never marry Marie-Louise, and he was glad that
Jean was going to. He was finding consolation at Phnom-Penh. His letter
was very cheerful. From the beginning Jean had told himself that Riri,
with his mercurial temperament, would soon forget Marie-Louise, and his
letter looked as if he had already done so. He had done him no
irreparable injury. It was a justification. For if he had lost
Marie-Louise he would have died; with him it was a matter of life and
death.

For a year Jean and Marie-Louise were extremely happy. Madame Meurice
died, and Marie-Louise inherited a couple of hundred thousand francs;
but with the depression and the unstable currency they decided not to
have a child till the economic situation was less uncertain.
Marie-Louise was a good and frugal housekeeper. She was an affectionate,
amiable and satisfactory wife. She was placid. This before he married
her had seemed to Jean a rather charming trait, but as time wore on it
was borne in upon him that her placidity came from a certain lack of
emotional ardour. It concealed no depth. He had always thought she was
like a little mouse; there was something mouse-like in her furtive
reticences; she was oddly serious about trivial matters and could busy
herself indefinitely with things that were of no consequence. She had
her own tiny little set of interests and they left no room in her pretty
sleek head for any others. She sometimes began a novel, but seldom cared
to finish it. Jean was obliged to admit to himself that she was rather
dull. The uneasy thought came to him that perhaps it had not been worth
while to do a dirty trick for her sake. It began to worry him. He missed
Riri. He tried to persuade himself that what was done was done and that
he had really not been a free agent, but he could not quite still the
prickings of his conscience. He wished now that when the director of his
firm spoke to him he had answered differently.

Then a terrible thing happened. Riri contracted typhoid fever and died.
It was a frightful shock for Jean. It was a shock to Marie-Louise too;
she paid Riri's parents the proper visit of condolence, but she neither
ate less heartily nor slept less soundly. Jean was exasperated by her
composure.

"Poor chap, he was always so gay," she said, "he must have hated dying.
But why did he go out there? I told him the climate was bad; it killed
my father and I knew what I was talking about."

Jean felt that he had killed him. If he had told the director all the
good he knew of Riri, knew as no one else in the world did, he would
have got the post and would now be alive and well.

"I shall never forgive myself," he thought. "I shall never be happy
again. Oh, what a fool I was, and what a cad!"

He wept for Riri. Marie-Louise sought to comfort him. She was a kind
little thing and she loved him.

"You mustn't take it too hardly. After all, you wouldn't have seen him
for five years, and you'd have found him so changed that there wouldn't
have been anything between you any more. He would have been a stranger
to you. I've seen that sort of thing happen so often. You'd have been
delighted to see him, and in half an hour you'd have discovered that you
had nothing to say to one another."

"I dare say you're right," he sighed.

"He was too scatter-brained ever to have amounted to anything very much.
He never had your firmness of character and your clear, solid
intellect."

He knew what she was thinking. What would have been her position now if
she had followed Riri to Indo-China and found herself at twenty-one a
widow with nothing but her own two hundred thousand francs to live on?
It was a lucky escape and she congratulated herself on her good sense.
Jean was a husband of whom she could be proud. He was earning good
money. Jean was tortured by remorse. What he had suffered before was
nothing to what he suffered now. The anguish that the recollection of
his treachery caused him was worse than a physical pain gnawing at his
vitals. It would assail him suddenly when he was in the middle of his
work and twist his heartstrings with a violent pang. His agony was such
that he craved for relief, and it was only by an effort of all his will
that he prevented himself from making a full confession to Marie-Louise.
But he knew how she would take it; she would not be shocked, she would
think it rather a clever trick and be even subtly flattered that for her
sake he had been guilty of a despicable act. She could not help him. He
began to dislike her. For it was for her that he had done the shameful
thing, and what was she? An ordinary, commonplace, rather calculating
little woman.

"What a fool I've been," he repeated.

He did not even find her pretty any more. He knew now that she was
terribly stupid. But of course she was not to blame for that, she was
not to blame because he had been false to his friend; and he forced
himself to be as sweet and tender to her as he had always been. He did
whatever she wanted. She had only to express a wish for him to fulfil it
if it was in his power. He tried to pity her, he tried to be tolerant;
he told himself that from her own petty standpoint she was a good wife,
methodical, saving, and in her manner, dress and appearance a credit to
a respectable young man. All that was true; but it was on her account
that Riri had died, and he loathed her. She bored him to distraction.
Though he said nothing, though he was kind, amiable and indulgent, he
could often have killed her. When he did, however, it was almost without
meaning to. It was ten months after Riri's death, and Riri's parents,
Monsieur and Madame Renard, gave a party to celebrate the engagement of
their daughter. Jean had seen little of them since Riri's death and he
did not want to go. But Marie-Louise said they must; he had been Riri's
greatest friend and it would be a grave lack of politeness on Jean's
part not to attend an important celebration in the family. She had a
keen sense of social obligation.

"Besides, it'll be a distraction for you. You've been in poor spirits
for so long, a little amusement will do you good. There'll be champagne,
won't there? Madame Renard doesn't like spending money, but on an
occasion like this she'll have to sacrifice herself."

Marie-Louise chuckled slyly when she thought what a wrench it would be
to Madame Renard to unloose her purse-strings.

The party had been very gay. It gave Jean a nasty turn when he found
that they were using Riri's old room for the women to put their wraps in
and the men their coats. There was plenty of champagne. Jean drank a
great deal to drown the bitter remorse that tormented him. He wanted to
deaden the sound in his ears of Riri's laugh and to shut his eyes to the
good-humour of his shining glance. It was three o'clock when they got
home. Next day was Sunday, so Jean had no work to go to. They slept
late. The rest I can tell in Jean Charvin's own words.

"I had a headache when I woke. Marie-Louise was not in bed. She was
sitting at the dressing-table brushing her hair. I've always been very
keen on physical culture, and I was in the habit of doing exercises
every morning. I didn't feel very much inclined to do them that morning,
but after all that champagne I thought I'd better. I got out of bed and
took up my Indian clubs. Our bedroom was fairly large and there was
plenty of room to swing them between the bed and the dressing-table
where Marie-Louise was sitting. I did my usual exercises. Marie-Louise
had started a little while before having her hair cut differently, quite
short, and I thought it repulsive. From the back she looked like a boy,
and the stubble of cropped hair on her neck made me feel rather sick.
She put down her brushes and began to powder her face. She gave a nasty
little laugh.

"'What are you laughing at?' I asked.

"'Madame Renard. That was the same dress she wore at our wedding, she'd
had it dyed and done over; but it didn't deceive me. I'd have known it
anywhere.'

"It was such a stupid remark, it infuriated me. I was seized with rage,
and with all my might I hit her over the head with my Indian club. I
broke her skull, apparently, and she died two days later in hospital
without recovering consciousness."

He paused for a moment. I handed him a cigarette and lit another myself.

"I was glad she did. We could never have lived together again, and it
would have been very hard to explain my action."

"Very."

"I was arrested and tried for murder. Of course I swore it was an
accident, I said the club had slipped out of my hand, but the medical
evidence was against me. The prosecution proved that such an injury as
Marie-Louise had suffered could only have been caused by a violent and
deliberate blow. Fortunately for me they could find no motive. The
public prosecutor tried to make out that I had been jealous of the
attentions some man had paid her at the party and that we had quarrelled
on that account, but the man he mentioned swore that he had done nothing
to arouse my suspicions and others at the party testified that we had
left the best of friends. They found on the dressing-table an unpaid
dressmaker's bill and the prosecutor suggested that we had quarrelled
about that, but I was able to prove that Marie-Louise paid for her
clothes out of her own money, so that the bill could not possibly have
been the cause of a dispute. Witnesses came forward and said that I had
always been kind to Marie-Louise. We were generally looked upon as a
devoted couple. My character was excellent and my employer spoke in the
highest terms of me. I was never in danger of losing my head, and at one
moment I thought I had a chance of getting off altogether. In the end I
was sentenced to six years. I don't regret what I did, for from that
day, all the time I was in prison awaiting my trial, and since, while
I've been here, I've ceased to worry about Riri. If I believed in ghosts
I'd be inclined to say that Marie-Louise's death has laid Riri's.
Anyhow, my conscience is at rest, and after all the torture I suffered I
can assure you that everything I've gone through since is worth it; I
feel I can now look the world in the face again."

I know that this is a fantastic story; I am by way of being a realist,
and in the stories I write I seek verisimilitude. I eschew the bizarre
as scrupulously as I avoid the whimsical. If this had been a tale that I
was inventing I would certainly have made it more probable. As it is,
unless I had heard it with my own ears I am not sure that I should
believe it. I do not know whether Jean Charvin told me the truth, and
yet the words with which he closed his final visit to me had a
convincing ring. I had asked him what were his plans for the future.

"I have friends working for me in France," he answered. "A great many
people thought at the time that I was the victim of a grave miscarriage
of justice; the director of my firm is convinced that I was unjustly
condemned; and I may get a reduction of my sentence. Even if I don't, I
think I can count upon getting back to France at the end of my six
years. You see, I'm making myself very useful here. The accounts were
very badly kept when I took them over, and I've got them in apple-pie
order. There have been leakages, and I am convinced that if they'll give
me a free hand, I can stop them. The commandant likes me and I'm certain
that he'll do everything he can for me. At the worst I shan't be much
over thirty when I get back."

"But won't you find it rather difficult to get work?"

"A clever accountant like me, and a man who's honest and industrious,
can always get work. Of course I shan't be able to live in Le Havre, but
the director of my firm has business connections at Lille and Lyons and
Marseilles. He's promised to do something for me. No, I look forward to
the years to come with a good deal of confidence. I shall settle down
somewhere, and as soon as I'm comfortably fixed up I shall marry. After
what I've been through I want a home."

We were sitting in one of the corners of the verandah that surrounded my
house in order to get any draught there might be, and on the north side
I had left a jalousie undrawn. The strip of sky you saw with a single
coconut tree on one side, its green foliage harsh against the blue,
looked like an advertisement for a tropical cruise. Jean Charvin's eyes
searched the distance as though he sought to see the future.

"But next time I marry," he said thoughtfully, "I shan't marry for love,
I shall marry for money."




AN OFFICIAL POSITION


He was a sturdy broad-shouldered fellow, of the middle height; though
his bones were well covered as became his age, which was fifty, he was
not fat; he had a ruddy complexion which neither the heat of the sun nor
the unwholesomeness of the climate had affected. It was good rich blood
that ran through his veins. His hair was brown and thick, and only at
the temples touched with grey; he was very proud of his fair, handsome
moustache and he kept it carefully brushed. There was a pleasant twinkle
in his blue eyes. You would have said that this was a man whom life had
treated well. There was in his appearance an air of good nature and in
his vigour a glow of health that gave you confidence. He reminded you of
one of those well-fed, rubicund burghers in an old Dutch picture, with
their pink-cheeked wives, who made money and enjoyed the good things
with which their industry provided them. He was, however, a widower. His
name was Louis Remire, and his number 68763. He was serving a
twelve-year sentence at St. Laurent de Maroni, the great penal
settlement of French Guiana, for killing his wife, but partly because he
had served in the police force at Lyons, his native town, and partly on
account of his good character, he had been given an official position.
He had been chosen among nearly two hundred applicants to be the public
executioner.

That was why he was allowed to sport the handsome moustache of which he
took so much care. He was the only convict who wore one. It was in a
manner of speaking his badge of office. That also was why he was allowed
to wear his own clothes. The convicts wear pyjamas in pink and white
stripes, round straw hats and clumsy boots with wooden soles and leather
tops. Louis Remire wore espadrilles on his bare feet, blue cotton
trousers, and a khaki shirt the open neck of which exposed to view his
hairy and virile chest. When you saw him strolling about the public
garden, with a kindly eye looking at the children, black or half-caste,
who played there, you would have taken him for a respectable shopkeeper
who was enjoying an hour's leisure. He had his own house. That was not
only one of the perquisites of his office, but it was a necessity, since
if he had lodged in the prison camp the convicts would have made short
work of him. One morning he would have been found with his belly ripped
open. It was true that the house was small, it was just a wooden shack
of one room, with a lean-to that served as a kitchen; but it was
surrounded by a tiny garden, within a palisade, and in the garden grew
bananas, papaias and such vegetables as the climate allowed him to
raise. The garden faced the sea and was surrounded by a coconut grove.
The situation was charming. It was only a quarter of a mile from the
prison, which was convenient for his rations. They were fetched by his
assistant, who lived with him. The assistant, a tall, gawky, ungainly
fellow, with deep-set, staring eyes and cavernous jaws, was serving a
life sentence for rape and murder; he was not very intelligent, but in
civil life he had been a cook and it was wonderful what, with the help
of the vegetables they grew and such condiments as Louis Remire could
afford to buy at the Chinese grocer's, he managed to do with the soup,
potatoes and cabbage, and eternal beef, beef for three hundred and
sixty-five days of the year, which the prison kitchens provided. It was
on this account that Louis Remire had pressed his claim on the
commandant when it had been found necessary to get a new assistant. The
last one's nerves had given way and, absurdly enough, thought Louis
Remire with a good-natured laugh, he had developed scruples about
capital punishment; now, suffering from neurasthenia, he was on the Ile
St. Joseph, where the insane were confined.

His present assistant happened to be ill. He had high fever, and looked
very much as if he were going to die. It had been necessary to send him
to hospital. Louis Remire was sorry; he would not easily find so good a
cook again. It was bad luck that this should have happened just now, for
next day there was a job of work to be done. Six men were to be
executed. Two were Algerians, one was a Pole, another a Spaniard from
the mainland, and only two were French. They had escaped from prison in
a band and gone up the river. For nearly twelve months, stealing, raping
and killing they had spread terror through the colony. People scarcely
dared move from their homesteads. Recaptured at last, they had all been
sentenced to death, but the sentence had to be confirmed by the Minister
of the Colonies, and the confirmation had only just arrived. Louis
Remire could not manage without help, and besides there was a lot to
arrange beforehand; it was particularly unfortunate that on this
occasion of all others he should have to depend on an inexperienced man.
The commandant had assigned to him one of the turnkeys. The turnkeys are
convicts like the others, but they have been given their places for good
behaviour and they live in separate quarters. They are on the side of
the authorities and so are disliked by the other prisoners. Louis Remire
was a conscientious fellow, and he was anxious that everything next day
should go without a hitch. He arranged that his temporary assistant
should come that afternoon to the place where the guillotine was kept so
that he might explain to him thoroughly how it worked and show him
exactly what he would have to do.

The guillotine, when not in use, stood in a small room which was part of
the prison building, but which was entered by a separate door from the
outside. When he sauntered along there at the appointed hour he found
the man already waiting. He was a large-limbed, coarse-faced fellow. He
was dressed in the pink and white stripes of the prison garb, but as
turnkey he wore a felt hat instead of the straw of common convicts.

"What are you here for?"

The man shrugged his shoulders.

"I killed a farmer and his wife."

"H'm. How long have you got?"

"Life."

He looked a brute, but you could never be sure of people. He had himself
seen a warder, a big, powerful man, faint dead away at an execution. He
did not want his assistant to have an attack of nerves at the wrong
moment. He gave him a friendly smile, and with his thumb pointed to the
closed door behind which stood the guillotine.

"This is another sort of job," he said. "There are six of them, you
know. They're a bad lot. The sooner they're out of the way the better."

"Oh, that's all right. After what I've seen in this place I'm scared of
nothing. It means no more to me than cutting the head off a chicken."

Louis Remire unlocked the door and walked in. His assistant followed
him. The guillotine in that small room, hardly larger than a cell,
seemed to take up a great deal of space. It stood grim and sinister.
Louis Remire heard a slight gasp and turning round saw that the turnkey
was staring at the instrument with terrified eyes. His face was sallow
and drawn from the fever and the hookworm from which all the convicts
intermittently suffered, but now its pallor was ghastly. The executioner
smiled good-naturedly.

"Gives you a turn, does it? Have you never seen it before?"

"Never."

Louis Remire gave a little throaty chuckle.

"If you had, I suppose you wouldn't have survived to tell the tale. How
did you escape it?"

"I was starving when I did my job. I'd asked for something to eat and
they set the dogs on me. I was condemned to death. My lawyer went to
Paris and he got the President to reprieve me."

"It's better to be alive than dead, there's no denying that," said Louis
Remire, with that agreeable twinkle in his eyes.

He always kept his guillotine in perfect order. The wood, a dark hard
native wood somewhat like mahogany, was highly polished; but there was a
certain amount of brass, and it was Louis Remire's pride that this
should be as bright and clean as the brass-work on a yacht. The knife
shone as though it had just come out of the workshop. It was necessary
not only to see that everything functioned properly, but to show his
assistant how it functioned. It was part of the assistant's duty to
refix the rope when the knife had dropped, and to do this he had to
climb a short ladder.

It was with the satisfaction of a competent workman who knows his job
from A to Z that Remire entered upon the necessary explanations. It gave
him a certain quiet pleasure to point out the ingenuity of the
apparatus. The condemned man was strapped to the bascule, a sort of
shelf, and this by a simple mechanism was precipitated down and forwards
so that the man's neck was conveniently under the knife. The
conscientious fellow had brought with him a banana stem, about five feet
long, and the turnkey had wondered why. He was now to learn. The stem
was of about the same circumference and consistency as the human neck,
so that it afforded a very good way, not only of showing a novice how
the apparatus worked, but of making sure beforehand that it was in
perfect order. Louis Remire placed the banana stem in position. He
released the knife. It fell with incredible speed and with a great bang.
From the time the man was attached to the bascule to the time his head
was off only thirty seconds elapsed. The head fell in the basket. The
executioner took it up by the ears and exhibited it to those whose duty
it was to watch the execution. He uttered the solemn words:

"_Au nom du peuple franais justice est faite._ In the name of the
French people justice is done."

Then he dropped the head back into the basket. To-morrow, with six to be
dispatched, the trunk would have to be unstrapped from the bascule and
placed with the head on a stretcher, and the next man brought forward.
They were taken in the order of their guilt. The least guilty, executed
first, were spared the horror of seeing the death of their mates.

"We shall have to be careful that the right head goes with the right
body," said Louis Remire, in that rather jovial manner of his, "or there
may be no end of confusion at the Resurrection."

He let down the knife two or three times in order to make quite sure
that the assistant understood how to fix it, and then getting his
cleaning-materials from the shelf on which he kept them set him to work
on the brass. Though it was spotless he thought that a final polish
would do no harm. He leaned against the wall and idly smoked cigarettes.

Finally everything was in order and Louis Remire dismissed the assistant
till midnight. At midnight they were moving the guillotine from the room
in which it stood to the prison yard. It was always a bit of a job to
set it up again, but it had to be in place an hour before dawn, at which
time the execution took place. Louis Remire strolled slowly home to his
shack. The afternoon was drawing to its close, and as he walked along he
passed a working party who were returning to the prison. They spoke to
one another in undertones and he guessed that they spoke of him; some
looked down, two or three threw him a glance of hatred and one spat on
the ground. Louis Remire, the end of a cigarette sticking to his lip,
looked at them with irony. He was indifferent to the loathing, mingled
with fear, with which they regarded him. It did not matter to him that
not one of them would speak to him, and it only amused him to think that
there was hardly one who would not gladly have thrust a knife into his
guts. He had a supreme contempt for them all. He could take care of
himself. He could use a knife as well as any of them, and he had
confidence in his strength. The convicts knew that men were to be
executed next day, and as always before an execution they were depressed
and nervous. They went about their work in sullen silence, and the
warders had to be more than usually on the alert.

"They'll settle down when it's all over," said Louis Remire as he let
himself into his little compound.

The dogs barked as he came along, and brave though he was, he listened
to their uproar with satisfaction. With his own assistant ill, so that
he was alone in the house, he was not sorry that he had the protection
of those two savage mongrels. They prowled about the coconut grove
outside his compound all night and they would give him good warning if
anyone lurked there. They could be relied on to spring at the throat of
any stranger who ventured too near. If his predecessor had had these
dogs he wouldn't have come to his end.

The man who had been executioner before Louis Remire had only held the
job a couple of years when one day he disappeared. The authorities
thought he had run away; he was known to have a bit of money, and it was
very probable that he had managed to make arrangements with the captain
of a schooner to take him to Brazil. His nerves had given way. He had
gone two or three times to the governor of the prison and told him that
he feared for his life. He was convinced that the convicts were out to
kill him. The governor felt pretty sure that his fears were groundless
and paid no attention, but when the man was nowhere to be found he
concluded that his terror had got the better of him and he had preferred
to run the danger of escape, and the danger of being recaptured and put
back into prison, rather than face the risk of an avenging convict's
knife. About three weeks later the warder in charge of a working party
in the jungle noticed a great flock of vultures clustered round a tree.
These vultures, called urubus, are large black birds, of a horrible
aspect, and they fly about the market-place of St. Laurent, picking up
the offal that is left there by the starving liberated convicts, and
flit heavily from tree to tree in the neat, well-kept streets of the
town. They fly in the prison yard to remind the convicts that if they
attempt an escape into the jungle their end, ten to one, will be to have
their bones picked clean by these loathsome creatures. They were
fighting and screaming in such a mass round the tree that the warder
thought there was something strange there. He reported it and the
commandant sent a party to see. They found a man hanging by the neck
from one of the branches, and when they cut him down discovered that he
was the executioner. It was given out that he had committed suicide, but
there was a knife-thrust in his back, and the convicts knew that he had
been stabbed and then, still alive, taken to the jungle and hanged.

Louis Remire had no fear that anything of that sort would happen to him.
He knew how his predecessor had been caught. The job had not been done
by the convicts. By the French law when a man is sentenced to hard
labour for a certain number of years he has at the expiration of his
sentence to remain in the colony for the same number of years. He is
free, but he may not stir from the spot that is assigned to him as a
residence. In certain circumstances he can get a concession and if he
works hard he manages to scrape a bare living from it, but after a long
term of penal servitude, during which he has lost all power of
initiative, what with the debilitating effect of fever, hookworm and so
on, he is unfit for heavy and continuous labour, and so most of the
liberated men subsist on begging, larceny, smuggling tobacco or money to
the prisoners, and loading and unloading cargoes when two or three times
a month a steamer comes into the harbour. It was the wife of one of
these freed men that had been the means of the undoing of Louis Remire's
predecessor. She was a coloured woman, young and pretty, with a neat
little figure and mischievous eyes. The plot was well-considered. The
executioner was a burly, sanguine man, of ardent passions. She had
thrown herself in his way, and when she caught his approving glance, had
cast him a saucy look. He saw her a day or two later in the public
garden. He did not venture to speak to her (no one, man, woman or child,
would be seen speaking to him), but when he winked at her she smiled.
One evening he met her walking through the coconut grove that surrounded
his compound. No one was about. He got into conversation with her. They
only exchanged a few words, for she was evidently terrified of being
seen with him. But she came again to the coconut grove. She played him
carefully till his suspicions were allayed; she teased his desires; she
made him give her little presents, and at last on the promise of what
was for both of them quite a sum of money she agreed to come one dark
night to the compound. A ship had just come in and her husband would be
working till dawn. It was when he opened the door for her and she
hesitated to come in as though at the last moment she could not make up
her mind, that he stepped outside to draw her in, and fell to the ground
with the violence of the knife-thrust in his back.

"The fool," muttered Louis Remire. "He only got what he deserved. He
should have smelt a rat. The eternal vanity of man."

For his part he was through with women. It was on account of women that
he found himself in the situation he was in now, at least on account of
one woman; and besides, at his time of life, his passions were assuaged.
There were other things in life and after a certain age a man, if he was
sensible, turned his attention to them. He had always been a great
fisherman. In the old days, at home in France before he had had his
misfortune, as soon as he came off duty, he took his rod and line and
went down to the Rhone. He got a lot of fishing now. Every morning, till
the sun grew hot, he sat on his favourite rock and generally managed to
get enough for the prison governor's table. The governor's wife knew the
value of things and beat him down on the price he asked, but he did not
blame her for that; she knew that he had to take what she was prepared
to give and it would have been stupid of her to pay a penny more than
she had to. In any case it brought in a little money useful for tobacco
and rum and other odds and ends. But this evening he was going to fish
for himself. He got his bait from the lean-to, and his rod, and settled
down on his rock. No fish was so good as the fish you caught yourself,
and by now he knew which were those that were good to eat and which were
so tough and flavourless that you could only throw them back into the
sea. There was one sort that, fried in real olive oil, was as good as
mullet. He had not been sitting there five minutes when his float gave a
sudden jerk, and when he pulled up his line, there, like an answer to
prayer, was one of those very fish wriggling on the hook. He took it
off, banged its head on the rock, and putting it down, replaced his
bait. Four of them would make a good supper, the best a man could have,
and with a night's hard work before him he needed a hearty meal. He
would not have time to fish to-morrow morning. First of all the scaffold
would have to be taken down and the pieces brought back to the room in
which it was kept, and there would be a lot of cleaning to do. It was a
bloody business; last time he had had his pants so soaked that he had
been able to do nothing with them and had had to throw them away. The
brass would have to be polished, the knife would have to be honed. He
was not a man to leave a job half finished, and by the time it was
through he would be pretty peckish. It would be worth while to catch a
few more fish and put them in a cool place so that he could have a
substantial breakfast. A cup of coffee, a couple of eggs and a bit of
fried fish; he could do with that. Then he would have a good sleep;
after a night on his feet, the anxiety of an inexperienced assistant,
and the clearing away of all the mess, God knew he would deserve it.

In front of him was spread the bay in a noble sweep, and in the distance
was a little island green with trees. The afternoon was exquisitely
still. Peace descended on the fisherman's soul. He watched his float
idly. When you came to think of it, he reflected, he might be a great
deal worse off; some of them, the convicts he meant, the convicts who
swarmed in the prison a few hundred yards away from him, some of them
had such a nostalgia for France that they went mad with melancholy; but
he was a bit of a philosopher, so long as he could fish he was content;
and did it really matter if he watched his float on the southern sea or
in the Rhone? His thoughts wandered back to the past. His wife was an
intolerable woman and he did not regret that he had killed her. He had
never meant to marry her. She was a dressmaker, and he had taken a fancy
to her because she was always neatly and smartly dressed. She seemed
respectable and ladylike. He would not have been surprised if she had
looked upon herself as a cut above a policeman. But he had a way with
him. She soon gave him to understand that she was no snob, and when he
made the customary advances he discovered to his relief, for he was not
a man who considered that resistance added a flavour to conquest, that
she was no prude. He liked to be seen with her when he took her out to
dinner. She talked intelligently, and she was economical. She knew where
they could dine well at the cheapest price. His situation was enviable.
It added to his satisfaction that he could gratify the sexual desires
natural to his healthy temperament at so moderate an expense. When she
came to him and said she was going to have a baby it seemed natural
enough that they should get married. He was earning good wages, and it
was time that he should settle down. He often grew tired of eating, en
pension, at a restaurant, and he looked forward to having his own home
and home cooking. Well, it turned out that it had been a mistake about
the baby, but Louis Remire was a good-natured fellow, and he didn't hold
it up against Adle. But he found, as many men have found before, that
the wife was a very different woman from the mistress. She was jealous
and possessive. She seemed to think that on a Sunday afternoon he ought
to take her for a walk instead of going out fishing, and she made it a
grievance that, on coming off duty, he would go to the caf. There was
one caf he frequented where other fishermen went and where he met men
with whom he had a lot in common. He found it much pleasanter to spend
his free evenings there over a glass or two of beer, whiling away the
time with a game of cards, than to sit at home with his wife. She began
to make scenes. Though sociable and jovial by nature he had a quick
temper. There was a rough crowd at Lyons, and sometimes you could not
manage them unless you were prepared to show a certain amount of
firmness. When his wife began to make a nuisance of herself it never
occurred to him that there was any other way of dealing with her than
that he adopted. He let her know the strength of his hand. If she had
been a sensible woman she would have learnt her lesson, but she was not
a sensible woman. He found occasion more and more often to apply a
necessary correction; she revenged herself by screaming the place down
and by telling the neighbours--they lived in a two-roomed apartment on
the fifth floor of a big house--what a brute he was. She told them that
she was sure he would kill her one day. And yet never was there a more
good-natured man than Louis Remire; she blamed him for the money he
spent at the caf, she accused him of wasting it on other women; well,
in his position he had opportunities now and then, and as any man would,
he took them, and he was easy with his money, he never minded paying a
round of drinks for his friends, and when a girl who had been nice to
him wanted a new hat or a pair of silk stockings he wasn't the man to
say no. His wife looked upon money that he did not spend on her as money
stolen from her; she tried to make him account for every penny he spent,
and when in his jovial way he told her he had thrown it out of the
window, she was infuriated. Her tongue grew bitter and her voice was
rasping. She was in a sullen rage with him all the time. She could not
speak without saying something disagreeable. They led a cat-and-dog
life. Louis Remire used to tell his friends what a harridan she was, he
used to tell them that he wished ten times a day that he had never
married her, and sometimes he would add that if an epidemic of influenza
did not carry her off he would really have to kill her.

It was these remarks, made merely in jest, and the fact that she had so
often told the neighbours that she knew he would murder her, that had
sent him to St. Laurent de Maroni with a twelve-year sentence. Otherwise
he might very well have got off with three or four years in a French
prison. The end had come one hot summer's day. He was, which was rare
for him, in a bad temper. There was a strike in progress and the
strikers had been violent. The police had had to make a good many
arrests and the men had not submitted to this peaceably. Louis Remire
had got a nasty blow on the jaw and he had had to make free use of his
truncheon. To get the arrested men to the station had been a hot and
tiring job. On coming off duty he had gone home to get out of his
uniform and was intending to go to the caf and have a glass of beer and
a pleasant game of cards. His jaw was hurting him. His wife chose that
moment to ask him for money and when he told her that he had none to
give her she made a scene. He had plenty of money to go to the caf, but
none for her to buy a scrap of food with, she could starve for all he
cared. He told her to shut up, and then the row began. She got in front
of the door and swore that he should not pass till he gave her money. He
told her to get out of the way and took a step towards her. She whipped
out his service revolver which he had taken off when he removed his
uniform and threatened that she would shoot him if he moved a step. He
was used to dealing with dangerous criminals, and the words were hardly
out of her mouth before he had sprung upon her and snatched the revolver
out of her hand. She screamed and hit him in the face. She hit him
exactly where his jaw most hurt him. Blind with rage and mad with pain,
he fired, he fired twice and she fell to the floor. For a moment he
stood and stared at her. He was dazed. She looked as if she were dead.
His first feeling was one of indescribable relief. He listened. No one
seemed to have heard the sound of the shot. The neighbours must be out.
That was a bit of luck, for it gave him time to do what he had to do in
his own way. He changed back into his uniform, went out, locking the
door behind him and putting the key in his pocket; he stopped for five
minutes at his familiar caf to have a glass of beer and then returned
to the police-station he had lately left. On account of the day's
disturbances the chief inspector was still there. Louis Remire went to
his room and told him what had happened. He spent the night in a cell
adjoining those of the strikers he had so recently himself arrested.
Even at that tragic moment he was struck by the irony of the situation.

Louis Remire had on frequent occasions appeared as a police witness in
criminal cases and he knew how eager are a man's companions to give any
information that may damage him when he gets into trouble. It had caused
him a certain grim amusement to realise how often it happened that a
conviction was obtained only by the testimony of a prisoner's best
friends. But notwithstanding his experience he was amazed, when his own
case came up for trial, to listen to the evidence given by the
proprietor of the little caf he had so much frequented, and to that of
the men who for years had fished with him, played cards with him and
drunk with him. They seemed to have treasured every careless word he had
ever uttered, the complaints he had made about his wife and the joking
threats he had from time to time made that he would get even with her.
He knew that at the time they had taken them no more seriously than he
meant them. If he was able to do them a small service, and a man in the
force often has it in his power to do one, he never hesitated. He had
never been ungenerous with his money. You would have thought as you
listened to them in the witness-box that it gave them the most intense
satisfaction to disclose every trivial detail that could damage him.

From what appeared at the trial you would have thought that he was a bad
man, dissolute, of violent temper, extravagant, idle and corrupt. He
knew that he was nothing of the kind. He was just an ordinary,
good-natured, easy-going fellow, who was willing to let you go your way
if you would let him go his. It was true that he liked his game of cards
and his glass of beer, it was true that he liked a pretty girl, but what
of it? When he looked at the jury he wondered how many of them would
come out of it any better than he if all their errors, all their rash
words, all their follies were thus laid bare. He did not resent the long
term of penal servitude to which he was sentenced. He was an officer of
the law; he had committed a crime and it was right that he should be
punished. But he was not a criminal; he was the victim of an unfortunate
accident.

At St. Laurent de Maroni, in the prison camp, wearing the pink and white
stripe of the prison garb and the ugly straw hat, he remembered still
that he had been a policeman and that the convicts with whom he must now
consort had always been his natural enemies. He despised and disliked
them. He had as little to do with them as he could. And he was not
frightened of them. He knew them too well. Like all the rest he had a
knife and he showed that he was prepared to use it. He did not want to
interfere with anybody, but he was not going to allow anyone to
interfere with him.

The chief of the Lyons police had liked him, his character while in the
force had been exemplary, and the _fiche_ which accompanied every
prisoner spoke well of him. He knew that what officials like is a
prisoner who gives no trouble, who accepts his position with
cheerfulness and who is willing. He got a soft job; very soon he got a
cell of his own and so escaped the horrible promiscuity of the
dormitories; he got on well with the warders, they were decent chaps,
most of them, and knowing that he had formerly been in the police they
treated him more as a comrade than as a convict. The commandant of the
prison trusted him. Presently he got the job of servant to one of the
prison officials. He slept in the prison, but otherwise enjoyed complete
freedom. He took the children of his master to school every day and
fetched them at the end of their school hours. He made toys for them. He
accompanied his mistress to market and carried back the provisions she
bought. He spent long hours gossiping with her. The family liked him.
They liked his chaffing manner and his good-natured smile. He was
industrious and trustworthy. Life once more was tolerable.

But after three years his master was transferred to Cayenne. It was a
blow. But it happened just then that the post of executioner fell free
and he obtained it. Now once more he was in the service of the state. He
was an official. However humble his residence it was his own. He need no
longer wear the prison uniform. He could grow his hair and his
moustache. He cared little if the convicts looked upon him with horror
and contempt. That was how he looked upon them. Scum. When he took the
bleeding head of an executed man from the basket and holding it by the
ears pronounced those solemn words: _Au nom du peuple franais justice
est faite_, he felt that he did represent the Republic. He stood for law
and order. He was the protector of society against that vast horde of
ruthless criminals.

He got a hundred francs for each execution. That and what the governor's
wife paid him for his fish provided him with many a pleasant comfort and
not a few luxuries. And now as he sat on his rock in the peace of
eventide he considered what he would do with the money he would earn
next day. Occasionally he got a bite, now and then a fish; he drew it
out of the water, took it off the hook and put on fresh bait; but he did
this mechanically, and it did not disturb the current of his thoughts.
Six hundred francs. It was a respectable sum. He scarcely knew what to
do with it. He had everything he wanted in his little house, he had a
good store of groceries, and plenty of rum for one who was as little of
a drinker as he was; he needed no fishing tackle; his clothes were good
enough. The only thing was to put it aside. He already had a tidy little
sum hidden in the ground at the root of a papaya tree. He chuckled when
he thought how Adle would have stared had she known that he was
actually saving. It would have been balm to her avaricious soul. He was
saving up gradually for when he was released. That was the difficult
moment for the convicts. So long as they were in prison they had a roof
over their heads and food to eat, but when they were released, with the
obligation of staying for so many years more in the colony, they had to
shift for themselves. They all said the same thing: it was at the
expiration of their term that their real punishment began. They could
not get work. Employers mistrusted them. Contractors would not engage
them because the prison authorities hired out convict labour at a price
that defied competition. They slept in the open, in the market-place,
and for food were often glad to go to the Salvation Army. But the
Salvation Army made them work hard for what they gave and besides forced
them to listen to their services. Sometimes they committed a violent
crime merely to get back to the safety of prison. Louis Remire was not
going to take any risks. He meant to amass a sufficient capital to start
in business. He ought to be able to get permission to settle in Cayenne,
and there he might open a bar. People might hesitate to come at first
because he had been the executioner, but if he provided good liquor they
would get over their prejudice, and with his jovial manner, with his
experience in keeping order, he ought to be able to make a go of it.
Visitors came to Cayenne now and then and they would come out of
curiosity. It would be something interesting to tell their friends when
they got home that the best rum punch they had had in Cayenne was at the
executioner's. But he had a good many years to go yet, and if there
really was something he needed there was no reason why he shouldn't get
it. He racked his brains. No, there wasn't a thing in the world he
wanted. He was surprised. He allowed his eyes to wander from his float.
The sea was wonderfully calm and now it was rich with all the colour of
the setting sun. In the sky already a solitary star twinkled. A thought
came to him that filled him with an extraordinary sensation.

"But if there's nothing in the world you want, surely that's happiness."
He stroked his handsome moustache and his blue eyes shone softly. "There
are no two ways about it, I'm a happy man and till this moment I never
knew it."

The notion was so unexpected that he did not know what to make of it. It
was certainly a very odd one. But there it was, as obvious to anyone
with a logical mind as a proposition of Euclid.

"Happy, that's what I am. How many men can say the same? In St. Laurent
de Maroni of all places, and for the first time in my life."

The sun was setting. He had caught enough fish for his supper and enough
for his breakfast. He drew in his line, gathered up his fish, and went
back to his house. It stood but a few yards from the sea. It did not
take him long to light his fire and in a little while he had four little
fish cheerfully frizzling in a pan. He was always very particular about
the oil he used. The best olive oil was expensive, but it was worth the
money. The prison bread was good, and after he had fried his fish, he
fried a couple of pieces of bread in the rest of the oil. He sniffed the
savoury smell with satisfaction. He lit a lamp, washed a lettuce grown
in his own garden, and mixed himself a salad. He had a notion that no
one in the world could mix a salad better than he. He drank a glass of
rum and ate his supper with appetite. He gave a few odds and ends to the
two mongrel dogs who were lying at his feet, and then, having washed up,
for he was by nature a tidy man and when he came in to breakfast next
morning did not want to find things in a mess, let the dogs out of the
compound to wander about the coconut grove. He took the lamp into the
house, made himself comfortable in his deck-chair, and smoking a cigar
smuggled in from the neighbouring Dutch Colony settled down to read one
of the French papers that had arrived by the last mail. Replete, his
mind at ease, he could not but feel that life, with all its
disadvantages, was good to live. He was still affected by the amused
surprise that had overcome him when it suddenly occurred to him that he
was a happy man. When you considered that men spent their lives seeking
for happiness, it seemed hardly believable that he had found it. Yet the
fact stared him in the face. A man who has everything he wants is happy,
he had everything he wanted; therefore he was happy. He chuckled as a
new thought crossed his mind.

"There's no denying it, I owe it to Adle."

Old Adle. What a foul woman!

Presently he decided that he had better have a nap; he set his alarm
clock for a quarter to twelve and lying down on his bed in a few minutes
was fast asleep. He slept soundly and no dreams troubled him. He woke
with a start when the alarm sounded, but in a moment remembered why he
had set it. He yawned and stretched himself lazily.

"Ah, well, I suppose I must get to work. Every job has its
inconveniences."

He slipped from under his mosquito-net and relit his lamp. To freshen
himself he washed his hands and face, and then as a protection against
the night air drank a glass of rum. He thought for a moment of his
inexperienced assistant and wondered whether it would be wise to take
some rum in a flask with him.

"It would be a pretty business if his nerves went back on him."

It was unfortunate that so many as six men had to be executed. If there
had been only one, it wouldn't have mattered so much his assistant being
new to the game; but with five others waiting there, it would be awkward
if there were a hitch. He shrugged his shoulders. They would just have
to do the best they could. He passed a comb through his tousled hair and
carefully brushed his handsome moustache. He lit a cigarette. He walked
through his compound, unlocked the door in the stout palisade that
surrounded it, and locked it again behind him. There was no moon. He
whistled for his dogs. He was surprised that they did not come. He
whistled again. The brutes. They'd probably caught a rat and were
fighting over it. He'd give them a good hiding for that; he'd teach them
not to come when he whistled. He set out to walk in the direction of the
prison. It was dark under the coconut trees and he would just as soon
have had the dogs with him. Still there were only fifty yards to go and
then he would be out in the open. There were lights in the governor's
house, and it gave him confidence to see them. He smiled, for he guessed
what those lights at that late hour meant; the governor, with the
execution before him at dawn, was finding it hard to sleep. The anxiety,
the malaise, that affected convicts and ex-convicts alike on the eve of
an execution, had got on his nerves. It was true that there was always
the chance of an outbreak then, and the warders went around with their
eyes skinned and their hands ready to draw their guns at a suspicious
movement.

Louis Remire whistled for his dogs once more, but they did not come. He
could not understand it. It was a trifle disquieting. He was a man who
habitually walked slowly, strolling along with a sort of roll, but now
he hastened his pace. He spat the cigarette out of his mouth. It had
struck him that it was prudent not to betray his whereabouts by the
light it gave. Suddenly he stumbled against something. He stopped dead.
He was a brave man, with nerves of steel, but on a sudden he felt sick
with terror. It was something soft and rather large that he had stumbled
against, and he was pretty sure what it was. He wore espadrilles, and
with one foot he cautiously felt the object on the ground before him.
Yes, he was right. It was one of his dogs. It was dead. He took a step
backwards and drew his knife. He knew it was no good to shout. The only
house in the neighbourhood was the prison governor's, it faced the
clearing just beyond the coconut grove; but they would not hear him, or
if they did would not stir. St. Laurent de Maroni was not a place where
you went out in the dead of night when you heard a man calling for help.
If next day one of the freed convicts was found lying dead, well, it was
no great loss. Louis Remire saw in a flash what had happened.

He thought rapidly. They had killed his dogs while he was sleeping. They
must have got them when he had put them out of his compound after
supper. They must have thrown them some poisoned meat and the brutes had
snatched at it. If the one he had stumbled over was near his house it
was because it tried to crawl home to die. Louis Remire strained his
eyes. He could see nothing. The night was pitch black. He could hardly
see the trunks of the coconut trees a yard away from him. His first
thought was to make a rush for his shack. If he got back to the safety
of that he could wait till the prison people, wondering why he did not
come, sent to fetch him. But he knew he could never get back. He knew
they were there in the darkness, the men who had killed his dogs; he
would have to fumble with the key to find the lock and before he found
it he would have a knife plunged in his back. He listened intently.
There was not a sound. And yet he felt that there were men there,
lurking behind the trees, and they were there to kill him. They would
kill him as they had killed his dogs. And he would die like a dog. There
was more than one certainly. He knew them, there were three or four of
them at least, there might be more, convicts in service in private
houses who were not obliged to get back to the camp till a late hour, or
desperate and starving freed men who had nothing to lose. For a moment
he hesitated what to do. He dared not make a run for it, they might
easily have put a rope across the pathway that led from his house to the
open, and if he tripped he was done for. The coconut trees were loosely
planted and among them his enemies would see him as little as he saw
them. He stepped over the dead dog and plunged into the grove. He stood
with his back to a tree to decide how he should proceed. The silence was
terrifying. Suddenly he heard a whisper and the horror of it was
frightful. Again a dead silence. He felt he must move on, but his feet
seemed rooted to the ground. He felt that they were peering at him out
of the darkness and it seemed to him that he was as visible to them as
though he stood in the broad light of day. Then from the other side was
a little cough. It came as such a shock that Louis Remire nearly
screamed. He was conscious now that they were all round him. He could
expect no mercy from those robbers and murderers. He remembered the
other executioner, his predecessor, whom they had carried still alive
into the jungle, whose eyes they had gouged out, and whom they had left
hanging for the vultures to devour. His knees began to tremble. What a
fool he had been to take on the job! There were soft jobs he could have
found in which you ran no risk. It was too late to think of that. He
pulled himself together. He had no chance of getting out of the coconut
grove alive, he knew that; he wanted to be sure that he would be dead.
He tightened his grip on his knife. The awful part was that he could
hear no one, he could see no one, and yet he knew that they were lurking
there waiting to strike. For one moment he had a mad idea, he would
throw his knife away and shout out to them that he was unarmed and they
could come and kill him in safety. But he knew them; they would never be
satisfied merely to kill him. Rage seized him. He was not the man to
surrender tamely to a pack of criminals. He was an honest man and an
official of the state; it was his duty to defend himself. He could not
stay there all night. It was better to get it over quickly. Yet that
tree at his back seemed to offer a sort of security, he could not bring
himself to move. He stared at the trunk of a tree in front of him and
suddenly it moved and he realised with horror that it was a man. That
made up his mind for him and with a huge effort he stepped forwards. He
advanced slowly and cautiously. He could hear nothing, he could see
nothing. But he knew that as he advanced they advanced too. It was as
though he were accompanied by an invisible bodyguard. He thought he
could hear the sound of their naked feet on the ground. His fear had
left him. He walked on, keeping as close to the trees as he could, so
that they should have less chance of attacking him from behind; a wild
hope sprang up in his breast that they would be afraid to strike, they
knew him, they all knew him, and whoever struck the first blow would be
lucky if he escaped a knife in his own guts; he had only another thirty
yards to go, and once in the open, able to see, he could make a fight
for it. A few yards more and then he would run for his life. Suddenly
something happened that made him start out of his skin, and he stopped
dead. A light was flashed and in that heavy darkness the sudden glare
was terrifying. It was an electric torch. Instinctively he sprang to a
tree and stood with his back to it. He could not see who held the light.
He was blinded by it. He did not speak. He held his knife low, he knew
that when they struck it was in the belly, and if someone flung himself
at him he was prepared to strike back. He was going to sell his life
dearly. For half a minute perhaps the light shone on his face, but it
seemed to him an eternity. He thought now that he discerned dimly the
faces of men. Then a word broke the horrible silence.

"Throw."

At the same instant a knife came flying through the air and struck him
on the breast-bone. He threw up his hands and as he did so someone
sprang at him and with a great sweep of the knife ripped up his belly.
The light was switched off. Louis Remire sank to the ground with a
groan, a terrible groan of pain. Five, six men gathered out of the gloom
and stood over him. With his fall the knife that had stuck in his
breast-bone was dislodged. It lay on the ground. A quick flash of the
torch showed where it was. One of the men took it and with a single,
swift motion cut Remire's throat from ear to ear.

"_Au nom du peuple franais justice est faite_," he said.

They vanished into the darkness and in the coconut grove was the immense
silence of death.




WINTER CRUISE


Captain Erdmann knew Miss Reid very little till the _Friedrich Weber_
reached Haiti. She came on board at Plymouth, but by then he had taken
on a number of passengers, French, Belgian and Haitian, many of whom had
travelled with him before, and she was placed at the chief engineer's
table. The _Friedrich Weber_ was a freighter sailing regularly from
Hamburg to Cartagena on the Colombian coast and on the way touching at a
number of islands in the West Indies. She carried phosphates and cement
from Germany and took back coffee and timber; but her owners, the
Brothers Weber, were always willing to send her out of her route if a
cargo of any sort made it worth their while. The _Friedrich Weber_ was
prepared to take cattle, mules, potatoes or anything else that offered
the chance of earning an honest penny. She carried passengers. There
were six cabins on the upper deck and six below. The accommodation was
not luxurious, but the food was good, plain and abundant, and the fares
were cheap. The round trip took nine weeks and was not costing Miss Reid
more than forty-five pounds. She looked forward not only to seeing many
interesting places, with historical associations, but also to acquiring
a great deal of information that would enrich her mind.

The agent had warned her that till the ship reached Port au Prince in
Haiti she would have to share a cabin with another woman. Miss Reid did
not mind that, she liked company, and when the steward told her that her
companion was Madame Bollin she thought at once that it would be a very
good opportunity to rub up her French. She was only very slightly
disconcerted when she found that Madame Bollin was coal-black. She told
herself that one had to accept the rough with the smooth and that it
takes all sorts to make a world. Miss Reid was a good sailor, as indeed
was only to be expected since her grandfather had been a naval officer,
but after a couple of roughish days the weather was fine and in a very
short while she knew all her fellow-passengers. She was a good mixer.
That was one of the reasons why she had made a success of her business;
she owned a tea-room at a celebrated beauty spot in the west of England
and she always had a smile and a pleasant word for every customer who
came in; she closed down in the winter and for the last four years had
taken a cruise. You met such interesting people, she said, and you
always learnt something. It was true that the passengers on the
_Friedrich Weber_ weren't of quite so good a class as those she had met
the year before on her Mediterranean cruise, but Miss Reid was not a
snob, and though the table manners of some of them shocked her somewhat,
determined to look upon the bright side of things she decided to make
the best of them. She was a great reader and she was glad, on looking at
the ship's library, to find that there were a lot of books by Phillips
Oppenheim, Edgar Wallace and Agatha Christie; but with so many people to
talk to she had no time for reading and she made up her mind to leave
them till the ship emptied herself at Haiti.

"After all," she said, "human nature is more important than literature."

Miss Reid had always had the reputation of being a good talker and she
flattered herself that not once during the many days they were at sea
had she allowed the conversation at table to languish. She knew how to
draw people out, and whenever a topic seemed to be exhausted she had a
remark ready to revive it or another topic waiting on the tip of her
tongue to set the conversation off again. Her friend Miss Prince,
daughter of the late Vicar of Campden, who had come to see her off at
Plymouth, for she lived there, had often said to her:

"You know, Venetia, you have a mind like a man. You're never at a loss
for something to say."

"Well, I think if you're interested in everyone, everyone will be
interested in you," Miss Reid answered modestly. "Practice makes
perfect, and I have the infinite capacity for taking pains which Dickens
said was genius."

Miss Reid was not really called Venetia, her name was Alice, but
disliking it she had, when still a girl, adopted the poetic name which
she felt so much better suited to her personality.

Miss Reid had a great many interesting talks with her fellow-passengers
and she was really sorry when the ship at length reached Port au Prince
and the last of them disembarked. The _Friedrich Weber_ stopped two days
there, during which she visited the town and the neighbourhood. When
they sailed she was the only passenger. The ship was skirting the coast
of the island stopping off at a variety of ports to discharge or to take
on cargo.

"I hope you will not feel embarrassed alone with so many men, Miss
Reid," said the captain heartily as they sat down to midday dinner.

She was placed on his right hand and at table besides sat the first
mate, the chief engineer and the doctor.

"I'm a woman of the world, Captain. I always think if a lady is a lady
gentlemen will be gentlemen."

"We're only rough sailor men, madam, you mustn't expect too much."

"Kind hearts are more than coronets and simple faith than Norman blood,
Captain," answered Miss Reid.

He was a short, thick-set man, with a clean-shaven head and a red,
clean-shaven face. He wore a white stengah-shifter, but except at
meal-times unbuttoned at the neck and showing his hairy chest. He was a
jovial fellow. He could not speak without bellowing. Miss Reid thought
him quite an eccentric, but she had a keen sense of humour and was
prepared to make allowances for that. She took the conversation in hand.
She had learnt a great deal about Haiti on the voyage out and more
during the two days she had spent there, but she knew that men liked to
talk rather than to listen, so she put them a number of questions to
which she already knew the answers; oddly enough they didn't. In the end
she found herself obliged to give quite a little lecture, and before
dinner was over, _Mittag Essen_ they called it in their funny way, she
had imparted to them a great deal of interesting information about the
history and economic situation of the Republic, the problems that
confronted it and its prospects for the future. She talked rather
slowly, in a refined voice, and her vocabulary was extensive.

At nightfall they put in at a small port where they were to load three
hundred bags of coffee, and the agent came on board. The captain asked
him to stay to supper and ordered cocktails. As the steward brought them
Miss Reid swam into the saloon. Her movements were deliberate, elegant
and self-assured. She always said that you could tell at once by the way
she walked if a woman was a lady. The captain introduced the agent to
her and she sat down.

"What is that you men are drinking?" she asked.

"A cocktail. Will you have one, Miss Reid?"

"I don't mind if I do."

She drank it and the captain somewhat doubtfully asked her if she would
have another.

"Another? Well, just to be matey."

The agent, much whiter than some, but a good deal darker than many, was
the son of a former minister of Haiti to the German court, and having
lived for many years in Berlin spoke good German. It was indeed on this
account that he had got a job with a German shipping firm. On the
strength of this Miss Reid, during supper, told them all about a trip
down the Rhine that she had once taken. Afterwards she and the agent,
the skipper, the doctor and the mate sat round a table and drank beer.
Miss Reid made it her business to draw the agent out. The fact that they
were loading coffee suggested to her that he would be interested in
learning how they grew tea in Ceylon, yes, she had been to Ceylon on a
cruise, and the fact that his father was a diplomat made it certain that
he would be interested in the royal family of England. She had a very
pleasant evening. When she at last retired to rest, for she would never
have thought of saying she was going to bed, she said to herself:

"There's no doubt that travel is a great education."

It was really an experience to find herself alone with all those men.
How they would laugh when she told them all about it when she got home!
They would say that things like that only happened to Venetia. She
smiled when she heard the captain on deck singing with that great
booming voice of his. Germans were so musical. He had a funny way of
strutting up and down on his short legs singing Wagner tunes to words of
his own invention. It was _Tannhaser_ he was singing now (that lovely
thing about the evening star) but knowing no German Miss Reid could only
wonder what absurd words he was putting to it. It was as well.

"Oh, what a bore that woman is, I shall certainly kill her if she goes
on much longer." Then he broke into Siegfried's martial strain. "She's a
bore, she's a bore, she's a bore. I shall throw her into the sea."

And that of course is what Miss Reid was. She was a crashing, she was a
stupendous, she was an excruciating bore. She talked in a steady
monotone, and it was no use to interrupt her because then she started
again from the beginning. She had an insatiable thirst for information
and no casual remark could be thrown across the table without her asking
innumerable questions about it. She was a great dreamer and she narrated
her dreams at intolerable length. There was no subject upon which she
had not something prosy to say. She had a truism for every occasion. She
hit on the commonplace like a hammer driving a nail into the wall. She
plunged into the obvious like a clown in a circus jumping through a
hoop. Silence did not abash her. Those poor men far away from their
homes and the patter of little feet, and with Christmas coming on, no
wonder they felt low; she redoubled her efforts to interest and amuse
them. She was determined to bring a little gaiety into their dull lives.
For that was the awful part of it: Miss Reid meant well. She was not
only having a good time herself, but she was trying to give all of them
a good time. She was convinced that they liked her as much as she liked
them. She felt that she was doing her bit to make the party a success
and she was navely happy to think that she was succeeding. She told
them all about her friend Miss Price and how often she had said to her:
Venetia, no one ever has a dull moment in your company. It was the
captain's duty to be polite to a passenger and however much he would
have liked to tell her to hold her silly tongue he could not, but even
if he had been free to say what he liked, he knew that he could not have
brought himself to hurt her feelings. Nothing stemmed the torrent of her
loquacity. It was as irresistible as a force of nature. Once in
desperation they began talking German, but Miss Reid stopped this at
once.

"Now I won't have you saying things I don't understand. You ought all to
make the most of your good luck in having me all to yourselves and
practise your English."

"We were talking of technical matters that would only bore you, Miss
Reid," said the captain.

"I'm never bored. That's why, if you won't think me a wee bit conceited
to say so, I'm never boring. You see, I like to know things. Everything
interests me and you never know when a bit of information won't come in
useful."

The doctor smiled dryly.

"The captain was only saying that because he was embarrassed. In point
of fact he was telling a story that was not fit for the ears of a maiden
lady."

"I may be a maiden lady but I'm also a woman of the world, I don't
expect sailors to be saints. You need never be afraid of what you say
before me, Captain, I shan't be shocked. I should love to hear your
story."

The doctor was a man of sixty with thin grey hair, a grey moustache and
small bright blue eyes. He was a silent, bitter man, and however hard
Miss Reid tried to bring him into the conversation it was almost
impossible to get a word out of him. But she wasn't a woman who would
give in without a struggle, and one morning when they were at sea and
she saw him sitting on deck with a book, she brought her chair next to
his and sat down beside him.

"Are you fond of reading, Doctor?" she said brightly.

"Yes."

"So am I. And I suppose like all Germans you're musical."

"I'm fond of music."

"So am I. The moment I saw you I thought you looked clever."

He gave her a brief look and pursing his lips went on reading. Miss Reid
was not disconcerted.

"But of course one can always read. I always prefer a good talk to a
good book. Don't you?"

"No."

"How very interesting. Now do tell me why?"

"I can't give you a reason."

"That's very strange, isn't it? But then I always think human nature is
strange. I'm terribly interested in people, you know. I always like
doctors, they know so much about human nature, but I could tell you some
things that would surprise even you. You learn a great deal about people
if you run a tea-shop like I do, that's to say if you keep your eyes
open."

The doctor got up.

"I must ask you to excuse me, Miss Reid. I have to go and see a
patient."

"Anyhow I've broken the ice now," she thought, as he walked away. "I
think he was only shy."

But a day or two later the doctor was not feeling at all well. He had an
internal malady that troubled him now and then, but he was used to it
and disinclined to talk about it. When he had one of his attacks he only
wanted to be left alone. His cabin was small and stuffy, so he settled
himself on a long chair on deck and lay with his eyes closed. Miss Reid
was walking up and down to get the half-hour's exercise she took morning
and evening. He thought that if he pretended to be asleep she would not
disturb him. But when she had passed him half a dozen times she stopped
in front of him and stood quite still. Though he kept his eyes closed he
knew that she was looking at him.

"Is there anything I can do, Doctor?" she said.

He started.

"Why, what should there be?"

He gave her a glance and saw that her eyes were deeply troubled.

"You look dreadfully ill," she said.

"I'm in great pain."

"I know. I can see that. Can't something be done?"

"No, it'll pass off presently."

She hesitated for a moment then went away. Presently she returned.

"You look so uncomfortable with no cushions or anything. I've brought
you my own pillow that I always travel with. Do let me put it behind
your head."

He felt at that moment too ill to remonstrate. She lifted his head
gently and put the soft pillow behind it. It really did make him feel
more comfortable. She passed her hand across his forehead and it was
cool and soft.

"Poor dear," she said. "I know what doctors are. They haven't the first
idea how to take care of themselves."

She left him, but in a minute or two returned with a chair and a bag.
The doctor when he saw her gave a twitch of anguish.

"Now I'm not going to let you talk, I'm just going to sit beside you and
knit. I always think it's a comfort when one isn't feeling very well to
have someone near."

She sat down and taking an unfinished muffler out of her bag began
busily to ply her needles. She never said a word. And strangely enough
the doctor found her company a solace. No one else on board had even
noticed that he was ill, he had felt lonely, and the sympathy of that
crashing bore was grateful to him. It soothed him to see her silently
working and presently he fell asleep. When he awoke she was still
working. She gave him a little smile, but did not speak. His pain had
left him and he felt much better.

He did not go into the saloon till late in the afternoon. He found the
captain and Hans Krause, the mate, having a glass of beer together.

"Sit down, Doctor," said the captain. "We're holding a council of war.
You know that the day after to-morrow is Sylvester Abend."

"Of course."

Sylvester Abend, New Year's Eve, is an occasion that means a great deal
to a German and they had all been looking forward to it. They had
brought a Christmas tree all the way from Germany with them.

