by Philip Wylie
Jack had kne1tand folded his hands. He stared in· to the clouds that scudded overhead and his lips moved in prayer.
The drama on the rocks was horrible in its intensity. Henry found himself frozen, and he could neither think nor move.
Stone praised God. Here was a ship at the very hour and year when he had hoped a ship would come. His son was ready for the world. He thought that it would be impossible to light the fires. He reckoned with acid determination upon the chances of the vessel.
It was still far away, and yet it must have sighted the island. It was making slowly toward it--and it could not have made in any other direction. A schooner. One of its masts had been hacked down by, the gale.
It wallowed heavily--as if it was partly filled with water.
It approached.
McCobb continued to scream and wave his arms. Henry stood still.
The waves visibly lifted it. They could see water washing over the decks. They could see the laborious rise of the bows and a long rope that had broken loose and stood out horizontally from a mast.
It was two miles away.
One.
They tried to wave it toward the harbor mouth, although all of them knew that direction was impossible.
Stone bruised his son's arms. They saw how far the ship had settled.
Their voices ripped into the air, shrilly. When, at length, they could see the forms of men moving on the bridge, they went mad.
Then a wave came from which the vessel rose only with the utmost difficulty.
They saw a huge hole that had been staved in the hull. Whether the ship had hit a rock, or the mere power of the sea had broken it in, they did not know.
On the next wave the decks were awash.
It was almost near enough so that they could see the expression on the faces of the men.
On the third wave, only the stern rose and the bows were buried. The masts made an angle with the water. The stern stood high. She sank. McCobb beat his fists upon the rocks until they ran red.
Jack rent his clothes.
Henry wept.
And now, only Stone stood still--as if a judgment had come upon him.
There was no sign of the ship--save that by and by they observed pieces of wreckage and, for awhile, what they thought was a man swimming.
Henry ran for his boat. Jack and Stone needed their united efforts to hold him back. Henry's boat would not have been able to--round the harbor mouth in the sea that ran there.
As if in satirical compensation the wind died that afternoon and the sun appeared.
With its first rays, the four men who sat on the rocky point were able to salvage the first high-tossed bit of wreckage.
It was an oar.
Then came a box in which were four drowned chickens. A coat. After that, a broken boat, a life preserver that floated high in the subsiding surf, and a chair. They struggled with numb endeavor to reap these precious and yet melancholy items from the waves.
Bits of the ship itself drifted shoreward. Late in the afternoon their heap of debris was augmented by a score of things--wooden bowls from the galley, spars, planks, a straw cover from a bottle of wine, and a pillow.
They saved everything as it came in, and all that time they had not spoken to each other.
At last Stone, wading on the rocks, picked up a cupboard and he perceived that the inside was lined with newspaper, tacked on shelves.
The sight of that newsprint devastated him.
He hugged the box to his person. He pulled the tacks with his nails, heedless of the pain. He rolled the wet paper with the utmost care and, when he saw that his find had not been noticed by the others, he hurried secretly back to the house.
The first words he saw inflamed his mind. He could not help his selfishness and fanatic greed for news.
GERMANS AOVANCE ALONG MARNE SECTOR
That is what he had read.
As he went to the house his mind reeled. Germans advance. There was a war up there in the world. A war that involved Germany.
He locked himself in his room. He spread the wet pages with agonizing care and as he worked his eyes gleaned fragments.
Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States. England was at war with Germany. Also France. The name of Russia appeared as a combatant.
Finally, the papers were spread and he focussed his eyes. He read.
He forgot that salvation had missed them by a terrible margin--a margin at once minute and gigantic.
He forgot his son and McCobb and Jack.
He became for a little while the man he had been--the man of the world, the political power. And he became a student of the new world. They were moving troops through Paris in omnibuses and taxicabs? What were taxicabs? The Stutram had radioed for help. What was radioing? The, British line was holding well and Paris would be saved.
Paris.
Ah, God, Paris.
The curves of the Seine and the cold gray of Notre Dame. The wide passage of the Boulevard Montparnasse past the place where he had lived when he studied there.
The still dark places of the Bois and the songs and the wine and the lights and the music.
German guns were belching and French blood was making a red mud of Flanders fields but Paris would be saved.
Paris!
On the headland, wading in the seaweed and sliding on the rocks over which water gushed, three men hunted for souvenirs of their Gethsemane.
Henry rubbed shoulders with McCobb. The Scotchman was holding a shoe.
"Somebody's," he said, in a world where somebody was a word seldom used.
The expression was forlorn, so hopeless and woebegone, that Henry's spirit turned in its tracks.
He grinned.
"We can make better shoes than that."
The sentence rallied the Scot. His eyes lighted and on his tough face there came a smile both radiant and calm.
"Let's go back to see your father," he suggested. "There's no virtue--in this salvage and more'll wash up on the sand down the point."
"Right. Come on, Jack."
The Negro flashed his teeth from habit. "Yes, Mr. Henry."
They moved away from the place in slow file, heartened by an emotional chemistry which the indomitability of Henry's eyes had started. Thrice they knocked at the locked door of the bedroom before reluctant motion responded.
