The Beach of Dreams: A Romance

  PART VI

  CHAPTER XXXV

  MARSEILLES

  On board the _Carcassonne_ the girl had broken down as though all theexhaustion she had defied had waited for that moment to fall upon her.

  But the energy that had held her above defeat and had given her hopewhen things seemed hopeless was there, undestroyed, and when the turningpoint came she rallied swiftly. She came on deck one morning whereBathurst lay a point invisible beyond the blue sea to starboard andsitting in a deck chair made friends with the other passengers.

  It seemed to her almost impossible that the same world should holdKerguelen and at the same time this paradise of azure blue sky and tepidwind.

  Raft had told her story before reaching Cape Town and the loss of the_Gaston de Paris_ was now old news in Europe, and the fact that of allthe _Gaston's_ crowd only the beautiful Cleo de Bromsart had been saved.

  Raft had joined the crew of the _Carcassonne_, sleeping in the foc's'le,where there were several English speaking sailors, and as much out ofhis element as a man used only to masts and spars can be on asteamboat. However, he swabbed decks and did odd jobs without a grumbleand he was swabbing the deck on the morning she came up; he dropped thebusiness for a moment to take the two hands she held out to him.

  All through that time below she had been wanting Raft and his big handto pull her through. Satisfied, knowing he was on board and all right,but wanting him all the same.

  On the old barque once or twice had come the stray thought of how Raft'sfigure would accommodate itself against the background of the world sheknew.

  Well, here was the world she knew, or part of it; a deck, clean as aball-room floor and as spacious, passengers in deck chairs, readingnovels, and a manicured French surgeon ready to talk art or philosophyto her, polished, but rather narrow of shoulder.

  And against all that stood Raft, rough and in the clothes he had worn onthe beach, for there was not a man on board whose clothes would havefitted him comfortably.

  Well, he was not incongruous with this background, simply because hedestroyed it. In a ball-room it would have been the same. He carriedwith him his background of high black cliffs and miles of beach andflying gulls and breaking sea, and in a flash came to her the fact thathe dwarfed and belittled the other people around just as nature dwarfsand belittles art.

  She held both his hands for a moment, managing to pat them, somehow, asshe held them, asking him what on earth he was doing with the swab hehad just dropped. She had an idea that the ship people had put him towork, but before the idea had risen to indignation heat he reassuredher.

  "I must be doing," said Raft. "Not that there's much to be at in thisold kettle. You've got your legs back, well, that's good. I had it outwith that doctor chap and he told me how you were going from day to day,but I've been wanting the sight of you."

  He put his hand on her shoulder as he might on a pal's, then he crossedhis arms. "And well you look," said he.

  "Doctor Petit," said the girl, speaking in French, "this is Raft, thebravest and best man in the world as you will know when I tell you all.Shake hands with him."

  The doctor shook hands.

  The passengers, and the first officer, across the bridge canvas, watchedall this with curiosity. They knew something but they did not know all.They did that night when she had told them as best she could.

  After that she met him often on deck, giving him a word or stopping fora chat, and it was now that she began to think and make plans as to thefuture.

  Raft had become part of herself, they were bound together as perhaps notwo such contrary beings had ever been bound. The idea of Love, the ideaof Marriage, all conventional ideas as between grown-ups of opposite sexwere as absurd in relation to them as they would have been in relationto two children who had grown attached one to the other.

  As regarded one another they were in fact two children, for Raft hadnever been anything but a child and Kerguelen and Raft combined hadawakened the primitive and the child in her, giving her the power ofaffection that makes a little child throw its arm round the neck of adog.

  But the world could not understand that, and Raft to the world was arough sailor man, and she, to the world, was Cleo de Bromsart.

  She would lie awake at night listening to the pounding of the screws andthinking of this--contrasting the figure of Raft with the world she knewand the world she knew with the figure of Raft.

  Madame de Brie, her nearest relation, would pass before her mind's eyewith her gold eye glasses, and the Comtesse de Mirandole and a host ofothers; and the queer thing was that the vaguest feeling of antagonismtinged her mind towards these estimable people. They seemed forgeries,impudent forgeries of the handwriting that had first written the wordMan on the earth. She had seen the original writing.

  She felt also towards them the antagonism of the child to the grown up,and of the person who can't explain to the person who stands waitingfor an explanation.

