A FEW weeks later, coming early one morning into Singapore, from a
journey to the southward, I saw the brig lying at anchor in all her usual
symmetry and splendour of aspect as though she had been taken out of a
glass case and put delicately into the water that very moment.
She was well out in the roadstead, but I steamed in and took up my
habitual berth close in front of the town. Before we had finished
breakfast a quarter-master came to tell me that Captain Allen’s boat was
coming our way.
His smart gig dashed alongside, and in two bounds he was up our
accommodation-ladder and shaking me by the hand with his nervous grip,
his eyes snapping inquisitively, for he supposed I had called at the
Seven Isles group on my way. I reached into my pocket for a nicely
folded little note, which he grabbed out of my hand without ceremony and
carried off on the bridge to read by himself. After a decent interval I
followed him up there, and found him pacing to and fro; for the nature of
his emotions made him restless even in his most thoughtful moments.
He shook his head at me triumphantly.
“Well, my dear boy,” he said, “I shall be counting the days now.”
I understood what he meant. I knew that those young people had settled
already on a runaway match without official preliminaries. This was
really a logical decision. Old Nelson (or Nielsen) would never have
agreed to give up Freya peaceably to this compromising Jasper. Heavens!
What would the Dutch authorities say to such a match! It sounds too
ridiculous for words. But there’s nothing in the world more selfishly
hard than a timorous man in a fright about his “little estate,” as old
Nelson used to call it in apologetic accents. A heart permeated by a
particular sort of funk is proof against sense, feeling, and ridicule.
It’s a flint.
Jasper would have made his request all the same and then taken his own
way; but it was Freya who decided that nothing should be said, on the
ground that, “Papa would only worry himself to distraction.” He was
capable of making himself ill, and then she wouldn’t have the heart to
leave him. Here you have the sanity of feminine outlook and the
frankness of feminine reasoning. And for the rest, Miss Freya could read
“poor dear papa” in the way a woman reads a man—like an open book. His
daughter once gone, old Nelson would not worry himself. He would raise a
great outcry, and make no end of lamentable fuss, but that’s not the same
thing. The real agonies of indecision, the anguish of conflicting
feelings would be spared to him. And as he was too unassuming to rage,
he would, after a period of lamentation, devote himself to his “little
estate,” and to keeping on good terms with the authorities.
Time would do the rest. And Freya thought she could afford to wait,
while ruling over her own home in the beautiful brig and over the man who
loved her. This was the life for her who had learned to walk on a ship’s
deck. She was a ship-child, a sea-girl if ever there was one. And of
course she loved Jasper and trusted him; but there was a shade of anxiety
in her pride. It is very fine and romantic to possess for your very own
a finely tempered and trusty sword-blade, but whether it is the best
weapon to counter with the common cudgel-play of Fate—that’s another
question.
She knew that she had the more substance of the two—you needn’t try any
cheap jokes, I am not talking of their weights. She was just a little
anxious while he was away, and she had me who, being a tried confidant,
took the liberty to whisper frequently “The sooner the better.” But
there was a peculiar vein of obstinacy in Miss Freya, and her reason for
delay was characteristic. “Not before my twenty-first birthday; so that
there shall be no mistake in people’s minds as to me being old enough to
know what I am doing.”
Jasper’s feelings were in such subjection that he had never even
remonstrated against the decree. She was just splendid, whatever she did
or said, and there was an end of it for him. I believe that he was
subtle enough to be even flattered at bottom—at times. And then to
console him he had the brig which seemed pervaded by the spirit of Freya,
since whatever he did on board was always done under the supreme sanction
of his love.
“Yes. I’ll soon begin to count the days,” he repeated. “Eleven months
more. I’ll have to crowd three trips into that.”
“Mind you don’t come to grief trying to do too much,” I admonished him.
But he dismissed my caution with a laugh and an elated gesture. Pooh!
Nothing, nothing could happen to the brig, he cried, as if the flame of
his heart could light up the dark nights of uncharted seas, and the image
of Freya serve for an unerring beacon amongst hidden shoals; as if the
winds had to wait on his future, the stars fight for it in their courses;
as if the magic of his passion had the power to float a ship on a drop of
dew or sail her through the eye of a needle—simply because it was her
magnificent lot to be the servant of a love so full of grace as to make
all the ways of the earth safe, resplendent, and easy.
