“I think it is a perfect scandal. Muller has locked us out of our ball-room because someone is giving a piano recital.”
Colonel Blenkinsop wiped his moustache.
“I thought it was a concert.”
“There are just three chairs. Perfectly disgraceful. If this German had been playing for charity, one would have said nothing. I shall complain to Muller. I think we ought to insist on being allowed to use that room.”
She gathered a party together and advanced once more upon Gaston and the glass doors of the ball-room. They heard the sound of a piano being played. Max Spindler had begun, for Mr. Sabbine’s party had gained the ball-room without passing through the lounge.
Mrs. Horrocks issued an order.
“Gaston, you will unlock that door.”
“It is not permitted, madame.”
“I insist!”
“Madame had better look.”
He stood aside, and Mrs. Horrocks and her supporters first saw a row of chairs at the far end of the ballroom, and on the chairs were seated a number of the hotel waiters, the valets, the chambermaids and some of the kitchen staff. A democratic affair! But not wholly so, for when Mrs. Horrocks turned her attention to the three arm-chairs that were placed in an alcove on the right of the pianist she saw Mr. Sabbine and the pianist’s wife, and a certain great gentleman.
Mrs. Horrocks’ lips moved, but no sound came from them. It was Colonel Blenkinsop who supplied the words.
“By George, the Duke! What the devil is he doin’ sittin’ with that fellah?”
Gaston, who was listening, dared to answer the question.
“It is a very select party, monsieur. Mr. Sabbine is a very great authority on art and music. He is intimate with His Highness.”
Colonel Blenkinsop made a sort of snarling noise in his throat.
“These Jews are the limit! What about a game before dinner?”
The amateur door-crashers returned to the lounge, where there was much conversation, a sibilant hissing, broken occasionally by shriller exclamations. Even the card-tables were conversational. A catastrophic thing happened. Mrs. Horrocks revoked. She was trying to explain away the catastrophe when somebody said: “Ssh!” and the lounge of the Hotel Victoria rose from its chairs. The Duke was passing through. He was walking with Mr. Sabbine, and he held Mr. Sabbine by the arm, and while acknowledging the salutes of the Hotel Victoria his shy and pleasant smile protested. “Oh, do, please, sit down. This sort of thing is not necessary. It is not a public occasion.” He stood talking to Mr. Sabbine in the vestibule, and the silent lounge listened.
“Yes—I know no pianist who has what I should call the mystic touch—as Max has it. That was a prophetic act of yours, Sabbine. Oh, yes, kindness. You collect more than pictures. You will come and dine with me to-morrow night?”
“It will be a great pleasure, sir.”
The Duke was helped on with his coat, and handed his scarf and hat. The doors were held open for him, and as he went out the lounge of the Hotel Victoria had a view of Mr. Sabbine’s fat back paying homage to a great gentleman.
Colonel Blenkinsop picked up the cards that had been left lying on the table.
He said:
“Well—I’m demned!”
THE IMMORTALS
The white steamer lay motionless for a moment in the broken blue of the sea. She had dropped a boat like a white shell that dipped and rolled in the swell beside her.
Two men were scrambling about the boat, unhitching the falls and poling off from the ship’s side. A third man lay on a mattress in the stern sheets—one man whose face looked all red and mottled, and who sucked his lips in and out as he breathed. He wore nothing but a white shirt and a pair of dark coloured trousers; his feet were bare.
The two men got the oars out and began to pull, the blades of the oars cutting white into the green-blue water under the ship’s side. Rows of faces looked down at them—silent, solemn faces. Something dramatic was happening, and happening quietly as things happen with the English in war or at sea. A woman began to cheer and to wave her handkerchief, and the cheer ran along those rows of solemn, staring masks.
“That’s what I call courage! Oh, good luck, good luck!” The woman had tears in her eyes.
“Damned plucky!”
An officer stood on the rail and waved his cap.
