CONCERNING A CASSOWARY AND A
HYMN BOOK
“It’s a wise child that knows ’tis folly to be wise,” said the Marquis.
He was sitting in the supper-room, enjoying trifle, floating-island,
tipsy-cake and the other items of a somewhat sticky and gassy supper.
His partner, Mrs. Vandaleur, a very fascinating little widow in a
demure black dress and the most scarlet of scarlet silk stockings, had
just been carried off by the fluffy and indignant young Government
officer to whom she rightly owed the supper-dances. The Marquis, who
had danced without intermission from the first striking-up of the band
(one piano, out of tune; one violin, much affected by the climate and
given to emitting rat-like squeaks) until the eighteenth item in the
programme, was now resting and refreshing; I, who had given up dancing
many years ago and who wasn’t likely to begin again at a Port Moresby
“shivoo,” was watching――if the truth must be told――watching the Marquis.
I was already getting uneasy about him, though we had only returned to
the comparative civilization of Port Moresby the week before. We had a
good ten days to wait for the next steamer to Sydney, and Port Moresby
has nearly three hundred inhabitants, being a good deal the largest
settlement in Papua. What were the chances of some one of the three
hundred finding out in the course of those ten days that we possessed
the second biggest diamond in the world, if the Marquis went on as he
was doing now? It was his turn to wear the stone, and nothing would
induce him to give it up to me for the night, even though it was much
harder for him――being fat――to hide it about his person than for me.
There it was, perfectly visible to me at all events, sticking out like
a small tumor under the front of his shirt; and unless I was much more
stupid than I supposed myself to be, it had already attracted some
attention from little Mrs. Vandaleur.
Mrs. Vandaleur――Daisy Vandaleur, as most people called her (she signed
herself “Daisie,” in her numerous letters)――was always referred to as
“little”; she was, as a matter of fact, about the average height of
womenkind. But she had a small head and very small hands and feet and a
way of looking little and forlorn. And she was fond of calling herself
a “poor little widow.” I needn’t go on describing “Daisie”――every one
who has reached the age of thirty has met her and knows her by heart.
She had a puggy sort of little dog and a catty sort of companion, and
she was a little pious and more than a little musical, and knew how
to put on her clothes (I said as much to a lady at the dance, and she
replied that in that case it was a pity Mrs. Vandaleur didn’t use her
knowledge more liberally; also, that she at all events knew how to
put on her hair. Which gives you the attitude of feminine New Guinea
towards “Daisie,” in a word).
The little widow, of course, had set her cap at the Marquis from the
moment of our return. That did not trouble me or the Marquis either.
(“Many dear women, they have done so, and I love them for it,” he
explained to me. “I find it altogether natural.”) Nor did it trouble me
much, from any ordinary point of view, that she should have sprained
her ankle――just a trifle――when they were coming back from a stroll
on the grass outside the hall――because Daisie was given to spraining
her ankle at appropriate times. But when the Marquis lifted her up
the steps of the veranda and carried her to a long chair to rest her
foot for the next dance――why, then I saw Mrs. Daisie’s little hand, as
it slipped down from the Marquis’ huge shoulder, pause for a moment
at the odd lump under his shirt and feel it with the dexterity of a
pickpocket. The Marquis did not notice; he was gazing into her eyes,
which were blue eyes and went prettily with her Titian-red hair. I
began to wonder, however. And when the supper-dances came and I saw
Mrs. Vandaleur walking in with the Marquis as lightly as he walked
himself, I concluded that it was time to offer him a hint. Which I did.
He answered with the mangled proverb I have already quoted, and filled
himself another glass of ginger ale with the roystering air of a
gallant in a Christmas Number supplement. It really seemed to be going
to his head. I had had several whiskies myself by this time; but my
head is perhaps of a different quality.
It was the southeast season at its worst; in Port Moresby, that means
that you live in the midst of a roaring gale, day and night, for
months. Up here on the hill where the dance-room was built, the veranda
trembled like the hurricane deck of an Atlantic liner; the flags in the
ball-room tore at their moorings on the walls; down the long tunnel of
the supper-room the wind went yelling like a lost soul on its way to
hell. The tablecloth flapped and slatted; the crackers flew about.
