_Calypso._
Of course a glance, and the first sound of his voice, had told me that I
had to do with a gentleman, one of those vagabond English gentlemen in
exile who form a type peculiar, I think, to the English race; men that
are a curious combination of aristocrat and gipsy, soldier, scholar, and
philosopher; men of good family, who have drifted everywhere, seen and
seen through everything, but in all their wanderings have never lost
their sense and habit of "form," their boyish zest in living, their
humorous stoicism, and, above all, their lordly accent.
"Now that you have found us, Sir Ulysses"--continued my eccentric host,
motioning me, with an indescribably princely wave of the hand to
accompany him--"you must certainly give us the pleasure of your company
to luncheon. Visitors are as rare as black swans on this _Ultima Thule_
of ours--though, by the way, the black swan, _cygnus atratus,_ is
nothing like so rare as the ancients believed. I have shot them myself
out in Australia. Still they are rare enough for the purpose of
imagery, though really not so rare as a human being one can talk
intelligently to on this island."
Talk! My friend, indeed, very evidently was a talker--one of those
fantastic monologists to whom an audience is little more than a symbol.
I saw that there was no need for me to do any of the talking. He was
more than glad to do it all. Plainly his encounter with me was to him
like a spring in a thirsty land.
"Solitude," he continued, "is perhaps the final need of the human soul.
After a while, when we have run the gamut of all our ardours and our
dreams, solitude comes to seem the one excellent thing, the _summum
bonum._"
I murmured that he certainly seemed to have come to the right place for
it.
"Very true, indeed," he assented, with a courtly inclination of his
head, as though I had said something profound; "very true, indeed, and
yet, wasn't it the great Bacon who said: 'Whoever is delighted with
solitude is either a beast or a god'?--and this particular solitude, I
confess, sometimes seems to me a little too much like that enforced
solitude of the Pontic marshes of which Ovid wailed and whimpered in the
deaf ears of Augustus."
I could not help noticing at last as he talked on with this fantastic
magnificence, the odd contrast between his speech and the almost
equally fantastic poverty of his clothing. The suit he wore, though
still preserving a certain elegance of cut, was so worn and patched and
stained that a negro would hardly have accepted it as a gift; and his
almost painful emaciation gave him generally the appearance of an
animated framework of rags and bones, startlingly embodying the voice
and the manners of a prince. Yet the shabby tie about his neck was bound
by a ring, in which was set a turquoise of great size and beauty.
Evidently he was a being of droll contrasts, and I prepared myself to be
surprised at nothing concerning him.
Presently, as we loitered on through the palms, we came upon two negroes
chopping away with their machetes, trimming up the debris of broken and
decaying palm fans. They were both sturdy, ferocious-looking fellows,
but one of them was a veritable giant.
"Behold my bodyguard!" said my magnificent friend, with the usual
possessive wave of his hand; "my Switzers, my Janissaries, so to say."
The negroes stopped working, touched their great straw hats, and flashed
their splendid teeth in a delighted smile. Evidently they were used to
their master's way of talking, and were devoted to him.
"This chap here is Erebus," said my host, and the appropriateness of the
name was apparent, for he was certainly the blackest negro I had ever
seen, as superbly black as some women are superbly white.
"And this is Samson. Let's have a look at your muscles, Samson--there's
a good boy!"
And, with grins of pleasure, Samson proudly stripped off his thin calico
jacket and exposed a torso of terrifying power, but beautiful in its
play of muscles as that of a god.
"But since my name is Hercules, the man
Who owes me hatred hides it if he can,
"eh, Samson?" was his master's characteristic comment.
"Yaas, sar!" said Samson, as pleased as a flattered bulldog, and
understanding the compliment precisely in the same instinctive fashion.
Leaving Samson and Erebus to continue their savage play with their
machetes, we walked on through the palms, which here gave a particularly
jungle-like appearance to the scene, from the fact of their being bowed
out from their roots, and sweeping upward in great curves. One
involuntarily looked for a man-eating tiger at any moment, standing
striped and splendid in one of the openings.
Then suddenly to the right, there came a flash of level green,
suggesting lawns, and the outlines of a house, partly covered with
brilliant purple flowers--a marvellous splash of colour.
"_Bougainvillea! Bougainvillea spectabilis_--of course, you know it. Was
there ever such a purple? Not Solomon in all his glory, _et cetera._ And
here we are at the house of King Alcinoüs--a humble version of it
indeed."
It was evidently quite impossible for my friend to speak otherwise than
in images, picturesque scraps from the coloured rag-bag of a mind stored
with memories of the classics, all manner of romantic literature, and
tags of Greek and Latin which he mouthed with the relish of an epicure.
It was a large rambling stucco house, somewhat decayed looking, and
evidently built on the ruins of an older building. We came upon it at a
broad Italian-looking loggia, supported by stone pillars bowered in with
vines--very cool and pleasant--with mossy slabs for its floor, here and
there tropical ferns set out in tubs, some wicker chairs standing about,
and a table at one side on which two little barelegged negro girls were
busy setting out yellow fruit, and other appurtenances of luncheon, on a
dazzling white cloth.
"Has your mistress returned yet, my children?" asked the master.
"No, sar," said the older girl, with a giggle, twisting and grimacing
with embarrassment.