“I suppose,” I said, after he had finished laughing at my innocent enough
remark, “I suppose you will be off to-day.”
That was what he meant to do. He had not gone at daylight only because
he expected me to come in.
“And only fancy what has happened yesterday,” he went on. “My mate left
me suddenly. Had to. And as there’s nobody to be found at a short
notice I am going to take Schultz with me. The notorious Schultz! Why
don’t you jump out of your skin? I tell you I went and unearthed Schultz
late last evening, after no end of trouble. ‘I am your man, captain,’ he
says, in that wonderful voice of his, ‘but I am sorry to confess I have
practically no clothes to my back. I have had to sell all my wardrobe to
get a little food from day to day.’ What a voice that man has got. Talk
about moving stones! But people seem to get used to it. I had never
seen him before, and, upon my word, I felt suddenly tears rising to my
eyes. Luckily it was dusk. He was sitting very quiet under a tree in a
native compound as thin as a lath, and when I peered down at him all he
had on was an old cotton singlet and a pair of ragged pyjamas. I bought
him six white suits and two pairs of canvas shoes. Can’t clear the ship
without a mate. Must have somebody. I am going on shore presently to
sign him on, and I shall take him with me as I go back on board to get
under way. Now, I am a lunatic—am I not? Mad, of course. Come on! Lay
it on thick. Let yourself go. I like to see you get excited.”
He so evidently expected me to scold that I took especial pleasure in
exaggerating the calmness of my attitude.
“The worst that can be brought up against Schultz,” I began, folding my
arms and speaking dispassionately, “is an awkward habit of stealing the
stores of every ship he has ever been in. He will do it. That’s really
all that’s wrong. I don’t credit absolutely that story Captain Robinson
tells of Schultz conspiring in Chantabun with some ruffians in a Chinese
junk to steal the anchor off the starboard bow of the _Bohemian Girl_
schooner. Robinson’s story is too ingenious altogether. That other tale
of the engineers of the _Nan-Shan_ finding Schultz at midnight in the
engine-room busy hammering at the brass bearings to carry them off for
sale on shore seems to me more authentic. Apart from this little
weakness, let me tell you that Schultz is a smarter sailor than many who
never took a drop of drink in their lives, and perhaps no worse morally
than some men you and I know who have never stolen the value of a penny.
He may not be a desirable person to have on board one’s ship, but since
you have no choice he may be made to do, I believe. The important thing
is to understand his psychology. Don’t give him any money till you have
done with him. Not a cent, if he begs ever so. For as sure as Fate the
moment you give him any money he will begin to steal. Just remember
that.”
I enjoyed Jasper’s incredulous surprise.
“The devil he will!” he cried. “What on earth for? Aren’t you trying to
pull my leg, old boy?”
“No. I’m not. You must understand Schultz’s psychology. He’s neither a
loafer nor a cadger. He’s not likely to wander about looking for
somebody to stand him drinks. But suppose he goes on shore with five
dollars, or fifty for that matter, in his pocket? After the third or
fourth glass he becomes fuddled and charitable. He either drops his
money all over the place, or else distributes the lot around; gives it to
any one who will take it. Then it occurs to him that the night is young
yet, and that he may require a good many more drinks for himself and his
friends before morning. So he starts off cheerfully for his ship. His
legs never get affected nor his head either in the usual way. He gets
aboard and simply grabs the first thing that seems to him suitable—the
cabin lamp, a coil of rope, a bag of biscuits, a drum of oil—and converts
it into money without thinking twice about it. This is the process and
no other. You have only to look out that he doesn’t get a start. That’s
all.”
“Confound his psychology,” muttered Jasper. “But a man with a voice like
his is fit to talk to the angels. Is he incurable do you think?”
I said that I thought so. Nobody had prosecuted him yet, but no one
would employ him any longer. His end would be, I feared, to starve in
some hole or other.
“Ah, well,” reflected Jasper. “The _Bonito_ isn’t trading to any ports
of civilisation. That’ll make it easier for him to keep straight.”
