CHAPTER VI
Either would have been perfectly consistent with my feelings. I
gazed at the door, hesitating, but in the end I did neither. The
monition of some sixth sense--the sense of guilt, maybe, that sense
which always acts too late, alas!--warned me to look round; and at
once I became aware that the conclusion of this tumultuous episode
was likely to be a matter of lively anxiety. Jacobus was standing
in the doorway of the dining-room. How long he had been there it
was impossible to guess; and remembering my struggle with the girl
I thought he must have been its mute witness from beginning to end.
But this supposition seemed almost incredible. Perhaps that
impenetrable girl had heard him come in and had got away in time.
He stepped on to the verandah in his usual manner, heavy-eyed, with
glued lips. I marvelled at the girl's resemblance to this man.
Those long, Egyptian eyes, that low forehead of a stupid goddess,
she had found in the sawdust of the circus; but all the rest of the
face, the design and the modelling, the rounded chin, the very
lips--all that was Jacobus, fined down, more finished, more
expressive.
His thick hand fell on and grasped with force the back of a light
chair (there were several standing about) and I perceived the
chance of a broken head at the end of all this--most likely. My
mortification was extreme. The scandal would be horrible; that was
unavoidable. But how to act so as to satisfy myself I did not
know. I stood on my guard and at any rate faced him. There was
nothing else for it. Of one thing I was certain, that, however
brazen my attitude, it could never equal the characteristic Jacobus
impudence.
He gave me his melancholy, glued smile and sat down. I own I was
relieved. The perspective of passing from kisses to blows had
nothing particularly attractive in it. Perhaps--perhaps he had
seen nothing? He behaved as usual, but he had never before found
me alone on the verandah. If he had alluded to it, if he had
asked: "Where's Alice?" or something of the sort, I would have
been able to judge from the tone. He would give me no opportunity.
The striking peculiarity was that he had never looked up at me yet.
"He knows," I said to myself confidently. And my contempt for him
relieved my disgust with myself.
"You are early home," I remarked.
"Things are very quiet; nothing doing at the store to-day," he
explained with a cast-down air.
"Oh, well, you know, I am off," I said, feeling that this, perhaps,
was the best thing to do.
"Yes," he breathed out. "Day after to-morrow."
This was not what I had meant; but as he gazed persistently on the
floor, I followed the direction of his glance. In the absolute
stillness of the house we stared at the high-heeled slipper the
girl had lost in her flight. We stared. It lay overturned.
After what seemed a very long time to me, Jacobus hitched his chair
forward, stooped with extended arm and picked it up. It looked a
slender thing in his big, thick hands. It was not really a
slipper, but a low shoe of blue, glazed kid, rubbed and shabby. It
had straps to go over the instep, but the girl only thrust her feet
in, after her slovenly manner. Jacobus raised his eyes from the
shoe to look at me.
"Sit down, Captain," he said at last, in his subdued tone.
As if the sight of that shoe had renewed the spell, I gave up
suddenly the idea of leaving the house there and then. It had
become impossible. I sat down, keeping my eyes on the fascinating
object. Jacobus turned his daughter's shoe over and over in his
cushioned paws as if studying the way the thing was made. He
contemplated the thin sole for a time; then glancing inside with an
absorbed air:
"I am glad I found you here, Captain."
I answered this by some sort of grunt, watching him covertly. Then
I added: "You won't have much more of me now."
He was still deep in the interior of that shoe on which my eyes too
were resting.
"Have you thought any more of this deal in potatoes I spoke to you
about the other day?"
"No, I haven't," I answered curtly. He checked my movement to rise
by an austere, commanding gesture of the hand holding that fatal
shoe. I remained seated and glared at him. "You know I don't
trade."
"You ought to, Captain. You ought to."
I reflected. If I left that house now I would never see the girl
again. And I felt I must see her once more, if only for an
instant. It was a need, not to be reasoned with, not to be
disregarded. No, I did not want to go away. I wanted to stay for
one more experience of that strange provoking sensation and of
indefinite desire, the habit of which had made me--me of all
people!--dread the prospect of going to sea.
"Mr. Jacobus," I pronounced slowly. "Do you really think that upon
the whole and taking various' matters into consideration--I mean
everything, do you understand?--it would be a good thing for me to
trade, let us say, with you?"
