XII

Mr. Van Wyk, the white man of Batu Beru, an ex-naval officer who,

for reasons best known to himself, had thrown away the promise of a

brilliant career to become the pioneer of tobacco-planting on that

remote part of the coast, had learned to like Captain Whalley. The

appearance of the new skipper had attracted his attention. Nothing more

unlike all the diverse types he had seen succeeding each other on the

bridge of the Sofala could be imagined.

At that time Batu Beru was not what it has become since: the center of

a prosperous tobacco-growing district, a tropically suburban-looking

little settlement of bungalows in one long street shaded with two rows

of trees, embowered by the flowering and trim luxuriance of the gardens,

with a three-mile-long carriage-road for the afternoon drives and a

first-class Resident with a fat, cheery wife to lead the society of

married estate-managers and unmarried young fellows in the service of the

big companies.

All this prosperity was not yet; and Mr. Van Wyk prospered alone on the

left bank on his deep clearing carved out of the forest, which came down

above and below to the water’s edge. His lonely bungalow faced across

the river the houses of the Sultan: a restless and melancholy old ruler

who had done with love and war, for whom life no longer held any savor

(except of evil forebodings) and time never had any value. He was afraid

of death, and hoped he would die before the white men were ready to take

his country from him. He crossed the river frequently (with never

less than ten boats crammed full of people), in the wistful hope of

extracting some information on the subject from his own white man. There

was a certain chair on the veranda he always took: the dignitaries of

the court squatted on the rugs and skins between the furniture: the

inferior people remained below on the grass plot between the house and

the river in rows three or four deep all along the front. Not seldom the

visit began at daybreak. Mr. Van Wyk tolerated these inroads. He would

nod out of his bedroom window, tooth-brush or razor in hand, or pass

through the throng of courtiers in his bathing robe. He appeared and

disappeared humming a tune, polished his nails with attention, rubbed

his shaved face with _eau-de-Cologne_, drank his early tea, went out to

see his coolies at work: returned, looked through some papers on his

desk, read a page or two in a book or sat before his cottage piano

leaning back on the stool, his arms extended, fingers on the keys, his

body swaying slightly from side to side. When absolutely forced to speak

he gave evasive vaguely soothing answers out of pure compassion: the

same feeling perhaps made him so lavishly hospitable with the aerated

drinks that more than once he left himself without soda-water for a whole

week. That old man had granted him as much land as he cared to have

cleared: it was neither more nor less than a fortune.

Whether it was fortune or seclusion from his kind that Mr. Van Wyk

sought, he could not have pitched upon a better place. Even the

mail-boats of the subsidized company calling on the veriest clusters of

palm-thatched hovels along the coast steamed past the mouth of Batu Beru

river far away in the offing. The contract was old: perhaps in a few

years’ time, when it had expired, Batu Beru would be included in the

service; meantime all Mr. Van Wyk’s mail was addressed to Malacca,

whence his agent sent it across once a month by the Sofala. It followed

that whenever Massy had run short of money (through taking too many

lottery tickets), or got into a difficulty about a skipper, Mr. Van Wyk

was deprived of his letter and newspapers. In so far he had a personal

interest in the fortunes of the Sofala. Though he considered himself

a hermit (and for no passing whim evidently, since he had stood eight

years of it already), he liked to know what went on in the world.

Handy on the veranda upon a walnut _etagere_ (it had come last year by the

Sofala)--everything came by the Sofala there lay, piled up under bronze

weights, a pile of the Times’ weekly edition, the large sheets of the

Rotterdam Courant, the Graphic in its world-wide green wrappers, an

illustrated Dutch publication without a cover, the numbers of a German

magazine with covers of the “_Bismarck malade_” color. There were also

parcels of new music--though the piano (it had come years ago by the

Sofala in the damp atmosphere of the forests was generally out of tune.)

It was vexing to be cut off from everything for sixty days at a stretch

sometimes, without any means of knowing what was the matter. And when

the Sofala reappeared Mr. Van Wyk would descend the steps of the veranda

and stroll over the grass plot in front of his house, down to the

waterside, with a frown on his white brow.

“You’ve been laid up after an accident, I presume.”

