UNDER THE FLAME TREES by H. de Vere Stacpoole 

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I was sitting in front of Thibaud’s Café one evening when I saw Lewishon, whom I had not met for years.

Thibaud’s Café, I must tell you first, is situated on Coconut Square, Noumea. Noumea has a bad name, but it is not at all a bad place if you are not a convict. Neither is New Caledonia, take it all together, and that evening, sitting and smoking and listening to the band and watching the crowd, and the dusk taking the flame trees, it seemed to me for a moment that Tragedy had withdrawn, that there was no such place as the Isle Nou out there in the harbor and that the musicians making the echoes ring to the Sambre-et-Meuse were primarily musicians, not convicts.

Then I saw Lewishon crossing the square by the Liberty Statue and attracted his attention. He came and sat by me, and we smoked and talked while I tried to realize that it was fifteen years since I had seen him last and that he hadn’t altered in the least—in the dusk.

“I’ve been living here for years,” said he. “When I saw you last in Frisco I was about to take up a proposition in Oregon. I didn’t, owing to a telegram going wrong. That little fact changed my whole life. I came to the islands instead and started trading, then I came to live in New Caledonia. I’m married.”

“Oh,” I said, “is that so?”

Something in the tone of those two words “I’m married” struck me as strange.

We talked on indifferent subjects, and before we parted I promised to come over and see him next day at his place a few miles from the town. I did and I was astonished at what I saw.

New Caledonia, pleasant as the climate may be, is not the place one would live in by choice. In those days, the convicts were still coming there from France. The gangs of prisoners shepherded by wardens armed to the teeth, the great barges filled with prisoners that ply every evening when work is over between the harbor quay and the Isle Nou, the military air of the place and the fretting regulations, all these things and more robbed it of its appeal as a residential neighborhood. Yet the Lewishons lived there and what astonished me was the evidence of their wealth and the fact that they had no apparent interests at all to bind them to the place.

Mrs. Lewishon was a woman of forty-five or so, yet her beauty had scarce begun to fade. I was introduced to her by Lewishon on the broad veranda of their house, which stood in the midst of gardens more wonderful than the gardens of La Mortola.

A week or so later, after dining with me in the town he told me the story of his marriage, one of the strangest stories I ever heard and this is it, just as he told it.

“The Pacific is the finest place in the world to drop money in. You see it’s so big and full of holes that look like safe investments. I started, after I parted with you, growing coconut trees in the Fijis. It takes five years for a coconut palm to grow, but when it’s grown it will bring you in an income of eighteen pence or so a year according as the copra prices range. I planted forty thousand young trees and at the end of the fourth year a hurricane took the lot. That’s the Pacific. I was down and out, and then I struck luck. That’s the Pacific again. I got to be agent for a big English firm here in Noumea and in a short time I was friends with everyone from Chardin, the governor, right down.

“Chardin was a good sort but very severe. The former governor had been lax, so the people said, letting rules fall into abeyance like the rule about cropping the convicts’ hair and beards to the same pattern. However that may have been, Chardin had just come as governor and I had not been here more than a few months when one day a big, white yacht from France came and dropped anchor in the harbor. A day or two after, a lady appeared at my office and asked for an interview.

“She had heard of me through a friend, she said, and she sought my assistance in a most difficult matter. In plain English, she wanted me to help in the escape of a convict.

“I was aghast. I was about to order her out of the office, when something—something—something, I don’t know what, held my tongue while, with the cunning of a desperate woman in love, she managed to still my anger. ‘I understand,’ she said, ‘and I should have been surprised if you had taken the matter calmly, but will you listen to me and when you have heard me out, tell me if you would not have done what I have done today?’

“I could not stop her, and this is what she told me.

“Her name was Madame Armand Duplessis. Her maiden name had been Alexandre. She was the only child of Alexandre the big sugar refiner, and at his death she found herself a handsome young girl with a fortune of about twenty million francs—and nothing between her and the rogues of the world but an old maiden aunt given to piety and guileless as a rabbit. However, she managed to escape the sharks and married an excellent man, a captain in the cavalry and attached to St. Cyr. He died shortly after the marriage and the young widow, left desolate and without a child to console her, took up living again with her aunt, or rather the aunt came to live with her in the big house she occupied on the Avenue de la Grande Armee.

