Читать книгу The Dark River - James Norman Hall - Страница 4

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Mr. Robert Tyson, His Britannic Majesty’s consul on the island of Tahiti, having dined late and alone, came out on his verandah to enjoy his coffee and liqueur in the cool of the evening. The sun had set half an hour since, and the afterglow was fading slowly from a cloudless sky. The lagoon, motionless in the evening calm, still reflected an ashy light which brought into clear silhouette a small gemlike island with its cluster of coconut palms near the entrance to the harbor, and the monthly steamer from San Francisco, just then steaming out through the pass on her lonely voyage to New Zealand and Australia.

The consul sank into an easy chair with a sigh of content and, for a moment, let his gaze follow the departing vessel, her lights beginning to twinkle as she moved farther out into the gathering dusk. He selected a cigar, which he clipped carefully with a penknife and lit with the deliberation of one who finds keen enjoyment in the small amenities of life. He was a man in his early fifties, sturdy of frame, with thick snow-white hair which set off to advantage his tanned, weather-beaten face. A stranger, meeting him for the first time, might have noticed a humorous, rather obvious cynicism of manner, bespeaking the man, tolerant and humane by instinct, who makes a conscious effort in the presence of others to conceal the qualities upon which his nature is based.

Mr. Tyson had long since come to be regarded as a fixture at Tahiti, as much so as the consulate itself. On a voyage across the Pacific, some years before the war, he had stopped over, presumably for a month’s sojourn, but liking the place he had remained. He was then in his early twenties, without family ties, and in easy circumstances which suited well with an indolent temperament. To give him the illusion, at least, of an occupation, he later accepted the office of acting consul during the absence in England of the then incumbent, an elderly career officer who had died at home. As Mr. Tyson continued to fill the post to the satisfaction of the Foreign Office and cared nothing about salary, a successor had never been sent out from England. Mr. Tyson was still acting as consul pro tem, without pay, after a period of nearly thirty years.

His only absence from the islands had been during the war, when the consular duties had been performed by his secretary, a competent, middle-aged spinster who was better acquainted with the small intricacies of consular business than he himself. Badly wounded in 1916 and invalided out of service, he had then returned to Tahiti, where he settled down once more to his quiet, easy-going life with a relish heightened by his experience as an infantry officer in France. He loved the changelessness of life in this remote island world, and would have loved it still more had it been even farther removed from the turbulence of post-war Europe. His official duties being far from exacting, he had ample opportunity to travel amongst the lonely scattered archipelagoes composing French Polynesia, until there was scarcely an island within a radius of five hundred miles that he had not visited. But, having seen all or most of them, Tahiti was still the island of his choice, though he was careful to give strangers the impression that he could barely contrive to tolerate existence in such a tropical backwater and was prevented from leaving the wretched place only by an unconquerable inertia. And of all the bays, coves, rocky promontories, and stretches of sun-drenched alluvial plain around its one hundred-odd miles of coast line, he loved most the site where the consulate stood, toward the western end of the little port town, with its fine old trees shading lawn and road, and its view to the north and west over lagoon and sea. And that view he liked best when the wide expanse of ocean was made to seem emptier still by the dwindling shape, showing black against the afterglow, of the monthly steamer proceeding on its long voyage to the Antipodes.

Having watched the vessel disappear around a distant headland, the consul switched on his reading lamp and took up his newly arrived copy of Blackwood’s. He loved the old periodical and looked forward to its coming from month to month. He found there a picture of England and the outposts of Empire as he had known and thought of them in his younger days, and it reassured him to believe that, despite the vast changes wrought by the war, the old life still persisted; that it contained in it the seeds of health and vigor to perpetuate itself down the generations to come. He was in the midst of the first article when the bell in his office tinkled faintly. Looking up, he found a young man in gray flannels standing at the top of the verandah steps.

“Mr. Tyson?”

The consul, after a quick appraising glance, rose from his chair.

“At your service, young man. Come in.”

“If I’m intruding, please say so, frankly. I can come just as well at another time.”

“Not at all, not at all. I’m merely loafing after the exhaustion of steamer day. You came by the Makura?”

The young man nodded. Tyson sized him up rapidly and found his first impression distinctly favorable. His visitor was a tall fellow of the fair-haired Norman type. Under his loosely fitting clothes the consul could detect the sturdy structure of his body. His manner was easy and the gray eyes, set widely apart under level brows, met his own in glances direct and unself-conscious. The consul asked his usual perfunctory questions about the voyage and felt rather silly at having done so, for his visitor failed to make the customary perfunctory replies of the transpacific passengers. He seemed to take it for granted that the consul was interested, and replied with intelligence, humor, and good sense. Tyson noted that he spoke with an engaging emphasis of understatement. He approved of that: a good English trait.

