65 Short Stories (51 page)

The widow licked her dry lips. Her breath seemed hurried. She was silent ‘If he was in that state I should have thought it best to have let him go on sleeping,’ said Kathleen.

‘There was a parang on the wall by the side of the bed. You know how fond Harold was of curios.’

‘What’s a parang?’ said Mrs Skinner.

‘Don’t be silly, mother,’ her husband replied irritably. ‘There’s one on the wall immediately behind you.’

He pointed to the Malay sword on which for some reason his eyes had been unconsciously resting. Mrs Skinner drew quickly into the corner of the sofa, with a little frightened gesture, as though she had been told that a snake lay curled up beside her.

‘Suddenly the blood spurted out from Harold’s throat. There was a great red gash right across it.’

‘Millicent,’ cried Kathleen, springing up and almost leaping towards her, ‘what in God’s name do you mean?’

Mrs Skinner stood staring at her with wide startled eyes, her mouth open. ‘The parang wasn’t on the wall any more. It was on the bed. Then Harold opened his eyes. They were just like Joan’s.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Mr Skinner. ‘How could he have committed suicide if he was in the state you describe?’

Kathleen took her sister’s arm and shook her angrily.

‘Millicent, for God’s sake explain.’

Millicent released herself

‘The parang was on the wall, I told you. I don’t know what happened. There was all the blood, and Harold opened his eyes. He died almost at once. He never spoke, but he gave a sort of gasp.’

At last Mr Skinner found his voice.

‘But, you wretched woman, it was murder.’

Millicent, her face mottled with red, gave him such a look of scornful hatred that he shrank back. Mrs Skinner cried out.

‘Millicent, you didn’t do it, did you?’

Then Millicent did something that made them all feel as though their blood were turned to ice in their veins. She chuckled.

‘I don’t know who else did,’ she said.

‘My God,’ muttered Mr Skinner.

Kathleen had been standing bolt upright with her hands to her heart, as though its beating were intolerable.

‘And what happened then?’ she said.

‘I screamed. I went to the window and flung it open. I called for the ayah. She came across the compound with Joan. “Not Joan,” I cried. “Don’t let her come.” She called the cook and told him to take the child. I cried to her to hurry. And when she came I showed her Harold. “The Tuan’s killed himself?” I cried. She gave a scream and ran out of the house.

‘No one would come near. They were all frightened out of their wits. I wrote a letter to Mr Francis, telling him what had happened and asking him to come at once.’

‘How do you mean you told him what had happened?’

‘I said, on my return from the mouth of the river, I’d found Harold with his throat cut. You know, in the tropics you have to bury people quickly. I got a Chinese coffin, and the soldiers dug a grave behind the Fort. When Mr Francis came, Harold had been buried for nearly two days. He was only a boy. I could do anything I wanted with him. I told him I’d found the parang in Harold’s hand and there was no doubt he’d killed himself in an attack of delirium tremens. I showed him the empty bottle. The servants said he’d been drinking hard ever since I left to go to the sea. I told the same story at Kuala Solor. Everyone was very kind to me, and the government granted me a pension.’

For a little while nobody spoke. At last Mr Skinner gathered himself together. ‘I am a member of the legal profession. I’m a solicitor. I have certain duties. We’ve always had a most respectable practice. You’ve put me in a monstrous position.’

He fumbled, searching for the phrases that played at hide and seek in his scattered wits. Millicent looked at him with scorn.

‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘It was murder, that’s what it was; do you think I can possibly connive at it?’

‘Don’t talk nonsense, father,’ said Kathleen sharply. ‘You can’t give up your own daughter.’

‘You’ve put me in a monstrous position,’ he repeated.

Millicent shrugged her shoulders again.

‘You made me tell you. And I’ve borne it long enough by myself It was time that all of you bore it too.’

At that moment the door was opened by the maid.

‘Davis has brought the car round, sir,’ she said.

Kathleen had the presence of mind to say something, and the maid withdrew. ‘We’d better be starting,’ said Millicent.

‘I can’t go to the party now,’ cried Mrs Skinner, with horror. ‘I’m far too upset How can we face the Heywoods? And the Bishop will want to be introduced to you.’