That was true. The brig’s business was on uncivilised coasts, with
obscure rajahs dwelling in nearly unknown bays; with native settlements
up mysterious rivers opening their sombre, forest-lined estuaries among a
welter of pale green reefs and dazzling sand-banks, in lonely straits of
calm blue water all aglitter with sunshine. Alone, far from the beaten
tracks, she glided, all white, round dark, frowning headlands, stole out,
silent like a ghost, from behind points of land stretching out all black
in the moonlight; or lay hove-to, like a sleeping sea-bird, under the
shadow of some nameless mountain waiting for a signal. She would be
glimpsed suddenly on misty, squally days dashing disdainfully aside the
short aggressive waves of the Java Sea; or be seen far, far away, a tiny
dazzling white speck flying across the brooding purple masses of
thunderclouds piled up on the horizon. Sometimes, on the rare mail
tracks, where civilisation brushes against wild mystery, when the naïve
passengers crowding along the rail exclaimed, pointing at her with
interest: “Oh, here’s a yacht!” the Dutch captain, with a hostile glance,
would grunt contemptuously: “Yacht! No! That’s only English Jasper. A
pedlar—”
“A good seaman you say,” ejaculated Jasper, still in the matter of the
hopeless Schultz with the wonderfully touching voice.
“First rate. Ask any one. Quite worth having—only impossible,” I
declared.
“He shall have his chance to reform in the brig,” said Jasper, with a
laugh. “There will be no temptations either to drink or steal where I am
going to this time.”
I didn’t press him for anything more definite on that point. In fact,
intimate as we were, I had a pretty clear notion of the general run of
his business.
But as we are going ashore in his gig he asked suddenly: “By the way, do
you know where Heemskirk is?”
I eyed him covertly, and was reassured. He had asked the question, not
as a lover, but as a trader. I told him that I had heard in Palembang
that the _Neptun_ was on duty down about Flores and Sumbawa. Quite out
of his way. He expressed his satisfaction.
“You know,” he went on, “that fellow, when he gets on the Borneo coast,
amuses himself by knocking down my beacons. I have had to put up a few
to help me in and out of the rivers. Early this year a Celebes trader
becalmed in a prau was watching him at it. He steamed the gunboat full
tilt at two of them, one after another, smashing them to pieces, and then
lowered a boat on purpose to pull out a third, which I had a lot of
trouble six months ago to stick up in the middle of a mudflat for a tide
mark. Did you ever hear of anything more provoking—eh?”
“I wouldn’t quarrel with the beggar,” I observed casually, yet disliking
that piece of news strongly. “It isn’t worth while.”
“I quarrel?” cried Jasper. “I don’t want to quarrel. I don’t want to
hurt a single hair of his ugly head. My dear fellow, when I think of
Freya’s twenty-first birthday, all the world’s my friend, Heemskirk
included. It’s a nasty, spiteful amusement, all the same.”
We parted rather hurriedly on the quay, each of us having his own
pressing business to attend to. I would have been very much cut up had I
known that this hurried grasp of the hand with “So long, old boy. Good
luck to you!” was the last of our partings.
On his return to the Straits I was away, and he was gone again before I
got back. He was trying to achieve three trips before Freya’s
twenty-first birthday. At Nelson’s Cove I missed him again by only a
couple of days. Freya and I talked of “that lunatic” and “perfect idiot”
with great delight and infinite appreciation. She was very radiant, with
a more pronounced gaiety, notwithstanding that she had just parted from
Jasper. But this was to be their last separation.
“Do get aboard as soon as you can, Miss Freya,” I entreated.
She looked me straight in the face, her colour a little heightened and
with a sort of solemn ardour—if there was a little catch in her voice.
“The very next day.”
Ah, yes! The very next day after her twenty-first birthday. I was
pleased at this hint of deep feeling. It was as if she had grown
impatient at last of the self-imposed delay. I supposed that Jasper’s
recent visit had told heavily.
“That’s right,” I said approvingly. “I shall be much easier in my mind
when I know you have taken charge of that lunatic. Don’t you lose a
minute. He, of course, will be on time—unless heavens fall.”
“Yes. Unless—” she repeated in a thoughtful whisper, raising her eyes to
the evening sky without a speck of cloud anywhere. Silent for a time, we
let our eyes wander over the waters below, looking mysteriously still in
the twilight, as if trustfully composed for a long, long dream in the
warm, tropical night. And the peace all round us seemed without limits
and without end.
And then we began again to talk Jasper over in our usual strain. We
agreed that he was too reckless in many ways. Luckily, the brig was
equal to the situation. Nothing apparently was too much for her. A
perfect darling of a ship, said Miss Freya. She and her father had spent
an afternoon on board. Jasper had given them some tea. Papa was grumpy.