I waited for a while. He went on looking at the shoe which he held
now crushed in the middle, the worn point of the toe and the high
heel protruding on each side of his heavy fist.
"That will be all right," he said, facing me squarely at last.
"Are you sure?"
"You'll find it quite correct, Captain." He had uttered his
habitual phrases in his usual placid, breath-saving voice and stood
my hard, inquisitive stare sleepily without as much as a wink.
"Then let us trade," I said, turning my shoulder to him. "I see
you are bent on it."
I did not want an open scandal, but I thought that outward decency
may be bought too dearly at times. I included Jacobus, myself, the
whole population of the island, in the same contemptuous disgust as
though we had been partners in an ignoble transaction. And the
remembered vision at sea, diaphanous and blue, of the Pearl of the
Ocean at sixty miles off; the unsubstantial, clear marvel of it as
if evoked by the art of a beautiful and pure magic, turned into a
thing of horrors too. Was this the fortune this vaporous and rare
apparition had held for me in its hard heart, hidden within the
shape as of fair dreams and mist? Was this my luck?
"I think"--Jacobus became suddenly audible after what seemed the
silence of vile meditation--"that you might conveniently take some
thirty tons. That would be about the lot, Captain."
"Would it? The lot! I dare say it would be convenient, but I
haven't got enough money for that."
I had never seen him so animated.
"No!" he exclaimed with what I took for the accent of grim menace.
"That's a pity." He paused, then, unrelenting: "How much money
have you got, Captain?" he inquired with awful directness.
It was my turn to face him squarely. I did so and mentioned the
amount I could dispose of. And I perceived that he was
disappointed. He thought it over, his calculating gaze lost in
mine, for quite a long time before he came out in a thoughtful tone
with the rapacious suggestion:
"You could draw some more from your charterers. That would be
quite easy, Captain."
"No, I couldn't," I retorted brusquely. "I've drawn my salary up
to date, and besides, the ship's accounts are closed."
I was growing furious. I pursued: "And I'll tell you what: if I
could do it I wouldn't." Then throwing off all restraint, I added:
"You are a bit too much of a Jacobus, Mr. Jacobus."
The tone alone was insulting enough, but he remained tranquil, only
a little puzzled, till something seemed to dawn upon him; but the
unwonted light in his eyes died out instantly. As a Jacobus on his
native heath, what a mere skipper chose to say could not touch him,
outcast as he was. As a ship-chandler he could stand anything.
All I caught of his mumble was a vague--"quite correct," than which
nothing could have been more egregiously false at bottom--to my
view, at least. But I remembered--I had never forgotten--that I
must see the girl. I did not mean to go. I meant to stay in the
house till I had seen her once more.
"Look here!" I said finally. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll
take as many of your confounded potatoes as my money will buy, on
condition that you go off at once down to the wharf to see them
loaded in the lighter and sent alongside the ship straight away.
Take the invoice and a signed receipt with you. Here's the key of
my desk. Give it to Burns. He will pay you.
He got up from his chair before I had finished speaking, but he
refused to take the key. Burns would never do it. He wouldn't
like to ask him even.
"Well, then," I said, eyeing him slightingly, "there's nothing for
it, Mr. Jacobus, but you must wait on board till I come off to
settle with you."
"That will be all right, Captain. I will go at once."
He seemed at a loss what to do with the girl's shoe he was still
holding in his fist. Finally, looking dully at me, he put it down
on the chair from which he had risen.
"And you, Captain? Won't you come along, too, just to see--"
"Don't bother about me. I'll take care of myself."
He remained perplexed for a moment, as if trying to understand; and
then his weighty: "Certainly, certainly, Captain," seemed to be
the outcome of some sudden thought. His big chest heaved. Was it
a sigh? As he went out to hurry off those potatoes he never looked
back at me.
I waited till the noise of his footsteps had died out of the
dining-room, and I waited a little longer. Then turning towards
the distant door I raised my voice along the verandah:
"Alice!"
Nothing answered me, not even a stir behind the door. Jacobus's
house might have been made empty for me to make myself at home in.
I did not call again. I had become aware of a great
discouragement. I was mentally jaded, morally dejected. I turned
to the garden again, sitting down with my elbows spread on the low
balustrade, and took my head in my hands.
