Miss Grimshaw

“ Impatient as I was to see Jennie, the ride seemed short; and when we drove up to Miss Grimshaw’s little white gate, I thought I had never seen a picture half so beautiful. It was a soft spring day, the parlor windows open, and the white muslin curtains fluttering in the breeze. The breath of the lilacs perfumed the air, and the tulips were budding into beauty. Miss Grimshaw had moved her [208] shop to a larger building, and we walked up the yard and were looking through the half-open door, when grandma spied us, and came forward, leaning on her staff.
“Why, Marston, is that you? ”

“ Miss Grimshaw received us very cordially; and when I told her we wanted work together, she shook her head.
After thinking a while, she said with sincere tenderness, “Jennie had better stay with me. She is too delicate to do heavy work; I will give her a light task, and let her have several hours to study every day: and it is very probable that you can find employment in the village ”

“ Grimshaw was an elderly gentleman of nervous aspect, with a thin, squeaky voice which would have upset the risibles of the whole school at any ordinary time; but the girls for the most part listened to him with gravely decorous faces, although one irrepressible Fourth Form kid rippled into gurgling laughter, that was instantly changed to a strangled cough. ”

“ Her name, I believe, was Marie—a very humble Magdalen of that tragic back-water of civilization. Putting her cheek against Grimshaw's arm, she listened to him with a curious patience as one listens to the eloquence of the sea.
"This is no place for thee," he said to her. "Leave me now, ma petite."
But she laughed and went with him. Imagine that room—foul air, sanded floor, kerosene lamps, an odour of bad wine, tobacco, and stale humanity. Grimshaw pushed his way to a table and sat down with a surly Gascon and an enormous Negro from some American ship in the harbour. ”

“ Grimshaw stood with his head hanging forward upon his chest: the scene seemed to move with an intolerable slowness, and to him her attitude of detachment was unspeakably sad. It was as if she spoke from a great distance—as if she were a ghost fading away into dimness. He could not again raise his hands towards her: he could utter no endearments: her gesture of abnegation had been too absolute and too determined. With her eyes full upon him she said:
“You do not love Katya Lascarides: you are as cold to her as a stone. You love me, and you have ruined all our lives. ”

“ I saw the shabby figure of old Benjamin Grimshaw walking in the side path. His hands were in his pockets, his eyes bent upon the ground, his lips moving as if he were in deep thought. Roving Kate, the ragged, silent woman who, for the fortune of Amos, had drawn a gibbet, the shadow of which was now upon him, walked slowly behind the money-lender pointing at him with her bony forefinger. Her stern eyes watched him as the cat watches when its prey is near it. She did not notice me. Silently, her feet wrapped in rags, she walked behind the man, always pointing at him. ”

“ In spite of the Marquis’ accusation, I am not, and never have been, unhappy in women’s society; nor have I had occasion to observe that they are unhappy in mine—to take a leaf out of my companion’s books.
But Daisie didn’t want me, didn’t like me, was more or less afraid of me.
Why?
I watched her, sitting on the sheltered veranda, with the southeaster roaring ceaselessly outside, slamming at the blinds and lifting the long mats nailed on the floor. It was a wild day; a day to make any one restless. ”

“ Grimshaw’s price for a clean bill of health was preposterous.
“I like the young man, my dear; I am glad to entertain him but not his ideas. It’s so easy to be lavish with other people’s money. Thousands of pounds——!”
She repeated this intermittently, as if repetition might exorcise an unholy suggestion.
“What does Mr. Grimshaw want to do?” asked the girl.
“Heaven knows! A system of drainage, waterworks, the rebuilding of cottages.”
“What Lord Wilverley has done.”
“A very rich man, child. And the best of good fellows—a very sincere friend of yours, by the way.” ”

“ But Waram disappeared between the larches, without, apparently, having heard. Grimshaw wavered, unable to decide upon the way to the highroad. He could not shake off a sense of loneliness and terror, as if he himself had gone whirling down to his death. Like a man who comes slowly back from the effects of ether, he perceived, one by one, the familiar aspects of the landscape—the delicate flowers powdering the plateau, the tasselled larches on the slope, the lofty snow-peaks still suffused with rosy morning light. ”