. . . I had a vision of old Nelson under the brig’s snowy awnings,
nursing his unassuming vexation, and fanning himself with his hat. A
comedy father. . . . As a new instance of Jasper’s lunacy, I was told
that he was distressed at his inability to have solid silver handles
fitted to all the cabin doors. “As if I would have let him!” commented
Miss Freya, with amused indignation. Incidentally, I learned also that
Schultz, the nautical kleptomaniac with the pathetic voice, was still
hanging on to his job, with Miss Freya’s approval. Jasper had confided
to the lady of his heart his purpose of straightening out the fellow’s
psychology. Yes, indeed. All the world was his friend because it
breathed the same air with Freya.
Somehow or other, I brought Heemskirk’s name into conversation, and, to
my great surprise, startled Miss Freya. Her eyes expressed something
like distress, while she bit her lip as if to contain an explosion of
laughter. Oh! Yes. Heemskirk was at the bungalow at the same time with
Jasper, but he arrived the day after. He left the same day as the brig,
but a few hours later.
“What a nuisance he must have been to you two,” I said feelingly.
Her eyes flashed at me a sort of frightened merriment, and suddenly she
exploded into a clear burst of laughter. “Ha, ha, ha!”
I echoed it heartily, but not with the game charming tone: “Ha, ha, ha!
. . . Isn’t he grotesque? Ha, ha, ha!” And the ludicrousness of old
Nelson’s inanely fierce round eyes in association with his conciliatory
manner to the lieutenant presenting itself to my mind brought on another
fit.
“He looks,” I spluttered, “he looks—Ha, ha, ha!—amongst you three . . .
like an unhappy black-beetle. Ha, ha, ha!”
She gave out another ringing peal, ran off into her own room, and slammed
the door behind her, leaving me profoundly astounded. I stopped laughing
at once.
“What’s the joke?” asked old Nelson’s voice, half way down the steps.
He came up, sat down, and blew out his cheeks, looking inexpressibly
fatuous. But I didn’t want to laugh any more. And what on earth, I
asked myself, have we been laughing at in this uncontrollable fashion. I
felt suddenly depressed.
Oh, yes. Freya had started it. The girl’s overwrought, I thought. And
really one couldn’t wonder at it.
I had no answer to old Nelson’s question, but he was too aggrieved at
Jasper’s visit to think of anything else. He as good as asked me whether
I wouldn’t undertake to hint to Jasper that he was not wanted at the
Seven Isles group. I declared that it was not necessary. From certain
circumstances which had come to my knowledge lately, I had reason to
think that he would not be much troubled by Jasper Allen in the future.
He emitted an earnest “Thank God!” which nearly set me laughing again,
but he did not brighten up proportionately. It seemed Heemskirk had
taken special pains to make himself disagreeable. The lieutenant had
frightened old Nelson very much by expressing a sinister wonder at the
Government permitting a white man to settle down in that part at all.
“It is against our declared policy,” he had remarked. He had also
charged him with being in reality no better than an Englishman. He had
even tried to pick a quarrel with him for not learning to speak Dutch.
“I told him I was too old to learn now,” sighed out old Nelson (or
Nielsen) dismally. “He said I ought to have learned Dutch long before.
I had been making my living in Dutch dependencies. It was disgraceful of
me not to speak Dutch, he said. He was as savage with me as if I had
been a Chinaman.”
It was plain he had been viciously badgered. He did not mention how many
bottles of his best claret he had offered up on the altar of
conciliation. It must have been a generous libation. But old Nelson (or
Nielsen) was really hospitable. He didn’t mind that; and I only
regretted that this virtue should be lavished on the lieutenant-commander
of the _Neptun_. I longed to tell him that in all probability he would
be relieved from Heemskirk’s visitations also. I did not do so only from
the fear (absurd, I admit) of arousing some sort of suspicion in his
mind. As if with this guileless comedy father such a thing were
possible!
Strangely enough, the last words on the subject of Heemskirk were spoken
by Freya, and in that very sense. The lieutenant was turning up
persistently in old Nelson’s conversation at dinner. At last I muttered
a half audible “Damn the lieutenant.” I could see that the girl was
getting exasperated, too.
“And he wasn’t well at all—was he, Freya?” old Nelson went on moaning.
