XXVIII

They had wandered beyond the verifications of the map, which for some time had been little better than the nearest a cartographer could do with what was mainly hearsay. When the country about a camp gave them no hope of gain it was easy to build a house elsewhere; four corner props, some palm leaves laid on cross beams, and a floor of boughs raised well above the ground. A constant fire dried the gear, for the rain, though terse as a rule, made no mistake about it while it was speaking; the fire kept the fanatical leeches at bay, and discouraged the curiosity of night prowlers. Norrie was cleaning his gun. This was one of the mornings when, bent and patient, he sat at a small task suitable for meditation, occasionally pausing to consider the ground before him. His thoughts at such times he did not always avow; they were, usually, but the prelude to packing, and another departure; taking with them again, so far, no more than the hope of a luckier site.

Colet was getting used to it. He had never known what morning was till he saw the dawn from a camp by the side of a jungle stream, a brief inauguration of the earth. He could wake at night now, hear the snarling moan of the tiger on the hill, rise to give the fire a plentiful feed, and forget it. He could work all day and not pass a word to his companion. And that was a good thing. He and Norrie did not have to speak, unless it was necessary, nor even look at each other. There might be a comment from Norrie, late at night, after he put aside the book he had been reading, and began to watch the firelight convulsive on a tree trunk, making the tree move in and out of the forest.

“Listen, Colet.”

Colet would listen. The hush was that at the world’s end. No. There was something beneath the silence. Perhaps the sap rising in the trees; the breathing of creatures; the pulse of the forest. But all was dark, the darkness over which had never been pronounced the call to light. The collapse of a little ash in the fire was notable. One looked at it instantly.

“Listen to what?”

Norrie smiled.

“To what we can’t hear. Suppose we heard begin the Andante from the Fifth Symphony⁠—out in the trees beyond our light. Or if a choir suddenly exploded with ‘Worthy is the Lamb.’ What about it? The leopards would change their spots with fright. And what would you make of it? You’d think it was the Last Day and your number was up.”

Sometimes you considered Norrie as though you had never met him before. He knew that, though, and before you could recognise him he was behind the door.

Now he was cleaning his gun. The Chinaman was squatting by the stream below, washing the dishes. They could hear the Malays cutting firewood. All the immobility of the forest was but the whirr of a grasshopper. The gun was put aside.

“How long have we been on this pitch?”

“I dunno.” Collet went into the shelter to find a date. “Eight days.”

“Nothing here but signs. Good signs, too. All the bright promises of earth, Colet. Isn’t she kind to her children? But they lead nowhere.”

“But if they were not meant for promises! They may not have been. Not meant for signs at all. What could you expect them to lead to more than they have?”

“Dear old Colet. There he goes. But I’ll tell him again. I want to give the moths and rust a chance to corrupt something that belongs to me. I’ll moth ’em, if they come near it.”

“I don’t feel that way about it. But look here. If you do lift the lid off a hoard, watch me do the Highland fling with the accordant triumphant noises.”

“I know. You are like that. But it’s not the right spirit. It’s simply devilish. It’s only your damned playful sympathy. You’d have been a nice Christian all complete with another touch of dreary misfortune. Colet, it makes me doubt you. You’ll come to no good end. You really won’t. I’m inclined to think that you might even fold your hands like a pale martyr, or a skinned rabbit, some day, and let the other fellow have the girl. It’s wicked, you know. It’s unfair to the poor darling. Don’t you ever love your neighbour as yourself, unless you want him to know what a fool you are.”

“I should like to hear your own answer to that.”

“Then you’ll have to wait till I’m perfectly safe.”

“No point in it, then.”

“Oh, there will be, though. There will be. That is the point. It’s the right time to embrace the sad victims of fate when you have got nothing better to do. No point in being another victim.”

He waited a minute, and then picked up his gun again.

“I wouldn’t have the nerve to look at the world unless I were sure of a cushioned corner in it. It would be a terror of a hole. There’s no sense in it unless we put it there, so don’t you try to find it. Just think of humanity messing up its planet with progress⁠—shoving things about, piling ’em up, and especially getting cockeyed with deep religious conviction when making its worst muck of its place. It’s enough to bring down on us the Olympian sanitary inspector. I want a clear space in that jolly old riot. Then I shan’t mind the Gadarene rush so much. It might be comic to watch it then, something to pass the time; but I’ve no fancy to be among the hooves.”

“Well, by God, Norrie, I never thought of it before. But you’re afraid.”