Millicent made a gesture of indifference. Her eyes held their ironical expression.

‘We must go, mother,’ said Kathleen. ‘It would look so funny if we stayed away.’ She turned on Millicent furiously. ‘Oh, I think the whole thing is such frightfully bad form.’

Mrs Skinner looked helplessly at her husband. He went to her and gave her his hand to help her up from the sofa.

‘I’m afraid we must go, mother,’ he said.

‘And me with the ospreys in my toque that Harold gave me with his own hands,’ she moaned.

He led her out of the room, Kathleen followed close on their heels, and a step or two behind came Millicent.

‘You’ll get used to it, you know,’ she said quietly. ‘At first I thought of it all the time, but now I forget it for two or three days together. It’s not as if there was any danger.’

They did not answer. They walked through the hall and out of the front door. The three ladies got into the back of the car and Mr Skinner seated himself beside the driver. They had no self-starter; it was an old car, and Davis went to the bonnet to crank it up. Mr Skinner turned round and looked petulantly at Millicent.

‘I ought never to have been told,’ he said. ‘I think it was most selfish of you.’ Davis took his seat and they drove off to the Canon’s garden-party.

THE VESSEL WRATH

♦

There are few books in the world that contain more meat than the 
Sailing Directions 
published by the Hydrographic Department by order of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. They are handsome volumes, bound (very flimsily) in cloth of different colours, and the most expensive of them is cheap. For four shillings you can buy the 
Yangtse Kiang Pilot, 
‘containing a description of, and sailing directions for, the Yangtse Kiang from the Wusung river to the highest navigable point, including the Han Kiang, the Kialing Kiang, and the Min Kiang’; and for three shillings you can get Part III of the
Eastern. Archipelago Pilot, 
‘comprising the N.E. end of Celebes, Molucca and Gilolo passages, Banda and Arafura Seas, and North, West, and South-West coasts of New Guinea’. But it is not very safe to do so if you are a creature of settled habits that you have no wish to disturb or if you have an occupation that holds you fast to one place. These business-like books take you upon enchanted journeys of the spirit; and their matter-of-fact style, the admirable order, the concision with which the material is set before you, the stern sense or the practical that informs every line, cannot dim the poetry that, like the spice-laden breeze that assails your senses with a more than material languor when you approach some of those magic islands of the Eastern seas, blows with so sweet a fragrance through the printed pages. They tell you the anchorages and the landing places, what supplies you can get at each spot, and where you can get water; they tell you the lights and buoys, tides, winds, and weather that you will find there. They give you brief information about the population and the trade. And it is strange when you think how sedately it is all set down, with no words wasted, that so much else is given you besides. What? Well, mystery and beauty, romance and the glamour of the unknown. It is no common book that offers you casually turning its pages such a paragraph as this: ‘Supplies. A few jungle fowl are preserved, the island is also the resort of vast numbers of sea birds. Turtle are found in the lagoon, as well as quantities of various fish, including grey mullet, shark, and dog-fish; the seine cannot be used with any effect; but there is a fish which may be taken on a rod. A small store of tinned provisions and spirits is kept in a but for the relief of shipwrecked persons. Good water may be obtained from a well near the landing-place.’ Can the imagination want more material than this to go on a journey through time and space?

In the volume from which I have copied this passage, the compilers with the same restraint have described the Alas Islands. They are composed of a group or chain of islands, ‘for the most part low and wooded, extending about 75 miles east and west, and 40 miles north and south’. The information about them, you are told, is very slight; there are channels between the different groups, and several vessels have passed through them, but the passages have not been thoroughly explored, and the positions of many of the dangers not yet determined; it is therefore advisable to avoid them. The population of the group is estimated at about 8,000, of whom 200 are Chinese and 400 Mohammedans. The rest are heathen. The principal island is called Baru, it is surrounded by a reef, and here lives a Dutch ContrOleur. His white house with its red roof on the top of a little hill is the most prominent object that the vessels of the Royal Netherlands Steam Packet Company see when every other month on their way up to Macassar and every four weeks on their way down to Merauke in Dutch New Guinea they touch at the island.

