This was the reason why Mr. Sterne’s confidential communication,
delivered hurriedly on the shore alongside the dark silent ship,
had disturbed his equanimity. It was the most incomprehensible and
unexpected thing that could happen; and the perturbation of his spirit
was so great that, forgetting all about his letters, he ran rapidly up
the bridge ladder.
The portable table was being put together for dinner to the left of the
wheel by two pig-tailed “boys,” who as usual snarled at each other
over the job, while another, a doleful, burly, very yellow Chinaman,
resembling Mr. Massy, waited apathetically with the cloth over his arm
and a pile of thick dinner-plates against his chest. A common cabin lamp
with its globe missing, brought up from below, had been hooked to the
wooden framework of the awning; the side-screens had been lowered all
round; Captain Whalley filling the depths of the wicker-chair seemed to
sit benumbed in a canvas tent crudely lighted, and used for the storing
of nautical objects; a shabby steering-wheel, a battered brass binnacle
on a stout mahogany stand, two dingy life-buoys, an old cork fender
lying in a corner, dilapidated deck-lockers with loops of thin rope
instead of door-handles.
He shook off the appearance of numbness to return Mr. Van Wyk’s
unusually brisk greeting, but relapsed directly afterwards. To accept
a pressing invitation to dinner “up at the house” cost him another very
visible physical effort. Mr. Van Wyk, perplexed, folded his arms, and
leaning back against the rail, with his little, black, shiny feet well
out, examined him covertly.
“I’ve noticed of late that you are not quite yourself, old friend.”
He put an affectionate gentleness into the last two words. The real
intimacy of their intercourse had never been so vividly expressed
before.
“Tut, tut, tut!”
The wicker-chair creaked heavily.
“Irritable,” commented Mr. Van Wyk to himself; and aloud, “I’ll expect
to see you in half an hour, then,” he said negligently, moving off.
“In half an hour,” Captain Whalley’s rigid silvery head repeated behind
him as if out of a trance.
Amidships, below, two voices, close against the engineroom, could be
heard answering each other--one angry and slow, the other alert.
“I tell you the beast has locked himself in to get drunk.”
“Can’t help it now, Mr. Massy. After all, a man has a right to shut
himself up in his cabin in his own time.”
“Not to get drunk.”
“I heard him swear that the worry with the boilers was enough to drive
any man to drink,” Sterne said maliciously.
Massy hissed out something about bursting the door in. Mr. Van Wyk, to
avoid them, crossed in the dark to the other side of the deserted deck.
The planking of the little wharf rattled faintly under his hasty feet.
“Mr. Van Wyk! Mr. Van Wyk!”
He walked on: somebody was running on the path. “You’ve forgotten to get
your mail.”
Sterne, holding a bundle of papers in his hand, caught up with him.
“Oh, thanks.”
But, as the other continued at his elbow, Mr. Van Wyk stopped short.
The overhanging eaves, descending low upon the lighted front of the
bungalow, threw their black straight-edged shadow into the great body of
the night on that side. Everything was very still. A tinkle of cutlery
and a slight jingle of glasses were heard. Mr. Van Wyk’s servants were
laying the table for two on the veranda.
“I’m afraid you give me no credit whatever for my good intentions in the
matter I’ve spoken to you about,” said Sterne.
“I simply don’t understand you.”
“Captain Whalley is a very audacious man, but he will understand that
his game is up. That’s all that anybody need ever know of it from me.
Believe me, I am very considerate in this, but duty is duty. I don’t
want to make a fuss. All I ask you, as his friend, is to tell him from
me that the game’s up. That will be sufficient.”
Mr. Van Wyk felt a loathsome dismay at this queer privilege of
friendship. He would not demean himself by asking for the slightest
explanation; to drive the other away with contumely he did not think
prudent--as yet, at any rate. So much assurance staggered him. Who
could tell what there could be in it, he thought? His regard for Captain
Whalley had the tenacity of a disinterested sentiment, and his practical
instinct coming to his aid, he concealed his scorn.
“I gather, then, that this is something grave.”
“Very grave,” Sterne assented solemnly, delighted at having produced
an effect at last. He was ready to add some effusive protestations
of regret at the “unavoidable necessity,” but Mr. Van Wyk cut him
short--very civilly, however.
Once on the veranda Mr. Van Wyk put his hands in his pockets, and,
straddling his legs, stared down at a black panther skin lying on the
floor before a rocking-chair. “It looks as if the fellow had not the
pluck to play his own precious game openly,” he thought.
This was true enough. In the face of Massy’s last rebuff Sterne dared
not declare his knowledge. His object was simply to get charge of the
steamer and keep it for some time. Massy would never forgive him for
forcing himself on; but if Captain Whalley left the ship of his own
accord, the command would devolve upon him for the rest of the trip;
so he hit upon the brilliant idea of scaring the old man away. A vague
menace, a mere hint, would be enough in such a brazen case; and, with
a strange admixture of compassion, he thought that Batu Beru was a
very good place for throwing up the sponge. The skipper could go ashore
quietly, and stay with that Dutchman of his. Weren’t these two as thick
as thieves together? And on reflection he seemed to see that there was a
way to work the whole thing through that great friend of the old
man’s. This was another brilliant idea. He had an inborn preference for
circuitous methods. In this particular case he desired to remain in the
background as much as possible, to avoid exasperating Massy needlessly.
