The Pagan Madonna

“I wanted so to believe in him!”

“Not difficult to understand why. He has a silver tongue and a face like John the Baptist – del Sarto’s – and you are romantic. The picture of him has enlisted your sympathies. You are filled with pity that he should be so richly endowed, facially and mentally, and to be a cripple such as children laugh over.”

“Have you never considered what mental anguish must be the portion of a man whose body is twisted as his is? I know. So I pity him profoundly, even if he is a rogue. That’s all I was born for – to pity and to bind up. And I pity you, Mr. Cleigh, you who have walled your heart in granite.”

“You’re plain-spoken, young lady.”

“Yes, certain sick minds need plain speaking.”

“Then my mind is sick?”

“Yes.”

“And only a little while gone it was romantic!”

“Two hundred million hands begging for bread, and you crossing the world for a string of glass beads whose value is only sentimental!”

“I can’t let that pass, Miss Norman. I have trusted lieutenants who attend to my charities. I’m not a miser.”

“You are, with the greatest thing in the world – human love.”

“Shall a man give it where it is not wanted? But enough of this talk. I have shown you Cunningham’s pearls.”

“Perhaps.”

Night and wheeling stars. It was stuffy in the crew’s quarters. Half naked, the men lolled about, some in their bunks, some on the floor. The orders were that none should sleep on deck during the voyage to the Catwick.

“All because the old man brings a skirt on board, we have to sweat blood in the forepeak!” growled Flint. “We’ve got a right to a little sport.”

“Sure we have!”

The speaker was sitting on the edge of his bunk. He was a fine specimen of young manhood, with a pleasant, rollicking Irish countenance. He looked as if he had been brought up clean and had carried his cleanliness into the world. The blue anchor and love birds on his formidable forearms proclaimed him a deep-sea man. It was he who had given Dennison the shirt and the ducks.

“Sure, we have a right to a little sport! But why call in the undertaker to help us out? You poor fish, all the way from San Francisco you’ve been grousing because shore leaves weren’t long enough for you to get prime soused in. What’s two months in our young lives?”

“I’ve always been free to do as I liked.”

“You look it! I’ll say so! The chief laid down the rules of this game, and we all took oath to follow those rules. The trouble with you is, you’ve been reading dime novels. Where do you think you are – raiding the Spanish Main? There’s every chance of our coming out top hole, as those lime-juicers say, with oodles of dough and a whole skin.”

“Say, don’t I know this Sulu game? I tell you, if he does find his atoll there won’t be any shell. Not a chance in a hundred! Somebody’s been giving him a song and dance. As I get the dope, some pearl-hunting friend of his croaks and leaves him this chart. Old stuff! I bet a million boobs have croaked trying to locate the red cross on a chart.”

“Why the devil did you sign on, then?”

“I wanted a little fun, and I’m going to have it. There’s champagne and Napoleon brandy in the dry-stores. Wouldn’t hurt us to have a little of it. If we’ve got to go to jail we might as well go lit up.”

“Flint, you talk too much,” said a voice from the doorway. It was Cunningham’s. He leaned carelessly against the jamb. The crew fell silent and motionless. “Boys, you’ve heard Hennessy. Play it my way and you’ll wear diamonds; mess it up and you’ll all wear hemp. The world will forgive us when it finds out we’ve only made it laugh.” Cunningham strolled over to Flint, who rose to his feet. “Flint, I want that crimp-house whisky you’ve been swigging on the sly. No back talk! Hand it over!”

“And if I don’t?” said Flint, his jaw jutting.

CHAPTER XVII

Cunningham did not answer immediately. From Flint his glance went roving from man to man, as if trying to read what they expected of him.

“Flint, you were recommended to me for your knowledge of the Sulu lingo. We’ll need a crew of divers, and we’ll have to pick them up secretly. That’s your job. It’s your only job outside doing your watch with the shovel below. Somehow you’ve got the wrong idea. You think this is a junket of the oil-lamp period. All wrong! You don’t know me, and that’s a pity; because if you did know something about me you’d walk carefully. When we’re off this yacht, I don’t say. If you want what old-timers used to call their pannikin of rum, you’ll be welcome to it. But on board the Wanderer, nothing doing. Get your duffel out. I’ll have a look at it.”

