Gallions Reach (9 page)

“Come in, come in. It is a good one?”

“I like it. I've never seen a better one. It's a beautiful figure. But only one or two men know this stuff.”

“Are you interested in it?”

“Yes, but I don't know anything about it. It's different from Staffordshire ware, that's all.”

The stranger shyly confessed that, when in London, he himself had paid furtive visits to the British Museum, he did not quite know why, to look at Chinese bowls. “There's something about them,” he ventured.

“There is. They're the same as some music, I suppose. There's no reason in it, but it means something.”

They approved each other, and showed it. They had confessed a common frailty. Colet handled the figure, while they speculated over her quality, and the nature of her attraction.

“We had better not look for reason in it,” said the stranger. “For instance, just now she's a bit of a nuisance. I'm leaving here, but now I can't go to my ship till this afternoon. I've been called by 'phone to town. And there it is. I can't lug her about. I don't like trusting rough hands with her, but I shall have to risk it.”

Jimmy was jolted by a thoughtless impulse. He might as well finish with a useless friendly act. Was it the word to say? “Where is your ship? Could I take it along? It would be safe with me. It's all one what time I get to the city today.”

The sailor gave Jimmy a direct glance. Then he pouted at Kuan-yin. “That's very good of you. But it's too much to expect of a stranger.”

“Not a stranger,” said, Jimmy. “I mean, I know her. I've got one—I had one—rather like it. No trouble to see that good thing is safe. If it would help of course. Is your ship far from here?”

“I should be grateful, sir, I must say. The steamer
Altair
. But could you really do it? I got the thing only three days ago, in a Limehouse pawnshop. I couldn't resist it. Now I'm suddenly shifted to this ship, and I shan't see home yet awhile.”

Colet protested the simplicity of the task, if he could be trusted with it. His hurry was not great.

“It's very good of you. And I can't make any return. Sure you've the time for it? My ship is at Woolwich buoys. There will be a launch at the dockhead in half an hour. That would put you aboard, if you care to go. Could you wait aboard for me? If you would tell Mr. Sinclair, the chief officer, that you are a friend of mine, and that I shall be aboard pretty soon after lunch——! My name is Hale.”

Mr. Sinclair, the chief officer of the
Altair
, was on the navigating bridge, with the boatswain and a few men, and his voice was raised above the importance of the job, which was but adjusting the weather-cloth. He moved about abruptly in dispraise. Something, the boatswain thought, had stung him that morning. His foxy hair was so boisterous that it strongly resented the imposition of his cap. There was reproach in his eye, and his darting energy was but the whooping of his exasperation. He had expected to get this ship, for he had earned the post; he had brought her home. But another master was coming to take charge. If there hadn't been a new baby this voyage, worse luck, they could have found another mate for her as well. “Bo'sun, why the hell! …” The boatswain indicated with a warning nod that a boat was at the gangway. Sinclair shot his head over the bridge-end, saw a man of his own age in a launch, nursing a package, and who was conning the ship with a bright appraising eye. Here was the old man, already looking for faults. Let him find 'em. Let the whole chromatic directorate run their indecorous noses over her. She was better than they had deserved, blast them. He flung down to the head of the ship's ladder, prepared for any complaint, and hoping he would get it. He faced the newcomer with a look as direct and doubting as that of a challenging bull-dog. “Well, what fault have you found so far?” But the thought was not spoken. This stranger did not look like a faultfinder. Sinclair mumbled something to the new master.

“Mr. Sinclair?” Then Jimmy explained. The red-haired
man, so radiantly contumacious, heard him in sceptical silence. Then abruptly turned. “Come this way,” he said, over his shoulder.

Jimmy followed him along a covered alleyway, past three or four teak doors with brass handles, and another that was open. In the opening lolled a figure in a dirty singlet and dungarees, its face oddly patterned in coal-dust and sweat, eating an apple. It took an irreverently noisy bite as it watched them pass. Just beyond that door the mate seemed to save himself from falling from top to bottom of a perpendicular iron ladder with miraculous deftness, and Jimmy followed him down carefully, rung by rung; then along an iron deck; then through a door in the stern. There his guide, in the indistinction, disappeared. Jimmy heard a voice. “Here you are; in here. The captain's room. Better wait here.”

