PART ONETHE JADE: I
1
Allwould have happened differently for Bellair had he been drowsy as usual on this particular Sunday afternoon. The boarding-house was preparing for its nap; indeed already half enveloped, but there came to Bellair’s nostrils a smell of carpets that brought back his first passage up stairs five years before. The halls were filled with greys—dull tones that drove him forth at last. It was November, and the day didn’t know what to do next. Gusts of seasonable wind, wisps of sunshine, threats of rain, and everywhere Bellair’s old enemy—the terrifying Sabbath calm, without which the naked granite soul of New York would remain decently hid. Sundays had tortured him from the beginning. It was not so bad when the garment was on—the weave of millions.
He walked east with an umbrella, thinking more than observing, crossed to Brooklyn and followed the water-front as closely as the complication of ferries, pier-systems and general shipping would permit. Finally he came to a wooden arch, marked Hatmos & Company, the gate of which was open. Entering, he heard the water slapping the piles beneath, his eyes held in fascination to an activity ahead. In the wonder of a dream, he realised that this was a sailing-ship putting forth. On her black stern, he read
Jade of Adelaide
printed in blue of worn pigment.
A barkentine, her clipper-built hull of steel, her lines satisfying like the return of a friend after years. Along the water-line shone the bright edge of her copper sheathing; then a soft black line smooth as modelled clay where she muscled out for sea-worth, and covered her displacement in the daring beauty of contour. Still above was the shining brass of her row of ports on a ground of weathered grey, and the dull red of her rail. Over all, and that which quickened the ardour of Bellair’s soul, was the mystery of her wire rigging and folded cloths against the smoky horizon, exquisite as the frame of a butterfly to his fancy.
His emotion is not to be explained; nor another high moment of his life which had to do with a flashing merchantman seen from the water-frontat San Francisco—square-rigged throughout, a cloud of sail-cloth, her royals yet to be lifted, as she got underweigh. He knew that considerable canvas was still spread between California, Australia and the Islands, but what a well-kept if ancient maiden of theJade’sspecies was doing here in New York harbour, A. D. Nineteen hundred and odd, was not disclosed to Bellair until afterward, and not clearly then.
He knew her for a barkentine, and in the intensely personal appeal of the moment he was a bit sorry for the blend. To his eyes the schooner-rig of mizzen and main masts was not to be compared for beauty to the trisected fore. Still he reflected that square-rigged throughout, she would be crowded with crew to care for her, and that her concession to trade was at least not outright. Schooner, bark and brig—he seemed to know them first hand, not only from pictures and pages of print, though there had been many long evenings of half-dream with books before him—books that always pushed back impatiently through the years of upstart Steam into Nature’s own navigation, where Romance has put on her brave true form in the long perspective. Ships that reallysailedwere one of Bellair’s passions, like orchards and vined stone-work—all far from him apparently and out of the question—loved the more because of it.... He watched with rapt eyes now, estimated theJade’slength atone-seventy-five and was debating her tonnage when a huge ox of a man appeared from the cabin (while theJadeslid farther out), waddled aft as if bare-footed, spoke to an officer there, and then held up two brown hairy, thick-fingered hands, palms extended to the pier—as if to push Brooklyn from him forever.... The officer’s voice just reached shore, but not his words. A Japanese woman appeared on the receding deck.
“Jade of Adelaide,” muttered Bellair, moments afterward.
A tug was towing her straight toward Staten. He thought of her lying off the glistening white beach of a coral island two months hence, surrounded by native craft, all hands helping the big man get ashore.... At this moment a young man emerged from the harbour-front door of the Hatmos office, locking it after him. Bellair came up from his dream. Such realities of the city man are mainly secret. It was the worn surface that Bellair presented to the stranger, a sophisticated and imperturbable surface, and one employed so often that its novelty was gone.
“Where’s she going?” he asked.
“Who?”
Bellair smiled at the facetiousness.
“TheJade,” he said gently.
“Just as far from here as she can get.”
“Round the world?”
“I doubt if she’ll come back.”
“You don’t see many of them any more——”
“No,” replied the other agreeably enough, “this old dame and two or three sisters are about all that call here. Hatmos & Co. get ’em all.”
“Will you have a little drink?” Bellair inquired. “That is, if you know a place around here. I’m from across.”
The other was not unwilling. They walked up the pier together. A place was found.
“Does theJadebelong to the Hatmos people?” Bellair asked.
“No. We’re agents for Stackhouse. By the way, he’s aboard theJade—just left the office a half hour ago. The Hatmos son and heir went home in a cab, like his father used to, when Stackhouse blew in from the South Seas——”
“The big man who stood aft as the ship cleared?” Bellair suggested.
“Hairy neck—clothes look like pajamas?”
“Yes.”
“That must have been Stackhouse. He’s the biggest man in Peloponasia——”
Bellair wondered if he meant Polynesia. “You mean in size?”
“Possibly that, but I meant—interests. Owns whole islands and steam-fleets, but hates steam. Does his pleasure riding under canvas. Comes up to New York every third year with a new Japanese wife. Used to spend his time drinkingwith old Hatmos—now he’s trying to kill off the younger generation. Lives at theFlorimelwhile in New York, and teaches the dago barboys how to make tropical drinks. If he had stayed longer, he would have got to me. Young Hatmos is about finished.”
Bellair breathed deeply, strangely alive. “Where does theJadecall first after leaving here?”
“Savannah—then one or two South American ports—then around the Horn and the long up-beat to the Islands.”
“Why, that might mean four months.” Bellair spoke with a touch of wistfulness.
They emerged to the street at length, and the New Yorker started shyly back to the pier. The Hatmos man laughed.
“You fall for the sailing-stuff, don’t you?”
“Yes, it’s got me. Do they take passengers?”
“Sure, if you’re in no hurry. Here and there, some one like you—just for the voyage. Two or three on board from here.... One a preacher. He’d better look out. Stackhouse hates to drink alone.”
“Thanks. Good-bye.”
TheJade, far and very little among the liners, had turned south to the Narrows and was spreading her wings.... The world began to shut Bellair in, as he crossed the river again. Sunday night supper at the boarding-house was always adismal affair; by every manner and means it was so to-night. The chorus woman of the Hippodrome was bolting ahead of the bell, to hurry away to rehearsal. Nightly she came up out of the water.... He tried three sea-books that night—“Lady Letty,” “Lord Jim” and “The Phantom,” but couldn’t get caught in their old spell. A new and personal dimension was upon him from the afternoon. He fell to dreaming again and again of theJade—the last misty glimpse of her at the Narrows, and the huge brown hands pushing Brooklyn away.... There is pathos in the city man’s love and need for fresh air. Bellair pulled his bed to the window at last, surveying the room without regard. Long afterward he dreamed that he was out on the heaving floor of the sea, and that a man-monster came down from the deck in pajamas, and pressing his hands against the walls of the cabin, made respiration next to impossible for the inmate. There was a key to this suffocation, for the air in his room was still as a pool. A lull had fallen upon the city before a gusty storm of wind and rain.