  Then she would laugh quietly to herself, for no woman, surely, was everin a similar position. Then, casting her mind back, she would sometimeschoke a little with tears in her throat, tears for herself, dying ofloneliness, and for the hand that had brought her back from death.

  They passed the entrance of the straits and Gibraltar, and one brightblue winter's morning they entered the harbour of Marseilles, withMarseilles before them blazing in the sun and the bugles of Fort St.Jean answering the crying of the gulls and the drums of Fort St.Nicholas.

  Cleo was dressed in the same clothes she had worn on her escape from the_Gaston de Paris_. She had borrowed a hat from one of the ladies onboard and stockings and other things from another lady; but she stillwore round her waist the leather belt with the empty knife sheath.

  As she stood on deck, now, waiting whilst the _Carcassonne_ berthed atthe wharf alongside a great Messagerie steamer, she carried over her armthe oilskin coat and, by its elastic band, the sou'wester. They were oldfriends.

  Then when the hawsers had been passed and the gang plank was being runout she saw amongst the crowd on the wharf Monsieur de Brie and Madamede Brie, also a number of well-dressed people, Parisians some of them.

  Then she was being embraced by Madame de Brie and trying at the sametime to acknowledge the salute of Monsieur Bonvalot, her lawyer and manof affairs, a stout pale man with long Dundreary whiskers who had comefrom Paris to receive her.

  All this crowd had not come purely on account of Cleo. Beside the peopleinterested in her there were several friends and relations of PrinceSelm, also his lawyer.

  "I have taken rooms at the Hotel Noailles," said Madame de Brie, "and Ihave brought you some clothes. Oh, my poor child, what you must havesuffered. But why did the people on board not lend you some betterthings?"

  "Oh, my clothes are all right," said Cleo, "people wanted to lend methings, but I am quite comfortable in these."

  She was looking about in search of Raft who was nowhere to be seen.

  Then she was seized by the rest, by the Comtesse de Mirandole, by Madamede Florey, and several others who had stopped at Marseilles--on theirway to Monte Carlo--to meet the _Carcassonne_ and greet the girl who hadalone survived the wreck of the _Gaston de Paris_, some of these peopleknew her only slightly, but once a person becomes famous or notorious itis astonishing how slight acquaintanceship blossoms into fullfriendship.

  Several photographers from the illustrated papers were amongst the crowdand a Pathe operator was on the quay.

  Cleo was already recovering that sixth sense, which one might call thesocial sense, and, as she talked almost to half a dozen people at once,answering questions and receiving felicitations, this sixth sense toldher quite plainly that she was being criticised by her felicitators,that in their eyes she was a guy. That the old velour hat she hadborrowed, the hair that shewed beneath it, her face, which had stillupon it a reflection of Kerguelen, her old skirt and coat--all thesethings, singly and taken together, were exciting in the minds of theseParisians a pity which was not unrelated to hum
our. She did not mind,she was looking for Raft.

  It seemed to her that all these people, excellent in their way, had atinge of unreality about them. On the voyage she had sometimes vaguelydreaded that Raft might be pushed away from her, despite herself, by thecontrast between him and her own order. It had come to her that thedifference between the beach of Kerguelen and the Avenue Malakoff mighttake her like a giant of mind and divorce her from her allegiance tohim. That the good companion, the true friend, the person she lovedmight alter completely under the touch of social alchemy.

  Raft was impossible. She knew that. More impossible even than a seaelephant from that far beach where life was real and Paris a dream.Impossible in Paris where life was false and the far beach a dream.

  Raft at a dinner party! Raft at one of those elegant afternoons wherethe talk would run on the politics of the moment, on symbolism, onBergson, or Iturrino or the works of Othon Friesz--! He could not be hercompanion in that place, in that atmosphere, within leagues of thosepeople.

  She was not thinking that now. "These people" around her seemedstrangers; they had in fact always been strangers, strangers who hadkissed her, conversed with her, dined with her, but strangers; the one,true, living, warm friend, the only one she had ever known, was Raft. Itwas the penguins and sea-bulls over again, the polite, bowing,absolutely correct penguins, the warm lumping, living sea-bulls.

