The Lost Road, etc.

R >> Richard Harding Davis >> The Lost Road, etc.

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Griswold now was frightened, and that made him reckless. Instead
of withdrawing he plunged deeper.

"I won't have you two pretending you don't know each other," he
blustered. "I won't stand being fooled! If you're going to deceive
me before we're married, what will you do after we're married?"

Charles emitted a howl. It was made up of disgust, amazement, and
rage. Fiercely he turned upon Miss Proctor.

"Let me have him!" he begged.

"No!" almost shouted Miss Proctor. Her tone was no longer cold--it
was volcanic. Her eyes, flashing beautifully, were fixed upon Griswold.
She made a gesture as though to sweep Charles out of the room.
"Please go!" she demanded. "This does not concern you."

Her tone was one not lightly to be disregarded. Charles disregarded it.

"It does concern me," he said briskly. "Nobody can insult a woman
in my house--you, least of all!" He turned upon the greatest catch
in America. "Griswold," he said, "I never met this lady until I
came into this room; but I know her, understand her, value her
better than you'd understand her if you knew her a thousand
years!"

Griswold allowed him to go no farther.

"I know this much," he roared: "she was in love with the man who
took those photographs, and that man was in love with her! And
you're that man!"

"What if I am!" roared back Charles. "Men always have loved her;
men always will--because she's a fine, big, wonderful woman! You
can't see that, and you never will. You insulted her! Now I'll give
you time to apologize for that, and then I'll order you out of this
house! And if Miss Proctor is the sort of girl I think she is, she'll
order you out of it, too!"

Both men swung toward Miss Proctor. Her eyes were now smiling
excitedly. She first turned them upon Charles, blushing most
becomingly.

"Miss Proctor," she said, "hopes she is the sort of girl
Mr. Cochran thinks she is." She then turned upon the greatest
catch in America. "You needn't wait, Chester," she said, "not
even to apologize."

Chester Griswold, alone in his car, was driven back to New York.
On the way he invented a story to explain why, at the eleventh
hour, he had jilted Aline Proctor; but when his thoughts reverted
to the young man he had seen working with his sleeves rolled up
he decided it would be safer to let Miss Proctor tell of the broken
engagement in her own way.

Charles would not consent to drive his fair guest back to New
York until she had first honored him with her presence at
luncheon. It was served for two, on his veranda, under the
climbing honeysuckles. During the luncheon he told her all.

Miss Proctor, in the light of his five years of devotion,
magnanimously forgave him.

"Such a pretty house!" she exclaimed as they drove away from it.
"When Griswold selected it for our honeymoon he showed his first
appreciation of what I really like."

"It is still at your service!" said Charles.

Miss Proctor's eyes smiled with a strange light, but she did not
speak. It was a happy ride; but when Charles left her at the door
of her apartment-house he regarded sadly and with regret the
bundle of retrieved photographs that she carried away.

"What is it?" she asked kindly.

"I'm thinking of going back to those empty frames," said Charles,
and blushed deeply. Miss Proctor blushed also. With delighted
and guilty eyes she hastily scanned the photographs. Snatching one
from the collection, she gave it to him and then ran up the steps.

In the light of the spring sunset the eyes of Charles devoured
the photograph of which, at last, he was the rightful owner. On
it was written: "As long as this rock lasts!"

As Charles walked to his car his expression was distinctly
thoughtful.

THE MEN OF ZANZIBAR

When his hunting trip in Uganda was over, Hemingway shipped his
specimens and weapons direct from Mombasa to New York, but he
himself journeyed south over the few miles that stretched to
Zanzibar.

On the outward trip the steamer had touched there, and the
little he saw of the place had so charmed him that all the time
he was on safari he promised himself he would not return home
without revisiting it. On the morning he arrived he had called
upon Harris, his consul, to inquire about the hotel; and that
evening Harris had returned his call and introduced him at
the club.

One of the men there asked Hemingway what brought him to
Africa, and when he answered simply and truthfully that he had
come to shoot big game, it was as though he had said something
clever, and every one smiled. On the way back to the hotel, as
they felt their way through the narrow slits in the wall that
served as streets, he asked the consul why every one had smiled.

The consul laughed evasively.

