The Narrow Corner Read online

  The others continued their tour of the estate.

  xxi

  WHEN they came in they found Erik sitting alone with Swan. The old man was telling an interminable story, in an odd mixture of Swedish and English, of some adventure he had had in New Guinea.

  “Where’s Louise?” asked Frith.

  “I’ve been helping her to lay the table. She’s been doing something in the kitchen and now she’s gone to change.”

  They sat down and had another drink. They talked somewhat desultorily as people do when they don’t know one another. Old Swan was tired, and when the strangers appeared lapsed into silence, but he watched them, with his sharp, rheumy eyes, as though they filled him with suspicion. Captain Nichols told Frith that he was a martyr to dyspepsia.

  “I’ve never known what it is to have a pain in my tummy,” said Frith. “Rheumatism’s my trouble.”

  “I’ve known men as was martyrs to it. A friend of mine at Brisbane, one of the best pilots in the business, was just crippled by it. Had to go about on crutches.”

  “One has to have something,” said Frith.

  “You can’t ’ave anythin’ worse than dyspepsia, you take my word for it. I’d be a rich man now if it ’adn’t been for my dyspepsia.”

  “Money’s not everything,” said Frith.

  “I’m not sayin’ it is. I’m sayin’ I’d ’ave been a rich man to-day if it ’adn’t been for my dyspepsia.”

  “Money’s never meant anything very much to me. So long as I have a roof over my head and three meals a day I’m content. Leisure’s the important thing.”

  Dr. Saunders listened to the conversation. He could not quite place Frith. He spoke like an educated man. Though fat and gross, shabbily dressed and in want of a shave, he gave the impression, scarcely of distinction, but of being accustomed to the society of decent people. He certainly did not belong to the same class as old Swan and Captain Nichols. His manners were easy. He had welcomed them with courtesy and treated them not with the fussy politeness an ill-bred person thinks it necessary to use towards strange guests, but naturally, as though he knew the ways of the world. Dr. Saunders supposed that he was what in the England of his youth they would have called a gentleman. He wondered how he had found his way to that distant island. He got up from his chair and wandered about the room. A number of framed photographs hung on the wall over a long book-case. He was surprised to find that they were of rowing eights of a Cambridge College, among which, though only by the name underneath, G. P. Frith, he recognised his host; others were groups of native boys at Perak in the Malay States, and at Kuching in Sarawak, with Frith, a much younger man than now, sitting in the middle. It looked as though on leaving Cambridge he had come to the East as a schoolmaster. The book-case was untidily stacked with books, all stained with damp and the ravages of the white ant, and these, with idle curiosity, taking out one here, one there, he glanced at. There was a number of prizes bound in leather from which he learned that Frith had been at one of the smaller public schools, and had been an industrious and even brilliant boy. There were the text-books that he had used at Cambridge, a good many novels, and a few volumes of poetry which gave the impression that they had been much read, but long ago. They were well-thumbed and many passages were marked in pencil or underlined, but they had a musty smell as though they had for years remained unopened. But what surprised him most was to see two shelves filled with works on Indian religion and Indian philosophy. There were translations of the Rig-Veda and of certain of the Upanishads, and there were paper-bound books published in Calcutta or Bombay by authors with names odd to him and with titles that had a mystical sound. It was an unusual collection to find in the house of a planter in the Far East, and Dr. Saunders, trying to make something of the indications they afforded, asked himself what sort of man they suggested. He was turning the pages of a book by one Srinivasa Iyengar called “Outlines of Indian Philosophy”, when Frith somewhat heavily limped up to him.

  “Having a look at my library?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced at the volume the doctor was holding.

  “Interesting. Those Hindus, they’re marvellous; they have a natural instinct for philosophy. They make all our philosophers look cheap and obvious. Their subtlety is so amazing. Plotinus is the only fellow I know to compare with them.” He replaced the book on a shelf. “Of course, Brahmanism is the only religion that a reasonable man can accept without misgiving.”

  The doctor gave him a sidelong glance. With his red, round face, and that long yellow tooth hanging loose in his jaw, his baldish head, he had none of the look of a man with spiritual leanings. It was surprising to hear him talk in this strain.

