VISIONS OF THE PAST
Comfortably installed in a huge easy-chair beside the freshly built
fire in the “cabin” of Snug Haven and with one of Ezra Trefethen’s most
artful egg-nogs within easy reach, the aged doctor leaned back, and
sighed deeply.
“Maybe the captain’s right,” said he. “Maybe the boy’s all right. It’s
possible; but I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Blinking, his eyes wandered about the room, which opened off from an
old-fashioned hallway lighted by glass panels at the sides of the front
door, and by a leaded fanlight over the lintel; a hallway with a curved
stairway that would have delighted the heart of any antiquarian. The
cabin itself showed by its construction and furnishing that the captain
had spent a great deal of thought and time and money. At first glance,
save that the fireplace was an incongruous note, one would have thought
one’s self aboard ship, so closely had the nautical idea been carried
out.
To begin with, the windows at the side, which opened out upon the
orchard, were circular and rimmed with shining brass, and had thick
panes inward-swinging like ships’ portholes. A polished fir column, set
a trifle on a slant, rose from floor to ceiling, which was supported
on white beams, the form and curve of which exactly imitated marine
architecture. This column measured no less than a foot and a half in
diameter, and gave precisely the impression of a ship’s mast. On it
hung a chronometer, boxed in a case of polished mahogany, itself the
work of the captain’s own hand.
All the lamps were hung in gimbals, as if the good captain expected
Snug Haven at any moment to set sail and go pitching away over
storm-tossed seas. The green-covered table bore a miscellany of
nautical almanacs; it accommodated, also, a variety of charts, maps
and meteorological reports. The captain’s own chair at that table
was a true swinging-chair, screwed to the floor; and this floor, you
understand, was uncarpeted, so that the holystoned planking shone in
immaculate cleanliness as the declining sun through the portholes
painted long, reddish stripes across it. Brass instruments lay on the
table, and from them the sun flecked little high-lights against the
clean, white paint of the cabin.
At the left of the table stood a binnacle, with compass and all; at the
right, a four-foot globe, its surface scored with numerous names, dates
and memoranda, carefully written in red ink. The captain’s log-book,
open on the table, also showed writing in red. No ordinary diary
sufficed for Alpheus Briggs; no, he would have a regulation ship’s log
to keep the record of his daily life, or he would have no record at all.
In a rack at one side rested two bright telescopes, with an empty place
for the glass now out on the piazza. Beneath this rack a sextant hung;
and at one side the daily government weather-report was affixed to a
white-painted board.
A sofa-locker, quite like a ship’s berth, still showed the impress
of the captain’s body, where he had taken his after-dinner nap. One
almost thought to hear the chanting of sea-winds in cordage, aloft, and
the creak and give of seasoned timbers. A curious, a wonderful room,
indeed! And as Dr. Filhiol studied it, his face expressed a kind of
yearning eagerness; for to his fading life this connotation of the
other, braver days brought back memories of things that once had been,
that now could never be again.
Yet, analyzing everything, he put away these thoughts. Many sad years
had broken the spirit in him and turned his thoughts to the worse
aspects of everything. He shook his head again dubiously, and his thin
lips formed the words:
“This is very, very strange. This is some form of mental aberration,
surely. No man wholly sane would build and furnish any such grotesque
place. It’s worse, worse than I thought.”
Contemplatively he sipped the egg-nog and continued his observations,
while from the kitchen—no, the galley—sounded a clink of coppers,
mingled with the piping song of old Ezra, interminably discoursing on
the life and adventures of the unfortunate Reuben Ranzo, whose chantey
is beknown to all seafaring men. The doctor’s eyes, wandering to the
wall nearest him, now perceived a glass-fronted cabinet, filled with a
most extraordinary _omnium gatherum_ of curios.
Corals, sponges, coir, nuts, pebbles and dried fruits, strange puffy
and spiny fishes, specimens in alcohol, a thousand and one oddments
jostled each other on the shelves.
Nor was this all to excite the doctor’s wonder. For hard by the cabinet
he now perceived the door of a safe, set into the wall, its combination
flush with the white boards.
“The captain can’t be so foolish as to keep his money in his house,”
thought Filhiol. “Not when there are banks that offer absolute
security. But then, with a man like Captain Briggs, anything seems
possible.”