Mrs. Daisie, dancing beyond the doorway with the fluffy boy, clutched
at her woeful black skirts and twinkled the scarlet stockings that so
piquantly contradicted them. I could see she was keeping an eye on me.
For some reason or other, Mrs. Daisie did not like me――much.
“Look, Marky,” I said (the howling of the southeaster isolated us from
the other guests, in our corner, as much as if we had been in a room by
ourselves), “I want you to think for a moment what it means, if people
get on to the fact that we have a diamond worth the whole island of New
Guinea in our possession. From that moment, any peace we have――and Lord
knows we haven’t had much――ceases. In a small place like this, one is
safe enough from robbery, but once on a liner, or in Sydney, we’d want
a corps of detectives to guard the stone――if we can’t keep it dark. And
of course, it doesn’t matter where or how the news gets out――it’ll run
over the world in a week, just the same.”
“All over the world!” said the Marquis, thoughtfully. “You have reason.
We shall be famous, me and you. Flint, I love to be famous. It is the
glory of our adventures that has already made that little flower of the
tropic, Dai-see Vandaleur, love me as the poor little one loves. It is
true, she also thinks me beautiful. But handsome is who tells no tales!”
“Will you let me keep the stone till the steamer comes in?” I asked,
dropping the vexed subject. When a man of forty odd begins to tell you
about the women who admire his beauty, you had better get off that line
of rails as quick as you can.
“On my conscience and my honor as a peer of the ancient regiment of
France, I will――not,” said the Marquis. “I have the heart of a child,
as the little Dai-see tells me, but a child I am not. Tomorrow you will
guard our property; the day after, I, and so on to the end. To the
end, my friend.” He drank another bottle of ginger ale in two gulps
and waved his empty tumbler in the air. “And even if the end shall
be Death, then, my friend, a dead man is out of the wood. I love your
English axes.”
“Saws, I suppose you mean,” I said.
“I knew it had to do with tools; it is altogether the same. Now I will
show this little beautiful some species of dancing that will make her
ready to die of love, there on my feet.”
I really think the amount of ginger ale he had drunk must have gone
to his head a little; or else it had so inflated him, mentally and
physically, that he was a trifle above himself. At any rate, he
volunteered to give the company an exhibition of solo-dancing; and the
offer being promptly accepted, started to do――of all things――Queen
Elizabeth dancing before the Scots’ ambassador, Melville.
“It is to please your English sentiment and at the same time to warm
the heart of the little Daisee by laughter,” he explained to me. “This
is comic; a frolic idea.”
What a scene it was! The dancers, in their odd mixture of day and
evening dress, gathered round the walls under the slatting, tearing
flags; the wild southeaster yelling along the veranda, so that the
music, despairingly pitted against it, sounded starved and thin;
in the midst of the cleared space, the Marquis, beneath a row of
guttering hurricane lamps, dancing Queen Elizabeth.... He had a scarlet
tablecloth about his waist and a fan in his hand; he had rouged his
cheeks with a scrap of red cracker paper dipped in water; he had
borrowed a pair of high-heeled shoes (big man though he was, his foot
was amazingly small) and, in spite of his bulk and his pink, fat face
and his twinkling trousers-legs showing below the drapery, he was the
ancient coquette of England to the life. You could even see the sour
face of Melville looking on as the dancer stepped and pirouetted “high
and disposedly,” watching eagerly for the ambassador’s approval.... At
the end he laughed a high-pitched, cackling, old woman’s laugh; struck
the imaginary Melville coquettishly on the shoulder with his fan,
dropped the tablecloth and became instantly a dignified nobleman of the
ancient peerage of France.
Mrs. Vandaleur ran forward impulsively as he finished and begged for
more. The room applauded. The Marquis danced again.
“Let a Papuan with a drum be brought,” he ordered. A boy was fetched
from the grass slope outside the hall, where a number of natives had
been looking on. He beat his iguana-skin drum, as if for a native
dance, with the throbbing, intoxicating beat of the New Guinea drummer.
The Marquis snatched a native feather crown off the wall, where it had
been hung as an ornament, put it on his head and danced “The Love Dance
of the Sorcerer,” looking at Mrs. Vandaleur all the time.