“I am, when it comes down to it. You’ve given it a name. When I look at life in the eyes, in the hope of finding reason in it, my little inside turns pale. Cast your mind back to the Thames embankment and its outcasts at midnight, and get the horrors. Here, we’ll be off. Let’s go and do a little healthy gravel washing.”

A shallow stream so clear that its bed of quartz granules appeared to be under glass, came down in an easy glide from a valley head. It coiled about the lower buttresses of the forest. Only in brief stretches of quieter water was its surface open to the sky. The trees enclosed it, and muffled its voice, which was the only one there in the heat of the day. To Colet its bed was but unusually clean and white. The angular grains were displayed by the clarity of the water. Yet for his companion the stones had various names and implications. They were more than stones. Norrie must have known a lot. If he could find in the eternal forest an outlook from a ridge, he could guess the nature of a distant valley by the tone of its foliage, which all appeared to be of a sombre green; an ocean of rounded billows. He could read a spread of gravel in his palm as though it were a page of a book. Show him a lump of local mud in a new place at night and he would tell you what you would see in the morning, with instances of detail according to his humour; what vegetation would be infernal there, whether they would still be as hungry as they were then, and whether the inflammatory patches on their feet would improve or suppurate.

“It’s the nose, Colet. Only the nose. It’s my gross selfishness. I’m so uncomfortable when in ignorance that even an unseen novelty anywhere near will make my nose twitch till I find it. That’s what unwholesome curiosity does for a man. That’s the result of being a dirt washer⁠ ⁠… but there’s a lot in dirt. It tells you what the bedrock may be. Haven’t you ever watched our Chinaman? Doesn’t he ever make your soul curl up at the corners?”

“Johnny? He’s only a shadow. There’s nothing the matter with him. He never even speaks⁠—only makes a gurgle or two.”

“That’s all he can do. If he wasn’t so careful with the stuff I’d be afraid he’d drop some of his opium into the grub. But he loves that more than he hates us. I should like to see a section of the bedrock of that Chink under the microscope. Have you seen him putting little saucers of rice under one of the trees? A devil there he knows about, and we don’t. He keep crackers, to frighten the goblins. A section of his faith would prove unusual, under polarised light. Or of yours, Colet, or of yours. A bit of the bottom of your mind, ground thin, would fascinate me all the evening, with a lens of high power.”

“But not me. Nothing there to give me an appetite. That predilection of yours for Beethoven⁠—did you find it in the dirt?”

“Quite right. All my fault. I asked for it. Now we’ll conclude our little inquiry into origins. When a fellow like you grows metaphysical I get lost. But you wouldn’t. Mystics can see anything in a fog, just anything, if only it’s thick enough. The thicker the better. But I loathe fogs. I can’t see so well in a fog.”

“Well, perhaps it wouldn’t be unfair to ask now whether we may look for gold here. Is there any?”

“That’s better. And there is. But Colet, where does it come from? That’s what beats me. I wish I was a mystic, or had second sight, or inspiration, or the devil’s own luck. Anything to take me where science can’t. The truth is, there’s bright little signs of happiness everywhere in this country. They lure us on like the portrait of a charmer whose favours were all distributed long ago, though we don’t know it. Oh, Colet, to think of it.”

They stooped to the stream, whirled the gravel in pans, and when neither perspiration nor another storm could saturate them more would examine the pinch of yellow dust that was all their reward. The metal had a strange loveliness, under the lens. To Colet it did not seem inadequate. For Norrie was near, with his droll comments. There was the apparition of the forest about them, silent and still; you had to touch a leathery leaf of it, to make sure of it, when stretching the back after intent diligence with the stream. Colet would pause in the washing now and then, checked by the only movement, a visiting butterfly, designed and coloured like joy, a flicker of silent mirth in the face of the wild. The butterflies did not object to a close inspection when they settled on a damp hummock of white sand under his nose; if he touched them they merely circused a little, and then came to the same spot, made themselves comfortable, and laid out their wings for inspection again.

Norrie declined to eat, when they sat by a tree, at midday. If he spoke, it was captiously. Once or twice his companion looked at him, surprised by a word that was venomous. Here was a corner beyond the hubbub, in a light like glory, and Norrie addressing Heaven, for his want of luck, as though it were the face of a dirty urchin who had soiled his property. Anything the matter with him? His hands were hanging listless over his knees, and he was brooding. His hands seemed queer. The fingers were lemon-colour, and the nails blue. Then Norrie peered over at him, and his jaw was chattering.

Colet became solicitous.

“Anything wrong, old chap?”

“I wondered what was coming. We’ll get back. I’ve got a touch of fever. Cold. It’s damned cold.”