Mr. Van Wyk, the white man of Batu
Beru, an ex-naval officer who, for reasons best known
to himself, had thrown away the promise of a brilliant
career to become the pioneer of tobacco-planting on
that remote part of the coast, had learned to like
Captain Whalley. The appearance of the new skipper
had attracted his attention. Nothing more unlike
all the diverse types he had seen succeeding each other
on the bridge of the Sofala could be imagined.
At that time Batu Beru was not what
it has become since: the center of a prosperous
tobacco-growing district, a tropically suburban-looking
little settlement of bungalows in one long street shaded
with two rows of trees, embowered by the flowering
and trim luxuriance of the gardens, with a three-mile-long
carriage-road for the afternoon drives and a first-class
Resident with a fat, cheery wife to lead the society
of married estate-managers and unmarried young fellows
in the service of the big companies.
All this prosperity was not yet; and
Mr. Van Wyk prospered alone on the left bank on his
deep clearing carved out of the forest, which came
down above and below to the water’s edge.
His lonely bungalow faced across the river the houses
of the Sultan: a restless and melancholy old ruler
who had done with love and war, for whom life no longer
held any savor (except of evil forebodings) and time
never had any value. He was afraid of death,
and hoped he would die before the white men were ready
to take his country from him. He crossed the
river frequently (with never less than ten boats crammed
full of people), in the wistful hope of extracting
some information on the subject from his own white
man. There was a certain chair on the veranda
he always took: the dignitaries of the court
squatted on the rugs and skins between the furniture:
the inferior people remained below on the grass plot
between the house and the river in rows three or four
deep all along the front. Not seldom the visit
began at daybreak. Mr. Van Wyk tolerated these
inroads. He would nod out of his bedroom window,
tooth-brush or razor in hand, or pass through the
throng of courtiers in his bathing robe. He appeared
and disappeared humming a tune, polished his nails
with attention, rubbed his shaved face with eau-de-Cologne,
drank his early tea, went out to see his coolies at
work: returned, looked through some papers on
his desk, read a page or two in a book or sat before
his cottage piano leaning back on the stool, his arms
extended, fingers on the keys, his body swaying slightly
from side to side. When absolutely forced to speak
he gave evasive vaguely soothing answers out of pure
compassion: the same feeling perhaps made him
so lavishly hospitable with the aerated drinks that
more than once he left himself without soda-water for
a whole week. That old man had granted him as
much land as he cared to have cleared: it was
neither more nor less than a fortune.
Whether it was fortune or seclusion
from his kind that Mr. Van Wyk sought, he could not
have pitched upon a better place. Even the mail-boats
of the subsidized company calling on the veriest clusters
of palm-thatched hovels along the coast steamed past
the mouth of Batu Beru river far away in the offing.
The contract was old: perhaps in a few years’
time, when it had expired, Batu Beru would be included
in the service; meantime all Mr. Van Wyk’s mail
was addressed to Malacca, whence his agent sent it
across once a month by the Sofala. It followed
that whenever Massy had run short of money (through
taking too many lottery tickets), or got into a difficulty
about a skipper, Mr. Van Wyk was deprived of his letter
and newspapers. In so far he had a personal interest
in the fortunes of the Sofala. Though he considered
himself a hermit (and for no passing whim evidently,
since he had stood eight years of it already), he
liked to know what went on in the world.
Handy on the veranda upon a walnut
etagere (it had come last year by the Sofala) everything
came by the Sofala there lay, piled up under bronze
weights, a pile of the Times’ weekly edition,
the large sheets of the Rotterdam Courant, the
Graphic in its world-wide green wrappers, an illustrated
Dutch publication without a cover, the numbers of a
German magazine with covers of the “Bismarck
malade” color. There were also parcels
of new music though the piano (it had come
years ago by the Sofala in the damp atmosphere of
the forests was generally out of tune.) It was vexing
to be cut off from everything for sixty days at a stretch
sometimes, without any means of knowing what was the
matter. And when the Sofala reappeared Mr. Van
Wyk would descend the steps of the veranda and stroll
over the grass plot in front of his house, down to
the waterside, with a frown on his white brow.
“You’ve been laid up after an accident,
I presume.”