I must say he had used his Papuan experiences well. The dance was New
Guinea, yet something more. It had sorcery in it, mystery, magic and
sinister, wicked charm. You felt the sorcerer loved the lady and meant
to win her; but you were not quite sure he did not mean to roast her
on the fire, and pick her pretty bones, by and by.... The lookers-on
applauded violently and Mrs. Daisie, whether truthfully or not,
declared herself faint when he had done, and had to be supported to a
chair.
“Oh, you terrible man――you dangerous sorcerer!” I heard her murmur as
he gave her his arm. “How many trusting little women’s hearts have you
charmed away? Do you know the power you have? I think you must be very
cruel.”
“No, for I make my spelling gently; ‘fair and softly is always to be
blest!’” he answered, through the yelling of the wind. Mrs. Daisie put
up her hand anxiously among her curls to see, I think, if nothing was
breaking away from its moorings and, being assured of this, fainted a
little more in the corner to which the Marquis had conducted her. Her
head grazed his shirt-front as she sank back in her chair.
“Ah! you have hurt my little face! Is it your heart that feels so hard
and sharp?” she asked. The Marquis, instead of answering, lifted her
onto her feet again as lightly as if she had been a baby and swung her
back into the dancing-room, where now the music was beginning again.
“What happened to the wife of Bluebeard, little wicked?” he said as
they dropped into the waltz.
I do not know that I have the best temper in the world. Some of
my friends say I have the worst when you rouse it; but that is an
exaggeration. Anyhow, I could not stay in the ball-room and see our
fortune swinging over a gulf of disaster on the frail thread of the
Marquis’ amorous folly any longer. I went out to smoke and to swear.
* * * * *
The next day it was my turn to wear the Sorcerer’s Stone, and I was
ready enough to claim it. We had cased it in a piece of silk and sewn
that up again in a piece of chamois leather, safely attached to a
strong cord. No one wears waistcoats in Port Moresby, but I took care
to select a shirt some sizes too wide for me when I wore the stone,
and with a coat on, the loose folds concealed it effectively.
I was feeling a little easier about the Marquis, since I had succeeded
in extracting from him a solemn promise that he would not, on any
account or for any reason, betray to any person the secret of the
diamond. At the same time, I managed to persuade him into altering his
clothing a little, so that the stone could not be noticed unless any
one went actually feeling about after it. More than this I could not do.
There is very little in the capital of Papua to occupy the mind of any
reasonable person. When you have been out to see the native village,
gone for a walk to Koki, where the native servants employed in the
town hold nightly dances, and taken a boat across to one or two of
the islands, you have about exhausted the interests of the place. It
is barren and rather ugly; the white people are more civilized, and
therefore less interesting, than those of Samarai; the natives speak
English, wear trade clothing and cheat the tourist over curios. To any
one recently returned, like the Marquis and myself, from the mysteries,
horrors and adventures of the unknown interior, nothing could be more
flat and tiresome than the silly little capital town.
All the more was I uncomfortable over my companion’s evident
fascination by Mrs. Vandaleur, whom I frankly took for an adventuress.
Her very name was against her; it savored too much of stage posters
to be natural. She was clever enough, I could see, to keep free of
scandals; the dead or missing Vandaleur had not divorced her; cards
were religiously left at her door by the ladies of the capital, who
seemed to find a weird delight in playing at a strange imitation of the
strange game called Society, here away in the wilderness of New Guinea.
(“Like your Israelites of the Bible,” said the Marquis, who always
spoke of the Old Testament as if it were the exclusive property of the
English race――“these dear ladies make brick in the desert without no
straw; it is for that reason, I observe, that their bricks do not hold
together the one with the other.” And, indeed, the inhabitants of Port
Moresby love each other scarcely better than do those of Samarai.)
But, though “Daisie” Vandaleur was quite respectable, according to the
canons of the card-tray, and though, in any case, there was no risk of
the Marquis’ historic coronet descending upon her well-dressed head, I
thought her none the less dangerous; perhaps rather the more.
“That dear little one, she desires quite simply to marry herself
with me. I find that very touching, though I can not accord her her
desire,” he said, sentimentally. “Flint, I can’t tell you how much pity
I have for all those beautiful women who so desire to marry with me.
Of course, the day shall come at last when one of those lovely ones
shall――what do you call it?――yank me in. But the rest――my heart is
bleeding for those!”
He took out his embroidered silk handkerchief and looked lovingly at
the coronet. I knew he was minded to tell me the history of the lady
who had worked it for him, so I got away before he had made a start.
