THE HAND OF MADAME GILBERT
Madame Gilbert, standing by the rail, watched the boat come alongside
which bore Lord Topsham and his legal adviser from Port Kennedy. They
appeared to have been shopping with energy, for the boat was laden with
packages. Among the spoils of Thursday Island were three wooden cases
around which the seamen clustered, like wasps about honey, when they had
been hauled up and laid upon the deck. Ching, who was standing beside
Madame, and looking the happier for his stroll ashore, frowned savagely.
"Shall I have them thrown overboard?" asked he.
Madame did not reply. She was speechless with the fury of one who has
been outraged publicly. Picture to yourself the feelings of a hostess
who invites guests to dinner, and watches them enter her drawing-room,
each with a bottle under the arm. Though strong drink may not be looked
for at her board, does she not regard this ostentatious liquid
supplement to her hospitality as a public outrage? So Madame felt in her
"dry ship" when Lord Topsham and his slave John brought their cases of
alcoholic refreshment aboard. For a moment she was strongly inclined to
let Ching have his will, but reflected that even if guests should bring
their own liquor to one's dinner, one should not retaliate by smashing
the bottles on the carpet. The only adequate retort would be to write
the cads' names off the list of one's acquaintance. That is exactly what
Madame was most disposed to do. She seriously thought of instantly
sending Willie and Clifford to the right about with their baggage, and
leaving them to find some other means of transport than the _Humming
Top_. Had Willie been educated in the ways of white men she would
certainly have shot him forth. But she realised that the blame lay with
the man Clifford, and that she could not dismiss the servant while
retaining the master. It must be both or neither. And while she hung
upon the edge of decision, Willie himself determined the issue by one of
those small unconscious actions which so often determine human
destinies. He looked up, saw Madame, forgot for a moment his resentment
against her, and smiled as the Willatopy of old had been wont to smile.
"I had just made up my mind to send the pair of them packing off to Port
Kennedy," said Madame to me, "when the boy looked up and smiled. There
was an unholy fascination about the brown creature, and sometimes I
almost came within sympathetic range of my wicked maid Marie. The bright
blue eyes, which shone like the sky at dawn, had a potency which no
woman could wholly resist. When he smiled at me then, I remembered the
boy who had kissed my wet trench coat--and I let him be. The cases were
taken down to Willie's cabin. I was beaten again, and as soon as I was
set free from the charm of those eyes, suffered the agonies of defeat.
But I was helpless. I could not ostracise that wretch Clifford any more
than he was already ostracised. One cannot exile an inhabitant of
Coventry in his own city. If our relations had not suffered so great a
change, had not a gulf of bitter resentment yawned between us, I would
have reasoned with the boy Willie--who at heart was a natural born
gentleman--and have shown him his error, as I had done when he ordered
port to be served in my own smoke-room. If that Clifford ever turns up
again, and approaches within pistol shot of me, even in Piccadilly
Circus at noonday, I am sure that I shall plug a hole in his waistcoat."
Our Madame is a very human woman; she can love and she can hate, and
after years of friendship and intimate knowledge of her, I cannot tell
which is the more dangerous--her love or her hate.
Wine in cases was not the only result of Willie's shopping expedition in
the outpost of white resources. He had gone ashore to gather covering
for his feet and person which would be in harmony with his exalted
dignity. The boy, who had happily roamed almost naked about his own
island, and had lived for nineteen years the simple, untrammelled life
of a native, had now become obsessed with the vice of clothes.
Madame Gilbert was standing in the saloon, waiting for her fellow diners
to collect, when the shuffle of strange feet behind fell upon her quick
ears. She spun round and beheld a portent. Lord Topsham had entered, a
Lord Topsham transfigured most abominably. Upon his shoulders hung an
ill-fitting dinner jacket, pumps of incredible vastness covered his
broad, naturally developed feet, and the edges of his black
trousers--some three inches too long--trailed upon the carpet. Upon
what long-neglected peg in Thursday Island that villainous suit had
hung, and for how long, Madame was never privileged to discover. Willie,
in delighted zeal, had torn it down, and wrapped it about himself, and
now stood forth the perfect European. Madame had been so completely
absorbed in Willie's clothes that some few seconds passed before her
eyes travelled upwards to his head. Then she had a further surprise--his
long, frizzy hair had been cropped quite close to his skull.
