CHAPTER XXXVII
A NEW HOME
Raft was still in the room where she had left him. As they passedthrough the hall where a number of people were seated about in basketchairs she felt every eye fixed upon her and her companion. Then out inthe sunlit Cannabier Prolongue she drew a deep breath just as a persondraws a deep breath after a dive.
She also felt free.
She had always been free in theory; possessed of her own money she couldhave done absolutely as she liked, in theory. In practice she had alwaysbeen a slave. The slave of a thousand and one things and circumstances,things and circumstances many of them troublesome, many of themwearisome, all of them not to be denied.
"Mademoiselle, your bath is ready."
"Mademoiselle, the first gong has sounded."
"What dress will Mademoiselle wear this afternoon?"
Oh, the day, the day with its hundred phases and divisions, the dressesthat went with each phase, the lukewarm emotions and interests andboredom and suppressed hatreds, this thing called the day, which she hadfirst reviewed in the open boat after the wreck of the _Gaston deParis_ terrified to find it torn from her--this thing had been returnedto her that morning in all its futility. It seemed to her, as she castit away, a horrible gaud, a thing made of tinsel, yet a thing that coulddestroy the soul and blind the eyes and numb the heart.
She had never been free, she had always been the veriest slave, theslave of things, of people, of convenances, and of circumstances.
Doctor Epinard had spoken something of the truth.
Man may not be an automaton worked by environment, all the same he isthe slave of environment, and never such a slave as when his environmentis that of high Civilisation.
For there the pure motives of the mind have ever to be regulated andfalsified, the heart crushed, the face veiled.
To break with all that falsity means shipwreck.
"Which way does the sea lie?" asked the girl. Raft turned to the left asthough the smell of the sea were leading him.
"I'm glad to be out of there," said he, "I was near smothered in thatplace."
"So was I," said she, "did that man bring you your food all right?"
"Another chap brought it," said Raft, "a Dutchman."
She laughed.
"Do you know what I was thinking?" said she.
"I was thinking of the time you brought me food when I was nearly dying.You didn't tell a Dutchman to bring it. I'd have brought you your foodmyself and we would have had it together only I had to talk to thosepeople. Well, I've got rid of them. How would you like to live always ina place like that hotel?"
Raft mentally reviewed the room done in blue silk, Fritz, and the restof it.
"I'd rather be out in the open," said Raft. "Not that I have anything tosay against it--but I'd rather be out in the open."
They walked along.
Companionship with Raft had for her one delightful thing about it, itwas companionship without restraint. In a way it was like companionshipwith a dog, or a child. Like two old sailors they would hang silent,sometimes, for a long time, not bothering to speak, content with beingtogether.
She had never imagined the possibility of a man and a woman ofabsolutely different social position in such a relationship, never drawnthe ghost of such an idea from all the books she had read, all the playsshe had seen. Never could she have imagined a common sailor man strikingArt for her to pieces, as he had struck the story of Anatole France, andcreating above a world he had taught her to despise, a nest for her mindrough as himself, but in air pure and living.
Raft, the common man, had made her social world seem vulgar as well assmall, chill as well as vulgar.
She was thinking just now as she walked beside him how when she had toldhim that the hotel manager would bring him something to eat, he hadsaid, "but you will want something to eat yourself." That was the sortof thing constantly recurring in all sorts of ways that had brought herto know him truly, occurring in little ways as well as in that great andheroic moment when he had told her to destroy herself with the knife ifhe were killed.
As they passed along the Cannabier they saw a drunken sailor reelingalong towards them through the crowd, and Raft drew her by the arm offthe sidewalk to avoid him.
The sight in other times would have made him laugh, or more likely itwould have been scarcely noticed, but She, in some manner or another,made drink discreditable, and the sight of it to be avoided. It wouldhave been the same, most likely, had he been taking a child for a walk.Down near the docks they passed a birdshop before which Raft cast anchoralmost forgetful of his companion. There were all sorts of birds here,those tiny birds from the African coast one sees in the shops of theRiviera, canaries and parrots.
There was one parrot, enormous and coloured like a tropical sunset,drowsy-eyed and insolent looking. When he saw the sailor man he seemedto rouse up. He looked at Raft and Raft at him.