“Cheerio! The doc. is weeping because he can’t come with you. We’ll be quarantined—but we’ll send someone back.”
The rowers looked up and smiled.
“Cheerio!”
“Good-bye, Mr. Cumberledge. Bollard, I’m proud of you.”
Bollard spat into the sea.
“Let’s get out of the limelight, Mister,” he said, loving it all the same.
They pulled clear of the steamer, and saw the white chasm at her stern as the screws began to revolve. She glided away, a white shape between the blue of the sky and the angrier blue of the sea. Obeying some common impulse the two men rested on their oars and stared at her, Bollard with his flattened head and projecting jaw, Cumberledge long and lean, with breed in every line of him. Then they looked at the man lying on the mattress. He was conscious of nothing; his dusky face was a grotesque attachment to his heavy, breathless chest.
Bollard spat again into the sea.
“Come on,” he said.
They resumed their rowing—staring over the boat’s stern at the white hull of the steamer that seemed to be sinking more deeply into the blue of the sea. Neither of them spoke; they pulled in silence towards the purple outline of the rocky island which was to be a sort of lazar house, refuge and home. The wind came with an increasing whip out of the clear sky; white horses were showing, and sometimes the top of a wave slapped heavily against the boat’s stern.
Bollard turned to look over his shoulder.
“How fur’s that durned island?”
Cumberledge stopped rowing and turned his head, and the boat began to swing across the seas.
“Look out, Mister—keep on pulling.”
“Sorry, Bollard. It looks as though we had another mile or so yet.”
“That ain’t worrying me. It’s the getting ashore—with that thing.”
“There’s a strip of sand. Mr. Carter made sure of that—through his glasses.”
“Funny, ain’t it!” and Bollard nodded his head at the sick man on the mattress; “suppose he’ll be a stiff in a day or two.”
“Not much doubt about it, I’m afraid. It is one of the deadliest things on earth.”
Bollard meditated—his blue jerseyed back swinging steadily.
“Now, if we’d been dagos,” he said presently, “we should have dropped the feller into the sea—two days before he was due for heaven. But being British——”
“Just so,” said Cumberledge; “we don’t do that sort of thing.”
There was another length of silent rowing before Bollard turned his head.
“Say—Mister?”
“Yes?”
“D’you believe in that squirt of stuff the doc. gave us both?”
“A bit.”
“Durned if I do.”
The top of a wave spilled itself over the stern of the boat. The wind had freshened suddenly as though a big door had been opened in that hard blue sky, and Bollard gave an anxious cock of the chin.
“The sooner we get ashore the better. Queer sea—this. I’ve known squalls drop on you—out of nothing—like a bucket of water. Keep her steady. Put yer back into it, Mister.”
They rowed hard, and Cumberledge—landsman that he was—noticed a peculiar and abrupt change in the surface of the sea. The troughs between the waves seemed broader and deeper, and the waves themselves had a steeper and more menacing curl. He heard Bollard grunt expressively.
“Shallow water. There must be a durned reef round the b—— island. Look out, Mister, or we’ll be swamped.”
“Can you swim, Bollard?”
“Not a yard.”
Suddenly the boat jarred
under them—swung round broadside to the seas—heeled over and filled. A wave caught her and rolled her right over.
* * *
Cumberledge lay panting on a flat rock just beyond the suck of the sea. His last three minutes had been spent in a chaotic struggle among the breakers that rumbled and splashed on a broken edged headland that jutted into the sea. The end of his long swim had found him fighting to make the strip of sand—but the set of the sea had carried him round the headland to the rocks.
He lay there, conscious only of exhaustion and a most damnable pain in his left leg. In his scramble up the rocks he had caught his left foot in a deep crevice, and the next wave had knocked him over, and the bones had given just above the ankle. His clothes were torn; his body felt one great bruise, and he had swallowed a lot of salt water.
For quite a long while he lay there in a semi-dazed state, with the sunlight beating on him, and the wind blowing flakes of spray over his body.