“Perhaps it was that which made him so snappish, hey, Freya? He looked
very bad when he left us so suddenly. His liver must be in a bad state,
too.”
“Oh, he will end by getting over it,” said Freya impatiently. “And do
leave off worrying about him, papa. Very likely you won’t see much of
him for a long time to come.”
The look she gave me in exchange for my discreet smile had no hidden
mirth in it. Her eyes seemed hollowed, her face gone wan in a couple of
hours. We had been laughing too much. Overwrought! Overwrought by the
approach of the decisive moment. After all, sincere, courageous, and
self-reliant as she was, she must have felt both the passion and the
compunction of her resolve. The very strength of love which had carried
her up to that point must have put her under a great moral strain, in
which there might have been a little simple remorse, too. For she was
honest—and there, across the table, sat poor old Nelson (or Nielsen)
staring at her, round-eyed and so pathetically comic in his fierce aspect
as to touch the most lightsome heart.
He retired early to his room to soothe himself for a night’s rest by
perusing his account-books. We two remained on the verandah for another
hour or so, but we exchanged only languid phrases on things without
importance, as though we had been emotionally jaded by our long day’s
talk on the only momentous subject. And yet there was something she
might have told a friend. But she didn’t. We parted silently. She
distrusted my masculine lack of common sense, perhaps. . . . O! Freya!
Going down the precipitous path to the landing-stage, I was confronted in
the shadows of boulders and bushes by a draped feminine figure whose
appearance startled me at first. It glided into my way suddenly from
behind a piece of rock. But in a moment it occurred to me that it could
be no one else but Freya’s maid, a half-caste Malacca Portuguese. One
caught fleeting glimpses of her olive face and dazzling white teeth about
the house. I had observed her at times from a distance, as she sat
within call under the shade of some fruit trees, brushing and plaiting
her long raven locks. It seemed to be the principal occupation of her
leisure hours. We had often exchanged nods and smiles—and a few words,
too. She was a pretty creature. And once I had watched her approvingly
make funny and expressive grimaces behind Heemskirk’s back. I understood
(from Jasper) that she was in the secret, like a comedy camerista. She
was to accompany Freya on her irregular way to matrimony and “ever after”
happiness. Why should she be roaming by night near the cove—unless on
some love affair of her own—I asked myself. But there was nobody
suitable within the Seven Isles group, as far as I knew. It flashed upon
me that it was myself she had been lying in wait for.
She hesitated, muffled from head to foot, shadowy and bashful. I
advanced another pace, and how I felt is nobody’s business.
“What is it?” I asked, very low.
“Nobody knows I am here,” she whispered.
“And nobody can see us,” I whispered back.
The murmur of words “I’ve been so frightened” reached me. Just then
forty feet above our head, from the yet lighted verandah, unexpected and
startling, Freya’s voice rang out in a clear, imperious call:
“Antonia!”
With a stifled exclamation, the hesitating girl vanished out of the path.
A bush near by rustled; then silence. I waited wondering. The lights on
the verandah went out. I waited a while longer then continued down the
path to my boat, wondering more than ever.
I remember the occurrences of that visit especially, because this was the
last time I saw the Nelson bungalow. On arriving at the Straits I found
cable messages which made it necessary for me to throw up my employment
at a moment’s notice and go home at once. I had a desperate scramble to
catch the mailboat which was due to leave next day, but I found time to
write two short notes, one to Freya, the other to Jasper. Later on I
wrote at length, this time to Allen alone. I got no answer. I hunted up
then his brother, or, rather, half-brother, a solicitor in the city, a
sallow, calm, little man who looked at me over his spectacles
thoughtfully.
Jasper was the only child of his father’s second marriage, a transaction
which had failed to commend itself to the first, grown-up family.
“You haven’t heard for ages,” I repeated, with secret annoyance. “May I
ask what ‘for ages’ means in this connection?”
“It means that I don’t care whether I ever hear from him or not,”
retorted the little man of law, turning nasty suddenly.
I could not blame Jasper for not wasting his time in correspondence with
such an outrageous relative. But why didn’t he write to me—a decent sort
of friend, after all; enough of a friend to find for his silence the
excuse of forgetfulness natural to a state of transcendental bliss? I
waited indulgently, but nothing ever came. And the East seemed to drop
out of my life without an echo, like a stone falling into a well of
prodigious depth.