He addressed the bridge, but before
anybody could answer Massy was sure to have already
scrambled ashore over the rail and pushed in, squeezing
the palms of his hands together, bowing his sleek head
as if gummed all over the top with black threads and
tapes. And he would be so enraged at the necessity
of having to offer such an explanation that his moaning
would be positively pitiful, while all the time he
tried to compose his big lips into a smile.
“No, Mr. Van Wyk. You would
not believe it. I couldn’t get one of those
wretches to take the ship out. Not a single one
of the lazy beasts could be induced, and the law,
you know, Mr. Van Wyk . . .”
He moaned at great length apologetically;
the words conspiracy, plot, envy, came out prominently,
whined with greater energy. Mr. Van Wyk, examining
with a faint grimace his polished finger-nails, would
say, “H’m. Very unfortunate,”
and turn his back on him.
Fastidious, clever, slightly skeptical,
accustomed to the best society (he had held a much-envied
shore appointment at the Ministry of Marine for a
year preceding his retreat from his profession and
from Europe), he possessed a latent warmth of feeling
and a capacity for sympathy which were concealed by
a sort of haughty, arbitrary indifference of manner
arising from his early training; and by a something
an enemy might have called foppish, in his aspect like
a distorted echo of past elegance. He managed
to keep an almost military discipline amongst the
coolies of the estate he had dragged into the light
of day out of the tangle and shadows of the jungle;
and the white shirt he put on every evening with its
stiff glossy front and high collar looked as if he
had meant to preserve the decent ceremony of evening-dress,
but had wound a thick crimson sash above his hips
as a concession to the wilderness, once his adversary,
now his vanquished companion.
Moreover, it was a hygienic precaution.
Worn wide open in front, a short jacket of some airy
silken stuff floated from his shoulders. His fluffy,
fair hair, thin at the top, curled slightly at the
sides; a carefully arranged mustache, an ungarnished
forehead, the gleam of low patent shoes peeping under
the wide bottom of trowsers cut straight from the
same stuff as the gossamer coat, completed a figure
recalling, with its sash, a pirate chief of romance,
and at the same time the elegance of a slightly bald
dandy indulging, in seclusion, a taste for unorthodox
costume.
It was his evening get-up. The
proper time for the Sofala to arrive at Batu Beru
was an hour before sunset, and he looked picturesque,
and somehow quite correct too, walking at the water’s
edge on the background of grass slope crowned with
a low long bungalow with an immensely steep roof of
palm thatch, and clad to the eaves in flowering creepers.
While the Sofala was being made fast he strolled in
the shade of the few trees left near the landing-place,
waiting till he could go on board. Her white
men were not of his kind. The old Sultan (though
his wistful invasions were a nuisance) was really
much more acceptable to his fastidious taste.
But still they were white; the periodical visits of
the ship made a break in the well-filled sameness of
the days without disturbing his privacy. Moreover,
they were necessary from a business point of view;
and through a strain of preciseness in his nature he
was irritated when she failed to appear at the appointed
time.
The cause of the irregularity was
too absurd, and Massy, in his opinion, was a contemptible
idiot. The first time the Sofala reappeared under
the new agreement swinging out of the bend below,
after he had almost given up all hope of ever seeing
her again, he felt so angry that he did not go down
at once to the landing-place. His servants had
come running to him with the news, and he had dragged
a chair close against the front rail of the veranda,
spread his elbows out, rested his chin on his hands,
and went on glaring at her fixedly while she was being
made fast opposite his house. He could make out
easily all the white faces on board. Who on earth
was that kind of patriarch they had got there on the
bridge now?
At last he sprang up and walked down
the gravel path. It was a fact that the very
gravel for his paths had been imported by the Sofala.
Exasperated out of his quiet superciliousness, without
looking at anyone right or left, he accosted Massy
straightway in so determined a manner that the engineer,
taken aback, began to stammer unintelligibly.
Nothing could be heard but the words: “Mr.
Van Wyk . . . Indeed, Mr. Van Wyk . . .
For the future, Mr. Van Wyk” and by
the suffusion of blood Massy’s vast bilious
face acquired an unnatural orange tint, out of which
the disconcerted coal-black eyes shone in an extraordinary
manner.
