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Then, too, came the mild excitement of moving into his own house, the Portuguese nunnery. Through its desolate, lime-coated spaces, his meagre belongings were scattered all too easily; but the new servants, their words and ways, not only kept his hands full, but gave strange food for thought. The silent evenings, timed by the plash of a frog in a pool, a cry from the river, or the sing-song of a "boy" improvising some endless ballad below-stairs; drowsy noons above the little courtyard, bare and peaceful as a jail; homesick moments at the window, when beyond the stunted orangery, at sunset, the river was struck amazingly from bronze to indigo, or at dawn flashed from pearl-gray to flowing brass;—all these, and nights between sleep and waking, when fancy peopled the echoing chambers with the visionary lives, now ended, of meek, brown sisters from Goa or Macao, gave to Rudolph intimations, vague, profound, and gravely happy, as of some former existence almost recaptured. Once more he felt himself a householder in the Arabian tales.
And yet, when his life was growing all but placid, across it shot some tremor of disquieting knowledge.
One evening, after a busy day among his piece-goods, he had walked afield with Heywood, and back by an aimless circuit through the twilight. His companion had been taciturn, of late; and they halted, without speaking, where a wide pool gleamed toward a black, fantastic belt of knotted willows and sharp-curving roofs. Through these broke the shadow of a small pagoda, jagged as a war-club of shark's teeth. Vesper cymbals clashed faintly in a temple, and from its open door the first plummet of lamplight began to fathom the dark margin. A short bridge curved high, like a camel's hump, over the glimmering half-circle of a single arch. Close by, under a drooping foreground of branches, a stake upheld an oblong placard of neat symbols, like a cartouche to explain a painting.
"It is very beautiful," ventured Rudolph, twisting up his blond moustache with satisfaction. "Very sightly. I would say—picturesque, no?"
"Very," said Heywood, absently. "Willow Pattern."
"And the placard, so finishing, so artistic—That says?"
"Eh, what? Oh, I wasn't listening." Heywood glanced carelessly at the upright sentence. That's a notice:—
"'Girls May Not be Drowned in This Pond.'"
He started on, without comment. Without reply, Rudolph followed, gathering as he walked the force of this tremendous hint. Slow, far-reaching, it poisoned the elegiac beauty of the scene, alienated the night, and gave to the fading country-side a yet more ancient look, sombre and implacable. He was still pondering this, when across their winding foot-path, with a quick thud of hoofs, swept a pair of equestrian silhouettes. It was half glimpse, half conjecture,—the tough little ponies trotting stubbornly, a rider who leaned across laughing, and a woman who gayly cried at him: "You really do understand me, don't you?" The two jogging shadows melted in the bamboo tracery, like things blown down the wind. But for years Rudolph had known the words, the laugh, the beguiling cadence, and could have told what poise of the head went with them, what dangerous glancing light. Suddenly, without reason, he felt a gust of rage. It was he that understood. It was to him these things belonged. The memory of her weakness was lost in the shining memory of her power. He should be riding there, in the dusk of this lonely and cruel land.
Heywood had thrown after them a single gloomy stare, down the pointed aisle of bamboos.
"Well matched!" he growled. "Chantel—He bounds in the saddle, and he bounds afoot!"
Rudolph knew that he had hated Chantel at sight.
He could not bring himself, next day, to join their party for tiffin at the Flowery Pagoda. But in the midst of his brooding, Teppich and the fat Sturgeon assailed the nunnery gate with pot-valiant blows and shouts. They had brought chairs, to carry him off; and being in no mood to fail, though panting and struggling, they packed him into a palanquin with many bottles of the best wine known to Fliegelman and Sons. By a short cut through the streets—where checkered sunshine, through the lattice roof, gave a muddy, subdued light as in a roiled aquarium—the revelers passed the inland wall. Here, in the shade, grooms awaited them with ponies; and scrambling into saddle, they trotted off through gaps in the bamboos, across a softly rolling country. Tortuous foot-paths of vivid pink wound over brilliant green terraces of young paddy. The pink crescents of new graves scarred the hillsides, already scalloped and crinkled with shelving abodes of the venerable dead. Great hats of farmers stooping in the fields, gleamed in the sun like shields of brass. Over knolls and through hollows the little cavalcade jogged steadily, till, mounting a gentle eminence, they wound through a grove of camphor and Flame-of-the-Forest. Above the branches rose the faded lilac shaft of an ancient pagoda, ruinously adorned with young trees and wild shrubs clinging in the cornices.
