“CAN any man--a gentleman, I mean--call a woman a pig?”
The little man flung this challenge forth to the whole group, then
leaned back in his deck chair, sipping lemonade with an air commingled
of certitude and watchful belligerence. Nobody made answer. They were
used to the little man and his sudden passions and high elevations.
“I repeat, it was in my presence that he said a certain lady, whom none
of you knows, was a pig. He did not say swine. He grossly said that she
was a pig. And I hold that no man who is a man could possibly make such
a remark about any woman.”
Dr. Dawson puffed stolidly at his black pipe. Matthews, with knees
hunched up and clasped by his arms, was absorbed in the flight of a
gunie. Sweet, finishing his Scotch and soda, was questing about with his
eyes for a deck steward.
“I ask you, Mr. Treloar, can any man call any woman a pig?”
Treloar, who happened to be sitting next to him, was startled by the
abruptness of the attack, and wondered what grounds he had ever given
the little man to believe that he could call a woman a pig.
“I should say,” he began his hesitant answer, “that it--er--depends on
the--er--the lady.”
The little man was aghast.
“You mean...?” he quavered.
“That I have seen female humans who were as bad as pigs--and worse.”
There was a long pained silence. The little man seemed withered by the
coarse brutality of the reply. In his face was unutterable hurt and woe.
“You have told of a man who made a not nice remark and you have
classified him,” Treloar said in cold, even tones. “I shall now tell
you about a woman--I beg your pardon--a lady, and when I have finished
I shall ask you to classify her. Miss Caruthers I shall call her,
principally for the reason that it is not her name. It was on a P. & O.
boat, and it occurred neither more nor less than several years ago.
“Miss Caruthers was charming. No; that is not the word. She was amazing.
She was a young woman, and a lady. Her father was a certain high
official whose name, if I mentioned it, would be immediately recognized
by all of you. She was with her mother and two maids at the time, going
out to join the old gentleman wherever you like to wish in the East.
“She, and pardon me for repeating, was amazing. It is the one adequate
word. Even the most minor adjectives applicable to her are bound to be
sheer superlatives. There was nothing she could not do better than any
woman and than most men. Sing, play--bah!--as some rhetorician once
said of old Nap, competition fled from her. Swim! She could have made
a fortune and a name as a public performer. She was one of those rare
women who can strip off all the frills of dress, and in simple swimming
suit be more satisfying beautiful. Dress! She was an artist.
“But her swimming. Physically, she was the perfect woman--you know
what I mean, not in the gross, muscular way of acrobats, but in all the
delicacy of line and fragility of frame and texture. And combined with
this, strength. How she could do it was the marvel. You know the wonder
of a woman's arm--the fore arm, I mean; the sweet fading away from
rounded biceps and hint of muscle, down through small elbow and firm
soft swell to the wrist, small, unthinkably small and round and strong.
This was hers. And yet, to see her swimming the sharp quick English
overhand stroke, and getting somewhere with it, too, was--well, I
understand anatomy and athletics and such things, and yet it was a
mystery to me how she could do it.
“She could stay under water for two minutes. I have timed her. No man
on board, except Dennitson, could capture as many coins as she with a
single dive. On the forward main-deck was a big canvas tank with six
feet of sea-water. We used to toss small coins into it. I have seen her
dive from the bridge deck--no mean feat in itself--into that six-feet
of water, and fetch up no less than forty-seven coins, scattered
willy-nilly over the whole bottom of the tank. Dennitson, a quiet young
Englishman, never exceeded her in this, though he made it a point always
to tie her score.
“She was a sea-woman, true. But she was a land-woman, a
horsewoman--a--she was the universal woman. To see her, all softness of
soft dress, surrounded by half a dozen eager men, languidly careless of
them all or flashing brightness and wit on them and at them and through
them, one would fancy she was good for nothing else in the world.
At such moments I have compelled myself to remember her score of
forty-seven coins from the bottom of the swimming tank. But that was
she, the everlasting, wonder of a woman who did all things well.
“She fascinated every betrousered human around her. She had me--and I
don't mind confessing it--she bad me to heel along with the rest. Young
puppies and old gray dogs who ought to have known better--oh, they all
came up and crawled around her skirts and whined and fawned when she
whistled. They were all guilty, from young Ardmore, a pink cherub of
nineteen outward bound for some clerkship in the Consular Service, to
old Captain Bentley, grizzled and sea-worn, and as emotional, to look
at, as a Chinese joss. There was a nice middle-aged chap, Perkins, I
believe, who forgot his wife was on board until Miss Caruthers sent him
to the right about and back where he belonged.