The evening closed upon me. The shadows lengthened, deepened,
mingled together into a pool of twilight in which the flower-beds
glowed like coloured embers; whiffs of heavy scent came to me as if
the dusk of this hemisphere were but the dimness of a temple and
the garden an enormous censer swinging before the altar of the
stars. The colours of the blossoms deepened, losing their glow one
by one.
The girl, when I turned my head at a slight noise, appeared to me
very tall and slender, advancing with a swaying limp, a floating
and uneven motion which ended in the sinking of her shadowy form
into the deep low chair. And I don't know why or whence I received
the impression that she had come too late. She ought to have
appeared at my call. She ought to have . . . It was as if a
supreme opportunity had been missed.
I rose and took a seat close to her, nearly opposite her arm-chair.
Her ever discontented voice addressed me at once, contemptuously:
"You are still here."
I pitched mine low.
"You have come out at last."
"I came to look for my shoe--before they bring in the lights."
It was her harsh, enticing whisper, subdued, not very steady, but
its low tremulousness gave me no thrill now. I could only make out
the oval of her face, her uncovered throat, the long, white gleam
of her eyes. She was mysterious enough. Her hands were resting on
the arms of the chair. But where was the mysterious and provoking
sensation which was like the perfume of her flower-like youth? I
said quietly:
"I have got your shoe here." She made no sound and I continued:
"You had better give me your foot and I will put it on for you."
She made no movement. I bent low down and groped for her foot
under the flounces of the wrapper. She did not withdraw it and I
put on the shoe, buttoning the instep-strap. It was an inanimate
foot. I lowered it gently to the floor.
"If you buttoned the strap you would not be losing your shoe, Miss
Don't Care," I said, trying to be playful without conviction. I
felt more like wailing over the lost illusion of vague desire, over
the sudden conviction that I would never find again near her the
strange, half-evil, half-tender sensation which had given its acrid
flavour to so many days, which had made her appear tragic and
promising, pitiful and provoking. That was all over.
"Your father picked it up," I said, thinking she may just as well
be told of the fact.
"I am not afraid of papa--by himself," she declared scornfully.
"Oh! It's only in conjunction with his disreputable associates,
strangers, the 'riff-raff of Europe' as your charming aunt or
great-aunt says--men like me, for instance--that you--"
"I am not afraid of you," she snapped out.
"That's because you don't know that I am now doing business with
your father. Yes, I am in fact doing exactly what he wants me to
do. I've broken my promise to you. That's the sort of man I am.
And now--aren't you afraid? If you believe what that dear, kind,
truthful old lady says you ought to be."
It was with unexpected modulated softness that the affirmed:
"No. I am not afraid." She hesitated. . . . "Not now."
"Quite right. You needn't be. I shall not see you again before I
go to sea." I rose and stood near her chair. "But I shall often
think of you in this old garden, passing under the trees over
there, walking between these gorgeous flower-beds. You must love
this garden--"
"I love nothing."
I heard in her sullen tone the faint echo of that resentfully
tragic note which I had found once so provoking. But it left me
unmoved except for a sudden and weary conviction of the emptiness
of all things under Heaven.
"Good-bye, Alice," I said.
She did not answer, she did not move. To merely take her hand,
shake it, and go away seemed impossible, almost improper. I
stooped without haste and pressed my lips to her smooth forehead.
This was the moment when I realised clearly with a sort of terror
my complete detachment from that unfortunate creature. And as I
lingered in that cruel self-knowledge I felt the light touch of her
arms falling languidly on my neck and received a hasty, awkward,
haphazard kiss which missed my lips. No! She was not afraid; but
I was no longer moved. Her arms slipped off my neck slowly, she
made no sound, the deep wicker arm-chair creaked slightly; only a
sense of my dignity prevented me fleeing headlong from that
catastrophic revelation.
I traversed the dining-room slowly. I thought: She's listening to
my footsteps; she can't help it; she'll hear me open and shut that
door. And I closed it as gently behind me as if I had been a thief
retreating with his ill-gotten booty. During that stealthy act I
experienced the last touch of emotion in that house, at the thought
of the girl I had left sitting there in the obscurity, with her
heavy hair and empty eyes as black as the night itself, staring
into the walled garden, silent, warm, odorous with the perfume of
imprisoned flowers, which, like herself, were lost to sight in a
world buried in darkness.
