Carson of Red River

The evening was calm, and the window at Blake’s flat by the river mouth was open. Kit Carson, standing with his back against the curtains, felt the rather shabby room was homelike, and for long he had not known a home. When he got a holiday he went to Netherhall, and after the drawing office, he liked to carry a gun across the moors; but the big house at the dale head had not the charm that marked Blake’s cheap flat.

Kit, however, thought the room less shabby than usual. For one thing, Mrs. Blake had got a new rug and the soft green harmonized with the brown stained boards. Then a new cottage piano occupied a corner and a water-color drawing, Kit’s present to Mabel Blake, was on the wall. Kit had an eye for line and he thought the drawing was not bad. Perhaps its purchase was something of an extravagance, but Kit was extravagant and Mabel was his pal’s wife.

Kit felt the charm that marked the flat was really Mabel’s. She was plucky and cheerful, although her fight was hard. Blake was a sober fellow, but when he married her had debts, and his pay, like Kit’s, was small. Kit was his groom, and at the wedding had rather thought to lose his friend. Instead, he had got another.

Mrs. Blake, carrying a tray, came in, and when Blake took her load, gave Kit a happy smile.

“The pennies for the meter did not run out, and my birthday feast is served,” she said, and balancing on an arched foot, as if she meant to dance, indicated her dress. “But how do you like my new clothes?”

Kit studied her. Mabel Blake was short and light; her figure was boyish and Kit knew her boyishly alert and happy.

“I can’t judge the material, but the lines are good. One gets a sense of balance and poise, which, I think, is not altogether the dressmaker’s art. Anyhow, you can dance, and if the shipyard company goes broke we’ll try our luck on the road. You will dance for crowded houses and I will play the lute. Tom, perhaps, might be business manager.”

Mabel laughed and Blake grinned, for he knew the others knew his money went.

“Isn’t the lute rather out-of-date?” he inquired.

“Ah,” said Kit, “there’s its attraction! The troubadours used the lute and your wife has got the joy and confidence people knew in the old spacious days.”

“I wonder whether those days were joyous,” said Blake. “All the same, Mabel’s pluck is good. When we married she undertook an awkward job, but she never grumbles. Anyhow, you’re not a troubadour. Your job’s to make drawings for modern machines.”

“There’s sober Tom!” Mabel remarked. “But supper will soon get cold.”

They sat down at the little round table, and Mabel, glancing at Kit, rather thought he ascribed to her qualities that were properly his. Kit, like her husband, had a post in the drawing office at the shipbuilding yard. He was thin but athletic, and as a rule his eyes twinkled. Kit indulged his whimsical imagination and sometimes one did not know if he joked. Mrs. Blake knew him generous and romantic, but he was a first-class draftsman and made progress at the office. In the meantime, Kit, with frank satisfaction, used his knife and fork. At Netherhall one dined ceremoniously and wore evening clothes, but one did not get food like the suppers Mabel cooked on the gas stove. By and by she indicated the piano.

“Sometimes you’re not very keen, Kit. For example, I was forced to point out I’d got new clothes and ask for a compliment; and now it looks as if you had not noticed all Tom’s extravagance. But perhaps you want to be polite?”

“I saw the piano, and after supper I’ll try it. Just now I’m very happily occupied. All the same, I’m glad to see Tom’s luck has turned.”

“The piano’s not yet ours and we’ll talk about it again,” said Blake. “Until Kit has satisfied his appetite you must leave him alone, Mabel. Although he’s sometimes romantic, he’s frankly flesh and blood.”

“The flesh is not very conspicuous,” Kit rejoined, and gave Mrs. Blake his plate. “One sees why Tom gets fat. If you’d like a sincere compliment may I have some more?”

By and by Blake and Kit carried off the plates, and when they came back Kit turned down the light and signing the others to the window, pulled the curtain along the rod. The flat was at the top of a tall building, the night was fine, and one looked down on rows of houses and the dark river. On the other bank blast-lamps’ flames tossed, and the trembling illumination touched skeleton ships. Hammers rang with a rhythmic beat; and at the top of the steep slope steelworks engines throbbed. In the background a pillar of fire, intense and white, was reflected by a cloud. The pillar sank and vanished, and by contrast all was dark.

