Grand Canary (2 page)

Again Leith shivered, struck by a sense of quitting the land. A rawness rising from the water enwrapped him, mingled with a presentiment so strangely agitating he felt shaken. His eyes, reaching ahead, drew magnetically to the lines of a ship of some three thousand tons, blue-flagged for departure, her dark brown funnel lightly smoking, her shut ports palely glittering in the cold grey light. Dimly he traced the name upon her stern –
Aureola.
She was small and built for cargo; but a lovely ship, her bow keen, her stern fine, her hull graceful, tense.

‘There's your hooker, then,' murmured Ismay, breaking his tactful silence at last.
‘Aureola –
a lovely name.
Aureola!'
He let the syllables slip over his tongue. ‘ Sounds fine. Good omen, too, I'll be bound.'

Because he felt the name was lovely and somehow rhythmic, Harvey forced himself to sneer. He gave a hard satiric laugh.

‘More uplift, Ismay? A mystical light by the bow and haloes wreathed around the mast. You expect me to come back wearing one. Purified and ready to begin all over again.' He broke off, sorry already that he had spoken. He was on edge, his nerves overstrung; he needed a drink; yes, that was it, he must have a drink to steady himself. With the cold insight of a scientific mind he admitted his agitation, and placed it to its just cause. But what did it all matter anyway? Finished – everything!

And yet it was strange, very strange, this sudden queer excitement piercing the dreary oppression of his mind. As the tug drew alongside the
Aureola
he felt it strike at him again. He stood apart, heedless of the other passengers, of whom vaguely there were four, now disembarking from the tender – a small, stout woman; an oldish, clumsy-looking man; another man, tall, very assiduous and talkative; and a young woman in the background – but he took no notice of them. Climbing the ladder to the deck, he looked round – like a man expectant of something he knows not what. Yet he saw nothing; no one but a steward whom Ismay at once appropriated. Thus the mood broke sharply and fell away from him. He followed Ismay and the steward along the alley-way to the brief row of cabins which constituted the passenger accommodation of the ship, bowed his head, entered his cabin dully. He sat down upon the settee, morosely contemplating the shining white-enamelled cell which must enclose him for the next four weeks.

Vaguely he heard Ismay talking to the steward; vaguely he saw them go out together. He didn't care whether they went or stayed. No, no, that was wholly untrue; and above everything – yes, even now – there must be truth. Ismay's kindness: coming from London like this, arranging the whole dismal business; it was a sign of something far beyond the mere friendship which had linked them at the hospital. Ismay was a good fellow, a little officious perhaps, but that surely was permissible, the prerogative of a successful surgeon.

Success! He winced from the word and stared at the bunk which he must occupy, a bunk white as a shroud and narrow as a coffin. There had been three coffins, long and black, the coffins of three men borne with all the ghastly panoply of death to the grave. He had never seen these coffins, yet, as he sat, a sound like that of chanting swelled over him in waves, hollow and sepulchral. Wearily he raised his hand to his brow. He had heard no chanting. Never. Was he mad or drunk? His jaw set rigidly. At a sudden sound abruptly he lifted his head. It was Ismay: returning alone, closing the cabin door, looking at him with sudden resolution.

‘I'm going now, Harvey. The tender's just pushing off.'

‘You've been away a long time,' said Harvey slowly. ‘Where have you been?'

There was a short silence.

‘Speaking to someone – the steward,' said Ismay at length. ‘Explaining about your – your breakdown.'

Harvey stared at him fixedly.

‘You will try, Harvey,' went on Ismay quickly. ‘You promise me you'll try.'

‘Try what? I told you I'd stopped trying. Let someone else have a stab at the trying. I'm done with it.'

‘But listen; nobody believes – oh, I'm tired of telling you – every decent man knows –'

‘What do they know?' Harvey cried bitterly. ‘Nothing. The whole blasted brigade.' The nerve in his cheek began to work again painfully, excitedly; he went on with savage mimicry: ‘Take the coloured water three times a day. Come and see me next Tuesday. Yes, dear lady, two guineas, if
you
please. Swine – the lot of them ignorant, greedy, self-sufficient swine.'