The narrow, ill-lighted, rustic streets I knew so well on my way to
the harbour were extremely quiet. I felt in my heart that the
further one ventures the better one understands how everything in
our life is common, short, and empty; that it is in seeking the
unknown in our sensations that we discover how mediocre are our
attempts and how soon defeated! Jacobus's boatman was waiting at
the steps with an unusual air of readiness. He put me alongside
the ship, but did not give me his confidential "Good-evening, sah,"
and, instead of shoving off at once, remained holding by the
ladder.
I was a thousand miles from commercial affairs, when on the dark
quarter-deck Mr. Burns positively rushed at me, stammering with
excitement. He had been pacing the deck distractedly for hours
awaiting my arrival. Just before sunset a lighter loaded with
potatoes had come alongside with that fat ship-chandler himself
sitting on the pile of sacks. He was now stuck immovable in the
cabin. What was the meaning of it all? Surely I did not--
"Yes, Mr. Burns, I did," I cut him short. He was beginning to make
gestures of despair when I stopped that, too, by giving him the key
of my desk and desiring him, in a tone which admitted of no
argument, to go below at once, pay Mr. Jacobus's bill, and send him
out of the ship.
"I don't want to see him," I confessed frankly, climbing the poop-
ladder. I felt extremely tired. Dropping on the seat of the
skylight, I gave myself up to idle gazing at the lights about the
quay and at the black mass of the mountain on the south side of the
harbour. I never heard Jacobus leave the ship with every single
sovereign of my ready cash in his pocket. I never heard anything
till, a long time afterwards, Mr. Burns, unable to contain himself
any longer, intruded upon me with his ridiculously angry
lamentations at my weakness and good nature.
"Of course, there's plenty of room in the after-hatch. But they
are sure to go rotten down there. Well! I never heard . . .
seventeen tons! I suppose I must hoist in that lot first thing to-
morrow morning."
"I suppose you must. Unless you drop them overboard. But I'm
afraid you can't do that. I wouldn't mind myself, but it's
forbidden to throw rubbish into the harbour, you know."
"That is the truest word you have said for many a day, sir--
rubbish. That's just what I expect they are. Nearly eighty good
gold sovereigns gone; a perfectly clean sweep of your drawer, sir.
Bless me if I understand!"
As it was impossible to throw the right light on this commercial
transaction I left him to his lamentations and under the impression
that I was a hopeless fool. Next day I did not go ashore. For one
thing, I had no money to go ashore with--no, not enough to buy a
cigarette. Jacobus had made a clean sweep. But that was not the
only reason. The Pearl of the Ocean had in a few short hours grown
odious to me. And I did not want to meet any one. My reputation
had suffered. I knew I was the object of unkind and sarcastic
comments.
The following morning at sunrise, just as our stern-fasts had been
let go and the tug plucked us out from between the buoys, I saw
Jacobus standing up in his boat. The nigger was pulling hard;
several baskets of provisions for ships were stowed between the
thwarts. The father of Alice was going his morning round. His
countenance was tranquil and friendly. He raised his arm and
shouted something with great heartiness. But his voice was of the
sort that doesn't carry any distance; all I could catch faintly, or
rather guess at, were the words "next time" and "quite correct."
And it was only of these last that I was certain. Raising my arm
perfunctorily for all response, I turned away. I rather resented
the familiarity of the thing. Hadn't I settled accounts finally
with him by means of that potato bargain?
This being a harbour story it is not my purpose to speak of our
passage. I was glad enough to be at sea, but not with the gladness
of old days. Formerly I had no memories to take away with me. I
shared in the blessed forgetfulness of sailors, that forgetfulness
natural and invincible, which resembles innocence in so far that it
prevents self-examination. Now however I remembered the girl.
During the first few days I was for ever questioning myself as to
the nature of facts and sensations connected with her person and
with my conduct.
And I must say also that Mr. Burns' intolerable fussing with those
potatoes was not calculated to make me forget the part which I had
played. He looked upon it as a purely commercial transaction of a
particularly foolish kind, and his devotion--if it was devotion and
not mere cussedness as I came to regard it before long--inspired
him with a zeal to minimise my loss as much as possible. Oh, yes!
