on each side of which were the red and white bungalows, residences of
the dozen officials of the island. They were screened by hedges of
high growing bushes, bearing brilliant, exotic flowers which gave out
a heavy, sweet perfume, and the perfume hung in clouds, invisible yet
tangible, pervading the soft, warm air. How he had dreamed of such
perfumes--long ago. Yet how sickening in reality. And how dull they
were, the interiors of these sheltered bungalows, how dull and stupid
the monotonous life that went on inside them--dejected, weary, useless
little rounds of household activity, that went along languorously each
day, and led nowhere. It all led nowhere. Within each house was the
wearied, stupid wife of some petty official, and sometimes there were
stupid, pallid children as well, tended by convicts on parole. Nowhere
could he turn to find intellectual refreshment. The community offered
nothing--there was no society--just the dull daily greetings, the
dull, commonplace comments on island doings or not doings, for all lay
under the spell of isolation, under the pall of the great, oppressive,
overwhelming heat. How deadly it all was, the monotonous life, the
isolation, the lack of interests and occupation. As he passed along, a
frowzy woman in a Mother Hubbard greeted him from a verandah and asked
him to enter. Years ago she had come out fresh and blooming, and now
she was prematurely aged, fat and stupid--more stupid, perhaps, than
the rest. Yet somehow, because there was nothing else to do, Mercier
pushed open the flimsy bamboo gate, walked up the gravelled path, and
flung himself dejectedly upon a chaise longue which was at hand. And
the woman talked to him, asked him how many cattle had come over that
morning, whether they were yet unloaded, when they would be finally
landed and led to the slaughter pens a little way inland. It was all
so gross, so banal, yet it was all there was of incident in the day,
and most clays were still more barren, with not even these paltry
events to discuss. And he felt that he was sinking to the level of
these people, he who had dreamed of high romance, of the mystery of
the Far Eastern Tropics! And this was what it meant--what it had come
to! A fat woman in a Mother Hubbard asking him how many bullocks had
come in that day, and when they would be ready to kill and eat!
She clapped together her small, fat hands, and a servant entered, and
she ordered grenadine and soda and liqueurs, and pushed towards him a
box of cheap cigarettes. Where was her charm? Why had he married her,
her husband--who was at the moment in the Administrator's bureau,
compiling useless statistics concerning the petty revenues of the
prison colony? But he was just like her, in his way. All the men were
run to seed, and all their women too. And these were the only women on
the island, these worn, pale, bloated wives who led an idle life in
the blazing heat. Seven such women, all told. He relapsed into
silence, and she likewise fell silent, there being nothing more to
get nor give. They were all gone, intellectually. They had no ideas,
nothing to exchange. So he smoked on, lazily, in silence, feeling the
slight stir in his blood caused by the Quinquina. He filled his glass
again, and looked forward to the next wave of relaxation. Overhead,
the punkah swung slowly, stirring the scented air. These were the
scents he had dreamed of, the rich, heavy perfumes of the Tropics.
Only it was all so dull!
The door opened and a little girl entered the verandah, a child of
perhaps fourteen. A doomed child. He looked at her languidly, and
continued to look at her, thinking vague thoughts. She was beautiful.
Her cotton frock, belted in by some strange arrangement of seashells
woven into a girdle, pressed tightly over her young form, revealing
clearly the outline of a childish figure soon ready to bloom into full
maturity under these hot rays of vertical sunshine. She would develop
soon, even as the native women developed into maturity very early. His
tired glance rested upon her face. That, too, bore promise of great
beauty. The features were fine and regular, singularly well formed,
and the eyes those of a gentle cow, unspeculative, unintelligent. She
was very white, with the deathlike whiteness of the Tropics, and under
the childish eyes were deep, black rings, coming early. He noticed her
hands--slender, long, with beautiful fingernails--such hands in Paris!
And again his roving glance fell lower, and rested upon her bare legs,
well formed, well developed, the legs of a young woman. He stirred
lightly in his chair. The feet matched the hands--slender, long feet,
with long, slender toes. She was wearing native sandals, clumsy wooden
sandals, with knobs between the first two toes. Only the knobs were of
silver, instead of the usual buttons of bone, or wood. Some one had
brought them to her from the mainland, evidently. Well, here she was,
a doomed creature, uneducated, growing older, growing into womanhood,
with no outlook ahead. Her only companions her dull, stupid mother,
and the worn-out wives of the officials--all years older than herself.
