65 Short Stories Page 9

  ‘What do you value in life then?’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll laugh at me. Beauty, truth, and goodness.’

  ‘Don’t you think you can have those in Chicago?’

  ‘Some men can, perhaps, but not I.’ Edward sprang up now ‘I tell you when I think of the life I led in the old days I am filled with horror,’ he cried violently. ‘I tremble with fear when I think of the danger I have escaped. I never knew I had a soul till I found it here. If I had remained a rich man I might have lost it for good and all.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can say that,’ cried Bateman indignantly. ‘We often used to have discussions about it.’

  ‘Yes, I know. They were about as effectual as the discussions of deaf mutes about harmony. I shall never come back to Chicago, Bateman.’

  ‘And what about Isabel?’

  Edward walked to the edge of the veranda and leaning over looked intently at the blue magic of the night. There was a slight smile on his face when he turned back to Bateman.

  ‘Isabel is infinitely too good for me. I admire her more than any woman I have ever known. She has a wonderful brain and she’s as good as she’s beautiful. I respect her energy and her ambition. She was born to make a success of life. I am entirely unworthy of her.’

  ‘She doesn’t think so.’

  ‘But you must tell her so, Bateman.’

  ‘I?’ cried Bateman. ‘I’m the last person who could ever do that.’

  Edward had his back to the vivid light of the moon and his face could not be seen. Is it possible that he smiled again?

  ‘It’s no good your trying to conceal anything from her, Bateman. With her quick intelligence she’ll turn you inside out in five minutes. You’d better make a clean breast of it right away.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. Of course I shall tell her I’ve seen you.’ Bateman spoke in some agitation. ‘Honestly I don’t know what to say to her.’

  ‘Tell her that I haven’t made good. Tell her that I’m not only poor, but that I’m content to be poor. Tell her I was fired from my job because I was idle and inattentive. Tell her all you’ve seen tonight and all I’ve told you.’

  The idea which on a sudden flashed through Bateman’s brain brought him to his feet and in uncontrollable perturbation he faced Edward.

  ‘Man alive, don’t you want to marry her?’

  Edward looked at him gravely.

  ‘I can never ask her to release me. If she wishes to hold me to my word I will do my best to make her a good and loving husband.’

  ‘Do you wish me to give her that message, Edward? Oh, I can’t. It’s terrible. It’s never dawned on her for a moment that you don’t want to marry her. She loves you. How can I inflict such a mortification on her?’

  Edward smiled again.

  ‘Why don’t you marry her yourself, Bateman? You’ve been in love with her for ages. You’re perfectly suited to one another. You’ll make her very happy.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that. I can’t bear it.’

  ‘I resign in your favour, Bateman. You are the better man.’

  There was something in Edward’s tone that made Bateman look up quickly, but Edward’s eyes were grave and unsmiling. Bateman did not know what to say. He was disconcerted. He wondered whether Edward could possibly suspect that he had come to Tahiti on a special errand. And though he knew it was horrible he could not prevent the exultation in his heart.

  ‘What will you do if Isabel writes and puts an end to her engagement with you?’ he said, slowly.

  ‘Survive,’ said Edward.

  Bateman was so agitated that he did not hear the answer.

  ‘I wish you had ordinary clothes on,’ he said, somewhat irritably. ‘It’s such a tremendously serious decision you’re taking. That fantastic costume of yours makes it seem terribly casual.’

  ‘I assure you, I can be just as solemn in a pareo and a wreath of roses, as in a high hat and a cut-away coat.’

  Then another thought struck Bateman.

  ‘Edward, it’s not for my sake you’re doing this? I don’t know, but perhaps this is going to make a tremendous difference to my future. You’re not sacrificing yourself for me? I couldn’t stand for that, you know’

  ‘No, Bateman, I have learnt not to be silly and sentimental here. I should like you and Isabel to be happy, but I have not the least wish to be unhappy myself.’ The answer somewhat chilled Bateman. It seemed to him a little cynical. He would not have been sorry to act a noble part.

  ‘Do you mean to say you’re content to waste your life here? It’s nothing less than suicide. When I think of the great hopes you had when we left college it seems terrible that you should be content to be no more than a salesman in a cheap-John store.’

