Lanny, having no trace of the psychic gift himself, stood by the taffrail of the Oriole, looking down into this dark blue water, and did not know that this passage was “The Slot,” and that before half a year had passed it would be black with oil and red with the blood of dying men. He saw the dark fins of sharks cutting the surface, and did not know that they were soon to be fed upon shiploads of Americans and Japanese. He watched the yacht glide into the splendid deep harbor of Tulagi, capital of the island group, and no hunch told him that a great enemy fleet would be wrecked here, and the shores and bottom sprinkled with steel hulks of all sizes. Just so on his honeymoon with Irma had Lanny steamed into the harbor of Narvik in northern Norway, and got no hint of battles to be fought there. He knew about them now, and marveled at the impenetrable veil which hides the future from the eyes of men. Perhaps it is a mercy, and they will do themselves a disservice if they ever succeed in breaking through it.
V
These were British islands, and Tulagi, the government seat, was headquarters of a number of trading firms. In addition there was a Chinese settlement, and these traders went out in shallow-draft sailboats into waters too dangerous for the whites; their boats had showcases on deck with a glass, cover, so that the natives who came aboard could inspect the trinkets without being able to touch them. With one of the white firms Reverdy had an arrangement to hold a supply of Diesel oil for him each winter; he took the same meticulous care of the yacht that he took of himself, and never let the tanks get more than half empty, for in these wartimes you couldn’t be sure what you were going to find at the next port.
While fuel was being pumped aboard, the passengers went ashore and visited the home of an official, a fine bungalow with a wide, screened veranda with green matting and wicker chairs. He was an Australian, and like all the others from whatever part of the world, was counting the weeks or months or years before he would go home. All the white men wore khaki shirts and shorts, and many had bandages around the calves of their legs—Solomon sores! The trader presented Lizbeth with a young megapode, a small black bird, round and comical in appearance, which he said came from Savo Island near by. These birds lay one egg almost as large as themselves, and bury it three or four feet deep in the warm sand; the natives watch the procedure and then dig up the egg for food. Lizbeth was told that she would have to feed the creature small pieces of fish at frequent intervals, and she fully intended to do it. But she found it too inconvenient, and the megapode died very soon. Then she was remorseful.
The yacht put out to sea before sunset, to avoid the mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects. That was one way to keep out of trouble in the tropics; and another was to watch the vessel’s course day and night and keep away from the narrow channels between the islands, where swift unpredictable currents are perilous. In these volcanic regions small islands appear suddenly; others sink beneath the sea, and then the infinite numbers of tiny coral flower-animals go to work and build them up, and they become atolls, or reefs with sharp points full of deadly danger. Charts become out-of-date, and the only way to be safe is to restrain your curiosity and keep to the well-established trade routes where you have sea room in case of storms.
Reverdy kept all these matters in his mind, and did not trouble the guests with them. He had seen to it that the refrigerators were stocked with fresh vegetables which could not be obtained in the tropics; now and then they would stop and buy fish from fishermen. The owner kept on board a supply of trade goods, and apparently plenty of money, or he knew where to get it. Also, he had plenty of time and never let anything hurry him; one place on the sea was much like another, and the Oriole had proved her ability to ride out the worst storms the Pacific could produce.
VI
So the guests on board the yacht had no cares, and it was assumed that they were perfect models of contentment. But it has long been the practice of humans who have no troubles to set to work and make some; and so, alas, it proved in this case. Here was a presidential agent who had been released “on furlough” and ordered to take a long rest; but he was discontented because he wanted to talk to a lady novelist and wasn’t allowed to. Instead of leaving it for her to work out her story, in her own way, he kept thinking of ideas which might be of interest to her, and he wanted to tell her about them. After several days he worked himself into a state of irritation; one afternoon when he discovered her sitting under the awning in a steamer chair, peacefully reading a bock, he drew up another chair beside her. “I have a suggestion about your Professor Holitzer,” he remarked casually—as though they were two ordinary people who had the right to sit side by side and discuss the manners and morals, costumes and dietetic habits, vocabulary and Weltanschauung of university professors in Nazified Germany!