He addressed the bridge, but before anybody could answer Massy was sure

to have already scrambled ashore over the rail and pushed in, squeezing

the palms of his hands together, bowing his sleek head as if gummed all

over the top with black threads and tapes. And he would be so enraged

at the necessity of having to offer such an explanation that his moaning

would be positively pitiful, while all the time he tried to compose his

big lips into a smile.

“No, Mr. Van Wyk. You would not believe it. I couldn’t get one of those

wretches to take the ship out. Not a single one of the lazy beasts could

be induced, and the law, you know, Mr. Van Wyk . . .”

He moaned at great length apologetically; the words conspiracy, plot,

envy, came out prominently, whined with greater energy. Mr. Van Wyk,

examining with a faint grimace his polished finger-nails, would say,

“H’m. Very unfortunate,” and turn his back on him.

Fastidious, clever, slightly skeptical, accustomed to the best society

(he had held a much-envied shore appointment at the Ministry of Marine

for a year preceding his retreat from his profession and from Europe),

he possessed a latent warmth of feeling and a capacity for sympathy

which were concealed by a sort of haughty, arbitrary indifference of

manner arising from his early training; and by a something an enemy

might have called foppish, in his aspect--like a distorted echo of past

elegance. He managed to keep an almost military discipline amongst the

coolies of the estate he had dragged into the light of day out of the

tangle and shadows of the jungle; and the white shirt he put on every

evening with its stiff glossy front and high collar looked as if he had

meant to preserve the decent ceremony of evening-dress, but had wound

a thick crimson sash above his hips as a concession to the wilderness,

once his adversary, now his vanquished companion.

Moreover, it was a hygienic precaution. Worn wide open in front, a short

jacket of some airy silken stuff floated from his shoulders. His fluffy,

fair hair, thin at the top, curled slightly at the sides; a carefully

arranged mustache, an ungarnished forehead, the gleam of low patent

shoes peeping under the wide bottom of trowsers cut straight from the

same stuff as the gossamer coat, completed a figure recalling, with its

sash, a pirate chief of romance, and at the same time the elegance of

a slightly bald dandy indulging, in seclusion, a taste for unorthodox

costume.

It was his evening get-up. The proper time for the Sofala to arrive

at Batu Beru was an hour before sunset, and he looked picturesque, and

somehow quite correct too, walking at the water’s edge on the background

of grass slope crowned with a low long bungalow with an immensely steep

roof of palm thatch, and clad to the eaves in flowering creepers. While

the Sofala was being made fast he strolled in the shade of the few trees

left near the landing-place, waiting till he could go on board. Her

white men were not of his kind. The old Sultan (though his wistful

invasions were a nuisance) was really much more acceptable to his

fastidious taste. But still they were white; the periodical visits of

the ship made a break in the well-filled sameness of the days without

disturbing his privacy. Moreover, they were necessary from a business

point of view; and through a strain of preciseness in his nature he was

irritated when she failed to appear at the appointed time.

The cause of the irregularity was too absurd, and Massy, in his opinion,

was a contemptible idiot. The first time the Sofala reappeared under the

new agreement swinging out of the bend below, after he had almost given

up all hope of ever seeing her again, he felt so angry that he did not

go down at once to the landing-place. His servants had come running to

him with the news, and he had dragged a chair close against the front

rail of the veranda, spread his elbows out, rested his chin on his

hands, and went on glaring at her fixedly while she was being made fast

opposite his house. He could make out easily all the white faces on

board. Who on earth was that kind of patriarch they had got there on the

bridge now?

At last he sprang up and walked down the gravel path. It was a fact

that the very gravel for his paths had been imported by the Sofala.

Exasperated out of his quiet superciliousness, without looking at anyone

right or left, he accosted Massy straightway in so determined a manner

that the engineer, taken aback, began to stammer unintelligibly. Nothing

could be heard but the words: “Mr. Van Wyk . . . Indeed, Mr. Van Wyk

. . . For the future, Mr. Van Wyk”--and by the suffusion of blood Massy’s

vast bilious face acquired an unnatural orange tint, out of which the

disconcerted coal-black eyes shone in an extraordinary manner.