“Nonsense. I am tired of
this. I wonder you have the impudence to come
alongside my jetty as if I had it made for your convenience
alone.”
Massy tried to protest earnestly.
Mr. Van Wyk was very angry. He had a good mind
to ask that German firm those people in
Malacca what was their name? boats
with green funnels. They would be only too glad
of the opening to put one of their small steamers on
the run. Yes; Schnitzler, Jacob Schnitzler, would
in a moment. Yes. He had decided to write
without delay.
In his agitation Massy caught up his falling pipe.
“You don’t mean it, sir!” he shrieked.
“You shouldn’t mismanage your business
in this ridiculous manner.”
Mr. Van Wyk turned on his heel.
The other three whites on the bridge had not stirred
during the scene. Massy walked hastily from side
to side, puffed out his cheeks, suffocated.
“Stuck up Dutchman!”
And he moaned out feverishly a long
tale of griefs. The efforts he had made for all
these years to please that man. This was the return
you got for it, eh? Pretty. Write to Schnitzler let
in the green-funnel boats get an old Hamburg
Jew to ruin him. No, really he could laugh. .
. . He laughed sobbingly. . . . Ha! ha! ha!
And make him carry the letter in his own ship presumably.
He stumbled across a grating and swore.
He would not hesitate to fling the Dutchman’s
correspondence overboard the whole confounded
bundle. He had never, never made any charge for
that accommodation. But Captain Whalley, his
new partner, would not let him probably; besides, it
would be only putting off the evil day. For his
own part he would make a hole in the water rather
than look on tamely at the green funnels overrunning
his trade.
He raved aloud. The China boys
hung back with the dishes at the foot of the ladder.
He yelled from the bridge down at the deck, “Aren’t
we going to have any chow this evening at all?”
then turned violently to Captain Whalley, who waited,
grave and patient, at the head of the table, smoothing
his beard in silence now and then with a forbearing
gesture.
“You don’t seem to care
what happens to me. Don’t you see that this
affects your interests as much as mine? It’s
no joking matter.”
He took the foot of the table growling between his
teeth.
“Unless you have a few thousands put away somewhere.
I haven’t.”
Mr. Van Wyk dined in his thoroughly
lit-up bungalow, putting a point of splendor in the
night of his clearing above the dark bank of the river.
Afterwards he sat down to his piano, and in a pause
he became aware of slow footsteps passing on the path
along the front. A plank or two creaked under
a heavy tread; he swung half round on the music-stool,
listening with his fingertips at rest on the keyboard.
His little terrier barked violently, backing in from
the veranda. A deep voice apologized gravely
for “this intrusion.” He walked out
quickly.
At the head of the steps the patriarchal
figure, who was the new captain of the Sofala apparently
(he had seen a round dozen of them, but not one of
that sort), towered without advancing. The little
dog barked unceasingly, till a flick of Mr. Van Wyk’s
handkerchief made him spring aside into silence.
Captain Whalley, opening the matter, was met by a
punctiliously polite but determined opposition.
They carried on their discussion standing
where they had come face to face. Mr. Van Wyk
observed his visitor with attention. Then at last,
as if forced out of his reserve
“I am surprised that you should
intercede for such a confounded fool.”
This outbreak was almost complimentary,
as if its meaning had been, “That such a man
as you should intercede!” Captain Whalley let
it pass by without flinching. One would have
thought he had heard nothing. He simply went
on to state that he was personally interested in putting
things straight between them. Personally . . .
But Mr. Van Wyk, really carried away
by his disgust with Massy, became very incisive
“Indeed if I am to
be frank with you his whole character does
not seem to me particularly estimable or trustworthy
. . .”
Captain Whalley, always straight,
seemed to grow an inch taller and broader, as if the
girth of his chest had suddenly expanded under his
beard.
“My dear sir, you don’t
think I came here to discuss a man with whom I am I
am h’m closely associated.”
A sort of solemn silence lasted for
a moment. He was not used to asking favors, but
the importance he attached to this affair had made
him willing to try. . . . Mr. Van Wyk, favorably
impressed, and suddenly mollified by a desire to laugh,
interrupted
“That’s all right if you
make it a personal matter; but you can do no less
than sit down and smoke a cigar with me.”