“Get it yourself,” said Flint.

Cunningham appeared small and boyish beside the ex-beachcomber.

“I’m speaking to you decently, Flint, when I ought to bash in your head.”

The tone was gentle and level.

“Why don’t you try it?”

The expectant men thereupon witnessed a feat that was not only deadly in its precision but oddly grotesque. Cunningham’s right hand flew out with the sinister quickness of a cobra’s strike, and he had Flint’s brawny wrist in grip. He danced about, twisted and lurched until he came to an abrupt stop behind Flint’s back. Flint’s mouth began to bend at the corners – a grimace.

“You’ll break it yourself, Flint, if you move another inch,” said Cunningham, nonchalantly. “This is the gentlest trick I have in the bag. Cut out the booze until we’re off this yacht. Be a good sport and play the game according to contract. I don’t like these side shows. But you wanted me to show you. Want to call it off?”

Sweat began to bead Flint’s forehead. He was straining every muscle in his body to minimize that inexorable turning of his elbow and shoulder.

“The stuff is in Number Two bunker,” he said, with a ghastly grin. “I’ll chuck it over.”

“There, now!” Cunningham stepped back. “I might have made it your neck. But I’m patient, because I want this part of the game to go through according to schedule. When I turn back this yacht I want nothing missing but the meals I’ve had.”

Flint rubbed his arm, scowling, and walked over to his bunk.

“Boys,” said Cunningham, “so far you’ve been bricks. Shortly we’ll be heading southeast on our own. Wherever I am known, men will tell you that I never break my word. I promised you that we’d come through with clean heels. Something has happened which we could not forestall. There is a woman on board. It is not necessary to say that she is under my protection.”

He clumped out into the passage.

“Well, say!” burst out the young sailor named Hennessy. “I’m a tough guy, but I couldn’t have turned that trick. Hey, you! If you’ve got any hooch in the coal bunkers, heave it over. I’m telling you! These soft-spoken guys are the kind I lay off, believe you me! I’ve seen all kinds, and I know.”

“Did they kick you out of the Navy?” snarled Flint.

“Say, are you asking me to do it?” flared the Irishman. “You poor boob, you’d be in the sick bay if there hadn’t been a lady on board.”

“A lady?”

“I said a lady! Stand up, you scut!”

But Flint rolled into his bunk and turned his face to the partition.

Cunningham leaned against the port rail. These bursts of fury always left him depressed. He was not a fighting man at all and fate was always flinging him into physical contests. He might have killed the fool: he had been in a killing mood. He was tired. Somehow the punch was gone from the affair, the thrill. Why should that be?

For years he had been planning something like this, and then to have it taste like stale wine! Vaguely he knew that he had made a discovery. The girl! If he were poring over his chart, his glance would drift away; if he were reading, the printed page had a peculiar way of vanishing. Of course it was all nonsense. But that night in Shanghai something had drawn him irresistibly to young Cleigh’s table. It might have been the colour of her hair. At any rate, he hadn’t noticed the beads until he had spoken to young Cleigh.

Glass beads! Queer twist. A little trinket, worthless except for sentimental reasons, throwing these lives together. Of course an oil would have lured the elder Cleigh across the Pacific quite as successfully. The old chap had been particularly keen for a sea voyage after having been cooped up for four years. But in the event of baiting the trap with a painting neither the girl nor the son would have been on board. And Flint could have had his noggin without anybody disturbing him, even if the contract read otherwise.

Law-abiding pirates! How the world would chuckle if the yarn ever reached the newspapers! He had Cleigh in the hollow of his hand. In fancy he saw Cleigh placing his grievance with the British Admiralty. He could imagine the conversation, too.

“They returned the yacht in perfect condition?”

“Yes.”

“Did they steal anything?”

Cunningham could positively see Cleigh’s jowls redden as he shook his head to the query.

“Sorry. You can’t expect us to waste coal hunting for a scoundrel who only borrowed your yacht.”

But what was the row between Cleigh and his son? That was a puzzler. Not a word! They ignored each other absolutely. These dinners were queer games, to be sure. All three men spoke to the girl, but neither of the Cleighs spoke to him or to each other. A string of glass beads!

