Читать книгу The Lacquer Lady - Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse - Страница 9

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THE scorching rocks of Aden lay twenty-four hours astern, and the S.S. Bengal was well out into the Indian Ocean, the bleak, dry mountains of Arabia making faint purplish pattern away to port. A storm had only been missed by a couple of days, and the sea still ran with a long swell; it was the hour before sunset, and the shadows lay long and dark upon the decks whose whiteness was tinged with gold by the evening light.

Suddenly, in the telepathic manner in which things become known on board ship, word flashed round amongst the passengers that the course had been altered, that “something” had been seen ... the Bengal was making for it, whatever “it” was. Field-glasses were fetched, ladies asked a dozen questions of any man within sight, touchingly confident that gentlemen know everything at sea. Fanny, running to the rail, stared with the rest.

A dark dot marked the sunlit waters far ahead, and people stared alternately at it and at the navigating bridge, where the Captain directed matters. What is it? Can you see it yet? Is it an open boat? Oh, I wonder if there are people dying in it.... Presently the Bengal slowed down, and it became apparent that the object was not that romantic thing, a ship’s boat laden with castaways, but a native dhow, her sail down, rolling on the swell. It was, however, still permissible to hope that all on board her might be dying, and as the Bengal’s engines stopped everyone redoubled the effort to see all that was to be seen. Fanny, small and fragile, was being elbowed out of her place at the rail, when a genial voice said:

“Too bad, little girl. Let me give you a helping hand.”

And Mr. Jacobs, breathing down the back of her neck, placed his two hands about her waist and lifted her up so that her feet rested on the second rail.

“Lean over. I won’t let you fall,” he advised.

Fanny, giggling, left herself in his grasp and leaned well forward. The dhow was now rolling on the pale burnished green of the swell about a hundred yards away. Although an open vessel of not more than fifteen tons, she was crowded with people. As the Bengal hailed her, two negroes, naked save for their loin-cloths, dropped from her gunwale into a tiny dug-out, and started to make for the steamer. The negroes, paddling with long, strong strokes, called in English:

“Water! Water! We wanting water!”

Water ... Water! The classic ever-dramatic cry rang thrillingly through the evening air.

“Water! Poor things, they want water ...” said everyone, much gratified.

The inevitable passenger who knows everything declared that the crimson flag fluttering from the dhow was the flag of Zanzibar, the passenger who always contradicts maintained it was merely a signal of distress. In the bows of the dhow a tiny boy sat huddled up, twelve other people, one a woman, crowded the thwarts, a tall, bearded man clad in flowing white robes gave the impression of being in authority.

An accommodation ladder had been swung overboard from the Bengal, the first officer, down in the waist, leaned over the bulwark, a crowd of deckhands and coloured third-class passengers around him. The tiny dug-out reached the ladder, but there it rocked so upon the swell that it perpetually filled with water, and there was no possibility that it could bear back a cask in safety. The end of a hawser was dropped overboard and the two negroes started to paddle back, towing it to the dhow. But the heavy hawser dragged at them, acting like a sea-anchor, so that they could make no progress. Suddenly a man on board the dhow, not troubling to remove his scanty dress, dived into the sea and swam to their assistance. The hawser was made fast and the dhow pulled alongside the steamer. All this had taken the best part of half an hour, and it had become increasingly and disappointingly plain that the occupants of the dhow were in no distress whatsoever. The man in the white garment took it off and changed it for one of pale blue, the solitary woman cunningly pulled her veil to one side the better to see and to be seen. A skin of water and a great sack of rice and two of bread were lowered into the dhow. The occupants called out their thanks, the first officer replied curtly, and the dhow hoisted her lateen sail and drifted away on the darkening swell. The Bengal’s engines began to throb once more.

At first Fanny had thoroughly enjoyed the episode. It was fun being held up by Mr. Jacobs, and fun wondering whether the people in the dhow were all dying. Then something had happened to spoil her pleasure. She suddenly realised that the quiet man next her at the rail was Mr. Danvers, and that she, who wanted to impress him, was being practically cuddled by the Jacobs man, and that she had squealed and enjoyed it. As she wriggled forward to watch the dug-out at the foot of the ladder, she had pressed against her neighbour, who had drawn a little aside, glancing down at her as he did so. It was then that she saw it was Mr. Danvers and she fancied she saw contempt in his grey eyes.

“I’ll get down, it is all silly,” she told Mr. Jacobs curtly. “I don’t believe they really want anything at all.”

