Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard (21 page)

“You,” he went on after a pause, “are full of the juices of life. You have blood in you, you have, I suppose, tears. You long and yearn for the things which dissolve people, for friendship and fellowship, for love. Gold you have tonight seen for the first time. I can use you.

“To you, tonight, the minutes only, the pleasure of your body and the five guineas in your pocket will have real existence. You will not be aware that you are contributing to a worthy piece of work of mine. To the fine bafflement of my relations in England, who were once pleased to get rid of me, but who have now for twenty years been on the lookout for the legacy from China. May they sleep well on that.”

The sailor stuck the piece of gold into his pocket. He was by now flushed with food and wine. Big and bony, with his shaggy hair and shining eyes, he looked as strong, greedy and lusty as a bear just out of his winter lair.

“Say no more, old master,” he broke out. “I know what you are going to tell me. I have, before now, heard it told on the ships, every word. This, I know, is what happens to a sailor when he comes ashore. And you, old gentleman, are in luck tonight. If you want a strong, hearty sailor, you are in luck. You will find none stronger on any ship. Who stood by the pumps in the blizzard off Lofoten for eleven hours? It is hard on you being so old and dry. As for me, I shall know well enough what I am doing.”

Once more the boy suddenly and violently blushed crimson. He broke off his bragging and was silent for a minute.

“I am not,” he said, “in the habit of talking to rich old people. To tell you the truth, old master, I am not just now in the habit of talking to anybody at all. I shall tell you the whole story. A fortnight ago, when the schooner
Barracuda
picked me up and took me on board, I had not spoken a word for a whole year. For a year ago, by the middle of March, my own ship, the bark
Amelia Scott
, went down in a storm, and of all her crew I alone was cast ashore on an island. There was nobody but me there. It is not, tonight, more than three weeks since I walked there, on the beach of my island. There were many sounds on my island, but no one ever spoke. I myself sang a song there sometimes—you may sing to yourself. But I never spoke.”

The unexpected strain of adventure in his sailor, and in his story, was agreeable to Mr. Clay. He turned his half-closed eyes to the boy’s face and for a moment let them rest there with approval, almost with kindness.

“Ah,” he said, “so you have starved, slept on the ground, and dressed in rags, for a year?” He looked proudly round the rich room. “Then all this must be a change to you?”

The sailor looked round too. “Yes,” he said. “This house is very different from my island.” As he looked back at the old man, he stuck his hand into his hair. “And that is why my hair is so long,” he said. “I meant to have it cut tonight. The other two promised to take me to a barber’s shop, but they changed their mind and were going to take me to the girls instead. It was good luck to me that I did not get there, for then I should not have met you. I shall soon get used to talking to people again. I have talked before; I am not such a fool as I look.”

“A pleasant thing,” said Mr. Clay, as if to himself. “A highly pleasant thing, I should say, to be all by yourself on an island, where nobody can possibly intrude upon you.”

“It was good in many ways,” said the boy gravely. “There were birds’ eggs on the beach, and I fished there too. I had my knife with me, a good knife; I cut a mark with it in the bark of a big tree each time that I saw the new moon. I had cut nine marks, then I forgot about it, and there were two or three more new moons before the
Barracuda
came along.”

“You are young,” said Mr. Clay. “I presume that you were pleased when the ship came and took you back to people.”

“I was pleased,” said the sailor, “for one reason. But I had got used to the island; I had come to think that I would remain there all my life. I told you there were many sounds on the island. All night I heard the waves, and when the wind rose I would hear it round me on all sides. I heard when the seabirds woke in the morning. One time it rained for a whole month and another time for a fortnight. Both times there were great thunderstorms. The rain came from the sky like a song, and the thunder like a man’s voice, like my old captain’s voice. I was surprised; I had not heard a voice for many months.”

“Were the nights long?” asked Mr. Clay.

“They were as long as the days,” answered the sailor. “The day came, then the night, then the day. The one was as long as the other. Not like in my own country, where the nights are short in summer and long in winter.”

“What did you think of at night?” asked Mr. Clay.

