“Won’t you come inside and sit down?” she said. “Dad is working. He’ll be along presently.”
The doctor accompanied her into the large living-room. The jalousies were drawn and the subdued light was pleasant. There was not much comfort in the room, but it was cool, and a great bunch of yellow cannas in a bowl, flaming like the new-risen sun, gave it a peculiar and exotic distinction.
“We haven’t told grandpa about Erik. He liked him; they were both Scandinavians, you know. We were afraid it would upset him. But perhaps he knows; one can never tell. Sometimes, weeks after, he’ll let fall a remark and we find out that he’s known all along something that we thought we’d better say nothing about.”
She talked in a leisurely manner, with a soft, rather full voice, as though of indifferent things.
“Old age is very strange. It has a kind of aloofness. It’s lost so much, that you can hardly look upon the old as quite human any more. But sometimes you have a feeling that they’ve acquired a sort of new sense that tells them things that we can never know.”
“Your grandfather was gay enough the other night. I hope I shall be as alert at his age.”
“He was excited. He likes having new people to talk to. But that’s just like a phonograph that you wind up. That’s the machine. But there’s something else there, like a little animal, a rat burrowing away or a squirrel turning in its cage, that’s busy within him with things we know nothing of. I feel its existence and I wonder what it’s about.”
The doctor had nothing to say to this, and silence for a minute or two fell upon them.
“Will you have a stengah?” she said.
“No, thank you.”
They were sitting opposite one another in easy chairs. The large room surrounded them with strangeness. It seemed to await something.
“The Fenton sailed this morning,” said the doctor.
“I know.”
He looked at her reflectively and she returned his gaze with tranquillity.
“I’m afraid Christessen’s death was a great shock to you.”
“I was very fond of him.”
“He talked to me a great deal about you the night before he died. He was very much in love with you. He told me he was going to marry you.”
“Yes.” She gave him a fleeting glance. “Why did he kill himself?”
“He saw that boy coming out of your room.”
She looked down. She reddened a little.
“That’s impossible.”
“Fred told me. He was there when he jumped over the rail of the verandah.”
“Who told Fred I was engaged to Erik?”
“I did.”
“I thought it was that yesterday afternoon when he wouldn’t see me. And then when I came in and he looked at me like that I knew it was hopeless.”
There was no despair in her manner, but a collected acceptance of the inevitable. You might almost have said that there was in her tone a shrug of the shoulders.
“You weren’t in love with him, then?”
She leaned her face on her hand and for a moment seemed to look into her heart.
“It’s all rather complicated,” she said.
“Anyhow, it’s no business of mine.”
“Oh, I don’t mind telling you. I don’t care what you think of me.”
“Why should you?”
“He was very good-looking. D’you remember the other afternoon when I met you in the plantation? I couldn’t take my eyes off him. And then at supper, and afterwards when we danced together. I suppose you’d call it love at first sight.”
“I’m not sure that I would.”
“Oh?” She looked at him with an air of surprise, which changed to a quick, scrutinising glance, as though for the first time she paid him attention. “I knew he’d taken a fancy to me. I felt something I’d never felt in my life before. I wanted him simply frightfully. I generally sleep like a log. I was terribly restless all night. Father wanted to bring you his translation and I offered to drive him down. I knew he was only staying a day or two. Perhaps if he’d been staying a month it wouldn’t have happened. I should have thought there was plenty of time, and if I’d seen him every day for a week I daresay I shouldn’t have bothered about him. And afterwards, I didn’t regret it. I felt contented and free. I lay awake for a little while after he left me that night. I was awfully happy, but, you know, I didn’t really care if I never saw him again. It was very comfortable to be alone. I don’t suppose you’ll know what I mean, but I felt that my soul was a little light-headed.”
“Have you no fear of consequences?” asked the doctor.
