The Narrow Corner by W. Somerset Maugham
Frith, having to his satisfaction divided three birds among seven people, sat down again and helped himself to boiled potatoes.
“I have always been attracted by the idea of the Brahmans, that a man should devote his youth to study,” he said, turning to Dr. Saunders, “his maturity to the duties and ceremonies of a householder, and his age to abstract thought and meditation of the Absolute.”
He glanced at Old Swan, hunched up in his chair and laboriously gnawing a drumstick, and then at Louise.
“It will not be very long now before I am liberated from the obligations of my maturity. Then I shall take my staff and journey out into the world in search of the knowledge which passeth all understanding.”
The doctor’s eyes had followed Frith’s, and they rested for a while on Louise. She sat at the end of the table between the two young men. Fred, as a rule, tongue-tied, was talking nineteen to the dozen. He had lost the slight sulkiness of expression that his features bore in repose and looked frank, carefree and boyish. His face was lit up by the play of his words and his desire to please lent a soft and engaging lustre to his fine eyes. Dr. Saunders, smiling, saw how taking was his charm. He was not shy with women. He knew how to amuse them and you had only to see the girl’s easy gaiety, and her animation, to know that she was happy and interested. The doctor caught snatches of his conversation; it was about the races at Randwick, bathing at Manley Beach, the cinema, the amusements of Sydney; the sort of things that young people talk to one another about and because all experience is fresh to them find so absorbing. Erik, with his great clumsy size and his massive square head, a kindly smile on his pleasantly ugly face, sat watching Fred quietly. You could see that he was glad the boy he had brought to the house was going down well. It gave him a little warm feeling of self-satisfaction that he was so charming.
When dinner was finished, Louise went up to old Swan and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Now, grandpa, you must go to bed.”
“Not before I’ve had me tot of rum, Louise.”
“Well, drink it up quick.”
She poured him out the considerable amount he wanted, while he watched the glass with cunning, rheumy eyes, and added a little water.
“Put a tune on the gramophone, Erik,” she said.
The Dane did as he was bid.
“Can you dance, Fred?” he asked.
“Can’t you?”
“No.”
Fred rose to his feet, and looking at Louise outlined a gesture of invitation. She smiled. He took her hand and put his arm round her waist. They began to dance. They made a lovely couple. Dr. Saunders, standing with Erik by the gramophone, saw to his surprise that Fred was an exquisite dancer. He had an unimaginable grace. He made his partner, not more than competent, appear to dance as well as he did. He had the gift of being able to absorb her movements into his so that she was instinctively responsive to the notions as they formed themselves in his brain. He made the fox-trot they danced a thing of the most delicate beauty.
“You’re a pretty good dancer, young fellow,” said Dr. Saunders, when the record came to an end.
“It’s the only thing I can do,” answered the boy, with a smile.
He was so well aware of his amiable gift that he took it as a matter of course and compliments upon it meant nothing to him. Louise looked down at the floor with a serious look on her face. Suddenly she seemed to rouse herself.
“I must go and put grandfather to bed.”
She went over to the old man, still hugging his empty glass, and leaning over him, tenderly cajoled him to come with her. He took her arm and toddled, a foot shorter than she, out of the room beside her.
“What about a game of bridge?” said Frith. “Do you gentlemen play?”
“I do,” said the skipper. “I don’t know about the doctor and Fred.”
“I’ll make up a four,” said Dr. Saunders.
“Christessen plays a very good game.”
“I don’t play,” said Fred.
“That’s all right,” said Frith. “We can manage without you.”
Erik brought forward a bridge table, its green baize patched and worn, and Frith produced two packs of greasy cards. They brought up chairs and cut for partners. Fred stood beside the gramophone, alert, as though his body were on springs, and with little movements kept time to an inaudible tune. When Louise came back he did not move, but in his eyes was a smile of goodwill. It had a familiarity that was not offensive and it gave her the feeling that she had known him all her life.
“Shall I put on the gramophone?” he asked.