“I thought mostly of one thing,” said the sailor. “I thought of a boat. Many times I also dreamed that I had got her, that I launched her and steered her. She was to be a good, strong, seaworthy boat. But she need not be big, not more than five lastages. A sloop would be the thing for me, with tall bulwarks. The stern should be blue, and I should carve stars round the cabin windows. My own home is in Marstal in Denmark. The old shipbuilder Lars Jensen Bager was a friend
of my father’s; he might help me to build the boat. I should make her trade with corn from Bandholm and Skelskor to Copenhagen. I did not want to die before I had got my boat. When I was taken up by the
Barracuda
, I thought that this was the first bit of my way to her, and that was the reason why I was pleased, then. And when I met you, old gentleman, and you asked me if I would earn five guineas, I knew that I had been right to come away from the island. And that was why I went with you.”

“You are young,” said Mr. Clay again. “Surely on the island you also thought about women?”

The boy sat silent for a long time and looked straight in front of him, as if he had in reality forgotten to speak.

“Yes,” he said. “On the
Amelia Scott
, and on the
Barracuda
too, the others talked about their girls. I know, I know very well what you are paying me to do tonight. I am as good as any sailor. You will have no reason to complain of me, Master. Your lady here, waiting for me, will have no reason to complain of me.”

Suddenly, for a third time, the blood rushed to his face; it sank back, mounted again and kept glowing darkly through the tan of his cheeks. He stood up from his chair, tall and broad and very grave.

“All the same,” he said in a new, deep voice, “I may as well now go back to my ship. And you, my old gentleman, will take on another sailor for your job.” He stuck his hand into his pocket.

The faint rosy tinge disappeared from Mr. Clay’s cheeks. “No,” he said. “No, I do not want you to go back to your ship. You have been cast on a desert island, you have not spoken to a human being for a year. I like to think of that. I can use you. I shall take on no other sailor for my job.”

Mr. Clay’s guest took one step forward and there looked
so big that the old man suddenly clenched the arms of the chair with his hands. He had before now been threatened by desperate men, and had beaten them off by the weight of his wealth, or by the force of his cool, sharp brain. But the irate creature before him was too simple to give in to any of those arguments. He might have stuck his hand in his pocket to draw out the good knife of which he had just spoken. Was it, then, a matter of life and death to make a story come true?

The sailor took from his pocket the gold coin which Mr. Clay had given him, and held it toward the old man.

“You had better not try to hold me back,” he said. “You are very old, you have but little strength to stand up against me. Thank you, old master, for the food and the wine. I shall now go back to my ship. Good night, old gentleman.”

Mr. Clay in his state of surprise and alarm could speak only lowly and hoarsely, but he spoke.

“And your boat, my fine young seaman,” he said. “The boat which is to be all your own? The seaworthy smack of five lastages, which is to trade with corn from your own place to Copenhagen? What will she be, now that you are paying back your five guineas and going away? A story only, which you have been telling me—which will never come to be launched, which will never come to sail!”

After a moment the boy put the coin back in his pocket.

While the nabob and the sailor-boy were entertaining one another in the brilliantly lighted dining room, Virginie in the bedroom, where tonight all candles had been softly shaded
by rose-colored screens, was preparing herself for her own part, the heroine’s part, in Mr. Clay’s story.

She had sent away the little Chinese maid, who had helped her to arrange the room and adorn it with such objects as would make it seem an elegant lady’s bedroom. Two or three times she had suddenly stopped the work and informed the girl that they were both immediately going to leave the house. Now that she was alone, she no longer thought of leaving.

The room in which she found herself had been her parents’ bedroom, where on Sunday mornings the children were let in to play in the big bed. Her father and mother, who for a long time had seemed far away, were with her tonight; she had entered their old house with their consent. To them as to her, this night would bring about the final judgment of their old deadly enemy; the disgrace and humiliation of their daughter provided the conclusive evidence against him. The daughter, according to her vow of long ago, would not see his face at the verdict, but the dead father and mother were there to watch it.

The ornaments with which Virginie had embellished her bedroom of one night—the figurines, Chinese fans and Maquart bouquets—were all similar to those she remembered from her childhood, and which had been so sadly burnt or smashed up by her father before Mr. Clay ever entered the house. A few bibelots had come from her own house. In this way Virginie had joined her gloomy existence of the last ten years with her gay and guiltless past of long ago, and had had it recognized by Monsieur and Madame Dupont.