Stone came out and never did he look more like the substance of his name. His granite face was fixed. He recognized them as if they were not people, but far-fetched theories.
"There's a war," he whispered.
McCobb had seen madness and he was much frightened, but Henry, who had never seen it, laughed.
"War? What are you talking about, father?"
Vacantly, Stone stared.
"I found a newspaper in that stuff--that floated--ashore. I've been reading it."
"That's fine, father! It must have been great!"
"It was hideous."
"What do you mean?"
"I--"
He walked into the center of the living-room, where the hand-made furniture was arranged between shelves of books and corpulent cupboards, where, McCobb's golden handiwork gleamed and where in the shadows were the stuffed birds and animals Henry had collected. "I--"
McCobb pulled out a chair.
"Sit, down, Stephen. You're overwrought. Jack--bring a drink of whisky."
Stone swallowed the spirits. He began to talk.
"I've read it all. It will be dry soon--and then the rest of you can have it. It taught me--something. It taught me a great deal. It taught me that my coming here--was criminal.
It was criminal to you and to Jack--but I had discounted that. It was criminal to my son--
but I had an alibi for that.
"It was criminal to myself." Henry gave back the words he had been told so often.
"Why--father--you know it was an accident. The ship was in bad shape and you needed water and you smashed up here--and why blame yourself?"
"It-
-"
Stone began and McCobb, terrified lest the boy who was so nearly a man be told the truth, held up his finger and spoke heartily.
"You couldn't help it. It's nothing."
Stone avoided the eyes of his son. They were very bright and speculative at that instant. He cleared his throat.
"But it's my fault. I took too great a risk. And I stranded all of us here."
"Fiddlesticks!" said McCobb.
"You are plumb out of your haid," Jack said.
"When they need me," Stone continued. "When they need me. They need me in America today. They'll need me more tomorrow, if I am any reader of signs. I had a dt.lty greater than any other and I ran away from it into this cloying wonderland. I'm a fool!"
"Stephen--"
"Father--"
"A fool, gentlemen."
Stone stalked from the room. No one followed him for several minutes and then Jack stepped from the shadows.
"I think I'll just run along behind to see that everything's all right."
McCobb nodded. "Go ahead, Jack. Thanks. And take this."
He held out a revolver.
Jack stuck the gun in his belt. It pulled his trousers tight enough to reveal in relief the blade and handle of a butcher knife secreted along his thigh.
Silence, descended in the house.
McCobb poured himself a drink from the whisky bottle.
Henry stared at his feet. His face was covered with a fine, golden down. His chin was like his father's. His hands were lean and powerful. He stroked the down.
"Of course," he said softly to McCobb, "I've always known it wasn't--an accident."
McCobb dropped his glass.
"Steady there, son," the Scot murmured.
"I don't mind--much."
McCobb began the speech to which Henry had been long accustomed:
"It was a bad night--"
Henry interrupted, in a low, forceful voice:
"I don't mind a great deal. At first--it was just a feeling. When I was little I experienced it. No one ever talked about how we got here. No one ever talked about why the voyage was made. That wasn't natural. So I just felt that our shipwreck was intentional.
"But gradually--" Henry's eyes expanded as he spoke--"I began to think. You taught me about engines and about engineering. I looked at the wreck down on the beach.
I dove around it. The propeller had snapped. That, of course, wouldn't happen under accidental conditions--would it?" The Scot drank again. This recital of the powerful blond youth who sat idly in the chair was more harrowing to him, in a way, than the afternoon's disaster. He said nothing. "I don't mind. I know father did it."
"Henry, my lad--"
"Don't worry. I'll never accuse him of it. He'll never guess that I know."
"Good man!"
"Or that I know why."
McCobb's scalp prickled.
" Why? he repeated stupidly.
"Why. It was--on account of a woman."
He did not raise his eyes to ask for confirmation.
Instead he rose and poured McCobb's third drink, which he took from limp hands, back into the bottle.
"Let us take a walk, too," he said, with a smile that was poignant and charming and that McCobb always accounted afterward as a sort of miracle.
It was the second time that day that Henry had saved McCobb from intolerable emotions.
They went out into the sunlight together.
Chapter Seven: THE YEARNING
IT WAS 1917. The table in the "living-room" of the island house was exquisitely set A strange function was taking place.
Separated by spotless napery and beautiful silver, by white china and crystal glasses brimming with wine, were Stephen Stone and his son. Their ordinary habiliments of heavy cloth and soft-tanned rawhide were missing. Instead, they wore dinner clothes.
Dinner clothes of the late nineteenth century--Stephen's fitting perfectly, and Henry's somewhat too small for his frame--but dinner clothes with satin lapels, and boiled shirts.
Behind them, as they commenced to eat their green turtle soup, Jack stood at rigid attention and there was no sign of amusement on his face.
Stone touched his napkin to his lips and spoke to his son.
"They tell me, Mr. Stone, that Bryan's championship of bimetallism will sweep the country."