"At dinner to-day Miss Reid was more talkative than ever. Hans and I
have decided that something must be done about it."

"She sat with me for two hours this morning in silence. I suppose she
was making up for lost time."

"It's bad enough to be away from one's home and family just now anyway
and all we can do is to make the best of a bad job. We want to enjoy our
Sylvester Abend, and unless something is done about Miss Reid we haven't
a chance."

"We can't have a good time if she's with us," said the mate. "She'll
spoil it as sure as eggs is eggs."

"How do you propose to get rid of her, short of throwing her overboard?"
smiled the doctor. "She's not a bad old soul; all she wants is a lover."

"At her age?" cried Hans Krause.

"Especially at her age. That inordinate loquacity, that passion for
information, the innumerable questions she asks, her prosiness, the way
she goes on and on--it is all a sign of her clamouring virginity. A
lover would bring her peace. Those jangled nerves of hers would relax.
At least for an hour she would have lived. The deep satisfaction which
her being demands would travel through those exacerbated centres of
speech, and we should have quiet."

It was always a little difficult to know how much the doctor meant what
he said and when he was having a joke at your expense. The captain's
blue eyes, however, twinkled mischievously.

"Well, Doctor, I have great confidence in your powers of diagnosis. The
remedy you suggest is evidently worth trying, and since you are a
bachelor it is clear that it is up to you to apply it."

"Pardon me, Captain, it is my professional duty to prescribe remedies
for the patients under my charge in this ship, but not to administer
them personally. Besides, I am sixty."

"I am a married man with grown-up children," said the captain. "I am old
and fat and asthmatic, it is obvious that I cannot be expected to
undertake a task of this kind. Nature cut me out for the rle of a
husband and father, not for that of a lover."

"Youth in these matters is essential and good looks are advantageous,"
said the doctor gravely.

The captain gave a great bang on the table with his fist.

"You are thinking of Hans. You're quite right. Hans must do it."

The mate sprang to his feet.

"Me? Never."

"Hans, you are tall, handsome, strong as a lion, brave and young. We
have twenty-three days more at sea before we reach Hamburg, you wouldn't
desert your trusted old captain in an emergency or let down your good
friend the doctor?"

"No, Captain, it's asking too much of me. I have been married less than
a year and I love my wife. I can hardly wait to get back to Hamburg. She
is yearning for me as I am yearning for her. I will not be unfaithful to
her, especially with Miss Reid."

"Miss Reid's not so bad," said the doctor.

"Some people might call her even nice-looking," said the captain.

And indeed when you took Miss Reid feature by feature she was not in
fact a plain woman. True, she had a long, stupid face, but her brown
eyes were large and she had very thick lashes; her brown hair was cut
short and curled rather prettily over her neck; she hadn't a bad skin,
and she was neither too fat nor too thin. She was not old as people go
nowadays, and if she had told you that she was forty you would have been
quite willing to believe it. The only thing against her was that she was
drab and dull.

"Must I then for twenty-three mortal days endure the prolixity of that
tedious woman? Must I for twenty-three mortal days answer her inane
questions and listen to her fatuous remarks? Must I, an old man, have my
Sylvester Abend, the jolly evening I was looking forward to, ruined by
the unwelcome company of that intolerable virgin? And all because no one
can be found to show a little gallantry, a little human kindness, a
spark of charity to a lonely woman. I shall wreck the ship."

"There's always the radio-operator," said Hans.

The captain gave a loud shout.

"Hans, let the ten thousand virgins of Cologne arise and call you
blessed. Steward," he bellowed, "tell the radio-operator that I want
him."

The radio-operator came into the saloon and smartly clicked his heels
together. The three men looked at him in silence. He wondered uneasily
whether he had done something for which he was to be hauled over the
coals. He was above the middle height, with square shoulders and narrow
hips, erect and slender, his tanned, smooth skin looked as though a
razor had never touched it, he had large eyes of a startling blue and a
mane of curling golden hair. He was a perfect specimen of young Teutonic
manhood. He was so healthy, so vigorous, so much alive that even when he
stood some way from you, you felt the glow of his vitality.

"Aryan, all right," said the captain. "No doubt about that. How old are
you, my boy?"

"Twenty-one, sir."

"Married?"

"No, sir."

"Engaged?"

The radio-operator chuckled. There was an engaging boyishness in his
laugh.

"No, sir."

"You know that we have a female passenger on board?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you know her?"

"I've said good-morning to her when I've seen her on deck."

The captain assumed his most official manner. His eyes, which generally
twinkled with fun, were stern and he got a sort of bark into his rich,
fruity voice.

"Although this is a cargo-boat and we carry valuable freight, we also
take such passengers as we can get, and this is a branch of our business
that the company is anxious to encourage. My instructions are to do
everything possible to promote the happiness and comfort of the
passengers. Miss Reid needs a lover. The doctor and I have come to the
conclusion that you are well suited to satisfy Miss Reid's
requirements."

"Me, sir?"

The radio-operator blushed scarlet and then began to giggle, but quickly
composed himself when he saw the set faces of the three men who
confronted him.

"But she's old enough to be my mother."

"That at your age is a matter of no consequence. She is a woman of the
highest distinction and allied to all the great families of England. If
she were German she would be at least a countess. That you should have
been chosen for this responsible position is an honour that you should
greatly appreciate. Furthermore, your English is halting and this will
give you an excellent opportunity to improve it."

"That of course is something to be thought of," said the radio-operator.
"I know that I want practice."

"It is not often in this life that it is possible to combine pleasure
with intellectual improvement, and you must congratulate yourself on
your good fortune."

"But if I may be allowed to put the question, sir, why does Miss Reid
want a lover?"

"It appears to be an old English custom for unmarried women of exalted
rank to submit themselves to the embraces of a lover at this time of
year. The company is anxious that Miss Reid should be treated exactly as
she would be on an English ship, and we trust that if she is satisfied,
with her aristocratic connections she will be able to persuade many of
her friends to take cruises in the line's ships."

"Sir, I must ask to be excused."

"It is not a request that I am making, it is an order. You will present
yourself to Miss Reid, in her cabin, at eleven o'clock to-night."

"What shall I do when I get there?"

"Do?" thundered the captain. "Do? Act naturally."

With a wave of the hand he dismissed him. The radio-operator clicked his
heels, saluted and went out.

"Now let us have another glass of beer," said the captain.

At supper that evening Miss Reid was at her best. She was verbose. She
was playful. She was refined. There was not a truism that she failed to
utter. There was not a commonplace that she forebore to express. She
bombarded them with foolish questions. The captain's face grew redder
and redder as he sought to contain his fury; he felt that he could not
go on being polite to her any longer and if the doctor's remedy did not
help, one day he would forget himself and give her, not a piece, but the
whole of his mind.

"I shall lose my job," he thought, "but I'm not sure that it wouldn't be
worth it."

Next day they were already sitting at table when she came in to dinner.

"Sylvester Abend to-morrow," she said, brightly. That was the sort of
thing she would say. She went on: "Well, what have you all been up to
this morning?"

Since they did exactly the same thing every day, and she knew very well
what that was, the question was enraging. The captain's heart sank. He
briefly told the doctor what he thought of him.

"Now, no German, please," said Miss Reid archly. "You know I don't allow
that, and why, Captain, did you give the poor doctor that sour look?
It's Christmas time, you know; peace and goodwill to all men. I'm so
excited about to-morrow evening, and will there be candles on the
Christmas tree?"

"Naturally."

"How thrilling! I always think a Christmas tree without candles isn't a
Christmas tree. Oh, d'you know, I had such a funny experience last
night. I can't understand it at all."

A startled pause. They all looked intently at Miss Reid. For once they
hung on her lips.

"Yes," she went on in that monotonous, rather finicking way of hers, "I
was just getting into bed last night when there was a knock at my door.
'Who is it?' I said. 'It's the radio-operator,' was the answer. 'What is
it?' I said. 'Can I speak to you?' he said."

They listened with rapt attention.

"'Well, I'll just pop on a dressing-gown,' I said, 'and open the door.'
So I popped on a dressing-gown and opened the door. The radio-operator
said: 'Excuse me, miss, but do you want to send a radio?' Well, I did
think it was funny his coming at that hour to ask me if I wanted to send
a radio, I just laughed in his face, it appealed to my sense of humour
if you understand what I mean, but I didn't want to hurt his feelings so
I said: 'Thank you so much, but I don't think I want to send a radio.'
He stood there, looking so funny, as if he was quite embarrassed, so I
said: 'Thank you all the same for asking me,' and then I said
'Good-night, pleasant dreams' and shut the door."

"The damned fool," cried the captain.

"He's young, Miss Reid," the doctor put in. "It was excess of zeal. I
suppose he thought you would want to send a New Year's greeting to your
friends and he wished you to get the advantage of the special rate."

"Oh, I didn't mind at all. I like these queer little things that happen
to one when one's travelling. I just get a good laugh out of them."

As soon as dinner was over and Miss Reid had left them the captain sent
for the radio-operator.

"You idiot, what in heaven's name made you ask Miss Reid last night
whether she wanted to send a radio?"

"Sir, you told me to act naturally. I am a radio-operator. I thought it
natural to ask her if she wanted to send a radio. I didn't know what
else to say."

"God in heaven," shouted the captain, "when Siegfried saw Brunhilde
lying on her rock and cried: _Das ist kein Mann_," (the captain sang the
words, and being pleased with the sound of his voice, repeated the
phrase two or three times before he continued), "did Siegfried when she
awoke ask her if she wished to send a radio, to announce to her papa, I
suppose, that she was sitting up after her long sleep and taking
notice?"

"I beg most respectfully to draw your attention to the fact that
Brunhilde was Siegfried's aunt. Miss Reid is a total stranger to me."

"He did not reflect that she was his aunt. He knew only that she was a
beautiful and defenceless woman of obviously good family and he acted as
any gentleman would have done. You are young, handsome, Aryan to the
tips of your fingers, the honour of Germany is in your hands."

"Very good, sir. I will do my best."

That night there was another knock on Miss Reid's door.

"Who is it?"

"The radio-operator. I have a radio for you, Miss Reid."

"For me?" She was surprised, but it at once occurred to her that one of
her fellow-passengers who had got off at Haiti had sent her New Year's
greetings. "How very kind people are," she thought. "I'm in bed. Leave
it outside the door."

"It needs an answer. Ten words prepaid."

Then it couldn't be a New Year's greeting. Her heart stopped beating. It
could only mean one thing; her shop had been burned to the ground. She
jumped out of bed.

"Slip it under the door and I'll write the answer and slip it back to
you."

The envelope was pushed under the door and as it appeared on the carpet
it had really a sinister look. Miss Reid snatched it up and tore the
envelope open. The words swam before her eyes and she couldn't for a
moment find her spectacles. This is what she read:

"Happy New Year. Stop. Peace and goodwill to all men. Stop. You are very
beautiful. Stop. I love you. Stop. I must speak to you. Stop. Signed:
Radio Operator."

Miss Reid read this through twice. Then she slowly took off her
spectacles and hid them under a scarf. She opened the door.

"Come in," she said.

Next day was New Year's Eve. The officers were cheerful and a little
sentimental when they sat down to dinner. The stewards had decorated the
saloon with tropical creepers to make up for holly and mistletoe, and
the Christmas tree stood on a table with the candles ready to be lit at
supper time. Miss Reid did not come in till the officers were seated,
and when they bade her good-morning she did not speak but merely bowed.
They looked at her curiously. She ate a good dinner, but uttered never a
word. Her silence was uncanny. At last the captain could stand it no
longer, and he said:

"You're very quiet to-day, Miss Reid."

"I'm thinking," she remarked.

"And will you not tell us your thoughts, Miss Reid?" the doctor asked
playfully.

She gave him a cool, you might almost have called it a supercilious,
look.

"I prefer to keep them to myself, Doctor. I will have a little more of
that hash, I've got a very good appetite."

They finished the meal in a blessed silence. The captain heaved a sigh
of relief. That was what meal-time was for, to eat, not to chatter. When
they had finished he went up to the doctor and wrung his hand.

"Something has happened, Doctor."

"It has happened. She's a changed woman."

"But will it last?"

"One can only hope for the best."

Miss Reid put on an evening dress for the evening's celebration, a very
quiet black dress, with artificial roses at her bosom and a long string
of imitation jade round her neck. The lights were dimmed and the candles
on the Christmas tree were lit. It felt a little like being in church.
The junior officers were supping in the saloon that evening and they
looked very smart in their white uniforms. Champagne was served at the
company's expense and after supper they had a _Maibowle_. They pulled
crackers. They sang songs to the gramophone, _Deutschland_, _Deutschland
ber Alles_, _Alt Heidelberg_ and _Auld Lang Syne_. They shouted out the
tunes lustily, the captain's voice rising loud above the others, and
Miss Reid joining in with a pleasing contralto. The doctor noticed that
Miss Reid's eyes from time to time rested on the radio-operator, and in
them he read an expression of some bewilderment.

"He's a good-looking fellow, isn't he?" said the doctor.

Miss Reid turned round and looked at the doctor coolly.

"Who?"

"The radio-operator. I thought you were looking at him."

"Which is he?"

"The duplicity of women," the doctor muttered, but with a smile he
answered: "He's sitting next to the chief engineer."

"Oh, of course, I recognise him now. You know, I never think it matters
what a man looks like. I'm so much more interested in a man's brains
than in his looks."

"Ah," said the doctor.

They all got a little tight, including Miss Reid, but she did not lose
her dignity and when she bade them good-night it was in her best manner.

"I've had a very delightful evening. I shall never forget my New Year's
Eve on a German boat. It's been very interesting. Quite an experience."

She walked steadily to the door, and this was something of a triumph,
for she had drunk drink for drink with the rest of them through the
evening.

They were all somewhat jaded next day. When the captain, the mate, the
doctor and the chief engineer came down to dinner they found Miss Reid
already seated. Before each place was a small parcel tied up in pink
ribbon. On each was written: Happy New Year. They gave Miss Reid a
questioning glance.

"You've all been so very kind to me I thought I'd like to give each of
you a little present. There wasn't much choice at Port au Prince, so you
mustn't expect too much."

There was pair of briar pipes for the captain, half a dozen silk
handkerchiefs for the doctor, a cigar-case for the mate and a couple of
ties for the chief engineer. They had dinner and Miss Reid retired to
her cabin to rest. The officers looked at one another uncomfortably. The
mate fiddled with the cigar-case she had given him.

"I'm a little ashamed of myself," he said at last.

The captain was pensive and it was plain that he too was a trifle
uneasy.

"I wonder if we ought to have played that trick on Miss Reid," he said.
"She's a good old soul and she's not rich; she's a woman who earns her
own living. She must have spent the best part of a hundred marks on
these presents. I almost wish we'd left her alone."

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

"You wanted her silenced and I've silenced her."

"When all's said and done, it wouldn't have hurt us to listen to her
chatter for three weeks more," said the mate.

"I'm not happy about her," added the captain. "I feel there's something
ominous in her quietness."

She had spoken hardly a word during the meal they had just shared with
her. She seemed hardly to listen to what they said.

"Don't you think you ought to ask her if she's feeling quite well,
doctor?" suggested the captain.

"Of course she's feeling quite well. She's eating like a wolf. If you
want inquiries made you'd much better make them of the radio-operator."

"You may not be aware of it, Doctor, but I am a man of great delicacy."

"I am a man of heart myself," said the doctor.

For the rest of the journey those men spoilt Miss Reid outrageously.
They treated her with the consideration they would have shown to someone
who was convalescent after a long and dangerous illness. Though her
appetite was excellent they sought to tempt her with new dishes. The
doctor ordered wine and insisted on her sharing his bottle with him.
They played dominoes with her. They played chess with her. They played
bridge with her. They engaged her in conversation. But there was no
doubt about it, though she responded to their advances with politeness,
she kept herself to herself. She seemed to regard them with something
very like disdain; you might almost have thought that she looked upon
those men and their efforts to be amiable as pleasantly ridiculous. She
seldom spoke unless spoken to. She read detective stories and at night
sat on deck looking at the stars. She lived a life of her own.

At last the journey drew to its close. They sailed up the English
Channel on a still grey day; they sighted land. Miss Reid packed her
trunk. At two o'clock in the afternoon they docked at Plymouth. The
captain, the mate and the doctor came along to say good-bye to her.

"Well, Miss Reid," said the captain in his jovial way, "we're sorry to
lose you, but I suppose you're glad to be getting home."

"You've been very kind to me, you've all been very kind to me, I don't
know what I've done to deserve it. I've been very happy with you. I
shall never forget you."

She spoke rather shakily, she tried to smile, but her lips quivered, and
tears ran down her cheeks. The captain got very red. He smiled
awkwardly.

"May I kiss you, Miss Reid?"

She was taller than he by half a head. She bent down and he planted a
fat kiss on one wet cheek and a fat kiss on the other. She turned to the
mate and the doctor. They both kissed her.

"What an old fool I am," she said. "Everybody's so good."

She dried her eyes and slowly, in her graceful, rather absurd way,
walked down the companion. The captain's eyes were wet. When she reached
the quay she looked up and waved to someone on the boat deck.

"Who's she waving to?" asked the captain.

"The radio-operator."

Miss Price was waiting on the quay to welcome her. When they had passed
the Customs and got rid of Miss Reid's heavy luggage they went to Miss
Price's house and had an early cup of tea. Miss Reid's train did not
start till five. Miss Price had much to tell Miss Reid.

"But it's too bad of me to go on like this when you've just come home.
I've been looking forward to hearing all about your journey."

"I'm afraid there's not very much to tell."

"I can't believe that. Your trip was a success, wasn't it?"

"A distinct success. It was very nice."

"And you didn't mind being with all those Germans?"

"Of course they're not like English people. One has to get used to their
ways. They sometimes do things that--well, that English people wouldn't
do, you know. But I always think that one has to take things as they
come."

"What sort of things do you mean?"

Miss Reid looked at her friend calmly. Her long, stupid face had a
placid look, and Miss Price never noticed that in the eyes was a
strangely mischievous twinkle.

"Things of no importance really. Just funny, unexpected, rather nice
things. There's no doubt that travel is a wonderful education."




MABEL


I was at Pagan, in Burma, and from there I took the steamer to Mandalay,
but a couple of days before I got there, when the boat tied up for the
night at a riverside village, I made up my mind to go ashore. The
skipper told me that there was there a pleasant little club in which I
had only to make myself at home; they were quite used to having
strangers drop off like that from the steamer, and the secretary was a
very decent chap; I might even get a game of bridge. I had nothing in
the world to do, so I got into one of the bullock-carts that were
waiting at the landing-stage and was driven to the club. There was a man
sitting on the verandah and as I walked up he nodded to me and asked
whether I would have a whisky and soda or a gin and bitters. The
possibility that I would have nothing at all did not even occur to him.
I chose the longer drink and sat down. He was a tall, thin, bronzed man,
with a big moustache, and he wore khaki shorts and a khaki shirt. I
never knew his name, but when we had been chatting a little while
another man came in who told me he was the secretary, and he addressed
my friend as George.

"Have you heard from your wife yet?" he asked him.

The other's eyes brightened.

"Yes, I had letters by this mail. She's having no end of a time."

"Did she tell you not to fret?"

George gave a little chuckle, but was I mistaken in thinking that there
was in it the shadow of a sob?

"In point of fact she did. But that's easier said than done. Of course I
know she wants a holiday, and I'm glad she should have it, but it's
devilish hard on a chap." He turned to me. "You see, this is the first
time I've ever been separated from my missus, and I'm like a lost dog
without her."

"How long have you been married?"

"Five minutes."

The secretary of the club laughed.

"Don't be a fool, George. You've been married eight years."

After we had talked for a little, George, looking at his watch, said he
must go and change his clothes for dinner and left us. The secretary
watched him disappear into the night with a smile of not unkindly irony.

"We all ask him as much as we can now that he's alone," he told me. "He
mopes so terribly since his wife went home."

"It must be very pleasant for her to know that her husband is as devoted
to her as all that."

"Mabel is a remarkable woman."

He called the boy and ordered more drinks. In this hospitable place they
did not ask you if you would have anything; they took it for granted.
Then he settled himself in his long chair and lit a cheroot. He told me
the story of George and Mabel.

They became engaged when he was home on leave, and when he returned to
Burma it was arranged that she should join him in six months. But one
difficulty cropped up after another; Mabel's father died, the war came,
George was sent to a district unsuitable for a white woman; so that in
the end it was seven years before she was able to start. He made all
arrangements for the marriage, which was to take place on the day of her
arrival, and went down to Rangoon to meet her. On the morning on which
the ship was due he borrowed a motor-car and drove along to the dock. He
paced the quay.

Then, suddenly, without warning, his nerve failed him. He had not seen
Mabel for seven years. He had forgotten what she was like. She was a
total stranger. He felt a terrible sinking in the pit of his stomach and
his knees began to wobble. He couldn't go through with it. He must tell
Mabel that he was very sorry, but he couldn't, he really couldn't marry
her. But how could a man tell a girl a thing like that when she had been
engaged to him for seven years and had come six thousand miles to marry
him? He hadn't the nerve for that either. George was seized with the
courage of despair. There was a boat at the quay on the very point of
starting for Singapore; he wrote a hurried letter to Mabel, and without
a stick of luggage, just in the clothes he stood up in, leaped on board.

The letter Mabel received ran somewhat as follows:

_Dearest Mabel, I have been suddenly called away on business and do not
know when I shall be back. I think it would be much wiser if you
returned to England. My plans are very uncertain. Your loving George._

But when he arrived at Singapore he found a cable waiting for him.

_Quite understand. Don't worry. Love. Mabel._

Terror made him quick-witted.

"By Jove, I believe she's following me," he said.

He telegraphed to the shipping-office at Rangoon and sure enough her
name was on the passenger list of the ship that was now on its way to
Singapore. There was not a moment to lose. He jumped on the train to
Bangkok. But he was uneasy; she would have no difficulty in finding out
that he had gone to Bangkok and it was just as simple for her to take
the train as it had been for him. Fortunately there was a French tramp
sailing next day for Saigon. He took it. At Saigon he would be safe; it
would never occur to her that he had gone there; and if it did, surely
by now she would have taken the hint. It is five days journey from
Bangkok to Saigon and the boat is dirty, cramped and uncomfortable. He
was glad to arrive and took a rickshaw to the hotel. He signed his name
in the visitors' book and a telegram was immediately handed to him. It
contained but two words: _Love. Mabel._ They were enough to make him
break into a cold sweat.

"When is the next boat for Hong-Kong?" he asked.

Now his flight grew serious. He sailed to Hong-Kong, but dared not stay
there; he went to Manila; Manila was ominous; he went on to Shanghai:
Shanghai was nerve-racking; every time he went out of the hotel he
expected to run straight into Mabel's arms; no, Shanghai would never do.
The only thing was to go to Yokohama. At the Grand Hotel at Yokohama a
cable awaited him.

"_So sorry to have missed you at Manila. Love. Mabel._"

He scanned the shipping intelligence with a fevered brow. Where was she
now? He doubled back to Shanghai. This time he went straight to the club
and asked for a telegram. It was handed to him.

"_Arriving shortly. Love. Mabel._"

No, no, he was not so easy to catch as all that. He had already made his
plans. The Yangtse is a long river and the Yangtse was falling. He could
just about catch the last steamer that could get up to Chungking and
then no one could travel till the following spring except by junk. Such
a journey was out of the question for a woman alone. He went to Hankow
and from Hankow to Ichang, he changed boats here and from Ichang through
the rapids went to Chungking. But he was desperate now, he was not going
to take any risks: there was a place called Cheng-tu, the capital of
Szechuan, and it was four hundred miles away. It could only be reached
by road, and the road was infested with brigands. A man would be safe
there.

George collected chair-bearers and coolies and set out. It was with a
sigh of relief that he saw at last the crenellated walls of the lonely
Chinese city. From those walls at sunset you could see the snowy
mountains of Tibet.

He could rest at last: Mabel would never find him there. The consul
happened to be a friend of his and he stayed with him. He enjoyed the
comfort of a luxurious house, he enjoyed his idleness after that
strenuous escape across Asia, and above all he enjoyed his divine
security. The weeks passed lazily one after the other.

One morning George and the consul were in the courtyard looking at some
curios that a Chinese had brought for their inspection when there was a
loud knocking at the great door of the Consulate. The door-man flung it
open. A chair borne by four coolies entered, advanced, and was set down.
Mabel stepped out. She was neat and cool and fresh. There was nothing in
her appearance to suggest that she had just come in after a fortnight on
the road. George was petrified. He was as pale as death. She went up to
him.

"Hulloa, George, I was so afraid I'd missed you again."

"Hulloa, Mabel," he faltered.

He did not know what to say. He looked this way and that: she stood
between him and the doorway. She looked at him with a smile in her blue
eyes.

"You haven't altered at all," she said. "Men can go off so dreadfully in
seven years and I was afraid you'd got fat and bald. I've been so
nervous. It would have been terrible if after all these years I simply
hadn't been able to bring myself to marry you after all."

She turned to George's host.

"Are you the consul?" she asked.

"I am."

"That's all right. I'm ready to marry him as soon as I've had a bath."

And she did.




MASTERSON


When I left Colombo I had no notion of going to Keng Tung, but on the
ship I met a man who told me he had spent five years there. He said it
had an important market, held every five days, whither came natives of
half a dozen countries and members of half a hundred tribes. It had
pagodas darkly splendid and a remoteness that liberated the questing
spirit from its anxiety. He said he would sooner live there than
anywhere in the world. I asked him what it had offered him and he said,
contentment. He was a tall, dark fellow with the aloofness of manner you
often find in those who have lived much alone in unfrequented places.
Men like this are a little restless in the company of others and though
in the smoking-room of a ship or at the club bar they may be talkative
and convivial, telling their story with the rest, joking and glad
sometimes to narrate their unusual experiences, they seem always to hold
something back. They have a life in themselves that they keep apart, and
there is a look in their eyes, as it were turned inwards, that informs
you that this hidden life is the only one that signifies to them. And
now and then their eyes betray their weariness with the social round
into which hazard or the fear of seeming odd has for a moment forced
them. They seem then to long for the monotonous solitude of some place
of their predilection where they can be once more alone with the reality
they have found.

It was as much the manner of this chance acquaintance as what he told me
that persuaded me to make the journey across the Shan States on which I
now set out. From the rail-head in Upper Burma to the rail-head in Siam,
whence I could get down to Bangkok, it was between six and seven hundred
miles. Kind people had done everything possible to render the excursion
easy for me and the Resident at Taunggyi had wired to me that he had
made arrangements for mules and ponies to be ready for me on my arrival.
I had bought in Rangoon such stores as seemed necessary, folding chairs
and a table, a filter, lamps and I know not what. I took the train from
Mandalay to Thazi, intending there to hire a car for Taunggyi, and a man
I had met at the club at Mandalay and who lived at Thazi asked me to
have brunch (the pleasant meal of Burma that combines breakfast and
lunch) with him before I started. His name was Masterson. He was a man
in the early thirties, with a pleasant friendly face, curling dark hair
speckled with grey, and handsome dark eyes. He spoke with a singularly
musical voice, very slowly, and this, I hardly know why, inspired you
with confidence. You felt that a man who took such a long time to say
what he had to say and had found the world with sufficient leisure to
listen to him must have qualities that made him sympathetic to his
fellows. He took the amiability of mankind for granted and I suppose he
could only have done this because he was himself amiable. He had a nice
sense of humour, without of course a quick thrust and parry, but
agreeably sarcastic; it was of that agreeable type that applies common
sense to the accidents of life and so sees them in a faintly ridiculous
aspect. He was engaged in a business that kept him travelling up and
down Burma most of the year and in his journeyings he had acquired the
collector's habit. He told me that he spent all his spare money on
buying Burmese curiosities and it was especially to see them that he
asked me to have a meal with him.

The train got in early in the morning. He had warned me that, having to
be at his office, he could not meet me; but brunch was at ten and he
told me to go to his house as soon as I was finished with the one or two
things I had to do in the town.

"Make yourself at home," he said, "and if you want a drink ask the boy
for it. I'll get back as soon as I've got through with my business."

I found out where there was a garage and made a bargain with the owner
of a very dilapidated Ford to take me and my baggage to Taunggyi. I left
my Madrassi servant to see that everything was stowed in it that was
possible and the rest tied on to the foot-boards, and strolled along to
Masterson's house. It was a neat little bungalow in a road shaded by
tall trees, and in the early light of a sunny day looked pretty and
homelike. I walked up the steps and was hailed by Masterson.

"I got done more quickly than I expected. I shall have time to show you
my things before brunch is ready. What will you have? I'm afraid I can
only offer you a whisky and soda."

"Isn't it rather early for that?"

"Rather. But it's one of the rules of the house that nobody crosses the
threshold without having a drink."

"What can I do but submit to the rule?"

He called the boy and in a moment a trim Burmese brought in a decanter,
a syphon and glasses. I sat down and looked about the room. Though it
was still so early the sun was hot outside and the jalousies were drawn.
The light was pleasant and cool after the glare of the road. The room
was comfortably furnished with rattan chairs and on the walls were
water-colour paintings of English scenes. They were a little prim and
old-fashioned and I guessed that they had been painted in her youth by
the maiden and elderly aunt of my host. There were two of a cathedral I
did not know, two or three of a rose garden and one of a Georgian house.
When he saw my eyes for an instant rest upon this, he said:

"That was our house at Cheltenham."

"Oh, is that where you come from?"

Then there was his collection. The room was crowded with Buddhas and
with figures, in bronze or wood, of the Buddha's disciples; there were
boxes of all shapes, utensils of one kind and another, curiosities of
every sort, and although there were far too many they were arranged with
a certain taste so that the effect was pleasing. He had some lovely
things. He showed them to me with pride, telling me how he had got this
object and that, and how he had heard of another and hunted it down and
the incredible astuteness he had employed to induce an unwilling owner
to part with it. His kindly eyes shone when he described a great bargain
and they flashed darkly when he inveighed against the unreasonableness
of a vendor who rather than accept a fair price for a bronze dish had
taken it away. There were flowers in the room, and it had not the
forlorn look that so many bachelors' houses have in the East.

"You've made the place very comfortable," I said.

He gave the room a sweeping glance.

"It _was_ all right. It's not much now."

I did not quite know what he meant. Then he showed me a long wooden gilt
box, decorated with the glass mosaic that I had admired in the palace at
Mandalay, but the workmanship was more delicate than anything I had seen
there, and this with its gem-like richness had really something of the
ornate exquisiteness of the Italian Renaissance.

"They tell me it's about a couple of hundred years old," he said.
"They've not been able to turn out anything like this for a long time."

It was a piece made obviously for a king's palace and you wondered to
what uses it had been put and what hands it had passed through. It was a
jewel.

"What is the inside like?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing much. It's just lacquered."

He opened it and I saw that it contained three or four framed
photographs.

"Oh, I'd forgotten those were there," he said.

His soft, musical voice had a queer sound in it, and I gave him a
sidelong look. He was bronzed by the sun, but his face notwithstanding
flushed a deeper red. He was about to close the box, and then he changed
his mind. He took out one of the photographs and showed it to me.

"Some of these Burmese girls are rather sweet when they're young, aren't
they?" he said.

The photograph showed a young girl standing somewhat self-consciously
against the conventional background of a photographer's studio, a pagoda
and a group of palm trees. She was wearing her best clothes and she had
a flower in her hair. But the embarrassment you saw she felt at having
her picture taken did not prevent a shy smile from trembling on her lips
and her large solemn eyes had nevertheless a roguish twinkle. She was
very small and very slender.

"What a ravishing little thing," I said.

Then Masterson took out another photograph in which she sat with a child
standing by her side, his hand timidly on her knee and a baby in her
arms. The child stared straight in front of him with a look of terror on
his face; he could not understand what that machine and the man behind
it, his head under a black cloth, were up to.

"Are those her children?" I asked.

"And mine," said Masterson.

At that moment the boy came in to say that brunch was ready. We went
into the dining-room and sat down.

"I don't know what you'll get to eat. Since my girl went away everything
in the house has gone to blazes."

A sulky look came into his red honest face and I did not know what to
reply.

"I'm so hungry that whatever I get will seem good," I hazarded.

He did not say anything and a plate of thin porridge was put before us.
I helped myself to milk and sugar, Masterson ate a spoonful or two and
pushed his plate aside.

"I wish I hadn't looked at those damned photographs," he said. "I put
them away on purpose."

I did not want to be inquisitive or to force a confidence my host had no
wish to give, but neither did I desire to seem so unconcerned as to
prevent him from telling me something he had in his heart. Often in some
lonely post in the jungle or in a stiff grand house, solitary in the
midst of a teeming Chinese city, a man has told me stories about himself
that I was sure he had never told to a living soul. I was a stray
acquaintance whom he had never seen before and would never see again, a
wanderer for a moment through his monotonous life, and some starved
impulse led him to lay bare his soul. I have in this way learned more
about men in a night (sitting over a syphon or two and a bottle of
whisky, the hostile, inexplicable world outside the radius of an
acetylene lamp) than I could have if I had known them for ten years. If
you are interested in human nature it is one of the great pleasures of
travel. And when you separate (for you have to be up betimes) sometimes
they will say to you:

"I'm afraid I've bored you to death with all this nonsense. I haven't
talked so much for six months. But it's done me good to get it off my
chest."

The boy removed the porridge plates and gave each of us a piece of pale
fried fish. It was rather cold.

"The fish is beastly, isn't it?" said Masterson. "I hate river fish,
except trout; the only thing is to smother it with Worcester sauce."

He helped himself freely and passed me the bottle.

"She was a damned good housekeeper, my girl; I used to feed like a
fighting-cock when she was here. She'd have had the cook out of the
house in a quarter of an hour if he'd sent in muck like this."

He gave me a smile, and I noticed that his smile was very sweet. It gave
him a peculiarly gentle look.

"It was rather a wrench parting with her, you know."

It was quite evident now that he wished to talk and I had no hesitation
in giving him a lead.

"Did you have a row?"

"No. You could hardly call it a row. She lived with me five years and we
never had a tiff even. She was the best-tempered little thing that ever
was. Nothing seemed to put her out. She was always as merry as a
cricket. You couldn't look at her without her lips breaking into a
smile. She was always happy. And there was no reason why she shouldn't
be. I was very good to her."

"I'm sure you were," I answered.

"She was mistress here. I gave her everything she wanted. Perhaps if I'd
been more of a brute she wouldn't have gone away."

"Don't make me say anything so obvious as that women are incalculable."

He gave me a deprecating glance and there was a trace of shyness in the
smile that just flickered in his eyes.

"Would it bore you awfully if I told you about it?"

"Of course not."

"Well, I saw her one day in the street and she rather took my fancy. I
showed you her photograph, but the photograph doesn't begin to do her
justice. It sounds silly to say about a Burmese girl, but she was like a
rose-bud, not an English rose, you know, she was as little like that as
the glass flowers on that box I showed you are like real flowers, but a
rose grown in an Eastern garden that had something strange and exotic
about it. I don't know how to make myself plain."

"I think I understand what you mean all the same," I smiled.

"I saw her two or three times and found out where she lived. I sent my
boy to make enquiries about her, and he told me that her parents were
quite willing that I should have her if we could come to an arrangement.
I wasn't inclined to haggle and everything was settled in no time. Her
family gave a party to celebrate the occasion and she came to live here.
Of course I treated her in every way as my wife and put her in charge of
the house. I told the boys that they'd got to take their orders from her
and if she complained of any of them out they went. You know, some
fellows keep their girls in the servants' quarters and when they go away
on tour the girls have a rotten time. Well, I think that's a filthy
thing to do. If you are going to have a girl to live with you the least
you can do is to see that she has a good time.

"She was a great success and I was as pleased as Punch. She kept the
house spotless. She saved me money. She wouldn't let the boys rob me. I
taught her to play bridge and, believe me, she learned to play a damned
good game."

"Did she like it?"

"Loved it. When people came here she couldn't have received them better
if she'd been a duchess. You know, these Burmese have beautiful manners.
Sometimes it would make me laugh to see the assurance with which she
would receive my guests, government officials, you know, and soldiers
who were passing through. If some young subaltern was rather shy she'd
put him at his ease at once. She was never pushing or obtrusive, but
just there when she was wanted and doing her best to see that everything
went well and everyone had a good time. And I'll tell you what, she
could mix the best cocktail you'd get anywhere between Rangoon and
Bhamo. People used to say I was lucky."

"I'm bound to say I think you were," I said.

The curry was served and I piled my plate with rice and helped myself to
chicken and then chose from a dozen little dishes the condiments I
fancied. It was a good curry.

"Then she had her babies, three in three years, but one died when it was
six weeks old. I showed you a photograph of the two that are living.
Funny-looking little things, aren't they? Are you fond of children?"

"Yes. I have a strange and almost unnatural passion for new-born
babies."

"I don't think I am, you know. I couldn't even feel very much about my
own. I've often wondered if it showed that I was rather a rotter."

"I don't think so. I think the passion many people affect for children
is merely a fashionable pose. I have a notion that children are all the
better for not being burdened with too much parental love."

"Then my girl asked me to marry her, legally I mean, in the English way.
I treated it as a joke. I didn't know how she'd got such an idea in her
head. I thought it was only a whim and I gave her a gold bracelet to
keep her quiet. But it wasn't a whim. She was quite serious about it. I
told her there was nothing doing. But you know what women are, when they
once set their mind on getting something they never give you a moment's
peace. She wheedled and sulked, she cried, she appealed to my
compassion, she tried to extract a promise out of me when I was rather
tight, she was on the watch for me when I was feeling amorous, she
nearly tripped me when she was ill. She watched me more carefully, I
should think, than a stockbroker ever watched the market, and I knew
that, however natural she seemed, however occupied with something else,
she was always warily alert for the unguarded moment when she could
pounce on me and gain her point."

Masterson gave me once more his slow, ingenuous smile.

"I suppose women are pretty much the same all the world over," he said.

"I expect so," I answered.

"A thing I've never been able to understand is why a woman thinks it
worth while to make you do something you don't want to. She'd rather you
did a thing against the grain than not do it at all. I don't see what
satisfaction it can be to them."

"The satisfaction of triumph. A man convinced against his will may be of
the same opinion still, but a woman doesn't mind that. She has
conquered. She has proved her power."

Masterson shrugged his shoulders. He drank a cup of tea.

"You see, she said that sooner or later I was bound to marry an English
girl and turn her out. I said I wasn't thinking of marrying. She said
she knew all about that. And even if I didn't I should retire some day
and go back to England. And where would she be then? It went on for a
year. I held out. Then she said that if I wouldn't marry her she'd go
and take the kids with her. I told her not to be a silly little fool.
She said that if she left me now she could marry a Burman, but in a few
years nobody would want her. She began to pack her things. I thought it
was only a bluff and I called it: I said: 'Well, go if you want to, but
if you do you won't come back.' I didn't think she'd give up a house
like this, and the presents I made her, and all the pickings, to go back
to her own family. They were as poor as church mice. Well, she went on
packing her things. She was just as nice as ever to me, she was gay and
smiling; when some fellows came to spend the night here she was just as
cordial as usual, and she played bridge with us till two in the morning.
I couldn't believe she meant to go and yet I was rather scared. I was
very fond of her. She was a damned good sort."

"But if you were fond of her why on earth didn't you marry her? It had
been a great success."

"I'll tell you. If I married her I'd have to stay in Burma for the rest
of my life. Sooner or later I shall retire and then I want to go back to
my old home and live there. I don't want to be buried out here, I want
to be buried in an English churchyard. I'm happy enough here, but I
don't want to live here always. I couldn't. I want England. Sometimes I
get sick of this hot sunshine and these garish colours. I want grey
skies and a soft rain falling and the smell of the country. I shall be a
funny fat elderly man when I go back, too old to hunt even if I could
afford it, but I can fish. I don't want to shoot tigers, I want to shoot
rabbits. And I can play golf on a proper course. I know I shall be out
of it, we fellows who've spent our lives out here always are, but I can
potter about the local club and talk to retired Anglo-Indians. I want to
feel under my feet the grey pavement of an English country town, I want
to be able to go and have a row with the butcher because the steak he
sent me in yesterday was tough, and I want to browse about second-hand
bookshops. I want to be said how d'you do to in the street by people who
knew me when I was a boy. And I want to have a walled garden at the back
of my house and grow roses. I dare say it all sounds very humdrum and
provincial and dull to you, but that's the sort of life my people have
always lived and that's the sort of life I want to live myself. It's a
dream if you like, but it's all I have, it means everything in the world
to me, and I can't give it up."

He paused for a moment and looked into my eyes.

"Do you think me an awful fool?"

"No."

"Then one morning she came to me and said that she was off. She had her
things put on a cart and even then I didn't think she meant it. Then she
put the two children in a rickshaw and came to say good-bye to me. She
began to cry. By George, that pretty well broke me up. I asked her if
she really meant to go and she said yes, unless I married her. I shook
my head. I very nearly yielded. I'm afraid I was crying too. Then she
gave a great sob and ran out of the house. I had to drink about half a
tumbler of whisky to steady my nerves."

"How long ago did this happen?"

"Four months. At first I thought she'd come back and then because I
thought she was ashamed to make the first step I sent my boy to tell her
that if she wanted to come I'd take her. But she refused. The house
seemed awfully empty without her. At first I thought I'd get used to it,
but somehow it doesn't seem to get any less empty. I didn't know how
much she meant to me. She'd twined herself round my heart."

"I suppose she'll come back if you agree to marry her."

"Oh, yes, she told the boy that. Sometimes I ask myself if it's worth
while to sacrifice my happiness for a dream. It is only a dream, isn't
it? It's funny, one of the things that holds me back is the thought of a
muddy lane I know, with great clay banks on both sides of it, and above,
beech trees bending over. It's got a sort of cold, earthy smell that I
can never quite get out of my nostrils. I don't blame her, you know. I
rather admire her. I had no idea she had so much character. Sometimes
I'm awfully inclined to give way." He hesitated for a little while. "I
think, perhaps, if I thought she loved me I would. But of course, she
doesn't; they never do, these girls who go and live with white men, I
think she liked me, but that's all. What would you do in my place?"

"Oh, my dear fellow, how can I tell? Would you ever forget that dream?"

"Never."

At that moment the boy came in to say that my Madrassi servant with the
Ford car had just come up. Masterson looked at his watch.

"You'll want to be getting off, won't you? And I must get back to my
office. I'm afraid I've rather bored you with my domestic affairs."

"Not at all," I said.

We shook hands, I put on my topee, and he waved to me as the car drove
off.




PRINCESS SEPTEMBER


First the King of Siam had two daughters and he called them Night and
Day. Then he had two more, so he changed the names of the first ones and
called the four of them after the seasons, Spring and Autumn, Winter and
Summer. But in course of time he had three others and he changed their
names again and called all seven by the days of the week. But when his
eighth daughter was born he did not know what to do till he suddenly
thought of the months of the year. The Queen said there were only twelve
and it confused her to have to remember so many new names, but the King
had a methodical mind and when he made it up he never could change it if
he tried. He changed the names of all his daughters and called them
January, February, March (though of course in Siamese) till he came to
the youngest, who was called August, and the next one was called
September.

"That only leaves October, November, and December," said the Queen. "And
after that we shall have to begin all over again."

"No, we shan't," said the King, "because I think twelve daughters are
enough for any man and after the birth of dear little December I shall
be reluctantly compelled to cut off your head."

He cried bitterly when he said this, for he was extremely fond of the
Queen. Of course it made the Queen very uneasy because she knew that it
would distress the King very much if he had to cut off her head. And it
would not be very nice for her. But it so happened that there was no
need for either of them to worry because September was the last daughter
they ever had. The Queen only had sons after that and they were called
by the letters of the alphabet, so there was no cause for anxiety there
for a long time, since she had only reached the letter J.

Now the King of Siam's daughters had had their characters permanently
embittered by having to change their names in this way, and the older
ones, whose names of course had been changed oftener than the others,
had their characters more permanently embittered. But September, who had
never known what it was to be called anything but September (except of
course by her sisters, who because their characters were embittered
called her all sorts of names), had a very sweet and charming nature.

The King of Siam had a habit which I think might be usefully imitated in
Europe. Instead of receiving presents on his birthday he gave them and
it looks as though he liked it, for he used often to say he was sorry he
had only been born on one day and so only had one birthday in the year.
But in this way he managed in course of time to give away all his
wedding presents and the loyal addresses which the mayors of the cities
in Siam presented him with and all his own crowns which had gone out of
fashion. One year on his birthday, not having anything else handy, he
gave each of his daughters a beautiful green parrot in a beautiful
golden cage. There were nine of them and on each cage was written the
name of the month which was the name of the princess it belonged to. The
nine princesses were very proud of their parrots and they spent an hour
every day (for like their father they were of a methodical turn of mind)
in teaching them to talk. Presently all the parrots could say God Save
the King (in Siamese, which is very difficult) and some of them could
say Pretty Polly in no less than seven oriental languages. But one day
when the Princess September went to say good-morning to her parrot she
found it lying dead at the bottom of its golden cage. She burst into a
flood of tears, and nothing that her Maids of Honour could say comforted
her. She cried so much that the Maids of Honour, not knowing what to do,
told the Queen, and the Queen said it was stuff and nonsense and the
child had better go to bed without any supper. The Maids of Honour
wanted to go to a party, so they put the Princess September to bed as
quickly as they could and left her by herself. And while she lay in her
bed, crying still even though she felt rather hungry, she saw a little
bird hop into her room. She took her thumb out of her mouth and sat up.
Then the little bird began to sing and he sang a beautiful song all
about the lake in the King's garden and the willow trees that looked at
themselves in the still water and the goldfish that glided in and out of
the branches that were reflected in it. When he had finished, the
Princess was not crying any more and she quite forgot that she had had
no supper.

"That was a very nice song," she said.

The little bird gave her a bow, for artists have naturally good manners,
and they like to be appreciated.

"Would you care to have me instead of your parrot?" said the little
bird. "It's true that I'm not so pretty to look at, but on the other
hand I have a much better voice."

The Princess September clapped her hands with delight and then the
little bird hopped on to the end of her bed and sang her to sleep.

When she awoke next day the little bird was still sitting there, and as
she opened her eyes he said good-morning. The Maids of Honour brought in
her breakfast, and he ate rice out of her hand and he had his bath in
her saucer. He drank out of it too. The Maids of Honour said they didn't
think it was very polite to drink one's bath water, but the Princess
September said that was the artistic temperament. When he had finished
his breakfast he began to sing again so beautifully that the Maids of
Honour were quite surprised, for they had never heard anything like it,
and the Princess September was very proud and happy.

"Now I want to show you to my eight sisters," said the Princess.

She stretched out the first finger of her right hand so that it served
as a perch and the little bird flew down and sat on it. Then, followed
by her Maids of Honour, she went through the palace and called on each
of the Princesses in turn, starting with January, for she was mindful of
etiquette, and going all the way down to August. And for each of the
Princesses the little bird sang a different song. But the parrots could
only say God Save the King and Pretty Polly. At last she showed the
little bird to the King and Queen. They were surprised and delighted.

"I knew I was right to send you to bed without any supper," said the
Queen.

"This bird sings much better than the parrots," said the King.

"I should have thought you got quite tired of hearing people say God
Save the King," said the Queen. "I can't think why those girls wanted to
teach their parrots to say it too."

"The sentiment is admirable," said the King, "and I never mind how often
I hear it. But I do get tired of hearing those parrots say Pretty
Polly."

"They say it in seven different languages," said the Princesses.

"I dare say they do," said the King, "but it reminds me too much of my
councillors. They say the same thing in seven different ways and it
never means anything in any way they say it."

The Princesses, their characters as I have already said being naturally
embittered, were vexed at this, and the parrots looked very glum indeed.
But the Princess September ran through all the rooms of the palace,
singing like a lark, while the little bird flew round and round her,
singing like a nightingale, which indeed it was.

Things went on like this for several days and then the eight Princesses
put their heads together. They went to September and sat down in a
circle round her, hiding their feet as is proper for Siamese princesses
to do.

"My poor September," they said. "We are sorry for the death of your
beautiful parrot. It must be dreadful for you not to have a pet bird as
we have. So we have all put our pocket-money together and we are going
to buy you a lovely green and yellow parrot."

"Thank you for nothing," said September. (This was not very civil of
her, but Siamese princesses are sometimes a little short with one
another.) "I have a pet bird which sings the most charming songs to me
and I don't know what on earth I should do with a green and yellow
parrot."

January sniffed, then February sniffed, then March sniffed; in fact all
the Princesses sniffed, but in their proper order of precedence. When
they had finished September asked them:

"Why do you sniff? Have you all got colds in the head?"

"Well, my dear," they said, "it's absurd to talk of your bird when the
little fellow flies in and out just as he likes." They looked round the
room and raised their eyebrows so high that their foreheads entirely
disappeared.

"You'll get dreadful wrinkles," said September.

"Do you mind our asking where your bird is now?" they said.

"He's gone to pay a visit to his father-in-law," said the Princess
September.

"And what makes you think he'll come back?" asked the Princesses.

"He always does come back," said September.

"Well, my dear," said the eight Princesses, "if you'll take our advice
you won't run any risks like that. If he comes back, and mind you, if he
does you'll be lucky, pop him into the cage and keep him there. That's
the only way you can be sure of him."

"But I like to have him fly about the room," said the Princess
September.

"Safety first," said her sisters ominously.

They got up and walked out of the room, shaking their heads, and they
left September very uneasy. It seemed to her that her little bird was
away a long time and she could not think what he was doing. Something
might have happened to him. What with hawks and men with snares you
never knew what trouble he might get into. Besides, he might forget her,
or he might take a fancy to somebody else; that would be dreadful; oh,
she wished he were safely back again, and in the golden cage that stood
there empty and ready. For when the Maids of Honour had buried the dead
parrot they had left the cage in its old place.

Suddenly September heard a tweet-tweet just behind her ear and she saw
the little bird sitting on her shoulder. He had come in so quietly and
alighted so softly that she had not heard him.

"I wondered what on earth had become of you," said the Princess.

"I thought you'd wonder that," said the little bird. "The fact is I very
nearly didn't come back to-night at all. My father-in-law was giving a
party and they all wanted me to stay, but I thought you'd be anxious."

Under the circumstances this was a very unfortunate remark for the
little bird to make.

September felt her heart go thump, thump against her chest, and she made
up her mind to take no more risks. She put up her hand and took hold of
the bird. This he was quite used to, she liked feeling his heart go
pit-a-pat, so fast, in the hollow of her hand, and I think he liked the
soft warmth of her little hand. So the bird suspected nothing and he was
so surprised when she carried him over to the cage, popped him in, and
shut the door on him for a moment he could think of nothing to say. But
in a moment or two he hopped up on the ivory perch and said:

"What is the joke?"

"There's no joke," said September, "but some of mamma's cats are
prowling about to-night, and I think you're much safer in there."

"I can't think why the Queen wants to have all those cats," said the
little bird, rather crossly.

"Well, you see, they're very special cats," said the Princess, "they
have blue eyes and a kink in their tails, and they're a speciality of
the royal family, if you understand what I mean."

"Perfectly," said the little bird, "but why did you put me in this cage
without saying anything about it? I don't think it's the sort of place I
like."

"I shouldn't have slept a wink all night if I hadn't known you were
safe."

"Well, just for this once I don't mind," said the little bird, "so long
as you let me out in the morning."

He ate a very good supper and then began to sing. But in the middle of
his song he stopped.

"I don't know what is the matter with me," he said, "but I don't feel
like singing to-night."

"Very well," said September, "go to sleep instead."

So he put his head under his wing and in a minute was fast asleep.
September went to sleep too. But when the dawn broke she was awakened by
the little bird calling her at the top of his voice:

"Wake up, wake up," he said. "Open the door of this cage and let me out.
I want to have a good fly while the dew is still on the ground."

"You're much better off where you are," said September. "You have a
beautiful golden cage. It was made by the best workman in my papa's
kingdom, and my papa was so pleased with it that he cut off his head so
that he should never make another."

"Let me out, let me out," said the little bird.

"You'll have three meals a day served by my Maids of Honour; you'll have
nothing to worry you from morning till night, and you can sing to your
heart's content."

"Let me out, let me out," said the little bird. And he tried to slip
through the bars of the cage, but of course he couldn't, and he beat
against the door but of course he couldn't open it. Then the eight
Princesses came in and looked at him. They told September she was very
wise to take their advice. They said he would soon get used to the cage
and in a few days would quite forget that he had ever been free. The
little bird said nothing at all while they were there, but as soon as
they were gone he began to cry again: "Let me out, let me out."

"Don't be such an old silly," said September. "I've only put you in the
cage because I'm so fond of you. I know what's good for you much better
than you do yourself. Sing me a little song and I'll give you a piece of
brown sugar."

But the little bird stood in the corner of his cage, looking out at the
blue sky, and never sang a note. He never sang all day.

"What's the good of sulking?" said September. "Why don't you sing and
forget your troubles?"

"How can I sing?" answered the bird. "I want to see the trees and the
lake and the green rice growing in the fields."

"If that's all you want I'll take you for a walk," said September.

She picked up the cage and went out and she walked down to the lake
round which grew the willow trees, and she stood at the edge of the
rice-fields that stretched as far as the eye could see.

"I'll take you out every day," she said. "I love you and I only want to
make you happy."

"It's not the same thing," said the little bird. "The rice-fields and
the lake and the willow trees look quite different when you see them
through the bars of a cage."

So she brought him home again and gave him his supper. But he wouldn't
eat a thing. The Princess was a little anxious at this, and asked her
sisters what they thought about it.

"You must be firm," they said.

"But if he won't eat, he'll die," she answered.

"That would be very ungrateful of him," they said. "He must know that
you're only thinking of his own good. If he's obstinate and dies it'll
serve him right and you'll be well rid of him."

September didn't see how that was going to do her very much good, but
they were eight to one and all older than she, so she said nothing.

"Perhaps he'll have got used to his cage by to-morrow," she said.

And next day when she awoke she cried out good-morning in a cheerful
voice. She got no answer. She jumped out of bed and ran to the cage. She
gave a startled cry, for there the little bird lay, at the bottom, on
his side, with his eyes closed, and he looked as if he were dead. She
opened the door and putting her hand in lifted him out. She gave a sob
of relief, for she felt that his little heart was beating still.

"Wake up, wake up, little bird," she said.

She began to cry and her tears fell on the little bird. He opened his
eyes and felt that the bars of the cage were no longer round him.

"I cannot sing unless I'm free and if I cannot sing, I die," he said.

The Princess gave a great sob.

"Then take your freedom," she said, "I shut you in a golden cage because
I loved you and wanted to have you all to myself. But I never knew it
would kill you. Go. Fly away among the trees that are round the lake and
fly over the green rice-fields. I love you enough to let you be happy in
your own way."

She threw open the window and gently placed the little bird on the sill.
He shook himself a little.

"Come and go as you will, little bird," she said. "I will never put you
in a cage any more."

"I will come because I love you, little Princess," said the bird. "And I
will sing you the loveliest songs I know. I shall go far away, but I
shall always come back, and I shall never forget you." He gave himself
another shake. "Good gracious me, how stiff I am," he said.

Then he opened his wings and flew right away into the blue. But the
little Princess burst into tears, for it is very difficult to put the
happiness of someone you love before your own, and with her little bird
far out of sight she felt on a sudden very lonely. When her sisters knew
what had happened they mocked her and said that the little bird would
never return. But he did at last. And he sat on September's shoulder and
ate out of her hand and sang her the beautiful songs he had learned
while he was flying up and down the fair places of the world. September
kept her window open day and night so that the little bird might come
into her room whenever he felt inclined, and this was very good for her;
so she grew extremely beautiful. And when she was old enough she married
the King of Cambodia and was carried all the way to the city in which he
lived on a white elephant. But her sisters never slept with their
windows open, so they grew extremely ugly as well as disagreeable, and
when the time came to marry them off they were given away to the King's
councillors with a pound of tea and a Siamese cat.




A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE


I left Bangkok on a shabby little ship of four or five hundred tons. The
dingy saloon, which served also as dining-room, had two narrow tables
down its length with swivel chairs on both sides of them. The cabins
were in the bowels of the ship and they were extremely dirty.
Cockroaches walked about on the floor and however placid your
temperament it is difficult not to be startled when you go to the
wash-basin to wash your hands and a huge cockroach stalks leisurely out.

We dropped down the river, broad and lazy and smiling, and its green
banks were dotted with little huts on piles standing at the water's
edge. We crossed the bar; and the open sea, blue and still, spread
before me. The look of it and the smell of it filled me with elation.

I had gone on board early in the morning and soon discovered that I was
thrown amid the oddest collection of persons I had ever encountered.
There were two French traders and a Belgian colonel, an Italian tenor,
the American proprietor of a circus with his wife, and a retired French
official with his. The circus proprietor was what is termed a good
mixer, a type which according to your mood you fly from or welcome, but
I happened to be feeling much pleased with life and before I had been on
board an hour we had shaken for drinks, and he had shown me his animals.
He was a very short fat man and his stengah-shifter, white but none too
clean, outlined the noble proportions of his abdomen, but the collar was
so tight that you wondered he did not choke. He had a red, clean-shaven
face, a merry blue eye and short, untidy sandy hair. He wore a battered
topee well on the back of his head. His name was Wilkins and he was born
in Portland, Oregon. It appears that the Oriental has a passion for the
circus and Mr. Wilkins for twenty years had been travelling up and down
the East from Port Said to Yokohama (Aden, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta,
Rangoon, Singapore, Penang, Bangkok, Saigon, Hu, Hanoi, Hong-Kong,
Shanghai, their names roll on the tongue savourily, crowding the
imagination with sunshine and strange sounds and a multicoloured
activity) with his menagerie and his merry-go-rounds. It was a strange
life he led, unusual and one that, one would have thought, must offer
the occasion for all sorts of curious experiences, but the odd thing
about him was that he was a perfectly commonplace little man and you
would have been prepared to find him running a garage or keeping a
third-rate hotel in a second-rate town in California. The fact is, and I
have noticed it so often that I do not know why it should always
surprise me, that the extraordinariness of a man's life does not make
him extraordinary, but contrariwise if a man is extraordinary he will
make extraordinariness out of a life as humdrum as that of a country
curate. I wish I could feel it reasonable to tell here the story of the
hermit I went to see on an island in the Torres Straits, a shipwrecked
mariner who had lived there alone for thirty years, but when you are
writing a book you are imprisoned by the four walls of your subject and
though for the entertainment of my own digressing mind I set it down now
I should be forced in the end, by my sense of what is fit to go between
two covers and what is not, to cut it out. Anyhow, the long and short of
it is that notwithstanding his long and intimate communion with nature
and his thoughts the man was as dull, insensitive and vulgar an oaf at
the end of this experience as he must have been at the beginning.

The Italian singer passed us and Mr. Wilkins told me that he was a
Neapolitan who was on his way to Hong-Kong to rejoin his company, which
he had been forced to leave owing to an attack of malaria in Bangkok. He
was an enormous fellow, and very fat, and when he flung himself into a
chair it creaked with dismay. He took off his topee, displayed a great
head of long, curly, greasy hair, and ran podgy and beringed fingers
through it.

