“The two men remained kneeling upon the bank, peering into the darkness, listening. Polydore said:
“‘It is over now.’
“And Gavroche replied:
“‘Yes, it is over. We had to think of our village, hadn’t we? Yes, yes, we had to think of France.’
“Then they stood up and saw me just behind them. Now, indeed, I ran, with both of them at my heels, in and out amongst the bushes along the river bank, towards the bridge. Polydore Cromecq had grudged me my young legs that afternoon. He grudged me them still more during these minutes. I heard the two men crushing through the grass after me, panting, swaying, but I gained on them. Then Polydore raised his voice:
“‘Little Miss, wait for me! Come back to the estaminet and wish us good-bye! You shall see me drink a bock and the little bubbles wink on my big moustache. That will be amusing — what? For the last time, eh? It is good to part with a laugh.’
“But I ran the faster. I crossed the bridge. My governess and the boy were waiting with the bicycles at the gate.
“‘Quick, please, quick,’ I cried. ‘I will tell you afterwards.’
“My governess was the woman for an emergency. We were off down the cart-track on our bicycles when Polydore and Gavroche crossed the bridge.
“‘Little Miss! Little Miss!’
“The cry rang out, once, twice, and each time fainter. Then we heard it no more. I never did tell my governess afterwards of the crime which was committed that night — no, nor anyone, since my Zouave had forbidden me. But I have broken my promise to him to-night. The cruel thing is that ‘they’ never did enter the village. For they began their retreat the next morning.”
IV
Cynthia ended her story. For a minute the middle-aged woman and the girl stared into the unlit grate. Then Madame D’Estourie said slowly:
“For the honour of France, he said.”
“Yes. I didn’t understand what he meant. I do now, of course. It’s better that nothing should be said. War makes some men monsters.”
Madame D’Estourie stood up.
“And many women, childless,” she added.
Cynthia looked quickly at her.
“But Madame D’Estourie,” she began, and her visitor interrupted her.
“I was Madame Flavelle, before I was Madame D’Estourie. Your wounded Zouave was my boy. For six years I have been searching why he died and meaning to exact justice to the uttermost farthing. But — for the honour of France — he said;” and she let her arms drop against her sides in resignation. She turned her eyes to Cynthia. They were wells of pain. “I may kiss you?” she asked. She held the girl tight to her breast. “Thank you! Thank you!” she whispered in a breaking voice. She let her go and wrapped her cloak about her throat.
“Now,” she said in a cheerful voice. “We shall go downstairs together.”
But Cynthia drew back. Madame D’Estourie, however, would have none of it.
“No, no, that won’t do,” she cried. “That poor young man has been waiting in the hall more than his ten minutes. Let us go to him. And I think that old misery, now that you have told it to me, will not haunt you any more.”
She put her arm tenderly about Cynthia’s waist and they went down the stairs. But half-way down Madame D’Estourie ran forward with a little sob, as though her self-restraint at last was failing her. When Cynthia reached the floor, she found Jim seated patiently on a hall-chair, exchanging consolatory phrases with a no less patient butler.
It did not occur to Jim to complain, nor on the other hand did it occur to Cynthia to apologize. She said:
“Oh, Jim, I don’t want to dance to-night. Be an angel, will you? Drive me down the Portsmouth road as far as Ripley and back, will you?”
Jim’s face lit up with a smile.
“Cynthia,” he said, “there are bright moments in your young life which give me hopes for your future;” and he went outside and cranked up his car.
