Mr. Fortune (21 page)

“I can do that afterwards.”

“No indeed! That would be dismal. We will do it now, and shake out the mats. There is plenty of time, and if there isn't it won't hurt them to wait. They'll have the bananas to amuse them.”

Together they put all straight and tidy, folded up Mr. Fortune's island clothes, threw away the garlands of overnight and the unused twigs and vines that had been plucked for the packing of the head-dress, and removed every trace of departure. Then they set forth for the village once more.

Every one was out to see Mr. Fortune off and wish him good luck. The launch was outside the reef and his luggage was being conveyed on board. There was a vast amount of it, and it seemed even more numerous because of the quantity of helping hands outstretched to deal with it. It was all so exactly like what he had foreseen that he felt as though he were in a dream—the beach, the lagoon, thronged with excited well-wishers, canoes getting their outriggers entangled and nearly upsetting, hands thrust out of the water to right them, every one laughing and exclaiming. Every one, that is, except Lueli: Mr. Fortune had not been able to include him in his foreseeing of the last act. He had been lively and natural at breakfast; but now he was silent, he was pale, he was being brave. “If I say something cheerful,” thought Mr. Fortune, “I may upset him. What shall I say?” At the water's edge he turned to him. “Forgive me if——” He got no further for Lueli's arms were flung about his neck. Mr. Fortune gently patted him on the back.

He got into the canoe and the dream began again. The canoe manœuvred at the opening of the reef, it dodged forward between the waves. He stood up, he felt the sea sidle and thrust under him as the earth had done on the night of the earthquake, the rope was thrown, he touched the side of the launch, he was on board.

In the launch was the secretary, grown bald and corpulent, who immediately began to tell Mr. Fortune about the Great War, saying that the Germans crucified Belgian children, were a disgrace to humanity, and should be treated after the same fashion themselves.

Mr. Fortune sat listening and saying at intervals: “Indeed!” and: “How terrible!” and: “Of course I have heard nothing of all this.” His eyes were fixed upon the coral reef where Lueli stood, poised above the surf, and waving a green frond in farewell. As the launch gathered speed Lueli's figure grew smaller and smaller; at last he was lost to sight, and soon the island of Fanua appeared to be sinking back into the sea whence it had arisen.

Now the secretary was abusing the French; and from them he passed to the Turks, the Italians, and King Ferdinand of Bulgaria. Mr. Fortune could not yet gather who was fighting who, still less what they were all fighting about. However, there seemed no doubt but that it was a very comprehensive dog-fight.

“Shall I go back to Europe?” he thought. “I couldn't fight, but perhaps I might pick up the wounded. No! I am too old to be of any use; and besides, I have no money to pay my passage.”

The launch scurried on with a motion that might have been described as rollicking if it had not also been so purposeful and business-like. The paint which used to be white picked out with dark blue was now buff picked out with chocolate. The mechanic was a new one. He had stared at Mr. Fortune when the latter came aboard, and now he came out of the engine-house with a rag in his hand and began polishing the brass-work, turning round at frequent intervals to have another look at him.

“Perhaps he expected me to carry a goatskin umbrella,” thought Mr. Fortune.

The secretary displayed no such interest. He asked no questions about Fanua, a negligible peaceful spot, not like Europe, not to be compared to St. Fabien, where there was a gunboat and a fermenting depot for the Red Cross Fund. And as for Mr. Fortune, he had known years ago all that there was to know about him, and that wasn't much.

His conversation shifted from the wife of an ex–prime minister who was certainly in the pay of the Germans to the proprietor of the Pension Hibiscus who had attempted to charge for teas served to the ladies of the Swab Committee and was probably a spy. Meanwhile the island of Fanua was sinking deeper into the Pacific Ocean.

At last he stopped talking. Mr. Fortune knew that he ought now to say something, but he felt incapable of comment. He did not seem to have an idea left. Everything that was real, everything that was significant, had gone down with the island of Fanua and was lost for ever.

No. After all there was one thing he might ask, one small interest which had been overlooked in the pillaging of his existence.