“How d’you mean?” She understood and smiled. “Oh, that. Oh, doctor, I’ve lived on this island almost all my life. When I was a child I used to play with the children on the estate. My great friend, the daughter of our overseer, is the same age as me and she’s been married for four years and has had three babies. You don’t imagine sex has many secrets for Malay children. I’ve heard everything connected with it talked about since I was seven.”
“Why did you come to the hotel yesterday?”
“I was distracted. I was awfully fond of Erik. I couldn’t believe it when they told me he’d shot himself. I was afraid I was to blame. I wanted to know if it was possible that he knew about Fred.”
“You were to blame.”
“I’m dreadfully sorry he’s dead. I owe a great deal to him. When I was a child I used to worship him. He was like one of grandpa’s old Vikings to me. I’ve always liked him awfully. But I’m not to blame.”
“What makes you think that?”
“He didn’t know it, but it wasn’t me he loved, it was mother. She knew it and at the end I think she loved him, too. It’s funny if you come to think of it. He was almost young enough to be her son. What he loved in me was my mother, and he never knew that either.”
“Didn’t you love him?”
“Oh, very much. With my soul, not with my heart, or with my heart, perhaps, and not with my nerves. He was very good. He was wonderfully reliable. He was incapable of unkindness. He was very genuine. There was something almost saintly in him.”
She took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes, for while talking of him she had begun to cry.
“If you weren’t in love with him, why did you become engaged to him?”
“I promised mother I would before she died. I think she felt that in me she would gratify her love for him. And I was very fond of him. I knew him so well. I was very much at home with him. I think if he’d wanted to marry me just when mother died and I was so unhappy I might have loved him. But he thought I was too young. He didn’t want to take advantage of the feelings I had then.”
“And then?”
“Daddy didn’t very much want me to marry him. He was always waiting for the fairy prince who would come and carry me off to an enchanted castle. I suppose you think daddy’s feckless and unpractical. Of course I didn’t believe in a fairy prince, but there’s generally something behind daddy’s ideas. He has a sort of instinct for things. He lives in the clouds, if you know what I mean, but very often those clouds glow with the light of heaven. Oh, I suppose if nothing had happened we should have married in the end and been very happy. No one could have helped being happy with Erik. It would have been very nice to see all those places he talked about. I should have liked to go to Sweden, to the place where grandpa was born, and Venice.”
“It’s unfortunate that we ever came here. And, after all, it was only a chance, we might just as well have made for Amboyna.”
“Could you have gone to Amboyna? I think it was fated from all eternity that you should come here.”
“Do you think our destinies are so important that the fates should make such a to-do about them?” smiled the doctor.
She did not answer and for a little while they sat in silence.
“I’m terribly unhappy, you know,” she said at last.
“You must try not to grieve too much.”
&nbs
p; “Oh, I don’t grieve.”
She spoke with a sort of decision so that the doctor looked at her with surprise.
“You blame me. Anyone would. I don’t blame myself. Erik killed himself because I’d fallen short of the ideal he’d made of me.”
“Ah.”
Dr. Saunders perceived that her instinct had come to the same conclusion as he with his reasoning.
“If he’d loved me he might have killed me or he might have forgiven me. Don’t you think it’s rather stupid the importance men, white men at least, attach to the act of flesh? D’you know, when I was at school in Auckland I had an attack of religion—girls often have at that age—and in Lent I made a vow that I wouldn’t eat anything with sugar in it. After about a fortnight I hankered after something sweet so that it was positive torture. One day I passed a candy shop and I looked at the chocolates in the window and my heart turned round inside me. I went in and bought half a pound and ate them in the street outside, every one, till the bag was empty. I shall never forget what a relief it was. Then I went back to school and denied myself quite comfortably for the rest of Lent. I told that story to Erik and he laughed. He thought it very natural. He was so tolerant. Don’t you think if he’d loved me he would have been tolerant about the other, too?”
“Men are very peculiar in that respect.”
