Chapter I (6)

All novelties are interesting to One Who is Seeing Life, but novelty is unfortunately an elusive phantom to pursue. After a fortnight spent in inquiry, the gardener began to feel his heart sink at the mention of flour. He suffered from the gift of enthusiasm, in place of the gift of interest, and enthusiasm is like the seed that fell upon stony ground, the suns of monotony scorch it quickly. To do the gardener justice, it must be admitted that there was very little left to do. Union Town was not very long in adjusting itself to the emergency. Nigger huts are quickly built, and even the villas of the coffee-coloured aristocracy, the most serious sufferers from the disaster, are not the work of ages. The Post Office continued to lie upon its face in the High Street, but the bare feet of the people soon trod a path around it. Government House remained huddled in a heap upon its own cellars, but Governors, after all, are not human, and it makes but little difference to the population to hear of its viceroy sleeping under canvas.

In the gardener’s mind, during the past fortnight, the suffragette had had Union Town as a serious rival. His vanity was a little hurt by her continued lack of appreciation of a great man. He would have liked, while still on crutches, to have met her searching among the ruins for him. So for a little while he posed as being in love with his work. But when Union Town began to retire into the background, the suffragette stepped forward into insistent prominence. She triumphed finally one night in the verandah of the St. Maurice Hotel, after dinner. It was a night without a flaw, every star spoke the right word, and the moon was a poem unspeakable. Fireflies starred the garden.

The stars and fireflies dance in rings,
The fireflies set my heart alight,
Like fingers, writing magic things
In flame upon the wall of night.
There is high meaning in the skies
(The stars and fireflies—high and low),
And all the spangled world is wise
With knowledge that I almost know ...

“I’ll have to return to the search,” said the gardener.

“What for?” asked Courtesy, who always liked everything explained.

“For the suffragette,” he replied. “I’m tired of being respectable and in doubt.”

Luckily the priest had changed his table since Courtesy had changed her company. He sat at the far end of the verandah, with his back to every one. His righteousness had subsided to some extent since the earthquake, but he still looked on the gardener as a hopelessly lost lamb. Such a shepherd as the priest may yearn towards the lost lamb, but would rather not sit at the same table with it.

“If you start that silly game again, gardener,” said Courtesy, “you’ll have to throw over Mr. Twing’s job. Why can’t you leave the girl alone? She can’t have been killed, because there are no white people left unidentified. Why can’t you stick to one thing?”

“I have no glue in me,” replied the gardener. “I’m glad of it; there could be nothing duller than sticking to one thing. Besides, there’s nothing left to stick to. There was only half an hour’s work to do yesterday, although I spent three hours over it.”

Mrs. Rust shot a fountain of tobacco smoke into the air as a sign that she intended to speak. The priest liked Mrs. Rust, because his own tolerance of her vagaries made him feel so broad-minded. He liked to smile at her roguishly when she took a small whisky and soda; he liked to hand her the matches when she smoked; he liked to write to his sister at home: “One comes in contact with a worldly set out here, but if one is careful to keep one’s mind open, one finds points of contact undreamt of at home in one’s own more thoughtful set.” If the gardener had been a drunkard instead of being in love, the priest would have liked him better. But the gardener posed as being a non-drinker and a non-smoker on principle. Really the taste of spirits or of tobacco smoke made him feel sick.

“I am going to leave Union Town myself,” said Mrs. Rust. “I know of a car I could hire to-morrow. I will help you in your search, gardener, although she strikes me as being a totally unattractive young woman.”

“We had arranged to go to the hotel in Spanish City next Wednesday by the nine train,” said Courtesy in a reproachful voice; “and from there to Alligator Bay, and then in a car round the Island. I daresay other plans might be made, but you should have let me know sooner.”

“No plans need be made,” said the gardener rebelliously. “We might just get the car, and start now in the cool.”

“Ass!” observed Courtesy simply. “Mrs. Rust’s lace scarf won’t be dry enough to iron till to-morrow. I will see whether we can start the next day.”

To disobey Courtesy was unthinkable. The gardener gritted his teeth at the stars, because he would have to see them again before he could start on his search. _Now_ was the only time for the gardener; _then_ hardly counted; and _presently_ was a word he failed to acknowledge.

“Anyway, you don’t either of you know where to look for her,” said Courtesy, that practical girl.

“She’ll be at Alligator Bay,” said Mrs. Rust. “They’ve got a picture gallery there.”

“She’ll be somewhere in the hills,” said the gardener. “She would always go up.”

“I entirely disagree with you,” retorted Mrs. Rust.

“Anyway, it seems hot on sea-level,” said Courtesy. “We’d better go up to where it’s supposed to be cool. I’m told the Ridge Pension, High Valley, has a good cook, but the New Hotel, at Greyville, is also well spoken of.”

Fortunately thirty-six hours, though they may stretch half-way to eternity, never succeed in covering the whole distance. A moment arrived when the three, bristling with travellers’ trifles, met the waiting car at the nearest spot in the ruined High Street to which cars could penetrate. And then followed a long series of dancing moments. Little village ports strung like beads along the coast; thatched huts thrown together by a playful fate; waterfalls like torn shreds of gauze draped on the nakedness of the hills; logwood plantations, banana plantations, sugar plantations, yam plantations.... Then as the approaching hills began to usurp more and more of the sky, the road cut through a high and low land; hand in hand with a very blue river, it threaded a great grey crack in the island; high cliffs yearned towards each other on either side; a belt of pale sky followed the course from above. Then out into the sun and wild woods, with ferns and flowering trees beckoning beautifully from all sides. And then long hills, a road that doubled back at every hundred yards, with a great changing view, growing bigger, on the right hand or the left, as the course of the road decided. Little brown villages clung desperately to the hill-side; gardens of absurd size balanced themselves on almost perpendicular slopes; paths of red mud, disdaining the winding subterfuges of the road, sprang from angle to angle, like children playing at independence beside a plodding mother.