“I expect they wanted to look at you, little girl,” said Mr. Jacobs, retaining his clasp about her waist, and holding her where she was, “or maybe they’ve got out of their course or something like that. What do you think, sir?”

Fanny hated him for saying “sir” to Mr. Danvers, but she felt excited when Mr. Danvers turned his head and spoke pleasantly.

“They often do this hold-up in these waters. These dhows trade and carry passengers between the east coast of Africa and Arabia, and they count on this sort of pick-me-up assistance. They’d probably got plenty of food and water stowed away under the thwarts, but ...” and Mr. Danvers broke off with a shrug. He caught Fanny’s puzzled gaze and his face relaxed into a smile.

“What are you puzzling your head over?” he asked her, speaking as to a little girl. Fanny realised with a rush of relief that he was of the class of men to whom she would still be a little schoolgirl, nothing but a child. How silly she had been to confound him with those others.... Why, it was even all right Mr. Jacobs holding her like this, she was only a nice forward little girl.

“It seems funny a big ship like this bothering to stop,” she answered in a voice that was like a little child’s, half-eager, half-shy. “They’re only negroes and this is a mailship with heaps of important people on board.”

Mr. Danvers paused a moment or so before replying as though he were thinking how to put what he wanted to say in the simplest language.

“That’s not what matters,” he explained at last. “It’s the law of the sea never to refuse assistance to another vessel. A handful of niggers can hold-up a ship of the line if they want anything. How important you are doesn’t matter a bit. Life is life. It’s taken nearly an hour of our time, and perhaps they could have got along without food, but we mustn’t risk that. The law must always be obeyed for its own sake.”

“Is it a law like in Parliament?” asked Fanny, bewildered.

Mr. Danvers stared at her and then laughed, and Fanny had an uncomfortable feeling that they were talking different languages. Yet at the back of her mind new ideas were struggling towards the light. Vaguely she became aware, through the very fact that she did not understand, of the existence of modes of thoughts and conversation unknown to her. She thanked Mr. Jacobs for his help, still in that childish voice, and slipped away. Perhaps, thought Fanny gropingly, there are plenty of people like Mr. Danvers and perhaps they’re better than the other sort.... She struggled painfully with the notion. She knew he would not have asked her to let her hair down in the shadows of the boat-deck ... the awful cheap feeling came over her again. Yet he hadn’t thought her cheap, all her experiences since she came on board were hidden from him, she was a nice little schoolgirl. Pretty, he must think her that. But he was in the Civil Service ... did he ... did he think of her as coloured? She thrust the idea away, it was not one that the circumstances of her life had forced unkindly upon her notice. Hitherto her “difference” had been a source of distinction.

That evening she went to bed when Agatha did, and mentioned casually as she undressed that she had had such a pleasant conversation with Mr. Danvers.

“He’s not a bit stuck-up really, Agatha. He told me all about the boat and why it stopped.”

“They wanted water.”

“Not really. It was us that had to stop. That’s the law of the sea. He explained it all to me.”

Fanny went to bed, proud that she had impressed Agatha. If she had only left it at that! The shame and misery of the next day she always tried to forget, but it was a long time before it ceased to come up in her mind, like that dreadful day when she had been found out about the present for Miss Patterson.

Mr. Danvers was lying in a long chair close to hers, talking politics, dull government stuff, with a judge who wore grey whiskers. Fanny listened, but idly, just for the pleasure of hearing Mr. Danvers’ cool, quiet voice.

“Lytton!” Mr. Danvers said doubtfully. “I can’t believe he is the man for India, or that Salisbury is the right man for Secretary of State. It isn’t that they aren’t both clever, they’re brilliant, but even that may be a danger.”

“Lytton’s charming,” said the judge, “perfectly charming. I met him when I was home last time—the most delightful fellow and his essays are really good. I do a bit in that line myself, you know, Indian stuff, and I think very highly of Lytton’s.”

“Well, we shall see, but I was a great admirer of Northbrooks’s common sense. He never flew off at a tangent; he relied upon facts and on his own experience, and he acted accordingly. He saved us from another war with Afghanistan. Lytton and Salisbury will be more go-ahead, and I don’t believe that any good comes out of these Afghan wars.”

The judge snorted rather indignantly. “Got to keep these people in their place, you know,” he said.

