Within the tides; tales

c 7-ry

WITHIN THE TIDES

TALES

BY

JOSEPH CONRAD

, . Go, make you readyo

Hamlet to the Players

Garden City New York

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1916

a

r

Copyright, 1916, by
DOUBLEDAY, PaGE & CoMPANT

All rights reserved, including that of

translation into foreign languages,

including the Scandinavian

COPYRIGHT, 191 1, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
COPYRIGHT, I913, I914, BY METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE

^0

Mr. and Mrs. RALPH WEDGWOOD

THIS SHEAF OF CARE-FREE ANTE-BELLUM PAGES

IN GRATITUDE FOR THEIR CHARMING HOSPITALITY

IN THE LAST MONTH OF PEACE

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Planter of Malata 3

The Partner 129

The Inn of the Two Witches 187

Because of the Dollars 239

THE PLANTER OF MALATA

//5 / / /

THE PLANTER OF MALATA

In the private editorial office of the principal
newspaper in a great colonial city two men were
talking. They were both young. The stouter of
the two, fair, and with more of an urban look
about him, was the editor and part-owner of the
important newspaper.

The other's name was Renouard. That he
was exercised in his mind about something was
evident on his fine bronzed face. He was a lean,
lounging, active man. The journalist continued
the conversation.

"And so you were dining yesterday at old
Dunster's."

He used the word old not in the endearing
sense in which it is sometimes applied to in-
timates, but as a matter of sober fact. The
Dunster in question was old. He had been an
eminent colonial statesman, but had now retired
from active politics after a tour in Europe and a
lengthy stay in England, during which he had

4 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

had a very good press indeed. The colony was
proud of him.

"Yes. I dined there," said Renouard. "Young
Dunster asked me just as I was going out of his
office. It seemed to be hke a sudden thought.
And yet I can't help suspecting some purpose be-
hind it. He was very pressing. He swore that
his uncle would be very pleased to see me. Said
his uncle had mentioned lately that the granting
to me of the Malata concession was the last act
of his official life."

* ' Very touching . The old boy sentimentalises
over the past now and then."

"I really don't know why I accepted," con-
tinued the other. "Sentiment does not move
me very easily. Old Dunster was civil to me of
course, but he did not even inquire how I was
getting on with my silk plants. Forgot there
was such a thing probably. I must say there
were more people there than I expected to meet.
Quite a big party."

"I was asked," remarked the newspaper man.
**Only I couldn't go. But when did you arrive
from Malata.^"

"I arrived yesterday at daylight. I am
anchored out there in the bay — off Garden
Point. I was in Dunster's office before he had
finished reading his letters. Have you ever seen

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 5

young Dunster reading his letters? I had a
gKmpse of him through the open door. He holds
the paper in both hands, hunches his shoulders
up to his ugly ears, and brings his long nose and
thick lips on to it like a sucking apparatus. ^^
commercial monster."

"Here we don't consider him a monster," said
the newspaper man looking at his visitor
thoughtfully.

"Probably not. You are used to seeing his
face and the faces of others. I don't know how
it is that, when I come to town, the appearance
of the people in the street strikes me with such
force. They seem so awfully expressive."

"And not charming."

" Well— no. Not as a rule. The effect is for-
cible without being clear. ... I know
that you think it's because of my solitary man-
ner of life away there."

"Yes. I do think so. It is demoralising.
You don't see any one for months at a stretch.
You're leading an unhealthy life."

The other hardly smiled and murmured the
admission that true enough it was a good eleven
months since he had been in town last.

"You see," insisted the other. "Solitude
works like a sort of poison. And then you per-
ceive suggestions in faces — mysterious and

6 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

forcible, that no sound man would be bothered
with. Of course you do."

Geoffrey Renouard did not tell his journalist
friend that the suggestions of his own face, the
face of a friend, bothered him as much as the
others. He detected a degrading quality in the
touches of age which every day adds to a human
countenance. They moved and disturbed him,
like the signs of a horrible inward travail which
was frightfully apparent to the fresh eye he had
brought from his isolation in Malata, where he
had settled after five strenuous years of adven-
ture and exploration.

"It's a fact," he said, "that when I am at
home in Malata I see no one consciously. I take
the plantation boys for granted."

"Well, and we here take the people in the
streets for granted. And that's sanity."

The visitor said nothing to this for fear of en-
gaging a discussion. What he had come to seek
in the editorial office was not controversy, but
information. Yet somehow he hesitated to
approach the subject. Solitary life makes a
man reticent in respect of anything in the nature
of gossip, which those to whom chatting about
their kind is an everyday exercise regard as the
commonest use of speech.

"You very busy?" he asked.

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 7

The Editor making red marks on a long slip of
printed paper threw the pencil down.

"No. I am done. Social paragraphs. This
office is the place where everything is known
about everybody — including even a great deal of
nobodies. Queer fellows drift in and out of this
room. Waifs and strays from home, from up-
country, from the Pacific. And, by the way,
last time you were here you picked up one of
that sort for your assistant — didn't you.^^ '*

"I engaged an assistant only to stop your
preaching about the evils of solitude," said
Renouard hastily; and the pressman laughed at
the half -resentful tone. His laugh was not very
loud, but his plump person shook all over. He
was aware that his younger friend's deference to
his advice was based only on an imperfect belief
in his wisdom — or his sagacity. But it was he
who had first helped Renouard in his plans of ex-
ploration : the five-years' programme of scientific
adventure, of work, of danger and endurance,
carried out with such distinction and rewarded
modestly with the lease of Malata island by the
frugal colonial government. And this reward,
too, had been due to the journalist's advocacy
with word and pen — for he was an influential
man in the community. Doubting very much if
Renouard really liked him, he was himself with-

8 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

out great sympathy for a certain side of that
man which he could not quite make out. He
only felt it obscurely to be his real personality —
the true — and, perhaps, the absurd. As, for
instance, in that case of the assistant. Renouard
had given way to the arguments of his friend and
backer — the argument against the unwholesome
effect of solitude, the argument for the safety of
companionship even if quarrelsome. Very well.
In this docility he was sensible and even likeable.
But what did he do next.^ Instead of taking
counsel as to the choice with his old backer and
friend, and a man, besides, knowing everybody
employed and unemployed on the pavements of
the town, this extraordinary Renouard suddenly
and almost surreptitiously picked up a fellow —
God knows who — and sailed away with him back
to Malata in a hurry; a proceeding obviously
rash and at the same time not quite straight.
That was the sort of thing. The secretly unfor-
giving journalist laughed a little longer and then
ceased to shake all over.

"Oh, yes. About that assistant of yours. . . ."
"What about him.^" said Renouard, after
waiting a while, with a shadow of uneasiness on
his face.

"Have you nothing to tell me of him.^"
"Nothing except. . . ." Incipient grim-

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 9

ness vanished out of Renouard's aspect and his
voice, while he hesitated as if reflecting seriously
before he changed his mind. "No. Nothing
whatever."

"You haven't brought him along with you by
chance — for a change."

The Planter of Malata stared, then shook
his head, and finally murmured carelessly: "I
think he's very well where he is. But I wish you
could tell me why young Dunster insisted so
much on my dining with his uncle last night.
Everybody knows I am not a society man."

The Editor exclaimed at so much modesty.
Didn't his friend know that he was their one and
only explorer — that he was the man experiment-
ing with the silk plant. . . .

"Still, that doesn't tell me why I was invited
yesterday. For young Dunster never thought
of this civility before. . . ."

"Our Willie," said the popular journalist,
"never does anything without a purpose, that's
a fact."

"And to his uncle's house too!"

"He lives there."

"Yes. But he might have given me a feed
somewhere else. The extraordinary part is that
the old man did not seem to have anything
special to say. He smiled kindly on me once or

y^

10 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

twice, and that was all. It was quite a party,
sixteen people."

The Editor then, after expressing his regret
that he had not been able to come, wanted to
know if the party had been entertaining

Renouard regretted that his friend had not
been there. Being a man whose business or at
least whose profession was to know everything
that went on in this part of the globe, he could
probably have told him something of some
people lately arrived from home, who were
amongst the guests. Young Dunster (Willie),
with his large shirt front and streaks of white
skin shining unpleasantly through the thin black
hair plastered over the top of his head, bore
down on him and introduced him to that party,
as if he had been a trained dog or a child phe-
nomenon. Decidedly, he said, he disliked
Willie — one of these large oppressive men. . . .

A silence fell, and it was as if Renouard were
not going to say anything more when, suddenly,
he came out with the real object of his visit to the
editorial room.

"They looked to me like people under a spell."

The Editor gazed at him appreciatively, think-
ing that, whether the effect of solitude or not,
this was a proof of a sensitive perception of the
expression of faces.

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 11

"You omitted to tell me their name, but I can
make a guess. You mean Proiessor Moorsom,
his daughter and sister — don't you?"

Renouard assented. Yes, a white-haired
lady. But from his silence, with his eyes fixed,
yet avoiding his friend, it was easy to guess that
it was not in the white-haired lady that he was
interested.

"Upon my word," he said, recovering his
usual bearing. "It looks to me as if I had been
asked there only for the daughter to talk to me."

He did not conceal that he had been greatly
struck by her appearance. Nobody could have
helped being impressed. She was different from
everybody else in that house, and it was not only
the effect of her London clothes. He did not
take her down to dinner. Willie did that. It
was afterwards, on the terrace. . . .

The evening was delightfully calm. He was
sitting apart and alone, and wishing himself
somewhere else — on board the schooner for
choice, with the dinner-harness off. He hadn't
exchanged forty words altogether during the
evening with the other guests. He saw her
suddenly all by herself coming towards him along
the dimly lighted terrace, quite from a distance.

She was tall and supple, carrying nobly on her
straight body a head of a character which to him

1« THE PLANTER OF MALATA

appeared peculiar, something — well— pagan,
crowned with a great wealth of hair. He had
been about to rise, but her decided approach
caused him to remain on the seat. He had not
looked much at her that evening. He had not
that freedom of gaze acquired by the habit of
^y society and the frequent meetings with strangers.
It was not shyness, but the reserve of a man not
used to the world and to the practice of covert
staring, with careless curiosity. All he had
captured by his first, keen, instantly lowered
glance was the impression that her hair was mag-
nificently red and her eyes very black. It was a
troubling effect, but it had been evanescent; he
had forgotten it almost till very unexpectedly he
saw her coming down the terrace slow and eager,
as if she were restraining herself, and with a
rhythmic upward undulation of her whole figure.
The light from an open window fell across her
path, and suddenly all that mass of arranged
hair appeared incandescent, chiselled and fluid,
with the daring suggestion of a helmet of bur-
nished copper and the flowing lines of molten
metal. It kindled in him an astonished admira-
tion. But he said nothing of it to his friend the
Editor. Neither did he tell him that her ap-
proach woke up in his brain the image of love's
infinite grace and the sense of the inexhaustible

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 13

joy that lives in beauty. No! What he im-
parted to the Editor were no emotions, but mere
facts conveyed in a dehberate voice and in unin-
spired words.

"That young lady came and sat down by me.
She said: 'Are you French, Mr. Renouard.? '%

He had breathed a whiff of perfume of which
he said nothing either — of some perfume he did
not know. Her voice was low and distinct. Her
shoulders and her bare arms gleamed with an
extraordinary splendour, and when she advanced
her head into the light he saw the admirable
contour of the face, the straight fine nose with
delicate nostrils, the exquisite crimson brush-
stroke of the lips on this oval without colour.
The expression of the eyes was lost in a shadowy
mysterious play of jet and silver, stirring under
the red coppery gold of the hair as though she
had been a being made of ivory and precious
metals changed into living tissue.

" . . . I told her my people were living in
Canada, but that I was brought up in England
before coming out here. I can't imagine what
interest she could have in my history."

"And you complain of her interest? "

The accent A the all-knowing journalist
seemed to jar on the Planter of Malata.

"No!" he said in a deadened voice that was

14 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

almost sullen. But after a short silence he went
on. "Very extraordinary. I told her I came
out to wander at large in the world when I was
/'nineteen, almost directly after I left school. It
seems that her late brother was in the same
school a couple of years before me. She wanted
me to tell her what I did at first when I came out
here; what other men found to do when they
came out — where they went, what was likely to
happen to them — as if I could guess and foretell
from my experience the fates of men who come
out here with a hundred different projects, for
hundreds of different reasons — for no reason but
restlessness — who come, and go, and disappear!
Preposterous. She seemed to want to hear
their histories. I told her that most of them
were not worth telling."

The distinguished journalist leaning on his
elbow, his head resting against the knuckles of
his left hand, listened with great attention, but
gave no sign of that surprise which Renouard,
pausing, seemed to expect.

"You know something," the latter said
brusquely. The all-knowing man moved his
head slightly and said, "Yes. But go on."

"It's just this. There is no more to it. I
found myself talking to her of my adventures, of
my early days. It couldn't possibly have in-

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 15

terested her. Really," he cried, "this is most
extraordinary. Those people have something
on their minds. We sat in the light of the win-
dow, and her father prowled about the terrace,
with his hands behind his back and his head
drooping. The white-haired lady came to the
dining-room window twice — to look at us I am
certain. The other guests began to go away —
and still we sat there. Apparently these people
are staying with the Dunsters. It was old Mrs.
Dunster who put an end to the thing. The
father and the aunt circled about as if they were
afraid of interfering with the girl. Then she got
up all at once, gave me her hand, and said she
hoped she would see me again."

While he was speaking Renouard saw again
the sway of her figure in a movement of grace
and strength — felt the pressure of her hand —
heard the last accents of the deep murmur that
came from her throat so white in the light of the
window, and remembered the black rays of her
steady eyes passing off his face when she turned
away. He remembered all this visually, and
it was not exactly pleasurable. It was rather
startling like the discovery of a new faculty in
himself. There are faculties one would rather
do without — such, for instance, as seeing through
a stone wall or remembering a person with this

^,

16 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

uncanny vividness. And what about those two
people belonging to her with their air of ex-
pectant solicitude! Really, those figures from

ome got in front of one. In fact, their per-
sistence in getting between him and the solid
forms of the everyday material world had
driven Renouard to call on his friend at the
office. He hoped that a little common, gossipy
information would lay the ghost of that unex-
pected dinner-party. Of course the proper per-
son to go to would have been young Dunster,
but he couldn't stand Willie Dunster — not at
any price.

^In the pause the Editor had changed his
attitude, faced his desk, and smiled a faint know-
ing smile.

"Striking girl — eh.^" he said.
The incongruity of the word was enough to
make one jump out of the chair. Striking! That
girl striking! Stri . . . ! But Renouard re-
strained his feelings . His friend was not a person
to give oneself away to. And, after all, this sort
of speech was what he had come there to hear.
As, however, he had made a movement he re-
settled himself comfortably and said, with very
creditable indifference, that yes — she was, rather.
Especially amongst a lot of over-dressed frumps.
There wasn't one woman under forty there.

THE PLANTER OF JVIALATA 17

"Is that the way to speak of the cream of our
society; the 'top of the basket,' as the French
say?" the Editor remonstrated with mock indig-
nation. "You aren't moderate in your ex-
pressions— you know."

"I express myself very little," interjected
Renouard seriously.

"I will tell you what you are. You are a
fellow that doesn't count the cost. Of course
you are safe with me, but will you never
learn. . . ."

"What struck me most," interrupted the
other, "is that she should pick me out for such a
long conversation."

"That's perhaps because you were the most
remarkable of the men there."

Renouard shook his head.

"This shot doesn't seem to me to hit the
mark," he said calmly. "Try again."

"Don't you believe me.^ Oh, you modest
creature. Well, let me assure you that under
ordinary circumstances it would have been a
good shot. You are sufficiently remarkable.
But you seem a pretty acute customer too. The
circumstances are extraordinary. By Jove, they
are!"

He mused. After a time the Planter of
Malata dropped a negligent —

18 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

"And you know them."

"And I know them," assented the all-knowing
Editor, soberly, as though the occasion were too
special for a display of professional vanity; a
vanity so well known to Renouard that its
absence augmented his wonder and almost made
him uneasy as if portending bad news of some
sort.

"You have met those people.^" he asked.

" No. I was to have met them last night, but
I had to send an apology to Willie in the morn-
ing. It was then that he had the bright idea to
invite you to fill the place, from a muddled no-
tion that you could be of use. Willie is stupid
sometimes. For it is clear that you are the last
man able to help."

"How on earth do I come to be mixed up in
this — whatever it is?" Renouard's voice was
slightly altered by nervous irritation. "I only
arrived here yesterday morning."

II

His friend the Editor turned to him squarely.
"Willie took me into consultation, and since he
seems to have let you in I may just as well tell
you what is up. I shall try to be as short as I
can. But in confidence — mind!"

He waited. Renouard, his uneasiness grow-
ing on him unreasonably, assented by a nod, and
the other lost no time in beginning. Professor
Moorsom — physicist and philosopher — fine head
of white hair, to judge from the photographs —
plenty of brains in the head too — all these
famous books — surely even Renouard would
know. . . .

Renouard muttered moodily that it wasn't
his sort of reading, and his friend hastened to
assure him earnestly that neither was it his sort
— except as a matter of business and duty, for
the literary page of that newspaper which was
his property (and the pride of his life) . The only
literary newspaper in the Antipodes could not
ignore the fashionable philosopher of the age.
Not that anybody read Moorsom at the Antip-

19

20 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

odes, but everybody had heard of him — women,
children, dock labourers, cabmen. The only
person (besides himself) who had read Moorsom,
as far as he knew, was old Dunster, who used to
.call himself a Moorsomian (or was it Moor-
somite) years and years ago, long before Moor-
som had worked himself up into the great swell
he was now, in every way. . . . Socially
too. Quite the fashion in the highest world.

Renouard listened with profoundly concealed
attention. "A charlatan," he muttered lan-
guidly.

"Well — no. I should say not. I shouldn't
wonder though if most of his writing had been
done with his tongue in his cheek. Of course.
That's to be expected. I tell you what : the only
really honest writing is to be found in news^
papers and nowhere else — and don't you forget
it."

The Editor paused with a basilisk stare till
Renouard had conceded a casual: "I dare say,"
and only then went on to explain that old
Dunster, during his European tour, had been
made rather a lion of in London, where he stayed
with the Moorsoms — he meant the father and
the girl. The professor had been a widower for
a long time.

"She doesn't look just a girl," muttered Re-

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 21

nouard. The other agreed. Very Hkely not.
Had been playing the London hostess to tip-top
people ever since she put her hair up, probably.

*'I don't expect to see any girlish bloom on her
when I do have the privilege," he continued.
"Those people are staying with the Dunsters
incog., in a manner, you understand — something
like royalties. They don't deceive anybody, but
they want to be left to themselves. We have
even kept them out of the paper — to oblige old
Dunster. But we shall put your arrival in — our
local celebrity."

"Heavens!"

"Yes. Mr. G. Renouard, the explorer, whose
indomitable energy, etc., and who is now work-
ing for the prosperity of our country in another
way on his Malata plantation . . . And, by
the by, how's the silk plant — flourishing.^ "

"Yes."

"Did you bring any fibre .^"

"Schooner-full."

"I see. To be transhipped to Liverpool for7
experimental manufacture, eh? Eminent capi- '
tahsts at home very much interested, aren't
they.?"

"They are."

A silence fell. Then the Editor uttered
slowly: " You will be a rich man some day."

22 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

Renouard's face did not betray his opinion of
that confident prophecy. He didn't say any-
thing till his friend suggested in the same medi-
tative voice —

"You ought to interest Moorsom in the affair
too — since Willie has let you in."

"A philosopher!"

"I suppose he isn't above making a bit of
money. And he may be clever at it for all you
know. I have a. notion that he's a fairly practi-
cal old cove. . . . Anyhow," and here the
tone of the speaker took on a tinge of respect, *'he
has made philosophy pay."

Renouard raised his eyes, repressed an im-
pulse to jump up, and got out of the arm-chair
slowly. "It isn't perhaps a bad idea," he said.
"I'll have to call there in any case."

He wondered whether he had managed to keep
his voice steady, its tone unconcerned enough;
for his emotion was strong though it had nothing
to do with the business aspect of this suggestion.
He moved in the room in vague preparation for
departure, when he heard a soft laugh. He
spun about quickly with a frown, but the Editor
was not laughing at him. He was chuckling
across the big desk at the wall: a preliminary of
some speech for which Renouard, recalled to him-
self, waited silent and mistrustful.

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 23

**No! You would never guess! No one
would ever guess what these people are after.
Willie's eyes bulged out when he came to me
with the tale."

"They always do," remarked Renouard with
disgust. "He's stupid."

"He was startled. And so was I after he told
me. It's a search party. They are out looking
for a man. Willie's soft heart's enlisted in the
cause."

Renouard repeated: "Looking for a man."
He sat down suddenly as if on purpose to stare.
"Did Willie come to you to borrow the lantern,"
he asked sarcastically, and got up again for no
apparent reason.

"What lantern.^ " snapped the puzzled Editor,
and his face darkened with suspicion. "You,
Renouard, are always alluding to things that
aren't clear to me. If you were in politics, I, as
a party journalist, wouldn't trust you further
than I could see you. Not an inch further.
You are such a sophisticated beggar. Listen:
the man is the man Miss Moorsom was en-
gaged to for a year. He couldn't have been a
nobody, anyhow. But he doesn't seem to
have been very wise. Hard luck for the young
lady."

He spoke with feeling. It was clear that

24 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

what he had to tell appealed to his sentiment.
Yet, as an experienced man of the world, he
marked his amused wonder. Young man of
good family and connections, going everywhere,
yet not merely a man about town, but with a
foot in the two big F's.

Renouard lounging aimlessly in the room
turned round: "And what the devil's that?" he
asked faintly.

"Why Fashion and Finance," explained the
Editor. "That's how I call it. There are the
three R's at the bottom of the social edifice and
the two F's on the top. See.^ "

"Ha! Ha! Excellent! Ha! Ha!" Re-
nouard laughed with stony eyes.

"And you proceed from one set to the other
in this democratic age," the Editor went on with
unperturbed complacency. "That is if you are
clever enough. The only danger is in being too
clever. And I think something of the sort hap-
pened here. That swell I am speaking of got
himself into a mess. Apparently a very ugly
mess of a financial character. You will under-
stand that Willie did not go into details with me.
They were not imparted to him with very great
abundance either. But a bad mess — something
of the criminal order. Of course he was inno-
cent. But he had to quit all the same. "

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 25

"Ha! Ha!" Renouard laughed again
abruptly, staring as before. "So there's one
more big F in the tale."

"What do you mean?" inquired the Editor
quickly, with an air as if his patent were being
infringed.

"I mean— Fool."

"No. I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say
that."

"Well — let him be a scoundrel then. What
the devil do I care."

"But hold on! You haven't heard the end
of the story."

Renouard, his hat on his head already, sat
down with the disdainful smile of a man who had
discounted the moral of the story. Still he sat
down and the Editor swung his revolving chair
right round. He was full of unction.

"Imprudent, I should say. In many ways
money is as dangerous to handle as gunpowder.
You can't be too careful either as to who you are
working with. Anyhow there was a mighty
flashy burst up, a sensation, and — his familiar
haunts kiiew him no more. But before he
vanished he went to see Miss Moorsom. That
very fact argues for his innocence — don't it?
What was said between them no man knows —
unless the professor had the confidence from his

g6 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

daughter. There couldn't have been much
to say. There was nothing for it but to let
him go — was there? — for the affair had got into
the papers. And perhaps the kindest thing
would have been to forget him. Anyway the
easiest. Forgiveness would have been more
difficult, I fancy, for a young lady of spirit and
position drawn into an ugly affair like that.
Any ordinary young lady, I mean. Well, the
fellow asked nothing better than to be forgotten,
only he didn't find it easy to do so himself, be-
cause he would write home now and then. Not
to any of his friends though. He had no near
relations. The professor had been his guardian.
No, the poor devil wrote now and then to an old
retired butler of his late father, somewhere in the
country, forbidding him at the same time to let
any one know of his whereabouts. So that
worthy old ass would go up and dodge about the
Moorsom's town house, perhaps waylay Miss
Moorsom's maid, and then would write to
* Master Arthur' that the young lady looked
well and happy, or some such cheerful intelli-
gence. I dare say he wanted to be forgotten,
but I shouldn't think he was much cheered by
the news. What would you say .^^ "

Renouard, his legs stretched out and his chin
on his breast, said nothing. A sensation which

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 27

was not curiosity, but rather a vague nervous
anxiety, distinctly unpleasant, like a mysterious
symptom of some malady, prevented him from
getting up and going away.

" Mixed feelings," the Editor opined. " Many
fellows out here receive news from home with
mixed feelings. But what will his feelings be
when he hears what I am going to tell you now?
For we know he has not heard yet. Six months
ago a city clerk, just a common drudge of
finance, gets himself convicted of a common
embezzlement or something of that kind. Then
seeing he's in for a long sentence he thinks of
making his conscience comfortable, and makes a
clean breast of an old story of tampered with, or
else suppressed, documents, a story which clears
altogether the honesty of our ruined gentleman.''
That embezzling fellow was in a position to
know, having been employed by the firm before
the smash. There was no doubt about the
character being cleared — but where the cleared
man was nobody could tell. Another sensation
in society. And then Miss Moorsom says: *He
will come back to claim me, and I'll marry him.'
But he didn't come back. Between you and me
I don't think he was much wanted — except by
Miss Moorsom. I imagine she's used to have her
own way. She grew impatient, and declared

28 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

that if she knew where the man was she would go
to him. But all that could be got out of the old
butler was that the last envelope bore the post-
mark of our beautiful city; and that this was the
only address of 'Master Arthur' that he ever
had. That and no more. In fact the fellow
was at his last gasp — with a bad heart. Miss
Moorsom wasn't allowed to see him. She had
gone herself into the country to learn what she
could, but she had to stay downstairs while the
old chap's wife went up to the invalid. She
brought down the scrap of intelligence I've told
you of. He was already too far gone to be cross-
examined on it, and that very night he died. He
didn't leave behind him much to go by, did he.^^
Our Willie hinted to me that there had been
pretty stormy days in the professor's house, but
— here they are. I have a notion she isn't the
kind of everyday young lady who may be per-
mitted to gallop about the world all by herself —
eh.^ Well, I think it rather fine of her, but I quite
understand that the professor needed all his
philosophy under the circumstances. She is his
only child now — and brilliant — what.'^ Willie
positively spluttered trying to describe her to
me; and I could see directly j^ou came in that you
had an uncommon experience."

Renouard, with an irritated gesture, tilted his

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 29

hat more forward on his eyes, as though he were
bored. The Editor went on with the remark
that to be sure neither he (Renouard) nor yet
WiUie were much used to meet girls of that re-
markable superiority. Willie when learning
business with a firm in London, years before, had
seen none but boarding-house society, he
guessed. As to himself in the good old days,
when he trod the glorious flags of Fleet Street, he
neither had access to, nor yet would have cared
for the swells. Nothing interested him then but
parliamentary politics and the oratory of the
House of Commons.

He paid to this not very distant past the
tribute of a tender, reminiscent smile, and re-
turned to his first idea that for a society girl her
action was rather fine. All the same the pro-
fessor could not be very pleased. The fellow if
he was as pure as a lily now was just about as
devoid of the goods of the earth. And there
were misfortunes, however undeserved, which
damaged a man's standing permanently. On
the other hand, it was difiicult to oppose
cynically a noble impulse — not to speak of the
great love at the root of it. Ah! Love! And
then the lady was quite capable of going off by
herself. She was of age, she had money of her
own, plenty of pluck too. Moorsom must have

30 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

concluded that it was more truly paternal, more
prudent too, and generally safer all round to let
himself be dragged into this chase. The aunt
came along for the same reasons. It was given
out at home as a trip round the world of the
usual kind.

Renouard had risen and remained standing
with his heart beating, and strangely affected by
this tale, robbed as it was of all glamour by the
prosaic personality of the narrator. The Editor
added: "I've been asked to help in the search —
you know."

Renouard muttered something about an
appointment and went out into the street. His
inborn sanity could not defend him from a misty
creeping jealousy. He thought that obviously
no man of that sort could be worthy of such a
woman's devoted fidelity. Renouard, however,
had lived long enough to reflect that a man's
activities, his views, and even his ideas may be
very inferior to his character; and moved by a
delicate consideration for that splendid girl he
tried to think out for the man a character of
inward excellence and outward gifts — some
extraordinary seduction. But in vain. Fresh
from months of solitude and from days at sea,
her splendour presented itself to him absolutely
unconquerable in its perfection, unless by her

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 31

own folly. It was easier to suspect her of this
than to imagine in the man qualities which would
be worthy of her. Easier and less degrading. Be-
cause folly may be generous — could be nothing
else but generosity in her; whereas to imagine
her subjugated by something common was in-
tolerable.

Because of the force of the physical impression
he had received from her personality (and such
impressions are the real origins of the deepest
movements of our soul) this conception of her
was even inconceivable. But no Prince Charm-
ing has ever lived out of a fairy tale. He doesn't
walk the worlds of Fashion and Finance — and
with a stumbling gait at that. Generosity. Yes.
It was her generosity. But this generosity was
altogether regal in its splendour, almost absurd
in its lavishness — or, perhaps, divine.

In the evening, on board his schooner, sitting
on the rail, his arms folded on his breast and his
eyes fixed on the deck, he let the darkness catch
him unawares in the midst of a meditation on the
mechanism of sentiment and the springs of
passion. And all the time he had an abiding
consciousness of her bodily presence. The effect
on his senses had been so penetrating that in the
middle of the night, rousing up suddenly, wide-
eyed in the darkness of his cabin, he did not create

32 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

a faint mental vision of her person for himself,
but, more intimately affected, he scented dis-
tinctly the faint perfume she used, and could
almost have sworn that he had been awakened
by the soft rustle of her dress. He even sat up
listening in the dark for a time, then sighed and
lay down again, not agitated but, on the con-
trary, oppressed by the sensation of something
that had happened to him and could not be
undone.

m

In the afternoon he lounged into the editorial
office, carrying with affected nonchalance that
weight of the irremediable he had felt laid on
him suddenly in the small hours of the night —
that consciousness of something that could no
longer be helped. His patronising friend in-
formed him at once that he had made the
acquaintance of the Moorsom party last night.
At the Dunster's, of course. Dinner.

"Very quiet. Nobody there. It was much
better for the business. I say . . ."

Renouard, his hand grasping the back of a
chair, stared down at him dumbly.

"Phew! That's a stunning girl. . . . Why
do you want to sit on that chair ? It's uncomfort-
able!"

"I wasn't going to sit on it." Renouard
walked slowly to the window, glad to find in
himself enough self-control to let go the chair in-
stead of raising it on high and bringing it down
on the Editor's head.

"Willie kept on gazing at her with tears in his

33

34 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

boiled eyes. You should have seen him bending
sentimentally over her at dinner."

*' Don't," said Renouard in such an anguished
tone that the Editor turned right round to look
at his back.

*' You push your dislike of young Dunster too
far. It's positively morbid," he disapproved
mildly. "We can't be all beautiful after thirty.
. . . I talked a little, about you mostly, to
the professor. He appeared to be interested in
the silk plant — if only as a change from the great
subject. Miss Moorsom didn't seem to mind
when I confessed to her that I had taken you
into the confidence of the thing. Our Willie
approved too. Old Dunster with his white
beard seemed to give me his blessing. All those
people have a great opinion of you, simply be-
cause I told them that you've led every sort of
life one can think of before you got struck on
exploration. They want you to make sugges-
tions. What do you think 'Master Arthur' is
likely to have taken to.^^ "

"Something easy," muttered Renouard with-
out unclenching his teeth.

"Hunting man. Athlete. Don't be hard on
the chap. He may be riding boundaries, or
droving cattle, or humping his swag about the
back-blocks away to the devil — somewhere. He

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 35

may be even prospecting at the back of beyond
— this very moment."

" Or lying dead drunk in a roadside pub. It's
late enough in the day for that."

The Editor looked up instinctively. The
clock was pointing at a quarter to five. "Yes,
it is," he admitted. "But it needn't be. And
he may have lit out mto the Western Pacific all
of a sudden — say in a trading schooner. Though
I really don't see in what capacity. Still . . ."

"Or he may be passing at this very moment
under this very window."

"Not he . . . and I wish you would get
away from it to where one can see your face. I
hate talking to a man's back. You stand there
like a hermit on a sea-shore growling to yourself.
I tell you what it is, Geoffrey, you don't like
mankind."

"I don't make my living by talking about
mankind's affairs," Renouard defended himself.
But he came away obediently and sat down in
the arm-chair. " How can you be so certain that
your man isn't down there in the street.^" he
asked. " It's neither more nor less probable than
every single one of your other suppositions."

Placated by Renouard's docility the Editor
gazed at him for a while. "Aha! I'll tell you
how. Learn then that we have begun the cam-

36 THE PLANTER OF IVIALATA

paign. We have telegraphed his description to
the pohce of every township up and down the
land. And what's more we've ascertained defi-
nitely that he hasn't been in this town for the
last three months at least. How much longer
he's been away we can't tell."

"That's very curious."

"It's very simple. Miss Moorsom wrote to
him, to the post oflBce here, directly she returned
to London after her excursion into the country
to see the old butler. Well — her letter is still
lying there. It has not been called for. Ergo,
this town is not his usual abode. Personally, I
never thought it was. But he cannot fail to turn
up some time or other. Our main hope lies just
in the certitude that he must come to town
sooner or later. Remember he doesn't know
that the butler is dead, and he will want to
inquire for a letter. Well, he'll find a note from
Miss Moorsom."

Renouard, silent, thought that it was likely
enough. His profound distaste for this conver-
sation was betrayed by an air of weariness dark-
ening his energetic sun-tanned features, and by
the augmented dreaminess of his eyes. The
Editor noted it as a further proof of that im-
moral detachment from mankind, of that callous-
ness of sentiment fostered by the unhealthy

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 37

conditions of solitude — according to his own
favourite theory. Aloud he observed that as
long as a man had not given up correspondence
he could not be looked upon as lost. Fugitive
criminals had been tracked in that way by
justice, he reminded his friend; then suddenly
changed the bearing of the subject somewhat by
asking if Renouard had heard from his people
lately, and if every member of his large tribe
was well and happy.

"Yes, thanks."

The tone was curt, as if repelling a liberty.
Renouard did not like being asked about his
people, for whom he had a profound and re-
morseful affection. He had not seen a single
human being to whom he was related, for many
years, and he was extremely different from them
all.

On the very morning of his arrival from his
island he had gone to a set of pigeon-holes in
Willie Dunster's outer office and had taken out
from a compartment labelled "Malata" a very
small accumulation of envelopes, a few ad-
dressed to himself, and one addressed to his
assistant, all to the care of the firm, W. Dunster
and Co. As opportunity offered, the firm used
to send them on to Malata either by a man-of-
war schooner going on a cruise, or by some trad-

38 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

ing craft proceeding that way. But for the last
four months there had been no opportunity.

"You going to stay here some time.^^" asked
the Editor, after a longish silence.

Renouard, perfunctorily, did see no reason why
he should make a long stay.

"For health, for your mental health, my boy,"
rejoined the newspaper man. "To get used to
human faces so that they don't hit you in the eye
so hard when you walk about the streets. To
get friendly with your kind. I suppose that
assistant of yours can be trusted to look after
things?"

"There's the half-caste too. The Portuguese.
He knows what's to be done."

"Aha!" The Editor looked sharply at his
friend. "Wliat's his name?"

"Who's name?"

"The assistant's you picked up on the sly be-
hind my back."

Renouard made a slight movement of im-
patience.

"I met him unexpectedly one evening. I
thought he would do as well as another. He
had come from up country and didn't seem
happy in a town. He told me his name was
Walter. I did not ask him for proofs, you know."

" I don't think you get on very well with him."

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 39

"Why? What makes you think so."

"I don't know. Something reluctant in your
manner when he's in question."

"Really. My manner! I don't think he's a
great subject for conversation, perhaps. Why
not drop him?"

"Of course! You wouldn't confess to a mis-
take. Not you. Nevertheless I have my sus-
picions about it."

Renouard got up to go, but hesitated, looking
down at the seated Editor.

"How funny," he said at last with the utmost
seriousness, and was making for the door, when
the voice of his friend stopped him.

"You know what has been said of you? That
you couldn't get on with anybody you couldn't
kick. Now, confess — is there any truth in the
soft impeachment?"

"No," said Renouard. "Did you print that
in your paper."

"No. I didn't quite believe it. But I will
tell you what I believe. I believe that when
your heart is set on some object you are a man
that doesn't count the cost to yourself or others.
And this shall get printed some day."

"Obituary notice?" Renouard dropped negli-
gently.

" Certain — some day."

40 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

"Do you then regard yourself as immortal?'*

"No, my boy. I am not immortal. But the
voice of the press goes on for ever.
And it will say that this was the secret of
your great success in a task where better
men than you — meaning no offence — did fail
repeatedly."

"Success," muttered Renouard, pulling-to the
oflSce door after him with considerable energy.
And the letters of the word Private like a row
of white eyes seemed to stare after his back
sinking down the staircase of that temple of
publicity.

