coffee, was poor Bo planted on the beach, where, as far as I could see,
she must have passed the night, sitting with unshaken determination on
her camphor-wood chest. Taking the schooner’s dinghy, I pulled myself
over to the _Ransom_, bent on a fresh scheme to retrieve the situation.
The first person I ran across on board was the Beautiful Man himself,
who hailed me with the greatest good humour, and asked what the devil
had brought me there so early.
“To put you off this ship,” I replied. “When the captain has heard my
story, I don’t think you will ever see Sydney, Mr. Beautiful Man.”
“W’y, w’at’s this you have against me?” he asked, with a very
creditable show of astonishment.
I pointed to the melancholy spectre on the beach.
“W’at of it?” he said. “She ain’t mine: she’s yours.”
“You wait till I see the captain!” I retorted.
“A fat lot he’ll care,” said Hinton. “The fack is, as between man and
man, I don’t mind telling you he’d shake me if he dared, the old hunks;
but I’ve got an order for my passage from the owner, and it will be
worth his job for him to disregard it. My word! I thought he was going
to bounce me last night, for he was tearing up and down here like a
royal Bengal tiger in a cage of blue fire, giving me w’at he called a
piece of his mind. A dirty low mind it was, too, and I don’t mind who
hears me say it. But I stood on my order. I said, ‘Here it is,’ I said,
‘and I beg to inform you that I’m going to syle in this ship to Sydney.
Put me ashore if you dare,’ I said.”
At this moment the captain came on deck. He gave a stiff nod in reply
to my salutation, and marched past the Beautiful Man without so much as
a look.
“That’s a nice sight, sir,” I said, pointing in the direction of Bo.
He gave a snort and muttered something below his breath.
“Is his order good?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” he replied; “his order is good.”
“See here, Hinton,” I said, “wouldn’t you care to sell it?”
“W’y, w’at are you driving at?” he returned.
“If you’ll take her back,” I said, indicating Bo in the distance,
“I’ll buy your passage for what it’s worth.”
“I don’t know as I’d care to sell,” he returned; “leastw’ys, at any
figger you’d care to nyme.”
“What would you care to nyme?” I repeated after him, in involuntary
mimicry of his whine.
“One hundred dollars,” he replied.
“And for one hundred dollars you will surrender your passage and go
back to the girl,” I demanded, “and swear never to leave her again,
unless it is on her own island and among her own relations?”
“Oh, come off!” he exclaimed. “Ain’t you blooming well deserting her
yourself?”
“If you are not careful I will punch your head,” I said.
“Don’t mind me, sir,” said the captain, significantly, turning an
enormous back upon us.
“Is it business you’re talking, or fight?” inquired the Beautiful Man.
“You sort of mix a feller up.”
“I tell you I’ll pay you one hundred dollars on those terms,” I said.
“Hand them along, then,” said Hinton. “I tyke you.”
Unbuckling the money-belt I wore round my waist, I called upon the
captain to witness the proceedings, and counted out one hundred dollars
in gold. Without a word the Beautiful Man resigned his order into my
hands and tied up the money in the corner of a dirty handkerchief,
looking at me the while with something almost like compunction.
“Would you mind accepting this red pearl?” he said, producing a
trumpery pill of a thing that was worth perhaps a dollar. “You might
value it for old syke’s syke.”
I was rather disarmed by this gift and took it with a smile, putting in
another good word for Bo.
“Might I ask what you are going to do now?” asked the captain,
addressing Hinton in a tone that bordered on ferocity.
“W’y, I was just thinking of st’ying to breakfast, sir,” quavered the
little man, “and then toddle ashore to my happy home.”
“Get off my ship!” roared the captain. “Get off my ship, you red-headed
beach-comber and pirate. Get off before you are kicked off!”
Hinton bolted like a rabbit for the rail, and almost before we could
realise what he was about, we saw him leap feet foremost into the
lagoon. Blowing and cursing, he rose to the surface, and informed the
captain he should hold him personally responsible for his bag, which,
it seems, had been left in one of the cabins below.