He took care of those infamous potatoes with a vengeance, as the
saying goes.
Everlastingly, there was a tackle over the after-hatch and
everlastingly the watch on deck were pulling up, spreading out,
picking over, rebagging, and lowering down again, some part of that
lot of potatoes. My bargain with all its remotest associations,
mental and visual--the garden of flowers and scents, the girl with
her provoking contempt and her tragic loneliness of a hopeless
castaway--was everlastingly dangled before my eyes, for thousands
of miles along the open sea. And as if by a satanic refinement of
irony it was accompanied by a most awful smell. Whiffs from
decaying potatoes pursued me on the poop, they mingled with my
thoughts, with my food, poisoned my very dreams. They made an
atmosphere of corruption for the ship.
I remonstrated with Mr. Burns about this excessive care. I would
have been well content to batten the hatch down and let them perish
under the deck.
That perhaps would have been unsafe. The horrid emanations might
have flavoured the cargo of sugar. They seemed strong enough to
taint the very ironwork. In addition Mr. Burns made it a personal
matter. He assured me he knew how to treat a cargo of potatoes at
sea--had been in the trade as a boy, he said. He meant to make my
loss as small as possible. What between his devotion--it must have
been devotion--and his vanity, I positively dared not give him the
order to throw my commercial-venture overboard. I believe he would
have refused point blank to obey my lawful command. An
unprecedented and comical situation would have been created with
which I did not feel equal to deal.
I welcomed the coming of bad weather as no sailor had ever done.
When at last I hove the ship to, to pick up the pilot outside Port
Philip Heads, the after-hatch had not been opened for more than a
week and I might have believed that no such thing as a potato had
ever been on board.
It was an abominable day, raw, blustering, with great squalls of
wind and rain; the pilot, a cheery person, looked after the ship
and chatted to me, streaming from head to foot; and the heavier the
lash of the downpour the more pleased with himself and everything
around him he seemed to be. He rubbed his wet hands with a
satisfaction, which to me, who had stood that kind of thing for
several days and nights, seemed inconceivable in any non-aquatic
creature.
"You seem to enjoy getting wet, Pilot," I remarked.
He had a bit of land round his house in the suburbs and it was of
his garden he was thinking. At the sound of the word garden,
unheard, unspoken for so many days, I had a vision of gorgeous
colour, of sweet scents, of a girlish figure crouching in a chair.
Yes. That was a distinct emotion breaking into the peace I had
found in the sleepless anxieties of my responsibility during a week
of dangerous bad weather. The Colony, the pilot explained, had
suffered from unparalleled drought. This was the first decent drop
of water they had had for seven months. The root crops were lost.
And, trying to be casual, but with visible interest, he asked me if
I had perchance any potatoes to spare.
Potatoes! I had managed to forget them. In a moment I felt
plunged into corruption up to my neck. Mr. Burns was making eyes
at me behind the pilot's back.
Finally, he obtained a ton, and paid ten pounds for it. This was
twice the price of my bargain with Jacobus. The spirit of
covetousness woke up in me. That night, in harbour, before I
slept, the Custom House galley came alongside. While his
underlings were putting seals on the storerooms, the officer in
charge took me aside confidentially. "I say, Captain, you don't
happen to have any potatoes to sell."
Clearly there was a potato famine in the land. I let him have a
ton for twelve pounds and he went away joyfully. That night I
dreamt of a pile of gold in the form of a grave in which a girl was
buried, and woke up callous with greed. On calling at my ship-
broker's office, that man, after the usual business had been
transacted, pushed his spectacles up on his forehead.
"I was thinking, Captain, that coming from the Pearl of the Ocean
you may have some potatoes to sell."
I said negligently: "Oh, yes, I could spare you a ton. Fifteen
pounds."
He exclaimed: "I say!" But after studying my face for a while
accepted my terms with a faint grimace. It seems that these people
could not exist without potatoes. I could. I didn't want to see a
potato as long as I lived; but the demon of lucre had taken
possession of me. How the news got about I don't know, but,
returning on board rather late, I found a small group of men of the
coster type hanging about the waist, while Mr. Burns walked to and
fro the quarterdeck loftily, keeping a triumphant eye on them.