Or perhaps she depended for companionship upon the children--there
were a dozen such, about the place, between the ages of two and six.
And she stood between these two groups, just blooming into womanhood,
with her beautiful young body, and her atrophied young brain. Her eyes
fell shyly under his penetrating, speculative glances, and a wave of
colour rose into her white cheeks. She felt, then, hey? Felt what?
Mercier leaned forward, with something curious pulsing in his breast.
The sort of feeling that he had long since forgotten, for there was
nothing for such feelings to feed upon, here in his prison. Yet the
sensation, vague as it was, seemed to have been recognised, shared for
an instant by the young creature beside him. It was rather uncanny. He
had heard that idiots or half-witted people were like that. She rose
uneasily, placing upon her long, sprawling curls an old sun hat, very
dirty, the brim misshapen by frequent wettings of pipe-clay. A servant
appeared from behind the far corner of the verandah, an old man, dark
skinned, emaciated, clad in a faded red sarong. He was her personal
servant, told off to attend her. Something must be done for the men on
parole, some occupation given them to test their fitness before
returning them again to society. As she passed from the verandah,
followed by the old black man in his red sarong, Mercier felt a
strange thrill. Where were they going, those two?
He turned to the inattentive, vacuous mother. "Your daughter," he
began, "is fast growing up. Soon she will be marrying."
The woman shrugged her shoulders.
"With whom?" she answered. "Who will take her? What dowry can we give
her? We cannot even send her to Singapore to be educated. Who will
take her--ignorant, uneducated--without a _dot_? Besides," she
continued eagerly, warmed into a burst of confidence, "you have
heard--you have seen--the trouble lies here," and she tapped her
forehead significantly.
And with a sigh she concluded, "We are all prisoners here, every one
of us--like the rest."
Mercier rose from the chaise longue, still thinking deeply, still
stirred by the vague emotion that had called forth an answer from the
immature, half-witted child. He had a report to make to the Bureau,
and he must be getting on. Later, when the tide turned, and the
lighter could come against the jetty, he must attend to the cattle.
He did not linger in the office of the Administrator, but sent in his
report by a waiting boy, and then strolled inland by the road that led
past the prison, into the interior of the island. On his way he passed
the graveyard. It was a melancholy graveyard, containing a few
slanting shafts erected to the memory of guards and of one or two
officers who had been killed from time to time by prisoners who had
run amok. Such uprisings occurred now and then, but seldom. He entered
the cemetery, and looked about languidly, reading the names on the
stones. Killed, killed, killed. Then he came upon a few who had died
naturally. Or was it natural to have died, at the age of thirty, out
here on the edge of the world? Yet it was most natural, after all. He
himself was nearly ready for the grave, ready because of pure boredom,
through pure inertia, quite ready to succumb to the devitalising
effect of this life. This hideous life on a desert island. This
hideous mockery of life, lived while he was still so young and so
vital, and which was reducing him, not slowly but with great pacing
strides, to an inertia to which he must soon succumb. Why didn't the
prisoners revolt now, he wondered? He would gladly accept such a way
out--gladly offer himself to their knives, or their clubs, or whatever
it was they had. Anything that would put an end to him, and land him
under a stone in this forsaken spot. Surely he was no more alive than
the dead under those stones. No more dead than the dead.
He passed out of the gate, swinging on a loose hinge, and in deep
meditation walked along the palm bordered road back of the settlement.
Soon the last bungalow was left behind, even though he walked slowly.
Then succeeded the paddy fields, poorly tilled and badly irrigated.
There were enough men on the island to have done it properly--only
what was the use? Who cared--whether they raised their own rice or
brought it from the mainland twice a month? It was not a matter to
bother about. Water buffaloes, grazing by the roadside, raised their
heavy heads and stared at him with unspeakable insolence. They were
for ploughing the rice fields, but who had the heart to oversee the
work? Better leave the men squatting in content by the roadside,
under the straggly banana trees, than urge them to work. It meant more
effort on the part of the officials and effort was so useless. All so
futile and so hopeless. He nodded in recognition of the salutes given
him by groups of paroled prisoners, chewing betel nut under the trees.