Renouard had no doubt that all the means of
publicity would be put at the service of love and
used for the discovery of the loved man. He
did not wish him dead. He did not wish him
any harm. We are all equipped with a fund of
humanity which is not exhausted without many
and repeated provocations — and this man had
done him no evil. But before Renouard had left
old Dunster's house, at the conclusion of the call
he made there that very afternoon, he had dis-
covered in himself the desire that the search
might last long. He never really flattered him-
self that it might fail. It seemed to him that
there was no other course in this world for him-
self, for all mankind, but resignation. And he

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 41

could not help thinking that Professor Moorsom
had arrived at the same conclusion too.

Professor Moorsom, slight frame of middle
height, a thoughtful keen head under the thick
wavy hair, veiled dark eyes under straight eye-
brows, and with an inward gaze w^hich when dis-
engaged and arriving at one seemed to issue
from an obscure dream of books, from the limbo
of meditation, showed himself extremely gracious
to him. Renouard guessed in him a man whom
an incurable habit of investigation and analysis
had made gentle and indulgent; inapt for action,
and more sensitive to the thoughts than to the
events of existence. Withal not crushed, sub-
ironic without a trace of acidity, and with a
simple manner which put people at ease quickly.
They had a long conversation on the terrace
commanding an extended view of the town and
the harbour.

The splendid immobility of the bay resting
under his gaze, with its grey spurs and shining
indentations, helped Renouard to regain his self-
possession, which he had felt shaken, in coming
out on the terrace, into the setting of the most
powerful emotion of his life, when he had sat
within a foot of Miss Moorsom with fire in his
breast, a humming in his ears, and in a complete
disorder of his mind. There was the very garden

42 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

seat on which he had been enveloped in the
radiant spell. And presently he was sitting on
it again with the professor talking of her. Near
by the patriarchal Dunster leaned forward in a
wicker arm-chair, benign and a little deaf, his
big hand to his ear with the innocent eagerness
of his advanced age remembering the fires of life.

It was with a sort of apprehension that Re-
nouard looked forward to seeing Miss Moorsom.
And strangely enough it resembled the state of
mind of a man who fears disenchantment more
than sortilege. But he need not have been
afraid. Directly he saw her in a distance at the
other end of the terrace he shuddered to the roots
of his hair. With her approach the power of
speech left him for a time. Mrs. Dunster and
her aunt were accompanying her. All these
people sat down; it was an intimate circle into
which Renouard felt himself cordially admitted;
and the talk was of the great search which
occupied all their minds. Discretion was ex-
pected by these people, but of reticence as to the
object of the journey there could be no question.
Nothing but ways and means and arrangements
could be talked about.

By fixing his eyes obstinately on the ground,
which gave him an air of reflective sadness,
Renouard managed to recover his seK-possqs-

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 43

sion. He used it to keep his voice in a low key
and to measure his words on the great subject.
And he took care with a great inward effort to
make them reasonable without giving them a
discouraging complexion. For he did not want
the quest to be given up, since it would mean her
going away with her two attendant grey-heads
to the other side of the world.

He was asked to come again, to come often
and take part in the counsels of all these people
captivated by the sentimental enterprise of a
declared love. On taking Miss Moorsom's hand
he looked up, would have liked to say something,
but found himself voiceless, with his lips sud-
denly sealed. She returned the pressure of his
fingers, and he left her with her eyes vaguely
staring beyond him, an air of listening for an
expected sound, and the faintest possible smile
on her lips — a smile not for him, evidently, but
the reflection of some deep and inscrutable
thought.

IV

He went on board his schooner. She lay white,
and as if suspended, in the crepuscular atmos-
phere of sunset mingling with the ashy gleam of
the vast anchorage. He tried to keep his
thoughts as sober, as reasonable, as measured as
his words had been, lest they should get away
from him and cause some sort of moral disaster.
What he was afraid of in the coming night was
sleeplessness and the endless strain of that
wearisome task. It had to be faced however.
He lay on his back, sighing profoundly in the
dark, and suddenly beheld his very own self,
carrying a small bizarre lamp, reflected in a long
mirror inside a room in an empty and unfur-
nished palace. In this startling image of himself
he recognised somebody he had to follow — the
frightened guide of his dream. He traversed
endless galleries, no end of lofty halls, innumer-
able doors. He lost himself utterly — he found his
way again. Room succeeded room. At last
the lamp went out, and he stumbled against some
object which, when he stooped for it, he found to

44

THE PLANTER OF IVIALATA 45

be very cold and heavy to lift. The sickly white
light of dawii showed him the head of a statue.
Its marble hair was done in the bold lines of a
helmet, on its lips the chisel had left a faint
smile, and it resembled Miss Moorsom. \Miile
he was staring at it fixedly, the head began to
grow light in his fingers, to diminish and crumble
to pieces, and at last turned into a handful of
dust, which was blown away by a puff of wind so
chilly that he woke up with a desperate shiver
and leaped headlong out of his bed-place. The
day had really come. He sat down by the cabin
table, and taking his head between his hands, did
not stir for a very long time.

Very quiet, he set himself to review this dream.
The lamp, of course, he connected with Jh^
search for a man. But on closer examination he j
perceived that the reflection of himself in the
mirror was not really the true Renouard, butj
somebody else whose face he could not remember J
In the deserted palace he recognised a sinister
adaptation by his brain of the long corridors
with many doors, in the great building in which
his friend's newspaper was lodged on the first
floor. The marble head with Miss Moorsom's
face! Well! What other face could he have
dreamed of.^ And her complexion was fairer
than Parian marble, than the heads of angels.

46 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

The wind at the end was the morning breeze
entering through the open porthole and touching
his face before the schooner could swing to the
chilly gust.

Yes ! And all this rational explanation of the
fantastic made it only more mysterious and
weird. There was something daemonic in that
dream. It was one of those experiences which
throw a man out of conformity with the estab-
lished order of his kind and make him a creature
of obscure suggestions.

Henceforth, without ever trying to resist, he
went every afternoon to the house where she
lived. He went there as passively as if in a
dream. He could never make out how he had
attained the footing of intimacy in the Dunster
mansion above the bay — whether on the ground
of personal merit or as the pioneer of the vege-
table silk industry. It must have been the last,
because he remembered distinctly, as distinctly
as in a dream, hearing old Dunster once telling
him that his next public task would be a careful
survey of the Northern Districts to discover
tracts suitable for the cultivation of the silk
plant. The old man wagged his beard at him
sagely. It was indeed as absurd as a dream.

Willie of course would be there in the evening.
But he was more of a figure out of a nightmare.

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 47

hovering about the circle of chairs in his dress-
clothes like a gigantic, repulsive, and sentimen-
tal bat. " Do away with the beastly cocoons all
over the world," he buzzed in his blurred, water-
logged voice. He affected a great horror of
insects of all kinds. One evening he appeared
with a red flower in his button-hole. Nothing
could have been more disgustingly fantastic.
And he would also say to Renouard: "You may
yet change the history of our country. For
economic conditions do shape the history of
nations. Eh.^ What?" And he would turn to
Miss Moorsom for approval, lowering protect-
ingly his spatulous nose and looking up with
feeling from under his absurd eyebrows, which
grew thin, in the manner of canebrakes, out of
his spongy skin. For this large, bilious creature
was an economist and a sentimentalist, facile to
tears, and a member of the Cobden Club.

In order to see as little of him as possible Re-
nouard began coming earlier so as to get away
before his arrival, without curtailing too much
the hours of secret contemplation for which he
lived. He had given up trying to deceive him-
self. His resignation was without bounds. He
accepted the immense misfortune of being in
love with a woman who was in search of another
man only to throw herself into his arms. With

48 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

such desperate precision he defined in his
thoughts the situation, the consciousness of which
traversed Hke a sharp arrow the sudden silences of
general conversation. The only thought before
which he quailed was the thought that this could
not last; that it must come to an end. He
feared it instinctively as a sick man may fear
death. For it seemed to him that it must be
the death of him followed by a lightless, bottom-
less pit. But his resignation was not spared the
torments of jealousy: the cruel, insensate, poign-
ant, and imbecile jealousy, when it seems that
a woman betrays us simply by this that she
exists, that she breathes — and when the deep
movements of her nerves or her soul become a
matter of distracting suspicion, of killing doubt,
of mortal anxiety.

In the peculiar condition of their sojourn Miss
Moorsom went out very little. She accepted
this seclusion at the Dunster's mansion as in
a hermitage, and lived there, watched over by a
group of old people, with lofty endurance of a
condescending and strong-headed goddess. It
was impossible to say if she suffered from any-
thing in the world, and whether this was the in-
sensibility of a great passion concentrated on
itself, or a perfect restraint of manner, or the
indifference of superiority so complete as to be

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 49

sufficient to itself. But it was visible to Re-
nouard that she took some pleasure in talking to
him at times. Was it because he was the only
person near her age? Was this, then, the secret
of his admission to the circle.^

He admired her voice as well poised as her
movements, as her attitudes. He himself had
always been a man of tranquil tones. But the
power of fascination had torn him out of his very
nature so completely that to preserve his habit-
ual calmness from going to pieces had become a
terrible effort. He used to go from her on board
the schooner exhausted, broken, shaken up, as
though he had been put to the most exquisite
torture. When he saw her approaching he al-
ways had a moment of hallucination. She was a
misty and fair creature, fitted for invisible music,
for the shadows of love, for the murmurs of
waters. After a time (he could not be always
staring at the ground) he would summon up all
his resolution and look at her. There was a
sparkle in the clear obscurity of her eyes; and
when she turned them on him they seemed to
give a new meaning to life. He would say to
himself that another man would have found long
before the happy release of madness, his wits
burnt to cinders in that radiance. But no such
luck for him. His wits had come unscathed

50 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

through the furnaces of hot suns, of blazing
deserts, of flaming angers against the weaknesses
of men and the obstinate cruelties of hostile
nature.

Being sane he had to be constantly on his
guard against falling into adoring silences or
breaking out into wild speeches. He had to
keep watch on his eyes, his limbs, on the muscles
of his face. Their conversations were such as
they could be between these two people: she a
young lady fresh from the thick twilight of four
million people and the artificiality of several
London seasons ; he the man of definite conquer-
ing tasks, the familiar of wide horizons, and in
his very repose holding aloof from these agglom-
erations of units in which one loses one's im-
portance even to oneself. They had no com-
mon conversational small change. They had to
use the great pieces of general ideas, but they
exchanged them trivially. It was no serious
commerce. Perhaps she had not much of that
coin. Nothing significant came from her. It
could not be said that she had received from the
contacts of the external world impressions of a
personal kind, different from other women.
What was ravishing in her was her quietness and,
in her grave attitudes, the unfailing brilhance of
her femininity. He did not know what there

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 51

was under that ivory forehead so splendidly
shaped, so gloriously crowned. He could not
tell what were her thoughts, her feelings. Her
replies were reflective, always preceded by a short
silence, while he hung on her lips anxiously. He
felt himself in the presence of a mysterious being
in whom spoke an unknown voice, like the voice
of oracles, bringing everlasting unrest to the
heart.

He was thankful enough to sit in silence with
secretly clenched teeth, devoured by jealousy —
and nobody could have guessed that his quiet
deferential bearing to all these grey-heads was
the supreme effort of stoicism, that the man was
engaged in keeping a sinister watch on his tor-
tures lest his strength should fail him. As be-^;
fore, when grappling with other forces of nature, ^^
he could find in himself all sorts of courage \
except the courage to run away.

It was perhaps from the lack of subjects they
could have in common that Miss Moorsom made
him so often speak of his own life. He did not
shrink from talking about himself, for he was
free from that exacerbated, timid vanity which
seals so many vain-glorious lips. He talked to
her in his restrained voice, gazing at the tip of
her shoe, and thinking that the time was bound
to come soon when her very inattention would

52 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

get weary of him. And indeed on stealing a
glance he would see her dazzling and perfect, her
eyes vague, staring in mournful immobility,
with a drooping head that made him think of a
^.-tragic Venus arising before him, not from the
/ foam of the sea, but from a distant, still more
formless, mysterious, and potent immensity of
mankind.

^

c^'

r^ \

\/r'

One afternoon Henouard stepping out on the
terrace found nobody. there. It was for him, at
the same time, a melancholy disappointment and
a poignant relief.

The heat was great, the air was still, all the
long windows of the house stood wide open. At
the further end, grouped round a lady's work-
table, several chairs disposed sociably suggested
invisible occupants, a company of conversing
shades. Renouard looked toward them with a
sort of dread. A most elusive, faint sound of
ghostly talk issuing from one of the rooms added
to the illusion and stopped his already hesitating
footsteps. He leaned over the balustrade of stone
near a squat vase holding a tropical plant of a
bizarre shape. Professor Moorsom coming up
from the garden with a book under his arm and
a white parasol held over his bare head, found
him there and, closing the parasol, leaned over
by his side with a remark on the increasing heat of
the season. Renouard assented and changed his
position a little; the other, after a short silence,

53

54 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

administered unexpectedly a question which,
like the blow of a club on the head, deprived Re-
nouard of the power of speech and even thought,
but, more cruel, left him quivering with appre-
hension, not of death but of everlasting torment.
Yet the words were extremely simple.

"Something will have to be done soon. We
can't remain in a state of suspended expectation
for ever. Tell me what do you think of our
chances.^"

Renouard, speechless, produced a faint smile.
The professor confessed in a jocular tone his im-
patience to complete the circuit of the globe and
be done with it. It was impossible to remain
quartered on the dear excellent Dunsters for
an indefinite time. And then there were the
lectures he had arranged to deliver in Paris. A
serious matter.

That lectures by Professor Moorsom were a
European event and that brilliant audiences
would gather to hear them Renouard did not
know. All he was aware of was the shock of this
hint of departure. The menace of separation
fell on his head like a thunderbolt. And he saw
the absurdity of his emotion, for hadn't he lived
all these days under the very cloud .'^ The pro-
fessor, his elbows spread out, looked down into
the garden and went on unburdening his mind.

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 55

Yes. The department of sentiment was directed
by his daughter, and she had plenty of volun-
teered moral support; but he had to look after
the practical side of life without assistance.

"I have the less hesitation in speaking to you
about my anxiety, because I feel you are friendly
to us and at the same time you are detached from
all these sublimities — confound them."

"What do you mean?" murmured Renouard.

*'I mean that you are capable of calm judg-
ment. Here the atmosphere is simply detestable.
Everybody has knuckled under to sentiment.
Perhaps your deliberate opinion could in-
fluence . . ."

" You want Miss Moorsom to give it up? "

The professor turned to the young man dis-
mally.

"Heaven only knows what I want."

Renouard leaning his back against the balus-
trade folded his arms on his breast, appeared to
meditate profoundly. His face, shaded softly
by the broad brim of a planter's panama hat,
with the straight line of the nose level with the
forehead, the eyes lost in the depth of the setting,
and the chin well forward, had such a profile as
may be seen amongst the bronzes of classical
museums, pure under a crested helmet — recalled
vaguely a Minerva's head.

56 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

"This is the most troublesome time I ever had
in my life," exclaimed the professor testily.

" Surely the man must be worth it," muttered
Renouard with a pang of jealousy traversing his
breast like a self-inflicted stab.

Whether enervated by the heat or giving way
to pent-up irritation the professor surrendered
himself to the mood of sincerity.

"He began by being a pleasantly dull boy.
He developed into a pointlessly clever young
man, without, I suspect, ever trying to under-
stand anything. My daughter knew him from
childhood. I am a busy man, and I confess
that their engagement was a complete surprise
to me. I wish their reasons for that step had
been more naive. But simplicity was out of
fashion in their set. From a worldly point
of view he seems to have been a mere baby.
Of course, now, I am assured that he is the vic-
tim of his noble confidence in the rectitude of
his kind. But that's mere idealising of a sad
reality. For my part I will tell you that from
the very beginning I had the gravest doubts
of his dishonesty. Unfortunately my clever
daughter hadn't. And now we behold the
reaction. No. To be earnestly dishonest one
must be really poor. This was only a mani-
festation of his extremely refined cleverness.

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 57

The complicated simpleton. He had an awful
awakening though."

In such words did Professor Moorsom give
his "young friend" to understand the state of
his feelings toward the lost man. It was evi-
dent that the father of Miss Moorsom wished
him to remain lost. Perhaps the unprecedented
heat of the season made him long for the cool
spaces of the Pacific, the sweep of the ocean's
free wind along the promenade decks, cumbered
with long chairs, of a ship steaming toward
the Calif ornian coast. To Renouard the philos-
opher appeared simply the most treacherous
of fathers. He was amazed. But he was not
at the end of his discoveries.

*'He may be dead," the professor murmured.

" Why.^ People don't die here sooner than in
Europe. If he had gone to hide in Italy, for
instance, you wouldn't think of saying that."

"Well! And suppose he has become morally
disintegrated. You know he was not a strong
personality," the professor suggested moodily.
"My daughter's future is in question here."

Renouard thought that the love of such a
woman was enough to pull any broken man
together — to drag a man out of his grave. And
he thought this with inward despair, which
kept him silent as much almost as his astonish-

58 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

ment. At last he managed to stammer out a
generous —

"Oh! Don't let us even suppose . . ."

The professor struck in with a sadder accent
than before —

"It's good to be young. And then you have
been a man of action, and necessarily a believer
in success. But I have been looking too long
at life not to distrust its surprises. Age! Age!
Here I stand before you a man full of doubts
and hesitation — sjpe lentus, timidus futuri.^'

He made a sign to Renouard not to interrupt,
and in a lowered voice, as if afraid of being over-
heard, even there, in the solitude of the terrace —

"And the worst is that I am not even sure
how far this sentimental pilgrimage is genuine.
Yes. I doubt my own child. It's true that
she's a woman . . ."

Renouard detected with horror a tone of
resentment, as if the professor had never for-
given his daughter for not dying instead of his
son. The latter noticed the young man's stony
stare.

"Ah! you don't understand. Yes, she's
clever, open-minded, popular, and — well, charm-
ing. But you don't know what it is to have
moved, breathed, existed, and even triumphed
in the mere smother and froth of life — the

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 59

brilliant froth. There thoughts, sentiments,
opinions, feelings, actions too, are nothing but
agitation in empty space — to amuse life — a sort
of superior debauchery, exciting and fatiguing,
meaning nothing, leading nowhere. She is the
creature of that circle. And I ask myself if she
is obeying the uneasiness of an instinct seeking
its satisfaction, or is it a revulsion of feeling,
or is she merely deceiving her own heart by
this dangerous trifling with romantic images.
And everything is possible — except sincerity,
such as only stark, struggling humanity can
know. No woman can stand that mode of life
in which women rule, and remain a perfectly
genuine, simple human being. . . . Ah!
There's some people coming out."

He moved off a pace, then turning his head:
"Upon my word! I would be infinitely obliged
to you if you could throw a little cold water
. . . " and at a vaguely dismayed gesture
of Renouard, he added: "Don't be afraid.
You wouldn't be putting out a sacred fire."

Renouard could hardly find words for a pro-
test: *'I assure you that I never talk with Miss
Moorsom — on — on — that. And if you, her
father . . ."

"I envy you your innocence," sighed the
professor. "A father is only an everyday per-

60 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

son. Flat. Stale. Moreover, my child would
naturally mistrust me. We belong to the same
set. Whereas you carry with you the prestige
of the unknown. You have proved yourself
to be a force."

Thereupon the professor, followed by Renou-
ard, joined the circle of all the inmates of the
house assembled at the other end of the terrace
about a tea-table: three white heads and that
resplendent vision of woman's glory, the sight
of which had the power to flutter his heart like
a reminder of the mortality of his frame.

He avoided the seat by the side of Miss
Moorsom. The others were talking together
languidly. Unnoticed he looked at that wo-
man so marvellous that centuries seemed to lie
between them. He was oppressed and over-
come at the thought of what she could give to
some man who really would be a force! What
a glorious struggle with this amazon. What
noble burden for the victorious strength.

Dear old Mrs. Dunster was dispensing tea,
looking from time to time with interest toward
Miss Moorsom. The aged statesman having
eaten a raw tomato and drunk a glass of milk
(a habit of his early farming days, long before
politics, when, pioneer of wheat growing, he
demonstrated the possibility of raising crops on

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 61

ground looking barren enough to discourage a
magician), smoothed his white beard, and
struck Hghtly Renouard's knee with his big
wrinkled hand.

"You had better come back to-night and dine
with us quietly."

He liked this young man, a pioneer, too, in
more than one direction. Mrs. Dunster added:
"Do. It will be very quiet. I don't even know
if Willie will be home for dinner." Renouard
murmured his thanks, and left the terrace to go
on board the schooner. While lingering in the
drawing-room doorway he heard the resonant
voice of old Dunster uttering oracularly —

" . . . the leading man here some day.
. . . Like me."

Renouard let the thin summer portiere of the
doorway fall behind him. The voice of Pro-
fessor Moorsom said —

"I am told that he has made an enemy of
almost every man who had to work with him."

"That's nothing. He did his work. . . .
Like me."

"He never counted the cost they say. Not
even of lives."

Renouard understood that they were talking
of him. Before he could move away, Mr^.
Dunster struck in placidly —

62 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

"Don't let yourself be shocked by the tales
you may hear of him, my dear. Most of it is
envy."

Then he heard Miss Moorsom's voice replying
to the old lady —

"Oh! I am not easily deceived. I think I
may say I have an instinct for truth."

He hastened away from that house with his
heart full of dread.

VI

On board the schooner, lying on the settee on his
back with the knuckles of his hands pressed over
his eyes, he made up his mind that he would not
return to that house for dinner — that he would
never go back there any more. He made up his
mind some twenty times. The knowledge that
he had only to go up on the quarter deck, utter
quietly the words: "Man the windlass," and
that the schooner springing into life would run a
hundred miles out to sea before sunrise, deceived
his struggling will. Nothing easier! Yet, in
the end, this young man, almost ill-famed for
his ruthless daring, the inflexible leader of two
tragically successful expeditions, shrank from
that act of savage energy, and began, instead,
to hunt for excuses.

No! It was not for him to run away like an
incurable who cuts his throat. He finished
dressing and looked at his own impassive face
in the saloon mirror scornfully. AMiile being
pulled on shore in the gig, he remembered sud-
denly the wild beauty of a waterfall seen when

64 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

hardly more than a boy, years ago, in Menado.
There was a legend of a governor-general of the
Dutch East Indies, on official tour, committing
suicide on that spot by leaping into the chasm.
It was supposed that a painful disease had made
him weary of life. But was there ever a visita-
tion like his own, at the same time binding one
to life and so cruelly mortal !

The dinner was indeed quiet. Willie, given
half an hour's grace, failed to turn up, and his
chair remained vacant by the side of Miss
Moorsom. Renouard had the professor's sister
on his left, dressed in an expensive gown be-
coming her age. That maiden lady in her

onderful preservation reminded Renouard
somehow of a wax flower under glass. There
were no traces of the dust of life's battles on her
anywhere. She did not like him very much in
the afternoons, in his white drill suit and
planter's hat, which seemed to her an unduly
Bohemian costume for calling in a house where
there were ladies. But in the evening, lithe and
elegant in his dress clothes and with his pleasant,
slightly veiled voice, he always made her con-
quest afresh. He might have been anybody
distinguished — the son of a duke. Falling
under that charm probably (and also because
her brother had given her a hint) , she attempted

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 65

to open her heart to Renouard, who was watch-
ing with all the power of his soul her niece across
the table. She spoke to him as frankly as
though that miserable mortal envelope, emptied
of everything but hopeless passion, were indeed
the son of a duke.

Inattentive, he heard her only in snatches, till
the final confidential burst : " . . . glad if you
would express an opinion. Look at her, so
charming, such a great favourite, so generally
admired! It would be too sad. We all hoped
she would make a brilliant marriage with some-
body very rich and of high position, have a house
in London and in the country, and entertain us
all splendidly. She's so eminently fitted for it.
She has such hosts of distinguished friends ! And
then — this instead! . . . My heart really
aches."

Her well-bred if anxious whisper was covered
by the voice of Professor Moorsom discoursing
subtly down the short length of the dinner table
on the Impermanency of the Measurable to his
venerable disciple. It might have been a
chapter in a new and popular book of Moorsom-
ian philosophy. Patriarchal and delighted, old
Dunster leaned forward a little, his eyes shining
youthfully, two spots of colour at the roots of his
white beard; and Renouard, glancing at the

66 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

senile excitement, recalled the words heard on
those subtle lips, adopted their scorn for his own,
saw their truth before this man ready to be
amused by the side of the grave. Yes! In-
tellectual debauchery in the froth of existence!
Froth and fraud !

On the same side of the table Miss Moorsom
never once looked toward her father, all her
grace as if frozen, her red lips compressed, the
faintest rosiness under her dazzling complexion,
her black eyes burning motionless, and the very
coppery gleams of light lying still on the waves
and undulation of her hair. Renouard fancied
himself overturning the table, smashing crystal
and china, treading fruit and flowers under foot,
seizing her in his arms, carrying her off in a
tumult of shrieks from all these people, a silent
frightened mortal, into some profound retreat as
in the age of Cavern men. Suddenly everybody
got up, and he hastened to rise too, finding him-
self out of breath and quite unsteady on his
feet.

On the terrace the philosopher, after lighting
a cigar, slipped his hand condescendingly under
his *'dear young friend's" arm. Renouard re-
garded him now with the profoundest mistrust.
But the great man seemed really to have a liking
for his young friend — one of those mysterious

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 67

sympathies, disregarding the differences of age
and position, which in this case might have been
explained by the failure of philosophy to meet a
very real worry of a practical kind.

After a turn or two and some casual talk the
professor said suddenly: *'My late son was in
your school — do you know? I can imagine that
had he lived and you had ever met you would
have understood each other. He too was inclined
to action."

He sighed, then shaking off the mournful
thought and with a nod at the dusky part of the
terrace where the dress of his daughter made a
luminous stain: "I really wish you would drop in
that quarter a few sensible, discouraging words."

Renouard disengaged himself from that most
perfidious of men under the pretence of astonish-
ment, and stepping back a pace —

"Surely you are making fun of me. Professor
Moorsom," he said with a low laugh, which was
really a sound of rage.

"My dear young friend! It's no subject for
jokes, to me. . . . You don't seem to have any
notion of your prestige," he added, walking
away toward the chairs.

"Humbug! " thought Renouard, standing still
and looking after him. "And yet! And yet!
What if it were true? "

68 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

He advanced then toward Miss Moorsom.
Posed on the seat on which they had first spoken
to each other, it was her turn to watch him
coming on. But many of the windows were not
lighted that evening. It was dark over there.
She appeared to him luminous in her clear dress,
a figure without shape, a face without features,
awaiting his approach, till he got quite near to
her, sat down, and they had exchanged a few in-
significant words. Gradually she came out like
a magic painting of charm, fascination, and
desire, glowing mysteriously on the dark back-
ground. Something imperceptible in the lines
of her attitude, in the modulations of her voice,
seemed to soften that suggestion of calm uncon-
scious pride which enveloped her always like a
mantle. He, sensitive like a bond slave to the
moods of the master, was moved by the subtle
relenting of her grace to an infinite tenderness.
He fought down the impulse to seize her by the
hand, lead her down into the garden away under
the big trees, and throw himself at her feet
uttering words of love. His emotion was so
strong that he had to cough slightly, and not
knowing what to talk to her about he began to
tell her of his mother and sisters. All the family
were coming to London to live there, for some
little time at least.

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 69

"I hope you will go and tell them something
of me. Something seen," he said pressingly.

By this miserable subterfuge, like a man about
to part with his life, he hoped to make her re-
member him a little longer.

"Certainly," she said. "I'll be glad to call
when I get back. But that *when' may be a
long time."

He heard a light sigh. A cruel jealous curi-
osity made him ask —

"Are you growing weary. Miss Moorsom?"

A silence fell on his low-spoken question

"Do you mean heart weary .'^" sounded Miss
Moorsom's voice. " You don't know me, I see."

"Ah! Never despair," he muttered.

"This, Mr Renouard, is a work of reparation.
I stand for truth here. I can't think of myself."

He could have taken her by the throat for
every word seemed an insult to his passion; but
he only said —

"I never doubted the — the — nobility of your
purpose."

"And to hear the word weariness pronounced
in this connection surprises me. And from a
man too who, I understand, has never counted
the cost."

"You are pleased to tease me," he said di-
rectly he had recovered his voice and had

70 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

mastered his anger. It was as if Professor Moor-
som had dropped poison in his ear which was
spreading now and tainting his passion, his very
jealousy. He mistrusted every word that came
from those Hps on which his hfe hung. "How
can you know anything of men who do not count
the cost?" he asked in his gentlest tones.

" From hearsay — a little."

"Well, I assure you they are like the others,
subject to suffering, victims of spells. . . ."

" One of them, at least, speaks very strangely."

She dismissed the subject after a short silence.
"Mr. Renouard, I had a disappointment this
morning. This mail brought me a letter from
the widow of the old butler — you know. I ex-
pected to learn that she had heard from — from
here. But no. No letter arrived home since we
left."

Her voice was calm. His jealousy couldn't
stand much more of this sort of talk; but he was
glad that nothing had turned up to help the
search; glad blindly, unreasonably — only be-
cause it would keep her longer in his sight — since
she wouldn't give up.

"I am too near her," he thought, moving a
little farther on the seat. He was afraid in the
revulsion of feeling of flinging himself on her
hands, which were lying on her lap, and covering

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 71

them with kisses. He was afraid. Nothing,
nothing could shake that spell — not if she were
ever so false, stupid, or degraded. She was fate,
itself. The extent of his misfortune plunged
him in such a stupor that he failed at first to
hear the sound of voices and footsteps inside the
drawing-room. Willie had come home — and
the Editor was with him.

They burst out on the terrace babbling noisily,
and then pulling themselves together stood still,
surprising — and as if themselves surprised.

VII

They had been feasting a poet from the bush,
the latest discovery of the Editor. Such dis-
coveries were the business, the vocation, the
pride and delight of the only apostle of letters in
the hemisphere, the solitary patron of culture,
the Slave of the Lamp — as he subscribed himself
at the bottom of the weekly literary page of his
paper. He had had no difficulty in persuading
the virtuous Willie (who had festive instincts) to
help in the good work, and now they had left the
poet lying asleep on the hearthrug of the edi-
torial room and had rushed to the Dunster man-
sion wildly. The Editor had another discovery
to announce. Swaying a little where he stood
he opened his mouth very wide to shout the one
word "Found!" Behind him Willie flung both
his hands above his head and let them fall dra-
matically. Renouard saw the four white-headed
people at the end of the terrace rise all together
from their chairs with an effect of sudden panic.
' "I tell you — he — is — found," the patron of
letters shouted emphatically.

72

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 73

"What is this!" exclaimed Renouard in a
choked voice. Miss Moorsom seized his wrist
suddenly, and at that contact fire ran through all
his veins, a hot stillness descended upon him in
which he heard the blood — or the fire — beating
in his ears. He made a movement as if to rise,
but was restrained by the convulsive pressure on
his wrist.

"No, no." Miss Moorsom's eyes stared black
as night, searching the space before her. Far
away the Editor strutted forward, Willie follow-
ing with his ostentatious manner of carrying his
bulky and oppressive carcass which, however,
did not remain exactly perpendicular for two
seconds together.

"The innocent Arthur . . . Yes. We've got
him." The Editor became very business-like.
"Yes, this letter has done it."

He plunged into an inside pocket for it, slapped
the scrap of paper with his open palm. "From
that old woman. William had it in his pocket
since this morning when Miss Moorsom gave it
to him to show me. Forgot all about it till an
hour ago. Thought it was of no importance.
Well, no ! Not till it was properly read."

Renouard and Miss Moorsom emerged from
the shadows side by side, a well-matched couple,
animated yet statuesque in their calmness and

74 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

in their pallor. She had let go his wrist. On
catching sight of Renouard the Editor exclaimed:
** What — you here ! " in a quite shrill voice.

There came a dead pause. All the faces had
in them something dismayed and cruel.

"He's the very man we want," continued the
Editor. " Excuse my excitement. You are the
very man, Renouard. Didn't you tell me that
your assistant called himself Walter? Yes.?
Thought so. But here's that old woman — the
butler's wife — listen to this. She writes: All I
can tell you. Miss, is that my poor husband
directed his letters to the name of H. Walter."

Renouard's violent but repressed exclamation
was lost in a general murmur and shuffle of feet.
The Editor made a step forward, bowed with
creditable steadiness.

"Miss Moorsom, allow me to congratulate
you from the bottom of my heart on the happy
— er — issue . . ."

"Wait," muttered Renouard irresolutely.

The Editor jumped on him in the manner of
their old friendship. "Ah, you! You are a
fine fellow too. With your solitary ways of life
you will end by having no more discrimination
than a savage. Fancy living with a gentleman
for months and never guessing. A man, I am cer-
^'^tain, accomplished, remarkable, out of the com-

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 75

mon, since he had been distinguished " (he bowed
again) *' by Miss Moorsom, whom we all admire."

She turned her back on him.

"I hope to goodness you haven't been leading
him a dog's life, Geoffrey," the Editor addressed
his friend in a whispered aside.

Renouard seized a chair violently, sat down,
and propping his elbow on his knee leaned
his head on his hand. Behind him the sister
of the professor looked up to heaven and wrung
her hands stealthily. Mrs. Dunster's hands
were clasped forcibly under her chin, but she,
dear soul, was looking sorrowfully at Willie.
The model nephew! In this strange state!
So very much flushed ! The careful disposition
of the thin hairs across Willie's bald spot was
deplorably disarranged, and the spot itself was
red and, as it were, steaming.

" What's the matter, Geoffrey? " The Editor
seemed disconcerted by the silent attitudes
round him, as though he had expected all these
people to shout and dance. "You have him
on the island — haven't you.^ "

"Oh, yes: I have him there," said Renouard,
without looking up.

" Well, then ! " The Editor looked helplessly
around as if begging for response of some sort.
But the only response that came was very un-

76 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

expected. Annoyed at being left in the back-
ground, and also because very little drink made
him nasty, the emotional Willie turned malignant
all at once, and in a bibulous tone surprising in a
man able to keep his balance so well —

"Aha! But you haven't got him here — not
yet! " he sneered. "No! You haven't got him

yet."

This outrageous exhibition was to the Editor
like the lash to a jaded horse. He positively
jumped.

" What of that.? What do you mean.? We—
haven't — got — him — here. Of course he isn't
here! But Geoffrey's schooner is here. She
can be sent at dhce lo fetch him here. No!
Stay! There's a better plan. Why shouldn't
you all sail over to Malata, professor.? Save
time! I am sure Miss Moorsom would pre-
fer . . ."

With a gallant flourish of his arm he looked
for Miss Moorsom. She had disappeared. He
was taken aback somewhat.

"Ah! H'm. Yes. . . . Why not. A
pleasure cruise, delightful ship, delightful sea-
son, delightful errand, del . . . No ! There
are no objections. Geoffrey, I understand,
has indulged in a bungalow three sizes too large
for him. He can put you all up. It will be a

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 77

pleasure for him. It will be the greatest priv-
ilege. Any man would be proud of being an
agent of this happy reunion. I am proud
of the little part I've played. He will consider
it the greatest honour. Geoff, my boy, you
had better be stirring to-morrow bright and
early about the preparations for the trip. It
would be criminal to lose a single day."

He was as flushed as Willie, the excitement
keeping up the effect of the festive dinner. For
a time Renouard, silent, as if he had not heard a
word of all that babble, did not stir. But when
he got up it was to advance toward the Editor
and give him such a hearty slap on the back
that the plump little man reeled in his tracks
and looked quite frightened for a moment.

" You are a heaven-born discoverer and a first-
rate manager. . . . He's right. It's the
only way. You can't resist the claim of senti-
ment, and you must even risk the voyage to
Malata. . . ." Renouard's voice sank. "A
lonely spot," he added, and fell into thought un-
der all these eyes converging on him in the sud-
den silence. His slow glance passed over all the
faces in succession, remaining arrested on Profes-
sor Moorsom, stony eyed, a smouldering cigar in
his fingers, and with his sister standing by his side.

"I shall be infinitely gratified if you consent

78 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

to come. But, of course, you will. We shall
sail to-morrow evening then. And now let me
leave you to your happiness."

He bowed, very grave, pointed suddenly his
finger at Willie who was swaying about with a
sleepy frown. . . . "Look at him. He's
overcome with happiness. You had better
put him to bed . . ." and disappeared
while every head on the terrace was turned to
Willie with varied expressions.

Renouard ran through the house. Avoiding
the carriage road he fled down the steep short
cut to the shore, where his gig was waiting. At
his loud shout the sleeping Kanakas jumped up.
He leaped in. "Shove off. Give way!" and
the gig darted through the water. "Give way!
Give way!" She flew past the wool-clippers
sleeping at their anchors each with the open
unwinking eye of the lamp in the rigging; she
flew past the flagship of the Pacific squadron,
a great mass all dark and silent, heavy with the
slumbers of five hundred men, and where the
invisible sentries heard his urgent "Give way!
Give way!" in the night. The Kanakas, pant-
ing, rose off the thwarts at every stroke. Noth-
ing could be fast enough for him! And he ran
up the side of his schooner shaking the ladder
noisily with his rush.