That was where I made my mistake. He went right off to Mrs. Vandaleur’s
and told her.
They invited him to join the tennis club after this. I never had time
or inclination myself to learn how to throw balls at a man who doesn’t
want them, and work hard trying to get them back when I don’t want
them myself――so I didn’t see very much of the Marquis at this period,
although for want of room we were sharing our quarters at the hotel.
After all, I had not been brought up at the Court of France; I did
not know half the kings of Europe and I did not possess even a shanty
in New Guinea, let alone a castle on the Loire. These things had not
seemed to matter when we were away in the wilds together getting
chased by cannibals or being shipwrecked or having snakes set on us
by sorcerers――going ragged and hungry sometimes and at all times not
being quite as sure as we could have wished that we were ever going to
get safely back again. But here, in the little tin-pot capital, the
kings and castles and things began to crop up again. And――as they say
in sentimental novels――the Marquis and I drifted apart.
The days passed very slowly, before the steamer’s call. In the
afternoons, when the southeaster was howling harder than ever and
almost laying flat the little eucalyptus trees that stand up all over
the many hills on which Port Moresby stands, I used to climb the
heights above the town and wander idly about, holding on my hat and
thinking what I’d do with my share of the price of the diamond――if we
ever got it safe away to civilization. And down below on the flat, the
Marquis would be playing tennis with Mrs. Vandaleur or squiring her
about on the beach.
I never felt inclined to watch him on the days when it was my turn to
guard the Sorcerer’s Stone. But on his days I don’t mind admitting
that I shadowed him like a detective. In a town that is all small
hills, with every house overlooking all the others, there is not much
difficulty about that. And I grew more and more uneasy, as the time
went on, to see the increasing number of hours he spent with “Daisie.”
Every second evening, when he handed over the chamois leather case, in
the privacy of our own room and said, “All right, my Flint!” I felt as
though another barrier between our fortune and its realization had been
painfully passed over; another cast of the dice fallen in our favor.
For I knew now that Mrs. Vandaleur had her suspicions; and I trusted
her――well, not half so far as I could have thrown her supple, eel-like
little body.
Sometimes, from my eyrie among the rocks above I saw amusing scenes
on the tennis ground and the flat. The most amusing was on the day
when “Daisie” persuaded the Marquis to dance on the tennis court with
a cassowary, a pet of some one of the residents, which used to hang
about the grounds, begging humbly for cake, and if refused, instantly
turned vicious and jumped up into the air to kick with both feet at
the person who had repulsed it. The players used to tease the creature
a good deal in order to see it fly into a rage; it was a young bird
and not half grown, but it was very active and went into the most
amusing frenzies of stamping, whistling rage. Cassowaries, as most
people know, are extremely fond of dancing; and Mrs. Vandaleur incited
the Marquis, first to dance with the bird, and afterwards to give an
imitation of its style. I do not think I ever saw anything funnier than
the tall, thin bird and the tall, fat Marquis, setting to partners on
the green grass court, the cassowary taking its part quite seriously,
and sidling, chasséeing, springing, like a girl in a theater; the man
craning his neck in imitation, stepping stiff-legged, as it stepped and
using his arms exactly as it used its wings. Afterwards, the Marquis
improvised a “Dance of the Cassowary,” and it was one of the very best
things I had ever seen him do. I have heard since then that it has met
with much approval in his castle on the Loire.
It was my day for the Sorcerer’s Stone, so I looked on with an easy
mind. After all, it seemed to me, I had been making too much fuss.
The Marquis was not a fool, and even if the little widow succeeded in
worming out of him the secret of the diamond, it was only what would
probably happen sooner or later, somewhere. We had been through so many
risks with the Sorcerer’s Stone that I had nearly come to believe there
was something supernatural about it, for it always seemed to work out
right in the end.
Next day I was suffering from a touch of fever, as most New Guinea
residents do at times, and I did not go out at all, but stayed in my
room and took quinine till the walls spun round me. The attack passed
off towards evening, and I was lying on my bed, feeling weak but
better, when the Marquis came in.
“Had a pleasant day?” I asked. He did not answer, but went over to
the washstand and began washing his hands, with his back to me. I was
feeling almost too tired to talk, so I lay silent for a while, watching
the eastern sky-line, through our little square window, turn pink with
the reflected glow of the sunset in the unseen west, and the green-gray
eucalyptus trees streaming before the ceaseless thrash of the “trade”
that blew up strong and stronger as the night came on....
