“We keep this house because men from the Universities come down and put in a week now and then at the mission. My rooms are upstairs.”
Chase’s sitting-room was in the strangest contrast to the bareness of the mission and the squalor of the streets. It was furnished with luxury, but the luxury was that of a man of taste and knowledge. There was hardly a piece of furniture which had not an interesting history; the engravings and the brass ornaments upon the walls had been picked up here and there in Italy. A bright fire blazed upon the hearth.
“What will you drink?” Chase asked, and brought from a cupboard bottle after bottle of liqueurs. It seemed to Warrisden that the procession of bottles would never end — some held liqueurs of which he had never even heard the name; but concerning all of them Mr. Chase discoursed with great knowledge and infinite appreciation.
“I can recommend this,” he said tentatively, as he took up one fat round bottle and held it up to the light. “It is difficult perhaps to say definitely which is the best, but — yes, I can recommend this.”
“Can’t I have a whiskey and soda?” asked Warrisden, plaintively.
Mr. Chase looked at his companion with a stare.
“Of course you can,” he replied. But his voice was one of disappointment, and with an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders he fetched a Tantalus and a siphon of seltzer.
“Help yourself,” he said; and lighting a gold-tipped cigarette he drew up a chair and began to talk. And so Warrisden came at last to understand how Tony Stretton had gained his great faith in Mr. Chase. Chase was a talker of a rare quality. He sat stooping over the fire with his thin hands outspread to the blaze, and for half an hour Warrisden was enchained. All that had repelled him in the man, all that had aroused his curiosity, was soon lost to sight. He yielded himself up as if to some magician. Chase talked not at all of his work or of the many strange incidents which he must needs have witnessed in its discharge. He spoke of other climates and bright towns with a scholarship which had nothing of pedantry, and an observation human as it was keen. Chase, with the help of his Livy, had traced Hannibal’s road across the Alps and had followed it on foot; he spoke of another march across snow mountains of which Warrisden had never till this moment heard — the hundred days of a dead Sultan of Morocco on the Passes of the Atlas, during which he led his forces back from Tafilet to Rabat. Chase knew nothing of this retreat but what he had read. Yet he made it real to Warrisden, so vividly did his imagination fill up the outlines of the written history. He knew his Paris, his Constantinople. He had bathed from the Lido and dreamed on the Grand Canal. He spoke of the peeling frescoes in the Villa of Countess Guiccioli above Leghorn, of the outlook from the terrace over the vines and the olive trees to the sea where Shelley was drowned; and where Byron’s brig used to round into the wind and with its sails flapping drop anchor under the hill. For half an hour Warrisden wandered through Europe in the pleasantest companionship, and then Chase stopped abruptly and leaned back in his chair.
“I was forgetting,” he said, “that you had come upon a particular errand. It sometimes happens that I see no one outside the mission people for a good while, and during those periods when I get an occasion I am apt to talk too much. What can I do for you?”
The spirit had gone from his voice, his face. He leaned back in his chair, a man tired out. Warrisden looked at the liqueur bottles crowded on the table, with Chase’s conversation still fresh in his mind. Was Chase a man at war with himself, he wondered, who was living a life for which he had no taste that he might the more completely escape a life which his conscience disapproved? Or was he deliberately both hedonist and Puritan, giving to each side of his strange nature, in turn, its outlet and gratification?
“You have something to say to me,” Chase continued. “I know quite well what it is about.”
“Stretton,” said Warrisden.
“Yes; you mentioned him in the billiard-room. Well?”
Chase was not looking at Warrisden. He sat with his eyes half-closed, his elbows on the arms of his chair, his finger-tips joined under his chain, and his head thrown back. There was no expression upon his face but one of weariness. Would he answer? Could he answer? Warrisden was in doubt, indeed in fear. He led to his question warily.
“It was you who recommended Stretton to try horse-breeding in Kentucky.”
“Yes,” said Chase; and he added, “after he had decided of his own accord to go away.”
“He failed.”
“Yes.”
“And he has disappeared.”