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 79

On deck he stumbled and stood still.

Wherefore this haste? To what end, since
he knew well before he started that he had a
pursuer from whom there was no escape?

As his foot touched the deck his will, his pur-
pose he had been hurrying to save, died out
within him. It had been nothing less than
getting the schooner under-way, letting her
vanish silently in the night from amongst these
sleeping ships. And now he was certain he
could not do it. It was impossible! And he
reflected that whether he lived or died such
an act would lay him under a dark suspicion
from which he shrank. No, there was nothing
to be done.

He went down into the cabin and, before
even unbuttoning his overcoat, took out of the
drawer the letter addressed to his assistant; that
letter which he had found in the pigeon-hole
labelled "Malata" in young Dunster's outer
office, where it had been waiting for three
months some occasion for being forwarded.
From the moment of dropping it in the drawer
he had utterly forgotten its existence — till
now, when the man's name had come out so
clamorously. He glanced at the common en-
velope, noted the shaky and laborious hand-
writing: H. Walter, Esqre. Undoubtedly the

80 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

very last letter the old butler had posted before
his illness, and in answer clearly to one from
"Master Arthur" instructing him to address
in the future: "Care of Messrs. W. Dunster
and Co." Renouard made as if to open the
envelope, but paused, and, instead, tore the
letter deliberately in two, in four, in eight.
With his hand full of pieces of paper he returned
on deck and scattered them overboard on the
dark water, in which they vanished instantly.

He did it slowly, without hesitation or re-
morse. H. Walter, Esqre, in Malata. The

innocent Arthur What was his name?

The man sought for by that woman who as she
went by seemed to draw all the passion of the
earth to her without effort, not deigning to
notice, naturally, as other women breathed the
air. But Renouard was no longer jealous of
her very existence. Whatever its meaning
it was not for that man he had picked up casu-
ally on obscure impulse, to get rid of the tire-
some expostulations of a so-called friend; a man
of whom he really knew nothing — and now. a
^ dead man. In Malata. Oh, yes! He was
there secure enough, untroubled in his grave.
In Malata. To bury him was* the last service
Renouard had rendered to his assistant before
leaving the island on this trip to town.

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 81

Like many men ready enough for arduous
enterprises Renouard was inclined to evade the
small complications of existence. This trait of
his character was composed of a little indolence,
some disdain, and a shrinking from contests
with certain forms of vulgarity — like a man who
would face a lion and go out of his way to avoid
a toad. His intercourse with the meddlesome
journalist was that merely outward intimacy
without sympathy some young men get drawn
into easily. It had amused him rather to keep
that "friend" in the dark about the fate of his
assistant. Renouard had never needed other
company than his own, for there was in him
something of the sensitiveness of a dreamer who
is easily jarred. He had said to himself that
the all-knowing one would only preach again
about the evils of solitude and worry his head
off in favour of some forlornly useless protege of
his. Also the inquisitiveness of the Editor
had irritated him and had closed his lips in
sheer disgust.

And now he contemplated the noose of con-
sequences drawing tight around him.

It was the memory of that diplomatic reti-
cence which on the terrace had stifled his first
cry which would have told them all that the
man sought for was not to be met on earth any

82 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

more. He shrank from the absurdity of hear-
ing the all-knowing one, and not very sober at
that, turning on him with righteous reproaches —
"You never told me. You gave me to under-
stand that your assistant was alive, and now you
say he's dead. Which is it.^ Were you lying
then or are you lying now.? " No ! the thought of
such a scene was not to be borne. He had sat
down appalled, thinking: "What shall I do
now.f^"

His courage had oozed out of him. Speaking
the truth meant the Moorsoms going away at
once — while it seemed to him that he would give
the last shred of his rectitude to secure a day
,^more of her company. He sat on — silent.
Slowly, from confused sensations, from his talk
with the professor, the manner of the girl her-
self, the intoxicating familiarity of her sudden
hand-clasp, there had come to him a half glim-
mer of hope. The other man was dead. Then!
. Madness, of course — but he could not
give it up. He had listened to that confounded
busybody arranging everything — while all these
people stood around assenting, under the spell
of that dead romance. He had listened scornful
and silent. The glimmers of hope, of oppor-
tunity, passed before his eyes. He had only to
sit still and say nothing. That and no more.

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 83

And what was truth to him in the face of that
great passion which had flung him prostrate in
spirit at her adored feet !

And now it was done ! FataHty had willed it !
With the eyes of a mortal struck by the madden-
ing thunderbolt of the gods, Renouard looked up
to the sky, an immense black pall dusted over
with gold, on which great shudders seemed to
pass from the breath of life aflSrming its sway.

VIII

At last, one morning, in a clear spot of a glassy
horizon charged with heraldic masses of black
vapours, the island grew out from the sea, show-
ing here and there its naked members of basaltic
rock through the rents of heavy foliage. Later,
in the great spilling of all the riches of sunset,
Malata stood out green and rosy before turning
into a violet shadow in the autumnal light of the
expiring day. Then came the night. In the
faint airs the schooner crept on past a sturdy
squat headland, and it was pitch dark when her
head-sails ran down, she turned short on her heel,
and her anchor bit into the sandy bottom of the
edge of the outer reef; for it was too dangerous
then to attempt entering the little bay full of
shoals. After the last solemn flutter of the
mainsail the murmuring voices of the Moorsom
party lingered, very frail, in the black stillness.
They were sitting aft, on chairs, and nobody
made a move. Early in the day, when it had
become evident that the wind was failing, Re-
nouard, basing his advice on the shortcomings of

84

THE PLANTER OF IVIALATA 85

his bachelor estabHshment, had urged on the
ladies the advisability of not going ashore in the
middle of the night. Now he approached them
in a constrained manner (it was astonishing the
constraint that had reigned between him and his
guests all through the passage) and renewed his
arguments. No one ashore would dream of his
bringing any visitors with him. Nobody would
even think of coming off. There was only one
old canoe on the plantation. And landing in the
schooner's boats would be awkward in the dark.
There was the risk of getting aground on some
shallow patches. It would be best to spend the
rest of the night on board.

There was really no opposition. The pro-
fessor smoking a pipe, and very comfortable in
an ulster buttoned over his tropical clothes, was
the first to speak from his long chair.

"Most excellent advice."

Next to him Miss Moorsom assented by a long
silence. Then in a voice as of one coming out of
a dream —

"And so this is Malata," she said. "I have
often wondered . . ."

A shiver passed through Renouard. She had
wondered! What about.? Malata was himself.
He and Malata were one. And she wondered!
She had . . .

86 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

The professor's sister leaned over toward Re-
nouard. Through all these days at sea the man's
— the found man's — existence had not been
alluded to on board the schooner. That reticence
was part of the general constraint lying upon
them all. She, herself, certainly had not been
exactly elated by this finding — poor Arthur,
without money, without prospects. Bat she felt
moved by the sentiment and romance of the situ-
ation.

"Isn't it wonderful," she whispered out of her
white wrap, *'to think of poor Arthur sleeping
there, so near to our dear lovely Felicia, and not
knowing the immense joy in store for him to-
morrow."

There was such artificiality in the wax-flower
lady that nothing in this speech touched Re-
nouard. It was but the simple anxiety of his
heart that he was voicing when he muttered
gloomily —

"No one in the world knows what to-morrow
may hold in store."

The mature lady had a recoil as though he had
said something impolite. What a harsh thing to
say — instead of finding something nice and
appropriate. On board, where she never saw
him in evening clothes, Renouard's resemblance
to a duke's son was not so apparent to her.

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 87

Nothing but his — ah — bohemianism remained.
She rose with a sort of ostentation.

"It's late — and since we are going to sleep on
board to-night . . ."she said. "But it does
seem so cruel."

The professor started up eagerly, knocking the
ashes out of his pipe. " Infinitely more sensible,
my dear Emma."

Renouard waited behind Miss Moorsom's
chair.

She got up slowly, moved one step forward,
and paused looking at the shore. The blackness
of the island blotted out the stars with its vague
mass like a low thundercloud brooding over the
waters and ready to burst into flame and crashes.

"And so — this is Malata," she repeated
dreamily, moving toward the cabin door. The
clear cloak hanging from her shoulders, the ivory
face — for the night had put out nothing of her
but the gleams of her hair — made her resemble a
shining dream woman uttering words of wistful
inquiry. She disappeared without a sign, leav-
ing Renouard penetrated to the very marrow by
the sounds that came from her body like a mys-
terious resonance of an exquisite instrument.

He stood stock still. What was this accidental
touch which had evoked the strange accent of
her voice .^ He dared not answer that question.

88 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

But he had to answer the question of what was
to be done now. Had the moment of confession
come? The thought was enough to make one's
blood run cold.

It was as if those people had a premonition of
something. In the taciturn days of the passage
he had noticed their reserve even amongst them-
selves. The professor smoked his pipe moodily
in retired spots. Henouard had caught Miss
Moorsom's eyes resting on himself more than
once with a peculiar and grave expression. He
fancied that she avoided all opportunities of con-
versation. The maiden lady seemed to nurse a
grievance. And now what had he to do.f^

The lights on the deck had gone out one after
the other. The schooner slept.

About an hour after Miss Moorsom had gone
below without a sign or a word for him, Re-
nouard got out of his hammock slung in the waist
under the midship awning — for he had given up
all the accommodation below to his guests. He
got out with a sudden swift movement, flung off
his sleeping jacket, rolled his pyjamas up his
thighs, and stole forward, unseen by the one
Kanaka of the anchor-watch. His white torso,
naked like a stripped athlete's, glimmered
ghostly in the deep shadows of the deck. Un-
noticed he got out of the ship over the knight-

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 89

heads, ran along the back rope, and seizing the
dolphin-striker firmly with both hands, lowered
himself into the sea without a splash.

He swam away, noiseless like a fish, and then
struck boldly for the land, sustained, embraced
by the tepid water. The gentle, voluptuous
heave of its breast swung him up and down
slightly; sometimes a wavelet murmured in his
ears ; from time to time, lowering his feet, he felt
for the bottom on a shallow patch to rest and
correct his direction. He landed at the lower
end of the bungalow garden, into the dead still-
ness of the island. There were no lights. The
plantation seemed to sleep as profoundly as the
schooner. On the path a small shell cracked
under his naked heel.

The faithful half-caste foreman going his
rounds cocked his ears at the sharp sound. He
gave one enormous start of fear at the sight of
the swift white figure flying at him out of the
night. He crouched in terror, and then sprang
up and clicked his tongue in amazed recognition.

"Tse! Tse! The master!"

"Be quiet, Luiz, and listen to what I say."

Yes, it was the master, the strong master who
was never known to raise his voice, the man
blindly obeyed and never questioned. He talked
low and rapidly in the quiet night, as if every

90 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

minute were precious. On learning that three
guests were coming to stay Luiz cHcked his
tongue rapidly. These clicks were the uniform,
stenographic symbols of his emotions, and he
could give them an infinite variety of meaning.
He listened to the rest in a deep silence hardly
affected by the low, "Yes, master," whenever
Renouard paused.

"You understand .f^ " the latter insisted. "No
preparations are to be made till we land in the
morning. And you are to say that Mr. Walter
has gone off in a trading schooner on a round of
the islands."

"Yes, master."

* ' No mistakes — mind ! "

"No, master."

Renouard walked back toward the sea. Luiz,
following him, proposed to call out half a dozen
boys and man the canoe.

"Imbecile!"

"Tse! Tse! Tse!"

"Don't you understand that you haven't seen
me?"

"Yes, master. But what a long swim. Sup-
pose you drown."

"Then you can say of me and of Mr. Walter
what you like. The dead don't mind."

Renouard entered the sea and heard a faint

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 91

Tse! Tse! Tse! of concern from the half-caste,
who had already lost sight of the master's dark
head on the overshadowed water.

Renouard set his direction by a big star that,
dipping on the horizon, seemed to look curiously
into his face. On this swim back he felt the
mournful fatigue of all that length of the
traversed road, which brought him no nearer to
his desire. It was as if his love had sapped the
invisible supports of his strength. There came
a moment when it seemed to him that he must
have swum beyond the confines of life. He had
a sensation of eternity close at hand, demand-
ing no effort — offering its peace. It was easy
to swim like this beyond the confines of life
looking at a star. But the thought: "They
will think I dared not face them and committed
suicide," caused a revolt of his mind which
carried him on. He returned on board, as he
had left, unheard and unseen. He lay in his
hammock utterly exhausted and with a con-
fused feeling that he had been beyond the con-
fines of life, somewhere near a star, and that it
was very quiet there.

IX

Sheltered by the squat headland from the first
morning sparkle of the sea the little bay breathed
a delicious freshness. The party from the
schooner landed at the bottom of the garden.
They exchanged insignificant words in studi-
ously casual tones. The professor's sister put
up a long-handled eyeglass as if to scan the
novel surroundings, but in reality searching for
poor Arthur anxiously. Having never seen
him otherwise than in his town clothes she had
no idea what he would look like. It had been
left to the professor to help his ladies out of the
boat because Renouard, as if intent on giving
directions, had stepped forward at once to
meet the half-caste Luiz hurrying down the
path. In the distance, in front of the dazzlingly
sunlit bungalow, a row of dark-faced house boys,
unequal in stature and varied in complexion,
preserved the immobility of a guard of honour.

Luiz had taken off his soft felt hat before
coming within earshot. Henouard bent his
head to his rapid talk of domestic arrangements

92

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 93

he meant to make for the visitors; another bed
in the master's room for the ladies and a cot for
the gentleman to be hung in the room opposite
where — where Mr. Walter — here he gave a
scared look all round — Mr. Walter — had died.

"Very good," assented Renouard in an even
undertone. "And remember what you have to
say of him."

"Yes, master. Only" — he WT-iggled slightly
and put one bare foot on the other for a moment
in apologetic embarrassment — "only I — I —
don't like to say it."

Renouard looked at him without anger,
without any sort of expression. "Frightened
of the dead.? Eh.? Well— all right. I will
say it myself — I suppose once for all. . . ."
Immediately he raised his voice very much.

"Send the boys down to bring up the lug-
gage."

"Yes, master."

Renouard turned to his distinguished guests
who, like a personally conducted party of
tourists, had stopped and were looking about
them.

"I am sorry," he began with an impassive
face. *'My man has just told me that Mr.
Walter . . ." he managed to smile, but
didn't correct himself. . . "has gone in

94 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

a trading schooner on a short tour of the islands,
to the westward."

This communication was received in pro-
found silence.

Renouard forgot himself in the thought: "It's
done!" But the sight of the string of boys
marching up to the house with suitcases and
dressing-bags rescued him from that appalling
abstraction.

"All I can do is to beg you to make yourselves
at home . . . with what patience you
may."

This was so obviously the only thing to do
that everybody moved on at once. The pro-
fessor walked alongside Renouard, behind the
two ladies.

"Rather unexpected — this absence."

"Not exactly," muttered Renouard. "A
trip has to be made every year to engage
labour."

"I see . . . And he . . . How vex-
ingly elusive the poor fellow has become! I'll
begin to think that some wicked fairy is favour-
ing this love tale with unpleasant attentions."

Renouard noticed that the party did not
seem weighed down by this new disappoint-
ment. On the contrary they moved with a
freer step. The professor's sister dropped her

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 95

eyeglass to the end of its chain. Miss Moor-
som took the lead. The professor, his lips
unsealed, lingered in the open: but Renouard
did not listen to that man's talk. He looked
after that man's daughter — if indeed that
creature of irresistible seductions were a daughter
of mortals. The very intensity of his desire,
as if his soul were streaming after her through
his eyes, defeated his object of keeping hold of
her as long as possible with, at least, one of
his senses. Her moving outlines dissolved into
a misty coloured shimmer of a woman made of
flame and shadows crossing the threshold of his
house.

The days which followed were not exactly
such as Renouard had feared — yet they were
not better than his fears. They were accursed
in all the moods they brought him. But the
general aspect of things was quiet. The pro-
fessor smoked innumerable pipes with the air
of a worker on his holiday, always in movement
and looking at things with that mysteriously
sagacious aspect of men who are admittedly
wiser than the rest of the world. His white
head of hair — whiter than anything within
the horizon except the broken water on the
reefs — was glimpsed in every part of the planta-
tion always on the move under the white parasol.

96 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

And once he climbed the headland and appeared
suddenly to those below, a white speck elevated
in the blue, with a diminutive but statuesque
effect.

Felicia Moorsom remained near the house.
Sometimes she could be seen with a despairing
expression scribbling rapidly in her lock-up
diary. But only for a moment. At the sound
of Renouard's footsteps she would turn toward
him her beautiful face, adorable in that calm
which was like a wilful, like a cruel ignoring of
her tremendous power. WTienever she sat
on the veranda, on a chair more specially
reserved for her use, Renouard would stroll
up and sit on the steps near her, mostly silent,
and often not trusting himself to turn his
glance on her. She, very still, with her eyes
half closed, looked down on his head — so that
to a beholder (such as Professor Moorsom, for
instance) she would appear to be turning over
in her mind profound thoughts about that man
sitting at her feet, his shoulders bowed a little,
his hands listless — as if vanquished. And,
indeed, the moral poison of falsehood has such
I sa decomposing power that Renouard felt his
V bold personality turn to dead dust. Often, in
^ the evening, when they sat outside convers-
ing languidly in the dark, he felt that he

THE PLANTER OF MALATA . 97

must rest his forehead on her feet and burst
into tears.

The professor's sister suffered from some little
strain caused by the unstabihty of her own
feelings toward Renouard. She could not tell
whether she really did dislike him or not. At
times he appeared to her most fascinating; and,
though he generally ended by saying something
shockingly crude, she could not resist her in-
clination to talk with him — at least not always.
One day when her niece had left them alone on
the veranda she leaned forward in her chair —
speckless, resplendent, and, in her way, almost
as striking a personality as her niece, who did
not resemble her in the least. "Dear Felicia
has inherited her hair and the greatest part of
her appearance from her mother," the maiden
lady used to tell people.

She leaned forward then, confidentially.

*'0h! Mr. Renouard! Haven't you some-
thing comforting to say .^ "

He looked up, as surprised as if a voice from
heaven had spoken with this perfect society
intonation, and by the puzzled profundity of
his blue eyes fluttered the wax flower of refined
womanhood. She continued. "For — I can
speak to you openly on this tiresome subject —
only think what a terrible strain this hope de-

98 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

ferred must be for Felicia's heart — for her
nerves."

"WTiy speak to me about it," he muttered,
feeling half choked suddenly.

"Why! As a friend — a well-wisher — the
kindest of hosts. I am afraid we are really
eating you out of house and home." She
laughed a little. "Ah! When, when will this
suspense be relieved! That poor lost Arthur!
I confess that I am almost afraid of the great
moment. It will be like seeing a ghost."

"Have you ever seen a ghost .'^" asked Renou-
ard in a dull voice.

She shifted her hands a little. Her pose was
perfect in its ease and middle-aged grace.

"Not actually. Only in a photograph. But
we have many friends who had the experience of
apparitions."

"Ah! They see ghosts in London," mumbled
Renouard, not looking at her.

"Frequently — in a certain very interesting
set. But all sorts of people do. We have a
friend, a very famous author — his ghost is a
girl. One of my brother's intimates is a very
great man of science. He is friendly with a
ghost ... Of a girl too," she added in a
voice as if struck for the first time by the coin-
cidence. "It is the photograph of that ap-

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 99

parition which I have seen. Very sweet. Most
interesting. A little cloudy naturally. . . .
Mr. Renouard! I hope you are not a sceptic.
It's so consoling to think . . ."

"Those plantation boys of mine see ghosts
too," said Renouard grimly.

The sister of the philosopher sat up stiffly.
What crudeness! It was always so with this
strange young man. -.

"Mr. Renouard! How can you compare the
superstitious fancies of your horrible savages
with the manifestations ..." '^

Words failed her. She broke off with a very
faint primly angry smile. She was perhaps the
more offended with him because of that flutter
at the beginning of the conversation. And in a
moment, with perfect tact and dignity, she got
up from her chair and left him alone.

Renouard didn't even look up. It was not the
displeasure of the lady which deprived him of
his sleep that night. He was beginning to forget
what simple, honest sleep was like. His ham-
mock from the ship had been hung for him on a
side veranda, and he spent his nights in it on
his back, his hands folded on his chest, in a sort
of half-conscious, oppressed stupor. In the
morning he watched with unseeing eyes the
headland come out a shapeless inkblot against

100 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

the thin Hght of the false dawn, pass through all
the stages of daybreak to the deep purple of its
outlined mass nimbed gloriously with the gold of
the rising sun. He listened to the vague sounds
of waking within the house: and suddenly he be-
came aware of Luiz standing by the hammock—
obviously troubled.

"What's the matter.^"

"Tse! Tse! Tse!"

"Well, what now.^ trouble with the boys.?"

"No, master. The gentleman when 1 take him
his bath water he speak to me. He ask me — he
ask — when, when I think Mr. Walter, he come
back."

The half-breed's teeth chattered slightly.
Renouard got out of the hammock.

"And he is here all the time — eh?"

Luiz nodded a scared affirmative, but at once
protested, "I no see him. I never. Not I! The
ignorant wild boys say they see . . . Some-
thing! Ough!"

He clapped his teeth on another short rattle,
and stood there, shrunk, blighted like a man in a
freezing blast.

"And what did you say to the gentleman .f^'*

"I say I don't know — and I clear out. I — I
don't like to speak of him."

"All right. We shall try to lay that poor

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 101

ghost," said Renouard gloomily, going off to a
small hut near by to dress. He was saying to
himself : "This fellow will end by giving me away.
The last thing that I ... No! That mustn't
be." And feeling his hand being forced he dis-
covered the whole extent of his cowardice.

That morning wandering about his plantation,
more like a frightened soul than its creator and
master, he dodged the white parasol bobbing up
here and there like a buoy adrift on a sea of dark-
green plants. The crop promised to be magnifi-
cent, and the fashionable philosopher of the age
took other than a merely scientific interest in the
experiment. His investments were judicious,
but he had always some little money lying by
for experiments.

After lunch, being left alone with Renouard,
he talked a little of cultivation and such matters.
Then suddenly :

"By the way, is it true what my sister tells me,
that your plantation boys have been disturbed
by a ghost .f^"

Renouard, who since the ladies had left the
table was not keeping such a strict watch on him-
self, came out of his abstraction with a start and
a stiff smile.

"My foreman had some trouble with them

102

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 103

during my absence. They funk working in a
certain field on the slope of the hill."

"A ghost here!" exclaimed the amused pro-
fessor. *'Then our whole conception of the
psychology of ghosts must be revised. This
island has been uninhabited probably since the
dawn of ages. How did a ghost come here. By
air or water .^^ And why did it leave its native
haunts. Was it from misanthropy .^^ Was he ex-
pelled from some community of spirits.^"

Renouard essayed to respond in the same tone.
The words died on his lips. Was it a man or a
woman ghost, the professor inquired.

"I don't know." Renouard made an effort to
appear at ease. He had, he said, a couple of
Tahitians amongst his boys — a ghost-ridden
race. They had started the scare. They had
probably brought their ghost with them.

"Let us investigate the matter, Renouard,"
proposed the professor half in earnest. "We
may make some interesting discoveries as to the
state of primitive minds, at any rate."

This was too much. Renouard jumped up and
leaving the room went out and walked about in
front of the house. He would allow no one to
force his hand. Presently the professor joined
him outside. He carried his parasol, but had
neither his book nor his pipe with him. Amiably

104 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

serious he laid his hand on his "dear young
friend's" arm.

"We are all of us a little strung up," he said.
"For my part I have been like sister Anne in the
story. But I cannot see anything coming. Any-
thing that would be the least good for anybody
— I mean."

Renouard had recovered sufficiently to mur-
mur coldly his regret of this waste of time. For
that was what, he supposed, the professor had in
his mind.

"Time," mused Professor Moorsom. "I
don't know that time can be wasted. But I will
tell you, my dear friend, what this is: it is an
awful waste of life. I mean for all of us. Even
Y/' for my sister, who has got a headache and is gone
to lie down."

He shook gently Renouard's arm. *'Yes, for
all of us! One may meditate on life endlessly,
one may even have a poor opinion of it — but the
fact remains that we have only one life to live.
And it is short. Think of that, my young friend."

He released Renouard 's arm and stepped out
of the shade opening his parasol. It was clear
that there was something more in his mind than
mere anxiety about the date of his lectures for
fashionable audiences. What did the man mean
by his confounded platitudes.'^ To Renouard,

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 105

scared by Luiz in the morning (for he felt that
nothing could be more fatal than to have his
deception unveiled otherwise than by personal
confession) this talk sounded like encourage-
ment or a warning from that man who seemed to
him to be very brazen and very subtle. It was
like being bullied by the dead and cajoled by the
living into a throw of dice for a supreme stake.

Renouard went away to some distance from
the house and threw himself down in the shade
of a tree. He lay there perfectly still with his
forehead resting on his folded arms, light headed
and thinking. It seemed to him that he must be
on fire, then that he had fallen into a cool whirl-
pool, a smooth funnel of water swirling about
with nauseating rapidity. And then (it must
have been a reminiscence of his boyhood) he
was walking on the dangerous thin ice of a river,
unable to turn back. , . . Suddenly it parted
from shore to shore with a loud crack like the
report of a gun.

With one leap he found himself on his feet.
All was peace, stillness, sunshine. He walked
away from there slowly. Had he been a gam-
bler he would have perhaps been supported in a
measure by the mere excitement. But he was
not a gambler. He had always disdained that
artificial manner of challenging the fates. The

106 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

bungalow came into view, bright and pretty, and
all about everything was peace, stillness, sun-
shine. . . .

While he was plodding toward it he had a dis-
agreeable sense of the dead man's company at
his elbow. The ghost ! He seemed to be every-
where but in his grave. Could one ever shake
him off? he wondered. At that moment Miss
Moorsom came out on the veranda; and at
once, as if by a mystery of radiating waves, she
roused a great tumult in his heart, shook earth
and sky together — but he plodded on. Then
like a grave song-note in the storm her voice came
to him ominously.

"Ah! Mr. Renouard " He came

up and smiled calmly, but she was very serious.
"I can't keep still any longer. Is there time to
walk up this headland and back before dark.^^"

The shadows were lying lengthened on the
ground; all was stillness and peace. *'No," said
Renouard, feeling suddenly as steady as a rock.
**But I can show you a view from the central
hill which your father has not seen — a view of
reefs and of broken water without end, and of
great wheeling clouds of sea-birds."

She came down the veranda steps at once and
they moved off. *'You go first," he proposed,
"and I'll direct you. To the left."

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 107

She was wearing a short nankin skirt, a musKn
blouse; he could see through the thin stuff the
skin of her shoulders, of her arms. The noble
delicacy of her neck cause him a sort of trans-
port. "The path begins where these three palms
are. The only palms on the island."

"I see."

She never turned her head. After a while she
observed: "This path looks as if it had been
made recently."

"Quite recently," he assented very low.

They went on climbing steadily without ex-
changing another word; and when they stood on
the top she gazed a long time before her. The
low evening mist veiled the further limit of the
reefs. Above the enormous and melancholy con-
fusion, as of a fleet of wrecked islands, the rest-
less myriads of sea-birds rolled and unrolled dark
ribbons on the sky, gathered in clouds, soared
and stooped like a play of shadows, for they were
too far for them to hear their cries.

Renouard broke the silence in low tones.

"They'll be settling for the night presently."
She made no sound. Round them all was peace
and declining sunshine. Near by the topmost
pinnacle of Malata, resembling the top of a
buried tower, rose a rock, weather-worn, grey,
weary of watching the monotonous centuries of

108 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

the Pacific. Renouard leaned his shoulders
against it. Felicia Moorsom faced him suddenly,
her splendid black eyes full on his face as though
she had made up her mind at last to destroy his
wits once and for all. Dazzled, he lowered his
eyelids slowly.

"Mr. Renouard! There is something strange
in all this. Tell me where he is? "

He answered deliberately.

"On the other side of this rock. I buried him
there myself."

She pressed her hands to her breast, struggled
for her breath for a moment, then: "Ohhh!
. . . You buried him! . . . What sort
of man are you.f^ . . . You dared not tell!
. . He is another of your victims? . . .
You dared not confess that evening. .
You must have killed him. What could he
have done to you? . . . You fastened on him
some atrocious quarrel and . . ."

Her vengeful aspect, her poignant cries left
him as unmoved as the weary rock against
which he leaned. He only raised his eyelids to
look at her and lowered them slowly. Nothing
more. It silenced her. And as if ashamed she
made a gesture with her hand, putting away from
her that thought. He spoke, quietly ironic at first.

"Ha! the legendary Renouard of sensitive

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 109

idiots — the ruthless adventurer — the ogre with
a future. That was a parrot cry, Miss Moor-
som. I don't think that the greatest fool of
them all ever dared hint such a stupid thing of
me that I killed men for nothing. No, I had
noticed this man in a hotel. He had come
from up country I was told, and was doing
nothing. I saw him sitting there lonely in a
corner like a sick crow, and I went over one
evening to talk to him. Just on impulse. He
wasn't impressive. He was pitiful. My worst
enemy could have told you he wasn't good
enough to be one of Renouard's victims. It
didn't take me long to judge that he was drug-
ging himself. Not drinking. Drugs."

"Ah ! It's now that you are trying to murder
him," she cried.

"Really. Always the Renouard of shop-
keepers' legend. Listen! I would never have
been jealous of him. And yet I am jealous of
the air you breathe, of the soil you tread on, of
the world that sees you — moving free — not
mine. But never mind. I rather liked him.
For a certain reason I proposed he should come
to be my assistant here. He said he believed
this would save him. It did not save him from
death. It came to him as it were from noth-
ing— just a fall. A mere slip and tumble of

110 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

ten feet into a ravine. But it seems he had been
hurt before up country — by a horse. He ailed
and ailed. No, he was not a steel-tipped man.
And his poor soul seemed to have been damaged
too. It gave way very soon."

"This is tragic!" Felicia Moorsom whispered
with feeling. Renouard's lips twitched, but his
level voice continued mercilessly.

"That's the story. He rallied a little one
night and said he wanted to tell me something.
I, being a gentleman, he said, he could confide in
me. I told him that he was mistaken. That
there was a good deal of a plebeian in me, that
he couldn't know. He seemed disappointed.
He muttered something about his innocence
and something that sounded like a curse on
some woman, then turned to the wall and —
just grew cold."

"On a woman," cried Miss Moorsom in-
dignantly. " \Miat woman .^ "

"I wonder!" said Renouard, raising his eyes
and noting the crimson of her ear-lobes against
the live whiteness of her complexion, the sombre,
as if secret, night splendour of her eyes under
the writhing flames of her hair. "Some woman
who wouldn't believe in that poor innocence
of his. . . . Yes. You probably. And now
you will not believe in me — not even in me

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 111

who must in truth be what I am — even to
death. No! You won't. And yet, FeKcia,
a woman Hke you and a man hke me do not
often come together on this earth."

The flame of her glorious head scorched his
face. He flung his hat far away, and his sud-
denly lowered eyelids brought out startlingly
his resemblance to antique bronze, the profile of
Pallas, stiU, austere, bowed a little in the shadow
of the rock. *'0h! If you could only under-
stand the truth that is in me!" he added.

She waited, as if too astounded to speak, till
he looked up again, and then with unnatural
force as if defending herself from some unspoken
aspersion: "It's I who stand for truth here!
Believe in you! In you, who by a heartless
falsehood — and nothing else, nothing else, do
you hear.f^ — have brought me here, deceived,
cheated, as in some abominable farce ! " She sat
down on a boulder, rested her chin in her hands,
in the pose of simple grief — mourning for herself.

*'It only wanted this. Why! Oh! Why is
it that ugliness, ridicule, and baseness must fall
across my path."

On that height, alone with the sky, they spoke
to each other as if the earth had fallen away
from under their feet.

"Are you grieving for your dignity.'^ He was

112 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

a mediocre soul and could have given you but an
unworthy existence."

She did not even smile at those words, but,
superb, as if lifting a corner of the veil, she
turned on him slowly.

"And do you imagine I would have devoted
myself to him for such a purpose! Don't you
know that reparation was due to him from me?
A sacred debt — a fine duty. To redeem him
would not have been in my power — I know it.
But he was blameless, and it was for me to
come forward. Don't you see that in the eyes
of the world nothing could have rehabilitated
him so completely as his marriage with me?
No word of evil could be whimpered of him after
I had given him my hand. /As to giving myself
up to anything less than the shaping of a man's
destiny — if I thought I could do it I would
abhor myself. . . ." She spoke with au-
thority in her deep, fascinating, unemotional
voice. Renouard meditated, gloomy, as if over
some sinister riddle of a beautiful sphinx met
on the wild road of his life.

"Yes. Your father was right. You are one
of these aristocrats . . ."

She drew herself up haughtily.

"What do you say.^ My father! ... I
an aristocrat."

THE PLANTER OF JVIALATA 113

"Oh! I don't mean that you are like the
men and women of the time of armours, castles,
and great deeds. Oh, no! They stood on the
naked soil, had traditions to be faithful to, had
their feet on this earth of passions and death
which is not a hothouse. They would have been
too plebeian for you since they had to lead, to
suffer with, to understand the commonest
humanity. No, you are merely of the topmost
layer, disdainful and superior, the mere pure
froth and bubble on the inscrutable depths
which some day will toss you out of existence.
But you are you! You are you! You are the
eternal love itself — only, O Divinity, it isn't
your body, it is your soul that is made of foam."

She listened as if in a dream. He had suc-
ceeded so well in his effort to drive back the
flood of his passion that his life itself seemed to
run with it out of his body. At that moment
he felt as one dead speaking. But the headlong
w^ave returning with tenfold force flung him
on her suddenly, with open arms and blazing
eyes. She found herself like a feather in his
grasp, helpless, unable to struggle, with her
feet off the ground. But this contact with her,
maddening like too much felicity, destroyed its
own end. Fire ran through his veins, turned
his passion to ashes, burnt him out and left

114 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

him empty, without force — almost without
desire. He let her go before she could cry out.
And she was so used to the forms of repression
enveloping, softening the crude impulses of old
humanity that she no longer believedlh their
existence as if it were an exploded legend.
She did not recognise what had happened to
her. She came safe out of his arms without a
struggle, not even having felt afraid.

"What's the meaning of this.f^" she said,
outraged but calm in a scornful way.

He got down on his knees in silence, bent low
to her very feet, while she looked down at him, a
little surprised, without animosity, as if merely
curious to see what he would do. Then, while
he remained bowed to the ground pressing the
hem of her skirt to his lips, she made a slight
movement. He got up.

"No," he said. "Were you ever so much
mine what could I do with you without your
consent .f^ No. You don't conquer a wraith,
cold mist, stuff of dreams, illusion. It must
come to you and cling to your breast. And
then! Oh! And then!"

All ecstasy, all expression went out of his face.

"Mr. Renouard," she said, "though you can
have no claim on my consideration after having
decoyed me here for the vile purpose, apparently.

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 115

of gloating over me as your possible prey, I will
tell you that I am not perhaps the extraordinary
being you think I am. You may believe me.
Here I stand for truth itself."

*' What's that to me what you are?" he an-
swered. "At a sign from you I would climb up
to the seventh heaven to bring you down to
earth for my own — and if I saw you steeped to
the lips in vice, in crime, in mud, I would go
after you, take you to my arms — wear you for
an incomparable jewel on my breast. And
that's love — true love — the gift and the curse
of the gods. There is no other."

The truth vibrating in his voice made her
recoil slightly, for she was not fit to hear it —
not even a little — not even one single time in her
life. It was revolting to her; and in her trouble,
perhaps prompted by the suggestion of his
name or to soften the harshness of expression,
for she was obscurely moved, she spoke to him
in French.

^'Assez ! J'ai horreur de tout cela,^^ she said.

He was white to his very lips, but he was
trembling no more. The dice had been cast,
and not even violence could alter the throw.
She passed by him unbendingly, and he followed
her down the path. After a time she heard him
saying:

116 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

"And your dream is to influence a human
destiny?"

"Yes!" she answered curtly, unabashed, with
a woman's complete assurance.

"Then you may rest content. You have
done it."

She shrugged her shoulders slightly. But
just before reaching the end of the path she
relented, stopped, and went back to him.

"I don't suppose you are very anxious for
people to know how near you came to absolute
turpitude. You may rest easy on that point.
I shall speak to my father, of course, and we
will agree to say that he has died — nothing
more."

"Yes," said Renouard in a lifeless voice.
*'He is dead. His very ghost shall be done
with presently."

She went on, but he remained standing stock
still in the dusk. She had already reached the
three palms when she heard behind her a loud
peal of laughter, cynical and joyless, such as
is heard in smoking-rooms at the end of a
scandalous story. It made her feel positively
faint for a moment.

XI

Slowly a complete darkness enveloped Geoffrey
Renoiiard. His resolution had failed him'. In-
stead of following Felicia into the house, he had
stopped under the three palms, and leaning
against a smooth trunk had abandoned himself
to a sense of an immense deception and the feel-
ing of extreme fatigue. This walk up the hill and
down again was like the supreme effort of an
explorer trying to penetrate the interior of an un-
known country, the secret of which is too well de-
fended by its cruel and barren nature. Decoyed
by a mirage, he had gone too far — so far that
there was no going back. His strength was at an
end. For the first time in his life he had to give
up, and with a sort of despairing self-possession
he tried to understand the cause of the defeat.
He did not ascribe it to that absurd dead man.

