than he expected to be. He was now engaged in growing a beard,
and freed from any obligation to convert his housemates he found
their society very agreeable. The great-grandmother was especially
good company. She was a celebrated story-teller, and when she had
exhausted her stock of scandals about everyone in the village she
fell back upon legends and fairy-tales. Mr. Fortune was interested
to find that many of these were almost word for word the stories of
the Old Testament. One hot afternoon as they sat bathing their legs
in a pool and waving away the flies from each other, she recounted
the story of Joseph and his Brethren. Joseph was called Kila and
was carried to the land of Egypt in a canoe, but all the familiar
characters were there, all the familiar incidents, even to where Kila
turned away from the brothers he was threatening, to hide the tears
which he could no longer keep back. The only variation was in the
character of Isaac, who had changed his sex and split into Joseph’s
mother and aunt. But in truth the change made little difference, nor
did it detract from the dignity of the story, for in spite of our
English prejudice there is nothing inherently ridiculous about a
mother’s sister. Mr. Fortune was not perturbed to hear the history
of the Jews from the lips of a wrinkled and engraved old Polynesian
harridan. He reflected that everywhere mankind is subject to the
same anxious burden of love and loneliness, and must in self-defence
enchant their cares into a story and a dream. In return for Joseph
and his Brethren he told the old dame of the adventures of Mr.
Pickwick, many of which were new to her.
But while Mr. Fortune was getting on so nicely Lueli was very
unhappy. His playmates had soon found out his misfortune. They teased
him, saying that he had lost his god and would soon go to Hell. Every
day the boy grew more dispirited. He shunned his fellows and went
slinking off to hide himself in the woods, where he could mope in
peace and quiet. Late in the evening he would creep back, smelling of
damp forest earth and wild spices; and without a word he would lie
down on his mat and fall into a dreary slumber.
One day Teioa remarked to Mr. Fortune: “That boy has lost his god. I
expect he will die soon.”
“What nonsense!” shouted Mr. Fortune in a loud rude voice. He felt
too suddenly sick to choose his words. He remembered what he had once
read in a book about the Polynesians: that they can renounce life at
their own will, not with the splash of suicide but slowly, sullenly,
deliberately, driving death into themselves like a wedge. Was Lueli
doing this--gay, inconsequent, casual Lueli? But since the loss of
his god Lueli was gay no longer, and his casualness had taken on a
new and terrible aspect, as though it were the casualness of one who
could not be bothered to live, who was discarding life as naturally
and callously as he had picked flowers and thrown them down to die.
Just then a troop of boys and girls danced by. They were dancing
after Lueli and pelting him with small glittering fishes. “Catch!”
they cried, “Here’s a god for you, Lueli. Catch him!”
Lueli walked on as if he hadn’t noticed them. He looked down and
saw one of the fish lying at his feet. Like an animal he picked it
up and began eating it, but he ate inattentively, without appetite.
He was like a sick dog that snatches listlessly at a tuft of grass.
Mr. Fortune stepped out from the verandah. His intention had been to
drive the dancers away, but instead of that he put his arm through
Lueli’s and began walking him down to the beach.
“Let us bathe together,” he said. “It is a long time since you gave
me a swimming lesson.”
Lueli swam so beautifully that it was hard to believe he was not
happy. Mr. Fortune surpassed himself in flounderings. He tried to
catch a fish in his mouth.
When they were sitting on the beach again he said: “Where shall we
live when we leave Teioa’s house? Shall we make a new hut or shall
we build up our old one again?”
“Go back to the old,” Lueli replied instantly in a soft fearful
whisper.
“Yes, I think so too. Our own bathing-pool is much the best.”
“Yes. It’s deeper than the one here.”
“I think the fish are tamer, too.”
“Yes.”
“I was wondering if we couldn’t make a small wickerwork bower on
a pole and teach the parrots to sleep in it. In England people do
so, only the birds are doves, not parrots. Perhaps you remember me
telling you about our doves and pigeons?”
“They take messages.”
“Yes, those are carrier pigeons. There are also pouters and fantails
and tumbling pigeons that turn head over heels in the air. But
parrots would be very nice too. You could feed them.”
“Won’t they be able to feed themselves?”
“Oh, yes, certainly. But they would be more apt to stay with us if we
fed them.”
“Must they stay?”
“Now am I diverting him from his grief”--thought Mr. Fortune, “or am
I only boring him?”