  “When I consider the universe, those innumerable worlds and the vast distances of interstellar space, I cannot think it the work of a creator, and if it were, then I am forced to ask who or what created the creator. The Vedanta teaches that in the beginning was the existent, for how could the existent be born from the non-existent? And this existent was Atman, the supreme spirit, from whom emanated maya, the illusion of the phenomenal world. And when you ask those wise men of the East why the supreme spirit should have sent forth this phantasmagory they will tell you it was for his diversion. For being complete and perfect, he could not be actuated by aim or motive. Aim and motive imply desire and he that is perfect and complete needs neither change nor addition. Therefore the activity of the eternal spirit has no purpose, but like the frolic of princes or the play of children, is spontaneous and exultant. He sports in the world, he sports in the soul.

  “That is an explanation of things that does not entirely displease me,” the doctor murmured, smiling. “There is a futility about it that gratifies the sense of irony.”

  But he was watchful and suspicious. He was conscious that he would have attached more significance to what Frith said had he been of ascetic appearance, and his face, instead of shining with sweat, shone with the travail of urgent thought. But does the outer man represent the man within? The face of a scholar or a saint may well mask a vulgar and a trivial soul. Socrates, with his flattened nose and protruding eyes, his thick lips and unwieldy belly, looked like Silenus, and yet was full of admirable temperance and wisdom.

  Frith gave a little sigh.

  “For a time I was attracted by Yoga, but after all it’s only a schismatic branch of Sankhya, and its materialism is unreasonable. All that mortification of the senses is inane. The goal is perfect knowledge of the soul’s nature, and apathy and abstraction and rigidity of posture will not enable you to attain that any more than rites and ceremonies. I’ve got masses of notes. When I have time I shall get some sort of order in my material and write a book. I’ve had it in mind for twenty years.”

  “I should have thought you had time to burn here,” said the doctor dryly.

  “Not enough for all I have to do. I’ve been spending the last four years doing a metrical translation of ‘The Lusiad.’ Camoens, you know. I should like to read you one or two cantos. There’s no one here who has any critical discernment. Christessen is a Dane, and I can’t trust his ear.”

  “But hasn’t it been translated before?”

  “Yes. By Burton among others. Poor Burton was no poet. His version is intolerable. Every generation must retranslate the great works of the world for itself. My aim is not only to render the sense, but also to preserve the rhythm and music and lyrical quality of the original.

  “What made you think of it?”

  “It’s the last of the great epics. After all, my book on the Vedanta can only hope to appeal to a small and special public. I felt I owed it to my daughter to undertake a work of more popular character. I have nothing. This estate belongs to old Swan. My translation of ‘The Lusiads’ shall be her dowry. I am going to give her every penny I make out of it. But that is not all; money isn’t very important. I want her to be proud of me; I don’t think my name will be very easily forgotten: my fame also shall be her dowry.”

  Dr. Saunders
kept silence. It seemed to him fantastic that this man should expect to get money and fame by translating a Portuguese poem that not a hundred people had any wish to read. He shrugged a tolerant shoulder.

  “It is strange how things happen,” Frith continued, his face heavy and serious. “It’s hard for me to believe that it is only by accident that I have undertaken this task. You know, of course, that Camoens, a soldier of fortune as well as a poet, came to this island, and he must often have watched the sea from the fort as I have watched it. Why should I have come here? I was a schoolmaster. When I left Cambridge I had an opportunity to come to the East, and I jumped at it. I’d longed to ever since I was a child. But the routine of school-work was too much for me. I couldn’t bear the people I had to mix with. I was in the Malay States, and then I thought I’d try Borneo. It was no better. At last I couldn’t stand it any more. I resigned. For some time I was in an office in Calcutta. Then I started a book-shop in Singapore. But it didn’t pay. I ran a hotel in Bali, but I was before my time, and I couldn’t make both ends meet. At last I drifted down here. It’s strange that my wife should have been called Catherine, because that was the name of the only woman Camoens loved. It was for her he wrote his perfect lyrics. Of course, if there’s anything that seems to me proved beyond all doubt it’s the doctrine of transmigration which the Hindus call Samsara. Sometimes I’ve asked myself if perhaps the spark that issued from the fire and formed the spirit of Camoens is not the self-same spark that now forms mine. So often when I’m reading ‘The Lusiads’ I come across a line that I seem to remember so distinctly that I can’t believe I’m reading it for the first time. You know that Pedro de Alcaçova said that ‘The Lusiads’ had only one fault. It was not short enough to learn by heart and not long enough to have no ending.”