Chase opened his eyes, but did not turn them to his companion.
“I did not advise his disappearance,” he said. “That, like his departure, was his own doing.”
“No doubt,” Warrisden agreed. “But it is thought that you might have heard from him since his disappearance.”
Chase nodded his head.
“I have.”
“It is thought that you might know where he is now.”
“I do,” said Mr. Chase. Warrisden was sensibly relieved. One-half of his fear was taken from him. Chase knew, at all events, where Stretton was to be found. Now he must disclose his knowledge. But before he could put a question, Chase said languidly —
“You say ‘it is thought,’ Mr. Warrisden. By whom is it thought? By his wife?”
“No. But by a great friend of hers and his.”
“Oh,” said Chase, “by Miss Pamela Mardale, then.”
Warrisden started forward.
“You know her?” he asked.
“No. But Stretton mentioned her to me in a letter. She has sent you to me in fulfilment of a promise. I understand.”
The words were not very intelligible to Warrisden. He knew nothing of Pamela’s promise to Tony Stretton. But, on the other hand, he saw that Mr. Chase was giving a more attentive ear to what he said. He betrayed no ignorance of the promise.
“I am sent to fetch Stretton home,” he said. “I want you to tell me where he is.”
Chase shook his head.
“No,” he said gently.
“It is absolutely necessary that Stretton should come back,” Warrisden declared with great deliberation. And with no less deliberation Chase replied —
“In Stretton’s view it is absolutely necessary that he should stay away!”
“His father is dying.”
Chase started forward in his chair, and stared at Warrisden for a long time.
“Is that an excuse?” he said at length.
It was, as Warrisden was aware. He did not answer the question.
“It is the truth,” he replied; and he replied truthfully.
Chase rose from his chair and walked once or twice across the room. He came back to the fire, and leaning an elbow on the mantelpiece stared into the coals. Warrisden sat very still. He had used his one argument — he could add nothing to it; he could only wait for the answer in a great anxiety. So much hung upon that answer for Stretton and his wife, for Pamela, for himself! The fortunes of all four were knotted together. At last the answer came.
“I promised Tony that I would keep his secret,” said Chase. “But when he asked for the promise, and when I gave it, the possibility of his father dying was not either in his mind or mine. We considered — in letters, of course — other possibilities; but not this one. I don’t think I have the right to remain silent. Even in the face of this possibility I should have kept my promise, I think, if you had come from his wife — for I know why he disappeared. But as things are, I will tell you. Tony Stretton is in the North Sea on a trawler.”
“In the North Sea?” exclaimed Warrisden. And he smiled. After all, the steamboats on the river had last night called to him with a particular summons.
“Yes,” continued Chase, and he fetched from his writing-desk a letter in Tony’s hand. “He came back to England two months ago. He drifted across the country. He found himself at Yarmouth with a few shillings in his pocket. He knew something of the sea. He had sailed his own
yacht in happier times. He was in great trouble. He needed time to think out a new course of life. He hung about on Gorleston pier for a day or two, and then was taken on by a skipper who was starting out short of hands, he signed for eight weeks, and he wrote to me the day before he started. That’s four weeks ago.”
“Can I reach him?” Warrisden asked.
“Yes. The boat is the Perseverance, and it belongs to the Blue Fleet. A steam cutter goes out every day from Billingsgate to fetch the fish. I know one of the owners. His son comes down to the mission. I can get you a passage. When can you start?”
“At any time,” replied Warrisden. “The sooner the better.”
“To-morrow, then,” said Chase. “Meet me at the entrance to Billingsgate Market at half-past eleven. It will take you forty-eight hours with ordinary luck to reach the Dogger Bank. Of course, if there’s a fog in the Thames the time will be longer. And I warn you, living is rough on a fish-carrier.”
“I don’t mind that,” said Warrisden, with a smile. He went away with a light heart, and that night wrote a letter to Pamela, telling her of his interview with Mr. Chase. The new road seemed after all likely to prove a smooth one. As he wrote, every now and then a steamboat hooted from the river, and the rain pattered upon his window. He flung it up and looked out. There was no fog to-night, only the rain fell, and fell gently. He prayed that there might be no fog upon the Thames to-morrow.
