The girl saw his weakness. This was her opportunity. She had been urging him to let a native doctor see him, and he had stoutly refused; but now she entreated him. He listened with harassed eyes. He wavered. It was very funny that the American doctor could not tell what was the matter with him. But he did not want her to think that he was scared. If he let a damned nigger come along and look at him, it was to comfort her. He told her to do what she liked.
The native doctor came the next night. The captain was lying alone, half awake, and the cabin was dimly lit by an oil lamp. The door was softly opened and the girl came in on tip-toe. She held the door open and someone slipped in silently behind her. The captain smiled at this mystery, but he was so weak now, the smile was no more than a glimmer in his eyes. The doctor was a little, old man, very thin and very wrinkled, with a completely bald head, and the face of a monkey. He was bowed and gnarled like an old tree. He looked hardly human, but his eyes were very bright, and in the half darkness they seemed to glow with a reddish light. He was dressed filthily in a pair of ragged dungarees, and the upper part of his body was naked. He sat down on his haunches and for ten minutes looked at the captain. Then he felt the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. The girl watched him with frightened eyes. No word was spoken. Then he asked for something that the captain had worn. The girl gave him the old felt hat which the captain used constantly and taking it he sat down again on the floor, clasping it firmly with both hands; and rocking backwards and forwards slowly he muttered some gibberish in a very low tone.
At last he gave a little sigh and dropped the hat. He took an old pipe out of his trouser pocket and lit it. The girl went over to him and sat by his side. He whispered something to her, and she started violently. For a few minutes they talked in hurried undertones, and then they stood up. She gave him money and opened the door for him. He slid out as silently as he had come in. Then she went over to the captain and leaned over him so that she could speak into his ear.
“It’s an enemy praying you to death.”
“Don’t talk fool stuff, girlie,” he said impatiently.
“It’s truth. It’s God’s truth. That’s why the American doctor couldn’t do anything. Our people can do that. I’ve seen it done. I thought you were safe because you were a white man.”
“I haven’t an enemy.”
“Bananas.”
“What’s he want to pray me to death for?”
“You ought to have fired him before he had a chance.”
“I guess if I ain’t got nothing more the matter with me than Bananas’ hoodoo I shall be sitting up and taking nourishment in a very few days.”
She was silent for a while and she looked at him intently.
“Don’t you know you’re dying?” she said to him at last.
That was what the two skippers had thought, but they hadn’t said it. A shiver passed across the captain’s wan face.
“The doctor says there ain’t nothing really the matter with me. I’ve only to lie
quiet for a bit and I shall be all right.”
She put her lips to his ear as if she were afraid that the air itself might hear.
“You’re dying, dying, dying. You’ll pass out with the old moon.”
“That’s something to know.”
“You’ll pass out with the old moon unless Bananas dies before.”
He was not a timid man and he had recovered already from the shock her words, and still more her vehement, silent manner, had given him. Once more a smile flickered in his eyes.
“I guess I’ll take my chance, girlie.”
“There’s twelve days before the new moon.”
There was something in her tone that gave him an idea.
“See here, my girl, this is all bunk. I don’t believe a word of it. But I don’t want you to try any of your monkey tricks with Bananas. He ain’t a beauty, but he’s a first-rate mate.”
He would have said a good deal more, but he was tired out. He suddenly felt very weak and faint. It was always at that hour that he felt worse. He closed his eyes. The girl watched him for a minute and then slipped out of the cabin. The moon, nearly full, made a silver pathway over the dark sea. It shone from an unclouded sky. She looked at it with terror, for she knew that with its death the man she loved would die. His life was in her hands. She could save him, she alone could save him, but the enemy was cunning, and she must be cunning too. She felt that someone was looking at her, and without turning, by the sudden fear that seized her, knew that from the shadow the burning eyes of the mate were fixed upon her. She did not know what he could do; if he could read her thoughts she was defeated already, and with a desperate effort she emptied her mind of all content. His death alone could save her lover, and she could bring his death about. She knew that if he could be brought to look into a calabash in which was water so that a reflection of him was made, and the reflection were broken by hurtling the water, he would die as though he had been struck by lightning; for the reflection was his soul. But none knew better than he the danger, and he could be made to look only by a guile which had lulled his least suspicion. He must never think that he had an enemy who was on the watch to cause his destruction. She knew what she had to do. But the time was short, the time was terribly short. Presently she realized that the mate had gone. She breathed more freely.
Two days later they sailed, and there were ten now before the new moon. Captain Butler was terrible to see. He was nothing but skin and bone, and he could not move without help. He could hardly speak. But she dared do nothing yet. She knew that she must be patient. The mate was cunning, cunning. They went to one of the smaller islands of the group and discharged cargo, and now there were only seven days more. The moment had come to start. She brought some things out of the cabin she shared with the captain and made them into a bundle. She put the bundle in the deck cabin where she and Bananas ate their meals, and at dinner time, when she went in, he turned quickly and she saw that he had been looking at it. Neither of them spoke, but she knew what he suspected. She was making her preparations to leave the ship. He looked at her mockingly. Gradually, as though to prevent the captain from knowing what she was about, she brought everything she owned into the cabin, and some of the captain’s clothes, and made them all into bundles. At last Bananas could keep silence no longer. He pointed to a suit of ducks.