At the foot of this aged fantasy in stone, people were laughing. The three riders broke cover in time to see Mrs. Forrester, flushed and radiant, end some narrative with a droll pantomime. She stood laughing, the life and centre of a delighted group.
"And Gilbert Forrester," she cried, turning archly on her husband, "said that wasn't funny!"
Gilly tugged his gray moustache, in high good-nature. Chantel, Nesbit, and Kempner laughed uproariously, the padre and the dark-eyed Miss Drake quietly, Heywood more quietly, while even stout, uneasy Mrs. Earle smiled as in duty bound. A squad of Chinese boys, busy with tiffin-baskets, found time to grin. To this lively actress in the white gown they formed a sylvan audience under the gnarled boughs and the pagoda.
"Too late!" called the white-haired giant, indulgently, to the dismounting trio. "Mr. Hackh, you should have come spurring."
Rudolph advanced, pale, but with a calmness of which, afterward, he was justly proud. The heroine of the moment turned toward him quickly, with a look more natural, more sincere, than she had ever given him.
"Is this Mr. Hackh?" she said graciously. "I've heard so much about you!"
The young man himself was almost deceived. Was there a German mail-boat? Was there a club, from which he had stolen out while she wept, ignominiously, in that girl's arms? And then of a sudden he perceived, with a fatuous pleasure, how well she knew him, to know that he had never spoken. His English, as he drew up a stool beside Miss Drake, was wild and ragged; but he found her an astonishing refuge. For the first time, he recalled that this quiet girl had been beautiful, the other night; and though now by day that beauty was rather of line than of color, he could not understand how it had been overlooked. Tiffin, meanwhile, sped by like an orgy. He remembered asking so many questions, about the mission hospital and her school for orphans, that the girl began at last to answer with constraint, and with puzzled, sidelong scrutiny. He remembered how even the tolerant Heywood shot a questioning glance toward his wine-glass. He remembered telling a brilliant story, and reciting "Old Captain Mau in Vegesack,"—rhymes long forgotten, now fluent and spontaneous. The applause was a triumph. Through it, as through a haze, he saw a pair of wide blue eyes shining with startled admiration.
But the best came when the sun had lowered behind the grove, the company grown more silent, and Mrs. Forrester, leaning beside the door of the tower, turned the great pegs of a Chinese lute. The notes tinkled like a mandolin, but with now and then an alien wail, a lament unknown to the West. "Sing for us," begged the dark-eyed girl; "a native song." The other smiled, and bending forward as if to recollect, began in a low voice, somewhat veiled, but musical and full of meaning. "The Jasmine Flower," first; then, "My Love is Gathering Dolichos"; and then she sang the long Ballad of the Rice,—of the husband and wife planting side by side, the springing of the green blades, the harvest by millions upon millions of sheaves, the wealth of the State, more fragrant to ancestors than offerings of spice:—
"...O Labor and Love and hallowed Land! Think you these things are but still to come? Think you they are but near at hand, Only now and here?—Behold. They were the same in years of old!"
In her plaintive interlude, the slant-eyed servants watched her, nodding and muttering under the camphor trees.
"And here's a song of exile," she said. "I render it very badly."—Rudolph had never seen her face like this, bending intently above the lute. It was as though in the music she found and disclosed herself, without guile.
