THE CAMPAIGN OPENS
Madame Gilbert kept no diary of her adventures, and her memory for dates
is precarious. But the log of the _Humming Top_--to which I have had
access--confirms her impression that she arrived at Tops Island on the
twentieth of May. It was in the fourth week of her stay that the island
schooners began to arrive, of which the third carried the little
unwelcome stranger, of whom Madame longed to be quit. But although three
schooners came within a week, the much-desired fourth, for whose dirty
sails Madame looked out so anxiously, tarried until the occasion for its
employment vanished with the flying days. During this lamentable period
of delay in speeding the parting guest, the opening rounds in the
contest between Madame and the Hedge Lawyer had been fought and
lost--lost by Madame Gilbert. No longer was it possible to eject him
with a boathook; he had become the guest of Willatopy, and Willatopy,
Lord of Topsham, was also Lord of Tops Island.
Looking back now over the series of incidents which I have to relate, I
cannot but feel that there was some failure of adroitness in Madame's
conduct of the campaign. It is true that she had no cards at all--except
her own dominating personality--and the Hedge Lawyer possessed the
entire pack. But even so her failure to put a wide distance in material
space between the Heir of Topsham and his self-appointed legal adviser
is almost inexplicable. She must have failed through excess of
confidence. She did not grasp the elusive inconsistency of Willatopy's
undeveloped mind. She believed that the influence of his dead white
father would remain ineradicable--she conceived that it was bitten into
steel instead of into soft South Sea wax--and she was misled utterly by
the violence of Willatopy's first onslaught upon the managing
indispensable clerk. When seated at that breakfast on the shore, she had
torn with her feminine claws the quivering flesh of the miserable Hedge
Lawyer, she had judged him to be a cowardly fool who could be readily
frightened away from his purpose. He was no coward, and a long way from
being a fool. A man needs more than the average equipment of Cockney
cunning to become, at thirty-two, the managing clerk of a firm of
speculative lawyers. This fellow, John Clifford, possessed the quick
shrewdness of the City's streets, and the indomitable persistence of a
man whose professional advancement depended upon his own unscrupulous
ability. His employers had promised, ere he set sail for the Torres
Straits, that his return to London with Willatopy as a dazzling and
valuable new client, would mark his own promotion to the status of
junior partner. He had everything to gain by persistence, and nothing to
lose except his life. He was sufficiently astute to realise that
Madame's threats were vain persiflage; that she was helpless if he chose
to remain on the Island, and that the mind of a half-caste savage
might, by adroit moulding, become receptive of strange and flattering
impressions. He held all the cards--those which we know of, others which
he played later. As he dried on the blazing beach, after Madame had left
him, he determined to hang on at any risk from Willatopy's spear and the
rude hands of Madame Gilbert's sailors, until he had won over to his
side the wandering intelligence of the Lord of Topsham.
"After all," muttered Clifford to himself, "he is an English Lord, and
it is a very great thing to be an English Lord." Madame he already
hated--which is not surprising. She had not exactly cultivated his
favour. He did not know that she had any interest in opposing his plans
for the transfer of Willatopy to England, and he did not anticipate
serious opposition from her when proof was offered of Willatopy's legal
heirship. That proof--copies of the registers in Thursday Island--was in
his lost suit case. Also the light flannel clothes which his damp
blackness made urgently desirable. So the first step taken by John
Clifford in his campaign was to hunt for that case which he had flung
away in his flight from the terrible fish spear.
Had Madame realised at the beginning how rapidly the atmosphere would
change, how quickly the wild ingenuous boy Willatopy would become
interested in the adroit cunning man, John Clifford, she might have
acted with her customary and ruthless illegality. On that first morning
she could easily have persuaded Willatopy to convey the intruder out to
the _Humming Top_, and could have held him there inactive until a
convenient moment arrived for carrying him back to Thursday Island.