She set to dress and adorn her own person. She started on the task solemnly and darkly, the way Judith in the tent of the Babylonians adorned her face and body for the meeting with Holofernes. But she immediately and inevitably became absorbed in the process—as, very likely, Judith herself did.

Virginie was an honest person in money matters; out of Mr. Clay’s three hundred guineas she had conscientiously and generously purchased everything belonging to her role. She had a weakness for lace, and was at this moment floating in a cloud of Valenciennes, with a coral necklace round her throat, pearls in her ears and a pair of pink satin slippers on her feet. She powdered and rouged her face, blackened her eyebrows and painted her full lips; she let down her hair in rich silky ringlets over her smooth shoulders, and scented her neck, arms and bosom. When all was done, she gravely went up to one after another of the long looking-glasses in the room.

These glasses had reflected her figure as a little girl, and had told her, then, that she was pretty and graceful. As she looked into them she remembered how, at the age of twelve, she had entreated them to show her what she would be like in years to come, as a lady. The child, she felt, could never have hoped to be shown, in a sweeter or rosier light, a lovelier, a more elegant and bewitching lady. Virginie’s love of the dramatic art, inherited from her father and encouraged by him, came to her aid in the hour of need. If she was not what she appeared to be, neither had her father’s business transactions always been quite what they appeared to be.

During these reflections she had stepped out of her small silk slippers and stretched her fair, slim, strong body between the smooth sheets rich with lace, her dark silken tresses spread over the pillowcase.

She had been engrossed in the thought of her enemy, and she had become engrossed in the vision of herself. It was not till she heard steps in the corridor ouside that she gave any thought to the third party in the story, her unknown guest of the night. Then for a second a little cold draft of contempt for Mr. Clay’s hired and bribed puppet ran through her mind.

When the doorknob turned she cast down her eyes, and till the door was once more opened and shut she kept her glance fixed upon the sheet. But in this withdrawal there was as much energy and vigor as in any direct glance of deadly, uncompromising enmity.

Mr. Clay, in his long dressing-gown of heavy Chinese silk, came into the room leaning on his stick. Two respectful steps behind him a big, blurred shadow slowly crossed the threshold.

The one glass of wine he had taken with his guest had acted upon the invalid of many sleepless nights. He had also, a few minutes ago, been frightened a little, and although in the course of his life he had frightened many people, fear to himself was a rare experience and might well stir his blood in a new way. But the old man was drunk with a still stronger liquor. For tonight he was moving in a world created by his will and at his word.

His triumph had aged him; in a few hours his hair seemed to have grown whiter. But at the same time it had strangely rejuvenated him.

He was at this hour conquering and subjugating; he was indeed, in absorbing them into his own being, annihilating the forces which unexpectedly had bid defiance to him. He was materializing a fantasy and changing a fable into fact. Dimly he felt that he was about to triumph over the person who had attempted to upset his own idea of the world—the Prophet Isaiah.

He smiled a little; he was a little bit unsteady on his legs. For the first time in his life he was impressed by a woman’s beauty. He gazed almost happily at the girl in the bed, whom his command had called to life, and for a second the vague picture of a child long ago shown to him by a proud father appeared before him, and disappeared. He nodded his head
in approval. His dolls were behaving well. The heroine of his story was pink and white, and her downcast eyes bore witness to alarmed modesty. The story was fetching headway.

This was the moment, Mr. Clay knew, for the speech of the old gentleman in the story. He remembered it word for word from the night fifty years ago, but the consciousness of his power was somehow going to the head of the nabob of Canton. The Prophet Isaiah is crafty; behind a pious mien he has knowledge of many ways and measures. Mr. Clay had been a child only a very short time, until he had learned to speak and to understand the speech of other people. Now, as he was about to enter the heaven of his omnipotence, the Prophet laid his hand on his head and turned him into a child—in other words, the old stone-man was quietly entering his second childhood. He began to play with his story; he could not let go the theme of the dinner table.