“Janions’ converter,” said Kit. “If they roll us the plates as they agreed, you ought soon to run the Mariposa down the launching ways. I don’t know if her boiler will be ready.”

“Then you’re not satisfied about the circulation?” Blake inquired, and Kit thought his interest rather keen.

“We are nearly satisfied. Colvin’s hurrying me, and when Mabel has had enough I must go back to the office: the tube-shop foreman wants some particulars. Anyhow, we mustn’t bore Mabel. I like your window, madam. It commands a moving view.”

“The fires and grime of industry?” said Mabel and laughed. “I begin to doubt if I know you, Mr. Carson. Sometimes you’re the minstrel you talk about, and sometimes a shipbuilder. Which would you really like to be?”

“I don’t know. There’s the trouble. Anyhow, I do like your window. It commands the road to countries not yet modernized—where men beat the monkey-skin drums and play the pipes, make love by primitive rules and kill their rivals. For example——”

A whistle shrieked on a high note and dropped to a harmonious chord; a ruby beam moved across the trembling reflections. Then a funnel and a vague, long hull stole through the shipyard smoke. The beam faded, the hull was foreshortened and the ship went round a bend. The wave she threw off beat the bank and melted in the dark.

“The Negapatam, bound for Singapore and the Malay seas,” said Kit. “But I expect you get cold.”

Blake shut the window and pulled chairs to the small gas fire; and Kit thought his doing so characteristic. Tom was a very good sort, but he was sober and, so to speak, rather soft.

“Why must you go back to the office on my birthday?” Mrs. Blake inquired.

“Well, you see, I get my pay for building ships, and the Mariposa will soon be waiting for her fast-steaming, anti-incrustation boiler. Our boiler; the very latest thing of the water-tube type!”

“What is a water-tube boiler? And why are you so keen about the Mariposa’s?”

“In an ordinary marine boiler the flame goes through the flues; in the water-tube pattern the water circulates in tubes and the flame is outside. The type has some drawbacks I mustn’t bother you about, but it steams fast and carries a heavy pressure. Well, a foreign government requires four small, swift, shallow boats for tropical rivers and has ordered two; one from us, and one from the opposition yard.”

Mrs. Blake nodded. “The Mariposa’s yours; if she beats the other boat, you will build the lot?”

“Colvin hopes we’ll do so. The rivers she’ll navigate are muddy, and in a water-tube boiler mud is awkward. We have been forced to modify our standard pattern, but if we get the results we expect, we reckon on beating the other boat. The improvements cannot be patented, and in consequence we don’t talk about our plans.”

“But if the Mariposa wins, your competitors may bribe somebody to study her boiler.”

“It’s possible,” Kit agreed. “All the same, the tubes are covered by a casing, and if the opposition did find out something useful, we’d have begun to build the fleet. Now you know all about it and we have done with shipbuilding. Let’s try the new piano!”

He went to the piano and began to play. The others knew his talent, but they thought the music strange and melancholy. Yet the air was haunting.

“It is not piano music,” Blake remarked.

“I expect it was first written for the guitar; Spanish music’s Moorish music. Don’t you hear the strings and the wind in the sand? Can’t you picture the camel-dung fires in front of the black tents, and smell the curling smoke. But I’ll try a song. It’s about the King of Spain who lost Gibraltar, but did not lose all the fellow lost who lost his heart. Do you hear the guitars tinkle under the lattice window?”

“I do not,” said Blake, smiling. “Still, you see, I’m not a lute player.”

“Oh, well, the next lot’s blatantly pictorial,” said Kit and pushed down the pedal. “Shipyard hammers! You can hear that! Now the Negapatam’s whistle calls in the smoke and fog. She steals down river; her screw throbs steadily and stops. The pilot’s boat vanishes and the engines beat a quicker rhythm. The dark water heaves and splashes at the bows. She steers south for sunshine and the islands of pearls and spice.”

He shut the piano and swung the revolving stool. “Well, the instrument’s jolly good and I hope it will soon be yours.”