Mr. Chase, too, heard the rain that night. He sat in his armchair listening to it with a decanter at his elbow half filled with a liquid like brown sherry. At times he poured a little into his glass and drank it slowly, crouching over his fire. Somewhere in the darkness of the North Sea Tony Stretton was hidden. Very likely at this moment he was standing upon the deck of his trawler with his hands upon the spokes of the wheel, and his eyes peering forward through the rain, keeping his long night-watch while the light from the binnacle struck upwards upon the lines of his face. Mr. Chase sat late in a muse. But before he went to bed he locked the decanter and the glass away in a private cupboard, and took the key with him into his bedroom.
CHAPTER XI
ON THE DOGGER BANK
THE CITY OF Bristol swung out of the huddle of boats off Billingsgate Wharf at one o’clock on the next afternoon. Mr. Chase, who stood upon the quay amongst the porters and white-jacketed salesmen, turned away with an episcopal wave of the hand. Warrisden leaned over the rail of the steamer’s bridge, between the captain and the pilot, and shouted a reply. The City of Bristol, fish-cutter of 300 tons, was a boat built for speed, long and narrow, sitting low on the water, with an upstanding forecastle forward, a small saloon in the stern, and a tiny cabin for the captain under the bridge on deck. She sidled out into the fair way and went forward upon her slow, intricate journey to the sea. Below the Tower she took her place in the long, single file of ships winding between the mud banks, and changed it as occasion served; now she edged up by a string of barges, now in a clear broad space she made a spurt and took the lead of a barquantine, which swam in indolence, with bare masts, behind a tug; and at times she stopped altogether, like a carriage blocked in Piccadilly. The screw thrashed the water, ceased, and struck again with a suggestion of petulance at the obstacles which barred the boat’s way. Warrisden, too, chafed upon the bridge. A question pressed continually upon his mind— “Would Stretton return?” He had discovered where Stretton was to be found. The tall grey spire of Stepney Church rose from behind an inlet thick with masts, upon the left; he was already on his way to find him. But the critical moment was yet to come. He had still to use his arguments; and as he stood watching the shipping with indifferent eyes the arguments appeared most weak and unpersuasive. Stretton’s father was dying, it was true. The son’s return was no doubt a natural obligation. But would the natural obligation hold when the father was unnatural? Those months in New York had revealed one quality in Tony Stretton, at all events; he could persist. The very name of the trawler in which he was at work seemed to Warrisden of a bad augury for his success — the Perseverance!
Greenwich, with its hill of grass, slipped behind on the right; at the Albert Docks a huge Peninsular and Oriental steamer, deck towering above deck, swung into the line; the high chimneys of the cement works on the Essex flats began to stand out against the pale grey sky, each one crowned with white smoke like a tuft of wool; the barges, under their big brown sprit-sails, now tacked this way and that across a wider stream; the village of Greenhithe and the white portholes of the Worcester showed upon the right.
“Would Stretton return?” The question revolved in Warrisden’s mind as the propeller revolved in the thick brown water. The fortunes of four people hung upon the answer, and no answer could be given until a night, and a day, and another night had passed, until he saw the Blue Fleet tossing far away upon the Dogger Bank. Suppose that the answer were “No!” He imagined Pamela sinking back into lassitude, narrowing to that selfishness which she, no less than he, foresaw; looking on again at the world’s show with the lack-lustre indifference of the very old.
At Gravesend the City of Bristol dropped her pilot, a little, white-bearded, wizened man, who all the way down the river, balancing himself upon the top-rail of the bridge, like some nautical Blondin, had run from side to side the while he exchanged greetings with the anchored ships; and just opposite to Tilbury Fort, with its scanty fringe of trees, she ran alongside of a hulk and took in a load of coal.
“We’ll go down and have tea while they are loading her,” said the captain.