He drank a little more of Ezra’s excellent concoction, and turned his
attention to the one remaining side of the cabin, almost filled by the
huge-throated fireplace and by the cobbled chimney.
“More junk!” said Dr. Filhiol unsympathetically.
Against the cobble-stones, suspended from hooks screwed into the
cement, hung a regular arsenal of weapons: yataghans, scimitars, sabers
and muskets—two of them rare Arabian specimens with long barrels and
silver-chased stocks. Pistols there were, some of antique patterns
bespeaking capture or purchase from half-civilized peoples. Daggers
and stilettos had been worked into a kind of rough pattern. A bow and
arrows, a “Penang lawyer,” and a couple of boomerangs were interspersed
between some knobkerries from Australia, and a few shovel-headed spears
and African pigmies’ blow-guns. All the weapons showed signs of wear or
rust. In every probability, all had taken human life.
Odd, was it not, that the captain, now so mild a man of peace, should
have maintained so grim a reliquary? But, perhaps (the doctor thought),
Briggs had preserved it as a kind of strange, contrasting reminder of
his other days, just as more than one reformed drunkard has been known
to keep the favorite little brown jug that formerly was his undoing.
Filhiol, however, very deeply disapproved of this collection. Old age
and infirmity had by no means rendered his disposition more suave. He
muttered words of condemnation, drank off a little more of the egg-nog,
and once again fell to studying the collection. And suddenly his
attention concentrated, fixing itself with particular intentness on a
certain blade that until then had escaped his scrutiny.
This blade, a Malay kris with a beautifully carved lotus-bud on the
handle, seemed to occupy a sort of central post of honor, toward
which the other knives converged. The doctor adjusted his spectacles
and studied it for a long minute, as if trying to bring back some
recollections not quite clear. Then he arose lamely, and squinted up at
the blade.
“That’s a kris,” said he slowly. “A Malay kris. Good Lord, it couldn’t
be—_the_ kris, could it?”
He remained a little while, observing the weapon. The sunlight,
ever growing redder as the sun sank over Croft Hill and the ancient
cemetery, flicked lights from the brass instruments on the table, and
for a moment seemed to crimson the vicious, wavy blade of steel. The
doctor raised a lean hand to touch the kris, then drew back.
“Better not,” said he. “That’s the one, all right enough. There’s the
groove, the poison groove. There couldn’t be two exactly alike. I
remember that groove especially. And curaré lasts for years; it’s just
as fatal now, as when it was first put on. That kris is mighty good to
let alone!”
A dark, rusty stain on the blade set him shuddering. Blood, was
it—blood, from the long ago? Who could say? The kris evoked powerful
memories. The battle of Motomolo Strait rose up before him. The smoke
from the fire in the grate seemed, all at once, that of the burning
proa, drifting over the opalescent waters of that distant sea. The
illusion was extraordinary. Dr. Filhiol closed his eyes, held tightly
to the edge of the mantel, and with dilated nostrils sniffed the smoke.
He remained there, transfixed with poignant emotions, trembling, afraid.
It seemed to him as if the shadowy hand of some malignant _jinnee_ had
reached out of the bleeding past, and had laid hold on him—a hand that
seized and shook his heart with an envenomed, bony clutch.
“God!” he murmured. “What a time that was—what a ghastly, terrible
time!”
He tried to shake off this obsessing vision, opened his eyes, and sank
down into the easy-chair. Unnerved, shaking, he struck the glass still
holding some of the egg-nog, and knocked it to the floor.
The crash of the breaking glass startled him as if it had been the
crack of a rifle. Quivering, he stared down at the liquor, spreading
over the holystoned floor. Upon it the red sunlight gleamed; and in a
flash he beheld once more the deck of the old _Silver Fleece_, smeared
and spotted with blood.
Back he shrank, with extended hands, superstitious fear at his heart.
Something nameless, cold and terrible fingered at the latchets of his
soul. It was all irrational enough, foolish enough; but still it caught
him in its grip, that perfectly unreasoning, heart-clutching fear.
Weakly he pressed a shaking hand over his eyes. With bloodless lips he
quavered:
“After fifty years, my God! After fifty years!”