The Nymph and the Lamp

  “When!”

  “Well, here’s down the hatch!”

  “Down the hatch,” Carney murmured, and they drank together.

  “How do you manage without this stuff on Marina?”

  “Whiskey? It doesn’t trouble me. I could always take it or leave it anyhow, and when I went to Marina in 1910 I simply left it behind, with a lot of other things I didn’t need. It bothers the operators a bit. They usually bring a bottle or two out with them, and when that’s gone they talk about old sprees and give themselves a frightful thirst for a time. But on the whole we’re teetotalers, and we get along. What about a berth for me?”

  O’Dell made an expansive sweep with his glass. “The ship’s yours. I’ve got no passengers except an assistant lightkeeper going up to Saint Paul Rock, unless they send me somebody else at the last minute. That chap Hurd—a bit of a fuss-budget—sent me a chit about your passage several days ago, and I told the steward to give you the best, that cabin off the port alley. You’ve seen it. Built into the ship for the Deputy Minister of Marine and Fisheries, as if the old chap planned to spend his time knocking about the coast in a thing like this. Rather like mine but in better shape. All plush and mahogany. You’l1 travel like a blooming swell.”

  Carney’s bearded lips parted in a grin. “The end of a perfect fling!”

  O’Dell regarded him curiously. “You make that sound pretty final.”

  “It is. I’ve seen all I want of the outside.”

  “Until the next time,” O’Dell suggested.

  “No, this is the last time. You’ll never see me off Marina again, except for a swim, perhaps.”

  O’Dell’s thin gray brows shot up over the whiskey glass. He took a long swig.

  “You don’t mean it! Besides, they’ll retire you some day. What then?”

  “Then I’ll build myself a shack among the dunes, a bit to the east of the wireless station where I can hear the spark when the wind’s right. I’ve even got a spot picked out. But I’m good for a lot of service yet, mind you. You might say I’m part of the government inventory.”

  The thin clang of a brass hand bell sounded along the deck outside.

  “Lunch!” Captain O’Dell cried. “Come and eat with us, Carney, and you can tell me all about your holiday.”

  In the small saloon, already uncomfortable in the forenoon heat despite the open portholes, they found the chief engineer and a young fresh-cheeked third mate leaning against the buffet and talking diffidently, waiting for Captain O’Dell to seat himself. Along one side of the table, and directly under the portholes, extended a long settee padded with red plush. At the head and foot, and along the other side, stood chairs with stout wooden backs and round red-plush seats, each revolving on an iron standard bolted to the deck. The portholes had prim little red curtains to match the upholstery. From the forward bulkhead an electric fan wafted a thin breeze along the table.

  They sat, O’Dell at the table head, Carney at his left, and the others in their accustomed places, the chief engineer at O’Dell’s right and the third mate lonely towards the farther end, sitting on the settee. The other officers evidently were on leave or errands ashore. A white-jacketed steward bustled about with ice water in a pitcher. When the food appeared, the captain’s eyes glistened. That lined gray face, that thin drooped body with its incongruous paunch, the whole being of Captain O’Dell which resembled so much an unburied corpse, had a capacity for food that amounted to gluttony. It was his only vice, and it was famous in the lighthouse service.

  With this obsession he had little to say during the course of the meal, and Carney directed his own conversation to the engineer across the table, a heavy red-faced man with drooping mustaches and a shabby uniform. Mr. McIntyre had a glum view of the world which descended on him with especial force whenever the ship was about to sail; but he talked shop with the animation of an expert at his trade, and because Carney had a rough-and-ready knowledge of shipboard machinery they had a common ground. The younger officer sat remote and silent at his food, glancing up the table in wonder at a man who, having once got away from Marina Island, went back there of his own accord.

  At the meal’s end Captain O’Dell began to converse in the slow vague manner of a man who has eaten heavily and now desires nothing so much as his afternoon nap. The younger officer vanished. The engineer remained politely, glooming over his words with the air of a melancholy walrus. There was another half hour of this, and then Carney took his departure. As he stepped on deck into the muggy heat of the afternoon he cast an instinctive look at the sky.

  “Hello! Clouding up fast.”