Jimmy looked round. He placed Kuan-yin in the bunk. The mate stood for a second as if he were going to fire a question. He did not fire it, but vanished. Jimmy took a wicker-chair, which whined so loudly under his invasion that he thought it better for the silence if he did not move.

Eleven o'clock. New smells here. He couldn't wait long. Why wait at all? But he could not go at once. Not fair to disturb that carroty young man too soon. Must give him a chance to cool off. Might as well take the opportunity to think a bit. What right had he to be there? Say, then, that it was better to help to save a good piece of porcelain than to hurry to give the police a job of work. Perhaps the accidents of circumstances were not quite so accidental as they appeared. Perhaps they knew what they were about. Well, then they knew more than he did. If they knew so much, then they could take charge, and he would see what would happen. Apparently he had done that. It was all a muddle. A muddle to him. It was not much, after all, to be charged with Perriam's death; but it was of great importance now not to become involved again in that other life. That would
be worse than murder. That would be a senseless existence. It wasn't worth a thought. That travail in London meant nothing but fodder for cattle. Cabbages for cows. Perriam alive wasn't as important as Kuan-yin.

All rot that! Reason could always justify fears and desires.

But what else was there to do? Couldn't run away to sea. That was ruled out. Too ignorant of life to know how to live independently. He was part of the protoplasmic reef of London, and now he was a detached polyp. There was a doubt whether it was possible to live alone. At the very next hint of destiny, one way or another, he would take it, anyhow, though it stranded the polyp high in the sun, and he dried up. The real difficulty was to catch destiny when it tipped the wink.

The room seemed to be listening to his thoughts. It was very quiet, but it had thoughts of its own. You could hear them, when your own thoughts stopped. The cabin seemed to be full of reminiscences. It knew a lot. It communicated with him through the chair; tremors, clicks of adjustment, a ventriloquial murmuring. Once he heard the mate's voice outside. That fellow did not seem much better yet. And then somebody in a white jacket burst into the cabin, opened his mouth when he saw the room was occupied, and left at once, closing the door with deferential gentleness. The distant trees, he could see through the port, had changed their position. She was swinging to the tide.

Silly to wait there. He was an intruder. Whatever place there was for him in the world it was not that room. He went outside. Mr. Sinclair hurried past him on deck. “One moment, please.” He advised the chief officer what he had done with his charge, and that the contents of the parcel were eminently precious and delicate. Mr. Sinclair darted back to the alleyway without aword. “Steward!” he bawled. The man in the white jacket was there at once. “Parcel in the captain's room. Too good to be touched. Don't touch it. See?”

Then he turned to Colet, and his question was in his glance. “Anything more to say? I'm busy.” Jimmy explained that he would not wait for the captain. He must go now.

“What?” ejaculated the sailor. “I thought you were a passenger or the ship's agent. Why didn't you speak? The launch has gone. The pilot's aboard. I've just had a telegram to say Captain Hale joins us at Plymouth. You'll have to go on to Gravesend now.” He spoke as though it would not matter to him if Jimmy went farther still.

Jimmy made a little protest.

“There it is. I can't stop. I'm wanted above,” Mr. Sinclair strode away.

The
Altair
was far from the shore. There was some inexplicable activity, and directing shouts. The ship began to tremble, and gave a warning bellow. She was under way. Jimmy half-wished he was going with her; a foolish wish; he did not even know where she was bound.

