Chapter 8. BETTER ACQUAINTANCE
The boat was gone again, and already half-way to the Farallone, beforeHerrick turned and went unwillingly up the pier. From the crown ofthe beach, the figure-head confronted him with what seemed irony,her helmeted head tossed back, her formidable arm apparently hurlingsomething, whether shell or missile, in the direction of the anchoredschooner. She seemed a defiant deity from the island, coming forth toits threshold with a rush as of one about to fly, and perpetuated inthat dashing attitude. Herrick looked up at her, where she towered abovehim head and shoulders, with singular feelings of curiosity and romance,and suffered his mind to travel to and fro in her life-history. So longshe had been the blind conductress of a ship among the waves; so longshe had stood here idle in the violent sun, that yet did not availto blister her; and was even this the end of so many adventures? hewondered, or was more behind? And he could have found in his heart toregret that she was not a goddess, nor yet he a pagan, that he mighthave bowed down before her in that hour of difficulty.
When he now went forward, it was cool with the shadow of many well-grownpalms; draughts of the dying breeze swung them together overhead; and onall sides, with a swiftness beyond dragon-flies or swallows, the spotsof sunshine flitted, and hovered, and returned. Underfoot, the sand wasfairly solid and quite level, and Herrick's steps fell there noiselessas in new-fallen snow. It bore the marks of having been once weeded likea garden alley at home; but the pestilence had done its work, and theweeds were returning. The buildings of the settlement showed here andthere through the stems of the colonnade, fresh painted, trim and dandy,and all silent as the grave. Only, here and there in the crypt, therewas a rustle and scurry and some crowing of poultry; and from behind thehouse with the verandahs, he saw smoke arise and heard the crackling ofa fire.
The stone houses were nearest him upon his right. The first was locked;in the second, he could dimly perceive, through a window, a certainaccumulation of pearl-shell piled in the far end; the third, which stoodgaping open on the afternoon, seized on the mind of Herrick with itsmultiplicity and disorder of romantic things. Therein were cables,windlasses and blocks of every size and capacity; cabin windows andladders; rusty tanks, a companion hutch; a binnacle with its brassmountings and its compass idly pointing, in the confusion and dusk ofthat shed, to a forgotten pole; ropes, anchors, harpoons, a blubberdipper of copper, green with years, a steering wheel, a tool chest withthe vessel's name upon the top, the Asia: a whole curiosity-shop of seacurios, gross and solid, heavy to lift, ill to break, bound with brassand shod with iron. Two wrecks at the least must have contributed tothis random heap of lumber; and as Herrick looked upon it, it seemed tohim as if the two ships' companies were there on guard, and he heardthe tread of feet and whisperings, and saw with the tail of his eye thecommonplace ghosts of sailor men.
This was not merely the work of an aroused imagination, but hadsomething sensible to go upon; sounds of a stealthy approach were nodoubt audible; and while he still stood staring at the lumber, the voiceof his host sounded suddenly, and with even more than the customarysoftness of enunciation, from behind.
'Junk,', it said, 'only old junk! And does Mr Hay find a parable?'
'I find at least a strong impression,' replied Herrick, turning quickly,lest he might be able to catch, on the face of the speaker, somecommentary on the words.
Attwater stood in the doorway, which he almost wholly filled; his handsstretched above his head and grasping the architrave. He smiled whentheir eyes Met, but the expression was inscrutable.
'Yes, a powerful impression. You are like me; nothing so affecting asships!' said he. 'The ruins of an empire would leave me frigid, when abit of an old rail that an old shellback leaned on in the middle watch,would bring me up all standing. But come, let's see some more of theisland. It's all sand and coral and palm trees; but there's a kind of aquaintness in the place.'
'I find it heavenly,' said Herrick, breathing deep, with head bared inthe shadow.
'Ah, that's because you're new from sea,' said Attwater. 'I dare say,too, you can appreciate what one calls it. It's a lovely name. It hasa flavour, it has a colour, it has a ring and fall to it; it's like itsauthor--it's half Christian! Remember your first view of the island, andhow it's only woods and water; and suppose you had asked somebody forthe name, and he had answered--nemorosa Zacynthos!'
'Jam medio apparet fluctu!' exclaimed Herrick. 'Ye gods, yes, how good!'
'If it gets upon the chart, the skippers will make nice work of it,'said Attwater. 'But here, come and see the diving-shed.'