She looked at him, startled, as if he had come waving a red flag of revolution. After a pause she said: “We really ought not to do this.”
“I’ve been thinking it over,” he declared. “I think it’s just too silly that I shouldn’t be able to talk to you.”
“We can’t change the facts. The only question is, are we prepared to pay the price?”
“So far as I am concerned, the answer is yes.”
“It will be disagreeable for both of us, you must be aware.”
“I am concerned only about being fair to you. Do you feel yourself under a moral obligation in the matter? And do you value what you might lose through being my friend?” He was being careful not to name any names.
“Let us get it exactly right. There is going to be a great disappointment for somebody. That is inevitable, from what you have told me.”
“Yes, that is certain.”
“The question then is, whether you alone are to be blamed, or whether both of us shall take a share. In the latter case, my share will be much greater. You know that is the fate of women.”
“I see what you mean, and perhaps it is too high a price for you.”
“I have not said that. I am just facing the facts, as I understand you always prefer to do.”
“By all means, yes.”
“I am an independent woman. I earn my own living and I do not need gifts or family support. But, on the other hand, I am a guest, and that means that I have voluntarily accepted certain obligations. I ask myself: Is it enough that I shall have a good conscience? Or should I not avoid the appearance of evil?”
“The evil being to be my friend?”
“The evil is to appear to be cutting someone out of the thing which she wants more than anything else in the world.”
“But which she is not going to get!”
“She doesn’t know that and nothing could convince her of it. She will be seeking in her mind for an explanation—and suddenly I will supply it. Never so long as we live could I convince her that I am not guilty.”
That was stating the case with scientific precision. He sat returning her clear, honest gaze, and deciding that he liked people who spoke in that straightforward way, even when their conclusions were inconvenient. He wished to deal with her on that same basis, and ventured: “Tell me, why did you come here?”
“Because you wrote me that you were coming, and I thought it would be a pleasant trip.”
“You wanted my help with the book?”
“Of course; you had offered it so generously. But also I thought it would be fun to be with you.”
“You didn’t know how matters stood with me and the other person?”
“I had heard hints, but I had no idea it was so serious.”
“And if you had known, it, you wouldn’t have come?”
“I had no way to find out, except by coming. This cruise won’t last forever; and if we meet afterwards, that won’t shock anybody as it would now.”
Lanny saw that it was time to move, and did so. He had hardly taken a dozen steps before Lizbeth appeared in the doorway of the saloon. He wondered if she had been watching them through a window, he resented having to feel guilty, but he was too trained in self-control to show it.
He joined his would-be fiancée and invited her to walk. They could talk about the last port they had been to, and the family they had called upon. In class these persons were far below any she would have met in Baltimore, but cruising in the South Seas was like “slumming.” She wanted to know why their last host had called himself an “Astrylian,” and Lanny explained that the colony had been settled by cockney emigrants, many of them convicts. Hearing that, the daughter of the Holdenhursts crossed “Astrylia” off her visiting list.
VII
The next destination of the Oriole was the Philippines. The course led between New Britain and New Ireland, and here too were great harbors, Rabaul and Kavieng, soon to be prominent in the world’s news. But Lanny continued in his insensibility to the future; his thougnts were perforce taken up with the woman question. Frequently he had in mind the familiar old English song: “How happy could I be with either, were t’other dear charmer away”; he had now decided upon a revised version: “How happy could I be with Laurel were Lizbeth away.” He had definitely made up his mind that brains were more than beauty, and that he couldn’t imagine what he would talk about on his next stroll with the skipper’s daughter.
