The Pools of Silence. H. De Vere Stacpoole
me. He had overshot the mark a bit—I was not even scratched. I lay looking up at his whiskers; they seemed thick as quills, and I counted them. I was dead to all intents and purposes, so I felt no fear. That was the lesson this gentleman taught me; it is as natural to be dead as to be alive. I have never been afraid of death since. Well, something must have distracted his attention and frightened him, for he lifted himself, passed over me like a cloud, and was gone. Well, so much for the tiger. And now for business. Are you prepared to act as medical attendant to my new expedition?”
“Well,” said Adams, “I would like a little time to consider——”
“Certainly,” said Captain Berselius, taking out his watch. “I will give you five minutes, as a matter of form. Thénard, in a note to me this morning, informs me he has given you all details as to salary.”
“Yes, he gave me the details. As you give me so short a time to make my decision about you, I suppose you have already made your decision about me?”
“Absolutely,” said Berselius. “Two minutes have passed. Why waste the other three? For you have already made up your mind to come.”
Adams sat down in a chair for a moment, and in that moment he did a great deal of thinking.
He had never met a man before at all like Berselius. He had never before come across a man with such a tremendous personality. Berselius fascinated yet repelled him. That there was evil in this man he felt, but he felt also that there was good. Much evil and much good. And beyond this he divined an animal ferocity latent—the ferocity of a tiger—a cold and pitiless and utterly divorced from reason ferociousness, the passion of a primitive man, who had never known law except the law of the axe wielded by the strongest. And yet there was something in the man that he liked. He knew by Berselius’s manner that if he did not take the offer now, he would lose it. He reckoned with lightning swiftness that the expedition would bring him in solid cash enough to start in a small way in the States. He was as poor as Job, as hungry for adventure as a schoolboy, and he only had a moment to decide in.
“How many men are making up your party?” suddenly asked Adams.
“You and I alone,” replied Berselius, putting his watch in his pocket to indicate that the time was almost expired.
“I will come,” said Adams, and it seemed to him that he said the words against his will.
Captain Berselius went to a writing table, took a sheet of paper and wrote carefully and with consideration for the space of some five minutes. Then he handed the paper to Adams. “These are the things you want,” said he. “I am an old campaigner in the wilds, so you will excuse me for specifying them. Go for your outfit where you will, but for your guns to Schaunard, for he is the best. Order all accounts to be sent in to my secretary, M. Pinchon. He will settle them. Your salary you can take how you will. If it is useful to you, I can give you a cheque now on the Crédit Lyonnais, if you will state the amount.”
“Thank you, thank you,” said Adams. “I have quite sufficient money for my needs, and, if it is the same to you, I would rather pay for my outfit myself.”
“As you please,” said Captain Berselius, quite indifferently. “But Schaunard’s account and the account for drugs and instruments you will please send to M. Pinchon; they are part of the expedition. And now,” looking at his watch, “will you do me the pleasure of staying to déjeuner?”
Adams bowed.
“I will notify you to-night at your address the exact date we start,” said Captain Berselius as he led the way from the room. “It will be within a fortnight. My yacht is lying at Marseilles, and will take us to Matadi, which will be our base. She will be faster than the mail-boats and very much more comfortable.”
They crossed the hall, Captain Berselius opened a door, motioned his companion to enter, and Adams found himself in a room, half morning room, half boudoir. A bright log fire was burning, and on either side of the fireplace two women—a girl of about eighteen and a woman of thirty-five or so—were seated.
The elder woman, Madame Berselius, a Parisienne, pale, stout, yet well-proportioned, with almond-shaped eyes; full lips exquisitely cut in the form of the true cupid’s bow; and with a face vigorous enough, but veiled by an expression at once mulish, blindish, and indolent—was a type.
The type of the poodle woman, the parasite. With the insolent expression of a Japanese lady of rank, an insult herself to the human race, you will see her everywhere in the highest social ranks of society. At the Zoölogical Gardens of Madrid on a Sunday, when the grandees of Spain take their pleasure amidst the animals at Longchamps, in Rotten Row, Washington Square, Unter den Linden, wherever money is, growing like an evil fungus, she flourishes.
Opposite Madame Berselius sat her daughter, Maxine.
Adams, after his first glance at the two women, saw only Maxine.
Maxine had golden-brown hair, worn after the fashion of Cléo de Mérode’s, gray eyes, and a wide mouth, with pomegranate-red lips. Goethe’s dictum that the highest beauty is unobtainable without something of disproportion was exemplified in the case of Maxine Berselius. “Her mouth is too wide,” said the women, who, knowing nothing of the philosophy of art, hit upon the defect that was Maxine’s main charm.
Berselius introduced Adams to his wife and daughter, and scarcely had he done so than a servant, in the blue-and-gold livery of the house, flung open the door and announced that déjeuner was served.
Adams scarcely noticed the room into which they passed; a room whose scheme of colour was that watery green which we associate with the scenery of early spring, the call of the cuckoo, and the river echoes where the weir foams and the willow droops.
The tapestry hanging upon the walls did not distract from this scheme. Taken from some château of Provence, and old almost as the story of Nicolete, it showed ladies listening to shepherds who played on flutes, capering lambs, daffodils blowing to the winds of early spring under a sky gray and broken by rifts of blue.
Adams scarcely noticed the room, or the tapestry, or the food placed before him; he was entirely absorbed by two things, Maxine and Captain Berselius.
Berselius’s presence at the table evidently cast silence and a cloak of restraint upon the women. You could see that the servants who served him dreaded him to the very tips of their fingers, and, though he was chatting easily and in an almost paternal manner, his wife and daughter had almost the air of children, nervous, and on their very best behaviour. This was noticeable, especially, in Madame Berselius. The beautiful, indolent, arrogant face became a very humble face indeed when she turned it on the man who was evidently, literally, her lord and master. Maxine, though oppressed by the presence, wore a different air; she seemed abstracted and utterly unconscious of what a beautiful picture she made against the old-world tapestry of spring.
Her eyes sometimes met the American’s. They scarcely spoke to each other once during the meal, yet their eyes met almost as frequently as though they had been conversing. As a matter of fact, Adams was a new type of man to her, and on that account interesting; very different was this son of Anak, with the restful, forceful face, to the curled and scented dandies of the Chaussée d’Antin, the “captains with the little moustaches,” the frequenters of the foyer de Ballet, the cigarette-dried mummies of the Grand Club. It was like the view of a mountain to a person who had only known hills.
Maxine, in her turn, was a new type of woman to Adams. This perfect flower from the Parisian hot-house was the rarest and most beautiful thing he had met in the way of womanhood. She seemed to him a rose only just unfolded, unconscious of its own freshness and beauty as of the dew upon its petals, and saying to the world, by the voice of its own loveliness, “Behold me!”
“Well,” said Captain Berselius, as he took leave of his guest in the smoking room, “I will let you know to-night the day and hour of our departure. All my business in Paris will be settled this afternoon. You had better come and see me the day before we start, so that we can make our last arrangements. Au revoir.”