FORTINBRAS paced the deck of the homeward bound steamer deep in thought.
He still wore the costume of the elderly cabinet minister; but his air
was that of the cabinet minister returning to a wrecked ministry. His
broad shoulders were rounded and bent; his face had fallen from its
benevolent folds into fleshy haggardness. He felt old; he felt
inexpressibly lonely. He had not repeated the social experiment of the
voyage out. Save to his Dutch and Russian table neighbours he had not
the heart to speak to any one. A deep melancholy enwrapped him. After
his philosophical communion with the sage Abu Mohammed he shrank from
platitudinous commerce with the profane. It was for the heart and not
for the mind that he craved companionship. He was travelling
(second-class, for economy’s sake) back to the old half-charlatan life.
For all one’s learning and wisdom, one cannot easily embark on a new
career in the middle-fifties. He must be _Marchand de Bonheur_ to the
end.
He wondered whether he would miss Cécile. Such things had happened. No
matter how degraded, she had been a human thing to greet him on his
return from his preposterous toil. Also, her needs had been an
incentive; they had sharpened the hawk’s vision during the daily round
of cafés and restaurants, and quickened his pounce upon the divined
five-franc piece. Would he have the nerve, the unwearied patience, the
bitter sense of martyrdom, wherewith to carry on his trade? Again, in
days past his heavy heart had been uplifted by the love of a child like
the wild flowers from which Alpine honey is made, away in the depths of
old-world France. But now he had forfeited her love. She had written to
him, all these weeks in Egypt, dutifully, irreproachably; had given him
the news, such as it was, of Brantôme. She had told him of the state of
her uncle’s health—invariably robust; of the arrivals and departures of
elegant motorists; of the march through the town decorated for the
occasion of a host of _petits soldats_, amid the enthusiasm and
Marseillaise singing of the inhabitants; of the sudden death by apoplexy
of the good Madame Chauvet, and the sudden development of business on
the part of her daughters, who almost immediately had taken the next
shop and launched out into iron wreaths and crosses, and artificial
flowers and funeral inscriptions, touching and pious; of the purchases
of geese; of the infatuation of the elderly Euphémie for the youthful
waiter, erstwhile _plongeur_ of the Café de l’Univers; of all sorts and
conditions of unimportant happenings; finally of the betrothal of
Monsieur Lucien Viriot and Estelle Mazabois, the daughter of the famous
Mazabois who kept a great drapery establishment of Périgueux—“she has
the dowry of a princess and the head of a rocking-horse, so they are
sure to be happy,” wrote Félise. The manner of this last announcement
shocked him. Félise had changed. She had given him all the news, but her
letters had grown self-conscious and artificial. To avoid the old,
artless expressions of endearment, she rushed into sprightly narrative,
and signed herself “his affectionate daughter.” He had lost Félise.
Yes, he felt old and lonely, unnerved for the struggle. Even Martin had
forsaken him.
He had encountered a stony-faced, wrong-headed young man on the terrace
of Shepheard’s Hotel the noon before he sailed, and found all his
nostrums for happiness high-handedly rejected. Martin had been an idle
woman’s toy, a fiery toy as it turned out; and when she burned her
fingers, she had dropped him. So much was obvious; most of it he had
foreseen. He had counted on eventual declaration and summary dismissal;
but he had not reckoned on a prelude of reciprocated sentiment. Contrary
to habit, Martin gave him but a confused view of his state of mind. The
unhappy lover would hear not a word against his peerless lady. On the
other hand, his love for her had blasted his existence. This appalling
fact, though he did not proclaim it so heroically, he allowed Fortinbras
to apprehend. He neither reproached him for past advice nor asked for
new. To the suggestion that he should return to Brantôme and accept
Bigourdin’s offer, he turned a deaf ear. He had cut himself adrift; he
must go whithersoever winds and tides should carry him, and they were
carrying him far from Périgord.
“In what direction?” Fortinbras had enquired.