“You like Tahiti, what little you’ve seen of it?” he asked, presently. “You’re here for a month, of course. Now that the steamer has gone you’ll have to stop whether you like it or not.”

The young man hesitated in replying. “I hardly know, sir. I’m here with a friend. This is my first visit to the tropics. I must say that I was deeply impressed with the view of the island as we saw it coming in early this morning. I was eager to be ashore. And then ...”

“Later impressions not precisely favorable?”

“Well, no; they’re not, if you don’t mind my saying so?”

“Mind? Why should I? But tell me a little more of how the place strikes you; in a general way, I mean.”

“It’s presumptuous to speak of it, after one day ashore. I’ve been charmed and repelled at the same time. The town seems a bit on the sordid side. I dislike squalor, and I’ve seen a good deal of it in rambling about to-day. My friend’s enchanted with the place. He thinks Papeete is just what it should be.”

Tyson smiled. “He’ll be the first to want to move on.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Experience—long experience. Those who dislike the place at first are the ones who stay longest. It’s not to be explained, but so it is. You might be an exception, but take care! I loathed the island when I first came. I’ve been here thirty years. Lord knows why!”

“Yes, so my father told me.”

“Your father?”

“He claims to be a friend of yours. I’d not venture to say how often I’ve heard him speak of you.”

Tyson sat up in his chair. “The devil you say! What’s your name?”

“Hardie. Alan Hardie.”

The consul got up with alacrity and strode over to grasp the young man’s hand. “Hardie, you rogue! God bless my soul! Why didn’t you tell me when you first came in? Claims to be? I should think he might. You’re here with a friend, you say. Someone from home?”

“Yes. You’ll remember him, sir. At least you’ll remember about him—George McLeod.”

“You don’t tell me,” the consul exclaimed, his face beaming. “That infant? But of course he’ll have managed to grow up by this time. Where is he?”

“He’s wandering along the waterfront. He thought we’d be putting you out, coming to call on steamer day. I decided to drop in for a moment, anyway.”

“Putting me out! Nonsense! Hardie, I’m the idlest man in the whole of French Oceania. Why didn’t you let me know you were coming? I might have been off somewhere, fishing. That’s my chief occupation as consul.”

“My father insisted that we shouldn’t trouble you in advance.”

“That’s your father. I can see he hasn’t changed. Now tell me about him. Why didn’t you bring him with you?”

“He’s coming, sir, shortly.”

“That’s the best news I’ve had in many a day,” said Tyson, warmly. “You mean to wait for him here?”

“I’m not so sure of that,” Hardie replied. “McLeod and I rather thought we’d go on to New Zealand or Australia and wait there. But we can decide this later.”

“Of course you can. Don’t make any hasty decisions about pushing on. Your father’s still in the Army, of course?”

“Yes; but he’s retiring soon. He doesn’t yet know just when he can leave, but he means to take life easy from now on.”

“Good! How he’s been able to stick that deadly life all these years is more than I know. Sense of duty, I suppose.”

“He loves it,” said Hardie. “I’ve never known a man happier in his profession.”

“I know, I know. He’s wrapped up in it. Always was. What of yourself, Hardie? Somehow, you haven’t the look of Sandhurst about you.”

“My interests run in another direction. I’ve just come down from Cambridge. This voyage was my father’s idea, and by good luck it fitted in with McLeod’s plans. When my father joins us we expect to go home by way of the Straits Settlements and the Dutch East Indies. We’ll be gone close to a year.”

“I hope your father will give me a month of that time,” said Tyson. “I must try to persuade him. It’s curious: we were in the war together, but we almost never write. But what does it matter? There’s a great deal of useless letter writing done in the world.”

“I’ve heard my father say the same thing,” Hardie replied. “But he spent most of a day, just before we left, writing the letter I’ve brought you. I fancy he’s tried to make up for a long silence.”

He took a letter from his breast pocket and handed it to the consul.

“By Jove! He has, evidently,” said Tyson as he felt of the bulky packet. “I’ve a treat in store.” He laid the letter on the table beside him. “There’s nothing like the old war comradeships, Hardie. You don’t know that, of course, but you can take my word for it. Well I remember meeting your father in September, ’14. I’d just arrived in London from here, and was joining one of Lord Kitchener’s New Army battalions. Your father was a lieutenant then and got me posted to his platoon. Alan McLeod, George’s father, was there too, and I took up two old friendships where I’d left off with them years before. Does George remember anything of his parents?”

“Very little.”

“It isn’t likely that he would. He was a mere infant when they died.”

“But he’s become interested now. He means to ask you all about their coming out here.”

“He does? Well, I shan’t tell him. It was too damnably tragic. I don’t mind telling you, though, if you’d care to hear about it?”

“I’d like to, very much, sir.”