Towards the afternoon a blue-black cloud crept suddenly over a summit, and emptied itself with passion upon the travellers. In a minute the waterproof hood of the car was proved unworthy of its name; the screen in front became less transparent than a whirlpool; the road went mad and believed itself to be a mountain torrent. The wet wrath of heaven began to make itself felt even down Mrs. Rust’s neck.

“This is disgraceful,” said Mrs. Rust. “Courtesy, do something at once.”

No doubt Courtesy would have risen to the occasion, but for once Heaven was quicker. The sun suddenly shouldered its way round the intruding cloud, and made one great shining jewel of the world. Park View, that forward house, residence of the retiring Miss Brown, stood bold upon the sky-line.

The gardener’s heart did not leap within him when he saw Park View. Only in books does Fate disguised stir the heart to such activity. In real life, when I stumble on the little thing that is to change my life, I merely kick it aside, and hurry on.

In case you should think that by bringing my travellers to Greyville I make the long arm of coincidence unduly attenuated, I must add that there are only two tourist centres on the hills of the Island—Greyville and High Valley—and that almost everybody visits both.

The gardener was now posing as a Seeker, and instinctively his eyes took on the haggard look that belongs to the pose. As he mounted the steps of the New Hotel verandah, the lady novelist thought, “What an interesting young man!” When, however, she saw Mrs. Rust’s hair, her notebook trembled in her pocket. The Treasure had left, and as to the other Americans, she had practically drunk their cup of copy dry.

“Charles,” she said to the woolly black waiter when he brought her tea, “will you put those new people at my table?”

“No, please, missis,” replied Charles, who, being a head waiter at seventeen, was suffering from the glamour of power. “Shall sit dem wid Mistah Van Biene.”

A fraction of the proceeds of the lady novelist’s last novel, however, soon silenced the authority of Charles.

And after all it was Mrs. Rust who sought acquaintance first, at breakfast in the cool verandah next morning.

“There was a lizard in my bath,” said Mrs. Rust. “Disgraceful! Why can’t you exterminate your vermin?”

This was hard on the lady novelist, who screamed for Charles whenever she saw anything moving anywhere, but she bore the injustice with a beautiful patience.

“What do you think of the Island in general?” she asked. “I can tell by your face that your opinion would be worth having.”

She might have added that she could tell this, not so much by Mrs. Rust’s face as by her hair.

“I don’t think of the Island if I can help it,” retorted Mrs. Rust after some thought, during which she sought in vain for some adequately startling reply. “That earthquake—on my first day—a revolting exhibition.”

“Oh, were you in Union for the earthquake? I am collecting the reports of intelligent people who were there. I am sure your adventures must have been worth recording.”

“On the contrary,” replied Mrs. Rust, “the whole thing was absurdly overrated. My nerves remained perfectly steady throughout.”

The gardener, the only person who might have cast a doubt upon this statement, was not present. Still posing as the strenuous seeker, he had gone for a walk before breakfast.

There is a great glitter about morning in the hills which drags the optimist for long walks in the small hours upon an empty stomach, and causes even the pessimist to attack his grape fruit at breakfast with a jovial trill. The little tables on the verandah of the New Hotel have a glamour of heaped bright fruit upon white linen. In the garden the tangerines grow radiantly among their shining sober green, the butterflies blow across the pale young grass. There is a salmon-pink azalea, whose smile attracts the humming-birds, and a riotous clump of salvia. There is a benevolent John Crow, who strikes attitudes upon the roof of the annex, and stands for hours with his ragged wings spread open to the sun, as he surveys the diamond world. Really he is hoping that you will fall dead over your breakfast, but you lose this thought in the glitter of a hill morning. For the sake of your own peace of mind, never get close enough to a John Crow to see his gargoyle face. Content yourself with admiring his barbaric grace from a distance, and forget why he is there.

Courtesy was characteristically still in bed. She never was one to hear the call of a singing world.

The gardener came in with eyes crinkled by the sun, and his hair standing up in a spirited way all over the top of his head. Did you know that it is possible to be a specialist in posing without giving thought to the appearance?

“You look as if you had been fighting,” snapped Mrs. Rust. “Disgraceful state of hair.”

“I wish I had,” replied the gardener. “I could fight beautifully at this moment. I never knew what it was to breathe until this morning.”

“Air is indeed a blessing” said the lady novelist. “I have a passion for air. I sometimes think I should die without it. How interesting to meet any one who loves fighting. You ought to be a soldier. I myself am a peace-loving woman, but I often have quarrels forced upon me.”

“Let me conduct them for you,” suggested the gardener, wrestling with his grape fruit. “Show me the enemy.”

“I wish I could. I think I will,” said the lady. “I came to Greyville to stay with a dear friend, and a young woman, of no standing whatever, picked up anyhow and anywhere, not only turned me out of my friend’s house, but now insists on my moving two of my trunks from the sick-room.”

