Beach of Dreams — 29 - Part VI, Chapter 37

CHAPTER XXXVII A NEW HOME

Raft was still in the room where she had left him.

As they passed through the hall where a number of people were seated about in basket chairs she felt every eye fixed upon her and her companion.

Then out in the sunlit Cannabier Prolongué she drew a deep breath just as a person draws a deep breath after a dive.

She also felt free.

She had always been free in theory; possessed of her own money she could have done absolutely as she liked, in theory.

In practice she had always been a slave.

The slave of a thousand and one things and circumstances, things and circumstances many of them troublesome, many of them wearisome, all of them not to be denied.

"Mademoiselle, your bath is ready."

"Mademoiselle, the first gong has sounded."

"What dress will Mademoiselle wear this afternoon?"

Oh, the day, the day with its hundred phases and divisions, the dresses that went with each phase, the lukewarm emotions and interests and boredom and suppressed hatreds, this thing called the day, which she had first reviewed in the open boat after the wreck of the _Gaston de Paris_ terrified to find it torn from her--this thing had been returned to her that morning in all its futility.

It seemed to her, as she cast it away, a horrible gaud, a thing made of tinsel, yet a thing that could destroy the soul and blind the eyes and numb the heart.

She had never been free, she had always been the veriest slave, the slave of things, of people, of convenances, and of circumstances.

Doctor Epinard had spoken something of the truth.

Man may not be an automaton worked by environment, all the same he is the slave of environment, and never such a slave as when his environment is that of high Civilisation.

For there the pure motives of the mind have ever to be regulated and falsified, the heart crushed, the face veiled.

To break with all that falsity means shipwreck.

"Which way does the sea lie?"

asked the girl.

Raft turned to the left as though the smell of the sea were leading him.

"I'm glad to be out of there," said he, "I was near smothered in that place."

"So was I," said she, "did that man bring you your food all right?"

"Another chap brought it," said Raft, "a Dutchman."

She laughed.

"Do you know what I was thinking?"

said she.

"I was thinking of the time you brought me food when I was nearly dying.

You didn't tell a Dutchman to bring it.

I'd have brought you your food myself and we would have had it together only I had to talk to those people.

Well, I've got rid of them.

How would you like to live always in a place like that hotel?"

Raft mentally reviewed the room done in blue silk, Fritz, and the rest of it.

"I'd rather be out in the open," said Raft.

"Not that I have anything to say against it--but I'd rather be out in the open."

They walked along.

Companionship with Raft had for her one delightful thing about it, it was companionship without restraint.

In a way it was like companionship with a dog, or a child.

Like two old sailors they would hang silent, sometimes, for a long time, not bothering to speak, content with being together.

She had never imagined the possibility of a man and a woman of absolutely different social position in such a relationship, never drawn the ghost of such an idea from all the books she had read, all the plays she had seen.

Never could she have imagined a common sailor man striking Art for her to pieces, as he had struck the story of Anatole France, and creating above a world he had taught her to despise, a nest for her mind rough as himself, but in air pure and living.

Raft, the common man, had made her social world seem vulgar as well as small, chill as well as vulgar.

She was thinking just now as she walked beside him how when she had told him that the hotel manager would bring him something to eat, he had said, "but you will want something to eat yourself."

That was the sort of thing constantly recurring in all sorts of ways that had brought her to know him truly, occurring in little ways as well as in that great and heroic moment when he had told her to destroy herself with the knife if he were killed.

As they passed along the Cannabier they saw a drunken sailor reeling along towards them through the crowd, and Raft drew her by the arm off the sidewalk to avoid him.

The sight in other times would have made him laugh, or more likely it would have been scarcely noticed, but She, in some manner or another, made drink discreditable, and the sight of it to be avoided.

It would have been the same, most likely, had he been taking a child for a walk.

Down near the docks they passed a birdshop before which Raft cast anchor almost forgetful of his companion.

There were all sorts of birds here, those tiny birds from the African coast one sees in the shops of the Riviera, canaries and parrots.

There was one parrot, enormous and coloured like a tropical sunset, drowsy-eyed and insolent looking.

When he saw the sailor man he seemed to rouse up.

