The House of Illusion

by Ralph Stock

THE HOUSE OF
ILLUSION

By RALPH STOCK

THE Army had only one thing to say to 29476 Cpl. Compton, J., and when it was said, he found himself on the wet pavement of the Vauxhall Bridge Road with a dull pain in his left hip, and his freedom.

It was a strange sensation. He appreciated for the first time the feelings of a bird released from its cage after three years' confinement. Not that he had anything against the cage. The Army had treated him fairly, even generously—war is war—but he knew that he was a changed man. It would be interesting to discover what was left of himself.

For a while he sat in a secluded corner of a cheap restaurant in unaccustomed "mufti," trying to pick up the loose threads of his life where they had been dropped, and finding it surprisingly difficult. Things seemed so remote. What had he been before plunging into the maelstrom? Ah, yes, a planter of cocoa-nuts on the other side of the world. For some reason it sounded ludicrous now, yet that was what he had been, and that was what he would have to go on being; it was all he really knew, besides the machine-gun.

He supposed that Delaniva was still in existence—Delaniva of the palm groves tumbling to the sea, of yellow sunlight and deep shadow; of hard work in tropical heat, and well-earned rest in a wicker chair on the verandah, with coolie chants drifting up from the "lines," muffled to weird beauty by the eternal chorus of the surf on the barrier reef; of dear old blind Metcalf and Jill—who, by the way, must be three years older now, a big difference in a girl of seventeen—and her poisonous little brother Fred. It all seemed an unconscionable time ago, as well as being fifteen thousand miles away. Yet he remembered what Metcalf had said when he left the blessed old overseer's outhouse for Gallipoli and France: "I can't see you these days, Jim, but I know you all the better for that, and I want you to remember Delaniva as home." Then, with the suddenly changed manner of a man who has caught himself on the verge of displaying sentiment: "I have made arrangements for you to have half-pay while you're away. And I want you back, Jim; remember that."

"If I get through, I'll come," Compton had answered.

He was brought back to earth, and more particularly to the cheap restaurant in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, by his bill being slapped on the imitation marble-topped table with a vigour that sent a dagger's point of pain to his left hip. He limped into the street.

Nine weeks later he squatted in the bows of an outrigger sailing canoe, beating up the Tai Leba coast against a south-east trade, and absorbing the sights and sounds that he loved. There was something left, after all, he mused. The world was still beautiful, when it was left alone. Life was distinctly worth living, in spite of a hip that never let one quite forget it.

Out of an opalescent haze the familiar outline of the island took shape. Compton's binoculars were fastened upon it. Every volcanic crag and coral beach was known to him. At that moment the past three years were as though they had never been. He was again overseer on Delaniva. There was the bungalow, glinting white among the mangoes and mummy apples, and there was the landing, thrusting its unlovely length into the fair face of the Pacific. And there—the glasses were pressed closer to his eyes—there surely was the plantation flowing in gentle green waves down the mountain-side. The place was so clearly photographed on Compton's mind that it was a full five minutes before he could believe that his eyes were not at fault. The thing was incredible, yet there was no gainsaying it—not a palm reared its feathery head on Delaniva! What he had seen was grass—grass and prone palm trunks littering the mountain-side.

Hurricane? The thought was discarded as soon as conceived. A hurricane rends and crushes; it does not slice palms neatly a foot from the ground and stack them ready for burning. And these were palms—cocoanut palms that take seven weary years of labour before they mature! What, in the name of all that was ghastly, had happened to Delaniva?

There was no one at the landing. The copra punts lay at their moorings, green with disuse. Compton climbed the familiar sea-washed steps with difficulty, and passed through the drying-yards. There were no coolie women tending the copra. There was no copra to tend.

Compton limped up the powdered coral pathway to the bungalow, and had swung open the mosquito door, when a black hand touched his arm. It was Soon, the house-boy of doubtful origin and undoubted virtues, who had been with the Metcalfs when Delaniva was planted.

"You no can," he ordered peremptorily, before the sight of Compton's face set him gibbering and clucking like a monkey.

