1
ALL would have happened differently for Bellair had he been drowsy
as usual on this particular Sunday afternoon. The boarding-house
was preparing for its nap; indeed already half enveloped, but there
came to Bellair’s nostrils a smell of carpets that brought back his
first passage up stairs five years before. The halls were filled with
greys--dull tones that drove him forth at last. It was November, and
the day didn’t know what to do next. Gusts of seasonable wind, wisps
of sunshine, threats of rain, and everywhere Bellair’s old enemy--the
terrifying Sabbath calm, without which the naked granite soul of New
York would remain decently hid. Sundays had tortured him from the
beginning. It was not so bad when the garment was on--the weave of
millions.
He walked east with an umbrella, thinking more than observing, crossed
to Brooklyn and followed the water-front as closely as the complication
of ferries, pier-systems and general shipping would permit. Finally he
came to a wooden arch, marked Hatmos & Company, the gate of which was
open. Entering, he heard the water slapping the piles beneath, his eyes
held in fascination to an activity ahead. In the wonder of a dream,
he realised that this was a sailing-ship putting forth. On her black
stern, he read
_Jade of Adelaide_
printed in blue of worn pigment.
A barkentine, her clipper-built hull of steel, her lines satisfying
like the return of a friend after years. Along the water-line shone
the bright edge of her copper sheathing; then a soft black line smooth
as modelled clay where she muscled out for sea-worth, and covered her
displacement in the daring beauty of contour. Still above was the
shining brass of her row of ports on a ground of weathered grey, and
the dull red of her rail. Over all, and that which quickened the ardour
of Bellair’s soul, was the mystery of her wire rigging and folded
cloths against the smoky horizon, exquisite as the frame of a butterfly
to his fancy.
His emotion is not to be explained; nor another high moment of his life
which had to do with a flashing merchantman seen from the water-front
at San Francisco--square-rigged throughout, a cloud of sail-cloth,
her royals yet to be lifted, as she got underweigh. He knew that
considerable canvas was still spread between California, Australia and
the Islands, but what a well-kept if ancient maiden of the _Jade’s_
species was doing here in New York harbour, A. D. Nineteen hundred and
odd, was not disclosed to Bellair until afterward, and not clearly then.
He knew her for a barkentine, and in the intensely personal appeal
of the moment he was a bit sorry for the blend. To his eyes the
schooner-rig of mizzen and main masts was not to be compared for
beauty to the trisected fore. Still he reflected that square-rigged
throughout, she would be crowded with crew to care for her, and that
her concession to trade was at least not outright. Schooner, bark and
brig--he seemed to know them first hand, not only from pictures and
pages of print, though there had been many long evenings of half-dream
with books before him--books that always pushed back impatiently
through the years of upstart Steam into Nature’s own navigation,
where Romance has put on her brave true form in the long perspective.
Ships that really _sailed_ were one of Bellair’s passions, like
orchards and vined stone-work--all far from him apparently and out
of the question--loved the more because of it.... He watched with
rapt eyes now, estimated the _Jade’s_ length at one-seventy-five
and was debating her tonnage when a huge ox of a man appeared from
the cabin (while the _Jade_ slid farther out), waddled aft as if
bare-footed, spoke to an officer there, and then held up two brown
hairy, thick-fingered hands, palms extended to the pier--as if to push
Brooklyn from him forever.... The officer’s voice just reached shore,
but not his words. A Japanese woman appeared on the receding deck.
“_Jade of Adelaide_,” muttered Bellair, moments afterward.
A tug was towing her straight toward Staten. He thought of her
lying off the glistening white beach of a coral island two months
hence, surrounded by native craft, all hands helping the big man get
ashore.... At this moment a young man emerged from the harbour-front
door of the Hatmos office, locking it after him. Bellair came up from
his dream. Such realities of the city man are mainly secret. It was the
worn surface that Bellair presented to the stranger, a sophisticated
and imperturbable surface, and one employed so often that its novelty
was gone.
“Where’s she going?” he asked.
“Who?”
Bellair smiled at the facetiousness.
“The _Jade_,” he said gently.
“Just as far from here as she can get.”
“Round the world?”
“I doubt if she’ll come back.”
“You don’t see many of them any more----”
“No,” replied the other agreeably enough, “this old dame and two or
three sisters are about all that call here. Hatmos & Co. get ’em all.”
“Will you have a little drink?” Bellair inquired. “That is, if you know
a place around here. I’m from across.”
The other was not unwilling. They walked up the pier together. A place
was found.
“Does the _Jade_ belong to the Hatmos people?” Bellair asked.
“No. We’re agents for Stackhouse. By the way, he’s aboard the
_Jade_--just left the office a half hour ago. The Hatmos son and heir
went home in a cab, like his father used to, when Stackhouse blew in
from the South Seas----”
“The big man who stood aft as the ship cleared?” Bellair suggested.
“Hairy neck--clothes look like pajamas?”
“Yes.”
“That must have been Stackhouse. He’s the biggest man in
Peloponasia----”
Bellair wondered if he meant Polynesia. “You mean in size?”
“Possibly that, but I meant--interests. Owns whole islands and
steam-fleets, but hates steam. Does his pleasure riding under canvas.
Comes up to New York every third year with a new Japanese wife. Used to
spend his time drinking with old Hatmos--now he’s trying to kill off
the younger generation. Lives at the _Florimel_ while in New York, and
teaches the dago barboys how to make tropical drinks. If he had stayed
longer, he would have got to me. Young Hatmos is about finished.”
Bellair breathed deeply, strangely alive. “Where does the _Jade_ call
first after leaving here?”
“Savannah--then one or two South American ports--then around the Horn
and the long up-beat to the Islands.”
“Why, that might mean four months.” Bellair spoke with a touch of
wistfulness.
They emerged to the street at length, and the New Yorker started shyly
back to the pier. The Hatmos man laughed.
“You fall for the sailing-stuff, don’t you?”
“Yes, it’s got me. Do they take passengers?”
“Sure, if you’re in no hurry. Here and there, some one like you--just
for the voyage. Two or three on board from here.... One a preacher.
He’d better look out. Stackhouse hates to drink alone.”
“Thanks. Good-bye.”
The _Jade_, far and very little among the liners, had turned south to
the Narrows and was spreading her wings.... The world began to shut
Bellair in, as he crossed the river again. Sunday night supper at the
boarding-house was always a dismal affair; by every manner and means
it was so to-night. The chorus woman of the Hippodrome was bolting
ahead of the bell, to hurry away to rehearsal. Nightly she came up out
of the water.... He tried three sea-books that night--“Lady Letty,”
“Lord Jim” and “The Phantom,” but couldn’t get caught in their old
spell. A new and personal dimension was upon him from the afternoon.
He fell to dreaming again and again of the _Jade_--the last misty
glimpse of her at the Narrows, and the huge brown hands pushing
Brooklyn away.... There is pathos in the city man’s love and need for
fresh air. Bellair pulled his bed to the window at last, surveying the
room without regard. Long afterward he dreamed that he was out on the
heaving floor of the sea, and that a man-monster came down from the
deck in pajamas, and pressing his hands against the walls of the cabin,
made respiration next to impossible for the inmate. There was a key to
this suffocation, for the air in his room was still as a pool. A lull
had fallen upon the city before a gusty storm of wind and rain.