“Nonsense. I am tired of this. I wonder you have the impudence to come

alongside my jetty as if I had it made for your convenience alone.”

Massy tried to protest earnestly. Mr. Van Wyk was very angry. He had

a good mind to ask that German firm--those people in Malacca--what was

their name?--boats with green funnels. They would be only too glad

of the opening to put one of their small steamers on the run. Yes;

Schnitzler, Jacob Schnitzler, would in a moment. Yes. He had decided to

write without delay.

In his agitation Massy caught up his falling pipe.

“You don’t mean it, sir!” he shrieked.

“You shouldn’t mismanage your business in this ridiculous manner.”

Mr. Van Wyk turned on his heel. The other three whites on the bridge had

not stirred during the scene. Massy walked hastily from side to side,

puffed out his cheeks, suffocated.

“Stuck up Dutchman!”

And he moaned out feverishly a long tale of griefs. The efforts he had

made for all these years to please that man. This was the return you

got for it, eh? Pretty. Write to Schnitzler--let in the green-funnel

boats--get an old Hamburg Jew to ruin him. No, really he could laugh.

. . . He laughed sobbingly. . . . Ha! ha! ha! And make him carry the

letter in his own ship presumably.

He stumbled across a grating and swore. He would not hesitate to fling

the Dutchman’s correspondence overboard--the whole confounded bundle.

He had never, never made any charge for that accommodation. But Captain

Whalley, his new partner, would not let him probably; besides, it would

be only putting off the evil day. For his own part he would make a hole

in the water rather than look on tamely at the green funnels overrunning

his trade.

He raved aloud. The China boys hung back with the dishes at the foot of

the ladder. He yelled from the bridge down at the deck, “Aren’t we going

to have any chow this evening at all?” then turned violently to Captain

Whalley, who waited, grave and patient, at the head of the table,

smoothing his beard in silence now and then with a forbearing gesture.

“You don’t seem to care what happens to me. Don’t you see that this

affects your interests as much as mine? It’s no joking matter.”

He took the foot of the table growling between his teeth.

“Unless you have a few thousands put away somewhere. I haven’t.”

Mr. Van Wyk dined in his thoroughly lit-up bungalow, putting a point of

splendor in the night of his clearing above the dark bank of the river.

Afterwards he sat down to his piano, and in a pause he became aware

of slow footsteps passing on the path along the front. A plank or two

creaked under a heavy tread; he swung half round on the music-stool,

listening with his fingertips at rest on the keyboard. His little

terrier barked violently, backing in from the veranda. A deep voice

apologized gravely for “this intrusion.” He walked out quickly.

At the head of the steps the patriarchal figure, who was the new captain

of the Sofala apparently (he had seen a round dozen of them, but not

one of that sort), towered without advancing. The little dog barked

unceasingly, till a flick of Mr. Van Wyk’s handkerchief made him spring

aside into silence. Captain Whalley, opening the matter, was met by a

punctiliously polite but determined opposition.

They carried on their discussion standing where they had come face to

face. Mr. Van Wyk observed his visitor with attention. Then at last, as

if forced out of his reserve--

“I am surprised that you should intercede for such a confounded fool.”

This outbreak was almost complimentary, as if its meaning had been,

“That such a man as you should intercede!” Captain Whalley let it pass

by without flinching. One would have thought he had heard nothing. He

simply went on to state that he was personally interested in putting

things straight between them. Personally . . .

But Mr. Van Wyk, really carried away by his disgust with Massy, became

very incisive--

“Indeed--if I am to be frank with you--his whole character does not seem

to me particularly estimable or trustworthy . . .”

Captain Whalley, always straight, seemed to grow an inch taller and

broader, as if the girth of his chest had suddenly expanded under his

beard.

“My dear sir, you don’t think I came here to discuss a man with whom I

am--I am--h’m--closely associated.”

A sort of solemn silence lasted for a moment. He was not used to asking

favors, but the importance he attached to this affair had made him

willing to try. . . . Mr. Van Wyk, favorably impressed, and suddenly

mollified by a desire to laugh, interrupted--

“That’s all right if you make it a personal matter; but you can do no

less than sit down and smoke a cigar with me.”