It took some time to convince him that the returned overseer was flesh and blood and not a spirit from the battlefield. This accomplished, Compton at last succeeded in eliciting the information that "Delaniva, him stop all along beetlie."

It was enough. Compton knew only too well the dread rhinoceros beetle, that riddles a cocoanut-palm like a sieve in the course of a few months.

"You no tell 'um," enjoined Soon in a penetrating whisper, jerking a gnarled thumb at the door. "'Um no savvy."

Compton nodded and passed inside.

Old man Metcalf, in his accustomed stiffly-starched ducks resembling plate armour, sat in the mosquito-proof office, pretending to write. He had never given in. Even after the last bout of fever, that had robbed him of sight, he had claimed to be able to answer his own correspondence. Delaniva lay outspread in his mind like a detailed map, and his grip of plantation affairs had tightened rather than relaxed, as his overseer well knew. And now he was in the office, still clinging to the belief that his hands were on the reins.

"Who's that?" he said sharply, at sound of the strange footfall.

It was welcome enough for Compton to see the old man's face brighten at his overseer's name.

With whisky and sparklet at elbow, they talked the big hand round the clock. Like most men from the firing-line, Compton had little to say about it, and the conversation soon turned on Delaniva.

"Good, good!" said Metcalf to Compton's glib lie that the place had never looked better. "You must have noticed the ten acres of young trees east of the Hog's Back. They've come on, eh?"

Compton looked out through the window at the devastated hillside, then at the anxious face turned to him, and said that they had.

Metcalf's evident relief was his reward.

"I'm glad you think so," he said. "I had an idea—it was only a chance remark of Fred's that gave it me—but I had an idea those trees were not up to Delaniva standard. The seed nuts came from Tai Lemba; but there," he added, tapping the table with his thin, sensitive fingers, "call it a blind man's whim. And here I am worrying you with business before you're settled. Time enough when you've been over the place and handed in one of your old reports, Jim. That's what I want. Jill's a good girl, but——"

"Jill?" queried Compton involuntarily.

"Yes," answered Metcalf, with a hint of embarrassment, "Jill's been running the place while you were away. Fred went to Sydney. Young fellow, you know—must see something besides Delaniva. Ah, here they come!"

With a blind man's sharpened sense of hearing, he had detected the beat of horse's hoofs on the beach road long before it reached Compton.

"I must tell you before they come," added Metcalf quickly. "It may be, as I say, a whim, but I have a feeling—it amounts to that—a feeling that something is being held back from me; they are hiding something. Oh, I know you are probably smiling, but there it is, and I have iio one—do you understand?—no one to speak to about it."

Metcalf's thin, upright body stiffened in its plate-armour ducks. His voice held the ring of old days.

"I shall expect a full report from you to-morrow night, Jim."

"Very good, sir," said Compton, and, in answer to an almost imperceptible nod of dismissal, left the "office."

From the verandah of the overseer's outhouse he watched a white figure astride a Tongan pony approaching along the beach road. At a glance he knew it was Jill Metcalf, but it was Jill with a difference. The short drill skirt and workmanlike solar topee were the same, and the mist of dark hair about the well-poised head, but this was not the boyish girl who had cantered at his side through the palm grove after scampering Herefords. There were the same quick, practised movements as she opened the compound gate with her riding-crop, the same easy carriage of her slim figure in the saddle, but Compton was conscious of a vague embarrassment at prospect of the meeting. Embarrassment, with Jill! It vanished at her first word.

"Jim!"

She dismounted and ran up the steps.

"I suppose it is you?" she said. "May I pinch instead of shaking hands?"

This accomplished, she sat on the top step, her hands clasped about her knees.

"And now, if you'll kindly tell me all about it," she suggested. "Did you bayonet any?"

Compton was acutely aware that her frank, wallflower eyes were inspecting him.

"I was in the machine-guns," he said; "quite tame compared with the bombers. I'm no use any more; that's why I've come back."

"I see," said Jill, looking out over the Pacific.

"No decorations—oh, bar corporal's stripes."