The hesitating shadow of Luiz approached
him unnoticed till it spoke timidly. Renouard
started.

"Eh? What.^ Dinner waiting? You must say
I beg to be excused. I can't come. But I shall

117

118 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

see them to-morrow morning, at the landing
place. Take your orders from the professor as
to the sailing of the schooner. Go now."

Luiz, dumbfounded, retreated into the dark-
ness. Renouard did not move, but hours after-
ward, like the bitter fruit of his immobility, the
words: "I had nothing to offer to her vanity,"
came from his lips in the silence of the island.
And it was then only that he stirred, only to
wear the night out in restless tramping up and
down the various paths of the plantation. Luiz,
whose sleep was made light by the consciousness
of some impending change, heard footsteps pass-
ing by his hut, the firm tread of the master; and
turning on his mats emitted a faint Tse! Tse!
Tse! of deep concern.

Lights had been burning in the bungalow al-
most all through the night; and with the first
sign of day began the bustle of departure. House
boys walked processionally carrying suitcases
and dressing-bags down to the schooner's boat,
which came to the landing place at the bottom of
the garden. Just as the rising sun threw its
golden nimbus around the purple shape of the
headland, the Planter of Malata was perceived
pacing bareheaded the curve of the little bay.
He exchanged a few words with the sailing-
master of the schooner, then remained by the

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 119

boat, standing very upright, his eyes on the
ground, waiting.

He had not long to wait. Into the cool, over-
shadowed garden the professor descended first,
and came jauntily down the path in a lively
cracking of small shells. With his closed par-
asol hooked on his forearm, and a book in his
hand, he resembled a banal tourist more than
was permissible to a man of his unique distinc-
tion. He waved the disengaged arm from a dis-
tance, but at close quarters, arrested before
Renouard's immobility, he made no offer to
shake hands. He seemed to appraise the aspect
of the man with a sharp glance, and made up his
mind.

"We are going back by Suez," he began al-
most boisterously. " I have been looking up the
sailing lists. If the zephyrs of your Pacific are
only moderately propitious I think we are sure
to catch the mail boat due in Marseilles on the
18th of March. This will suit me excellently
. . . ." He lowered his tone. "My dear
young friend, I'm deeply grateful to you."

Renouard's set lips moved.

"Why are you grateful to me? "

"Ah? Why? In the first place you might
have made us miss the next boat, mightn't you?
. . . I don't thank you for your hospitality.

120 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

You can't be angry with me for saying that I am
truly thankful to escape from it. But I am grate-
ful to you for what you have done, and — for
being what you are."

It was difficult to define the flavour of that
speech, but Renouard received it with an
austerely equivocal smile. The professor step-
ping into the boat opened his parasol and sat
down in the stern-sheets waiting for the ladies.
No sound of human voice broke the fresh silence
of the morning while they walked the broad
path, Miss Moorsom a little in advance of her
aunt.

When she came abreast of him Renouard
raised his head.

"Good-bye, Mr. Renouard," she said in a low
voice, meaning to pass on; but there was such a
look of entreaty in the blue gleam of his sunken
eyes that after an imperceptible hesitation she
Uid her hand, which was ungloved, in his ex-
tended palm.

"Will you condescend to remember me.^^" he
asked, while an emotion with which she was
angry made her pale cheeks flush and her black
eyes sparkle.

"This is a strange request for you to make,"
she said, exaggerating the coldness of her tone.

" Is it? Impudent, perhaps. Yet I am not so

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 121

guilty as you think; and bear in mind that to me
you can never make reparation."

"Reparation? To you! It is you who can
offer me no reparation for the offence against my
feehngs — and my person; for what reparation
can be adequate for your odious and ridiculous
plot so scornful in its implication, so humiliating
to my pride. No! I don't want to remember
you."

Unexpectedly, with a tightening grip, he pulled
her nearer to him, and looking into her eyes with
fearless despair —

"You'll have to. . . . I shall haunt you,"
he said firmly.

Her hand was wrenched out of his grasp be-
fore he had time to release it. Felicia Moorsom
stepped into the boat, sat down by the side of
her father, and breathed tenderly on her crushed
fingers.

The professor gave her a sidelong look — noth-
ing more. But the professor's sister, yet on
shore, had put up her long-handle double eye-
glass to look at the scene. She dropped it with a
faint rattle.

"I've never in my life heard anything so crude
said to a lady," she murmured, passing before
Renouard with a perfectly erect head. When, a
moment afterward, softening suddenly, she

122 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

turned to throw a good-bye to that young man,
she saw only his back in the distance moving
toward the bungalow. She watched him go in
— amazed — before she too left the soil of Malata.

Nobody disturbed Renouard in that room
where he had shut himself in to breathe the
evanescent perfume of her who for him was no
more, till late in the afternoon when the half-
caste was heard on the other side of the door.

He wanted the master to know that the
trader Janet was just entering the cove.

Renouard' s strong voice on his side of the
door gave him most unexpected instructions.
He was to pay off the boys with the cash in the
office and arrange with the captain of the Janet
to take every worker away from Malata, re-
turning them to their respective homes. An
order on the Dunster firm would be given to him
in payment.

And again the silence of the bungalow re-
mained unbroken till, next morning, the half-
caste came to report that everything was done.
The plantation boys were embarking now.

Through a crack in the door a hand thrust at
him a piece of paper, and the door slammed to so
sharply that Luiz stepped back. Then approach-
ing cringingly the keyhole, in a propitiatory tone
he asked :

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 123

"Do I go too, master?"

*'Yes. You too. Everybody."

"Master stop here alone .'^"

Silence. And the half-caste's eyes grew wide
with wonder. But he also, like those " ignorant
savages," the plantation boys, was only too glad
to leave an island haunted by the ghost of a
white man. He backed away noiselessly from
the mysterious silence in that closed room, and
only in the very doorway of the bungalow
allowed himself to give vent to his feelings by a
deprecatory and pained —

"Tse! Tse! Tse!"

XII

The Moorsoms did manage to catch the home-
ward mail boat all right, but had only twenty-
four hours in town. Thus the sentimental Willie
could not see very much of them. This did not
prevent him afterward from relating at great
length, with manly tears in his eyes, how poor
Miss Moorsom — the fashionable and clever
beauty — found her betrothed in Malata only to
see him die in her arms. Most people were
deeply touched by the sad story. It was the talk
of a good many days.

But the all-knowing Editor, Renouard's only
friend and crony, wanted to know more than the
rest of the world. From professional inconti-
nence, perhaps, he thirsted for a full cup of
harrowing detail. And when he noticed Re-
nouard's schooner lying in port day after day he
sought the sailing master to learn the reason.
The man told him that such were his instruc-
tions. He had been ordered to lie there a month
before returning to Malata. And the month

124

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 125

was nearly up. "I will ask you to give me a
passage," said the Editor.

He landed in the morning at the bottom of
the garden and found peace, stillness, sunshine
reigning everywhere, the doors and windows of
the bungalow standing wide open, no sight of a
human being anywhere, the plants growing rank
and tall in the deserted fields. For hours the
Editor and the schooner's crew, excited by the
mystery, roamed over the island shouting Re-
nouard's name; and at last set themselves in
grim silence to explore systematically the un-
cleared bush and the deeper ravines in search of
his corpse. What had happened .^^ Had he been,^
murdered by the boys ? Or had he simply, capri-
cious and secretive, abandoned his plantation
taking the people with him. It was impossible
to tell what had happened. At last, toward the
decline of the day, the Editor and the sailing
master discovered a track of sandals crossing
a strip of sandy beach on the north shore of
the bay. Following this track fearfully, they
passed round the spur of the headland, and
there on a large stone found the sandals, Re-
nouard's white jacket, and the Malay sarong
of chequered pattern which the planter of
Malata was well known to wear when going
to bathe. These things made a little heap.

126 THE PLANTER OF MALATA

and the sailor remarked, after gazing at it in
silence —

"Birds have been hovering over this for many
a day."

*'He's gone bathing and got drowned," cried
the Editor in dismay.

"I doubt it, sir. If he had been drowned
anywhere within a mile from the shore the body
would have been washed out on the reefs. And
our boats have found nothing so far."

Nothing was ever found — and Renouard's
disappearance remained in the main inexpli-
cable. For to whom could it have occurred that
a man would set out calmly to swim beyond the
confines of life — with a steady stroke — his
eyes fixed on a star!

Next evening, from the receding schooner,
the Editor looked back for the last time at the
deserted island. A black cloud hung listlessly
over the high rock on the middle hill ; and under
the mysterious silence of that shadow Malata
lay mournful, with an air of anguish in the wild
sunset, as if remembering the heart that was
broken there.

Dec, 1913.

THE PARTNER

THE PARTNER

"And that be hanged for a silly yarn. The
boatmen here in Westport have been telling
this lie to the summer visitors for years. The
sort that gets taken out for a row at a shilling
a head — and asks foolish questions — must be
told something to pass the time away. D'ye
know anything more silly than being pulled in
a boat along a beach .^^ . . . It's like drink-
ing weak lemonade when you aren't thirsty.
I don't know why they do it! They don't
even get sick."

A forgotten glass of beer stood at his elbow;
the locality was a small respectable smoking-
room of a small respectable hotel, and a taste
for forming chance acquaintances accounts
for my sitting up late with him. His great,
flat, furrowed cheeks were shaven; a thick,
square wisp of white hairs hung from his chin;
its waggling gave additional point to his deep
utterance; and his general contempt for man-
kind with its activities and moralities was ex-
pressed in the rakish set of his big soft hat of

130 THE PARTNER

black felt with a large rim, which he kept al-
ways on his head.

His appearance was that of an old adventurer,
retired after many unholy experienceO?)Cfcii6
darkest parts of the earth; but I had every
reason to believe that he had never been outside
England. From a casual remark somebody
dropped I gathered that in his early days he
must have been somehow connected with ship-
ping— with ships in docks. Of individuality
he had plenty. And it was this which attracted
my attention at first. But he was not easy to
classify, and before the end of the week I gave
him up with the vague definition, "an imposing
old ruffian."

One rainy afternoon, oppressed by infinite
boredom, I went into the smoking-room. He
was sitting there in absolute immobility, which
was really fakir-like and impressive. I began
to wonder what could be the associations of
that sort of man, his "milieu," his private con-
nections, his views, his morality, his friends, and
even his wife — when to my surprise he opened
a conversation in a deep, muttering voice.

I must say that since he had learned from
somebody that I was a writer of stories he had
been acknowledging my existence by means of
some vague growls in the morning.

THE PARTNER 131

He was essentially a taciturn man. There was
an effect of rudeness in his fragmentary sen-
tences. It was some time before I discovered that
what he would be at was the process by which
stories — stories for periodicals — were produced.

What could one say to a fellow like that?
But I was bored to death; the weather continued
Impossible; and I resolved to be amiable.

"And so you make these tales up on your
own. How do they ever come into your head? "
he rumbled.

I explained that one generally got a hint for
a tale.

"What sort of hint?"

"Well, for instance," I said, "I got myself
rowed out to the rocks the other day. My boat-
man told me of the wreck on these rocks nearly
twenty years ago. That could be used as a hint
for a mainly descriptive bit of story with some
such title as *In the Channel,' for instance."

It was then that he flew out at the boatmen
and the summer visitors who listen to their
tales. Without moving a muscle of his face
he emitted a powerful "Rot," from somewhere
out of the depths of his chest, and went on in
his hoarse, fragmentary mumble. "Stare at
the silly rocks — nod their silly heads [the visitors
I presume]. What do they think a man is —

132 THE PARTNER

blown-out paper bag or what? — go off pop

like that when he's hit Damn silly yarn

Hint indeed! . . . A lie?"

You must imagine this statuesque ruffian
enhaloed in the black rim of his hat, letting all
this out as an old dog growls sometimes, with
his head up and staring-away eyes.

"Indeed!" I exclaimed. "Well, but even if
untrue it is a hint, enabling me to see these
rocks, this gale they speak of, the heavy seas,
etc., etc., in relation to mankind. The struggle
against natural forces and the effect of the issue
on at least one, say, exalted "

He interrupted me by an aggressive —

" Would truth be any good to you? "

"I shouldn't like to say," I answered cau-
tiously. "It's said that truth is stranger than
fiction."

"Who says that?" he mouthed.

"Oh! Nobody in particular."

I turned to the window; for the contemptuous
beggar was oppressive to look at, with his
immovable arm on the table. I suppose my
unceremonious manner provoked him to a
comparatively long speech.

"Did you ever see such a silly lot of rocks?
Like plums in a slice of cold pudding."

I was looking at them — an acre or more of

THE PARTNER 133

black dots scattered on the steel-grey shades of
the level sea, under the uniform gossamer grey
mist, with a formless brighter patch in one place
— the veiled whiteness of the cliff coming through
like a diffused, mysterious radiance. It was
a delicate and wonderful picture, something ex-
pressive, suggestive, and desolate, a symphony
in grey and black — a Whistler. But the next
thing said by the voice behind me made me turn
round. It growled out contempt for all asso-
ciated notions of roaring seas with concise
energy, then went on —

"I — no such foolishness — looking at the rocks
out there — more likely call to mind an office — I
used to look in sometimes at one time — office
in London — one of them small streets behind
Cannon Street Station. . . ."

He was very deliberate; not jerky, only frag-
mentary; at times profane.

"That's a rather remote connection," I ob-
served, approaching him.

"Connection? To Hades with your connec-
tions. It was an accident.'*

"Still," I said, "an accident has its backward
and forward connections, which, if they could
be set forth "

Without moving he seemed to lend an atten-
tive ear.

134 THE PARTNER

**Aye! Set forth. That's perhaps what you
could do. Couldn't you now? There's no sea
life in this connection. But you can put it in
out of your head — if you like."

"Yes. I could, if necessary," I said. "Some-
times it pays to put in a lot out of one's head,
and sometimes it doesn't. I mean that the
story isn't worth it. Everything's in that."

It amused me to talk to him like this. He re-
flected audibly that he guessed story-writers
were out after money like the rest of the world
which had to live by its wits: and that it was
extraordinary how far people who were out after
money would go. . . . Some of them.

Then he made a sally against sea life. Silly
sort of life, he called it. No opportunities, no
experience, no variety, nothing. Some fine
men came out of it — he admitted — but no more
chance in the world if put to it than fly. Kids.
So Captain Harry Dunbar. Good sailor. Great
name as a skipper. Big man; short side- whiskers
going grey, fine face, loud voice. A good fel-
low, but no more up to people's tricks than a
baby.

"That's the captain of the Sagamore you're
talking about," I said confidently.

After a low, scornful "Of course," he seemed
now to hold on the wall with his fixed stare the

THE PARTNER 135

vision of that city office, "at the back of Can-
non Street Station," while he growled and
mouthed a fragmentary description, jerking his
chin up now and then, as if angry.

It was, according to his account, a modest
place of business, not shady in any sense, but
out of the way, in a small street now rebuilt
from end to end. " Seven doors from the Chesh-
ire Cat public house under the railway bridge.
I used to take my lunch there when my business
called me to the city. Cloete would come in
to have his chop and make the girl laugh. No
need to talk much, either, for that. Nothing
but the way he would twinkle his spectacles on
you and give a twitch of his thick mouth was
enough to start you off before he began one of
his little tales. Funny fellow, Cloete. C-l-o-
e-t-e — Cloete."

"What was he — a Dutchman.^" I asked, not
seeing the least what all this had to do with
the Westport boatmen and the Westport sum-
mer visitors and this extraordinary old fellow's
irritable view of them as liars and fools. "Devil
knows'" he grunted, his eyes on the wall as if
not to miss a single movement of a cinemato-
graph picture. "Spoke nothing but English,
anyway. First I saw him — comes off a ship
in dock from the States — passenger. Asks

136 THE PARTNER

me for a small hotel near by. Wanted to be
quiet and have a look round for a few days. I
took him to a place — friend of mine. . . .
Next time — in the City — Hallo! You're very
obliging — have a drink. Talks plenty about
himself. Been years in the States. All sorts
of business all over the place. With some
patent medicine people, too. Travels. Writes
advertisements and all that. Tells me funny
stories. Tall, loose-limbed fellow. Black hair
up on end, like a brush; long face, long legs,
long arms, twinkle in his specs, jocular way of
speaking — in a low voice. . . . See that?"

I nodded, but he was not looking at me.

"Never laughed so much in my life. The
beggar — would make you laugh telling you how
he skinned his own father. He was up to that,
too. A man who's been in the patent-medicine
trade will be up to anything from pitch-and-toss
to wilful murder. And that's a bit of hard truth
for you. Don't mind what they do — think they
can carry off anything and talk themselves out of
anything — all the world's a fool to them. Busi-
ness man, too, Cloete. Came over with a few
hundred pounds. Looking for something to do
— in a quiet way. Nothing like the old country,
after all, says he. . . . And so we part — I with
more drinks in me than I was used to. After a

THE PARTNER 137

time, perhaps six months or so, I run up against
him again in Mr. George Dunbar's office. Yes,
that office. It wasn't often that I . . . How-
ever, there was a bit of his cargo in a ship in dock
that I wanted to ask Mr. George about. In
comes Cloete out of the room at the back with
some papers in his hand. Partner. You under-
stand.?^"

"Aha!" I said. "The few hundred pounds."

"And that tongue of his," he grow^led. "Don't
forget that tongue. Some of his tales must have
opened George Dunbar's eyes a bit as to what
business means."

"A plausible fellow," I suggested.

"H'm! You must have it in your own way —
of course. Well. Partner. George Dunbar puts
his top-hat on and tells me to wait a moment.
. . . George always looked as though he
were making a few thousands a year — a city
swell. . . . Come along, old man ! And he
and Captain Harry go out together — some busi-
ness with a solicitor round the corner. Captain
Harry, when he was in England, used to turn up
in his brother's office regularly about twelve.
Sat in a corner like a good boy, reading the paper
and smoking his pipe. So they go out. . . .
Model brothers, says Cloete — two love-birds — I
am looking after the tinned-fruit side of this cozy

138 THE PARTNER

little show. . . . Gives me that sort of talk.
Then by-and-by: What sort of old thing is that
Sagamore y Finest ship out — eh? I dare say all
ships are fine to you. You live by them. I tell
you what; I would just as soon put my money
into an old stocking. Sooner!"

He drew a breath, and I noticed his hand,
lying loosely on the table, close slowly into a fist.
In that immovable man it was startling, omi-
nous, like the famed nod of the Commander.

"So, already at that time — note — already,"
he growled.

"But hold on," I interrupted. "The Saga-
more belonged to Mundy and Rogers, I've been
told."

He snorted contemptuously. "Damn boat-
men— know no better. Flew the firm's house-flag.
That's another thing. Favour. It was like this :
When old man Dunbar died, Captain Harry was
already in command with the firm. George
chucked the bank he was clerking in — to go on
his own with what there was to share after the
old chap. George was a smart man. Started
warehousing; then two or three things at a time:
wood-pulp, preserved-fruit trade, and so on.
And Captain Harry let him have his share to
work with. . . . I am provided for in my ship,

THE PARTNER 139

he says. . . . But by-and-by Mundy and
Rogers began to sell out to foreigners all their
ships — go into steam right away. Captain
Harry gets very upset — lose command, part
with the ship he was fond of — very wretched.
Just then, so it happened, the brothers came in
for some money — an old woman died or some-
thing. Quite a tidy bit. Then young George
says : There's enough between us two to buy the

Sagamore with But you'll need more

money for your business, cries Captain Harry —
and the other laughs at him: My business is
going on all right. Why, I can go out and make
a handful of sovereigns while you are trying to
get your pipe to draw, old man. . . . Mundy
and Rogers very friendly about it: Certainly,
Captain. And we will manage her for you, if you
like, as if she were still our own. . . . Why,
with a connection like that it was a good invest-
ment to buy that ship. Good! Aye, at the
time."

The turning of his head slightly toward me at
this point was like a sign of strong feeling in any
other man.

"You'll mind that this was long before Cloete
came into it at all," he muttered warningly.

"Yes. I will mind," I said. "We generally
say : some years passed. That's soon done."

140 THE PARTNER

He eyed me for a while silently in an unseeing
way, as if engrossed in the thought of the years
so easily dealt with; his own years, too, they
were, the years before and the years (not so
many) after Cloete came upon the scene. When
he began to speak again, I discerned his inten-
tion to point out to me, in his obscure and graphic
manner, the influence on George Dunbar of
long association with Cloete's easy moral stand-
ards, unscrupulously persuasive gift of humour
(funny fellow), and adventurously reckless dis-
position. He desired me anxiously to elaborate
this view, and I assured him it was quite within
my powers. He wished me also to understand
that George's business had its ups and downs
(the other brother was meantime sailing to and
fro serenely); that he got into low water at
times, which worried him rather, because he had
married a young wife with expensive tastes.
He was having a pretty anxious time of it gen-
erally; and just then Cloete ran up in the city
somewhere against a man working a patent
medicine (the fellow's old trade) with some
success, but which, with capital, capital to the
tune of thousands to be spent with both hands on
advertising, could be turned into a great thing —
infinitely better-paying than a gold-mine. Cloete
became excited at the possibilities of that sort of

THE PARTNER 141

business, in which he was an expert. I under-
stood that George's partner was all on fire from
the contact with this unique opportunity.

"So he goes in every day into George's room
about eleven, and sings that tune till George
gnashes his teeth with rage. Do shut up.
What's the good.^ No money. Hardly any to
go on with, let alone pouring thousands into
advertising. Never dare propose to his brother
Harry to sell the ship. Couldn't think of it.
Worry him to death. It would be like the end
of the world coming. And certainly not for a
business of that kind! ... Do you think
it would be a swindle? asks Cloete, twitching his
mouth. . . . George owns up : No — would be
no better than a squeamish ass if he thought
that, after all these years in business.

" Cloete looks at him hard— Never thought
of selling the ship. Expected the blamed old
thing wouldn't fetch half her insured value by
this time. Then George flies out at him. What's
the meaning, then, of these silly jeers at ship-
owning for the last three weeks? Had enough
of them, anyhow.

"Angry at having his mouth made to water,
see. Cloete don't get excited. ... I am no
squeamish ass, either, says he, very slowly.
"Tisn't selling your old Sagamore wants. The

142 THE PARTNER

blamed thing wants tomahawking (seems the
name Sagamore means an Indian chief or some-
thing. The figure-head was a half -naked savage
with a feather over one ear and a hatchet in his
belt). Tomahawking, says he.

"What do you mean.f^ asks George.
Wrecking — it could be managed with perfect
safety, goes on Cloete — your brother would then
put in his share of insurance money. Needn't
tell him exactly what for. He thinks you're the
smartest business man that ever lived. Make
his fortune, too. . . . George grips the desk
with both hands in his rage. . . . You
think my brother's a man to cast away his ship
on purpose. I wouldn't even dare think of such
a thing in the same room with him — the finest
fellow that ever lived. . . . Don't make such
noise; they'll hear you outside, says Cloete; and
he tells him that his brother is the salted pattern
of all virtues, but all that's necessary is to induce
him to stay ashore for a voyage — for a holiday —
take a rest — why not.^ ... In fact, I have
in view somebody up to that sort of game —
Cloete whispers.

*' George nearly chokes. . . . So you think I
am of that sort — you think me capable — What
do you take me for? . . . He almost loses his
head, while Cloete keeps cool, only gets white

THE PARTNER 143

about the gills. ... I take you for a man who
will be most cursedly hard up before long. . . .
He goes to the door and sends away the clerks —
there were only two — to take their lunch hour.
Comes back. . . . What are you indignant
about .^ Do I want you to rob the widow and
orphan.^ Why, man! Lloyd's a corporation, it
hasn't got a body to starve. There's forty or
more of them perhaps who underwrote the lines
on that silly ship of yours. Not one human
being would go hungry or cold for it. They take
every risk into consideration. Everything I tell
you. . . . That sort of talk. H'm! George
too upset to speak — only gurgles and waves his
arms; so sudden, you see. The other, warming
his back at the fire, goes on. Wood-pulp busi-
ness next door to a failure. Tinned-fruit trade
nearly played out. . . . You're frightened, he
says ; but the law is only meant to frighten fools
away. . . . And he shows how safe casting
away that ship would be. Premiums paid for so
many, many years. No shadow of suspicion
could arise. And, dash it all! a ship must meet
her end some day. . . .

"I am not frightened. I am indignant, says
George Dunbar.

" Cloete boiling with rage inside. Chance of a
lifetime — his chance ! And he says kindly : Your

144 THE PARTNER

wife'll be much more indignant when you ask her
to get out of that pretty house of yours and pile
in into a two-pair back — with kids perhaps,
too. . . .

''George had no children. Married a couple
of years; looked forward to a kid or two very
much. Feels more upset than ever. Talks about
an honest man for father, and so on. Cloete
grins: You be quick before they come, and they'll
have a rich man for father, and no one the worse
for it. That's the beauty of the thing.

" George nearly cries. I believe he did cry at
odd times. This went on for weeks. He
couldn't quarrel with Cloete. Couldn't pay off
his few hundreds; and besides, he was used to
have him about. Weak fellow, George. Cloete
generous, too. . . . Don't think of my little
pile, says he. Of course it's gone when we have
to shut up. But I don't care, he says.
And then there was George's new wife. When
Cloete dines there, the beggar puts on a dress
suit; little woman liked it; . . . Mr. Cloete,
my husband's partner; such a clever man, man
of the world, so amusing! . . . When he
dines there and they are alone: Oh, Mr. Cloete,
I wish George would do something to improve
our prospects. Our position is really so medi-
ocre. . . . And Cloete smiles, but isn't sur-

THE PARTNER 145

prised, because he had put all these notions him-
self into her empty head. . . . What your
husband wants is enterprise, a little audacity.
You can encourage him best, Mrs. Dunbar.
. . . She was a silly, extravagant little fool.
Had made George take a house in Norwood.
Live up to a lot of people better off than them-
selves. I saw her once; silk dress, pretty boots,
all feathers and scent, pink face. More like the
Promenade at the Alhambra than a decent home,
it looked to me. But some women do get a devil
of a hold on a man."

"Yes, some do," I assented. "Even when the
man is the husband."

"My missis," he addressed me unexpectedly,
in a solemn, surprisingly hollow tone, "could
wind me round her little finger. I didn't find
out till she was gone. Aye. But she was a
woman of sense, while that piece of goods ought
to have been walking the streets, and that's all I
can say. . . . You must make her up out of
your head. You will know the sort."

"Leave all that to me," I said.

"H'm!" he grunted, doubtfully, then going
back to his scornful tone: "A month or so after-
ward the Sagamore arrives home. All very jolly
at first. . . . Hallo, George boy! Hallo,
Harry, old man! . . . But by and by Cap-

146 THE PARTNER

tain Harry thinks his clever brother is not look-
ing very well. And George begins to look worse.
He can't get rid of Cloete's notion. It has stuck
in his head. . . . There's nothing wrong —
quite well. . . . Captain Harry still anxious.
Business going all right, eh.^^ Quite right. Lots
of business. Good business. ... Of course
Captain Harry believes that easily. Starts
chaffing his brother in his jolly way about rolling
in money. George's shirt sticks to his back with
perspiration, and he feels quite angry with the
captain. . . . The fool, he says to himself.
Rolling in money, indeed ! And then he thinks
suddenly: Why not.^ . . . Because Cloete's
notion has got hold of his mind.

"But next day he weakens and says to Cloete
. . . Perhaps it would be best to sell. Couldn't
you talk to my brother.^ and Cloete explains to
him over again for the twentieth time why selling
wouldn't do, anyhow. No! The Sagamore must
be tomahawked — as he would call it; to spare
George's feelings, maybe. But every time he
says the word, George shudders. . . . I've got
a man at hand competent for the job, who will do
the trick for five hundred, and only too pleased
at the chance, says Cloete. . . . George shuts
his eyes tight at that sort of talk — but. at the
same time he thinks : Humbug ! There can be no

THE PARTNER 147

such man. And yet if there was such a man it
would be safe enough — perhaps.

"And Cloete always funny about it. He
couldn't talk about anything without it seeming
there was a great joke in it somewhere. . . .
Now, says he, I know you are a moral citizen,
George. Morality is mostly funk, and I think
you're the funkiest man I ever came across in my
travels. ^Miy, you are afraid to speak to your
brother. Afraid to open your mouth to him with
a fortune for us all in sight. . . . George flares
up at this: no, he ain't afraid; he will speak;
bangs fist on the desk. And Cloete pats him on
the back. . . . We'll be made men presently,
he says.

"But the first time George attempts to speak
to Captain Harry his heart slides down into
his boots. Captain Harry only laughs at the
notion of staying ashore. He wants no holiday,
not he. But Jane thinks of remaining in Eng-
land this trip. Go about a bit and see some of
her people. Jane was the Captain's wife; round-
faced, pleasant lady. George gives up that time;
but Cloete won't let him rest. So he tries again ;
and the Captain frowns. He frowns because he's
puzzled. He can't make it out. He has no
notion of living away from his Sagamore. . . ."

"Ah!" I cried. "Now I understand."

148 THE PARTNER

"No, you don't," he growled, his black, con-
temptuous stare turning on me crushingly.

"I beg your pardon," I murmured.

" H'm ! Very well, then. Captain Harry looks
very stern, and George crumples all up inside.
. . . He sees through me, he thinks. . . .
Of course it could not be; but George, by that
time, was scared at his own shadow. He is
shirking it with Cloete, too. Gives his partner to
understand that his brother has half a mind to try
a spell on shore, and so on. Cloete waits, gnawing
his fingers ; so anxious. Cloete really had found a
man for the job. Believe it or not, he had found
him inside the very boarding-house he lodged in
— somewhere about Tottenham Court Road. He
had noticed down-stairs a fellow — a boarder and
not a boarder — hanging about the dark part of
the passage mostly; sort of 'man of the house,'
a slinking chap. Black eyes. White face. The
woman of the house — a widow lady, she called
herself— very full of Mr. Stafford; Mr. Stafford
this and Mr. Stafford that. . . . Anyhow,
Cloete one evening takes him out to have a
drink. Cloete mostly passed away his evenings
in saloon bars. No drunkard, though, Cloete;
for company; liked to talk to all sorts there; just
habit; American fashion.

"So Cloete takes that chap out more than

THE PARTNER 149

once. Not very good company, though. Lit-
tle to say for himself. Sits quiet and drinks
what's given to him, eyes always half closed,
speaks sort of demure. . . . I've had mis-
fortunes, he says. The truth was they had
kicked him out of a big steamship company for
disgraceful conduct; nothing to affect his
certificate, you understand; and he had gone
dow^n quite easily. Liked itj I expect. Any-
thing's better than work. Lived on the widow
lady who kept that boarding-house."

"That's almost incredible," I ventured to
interrupt. "A man with a master's certificate, y^
do you mean.^"

*'I do; I've known them 'bus cads," he
growled, contemptuously. "Yes. Swing on the
tail-board by the strap and yell, ' tuppence all the
way.' Through drink. But this Stafford was
of another kind. Hell's full of such Staff ords;
Cloete would make fun of him, and then there
would be a nasty gleam in the fellow's half-shut
eye. But Cloete was generally kind to him. Clo-
ete was a fellow that w^ould be kind to a mangy
dog. Anyhow, he used to stand drinks to that
object, and now and then gave him half a crown
— because the widow lady kept Mr. Stafford
short of pocket-money. They had rows almost
every day down in the basement. . . .

150 THE PARTNER

"It was the fellow being a sailor that put into
Cloete's mind the first notion of doing away
with the Sagamore. He studies him a bit,
thinks there's enough devil in him yet to be
tempted, and one evening he says to him . . .
I suppose you wouldn't mind going to sea
again, for a spell? . . . The other never
raises his eyes; says it's scarcely worth one's
while for the miserable salary one gets. . . .
Well, but what do you say to captain's wages
for a time, and a couple of hundred extra if you
are compelled to come home without the ship.
Accidents will happen, says Cloete. . . .
Oh! sure to, says that Stafford; and goes on
taking sips of his drink as if he had no interest
in the matter.

"Cloete presses him a bit; but the other
observes, impudent and languid like: You
see, there's no future in a thing like that — is
there? . . . Oh! no, says Cloete. Cer-
tainly not. I don't mean this to have any
future — as far as you are concerned. It's a
'once for all' transaction. Well, what do you
estimate your future at? he asks. . . . The
fellow more listless than ever — nearly asleep.
I believe the skunk was really too lazy to care.
Small cheating at cards, wheedling or bullying
his living out of some woman or other, was more

THE PARTNER 151

his style. Cloete swears at him in whispers
something awful. All this in the saloon bar
of the Horse Shoe, Tottenham Court Road.
Finally they agree, over the second sixpenny-
worth of Scotch hot, on five hundred pounds as
the price of tomahawking the Sagamore. And
Cloete waits to see what George can do.

"A week or two goes by. The other fellow
loafs about the house as if there had been noth-
ing, and Cloete begins to doubt whether he
really means ever to tackle that job. But one
day he stops Cloete at the door, with his down-
cast eyes: What about that employment you
wished to give me? he asks. . . . You
see, he had played some more than usual dirty
trick on the woman and expected awful ruc-
tions presently; and to be fired out for sure.
Cloete very pleased. George had been pre-
varicating to him such a lot that he really
thought the thing was as well as settled. And
he says: Yes. It's time I introduced you to
my friend. Just get your hat and we will go
now. . . .

"The two come into the office, and George
at his desk sits up in a sudden panic — staring.
Sees a tallish fellow, sort of nasty-handsome
face, heavy eyes, half shut; short drab overcoat,
shabby bowler hat, very careful-like in his

152 THE PARTNER

movements. And he thinks to himself, Is
that how such a man looks! No, the thing's
impossible. . . . Cloete does the intro-
duction, and the fellow turns round to look
behind him at the chair before he sits down.
. . . A thoroughly competent man, Cloete
goes on. . . . The man says nothing, sits
perfectly quiet. And George can't speak,
throat too dry. Then he makes an effort: H'm!
H'm! Oh, yes — unfortunately — sorry to dis-
appoint— my brother — made other arrange-
ments— going himself.

"The fellow gets up, never raising his eyes off
the ground, like a modest girl, and goes out
softly, right out of the office without a sound.
Cloete sticks his chin in his hand and bites all
his fingers at once. George's heart slows down
and he speaks to Cloete. . . . This can't
be done. How can it be? Directly the ship
is lost Harry would see through it. You know
he is a man to go to the underwriters himself
with his suspicions. And he would break his
heart over me. How can I play that on him?
There's only two of us in the world belonging
to each other. . . .

"Cloete lets out a horrid cuss-word, jumps
up, bolts away into his room, and George hears
him there banging things around. After a

THE PARTNER 153

while he goes to the door and says in a trem-
bling voice: You ask me for an impossibil-
ity. . . . Cloete inside ready to fly out
like a tiger and rend him, but he opens the
door a little way and says softly: Talking of
hearts, yours is no bigger than a mouse's,
let me tell you. . . . But George doesn't
care — load off the heart, anyhow. And just
then Captain Harry comes in. . . . Hallo,
George boy. I am a little late. What about a
chop at the Cheshire, now.^^ . . . Right you
are, old man. . . . And off they go to
lunch together. Cloete has nothing to eat that
day.

" George feels a new man for a time; but all of
a sudden that fellow Stafford begins to hang
about the street, in sight of the house door.
The first time George sees him he thinks he
made a mistake. But no; next time he has to
go out, there is the very fellow skulking on the
other side of the road. It makes George ner-
vous; but he must go out on business, and when
the fellow cuts across the roadway he dodges
him. He dodges him once, twice, three times;
but at last he gets nabbed in his very doorway.
. . . What do you want.? he says, trying to
look fierce.

"It seems that ructions had come in the base-

154 THE PARTNER

ment of that boarding-house, and the widow
lady had turned on him (being jealous mad), to
the extent of talking of the police. That Mr.
Stafford couldn't stand; so he cleared out like a
scared stag, and there he was, chucked into the
streets, so to speak. Cloete looked so savage
as he went to and fro that he hadn't the spunk
to tackle him; but George seemed a softer kind
to his eye. He would have been glad of half
a quid, anything. . . . I've had misfor-
tunes, he says softly, in his demure way, which
frightens George more than a row would have
done. . . . Consider the severity of my
disappointment, he says. . . .