A slight pause, then Captain Whalley
stepped forward heavily. As to the regularity
of the service, for the future he made himself responsible
for it; and his name was Whalley perhaps
to a sailor (he was speaking to a sailor, was he not?)
not altogether unfamiliar. There was a lighthouse
now, on an island. Maybe Mr. Van Wyk himself .
. .
“Oh yes. Oh indeed.”
Mr. Van Wyk caught on at once. He indicated a
chair. How very interesting. For his own
part he had seen some service in the last Acheen War,
but had never been so far East. Whalley Island?
Of course. Now that was very interesting.
What changes his guest must have seen since.
“I can look further back even on
a whole half-century.”
Captain Whalley expanded a bit.
The flavor of a good cigar (it was a weakness) had
gone straight to his heart, also the civility of that
young man. There was something in that accidental
contact of which he had been starved in his years
of struggle.
The front wall retreating made a square
recess furnished like a room. A lamp with a milky
glass shade, suspended below the slope of the high
roof at the end of a slender brass chain, threw a bright
round of light upon a little table bearing an open
book and an ivory paper-knife. And, in the translucent
shadows beyond, other tables could be seen, a number
of easy-chairs of various shapes, with a great profusion
of skin rugs strewn on the teakwood planking all over
the veranda. The flowering creepers scented the
air. Their foliage clipped out between the uprights
made as if several frames of thick unstirring leaves
reflecting the lamplight in a green glow. Through
the opening at his elbow Captain Whalley could see
the gangway lantern of the Sofala burning dim by the
shore, the shadowy masses of the town beyond the open
lustrous darkness of the river, and, as if hung along
the straight edge of the projecting eaves, a narrow
black strip of the night sky full of stars resplendent.
The famous cigar in hand he had a moment of complacency.
“A trifle. Somebody must
lead the way. I just showed that the thing could
be done; but you men brought up to the use of steam
cannot conceive the vast importance of my bit of venturesomeness
to the Eastern trade of the time. Why, that new
route reduced the average time of a southern passage
by eleven days for more than half the year. Eleven
days! It’s on record. But the remarkable
thing speaking to a sailor I
should say was . . .”
He talked well, without egotism, professionally.
The powerful voice, produced without effort, filled
the bungalow even into the empty rooms with a deep
and limpid resonance, seemed to make a stillness outside;
and Mr. Van Wyk was surprised by the serene quality
of its tone, like the perfection of manly gentleness.
Nursing one small foot, in a silk sock and a patent
leather shoe, on his knee, he was immensely entertained.
It was as if nobody could talk like this now, and the
overshadowed eyes, the flowing white beard, the big
frame, the serenity, the whole temper of the man,
were an amazing survival from the prehistoric times
of the world coming up to him out of the sea.
Captain Whalley had been also the
pioneer of the early trade in the Gulf of Pe-tchi-li.
He even found occasion to mention that he had buried
his “dear wife” there six-and-twenty years
ago. Mr. Van Wyk, impassive, could not help speculating
in his mind swiftly as to the sort of woman that would
mate with such a man. Did they make an adventurous
and well-matched pair? No. Very possible
she had been small, frail, no doubt very feminine or
most likely commonplace with domestic instincts, utterly
insignificant. But Captain Whalley was no garrulous
bore, and shaking his head as if to dissipate the
momentary gloom that had settled on his handsome old
face, he alluded conversationally to Mr. Van Wyk’s
solitude.
Mr. Van Wyk affirmed that sometimes
he had more company than he wanted. He mentioned
smilingly some of the peculiarities of his intercourse
with “My Sultan.” He made his visits
in force. Those people damaged his grass plot
in front (it was not easy to obtain some approach to
a lawn in the tropics) and the other day had broken
down some rare bushes he had planted over there.
And Captain Whalley remembered immediately that, in
’forty-seven, the then Sultan, “this man’s
grandfather,” had been notorious as a great
protector of the piratical fleets of praus from farther
East. They had a safe refuge in the river at Batu
Beru. He financed more especially a Balinini
chief called Haji Daman. Captain Whalley, nodding
significantly his bushy white eyebrows, had very good
reason to know something of that. The world had
progressed since that time.
Mr. Van Wyk demurred with unexpected
acrimony. Progressed in what? he wanted to know.