The
Altair
went down on the first of the ebb at half-speed. Colet had not seen those shores since he came up this very reach more years ago than he could accurately count. It does not heighten the present morning light to count years you seem to have lost. But it was twilight, he knew, when he was there last. Not much use peering backwards to discern what has lapsed into an old twilight. All the people who were with him then were shades in a lost year. He could not recognise them. There was a vague woman in a pale dress beside him, whose face he could not see now, but he could feel her consoling fingers rumpling his hair. Here it all was. And an old man stood up there, who, somehow, accorded with the dark and the sound of the warning river. He remembered how the grave murmuring stirred him, while all was still. Who was that old fellow? His dim tall figure was still there. But nobody knew his name. He could hear only Mr. Sinclair's voice. No doubt about that. We live a dual existence. The people who talk to us in the present are unaware that we are not altogether with them. He was making two voyages now. If that chief officer were asked, he would give an emphatic opinion, which everybody would see was obviously right; but the truth isn't as easy as that.

He paced the deck, and watched two landscapes unfold, one in an evening without a date, and another that their pilot was watching. He felt that the actual was of less potency, in spite of the spring sun, than the obscure land from which the sun had gone, where the people were so merged in a fading year that nothing of them remained but
a gesture of affection and an absurdly solemn premonition about something he didn't know. It looked as if the doctor who talked at breakfast was right. There is no chart for what is of enduring importance to us, and nobody talks of what is of most importance to us. Infinity cannot be charted. There are only private symbols, but they affect us more than the loud fussiness of the day. Perhaps, in a time not yet, even that aggressive officer on the
Altair
'
s
bridge would appear to be shadowy and significant to him. In what way? Mr. Sinclair's voice could be heard again. He was addressing somebody in the bows, and his voice was like a gun's. Jimmy saw some fun in that probability. It would not be easy to make an august memory of that red-headed man.

Something was happening. Of course, here was Gravesend. They had anchored. The day was still early. It would be easy to get back. The fellow in the white jacket approached him. “Mr. Sinclair would like to see you, sir. He's in the chart-room.”

Jimmy went up. Sinclair held out his hand with an embarrassed smile. “I don't know your name. You'll excuse me if I've seemed inattentive. I've been rushed. The pilot will be leaving in ten minutes. He's talking to the chief engineer. You can push off with him.”

He was assured that all was well. “Have you got an interesting voyage in front of you?”

“I haven't. I'd stay ashore if I could. I've been in this old thing too long. Four years and two sets of owners. It's time for a change, but she was turned round again so quickly this voyage that I didn't get a chance to do anything about it.”

Mr. Sinclair now seemed slow and sad. He was opening and closing a pair of dividers. “Look here, I'm sorry I was so busy when you boarded us. No time for a drink, and all that. Things have gone in jumps the last day or two, and I never knew which way they'd jump. The owners, you know.
The blessed owners. But perhaps you don't know 'em. The present owners are worse than the last, and old Perriam was bad enough.”

“What!” muttered Jimmy, suddenly shocked; “did he own her?”

“Under another name. Did you know him?”

“Yes. I worked for him. I was in his office.”

Mr. Sinclair betrayed no interest. “You were?” He put down the dividers, and called to a sailor outside. “Go and see if the pilot is still with Mr. Gillespie.” He pushed back a chart and perched himself on the table. “I saw in a paper that the old swine is dead. Found dead in his office. About time, too. What was the matter with him; heart? Couldn't have been. He hadn't got one. What was it?”

Jimmy took a steady look at his watch. “So far as I know, it was a punch on the jaw.”

Mr. Sinclair looked up with amused interest. “No. It was a jolly good one then. Who hit him for us?”

“I did.”

Mr. Sinclair threw up an astonished leg and laughed. He laughed with his head thrown back, loudly and with complete abandon to his enjoyment. He slapped his raised leg with his hand. He was wiping his eyes when he turned to Jimmy, who was speaking to him.

“Please tell me what the paper said about it.”

“Eh? Oh, nothing much. I don't remember. Said he was dead. That's all. Found in his office, on the floor. Just dead. I say, what the devil are you doing here? It didn't say any one had hit him. I don't believe it did.”

“Well, somebody did, and here he is, though God knows why.”

A sailor came to the door, and announced that the pilot was ready to go. Mr. Sinclair slid off the table, hesitated, and snapped his fingers. “All right, Wilson. Tell him … tell him there's nobody for the shore.”