*' George, instead of telling him to go to the
devil, loses his head. ... I don't know
you. What do you want.? he cries, and bolts
up-stairs to Cloete. . . . Look what's come
of it, he gasps; now we are at the mercy of that
horrid fellow. . . . Cloete tries to show
him that the fellow can do nothing; but George
thinks that some sort of scandal may be forced
on, anyhow. Says that he can't live with that
horror haunting him. Cloete would laugh if
\y/ he weren't too weary of it all. Then a thought
strikes him and he changes his tune. . . .
Well, perhaps! I will go down-stairs and send
him away to begin with. , . . He comes

THE PARTNER 155

back. . . . He's gone. But perhaps you
are right. The fellow's hard up, and that's
what makes people desperate. The best thmg
would be to get him out of the country for a
time. Look here, the poor devil is really in
want of employment. I won't ask you much
this time: only to hold your tongue; and I
shall try to get your brother to take him as
chief officer. At this George lays his arms and
his head on his desk, so that Cloete feels sorry
for him. But altogether Cloete feels more
cheerful because he has shaken the ghost a bit
into that Stafford. That very afternoon he
buys him a suit of blue clothes, and tells him
that he will have to turn to and work for his
living now. Go to sea as mate of the Sagamore.
The skunk w^asn't very willing, but what with
having nothing to eat and no place to sleep in,
and the woman having frightened him with the
talk of some prosecution or other, he had no
choice, properly speaking. Cloete takes care
of him for a couple of days. . . . Our
arrangement still stands, says he. Here's the
ship bound for Port Elizabeth; not a safe
anchorage at all. Should she by chance part
from her anchors in a north-east gale and get
lost on the beach, as many of them do, why, it's
five hundred in your pocket — and a quick

156 THE PARTNER

return home. You are up to the job, ain't
you?

"Our Mr. Stafford takes it all in with down-
cast eyes. ... I am a competent seaman,
he says, with his sly, modest air. A ship's
chief mate has no doubt many opportunities to
manipulate the chains and anchors to some pur-
pose. ... At this Cloete thumps him on
the back: You'll do, my noble sailor. Go in
and win. . . .

"Next thing George knows, his brother tells
him that he had occasion to oblige his partner.
And glad of it, too. Likes the partner no end.
Took a friend of his as mate. Man had his
troubles, been ashore a year nursing a dying
wife, it seems. Down on his luck. . . .
George protests earnestly that he knows noth-
ing of the person. Saw him once. Not very
attractive to look at. . . . And Captain
Harry says in his hearty way. That's so, but
must give the poor devil a chance. . - .

"So Mr. Stafford joins in dock. And it
seems that he did manage to monkey with one
of the cables — keeping his mind on Port Eliza-
beth. The riggers had all the cable ranged on
deck to clean lockers. The new mate watches
them go ashore — dinner hour — and sends the
ship-keeper out of the ship to fetch him a bottle

THE PARTNER 157

of beer. Then he goes to work whittling away
the forelock of the forty-five-fathoni shackle-
pin, gives it a tap or two with a hammer just
to make it loose, and of course that cable wasn't
safe any more. Riggers come back — you know
what riggers are: come day, go day, and God
send Sunday. Down goes the chain into the
locker without their foreman looking at the
shackles at all. What does he care? He ain't
going in the ship. And two days later the ship
goes to sea. . . ."

At this point I was incautious enough to
breathe out another "I see," which gave offence
again, and brought on me a rude "No, you
don't" — as before. But in the pause he re-
membered the glass of beer at his elbow. He
drank half of it, wiped his mustaches, and re-
marked grimly —

"Don't you think that there will be any sea
life in this, because there ain't. If you're
going to put in any out of your own head, now's
your chance. I suppose you know what ten
days of bad weather in the Channel are like.?
I don't. Anyway, ten whole days go by.
One Monday Cloete comes to the office a little
late — hears a woman's voice in George's room
and looks in. Newspapers on the desk, on the

158 THE PARTNER

floor; Captain Harry's wife sitting with red
eyes and a bag on the chair near her. . .
Look at this, says George, in great excitement,
showing him a paper. Cloete's heart gives a
jump. Ha! Wreck in Westport Bay. The
Sagamore gone ashore early hours of Sunday,
and so the newspaper men had time to put in
some of their work. Columns of it. Lifeboat
out twice. Captain and crew remain by the
ship. Tugs summoned to assist. If the wea-
ther improves, this well-known fine ship may
yet be saved. . . . You know the way these
chaps put it. . . . Mrs. Harry there on
her way to catch a train from Cannon Street.
Got an hour to wait.

"Cloete takes George aside and whispers:
Ship saved yet! Oh, damn! That must never
be; you hear.^ But George looks at him dazed,
and Mrs. Harry keeps on sobbing quietly:
. . . I ought to have been with him. But
I am going to him. . . . We are all going
together, cries Cloete, all of a sudden. He
rushes out, sends the woman a cup of hot bovril
from the shop across the road, buys a rug for
her, thinks of everything; and in the train
tucks her in and keeps on talking, thirteen to
the dozen, all the way, to keep her spirits up,
as it were; but really because he can't hold his

THE PARTNER 159

peace for very joy. Here's the thing done all at
once, and nothing to pay. Done. Actually
done. His head swims now and again when he
thinks of it. What enormous luck! It almost
frightens him. He would like to yell and sing.
Meantime George Dunbar sits in his corner,
looking so deadly miserable that at last poor
Mrs. Harry tries to comfort him, and so cheers
herseK up at the same time by talking about
how her Harry is a prudent man; not likely to
risk his crew's life or his own unnecessarily —
and so on.

"First thing they hear at Westport station
is that the life-boat has been out to the ship
again, and has brought off the second officer,
who had hurt himself, and a few sailors. Cap-
tain and the rest of the crew, about fifteen in
all, are still on board. Tugs expected to arrive
every moment.

"They take Mrs. Harry to the inn, nearly
opposite the rocks; she bolts straight up-stairs
to look out of the window, and she lets out a
great cry when she sees the wreck. She won't
rest till she gets on board to her Harry. Cloete
soothes her all he can. . . . All right; you
try to eat a mouthful, and we will go to make
inquiries.

"He draws George out of the room: Look

160 THE PARTNER

here, she can't go on board, but I shall. I'll
see to it that he doesn't stop in the ship too
long. Let's go and find the coxswain of the
life-boat. . . . George follows him, shiver-
ing from time to time. The waves are washing
over the old pier; not much wind, a wdld, gloomy
sky over the bay. In the whole world only one tug
away off, heading to the seas, tossed in and out
of sight every minute as regular as clockwork.

"They meet the coxswain and he tells them:
Yes! He's going out again. No, they ain't in
danger on board — not yet! But the ship's
chance is very poor. Still, if the wind doesn't
pipe up again and the sea goes down something
might be tried. After some talk he agrees to
take Cloete on board; supposed to be with an
urgent message from the owners to the captain.

*' Whenever Cloete looks at the sky he feels
comforted; it looks so threatening. George
Dunbar follows him about with a white face
and saying nothing. Cloete takes him to have
a drink or two, and by and by he begins to pick
up. . . . That's better, says Cloete; dash
me if it wasn't like walking about with a dead
man before. You ought to be throwing up your
cap, man. I feel as if I wanted to stand in the
street and cheer. Your brother is safe, the
ship is lost, and we are made men.

THE PARTNER 161

"Are you certain she's lost? asks George. It
would be an awful blow after all the agonies I
have gone through in my mind, since you first
spoke to me, if she were to be got off — and —
and — all this temptation to begin over again.
. . . For we had nothing to do with this;
had we.^

"Of course not, says Cloete. Wasn't your
brother himself in charge.^ It's providential.
. . . Oh! cries George, shocked. . . .
Well, say it's the devil, says Cloete, cheerfully.
I don't mind! You had nothing to do with it
any more than a baby unborn, you great softy,
you. . . . Cloete has got so that he almost
loved George Dunbar. Well. Yes. That was
so. I don't mean he respected him. He was
just fond of his partner.

"They go back, you may say fairly skipping,
to the hotel, and find the wife of the captain
at the open window, with her eyes on the ship
as if she wanted to fly across the bay over
there. . . . Now then, Mrs. Dunbar, cries
Cloete, you can't go, but I am going. Any mes-
sages.? Don't be shy. I'll deliver every word
faithfully. And if you would like to give me a
kiss for him, I'll deliver that too, dash me if I
don't.

"He makes Mrs. Harry laugh with his pat-

162 THE PARTNER

ter. . . . Oh, dear Mr. Cloete, you are a
calm, reasonable man. Make him behave
sensibly. He's a bit obstinate, you know, and
he's so fond of the ship, too. Tell him I am
here — looking on. . . . Trust me, Mrs.
Dunbar. Only shut that window, that's a
good girl. You will be sure to catch cold if
you don't, and the Captain won't be pleased
coming off the wreck to find you coughing and
sneezing so that you can't tell him how happy
you are. And now if you can get me a bit of
tape to fasten my glasses on good to my ears,
I will be going.

"How he gets on board I don't know. All
wet and shaken and excited and out of breath,
he does get on board. Ship lying over, smoth-
ered in sprays, but not moving very much; just
enough to jag one's nerve a bit. He finds them
all crowded on the deck-house forward, in their
shiny oilskins, with faces like sick men. Cap-
tain Harry can't believe his eyes. What! Mr.
Cloete! What are you doing here, in God's
name? . . . Your wife's ashore there, look-
ing, on, gasps out Cloete; and after they had
talked a bit. Captain Harry thinks it's uncom-
monly plucky and kind of his brother's partner
to come off to him like this. Man glad to
have somebody to talk to. . . . It's a

THE PARTNER 163

bad business, Mr. Cloete, he says. And Cloete
rejoices to hear that. Captain Harry thinks he
had done his best, but the cable had parted
when he tried to anchor her. It was a great
trial to lose the ship. Well, he would have to
face it. He fetches a deep sigh now and then.
Cloete almost sorry he had come on board,
because to be on that wreck keeps his chest
in a tight band all the time. They crouch
out of the wind under the port boat, a little
apart from the men. The life-boat had gone
away after putting Cloete on board, but was
coming back next high water to take off the
crew if no attempt at getting the ship afloat
could be made. Dusk was falHng; winter's
day; black sky; wind rising. Captain Harry
felt melancholy. God's will be done. If she
must be left on the rocks — why, she must. A
man should take what God sends him standing
up. . . . Suddenly his voice breaks, and
he squeezes Cloete's arm: It seems as if I
couldn't leave her, he whispers. Cloete looks
round at the men like a lot of huddled sheep and
thinks to himself: They won't stay. . . .
Suddenly the ship lifts a little and sets dowTi with
a thump. Tide rising. Everybody beginning
to look out for the life-boat. Some of the men
made her out far away and also two more tugs.

164 THE PARTNER

But the gale has come on again, and everybody
knows that no tug will ever dare come near the
ship.

"That's the end, Captain Harry says, very
low. . . . Cloete thinks he never felt so
cold in all his life. . . . And I feel as if I
\^ didn't care to live on just now, mutters Captain
Harry. . . . Your wife's ashore, looking
on, says Cloete. . . . Yes. Yes. It must
be awful for her to look at the poor old ship
lying here done for. Why, that's our home.

"Cloete thinks that as long as the Sagamore's
done for he doesn't care, and only wishes himself
somewhere else. The slightest movement of
the ship cuts his breath like a blow. And he
feels excited by the danger, too. The captain
takes him aside. . . . The life-boat can't
come near us for more than an hour. Look
here, Cloete, since you are here, and such a
plucky one — do something for me.
He tells him then that down in his cabin aft in
a certain drawer there is a bundle of important
papers and some sixty sovereigns in a small
canvas bag. Asks Cloete to go and get these
things out. He hasn't been below since the
ship struck, and it seems to him that if he were
to take his eyes off her she would fall to pieces.
And then the men — a scared lot by this time^

THE PARTNER 165

if he were to leave them by themselves they
would attempt to launch one of the ship's boats
in a panic at some heavier thump — and then
some of them bound to get drowned. . .
There are two or three boxes of matches about
my shelves in my cabin if you want a light,
says Captain Harry. Only w^ipe your wet hands
before you begin to feel for them.

"Cloete doesn't like the job, but doesn't like
to show funk, either — and he goes. Lots of
water on the main-deck, and he splashes along;
it was getting dark, too. All at once, by the
mainmast, somebody catches him by the arm.
Stafford. He wasn't thinking of Stafford at all.
Captain Harry had said something as to the
mate not being quite satisfactory, but it wasn't
much. Cloete doesn't recognise him in his
oilskins at first. He sees a white face with big
eyes peering at him. . . . Are you pleased,
Mr. Cloete . . . ?

"Cloete is moved to laugh at the whine, and
shakes him off. But the fellow scrambles on
after him on the poop and follows him down into
the cabin of that wrecked ship. And there
they are, the two of them; can hardly see each
other. . . . You don't mean to make me
believe you have had anything to do with this,
says Cloete. . . .

166 THE PARTNER

*'They both shiver, nearly out of their wits
with the excitement of being on board that ship.
She thumps and lurches, and they stagger to-
gether, feeling sick. Cloete again bursts out
laughing at that wretched creature Stafford
pretending to have been up to something so
desperate. ... Is that how you think you
can treat me now? yells the other man all of a
sudden. . . .

"A sea strikes the stem, the ship trembles
and groans all round them, there's the noise of
the seas about and overhead, confusing Cloete,
and he hears the other screaming as if crazy.
. . . Ah, you don't believe me! Go and
look at the port chain. Parted? Eh? Go and
see if it's parted. Go and find the broken link.
You can't. There's no broken link. That
means a thousand pounds for me. No less.
A thousand the day after we get ashore —
prompt. I won't wait till she breaks up, Mr.
Cloete. To the underwriters I go if I've to
walk to London on my bare feet. Port cable!
Look at her port cable, I will say to them. I
doctored it — for the owners — tempted by a low
rascal called Cloete.

"Cloete does not understand what it means
exactly. All he sees is that the fellow means to
make mischief. He sees trouble ahead. . . .

THE PARTNER 167

Do you think you can scare me? he asks — you
poor miserable skunk. . . . And Stafford
faces him out — both holding on to the cabin
table : No, damn you, you are only a dirty vaga-
bond; but I can scare the other, the chap in the
black coat. . . .

"Meaning George Dunbar. Cloete's brain
reels at the thought. He doesn't imagine the
fellow can do any real harm, but he knows what
George is; give the show away; upset the whole
business he had set his heart on. He says
nothing; he hears the other, what with the funk
and strain and excitement, panting like a dog —
and then a snarl. ... A thousand down,
twenty -four hours after we get ashore; day
after to-morrow. That's my last word, Mr.
Cloete. ... A thousand pounds, day after
to-morrow, says Cloete. Oh, yes. And to-day
take this, you dirty cur. . . . He hits
straight from the shoulder in sheer rage, noth-
ing else. Stafford goes away spinning along the
bulkhead. Seeing this, Cloete steps out and
lands him another one somewhere about the
jaw. The fellow staggers backward right into
the captain's cabin through the open door.
Cloete, following him up, hears him fall down
heavily and roll to leeward, then slams the door
to and turns the key. . . . There! says he

168 THE PARTNER

to himself, that will stop you from making
trouble."

" By Jove ! " I murmured.

The old fellow departed from his impressive
immobility to turn his rakishly hatted head and
look at me with his old, black, lack-lustre
eyes.

"He did leave him there," he uttered, weight-
ily, returning to the contemplation of the wall.
"Cloete didn't mean to allow anybody, let
alone a thing like Stafford, to stand in the way
of his great notion of making George and him-
self, and Captain Harry, too, for that matter,
rich men. And he didn't think much of con-
sequences. These patent-medicine chaps don't
care what they say or what they do. They
think the world's bound to swallow any story
they like to tell. . . . He stands listening
for a bit. And it gives him quite a turn to hear
a thump at the door and a sort of muffled raving
screech inside the captain's room. He thinks
he hears his own name, too, through the awful
crash as the old Sagamore rises and falls to a sea.
That noise and that awful shock make him clear
out of the cabin. He collects his senses on the
poop. But his heart sinks a little at the black
wildness of the night. Chances that he will
get drowned himself before long. Puts his head

THE PARTNER 169

down the companion. Through the wind and
breaking seas he can hear the noise of Stafford's
beating against the door and cursing. He
hstens and says to himself: No. Can't trust
him now.

"When he gets back to the top of the deck-
house he says to Captain Harry, who asks him
if he got the things, that he is very sorry. There
was something wrong with the door. Couldn't
open it. And to tell you the truth, says he,
I didn't like to stop any longer in that cabin.
There are noises there as if the ship were going
to pieces. . . . Captain Harry thinks:
Nervous; can't be anything wrong with the
door. But he says: Thanks — never mind,
never mind. ... All hands looking out
now for the life-boat. Everybody thinking
of himself rather. Cloete asks himself, will
they miss him.^ But the fact is that Mr. Staf-
ford had made such poor show at sea that after
the ship struck nobody ever paid any attention
to him. Nobody cared what he did or where
he was. Pitch dark, too — no counting of heads.
The light of the tug with the life-boat in tow
is seen making for the ship, and Captain Harry
asks: Are we all there .^^ . . . Somebody
answers: All here, sir. . . . Stand by to
leave the ship, then, says Captain Harry; and

170 THE PARTNER

two of you help the gentleman over first. . . .
xAye, aye, sir. . . . Cloete was moved to
ask Captain Harry to let him stay till last, but
the life-boat drops on a grapnel abreast the
fore-rigging, two chaps lay hold of him, watch
their chance, and drop him into her, all safe.

"He's nearly exhausted; not used to that sort
of thing, you see. He sits in the stern-sheets with
his eyes shut. Don't want to look at the white
water boiling all around. The men drop into
the boat one after another. Then he hears
Captain Harry's voice shouting in the wind to
the coxswain, to hold on a moment, and some
other words he can't catch, and the coxswain
yelling back: Don't be long, sir. . . . What is
it.^ Cloete asks, feeling faint. . . . Something
about the ship's papers, says the coxswain, very
anxious. It's no time to be fooling about along-
side, you understand. They haul the boat off a
little and wait. The water flies over her in sheets.
Cloete' s senses almost leave him. He thinks of
nothing. He's numb all over, till there's a shout :
Here he is ! . . . They see a figure in the fore-
rigging waiting — they slack away on the grapnel-
line and get him in the boat quite easy. There is
a little shouting — it's all mixed up with the noise
of the sea. Cloete fancies that Stafford's voice
is talking away quite close to his ear. There's a

THE PARTNER 171

lull in the wind, and Stafford's voice seems to be
speaking very fast to the coxswain; he tells him
that of course he was near his skipper, was all the
time near him, till the old man said at the last
moment that he must go and get the ship's
papers from aft; would insist on going himself;
told him, Stafford, to get into the life-boat.
. . . He had meant to wait for his skipper,
only there came this smooth of the seas, and he
thought he would take his chance at once.

"Cloete opens his eyes. Yes. There's Staf-
ford sitting close by him in that crowded life-
boat. The coxswain stoops over Cloete and
cries: Did you hear what the mate said, sir.^
Cloete's face feels as if it were set in
plaster, lips and all. Yes, I did, he forces him-
self to answer. The coxswain waits a moment,
then says: I don't like it. . . . And he turns
to the mate, telling him it was a pity he did not
try to run along the deck and hurry up the cap-
tain when the lull came. Stafford answers at
once that he did think of it, only he was afraid of
missing him on the deck in the dark. For, says
he, the captain might have got over at once,
thinking I was already in the life-boat, and you
would have hauled off perhaps, leaving me be-
hind. . . . True enough, says the coxswain.
A minute or so passes. This won't do, mutters the

172 THE PARTNER

coxswain. Suddenly Stafford speaks up in a sort
of hollow voice: I was by when he told Mr. Cloete
here that he didn't know how he would ever have
the courage to leave the old ship; didn't he, now?
. . . And Cloete feels his arm being gripped
quietly in the dark. . . . Didn't he now?
We were standing together just before you went
over, Mr. Cloete? . . .

"Just then the coxswain cries out: I'm going
on board to see. . . . Cloete tears his arm
away: I am going with you. . . .

"When they get aboard, the coxswain tells
Cloete to go aft along one side of the ship and he
would go along on the other so as not to miss the
captain. . . . And feel about with your hands,
too, says he; he might have fallen and be lying in-
sensible somewhere on the deck. . . . When
Cloete gets at last to the cabin companion on the
poop the coxswain is already there, peering down
and sniffing. I detect the smell of smoke down
there, says he. And he yells: Are you there, sir?
. . . This is not a case for shouting, says
Cloete, feeling his heart go stony, as it were.
. . . Down they go. Pitch dark; the incli-
nation so sharp that the coxswain, groping his
way into the captain's room, slips and goes
tumbling down. Cloete hears him cry out as
though he had hurt himself, and asks what's the

THE PARTNER 173

matter. And the coxswain answers quietly
that he had fallen on the captain, lying there in-
sensible. Cloete without a word begins to grope
all over the shelves for a box of matches, finds
one, strikes a light. He sees the coxswain in his
cork jacket kneeling over Captain Harry. . . .
Blood, says the coxswain, looking up, and the
match goes out. . . .

"Wait a bit, says Cloete; I'll make paper
spills. ... He had felt the back of books
on the shelves. And so he stands lighting one
spill from another while the coxswain turns poor
Captain Harry over. Dead, he says. Shot
through the heart. Here's the revolver. . . .
He hands it up to Cloete, who looks at it before
putting it in his pocket, and sees a plate on the
butt with H. Dunbar on it. . . . His own, he
mutters. . . . Wliose else revolver did you
expect to find? snaps the coxswain. And look,
he took off his long oilskin in the cabin before he
went in. But what's this lot of burnt paper.^
what could he want to burn the ship's papers
for.? . . .

" Cloete sees all the little drawers drawn out,
and asks the coxswain to look well into them.
. . . There's nothing, says the man. Cleaned
out. Seems to have pulled out all he could lay
his hands on and set fire to the lot. Mad —

174 THE PARTNER

that's what it is — went mad. And now he's
dead. You'll have to break it to his wife. . . .

"I feel as if I were going mad myself, says
Cloete, suddenly, and the coxswain begs him for
God's sake to pull himself together, and drags
him away from the cabin. They had to leave
the body, and as it was they were just in time be-
fore a furious squall came on. Cloete is dragged
into the life-boat and the coxswain tumbles in.
Haul away on the grapnel, he shouts; the captain
has shot himself. . . .

" Cloete was like a dead man — didn't care for
anything. He let that Stafford pinch his arm
twice without making a sign. Most of West-
port was on the old pier to see the men out of the
life-boat, and at first there was a sort of confused
cheery uproar when she came alongside; but
after the coxswain has shouted something the
voices die out, and everybody is very quiet. As
soon as Cloete has set foot on something firm he
becomes himself again. The coxswain shakes
hands with him: Poor woman, poor woman, I'd
rather you had the job than I. . . .

"Where's the mate.^ asks Cloete. He's the
last man who spoke to the master. . . .
Somebody ran along — the crew were being taken
to the Mission Hall, where there was a fire and
shake-downs ready for them — somebody ran

THE PARTNER 175

along the pier and caught up with Stafford.
. . . Here! The owner's agent wants you.
. . . Cloete tucks the fellow's arm under his
own and walks away with him to the left, where
the fishing harbour is. . . .1 suppose I haven't
misunderstood you. You wish me to look after
you a bit, says he. The other hangs on him
rather limp, but gives a nasty little laugh: You
had better, he mumbles; but mind, no tricks; no
tricks, Mr. Cloete; we are on land now.

"There's a police office within fifty yards from
here, says Cloete. He turns into a little public
house, pushes Stafford along the passage. The
landlord runs out of the bar. . . . This is the
mate of the ship on the rocks, Cloete explains; I
wish you would take care of him a bit to-night.
. Wiat's the matter with him? asks the
man. Stafford leans against the wall in the
passage, looking ghastly. And Cloete says it's
nothing — done up, of course. ... I will be
responsible for the expense; I am the owner's
agent. I'll be round in an hour or two to see him.

"And Cloete gets back to the hotel. The
news had travelled there already, and the first
thing he sees is George outside the door as white
as a sheet waiting for him. Cloete just gives him
a nod and they go in. Mrs. Harry stands at the
head of the stairs, and, when she sees only these

176 THE PARTNER

two coming up, flings her arms above her head
and runs into her room. Nobody had dared tell
her, but not seeing her husband was enough.
Cloete hears an awful shriek. . . . Go to
her, he says to George.

"While he's alone in the private parlour
Cloete drinks a glass of brandy and thinks it all
out. Then George comes in. . . . The land-
lady's with her, he says. And he begins to walk
up and down the room, flinging his arms about
and talking, disconnected like, his face set hard
as Cloete has never seen it before. . . . What
must be, must be. Dead — only brother. Well,
dead — his troubles over. But we are living, he
says to Cloete; and I suppose, says he, glaring at
him with hot, dry eyes, that you won't forget to
wire in the morning to your friend that we are
coming in for certain.

" Meaning the patent-medicine fellow. . . .
Death is death and business is business, George
goes on; and look — my hands are clean, he says,
showing them to Cloete. Cloete thinks: He's
going crazy. He catches hold of him by the
shoulders and begins to shake him : Damn you —
if you had had the sense to know what to say to
your brother, if you had had the spunk to speak
to him at all, you moral creature you, he would
be alive now, he shouts.

THE PARTNER 177

"At this George stares, then bursts out weep-
ing with a great bellow. He throws himself on
the couch, buries his face in a cushion, and howls
like a kid. . . . That's better, thinks Cloete,
and he leaves him, telling the landlord that he
must go out, as he has some little business to
attend to that night. The landlord's wife, weep-
ing herself, catches him on the stairs: Oh, sir,
that poor lady will go out of her mind. . . .

*' Cloete shakes her off thinking to himself:
Oh, no ! She won't. She will get over it. No-
body will go mad about this affair unless I do.
It isn't sorrow that makes people go mad, but
worry.

"There Cloete was wrong. What affected
Mrs. Harry was that her husband should take
his own life, with her, as it were, looking on.
She brooded over it so that in less than a year
they had to put her in a Home. She was very,
very quiet; just gentle melancholy. She lived
for quite a long time.

"Well, Cloete splashes along in the wind and
rain. Nobody in the streets — all the excitement
over. The publican runs out to meet him in the
passage and says to him: Not this way. He
isn't in his room. We couldn't get him to go to
bed nohow. He's in the Httle parlour there.
We've lighted him a fire. . . . You have been

178 THE PARTNER

giving him drinks too, says Cloete; I never said I
would be responsible for drinks. How many?
. . . Two, says the other. It's all right. I
don't mind doing that much for a ship-
wrecked sailor. . . . Cloete smiles his
funny smile: Eh? Come. He paid for them.

The publican just blinks.
Gave you gold, didn't he? Speak up!
What of that! cries the man. What are you
after, anyway? He had the right change for
his sovereign.

"Just so, says Cloete. He walks into the
parlour, and there he sees our Stafford; hair all
up on end, landlord's shirt and pants on, bare
feet in slippers, sitting by the fire. When he
sees Cloete he casts his eyes down.

"You didn't mean us ever to meet again,
Mr. Cloete, Stafford says, demurely.
That fellow, when he had the drink he wanted —
he wasn't a drunkard — would put on this sort
of sly, modest air. . . . But since the cap-
tain committed suicide, he says, I have been
sitting here thinking it out. All sorts of things
happen. Conspiracy to lose the ship — at-
tempted murder — and this suicide. For if it
was not suicide, Mr. Cloete, then I know of
a victim of the most cruel, cold-blooded attempt
at murder; somebody who has suffered a thou-

THE PARTNER 179

sand deaths. And that makes the thousand
pounds of which we spoke once a quite insignifi-
cant sum. Look how very convenient this sui-
cide is. . . .

"He looks up at Cloete then, who smiles at
him and comes quite close to the table.

"You killed Harry Dunbar, he whispers. . . .
The fellow glares at him and shows his teeth:
Of course I did! I had been in that cabin for
an hour and a half like a rat in a trap. . . .
Shut up and left to drown in that wreck. Let
flesh and blood judge. Of course I shot him!
I thought it was you, you murdering scoundrel,
come back to settle me. He opens the door
flying and tumbles right down upon me; I had,
a revolver in my hand, and I shot him. I was
crazy. Men have gone crazy for less.

" Cloete looks at him without flinching. Aha !
That's your story, is it? . . . And he
shakes the table a little in his passion as he
speaks. . . . Now listen to mine. What's
this conspiracy? Who's going to prove it?
You were there to rob. You were rifling his
cabin; he came upon you unawares with your
hands in the drawer; and you shot him with
his own revolver. You killed to steal — to steal !
His brother and the clerks in the office know
that he took sixty pounds with him to sea.

180 THE PARTNER

Sixty pounds in gold in a canvas bag. He told
me where they were. The coxswain of the
life-boat can swear to it that the drawers were
all empty. And you are such a fool that before
you're half an hour ashore you change a sov-
ereign to pay for a drink. Listen to me. If
you don't turn up day after to-morrow at
George Dunbar's solicitors, to make the proper
deposition as to the loss of the ship, I shall set
the police on your track. Day after to-mor-
row. . . .

"And then what do you think? That Staf-
ford begins to tear his hair. Just so. Tugs
at it with both hands without saying anything.
Cloete gives a push to the table which nearly
sends the fellow off his chair, tumbling inside
the fender; so that he has got to catch hold of it
to save himself. .

"You know the sort of man I am, Cloete says,
fiercely. I've got to a point that I don't care
what happens to me. I would shoot you now
for tuppence.

"At this the cur dodges under the table.
Then Cloete goes out, and as he turns in the
street — you know, little fishermen's cottages,
all dark; raining in torrents, too — the other
opens the window of the parlour and speaks in a
sort of crying voice —

THE PARTNER 181

"You low Yankee fiend — I'll pay you off
some day.

"Cloete passes by with a damn bitter laugh,
because he thinks that the fellow in a way has
paid him off already, if he only knew it."

My impressive ruffian drank what remained of
his beer, while his black, sunken eyes looked at
me over the rim.

"I don't quite understand this," I said. "In
what way.^"

He unbent a little and explained without too
much scorn that Captain Harry being dead, his
half of the insurance money went to his wife,
and her trustees of course bought consols with
it. Enough to keep her comfortable. George
Dunbar's half, as Cloete feared from the first,
did not prove sufficient to launch the medicine
well; other moneyed men stepped in, and these
two had to go out of that business, pretty nearly
shorn of everything.

"I am curious," I said, "to learn what the
motive force of this tragic affair was — I mean
the patent medicine. Do you know.^^ "

He named it, and I whistled respectfully.
Nothing less than Parker's Lively Lum-
bago Pills. Enormous property! You know
it; all the world knows it. Every second

Au ^-^\

182 THE PARTNER

man, at least, on this globe of ours has tried
it.

"Why!" I cried, "they missed an immense
fortune."

"Yes," he mumbled, "by the price of a re-
volver-shot."

He told me also that eventually Cloete re-
turned to the States, passenger in a cargo-boat
from Albert Dock. The night before he sailed
he met him wandering about the quays, and
took him home for a drink. "Funny chap,
Cloete. We sat all night drinking grogs, till
it was time for him to go on board."

It was then that Cloete, unembittered but
weary, told him this story, with that utterly
unconscious frankness of a patent-medicine
man stranger to all moral standards. Cloete
concluded by remarking that he had "had
enough of the old country." George Dunbar
had turned on him, too, in the end. Cloete
was clearly somewhat disillusioned.

As to Stafford, he died, professed loafer, in
some East End hospital or other, and on his last
day clamoured "for a parson," because his
conscience worried him for killing an innocent
man. "Wanted somebody to tell him it was
all right," growled my old ruffian, contemptu-
ously. "He told the parson that I knew this

THE PARTNER 188

Cloete who had tried to murder him, and so the
parson (he worked among the dock labourers)
once spoke to me about it. That skunk of a
fellow finding himself trapped yelled for mercy.
. . . Promised to be good and so on. . . .
Then he went crazy . . . screamed and threw
himself about, beat his head against the bulk-
heads . . . you can guess all that — eh?
till he was exhausted. Gave up.
Threw himself down, shut his eyes, and wanted
to pray. So he says. Tried to think of some
prayer for a quick death — he was that terrified.
Thought that if he had a knife or something he
would cut his throat, and be done with it. Then
he thinks: No! Would try to cut away the
wood about the lock. . . . He had no knife
in his pocket. . . . He was weeping and
calling on God to send him a tool of some
kind when suddenly he thinks: Axe! In
most ships there is a spare emergency axe
kept in the master's room in some locker or
other. . . . Up he jumps. . . . Pitch
dark. Pulls at the drawers to find matches
and, groping for them, the first thing he comes
upon — Captain Harry's revolver. Loaded
too. He goes perfectly quiet all over. Can
shoot the lock to pieces. See? Saved! God's
providence! There are boxes of matches too.

184 THE PARTNER

Thinks he: I may just as well see what I am
about.

"Strikes a light and sees the little canvas bag
tucked away at the back of the drawer. Knew
at once what that was. Rams it into his pocket
quick. Aha! says he to himself: this requires
more light. So he pitches a lot of paper on the
floor, set fire to it, and starts in a hurry rum-
maging for more valuables. Did you ever?
He told that East-End parson that the devil
tempted him. First God's mercy — then devil's
work. Turn and turn about. . . .

"Any squirming skunk can talk like that.
He was so busy with the drawers that the first
thing he heard was a shout. Great Heavens.
He looks up and there was the door open (Cloete
had left the key in the lock) and Captain Harry
holding on, well above him, very fierce in the
light of the burning papers. His eyes were
starting out of his head. Thieving, he thunders
at him. A sailor! An officer! No! A wretch
like you deserves no better than to be left here
to drown.

"This Stafford — on his death-bed — told the
parson that when he heard these words he went
crazy again. He snatched his hand with the
revolver in it out of the drawer, and fired with-
out aiming. Captain Harry fell right in with a

THE PARTNER 185

crash like a stone on top of the burning papers,
putting the blaze out. All dark. Not a sound.
He listened for a bit then dropped the revolver
and scrambled out on deck like mad."

The old fellow struck the table with his
ponderous fist.

"What makes me sick is to hear these silly
boatmen telling people the captain committed
suicide. Pah ! Captain Harry was a man that
could face his Maker any time up there, and
here below, too. He wasn't the sort to slink
out of life. Not he! He was a good man down
to the ground. He gave me my first job as
stevedore only three days after I got mar-
ried."

As the vindication of Captain Harry from the
charge of suicide seemed to be his only object,
I did not thank him very effusively for his
material. And then it was not worth many
thanks in any case.

For it is too startling even to think of such
things happening in our respectable Channel in
full view, so to speak, of the luxurious conti-
nental traffic to Switzerland and Monte Carlo.
This story to be acceptable should have been
transposed to somewhere in the South Seas,
But it would have been too much trouble to
cook it for the consumption of magazine readers.

186 THE PARTNER

So here it is raw, so to speak — just as it was told
to me — but unfortunately robbed of the striking
effect of the narrator; the most imposing old
ruffian that ever followed the unromantic trade
of master stevedore in the port of London.

Oct, 1910.

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES
A FIND

|1/^ '

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

A FIND

This tale, episode, experience — call it how you
will — was related in the fifties of the last century
by a man who, by his own confession, was sixty
years old at the time. Sixty is not a bad age —
unless in perspective, when no doubt it is con-
templated by the majority of us with mixed
feelings. It is a calm age; the game is practi-
cally over by then; and standing aside one be-
gins to remember with a certain vividness what
a fine fellow one used to be. I have observed
that, by an amiable attention of Providence,
most people at sixty begin to take a romantic
view of themselves. Their very failures exhale
a charm of peculiar potency. And indeed the
hopes of the future are a fine company to live
with, exquisite forms, fascinating if you like, but
— so to speak — naked, stripped for a run. The
robes of glamour are luckily the property of the
immovable past which, without them, would sit,
a shivery sort of thing, under the gathering
shadows.

190 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

I suppose it was the romanticism of growing
age which set our man to relate his experience for
his own satisfaction or for the wonder of his
posterity. It could not have been for his glory,
because the experience was simply that of an
abominable fright — terror he calls it. You
would have guessed that the relation alluded to
in the very first lines was in writing.

This writing constitutes the Find declared in
the sub-title. The title itself is my own con-
trivance (can't call it invention), and has the
merit of veracity. We will be concerned with
an inn here. As to the witches that's merely a
conventional expression, and we must take our
man's word for it that it fits the case.

The Find was made in a box of books bought
in London, in a street which no longer exists,
from a second-hand bookseller in the last stage
of decay. As to the books themselves they were
at least twentieth-hand, and on inspection
turned out not worth the very small sum of
money I disbursed. It might have been some
premonition of the fact which made me say : " But
I must have the box too." The decayed book-
seller assented by the careless, tragic gesture of a
man already doomed to extinction.

A litter of loose pages at the bottom of the box
excited my curiosity but faintly. The close.

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 191

neat, regular handwriting was not attractive at
first sight. But in one place the statement that
in A. D. 1813 the writer was twenty-two years old
caught my; eye. Two and twenty is an interest-
ing age in which one is easily reckless and easily
frightened; the faculty of reflection being weak
and the power of imagination strong.

In another place the phrase: "At night we
stood in again," arrested my languid attention,
because it was a sea phrase. "Let's see what it
is all about," I thought, without excitement.

