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_ 'Six months afterwards my friend (he was a cynical, more than
middle-aged bachelor, with a reputation for eccentricity, and owned
a rice-mill) wrote to me, and judging, from the warmth of my
recommendation, that I would like to hear, enlarged a little upon
Jim's perfections. These were apparently of a quiet and effective
sort. "Not having been able so far to find more in my heart than a
resigned toleration for any individual of my kind, I have lived till
now alone in a house that even in this steaming climate could be
considered as too big for one man. I have had him to live with me
for some time past. It seems I haven't made a mistake." It seemed
to me on reading this letter that my friend had found in his heart
more than tolerance for Jim--that there were the beginnings of
active liking. Of course he stated his grounds in a characteristic
way. For one thing, Jim kept his freshness in the climate. Had he
been a girl--my friend wrote--one could have said he was blooming--
blooming modestly--like a violet, not like some of these blatant
tropical flowers. He had been in the house for six weeks, and
had not as yet attempted to slap him on the back, or address
him as "old boy," or try to make him feel a superannuated fossil.
He had nothing of the exasperating young man's chatter. He was
good-tempered, had not much to say for himself, was not clever by
any means, thank goodness--wrote my friend. It appeared, however,
that Jim was clever enough to be quietly appreciative of his wit,
while, on the other hand, he amused him by his naiveness. "The
dew is yet on him, and since I had the bright idea of giving
him a room in the house and having him at meals I feel less withered
myself. The other day he took it into his head to cross the room
with no other purpose but to open a door for me; and I felt more in
touch with mankind than I had been for years. Ridiculous, isn't it?
Of course I guess there is something--some awful little scrape--
which you know all about--but if I am sure that it is terribly
heinous, I fancy one could manage to forgive it. For my part, I
declare I am unable to imagine him guilty of anything much worse
than robbing an orchard. Is it much worse? Perhaps you ought to
have told me; but it is such a long time since we both turned saints
that you may have forgotten we, too, had sinned in our time? It may
be that some day I shall have to ask you, and then I shall expect to
be told. I don't care to question him myself till I have some idea
what it is. Moreover, it's too soon as yet. Let him open the door a
few times more for me. . . ." Thus my friend. I was trebly pleased--
at Jim's shaping so well, at the tone of the letter, at my own
cleverness. Evidently I had known what I was doing. I had read characters
aright, and so on. And what if something unexpected and wonderful
were to come of it? That evening, reposing in a deck-chair under
the shade of my own poop awning (it was in Hong-Kong harbour),
I laid on Jim's behalf the first stone of a castle in Spain.
'I made a trip to the northward, and when I returned I found
another letter from my friend waiting for me. It was the first
envelope I tore open. "There are no spoons missing, as far as I know,"
ran the first line; "I haven't been interested enough to inquire. He
is gone, leaving on the breakfast-table a formal little note of apology,
which is either silly or heartless. Probably both--and it's all one to
me. Allow me to say, lest you should have some more mysterious
young men in reserve, that I have shut up shop, definitely and for
ever. This is the last eccentricity I shall be guilty of. Do not imagine
for a moment that I care a hang; but he is very much regretted at
tennis-parties, and for my own sake I've told a plausible lie at the
club. . . ." I flung the letter aside and started looking through the
batch on my table, till I came upon Jim's handwriting. Would you
believe it? One chance in a hundred! But it is always that hundredth
chance! That little second engineer of the Patna had turned up in
a more or less destitute state, and got a temporary job of looking
after the machinery of the mill. "I couldn't stand the familiarity of
the little beast," Jim wrote from a seaport seven hundred miles
south of the place where he should have been in clover. "I am now
for the time with Egstrom & Blake, ship-chandlers, as their--well--
runner, to call the thing by its right name. For reference I gave
them your name, which they know of course, and if you could write
a word in my favour it would be a permanent employment." I was
utterly crushed under the ruins of my castle, but of course I wrote
as desired. Before the end of the year my new charter took me that
way, and I had an opportunity of seeing him.
'He was still with Egstrom & Blake, and we met in what they
called "our parlour" opening out of the store. He had that moment
come in from boarding a ship, and confronted me head down, ready
for a tussle. "What have you got to say for yourself?" I began as
soon as we had shaken hands. "What I wrote you--nothing more,"
he said stubbornly. "Did the fellow blab--or what?" I asked. He
looked up at me with a troubled smile. "Oh, no! He didn't. He made
it a kind of confidential business between us. He was most damnably
mysterious whenever I came over to the mill; he would wink at me
in a respectful manner--as much as to say 'We know what we
know.' Infernally fawning and familiar--and that sort of thing . . ."
He threw himself into a chair and stared down his legs. "One day
we happened to be alone and the fellow had the cheek to say, 'Well,
Mr. James'--I was called Mr. James there as if I had been the son--
'here we are together once more. This is better than the old ship--
ain't it?' . . . Wasn't it appalling, eh? I looked at him, and he put
on a knowing air. 'Don't you be uneasy, sir,' he says. 'I know a
gentleman when I see one, and I know how a gentleman feels. I
hope, though, you will be keeping me on this job. I had a hard time
of it too, along of that rotten old Patna racket.' Jove! It was awful.