"He ain't very sociable," said Mr. Wilkins. "He took the cigar I gave
him, but he wouldn't have a drink. I shouldn't wonder if there wasn't
somethin' rather queer about him. Nasty-lookin' guy, ain't he?"

Then a little fat woman in white came on deck holding by the hand a
Wa-Wa monkey. It walked solemnly by her side.

"This is Mrs. Wilkins," said the circus proprietor, "and our youngest
son. Draw up a chair, Mrs. Wilkins, and meet this gentleman. I don't
know his name, but he's already paid for two drinks for me and if he
can't shake any better than he has yet he'll pay for one for you too."

Mrs. Wilkins sat down with an abstracted, serious look, and with her
eyes on the blue sea suggested that she did not see why she shouldn't
have a lemonade.

"My, it's hot," she murmured, fanning herself with the topee which she
took off.

"Mrs. Wilkins feels the heat," said her husband. "She's had twenty years
of it now."

"Twenty-two and a half," said Mrs. Wilkins, still looking at the sea.

"And she's never got used to it yet."

"Nor never shall and you know it," said Mrs. Wilkins.

She was just the same size as her husband and just as fat, and she had a
round red face like his and the same sandy, untidy hair. I wondered if
they had married because they were so exactly alike, or if in the course
of years they had acquired this astonishing resemblance. She did not
turn her head but continued to look absently at the sea.

"Have you shown him the animals?" she asked.

"You bet your life I have."

"What did he think of Percy?"

"Thought him fine."

I could not but feel that I was being unduly left out of a conversation
of which I was at all events partly the subject, so I asked:

"Who's Percy?"

"Percy's our eldest son. There's a flyin'-fish, Elmer. He's the
oran-utan. Did he eat his food well this morning?"

"Fine. He's the biggest oran-utan in captivity. I wouldn't take a
thousand dollars for him."

"And what relation is the elephant?" I asked.

Mrs. Wilkins did not look at me, but with her blue eyes still gazed
indifferently at the sea.

"He's no relation," she answered. "Only a friend."

The boy brought lemonade for Mrs. Wilkins, a whisky and soda for her
husband and a gin and tonic for me. We shook dice and I signed the chit.

"It must come expensive if he always loses when he shakes," Mrs. Wilkins
murmured to the coast-line.

"I guess Egbert would like a sip of your lemonade, my dear," said Mr.
Wilkins.

Mrs. Wilkins slightly turned her head and looked at the monkey sitting
on her lap.

"Would you like a sip of mother's lemonade, Egbert?"

The monkey gave a little squeak and putting her arm round him she handed
him a straw. The monkey sucked up a little lemonade and having drunk
enough sank back against Mrs. Wilkins' ample bosom.

"Mrs. Wilkins thinks the world of Egbert," said her husband. "You can't
wonder at it, he's her youngest."

Mrs. Wilkins took another straw and thoughtfully drank her lemonade.

"Egbert's all right," she remarked. "There's nothin' wrong with Egbert."

Just then the French official, who had been sitting down, got up and
began walking up and down. He had been accompanied on board by the
French minister at Bangkok, one or two secretaries and a prince of the
royal family. There had been a great deal of bowing and shaking of hands
and as the ship slipped away from the quay much waving of hats and
handkerchiefs. He was evidently a person of consequence. I had heard the
captain address him as Monsieur le Gouverneur.

"That's the big noise on this boat," said Mr. Wilkins. "He was Governor
of one of the French colonies and now he's makin' a tour of the world.
He came to see my circus at Bangkok. I guess I'll ask him what he'll
have. What shall I call him, my dear?"

Mrs. Wilkins slowly turned her head and looked at the Frenchman, with
the rosette of the Legion of Honour in his buttonhole, pacing up and
down.

"Don't call him anythin'," she said. "Show him a hoop and he'll jump
right through it."

I could not but laugh. Monsieur le Gouverneur was a little man, well
below the average height, and smally made, with a very ugly little face
and thick, almost negroid features; and he had a bushy grey head, bushy
grey eyebrows and a bushy grey moustache. He did look a little like a
poodle and he had the poodle's soft, intelligent and shining eyes. Next
time he passed us Mr. Wilkins called out:

"_Monsoo. Qu'est ce que vous prenez?_" I cannot reproduce the
eccentricities of his accent. "_Une petite verre de porto._" He turned
to me. "Foreigners, they all drink porto. You're always safe with that."

"Not the Dutch," said Mrs. Wilkins, with a look at the sea. "They won't
touch nothin' but Schnapps."

The distinguished Frenchman stopped and looked at Mr. Wilkins with some
bewilderment. Whereupon Mr. Wilkins tapped his breast and said:

"_Moa, proprietarre Cirque. Vous avez visit._"

Then, for a reason that escaped me, Mr. Wilkins made his arms into a
hoop and outlined the gestures that represented a poodle jumping through
it. Then he pointed at the Wa-Wa that Mrs. Wilkins was still holding on
her lap.

"_La petit fils de mon femme_," he said.

Light broke upon the Governor and he burst into a peculiarly musical and
infectious laugh. Mr. Wilkins began laughing too.

"_Oui, oui_," he cried. "_Moa_, circus proprietor. _Une petite verre de
porto. Oui. Oui. N'est ce pas?_"

"Mr. Wilkins talks French like a Frenchman," Mrs. Wilkins informed the
passing sea.

"_Mais trs volontiers_," said the Governor, still smiling. I drew him
up a chair and he sat down with a bow to Mrs. Wilkins.

"Tell poodle-face his name's Egbert," she said, looking at the sea.

I called the boy and we ordered a round of drinks.

"You sign the chit, Elmer," she said. "It's not a bit of good Mr.
What's-his-name shakin' if he can't shake nothin' better than a pair of
treys."

"_Vous comprenez le franais, madame?_" asked the Governor politely.

"He wants to know if you speak French, my dear."

"Where does he think I was raised? Naples?"

Then the Governor, with exuberant gesticulation, burst into a torrent of
English so fantastic that it required all my knowledge of French to
understand what he was talking about.

Presently Mr. Wilkins took him down to look at his animals and a little
later we assembled in the stuffy saloon for luncheon. The Governor's
wife appeared and was put on the captain's right. The Governor explained
to her who we all were and she gave us a gracious bow. She was a large
woman, tall and of a robust build, of fifty-five perhaps, and she was
dressed somewhat severely in black silk. On her head she wore a huge
round topee. Her features were so large and regular, her form so
statuesque, that you were reminded of the massive females who take part
in processions. She would have admirably suited the rle of Columbia or
Britannia in a patriotic demonstration. She towered over her diminutive
husband like a skyscraper over a shack. He talked incessantly, with
vivacity and wit, and when he said anything amusing her heavy features
relaxed into a large, fond smile.

"_Que tu es bte, mon ami_," she said. She turned to the captain. "You
must not pay any attention to him. He is always like that."

We had indeed a very amusing meal and when it was over we separated to
our various cabins to sleep away the heat of the afternoon. In such a
small ship having once made the acquaintance of my fellow-passengers, it
would have been impossible, even had I wished it, not to pass with them
every moment of the day that I was not in my cabin. The only person who
held himself aloof was the Italian tenor. He spoke to no one, but sat by
himself as far forward as he could get, twanging a guitar in an
undertone so that you had to strain your ears to catch the notes. We
remained in sight of land and the sea was like a pail of milk. Talking
of one thing and another we watched the day decline, we dined, and then
we sat out again on deck under the stars. The two traders played piquet
in the hot saloon, but the Belgian colonel joined our little group. He
was shy and fat and opened his mouth only to utter a civility. Soon,
influenced perhaps by the night and encouraged by the darkness that gave
him, up there in the bows, the sensation of being alone with the sea,
the Italian tenor, accompanying himself on his guitar, began to sing,
first in a low tone, and then a little louder, till presently, his music
captivating him, he sang with all his might. He had the real Italian
voice, all macaroni, olive oil and sunshine, and he sang the Neapolitan
songs that I had heard in my youth in the Piazza San Ferdinando, and
fragments from _La Bohme_, and _Traviata_ and _Rigoletto_. He sang with
emotion and false emphasis and his tremolo reminded you of every
third-rate Italian tenor you had ever heard, but there in the openness
of that lovely night his exaggerations only made you smile and you could
not but feel in your heart a lazy sensual pleasure. He sang for an hour,
perhaps, and we all fell silent; then he was still, but he did not move
and we saw his huge bulk dimly outlined against the luminous sky.

I saw that the little French Governor had been holding the hand of his
large wife and the sight was absurd and touching.

"Do you know that this is the anniversary of the day on which I first
saw my wife?" he said, suddenly breaking the silence which had certainly
weighed on him, for I had never met a more loquacious creature. "It is
also the anniversary of the day on which she promised to be my wife.
And, which will surprise you, they were one and the same."

"_Voyons, mon ami_," said the lady, "you are not going to bore our
friends with that old story. You are really quite insupportable."

But she spoke with a smile on her large, firm face, and in a tone that
suggested that she was quite willing to hear it again.

"But it will interest them, _mon petit chou_." It was in this way that
he always addressed his wife and it was funny to hear this imposing and
even majestic lady thus addressed by her small husband. "Will it not,
_monsieur_?" he asked me. "It is a romance and who does not like
romance, especially on such a night as this?"

I assured the Governor that we were all anxious to hear and the Belgian
colonel took the opportunity once more to be polite.

"You see, ours was a marriage of convenience pure and simple."

"_C'est vrai_," said the lady. "It would be stupid to deny it. But
sometimes love comes after marriage and not before, and then it is
better. It lasts longer."

I could not but notice that the Governor gave her hand an affectionate
little squeeze.

"You see, I had been in the navy, and when I retired I was forty-nine. I
was strong and active and I was very anxious to find an occupation. I
looked about; I pulled all the strings I could. Fortunately I had a
cousin who had some political importance. It is one of the advantages of
democratic government that if you have sufficient influence, merit,
which otherwise might pass unnoticed, generally receives its due
reward."

"You are modesty itself, _mon pauvre ami_," said she.

"And presently I was sent for by the Minister to the Colonies and
offered the post of Governor in a certain colony. It was a very distant
spot that they wished to send me to and a lonely one, but I had spent my
life wandering from port to port, and that was not a matter that
troubled me. I accepted with joy. The minister told me that I must be
ready to start in a month. I told him that would be easy for an old
bachelor who had nothing much in the world but a few clothes and a few
books.

"'_Comment, mon lieutenant_,' he cried. 'You are a bachelor?'

"'Certainly,' I answered. 'And I have every intention of remaining one.'

"'In that case I am afraid I must withdraw my offer. For this position
it is essential that you should be married.'

"It is too long a story to tell you, but the gist of it was that owing
to the scandal my predecessor, a bachelor, had caused by having native
girls to live in the Residency and the consequent complaints of the
white people, planters and the wives of functionaries, it had been
decided that the next Governor must be a model of respectability. I
expostulated. I argued. I recapitulated my services to the country and
the services my cousin could render at the next elections. Nothing would
serve. The minister was adamant.

"'But what can I do?' I cried with dismay.

"'You can marry,' said the minister.

"'_Mais voyons, monsieur le ministre_, I do not know any women. I am not
a lady's man and I am forty-nine. How do you expect me to find a wife?'

"'Nothing is more simple. Put an advertisement in the paper.'

"I was confounded. I did not know what to say.

"'Well, think it over,' said the minister. 'If you can find a wife in a
month you can go, but no wife no job. That is my last word.' He smiled a
little, to him the situation was not without humour. 'And if you think
of advertising I recommend the _Figaro_.'

"I walked away from the ministry with death in my heart. I knew the
place to which they desired to appoint me and I knew it would suit me
very well to live there; the climate was tolerable and the Residency was
spacious and comfortable. The notion of being a Governor was far from
displeasing me and, having nothing much but my pension as a naval
officer, the salary was not to be despised. Suddenly I made up my mind.
I walked to the offices of the _Figaro_, composed an advertisement and
handed it in for insertion. But I can tell you, when I walked up the
Champs Elyses afterwards my heart was beating much more furiously than
it had ever done when my ship was stripped for action."

The Governor leaned forward and put his hand impressively on my knee.

"_Mon cher monsieur_, you will never believe it, but I had four thousand
three hundred and seventy-two replies. It was an avalanche. I had
expected half-a-dozen; I had to take a cab to take the letters to my
hotel. My room was swamped with them. There were four thousand three
hundred and seventy-two women who were willing to share my solitude and
be a Governor's lady. It was staggering. They were of all ages from
seventeen to seventy. There were maidens of irreproachable ancestry and
the highest culture, there were unmarried ladies who had made a little
slip at one period of their career and now desired to regularise their
situation; there were widows whose husbands had died in the most
harrowing circumstances; and there were widows whose children would be a
solace to my old age. They were blonde and dark, tall and short, fat and
thin; some could speak five languages and others could play the piano.
Some offered me love and some craved for it; some could only give me a
solid friendship but mingled with esteem; some had a fortune and others
golden prospects. I was overwhelmed. I was bewildered. At last I lost my
temper, for I am a passionate man, and I got up and I stamped on all
those letters and all those photographs and I cried: I will marry none
of them. It was hopeless, I had less than a month now and I could not
see over four thousand aspirants to my hand in that time. I felt that if
I did not see them all, I should be tortured for the rest of my life by
the thought that I had missed the one woman the fates had destined to
make me happy. I gave it up as a bad job.

"I went out of my room hideous with all those photographs and littered
papers and to drive care away went on to the boulevard and sat down at
the Caf de la Paix. After a time I saw a friend passing and he nodded
to me and smiled. I tried to smile but my heart was sore. I realised
that I must spend the years that remained to me in a cheap _pension_ at
Toulon or Brest as an _officier de marine en retraite_. _Zut!_ My friend
stopped and coming up to me sat down.

"'What is making you look so glum, _mon cher_?' he asked me. 'You who
are the gayest of mortals.'

"I was glad to have someone in whom I could confide my troubles and told
him the whole story. He laughed consumedly. I have thought since that
perhaps the incident had its comic side, but at the time, I assure you,
I could see in it nothing to laugh at. I mentioned the fact to my friend
not without asperity and then, controlling his mirth as best he could,
he said to me: 'But, my dear fellow, do you really want to marry?' At
this I entirely lost my temper.

"'You are completely idiotic,' I said. 'If I did not want to marry, and
what is more marry at once, within the next fortnight, do you imagine
that I should have spent three days reading love letters from women I
have never set eyes on?'

"'Calm yourself and listen to me,' he replied. 'I have a cousin who
lives in Geneva. She is Swiss, _du reste_, and she belongs to a family
of the greatest respectability in the republic. Her morals are without
reproach, she is of a suitable age, a spinster, for she has spent the
last fifteen years nursing an invalid mother who has lately died, she is
well educated and _pardessus le march_ she is not ugly.'

"'It sounds as though she were a paragon,' I said.

"'I do not say that, but she has been well brought up and would become
the position you have to offer her.'

"'There is one thing you forget. What inducement would there be for her
to give up her friends and her accustomed life to accompany in exile a
man of forty-nine who is by no means a beauty?'"

Monsieur le Gouverneur broke off his narrative and shrugging his
shoulders so emphatically that his head almost sank between them, turned
to us.

"I am ugly. I admit it. I am of an ugliness that does not inspire terror
or respect, but only ridicule, and that is the worst ugliness of all.
When people see me for the first time they do not shrink with horror,
there would evidently be something flattering in that, they burst out
laughing. Listen, when the admirable Mr. Wilkins showed me his animals
this morning, Percy, the oran-utan, held out his arms and but for the
bars of the cage would have clasped me to his bosom as a long-lost
brother. Once indeed when I was at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and
was told that one of the anthropoid apes had escaped I made my way to
the exit as quickly as I could in fear that, mistaking me for the
refugee, they would seize me and, notwithstanding my expostulations,
shut me up in the monkey house."

"_Voyons, mon ami_," said Madame his wife, in her deep slow voice, "you
are talking even greater nonsense than usual. I do not say that you are
an Apollo, in your position it is unnecessary that you should be, but
you have dignity, you have poise, you are what any woman would call a
fine man."

"I will resume my story. When I made this remark to my friend he
replied: 'One can never tell with women. There is something about
marriage that wonderfully attracts them. There would be no harm in
asking her. After all it is regarded as a compliment by a woman to be
asked in marriage. She can but refuse.'

"'But I do not know your cousin and I do not see how I am to make her
acquaintance. I cannot go to her house, ask to see her and when I am
shown into the drawing-room say: _Voil_, I have come to ask you to
marry me. She would think I was a lunatic and scream for help. Besides,
I am a man of an extreme timidity, and I could never take such a step.'

"'I will tell you what to do,' said my friend. 'Go to Geneva and take
her a box of chocolates from me. She will be glad to have news of me and
will receive you with pleasure. You can have a little talk and then if
you do not like the look of her you take your leave and no harm is done.
If on the other hand you do, we can go into the matter and you can make
a formal demand for her hand.'

"I was desperate. It seemed the only thing to do. We went to a shop at
once and bought an enormous box of chocolates and that night I took the
train to Geneva. No sooner had I arrived than I sent her a letter to say
that I was the bearer of a gift from her cousin and much wished to give
myself the pleasure of delivering it in person. Within an hour I
received her reply to the effect that she would be pleased to receive me
at four o'clock in the afternoon. I spent the interval before my mirror
and seventeen times I tied and retied my tie. As the clock struck four I
presented myself at the door of her house and was immediately ushered
into the drawing-room. She was waiting for me. Her cousin said she was
not ugly. Imagine my surprise to see a young woman, _enfin_ a woman
still young, of a noble presence, with the dignity of Juno, the features
of Venus, and in her expression the intelligence of Minerva."

"You are too absurd," said Madame. "But by now these gentlemen know that
one cannot believe all you say."

"I swear to you that I do not exaggerate. I was so taken aback that I
nearly dropped the box of chocolates. But I said to myself: _La garde
meurt mais ne se rend pas_. I presented the box of chocolates. I gave
her news of her cousin. I found her amiable. We talked for a quarter of
an hour. And then I said to myself: _Allons-y_. I said to her:

"'Mademoiselle, I must tell you that I did not come here merely to give
you a box of chocolates.'

"She smiled and remarked that evidently I must have had reasons to come
to Geneva of more importance than that.

"'I came to ask you to do me the honour of marrying me.' She gave a
start.

"'But, _monsieur_, you are mad,' she said.

"'I beseech you not to answer till you have heard the facts,' I
interrupted, and before she could say another word I told her the whole
story. I told her about my advertisement in the _Figaro_ and she laughed
till the tears ran down her face. Then I repeated my offer.

"'You are serious?' she asked.

"'I have never been more serious in my life.'

"'I will not deny that your offer has come as a surprise. I had not
thought of marrying, I have passed the age; but evidently your offer is
not one that a woman should refuse without consideration. I am
flattered. Will you give me a few days to reflect?'

"'_Mademoiselle_, I am absolutely desolated,' I replied. 'But I have not
time. If you will not marry me I must go back to Paris and resume my
perusal of the fifteen or eighteen hundred letters that still await my
attention.'

"'It is quite evident that I cannot possibly give you an answer at once.
I had not set eyes on you a quarter of an hour ago. I must consult my
friends and my family.'

"'What have they got to do with it? You are of full age. The matter is
pressing. I cannot wait. I have told you everything. You are an
intelligent woman. What can prolonged reflection add to the impulse of
the moment?'

"'You are not asking me to say yes or no this very minute? That is
outrageous.'

"'That is exactly what I am asking. My train goes back to Paris in a
couple of hours.'

"She looked at me reflectively.

"'You are quite evidently a lunatic. You ought to be shut up both for
your own safety and that of the public.'

"'Well, which is it to be?' I said. 'Yes or no?'

"She shrugged her shoulders.

"'_Mon Dieu._' She waited a minute and I was on tenterhooks. 'Yes.'"

The Governor waved his hand towards his wife.

"And there she is. We were married in a fortnight and I became Governor
of a colony. I married a jewel, my dear sirs, a woman of the most
charming character, one in a thousand, a woman of a masculine
intelligence and a feminine sensibility, an admirable woman."

"But hold your tongue, _mon ami_," his wife said. "You are making me as
ridiculous as yourself."

He turned to the Belgian colonel.

"Are you a bachelor, _mon colonel_? If so I strongly recommend you to go
to Geneva. It is a nest (_une ppinire_ was the word he used) of the
most adorable young women. You will find a wife there as nowhere else.
Geneva is besides a charming city. Do not waste a minute, but go there
and I will give you a letter to my wife's nieces."

It was she who summed up the story.

"The fact is that in a marriage of convenience you expect less and so
you are less likely to be disappointed. As you do not make senseless
claims on one another there is no reason for exasperation. You do not
look for perfection and so you are tolerant to one another's faults.
Passion is all very well, but it is not a proper foundation for
marriage. _Voyez-vous_, for two people to be happy in marriage they must
be able to respect one another, they must be of the same condition and
their interests must be alike; then if they are decent people and are
willing to give and take, to live and let live, there is no reason why
their union should not be as happy as ours." She paused. "But, of
course, my husband is a very, very remarkable man."




MIRAGE


I had been wandering about the East for months and at last reached
Haiphong. It is a commercial town and a dull one, but I knew that from
there I could find a ship of sorts to take me to Hong-Kong. I had some
days to wait and nothing to do. It is true that from Haiphong you can
visit the Bay of Along, which is one of the _sehenswrdigkeiten_ of
Indo-China, but I was tired of sights. I contented myself with sitting
in the cafs, for here it was none too warm and I was glad to get out of
tropical clothes, and reading back numbers of _L'Illustration_, or for
the sake of exercise taking a brisk walk along straight, wide streets.
Haiphong is traversed by canals and sometimes I got a glimpse of a scene
which in its varied life, with all the native craft on the water, was
multicoloured and charming. There was one canal, with tall Chinese
houses on each side of it, that had a pleasant curve. The houses were
whitewashed, but the whitewash was discoloured and stained; with their
grey roofs they made an agreeable composition against the pale sky. The
picture had the faded elegance of an old water-colour. There was nowhere
an emphatic note. It was soft and a little weary and inspired one with a
faint melancholy. I was reminded I scarcely know why of an old maid I
knew in my youth, a relic of the Victorian age, who wore black silk
mittens and made crochet shawls for the poor, black for widows and white
for married women. She had suffered in her youth, but whether from
ill-health or unrequited love, no one exactly knew.

But there was a local paper at Haiphong, a small dingy sheet with stubby
type the ink of which came off on your fingers, and it gave you a
political article, the wireless news, advertisements and local
intelligence. The editor, doubtless hard pressed for matter, printed the
names of the persons, Europeans, natives of the country and Chinese, who
had arrived at Haiphong or left it, and mine was put in with the rest.
On the morning of the day before that on which the old tub I was taking
was to sail for Hong-Kong I was sitting in the caf of the hotel
drinking a Dubonnet before luncheon when the boy came in and said that a
gentleman wished to see me. I did not know a soul in Haiphong and asked
who it was. The boy said he was an Englishman and lived there, but he
could not tell me his name. The boy spoke very little French and it was
hard for me to understand what he said. I was mystified, but told him to
show the visitor in. A moment later he came back followed by a white man
and pointed me out to him. The man gave me a look and walked towards me.
He was a very tall fellow, well over six feet high, rather fat and
bloated, with a red, clean-shaven face and extremely pale blue eyes. He
wore very shabby khaki shorts and a stengah-shifter unbuttoned at the
neck, and a battered helmet. I concluded at once that he was a stranded
beachcomber who was going to touch me for a loan and wondered how little
I could hope to get off for.

He came up to me and held out a large red hand with broken, dirty nails.

"I don't suppose you remember me," he said. "My name's Grosely. I was at
St. Thomas's Hospital with you. I recognised your name as soon as I saw
it in the paper and I thought I'd look you up."

I had not the smallest recollection of him, but I asked him to sit down
and offered him a drink. By his appearance I had first thought he would
ask me for ten piastres and I might have given him five, but now it
looked more likely that he would ask for a hundred and I should have to
think myself lucky if I could content him with fifty. The habitual
borrower always asks twice what he expects to get and it only
dissatisfies him to give him what he has asked since then he is vexed
with himself for not having asked more. He feels you have cheated him.

"Are you a doctor?" I asked.

"No, I was only at the bloody place a year."

He took off his sun-helmet and showed me a mop of grey hair, which much
needed a brush. His face was curiously mottled and he did not look
healthy. His teeth were badly decayed and at the corners of his mouth
were empty spaces. When the boy came to take the orders he asked for
brandy.

"Bring the bottle," he said. "_La bouteille._ Savvy?" He turned to me.
"I've been living here for the last five years, but I can't get along
with French somehow. I talk Tonkinese." He leaned his chair back and
looked at me. "I remember you, you know. You used to go about with those
twins. What was their name? I expect I've changed more than you have.
I've spent the best part of my life in China. Rotten climate, you know.
It plays hell with a man."

I still had not the smallest recollection of him. I thought it best to
say so.

"Were you the same year as I was?" I asked.

"Yes. '92."

"It's a devil of a long time ago."

About sixty boys and young men entered the hospital every year; they
were most of them shy and confused by the new life they were entering
upon; many had never been in London before; and to me at least they were
shadows that passed without any particular rhyme or reason across a
white sheet. During the first year a certain number for one reason or
another dropped out, and in the second year those that remained gained
by degrees the beginnings of a personality. They were not only
themselves, but the lectures one had attended with them, the scone and
coffee one had eaten at the same table for luncheon, the dissection one
had done at the same board in the same dissecting room, and _The Belle
of New York_ one had seen together from the pit of the Shaftesbury
Theatre.

The boy brought the bottle of brandy and Grosely, if that was really his
name, pouring himself out a generous helping drank it down at a gulp
without water or soda.

"I couldn't stand doctoring," he said, "I chucked it. My people got fed
up with me and I went out to China. They gave me a hundred pounds and
told me to shift for myself. I was damned glad to get out, I can tell
you. I guess I was just about as much fed up with them as they were with
me. I haven't troubled them much since."

Then from somewhere in the depths of my memory a faint hint crept into
the rim, as it were, of consciousness, as on a rising tide the water
slides up the sand and then withdraws to advance with the next wave in a
fuller volume. I had first an inkling of some shabby little scandal that
had got into the papers. Then I saw a boy's face, and so gradually the
facts recurred to me; I remembered him now. I didn't believe he was
called Grosely then, I think he had a one-syllabled name, but that I was
uncertain of. He was a very tall lad (I began to see him quite well),
thin, with a slight stoop, he was only eighteen and had grown too fast
for his strength, he had curly, shining brown hair, rather large
features (they did not look so large now, perhaps because his face was
fat and puffy) and a peculiarly fresh complexion, very pink and white,
like a girl's. I imagine people, women especially, would have thought
him a very handsome boy, but to us he was only a clumsy, shuffling lout.
Then I remembered that he did not often come to lectures, no, it wasn't
that I remembered, there were too many students in the theatre to
recollect who was there and who wasn't. I remembered the dissecting
room. He had a leg at the next table to the one I was working at and he
hardly ever touched it; I forget why the men who had other parts of the
body complained of his neglecting the work, I suppose somehow it
interfered with them. In those days a good deal of gossip went on over
the dissection of a "part" and out of the distance of thirty years some
of it came back to me. Someone started the story that Grosely was a very
gay dog. He drank like a fish and was an awful womaniser. Most of those
boys were very simple, and they had brought to the hospital the notions
they had acquired at home and at school. Some were prudish and they were
shocked; others, those who worked hard, sneered at him and asked how he
could hope to pass his exams; but a good many were excited and
impressed, he was doing what they would have liked to do if they had had
the courage. Grosely had his admirers and you could often see him
surrounded by a little band listening open-mouthed to stories of his
adventures. Recollections now were crowding upon me. In a very little
while he lost his shyness and assumed the airs of a man of the world.
They must have looked absurd on this smooth-cheeked boy with his pink
and white skin. Men (so they called themselves) used to tell one another
of his escapades. He became quite a hero. He would make caustic remarks
as he passed the museum and saw a pair of earnest students going over
their anatomy together. He was at home in the public-houses of the
neighbourhood and was on familiar terms with the barmaids. Looking back,
I imagine that, newly arrived from the country and the tutelage of
parents and schoolmasters, he was captivated by his freedom and the
thrill of London. His dissipations were harmless enough. They were due
only to the urge of youth. He lost his head.

But we were all very poor and we did not know how Grosely managed to pay
for his garish amusements. We knew his father was a country doctor and I
think we knew exactly how much he gave his son a month. It was not
enough to pay for the harlots he picked up on the promenade at the
Pavilion and for the drinks he stood his friends in the Criterion Bar.
We told one another in awe-struck tones that he must be getting
fearfully into debt. Of course he could pawn things, but we knew by
experience that you could not get more than three pounds for a
microscope and thirty shillings for a skeleton. We said he must be
spending at least ten pounds a week. Our ideas were not very grand and
this seemed to us the wildest pitch of extravagance. At last one of his
friends disclosed the mystery: Grosely had discovered a wonderful system
for making money. It amused and impressed us. None of us would have
thought of anything so ingenious or have had the nerve to attempt it if
he had. Grosely went to auctions, not Christie's, of course, but
auctions in the Strand and Oxford Street, and in private houses, and
bought anything portable that was going cheap. Then he took his purchase
to a pawnbroker's and pawned it for ten shillings or a pound more than
he had paid. He was making money, four or five pounds a week, and he
said he was going to give up medicine and make a regular business of it.
Not one of us had ever made a penny in his life and we regarded Grosely
with admiration.

"By Jove, he's clever," we said.

"He's just about as sharp as they make them."

"That's the sort that ends up as a millionaire."

We were all very worldly-wise and what we didn't know about life at
eighteen we were pretty sure wasn't worth knowing. It was a pity that
when an examiner asked us a question we were so nervous that the answer
often flew straight out of our head and when a nurse asked us to post a
letter we blushed scarlet. It became known that the Dean had sent for
Grosely and hauled him over the coals. He had threatened him with sundry
penalties if he continued systematically to neglect his work. Grosely
was indignant. He'd had enough of that sort of thing at school, he said,
he wasn't going to let a horse-faced eunuch treat him like a boy. Damn
it all, he was getting on for nineteen and there wasn't much you could
teach him. The Dean had said he heard he was drinking more than was good
for him. Damned cheek. He could carry his liquor as well as any man of
his age, he'd been blind last Saturday and he meant to get blind next
Saturday, and if anyone didn't like it he could do the other thing.
Grosely's friends quite agreed with him that a man couldn't let himself
be insulted like that.

But the blow fell at last and now I remembered quite well the shock it
gave us all. I suppose we had not seen Grosely for two or three days,
but he had been in the habit of coming to the hospital more and more
irregularly, so if we thought anything about it, I imagine we merely
said that he was off on one of his bats. He would turn up again in a day
or so, rather pale, but with a wonderful story of some girl he had
picked up and the time he had had with her. The anatomy lecture was at
nine in the morning and it was a rush to get there in time. On this
particular day little attention was paid to the lecturer, who, with a
visible pleasure in his limpid English and admirable elocution, was
describing I know not what part of the human skeleton, for there was
much excited whispering along the benches and a newspaper was
surreptitiously passed from hand to hand. Suddenly the lecturer stopped.
He had a pedagogic sarcasm. He affected not to know the names of his
students.

"I am afraid I am disturbing the gentleman who is reading the paper.
Anatomy is a very tedious science and I regret that the regulations of
the Royal College of Surgeons oblige me to ask you to give it enough of
your attention to pass an examination in it. Any gentleman, however, who
finds this impossible is at liberty to continue his perusal of the paper
outside."

The wretched boy to whom this reproof was addressed reddened to the
roots of his hair and in his embarrassment tried to stuff the newspaper
in his pocket. The professor of anatomy observed him coldly.

"I am afraid, sir, that the paper is a little too large to go into your
pocket," he remarked. "Perhaps you would be good enough to hand it down
to me?"

The newspaper was passed from row to row to the well of the theatre,
and, not content with the confusion to which he had put the poor lad,
the eminent surgeon, taking it, asked:

"May I enquire what it is in the paper that the gentleman in question
found of such absorbing interest?"

The student who gave it to him without a word pointed out the paragraph
that we had all been reading. The professor read it and we watched him
in silence. He put the paper down and went on with his lecture. The
headline ran _Arrest of a Medical Student_. Grosely had been brought
before the police-court magistrate for getting goods on credit and
pawning them. It appears that this is an indictable offence and the
magistrate had remanded him for a week. Bail was refused. It looked as
though his method of making money by buying things at auctions and
pawning them had not in the long run proved as steady a source of income
as he expected and he had found it more profitable to pawn things that
he was not at the expense of paying for. We talked the matter over
excitedly as soon as the lecture was over and I am bound to say that,
having no property ourselves, so deficient was our sense of its sanctity
we could none of us look upon his crime as a very serious one; but with
the natural love of the young for the terrible there were few who did
not think he would get anything from two years hard labour to seven
years penal servitude.

I do not know why, but I did not seem to have any recollection of what
happened to Grosely. I think he may have been arrested towards the end
of a session and his case may have come on again when we had all
separated for holidays. I did not know if it was disposed of by the
police-court magistrate or whether it went up for trial. I had a sort of
feeling that he was sentenced to a short term of imprisonment, six weeks
perhaps, for his operations had been pretty extensive; but I knew that
he had vanished from our midst and in a little while was thought of no
more. It was strange to me that after all these years I should recollect
so much of the incident so clearly. It was as though, turning over an
album of old snapshots, I saw all at once the photograph of a scene I
had quite forgotten.

But of course in that gross elderly man with grey hair and mottled red
face I should never have recognised the lanky pink-cheeked boy. He
looked sixty, but I knew he must be much less than that. I wondered what
he had done with himself in the intervening time. It did not look as
though he had excessively prospered.

"What were you doing in China?" I asked him.

"I was a tide-waiter."

"Oh, were you?"

It is not a position of great importance and I took care to keep out of
my tone any note of surprise. The tide-waiters are employees of the
Chinese Customs whose duty it is to board the ships and junks at the
various treaty ports and I think their chief business is to prevent
opium-smuggling. They are mostly retired A.B.s from the Royal Navy and
non-commissioned officers who have finished their time. I have seen them
come on board at various places up the Yangtse. They hobnob with the
pilot and the engineer, but the skipper is a trifle curt with them. They
learn to speak Chinese more fluently than most Europeans and often marry
Chinese women.

"When I left England I swore I wouldn't go back till I'd made my pile.
And I never did. They were glad enough to get anyone to be a tide-waiter
in those days, any white man I mean, and they didn't ask questions. They
didn't care who you were. I was damned glad to get the job, I can tell
you, I was about broke to the wide when they took me on. I only took it
till I could get something better, but I stayed on, it suited me, I
wanted to make money and I found out that a tide-waiter could make a
packet if he knew the right way to go about it. I was with the Chinese
Customs for the best part of twenty-five years and when I came away I
wouldn't mind betting that lots of commissioners would have been glad to
have the money I had."

He gave me a sly, mean look. I had an inkling of what he meant. But
there was a point on which I was willing to be reassured; if he was
going to ask me for a hundred piastres (I was resigned to that sum now)
I thought I might just as well take the blow at once.

"I hope you kept it," I said.

"You bet I did. I invested all my money in Shanghai and when I left
China I put it all in American railway bonds. Safety first is my motto.
I know too much about crooks to take any risks myself."

I liked that remark, so I asked him if he wouldn't stay and have
luncheon with me.

"No, I don't think I will. I don't eat much tiffin and anyway my chow's
waiting for me at home. I think I'll be getting along." He got up and he
towered over me. "But look here, why don't you come along this evening
and see my place? I've married a Haiphong girl. Got a baby too. It's not
often I get a chance of talking to anyone about London. You'd better not
come to dinner. We only eat native food and I don't suppose you'd care
for that. Come along about nine, will you?"

"All right," I said.

I had already told him that I was leaving Haiphong next day. He asked
the boy to bring him a piece of paper so that he might write down his
address. He wrote laboriously in the hand of a boy of fourteen.

"Tell the porter to explain to your rickshaw boy where it is. I'm on the
second floor. There's no bell. Just knock. Well, see you later."

He walked out and I went in to luncheon.

After dinner I called a rickshaw and with the porter's help made the boy
understand where I wanted to go. I found presently that he was taking me
along the curved canal the houses of which had looked to me so like a
faded Victorian water-colour; he stopped at one of them and pointed to
the door. It looked so shabby and the neighbourhood was so squalid that
I hesitated, thinking he had made a mistake. It seemed unlikely that
Grosely could live so far in the native quarter and in a house so
bedraggled. I told the rickshaw boy to wait and pushing open the door
saw a dark staircase in front of me. There was no one about and the
street was empty. It might have been the small hours of the morning. I
struck a match and fumbled my way upstairs; on the second floor I struck
another match and saw a large brown door in front of me. I knocked and
in a moment it was opened by a little Tonkinese woman holding a candle.
She was dressed in the earth-brown of the poorer classes, with a tight
little black turban on her head; her lips and the skin round them were
stained red with betel and when she opened her mouth to speak I saw that
she had the black teeth and black gums that so disfigure these people.
She said something in her native language and then I heard Grosely's
voice:

"Come along in. I was beginning to think you weren't going to turn up."

I passed through a little dark ante-chamber and entered a large room
that evidently looked on the canal. Grosely was lying on a long chair
and he raised his length from it as I came in. He was reading the
Hong-Kong papers by the light of a paraffin-lamp that stood on a table
by his side.

"Sit down," he said, "and put your feet up."

"There's no reason I should take your chair."

"Go on. I'll sit on this."

He took a kitchen chair and sitting on it put his feet on the end of
mine.

"That's my wife," he said pointing with his thumb at the Tonkinese woman
who had followed me into the room. "And over there in the corner's the
kid."

I followed his eyes and against the wall, lying on bamboo mats and
covered with a blanket, I saw a child sleeping.

"Lively little beggar when he's awake. I wish you could have seen him.
She's going to have another soon."

I glanced at her and the truth of what he said was apparent. She was
very small, with tiny hands and feet, but her face was flat and the skin
muddy. She looked sullen, but may only have been shy. She went out of
the room and presently came back with a bottle of whisky, two glasses
and a syphon. I looked round. There was a partition at the back of dark
unpainted wood, which I suppose shut off another room, and pinned
against the middle of this was a portrait cut out of an illustrated
paper of John Galsworthy. He looked austere, mild and gentlemanly, and I
wondered what he did there. The other walls were whitewashed, but the
whitewash was dingy and stained. Pinned on to them were pages of
pictures from the _Graphic_ or the _Illustrated London News_.

"I put them up," said Grosely, "I thought they made the place look
homelike."

"What made you put up Galsworthy? Do you read his books."

"No, I didn't know he wrote books. I liked his face."

There were one or two torn and shabby rattan mats on the floor and in a
corner a great pile of the _Hong-Kong Times_. The only furniture
consisted of a wash-hand stand, two or three kitchen chairs, a table or
two and a large teak native bed. It was cheerless and sordid.

"Not a bad little place, is it?" said Grosely. "Suits me all right.
Sometimes I've thought of moving, but I don't suppose I ever shall now."
He gave a little chuckle. "I came to Haiphong for forty-eight hours and
I've been here five years. I was on my way to Shanghai really."

He was silent. Having nothing to say I said nothing. Then the little
Tonkinese woman made a remark to him, which I could not of course
understand, and he answered her. He was silent again for a minute or
two, but I thought he looked at me as though he wanted to ask me
something. I did not know why he hesitated.

"Have you ever tried smoking opium on your travels in the East?" he
inquired at last, casually.

"Yes, I did once, at Singapore. I thought I'd like to see what it was
like."

"What happened?"

"Nothing very thrilling, to tell you the truth. I thought I was going to
have the most exquisite emotions. I expected visions, like de Quincey's,
you know. The only thing I felt was a kind of physical well-being, the
same sort of feeling that you get when you've had a Turkish bath and are
lying in the cooling room, and then a peculiar activity of mind so that
everything I thought of seemed extremely clear."

"I know."

"I really felt that two and two are four and there could not be the
smallest doubt about it. But next morning--oh God! My head reeled. I was
as sick as a dog, I was sick all day, I vomited my soul out, and as I
vomited I said to myself miserably: And there are people who call this
fun."

Grosely leaned back in his chair and gave a low mirthless laugh.

"I expect it was bad stuff. Or you went at it too hard. They saw you
were a mug and gave you dregs that had been smoked already. They're
enough to turn anybody up. Would you like to have another try now? I've
got some stuff here that I know's good."

"No, I think once was enough for me."

"D'you mind if I have a pipe or two? You want it in a climate like this.
It keeps you from getting dysentery. And I generally have a bit of a
smoke about this time."

"Go ahead," I said.

He spoke again to the woman and she, raising her voice, called out
something in a raucous tone. An answer came from the room behind the
wooden partition and after a minute or two an old woman came out
carrying a little round tray. She was shrivelled and old and when she
entered gave me an ingratiating smile of her stained mouth. Grosely got
up and crossed over to the bed and lay on it. The old woman set the tray
down on the bed; on it was a spirit-lamp, a pipe, a long needle and a
little round box of opium. She squatted on the bed and Grosely's wife
got on it too and sat, her feet tucked up under her, with her back
against the wall. Grosely watched the old woman while she put a little
pellet of the drug on the needle, held it over the flame till it sizzled
and then plugged it into the pipe. She handed it to him and with a great
breath he inhaled it, he held the smoke for a little while and then blew
it out in a thick grey cloud. He handed her back the pipe and she
started to make another. Nobody spoke. He smoked three pipes in
succession and then sank back.

"By George, I feel better now. I was feeling all in. She makes a
wonderful pipe, this old hag. Are you sure you won't have one?"

"Quite."

"Please yourself. Have some tea then."

He spoke to his wife, who scrambled off the bed and went out of the
room. Presently she came back with a little china pot of tea and a
couple of Chinese bowls.

"A lot of people smoke here, you know. It does you no harm if you don't
do it to excess. I never smoke more than twenty to twenty-five pipes a
day. You can go on for years if you limit yourself to that. Some of the
Frenchmen smoke as many as forty or fifty a day. That's too much. I
never do that, except now and then when I feel I want a binge. I'm bound
to say it's never done me any harm."

We drank our tea, pale and vaguely scented and clean on the palate. Then
the old woman made him another pipe and then another. His wife had got
back on to the bed and soon curling herself up at his feet went to
sleep. Grosely smoked two or three pipes at a time, and while he was
smoking seemed intent upon nothing else, but in the intervals he was
loquacious. Several times I suggested going, but he would not let me.
The hours wore on. Once or twice while he smoked I dozed. He told me all
about himself. He went on and on. I spoke only to give him a cue. I
cannot relate what he told me in his own words. He repeated himself. He
was very long-winded and he told me his story confusedly, first a late
bit, then an early bit, so that I had to arrange the sequence for
myself; sometimes I saw that, afraid he had said too much, he held
something back; sometimes he lied and I had to make a guess at the truth
from the smile he gave me or the look in his eyes. He had not the words
to describe what he had felt, and I had to conjecture his meaning from
slangy metaphors and hackneyed, vulgar phrases. I kept on asking myself
what his real name was, it was on the tip of my tongue and it irritated
me not to be able to recall it, though why it should in the least matter
to me I did not know. He was somewhat suspicious of me at first and I
saw that this escapade of his in London and his imprisonment had been
all these years a tormenting secret. He had always been haunted by the
fear that sooner or later someone would find out.

"It's funny that even now you shouldn't remember me at the hospital," he
said, looking at me shrewdly. "You must have a rotten memory."

"Hang it all, it's nearly thirty years ago. Think of the thousands of
people I've met since then. There's no reason why I should remember you
any more than you remember me."

"That's right. I don't suppose there is."

It seemed to reassure him. At last he had smoked enough and the old
woman made herself a pipe and smoked it. Then she went over to the mat
on which the child was lying and huddled down beside it. She lay so
still that I supposed she had fallen directly asleep. When at last I
went I found my boy curled up on the foot-board of the rickshaw in so
deep a slumber that I had to shake him. I knew where I was and I wanted
air and exercise, so I gave him a couple of piastres and told him I
would walk.

It was a strange story I carried away with me.

It was with a sort of horror that I had listened to Grosely, telling me
of those twenty years he had spent in China. He had made money, I do not
know how much, but from the way he talked I should think something
between fifteen and twenty thousand pounds, and for a tide-waiter it was
a fortune. He could not have come by it honestly, and little as I knew
of the details of his trade, by his sudden reticences, by his leers and
hints I guessed that there was no base transaction that, if it was made
worth his while, he jibbed at. I suppose that nothing paid him better
than smuggling opium, and his position gave him the opportunity to do
this with safety and profit. I understood that his superior officers had
often had their suspicions of him, but had never been able to get such
proof of his malpractices as to justify them in taking any steps. They
contented themselves with moving him from one port to another, but that
did not disturb him; they watched him, but he was too clever for them. I
saw that he was divided between the fear of telling me too much to his
discredit and the desire to boast of his own astuteness. He prided
himself on the confidence the Chinese had placed in him.

"They knew they could trust me," he said, "and it gave me a pull. I
never double-crossed a Chinaman once."

The thought filled him with the complacency of the honest man. The
Chinese discovered that he was keen on curios and they got in the habit
of giving him bits or bringing him things to buy; he never made
enquiries how they had come by them and he bought them cheap. When he
had got a good lot he sent them to Peking and sold them at a handsome
profit. I remembered how he had started his commercial career by buying
things at auctions and pawning them. For twenty years by shabby shift
and petty dishonesty he added pound to pound, and everything he made he
invested in Shanghai. He lived penuriously, saving half his pay; he
never went on leave because he did not want to waste his money, he would
not have anything to do with the Chinese women, he wanted to keep
himself free from any entanglement; he did not drink. He was consumed by
one ambition, to save enough to be able to go back to England and live
the life from which he had been snatched as a boy. That was the only
thing he wanted. He lived in China as though in a dream; he paid no
attention to the life around him; its colour and strangeness, its
possibilities of pleasure, meant nothing to him. There was always before
him the mirage of London, the Criterion Bar, himself standing with his
foot on the rail, the promenade at the Empire and the Pavilion, the
picked-up harlot, the serio-comic at the music-hall and the musical
comedy at the Gaiety. This was life and love and adventure. This was
romance. This was what he yearned for with all his heart. There was
surely something impressive in the way in which during all those years
he had lived like an anchorite with that one end in view of leading
again a life that was so vulgar. It showed character.

"You see," he said to me, "even if I'd been able to get back to England
on leave I wouldn't have gone. I didn't want to go till I could go for
good. And then I wanted to do the thing in style."

He saw himself putting on evening clothes every night and going out with
a gardenia in his buttonhole, and he saw himself going to the Derby in a
long coat and a brown hat and a pair of opera glasses slung over his
shoulder. He saw himself giving the girls a look over and picking out
the one he fancied. He made up his mind that on the night he arrived in
London he would get blind, he hadn't been drunk for twenty years; he
couldn't afford to in his job, you had to keep your wits about you. He'd
take care not to get drunk on the ship on the way home. He'd wait till
he got to London. What a night he'd have! He thought of it for twenty
years.

I do not know why Grosely left the Chinese Customs, whether the place
was getting too hot for him, whether he had reached the end of his
service or whether he had amassed the sum he had fixed. But at last he
sailed. He went second-class; he did not intend to start spending money
till he reached London. He took rooms in Jermyn Street, he had always
wanted to live there, and he went straight to a tailor's and ordered
himself an outfit. Slap up. Then he had a look round the town. It was
different from how he remembered it, there was much more traffic and he
felt confused and a little at sea. He went to the Criterion and found
there was no longer a bar where he had been used to lounge and drink.
There was a restaurant in Leicester Square where he had been in the
habit of dining when he was in funds, but he could not find it; he
supposed it had been torn down. He went to the Pavilion, but there were
no women there; he was rather disgusted and went on to the Empire, he
found they had done away with the Promenade. It was rather a blow. He
could not quite make it out. Well, anyhow, he must be prepared for
changes in twenty years, and if he couldn't do anything else he could
get drunk. He had had fever several times in China and the change of
climate had brought it on again, he wasn't feeling any too well, and
after four or five drinks he was glad to go to bed.

That first day was only a sample of many that followed it. Everything
went wrong. Grosely's voice grew peevish and bitter as he told me how
one thing and another had failed him. The old places were gone, the
people were different, he found it hard to make friends, he was
strangely lonely; he had never expected that in a great city like
London. That's what was wrong with it, London had become too big, it
wasn't the jolly, intimate place it had been in the early nineties. It
had gone to pieces. He picked up a few girls, but they weren't as nice
as the girls he had known before, they weren't the fun they used to be,
and he grew dimly conscious that they thought him a rum sort of cove. He
was only just over forty and they looked upon him as an old man. When he
tried to cotton on to a lot of young fellows standing round a bar they
gave him the cold shoulder. Anyway, these young fellows didn't know how
to drink. He'd show them. He got soused every night, it was the only
thing to do in that damned place, but, by Jove, it made him feel rotten
next day. He supposed it was the climate of China. When he was a medical
student he could drink a bottle of whisky every night and be as fresh as
a daisy in the morning. He began to think more about China. All sorts of
things that he never knew he had noticed came back to him. It wasn't a
bad life he'd led there. Perhaps he'd been a fool to keep away from
those Chinese girls, they were pretty little things some of them, and
they didn't put on the airs these English girls did. One could have a
damned good time in China if one had the money he had. One could keep a
Chinese girl and get into the club, and there'd be a lot of nice fellows
to drink with and play bridge with and billiards. He remembered the
Chinese shops and all the row in the streets and the coolies carrying
loads and the ports with the junks in them and the rivers with pagodas
on the banks. It was funny, he never thought much of China while he was
there and now--well, he couldn't get it out of his mind. It obsessed
him. He began to think that London was no place for a white man. It had
just gone to the dogs, that was the long and short of it, and one day
the thought came to him that perhaps it would be a good thing if he went
back to China. Of course it was silly, he'd worked like a slave for
twenty years to be able to have a good time in London, and it was absurd
to go and live in China. With his money he ought to be able to have a
good time anywhere. But somehow he couldn't think of anything else but
China. One day he went to the pictures and saw a scene at Shanghai. That
settled it. He was fed up with London. He hated it. He was going to get
out and this time he'd get out for good. He had been home a year and a
half, and it seemed longer to him than all his twenty years in the East.
He took a passage on a French boat sailing from Marseilles, and when he
saw the coast of Europe sink into the sea he heaved a great sigh of
relief. When they got to Suez and he felt the first touch of the East he
knew he had done the right thing. Europe was finished. The East was the
only place.

He went ashore at Djibouti and again at Colombo and Singapore, but
though the ship stopped for two days at Saigon he remained on board
there. He'd been drinking a good deal and he was feeling a bit under the
weather. But when they reached Haiphong, where they were staying for
forty-eight hours, he thought he might just as well have a look at it.
That was the last stopping-place before they got to China. He was bound
for Shanghai. When he got there he meant to go to a hotel and look
around a bit and then get hold of a girl and a place of his own. He
would buy a pony or two and race. He'd soon make friends. In the East
they weren't so stiff and stand-offish as they were in London. Going
ashore, he dined at the hotel and after dinner got into a rickshaw and
told the boy he wanted a woman. The boy took him to the shabby tenement
in which I had sat for so many hours and there were the old woman and
the girl who was now the mother of his child. After a while the old
woman asked him if he wouldn't like to smoke. He had never tried opium,
he had always been frightened of it, but now he didn't see why he
shouldn't have a go. He was feeling good that night and the girl was a
jolly cuddlesome little thing; she was rather like a Chinese girl, small
and pretty, like an idol. Well, he had a pipe or two, and he began to
feel very happy and comfortable. He stayed all night. He didn't sleep.
He just lay, feeling very restful, and thought about things.

"I stopped there till my ship went on to Hong-Kong," he said. "And when
she left I just stopped on."

"How about your luggage?" I asked.

For I am perhaps unworthily interested in the manner people combine
practical details with the ideal aspects of life. When in a novel
penniless lovers drive in a long, swift racing car over the distant
hills I have always a desire to know how they managed to pay for it; and
I have often asked myself how the characters of Henry James in the
intervals of subtly examining their situation coped with the
physiological necessities of their bodies.

"I only had a trunk full of clothes, I was never one to want much more
than I stood up in, and I went down with the girl in a rickshaw to fetch
it. I only meant to stay on till the next boat came through. You see, I
was so near China here I thought I'd wait a bit and get used to things,
if you understand what I mean, before I went on."

I did. Those last words of his revealed him to me. I knew that on the
threshold of China his courage had failed him. England had been such a
terrible disappointment that now he was afraid to put China to the test
too. If that failed him he had nothing. For years England had been like
a mirage in the desert. But when he had yielded to the attraction, those
shining pools and the palm trees and the green grass were nothing but
the rolling sandy dunes. He had China, and so long as he never saw it
again he kept it.

"Somehow I stayed on. You know, you'd be surprised how quickly the days
pass. I don't seem to have time to do half the things I want to. After
all I'm comfortable here. The old woman makes a damned good pipe, and
she's a jolly little girl, my girl, and then there's the kid. A lively
young beggar. If you're happy somewhere what's the good of going
somewhere else?"

"And are you happy here?" I asked him.

I looked round that large bare sordid room. There was no comfort in it
and not one of the little personal things that one would have thought
might have given him the feeling of home. Grosely had taken on this
equivocal little apartment, which served as a house of assignation and
as a place for Europeans to smoke opium in, with the old woman who kept
it, just as it was, and he camped, rather than lived, there still as
though next day he would pack his traps and go. After a little while he
answered my question.

"I've never been so happy in my life. I often think I'll go on to
Shanghai some day, but I don't suppose I ever shall. And God knows, I
never want to see England again."

"Aren't you awfully lonely sometimes for people to talk to?"

"No. Sometimes a Chinese tramp comes in with an English skipper or a
Scotch engineer, and then I go on board and we have a talk about old
times. There's an old fellow here, a Frenchman who was in the Customs,
and he speaks English; I go and see him sometimes. But the fact is I
don't want anybody very much. I think a lot. It gets on my nerves when
people come between me and my thoughts. I'm not a big smoker, you know,
I just have a pipe or two in the morning to settle my stomach, but I
don't really smoke till night. Then I think."

"What d'you think about?"

"Oh, all sorts of things. Sometimes about London and what it was like
when I was a boy. But mostly about China. I think of the good times I
had and the way I made my money, and I remember the fellows I used to
know, and the Chinese. I had some narrow squeaks now and then, but I
always came through all right. And I wonder what the girls would have
been like that I might have had. Pretty little things. I'm sorry now I
didn't keep one or two. It's a great country, China; I love those shops,
with an old fellow sitting on his heels smoking a water-pipe, and all
the shop-signs. And the temples. By George, that's the place for a man
to live in. There's life."

The mirage shone before his eyes. The illusion held him. He was happy. I
wondered what would be his end. Well, that was not yet. For the first
time in his life perhaps he held the present in his hand.




THE LETTER


Outside on the quay the sun beat fiercely. A stream of motors, lorries
and buses, private cars and hirelings, sped up and down the crowded
thoroughfare, and every chauffeur blew his horn; rickshaws threaded
their nimble path amid the throng, and the panting coolies found breath
to yell at one another; coolies, carrying heavy bales, sidled along with
their quick jog-trot and shouted to the passer-by to make way; itinerant
vendors proclaimed their wares. Singapore is the meeting-place of a
hundred peoples; and men of all colours, black Tamils, yellow Chinks,
brown Malays, Armenians, Jews and Bengalis, called to one another in
raucous tones. But inside the office of Messrs. Ripley, Joyce and Naylor
it was pleasantly cool; it was dark after the dusty glitter of the
street and agreeably quiet after its unceasing din. Mr. Joyce sat in his
private room, at the table, with an electric fan turned full on him. He
was leaning back, his elbows on the arms of the chair, with the tips of
the outstretched fingers of one hand resting neatly against the tips of
the outstretched fingers of the other. His gaze rested on the battered
volumes of the Law Reports which stood on a long shelf in front of him.
On the top of a cupboard were square boxes of japanned tin, on which
were painted the names of various clients.

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in."

A Chinese clerk, very neat in his white ducks, opened it.

"Mr. Crosbie is here, sir."

He spoke beautiful English, accenting each word with precision, and Mr.
Joyce had often wondered at the extent of his vocabulary. Ong Chi Seng
was a Cantonese, and he had studied law at Gray's Inn. He was spending a
year or two with Messrs. Ripley, Joyce and Naylor in order to prepare
himself for practice on his own account. He was industrious, obliging,
and of exemplary character.

"Show him in," said Mr. Joyce.

He rose to shake hands with his visitor and asked him to sit down. The
light fell on him as he did so. The face of Mr. Joyce remained in
shadow. He was by nature a silent man, and now he looked at Robert
Crosbie for quite a minute without speaking. Crosbie was a big fellow,
well over six feet high, with broad shoulders, and muscular. He was a
rubber-planter, hard with the constant exercise of walking over the
estate, and with the tennis which was his relaxation when the day's work
was over. He was deeply sunburned. His hairy hands, his feet in clumsy
boots were enormous, and Mr. Joyce found himself thinking that a blow of
that great fist would easily kill the fragile Tamil. But there was no
fierceness in his blue eyes; they were confiding and gentle; and his
face, with its big, undistinguished features, was open, frank and
honest. But at this moment it bore a look of deep distress. It was drawn
and haggard.

"You look as though you hadn't had much sleep the last night or two,"
said Mr. Joyce.

"I haven't."

Mr. Joyce noticed now the old felt hat, with its broad double brim,
which Crosbie had placed on the table; and then his eyes travelled to
the khaki shorts he wore, showing his red hairy thighs, the tennis shirt
open at the neck, without a tie, and the dirty khaki jacket with the
ends of the sleeves turned up. He looked as though he had just come in
from a long tramp among the rubber trees. Mr. Joyce gave a slight frown.

"You must pull yourself together, you know. You must keep your head."

"Oh, I'm all right."

"Have you seen your wife to-day?"

"No, I'm to see her this afternoon. You know, it is a damned shame that
they should have arrested her."

"I think they had to do that," Mr. Joyce answered in his level, soft
tone.

"I should have thought they'd have let her out on bail."

"It's a very serious charge."

"It is damnable. She did what any decent woman would do in her place.
Only, nine women out of ten wouldn't have the pluck. Leslie's the best
woman in the world. She wouldn't hurt a fly. Why, hang it all, man, I've
been married to her for twelve years, do you think I don't know her?
God, if I'd got hold of the man I'd have wrung his neck, I'd have killed
him without a moment's hesitation. So would you."

"My dear fellow, everybody's on your side. No one has a good word to say
for Hammond. We're going to get her off. I don't suppose either the
assessors or the judge will go into court without having already made up
their minds to bring in a verdict of not guilty."

"The whole thing's a farce," said Crosbie violently. "She ought never to
have been arrested in the first place, and then it's terrible, after all
the poor girl's gone through, to subject her to the ordeal of a trial.
There's not a soul I've met since I've been in Singapore, man or woman,
who hasn't told me that Leslie was absolutely justified. I think it's
awful to keep her in prison all these weeks."

"The law is the law. After all, she confesses that she killed the man.
It is terrible, and I'm dreadfully sorry for both you and for her."

"I don't matter a hang," interrupted Crosbie.