“No, they’ll have a fit.”
“We must have another dance.”
“Dad and Erik take their bridge very seriously.”
She walked over to the table and he accompanied her. He stood behind Captain Nichols for a few minutes. The skipper gave him one or two uneasy glances and then, having made a bad play, turned round irascibly.
“I can’t do a thing with someone lookin’ over me ’and,” he said. “Nothin’ puts me off like that.”
“Sorry, old man.”
“Let’s go outside,” said Louise.
The living-room of the bungalow opened on to a verandah, and they stepped out. Beyond the little garden you saw in the starlight the towering kanari trees and below them, thick and dark, the massy verdure of the nutmegs. At the bottom of the steps, on one side, grew a large bush and it was alight with fire-flies. There was a multitude of them and they sparkled softly. It was like the radiance of a soul at peace. They stood side by side for a little while looking at the night. Then he took her hand and led her down the steps. They walked along the pathway till they came to the plantation and she let her hand rest in his as though it were such a natural thing for him to hold it that she paid no attention.
“Don’t you play bridge?” she asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“Why aren’t you playing, then?”
“I didn’t want to.”
It was very dark under the nutmeg trees. The great white pigeons that roosted in their branches were asleep, and the only sound that broke the silence was when one of them for some reason rustled its wings. There was not a breath of wind and the air, vaguely aromatic, had a warm softness so that it surrounded them sensible to the nerves of touch like water to the swimmer. Fire-flies hovered across the path with a sort of swaying movement that made you think of drunken men staggering down an empty street. They walked a little without saying a word. Then he stopped and took her gently in his arms and kissed her on the mouth. She did not start. She did not stiffen, with surprise, or modesty; she made no instinctive movement of withdrawal; she accepted his embrace as though it were in the order of things. She was soft in his arms, but not weak, yielding, but yielding with a sort of tender willingness. They were accustomed to the darkness now, and when he looked into her eyes they had lost their blue and were dark and unfathomable. He had his hand round her waist and an arm round her neck. She rested her head against it comfortably.
“You are lovely,” he said.
“You’re awfully good-looking,” she answered.
He kissed her again. He kissed her eyelids.
“Kiss me,” he whispered.
She smiled. She took his face in her two hands and pressed her lips to his. He placed his hands on her two small breasts. She sighed.
“We must go in.”
She took his hand and side by side they walked back slowly to the house.
“I love you,” he whispered.
She did not answer, but tightly pressed his hand. They came into the light from the house, and when they went into the room for an instant were dazzled. Erik looked up as they entered and gave Louise a smile.
“Been down to the pool?”
“No, it was too dark.”
She sat down and, taking up an illustrated Dutch paper, began to look at the pictures. Then putting it down she let her gaze rest on Fred. She stared at him thoughtfully, without expression on
“I shall go to bed,” she said.
She bade them all good night. Fred sat down behind the doctor and watched them play. Presently, having finished a rubber, they stopped. The old Ford had come back for them and the four men piled in. When they reached the town it drew up to put the doctor and Erik down at the hotel and then drove on to the harbour with the others.
xxii
“ARE you sleepy?” asked Erik.
“No, it’s early yet,” replied the doctor.
“Come over to my place and have a night-cap.”
“All right.”
The doctor had not smoked for a night or two and intended to do so that evening, but he did not mind waiting a little. To delay the pleasure was to increase it. He accompanied Erik along the deserted street. People went to bed early at Kanda and there was not a soul about. The doctor walked with a little quick trip and he took two steps to Erik’s one. With his short legs and somewhat prominent belly he cut a comic figure beside the striding giant. It was not more than two hundred yards to the Dane’s house, but he was a little out of breath when they arrived. The door was unlocked, there was not much fear of thieves on that island where people could neither escape nor dispose of stolen property, and Erik, opening the door, walked in ahead to light the lamp. The doctor threw himself in the most comfortable of the chairs and waited while Erik fetched glasses, ice, whisky and soda. In the uncertain light of a paraffin lamp, with his short grey hair, snub nose and the bright colour on his high cheek bones, he reminded you of an elderly chimpanzee, and his little bright eyes had the monkey’s scintillating sharpness. It would have been a foolish man who thought they would not see through pretence, but perhaps it would have been a wise one who discerned that, however clumsily an awkward address concealed it, they would recognise sincerity. He was not likely to take at its face value what a man said, however plausible, though no more than the shadow of a mischievous smile betrayed his thoughts, but honesty, however naïve, and true feeling, however incongruous, he could repay with a sympathy somewhat ironical and amused, but patient and kindly.