“What are you going to do with that?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m going back to my island.”
He gave a laugh that distorted his grim face. The captain was dying and she meant to get away with all she could lay hands on.
“What’ll you do if I say you can’t take those things? They’re the captain’s.”
“They’re no use to you,” she said.
There was a calabash hanging on the wall. It was the very calabash I had seen when I came into the cabin and which we had talked about. She took it down. It was all dusty, so she poured water into it from the water-bottle, and rinsed it with her fingers.
“What are you doing with that?”
“I can sell it for fifty dollars,” she said.
“If you want to take it you’ll have to pay me.”
“What d’you want?”
“You know what I want.”
She allowed a fleeting smile to play on her lips. She flashed a quick look at him and quickly turned away. He gave a gasp of desire. She raised her shoulders in a little shrug. With a savage bound he sprang upon her and seized her in his arms. Then she laughed. She put her arms, her soft, round arms, about his neck, and surrendered herself to him voluptuously.
When the morning came she roused him out of a deep sleep. The early rays of the sun slanted into the cabin. He pressed her to his heart. Then he told her that the captain could not last more than a day or two, and the owner wouldn’t so easily find another white man to command the ship. If Bananas offered to take less money he would get the job and the girl could stay with him. He looked at her wit
h love-sick eyes. She nestled up against him. She kissed his lips, in the foreign way, in the way the captain had taught her to kiss. And she promised to stay. Bananas was drunk with happiness.
It was now or never.
She got up and went to the table to arrange her hair. There was no mirror and she looked into the calabash, seeking for her reflection. She tidied her beautiful hair. Then she beckoned to Bananas to come to her. She pointed to the calabash.
“There’s something in the bottom of it,” she said.
Instinctively, without suspecting anything, Bananas looked full into the water. His face was reflected in it. In a flash she beat upon it violently, with both her hands, so that they pounded on the bottom and the water splashed up. The reflection was broken in pieces. Bananas started back with a sudden hoarse cry and he looked at the girl. She was standing there with a look of triumphant hatred on her face. A horror came into his eyes. His heavy features were twisted in agony, and with a thud, as though he had taken a violent poison, he crumpled up on the ground. A great shudder passed through his body and he was still. She leaned over him callously. She put her hand on his heart and then she pulled down his lower eye-lid. He was quite dead.
She went into the cabin in which lay Captain Butler. There was a faint colour in his cheeks and he looked at her in a startled way.
“What’s happened?” he whispered.
They were the first words he had spoken for forty-eight hours.
“Nothing’s happened,” she said.
“I feel all funny.”
Then his eyes closed and he fell asleep. He slept for a day and a night, and when he awoke he asked for food. In a fortnight he was well.
It was past midnight when Winter and I rowed back to shore and we had drunk innumerable whiskies and sodas.
“What do you think of it all?” asked Winter.
“What a question! II you mean, have I any explanation to suggest, I haven’t.”
“The captain believes every word of it.”
“That’s obvious; but, you know, that’s not the part that interests me most: whether it’s true or not, and what it all means; the part that interests me is that such things should happen to such people. I wonder what there is in that common-place little man to arouse such a passion in that lovely creature. As I watched her, asleep there, while he was telling the story I had some fantastic idea about the power of love being able to work miracles.”
“But that’s not the girl,” said Winter.
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Didn’t you notice the cook?”
“Of course I did. He’s the ugliest man I ever saw.”
“That’s why Butler took him. The girl ran away with the Chinese cook last year. This is a new one. He’s only had her there about two months.”
“Well, I’m hanged.”
“He thinks this cook is safe. But I wouldn’t be too sure in his place. There’s something about a Chink, when he lays himself out to please a woman she can’t resist him.”
THE POOL
WHEN I was introduced to Lawson by Chaplin, the owner of the Hotel Metropole at Apia, I paid no particular attention to him. We were sitting in the lounge over an early cocktail and I was listening with amusement to the gossip of the island.
Chaplin entertained me. He was by profession a mining engineer and perhaps it was characteristic of him that he had settled in a place where his professional attainments were of no possible value. It was, however, generally reported that he was an extremely clever mining engineer. He was a small man, neither fat nor thin, with black hair, scanty on the crown, turning grey, and a small, untidy moustache; his face, partly from the sun and partly from liquor, was very red. He was but a figurehead, for the hotel, though so grandly named but a frame building of two storeys, was managed by his wife, a tall, gaunt Australian of five-and-forty, with an imposing presence and a determined air. The little man, excitable and often tipsy, was terrified of her, and the stranger soon heard of domestic quarrels in which she used her fist and her foot in order to keep him in subjection. She had been known after a night of drunkenness to confine him for twenty-four hours to his own room, and then he could be seen, afraid to leave his prison, talking somewhat pathetically from his veranda to people in the street below.