  He gave a deprecating smile as a man might to whom an extravagant compliment was addressed.

  “Ah, here’s Louise,” he said. “That looks as if supper was nearly ready.”

  Dr. Saunders turned to look at her. She was wearing a sarong of green silk in which was woven an elaborate pattern in gold thread. It had a sleek and glowing splendour. It was Javanese, and such as the ladies of the Sultan’s harem at Djokjokarta wore on occasions of state. It fitted her slim body like a sheath, tight over her young nipples and tight over her narrow hips. Her bosom and her legs were bare. She wore high-heeled green shoes, and they added to her graceful stature. That ashy blond hair of hers was done high on her head, but very simply, and the sober brilliance of the green and golden sarong enhanced its astonishing fairness. Her beauty took the breath away. The sarong had been kept with sweet-smelling essences or she had scented herself; when she joined them they were conscious of a faint and unknown perfume. It was languorous and illusive, and it was pleasant to surmise that it was made from a secret recipe in the palace of one of the rajahs of the islands.

  “What’s the meaning of this fancy dress?” asked Frith, with a smile in his pale eyes and a waggle of his long tooth.

  “Erik gave me this sarong the other day. I thought it would be a good opportunity to wear it.”

  She gave the Dane a friendly little smile that thanked him again.

  “It’s an old one,” said Frith. “It must have cost you a small fortune, Christessen. You’ll spoil the child.”

  “I got it for a bad debt. I couldn’t resist it. I know Louise likes green.”

  A Malay servant brought in a great bowl of soup and set it down on the table.

  “Will you take Dr. Saunders on your right, Louise, and Captain Nichols on your left?” said Frith, with a certain stateliness.

  “What does she want to sit between those two old men for?” cackled the ancient Swan suddenly. “Let her sit between Erik and the kid.”

  “I see no reason not to conform to the usages of polite society,” said Frith in a very dignified manner.

  “Want to show off?”

  “Then will you sit beside me, doctor?” said Frith, taking no notice of this. “And perhaps Captain Nichols wouldn’t mind sitting on my left.”

  Old Swan, with a funny quick crawl, took what was evidently his accustomed place. Frith ladled out the soup.

  “Pair of crooks they look to me,” said the little old man, shooting a sharp glance from the doctor to Nichols. “Where’d you fish ’em from, Erik?”

  “You’re ginny, Mr. Swan,” said Frith, handing him gravely a plate of soup to be passed down the table.

  “No offence meant,” said Mr. Swan.

  “And no offence taken,” answered Captain Nichols, graciously. “I’d ever so much sooner somebody said I looked like a crook than I looked like a fool. And I’m sure the doctor’ll say the same as me. What does a fellow mean when ’e says you’re a crook? Well, ’e means you’re cleverer than ’im, that’s all; I ask you, am I right or am I wrong?”

  “I know a crook when I see one,” said old Swan. “I’ve known too many in my time not to. Been a bit of a crook meself at times.”

  He gave a little cackling laugh.

  “And who hasn’t?” said Captain Nichols, wiping his mouth, for he ate soup somewhat untidily. “What I always say is, you must take the world as you find it. Compromise, that’s the thing. Ask anybody and they’ll tell you what made the British Empire what it is, is compromise.”

  With a deft movement of his lower lip Frith sucked the remains of his soup off his little grey moustache.

  “It’s a matter of temperament, I suppose. Compromise has never appealed to me. I have had other fish to fry.”