He opened a door, and Herrick saw a large display of apparatus neatlyordered: pumps and pipes, and the leaded boots, and the huge snoutedhelmets shining in rows along the wall; ten complete outfits.
'The whole eastern half of my lagoon is shallow, you must understand,'said Attwater; 'so we were able to get in the dress to great advantage.It paid beyond belief, and was a queer sight when they were at it,and these marine monsters'--tapping the nearest of the helmets--'keptappearing and reappearing in the midst of the lagoon. Fond of parables?'he asked abruptly.
'O yes!' said Herrick.
'Well, I saw these machines come up dripping and go down again, and comeup dripping and go down again, and all the while the fellow inside asdry as toast!' said Attwater; 'and I thought we all wanted a dress togo down into the world in, and come up scatheless. What do you think thename was?' he inquired.
'Self-conceit,' said Herrick.
'Ah, but I mean seriously!' said Attwater.
'Call it self-respect, then!' corrected Herrick, with a laugh.
'And why not Grace? Why not God's Grace, Hay?' asked Attwater. 'Whynot the grace of your Maker and Redeemer, He who died for you, Hewho upholds you, He whom you daily crucify afresh? There is nothinghere,'--striking on his bosom--'nothing there'--smiting the wall--'andnothing there'--stamping--'nothing but God's Grace! We walk upon it, webreathe it; we live and die by it; it makes the nails and axles of theuniverse; and a puppy in pyjamas prefers self-conceit!' The huge darkman stood over against Herrick by the line of the divers' helmets, andseemed to swell and glow; and the next moment the life had gone fromhim. 'I beg your pardon,' said he; 'I see you don't believe in God?'
'Not in your sense, I am afraid,' said Herrick.
'I never argue with young atheists or habitual drunkards,' said Attwaterflippantly. 'Let us go across the island to the outer beach.'
It was but a little way, the greatest width of that island scarceexceeding a furlong, and they walked gently. Herrick was like one ina dream. He had come there with a mind divided; come prepared to studythat ambiguous and sneering mask, drag out the essential man fromunderneath, and act accordingly; decision being till then postponed.Iron cruelty, an iron insensibility to the suffering of others, theuncompromising pursuit of his own interests, cold culture, mannerswithout humanity; these he had looked for, these he still thought hesaw. But to find the whole machine thus glow with the reverberation ofreligious zeal, surprised him beyond words; and he laboured in vain, ashe walked, to piece together into any kind of whole his odds and endsof knowledge--to adjust again into any kind of focus with itself, hispicture of the man beside him.
'What brought you here to the South Seas?' he asked presently.
'Many things,' said Attwater. 'Youth, curiosity, romance, the love ofthe sea, and (it will surprise you to hear) an interest in missions.That has a good deal declined, which will surprise you less. They go thewrong way to work; they are too parsonish, too much of the old wife, andeven the old apple wife. CLOTHES, CLOTHES, are their idea; but clothesare not Christianity, any more than they are the sun in heaven, or couldtake the place of it! They think a parsonage with roses, and churchbells, and nice old women bobbing in the lanes, are part and parcelof religion. But religion is a savage thing, like the universe itilluminates; savage, cold, and bare, but infinitely strong.'
'And you found this island by an accident?' said Herrick.
'As you did!' said Attwa
ter. 'And since then I have had a business, anda colony, and a mission of my own. I was a man of the world before I wasa Christian; I'm a man of the world still, and I made my mission pay.No good ever came of coddling. A man has to stand up in God's sightand work up to his weight avoirdupois; then I'll talk to him, but notbefore. I gave these beggars what they wanted: a judge in Israel, thebearer of the sword and scourge; I was making a new people here; andbehold, the angel of the Lord smote them and they were not!'
With the very uttering of the words, which were accompanied by agesture, they came forth out of the porch of the palm wood by the marginof the sea and full in front of the sun which was near setting. Beforethem the surf broke slowly. All around, with an air of imperfect woodenthings inspired with wicked activity, the crabs trundled and scuttledinto holes. On the right, whither Attwater pointed and abruptly turned,was the cemetery of the island, a field of broken stones from thebigness of a child's hand to that of his head, diversified by manymounds of the same material, and walled by a rude rectangular enclosure.Nothing grew there but a shrub or two with some white flowers; nothingbut the number of the mounds, and their disquieting shape, indicated thepresence of the dead.