Adequately frightened, Clifford might have been prevailed upon to set
sail for home, alone, but I doubt whether this temporarily drastic
course would have availed for long. The firm of poachers in St. Mary Axe
could not indefinitely have been denied access to their prey on Tops
Island. After Madame and her yacht had gone, John Clifford, or another,
would have returned. Willatopy, as the half-caste Heir of Topsham, was
too attractive a bait for lawyers to have been left for many months in
the security of his island solitude. Roger Gatepath, who understood his
own profession, was convinced that the legal vultures of London would
speedily discover and fasten upon the profitable pigeon of the Torres
Straits.
Clifford found his suit case within the fringe of woodland where first
he had encountered Willatopy. And as he stooped to pick it up, a heavy
hand smote him upon the back. It was Willatopy again. The boy had been
watching the breakfast party of two, and now that Clifford was alone
interposed his dark powerful figure between the lawyer and the beach.
"This time," said he, smacking his lips, "there will be no Madame
Gilbert."
"Why should you chase me again?" asked Clifford, who feared the boy less
now that he had breakfasted. Besides, Willatopy no longer carried the
fish spear. "Why should you chase me, my lord? I am your friend, and
have come to make you a very rich and great lord in England."
Willie frowned. "I am very rich now. You English are cannibals. You want
to get me away that you may kill and eat me. My father said that the
English devoured one another."
"That meant, my lord," said Clifford, "that the English try to take
money from one another."
"As they try to do in Thursday Island," assented Willatopy. "The English
try to make me drink so that they may steal my money. I keep it in a bag
tied round my waist. Miles and miles of shore and forest are mine, my
banker has piles and piles of my silver, all in bags. It comes from
England. The brown girls love my bright blue eyes and the brown boys are
my servants. I am already rich, and the lord of Tops Island. You are a
liar."
"It is a small thing," said Clifford, "to be the lord of a little island
in the Straits, and to be master of brown girls and boys. In England you
would be a real Lord, the Lord of Topsham; you would have houses, big
houses, and your servants would be white, not brown. White women,
beautiful white women, would be at your pleasure, and white men would
obey your commands."
"White women!" asked Willatopy, who began to be interested. "Would white
women love my blue eyes which are like the sky at dawn?"
"They would, my lord. And if you wish to marry one of them she would
feel honoured by your choice."
"I don't want to marry one, just yet," replied Willatopy indifferently.
"If they loved my bright blue eyes, and were to me as are my brown
girls, that would please me."
"You are a great Lord, and there would be no lack of beautiful white
women to seek your favour," said Clifford, whose little close-set eyes
began to twinkle. He was progressing.
"I have a very fine hut," observed Willie. "It is thatched with sago
palm. There is not a finer hut in the islands."
"In England you would have big houses, not huts," said Clifford. "Big
houses with many rooms."
"I do not like English houses," said Willatopy. "The walls are iron and
roofs are iron. They are painted white and glare in the sun. I have seen
them on Thursday Island."
"Those are not real houses, my lord. Your lordship's chief house in
Devonshire has red stone walls and a roof of burnt clay tiles. It is a
splendid house, hundreds of years old. Green ivy grows upon the walls.
There are many servants in the house and in the gardens; white
servants."
"I should like to have white men working in my garden as my servants.
They are very proud. I should like to have the Skipper as my servant. I
would lay my stick on his back and make him--skip. When I am an English
Lord will the Skipper be my servant?"
"If you wish, my lord, all men will be your servants. In England the
great lords are the masters of the people."
"Shall I be your master?"
Clifford hesitated. The boy with his childlike savage logic was moving
too fast, but it would not do to hesitate. He decided to go the whole
hog.
"Of course, my lord. I should be your most obedient humble servant."
"Good," said Willatopy. "Then since I am already a great English lord
you are now my servant. I should like to see a white man working in my
garden under the hot sun and jumping when I lay my stick upon him. You
shall work in my garden. Come."
"Certainly, my lord, with the utmost pleasure. But may I first change my
clothes? I have some others in this suit case."