"It's a local joke," he explained. "A lot of men come here for
reasons best kept to themselves, and they all say what you said,
that they've come to shoot big game. It's grown to be a polite
way of telling a man it is none of his business."

"But I didn't mean it that way," protested Hemingway. "I really
have been after big game for the last eight months."

In the tone one uses to quiet a drunken man or a child, the
consul answered soothingly.

"Of course," he assented-- "of course you have." But to show he
was not hopelessly credulous, and to keep Hemingway from
involving himself deeper, he hinted tactfully: "Maybe they
noticed you came ashore with only one steamer trunk and no
gun-cases."

"Oh, that's easily explained," laughed Hemingway. "My heavy
luggage--"

The consul had reached his house and his "boy" was pounding upon
it with his heavy staff.

"Please don't explain to me," he begged. "It's quite unnecessary.
Down here we're so darned glad to see any white man that we don't
ask anything of him except that he won't hurry away. We judge
them as they behave themselves here; we don't care what they are
at home or why they left it."

Hemingway was highly amused. To find that he, a respectable,
sport-loving Hemingway of Massachusetts, should be mistaken for a
gun-runner, slave-dealer, or escaping cashier greatly delighted
him.

"All right!" he exclaimed. "I'll promise not to bore you with my past,
and I agree to be judged by Zanzibar standards. I only hope I can
live up to them, for I see I am going to like the place very much."

Hemingway kept his promise. He bored no one with confidences as
to his ancestors. Of his past he made a point never to speak. He
preferred that the little community into which he had dropped
should remain unenlightened, should take him as they found him.
Of the fact that a college was named after his grandfather and
that on his father's railroad he could travel through many
States, he was discreetly silent.

The men of Zanzibar asked no questions. That Hemingway could play
a stiff game of tennis, a stiffer game of poker, and, on the piano, songs
from home was to them sufficient recommendation. In a week he had
become one of the most popular members of Zanzibar society. It was
as though he had lived there always. Hemingway found himself reaching
out to grasp the warmth of the place as a flower turns to the sun. He
discovered that for thirty years something in him had been cheated.
For thirty years he had believed that completely to satisfy his soul all
he needed was the gray stone walls and the gray-shingled cabins under
the gray skies of New England, that what in nature he most loved was
the pine forests and the fields of goldenrod on the rock-bound coast
of the North Shore. But now, like a man escaped from prison, he
leaped and danced in the glaring sunlight of the equator, he revelled
in the reckless generosity of nature, in the glorious confusion of
colors, in the "blooming blue" of the Indian Ocean, in the Arabian
nights spent upon the housetops under the purple sky, and beneath
silver stars so near that he could touch them with his hand.

He found it like being perpetually in a comic opera and playing a
part in one. For only the scenic artist would dare to paint houses
in such yellow, pink, and cobalt-blue; only a "producer" who had
never ventured farther from Broadway than the Atlantic City
boardwalk would have conceived costumes so mad and so
magnificent. Instinctively he cast the people of Zanzibar in the
conventional roles of musical comedy.

His choruses were already in waiting. There was the Sultan's
body-guard in gold-laced turbans, the merchants of the bazaars in
red fezzes and gowns of flowing silk, the Malay sailors in blue,
the black native police in scarlet, the ladies of the harems closely
veiled and cloaked, the market women in a single garment of
orange, or scarlet, or purple, or of all three, and the happy,
hilarious Zanzibari boys in the color God gave them.

For hours he would sit under the yellow-and-green awning of the
Greek hotel and watch the procession pass, or he would lie under
an umbrella on the beach and laugh as the boatmen lifted their
passengers to their shoulders and with them splash through the
breakers, or in the bazaars for hours he would bargain with the
Indian merchants, or in the great mahogany hall of the Ivory
House, to the whisper of a punka and the tinkle of ice in a tall
glass, listen to tales of Arab raids, of elephant poachers, of
the trade in white and black ivory, of the great explorers who
had sat in that same room--of Emin Pasha, of Livingstone, of
Stanley. His comic opera lacked only a heroine and the love
interest.