He looked at Raft and Raft at him.

"I'd like that chap," said Raft, "he beats the lot of them."

"And you shall have him," said she.

He laughed.

"Much good he'd be to a chap like me.

Where'd I keep him?"

Her eyes softened as she looked at the bird and from the bird to the man.

Where, indeed, could he keep him?

He who had no home--nothing.

Then it was that Money seemed to her what it really is, a god, beautiful and benign.

It had often seemed to her as a demon, but Raft, who unconsciously had cast ridicule on her world, was now, unconsciously, shewing her the great truth she had never seen before, the truth that Money is more beautiful than Apollo, more etherial than Psyche, more powerful than Jove.

"You will soon have somewhere to keep him," said she, "we will get him to-morrow.

Come on.

I want now to find the place where the fishing boats put in.

I saw it the last time I was here in Marseilles, years ago, but I am not sure of the direction."

She asked a man who was passing and he pointed the way; it was a long distance, but it seemed short, so full was her mind with the plan she had formulated before leaving the hotel.

She talked as she went.

Talked just as though they were on the Kerguelen beach hunting for a cave.

"We will find a place to put the parrot.

I want a great big boat, not a yacht.

I've had enough of those.

I want a good sea boat and the fisher-boats I have seen here seemed to me good, and the men are the right sort of men.

I am going to buy one--or hire one--well, we shall see.

I want you to help to get it ready for us.

How good the smell of this place is," she paused to sniff the tar-sea scents brought by the afternoon wind.

It was like the smell of Freedom.

Then they came on to the fisher wharf and right into the arms of Captain Jean Bontemps.

Captain Jean was about five feet in height and he seemed five feet in thickness.

He was propped against a bollard and he was in his shore-going clothes.

The girl's eye told her at once that here was a useful man, a man of authority and knowledge.

She approached him, and as he took his pipe from his mouth and removed his cap, she opened her business without parley or hesitation.

She wanted to buy or hire a fishing boat, price no object.

He did not understand her at first.

He seemed suffering from some form of deafness.

Then when she repeated the statement he shewed no surprise.

He himself was a fishing boat owner, Captain Bontemps of the _Arlesienne_, and he was quite willing to sell his boat, for a sum--two thousand pounds he asked, and she did not know that he was speaking in jest, just as one might speak to a child.

"If your boat suits me, I will pay what you ask," said she, "let me see it."

Then it came upon Captain Jean that he was either talking to a lunatic or some wealthy woman with a craze.

His sails were taken aback and he was left wallowing in a heavy ground sea of the mind with a smell of spice islands tinging the air.

_La Belle Arlesienne_, his old boat, was not worth a thousand pounds.

Under the hammer heaven knows what she would have fetched, but she was his wife, or the only female thing that stood in that relationship to him.

He tapped the dottle out of his pipe, then he took a pouch from his pocket and began to refill and the girl, seeing his condition, drew him aside, asking Raft to wait for her.

They went to another bollard and there, the mariner anchoring himself, she began to talk.

She introduced herself.

He knew all about the _Gaston de Paris_ and Mademoiselle de Bromsart.

He put his pipe in his pocket, finding himself in such famous company.

She went on.

In ten minutes she told him her whole story, told him just what Raft was and just how they stood related, and just how he had been treated in the hotel.

"It's as though they had turned out my father or my brother," said she, "we two who have fought and faced everything together have grown into companions.

Friends who cannot be parted, Captain Bontemps.

If he were a woman or I a man it would be easier.

As it is things are difficult.

Well, I do not care.

I will do exactly as I like.

I feel you will be my friend, too; you understand me.

And I want you to look after him to-night, for in the whole of Marseilles I do not know where he could go unless to some wretched Sailors' Home or worse.

Ah, it is wicked.

Of what use is it to be brave, to be honest, to be true in this world?"

"Mon Dieu," said the Captain, "I will look after him, if for no other reason than that he is what you say, mademoiselle; but _La Belle Arlesienne_ is rough, should you use her as a yacht, you would not find her a yacht.

She smells of fish--" "I am used to rough things," said the girl.

"I dread the smooth.

Captain Bontemps, for one who has done for me everything should I dread anything?

