CHAPTER XXXVI
THE LEPER
Dejeuner had been prepared for the party in a private room, a big room,for there were twelve guests all told, including not only Cleo's friendsbut the business men, and the friends of Prince Selm.
But before thinking of dejeuner or anything else she had to see aboutRaft.
She left him standing in the hall whilst she interviewed the manager.
Actually, the business would have been easier for her had she broughtwith her an animal, even of the largest pattern. The manager, when hehad caught a glimpse of the intended guest, revolted; not openly, it istrue, but with genuflexions and outstretching of hands.
Where could this man be put, what could be done with him? The valets andladies' maids would certainly not eat with him, the visitors wouldobject to his presence in the lounge, the servants in the servants'quarters. He was a common sailor man. Heavens! What a problem thatmanager had to face, something quite new, quite illogical, yet quitelogical. He had heard of the wreck of the _Gaston_ and he was asinterested in Cleo as a hotel manager could be. He understood the wholecase when she told him that Raft had saved her life; he was a man ofbroad mind, but he knew intimately the mental make up of his servants,his visitors and their servants. He discussed the matter with Cleo quiteopenly and she saw the reason of all he said. Raft was "impossible" inthat hotel. His heroism did not count a bit; it did with the manager whowould not have to sit at table with him, it did not with the waiters andvalets and ladies' maids who would have to associate with him, or theguests whose eyes would be offended by his presence.
"He belongs to a ship," said the manager. Then he solved the questionwith a burst.
"I will look after him myself." He ran into the hall and called Raft tocome with him; then, followed by Cleo, he led the way to a sitting-room,a most elegant sitting-room upholstered in blue silk.
"Here," said he to the sea lion, "will you take your seat and dejeunerwill be served to you."
"I have to leave you for a bit," said Cleo, putting her hand on his arm,"I won't be long."
"I'll wait for you," said Raft. He was a bit amazed at all the newthings around him and blissfully unconscious of trouble. He threw hiscap on a chair and took his pipe from his pocket, the same old pipe hehad lit that night on the ledge of the sea-corridor, then he produced aplug of tobacco, the same tobacco whose pungent fume had comforted herthere, with the sound of the hungry sea coming through the dark.
Then he sat down on a silk covered chair and the manager and the girlwent out.
"I will serve him myself," said the manager. "I understand; he is abrave man but very rough; the servants do not understand these things.It is a difficulty, but after--? Mademoiselle--after?"
"After what?"
"After he has had his meal?"
She understood. After he had been fed he was to go. He could go, say, toa sailors' lodging house; she had heard of such things. Or, he wouldwalk about the streets; the thing was quite simple. It was only right togive him a good meal and some money, a good round sum, seeing all he haddone for her.
She was scarcely heeding the manager. She was viewing, full face, thetruth that the manager had demonstrated to her clearly. Raft wasimpossible. She had had vague ideas of bringing him to Paris and givinghim a room for himself in her house on the Avenue Malakoff. She hadnever thought of the servants, she had thought of her friends and thatthey would think her conduct queer. But she saw everything now quitestraight and in a dry light. Raft was shipwrecked on a social state; tokeep company with him she would have to renounce everything and live onhis level; she could not treat him as a servant; even if she could,servants would resent him. He was not of their type, much lower, alabouring man from the sea. Not to lose him as he was to her she wouldhave to enter the absolutely impossible and absurd, she would have togive up social life and make a world of her own with Raft. With a manwhose setting was the sea, the wilderness, whose life was action, whowas ignorant of art, philosophy, the convenances, who was a figure ofscorn to every educated eye when caught against the background ofCivilisation.
In three beats of a pendulum all this passed through her mind.
Then she said to the manager:
"Quite so. I understand. I must thank you very much for your realkindness. I shall give this man a sum of money, and this afternoon youwill be free of him. He can find shelter at a sailors' home--I haveheard of such places."
"Oh, Mon Dieu! Yes," said the manager, vastly relieved, "and either I orFritz, my head waiter, will serve him with his food. Fritz is a man oftemperament and knowledge and I will explain to him."
He hurried off and she was left alone in the corridor.
She opened the door of the little sitting-room. The leper was seatedhunched on his chair just as she had seen him sitting often on a rock;he was surrounded with a cloud of tobacco smoke.
She had seen the loneliness of Kerguelen but that was nothing to this.