Erik poured out a drink for his guest and a drink for himself.
“What about Mrs. Frith?” asked the doctor. “Is she dead?”
“Yes, she died last year. Heart disease. She was a fine woman. Her mother came from New Zealand, but to look at her you would have said she was pure Swedish. The real Scandinavian type, tall and big and fair, like one of the goddesses in the Rhinegold. Old Swan used to say that when she was a girl she was better-looking than Louise.”
“A very pretty young woman,” said the doctor.
“She was like a mother to me. You can’t imagine how kind she was. I used to spend all my spare time up there, and if I didn’t go for a few days because I was afraid of abusing their hospitality she’d come down and fetch me herself. We Danes, you know, we think the Dutch are rather dull and heavy, and it was a godsend for me to have that house to go to. Old Swan used to like talking Swedish to me.” Erik gave a little laugh. “He’d forgotten most of it, he talks half Swedish, half English, and Malay words thrown in and bits of Japanese; at first I had a job to understand. Funny how a man can forget his native language. I’ve always liked the English. It was fine for me to have long talks with Frith. You wouldn’t expect to find a man with that education in a place like this.”
“I was wondering how he ever found his way here.”
“He’d read about it in some old travel book. He’s told me he wanted to come ever since he was a kid. It’s a funny thing, he’d got it into his head that it was the one place in the world he wanted to live in. And I’ll tell you what’s strange, he’d forgotten the name of it; he could never find again the book in which he’d read about it; he just knew there was an island all by itself in a little group somewhere between Celebes and New Guinea, where the sea was scented with spices and there were great marble palaces.”
“It sounds more like the sort of thing you read about in ‘The Arabian Nights’ than in a book of travel.”
“That’s what a good many people expect to find in the East.”
“Sometimes they do,” murmured the doctor.
He thought of the noble bridge that spanned the river at Fu-chou. There was a press of traffic on the Min, great junks with eyes painted on their prows so that they could see the way to go, wupans with their rattan hoods, frail sampans and chugging motor-boats. On the barges dwelt the turbulent river-folk. In mid-stream on a raft two men, wearing nothing but a loin cloth, fished with cormorants. It was a sight you could watch for an hour at a time. The fisherman sent his bird into the water; it dived, it caught; as it rose to the surface he drew it in by a string tied to its leg; then, while it struggled, angrily flapping its wings, he seized it by the throat and made it disgorge the fish it had seized. After all it was just such a fisherman, fishing in his different Arab way, to whom a casual chance brought such amazing adventures.
The Dane continued:
“He came out East when he was twenty-four. It took him twelve years to get here. He asked everyone he met if they’d heard of the island, but you know, in the F. M. S. and in Borneo, they don’t know much about these parts. He was a bit of a rolling stone when he was a young chap and he wandered from place to place. You heard what old Swan said to him and I guess it was true. He never kept a job very long. He got here at last. The skipper of a Dutch ship told him about it. It didn’t sound very much like the place he was looking for, but it was the only island in the Archipelago that answered to the description at all, and he thought he’d come and look at it. When he landed he hadn’t much besides his books and the clothes he stood up in. At first he couldn’t believe it was the right place; you’ve seen the marble palaces, you’re sitting in one of them now.” Erik looked round the room and laughed. “You see, he’d pictured them to himself all those years like the palaces on the Grand Canal. Anyhow, if it wasn’t the place he was looking for it was the only place he could find. He shifted his standpoint, if you understand what I mean, and forced the reality to tally with his fancy. He came to the conclusion that it was all right. Because they’ve got marble floors and stucco columns he really thinks they are marble palaces.”