“ Nambu looked at me reproachfully. The man-eater of the ranges does not rudely raise his voice unless he happens to be raiding a village; then—but you men who have been through the war don't need to be told. We are like the colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady, all one family under our skins.
"Did you say there was a dim-dim girl here?" I cried. "Who is she. How long has she been here? And how—how—how did she get here?"
You cannot say "how the devil" in any native language; it is a pity.
"What's a dim-dim girl?" asked Rothery, who knew the word for "woman." ”

“ It would be absurd and you would not believe me if I told you that I, a strong man in the thirties, had never taken interest in any woman before. Only in books does a man pass half his life asleep like the silly princess in the wood waiting for love.
I had been broad awake since first they tied the armlet of manhood on me in these very mountains, and, as Nambu, my friend, had said, there were girls even then who were ready to cook my food for me—in Papua, a significant act. ”

“ The captain of the Dawn was willing to take us out for a consideration. He was a long time getting away from the jetty, and I grew more impatient every minute, for there was the Gertrude far ahead, and gradually drawing out of sight, while we still delayed. By the time the Dawn had spread her dirty sails to the breeze, the other lugger had diminished to a speck.
The Marquis and I sat side by side on the hatch, watching Sariba and the Basilisk open out into emerald and purple bays, and the tall blue D’Entrecasteaux show up on the far horizon. We did not talk: we were too anxious. ”

“ Why should you die?"
"I don't understand you, Mrs. Waite," said the stewardess, coolly. She was supporting Mrs. Arthurs now—supporting her toward the brushwood house.
"Well, I'll make you!" screamed the other, beyond all control. "You'll be the next, and I shall to have nurse you—I shall have to die!"
"I guess not," said the American lad. "I'll tend to the lady myself. There isn't any Mrs. Grundy on a plague island. Stewardess, you needn't nurse that lady there, anyhow. I'll do it. I guess we can't spare our ladies, no any more of them, that is."
They all spoke of Mrs. Arthurs as dead ”

“ If the singing or the howling annoys you, you throw something at the disturber of your peace: that is all.
Further, if any one did hear it and take notice of it, there was nothing dangerous in the song—unless one had the clue—the knowledge of what the charm really was. Had any one the clue save myself and the Marquis? Had George the Greek—who had dug Mo out of his grave, to get his diving dress? Impossible. Still, I might as well stop the singing: it was certainly irritating, and the Kiwai had no right to be annoying the town in the middle of the day, almost opposite the hotel. ”

“ It grew light; we were on our way. The village where Nambu had said we should find the dim-dim girl was one that I had known long ago; I needed no guide to the lifting precipice, plumed with dangling trees, up which our pathway lay.
Rothery, though he had as plucky a soul as every small, weak body held, seemed somewhat daunted at the sight of this typical Papuan "road," with its faint streak of liana ladder, half rotten, dropped from ledge to ledge and waiting in the wind raised by the waterfall that spumed beside it.
"It looks bad," he said. "Can we take a long time?" ”

“ She was in the second row among the shillings. And by the greatest chance in the world Grimshaw happened to make her acquaintance. He sat in the next seat to her. She dropped her programme; he picked it up; and so the acquaintance was made.
Her behaviour towards him was instinct with the greatest condescension. Grimshaw assured me that he was almost overwhelmed. She really treated him as if he had been her equal; as if he had been an acquaintance of some standing. She allowed him to escort her to her hotel. And she told him all about herself ”

“ He gave it to us to handle. We both saw that it was dead and beginning to grow stiff; it seemed to have died naturally, as there were no marks upon it. Mo squatted down on the floor, and motioned us to keep quiet. He laid the lizard out upon a banana-leaf, shut his eyes, and began to chant something in a low, monotonous voice. We could not hear very clearly, for the drums throbbed on and on in the village, and the distant dance had risen to a thundering chorus of feet and voices, like the beat of the trade-wind surf on the long beaches of Papua. ”

