by A. J. Cronin
Awkwardness at once was in the air, but though Susan’s flush still lingered her voice was firm.
‘We have been singing to our Maker,’ she said distinctly. ‘We don’t just regard that as an entertainment.’
Elissa affected a puzzled frown.
‘Can’t you sing something?’ she protested. ‘I mean, couldn’t you entertain your Maker and us – both at the same time?’
Dibs let out his usual laugh, but Susan’s eyes darkened and her lips became quite pale; she seemed struggling for words when Robert spoke.
Looking directly at Elissa he said:
‘I’ll sing for you, Mrs Baynham, since you ask us. We aren’t that unobliging after all. I’ll sing something you might like to hear. And I guess God won’t mind hearing it either.’
He swung round with a half-conscious, vaguely ceremonial air and in an undertone said a few words to Susan sitting bolt upright, rigid as a rock. For a full ten seconds, it seemed as if she would not stir, then, with a movement, almost of resignation, her body slackened, her hands reached out to the keyboard, she began to play. It was the negro spiritual ‘All God’s Children,’ and as the thin melodious treble of the cheap harmonium rose into the saloon Robert began to sing.
His voice was good, a baritone which, though it boomed a little in its lower and vibrated in its upper reaches, had nevertheless richness and resonance. And with full eye and straining throat he tried hard to sing his best, which made him rather emotional, even theatrical. But nothing of his mannerisms could destroy the touching beauty of the air, echoing in that cabined space and soaring outwards to dissolve thinly upon the vast dimensions of the moving sea.
Corcoran listened with lifted battered ear and faintly nodding head – to him it was a tune; Dibs, his upper lip retracted questioningly to show his yellowish teeth, was thinking of his lunch; Elissa’s sulky inanimation betrayed nothing but a bored contempt. But Mary, curled upon the settee, her slender legs bent under her blue serge skirt which, drawn tautly back exposed the beauty of her thigh, listened like someone in a dream. Her eyes were utterly remote, quite heedless of the singer. Her expression, a moment ago so eager and intrepid, was now forlorn; upon her lovely face there lay a queer lost look. Shadows all fretted and perplexing floated across her vision; in her ears a fountain surged and splashed; white moonshine mingled with the fountain’s note. Again she felt herself trembling as upon a deep chasm of discovery.
Suddenly the voice rose and for the last time fell to silence. No one spoke. Mary was too moved to speak. Then deliberately Elissa yawned behind her hand.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said languidly. ‘I heard Robeson sing that. He did it quite beautifully.’
Tranter flushed to his ears with mortification; Susan got up with the abruptness of an automaton, began to collect her music.
Then Mary said:
‘It was lovely – lovely.’ She hesitated, seeking to shape her thought, ‘Something behind it – that meaning you can’t find on the surface of things.’
‘Faith and yer right, lady,’ said Corcoran gallantly. ‘There’s more goes on below the surface than works out by rule of three. Things you’d never dream about – the queerest things ye can’t for the life of ye explain.’
There was a short silence. Then Mary rose and without a word went out of the saloon.
On deck the rain had ceased. Leaning across the rail she felt the clean wind come crisping through her parted teeth with a sound like the sighing of a great seashell. For no reason whatever her emotion was intense. That meaning you couldn’t find on the surface of things! Oh, she was stupid, too stupid for words. But she couldn’t help herself. Blindly she reached out her arms. With palms uppermost and thin fingers uncurled, she surrendered her whole soul to the listening horizon.
Below, the group had not held together: Corcoran and Dibs had vanished separately to their cabins, and Susan, too, stood now in the middle of the floor, her music clasped under her arm, her brown eyes fixed on Robert, who still sat by the harmonium.
‘Are you coming, Robbie?’ she asked quietly. ‘It’s about time you had your extract.’
Like one removed from serious thought he lifted his head.
‘I’ll be along right now, Sue. Will you put out the’ – he smiled in a big brotherly fashion – ‘ the darn stuff.’
‘Come now. You’ll forget for certain if you don’t.’
He still smiled at her; spoke with unusual lightness:
‘Pour out the dose, Susie, and if it’s not gone in half an hour I’ll swallow the bottleful.’