"But the fact remains that murder has been committed, and in a civilised
community a trial is inevitable."

"Is it murder to exterminate noxious vermin? She shot him as she would
have shot a mad dog."

Mr. Joyce leaned back again in his chair and once more placed the tips
of his ten fingers together. The little construction he formed looked
like the skeleton of a roof. He was silent for a moment.

"I should be wanting in my duty as your legal adviser," he said at last,
in an even voice, looking at his client with his cool, brown eyes, "if I
did not tell you that there is one point which causes me just a little
anxiety. If your wife had only shot Hammond once, the whole thing would
be absolutely plain sailing. Unfortunately she fired six times."

"Her explanation is perfectly simple. In the circumstances anyone would
have done the same."

"I dare say," said Mr. Joyce, "and of course I think the explanation is
very reasonable. But it's no good closing our eyes to the facts. It's
always a good plan to put yourself in another man's place, and I can't
deny that if I were prosecuting for the Crown that is the point on which
I should centre my enquiry."

"My dear fellow, that's perfectly idiotic."

Mr. Joyce shot a sharp glance at Robert Crosbie. The shadow of a smile
hovered over his shapely lips. Crosbie was a good fellow, but he could
hardly be described as intelligent.

"I dare say it's of no importance," answered the lawyer, "I just thought
it was a point worth mentioning. You haven't got very long to wait now,
and when it's all over I recommend you to go off somewhere with your
wife on a trip, and forget all about it. Even though we are almost dead
certain to get an acquittal, a trial of that sort is anxious work, and
you'll both want a rest."

For the first time Crosbie smiled, and his smile strangely changed his
face. You forgot the uncouthness and saw only the goodness of his soul.

"I think I shall want it more than Leslie. She's borne up wonderfully.
By God, there's a plucky little woman for you."

"Yes, I've been very much struck by her self-control," said the lawyer.
"I should never have guessed that she was capable of such
determination."

His duties as her counsel had made it necessary for him to have a good
many interviews with Mrs. Crosbie since her arrest. Though things had
been made as easy as could be for her, the fact remained that she was in
gaol, awaiting her trial for murder, and it would not have been
surprising if her nerves had failed her. She appeared to bear her ordeal
with composure. She read a great deal, took such exercise as was
possible, and by favour of the authorities worked at the pillow lace
which had always formed the entertainment of her long hours of leisure.
When Mr. Joyce saw her, she was neatly dressed in cool, fresh, simple
frocks, her hair was carefully arranged, and her nails were manicured.
Her manner was collected. She was able even to jest upon the little
inconveniences of her position. There was something casual about the way
in which she spoke of the tragedy, which suggested to Mr. Joyce that
only her good breeding prevented her from finding something a trifle
ludicrous in a situation which was eminently serious. It surprised him,
for he had never thought that she had a sense of humour.

He had known her off and on for a good many years. When she paid visits
to Singapore she generally came to dine with his wife and himself, and
once or twice she had passed a week-end with them at their bungalow by
the sea. His wife had spent a fortnight with her on the estate, and had
met Geoffrey Hammond several times. The two couples had been on
friendly, if not on intimate, terms, and it was on this account that
Robert Crosbie had rushed over to Singapore immediately after the
catastrophe and begged Mr. Joyce to take charge personally of his
unhappy wife's defence.

The story she told him the first time he saw her she had never varied in
the smallest detail. She told it as coolly then, a few hours after the
tragedy, as she told it now. She told it connectedly, in a level, even
voice, and her only sign of confusion was when a slight colour came into
her cheeks as she described one or two of its incidents. She was the
last woman to whom one would have expected such a thing to happen. She
was in the early thirties, a fragile creature, neither short nor tall,
and graceful rather than pretty. Her wrists and ankles were very
delicate, but she was extremely thin, and you could see the bones of her
hands through the white skin, and the veins were large and blue. Her
face was colourless, slightly sallow, and her lips were pale. You did
not notice the colour of her eyes. She had a great deal of light brown
hair, and it had a slight natural wave; it was the sort of hair that
with a little touching-up would have been very pretty, but you could not
imagine that Mrs. Crosbie would think of resorting to any such device.
She was a quiet, pleasant, unassuming woman. Her manner was engaging,
and if she was not very popular it was because she suffered from a
certain shyness. This was comprehensible enough, for the planter's life
is lonely, and in her own house, with people she knew, she was in her
quiet way charming. Mrs. Joyce, after her fortnight's stay, had told her
husband that Leslie was a very agreeable hostess. There was more in her,
she said, than people thought; and when you came to know her you were
surprised how much she had read and how entertaining she could be.

She was the last woman in the world to commit murder.

Mr. Joyce dismissed Robert Crosbie with such reassuring words as he
could find and, once more alone in his office, turned over the pages of
the brief. But it was a mechanical action, for all its details were
familiar to him. The case was the sensation of the day, and it was
discussed in all the clubs, at all the dinner tables, up and down the
Peninsula, from Singapore to Penang. The facts that Mrs. Crosbie gave
were simple. Her husband had gone to Singapore on business, and she was
alone for the night. She dined by herself, late, at a quarter to nine,
and after dinner sat in the sitting-room working at her lace. It opened
on the verandah. There was no one in the bungalow, for the servants had
retired to their own quarters at the back of the compound. She was
surprised to hear a step on the gravel path in the garden, a booted
step, which suggested a white man rather than a native, for she had not
heard a motor drive up, and she could not imagine who could be coming to
see her at that time of night. Someone ascended the few stairs that led
up to the bungalow, walked across the verandah, and appeared at the door
of the room in which she sat. At the first moment she did not recognise
the visitor. She sat with a shaded lamp, and he stood with his back to
the darkness.

"May I come in?" he said.

She did not even recognise the voice.

"Who is it?" she asked.

She worked with spectacles, and she took them off as she spoke.

"Geoff. Hammond."

"Of course. Come in and have a drink."

She rose and shook hands with him cordially. She was a little surprised
to see him, for though he was a neighbour neither she nor Robert had
been lately on very intimate terms with him, and she had not seen him
for some weeks. He was the manager of a rubber estate nearly eight miles
from theirs, and she wondered why he had chosen this late hour to come
and see them.

"Robert's away," she said. "He had to go to Singapore for the night."

Perhaps he thought his visit called for some explanation, for he said:

"I'm sorry. I felt rather lonely to-night, so I thought I'd just come
along and see how you were getting on."

"How on earth did you come? I never heard a car."

"I left it down the road. I thought you might both be in bed and
asleep."

This was natural enough. The planter gets up at dawn in order to take
the roll-call of the workers, and soon after dinner he is glad to go to
bed. Hammond's car was in point of fact found next day a quarter of a
mile from the bungalow.

Since Robert was away there was no whisky and soda in the room. Leslie
did not call the boy, who was probably asleep, but fetched it herself.
Her guest mixed himself a drink and filled his pipe.

Geoff. Hammond had a host of friends in the colony. He was at this time
in the late thirties, but he had come out as a lad. He had been one of
the first to volunteer on the outbreak of war, and had done very well. A
wound in the knee caused him to be invalided out of the army after two
years, but he returned to the Federated Malay States with a D.S.O. and
an M.C. He was one of the best billiard-players in the colony. He had
been a beautiful dancer and a fine tennis-player, but though able no
longer to dance, and his tennis, with a stiff knee, was not so good as
it had been, he had the gift of popularity and was universally liked. He
was a tall, good-looking fellow, with attractive blue eyes and a fine
head of black, curling hair. Old stagers said his only fault was that he
was too fond of the girls, and after the catastrophe they shook their
heads and vowed that they had always known this would get him into
trouble.

He began now to talk to Leslie about the local affairs, the forthcoming
races in Singapore, the price of rubber, and his chances of killing a
tiger which had been lately seen in the neighbourhood. She was anxious
to finish by a certain date the piece of lace on which she was working,
for she wanted to send it home for her mother's birthday, and so put on
her spectacles again, and drew towards her chair the little table on
which stood the pillow.

"I wish you wouldn't wear those great horn-spectacles," he said. "I
don't know why a pretty woman should do her best to look plain."

She was a trifle taken aback at this remark. He had never used that tone
with her before. She thought the best thing was to make light of it.

"I have no pretensions to being a raving beauty, you know, and if you
ask me point-blank, I'm bound to tell you that I don't care two pins if
you think me plain or not."

"I don't think you're plain. I think you're awfully pretty."

"Sweet of you," she answered, ironically. "But in that case I can only
think you half-witted."

He chuckled. But he rose from his chair and sat down in another by her
side.

"You're not going to have the face to deny that you have the prettiest
hands in the world," he said.

He made a gesture as though to take one of them. She gave him a little
tap.

"Don't be an idiot. Sit down where you were before and talk sensibly, or
else I shall send you home."

He did not move.

"Don't you know that I'm awfully in love with you?" he said.

She remained quite cool.

"I don't. I don't believe it for a minute, and even if it were true I
don't want you to say it."

She was the more surprised at what he was saying, since during the seven
years she had known him he had never paid her any particular attention.
When he came back from the war they had seen a good deal of one another,
and once when he was ill Robert had gone over and brought him back to
their bungalow in his car. He had stayed with them for a fortnight. But
their interests were dissimilar, and the acquaintance had never ripened
into friendship. For the last two or three years they had seen little of
him. Now and then he came over to play tennis, now and then they met him
at some planter's who was giving a party, but it often happened that
they did not set eyes on him for a month at a time.

Now he took another whisky and soda. Leslie wondered if he had been
drinking before. There was something odd about him, and it made her a
trifle uneasy. She watched him help himself with disapproval.

"I wouldn't drink any more if I were you," she said, good-humouredly
still.

He emptied his glass and put it down.

"Do you think I'm talking to you like this because I'm drunk?" he asked
abruptly.

"That is the most obvious explanation, isn't it?"

"Well, it's a lie. I've loved you ever since I first knew you. I've held
my tongue as long as I could, and now it's got to come out. I love you,
I love you, I love you."

She rose and carefully put aside the pillow.

"Good-night," she said.

"I'm not going now."

At last she began to lose her temper.

"But, you poor fool, don't you know that I've never loved anyone but
Robert, and even if I didn't love Robert you're the last man I should
care for."

"What do I care? Robert's away."

"If you don't go away this minute I shall call the boys, and have you
thrown out."

"They're out of earshot."

She was very angry now. She made a movement as though to go on to the
verandah, from which the house-boy would certainly hear her, but he
seized her arm.

"Let me go," she cried furiously.

"Not much. I've got you now."

She opened her mouth and called "Boy, boy," but with a quick gesture he
put his hand over it. Then before she knew what he was about he had
taken her in his arms and was kissing her passionately. She struggled,
turning her lips away from his burning mouth.

"No, no, no," she cried. "Leave me alone. I won't."

She grew confused about what happened then. All that had been said
before she remembered accurately, but now his words assailed her ears
through a mist of horror and fear. He seemed to plead for her love. He
broke into violent protestations of passion. And all the time he held
her in his tempestuous embrace. She was helpless, for he was a strong,
powerful man, and her arms were pinioned to her sides; her struggles
were unavailing, and she felt herself grow weaker; she was afraid she
would faint, and his hot breath on her face made her feel desperately
sick. He kissed her mouth, her eyes, her cheeks, her hair. The pressure
of his arms was killing her. He lifted her off her feet. She tried to
kick him, but he only held her more closely. He was carrying her now. He
wasn't speaking any more, but she knew that his face was pale and his
eyes hot with desire. He was taking her into the bedroom. He was no
longer a civilised man, but a savage. And as he ran he stumbled against
a table which was in the way. His stiff knee made him a little awkward
on his feet, and with the burden of the woman in his arms he fell. In a
moment she had snatched herself away from him. She ran round the sofa.
He was up in a flash, and flung himself towards her. There was a
revolver on the desk. She was not a nervous woman, but Robert was to be
away for the night, and she had meant to take it into her room when she
went to bed. That was why it happened to be there. She was frantic with
terror now. She did not know what she was doing. She heard a report. She
saw Hammond stagger. He gave a cry. He said something, she didn't know
what. He lurched out of the room on to the verandah. She was in a frenzy
now, she was beside herself, she followed him out, yes, that was it, she
must have followed him out, though she remembered nothing of it, she
followed firing automatically, shot after shot, till the six chambers
were empty. Hammond fell down on the floor of the verandah. He crumpled
up into a bloody heap.

When the boys, startled by the reports, rushed up, they found her
standing over Hammond with the revolver still in her hand and Hammond
lifeless. She looked at them for a moment without speaking. They stood
in a frightened, huddled bunch. She let the revolver fall from her hand,
and without a word turned and went into the sitting-room. They watched
her go into her bedroom and turn the key in the lock. They dared not
touch the dead body, but looked at it with terrified eyes, talking
excitedly to one another in undertones. Then the head-boy collected
himself; he had been with them for many years, he was Chinese and a
level-headed fellow. Robert had gone into Singapore on his motor-cycle,
and the car stood in the garage. He told the seis to get it out; they
must go at once to the Assistant District Officer and tell him what had
happened. He picked up the revolver and put it in his pocket. The
A.D.O., a man called Withers, lived on the outskirts of the nearest
town, which was about thirty-five miles away. It took them an hour and a
half to reach him. Everyone was asleep, and they had to rouse the boys.
Presently Withers came out and they told him their errand. The head-boy
showed him the revolver in proof of what he said. The A.D.O. went into
his room to dress, sent for his car, and in a little while was following
them back along the deserted road. The dawn was just breaking as he
reached the Crosbies' bungalow. He ran up the steps of the verandah, and
stopped short as he saw Hammond's body lying where he fell. He touched
the face. It was quite cold.

"Where's mem?" he asked the house-boy.

The Chinese pointed to the bedroom. Withers went to the door and
knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again.

"Mrs. Crosbie," he called.

"Who is it?"

"Withers."

There was another pause. Then the door was unlocked and slowly opened.
Leslie stood before him. She had not been to bed, and wore the tea-gown
in which she had dined. She stood and looked silently at the A.D.O.

"Your house-boy fetched me," he said. "Hammond. What have you done?"

"He tried to rape me, and I shot him."

"My God. I say, you'd better come out here. You must tell me exactly
what happened."

"Not now. I can't. You must give me time. Send for my husband."

Withers was a young man, and he did not know exactly what to do in an
emergency which was so out of the run of his duties. Leslie refused to
say anything till at last Robert arrived. Then she told the two men the
story, from which since then, though she had repeated it over and over
again, she had never in the slightest degree diverged.

The point to which Mr. Joyce recurred was the shooting. As a lawyer he
was bothered that Leslie had fired not once, but six times, and the
examination of the dead man showed that four of the shots had been fired
close to the body. One might almost have thought that when the man fell
she stood over him and emptied the contents of the revolver into him.
She confessed that her memory, so accurate for all that had preceded,
failed her here. Her mind was blank. It pointed to an uncontrollable
fury; but uncontrollable fury was the last thing you would have expected
from this quiet and demure woman. Mr. Joyce had known her a good many
years, and had always thought her an unemotional person; during the
weeks that had passed since the tragedy her composure had been amazing.

Mr. Joyce shrugged his shoulders.

"The fact is, I suppose," he reflected, "that you can never tell what
hidden possibilities of savagery there are in the most respectable of
women."

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in."

The Chinese clerk entered and closed the door behind him. He closed it
gently, with deliberation, but decidedly, and advanced to the table at
which Mr. Joyce was sitting.

"May I trouble you, sir, for a few words private conversation?" he said.

The elaborate accuracy with which the clerk expressed himself always
faintly amused Mr. Joyce, and now he smiled.

"It's no trouble, Chi Seng," he replied.

"The matter on which I desire to speak to you, sir, is delicate and
confidential."

"Fire away."

Mr. Joyce met his clerk's shrewd eyes. As usual Ong Chi Seng was dressed
in the height of local fashion. He wore very shiny patent-leather shoes
and gay silk socks. In his black tie was a pearl and ruby pin, and on
the fourth finger of his left hand a diamond ring. From the pocket of
his neat white coat protruded a gold fountain pen and a gold pencil. He
wore a gold wrist-watch, and on the bridge of his nose invisible
pince-nez. He gave a little cough.

"The matter has to do with the case R. _v._ Crosbie, sir."

"Yes?"

"A circumstance has come to my knowledge, sir, which seems to me to put
a different complexion on it."

"What circumstance?"

"It has come to my knowledge, sir, that there is a letter in existence
from the defendant to the unfortunate victim of the tragedy."

"I shouldn't be at all surprised. In the course of the last seven years
I have no doubt that Mrs. Crosbie often had occasion to write to Mr.
Hammond."

Mr. Joyce had a high opinion of his clerk's intelligence and his words
were designed to conceal his thoughts.

"That is very probable, sir. Mrs. Crosbie must have communicated with
the deceased frequently, to invite him to dine with her for example, or
to propose a tennis game. That was my first thought when the matter was
brought to my notice. This letter, however, was written on the day of
the late Mr. Hammond's death."

Mr. Joyce did not flicker an eyelash. He continued to look at Ong Chi
Seng with the smile of faint amusement with which he generally talked to
him.

"Who has told you this?"

"The circumstances were brought to my knowledge, sir, by a friend of
mine."

Mr. Joyce knew better than to insist.

"You will no doubt recall, sir, that Mrs. Crosbie has stated that until
the fatal night she had had no communication with the deceased for
several weeks."

"Have you got the letter?"

"No, sir."

"What are its contents?"

"My friend gave me a copy. Would you like to peruse it, sir?"

"I should."

Ong Chi Seng took from an inside pocket a bulky wallet. It was filled
with papers, Singapore dollar notes and cigarette cards. From the
confusion he presently extracted a half-sheet of thin notepaper and
placed it before Mr. Joyce. The letter read as follows:--

    _R. will be away for the night. I absolutely must see you. I
    shall expect you at eleven. I am desperate, and if you don't
    come I won't answer for the consequences. Don't drive up.--L._

It was written in the flowing hand which the Chinese were taught at the
foreign schools. The writing, so lacking in character, was oddly
incongruous with the ominous words.

"What makes you think that this note was written by Mrs. Crosbie?"

"I have every confidence in the veracity of my informant, sir," replied
Ong Chi Seng. "And the matter can very easily be put to the proof. Mrs.
Crosbie will, no doubt, be able to tell you at once whether she wrote
such a letter or not."

Since the beginning of the conversation Mr. Joyce had not taken his eyes
off the respectable countenance of his clerk. He wondered now if he
discerned in it a faint expression of mockery.

"It is inconceivable that Mrs. Crosbie should have written such a
letter," said Mr. Joyce.

"If that is your opinion, sir, the matter is of course ended. My friend
spoke to me on the subject only because he thought, as I was in your
office, you might like to know of the existence of this letter before a
communication was made to the Deputy Public Prosecutor."

"Who has the original?" asked Mr. Joyce sharply.

Ong Chi Seng made no sign that he perceived in this question and its
manner a change of attitude.

"You will remember, sir, no doubt, that after the death of Mr. Hammond
it was discovered that he had had relations with a Chinese woman. The
letter is at present in her possession."

That was one of the things which had turned public opinion most
vehemently against Hammond. It came to be known that for several months
he had had a Chinese woman living in his house.

For a moment neither of them spoke. Indeed everything had been said and
each understood the other perfectly.

"I'm obliged to you, Chi Seng. I will give the matter my consideration."

"Very good, sir. Do you wish me to make a communication to that effect
to my friend?"

"I dare say it would be as well if you kept in touch with him," Mr.
Joyce answered with gravity.

"Yes, sir."

The clerk noiselessly left the room, shutting the door again with
deliberation, and left Mr. Joyce to his reflections. He stared at the
copy, in its neat, impersonal writing, of Leslie's letter. Vague
suspicions troubled him. They were so disconcerting that he made an
effort to put them out of his mind. There must be a simple explanation
of the letter, and Leslie without doubt could give it at once, but, by
heaven, an explanation was needed. He rose from his chair, put the
letter in his pocket, and took his topee. When he went out Ong Chi Seng
was busily writing at his desk.

"I'm going out for a few minutes, Chi Seng," he said.

"Mr. George Reed is coming by appointment at twelve o'clock, sir. Where
shall I say you've gone?"

Mr. Joyce gave him a thin smile.

"You can say that you haven't the least idea."

But he knew perfectly well that Ong Chi Seng was aware that he was going
to the gaol. Though the crime had been committed in Belanda and the
trial was to take place at Belanda Bharu, since there was in the gaol no
convenience for the detention of a white woman Mrs. Crosbie had been
brought to Singapore.

When she was led into the room in which he waited she held out her thin,
distinguished hand, and gave him a pleasant smile. She was as ever
neatly and simply dressed, and her abundant, pale hair was arranged with
care.

"I wasn't expecting to see you this morning," she said, graciously.

She might have been in her own house, and Mr. Joyce almost expected to
hear her call the boy and tell him to bring the visitor a gin pahit.

"How are you?" he asked.

"I'm in the best of health, thank you." A flicker of amusement flashed
across her eyes. "This is a wonderful place for a rest cure."

The attendant withdrew and they were left alone.

"Do sit down," said Leslie.

He took a chair. He did not quite know how to begin. She was so cool
that it seemed almost impossible to say to her the thing he had come to
say. Though she was not pretty there was something agreeable in her
appearance. She had elegance, but it was the elegance of good breeding
in which there was nothing of the artifice of society. You had only to
look at her to know what sort of people she had and what kind of
surroundings she had lived in. Her fragility gave her a singular
refinement. It was impossible to associate her with the vaguest idea of
grossness.

"I'm looking forward to seeing Robert this afternoon," she said, in her
good-humoured, easy voice. (It was a pleasure to hear her speak, her
voice and her accent were so distinctive of her class.) "Poor dear, it's
been a great trial to his nerves. I'm thankful it'll all be over in a
few days."

"It's only five days now."

"I know. Each morning when I awake I say to myself, 'one less.'" She
smiled then. "Just as I used to do at school and the holidays were
coming."

"By the way, am I right in thinking that you had no communication
whatever with Hammond for several weeks before the catastrophe?"

"I'm quite positive of that. The last time we met was at a tennis-party
at the MacFarrens. I don't think I said more than two words to him. They
have two courts, you know, and we didn't happen to be in the same sets."

"And you haven't written to him?"

"Oh, no."

"Are you quite sure of that?"

"Oh, quite," she answered, with a little smile. "There was nothing I
should write to him for except to ask him to dine or to play tennis, and
I hadn't done either for months."

"At one time you'd been on fairly intimate terms with him. How did it
happen that you had stopped asking him to anything?"

Mrs. Crosbie shrugged her thin shoulders.

"One gets tired of people. We hadn't anything very much in common. Of
course, when he was ill Robert and I did everything we could for him,
but the last year or two he'd been quite well, and he was very popular.
He had a good many calls on his time, and there didn't seem to be any
need to shower invitations upon him."

"Are you quite certain that was all?"

Mrs. Crosbie hesitated for a moment.

"Well, I may just as well tell you. It had come to our ears that he was
living with a Chinese woman, and Robert said he wouldn't have him in the
house, I had seen her myself."

Mr. Joyce was sitting in a straight-backed arm-chair, resting his chin
on his hand, and his eyes were fixed on Leslie. Was it his fancy that,
as she made this remark, her black pupils were filled on a sudden, for
the fraction of a second, with a dull red light? The effect was
startling. Mr. Joyce shifted in his chair. He placed the tips of his ten
fingers together. He spoke very slowly, choosing his words.

"I think I should tell you that there is in existence a letter in your
handwriting to Geoff. Hammond."

He watched her closely. She made no movement, nor did her face change
colour, but she took a noticeable time to reply.

"In the past I've often sent him little notes to ask him to something or
other, or to get me something when I knew he was going to Singapore."

"This letter asks him to come and see you because Robert was going to
Singapore."

"That's impossible. I never did anything of the kind."

"You'd better read it for yourself."

He took it out of his pocket and handed it to her. She gave it a glance
and with a smile of scorn handed it back to him.

"That's not my handwriting."

"I know, it's said to be an exact copy of the original."

She read the words now, and as she read a horrible change came over her.
Her colourless face grew dreadful to look at. It turned green. The flesh
seemed on a sudden to fall away and her skin was tightly stretched over
the bones. Her lips receded, showing her teeth, so that she had the
appearance of making a grimace. She stared at Mr. Joyce with eyes that
started from their sockets. He was looking now at a gibbering death's
head.

"What does it mean?" she whispered.

Her mouth was so dry that she could utter no more than a hoarse sound.
It was no longer a human voice.

"That is for you to say," he answered.

"I didn't write it. I swear I didn't write it."

"Be very careful what you say. If the original is in your handwriting it
would be useless to deny it."

"It would be a forgery."

"It would be difficult to prove that. It would be easy to prove that it
was genuine."

A shiver passed through her lean body. But great beads of sweat stood on
her forehead. She took a handkerchief from her bag and wiped the palms
of her hands. She glanced at the letter again and gave Mr. Joyce a
sidelong look.

"It's not dated. If I had written it and forgotten all about it, it
might have been written years ago. If you'll give me time, I'll try and
remember the circumstances."

"I noticed there was no date. If this letter were in the hands of the
prosecution they would cross-examine the boys. They would soon find out
whether someone took a letter to Hammond on the day of his death."

Mrs. Crosbie clasped her hands violently and swayed in her chair so that
he thought she would faint.

"I swear to you that I didn't write that letter."

Mr. Joyce was silent for a little while. He took his eyes from her
distraught face, and looked down on the floor. He was reflecting.

"In these circumstances we need not go into the matter further," he said
slowly, at last breaking the silence. "If the possessor of this letter
sees fit to place it in the hands of the prosecution you will be
prepared."

His words suggested that he had nothing more to say to her, but he made
no movement of departure. He waited. To himself he seemed to wait a very
long time. He did not look at Leslie, but he was conscious that she sat
very still. She made no sound. At last it was he who spoke.

"If you have nothing more to say to me I think I'll be getting back to
my office."

"What would anyone who read the letter be inclined to think that it
meant?" she asked then.

"He'd know that you had told a deliberate lie," answered Mr. Joyce
sharply.

"When?"

"You have stated definitely that you had had no communication with
Hammond for at least three months."

"The whole thing has been a terrible shock to me. The events of that
dreadful night have been a nightmare. It's not very strange if one
detail has escaped my memory."

"It would be unfortunate, when your memory has reproduced so exactly
every particular of your interview with Hammond, that you should have
forgotten so important a point as that he came to see you in the
bungalow on the night of his death at your express desire."

"I hadn't forgotten. After what happened I was afraid to mention it. I
thought you'd none of you believe my story if I admitted that he'd come
at my invitation. I dare say it was stupid of me; but I lost my head,
and after I'd said once that I'd had no communication with Hammond I was
obliged to stick to it."

By now Leslie had recovered her admirable composure, and she met Mr.
Joyce's appraising glance with candour. Her gentleness was very
disarming.

"You will be required to explain, then, _why_ you asked Hammond to come
and see you when Robert was away for the night."

She turned her eyes full on the lawyer. He had been mistaken in thinking
them insignificant, they were rather fine eyes, and unless he was
mistaken they were bright now with tears. Her voice had a little break
in it.

"It was a surprise I was preparing for Robert. His birthday is next
month. I knew he wanted a new gun and you know I'm dreadfully stupid
about sporting things. I wanted to talk to Geoff. about it. I thought
I'd get him to order it for me."

"Perhaps the terms of the letter are not very clear to your
recollection. Will you have another look at it?"

"No, I don't want to," she said quickly.

"Does it seem to you the sort of letter a woman would write to a
somewhat distant acquaintance because she wanted to consult him about
buying a gun?"

"I dare say it's rather extravagant and emotional. I do express myself
like that, you know. I'm quite prepared to admit it's very silly." She
smiled. "And after all, Geoff. Hammond wasn't quite a distant
acquaintance. When he was ill I'd nursed him like a mother. I asked him
to come when Robert was away, because Robert wouldn't have him in the
house."

Mr. Joyce was tired of sitting so long in the same position. He rose and
walked once or twice up and down the room, choosing the words he
proposed to say; then he learned over the back of the chair in which he
had been sitting. He spoke slowly in a tone of deep gravity.

"Mrs. Crosbie, I want to talk to you very, very seriously. This case was
comparatively plain sailing. There was only one point which seemed to me
to require explanation: as far as I could judge, you had fired no less
than four shots into Hammond when he was lying on the ground. It was
hard to accept the possibility that a delicate, frightened, and
habitually self-controlled woman, of gentle nature and refined
instincts, should have surrendered to an absolutely uncontrolled frenzy.
But of course it was admissible. Although Geoffrey Hammond was much
liked and on the whole thought highly of, I was prepared to prove that
he was the sort of man who might be guilty of the crime which in
justification of your act you accused him of. The fact, which was
discovered after his death, that he had been living with a Chinese woman
gave us something very definite to go upon. That robbed him of any
sympathy which might have been felt for him. We made up our minds to
make use of the odium which such a connection cast upon him in the minds
of all respectable people. I told your husband this morning that I was
certain of an acquittal, and I wasn't just telling him that to give him
heart. I do not believe the assessors would have left the court."

They looked into one another's eyes. Mrs. Crosbie was strangely still.
She was like a little bird paralysed by the fascination of a snake. He
went on in the same quiet tones.

"But this letter has thrown an entirely different complexion on the
case. I am your legal adviser, I shall represent you in court. I take
your story as you tell it me, and I shall conduct your defence according
to its terms. It may be that I believe your statements, and it may be
that I doubt them. The duty of counsel is to persuade the court that the
evidence placed before it is not such as to justify it in bringing in a
verdict of guilty, and any private opinion he may have of the guilt or
innocence of his client is entirely beside the point."

He was astonished to see in Leslie's eyes the flicker of a smile.
Piqued, he went on somewhat dryly:

"You're not going to deny that Hammond came to your house at your
urgent, and I may even say, hysterical invitation?"

Mrs. Crosbie, hesitating for an instant, seemed to consider.

"They can prove that the letter was taken to his bungalow by one of the
house-boys. He rode over on his bicycle."

"You mustn't expect other people to be stupider than you. The letter
will put them on the track of suspicions which have entered nobody's
head. I will not tell you what I personally thought when I saw the copy.
I do not wish you to tell me anything but what is needed to save your
neck."

Mrs. Crosbie gave a shrill cry. She sprang to her feet, white with
terror.

"You don't think they'd hang me?"

"If they came to the conclusion that you hadn't killed Hammond in
self-defence, it would be the duty of the assessors to bring in a
verdict of guilty. The charge is murder. It would be the duty of the
judge to sentence you to death."

"But what can they prove?" she gasped.

"I don't know what they can prove. You know. I don't want to know. But
if their suspicions are aroused, if they begin to make inquiries, if the
natives are questioned--what is it that can be discovered?"

She crumpled up suddenly. She fell on the floor before he could catch
her. She had fainted. He looked round the room for water, but there was
none there, and he did not want to be disturbed. He stretched her out on
the floor, and kneeling beside her waited for her to recover. When she
opened her eyes he was disconcerted by the ghastly fear that he saw in
them.

"Keep quite still," he said. "You'll be better in a moment."

"You won't let them hang me," she whispered.

She began to cry, hysterically, while in undertones he sought to quieten
her.

"For goodness sake pull yourself together," he said.

"Give me a minute."

Her courage was amazing. He could see the effort she made to regain her
self-control, and soon she was once more calm.

"Let me get up now."

He gave her his hand and helped her to her feet. Taking her arm, he led
her to the chair. She sat down wearily.

"Don't talk to me for a minute or two," she said.

"Very well."

When at last she spoke it was to say something which he did not expect.
She gave a little sigh.

"I'm afraid I've made rather a mess of things," she said.

He did not answer, and once more there was a silence.

"Isn't it possible to get hold of the letter?" she said at last.

"I do not think anything would have been said to me about it if the
person in whose possession it is was not prepared to sell it."

"Who's got it?"

"The Chinese woman who was living in Hammond's house."

A spot of colour flickered for an instant on Leslie's cheek-bones.

"Does she want an awful lot for it?"

"I imagine that she has a very shrewd idea of its value. I doubt if it
would be possible to get hold of it except for a very large sum."

"Are you going to let me be hanged?"

"Do you think it's so simple as all that to secure possession of an
unwelcome piece of evidence? It's no different from suborning a witness.
You have no right to make any such suggestion to me."

"Then what is going to happen to me?"

"Justice must take its course."

She grew very pale. A little shudder passed through her body.

"I put myself in your hands. Of course I have no right to ask you to do
anything that isn't proper."

Mr. Joyce had not bargained for the little break in her voice which her
habitual self-restraint made quite intolerably moving. She looked at him
with humble eyes, and he thought that if he rejected their appeal they
would haunt him for the rest of his life. After all, nothing could bring
poor Hammond back to life again. He wondered what really was the
explanation of that letter. It was not fair to conclude from it that she
had killed Hammond without provocation. He had lived in the East a long
time and his sense of professional honour was not perhaps so acute as it
had been twenty years before. He stared at the floor. He made up his
mind to do something which he knew was unjustifiable, but it stuck in
his throat and he felt dully resentful towards Leslie. It embarrassed
him a little to speak.

"I don't know exactly what your husband's circumstances are?"

Flushing a rosy red, she shot a swift glance at him.

"He has a good many tin shares and a small share in two or three rubber
estates. I suppose he could raise money."

"He would have to be told what it was for."

She was silent for a moment. She seemed to think.

"He's in love with me still. He would make any sacrifice to save me. Is
there any need for him to see the letter?"

Mr. Joyce frowned a little, and, quick to notice, she went on.

"Robert is an old friend of yours. I'm not asking you to do anything for
me, I'm asking you to save a rather simple, kind man who never did you
any harm from all the pain that's possible."

Mr. Joyce did not reply. He rose to go and Mrs. Crosbie, with the grace
that was natural to her, held out her hand. She was shaken by the scene,
and her look was haggard, but she made a brave attempt to speed him with
courtesy.

"It's so good of you to take all this trouble for me. I can't begin to
tell you how grateful I am."

Mr. Joyce returned to his office. He sat in his own room, quite still,
attempting to do no work, and pondered. His imagination brought him many
strange ideas. He shuddered a little. At last there was the discreet
knock on the door which he was expecting. Ong Chi Seng came in.

"I was just going out to have my tiffin, sir," he said.

"All right."

"I didn't know if there was anything you wanted before I went, sir."

"I don't think so. Did you make another appointment for Mr. Reed?"

"Yes, sir. He will come at three o'clock."

"Good."

Ong Chi Seng turned away, walked to the door, and put his long slim
fingers on the handle. Then, as though on an afterthought, he turned
back.

"Is there anything you wish me to say to my friend, sir?"

Although Ong Chi Seng spoke English so admirably he had still a
difficulty with the letter R, and he pronounced it "fliend."

"What friend?"

"About the letter Mrs. Crosbie wrote to Hammond deceased, sir."

"Oh! I'd forgotten about that. I mentioned it to Mrs. Crosbie and she
denies having written anything of the sort. It's evidently a forgery."

Mr. Joyce took the copy from his pocket and handed it to Ong Chi Seng.
Ong Chi Seng ignored the gesture.

"In that case, sir, I suppose there would be no objection if my fliend
delivered the letter to the Deputy Public Prosecutor."

"None. But I don't quite see what good that would do your friend."

"My fliend, sir, thought it was his duty in the interests of justice."

"I am the last man in the world to interfere with anyone who wishes to
do his duty, Chi Seng."

The eyes of the lawyer and of the Chinese clerk met. Not the shadow of a
smile hovered on the lips of either, but they understood each other
perfectly.

"I quite understand, sir," said Ong Chi Seng, "but from my study of the
case R. _v._ Crosbie I am of opinion that the production of such a
letter would be damaging to our client."

"I have always had a very high opinion of your legal acumen, Chi Seng."

"It has occurred to me, sir, that if I could persuade my fliend to
induce the Chinese woman who has the letter to deliver it into our hands
it would save a great deal of trouble."

Mr. Joyce idly drew faces on his blotting-paper.

"I suppose your friend is a business man. In what circumstances do you
think he would be induced to part with the letter?"

"He has not got the letter. The Chinese woman has the letter. He is only
a relation of the Chinese woman. She is an ignorant woman; she did not
know the value of that letter till my fliend told her."

"What value did he put on it?"

"Ten thousand dollars, sir."

"Good God! Where on earth do you suppose Mrs. Crosbie can get ten
thousand dollars! I tell you the letter's a forgery."

He looked up at Ong Chi Seng as he spoke. The clerk was unmoved by the
outburst. He stood at the side of the desk, civil, cool and observant.

"Mr. Crosbie owns an eighth share of the Betong Rubber Estate and a
sixth share of the Selantan River Rubber Estate. I have a fliend who
will lend him the money on the security of his property."

"You have a large circle of acquaintance, Chi Seng."

"Yes sir."

"Well, you can tell them all to go to hell. I would never advise Mr.
Crosbie to give a penny more than five thousand for a letter that can be
very easily explained."

"The Chinese woman does not want to sell the letter, sir. My fliend took
a long time to persuade her. It is useless to offer her less than the
sum mentioned."

Mr. Joyce looked at Ong Chi Seng for at least three minutes. The clerk
bore the searching scrutiny without embarrassment. He stood in a
respectful attitude with downcast eyes. Mr. Joyce knew his man. Clever
fellow, Chi Seng, he thought, I wonder how much he's going to get out of
it.

"Ten thousand dollars is a very large sum."

"Mr. Crosbie will certainly pay it rather than see his wife hanged,
sir."

Again Mr. Joyce paused. What more did Chi Seng know than he had said? He
must be pretty sure of his ground if he was obviously so unwilling to
bargain. That sum had been fixed because whoever it was that was
managing the affair knew it was the largest amount that Robert Crosbie
could raise.

"Where is the Chinese woman now?" asked Mr. Joyce.

"She is staying at the house of my fliend, sir."

"Will she come here?"

"I think it more better if you go to her, sir. I can take you to the
house to-night and she will give you the letter. She is a very ignorant
woman, sir, and she does not understand cheques."

"I wasn't thinking of giving her a cheque. I will bring bank-notes with
me."

"It would only be waste of valuable time to bring less than ten thousand
dollars, sir."

"I quite understand."

"I will go and tell my fliend after I have had my tiffin, sir."

"Very good. You'd better meet me outside the club at ten o'clock
to-night."

"With pleasure, sir," said Ong Chi Seng.

He gave Mr. Joyce a little bow and left the room. Mr. Joyce went out to
have luncheon, too. He went to the club and here, as he had expected, he
saw Robert Crosbie. He was sitting at a crowded table, and as he passed
him, looking for a place, Mr. Joyce touched him on the shoulder.

"I'd like a word or two with you before you go," he said.

"Right you are. Let me know when you're ready."

Mr. Joyce had made up his mind how to tackle him. He played a rubber of
bridge after luncheon in order to allow time for the club to empty
itself. He did not want on this particular matter to see Crosbie in his
office. Presently Crosbie came into the card-room and looked on till the
game was finished. The other players went on their various affairs, and
the two were left alone.

"A rather unfortunate thing has happened, old man," said Mr. Joyce, in a
tone which he sought to render as casual as possible. "It appears that
your wife sent a letter to Hammond asking him to come to the bungalow on
the night he was killed."

"But that's impossible," cried Crosbie. "She's always stated that she
had had no communication with Hammond. I know from my own knowledge that
she hadn't set eyes on him for a couple of months."

"The fact remains that the letter exists. It's in the possession of the
Chinese woman Hammond was living with. Your wife meant to give you a
present on your birthday, and she wanted Hammond to help her to get it.
In the emotional excitement that she suffered from after the tragedy,
she forgot all about it, and having once denied having any communication
with Hammond she was afraid to say that she had made a mistake. It was,
of course, very unfortunate, but I dare say it was not unnatural."

Crosbie did not speak. His large, red face bore an expression of
complete bewilderment, and Mr. Joyce was at once relieved and
exasperated by his lack of comprehension. He was a stupid man, and Mr.
Joyce had no patience with stupidity. But his distress since the
catastrophe had touched a soft spot in the lawyer's heart; and Mrs.
Crosbie had struck the right note when she asked him to help her, not
for her sake, but for her husband's.

"I need not tell you that it would be very awkward if this letter found
its way into the hands of the prosecution. Your wife has lied, and she
would be asked to explain the lie. It alters things a little if Hammond
did not intrude, an unwanted guest, but came to your house by
invitation. It would be easy to arouse in the assessors a certain
indecision of mind."

Mr. Joyce hesitated. He was face to face now with his decision. If it
had been a time for humour, he could have smiled at the reflection that
he was taking so grave a step, and that the man for whom he was taking
it had not the smallest conception of its gravity. If he gave the matter
a thought, he probably imagined that what Mr. Joyce was doing was what
any lawyer did in the ordinary run of business.

"My dear Robert, you are not only my client, but my friend. I think we
must get hold of that letter. It'll cost a good deal of money. Except
for that I should have preferred to say nothing to you about it."

"How much?"

"Ten thousand dollars."

"That's a devil of a lot. With the slump and one thing and another it'll
take just about all I've got."

"Can you get it at once?"

"I suppose so. Old Charlie Meadows will let me have it on my tin shares
and on those two estates I'm interested in."

"Then will you?"

"Is it absolutely necessary?"

"If you want your wife to be acquitted."

Crosbie grew very red. His mouth sagged strangely.

"But..." he could not find words, his face now was purple. "But I
don't understand. She can explain. You don't mean to say they'd find her
guilty? They couldn't hang her for putting a noxious vermin out of the
way."

"Of course they wouldn't hang her. They might only find her guilty of
manslaughter. She'd probably get off with two or three years."

Crosbie started to his feet and his red face was distraught with horror.

"Three years."

Then something seemed to dawn in that slow intelligence of his. His mind
was darkness across which shot suddenly a flash of lightning, and though
the succeeding darkness was as profound, there remained the memory of
something not seen but perhaps just descried. Mr. Joyce saw that
Crosbie's big red hands, coarse and hard with all the odd jobs he had
set them to, trembled.

"What was the present she wanted to make me?"

"She says she wanted to give you a new gun."

Once more that great red face flushed a deeper red.

"When have you got to have the money ready?"

There was something odd in his voice now. It sounded as though he spoke
with invisible hands clutching at his throat.

"At ten o'clock to-night. I thought you could bring it to my office at
about six."

"Is the woman coming to you?"

"No, I'm going to her."

"I'll bring the money. I'll come with you."

Mr. Joyce looked at him sharply.

"Do you think there's any need for you to do that? I think it would be
better if you left me to deal with this matter by myself."

"It's my money, isn't it? I'm going to come."

Mr. Joyce shrugged his shoulders. They rose and shook hands, Mr. Joyce
looked at him curiously.

At ten o'clock they met in the empty club.

"Everything all right?" asked Mr. Joyce.

"Yes. I've got the money in my pocket."

"Let's go then."

They walked down the steps. Mr. Joyce's car was waiting for them in the
square, silent at that hour, and as they came to it Ong Chi Seng stepped
out of the shadow of a house. He took his seat beside the driver and
gave him a direction. They drove past the Hotel de l'Europe and turned
up by the Sailor's Home to get into Victoria Street. Here the Chinese
shops were still open, idlers lounged about, and in the roadway
rickshaws and motor-cars and gharries gave a busy air to the scene.
Suddenly their car stopped and Chi Seng turned round.

"I think it more better if we walk here, sir," he said.

They got out and he went on. They followed a step or two behind. Then he
asked them to stop.

"You wait here, sir. I go in and speak to my fliend."

He went into a shop, open to the street, where three or four Chinese
were standing behind the counter. It was one of those strange shops
where nothing was on view, and you wondered what it was they sold there.
They saw him address a stout man in a duck suit with a large gold chain
across his breast, and the man shot a quick glance out into the night.
He gave Chi Seng a key and Chi Seng came out. He beckoned to the two men
waiting and slid into a doorway at the side of the shop. They followed
him and found themselves at the foot of a flight of stairs.

"If you wait a minute I will light a match," he said, always
resourceful. "You come upstairs, please."

He held a Japanese match in front of them, but it scarcely dispelled the
darkness and they groped their way up behind him. On the first floor he
unlocked a door and going in lit a gas-jet.

"Come in, please," he said.

It was a small square room, with one window, and the only furniture
consisted of two low Chinese beds covered with matting. In one corner
was a large chest, with an elaborate lock, and on this stood a shabby
tray with an opium pipe on it and a lamp. There was in the room the
faint, acrid scent of the drug. They sat down and Ong Chi Seng offered
them cigarettes. In a moment the door was opened by the fat Chinaman
whom they had seen behind the counter. He bade them good-evening in very
good English, and sat down by the side of his fellow-countryman.

"The Chinese woman is just coming," said Chi Seng.

A boy from the shop brought in a tray with a teapot and cups and the
Chinaman offered them a cup of tea. Crosbie refused. The Chinese talked
to one another in undertones, but Crosbie and Mr. Joyce were silent. At
last there was the sound of a voice outside; someone was calling in a
low tone; and the Chinaman went to the door. He opened it, spoke a few
words, and ushered a woman in. Mr. Joyce looked at her. He had heard
much about her since Hammond's death, but he had never seen her. She was
a stoutish person, not very young, with a broad, phlegmatic face, she
was powdered and rouged and her eyebrows were a thin black line, but she
gave you the impression of a woman of character. She wore a pale blue
jacket and a white skirt, her costume was not quite European nor quite
Chinese, but on her feet were little Chinese silk slippers. She wore
heavy gold chains round her neck, gold bangles on her wrists, gold
ear-rings and elaborate gold pins in her black hair. She walked in
slowly, with the air of a woman sure of herself, but with a certain
heaviness of tread, and sat down on the bed beside Ong Chi Seng. He said
something to her and nodding she gave an incurious glance at the two
white men.

"Has she got the letter?" asked Mr. Joyce.

"Yes, sir."

Crosbie said nothing, but produced a roll of five-hundred-dollar notes.
He counted out twenty and handed them to Chi Seng.

"Will you see if that is correct?"

The clerk counted them and gave them to the fat Chinaman.

"Quite correct, sir."

The Chinaman counted them once more and put them in his pocket. He spoke
again to the woman and she drew from her bosom a letter. She gave it to
Chi Seng who cast his eyes over it.

"This is the right document, sir," he said, and was about to give it to
Mr. Joyce when Crosbie took it from him.

"Let me look at it," he said.

Mr. Joyce watched him read and then held out his hand for it.

"You'd better let me have it."

Crosbie folded it up deliberately and put it in his pocket.

"No, I'm going to keep it myself. It's cost me enough money."

Mr. Joyce made no rejoinder. The three Chinese watched the little
passage, but what they thought about it, or whether they thought, it was
impossible to tell from their impassive countenances. Mr. Joyce rose to
his feet.

"Do you want me any more to-night, sir?" said Ong Chi Seng.

"No." He knew that the clerk wished to stay behind in order to get his
agreed share of the money, and he turned to Crosbie. "Are you ready?"

Crosbie did not answer, but stood up. The Chinaman went to the door and
opened it for them. Chi Seng found a bit of candle and lit it in order
to light them down, and the two Chinese accompanied them to the street.
They left the woman sitting quietly on the bed smoking a cigarette. When
they reached the street the Chinese left them and went once more
upstairs.

"What are you going to do with that letter?" asked Mr. Joyce.

"Keep it."

They walked to where the car was waiting for them and here Mr. Joyce
offered his friend a lift. Crosbie shook his head.

"I'm going to walk." He hesitated a little and shuffled his feet. "I
went to Singapore on the night of Hammond's death partly to buy a new
gun that a man I knew wanted to dispose of. Good-night."

He disappeared quickly into the darkness.

Mr. Joyce was quite right about the trial. The assessors went into court
fully determined to acquit Mrs. Crosbie. She gave evidence on her own
behalf. She told her story simply and with straightforwardness. The
D.P.P. was a kindly man and it was plain that he took no great pleasure
in his task. He asked the necessary questions in a deprecating manner.
His speech for the prosecution might really have been a speech for the
defence, and the assessors took less than five minutes to consider their
popular verdict. It was impossible to prevent the great outburst of
applause with which it was received by the crowd that packed the
court-house. The judge congratulated Mrs. Crosbie and she was a free
woman.

No one had expressed a more violent disapprobation of Hammond's
behaviour than Mrs. Joyce; she was a woman loyal to her friends and she
had insisted on the Crosbies staying with her after the trial, for she
in common with everyone else had no doubt of the result, till they could
make arrangements to go away. It was out of the question for poor, dear,
brave Leslie to return to the bungalow at which the horrible catastrophe
had taken place. The trial was over by half-past twelve and when they
reached the Joyces' house a grand luncheon was awaiting them. Cocktails
were ready, Mrs. Joyce's million-dollar cocktail was celebrated through
all the Malay States, and Mrs. Joyce drank Leslie's health. She was a
talkative, vivacious woman, and now she was in the highest spirits. It
was fortunate, for the rest of them were silent. She did not wonder; her
husband never had much to say, and the other two were naturally
exhausted from the long strain to which they had been subjected. During
luncheon she carried on a bright and spirited monologue. Then coffee was
served.

"Now, children," she said in her gay, bustling fashion, "you must have a
rest and after tea I shall take you both for a drive to the sea."

Mr. Joyce, who lunched at home only by exception, had of course to go
back to his office.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Mrs. Joyce," said Crosbie. "I've got to get
back to the estate at once."

"Not to-day?" she cried.

"Yes, now. I've neglected it for too long and I have urgent business.
But I shall be very grateful if you will keep Leslie until we have
decided what to do."

Mrs. Joyce was about to expostulate, but her husband prevented her.

"If he must go, he must, and there's an end of it."

There was something in the lawyer's tone which made her look at him
quickly. She held her tongue and there was a moment's silence. Then
Crosbie spoke again.

"If you'll forgive me, I'll start at once so that I can get there before
dark." He rose from the table. "Will you come and see me off, Leslie?"

"Of course."

They went out of the dining-room together.

"I think that's rather inconsiderate of him," said Mrs. Joyce. "He must
know that Leslie wants to be with him just now."

"I'm sure he wouldn't go if it wasn't absolutely necessary."

"Well, I'll just see that Leslie's room is ready for her. She wants a
complete rest, of course, and then amusement."

Mrs. Joyce left the room and Joyce sat down again. In a short time he
heard Crosbie start the engine of his motor-cycle and then noisily
scrunch over the gravel of the garden path. He got up and went into the
drawing-room. Mrs. Crosbie was standing in the middle of it, looking
into space, and in her hand was an open letter. He recognised it. She
gave him a glance as he came in and he saw that she was deathly pale.

"He knows," she whispered.

Mr. Joyce went up to her and took the letter from her hand. He lit a
match and set the paper afire. She watched it burn. When he could hold
it no longer he dropped it on the tiled floor and they both looked at
the paper curl and blacken. Then he trod it into ashes with his foot.

"What does he know?"

She gave him a long, long stare and into her eyes came a strange look.
Was it contempt or despair? Mr. Joyce could not tell.

"He knows that Geoff. was my lover."

Mr. Joyce made no movement and uttered no sound.

"He'd been my lover for years. He became my lover almost immediately
after he came back from the war. We knew how careful we must be. When we
became lovers I pretended I was tired of him, and he seldom came to the
house when Robert was there. I used to drive out to a place we knew and
he met me, two or three times a week, and when Robert went to Singapore
he used to come to the bungalow late, when the boys had gone for the
night. We saw one another constantly, all the time, and not a soul had
the smallest suspicion of it. And then lately, a year ago, he began to
change. I didn't know what was the matter. I couldn't believe that he
didn't care for me any more. He always denied it. I was frantic. I made
him scenes. Sometimes I thought he hated me. Oh, if you knew what
agonies I endured. I passed through hell. I knew he didn't want me any
more and I wouldn't let him go. Misery! Misery! I loved him. I'd given
him everything. He was my life. And then I heard he was living with a
Chinese woman. I couldn't believe it. I wouldn't believe it. At last I
saw her, I saw her with my own eyes, walking in the village, with her
gold bracelets and her necklaces, an old, fat, Chinese woman. She was
older than I was. Horrible! They all knew in the kampong that she was
his mistress. And when I passed her, she looked at me and I knew that
she knew I was his mistress too. I sent for him. I told him I must see
him. You've read the letter. I was mad to write it. I didn't know what I
was doing. I didn't care. I hadn't seen him for ten days. It was a
lifetime. And when last we'd parted he took me in his arms and kissed
me, and told me not to worry. And he went straight from my arms to
hers."

She had been speaking in a low voice, vehemently, and now she stopped
and wrung her hands.

"That damned letter. We'd always been so careful. He always tore up any
word I wrote to him the moment he'd read it. How was I to know he'd
leave that one? He came, and I told him I knew about the Chinawoman. He
denied it. He said it was only scandal. I was beside myself. I don't
know what I said to him. Oh, I hated him then. I tore him limb from
limb. I said everything I could to wound him. I insulted him. I could
have spat in his face. And at last he turned on me. He told me he was
sick and tired of me and never wanted to see me again. He said I bored
him to death. And then he acknowledged that it was true about the
Chinawoman. He said he'd known her for years, before the war, and she
was the only woman who really meant anything to him, and the rest was
just pastime. And he said he was glad I knew and now at last I'd leave
him alone. And then I don't know what happened, I was beside myself, I
saw red. I seized the revolver and I fired. He gave a cry and I saw I'd
hit him. He staggered and rushed for the verandah. I ran after him and
fired again. He fell and then I stood over him and I fired and fired
till the revolver went click, click, and I knew there were no more
cartridges."

At last she stopped, panting. Her face was no longer human, it was
distorted with cruelty, and rage and pain. You would never have thought
that this quiet, refined woman was capable of such fiendish passion. Mr.
Joyce took a step backwards. He was absolutely aghast at the sight of
her. It was not a face, it was a gibbering, hideous mask. Then they
heard a voice calling from another room, a loud, friendly, cheerful
voice. It was Mrs. Joyce.

"Come along, Leslie darling, your room's ready. You must be dropping
with sleep."

Mrs. Crosbie's features gradually composed themselves. Those passions,
so clearly delineated, were smoothed away as with your hand you would
smooth a crumpled paper, and in a minute the face was cool and calm and
unlined. She was a trifle pale, but her lips broke into a pleasant,
affable smile. She was once more the well-bred and even distinguished
woman.

"I'm coming, Dorothy dear. I'm sorry to give you so much trouble."




THE OUTSTATION


The new assistant arrived in the afternoon. When the Resident, Mr.
Warburton, was told that the prahu was in sight he put on his solar
topee and went down to the landing-stage. The guard, eight little Dyak
soldiers, stood to attention as he passed. He noted with satisfaction
that their bearing was martial, their uniforms neat and clean, and their
guns shining. They were a credit to him. From the landing-stage he
watched the bend of the river round which in a moment the boat would
sweep. He looked very smart in his spotless ducks and white shoes. He
held under his arm a gold-headed Malacca cane which had been given him
by the Sultan of Perak. He awaited the newcomer with mingled feelings.
There was more work in the district than one man could properly do, and
during his periodical tours of the country under his charge it had been
inconvenient to leave the station in the hands of a native clerk, but he
had been so long the only white man there that he could not face the
arrival of another without misgiving. He was accustomed to loneliness.
During the war he had not seen an English face for three years; and once
when he was instructed to put up an afforestation officer he was seized
with panic, so that when the stranger was due to arrive, having arranged
everything for his reception, he wrote a note telling him he was obliged
to go up-river, and fled; he remained away till he was informed by a
messenger that his guest had left.

Now the prahu appeared in the broad reach. It was manned by prisoners,
Dyaks under various sentences, and a couple of warders were waiting on
the landing-stage to take them back to gaol. They were sturdy fellows,
used to the river, and they rowed with a powerful stroke. As the boat
reached the side a man got out from under the attap awning and stepped
on shore. The guard presented arms.

"Here we are at last. By God, I'm as cramped as the devil. I've brought
you your mail."

He spoke with exuberant joviality. Mr. Warburton politely held out his
hand.

"Mr. Cooper, I presume?"

"That's right. Were you expecting anyone else?"

The question had a facetious intent, but the Resident did not smile.

"My name is Warburton. I'll show you your quarters. They'll bring your
kit along."

He preceded Cooper along the narrow pathway and they entered a compound
in which stood a small bungalow.

"I've had it made as habitable as I could, but of course no one has
lived in it for a good many years."

It was built on piles. It consisted of a long living-room which opened
on to a broad verandah, and behind, on each side of a passage, were two
bedrooms.

"This'll do me all right," said Cooper.

"I dare say you want to have a bath and a change. I shall be very much
pleased if you'll dine with me to-night. Will eight o'clock suit you?"

"Any old time will do for me."

The Resident gave a polite, but slightly disconcerted smile, and
withdrew. He returned to the Fort where his own residence was. The
impression which Allen Cooper had given him was not very favourable, but
he was a fair man, and he knew that it was unjust to form an opinion on
so brief a glimpse. Cooper seemed to be about thirty. He was a tall,
thin fellow, with a sallow face in which there was not a spot of colour.
It was a face all in one tone. He had a large, hooked nose and blue
eyes. When, entering the bungalow, he had taken off his topee and flung
it to a waiting boy, Mr. Warburton noticed that his large skull, covered
with short, brown hair, contrasted somewhat oddly with a weak, small
chin. He was dressed in khaki shorts and a khaki shirt, but they were
shabby and soiled; and his battered topee had not been cleaned for days.
Mr. Warburton reflected that the young man had spent a week on a
coasting steamer and had passed the last forty-eight hours lying in the
bottom of a prahu.

"We'll see what he looks like when he comes in to dinner."

He went into his room, where his things were as neatly laid out as if he
had an English valet, undressed, and, walking down the stairs to the
bath-house, sluiced himself with cool water. The only concession he made
to the climate was to wear a white dinner jacket; but otherwise, in a
boiled shirt and a high collar, silk socks and patent-leather shoes, he
dressed as formally as though he were dining at his club in Pall Mall. A
careful host, he went into the dining-room to see that the table was
properly laid. It was gay with orchids, and the silver shone brightly.
The napkins were folded into elaborate shapes. Shaded candles in silver
candlesticks shed a soft light. Mr. Warburton smiled his approval and
returned to the sitting-room to await his guest. Presently he appeared.
Cooper was wearing the khaki shorts, the khaki shirt, and the ragged
jacket in which he had landed. Mr. Warburton's smile of greeting froze
on his face.

"Hulloa, you're all dressed up," said Cooper. "I didn't know you were
going to do that. I very nearly put on a sarong."

"It doesn't matter at all. I dare say your boys were busy."

"You needn't have bothered to dress on my account, you know."

"I didn't. I always dress for dinner."

"Even when you're alone?"

"Especially when I'm alone," replied Mr. Warburton, with a frigid stare.

He saw a twinkle of amusement in Cooper's eyes, and he flushed an angry
red. Mr. Warburton was a hot-tempered man; you might have guessed that
from his red face with its pugnacious features and from his red hair now
growing white; his blue eyes, cold as a rule and observing, could flash
with sudden wrath; but he was a man of the world and he hoped a just
one. He must do his best to get on with this fellow.