'The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep!'
quoted Attwater as he entered by the open gateway into that unholyclose. 'Coral to coral, pebbles to pebbles,' he said, 'this has been themain scene of my activity in the South Pacific. Some were good, and somebad, and the majority (of course and always) null. Here was a fellow,now, that used to frisk like a dog; if you had called him he came likean arrow from a bow; if you had not, and he came unbidden, you shouldhave seen the deprecating eye and the little intricate dancingstep. Well, his trouble is over now, he has lain down with kings andcouncillors; the rest of his acts, are they not written in the bookof the chronicles? That fellow was from Penrhyn; like all the Penrhynislanders he was ill to manage; heady, jealous, violent: the man withthe nose! He lies here quiet enough. And so they all lie.
"And darkness was the burier of the dead!"'
He stood, in the strong glow of the sunset, with bowed head; his voicesounded now sweet and now bitter with the varying sense.
'You loved these people?' cried Herrick, strangely touched.
'I?' said Attwater. 'Dear no! Don't think me a philanthropist. I dislikemen, and hate women. If I like the islands at all, it is because you seethem here plucked of their lendings, their dead birds and cocked hats,their petticoats and coloured hose. Here was one I liked though,' and heset his foot upon a mound. 'He was a fine savage fellow; he had a darksoul; yes, I liked this one. I am fanciful,' he added, looking hard atHerrick, 'and I take fads. I like you.'
Herrick turned swiftly and looked far away to where the clouds werebeginning to troop together and amass themselves round the obsequies ofday. 'No one can like me,' he said.
'You are wrong there,' said the other, 'as a man usually is abouthimself. You are attractive, very attractive.'
'It is not me,' said Herrick; 'no one can like me. If you knew how Idespised myself--and why!' His voice rang out in the quiet graveyard.
'I knew that you despised yourself,' said Attwater. 'I saw the bloodcome into your face today when you remembered Oxford. And I could haveblushed for you myself, to see a man, a gentleman, with these two vulgarwolves.'
Herrick faced him with a thrill. 'Wolves?' he repeated.
'I said wolves and vulgar wolves,' said Attwater. 'Do you know thattoday, when I came on board, I trembled?'
'You concealed it well,' stammered Herrick.
'A habit of mine,' said Attwater. 'But I was afraid, for all that: I wasafraid of the two wolves.' He raised his hand slowly. 'And now, Hay, youpoor lost puppy, what do you do with the two wolves?'
'What do I do? I don't do anything,' said Herrick. 'There is nothingwrong; all is above board; Captain Brown is a good soul; he is a... heis...' The phantom voice of Davis called in his ear: 'There's going tobe a funeral' and the sweat burst forth and streamed on his brow. 'Heis a family man,' he resumed again, swallowing; 'he has children athome--and a wife.'
'And a very nice man?' said Attwater. 'And so is Mr Whish, no doubt?'
'I won't go so far as that,' said Herrick. 'I do not like Huish. Andyet... he has his merits too.'
'And, in short, take them for all in all, as good a ship's company asone would ask?' said Attwater.
'O yes,' said Herrick, 'quite.'
'So then we approach the other point of why you despise yourself?' saidAttwater.
'Do we not all despise ourselves?' cried Herrick. 'Do not you?'
'Oh, I say I do. But do I?' said Attwater. 'One thing I know at least:I never gave a cry like yours. Hay! it came from a bad conscience! Ah,man, that poor diving dress of self-conceit is sadly tattered! Today,now, while the sun sets, and here in this burying place of browninnocents, fall on your knees and cast your sins and sorrows on theRedeemer. Hay--'
'Not Hay!' interrupted the other, strangling. 'Don't call me that! Imean... For God's sake, can't you see I'm on the rack?'
'I see it, I know it, I put and keep you there, my fingers are on thescrews!' said Attwater. 'Please God, I will bring a penitent thisnight before His throne. Come, come to the mercy-seat! He waits to begracious, man--waits to be gracious!'
He spread out his arms like a crucifix, his face shone with thebrightness of a seraph's; in his voice, as it rose to the last word, thetears seemed ready.