“Men were wax in her hands. She melted them, or softly molded them, or
incinerated them, as she pleased. There wasn't a steward, even, grand
and remote as she was, who, at her bidding, would have hesitated to
souse the Old Man himself with a plate of soup. You have all seen such
women--a sort of world's desire to all men. As a man-conqueror she was
supreme. She was a whip-lash, a sting and a flame, an electric spark.
Oh, believe me, at times there were flashes of will that scorched
through her beauty and seduction and smote a victim into blank and
shivering idiocy and fear.
“And don't fail to mark, in the light of what is to come, that she was
a prideful woman. Pride of race, pride of caste, pride of sex, pride of
power--she had it all, a pride strange and wilful and terrible.
“She ran the ship, she ran the voyage, she ran everything, and she ran
Dennitson. That he had outdistanced the pack even the least wise of us
admitted. That she liked him, and that this feeling was growing, there
was not a doubt. I am certain that she looked on him with kinder eyes
than she had ever looked with on man before. We still worshiped, and
were always hanging about waiting to be whistled up, though we knew that
Dennitson was laps and laps ahead of us. What might have happened we
shall never know, for we came to Colombo and something else happened.
“You know Colombo, and how the native boys dive for coins in the
shark-infested bay. Of course, it is only among the ground sharks and
fish sharks that they venture. It is almost uncanny the way they know
sharks and can sense the presence of a real killer--a tiger shark, for
instance, or a gray nurse strayed up from Australian waters. Let such a
shark appear, and, long before the passengers can guess, every mother's
son of them is out of the water in a wild scramble for safety.
“It was after tiffin, and Miss Caruthers was holding her usual court
under the deck-awnings. Old Captain Bentley had just been whistled
up, and had granted her what he never granted before... nor
since--permission for the boys to come up on the promenade deck. You
see, Miss Caruthers was a swimmer, and she was interested. She took up
a collection of all our small change, and herself tossed it overside,
singly and in handfuls, arranging the terms of the contests, chiding a
miss, giving extra rewards to clever wins, in short, managing the whole
exhibition.
“She was especially keen on their jumping. You know, jumping feet-first
from a height, it is very difficult to hold the body perpendicularly
while in the air. The center of gravity of the male body is high, and
the tendency is to overtopple. But the little beggars employed a method
which she declared was new to her and which she desired to learn.
Leaping from the davits of the boat-deck above, they plunged downward,
their faces and shoulders bowed forward, looking at the water. And only
at the last moment did they abruptly straighten up and enter the water
erect and true.
“It was a pretty sight. Their diving was not so good, though there was
one of them who was excellent at it, as he was in all the other stunts.
Some white man must have taught him, for he made the proper swan dive
and did it as beautifully as I have ever seen it. You know, headfirst
into the water, from a great height, the problem is to enter the water
at the perfect angle. Miss the angle and it means at the least a twisted
back and injury for life. Also, it has meant death for many a bungler.
But this boy could do it--seventy feet I know he cleared in one dive
from the rigging--clenched hands on chest, head thrown back, sailing
more like a bird, upward and out, and out and down, body flat on the air
so that if it struck the surface in that position it would be split in
half like a herring. But the moment before the water is reached, the
head drops forward, the hands go out and lock the arms in an arch in
advance of the head, and the body curves gracefully downward and enters
the water just right.
“This the boy did, again and again, to the delight of all of us, but
particularly of Miss Caruthers. He could not have been a moment over
twelve or thirteen, yet he was by far the cleverest of the gang. He was
the favorite of his crowd, and its leader. Though there were a number
older than he, they acknowledged his chieftaincy. He was a beautiful
boy, a lithe young god in breathing bronze, eyes wide apart, intelligent
and daring, a bubble, a mote, a beautiful flash and sparkle of life. You
have seen wonderful glorious creatures--animals, anything, a leopard,
a horse-restless, eager, too much alive ever to be still, silken of
muscle, each slightest movement a benediction of grace, every action
wild, untrammeled, and over all spilling out that intense vitality, that
sheen and luster of living light. The boy had it. Life poured out of him
almost in an effulgence. His skin glowed with it. It burned in his eyes.
I swear I could almost hear it crackle from him. Looking at him, it was
as if a whiff of ozone came to one's nostrils--so fresh and young was
he, so resplendent with health, so wildly wild.
“This was the boy. And it was he who gave the alarm in the midst of the
sport. The boys made a dash of it for the gangway platform, swimming the
fastest strokes they knew, pellmell, floundering and splashing, fright
in their faces, clambering out with jumps and surges, any way to get
out, lending one another a hand to safety, till all were strung along
the gangway and peering down into the water.
“'What is the matter?' asked Miss Caruthers.
“'A shark, I fancy,' Captain Bentley answered. 'Lucky little beggars
that he didn't get one of them.'