Henry lifted his eyebrows with elegant hauteur.
"I've read his speeches. A cheap and dangerous demagogue. Something about crucifixion on a cross of gold. Well--if gold is too heavy a burden for the people to carry about, they'll find that free silver will make their pockets light enough."
"William Jennings Bryan is a menace--" Stephen Stone began, after laughing politely at Henry's witticism. "A decided menace." He interrupted himself. "Henry--that's not the way to hold a wine-goblet. Like this."
Henry followed his father's instructions.
"Am I right, now?"
"That's better. Now. I'm the Ambassador from Spain. You have just criticized Spanish actions in Cuba and you are unfortunately seated beside me at a dinner given by Mrs. Astor. I am a little bit--perhaps, guardedly, a great deal--perturbed at this unhappy accident. I am thinking of something definitely unpleasant to say about your newspaper.
Proceed."
Henry flashed upon his father a winning and wholly artificial smile.
"My dear Mr. Ambassador-"
"My dear, Ambassador Chinito--"
"My dear Ambassador Chinito--this is luck. I've been wanting to meet and talk with you for months. The information we receive.at my office relative to Spanish policy is at best vague and uncertain, and this opportunity to discuss it with a' master of statecraft is handsome Providence indeed."
Stephen Stone smiled. "A little flowery. But good. Now. I am--oh--Jack--remove the soup. The serving plates. I am--"
The conversation continued endlessly. The meal lasted two hours.
It was a new function on Stone Island. A new course in Stephen Stone's instruction of his son. He had planned it long, long ago. He had brought the necessary adjuncts. He was training Henry for his social life, training him how to be a perfect guest, a polished conversationalist, and diplomatically quick-thinking--all in the manner and according to the best traditions of a period that was already twenty years old.
He taught him how to dress--although when he had ordered the clothes, in London, in 1897, he had not guessed his son would attain such stature. He taught him etiquette, and how to dine and what to order, and how to order from a waiter in Delmonico's and from a waiter in Jack's and what to do in London and Paris and Vienna and where to go.
He taught him how to behave in a men's club and in a bank and in the box of an opera.
He taught him all the important trifles and they lived through a thousand scenes and situations, for one night each week was designated to represent some sort of function.
Invitations were sent and Henry answered them. The table was set meticulously and Stephen Stone portrayed the various guests--sometimes playing three or four roles at once.
At the same time, he intensified his courses in politics and the newspaper business.
He made Henry write a complete edition of a newspaper for Stone Island every two weeks. He discussed with his son the politics of his day--for there was no other material open to their contemplation. He taught the mechanics of the business, the functions of the various departments, the financing and the methods of development.
He educated his son to be a public speaker, and with Jack and McCobb for his audience, Henry frequently stood on the front porch, vines, trees and gaudy birds behind him, the sea before, and waxed eloquent on the administration of a proper government, or the fallacies of the Populists, or the trend of policies in the State Department. Sometimes, for variety, he and his father had a debate. McCobb, who rarely joined in these intellectual and social pastimes, was instructed to act as chairman or referee in such cases.
Henry addressed an imaginary Senate Committee on the freedom of the pre
ss. He ranted endlessly about Bryan. He raked over the ancient scandals of the Tweed Ring.
He also talked with dowagers in imaginary carriages. Dowagers--and they were always stuffy and frigid--were the only women who invaded this educational polic, and their invasion was rare. He rode in street cars under his father's tutelage. He walked on Fifth Avenue on Easter Day. He listened to sermons and sang hymns--although Stone was himself an agnostic.
A great, vicarious world expanded before him, amplified by poor drawings in books and by his father's excellent descriptions. In that world one thing was paramount: Ideals.
Stephen Stone made them the foundation of all else:
Never lie.
Never cheat.
Be honest.
Be forthright (but tactful).
Stick to your party but hold your country above it.
Be a gentleman (a thousand times that!)
Be a good sport.
Be tolerant (except of certain evils).
Be moderate. Drink moderately. Smoke moderately.
Keep informed.
Sleep eight hours a day and work twelve.
Never, never, never, never believe a woman.
Women are ruin. Love is a myth. Marry when you are over forty-five and marry someone you do not love.
Love is ruin.
Be, above all, fearless.
The precepts were banged out on the table with a fist. They were infiltrated through all their discussions. Henry was shown up flagrantly for the slightest lapse from them.
This was Stephen Stone's reaction to the numb days that had followed the sinking of the ship off the, headlands. He had stayed away from the house all night--with Jack in the bush nearby--and he had come back changed. The gaiety which had grown in him vanished. He applied all his energy now to the training of his son.
And Henry slowly lost human contact with his father. He obeyed. He even respected. He worked like a slave. But a rift grew between them. McCobb thought that it was an unconscious breach caused by Henry's unspoken resentment of the fact that his father had stranded him--probably for life--on the island.
It was not.
It grew because the two men were fundamentally different. There was something fanatical, puritanic, masochistic and sadistic in Stephen Stone. Henry was broad-minded by nature, and generous.