He hit upon a procedure which might have seemed malicious, but he told himself that it was a psychological experiment. He would find out whether Laurel was right in her idea of how her cousin would behave under the spell of the “green-eyed monster.” There were three other ladies available, and Lanny selected Dr. Althea Carroll, not because she was the youngest, but because she was the most interesting to talk to. He had conceived a regard-for this earnest young woman, who had not a frivolous cell in her organism. He was sure he couldn’t do her any harm, for she would never dream of standing in Lizbeth’s way. Besides, they were due to part in ten days, and the chances of their ever seeing each other again were slender.
All right! Lanny drew his chair close alongside that of the lady doctor, who spent her time in a quiet spot studying medical publications. Lanny engaged her in conversation concerning the diseases which they had observed among the natives in the Marquesas, Samoa, and the Solomons. That dreadful elephantiasis, for example; people’s arms, legs, or other parts grew to enormous size, and the sight had almost destroyed the appetite of the guests at the Turailan feast. The doctor explained that the trouble was due to the clogging of the lymphatic glands, and there were two forms of the disease, one caused by microscopic thread-like worms; that was known as filariasis. The other form was more obscure; it might be due to cancerous material, or tubercular. All very learned, but, you must admit, hardly elegant, hardly in accord with the standards of Miss Emily Post.
In the midst of it, Lizbeth showed up on deck; she invariably did so whenever Lanny was there, and he wondered if she kept a vigil by the clock. The psychological test required that he should display the utmost politeness, so he arose and offered her his chair. “Dr. Carroll is telling me about the diseases of China,” he said—they had taken a jump of a few thousand miles. He drew up another chair, and the doctor went on talking; this was her hobby, honestly come by, and there was nothing she knew or cared so much about.
If you have a hobby, and are so fortunate as to meet people who are rich, you cannot avoid having in the back of your mind the thought that they may be willing to put up money to enable your work to go faster and farther. Of course the rich people know it, so as a rule they try to keep away from the hobbyists. Like the war between armor plate and gun, between battleship and airplane bomb, so is the war between the safety-deposit box and the betterment of humanity. Young Dr. Althea was thinking of all the ragged, undernourished, and suffering people who stood patiently the whole day long at the door of her father’s clinic. She told about beri-beri, a disease of malnutrition, and about tuberculosis, which has malnutrition as a preliminary stage. She talked about syphilis, and yaws, a variety of it. She talked about the opium habit, which the Japanese were deliberately fostering in the conquered parts of China, both for the profit they made out of it and the impotence it produced in their subject populations. She told about women who bore sickly babies with no medical attention whatever, and explained that she had taken special courses in obstetrics in order to be able to open a school for midwives.
In all her life Lizbeth had never heard anybody talking like that. She had never dreamed that any woman would talk so in the presence of a man. She became more and more restless, and finally broke in to remind them of a radio broadcast they were accustomed to hear. When she was alone with Lanny she exclaimed: “What on earth got Althea to talking about stuff like that?”
He had to be fair to the hard-working doctor, so he hastened to say: “I asked her. We are going to China, and we ought to know about conditions there.”
“I don’t want to know about such conditions anywhere,” declared this daughter of privilege. “There’s nothing we can do about such things, and why should we make ourselves sick thinking about them?”
VIII
That was only the beginning of the experiment. For several days thereafter this devil in polo shirt and tennis trousers availed himself of opportunities for conversation with an authority on Chinese manners and morals, costumes and dietetic habits, vocabulary and Weltanschauung—though of course they didn’t call it that. Their name for it was the Lun-Yii or Analects of Confucius, a sage of twenty-five centuries ago who had taught them to face the bitter realities of life with courage, understanding, and patience. Infinite patience one had to have in order to exist in an overcrowded land, as China had been even in Confucius’s time. The world was very old, and growing older, and human beings were far from perfect and growing no better. Learn to protect yourself with wisdom, and manifest benevolence when possible.