It occurred to me that the Marquis was a very long time washing his
hands. The room was getting darker; the people of the hotel were
clashing plates and clinking glasses down below. It was nearly dinner
time.... What could be the matter with my companion?
“Say, Mark!” I called out from my bed, “have you been murdering any
one, like Lady Macbeth, and are you trying to wash the ‘damned spot’
away, or what?”
The Marquis turned round so suddenly that he flung the tin basin
rattling on the floor, and the water rushed in a deluge across the
room. He did not take the slightest notice of it. He came up to the
bed, and even in the twilight I could see that his face was white.
I knew what had happened before he spoke.
“Flint,” he said, beating his pink, soapy hands up and down in the air,
“I can not tell you. I can not tell you. My God, what have I done!”
He sat down on the floor (we had no chair) right in the middle of the
deluge of water and began to cry.
“I have betrayed and ruined you, my friend,” he said. “I would like to
die, here where I am; what is the use that I should live? I say that I
can not tell you what I have done.” He wept again.
“Oh, get out of that water and sit on the bed,” I said. “You don’t
need to tell me; all I want to know is, how it happened and what Mrs.
Vandaleur has to do with it.” I was feeling pretty bad about the
affair――for I saw in a moment that he had lost the diamond――but there
is never any use, to my mind, in making a fuss.
The Marquis jumped up and tore open his shirt with the air of a man
who was opening his very heart for your inspection. Round his neck was
hanging a string and on the string was a small silk bag――empty.
“Not one confoundable thing has that angel had to do with it,” he said.
“It is altogether me. I took it out of the chamois case this morning,
because when I play tennis that chamois sticks and comes to go out of
the front of my shirt. But the silk, it slips and does not come out. So
I take away the chamois and I play tennis all the afternoon. And in the
end, when it is time to go and they have all gone, all but Mrs. Daisee
and me, I feel my hand into my shirt and there is nothing there! I tear
out the bag and it is splitted――――”
“Don’t you know that no silk will stand in the tropics? It was only a
protection for the stone. You might as well trust tissue-paper as silk,
in New Guinea,” I said wearily.
“I did not know, I swear. Well, when I see it is gone, I tell Daisee
that I have lost a something I have the greatest value for, a gem――I do
not say a diamond. And she call many native boys. And they look, look,
look, till it get dark. And I will swear, if it were that I was dying,
we look every inch. But there is no stone.”
“I reckon Mrs. Daisie could tell you――――” I began.
“Halt!” cried the Marquis. “Daisee is as innocent as the lamb unborn.
When we see the stone is lost, she will not look herself. She sit on
the seat and watch. She weep for me, that little one, she is most
blooming sorry. But she will not be suspect; she won’t touch that
searching herself. She can not understand and I can not understand. It
was all razed clean, that ground; there was no gulfs anywhere, and the
weeds was not. I should have been finding all right. But, my God, it is
not!”
He seemed so exceedingly distressed that I could not find it in my
heart to say what I thought of him and his carelessness, and of Mrs.
Vandaleur――whom I could not believe altogether innocent――and of the
whole wretched affair altogether. After all, Marquis or no Marquis, the
man was my “mate,” and we had been through a lot together, and a nicer
fighter than he was when one got into a tight place, I never wished to
find. And neither he nor I was worse off than either had been a month
or two ago; we had lost nothing――except a dream. It was a splendid
dream, no doubt, and one that I at least was never likely to have a
chance of dreaming again. But I thought I could do without it, on the
whole; and if I could, who hadn’t done the mischief, so, I reckoned,
could he.
I said something to this effect, and the Marquis wiped away his tears.
It was with a red silk handkerchief this time, and the embroidery of
the coronet, as he told me, had a story attached to it that was written
in his heart’s blood.
“Has Mrs. Daisie given you a handkerchief yet?” I asked.
“No,” he said quite gravely, “she has but given me a hymn book.”
“A hymn book!” I yelled, choking with laughter. “What in the name of
everything inappropriate should Mrs. Vandaleur give you hymn books for?”