At a certain moment of the world’s history the ContrOleur was Mynheer Evert Gruyter and he ruled the people who inhabited the Alas Islands with firmness tempered by a keen sense of the ridiculous. He had thought it a very good joke to be placed at the age of twenty-seven in a position of such consequence, and at thirty he was still amused by it. There was no cable communication between his islands and Batavia, and the mail arrived after so long a delay that even if he asked advice, by the time he received it, it was useless, and so he equably did what he thought best and trusted to his good fortune to keep out of trouble with the authorities. He was very short, not more than five feet four in height, and extremely fat; he was of a florid complexion. For coolness’ sake he kept his head shaved and his face was hairless. It was round and red. His eyebrows were so fair that you hardly saw them; and he had little twinkling blue eyes. He knew that he had no dignity, but for the sake of his position made up for it by dressing very dapperly. He never went to his office, nor sat in court, nor walked abroad but in spotless white. His stengahshifter, with its bright brass buttons, fitted him very tightly and displayed the shocking fact that, young though he was, he had a round and protruding belly. His good-humoured face shone with sweat and he constantly fanned himself with a palm-leaf fan.

But in his house Mr Gruyter preferred to wear nothing but a sarong and then with his white podgy little body he looked like a fat funny boy of sixteen. He was an early riser and his breakfast was always ready for him at six. It never varied. It consisted of a slice of papaia, three cold fried eggs, Edam cheese, sliced thin, and a cup of black coffee. When he had eaten it, he smoked a large Dutch cigar, read the papers if he had not read them through and through already, and then dressed to go down to his office.

One morning while he was thus occupied his head boy came into his bedroom and told him that Tuan Jones wanted to know if he could see him. Mr Gruyter was standing in front of a looking-glass. He had his trousers on and was admiring his smooth chest He arched his back in order to throw it out and throw in his belly and with a good deal of satisfaction gave his breast three or four resounding slaps. It was a manly chest When the boy brought the message he looked at his own eyes in the mirror and exchanged a slightly ironic smile with them. He asked himself what the devil his visitor could want Evert Gruyter spoke English, Dutch, and Malay with equal facility, but he thought in Dutch. He liked to do this. It seemed to him a pleasantly ribald language.

‘Ask the tuan to wait and say I shall come directly.’ He put on his tunic, over his naked body, buttoned it up, and strutted into the sitting-room. The Rev. Owen Jones got up.

‘Good morning, Mr Jones,’ said the ContrOleur. ‘Have you come in to have a peg with me before I start my day’s work?’

Mr Jones did not smile.

‘I’ve come to see you upon a very distressing matter, Mr Gruyter,’ he answered.

The ContrOleur was not disconcerted by his visitor’s gravity nor depressed by his words. His little blue eyes beamed amiably.

‘Sit down, my dear fellow, and have a cigar.’

Mr Gruyter knew quite well that the Rev. Owen Jones neither drank nor smoked, but it tickled something prankish in his nature to offer him a drink and a smoke whenever they met Mr Jones shook his head.

Mr Jones was in charge of the Baptist Mission on the Alas Islands. His headquarters were at Baru, the largest of them, with the greatest population, but he had meeting-houses under the care of native helpers in several other islands of the group. He was a tall, thin, melancholy man, with a long face, sallow and drawn, of about forty. His brown hair was already white on the temples and it receded from the forehead. This gave him a look of somewhat vacuous intellectuality. Mr Gruyter both disliked and respected him. He disliked him because he was narrow-minded and dogmatic. Himself a cheerful pagan who liked the good things of the flesh and was determined to get as many of them as his circumstances permitted, he had no patience with a man who disapproved of them all. He thought the customs of the country suited its inhabitants and had no patience with the missionary’s energetic efforts to destroy a way of life that for centuries had worked very well. He respected him because he was honest, zealous, and good. Mr Jones, an Australian of Welsh descent, was the only qualified doctor in the group and it was a comfort to know that if you fell ill you need not rely only on a Chinese practitioner, and none knew better than the ContrOleur how useful to all Mr Jones’s skill had been and with what charity he had given it On the occasion of an epidemic of influenza the missionary had done the work of ten men and no storm short of a typhoon could prevent him from crossing to one island or another if his help was needed.