"Corporal Jim," murmured the girl.

"29476, to be exact," supplied Compton.

He sat beside her. She was the same, he told himself, because he knew there was a difference. "Now, do you mind telling me all about it?"

Jill looked round at him.

"I suppose I'd better," she said. "We must get it over. Delaniva's done. But you can see that. You saw Dad?"

"Yes. He looks well."

"You're just saying that—thanks. Was Soon awake?"

"I don't know, but he caught me with the door half-open."

Jill's face fell grave.

"That was a near thing," she said. "But I can't always be there, and—and there's no one else."

She turned to him with a touch of her old impulsiveness.

"Oh, it's been the devil, Jim—the very devil, sometimes!"

"Of course it has," said Compton.

"It was all I could do to get the inspector not to tell Dad. It would have killed him—it would kill him now. I promised to have Delaniva torn up by the roots in a month. I don't know what I didn't promise. So he sent a notification instead, and we started work the next day. It was like pulling teeth. But you can imagine. There are only fifteen acres more to do; then comes the burning. That's how we stand to-day, Mr. Overseer. What do you think of my stewardship?"

Jill paused. Her finger-tips were white with the pressure of her clasped hands. Compton had nothing to say—nothing, that is, that would not sound puerile. What did he think of her stewardship? How could he tell her that without telling her the rest?

"I have to hand in a report to-morrow night," he said bluntly.

"Oh, that's easy," returned Jill. "You can read him one of your old ones."

"He feels you are hiding something from him."

"He told you that?"

"Yes. He got the impression from some chance remark of Fred's."

A deep flush slowly surged over Jill's face. She looked out to sea to hide it, then suddenly turned on him.

"Am I doing right or wrong?" she demanded. "I want to know. Am I to tell Dad and destroy the illusions that are his life, or am I to lie, lie, lie, until I begin to wonder if I shall ever speak the truth again?"

"There's no question in it that I can see," said Compton. "Why? Does anyone think otherwise?"

Jill did not answer. Her lips were compressed.

"It was easy at first," she went on presently. "I looked upon it as a sort of game, and it pleased him, satisfied him so. But it grew more and more difficult. You know how sharp he is. Then, quite suddenly somehow, I saw all that they meant to him, these illusions I was keeping alive, and I was frightened. But there was no turning back. I used to shut my eyes sometimes and see Delaniva as it used to be, and try and imagine what it would be like to open them and see the place—as it is. That made me go on. And I've failed," she ended abruptly. "He feels we're hiding something——"

"We must begin all over again," said Compton a trifle hurriedly—there was a hint of tears in her eyes. "Others have had to do it; we must do it, until there's no need for illusions."

Jill smiled at him.

"Yes," she said. "That's all."

But Compton knew that it was not all. Less than an hour after the arrival of Mr. Fred Metcalf, direct from an atmosphere of stagnant tobacco-smoke, whisky, and cards at the Settlement club, Compton knew that it was more than the ruin of Delaniva that troubled Jill.

He burst into the overseer's outhouse at about eleven o'clock, and talked loudly until past twelve. When Compton had left Delaniva, Fred Metcalf was in the making, an unbalanced youth of sixteen. His visit to Sydney, with plenty of money and an impressionable mind, had done the rest. His manner was racy.

"Cheerio, old bird! Great to see you back. Stopped one, eh? Rotten luck—and Delaniva on top of it! Thank goodness, I'm out of that! Pater saw fit to put Jill in charge, and not sure he wasn't wise, too. Never should have made a nigger-driver, so I had to plough my own furrow, or words to that effect. Struck it lucky in Sydney town, though. Cheeriest bunch you could wish to meet, and making no end of money. It's like shelling peas. You sit at a roll-top desk in George Street, and buy lucerne when it's down, wait until it goes up, which it does like a rocket these days, and—I'm getting back by the next boat."

So much Compton gathered, with Fred perched on the edge of his bed. The rest came later.

There followed busy days in the house of illusion. Compton read his report without a hitch, and answered searching questions with a glibness that surprised himself.