“Oh, there is a sick-room, is there?”

“Yes, my friend’s little nephew is ill.”

“But didn’t your friend protest? Has the young woman a hypnotic power over her?”

“My friend is very weak. The young woman is only a sort of second-rate children’s nurse, apparently.”

“And do you want to go back there?”

“No, I prefer to be here. But it is so undignified not to be consulted.”

“That’s very true,” said the gardener, whose interest was beginning to wane.

“That road below is as crowded and as noisy as Piccadilly,” said Mrs. Rust. “Disgraceful.”

“Market day,” replied the novelist rapturously. “Such a blaze of colour. Such a babel of tongues....”

“And so smelly, I am sure,” said Mrs. Rust. “I am going to market.”

“Let’s all go to market,” added the gardener.

An hour had to be allowed for Courtesy to have her breakfast, and for Mrs. Rust to don her panama. Mrs. Rust, though not averse to startling any one of her own colour, had a secret distaste for the naïve criticisms of the niggers on her strange hair. The Islanders were not aware that dyed hair was the apex of modern fashion; they looked upon it, poor things, as a deformity, and a most amusing one. Mrs. Rust had been obliged to invest in a perfect beehive of a hat for wear in such ignorant parts.

So four more units joined the stream of marketers along the red road. In spite of Mrs. Rust’s panama, the niggers laughed. Niggers always laugh unless they cry, and the lunatic ways of white women provide a source of amusement that never fails, although white women have been on the Island for three hundred years. Some of the marketers actually had to remove their baskets of fruit—crowned with boots—from their heads, to give free play to their sense of humour. Every nigger wears his boots upon his head. It is, I suppose, as much a disgrace not to own them as it is a discomfort to wear them.

The appearance of the market was like a maniac garden, and the sound of it was like a maniac rookery. By way of compensation to the niggers for their individual ugliness, Providence has granted to them an unconscious beauty in the matter of grouping themselves. A nigger by herself looks like a comic picture post card, a lot of niggers together look like the picture that many master-hands have tried to paint.

My senses tingle even now with the welter of sun and sound and smell and colour, that constitutes an Island market.

“You meet every one in Greyville here,” said the lady novelist to the gardener. “I will introduce you to the enemy.”

The gardener agreed absent-mindedly. He was helping Courtesy to buy baskets. The Island is the paradise of basket lovers. Those hearts are rare which do not thrill at the sight of a plaited basket in many colours, and I believe that nobody ever left the Island without succumbing to the charm. I suppose the reason why Island baskets never get on to the market at home is that everybody loves them so much, they never part with them. Courtesy, who always loved the popular thing, had been very busy buying baskets since the first moment of her arrival.

Mrs. Rust was busily occupied in refusing to buy anything. “Buy a pine? Why should I? I loathe pines. Lace? No, I won’t buy lace, my underclothes are already overcrowded with it. What’s that? A basket to keep my letters in. I keep my letters behind the fire. Why, gardener—look—here’s——”

“Mr. Gardener,” tittered the novelist, “here is the enemy behind you.”

“You dream,” said the gardener, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

With an amiable smile the suffragette allowed her hand to be shaken an enormous number of times. She was looking plainer than the gardener had expected. With the pretty obtuseness of men, he had in his dreams forgotten that brown hat with the weary flowers in it. He had imagined her dressed in blue, he had thought her eyes were blue to match, he had created a little curl in her hair. Yet somehow he was not disappointed. For he had also forgotten in his dreams the comfort that lies in lack of ornament. It isn’t love that makes the world go round, it’s the optimism of men.

“Why, it’s quite nice to see you again,” said the suffragette in a voice of surprise.

“Courtesy,” shouted the gardener, “from this moment I’m not a fit companion for Mrs. Rust. Courtesy says I’m not respectable when I’m with you,” he added to the suffragette.

“I don’t see anything very disreputable in your behaviour with me,” she replied. “But it’s only for a little while, Courtesy.”

“Oh, Lor’, no,” said Courtesy. “He’s come to stop.”

“I haven’t,” said the suffragette.

The gardener would never have put into words the appeal that came into his eyes.

“Yes,” said the suffragette, “you are thinking that I am growing more and more militant every time you see me.”

“I was not,” he answered, “I was wondering how I could manage to see you apart from all this noise.”

“Quite easily. You can walk back to Park View with me now. I have got the oranges for Albert.”

So they squeezed out of the market-place, and side by side paced the avenue of donkeys which on market days lines the village street.

“What are you waiting for?” asked the gardener. “What’s wrong with me? When will you want me?”

“It isn’t you I don’t want. It’s what you stand for. Possibly I haven’t mentioned to you that I am a suffragette of a special kind. A cat that walks by itself.... Or rather perhaps it is presumptuous of me to lay claim to cathood. I have only walked such a little way. I am an elderly kitten, say, walking by itself.”

“But if all suffragettes were like you, it would certainly be an argument against the franchise. For what would become of England?”

“God forbid that all suffragettes should be like me. I am a fanatic, a rather silly thing to be.”

“I know what you are waiting for,” said the gardener. “Heaven! you want so much beside the Vote, and you’ll never get what you want this side of heaven.”

“God forbid that I should want heaven,” said the suffragette. “Heaven is not made for women. Why, the very archangels are men.”