“By the by, can you tell me the exact time?”

He was an hour and twenty minutes out. A bad guess on his part. But perhaps it was not quite such bad guessing as it now appeared to be; for he had spent three and a half years in Fanua, and his watch might well have lost half an hour or so in that time. It was a good watch once; but Time will wear out even watches, and it had seen its best days.

THE SUN was voyaging towards the horizon. The poplars unrolled their shadows towards the well; before long the water's unblinking reflection of the sky would be meshed over by the footfalls of the breeze, and a leaf or two, already done with summer, would waver down. But it was still the hour of the siesta, for a while yet nothing would move but the sun and the shadows. All round the house, for miles and miles and miles, though there was no ear to hear it, a continuous small sound existed—the crackle of the ripened sunflower seeds breaking from their envelopes. On all sides the land travelled smoothly to the sky-line. To the eastward it was a pale silvery gold, to the westward, dun. The vegetation was so close and even that it had the appearance of turf—only where the road ran did the eye relinquish the hallucination, realising the height of the summer growth. Moving slowly through that growth the backs of the cattle appeared as porpoises lolling on the ocean surface.

The House of the Salutation was old. It was long, low and rambling, with differing roof levels. Only in the centre block had it an upper story. It was colour-washed in various tints of ochre and lemon, and its deep-set windows were guarded with wrought-iron jalousies, so rusty and brittle that a good blow would have shattered them like withies. The farm buildings were more recent. They were built of brick and corrugated iron, expensively. Two wind-fans for pumping water stood near by. When the breeze came they would begin to clank, gently, and that would be the signal for waking.

But now everything slept. The yellow bitch lay poured out in the shade. She had whelped recently, and she lay on her side to ease her swollen teats. Her pups slept in a confused rumple of soft fur beside her: five straight tails stuck out from the mass—puppy-dogs' tails, broad at the base, diamonded to a point. The sappy pumpkin leaves wilted under the sun's rays, sprawling flaccidly over the fruit. A snake lay asleep on a stone, relaxed, its life narrowed into the pin-points of its eyes, and a bucket lay on its side, sleeping too.

The fowls had scratched themselves dust baths, and basked in their usual place, round the arbour. It had been put up long ago, in the taste of mid–nineteenth century Europe, sentimentally eclectic, and from the interior of its rather Swiss roof topped with a spiral there dangled an empty bird-cage. Round it were beds of balsam and portulaca, and it was here, in the soft earth, that the fowls scratched themselves in. When the pumping fans began to clank, Quita would come out and shoo them away; and on the morrow they would sleep there again. Everything slept, the slow indefinite contours of the pampas seemed to heave and fall towards the horizon, heave and fall with the rhythmical tide of slumber. Even the vultures, slowly wheeling overhead, seemed to sleep on that blue.

After she had scolded the fowls Quita would bring her mistress a cup of chocolate; for if one is a good sleeper one awakes hungry, and Angustias had always been a good sleeper. She practised sleep, indeed, with such mastery that she had a repertory of different slumbers which she could command at will, slumbers ranging from the slight gauze of inattention suitable for sermons and too prolonged explanations to the quilted oblivion fit for a winter's night. The siesta sleep was poised about midway between these extremes; it was, perhaps, more akin to the former.

In this sleep one composed one's thoughts—at night, dismissed—almost consciously watching them take on the greater composure and deliberation of dreams. For the sleep of night one abandoned the waking self; in the siesta one but renounced it, laid it a little aside, on the bed-table, maybe, with the handkerchief and the fan, ready to be taken up again when Quita came with the chocolate. In other words, at night one slept as an animal, but during the siesta as a lady.

Thus it was that she heard the first cough.