  O’Dell inspected the weather from the doorway. “Humph. Rain at last. A lot of it, too, by the look of things.”

  Carney frowned. It was not quite time for the line gales but you never knew. Sometimes a forerunner blew up out of the West Indies in late August and lashed the Nova Scotia coast for two or three days on end.

  “If this is a southeaster coming up, it’ll raise a sea on the beach at Marina that won’t go down for a week.”

  “M’yes,” O’Dell acknowledged. “Personally I don’t think it’ll amount to much. We’re due for a big rain—the country’s parched. May be a bit of wind behind it. If it turns out to be a real southeaster I’ll hold up here a day or two. If it’s just a stiff blow I’ll pull out about sundown tomorrow and run up the coast to Bold Head. Good shelter inside the Head at Packet Harbor, and the shortest run to Marina when the surf goes down. You’d better be aboard by five tomorrow afternoon, Carney, or six at the outside.” He waved a delicate white hand and vanished towards his couch.

  Carney recrossed the harbor under a sky covered with gray scud drifting in from the eastward. A fitful wind wandered about the streets, whirling up little clouds of dust. When he turned in to the office to say Good-bye to Hurd the first drops of rain were spattering on the sidewalk. Hurd was engaged in a long-distance telephone conversation but he asked Miss Jardine to send Carney in at once. The farewell did not take long. Having arranged for the wireless station stores to be shipped, and for Carney’s return, Hurd’s neat mind had dismissed Marina for at least three months. As Carney came out he paused at Miss Jardine’s desk.

  “Well, I’m away, Miss Jardine.”

  The familiar flush passed over her pale features. She stood up, plucking off the glasses and casting a swift glance into the anteroom, where Miss Benson was being charming to an operator from the French cable-ship in port. She put out a hand and Carney shook it slowly and woodenly and released it. For want of anything else to say she asked, “You’re not sailing at once?”

  “Oh no, tomorrow evening. I’d thought of sending my gear aboard but I decided I might as well spend my last night ashore.”

  “It looks like a storm,” she murmured.

  “Yes. The rain won’t matter but if it blows hard the skipper may decide to hold up a day or two. In that case he’ll probably phone here and you might let me know. I’m at the Travelers’ Arms, a small wooden place down by the railroad station. I don’t know the phone number but no doubt it’s in the book.”

  She nodded, and catching up a pencil made a swift scrabble of pothooks in her notebook.

  “Let me thank you again…” Carney began.

  “Please don’t!” Miss Jardine said, with a warning tone.

  In the anteroom Miss Benson’s voice gave forth the gurgling note that meant another conquest in the making. In the inner office Hurd’s voice went on shouting into the telephone. Outside, from the seaward, came a mutter of thunder.

  “Good-by,” Carney said.

  “Good-by, Mr. Carney, and good luck. I’ll think of you on your island when the station reports come in.”

  Her face was still pink and there was a self-conscious smile on her lips. She was thinking, I might have given him one more evening. It wasn’t much to ask, after all. She raised her eyes to his with a feeling almost of guilt, and saw in his steady gaze only the shy friendliness that made him seem so much like
a boy masquerading in a beard. Impulsively she said, “I’m free tonight, if you’d like to take me out.”

  She was rewarded at once by the gratitude in his face. “That’s awfully kind of you, Miss Jardine!”

  “Oh, I’m being quite selfish, I assure you. There’s nothing so dull as a wet summer evening in lodgings. I’ll meet you at Morgan’s—you know, the little place where we had tea—at seven. You can give me something to eat and take me to the movies. Here comes Miss Benson. Don’t say anything more.”

  He nodded, with a pleasant feeling of conspiracy, and swung away, putting on his new hat firmly and turning up his collar against the rain.

  CHAPTER 7

  At five o’clock, when the shops and offices of Halifax emptied their human contents into the streets, the rain was falling heavily. There was no wind. The torrent fell straight down and the big drops covered the pavement with an inch of bouncing water. Caught like everyone else without coat or umbrella, Miss Jardine clutched the thin jacket about her throat and ran. There was a brief haven in the post office, where she drew the afternoon mail from her satchel and tipped the letters into the chute. She waited inside for a time, hoping for a pause in the downpour, but there was none.