“Why won’t you have me? We could get married to-morrow. Why not?”

“Because I am too busy. Because there is a superfluity of women, and as I am not a real woman—only an idea—I’d better sit out. Because I am conceited and couldn’t bear my pride to have a fall—at your expense. Because you don’t know me and I don’t know you. Because it’s better to live alone with an ideal than coupled with a fact. Now I’m sick of talking about myself, it makes me feel sugary, as though I’d been swallowing golden syrup neat.”

“But before you retire into your militancy, tell me,” said the gardener, “do you think you will ever recognise this bond between us?”

“There is no bond between us.”

“There is love between us.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s not mutual.”

“Love is an automatically mutual thing.”

“Then I’m afraid that proves that whatever may be between us is not love. Here is Park View.”

“Damn Park View!”

Words are supposed to be a woman’s luxury, but it always seems to me that men put a more touching faith in argument than ever women did. I believe the gardener thought that if Park View had been five miles farther on, he might have made a woman of the suffragette.

“And what do you expect me to do now?” he asked pathetically.

“Get busy,” advised the suffragette, “somewhere else. Dear little gardener, remember that this road has been trodden before. Being young is a devastating time, anyway. It always comforts me to think that there are crowds before and behind me, and that even a cow has had a delirious calfhood. After all, the past is such a little thing, one can drown it in a drop. And the future is so big.”

“That’s what I complain of—the size of the future.”

“Oh, no, don’t. Size is space and space is growth. Good gracious, what a prig I am becoming!”

“For God’s sake, come and fill up a little corner of my big future, then. You little thing, I could hold you in my hand.... And you can hold me with no hand at all, but only with your heart.”

“Good-bye.”

“But why? Why?”

She was climbing the steep drive. She never looked round. She always looked up.

With excellent intentions the suffragette had, I think, succeeded in killing her heart. She was so heartless that even the hole where her heart should have been was a very shallow one. Some rudimentary emotion turned in her breast as she walked up the drive, and if she could have had the gardener as a friend, she would have turned even then and tendered him the friendly mailed fist of the independent woman. But if one is a fanatic, one cannot also be a lover. She suffered from the cold humility that sometimes attacks women. Every morning she occupied three minutes in the thankless task of pinning her hair into a shape conformable with convention’s barest requirements, and was then confronted with her own thin short face, white—but not white like a flower as the face of a beloved woman should be; her small eyes, grey—but not grey like the sea; her straight and drooping hair, made out of the ashes of the flame that burns in real women’s hair; her thin pressed lips, her hard set chin, the little defiant wrinkles over her brows.... It was impossible for her to believe that such a thing could be indispensable to any eyes. Her attitude towards the paradox was always sceptical, and the idea that there is nothing a woman can offer as a substitute for such a small gift as herself was beyond her. The little ordinary fiery things of youth had been shorn out of her life, she had been crushed by the responsibility of being a woman and a devotee.

No man would believe that such a woman exists. The pathetic vanity of man would never be convinced that any woman could prefer her own independence to his kisses.

By the time the suffragette had reached the front door of Park View, the interview with the gardener was but a pulse beating at the back of her mind.

Miss Brown, looking as nearly dishevelled as a persistently Real Lady could possibly look, was standing in the hall, ankle-deep in her own prostrate property. Trunks yawned on every side, highly respectable dresses, like limp ghosts of Miss Brown herself, embellished every chair.

“And I haven’t even begun on Albert’s books yet.”

“The more of Albert’s books we leave behind the better,” replied the suffragette. “I have got him _Treasure Island_ to read on the boat, and he might take that one on Chemistry for Sundays.”

“I’m sure I don’t know how you manage Albert,” said Miss Brown. “I could never even get him to read the Bible. It really looks as if Providence had sent you to us at this crisis.”

“Providence would never have chosen a militant suffragette.”

“Well, but really one wouldn’t notice your opinions,” said Miss Brown in an encouraging voice.

“What about Scottie?” asked the suffragette. “Has anybody thought what is going to happen to him?”

“I haven’t thought of any details,” answered Miss Brown. “The doctor’s orders were so sudden, they altogether upset me. I suppose Scottie can be left with John.”

“I hope he won’t,” said the suffragette. “I caught John using Scottie as a target yesterday. He scored two bull’s-eyes before I got there.”

“I can’t think what to do with him. There is nobody but Mr. Wise, and he already has a fierce bulldog. Have you any ideas?”

“Yes, one. I have a sort of friend on the Island. If I left Scottie with him, he would act as a brake in the pursuit, because of the difficulties of quarantine.”

“I don’t quite follow your meaning,” said Miss Brown, not unnaturally. “I didn’t know you had a gentleman friend on the Island.”

“I haven’t. But I’m sure he will be kind to Scottie.”

Very late that night, when Courtesy, Mrs. Rust, the gardener, and an unknown young man picked up at the club by the gardener, were playing Bridge in the verandah, a very young boy with a very fat dog appeared, asking for Mr. Gardener. The boy was too well educated to be afraid of duppies. The solid Scottie, too, was felt to be a sound defence against the supernatural.

“What is this?” asked the gardener, who had assumed the melancholy pose of the Rejected One, and had unconsciously acquired a sad sweet smile to correspond. Even on his death-bed the gardener will pose as a dying man.

The young boy put a note into his hand, and dragged Scottie from the shadow where he had modestly seated himself.