Lanny was surprised to discover that this was a very intelligent young woman indeed. She had been so quiet and tightly shut, like a white camellia bud; now under the warmth of his interest she blossomed into flower. He understood, of course, that her eloquence was due in part to the fact that she knew the Budds were rich people, perhaps as rich as the Holdenhursts. Grandfather Samuel had supported foreign missions, and so had other devout members of this old family. Lanny guessed that it might be possible to interest some of the new generation in what was going on in the antipodes.
Althea had probably never taken any courses in psychology, and so failed to realize what was happening to her friendship with the Holdenhursts while she was cultivating the Budds. Lizbeth was cooking herself into a stew of vexation. She didn’t want to sit and hear that kind of talk, and she couldn’t understand why Lanny persisted in inviting it. Was it just to tease her? Or was he trying to get away from her? She understood only too well the inadequacies of her conversation, but that didn’t salve her wounded feelings. When he suggested that China was as important a subject of study as art or literature, and that Lizbeth and Miss Hayman might become pupils of the learned young doctor for a while, Lizbeth was annoyed beyond endurance. She listened to Miss Hayman because Miss Hayman was a teacher, and was paid to talk; but who had asked Althea to set herself up? The truth was plain enough that Lizbeth didn’t really want to listen to any female’s talk; she wanted to listen to a man’s.
The next time he invited her to sit in at such a tête-à-tête, she said sharply: “No, thank you,” and went off and settled herself to reading a book. But she couldn’t keep up that bluff, and presently got up and went to her cabin. Lanny did nothing about it, because at the moment he was especially interested in what Althea was telling him. Her father, it appeared, was something of a liberal, and besides teaching young Chinese about American medical science, he had taught them about freedom and self-government. He had been a friend of Sun Yat-sen, the great republican leader, and had had something to do with the drafting of the Three People’s Principles which were the foundation of the republican movement of that vast inchoate land. Sun was dead, but his widow lived in a suburb of Hongkong, and her home was a sort of shrine to which liberals from all nations repaired. The Japanese, of course, were doin
g all they could to wipe out the movement, for they did not want a free enlightened China but a mass of ignorant and helpless slaves.
Lanny said: “You interest me greatly, Dr. Carroll. Do you suppose Madame Sun would receive an American art expert?”
“I am sure it would please her greatly,” was the reply.
“You must explain to her that I am not a political person, but I am interested in understanding the Chinese people and their art, which is bound to be influenced by this new renaissance.”
“Indeed that is true, Mr. Budd, and it is fascinating to see Chinese artists using their old techniques upon modern themes. In New York I met a young Chinese who was painting American subjects such as strike scenes, with the idea of sending them back to his homeland, but Americans are so interested in his work that they buy it up as fast as he can produce it.”
IX
In the midst of this conversation Lanny overlooked entirely the possibility that the skipper’s daughter might be weeping in her cabin. When he thought it over afterwards he decided that his psychological researches had been successful. The next time he met Laurel alone he stopped long enough to whisper: “I have been trying an experiment, and you were dead right about what would happen.”
She didn’t need to ask what he was referring to. She had devoted her mind to the subject of psychology, and was observing everything that went on in this little sea-bound world. What she said was: “Oh, how cruel!” Lanny went off chuckling, and wondering whom he had been cruel to—Lizbeth, Althea, or possibly Laurel Creston.
It was like being married into the Holdenhurst family, so the man decided. If he became Lizbeth’s husband, she would make him a little world exactly like this. It wouldn’t always be sea-bound, but would be bound by the limits of her understanding and interests. She would love him with absorption and watch him with the jealousy of a tigress. She would know that she was his intellectual inferior, and would fear all persons, men or women, who might claim to be his intellectual equals. If such persons got his time and attention, she would hate them; her feeling for her husband would come to be half love, half hate, that strange ambivalence which is so common and so little understood. Some day, sooner or later, Lanny would say: “I never really loved you, and I cannot stand hating you, so good-by.”