“Not Erik. He was so wise and so charitable. I tell you he didn’t love me. He loved his ideal. My mother’s beauty and my mother’s qualities in me and those Shakespeare heroines of his and the princesses in Hans Andersen’s fairy tales. What right have people to make an image after their own heart and force it on you and be angry if it doesn’t fit you? He wanted to imprison me in his ideal. He didn’t care who I was. He wouldn’t take me as I am. He wanted to possess my soul, and because he felt that there was somewhere in me something that escaped him, he tried to replace that little spark within me which is me by a phantom of his own fancy. I’m unhappy, but I tell you I don’t grieve. And Fred in his way was the same. When he lay by my side that night he said he’d like to stay here always on this island, and marry me and cultivate the plantation, and I don’t know what else. He made a picture of his life and I was to fit in it. He wanted, too, to imprison me in his dream. It was a different dream, but it was his dream. But I am I. I don’t want to dream anyone else’s dream. I want to dream my own. All that’s happened is terrible and my heart is heavy, but at the back of my mind I know that it’s given me freedom.”
She did not speak with emotion, but slowly and in measured terms, with the collected manner that the doctor had always found so singular. He listened attentively. He shuddered a little within himself, for the spectacle of the naked human soul always affected him with horror. He saw there that same bare, ruthless instinct that impelled those shapeless creatures of the beginning of the world’s history to force their way through the blind hostility of chance. He wondered what would become of this girl.
“Have you any plan for the future?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I can wait. I’m young. When grandpa dies this will be mine. Perhaps I shall sell it. Daddy wants to go to India. The world is wide.”
“I must go,” said Dr. Saunders. “Can I see your father to say good-bye to him?”
“I’ll take you to his study.”
She led him along a passage to a smallish room at the side of the house. Frith was sitting at a table littered with manuscripts and books. He was pounding a typewriter, and the sweat pouring from his fat red face made his spectacles slip down his nose.
“This is the final typing of the ninth canto,” he said. “You’re going away, aren’t you? I’m afraid I shan’t have time to show it you.”
He had forgotten that Dr. Saunders had fallen asleep while he was reading his translation aloud to him, or if he remembered was undiscouraged.
“I am nearing the end. It has been an arduous task, and I hardly think I could ever have brought it to a successful conclusion but for my little girl’s encouragement. It is very right and proper that she should be the chief gainer.”
“You mustn’t work too hard, daddy.”
“Tempus fugit,” he murmured. “Ars longa, vita brevis.”
She put her hand gently on his shoulder and with a smile looked at the sheet of paper in the machine. Once more the doctor was struck by the loving kindness with which Louise treated her father. With her shrewd sense she could not have failed to form a just estimate of his futile labour.
“We haven’t come to disturb you, darling. Dr. Saunders wants to say good-bye.”
“Ah, yes, of course,” said Frith. He got up from the table. “Well, it’s been a treat to see you. In this backwater of life we don’t often have visitors. It was kind of you to come to Christessen’s funeral yesterday. We Britishers ought to stick together on these occasions. It impresses the Dutch. Not that Christessen was British. But we’d seen a great deal of him since he came to the island, and after all he belonged to the same country as Queen Alexandra. A glass of sherry before you go?”
“No, thank you. I must be getting back.”
“I was very much upset when I heard. The Controleur told me he had no doubt it was the heat. He wanted to marry Louise. I’m very glad now I wouldn’t give my consent. Lack of self-control, of course. The English are the only people who can transplant themselves to strange lands and keep their balance. He’ll be a great loss to us. Of course he was a foreigner, but all the same it’s a shock. I’ve felt it very much.”