The new hut that rose on the place of the old had a faint whiff
of burning. Mr. Fortune had superintended the building of it and
because the islanders were fond of him they allowed him to introduce
several novelties, such as window-boxes and a kitchen dresser. He
also threw out a bay. The parrot-cote stood in a corner of the lawn
and leading up to it was a narrow serpentining path with crazy paving
made out of flat shells. On the other side of the house to balance
the parrot-cote was a pergola, constructed in bamboo. In front of
the house, in fact exactly where it always had been, but uprooted by
the earthquake, was the flat stone on which he had celebrated Holy
Communion on that first Sunday morning. He looked at it a little
sadly. He bore it no malice, although it reminded him of a special
kind of happiness which he could taste no more. He decided that he
would make it the head-stone of a rock-garden.
Mr. Fortune attached special importance to these European refinements
because he felt that to the eyes of the world he must now present
such an un-European appearance. The earthquake had left him nothing
save the clothes he stood up in, the contents of his pockets and a
good-sized rubbish-heap. As for the rubbish-heap, he had with his
own hands grubbed a large hole among the bushes and buried therein
the bones of the harmonium, lamp, sewing-machine, etc., also the
molten images of the communion plate and the tea-pot. He had done
this by night, working by moonlight in the approved fashion of those
who have a past to put away, and when he had covered in the hole and
stamped down the earth he went back and forth from the ruins to the
bushes, scooping up the ashes in a gourd and scattering them in the
undergrowth.
His clothes he had folded and put away, thinking that as they were
all he had, he had better save them up for future emergencies, such
as a shipwreck, a visit of American tourists, the arrival of a new
missionary or somebody dropping in from a flying-machine. In their
stead he wore a kilt and a mantle of native cloth, soberly contrived
without any fringes or fandangos, and sandals of plaited bark.
Since this new garb was pocketless, the contents of his pockets
were ranged on the shelf of honour of the kitchen dresser--a pocket
magnifying glass, a whistle, a nail-file, a graduated medicine spoon,
a flint-and-steel lighter, a copper medal commemorating Parnell
which Henry Martin had brought from Ireland as a curiosity, nineteen
mother-of-pearl counters in a wash-leather bag, a pencil-sharpener
blunted by sand getting into it, a tape-measure that sprang back into
a boxwood nut, several buttons, a silver pencil-case with no pencil
and a small magnet, painted scarlet. There was also the knife with
two blades, but this he carried on a string round his neck.
He looked on this array without sentiment. The parrot-cote and
the pergola were also without charms for him. His intentions were
severely practical. These things were all part of his designs on
Lueli, they were so many fish-hooks to draw him from despair. Not by
their proper qualities, of course, Mr. Fortune was not so simple as
to expect that, even of the magnet. But indirectly they would build
up around their owner and designer a compelling spiritual splendour,
a glamour of mysterious attributes, fastidious living and foreign
parts. After three years of such familiarity it would not be easy to
re-construct his first fascination as something rich and strange. But
it must be done if he were to compete successfully with his rival in
Lueli’s affections. It must be done because that rival was death.
He thought as little as he could help about his progress in this
contest. He dared not allow himself to be elated when he seemed to be
gaining a little, he dared not admit the possibility of failure. He
fought with his eyes turned away from the face of the adversary, like
Perseus attacking the Gorgon. He fought by inches, by half-hours;
he dared not attempt a decisive victory for he could not risk a
decisive defeat. And when he crept out of the hut at night to refresh
himself with solitude and darkness, the sullen red light kindling and
wavering above the blackness of the crags betokened to him that his
enemy was also awake and weaving his powerful spells of annihilation.
He had no time to think of his own loss. He was entirely
taken up with solicitude for Lueli, a soul no longer--as he
supposed--immortal, and for that reason a charge upon him all the
more urgent, as one is more concerned for a humming-bird than for
a tortoise. Only at such times as when he had received a serious
set-back or was feeling especially desperate did he find himself on
the point of taking refuge in prayer; and then remembering the real
state of things he would feel exactly like a person who makes to cast
himself down on a chair but recalls just in time (or maybe just too
late) how all the furniture has been moved, and that the chair is no
longer in its old place.
It was sometimes hard for him with his English prejudices not to grow
irritated at Lueli’s abject listlessness and misery. He could not
have believed that his friend could be so chicken-hearted. And since
when one is down everything falls on one, circumstances seemed to
conspire in twitting and outraging the luckless youth.