"When I lived in London I moved in circles in which it would have been
just as eccentric not to dress for dinner every night as not to have a
bath every morning. When I came to Borneo I saw no reason to discontinue
so good a habit. For three years during the war I never saw a white man.
I never omitted to dress on a single occasion on which I was well enough
to come into dinner. You have not been very long in this country;
believe me, there is no better way to maintain the proper pride which
you should have in yourself. When a white man surrenders in the
slightest degree to the influences that surround him he very soon loses
his self-respect, and when he loses his self-respect you may be quite
sure the natives will soon cease to respect him."

"Well, if you expect me to put on a boiled shirt and a stiff collar in
this heat I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."

"When you are dining in your own bungalow you will, of course, dress as
you think fit, but when you do me the pleasure of dining with me,
perhaps you will come to the conclusion that it is only polite to wear
the costume usual in civilised society."

Two Malay boys, in sarongs and songkoks, with smart white coats and
brass buttons, came in, one bearing gin pahits, and the other a tray on
which were olives and anchovies. Then they went in to dinner. Mr.
Warburton flattered himself that he had the best cook, a Chinese, in
Borneo, and he took great trouble to have as good food as in the
difficult circumstances was possible. He exercised much ingenuity in
making the best of his materials.

"Would you care to look at the menu?" he said, handing it to Cooper.

It was written in French and the dishes had resounding names. They were
waited on by the two boys. In opposite corners of the room two more
waved immense fans, and so gave movement to the sultry air. The fare was
sumptuous and the champagne excellent.

"Do you do yourself like this every day?" said Cooper.

Mr. Warburton gave the menu a careless glance.

"I have not noticed that the dinner is any different from usual," he
said. "I eat very little myself, but I make a point of having a proper
dinner served to me every night. It keeps the cook in practice and it's
good discipline for the boys."

The conversation proceeded with effort. Mr. Warburton was elaborately
courteous and, it may be, found a slightly malicious amusement in the
embarrassment which he thereby occasioned in his companion. Cooper had
not been more than a few months in Sembulu, and Mr. Warburton's
enquiries about friends of his in Kuala Solor were soon exhausted.

"By the way," he said presently, "did you meet a lad called Hennerley?
He's come out recently, I believe."

"Oh yes, he's in the police. A rotten bounder."

"I should hardly have expected him to be that. His uncle is my friend
Lord Barraclough. I had a letter from Lady Barraclough only the other
day asking me to look out for him."

"I heard he was related to somebody or other. I suppose that's how he
got the job. He's been to Eton and Oxford and he doesn't forget to let
you know it."

"You surprise me," said Mr. Warburton. "All his family have been at Eton
and Oxford for a couple of hundred years. I should have expected him to
take it as a matter of course."

"I thought him a damned prig."

"To what school did you go?"

"I was born in Barbados. I was educated there."

"Oh, I see."

Mr. Warburton managed to put so much offensiveness into his brief reply
that Cooper flushed. For a moment he was silent.

"I've had two or three letters from Kuala Solor," continued Mr.
Warburton, "and my impression was that young Hennerley was a great
success. They say he's a first-rate sportsman."

"Oh, yes, he's very popular. He's just the sort of fellow they would
like in K.S. I haven't got much use for the first-rate sportsman myself.
What does it amount to in the long run that a man can play golf and
tennis better than other people? And who cares if he can make a break of
seventy-five at billiards? They attach a damned sight too much
importance to that sort of thing in England.'

"Do you think so? I was under the impression that the first-rate
sportsman had come out of the war certainly no worse than anyone else."

"Oh, if you're going to talk of the war then I do know what I'm talking
about. I was in the same regiment as Hennerley and I can tell you that
the men couldn't stick him at any price."

"How do you know?"

"Because I was one of the men."

"Oh, you hadn't got a commission."

"A fat chance I had of getting a commission. I was what was called a
Colonial. I hadn't been to a public-school and I had no influence. I was
in the ranks the whole damned time."

Cooper frowned. He seemed to have difficulty in preventing himself from
breaking out into violent invective. Mr. Warburton watched him, his
little blue eyes narrowed, watched him and formed his opinion. Changing
the conversation, he began to speak to Cooper about the work that would
be required of him, and as the clock struck ten he rose.

"Well, I won't keep you any more. I dare say you're tired by your
journey."

They shook hands.

"Oh, I say, look here," said Cooper, "I wonder if you can find me a boy.
The boy I had before never turned up when I was starting from K.S. He
took my kit on board and all that, and then disappeared. I didn't know
he wasn't there till we were out of the river."

"I'll ask my head-boy. I have no doubt he can find you someone."

"All right. Just tell him to send the boy along and if I like the look
of him I'll take him."

There was a moon, so that no lantern was needed. Cooper walked across
from the Fort to his bungalow.

"I wonder why on earth they've sent me a fellow like that?" reflected
Mr. Warburton. "If that's the kind of man they're going to get out now I
don't think much of it."

He strolled down his garden. The Fort was built on the top of a little
hill and the garden ran down to the river's edge; on the bank was an
arbour, and hither it was his habit to come after dinner to smoke a
cheroot. And often from the river that flowed below him a voice was
heard, the voice of some Malay too timorous to venture into the light of
day, and a complaint or an accusation was softly wafted to his ears, a
piece of information was whispered to him or a useful hint, which
otherwise would never have come into his official ken. He threw himself
heavily into a long rattan chair. Cooper! An envious, ill-bred fellow,
bumptious, self-assertive and vain. But Mr. Warburton's irritation could
not withstand the silent beauty of the night. The air was scented with
the sweet-smelling flowers of a tree that grew at the entrance to the
arbour, and the fire-flies, sparkling dimly, flew with their slow and
silvery flight. The moon made a pathway on the broad river for the light
feet of Sila's bride, and on the further bank a row of palm trees was
delicately silhouetted against the sky. Peace stole into the soul of Mr.
Warburton.

He was a queer creature and he had had a singular career. At the age of
twenty-one he had inherited a considerable fortune, a hundred thousand
pounds, and when he left Oxford he threw himself into the gay life,
which in those days (now Mr. Warburton was a man of four and fifty)
offered itself to the young man of good family. He had his flat in Mount
Street, his private hansom, and his hunting-box in Warwickshire. He went
to all the places where the fashionable congregate. He was handsome,
amusing, and generous. He was a figure in the society of London in the
early nineties, and society then had not lost its exclusiveness nor its
brilliance. The Boer War which shook it was unthought of; the Great War
which destroyed it was prophesied only by the pessimists. It was no
unpleasant thing to be a rich young man in those days, and Mr.
Warburton's chimney-piece during the season was packed with cards for
one great function after another. Mr. Warburton displayed them with
complacency. For Mr. Warburton was a snob. He was not a timid snob, a
little ashamed of being impressed by his betters, nor a snob who sought
the intimacy of persons who had acquired celebrity in politics or
notoriety in the arts, nor the snob who was dazzled by riches; he was
the naked, unadulterated common snob who dearly loved a lord. He was
touchy and quick-tempered, but he would much rather have been snubbed by
a person of quality than flattered by a commoner. His name figured
insignificantly in Burke's Peerage, and it was marvellous to watch the
ingenuity he used to mention his distant relationship to the noble
family he belonged to; but never a word did he say of the honest
Liverpool manufacturer from whom, through his mother, a Miss Gubbins, he
had come by his fortune. It was the terror of his fashionable life that
at Cowes, maybe, or at Ascot, when he was with a duchess or even with a
prince of the blood, one of these relatives would claim acquaintance
with him.

His failing was too obvious not soon to become notorious, but its
extravagance saved it from being merely despicable. The great whom he
adored laughed at him, but in their hearts felt his adoration not
unnatural. Poor Warburton was a dreadful snob, of course, but after all
he was a good fellow. He was always ready to back a bill for an
impecunious nobleman, and if you were in a tight corner you could safely
count on him for a hundred pounds. He gave good dinners. He played whist
badly, but never minded how much he lost if the company was select. He
happened to be a gambler, an unlucky one, but he was a good loser, and
it was impossible not to admire the coolness with which he lost five
hundred pounds at a sitting. His passion for cards, almost as strong as
his passion for titles, was the cause of his undoing. The life he led
was expensive and his gambling losses were formidable. He began to
plunge more heavily, first on horses, and then on the Stock Exchange. He
had a certain simplicity of character, and the unscrupulous found him an
ingenuous prey. I do not know if he ever realised that his smart friends
laughed at him behind his back, but I think he had an obscure instinct
that he could not afford to appear other than careless of his money. He
got into the hands of money-lenders. At the age of thirty-four he was
ruined.

He was too much imbued with the spirit of his class to hesitate in the
choice of his next step. When a man in his set had run through his
money, he went out to the colonies. No one heard Mr. Warburton repine.
He made no complaint because a noble friend had advised a disastrous
speculation, he pressed nobody to whom he had lent money to repay it, he
paid his debts (if he had only known it, the despised blood of the
Liverpool manufacturer came out in him there), sought help from no one,
and, never having done a stroke of work in his life, looked for a means
of livelihood. He remained cheerful, unconcerned and full of humour. He
had no wish to make anyone with whom he happened to be uncomfortable by
the recital of his misfortune. Mr. Warburton was a snob, but he was also
a gentleman.

The only favour he asked of any of the great friends in whose daily
company he had lived for years was a recommendation. The able man who
was at that time Sultan of Sembulu took him into his service. The night
before he sailed he dined for the last time at his club.

"I hear you're going away, Warburton," the old Duke of Hereford said to
him.

"Yes, I'm going to Borneo."

"Good God, what are you going there for?"

"Oh, I'm broke."

"Are you? I'm sorry. Well, let us know when you come back. I hope you
have a good time."

"Oh yes. Lots of shooting, you know."

The Duke nodded and passed on. A few hours later Mr. Warburton watched
the coast of England recede into the mist, and he left behind everything
which to him made life worth living.

Twenty years had passed since then. He kept up a busy correspondence
with various great ladies and his letters were amusing and chatty. He
never lost his love for titled persons and paid careful attention to the
announcements in _The Times_ (which reached him six weeks after
publication) of their comings and goings. He perused the column which
records births, deaths, and marriages, and he was always ready with his
letter of congratulation or condolence. The illustrated papers told him
how people looked and on his periodical visits to England, able to take
up the threads as though they had never been broken, he knew all about
any new person who might have appeared on the social surface. His
interest in the world of fashion was as vivid as when himself had been a
figure in it. It still seemed to him the only thing that mattered.

But insensibly another interest had entered into his life. The position
he found himself in flattered his vanity; he was no longer the sycophant
craving the smiles of the great, he was the master whose word was law.
He was gratified by the guard of Dyak soldiers who presented arms as he
passed. He liked to sit in judgement on his fellow men. It pleased him
to compose quarrels between rival chiefs. When the head-hunters were
troublesome in the old days he set out to chastise them with a thrill of
pride in his own behaviour. He was too vain not to be of dauntless
courage, and a pretty story was told of his coolness in adventuring
single-handed into a stockaded village and demanding the surrender of a
bloodthirsty pirate. He became a skilful administrator. He was strict,
just and honest.

And little by little he conceived a deep love for the Malays. He
interested himself in their habits and customs. He was never tired of
listening to their talk. He admired their virtues, and with a smile and
a shrug of the shoulders condoned their vices.

"In my day," he would say, "I have been on intimate terms with some of
the greatest gentlemen in England, but I have never known finer
gentlemen than some well-born Malays whom I am proud to call my
friends."

He liked their courtesy and their distinguished manners, their
gentleness and their sudden passions. He knew by instinct exactly how to
treat them. He had a genuine tenderness for them. But he never forgot
that he was an English gentleman, and he had no patience with the white
men who yielded to native customs. He made no surrenders. And he did not
imitate so many of the white men in taking a native woman to wife, for
an intrigue of this nature, however sanctified by custom, seemed to him
not only shocking but undignified. A man who had been called George by
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, could hardly be expected to have any
connection with a native. And when he returned to Borneo from his visits
to England it was now with something like relief. His friends, like
himself, were no longer young, and there was a new generation which
looked upon him as a tiresome old man. It seemed to him that the England
of to-day had lost a good deal of what he had loved in the England of
his youth. But Borneo remained the same. It was home to him now. He
meant to remain in service as long as was possible, and the hope in his
heart was that he would die before at last he was forced to retire. He
had stated in his will that wherever he died he wished his body to be
brought back to Sembulu, and buried among the people he loved within the
sound of the softly flowing river.

But these emotions he kept hidden from the eyes of men; and no one,
seeing this spruce, stout, well-set up man, with his clean-shaven strong
face and his whitening hair, would have dreamed that he cherished so
profound a sentiment.

He knew how the work of the station should be done, and during the next
few days he kept a suspicious eye on his assistant. He saw very soon
that he was painstaking and competent. The only fault he had to find
with him was that he was brusque with the natives.

"The Malays are shy and very sensitive," he said to him. "I think you
will find that you will get much better results if you take care always
to be polite, patient and kindly."

Cooper gave a short, grating laugh.

"I was born in Barbados and I was in Africa in the war. I don't think
there's much about niggers that I don't know."

"I know nothing," said Mr. Warburton acidly. "But we were not talking of
them. We were talking of Malays."

"Aren't they niggers?"

"You are very ignorant," replied Mr. Warburton.

He said no more.

On the first Sunday after Cooper's arrival he asked him to dinner. He
did everything ceremoniously, and though they had met on the previous
day in the office and later, on the Fort verandah where they drank a gin
and bitters together at six o'clock, he sent a polite note across to the
bungalow by a boy. Cooper, however unwillingly, came in evening dress
and Mr. Warburton, though gratified that his wish was respected, noticed
with disdain that the young man's clothes were badly cut and his shirt
ill-fitting. But Mr. Warburton was in a good temper that evening.

"By the way," he said to him, as he shook hands, "I've talked to my
head-boy about finding you someone and he recommends his nephew. I've
seen him and he seems a bright and willing lad. Would you like to see
him?"

"I don't mind."

"He's waiting now."

Mr. Warburton called his boy and told him to send for his nephew. In a
moment a tall, slender youth of twenty appeared. He had large dark eyes
and a good profile. He was very neat in his sarong, a little white coat,
and a fez, without a tassel, of plum-covered velvet. He answered to the
name of Abas. Mr. Warburton looked on him with approval, and his manner
insensibly softened as he spoke to him in fluent and idiomatic Malay. He
was inclined to be sarcastic with white people, but with the Malays he
had a happy mixture of condescension and kindliness. He stood in the
place of the Sultan. He knew perfectly how to preserve his own dignity
and at the same time put a native at his ease.

"Will he do?" said Mr. Warburton, turning to Cooper.

"Yes, I dare say he's no more of a scoundrel than any of the rest of
them."

Mr. Warburton informed the boy that he was engaged, and dismissed him.

"You're very lucky to get a boy like that," he told Cooper. "He belongs
to a very good family. They came over from Malacca nearly a hundred
years ago."

"I don't much mind if the boy who cleans my shoes and brings me a drink
when I want it has blue blood in his veins or not. All I ask is that he
should do what I tell him and look sharp about it."

Mr. Warburton pursed his lips, but made no reply.

They went in to dinner. It was excellent, and the wine was good. Its
influence presently had its effect on them, and they talked not only
without acrimony, but even with friendliness. Mr. Warburton liked to do
himself well, and on Sunday night he made it a habit to do himself even
a little better than usual. He began to think he was unfair to Cooper.
Of course he was not a gentleman, but that was not his fault, and when
you got to know him it might be that he would turn out a very good
fellow. His faults, perhaps, were faults of manner. And he was certainly
good at his work, quick, conscientious and thorough. When they reached
the dessert Mr. Warburton was feeling kindly disposed towards all
mankind.

"This is your first Sunday, and I'm going to give you a very special
glass of port. I've only got about two dozen of it left and I keep it
for special occasions."

He gave his boy instructions and presently the bottle was brought. Mr.
Warburton watched the boy open it.

"I got this port from my old friend Charles Hollington. He'd had it for
forty years, and I've had it for a good many. He was well-known to have
the best cellar in England."

"Is he a wine merchant?"

"Not exactly," smiled Mr. Warburton. "I was speaking of Lord Hollington
of Castle Reagh. He's one of the richest peers in England. A very old
friend of mine. I was at Eton with his brother."

This was an opportunity that Mr. Warburton could never resist, and he
told a little anecdote of which the only point seemed to be that he knew
an Earl. The port was certainly very good; he drank a glass and then a
second. He lost all caution. He had not talked to a white man for
months. He began to tell stories. He showed himself in the company of
the great. Hearing him, you would have thought that at one time
ministries were formed and policies decided on his suggestion whispered
into the ear of a duchess or thrown over the dinner-table to be
gratefully acted on by the confidential adviser of the Sovereign. The
old days at Ascot, Goodwood and Cowes lived again for him. Another glass
of port. There were the great house-parties in Yorkshire and in Scotland
to which he went every year.

"I had a man called Foreman then, the best valet I ever had, and why do
you think he gave me notice? You know in the House-keeper's Room the
ladies' maids and the gentlemen's gentlemen sit according to the
precedence of their masters. He told me he was sick of going to party
after party at which I was the only commoner. It meant that he always
had to sit at the bottom of the table, and all the best bits were taken
before a dish reached him. I told the story to the old Duke of Hereford,
and he roared. 'By God, sir,' he said, 'if I were King of England, I'd
make you a viscount just to give your man a chance.' 'Take him yourself,
Duke,' I said. 'He's the best valet I've ever had.' 'Well, Warburton,'
he said, 'if he's good enough for you he's good enough for me. Send him
along.'"

Then there was Monte Carlo, where Mr. Warburton and the Grand Duke
Fyodor, playing in partnership, had broken the bank one evening; and
there was Marienbad. At Marienbad Mr. Warburton had played baccarat with
Edward VII.

"He was only Prince of Wales then, of course. I remember him saying to
me, 'George, if you draw on a five you'll lose your shirt.' He was
right; I don't think he ever said a truer word in his life. He was a
wonderful man. I always said he was the greatest diplomatist in Europe.
But I was a young fool in those days, I hadn't the sense to take his
advice. If I had, if I'd never drawn on a five, I dare say I shouldn't
be here to-day."

Cooper was watching him. His brown eyes, deep in their sockets, were
hard and supercilious, and on his lips was a mocking smile. He had heard
a good deal about Mr. Warburton in Kuala Solor, not a bad sort, and he
ran his district like clockwork, they said, but by heaven, what a snob!
They laughed at him good-naturedly, for it was impossible to dislike a
man who was so generous and so kindly, and Cooper had already heard the
story of the Prince of Wales and the game of baccarat. But Cooper
listened without indulgence. From the beginning he had resented the
Resident's manner. He was very sensitive, and he writhed under Mr.
Warburton's polite sarcasms. Mr. Warburton had a knack of receiving a
remark of which he disapproved with a devastating silence. Cooper had
lived little in England and he had a peculiar dislike of the English. He
resented especially the public-school boy since he always feared that he
was going to patronise him. He was so much afraid of others putting on
airs with him that, in order as it were to get in first, he put on such
airs as to make everyone think him insufferably conceited.

"Well, at all events the war has done one good thing for us," he said at
last. "It's smashed up the power of the aristocracy. The Boer War
started it, and 1914 put the lid on."

"The great families of England are doomed," said Mr. Warburton with the
complacent melancholy of an _migr_ who remembered the court of Louis
XV. "They cannot afford any longer to live in their splendid palaces and
their princely hospitality will soon be nothing but a memory."

"And a damned good job too in my opinion."

"My poor Cooper, what can you know of the glory that was Greece and the
grandeur that was Rome?"

Mr. Warburton made an ample gesture. His eyes for an instant grew dreamy
with a vision of the past.

"Well, believe me, we're fed up with all that rot. What we want is a
business government by business men. I was born in a Crown Colony, and
I've lived practically all my life in the colonies. I don't give a row
of pins for a lord. What's wrong with England is snobbishness. And if
there's anything that gets my goat it's a snob."

A snob! Mr. Warburton's face grew purple and his eyes blazed with anger.
That was a word that had pursued him all his life. The great ladies
whose society he had enjoyed in his youth were not inclined to look upon
his appreciation of themselves as unworthy, but even great ladies are
sometimes out of temper and more than once Mr. Warburton had had the
dreadful word flung in his teeth. He knew, he could not help knowing,
that there were odious people who called him a snob. How unfair it was!
Why, there was no vice he found so detestable as snobbishness. After
all, he liked to mix with people of his own class, he was only at home
in their company, and how in heaven's name could anyone say that was
snobbish? Birds of a feather.

"I quite agree with you," he answered. "A snob is a man who admires or
despises another because he is of a higher social rank than his own. It
is the most vulgar failing of our English middle-class."

He saw a flicker of amusement in Cooper's eyes. Cooper put up his hand
to hide the broad smile that rose to his lips, and so made it more
noticeable. Mr. Warburton's hands trembled a little.

Probably Cooper never knew how greatly he had offended his chief. A
sensitive man himself he was strangely insensitive to the feelings of
others.

Their work forced them to see one another for a few minutes now and then
during the day, and they met at six to have a drink on Mr. Warburton's
verandah. This was an old-established custom of the country which Mr.
Warburton would not for the world have broken. But they ate their meals
separately, Cooper in his bungalow and Mr. Warburton at the Fort. After
the office work was over they walked till dusk fell, but they walked
apart. There were but few paths in this country where the jungle pressed
close upon the plantations of the village, and when Mr. Warburton caught
sight of his assistant passing along with his loose stride, he would
make a circuit in order to avoid him. Cooper with his bad manners, his
conceit in his own judgment and his intolerance had already got on his
nerves; but it was not till Cooper had been on the station for a couple
of months that an incident happened which turned the Resident's dislike
into bitter hatred.

Mr. Warburton was obliged to go up-country on a tour of inspection, and
he left the station in Cooper's charge with more confidence, since he
had definitely come to the conclusion that he was a capable fellow. The
only thing he did not like was that he had no indulgence. He was honest,
just and painstaking, but he had no sympathy for the natives. It
bitterly amused Mr. Warburton to observe that this man who looked upon
himself as every man's equal should look upon so many men as his own
inferiors. He was hard, he had no patience with the native mind, and he
was a bully. Mr. Warburton very quickly realised that the Malays
disliked and feared him. He was not altogether displeased. He would not
have liked it very much if his assistant had enjoyed a popularity which
might rival his own. Mr. Warburton made his elaborate preparations, set
out on his expedition, and in three weeks returned. Meanwhile the mail
had arrived. The first thing that struck his eyes when he entered his
sitting-room was a great pile of open newspapers. Cooper had met him,
and they went into the room together. Mr. Warburton turned to one of the
servants who had been left behind, and sternly asked him what was the
meaning of those open papers. Cooper hastened to explain.

"I wanted to read all about the Wolverhampton murder, and so I borrowed
your _Times_. I brought them back again. I knew you wouldn't mind."

Mr. Warburton turned on him, white with anger.

"But I do mind. I mind very much."

"I'm sorry," said Cooper, with composure. "The fact is, I simply
couldn't wait till you came back."

"I wonder you didn't open my letters as well."

Cooper, unmoved, smiled at his chief's exasperation.

"Oh, that's not quite the same thing. After all, I couldn't imagine
you'd mind my looking at your newspapers. There's nothing private in
them."

"I very much object to anyone reading my paper before me." He went up to
the pile. There were nearly thirty numbers there. "I think it extremely
impertinent of you. They're all mixed up."

"We can easily put them in order," said Cooper, joining him at the
table.

"Don't touch them," cried Mr. Warburton.

"I say, it's childish to make a scene about a little thing like that."

"How dare you speak to me like that?"

"Oh, go to hell," said Cooper, and he flung out of the room.

Mr. Warburton, trembling with passion, was left contemplating his
papers. His greatest pleasure in life had been destroyed by those
callous, brutal hands. Most people living in out-of-the-way places when
the mail comes tear open impatiently their papers and taking the last
ones first glance at the latest news from home. Not so Mr. Warburton.
His newsagent had instructions to write on the outside of the wrapper
the date of each paper he despatched, and when the great bundle arrived
Mr. Warburton looked at these dates and with his blue pencil numbered
them. His head-boy's orders were to place one on the table every morning
in the verandah with the early cup of tea and it was Mr. Warburton's
especial delight to break the wrapper as he sipped his tea, and read the
morning paper. It gave him the illusion of living at home. Every Monday
morning he read the Monday _Times_ of six weeks back, and so went
through the week. On Sunday he read the _Observer_. Like his habit of
dressing for dinner it was a tie to civilisation. And it was his pride
that no matter how exciting the news was he had never yielded to the
temptation of opening a paper before its allotted time. During the war
the suspense sometimes had been intolerable, and when he read one day
that a push was begun he had undergone agonies of suspense which he
might have saved himself by the simple expedient of opening a later
paper which lay waiting for him on a shelf. It had been the severest
trial to which he had ever exposed himself, but he victoriously
surmounted it. And that clumsy fool had broken open those neat tight
packages because he wanted to know whether some horrid woman had
murdered her odious husband.

Mr. Warburton sent for his boy and told him to bring wrappers. He folded
up the papers as neatly as he could, placed a wrapper round each and
numbered it. But it was a melancholy task.

"I shall never forgive him," he said. "Never."

Of course his boy had been with him on his expedition; he never
travelled without him, for his boy knew exactly how he liked things, and
Mr. Warburton was not the kind of jungle traveller who was prepared to
dispense with his comforts; but in the interval since their arrival he
had been gossiping in the servants' quarters. He had learnt that Cooper
had had trouble with his boys. All but the youth Abas had left him. Abas
had desired to go too, but his uncle had placed him there on the
instructions of the Resident, and he was afraid to leave without his
uncle's permission.

"I told him he had done well, Tuan," said the boy. "But he is unhappy.
He says it is not a good house, and he wishes to know if he may go as
the others have gone."

"No, he must stay. The Tuan must have servants. Have those who went been
replaced?"

"No, Tuan, no one will go."

Mr. Warburton frowned. Cooper was an insolent fool, but he had an
official position and must be suitably provided with servants. It was
not seemly that his house should be improperly conducted.

"Where are the boys who ran away?"

"They are in the kampong, Tuan."

"Go and see them to-night, and tell them that I expect them to be back
in Tuan Cooper's house at dawn to-morrow."

"They say they will not go, Tuan."

"On my order?"

The boy had been with Mr. Warburton for fifteen years, and he knew every
intonation of his master's voice. He was not afraid of him, they had
gone through too much together, once in the jungle the Resident had
saved his life, and once, upset in some rapids, but for him the Resident
would have been drowned; but he knew when the Resident must be obeyed
without question.

"I will go to the kampong," he said.

Mr. Warburton expected that his subordinate would take the first
opportunity to apologise for his rudeness, but Cooper had the ill-bred
man's inability to express regret; and when they met next morning in the
office he ignored the incident. Since Mr. Warburton had been away for
three weeks it was necessary for them to have a somewhat prolonged
interview. At the end of it, Mr. Warburton dismissed him.

"I don't think there's anything else, thank you." Cooper turned to go,
but Mr. Warburton stopped him. "I understand you've been having some
trouble with your boys."

Cooper gave a harsh laugh.

"They tried to blackmail me. They had the damned cheek to run away, all
except that incompetent fellow Abas--he knew when he was well off--but I
just sat tight. They've all come to heel again."

"What do you mean by that?"

"This morning they were all back on their jobs, the Chinese cook and
all. There they were, as cool as cucumbers; you would have thought they
owned the place. I suppose they'd come to the conclusion that I wasn't
such a fool as I looked."

"By no means. They came back on my express order."

Cooper flushed slightly.

"I should be obliged if you wouldn't interfere with my private
concerns."

"They're not your private concerns. When your servants run away it makes
you ridiculous. You are perfectly free to make a fool of yourself, but I
cannot allow you to be made a fool of. It is unseemly that your house
should not be properly staffed. As soon as I heard that your boys had
left you, I had them told to be back in their places at dawn. That'll
do."

Mr. Warburton nodded to signify that the interview was at an end. Cooper
took no notice.

"Shall I tell you what I did? I called them and gave the whole bally lot
the sack. I gave them ten minutes to get out of the compound."

Mr. Warburton shrugged his shoulders.

"What makes you think you can get others?"

"I've told my own clerk to see about it."

Mr. Warburton reflected for a moment.

"I think you behaved very foolishly. You will do well to remember in
future that good masters make good servants."

"Is there anything else you want to teach me?"

"I should like to teach you manners, but it would be an arduous task,
and I have not the time to waste. I will see that you get boys."

"Please don't put yourself to any trouble on my account. I'm quite
capable of getting them for myself."

Mr. Warburton smiled acidly. He had an inkling that Cooper disliked him
as much as he disliked Cooper, and he knew that nothing is more galling
than to be forced to accept the favours of a man you detest.

"Allow me to tell you that you have no more chance of getting Malay or
Chinese servants here now than you have of getting an English butler or
a French chef. No one will come to you except on an order from me. Would
you like me to give it?"

"No."

"As you please. Good-morning."

Mr. Warburton watched the development of the situation with acrid
humour. Cooper's clerk was unable to persuade Malay, Dyak or Chinese to
enter the house of such a master. Abas, the boy who remained faithful to
him, knew how to cook only native food, and Cooper, a coarse feeder,
found his gorge rise against the everlasting rice. There was no
water-carrier, and in that great heat he needed several baths a day. He
cursed Abas, but Abas opposed him with sullen resistance and would not
do more than he chose. It was galling to know that the lad stayed with
him only because the Resident insisted. This went on for a fortnight and
then, one morning, he found in his house the very servants whom he had
previously dismissed. He fell into a violent rage, but he had learnt a
little sense, and this time, without a word, he let them stay. He
swallowed his humiliation, but the impatient contempt he had felt for
Mr. Warburton's idiosyncrasies changed into a sullen hatred: the
Resident with this malicious stroke had made him the laughing-stock of
all the natives.

The two men now held no communication with one another. They broke the
time-honoured custom of sharing, notwithstanding personal dislike, a
drink at six o'clock with any white man who happened to be at the
station. Each lived in his own house as though the other did not exist.
Now that Cooper had fallen into the work, it was necessary for them to
have little to do with one another in the office. Mr. Warburton used his
orderly to send any message he had to give his assistant, and his
instructions he sent by formal letter. They saw one another constantly,
that was inevitable, but did not exchange half a dozen words in a week.
The fact that they could not avoid catching sight of one another got on
their nerves. They brooded over their antagonism, and Mr. Warburton,
taking his daily walk, could think of nothing but how much he detested
his assistant.

And the dreadful thing was that in all probability they would remain
thus, facing each other in deadly enmity, till Mr. Warburton went on
leave. It might be three years. He had no reason to send in a complaint
to headquarters: Cooper did his work very well, and at that time men
were hard to get. True, vague complaints reached him and hints that the
natives found Cooper harsh. There was certainly a feeling of
dissatisfaction among them. But when Mr. Warburton looked into specific
cases, all he could say was that Cooper had shown severity where
mildness would not have been misplaced, and had been unfeeling when
himself would have been sympathetic. He had done nothing for which he
could be taken to task. But Mr. Warburton watched him. Hatred will often
make a man clear-sighted, and he had a suspicion that Cooper was using
the natives without consideration, yet keeping within the law, because
he felt that thus he could exasperate his chief. One day perhaps he
would go too far. None knew better than Mr. Warburton how irritable the
incessant heat could make a man and how difficult it was to keep one's
self-control after a sleepless night. He smiled softly to himself.
Sooner or later Cooper would deliver himself into his hand.

When at last the opportunity came, Mr. Warburton laughed aloud. Cooper
had charge of the prisoners; they made roads, built sheds, rowed when it
was necessary to send the prahu up or down stream, kept the town clean
and otherwise usefully employed themselves. If well-behaved they even on
occasion served as house-boys. Cooper kept them hard at it. He liked to
see them work. He took pleasure in devising tasks for them; and seeing
quickly enough that they were being made to do useless things the
prisoners worked badly. He punished them by lengthening their hours.
This was contrary to the regulations, and as soon as it was brought to
the attention of Mr. Warburton, without referring the matter back to his
subordinate, he gave instructions that the old hours should be kept;
Cooper, going out for his walk, was astounded to see the prisoners
strolling back to the gaol; he had given instructions that they were not
to knock off till dusk. When he asked the warder in charge why they had
left off work he was told that it was the Resident's bidding.

White with rage he strode to the Fort. Mr. Warburton, in his spotless
white ducks and his neat topee, with a walking-stick in his hand,
followed by his dogs, was on the point of starting out on his afternoon
stroll. He had watched Cooper go, and knew that he had taken the road by
the river. Cooper jumped up the steps and went straight up to the
Resident.

"I want to know what the hell you mean by countermanding my order that
the prisoners were to work till six," he burst out, beside himself with
fury.

Mr. Warburton opened his cold blue eyes very wide and assumed an
expression of great surprise.

"Are you out of your mind? Are you so ignorant that you do not know that
that is not the way to speak to your official superior?"

"Oh, go to hell. The prisoners are my pidgin, and you've got no right to
interfere. You mind your business and I'll mind mine. I want to know
what the devil you mean by making a damned fool of me. Everyone in the
place will know that you've countermanded my order."

Mr. Warburton kept very cool.

"You had no power to give the order you did. I countermanded it because
it was harsh and tyrannical. Believe me, I have not made half such a
damned fool of you as you have made of yourself."

"You disliked me from the first moment I came here. You've done
everything you could to make the place impossible for me because I
wouldn't lick your boots for you. You got your knife into me because I
wouldn't flatter you."

Cooper, spluttering with rage, was nearing dangerous ground, and Mr.
Warburton's eyes grew on a sudden colder and more piercing.

"You are wrong. I thought you were a cad, but I was perfectly satisfied
with the way you did your work."

"You snob. You damned snob. You thought me a cad because I hadn't been
to Eton. Oh, they told me in K.S. what to expect. Why, don't you know
that you're the laughing-stock of the whole country? I could hardly help
bursting into a roar of laughter when you told your celebrated story
about the Prince of Wales. My God, how they shouted at the club when
they told it. By God, I'd rather be the cad I am than the snob you are."

He got Mr. Warburton on the raw.

"If you don't get out of my house this minute I shall knock you down,"
he cried.

The other came a little closer to him and put his face in his.

"Touch me, touch me," he said. "By God, I'd like to see you hit me. Do
you want me to say it again? Snob. Snob."

Cooper was three inches taller than Mr. Warburton, a strong, muscular
young man. Mr. Warburton was fat and fifty-four. His clenched fist shot
out. Cooper caught him by the arm and pushed him back.

"Don't be a damned fool. Remember I'm not a gentleman. I know how to use
my hands."

He gave a sort of hoot, and grinning all over his pale, sharp face
jumped down the verandah steps. Mr. Warburton, his heart in his anger
pounding against his ribs, sank exhausted into a chair. His body tingled
as though he had prickly heat. For one horrible moment he thought he was
going to cry. But suddenly he was conscious that his head-boy was on the
verandah and instinctively regained control of himself. The boy came
forward and filled him a glass of whisky and soda. Without a word Mr.
Warburton took it and drank it to the dregs.

"What do you want to say to me?" asked Mr. Warburton, trying to force a
smile on to his strained lips.

"Tuan, the assistant Tuan is a bad man. Abas wishes again to leave him."

"Let him wait a little. I shall write to Kuala Solor and ask that Tuan
Cooper should go elsewhere."

"Tuan Cooper is not good with the Malays."

"Leave me."

The boy silently withdrew. Mr. Warburton was left alone with his
thoughts. He saw the club at Kuala Solor, the men sitting round the
table in the window in their flannels, when the night had driven them in
from golf and tennis, drinking whiskies and gin pahits, and laughing
when they told the celebrated story of the Prince of Wales and himself
at Marienbad. He was hot with shame and misery. A snob! They all thought
him a snob. And he had always thought them very good fellows, he had
always been gentleman enough to let it make no difference to him that
they were of very second-rate position. He hated them now. But his
hatred for them was nothing compared with his hatred for Cooper. And if
it had come to blows Cooper could have thrashed him. Tears of
mortification ran down his red, fat face. He sat there for a couple of
hours smoking cigarette after cigarette, and he wished he were dead.

At last the boy came back and asked him if he would dress for dinner. Of
course! He always dressed for dinner. He rose wearily from his chair and
put on his stiff shirt and the high collar. He sat down at the prettily
decorated table, and was waited on as usual by the two boys while two
others waved their great fans. Over there in the bungalow, two hundred
yards away, Cooper was eating a filthy meal clad only in a sarong and a
baju. His feet were bare and while he ate he probably read a detective
story. After dinner Mr. Warburton sat down to write a letter. The Sultan
was away, but he wrote, privately and confidentially, to his
representative. Cooper did his work very well, he said, but the fact was
that he couldn't get on with him. They were getting dreadfully on each
other's nerves and he would look upon it as a very great favour if
Cooper could be transferred to another post.

He despatched the letter next morning by special messenger. The answer
came a fortnight later with the month's mail. It was a private note, and
ran as follows:

    "_My dear Warburton_,

    _I do not want to answer your letter officially, and so I am
    writing you a few lines myself. Of course if you insist I will
    put the matter up to the Sultan, but I think you would be much
    wiser to drop it. I know Cooper is a rough diamond, but he is
    capable, and he had a pretty thin time in the war, and I think
    he should be given every chance. I think you are a little too
    much inclined to attach importance to a man's social position.
    You must remember that times have changed. Of course it's a very
    good thing for a man to be a gentleman, but it's better that he
    should be competent and hard-working. I think if you'll exercise
    a little tolerance you'll get on very well with Cooper._

                                       _Yours very sincerely_,
                                               _Richard Temple_."

The letter dropped from Mr. Warburton's hand. It was easy to read
between the lines. Dick Temple, whom he had known for twenty years, Dick
Temple who came from quite a good county family, thought him a snob, and
for that reason had no patience with his request. Mr. Warburton felt on
a sudden discouraged with life. The world of which he was a part had
passed away and the future belonged to a meaner generation. Cooper
represented it and Cooper he hated with all his heart. He stretched out
his hand to fill his glass, and at the gesture his head-boy stepped
forward.

"I didn't know you were there."

The boy picked up the official letter. Ah, that was why he was waiting.

"Does Tuan Cooper go, Tuan?"

"No."

"There will be a misfortune."

For a moment the words conveyed nothing to his lassitude. But only for a
moment. He sat up in his chair and looked at the boy. He was all
attention.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Tuan Cooper is not behaving rightly with Abas."

Mr. Warburton shrugged his shoulders. How should a man like Cooper know
how to treat servants? Mr. Warburton knew the type: he would be grossly
familiar with them at one moment and rude and inconsiderate the next.

"Let Abas go back to his family."

"Tuan Cooper holds back his wages so that he may not run away. He has
paid him nothing for three months. I tell him to be patient. But he is
angry, he will not listen to reason. If the Tuan continues to use him
ill there will be a misfortune."

"You were right to tell me."

The fool! Did he know so little of the Malays as to think he could
safely injure them? It would serve him damned well right if he got a
kris in his back. A kris. Mr. Warburton's heart seemed on a sudden to
miss a beat. He had only to let things take their course and one fine
day he would be rid of Cooper. He smiled faintly as the phrase, a
masterly inactivity, crossed his mind. And now his heart beat a little
quicker, for he saw the man he hated lying on his face in a pathway of
the jungle with a knife in his back. A fit end for the cad and the
bully. Mr. Warburton sighed. It was his duty to warn him, and of course
he must do it. He wrote a brief and formal note to Cooper asking him to
come to the Fort at once.

In ten minutes Cooper stood before him. They had not spoken to one
another since the day when Mr. Warburton had nearly struck him. He did
not now ask him to sit down.

"Did you wish to see me?" asked Cooper.

He was untidy and none too clean. His face and hands were covered with
little red blotches where mosquitoes had bitten him and he had scratched
himself till the blood came. His long, thin face bore a sullen look.

"I understand that you are again having trouble with your servants.
Abas, my head-boy's nephew, complains that you have held back his wages
for three months. I consider it a most arbitrary proceeding. The lad
wishes to leave you, and I certainly do not blame him. I must insist on
your paying what is due to him."

"I don't choose that he should leave me. I am holding back his wages as
a pledge of his good behaviour."

"You do not know the Malay character. The Malays are very sensitive to
injury and ridicule. They are passionate and revengeful. It is my duty
to warn you that if you drive this boy beyond a certain point you run a
great risk."

Cooper gave a contemptuous chuckle.

"What do you think he'll do?"

"I think he'll kill you."

"Why should you mind?"

"Oh, I wouldn't," replied Mr. Warburton, with a faint laugh. "I should
bear it with the utmost fortitude. But I feel the official obligation to
give you a proper warning."

"Do you think I'm afraid of a damned nigger?"

"It's a matter of entire indifference to me."

"Well, let me tell you this, I know how to take care of myself; that boy
Abas is a dirty, thieving rascal, and if he tries any monkey tricks on
me, by God, I'll wring his bloody neck."

"That was all I wished to say to you," said Mr. Warburton.
"Good-evening."

Mr. Warburton gave him a little nod of dismissal. Cooper flushed, did
not for a moment know what to say or do, turned on his heel and stumbled
out of the room. Mr. Warburton watched him go with an icy smile on his
lips. He had done his duty. But what would he have thought had he known
that when Cooper got back to his bungalow, so silent and cheerless, he
threw himself down on his bed and in his bitter loneliness on a sudden
lost all control of himself? Painful sobs tore his chest and heavy tears
rolled down his thin cheeks.

After this Mr. Warburton seldom saw Cooper, and never spoke to him. He
read his _Times_ every morning, did his work at the office, took his
exercise, dressed for dinner, dined and sat by the river smoking his
cheroot. If by chance he ran across Cooper he cut him dead. Each, though
never for a moment unconscious of the propinquity, acted as though the
other did not exist. Time did nothing to assuage their animosity. They
watched one another's actions and each knew what the other did. Though
Mr. Warburton had been a keen shot in his youth, with age he had
acquired a distaste for killing the wild things of the jungle, but on
Sundays and holidays Cooper went out with his gun: if he got something
it was a triumph over Mr. Warburton; if not, Mr. Warburton shrugged his
shoulders and chuckled. These counter-jumpers trying to be sportsmen!
Christmas was a bad time for both of them: they ate their dinners alone,
each in his own quarters, and they got deliberately drunk. They were the
only white men within two hundred miles and they lived within shouting
distance of each other. At the beginning of the year Cooper went down
with fever, and when Mr. Warburton caught sight of him again he was
surprised to see how thin he had grown. He looked ill and worn. The
solitude, so much more unnatural because it was due to no necessity, was
getting on his nerves. It was getting on Mr. Warburton's too, and often
he could not sleep at night. He lay awake brooding. Cooper was drinking
heavily and surely the breaking point was near; but in his dealings with
the natives he took care to do nothing that might expose him to his
chief's rebuke. They fought a grim and silent battle with one another.
It was a test of endurance. The months passed, and neither gave sign of
weakening. They were like men dwelling in regions of eternal night, and
their souls were oppressed with the knowledge that never would the day
dawn for them. It looked as though their lives would continue for ever
in this dull and hideous monotony of hatred.

And when at last the inevitable happened it came upon Mr. Warburton with
all the shock of the unexpected. Cooper accused the boy Abas of stealing
some of his clothes, and when the boy denied the theft took him by the
scruff of the neck and kicked him down the steps of the bungalow. The
boy demanded his wages and Cooper flung at his head every word of abuse
he knew. If he saw him in the compound in an hour he would hand him over
to the police. Next morning the boy waylaid him outside the Fort when he
was walking over to his office, and again demanded his wages. Cooper
struck him in the face with his clenched fist. The boy fell to the
ground and got up with blood streaming from his nose.

Cooper walked on and set about his work. But he could not attend to it.
The blow had calmed his irritation, and he knew that he had gone too
far. He was worried. He felt ill, miserable and discouraged. In the
adjoining office sat Mr. Warburton, and his impulse was to go and tell
him what he had done; he made a movement in his chair, but he knew with
what icy scorn he would listen to the story. He could see his
patronising smile. For a moment he had an uneasy fear of what Abas might
do. Warburton had warned him all right. He sighed. What a fool he had
been! But he shrugged his shoulders impatiently. He did not care; a fat
lot he had to live for. It was all Warburton's fault; if he hadn't put
his back up nothing like this would have happened. Warburton had made
life a hell for him from the start. The snob. But they were all like
that: it was because he was a Colonial. It was a damned shame that he
had never got his commission in the war; he was as good as anyone else.
They were a lot of dirty snobs. He was damned if he was going to knuckle
under now. Of course Warburton would hear of what had happened; the old
devil knew everything. He wasn't afraid. He wasn't afraid of any Malay
in Borneo, and Warburton could go to blazes.

He was right in thinking that Mr. Warburton would know what had
happened. His head-boy told him when he went in to tiffin.

"Where is your nephew now?"

"I do not know, Tuan. He has gone."

Mr. Warburton remained silent. After luncheon as a rule he slept a
little, but to-day he found himself very wide awake. His eyes
involuntarily sought the bungalow where Cooper was now resting.

The idiot! Hesitation for a little was in Mr. Warburton's mind. Did the
man know in what peril he was? He supposed he ought to send for him. But
each time he had tried to reason with Cooper, Cooper had insulted him.
Anger, furious anger welled up suddenly in Mr. Warburton's heart, so
that the veins on his temples stood out and he clenched his fists. The
cad had had his warning. Now let him take what was coming to him. It was
no business of his, and if anything happened it was not his fault. But
perhaps they would wish in Kuala Solor that they had taken his advice
and transferred Cooper to another station.

He was strangely restless that night. After dinner he walked up and down
the verandah. When the boy went away to his own quarters, Mr. Warburton
asked him whether anything had been seen of Abas.

"No, Tuan, I think maybe he has gone to the village of his mother's
brother."

Mr. Warburton gave him a sharp glance, but the boy was looking down, and
their eyes did not meet. Mr. Warburton went down to the river and sat in
his arbour. But peace was denied him. The river flowed ominously silent.
It was like a great serpent gliding with sluggish movement towards the
sea. And the trees of the jungle over the water were heavy with a
breathless menace. No bird sang. No breeze ruffled the leaves of the
cassias. All around him it seemed as though something waited.

He walked across the garden to the road. He had Cooper's bungalow in
full view from there. There was a light in his sitting-room, and across
the road floated the sound of ragtime. Cooper was playing his
gramophone. Mr. Warburton shuddered; he had never got over his
instinctive dislike of that instrument. But for that he would have gone
over and spoken to Cooper. He turned and went back to his own house. He
read late into the night, and at last he slept. But he did not sleep
very long, he had terrible dreams, and he seemed to be awakened by a
cry. Of course that was a dream too, for no cry--from the bungalow for
instance--could be heard in his room. He lay awake till dawn. Then he
heard hurried steps and the sound of voices, his head-boy burst suddenly
into the room without his fez, and Mr. Warburton's heart stood still.

"Tuan, Tuan."

Mr. Warburton jumped out of bed.

"I'll come at once."

He put on his slippers, and in his sarong and pyjama-jacket walked
across his compound and into Cooper's. Cooper was lying in bed, with his
mouth open, and a kris sticking in his heart. He had been killed in his
sleep. Mr. Warburton started, but not because he had not expected to see
just such a sight, he started because he felt in himself a sudden glow
of exultation. A great burden had been lifted from his shoulders.

Cooper was quite cold. Mr. Warburton took the kris out of the wound, it
had been thrust in with such force that he had to use an effort to get
it out, and looked at it. He recognised it. It was a kris that a dealer
had offered him some weeks before, and which he knew Cooper had bought.

"Where is Abas?" he asked sternly.

"Abas is at the village of his mother's brother."

The sergeant of the native police was standing at the foot of the bed.

"Take two men and go to the village and arrest him."

Mr. Warburton did what was immediately necessary. With set face he gave
orders. His words were short and peremptory. Then he went back to the
Fort. He shaved and had his bath, dressed and went into the dining-room.
By the side of his plate _The Times_ in its wrapper lay waiting for him.
He helped himself to some fruit. The head-boy poured out his tea while
the second handed him a dish of eggs. Mr. Warburton ate with a good
appetite. The head-boy waited.

"What is it?" asked Mr. Warburton.

"Tuan, Abas, my nephew, was in the house of his mother's brother all
night. It can be proved. His uncle will swear that he did not leave the
kampong."

Mr. Warburton turned upon him with a frown.

"Tuan Cooper was killed by Abas. You know it as well as I know it.
Justice must be done."

"Tuan, you would not hang him?"

Mr. Warburton hesitated an instant, and though his voice remained set
and stern a change came into his eyes. It was a flicker which the Malay
was quick to notice and across his own eyes flashed an answering look of
understanding.

"The provocation was very great. Abas will be sentenced to a term of
imprisonment." There was a pause while Mr. Warburton helped himself to
marmalade. "When he has served a part of his sentence in prison I will
take him into this house as a boy. You can train him in his duties. I
have no doubt that in the house of Tuan Cooper he got into bad habits."

"Shall Abas give himself up, Tuan?"

"It would be wise of him."

The boy withdrew. Mr. Warburton took his _Times_ and neatly slit the
wrapper. He loved to unfold the heavy, rustling pages. The morning, so
fresh and cool, was delicious and for a moment his eyes wandered out
over the garden with a friendly glance. A great weight had been lifted
from his mind. He turned to the columns in which were announced the
births, deaths, and marriages. That was what he always looked at first.
A name he knew caught his attention. Lady Ormskirk had had a son at
last. By George, how pleased the old dowager must be! He would write her
a note of congratulation by the next mail.

Abas would make a very good house-boy.

That fool Cooper!




THE PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN


I arrived in Seoul towards evening and after dinner, tired by the long
railway journey from Peking, to stretch my cramped legs I went for a
walk. I wandered at random along a narrow and busy street. The Koreans
in their long white gowns and their little white top-hats were amusing
to look at and the open shops displayed wares that arrested my foreign
eyes. Presently I came to a second-hand bookseller's and catching sight
of shelves filled with English books went in to have a look at them. I
glanced at the titles and my heart sank. They were commentaries on the
Old Testament, treatises on the Epistles of St. Paul, sermons and lives
of divines doubtless eminent, but whose names were unfamiliar to me; I
am an ignorant person. I supposed that this was the library of some
missionary whom death had claimed in the midst of his labours and whose
books then had been purchased by a Japanese bookseller. The Japanese are
astute, but I could not imagine who in Seoul would be found to buy a
work in three volumes on the Epistle to the Corinthians. But as I was
turning away, between volume two and volume three of this treatise I
noticed a little book bound in paper. I do not know what induced me to
take it out. It was called the _Complete Poker Player_ and its cover was
illustrated with a hand holding four aces. I looked at the title-page.
The author was Mr. John Blackbridge, actuary and counseller-at-law, and
the preface was dated 1879. I wondered how this work happened to be
among the books of a deceased missionary and I looked in one or two of
them to see if I could find his name. Perhaps it was there only by
accident. It may be that it was the entire library of a stranded gambler
and had found its way to those shelves when his effects were sold to pay
his hotel bill. But I preferred to think that it was indeed the property
of the missionary and that when he was weary of reading divinity he
rested his mind by the perusal of these lively pages. Perhaps somewhere
in Korea, at night and alone in his mission-house, he dealt innumerable
poker hands in order to see for himself whether you could really only
get a straight flush once in sixty-five thousand hands. But the owner of
the shop was looking at me with disfavour so I turned to him and asked
the price of the book. He gave it a contemptuous glance and told me I
could have it for twenty sen. I put it in my pocket.

I do not remember that for so small a sum I have ever purchased better
entertainment. For Mr. John Blackbridge in these pages of his did a
thing that no writer can do who deliberately tries to, but that, if done
unconsciously, gives a book a rare and precious savour; he painted a
complete portrait of himself. He stands before the reader so vividly
that I was convinced that a wood-cut of him figured as a frontispiece
and I was surprised to discover, on looking at the book again the other
day, that there was nothing of the kind. I see him very distinctly as a
man of middle-age, in a black frock-coat and a chimney-pot hat, wearing
a black satin stock; he is clean-shaven and his jaw is square; his lips
are thin and his eyes wary; his face is sallow and somewhat wrinkled. It
is a countenance not without severity, but when he tells a story or
makes one of his dry jokes his eyes light up and his smile is winning.
He enjoyed his bottle of Burgundy, but I cannot believe that he ever
drank enough to confuse his excellent faculties. He was just rather than
merciful at the card-table and he was prepared to punish presumption
with rigour. He had few illusions, for here are some of the things that
life had taught him: "Men hate those whom they have injured; men love
those whom they have benefited; men naturally avoid their benefactors;
men are universally actuated by self-interest; gratitude is a lively
sense of expected benefits; promises are never forgotten by those to
whom they are made, usually by those who make them."

It may be presumed that he was a Southerner, for while speaking of Jack
Pots, which he describes as a frivolous attempt to make the game more
interesting, he remarks that they are not popular in the South. "This
last fact," he says, "contains much promise, because the South is the
conservative portion of the country, and may be relied on as the last
resort of good sense in social matters. The revolutionary Kossuth made
no progress below Richmond; neither Spiritualism, nor Free Love, nor
Communism, has ever been received with the least favour by the Southern
mind; and it is for this reason that we greatly respect the Southern
verdict upon the Jack Pot." It was in his day an innovation and he
condemned it. "The time has arrived when all additions to the present
standard combinations in Draw Poker must be worthless; the game being
complete. The Jack Pot," he says, "was invented (in Toledo, Ohio) by
reckless players to compensate losses incurred by playing against
cautious players; and the principle is the same as if a party should
play whist for stakes, and all be obliged every few minutes to stop, and
purchase tickets in a lottery; or raffle for a turkey; or share a deal
in Keno."

Poker is a game for gentlemen (he does not hesitate to make frequent use
of this abused word; he lived in a day when to be a gentleman had its
obligations but also its privileges) and a straight flush is to be
respected, not because you make money on it ("I have never seen anyone
make much money upon a straight flush," he says) but "because it
prevents any hand from being _absolutely_ the winning hand, and thus
relieves gentlemen from the necessity of betting on a certainty. Without
the use of straights, and hence without the use of a straight flush,
four aces would be a certainty and no gentleman could do more than
_call_ on them." This, I confess, catches me on the raw, for once in my
life I had a straight flush, and bet on it till I was called.

Mr. John Blackbridge had personal dignity, rectitude, humour and common
sense. "The amusements of mankind," he says, "have not as yet received
proper recognition at the hands of the makers of the civil law, and of
the unwritten social law," and he had no patience with the persons who
condemn the most agreeable pastime that has been invented, namely
gambling, because risk is attached to it. Every transaction in life is a
risk, he truly observes, and involves the question of loss and gain. "To
retire to rest at night is a practice that is fortified by countless
precedents, and it is generally regarded as prudent and necessary. Yet
it is surrounded by risks of every kind." He enumerates them and finally
sums up his argument with these reasonable words: "If social circles
welcome the banker and merchant who live by taking fair risks for the
sake of profit, there is no apparent reason why they should not at least
tolerate the man who at times employs himself in giving and taking fair
risks for the sake of amusement." But here his good sense is obvious.
"Twenty years of experience in the city of New York, both professionally
(you must not forget that he is an actuary and counsellor-at-law) and as
a student of social life, satisfy me that the average American gentleman
in a large city has not over three thousand dollars a year to spend upon
amusements. Will it be fair to devote more than one-third of this fund
to cards? I do not think that anyone will say that one-third is not
ample allowance for a single amusement. Given, therefore, a thousand
dollars a year for the purpose of playing Draw Poker, what should be the
limit of the stakes, in order that the average American gentleman may
play the game with a contented mind, and with the certainty not only
that he can pay his losses, but that his winnings will be paid to him?"
Mr. Blackbridge has no doubt that the answer is two dollars and a half.
"The game of Poker should be intellectual and not emotional; and it is
impossible to exclude the emotions from it, if the stakes are so high
that the question of loss and gain penetrates to the feelings." From
this quotation it may be seen that Mr. Blackbridge looked upon poker as
only on the side a game of chance. He considered that it needed as much
force of character, mental ability, power of decision and insight into
motive to play poker as to govern a country or to lead an army, and I
have an idea that on the whole he would have thought it a more sensible
use of a man's faculties.

I am tempted to quote interminably, for Mr. Blackbridge seldom writes a
sentence that is other than characteristic, and his language is
excellent; it is dignified as befits his subject and his condition (he
does not forget that he is a gentleman), measured, clear and pointed.
His phrase takes an ample sweep when he treats of mankind and its
foibles, but he can be as direct and simple as you please. Could
anything be better than this terse but adequate description of a
card-sharper? "He was a very good-looking man of about forty years of
age, having the appearance of one who had been leading a temperate and
thoughtful life." But I will content myself with giving a few of his
aphorisms and wise saws chosen almost at random from the wealth of his
book.

"Let your chips talk for you. A silent player is so far forth, a
mystery; and a mystery is always feared."

"In this game never do anything that you are not compelled to; while
cheerfully responding to your obligations."

"At Draw Poker all statements not called for by the laws of the game, or
supported by ocular demonstration, may be set down as fictitious;
designed to enliven the path of truth throughout the game, as flowers in
summer enliven the margins of the highway."

"Lost money is never recovered. After losing you may win, but the losing
does not bring the winning."

"No gentleman will ever play any game of cards with the design of
habitually winning and never losing."

"A gentleman is always willing to pay a fair price for recreation and
amusement."

"...that habit of mind which continually leads us to undervalue the
mental force of other men, while we continually overvalue their good
luck."

"The injury done to your capital by a loss is never compensated by the
benefit done to your capital by a gain of the same amount."

"Players usually straddle when they are in bad luck, upon the principle
that bad play and bad luck united will win. A slight degree of
intoxication aids to perfect this intellectual deduction."

"Euchre is a contemptible game."

"The lower cards as well as the lower classes are only useful in
combination or in excess, and cannot be depended upon under any other
circumstances."

"It is a hard matter to hold four Aces as steadily as a pair, but the
table will bear their weight with as much equanimity as a pair of
deuces."

Of good luck and bad luck: "To feel emotions over such incidents is
unworthy of a man; and it is much more unworthy to express them. But no
words need be wasted over practices which all men despise in others;
and, in their reflecting moments, lament in themselves."

"Endorsing for your friends is a bad habit, but it is nothing to playing
Poker on credit.... Debit and credit ought never to interfere with
the fine intellectual calculations of this game."

There is a grand ring in his remarks on the player who has trained his
intellect to bring logic to bear upon the principles and phenomena of
the game. "He will thus feel a constant sense of security amid all
possible fluctuations that occur, and he will also abstain from pressing
an ignorant or an intellectually weak opponent, beyond what may be
necessary either for the purpose of playing the game correctly, or of
punishing presumption."

I leave Mr. John Blackbridge with this last word and I can hear him
saying it gently, but with a tolerant smile:

"For we must take human nature as it is."