"...Blue was the sky, And blue the rice-pool water lay Holding the sky; Blue was the robe she wore that day. Alas, my sorrow! Why Must life bear all away, Away, away, Ah, my beloved, why?"
A murmur of praise went round the group, as she put aside the instrument.
"The sun's getting low," she said lightly, "and I must see that view from the top." Chantel was rising, but sat down again with a scowl, as she turned to Rudolph. "You've never seen it, Mr. Hackh? Do come help me up."
Inside, with echoing steps, they mounted in a squalid well, obscurely lighted from the upper windows, toward which decaying stairs rose in a dangerous spiral, without guard-rail. A misstep being no trifle, Rudolph offered his hand for the mere safety; but she took it with a curious little laugh. They climbed cautiously. Once, at a halt, she stood very close, with eyes shining large in the dusk. Her slight body trembled, her head shook with stifled merriment, like a girl overcome by mischief.
"What a queer little world!" she whispered. "You and I here!—I never dreamed you could be funny. It made me so proud of you, down there!"
He muttered something vague; and—the stairs ending in ruin at the fourth story—handed her carefully through the window to a small outer balustrade. As they stood together at the rail, he knew not whether to be angry, suspicious, or glad.
"I love this prospect," she began quietly. "That's why I wanted you to come."
Beyond the camphors, a wide, strange landscape glowed in the full, low-streaming light. The ocean lay a sapphire band in the east; in the west, on a long ridge, undulated the gray battlements of a city, the antique walls, warmed and glorified, breasting the flood of sunset. All between lay vernal fields and hillocks, maidenhair sprays of bamboo, and a wandering pattern of pink foot-paths. Slowly along one of these, a bright-gowned merchant rode a white pony, his bells tinkling in the stillness of sea and land. Everywhere, like other bells more tiny and shrill, sounded the trilling of frogs.
As the two on the pagoda stood listening,—
"It was before Rome," she declared thoughtfully. "Before Egypt, and has never changed. You and I are just—" She broke off, humming:—
"Only here and now? Behold They were the same in years of old!"
Her mood colored the scene: the aged continuity of life oppressed him. Yet he chose rather to watch the straggling battlements, far off, than to meet her eyes or see her hair gleaming in the sun. Through many troubled days he had forgotten her, despised her, bound his heart in triple brass against a future in her hateful neighborhood; and now, beside her at this time-worn rail, he was in danger of being happy. It was inglorious. He tried to frown.
"You poor boy." Suddenly, with an impulse that must have been generous, she rested her hand on his arm. "I was sorry. I thought of you so often."
At these close quarters, her tremulous voice and searching upward glance meant that she alone understood all his troubles. He started, turned for some rush of overwhelming speech, when a head popped through the window behind them.
"Boot and saddle, Mrs. Forrester," announced Heywood. His lean young face was very droll and knowing. "We're leaving, bottom-side."
"Thank you so much, Maurice," she answered, perhaps dryly. "You're a dear, to climb all those dreadful stairs."
"Oh!" said Heywood, with his gray eyes fastened on Rudolph, "no trouble."
All three went down the dark well together.
When the company were mounted, and trooping downhill through the camphor shadow, Heywood's pony came sidling against Rudolph's, till legging chafed legging.
"You blossomed, old boy," he whispered. "Quite the star, after your comedy turn." He reined aside, grinning. "What price sympathy on a pagoda?"
For that moment, Rudolph could have struck down the one sure friend he had in China.
CHAPTER VII
IPHIGENIA
"Don't chop off a hen's head with a battle-axe." Heywood, still with a malicious, friendly quirk at the corners of his mouth, held in his fretful pony. Rudolph stood bending a whip viciously. They two had fetched a compass about the town, and now in the twilight were parting before the nunnery gate. "A tiff's the last thing I'd want with you. The lady, in confidence, is not worth—"
"I do not wish," declared Rudolph, trembling,—"I do not wish you to say those things, so!"