  ‘Oh, I’m only doing that for the present, and I’m gaining a great deal of valuable experience. I have another plan in my head. Arnold Jackson has a small island in the Paumotas, about a thousand miles from here, a ring of land round a lagoon. He’s planted coconut there. He’s offered to give it me.’

  ‘Why should he do that?’ asked Bateman.

  ‘Because if Isabel releases me I shall marry his daughter.’

  ‘You?’ Bateman was thunderstruck. ‘You can’t marry a half-caste. You wouldn’t be so crazy as that.’

  ‘She’s a good girl, and she has a sweet and gentle nature. I think she would make me very happy.’

  ‘Are you in love with her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ answered Edward reflectively. ‘I’m not in love with her as I was in love with Isabel. I worshipped Isabel. I thought she was the most wonderful creature I had ever seen. I was not half good enough for her. I don’t feel like that with Eva. She’s like a beautiful exotic flower that must be sheltered from bitter winds. I want to protect her. No one ever thought of protecting Isabel. I think she loves me for myself and not for what I may become. Whatever happens to me I shall never disappoint her. She suits me.’

  Bateman was silent.

  ‘We must turn out early in the morning,’ said Edward at last. ‘It’s really about time we went to bed.’

  Then Bateman spoke and his voice had in it a genuine distress.

  ‘I’m so bewildered, I don’t know what to say. I came here because I thought something was wrong. I thought you hadn’t succeeded in what you set out to do and were ashamed to come back when you’d failed. I never guessed I should be faced with this. I’m so desperately sorry, Edward. I’m so disappointed. I hoped you would do great things. It’s almost more than I can bear to think of you wasting your talents and your youth and your chance in this lamentable way.’

  ‘Don’t be grieved, old friend,’ said Edward. ‘I haven’t failed. I’ve succeeded. You can’t think with what zest I look forward to life, how full it seems to me and how significant. Sometimes, when you are married to Isabel, you will think of me. I shall build myself a house on my coral island and I shall live there, looking after my trees-getting the fruit out of the nuts in the same old way that they have done for unnumbered years-I shall grow all sorts of things in my garden, and I shall fish. There will be enough work to keep me busy and not enough to make me dull. I shall have my books and Eva, children, I hope, and above all, the infinite variety of the sea and the sky, the freshness of the dawn and the beauty of the sunset, and the rich magnificence of the night. I shall make a garden out of what so short a while ago was a wilderness. I shall have created something. The years will pass insensibly, and when I am an old man I hope I shall be able to look back on a happy, simple, peaceful life. In my small way I too shall have lived in beauty. Do you think it is so little to have enjoyed contentment? We know that it will profit a man little if he gain the whole world and lose his soul. I think I have won mine.’

  Edward led him to a room in which there were two beds and he threw himself on one of them. In ten minutes Bateman knew by his regular breathing, peaceful as a child’s, that Edward was asleep. But for his part he had no rest, he was disturbed in mind, and it was not t
ill the dawn crept into the room, ghostlike and silent, that he fell asleep.

  Bateman finished telling Isabel his long story. He had hidden nothing from her except what he thought would wound her or what made himself ridiculous. He did not tell her that he had been forced to sit at dinner with a wreath of flowers round his head and he did not tell her that Edward was prepared to marry her uncle’s half-caste daughter the moment she set him free. But perhaps Isabel had keener intuitions than he knew, for as he went on with his tale her eyes grew colder and her lips closed upon one another more tightly. Now and then she looked at him closely, and if he had been less intent on his narrative he might have wondered at her expression.

  ‘What was this girl like?’ she asked when he finished. ‘Uncle Arnold’s daughter. Would you say there was any resemblance between her and me?’ Bateman was surprised at the question.

  ‘It never struck me. You know I’ve never had eyes for anyone but you and I could never think that anyone was like you. Who could resemble you?’ Was she pretty?’ said Isabel, smiling slightly at his words.

  ‘I suppose so. I daresay some men would say she was very beautiful.’

  ‘Well, it’s of no consequence. I don’t think we need give her any more of our attention.’

  ‘What are you going to do, Isabel?’ he asked then.

  Isabel looked down at the hand which still bore the ring Edward had given her on their betrothal.