“By Jove,” said the unknown young man, who happened to be Mr. Wise. “It’s Scottie, the Park View dog.”

The gardener literally burst the envelope open. The enclosure said: “Dear Gardener—Will you please keep Scottie until I ask you for him again.—Your fairly sincere suffragette.”

The note went round the Bridge Table.

“I have always wondered,” said Mrs. Rust, “whether politics were really good for women. Now I am sure that they have an unhinging tendency. What does it mean?”

“It means that they are going on an expedition,” said Courtesy. “They want the dog looked after for a day or two.”

“Why, but Park View is a regular palace in Greyville,” said Mr. Wise. “There are three servants in it, all competent to look after Scottie for a day or two.”

“I shall have to do what she says,” said the gardener. “The suffragette’s only fault is that she leaves almost too much to the imagination.”

The boy had vanished.

“Better go round and ask for an explanation,” said Courtesy.

“He must play out these doubled lilies,” said Mrs. Rust.

“It must be nearly twelve,” said Mr. Wise. “The cocks have been crowing for an hour.”

The Island cock proclaims the night rather than the day. Not even a cock can feel much enthusiasm for such a tyrant as the Trinity Island sun.

“I can’t go now,” said the gardener.

But next morning at breakfast he said, “I daren’t go now.” He had hardly slept at all, and looked white. The light of the Seeker had gone out of his eyes, there had been no wish in him for a wild walk in the early sun. He was not even posing. He had been pathetically late for breakfast, and Mrs. Rust and the lady novelist had disappeared to read the _English Review_ and the _Lady’s Pictorial_ respectively on the front verandah.

“Why daren’t you?” asked Courtesy.

“Oh, Courtesy—she’s beaten me. She’s left me without hope.”

Courtesy took several mouthfuls of porridge before she replied, “You’re young yet, gardener. And she isn’t so extra unique, after all. If you like, I’ll go round and ask for an explanation of the dog.”

“You don’t know the way,” said the gardener tragically.

It was lucky that Mr. Wise at that moment arrived in his buggy to invite Courtesy and Mrs. Rust (if she wasn’t too tired) for a drive. The buggy was a single one, and held two only, so there was a transparency about his motives which did him credit. Courtesy never even passed on the invitation to Mrs. Rust, and the owner of the vehicle failed to repeat it.

Armed with her inevitable box of sweets, Courtesy set forth on her romance.

“Ripping woods,” she said, as the sun winked through the delicate lace of the forest.

“Ripping,” agreed Mr. Wise. “But full of ticks.”

Courtesy suffered that beautiful shock that attacks a woman when she first realises that the man by her side is an uncommon person, and that he holds the same view about herself. She offered him a chocolate cream.

They went to Park View by the longest way possible, but I think the nearest approach to romance that they reached was when Courtesy said, “Oh, Lor’, I am enjoying myself!”

And Mr. Wise replied, “So am I. I hope you’ll come again.”

When they reached Park View they were neither of them observant enough to notice the forsaken look of the house.

“I’ll just go and tackle that funny little suffragette,” said Courtesy. “I won’t be half a mo.”

She looked back and smiled at him as she climbed the drive.

“Dey all gone, missis,” said John, who was sitting in the hall, reading the letters out of the waste-paper basket.

“Gone? Where to?”

“Gone to Lunnon Town to see a doctah man, please, missis.”

“Union Town, you mean.”

“No, please thank you, missis. Gone lars’ night to catch a big steamboat.”

“How many of them went?”

“Missis Brown, and Mars’ Albert, an’ de visitor-missis.”

“Do you know their address? Where are you forwarding their letters to?”

John laughed shrilly at this joke.

“Carn’t say, please, missis. Post-missis wouldn’t send me de letters, now de fambly gone.”

The Island is the home of elusive information.

“What’s the matter with the woman, anyway?” said Courtesy, as she remounted the buggy. “I never can understand a woman that doesn’t know her vocation.”

“What is her vocation?” asked Mr. Wise.

“Ou, I don’t know,” giggled Courtesy.

“I think all women ought to marry,” said Mr. Wise. “Somehow it keeps them softer.”

“It wouldn’t make a hard woman soft,” said Courtesy. “Only all the soft women do marry.”

“Do you consider——”

“Ou, Lor’, this is a killing conversation!” interrupted the lady. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“All right. That’s a very pretty dress you’ve got on.”

They found the gardener sitting on tenterhooks on the verandah, pulling Scottie’s ears.

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t. She’s gone to London.”

“I hope they’ll take care of Westminster Abbey,” said Mrs. Rust.

The gardener said nothing.

By this time the suffragette was putting romance behind her by means of a little boat limping across a heavy sea. Compared to the _Caribbeania_, this boat was like my suffragette compared with Mr. Shakespeare’s Desdemona. There was rust on the little boat’s metal, and her paint still bore memories of London smuts. The purser was occasionally to be seen in his shirt sleeves, and the Captain had a button off his coat.

The priest was on board, returning to his flock, overflowing with material for sermons. By mutual consent he and the suffragette ignored each other. He made an attempt to approach Albert, with his special children’s manner, but that cultured youth quickly silenced him. So he occupied himself in trying to save the soul of the second officer, a docile youth, of humble and virtuous tendency.

Within two days the little boat reached the Isthmus which has lately been converted into one of the wonders of the world.