The boy, in equipping himself as the Lord Topsham of his imagination,
had lost for ever all the natural dignity of Willatopy. He had become
the very image of an uncouth brown waiter in a Pacific Island hotel. It
was pitiful, and Madame hung poised between laughter and tears.
"Am I all right, Madame?" asked Willie anxiously. "John fastened my tie.
I could not do it myself."
"You are quite all right," said Madame kindly. "You were very lucky to
find so splendid a dinner jacket in Thursday Island."
He glowed with pleasure, and stretched out a black, shining foot. "I am
not ashamed now to sit at dinner with you, Madame."
At this moment Ching and Alexander entered, and, like the gentlemen that
they were, paid no apparent attention to the transfigured Willie. But
they were appalled at the change which had been wrought upon him by that
dreadful apparel. Never before had they so vividly realised the power of
clothes to make or mar the human form. Willie, at his first effort, had
unhappily chosen the most cruelly searching of all human vestments. He
had aspired to the heights and fallen into the depths.
They were still lying off Port Kennedy, for the Skipper did not propose
until morning dawned to guide the _Humming Top_ through the narrow
bottle-neck of the Straits. They dined in comfort on an even keel, and
afterwards Willie disappeared to go to his cabin, and there, with his
slave John, to supplement Madame's austere hospitality.
At about eleven o'clock there happened an incident which has some
significance in this story. Willie, whose thoughts were never far away
from the Marie whose charms had been denied to him, and was ever on the
alert to encounter her, had come into the corridor outside his cabin,
and seen Marie's white skirt passing through an open door. He sprang,
and before she could slip within, had gripped her hand in his iron fist.
"Now I have you," he whispered. "At last."
He pulled her towards him, but the girl strained away. She looked
fearfully up and down the corridor.
"Kiss me, Marie," murmured Willie. "You cannot escape me now."
Still she strained away from him in terror. Then suddenly she relaxed,
and he got his arm about her waist. She no longer resisted him, seemed
not to be looking at him, and he was puzzled by a placid indifference
which he had never before experienced in her. He had his arm round her
waist, and she was gazing intently over his shoulder.
Willie threw back his head, and followed the direction of the girl's
eyes. Six feet distant Madame Gilbert was standing in the corridor
gazing upon the pair with that sombre deadly look which chilled the
blood of Marie, and sobered even the ardent, wine-inspired Lord of
Topsham.
He released the girl, who immediately vanished, and turned savagely upon
Madame. She said nothing. He moved towards her, and seized both her
elbows. He thrust her against the wall, and held her there motionless.
Madame is very strong, physically, but she tells me that she never puts
forth the strength of her body against that of a man.
"Whenever a man seizes me in anger I never struggle," she has often said
to me. "A physical broil between a man and a woman must always end to
the discomfiture of the woman. To the greater power of a man I oppose
exaggerated feminine weakness."
With muscles deliberately limp, she stood against the wall in Willie's
grip, her breast rising and falling quietly, her cold, fearless eyes
holding him immovably. He approached his face to hers until each could
see the tiny reflection of self in the other's pupils. Willie's breath,
charged with the fumes of bad and fiery port, beat upon Madame's senses.
She suffered from a momentary nausea, but the steadiness of her gaze
continued unabated.
He was trying to beat her down with the power of his eyes, but, just
then, they had no charm for Madame Gilbert. They were no longer the eyes
of Willatopy before whose radiance her heart had often melted; they were
the drink-suffused eyes of Lord Topsham, an enemy. She put forth all her
moral energy, and stared him into disquiet. And when his eyelids began
to blink and flicker, she knew that she had won. The savage light died
out, and he released her elbows. He stepped back, and she was free.
Still calm, she bowed slightly as one bidding farewell to a distant
acquaintance, and walked slowly towards her own door. With the snap of
her drawn bolt the spell broke, and Willie also moved away. He felt
humiliated, as one who had suffered defeat. As he had stood there facing
Madame, there had come upon him a savage lust to fasten his talons in
the beautiful white throat, and to choke the cold light of scorn out of
her lovely eyes. But he could not do it. He had spurned her, and felt
that he hated her, but there still remained for him about her something
of the aura of a goddess.