A slight pause, then Captain Whalley stepped forward heavily. As to the

regularity of the service, for the future he made himself responsible

for it; and his name was Whalley--perhaps to a sailor (he was speaking

to a sailor, was he not?) not altogether unfamiliar. There was a

lighthouse now, on an island. Maybe Mr. Van Wyk himself . . .

“Oh yes. Oh indeed.” Mr. Van Wyk caught on at once. He indicated a

chair. How very interesting. For his own part he had seen some service

in the last Acheen War, but had never been so far East. Whalley Island?

Of course. Now that was very interesting. What changes his guest must

have seen since.

“I can look further back even--on a whole half-century.”

Captain Whalley expanded a bit. The flavor of a good cigar (it was a

weakness) had gone straight to his heart, also the civility of that

young man. There was something in that accidental contact of which he

had been starved in his years of struggle.

The front wall retreating made a square recess furnished like a room.

A lamp with a milky glass shade, suspended below the slope of the high

roof at the end of a slender brass chain, threw a bright round of light

upon a little table bearing an open book and an ivory paper-knife. And,

in the translucent shadows beyond, other tables could be seen, a number

of easy-chairs of various shapes, with a great profusion of skin rugs

strewn on the teakwood planking all over the veranda. The flowering

creepers scented the air. Their foliage clipped out between the uprights

made as if several frames of thick unstirring leaves reflecting the

lamplight in a green glow. Through the opening at his elbow Captain

Whalley could see the gangway lantern of the Sofala burning dim by the

shore, the shadowy masses of the town beyond the open lustrous darkness

of the river, and, as if hung along the straight edge of the projecting

eaves, a narrow black strip of the night sky full of stars--resplendent.

The famous cigar in hand he had a moment of complacency.

“A trifle. Somebody must lead the way. I just showed that the thing

could be done; but you men brought up to the use of steam cannot

conceive the vast importance of my bit of venturesomeness to the Eastern

trade of the time. Why, that new route reduced the average time of a

southern passage by eleven days for more than half the year. Eleven

days! It’s on record. But the remarkable thing--speaking to a sailor--I

should say was . . .”

He talked well, without egotism, professionally. The powerful voice,

produced without effort, filled the bungalow even into the empty rooms

with a deep and limpid resonance, seemed to make a stillness outside;

and Mr. Van Wyk was surprised by the serene quality of its tone, like

the perfection of manly gentleness. Nursing one small foot, in a

silk sock and a patent leather shoe, on his knee, he was immensely

entertained. It was as if nobody could talk like this now, and the

overshadowed eyes, the flowing white beard, the big frame, the

serenity, the whole temper of the man, were an amazing survival from the

prehistoric times of the world coming up to him out of the sea.

Captain Whalley had been also the pioneer of the early trade in the Gulf

of Pe-tchi-li. He even found occasion to mention that he had buried

his “dear wife” there six-and-twenty years ago. Mr. Van Wyk, impassive,

could not help speculating in his mind swiftly as to the sort of woman

that would mate with such a man. Did they make an adventurous and

well-matched pair? No. Very possible she had been small, frail, no

doubt very feminine--or most likely commonplace with domestic instincts,

utterly insignificant. But Captain Whalley was no garrulous bore, and

shaking his head as if to dissipate the momentary gloom that had settled

on his handsome old face, he alluded conversationally to Mr. Van Wyk’s

solitude.

Mr. Van Wyk affirmed that sometimes he had more company than he wanted.

He mentioned smilingly some of the peculiarities of his intercourse with

“My Sultan.” He made his visits in force. Those people damaged his grass

plot in front (it was not easy to obtain some approach to a lawn in

the tropics) and the other day had broken down some rare bushes he had

planted over there. And Captain Whalley remembered immediately that,

in ‘forty-seven, the then Sultan, “this man’s grandfather,” had been

notorious as a great protector of the piratical fleets of praus from

farther East. They had a safe refuge in the river at Batu Beru. He

financed more especially a Balinini chief called Haji Daman. Captain

Whalley, nodding significantly his bushy white eyebrows, had very good

reason to know something of that. The world had progressed since that

time.