“My poor Albert,” said the suffragette. “I’m afraid the doctor says you mustn’t go to see the Canal. It’s so dusty. And you know such a lot about it, don’t you? It is disappointing.”

“I dow quite edough about it,” replied Albert. “I have do wish whatever to see it. I dow every detail of its codstructiod.”

“That’s all right, then. The doctor says when it’s cool after dark, you may walk as far as the gardens behind the quay, and listen to the band.”

“I do dot wish to hear the badd. I wish you ad Ah-Bargaret to go away for the whole day, ad let the youggest stewardess cob ad sit with be. She is a charbig persod, ad it would be very good for you to see the Cadal.”

In Albert’s eyes the halo of the suffragette was to some extent evaporating. Her attitude towards science alienated him in his capacity as an educated man, although as a child in pain he still clung to her. And she had that morning offended him by buying him a bottle of sweets from the barber’s shop.

“I really thigk you sobetibes forget I ab do logger a baby,” he observed, and forthwith began to lay great stress on the charm of the youngest stewardess.

Miss Brown was delighted at the fall of her nephew’s latest idol.

“You’d better come away,” she said. “Let’s go and see the Canal. If you stay with Albert when he is displeased, you get on his nerves.”

So they landed on the quay of one of the two terrible towns that guard the entrances of the Canal. They paid a great price and manned a train that cost humanity a very great price indeed to create. That train is built of dead men, the embankment on which it runs has largely peopled purgatory, the very sleepers might as well be coffins, yet the train moves with the same callous rhythm as the train from Surbiton to Waterloo. In it you may see the calm inheritors of the fatal past sit upon spread handkerchiefs upon the smutty seats, and stick their tickets in their hats that the passing of the conductor may not disturb their train of thought; and all as if there were no ghosts to keep them company. Only outside the windows you can see the haunted land, white water enveloping a dead forest, ashen trees suffering slow drowning, tall grey birds standing amid floating desolation, and the Canal, a strip of successful tragedy, creeping between its treacherous red banks. The train leaves the Canal for a while, and returns to find it in a different mood. The First Lock is the crown of that great endeavour. I am assured that much more genius has been spent on the Cuts than on the Locks, but to you and me, ignorantly seeking copy, the First Lock triumphantly dominating the weary water-way, seems like the seal of success, as if Man had built this stupendous thing as a barrier between him and failure.

When you see the Lock you feel like an ant seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The suffragette, as she stood on the iron way that goes along the top edge of one of the gates, had to think of all the biggest things she had ever imagined to keep herself from dwindling out of existence. Even Women’s Rights grew small in the light of this man-made immensity. She was standing on the highest gate, and she could look across a perspective of three empty cube-worlds, at the white Canal and the white sea beyond it.

“Really,” she said, “there is very little to choose between God and Man.”

“Good gracious me, what a thing to say!” said Miss Brown, bridling. “God could knock all this down with one stroke.”

“He couldn’t knock down the spirit that would make man build it up again. Why do we pray to a Creator, if we can ourselves create?”

“I think you had better come out of the sun,” said Miss Brown coldly. “I am feeling a little sick myself.”

But on their way across the gate back to the white paving that borders the Lock, they found their way blocked by the priest, who was advancing in the opposite direction.

It is impossible for a stout Miss Brown and a stout priest to pass each other on this route. Two suffragettes might have passed, but fortunately for the Isthmus there was only one present.

“I will retire,” said the priest. “Place aux dames, yerce, yerce.”

“Oh, how good of you!” said Miss Brown, bridling. “I am sorry to put you to such inconvenience.”

With a jocular reference or two to goods trains at a shunting station the priest retired from the dilemma. But when they had all reached the safety of the broad paving again he seemed to have shed his desire to cross the gate. He was by himself, which he detested; there were countless morals to be humorously drawn from the Canal, and nobody to point them out to.

“This is a marvel of workmanship, is it not?” he said to Miss Brown, pointedly excluding the suffragette.

Miss Brown agreed, and asked whether he had felt pretty well on the voyage so far. Thus the Canal introduced them, and when the acquaintance was safely formed, Miss Brown strove to introduce the suffragette.

“Yerce, yerce,” said the priest hurriedly. “We have met before. An introduction is unnecessary.”

Fortunately for the suffragette she saw a dog at a little distance, and hurried to speak to it. The dog is blessedly cosmopolitan. Wherever you may meet him he speaks your home tongue to you, and his eyes are the eyes of a friend in a strange land.

The suffragette and the dog walked along the side of the Lock some twenty yards behind their elders and betters, and the suffragette watched her character falling in shreds between them. Some people like safe hunting, and there is no prey so defenceless as prey that is not there. The priest’s conscience had been for some time accumulating reasons why the modest Miss Brown should be warned of the true character of her immodest companion.

The suffragette allowed them half an hour to finish the destruction, and joined them at the train, when the dog reluctantly remembered another engagement.

The party returned to the town in dead silence. At the station the priest left them, with promises to come and read to Albert. The suffragette and Miss Brown made their way across the gardens to the quay. Under a great palm, Miss Brown stopped tragically, and spoke to her companion for the first time since leaving the Lock.

“I trusted you,” she said, rather dramatically, though, of course, she was too ladylike for melodrama. “I gave you my hospitality, I succoured you when you needed help (this was an echo of the priest), and all the while you deceived me, you took advantage of my kindness.”

