fortinbras paced the deck of the homeward bound steamer deep in thought. he still wore the costume of the elderly cabinet minister; but his air was that of the cabinet minister returning to a wrecked ministry. his broad shoulders were rounded and bent; his face had fallen from its benevolent folds into fleshy haggardness. he felt old; he felt inexpressibly lonely. he had not repeated the social experiment of the voyage out. save to his dutch and russian table neighbours he had not the heart to speak to any one. a deep melancholy enwrapped him. after his philosophical communion with the sage abu mohammed he shrank from platitudinous commerce with the profane. it was for the heart and not for the mind that he craved companionship. he was travelling (second-class, for economy’s sake) back to the old half-charlatan life. for all one’s learning and wisdom, one cannot easily embark on a new career in the middle-fifties. he must be marchand de bonheur to the end.
he wondered whether he would miss cécile. such things had happened. no matter how degraded, she had been a human thing to greet him on his return from his preposterous toil. also, her needs had been an incentive; they had sharpened the hawk’s vision during the daily round of cafés and restaurants, and quickened his pounce upon the divined five-franc piece. would he have the nerve, the unwearied patience, the bitter sense of martyrdom, wherewith to carry on his trade? again, in days past his heavy heart had been uplifted by the love of a child like the wild flowers from which alpine honey is made, away in the depths of old-world france. but now he had forfeited her love. she had written to him, all these weeks in egypt, dutifully, irreproachably; had given him the news, such as it was, of brant?me. she had told him of the state of her uncle’s health—invariably robust; of the arrivals and departures of elegant motorists; of the march through the town decorated for the occasion of a host of petits soldats, amid the enthusiasm and marseillaise singing of the inhabitants; of the sudden death by apoplexy of the good madame chauvet, and the sudden development of business on the part of her daughters, who almost immediately had taken the next shop and launched out into iron wreaths and crosses, and artificial flowers and funeral inscriptions, touching and pious; of the purchases of geese; of the infatuation of the elderly euphémie for the youthful waiter, erstwhile plongeur of the café de l’univers; of all sorts and conditions of unimportant happenings; finally of the betrothal of monsieur lucien viriot and estelle mazabois, the daughter of the famous mazabois who kept a great drapery establishment of périgueux—“she has the dowry of a princess and the head of a rocking-horse, so they are sure to be happy,” wrote félise. the manner of this last announcement shocked him. félise had changed. she had given him all the news, but her letters had grown self-conscious and artificial. to avoid the old, artless expressions of endearment, she rushed into sprightly narrative, and signed herself “his affectionate daughter.” he had lost félise.
yes, he felt old and lonely, unnerved for the struggle. even martin had forsaken him.
he had encountered a stony-faced, wrong-headed young man on the terrace of shepheard’s hotel the noon before he sailed, and found all his nostrums for happiness high-handedly rejected. martin had been an idle woman’s toy, a fiery toy as it turned out; and when she burned her fingers, she had dropped him. so much was obvious; most of it he had foreseen. he had counted on eventual declaration and summary dismissal; but he had not reckoned on a prelude of reciprocated sentiment. contrary to habit, martin gave him but a confused view of his state of mind. the unhappy lover would hear not a word against his peerless lady. on the other hand, his love for her had blasted his existence. this appalling fact, though he did not proclaim it so heroically, he allowed fortinbras to apprehend. he neither reproached him for past advice nor asked for new. to the suggestion that he should return to brant?me and accept bigourdin’s offer, he turned a deaf ear. he had cut himself adrift; he must go whithersoever winds and tides should carry him, and they were carrying him far from périgord.
“in what direction?” fortinbras had enquired.
“thank heaven, i don’t know myself,” he had answered. “anyhow, i am going to seek my fortune. i must have money and power so that i can snap my fingers at the world. that’s what i’m going to live for.”
and soon after that declaration he had wrung fortinbras by the hand, and hailing an arabeah had driven off into the unknown. fortinbras had felt like the hen who sees her duckling brood sail away down the brook. he had lost control of his disciple; he mattered nothing to the young man setting forth on his wild-goose chase after fortune. his charming little scheme had failed. he anticipated the reproaches of bigourdin, the accusation in the eyes of félise. “why did you side with the enemy? why did you drive martin away?” . . .
he felt old and lonely, a pathetic failure; so he walked the second-class deck with listless shoulders and bowed head, his hands in his pockets.
“tiens! monsieur fortinbras! who would have thought it?” cried a fresh voice.
he looked up and saw a dark-eyed girl, her head enveloped in a motor-veil, who extended a friendly hand.
“mademoiselle . . .” he began uncertainly.
“mais oui! eugénie dubois. you must remember me. there was also le grand jules—jules massart.”
“yes, i remember,” he said courteously, with a wan smile.
“you saved us both from a pretty mess.”
“i remember the saving; but i forget the mess. it is my rule always to forget such things.”
she laughed gaily, burst into an account of herself. she was a modiste in the great paris firm of odille et compagnie, which had a branch at cairo. now she was recalled for the paris and london season.