  “Someone else caught ’em for you, I bet,” said old Swan, with a little snicker of senile glee. “Bone idle, that’s what you are, George. Had a dozen jobs in your time and never kept one of them.”

  Frith gave Dr. Saunders an indulgent smile. It said as clearly as if he had spoken that it was mightily absurd to hurl such charges at a man who had spent twenty years in the study of the highly metaphysical thought of the Hindus and in whom in all probability dwelt the spirit of a celebrated Portuguese poet.

  “My life has been a journey in search of truth and there can be no compromise with truth. The Europeans ask what is the use of truth, but for the thinkers of India it is not a means but an end. Truth is the goal of life. Years ago I used sometimes to hanker for the world I had left behind me. I would go down to the Dutch club and look at the illustrated papers, and when I saw pictures of London my heart ached. But now I know that it is only the recluse who enjoys the civilisation of cities to the full. At long last I have learnt that it is we exiles from life who get most value from it. For the way of knowledge is the true way and that way passes every door.”

  But at that moment, three chickens, the scrawny, pallid, tasteless chickens of the East, were set before him. He rose from his chair and seized a carving knife.

  “Ah, the duties and ceremonies of the householder,” he said cheerfully.

  Old Swan had been sitting silent, hunched up in his chair like a little gnome. He ate his soup greedily. Suddenly, in his thin cracked voice, he began to speak:

  “I spent seven years in New Guinea, I did. I spoke every language they spoke in New Guinea. You go to Port Moresby and ask ’em about Jack Swan. They remember me. I was the first white man ever walked across the island. Moreton did it afterwards, unarmed, with a walking stick, but he had his police with him. I did it by meself. Everyone thought I was dead, and when I walked into town they thought I was a ghost. Been shooting birds of paradise, we had, my mate and me, a New Zealander he was, been a bank-manager and got into some mess-up, we had our own cutter and we sailed along the coast from Merauke. Got a lot of birds. Worth a mint of money they was then. We was very friendly with the natives, used to give them a drink now and then, and a stick of tobacco. One day I’d been out shooting by myself and I was coming back to the cutter, I was just going to give my mate a shout to come and fetch me in the dinghy when I see some natives on it. We never allowed them to come on board, and I thought something was up. So I just hid myself and stood th
ere looking. I didn’t half like the look of it. I crept along very quiet and I saw the dinghy pulled up on the beach. I thought my mate had come ashore and some of them natives had swum out to the cutter. I thought I wouldn’t half give them what for. And then I bumped against something. My God, it did give me a turn. D’you know what it was? It was my mate’s body, with the head cut off, and all a mass of blood from the wounds in his back. I didn’t wait to see no more. I knew I’d go the same way if they caught me. They was waiting for me on the cutter, that’s what they was doing. I’d got to get away and I’d got to get away damned quick. Rare time I had getting across. The things that happened to me. You could write a book about it. One old fellow, chief of a big village he was, took quite a fancy to me, wanted to adopt me and give me a couple of wives, said I’d be chief after him. I was nippy with my hands when I was a young fellow, having been a sailor and all that. I knew a lot. Nothing I couldn’t do. Three months I stayed there. If I hadn’t been a young fool I’d have stayed for good. Powerful chief he was. I might have been a king, I might. King of the Cannibal Islands.”

  He ended with his high-pitched cackle and relapsed into silence; but it was a strange silence, for he seemed to notice everything that was going on around him, and yet live his own life apart. The sudden burst of reminiscence, which had no connection with anything that had been said, had a sort of automatic effect as though a machine controlled by an unseen clock at intervals uncannily shot forth a stream of patter. Dr. Saunders was puzzled by Frith. What he said was on occasion not without interest; to the doctor, indeed, sometimes striking; and yet his manner and appearance predisposed you to listen to him warily. He seemed sincere, his attitude had even nobility, but there was something in him that the doctor found disconcerting. It was odd that these two men, old Swan and Frith, the man of action and the man who had devoted his life to speculation, should have ended up there, together, on this lonely island. It looked as though it all came to very much the same in the end. The end of all the adventurer’s hazards, like the end of the philosopher’s high thoughts, was a comfortable respectability.