“And what about our place?” asked Mr. Danvers. “I don’t see that by any possible argument you can make ‘our place’ stretch as far as Kabul.”

Fanny’s thoughts wandered, but she pricked up her ears again when the talk veered to King Mindoon, though it was dull stuff, all about the King and some French statesmen, that they discussed. Fanny, in a crisp white muslin decked with rose ribbons, was lying back on her wicker-chair, her usual little court about her; Agatha, sitting on its outskirts, hardly shared in the glow. Often afterwards Fanny wondered what on earth had taken hold of her, part of her mind told her she was being stupid, and yet she couldn’t stop. She heard her own clear loud tones beating about like birds, forcing themselves on the attention of Mr. Danvers. Perhaps it was that she felt no longer the little girl that day, but instead knew a return of that swelling confidence, that exhilaration, she had felt when admitting to Agatha that she was a flirt. She knew just what she must be looking like, her small, dark, sleek head against a scarlet twill cushion, the bangles dangling on her small, fine wrists, as she gesticulated with her little ivory hands, her long dark eyes, glancing upwards from beneath her thick upcurving lashes. She knew she made the pretty girls, the fair-haired, pink and white English misses, seem thick and clumsy, and the knowledge pleased her. She knew that this particular morning she was looking at her best and had the delicious feeling that everything was just right about her, that her finger-nails looked bright and shining, and the brilliant light of the Indian Ocean could find no flaw in her pale skin, that her frock fitted her slender bust and small waist and flowed out below in just the right way. All conspired to give her that sense of excitement in which hitherto the voyage had been so disappointing. Her eyes were shining, her voice was animated, her light-hearted laughter charmed her own ears, she was holding the little group of men enthralled. The story that had had no encouragement since leaving school came to her lips once more. She built up by vivid touches that life at the Palace which she had been far too young on leaving it to remember.

“Of course, it’ll be easy for me,” she said lightly, “my father is such a great friend of the King’s. Only the other day the King gave him sixty thousand rupees, and he goes to the Palace every day. Of course, they’ll want me to be a Maid of Honour, but I’m not sure I should care about it. There’d be so little freedom, rather like going straight from one school to another, wouldn’t it be?”

And Fanny screwed up her face and gave what she felt was a delightful pout. The heroines in the books that Fanny read drove men to despair by the simple art of pouting. None of the gentlemen seemed affected other than pleasurably, however; they laughed and the Rangoon merchant said something to the effect that he would turn schoolmaster if Fanny would be his pupil. Fanny pouted again and went on happily:

“I suppose if the Queen insists on it I shall have to live in the Palace, but I think I’d rather stay with Papa, after all I expect he’ll be able to manage it, he is a sort of Minister you know, not quite Prime Minister but something like that, and enormously powerful.”

“What nonsense you talk, Fanny,” said Mrs. Murgatroyd, the female missionary, suddenly appearing round a ventilator like a bad fairy in a pantomime. “I’m afraid you’re a very boastful, untruthful little girl. Your father is a weaver and works at his looms all day. I’ve a good mind to keep you in your cabin for telling such untruths.”

The world, the beautiful blue and gold world of sea and sky, the snow-white and pearly shadows of deck and awning, the white suits of the men and their laughing eyes, all seemed to turn black about poor Fanny, her heart thudded as though it would choke her, her slow burning blush seemed to smother her like a hot blanket; in the agony that she went through she would willingly have seen Mrs. Murgatroyd struck dead upon the planking. Even Agatha, who thought it wrong to exaggerate, let alone tell lies, was sorry for Fanny and indignant with Mrs. Murgatroyd. Agatha, forgiving Fanny all the snubs the latter had inflicted on her when things had been going well, gathered the poor, damp, hysterical little creature in her arms and comforted her in the privacy of their cabin, but it was days before Fanny felt she could laugh and joke again, and the consolation that she eventually found in the arms of Mr. Jacobs on the boat-deck was short-lived, for even there Mrs. Murgatroyd, the very shadow of doom, found her out. As to Mr. Danvers, Fanny avoided him for the rest of the passage.

Altogether she was relieved when the ship entered the muddy waters of the Irrawaddy mouth and steamed up through the thick, yellow wavelets between the flat and ugly shores to the port of Rangoon. And, with a catch of the heart, Fanny saw again the incomparably fluent line of the Shway Dagon, a burnished gold against the paler gold of the sky. Christian as she was, at sight of that, some deep sense of inheritance in Fanny told her that she had come home.