I don't know what I should have said or done if I had not just then
heard Mr. Denver calling me in the passage. It was tiffin-time, and
we walked together across the yard and through the garden to the
bungalow. He began to chaff me in his kindly way . . . I believe he
liked me . . ."
'Jim was silent for a while.
' "I know he liked me. That's what made it so hard. Such a
splendid man! . . . That morning he slipped his hand under my
arm. . . . He, too, was familiar with me." He burst into a short
laugh, and dropped his chin on his breast. "Pah! When I remembered
how that mean little beast had been talking to me," he began suddenly
in a vibrating voice, "I couldn't bear to think of myself . . . I
suppose you know . . ." I nodded. . . . "More like a father," he cried;
his voice sank. "I would have had to tell him. I couldn't let it go
on--could I?" "Well?" I murmured, after waiting a while. "I preferred
to go," he said slowly; "this thing must be buried."
'We could hear in the shop Blake upbraiding Egstrom in an abusive,
strained voice. They had been associated for many years, and every
day from the moment the doors were opened to the last minute
before closing, Blake, a little man with sleek, jetty hair and
unhappy, beady eyes, could be heard rowing his partner incessantly
with a sort of scathing and plaintive fury. The sound of that
everlasting scolding was part of the place like the other fixtures;
even strangers would very soon come to disregard it completely unless
it be perhaps to mutter "Nuisance," or to get up suddenly and shut
the door of the "parlour." Egstrom himself, a raw-boned, heavy
Scandinavian, with a busy manner and immense blonde whiskers,
went on directing his people, checking parcels, making out bills
or writing letters at a stand-up desk in the shop, and comported
himself in that clatter exactly as though he had been stone-deaf.
Now and again he would emit a bothered perfunctory "Sssh," which
neither produced nor was expected to produce the slightest effect.
"They are very decent to me here," said Jim. "Blake's a little cad,
but Egstrom's all right." He stood up quickly, and walking with
measured steps to a tripod telescope standing in the window and
pointed at the roadstead, he applied his eye to it. "There's that ship
which has been becalmed outside all the morning has got a breeze
now and is coming in," he remarked patiently; "I must go and
board." We shook hands in silence, and he turned to go. "Jim!" I
cried. He looked round with his hand on the lock. "You--you have
thrown away something like a fortune." He came back to me all the
way from the door. "Such a splendid old chap," he said. "How
could I? How could I?" His lips twitched. "Here it does not matter."
"Oh! you--you--" I began, and had to cast about for a suitable
word, but before I became aware that there was no name that would
just do, he was gone. I heard outside Egstrom's deep gentle voice
saying cheerily, "That's the Sarah W. Granger, Jimmy. You must
manage to be first aboard"; and directly Blake struck in, screaming
after the manner of an outraged cockatoo, "Tell the captain we've
got some of his mail here. That'll fetch him. D'ye hear, Mister
What's-your-name?" And there was Jim answering Egstrom with
something boyish in his tone. "All right. I'll make a race of it." He
seemed to take refuge in the boat-sailing part of that sorry business.
'I did not see him again that trip, but on my next (I had a six
months' charter) I went up to the store. Ten yards away from the
door Blake's scolding met my ears, and when I came in he gave
me a glance of utter wretchedness; Egstrom, all smiles, advanced,
extending a large bony hand. "Glad to see you, captain. . . .
Sssh. . . . Been thinking you were about due back here. What did
you say, sir? . . . Sssh. . . . Oh! him! He has left us. Come into the
parlour." . . . After the slam of the door Blake's strained voice
became faint, as the voice of one scolding desperately in a
wilderness. . . . "Put us to a great inconvenience, too. Used us badly--I
must say . . ." "Where's he gone to? Do you know?" I asked. "No.
It's no use asking either," said Egstrom, standing bewhiskered and
obliging before me with his arms hanging down his sides clumsily,
and a thin silver watch-chain looped very low on a rucked-up blue
serge waistcoat. "A man like that don't go anywhere in particular."
I was too concerned at the news to ask for the explanation of that
pronouncement, and he went on. "He left--let's see--the very day
a steamer with returning pilgrims from the Red Sea put in here with
two blades of her propeller gone. Three weeks ago now." "Wasn't
there something said about the Patna case?" I asked, fearing the
worst. He gave a start, and looked at me as if I had been a sorcerer.
"Why, yes! How do you know? Some of them were talking about
it here. There was a captain or two, the manager of Vanlo's
engineering shop at the harbour, two or three others, and myself. Jim
was in here too, having a sandwich and a glass of beer; when we are
busy--you see, captain--there's no time for a proper tiffin. He was
standing by this table eating sandwiches, and the rest of us were
round the telescope watching that steamer come in; and by-and-by
Vanlo's manager began to talk about the chief of the Patna; he had
done some repairs for him once, and from that he went on to tell
us what an old ruin she was, and the money that had been made
out of her. He came to mention her last voyage, and then we all
struck in. Some said one thing and some another--not'much--what
you or any other man might say; and there was some laughing.