Her fingers tightened against the green cardboard of the music case, but she managed to answer his smile, then she turned, retreated noiselessly from the saloon.
Elissa, removing her gaze from vacancy, let it fall by chance on Robert.
‘She’s jealous of you,’ she said – then added her jibe: ‘What on earth for?’
‘Susan and I live for each other.’
‘And for God?’
‘Yes. For God.’
From across the cabin she contemplated him as from across a continent, her gaze charged with lifeless scorn yet holding a sort of antipodean wonder, seeing him the most abject creature, the most insufferable bore, the most contemptible prig who had ever whined a psalmody. His dark eyes absorbed her scrutiny with all that it contained, and he broke out suddenly:
‘Why do you despise us, Mrs Baynham – my sister and me? We haven’t your breeding, your poise, we’re not in your social grade. But for all that, ma’am, we are human. At least I guess so. We’re ordinary human beings trying to be honest and good.’
She lit a cigarette without interest. But he rose, strode over to the settee, and impressively seated himself beside her.
‘Mrs Baynham,’ he said earnestly, his voice full, soft, and ceremonial. ‘I’ve wanted the chance to talk to you. And say’ – his eyes blazed suddenly and his voice quickened – ‘I am real honest about this. You think my sister and myself are fakirs – what you would call plain humbugs. It isn’t true. There’s been mud thrown at us evangelists. Books have been written – guying us – our accent, our clothes, everything. It’s shameful! And before God it isn’t true. There’s been cases, I grant you – bad cases – men and women with commercial minds who prostituted the gospel for money. But for every one of these shams there’s a hundred others with a positive and burning belief. You’d think, to read those books, there wasn’t an ounce of good intention or endeavour in religion. That every minister doubted what he preached. That’s a downright lie. I believe with every fibre of my being. Mrs Baynham, ma’am, granted you’re not in sympathy with that belief, at least have the goodness to admit that we are sincere.’
She threw him a patronising glance.
‘What a long speech. What does it mean? And what does it matter?’
‘It matters more than you think, ma’am. And you know what it means. Believe me, it grieves me to see a woman of your talents and capacity and beauty so blind to the meaning of life. You are not happy. You have tried everything and enjoyed nothing.’
Her eyebrows lifted.
‘So I’ve enjoyed nothing?’
‘No!’ he cried. ‘Nothing! And you’ll never be happy until you find God. There lies the only joy in life.’
She inhaled a long puff of smoke and studied the cigarette’s fat glowing end. He was sincere; she admitted it with a kind of lustreless surprise; and a vague whim rose and sank within her – his profile rather good, she speculated, his figure big, quite solid, but there were tiny hairs sprouting in his nostrils and he was a bore, oh, yes, such a frightful crashing bore. She found herself saying:
‘And you’ve got all the happiness you want?’
‘Cannot you see,’ he answered glowingly, ‘ I am happy? Salvation spells happiness, here and hereafter. That’s a cinch – a certainty. If only you could see it! Oh, I wish I could convince you, ma’am.’
Wrapped unapproachably in her indolence she said:
‘You mea
n then – you want actually to – to save me?’
She had a vague derisory impulse to employ another predicate – but she refrained.
‘My mission is to lead people to salvation,’ he cried, and a strange sincerity rang through the florid words. He bent towards her, his eye humid, fervent: ‘Won’t you try, Mrs Baynham? Won’t you try to come to God? You are too fine really to be lost. Come! Come! Oh, let me help you to come!’
She sat motionless, holding in her body a secret, contemptuous hilarity which suddenly swelled unconquerably. She burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter through which, like the trumpet note of judgement, there came a bugle’s clarion call. It was the signal for luncheon.
At last she turned to him.
‘I’ve just thought,’ she declared brokenly. ‘You haven’t – you haven’t taken your liver extract.’