Let them be.
A bend in the road brought him to a halt. Just beyond, lying at full
length upon the parched grass, was the little girl he had seen that
morning. She lay on her back, with bare legs extended, asleep. Nearby,
squatting on his heels and lost in a meditative pipe, sat the Kling,
her body servant. The man rose to his feet respectfully as Mercier
passed, watching his mistress and watching Mercier with a sombre eye.
Mercier passed on slowly, with a long glance at the child. She was not
a child, really. Her cotton dress clung round her closely, and he
gazed fascinated, at the young figure, realising that it was mature.
Mature enough. A thought suddenly rose to his mind, submerging
everything else. He walked on hurriedly, and at a turn of the road,
looked back. The Kling was sitting down again impassively, refilling
his pipe.
From that time on, Mercier's days were days of torment, and the nights
as well. He struggled violently against this new feeling, this hideous
obsession, and plunged into his work violently, to escape it. But his
work, meagre and insufficient at best, was merely finished the sooner
because of his energy, which left him with more time on his hands.
That was all. Time in which to think and to struggle. No, certainly,
he did not wish to marry. That thought was put aside immediately.
Marry a stupid little child like that, with a brain as fat as her
body! But not as beautiful as her body. Besides, she was too young to
marry, even in the Tropics, where all things mate young. But there she
was, forever coming across his path at every turn. In his long walks
back into the interior, behind the settlement, he came upon her daily,
with her attendant Kling. The Kling always squatting on his heels,
smoking, or else rolling himself a bit of areca nut into a
sirrah-leaf, and dabbing on a bit of pink lime from his worn, silver
box. Mercier tried to talk to the child, to disillusion himself by
conversations which showed the paucity of ideas, her retarded
mentality. But he always ended by looking at the beautiful, slim
hands, at the beautiful, slim feet, at the cotton gown slightly
pressed outward by the maturing form within.
He was angry with himself, furious at the obsession that possessed
him. Once he entered the gravelled path of the child's home, and
seriously discussed with her mother the danger of letting her roam at
large over the island, accompanied only by the old Kling. He explained
vigorously that it was not safe. There were hundreds of paroled
prisoners at large, engaged in the ricefields, on the plantations,
mending the roads--there was not a native woman on the place. He
explained and expostulated volubly, surprised at his own eloquence.
The mother took it calmly. The Kling, she replied, was trustworthy. He
was an old man, very trustworthy and very strong. No harm could come
to her daughter under his protection. And the long rambles abroad were
good for the child. Was she not accustomed to convicts, as servants?
She had a houseful of them, and many years' experience. What did he
know of them, a comparative newcomer? For example, she had three
pirates, Malays from the coast of Siam. They were quiet enough now.
And one Cambodian, a murderer, true enough, but gentle enough now.
Three house-boys and a cook. As for the old Kling, he was a marvel--he
had been a thief in his day, but now--well now, he was body-servant
for her daughter and a more faithful soul it would be hard to find.
For seven years she had lived upon the island, surrounded by these
men. She knew them well enough. True, there was the graveyard back of
the prison compound, eloquent, mute testimony of certain lapses from
trustworthiness, but she was not afraid. She had no imagination, and
Mercier, failing to make her sense danger, gave it up. It had been a
great effort. He had been pleading for protection against himself.