“'Are they afraid of sharks?' she asked.
“'Aren't you?' he asked back.”
She shuddered, looked overside at the water, and made a move.
“'Not for the world would I venture where a shark might be,' she said,
and shuddered again. 'They are horrible! Horrible!'
“The boys came up on the promenade deck, clustering close to the rail
and worshiping Miss Caruthers who had flung them such a wealth of
backsheesh. The performance being over, Captain Bentley motioned to them
to clear out. But she stopped him.
“'One moment, please, Captain. I have always understood that the natives
are not afraid of sharks.'
“She beckoned the boy of the swan dive nearer to her, and signed to
him to dive over again. He shook his head, and along with all his crew
behind him laughed as if it were a good joke.
“'Shark,' he volunteered, pointing to the water.
“'No,' she said. 'There is no shark.'
“But he nodded his head positively, and the boys behind him nodded with
equal positiveness.
“'No, no, no,' she cried. And then to us, 'Who'll lend me a half-crown
and a sovereign!'
“Immediately the half dozen of us were presenting her with crowns and
sovereigns, and she accepted the two coins from young Ardmore.
“She held up the half-crown for the boys to see. But there was no eager
rush to the rail preparatory to leaping. They stood there grinning
sheepishly. She offered the coin to each one individually, and each,
as his turn came, rubbed his foot against his calf, shook his head,
and grinned. Then she tossed the half-crown overboard. With wistful,
regretful faces they watched its silver flight through the air, but not
one moved to follow it.
“'Don't do it with the sovereign,' Dennitson said to her in a low voice.
“She took no notice, but held up the gold coin before the eyes of the
boy of the swan dive.
“'Don't,' said Captain Bentley. 'I wouldn't throw a sick cat overside
with a shark around.'
“But she laughed, bent on her purpose, and continued to dazzle the boy.
“'Don't tempt him,' Dennitson urged. 'It is a fortune to him, and he
might go over after it.'
“'Wouldn't YOU?' she flared at him. 'If I threw it?'”
This last more softly.
Dennitson shook his head.
“'Your price is high,' she said. 'For how many sovereigns would you go?'
“'There are not enough coined to get me overside,' was his answer.
“She debated a moment, the boy forgotten in her tilt with Dennitson.
“'For me?' she said very softly.
“'To save your life--yes. But not otherwise.'
“She turned back to the boy. Again she held the coin before his eyes,
dazzling him with the vastness of its value. Then she made as to toss
it out, and, involuntarily, he made a half-movement toward the rail,
but was checked by sharp cries of reproof from his companions. There was
anger in their voices as well.
“'I know it is only fooling,' Dennitson said. 'Carry it as far as you
like, but for heaven's sake don't throw it.'
“Whether it was that strange wilfulness of hers, or whether she doubted
the boy could be persuaded, there is no telling. It was unexpected to
all of us. Out from the shade of the awning the coin flashed golden
in the blaze of sunshine and fell toward the sea in a glittering arch.
Before a hand could stay him, the boy was over the rail and curving
beautifully downward after the coin. Both were in the air at the same
time. It was a pretty sight. The sovereign cut the water sharply, and at
the very spot, almost at the same instant, with scarcely a splash, the
boy entered.
“From the quicker-eyed black boys watching, came an exclamation. We were
all at the railing. Don't tell me it is necessary for a shark to turn on
its back. That one did not. In the clear water, from the height we were
above it, we saw everything. The shark was a big brute, and with one
drive he cut the boy squarely in half.
“There was a murmur or something from among us--who made it I did not
know; it might have been I. And then there was silence. Miss Caruthers
was the first to speak. Her face was deathly white.
“'I never dreamed,' she said, and laughed a short, hysterical laugh.
“All her pride was at work to give her control. She turned weakly toward
Dennitson, and then, on from one to another of us. In her eyes was a
terrible sickness, and her lips were trembling. We were brutes--oh, I
know it, now that I look back upon it. But we did nothing.
“'Mr. Dennitson,' she said, 'Tom, won't you take me below!'
“He never changed the direction of his gaze, which was the bleakest I
have ever seen in a man's face, nor did he move an eyelid. He took a
cigarette from his case and lighted it. Captain Bentley made a nasty
sound in his throat and spat overboard. That was all; that and the
silence.
“She turned away and started to walk firmly down the deck. Twenty feet
away, she swayed and thrust a hand against the wall to save herself. And
so she went on, supporting herself against the cabins and walking very
slowly.” Treloar ceased. He turned his head and favored the little man
with a look of cold inquiry.
“Well,” he said finally. “Classify her.”
The little man gulped and swallowed.
“I have nothing to say,” he said. “I have nothing whatever to say.”