“About six months after, she met Duplessis. I don’t know how she met him, she didn’t say, but anyhow he wasn’t quite in the same circle as herself. He was a clerk in La Fontaine’s Bank and only drawing a few thousand francs a year, but he was handsome and attractive and young, and the upshot of it was they got married.

“She did not know anything of his past history and he had no family in evidence, nothing to stand on at all but his position at the bank, but she did not mind—she was in love and she took him on trust and they got married. A few months after marriage a change came over Duplessis. He had always been given rather to melancholy, but now an acute depression of spirits came on him for no reason apparently. He could not sleep, his appetite failed, and the doctors, fearing consumption, ordered him away on a sea voyage. When he heard this prescription he laughed in such a strange way that Madame Duplessis, who had been full of anxiety as to his bodily condition, became for a moment apprehensive as to his mental state. However she said nothing, keeping her fears hidden and busying herself in preparations for the voyage.

“It chanced that just at that moment a friend had a yacht to dispose of, an eight-hundred-ton auxiliary-engined schooner, La Gaudriole. It was going cheap and Madame Duplessis, who was a good business woman, bought it, reckoning to sell it again when the voyage was over.

“A month later they left Marseilles.

“They visited Greece and the islands, then, having touched at Alexandria, they passed through the canal, came down the Red Sea and crossed the Indian Ocean. They touched at Ceylon and while there Madame Duplessis suggested that, instead of going to Madras as they had intended, they should go into the Pacific by way of the Straits of Malacca. Duplessis opposed this suggestion at first, then fell in with it. More than that, he became enthusiastic about it. A weight seemed suddenly to have been lifted from his mind, his eyes grew bright, and the melancholy that all the breezes of the Indian Ocean had not blown away suddenly vanished.

“Two days later they left Ceylon, came through the Straits of Malacca and, by way of the Arofura Sea and Torras Straits, into the Pacific. The captain of the yacht had suggested the Santa Cruz islands as their first stopping place, but one night Duplessis took his wife aside and asked her would she mind their making for New Caledonia instead. Then he gave his reason.

“He said to her, ‘When you married me I told you I had no family. That was not quite the truth. I have a brother. He is a convict serving sentence in Noumea. I did not tell you because the thing was painful to me as death.’

“You can fancy her feelings, struck by a bombshell like that, but she says nothing and he goes on telling her the yarn he ought to have told her before they were married.

“This brother, Charles Duplessis, had been rather a wild young scamp. He lived in the Rue du Mont Thabor, a little street behind the Rue St. Honore in Paris, and he made his money on the Stock Exchange. Then he got into terrible trouble. He was accused of a forgery committed by another man but could not prove his innocence. Armand was certain of his innocence but could do nothing, and Charles was convicted and sent to New Caledonia.

“Well, Madame Duplessis sat swallowing that fact, and when he’d done speaking she sat swallowing some more as if her throat was dry. Then she says to Armand:

“‘Your brother is innocent, then,’ she says.

“‘As innocent as yourself,’ he answers her, ‘and it is the knowledge of all this that has caused my illness and depression. Before I was married, I managed to forget it all, but married to the woman I love, rich and happy, with enviable surroundings, thoughts of Charles came and knocked at my door, saying, ‘Remember me in your happiness.’“

“‘But can we do nothing for him?’ asked Madame Duplessis.

“‘Nothing’ replied Armand, ‘unless we can help him to escape.’

“Then he went on to tell her how he had not wanted to come on this long voyage at first, feeling that there was some fate in the business, and that it would surely bring him somehow or another to Noumea; then how the idea had come to him at Ceylon that he might be able to help Charles to escape.

“She asked him if had he any plan, and he replied that he had not—that it was impossible to make any plan till he reached Noumea and studied the place and its possibilities.