"Right!" laughed the other, and his pony wheeled at the word. "I'll give you one month—no: you're such a good, thorough little chap, it will take longer—two months, to change your mind. Only"—he looked down at Rudolph with a comic, elderly air—"let me observe, our yellow people have that rather neat proverb. A hen's head, dear chap,—not with a battle-axe! No. Hot weather's coming, too. No sorrows of Werther, now, over such"—He laughed again. "Don't scowl, I'll be good. I won't say it. You'll supply the word, in two months!"
He let the pony have his way, and was off in a clatter. Lonely, fuming with resentment, Rudolph stared after him. What could he know, this airy, unfeeling meddler, so free with his advice and innuendo? Let him go, then, let him canter away. He had seen quickly, guessed with a diabolic shrewdness, yet would remain on the surface, always, of a mystery so violent and so profound. The young man stalked into his vacant nunnery in a rage, a dismal pomp of emotion: reason telling him that a friend had spoken sense, imagination clothing him in the sceptred pall of tragedy.
Yet one of these unwelcome words had stuck: he was Werther, it was true—a man who came too late. Another word was soon fulfilled; for the hot weather came, sudden, tropical, ferocious. Without gradation, the vernal days and languid noons were gone in a twinkling. The change came like another act of a play. One morning—though the dawn stirred cool and fragrant as all dawns before—the "boy" laid out Rudolph's white tunic, slipped in the shining buttons, smeared pipe-clay on his heaviest helmet; and Rudolph, looking from his window, saw that on the river, by the same instinct, boatmen were stretching up their bamboo awnings. Breakfast was hardly ended, before river, and convex field, and huddling red tiles of the town, lay under a blurred, quivering distortion. The day flamed. At night, against a glow of fiery umber, the western hills broke sharp and thin as sheet-iron, while below them rose in flooding mirage a bright strip of magical water.
Thus, in these days, he rode for his exercise while the sun still lay behind the ocean; and thus her lively, pointed face and wide blue eyes, wondering or downcast or merry, were mingled in his thoughts with the first rousing of the world, the beat of hoofs in cool silences, the wide lights of creation over an aged, weary, alien empire. Their ponies whinnying like old friends, they met, by chance or appointment, before the power of sleep had lifted from eyes still new and strange against the morning. Sometimes Chantel the handsome rode glowering beside them, sometimes Gilly, erect and solid in the saddle, laid upon their talk all the weight of his honest, tired commonplaces.
But one morning she cantered up alone, laughing at her escape. His pony bolted, and they raced along together as comrades happily join forces in a headlong dream. Quivering bamboo swept behind them; the river, on their other hand, met and passed in hurrying panorama. They had no time for words, but only laughter. Words, indeed, had never yet advanced them beyond that moment on the pagoda. And now, when their ponies fell into a shambling trot, came the first impulse of speech.
"How lucky!" she cried. "How lucky we came this way! Now I can really test you!"
He turned. Her glowing face was now averted, her gesture was not for him, but for the scene. He studied that, to understand her.
The river, up which they had fled, now rested broad and quiet as a shallow lake, burnished faintly, brooded over by a floating, increasing light, not yet compounded into day. Tussocks, innumerable clods and crumbs of vivid green, speckled all the nearer water. On some of these storks meditated,—sage, pondering heads and urbane bodies perched high on the frailest penciling of legs. In the whole expanse, no movement came but when a distant bird, leaving his philosophic pose, plunged downward after a fish. Beyond them rose a shapeless mound or isle, like some half-organic monster grounded in his native ooze.
"There!" said the woman, pointing. "Are you all excuses, like the others? Or do you dare?"
"I am not afraid of anything—now," retorted Rudolph, and with truth, after the dash of their twilight encounter. "Dare what?"
"Go see what's on that island," she answered. "I dared them all. Twice I've seen natives land there and hurry away. Mr. Nesbit was too lazy to try; Dr. Chantel wearing his best clothes. Maurice Heywood refused to mire his horse for a whim. Whim? It's a mystery! Come, now. Do you dare?"