“et justement”—she plucked at his sleeve and led him to a seat—“i am in a tangle of an affair which keeps me awake of nights. you fall upon me from the skies like an angel. be good and give me a consultation.”
she fished out her purse and extracted a twenty-five piastre piece. he motioned her hand away.
“mon enfant” said he. “you are an honourable little soul. but i don’t do business on a holiday. raconte-moi ton affaire.”
but she protested. she would not abuse his kindness. either a consultation at the regulation price or no consultation at all. at last he said:
“eh bien! give me your five francs.”
she obeyed. he rose. “come,” said he, and led the way to the stairhead by the saloon where was fixed the collecting box in aid of the fund for shipwrecked mariners. he slipped the coin down the slot.
“now,” said he, “honour is satisfied.”
but listening to her artless and complicated tale, he wondered, while a shiver ran over his frame, whether he would ever be able again to slip a five-franc piece into his waistcoat pocket. he felt yet older than before, incapable of piercing to the root of youth’s perplexities. he counselled with oracular vagueness, conscious of not having earned his fee. he paced the deck again.
“were it not for abu mohammed,” he said, “i should call it a disastrous journey.”
meanwhile martin, lonelier even than he, sat in the bows of a great eastward bound steamer, his eyes opened to the staring facts of life. no longer must he masquerade as the man of fashion—never again until he had bought the right. the remains of his small capital he must keep intact for the day of need. no more the luxury of first-class travel. this voyage in the steerage was but a means of transit to the new lands where he would win his way to fortune. he needed no advice. he had spiritually and morally outgrown his tutelage. no longer, so he told himself, would he nourish his soul on dreams. it could feed if it liked on memories. the madness had passed. he drew the breath of an honest man. if he had taken lucilla at her word and married her, what would have been his existence? trailing about the idle world in the wake of a rich wife, dependent on her bounty even for a pair of shoe-laces; eating out his heart for the love she could not give; at last, perhaps, quarrelling desperately, or else with sapped will-power sunk in sloth, accepting from her an allowance on condition that they should live apart. he had heard of such marriages since he had mingled with the wealthy. even had she met him with a love as passionate as his own, would the happiness have lasted? in his grim mood he thought not. he reasoned himself into the conviction that his loss had been his gain. far better that he should be among these few poor folk who sat down to table in their shirt-sleeves, than that he should be eating the flesh-pots of dishonour in the land of egypt. he himself dined in his shirt-sleeves, as he had done many a time before in the kitchen of the h?tel des grottes.
yet he hungered for her. it seemed impossible that he should never see her again, never again watch the sweep of the adorable brown eyelashes, the subtle play of laughter around her mobile lips; never again greet with delicious heart-pang the sight of her slim figure willowy like those in the primavera. in vain he schooled himself to regard her as one dead. the witchery of her obsessed him night and day. he learned what it was to suffer.
he had taken his deck passage to hong-kong—why he could scarcely tell. it sounded very far away—as far away from her as practicable. as the sultry days went on, he realised that he had not reckoned on the tremendous distance of hong-kong. it was past bombay, colombo, penang and singapore. at such ports as he could, he landed, but the glamour of the east had gone. he was a man who had expended his power of wonder and delight. he looked on them coldly as places he might possibly exploit, should hong-kong prove barren. also the period of great heat had begun, and he found danger in strolling about the deadly streets. on ship-board he slept on deck. as they neared hong-kong his heart sank. for the first time he wished that fortinbras were with him. perhaps he had repaid affection with scant courtesy. he occupied himself with a long letter to his friend, setting out his case. he then imagined the reply. “my son,” said the mellow, persuasive voice, “have you not been carrying on from thrill to thrill the great adventure begun last august, when you threw off the chains of margett’s? have you not filled your brain and your soul with new and breathless sensations? have you not tasted joys hitherto unimagined? have you not been admitted to the heart of a great and loyal nation? have you not flaunted it in the dazzling splendour of the great world? have you not steeped your being in the gorgeous colour of the east? have not your pulses throbbed with an immortal passion for a woman of surpassing beauty? have you not known, what is only accorded to the select of the sons of men, a supreme moment of delirious joy when time stood still and space was not? have you not lived intensely all this wonderful year? are you the same blank-minded, starving-souled, mild negation of a man who sat as a butt for corinna’s pleasantries at the petit cornichon? have you not progressed immeasurably? have you not gained spiritual stature, wisdom both human and godlike? and are you not now, having passed through the fiery furnace not only unscathed but tempered, setting out on the still greater adventure—the conquest of the ends of the earth? less than a year ago what were you but a slave? what are you now? a free man.”
so through the ears of fancy ran the sonorous rhetoric of fortinbras. martin tore up his letter and scattered the fragments on the sea. a day or two afterwards, with a stout heart, he landed at victoria, the capital of hong-kong.
a half-caste clerk to whom he had entrusted his card returned from the inner office.