No fuss! Let it all happen naturally.
Mr. Van Wyk all through the dinner was conscious of a sense of isolation
that invades sometimes the closeness of human intercourse. Captain
Whalley failed lamentably and obviously in his attempts to eat
something. He seemed overcome by a strange absentmindedness. His hand
would hover irresolutely, as if left without guidance by a preoccupied
mind. Mr. Van Wyk had heard him coming up from a long way off in the
profound stillness of the river-side, and had noticed the irresolute
character of the footfalls. The toe of his boot had struck the bottom
stair as though he had come along mooning with his head in the air
right up to the steps of the veranda. Had the captain of the Sofala been
another sort of man he would have suspected the work of age there. But
one glance at him was enough. Time--after, indeed, marking him for its
own--had given him up to his usefulness, in which his simple faith would
see a proof of Divine mercy. “How could I contrive to warn him?” Mr. Van
Wyk wondered, as if Captain Whalley had been miles and miles away, out
of sight and earshot of all evil. He was sickened by an immense disgust
of Sterne. To even mention his threat to a man like Whalley would be
positively indecent. There was something more vile and insulting in
its hint than in a definite charge of crime--the debasing taint of
blackmailing. “What could anyone bring against him?” he asked himself.
This was a limpid personality. “And for what object?” The Power that man
trusted had thought fit to leave him nothing on earth that envy could
lay hold of, except a bare crust of bread.
“Won’t you try some of this?” he asked, pushing a dish slightly.
Suddenly it seemed to Mr. Van Wyk that Sterne might possibly be coveting
the command of the Sofala. His cynicism was quite startled by what
looked like a proof that no man may count himself safe from his kind
unless in the very abyss of misery. An intrigue of that sort was hardly
worth troubling about, he judged; but still, with such a fool as Massy
to deal with, Whalley ought to and must be warned.
At this moment Captain Whalley, bolt upright, the deep cavities of the
eyes overhung by a bushy frown, and one large brown hand resting on each
side of his empty plate, spoke across the tablecloth abruptly--“Mr. Van
Wyk, you’ve always treated me with the most humane consideration.”
“My dear captain, you make too much of a simple fact that I am not
a savage.” Mr. Van Wyk, utterly revolted by the thought of Sterne’s
obscure attempt, raised his voice incisively, as if the mate had been
hiding somewhere within earshot. “Any consideration I have been able to
show was no more than the rightful due of a character I’ve learned to
regard by this time with an esteem that nothing can shake.”
A slight ring of glass made him lift his eyes from the slice of
pine-apple he was cutting into small pieces on his plate. In changing
his position Captain Whalley had contrived to upset an empty tumbler.
Without looking that way, leaning sideways on his elbow, his other
hand shading his brow, he groped shakily for it, then desisted. Van Wyk
stared blankly, as if something momentous had happened all at once.
He did not know why he should feel so startled; but he forgot Sterne
utterly for the moment.
“Why, what’s the matter?”
And Captain Whalley, half-averted, in a deadened, agitated voice,
muttered--
“Esteem!”
“And I may add something more,” Mr. Van Wyk, very steady-eyed,
pronounced slowly.
“Hold! Enough!” Captain Whalley did not change his attitude or raise his
voice. “Say no more! I can make you no return. I am too poor even for
that now. Your esteem is worth having. You are not a man that would
stoop to deceive the poorest sort of devil on earth, or make a ship
unseaworthy every time he takes her to sea.”
Mr. Van Wyk, leaning forward, his face gone pink all over, with the
starched table-napkin over his knees, was inclined to mistrust his
senses, his power of comprehension, the sanity of his guest.
“Where? Why? In the name of God!--what’s this? What ship? I don’t
understand who . . .”
“Then, in the name of God, it is I! A ship’s unseaworthy when her
captain can’t see. I am going blind.”
Mr. Van Wyk made a slight movement, and sat very still afterwards for
a few seconds; then, with the thought of Sterne’s “The game’s up,” he
ducked under the table to pick up the napkin which had slipped off his
knees. This was the game that was up. And at the same time the muffled
voice of Captain Whalley passed over him--
“I’ve deceived them all. Nobody knows.”
He emerged flushed to the eyes. Captain Whalley, motionless under the
full blaze of the lamp, shaded his face with his hand.
“And you had that courage?”
“Call it by what name you like. But you are a humane
man--a--a--gentleman, Mr. Van Wyk. You may have asked me what I had done
with my conscience.”
He seemed to muse, profoundly silent, very still in his mournful pose.
“I began to tamper with it in my pride. You begin to see a lot of things
when you are going blind. I could not be frank with an old chum even.
