The Narrow Corner (21 page)

She gave him her sweet, humorous smile.

“No, but I can’t help thinking that you will love her.” She was silent for a moment. Then she said something
that he did not quite understand. “I think I’m just as glad that I shan’t be here.”

“Oh, don’t say that. Why?”

She did not answer. She just patted his hand and chuckled.

It touched him with a sort of sad emotion to reflect how right she had been and he was inclined to attribute her prescience to the strange presentiment of the dying. He was staggered when he saw Louise on her return. She was grown into a lovely girl. She had lost her childish worship of him, but also her shyness; she was perfectly at ease with him. She was, of course, very fond of him; he couldn’t doubt that, she was so sweet, friendly and affectionate; but he had the impression, not exactly that she criticised him, but that she coolly appraised him. It did not embarrass him, but it made him feel a little self-conscious. She had acquired the quizzical, humorous look in the eyes that he knew so well in her mother, but whereas in her it warmed your heart because it was so rich with love, with Louise it slightly disconcerted you; you were not sure that she did not find you a trifle absurd. Erik discovered that he had to start with her from the beginning, for it was not only her body that had changed, it was her spirit too. She, was as companionable as ever, as jolly, and they took the same long walks together as in the old days, bathed and fished; they talked and laughed together as freely
as when he was twenty-two and she fourteen; but he was vaguely conscious that there was in her a new aloofness. Her soul had been transparent as glass; now it was mysteriously veiled, and he was aware that its depths held something he did not know.

Catherine died quite suddenly. She had an attack of angina, and when the half-caste doctor reached the bungalow she was beyond his aid. Louise broke down completely. The years, with the early maturity they had brought, fell away from her and she was a little girl again. She did not know how to cope with her grief. She was shattered. For long hours she lay in Erik’s arms on his lap, weeping, like a child who cannot realise that sorrow will pass, and would not be comforted. The situation was more than she could deal with, and she did meekly exactly what he told her. Frith went all to pieces and no sense could be got from him. He spent his time drinking whisky and water and crying. Old Swan talked of all the children he had had and how they had died one after the other. They’d all treated him very badly. There was not one of them left now to look after a poor old man. Some of them had run away and some had robbed him, and some had married he didn’t know whom, and the rest had died. One would have thought one of them would have had the decency to stay and look after his father now he wanted looking after.

Erik did everything that had to be done.

“You are angelic,” Louise said to him.

He saw the light of love in her eyes, but he contented himself with patting her hand and telling her not to be silly; he did not want to take advantage of her emotion, of the sense of helplessness and of being deserted that just then overwhelmed her, to ask her to marry him. She was so young. It would be unfair to take this advantage over her. He loved her madly. But no sooner had he said this to himself than he corrected it; he loved her sanely. He loved her with all the energy of his solid intelligence, with all the power of his mighty limbs, with all the vigour of his honest character; he loved her not only for the beauty of her virginal body, but for the firm outlines of her growing personality and for the purity of her virginal soul. His love increased his sense of his own strength. He felt there was nothing he could not achieve. And yet, when he considered her perfection, so much more than the healthy mind in the healthy body, the subtle, sensitive soul that so wonderfully corresponded with the lovely form, he felt abject and humble.

And now it was all settled. Frith’s hesitations were not serious; he could be induced, if not to listen to reason, at least to yield to persuasion. But Swan was very old. He was failing fast. It might be necessary to await his death before they married. Erik was efficient. The company would not leave him indefinitely on that
island. Sooner or later they would move him to Rangoon, Bangkok or Calcutta. Eventually they would need him at Copenhagen. He could never be satisfied, like Frith, to spend his life on the plantation and make a bare living by selling cloves and nutmegs. Nor had Louise the placidity that had enabled her mother to make a lovely idyll of her life on that beautiful island. There was nothing he had admired in Catherine so much as that out of these simple elements, the common round of every day, the immemorial labours of husbandry, peace, quiet, humour and a contented mind, she had been able to make a pattern of such an exquisite and completed beauty. Louise was high-strung as her mother had never been. Though she accepted her circumstances with serenity, her vagrant spirit roved. Sometimes, when they sat on the ramparts of the old Portuguese fort and looked at the sea together, he felt that there was an activity in her soul that craved exercise.