“Well, there was the position the woman found herself in, and a nice position it was. Think of it, married only a short time and now condemned to help a prisoner to escape from New Caledonia, for, though she could easily have refused, she felt compelled to the business both for the sake of her husband and the sake of his brother, an innocent man wrongfully convicted.

“She agreed to help in the attempt, like the high-spirited woman she was, and a few days later they raised the New Caledonia reef and the Noumea lighthouse that marks the entrance to the harbor.

“Madame Duplessis had a big acquaintance in Paris, especially among the political and military people, and, no sooner had the yacht berthed than the governor and chief people who knew her name began to show their attentions, tumbling over themselves with invitations to dinners and parties.

“That, again, was a nice position for her, having to accept the hospitality of the people she had come to betray, so to speak. But she had to do it. It was the only way to help her husband along in his scheme and, leaving the yacht, she took up her residence in a house she rented on the sea road; you may have seen it, a big white place with green verandas, and there she and her husband spent their time while the yacht was being overhauled.

“They gave dinners and parties and went on picnics; they regularly laid themselves out to please. Then one night Armand came to his wife and said he had been studying all means of escape from Noumea and had found only one. He would not say what it was, and she was content not to poke into the business, leaving him to do the plotting and planning till the time came when she could help.

“Armand said that before he could do anything in the affair he must first have an interview with Charles. They were hand in glove with the governor and it was easy enough to ask to see a prisoner, but the bother was the name of Duplessis, for Charles had been convicted and deported under that name. The governor had never noticed Charles and the name of Duplessis was in the prison books and forgotten. It would mean raking the whole business up and claiming connection with a convict. Still, it had to be done.

‘“Next day Armand called at the governor house and had an interview. He told the governor that a relation named Charles Duplessis was among the convicts and that he very much wanted to have an interview with him.

“Now the laws at that time were very strict and the governor, though pretty lax in some things, as I’ve said, found himself up against a very stiff proposition and that proposition was how to tell Armand there was nothing doing.
“‘I am sorry,’ said the governor, ‘but what you ask is impossible, Monsieur Duplessis. A year ago it would have been easy enough, but since the escape of Benonini and that Englishman Travels, the orders from Paris have forbidden visitors. Any message you would like me to send to your relation shall be sent, but an interview—no.’

“Then Armand played his ace of trumps. He confessed, swearing the governor to secrecy, that Charles was his brother. He said that Charles had in his possession a family secret that it was vital to obtain. He talked and talked and the upshot was that the governor gave in.

“Charles would be brought by two wardens to the house on the Sea Road after dark on the following day. The interview was to take place in a room with a single door and single window. One warden was to guard the door on the outside, the other would stand below the window. The whole interview was not to last longer than half an hour.

“Next evening after dark, steps sounded on the path to the house with the green veranda, Madame Duplessis had retired to her room, she had dismissed the servants for the evening and Armand himself opened the door. One of those little ten-cent, whale-oil lamps was the only light in the passage but it was enough for Amand to see the forms of the wardens and another form, that of his brother.

“The wardens, unlike the governor, weren’t particular about trifles. They didn’t bother about guarding doors and windows. Sure of being able to pot anyone who made an attempt to leave the house, they sat on the fence in the moonlight counting the money Armand had given them, ten napoleons apiece.

“Half an hour passed during which Madame Duplessis heard voices in argument from the room below, and then she heard the hall door open as Charles went out. Charles shaded his eyes against the moon, saw the wardens approaching him from the fence, and walked off with them back to the prison he had come from.

“Then Madame Duplessis came from her room and found her husband in the passage. He seemed overcome by the interview with his brother.

“She asked him had he made plans for Charles’ escape, and he answered: ‘No.’ Then he went on to say that escape was impossible. They had talked the whole thing over and had come to that decision. She stood there in the hall likening to him, wondering dimly what had happened, for only a few hours before he had been full of plans and energy and now this interview seemed to have crushed all the life out of him.

“Then she said: ‘If that is so there is no use in our remaining any longer at Noumea.’ He agreed with her and went off to his room, leaving her there wondering more than ever what could have happened to throw everything out of gear in that way.