When he met Mrs. Adair he found both. Polly Adair, as every
one who dared to do so preferred to call her, was, like himself, an
American and, though absurdly young, a widow. In the States she
would have been called an extremely pretty girl. In a community
where the few dozen white women had wilted and faded in the
fierce sun of the equator, and where the rest of the women were
jet black except their teeth, which were dyed an alluring purple,
Polly Adair was as beautiful as a June morning. At least, so
Hemingway thought the first time he saw her, and each succeeding
time he thought her more beautiful, more lovely, more to be loved.

He met her, three days after his arrival, at the residence of the
British agent and consul-general, where Lady Firth was giving tea
to the six nurses from the English hospital and to all the other
respectable members of Zanzibar society.

"My husband's typist," said her ladyship as she helped Hemingway
to tea, "is a copatriot of yours. She's such a nice gell; not a bit like
an American. I don't know what I'd do in this awful place without her.
Promise me," she begged tragically, "you will not ask her to marry you."

Unconscious of his fate, Hemingway promised.

"Because all the men do," sighed Lady Firth, "and I never know
what morning one of the wretches won't carry her off to a home of
her own. And then what would become of me? Men are so selfish!
If you must fall in love," suggested her ladyship, "promise me you
will fall in love with"--she paused innocently and raised baby-blue
eyes, in a baby-like stare--"with some one else."

Again Hemingway promised. He bowed gallantly. "That will be quite
easy," he said.

Her ladyship smiled, but Hemingway did not see the smile. He was
looking past her at a girl from home, who came across the terrace
carrying in her hand a stenographer's note-book.

Lady Firth followed the direction of his eyes and saw the look in
them. She exclaimed with dismay:

"Already! Already he deserts me, even before the ink is dry on
the paper."

She drew the note-book from Mrs. Adair's fingers and dropped it
under the tea-table.

"Letters must wait, my child," she declared.

"But Sir George--" protested the girl.

"Sir George must wait, too," continued his wife; "the Foreign Office
must wait, the British Empire must wait until you have had your tea."

The girl laughed helplessly. As though assured her fellow
countryman would comprehend, she turned to him.

"They're so exactly like what you want them to be," she said--"I
mean about their tea!"

Hemingway smiled back with such intimate understanding that
Lady Firth glanced up inquiringly.

"Have you met Mrs. Adair already?" she asked.

"No," said Hemingway, "but I have been trying to meet her for
thirty years."

Perplexed, the Englishwoman frowned, and then, with delight at
her own perspicuity, laughed aloud.

"I know," she cried, "in your country you are what they call a
'hustler'! Is that right?" She waved them away. "Take Mrs. Adair
over there," she commanded, "and tell her all the news from home.
Tell her about the railroad accidents and 'washouts' and the
latest thing in lynching."

The young people stretched out in long wicker chairs in the shade
of a tree covered with purple flowers. On a perch at one side of
them an orang-outang in a steel belt was combing the whiskers of
her infant daughter; at their feet what looked like two chow puppies,
but which happened to be Lady Firth's pet lions, were chewing each
other's toothless gums; and in the immediate foreground the hospital
nurses were defying the sun at tennis while the Sultan's band played
selections from a Gaiety success of many years in the past. With these
surroundings it was difficult to talk of home. Nor on any later occasions,
except through inadvertence, did they talk of home.

For the reasons already stated, it amused Hemingway to volunteer
no confidences. On account of what that same evening Harris told
him of Mrs. Adair, he asked none.

Harris himself was a young man in no way inclined to withhold
confidences. He enjoyed giving out information. He enjoyed
talking about himself, his duties, the other consuls, the Zanzibaris,
and his native State of Iowa. So long as he was permitted to talk,
the listener could select the subject. But, combined with his loquacity,
Hemingway had found him kind-hearted, intelligent, observing, and
the call of a common country had got them quickly together.

Hemingway was quite conscious that the girl he had seen but once
had impressed him out of all proportion to what he knew of her.
She seemed too good to be true. And he tried to persuade himself
that after eight months in the hinterland among hippos and zebras
any reasonably attractive girl would have proved equally disturbing.

But he was not convinced. He did not wish to be convinced. He
assured himself that had he met Mrs. Adair at home among hundreds
of others he would have recognized her as a woman of exceptional
character, as one especially charming. He wanted to justify this
idea of her; he wanted to talk of Mrs. Adair to Harris, not to learn
more concerning her, but just for the pleasure of speaking her name.