“You make him out a wiser man than I thought he was.”
“He got a job here, there was more trade then than there is now; after that, he fell in love with old Swan’s daughter and married her.”
“Were they happy together?”
“Yes. Swan didn’t like him much. He was pretty active in those days and he was always concocting some scheme or other. He could never get Frith to get a move on. But she worshipped him. She thought he was wonderful. When Swan got too old, she ran the estate and looked after things and made both ends meet. You know, some women are like that. It gave her a sort of satisfaction to think of Frith sitting in his den with his books, reading and writing and making notes. She thought him a genius. She thought everything she did for him was only his due. She was a fine woman.”
The doctor reflected on what Erik told him. What a picture of a strange life this offered to the fancy! The shabby bungalow in the nutmeg plantation, with the immensely tall kanari trees; that old pirate of a Swede, ruthless and crotchety, brave adventurer in the soulless deserts of hard fact; the dreamy, unpractical schoolmaster, lured by the mirage of the East, who like—like a coster’s donkey let loose on a common, wandered aimlessly in the pleasant lands of the spirit, browsing at random; and then, the great blonde woman, like a goddess of the Vikings, with her efficiency, her love, her honesty of mind, and surely her charitable sense of humour, who held things together, managed, guided and protected those two incompatible men.
“When she knew she was dying she made Louise promise to look after them. The plantation belongs to Swan. Even now it brings in enough to keep them all. She was afraid that after she
“No great loss to the world, I daresay,” smiled the doctor, “but exasperating to a struggling author.”
“You don’t think much of Frith?”
“I haven’t made up my mind about him.”
“He’s taught me so much. I shall always be grateful to him. I was only a kid when I first came here. I’d been to the university at Copenhagen, and at home we’d always cared for culture; my father was a friend of George Brandes, and Holger Drachmann, the poet, used often to come to our house; it was Brandes who first made me read Shakespeare, but I was very ignorant and narrow. It was Frith who made me understand the magic of the East. You know, people come out here and they see nothing. Is that all, they say. And they go home again. That fort I took you to see yesterday, just a few old grey walls overgrown with weeds. I shall never forget the first time he took me there. His words built up the ruined walls and put ordnance on the battlements. When he told me how the governor had paced them week after week in sickening anxiety, for the natives, in the strange way they have in the East of knowing things before they can possibly be known, were whispering of a terrible disaster to the Portuguese, and he waited desperately for the ship that would bring news; and at last it came, and he read the letter which told him that King Sebastian, with his splendid train of nobles and courtiers, had been annihilated at the battle of Alcacer, and the tears ran down his old cheeks, not only because his king had met a cruel death, but because he foresaw that the defeat must cost his country her freedom; and that rich world they had discovered and conquered, those innumerable islands a handful of brave men had seized for the power of Portugal, must pass under the dominion of foreigners—then, believe me or not, I felt a lump in my throat, and for a little while I couldn’t see because my eyes were blurred with tears. And not only this. He talked to me of Goa the Golden, rich with the plunder of Asia, the great capital of the East, and of the Malabar Coast and Macao, and Ormuz and Bassora. He made that old life so plain and vivid that I’ve never since been able to see the East but with the past still present to-day. And I’ve thought what a privilege it was that I, a poor Danish country boy, should see all these wonders with my own eyes. And I think it’s grand to be a man when I think of those little swarthy chaps from a country no bigger than my own Denmark who, by their dauntless courage, their gallantry, their ardent imagination, held half the world in fee. It’s all gone now and they say that Goa the Golden is no more than a poverty-stricken village; but if it’s true that the only reality is spirit then somehow that dream of empire, that dauntless courage, that gallantry, live on.”