‘But look –'

‘Stamping along their measly little ruts. Snouts in the muck of ignorance. Rooting the same patch. Year in, year out. Blind to truth. On and on. Blind.'

A supplicating note ran into Ismay's voice:

‘But hang it all, man, be reasonable. There's yourself – your future. You must think of it. You must.'

‘Future?'

‘A brilliant future.'

‘Who said so?'

‘I said so. And you know it. For God's sake don't smash up that, Harvey.'

‘It is smashed. Smashed to bits. And the bits belong to me. I'll do what I damned well like with them.'

‘Can't you think of humanity then?' cried Ismay. ‘ Sneer if you like. I will put it like that. I know you'll do great work. I feel it. You've got it in you just – oh, just as Pasteur had. I'm positive. Don't let yourself go to pieces like this. It's too horrible.'

Carried away by his feeling, he bent forward and said again entreatingly: ‘Can't you think of humanity?'

‘Humanity!' Harvey burst into a loud, derisive laugh. ‘ I hate every son of a bitch who ever had the belly-ache.'

There was a pause filled by a quiet sound of feet on the deck above; then all at once Ismay awkwardly discovered his own emotion. He let his attitude relax, forced the anxiety from his face.

‘I'll say no more, then,' he declared in his ordinary voice. ‘ I'm going now. But I know you too well to have any fear. All that you need is this breathing-space. Four weeks – it isn't much. But it's enough. I've got faith, you see. Perhaps I know you better than you know yourself.'

‘You know, do you?' sneered Harvey. ‘My God!'

There was another pause: Ismay held out his hand.

‘Good-bye.'

‘Good-bye,' said Harvey shortly; he hesitated, then added slowly, with averted head and a sort of laconic compunction, ‘And thanks.'

‘It'll be good to have you back,' said Ismay. ‘ Back and ready to begin again.' He smiled his dry, reassuring smile; then the door closed behind him and he was gone.

Back – ready to begin again? Sitting there alone as Ismay had left him, he had the rushing conviction that he would never begin again. But what did it matter, anyway? That was all past, finished, done with; and in the meantime he wanted a drink, wanted it so badly he felt the moisture run into his mouth in reflex to the thought. Strange how alcohol had helped him. It was a drug, and as such he recognised it – a useful drug which he had applied deliberately to his own condition, blunting the edge of his suffering, dulling the quivering agony of his mind. Dispassionately he studied the question. He was no drunkard. He was a scientist, bound to no banal moral code, admitting no virtue but truth – that truth which he had always sought – impervious to the stupid, the obvious, and the orthodox, demanding the freedom to arrange his destiny according to his will. It was a lucid thought and not without a certain bitter comfort.

He remained quite still, craving to drink, feeling the fine tremor of his fingers run into his arms in spasms of nervous irritation. But oddly, with a fierce and introverted grimness, he withheld the moment of his deliverance. He would drink when the ship got under way, but not before. And so he sat waiting; waiting for the ship's departure.

The ship, too, seemed waiting. In the waist, the cargo hatches lay secured, tarpaulined and in sea shape. Beyond, at the donkey engine, two men in blue jerseys stood alert, shrouded by a coil of hissing steam. In the bows the boatswain fingered his whistle, and by the gangway Hamble, the purser, hung about, dusting the lapels of his monkey-jacket, caressing his small moustache, fiddling at his stringy black tie, all with a sort of nervous anticipation.

The tender had long ago stood off. On the bridge deck, gazing intently towards the quay, there was firmly planted a short man in uniform who now, without moving his head, hailed the bridge. At once the siren sounded – a long and mournful note, repeated and again repeated. At the same second a swift moving shape darted from the dull background of the docks towards the ship. On it came, an open motor-launch, impelled to speed by the siren's troubled moaning, threshing a curving wake with every indication of despatch. In three minutes it bumped alongside.

Beyond the rich baggage which it contained and the waterman – plainly distressed to be involved in the supreme disaster of a ship's delay – the launch held three passengers.

And now they came on board.

Daines-Dibdin, a long, rangy, senile gentleman with a monocle embedded in his eye, came first. He was a reddish, withered gentleman, but he was, in his preserved way, utterly immaculate and well bred. He stood, at a glance, for the correct thing, and there was about him a perennial aspect and a certain doltish inevitability as though one day he might use Bond Street as his highway and the next, with a fresh shave and serene stupidity, the middle of the Sahara.