He was much upset at that, and the discovery that on meeting a
woman for the first time he still could be so boyishly and ingenuously
moved greatly pleased him. It was a most delightful secret. So he acted
on the principle that when a man immensely admires a woman and
wishes to conceal that fact from every one else he can best do so by
declaring his admiration in the frankest and most open manner. After
the tea-party, as Harris and himself sat in the consulate, he so expressed
himself.

"What an extraordinary nice girl," he exclaimed, "is that Mrs. Adair!
I had a long talk with her. She is most charming. However did a
woman like that come to be in a place like this?"

Judging from his manner, it seemed to Hemingway that at the
mention of Mrs. Adair's name he had found Harris mentally on
guard, as though the consul had guessed the question would come
and had prepared for it.

"She just dropped in here one day," said Harris, "from no place
in particular. Personally, I always have thought from heaven."

"It's a good address," said Hemingway.

"It seems to suit her," the consul agreed. "Anyway, if she doesn't come
from there, that's where she's going--just on account of the good she's
done us while she's been here. She arrived four months ago with a
typewriting-machine and letters to me from our consuls in Cape Town
and Durban. She had done some typewriting for them. It seems that
after her husband died, which was a few months after they were married,
she learned to make her living by typewriting. She worked too hard
and broke down, and the doctor said she must go to hot countries, the
'hotter the better.' So she's worked her way half around the world
typewriting. She worked chiefly for her own consuls or for the American
commission houses. Sometimes she stayed a month, sometimes only over
one steamer day. But when she got here Lady Firth took such a fancy to
her that she made Sir George engage her as his private secretary, and she's
been here ever since."

In a community so small as was that of Zanzibar the white residents
saw one another every day, and within a week Hemingway had met
Mrs. Adair many times. He met her at dinner, at the British agency;
he met her in the country club, where the white exiles gathered for
tea and tennis. He hired a launch and in her honor gave a picnic
on the north coast of the island, and on three glorious and memorable
nights, after different dinner-parties had ascended to the roof, he sat
at her side and across the white level of the housetops looked down
into the moonlit harbor.

What interest the two young people felt in each other was in no
way discouraged by their surroundings. In the tropics the tender
emotions are not winter killed. Had they met at home, the
conventions, his own work, her social duties would have kept the
progress of their interest within a certain speed limit. But they
were in a place free of conventions, and the preceding eight
months which Hemingway had spent in the jungle and on the plain
had made the society of his fellow man, and of Mrs. Adair in
particular, especially attractive.

Hemingway had no work to occupy his time, and he placed it
unreservedly at the disposition of his countrywoman. In doing so
it could not be said that Mrs. Adair encouraged him. Hemingway
himself would have been the first to acknowledge this. From the
day he met her he was conscious that always there was an intangible
barrier between them. Even before she possibly could have guessed
that his interest in her was more than even she, attractive as she was,
had the right to expect, she had wrapped around herself an invisible
mantle of defense.

There were certain speeches of his which she never heard, certain tones
to which she never responded. At moments when he was complimenting
himself that at last she was content to be in his company, she would
suddenly rise and join the others, and he would be left wondering in
what way he could possibly have offended.

He assured himself that a woman, young and attractive, in a
strange land in her dependent position must of necessity be
discreet, but in his conduct there certainly had been nothing
that was not considerate, courteous, and straightforward.

When he appreciated that he cared for her seriously, that he was
gloriously happy in caring, and proud of the way in which he
cared, the fact that she persistently held him at arm's length
puzzled and hurt. At first when he had deliberately set to work
to make her like him he was glad to think that, owing to his
reticence about himself, if she did like him it would be for himself
alone and not for his worldly goods. But when he knew her better
he understood that if once Mrs. Adair made up her mind to take
a second husband, the fact that he was a social and financial
somebody, and not, as many in Zanzibar supposed Hemingway
to be, a social outcast, would make but little difference.

Nor was her manner to be explained by the fact that the majority
of women found him unattractive. As to that, the pleasant burden
of his experience was to the contrary. He at last wondered if
there was some one else, if he had come into her life too late.
He set about looking for the man and so, he believed, he soon
found him.

Of the little colony, Arthur Fearing was the man of whom Hemingway
had seen the least. That was so because Fearing wished it. Like
himself, Fearing was an American, young, and a bachelor, but,
very much unlike Hemingway, a hermit and a recluse.