“mr. tudsley will see you, sir.”
martin followed him into a darkened office, cooled by an electric fan, where a white-clad, gaunt, yellow-faced englishman sat at a desk. the clerk closed the door and retired. the yellow-faced englishman rose and smiled, after glancing at martin’s card on the desk before him.
“mr. overshaw? what can i do for you?”
“you can give me some work,” said martin.
“i’m afraid i can’t.”
“i’m sorry,” said martin. “i must apologise for troubling you.”
he was about to withdraw. mr. tudsley glanced at him shrewdly.
“wait a minute. sit down. i don’t seem to place you. who are you and where do you come from?”
“that’s my name,” said martin, pointing to his card, “and i have just arrived from europe, or to be more exact, from egypt.”
“by the sesostris?”
“yes.”
mr. tudsley took up and scanned a type-written sheet of paper.
“i don’t see your name on the passenger list.”
“possibly not,” said martin. “i came steerage.”
“indeed?” martin, spruce in his well-cut grey flannels, looked anything but a deck passenger. “what made you do that?”
“economy,” said martin.
“and why have you come to me?”
“i made a list last night, at the hotel, of the leading firms in hong-kong and yours was among them.”
“haven’t you any introductions?”
“no.”
“then what induced you to come to this particular little hell upon earth?”
“chance,” said martin. “one place is pretty much the same to me as another.”
“what kind of work are you looking for?”
“anything. from sweeping the floor to running a business.”
“only coolies sweep floors here,” said mr. tudsley, tilting back his chair and clasping his hands behind his back. “and only experienced men of business run businesses. what business have you run?”
“none,” said martin.
“well, what business qualifications have you?”
“none. but i’m an educated man—cambridge——”
“yes, yes, one sees that,” the other interrupted. “there are millions of them.”
“i’m bilingual, english and french, and my german is good enough for ordinary purposes.”
“do you know anything of accounts?”
“no,” said martin.
“can you add up figures correctly?”
“i daresay,” said martin.
“have you ever tried?”
“no,” said martin.
mr. tudsley handed him a mass of type-written papers pinned together. “do you know what that is?”
martin glanced through the document. “it seems to be a list of commodities.”
“it’s a bill of lading. first time you’ve ever seen one?”
“yes,” said martin.
“have you any capital?”
“a little. a few hundred pounds.”
“then stick to it like grim death. don’t part with it here.”
“i haven’t the slightest intention of doing so,” said martin.
the lean, yellow-faced man brought his chair back to normal perpendicularity and swung it round—it worked on a swivel.
“mr. overshaw,” said he, “pardon a perfect stranger giving you advice—but you seem to be a frank, straight man. you’ve made a mistake in coming to hong-kong. it’s a beast of a climate. in a few days’ time the rains will begin. then it will rain steadily, drearily, hopelessly, damply, swelteringly, deadlily day after day, hour after hour, for four months. that’s one way of looking at things. there’s another. i am perfectly sure there’s not a vacancy for an amateur clerk in the whole of hong-kong. if we want a linguist—your specialty—we can get germans by the dozen who not only know six languages but who have been trained as business experts from childhood—and we can get them for twopence halfpenny a month.”
martin, remembering the discussions at the café de l’univers, replied:
“and when the war comes?”
“what war?”
“between england and germany.”
“my dear fellow, what in the world are you talking of? there’s not going to be any war. besides,” he smiled indulgently, “suppose there was—what then?”
“first,” said martin, “you would have given the enemy an intimate knowledge of your trade, which by the way he is even now reporting by every mail to his government”—he was quoting the dictum of a highly placed egyptian official whom he met at a dinner party in cairo—“and then you would have to fall back upon englishmen.”
mr. tudsley laughed and rose, so as to end the interview.
“i’ll take the risk of that,” he said easily. “but the immediate question is: ‘what are you to do?’ have you visited any other firms?”
“several,” said martin.
“and what have they said?”
“much the same as you, mr. tudsley, only not so kindly and courteously.”
“that’s all right,” said mr. tudsley, shy at the compliment. “i don’t see why englishmen meeting at the other end of nowhere shouldn’t be civil to each other. but my advice is: clear out of hong-kong. there’s nothing doing.”
“what about shanghai?”
“that’s further still from europe.”
“singapore?”
“that’s better—on the way back.”
“i must thank you,” said martin, “for giving me so much of your time.”
“not a bit i am only sorry i can’t give you a job or put you on to one. but you see the position, don’t you?”
martin smiled wryly. “i’m beginning to see it with painful clearness.”
“good-bye and good luck,” said mr. tudsley.
“good-bye,” said martin.
between then and the date of sailing of the next homeward bound steamer, martin knocked at every door in hong-kong. nobody wanted him. there was nothing he could do. there was no place for him on the very lowest rung of any ladder to fortune.
he sailed to singapore.
