Mr. Fortune (12 page)

Mr. Fortune leapt to his feet. He waved his arms, he stood on tiptoe in order to see better. Though the next moment might engulf him he was going to make the most of this. But there was no need to be so provident, so economical. This bonfire had been preparing for decades, it would not burn out in a minute or two. Realising this, he sat down again and relinquished himself to an entire and passive contemplation, almost lulled by the inexhaustible procession of fire and smoke, warming his mind at the lonely terrific beauty of a mountain burning by night amid an ocean.

Clouds began to gather at daybreak. Only a pallor showed where the sun groped upwards among them, and the sea, which but a few hours ago had looked so lustrous, and solid like a floor of onyx, was now pale and weltering.

The earthquake seemed to be over; sometimes the ground gave a sort of a twitch and a tremble like an animal that dreams a bad dream; but this happened at longer and longer intervals and each disturbance was fainter than the last. Except for the plume of foul smoke that issued from the crater and sagged over the mountain side as it was checked by the morning airs there was nothing to distinguish this daybreak from any other, unless, thought Mr. Fortune, that it was a peculiarly dreary one.

He was chilled with watching, and oppressed with the indigestion common to those who have sat up all night. He was also bruised with so much falling about, and his ribs ached from being crushed under the harmonium. But his excitement, which in spite of all the adventures of the last twelve hours was still a deferred excitement, unsatisfied and defrauded of its prey, wouldn't let him settle down into a reasonable fatigue, but still kept his muscles strung up and his vision strained.

It seemed an age since he had last thought of Lueli. He looked at him now as though from a long way off, and rather crossly, and it seemed as though his vague irritation were in a way to be justified. For Lueli lay as though asleep.

That Lueli should sleep while he waked was enough. It showed that he was inconsiderate, incapable of true sympathy, an inferior being who hadn't got indigestion. Mr. Fortune heaved a loud short sigh. Lueli didn't stir. No doubt of it. He was asleep. He lay so that Mr. Fortune could only see the curve of his cheek and half his mouth, which bore the sad resigned expression of those who slumber. But bending a little over him to make sure, Mr. Fortune discovered that the boy's eyes were open and fixed mournfully upon the empty and unquiet sea. There was something so devastated about that blank and unmoving gaze that the priest was awed. Why did Lueli look so old, so set and austere? The face so well known seemed that of a stranger; and suddenly he recalled Lueli bending over him in the burning hut as he lay helpless under the harmonium, and remembered that then his face had worn the same look, grave and stern.

Lueli had saved his life at the risk of his own, he had shown that greatest love which makes a man ready to lay down his life for his friend. And now the rescued one sat coldly beside the rescuer, eyeing his unknown sorrow, and but a moment ago seeking some pretext for scorning and disliking him.

“What a hateful creature I am!” thought Mr. Fortune, “and how this earthquake has shown me up! But Lueli has behaved well throughout, he saved my life, he kept his head, he didn't want to cheer and behave like a tripper when the mountain exploded.” And in his thoughts he begged Lueli's pardon.

Still Lueli lay beside him, staring out to sea with the same mournful look. His silence was like a reproach to Mr. Fortune. It seemed to say: “You have slighted me unjustly and now I must forget you.” Mr. Fortune waited patiently, he had a confused idea that his patience now must repair his former impatience. But at length his love could endure no longer, and he laid his hand gently on Lueli's arm. There was no response. Lueli didn't even turn his eyes.

“He is tired out,” thought the priest. “That is why he looks so miserable.” He said aloud: “Wake up, Lueli, you will make yourself ill if you lie there any longer so still on the cold ground. Wake up. Rouse yourself. It is all over now.” And he gave him an encouraging slap on the shoulder.

At last Lueli sighed and stretched himself and turned and met Mr. Fortune's anxious gaze.

“I think the earthquake is over,” he remarked in an everyday voice.

“Just what I said a minute ago,” thought Mr. Fortune. “But he doesn't know I said it. What can he have been thinking of that he didn't hear me?”

He still felt slightly worried about the boy.

“We had better walk about a little,” he said. “Ow! I've got cramp.”