Mercier awoke one morning very early. It was early, but still dark,
for never, in these baleful Tropics, did the dawn precede the sunrise,
and there was no slow, gradual greying and rosying creeping of
daylight, preceding the dawn. It was early and dark, with a damp
coolness in the air, and he reached down from his cot for his
slippers, and first clapped them together before placing them upon his
slim feet. Then he arose, stepped out upon his verandah, and thought
awhile. Darkness everywhere, and the noise of the surf beating within
the enclosed crescent of the harbour. Over all, a great heat, tinged
with a damp coolness, a coolness which was sinister. And standing upon
his verandah, came rushing over him the agony of his wasted life. His
prisoner life upon this lonely island in the Southern Seas. Exchanged,
this wasted life, for his romantic dreams, and a salary of a few
hundred francs a year. That day he would write and ask for his
release--send in his resignation--although it would be weeks or months
before he could be relieved. As he stood there in agony, the dawn
broke before him suddenly, as Tropic dawns do break, all of a sudden,
with a rush. Before him rose the high peaks of the binding mountains,
high, impassable, black peaks, towering like a wall of rock. It was
the wall of the world, and he could not scale it. Before him stretched
the curve of the southern sea, in a crescent, but for all its
fluidity, as impassable as the backing wall of rock. Between the two
he was hemmed in, on a narrow strip of land, enclosed between the
mountain wall and the curving reach of sea. He and all his futile
interests lay within that narrow strip of land, between the mountain
wall and the sea--and the strip was very narrow and small.
He went forth from his bungalow, pulling upon his feet clumsy native
sandals of wood, with a button between the toes. For underfoot lay the
things he dreaded, the heat things, the things bred by this warm
climate enclosed between the high wall of the mountains and the
infitting curve of the sea. He tramped awkwardly along in his loose
fitting sandals, fast at the toe, clapping up and down at the heel.
The one street of the town through which he passed was bordered by the
houses of the officials, all sleeping. They were accustomed to
sleeping. Only he, Mercier, could not sleep. He was not yet accustomed
to being a prisoner. Perhaps--in time----
He clapped along gently, though to him it seemed very noisily, past
the bungalows of the officials, past the big prison, also sleeping.
Past the Administration buildings, past the weed-grown, unused tennis
courts, out upon the red road leading to the mountains. Turn upon turn
of the red road he passed, and then stopped, halted by a sight. A
sight which for weeks past he had worn in his heart, but which he had
never hoped to see fulfilled. She was there, that child! That child so
young, so voluptuous in her development, so immature in her mentality,
and beside her, a little way away, sat the Kling prisoner who guarded
her. The Kling squatted upon his heels, chewing areca nut, and
spitting long distances before him. The child also squatted upon the
grass by the roadside, very listless. The Kling did not move as
Mercier approached, clapping in his sandals. But the child moved and
cast upon him a luminous, frightened gaze, and then regarded him
fixedly. Therefore Mercier sat down by the child, and noted her. Noted
her with a hungry feeling, taking in every beautiful detail. Her
exquisite little hands, and her exquisite little feet, shod in wooden
sandals, with a button between the toes, such sandals as he was
wearing. He talked to her a little, and she answered in half-shy,
frightened tones, but underneath he detected a note of passion--such
as he felt for her. She was fourteen years old, you see, and fully
developed, partly because she was half-witted, and partly because of
these hot temperatures under the Equator.
Thus it befell that every morning Mercier arose early, clad his feet
in noisy, clapping sandals, and went out for a walk along the red road
underlying the mountain. And every morning, almost by accident, he met
the half-witted child with her faithful Kling attendant. And the
Kling, squatting down upon his heels, chewed areca nut, and spat
widely and indifferently, while Mercier sat down beside the little
girl and wondered how long he could stand it--before his control gave
way. For she was a little animal, you see, and yearned for him in a
sort of fourteen-year-old style, fostered by the intense heat of the
Tropics. But Mercier, not yet very long from home, held back--because
of certain inhibitions. Sometimes he thought he would ask for her in
marriage--which was ridiculous, and showed that life in the Far East,
especially in a prison colony, affects the brain. At other times, he
thought how very awkward it would be, in such a little, circumscribed
community as that, if he did not ask her in marriage. Suppose she
babbled--as she might well do. There is no accounting for the
feeble-minded. But as the days grew on, madder and wilder he became,
earlier and earlier he arose to meet her, to go forth to find her on
the red road beneath the mountains. There she was always waiting for
him, while the Kling, her attendant, squatted chewing betel nut a
little farther on.