“She was a high-spirited woman and she had thought little of the danger of the business; pitying Charles, she did not mind risking her liberty to set him free, and the thought that her husband had funked the business came to her suddenly as she stood there, like a stab in the heart.

“She went off to her room and went to bed, but she could not sleep for thinking, and the more she thought the clearer it seemed to her that her husband, brought up to scratch, had got cold feet, as the Yankees say, and had backed out of the show, leaving Charles to his fate.

“She was more sure next morning for he kept away from her, had breakfast early and went off into the town shopping. But the shock of her life came at dinner time, for when he turned up for the meal it was plain to be seen he had been drinking more than was good for him—trying to drown the recollections of his own weakness, it seemed to her.

“She had never seen him under the influence before and she was shocked at the change it made in him. She left the table.

“Afterward she was sorry that she did that for it was like the blow of an ax between them. Next morning he would scarcely speak to her and the day after they were due to leave for France.

“They were due out at midday, and at eleven Duplessis—who had lingered in the town to make some purchases—had not come on board. He did not turn up till half an hour after the time they were due to sail, and when he did it was plain to be seen that all his purchases had been made in cafe’s.

“‘He was flushed and laughing and joking with the boatman who brought him off, and his wife, seeing his condition, went below and left the deck to him—a nice position for a woman on board a yacht like that with all the sailors looking on, to say nothing of the captain and officers. However there was nothing to be done and she had to make the best of it, which she did by avoiding her husband as much as she could from that point on. The chap had gone clean off the handle. It was as if his failure to be man enough to rescue his brother had broken him, and the drink which he flew to for consolation finished the business.

They stopped at Colombo and he went ashore. They were three days getting him back and when he came he looked like a sack of meal in the stern sheet of the pinnace. They stopped at Port Said and he got ashore again without any money, but that was nothing, for a chap coming off a yacht like that gets all the tick he wants for anything in Port Said. He was a week there and was only got away by the captain of the yacht knocking seven bells out of him with his fists and then handing the carcass to two quartermasters to take on board ship.

“They stopped nowhere else till they reached Marseilles, and there they found Madame Duplessis’ lawyer waiting for them, having been notified by cable from Port Said.

“A doctor was had in and he straightened Armand up with strychnine and bromide, and they brushed his hair and shaved him and stuck him in a chair for a family conference, consisting of Madame Duplessis, the old maiden aunt, Armand, and the lawyer.

“Armand had no fight in him. He looked mighty sorry for himself but offered no explanations or excuses, beyond saying that the drink had got into his head. Madame Duplessis, on the other hand, was out for scalps—do you wonder! Fancy that voyage all the way back with a husband worse than drunk! When I say worse than drunk I mean that this chap wasn’t content to take his booze and carry on as a decent man would have done. No, sir. He embroidered on the business without the slightest thought of his wife. An ordinary man full up with liquor and with a wife touring round would have tried to have hidden his condition as far as he could, but this blighter carried on regardless, and, when the whisky was in, wasn’t to hold or bind.

“Of course she recognized that something in his brain had given way and she took into account that he was plainly trying to drown the recollection of his cowardice in not helping Charles to escape. All the same she was out for scalps and said so.

“She said she would live with him no more, that she had been a fool to marry a man whom she had only known for a few months and of whose family she knew nothing. She said she would give him an allowance of a thousand francs a month if he would sheer off and get out of her sight and never let her see him again.

“He sat listening to all this without a sign of shame and when she’d finished he flattened her out by calmly asking for fifteen hundred a month instead of a thousand. Never said he was sorry, just asked for a bigger allowance as if he was talking to a business man he was doing a deal with instead of a wife he had injured and outraged. Even the old lawyer was sick, and it takes a lot to sicken a French lawyer, I can tell you that.

“What does she do? She says: ‘I’ll allow you two thousand a month on the condition I never see your face or hear from you again. If you show yourself before me,’ she says, ‘or write to me, I’ll stop the allowance. If you try to move the law to make us live together, I’ll turn all my money into gold coin and throw it in the sea and myself after it, you beast,’ she says.