He was a character, and his reminiscences of a varied life, whether true or not, made him worth listening to, so that when Lawson strolled in I was inclined to resent the interruption. Although not midday, it was clear that he had had enough to drink, and it was without enthusiasm that I yielded to his persistence and accepted his offer of another cocktail. I knew already that Chaplin’s head was weak. The next round which in common politeness I should be forced to order would be enough to make him lively, and then Mrs Chaplin would give me black looks.
Nor was there anything attractive in Lawson’s appearance. He was a little thin man, with a long, sallow face and a narrow, weak chin, a prominent nose, large and bony, and great shaggy black eyebrows. They gave him a peculiar look. His eyes, very large and very dark, were magnificent. He was jolly, but his jollity did not seem to me sincere; it was on the surface, a mask which he wore to deceive the world, and I suspected that it concealed a mean nature. He was plainly anxious to be thought a “good sport’ and he was hail-fellow-well-met; but, I do not know why, I felt that he was cunning and shifty. He talked a great deal in a raucous voice, and he and Chaplin capped one another’s stories of beanos which had become legendary, stories of “wet’ nights at the English Club, of shooting expeditions where an incredible amount of whisky had been consumed, and of jaunts to Sydney of which their pride was that they could remember nothing from the time they landed till the time they sailed. A pair of drunken swine. But even in their intoxication, for by now, after four cocktails each, neither was sober, there was a great difference between Chaplin, rough and vulgar, and Lawson: Lawson might be drunk, but he was certainly a gentleman.
At last he got out of his chair, a little unsteadily.
“Well, I’ll be getting along home,” he said. “See you before dinner.”
“Missus all right?” said Chaplin.
“Yes.”
He went out. There was a peculiar note in the monosyllable of his answer which made me look up.
“Good chap,” said Chaplin flatly, as Lawson went out of the door into the sunshine. “One of the best. Pity he drinks.”
This from Chaplin was an observation not without humour.
“And when he’s drunk he wants to fight people.”
“Is he often drunk?”
“Dead drunk, three or four days a week. It’s the island done it, and Ethel.”
“Who’s Ethel?”
“Ethel’s his wife. Married a half-caste. Old Brevald’s daughter. Took her away from here. Only thing to do. But she couldn’t stand it, and now they’re back again. He’ll hang himself one of these days, if he don’t drink himself to death. Good chap. Nasty when he’s drunk.”
Chaplin belched loudly.
“I’ll go and put my head under the shower. I oughtn’t to have had that last cocktail. It’s always the last one that does you in.”
He looked uncertainly at the staircase as he made up his mind to go to the cubby hole in which was the shower, and then with unnatural seriousness got up.
“Pay you to cultivate Lawson,” he said. “A well-read chap. You’d be surprised when he’s sober. Clever too. Worth talking to.”
Chaplin had told me the whole story in these few speeches.
When I came in towards evening from a ride along the seashore Lawson was again in the hotel. He was heavily sunk in one of the cane chairs in the lounge and he looked at me with glassy eyes. It was plain that he had been drinking all the afternoon. He was torpid, and the look on his face was sullen and vindictive. His glance rested on me for a moment, but I could see that he did not recognize me. Two or three other men were sitting there, shaking dice, and they took no notice of him. His condition was evidently too usual to att
ract attention. I sat down and began to play.
“You’re a damned sociable lot,” said Lawson suddenly.
He got out of his chair and waddled with bent knees towards the door. I do not know whether the spectacle was more ridiculous than revolting. When he had gone one of the men sniggered.
“Lawson’s fairly soused today,” he said.
“If I couldn’t carry my liquor better than that,” said another, “I’d climb on the waggon and stay there.”
Who would have thought that this wretched object was in his way a romantic figure or that his life had in it those elements of pity and terror which the theorist tells us are necessary to achieve the effect of tragedy?
I did not see him again for two or three days.
I was sitting one evening on the first floor of the hotel on a veranda that overlooked the street when Lawson came up and sank into a chair beside me. He was quite sober. He made a casual remark and then, when I had replied somewhat indifferently, added with a laugh which had in it an apologetic tone:
“I was devilish soused the other day.”
I did not answer. There was really nothing to say. I pulled away at my pipe in the vain hope of keeping the mosquitoes away, and looked at the natives going home from their work. They walked with long steps, slowly, with care and dignity, and the soft patter of their naked feet was strange to hear. Their dark hair, curling or straight, was often white with lime, and then they had a look of extraordinary distinction. They were tall and finely built. Then a gang of Solomon Islanders, indentured labourers, passed by, singing; they were shorter and slighter than the Samoans, coal-black, with great heads of fuzzy hair dyed red. Now and then a white man drove past in his buggy or rode into the hotel yard. In the lagoon two or three schooners reflected their grace in the tranquil water.
“I don’t know what there is to do in a place like this except to get soused,” said Lawson at last.
The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham - I - East and West Page 20