Captain O'Brien of the Sarah W. Granger, a large, noisy old man
with a stick--he was sitting listening to us in this arm-chair here--
he let drive suddenly with his stick at the floor, and roars out,
'Skunks!' . . . Made us all jump. Vanlo's manager winks at us and
asks, 'What's the matter, Captain O'Brien?' 'Matter! matter!' the
old man began to shout; 'what are you Injuns laughing at? It's no
laughing matter. It's a disgrace to human natur'--that's what it is.
I would despise being seen in the same room with one of those men.
Yes, sir!' He seemed to catch my eye like, and I had to speak out
of civility. 'Skunks!' says I, 'of course, Captain O'Brien, and I
wouldn't care to have them here myself, so you're quite safe in this
room, Captain O'Brien. Have a little something cool to drink.'
'Dam' your drink, Egstrom,' says he, with a twinkle in his eye;
'when I want a drink I will shout for it. I am going to quit. It stinks
here now.' At this all the others burst out laughing, and out they
go after the old man. And then, sir, that blasted Jim he puts down
the sandwich he had in his hand and walks round the table to me;
there was his glass of beer poured out quite full. 'I am off,' he
says--just like this. 'It isn't half-past one yet,' says I; 'you
might snatch a smoke first.' I thought he meant it was time for him
to go down to his work. When I understood what he was up to, my arms
fell--so! Can't get a man like that every day, you know, sir; a regular
devil for sailing a boat; ready to go out miles to sea to meet ships
in any sort of weather. More than once a captain would come in here
full of it, and the first thing he would say would be, 'That's a
reckless sort of a lunatic you've got for water-clerk, Egstrom. I was
feeling my way in at daylight under short canvas when there comes
flying out of the mist right under my forefoot a boat half under
water, sprays going over the mast-head, two frightened niggers on
the bottom boards, a yelling fiend at the tiller. Hey! hey! Ship
ahoy! ahoy! Captain! Hey! hey! Egstrom & Blake's man first to speak
to you! Hey! hey! Egstrom & Blake! Hallo! hey! whoop! Kick the
niggers--out reefs--a squall on at the time--shoots ahead whooping
and yelling to me to make sail and he would give me a lead in--more
like a demon than a man. Never saw a boat handled like that in all
my life. Couldn't have been drunk--was he? Such a quiet, soft-spoken
chap too--blush like a girl when he came on board. . . .' I tell
you, Captain Marlow, nobody had a chance against us with a strange
ship when Jim was out. The other ship-chandlers just kept their old
customers, and . . ."
'Egstrom appeared overcome with emotion.
' "Why, sir--it seemed as though he wouldn't mind going a
hundred miles out to sea in an old shoe to nab a ship for the firm.
If the business had been his own and all to make yet, he couldn't
have done more in that way. And now . . . all at once . . . like this!
Thinks I to myself: 'Oho! a rise in the screw--that's the trouble--
is it?' 'All right,' says I, 'no need of all that fuss with me, Jimmy.
Just mention your figure. Anything in reason.' He looks at me as if
he wanted to swallow something that stuck in his throat. 'I can't
stop with you.' 'What's that blooming joke?' I asks. He shakes his
head, and I could see in his eye he was as good as gone already, sir.
So I turned to him and slanged him till all was blue. 'What is it
you're running away from?' I asks. 'Who has been getting at you?
What scared you? You haven't as much sense as a rat; they don't
clear out from a good ship. Where do you expect to get a better
berth?--you this and you that.' I made him look sick, I can tell
you. 'This business ain't going to sink,' says I. He gave a big jump.
'Good-bye,' he says, nodding at me like a lord; 'you ain't half a bad
chap, Egstrom. I give you my word that if you knew my reasons
you wouldn't care to keep me.' 'That's the biggest lie you ever told
in your life,' says I; 'I know my own mind.' He made me so mad
that I had to laugh. 'Can't you really stop long enough to drink this
glass of beer here, you funny beggar, you?' I don't know what came
over him; he didn't seem able to find the door; something comical,
I can tell you, captain. I drank the beer myself. 'Well, if you're in
such a hurry, here's luck to you in your own drink,' says I; 'only,
you mark my words, if you keep up this game you'll very soon find
that the earth ain't big enough to hold you--that's all.' He gave me
one black look, and out he rushed with a face fit to scare little
children."
'Egstrom snorted bitterly, and combed one auburn whisker with
knotty fingers. "Haven't been able to get a man that was any good
since. It's nothing but worry, worry, worry in business. And where
might you have come across him, captain, if it's fair to ask?"
' "He was the mate of the Patna that voyage," I said, feeling that
I owed some explanation. For a time Egstrom remained very still,
with his fingers plunged in the hair at the side of his face, and then
exploded. "And who the devil cares about that?" "I daresay no
one," I began . . . "And what the devil is he--anyhow--for to go
on like this?" He stuffed suddenly his left whisker into his mouth
and stood amazed. "Jee!" he exclaimed, "I told him the earth
wouldn't be big enough to hold his caper." ' _
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