Apparently Metcalf was satisfied, and that was all that mattered. The work of destruction went on. Acre by acre Delaniva was felled to the ground, and burnt when the wind was favourable. And through it all Metcalf sat on the verandah or in his beloved "office," fragile, indomitable, living on dreams.

Then came the night of Compton's eavesdropping. It was a shameless affair. He heard voices in altercation, and he listened.

"Two hundred would do it, and I swear I won't trouble you again, Jill."

"You should have it willingly, if I had it."

"How about a mortgage? I could pay——"

"We are mortgaged."

"You mean you are. Delaniva's nothing to do with me."

"Very well, then, I am."

There followed a short silence of exasperation. Compton could imagine Fred's weak, distorted face, Then—

"You're driving me pretty hard, Jill. Not many fellows would stand it. I'm not asking for much. You don't want to get my back up, do you? Because——"

"Freddie, don't talk so loud, and please don't make a scene!"

"Oh, yes, at it again! Anything, anything, except tell the governor the truth. I know you think you're doing right, but there are others, you know. Personally, I'm not so sure."

"What do you mean?"

"I'll tell you presently. Look here, will you borrow it from Jim?"

"From Jim! Do you know we owe him half-wages for the past three years, and haven't paid?"

"No, bu—— Oh, what's the use? He came back, all the same, didn't he? You know what for as well as I do. What else would bring him back to a hole like this? I don't approve, but then I don't seem to count anyhow."

"Hadn't you better go to bed?"

"There you go, treating me like a kid! I can't stand it!" Fred's voice trembled with passion. "I'm an outsider in my own home, but I'll have you know that I'm a man, and the son of my father. I don't approve of this eternal play-acting, and I won't have it! Is that plain?"

"You mean, if I don't give you this money, you'll tell Dad?"

The voice was tense, but steady.

"I didn't say so."

"But that is what you mean."

"You can take it that way if you like."

"It would kill him."

"I'm not so sure. You've got your precious fairy stories on the brain. Besides, you don't understand; I must have the money."

There was dead silence for a space, evidently prolonged beyond Fred's endurance.

"Well, what have you got to say?"

"Nothing."

"You're quite sure?"

"Quite."

There was an indescribable sound of impatience, then the snapping-to of a mosquito-door and footsteps dying away down the passage.

Compton satisfied himself that these last were going in the direction of Fred's bedroom, then went to his outhouse and lay on the bed, staring unseeingly through the white mist of the mosquito-bar.

Throughout the next day the troubled preoccupation in Jill's eyes was more than Compton could bear. And he knew that she would never confide in him in this matter; her innate sense of loyalty prevented it.

By the evening his mind was made up. He waited for Fred's belated return from the Settlement at a bend in the beach road, smoking and thinking.

He saw clearly that, as in war, there are times when present-day civilisation counts for nothing, and men must hark back to primeval force for the settlement of their differences.

It was a night of blue-black darkness, but the plantation pony knew the road, and Fred was cantering when Compton went out to meet him.

"I want to speak to you for a moment," he said.

Fred's astonishment gave way to quick suspicion.

"What, here?"

"Yes. Do you mind dismounting?"

For some reason, not entirely unconnected with a hand on the pony's rein, Fred obeyed.

"I wanted to tell you," said Compton, "that I overheard all you said to your sister last night."

For a moment—only a moment—Fred was speechless.

"Oh, you did?" he jerked out. "Prying, I suppose."

"Yes," said Compton.

"Into my family affairs."

"Yes."

"Then perhaps"—Fred succeeded in simulating dignified anger—"then perhaps you'll be so good as to tell me what the deuce you mean by it?"

"Certainly," said Compton. "I mean that on no account are you to tell your father what you threatened last night."

"And if I choose to, who's going to stop me?"

"I am."

"How?"

"I'll show you when you begin," said Compton.