"My daughter," explained my host, "has gone to the town on an errand.
She will be back at any moment. Meanwhile, I shall introduce you to a
cooling drink of my own manufacture, with a basis of that cocoanut milk
which I need not ask you whether you appreciate, recalling the pleasant
circumstance of our first acquaintance."
Motioning me to a seat, and pushing toward me a box of cigarettes, he
went indoors, leaving me to take in the stretch of beautiful garden in
front of me, the trees of which seemed literally to be hung with
gold--for they were mainly of orange and grapefruit ranged round a
spacious beautifully-kept lawn with the regularity of sumptuous
decoration. In the middle of the lawn, a little rock foundation threw up
a jet of silver, falling with a tinkling murmur into a broad circular
basin from which emerged the broad leaves and splendid pink blossoms of
an Egyptian lotus. Certainly it was no far-fetched allusion of my
classical friend to speak of the garden of Alcinoüs; particularly
connected as it was in my mind with the white beach of a desert isle,
and that marble statue in the moonlight.
As I sat dreaming, bathed in the golden-green light of the orange
trees, and lulled by the tinkling of the fountain, my host returned with
our drinks, his learned disquisition on which I will spare the reader,
highly interesting and characteristic though it was.
Suffice it that it was a drink, whatever its ingredients--and there was
certainly somewhere a powerful "stick" in it--that seemed to have been
drawn from some cool grotto of the virgin earth, so thrillingly cold and
invigorating it was.
While we were slowly sipping it, and smoking our cigarettes, in an
unwonted pause of my friend's fanciful verbosity, I almost jumped in my
chair at the sound of a voice indoors. It was instantly followed by a
light and rapid tread, and the sound of a woman's dress. Then a tall
beautiful young woman emerged on the loggia.
"Ah! there you are!" cried my host, as we both rose; and then turning to
me, "this is my daughter--Calypso. Her real name I assure you--none of
my nonsense--doesn't she look it? Allow me, my dear, to introduce--Mr.
Ulysses!"--for we had not yet exchanged each other's names....
I am a wretched actor, and I am bound to say that she proved herself no
better. For she gave a decided start as she turned those glowing eyes on
me, and the lovely olive of her cheeks glowed as with submerged
rose-colour. Our embarrassment did not escape the father.
"Why you know each other already!" he exclaimed, with natural surprise.
"Not exactly,"--I was grateful for the sudden nerve with which I was
able to hasten to the relief of her lovely distress--"but possibly
Miss--Calypso recalls as naturally as I do, our momentary meeting in
Sweeney's store, one evening. I had no expectation, of course, that we
should meet again under such pleasant circumstances as this."
She gave me a grateful look as she took my hand, and with it--or was it
only my eager imagination?--a shy little pressure, again as of
gratitude.
I had tried to get into my voice my assurance that, of course, I
remembered no other more recent meeting--though, naturally, as she had
given that little start in the doorway, there had flashed on me again
the picture of her standing, moonlit, in another resounding doorway, and
of the wild start she had given then, as the golden pieces streamed from
her lovely surprised mouth, and her lifted hands. And her eyes--I could
have sworn--were the living eyes of Jack Harkaway! Had she a brother, I
wondered. Yet my mind was too dazzled and confused with her nearness to
pursue the speculation.
As we sat down to luncheon, waited upon by the little barelegged black
children--waited on, too, surprisingly well, despite the contortions of
their primitive embarrassment--my host once more resumed his character
of the classic king welcoming the storm-tossed stranger to his board.
"Far wanderer," he said, raising his glass to me, "eat of what our board
affords, welcome without question of name and nation. But if, when the
food and wine have done their genial office, and the weariness of your
journeying has fallen from you, you should feel stirred to tell us
somewhat of yourself and your wanderings, what manner of men call you
kinsman, in what fair land is your home and the place of your loved
ones, be sure that we shall count the tale good hearing, and, for our
part, make exchange in like fashion of ourselves and the passage of our
days in this lonely isle."
We all laughed as he ended--himself with a whinny of laughter. For, odd
as such discourse may sound in the reading, it was uttered so
whimsically, and in so spirited and humorous a style that I assure you
it was very captivating.
"You should have been an actor, my lord Alcinoüs," I said, laughing. I
seemed already curiously at home, seated there at that table with this
fantastic stranger and that being out of fairyland, toward whom I dared
only turn my eyes now and again by stealth. The strange fellow had such
a way with him, and his talk made you feel that he had known you all
your life.
"Ah! I have had my dreams. I have had my dreams!" he answered, his eyes
gazing with a momentary wistfulness across the orange trees.
Then we talked at random, as friendly strangers talk over luncheon,
though we were glad enough that he should do all the talking--wonderful,
iridescent, madcap talk, such as a man here and there in ten thousand,
gifted with perhaps the most attractive of all human gifts, has at his
command.
And, every now and again, my eyes, falling on the paradoxical squalor of
his clothing, would remind me of the enigma of this courtly vagabond;
though--need I say it?--my eyes and my heart had other business than
with him, throughout that wonderful meal, enfolded as I felt myself once
more in that golden cloud of magnetic vitality, which had at first swept
over me, as with a breath of perfumed fire, among the salt pork and the
tinware of Sweeney's store.