"I'd like that chap," said Raft, "he beats the lot of them."
"And you shall have him," said she.
He laughed.
"Much good he'd be to a chap like me. Where'd I keep him?"
Her eyes softened as she looked at the bird and from the bird to theman. Where, indeed, could he keep him? He who had no home--nothing. Thenit was that Money seemed to her what it really is, a god, beautiful andbenign.
It had often seemed to her as a demon, but Raft, who unconsciously hadcast ridicule on her world, was now, unconsciously, shewing her thegreat truth she had never seen before, the truth that Money is morebeautiful than Apollo, more etherial than Psyche, more powerful thanJove.
"You will soon have somewhere to keep him," said she, "we will get himto-morrow. Come on. I want now to find the place where the fishing boatsput in. I saw it the last time I was here in Marseilles, years ago, butI am not sure of the direction."
She asked a man who was passing and he pointed the way; it was a longdistance, but it seemed short, so full was her mind with the plan shehad formulated before leaving the hotel. She talked as she went. Talkedjust as though they were on the Kerguelen beach hunting for a cave.
"We will find a place to put the parrot. I want a great big boat, not ayacht. I've had enough of those. I want a good sea boat and thefisher-boats I have seen here seemed to me good, and the men are theright sort of men. I am going to buy one--or hire one--well, we shallsee. I want you to help to get it ready for us. How good the smell ofthis place is," she paused to sniff the tar-sea scents brought by theafternoon wind. It was like the smell of Freedom.
Then they came on to the fisher wharf and right into the arms of CaptainJean Bontemps.
Captain Jean was about five feet in height and he seemed five feet inthickness. He was propped against a bollard and he was in hisshore-going clothes. The girl's eye told her at once that here was auseful man, a man of authority and knowledge. She approached him, and ashe took his pipe from his mouth and removed his cap, she opened herbusiness without parley or hesitation.
She wanted to buy or hire a fishing boat, price no object.
He did not understand her at first. He seemed suffering from some formof deafness. Then when she repeated the statement he shewed no surprise.
He himself was a fishing boat owner, Captain Bontemps of the_Arlesienne_, and he was quite willing to sell his boat, for a sum--twothousand pounds he asked, and she did not know that he was speaking injest, just as one might speak to a child.
"If your boat suits me, I will pay what you ask," said she, "let me seeit."
Then it came upon Captain Jean that he was either talking to a lunaticor some wealthy woman with a craze. His sails were taken aback and hewas left wallowing in a heavy ground sea of the mind with a smell ofspice islands tinging the air.
_La Belle Arlesienne_, his old boat, was not worth a thousand pounds.Under the hammer heaven knows what she would have fetched, but she washis wife, or the only female thing that stood in that relationship tohim. He tapped the dottle out of his pipe, then he took a pouch from hispocke
t and began to refill and the girl, seeing his condition, drew himaside, asking Raft to wait for her.
They went to another bollard and there, the mariner anchoring himself,she began to talk. She introduced herself. He knew all about the _Gastonde Paris_ and Mademoiselle de Bromsart. He put his pipe in his pocket,finding himself in such famous company. She went on. In ten minutes shetold him her whole story, told him just what Raft was and just how theystood related, and just how he had been treated in the hotel.
"It's as though they had turned out my father or my brother," said she,"we two who have fought and faced everything together have grown intocompanions. Friends who cannot be parted, Captain Bontemps. If he were awoman or I a man it would be easier. As it is things are difficult.Well, I do not care. I will do exactly as I like. I feel you will be myfriend, too; you understand me. And I want you to look after himto-night, for in the whole of Marseilles I do not know where he could gounless to some wretched Sailors' Home or worse. Ah, it is wicked. Ofwhat use is it to be brave, to be honest, to be true in this world?"
"Mon Dieu," said the Captain, "I will look after him, if for no otherreason than that he is what you say, mademoiselle; but _La BelleArlesienne_ is rough, should you use her as a yacht, you would not findher a yacht. She smells of fish--"
"I am used to rough things," said the girl. "I dread the smooth. CaptainBontemps, for one who has done for me everything should I dreadanything? And a little roughness, what is that to freedom and the life Ihave learned to love with the man I love? For I love Raft, CaptainBontemps, just as I know he loves me. Oh, do not mistake me, it is notthe sort of thing they call love here amongst houses and streets, it isnot a woman that is speaking to you but a human being."
