Revolving these thoughts, he strolled on near the railings of the quay,
broad-chested, without a stoop, as though his big shoulders had never
felt the burden of the loads that must be carried between the cradle
and the grave. No single betraying fold or line of care disfigured the
reposeful modeling of his face. It was full and untanned; and the upper
part emerged, massively quiet, out of the downward flow of silvery hair,
with the striking delicacy of its clear complexion and the powerful
width of the forehead. The first cast of his glance fell on you candid
and swift, like a boy’s; but because of the ragged snowy thatch of the
eyebrows the affability of his attention acquired the character of a
dark and searching scrutiny. With age he had put on flesh a little, had
increased his girth like an old tree presenting no symptoms of decay;
and even the opulent, lustrous ripple of white hairs upon his chest
seemed an attribute of unquenchable vitality and vigor.
Once rather proud of his great bodily strength, and even of his personal
appearance, conscious of his worth, and firm in his rectitude, there had
remained to him, like the heritage of departed prosperity, the tranquil
bearing of a man who had proved himself fit in every sort of way for the
life of his choice. He strode on squarely under the projecting brim of
an ancient Panama hat. It had a low crown, a crease through its whole
diameter, a narrow black ribbon. Imperishable and a little discolored,
this headgear made it easy to pick him out from afar on thronged wharves
and in the busy streets. He had never adopted the comparatively modern
fashion of pipeclayed cork helmets. He disliked the form; and he hoped
he could manage to keep a cool head to the end of his life without all
these contrivances for hygienic ventilation. His hair was cropped close,
his linen always of immaculate whiteness; a suit of thin gray flannel,
worn threadbare but scrupulously brushed, floated about his burly limbs,
adding to his bulk by the looseness of its cut. The years had mellowed
the good-humored, imperturbable audacity of his prime into a temper
carelessly serene; and the leisurely tapping of his iron-shod stick
accompanied his footfalls with a self-confident sound on the flagstones.
It was impossible to connect such a fine presence and this unruffled
aspect with the belittling troubles of poverty; the man’s whole
existence appeared to pass before you, facile and large, in the freedom
of means as ample as the clothing of his body.
The irrational dread of having to break into his five hundred pounds for
personal expenses in the hotel disturbed the steady poise of his mind.
There was no time to lose. The bill was running up. He nourished the
hope that this five hundred would perhaps be the means, if everything
else failed, of obtaining some work which, keeping his body and soul
together (not a matter of great outlay), would enable him to be of use
to his daughter. To his mind it was her own money which he employed, as
it were, in backing her father and solely for her benefit. Once at work,
he would help her with the greater part of his earnings; he was good for
many years yet, and this boarding-house business, he argued to himself,
whatever the prospects, could not be much of a gold-mine from the first
start. But what work? He was ready to lay hold of anything in an honest
way so that it came quickly to his hand; because the five hundred pounds
must be preserved intact for eventual use. That was the great point.
With the entire five hundred one felt a substance at one’s back; but
it seemed to him that should he let it dwindle to four-fifty or even
four-eighty, all the efficiency would be gone out of the money, as though
there were some magic power in the round figure. But what sort of work?
Confronted by that haunting question as by an uneasy ghost, for whom he
had no exorcising formula, Captain Whalley stopped short on the apex
of a small bridge spanning steeply the bed of a canalized creek with
granite shores. Moored between the square blocks a seagoing Malay prau
floated half hidden under the arch of masonry, with her spars lowered
down, without a sound of life on board, and covered from stem to stern
with a ridge of palm-leaf mats. He had left behind him the overheated
pavements bordered by the stone frontages that, like the sheer face of
cliffs, followed the sweep of the quays; and an unconfined spaciousness
of orderly and sylvan aspect opened before him its wide plots of rolled
grass, like pieces of green carpet smoothly pegged out, its long ranges
of trees lined up in colossal porticos of dark shafts roofed with a
vault of branches.
Some of these avenues ended at the sea. It was a terraced shore; and
beyond, upon the level expanse, profound and glistening like the gaze
of a dark-blue eye, an oblique band of stippled purple lengthened itself
indefinitely through the gap between a couple of verdant twin islets.