And a little roughness, what is that to freedom and the life I have learned to love with the man I love?

For I love Raft, Captain Bontemps, just as I know he loves me.

Oh, do not mistake me, it is not the sort of thing they call love here amongst houses and streets, it is not a woman that is speaking to you but a human being."

He understood her.

To his broad and simple mind the thing was simple;

she did not want to part with the man who had saved her and fought for her and who had been "chucked out" of a hotel because he was a rough sailor, and marvellously well he understood that when she said she loved Raft she did not mean the thing that the dock side called Love.

No Paris poet could have understood her.

The old fisher captain did.

But he was a practical man.

He struck himself a blow on the head.

"I have what you want," said he, "_La Belle Arlesienne_, no, it is no use, I have something better, a good cruising boat--you say money is no object."

"None."

"Then come with me, you two."

He led the way followed by Raft and the girl to a wharf where a tug lay moored and by the tug a fifty ton yawl.

"There's your boat," said Bontemps, "built by Pinoli of Genoa for an American.

She has even a bath-room--a main cabin with two cabins off it, your man could berth in the fo'c'sle which is big enough for twenty like him.

Follow me."

He led the way on to the deck of the yawl.

The girl went over it down below into the main cabin with two little sleeping cabins off it.

She peeped into the tiny bath-room, examined the pantry well-stored with crockeryware, there was everything even to the bunk bedding, sheets and towels, she went to the fo'c'sle; compared with the fo'c'sle of the _Albatross_ it was a little palace.

Then she turned to Raft.

"This is your new home," said she, "there is room for your parrot here."

Then turning to Captain Bontemps.

"Well, that is settled and now I only want a crew and a captain--fishermen.

I will have no yachtsmen on my boat.

I have had to do with yachtsmen, Captain Bontemps."

"Oh, my faith," said the old fellow, "you will easily find a crew."

"Yes, but I won't easily find a captain.

I want you."

The Captain laughed.

"And how about _La Belle Arlesienne_?"

asked he.

"You must leave her behind you to be sold.

In my service money is no object.

Now as to this boat, who is the agent from whom I can buy her?"

"Latour and Company," replied the old fellow, for the first time in his life in the powerful grip of wealth and not knowing exactly whether the great golden hand was holding him heels or head up.

"How far is Latour's from here?"

"Not far."

The girl stood for a moment looking round her at the white deck, the masts, the rigging, and as she looked some hand seemed to draw aside a veil revealing the stupid immovable houses of the land filled with stupid immovable people bound and tied up by soul-killing conventions--and on the other hand the old mystery of ships, those homes of Freedom on the road that has no boundaries.

Then she turned to Bontemps.

"Come," said she, "let us go to Latour's." * * * * * "Cléo," said the distracted Madame de Brie, writing to a friend, "Cléo must always have been as mad as her aunt De Warens.

Fishermen, it seems, are the only honest people, and she and her cargo of fishermen, with an old man named Bontemps, are now heaven knows where since I met them at Portofino.

"She calls them her children and when I last saw her she was coming along the little quay at Portofino helping that big red bearded man to carry provisions.

"The times are revolutionary, that's the truth, and women are not what they were, and I am old, I suppose, and cannot see things as I ought to see them--and the grief is she might have married any one, she might have married Royalty itself, and I told her so and she laughed in my face.

She said she never intended to marry any one, that she already had a family of 'children' and that the great bearded man Raft was the smallest of them all, that she was teaching him to read and write and to talk French so that he could converse with the rest of her family.

"She has made Portofino her headquarters, it seems, and she is the lady bountiful of the fishing folk there, sits in their cottages and talks to them, taking up her quarters at the little _auberge_ and sometimes living on board her boat.

"A strange life, and yet she seems happy, like that poor Mademoiselle La Fontaine, whom I last saw at the Maison de Santé of Doctor Schwanthaller, seated with a straw crown on her head and imagining herself a queen."

There ended the letter of Madame de Brie, and here ends the story of Cléo de Bromsart, a woman of energy and mind who learned from Kerguelen that Life is an endless striving, not a peaceful drifting, and that of all things high the highest is the soul of a child.

THE END

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