What about himself? What had caused his exuberance to die away, his enthusiasm to grow dim? Why, a month gone he would burst into such gales of laughter that his eyes would fill with tears at the thought of this hour! And the wine tasted flat. The greatest sea joke of the age, and he couldn’t boil up over it any more!

Love? He had burnt himself out long ago. But had it been love? Rather had it not been a series of false dawns? To a weepy-waily woman he would have offered the same courtesies, but she would not have drawn his thoughts in any manner. And this one kept entering his thoughts at all times. That would be a joke, wouldn’t it? At this day to feel the scorch of genuine passion!

To dig a pit for Cleigh and to stumble into another himself! In setting this petard he hadn’t got out of range quickly enough. His sense of humour was so keen that he laughed aloud, with a gesture which invited the gods to join him.

Jane, who had been watching the solitary figure from the corner of the deck house and wondering who it was, recognized the voice. The cabin had been stuffy, her own mental confusion had driven sleep away, so she had stolen on deck for the purpose of viewing the splendours of the Oriental night. The stars that seemed so near, so soft; the sea that tossed their reflections hither and yon, or spun a star magically into a silver thread and immediately rolled it up again; the brilliant electric blue of the phosphorescence and the flash of flying fish or a porpoise that ought to have been home and in bed.

She hesitated. She was puzzled. She was not afraid of him – the puzzle lay somewhere else. She was a little afraid of herself. She was afraid of anything that could not immediately be translated into ordinary terms of expression. The man frankly wakened her pity. He seemed as lonely as the sea itself. Slue-Foot! And somewhere a woman had laughed at him. Perhaps that had changed everything, made him what he was.

She wondered if she would ever be able to return to the shell out of which the ironic humour of chance had thrust her. Wondered if she could pick up again philosophically the threads of dull routine. Jane Norman, gliding over this mysterious southern sea, a lone woman among strong and reckless men! Piracy! Pearls! Rugs and paintings worth a quarter of a million! Romance!

Did she want it to last? Did she want romance all the rest of her days? What was this thing within her that was striving for expression? For what was she hunting? What worried her and put fear into her heart was the knowledge that she did not know what she wanted. From all directions came questions she could not answer.

Was she in love? If so, where was the fire that should attend? Was it Denny – or yonder riddle? She felt contented with Denny, but Cunningham’s presence seemed to tear into unexplored corners of her heart and brain. If she were in love with Denny, why didn’t she thrill when he approached? There was only a sense of security, contentment.

The idea of racing round the world romantically with Denny struck her as absurd. Equally contrary to reason was the picture of herself and Cunningham sitting before a wood fire. What was the matter with Jane Norman?

There was one bar of light piercing the fog. She knew now why she had permitted Cleigh to abduct her. To bring about a reconciliation between father and son. And apparently there was as much chance as of east meeting west. She walked over to the rail and joined Cunningham.

“You?” he said.

“The cabin was stuffy. I couldn’t sleep.”

“I wonder.”

“About what?”

“If there isn’t a wild streak in you that corresponds with mine. You fall into the picture naturally – curious and unafraid.”

“Why should I be afraid, and why shouldn’t I be curious?”

“The greatest honour a woman ever paid me. I mean that you shouldn’t be afraid of me when everything should warn you to give me plenty of sea room.”

“I know more about men than I do about women.”

“And I know too much about both.”

“There have been other women – besides the one who laughed?”

“Yes. Perhaps I was cruel enough to make them pay for that.

“‘Funny an’ yellow an’ faithful —Doll in a teacup she were,But we lived on the square, like a true-married pair,An’ I learned about women from ’er!’

“But I wonder what would have happened if it had been a woman like you instead of the one who laughed.”

“I shouldn’t have laughed.”

“This damned face of mine!”

“You mustn’t say that! Why not try to make over your soul to match it?”

“How is that done?”

The irony was so gentle that she fell silent for a space.

“Are you going to take Mr. Cleigh’s paintings when you leave us?”

“My dear young lady, all I have left to be proud of is my word. I give it to you that I am going after pearls. It may sound crazy, but I can’t help that. I am realizing a dream. I’m something of a fatalist – I’ve had to be. I’ve always reasoned that if I could make the dream come true – this dream of pearls – I’d have a chance to turn over a new leaf. I’ve had to commit acts at times that were against my nature, my instincts. I’ve had to be cruel and terrible, because men would not believe a pretty man could be a strong one. Do you understand? I have been forced to cruel deeds because men would not credit a man’s heart behind a woman’s face. I possess tremendous nervous energy. That’s the principal curse. I can’t sit still; I can’t remain long anywhere; I must go, go, go! Like the Wandering Jew, Ishmael.”