“She is very devoted,” said the Marquis reprovingly. “She thinks that
she will make a Lutheran of me. Of course, there isn’t any dashed
chance that such a consummation could arrive, but it makes the little
one happy. Me also. As for the hymns, she sings them to me; I hear her
sing them when I come up the road past her little bird-nest of a house.”
“What does she sing?” I asked.
“Something that is in the hymn book, and that the great Clara Tun――no,
Butt――Clara Butt sings also; it is altogether touching. ‘Abide with
me.’”
“Does she?” said I, sitting up. “I call it irreligious and bad manners
both, if she does. Every man to his taste. Are you going to ask her to
help us to look for the diamond tomorrow?”
“I won’t do nothing you don’t wish,” said the Marquis, with sudden
meekness. “I can not forget that I have ruined you.”
“No fear,” I told him. “Are you going down to dinner, or aren’t you?
Tell them to send me up a bit; I’m getting better. I rather think you
and I are going to have a busy day tomorrow, Marky.”
* * * * *
We had. I got up a bit before daylight and had a dozen natives helping
me to search the tennis ground before the sun was well up. We hunted
for a good hour and I came to the conclusion that if the diamond had
ever been on the tennis court it certainly was not there now. I came
back and reported the result of my labors to the Marquis. He was
sitting in our room and looked very gorgeous in a marvelous pink silk
kimono embroidered with green and gold dragons; but his hair had not
been brushed up into its usual fierce bristles; his mustache was as
limp as a walrus’ and his general aspect suggested a pink cockatoo that
has been out in the rain.
“Don’t lose heart,” I told him. “The stone is somewhere. It’s been
picked up, you take my word for it. It must be in Port Moresby, and you
can leave me to find out where.”
It was in my mind, and I could not get it out, that if I wanted to know
where the Sorcerer’s Stone had gone to, I had better keep as much in
Mrs. Vandaleur’s company as possible. So, without giving vent to any
suspicions I had or guessed at, I allowed the Marquis to think that I
had got the better of my prejudices against the little widow. I even
accompanied him to tea with her when he went there to call a day or two
after the loss of the stone.
It did not strike me that “Daisie” was overjoyed to see me, but she
greeted me prettily and made tea for both of us. I don’t know whether
it was by accident or design that she made mine cold and weak and left
out the sugar; if so, she did a foolish thing, for it set me wondering
just why the little lady disliked me as much as she did. In spite of
the Marquis’ accusation, I am not, and never have been, unhappy in
women’s society; nor have I had occasion to observe that they are
unhappy in mine――to take a leaf out of my companion’s books.
But Daisie didn’t want me, didn’t like me, was more or less afraid of
me.
Why?
I watched her, sitting on the sheltered veranda, with the southeaster
roaring ceaselessly outside, slamming at the blinds and lifting the
long mats nailed on the floor. It was a wild day; a day to make any
one restless. Most Port Moresby folk find the southeast season trying
to the nerves, by reason of the unending uproar of the persistent
“trade,” and I judged that the wind――or something――was affecting Mrs.
Vandaleur’s nerves. She dropped a cup. She snapped at the boy who was
bringing the tray. She started when one spoke to her suddenly――as I
confess I did. Her color did not pale, but there may have been reasons
for that. She looked pretty enough, with her floating black draperies
and her wicked little scarlet shoes, and her daintily-dressed red-brown
hair, to have turned almost any man’s head, and I was not surprised to
see the Marquis more devoted than ever. But as for me, I mistrusted her
from the crown of her expensive curls to the sole of her little red
shoe. I drank my ill-tasting tea in silence, listened to the roar of
the wind and watched the lady and her lover. And I thought.
She could not have picked up the stone on the court――by what the
Marquis said, it was clear she had not known of the loss until he told
her. It seemed that she had questioned him shrewdly then concerning
what it was that he had lost, and had managed to extract from him a
pretty accurate description of the gem. He had not actually said it was
a diamond, but――from what he told me――he must have allowed her to guess
what it was.
She knew, then, that he had had a diamond of remarkable size; that he
had lost it in a small, easily-searched area. She had not picked it
up, and she had been careful――too careful, I thought――to avoid all
possible suspicion of having done so.
Did she know where it was?
These were the thoughts that ran through my mind while the Marquis
flirted with the lady, leaving me to talk to the uninteresting elderly
companion in the background.