They had come to buy potatoes.
"These chaps have been waiting here in the sun for hours," Burns
whispered to me excitedly. "They have drank the water-cask dry.
Don't you throw away your chances, sir. You are too good-natured."
I selected a man with thick legs and a man with a cast in his eye
to negotiate with; simply because they were easily distinguishable
from the rest. "You have the money on you?" I inquired, before
taking them down into the cabin.
"Yes, sir," they answered in one voice, slapping their pockets. I
liked their air of quiet determination. Long before the end of the
day all the potatoes were sold at about three times the price I had
paid for them. Mr. Burns, feverish and exulting, congratulated
himself on his skilful care of my commercial venture, but hinted
plainly that I ought to have made more of it.
That night I did not sleep very well. I thought of Jacobus by fits
and starts, between snatches of dreams concerned with castaways
starving on a desert island covered with flowers. It was extremely
unpleasant. In the morning, tired and unrefreshed, I sat down and
wrote a long letter to my owners, giving them a carefully-thought-
out scheme for the ship's employment in the East and about the
China Seas for the next two years. I spent the day at that task
and felt somewhat more at peace when it was done.
Their reply came in due course. They were greatly struck with my
project; but considering that, notwithstanding the unfortunate
difficulty with the bags (which they trusted I would know how to
guard against in the future), the voyage showed a very fair profit,
they thought it would be better to keep the ship in the sugar
trade--at least for the present.
I turned over the page and read on:
"We have had a letter from our good friend Mr. Jacobus. We are
pleased to see how well you have hit it off with him; for, not to
speak of his assistance in the unfortunate matter of the bags, he
writes us that should you, by using all possible dispatch, manage
to bring the ship back early in the season he would be able to give
us a good rate of freight. We have no doubt that your best
endeavours . . . etc. . . etc."
I dropped the letter and sat motionless for a long time. Then I
wrote my answer (it was a short one) and went ashore myself to post
it. But I passed one letter-box, then another, and in the end
found myself going up Collins Street with the letter still in my
pocket--against my heart. Collins Street at four o'clock in the
afternoon is not exactly a desert solitude; but I had never felt
more isolated from the rest of mankind as when I walked that day
its crowded pavement, battling desperately with my thoughts and
feeling already vanquished.
There came a moment when the awful tenacity of Jacobus, the man of
one passion and of one idea, appeared to me almost heroic. He had
not given me up. He had gone again to his odious brother. And
then he appeared to me odious himself. Was it for his own sake or
for the sake of the poor girl? And on that last supposition the
memory of the kiss which missed my lips appalled me; for whatever
he had seen, or guessed at, or risked, he knew nothing of that.
Unless the girl had told him. How could I go back to fan that
fatal spark with my cold breath? No, no, that unexpected kiss had
to be paid for at its full price.
At the first letter-box I came to I stopped and reaching into my
breast-pocket I took out the letter--it was as if I were plucking
out my very heart--and dropped it through the slit. Then I went
straight on board.
I wondered what dreams I would have that night; but as it turned
out I did not sleep at all. At breakfast I informed Mr. Burns that
I had resigned my command.
He dropped his knife and fork and looked at me with indignation.
"You have, sir! I thought you loved the ship."
"So I do, Burns," I said. "But the fact is that the Indian Ocean
and everything that is in it has lost its charm for me. I am going
home as passenger by the Suez Canal."
"Everything that is in it," he repeated angrily. "I've never heard
anybody talk like this. And to tell you the truth, sir, all the
time we have been together I've never quite made you out. What's
one ocean more than another? Charm, indeed!"
He was really devoted to me, I believe. But he cheered up when I
told him that I had recommended him for my successor.
"Anyhow," he remarked, "let people say what they like, this Jacobus
has served your turn. I must admit that this potato business has
paid extremely well. Of course, if only you had--"
"Yes, Mr. Burns," I interrupted. "Quite a smile of fortune."
But I could not tell him that it was driving me out of the ship I
had learned to love. And as I sat heavy-hearted at that parting,
seeing all my plans destroyed, my modest future endangered--for
this command was like a foot in the stirrup for a young man--he
gave up completely for the first time his critical attitude.
"A wonderful piece of luck!" he said.