RAW MATERIAL


I have long had in mind a novel in which a card-sharper was the
principal character; and, going up and down the world, I have kept my
eyes open for members of this profession. Because the idea is prevalent
that it is a slightly dishonourable one the persons who follow it do not
openly acknowledge the fact. Their reticence is such that it is often
not till you have become quite closely acquainted with them, or even
have played cards with them two or three times, that you discover in
what fashion they earn their living. But even then they have a
disinclination to enlarge upon the mysteries of their craft. They have a
weakness for passing themselves off for cavalrymen, commercial agents or
landed proprietors. This snobbish attitude makes them the most difficult
class in the world for the novelist to study. It has been my good
fortune to meet a number of these gentlemen, and though I have found
them affable, obliging and debonair, I have no sooner hinted, however
discreetly, at my curiosity (after all purely professional) in the
technique of their calling than they have grown shy and uncommunicative.
An airy reference on my part to stacking the cards has made them assume
immediately the appearance of a clam. I am not easily discouraged, and
learning by experience that I could hope for no good results from a
direct method, I have adopted the oblique. I have been childlike with
them and bland. I have found that they gave me their attention and even
their sympathy. Though they confessed honestly that they had never read
a word I had written they were interested by the fact that I was a
writer. I suppose they felt obscurely that I too followed a calling that
the Philistine regarded without indulgence. But I have been forced to
gather my facts by a bold surmise. It has needed patience and industry.

It may be imagined with what enthusiasm I made the acquaintance a little
while ago of two gentlemen who seemed likely to add appreciably to my
small store of information. I was travelling from Haiphong on a French
liner going East, and they joined the ship at Hong-Kong. They had gone
there for the races and were now on their way back to Shanghai. I was
going there too, and thence to Peking. I soon learned that they had come
from New York for a trip, were bound for Peking also, and by a happy
coincidence meant to return to America in the ship in which I had myself
booked a passage. I was naturally attracted to them, for they were
pleasant fellows, but it was not till a fellow-passenger warned me that
they were professional gamblers that I settled down to complete
enjoyment of their acquaintance. I had no hope that they would ever
discuss with frankness their interesting occupation, but I expected from
a hint here, from a casual remark there, to learn some very useful
things.

One--Campbell was his name--was a man in the late thirties, small, but
so well built as not to look short, slender, with large, melancholy eyes
and beautiful hands. But for a premature baldness he would have been
more than commonly good-looking. He was neatly dressed. He spoke slowly,
in a low voice, and his movements were deliberate. The other was made on
another pattern. He was a big, burly man with a red face and crisp black
hair, of powerful appearance, strong in the arm and pugnacious. His name
was Peterson.

The merits of the combination were obvious. The elegant, exquisite
Campbell had the subtle brain, the knowledge of character, and the deft
hands; but the hazards of the card-sharper's life are many, and when it
came to a scrap Peterson's ready fist must often have proved invaluable.
I do not know how it spread through the ship so quickly that a blow of
Peterson's would stretch any man out. But during the short voyage from
Hong-Kong to Shanghai they never even suggested a game of cards. Perhaps
they had done well during the race-week and felt entitled to a holiday.
They were certainly enjoying the advantages of not living for the time
in a dry country and I do not think I do them an injustice if I say that
for the most part they were far from sober. Each one talked little of
himself but willingly of the other. Campbell informed me that Peterson
was one of the most distinguished mining engineers in New York and
Peterson assured me that Campbell was an eminent banker. He said that
his wealth was fabulous. And who was I not to accept ingenuously all
that was told me? But I thought it negligent of Campbell not to wear
jewellery of a more expensive character. It seemed to me that to use a
silver cigarette case was rather careless.

I stayed but a day in Shanghai, and though I met the pair again in
Peking I was then so much engaged that I saw little of them. I thought
it a little odd that Campbell should spend his entire time in the hotel.
I do not think he even went to see the Temple of Heaven. But I could
quite understand that from his point of view Peking was unsatisfactory
and I was not surprised when the pair returned to Shanghai, where, I
knew the wealthy merchants played for big money. I met them again in the
ship that was to take us across the Pacific and I could not but
sympathise with my friends when I saw that the passengers were little
inclined to gamble. There were no rich people among them. It was a dull
crowd. Campbell indeed suggested a game of poker, but no one would play
more than twenty-dollar table stakes, and Peterson, evidently not
thinking it worth his while, would not join. Although we played
afternoon and evening through the journey he sat down with us only on
the last day. I suppose he thought he might just as well make his bar
chits, and this he did very satisfactorily in a single sitting. But
Campbell evidently loved the game for itself. Of course it is only if
you have a passion for the business by which you earn your living that
you can make a success of it. The stakes were nothing to him and he
played all day and every day. It fascinated me to see the way in which
he dealt the cards, very slowly, with his delicate hands. His eyes
seemed to bore through the back of each one. He drank heavily, but
remained quiet and self-controlled. His face was expressionless. I
judged him to be a perfect card-player and I wished that I could see him
at work. It increased my esteem for him to see that he could take what
was only a relaxation so seriously.

I parted with the pair at Victoria and concluded that I should never see
them again. I set about sorting my impressions and made notes of the
various points that I thought would prove useful.

When I arrived in New York I found an invitation to luncheon at the Ritz
with an old friend of mine. When I went she said to me:

"It's quite a small party. A man is coming whom I think you'll like.
He's a prominent banker; he's bringing a friend with him."

The words were hardly out of her mouth when I saw coming up to us
Campbell and Peterson. The truth flashed across me: Campbell really was
an opulent banker; Peterson really was a distinguished engineer; they
were not card-sharpers at all. I flatter myself I kept my face, but as I
blandly shook hands with them I muttered under my breath furiously:

"Impostors!"




STRAIGHT FLUSH


I am not a bad sailor and when under stress of weather the game broke up
I did not go below. We were in the habit of playing poker into the small
hours, a mild game that could hurt nobody, but it had been blowing all
day and with nightfall the wind strengthened to half a gale. One or two
of our bunch admitted that they felt none too comfortable and one or two
others played with unwonted detachment. But even if you are not sick
dirty weather at sea is an unpleasant thing. I hate the fool who tells
you he loves a storm and tramping the deck lustily vows that it can
never be too rough for him. When the woodwork groans and creaks, glasses
crash to the floor and you lurch in your chair as the ship heels over,
when the wind howls and the waves thunder against the side, I very much
prefer dry land. I think no one was sorry when one of the players said
he had had enough, and the last round of jack pots was agreed to without
demur. I remained alone in the smoking-room, for I knew I should not
easily get to sleep in that racket and I could not read in bed with any
comfort when the North Pacific kept dashing itself against my
port-holes. I shuffled together the two packs we had been playing with
and set out a complicated patience.

I had been playing about ten minutes when the door was opened with a
blast of wind that sent my cards flying, and two passengers, rather
breathless, slipped into the smoking-room. We were not a full ship and
we were ten days out from Hong-Kong, so that I had had time to become
acquainted with pretty well everyone on board. I had spoken on several
occasions to the pair who now entered, and seeing me by myself they came
over to my table.

They were very old men, both of them. That perhaps was what had brought
them together, for they had first met when they got on board at
Hong-Kong, and now you saw them sitting together in the smoking-room
most of the day, not talking very much, but just comfortable to be side
by side, with a bottle of Vichy water between them. They were very rich
old men too and that was a bond between them. The rich feel at ease in
one another's company. They know that money means merit. Their
experience of the poor is that they always want something. It is true
that the poor admire the rich and it is pleasant to be admired, but they
envy them as well and this prevents their admiration from being quite
candid. Mr. Rosenbaum was a little hunched-up Jew, very frail in clothes
that looked too big for him, and he gave you the impression of hanging
on to mortality only by a hair. His ancient, emaciated body looked as
though it were already attacked by the corruption of the grave. The only
expression his face ever bore was one of cunning, but it was purely
habitual, the result of ever so many years astuteness; he was a kindly,
friendly person, very free with his drinks and cigars, and his charity
was world-famous. The other was called Donaldson. He was a Scot, but had
gone to California as a little boy and made a great deal of money
mining. He was short and stout, with a red, clean-shaven, shiny face and
no hair but a sickle of silver above his neck, and very gentle eyes.
Whatever force he had had to make his way in the world had been worn
away by the years and he was now a picture of mild beneficence.

"I thought you'd turned in long ago," I remarked.

"I should have," returned the Scot, "only Mr. Rosenbaum kept me up
talking of old times."

"What's the good of going to bed when you can't sleep?" said Mr.
Rosenbaum.

"Walk ten times round the deck with me to-morrow morning and you'll
sleep all right."

"I've never taken any exercise in my life and I'm not going to begin
now."

"That's foolishness. You'd be twice the man you are now if you'd taken
exercise. Look at me. You'd never think I was seventy-nine, would you?"

Mr. Rosenbaum looked critically at Mr. Donaldson.

"No, I wouldn't. You're very well preserved. You look younger than me
and I'm only seventy-six. But then I never had a chance to take care of
myself."

At that moment the steward came up.

"The bar's just going to close, gentlemen. Is there anything I can get
you?"

"It's a stormy night," said Mr. Rosenbaum. "Let's have a bottle of
champagne."

"Small Vichy for me," said Mr. Donaldson.

"Oh, very well, small Vichy for me too."

The steward went away.

"But mind you," continued Mr. Rosenbaum testily, "I wouldn't have done
without the things you've done without, not for all the money in the
world."

Mr. Donaldson gave me his gentle smile.

"Mr. Rosenbaum can't get over it because I've never touched a card nor a
drop of alcohol for fifty-seven years."

"Now I ask you, what sort of a life is that?"

"I was a very heavy drinker when I was a young fellow and a desperate
gambler, but I had a very terrible experience. It was a lesson to me and
I took it."

"Tell him about it," said Mr. Rosenbaum. "He's an author. He'll write it
up and perhaps he'll be able to make his passage money."

"It's not a story I like telling very much even now. I'll make it as
short as I can. Me and three others had staked out a claim, friends all
of us, and the oldest wasn't twenty-five; there was me and my partner
and a couple of brothers, McDermott their name was, but they were more
like friends than brothers. What was one's was the other's, and one
wouldn't go into town without the other went too, and they were always
laughing and joking together. A fine clean pair of boys, over six feet
high both of them, and handsome. We were a wild bunch and we had pretty
good luck on the whole and when we made money we didn't hesitate to
spend it. Well, one night we'd all been drinking very heavily and we
started a poker game. I guess we were a good deal drunker than we
realised. Anyhow suddenly a row started between the McDermotts. One of
them accused the other of cheating. 'You take that back,' cried Jamie.
'I'll see you in hell first,' says Eddie. And before me and my partner
could do anything Jamie had pulled out his gun and shot his brother
dead."

The ship gave a huge roll and we all clung to our seats. In the
steward's pantry there was a great clatter as bottles and glasses slid
along a shelf. It was strange to hear that grim little story told by
that mild old man. It was a story of another age and you could hardly
believe that this fat, red-faced little fellow, with his silver fringe
of hair, in a dinner jacket, two large pearls in his shirt-front, had
really taken part in it.

"What happened then?" I asked.

"We sobered up pretty quick. At first Jamie couldn't believe Eddie was
dead. He took him in his arms and kept calling him. 'Eddie,' he says,
'wake up, old boy, wake up.' He cried all night and next day we rode in
with him to town, forty miles it was, me on one side of him and my
partner on the other, and handed him over to the sheriff. I was crying
too when we shook hands with him and said good-bye. I told my partner
I'd never touch a card again or drink as long as I lived, and I never
have, and I never will."

Mr. Donaldson looked down, and his lips were trembling. He seemed to see
again that scene of long ago. There was one thing I should have liked to
ask him about, but he was evidently so much moved I did not like to.
They seem not to have hesitated, his partner and himself, but delivered
up this wretched boy to justice as though it were the most natural thing
in the world. It suggested that even in those rough, wild men the
respect for the law had somehow the force of an instinct. A little
shiver ran through me. Mr. Donaldson emptied his glass of Vichy and with
a curt good-night left us.

"The old fellow's getting a bit childish," said Mr. Rosenbaum. "I don't
believe he was ever very bright."

"Well, apparently he was bright enough to make an awful lot of money."

"But how? In those days in California you didn't want brains to make
money, you only wanted luck. I know what I'm talking about. Johannesburg
was the place where you had to have your wits about you. Jo'burg in the
'eighties. It was grand. We were a tough lot of guys, I can tell you. It
was each for himself and the devil take the hindmost."

He took a meditative sip of his Vichy.

"You talk of your cricket and baseball, your golf and tennis and
football, you can have them, they're all very well for boys; is it a
reasonable thing, I ask you, for a grown man to run about and hit a
ball? Poker's the only game fit for a grown man. Then your hand is
against every man and every man's hand is against yours. Team-work? Who
ever made a fortune by team-work? There's only one way to make a fortune
and that's to down the fellow who's up against you."

"I didn't know you were a poker player," I interrupted. "Why don't you
take a hand one evening?"

"I don't play any more. I've given it up too, but for the only reason a
man should. I can't see myself giving it up because a friend of mine was
unlucky enough to get killed. Anyway a man who's damn fool enough to get
killed isn't worth having as a friend. But in the old days! If you
wanted to know what poker was you ought to have been in South Africa
then. It was the biggest game I've ever seen. And they were fine
players; there wasn't a crooked dodge they weren't up to. It was grand.
Just to give you an example, one night I was playing with some of the
biggest men in Johannesburg and I was called away. There was a couple of
thousand pounds in the pot! 'Deal me a hand, I won't keep you waiting,'
I said. 'All right,' they said, 'don't hurry.' Well, I wasn't gone more
than a minute. When I came back I picked up my cards and saw I'd got a
straight flush to the queen. I didn't say a word, I just threw in my
hand. I knew my company. And do you know, I was wrong."

"What do you mean? I don't understand."

"It was a perfectly straight deal and the pot was won on three sevens.
But how could I tell that? Naturally I thought someone else had a
straight flush to the king. It looked to me just the sort of hand I
might lose a hundred thousand pounds on."

"Too bad," I said.

"I very nearly had a stroke. And it was on account of another pat
straight flush that I gave up playing poker. I've only had about five in
my life."

"I believe the chances are nearly sixty-six thousand to one against."

"In San Francisco it was, the year before last. I'd been playing in poor
luck all the evening. I hadn't lost much money because I never had a
chance to play. I'd hardly had a pair and if I got a pair I couldn't
improve. Then I got a hand just as bad as the others and I didn't come
in. The man next me wasn't playing either and I showed him my hand.
'That's the kind of thing I've been getting all the evening,' I said.
'How can anyone be expected to play with cards like that?' 'Well, I
don't know what more you want,' he said, as he looked at them. 'Most of
us would be prepared to come in on a straight flush.' 'What's that,' I
cried. I was trembling like a leaf. I looked at the cards again. I
thought I had two or three little hearts and two or three little
diamonds. It was a straight flush in hearts all right and I hadn't seen
it. My eyes, it was. I knew what it meant. Old age. I don't cry much.
I'm not that sort of man. But I couldn't help it then. I tried to
control myself, but the tears just rolled down my cheeks. Then I got up.
'I'm through, gentlemen,' I said. 'When a man's eyes are so dim that he
can't see a straight flush when it's dealt him he has no business to
play poker. Nature's given me a hint and I'm taking it. I'll never play
poker again as long as I live.' I cashed in my chips, all but one, and I
left the house. I've never played since."

Mr. Rosenbaum took a chip out of his waistcoat pocket and showed it to
me.

"I kept this as a souvenir. I always carry it about with me. I'm a
sentimental old fool, I know that, but, you see, poker was the only
thing I cared for. Now I've only got one thing left."

"What is that?" I asked.

A smile flickered across his cunning little face and behind his thick
glasses his rheumy eyes twinkled with ironic glee. He looked incredibly
astute and malicious. He gave the thin, high-pitched cackle of an old
man amused and answered with a single word: "Philanthropy."




THE END OF THE FLIGHT


I shook hands with the skipper and he wished me luck. Then I went down
to the lower deck crowded with passengers, Malays, Chinese and Dyaks,
and made my way to the ladder. Looking over the ship's side I saw that
my luggage was already in the boat. It was a large, clumsy-looking
craft, with a great square sail of bamboo matting, and it was crammed
full of gesticulating natives. I scrambled in and a place was made for
me. We were about three miles from the shore and a stiff breeze was
blowing. As we drew near I saw that the coconut trees in a green
abundance grew to the water's edge, and among them I saw the brown roofs
of the village. A Chinese who spoke English pointed out to me a white
bungalow as the residence of the District Officer. Though he did not
know it, it was with him that I was going to stay. I had a letter of
introduction to him in my pocket.

I felt somewhat forlorn when I landed and my bags were set down beside
me on the glistening beach. This was a remote spot to find myself in,
this little town on the north coast of Borneo, and I felt a trifle shy
at the thought of presenting myself to a total stranger with the
announcement that I was going to sleep under his roof, eat his food and
drink his whisky, till another boat came in to take me to the port for
which I was bound.

But I might have spared myself these misgivings, for the moment I
reached the bungalow and sent in my letter he came out, a sturdy, ruddy,
jovial man, of thirty-five perhaps, and greeted me with heartiness.
While he held my hand he shouted to a boy to bring drinks and to another
to look after my luggage. He cut short my apologies.

"Good God, man, you have no idea how glad I am to see you. Don't think
I'm doing anything for you in putting you up. The boot's on the other
leg. And stay as long as you damned well like. Stay a year."

I laughed. He put away his day's work, assuring me that he had nothing
to do that could not wait till the morrow, and threw himself into a long
chair. We talked and drank and talked. When the heat of the day wore off
we went for a long tramp in the jungle and came back wet to the skin. A
bath and a change were very grateful, and then we dined. I was tired out
and though my host was plainly willing to go on talking straight through
the night I was obliged to beg him to allow me to go to bed.

"All right, I'll just come along to your room and see everything's all
right."

It was a large room with verandahs on two sides of it, sparsely
furnished, but with a huge bed protected by mosquito netting.

"The bed is rather hard. Do you mind?"

"Not a bit. I shall sleep without rocking to-night."

My host looked at the bed reflectively.

"It was a Dutchman who slept in it last. Do you want to hear a funny
story?"

I wanted chiefly to go to bed, but he was my host, and being at times
somewhat of a humorist myself I know that it is hard to have an amusing
story to tell and find no listener.

"He came on the boat that brought you, on its last journey along the
coast, he came into my office and asked where the dak bungalow was. I
told him there wasn't one, but if he hadn't anywhere to go I didn't mind
putting him up. He jumped at the invitation. I told him to have his kit
sent along.

"'This is all I've got,' he said.

"He held out a little shiny black grip. It seemed a bit scanty, but it
was no business of mine, so I told him to go along to the bungalow and
I'd come as soon as I was through with my work. While I was speaking the
door of my office was opened and my clerk came in. The Dutchman had his
back to the door and it may be that my clerk opened it a bit suddenly.
Anyhow, the Dutchman gave a shout, he jumped about two feet into the air
and whipped out a revolver.

"'What the hell are you doing?' I said.

"When he saw it was the clerk he collapsed. He leaned against the desk,
panting, and upon my word he was shaking as though he'd got fever.

"'I beg your pardon,' he said. 'It's my nerves. My nerves are terrible.'

"'It looks like it,' I said.

"I was rather short with him. To tell you the truth I wished I hadn't
asked him to stop with me. He didn't look as though he'd been drinking a
lot and I wondered if he was some fellow the police were after. If he
were, I said to myself, he could hardly be such a fool as to walk right
into the lion's den.

"'You'd better go and lie down,' I said.

"He took himself off, and when I got back to my bungalow I found him
sitting quite quietly, but bolt upright, on the verandah. He'd had a
bath and shaved and put on clean things and he looked fairly
presentable.

"'Why are you sitting in the middle of the place like that?' I asked
him. 'You'll be much more comfortable in one of the long chairs.'

"'I prefer to sit up,' he said.

"Queer, I thought. But if a man in this heat would rather sit up than
lie down it's his own lookout. He wasn't much to look at, tallish and
heavily built, with a square head and close-cropped bristly hair. I
should think he was about forty. The thing that chiefly struck me about
him was his expression. There was a look in his eyes, blue eyes they
were and rather small, that beat me altogether; and his face sagged as
it were; it gave you the feeling he was going to cry. He had a way of
looking quickly over his left shoulder as though he thought he heard
something. By God, he was nervous. But we had a couple of drinks and he
began to talk. He spoke English very well; except for a slight accent
you'd never have known that he was a foreigner, and I'm bound to admit
he was a good talker. He'd been everywhere and he'd read any amount. It
was a treat to listen to him.

"We had three or four whiskies in the afternoon and a lot of gin pahits
later on, so that when dinner came along we were by way of being rather
hilarious and I'd come to the conclusion that he was a damned good
fellow. Of course we had a lot of whisky at dinner and I happened to
have a bottle of Benedictine, so we had some liqueurs afterwards. I
can't help thinking we both got very tight.

"And at last he told me why he'd come. It was a rum story."

My host stopped and looked at me with his mouth slightly open as though,
remembering it now, he was struck again with its rumness.

"He came from Sumatra, the Dutchman, and he'd done something to an
Achinese and the Achinese had sworn to kill him. At first he made light
of it, but the fellow tried two or three times and it began to be rather
a nuisance, so he thought he'd better go away for a bit. He went over to
Batavia and made up his mind to have a good time. But when he'd been
there a week he saw the fellow slinking along a wall. By God, he'd
followed him. It looked as though he meant business. The Dutchman began
to think it was getting beyond a joke and he thought the best thing he
could do would be to skip off to Soerabaya. Well, he was strolling about
there one day, you know how crowded the streets are, when he happened to
turn round and saw the Achinese walking quite quietly just behind him.
It gave him a turn. It would give anyone a turn.

"The Dutchman went straight back to his hotel, packed his things, and
took the next boat to Singapore. Of course he put up at the Van Wyck,
all the Dutch stay there, and one day when he was having a drink in the
courtyard in front of the hotel, the Achinese walked in as bold as
brass, looked at him for a minute, and walked out again. The Dutchman
told me he was just paralysed. The fellow could have stuck his kris into
him there and then and he wouldn't have been able to move a hand to
defend himself. The Dutchman knew he was just biding his time, that
damned native was going to kill him, he saw it in his eyes; and he went
all to pieces."

"But why didn't he go to the police?" I asked.

"I don't know. I expect it wasn't a thing he wanted the police to be
mixed up in."

"But what had he done to the man?"

"I don't know that either. He wouldn't tell me. But by the look he gave
when I asked him, I expect it was something pretty rotten. I have an
idea he knew he deserved whatever the Achinese could do."

My host lit a cigarette.

"Go on," I said.

"The skipper of the boat that runs between Singapore and Kuching lives
at the Van Wyck between trips and the boat was starting at dawn. The
Dutchman thought it a grand chance to give the fellow the slip; he left
his luggage at the hotel and walked down to the ship with the skipper,
as if he were just going to see him off, and stayed on her when she
sailed. His nerves were all anyhow by then. He didn't care about
anything but getting rid of the Achinese. He felt pretty safe at
Kuching. He got a room at the rest-house and bought himself a couple of
suits and some shirts in the Chinese shops. But he told me he couldn't
sleep. He dreamt of that man and half a dozen times he awakened just as
he thought a kris was being drawn across his throat. By God, I felt
quite sorry for him. He just shook as he talked to me and his voice was
hoarse with terror. That was the meaning of the look I had noticed. You
remember, I told you he had a funny look on his face and I couldn't tell
what it meant. Well, it was fear.

"And one day when he was in the club at Kuching he looked out of the
window and saw the Achinese sitting there. Their eyes met. The Dutchman
just crumpled up and fainted. When he came to, his first idea was to get
out. Well, you know, there's not a hell of a lot of traffic at Kuching
and this boat that brought you was the only one that gave him a chance
to get away quickly. He got on her. He was positive the man was not on
board."

"But what made him come here?"

"Well, the old tramp stops at a dozen places on the coast and the
Achinese couldn't possibly guess he'd chosen this one because he only
made up his mind to get off when he saw there was only one boat to take
the passengers ashore, and there weren't more than a dozen people in it.

"'I'm safe here for a bit at all events,' he said, 'and if I can only be
quiet for a while I shall get my nerve back.'

"'Stay as long as you like,' I said. 'You're all right here, at all
events till the boat comes along next month, and if you like we'll watch
the people who come off.'

"He was all over me. I could see what a relief it was to him.

"It was pretty late and I suggested to him that we should turn in. I
took him to his room to see that it was all right. He locked the door of
the bath-house and bolted the shutters, though I told him there was no
risk, and when I left him I heard him lock the door I had just gone out
of.

"Next morning when the boy brought me my tea I asked him if he'd called
the Dutchman. He said he was just going to. I heard him knock and knock
again. Funny, I thought. The boy hammered on the door, but there was no
answer. I felt a little nervous, so I got up. I knocked too. We made
enough noise to rouse the dead, but the Dutchman slept on. Then I broke
down the door. The mosquito curtains were neatly tucked in round the
bed. I pulled them apart. He was lying there on his back with his eyes
wide open. He was as dead as mutton. A kris lay across his throat, and
say I'm a liar if you like, but I swear to God it's true, there wasn't a
wound about him anywhere. The room was empty.

"Funny, wasn't it?"

"Well, that all depends on your idea of humour," I replied.

My host looked at me quickly.

"You don't mind sleeping in that bed, do you?"

"N-no. But I'd just as soon you'd told me the story to-morrow morning."




A CASUAL AFFAIR


I am telling this story in the first person, though I am in no way
connected with it, because I do not want to pretend to the reader that I
know more about it than I really do. The facts are as I state them, but
the reasons for them I can only guess, and it may be that when the
reader has read them he will think me wrong. No one can know for
certain. But if you are interested in human nature there are few things
more diverting than to consider the motives that have resulted in
certain actions. It was only by chance that I heard anything of the
unhappy circumstances at all. I was spending two or three days on an
island on the north coast of Borneo and the District Officer had very
kindly offered to put me up. I had been roughing it for some time and I
was glad enough to have a rest. The island had been at one time a place
of some consequence, with a Governor of its own, but was so no longer;
and now there was nothing much to be seen of its former importance
except the imposing stone house in which the Governor had once lived and
which now the District Officer, grumblingly because of its unnecessary
size, inhabited. But it was a comfortable house to stay in, with an
immense drawing-room, a dining-room large enough to seat forty people,
and lofty, spacious bedrooms. It was shabby, because the government at
Singapore very wisely spent as little money on it as possible; but I
rather liked this, and the heavy official furniture gave it a sort of
dull stateliness that was amusing. The garden was too large for the
District Officer to keep up and it was a wild tangle of tropical
vegetation. His name was Arthur Low; he was a quiet, smallish man in the
later thirties, married, with two young children. The Lows had not tried
to make themselves at home in this great place, but camped there, like
refugees from a stricken area, and looked forward to the time when they
would be moved to some other post where they could settle down in
surroundings more familiar to them.

I took a fancy to them at once. The D.O. had an easy manner and a
humorous way with him. I am sure he performed his various duties
admirably, but he did everything he could to avoid the official
demeanour. He was slangy of speech and pleasantly caustic. It was
charming to see him play with the two children. It was quite obvious
that he had found marriage a very satisfactory state. Mrs. Low was an
extremely nice little woman, plump, with dark eyes under fine eyebrows,
not very pretty, but certainly attractive. She looked healthy and she
had high spirits. They chaffed one another continually and each one
seemed to look upon the other as immensely comic. Their jokes were
neither very good nor very new, but they thought them so killing that
you were obliged to laugh with them.

I think they were glad to see me, especially Mrs. Low, for with nothing
much to do but keep an eye on the house and the children, she was thrown
very much on her own resources. There were so few white people on the
island that the social life was soon exhausted; and before I had been
there twenty-four hours she pressed me to stay a week, a month or a
year. On the evening of my arrival they gave a dinner-party to which the
official population, the government surveyor, the doctor, the
schoolmaster, the chief of constabulary, were invited, but on the
following evening the three of us dined by ourselves. At the
dinner-party the guests had brought their house-boys to help, but that
night we were waited on by the Lows' one boy and my travelling servant.
They brought in the coffee and left us to ourselves. Low and I lit
cheroots.

"You know that I've seen you before," said Mrs. Low.

"Where?" I asked.

"In London. At a party. I heard someone point you out to somebody else.
In Carlton House Terrace at Lady Kastellan's."

"Oh? When was that?"

"Last time we were home on leave. There were Russian dancers."

"I remember. About two or three years ago. Fancy you being there!"

"That's exactly what we said to one another at the time," said Low, with
his slow, engaging smile. "We'd never been at such a party in our
lives."

"It made a great splash, you know," I said. "It was the party of the
season. Did you enjoy it?"

"I hated every minute of it," said Mrs. Low.

"Don't let's overlook the fact that you insisted on going, Bee," said
Low. "I knew we'd be out of it among all those swells. My dress clothes
were the same I'd had at Cambridge and they'd never been much of a fit."

"I bought a frock specially at Peter Robinson's. It looked lovely in the
shop. I wished I hadn't wasted so much money when I got there; I never
felt so dowdy in my life."

"Well, it didn't much matter. We weren't introduced to anybody."

I remembered the party quite well. The magnificent rooms in Carlton
House Terrace had been decorated with great festoons of yellow roses and
at one end of the vast drawing-room a stage had been erected. Special
costumes of the Regency period had been designed for the dancers and a
modern composer had written the music for the two charming ballets they
danced. It was hard to look at it all and not allow the vulgar thought
to cross one's mind that the affair must have cost an enormous amount of
money. Lady Kastellan was a beautiful woman and a great hostess, but I
do not think anyone would have ascribed to her any vast amount of
kindliness, she knew too many people to care much for any one in
particular, and I couldn't help wondering why she had asked to such a
grand party two obscure and quite unimportant little persons from a
distant colony.

"Had you known Lady Kastellan long?" I asked.

"We didn't know her at all. She sent us a card and we went because I
wanted to see what she was like," said Mrs. Low.

"She's a very able woman," I said.

"I dare say she is. She hadn't an idea who we were when the butler man
announced us, but she remembered at once. 'Oh, yes,' she said, 'you're
poor Jack's friends. Do go and find yourselves seats where you can see.
You'll adore Lifar, he's too marvellous.' And then she turned to say how
d'you do to the next people. But she gave me a look. She wondered how
much I knew and she saw at once that I knew everything."

"Don't talk such nonsense, darling," said Low. "How could she know all
you think she did by just looking at you, and how could you tell what
she was thinking?"

"It's true, I tell you. We said everything in that one look, and unless
I'm very much mistaken I spoilt her party for her."

Low laughed and I smiled, for Mrs. Low spoke in a tone of triumphant
vindictiveness.

"You are terribly indiscreet, Bee."

"Is she a great friend of yours?" Mrs. Low asked me.

"Hardly. I've met her here and there for fifteen years. I've been to a
good many parties at her house. She gives very good parties and she
always asks you to meet the people you want to see."

"What d'you think of her?"

"She's by way of being a considerable figure in London. She's amusing to
talk to and she's nice to look at. She does a lot for art and music.
What do _you_ think of her?"

"I think she's a bitch," said Mrs. Low, with cheerful but decided
frankness.

"That settles her," I said.

"Tell him, Arthur."

Low hesitated for a moment.

"I don't know that I ought to."

"If you don't, I shall."

"Bee's got her knife into her all right," he smiled. "It was rather a
bad business really."

He made a perfect smoke-ring and watched it with absorption.

"Go on, Arthur," said Mrs. Low.

"Oh, well. It was before we went home last time. I was D.O. in Selangor
and one day they came and told me that a white man was dead in a small
town a couple of hours up the river. I didn't know there was a white man
living there. I thought I'd better go and see about it, so I got in the
launch and went up. I made inquiries when I got there. The police didn't
know anything about him except that he'd been living there for a couple
of years with a Chinese woman in the bazaar. It was rather a picturesque
bazaar, tall houses on each side, with a board walk in between, built on
piles on the river-bank, and there were awnings above to keep out the
sun. I took a couple of policemen with me and they led me to the house.
They sold brass-ware in the shop below and the rooms above were let out.
The master of the shop took me up two flights of dark, rickety stairs,
foul with every kind of Chinese stench, and called out when we got to
the top. The door was opened by a middle-aged Chinese woman and I saw
that her face was all bloated with weeping. She didn't say anything, but
made way for us to pass. It wasn't much more than a cubby-hole under the
roof; there was a small window that looked on the street, but the awning
that stretched across it dimmed the light. There wasn't any furniture
except a deal table and a kitchen chair with a broken back. On a mat
against the wall a dead man was lying. The first thing I did was to have
the window opened. The room was so frowsty that I retched, and the
strongest smell was the smell of opium. There was a small oil-lamp on
the table and a long needle, and of course I knew what they were there
for. The pipe had been hidden. The dead man lay on his back with nothing
on but a sarong and a dirty singlet. He had long brown hair, going grey,
and a short beard. He was a white man all right. I examined him as best
I could. I had to judge whether death was due to natural causes. There
were no signs of violence. He was nothing but skin and bone. It looked
to me as though he might very likely have died of starvation. I asked
the man of the shop and the woman a number of questions. The policeman
corroborated their statements. It appeared that the man coughed a great
deal and brought up blood now and then, and his appearance suggested
that he might very well have had T.B. The Chinaman said he'd been a
confirmed opium smoker. It all seemed pretty obvious. Fortunately cases
of that sort are rare, but they're not unheard-of--the white man who
goes under and gradually sinks to the last stage of degradation. It
appeared that the Chinese woman had been fond of him. She'd kept him on
her own miserable earnings for the last two years. I gave the necessary
instructions. Of course I wanted to know who he was. I supposed he'd
been a clerk in some English firm or an assistant in an English store at
Singapore or Kuala Lumpur. I asked the Chinese woman if he'd left any
effects. Considering the destitution in which they'd lived it seemed a
rather absurd question, but she went to a shabby suit-case that lay in a
corner, opened it and showed me a square parcel about the size of two
novels put together wrapped in an old newspaper. I had a look at the
suit-case. It contained nothing of any value. I took the parcel."

Low's cheroot had gone out and he leaned over to relight it from one of
the candles on the table.

"I opened it. Inside was another wrapping, and on this, in a neat,
well-educated writing: To the District Officer, me as it happened, and
then the words: please deliver personally to the Viscountess Kastellan,
53 Carlton House Terrace, London, S.W. That was a bit of a surprise. Of
course I had to examine the contents. I cut the string and the first
thing I found was a gold and platinum cigarette-case. As you can imagine
I was mystified. From all I'd heard the pair of them, the dead man and
the Chinese woman, had scarcely enough to eat, and the cigarette-case
looked as if it had cost a packet. Besides the cigarette-case there was
nothing but a bundle of letters. There were no envelopes. They were in
the same neat writing as the directions and they were signed with the
initial J. There were forty or fifty of them. I couldn't read them all
there, but a rapid glance showed me that they were a man's love letters
to a woman. I sent for the Chinese woman to ask her the name of the dead
man. Either she didn't know or wouldn't tell me. I gave orders that he
should be buried and got back into the launch to go home. I told Bee."

He gave her his sweet little smile.

"I had to be rather firm with Arthur," she said. "At first he wouldn't
let me read the letters, but of course I wasn't going to put up with any
nonsense like that."

"It was none of our business."

"You had to find out the name if you could."

"And where exactly did you come in?"

"Oh, don't be so silly," she laughed. "I should have gone mad if you
hadn't let me read them."

"And did you find out his name?" I asked.

"No."

"Was there no address?"

"Yes, there was, and a very unexpected one. Most of the letters were
written on Foreign Office paper."

"That was funny."

"I didn't quite know what to do. I had half a mind to write to the
Viscountess Kastellan and explain the circumstances, but I didn't know
what trouble I might be starting; the directions were to deliver the
parcel to her personally, so I wrapped everything up again and put it in
the safe. We were going home on leave in the spring and I thought the
best thing was to leave everything over till then. The letters were by
way of being rather compromising."

"To put it mildly," giggled Mrs. Low. "The truth is they gave the whole
show away."

"I don't think we need go into that," said Low.

A slight altercation ensued; but I think on his part it was more for
form's sake, since he must have known that his desire to preserve an
official discretion stood small chance against his wife's determination
to tell me everything. She had a down on Lady Kastellan and didn't care
what she said about her. Her sympathies were with the man. Low did his
best to tone down her rash assertions. He corrected her exaggerations.
He told her that she'd let her imagination run away with her and had
read into the letters more than was there. She would have done it.
They'd evidently made a deep impression on her, and from her vivid
account and Low's interruptions I gained a fairly coherent impression of
them. It was plain for one thing that they were very moving.

"I can't tell you how it revolted me, the way Bee gloated over them,"
said Low.

"They were the most wonderful letters I've ever read. You never wrote
letters like that to me."

"What a damned fool you would have thought me if I had," he grinned.

She gave him a charming, affectionate smile.

"I suppose I should, and yet, God knows I was crazy about you, and I'm
damned if I know why."

The story emerged clearly enough. The writer, the mysterious J,
presumably a clerk in the Foreign Office, had fallen in love with Lady
Kastellan and she with him. They had become lovers and the early letters
were passionately lyrical. They were happy. They expected their love to
last for ever. He wrote to her immediately after he had left her and
told her how much he adored her and how much she meant to him. She was
never for a moment absent from his thoughts. It looked as though her
infatuation was equal to his, for in one letter he justified himself
because she had reproached him for not coming to some place where he
knew she would be. He told her what agony it had been to him that a
sudden job had prevented him from being with her when he'd so eagerly
looked forward to it.

Then came the catastrophe. How it came or why one could only guess. Lord
Kastellan learnt the truth. He not merely suspected his wife's
infidelity, he had proofs of it. There was a fearful scene between them,
she left him and went to her father's. Lord Kastellan announced his
intention of divorcing her. The letters changed in character. J. wrote
at once asking to see Lady Kastellan, but she begged him not to come.
Her father insisted that they shouldn't meet. J. was distressed at her
unhappiness and dismayed by the trouble he had brought upon her, and he
was deeply sympathetic because of what she was enduring at home, for her
father and mother were furious; but at the same time it was plain that
he was relieved that the crisis had come. Nothing mattered except that
they loved one another. He said he hated Kastellan. Let him bring his
action. The sooner they could get married the better. The correspondence
was one-sided, there were no letters from her, and one had to guess from
his replies what she said in them. She was obviously frightened out of
her wits and nothing that he could say helped. Of course he would have
to leave the Foreign Office. He assured her that this meant nothing to
him. He could get a job somewhere, in the colonies, where he would earn
much more money. He was sure he could make her happy. Naturally there
would be a scandal, but it would be forgotten, and away from England
people would not bother. He besought her to have courage. Then it looked
as though she had written somewhat peevishly. She hated being divorced,
Kastellan refused to take the blame on himself and be made respondent,
she did not want to leave London, it was her whole life, and bury
herself in some God-forsaken place on the other side of nowhere. He
answered unhappily. He said he would do anything she wanted. He implored
her not to love him less and he was tortured by the thought that this
disaster had changed her feelings for him. She reproached him for the
mess they had got into; he did not try to defend himself; he was
prepared to admit that he alone was to blame. Then it appeared that
pressure was being brought to bear on Kastellan from some high quarter
and there was even yet a chance that something might be arranged.
Whatever she wrote made J., the unknown J., desperate. His letter was
almost incoherent. He begged her again to see him, he implored her to
have strength, he repeated that she meant everything in the world to
him, he was frightened that she would let people influence her, he asked
her to burn her boats behind her and bolt with him to Paris. He was
frantic. Then it seemed that for some days she did not write to him. He
could not understand. He did not know if she was receiving his letters.
He was in an agony. The blow fell. She must have written to say that if
he would resign from the Foreign Office and leave England her husband
was prepared to take her back. His answer was broken-hearted.

"He never saw through her for a moment," said Mrs. Low.

"What was there to see through?" I asked.

"Don't you know what she wrote to him? I do."

"Don't be such an ass, Bee. You can't possibly know."

"Ass yourself. Of course I do. She put it up to him. She threw herself
on his mercy. She dragged in her father and mother. She brought in her
children; I bet that was the first thought she'd given them since they
were born. She knew that he loved her so much that he was willing to do
everything in the world for her, even lose her. She knew that he was
prepared to accept the sacrifice of his love, his life, his career,
everything for her sake, and she let him make it. She let the offer come
from him. She let him persuade her to accept it."

I listened to Mrs. Low with a smile, but with attention. She was a woman
and she felt instinctively how a woman in those circumstances would act.
She thought it hateful, but she felt in her bones that in just that way
would she herself have acted. Of course it was pure invention, with
nothing but J.'s letter as a foundation, but I had an impression that it
was very likely.

That was the last letter in the bundle.

I was astonished. I had known Lady Kastellan for a good many years, but
only casually; and I knew her husband even less. He was immersed in
politics, he was Under-Secretary at the Home Office at the time of the
great do to which the Lows and I had been invited; and I never saw him
but in his own house. Lady Kastellan had the reputation of being a
beauty; she was tall and her figure was good in a massive way. She had a
lovely skin. Her blue eyes were large, set rather wide apart and her
face was broad. It gave her a slightly cow-like look. She had pretty
pale brown hair and she held herself superbly. She was a woman of great
self-possession, and it amazed me to learn that she had ever surrendered
to such passion as the letters suggested. She was ambitious and there
was no doubt that she was very useful to Kastellan in his political
life. I should have thought her incapable of indiscretion. Searching my
memory I seemed to remember hearing years before that the Kastellans
were not getting on very well, but I had never heard any details, and
whenever I saw them it looked as though they were on very good terms
with one another. Kastellan was a big, red-faced fellow with sleek black
hair, jovial and loud-voiced, but with little shrewd eyes that watched
and noted. He was industrious, an effective speaker, but a trifle
pompous. He was a little too conscious of his own importance. He did not
let you forget that he had rank and wealth. He was inclined to be
patronising with people of less consequence than himself.

I could well believe that when he discovered that his wife was having an
affair with a junior clerk in the Foreign Office there was a devil of a
row. Lady Kastellan's father had been for many years permanent
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs and it would have been more than
usually embarrassing for his daughter to be divorced on account of one
of his subordinates. For all I knew Kastellan was in love with his wife
and he may have been teased by a very natural jealousy. But he was a
proud man, deficient in humour. He feared ridicule. The rle of the
deceived husband is difficult to play with dignity. I do not suppose he
wanted a scandal that might well jeopardise his political future. It may
be that Lady Kastellan's advisers threatened to defend the case and the
prospect of washing dirty linen in public horrified him. It is likely
enough that pressure was brought to bear on him and the solution to
forgive and take his wife back if her lover were definitely eliminated
may have seemed the best to adopt. I have no doubt Lady Kastellan
promised everything she was asked.

She must have had a bad fright. I didn't take such a severe view of her
conduct as Mrs. Low. She was very young; she was not more than
thirty-five now. Who could tell by what accident she had become J.'s
mistress? I suspect that love had caught her unawares and that she was
in the middle of an affair almost before she knew what she was about.
She must always have been a cold, self-possessed woman, but it is just
with people like that that nature at times plays strange tricks. I am
prepared to believe that she lost her head completely. There is no means
of knowing how Kastellan discovered what was going on, but the fact that
she kept her lover's letters shows that she was too much in love to be
prudent. Arthur Low had mentioned that it was strange to find in the
dead man's possession his letters and not hers; but that seemed to me
easily explainable. At the time of the catastrophe they were doubtless
given back to him in exchange for hers. He very naturally kept them.
Reading them again he could relive the love that meant everything in the
world to him.

I didn't suppose that Lady Kastellan, devoured by passion, could ever
have considered what would happen if she were found out. When the blow
fell it is not strange that she was scared out of her wits. She may not
have had more to do with her children than most women who live the sort
of life she lived, but she may for all that not have wanted to lose
them. I did not even know whether she had ever cared for her husband,
but from what I knew of her I guessed that she was not indifferent to
his name and wealth. The future must have looked pretty grim. She was
losing everything, the grand house in Carlton House Terrace, the
position, the security; her father could give her no money and her lover
had still to find a job. It may not have been heroic that she should
yield to the entreaties of her family, but it was comprehensible.

While I was thinking all this Arthur Low went on with his story.

"I didn't quite know how to set about getting in touch with Lady
Kastellan," he said. "It was awkward not knowing the chap's name.
However, when we got home I wrote to her. I explained who I was and said
that I'd been asked to give her some letters and a gold and platinum
cigarette-case by a man who'd recently died in my district. I said I'd
been asked to deliver them to her in person. I thought perhaps she
wouldn't answer at all or else communicate with me through a solicitor.
But she answered all right. She made an appointment for me to come to
Carlton House Terrace at twelve one morning. Of course it was stupid of
me, but when finally I stood on the doorstep and rang the bell I was
quite nervous. The door was opened by a butler. I said I had an
appointment with Lady Kastellan. A footman took my hat and coat. I was
led upstairs to an enormous drawing-room.

"'I'll tell her ladyship you're here, sir,' the butler said.

"He left me and I sat on the edge of a chair and looked round. There
were huge pictures on the walls, portraits you know, I don't know who
they were by, Reynolds I should think and Romney, and there was a lot of
Oriental china, and gilded consoles and mirrors. It was all terribly
grand and it made me feel very shabby and insignificant. My suit smelt
of camphor and it was baggy at the knees. My tie felt a bit loud. The
butler came in again and asked me to go with him. He opened another door
from the one I'd come in by and I found myself in a further room, not so
large as the drawing-room, but large all the same and very grand too. A
lady was standing by the fireplace. She looked at me as I came in and
bowed slightly. I felt frightfully awkward as I walked along the whole
length of the room and I was afraid of stumbling over the furniture. I
can only hope I didn't look such a fool as I felt. She didn't ask me to
sit down.

"'I understand you have some things that you wish to deliver to me
personally,' she said. 'It's very good of you to bother.'

"She didn't smile. She seemed perfectly self-possessed, but I had a
notion that she was sizing me up. To tell you the truth it put my back
up. I didn't much fancy being treated as if I were a chauffeur applying
for a situation.

"'Please don't mention it,' I said, rather stiffly. 'It's all in the
day's work.'

"'Have you got the things with you?' she asked.

"I didn't answer, but I opened the dispatch-case I'd brought with me and
took out the letters. I handed them to her. She accepted them without a
word. She gave them a glance. She was very much made up, but I swear she
went white underneath. The expression of her face didn't change. I
looked at her hands. They were trembling a little. Then she seemed to
pull herself together.

"'Oh, I'm so sorry,' she said. 'Won't you sit down?'

"I took a chair. For a moment she didn't seem to know quite what to do.
She held the letters in her hand. I, knowing what they were, wondered
what she felt. She didn't give much away. There was a desk beside the
chimney-piece and she opened a drawer and put them in. Then she sat down
opposite me and asked me to have a cigarette. I handed her the
cigarette-case. I'd had it in my breast pocket.

"'I was asked to give you this too,' I said.

"She took it and looked at it. For a moment she didn't speak and I
waited. I didn't quite know if I ought to get up and go.

"'Did you know Jack well?' she asked suddenly.

"'I didn't know him at all,' I answered. 'I never saw him until after
his death.'

"'I had no idea he was dead till I got your note,' she said. 'I'd lost
sight of him for a long time. Of course he was a very old friend of
mine.'

"I wondered if she thought I hadn't read the letters or if she'd
forgotten what sort of letters they were. If the sight of them had given
her a shock she had quite got over it by then. She spoke almost
casually.

"'What did he die of in point of fact?' she asked.

"'Tuberculosis, opium and starvation,' I answered.

"'How dreadful,' she said.

"But she said it quite conventionally. Whatever she felt she wasn't
going to let me see. She was as cool as a cucumber, but I fancied,
though it may have been only my fancy, that she was watching me, with
all her wits about her, and wondering how much I knew. I think she'd
have given a good deal to be certain of that.

"'How did you happen to get hold of these things?' she asked me.

"'I took possession of his effects after his death,' I explained. 'They
were done up in a parcel and I was directed to give them to you.'

"'Was there any need to undo the parcel?'

"I wish I could tell you what frigid insolence she managed to get into
the question. It made me go white and I hadn't any make-up on to hide
it. I answered that I thought it my duty to find out if I could who the
dead man was. I should have liked to be able to communicate with his
relations.

"'I see,' she said.

"She looked at me as though that were the end of the interview and she
expected me to get up and take myself off. But I didn't. I thought I'd
like to get a bit of my own back. I told her how I'd been sent for and
how I'd found him. I described the whole thing and I told her how, as
far as I knew, there'd been no one at the end to take pity on him but a
Chinese woman. Suddenly the door was opened and we both looked round. A
big, middle-aged man came in and stopped when he saw me.

"'I beg your pardon,' he said, 'I didn't know you were busy.'

"'Come in,' she said, and when he had approached, 'This is Mr. Low. My
husband.'

"Lord Kastellan gave me a nod.

"'I just wanted to ask you,' he began, and then he stopped.

"His eyes had caught the cigarette-case that was still resting on Lady
Kastellan's open hand. I don't know if she saw the look of inquiry in
his eyes. She gave him a friendly little smile. She was quite amazingly
mistress of herself.

"'Mr. Low comes from the Federated Malay States. Poor Jack Almond's dead
and he's left me his cigarette-case.'

"'Really?' said Lord Kastellan. 'When did he die?'

"'About six months ago,' I said.

"Lady Kastellan got up.

"'Well, I won't keep you any longer. I dare say you're busy. Thank you
so much for carrying out Jack's request.'

"'Things are pretty bad just now in the F.M.S. if all I hear is true,'
said Lord Kastellan.

"I shook hands with them both and Lady Kastellan rang a bell.

"'Are you staying in London?' she asked, as I was going. 'I wonder if
you'd like to come to a little party I'm giving next week.'

"'I have my wife with me,' I said.

"'Oh, how very nice. I'll send you a card.'

"A couple of minutes later I found myself in the street. I was glad to
be alone. I'd had a bad shock. As soon as Lady Kastellan mentioned the
name I remembered. It was Jack Almond, the wretched bum I'd found dead
in the Chinese house, dead of starvation. I'd known him quite well. It
never struck me for a moment that it was he. Why, I'd dined and played
cards with him, and we'd played tennis together. It was awful to think
of him dying quite near me and me never knowing. He must have known he
only had to send me a message and I'd have done something. I made my way
into St. James's Park and sat down. I wanted to have a good think."

I could understand that it was a shock to Arthur Low to discover who the
dead wastrel had been, for it was a shock to me too. Oddly enough I also
had known him. Not intimately, but as a man I met at parties and now and
then at a house in the country where we were both passing the week-end.
Except that it was years since I had even thought of him it would have
been stupid of me not to put two and two together. With his name there
flashed back into my memory all my recollections of him. So that was why
he had suddenly thrown up a career he liked so much! At that time, it
was just after the war, I happened to know several people in the Foreign
Office; Jack Almond was thought the cleverest of all the young men
attached to it, and the highest posts the Diplomatic Service had to
offer were within his reach. Of course it meant waiting. But it did seem
absurd for him to fling away his chances in order to go into business in
the Far East. His friends did all they could to dissuade him. He said he
had had losses and found it impossible to live on his salary. One would
have thought he could scrape along till things grew better. I remembered
very well what he looked like. He was tall and well-made, a trifle
dressy, but he was young enough to carry off his faultless clothes with
a dash, with dark brown hair, very neat and sleek, blue eyes with very
long lashes, and a fresh brilliant colour. He looked the picture of
health. He was amusing, gay and quick-witted. I never knew anyone who
had more charm. It is a dangerous quality and those who have it trade on
it. Often they think it enough to get them through life without any
further effort. It is well to be on one's guard against it. But with
Jack Almond it was the expression of a sweet and generous nature. He
delighted because he was delightful. He was entirely without conceit. He
had a gift for languages, he spoke French and German without a trace of
accent, and his manners were admirable. You felt that when the time came
he would play the part of an ambassador to a foreign power in the grand
style. No one could fail to like him. It was not strange that Lady
Kastellan should have fallen madly in love with him. My fancy ran away
with me. What is there more moving than young love? The walks together
of that handsome pair in one of the parks in the warm evenings of early
summer, the dances they went to where he held her in his arms, the
enchantment of the secret they shared when they exchanged glances across
a dinner-table, and the passionate encounters, hurried and dangerous,
but worth a thousand risks, when at some clandestine meeting-place they
could give themselves to the fulfilment of their desire. They drank the
milk of Paradise.

How frightful that the end of it all should have been so tragic!

"How did you know him?" I now asked Low.

"He was with Dexter and Farmilow. You know, the shipping people. He had
quite a good job. He'd brought letters to the Governor and people like
that. I was in Singapore at the time. I think I met him first at the
club. He was damned good at games and all that sort of thing. Played
polo. He was a fine tennis-player. You couldn't help liking him."

"Did he drink, or what?"

"No." Arthur Low was quite emphatic. "He was one of the best. The women
were crazy about him, and you couldn't blame them. He was one of the
most decent fellows I've ever met."

I turned to Mrs. Low.

"Did you know him?"

"Only just. When Arthur and I were married we went to Perak. He was
sweet, I remember that. He had the longest eyelashes I've ever seen on a
man."

"He was out quite a long time without going home. Five years, I think. I
don't want to use hackneyed phrases, but the fact is I can't say it in
any other way, he'd won golden opinions. There were a certain number of
fellows who'd been rather sick at his being shoved into a damned good
job by influence, but they couldn't deny that he'd made good. We knew
about his having been in the F.O. and all that, but he never put on any
frills."

"I think what took me," Mrs. Low interrupted, "was that he was so
tremendously alive. It bucked you up just to talk to him."

"He had a wonderful send-off when he sailed. I happened to have run up
to Singapore for a couple of days and I went to the dinner at the Europe
the night before. We all got rather tight. It was a grand lark. There
was quite a crowd to see him off. He was only going for six months. I
think everybody looked forward to his coming back. It would have been
better for him if he never had."

"Why, what happened then?"

"I don't know exactly. I'd been moved again, and I was right away
north."

How exasperating! It is really much easier to invent a story out of your
own head than to tell one about real people, of whom you not only must
guess the motives, but whose behaviour even at crucial moments you are
ignorant of.

"He was a very good chap, but he was never an intimate friend of ours,
you know how cliquey Singapore is, and he moved in rather more exalted
circles than we did; when we went north I forgot about him. But one day
at the club I heard a couple of fellows talking. Walton and Kenning.
Walton had just come up from Singapore. There'd been a big polo match.

"'Did Almond play?' asked Kenning.

"'You bet your life he didn't,' said Walton. 'They kicked him out of the
team last season.'

"I interrupted.

"'What _are_ you talking about?' I said.

"'Don't you know?' said Walton. 'He's gone all to pot, poor devil.'

"'How?' I asked.

"'Drink.'

"'They say he dopes too,' said Kenning.

"'Yes, I've heard that,' said Walton. 'He won't last long at that rate.
Opium, isn't it?'

"'If he doesn't look out he'll lose his job,' said Kenning.

"I couldn't make it out," Low went on. "He was the last man I should
ever have expected to go that way. He was so typically English and he
was a gentleman and all that. It appeared that Walton had travelled out
with him on the same ship when Jack came back from leave. He joined the
ship at Marseilles. He was rather low, but there was nothing funny about
that; a lot of people don't feel any too good when they're leaving home
and have to get back to the mill. He drank a good deal. Fellows do that
sometimes too. But Walton said rather a curious thing about him. He said
it looked as if the life had gone out of him. You couldn't help noticing
it because he'd always had such high spirits. There'd been a general
sort of idea that he was engaged to some girl in England and on the ship
they jumped to the conclusion that she'd thrown him over."

"That's what I said when Arthur told me," said Mrs. Low. "After all,
five years is a long time to leave a girl."

"Anyhow they thought he'd get over it when he got back to work. But he
didn't, unfortunately. He went from bad to worse. A lot of people liked
him and they did all they could to persuade him to pull himself
together. But there was nothing doing. He just told them to mind their
own business. He was snappy and rude, which was funny because he'd
always been so nice to everybody. Walton said you could hardly believe
it was the same man. Government House dropped him and a lot of others
followed suit. Lady Ormonde, the Governor's wife, was a snob, she knew
he was well-connected and all that, and she wouldn't have given him the
cold shoulder unless things had got pretty bad. He was a nice chap, Jack
Almond, it seemed a pity that he should make such a mess of things. I
was sorry, you know, but of course it didn't impair my appetite or
disturb my night's sleep. A few months later I happened to be in
Singapore myself, and when I went to the club I asked about him. He'd
lost his job all right, it appeared that he often didn't go to the
office for two or three days at a time; and I was told that someone had
made him manager of a rubber estate in Sumatra in the hope that away
from the temptations of Singapore he might pull himself together. You
see, everyone had liked him so much, they couldn't bear the thought of
his going under without some sort of a struggle. But it was no good. The
opium had got him. He didn't keep the job in Sumatra long and he was
back again in Singapore. I heard afterwards that you would hardly have
recognised him. He'd always been so spruce and smart; he was shabby and
unwashed and wild-eyed. A number of fellows at the club got together and
arranged something. They felt they had to give him one more chance and
they sent him out to Sarawak. But it wasn't any use. The fact is, I
think, he didn't want to be helped. I think he just wanted to go to hell
in his own way and be as quick as he could about it. Then he
disappeared; someone said he'd gone home; anyhow he was forgotten. You
know how people drop out in the F.M.S. I suppose that's why when I found
a dead man in a sarong, with a beard, lying in a little smelly room in a
Chinese house thirty miles from anywhere, it never occurred to me for a
moment that it might be Jack Almond. I hadn't heard his name for years."

"Just think what he must have gone through in that time," said Mrs. Low,
and her eyes were bright with tears, for she had a good and tender
heart.

"The whole thing's inexplicable," said Low.

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, if he was going to pieces, why didn't he do it when he first came
out? His first five years he was all right. One of the best. If this
affair of his had broken him you'd have expected him to break when it
was all fresh. All that time he was as gay as a bird. You'd have said he
hadn't a care in the world. From all I heard it was a different man who
came back from leave."

"Something happened during those six months in London," said Mrs. Low.
"That's obvious."

"We shall never know," sighed Low.

"But we can guess," I smiled. "That's where the novelist comes in. Shall
I tell you what I think happened?"

"Fire away."

"Well, I think that during those first five years he was buoyed up by
the sacrifice he'd made. He had a chivalrous soul. He had given up
everything that made life worth living to him to save the woman he loved
better than anything in the world. I think he had an exaltation of
spirit that never left him. He loved her still, with all his heart; most
of us fall in and out of love; some men can only love once, and I think
he was one of them. And in a strange way he was happy because he'd been
able to sacrifice his happiness for the sake of someone who was worthy
of the sacrifice. I think she was always in his thoughts. Then he went
home. I think he loved her as much as ever and I don't suppose he ever
doubted that her love was as strong and enduring as his. I don't know
what he expected. He may have thought she'd see it was no good fighting
her inclination any more and would run away with him. It may have been
that he'd have been satisfied to realise that she loved him still. It
was inevitable that they should meet; they lived in the same world. He
saw that she didn't care a row of pins for him any longer. He saw that
the passionate girl had become a prudent, experienced woman of the
world, he saw that she'd never loved him as he thought she loved him,
and he may have suspected that she'd lured him coldly into making the
sacrifice that was to save her. He saw her at parties, self-possessed
and triumphant. He knew that the lovely qualities he'd ascribed to her
were of his own imagining and she was just an ordinary woman who had
been carried away by a momentary infatuation and having got over it had
returned to her true life. A great name, wealth, social distinction,
worldly success: those were the things that mattered to her. He'd
sacrificed everything, his friends, his familiar surroundings, his
profession, his usefulness in the world, all that gives value to
existence--for nothing. He'd been cheated, and it broke him. Your friend
Walton said the true thing, you noticed it yourself, he said it looked
as if the life had gone out of him. It had. After that he didn't care
any more, and perhaps the worst thing was that even with it all, though
he knew Lady Kastellan for what she was, he loved her still. I know
nothing more shattering than to love with all your heart, than not to be
able however hard you try to break yourself of it, someone who you know
is worthless. Perhaps that is why he took to opium. To forget and to
remember."