Presently he raised his head. The man in him revived. He began to work his way up the slope of the headland—dragging his left foot and cursing it. He crawled beyond the reach of the spray, and gained a little hollow on the top low headland; he was in the sun here and out of the wind, and he could see along the curve of towing sand strung between his headland and the next. But the climb and the pain had exhausted him. His head went down again.
He felt shocked, vastly discouraged, ready almost to weep. What an ending to a day of stiff-lipped courage! Poor Bollard dead—and the dying man soused in the sea! He had had no glimpse of Bollard since the over-turning of the boat—though he had swum round and round for a while, looking for him, and he guessed that the sailor had been stunned and had sunk in the deep water beyond the reef. And what a prospect for himself, marooned with a broken leg on an island that he believed to be deserted, foodless, waterless, without shelter!
Everything had been lost with the boat. What a futile sacrifice! They might just as well have dropped that moribund mass of infection over the ship’s side into the sea.
Again he raised his head and his manhood stiffened itself. Sunset had come, and behind the sky was a sheet of orange above the deep sombreness of the sea. He blinked, closed his eyes, opened them again, and raised an astonished head above the ledge of rock. He stared. Then he closed his eyes, and kept them closed for half a minute. But when he opened them again, the thing was still there; it had come nearer.
Cumberledge saw two figures in the sands. One figure lay half on the sand and half in the wash of the sea—a figure in a white shirt and dark breeches, and most obviously dead. The other was a thing of life—amazing, incredible—the figure of a girl running wild upon the sands. Cumberledge saw her as a vivid and brilliant creature; a little distant figure that glowed and raced at the edge of the sea.
She came nearer. It was obvious to Cumberledge that she had not seen the dead body lying on the shore, for a ridge of black rock jutted up just beyond it. He was absorbed in watching the girl, and as she came nearer, sometimes running with arms spread, sometimes taking a few quick steps that were like the steps of a dance, he was fascinated by her strangeness. She looked like a girl of three thousand years ago, some dark-haired child of Minoan Crete.
Her shoulders and arms were bare. Her bodice was red, her skirt an emerald green. She had a green fillet about her hair, great gold earrings, and a massive, barbaric chain of red beads dangling from her neck. And she wore sandals made of some stuff that glittered in the sunlight.
Cumberledge closed his eyes.
“It can’t be true,” he said to himself; “I must have had a knock on the head.”
He reopened his eyes and saw her close to the wall of black rock. She gave a little run, and rising like a bird, stood poised upon a flat boulder. For a moment she remained utterly still, save for the flutter of her green skirt. She had seen the body lying on the sands.
It was impossible for Cumberledge even to suspect that though she appeared most strange to him, the dead man appeared to her far more strange and impossible. He saw her leap down from the rock, run quickly towards the body and then stop. Her pose as of terror, of astonishment, of immense wonder. He saw her move forward step by step, shirkingly, one arm rigid—the four fingers spread—her other hand at her throat. She was close to the dead man’s head and looking down at him. Every part of her seemed to quail.
A vivid phrase came into his head.
“Life discovers Death!”
A moment later he had raised his head and was shouting to her.
“Keep away—keep away.”
She did not hear him, for the noise of the sea drowned his voice; nor need he have feared that she would touch the body of the man who had died of pneumonic plague, for she turned and fled with arms spread like the white wings of a bird.
Cumberledge felt dashed. He had a personal interest in life, and a broken leg that called for sympathy; night was coming on and he had no wish to spend it lying in the wind on the cold face of a rock. He hollowed his hands about his mouth and hailed her again. He saw her pause—only to realize that it was not his shout that had slowed her sandalled feet.
A second figure had appeared, the figure of a man. He had come over the further headland, and as the evening sunlight played upon him he looked like a tiny figure of gold. Cumberledge saw the girl run towards him and cling to him like a frightened child.