  A gloomy mass of cloud hung over the city like an immense sponge being squeezed by a maniac giant. The thunder, which at first had sounded from the harbor mouth as if the forts were at gunnery practice, now boomed and rattled over the ceiling with violence, and at intervals the unnatural twilight in the streets was torn apart and a dazzling flash revealed all the scampering figures caught in suspended motion like a photograph.

  Reluctantly she stepped into a revolving door whose pace was set by a rush of people eager for shelter, and it thrust her quickly and mercilessly into the storm. As she emerged another flash of lightning splashed the wet walls of Province House with luminous blue paint, and in that moment she saw the Boer War monument and the imperturbable soldier holding his rifle above his head as if to ward off a further blow from the sky. She thought of Carney, then, and smiled. The thunder followed, and she ran towards her lodging, thankful that it was not far.

  She was wet to the skin, with her hair dripping and falling out of its pins, when she ran up the stairs to her room. She slipped off the wet garments quickly and put on a silk wrapper. On the stairs and along the halls she could hear the feet of other lodgers running, voices exclaiming over the storm, doors opening and slamming. The thunder had ceased but a deluge still poured from the gutterspouts into the back court.

  What I want most, she thought, is a good hot bath. When the last footsteps had retreated down the stairs towards the restaurant, she slipped along the hall. Experience had taught her this propitious time. At the supper hour Mrs. Paradee’s indifferent hot water supply was at its best. Soon after, when one or two of the more fastidious lodgers had bathed for an evening out, the taps would run lukewarm and by bedtime the water would be frigid. Also, at this hour when the inmates had emerged from their lairs like some savage tribe in search of food, she had an undisputed possession of the bathroom that enabled her to soap and sponge as much as she pleased, to relax in lazy enjoyment, and to speculate on what she would have for tea.

  She returned to her room with that pleasant feeling of wellbeing which is only to be found in the bath. The air in the bedroom was humid and oppressive and she decided not to dress until the last possible moment. She tossed off the wrapper and sat before the mirror brushing her hair. The house now was silent except for a scrape of chairs in Mrs. Paradee’s apartment just below her room; but in a few moments she heard a lone tread on the stairs. It sounded like the ponderous step of Mr. Klaus, who was foreman of a wharf on Water Street. The footsteps came slowly along the hall, and halted. Her doorknob rattled. She barely had time to pick up the flimsy wrapper and catch it about herself when the door sprang open.

  It was Klaus, with his huge red face and barrel shoulders, swaying as if moved by mysterious gales. He was known to the lodgers as a widower in middle age, a polite and silent creature rarely to be seen except at morning, when he tramped stolidly to work, and at evening when he dined in Feder’s Grill after a long day on the waterfront. She knew the man tippled; it was common gossip in that house where everyone knew the other’s foibles; but usually he drank quietly in his room and smuggled out his empty bottles with a ponderous air of innocence that made everybody smile. He had been one of the “regulars” long before Miss Jardine’s time, and he went in great awe of the gorgon downstairs.

  Klaus lurched into the room and shut the door with a slam that echoed through the house. Miss Jardine kept her composure.

  “Mr. Klaus,” she said quietly, “this is not your room.”

  He did not seem to hear. Indeed he seemed oblivious of the slim shape standing by the mirror with a hairbrush, inadequate weapon, clutched against its breast. Like most of his stevedores in the summer heat Klaus worked in trousers, singlet and boots, and ordinarily when he returned to his lodgings he resumed the gray flannel shirt, the draggled red tie and the somewhat frayed blue jacket that seemed to be his only other clothes.

  Today however he had simply pulled on an oilskin coat against the rain. This he now removed, with violence, as if the thing oppressed him, and he flung it on the floor. He sat heavily on Miss Jardine’s bed, propping himself erect with a pair of large tattooed arms. He had lost his hat and the grizzled fringe of hair that so emphasized his baldness had been turned to absurd little wisps by the downpour in the streets. A bottle stuck out of his hip pocket.