“ High above them the mountains were tipped with flame. Grimshaw walked slowly—he was a man of great physical laziness—slashing his cane at the tasselled tips of the crowding larches. Once, when a herd of little goats trotted by, he stood aside and laughed uproariously, and the goatherd's dog, bristling, snapped in passing at his legs.
Waram was silent, full of bitterness and disgust. They went on again, and well down the springlike coils of the descent of Martigny they came upon the body of a man—one of those wandering vendors of pocket-knives and key-rings, scissors and cheap watches. ”

“ You've run yourself long enough without anybody to stop you; it's idiotic, it's suicidal! Do you hear? You're going to do just as I say. I am the Master of your fate, I am the Captain of your darling soul in this instance! What—what, dear—what? Why—Carina!"
The blood suddenly mounted to his face—she was looking at him as that lovely bride had looked at Grimshaw. ”

“ You can never accept the look of things in the mountains, and besides we had to keep under shadow of the bush all the way.
It was certain that the women of the place would be coming home from their gardens about 5, and if the dim dim girl caught sight of us I was fairly certain she would make a bolt of it. I should have been none the worse pleased, but I didn't want to disappoint Willis, since he was set upon carrying the matter through.
We came in sight of a break in the deep forest and of a little track leading to it; we concealed ourselves and sat still. ”

“ I broke through the last of the bush—there was no doubt a track somewhere in the neighborhood, but in the growing dark we had somehow or other missed it—and led the way across the clearing. Meantime, inside the store, the ribald song went on, and the miners, seated round with solemn faces, listened as if at church.
“I am intrigued to find out the meaning of this, my Flint,” breathed the Marquis down the back of my neck. “It is so blessed queer.” ”

“ There was the sound of a mighty waterfall not far away. I felt once more to make sure—as if one who had seen the battlefields of Europe did not know death at first sight!—and then I left Grace for a moment, warning her to keep hidden, tramped through a few rods of tangled bush, came out on the verge of a great white torrent that seemed to light up the moonless night, and with a single word of farewell gave Willis' body to the deep.
"You are eating tears," whispered Grace to me as we ran along side by side through the dusk, her hand in mine. "Why?" ”

“ The fire was low in the marea, but it cast up a deep red glow toward the roof, giving light enough to see the contents of the wonderful bag, as Mo tumbled them out on the floor beside us. The salt had been too much for him; he accepted it eagerly, and was eating it like sugar, smearing his paint all to bits, and nearly choking himself as he sucked it down. These inland natives hardly ever see salt, and they are as keen for it as an alligator for fish, once they get the chance of a little.
Everything that was in the bag the Marquis handled, weighed, even smelt. ”

“ You might as well trust tissue-paper as silk, in New Guinea,” I said wearily.
“I did not know, I swear. Well, when I see it is gone, I tell Daisee that I have lost a something I have the greatest value for, a gem—I do not say a diamond. And she call many native boys. And they look, look, look, till it get dark. And I will swear, if it were that I was dying, we look every inch. But there is no stone.”
“I reckon Mrs. Daisie could tell you——” I began.
“Halt!” cried the Marquis. “Daisee is as innocent as the lamb unborn. When we see the stone is lost, she will not look herself. ”

“ So I sat down on the floor of the marea again, and lit my pipe before I would answer.
“Flint, my very good friend, I fear that you are in a blooming wax,” said the Marquis. “Why should you wax with me? What have I done?”
I took out my pipe. “You don’t seem to remember,” I said, “that we’re in a hostile country. I’d be obliged if you would.” I put back my pipe.
“What did you see?” asked the Marquis, quite grave and sensible now.
“I saw nothing,” I said. “I don’t know that there was anything. But I think I heard—the little creak that some of these big blackwood bows make.” ”

“ Grimshaw shouted, clapping Waram on the back, "I'm confoundedly pleased! We'll arrange a divorce for Dagmar. Good heaven, she deserves a decent future. I'm not the sort for her. I hate the things she cares most about. And now I'm done for in England. Just to make it look conventional—nice, Victorian, English, you understand—you and I can go off to the Continent together while Dagmar's getting rid of me. There'll be no trouble about that. I'm properly dished. Besides, I want freedom. A new life. Beauty, without having to buck this confounded distrust of beauty. ”