THE SLOUGH OF TRANQUILLITY
Three months stole by with tantalising slowness. How the strangers on
the island of Japat employed those dull, simmering, idle weeks it would
not be difficult to relate. There was little or no incident to break the
monotony of their enforced residence among the surly Japatites; the same
routine obtained from day to day. Sultry, changeless, machine-like were
those hundred days and nights. They looked forward with hopeful, tired
eyes; never backward. There was nothing behind them but a dour waste, a
bog through which they had driven themselves with a lash of resolution.
Autumn passed on into winter without a change of expression in the
benign face of nature. Christmas day was as hot as if it had come in
midsummer; the natives were as naked, the trees as fully clad. The
curious sun closed his great eye for a few hours in the twenty-four; the
remainder of the time he glared down upon his victims with a malevolence
that knew no bounds. Soft, sweet winds came with the typhoon season,
else the poor whites must have shrivelled and died while nature
revelled. Rain fell often in fitful little bursts of joyousness, but the
hungry earth sipped its moisture through a million greedy lips, eager to
thwart the mischievous sun. Through it all, the château gleamed red and
purple and gray against the green mountainside, baked where the sun
could meet its face, cool where the caverns blew upon it with their
rich, damp breath.
The six months were passing away, however, in spite of themselves; ten
weeks were left before the worn, but determined heirs could cast off
their bonds and rush away to other climes. It mattered little whether
they went away rich or poor; they were to go! Go! That was the richest
thing the future held out to them--more precious than the wealth for
which they stayed. Whatever was being done for them in London and
Boston, it was no recompense for the weariness of heart and soul that
they had found in the green island of Japat.
True, they rode and played and swam and romped without restraint, but
beneath all of their abandon there lurked the ever-present pathos of the
jail, the asylum, the detention ward. The blue sky seemed streaked with
the bars of their prison; the green earth clanked as with the sombre
tread of feet crossing flagstones.
Not until the end of January was there a sign of revolt against the
ever-growing, insidious condition of melancholy. As they turned into the
last third of their exile, they found heart to rejoice in the thought
that release was coming nearer and nearer. The end of March! Eight weeks
off! Soon there would be but seven weeks--then six!
And, all this time, the islanders toiled as they had toiled for years;
they reckoned in years, while the strangers cast up Time's account in
weeks and called them years. Each day the brown men worked in the mines,
piling gems into the vaults with a resoluteness that never faltered.
They were the sons of Martha. The rubies of Mandalay and Mogok were
rivalled by the takings of these indifferent stockholders in the great
Japat corporation. Nothing short of a ruby as large as the Tibet gem
could have startled them out of their state of taciturnity. Gems
weighing ten and fifteen carats already had been taken from the "byon"
in the wash, and yet inspired no exaltation. Sapphires, nestling in the
soft ground near their carmine sisters, were rolling into the coffers of
the company, but they were treated as so many pebbles in this ceaseless
search.
The tiniest child knew that the ruby would not lose its colour by fire,
while the blue of the sapphire would vanish forever if subjected to
heat. All these things and many more the white strangers learned; they
were surfeited with a knowledge that tired and bored them.
From London came disquieting news for all sides to the controversy. The
struggle promised to be drawn out for years, perhaps; the executors
would probably be compelled to turn over the affairs of the corporation
to agents of the Crown; in the meantime a battle royal, long drawn out,
would undoubtedly be fought for the vast unentailed estate left behind
by the two legators.
The lonely legatees, marooned in the far South Sea, began to realise
that even after they had spent their six months of probation, they would
still have months, even years, of waiting before they could touch the
fortune they laid claim to. The islanders also were vaguely awake to the
fact that everything might be tied up for years, despite the provisions
of the will; a restless, stubborn feeling of alarm spread among them.
This feeling gradually developed itself into bitter resentment; hatred
for the people who were causing this delay was growing deeper and
fiercer with each succeeding day of toil.
Their counsellor, the complacent Enemy, was in no sense immune to the
blandishments of the climate. His tremendous vitality waned; he slowly
drifted into the current with his fellows, although not beside them. For
some unaccountable reason, he held himself aloof from the men and women
that his charges were fighting. He met the two lawyers often, but
nothing passed between them that could have been regarded as the
slightest breach of trust. He lived like a rajah in his shady bungalow,
surrounded by the luxuries of one to whom all things are brought
indivisible. If he had any longing for the society of women of his own
race and kind, he carefully concealed it; his indifference to the subtle
though unmistakable appeals of the two gentlewomen in the château was
irritating in the extreme. When he deliberately, though politely,
declined their invitation to tea one afternoon, their humiliation knew
no bounds. They had, after weeks of procrastination, surrendered to the
inevitable. It was when they could no longer stand out against the
common enemy--Tranquillity! Lord Deppingham and Bobby Browne suffered in
silence; they even looked longingly toward the bungalow for the relief
that it contained and refused to extend.
Lady Deppingham and Mrs. Browne should not be misunderstood by the
reader. They loved their husbands--I am quite sure of that; but they
were tired of seeing no one else, tired of talking to no one else.
Moreover, in support of this one-sided assertion, they experienced from
time to time the most melancholy attacks of jealousy. The drag of time
hung so heavily upon them that any struggle to cast it off was
immediately noticeable. If Mrs. Browne, in plain despair, went off for a
day's ride with Lord Deppingham, that gentleman's wife was sick with
jealousy. If Lady Agnes strolled in the moonlit gardens with Mr. Browne,
the former Miss Bate of Boston could scarcely control her emotions. They
shed many tears of anguish over the faithlessness of husbands; tears of
hatred over the viciousness of temptresses. Their quarrels were fierce,
their upbraidings characteristic, but in the end they cried and kissed
and "made up"; they actually found some joy in creating these little
feuds and certainly there was great exhilaration in ending them.