“Certainly you were all that to me,” said the suffragette mildly, “and certainly I am very grateful for all your kindness. But I don’t remember deceiving you.”

“You are an immoral woman,” said Miss Brown, with a great effort, “and you never told me.”

“It is hardly expected that I should have told you that. Partly because it would have been silly, and partly because it would have been quite untrue.”

“No one could dislike gossip more than I do,” said Miss Brown, who loved it. “But a priest is a priest, and this one is such a truly nice man, so good-hearted, never said a word yesterday when the steward upset the soup into his lap. Why did you never tell me that you travelled from England in company with a man who was not your husband?”

Now the suffragette, though she was distrustful of the reasoning of men, seldom failed to see the point of view of a woman, even though that woman was an anti. She specialised in feminism, and in her eyes to be a woman was in itself a good argument.

“Of course I ought to have told you, Miss Brown,” she said in a warmer voice than was usual with her. “As a matter of fact it never occurred to me that the thing was worth telling, but that, I admit, is no excuse. I do see that I have been accepting your kindness under false pretences. It is perhaps useless to say I am sorry, and worse than useless to tell you that I would rather die than be married, and that I would rather be hanged than live unmarried with a man. Still I admit I allowed all the fools on the _Caribbeania_ to think I was also such a fool as to be married. I will not bother you again, Miss Brown, I will keep out of your way as much as possible on the boat. It’s only a fortnight.”

Miss Brown was mollified, and when she spoke again it was like the angel Gabriel sympathising with the difficulties of a beetle. “Of course if you are penitent,” she said, “I should like to help you to retrace as far as possible the false step you have taken. I believe there are Homes.... But perhaps you had better not come near Albert.”

The little boat was indulging in a two days’ rest at the Isthmus. It is a problem worthy of the superwoman to avoid a fellow-passenger on a small boat in port. The bearable space on board becomes limited to inches. The side nearest the quay affords nothing but coal-dust to breathe, the other side allows a small percentage of air to dilute the coal-dust. There is no scope for choice.

After-dinner, however, Miss Brown settled down to play chess with Albert. Chess with Miss Brown is a most satisfactory game, a crescendo of “Checks” leading to a triumphant “Mate” in a delightfully short time.

So the suffragette went on shore to listen to the band.

The Isthmus band is as gaudy in attire as it is sombre in complexion, and it plays to a stratum of society as striking to the eye as any in the world. The Isthmus is the centre of nigger fashion. Here, under the glare and the flare of a hot night in the season, you may see the effect of a layer of civilisation on an aboriginal worship of colour. Crimson, gold, and silver are the prevailing motifs. As to the coiffure of the ladies, for every plait to be found on a Trinity Island head there are half a dozen on the Isthmus. There is something uniquely wicked in the appearance of rouge and powder on a mahogany ground. The look of vice which the Parisian or London lady strives to attain by means of a shopful of cosmetics can be acquired by the lady-nigger with one dab of the flour-dredger. Once more I pause to ask when we may expect the decree that we must further conceal our incurable virtue by means of a complexion dyed copper colour.

There was a moon, and there were stars standing aloof in the sky; and there were many lights about the garden. There were shrill brass voices everywhere, and the band was playing that tune of resigned sentimentality, “My Old Kentucky Home.”

The suffragette felt slightly drunk. She had had a day of emotions, and it was an unusual and intoxicating experience for her to find her emotions escaping from the iron bound cask in which she kept them. She felt totally irresponsible, and when the priest came along, looking as conceited as the moon, and as sentimentally benign as the stars, she discovered a lunatic longing to tear the hat from his head and stamp upon it, to make him look a fool, to prick his pride; not because of any personal enmity—or so she thought—but because he seemed eternally on the side of sanity and of yesterday, and barred the path of young and mad modernity. She approached him.

The priest suddenly perceived in front of him a soul dangerously in need of salvation.

“My dear young lady, I have been seeking an opportunity for a quiet chat with you, yerce, yerce. Whatever you may think of me, I assure you that I am not the hard and inhuman man you think me. I should be only too thankful to be of service to you. Let us sit on that quiet seat, away from the crowd.”

“It is good of you to risk contamination,” said the suffragette.

“My calling leads me among the publicans and sinners,” said the priest. “It is not my business to divide the sheep from the goats.”

“Not your business, but your pleasure,” suggested the suffragette.

The priest stiffened.

“I wish you had not hardened your heart against my help,” he said. “Believe me, I have every sympathy with a young and unprotected woman in your position. I think sometimes life seems hard on the weaker sex, yerce, yerce.”

“It is a great honour to be a woman,” said the suffragette. “Your God certainly turns his back on the individual, but he is very just to the mass. The day of women is just dawning.”

“There may be something in what you say,” observed the priest, feeling that she was somehow erasing all that he had meant to say. “I am sure we shall all be glad to see Woman come into her own. But....”

“Men may possess the past, but women have the future,” continued the suffragette, who was certainly very much excited. “We have suddenly found what you have lost—the courage of our convictions. The art of being a fanatic seems to me to be the pivot of progress; but men have lost, and women have caught that blessed disease.”

“I do not see how all this applies to the matter in hand,” said the priest. “Unless you are trying to convey to me, by way of an excuse, the craving which I am told possesses most women of your persuasion—the craving for fame, the morbid wish to be talked about.”