Mr. Fortune thought he would try games. Lueli was agile and
dexterous, surely it would comfort him to exhibit those qualities?
Mr. Fortune introduced him to ping-pong. They played with basket-work
bats and small nuts. On the second day a nut hit Lueli and made his
nose bleed. He turned green, cast down his bat and began to whimper.
Since ping-pong was too rough, what about spellikins? He carved a set
of pieces out of splinters, dyed them with fruit juice to make them
look more appetising, and made a great show of excitement to tempt
the other on. Whenever it was Lueli’s turn to hook a piece from the
tangle he sighed and groaned as though he had been requested to move
mountains. Dicing and skittles were no better received.
Deciding that neither games nor gaming (they diced for the
mother-of-pearl counters) were likely to rouse Lueli from his
dejection, Mr. Fortune cast about for some new expedient. Perhaps a
pet animal might have charms? He caught a baby flying-fox and reared
it with great tenderness on guavas and coco-milk. The flying-fox soon
grew extremely attached to him and learnt to put its head out of the
cage when he called “Tibby!” But whenever Lueli could be induced to
take any interest in it and to prod it up with a cautious finger, it
scratched and bit him. Still persevering with natural history, Mr.
Fortune spat on the magnifying glass, polished it, and began to show
off the wonderful details of flowers, mosses, and water-fleas. Lueli
would look, and look away again, obediently and haplessly bored.
Though the idea of such cold and rapacious blood-thirstiness was
highly repugnant to him, he resolved to sacrifice his own feelings
(and theirs) and make a moth collection. He prepared a mess of
honey and water and took Lueli out that evening on an expedition to
lime the trees. Two hours later they went out again with a string
of candle-nuts for a lantern and collected a quantity of moths and
nocturnal insects, poignantly beautiful and battered with their
struggles to escape. But he stifled his sense of shame, all the more
in that Lueli seemed inclined to rise to this lure, of his own accord
suggesting a second expedition. He had not quite grasped the theory,
however. Two days later Mr. Fortune, returning from an errand in the
village, was surprised to hear a loud and furious buzzing proceeding
from the dell. It was full of wild bees, and Lueli, very swollen
and terrified, came crawling out of the bushes. He had smeared the
parrot-cote and the posts of the verandah with honey and it seemed as
though every bee and wasp on the island were assembled together to
quarrel and gorge themselves. It was not possible to approach the hut
until after nightfall, and drunk and disorderly bees hovered about it
for days, not to speak of a sediment of ants.
Worse was to come. Since his arrival on the island Mr. Fortune had
never ailed. But now, whether by exposure to night dews and getting
his feet damp out mothing or by some special malignity of Fate, he
found himself feeling sore at the back of the throat and sneezing;
and presently he had developed a streaming cold. Lueli caught it from
him and if his cold were bad, Lueli’s was ten times worse. He made
no effort to struggle against it; indeed, he was so overwhelmed that
struggling was practically out of the question. He crouched on his
mats, snorting and groaning, with a face all chapped and bloated,
blear eyes, a hanging jaw, and a sullen and unhealthy appetite; and
every five minutes or so he sneezed as though he would bring the roof
down.
Mr. Fortune was terrified, not only for Lueli, but for the whole
population of the island. He knew how direly European diseases can
rampage through a new field. He set up a rigid quarantine. Since
the loss of his God Lueli had been at pains to avoid his friends,
but naturally he was now seized with a passionate craving for their
society; and there was some excuse for him as Mr. Fortune was not
just now very exhilarating company. But he did his best to be, in
spite of an ear-ache which followed the cold, and between Lueli’s
paroxysms of sneezing he strove to cheer him with accounts of the
Great Plague and the Brave Men of Eyam.
At last they were both recovered. But though restored in body Lueli
was as mopish as ever. Mr. Fortune went on bracing, and beat his
brains for some new distraction. But he had lost ground in this last
encounter, and the utmost he could congratulate himself upon was that
Lueli was still, however indifferently or unwillingly, consenting to
exist. The worst of it was that he couldn’t allow himself to show any
sympathy. There were times when he could scarcely hold himself back
from pity and condolence. But he believed that if he were once to
acknowledge the other’s grief he would lose his greatest hold over
him--his title of being someone superior, august and exemplary.