Why, in knowledge of truth, in decency,
in justice, in order in honesty too, since
men harmed each other mostly from ignorance. It
was, Captain Whalley concluded quaintly, more pleasant
to live in.
Mr. Van Wyk whimsically would not
admit that Mr. Massy, for instance, was more pleasant
naturally than the Balinini pirates.
The river had not gained much by the
change. They were in their way every bit as honest.
Massy was less ferocious than Haji Daman no doubt,
but . . .
“And what about you, my good
sir?” Captain Whalley laughed a deep soft laugh.
“You are an improvement, surely.”
He continued in a vein of pleasantry.
A good cigar was better than a knock on the head the
sort of welcome he would have found on this river
forty or fifty years ago. Then leaning forward
slightly, he became earnestly serious. It seems
as if, outside their own sea-gypsy tribes, these rovers
had hated all mankind with an incomprehensible, bloodthirsty
hatred. Meantime their depredations had been stopped,
and what was the consequence? The new generation
was orderly, peaceable, settled in prosperous villages.
He could speak from personal knowledge. And even
the few survivors of that time old men now had
changed so much, that it would have been unkind to
remember against them that they had ever slit a throat
in their lives. He had one especially in his
mind’s eye: a dignified, venerable headman
of a certain large coast village about sixty miles
sou’west of Tampasuk. It did one’s
heart good to see him to hear that man
speak. He might have been a ferocious savage
once. What men wanted was to be checked by superior
intelligence, by superior knowledge, by superior force
too yes, by force held in trust from God
and sanctified by its use in accordance with His declared
will. Captain Whalley believed a disposition for
good existed in every man, even if the world were
not a very happy place as a whole. In the wisdom
of men he had not so much confidence. The disposition
had to be helped up pretty sharply sometimes, he admitted.
They might be silly, wrongheaded, unhappy; but naturally
evil no. There was at bottom a complete
harmlessness at least . . .
“Is there?” Mr. Van Wyk snapped acrimoniously.
Captain Whalley laughed at the interjection,
in the good humor of large, tolerating certitude.
He could look back at half a century, he pointed out.
The smoke oozed placidly through the white hairs hiding
his kindly lips.
“At all events,” he resumed
after a pause, “I am glad that they’ve
had no time to do you much harm as yet.”
This allusion to his comparative youthfulness
did not offend Mr. Van Wyk, who got up and wriggled
his shoulders with an enigmatic half-smile. They
walked out together amicably into the starry night
towards the river-side. Their footsteps resounded
unequally on the dark path. At the shore end
of the gangway the lantern, hung low to the handrail,
threw a vivid light on the white legs and the big
black feet of Mr. Massy waiting about anxiously.
From the waist upwards he remained shadowy, with a
row of buttons gleaming up to the vague outline of
his chin.
“You may thank Captain Whalley
for this,” Mr. Van Wyk said curtly to him before
turning away.
The lamps on the veranda flung three
long squares of light between the uprights far over
the grass. A bat flitted before his face like
a circling flake of velvety blackness. Along
the jasmine hedge the night air seemed heavy with
the fall of perfumed dew; flowerbeds bordered the
path; the clipped bushes uprose in dark rounded clumps
here and there before the house; the dense foliage
of creepers filtered the sheen of the lamplight within
in a soft glow all along the front; and everything
near and far stood still in a great immobility, in
a great sweetness.
Mr. Van Wyk (a few years before he
had had occasion to imagine himself treated more badly
than anybody alive had ever been by a woman) felt
for Captain Whalley’s optimistic views the disdain
of a man who had once been credulous himself.
His disgust with the world (the woman for a time had
filled it for him completely) had taken the form of
activity in retirement, because, though capable of
great depth of feeling, he was energetic and essentially
practical. But there was in that uncommon old
sailor, drifting on the outskirts of his busy solitude,
something that fascinated his skepticism. His
very simplicity (amusing enough) was like a delicate
refinement of an upright character. The striking
dignity of manner could be nothing else, in a man
reduced to such a humble position, but the expression
of something essentially noble in the character.