Taking Lueli's arm he staggered down the little rocky path. The morning was cold and now it began to rain. The rain was dirty rain, full of smuts and fine grit from the volcano. It might have been raining in London or Manchester.

Exercise soon restored Mr. Fortune to an ordinary frame of mind. He looked with interested horror at the wood they passed through. Many trees were uprooted or hung tottering with their roots half out of the ground, the shrubs and grass were crushed and trampled, boughs and torn creepers were scattered everywhere. It was as though some savage beast had run amuck through the glades, tearing and havocking and rooting up the ground with its horns. Lueli picked up a dead parrot, and once they skirted by a swarm of angry bees. Their hive had been broken in the fall of its tree, the honeycomb was scattered on the grass, and the affronted insects were buzzing hither and thither, angrier than ever because now the rain was making its way through the dishevelled green roof.

“But it will soon quench them,” thought Mr. Fortune. “And if some bees and some parrots are the only deaths by this earthquake we shall be well out of it.”

He was uneasy about the villagers, all the more so because he felt that he had run away from them in their hour of peril. Also he wanted to talk to some one about the stream of lava which he knew would soon flow down from the crater. “Provided it only flows to the south!” he thought. He questioned Lueli but could learn nothing; Lueli had never been in an earthquake before, he had heard the old men of the island talking about them but the last earthquake had happened long before his day.

On nearing the village Mr. Fortune heard a great hubbub, but it was impossible to discover from the noise of every one talking at once whether they were lamenting or merely excited; all he could conclude was that at any rate they were not all dead.

When he appeared, with Lueli following sedately behind, a crowd of gesticulating islanders rushed forward, all waving their arms and shouting. The thought leapt up in his mind: “Suppose they think that
I
am responsible for this earthquake? Perhaps they will kill me to appease the mountain!”

He had never felt less in the mood for martyrdom. The last twelve hours had given him more than enough to cope with. Yet even if the fervour of his faith were lacking, he could make a shift to die decently: and he stiffened himself and went forward. But Lueli? Suppose they wanted to martyr him too? No! That he would not allow. While there was a kick left in him he would see to that. He glanced back as though to reassure him, but as he caught sight of him he remembered that Lueli was not a Christian, nor ever had been one. What a sell if they should sacrifice him before there was time to explain! Well, this made it even more urgent a matter to defend him: martyrdom was one thing, miscarriage of justice quite another.

But Mr. Fortune need not have been agitated. The islanders had no intention but to welcome him and Lueli, and to rejoice round them over their safety, which they did with the pleasanter excitement and conviction, since naturally in the emotions of the night they had not given them a thought till now.

Half-smothered and quite deafened, Mr. Fortune pushed through the throng, saying: “Where is Ori?” For having lived so long on the island he had fallen into the proper respect for a chief, and depended on Ori rather more than he would have liked to admit. “He is almost like another European”—so the priest explained to himself. At this juncture Ori was behaving very much like an European, for he was partaking of one of those emergency breakfasts, sketchy in form but extremely solid and comprehensive in content, with which the white races consummate and, as it were, justify any fly-by-night catastrophe. Seeing Mr. Fortune he politely invited him to sit down and take a share. “But the flow of lava?” inquired Mr. Fortune, wiping his mouth. “Do you think it will come this way?” Ori took another handful of stirabout. “There are no signs of it so far, and if it comes this way it will not come here yet.”

“But do you think it will come this way?”

“My god says, No.”

When breakfast was finished Ori got up and went off with the other men of consequence to make an inquisition into the damage done by the pigs. They had come bolting down from the woods and wrought even more serious havoc than the earthquake, which had only shaken down a house or two, whereas the pigs had trespassed into every enclosure and eaten all the provisions. Mr. Fortune felt a little slighted that he was not invited to go too. Apparently Ori did not quite regard him as another Fanuan. “Oh well,” he said, “perhaps they meant it politely, seeing that I had not finished my breakfast.” But though he felt as if he were hungry he had no real appetite, and rising he prepared to walk back to his hut.