"Clothes?" cried Willatopy contemptuously. "It is always clothes with
you foolish white people. When I go with Madame in a boat she makes me
wear my trousers, though I throw them off when I plunge into the water.
Madame will never swim like Joy and Cry if she always wears that tight
blue bathing dress. Now that I am a great English Lord, all men and
women shall be my servants, and shall do what I command. Put on your
foolish trousers, white man, and come with me. I will make you labour in
my garden, and presently when the sun grows hot at noon you will be glad
to put them off for coolness. For now that you are my servant, I shall
make you work very hard."
"I cannot work too hard in your service, my lord," replied Clifford
obsequiously. He had been successful beyond all expectation, and was
willing to sweat copiously in Willie's garden as a sacrifice to the High
Gods.
Meanwhile, Madame Gilbert had changed into the white _crepe de chine_
and muslin gear which was her toilet on land and in the yacht. She sat
in the entrance of her big tent, smoking Russian cigarettes, and mildly
wondering what had become of Clifford, the "sharks' food." She
anticipated with some pleasure hearing the howls of a dog which would
announce the hollow emptiness of his stomach. She intended to feed him
sparingly as evidence of her punctilious hospitality, though under her
austere regimen there would be no margin for pride and fatness. And
while she smoked there, ignorantly idle, Clifford had fought and won the
first and most difficult battle in his campaign. He was already the
victor, though for long hours he sweated outrageously in Willie's garden
while that lordly task-master looked on, and now and then administered
painful stimulus. John Clifford was, I am convinced, almost flattered by
receiving upon his servile, middle-class back the haughtily administered
blows of an undoubted Baron of ancient lineage.
It was not until late that afternoon that Madame Gilbert had an
opportunity to perceive the changed relations between the Hedge Lawyer
and his baronial client. There had been no starving yelps from the
beach, and though she had despatched her steward to look for the little
stranger, the man of food had returned with his supplies undevoured.
None of the sailors had seen the black-coated intruder, and Madame began
to hope that Willatopy, true to his instincts, had completed the
despatch of John Clifford, and had consigned his remains to his brother
sharks of the bay. Madame, I regret to say, has no respect for the lives
of those whom she dislikes. When she acted as the lawyer's shield in the
early morning, she had not yet made his professional acquaintance.
Afterwards, Willatopy might have carved him into pieces if he chose.
In the late afternoon, Madame was roaming in search of some rare
tropical flowers which grew at the head of the bay when she came upon
Willatopy, attended at a respectful distance by a bare-headed and
bare-footed menial dressed in grey flannels.
"Hullo, Willie," cried Madame, not recognising Clifford in this new
incarnation, "whom have you picked up?"
"This, Madame," replied Willatopy with hauteur, "is John, my white
slave. He works much better than my brown boys, and I shall keep him on
my island. He has hoed the weeds all day in my garden, and I have given
him food in payment. Now I am taking him to my yawl that he may clean it
properly inside and polish up the brass-work. John, can you clean my
yawl properly, so that the brass shines?"
"Yes, my lord. Certainly, my lord," said John, cocking an eye at Madame,
in which she detected some light of derisive humour.
"You had better," said Willie ominously. "I am a great English Lord, and
most particular. If you do not work properly, I shall throw you
overboard. The sharks will get you."
"As your lordship pleases," responded John Clifford.