With all his trust in mankind he was no fool; the serenity
of his temper at the end of so many years, since it
could not obviously have been appeased by success,
wore an air of profound wisdom. Mr. Van Wyk was
amused at it sometimes. Even the very physical
traits of the old captain of the Sofala, his powerful
frame, his reposeful mien, his intelligent, handsome
face, the big limbs, the benign courtesy, the touch
of rugged severity in the shaggy eyebrows, made up
a seductive personality. Mr. Van Wyk disliked
littleness of every kind, but there was nothing small
about that man, and in the exemplary regularity of
many trips an intimacy had grown up between them, a
warm feeling at bottom under a kindly stateliness
of forms agreeable to his fastidiousness.
They kept their respective opinions
on all worldly matters. His other convictions
Captain Whalley never intruded. The difference
of their ages was like another bond between them.
Once, when twitted with the uncharitableness of his
youth, Mr. Van Wyk, running his eye over the vast
proportions of his interlocutor, retorted in friendly
banter
“Oh. You’ll come
to my way of thinking yet. You’ll have plenty
of time. Don’t call yourself old:
you look good for a round hundred.”
But he could not help his stinging
incisiveness, and though moderating it by an almost
affectionate smile, he added
“And by then you will probably
consent to die from sheer disgust.”
Captain Whalley, smiling too, shook
his head. “God forbid!”
He thought that perhaps on the whole
he deserved something better than to die in such sentiments.
The time of course would have to come, and he trusted
to his Maker to provide a manner of going out of which
he need not be ashamed. For the rest he hoped
he would live to a hundred if need be: other
men had been known; it would be no miracle. He
expected no miracles.
The pronounced, argumentative tone
caused Mr. Van Wyk to raise his head and look at him
steadily. Captain Whalley was gazing fixedly with
a rapt expression, as though he had seen his Creator’s
favorable decree written in mysterious characters
on the wall. He kept perfectly motionless for
a few seconds, then got his vast bulk on to his feet
so impetuously that Mr. Van Wyk was startled.
He struck first a heavy blow on his
inflated chest: and, throwing out horizontally
a big arm that remained steady, extended in the air
like the limb of a tree on a windless day
“Not a pain or an ache there.
Can you see this shake in the least?”
His voice was low, in an awing, confident
contrast with the headlong emphasis of his movements.
He sat down abruptly.
“This isn’t to boast of
it, you know. I am nothing,” he said in
his effortless strong voice, that seemed to come out
as naturally as a river flows. He picked up the
stump of the cigar he had laid aside, and added peacefully,
with a slight nod, “As it happens, my life is
necessary; it isn’t my own, it isn’t God
knows.”
He did not say much for the rest of
the evening, but several times Mr. Van Wyk detected
a faint smile of assurance flitting under the heavy
mustache.
Later on Captain Whalley would now
and then consent to dine “at the house.”
He could even be induced to drink a glass of wine.
“Don’t think I am afraid of it, my good
sir,” he explained. “There was a very
good reason why I should give it up.”
On another occasion, leaning back
at ease, he remarked, “You have treated me most most
humanely, my dear Mr. Van Wyk, from the very first.”
“You’ll admit there was
some merit,” Mr. Van Wyk hinted slyly. “An
associate of that excellent Massy. . . . Well,
well, my dear captain, I won’t say a word against
him.”
“It would be no use your saying
anything against him,” Captain Whalley affirmed
a little moodily. “As I’ve told you
before, my life my work, is necessary,
not for myself alone. I can’t choose”
. . . He paused, turned the glass before him
right round. . . . “I have an only child a
daughter.”
The ample downward sweep of his arm
over the table seemed to suggest a small girl at a
vast distance. “I hope to see her once more
before I die. Meantime it’s enough to know
that she has me sound and solid, thank God. You
can’t understand how one feels. Bone of
my bone, flesh of my flesh; the very image of my poor
wife. Well, she . . .”
Again he paused, then pronounced stoically
the words, “She has a hard struggle.”
And his head fell on his breast, his
eyebrows remained knitted, as by an effort of meditation.
But generally his mind seemed steeped in the serenity
of boundless trust in a higher power. Mr. Van
Wyk wondered sometimes how much of it was due to the
splendid vitality of the man, to the bodily vigor
which seems to impart something of its force to the
soul. But he had learned to like him very much.