  ‘I wouldn’t let Edward break our engagement because I thought it would be an incentive to him. I wanted to be an inspiration to him. I thought if anything could enable him to achieve success it was the thought that I loved him. I have done all I could. It’s hopeless. It would only be weakness on my part not to recognize the facts. Poor Edward, he’s nobody’s enemy but his own. He was a dear, nice fellow, but there was something lacking in him, I suppose it was backbone. I hope he’ll be happy.’

  She slipped the ring off her finger and placed it on the table. Bateman watched her with a heart beating so rapidly that he could hardly breathe. ‘You’re wonderful, Isabel, you’re simply wonderful.’

  She smiled, and, standing up, held out her hand to him.

  ‘How can I ever thank you for what you’ve done for me?’ she said. ‘You have done me a great service. I knew I could trust you.’

  He took her hand and held it. She had never looked more beautiful.

  ‘Oh, Isabel, I would do so much more for you than that. You know that I only ask to be allowed to love and serve you.’

  ‘You’re so strong, Bateman,’ she sighed. ‘It gives me such a delicious feeling of confidence.’

  ‘Isabel, I adore you.’

  He hardly knew how the inspiration had come to him, but suddenly he clasped her in his arms; she, all unresisting, smiled into his eyes.

  ‘Isabel, you know I wanted to marry you the very first day I saw you,’ he cried passionately.

  ‘Then why on earth didn’t you ask me?’ she replied.

  She loved him. He could hardly believe it was true. She gave him her lovely lips to kiss. And as he held her in his arms he had a vision of the works of the Hunter Motor Traction and Automobile Company growing in size and importance till they covered a hundred acres, and of the millions of motors they would turn out, and of the great collection of pictures he would form which should beat anything they had in New York. He would wear horn spectacles. And she, with the delicious pressure of his arms about her, sighed with happiness, for she thought of the exquisite house she would have, full of antique furniture, and of the concerts she would give, and of the thes dansants, and the dinners to which only the most cultured people would come.

  ‘Poor Edward,’ she sighed.

  HONOLULU

  ♦

  The wise traveller travels only in imagination. An old Frenchman (he was really a Savoyard) once wrote a book called Voyage autour de ma Chambre. I have not read it and do not even know what it is about, but the title stimulates my fancy. In such a journey I could circumnavigate the globe. An eikon by the chimneypiece can take me to Russia with its great forests of birch and its white, domed churches. The Volga is wide, and at the end of a straggling village, in the wine-shop, bearded men in rough sheepskin coats sit drinking. I stand on the little hill from which Napoleon first saw Moscow and I look upon the vastness of the city. I will go down and see the people whom I know more intimately than so many of my friends, Alyosha, and Vronsky, and a dozen more. But my eyes fall on a piece of porcelain and I smell the acrid odours of China. I am borne in a chair along a narrow causeway between the padi fields, or else I skirt a tree-clad mountain. My bearers chat gaily as they trudge along in the bright morning and every now and then, distant and mysterious, I hear the deep sound of a monastery bell. In the streets of Peking there is a motley crowd and it scatters to allow passage to a string of camels, stepping delicately, that bring skins and strange drugs from the stony deserts of Mongolia. In England, in London, there are certain afternoons in winter when the clouds hang heavy and low and the light is so bleak that your heart sinks, but then you can look out of your window, and you see the coconut trees crowded upon the beach of a coral island. The strand is silvery and when you walk along in the sunshine it is so dazzling that you can hardly bear to look at it. Overhead the mynah birds are making a great to-do, and the surf beats ceaselessly against the reef Those are the best journeys, the journeys that you take at your own fireside, for then you lose none of your illusions.

  But there are people who take salt in their coffee. They say it gives it a tang, a savour, which is peculiar and fascinating. In the same way there are certain places, surrounded by a halo of romance, to which the inevitable disillusionment which you must experience on seeing them gives a singular spice. You had expected something wholly beautiful and you get an impression which is infinitely more complicated than any that beauty can give you. It is like the weakness in the character of a great man which may make him less admirable but certainly makes him more interesting.