The dusk was falling when Warrisden came again on deck, and a cold wind was blowing from the north-west. The sharp stem of the boat was cutting swiftly through the quiet water; the lift of the sea under her forefoot gave to her a buoyancy of motion — she seemed to have become a thing alive. The propeller cleft the surface regularly; there was no longer any sound of petulance in its revolutions, rather there was a throb of joy as it did its work unhindered. Throughout the ship a steady hum, a steady vibration ran. The City of Bristol was not merely a thing alive; it was a thing satisfied.
Upon Warrisden, too, there descended a sense of peace. He was en rapport with the ship. The fever of his questioning left him. On either side the arms of the shore melted into the gathering night. Far away upon his right the lights of Margate shone brightly, like a chain of gold stretched out upon the sea; in front of him there lay a wide and misty bay, into which the boat drove steadily. All the unknown seemed hidden there; all the secret unrevealed Beyond. There came whispers out of that illimitable bay to Warrisden’s ears; whispers breathed upon the north wind, and all the whispers were whispers of promise, bidding him take heart. Warrisden listened and believed, uplifted by the grave quiet of the sea and its mysterious width.
The City of Bristol turned northward into the great channel of the Swin, keeping close to the lightships on the left, so close that Warrisden from the bridge could look straight down upon their decks. The night had altogether come — a night of stars. Clusters of lights, low down upon the left, showed where the towns of Essex stood; upon the light hand the homeward-bound ships loomed up ghost-like and passed by; on the right, too, shone out the great green globes of the Mouse light like Neptune’s reading-lamps. Sheltered behind the canvas screen at the corner of the bridge Warrisden looked along the rake of the unlighted deck below. He thought of Pamela waiting for his return at Whitewebs, but without impatience. The great peace and silence of the night were the most impressive things he had ever known. The captain’s voice complaining of the sea jarred upon him.
“It’s no Bobby’s job,” said the captain in a low voice. “It’s home once in three weeks from Saturday to Monday, if you are in luck, and the rest of your time you’re in carpet slippers on the bridge. You’ll sleep in my chatoo, to-night. I sha’n’t turn in until we have passed the Outer Gabbard and come to the open sea. That won’t be till four in the morning.”
Warrisden understood that he was being offered the captain’s cabin.
“No, th
anks,” said he. “The bench of the saloon will do very well for me.”
The captain did not press his offer.
“Yes; there’s more company in the saloon,” he said. “I often sleep there myself. You are bound for the Mission ship, I suppose?”
“No; I want to find a man on the trawler Perseverance.”
The captain turned. Warrisden could not see his face, but he knew from his attitude that he was staring at him in amazement.
“Then you must want to see him pretty badly,” he commented. “The No’th Sea in February and March is not a Bobby’s job.”
“Bad weather is to be expected?” asked Warrisden.
“It has been known,” said the captain dryly; and before the lights of the Outer Gabbard winked good-bye on the starboard quarter at four o’clock in the morning, the City of Bristol was taking the water over her deck.
Warrisden rolled on the floor of the saloon — for he could not keep his balance on the narrow bench — and tried in vain to sleep. But the strong light of a lamp, swinging from the roof, glared upon his eyes, the snores of his companions trumpeted in his ears. Moreover, the heat was intolerable. Five men slept in the bunks — Warrisden made a sixth. At four in the morning the captain joined the party through his love of company. The skylight and the door were both tightly closed, a big fire burned in the stove, and a boiling kettle of tea perpetually puffed from its spout a column of warm, moist steam. Warrisden felt his skin prickly beneath his clothes; he gasped for fresh air.
Living would be rough upon the fish-carrier, Chase had told him; and rough Warrisden found it. In the morning the steward rose, and made tea by the simple process of dropping a handful of tea into the kettle and filling it up with water. A few minutes later he brought a dish of ham and eggs from the galley, and slapped it down on the table.
“Breakfast,” he cried; and the five men opened their eyes, rubbed them, and without any other preparation sat down and ate. Warrisden slipped up the companion, unscrewed the skylight and opened it for the space of an inch. Then he returned.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 401