He had found a little leaf of cigars in a German shop in Honolulu; the same reminding him of Stackhouse. They were Brills, with a Trichinopoli flavour, a wrapping from the States, the main filler doubtless from the Island plantations. The German had talked of them long, playing with the clotty little fellows in his hands, for they were moist enough, not easily to be broken. “You sink your teeth in one of these after a good dinner,” he said, “and if you do not enjoy tobacco, it is because you have been smoking other plants. These are made by a workman——”
Bellair smoked to the workman; also he smoked to Stackhouse. Something kindly had come over him for the Animal. Lot & Company had helped him to it.... Yes, he thought, the animal part is right enough. It is only when the human adult consciousness turns predatory that the earth is laid waste and the stars are fogged.... These were but back-flips of Bellair’s mind. In the main he was held so furiously ahead, that body and brain ached with the strain. As nearly as he could describe from the sensation, there was a carbon-stick upstanding between his diaphragm and his throat. Every time he thought of Auckland, it turned hot.
... He knew better where to begin now. The beginning was not in New York. The wallet was heavy upon him; he must not waste it; nor allow it to waste itself through bad management. Auckland was a desirable centre for the Stackhouse operations. He could travel forth from one agency to another. The fundamental ideas of trade, together with large knowledge of how trade should not be conducted, was his heritage from Lot & Company. He would begin slowly and sincerely to work out his big problems—holding the fruits loosely in his hands; ready to give them up to another, if that other should appear; contenting himself only with the simplest things; preparing always to be poorer, instead of richer.... He would earn the right to be poor. The thought warmed him, something of the natural strength of youth about it.
Standing out of the wind with an expensive cigar, a superb course-dinner finished less than an hour back, Bellair smiled at the ease of poverty, welcoming all the details of clean, austere denial. Yet he was not so far from it as would appear. He had always taken these matters of luxury and satiety with tentative grasp; even the dinners of Stackhouse were but studies of life. His ideal was closely adjusted to the Faraway Woman’s in these things. One of the dearest of her sayings had to do with renting the two front rooms of the stone cottage. Yet now he hoped furiously that she had not yet done so.
His thoughts turned again out among the Islands. He would meet the agents of Stackhouse. They would be bewildered at first; they would think he had come to peer and bite. He would lift and help and pass on—making the circles again and again, gaining confidence, not saying much. No, the thing he had in mind had little to do with words.... What a masonry among men—here and there one giving his best secretly.
No words about it. Bellair halted and filled his lungs from the good breeze. This thought had repeated itself like a certain bright pattern through all the weave of his conception. It had a familiar look, and a prod that startled him now. The whole meaning of it rushed home, so that he laughed.
He had reached in his own way, the exact point that Fleury had set out with. He was determined to act. He had ceased to talk.... Just then looking up from his laughing reverie, he saw a star. It was ahead, not high, very brilliant and golden. It had only escaped a moment between the flying black figures of the night, but more brilliant for that. It was vast and familiar—the meaning tried the throat and struck at his heart with strange suffering.... Yes, the Suwarrow was lifting the southern stars. There could be no doubt. He had looked at that mighty sun too often from the open boat to mistake. Fleury had said if it were as near to earth as our sun, this little planet would be dried to a cinder in ten seconds. It was the great golden ball, Canopus.... A hand was placed softly in his. Bellair was startled. He had been far away, yet the gladness was instant, as he turned down to the face of Davy Acton.
“She’s better,” the boy said. “I’ve been trying to get her to come up on deck. She told me to ask you, if you thought it best.”
“Sure, Davy—I’ll go with you to get her.”
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