It was evident, however, that he looked upon it as much less serious for a Dane to die than for an Englishman. Frith insisted on coming out into the compound. The doctor, turning round to wave his hand as he drove off, saw him with his arm round his daughter’s waist. A ray of sun finding its way through the heavy leafage of the kanari trees touched her fair hair with gold.
xxx
A MONTH later Dr. Saunders was sitting on the little dusty terrace of the van Dyke Hotel at Singapore. It was late in the afternoon. From where he sat he could see the street below. Cars dashed past and cabs drawn by two sturdy ponies; rickshaws sped by with a patter of naked feet. Now and then Tamils, tall and emaciated, sauntered along, and in their silence, in the quiet of their stealthy movement, was the night of a far-distant past. Trees shaded the street and the sun splashed down in irregular patches. Chinese women in trousers, with gold pins in their hair, stepped out of the shade into the light like marionettes passing across the stage. Now and then a young planter, deeply sunburned, in a double-brimmed hat and khaki shorts, walked past with the long stride he had learnt tramping over the rubber estates. Two dark-skinned soldiers, very smart in their clean uniforms, strutted by conscious of their importance. The heat of the day was past, the light was golden, and in the air was a crisp nonchalance as though life, there and then, invited you to take it lightly. A water-cart passed, slithering the dusty road with a stream of water.
Dr. Saunders had spent a fortnight in Java. Now he was catching the first ship that came in for Hong-Kong, and from there he intended to take a coasting vessel to Fu-chou. He was glad he had made the journey. It had taken him out of the rut he had been in so long. It had liberated him from the bonds of unprofitable habits, and, relaxed as never before from all earthly ties, he rejoiced in a heavenly sense of spiritual independence. It was an exquisite pleasure to him to know that there was no one in the world who was essential to his peace of mind. He had reached, though by a very different path, the immunity from the concerns of this world which is the aim of the ascetic. While, like the Buddha contemplating his navel, he was delectably immersed in his self-satisfaction, someone touched him on the shoulder. He looked up and saw Captain Nichols.
“I was passin’ by and saw you sittin’ there. I came up to say ’ow d’ye do to you.”
“Sit down and have a drink.”
“I don’t mind if I do.”
The skipper wore his shore-going clothes. They were not old, but they looked astonishingly seedy. H
e had two days’ growth of beard on his lean face, and the nails on his hands were rimmed with grime. He looked down at heel.
“I’m ’avin’ me teeth attended to,” he said. “You was right. The dentist says I must ’ave ’em all out. Says ’e’s not surprised I suffer from dyspepsia. It’s a miracle I’ve gone on as long as I ’ave, according to ’im.”
The doctor gave him a glance and noticed that his upper front teeth had been extracted. It made his ingratiating smile more sinister than ever.
“Where’s Fred Blake?” asked Dr. Saunders.
The smile faded from the skipper’s lips, but lingered sardonic in his eyes.
“Come to a sticky end, poor young chap,” he replied.
“What d’you mean?”
“Fell overboard one night or jumped over. Nobody knows. He was gone in the morning.”
“In a storm?”
The doctor could hardly believe his ears.
“No. Sea was as flat as a mill-pond. He was very low after we come away from Kanda. We went to Batavia same as we said we was goin’ to do. I suspicioned ’e was expectin’ a letter there. But if it come or if it didn’t I don’t know, and it’s no good askin’ me.”
“But how could he go overboard without anyone noticing? What about the man at the helm?”
“We’d ’ove to for the night. Been drinkin’ very ’eavy. Nothin’ to do with me, of course, but I tell ’im he’d better go easy. Told me to mind me own bloody business. All right, I says, go your own way. It ain’t goin’ to disturb my night’s rest what you do.”
“When did it happen?”
“A week ago last Tuesday.”
The doctor leaned back. It was a shock to him. It was so short a while since that boy and he had sat together and talked. It had seemed to him then that there was in him something naïve and aspiring that was not devoid of charm. It was not very pleasant to think of him now drifting, mangled and terrible, at the mercy of the tides. He was only a kid. Notwithstanding his philosophy, the doctor could not but feel a pang when the young died.
The Narrow Corner Page 22