In a rare flush of pride, Rudolph wheeled his stubborn mount and bullied him down the bank. A poor horseman, he would have outstripped Curtius to the gulf. But no sooner had his dancing pony consented to make the first rebellious, sidelong plunge, than he had small joy of his boast. Fore-legs sank floundering, were hoisted with a terrified wrench of the shoulders, in the same moment that hind-legs went down as by suction. The pony squirmed, heaved, wrestled in a frenzy, and churning the red water about his master's thighs, went deeper and fared worse. With a clangor of wings, the storks rose, a streaming rout against the sky, trailed their tilted legs, filed away in straggling flight, like figures interlacing on a panel. At the height of his distress, Rudolph caught a whirling glimpse of the woman above him, safe on firm earth, easy in her saddle, and laughing. Quicksand, then, was a joke,—but he could not pause for this added bewilderment.
The pony, using a skill born of agony, had found somewhere a solid verge and scrambled up, knee-deep, well out from the bank. With a splash, Rudolph stood beside him among the tufts of salad green. As he patted the trembling flanks, he heard a cry from the shore.
"Oh, well done!" she mocked them. "Well done!"
A gust of wholesome anger refreshed him. She might laugh, but now he would see this folly through. He tore off his coat, flung it across the saddle, waded out alone through the tussocks, and shooting forward full length in the turbid water, swam resolutely for the island.
Sky and water brightened while he swam; and as he rose, wrapped in the leaden weight of dripping clothes, the sun, before and above him, touched wonderfully the quaggy bank and parched grasses. He lurched ashore, his feet caked with enormous clods as of melting chocolate. A filthy scramble left him smeared and disheveled on the summit. He had come for nothing. The mound lay vacant, a tangled patch, a fragment of wilderness.
Yet as he stood panting, there rose a puny, miserable sound. What presence could lurk there? The distress, it might be, of some small animal—a rabbit dying in a forgotten trap. Faint as illusion, a wail, a thin-spun thread of sorrow, broke into lonely whimpering, and ceased. He moved forward, doubtfully, and of a sudden, in the scrubby level of the isle, stumbled on the rim of a shallow circular depression.
At first, he could not believe the discovery; but next instant—as at the temple pond, though now without need of placard or interpreter—he understood. This bowl, a tiny crater among the weeds, showed like some paltry valley of Ezekiel, a charnel place of Herod's innocents, the battlefield of some babes' crusade. A chill struck him, not from the water or the early mists. In stupor, he viewed that savage fact.
Through the stillness of death sounded again the note of living discontent. He was aware also of some stir, even before he spied, under a withered clump, the saffron body of an infant girl, feebly squirming. By a loathsome irony, there lay beside her an earthen bowl of rice, as an earnest or symbol of regret.
Blind pity urged him into the atrocious hollow. Seeing no further than the present rescue, he caught up the small unclean sufferer, who moaned the louder as he carried her down the bank, and waded out through the sludge. To hold the squalling mouth above water, and swim, was no simple feat; yet at last he came floundering among the tussocks, wrapped the naked body in his jacket, and with infinite pains tugged his terrified pony along a tortuous bar to the land.
Once in the river-path, he stood gloomily, and let Mrs. Forrester canter up to join him. Indeed, he had almost forgotten her.
"Splendid!" she laughed. "What a figure of fun! But what can you have brought back? Oh, please! I can't wait!"
He turned on her a muddy, haggard face, without enthusiasm, and gently unfolded the coat. The man and the woman looked down together, in silence, at the child. He had some foolish hope that she would take it, that his part was ended. Like an outlandish doll, with face contorted and thick-lidded eyes shut tightly against the sunshine, the outcast whimpered, too near the point of death for even the rebellion of arms and legs.
The woman in the saddle gave a short, incredulous cry. Her face, all gay curiosity, had darkened in a shock of disgust.