I think he began to feel sorry, before very long, that he had asked
me to accompany him to Daisie’s; for the little lady seemed in a
fascinating mood, and looked as though she would not have been sorry
to have the drawing-room and the piano left to herself and her friend.
Doubtless, even the Marquis’ self-possession shrank from picking out
sentimental-sounding bits of hymns and reading or singing them in her
company before a couple of more or less unsympathetic observers. Mrs.
Daisie gave me a look or two that were certainly meant to be taken as
hints, but I was astonishingly stupid that afternoon and could not
understand her. Even when the Marquis proposed going out to the little
back garden to look at Mrs. Vandaleur’s plants, I was so stupid that I
couldn’t see they did not want me, and I got up to go too, protesting
that there was nothing in the world interested me so much as the
selection and care of roses in the tropics.
“I never knew you were an amateur of the garden,” observed the Marquis
somewhat ruefully. “You are then interested in culture? Don’t put out
yourself to please us, my friend, if you would rather love to stay in
the house.”
“It doesn’t put me out worth twopence,” I assured him. We went out
through the sun and the wind, to the back of the house, a rather
gloomy party of four, all trying more or less to be cheerful. I fancy
I succeeded the best. Mrs. Daisie made great play with the care of
her black draperies in the storm, yet found time to glance at me, I
thought, unpleasantly, and the Marquis was pulling his mustache. But I
was determinedly stupid.
The two got away in a corner of the garden before long, shamelessly
deserting myself and the companion, and I could see that Mrs. Daisie
was talking religion again; a thing that disgusted me, and inclined
me to have no mercy on her, if ever she should need it at my hands. I
can’t say I am particularly religious myself, but any decent man hates
to see piety used as a cloak. They had got out the hymn book she had
given him――a tiny, fancy little white leather thing, the size of a
match-box――and were looking up something or other in it, their heads
very close together....
“Would you like to see the cassowary?” asked the companion suddenly. I
had almost forgotten her existence; she was of those gray, dusty women
of no particular age, whom, somehow or other, one always does overlook.
“What cassowary?” I asked.
“Ours. It’s such a funny thing. It dances and fights and does lots of
queer tricks of its own. We have it shut up in the fowl-house.”
“What for?” I asked, yawning. The companion certainly did bore me.
“Because Mrs. Vandaleur says it’s sick. She bought it the other day;
the people who owned it wanted quite a lot for it.”
The companion was opening the door of the fowl-house as she spoke. Mrs.
Vandaleur, hearing the creak of the lock, turned around, and if I did
not mistake, her look was very black. It cleared at once, and a sunny
smile overspread her face.
“So you are looking at my new pet,” she said. “Poor thing, I think it
is sick; but it is very amusing when it is well.”
“Oh, this is my partner of the dance!” said the Marquis, as the great
bird came solemnly out, turning its big brown eyes suspiciously about
and about. He held out his hand to it, bowed, and began to dance
towards it, flapping his coat-tails in imitation of wings, and singing,
to an absurd tune, the well-known nonsense rhyme:
“I wish I was a cassowary
On the plains of Timbuctoo,
For then I’d eat a missionary,
Arms, legs and hymn book too.”
[Illustration:
_The bird stretched out its neck with the darting pounce of a
snake, snatched at the gaudy little book, gulped, swallowed
and_――――]
“Beautiful missionary!” he said, pausing in his dance, “do you think
the savage animal would eat you?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Vandaleur pettishly. “I can’t stand this
wind; it makes Daisie’s little foots too cold. Let’s go in.”
“If it will not eat the lovely missionary, will it eat the lovely
hymn book too?” asked the Marquis, teasing the bird with the little
book he held in his hand. The answer came suddenly, and in a way that
he hardly expected. I do not think the Marquis had ever heard that
the cassowaries are much the same as ostriches in their appetite
for strange and seemingly inappropriate food. If he had not, he was
enlightened now. The bird stretched out its neck with the darting
pounce of a snake, snatched at the gaudy little book, gulped, swallowed
and....
“By gum!” cried the Marquis, “she has eat up the hymn book too!”
“Daisie’s little foots are so cold,” complained Mrs. Vandaleur,
shivering in the wind. “Daisie wants to go to her little own home
again.”
