Complete Works

now.
    “There’s a police office within fifty yards from here, says Cloete.  He turns into a little public house, pushes Stafford along the passage.  The landlord runs out of the bar. . . This is the mate of the ship on the rocks, Cloete explains; I wish you would take care of him a bit to-night. . . What’s the matter with him? asks the man.  Stafford leans against the wall in the passage, looking ghastly.  And Cloete says it’s nothing — done up, of course. . . I will be responsible for the expense; I am the owner’s agent.  I’ll be round in an hour or two to see him.
    And Cloete gets back to the hotel.  The news had travelled there already, and the first thing he sees is George outside the door as white as a sheet waiting for him.  Cloete just gives him a nod and they go in.  Mrs. Harry stands at the head of the stairs, and, when she sees only these two coming up, flings her arms above her head and runs into her room.  Nobody had dared tell her, but not seeing her husband was enough.  Cloete hears an awful shriek. . . Go to her, he says to George.
    “While he’s alone in the private parlour Cloete drinks a glass of brandy and thinks it all out.  Then George comes in. . . The landlady’s with her, he says.  And he begins to walk up and down the room, flinging his arms about and talking, disconnected like, his face set hard as Cloete has never seen it before. . . What must be, must be.  Dead — only brother.  Well, dead — his troubles over.  But we are living, he says to Cloete; and I suppose, says he, glaring at him with hot, dry eyes, that you won’t forget to wire in the morning to your friend that we are coming in for certain. . .
    “Meaning the patent-medicine fellow. . . Death is death and business is business, George goes on; and look — my hands are clean, he says, showing them to Cloete.  Cloete thinks: He’s going crazy.  He catches hold of him by the shoulders and begins to shake him: Damn you — if you had had the sense to know what to say to your brother, if you had had the spunk to speak to him at all, you moral creature you, he would be alive now, he shouts.
    “At this George stares, then bursts out weeping with a great bellow.  He throws himself on the couch, buries his face in a cushion, and howls like a kid. . . That’s better, thinks Cloete, and he leaves him, telling the landlord that he must go out, as he has some little business to attend to that night.  The landlord’s wife, weeping herself, catches him on the stairs: Oh, sir, that poor lady will go out of her mind. . .
    “Cloete shakes her off, thinking to himself: Oh no!  She won’t.  She will get over it.  Nobody will go mad about this affair unless I do.  It isn’t sorrow that makes people go mad, but worry.
    “There Cloete was wrong.  What affected Mrs. Harry was that her husband should take his own life, with her, as it were, looking on.  She brooded over it so that in less than a year they had to put her into a Home.  She was very, very quiet; just gentle melancholy.  She lived for quite a long time.
    “Well, Cloete splashes along in the wind and rain.  Nobody in the streets — all the excitement over.  The publican runs out to meet him in the passage and says to him: Not this way.  He isn’t in his room.  We couldn’t get him to go to bed nohow.  He’s in the little parlour there.  We’ve lighted him a fire. . . You have been giving him drinks too, says Cloete; I never said I would be responsible for drinks.  How many? . . . Two, says the other.  It’s all right.  I don’t mind doing that much for a shipwrecked sailor. . . Cloete smiles his funny smile: Eh?  Come.  He paid for them. . . The publican just blinks. . . Gave you gold, didn’t he?  Speak up! . . . What of that! cries the man.  What are you after, anyway?  He had the right change for his sovereign.
    “Just so, says Cloete.  He walks into the parlour, and there he sees our Stafford; hair all up on end, landlord’s shirt and pants on, bare feet in slippers, sitting by the fire.  When he sees Cloete he casts his eyes down.
    “You didn’t mean us ever to meet again, Mr. Cloete, Stafford says, demurely. . . That fellow, when he had the drink he wanted — he wasn’t a drunkard — would put on this sort of sly, modest air. . . But since the captain committed suicide, he says, I have been sitting here thinking it out.  All sorts of things happen.  Conspiracy to lose the ship — attempted murder