* * * * *
In time, he had enough. He had had quite enough. She was a stupid
fool, half-witted. He grew quite satiated. Also she grew alarmed. Very
much alarmed. But always, in the distance, with his back discreetly
turned, sat her Kling guardian, the paroled prisoner, chewing betel
nut. So his way out was easy. One day, about eleven o'clock in the
morning, clad in very immaculate white clothes, he came to call upon
the child's parents, with a painful duty to perform. He must report
what he had seen. When out taking his constitutional, he had seen
certain things in an isolated spot of the red road, leading up to the
mountains. These paroled prisoners could not be trusted--he had
intimated as much weeks ago. Therefore he made his report, his painful
report, as compelled by duty. In his pocket was his release--the
acceptance of his resignation. His recall from his post. When the boat
came in next time--that day, in fact--he would go. But he could not
go, with a clear conscience, till he had reported on what he had seen.
The Kling--the old, stupid, trusted Kling--stupid to trust a child
like that with a servant like that----
So the Kling was hanged next morning, and Mercier sailed away that
afternoon, when the little steamer came in. The little colony on the
island of prisoners went on with its life as usual. Ah, bah! There was
no harm done! She was so very immature! Mercier need not have exacted
the life of the Kling servant, after all. He was supersensitive and
over-scrupulous. Life in a prison colony in the Far East certainly
affects one's judgment.
CANTERBURY CHIMES
VII
CANTERBURY CHIMES
I
The Colonial Bishop lay spread out on his long, rattan chair, idly
contemplating the view of the harbour, as seen from his deep, cool
verandah. As he lay there, pleasant thoughts crossed his mind, swam
across his consciousness in a continuous stream, although, properly
speaking, he was not thinking at all. The thoughts condensed in
patches, were mere agglomerations of feelings and impressions, and
they strung themselves across his mind as beads are strung along a
string. His mental fingers, however, slipped the beads along, and he
derived an impression of each bead as it passed before his half closed
eyes. The first that appeared was a sense of physical well-being. He
liked the climate. This climate of the Far Eastern Tropics, which so
few people could stand, much less enjoy. But he liked it; he liked its
enclosing sense of warmth and dampness and heavy scented atmosphere.
Never before had he brought such an appetite to his meals, or so
enjoyed his exercise, or revelled in perspiration after a hard bicycle
ride, and so enjoyed the cool wash and splash in the Java jar
afterwards. The climate suited him admirably. It made one very fit,
physically, and was altogether delightful. From this you will see that
the Bishop was a young man, not over forty-five.
Then the servants. Good boys he had, well trained, obedient,
anticipative, amusing, picturesque in their Oriental dress. Rather
trying because of their laziness, but not too exasperating to be a
real irritant. So many people found native servants a downright source
of annoyance--even worse than the climate--but for himself, he had
never found them so. They gave him no trouble at all, and he had been
out ten years, so ought to know.
The native life was charming too, so rich in colour, in all its gay
costumes. Surely the first Futurists must have been the Orientals. No
modern of the most ultra-modern school had ever revelled in such
gorgeous colour combinations, in such daring contrasts and lurid
extremes, as did these dark hued people, in their primitive
simplicity. He liked them all, decent and docile. He liked their
earrings--only that day he had counted a row of nine in the ear of
some wandering juggler. Nose rings too--how pretty they were, nose
rings. Rubies too, and most of them real, doubtless. How well they
looked in the nostril of a thin, aquiline brown nose. It all went with
the country. Barbaric, perhaps, contrasted with other standards, but
beautiful--in its way. He would not change it for the world.
And the perfumes! A faint scent of gardenias was at that moment being
wafted in from his well-kept, rich gardens, where somehow his boys
managed to make flowers grow in the brown, devitalised earth. For the
soil was devitalised, surely. It got no rest, year in, year out. For
centuries it had nourished, in one long, eternal season, the great
rich mass of tropical vegetation. European flowers would not grow in
the red earth, or the black earth, whichever it was--he had been
accustomed to think of red or black earth as being rich, but out here
in the Tropics, it was unable to produce, for more than a brief
season, the flowers and shrubs that were native to his home land. But
gardenias and frangipanni----
The next bead that slipped along was the memory of an Arab street at
dusk--the merchants sitting at their shop fronts, the gloom of the
little, narrow shops, the glow of rich stuffs and rich colours that
lay in neat piles on the shelves, and the scent of incense burning in
little earthenware braziers at the door of each shop--how sweet was
the warm air, laden with this deeply sweet smell of burning, glowing
incense----