Two years before he had come to Zanzibar looking for an
investment for his money. In Zanzibar there were gentlemen
adventurers of every country, who were welcome to live in any
country save their own.

To them Mr. Fearing seemed a heaven-sent victim. But to him their
alluring tales of the fortunes that were to rise from buried treasures,
lost mines, and pearl beds did not appeal. Instead he conferred
with the consuls, the responsible merchants, the partners in the
prosperous trading houses. After a month of "looking around" he
had purchased outright the goodwill and stock of one of the oldest
of the commission houses, and soon showed himself to be a most
capable man of business. But, except as a man of business, no one
knew him. From the dim recesses of his warehouse he passed each
day to the seclusion of his bungalow in the country. And, although
every one was friendly to him, he made no friends.

It was only after the arrival of Mrs. Adair that he consented to show
himself, and it was soon noted that it was only when she was invited
that he would appear, and that on these occasions he devoted himself
entirely to her. In the presence of others, he still was shy, gravely
polite, and speaking but little, and never of himself; but with
Mrs. Adair his shyness seemed to leave him, and when with her
he was seen to talk easily and eagerly. And, on her part, to what
he said, Polly Adair listened with serious interest.

Lady Firth, who, at home, was a trained and successful match-maker,
and who, in Zanzibar, had found but a limited field for her activities,
decided that if her companion and protegee must marry, she should
marry Fearing.

Fearing was no gentleman adventurer, remittance-man, or humble
clerk serving his apprenticeship to a steamship line or an ivory
house. He was one of the pillars of Zanzibar society. The trading
house he had purchased had had its beginnings in the slave-trade,
and now under his alert direction was making a turnover equal to
that of any of its ancient rivals. Personally, Fearing was a most
desirable catch. He was well-mannered, well-read, of good
appearance, steady, and, in a latitude only six degrees removed
from the equator, of impeccable morals.

It is said that it is the person who is in love who always is the
first to discover his successful rival. It is either an instinct
or because his concern is deeper than that of others.

And so, when Hemingway sought for the influence that separated
him from Polly Adair, the trail led to Fearing. To find that the
obstacle in the path of his true love was a man greatly relieved
him. He had feared that what was in the thoughts of Mrs. Adair
was the memory of her dead husband. He had no desire to cross
swords with a ghost. But to a living rival he could afford to be
generous.

For he was sure no one could care for Polly Adair as he cared,
and, like every other man in love, he believed that he alone had
discovered in her beauties of soul and character that to the rest
of mankind were hidden. This knowledge, he assured himself, had
aroused in him a depth of devotion no one else could hope to
imitate, and this depth of devotion would in time so impress her,
would become so necessary to her existence, that it would force
her at last into the arms of the only man who could offer it.

Having satisfied himself in this fashion, he continued cheerfully
on his way, and the presence of a rival in no way discouraged
him. It only was Polly Adair who discouraged him. And this,
in spite of the fact that every hour of the day he tried to bring
himself pleasantly to her notice. All that an idle young man in
love, aided and abetted by imagination and an unlimited letter of
credit, could do, Hemingway did. But to no end.

The treasures he dug out of the bazaars and presented to her,
under false pretenses as trinkets he happened at that moment
to find in his pockets, were admired by her at their own great
value, and returned also under false pretenses, as having been
offered her only to examine.

"It is for your sister at home, I suppose," she prompted. "It's
quite lovely. Thank you for letting me see it."

After having been several times severely snubbed in this fashion,
Hemingway remarked grimly as he put a black pearl back into his
pocket:

"At this rate sister will be mighty glad to see me when I get
home. It seems almost a pity I haven't got a sister."

The girl answered this only with a grave smile.

On another occasion she admired a polo pony that had been
imported for the stable of the boy Sultan. But next morning
Hemingway, after much diplomacy, became the owner of it and
proudly rode it to the agency. Lady Firth and Polly Adair walked
out to meet him arm in arm, but at sight of the pony there came
into the eyes of the secretary a look that caused Hemingway to
wish himself and his mount many miles in the jungle. He saw
that before it had been proffered, his gift-horse had been rejected.
He acted promptly.

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