And then one morning when they had been living in the new hut for
about six weeks he woke up inspired. Why had he wasted so much time
displaying his most trivial and uncompelling charms, opposing to
the magnetism of death such fripperies and titbits of this world,
such gewgaws of civilization as a path serpentining to a parrot-cote
(a parrot-cote which hadn’t even allured the parrots), or a pocket
magnifying glass, while all the time he carried within him the
inestimable treasures of intellectual enjoyment? Now he would pipe
Lueli a tune worth dancing to, now he would open for him a new world.
He would teach him mathematics.
He sprang up from bed, full of enthusiasm. At the thought of all
those stretches of white beach he was like a bridegroom. There they
were, hard and smooth from the tread of the sea, waiting for that
noble consummation of blank surfaces, to show forth a truth; waiting,
in this particular instance, to show forth the elements of plane
geometry.
At breakfast Mr. Fortune was so glorified and gay that Lueli caught
a reflection of his high spirits and began to look more life-like
than he had done for weeks. On their way down to the beach they met a
party of islanders who were off on a picnic. Mr. Fortune with delight
heard Lueli answering their greetings with something like his former
sociability, and even plucking up heart enough for a repartee. His
delight gave a momentary stagger when Lueli decided to go a-picnicing
too. But, after all, it didn’t matter a pin. The beach would be as
smooth again to-morrow, the air as sweet and nimble; Lueli would be
in better trim for learning after a spree, and, now he came to think
of it, he himself wouldn’t teach any the worse for a little private
rubbing-up beforehand.
It must be going on for forty years since he had done any
mathematics; for he had gone into the Bank the same year that his
father died, leaving Rugby at seventeen because, in the state that
things were then in, the Bank was too good an opening to be missed.
He had once got a prize--The Poetical Works of Longfellow--for
Algebra, and he had scrambled along well enough in other branches
of mathematics; but he had not learnt with any particular thrill or
realized that thrill there might be until he was in the Bank, and
learning a thing of the past.
Then, perhaps because of that never-ending entering and adding up
and striking balances, and turning on to the next page to enter, add
up and strike balances again, a mental occupation minute, immediate
and yet, so to speak, wool-gathering, as he imagined knitting to
be, the absolute quality of mathematics began to take on for him an
inexpressibly romantic air. “Pure Mathematics.” He used to speak of
them to his fellow clerks as though he were hinting at some kind
of transcendental debauchery of which he had been made free--and
indeed there does seem to be a kind of unnatural vice in being so
completely pure. After a spell of this holy boasting he would grow a
little uneasy; and going to the Free Library he took out mathematical
treatises, just to make sure that he could follow step by step as
well as soar. For twenty pages perhaps, he read slowly, carefully,
dutifully, with pauses for self-examination and working out the
examples. Then, just as it was working up and the pauses should
have been more scrupulous than ever, a kind of swoon and ecstasy
would fall on him, and he read ravening on, sitting up till dawn to
finish the book, as though it were a novel. After that his passion
was stayed; the book went back to the Library and he was done with
mathematics till the next bout. Not much remained with him after
these orgies, but something remained: a sensation in the mind, a
worshipping acknowledgment of something isolated and unassailable, or
a remembered mental joy at the rightness of thoughts coming together
to a conclusion, accurate thoughts, thoughts in just intonation,
coming together like unaccompanied voices coming to a close.
But often his pleasure flowered from quite simple things that any
fool could grasp. For instance he would look out of the bank
windows, which had green shades in their lower halves; and rising
above the green shades he would see a row of triangles, equilateral,
isosceles, acute-angled, right-angled, obtuse-angled. These triangles
were a range of dazzling mountain peaks, eternally snowy, eternally
untrodden; and he could feel the keen wind which blew from their
summits. Yet they were also a row of triangles, equilateral,
isosceles, acute-angled, right-angled, obtuse-angled.
This was the sort of thing he designed for Lueli’s comfort. Geometry
would be much better than algebra, though he had not the same
certificate from Longfellow for teaching it. Algebra is always
dancing over the pit of the unknown, and he had no wish to direct
Lueli’s thoughts to that quarter. Geometry would be best to begin
with, plain plane geometry, immutably plane. Surely if anything could
minister to the mind diseased it would be the steadfast contemplation
of a right angle, an existence that no mist of human tears could
blur, no blow of fate deflect.