THE CHRONOMETER
AGES AND AGES ago one of our crack steamers of the Dagger Line piled herself up at night on the rocks of Sokotra in the first violence of the South-west Monsoon. I was then a youngster in the Agent’s office at Port Said learning the work, and during the next few weeks my education was rapid and intensive. The ship was the Calobar of eleven thousand tons, the Flagship of the Line and a favourite with passengers. But fortunately the homeward rush from the East was over and there were no more than seventy souls on board apart from the officers and the crew. The Calobar struck heavily and heeled over at a dangerous cant, with a furious sea thrashing her hull and boiling across her deck. There was some trouble, too, with the native portion of her crew. But in the early morning one lifeboat was got away. It carried the women and children, twenty-five of them, and it was manned by the best of the English sailors under the command of the third officer, a forlorn hope, no doubt, but to all appearances the only one. But by one of the sea’s favourite ironies, those who remained on board the Calobar to die were rescued and the life-boat was never heard of again.
A big tramp steamer bound from Karachi to Liverpool picked the battered survivors off the wreck, and with her natural speed of ten knots an hour checked down to seven by the monsoon, carried them into Aden. There they waited for a mail-boat and arrived at Suez in the second week of June upon a steamer of the Khedivial Line. From Suez they travelled by train to Port Said; and thus it was that I came across them. And what with securing rooms for them, buying them clothes, sending cables home and arranging their bank-drafts and their passages to England, I had enough to do. So completely enough that of all those distressed and haggard travellers, only one remained clearly individualized in my memories as a passenger by s.s. Calobar.
My chief brought him into the little room I occupied on the water-front. It was on the second floor and if I craned my body out of the window, I could see the great breakwater with the Lesseps statue reaching out into the sea; and below me was all the traffic of the harbour from the little feluccas of the Mediterranean to the funnelled giants of the outer seas.
“Will you hear what Mr. Trinic has to say,” said my chief, “and draft out a petition to the Board of Trade which he will sign and I will support?”
As a matter of fact the request had already gone forward on the Company’s own initiative, and the Shipping Agent’s proposal was merely a kindly attempt to find something for Mr. Trinic to do whilst he had to wait at Port Said.
“I can hand you over with every confidence to my assistant,” said the Agent to Mr. Trinic; and he left him with me.
Mr. Trinic was as commonplace in appearance as his name was odd. His face was a whitish grey, his age a year or two over fifty — he had big ears and a little button of a nose, but such an aura of grief enveloped him and set him apart that I saw in him a person of high dignity. I could imagine him, just whilst his distress lasted, a leader amongst men.
“I want to know that she’s dead,” he said as soon as we were alone, speaking with some sort of provincial accent which I could not identify. “I had done my work, you see — planting tobacco in Java. I had made enough. I was going back home to Liverpool with my girl to set up house. She was twenty-four, you see. She had been seven years out with me — ever since my wife died. It was time I took her home and gave her her chance, you see, amongst her own people.”
He was carrying a chart and a very thin book under his arm. He laid these down on the table and took from his pocket a leather case.
“There she is. Have a look!”
He handed me the case and turning his back walked to the window whilst I opened it. There were two photographs, face to face, of a girl, one in profile, one full, and they took my breath away. I couldn’t reconcile her with the man staring out of the window. It was not a mere matter of looks, though hers were rare enough. She was haunting. There was humour in the shape and set of her mouth, and in her big eyes enormous wisdom. In the full face, she looked out at you, knowing you — excusing you — accepting you marvellously in
to her company. In the photograph of the side face, she was just looking forward beyond the world, waiting quietly for something far off which she saw approaching.
“Yes,” I said, and I closed the case. There was nothing, indeed, for me to say.
“So you see.” He turned back from the window and tucked the case away in his pocket as he talked; and he talked quite quietly and sensibly. “The Liverpool plan’s over and done with—” I had an odd feeling that Liverpool did not quite agree with those two photographs. I saw in imagination a street of little villas with backyards and front gardens. “But I want to know that my girl’s dead. How can I go back to Liverpool and live there — alone — for how many years! — unless I know that? You must see. I’ve got to know that Mona’s dead, haven’t I?”
He was appealing to me as a reasonable man in a voice which he might have used to explain some detail in his accounts. It was as dry and tearless as his eyes. But I was conscious of a measureless unhappiness in the man which made any word of sympathy the most futile of banalities.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Trinic?” I asked.