He understood her. To his broad and simple mind the thing was simple;she did not want to part with the man who had saved her and fought forher and who had been "chucked out" of a hotel because he was a roughsailor, and marvellously well he understood that when she said she lovedRaft she did not mean the thing that the dock side called Love. No Parispoet could have understood her. The old fisher captain did.
But he was a practical man. He struck himself a blow on the head.
"I have what you want," said he, "_La Belle Arlesienne_, no, it is nouse, I have something better, a good cruising boat--you say money is noobject."
"None."
"Then come with me, you two."
He led the way followed by Raft and the girl to a wharf where a tug laymoored and by the tug a fifty ton yawl.
"There's your boat," said Bontemps, "built by Pinoli of Genoa for anAmerican. She has even a bath-room--a main cabin with two cabins off it,your man could berth in the fo'c'sle which is big enough for twenty likehim. Follow me."
He led the way on to the deck of the yawl.
The girl went over it down below into the main cabin with two littlesleeping cabins off it. She peeped into the tiny bath-room, examined thepantry well-stored with crockeryware, there was everything even to thebunk bedding, sheets and towels, she went to the fo'c'sle; compared withthe fo'c'sle of the _Albatross_ it was a little palace.
Then she turned to Raft.
"This is your new home," said she, "there is room for your parrot here."Then turning to Captain Bontemps. "Well, that is settled and now I onlywant a crew and a captain--fishermen. I will have no yachtsmen on myboat. I have had to do with yachtsmen, Captain Bontemps."
"Oh, my faith," said the old fellow, "you will easily find a crew."
"Yes, but I won't easily find a captain. I want you."
The Captain laughed.
"And how about _La Belle Arlesienne_?" asked he.
"You must leave her behind you to be sold. In my service money is noobject. Now as to this boat, who is the agent from whom I can buy her?"
"Latour and Company," replied the old fellow, for the first time in hislife in the powerful grip of wealth and not knowing exactly whether thegreat golden hand was holding him heels or head up.
"How far is Latour's from here?"
"Not far."
The girl stood for a moment looking round her at the white deck, themasts, the rigging, and as she looked some hand seemed to draw aside aveil revealing the stupid immovable houses of the land filled withstupid immovable people bound and tied up by soul-killingconventions--and on the other hand the old mystery of ships, those homesof Freedom on the road that has no boundaries.
Then she turned to Bontemps.
"Come," said she, "let us go to Latour's."
* * * * *
"Cleo," said the distracted Madame de Brie, writing to a friend, "Cleomust always have been as mad as her aunt De Warens. Fishermen, itseems, are the only honest people, and she and her cargo of fishermen,with an old man named Bontemps, are now heaven knows where since I metthem at Portofino.
"She calls them her children and when I last saw her she was comingalong the little quay at Portofino helping that big red bearded man tocarry provisions.
"The times are revolutionary, that's the truth, and women are not whatthey were, and I am old, I suppose, and cannot see things as I ought tosee them--and the grief is she might have married any one, she mighthave married Royalty itself, and I told her so and she laughed in myface. She said she never intended to marry any one, that she already hada family of 'children' and that the great bearded man Raft was thesmallest of them all, that she was teaching him to read and write and totalk French so that he could converse with the rest of her family.
"She has made Portofino her headquarters, it seems, and she is the ladybountiful of the fishing folk there, sits in their cottages and talks tothem, taking up her quarters at the little _auberge_ and sometimesliving on board her boat.
"A strange life, and yet she seems happy, like that poor Mademoiselle LaFontaine, whom I last saw at the Maison de Sante of DoctorSchwanthaller, seated with a straw crown on her head and imaginingherself a queen."
There ended the letter of Madame de Brie, and here ends the story ofCleo de Bromsart, a woman of energy and mind who learned from Kerguelenthat Life is an endless striving, not a peaceful drifting, and that ofall things high the highest is the soul of a child.
THE END
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