“I did not hope to convey anything at all to you. And certainly not fame, for there is no such thing. I have seen pigeons sitting on the heads of statues of great men in London, and I have seen little critics sitting on their fame. This is a world of isolated people, and there can be no fame where there is no mutual understanding.”

“You are oddly pessimistic, and you are also wilfully evading the point. When I saw you just now, I hoped that you had repented of your sin and needed my help.”

“I have committed no sin that would appeal to you,” said the suffragette. “But that is, of course, beside the point. What you want is that I should repent of being myself, and become a sort of inferior female you.”

“Indeed you have come to hasty and mistaken conclusions about my intentions,” said the priest, whose principal virtue was perseverance. “Regarding your political opinions, I have every sympathy with your cause, though none for your methods. There is something so very coarse about militancy.”

“Have you ever tried denying a creature the food it needs? I think you would find that even a white mouse would be coarse if you starved it.”

“You may be right. My sister is a member of the Church League for Women’s Suffrage. Perhaps you also belong to that sisterhood?”

“No,” she answered. “I belong to the Shrieking Sisterhood.”

“It seems useless for me to try and help you in this mood,” sighed the priest. “I can only pray that I may be shown the way to your heart....”

“I have none,” she said.

In a garden not five hundred miles away from the garden in which she sat was the Fact which she had Forgotten, set in a silver light among the silver trees. The gardener stood among the pale grape-fruit trees, with his head back in his usual conceited way, with his hands in his pockets and his feet in the wet grass.

“This is nonsense,” he thought.

“She is only half human.”

“Love for a thing only half human is only half love.”

“You can’t build a world out of words, as she tries to do.”

“In a thing like love, there is fact and there is theory. Theory is only falsehood disguised as fact.”

“She is not a bit pretty.”

“I believe she would rather make an enemy than make a friend.”

“Something has gone wrong with the woman of to-day. She has left the man behind, but she has not gone forward.”

“What have I been about to allow such a woman to disturb me? I came to this island a king, and I have made myself a slave.”

“It is youth that has burnt me. I am done with youth. It is fine to have reached age in theory, and yet in practice still to have one’s life ahead. My youth has been a fire in my path, and she has stamped it out.”

The moon explored the spangled sky. The fireless interwove with the pale purring noises of the night. The mad still shadows of the palms blotted the grass.

The gardener went into the verandah firmly posed as He Who has Passed through Fire, and has emerged, cured of the silly disease of youth, into a pale silver light.

For the gardener made his theories, while the suffragette’s theories made her.

The gardener was awakened next morning by the loud noise of Scottie chasing lizards across the room. Scottie was a bristly Northerner, and never became really used to the conditions of tropical life. To this day he labours under the delusion that lizards are only bald or naked mice, that have deceitfully changed their smell and their taste.

The gardener thought that he awoke perfectly light-hearted. He did not recognise the curious thing that throbbed in the back of his consciousness as his heart.

He whistled in his bath. He whistled as he came out on to the verandah for breakfast.

Courtesy had risen for early breakfast by mistake.

“Stopped brooding?” she asked. “Brave boy.”

“Two and two is such a poor formation after all,” said the gardener. “One and one is much more comfortable.”

Courtesy giggled. “There are times,” she said, “when two and two is ripping. Mr. Wise is coming up to lunch.”

“He came up to lunch yesterday. And he’s coming up to tea to-morrow.”

“Yesterday and to-morrow are not to-day,” said Courtesy, that practical girl.

The gardener had not time to ponder, for Mrs. Rust then appeared. Her complexion was even more of a contrast to her hair than usual.

“I had a letter last night,” she said. “I didn’t tell you at once, because it’s such a vulgar habit to blurt out news. I don’t know whether I have mentioned my son Samuel to you?”

“You have,” said Courtesy.

“So have I,” added the gardener.

“His house has played him false—I knew it would. One of the ceilings gave way—on to Samuel. Him and his house—he always was a fool. I believe he thought the Almighty built his house for him.”

“Yes, but what happened to Samuel?”

“I told you—the ceiling fell on him.”

“Yes, but what is the result?”

“Oh, the rest of the house is still standing. It was only one of the ceilings. He put the billiard table upstairs, and probably had his rafters made of bamboo.”

“Yes, but I mean what was the result as far as Samuel was concerned?”

“He was concussion. There have been one or two people staying in the house since he started the atrocious practice of advertising, and they had him taken to a hospital. My letter is from the matron.”

“Poor Mrs. Rust,” said Courtesy, “you must be terribly worried. I suppose you’ll be wantin’ to get home by the next boat.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” snapped the mother. “Haven’t you noticed by now that I have iron nerves. Next boat—indeed.”

“But I should have thought——” began Courtesy, and the gardener kicked her under the table.

“There is only one perfectly obvious thing to do,” said the gardener, “and that is wait till the next mail, a fortnight hence. Knowing Mrs. Rust as I do, Courtesy, I am sure she will follow this obvious course.”

“Obvious course—indeed,” said Mrs. Rust, much relieved. “Stuff and nonsense. I shall do exactly as I please, whether it’s obvious or not. Suppose I decide to go home by Wednesday’s boat, what then, young man?”

The gardener shook his head. “You won’t, I know,” he said. “You are too reasonable.”

“Reason be blowed,” said Mrs. Rust with spirit. “You don’t know me very well, young man, if you think I’m like all the other old cats, to be persuaded by that sort of argument.”