“Thank Heaven, I don’t know myself,” he had answered. “Anyhow, I am
going to seek my fortune. I must have money and power so that I can snap
my fingers at the world. That’s what I’m going to live for.”
And soon after that declaration he had wrung Fortinbras by the hand, and
hailing an _arabeah_ had driven off into the unknown. Fortinbras had
felt like the hen who sees her duckling brood sail away down the brook.
He had lost control of his disciple; he mattered nothing to the young
man setting forth on his wild-goose chase after fortune. His charming
little scheme had failed. He anticipated the reproaches of Bigourdin,
the accusation in the eyes of Félise. “Why did you side with the enemy?
Why did you drive Martin away?” . . .
He felt old and lonely, a pathetic failure; so he walked the
second-class deck with listless shoulders and bowed head, his hands in
his pockets.
“_Tiens!_ Monsieur Fortinbras! who would have thought it?” cried a fresh
voice.
He looked up and saw a dark-eyed girl, her head enveloped in a
motor-veil, who extended a friendly hand.
“_Mademoiselle_ . . .” he began uncertainly.
“_Mais oui!_ Eugénie Dubois. You must remember me. There was also _le
grand Jules_—Jules Massart.”
“Yes, I remember,” he said courteously, with a wan smile.
“You saved us both from a pretty mess.”
“I remember the saving; but I forget the mess. It is my rule always to
forget such things.”
She laughed gaily, burst into an account of herself. She was a modiste
in the great Paris firm of Odille et Compagnie, which had a branch at
Cairo. Now she was recalled for the Paris and London season.
“_Et justement_”—she plucked at his sleeve and led him to a seat—“I am
in a tangle of an affair which keeps me awake of nights. You fall upon
me from the skies like an angel. Be good and give me a consultation.”
She fished out her purse and extracted a twenty-five piastre piece. He
motioned her hand away.
“_Mon enfant_” said he. “You are an honourable little soul. But I don’t
do business on a holiday. _Raconte-moi ton affaire._”
But she protested. She would not abuse his kindness. Either a
consultation at the regulation price or no consultation at all. At last
he said:
“_Eh bien!_ give me your five francs.”
She obeyed. He rose. “Come,” said he, and led the way to the stairhead
by the saloon where was fixed the collecting box in aid of the Fund for
Shipwrecked Mariners. He slipped the coin down the slot.
“Now,” said he, “honour is satisfied.”
But listening to her artless and complicated tale, he wondered, while a
shiver ran over his frame, whether he would ever be able again to slip a
five-franc piece into his waistcoat pocket. He felt yet older than
before, incapable of piercing to the root of youth’s perplexities. He
counselled with oracular vagueness, conscious of not having earned his
fee. He paced the deck again.
“Were it not for Abu Mohammed,” he said, “I should call it a disastrous
journey.”
* * * * *
Meanwhile Martin, lonelier even than he, sat in the bows of a great
Eastward bound steamer, his eyes opened to the staring facts of life. No
longer must he masquerade as the man of fashion—never again until he
had bought the right. The remains of his small capital he must keep
intact for the day of need. No more the luxury of first-class travel.
This voyage in the steerage was but a means of transit to the new lands
where he would win his way to fortune. He needed no advice. He had
spiritually and morally outgrown his tutelage. No longer, so he told
himself, would he nourish his soul on dreams. It could feed if it liked
on memories. The madness had passed. He drew the breath of an honest
man. If he had taken Lucilla at her word and married her, what would
have been his existence? Trailing about the idle world in the wake of a
rich wife, dependent on her bounty even for a pair of shoe-laces; eating
out his heart for the love she could not give; at last, perhaps,
quarrelling desperately, or else with sapped will-power sunk in sloth,
accepting from her an allowance on condition that they should live
apart. He had heard of such marriages since he had mingled with the
wealthy. Even had she met him with a love as passionate as his own,
would the happiness have lasted? In his grim mood he thought not. He
reasoned himself into the conviction that his loss had been his gain.