  “Phoo!” he ejaculated, shaking his head and peering in a vaguely puzzled way at one of Miss Jardine’s pencil sketches, framed and hung on the opposite wall. She put down the brush and stepped forward, clasping the wisp of silk about her as if it were armor of some sort.

  “Mr. Klaus! Your room’s across the hall. Go there, please!”

  He turned his head cautiously, as if quick movement gave him pain. His blurred gaze considered her for a moment, looked away, and came back to her with sudden interest.

  “How’d you git in here?” he demanded belligerently.

  “This is my room. Please get out.”

  He considered that a moment. Then, flatly, “Out yourself.”

  Miss Jardine was indignant. She moved on swift white legs to the door and flung it wide, crying imperiously, “Mr. Klaus, for heaven’s sake get out before somebody comes!” He did not move. She went to him and put a firm hand on his shoulder, as if by the sheer force of her anger she could hurl this drunken sweating creature out of her presence. The response of Klaus was rude and sudden. He was not accustomed to being hustled, even when sober, and now he arose with a bellow, thrusting out a fist. Fortunately he was in no condition to gauge the distance of Miss Jardine or even to keep his balance. The blow missed her completely and it carried Klaus off his feet. He fell with the force of two hundred and twenty pounds not merely dropped but thrown. His huge body seemed to bounce on the bedroom floor. From his pocket the bottle shot a dark stream over Miss Jardine’s worn carpet.

  Here was a chance to escape, but escape was far from her mind. She was still more angry than frightened, and all that was stubborn in her Scotch blood resented this intrusion into what was, after all, her home. This was her citadel, the repository of her small possessions, the refuge to which she fled after each day’s work, to read, to knit, to practice the sketching lessons she received two evenings a week at the School of Art. She would not give it up to this fuddled animal even for a moment.

  It was of no use to cry for help. The whole floor was deserted. In any case she could not call attention to this ridiculous scene. In her sensitive mind already she could hear the titters and sly wit of the lodgers, male and female, who resented her aloofness, her books, her solitary walks, who would regard this spectacle of Bacchus and the prude as a wonderful bit of comic justice, to be retailed with gusto on both floors and over the tables in Feder’s Grill. With the fervency of prayer she hoped that no one would come up the stairs until
Klaus had regained his senses and his room.

  The man was now on hands and knees, swearing softly and thickly. The fall had shaken him. He muttered, “Who left off that hatch?” in a tone of indignant wonder, and Miss Jardine had a hysterical urge to laugh. A stench of raw Demerara rum crept about the room. She went over to him and, this time in a most gingerly way, put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Mr. Klaus!”

  “Eh!”

  “You’re in the wrong room.”

  “So?” He swung his head from side to side like a dazed bull. Her bare feet caught his attention and he inspected them. With some difficulty he raised his head and perceived a pair of shapely marble columns attached to them; but the effort hurt his neck. He returned his attention to her feet.

  “That ain’t you, Babe?” he said dubiously.

  “It’s Miss Jardine,” she returned impatiently. “Get up, do!” She placed her hand under his arm and pulled. Obediently Klaus heaved himself upward. He came to his feet swaying dangerously and throwing a heavy arm about her shoulders for support. Encouraged, Miss Jardine moved forward, pressing him towards the open door and watching his feet with anxiety, for if he stumbled the whole absurd performance must be repeated. They were in this attitude, approaching the doorway, with Miss Jardine’s eyes downcast, watchful and absorbed, when Klaus came to a halt.

  “Jeest!” he said.

  She glanced at his face and saw the bleared eyes fixed on something in the hall. Swiftly she looked at the doorway. At once she cried in a relieved voice, “Oh, Mrs. Paradee, I’m so glad it’s you and no one else. You see…”

  “I see,” Mrs. Paradee said.

  Miss Jardine withdrew her arm. The sodden Klaus tottered and sat down upon the bed.

  “Jeest!” he said again.

  The landlady’s gaze swept past him contemptuously to the overturned chair before the mirror, the scatter of garments just where Miss Jardine had flung them off, the dark stain on the carpet. She sniffed, and turned to examine Miss Jardine from head to foot.