I was not frank with Massy--no, not altogether. I knew he took me for
a wealthy sailor fool, and I let him. I wanted to keep up my
importance--because there was poor Ivy away there--my daughter. What did
I want to trade on his misery for? I did trade on it--for her. And now,
what mercy could I expect from him? He would trade on mine if he knew
it. He would hunt the old fraud out, and stick to the money for a year.
Ivy’s money. And I haven’t kept a penny for myself. How am I going to
live for a year. A year! In a year there will be no sun in the sky for
her father.”
His deep voice came out, awfully veiled, as though he had been
overwhelmed by the earth of a landslide, and talking to you of the
thoughts that haunt the dead in their graves. A cold shudder ran down
Mr. Van Wyk’s back.
“And how long is it since you have . . .?” he began.
“It was a long time before I could bring myself to believe in this--this
visitation.” Captain Whalley spoke with gloomy patience from under his
hand.
He had not thought he had deserved it. He had begun by deceiving himself
from day to day, from week to week. He had the Serang at hand there--an
old servant. It came on gradually, and when he could no longer deceive
himself . . .
His voice died out almost.
“Rather than give her up I set myself to deceive you all.”
“It’s incredible,” whispered Mr. Van Wyk. Captain Whalley’s appalling
murmur flowed on.
“Not even the sign of God’s anger could make me forget her. How could I
forsake my child, feeling my vigor all the time--the blood warm within
me? Warm as yours. It seems to me that, like the blinded Samson, I
would find the strength to shake down a temple upon my head. She’s a
struggling woman--my own child that we used to pray over together, my
poor wife and I. Do you remember that day I as well as told you that I
believed God would let me live to a hundred for her sake? What sin is
there in loving your child? Do you see it? I was ready for her sake
to live for ever. I half believed I would. I’ve been praying for death
since. Ha! Presumptuous man--you wanted to live . . .”
A tremendous, shuddering upheaval of that big frame, shaken by a gasping
sob, set the glasses jingling all over the table, seemed to make the
whole house tremble to the roof-tree. And Mr. Van Wyk, whose feeling of
outraged love had been translated into a form of struggle with nature,
understood very well that, for that man whose whole life had been
conditioned by action, there could exist no other expression for all the
emotions; that, to voluntarily cease venturing, doing, enduring, for his
child’s sake, would have been exactly like plucking his warm love for
her out of his living heart. Something too monstrous, too impossible,
even to conceive.
Captain Whalley had not changed his attitude, that seemed to express
something of shame, sorrow, and defiance.
“I have even deceived you. If it had not been for that word ‘esteem.’
These are not the words for me. I would have lied to you. Haven’t I
lied to you? Weren’t you going to trust your property on board this very
trip?”
“I have a floating yearly policy,” Mr. Van Wyk said almost unwittingly,
and was amazed at the sudden cropping up of a commercial detail.
“The ship is unseaworthy, I tell you. The policy would be invalid if it
were known . . .”
“We shall share the guilt, then.”
“Nothing could make mine less,” said Captain Whalley.
He had not dared to consult a doctor; the man would have perhaps asked
who he was, what he was doing; Massy might have heard something. He had
lived on without any help, human or divine. The very prayers stuck in
his throat. What was there to pray for? and death seemed as far as ever.
Once he got into his cabin he dared not come out again; when he sat down
he dared not get up; he dared not raise his eyes to anybody’s face;
he felt reluctant to look upon the sea or up to the sky. The world was
fading before his great fear of giving himself away. The old ship was
his last friend; he was not afraid of her; he knew every inch of her
deck; but at her too he hardly dared to look, for fear of finding he
could see less than the day before. A great incertitude enveloped him.
The horizon was gone; the sky mingled darkly with the sea. Who was this
figure standing over yonder? what was this thing lying down there? And
a frightful doubt of the reality of what he could see made even the
remnant of sight that remained to him an added torment, a pitfall always
open for his miserable pretense. He was afraid to stumble inexcusably
over something--to say a fatal Yes or No to a question. The hand of God
was upon him, but it could not tear him away from his child. And, as if
in a nightmare of humiliation, every featureless man seemed an enemy.
He let his hand fall heavily on the table. Mr. Van Wyk, arms down,
chin on breast, with a gleam of white teeth pressing on the lower lip,
meditated on Sterne’s “The game’s up.”
“The Serang of course does not know.”
“Nobody,” said Captain Whalley, with assurance.
“Ah yes. Nobody. Very well. Can you keep it up to the end of the trip?
That is the last under the agreement with Massy.”
Captain Whalley got up and stood erect, very stately, with the great
white beard lying like a silver breastplate over the awful secret of his
heart. Yes; that was the only hope there was for him of ever seeing her
again, of securing the money, the last he could do for her, before he
crept away somewhere--useless, a burden, a reproach to himself. His
voice faltered.
“Think of it! Never see her any more: the only human being besides
myself now on earth that can remember my wife. She’s just like her
mother. Lucky the poor woman is where there are no tears shed over
those they loved on earth and that remain to pray not to be led into
temptation--because, I suppose, the blessed know the secret of grace in
God’s dealings with His created children.”