The masts and spars of a few ships far away, hull down in the outer
roads, sprang straight from the water in a fine maze of rosy lines
penciled on the clear shadow of the eastern board. Captain Whalley gave
them a long glance. The ship, once his own, was anchored out there. It
was staggering to think that it was open to him no longer to take a boat
at the jetty and get himself pulled off to her when the evening came. To
no ship. Perhaps never more. Before the sale was concluded, and till the
purchase-money had been paid, he had spent daily some time on board the
Fair Maid. The money had been paid this very morning, and now, all at
once, there was positively no ship that he could go on board of when he
liked; no ship that would need his presence in order to do her work--to
live. It seemed an incredible state of affairs, something too bizarre
to last. And the sea was full of craft of all sorts. There was that prau
lying so still swathed in her shroud of sewn palm-leaves--she too had
her indispensable man. They lived through each other, this Malay he had
never seen, and this high-sterned thing of no size that seemed to be
resting after a long journey. And of all the ships in sight, near and
far, each was provided with a man, the man without whom the finest ship
is a dead thing, a floating and purposeless log.
After his one glance at the roadstead he went on, since there was
nothing to turn back for, and the time must be got through somehow. The
avenues of big trees ran straight over the Esplanade, cutting each other
at diverse angles, columnar below and luxuriant above. The interlaced
boughs high up there seemed to slumber; not a leaf stirred overhead:
and the reedy cast-iron lampposts in the middle of the road, gilt like
scepters, diminished in a long perspective, with their globes of white
porcelain atop, resembling a barbarous decoration of ostriches’ eggs
displayed in a row. The flaming sky kindled a tiny crimson spark upon
the glistening surface of each glassy shell.
With his chin sunk a little, his hands behind his back, and the end of
his stick marking the gravel with a faint wavering line at his heels,
Captain Whalley reflected that if a ship without a man was like a body
without a soul, a sailor without a ship was of not much more account
in this world than an aimless log adrift upon the sea. The log might be
sound enough by itself, tough of fiber, and hard to destroy--but what of
that! And a sudden sense of irremediable idleness weighted his feet like
a great fatigue.
A succession of open carriages came bowling along the newly opened
sea-road. You could see across the wide grass-plots the discs of
vibration made by the spokes. The bright domes of the parasols swayed
lightly outwards like full-blown blossoms on the rim of a vase; and
the quiet sheet of dark-blue water, crossed by a bar of purple, made a
background for the spinning wheels and the high action of the horses,
whilst the turbaned heads of the Indian servants elevated above the line
of the sea horizon glided rapidly on the paler blue of the sky. In an
open space near the little bridge each turn-out trotted smartly in a
wide curve away from the sunset; then pulling up sharp, entered the main
alley in a long slow-moving file with the great red stillness of the sky
at the back. The trunks of mighty trees stood all touched with red on
the same side, the air seemed aflame under the high foliage, the
very ground under the hoofs of the horses was red. The wheels turned
solemnly; one after another the sunshades drooped, folding their colors
like gorgeous flowers shutting their petals at the end of the day. In
the whole half-mile of human beings no voice uttered a distinct word,
only a faint thudding noise went on mingled with slight jingling sounds,
and the motionless heads and shoulders of men and women sitting in
couples emerged stolidly above the lowered hoods--as if wooden. But one
carriage and pair coming late did not join the line.
It fled along in a noiseless roll; but on entering the avenue one of the
dark bays snorted, arching his neck and shying against the steel-tipped
pole; a flake of foam fell from the bit upon the point of a satiny
shoulder, and the dusky face of the coachman leaned forward at once over
the hands taking a fresh grip of the reins. It was a long dark-green
landau, having a dignified and buoyant motion between the sharply
curved C-springs, and a sort of strictly official majesty in its supreme
elegance. It seemed more roomy than is usual, its horses seemed slightly
bigger, the appointments a shade more perfect, the servants perched
somewhat higher on the box. The dresses of three women--two young
and pretty, and one, handsome, large, of mature age--seemed to fill
completely the shallow body of the carriage. The fourth face was that
of a man, heavy lidded, distinguished and sallow, with a somber, thick,
iron-gray imperial and mustaches, which somehow had the air of solid
appendages. His Excellency--
The rapid motion of that one equipage made all the others appear utterly
inferior, blighted, and reduced to crawl painfully at a snail’s pace.
The landau distanced the whole file in a sort of sustained rush; the
features of the occupant whirling out of sight left behind an impression
of fixed stares and impassive vacancy; and after it had vanished in full
flight as it were, notwithstanding the long line of vehicles hugging the
curb at a walk, the whole lofty vista of the avenue seemed to lie open
and emptied of life in the enlarged impression of an august solitude.