Poor Raft. The very chairs and tables shouted at him; he lookedridiculous. How in her wildest dreams could she have entertained theidea of holding him to her, here?
He would have looked more ridiculous only that he looked, what he felt,forlorn. The place was beginning to tell on him, used to the rough andthe open; the smooth and the closed were getting at him.
When he saw her he took the pipe from his mouth and pressed the burningtobacco down with his finger nervously, the same finger she had suckedonce when parched with thirst.
She saw, as a matter of fact, that he was nervous, if the term couldapply to such a huge and powerful organism, and the fear came to herthat if left alone he might bolt before she could conduct him in personto the Sailors' Home.
Standing with the door held half open she nodded to him.
"I want you to stay here," said she, "till I come back. I have to talkto all those people you saw and I may be a couple of hours. That manwill bring you something to eat--you don't mind my leaving you here?"
"Oh, I don't mind," said Raft "but you'll be wanting something to eatyourself."
"I'll get it."
"You'll come back, sure?"
"Sure."
She laughed, nodded to him, and closed the door. Her cheeks wereflushed and her eyes bright, she was strangely worked up; a touch mighthave sent her into a storm of anger or a burst of tears.
In the corridor she met Madame de Brie who had been hunting for her.
"Cleo, they are waiting dejeuner for you--but, my dear child, you havenot changed, has no one shewn you to your room?"
The old lady had not only brought along Cleo's maid who, with the restof the servants, had been on board wages during her mistress's absence,but a trunk full of clothes.
"I am not going to change," said Cleo, "I am too busy--and too hungry--"
A reporter from the _Gaulois_ stopped her as she was turning towards theroom, indicated by Madame de Brie, where dejeuner was to be served.
"Mademoiselle," said the reporter, "I did not like to trouble yousooner, may I crave the honour of a short interview with you on accountof the _Gaulois_?"
"Certainly, monsieur," replied the girl. "Pray come to dejeuner as myguest, I hope to tell my friends something of my experiences and what Isay you can repeat; that will be better than a formal interviewtete-a-tete, which, after all, is rather a depressing affair."
The dejeuner was not a depressing affair. Cleo struck the note. She wasin radiant good humour. Madame de Brie sat on her right, Monsieur deBrie on her left. Monsieur Bonvalot, her man of affairs, with his longDundreary whiskers, opposite to her; the rest were scattered on eitherside of the long table.
At first the conversation was general, then, after a while, Cleo wastalking and the rest listening.
"As I shall be very busy for a long time," said Cleo, "I would like nowto give all the information I can about the loss of the yacht. Agentleman is present on behalf of the _Gaulois_, and as all details Ican give relative to the disaster are of world wide interest,considering the position of the late Pri
nce Selm, I take thisopportunity of making them known. Unfortunately they are few."
She told briefly but clearly the story of the disaster, of her escapeand landing on Kerguelen, of the caves and the cache and the death ofthe two men. She did not tell how La Touche met his end, that businesshad to do with no one but herself and La Touche. She gave it to beunderstood that he, like Bompard, had met his fate in the quicksands.
She told of her loneliness, and how she had been dying simply fromloneliness, how she had been saved by Raft and how he had nursed herlike a mother.
It was then that she really began to talk and shew them pictures. Theysaw the beach and that terrible journey along under the cliffs, cliffsthat seemed cut out of night and never ending, the sea, like anobsession, crawling shoreward, and Raft carrying her on his shoulder.
They saw the summit where she had stood looking towards the west and thehopeless prospect of finding a bay that might not be there and ananchorage where there might be a ship, on a coast where few ships evercame.
Fascinated and warmed by Perrier Jouet, they followed her to the placewhere the wind had brought her the smell of the try pots and to thecliff edge where Derision shew her the Chinese whaler and the terriblelittle man, blood-stained, and busy with butchery.
She shewed them the great serang--Captain of the Chinese--driving themoff the beach and telling them to begone back into the wilderness, and,vaguely, the fight where Raft had saved her from death or worse----
"Ah, Mon Dieu, what a man," cried a female voice down the table.
Cleo stopped.
"Yes, Madame la Comtesse," said she, "but a man beyond the pale, a manto be ashamed of, a man who, were he to sit in the lounge of this hoteland smoke his pipe, would drive all the other guests away. A commonsailor. A man rough from the sea and illiterate."
There was a dead silence.
Monsieur Bonvalot, a socialist, though a business man, nodded his head.He broke the silence.