Madame was very thoughtful as Marie undressed her that evening. She said
nothing to the girl, for she had perceived her attempts to repulse Lord
Topsham. She had confidence in Marie's terrors if not in her virtue. But
the brief contest of wills without had made a deep impression. She
perceived that the struggle for mastery between the half-savage boy and
herself had begun seriously. As the wise man Grant had predicted, the
boy was growing into a peril. She had beaten him once in the tense
silent battle of eyes, but could she always reckon upon time and
opportunity within which to achieve another victory? Madame lay deep in
thought upon her bed, and fingered delicately the butt of that faithful
companion which now always slept beside her.
A couple of hours later, while she still lay sleepless, a loud noise of
shouting and singing arose from the cabin opposite. Willie and John
Clifford had been broaching the cases of sweet fiery port, and had
become drunkenly exuberant This was, I believe, the first time that
Willie had passed over the alcoholic border into actual intoxication.
Madame listened to the unseemly racket, which resounded now through the
silent anchored ship, and again toyed with the automatic.
"Drink and Lust and explosive half-blood," murmured she. "The blood of
Old Devon and of savage Melanesia. I wonder what the end of it all will
be."
That end came with appalling suddenness, without warning or preparation.
Madame alone in the ship was ready, for she who had for five years lived
amid quick storms and unheralded perils was always ready. For three days
the yacht had been steaming slowly up towards the Straits of Sunda.
Willie in public had been surly and reserved; he had not again fallen
upon the apprehensive Marie--too intently busied upon working out her
reprieve to relax in favour towards him--and had shown no overt
hostility to Madame. Every night he had drunk deeply with John Clifford,
and the noise of their joint libations had disturbed Madame Gilbert's
rest. The once healthy boy, splendid in his tireless virility, was
degenerating fast. From day to day the decline could be seen in the
greyness of his face, and in the tremor of his strong thin fingers. The
shoes which he insisted upon wearing crippled his free movements. Once
conspicuously elastic of tread--he had seemed to move on steel
springs--he now slouched and shuffled. Madame never saw Clifford, but
she heard his voice nightly in the cabin opposite, and I am sure that
she ached to slay him. She longed for Singapore, and for the final
expulsion of the Hedge Lawyer, who was responsible for the woes of a
once happy Toppys yacht, and of the once happy Tops Island. He was
working fast for Willie's destruction, but he did not understand the
explosive material with which he worked. In the end he lost--at the
moment when it seemed to his narrow intelligence that the white slave
had become the white master.
It was after midnight, Madame was abed, and for once the potations of
the drinkers did not culminate in a noise which disturbed her sleep. For
once Willie had dismissed Clifford at an early hour, and bent himself to
carry out his own delayed yet cherished schemes. Something of the
cunning of the white man had tempered the desires of the savage; he had
deliberately ceased to pursue Marie, and thought to dim the bright
polish of Madame's unfailing watchfulness.
Nothing was to be heard that night save the whirr of the high-speed
turbines, and nothing to be felt except the quivering vibration of the
yacht's frames. Although the cabin opposite was unwontedly quiet, Madame
Gilbert did not sleep. The change from noise to silence oppressed her.
She was more wakeful and watchful than she had been for some days; she
had learned that the unexpected always happens and she was waiting,
apprehensively, for the violently unexpected. She did not, as Grant had
advised, pass her days and nights in deadly fear--it was no strange
experience for her to watch and wait with that faithful companion within
grip of her fingers--but both her days and nights were brimful of
apprehension and sorrow. She had faintly hoped that the old spirit of
Willatopy would revive when the well-beloved seas girt him about, and
his feet trod the decks of a ship. She had hoped that the salt of the
sea would call irresistibly to the salt in his blood. But the strong,
rich drinks of Thursday Island were more potent than any sea salt.
Willatopy was gone for ever. There remained a visibly degenerating Lord
Topsham.
Suddenly she heard the soft closing of a door. The sound was quite near.
She sat up and listened. A faint light, reflected from the sea, came
through her cabin scuttles; she could make out the closed doors of her
room--the bathroom door behind her, Marie's door in front, and that
other which led into the corridor at her right. Her rooms were on the
port side of the main deck. But though the upper part of the cabin was
faintly illuminated, the deck lay in the deepest shadow.
Madame heard nothing, but straight before her she saw the communicating
door between her room and Marie's open half-way and then close. Someone
had penetrated her room by way of the bathroom door, crawled past her
bed along the deck, and slipped without sound into her maid's cabin.