Then she pointed—and drew him by the hand—but for a minute or more they remained there, and even their gestures seemed strange. They were freer, more dramatic, more human than the gestures of the moderns and made Cumberledge think of two figures in a Greek tragedy. He forgot his broken leg in watching them, and their slow advance along the sands. The girl was clasping the man’s right arm—while he walked like a troubled Zeus treading the stately earth, a Zeus whom some Promethean treachery had angered. His hair and beard were a tawny gold; his loose cloak and tunic were of the same colour, and he wore sandals like the girl.
“I suppose I—do—see them?” thought Cumberledge, feeling his head.
He turned his eyes towards the body of Steel Maitland.
“That’s real. And the girl saw it. They must be real.”
When he looked again they were close to the black ridge of rock that screened the body. The man climbed it and went on, but the girl remained poised upon a rock—her arms folded over her bosom.
Cumberledge got on his knees, waved, and shouted:
“Keep away from that body.”
Again the noise of the great sea drowned his voice; but the girl saw his waving arm and his head and shoulders outlined against the yellow sky. She gave a cry. The man in gold turned and saw her pointing hand. For a moment he stood at gaze, and then walked slowly forward towards the headland. The girl followed him. He suffered her to come with him as far as the rocks—but there he motioned her back.
“Stay here, Ariadne.”
Cumberledge heard the words, and thrilled. The man had spoken in classic Greek.
His head appeared above the top of the rocks, a fine head, strangely young yet venerable, with sea-blue eyes that were clouded and angry, and for a moment these two men looked at each other with curiosity and mistrust.
“I should not come too close, sir,” said Cumberledge in English.
He was surprised when the man replied in English that was as English as his own.
“What are you doing here? No one is allowed to land on this island.”
His solemnity was epic. He looked like a god questioning a slave. His yellow, Zeus-like head seemed to have passed through life without any sound of laughter. It was Cumberledge who laughed. He could not help seeing the man as a clerified and superhuman squire asking some river party how they had dared to land on his island.
And then he was ashamed of his laughter. There was something in the man’s eyes that sobered him.
“I beg your pardon. Our boat was upset, and one of the men with me drowned. We did not know whether there was anyone on this island. Didn’t you see our
steamer?”
The man regarded him steadily, and then looked out to sea.
“There is no steamer.”
“No—she dropped us. By the way—does the girl understand English?”
The man nodded.
“Well—I think you had better send her away. If she is your daughter——”
“Ariadne——!”
Her immense seriousness, her dark-eyed wonder, changed to a sudden smile. She turned quickly and disappeared. They heard her sandals on the rocks—and when Cumberledge saw her again she was walking slowly along the sands. Once or twice she turned and looked back.
“She is more obedient than I was,” said Cumberledge.
The man’s blue eyes flared.
“Now! Have you any excuses—anything to plead?”
Cumberledge looked at him in astonishment. If ever he had dreamed of an angry and outraged god——!
“I don’t understand you——”
“I am going to throw you back into the sea.”
For the moment, Cumberledge thought that the man was mad, and yet his face was not the face of a madman. It betrayed—rather—a calm wrath, a vast resentment against the mischance that had thrown a dead man and a live man upon this island. His eyes were lucid and steady. He meant what he said.
“That’s very hospitable of you!”
Cumberledge gave a cracked smile, and turned to ease his broken leg.
“But—before you throw me back into the sea—and by the way—I have got a broken leg—may I explain how and why I happened to land on your island?”
The man sat down on a flat rock.
“Be quick,” he said.
“Thank you. My name is Cumberledge; I was a passenger on the Otranto, and bound for England. Three or four days ago my cabin companion fell sick; it turned out to be pneumonic plague. The news leaked through the ship and there was something like a panic. Well, to be brief—another man and myself volunteered to take the fellow off the ship—land on one of these islands, and run an isolation hospital for one. We might develop the disease; we had to chance that—and we chanced it. As it happened—our boat upset on that reef—the sailor with me was drowned; so was our patient. That’s him—there.”
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 11