“And he says, ‘All right, all right, don’t fly away with things,’ he says. ‘Give me my allowance and you’ll never see me again.’

“One day an old woman turned up at her house asking her to come at once to where he was living as he was mortally ill and couldn’t hold out more than a few hours.

“She didn’t think twice, but came, taking a cab and being landed in a little old back street at the door of a house that stood between a thieves’ cafe and a rag shop.

“Up the stairs she went, following the old woman, and into a room where his royal highness was lying with a jug of whisky on the floor beside him and a hectic blush on his cheeks.

“‘I’m dying,’ he says, ‘and I want to tell you something you ought to know. I was sent to New Caledonia,’ he says, ‘for a robbery committed by another man.’

“She thought he was raving, but she says, ‘Go on.’

“‘Armand and I were twins,’ he says, ‘as like as two peas. Armand could do nothing. He stayed in Paris while poor Charles—that’s me—went making roads on Noumea. Then you married him.’

“‘But you are Armand,’ she cries, ‘you are my husband or am I mad?’

“‘Not a bit,’ says he. ‘I’m Charles, his twin brother.

“‘A year ago you and him came in a big yacht to Noumea and the governor sent me one night to have a talk with him. When we were alone he told me how his heart had been burning a hole in him for years, how he had married a rich woman—that’s you—and how when he was happy and rich his heart had burned him worse so that the doctors not knowing what was wrong with him had ordered him a sea voyage.’ Then Charles goes on to tell how Armand had come to the conclusion that even if he helped Charles to escape this likeness between them would lead surely to the giving away of the whole show, make trouble among the crew of the yacht and so on—besides the fact that it was next to impossible for a man to escape from Noumea in the ordinary way. But said Armand, ‘We can change places and no one will know. Strip and change here and now,’ he says, ‘the guards are outside, I’ll take your place and go to prison and you’ll be free. I’ve got a scissors here and two snips will make our hair the same, and by good luck we are both clean shaven. You’ve done half your sentence of ten years and I’ll do the other half,’ he says. ‘The only bargain I’ll make is that you’ll respect my wife and live apart from her and, after a while, you’ll break the news to her and, maybe, when I’m free in five years she’ll forgive me.’

“Charles finishes up by excusing himself for the drink, saying if she’d served five years without the chance of a decent wet all that time she’d maybe have done as he’d done.

“He died an hour after and there was that woman left with lots to thank about—first of all her husband wasn’t the drunkard that had disgraced her, but he was a convict serving his time and serving it wrongfully.

“The thundering great fact stood up like a shot tower before her that Armand wasn’t the drunkard that had disgraced her in two ports and before a ship’s company, wasn’t the swine that took her allowance and asked for more. That he was a saint, if ever a man was a saint.

“She rushed home, telegraphed to Marseilles and recommissioned the Gaudriole that was still lying at the wharves. A week later she sailed again for Noumea.

“On the voyage she plotted and planned. She had determined to save him from the four years or so of the remains of his sentence at all costs and hazards, and when the yacht put in here she had a plan fixed on, but it was kiboshed by the fact that the governor, as I have said, was changed. However she took up residence for a while in the town. People she had known before called on her and she gave out that her husband was dead.

“You can fancy how a rich widow was run after by all and sundry, myself included—not that I had any idea about her money. I only cared for herself. She knew this as women know such things, by instinct. She had asked for my help. I’m a strange chap in some ways. I had liked her enough to ruin myself for her by risking everything to give her husband back to her, and between us we had worked out a plan that was a pippin.

“It would have freed Armand only that we found on inquiring about him that he had already escaped—he was dead. Died of fever two months before she came.

“I heard once of a Japanese child that said her doll was alive because she loved it so much, adding that if you loved anything enough it lived. Well, in my experience, if you love anything enough you can make it love you.

“That woman stayed on in Noumea and I made her love me. At last I married her. You know her—she is my wife. She loves Armand still, as a memory, and for the sake of his memory we live here. It’s as good a place to live as anywhere else, especially now that they have settled to send no more convicts from France.”