A gust of fury shook her. She did not seek to enquire whether Marie were
a victim or an accomplice. Just as when those cases of liquor had come
aboard, she felt the humiliation of outrage. Her room had been made
flagrant use of as a surreptitious passage to her maid's; her one
passion at that moment was for instant vengeance.
She stretched forth her left hand, and snapped on the electric lights.
In her other hand was gripped the loaded automatic.
The lights flashed on, and Marie's door opened wide. On the threshold
stood Lord Topsham, clad only in a pair of pyjama trousers. The dark
brown skin of his body glowed in the light. He himself paused,
momentarily dazzled.
Behind him rang out a shriek followed instantly by a howl from Willie.
White arms were wound about his neck. Marie had sprung upon his back,
and clung to him shrieking.
Willie staggered into Madame's room, and some hard object, which had
been in his hand, fell upon the deck. Madame heard the ring of steel
upon wood. Then he raised both hands, and fastened his fingers into the
soft upper arms of the girl who had sprung upon him. Those fingers,
contracted with the full force of Willie's powerful muscles, bit into
Marie's flesh, and she screamed with a pain which was even greater than
her terror. The remorseless fingers ground and bit, and the grip of
Marie's arms relaxed. Then Willie bent almost to the deck, and with a
heave of his loins flung Marie, a whirl of white tangled draperies,
against the cabin wall. She brought up with a sickening crunch against
the hard steel-backed panelling, and lay insensible along the wainscot.
Willie stooped and picked up that which he had dropped. Madame sat upon
her hammock-bed, motionless, scarcely breathing, every scrap of nervous
energy concentrated in her eyes and skilled right hand. As one whose
life hung by a thread, which she alone could preserve intact, she
watched intently Willie's every movement.
He stooped and picked up the trench dagger which at Marie's onslaught he
had dropped. The light ran up and down the thin sharp blade. Madame
watched Willie feel the point with his thumb, and settle his fingers
comfortably about the grip. He did not hurry, and as he grasped the
dagger firmly, and struck out gently once or twice to enjoy a sense of
its handiness, the broad lips curled back from his white teeth.
Then he sprang straight at Madame. It was the launching of a human
steel-tipped javelin.
He was ten feet away from her when he sprang, and six feet distant when
her pistol cracked like a vicious whip lash. In the act of firing she
threw herself backwards. The brown boy, carried irresistibly forward by
the impetus of his leap, fell diagonally across Madame's body, the
outstretched dagger-tipped arm passing close over her face. He fell
across her, pinning her down, and the hammock bed creaked and swung with
the shock. The stricken boy lay across Madame, his hands and feet
tearing at the deck as the bed swung, his body heaving and writhing in
convulsions. Under him she lay pinned down, and felt within her own
living frame every quiver and pang of his dissolution.
The hammock bed slowed down in its swing, and the hands and feet of
William, Lord Topsham, trailed helplessly. His brown half-naked body was
quiet now. The sudden leap, the quick deadly shot, the last agonies, had
not filled up sixty seconds, yet they left Madame aged by their rapid
passage. In those seconds some of her old light-heartedness had gone
from her. She felt little sorrow for the Lord Topsham who had sought to
slay her, and whom she had killed in the act, but her heart wept
bitterly for the Willatopy whom he once had been.
The bed and the body came to rest together, and all was still.
"Marie," called Madame. There was no response from the white heap which
lay where it had been flung.
"Marie," Madame cried again, "_es tu morte_?"
It was the silliest of enquiries, yet it penetrated the dulled ear of
the sorely bruised girl.
"_Oui, Madame_," groaned Marie. "_Je suis morte, morte, absolument._"
"So that's all right," cried Madame, much relieved. The maid had risen
to a lofty eminence in the opinion of the mistress, when she, inspired
by her brave French blood, had sprung upon the back of the murder-filled
savage. She had staked her life, and come nigh to losing her stake, to
gain time for the mistress whom she had no great reason to love.
"I am pinned down and cannot move," explained Madame. "Try to open the
door and then scream as loudly as you can."
"Where is the terrible Lord?" muttered Marie, still not wholly
conscious. "I woke with his face against mine. He pricked my breast with
his sharp steel."
"Tell me later," cried Madame. "He is dead. Open the door and scream."
The heap moved slowly, and Marie somehow got the door open. Then she
howled.
A steward ran up and thrust in his gaping head.
"Call the Captain," ordered Madame sharply.