“Your bag!” cried the captain, going to the open skylight and
thundering out: “Steward, bring up that beach-comber’s bag!”
The boy came running up with the valise I remembered so well; it
looked even more dilapidated than before, for the thing was patched
with canvas in a dozen places, and was wound round and round with a
kind of cocoanut string. The captain lifted it in his brawny arms, and
aiming it at the Beautiful Man’s head, let it fly straight at him. It
just missed Hinton by an inch, and splashed water all over him as he
grasped it to his breast. Turning on his back and dragging the spongy
thing along with him, as one might the body of a drowning person, he
set off most unconcernedly for the shore. In this fashion we saw him
strike the beach, and rise up at last with the bag in his hand, not a
dozen paces from where Bo was still encamped. We were, unfortunately,
at too great a distance to watch their faces or to observe narrowly the
greeting that must have passed between them; but the meeting was to all
appearance not unfriendly, and I had the satisfaction of seeing them
move off together in the direction of the boat-house, lugging the chest
and bag between them, as though they were about to resume housekeeping
in the old place.
I spent the rest of the morning writing letters to go by the _Ransom_,
which sailed away at noon, homeward bound. I had no heart to go ashore
again that day, for the Bo affair stuck in my throat, and the loss of
so much money, not to speak of time, made me feel seriously crippled in
the plans I had laid out for my future work. I was undecided, besides,
whether to remain at Ruk and wait for another ship to the westward,
or to stand by the schooner in her cruise through the Kingsmills,
remaining over, perhaps, at Butaritari, or at one of the islands
towards the south. On talking over the matter with the captain, I
found his feelings so far changed towards me that he was eager now to
give me a passage at any price; for, as he told me, he had taken a
genuine liking to my company, and was desirous of having another face
at his lonely table. Accordingly we patched up the matter to our mutual
satisfaction, and arranged to sail the next day when the tide turned at
ten.
Shortly before this hour, I remembered some improvised tide-gauges
I had set on the weather side of the island, and I snatched an
opportunity to see them on the very eve, as it was, of the schooner’s
sailing. It seemed, however, that I had been too late in going, for not
one of them could I find, though I searched up and down the beach for
as long a time as I dared to stay.
I was returning leisurely back across the island, when a turn of the
path brought me face to face with the Beautiful Man himself, carrying
some kind of fish-trap in his hand. I would have walked silently past
him, for the very sight of the creature now turned my stomach, had he
not, in what proved an evil moment for himself, detained me as I was
passing.
“My word!” he said, “that girl is regularly gone on you, she is! W’y,
last night, when I told her of the hundred dollars, she was that put
out that I heard the teeth snap in her head like that, and I thought
she was going to do for me sure, while I lit out in the dark and looked
for a club. She’s put by a little present for you before you go,--one
of them pearl-shell bonito-hooks, and a string of the last monkey’s
teeth,--and she asked me to say she hoped you wouldn’t forget her.”
“I won’t forget her,” I answered pretty quietly. “Nor you either, you
little cur.”
“Cur!” he repeated, edging away from me.
I don’t know what possessed me, but the memory of my wrongs, wasted
money, lost time, the man’s egregious cynicism and selfishness,
suddenly set my long-tried temper flaming, and almost before I knew
what I was doing, I had the creature by the throat and was pounding him
with all my force against a tree. I was twice his size and twice his
strength, but I fought him regardless of all the decencies of personal
combat in a lawless and primeval manner, even as one of our hairy
ancestors might have revenged himself (after extraordinary provocation)
upon another. I shook and kicked him, and I pulled out whole handfuls
of frowsy red hair and whisker, and when at last he lay limp before me
in the dirt, whimpering aloud for mercy, I beat him for ten minutes
with a cocoanut branch that happened, by the best of fortunes, to be
at hand. When I at length desisted, it was from no sense of pity for
him, but rather in concern for myself and my interrupted voyage. I did
turn him over once or twice to assure myself that none of his bones
were broken, and that my punishment had not gone too far; and as I did
so, he executed some hollow groans, and went through with an admirable
stage-play of impending dissolution. I could plainly see that he was
shamming, and had an eye to damages and financial consolation, as well
as the obvious intention of wringing my bosom with remorse. I left
him sitting up in the path, rubbing his fiery curls and surveying the
cocoanut branch with which he had made such a painful acquaintance, a
figure so mournful, changed, and dejected that Pingalap would scarce
have known him for her Beautiful Man.