“Do you know what Ishmael means?”

“No. What?”

“‘God heareth.’ Have you ever asked Him for anything?”

“No. Why should I, since He gave me this withered leg? Please don’t preach to me.”

“I won’t, then. But I’m terribly sorry.”

“Of course you are. But – don’t become too sorry. I might want to carry you off to my atoll.”

“If you took me away with you by force, I’d hate you and you’d hate yourself. But you won’t do anything like that.”

“What makes you believe so?”

“I don’t know why, but I do believe it.”

“To be trusted by a woman, a good woman! I’ll tell that to the stars. Tell me about yourself – what you did and how you lived before you came this side.”

It was not a long story, and he nodded from time to time understandingly. Genteel poverty, a life of scrimp and pare – the cage. Romance – a flash of it – and she would return to the old life quite satisfied. Peace, a stormy interlude; then peace again indefinitely. It came to him that he wanted the respect of this young woman for always. But the malice that was ever bubbling up to his tongue and finding speech awoke.

“Suppose I find my pearls – and then come back for you? Romance and adventure! These warm stars always above us at night; the brilliant days; the voyages from isle to isle; palms and gay parrakeets, cocoanuts and mangosteens – and let the world go hang!”

She did not reply, but she moved a little away. He waited for a minute, then laughed softly.

“My dear young lady, this is the interlude you’ve always been longing for. Fate has popped you out of the normal for a few days, and presently she’ll pop you back into it. Some day you’ll marry and have children; you’ll sink into the rut of monotony again and not be conscious of it. On winter nights, before the fire, when the children have been put to bed, your man buried behind his evening paper, you will recall Slue-Foot and the interlude and be happy over it. You’ll hug and cuddle it to your heart secretly. A poignant craving in your life had been satisfied. Kidnapped by pirates, under Oriental stars! Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest – yo-ho, and a bottle of rum! A glorious adventure, with three meals the day and grand opera on the phonograph. Shades of Gilbert and Sullivan! And you will always be wondering whether the pirate made love to you in jest or in earnest – and he’ll always be wondering, too!”

Cunningham turned away abruptly and clumped toward the bridge ladder, which he mounted.

For some inexplicable reason her heart became filled with wild resentment against him. Mocking her, when she had only offered him kindness! She clung to the idea of mockery because it was the only tangible thing she could pluck from her confusion. Thus when she began the descent of the companionway and ran into Dennison coming up her mood was not receptive to reproaches.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

“Watching the stars and the phosphorescence. I could not sleep.”

“Alone?”

“No. Mr. Cunningham was with me.”

“I warned you to keep away from that scoundrel!”

“How dare you use that tone to me? Have you any right to tell me what I shall and shall not do?” she stormed at him. “I’ve got to talk to someone. You go about in one perpetual gloom. I purpose to see and talk to Cunningham as often as I please. At least he amuses me.”

With this she rushed past him and on to her cabin, the door of which she closed with such emphasis that it was heard all over the yacht – so sharp was the report that both Cleigh and Dodge awoke and sat up, half convinced that they had heard a pistol shot!

Jane sat down on her bed, still furious. After a while she was able to understand something of this fury. The world was upside down, wrong end to. Dennison, not Cunningham, should have acted the debonair, the nonchalant. Before this adventure began he had been witty, amusing, companionable; now he was as interesting as a bump on a log. At table he was only a poor counterfeit of his father, whose silence was maintained admirably, at all times impressively dignified. Whereas at each encounter Dennison played directly into Cunningham’s hands, and the latter was too much the banterer not to make the most of these episodes.

What if he was worried? Hadn’t she more cause to worry than any one else? For all that, she did not purpose to hide behind the barricaded door of her cabin. If there was a tragedy in the offing it would not fall less heavily because one approached it with melancholy countenance.

Heaven knew that she was no infant as regarded men! In the six years of hospital work she had come into contact with all sorts and conditions of men. Cunningham might be the greatest scoundrel unhung, but so far as she was concerned she need have no fear. This knowledge was instinctive.