Fred had a perfect horror of physical violence, except of the variety that consisted of sitting in a comfortable ringside chair at Rushcutter's Bay, watching prize-fighters wallow in each other's gore. But he had always detested Compton, and now the white heat of hate consumed him. For the first time in his life Fred's blood was up. It was an unpleasant sight. His passion blanched and twisted his face into a thing of venom. It was thrust closer to Compton in the darkness. The voice was a harsh whisper.

"Then I'm going to begin now," it said. "I refuse to be bullied and dictated to by anyone—anyone—least of all you! I'm going now—d'you hear?—now—to tell him everything! I—I'll show you two I'm of some account in my own home!"

"My pension is five shillings a week," said Compton, "so I can't stop you the way you wanted, but I shall stop you."

Fred had flung away with a passion of resolve in his eyes when a hand gripped his arm. It was enough. He turned with the fury of a cat and struck blindly, by chance accurately.

Compton had forgotten his hip. He staggered under the impact, to his own disgust collapsed, and lay powerless to move, watching, through a haze of pain, horse and rider cantering off up the beach road.

*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

It was past eleven, but Metcalf was still in the "office." He was busy, he told Jill, when she came to say good night, and she had left him with his dreams. He was happier so.

He sat, an alert, upright figure in his stiffly-starched ducks, until the door had closed, then relaxed. He seemed to crumple into his chair, and lay thinking, thinking, with pinched brow and compressed lips.

Presently, with slow-moving and silent deliberation, he took up his yaka-wood stick and crept from the house. It was the first time he had passed through the compound gate for five years, yet he hardly needed the guidance of his stick, so familiar was the path. They had told him his heart would not stand it. There was nothing the matter with his heart. Surely he could walk through his own plantation. Why had he not done it before? He had been too submissive.

His deliberate steps led him down the path and into the groves. He could feel the encompassing presence of the palms, with their towering trunks and thick green roof of leaves. He tapped them with his stick when they bordered the path, and muttered as he went: "Seventy-five, seventy-six, seventy——" He had come to the end. His stick swept the empty air; his muttering ceased. He advanced uncertainly until his stick encountered something lying on the ground. It was still a palm trunk—the seventy-seventh.

From there onward he found nothing, nothing but prone palm trunks, stacked. He tore at one with his fingers, and it crumbled under his touch. He sat quite still for a while, then retraced his steps to the bungalow, and crumpled back into his favourite cane chair. It was a night of blue-black darkness, but one of extraordinary clarity to John Metcalf.

*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

He was still sitting there, the careworn lines miraculously smoothed from his face, when Fred Metcalf burst into the sitting-room. He was beyond noticing anything unusual in his sister's presence there at such an hour. She sat at the table, her head pillowed on her arms like a weary child.

"Jill," he jerked out, "we fought down there in the groves. He tried to stop me—by force. He couldn't, that's all; no one can. I——" Something caused him to stop, something indefinable that went to the core of his being.

Jill had looked up. Her eyes held a strange peace as they rested on this brother of hers.

"You're too late, Freddie," she said without resentment; "he can't hear you now."

The quiet finality in her voice brought the dawn of understanding to Fred Metcalf.

"What do you mean?" he asked almost in a whisper.

But he knew. In that moment it was given to him to catch a brief glimpse of himself as he was. Such a rare vision is apt to startle most of us; it awed Fred Metcalf. He turned uncertainly to the door and paused.

"You'll find Jim on the beach road," he muttered dazedly. "I don't quite know what I've done … I must try and think … Good-bye!"

Jill listened to his footsteps growing fainter down the powdered coral pathway, then hurried down to the beach road.

Compton watched her coming in dull suspense. His own helplessness filled him with unreasoning disgust. He had failed—through no fault of his own, but he had failed.

Jill smiled down at him.

"It's all right," she said, as though comforting a child. And later, with his head resting in her lap: "We won through, Jim. He never knew—until he knew everything."

Compton looked up into her eyes. There was something in them that he had not allowed himself to believe before. Even now he turned aside his head.

"I couldn't help," he said. "I shall never forget that. I'm pretty useless these days, Jill."

"Are you, dear?" she answered, and, leaning down, kissed him on the lips.