Chapter Eight
Just after seven bells on that same day Harvey Leith came out of his cabin for the first time since the ship had reached blue water. In the alley-way he paused, dazzled by a sunlight which his unaccustomed eyes could not sustain, flooded by a strange pariah sense of isolation. In that merciless light his face betrayed what he had suffered. The ridges of his cheeks were gaunt, but though weakness still assailed him he was better – incomparably better. Trout had shaved him, assisted him to dress in the nondescript grey suit, and now observed him from the cabin doorway with a bland creative pride. The little steward had been assiduous, and Corcoran, too, had come often to the cabin to plague him with companionable philosophy during those last three days.
He was not ungrateful, yet for all their succour he felt a stranger upon the ship. And so desired it. Supporting himself against the rail he slowly ascended the companion-way to the bridge deck. Upon the port side, wrapped in a rug, sat Mother Hemmingway, her fat, ringed hands like blobs of butter upon her lap, her figure spineless as a bag of dough. Since at this moment she neither smoked nor ate she was doing nothing – she merely sat. But when she saw Leith her beady eyes glistened with their bright, malicious stare.
‘Well, well,’ she cried. ‘If it ain’t the strynger. Sancta Maria, but you don’t ’alf look scuppered. My ’at and parsley, you gives me quite a turn.’
Harvey gazed downwards at her bulging cheeks so blotched they seemed to ooze blood.
‘Ought I to apologise?’ he asked stiffly.
‘Ah!’ she exclaimed in a friendly tone. ‘I don’t think none the worse on you ’cos you was lushed. Carajo, no, sir. And it’s ’ell when you’re knocked off it pronto. Wot you need is a drop of nigger’s blood – stout and port that is. ’Streuth but it’s lively.’ She winked. ‘Say the word and I’ll do you a turn.’
‘No thanks,’ said Harvey flatly. And he turned to go.
‘’Ere, don’t go awye,’ she cried volubly. ‘Sit down and be matey. My tongue’s ’ angin’ out for a parley-vous. With that bleedin’ old snob at the tyble ye can’t get a word in edgewyes. ‘ E’s too stuck up for Gawd Almighty. “Do you ’unt?” says ’e to me to-dye, meanin’ to tyke me down a peg. “ ’Unt,” says I – “I don’t know an ’orse from an ’am-bone but if you try to make gyme of me I’ll ’ unt the bleedin’ ’ide off your back.”’ Indignantly she tossed her earrings; but immediately she smiled. ‘Now you’re different. You’ve been up against it, cocky, like I’ave. I likes you for it. Strike me blind if you ’aven’t got my bleedin’ sympathy.’ She closed one eye cunningly. ‘You’ll ave to come and see me at my plyce in Santa. We’ll ’ave a snack and an ’ and at German w’ist. ’Undred and Sixteen Calle de la Tuna. Make a note on it.’
‘Your kindness is overwhelming. But I hardly think I’ll be able to come.’
‘You never knows your luck, cocky.’ She peered up at him. ‘And while we’re talkin’. Wot’s your friend Corcoran’s gyme? ’E’s on ’is uppers for all ’is blarney. And I’ve rooked ’im of his petty cash at rummy. Wye is ’e comin’ out to Santa? I don’t rumble ’im no’ow.’
Harvey shook his head.
‘I haven’t the least idea,’ he said coldly; then before she could reply he turned and passed quickly out of earshot.
He went round to the starboard side, seeking seclusion. But though some chairs stood about untenanted, two were occupied. He did not care. Suddenly he felt weak and sat down.
The sun was warm, a healing warmth which lay like balm upon his half-closed eyelids and sank into his weary body like a caress. The corners of his mouth, drawn downwards into bitterness, faintly relaxed. The wound in his soul remained raw and bleeding; but for a moment he forgot its pain. The air was light. The water glinted in great soft curves. The ship sailed southwards. Incredibly, about its steepled rigging two swallows circled, cherishing this chance oasis upon their passage, holding to safety till they should sight the land.
All at once Harvey opened his eyes, conscious that someone was gazing at him. Immediately Susan Tranter looked away, an unexpected flush rising, then fading on her cheek.
She was seated in the neighbouring chair, darning a grey woollen sock, a work-bag by her side, a note-book and a pencil upon her knee. So quickly did she turn that the note-book dropped upon the deck and lay open beside her strong, square shoe.