But when her cheek touched the pillow she began to cry softly. She was so terribly lonely!

CHAPTER XVIII

The space through which Jane had passed held Dennison’s gaze for two or three minutes. Then he sat down on the companionway step, his arms across his knees and his forehead upon his arms. What to say? What to do? She expected him to be amusing! – when he knew that the calm on board was of the same deceptive quality as that of the sea – below, the terror!

It did not matter that the crew was of high average. They would not be playing such a game unless they were a reckless lot. At any moment they might take it into their heads to swarm over Cunningham and obliterate him. Then what? If the episode of the morning had not convinced Jane, what would? The man Flint had dropped his mask; the others were content to wear theirs yet awhile. Torture for her sake, the fear of what might actually be in store for her, and she expected him to talk and act like a chap out of a novel!

Ordinarily so full of common sense, what had happened to her that her vision should become so obscured as not to recognize the danger of the man? Had he been ugly, Jane would probably have ignored him. But that face of his, as handsome as a Greek god’s, and that tongue with its roots in oil! And there was his deformity – that had drawn her pity. Playing with her, and she deliberately walked into the trap because he was amusing! Why shouldn’t he be, knowing that he held their lives in the hollow of his hand? What imp of Satan wouldn’t have been amiable?

Because the rogues did not run up the skull and crossbones; because they did not swagger up and down the deck, knives and pistols in their sashes, she couldn’t be made to believe them criminals!

Amusing! She could not see that if he spoke roughly it was only an expression of the smothered pain of his mental crucifixion. He could not tell her he loved her for fear she might misinterpret her own sentiments. Besides, her present mood was not inductive to any declaration on his part; a confession might serve only to widen the breach. Who could say that it wasn’t Cunningham’s game to take Jane along with him in the end? There was nothing to prevent that. His father holding aloof, the loyal members of the crew in a most certain negligible minority, what was there to prevent Cunningham from carrying off Jane?

Blood surged into Dennison’s throat; a murderous fury boiled up in him; but he remembered in time what these volcanic outbursts had cost him in the past. So he did not rush to the chart house. Cunningham would lash him with ridicule or be forced to shoot him. But his rage carried him as far as the wireless room. He could hear the smack of the spark, but that was all. He tried the door – locked. He tried the shutters – latched. Cunningham’s man was either calling or answering somebody. Ten minutes inside that room and there would be another tale to tell.

In the end Dennison spent his fury by travelling round the deck until the sea and sky became like pearly smoke. Then he dropped into a chair and fell asleep.

Cunningham had also watched through the night. The silent steersman heard him frequently rustling papers on the chart table or clumping to the bridge or lolling on the port sills – a restlessness that had about it something of the captive tiger.

Retrospection – he could not break the crowding spell of it, twist mentally as he would; and the counter-thought was dimly suicidal. The sea there; a few strides would carry him to the end of the bridge, and then – oblivion. And the girl would not permit him to enact this thought. He laughed. God had mocked him at his birth, and the devil had played with him ever since. He had often faced death hotly and hopefully, but to consider suicide coldly!

A woman who had crossed his path reluctantly, without will of her own; the sort he had always ignored because they had been born for the peace of chimney corners! She – the thought of her – could bring the past crowding upon him and create in his mind a suicidal bent!

Pearls! A great distaste of life fell upon him; the adventure grew flat. The zest that had been his ten days gone, where was it?

Imagination! He had been cursed with too much of it. In his youth he had skulked through alleys and back streets – the fear of laughter and ridicule dogging his mixed heels. Never before to have paused to philosophize over what had caused his wasted life! Too much imagination! Mental strabismus! He had let his over-sensitive imagination wreck and ruin him. A woman’s laughter had given him the viewpoint of a careless world; and he had fled, and he had gone on fleeing all these years from pillar to post. From a shadow!

He was something of a monster. He saw now where the fault lay. He had never stayed long enough in any one place for people to get accustomed to him. His damnable imagination! And there was conceit of a sort. Probably nobody paid any attention to him after the initial shock and curiosity had died away. There was Scarron in his wheel chair – merry and cheerful and brave, jesting with misfortune; and men and women had loved him.