Captain Whalley had lifted his head to look, and his mind, disturbed in
its meditation, turned with wonder (as men’s minds will do) to matters
of no importance. It struck him that it was to this port, where he had
just sold his last ship, that he had come with the very first he had
ever owned, and with his head full of a plan for opening a new trade
with a distant part of the Archipelago. The then governor had given
him no end of encouragement. No Excellency he--this Mr. Denham--this
governor with his jacket off; a man who tended night and day, so to
speak, the growing prosperity of the settlement with the self-forgetful
devotion of a nurse for a child she loves; a lone bachelor who lived as
in a camp with the few servants and his three dogs in what was called
then the Government Bungalow: a low-roofed structure on the half-cleared
slope of a hill, with a new flagstaff in front and a police orderly on
the veranda. He remembered toiling up that hill under a heavy sun for
his audience; the unfurnished aspect of the cool shaded room; the long
table covered at one end with piles of papers, and with two guns, a
brass telescope, a small bottle of oil with a feather stuck in the neck
at the other--and the flattering attention given to him by the man in
power. It was an undertaking full of risk he had come to expound, but a
twenty minutes’ talk in the Government Bungalow on the hill had made it
go smoothly from the start. And as he was retiring Mr. Denham, already
seated before the papers, called out after him, “Next month the Dido
starts for a cruise that way, and I shall request her captain officially
to give you a look in and see how you get on.” The Dido was one of the
smart frigates on the China station--and five-and-thirty years make a
big slice of time. Five-and-thirty years ago an enterprise like his had
for the colony enough importance to be looked after by a Queen’s ship.
A big slice of time. Individuals were of some account then. Men like
himself; men, too, like poor Evans, for instance, with his red face,
his coal-black whiskers, and his restless eyes, who had set up the first
patent slip for repairing small ships, on the edge of the forest, in
a lonely bay three miles up the coast. Mr. Denham had encouraged that
enterprise too, and yet somehow poor Evans had ended by dying at
home deucedly hard up. His son, they said, was squeezing oil out of
cocoa-nuts for a living on some God-forsaken islet of the Indian Ocean;
but it was from that patent slip in a lonely wooded bay that had sprung
the workshops of the Consolidated Docks Company, with its three
graving basins carved out of solid rock, its wharves, its jetties,
its electric-light plant, its steam-power houses--with its gigantic
sheer-legs, fit to lift the heaviest weight ever carried afloat, and
whose head could be seen like the top of a queer white monument peeping
over bushy points of land and sandy promontories, as you approached the
New Harbor from the west.
There had been a time when men counted: there were not so many carriages
in the colony then, though Mr. Denham, he fancied, had a buggy. And
Captain Whalley seemed to be swept out of the great avenue by the swirl
of a mental backwash. He remembered muddy shores, a harbor without
quays, the one solitary wooden pier (but that was a public work) jutting
out crookedly, the first coal-sheds erected on Monkey Point, that caught
fire mysteriously and smoldered for days, so that amazed ships came
into a roadstead full of sulphurous smoke, and the sun hung blood-red
at midday. He remembered the things, the faces, and something more
besides--like the faint flavor of a cup quaffed to the bottom, like a
subtle sparkle of the air that was not to be found in the atmosphere of
to-day.
In this evocation, swift and full of detail like a flash of magnesium
light into the niches of a dark memorial hall, Captain Whalley
contemplated things once important, the efforts of small men, the growth
of a great place, but now robbed of all consequence by the greatness
of accomplished facts, by hopes greater still; and they gave him for a
moment such an almost physical grip upon time, such a comprehension of
our unchangeable feelings, that he stopped short, struck the ground with
his stick, and ejaculated mentally, “What the devil am I doing here!” He
seemed lost in a sort of surprise; but he heard his name called out in
wheezy tones once, twice--and turned on his heels slowly.
He beheld then, waddling towards him autocratically, a man of an
old-fashioned and gouty aspect, with hair as white as his own, but with
shaved, florid cheeks, wearing a necktie--almost a neckcloth--whose
stiff ends projected far beyond his chin; with round legs, round arms,
a round body, a round face--generally producing the effect of his short
figure having been distended by means of an air-pump as much as the
seams of his clothing would stand. This was the Master-Attendant of the
port. A master-attendant is a superior sort of harbor-master; a person,
out in the East, of some consequence in his sphere; a Government
official, a magistrate for the waters of the port, and possessed of vast
but ill-defined disciplinary authority over seamen of all classes.
This particular Master-Attendant was reported to consider it miserably
inadequate, on the ground that it did not include the power of life
and death. This was a jocular exaggeration. Captain Eliott was fairly
satisfied with his position, and nursed no inconsiderable sense of such
power as he had. His conceited and tyrannical disposition did not allow
him to let it dwindle in his hands for want of use. The uproarious,
choleric frankness of his comments on people’s character and conduct
caused him to be feared at bottom; though in conversation many pretended
not to mind him in the least, others would only smile sourly at the
mention of his name, and there were even some who dared to pronounce him
“a meddlesome old ruffian.” But for almost all of them one of Captain
Eliott’s outbreaks was nearly as distasteful to face as a chance of
annihilation.
V