Madame, frowning deeply, watched the two figures--the lord marching
ahead with the villein humbly following--embark in Willatopy's
collapsible boat, and row out to the yawl, which lay at anchor at the
head of the bay. Willatopy would sail her in or out over the bar when
the tide was high, though even he dared not push her through the rollers
which broke on the bar when the water was at its lowest. Madame realised
instantly that Clifford, by cunning flattery, had turned her flank and
captured the interest of Willatopy. It was a new experience for the
brown youth to possess an obsequious white slave who sweated at his
orders, and who addressed him as "lord" and "lordship" in every
sentence. The Baron of Topsham was beginning to believe that he must be
something out of the common way if a white stranger would come all the
way from England to call him lord, to work in his garden, and to clean
the brass of his yacht. He supposed that a Lord in England was a kind of
headman in a village or the chief in a tribe. Only, as the English were
very rich and very proud, a Lord in England must be much more exalted
than any man in the Straits--except, of course, the Administrator in
Thursday Island, or Grant, the banker. He marched with his head held
high, ordered John to row the collapsible boat--which job from long
practice on the Thames in summer he achieved tolerably--and, after the
yawl had been boarded, directed John towards the objects of his labour,
and surveyed his operations from a critical distance. Cleaning the yawl
was the one job of work which the Rich and Idle Willatopy had hitherto
undertaken with his own hands. He had cared for the yawl as a Sportsman
cares for his gun or his horse, and as a golfer cares for his clubs. It
was, however, much pleasanter to superintend the labours of John.
"You are clever," he said at last approvingly. "Not stupid like my brown
boys. I shall not go to England. I will be a great Lord in my island,
and you shall stay with me always as my slave. That white girl, Marie,
who looks at me sideways--so--with eyes that bite, I will ask Madame to
give her to me. Now that I am an English Lord, and no longer a brown
Hula of Bulaa, the girl Marie shall kiss my feet."
"You will never be really a great Lord unless you go to England where
all the men and women are white slaves of the Lords who rule them," said
John mendaciously. Having decided to go the whole hog, he did not spare
decoration upon the beast. "Here you will be always Willatopy, the brown
boy. There beyond the wide sea you will be the Right Honourable William
Toppys, Twenty-Eighth Baron of Topsham."
"My father, the Honourable William Toppys, was a great Chief here on his
island. I cannot be greater than my father."
"You can be, and you are," said John Clifford earnestly. "Your father
was a younger son, never a great Lord. You are the Head of the House,
Head of the ancient Family of Toppys. Even Sir John Toppys, who owns the
_Humming Top_ yonder, will be your servant."
"Huh!" cried Willatopy. "Is the yacht also mine? I will throw the
Skipper, he who called me 'nigger,' and scorns me, I will throw him into
the sea, and sail the _Humming Top_ myself. It will be better even than
my yawl."
"No," explained John, who had started Willatopy's mind working, and was
alarmed where it would fetch up. "No. The yacht is not yours. It belongs
to Sir John Toppys, not to you."
"But if I am the Lord of Topsham, it must be mine," roared Willie.
"No," repeated John, and tried to explain.
But Willatopy, with cries of "Liar, liar, liar," fell upon his white
slave, and beat him severely. And so John Clifford discovered, very
early in his campaign, that the man who would teach the English law of
inheritance to a half-caste and fully logical heir, runs a grievous risk
of being mangled by his pupil.
"There," said Willatopy, as he picked up the crumpled body of John
Clifford by the slack of its breeches, and hammered it on the yawl's
deck. "If the yacht is not mine, I cannot be the Lord of Topsham, and
you are a liar and a cannibal. Die-cannibal."
"You can get another," shrieked Clifford. "A better one than the
_Humming Top_."
"What is that?" cried Willatopy, and paused while yet some life remained
unhammered out on the yawl's deck.
"When you are a very rich Lord," groaned Clifford, "you will be able to
buy a much newer and finer yacht than the _Humming Top_."
"Where?" enquired Willatopy.
"In England. You will give your orders, and your slaves will build for
you any yacht which you please. But you must go to England first."
"I shall never go to England," said Willatopy. Yet he desisted from the
hammering of John Clifford, and his tone lacked its customary
resolution.