Mr. Van Wyk demurred with unexpected acrimony. Progressed in what? he

wanted to know.

Why, in knowledge of truth, in decency, in justice, in order--in honesty

too, since men harmed each other mostly from ignorance. It was, Captain

Whalley concluded quaintly, more pleasant to live in.

Mr. Van Wyk whimsically would not admit that Mr. Massy, for instance,

was more pleasant naturally than the Balinini pirates.

The river had not gained much by the change. They were in their way

every bit as honest. Massy was less ferocious than Haji Daman no doubt,

but . . .

“And what about you, my good sir?” Captain Whalley laughed a deep soft

laugh. “_You_ are an improvement, surely.”

He continued in a vein of pleasantry. A good cigar was better than a

knock on the head--the sort of welcome he would have found on this

river forty or fifty years ago. Then leaning forward slightly, he became

earnestly serious. It seems as if, outside their own sea-gypsy

tribes, these rovers had hated all mankind with an incomprehensible,

bloodthirsty hatred. Meantime their depredations had been stopped, and

what was the consequence? The new generation was orderly, peaceable,

settled in prosperous villages. He could speak from personal knowledge.

And even the few survivors of that time--old men now--had changed so

much, that it would have been unkind to remember against them that they

had ever slit a throat in their lives. He had one especially in his

mind’s eye: a dignified, venerable headman of a certain large coast

village about sixty miles sou’west of Tampasuk. It did one’s heart

good to see him--to hear that man speak. He might have been a ferocious

savage once. What men wanted was to be checked by superior intelligence,

by superior knowledge, by superior force too--yes, by force held in

trust from God and sanctified by its use in accordance with His declared

will. Captain Whalley believed a disposition for good existed in every

man, even if the world were not a very happy place as a whole. In the

wisdom of men he had not so much confidence. The disposition had to be

helped up pretty sharply sometimes, he admitted. They might be silly,

wrongheaded, unhappy; but naturally evil--no. There was at bottom a

complete harmlessness at least . . .

“Is there?” Mr. Van Wyk snapped acrimoniously.

Captain Whalley laughed at the interjection, in the good humor of large,

tolerating certitude. He could look back at half a century, he pointed

out. The smoke oozed placidly through the white hairs hiding his kindly

lips.

“At all events,” he resumed after a pause, “I am glad that they’ve had

no time to do you much harm as yet.”

This allusion to his comparative youthfulness did not offend Mr. Van

Wyk, who got up and wriggled his shoulders with an enigmatic half-smile.

They walked out together amicably into the starry night towards the

river-side. Their footsteps resounded unequally on the dark path. At the

shore end of the gangway the lantern, hung low to the handrail, threw

a vivid light on the white legs and the big black feet of Mr. Massy

waiting about anxiously. From the waist upwards he remained shadowy,

with a row of buttons gleaming up to the vague outline of his chin.

“You may thank Captain Whalley for this,” Mr. Van Wyk said curtly to him

before turning away.

The lamps on the veranda flung three long squares of light between

the uprights far over the grass. A bat flitted before his face like a

circling flake of velvety blackness. Along the jasmine hedge the night

air seemed heavy with the fall of perfumed dew; flowerbeds bordered the

path; the clipped bushes uprose in dark rounded clumps here and there

before the house; the dense foliage of creepers filtered the sheen of

the lamplight within in a soft glow all along the front; and everything

near and far stood still in a great immobility, in a great sweetness.

Mr. Van Wyk (a few years before he had had occasion to imagine himself

treated more badly than anybody alive had ever been by a woman) felt

for Captain Whalley’s optimistic views the disdain of a man who had once

been credulous himself. His disgust with the world (the woman for a

time had filled it for him completely) had taken the form of activity

in retirement, because, though capable of great depth of feeling, he was

energetic and essentially practical. But there was in that uncommon old

sailor, drifting on the outskirts of his busy solitude, something that

fascinated his skepticism. His very simplicity (amusing enough) was like

a delicate refinement of an upright character. The striking dignity

of manner could be nothing else, in a man reduced to such a humble

position, but the expression of something essentially noble in the

character. With all his trust in mankind he was no fool; the serenity

of his temper at the end of so many years, since it could not obviously

have been appeased by success, wore an air of profound wisdom. Mr. Van

Wyk was amused at it sometimes. Even the very physical traits of the

old captain of the Sofala, his powerful frame, his reposeful mien, his

intelligent, handsome face, the big limbs, the benign courtesy, the

touch of rugged severity in the shaggy eyebrows, made up a seductive

personality. Mr. Van Wyk disliked littleness of every kind, but there

was nothing small about that man, and in the exemplary regularity of

many trips an intimacy had grown up between them, a warm feeling

at bottom under a kindly stateliness of forms agreeable to his

fastidiousness.