As I was hurrying down to the beach, I saw the schooner getting under
way, and heard the boat’s crew imperiously calling out to me to hasten.
I broke into a run, and was almost at the water’s edge when I turned to
find Bo panting at my side. I stopped to see what she wanted, and when
she forced a little parcel into my pocket I suddenly remembered the
present of which Hinton had spoken.
“Good-bye, Bo,” I cried, wringing her little fist in mine. “Many thanks
for the fish-hook, which I shall always keep in memory of our travels.”
All the way out to the schooner I seemed to feel the package growing
heavier and heavier in my pyjama pocket, and the suspicion more than
once crossed my mind that it was no fish-hook at all. Feeling loath
to determine the matter before the men, who must needs have seen and
wondered at the transaction from the boat, I kept down my curiosity
until I could satisfy it more privately on board. Then, as the captain
and I were watching the extraordinary antics of the Beautiful Man (who
had rushed down to the beach and thrown himself into a native canoe,
in the impossible hope of overtaking us, alternately paddling and
shaking his fist demoniacally in the air), I drew out the package and
cut it open with my knife. In a neat little beadwork bag (which still
conserved a lurking scent of monkey), and carefully done up in fibre,
like a jewel in cotton wool, I found a shining treasure of gold and
silver coin.
One hundred and thirty-seven dollars!
It was Bo’s restitution.
THE DUST OF DEFEAT
THE DUST OF DEFEAT
They took their accustomed path beside the strait, walking slowly
side by side, each conscious that they would never again be together.
The melancholy pines, rising from the water’s edge to the very summit
of the mountains, gave that look of desolation which is the salient
note of New Caledonian landscape. Across the narrow strait as calm
and clear as some sweet English river, the rocky shore rose steep and
precipitous, cloaked still in pines. A faint, thrilling roar broke at
times upon the ear, and told of Fitzroy’s mine far up on the hill, its
long chutes emptying chrome on the beach below. Except for this, there
was not a sound that bespoke man’s presence or any sign that betrayed
his habitation or handiwork.
“This is our last day,” he said. “Do you not once wish to see the
little cabin where I have eaten my heart out these dozen years? Do you
never mean to ask me what brought me here?”
“I would like to know,” she answered; “but I was afraid. I didn’t wish
to be--to be--”
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for that unspoken word. You did not
wish to be disillusioned--to be told that the man you have treated with
such condescension was a mere vulgar criminal, a garroter perhaps, such
a one as you have read of in Gaboriau’s romances. Ah, mademoiselle,
when you have heard my unhappy story,--that story which no one has ever
listened to save the counsel that defended me,--you will perhaps think
better of poor Paul de Charruel.”
“You are innocent?” she cried, looking up at him with eyes full of
tenderness and curiosity. “You have shielded some one?”
M. de Charruel shook his head. “I am not innocent,” he said. “I am no
martyr, mademoiselle--not, at least, in the sense you are good enough
to imply. I was fortunate to get transportation for life, doubly
fortunate to obtain this modified liberty after only three years.
You may, however, congratulate yourself that your friend is a model
prisoner; his little farm has been well reported on by the Chef de
l’Administration Pénitentiaire; it compares favourably with Leclair’s,
the vitriol-thrower of Rue d’Enfer, and his early potatoes are said to
rival those of Palitzi the famous poisoner.”
His companion shuddered.
“Pardon me,” he continued. “God knows, I have no desire to be merry; my
heart is heavy enough, in all conscience.”