It was as though the earthquake had literally shaken his wits. All his recollections were dislodged and tumbled together; he knew they were there somewhere, but he could not find them—just as he had mislaid the discovery of overnight until, turning to view Lueli as a possible martyr, he beheld and recognised him as the idolater he was and always had been. Now he was walking to the hut in the same kind of oblivion. He must have remembered the lamp tossing its flame up to the roof, the burning sheaves of thatch falling down around him, for he had a very clear vision of Lueli's face bending over him, so violently modelled by the flames that it had looked like the face, sad and powerful, of a stranger, of an angel. But his thoughts went no further; and even when the smell of charred wood came sadly to his nostrils through the falling rain he did not put two and two together.

“I wonder if those pigs have messed up my place too,” he said. A sigh out of the air answered him. He had not noticed till then that Lueli was following.

“Poor Lueli, you must be so tired!” There was no answer and still the boy lagged behind. He must be tired indeed. Mr. Fortune stopped. He was about to speak once more, bidding Lueli to lean on him and take heart, when suddenly the boy shot past him, running desperately, and whispering to himself as he ran as though he were imploring his own mind.

Mr. Fortune hastened after him. Would all this strangeness, this bewilderment, this nightmare of familiar living confounded and turned backward never come to an end? He hastened on into the smell of burning, and pulling aside the drooping fronds of a banana tree which, uprooted, had fallen and lay across the pathway like a screen, he beheld the ruins of the hut.

One wall was still standing, a few pale flames licking wistfully over it. The rest was charred logs and hummocks of grey ash sizzling under the rain—for now it was raining more and more heavily. Looking round on the devastation he began to recognise the remains of his belongings. Those shreds of tinder were his clothes. That scrap of shrivelled leather, that wasting impalpable bulk of feathery print, was his Bible; there lay the medicine chest and there the sewing-machine; and this, this intricate ruin of molten metal tubes, charred rubber, and dislocated machinery, was the harmonium, its scorched ivory keys strewed round about it like teeth fallen from a monstrous head.

Lueli was there, but he seemed to have no thought for the unfortunate priest amid the ruins of his home. Wading among the hot ashes, crouching close to the wreckage, turning over this and that with rapid and trembling hands, Lueli was searching with desperate anxiety for—Mr. Fortune knew not what. At length he gave a bitter cry and cast himself down upon the ground.

Instantly Mr. Fortune was kneeling beside him, patting his shoulder, trying to lift the averted head.

“What is it, Lueli? What is it, my dear, dear friend?”

Lueli sat up and turned on him a face discoloured and petrified into an expression of such misery that he could hardly endure to look at it.

“What is it? Are you hurt? Are you ill?”

The expression never changed.

“Are you frightened, Lueli? Has it upset you to find our home burnt to the ground? But never mind! We will soon have another, it is nothing to grieve for.”

He would have said that Lueli did not hear him, so unmoving he sat, so utterly aloof, but that at these last words a very slight smile of scorn quivered on the dry lips.

Then Mr. Fortune remembered. He hung his head; and when he spoke again it was with the grave voice in which we address the bereaved.

“Is it your god you were looking for? Is he gone?”

Lueli did not answer. But it was clear that he had both heard and understood, for he fixed his eyes on the priest's face with the look of an animal which knows itself at man's mercy but does not know what man intends to do to it.

“My poor Lueli! Is that it?... Is it so dreadful? Yes, I know it must be, I know, I know. I would do anything to comfort you, but I cannot think how, I can only tell you how I pity you with my whole heart. I do, indeed I do. Believe me, though I told you to burn your god, yet at this moment, if it were possible for me, I think I would even give it to you again.”

He spoke very slowly, scarcely daring to lift his gaze to the sorrow which sat beside him, not answering, not crying out, meek with the meekness of despair. And still Lueli listened, and still looked, with his expression wavering between timidity and antagonism.

“Lueli, I spoke very harshly to you last night, not like a Christian, not as one sad human being should speak to another. In blaspheming against your god I blasphemed against my own. And now I can't comfort you. I don't deserve to. I can only sit beside you and be sorry.”