  Nothing had prepared me for Honolulu. It is so far away from Europe, it is reached after so long a journey from San Francisco, so strange and so charming associations are attached to the name, that at first I could hardly believe my eyes. I do not know that I had formed in my mind any very exact picture of what I expected, but what I found caused me a great surprise. It is a typical western city. Shacks are cheek by jowl with stone mansions: dilapidated frame houses stand next door to smart stores with plate-glass windows; electric cars rumble noisily along the streets; and motors, Fords, Buicks, Packards, line the pavement. The shops are filled with all the necessities of American civilization. Every third house is a bank and every fifth the agency of a steamship company.

  Along the streets crowd an unimaginable assortment of people. The Americans, ignoring the climate, wear black coats and high, starched collars, straw hats, soft hats, and bowlers. The Kanakas, pale brown, with crisp hair, have nothing on but a shirt and a pair of trousers; but the half-breeds are very smart with flaring ties and patent-leather boots. The Japanese, with their obsequious smile, are neat and trim in white duck, while their women walk a step or two behind them, in native dress, with a baby on their backs. The Japanese children, in bright coloured frocks, their little heads shaven, look like quaint dolls. Then there are the Chinese. The men, fat and prosperous, wear their American clothes oddly, but the women are enchanting with their tightly-dressed black hair, so neat that you feel it can never be disarranged, and they are very clean in their tunics and trousers, white, or powder-blue, or black. Lastly there are the Filipinos, the men in huge straw hats, the women in bright yellow muslin with great puffed sleeves.

  It is the meeting-place of East and West. The very new rubs shoulders with the immeasurably old. And if you have not found the romance you expected you have come upon something singularly intriguing. All these strange people live close to each other, with different languages and different thoughts; they believe in different gods and they have different values; two passions alone t
hey share, love and hunger. And somehow as you watch them you have an impression of extraordinary vitality. Though the air is so soft and the sky so blue, you have, I know not why, a feeling of something hotly passionate that beats like a throbbing pulse through the crowd. Though the native policeman at the corner, standing on a platform, with a white club to direct the traffic, gives the scene an air of respectability, you cannot but feel that it is a respectability only of the surface; a little below there is darkness and mystery. It gives you just that thrill, with a little catch at the heart, that you have when at night in the forest the silence trembles on a sudden with the low, insistent beating of a drum. You are all expectant of I know not what.

  If I have dwelt on the incongruity of Honolulu, it is because just this, to my mind, gives its point to the story I want to tell. It is a story of primitive superstition, and it startles me that anything of the sort should survive in a civilization which, if not very distinguished, is certainly very elaborate.

  I cannot get over the fact that such incredible things should happen, or at least be thought to happen, right in the middle, so to speak, of telephones, tramcars, and daily papers. And the friend who showed me Honolulu had the same incongruity which I felt from the beginning was its most striking characteristic.

  He was an American named Winter and I had brought a letter of introduction to him from an acquaintance in New York. He was a man between forty and fifty, with scanty black hair, grey at the temples, and a sharp-featured, thin face. His eyes had a twinkle in them and his large horn spectacles gave him a demureness which was not a little diverting. He was tall rather than otherwise and very spare. He was born in Honolulu and his father had a large store which sold hosiery and all such goods, from tennis racquets to tarpaulins, as a man of fashion could require. It was a prosperous business and I could well understand the indignation of Winter Pere when his son, refusing to go into it, had announced his determination to be an actor. My friend spent twenty years on the stage, sometimes in New York, but more often on the road, for his gifts were small; but at last, being no fool, he came to the conclusion that it was better to sell sock-suspenders in Honolulu than to play small parts in Cleveland, Ohio. He left the stage and went into the business. I think after the hazardous existence he had lived so long, he thoroughly enjoyed the luxury of driving a large car and living in a beautiful house near the golf-course, and I am quite sure, since he was a man of parts, he managed the business competently. But he could not bring himself entirely to break his connexion with the arts and since he might no longer act he began to paint. He took me to his studio and showed me his work. It was not at all bad, but not what I should have expected from him. He painted nothing but still life, very small pictures, perhaps eight by ten; and he painted very delicately, with the utmost finish. He had evidently a passion for detail. His fruit pieces reminded you of the fruit in a picture by Ghirlandajo. While you marvelled a little at his patience, you could not help being impressed by his dexterity. I imagine that he failed as an actor because his effects, carefully studied, were neither bold nor broad enough to get across the footlights.