They did not know, of course, that the wily Britt, despite his own
depression, was all the while accumulating the most astounding lot of
evidence to show that a decided streak of insanity existed in the two
heirs. He won Saunders over to his way of thinking, and that faithful
agent unconsciously found himself constantly on the watch for "signs,"
jotting them down in his memorandum book. Britt was firm in his purpose
to make them out as "mad as March hares" if needs be; he slyly patted
his typewritten "manifestations" and said that it would be easy sailing,
so far as he was concerned. One choice bit of evidence he secured in a
most canny manner. He was present when Miss Pelham, at the bank, was
"taking" a dictation for the Enemy--some matter pertaining to the output
of the mines. Lady Deppingham had just been guilty of a most astounding
piece of foolhardiness, and he was discussing it with the Enemy. She had
forced her horse to leap across a narrow fissure in the volcano the day
before. Falling, she would have gone to her death three hundred feet
below.
"She must be an out and out lunatic," the Enemy had said. Britt looked
quickly at Miss Pelham and Mr. Bowles. The former took down the
statement in shorthand and Bowles was afterward required to sign "his
deposition." Such a statement as that, coming from the source it did,
would be of inestimable value in Court.
"If they could only be married in some way," was Britt's private lament
to Saunders, from time to time, when despair overcame confidence.
"I've got a ripping idea," Saunders said one day.
"Let's have it. You've always got 'em. Why not divide with me?"
"Can't do it just yet. I've been looking up a little matter. I'll spring
it soon."
"How long have you been working on the idea?"
"Nearly four months," said Saunders, yawning.
"'Gad, this climate _is_ enervating," was Britt's caustic comment.
Saunders was heels over head in love with Miss Pelham at this time, so
it is not surprising that he had some sort of an idea about marriage, no
matter whom it concerned.
Night after night, the Deppinghams and Brownes gave dinners, balls,
musicales, "Bridges," masques and theatre suppers at the château. First
one would invite the other to a great ball, then the other would respond
by giving a sumptuous dinner. Their dinners were served with as much
punctiliousness as if the lordliest guests were present; their dancing
parties, while somewhat barren of guests, were never dull for longer
than ten minutes after they opened. Each lady danced twice and then
pleaded a headache. Whereupon the "function" came to a close.
For a while, the two hostesses were not in a position to ask any one
outside their immediate families to these functions, but one day Mrs.
Browne was seized by an inspiration. She announced that she was going to
send regular invitations to all of her friends at home.
"Regular written invitations, with five-cent stamps, my dear," she
explained enthusiastically. "Just like this: 'Mrs. Robert Browne
requests the pleasure of Miss So-and-so's company at dinner on the 17th
of Whatever-it-is. Please reply by return steamer.' Won't it be fun?
Bobby, please send down to the bank for the stamps. I'm going to make
out a list."
After that it was no unusual thing to see large packages of carefully
stamped envelopes going to sea in the ships that came for the mail.
"And I'd like so much to meet these native Americans that you are
asking," said Lady Agnes sweetly, and without malice. "I've always
wondered if the first families over there show any trace of their
wonderful, picturesque Indian blood."
"Our first families came from England, Lady Deppingham," said Drusilla,
biting her lips.
"Indeed? From what part of England?" Of course, that query killed every
chance for a sensible discussion.
One morning during the first week in February, the steamer from Aden
brought stacks of mail--the customary newspapers, magazines, novels,
telegrams and letters. It was noticed that her ladyship had several
hundred letters, many bearing crests or coats-of-arms.
At last, she came to a letter of many pages, covered with a scrawl that
looked preposterously fashionable.
"Nouveau riche," thought Drusilla Browne, looking up from her own
letters. Lady Agnes gave a sudden shriek, and, leaping to her feet,
performed a dance that set her husband and Bobby Browne to gasping.
"She's coming!" she cried ecstatically, repeating herself a dozen times.
"Who's coming, Aggie?" roared her husband for the sixth time.
"She!"
"She may be a steamship for all I know, if--"
"The Princess! Deppy, I'm going to squeeze you! I must squeeze somebody!
Isn't it glorious? Now--now! Now life will be worth living in this
beastly place."
Her dearest friend, the Princess, had written to say that she was coming
to spend a month with her. Her dear schoolmate of the old days in
Paris--her chum of the dear Sacred Heart Convent when it flourished in
the Boulevard des Invalides--her roommate up to the day when that
institution was forced to leave Paris for less unfriendly fields!
"In her uncle's yacht, Deppy--the big one that came to Cowes last year,
don't you know? Of course, you do. Don't look so dazed. He's cruising
for a couple of months and is to set her down here until the yacht
returns from Borneo and the Philippines. She says she hopes it will be
quiet here! Quiet! She _hopes_ it will be _quiet_! Where are the
cigarettes, Deppy? Quick! I must do something devilish. Yes, I know I
swore off last week, but--please let me take 'em." The four of them
smoked in wondrous silence for two or three minutes. Then Browne spoke
up, as if coming from a dream:
"I say, Deppingham, you can take her out walking and pick up a crownful
of fresh rubies every day or so."
"Hang it all, Browne, I'm afraid to pluck a violet these days. Every
time I stoop over I feel that somebody's going to take a shot at me. I
wonder why the beggars select me to shoot at. They're not always popping
away at you, Browne. Why is it? I'm not looking for rubies every time I
stoop over. They shot at me the other day when I got down to pick up my
crop."
"It's all right so long as they don't kill you," was Browne's consoling
remark.
"By Jove!" said Deppingham, starting up with a look of horror in his
eyes, sudden comprehension rushing down upon him. "I wonder if they
think I am _you_, Browne! Horrible!"