He picked up the book, aware with the instant comprehension which was his faculty that it was her diary: keeping a conscientious diary, mending her brother’s underwear – that, he thought grimly, is her type. But as he held the note-book in his hand a page fluttered and quite by accident his name, a phrase upon the finely written sheet beyond that name, leaped to his astonished eye:
‘I do not believe the story to be true. He has a noble face.’
That was all; the book was now closed, back upon her lap; his expression had not changed. But she was still vaguely discomposed, feeling that she must speak, not knowing what to say. At last she ventured:
‘I hope – I hope you feel better.’
He turned away. Nauseated by his discovery, by the gawky sentiment implied, he hated her solicitude; yet there was in her attitude a diffidence which compelled him to reply:
‘Yes, I’m better.’
‘That’s great,’ she went on quickly. ‘When we make Las Palmas on Saturday you’ll feel that fine you’ll want to go ashore and climb the Peak.’
He stared morbidly in front of him.
‘I shall probably go ashore and get drunk. Not heroically drunk you understand. Just undramatically fuddled. Stupid oblivion.’
Something in her eyes winced; she made to protest; but she controlled herself.
‘We wanted to help you, my brother and I, when you – when you were sick. He wanted to come to your cabin. But I kind of guessed you’d like to be left quiet.’
‘You were right.’
His agreement seemed conclusive, constituting a final silence. Yet in a moment she bridged that silence.
‘That remark of mine sounds so officious,’ she said diffidently. ‘I just must explain I’ve had nursing experience. Three years in the John Stirling clinic. And fever training also. I’ve nursed most things – from malaria to teething fits. It’ll help Robert’s missionary work, you see.’ She paused to snip competently a tag of wool, and ended: ‘But I guess it’s healthy enough in Laguna.’
But he wasn’t listening. As she spoke, his eye, roving nervously, had fallen to studying the girl in the chair which faced him four yards away. She was sleeping, her small bosom rising and gently falling, her hands relaxed, her lashes casting blue shadows upon her pale, sun-warmed skin. Each lash was long and curled to a point with a separate, lustrous individuality. Her coat, of smooth brown pelt, lay open at the neck, exposing a row of pearls, each pinkish, translucent, soft, and larger than a pea. She slept warmly like a child, her body acquiescent yet filled with a flowing beauty. Loveliness lay upon her like a bloom. And in her sleep her mouth seemed smiling.
Finding him frankly inattentive, Susan had fallen silent: but from time to time she followed his stare with little darting glances cast off across her flying
needle, glances which focused alertly upon a tiny ring of yellow silk that glinted unguarded above the sleeping girl’s knee. Finally she seemed compelled to speak.
‘She is very young – Lady Fielding,’ she said carefully, in a tone charged with determined generosity. ‘And real beautiful.’
‘Her two virtues, doubtless,’ he answered frigidly. And the instant he had spoken he regretted it; he had the strange sense of striking something lovely and defenceless.
Susan did not encourage his irony; nor did she rebuke it.
‘Those pearls,’ she continued in the same colourless voice. ‘Each of them would help keep a starving family for a year. Don’t you think it a terrible pity, Dr Leith? Poor folks starving to death in the slums – and these gew-gaws! Honest, they’re so useless.’
‘I have no interest in starving slum families,’ he said with sardonic bitterness. ‘Except in so far as they do starve to death. That would improve the race. It needs it. You know of course that I am practising the killing-off principle. Three blameless fellow creatures wiped out before I came on board. A good start!’
Her eyes were troubled. Drawn to him by pity she felt now instinctively the hurt within his mind. And his face – it made her catch her breath, so like that painting she had once seen, the profile of the wounded Saviour. She must speak.
‘Her husband, Sir Michael Fielding,’ she went on at random. ‘He’s awfully rich. Plantations on the islands. That’s only a sideline, I reckon, to him. But we heard tell of it through our enquiries. Real fine reputation, he’s got. And of course his name – historic! Guess he’s a bit older than she. A Mainwaring, Lady Fielding was, before her marriage – folks always been connected with the sea. Leastways so I’m told. Kind of queer she came away without her husband. I wonder why?’