Far better that he should be among these few poor folk who sat down to
table in their shirt-sleeves, than that he should be eating the
flesh-pots of dishonour in the land of Egypt. He himself dined in his
shirt-sleeves, as he had done many a time before in the kitchen of the
Hôtel des Grottes.
Yet he hungered for her. It seemed impossible that he should never see
her again, never again watch the sweep of the adorable brown eyelashes,
the subtle play of laughter around her mobile lips; never again greet
with delicious heart-pang the sight of her slim figure willowy like
those in the _Primavera_. In vain he schooled himself to regard her as
one dead. The witchery of her obsessed him night and day. He learned
what it was to suffer.
He had taken his deck passage to Hong-Kong—why he could scarcely tell.
It sounded very far away—as far away from her as practicable. As the
sultry days went on, he realised that he had not reckoned on the
tremendous distance of Hong-Kong. It was past Bombay, Colombo, Penang
and Singapore. At such ports as he could, he landed, but the glamour of
the East had gone. He was a man who had expended his power of wonder and
delight. He looked on them coldly as places he might possibly exploit,
should Hong-Kong prove barren. Also the period of great heat had begun,
and he found danger in strolling about the deadly streets. On ship-board
he slept on deck. As they neared Hong-Kong his heart sank. For the first
time he wished that Fortinbras were with him. Perhaps he had repaid
affection with scant courtesy. He occupied himself with a long letter to
his friend, setting out his case. He then imagined the reply. “My son,”
said the mellow, persuasive voice, “have you not been carrying on from
thrill to thrill the Great Adventure begun last August, when you threw
off the chains of Margett’s? Have you not filled your brain and your
soul with new and breathless sensations? Have you not tasted joys
hitherto unimagined? Have you not been admitted to the heart of a great
and loyal nation? Have you not flaunted it in the dazzling splendour of
the great world? Have you not steeped your being in the gorgeous colour
of the East? Have not your pulses throbbed with an immortal passion for
a woman of surpassing beauty? Have you not known, what is only accorded
to the select of the sons of men, a supreme moment of delirious joy when
Time stood still and Space was not? Have you not lived intensely all
this wonderful year? Are you the same blank-minded, starving-souled,
mild negation of a man who sat as a butt for Corinna’s pleasantries at
the Petit Cornichon? Have you not progressed immeasurably? Have you not
gained spiritual stature, wisdom both human and godlike? And are you not
now, having passed through the fiery furnace not only unscathed but
tempered, setting out on the still greater adventure—the conquest of
the Ends of the Earth? Less than a year ago what were you but a slave?
What are you now? A free man.”
So through the ears of fancy ran the sonorous rhetoric of Fortinbras.
Martin tore up his letter and scattered the fragments on the sea. A day
or two afterwards, with a stout heart, he landed at Victoria, the
capital of Hong-Kong.
* * * * *
A half-caste clerk to whom he had entrusted his card returned from the
inner office.
“Mr. Tudsley will see you, sir.”
Martin followed him into a darkened office, cooled by an electric fan,
where a white-clad, gaunt, yellow-faced Englishman sat at a desk. The
clerk closed the door and retired. The yellow-faced Englishman rose and
smiled, after glancing at Martin’s card on the desk before him.
“Mr. Overshaw? What can I do for you?”
“You can give me some work,” said Martin.
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
“I’m sorry,” said Martin. “I must apologise for troubling you.”
He was about to withdraw. Mr. Tudsley glanced at him shrewdly.
“Wait a minute. Sit down. I don’t seem to place you. Who are you and
where do you come from?”
“That’s my name,” said Martin, pointing to his card, “and I have just
arrived from Europe, or to be more exact, from Egypt.”
“By the _Sesostris?_”
“Yes.”
Mr. Tudsley took up and scanned a type-written sheet of paper.
“I don’t see your name on the passenger list.”
“Possibly not,” said Martin. “I came steerage.”
“Indeed?” Martin, spruce in his well-cut grey flannels, looked anything
but a deck passenger. “What made you do that?”
“Economy,” said Martin.
“And why have you come to me?”
