The Narrow Corner (14 page)

“Going to dine at the hotel, Fred?” he asked.

“I’d ask you both to stay and have pot-luck with me here,” said the Dane, “but I’m going up to have supper with Frith.”

“Well, we’ll be toddling.”

The doctor and Fred walked a few steps in silence along the dark street.

“I don’t want any dinner,” the boy said suddenly. “I can’t face Nichols to-night. I’m going for a tramp.”

Before Dr. Saunders could answer he had turned on his heel and rapidly walked away. The doctor shrugged his shoulders and continued on his unhurried way.

H
E WAS
drinking a gin pahit before dinner, on the verandah of the hotel, when Captain Nichols strolled up. He had washed and shaved, he was wearing a khaki stengah-shifter, with his topi set at a rakish angle, so that he looked quite spruce. He reminded you of a gentlemanly pirate.

“Feelin’ better to-night,” he remarked as he sat down, “and quite peckish, to tell you the truth. I don’t believe the wing of a chicken could do me any ’arm. Where’s Fred?”

“I don’t know. He’s off somewhere.”

“Lookin’ for a girl? I don’t blame him. Though I don’t know what he thinks he’s goin’ to find in a place like this. Risky, you know.”

The doctor ordered him a drink.

“I was a rare one for the girls when I was a young fellow. Got a way with me, you know. The mistake I made was to marry. If I ’ad my time over again.… I never tell you about my old woman, doc.”

“Enough,” said the doctor.

“That’s impossible. I couldn’t do that, not if I was to tell you about ’er till to-morrow morning. If ever there was a devil in ’uman form, it’s my old woman.
I ask you, is it fair to treat a man like that? She’s directly responsible for my indigestion; I’m just as sure of that as I am that I’m sittin’ and talkin’ to you. It’s ’umiliatin’, that’s what it is. I’m surprised I ’aven’t killed her. I would ’ave, too, only I know that if I was to start anything, and she said to me: ‘You put that knife down, Captain,’ I’d put it down. Now I ask you, is it natural? And then she’d just start on me. And if I was to edge towards the door, she’d say: ‘No, you don’t, you stay ’ere till I’ve said all I’ve got to say to you, and when I’ve finished with you, I’ll tell you.’ ”

They dined together, and the doctor lent a sympathetic ear to the recital of Captain Nichols’ domestic infelicity. Then they sat again on the verandah, smoking Dutch cigars, and drank Schnapps with their coffee. Alcohol mellowed the skipper, and he grew reminiscent. He told the doctor stories of his early days on the coast of New Guinea and about the islands. He was a racy talker, with an ironic vein of humour, and it was diverting to listen to him, since false shame never tempted him to depict himself in a flattering light. It never occurred to him that anyone would hesitate to diddle another if he had the chance, and he felt just the same satisfaction in the success of a dirty trick as a chess-player might in winning a game by a bold and ingenious move. He was a scamp, but a courageous one. Dr. Saunders found a peculiar savour in his conversation
when he remembered the splendid self-confidence with which he had weathered the storm. It had been impossible then not to be impressed by his readiness, resource and coolness.

Presently the doctor found occasion to slip in a question that had been for some time on the tip of his tongue.

“Did you ever know a fellow called Patrick Hudson?”

“Patrick ’udson?”

“He was a resident magistrate in New Guinea at one time. He’s been dead a good many years now.”

“That’s a funny coincidence. No, I didn’t know ’im. There was a fellow called Patrick ’udson in Sydney. Come to a sticky end.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Not so very long before we sailed. The papers was full of it.”

“He might have been some relation of the man I mean.”

“He was what they call a rough diamond. Been a railway man, they said, and worked ’is way up. Took up politics and all that. He was member for some place. Labour, of course.”

“What happened to him?”

“Well, ’e was shot. With his own gun, if I remember right.”

“Suicide?”

“No, they said ’e couldn’t ’a’ done it ’imself. I don’t know any more than you do what ’appened, on account of my leavin’ Sydney. It made quite a sensation.”

“Was he married?”

“Yes. A lot of people thought ’is old woman done it. They couldn’t prove anythin’. She’d been to the pictures, and when she come ’ome she found ’im lyin’ there. There’d been a fight. The furniture was all over the shop. I never thought it was ’is old woman meself. My experience is they don’t let you off so easy. They want to keep you alive as long as they can. They ain’t going to lose their fun by puttin’ you out of your misery.”