Walking up and down the beach, admiring the surface which to-morrow
with so much epiphany and glory was going to reveal the first axioms
of Euclid, Mr. Fortune began to think of himself as possessing an
universal elixir and charm. A wave of missionary ardour swept him
along and he seemed to view, not Lueli only, but all the islanders
rejoicing in this new dispensation. There was beach-board enough
for all and to spare. The picture grew in his mind’s eye, somewhat
indebted to Raphael’s Cartoon of the School of Athens. Here a
group bent over an equation, there they pointed out to each other
with admiration that the square on the hypotenuse equalled the sum
of the squares on the sides containing the right angle; here was
one delighting in a rhomboid and another in conic sections, that
enraptured figure had secured the twelfth root of two, while the
children might be filling up the foreground with a little long
division.
By the morrow he had slept off most of his fervour. Calm, methodical,
with a mind prepared for the onset, he guided Lueli down to the beach
and with a stick prodded a small hole in it.
“What is this?”
“A hole.”
“No, Lueli, it may seem like a hole, but it is a point.”
Perhaps he had prodded a little too emphatically. Lueli’s mistake was
quite natural. Anyhow, there were bound to be a few misunderstandings
at the start.
He took out his pocket knife and whittled the end of the stick. Then
he tried again.
“What is this?”
“A smaller hole.”
“Point,” said Mr. Fortune suggestively.
“Yes, I mean a smaller point.”
“No, not quite. It is a point, but it is not smaller. Holes may be
of different sizes, but no point is larger or smaller than another
point.”
Lueli looked from the first point to the second. He seemed to be
about to speak, but to think better of it. He removed his gaze to the
sea.
Meanwhile, Mr. Fortune had moved about, prodding more points. It was
rather awkward that he should have to walk on the beach-board, for
his footmarks distracted the eye from the demonstration.
“Look, Lueli!”
Lueli turned his gaze inland.
“Where?” said he.
“At all these. Here; and here; and here. But don’t tread on them.”
Lueli stepped back hastily. When he was well out of the danger-zone
he stood looking at Mr. Fortune with great attention and some
uneasiness.
“These are all points.”
Lueli recoiled a step further. Standing on one leg he furtively
inspected the sole of his foot.
“As you see, Lueli, these points are in different places. This one is
to the west of that and consequently that one is to the east of this.
Here is one to the south. Here are two close together, and there is
one quite apart from all the others. Now look at them, remember what
I have said, think carefully and tell me what you think.”
Inclining his head and screwing up his eyes Lueli inspected the
demonstration with an air of painstaking connoisseurship. At length
he ventured the opinion that the hole lying apart from the others was
perhaps the neatest. But if Mr. Fortune would give him the knife he
would whittle the stick even finer.
“Now what did I tell you? Have you forgotten that points cannot
be larger or smaller? If they were holes it would be a different
matter. But these are points. Will you remember that?”
Lueli nodded. He parted his lips, he was about to ask a question. Mr.
Fortune went on hastily.
“Now suppose I were to cover the whole beach with these: what then?”
A look of dismay came over Lueli’s countenance. Mr. Fortune withdrew
the hypothesis.
“I don’t intend to. I only ask you to imagine what it would be like
if I did.”
The look of dismay deepened.
“They would all be points,” said Mr. Fortune, impressively. “All in
different places. And none larger or smaller than another.
“What I have explained to you is summed up in the axiom: a point has
position but not magnitude. In other words if a given point were not
in a given place it would not be there at all.”
Whilst allowing time for this to sink in he began to muse about those
other words. Were they quite what he meant? Did they indeed mean
anything? Perhaps it would have been better not to try to supplement
Euclid. He turned to his pupil. The last words had sunk in at any
rate, had been received without scruple and acted upon. Lueli was out
of sight.
Compared with his intentions actuality had been a little quelling.
It became more quelling as time went on. Lueli did not again remove
himself without leave; he soon discovered that Mr. Fortune was
extremely in earnest, and was resigned to regular instruction every
morning and a good deal of rubbing-in and evocation during the rest
of the day. No one ever had a finer capacity for listening than
he, or a more docile and obliging temperament. But whereas in the
old days these good gifts had flowed from him spontaneously and
pleasurably he now seemed to be exhibiting them by rote and in a
manner almost desperate, as though he were listening and obliging as
a circus animal does its tricks. Humane visitors to circuses often
point out with what alacrity the beasts run into the ring to perform
their turn. They do not understand that in the choice of two evils
most animals would rather flourish round a spacious ring than be
shut up in a cage. The activity and the task is a distraction from
their unnatural lot, and they tear through paper hoops all the better
because so much of their time is spent behind iron bars.