It had been an arduous day for the Hedge Lawyer. Yet I think that he was
well content. In a few hours, at the price of much sweat and many aching
bones, he had powerfully stirred up the soul of Willatopy so that it
would never resettle in its old simple contented form. He had driven
belief into the half-white, half-brown mind of the once happy boy that
beyond the wide seas, over in that England whence his father had fled,
he himself had become a man of consequence. His poor, childlike brain
boiled and threw up visions in its steaming vapours. White women at his
pleasure, white men as his slaves, splendid yachts at his orders, big
stone houses with many, many rooms--the big houses left him cold, but to
the other visions he could give something of warm concrete form. Marie
who made eyes at him, John who slaved for him, the yacht better even
than the splendid _Humming Top_--these would all be his, and they were
but an earnest of greater delights to follow. The round world and all
that was therein would lie beneath his brown feet if only he would go to
England and become, in his own unchallengeable right, the Twenty-Eighth
Baron of Topsham. Already the impressions left by the father upon the
small soft mind of the twelve-year-old boy were beginning to yield under
the moulding hand of the white slave John. Already the white, restless
strain in his blood, which throughout his life had reposed dormant, was
beginning to bestir itself within him. He tossed John Clifford into the
boat, and rowed ashore himself. He drove Clifford before him up into the
woods, and left him there supperless and without shelter. Let him forage
in the woods if he hungered, and seek for cover under the ample branches
about him.
Then Willatopy, that gallant boy of mixed blood, torn from his lifelong
island roots by the exotic pressure of a cursed Heirship, ran as if
devils pursued to the tent of Madame Gilbert, and bursting in, flung his
naked body at her feet. Never before had he entered without leave. And
Madame, seeing the tumult which raged in his soul, and already
understanding something of the agony of his partial awakening, listened
while the boy poured out the story much as I have told it here.
"Madame," he cried at the end. "What shall I do? What shall I do?"
"Send Clifford away," said she, "and never go to England."
"I cannot send him away," said Willatopy. "He is my white slave. And if
he went I should still be an English Lord. But when a schooner calls he
shall go. And I will never go to England. My father said: 'Always stick
to Hula, Willie: Hula is better than England.' And I always will."
"That's right," said Madame. "You can't go wrong if you follow your
father. And now, Willie dear, go back to your own hut, and be Hula once
more. I love Willatopy, but I should hate an English Lord. He couldn't
come to my tent like this--without even a bootlace about his middle. But
my dear Willatopy may wear as little as he pleases. Be off; I don't want
Marie to find you here."
The blue eyes, so strange in the almost black face, flashed with a new
light.
"Marie," he said. "The white Marie. If I were an English Lord...."
Madame held up a warning hand.
"As my lady pleases," said the boy, smiling almost happily, and turning
about, ran from the tent.
Madame sat for a long while after Willatopy had gone. Before her stood
the austere Scotch figure of Grant of Thursday Island, the banker Grant
who had loved the father and now loved the son for his father's sake.
His solemn words rang in her ears. "White and brown blood form a bad
mixture, an explosive mixture. A mixture unstable as nitro-glycerine."
Grant had declared that if drink and white women came into his life,
Willatopy would be a lost soul.
"We have no drink on the island," murmured Madame Gilbert, "and the
stores of the yacht are safe from him. Marie dreads me too gravely to be
a danger any more. If that lump of sharks' food, Clifford, can be got
away, we may pull through. But this inheritance of poor Willatopy's is
the very devil. In England it seemed a comedy shot with streaks of utter
farce; here in Tops Island it borders upon tragedy. In England it would
be ... Mon Dieu! To save Willatopy from that horror I would go some
lengths, some bitter, bitter lengths."
"Marie," said Madame Gilbert, as the French girl came in. "If you hear
any gossip about young Willatopy, don't believe it. There is a story
that he is the rightful Lord Topsham, but, of course, it isn't true.
Should it come to your ears, you have my authority to deny it stoutly."
"Certainly, Madame," said Marie, the demure maid. But Marie did not say
that Willatopy, flying from Madame's tent, had fallen in with her; that
he had told her the whole story, and that she had urged him to claim all
the rights and privileges that were his. And as a foretaste in the
privileges of a seigneur she had offered him her warm lips. No Marie
said nothing of that to Madame Gilbert.