It was a long speech I had made, and now I stopped.

"All that's only fancy," said Low.

"I know it is," I answered, "but it seems to fit the circumstances."

"There must have been a weak strain in him. Otherwise he could have
fought and conquered."

"Perhaps. Perhaps there is always a certain weakness attached to such
great charm as he possessed. Perhaps few people love as wholeheartedly
and as devotedly as he loved. Perhaps he didn't want to fight and
conquer. I can't bring myself to blame him."

I didn't add, because I was afraid they would think it cynical, that
maybe if only Jack Almond hadn't had those wonderfully long eyelashes he
might now have been alive and well, minister to some foreign power and
on the high road to the Embassy in Paris.

"Let's go into the drawing-room," said Mrs. Low. "The boy wants to clear
the table."

And that was the end of Jack Almond.




RED


The skipper thrust his hand into one of his trouser pockets and with
difficulty, for they were not at the sides but in front and he was a
portly man, pulled out a large silver watch. He looked at it and then
looked again at the declining sun. The Kanaka at the wheel gave him a
glance, but did not speak. The skipper's eyes rested on the island they
were approaching. A white line of foam marked the reef. He knew there
was an opening large enough to get his ship through, and when they came
a little nearer he counted on seeing it. They had nearly an hour of
daylight still before them. In the lagoon the water was deep and they
could anchor comfortably. The chief of the village which he could
already see among the coconut trees was a friend of the mate's, and it
would be pleasant to go ashore for the night. The mate came forward at
that minute and the skipper turned to him.

"Well take a bottle of booze along with us and get some girls in to
dance," he said.

"I don't see the opening," said the mate.

He was a Kanaka, a handsome, swarthy fellow, with somewhat the look of a
later Roman emperor, inclined to stoutness; but his face was fine and
clean-cut.

"I'm dead sure there's one right here," said the captain, looking
through his glasses. "I can't understand why I can't pick it up. Send
one of the boys up the mast to have a look."

The mate called one of the crew and gave him the order. The captain
watched the Kanaka climb and waited for him to speak. But the Kanaka
shouted down that he could see nothing but the unbroken line of foam.
The captain spoke Samoan like a native, and he cursed him freely.

"Shall he stay up there?" asked the mate.

"What the hell good does that do?" answered the captain. "The blame fool
can't see worth a cent. You bet your sweet life I'd find the opening if
I was up there."

He looked at the slender mast with anger. It was all very well for a
native who had been used to climbing up coconut trees all his life. He
was fat and heavy.

"Come down," he shouted. "You're no more use than a dead dog. We'll just
have to go along the reef till we find the opening."

It was a seventy-ton schooner with paraffin auxiliary, and it ran, when
there was no head wind, between four and five knots an hour. It was a
bedraggled object; it had been painted white a very long time ago, but
it was now dirty, dingy, and mottled. It smelt strongly of paraffin and
of the copra which was its usual cargo. They were within a hundred feet
of the reef now and the captain told the steersman to run along it till
they came to the opening. But when they had gone a couple of miles he
realised that they had missed it. He went about and slowly worked back
again. The white foam of the reef continued without interruption and now
the sun was setting. With a curse at the stupidity of the crew the
skipper resigned himself to waiting till next morning.

"Put her about," he said. "I can't anchor here."

They went out to sea a little and presently it was quite dark. They
anchored. When the sail was furled the ship began to roll a good deal.
They said in Apia that one day she would roll right over; and the owner,
a German-American who managed one of the largest stores, said that no
money was big enough to induce him to go out in her. The cook, a Chinese
in white trousers, very dirty and ragged, and a thin white tunic, came
to say that supper was ready, and when the skipper went into the cabin
he found the engineer already seated at table. The engineer was a long,
lean man with a scraggy neck. He was dressed in blue overalls and a
sleeveless jersey which showed his thin arms tattooed from elbow to
wrist.

"Hell, having to spend the night outside," said the skipper.

The engineer did not answer, and they ate their supper in silence. The
cabin was lit by a dim oil-lamp. When they had eaten the canned apricots
with which the meal finished the Chink brought them a cup of tea. The
skipper lit a cigar and went on the upper deck. The island now was only
a darker mass against the night. The stars were very bright. The only
sound was the ceaseless breaking of the surf. The skipper sank into a
deck-chair and smoked idly. Presently three or four members of the crew
came up and sat down. One of them had a banjo and another a concertina.
They began to play, and one of them sang. The native song sounded
strange on these instruments. Then to the singing a couple began to
dance. It was a barbaric dance, savage and primeval, rapid, with quick
movements of the hands and feet and contortions of the body; it was
sensual, sexual even, but sexual without passion. It was very animal,
direct, weird without mystery, natural in short, and one might almost
say childlike. At last they grew tired. They stretched themselves on the
deck and slept, and all was silent. The skipper lifted himself heavily
out of his chair and clambered down the companion. He went into his
cabin and got out of his clothes. He climbed into his bunk and lay
there. He panted a little in the heat of the night.

But next morning, when the dawn crept over the tranquil sea, the opening
in the reef which had eluded them the night before was seen a little to
the east of where they lay. The schooner entered the lagoon. There was
not a ripple on the surface of the water. Deep down among the coral
rocks you saw little coloured fish swim. When he had anchored his ship
the skipper ate his breakfast and went on deck. The sun shone from an
unclouded sky, but in the early morning the air was grateful and cool.
It was Sunday, and there was a feeling of quietness, a silence as though
nature were at rest, which gave him a peculiar sense of comfort. He sat,
looking at the wooded coast, and felt lazy and well at ease. Presently a
slow smile moved his lips and he threw the stump of his cigar into the
water.

"I guess I'll go ashore," he said. "Get the boat out."

He climbed stiffly down the ladder and was rowed to a little cove. The
coconut trees came down to the water's edge, not in rows, but spaced out
with an ordered formality. They were like a ballet of spinsters, elderly
but flippant, standing in affected attitudes with the simpering graces
of a bygone age. He sauntered idly through them, along a path that could
be just seen winding its tortuous way, and it led him presently to a
broad creek. There was a bridge across it, but a bridge constructed of
single trunks of coconut trees, a dozen of them, placed end to end and
supported where they met by a forked branch driven into the bed of the
creek. You walked on a smooth, round surface, narrow and slippery, and
there was no support for the hand. To cross such a bridge required sure
feet and a stout heart. The skipper hesitated. But he saw on the other
side, nestling among the trees, a white man's house; he made up his mind
and, rather gingerly, began to walk. He watched his feet carefully, and
where one trunk joined on to the next and there was a difference of
level, he tottered a little. It was with a gasp of relief that he
reached the last tree and finally set his feet on the firm ground of the
other side. He had been so intent on the difficult crossing that he
never noticed anyone was watching him, and it was with surprise that he
heard himself spoken to.

"It takes a bit of nerve to cross these bridges when you're not used to
them."

He looked up and saw a man standing in front of him. He had evidently
come out of the house which he had seen.

"I saw you hesitate," the man continued, with a smile on his lips, "and
I was watching to see you fall in."

"Not on your life," said the captain, who had now recovered his
confidence.

"I've fallen in myself before now. I remember, one evening I came back
from shooting, and I fell in, gun and all. Now I get a boy to carry my
gun for me."

He was a man no longer young, with a small beard, now somewhat grey, and
a thin face. He was dressed in a singlet, without arms, and a pair of
duck trousers. He wore neither shoes nor socks. He spoke English with a
slight accent.

"Are you Neilson?" asked the skipper.

"I am."

"I've heard about you. I thought you lived somewheres round here."

The skipper followed his host into the little bungalow and sat down
heavily in the chair which the other motioned him to take. While Neilson
went out to fetch whisky and glasses he took a look round the room. It
filled him with amazement. He had never seen so many books. The shelves
reached from floor to ceiling on all four walls, and they were closely
packed. There was a grand piano littered with music, and a large table
on which books and magazines lay in disorder. The room made him feel
embarrassed. He remembered that Neilson was a queer fellow. No one knew
very much about him, although he had been in the islands for so many
years, but those who knew him agreed that he was queer. He was a Swede.

"You've got one big heap of books here," he said, when Neilson returned.

"They do no harm," answered Neilson with a smile.

"Have you read them all?" asked the skipper.

"Most of them."

"I'm a bit of a reader myself. I have the _Saturday Evening Post_ sent
me regler."

Neilson poured his visitor a good stiff glass of whisky and gave him a
cigar. The skipper volunteered a little information.

"I got in last night, but I couldn't find the opening, so I had to
anchor outside. I never been this run before, but my people had some
stuff they wanted to bring over here. Gray, d'you know him?"

"Yes, he's got a store a little way along."

"Well, there was a lot of canned stuff that he wanted over, an' he's got
some copra. They thought I might just as well come over as lie idle at
Apia. I run between Apia and Pago-Pago mostly, but they've got smallpox
there just now, and there's nothing stirring."

He took a drink of his whisky and lit a cigar. He was a taciturn man,
but there was something in Neilson that made him nervous, and his
nervousness made him talk. The Swede was looking at him with large dark
eyes in which there was an expression of faint amusement.

"This is a tidy little place you've got here."

"I've done my best with it."

"You must do pretty well with your trees. They look fine. With copra at
the price it is now. I had a bit of a plantation myself once, in Upolu
it was, but I had to sell it."

He looked round the room again, where all those books gave him a feeling
of something incomprehensible and hostile.

"I guess you must find it a bit lonesome here though," he said.

"I've got used to it. I've been here for twenty-five years."

Now the captain could think of nothing more to say, and he smoked in
silence. Neilson had apparently no wish to break it. He looked at his
guest with a meditative eye. He was a tall man, more than six feet high,
and very stout. His face was red and blotchy, with a network of little
purple veins on the cheeks, and his features were sunk into its fatness.
His eyes were bloodshot. His neck was buried in rolls of fat. But for a
fringe of long curly hair, nearly white, at the back of his head, he was
quite bald; and that immense, shiny surface of forehead, which might
have given him a false look of intelligence, on the contrary gave him
one of peculiar imbecility. He wore a blue flannel shirt, open at the
neck and showing his fat chest covered with a mat of reddish hair, and a
very old pair of blue serge trousers. He sat in his chair in a heavy
ungainly attitude, his great belly thrust forward and his fat legs
uncrossed. All elasticity had gone from his limbs. Neilson wondered idly
what sort of man he had been in his youth. It was almost impossible to
imagine that this creature of vast bulk had ever been a boy who ran
about. The skipper finished his whisky, and Neilson pushed the bottle
towards him.

"Help yourself."

The skipper leaned forward and with his great hand seized it.

"And how come you in these parts anyways?" he said.

"Oh, I came out to the islands for my health. My lungs were bad and they
said I hadn't a year to live. You see they were wrong."

"I meant, how come you to settle down right here?"

"I am a sentimentalist."

"Oh!"

Neilson knew that the skipper had not an idea what he meant, and he
looked at him with an ironical twinkle in his dark eyes. Perhaps just
because the skipper was so gross and dull a man the whim seized him to
talk further.

"You were too busy keeping your balance to notice, when you crossed the
bridge, but this spot is generally considered rather pretty."

"It's a cute little house you've got here."

"Ah, that wasn't here when I first came. There was a native hut, with
its beehive roof and its pillars, overshadowed by a great tree with red
flowers; and the croton bushes, their leaves yellow and red and golden,
made a pied fence around it. And then all about were the coconut trees,
as fanciful as women, and as vain. They stood at the water's edge and
spent all day looking at their reflections. I was a young man then--good
heavens, it's a quarter of a century ago--and I wanted to enjoy all the
loveliness of the world in the short time allotted to me before I passed
into the darkness. I thought it was the most beautiful spot I had ever
seen. The first time I saw it I had a catch at my heart, and I was
afraid I was going to cry. I wasn't more than twenty-five, and though I
put the best face I could on it, I didn't want to die. And somehow it
seemed to me that the very beauty of this place made it easier for me to
accept my fate. I felt when I came here that all my past life had fallen
away, Stockholm and its University, and then Bonn: it all seemed the
life of somebody else, as though now at last I had achieved the reality
which our doctors of philosophy--I am one myself, you know--had
discussed so much. 'A year,' I cried to myself. 'I have a year. I will
spend it here and then I am content to die.'

"We are foolish and sentimental and melodramatic at twenty-five, but if
we weren't perhaps we should be less wise at fifty.

"Now drink, my friend. Don't let the nonsense I talk interfere with
you."

He waved his thin hand towards the bottle, and the skipper finished what
remained in his glass.

"You ain't drinking nothin'," he said, reaching for the whisky.

"I am of a sober habit," smiled the Swede. "I intoxicate myself in ways
which I fancy are more subtle. But perhaps that is only vanity. Anyhow,
the effects are more lasting and the results less deleterious."

"They say there's a deal of cocaine taken in the States now," said the
captain.

Neilson chuckled.

"But I do not see a white man often," he continued, "and for once I
don't think a drop of whisky can do me any harm."

He poured himself out a little, added some soda, and took a sip.

"And presently I found out why the spot had such an unearthly
loveliness. Here love had tarried for a moment like a migrant bird that
happens on a ship in mid-ocean and for a little while folds its tired
wings. The fragrance of a beautiful passion hovered over it like the
fragrance of hawthorn in May in the meadows of my home. It seems to me
that the places where men have loved or suffered keep about them always
some faint aroma of something that has not wholly died. It is as though
they had acquired a spiritual significance which mysteriously affects
those who pass. I wish I could make myself clear." He smiled a little.
"Though I cannot imagine that if I did you would understand."

He paused.

"I think this place was beautiful because here for a period the ecstasy
of love had invested it with beauty." And now he shrugged his shoulders.
"But perhaps it is only that my sthetic sense is gratified by the happy
conjunction of young love and a suitable setting."

Even a man less thick-witted than the skipper might have been forgiven
if he were bewildered by Neilson's words. For he seemed faintly to laugh
at what he said. It was as though he spoke from emotion which his
intellect found ridiculous. He had said himself that he was a
sentimentalist, and when sentimentality is joined with scepticism there
is often the devil to pay.

He was silent for an instant and looked at the captain with eyes in
which there was a sudden perplexity.

"You know, I can't help thinking that I've seen you before somewhere or
other," he said.

"I couldn't say as I remember you," returned the skipper.

"I have a curious feeling as though your face were familiar to me. It's
been puzzling me for some time. But I can't situate my recollection in
any place or at any time."

The skipper massively shrugged his heavy shoulders.

"It's thirty years since I first come to the islands. A man can't figure
on remembering all the folk he meets in a while like that."

The Swede shook his head.

"You know how one sometimes has the feeling that a place one has never
been to before is strangely familiar. That's how I seem to see you." He
gave a whimsical smile. "Perhaps I knew you in some past existence.
Perhaps, perhaps you were the master of a galley in ancient Rome and I
was a slave at the oar. Thirty years have you been here?"

"Every bit of thirty years."

"I wonder if you knew a man called Red?"

"Red?"

"That is the only name I've ever known him by. I never knew him
personally. I never even set eyes on him. And yet I seem to see him more
clearly than many men, my brothers, for instance, with whom I passed my
daily life for many years. He lives in my imagination with the
distinctness of a Paolo Malatesta or a Romeo. But I dare say you have
never read Dante or Shakespeare?"

"I can't say as I have," said the captain.

Neilson, smoking a cigar, leaned back in his chair and looked vacantly
at the ring of smoke which floated in the still air. A smile played on
his lips, but his eyes were grave. Then he looked at the captain. There
was in his gross obesity something extraordinarily repellent. He had the
plethoric self-satisfaction of the very fat. It was an outrage. It set
Neilson's nerves on edge. But the contrast between the man before him
and the man he had in mind was pleasant.

"It appears that Red was the most comely thing you ever saw. I've talked
to quite a number of people who knew him in those days, white men, and
they all agree that the first time you saw him his beauty just took your
breath away. They called him Red on account of his flaming hair. It had
a natural wave and he wore it long. It must have been of that wonderful
colour that the pre-Raphaelites raved over. I don't think he was vain of
it, he was much too ingenuous for that, but no one could have blamed him
if he had been. He was tall, six feet and an inch or two--in the native
house that used to stand here was the mark of his height cut with a
knife on the central trunk that supported the roof--and he was made like
a Greek god, broad in the shoulders and thin in the flanks; he was like
Apollo, with just that soft roundness which Praxiteles gave him, and
that suave, feminine grace which has in it something troubling and
mysterious. His skin was dazzling white, milky, like satin; his skin was
like a woman's."

"I had kind of a white skin myself when I was a kiddie," said the
skipper, with a twinkle in his bloodshot eyes.

But Neilson paid no attention to him. He was telling his story now and
interruption made him impatient.

"And his face was just as beautiful as his body. He had large blue eyes,
very dark, so that some say they were black, and unlike most red-haired
people he had dark eyebrows and long dark lashes. His features were
perfectly regular and his mouth was like a scarlet wound. He was
twenty."

On these words the Swede stopped with a certain sense of the dramatic.
He took a sip of whisky.

"He was unique. There never was anyone more beautiful. There was no more
reason for him than for a wonderful blossom to flower on a wild plant.
He was a happy accident of nature.

"One day he landed at that cove into which you must have put this
morning. He was an American sailor, and he had deserted from a
man-of-war in Apia. He had induced some good-humoured native to give him
a passage on a cutter that happened to be sailing from Apia to Safoto,
and he had been put ashore here in a dug-out. I do not know why he
deserted. Perhaps life on a man-of-war with its restrictions irked him,
perhaps he was in trouble, and perhaps it was the South Seas and these
romantic islands that got into his bones. Every now and then they take a
man strangely, and he finds himself like a fly in a spider's web. It may
be that there was a softness of fibre in him, and these green hills with
their soft airs, this blue sea, took the northern strength from him as
Delilah took the Nazarite's. Anyhow, he wanted to hide himself, and he
thought he would be safe in this secluded nook till his ship had sailed
from Samoa.

"There was a native hut at the cove and as he stood there, wondering
where exactly he should turn his steps, a young girl came out and
invited him to enter. He knew scarcely two words of the native tongue
and she as little English. But he understood well enough what her smiles
meant, and her pretty gestures, and he followed her. He sat down on a
mat and she gave him slices of pineapple to eat. I can speak of Red only
from hearsay, but I saw the girl three years after he first met her, and
she was scarcely nineteen then. You cannot imagine how exquisite she
was. She had the passionate grace of the hibiscus and the rich colour.
She was rather tall, slim, with the delicate features of her race, and
large eyes like pools of still water under the palm trees; her hair,
black and curling, fell down her back, and she wore a wreath of scented
flowers. Her hands were lovely. They were so small, so exquisitely
formed, they gave your heartstrings a wrench. And in those days she
laughed easily. Her smile was so delightful that it made your knees
shake. Her skin was like a field of ripe corn on a summer day. Good
heavens, how can I describe her? She was too beautiful to be real.

"And these two young things, she was sixteen and he was twenty, fell in
love with one another at first sight. That is the real love, not the
love that comes from sympathy, common interests, or intellectual
community, but love pure and simple. That is the love that Adam felt for
Eve when he awoke and found her in the garden gazing at him with dewy
eyes. That is the love that draws the beasts to one another, and the
Gods. That is the love that makes the world a miracle. That is the love
which gives life its pregnant meaning. You have never heard of the wise,
cynical French duke who said that with two lovers there is always one
who loves and one who lets himself be loved; it is a bitter truth to
which most of us have to resign ourselves; but now and then there are
two who love and two who let themselves be loved. Then one might fancy
that the sun stands still as it stood when Joshua prayed to the God of
Israel.

"And even now after all these years, when I think of these two, so
young, so fair, so simple, and of their love, I feel a pang. It tears my
heart just as my heart is torn when on certain nights I watch the full
moon shining on the lagoon from an unclouded sky. There is always pain
in the contemplation of perfect beauty.

"They were children. She was good and sweet and kind. I know nothing of
him, and I like to think that then at all events he was ingenuous and
frank. I like to think that his soul was as comely as his body. But I
dare say he had no more soul than the creatures of the woods and forests
who made pipes from reeds and bathed in the mountain streams when the
world was young, and you might catch sight of little fawns galloping
through the glade on the back of a bearded centaur. A soul is a
troublesome possession and when man developed it he lost the Garden of
Eden.

"Well, when Red came to the island it had recently been visited by one
of those epidemics which the white man has brought to the South Seas,
and one third of the inhabitants had died. It seems that the girl had
lost all her near kin and she lived now in the house of distant cousins.
The household consisted of two ancient crones, bowed and wrinkled, two
younger women, and a man and a boy. For a few days he stayed there. But
perhaps he felt himself too near the shore, with the possibility that he
might fall in with white men who would reveal his hiding-place; perhaps
the lovers could not bear that the company of others should rob them for
an instant of the delight of being together. One morning they set out,
the pair of them, with the few things that belonged to the girl, and
walked along a grassy path under the coconuts, till they came to the
creek you see. They had to cross the bridge you crossed, and the girl
laughed gleefully because he was afraid. She held his hand till they
came to the end of the first tree, and then his courage failed him and
he had to go back. He was obliged to take off all his clothes before he
could risk it, and she carried them over for him on her head. They
settled down in the empty hut that stood there. Whether she had any
rights over it (land tenure is a complicated business in the islands),
or whether the owner had died during the epidemic, I do not know, but
anyhow no one questioned them, and they took possession. Their furniture
consisted of a couple of grass mats on which they slept, a fragment of
looking-glass, and a bowl or two. In this pleasant land that is enough
to start housekeeping on.

"They say that happy people have no history, and certainly a happy love
has none. They did nothing all day long and yet the days seemed all too
short. The girl had a native name, but Red called her Sally. He picked
up the easy language very quickly, and he used to lie on the mat for
hours while she chattered gaily to him. He was a silent fellow, and
perhaps his mind was lethargic. He smoked incessantly the cigarettes
which she made him out of the native tobacco and pandanus leaf, and he
watched her while with deft fingers she made grass mats. Often natives
would come in and tell long stories of the old days when the island was
disturbed by tribal wars. Sometimes he would go fishing on the reef, and
bring home a basket full of coloured fish. Sometimes at night he would
go out with a lantern to catch lobster. There were plantains round the
hut and Sally would roast them for their frugal meal. She knew how to
make delicious messes from coconuts, and the breadfruit tree by the side
of the creek gave them its fruit. On feast-days they killed a little pig
and cooked it on hot stones. They bathed together in the creek; and in
the evening they went down to the lagoon and paddled about in a dug-out,
with its great outrigger. The sea was deep blue, wine-coloured at
sundown, like the sea of Homeric Greece; but in the lagoon the colour
had an infinite variety, aquamarine and amethyst and emerald; and the
setting sun turned it for a short moment to liquid gold. Then there was
the colour of the coral, brown, white, pink, red, purple; and the shapes
it took were marvellous. It was like a magic garden, and the hurrying
fish were like butterflies. It strangely lacked reality. Among the coral
were pools with a floor of white sand and here, where the water was
dazzling clear, it was very good to bathe. Then, cool and happy, they
wandered back in the gloaming over the soft grass road to the creek,
walking hand in hand, and now the mynah birds filled the coconut trees
with their clamour. And then the night, with that great sky shining with
gold, that seemed to stretch more widely than the skies of Europe, and
the soft airs that blew gently through the open hut, the long night
again was all too short. She was sixteen and he was barely twenty. The
dawn crept in among the wooden pillars of the hut and looked at those
lovely children sleeping in one another's arms. The sun hid behind the
great tattered leaves of the plantains so that it might not disturb
them, and then, with playful malice, shot a golden ray, like the
outstretched paw of a Persian cat, on their faces. They opened their
sleepy eyes and they smiled to welcome another day. The weeks lengthened
into months, and a year passed. They seemed to love one another as--I
hesitate to say passionately, for passion has in it always a shade of
sadness, a touch of bitterness or anguish, but as wholeheartedly, as
simply and naturally as on that first day on which, meeting, they had
recognised that a god was in them.

"If you had asked them I have no doubt that they would have thought it
impossible to suppose their love could ever cease. Do we not know that
the essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity? And yet
perhaps in Red there was already a very little seed, unknown to himself
and unsuspected by the girl, which would in time have grown to
weariness. For one day one of the natives from the cove told them that
some way down the coast at the anchorage was a British whaling-ship.

"'Gee,' he said, 'I wonder if I could make a trade of some nuts and
plantains for a pound or two of tobacco.'

"The pandanus cigarettes that Sally made him with untiring hands were
strong and pleasant enough to smoke, but they left him unsatisfied; and
he yearned on a sudden for real tobacco, hard, rank, and pungent. He had
not smoked a pipe for many months. His mouth watered at the thought of
it. One would have thought some premonition of harm would have made
Sally seek to dissuade him, but love possessed her so completely that it
never occurred to her any power on earth could take him from her. They
went up into the hills together and gathered a great basket of wild
oranges, green, but sweet and juicy; and they picked plantains from
around the hut, and coconuts from their trees, and breadfruit and
mangoes; and they carried them down to the cove. They loaded the
unstable canoe with them, and Red and the native boy who had brought
them the news of the ship paddled along outside the reef.

"It was the last time she ever saw him.

"Next day the boy came back alone. He was all in tears. This is the
story he told. When after their long paddle they reached the ship and
Red hailed it, a white man looked over the side and told them to come on
board. They took the fruit they had brought with them and Red piled it
up on the deck. The white man and he began to talk, and they seemed to
come to some agreement. One of them went below and brought up tobacco.
Red took some at once and lit a pipe. The boy imitated the zest with
which he blew a great cloud of smoke from his mouth. Then they said
something to him and he went into the cabin. Through the open door the
boy, watching curiously, saw a bottle brought out and glasses. Red drank
and smoked. They seemed to ask him something, for he shook his head and
laughed. The man, the first man who had spoken to them, laughed too, and
he filled Red's glass once more. They went on talking and drinking, and
presently, growing tired of watching a sight that meant nothing to him,
the boy curled himself up on the deck and slept. He was awakened by a
kick; and, jumping to his feet, he saw that the ship was slowly sailing
out of the lagoon. He caught sight of Red seated at the table, with his
head resting heavily on his arms, fast asleep. He made a movement
towards him, intending to wake him, but a rough hand seized his arm, and
a man, with a scowl and words which he did not understand, pointed to
the side. He shouted to Red, but in a moment he was seized and flung
overboard. Helpless, he swam round to his canoe, which was drifting a
little way off, and pushed it on to the reef. He climbed in and, sobbing
all the way, paddled back to shore.

"What had happened was obvious enough. The whaler, by desertion or
sickness, was short of hands, and the captain when Red came aboard had
asked him to sign on; on his refusal he had made him drunk and kidnapped
him.

"Sally was beside herself with grief. For three days she screamed and
cried. The natives did what they could to comfort her, but she would not
be comforted. She would not eat. And then, exhausted, she sank into a
sullen apathy. She spent long days at the cove, watching the lagoon, in
the vain hope that Red somehow or other would manage to escape. She sat
on the white sand, hour after hour, with the tears running down her
cheeks, and at night dragged herself wearily back across the creek to
the little hut where she had been happy. The people with whom she had
lived before Red came to the island wished her to return to them, but
she would not; she was convinced that Red would come back, and she
wanted him to find her where he had left her. Four months later she was
delivered of a still-born child, and the old woman who had come to help
her through her confinement remained with her in the hut. All joy was
taken from her life. If her anguish with time became less intolerable it
was replaced by a settled melancholy. You would not have thought that
among these people, whose emotions, though so violent, are very
transient, a woman could be found capable of so enduring a passion. She
never lost the profound conviction that sooner or later Red would come
back. She watched for him, and every time someone crossed this slender
little bridge of coconut trees she looked. It might at last be he."

Neilson stopped talking and gave a faint sigh.

"And what happened to her in the end?" asked the skipper.

Neilson smiled bitterly.

"Oh, three years afterwards she took up with another white man."

The skipper gave a fat, cynical chuckle.

"That's generally what happens to them," he said.

The Swede shot him a look of hatred. He did not know why that gross,
obese man excited in him so violent a repulsion. But his thoughts
wandered and he found his mind filled with memories of the past. He went
back five and twenty years. It was when he first came to the island,
weary of Apia, with its heavy drinking, its gambling and coarse
sensuality, a sick man, trying to resign himself to the loss of the
career which had fired his imagination with ambitious thoughts. He set
behind him resolutely all his hopes of making a great name for himself
and strove to content himself with the few poor months of careful life
which was all that he could count on. He was boarding with a half-caste
trader who had a store a couple of miles along the coast at the edge of
a native village; and one day, wandering aimlessly along the grassy
paths of the coconut groves, he had come upon the hut in which Sally
lived. The beauty of the spot had filled him with a rapture so great
that it was almost painful, and then he had seen Sally. She was the
loveliest creature he had ever seen, and the sadness in those dark,
magnificent eyes of hers affected him strangely. The Kanakas were a
handsome race, and beauty was not rare among them, but it was the beauty
of shapely animals. It was empty. But those tragic eyes were dark with
mystery, and you felt in them the bitter complexity of the groping,
human soul. The trader told him the story and it moved him.

"Do you think he'll ever come back?" asked Neilson.

"No fear. Why, it'll be a couple of years before the ship is paid off,
and by then he'll have forgotten all about her. I bet he was pretty mad
when he woke up and found he'd been shanghaied, and I shouldn't wonder
but he wanted to fight somebody. But he'd got to grin and bear it, and I
guess in a month he was thinking it the best thing that had ever
happened to him that he got away from the island."

But Neilson could not get the story out of his head. Perhaps because he
was sick and weakly, the radiant health of Red appealed to his
imagination. Himself an ugly man, insignificant of appearance, he prized
very highly comeliness in others. He had never been passionately in
love, and certainly he had never been passionately loved. The mutual
attraction of those two young things gave him a singular delight. It had
the ineffable beauty of the Absolute. He went again to the little hut by
the creek. He had a gift for languages and an energetic mind, accustomed
to work, and he had already given much time to the study of the local
tongue. Old habit was strong in him and he was gathering together
material for a paper on the Samoan speech. The old crone who shared the
hut with Sally invited him to come in and sit down. She gave him _kava_
to drink and cigarettes to smoke. She was glad to have someone to chat
with and while she talked he looked at Sally. She reminded him of the
Psyche in the museum at Naples. Her features had the same clear purity
of line, and though she had borne a child she had still a virginal
aspect.

It was not till he had seen her two or three times that he induced her
to speak. Then it was only to ask him if he had seen in Apia a man
called Red. Two years had passed since his disappearance, but it was
plain that she still thought of him incessantly.

It did not take Neilson long to discover that he was in love with her.
It was only by an effort of will now that he prevented himself from
going every day to the creek, and when he was not with Sally his
thoughts were. At first, looking upon himself as a dying man, he asked
only to look at her, and occasionally hear her speak, and his love gave
him a wonderful happiness. He exulted in its purity. He wanted nothing
from her but the opportunity to weave around her graceful person a web
of beautiful fancies. But the open air, the equable temperature, the
rest, the simple fare, began to have an unexpected effect on his health.
His temperature did not soar at night to such alarming heights, he
coughed less and began to put on weight; six months passed without his
having a hmorrhage; and on a sudden he saw the possibility that he
might live. He had studied his disease carefully, and the hope dawned
upon him that with great care he might arrest its course. It exhilarated
him to look forward once more to the future. He made plans. It was
evident that any active life was out of the question, but he could live
on the islands, and the small income he had, insufficient elsewhere,
would be ample to keep him. He could grow coconuts; that would give him
an occupation; and he would send for his books and a piano; but his
quick mind saw that in all this he was merely trying to conceal from
himself the desire which obsessed him.

He wanted Sally. He loved not only her beauty, but that dim soul which
he divined behind her suffering eyes. He would intoxicate her with his
passion. In the end he would make her forget. And in an ecstasy of
surrender he fancied himself giving her too the happiness which he had
thought never to know again, but had now so miraculously achieved.

He asked her to live with him. She refused. He had expected that and did
not let it depress him, for he was sure that sooner or later she would
yield. His love was irresistible. He told the old woman of his wishes,
and found somewhat to his surprise that she and the neighbours, long
aware of them, were strongly urging Sally to accept his offer. After
all, every native was glad to keep house for a white man, and Neilson
according to the standards of the island was a rich one. The trader with
whom he boarded went to her and told her not to be a fool; such an
opportunity would not come again, and after so long she could not still
believe that Red would ever return. The girl's resistance only increased
Neilson's desire, and what had been a very pure love now became an
agonising passion. He was determined that nothing should stand in his
way. He gave Sally no peace. At last, worn out by his persistence and
the persuasions, by turns pleading and angry, of everyone around her,
she consented. But the day after, when exultant he went to see her he
found that in the night she had burnt down the hut in which she and Red
had lived together. The old crone ran towards him full of angry abuse of
Sally, but he waved her aside; it did not matter; they would build a
bungalow on the place where the hut had stood. A European house would
really be more convenient if he wanted to bring out a piano and a vast
number of books.

And so the little wooden house was built in which he had now lived for
many years, and Sally became his wife. But after the first few weeks of
rapture, during which he was satisfied with what she gave him, he had
known little happiness. She had yielded to him, through weariness, but
she had only yielded what she set no store on. The soul which he had
dimly glimpsed escaped him. He knew that she cared nothing for him. She
still loved Red, and all the time she was waiting for his return. At a
sign from him, Neilson knew that, notwithstanding his love, his
tenderness, his sympathy, his generosity, she would leave him without a
moment's hesitation. She would never give a thought to his distress.
Anguish seized him and he battered at that impenetrable self of hers
which sullenly resisted him. His love became bitter. He tried to melt
her heart with kindness, but it remained as hard as before; he feigned
indifference, but she did not notice it. Sometimes he lost his temper
and abused her, and then she wept silently. Sometimes he thought she was
nothing but a fraud, and that soul simply an invention of his own, and
that he could not get into the sanctuary of her heart because there was
no sanctuary there. His love became a prison from which he longed to
escape, but he had not the strength merely to open the door--that was
all it needed--and walk out into the open air. It was torture and at
last he became numb and hopeless. In the end the fire burnt itself out
and, when he saw her eyes rest for an instant on the slender bridge, it
was no longer rage that filled his heart but impatience. For many years
now they had lived together bound by the ties of habit and convenience,
and it was with a smile that he looked back on his old passion. She was
an old woman, for the women on the islands age quickly, and if he had no
love for her any more he had tolerance. She left him alone. He was
contented with his piano and his books.

His thoughts led him to a desire for words.

"When I look back now and reflect on that brief passionate love of Red
and Sally, I think that perhaps they should thank the ruthless fate that
separated them when their love seemed still to be at its height. They
suffered, but they suffered in beauty. They were spared the real tragedy
of love."

"I don't know exactly as I get you," said the skipper.

"The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think
it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care? Oh, it is
dreadfully bitter to look at a woman whom you have loved with all your
heart and soul, so that you felt you could not bear to let her out of
your sight, and realise that you would not mind if you never saw her
again. The tragedy of love is indifference."

But while he was speaking a very extraordinary thing happened. Though he
had been addressing the skipper he had not been talking to him, he had
been putting his thoughts into words for himself, and with his eyes
fixed on the man in front of him he had not seen him. But now an image
presented itself to them, an image not of the man he saw, but of another
man. It was as though he were looking into one of those distorting
mirrors that make you extraordinarily squat or outrageously elongate,
but here exactly the opposite took place, and in the obese, ugly old man
he caught the shadowy glimpse of a stripling. He gave him now a quick,
searching scrutiny. Why had a haphazard stroll brought him just to this
place? A sudden tremor of his heart made him slightly breathless. An
absurd suspicion seized him. What had occurred to him was impossible,
and yet it might be a fact.

"What is your name?" he asked abruptly.

The skipper's face puckered and he gave a cunning chuckle. He looked
then malicious and horribly vulgar.

"It's such a damned long time since I heard it that I almost forgot it
myself. But for thirty years now in the islands they've always called me
Red."

His huge form shook as he gave a low, almost silent laugh. It was
obscene. Neilson shuddered. Red was hugely amused, and from his
bloodshot eyes tears ran down his cheeks.

Neilson gave a gasp, for at that moment a woman came in. She was a
native, a woman of somewhat commanding presence, stout without being
corpulent, dark, for the natives grow darker with age, with very grey
hair. She wore a black Mother Hubbard, and its thinness showed her heavy
breasts. The moment had come.

She made an observation to Neilson about some household matter and he
answered. He wondered if his voice sounded as unnatural to her as it did
to himself. She gave the man who was sitting in the chair by the window
an indifferent glance, and went out of the room. The moment had come and
gone.

Neilson for a moment could not speak. He was strangely shaken. Then he
said:

"I'd be very glad if you'd stay and have a bit of dinner with me. Pot
luck."

"I don't think I will," said Red. "I must go after this fellow Gray.
I'll give him his stuff and then I'll get away. I want to be back in
Apia to-morrow."

"I'll send a boy along with you to show you the way."

"That'll be fine."

Red heaved himself out of his chair, while the Swede called one of the
boys who worked on the plantation. He told him where the skipper wanted
to go, and the boy stepped along the bridge. Red prepared to follow him.

"Don't fall in," said Neilson.

"Not on your life."

Neilson watched him make his way across and when he had disappeared
among the coconuts he looked still. Then he sank heavily in his chair.
Was that the man who had prevented him from being happy? Was that the
man whom Sally had loved all these years and for whom she had waited so
desperately? It was grotesque. A sudden fury seized him so that he had
an instinct to spring up and smash everything around him. He had been
cheated. They had seen each other at last and had not known it. He began
to laugh, mirthlessly, and his laughter grew till it became hysterical.
The Gods had played him a cruel trick. And he was old now.

At last Sally came in to tell him dinner was ready. He sat down in front
of her and tried to eat. He wondered what she would say if he told her
now that the fat old man sitting in the chair was the lover whom she
remembered still with the passionate abandonment of her youth. Years
ago, when he hated her because she made him so unhappy, he would have
been glad to tell her. He wanted to hurt her then as she hurt him,
because his hatred was only love. But now he did not care. He shrugged
his shoulders listlessly.

"What did that man want?" she asked presently.

He did not answer at once. She was too old, a fat old native woman. He
wondered why he had ever loved her so madly. He had laid at her feet all
the treasures of his soul, and she had cared nothing for them. Waste,
what waste! And now, when he looked at her, he felt only contempt. His
patience was at last exhausted. He answered her question.

"He's the captain of a schooner. He's come from Apia."

"Yes."

"He brought me news from home. My eldest brother is very ill and I must
go back."

"Will you be gone long?"

He shrugged his shoulders.




NEIL MACADAM


Captain Bredon was good-natured. When Angus Munro, the Curator of the
museum at Kuala Solor, told him that he had advised Neil MacAdam, his
new assistant, on his arrival at Singapore to put up at the Van Dyke
Hotel, and asked him to see that the lad got into no mischief during the
few days he must spend there, he said he would do his best. Captain
Bredon commanded the _Sultan Ahmed_, and when he was at Singapore always
stayed at the Van Dyke. He had a Japanese wife and kept a room there. It
was his home. When he got back after his fortnight's trip along the
coast of Borneo the Dutch manager told him that Neil had been there for
two days. The boy was sitting in the little dusty garden of the hotel
reading old numbers of _The Straits Times_. Captain Bredon took a look
at him first and then went up.

"You're MacAdam, aren't you?"

Neil rose to his feet, flushed to the roots of his hair and answered
shyly: "I am."

"My name's Bredon. I'm skipper of the _Sultan Ahmed_. You're sailing
with me next Tuesday. Munro asked me to look after you. What about a
stengah? I suppose you've learned what that means by now."

"Thank you very much, but I don't drink."

He spoke with a broad Scots accent.

"I don't blame you. Drink's been the ruin of many a good man in this
country."

He called the Chinese boy and ordered himself a double whisky and a
small soda.

"What have you been doing with yourself since you got in?"

"Walking about."

"There's nothing much to see in Singapore."

"I've found plenty."

Of course the first thing he had done was to go to the museum. There was
little that he had not seen at home, but the fact that those beasts and
birds, those reptiles, moths, butterflies and insects were native to the
country excited him. There was one section devoted to that part of
Borneo of which Kuala Solor was the capital, and since these were the
creatures that for the next three years would chiefly concern him, he
examined them with attention. But it was outside, in the streets, that
it was most thrilling, and except that he was a grave and sober young
man he would have laughed aloud with joy. Everything was new to him. He
walked till he was footsore. He stood at the corner of a busy street and
wondered at the long line of rickshaws and the little men between the
shafts running with dogged steps. He stood on a bridge over a canal and
looked at the sampans wedged up against one another like sardines in a
tin. He peered into the Chinese shops in Victoria Road where so many
strange things were sold. Bombay merchants, fat and exuberant, stood at
their shop doors and sought to sell him silks and tinsel jewellery. He
watched the Tamils, pensive and forlorn, who walked with a sinister
grace, and the bearded Arabs, in white skull-caps, who bore themselves
with scornful dignity. The sun shone upon the varied scene with a hard,
acrid brilliance. He was confused. He thought it would take him years to
find his bearings in this multicoloured and excessive world.

After dinner that night Captain Bredon asked him if he would like to go
round the town.

"You ought to see a bit of life while you're here," he said.

They stepped into rickshaws and drove to the Chinese quarter. The
Captain, who never drank at sea, had been making up for his abstinence
during the day. He was feeling good. The rickshaws stopped at a house in
a side street and they knocked at the door. It was opened and they
passed through a narrow passage into a large room with benches all round
it covered with red plush. A number of women were sitting about--French,
Italian and American. A mechanical piano was grinding out harsh music
and a few couples were dancing. Captain Bredon ordered drinks. Two or
three women, waiting for an invitation, gave them inviting glances.

"Well, young feller, is there anyone you fancy here?" the Captain asked
facetiously.

"To sleep with, d'you mean? No."

"No white girls where you're going, you know."

"Oh, well."

"Like to go an' see some natives?"

"I don't mind."

The Captain paid for the drinks and they strolled on. They went to
another house. Here the girls were Chinese, small and dainty, with tiny
feet and hands like flowers, and they wore suits of flowered silk. But
their painted faces were like masks. They looked at the strangers with
black derisive eyes. They were strangely inhuman.

"I brought you here because I thought you ought to see the place," said
Captain Bredon, with the air of a man doing his bounden duty, "but just
look-see is all. They don't like us for some reason. In some of these
Chinese joints they won't even let a white man in. Fact is, they say we
stink. Funny, ain't it? They say we smell of corpses."

"We?"

"Give me Japs," said the Captain. "They're fine. My wife's a Jap, you
know. You come along with me and I'll take you to a place where they
have Japanese girls, and if you don't see something you like there I'm a
Dutchman."

Their rickshaws were waiting and they stepped into them. Captain Bredon
gave a direction and the boys started off. They were let into the house
by a stout middle-aged Japanese woman, who bowed low as they entered.
She took them into a neat, clean room furnished only with mats on the
floor; they sat down and presently a little girl came in with a tray on
which were two bowls of pale tea. With a shy bow she handed one to each
of them. The Captain spoke to the middle-aged woman and she looked at
Neil and giggled. She said something to the child, who went out, and
presently four girls tripped in. They were sweet in their kimonos, with
their shining black hair artfully dressed; they were small and plump,
with round faces and laughing eyes. They bowed low as they came in and
with good manners murmured polite greetings. Their speech sounded like
the twittering of birds. Then they knelt, one on each side of the two
men, and charmingly flirted with them. Captain Bredon soon had his arms
round two slim waists. They all talked nineteen to the dozen. They were
very gay. It seemed to Neil that the Captain's girls were mocking him,
for their gleaming eyes were mischievously turned towards him, and he
blushed. But the other two cuddled up to him, smiling, and spoke in
Japanese as though he understood every word they said. They seemed so
happy and guileless that he laughed. They were very attentive. They
handed him the bowl so that he should drink his tea, and then took it
from him so that he should not have the trouble of holding it. They lit
his cigarette for him and one put out a small, delicate hand to take the
ash so that it should not fall on his clothes. They stroked his smooth
face and looked with curiosity at his large young hands. They were as
playful as kittens.

"Well, which is it to be?" said the Captain after a while. "Made your
choice yet?"

"What d'you mean?"

"I'll just wait and see you settled and then I'll fix myself up."

"Oh, I don't want either of them. I'm going home to bed."

"Why, what's the matter? You're not scared, are you?"

"No, I just don't fancy it. But don't let me stand in your way. I'll get
back to the hotel all right."

"Oh, if you're not going to do anything I won't either. I only wanted to
be matey."

He spoke to the middle-aged woman and what he said caused the girls to
look at Neil with sudden surprise. She answered and the Captain shrugged
his shoulders. Then one of the girls made a remark that set them all
laughing.

"What does she say?" asked Neil.

"She's pulling your leg," replied the Captain, smiling.

But he gave Neil a curious look. The girl, having made them laugh once,
now said something directly to Neil. He could not understand, but the
mockery of her eyes made him blush and frown. He did not like to be made
fun of. Then she laughed outright and throwing her arm round his neck
lightly kissed him.

"Come on, let's be going," said the Captain.

When they dismissed their rickshaws and walked into the hotel Neil asked
him:

"What was it that girl said that made them all laugh?"

"She said you were a virgin."

"I don't see anything to laugh at in that," said Neil, with his slow
Scots accent.

"Is it true?"

"I suppose it is."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-two."

"What are you waiting for?"

"Till I marry."

The Captain was silent. At the top of the stairs he held out his hand.
There was a twinkle in his eyes when he bade the lad good-night, but
Neil met it with a level, candid and untroubled gaze.

Three days later they sailed. Neil was the only white passenger. When
the Captain was busy he read. He was reading again Wallace's _Malay
Archipelago_. He had read it as a boy, but now it had a new and
absorbing interest for him. When the Captain was at leisure they played
cribbage or sat in long chairs on the deck, smoking, and talked. Neil
was the son of a country doctor, and he could not remember when he had
not been interested in natural history. When he had done with school he
went to the University of Edinburgh and there took a B.Sc. with Honours.
He was looking out for a job as demonstrator in biology when he chanced
to see in _Nature_ an advertisement for an assistant curator of the
museum at Kuala Solor. The Curator, Angus Munro, had been at Edinburgh
with his uncle, a Glasgow merchant, and his uncle wrote to ask him if he
would give the boy a trial. Though Neil was especially interested in
entomology he was a trained taxidermist, which the advertisement said
was essential; he enclosed certificates from Neil's old teachers; he
added that Neil had played football for his university. In a few weeks a
cable arrived engaging him and a fortnight later he sailed.

"What's Mr. Munro like?" asked Neil.

"Good fellow. Everybody likes him."

"I looked out his papers in the scientific journals. He had one in the
last number of _The Ibis_ on the Gymnathid."

"I don't know anything about that. I know he's got a Russian wife. They
don't like her much."

"I got a letter from him at Singapore saying they'd put me up for a bit
till I could look round and see what I wanted to do."

Now they were steaming up the river. At the mouth was a straggling
fishermen's village standing on piles in the water; on the bank grew
thickly nipah palm and the tortured mangrove; beyond stretched the dense
green of the virgin forest. In the distance, darkly silhouetted against
the blue sky, was the rugged outline of a mountain. Neil, his heart
beating with the excitement that possessed him, devoured the scene with
eager eyes. He was surprised. He knew his Conrad almost by heart and he
was expecting a land of brooding mystery. He was not prepared for the
blue milky sky. Little white clouds on the horizon, like sailing boats
becalmed, shone in the sun. The green trees of the forest glittered in
the brilliant light. Here and there, on the banks, were Malay houses
with thatched roofs, and they nestled cosily among fruit trees. Natives
in dug-outs rowed, standing, up the river. Neil had no feeling of being
shut in, nor, in that radiant morning, of gloom, but of space and
freedom. The country offered him a gracious welcome. He knew he was
going to be happy in it. Captain Bredon from the bridge threw a friendly
glance at the lad standing below him. He had taken quite a fancy to him
during the four days the journey had lasted. It was true he did not
drink, and when you made a joke he was as likely as not to take you
seriously, but there was something very taking in his seriousness;
everything was interesting and important to him--that, of course, was
why he did not find your jokes amusing; but even though he didn't see
them he laughed, because he felt you expected it. He laughed because
life was grand. He was grateful for every little thing you told him. He
was very polite. He never asked you to pass him anything without saying
"please" and always said "thank you" when you gave it. And he was a
good-looking fellow, no one could deny that. Neil was standing with his
hands on the rail, bare-headed, looking at the passing bank. He was
tall, six foot two, with long, loose limbs, broad shoulders and narrow
hips; there was something charmingly coltish about him, so that you
expected him at any moment to break into a caper. He had brown curly
hair with a peculiar shine in it; sometimes when the light caught it, it
glittered like gold. His eyes, large and very blue, shone with
good-humour. They reflected his happy disposition. His nose was short
and blunt and his mouth big, his chin determined; his face was rather
broad. But his most striking feature was his skin; it was very white and
smooth, with a lovely patch of red on either cheek. It would have been a
beautiful skin even for a woman. Captain Bredon made the same joke to
him every morning.

"Well, my lad, have you shaved to-day?"

Neil passed his hand over his chin.

"No, d'you think I need it?"

The Captain always laughed at this.

"Need it? Why, you've got a face like a baby's bottom."

And invariably Neil reddened to the roots of his hair.

"I shave once a week," he retorted.

But it wasn't only his looks that made you like him. It was his
ingenuousness, his candour and the freshness with which he confronted
the world. For all his intentness and the solemn way in which he took
everything, and his inclination to argue upon every point that came up,
there was something strangely simple in him that gave you quite an odd
feeling. The Captain couldn't make it out.

"I wonder if it's because he's never had a woman," he said to himself.
"Funny. I should have thought the girls never left him alone. With a
complexion like that."

But the _Sultan Ahmed_ was nearing the bend after rounding which Kuala
Solor would be in sight and the Captain's reflections were interrupted
by the necessities of his work. He rang down to the engine room. The
ship slackened to half speed. Kuala Solor straggled along the left bank
of the river, a white neat and trim little town, and on the right on a
hill were the fort and the Sultan's palace. There was a breeze and the
Sultan's flag, at the top of a tall staff, waved bravely against the
sky. They anchored in midstream. The doctor and a police officer came on
board in the government launch. They were accompanied by a tall thin man
in white ducks. The Captain stood at the head of the gangway and shook
hands with them. Then he turned to the last comer.

"Well, I've brought you your young hopeful safe and sound." And with a
glance at Neil: "This is Munro."

The tall thin man held out his hand and gave Neil an appraising look.
Neil flushed a little and smiled. He had beautiful teeth.

"How do you do, sir?"

Munro did not smile with his lips, but faintly with his grey eyes. His
cheeks were hollow and he had a thin aquiline nose and pale lips. He was
deeply sunburned. His face looked tired, but his expression was very
gentle, and Neil immediately felt confidence in him. The Captain
introduced him to the doctor and the policeman and suggested that they
should have a drink. When they sat down and the boy brought bottles of
beer Munro took off his topee. Neil saw that he had close-cropped brown
hair turning grey. He was a man of forty, quiet, self-possessed in
manner, with an intellectual air that distinguished him from the brisk
little doctor and the heavy swaggering police officer.

"MacAdam doesn't drink," said the Captain when the boy poured out four
glasses of beer.

"All the better," said Munro. "I hope you haven't been trying to lure
him into evil ways."

"I tried to in Singapore," returned the Captain, with a twinkle in his
eyes, "but there was nothing doing."

When he had finished his beer Munro turned to Neil.

"Well, we'll be getting ashore, shall we?"

Neil's baggage was put in charge of Munro's boy and the two men got into
a sampan. They landed.

"Do you want to go straight up to the bungalow or would you like to have
a look round first? We've got a couple of hours before tiffin."

"Couldn't we go to the museum?" said Neil.

Munro's eyes smiled gently. He was pleased. Neil was shy and Munro not
by nature talkative, so they walked in silence. By the river were the
native huts and here, living their immemorial lives, dwelt the Malays.
They were busy, but without haste, and you were conscious of a happy,
normal activity. There was a sense of the rhythm of life of which the
pattern was birth and death, love and the affairs common to mankind.
They came to the bazaars, narrow streets with arcades, where the teeming
Chinese, working and eating, noisily talking, as is their way,
indefatigably strove with eternity.

"It's not much after Singapore," said Munro, "but I always think it's
rather picturesque."

He spoke with an accent less broad than Neil's, but the Scots burr was
there and it put Neil at his ease. He could never quite get it out of
his head that the English of English people was affected.

The museum was a handsome stone building and as they entered its portals
Munro instinctively straightened himself. The attendant at the door
saluted and Munro spoke to him in Malay, evidently explaining who Neil
was, for the attendant gave him a smile and saluted again. It was cool
in there in comparison with the heat without and the light was pleasant
after the glare of the street.

"I'm afraid you'll be disappointed," said Munro. "We haven't got half
the things we ought to have, but up to now we've been handicapped by
lack of money. We've had to do the best we could. So you must make
allowances."

Neil stepped in like a swimmer diving confidently into a summer sea. The
specimens were admirably arranged. Munro had sought to please as well as
to instruct, and birds and beasts and reptiles were presented, as far as
possible in their natural surroundings, in such a way as to give a vivid
impression of life. Neil lost his shyness and began with boyish
enthusiasm to talk of this and that. He asked an infinity of questions.
He was excited. Neither of them was conscious of the passage of time,
and when Munro glanced at his watch he was surprised to see what the
hour was. They got into rickshaws and drove to the bungalow.

Munro led the young man into a drawing-room. A woman was lying on a sofa
reading a book and as they came in she slowly rose.

"This is my wife. I'm afraid we're dreadfully late, Darya."

"What does it matter?" she smiled. "What is more unimportant than time?"

She held out her hand, a rather large hand, to Neil and gave a long,
reflective, but friendly look.

"I suppose you've been showing him the museum."

She was a woman of five-and-thirty, of medium height, with a pale brown
face of a uniform colour and pale blue eyes. Her hair, parted in the
middle and wound into a knot on the nape of her neck, was untidy; it had
a moth-like quality and was of a curious pale brown. Her face was broad,
with high cheek-bones, and she had a rather fleshy nose. She was not a
pretty woman, but there was in her slow movements a sensual grace and in
her manner as it were a physical casualness that only very dull people
could have failed to find interesting. She wore a frock of green cotton.
She spoke English perfectly, but with a slight accent.

They sat down to tiffin. Neil was overcome once more with shyness, but
Darya did not seem to notice it. She talked freely and easily. She asked
him about his journey and what he had thought of Singapore. She told him
about the people he would have to meet. That afternoon Munro was to take
him to call on the Resident, the Sultan being away, and later they would
go to the club. There he would see everybody.

"You will be popular," she said, her pale blue eyes resting on him with
attention. A man less ingenuous than Neil might have noticed that she
took stock of his size and youthful virility, his shiny, curling hair
and his lovely skin. "They don't think much of us."

"Oh, nonsense, Darya. You're too sensitive. They're English, that's
all."

"They think it's rather funny of Angus to be a scientist and they think
it's rather vulgar of me to be a Russian. I don't care. They're fools.
They're the most commonplace, the most narrow-minded, the most
conventional people it has ever been my misfortune to live amongst."

"Don't put MacAdam off the moment he arrives. He'll find them kind and
hospitable."

"What is your first name?" she asked the boy.

"Neil."

"I shall call you by it. And you must call me Darya. I hate being called
Mrs. Munro. It makes me feel like a minister's wife."

Neil blushed. He was embarrassed that she should ask him so soon to be
so familiar. She went on.

"Some of the men are not bad."

"They do their job competently and that's what they're here for," said
Munro.

"They shoot. They play football and tennis and cricket. I get on with
them quite well. The women are intolerable. They are jealous and
spiteful and lazy. They can talk of nothing. If you introduce an
intellectual subject they look down their noses as though you were
indecent. What can they talk about? They're interested in nothing. If
you speak of the body they think you improper, and if you speak of the
soul they think you priggish."

"You mustn't take what my wife says too literally," smiled Munro, in his
gentle, tolerant way. "The community here is just like any other in the
East, neither very clever, nor very stupid, but amiable and kindly. And
that's a good deal."

"I don't want people to be amiable and kindly. I want them to be vital
and passionate. I want them to be interested in mankind. I want them to
attach more importance to the things of the spirit than to a gin pahit
or a curry tiffin. I want art to matter to them and literature." She
addressed herself abruptly to Neil: "Have you got a soul?"

"Oh, I don't know. I don't know exactly what you mean."

"Why do you blush when I ask you? Why should you be ashamed of your
soul? It is what is important in you. Tell me about it. I am interested
in you and I want to know."

It seemed very awkward to Neil to be tackled in this way by a perfect
stranger. He had never met anyone like this. But he was a serious young
man and when he was asked a question straight out he did his best to
answer it. It was Munro's presence that embarrassed him.

"I don't know what you mean by the soul. If you mean an immaterial or
spiritual entity, separately produced by the creator, in temporary
conjunction with the material body, then my answer is in the negative.
It seems to me that such a radically dualistic view of human personality
cannot be defended by anyone who is able to take a calm view of the
evidence. If, on the other hand, you mean by soul the aggregate of
psychic elements which form what we know as the personality of the
individual, then, of course, I have."

"You're very sweet and you're wonderfully handsome," she said, smiling.
"No, I mean the heart with its longings and the body with its desires
and the infinite in us. Tell me, what did you read on the journey, or
did you only play deck tennis?"

Neil was taken aback at the inconsequence of her reply. He would have
been a little affronted except for the good-humour in her eyes and the
naturalness in her manner. Munro smiled quietly at the young man's
bewilderment. When he smiled the lines that ran from the wings of his
nostrils to the corners of his mouth became deep furrows.

"I read a lot of Conrad."

"For pleasure or to improve your mind?"

"Both. I admire him awfully."

Darya threw up her arms in an extravagant gesture of protest.

"That Pole," she cried. "How can you English ever have let yourselves be
taken in by that wordy mountebank? He has all the superficiality of his
countrymen. That stream of words, those involved sentences, the showy
rhetoric, that affectation of profundity: when you get through all that
to the thought at the bottom, what do you find but a trivial
commonplace? He was like a second-rate actor who puts on a romantic
dress and declaims a play by Victor Hugo. For five minutes you say this
is heroic, and then your whole soul revolts and you cry, no, this is
false, false, false."

She spoke with a passion that Neil had never known anyone show when
speaking of art or literature. Her cheeks, usually colourless, flushed
and her pale eyes glowed.

"There's no one who got atmosphere like Conrad," said Neil. "I can smell
and see and feel the East when I read him."

"Nonsense. What do you know about the East? Everyone will tell you that
he made the grossest blunders. Ask Angus."