It seemed to me that she was anxious to pass over the incident without
remark, which struck me as odd, considering that it was her own gift
to the Marquis that the mischievous bird had destroyed. We all went
back to the house, and before very long our hostess began to yawn in
an elegant but obvious manner that conveyed an unmistakable hint. The
Marquis rose to leave and I followed him.
He was looking worried and depressed, and I should have been glad
enough to say something to comfort him a little if I had thought
it safe. But in the light of past events, I certainly did not.
Nevertheless, I was mentally skipping and dancing all the way back to
the hotel. For now I thought I saw my way.
When I had left the Marquis in his room, I waited for a little while
and then went straight back to Mrs. Vandaleur’s. I found her alone on
the veranda; and this time all her rouge could not conceal the sudden
paleness that crept like a white mist over her pretty face when she saw
me return alone.
“I am flattered,” she said. “To what do I owe the honor of this――very
late――call?”
I looked her straight in the eyes.
“What will you take for your cassowary,” I said, “your cassowary that
is sick (though it doesn’t look it) and that will probably die in a day
or two, suddenly?”
I always said the woman was an adventuress. She never turned a hair or
hesitated a moment.
“A thousand pounds,” she said.
“You mean fifty,” I told her.
“A thousand,” she said, opening her eyes very wide and trying to stare
me down. The wind was working up for night; we had to shout at each
other in order to be heard.
“Fifty,” I said again. “It isn’t worth a thousand to you to be driven
out of the country by that story.”
“Perhaps it is,” said she insolently.
“You forget,” I told her, “that this is going to be a world-famous
stone. You can’t go to――Tahiti――or Nounea――or anywhere, and cut loose
from a tale that links you up to a thing like the Kohinoor. You’ll go
with that story chained to you like the ball on a convict’s leg and
a thousand pounds in your pocket――or we’ll keep our own counsel, and
you’ll keep yours and fifty pounds.”
For a moment there was silence in the veranda――silence but for the
tearing of the wind. The reed curtain in the doorway slashed back and
forth. The canvas awning rattled like a sail.
“Give me the money,” said Mrs. Vandaleur, without the slightest change
of countenance. But I could see that the gauzy, sable laces on the
bosom of her dress were heaving like black seaweeds in a storm.
I had brought a check-book and a fountain pen. I wrote a check and gave
it to her.
“You might tell me how it happened,” I said as I handed the paper.
“You know,” she said. “He told me what he had lost. I’d seen the
cassowary in the corner of the ground, gulping down something a moment
before. They always go for anything bright. So I guessed. And when he
told me, I brought the bird over to the seat, while he was searching
for the stone, and I saw the thing going down its neck inch by inch――as
you can see if you watch them swallow anything. Oh, I didn’t take any
chances. You’ve spoiled――you’ve spoiled――the best――――Did you ever think
what it is to be a woman and not so young as you were, and with no
prospects――none? You never thought, or felt, or cared, about any woman
in the world――and yet――――”
Her eyes were very, very blue, and they were very soft to see through
the tears that were gathering in them.
She looked at me and then looked away.
“And yet――――”
I am never likely to know what she meant by that. Nor do I very much
care. For there is a girl down in Sydney.
I never saw Mrs. Vandaleur again.
* * * * *
The Marquis slept better that night than he had done for some nights
past. I had a job to do before we slept; I did it――any man who has been
on sheep and cattle stations understands that sort of thing completely.
I tidied up before I came into the Marquis’ room with the recovered
stone; but there was a stain that I had overlooked on one shirt sleeve.
The Marquis saw it.
“It began in dying and blood and it ends in dying and blood,” he said.
“Flint, in one week we shall be in Melbourne and we shall find a
syndicate of Jews, and they will buy our stone for very many thousand
pounds, and by gum! my friend, I shall think we are blooming well rid
of this so remarkable treasure trophy of the wilderness!”
“I’m with you there,” I said; and I was.
Transcriber’s Note
This book was written in a period when many words had not become
standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling
variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been
left unchanged unless indicated below. Obsolete and alternative
spellings were left unchanged.
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, reversed
order, upside down, or partially printed letters and punctuation,
were corrected. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and
abbreviations were added. Accents were corrected.
The following items were changed:
women to woman, line 3532
celebrate to celebrated, line 4631
minute to minutes, line 4648
detectices to detectives, line 4848
doen’t to doesn’t, line 4849
walz to waltz, line 4946