He spread out his chart upon my table and pinned down the four corners.
“That life-boat was well-found in every way,” he argued. “It had good English sailors, water, food, an officer who understood navigation, sails — and it wasn’t overcrowded.”
“But you don’t imagine that in that storm—” I cried, and he did not let me finish the sentence.
“Why did the Captain send it off, then?” he asked.
“Well...yes,” I had to admit. “I suppose he thought it had a chance.”
“Exactly. I have been studying this book,” and he showed me the title-page. It was The Gulf of Aden Pilot. “I bought it off an officer of the tramp steamer which took us into Aden. After the first violent blow, the wind often drops at the beginning of June. There it is, written in the book. And I’ll tell you another thing. On the north of Sokotra the current runs eastward forty miles to the day. I’ll tell you a third thing too. During the South-west Monsoon the nearer you get to the Arabian coast, except just within one area, the lighter you get the wind and the smoother the sea.”
“The Arabian coast!” I exclaimed. “But, Mr. Trinic, the distance—”
“Three hundred miles, and the wind aft all the while,” he replied promptly. “Measure it for yourself on the chart. Here!” He took calipers out of his pocket and handed the instrument to me. He had everything ready which could help his argument. I took it reluctantly and measured off the distance.
“Yes, three hundred miles — just about,” said I.
There was after all this horrid possibility which was torturing my visitor.
“Some ship going East may have picked up the lifeboat,” I argued.
“It’s a fortnight since the life-boat left the wreck. We should have heard.”
Wireless was still at that time a marvel to come. But the Gulf of Aden was the world’s greatest trade route; and though you may cross the Atlantic and never see a ship till you sight the Bishop or Sandy Hook, you steam in company through the narrow seas beyond Perim. Signals would have been exchanged. From half a dozen ports the news would have been flashed a week ago that the Calobar’s life-boat with its castaways had been saved.
“Yes, we should have heard,” I conceded. I looked at the chart again.
“If they reached Arabia it would have been here, wouldn’t it? At Dhofar,” I said.
“And then?” Trinic asked. “Where’s my girl? In the harem of some wretched little black Sultan ruling over a cabbage patch and living in a block house. Listen to this:” — he turned over the pages of the Pilot—”’The Beni Gharrah bedouins have a great hatred towards Europeans.’ The Beni Gharrah bedouins are the people who live at Dhofar. Or suppose the boat landed a little nearer — here — in the Bay of Kamar—” and again he turned the pages of his book and read: “‘The Mahrah tribe is very numerous and powerful...their enmity towards the English is very great...’ I want to be sure that my girl’s dead.”
“You want us to send a ship along that coast and look for the wreckage of the life-boat,” I suggested.
“That’s not enough,” said Trinic. He referred yet again to the Pilot. “Boats of thirty and forty tons are hauled up on shore during the South-west Monsoon. It wouldn’t be difficult to haul up a ship’s life-boat and hide it. No, I want the Government to search that strip of coast from end to end with a man-of-war. I want every little tinpot king to turn his household out for inspection. I want to know that my girl’s dead.”
I drew a sheet of foolscap towards me and began to draft out his petition to the Board of Trade. All that day we worked at it together, and when it was finished and signed it was sent home, whilst Trinic carried a copy of it to the Consul-General at Cairo. As the world knows, the search was made immediately by the Board of Trade and a little while afterwards a second survey was taken by a steamer of the Company’s Line. But between Kamar Bay and the Kuria Muria islands, the limits east and west within which a search was of use, not a plank of wreckage was discovered, and not a fisherman had any story to tell of the landing of the castaways. The Calobar’s life-boat had disappeared with all its cargo of passengers. Mr. Trinic carried his misery home with him to Liverpool and disappeared too. Gradually under the stress of business and immediate things to be done the memory of the catastrophe faded. Moreover, I was moved about the world’s big chessboard. I was transferred the next year to Colombo and thence to Hong Kong and thence to London, and in due course after fifteen years I returned to Port Said as Head Agent there of the Dagger Line.