"Of course he was not always accurate," said Munro, in his measured,
reflective way. "The Borneo he described is not the Borneo we know. He
saw it from the deck of a merchant-vessel and he was not an acute
observer even of what he saw. But does it matter? I don't know why
fiction should be hampered by fact. I don't think it's a mean
achievement to have created a country, a dark, sinister, romantic and
heroic country of the soul."

"You're a sentimentalist, my poor Angus." And then again to Neil: "You
must read Turgeniev, you must read Tolstoi, you must read Dostoevsky."

Neil did not in the least know what to make of Darya Munro. She skipped
over the first stages of acquaintance and treated him at once like
someone she had known intimately all her life. It puzzled him. It seemed
so reckless. When he met anyone his own instinct was to go cautiously.
He was amiable, but he did not like to step too far before he saw his
way before him. He did not want to give anyone his confidence before he
thought himself justified. But with Darya you could not help yourself;
she forced your confidence. She poured out the feelings and thoughts
that most people keep to themselves like a prodigal flinging gold pieces
to a scrambling crowd. She did not talk, she did not act, like anyone he
had ever known. She did not mind what she said. She would speak of the
natural functions of the human animal in a way that brought the blushes
coursing to his cheeks. They excited her ridicule.

"Oh, what a prig you are! What is there indecent in it? When I'm going
to take a purge, why shouldn't I say so and when I think you want one,
why shouldn't I tell you?"

"Theoretically I dare say you're right," said Neil, always judicious and
reasonable.

She made him tell her of his father and mother, his brothers, his life
at school and at the university. She told him about herself. Her father
was a general killed in the war and her mother a Princess Lutchkov. They
were in Eastern Russia when the Bolsheviks seized power, and fled to
Yokohama. Here they had subsisted miserably on the sale of their jewels
and such objects of art as they had been able to save, and here she
married a fellow-exile. She was unhappy with him and in two years
divorced him. Her mother died and, penniless, she was driven to earn her
living as best she could. She was employed by an American relief
organisation. She taught in a mission school. She worked in a hospital.
She made Neil's blood boil, and at the same time embarrassed him very
much, when she spoke of the men who tried to take advantage of her
defencelessness and her poverty. She spared him no details.

"Brutes," he said.

"Oh, all men are like that," she replied, with a shrug of her shoulders.

She told him how once she protected her virtue at the point of her
revolver.

"I swore I'd kill him if he took another step, and if he had I'd have
shot him like a dog."

"Gosh!" said Neil.

It was at Yokohama that she met Angus. He was spending his leave in
Japan. She was captivated by his straightforwardness, the decency which
was so obvious in him, his tenderness and his consideration. He was not
a business man; he was a scientist, and science is milk-brother to art.
He offered her peace. He offered her security. And she was tired of
Japan. Borneo was a land of mystery. They had been married for five
years.

She gave Neil the Russian novelists to read. She gave him _Fathers and
Sons_, _Anna Karenina_ and _The Brothers Karamazoff_.

"Those are the three peaks of our literature. Read them. They are the
greatest novels the world has ever seen."

Like many of her countrymen she talked as though no other literature
counted, and as though a few novels and stories, some indifferent poetry
and half a dozen good plays had made whatever else the world has
produced negligible. Neil was fascinated and overwhelmed.

"You're rather like Alyosha yourself, Neil," she said, looking at him
with eyes that were now so soft and tender, "an Alyosha with a Scotch
dourness, suspicious and prudent, that will not let the soul in you, the
spiritual beauty, come out."

"I'm not a bit like Alyosha," he answered self-consciously.

"You don't know what you're like. You don't know anything about
yourself. Why are you a naturalist? Is it for money? You could have made
much more money by going into your uncle's office in Glasgow. I feel in
you something strange and unearthly. I could bow down at your feet as
Father Zossima did to Dimitri."

"Please don't," he said, smiling, but flushing a little too.

But the novels he read made her seem a little less strange to him. They
gave her an environment and he recognised in her traits which, however
unusual in the women he knew in Scotland, his mother and the daughters
of his uncle in Glasgow, were common to many of the characters in
Russian fiction. He no longer wondered that she should like to sit up so
late, drinking innumerable cups of tea, and lie on the sofa nearly all
day long reading and incessantly smoking cigarettes. She could do
nothing at all for days on end without being bored. She had a curious
mixture of languor and zest. She often said, with a shrug of her
shoulders, that she was an Oriental, and a European only by chance. She
had a feline grace that indeed suggested the Oriental. She was immensely
untidy and it did not seem to affect her that cigarette-ends, old papers
and empty tins should lie about their living-room. But he thought she
had something of Anna Karenina in her, and he transferred to her the
sympathy he felt for that pathetic creature. He understood her
arrogance. It was not unnatural that she despised the women of the
community, whose acquaintance little by little he made; they _were_
commonplace; her mind was quicker than theirs, she had a wider culture,
and she had above all a sort of tremulous sensitiveness that made _them_
extraordinarily colourless. She certainly took no pains to conciliate
them. Though at home she slopped about in a sarong and baju, when she
and Angus went out to dinner she dressed with a splendour that was
somewhat out of place. She liked to display her ample bosom and her
shapely back. She painted her cheeks and made up her eyes like an
actress for the footlights. Though it made Neil angry to see the amused
or outraged glances that her appearance provoked, he could not in his
heart but think it a pity that she should make such an object of
herself. She looked grand, of course, but if you hadn't known who she
was you would have thought she wasn't respectable. There were things
about her that he could never get over. She had an enormous appetite and
it fashed him that she ate more than he and Angus together. He could
never quite get used to the bluntness with which she discussed sexual
matters. She took it for granted that at home and in Edinburgh he had
had affairs with a host of women. She pressed him for details of his
adventures. His Scotch pawkiness helped him to parry her thrusts and he
evaded her questions with native caution. She laughed at his reticence.

Sometimes she shocked him. He grew accustomed to the frankness with
which she admired his looks, and when she told him that he was as
beautiful as a young Norse god he did not turn a hair. Flattery fell off
him like water from a duck's back. But he did not like it when she ran
her hand, though large, very soft, with caressing fingers, through his
curly hair or, a smile on her lips, stroked his smoothed face. He
couldn't bear being mussed about. One day she wanted a drink of tonic
water and began pouring some out in a glass that stood on the table.

"That's my glass," he said quickly. "I've just been drinking out of it."

"Well, what of it? You haven't got syphilis, have you?"

"I hate drinking out of other people's glasses myself."

She was funny about cigarettes too. Once, when he hadn't been there very
long, he had just lit one, when she passed and said:

"I want that."

She took it out of his mouth and began to smoke it. After two or three
puffs, she said she did not want any more and handed it back to him. The
end she had had in her mouth was red from the rouge on her lips, and he
didn't want to go on smoking it at all. But he was afraid she would
think it rude if he threw it away. It somewhat disgusted him. Often she
would ask him for a cigarette and when he handed it to her, say:

"Oh, light it for me, will you?"

When he did so, and held it out to her, she opened her mouth so that he
should put it in. He hadn't been able to help wetting the end a little.
He wondered she could bear to put it in her mouth after it had been in
his. The whole thing seemed to him awfully familiar. He was sure Munro
wouldn't like it. She had even done this once or twice at the club. Neil
had felt himself go purple. He wished she hadn't got these rather
unpleasant habits, but he supposed they were Russian, and one couldn't
deny that she was wonderfully good company. Her conversation was very
stimulating. It was like champagne (which Neil had tasted once and
thought wretched stuff), "metaphorically speaking". There was nothing
she couldn't talk about. She didn't talk like a man; with a man you
generally knew what he would say next, but with her you never did; her
intuition was quite remarkable. She gave you ideas. She enlarged your
mind and excited your imagination. Neil felt alive as he had never felt
alive before. He seemed to walk on mountain peaks and the horizons of
the spirit were unbounded. Neil felt a certain complacency when he
stopped to reflect on what an exalted plane his mind communed with hers.
Such conversations made very small beer of the vaunted pleasure of
sense. She was in many ways (he was of a cautious nature and seldom made
a statement even to himself that he did not qualify) the most
intelligent woman he had ever met. And besides, she was Angus Munro's
wife.

For, whatever Neil's reservations were about Darya, he had none about
Munro, and she would have had to be a much less remarkable woman not to
profit by the enormous admiration he conceived for her husband. With him
Neil let himself go. He felt for him what he had never felt for anyone
before. He was so sane, so balanced, so tolerant. This was the sort of
man he would himself like to be when he was older. He talked little, but
when he did, with good sense. He was wise. He had a dry humour that Neil
understood. It made the hearty English fun of the men at the club seem
inane. He was kind and patient. He had a dignity that made it impossible
to conceive of anyone taking a liberty with him, but he was neither
pompous nor solemn. He was honest and absolutely truthful. But Neil
admired him no less as a scientist than as a man. He had imagination. He
was careful and painstaking. Though his interest was in research he did
the routine work of the museum conscientiously. He was just then much
interested in stick-insects and intended to write a paper on their
powers of parthenogenetic reproduction. An incident occurred in
connection with the experiments he was making that made a great
impression on Neil. One day, a little captive gibbon escaped from its
chain and ate up all the larvae and so destroyed the whole of Munro's
evidence. Neil nearly cried. Angus Munro took the gibbon in his arms
and, smiling, stroked it.

"Diamond, Diamond," he said, quoting Sir Isaac Newton, "you little know
the damage you have done."

He was also studying mimicry and instilled into Neil his absorbed
interest in this controversial subject. They had interminable talks
about it. Neil was astonished at the Curator's wonderful knowledge. It
was encylopdic, and he was abashed at his own ignorance. But it was
when Munro spoke of the trips into the country to collect specimens that
his enthusiasm was most contagious. That was the perfect life, a life of
hardship, difficulty, often of privation and sometimes of danger, but
rewarded by the thrill of finding a rare, or even a new, species, by the
beauty of the scenery and the intimate observation of nature, and above
all by the sense of freedom from every tie. It was for this part of the
work that Neil had been chiefly engaged. Munro was occupied in research
work that made it difficult for him to be away from home for several
weeks at a time, and Darya had always refused to accompany him. She had
an unreasoning fear of the jungle. She was terrified of wild beasts,
snakes and venomous insects. Though Munro had told her over and over
again that no animal hurt you unless you molested or frightened it, she
could not get over her instinctive horror. He did not like leaving her.
She cared little for the local society and with him away he realised
that life for her must be intolerably dull. But the Sultan was keenly
interested in natural history and was anxious that the museum should be
completely representative of the country's fauna. One expedition Munro
and Neil were to make together, so that Neil should learn how to go to
work, and the plans for this were discussed by them for months. Neil
looked forward to it as he had never looked forward to anything in his
life.

Meanwhile he learned Malay and acquired a smattering of the dialects
that would be useful to him on future journeys. He played tennis and
football. He soon knew everyone in the community. On the football field
he threw off his absorption in science and his interest in Russian
fiction and gave himself up to the pleasure of the game. He was strong,
quick and active. After it was all over it was grand to have a sluice
down and a long tonic with a slice of lemon and go over it all with the
other fellows. It had never been intended that Neil should live
permanently with the Munros. There was a roomy rest-house at Kuala
Solor, but the rule was that no one should stay in it for more than a
fortnight and such of the bachelors as had no official quarters clubbed
together and took a house between them. When Neil arrived it so happened
that there was no vacancy in any of these messes. One evening, however,
when he had been about four months in the colony, two men, Waring and
Jonson, when they were sitting together after a game of tennis, told him
that one member of their mess was going home and if he would like to
join them they would be glad to have him. They were young fellows of his
own age, in the football team, and Neil liked them both. Waring was in
the Customs and Jonson in the police. He jumped at the suggestion. They
told him how much it would cost and fixed a day, a fortnight later, when
it would be convenient for him to move in.

At dinner he told the Munros.

"It's been awfully good of you to let me stay so long. It's made me very
uncomfortable planting myself on you like this, I've been quite ashamed,
but now there's no excuse for me."

"But we like having you here," said Darya. "You don't need an excuse."

"I can hardly go on staying here indefinitely."

"Why not? Your salary's miserable, what's the use of wasting it on board
and lodging? You'd be bored stiff with Jonson and Waring. Stupids. They
haven't an idea in their heads outside playing the gramophone and
knocking balls about."

It was true that it had been very convenient to live free of cost. He
had saved the greater part of his salary. He had a thrifty soul and had
never been used to spending money when it wasn't necessary, but he was
proud. He could not go on living at other people's expense. Darya looked
at him with her quiet, observant eyes.

"Angus and I have got used to you now. I think we'd miss you. If you
like, you can pay us for your board. You don't cost anything, but if
it'll make you easier I'll find out exactly what difference you make in
cookie's book and you can pay that."

"It must be an awful nuisance having a stranger in the house," he
answered uncertainly.

"It'll be miserable for you there. Good heavens, the filth they eat."

It was true also that at the Munros' you ate better than anywhere else
at Kuala Solor. He had dined out now and then, and even at the
Resident's you didn't get a very good dinner. Darya liked her food and
kept the cook up to the mark. He made Russian dishes which were a fair
treat. That cabbage soup of Darya's was worth walking five miles for.
But Munro hadn't said anything.

"I'd be glad if you'd stay here," he said now. "It's very convenient to
have you on the spot. If anything comes up we can talk it over there and
then. Waring and Jonson are very good fellows, but I dare say you'd find
them rather limited after a bit."

"Oh, well, then I'll be very pleased. Heaven knows, I couldn't want
anything better than this. I was only afraid I was in the way."

Next day it was raining cats and dogs and it was impossible to play
tennis or football, but towards six Neil put on a mackintosh and went to
the club. It was empty but for the Resident, who was sitting in an
arm-chair reading _The Fortnightly_. His name was Trevelyan, and he
claimed to be related to the friend of Byron. He was a tall fat man,
with close-cropped white hair and the large red face of a comic actor.
He was fond of amateur theatricals and specialised in cynical dukes and
facetious butlers. He was a bachelor, but generally supposed to be fond
of the girls, and he liked his gin pahit before dinner. He owed his
position to the Sultan's friendship. He was a slack, complacent man, a
great talker, not very fond of work, who wanted everything to go
smoothly and no one to give trouble. Though not considered especially
competent he was popular in the community because he was easy-going and
hospitable, and he certainly made life more comfortable than if he had
been energetic and efficient. He nodded to Neil.

"Well, young fellow, how are bugs to-day?"

"Feeling the weather, sir," said Neil gravely.

"Hi-hi."

In a few minutes Waring, Jonson and another man, called Bishop, came in.
He was in the Civil Service. Neil did not play bridge, so Bishop went up
to the Resident.

"Would you care to make a fourth, sir?" he asked him. "There's nobody
much in the club to-day."

The Resident gave the others a glance.

"All right. I'll just finish this article and join you. Cut for me and
deal. I shall only be five minutes."

Neil went up to the three men.

"Oh, I say, Waring, thanks awfully, but I can't move over to you after
all. The Munros have asked me to stay on with them for good."

A broad smile broke on Waring's face.

"Fancy that."

"It's awfully nice of them, isn't it? They made rather a point of it. I
couldn't very well refuse."

"What did I tell you?" said Bishop.

"I don't blame the boy," said Waring.

There was something in their manner that Neil did not like. They seemed
to be amused. He flushed.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he cried.

"Oh, come off it," said Bishop. "We know our Darya. You're not the first
good-looking young fellow she's had a romp with, and you won't be the
last."

The words were hardly out of his mouth before Neil's clenched fist shot
out like a flash. He hit Bishop on the face and he fell heavily to the
floor. Jonson sprang at Neil and seized him round the middle, for he was
beside himself.

"Let me go," he shouted. "If he doesn't withdraw that I'll kill him."

The Resident, startled by the commotion, looked up and rose to his feet.
He walked heavily towards them.

"What's this? What's this? What the hell are you boys playing at?"

They were taken aback. They had forgotten him. He was their master.
Jonson let go of Neil and Bishop picked himself up. The Resident, a
frown on his face, spoke to Neil sharply.

"What's the meaning of this? Did you hit Bishop?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why?"

"He made a foul suggestion reflecting on a woman's honour," said Neil,
very haughtily, and still white with rage.

The Resident's eyes twinkled, but he kept a grave face.

"What woman?"

"I refuse to answer," said Neil, throwing back his head and drawing
himself up to his full imposing height.

It would have been more effective if the Resident hadn't been a good two
inches taller, and very much stouter.

"Don't be a damned young fool."

"Darya Munro," said Jonson.

"What did you say, Bishop?"

"I forget the exact words I used. I said she'd hopped into bed with a
good many young chaps here, and I supposed she hadn't missed the chance
of doing the same with MacAdam."

"It was a most offensive suggestion. Will you be so good as to apologise
and shake hands. Both of you."

"I've had a hell of a biff, sir. My eye's going to look like the devil.
I'm damned if I apologise for telling the truth."

"You're old enough to know that the fact that your statement is true
only makes it more offensive, and as far as your eye is concerned I'm
told that a raw beef-steak is very efficacious in these circumstances.
Though I put my desire that you should apologise in the form of a
request out of politeness, it is in point of fact an order."

There was a moment's silence. The Resident looked bland.

"I apologise for what I said, sir," Bishop said sulkily.

"Now then, MacAdam."

"I'm sorry I hit him, sir. I apologise, too."

"Shake hands."

The two young men solemnly did so.

"I shouldn't like this to go any further. It wouldn't be very nice for
Munro, whom I think we all like. Can I count on you all holding your
tongues?"

They nodded.

"Now be off with you. You stay, MacAdam, I want to have a few words with
you."

When the two of them were left alone, the Resident sat down and lit
himself a cheroot. He offered one to Neil, but he only smoked
cigarettes.

"You're a very violent young man," said the Resident, with a smile. "I
don't like my officers to make scenes in a public place like this."

"Mrs. Munro is a great friend of mine. She's been kindness itself to me.
I won't hear a word said against her."

"Then I'm afraid you'll have your job cut out for you if you stay here
much longer."

Neil was silent for a moment. He stood, tall and slim, before the
Resident, and his grave young face was guileless. He flung back his head
defiantly. His emotion made him speak in broader Scots even than usual.

"I've lived with the Munros for four months, and I give you my word of
honour that so far as I am concerned there is not an iota of truth in
what that beast said. Mrs. Munro has never treated me with anything that
you could call undue familiarity. She's never by word or deed given me
the smallest hint that she had an improper idea in her head. She's been
like a mother to me or an elder sister."

The Resident watched him with ironical eyes.

"I'm very glad to hear it. That's the best thing I've heard about her
for a long time."

"You believe me, sir, don't you?"

"Of course. Perhaps you've reformed her." He called out. "Boy. Bring me
a gin pahit." And then to Neil. "That'll do. You can go now if you want
to. But no more fighting, mind you, or you'll get the order of the
boot."

When Neil walked back to the Munros' bungalow the rain had stopped and
the velvet sky was bright with stars. In the garden the fire-flies were
flitting here and there. From the earth rose a scented warmth and you
felt that if you stopped you would hear the growth of that luxuriant
vegetation. A white flower of the night gave forth an overwhelming
perfume. In the verandah Munro was typing some notes and Darya, lying at
full length on a long chair, was reading. The lamp behind her lit her
smoky hair so that it shone like an aureole. She looked up at Neil and,
putting down her book, smiled. Her smile was very friendly.

"Where have you been, Neil?"

"At the club."

"Anybody there?"

The scene was so cosy and domestic, Darya's manner so peaceful and
quietly assured, that it was impossible not to be touched. The two of
them there, each occupied with his own concerns, seemed so united, their
intimacy so natural, that no one could have conceived that they were not
perfectly happy in one another. Neil did not believe a single word of
what Bishop had said and the Resident had hinted. It was incredible.
After all, he knew that what they had suspected of _him_ was untrue, so
what reason was there to think that the rest was any truer? They had
dirty minds, all those people; because they were a lot of swine they
thought everyone else as bad as they were. His knuckle hurt him a
little. He was glad he had hit Bishop. He wished he knew who had started
that filthy story. He'd wring his neck.

But now Munro fixed a date for the expedition that they had so much
discussed, and in his careful way began to make preparations so that at
the last moment nothing should be forgotten. The plan was to go as far
up the river as possible and then make their way through the jungle and
hunt for specimens on the little-known Mount Hitam. They expected to be
away two months. As the day on which they were to start grew nearer
Munro's spirits rose, and though he did not say very much, though he
remained quiet and self-controlled, you could tell by the light in his
eyes and the jauntiness of his step how much he looked forward to it.
One morning, at the museum, he was almost sprightly.

"I've got some good news for you," he said suddenly to Neil, after they
had been looking at some experiments they were making, "Darya's coming
with us."

"Is she? That's grand."

Neil was delighted. That made it perfect.

"It's the first time I've ever been able to induce her to accompany me.
I told her she'd enjoy it, but she would never listen to me. Queer
cattle, women. I'd given it up and never thought of asking her to come
this time, and suddenly, last night, out of a blue sky she said she'd
like to."

"I'm awfully glad," said Neil.

"I didn't much like the idea of leaving her by herself so long; now we
can stay just as long as we want to."

They started early one morning in four prahus, manned by Malays, and
besides themselves the party consisted of their servants and four Dyak
hunters. The three of them lay on cushions side by side, under an
awning; in the other boats were the Chinese servants and the Dyaks. They
carried bags of rice for the whole party, provisions for themselves,
clothes, books and all that was necessary for their work. It was
heavenly to leave civilisation behind them and they were all excited.
They talked. They smoked. They read. The motion of the river was
exquisitely soothing. They lunched on a grassy bank. Dusk fell and they
moored for the night. They slept at a long house and their Dyak hosts
celebrated their visit with arrack, eloquence and a fantastic dance.
Next day the river, narrowing, gave them more definitely the feeling
that they were adventuring into the unknown, and the exotic vegetation
that crowded the banks to the water's edge, like an excited mob pushed
from behind by a multitude, caused Neil a breathless ravishment. O
wonder and delight! On the third day, because the water was shallower
and the stream more rapid, they changed into lighter boats, and soon it
grew so strong that the boatmen could paddle no longer, and they poled
against the current with powerful and magnificent gestures. Now and then
they came to rapids and had to disembark, unload and haul the boats
through a rock-strewn passage. After five days they reached a point
beyond which they could go no further. There was a government bungalow
there, and they settled in for a couple of nights while Munro made
arrangements for their excursion into the interior. He wanted bearers
for their baggage, and men to build a house for them when they reached
Mount Hitam. It was necessary for Munro to see the headman of a village
in the vicinity and thinking it would save time if he went himself
rather than let the headman come to him, the day after they arrived he
set out at dawn with a guide and a couple of Dyaks. He expected to be
back in a few hours. When he had seen him off Neil thought he would have
a bathe. There was a pool a little way from the bungalow, and the water
was so clear that you saw every grain of the sandy bottom. The river was
so narrow there that the trees over-arched it. It was a lovely spot. It
reminded Neil of the pools in Scotch streams he had bathed in as a boy,
and yet it was strangely different. It had an air of romance, a feeling
of virgin nature, that filled him with sensations that he found hard to
analyse. He tried, of course, but older heads than his have found it
difficult to anatomise happiness. A kingfisher was sitting on an
overhanging branch and its vivid blue was reflected as bluely in the
crystal stream. It flew away with a flashing glitter of jewelled wings
when Neil, slipping off his sarong and baju, scrambled down into the
water. It was fresh without being cold. He splashed and tumbled about.
He enjoyed the movement of his strong limbs. He floated and looked at
the blue sky peeping through the leaves and the sun that here and there
gilded the water. Suddenly he heard a voice.

"How white your body is, Neil."

With a gasp he let himself sink and turning round saw Darya standing on
the bank.

"I say, I haven't got any clothes on."

"So I saw. It's much nicer bathing without. Wait a minute, I'll come in,
it looks lovely."

She also was wearing a sarong and a baju. He turned away his head
quickly, for he saw that she was taking them off. He heard her splash
into the water. He gave two or three strokes in order that she should
have room to swim about at a good distance from him, but she swam up to
him.

"Isn't the feel of the water on one's body lovely?" she said.

She laughed and opening her hand splashed water in his face. He was so
embarrassed he did not know which way to look. In that limpid water it
was impossible not to see that she was stark naked. It was not so bad
now, but he could not help thinking how difficult it would be to get
out. She seemed to be having a grand time.

"I don't care if I do get my hair wet," she said.

She turned over on her back and with strong strokes swam round the pool.
When she wanted to get out, he thought, the best thing would be if he
turned his back and when she was dressed she could go and he would get
out later. She seemed quite unconscious of the awkwardness of the
situation. He was vexed with her. It really was rather tactless to
behave like that. She kept on talking to him just as if they were on dry
land and properly dressed. She even called his attention to herself.

"Does my hair look awful? It's so fine it gets like rat tails when it's
wet. Hold me under the shoulders a moment while I try to screw it up."

"Oh, it's all right," he said. "You'd better leave it now."

"I'm getting frightfully hungry," she said presently. "What about
breakfast?"

"If you'll get out first and put on your things, I'll follow you in a
minute."

"All right."

She swam the two strokes needed to bring her to the side, and he
modestly looked away so that he should not see her get out nude from the
water.

"I can't get up," she cried. "You'll have to help me."

It had been easy enough to get in, but the bank overhung the water and
one had to lift oneself up by the branch of a tree.

"I can't. I haven't got a stitch of clothing on."

"I know that. Don't be so Scotch. Get up on the bank and give me a
hand."

There was no help for it. Neil swung himself up and pulled her after
him. She had left her sarong beside his. She took it up unconcernedly
and began to dry herself with it. There was nothing for him but to do
the same, but for decency's sake he turned his back on her.

"You really have a most lovely skin," she said. "It's as smooth and
white as a woman's. It's funny on such a manly virile figure. And you
haven't got a hair on your chest."

Neil wrapped the sarong round him and slipped his arms into the baju.

"Are you ready?"

She had porridge for breakfast, and eggs and bacon, cold meat and
marmalade. Neil was a trifle sulky. She was really almost too Russian.
It was stupid of her to behave like that; of course there was no harm in
it, but it was just that sort of thing that made people think the things
they did about her. The worst of it was that you couldn't give her a
hint. She'd only laugh at you. But the fact was that if any of those men
at Kuala Solor had seen them bathing like that together, stark naked,
nothing would have persuaded them that something improper hadn't
happened. In his judicious way Neil admitted to himself that you could
hardly blame them. It was too bad of her. She had no right to put a
fellow in such a position. He had felt such a fool. And say what you
liked, it was indecent.

Next morning, having seen their carriers on the way, a long procession
in single file, each man carrying his load in a creel on his back, with
their servants, guides and hunters, they started to walk. The path ran
over the foothills of the mountain, through scrub and tall grass, and
now and then they came to narrow streams which they crossed by rickety
bridges of bamboo. The sun beat on them fiercely. In the afternoon they
reached the shade of a bamboo forest, grateful after the glare, and the
bamboos in their slender elegance rose to incredible heights, and the
green light was like the light under the sea. At last they reached the
primeval forest, huge trees swathed in luxuriant creepers, an
inextricable tangle, and awe descended upon them. They cut their way
through the undergrowth. They walked in twilight and only now and then
caught through the dense foliage above them a glimpse of sunshine. They
saw neither man nor beast, for the denizens of the jungle are shy and at
the first sound of footsteps vanish from sight. They heard birds up high
in the tall trees, but saw none save the twittering sunbirds that flew
in the underwoods and delicately coquetted with the wild flowers. They
halted for the night. The carriers made a floor of branches and on this
spread water-proof sheets. The Chinese cook made them their dinner and
then they turned in.

It was the first night Neil had ever spent in the jungle and he could
not sleep. The darkness was profound. The noise was deafening of
innumerable insects, but like the roar of traffic in a great city it was
so constant that in a little while it was like an impenetrable silence,
and when on a sudden he heard the shriek of a monkey seized by a snake
or the scream of a night-bird he nearly jumped out of his skin. He had a
mysterious sensation that all around creatures were watching them. Over
there, beyond the camp-fires, savage warfare was waged and they three on
their bed of branches were defenceless and alone in face of the horror
of nature. By his side Munro was breathing quietly in his deep sleep.

"Are you awake, Neil?" Darya whispered.

"Yes. Is anything the matter?"

"I'm terrified."

"It's all right. There's nothing to be afraid of."

"The silence is so awful. I wish I hadn't come."

She lit a cigarette.

Neil, having at last dozed off, was awakened by the hammering of a
woodpecker, and its complacent laugh as it flew from one tree to another
seemed to mock the sluggards. A hurried breakfast, and the caravan
started. The gibbons swung from branch to branch, gathering in the dawn
dew from the leaves, and their strange cry was like the call of a bird.
The light had driven away Darya's fears, and notwithstanding a sleepless
night she was alert and gay. They continued to climb. In the afternoon
they reached the spot that the guides had told them would be a good
camping place, and here Munro decided to build a house. The man set to
work. With their long knives they cut palm leaves and saplings and soon
had erected a two-roomed hut raised on piles from the ground. It was
neat and fresh and green. It smelt good.

The Munros, he from old habit, she because she had for years wandered
about the world and had a catlike knack of making herself comfortable
wherever she went, were at home anywhere. In a day they had arranged
everything and settled down. Their routine was invariable. Every morning
early Neil and Munro started out separately, collecting. The afternoon
was devoted to pinning insects in boxes, placing butterflies between
sheets of paper and skinning birds. When dusk came they caught moths.
Darya busied herself with the hut and the servants, sewed and read and
smoked innumerable cigarettes. The days passed very pleasantly,
monotonous but eventful. Neil was enraptured. He explored the mountain
in all directions. One day, to his pride, he found a new species of
stick-insect. Munro named it Cuniculina MacAdami. This was fame. Neil
(at twenty-two) realised that he had not lived in vain. But another day
he only just escaped being bitten by a viper. Owing to its green colour
he had not seen it and was only saved from lurching against it by the
Dyak hunter who was with him. They killed it and brought it back to
camp. Darya shuddered at the sight of it. She had a terror of the wild
creatures of the jungle that was almost hysterical. She would never go
more than a few yards from the camp for fear of being lost.

"Has Angus ever told you how he was lost?" she asked Neil one evening
when they were sitting quietly together after dinner.

"It wasn't a very pleasant experience," he smiled.

"Tell him, Angus."

He hesitated a little. It was not a thing he liked to recall.

"It was some years ago, I'd gone out with my butterfly net and I'd been
very lucky, I'd got several rare specimens that I'd been looking for a
long time. After a while I thought I was getting hungry so I turned
back. I walked for some time and it struck me I'd come a good deal
farther than I knew. Suddenly I caught sight of an empty match-box. I'd
thrown it away when I started to come back; I'd been walking in a circle
and was exactly where I was an hour before. I was not pleased. But I had
a look round and set off again. It was fearfully hot and I was simply
dripping with sweat. I knew more or less the direction the camp was in
and I looked about for traces of my passage to see if I had come that
way. I thought I found one or two and went on hopefully. I was
frightfully thirsty. I walked on and on, picking my way over snags and
trailing plants, and suddenly I knew I was lost. I couldn't have gone so
far in the right direction without hitting the camp. I can tell you I
was startled. I knew I must keep my head, so I sat down and thought the
situation over. I was tortured by thirst. It was long past midday and in
three or four hours it would be dark. I didn't like the idea of spending
a night in the jungle at all. The only thing I could think of was to try
and find a stream; if I followed its course, it would eventually bring
me to a larger stream and sooner or later to the river. But of course it
might take a couple of days. I cursed myself for being such a fool, but
there was nothing better to do and I began walking. At all events if I
found a stream I should be able to get a drink. I couldn't find a
trickle of water anywhere, not the smallest brook that might lead to
something like a stream. I began to be alarmed. I saw myself wandering
on till at last I fell exhausted. I knew there was a lot of game in the
forest and if I came upon a rhino I was done for. The maddening thing
was I knew I couldn't be more than ten miles from my camp. I forced
myself to keep my head. The day was waning and in the depths of the
jungle it was growing dark already. If I'd brought a gun I could have
fired it. In the camp they must have realised I was lost and would be
looking for me. The undergrowth was so thick that I couldn't see six
feet into it and presently, I don't know if it was nerves or not, I had
the sensation that some animal was walking stealthily beside me. I
stopped and it stopped too. I went on and it went on. I couldn't see it.
I could see no movement in the undergrowth. I didn't even hear the
breaking of a twig or the brushing of a body through leaves, but I knew
how silently those beasts could move, and I was positive something was
stalking me. My heart beat so violently against my ribs that I thought
it would break. I was scared out of my wits. It was only by the exercise
of all the self-control I had that I prevented myself from breaking into
a run. I knew if I did that I was lost. I should be tripped up before I
had gone twenty yards by a tangled root and when I was down it would
spring on me. And if I started to run God knew where I should get to.
And I had to husband my strength. I felt very like crying. And that
intolerable thirst. I've never been so frightened in my life. Believe
me, if I'd had a revolver I think I'd have blown my brains out. It was
so awful I just wanted to finish with it. I was so exhausted I could
hardly stagger. If I had an enemy who'd done me a deadly injury I
wouldn't wish him the agony I endured then. Suddenly I heard two shots.
My heart stood still. They were looking for me. Then I did lose my head.
I ran in the direction of the sound, screaming at the top of my voice, I
fell, I picked myself up again, I ran on, I shouted till I thought my
lungs would burst, there was another shot, nearer, I shouted again, I
heard answering shouts; there was a scramble of men in the undergrowth.
In a minute I was surrounded by Dyak hunters. They wrung and kissed my
hands. They laughed and cried. I very nearly cried too. I was down and
out, but they gave me a drink. We were only three miles from the camp.
It was pitch dark when we got back. By God, it was a near thing."

A convulsive shudder passed through Darya.

"Believe me, I don't want to be lost in the jungle again."

"What would have happened if you hadn't been found?"

"I can tell you. I should have gone mad. If I hadn't been stung by a
snake or attacked by a rhino I should have gone on blindly till I fell
exhausted. I should have starved to death. I should have died of thirst.
Wild beasts would have eaten my body and ants cleaned my bones."

Silence fell upon them.

Then it happened, when they had spent nearly a month on Mount Hitam,
that Neil, notwithstanding the quinine Munro had made him take
regularly, was stricken with fever. It was not a bad attack, but he felt
very sorry for himself and was obliged to stay in bed. Darya nursed him.
He was ashamed to give her so much trouble, but she would not listen to
his protests. She was certainly very capable. He resigned himself to
letting her do things for him that one of the Chinese boys could have
done just as well. He was touched. She waited on him hand and foot. But
when the fever was at its height and she sponged him all over with cold
water, though the comfort was indescribable, he was excessively
embarrassed. She insisted on washing him night and morning.

"I wasn't in the British hospital at Yokohama for six months without
learning at least the routine of nursing," she said, smiling.

She kissed him on the lips each time after she had finished. It was
friendly and sweet of her. He rather liked it, but attached no
importance to it; he even went so far, a rare thing for him, as to be
facetious on the subject.

"Did you always kiss your patients at the hospital?" he asked her.

"Don't you like me to kiss you?" she smiled.

"It doesn't do me any harm."

"It may even hasten your recovery," she mocked.

One night he dreamt of her. He awoke with a start. He was sweating
profusely. The relief was wonderful, and he knew that his temperature
had fallen; he was well. He did not care. For what he had dreamt filled
him with shame. He was horrified. That he should have such thoughts,
even in his sleep, made him feel awful. He must be a monster of
depravity. Day was breaking, and he heard Munro getting up in the room
next door that he occupied with Darya. She slept late, and he took care
not to disturb her. When he passed through Neil's room, Neil in a low
voice called him.

"Hullo, are you awake?"

"Yes, I've had the crisis. I'm all right now."

"Good. You'd better stay in bed to-day. To-morrow you'll be as fit as a
fiddle."

"Send Ah Tan to me when you've had your breakfast, will you?"

"Right-ho."

He heard Munro start out. The Chinese boy came and asked him what he
wanted. An hour later Darya awoke. She came in to bid him good-morning.
He could hardly look at her.

"I'll just have my breakfast and then I'll come in and wash you," she
said.

"I'm washed. I got Ah Tan to do it."

"Why?"

"I wanted to spare you the trouble."

"It isn't a trouble. I like doing it."

She came over to the bed and bent down to kiss him, but he turned away
his head.

"Oh, don't," he said.

"Why not?"

"It's silly."

She looked at him for a moment, surprised, and then with a slight shrug
of the shoulders left him. A little later she came back to see if there
was anything he wanted. He pretended to be asleep. She very gently
stroked his cheek.

"For God's sake don't do that," he cried.

"I thought you were sleeping. What's the matter with you to-day?"

"Nothing."

"Why are you being horrid to me? Have I done anything to offend you?"

"No."

"Tell me what it is."

She sat down on the bed and took his hand. He turned his face to the
wall. He was so ashamed he could hardly speak.

"You seem to forget I'm a man. You treat me as if I was a boy of
twelve."

"Oh?"

He was blushing furiously. He was angry with himself and vexed with her.
She really should be more tactful. He plucked nervously at the sheet.

"I know it means nothing to you and it ought not to mean anything to me.
It doesn't when I'm well and up and about. One can't help one's dreams,
but they are an indication of what is going on in the subconscious."

"Have you been dreaming about me? Well, I don't think there's any harm
in that."

He turned his head and looked at her. Her eyes were gleaming, but his
were sombre with remorse.

"You don't know men," he said.

She gave a little burble of laughter. She bent down and threw her arms
round his neck. She had nothing on but her sarong and baju.

"You darling," she cried. "Tell me, what did you dream?"

He was startled out of his wits. He pushed her violently aside.

"What are you doing? You're crazy."

He jumped half out of bed.

"Don't you know that I'm madly in love with you?" she said.

"What _are_ you talking about?"

He sat down on the side of the bed. He was frankly bewildered. She
chuckled.

"Why do you suppose I came up to this horrible place? To be with you,
ducky. Don't you know I'm scared stiff of the jungle? Even in here I'm
frightened there'll be snakes or scorpions or something. I adore you."

"You have no right to speak to me like that," he said sternly.

"Oh, don't be so prim," she smiled.

"Let's get out of here."

He walked out on to the verandah and she followed him. He threw himself
into a chair. She knelt by his side and tried to take his hands, but he
withdrew them.

"I think you must be mad. I hope to God you don't mean what you say."

"I do. Every word of it," she smiled.

It exasperated him that she seemed unconscious of the frightfulness of
her confession.

"Have you forgotten your husband?"

"Oh, what does he matter?"

"Darya."

"I can't be bothered about Angus now."

"I'm afraid you're a very wicked woman," he said slowly, a frown
darkening his smooth brow.

She giggled.

"Because I've fallen in love with you? Darling, you shouldn't be so
absurdly good-looking."

"For God's sake don't laugh."

"I can't help it; you're comic--but still adorable. I love your white
skin and your shining curly hair. I love you because you're so prim and
Scotch and humourless. I love your strength. I love your youth."

Her eyes glowed and her breath came quickly. She stooped and kissed his
naked feet. He drew them away quickly, with a cry of protest, and in the
agitation of his gesture nearly overthrew the rickety chair.

"Woman, you're insane. Have you no shame?"

"No."

"What do you want of me?" he asked fiercely.

"Love."

"What sort of a man do you take me for?"

"A man like any other," she replied calmly.

"Do you think after all that Angus Munro has done for me I could be such
a damned beast as to play about with his wife? I admire him more than
any man I've ever known. He's grand. He's worth a dozen of me and you
put together. I'd sooner kill myself than betray him. I don't know how
you can think me capable of such a dastardly act."

"Oh, my dear, don't talk such bilge. What harm is it going to do him?
You mustn't take that sort of thing so tragically. After all, life is
very short; we're fools if we don't take what pleasure we can out of
it."

"You can't make wrong right by talking about it."

"I don't know about that. I think that's a very controvertible
statement."

He looked at her with amazement. She was sitting at his feet, cool to
all appearance and collected, and she seemed to be enjoying the
situation. She seemed quite unconscious of its seriousness.

"Do you know that I knocked a fellow down at the club because he made an
insulting remark about you?"

"Who?"

"Bishop."

"Dirty dog. What did he say?"

"He said you'd had affairs with men."

"I don't know why people won't mind their own business. Anyhow, who
cares what they say? I love you. I've never loved anyone like you. I'm
absolutely sick with love for you."

"Be quiet. Be quiet."

"Listen, to-night when Angus is asleep I'll slip into your room. He
sleeps like a rock. There's no risk."

"You mustn't do that."

"Why not?"

"No, no, no."

He was frightened out of his wits. Suddenly she sprang to her feet and
went into the house.

Munro came back at noon, and in the afternoon they busied themselves as
usual. Darya, as she sometimes did, worked with them. She was in high
spirits. She was so gay that Munro suggested that she was beginning to
enjoy the life.

"It's not so bad," she admitted. "I'm feeling happy to-day."

She teased Neil. She seemed not to notice that he was silent and kept
his eyes averted from her.

"Neil's very quiet," said Munro. "I suppose you're feeling a bit weak
still."

"No, I just don't feel very talkative."

He was harassed. He was convinced that Darya was capable of anything. He
remembered the hysterical frenzy of Nastasya Filipovna in _The Idiot_,
and felt that she too could behave with that unfortunate lack of
balance. He had seen her more than once fly into a temper with one of
the Chinese servants and he knew how completely she could lose her
self-control. Resistance only exasperated her. If she did not
immediately get what she wanted she would go almost insane with rage.
Fortunately she lost interest in a thing with the same suddenness with
which she hankered for it, and if you could distract her attention for a
minute she forgot all about it. It was in such situations that Neil had
most admired Munro's tact. He had often been slyly amused to see with
what a pawky and yet tender cunning he appeased her feminine tantrums.
It was on Munro's account that Neil's indignation was so great. Munro
was a saint, and from what a state of humiliation and penury and random
shifts had he not taken her to make her his wife! She owed everything to
him. His name protected her. She had respectability. The commonest
gratitude should have made it impossible for her to harbour such
thoughts as she had that morning expressed. It was all very well for men
to make advances, that was what men did, but for women to do so was
disgusting. His modesty was outraged. The passion he had seen in her
face, and the indelicacy of her gestures, scandalised him.

He wondered whether she would really carry out her threat to come to his
room. He didn't think she would dare. But when night came and they all
went to bed, he was so terrified that he could not sleep. He lay there
listening anxiously. The silence was broken only by the repeated and
monotonous cry of an owl. Through the thin wall of woven palm leaves he
heard Munro's steady breathing. Suddenly he was conscious that someone
was stealthily creeping into his room. He had already made up his mind
what to do.

"Is that you, Mr. Munro?" he called in a loud voice.

Darya stopped suddenly. Munro awoke.

"There's someone in my room. I thought it was you."

"It's all right," said Darya. "It's only me. I couldn't sleep, so I
thought I'd go and smoke a cigarette on the verandah."

"Oh, is that all?" said Munro. "Don't catch cold."

She walked through Neil's room and out. He saw her light a cigarette.
Presently she went back and he heard her get into bed.

He did not see her next morning, for he started out collecting before
she was up, and he took care not to get in till he was pretty sure Munro
also would be back. He avoided being alone with her till it was dark and
Munro went down for a few minutes to arrange the moth-traps.

"Why did you wake Angus last night?" she said in a low angry whisper.

He shrugged his shoulders and going on with his work did not answer.

"Were you frightened?"

"I have a certain sense of decency."

"Oh, don't be such a prig."

"I'd rather be a prig than a dirty swine."

"I hate you."

"Then leave me alone."

She did not answer, but with her open hand smartly slapped his face. He
flushed, but did not speak. Munro returned and they pretended to be
intent on whatever they were doing.

For the next few days Darya, except at meal-times and in the evenings,
never spoke to Neil. Without prearrangement they exerted themselves to
conceal from Munro that their relations were strained. But the effort
with which Darya roused herself from a brooding silence would have been
obvious to anyone more suspicious than Angus, and sometimes she could
not help herself from being a trifle sharp with Neil. She chaffed him,
but in her chaff was a sting. She knew how to wound and caught him on
the raw, but he took care not to let her see it. He had an inkling that
the good-humour he affected infuriated her.

Then, one day when Neil came back from collecting, though he had delayed
till the last possible minute before tiffin, he was surprised to find
that Munro had not yet returned. Darya was lying on a mattress on the
verandah, sipping a gin pahit and smoking. She did not speak to him when
he passed through to wash. In a minute the Chinese boy came into his
room and told him that tiffin was ready. He walked out.

"Where's Mr. Munro?" he asked.

"He's not coming," said Darya. "He sent a message to say that the place
he's at is so good he won't come down till night."

Munro had set out that morning for the summit of the mountain. The lower
levels had yielded poor results in the way of mammals, and Munro's idea
was, if he could find a good place higher up, with a supply of water, to
transfer the camp. Neil and Darya ate their meal in silence. After they
had finished he went into the house and came out again with his topee
and his collecting gear. It was unusual for him to go out in the
afternoon.

"Where are you going?" she asked abruptly.

"Out."

"Why?"

"I don't feel tired. I've got nothing much else to do this afternoon."

Suddenly she burst into tears.

"How can you be so unkind to me?" she sobbed. "Oh, it is cruel to treat
me like this."

He looked down at her from his great height, his handsome, somewhat
stolid face bearing a harassed look.

"What have _I_ done?"

"You've been beastly to me. Bad as I am I haven't deserved to suffer
like this. I've done everything in the world for you. Tell me one single
little thing I could do that I haven't done gladly. I'm so terribly
unhappy."

He moved on his feet uneasily. It was horrible to hear her say that. He
loathed and feared her, but he had still the respect for her that he had
always felt, not only because she was a woman, but because she was Angus
Munro's wife. She wept uncontrollably. Fortunately the Dyak hunters had
gone that morning with Munro. There was no one about the camp but the
three Chinese servants and they, after tiffin, were asleep in their own
quarters fifty yards away. They were alone.

"I don't want to make you unhappy. It's all so silly. It's absurd of a
woman like you to fall in love with a fellow like me. It makes me look
such a fool. Haven't you got any self-control?"

"Oh, God. Self-control!"

"I mean, if you really cared for me you couldn't want me to be such a
cad. Doesn't it mean anything to you that your husband trusts us
implicitly? The mere fact of his leaving us alone like this puts us on
our honour. He's a man who would never hurt a fly. I should never
respect myself again if I betrayed his confidence."

She looked up suddenly.

"What makes you think he would never hurt a fly? Why, all those bottles
and cases are full of the harmless animals he's killed."

"In the interests of science. That's quite another thing."

"Oh, you fool, you fool."

"Well, if I am a fool I can't help it. Why do you bother about me?"

"Do you think I wanted to fall in love with you?"

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"Ashamed? How stupid! My God, what have I done that I should eat my
heart out for such a pretentious ass?"

"You talk about what you've done for me. What has Munro done for you?"

"Munro bores me to death. I'm sick of him. Sick to death of him."

"Then I'm not the first?"

Ever since her amazing avowal he had been tortured by the suspicion that
what those men at Kuala Solor had said of her was true. He had refused
to believe a word of it, and even now he could not bring himself to
think that she could be such a monster of depravity. It was frightful to
think that Angus Munro, so trusting and tender, should have lived in a
fool's paradise. She could not be as bad as that. But she misunderstood
him. She smiled through her tears.

"Of course not. How can you be so silly? Oh, darling, don't be so
desperately serious. I love you."

Then it was true. He had sought to persuade himself that what she felt
for him was exceptional, a madness that together they could contend with
and vanquish. But she was simply promiscuous.

"Aren't you afraid Munro will find out?"

She was not crying any more. She adored talking about herself, and she
had a feeling that she was inveigling Neil into a new interest in her.

"I sometimes wonder if he doesn't know, if not with his mind, then with
his heart. He's got the intuition of a woman and a woman's
sensitiveness. Sometimes I've been certain he suspected and in his
anguish I've sensed a strange, spiritual exaltation. I've wondered if in
his pain he didn't find an infinitely subtle pleasure. There are souls,
you know, that feel a voluptuous joy in laceration."

"How horrible!" Neil had no patience with these conceits. "The only
excuse for you is that you're insane."

She was now much more sure of herself. She gave him a bold look.

"Don't you think I'm attractive? A good many men have. You must have had
dozens of women in Scotland who weren't so well made as I am."

She looked down at her shapely, sensual figure with calm pride.

"I've never had a woman," he said gravely.

"Why not?"

She was so surprised that she sprang to her feet. He shrugged his
shoulders. He could not bring himself to tell her how disgusting the
idea of such a thing was to him, and how vile he had thought the
haphazard amours of his fellow-students at Edinburgh. He took a mystical
joy in his purity. Love was sacred. The sexual act horrified him. Its
excuse was the procreation of children and its sanctification marriage.
But Darya, her whole body rigid, stared at him, panting; and suddenly,
with a sobbing cry in which there was exultation and at the same time
wild desire, she flung herself on her knees and seizing his hand
passionately kissed it.

"Alyosha," she gasped. "Alyosha."

And then, crying and laughing, she crumpled up in a heap at his feet.
Strange, hardly human sounds issued from her throat and convulsive
tremors passed through her body so that you would have thought she was
receiving one electric shock after another. Neil did not know if it was
an attack of hysteria or an epileptic fit.

"Stop it," he cried. "Stop it."

He took her up in his strong arms and laid her in the chair. But when he
tried to leave her she would not let him. She flung her arms round his
neck and held him. She covered his face with kisses. He struggled. He
turned his face away. He put his hand between her face and his to
protect himself. Suddenly she dug her teeth into it. The pain was so
great that, without thinking, he gave her a great swinging blow.

"You devil," he cried.

His violent gesture had forced her to release him. He held his hand and
looked at it. She had caught him by the fleshy part on the side and it
was bleeding. Her eyes blazed. She was feeling alert and active.

"I've had enough of this. I'm going out," he said.

She sprang to her feet.

"I'll come with you."

He put on his topee and, snatching up his collecting gear without a
word, turned on his heel. With one stride he leaped down the three steps
that led from the floor of the house to the ground. She followed him.

"I'm going into the jungle," he said.

"I don't care."

In the ravening desire that possessed her she forgot her morbid fear of
the jungle. She recked nothing of snakes and wild beasts. She did not
mind the branches that hit her face or the creepers that entangled her
feet. For a month Neil had explored all that part of the forest and he
knew every yard of it. He told himself grimly that he'd teach her to
come with him. He forced his way through the undergrowth with rapid
strides; she followed him, stumbling but determined; he crashed on,
blind with rage, and she crashed after him. She talked; he did not
listen to what she said. She besought him to have pity on her. She
bemoaned her fate. She made herself humble. She wept and wrung her
hands. She tried to cajole him. The words poured from her lips in an
unceasing stream. She was like a mad woman. At last in a little clearing
he stopped suddenly and turning round faced her.

"This is impossible," he cried. "I'm fed up. When Angus comes back I
must tell him I've got to go. I shall go back to Kuala Solor to-morrow
morning and go home."

"He won't let you go, he wants you. He finds you invaluable."

"I don't care. I'll fake up something."

"What?"

He mistook her.

"Oh, you needn't be frightened, I shan't tell him the truth. You can
break his heart if you want to; I'm not going to."

"You worship him, don't you? That dull, phlegmatic man."

"He's worth a hundred of you."

"It would be rather funny if I told him you'd gone because I wouldn't
yield to your advances."

He gave a slight start and looked at her to see if she was serious.

"Don't be such a fool. You don't think he'd believe that, do you? He
knows it would never occur to me."

"Don't be too sure."

She had spoken carelessly, with no particular intention other than to
continue the argument, but she saw that he was frightened and some
instinct of cruelty made her press the advantage.

"Do you expect mercy from me? You've humiliated me beyond endurance.
You've treated me like dirt. I swear that if you make any suggestion of
going I shall go straight to Angus and say that you took advantage of
his absence to try and assault me."

"I can deny it. After all it's only your word against mine."

"Yes, but my word'll count. I can prove what I say."

"What do you mean?"

"I bruise easily. I can show him the bruise where you struck me. And
look at your hand." He turned and gave it a sudden glance. "How did
those teeth marks get there?"

He stared at her stupidly. He had gone quite pale. How could he explain
that bruise and that scar? If he was forced to in self-defence he could
tell the truth, but was it likely that Angus would believe it? He
worshipped Darya. He would take her word against anyone's. What
monstrous ingratitude it would seem for all Munro's kindness and what
treachery in return for so much confidence! He would think him a filthy
skunk and from his standpoint with justice. That was what shattered him,
the thought that Munro, for whom he would willingly have laid down his
life, should think ill of him. He was so unhappy that tears, unmanly
tears that he hated, came to his eyes. Darya saw that he was broken. She
exulted. She was paying him back for the misery he had made her suffer.
She held him now. He was in her power. She savoured her triumph and in
the midst of her anguish laughed in her heart because he was such a
fool. At that moment she did not know whether she loved or despised him.

"Now will you be good?" she said.

He gave a sob and blindly, with a sudden instinct of escape from that
abominable woman, took to his heels and ran as hard as he could. He
plunged through the jungle, like a wounded animal, not looking where he
was going, till he was out of breath. Then, panting, he stopped. He took
out his handkerchief and wiped away the sweat that was pouring into his
eyes and blinding him. He was exhausted and he sat down to rest.

"I must take care I don't get lost," he said to himself.

That was the least of his troubles, but all the same he was glad that he
had a pocket compass, and he knew in which direction he must go. He
heaved a deep sigh and rose wearily to his feet. He started walking. He
watched his way and with another part of his mind miserably asked
himself what he should do. He was convinced that Darya would do what she
had threatened. They were to be another three weeks in that accursed
place. He dared not go; he dared not stay. His mind was in a whirl. The
only thing was to get back to camp and think it out quietly. In about a
quarter of an hour he came to a spot that he recognised. In an hour he
was back. He flung himself miserably into a chair. And it was Angus who
filled his thoughts. His heart bled for him. Neil saw now all sorts of
things that before had been dark to him. They were revealed to him in a
flash of bitter insight. He knew why the women at Kuala Solor were so
hostile to Darya and why they looked at Angus so strangely. They treated
him with a sort of affectionate levity. Neil thought it was because
Angus was a man of science and so in their foolish eyes somewhat absurd.
He knew now it was because they were sorry for him and at the same time
found him ridiculous. Darya had made him the laughing-stock of the
community. If ever there was a man who hadn't deserved ill usage at a
woman's hands it was he. Suddenly Neil gasped and began to tremble all
over. It had suddenly occurred to him that Darya did not know her way
through the jungle; in his anguish he had hardly been conscious of where
they went. Supposing she could not find her way home? She would be
terrified. He remembered the ghastly story Angus had told them of being
lost in the forest. His first instinct was to go back and find her, and
he sprang to his feet. Then a fierce anger seized him. No, let her shift
for herself. She had gone of her own free will. Let her find her own way
back. She was an abominable woman and deserved all that might come to
her. Neil threw back his head defiantly, a frown of indignation on his
smooth young brow, and clenched his hands. Courage. He made up his mind.
It would be better for Angus if she never returned. He sat down and
began trying to make a skin of a Mountain Trogon. But the Trogon has a
skin like wet tissue-paper and his hands trembled. He tried to apply his
mind to the work he was doing, but his thoughts fluttered desperately,
like moths in a trap, and he could not control them. What was happening
over there in the jungle? What had she done when he suddenly bolted?
Every now and then, against his will, he looked up. At any moment she
might appear in the clearing and walk calmly up to the house. He was not
to blame. It was the hand of God. He shuddered. Storm clouds were
gathering in the sky and night fell quickly.

Just after dusk Munro arrived.

"Just in time," he said. "There's going to be a hell of a storm."

He was in great spirits. He had come upon a fine plateau, with lots of
water, from which there was a magnificent view to the sea. He had found
two or three rare butterflies and a flying squirrel. He was full of
plans to move the camp to this new place. All about it he had seen
abundant evidence of animal life. Presently he went into the house to
take off his heavy walking boots. He came out at once.

"Where's Darya?"

Neil stiffened himself to behave with naturalness.

"Isn't she in her room?"

"No. Perhaps she's gone down to the servants' quarters for something."

He walked down the steps and strolled a few yards.

"Darya," he called. "Darya." There was no answer. "Boy."

A Chinese servant came running up and Angus asked him where his mistress
was. He did not know. He had not seen her since tiffin.

"Where can she be?" asked Munro, coming back, puzzled.

He went to the back of the house and shouted.

"She can't have gone out. There's nowhere to go. When did you see her
last, Neil?"

"I went out collecting after tiffin. I'd had a rather unsatisfactory
morning and I thought I'd try my luck again."

"Strange."

They hunted everywhere round the camp. Munro thought she might have made
herself comfortable somewhere and gone to sleep.

"It's too bad of her to frighten one like this."

The whole party joined in the search. Munro began to grow alarmed.

"It's not possible that she should have gone for a stroll in the jungle
and lost her way. She's never moved more than a hundred yards from the
house to the best of my knowledge since we've been here."

Neil saw the fear in Munro's eyes and looked down.

"We'd better get everyone along and start hunting. There's one thing,
she can't be far. She knows that if you get lost the best thing is to
stay where you are and wait for people to come and find you. She'll be
scared out of her wits, poor thing."

He called out the Dyak hunters and told the Chinese servants to bring
lanterns. He fired his gun as a signal. They separated into two parties,
one under Munro, the other under Neil, and went down the two rough paths
that in the course of the month they had made in their comings and
goings. It was arranged that whoever found Darya should fire three shots
in quick succession. Neil walked with his face stern and set. His
conscience was clear. He seemed to bear in his hands the decree of
immanent justice. He knew that Darya would never be found. The two
parties met. It was not necessary to look at Munro's face. He was
distracted. Neil felt like a surgeon who is forced to perform a
dangerous operation without assistance or appliances to save the life of
someone he loves. It behoved him to be firm.

"She could never have got so far as this," said Munro. "We must go back
and beat the jungle within the radius of a mile from the house inch by
inch. The only explanation is that she was frightened by something or
fainted or was stung by a snake."

Neil did not answer. They started out again and, making lines, combed
the undergrowth. They shouted. Every now and then they fired a gun and
listened for a faint call in answer. Birds of the night flew with a
whirring of wings, frightened, as they advanced with their lanterns; and
now and then they half saw, half guessed at an animal, deer, boar, or
rhino, that fled at their approach. The storm broke suddenly. A great
wind blew and then the lightning rent the darkness, like the scream of a
woman in pain, and the tortured flashes, quick, quick, one on the heels
of the other, like demon dancers in a frantic reel, wriggled down the
night. The horror of the forest was revealed in an unearthly day. The
thunder crashed down the sky in huge rollers, peal upon peal, like vast,
primeval waves dashing against the shores of eternity. That fearful din
hurtled through space as though sound had size and weight. The rain
pelted in fierce torrents. Rocks and gigantic trees came tumbling down
the mountain. The tumult was awful. The Dyak hunters cowered, gibbering
in terror of the angry spirits who spoke in the storm, but Munro urged
them on. The rain fell all night, with lightning and thunder, and did
not cease till dawn. Wet through and shivering they returned to the
camp. They were exhausted. When they had eaten Munro meant to resume the
desperate search. But he knew that it was hopeless. They would never see
her alive again. He flung himself down wearily. His face was tired and
white and anguished.

"Poor child. Poor child."






[End of The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Vol. III]