“You know, Hardie, you make me feel a veritable relic of antiquity. I remember hearing about you one night during the battle of the Somme. Our battalion was in and out of that slaughter during the greater part of it. One week, I remember, we’d gone into support and your father was given three days’ leave. You were very ill—I’ve forgotten with what—and it was touch and go whether you lived or died.”

“It must have been when I had the accursed scarlet fever,” Hardie replied. “I know that it played the devil with my eyes. They’ve been weak ever since.”

“That was it—scarlet fever. Well, on the day your father returned we were pitched into the mess again, another of those incredibly stupid and costly attacks which gained us nothing but casualties. Your father went from company to battalion commander in the course of one day.

“That same evening, he and I were lying at the lip of a huge shell crater in the midst of desolation. It was pitch dark and raining hard, and for an hour or two we had a blessed release from shell fire. That was when your father spoke of you. You were out of danger, the doctors had told him. He’d seen Nina McLeod, too, while on leave, and young George. George’s father was not with us then. He’d been badly gassed six months before and was still in hospital. By good luck I had a canteen half full of brandy and, b’gad, your father and I drank long life and health to you. How well I remember that night! I’ve thought of you as an infant ever since. A precious big one you’ve grown to be! I was knocked out the very next day, and that ended the war, for me.”

“You returned to Tahiti then?”

“Yes, as soon as I was able to travel, and Alan and Nina McLeod came too, and young George with them. Alan was done for, after his experience with gas, but he’d lost none of his old courage. The climate at home was impossible for him and his doctors had urged him to go to the tropics. I had no difficulty in persuading him to try Tahiti.

“They stopped with me at the consulate for a fortnight while plans were being made. They wanted a little place in the country, with a house of their own, where they could have a garden, fowls, and the like, and loaf in the sun to their hearts’ content. We looked at half a dozen places on the main island, and one day I took them to the farthest peninsula, a glorious stretch of coast called the Fenua Aaiheré. It is far and away the most beautiful part of the island, though I doubted that they would want to live in so lonely a region. I was mistaken; they loved it at sight, so we lost no time in getting them settled.

“I saw a good deal of them in the months that followed. For all their urging, I disliked intruding upon them, for they knew and I knew that he hadn’t long to live. They were trying to crowd a lifetime of companionship into a few short months. However, I made it a point to go fishing on that side of the island at least once a fortnight. It wrung my heart to visit them. They tried to deceive themselves about his condition, and he was looking death in the face every moment.

“Six months later he was gone. Nina bore the loss like the thoroughbred she was. She was expecting a baby in a few months’ time. I wanted her to return to Papeete, but she was not to be moved from their little home in Vaihiva. I didn’t insist overmuch, then, for she was in excellent hands, with a native family, friends of mine, living close by. However, I made her promise to come to the hospital here well before the time of her confinement.

“Those plans went for nothing. I was to fetch her in my launch, on the Monday, I think it was. Three days before this a storm broke that came close to being a hurricane; it was one of the worst I remember here. I went to Vaihiva the moment wind and sea would let me, but I was too late. Nina had died in childbirth in the midst of the storm, and her baby with her.”

Tyson was silent for some time. “Tell young McLeod as little of this as you like,” he said. “One thing you can say with truth: his father and mother loved Vaihiva. They were as happy there as his health would let them be. George was too small, of course, to remember much about it. By good luck, he was not with his mother at the time of her death.”

“He was trying to remember the name of some woman who used to take care of him,” Hardie remarked; “the one he hated so to leave.”

“That would be Mauri. She still lives at Vaihiva; she owns the valley, in fact. She’ll want to see George. She’s asked about him from time to time. If you like, I’ll take you both out there one of these days.... By the way, where’ve you put up—Hôtel du Port? Why not stop with me? The hotel’s nothing to boast of.”

“We’ll accept with pleasure, sir, if you’ll ask us a bit later. For the next few days we thought we’d like to wander about on our own.”

“Of course. So would I in your place. You want your first impressions fresh and unspoiled by the consular atmosphere. Well, come when you please. You’ll be welcome at any time. Meanwhile, perhaps you could have dinner with me on Friday?”

Hardie rose and took up his hat. “We’d like nothing better. What time shall we come?”

“Dinner at seven-thirty. Any time you please before that.”

“We’ll be on hand. Good night, sir.”

“Good night.”

Tyson stood at the top of the steps, looking after his guest until he was lost to view in the shadows of the avenue. Returning to his chair by the shaded lamp, he took up his old friend’s letter, carefully slit open the envelope, and drew out the sheaf of closely written pages. He lit a cigarette and began to read.