Breathing heavily, he reached the deck and turned to assist the others – a woman and a girl – now clambering up the gangway. At that moment Harvey, chafing at the delay, flung open his cabin door. His brooding eye, arrested suddenly, fastened on the scene of the arrival: the formal reception, Hamble's deference, the rapid attention to the baggage, the agitated scurrying of the stewardess, the unusual stir created. With cold detachment he noticed these evidences of social consequence, and a moment later, as the two women advanced along the deck, he inspected them stonily.

The elder was tall, with a full and elegant figure, a languid air, and a manner so completely assured it aroused unreasonably a sort of irritation. Perhaps it was Elissa Baynham's manner which had irritated two husbands through the divorce courts. Perhaps not. Certainly, at thirty-two, she was physically quite magnificent. But it was a careless magnificence. Only a tenth part of her mind seemed occupied by external affairs – a tiresome business! – the remainder was concentrated upon herself. If her face showed no animation it was because she had now decided that the situation was unworthy of her attention. Yet her expression was striking – faintly challenging and, now that her features were in repose, arrogant, almost sullen. She was handsome in her vivid way. She had a dashing colour, her eyes were splendid, her mouth wide, her teeth strong and white.

Beside her the girl seemed strangely young; that, indeed, was the quality in Mary Fielding which instantly possessed the eye; though she was twenty-five, she looked, at times, no more than fifteen years. She was of medium height, her figure slender, small-boned, and light. Her hands and feet were small, her face both eager and alive. Her hair, of a deep rich brown, was worn short, falling away from a wide forehead; her teeth were small and perfect; her eyes blue, with irises circled curiously by much darker rings; and very deep they were – brimming with light that seemed upon the edge of darkness. Though there were moments when those eyes could hold a strangely puzzled sadness, now they were dancing – singularly gay. She was dressed quite carelessly in brown tweed clothes that hung about her in some disarray.

They drew near. And, preparatory to their passing, Harvey pointedly averted his gaze. It was then that Mary Fielding saw him.

She gave a little gasp; her face went quite pale; and into the brightness of her eyes there flashed a look both joyful and afraid. She hesitated, made to stop. And then, lifting his head, his gaze met hers. He did not know her, had never in his life seen her before. He stared at her in stony and complete unrecognition.

At that her eyes fell. Again deep within her she felt frightened, terribly frightened, and yet glad. Her face was still white as she walked forward with Elissa. Out of the corner of his eye Harvey observed them enter their cabins, which, with a cold indifference, he saw to be adjoining his own.

The doors closed; he forgot about it all. Wearily he turned and leant against a stanchion. A bell rang sharply from the bridge, then rang again; a muffled throbbing stirred inside the ship, which pulsed as with the awakening of life. He felt the vessel slowly move and, like a man released by a sudden signal, he swung abruptly round.

He stepped into his cabin, flung himself upon the settee, and immediately pressed the bell. He waited; then with a sudden impatience he rang the bell again. Violently. In a moment the steward entered, flurried and apologetic, sweating from his haste. He was a little fat man, bald on top of his head, with brown bulbous eyes that popped out of his round face above the whiteness of his short drill jacket.

‘What's your name?' asked Leith abruptly.

‘Trout, sir.'

‘You thought twice about answering the bell, Trout.'

‘Very sorry, sir. I've been extra busy with the luggage. You see, sir, Lady Fielding just came aboard now. And I had to look slippy of a sudden. Sir Michael Fielding – her husband – is a big man with Slade Brothers. Large interests in the company he has, sir.'

‘Fielding?' said Harvey. ‘You mean the specimen with the monocle?'

Trout looked deprecatingly at his cracked boots, rubbed his moist palms along the shiny seams of his blue serge trousers.

‘Sir Michael is not travelling, sir. You might mean the Honourable Daines-Dibdin, intending no offence. An oldish gentleman, sir, but very classy, as you would say. He came aboard with her ladyship and Mrs Baynham.'

Harvey looked gloomily at the steward's bald head.