They kept their respective opinions on all worldly matters. His other

convictions Captain Whalley never intruded. The difference of their

ages was like another bond between them. Once, when twitted with the

uncharitableness of his youth, Mr. Van Wyk, running his eye over the

vast proportions of his interlocutor, retorted in friendly banter--

“Oh. You’ll come to my way of thinking yet. You’ll have plenty of time.

Don’t call yourself old: you look good for a round hundred.”

But he could not help his stinging incisiveness, and though moderating

it by an almost affectionate smile, he added--

“And by then you will probably consent to die from sheer disgust.”

Captain Whalley, smiling too, shook his head. “God forbid!”

He thought that perhaps on the whole he deserved something better than

to die in such sentiments. The time of course would have to come, and he

trusted to his Maker to provide a manner of going out of which he need

not be ashamed. For the rest he hoped he would live to a hundred if need

be: other men had been known; it would be no miracle. He expected no

miracles.

The pronounced, argumentative tone caused Mr. Van Wyk to raise his head

and look at him steadily. Captain Whalley was gazing fixedly with a rapt

expression, as though he had seen his Creator’s favorable decree written

in mysterious characters on the wall. He kept perfectly motionless for

a few seconds, then got his vast bulk on to his feet so impetuously that

Mr. Van Wyk was startled.

He struck first a heavy blow on his inflated chest: and, throwing out

horizontally a big arm that remained steady, extended in the air like

the limb of a tree on a windless day--

“Not a pain or an ache there. Can you see this shake in the least?”

His voice was low, in an awing, confident contrast with the headlong

emphasis of his movements. He sat down abruptly.

“This isn’t to boast of it, you know. I am nothing,” he said in his

effortless strong voice, that seemed to come out as naturally as a river

flows. He picked up the stump of the cigar he had laid aside, and added

peacefully, with a slight nod, “As it happens, my life is necessary; it

isn’t my own, it isn’t--God knows.”

He did not say much for the rest of the evening, but several times Mr.

Van Wyk detected a faint smile of assurance flitting under the heavy

mustache.

Later on Captain Whalley would now and then consent to dine “at the

house.” He could even be induced to drink a glass of wine. “Don’t think

I am afraid of it, my good sir,” he explained. “There was a very good

reason why I should give it up.”

On another occasion, leaning back at ease, he remarked, “You have

treated me most--most humanely, my dear Mr. Van Wyk, from the very

first.”

“You’ll admit there was some merit,” Mr. Van Wyk hinted slyly. “An

associate of that excellent Massy. . . . Well, well, my dear captain, I

won’t say a word against him.”

“It would be no use your saying anything against him,” Captain Whalley

affirmed a little moodily. “As I’ve told you before, my life--my work,

is necessary, not for myself alone. I can’t choose” . . . He paused,

turned the glass before him right round. . . . “I have an only child--a

daughter.”

The ample downward sweep of his arm over the table seemed to suggest

a small girl at a vast distance. “I hope to see her once more before I

die. Meantime it’s enough to know that she has me sound and solid, thank

God. You can’t understand how one feels. Bone of my bone, flesh of my

flesh; the very image of my poor wife. Well, she . . .”

Again he paused, then pronounced stoically the words, “She has a hard

struggle.”

And his head fell on his breast, his eyebrows remained knitted, as by

an effort of meditation. But generally his mind seemed steeped in the

serenity of boundless trust in a higher power. Mr. Van Wyk wondered

sometimes how much of it was due to the splendid vitality of the man,

to the bodily vigor which seems to impart something of its force to the

soul. But he had learned to like him very much.