“North Camp: Aldershot.” As Tyson’s glance fell upon the familiar heading, a gust of emotion swept across his senses. North Camp—how vividly he remembered the place and his own experiences there twenty years before! He saw the rows of old brick barracks, the bare parade grounds with their borders of dusty trees, and men armed with ancient Boer War rifles at squad, platoon, and company drill in the first autumn of the war. “Move to the right in fours! Fo-o-rm, fours!” ... “At the halt, on the left, form close column of platoons!” He could hear the voices of those old dependables, the sergeants, whipping Lord Kitchener’s First Hundred Thousand into shape. And what men they were, those early volunteers! Never in England’s history had there been such an army as that, nor would there be again. He recalled the spirit of those days—the never-to-be-forgotten comradeships, the sense of great events at hand, and, above all, the mingled feeling of happiness and poignant sadness that seemed to be a part of the wan autumn sunshine. He remembered the route marches, the brigade and divisional field days in the early spring of ’15, when the bitterness, the tragedy, the disillusionment, of war were yet to come; when the roads of the English countryside were filled with high-spirited lads in the perfection of health and hardness after nine months of training. He saw them marching, rifles at the slope, singing the songs of those days: “Hold Your Hand Out, Naughty Boy!” ... “Hello! Hello! Who’s Your Lady Friend?” and a score of others. He heard again the bugles of Aldershot sounding retreat, last post, lights out. He sighed deeply. Best to let those memories lie buried with the men who might have shared them with him.

Turning to the letter, he read slowly, with deep enjoyment, reluctant to come to the end of each page. It was as though his friend were there beside him, talking in the blunt incisive manner he remembered so well.

We’re not so young as we were, Tyson, but damned if I’ll admit it. Why should I? I’m as sound as ever I was. I’m a better man at fifty-four than most of these post-war company commanders scarcely half my age. I’ve got a division now, and I’m proud of it, in a way. But it’s not a patch on old Wing’s lot that went overseas in May, ’15. How could it be when the best blood of England was drained into French soil? We’ll never again be the nation we were, old friend. We’re bled white: that’s the plain truth.

Enough of this. Now about my son—or should I say, my two sons? The truth is, Tyson, that I’m closer to George McLeod than I am to my own boy. At least, I understand him better. I think you’ll like the pair of them, but you will find George easier to get on terms with in the beginning. Alan is more reserved; at any rate, with me, and I’ve only myself to blame. I played the blasted fool with him when he was a youngster. From the day he was ten, I tried to steer him toward the Army, with no success. It used to exasperate me to see the little interest he took in whatever interested me. I thought, then, it was pure stubbornness, and having plenty of that in my own character I naturally resented Alan’s. At last I had the sense to see that I was on the wrong track with him. Since then I’ve let him go his own way. A good job, too. I might easily have spoiled his life for him.

Alan has made an exceptional record at Cambridge. I’ve the arrogance to be proud of him, Tyson, but I’ve got to admit that he got his brains from his mother. It amazes me to learn that I not only could have, but do have, a son with an original, scholarly mind; but such, it appears, is the truth of the matter. Old Grayson, Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy,—whatever this latter may be,—is so impressed with the lad’s abilities that he’s taken the trouble to advise me about his future. He tells me that Alan has the makings of a brilliant mathematician, or astronomer, or the two combined, and shows a remarkable gift for independent research. Grayson says Alan should now go on to London University to work for his D. Sc. That’s what Alan wants. Damned if he hasn’t pretty well mapped out a career for himself! He’s got his eye, ultimately, on the Observatory in South Africa.

I’m pleased, of course, but it’s no thanks to me, all this. What a pity that his mother could not have lived to see his promise! But the disheartening thing, from the point of view of his future, is this: he’s worked at a terrific pace the past four years, with the result that he’s badly injured his eyes. They have never been strong since the time during the war when he caught scarlet fever. The best oculist in London tells me that the damage is extremely serious but not necessarily lasting. Alan is very sensitive, so say nothing to him about this. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t know how grave the danger is. But he has consented to give his eyes a complete rest for the better part of a year. We had hard work persuading him to knock off for so long, but he realizes that rest is essential. Hence this voyage.

Luckily, George could go with him. George has a good level head and will make the best possible companion. Alan is headstrong, idealistic and impulsive, and he’s lived so much in scholarship that he scarcely knows there are other worlds to explore. He’s a curious mixture of innocence and of wisdom beyond his years. Or, I’d better say, of knowledge beyond his years. It’s George who has the wisdom.

I’ve said enough—too much, perhaps, on the subject of Alan. But he’s all I’ve got left, Tyson; the war damned near wiped out the Hardies. I’m as fond of young George as though he were Alan’s brother, but the fact remains that he’s not. Neither of them will be a burden to you. They’ll go their own way, and I’m afraid you’ll see very little of them. They will have told you of my plans. If you can, persuade them to stop with you, and to stay on there till I come.