Undoubtedly an Englishman. No other nation coughed like that—so dryly, and with such reserve. Just so had her husband coughed, and his friends also. Sometimes, shortly after coughing, they would speak. And as they coughed, so they spoke: dryly, and with reserve. A curious race, rarely, if ever, unlocking their voices, save to a horse or a dog. Something should have been done about those puppies. But now it was too late. They would grow up undocked and chase the hens. It was a pity that none of them showed any resemblance to their great-great-grandmother, Harry's pointer. Once, long ago, in historical times, the Kings of Spain had kept pointers, so Harry had said. That was in the summer when she had first worn straight-fronted corsets, and a hat trimmed with white lilac and green bows. The Señora Pacheco kept such an insane quantity of cats, it was rumoured that one had actually been found by a visitor, curled up in the spare-room chamber-pot.

Cough.

How strange an affair was the mind! She had not heard an English cough for twenty years, not since Mr. Gauntlett had come on business, after Harry's death; yet she had never forgotten the sound, it was as unmistakable as the rattle of the chocolate-cups which she heard daily. One might have sworn, so clearly had the mind conjured it up, that it came from a real Englishman. If Johnny had lived the house might still be ringing with English coughs, for he was to be sent to school in England, she had agreed to that, and they were all to go over together, and drive through Hyde Park in London. Mother of God, life was not too easy! During the first year of her widowhood there had been three proposals of marriage, not a moment to oneself; and now she was left with a son-in-law, who wrote constantly, and enclosed Government pamphlets on stock-breeding.

The thought of the pamphlets almost woke her. She turned a little, re-dedicating herself to sleep; and in that moment she heard the cough for the third time.

But it was real! What was happening now?

She sat up and rang the little silver bell that stood beside the fan and the handkerchief. Then she listened again. There was no sound—could she after all have been mistaken? No! At the age of sixty one is not deceived by fancies, like a girl. How that old hag Quita slept! it was intolerable that any one of God's creatures should sleep so besottedly. She rang the bell more vigorously, and was still ringing it when Quita entered the room.

“Mariquita, where is that Englishman?”

Quita looked round apprehensively.

“I don't suppose that he is under the bed, so you needn't look there. An Englishman under the bed I could have found for myself. But somewhere in this house there is an Englishman. I am positive of it.”

Quita crossed herself.

“I know of no Englishman here.”

“I have heard him. Ah, there he is!”

This time the cough was unmistakable. It appeared to come from below the window. Quita turned pale, and crossed herself more emphatically. She too recognised the nationality of the cough, and she believed in ghosts.

Her mistress jumped off the bed, and seized her by the hand.

“Come! Walk quietly. We will look from the window.”

Quita had served her mistress for nearly fifty years, and she knew that it was vain to struggle against that imperious will. She suffered herself to be led to the window, and at a gesture she opened the jalousies as quietly as might be. A small plump hand on her shoulder urged her to look forth. But there are limits even to the obedience of a trusted servant, and though Quita leant out over the sill she shut her eyes first.

After a while, since nothing had happened, curiosity compelled her to open them; and then she saw what it was that her mistress gazed at so attentively—the top of a grey head.

Here, on the shady side of the house, he must have sat down to rest, a wayfarer. A stick was propped against the bench, a hat was poised on the stick, a bundle tied up in a spotted cloth lay on the ground. His legs were far too long for the height of the bench; they stuck out before him with flattened knee-caps and feet turned a little inward towards each other—the legs of a wearied man. He was coatless, and his trousers were held up by braces. Even if he had not coughed, seeing him Angustias could scarcely have doubted of his nationality. Only one thing, she thought, was lacking. Beside the stick and the hat there should have lain a pair of gloves, methodically face to face like a pair of kippers.

Quita, still staring, felt her mistress dart from her side, gone with the abrupt plump whirr of a pigeon. She had torn out her hairpins, and was brushing her hair with swift searching strokes. Long, plentiful, badger-pied, it swayed under the brush like a piece of black and silver brocade.

“Quita! My best corsets.”

“Shall I not help you with your hair?”

Angustias shook her head decisively. Her lips were compressed as she clasped the best corsets.

“No, Quita. It is not for tomorrow.”

Now with closed eyes she had given herself to the business of hair-dressing, her hands diving among the brocaded tresses, plaiting and erecting. Speaking through a mouthful of hairpins she said,