II
The events which I am going to relate happened in my sixth year as Head Agent. Yes, I had been five years in Port Said and I enjoyed every minute of it. I had the pleasantest kind of work for anyone who likes ships, and after all, the town itself is a Grand Hotel with the world passing in at one door and out by the other. One morning I found that my watch had stopped and I took it that afternoon to little Papyanni, the jeweller in the Rue de la Poste. He opened the back and screwed his magnifying-glass into his eye.
“The mainspring’s broken, Mr. Woodyer,” he said. “I’ll want three days.”
Then he put the watch away in a drawer. He was a brisk little man in the ordinary way, but this afternoon either he was thinking of something else or he had a touch of the gout in his foot. For he moved like a snail. But he was thinking of something else and of something which concerned me. For when he returned to his counter he leaned across it confidentially and actually opened his mouth to speak. But a woman from an All-Round-the-World Luxury Steamer interrupted at that moment with a demand for a silver spoon enamelled with the flag of Egypt, and the opportunity was lost. For little Papyanni had a second thought. He stood up again straight.
“In three days, Mr. Woodyer,” he said shortly, and he turned to his lady customer. “Just about this time.”
So just about that time in three days I turned up at Papyanni’s and asked for my watch. The All-Round-the-World Luxury Steamer had carried off its passengers to Colombo and the shop was empty. Little Papyanni had my watch ready and he set it to the hour by means of a large chronometer which was ticking away in a battered but handsome mahogany box lined with faded old green cloth.
“Is that right?” I asked, with a nod towards the chronometer.
As a rule, Papyanni set a watch that he had mended by the clock hanging up against the wall opposite to the door. But he never looked at it to-day. He rapped on the side of the mahogany case with his knuckles and answered:
“Oh, yes, this keeps very good time.”
Then he shot a little inquisitive darting look at me to notice how I took the answer. But I took it too simply for him. I said:
“Well, if you’re satisfied, I’ve no doubt it’s all right;” and I clipped the watch on to my watch-chain, dropped it into my waistcoat pocket and went away. I left a very disappointed watchmaker behind.
He was, indeed, so disappoin
ted that he wrote me a letter that evening asking me, if I could make the visit convenient, to call round at his shop. I was intrigued by his insistence. Papyanni was not at all the kind of man who must make a drama out of every trifle which happens to him. He was an unimaginative little corpulent Levantine. He obviously had something to tell me. Accordingly I went round to the Rue de la Poste just as he was shutting up his shop for the luncheon hour. He opened the glass door again at once and locked it when I had entered.
“I have something to show you, Mr. Woodyer,” he said. He slipped behind his counter and lifted down from a shelf behind him the big chronometer in the mahogany case by which he had set my watch yesterday.
“But you showed me that yesterday,” I answered.
“Do you know what it is, Mr. Woodyer?” he asked.
“Of course I do. That’s a ship’s chronometer.”
“What ship’s?”
I turned the deep square case towards me and opened the lid. There was no label on the green lining and only the name of the Glasgow manufacturer on the dial of the clock.
“I haven’t an idea.”
And suddenly he shot his shoulders and chest across the counter.
“The Calobar’s,” said he.
Once more I disappointed him.
“The Calobar...The Calobar!”
I had served the Dagger Line in a great many ports and in different countries. For twenty years I had watched the procession of ships, each like its fellow and each with a name of its own. I worked back to the Calobar, however, in a minute or so.
“She was wrecked on Sokotra,” I said, and Papyanni nodded.
“A tramp brought up the survivors to Aden. And a mailship picked them up there. But how do you know this chronometer comes from that ship? Did somebody pinch it and sell it to you?”
Papyanni shook his head.
“It’s not mine. It was left with me to clean and repair a couple of months ago.”
“How do you know it’s the Calobar’s, then?” I repeated.
Papyanni became mysterious.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 813