They had often spoken of their wedding journey. He wanted to arrive in Denmark in the spring when all the trees after the long cruel winter were bursting into leaf. The green of that northern country had a fresh tenderness that the tropics never knew. The meadows with their black and white cows and the farmsteads nestling among trees had a sweet and tidy beauty that did not amaze you, but made you feel at home. Then there was
Copenhagen, with its wide, busy streets, the prim, dignified houses with so many windows you were quite surprised, and its churches and the red palaces King Christian had built that looked as though they belonged to a fairy story. He wanted to take her to Elsinore. It was on its battlements that his father’s ghost had appeared to the Danish prince. It was grand on the Sound in summer, the calm sea grey or milk-blue; life there was very pleasant, then, with music and laughter; and all through the long northern twilight the cheerful talk flowed. But they must go to England. There was London, with the National Gallery and the British Museum. Neither of them had ever been to England. They would go to Stratford-on-Avon and see Shakespeare’s tomb. Paris, of course. It was the centre of civilization. She would go shopping at the magasins du Louvre, and they would drive in the Bois de Boulogne. They would walk hand in hand in the Forest of Fontainebleau. Italy and the Grand Canal by moonlight in a gondola! For Frith’s sake they must go to Lisbon. It would be wonderful to see the country from which those old Portuguese had sallied to found an empire of which, besides a few ruined forts and here and there a moribund station, nothing remained but a little deathless poetry and an imperishable renown. To see all these lovely places with the person who is all the world to you, what could life offer more perfect? At that moment Erik understood what Frith
meant when he said that the Primal Spirit, whom you can call God if you will, was not apart from the world but in it. That great spirit was in the stone on the mountain side, in the beast of the field, in man and in the thunder that rolled down the vault of heaven.

The late moon now flooded the house with white light. It gave its neat lines an airy distinction and its substantial mass a fragile and charming unreality. Suddenly the shutter of Louise’s room was slowly pushed open. Erik held his breath. If he had been asked what he wanted most in the world, he would have said just for one moment to be allowed to see her. She came out on the verandah. She was wearing nothing but the sarong in which she slept.

In the moonlight she looked like a wraith. The night seemed on a sudden to stand still and the silence was like a living thing that listened. She took a step or two and looked up and down the verandah. She wanted to see that no one was about. Erik expected her to come to the rail as she had done before and stand there for a while. In that light he thought he could almost see the colour of her eyes. She turned round towards the window of her room and beckoned. A man came out. He stopped for an instant as though to take her hand, but she shook her head and pointed to the rail. He went up to it and quickly stepped over. He looked down at the ground, six feet below him, and leapt lightly down.
Louise slipped back into her room and closed the shutter behind her.

For a moment Erik was so astonished, so bewildered, that he could not understand. He did not believe his eyes. He sat where he was, in old Swan’s chair, stock still, and stared and stared. The man landed on his feet and then sat down on the ground. He appeared to be putting on his shoes. Suddenly Erik found the use of his limbs. He sprang forwards, the man was only a few yards away, and with a bound seized him by the collar of his coat and dragged him to his feet. The man, startled, opened his mouth to cry out, but Erik put his great heavy hand over it. Then he slowly dropped his hand till it encircled the man’s throat. The man was so taken aback that he did not struggle. He stood there stupidly, staring at Erik, powerless in that mighty grasp. Then Erik looked at him. It was Fred Blake.

A
N HOUR
later Dr. Saunders, lying awake in bed, heard steps in the passage and then a scratching on the door. He did not answer and the handle was tried. The door was locked.

“Who is it?” he called out.

The reply came on the top of his cry, quickly, in a low, agitated voice.

“Doctor. It’s me, Fred. I want to see you.”