  Her heart, chilled by stephanotis-scented kisses, words of felicitationand the fat smiles of men in tall hats and tight-buttoned overcoats,chilled by Monsieur de Brie's gold rimmed eye glasses, chilled by asocial state that had never warmed her, cried out for Raft. Kerguelenand that beach, where, even now, the sea-bulls might be lingering,seemed a warm and blissful vision, real, alive, a place where life meantliving.

  Ah, here he came. He had been helping to fix a hawser at the bows. Sheran towards him.

  "Ah, there you are. Now, you are coming with me. I have told the captainand he said this morning it would be all right as you were not signedon."

  "Right," said Raft, "but where are you going?"

  "To an hotel."

  He looked about him. He saw the crowd on deck but he did not connect itwith her. He was out of his reckoning. He had never thought of whatwould happen in port as regarded her, or where he would go or what hewould do; making plans was not in his way. In the ordinary course ofthings he would have gone to the British consulate and the ShipwreckedMariners' people would have returned him, carriage paid, to England. Hehad always been in the hands of others and of chance.

  She--he had always called her She, and here, be it said, he did not knowher name, never having asked--She had now taken him into her hands andhe felt vaguely that she was a power on this new beach where he wasstranded.

  Had you told him that she was a woman of society and very wealthy hisidea of her power would not have been increased; he knew nothing ofwealth or society. She was She in her old dress that he knew so well,and still carrying the sou'wester he had fetched from the cave where shehad done that chap in, and as for any idea of being under an obligationto her for food or housing he had none. He would have done the same forher.

  Yet, to tell the truth, the docks, with no money in his pocket and thecold prospect of brilliant Marseilles, had made him feel adrift like alost child. Civilisation had affected him as it had affected her, sothat something, now, made him put his hand on her shoulder to get thetouch of her, and she, knowing that every eye in all that party behindher was upon them, took the great hand and held it and patted it.

  It was as well to take her stand at once, though she was scarcelybothering about that. Then, still holding his hand, she came along thatwhite deck towards the gang-plank. The officers knew and, as they badeher good-bye, they nodded to Raft, but the Parisians knew nothing butthat Cleo had gone clearly mad--and that that awful sailor had placedhis hand on her shoulder, familiarly!

  There were several automobiles waiting by the wharf and Madame de Brie,half-dumb and slightly agitated, having pointed out the car she hadreserved for Cleo, the girl introduced Raft.

  "This is Raft who saved my life," said Cleo.

  Then she took Raft by the arm and pushed him into the seat beside thechauffeur; having done that, she got into the car, following Madame deBrie. The Comtesse de Mirandole got in, also, followed by Monsieur deBrie and his gold eye glasses.

  The mistral was blowing so that the windows of the car had to be keptclosed.

  Used to fresh air, the girl nearly choked at first with the stuffinessof the car. The olfactory nerve is really a prolongation of the brain,as though the brain, distrusting the other senses, had pushed out atrustworthy scout to see what the world and its contents were reallylike. The sense of smell never lies; it is of all senses the truest andit handed along without comment to the brain of Cleo the faint perfumeof the stephanotis affected by Madame de Brie and of the Yoya-yoyaaffected by the Comtesse de Mirandole, also traces from the varnish andupholstery of the car.

  "Who, my dear, is that man," asked Madame de Brie. She had almost said"that dreadful man" but she had checked herself.

  "Man--Oh, that is Raft. He saved my life."

  "How delightful," said the Countess, "and he seems quite a character."

  "Quite," said Madame de Brie half-heartedly, "but my dear Cleo, you willexcuse an old woman for suggesting it, your generosity must be on itsguard, he placed his hand on your shoulder, quite familiarly it seemedto me."

  "Well," said the choking Cleo, "why should he not? I have slept with myhead on his chest on a rock and I have stabbed a man who was trying tokill him. Between us we fought a whole crowd of Chinamen. He had aharpoon and I had a knife and we beat them and took their ship. Do youmind having the window a wee bit open? I feel rather faint."

  "That's better," said she to the speechless other ones, "I'm so used tofresh air that I can't bear to be closed in."

  "But my dear Cleo," suddenly broke out the old lady, "what do you intendto do with him?"

  "Do with him? Nothing. He's my friend, that's all. Ah, here we are."

  The car had drawn up in the courtyard of the Hotel.