“You will tell me everything,” she said softly.
He walked along in silence for several minutes, moody and preoccupied,
staring on the ground before him.
“I suppose I ought to begin with my father and mother, in the
old-fashioned way,” he said at last, with a sudden smile. “There are
conventionalities even for convicts! My father (if we are to go so far
back) was the Comte de Charruel, one of the old noblesse; my mother
an American lady from whom I got the little English I possess, as well
as a disposition most rash, nervous, and impulsive. There were two
of us children--my sister Berthe and myself, she the younger by six
years. My father died when I reached twenty years, just as I entered
the Eighty-sixth Hussars as a sub-lieutenant. Had he survived I might
perhaps have been saved many miseries and unhappinesses; on the other
hand, he, the soul of honour, might have been standing here in my
place, condemned as I have been to a lifelong exile.
“I was a good officer. Titled, rich, and well born, there was accorded
me the friendship of the aristocratic side of the regiment; a good
comrade, and free from stupid pride, I stood well with those who had
risen from the ranks and the humbler spheres of society. Many a time
I was the only officer at home in either camp, and popular in both.
When I look back upon my army life, so gay, so animated, so filled with
small successes and commendations from my superiors, I wish that I
had been fated to die in what was the very zenith of my happiness and
prosperity.
“My mother, except for a short time each year at our hôtel in Paris,
lived in our old château in Nemours, entertaining, in an unobtrusive
fashion, many of the greatest people in France; for the entrée of few
houses was more eagerly sought than our own. Though we were not so well
born as some, nor so rich as many, my mother contrived to be always in
request, and to make her _salon_ the centre of all the gaiety and wit
of France.
“From her earliest infancy my sister Berthe was counted one of the
company at the château, and while I was at the _lycée_ and afterwards
at St. Cyr, she was leading the life of a great lady at Nemours.
Marshals of France were her cavaliers; famous poets and musicians
played with her dolls and shared her confidences; men and women
distinguished in a thousand ways paid court to her childish beauty.
Beauty, perhaps, I ought not to say, for her charm lay most in the
extraordinary liveliness and intrepidity of her character, which
captivated every beholder. Indeed, she ought to have been the man of
the family, I the girl--so diverse were our tastes and aspirations, our
whole outlook on life.
“You, of course, cannot recollect the amazing revolution that swept
over Europe when I was a young man--that upheaval of everything old,
accepted, and conventional, which was confined to no one country, but
raged equally throughout them all. Huxley, Darwin, Haeckel, Renan, and
Herbert Spencer were names that grew familiar by incessant repetition;
young ladies whom one remembered last in boxes at the opera, or
surrounded by admirers at balls and great assemblies, now threw
themselves passionately into this new Renaissance. One you would find
studying higher mathematics; another geology and chemistry; another
still, teaching the children of thieves and cut-throats how to read.
Girls you had seen at their father’s table, with downcast eyes and
blushes when one spoke to them, now demanded separate establishments
of their own; worked their way, if necessary, through foreign
universities; fought like little tigers for the privilege of studying
till two in the morning and starving with one another in the gloomiest
parts of the town. Nor were the young men behind their sisters: to
them also had come the new revelation, this self-denying and austere
standard of life, this religion of violent intellectual effort. To many
it was ennobling to a supreme degree; and while our girls boldly made
their way into avenues hitherto closed to women, there were everywhere
young men, no less ardent and disinterested, to support them in the
mêlée. In every house there was this revolt of the young against the
old, this perpetual argument of humanitarianism against apathy and
_laisser-faire_.
“To me it all seemed the most frightful madness. I was bewildered
to see bright eyes pursuing studies which I knew myself to be so
wearisome, taking joy where I had found only vexation and fatigue.