The doctor had smoked half a dozen pipes after Captain Nichols had left him to go back on board the
Fenton
, and when he had been smoking he hated to be disturbed. Thoughts as clear as the geometrical designs in a child’s drawing-book, squares, oblongs, circles, triangles, flowed through his mind in an orderly procession. The delight he felt in their lucidity was part and parcel of the indolent pleasure of his body. He raised his mosquito curtain and padded across the bare floor to the door. When he opened it he saw the night watchman, hooded with a blanket against the noxious air of the night, holding a lantern, and just behind him Fred Blake.

“Let me in, doctor. It’s frightfully important.”

“Wait till I light the lamp.”

By the light of the watchman’s lantern he found the matches and lit the lamp. Ah Kay, who slept on a mat on the verandah outside the doctor’s room, awoke at the disturbance and raising himself on his seat rubbed his dark, sloe-like eyes. Fred gave the watchman a tip and he went away.

“Go to sleep, Ah Kay,” said the doctor. “There’s nothing for you to get up for.”

“Look here, you must come to Erik’s at once,” said Fred. “There’s been an accident.”

“What d’you mean?”

He looked at Fred and saw that he was as white as a sheet. He was trembling in every limb.

“He’s shot himself.”

“Good God! How d’you know?”

“I’ve just come from there. He’s dead.”

At Fred’s first words the doctor had instinctively begun to busy himself, but at this he stopped short.

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, quite.”

“If he’s dead, what’s the good of my going?”

“He can’t be left like that. Come and see. Oh, my God.” His voice broke as though he were going to cry. “Perhaps you can do something.”

“Who’s there?”

“Nobody. He’s lying there alone. I can’t bear it. You must do something. For Christ’s sake come.”

“What’s that on your hand?”

Fred looked at it. It was smeared with blood. By a natural instinct he was about to wipe it on his duck trousers.

“Don’t do that,” cried the doctor, catching hold of his wrist. “Come and wash it off.”

Still holding him by the wrist, with the lamp in his other hand, he led him into the bath-house. This was a
little dark, square chamber with a concrete floor; there was a huge tub in the corner and you bathed yourself by sluicing water over your body with a small tin pan which you filled from the tub. The doctor gave a pan full of water and a piece of soap to Fred and told him to wash.

“Have you got any on your clothes?”

He held up the lamp to look.

“I don’t think so.”

The doctor poured the blood-stained water away and they went back to the bedroom. The sight of the blood had startled Fred and he sought to master his hysterical agitation. He was whiter than ever and though he held his hands clenched, Dr. Saunders saw that he could not control their violent trembling.

“Better have a drink. Ah Kay, give the gentleman some whisky. No water.”

Ah Kay got up and brought a glass into which he poured the neat spirit. Fred tossed it off. The doctor watched him closely.

“Look here, my boy, we’re in a foreign country. We don’t want to run up against the Dutch authorities. I don’t believe they’re very easy people to deal with.”

“We can’t leave him lying there in a pool of blood.”

“Isn’t it a fact that something happened in Sydney that made you leave in a hurry? The police here are going to ask you a lot of questions. D’you want them to cable to Sydney?”

“I don’t care. I’m fed up with the whole thing.”

“Don’t be a fool. If he’s dead you can do no good and neither can I. We’d better keep out of it. The best thing you can do is to get away from the island as soon as you can. Did anyone see you there?”

“Where?”

“At his house,” said the doctor impatiently.

“No, I was only there a minute. I rushed straight round here.”

“What about his boys?”

“I suppose they were asleep. They live at the back.”

“I know. The night watchman’s the only person who’s seen you. Why did you rouse him?”

“I couldn’t get in. The door was locked. I had to get hold of you.”

“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. There are plenty of reasons why you should rout me out in the middle of the night. What made you go to Erik’s?”

“I had to. I had something to say to him that couldn’t wait.”

“I suppose he did shoot himself. You didn’t shoot him, did you?”

“Me?” The boy gasped with horror and surprise. “Why, he’s … I wouldn’t have hurt a hair of his head. If he’d been my brother I couldn’t have thought more of him. The best pal a chap ever had.”