Herrick made a vigorous call upon himself. 'Attwater,' he said, 'youpush me beyond bearing. What am I to do? I do not believe. It is livingtruth to you; to me, upon my conscience, only folk-lore. I do notbelieve there is any form of words under heaven by which I can lift theburthen from my shoulders. I must stagger on to the end with the pack ofmy responsibility; I cannot shift it; do you suppose I would not, if Ithought I could? I cannot--cannot--cannot--and let that suffice.'
The rapture was all gone from Artwater's countenance; the dark apostlehad disappeared; and in his place there stood an easy, sneeringgentleman, who took off his hat and bowed. It was pertly done, and theblood burned in Herrick's face.
'What do you mean by that?' he cried.
'Well, shall we go back to the house?' said Attwater. 'Our guests willsoon be due.'
Herrick stood his ground a moment with clenched fists and teeth; and ashe so stood, the fact of his errand there slowly swung clear in front ofhim, like the moon out of clouds. He had come to lure that man on board;he was failing, even if it could be said that he had tried; he was sureto fail now, and knew it, and knew it was better so. And what was to benext?
With a groan he turned to follow his host, who was standing with politesmile, and instantly and somewhat obsequiously led the way in the nowdarkened colonnade of palms. There they went in silence, the earthgave up richly of her perfume, the air tasted warm and aromatic in thenostrils; and from a great way forward in the wood, the brightness oflights and fire marked out the house of Attwater.
Herrick meanwhile resolved and resisted an immense temptation to go up,to touch him on the arm and breathe a word in his ear: 'Beware, they aregoing to murder you.' There would be one life saved; but what of the twoothers? The three lives went up and down before him like buckets in awell, or like the scales of balances. It had come to a choice, and onethat must be speedy. For certain invaluable minutes, the wheels of liferan before him, and he could still divert them with a touch to the oneside or the other, still choose who was to live and who was to die. Heconsidered the men. Attwater intrigued, puzzled, dazzled, enchanted andrevolted him; alive, he seemed but a doubtful good; and the thought ofhim lying dead was so unwelcome that it pursued him, like a vision, withevery circumstance of colour and sound. Incessantly, he had before himthe image of that great mass of man stricken down in varying attitudesand with varying wounds; fallen prone, fallen supine, fallen on hisside; or clinging to a doorpost with the changing face and the relaxingfingers of the death-agony. He heard the click of the trigger, the thudof the ball, the cry of the victim; he saw the bloo
d flow. And thisbuilding up of circumstance was like a consecration of the man, till heseemed to walk in sacrificial fillets. Next he considered Davis, withhis thick-fingered, coarse-grained, oat-bread commonness of nature, hisindomitable valour and mirth in the old days of their starvation, theendearing blend of his faults and virtues, the sudden shining forth of atenderness that lay too deep for tears; his children, Adar and her bowelcomplaint, and Adar's doll. No, death could not be suffered to approachthat head even in fancy; with a general heat and a bracing of hismuscles, it was borne in on Herrick that Adar's father would find in hima son to the death. And even Huish showed a little in that sacredness;by the tacit adoption of daily life they were become brothers; there wasan implied bond of loyalty in their cohabitation of the ship and theirpassed miseries, to which Herrick must be a little true or whollydishonoured. Horror of sudden death for horror of sudden death, therewas here no hesitation possible: it must be Attwater. And no sooner wasthe thought formed (which was a sentence) than his whole mind of man ranin a panic to the other side: and when he looked within himself, he wasaware only of turbulence and inarticulate outcry.
In all this there was no thought of Robert Herrick. He had complied withthe ebb-tide in man's affairs, and the tide had carried him away; heheard already the roaring of the maelstrom that must hurry him under.And in his bedevilled and dishonoured soul there was no thought of self.
For how long he walked silent by his companion Herrick had no guess.The clouds rolled suddenly away; the orgasm was over; he found himselfplacid with the placidity of despair; there returned to him the power ofcommonplace speech; and he heard with surprise his own voice say: 'Whata lovely evening!'
'Is it not?' said Attwater. 'Yes, the evenings here would be verypleasant if one had anything to do. By day, of course, one can shoot.'
'You shoot?' asked Herrick.
'Yes, I am what you would call a fine shot,' said Attwater. 'It isfaith; I believe my balls will go true; if I were to miss once, it wouldspoil me for nine months.'
'You never miss, then?' said Herrick.