"What in the world!" she scolded. "Oh! Such a nasty little—Why did—What do you propose doing with it?"
Rudolph shook his head, like a man caught in some stupid blunder.
"I never thought of that," he explained heavily. "She has no—no friends."
"Cover it," his companion ordered. "Cover it up. I can't bear to see it."
With a sombre, disappointed air, he obeyed; then looked up, as if in her face he read strange matter.
"I can't bear," she added quickly, "to see any kind of suffering. Why did—It's all my fault for sending you! We were having such a good ride together, and now I've spoiled it all, with this.—Poor little filthy object!" She turned her hands outward, with a helpless, dainty gesture. "But what can we do? These things happen every day."
Rudolph was studying the ground again. His thoughts, then, had wronged her. Drenched and downhearted, holding this strange burden in his jacket, he felt that he had foolishly meddled in things inevitable, beyond repair. She was right. Yet some vague, insurgent instinct, which would not down, told him that there had been a disappointment. Still, what had he expected? No woman could help; no woman.
Then suddenly he mounted, bundle and all, and turned his willing pony homeward.
"Come," he said; and for the first time, unwittingly, had taken charge.
"What is it?" she called. "You foolish boy! What's your plan?"
"We shall see," he answered. Without waiting, he beckoned her to follow. She came. They rode stirrup to stirrup, silent as in their escape at dawn, and as close bodily, but in spirit traveling distant parallels. He gave no thought to that, riding toward his experiment. Near the town, at last, he reined aside to a cluster of buildings,—white walls and rosy tiles under a great willow.
"You may save your steps," she declared, with sudden petulance. "The hospital's more out of funds than ever, and more crowded. They'll not thank you."
Rudolph nodded back at her, with a queer smile, half reckless and half confident.
"Then," he replied, dismounting, "I will replenish my nunnery."
Squatting coolies sprang up and raced to hold his pony. Others, in the shade of the wall, cackled when they saw a Son of the Red-Haired so beplastered and sopping. A few pointed at his bundle, with grunts of sudden interest; and a leper, bearing the visage as of a stone lion defaced by time, cried something harshly. At his words, the whole band of idlers began to chatter.
Rudolph turned to aid his companion. She sat watching them sharply. An uneasy light troubled the innocent blue eyes, which had not even a glance for him.
"No, I shan't get down," she said angrily. "It's just what might be—Your little brat will bring no good to any of us."
He flung away defiantly, strode through the gate, and calling aloud, traversed an empty compound, already heated by the new-risen sun. A cooler fringe of veranda, or shallow cloister, lined a second court. Two figures met him,—the dark-eyed Miss Drake, all in white, and behind her a shuffling, grinning native woman, who carried a basin, in which permanganate of potash swam gleaming like diluted blood.
"Good-morning." With one droll look of amusement, the girl had understood, and regained that grave yet happy, friendly composure which had the virtue, he discovered, of being easily forgotten, to be met each time like something new. "What have you there for us?"
Again he unfolded the jacket.
"A child."
The naked mite lay very still, the breath weakly fluttered. A somewhat nauseous gift, the girl raised her arms and received it gently, without haste,—the saffron body appearing yet more squalid against the Palladian whiteness of her tunic, plain and cool as drapery in marble.
"It may live," she said. "We'll do what we can." And followed by the black-trousered woman, she moved quickly away to offer battle with death. A plain, usual fact, it seemed, involving no more surprise than repugnance. Her face had hardly altered; and yet Rudolph, for the first time in many days, had caught the fleeting brightness of compassion. Mere light of the eyes, a half-imagined glory, incongruous in the sharp smell of antiseptics, it left him wondering in the cloister. He knew now what had been missing by the river. "I was naked, and"—how ran the lines? He turned to go, recalling in a whirl snatches of truth he had never known since boyhood, never seen away from home.
