Then he remembered Sagesse’s pocket-book. He took it out and opened it. It contained only papers all wet with sea water and a note on the Bank of France for five hundred francs. He placed the note on the sand with a piece of coral on it to prevent the wind from blowing it away. The sun would dry it. Then he tried to examine the papers, they seemed of no use or importance to him, some were letters with the ink all blurred by the sea water, there were insurance certificates, an old theatre bill of a play performed years ago at a New York theatre, and in one packet a photograph with, on the back, the photographer’s name.
Nadan, Photographer. Rue Royale, Nimes.
It was the photograph of a woman, an old peasant woman to judge by the face and cap. Could it have been the man’s mother? as likely as not. And he had prized it evidently or he would not have given it a place in his pocket-book. Why had he kept the theatre bill? Of what romance or villainy was it the reminiscence, of what woman betrayed or man defrauded did he keep it as a memento to be read by Gaspard here, where to the crying of the cormorants, the past of man seemed a game futile and filled with derision. A play of shadows—tricking shadows.
He put the photograph and the theatre bill back in the pocket-book, and the papers; then he made a hole in the sand and buried it. To destroy the past of Sagesse utterly was the greatest act that Gaspard could have performed for humanity, failing that, to bury the records of it was a commendable deed.
He had a flint and steel and the tobacco in his own tobacco box had almost escaped wetting in the drenching of the night before. He filled his pipe and lit it, he had not smoked that day nor the day before and the tobacco, now, had a doubly soothing action on his mind, it chased away the stokehold and his recollections of the past, he forgave Sagesse his villainies, it brought the image of Marie from away across all those miles of ocean, he saw again the early morning market on the Place du Fort. Pierre-Alphonse, M. Seguin, and all the gay crowd beneath the blue sky and the dark green tamarinds.
He would find out Pierre-Alphonse when he returned and buy him a boat of his own, he would set Marie’s father up again in business at Morne Rouge, he would give money to all those people whom Sagesse had defrauded, he would make St. Pierre happy. That good town where the people had been so good to him. Then he would return to Montpellier, at least for a time, and take Marie with him, they would travel first class in the mail boat. He would go down to the stokehold as passengers sometimes did, ah! the stokers on that ship would have a good time when they reached Marseilles. He would go to the Riga tavern and call for a chopin of wine and see Anisette serve it. Ah, Yves, poor Yves, what a pity that he could not take the great, burly Breton by the hand and give him a fist full of money—so he lay smoking, playing with coloured shadows, spending phantom gold, whilst the voices of the cormorants half unheard, came on the wind across the bay-cedar bushes and the voices of the waves answered them like eternity making answer to time.
Then came the thought, “All that is very well, but how are you to turn your fortune into gold?”
This had not occurred to him before, and at first it seemed a simple matter, just a detail, then he remembered Sagesse’s words about governments who were apt to interfere in cases of treasure, men who sprang from nowhere with fictitious claims. Sagesse was afraid of these things and Sagesse was a clever man with thirty years of experience behind him.
To go to a jeweller with those things would be to admit at once the whole secret; to go to a pawn shop with the smallest of those gems would bring on his head enquiries that might prove fatal.
Here was a question to perplex a stoker’s mind. His strong hands could fight to protect his treasure, but of what avail was it to protect a useless thing?