Oh! but it was a dull-faced MS., each line re-
sembling every other line in their close-set and
regular order. It was like the drone of a monoto-
nous voice. A treatise on sugar-refining (the
dreariest subject I can think of) could have been
given a more lively appearance. " In a. d. 1813
I was twenty-two years old," he begins earnestly,
and goes on with every appearance of calm,
horrible industry. Don't imagine, however,
that there is anything archaic in my find. Dia-
bolic ingenuity in invention though as old as the
world is by no means a lost art. Look at the
telephones for shattering the little peace of mind
given to us in this world, or at the machine guns
for letting with dispatch life out of our bodies.
Now-a-days any blear-eyed old witch if only
strong enough to turn an insignificant little

192 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

handle could lay low a hundred young men of
twenty in the twinkling of an eye.

If this isn't progress ! . . . Why immense !
We have moved on, and so you must expect to
meet here a certain naiveness of contrivance and
simplicity of aim appertaining to the remote
epoch. And of course no motoring tourist can
hope to find such an inn anywhere, now. This
one, the one of the title, was situated in Spain.
That much I discovered only from internal
evidence, because a good many pages of that re-
lation were missing — perhaps not a great mis-
fortune after all. The writer seemed to have
entered into a most elaborate detail of the why
and wherefore of his presence on that coast —
presumably the north coast of Spain. His ex-
perience has nothing to do with the sea, though.
As far as I can make it out, he was an officer on
board a sloop-of-war. There's nothing strange
in that. At all stages of the long Peninsular
campaign many of our men-of-war of the smaller
kind were cruising off the north coast of Spain —
as risky and disagreeable a station as can well be
imagined.

It looks as though that ship of his had had
some special service to perform. A careful ex-
planation of all the circumstances was to be ex-
pected from our man, only, as I've said, some of

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 193

his pages (good tough paper too) were missing:
gone in covers for jampots or in wadding for the
fowHng-pieces of his irreverent posterity. But
it is to be seen clearly that communication with
the shore and even the sending of messages in-
land was part of her service, either to obtain in-
telligence from or to transmit orders or advice to
patriotic Spaniards, guerilleros or secret juntas
of the province. Something of the sort. All
this can be only inferred from the preserved
scraps of his conscientious writing.

Next we come upon the panegyric of a very
fine sailor, a member of the ship's company,
having the rating of the captain's coxswain. He
was known on board as Cuba Tom; not because
he was Cuban however; he was indeed the best
type of a genuine British tar of that time, and a
man-of-war's man for years. He came by the
name on account of some wonderful adventures
he had in that island in his young days, adven-
tures which were the favourite subject of the
yarns he was in the habit of spinning to his ship-
mates of an evening on the forecastle head. He
was intelligent, very strong, and of proved
courage. Incidentally we are told, so exact is
our narrator, that Tom had the finest pigtail for
thickness and length of any man in the Navy.
This appendage, much cared for and sheathed

194 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

tightly in a porpoise skin, hung half way down
his broad back to the great admiration of all be-
holders and to the great envy of some.

Our young oflficer dwells on the manly quali-
ties of Cuba Tom with something like affection.
This sort of relation between officer and man was
not then very rare. A youngster on joining the
service was put under the charge of a trust-
worthy seaman, who slung his first hammock for
him and often later on became a sort of humble
friend to the junior officer. The narrator on
joining the sloop had found this man on board
after some years of separation. There is some-
thing touching in the warm pleasure he remem-
bers and records at this meeting with the pro-
fessional mentor of his boyhood.

We discover then that, no Spaniard being
forthcoming for the service, this worthy seaman
with the unique pigtail and a very high char-
acter for courage and steadiness had been
selected as messenger for one of these missions
inland which have been mentioned. His prepa-
rations were not elaborate. One gloomy autumn
morning the sloop ran close to a shallow cove
where a landing could be made on that iron-
bound shore. A boat was lowered, and pulled
in with Tom Corbin (Cuba Tom) perched in the
bow, and our young man (Mr. Edgar Byrne was^

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 195

his name on this earth which knows him no more)
sitting in the stern sheets.

A few inhabitants of a hamlet, whose grey
stone houses could be seen a hundred yards or so
up a deep ravine, had come down to the shore
and watched the approach of the boat. The two
Englishmen leaped ashore. Either from dullness
or astonishment the peasants gave no greeting,
and only fell back in silence.

Mr. Byrne had made up his mind to see Tom
Corbin started fairly on his way. He looked
round at the heavy surprised faces.

"There isn't much to get out of them," he
said. *'Let us walk up to the village. There
will be a wine shop for sure where we may find
somebody more promising to talk to and get
some information from."

"Aye, aye, sir," said Tom, falling into step be-
hind his officer. "A bit of palaver as to courses
and distances can do no harm; I crossed the
broadest part of Cuba by the help of my tongue
tho* knowing far less Spanish than I do now. As
they say it themselves it was ' four words and no
more ' with me, that time when I got left behind
on shore by the Blanche, frigate."

He made light of what was before him, which
was but a day's journey into the mountains. It
is true that there was a full day's journey before

196 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

striking the mountain path, but that was noth-
ing for a man who had crossed the island of
Cuba on his two legs, and with no more than
four words of the language to begin with.

The oflBcer and the man were walking now on
a thick sodden bed of dead leaves, which the
peasants thereabouts accumulate in the streets of
their villages to rot during the winter for field
manure. Turning his head Mr. Byrne perceived
that the whole male population of the hamlet
was following them on the noiseless springy
carpet. Women stared from the doors of the
houses and the children had apparently gone
into hiding. The village knew the ship by sight,
afar off, but no stranger had landed on that spot
perhaps for a hundred years or more. The
I cocked hat of Mr. Byrne, the bushy whiskers
\ and the enormous pigtail of the sailor, filled them
with mute wonder. They pressed behind the
two Englishmen staring like those islanders dis-
covered by Captain Cook in the South Seas.

It was then that Byrne had his first glimpse of
the little cloaked man in a yellow hat. Faded
and dingy as it was, this covering for his head
made him noticeable.

The entrance to the wine shop was like a
rough hole in a wall of flints. The owner was
the only person who was not in the street, for

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 197

he came out from the darkness at the back where
the inflated forms of wine skins hung on nails
could be vaguely distinguished. He was a
tall, one-eyed Asturian with scrubby, hollow
cheeks; a grave expression of countenance con-
trasted enigmatically with the roaming restless-
ness of his solitary eye. On learning that the
matter in hand was the sending on his way of
that English mariner toward a certain Gonzales
in the mountains, he closed his good eye for a
moment as if in meditation. Then opened it,
very lively again.

"Possibly, possibly. It could be done."
A friendly murmur arose in the group in the
doorway at the name of Gonzales, the local
leader against the French. Inquiring as to the
safety of the road Byrne was glad to learn that
no troops of that nation had been seen in the
neighbourhood for months. Not the smallest
little detachment of these impious polizones.
While giving these answers the owner of the
wine-shop busied himself in drawing into an
earthenware jug some wine which he set before
the heretic English, pocketing with grave ab-
straction the small piece of money the oflficer
threw upon the table in recognition of the un-
written law that none may enter a wine-shop
without buying drink. His eye was in con-

198 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

stant motion as if it were trying to do the work
of the two; but when Byrne made inquiries as
to the possibiKty of hiring a mule, it became
immovably fixed in the direction of the door
which was closely besieged by the curious.
In front of them, just within the threshold, the
little man in the large cloak and yellow hat had
taken his stand. He was a diminutive person,
a mere homunculus, Byrne describes him, in a
ridiculously mysterious, yet assertive attitude,
a corner of his cloak thrown cavalierly over his
left shoulder, muffling his chin and mouth;
while the broad-brimmed yellow hat hung on a
corner of his square little head. He stood there
taking snuff, repeatedly.

"A mule," repeated the wine-seller, his eyes
fixed on that quaint and snuffy figure. . . .
"No, senor officer! Decidedly no mule is to
be got in this poor place."

The coxswain, who stood by with the true
sailor's air of unconcern in strange surround-
ings, struck in quietly —

"If your honour will believe me Shank's
pony's the best for this job. I would have to
leave the beast somewhere, anyhow, since the
captain has told me that half my way will be
along paths fit only for goats."

The diminutive man made a step forward, and

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 199

speaking through the folds of the cloak which
seemed to muffle a sarcastic intention —

" Si, senor. They are too honest in this vil-
lage to have a single mule amongst them for
your worship's service. To that I can bear
testimony. In these times it's only rogues or
very clever men who can manage to have mules
or any other four-footed beasts and the where-
withal to keep them. But what this valiant
mariner wants is a guide; and here, senor, be-
hold my brother-in-law, Bernardino, wine-seller,
and alcade of this most Christian and hospitable
village, who will find you one."

This, Mr. Byrne says in his relation, was the
only thing to do. A youth in a ragged coat
and goatskin breeches was produced after some
more talk. The English officer stood treat to
the whole village, and while the peasants drank
he and Cuba Tom took their departure accom-
panied by the guide. The diminutive man in
the cloak had disappeared.

Byrne went along with the coxswain out of
the village. He wanted to see him fairly on his
way; and he would have gone a greater distance,
if the seaman had not suggested respectfully
the advisability of return so as not to keep the
ship a moment longer than necessary so close
in with the shore on such an unpromising look-

200 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

ing morning. A wild gloomy sky hung over
their heads when they took leave of each other,
and their surroundings of rank bushes and
stony fields were dreary.

"In four days' time," were Byrne's last words,
"the ship will stand in and send a boat on shore
if the weather permits. If not you'll have to
make it out on shore the best you can till we
come along to take you off."

"Right you are, sir," answered Tom, and
strode on. Byrne watched him step out on a
narrow path. In a thick pea-jacket with a
pair of pistols in his belt, a cutlass by his side,
and a stout cudgel in his hand, he looked a
sturdy figure and well able to take care of him-
self. He turned round for a moment to wave
his hand, giving to Byrne one more view of his
honest bronzed face with bushy whiskers. The
lad in goatskin breeches looking, Byrne says,
like a faun or a young satyr leaping ahead,
stopped to wait for him, and then went off at a
bound. Both disappeared.

Byrne turned back. The hamlet was hidden
in a fold of the ground, and the spot seemed the
most lonely corner of the earth and as if accursed
in its uninhabited desolate barrenness. Before
he had walked many yards, there appeared very
suddenly from behind a bush the muffled up

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 201

diminutive Spaniard. Naturally Byrne stopped
short.

The other made a mysterious gesture with a
tiny hand peeping from under his cloak. His
hat hung very much at the side of his head.
*'Senor," he said without any preliminaries.
"Caution! It is a positive fact that one-eyed
Bernardino, my brother-in-law, has at this mo-
ment a mule in his stable. And why he who is
not clever has a mule there .^ Because he is a
rogue; a man without conscience. Because
I had to give up the macho to him to secure for
myself a roof to sleep under and a mouthful of
olla to keep my soul in this insignificant body of
mine. Yet, seiior, it contains a heart many
times bigger than the mean thing which beats
in the breast of that brute connection of mine
of which I am ashamed, though I opposed that
marriage with all my power. Well, the mis-
guided woman suffered enough. She had her
purgatory on this earth — God rest her soul."

Byrne says he was so astonished by the sudden
appearance of that sprite-like being, and by the
sardonic bitterness of the speech, that he was
unable to disentangle the significant fact from
what seemed but a piece of family history
fired out at him without rhyme or reason. Not
at first. He was confounded and at the same

202 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

time he was impressed by the rapid forcible
delivery, quite different from the frothy excited
loquacity of an Italian. So he stared while the
homunculus, letting his cloak fall about him,
aspired an immense quantity of snuff out of the
hollow of his palm.

"A mule," exclaimed Byrne, seizing at last
the real aspect of the discourse. "You say he
has got a mule.? That's queer! Why did he
refuse to let me have it.^^ "

The diminutive Spaniard muffled himself up
again with great dignity.

''Quien sabe,'' he said coldly, with a shrug of
his draped shoulders. "He is a great 'politico in
everything he does. But one thing your wor-
ship may be certain of — that his intentions are
always rascally. This husband of my defunta
sister ought to have been married a long time
ago to the widow with the wooden legs."^

"I see. But remember that, whatever your
motives, your worship countenanced him in this
lie."

The bright unhappy eyes on each side of a pred-
atory nose confronted Byrne without wincing,
while with that testiness which lurks so often at
the bottom of Spanish dignity —

^The gallows, supposed to be widowed of the last executed
criminal and waiting for another.

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 203

**No doubt the senor officer would not lose an
ounce of blood if I were stuck under the fifth
rib," he retorted. "But what of this poor
sinner here? " Then changing his tone. "Seiior,
b^:_4he necessities of the times I live here in
^ exile^a Castilian and an old Christian, existing
miserably in the midst of these brute Asturians,
and dependent on the worst of them all, who
has less conscience and scruples than a wolf.
And being a man of intelligence I govern myself
accordingly. Yet I can hardly contain my
scorn. You have heard the way I spoke. A
caballero of jmrts like your worship might have
guessed that there was a cat in there."

"WTiat cat.^" said Byrne uneasily. "Oh, I
see. Something suspicious. No, senor. I
guessed nothing. My nation are not good
guessers at that sort of thing; and, therefore, I
ask you plainly whether that wine-seller has
spoken the truth in other particulars.^ "

"There are certainly no Frenchmen any-
where about," said the little man with a return
to his. indifferent manner.

"Or robbers — ladrones P "

''Ladrones en grande — no! Assuredly not,"
was the answer in a cold philosophical tone.
"WTiat is there left for them to do after the
French.^ And nobody travels in these times.

204 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

But who can say! Opportunity makes the
robber. Still that mariner of yours has a fierce
aspect, and with the son of a cat rats will have
no play. But there is a saying, too, that where
honey is there will soon be flies."

This oracular discourse exasperated Byrne.
"In the name of God," he cried, "tell me plainly
if you think my man is reasonably safe on his
journey."

The homunculus, undergoing one of his rapid
changes, seized the officer's arm. The grip of
his little hand was astonishing.

"Senor! Bernardino had taken notice of
him. What more do you want? And listen
— men have disappeared on this road — on a
certain portion of this road, when Bernardino
kept a meson, an inn, and I, his brother-in-law,
had coaches and mules for hire. Now there
are no travellers, no coaches. The French have
ruined me. Bernardino has retired here for
reasons of his own after my sister died. They
were three to torment the life out of her, he
and Erminia and Lucilla, two aunts of his
— all affiliated to the devil. And now he has
robbed me of my last mule. You are an armed
man. Demand the macho from him, with a
pistol to his head, senor — it is not his, I tell
you — and ride after your man who is so pre-

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 205

cious to you. And then you shall both be safe,
for no two travellers have been ever known to
disappear together in those days. As to the
beast, I, its owner, I confide it to your honour."

They were staring hard at each other, and
Byrne nearly burst into a laugh at the ingenuity
and transparency of the little man's plot to re-
gain possession of his mule. But he had no
difficulty to keep a straight face because he felt
deep within himself a strange inclination to do
that very extraordinary thing. He did not
laugh, but his lip quivered at which the dimin-
utive Spaniard, detaching his black glittering
eyes from Byrne's face, turned his back on him
brusquely with a gesture and a fling of the cloak
which somehow expressed contempt, bitterness,
and discouragement all at once. He turned
away and stood still, his hat aslant, muffled up
to the ears. But he was not offended to the
point of refusing the silver duro which Byrne
offered him with a non-committal speech as if
nothing extraordinary had passed between them.

"I must make haste on board now," said
Byrne, then.

''Vaya usted con Dios'' muttered the gnome.
And this interview ended with a sarcastic low
sweep of the hat which was replaced at the same
perilous angle as before.

206 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

Directly the boat had been hoisted the ship's
sails were filled on the off-shore tack, and Byrne
imparted the whole story to his captain, who was
but a very few years older than himself. There
was some amused indignation at it — but while
they laughed they looked gravely at each other.
A Spanish dwarf trying to beguile an oflficer of his
majesty's navy into stealing a mule for him —
that was too funny, too ridiculous, too incredible.
Those were the exclamations of the captain . He
couldn't get over the grotesqueness of it.

"Incredible. That's just it," murmured
Byrne at last in a significant tone.

They exchanged a long stare. "It's as clear
as daylight," affirmed the captain impatiently,
because in his heart he was not certain. And
Tom the best seaman in the ship for one, the
good-humouredly deferential friend of his boy-
hood for the other, was becoming endowed with
^a compelling fascination, like a symbolic figure
of loyalty appealing to their feelings and their
conscience, so that they could not detach their
thoughts from his safety. Several times they
went up on deck, only to look at the coast, as if
it could tell them something of his fate. It
stretched away, lengthening in the distance,
mute, naked, and savage, veiled now and then by
the slanting cold shafts of rain. The westerly

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 207

swell rolled its interminable angry lines of foam
and big dark clouds flew over the ship in a sin-
ister procession.

"I wish to goodness you had done what your
little friend in the yellow hat wanted you to do,"
said the commander of the sloop late in the
afternoon with visible exasperation.

**Do you, sir.^" answered Byrne, bitter with
positive anguish. "I wonder what you would
have said afterward ? Why ! I might have been
kicked out of the service for looting a mule from
a nation in alliance with His Majesty. Or I
might have been battered to a pulp with flails
and pitchforks — a pretty tale to get abroad
about one of your officers — while trying to steal
a mule. Or chased ignominiously to the boat —
for you would not have expected me to shoot
down unoffending people for the sake of a mangy
mule. . . . And yet," he added in a low voice,
"I almost wished myself I had done it."

Before dark those two young men had worked
themselves up into a highly complex psycho-
logical state of scornful scepticism and alarmed
credulity. It tormented them exceedingly; and
the thought that it would have to last for six
days at least, and possibly be prolonged further
for an indefinite time, was not to be borne. The
ship was therefore put on the inshore tack at

208 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

dark. All through the gusty dark night she
went toward the land to look for her man, at
times lying over in the heavy puffs, at others
rolling idle in the swell, nearly stationary, as if
she too had a mind of her own to swing perplexed
between cool reason and warm impulse.

Then just at daybreak a boat put off from her
and went on tossed by the seas toward the
shallow cove where, with considerable difficulty,
an officer in a thick coat and a round hat man-
aged to land on a strip of shingle.

"It was my wish," writes Mr. Byrne, "a wish
of which my captain approved, to land secretly
if possible. I did not want to be seen either by
my aggrieved friend in the yellow hat, whose
motives were not clear, or by the one-eyed wine-
seller, who may or may not have been affiliated
to the devil, or indeed by any other dweller in
that primitive village. But unfortunately the
cove was the only possible landing place for
miles; and from the steepness of the ravine I
couldn't make a circuit to avoid the houses."

"Fortunately," he goes on, "all the people
were yet in their beds. It was barely daylight
when I found myself walking on the thick layer
of sodden leaves filling the only street. No soul
was stirring abroad, no dog barked. The si-
lence was profound, and I had concluded with

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 209

some wonder that apparently no dogs were kept
in the hamlet, when I heard a low snarl, and from
a noisome alley between two hovels emerged a
vile cur with its tail between its legs. He slunk
off silently showing me his teeth as he ran before
me, and he disappeared so suddenly that he might ^
have been the unclean incarnation of the Evil ""'
One. There was, too, something so weird in the
manner of its coming and vanishing, that my
spirits, already by no means very high, became
further depressed by the revolting sight of this
creature as if by an unlucky presage."

He got away from the coast unobserved, as far
as he knew, then struggled manfully to the west
against wind and rain, on a barren dark upland,
under a sky of ashes. Far away the harsh and
desolate mountains raising their scarped and
denuded ridges seemed to wait for him menac-
ingly. The evening found him fairly near to
them, but, in sailor language, uncertain of his
position, hungry, wet, and tired out by a day of
steady tramping over broken ground during
which he had seen very few people, and had been
unable to obtain the slightest intelligence of Tom
Corbin's passage. "On! on! I must push on,"
he had been saying to himself through the hours
of solitary effort, spurred more by incertitude
than by any definite fear or definite hope.

210 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

The lowering daylight died out quickly, leav-
ing him faced by a broken bridge. He de-
scended into the ravine, forded a narrow stream
by the last gleam of rapid water, and clambering
out on the other side was met by the night which
fell like a bandage over his eyes. The wind
sweeping in the darkness the broadside of the
sierra worried his ears by a continuous roaring
noise as of a maddened sea. He suspected
that he had lost the road. Even in daylight,
with its ruts and mudholes and ledges of out-
cropping stone, it was difficult to distinguish
from the dreary waste of the moor interspersed
with boulders and clumps of naked bushes. But,
as he says, "he steered his course by the feel of
the wind," his hat rammed low on his brow, his
head down, stopping now and again from mere
weariness of mind rather than of body — as if not
his strength but his resolution were being over-
taxed by the strain of endeavour half suspected
to be vain, and by the unrest of his feelings.

In one of these pauses borne in the wind
faintly as if from very far away he heard a sound
of knocking, iust^]3i)cking-on^wood . He noticed
that the wind had lulled suddenly.

His heart started beating tumultuously be-
cause in himself he carried the impression of the
desert solitudes he had been traversing for the

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 211

last six hours — the oppressive sense of an unin-
habited world. When he raised his head a
gleam of light, illusory as it often happens in
dense darkness, swam before his eyes. W^hile he
peered, the sound of feeble knocking was re-
peated— and suddenly he felt rather than saw
the existence of a massive obstacle in his path.
What was it.^ The spur of a hill.? Or was it a
house! Yes. It was a house right close, as
though it had risen from the ground or had come
gliding to meet him, dumb and pallid, from some
dark recess of the night. It towered loftily. He
had come up under its lee; another three steps
and he could have touched the wall with his
hand. It was no doubt a posada and some other
traveller was trying for admittance. He heard
again the sound of cautious knocking.

Next moment a broad band of light fell into
the night through the opened door. Byrne
stepped eagerly into it, whereupon the person
outside leaped with a stifled cry away into the
night. An exclamation of surprise was heard
too, from within. Byrne, flinging himself against
the half-closed door, forced his way in against
some considerable resistance.

A miserable candle, a mere rushlight, burned
at the end of a long deal table. And in its light
Byrne saw, staggering yet, the girl he had driver

212 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

from the door. She had a short black skirt, an
orange shawl, a dark complexion — and the
escaped single hairs from the mass, sombre and
thick like a forest and held up by a comb, made a
black mist about her low forehead. A shrill
lamentable howl of: " Misericordia ! " came in
two voices from the further end of the long room,
where the fire-light of an open hearth played be-
tween heavy shadows. The girl recovering her-
self drew a hissing breath through her set teeth.

It is unnecessary to report the long process of
questions and answers by which he soothed the
fears of two old women who sat on each side of
the fire, on which stood a large earthenware pot.
.^yrne thought at once of two witches watching
the brewing of some deadly potion. But all the
same, when one of them raising forward painfully
her broken form lifted the cover of the pot, the
escaping steam had an appetizing smell. The
other did not budge, but sat hunched up, her
head trembling all the time.

They were horrible. There was something
grotesque in their decrepitude. Their toothless
mouths, their hooked noses, the meagreness of
the active one, and the hanging yellow cheeks of
the other (the still one, whose head trembled)
would have been laughable if the sight of their
dreadful physical degradation had not been

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 213

appalling to one's eyes, had not gripped one's
heart with poignant amazement at the unspeak-
able misery of age, at the awful persistency of life
becoming at last an object of disgust and dread.

To get over it Byrne began to talk, saying that
he was an Englishman, and that he was in
search of a countryman who ought to have
passed this way. Directly he had spoken the
recollection of his parting with Tom came up in
his mind with amazing vividness: the silent
villagers, the angry gnome, the one-eyed wine-
seller, Bernardino. \Yhy! These two un-
speakable frights must be that man's aunts —
affiliated to the devil.

W^hatever they had been once it w^as impos-
sible to imagine what use such feeble creatures
could be to the devil, now, in the world of the
living. W'hich was Lucilla and w^hich w^as ,
Erminia? They w^ere now things without a t/^
name. A moment of suspended animation
followed Byrne's words. The sorceress w4th
the spoon ceased stirring the mess in the iron
pot, the very trembling of the other's head
stopped for the space of breath. In this in-
finitesimal fraction of a second Byrne had the
sense of being really on his quest, of having
reached the turn of the path, almost within hail
of Tom.

214 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

"They have seen him," he thought with con-
viction. Here was at last somebody who had
seen him. He made sure they would deny all
knowledge of the Ingles; but on the contrary
they were eager to tell him that he had eaten
and slept the night in the house. They both
started talking together, describing his appear-
ance and behaviour. An excitement quite fierce
in its feebleness possessed them. The doubled-
up sorceress flourished aloft her wooden spoon,
the puffy monster got off her stool and screeched,
stepping from one foot to the other, while the
trembling of her head was accelerated to posi-
tive vibration. Byrne was quite disconcerted
by their excited behaviour. . . . Yes ! The
big, fierce Ingles went away in the morning, after
eating a piece of bread and drinking some wine.
And if the caballero wished to follow the same
path nothing could be easier — in the morning.

"You will give me somebody to show me the
way.f^" said Byrne.

"Si, senor. A proper youth. The man the
caballero saw going out."

"But he was knocking at the door," protested
Byrne. " He only bolted when he saw me. He
1/was coming in."

" No ! No ! " the two horrid witches screamed
out together. "Going out. Going out!"

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 215

After all it may have been true. The sound
of knocking had been faint, elusive, reflected
Byrne. Perhaps only the effect of his fancy.
He asked —

*'Whoisthatman?"

"Her novio.'' They screamed pointing to the
girl. "He is gone home to a village far away
from here. But he will return in the morning.
Her novio ! And she is an orphan — the child
of poor Christian people. She lives with us for
the love of God, for the love of God."

The orphan crouching on the corner of the
hearth had been looking at Byrne. He thought
that she was more like a child of Satan kept
there by these two weird harridans for the love
of the Devil. Her eyes were a little oblique,
her mouth rather thick, but admirably formed;
her dark face had a ^rild beauty, volugt^ous and i^
untamed. As to the character of her steadfast
gaze attached upon him with a sensuously
savage attention, "to know what it was like,"
says Mr. Byrne, "you have only to observe a
hungry cat watching a bird in a cage or a mouse
inside a trap."

It was she who served him the food, of which
he was glad; though with those big slanting
black eyes examining him at close range, as if
he had something curious written on his face,

216 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

she gave him an uncomfortable sensation. But
anything was better than being approached by
these blear-eyed nightmarish witches. His ap-
prehensions somehow had been soothed; per-
haps by the sensation of warmth after severe
exposure and the ease of resting after the ex-
ertion of fighting the gale inch by inch all the
way. He had no doubt of Tom's safety. He
was now sleeping in the mountain camp having
been met by Gonzales' men.

Byrne rose, filled a tin goblet with wine out
of a skin hanging on the wall, and sat down
again. The witch with the mummy face began
to talk to him, ramblingly of old times; she
boasted of the inn's fame in those better days.
Great people in their own coaches stopped there.
An archbishop slept once in the casa, a long,
long time ago.

The witch with the puffy face |eemed to be
listening from her stool, motionless, except for
the trembling of her head. The girl (Byrne
was certain she was a casual gipsy ai4mitted
there for some reason or other) sat on the b^arth
stone in the glow of the embers. She hummed
a tune to herself, rattling a pair of castanets
slightly now and then. At the mention of the
archbishop she chuckled impiously and turned
her head to look at Byrne, so that the red glow

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 217

of the fire flashed in her black eyes and on her
white teeth under the dark cowl of the enormous
overmantel. And he smiled at her.

He rested now in the_ ease of security. His
advent not having been expected there could be
no plot against him in existence. Drowsiness
stole upon his senses. He enjoyed it, but keep-
ing a hold, so he thought at least, on his wits;
but he must have been gone further than he
thought because he was startled beyond measure
by a fiendish uproar. He had never heard any-
thing so pitilessly strident in his life. The
witches had started a fierce quarrel about some-
thing or other. Whatever its origin they were
now only abusing each other violently, without
arguments; their senile screams expressed noth-
ing but wricked anger and ferocious dismay.
The gipsy girl's black eyes flew from one to the
other. Never before had Byrne felt himself so y
removed from fellowship with human beings. ^
Before he had really time to understand the
subject of the quarrel, the girl jumped up rat-
thng her castanets loudly. A silence fefl. She
came up to the table and bending over, her eyes
in his —

"Senor," she said with decision, "You shall
sleep in the archbishop's room."

Neithei: of the witches objected. The dried-

v*:

218 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

up one bent double was propped on a stick. The
puffy faced one had now a crutch.

Byrne got up, walked to the door, and turn-
ing the key in the enormous lock put it coolly
in his pocket. This was clearly the only en-
trance, and he did not mean to be taken un-
awares by whatever danger there might have
been lurking outside. When he turned from
the door he saw the two witches "affiliated to
the Devil" and the Satanic girl looking at him
in silence. He wondered if Tom Corbin took
the same precaution last night. And thinking
of him he had again that queer impression of
is nearness. The world was perfectly dumb.
And in this stillness he heard the blood beating
in his ears with a confused rushing noise, in
which there seemed to be a voice uttering the
words: "Mr. Byrne, look out, sir." Tom's
voice. He shuddered; for the delusions of the
senses of hearing are the most vivid of all, and
from their nature have a compelling character.

It seemed impossible that Tom should not be
there. Again a slight chill as of stealthy draught
penetrated through his very clothes and passed
over all his body. He shook off the impression
with an effort.

It was the girl who preceded him upstairs
carrying an iron lamp from the naked flame of

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 219

which ascended a thin thread of smoke. Her
soiled white stockings were full of holes.

With the same quiet resolution w^ith which he
had locked the door below, Byrne threw open
one after another the doors in the corridor. AH
the rooms were empty except for some non-
descript lumber in one or two. And the girl
seeing what he would be at stopped every time,
raising the smoky light in each doorway pa-
tiently. Meantime she observed him with sus-
tained attention. The last door of all she threw
open herself.

"You sleep here, senor," she murmured in a
voice light like a child's breath, offering him the
lamp.

'* Buenos noches, senorita,'' he said politely,
taking it from her.

She didn't return the wish audibly, though
her lips did move a little, while her gaze black
like a starless night never for a moment wavered
before him. He stepped in, and as he turned to
close the door she was still there motionless and
disturbing, with her voluptuous mouth and
slanting eyes, with the expression of expectant
sensual ferocity of a baffled cat. He hesitated
for a moment, and in the dumb house he heard
again the blood pulsating ponderously in his
ears, while once more the illusion of Tom's voice

220 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

speaking earnestly somewhere near by was spe-
cially terrifying, because this time he could not
make out the words.

He slammed the door in the girl's face at last,
leaving her in the dark; and he opened it again
almost on the instant. Nobody. She had van-
ished without the slightest sound. He closed
the door quickly and bolted it with two heavy
bolts.

A profound mistrust possessed him suddenly.
Why did the witches quarrel about letting him
sleep here.^ And what meant that stare of the
girl as if she wanted to impress his features for
ever in her mind.^ His own nervousness alarmed
him. He seemed to himself to be removed very
far from mankind.

He examined his room. It was not very high,
just high enough to take the bed which stood
under an enormous baldaquin-like canopy from
which fell heavy curtains at foot and head; a
bed certainly worthy of an archbishop. There
was a heavy table carved all round the edges,
some arm-chairs of enormous weight like the
spoils of a grandee's palace; a tall shallow ward-
robe placed against the wall and with double
doors. He tried them. Locked. A suspicion
came into his mind, and he snatched the lamp
to make a closer examination. No, it was not

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 221

a disguised entrance. That heavy, tall piece of
furniture stood clear of the wall by quite an
inch. He glanced at the bolts of his room door.
No! No one could get at him treacherously
while he slept. But would he be able to sleep?
he asked himself anxiously. If only he had
Tom there — the trusty seaman who had fought
at his right hand in a cutting out affair or two,
and had always preached to him the necessity
to take care of himself. "For it's no great
trick," he used to say, "to get yourself killed in
a hot fight. Any fool can do that. The proper
pastime is to fight the Frenchies and then live
to fight another day."

Byrne found it a hard matter not to fall into
listening to the silence. Somehow he had the
conviction that nothing would break it unless he
heard again the haunting sound of Tom's voice.
He had heard it twice before. Odd! And yet
no wonder, he argued with himself reasonably,
since he had been thinking of the man for over
thirty hours continuously and, what's more, in-
conclusively. For his anxiety for Tom had
never taken a definite shape. "Disappear" was
the only word connected with the idea of Tom's
danger. It was very vague and awful. "Dis-
appear ! " What did that mean?

Byrne shuddered, and then said to himself

y

222 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

that he must be a Httle feverish. But Tom had
not disappeared. Byrne had just heard of him.
And again the young man felt the blood beating
in his ears. He sat still expecting every moment
to hear through the pulsating strokes the sound
of Tom's voice. He waited straining his ears,
but nothing came. Suddenly the thought
occurred to him: *'He has not disappeared, but
he cannot make himself heard."

He jumped up from the arm-chair. How
absurd ! Laying his pistol and his hanger on the
table he took off his boots and, feeling suddenly
too tired to stand, flung himself on the bed
which he found soft and comfortable beyond his
hopes.

He had felt very wakeful, but he must have
dozed off after all, because the next thing he
knew he was sitting up in bed and trying to recol-
lect what it was that Tom's voice had said. Oh!
He remembered it now. It had said: "Mr.
Byrne! Look out, sir!" A warning this. But
against what?

He landed with one leap in the middle of the
floor, gasped once, then looked all round the
room. The window was shuttered and barred
with an iron bar. Again he ran his eyes slowly
all round the bare walls, and even looked up at
the ceiling, which was rather high. Afterward

^ THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 223

he went to the door to examine the fastenings.
They consisted of two enormous iron bolts sliding
into holes made in the wall ; and as the corridor
outside was too narrow to admit of any battering
arrangement or even to permit an axe to be
swung, nothing could burst the door open — un-
less gunpowder. But while he was still making
sure that the lower bolt was pushed well home, ,
he received the impression of somebody's <X^
presence in the room. It was so strong that he
spun round quicker than lightning. There was
no one. Who could there be? And yet . . .

It was then that he lost the decorum and re-
straint a man keeps up for his own sake. He
got down on his hands and knees, with the lamp
on the floor, to look under the bed, like a silly
girl. He saw a lot of dust and nothing else. He
got up, his cheeks burning, and walked about
discontented with his own behaviour and un-
reasonably angry with Tom for not leaving him
alone. The words: "Mr. Byrne! Look out,
sir," kept on repeating themselves in his head in
a tone of warning.

"Hadn't I better just throw myself on the bed
and try to go to sleep," he asked himself. But
his eyes fell on the tall wardrobe, and he went
toward it feeling irritated with himself and yet
unable to desist. How he could explain to-

224 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

morrow the burglarious misdeed to the two
odious witches he had no idea. Nevertheless he
inserted the point of his hanger between the two
halves of the door and tried to prize them open.
They resisted. He swore, sticking now hotly to
his purpose. His mutter: "I hope you will be
satisfied, confound you," was addressed to the
absent Tom. Just then the doors gave way and
flew open.

He was there.

He — the trusty, sagacious, and courageous
Tom was there, drawn up shadowy and stiff, in
prudent silence, which his wide-open eyes by
their fixed gleam seemed to command Byrne
to respect. But Byrne was too startled to make
a sound. Amazed, he stepped back a little —
and on the instant the seaman flung himself for-
ward headlong as if to clasp his officer round the
neck. Instinctively Byrne put out his faltering
arms ; he felt the horrible rigidity of the body and
then the coldness of death as their heads knocked
together and their faces came into contact. They
reeled, Byrne hugging Tom close to his breast in
order not to let him fall with a crash. He had
just strength enough to lower the awful burden
gently to the floor — then his head swam, his legs
gave way, and he sank on his knees, leaning over
the body with his hands resting on the breast of

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 225

that man once full of generous life, and now as in-
sensible as a stone.

"Dead! my poor Tom, dead," he repeated
mentally. The light of the lamp standing near
the edge of the table fell from above straight on
the stony empty stare of these eyes which
naturally had a mobile and merry expression.
Byrne turned his own away from them. Tom's
black silk neckerchief was not knotted on his
breast. It was gone. The murderers had also
taken off his shoes and stockings. And noticing
this spoliation, the exposed throat, the bare up-
turned feet, Byrne felt his eyes run full of tears.
In other respects the seaman was fully dressed;
neither was his clothing disarranged as it must
have been in a violent struggle. Only his
checked shirt had been pulled a little out the
waistband in one place, just enough to ascertain
whether he had a money belt fastened round his
body. Byrne began to sob into his handkerchief.

It was a nervous outburst which passed off
quickly. Remaining on his knees he contem-
plated sadly the athletic body of as fine a sea-
man as ever had drawn a cutlass, laid a gun, or
passed the weather earring in a gale, lying stiff
and cold, his cheery, fearless spirit departed —
perhaps turning to him, his boy chum, to his
ship out there rolling on the grey seas off an iron-

226 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

bound coast, at the very moment of its flight.
He perceived that the six brass buttons of
Tom's jacket had been cut off. He shuddered at
the notion of the two miserable and repulsive
witches busying themselves ghoulishly about the
defenceless body of his friend. Cutoff. Perhaps
with the same knife which . . . The head
of one trembled; the other was bent double, and
their eyes were red and bleared, their infamous
claws unsteady. ... It must have been in
this very room too, for Tom could not have been
killed in the open and brought in here afterward.
Of that Byrne was certain. Yet those devilish
crones could not have killed him themselves
even by taking him unawares — and Tom would
be always on his guard of course. Tom was a
very wideawake wary man when engaged on
any service. . . . And in fact how did they
murder him.^^ Who did.^ In what way.^

Byrne jumped up, snatched the lamp off the
table, and stooped swiftly over the body. The
light revealed on the clothing no stain, no trace,
no spot of blood anywhere. Byrne's hands be-
gan to shake so that he had to set the lamp on
the floor and turn away his head in order to re-
cover from this agitation.