Across a court the padre hailed him,—a tall, ungainly patriarch under an enormous mushroom helmet of solar pith,—and walking along beside, listened shrewdly to his narrative. They paused at the outer gate. The padre, nodding, frowning slightly, stood at ease, all angles and loose joints, as if relaxed by the growing heat.
Suddenly he stood erect as a grenadier.
"That lie again!" he cried. "Listen!"
The leper, without, harangued from his place apart, in a raucous voice filled with the solitary pride of intellect.
"Well, men shall revile you," growled Dr. Earle. "He says we steal children, to puncture their eyes for magic medicine!"
Then, heaving his wide shoulders,—
"Oh, well!" he said wearily, "thanks, anyhow. Come see us, when we're not so busy? Good!—Look out these fellows don't fly at you."
Tired and befouled, Rudolph passed through into the torrid glare. The leper cut short his snarling oration. But without looking at him, the young man took the bridle from the coolie. There had been a test. He had seen a child, and two women. And yet it was with a pang he found that Mrs. Forrester had not waited.
CHAPTER VIII
THE HOT NIGHT
Rudolph paced his long chamber like a wolf,—a wolf in summer, with too thick a coat. In sweat of body and heat of mind, he crossed from window to window, unable to halt.
A faintly sour smell of parched things, oppressing the night without breath or motion, was like an interminable presence, irritating, poisonous. The punkah, too, flapped incessant, and only made the lamp gutter. Broad leaves outside shone in mockery of snow; and like snow the stifled river lay in the moonlight, where the wet muzzles of buffaloes glistened, floating like knots on sunken logs, or the snouts of crocodiles. Birds fluttered, sleepless and wretched. Coolies, flung asleep on the burnt grass, might have been corpses, but for the sound of their troubled breathing.
"If I could believe," he groaned, sitting with hands thrust through his hair. "If I believe in her—But I came too late."
The lamp was an added torment. He sprang up from it, wiped the drops off his forehead, and paced again. He came too late. All alone. The collar of his tunic strangled him. He stuffed his fingers underneath, and wrenched; then as he came and went, catching sight in a mirror, was shocked to see that, in Biblical fashion, he had rent his garments.
"This is bad," he thought, staring. "It is the heat. I must not stay alone."
He shouted, clapped his hands for a servant, and at last, snatching a coat from his unruffled boy, hurried away through stillness and moonlight to the detested club. On the stairs a song greeted him,—a fragment with more breath than melody, in a raw bass:—
"Jolly boating weather, And a hay harvest breeze!"
"Shut up!" snarled another voice. "Good God, man!"
The loft was like a cave heated by subterranean fires. Two long punkahs flapped languidly in the darkness, with a whine of pulleys. Under a swinging lamp, in a pool of light and heat, four men sat playing cards, their tousled heads, bare arms, and cinglets torn open across the chest, giving them the air of desperadoes.
"Jolly boating weather," wheezed the fat Sturgeon. He stood apart in shadow, swaying on his feet. "What would you give," he propounded thickly, "for a hay harvest breeze?"
He climbed, or rolled, upon the billiard-table, turned head toward punkah, and suddenly lay still,—a gross white figure, collapsed and sprawling.
"How much does he think a man can stand?" snapped Nesbit, his lean Cockney face pulled in savage lines. "Beast of a song! He'll die to-night, drinking."
"Die yourself," mumbled the singer, "'m goin' sleep. More 'n you can do."
A groan from the players, and the vicious flip of a card, acknowledged the hit. Rudolph joined them, ungreeting and ungreeted. The game went on grimly, with now and then the tinkle of ice, or the popping of soda bottles. Sharp cords and flaccid folds in Wutzler's neck, Chantel's brown cheeks, the point of Heywood's resolute chin, shone wet and polished in the lamplight. All four men scowled pugnaciously, even the pale Nesbit, who was winning. Bad temper filled the air, as palpable as the heat and stink of the burning oil.