Like all my caste, I was old-fashioned and thought a woman’s place at
home. You must not go to the army for new ideas. It was no pleasure
to me to see delicately nurtured ladies rubbing shoulders with raw
medical students or tainting their pretty ears with the unrestrained
conversation of men. You must remember how things have changed in
eighteen years; you can scarcely conceive the position of those
forerunners of your sex in Europe, so much has public opinion altered
for the better. In my day we went to extremes on either side, for it
was then that the battle was fought. The elders would not give way an
inch; the children dashed into a thousand extravagances. To some it
looked as though the dissolution of society was at hand. Girls asked
men to marry them,--men they had seen perhaps but once,--in order
that they might gain the freedom accorded to married women and secure
themselves against the intolerable interference of their families. Some
of them never saw their husbands again, nor could even recollect their
names without an effort. Ah, it was frightful! It was a revolution!
“In spite of all her liberal opinions, her unconventional views, her
apparent allegiance to the new religion, my mother soon took her place
amid the reactionary ranks, while my sister, the _mondaine_, just
as surely joined the rebellion. As I said before, it was the battle
of the young against the old; age, rather than conviction, assigned
one’s position in the fight. Our house, hitherto so free from domestic
discord, became the theatre of furious quarrels between mother and
daughter--quarrels not about gowns, allowances, suitors, or unpaid
bills, but involving questions abstract and sublime: one’s liberty
of free development; one’s duty to one’s self, to mankind; one’s
obligation, in fact, to cast off all shackles and take one’s place in
the revolution so auspiciously beginning.
“The end of it was that Berthe left Nemours, coming to Paris without
my mother’s permission, to study medicine with a Russian friend of
hers, a girl as defiant and undaunted as herself. This was Sonia
Boremykin, with whose name you must be familiar. Needless to say, I
was interdicted from giving any assistance to my sister, my mother
imploring me not to supply the means by which Berthe’s ruin might be
accomplished. But I could not allow my sister to starve to death in
a garret, and if I disobeyed my poor mother, she had at least the
satisfaction of knowing that my sympathies were on her side of the
quarrel. My greatest distress, indeed, was that Berthe would accept so
little, for she was crazy to be a martyr, and was, besides, prompted by
a generous feeling not to take a sou more than the meagre earnings of
her companion. So they lived and starved together, these two remarkable
young women, turning their backs on every luxury and refinement.
Either, for the asking, could have received a thousand-franc note
within the hour; for each a château stood with open doors; for each
there was a dowry of more than respectable dimensions, and lovers who
would have been glad to take them for their _beaux yeux_ alone! And yet
they chose to live in a garret, to be constantly affronted as they went
unescorted through the wickedest parts of Paris, to subsist on food the
most unappetising and unwholesome. For what? To cut up dead paupers in
the Sorbonne!
“I was often there to see them with the self-imposed task of trying
to lighten the burden of their sacrifices. I introduced food in paper
bags, and surreptitiously dropped napoleons in dark corners--that is,
until I was once detected. Afterwards they watched me like hawks.
Sometimes they were so hungry that tears came into their eyes at the
sight of what I brought; at others they would appear insulted, and
throw it remorselessly out of the window. Though I had no sympathy
whatever with their aims, I was profoundly interested, profoundly
touched, as one might be at the sight of an heroic enemy. Their
convictions were not my convictions; their mode of life I thought
detestable: but who could withhold admiration for so much courage, so
much self-denial, in two beautiful young women? I used often to bring
with me my old colonel, a glorious veteran with whom I was always a
favourite, and the girls liked to hear our sabres clank as we mounted
the grimy stair, and to see our brilliant uniforms in their garret. It
reminded them of the _monde_ they had resigned; besides, they needed
an audience of their own caste who could appreciate, as none other,
their sacrifices and their fortitude. Mademoiselle Sonia used to look
very kindly at me on the occasion of my visits, never growing angry, as
my sister did, at my stupidity, or by my failure to understand their
high-flown notions of duty. Once, when I was accidentally hurt at the
salle d’armes by a button coming off my opponent’s foil, it was she who
dressed my wound with the greatest tenderness and skill, converting me
for all time as to the medical career for women. Poor Sonia, how her
eyes sparkled at her little triumph!