Then he began to explore that cold, still, and
rigid body for a stab, a gunshot wound, for the

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 227

trace of some killing blow. He felt all over the
skull anxiously. It was whole. He slipped his
hand under the neck. It was unbroken. With
terrified eyes he peered close under the chin and
saw no marks of strangulation on the throat.

There were no signs anywhere. He was just
dead.

Impulsively Byrne got away from the body as \j
if the mystery of an incomprehensible death had
changed his pity into suspicion and dread. The
lamp on the floor near the set, still face of the
seaman showed it staring at the ceiling as if
despairingly. In the circle of light Byrne saw by
the undisturbed patches of thick dust on the
floor that there had been no struggle in that
room. " He has died outside," he thought. Yes,
outside in that narrow corridor, where there
was hardly room to turn, the mysterious death
had come to his poor dear Tom. The impulse of
snatching up his pistols and rushing out of the
room abandoned Byrne suddenly. For Tom,
too, had been armed — with just such powerless
weapons as he himself possessed — pistols, a cut-
lass ! And Tom had died a nameless death, by
incomprehensible means.

A new thought came to Byrne. That stranger
knocking at the door and fleeing so swiftly at his
appearance had come there to remove the body.

7

228 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

Aha! That was the guide the withered witch
had promised would show the Enghsh officer the
shortest way of rejoining his man. A promise,
he saw it now, of dreadful import. He who had
knocked would have two bodies to deal with.
Man and officer would go forth from the house
together. For Byrne was certain now that he
would have to die before the morning — and in
the same mysterious manner, leaving behind
him an unmarked body.

The sight of a smashed head, of a cut throat, of
a gaping gunshot wound, would have been an in-
expressible relief. It would have soothed all his
fears. His soul cried within him to that dead
man whom he had never found wanting in dan-
ger. "Why don't you tell me what I am to look
for, Tom.^ Wliy don't you.^" But in rigid im-
mobility, extended on his back, he seemed to pre-
serve an austere [silence, as if disdaining in the
finality of his awful knowledge to hold converse
with the living.

Suddenly Byrne flung himself on his knees by
the side of the body, and dry-eyed, fierce, opened
the shirt wide on the breast, as if to tear the
secret forcibly from that cold heart which had
been so loyal to him in life ! Nothing! Nothing!
He raised the lamp, and all the sign vouchsafed
to him by that face which used to be so kindly in

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 229

expression was a small bruise on the forehead —
the least thing, a mere mark. The skin even
was not broken. He stared at it a long time as if
lost in a dreadful dream. Then he observed that
Tom's hands were clenched as though he had
fallen facing somebody in a fight with fists. His
knuckles, on closer view, appeared somewhat
abraded. Both hands.

The discovery of these slight signs was more
appalling to Byrne than the absolute absence of
every mark would have been. So Tom had died
striking against something which could be hit,
and yet could kill one without leaving a wound —
by a breath.

Terror, hot terror, began to play about
Byrne's heart like a tongue of flame that touches
and withdraws before it turns a thing to ashes.
He backed away from the body as far as he
could, then came forward stealthily casting fear-
ful glances to steal another look at the bruised
forehead. There would perhaps be such a faint
bruise on his own forehead — before the morning.

*'I can't bear it," he whispered to himself.
Tom was for him now an object of horror, a
sight at once tempting and revolting to his
fear. He couldn't bear to look at him.

At last, desperation getting the better of his
increasing horror, he stepped forward from the

230 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

wall against which he had been leaning, seized
the corpse under the armpits, and began to lug
it over to the bed. The bare heels of the sea-
man trailed on the floor noiselessly. He was
heavy with the dead weight of inanimate ob-
jects. With aTast etiort Byrne landed him face
downward on the edge of the bed, rolled him
over, snatched from under this stiff passive
thing a sheet with which he covered it over.
Then he spread the curtains at head and foot
so that joining together as he shook their folds
they hid the bed altogether from his sight.

He stumbled toward a chair, and fell on it.
The perspiration poured from his face for a
moment, and then his veins seemed to carry
for a while a thin stream of half -frozen blood.
Complete terror had possession of him now, a
nameless terror which had turned his heart to
ashes.

He sat upright in the straight-backed chair,
the lamp burning at his feet, his pistols and his
hanger at his left elbow on the end of the table,
his eyes turning incessantly in their sockets
round the walls, over the ceiling, over the floor,
in the expectation of a mysterious and appalling
vision. The thing which could deal death in a
breath was outside that bolted door. But
Byrne believed neither in walls nor bolts now.

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 231

Unreasoning terror turning everything to ac-
count, his old time boyish admiration of the
athletic Tom, the undaunted Tom (he had
seemed to him invincible), helped to paralyse
his faculties, added to his despair.

He was no longer Edgar Byrne. He was a
tortured soul suffering more anguish than any
sinner's body had ever suffered from rack or
boot. The depth of his torment may be meas-
ured when I say that this young man, as brave
at least as the average of his kind, contemplated ,
seizing a pistol and firing into his own head.i/
But a deadly, chilly languor was spreading over
his limbs. It was as if his flesh had been wet
plaster stiffening slowly about his ribs. Pres-
ently, he thought, the two witches will be
coming in, with crutch and stick — horrible,
grotesque, monstrous — affiliated to the devil —
to put a mark on his forehead, the tiny little
bruise of death. And he wouldn't be able
to do anything. Tom had struck out at some-
thing, but he was not like Tom. His limbs were
dead already. He sat still, dying the death over
and over again; and the only part of him which
moved were his eyes, turning round and round
in their sockets, running over the walls, the
floor, the ceiling, again and again till suddenly
they became motionless and stony — starting

232 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

out of 'his head fixed in the direction of the
bed.

He had seen the heavy curtains stir and shake
as if the dead body they concealed had turned
over and sat up. Byrne, who thought the world
could hold no more terrors in store, felt his hair
stir at the roots. He gripped the arms of the
chair, his jaw fell, and the sweat broke out on his
brow while his dry tongue clove suddenly to the
roof of his mouth. Again the curtains stirred,
but did not open. " Don't, Tom ! " Byrne made
effort to shout, but all he heard was a slight
moan such as an uneasy sleeper may make.
He felt that his brain was going, for, now, it
seemed to him that the ceiling over the bed
had moved, had slanted, and came level again —
and once more the closed curtains swayed gently
as if about to part.

Byrne closed his eyes not to see the awful ap-
parition of the seaman's corpse coming out
animated by an evil spirit. In the profound
silence of the room he endured a moment of
frightful agony, then opened his eyes again.
And he saw at once that the curtains remained
closed still, but that the ceiling over the bed
had risen quite a foot. With the last gleam of
reason left to him he understood that it was
the enormous baldaquin over the bed which

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 233

was coming down, while the curtains attached
to it swayed softly, sinking gradually to the
floor. His drooping jaw snapped to — and half
rising in his chair he watched mutely the noise-
less descent of the monstrous canopy. It came
down in short smooth rushes till lowered half
way or more, when it took a run and settled
swiftly its turtle-back shape with the deep
border piece fitting exactly the edge of the bed-
stead. A slight crack or two of wood were
heard, and the overpowering stillness of the room
resumed its sway.

Byrne stood up, gasped for breath, and let out
a cry of rage and dismay, the first sound which
he is perfectly certain did make its way past his
lips on this night of terrors. This then was the
death he had escaped! This was the devilish
artifice of murder poor Tom's soul had perhaps
tried from beyond the border to warn him of.
For this was how he had died. Byrne was cer-
tain he had heard the voice of the seaman, faintly
distinct in his familiar phrase, "Mr. Byrne!
Look out, sir!" and again uttering words he
could not make out. But then the distance
separating the living from the dead is so great!
Poor Tom had tried. Byrne ran to the bed and
attempted to lift up, to push off the horrible lid
smothering the body. It resisted his efforts,

234 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

heavy as lead, immovable like a tombstone. The
rage of vengeance made him desist; his head
buzzed with chaotic thoughts of extermination,
he turned round the room as if he could find
neither his weapons nor the way out; and all the
time he stammered awful menaces. . . .

A violent battering at the door of the inn re-
called him to his soberer senses. He flew to the
window, pulled the shutters open, and looked
out. In the faint dawn he saw below him a
mob of men. Ha! He would go and face at
once this murderous lot collected no doubt for
his undoing. After his struggle with nameless
terrors he yearned for an open fray with armed
enemies. But he must have remained yet
bereft of his reason, because forgetting his weap-
ons he rushed downstairs with a wild cry, un-
barred the door while blows were raining on it
outside, and flinging it open flew with his bare
hands at the throat of the first man he saw
before him. They rolled over together. Byrne's
hazy intention was to break through, to fly up
the mountain path, and come back presently
with Gonzales' men to exact an exemplary
vengeance. He fought furiously till a tree,
a house, a mountain, seemed to crash down
upon his head — and he knew no more.

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 235

Here Mr. Byrne describes in detail the skilful
manner in which he found his broken head band-
aged, informs us that he had lost a great deal of
blood, and ascribes the preservation of his sanity
to that circumstance. He sets down Gonzales'
profuse apologies in full too. For it was Gon-
zales who, tired of waiting for news from the
English, had come down to the inn with half his
band, on his way to the sea. "His excellency," he
explained, "rushed out with fierce impetuosity,
and, moreover, was not known to us for a friend,
and so we . . . etc., etc. When asked
what had become of the witches, he only pointed
his finger silently to the ground, then voiced
calmly a moral reflection : ' The passion for gold
is pitiless in the very old, senor,' he said. *No
doubt in former days they have put many a soli-
tary traveller to sleep in the archbishop's bed.' "

"There was also a gipsy girl there," said
Byrne feebly from the improvised litter on
which he was being carried to the coast by a
squad of guerilleros.

"It was she who winched up that infernal
machine, and it was she too who lowered it that
night," was the answer.

"But why? Why?" exclaimed Byrne. "Why
should she wish for my death?"

"No doubt for the sake of your excellency's

236 THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

coat buttons," said politely the saturnine Gon-
zales. "We found those of the dead mariner
concealed on her person. But your excellency
may rest assured that everything that is fitting
has been done on this occasion."

Byrne asked no more questions. There was
still another death which was considered by
Gonzales as "fitting to the occasion." The
one-eyed Bernardino stuck against the wall of
his wine-shop received the charge of six escopet-
tas into his breast. As the shots rang out the
rough bier with Tom's body on it went past
carried by a bandit-like gang of Spanish patriots
down the ravine to the shore, where two boats
from the ship were waiting for what was left
on earth of her best seaman.

Mr. Byrne, very pale and weak, stepped into
the boat which carried the body of his humble
friend. For it was decided that Tom Corbin
should rest far out in the bay of Biscay. The
officer took the tiller and, turning his head for
the last look at the shore, saw on the grey hill-
side something moving, which he made out to be
a little man in a yellow hat mounted on a mule
— that mule without which the fate of Tom Cor-
bin would have remained mysterious for ever.

June, 1913.

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

While we were hanging about near the water's
edge, as sailors idhng ashore will do (it was in the
open smce before the Harbour OiBSce of a great
pastern |)ort), a man came toward us from the
' ifoirF'' of business houses, aiming obliquely at
the landing steps. He attracted my attention
because in the movement of figures in white drill
suits on the pavement from which he stepped,
his costume, the usual tunic and trousers, being
made of light grey flannel, made him noticeable.

I had time to observe him. He was stout,
but he was not grotesque. His face was round
and smooth, his complexion very fair. On his
nearer approach I saw a little mustache made
all the fairer by a good many white hairs. And
he had, for a stout man, quite a good chin. In
passing us he exchanged nods with the friend I
was with and smiled.

My friend was Hollis, the fellow who had so
many adventures and had known so many queer

239

£40 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

people in that part of the (more or less) gorgeous
East in the days of his youtEnie said: "That's
a good man. I don't mean good in the sense
of smart or skilful in his trade. I mean a really
good man."

I turned round at once to look at the phe-
nomenon. The "really good man" had a very
broad back. I saw him signal a sampan to come
alongside, get into it, and go off in the direc-
tion of a cluster of local steamers anchored close
inshore.

I said: "He's a seaman, isn't he.^^"
"Yes. Commands that biggish dark-green
steamer: 'Sissie — Glasgow.' He has never
commanded anything else but the ' Sissie —
Glasgow,' only it wasn't always the same Sissie.
The first he had was about half the length of this
one, and we used to tell poor Davidson that she
was a size too small for him. Even at that time
Davidson had bulk. We warned him he would
get callosities on his shoulders and elbows be-
cause of the tight fit of his command. And
Davidson could well afford the smiles he gave us
for our chaff. He made lots of money in her.
She belonged to a portly Chinaman resembling a
mandarin in a picture-book, with goggles and
thin drooping mustaches, and as dignified as only
a Celestial knows how to be.

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 241 ,

"The best of Chinamen as employers is that ^
they have such gentlemanly instincts. Once
they become convinced that you are a straight
man, they give you their unbounded confidence.
You simply can't do wrong, then. And they are
pretty quick judges of character, too. David-
son's Chinaman was the first to find out his
worth, on some theoretical principle. One day
in his counting-house, before several white men
he was heard to declare : ' Captain Davidson is a
good man.' And that settled it. After that
you couldn't tell if it was Davidson who belonged C
to the Chinaman or the Chinaman who belonged^
to Davidson. It was he who, shortly before he
died, ordered in Glasgow the new Sissie for
Davidson to command."

We walked into the shade of the Harbour
Office and leaned our elbows on the parapet of
the quay.

" She was really meant to comfort poor David-
son," continued Hollis. "Can you fancy any-
thing more naively touching than this old
mandarin spending several thousand pounds to
console his white man.^ Well, there she is. The
old mandarin's sons have inherited her, andj)a-
vidson^with her, and he commands her; and what
with his salary and the trading privileges he
makes a lot of money; and everything is as be-

242 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

fore; and Davidson even smiles — you have seen
it? Well, the smile's the only thing which isn't
as before."

"Tell me, HolHs," I asked, "what do you
mean by good in this connection?"

"Well, there are men who are born good just
as others are born witty. What I mean is his
nature. No simpler, more scrupulously delicate
soul had ever lived in such a — a — comfortable
envelope. How we used to laugh at Davidsoh's
fine scruples ! In short, he's thoroughly humane,
and I don't imagine there can be much of any
other sort of goodness that counts on this earth.
And as he's that with a shade of particular re-
finement, I may well call him a 'really good
man.'"

I knew from old that Hollis was a firm be-
liever in the final values of shades. And I said:
"I see" — because I really did see Hollis's David-
son in the sympathetic stout man who had
passed us a little while before. But I remem-
bered that at the very moment he smiled his
placid face appeared veiled in melancholy — a
sort of spiritual shadow. I went on.

"Who on earth has paid him off for being so
fine by spoiling his smile?"

"That's quite a story, and I will tell it to you
if you like. Confound it ! It's quite a surpris-

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 243

ing one, too. Surprising in every way, but
mostly in the way it knocked over poor David-
son— and apparently only because he is such a
good sort. He was telling me all about it only a
few days ago. He said that when he saw these
four fellows with their heads in a bunch over the
table, he at once didn't like it. He didn't like it
at all. You mustn't suppose that Davidson is a
soft fool. These men

"But I had better begin at the beginning.
We must go back to the first time the old dollars
had been called in by our Government in ex-
change for a new issue. Just about the time
when I left these parts to go home for a long stay.
Every trader in the islands was thinking of
getting his old dollars sent up here in time, and
the demand for empty French wine cases — you
know the dozen of vermouth or claret size — ■
was something unprecedented. The custom
was to pack the dollars in little bags of a hun-
dred each. I don't know how many bags
each case would hold. A good lot. Pretty tidy
sums must have been moving afloat just then.
But let us get away from here. Won't do to

stay in the sun. Where could we ^ I know!

let us go to those tiffin-rooms over there."

W^e moved over accordingly. Our appear-
ance in the long empty room at that early hour

244 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

caused visible consternation amongst the China
boys. But HolKs led the way to one of the tables
between the windows screened by rattan blinds.
A brilliant half-light trembled on the ceiling, on
the whitewashed walls, bathed the multitude of
vacant chairs and tables in a peculiar, stealthy
glow.

"All right. We will get something to eat when
it's ready," he said, waving the anxious China-
man waiter aside. He took his temples touched
with grey between his hands, leaning over the
table to bring his face, his dark, keen eyes, closer
to mine.

"Davidson then was commanding the steamer
Sissie — the little one which we used to chaff him
about. He ran her alone, with only the Malay
sfiiang^for a deck officer. The nearest approach
to another white man on board of her was the
engineer, a JsiiH^^^s^ half-caste, as thin as a
lath and quite a youngster at that. For all
practical purposes Davidson was managing that
command of his single-handed; and of course
this was known in the port. I am telling you of
it because the fact had its influence on the de-
velopments you shall hear of presently.

" His steamer, being so small, could go up tiny
creeks and into shallow bays and through reefs
and over sand-banks, collecting produce, where

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 245

no other vessel but a native craft would think of
venturing. It is a paying game, often. David- \
son was known to visit in her places that no one \
else could find and that hardly anybody had 1
ever heard of. ^^ — ^

"The old dollars being called in, Davidson's
Chinaman thought that the Sissie would be just
the thing to collect them from small traders in
the less frequented parts of the Archipelago. It's
a good business. Such cases of dollars are
dumped aft in the ship's lazarette, and you get
good freight for very little trouble and space.

"Davidson, too, thought it was a good idea;
and together they made up a list of his calls on
his next trip. Then Davidson (he had naturally
the chart of his voyages in his head) remarked
that on his way back he might look in at a cer-
tain settlement up a mere creek, where a poor ^
sort of white man lived in a native village.
Davidson pointed out to his Chinaman that the
fellow was certain to have some rattans to ship.

"'Probably enough to fill her forward,' said
Davidson. 'And that'll be better than bringing
her back with empty holds. A day more or less
doesn't matter.'

"This was sound talk, and the Chinaman
owner could not but agree. But if it hadn't
been sound it would have been just the same.

246 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

Davidson did what he liked. He was a man
^y^ai could do no wrong. However, this sugges-
tion of his was not merely a business matter.
There was in it a touch of Davidsonian kindness.
For you must know that the man could not have
continued to live quietly up that creek if it had
yHot been for Davidson's willingness to call there
^ from time to time. And_ Davidson's Chinaman
knew this perfectly well, too. So he only smiled
his dignified, bland smile, and said: 'All right.
Captain. You do what you like.'

"I will explain presently how this connection
between Davidson and that fellow came about.
Now I want to tell you about the part of this
affair which happened here — the preliminaries of
it.

"You know as well as I do that these tiffin-
rooms where we are sitting now have been in ex-
istence for many years. Well, next day about
twelve o'clock, Davidson dropped in here to get
something to eat.

"And here comes the only moment in this
story where accident — mere accident — plays a
part. If Davidson had gone home that day for
tiffin, there would be now, after twelve years or
more, nothing changed in his kindly, placid
smile.

"But he came in here; and perhaps it was

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 247

sitting at this very table that he remarked to a
friend of mine .that his next trip was to be a dol-
lar-collecting trip. He added, laughing, that his
wife was making rather a fuss about it. She had
begged him to stay ashore and get somebody else
to take his place for a voyage. She thought there
was some danger on account of the dollars. He
told her, he said, that there were no Java-sea
pirates nowadays except in boys' books. He had
laughed at her fears, but he was very sorry, too;
for when she took any notion in her head it was
impossible to argue her out of it. She would be
worrying herself all the time he was away. Well,
he couldn't help it. There was no one ashore fit
to take his place for the trip.

"This friend of mine and I went home together
in the same mail-boat, and he mentioned that
conversation one evening in the Red Sea while
we were talking over the things and people we
had just left, with more or less regret.

"I can't say that Davidson occupied a very
prominent place. Moral excellence seldom does.
He was quietly appreciated by those who knew
him well; but his more obvious distinction con-
sisted in this, that he was married. Ours, as you
remember, was a bachelor crowd; in spirit any-
how, if not absolutely in fact. There might have
been a few wives in existence, but if so they were

248 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

invisible, distant, never alluded to. For what
would have been the good? Davidson alone was
visibly married.

*' Being married suited him exactly. It fitted
him so well that the wildest of us did not resent
the fact when it was disclosed. Directly he had
felt his feet out here, Davidson sent for his wife.
She came out (from Australia) in the Somerset
under the care of Captain Ritchie — you know.
Monkey-face Ritchie — who couldn't praise
enough her sweetness, her gentleness, and her
charm. She seemed to be the heaven-born mate
for Davidson. She found on arrival a very pretty
bungalow on the hill, ready for her and the little
girl they had. Very soon he got for her a two-
wheeled trap and a Burmah pony, and she used
to drive down of an evening to pick up Davidson
on the quay. When Davidson, beaming, got into
tlie trap, it would become very full all at once.

"We used to admire Mrs. Davidson from a
distance. It was a girlish head out of a keep-
sake. From a distance. We had not many
opportunities for a closer view, because she
did not care to give them to us. We would
have been glad to drop in at the Davidson
bungalow, but we were made to feel somehow
that we were not very welcome there. Not
that she ever said anything ungracious. She

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 249

never had much to say for herself. I was
perhaps the one who saw most of the Davidsons
at home. What I noticed under the superficial
aspect of vapid sweetness was her convex, i^^
obstinate forehead, and her small, red, pretty,
ungenerous mouth. But then I am an observer
with strong prejudices. Most of us were
fetched by her white, swan- like neck, by that
drooping, innocent profile. There was a lot of
latent devotion to Davidson's wife hereabouts,
at that time, I can tell you. But my idea was
that she repaid it by a profound suspicion of
the sort of men we were; a mistrust which
extended — I fancied — to her very husband at
times. And I thought then she was jealous of
him in a way ; though there were no women that
she could be jealous about. She had no women's
society. It's difficult for a shipmaster's wife
unless there are other shipmasters' wives about,
and there were none here then. I know that
the dock manager's wife called on her; but that
was all. The fellows here formed the opinion
that Mrs. Davidson was a meek, shy little
thing. She looked it, I must say. And this
opinion was so universal that the friend I have
been telling you of remembered his conversation
with Davidson simply because of the statement
about Davidson's wife. He even wondered

250 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

to me: * Fancy Mrs. Davidson making a fuss
to that extent. She didn't seem to me the
sort of woman that would know how to make a
fuss about anything.'

"I wondered, too — ^but not so much. That
bumpy forehead — eh? I had always suspected
her of being silly. And I observed that David-
son must have been vexed by this display of
wifely anxiety.

"My friend said: *No. He seemed rather
touched and distressed. There really was no
one he could ask to relieve him; mainly because
he intended to make a call in some God-forsaken
creek, to look up a fellow of the name of Bamtz
who apparently had settled there.' ^"^

"And again my friend wondered. *Tell me,'
he cried, ' what connection can there be between
Davidson and such a creature as Bamtz .^'

"I don't remember now what answer I made.
A sufficient one could have been given in two
words: 'Davidson's goodness.' That never
boggled at unworthiness if there was the slight-
est reason for compassion. I don't want you to
think that Davidson had no discrimination at
all. Bamtz could not have imposed on him.
Moreover, everybody knew what Bamtz was.
He was a loafer with a beard. When I think
of Bamtz, the first thing I see is that long black

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 251

beard and a lot of propitiatory wrinkles at the
corners of two little eyes. There was no such
beard from here to Polynesia, where a beard is
a valuable property in itself. Bamtz's beard
was valuable to him in another way. You
know how impressed Orientals are by a fine
beard. Years and years ago, I remember, the
grave Abdullah, the great trader of Sambir,^
unable to repress signs of astonishment and
admiration at the first sight of that imposing
beard. And it's very well known that Bamtz
lived on Abdullah off and on for several years.
It was a unique beard, and so was the bearer of
the same. A unique loafer. He made a fi^e
art of it, or rather a sort of craft and mystery.
One can understand a fellow living by cadging
and small swindles in towns, in large communi-
ties of people; but Bamtz managed to do that
trick in the wilderness, to loaf on the outskirts
of the virgin forest.

"He understood how to ingratiate himself
with the natives. He would arrive in some
settlement up a river, make a present of a cheap
carbine or a pair of shoddy binoculars, or some-
thing of that sort, to the Rajah, or the head-
man, or the principal trader; and on the
strength of that gift, ask for a house, posing
mysteriously as a very special trader. He

252 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

would spin them no end of yarns, live on the fat
of the land for a while, and then do some mean
swindle or other — or else they would get tired of
him and ask him to quit. And he would go off
meekly with an air of injured innocence. Funny
life. Yet, he never got hurt somehow. I've
heard of the Rajah of Dongala giving him fifty
dollars' worth of trade goods and paying his
passage in a prau only to get rid of him. Fact.
And observe that nothing prevented the old
fellow having Bamtz's throat cut and the carcase
thrown into deep water outside the reefs; for
who on earth would have inquired after Bamtz.^^

"He had been known to loaf up and down the
wilderness as far north as the Gulf of Tonkin.
Neither did he disdain a spell of civilisation
from time to time. And it was while loafing
and cadging in Saigon, bearded and dignified
(he gave himself out there as a bookkeeper),
that he came across Laughing Anne.

"The less said of her early history the better,
but something must be said. We may safely
suppose there was very little heart left in her
famous laugh when Bamtz spoke first to her in
some low cafe. She was stranded in Saigon
with precious little money and in great trouble
about a kid she had, a boy of five or six.

"A fellow I just remember, whom they called

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 253

Pearler Harry, brought her out first into these
parts — from AustraHa, I beHeve. He brought
her out and then dropped her, and she remained
knocking about here and there, known to most
of us by sight, at any rate. Everybody in the
Archipelago had heard of Laughing Anne. She
had really a pleasant silvery laugh always at
her disposal, so to speak, but it wasn't enough
apparently to make her fortune. The poor
creature was ready to stick to any half-decent
man if he would only let her, but she always got
dropped, as it might have been expected.

"She had been left in Saigon by the skipper
of a German ship with whom she had been going
up and down the China coast as far as Vladi-
vostok for near upon two years. The German
said to her: *This is all over, mein Taubchen.
I am going home now to get married to the girl
I got engaged to before coming out here.' And
Anne said: 'All right, I'm ready to go. We part
friends, don't we?'

"She was always anxious to part friends. The
German told her that of course they were part-
ing friends. He looked rather glum at the
moment of parting. She laughed and went
ashore.

"But it was no laughing matter for her. She
had some notion that this would be her last

254 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

chance. What frightened her most was the
future of her child. She had left her boy in
Saigon before going off with the German, in the
care of an elderly French couple. The husband
was a doorkeeper in some Government office,
but his time was up, and they were returning
to France. She had to take the boy back from
them; and after she had got him back, she did
not like to part with him any more.

"That was the situation when she and Bamtz
got acquainted casually. She could not have
had any illusions about that fellow. To pick
up with Bamtz was coming down pretty low
in the world, even from a material point of view.
She had always been decent, in her way; whereas
Bamtz was, not to mince words, an abject sort
of creature. On the other hand, that bearded
loafer, who looked much more like a pirate
than a bookkeeper, was not a brute. He was
gentle — rather — even in his cups. And then
despair, like misfortune, makes us acquainted
^with strange bed-fellows. For she may well
have despaired. She was no longer young —
you know.

"On the man's side this conjunction is more
difficult to explain, perhaps. One thing, how-
ever, must be said of Bamtz; he had always
kept clear of native women. As one can't

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS ^55

suspect him of moral delicacy, I surmise that
it must have been from prudence. And he,
too, was no longer young. There were many
white hairs in his valuable black beard by then.
He may have simply longed for some kind of w^
companionship in his queer, degraded existence.
Whatever their motives, they vanished from
Saigon together. And of course nobody cared
what had become of them.

"Six months later Davidson came into the
Mirrah Settlement. It was the very first time
he had been up that creek, where no European
vessel had ever been seen before. A Javanese
passenger he had on board offered him fifty
dollars to call in there — it must have been some
very particular business — and Davidson con-
sented to try. Fifty dollars, he told me, were
neither here nor there; but he was curious to see
the place, and the little Sissie could go anywhere
where there was water enough to float a soup-
plate.

"Davidson landed his Javanese plutocrat,
and, as he had to wait a couple of hours for the
tide, he went ashore himself to stretch his legs.

"It was a small settlement. Some sixty
houses, most of them built on piles over the
river, the rest scattered in the long grass; the
usual pathway at the back; the forest hemming

256 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

in the clearing and smothering what there might
have been of air into a dead, hot stagnation.

"All the population was on the river-bank
staring silently, as Malays will do, at the Sissie
anchored in the stream. She w^as almost as
wonderful to them as an angel's visit. Many of
the old people had only heard vaguely of fire-
ships, and not many of the younger genera-
tion had seen one. On the back path Davidson
strolled in perfect solitude. But he became
aware of a bad_smell and concluded he would go
no farther.

"While he stood wiping his forehead, he
heard from somewhere the exclamation: *My
God! It's Davy!'

"Davidson's lower jaw, as he expressed it,
came unhooked at the crying of this excited
voice. Davy was the name used by the asso-
ciates of his young days; he hadn't heard it
for many years. He stared about with his
mouth open and saw a white w^oman issue from
the long grass in which a small hut stood buried
nearly up to the roof.

"Try to imagine the shock: in that wild
place that you couldn't find on a map, and
more squalid than the most poverty-stricken
Malay settlement had a right to be, this Euro-
pean woman coming swishing out of the long

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 257

grass in a fanciful teagown thing, dingy pink
satin, with a long train and frayed lace trim-
mings; her eyes like black coals in a pasty-
white face. Davidson thought that he was
asleep, that he was delirious. From the offen-
sive village mudhole (it was what Davidson had
sniffed just before) a couple of filthy buffaloes
uprose with loud snorts and lumbered off crash-
ing through the bushes, panic-struck by this
apparition.

"The woman came forward, her arms ex-
tended, and laid her hands on Davidson's
shoulders, exclaiming : ' Why ! You have hardly
changed at all. The same good Davy.' And
she laughed a little wildly.

"This sound was to Davidson like a galvanic
shock to a corpse. He started in every muscle.
* Laughing Anne,' he said in an awe-struck
voice.

" 'All that's left of her, Davy. All that's left
of her.'

"Davidson looked up at the sky: but there
was to be seen no balloon from which she could
have fallen on that spot. When he brought his
distracted gaze down, it rested on a child hold-
ing on with a brown little paw to the pink satin
gown. He ha"d run out of the grass after her.
Had Davidson seen a real hobgoblin his eyes

258 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

could not have bulged more than at this small
boy in a dirty white blouse and ragged knickers.
He had a round head of tight chestnut curls,
very sunburnt legs, a freckled face, and merry
eyes. Admonished by his mother to greet the
gentleman, he finished off Davidson by addres-
sing him in French.

'''Bonjqur.'

"Davidson, overcome, looked up at the wo-
man in silence. She sent the child back to the
hut, and w^hen he had disappeared in the grass?
she turned to Davidson, tried to speak, but
after getting out the words, 'That's my Tony,'
burst into a long fit of crying. She had to
lean on Davidson's shoulder. He, distressed
in the goodness of his heart, stood rooted to the
spot where she had come upon him.

"What a meeting — eh.^ Bamtz had sent her
out to see what white man it was who had
landed. And she had recognised him from that
time when Davidson, who had been pearling
himself in his youth, had been associating with
Harry the Pearler and others, the quietest of a
rather rowdy set.

"Before Davidson retraced his steps to go on
board the steamer, he had heard much of Laugh-
ing Anne's story, and had even had an inter-
view, on the path, with Bamtz himself. She

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 259

ran back to the hut to fetch him, and he came
out lounging, with his hands in his pockets,
with the detached, casual manner under which
he concealed his propensity to cringe> Ya-a-
as-as. He thought he would settle here per-
manently— with her. This with a nod at
Laughing Anne, who stood by, a haggard, tragi-
cally anxious figure, her black hair hanging
over her shoulders.

" *No more paint and dyes for me, Davy,' she
struck in, *if only you will do what he wants you
to do. You know that I was always ready to
stand by my men — if they had only let me.'

"Davidson had no doubt of her earnestness.
It was of Bamtz's good faith that he was not at
all sure. Bamtz wanted Davidson to promise
to call at Mirrah more or less regularly. He
thought he saw an opening to do business with
rattans there, if only he could depend on some
craft to bring out trading goods and take away
his produce.

"'I have a few dollars to make a start on.
The people are all right.'

" He had come there, where he was not known,
in a native prau, and had managed, with his
sedate manner and the exactly right kind of
yarn he knew how to tell to the natives, to in-
gratiate himself with the chief man.

260 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

"'The Orang Kay a has given me that empty
house there to live in as long as I will stay/
added Bamtz.

'"Do it, Davy,' cried the woman suddenly.
'Think of that poor kid.'

"'Seen him? 'Cute little customer,' said the
reformed loafer in such a tone of interest as to
surprise Davidson into a kindly glance.

"'I certainly can do it,' he declared. He
thought of at first making some stipulation as
to Bamtz behaving decently to the woman, but
his exaggerated delicacy and also the conviction
that such a fellow's promises were w^orth noth-
ing restrained him. Anne went a little distance
down the path with him talking anxiously.

"'It's for the kid. How could I have kept
him with me if I had to knock about in towns .^
Here he will never know that his mother was a
painted woman. And this Bamtz likes him.
He's real fond of him. I suppose I ought to
thank God for that.'

{"Davidson shuddered at any human crea-
ture being brought so low as to have to thank
God for the favours or affection of a Bamtz.

" 'And do you think that you can make out to
live here.^ ' he asked gently.

" 'Can't I.^ You know I have always stuck to
. ^y/men through thick and thin till they had enough

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 261

of me. And now look at me! But inside I am
as I always was. I have acted on the square to
them all one after another. Only they do get
tired somehow. Oh, Davy! Harry ought not
to have cast me off. It was he that led me
astray.

"Davidson mentioned to her that Harry the
Pearler had been dead now for some years.
Perhaps she had heard?

"She made a sign that she had heard; and
walked by the side of Davidson in silence nearly
to the bank. Then she told him that her meet-
ing with him had brought back the old times to
her mind. She had not cried for years. She
was not a crying woman either. It was hearing
herself called Laughing Anne that had started
her sobbing like a fool. Harry was the only
man she had loved. The others

" She shrugged her shoulders. But she prided
herself on her loyalty to the successive partners
of her dismal adventures. She had never
played any tricks in her life. She was a pal
worth having. But men did get tired. They
did not understand women. She supposed it
had to be.

"Davidson was attempting a veiled warning
as to Bamtz, but she interrupted him. She
knew what men were. She knew what this

262 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

man was like. But he had taken wonderfully
to the kid. And Davidson desisted willingly,
saying to himself that surely poor Laughing
Anne could have no illusions by this time. She
wrung his hand hard at parting.

"'It's for the kid, Davy— it's for the kid.
Isn't he a bright little chap? '

II

"All this happened about two years before the
day when Davidson, sitting in this very room,
talked to my friend. You will see presently
how this room can get full. Every seat'll be
occupied, and as you notice, the tables are set
close, so that the backs of the chairs are almost
touching. There is also a good deal of noisy
talk here about one o'clock.

"I don't suppose Davidson was talking very
loudly; but very likely he had to raise his voice
across the table to my friend. And here ac-
cident, mere accident, put in its work by pro-
viding a pair of fine ears close behind Davidson's
chair. It was ten to one against the owner of
the same having enough change in his pockets
to get his tiffin here. But he had. Most likely
had rooked somebody of a few dollars at cards
overnight. JHe .was a bright creature of the
name of /Fectorj a spare, short, jumpy fellow
with a red face and muddy eyes. He described
himself as a journalist as certain kind of women

263

A

264 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

give themselves out as actresses in the dock
of a pohce-court.

"He used to introduce himself to strangers as
a man with a mission to track out abuses and
fight them whenever found. He would also
hint that he was a martyr. And it's a fact
that he had been kicked, horsewhipped, im-
risoned, and hounded with ignominy out of
pretty well every place between Ceylon and
Shanghai for a proJessioiiaLhlackmailer.

"I suppose, in that trade, you've got to have
active wits and sharp ears. It's not likely that
he overheard every word Davidson said about
his dollar-collecting trip, but he heard enough
to set his wits at work.