Summoned by an urgent message, of which he could make no sense, Ching
leaped down from his bridge and a moment later stepped over Marie's
body into Madame's cabin.
Madame, lying with Willie stretched across her, his feet and hands
drooping to the deck on either side, raised her right hand, and beckoned
to the Skipper with her pistol muzzle.
"See, I have killed him. It happened very quickly."
Before the slow-witted Skipper could take in this astonishing situation,
Alexander Ewing burst through the ring of sailors which had clustered
about the door. A rumour had flown through the ship that Madame Gilbert
was dead. Alexander burst into her cabin, white and shaking, for he
loved her.
The air still reeked with the acrid taste of burnt cordite, and for a
moment Alexander could see no more of Madame than a glorious mass of
copper tresses on the white pillow beyond Willie's shoulder. He groaned
"Is she dead? Is our Madame really dead?"
"Not much," came the voice which he loved. "If you will lift off the
body of this unhappy, foolish boy, you will find me very much alive,
Sandy dear."
They raised with gentle hands the limp body of the Twenty-Eighth Baron
of Topsham, who never now would enter upon his hereditary dignities;
they lifted the body, and laid it on the floor. There was no sign about
him of a weapon, and both men looked enquiringly at Madame. She pointed
between her bed and the wall, and Ewing leaning over picked up the
trench dagger.
"That explains all," said he as he threw it down by the corpse. "It is
sharp and deadly, Ching. Madame had no choice but to shoot."
"I was sure of that before I saw the dagger," said Ching coldly.
Madame swung herself out of bed, and wrapped a dressing-grown about her
blue pyjamas. She stood beside Alexander Ewing, looking down upon the
body of the boy whom she had shot. The blue eyes, half open, had lost
their brightness. No longer were they like the sky at dawn. Death
falling swiftly had wiped out their colour. A large scorched patch
appeared on the broad chest of him who had been called Lord Topsham, and
in the centre, over the heart, was the deep print of Madame's bullet.
The small sharp bullet had passed right through him; they found it later
embedded in the woodwork of Marie's door. Madame looked down at the
scorched breast, and at the tiny hole through which a life had sped; her
lips twitched painfully, and she held back a sob. She looked up
pitifully at the two men, both her loving friends; at Ching, whose faith
in her cool judgment had not asked for the proof of Willie's dagger; at
Alexander, to whom the discovery of that weapon had brought a deep sense
of relief. Ching stood erect, thinking deeply, but Alexander, with
quicker sympathy, moved a step, and laid his arm about Madame's
shoulders.
"Brave lass," he whispered, as she cuddled herself to him.
"I had to shoot, Sandy," she murmured. "It was a very close call,
Sandy."
"Brave lass," said he again, and stooping down, kissed the twitching
lips.
"Thank you, Sandy dear," said Madame. "I am only a woman thing, after
all."
But though only a woman thing, Madame, an instant later, gave them an
exhibition of her rapid relentless quality. Into the room penetrated a
red-faced slobbering figure. Roused out of his drunken slumbers by a
realisation of the total failure of his evil plans, John Clifford came
for the last time into the silent presence of his human spoil.
He saw the body lying upon its back on the floor; he saw Madame standing
by with the pistol still dangling from her wrist. The wide burnt mark
made by the flaming cordite and the bullet hole told their tale. The
base creature, who did not lack for courage, turned furiously upon
Madame in the presence of her loyal friends.
"Murderess," he shrieked. "If there is a law in England you shall have
justice done upon you."
Madame swung round, the automatic in, her hand.
"And you, John Clifford, robber and man destroyer, shall have justice
here and now."
The pistol cracked, and the bullet, passing within an inch of his head,
smacked up against the wall. He leaped for the door, both Ching and
Ewing jumped out of the way, and the crowd beyond scattered down the
corridor. Crack went the pistol again, and a second bullet banged with
the impact of a hammer on the doorpost. Clifford reached the opening,
and was through. They heard his feet pattering down the alley way.
"Steady, lass," warned Ewing. "Ye might have killed him."
"No," said Madame. "I shot to frighten, not to kill. And I have done
what I intended. We shall not hear much more of Clifford and his law.
With all my heart I wish that he lay here now at my feet, and that poor
Willatopy, safe and ignorantly happy, were still in Tops Island. Fate is
very cruel, Sandy; it might have spared upon my hand the blood of
Willatopy."