"A man," said Monsieur Bonvalot, "is, after all, a man."
"Oh, no, monsieur, he is not," said Cleo, "not in Marseilles. But donot think I am quarrelling with social conditions. There must, Ibelieve, always be hewers of wood and drawers of water. I am justtalking of Raft and my own position as regards him. I am not thinking ofthe fact that he saved my life time and again, or that he nursed me withhis great rough hands as tenderly as a mother. I am thinking of the factthat I have discovered something quite new and genuine, a human heartthat is warm and real and true and simple, simple as the heart of achild, a mind that has no crookedness, a man who, in Paris or here inMarseilles, is absurd, not because he is rough and uncouth, but becausehe is like Monsieur Gulliver amongst the little people. I have seen thegreat, I have seen the wind and the sun and the sea and the mountains asthey really are, and life as it really is, for those who really live. Ihave seen death, none of you here have ever seen or imagined death, noneof you here have ever seen life, none of you here have seen the world.You all have been protected from the truth of things, and fortunately,for the truth of things would break you as it would have broken me butfor Raft, who sits in a room at the end of that corridor and whom themanager of this hotel is serving with food with his own hands becausethe hotel servants would consider it an insult were they asked to carryhim his food.
"I am not grumbling. I quite recognise the logic of the whole thing, butI feel as though I were looking at everything through the large end of apair of opera glasses, just as when as a child I used to do so andamuse myself by watching human beings reduced to the size of dolls.
"Well, now you have all my story and I have put before you a new view ofthings and I hope I have not shocked you all. My poor Raft must now goto the Sailors' Home where I am going with him. I want some money,Monsieur Bonvalot."
"Mademoiselle," said Bonvalot, awaking like a person from hypnotism anddelighted to find himself on a business footing again, "certainly, Ihave here your cheque book which I have brought with me."
"Then we will go to another room and discuss business matters," said thegirl rising. "Now all you people please enjoy yourselves. You are myguests whilst you stay in this hotel. Madame de Brie will see that youhave everything."
She led the way from the room, Monsieur Bonvalot following. A suite hadbeen engaged for her and here in the sitting-room she started to talkbusiness with her man of affairs.
A large fortune is like a delicate animal, always in need of nursing andattention, it is always changing colour in spots from rosy to dark, adepreciation in Peruvian bonds means that your capital has shrunk justthere and the question comes will it go on shrinking; a big rise inP.L.M. shares suggests taking the profit and re-investing should theyfall again.
Monsieur Bonvalot had problems of this sort to set before the girl--sheswept them away. "I have no time to attend to all that now," said she,"some other day will do. I want twenty thousand francs, have you gotthem?"
"Twenty thousand francs," said Bonvalot. "No, Mademoiselle. I broughtfive thousand francs in notes thinking you would want them for yourexpenses here, but you can write a cheque on the Credit Lyonnais and Iwill get it cashed for you at once."
He produced from a wallet a bundle of pink and blue bank notes andcounted out five thousand francs, then she wrote a cheque for fifteenthousand payable to him. He endorsed it, went off and returned in tenminutes with the money. She put the notes in a big envelope and theenvelope in her pocket. That same pocket still contained the old tobaccobox of Captain Slocum and the other odds and ends which she treasuredmore than gold.
"That will do for the present," said she, "to-morrow I will open anaccount at the Marseilles branch of the Credit Lyonnais, or rather youcan do it for me to-day. Give them this specimen of my signature andthey can telegraph to the Paris branch. I would like two hundredthousand francs put to my credit here.
"But are you not coming back to Paris?" asked Bonvalot.
"No, Monsieur Bonvalot, not at present!" He pulled his whiskers.
The idea had suddenly come to him, and come to him strongly, that shewas about to do "something foolish."
He had seen women do very foolish things in the course of his businesslife and all that talk of hers at the luncheon table came back to himnow.
He remembered the beautiful Mademoiselle de Lacy who had run off andmarried a groom; could it be possible that Cleo contemplated any suchmad act with that terrific sailor man? The idea chilled his heart.
Equality and Fraternity were parts of his motto and he was an honestsocialist; he believed honestly that all men were equals and that thewaiters who served him at table were as good as himself, with adifference of course due to the accidents of life, but he believed, withDaudet, that there is no greater abyss than class difference.
His theory was confounded by this practice. But he could say nothing,for the matter was too delicate to be touched upon.