“Still, a lot of women have murdered their husbands,” objected the doctor.

“Pure accident. We all know that accidents will ’appen in the best regulated families. Sometimes they get careless and go too far, and then the poor bastard dies. But they don’t mean it. Not them.”

D
R. SAUNDERS
was fortunate in this that, notwithstanding the several deplorable habits he had, and in some parts of the world they would certainly have been
accounted vices (
vérité au delà des Alpes, erreur ici
), he awoke in the morning with a clean tongue and in a happy frame of mind. He seldom stretched himself in bed, drinking his cup of fragrant China tea and smoking the first delicious cigarette, without looking forward with pleasure to the coming day. Breakfast in the little hotels in the islands of the Dutch East Indies is served at a very early hour. It never varies. Papaia,
œufs sur le plat
, cold meat, and Edam cheese. However punctually you appear, the eggs are cold; they stare at you, two large round yellow eyes on a thin surface of white, and they look as if they had been scooped out of the face of an obscene monster of the deep. The coffee is an essence to which you add Nestlé’s Swiss Milk brought to a proper consistency with hot water. The toast is dry, sodden and burnt. Such was the breakfast served in the dining-room of the hotel at Kanda and hurriedly eaten by silent Dutchmen, who had their offices to go to.

But Dr. Saunders got up late next morning, and Ah Kay brought him his breakfast out on the verandah. He enjoyed his papaia, he enjoyed his eggs, that moment out of the frying-pan, and he enjoyed his scented tea. He reflected that to live was a very enjoyable affair. He wanted nothing. He envied no man. He had no regrets. The morning was still fresh and in the clean, pale light the outline of things was sharp-edged. A huge
banana just below the terrace with a haughty and complacent disdain flaunted its splendid foliage to the sun’s fierce heat. Dr. Saunders was tempted to philosophize: he said that the value of life lay not in its moments of excitement but in its placid intervals when, untroubled, the human spirit in tranquillity undisturbed by the recollection of emotion could survey its being with the same detachment as the Buddha contemplated his navel. Plenty of pepper on the eggs, plenty of salt and a little Worcestershire sauce, and then when they were finished a piece of bread to soak up the buttery remains, and that was the best mouthful of all. He was intent on this when Fred Blake and Erik Christessen came swinging down the street. They leaped up the steps and, throwing themselves on chairs at the doctor’s table, shouted for the boy. They had started for their walk up the volcano before dawn, and were now ravenous. The boy hurried out with papaia and a dish of cold meats, and they finished this before he brought them eggs. They were in great spirits. The enthusiasm of youth had ripened the acquaintance made the day before into friendship, and they called one another Fred and Erik. It was a stiff climb and the violent exercise had excited them. They talked nonsense and laughed at nothing. They were like a couple of boys. The doctor had never seen Fred so gay. He was evidently much taken with Erik, and the companionship of someone
only a little older than himself had loosened his constraint so that he seemed to flower with a new adolescence. He looked so young that you could hardly believe he was a grown man, and his deep, ringing voice sounded almost comic.

“D’you know, he’s as strong as an ox, this blighter,” said he, with a glance of admiration at Erik. “We had one rather nasty little bit of climbing to do, a branch broke and I slipped. I might have taken a nasty toss, broken my leg or something. Erik caught hold of me with one arm, damned if I know how he did it, and lifted me right up and set me on my feet again. And I weigh a good eleven stone.”

“I’ve always been strong,” smiled Erik.

“Put your hand up.”

Fred placed his elbow on the table and Erik did the same. They put palm to palm and Fred tried to force Erik’s arm down. He put all his strength into the effort. He could not move it. Then with a little smile the Dane pressed back and gradually Fred’s arm was forced to the table.

“I’m like a kid beside you,” he laughed. “Gosh, a fellow wouldn’t stand much chance if you hit him. Ever been in a fight?”

“No. Why should I?”

He finished eating and lit a cheroot.

“I must go to my office,” he said. “Frith says, will
you all go up there this afternoon. He wants us to have supper with him.”

“Suits me all right,” said the doctor.

“And the captain, too. I’ll come for you about four.”

Fred watched him go.

“Perfect loon,” he said, turning to the doctor, with a smile. “My belief is he isn’t all there.”

“Oh, why?”