“I made a list last night, at the hotel, of the leading firms in
Hong-Kong and yours was among them.”
“Haven’t you any introductions?”
“No.”
“Then what induced you to come to this particular little Hell upon
Earth?”
“Chance,” said Martin. “One place is pretty much the same to me as
another.”
“What kind of work are you looking for?”
“Anything. From sweeping the floor to running a business.”
“Only coolies sweep floors here,” said Mr. Tudsley, tilting back his
chair and clasping his hands behind his back. “And only experienced men
of business run businesses. What business have you run?”
“None,” said Martin.
“Well, what business qualifications have you?”
“None. But I’m an educated man—Cambridge——”
“Yes, yes, one sees that,” the other interrupted. “There are millions of
them.”
“I’m bilingual, English and French, and my German is good enough for
ordinary purposes.”
“Do you know anything of accounts?”
“No,” said Martin.
“Can you add up figures correctly?”
“I daresay,” said Martin.
“Have you ever tried?”
“No,” said Martin.
Mr. Tudsley handed him a mass of type-written papers pinned together.
“Do you know what that is?”
Martin glanced through the document. “It seems to be a list of
commodities.”
“It’s a Bill of Lading. First time you’ve ever seen one?”
“Yes,” said Martin.
“Have you any capital?”
“A little. A few hundred pounds.”
“Then stick to it like grim death. Don’t part with it here.”
“I haven’t the slightest intention of doing so,” said Martin.
The lean, yellow-faced man brought his chair back to normal
perpendicularity and swung it round—it worked on a swivel.
“Mr. Overshaw,” said he, “pardon a perfect stranger giving you
advice—but you seem to be a frank, straight man. You’ve made a mistake
in coming to Hong-Kong. It’s a beast of a climate. In a few days’ time
the rains will begin. Then it will rain steadily, drearily, hopelessly,
damply, swelteringly, deadlily day after day, hour after hour, for four
months. That’s one way of looking at things. There’s another. I am
perfectly sure there’s not a vacancy for an amateur clerk in the whole
of Hong-Kong. If we want a linguist—your specialty—we can get Germans
by the dozen who not only know six languages but who have been trained
as business experts from childhood—and we can get them for twopence
halfpenny a month.”
Martin, remembering the discussions at the Café de l’Univers, replied:
“And when the war comes?”
“What war?”
“Between England and Germany.”
“My dear fellow, what in the world are you talking of? There’s not going
to be any war. Besides,” he smiled indulgently, “suppose there was—what
then?”
“First,” said Martin, “you would have given the enemy an intimate
knowledge of your trade, which by the way he is even now reporting by
every mail to his government”—he was quoting the dictum of a highly
placed Egyptian official whom he met at a dinner party in Cairo—“and
then you would have to fall back upon Englishmen.”
Mr. Tudsley laughed and rose, so as to end the interview.
“I’ll take the risk of that,” he said easily. “But the immediate
question is: ‘What are you to do?’ Have you visited any other firms?”
“Several,” said Martin.
“And what have they said?”
“Much the same as you, Mr. Tudsley, only not so kindly and courteously.”
“That’s all right,” said Mr. Tudsley, shy at the compliment. “I don’t
see why Englishmen meeting at the other end of nowhere shouldn’t be
civil to each other. But my advice is: Clear out of Hong-Kong. There’s
nothing doing.”
“What about Shanghai?”
“That’s further still from Europe.”
“Singapore?”
“That’s better—on the way back.”
“I must thank you,” said Martin, “for giving me so much of your time.”
“Not a bit I am only sorry I can’t give you a job or put you on to one.
But you see the position, don’t you?”
Martin smiled wryly. “I’m beginning to see it with painful clearness.”
“Good-bye and good luck,” said Mr. Tudsley.
“Good-bye,” said Martin.
Between then and the date of sailing of the next homeward bound steamer,
Martin knocked at every door in Hong-Kong. Nobody wanted him. There was
nothing he could do. There was no place for him on the very lowest rung
of any ladder to fortune.
He sailed to Singapore.