"He let Davidson go out, and then hastened
away down to the nativ£_slunis to a sort of
lodging-house kept in partnership by the usual
sort of Portuguese and a very disreputjible
CEmaman. Macao Hotel, it was called, but
it was mostly a gambling den that one used to
warn fellows against. Perhaps you remember.'^

"There, the evening before, Fector had met a
precious couple, a partnership even more queer
than the Portuguese and the Chinaman. One of
the two was Niclaus — you know. Why! the
fellow with a Tartar mustache and a yellow
/complexion like a Mongolian, only that his

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 265

eyes were set straight and his face was not so
flat. One couldn't tell what bYeed)he was. A
nondescript beggar. From a certain angle you
would think a very bilious white man. And I
daresay he was. He owned a Malay prau and
called himself The Nakhoda, as one would say:
The Captain. xAha! Now you remember. He \\
couldn't, apparently, speak any other European \
language than English, but he flew the 4)ut^Ji
flag on his prau.

*'The other was the Frenchman without
hands. Yes. The very same we used to
know in '79 in Sydney, keeping a little tobacco
shop at the lower end of George Street. You
remember the huge carcase hunched up behind
the counter, the big white face and the long
black hair brushed back off a high forehead
like a bard's. He was always trying to roll
cigarettes on his knee with his stumps, telling
endless yarns of Polynesia and whining and
cursing in turn about 'mon malheur.' His hands
had been blown away by a dynamite cartridge
while fishing in some lagoon. This accident, I
believe, had made him more wicked than before,
which is saying a good deal.

"He was always talking about * resuming his
activities' some day, whatever they were, if he
could only get an intelligent companion. It

266 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

was evident that the little shop was no field for
his activities, and the sickly woman with her face
tied up, who used to look in sometimes through
the back door, was no companion for him.

"And, true enough, he vanished from Sydney
before long, after some trouble with the Excise
fellows about his stock. Goods stolen out of a
warehouse or something similar. He left the
woman behind, but he must have secured some
sort of companion — he could not have shifted
for himself; but whom he went away with, and
where, and what other companions he might
have picked up afterward, it is impossible to
make the remotest guess about.

"Why exactly he came this way I can't tell.
Toward the end of my time here we began to
hear talk of a maimed Frenchman who had been
seen here and there. But no one knew then
that he had foregathered with Niclaus and
lived in hisprau. I daresay he put Niclaus
up to a thing or two. Anyhow, it was a part-
nership. Niclaus was somewhat afraid of the
Frenchman on account of his tempers, which
were awful. He looked then like a devil; but
a man without hands, unable to load or handle
a weapon, can at best go for one only with his
teeth. From that danger Niclaus felt certain
he could always defend himself.

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 267

"The couple were alone together loafing in
the common-room of that infamous hotel when
Fector turned up. After some beating about
the bush, for he was doubtful how far he could
trust these two, he repeated what he had over-
heard in the tifiin-rooms.

"His tale did not have much success till he
came to mention the creek and Bamtz's name.
Niclaus, sailing about like a native in a prau,
was, in his own words, 'familiar with the local-
ity.' The huge Frenchman, walking up and
down the room with his stumps in the pockets
of his jacket, stopped short in surprise. ' Com-
ment ? Bamtz I Bamtz ! '

"He had run across him several times in his
life. He exclaimed: ^ Bamtz! Mais je ne con-
nais que ca!^ And he applied such a contemp-
tuously indecent epithet to Bamtz that when,
later, he alluded to him as ^une chiffe' (a mere
rag) it sounded quite complimentary. 'We
can do with him what we like,' he asserted con-
fidently. 'Oh, yes. Certainly we must hasten

to pay a visit to that ' (another awful

descriptive epithet quite unfit for repetition).
'Devil take me if we don't pull off a coup that
will set us all up for a long time.'

"He saw all that lot of dollars melted into
bars and disposed of somewhere on the China

268 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

coast. Of the escape after the coup he never
doubted. There was Niclaus's prau to manage
that in.

"In his enthusiasm he pulled his stumps out
of his pockets and waved them about. Then,
catching sight of them, as it were, he held them
in front of his eyes, cursing and blaspheming and
bewailing his misfortune and his helplessness,
till Niclaus quieted him down.

"But it was his mind that planned out the
affair and it was his spirit which carried the
other two on. Neither of them was of the bold
buccaneer type; and Fector, especially, had
never in his adventurous life used other wea-
pons than slander and lies.

"That very evening they departed on a visit
to Bamtz in Niclaus's prau, which had been
lying, emptied of her cargo of cocoanuts, for a
day or two under the canal bridge. They must
have crossed the bows of the anchored Sissie,
and no doubt looked at her with interest as the
scene of their future exploit, the great haul,
le grand coup!

"Davidson's wife, to his great surprise, sulked
with him for several days before he left. I
don't know whether it occurred to him that, for
all her angelic profile, she was a very stupidly
obstinate girl. She didn't like the tropics. He

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 269

had brought her out there, where she had no
friends, and now, she said, he was becoming
inconsiderate. She had a presentiment of some
misfortune, and notwithstanding Davidson's
painstaking explanations, she could not see
why her presentiments were to be disregarded.
On the very last evening before Davidson went
away she asked him in a suspicious manner :

" * Why is it that you are so anxious to go this
time.?'

"'I am not anxious,' protested the good
Davidson. * I simply can't help myself. There's
no one else to go in my place.'

"'Oh! There's no one,' she said, turning
away slowly.

"She was so distant with him that evening
that Davidson from a sense of delicacy made up
his mind to say good-bye to her at once and go
and sleep on board. He felt very miserable
and, strangely enough, more on his own account
than on account of his wife. She seemed to
him much more offended than grieved.

"Three weeks later, having collected a good
many cases of old dollars (they were stowed aft
in the lazarette with an iron bar and a padlock
securing the hatch under his cabin-table), yes,
with a bigger lot than he had expected to col-
lect, he found himself homeward bound and

270 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

off the entrance of the creek where Bamtz lived
and even, in a sense, flourished.

"It was so late in the day that Davidson
actually hesitated whether he should not pass
by this time. He had no regard for Bamtz, who
was a degraded but not a really unhappy man.
His pity for Laughing Anne was no more than
her case deserved. But his goodness was of a
particularly jelicate sort. He realized how
these people were dependent on him, and how
they would feel their dependence (if he failed
to turn up) through a long month of anxious
waiting. Prompted by his sensitive humanity,
Davidson, in the gathering dusk, turned the
Sissie's head toward the hardly discernible
coast, and navigated her safely through a
maze of shallow patches. But by the time he got
to the mouth of the creek the night had come.

"The narrow waterway lay like a black cut-
ting through the forest. And as there were
always grounded snags in the channel which
it would be impossible to make out, Davidson
very prudently turned the Sissie round, and
with only enough steam on the boilers to give
her a touch ahead if necessary, let her drift
up stern first with the tide, silent and invisible
in the impenetrable darkness and in the dumb
stillness.

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 271

"It was a long job, and when at the end of
two hours Davidson thought he must be up to
the clearing, the settlement slept already, the
whole land of forests and rivers was asleep.

"Davidson, seeing a solitary light in the
massed darkness of the shore, knew that it was
burning in Bamtz's house. This was unex-
pected at this time of the night, but convenient
as a guide. By a turn of the screw and a touch
of the helm he sheered the Sissie alongside
Bamtz's wharf — a miserable structure of a dozen
piles and a few planks of which the ex-vagabond
was very proud. A couple of Kalashes jumped
down on it, took a turn with the ropes thrown
to them round the posts, and the Sissie came to
rest without a single loud word or the slightest
noise. And just in time too, for the tide turned
even before she was properly moored.

"Davidson had something to eat, and then,
coming on deck for a last look round, noticed
that the light was still burning in the house.

"This was very unusual, but since they were
awake so late, Davidson thought that he would
go up to say that he was in a hurry to be off and to
ask that what rattans there were in store should
be sent on board with the first sign of dawn.

"He stepped carefully over the shaky planks,
not being anxious to get a sprained ankle, and

272 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLAES

picked his way across the waste ground to the
foot of the house ladder. The house was but a
glorified hut on piles, unfenced and lonely.

"Like many a stout man, Davidson is very
lightfooted. He climbed the seven steps or so,
stepped across the bamboo platform quietly,
but what he saw through the doorway stopped
him short.

"Four men were sitting by the light of a
solitary candle. There was a bottle, a jug, and
glasses on the table, but they were not engaged
in drinking. Two packs of cards were lying
there too, but they were not preparing to play.
They were talking together in whispers, and
remained quite unaware of him. He himself
was too astonished to make a sound for some
time. The world was still, except for the sibila-
tion of the whispering heads bunched together
over the table.

"And Davidson, as I have quoted him to you
before, didn't like it. He didn't like it at all.

"The situation ended with a scream proceed-
ing from the dark, interior part of the room. ' O
Davy! you've given me a turn.'

"Davidson made out beyond the table Anne's
very pale face. She laughed a little hysteric-
ally, out of the deep shadows between the gloomy
mat walls. 'Ha! ha! ha!'

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 273

"The four heads sprang apart at the first
sound, and four pairs of eyes became fixed
stonily on Davidson. The woman came for-
ward, having Kttle more on her than a loose
chintz wrapper and straw slippers on her bare
feet. Her head was tied up Malay fashion in a
red handkerchief, with a mass of loose hair
hanging under it behind. Her professional,
gay, European feathers had literally dropped off
her in the course of these two years, but a long
necklace of amber beads hung round her un-
covered neck. It was the only ornament she
had left; Bamtz had sold all her poor-enough
trinkets during the flight from Saigon — when
their association began.

"She came forward, past the table into the
light, with her usual groping gesture of ex-
tended arms, as though her soul, poor thing! had
gone blind long ago, her white cheeks hollow,
her eyes darkly wild, distracted, as Davidson
thought. She came on swiftly, grabbed him by
the arm, dragged him in. *It's heaven itself
that sends you to-night. My Tony's so bad —
come and see him. Come along — do!'

"Davidson submitted. The only one of the
men to move was Bamtz, who made as if to get
up but dropped back in his chair again. David-
son in passing heard him mutter confusedly

274 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

something that sounded like 'poor little beg-
gar.'

"The child, lying very flushed in a miserable
cot knocked up out of gin-cases, stared at David-
son with wide, drowsy eyes. It was a bad bout
of fever clearly. But while Davidson was
promising to go on board and fetch some medi-
cines, and generally trying to say reassuring
things, he could not help being struck by the
extraordinary manner of the woman standing
by his side. Gazing with despairing expression
down at the cot, she would suddenly throw a
quick, startled glance at Davidson and then
toward the other room.

**'Yes, my poor girl,' he whispered, interpret-
ing her distraction in his own way, though he had
nothing precise in his mind. 'I'm afraid this
bodes no good to you. How is it they are here? '

"She seized his forearm and breathed out
forcibly : * No good to me ! Oh, no ! But what
about you! They are after the dollars you
t '^have on board.'

"Davidson let out an astonished *How do
they know there are any dollars? '

"She clapped her hands lightly, in distress.
*So it's true! You have them on board? Then
look out for yourself.'

"They stood gazing down at the boy in the

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 275

cot, aware that they might be observed from
the other room.

"*We must get him to perspire as soon as
possible,' said Davidson in his ordinary voice.
'You'll have to give him hot drink of some kind.
I will go on board and bring you a spirit-kettle
amongst other things.' And he added under his
breath: 'Do they actually mean murder.^'

"She made no sign, she had returned to her
desolate contemplation of the boy. Davidson
thought she nad not heard him even, when with
an unchanged expression she spoke under her
breath.

"'The Frenchman would, in a minute. The
others shirk it — unless you resist. He's a
devil. He keeps them going. Without him
they would have done nothing but talk. I've
got chummy with him. What can you do when
you are with a man like the fellow I am with
now. Bamtz is terrified of them, and they
know it. He's in it from funk. Oh, Davy!
take your ship away — quick ! '

"'Too late,' said Davidson. 'She's on the
mud already.'

"'If the kid hadn't been in this state I would
have run off with him — to you — into the woods
— anywhere. Oh, Davy! will he die.f^' she cried
aloud suddenly.

276 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

"Davidson met three men in the doorway.
They made way for him without actually daring
to face his glance. But Bamtz was the only one
who looked down with an air of guilt. The
big Frenchman had remained lolling in his
chair; he kept his stumps in his pockets and
addressed Davidson.

" ' Isn't it unfortunate about that child ! The
distress of that woman there upsets me, but I
am of no use in the world. I couldn't smooth
the sick pillow of my dearest friend. I have no
hands. Would you mind sticking one of those
cigarettes there into the mouth of a poor, harm-
less cripple.^ My nerves want soothing — upon
my honour, they do.'

"Davidson complied with his naturally kind
smile. As his outward placidity becomes only
piore pronounced, if possible, the more reason
there is for excitement; and as Davidson's eyes,
when his wits are hard at work, get very still
and as if sleepy, the huge Frenchman might
have been justified in concluding that the man
there was a mere sheep — a sheep ready for
slaughter. With a 'merci bien' he uplifted his
huge carcase to reach the light of the candle
with his cigarette, and Davidson left the house.

"Going down to the ship and returning, he
had time to consider his position. At first he

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 277

was inclined to believe that these men (Niclaus
— the white Nakhoda — was the only one he
knew by sight before, besides Bamtz) were not
of the stamp to proceed to extremities. This
was partly the reason why he never attempted
to take any measures on board. His pacific
Kalashes were not to be thought of as against
white men. His wretched engineer would have
had a fit from fright at the mere idea of any sort
of combat. Davidson knew that he would have to
depend on himself in this affair if it ever came off.

"Davidson underestimated naturally the
driving power of the Frenchman's character
and the force of the actuatiiiff motive. To
that man so hopelessly , crippled '>these dollars
were an enormous oppoftuhTty. With his
share of the robbery he would open another
shop in Vladivostok, Hai-phong, Mamla — some
where far away.

"Neither did it occur to Davidson, who is a
man of courage, if ever there was one, that his
psychology was not known to the world at
large, and that to this particular lot of ruflSans,
who judged him by his appearance, he appeared
an unsuspicious, inoffensive, soft creature, as
he passed again through the room, his hands
full of various objects and parcels destined for
the sick boy.

^

'I

278 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

"All the four were sitting again round the
table. Bamtz not having the pluck to open his
mouth, it was Niclaus who, as a collective voice,
called out to him thickly to come out soon and
join in a drink.

"*I think I'll have to stay some little time in
there, to help her look after the boy,' Davidson
answered without stopping.

"This was a good thing to say to allay a
possible suspicion. And, as it was, Davidson
felt he must not stay very long.

"He sat down on an old empty nail-keg near
the improvised cot and looked at the child;
while Laughing Anne, moving to and fro, pre-
paring the hot drink, giving it to the boy in
spoonfuls, or stopping to gaze motionless at the
flushed face, whispered disjointed bits of in-
formation. She had succeeded in making friends
with that French devil. Davy would under-
stand that she knew how to make herself
pleasant to a man.

"And Davidson nodded without looking at
her.

" The big beast had got to be quite confidential
with her. She held his cards for him when they
were having a game. Bamtz! Oh! Bamtz in
his funk was only too glad to see the Frenchman
humoured. And the Frenchman had come to

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 279

believe that she was a woman who didn't care
what she did. That's how it came about they
got to talk before her openly. For a long time
she could not make out what game they were
up to. The new arrivals, not expecting to find
a woman with Bamtz, had been very startled
and annoyed at first, she explained.

"She busied herself in attending to the boy;
and nobody looking into that room would have
seen anything suspicious in those two people
exchanging murmurs by the sick-bedside.

" 'But now they think I am a better man than
Bamtz ever was,' she said with a faint laugh.

"The child moaned. She went down on her
knees, and, bending low, contemplated him
mournfully. Then raising her head, she asked
Davidson whether he thought the child would
get better. Davidson was sure of it. She
murmured sadly: 'Poor kid. There's nothing
in life for such as he. Not a dog's chance.
But I couldn't let him go, Davy ! I couldn't.'

"Davidson felt a profound pity for the child.
She laid her hand on his knee and whispered an
earnest warning against the Frenchman. Davy
must never let him come to close quarters.
Naturally Davidson wanted to know the rea-
son, for a man without hands did not strike
him as very formidable under any circumstances.

280 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

"*Mind you don't let him — that's all,' she
insisted anxiously, hesitated, and then confessed
that the Frenchman had got her away from the
others that afternoon and had ordered her to
tie a seven-pound iron weight (out of the set of
weights Bamtz used in business) to his right
stump. She had to do it for him. She had
been afraid of his sayag^ temper. Bamtz was
such a craven, and neither of the other men
would have cared what happened to her. The
Frenchman, however, with many awful threats
had warned her not to let the others know what
she had done for him. Afterward he had been
trying to cajole her. He had promised her
that if she stood by him faithfully in this busi-
ness he would take her with him to Hai-phong
or some other place. A poor cripple needed
somebody to take care of him — always.

"Davidson asked her again if they really
meant mischief. It was, he told me, the hardest
thing to believe he had run up against, as yet, in
his life. Anne nodded. The Frenchman's heart
was set on this robbery. Davy might expect
them, about midnight, creeping on board his
ship, to steal anyhow — to murder, perhaps.
Her voice sounded weary, and her eyes remained
fastened on her child.

"And still Davidson could not accept it some-

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 281

how; his contempt for these men was too
great.

"'Look here, Davy,' she said. *I'll go out-
side with them when they start, and it will be
hard luck if I don't find something to laugh at.
They are used to that from me. Laugh or cry
— what's the odds. You will be able to hear
me oiTIBoard on this quiet night. Dark it is
too. Oh ! it's dark, Davy !— it's dark ! '

"'Don't you run any risks,' said Davidson.
Presently he called her attention to the boy,
who, less flushed now, had dropped into a sound
sleep. 'Look. He'll be all right.'

"She made as if to snatch the child up to her
breast, but restrained herself. Davidson pre-
pared to go. She whispered hurriedly:

'"Mind, Davy! I've told them that you
generally sleep aft in the hammock under the
awning over the cabin. They have been ask-
ing me about your ways and about your ship,
too. I told them all I knew. I had to keep in
with them. And Bamtz would have told them
if I hadn't — you understand.'^'

"He made a friendly sign and went out. The
men about the table (except Bamtz) looked at
him. This time it was Fector who spoke.
* Won't you join us in a quiet game. Captain .^^ '

"Davidson said that now the child was better

282 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

he thought he would go on board and turn in.
Fector was the only one of the four whom he
had, so to speak, never seen, for he had had a
good look at the Frenchman already. He ob-
served Fector's muddy eyes, his mean, bitter
mouth. Davidson's contempt for those men rose
in his gorge, while his placid smile, his gentle
tones and general air of innocence put heart
into them. They exchanged meaning glances.

"*We shall be sitting late over the cards/
Fector said in his harsh, low voice.

"* Don't make more noise than you can help.'

"'Oh! we are a quiet lot. And if the invalid
shouldn't be so well, she will be sure to send one
of us down to call you, so that you may play the
doctor again. So don't shoot at sight.'

" *He isn't a shooting man,' struck in Niclaus.

***I never shoot before making sure there's a
reason for it — at any rate,' said Davidson.

** Bamtz let out a sickly snigger. The French-
man alone got up to make a bow to Davidson's
careless nod. His stumps were stuck immov-
ably in his pockets. Davidson understood now
the reason.

"He went down to the ship. His wits were
working actively, and he was thoroughly angry.
He smiled, he says (it must have been the first
grim smile of his life), at the thought of the

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 283

seven-pound weight lashed to the end of the
Frenchman's stump. The ruffian had taken
that precaution in case of a quarrel that might
arise over the division of the spoil. A man with
an unsuspected power to deal killing blows could
take his own part in a sudden scrimmage round
a heap of money, even against adversaries
armed with revolvers, especially if he himself
started the row.

"*He's ready to face any of his friends with
that thing. But he will have no use for it.
There will be no occasion to quarrel about these
dollars here,' thought Davidson, getting on
board quietly. He never paused to look if
there was anybody about the decks. As a
matter of fact, most of his crew were on shore,
and the rest slept, stowed away in dark corners.

" He had his plan, and he went to work me-
thodically.

"He fetched a lot of clothing from below and
disposed it in his hammock in such a way as to
distend it to the shape of a human body; then he
threw over all the light cotton sheet he used to
draw over himself when sleeping on deck. Hav-
ing done this, he loaded his two revolvers and
clambered into one of the boats the Sissie
carried right aft, swung out on their davits.
Then he waited.

284 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

"And again the doubt of such a thing hap-
pening to him crept into his mind. He was
almost ashamed of this ridiculous vigil in a
boat. He became bored. And then he became
drowsy. The stillness of the black universe
•wearied him. There was not even the lapping
of the water to keep him company, for the tide
was out and the Sissie was lying on soft mud.
Suddenly in the breathless, soundless, hot night
an argus pheasant screamed in the woods across
the stream. Davidson started violently, all his
senses on the alert at once.

"The candle was still burning in the house.
Everything was quiet again, but Davidson felt
drowsy no longer. An uneasy premonition of
evil oppressed him.

I I *'* Surely I am not afraid,' he argued with
; Ihimself.

"The silence was like a seal on his ears, and
his nervous inward impatience grew intolerable.
He commanded himself to keep still. But all
the same he was just going to jump out of the
boat when a faint ripple on the immensity of
silence, a mere tremor in the air, the ghost of a
. >/silvery laugh, reached his ears.

"Illusion!

"He kept very still. He had no diflSculty
now in emulating the stillness of the mouse — a

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 285

grimly determined mouse. But he could not
shake off that premonition of evil unrelated to the
mere danger of the situation. Nothing hap-
pened. It had been an illusion !

"A curiosity came to him to learn how they
would go to work. He wondered and wondered,
till the whole thing seemed more absurd than
ever.

"He had left the hanging lamp in the cabin
burning as usual. It was part of his plan that
everything should be as usual. Suddenly in the
dim glow of the skylight panes a bulky shadow
came up the ladder without a sound, made two
steps toward the hammock (it hung right over
the skylight), and stood motionless. The
Frenchman !

"The minutes began to slip away. Davidson
guessed that the Frenchman's part (the poor
cripple) was to watch his (Davidson's) slumbers
while the others were no doubt in the cabin busy
forcing off the lazarette hatch.

"What was the course they meant to pursue
once they got hold of the silver (there were ten
cases, and each could be carried easily by two
men) nobody can tell now. But so far, David-
son was right. They were in the cabin. He ex-
pected to hear the sounds of breaking-in every
moment. But the fact was that one of them

286 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

(perhaps Fector, who had stolen papers out of
desks in his time) knew how to pick a lock, and
apparently was provided with the tools. Thus
while Davidson expected every moment to hear
them begin down there, they had the bar off
already and two cases actually up in the cabin
out of the lazarette.

"In the diffused faint glow of the skylight the
Frenchman moved no more than a statue.
Davidson could have shot him with the greatest
ease — but he was not homicidally inclined.
Moreover, he wanted to make sure before open-
ing fire that the others had gone to work. Not
hearing the sounds he expected to hear, he felt
uncertain whether they all were on board yet.

"While he listened, the Frenchman, whose
immobility might have but cloaked an internal
struggle, moved forward a pace, then another.
Davidson, entranced, watched him advance one
leg, withdraw his right stump, the armed one,
out of his pocket, and swinging his body to put
greater force into the blow, bring the seven-
^ypound weight down on the hammock where
the head of the sleeper ought to have been.
^ "Davidson admitted to me that his hair
stirred at the roots then. But for Anne, his
unsuspecting head would have been there. The
Frenchman's surprise must have been simply

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 287

overwhelming. He staggered away from the
lightly swinging hammock, and before David-
son could make a movement he had vanished,
bounding down the ladder to warn and alarm
the other fellows.

"Davidson sprang instantly out of the boat,
threw up the skylight flap, and had a glimpse
of the men down there crouching round the
hatch. They looked up scared, and at that
moment the Frenchman outside the door bel-
lowed out * Trahison — trahison! ' They bolted
out of the cabin, falling over each other and
swearing awfully. The shot Davidson let off
down the skylight had hit no one; but he ran
to the edge of the cabin-top and at once opened
fire at the dark shapes rushing about the deck.
These shots were returned, and a rapid fusillade
burst out, reports and flashes, Davidson dodg-
ing behind a ventilator and pulling the trigger
till his revolver clicked, and then throwing it
down to take the other in his right hand.

"He had been hearing in the din the French-
man's infuriated yells ' Tuez-le! — tuez-le! ' above
the fierce cursing of the others. But though
they fired at him they were only thinking of
clearing out. In the flashes of the last shots
Davidson saw them scrambling over the rail.
That he had hit more than one he was certain.

288 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

Two different voices had cried out in pain.
But apparently none of them were disabled.

"Davidson leaned against the bulwark re-
loading his revolver without haste. He had not
the slightest apprehension of their coming back.
On the other hand, he had no intention of pur-
suing them on shore in the dark. What they
were doing he had no idea. Looking to their
hurts probably. Not very far from the bank
the invisible Frenchman was blaspheming and
cursing his associates, his luck, and all the
world. He ceased; then with a sudden, venge-
ful yell, 'It's that woman! — it's that woman
that has sold us,' was heard running off in the
night.

"Davidson caught his breath in a sudden
pang of remorse. He perceived with dismay
that the stratagem of his defence had given Anne
away. He did not hesitate a moment. It was
or him to save her now. He leaped ashore.
But even as he landed on the wharf he heard a
shrill shriek which pierced his very soul.

"The light was still burning in the house.
Davidson, revolver in hand, was making for it
when another shriek, away to his left, made
him change his direction.

"He changed his direction — but very soon he
stopped. It was then that he hesitated in cruel

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 289

perplexity. He guessed what had happened.
The woman had managed to escape from the
house in some way, and now was being chased
in the open by the infuriated Frenchman. He
trusted she would try to run on board for pro-
tection.

"All was still around Davidson. Whether
she had run on board or not, this silence meant
that the Frenchman had lost her in the dark.

"Davidson, relieved, but still very anxious,
turned toward the river-side. He had not
made two steps in that direction when another
shriek burst out behind him, again close to the
house.

"He thinks that the Frenchman had lost
sight of the poor woman right enough. Then
came that period of silence. But the horrible
ruflSan had not given up his murderous purpose.
He reasoned that she would try to steal back
to her child, and went to lie in wait for her near
the house.

"It must have been something like that. As
she entered the light falling about the house-
ladder, he had rushed at her too soon, impatient
for vengeance. She had let out that second
scream of mortal fear when she caught sight of
him, and turned to run for life again.

"This time she was making for the river.

A,

/h

2G0 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

but not in a straight line. Her shrieks circled
about Davidson. He turned on his heels, fol-
lowing the horrible trail of sound in the darkness.
He wanted to shout 'This way, Anne! I am
here!' but he couldn't. At the horror of this
hase, more ghastly in his imagination than if
he could have seen it,the perspiration broke out
on his forhead, while his throat was as dry a
tinder. A last supreme scream was cut short
suddenly.

"The silence which ensued was even more
dreadful. Davidson felt sick. He tore his feet
from the spot and walked straight before him,
gripping the revolver and peering into the ob-
scurity fearfully. Suddenly a bulky shape
sprang from the ground within a few yards of
him and bounded away. Instinctively he fired
at it, started to run in pursuit, and stumbled
against something soft which threw him down
headlong.

''Even as he pitched forward on his head he
knew it could be nothing else but Laughing
Anne's body. He picked himself up and, re-
maining on his knees, tried to lift her in his
arms. He felt her so limp that he gave it up.
She was lying on her face, her long hair scattered
on the ground. Some of it was wet. Davidson,
feeling about her head, came to a place where

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 291

the crushed bone gave way under his fingers.
But even before that discovery he knew that
she was dead. The pursuing Frenchman had
flung her down with a kick from behind, and,
squatting on her back, was battering in her
skull with the weight she herself had fastened to
his stump, when the totally unexpected Davidson
loomed up in the night and scared him away.

"Davidson, kneeling by the side of that
woman done so miserably to death, was over-
come by remorse. She had died for him. Jlis
manhood was as if stunned. For the first time
he felt^7ragr~He might have been pounced
upon in the dark at any moment by the mur-
derer of Laughing Anne. He confesses to the
impulse of creeping away from that pitiful
corpse on his hands and knees to the refuge of
the ship. He even says that he actually began
to do so. . . .

"One can hardly picture to oneself Davidson
crawling away on all fours from the murdered
woman — Davidson unmanned and crushed by
the idea that she had died for him in a sense.
But he could not have gone very far. What
stopped him was the thought of the boy,
Laughing Anne's child, that (Davidson remem-
bered her very words) would not have a dog's
chance.

292 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

"This life the woman had left behind her

appeared to Davidson's conscience in the light

of a sacred trust. He assumed an erect attitude

(/and, quaking inwardly still, turned about and

walked toward the house.

"For all his tremors he was very determined;
but that smashed skull had affected his imagina-
tion, and he felt very defenceless in the dark-
ness, in which he seemed to hear faintly now
here, now there, the prowling footsteps of the
murderer without hands. But he never faltered
in his purpose. He got away with the boy
safely after all. The house he found empty.
A profound silence encompassed him all the
time, except once, just as he got down the
ladder with Tony in his arms, when a faint
groan reached his ears. It seemed to come
from the pitch-black space between the posts
on which the house was built, but he did not
stop to investigate.

"It's no use teUing you in detail how David-
son got on board with the burden Anne's
miserably cruel fate had thrust into his arms;
how next morning his scared crew, after ob-
serving from a distance the state of affairs on
board, rejoined with alacrity; how Davidson
went ashore and, aided by his engineer (still
half dead with fright), rolled up Laughing

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 293

Anne's body in a cotton sheet and brought it
on board for burial at sea later. While busy
with this pious task, Davidson, glancing about,
perceived a huge heap of white clothes huddled
up against the corner-post of the house. That
it was the Frenchman lying there he could not
doubt. Taking it in connection with the dismal
groan he had heard in the night, Davidson is
pretty sure that his random shot gave a mortal
hurt to the murderer of poor Anne.

"As to the others, Davidson never set eyes
on a single one of them. Whether they had
concealed themselves in the scared settlement,
or Bolted into the foresI^"or~were hiding on
board Niclaus's prau, which could be seen lying
on the mud a hundred yards or so higher up
the creek, the fact is that they (^anish^t and
Davidson did not trouble his head about them.
He lost no time in getting out of the creek
directly the Sissie floated. After steaming
some twenty miles clear of the coast, he (in
his own words) 'committed the body to the
deep.' He did everything himself. He weighted
her down with a few fire-bars, he read the
service, he lifted the plank, he was the only
mourner. And while he was rendering these
last services to the dead, the desolation of that
life and the atrocious wretchedness of its end

^94 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

cried aloud to his compassion, whispered to
him in tones of self-reproach.

"He ought to have handled the warning she
had given him in another way. He was con-
vinced now that a simple display of watchful-
ness would have been enough to restrain that
vile and cowardly crew. But the fact was that
he had not quite believed that anything would
be attempted.

"The body of Laughing Anne having been
'committed to the deep' some twenty miles
S.S.W. from Cape Selatan, the task before
Davidson was to commit La.ughing Anne's child
to the care of his wife. And there poor, good
Davidson made a fatal move. He didn't want
to tell her the whole awful story, since it in-
volved the knowledge of the danger from which
he, Davidson, had escaped. And this, too,
after he had been laughing at her unreasonable
fears only a short time before.

"'I thought that if I told her everything,'
Davidson explained to me, *she would never
have a moment's peace while I was away on
my trips.'

"He simply stated that the boy was an
orphan, the child of some people to whom he,
Davidson, was under the greatest obligation,
and that he felt morally bound to look after

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 295

him. Some day he would tell her more, he
said, and meantime he trusted in the goodness
and warmth of her heart, in her woman's natural
compassion.

"He did not know that her heart was about
the size of a parched pea, and had the propor-
tional amount of warmth; and that her faculty
of compassion was mainly directed to herself.
He was only startled and disappointed at the
air of cold surprise and the suspicious look with
which she received his imperfect tale. But she
did not say much. She never had much to say.
She was a fool of the silent, hopeless kind.

"What story Davidson's crew thought fit to
set afloat in Malay town is neither here nor
there. Davidson himself took some of his
friends into his confidence, besides giving the
full story officially to the Harbour Master.

"The Harbour Master was considerably
astonished. He didn't think, however, that a
formal complaint should be made to the Dutch ^
Government. They would probably do noth-
ing in the end, after a lot of trouble and cor-
respondence. The robbery had not come off,
after all. Those vagabonds could be trusted
to go to the devil in their own way. No amount
of fuss would bring the poor woman to life
again, the actual murderer had been done justice

296 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

to by a chance shot from Davidson. Better
let the matter drop.

"This was good common sense. But he was
impressed.

" 'Sounds a terrible affair, Captain Davidson.'

"'Aye, terrible enough,' agreed the remorseful
Davidson. But the most terrible thing for him,
though he didn't know it then, was that his
wife's silly brain was slowly coming to the con-
clusion that Tony was Davidson's child, and
that he had invented that lame story to intro-
duce him into her pure home in defiance of
ydecency, of virtue — of her most sacred feelings.

"Davidson was aware of some constraint in
his domestic relations. But at the best of times
she was not demonstrative; and perhaps that
very coldness was part of her charm in the
placid Davidson's eyes. Women are loved for
all sorts of reasons and even for characteristics
which one would think repellent. She was
watching him and nursing her suspicions.

"Then, one day. Monkey -faced Ritchie called
on that sweet, shy Mrs. Davidson. She had
come out under his care, and he considered him-
self a privileged person — her oldest friend in the
tropics. He posed for a great admirer of hers.
He was always a great chatterer. He had got
hold of the story rather vaguely, and he started

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 297

chattering on that subject, thinking she knew
all about it. And in due course he let out some-
thing about Laughing Anne.

"'Laughing Anne,' says Mrs. Davidson with
a start. 'What's that.?'

"Ritchie plunged into circumlocution at once,
but she very soon stopped him. 'Is that crea-
ture dead? ' she asks.

'"I believe so,' stammered Ritchie. 'Your
husband says so.'

'"But you don't know for certain? '

" ' No ! How could I, Mrs. Davidson ! '

'"That's all I wanted to know,' says she, and
goes out of the room.

"When Davidson came home she was ready
to go for him, not with common voluble indigna-
tion, but as if trickling a stream of cold clear
water down his back. She talked of his base
intrigue with a vile woman, of being made a
fool of, of the insult to her dignity.

"Davidson begged her to listen to him and
told her all the story, thinking that it would
move a heart of stone. He tried to make her
understand his remorse. She heard him to the
end, said 'Indeed!' and turned her back on him.

'"Don't you believe me?' he asked, appalled.

"She didn't say yes or no. All she said was,
'Send that brat away at once.'

298 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

"*I can't throw him out into the street,' cried
Davidson. * You don't mean it.'

*"I don't care. There are charitable institu-
tions for such children, I suppose.'

" 'That I will never do,' said Davidson.

" ' Very well. That's enough for me.'

"Davidson's home after this was like a silent,
frozen hell for him. A stupid woman with a
sense of grievance is worse than an unchained
devil. He sent the boy to the White Fathers in
iMalacca. J This was not a very expensive sort of
education, but she could not forgive him for not
casting the offensive child away utterly. She
worked up her sense of her wifely wrongs and
of her injured purity to such a pitch that one
day, when poor Davidson was pleading with
her to be reasonable and not to make an impos-
sible existence for them both, she turned on him
in a chill passion and told him that his very
sight was odious to her.

"Davidson, with his scrupulous delicacy of
feeling, was not the man to assert his rights over
a woman who could not bear the sight of him.
He bowed his head; and shortly afterward ar-
ranged for her to go back to her parents. That
was exactly what she wanted in her outraged
dignity. And then she had always disliked the
tropics and had detested secretly the people

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 299

she had to live amongst as Davidson's wife.
She took her pure, sensitive, mean little soul
away to Fremantle or somewhere in that direc-
tion. And of course the little girl went away
with her too. What could poor Davidson have
done with a little girl on his hands, even if she
had consented to leave her with him — which is
unthinkable.

"This is the story that has spoiled Davidson's
smile for him — which perhaps it wouldn't have
done so thoroughly had he been less of a good
fellow."

Hollis ceased. But before we rose from the
table I asked him if he knew what had become of
Laughing Anne's boy.

He counted carefully the change handed him
by the Chinaman waiter, and raised his head.

"Oh! that's the finishing touch. He was a
bright, taking little chap, as you know, and the
Fathers took very special pains in his bringing
up. Davidson expected in his heart to have
some comfort out of him. In his placid way
he's a man who needs affection. Well, Tony
has grown into a fine youth — but there you are !

(He wants to be a priest; his one dream is to be a
missionary. The Fathers assure Davidson that
it IS a serious vocation. They tell him he has a
special disposition for mission work, too. So

300 BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS

Laughing Anne's boy will lead a saintly life in
China somewhere; he may even become a martyr;
but poor Davidson is left out in the cold. He
will have to go downhill without a single human
affection near him because of these old dollars."

Jan. 1914.

-rrf

rrs BOOK IS DUE ON THE Ti A "^T r^ATT
- -K r. -.T, BEX-''

14 DAY USE

RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED

LOAN DEPT.

This book is due on the last date stamped below, or

on the date to which renewed.

Renewed books are subject to immediate recall.

C'u

JAN 9 1963

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

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