'Not unless I mean to,' said Attwater. 'But to miss nicely is the art.There was an old king one knew in the western islands, who used to emptya Winchester all round a man, and stir his hair or nick a rag out of hisclothes with every ball except the last; and that went plump between theeyes. It was pretty practice.'
'You could do that?' asked Herrick, with a sudden chill.
'Oh, I can do anything,' returned the other. 'You do not understand:what must be, must.'
They were now come near to the back part of the house. One of the menwas engaged about the cooking fire, which burned with the clear, fierce,essential radiance of cocoanut shells. A fragrance of strange meats wasin the air. All round in the verandahs lamps were lighted, so thatthe place shone abroad in the dusk of the trees with many complicatedpatterns of shadow.
'Come and wash your hands,' said Attwater, and led the way into a clean,matted room with a cot bed, a safe, or shelf or two of books in a glazedcase, and an iron washing-stand. Presently he cried in the native, andthere appeared for a moment in the doorway a plump and pretty youngwoman with a clean towel.
'Hullo!' cried Herrick, who now saw for the first time the fourthsurvivor of the pestilence, and was startled by the recollection of thecaptain's orders.
'Yes,' said Attwater, 'the whole colony lives about the house, what'sleft of it. We are all afraid of devils, if you please! and Taniera andshe sleep in the front parlour, and the other boy on the verandah.'
'She is pretty,' said Herrick.
'Too pretty,' said Attwater. 'That was why I had her married. A mannever knows when he may be inclined to be a fool about women; so when wewere left alone, I had the pair of them to the chapel and performed theceremony. She made a lot of fuss. I do not take at all the romantic viewof marriage,' he explained.
'And that strikes you as a safeguard?' asked Herrick with amazement.
'Certainly. I am a plain man and very literal. WHOM GOD HATH JOINEDTOGETHER, are the words, I fancy. So one married them, and respects themarriage,' said Attwater.
'Ah!' said Herrick.
'You see, I may look to make an excellent marriage when I go home,'began Attwater, confidentially. 'I am rich. This safe alone'--laying hishand upon it--'will be a moderate fortune, when I have the time to placethe pearls upon the market. Here are ten years' accumulation from alagoon, where I have had as many as ten divers going all day long; and Iwent further than people usually do in these waters, for I rotted a lotof shell, and did splendidly. Would you like to see them?'
This confirmation of the captain's guess hit Herrick hard, and hecontained himself with difficulty. 'No, thank you, I think not,' saidhe. 'I do not care for pearls. I am very indifferent to all these...'
'Gewgaws?' suggested Attwater. 'And yet I believe you ought to cast aneye on my collection, which is really unique, and which--oh! it is thecase with all of us and everything about us!--hangs by a hair. Todayit groweth up and flourisheth; tomorrow it is cut down and cast into theoven. Today it is here and together in this safe; tomorrow--tonight!--itmay be scattered. Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required ofthee.'
'I do not understand you,' said Herrick.
'Not?' said Attwater.
'You seem to speak in riddles,' said Herrick, unsteadily. 'I do notunderstand what manner of man you are, nor what you are driving at.'
Attwater stood with his hands upon his hips, and his head bent forward.'I am a fatalist,' he replied, 'and just now (if you insist on it)an experimentalist. Talking of which, by the bye, who painted out theschooner's name?' he said, with mocking softness, 'because, do you know?one thinks it should be done again. It can still be partly read; andwhatever is worth doing, is surely worth doing well. You think withme? That is so nice! Well, shall we step on the verandah? I have a drysherry that I would like your opinion of.'
Herrick followed him forth to where, under the light of the hanginglamps, the table shone with napery and crystal; followed him as thecriminal goes with the hangman, or the sheep with the butcher; took thesherry mechanically, drank it, and spoke mechanical words of praise. Theobject of his terror had become suddenly inverted; till then he had seenAttwater trussed and gagged, a helpless victim, and had longed to run inand save him; he saw him now tower up mysterious and menacing, the angelof the Lord's wrath, armed with knowledge and threatening judgment. Heset down his glass again, and was surprised to see it empty.
'You go always armed?' he said, and the next moment could have pluckedhis tongue out.
'Always,' said Attwater. 'I have been through a mutiny here; that wasone of my incidents of missionary life.'
And just then the sound of voices reached them, and looking forth fromthe verandah they saw Huish and the captain drawing near.
The Ebb-Tide: A Trio And Quartette Page 8