“The way he talked.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Crazy. He asked me about Shakespeare. A fat lot I know about Shakespeare. I told him I’d read ‘Henry V’ when I was at school (we took it one term), and he began spouting one of the speeches. Then he started talking about ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Othello’ and heaven knows what. He knows yards of them by heart. I can’t tell you all he said about them. I never heard anyone talk in that way before. And the funny thing was that, although it was all a lot of bunk, you didn’t want to tell him to shut up.”

A smile lingered in his candid blue eyes, but his face was serious.

“You’ve never been in Sydney, have you?”

“No.”

“We have quite a literary and artistic set there. Not much in my line, but sometimes I couldn’t help myself. Women chiefly, you know. They’d talk a lot of tosh
about books and then, before you knew where you were, they’d be wanting to pop into bed with you.”

“The Philistine dots his i’s and crosses his t’s with a definiteness that is unbecoming,” reflected the doctor, “and when he sees a nail he hits it on the head.”

“You get rather leery of them. But, I don’t know how to explain it exactly, when Erik talked about all that it was different. He wasn’t showing off and he wasn’t trying to impress me. He just talked like that because he couldn’t help it. He didn’t mind if I was bored or not. He was so keen on it all it never struck him, perhaps, I didn’t care a damn about it. I didn’t understand the half of what he said, you know, but somehow, I don’t know, it was as good as a play, if you understand what I mean.”

Fred threw out his observations like stones that you dig up in a garden to prepare the ground for planting and cast in a heap one after the other. In his perplexity he vigorously scratched his head. Dr. Saunders watched him with cool, shrewd eyes. The boy was tongue-tied, and it was diverting in his confused remarks to discover the emotion he was trying to put in words. Critics divide writers into those who have something to say and do not know how to say it, and those who know how to say it and have nothing to say. Often it is the same with men, with Anglo-Saxons at all events, to whom words come difficultly. When a man is fluent it
is sometimes because he has said a thing so often that it has lost its meaning, and his speech is most significant when he has to fashion it laboriously from thoughts to which he can see no clear outline.

Fred gave the doctor a puckish glance that made him look like a mischievous boy.

“D’you know, he’s lending me ‘Othello.’ I don’t exactly know why, but I said I wouldn’t mind reading it. You’ve read it, I suppose.”

“Thirty years ago.”

“Of course I may be mistaken, but when Erik was spouting great chunks of it, it sounded quite exciting. I don’t know what it is, but when you’re with a chap like that everything seems different. I daresay he’s crazy, but I wish there were a few more like him.”

“You’ve taken quite a fancy to him, haven’t you?”

“Well, you can hardly help it,” answered Fred, with a sudden attack of shyness. “You’d be a perfect damn fool not to see he’s as straight as a die. I’d trust him with every penny I had in the world. He couldn’t do anyone down. And you know, the funny thing is, though he’s such a big hulking fellow and as strong as an ox, you have a sort of feeling you want to take care of him. I know it sounds silly, but you can’t help feeling he oughtn’t to be allowed about by himself; someone ought to be there to see that he doesn’t get into trouble.”

The doctor, with his cynical detachment, translated
in his own mind the young Australian’s awkward phrases into sense. He was surprised and a trifle touched by the emotion that with this shy clumsiness fought for expression. For what emerged from those hackneyed words was the shock of admiration the lad had received when he was confronted with the realisation of something quite startling. Through the oddness of the huge, ungainly Dane, lighting up his complete sincerity, giving body to his idealism and charm to his extravagant enthusiasm, shone, with a warm, all-embracing glow, pure goodness. Fred Blake’s youth made him mystically able to see it, and he was amazed by it and baffled. It touched him and made him feel very shy. It shook his self-confidence and humbled him. At that moment the rather ordinary, handsome boy was conscious of something he had never imagined, spiritual beauty.

“Who would have thought it possible?” reflected the doctor.

His own feelings towards Erik Christessen, naturally enough, were more detached. He was interested in him because he was a little unusual. It was amusing, to begin with, in an island of the Malay Archipelago, to come across a trader who knew Shakespeare well enough to say long passages by heart. The doctor could not but look on it as a somewhat tiresome accomplishment. He wondered idly if Erik was a good business man. He was not very fond of idealists. It was difficult for
them in this workaday world to reconcile their professions with the exigencies of life, and it was disconcerting how often they managed to combine exalted notions with a keen eye to the main chance. The doctor had often found here cause for amusement. They were apt to look down upon those who were occupied with practical matters but not averse from profiting by their industry. Like the lilies of the field they neither toiled nor spun, but took it as a right that others should perform for them these menial offices.