Part 15 (2/2)

”Oh!”

Neilson knew that the skipper had not an idea what he meant, and he looked at him with an ironical twinkle in his dark eyes. Perhaps just because the skipper was so gross and dull a man the whim seized him to talk further.

”You were too busy keeping your balance to notice, when you crossed the bridge, but this spot is generally considered rather pretty.”

”It's a cute little house you've got here.”

”Ah, that wasn't here when I first came. There was a native hut, with its beehive roof and its pillars, overshadowed by a great tree with red flowers; and the croton bushes, their leaves yellow and red and golden, made a pied fence around it. And then all about were the coconut trees, as fanciful as women, and as vain. They stood at the water's edge and spent all day looking at their reflections. I was a young man then--Good Heavens, it's a quarter of a century ago--and I wanted to enjoy all the loveliness of the world in the short time allotted to me before I pa.s.sed into the darkness. I thought it was the most beautiful spot I had ever seen. The first time I saw it I had a catch at my heart, and I was afraid I was going to cry. I wasn't more than twenty-five, and though I put the best face I could on it, I didn't want to die. And somehow it seemed to me that the very beauty of this place made it easier for me to accept my fate. I felt when I came here that all my past life had fallen away, Stockholm and its University, and then Bonn: it all seemed the life of somebody else, as though now at last I had achieved the reality which our doctors of philosophy--I am one myself, you know--had discussed so much. 'A year,' I cried to myself. 'I have a year. I will spend it here and then I am content to die.'”

”We are foolish and sentimental and melodramatic at twenty-five, but if we weren't perhaps we should be less wise at fifty.”

”Now drink, my friend. Don't let the nonsense I talk interfere with you.”

He waved his thin hand towards the bottle, and the skipper finished what remained in his gla.s.s.

”You ain't drinking nothin,” he said, reaching for the whisky.

”I am of a sober habit,” smiled the Swede. ”I intoxicate myself in ways which I fancy are more subtle. But perhaps that is only vanity. Anyhow, the effects are more lasting and the results less deleterious.”

”They say there's a deal of cocaine taken in the States now,” said the captain.

Neilson chuckled.

”But I do not see a white man often,” he continued, ”and for once I don't think a drop of whisky can do me any harm.”

He poured himself out a little, added some soda, and took a sip.

”And presently I found out why the spot had such an unearthly loveliness. Here love had tarried for a moment like a migrant bird that happens on a s.h.i.+p in mid-ocean and for a little while folds its tired wings. The fragrance of a beautiful pa.s.sion hovered over it like the fragrance of hawthorn in May in the meadows of my home. It seems to me that the places where men have loved or suffered keep about them always some faint aroma of something that has not wholly died. It is as though they had acquired a spiritual significance which mysteriously affects those who pa.s.s. I wish I could make myself clear.” He smiled a little.

”Though I cannot imagine that if I did you would understand.”

He paused.

”I think this place was beautiful because here I had been loved beautifully.” And now he shrugged his shoulders. ”But perhaps it is only that my aesthetic sense is gratified by the happy conjunction of young love and a suitable setting.”

Even a man less thick-witted than the skipper might have been forgiven if he were bewildered by Neilson's words. For he seemed faintly to laugh at what he said. It was as though he spoke from emotion which his intellect found ridiculous. He had said himself that he was a sentimentalist, and when sentimentality is joined with scepticism there is often the devil to pay.

He was silent for an instant and looked at the captain with eyes in which there was a sudden perplexity.

”You know, I can't help thinking that I've seen you before somewhere or other,” he said.

”I couldn't say as I remember you,” returned the skipper.

”I have a curious feeling as though your face were familiar to me. It's been puzzling me for some time. But I can't situate my recollection in any place or at any time.”

The skipper ma.s.sively shrugged his heavy shoulders.

”It's thirty years since I first come to the islands. A man can't figure on remembering all the folk he meets in a while like that.”

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