_In Which the "King" Imprisons Me with Some Old Books and Pictures._
Nothing further transpired that day, and, at nightfall, we brought the
crew of the _Flamingo_ up to the house--all but two of them, whom we
left on guard. Two out of six was rather more than we had bargained for,
but we found that none of them had the courage to face the night there
in that dismal swamp alone--and we couldn't blame them, for a more
devil-haunted desolation could not be imagined even in the daylight, and
the mere thought of what might go on there after dark was enough to
uncurl the wool on the head of the bravest negro. And we agreed, too,
that the watch should be changed nightly, a fresh pair going on duty
each evening.
Then there was nothing to do but sit down and await events--amongst
them, the coming of Charlie Webster.
In regard to this, we had decided that it would be as well that, instead
of disembarking at the settlement, he should come and join the
_Flamingo_ in the hidden creek; so Samson was once more despatched down
to Sweeney with a letter for him to hand to Charlie on his arrival,
giving him direction how to find us. Meanwhile, our two men on the
_Flamingo_ could keep watch for him by day, and have a light burning for
him at the entrance of the creek by night.
The "King's" instructions to me were that I was not to show my nose
outside the house. Possibly I might expose the tip of it once in a
while, for a little exercise in the garden--where all this time the
little silver fountain went on playing amid the golden hush of the
orange trees, filling the lotus flowers with big pearls of spray. But,
most of the day, I must regard myself as a prisoner, with the entire
freedom of his study--a large airy room on the second floor, well
furnished with all manner of books, old prints, strange fishes in glass
cases, rods, guns, pipe-racks, curiosities of every kind from various
parts of the world--India, the South Seas, Australia, not forgetting
London and Paris--and all the flotsam and jetsam of a far-wandered man,
who--as the "King" remarked, introducing their autobiographic display
with a comprehensive wave of his hand--had, like that other wanderer
unbeloved of all schoolboys, the pious Æneas, been so much tossed about
on land and sea--_vi superum, sævæ memorem Junonis ob iram_--that he
might found his city and bring safe his household gods from Latium.
Touching his hand lightly on a row of old quartos, in the stout calfskin
and tarnished gold dear to bookmen, he said:
"These I recommend to you in your enforced leisure."
They were a collection of old French voyages--Dampier and
others--embellished with copper-plate maps and quaint engravings of the
fauna and flora of the world, still in all the romantic virginity of its
first discovery.
"This," he said, pointing to a stout old jar of Devonshire ware, "is
some excellent English tobacco--my one extravagance; and here," pointing
to a pipe-rack, "are some well-tried friends from that same 'dear, dear
land,' 'sceptred isle of kings,' and so forth. And now I am going to
leave you, while I go with Samson and Erebus on a little reconnoitring
tour around our domains."
So he left me, and I settled down to a pipe and a volume of Dampier;
but, interesting as I found the sturdy old pages, my thoughts, and
perhaps particularly my heart, were too much in the present for my
attention long to be held by even so adventurous a past; so, laying the
book down, I rose from my chair, and made a tour of inspection of the
various eloquent objects about the room--objects which made a sort of
chronicle in bric-à-brac of my fantastic friend's earthly pilgrimage,
and here and there seemed to hint at the story of his strange soul.
Among the books, for example, was a fine copy of Homer, with the arms of
a well-known English college stamped on the binding, and near by was the
faded photograph of a beautiful old Elizabethan house, with mouldering
garden walls, and a moat brimming with water-lilies surrounding it.
Hanging close by it, was another faded photograph, of a tall stately old
lady, who, at a glance, I surmised must be the "King's" mother. As I
looked at it, my eyes involuntarily sought the garden with its palms and
its orange trees. Far indeed had the son of her heart wandered, like so
many sons of stately English mothers, from that lilied moat and those
old gables, and the proud old eyes that would look on her son no more
forever.
And then in my privileged inspection of these sacred symbols, carried
across so many storm-tossed seas from that far-away Latium, I came upon
another photograph, hanging over the writing-desk--a tall,
Spanish-looking young woman of remarkable beauty. It needed but one
glance to realise that here was Calypso's mother; and, as was natural,
I stood a long time scanning the countenance that was so like the face
which, from my first sight of it, had seemed the loveliest in the world.
This was a flower that had been the mother of a flower. It was a face
more primitive in its beauty, a little less touched with race, than the
one I loved, but the same fearless natural nobility was in it, and the
figure had the same wild grace of pose, the same lithe strength of
carriage.
As I stood looking at it, lost in thought, I heard the "King's" voice
behind me. His step was so light that I had not heard him enter the
room.
"You are looking at Calypso's mother!" he said. "She was a beautiful
creature. I will tell you of her some day, Ulysses."
And indeed, that very night, as we sat over our pipes, he told me; and
without a word of his, I knew that the loneliness of his heart had
singled me out for his friend, since, for all his love of speech, he was
not the man to speak easily of the deep things of his heart.
"Beauty is a very mysterious thing, friend Ulysses," he began, his eyes
musing on the face above his desk, "as our old friends of the Siege of
Troy knew all too well. The eternal Helen! And in nothing is the
divinity of youth so clearly shown as in its worship of beauty, its
faith that there is nothing the world holds--the power and the glory,
the riches and the honours--nothing so well worth fighting for as a
beautiful face. When the world was young, the whole world thought that
too. Now we make ignoble war for markets, but the Greeks made nobler
warfare--for a beautiful face--
"The face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.
"So is it still with every young man. 'Fair Helen! make me immortal with
a kiss' is still his cry. Titles and broad lands, and all such earthly
gear--what are these to a youth, with his eyes on the face of the
eternal Helen?--that face we meet once and once only, and either win--to
lose all the rest, or lose--and win what? What is there to win if that
be lost? So, at all events, it was with me, who, after winging away from
those old gables yonder on all the adventurous winds of the seven seas,
and having in truth looked into many a fair face in every corner of the
globe, suddenly, in a certain little island of the French West Indies,
came upon the face I had been unconsciously seeking.
"So, long years before my coming, had it befallen also with a certain
young French nobleman, out there on military service, who had set eyes
on Calypso's grandmother in the streets of that quaint little town,
where the French soul seems almost more at home than in France itself.
All had seemed nothing to him--his ancestral ties, his brilliant
future--compared with that glory of a woman. He married her and settled
down for good, the world well lost, in that dream island. And the dream
he had been faithful to remained faithful to him. He seems to have been
a singularly happy man. I never saw him, for he was dead when I set foot
on his island--destined, though I knew it not, to live his life again in
the love of his daughter.
"She and her mother were living quietly on the small fortune he had left
them, in an old palm-shaded house backed by purple mountains, and sung
to by the sea. The soul of old France seemed to haunt that old house
like a perfume, taking on a richer colour and drawing a more ardent life
from the passionate tropic soul that enfolded it. Both had mysteriously
met and become visibly embodied in the lovely girl, in whose veins the
best blood of France blended with the molten gold of tropic suns. So, as
had happened with her mother, again it happened with her--she took the
wandering man to her heart"--he paused--"held him there for some happy
years"--he paused again--"and the rest is--Calypso."
We did not speak for a long time after he had ended, but his confidence
had touched me so nearly that I felt I owed him my heart in exchange,
and it was hard not to cry out: "And now I love Calypso. Once more the
far-wandered man has found the great light on a lonely shore."
But I felt that to speak yet--believer in the miracle of love though he
had declared himself to be--would seem as though I set too slight a
value on the miracle itself.
There should be a long hush before we speak, when a star has fallen out
of heaven into our hearts.