Only Heywood maintained a febrile gayety, interrupting the game perversely, stirring old Wutzler to incoherent speech.
"What's that about Rome?" he asked. "You were saying?"
"Rome is safed!" cried the outcast, with sudden enthusiasm. "In your paper Tit-bit, I read. How dey climb der walls op, yes, but Rome is safed by a flook of geeze. Gracious me, der History iss great sopjeck! I lern moch.—But iss Rome yet a fortify town?"
Chantel rapped out a Parisian oath.
"Do we play cards," he cried sourly, "or listen to the chatter of senility?"
Heywood held to the previous question.
"No, Wutz, that town's no longer fortified," he answered slowly. "Geese live there, still, as in—many other places."
Dr. Chantel examined his finger-tips as though for some defect; then, snatching up the cards, shuffled and dealt with intense precision. The game went on as before.
"I read alzo," stammered Wutzler, like a timid scholar encouraged to lecture, "I read zo how your Englishman, Rawf Ralli, he spreadt der fine clock for your Queen, and lern your Queen smoking, no?" He mopped his lean throat with the back of his hand. "In Bengal are dere Rallis. Dey handle jute."
"Yes?" Heywood smiled a weary indulgence. Next instant he whirled on Rudolph in fury.—"Is this a game, or Idiot's Joy?"
"I'm playing my best," explained Rudolph, sulkily.
"Then your best is the worst I ever saw! Better learn, before sitting in!"
Chantel laughed, without merriment; Rudolph flung down his cards, stalked to the window, and stood looking out, in lonely, impotent rage. A long time passed, marked by alarming snores from the billiard-table. The half-naked watchers played on, in ferocious silence. The night wore along without relief.
Hours might have lapsed, when Dr. Chantel broke out as though the talk had but paused a moment.
"So it goes!" he sneered. "Fools will always sit in, when they do not know. They rush into the water, also, and play the hero!"
Again his laughter was brief but malignant. Heywood had left his cards, risen, and crossing the room, stood looking over Rudolph's shoulder into the snowy moonlight. On the shoulder his hand rested, as by accident.
"It's the heat, old chap," he said wearily. "Don't mind what we say to-night."
Rudolph made no sign, except to move from under his hand, so that, with their quarrel between them, the two men stared out across the blanched roofs and drooping trees, where long black shadows at last crept toward the dawn.
"These heroes!" continued the mocker. "What is danger? Pouf—nothing! They make it for the rest of us, so easily! Do you know," his voice rose and quickened, "do you know, the other end of town is in an uproar? We murder children, it appears, for medicine!"
Rudolph started, turned, but now sat quiet under Heywood's grasp. Chantel, in the lamplight, watched the punkahs with a hateful smile.
"The Gascons are not all dead," he murmured. "They plunge us all into a turmoil, for the sake of a woman." He made a sudden startling gesture, like a man who has lost control. "For the sake," he cried angrily, "of a person we all know! Oh! we all know her! She is nothing more—"
There was a light scuffle at the window.
"Dr. Chantel," began Heywood, with a sharp and dangerous courtesy, "we are all unlike ourselves to-night. I am hardly the person to remind you, but this club is hardly the place—"
"Oh, la la!" The other snapped his fingers, and reverting to his native tongue, finished his sentence wildly.
"You cad!" Heywood advanced in long strides deliberately, as if gathering momentum for a collision. Before his blow could fall, he was sent spinning. Rudolph, his cheeks on fire, darted past and dealt, full force, a clumsy backhand sweep of the arm. Light and quick as a leopard, Chantel was on foot, erect, and even while his chair crashed on the floor, had whipped out a handkerchief.
"You are right, Mr. Heywood," he said, stanching his lips, in icy composure. His eyes held an odd gleam of satisfaction. "You are right. We are not like ourselves, at present. I will better ask Mr. Sturgeon to see your friend to-morrow morning. This morning, rather."
Not without dignity, he turned, stepped quickly to the stairs, saluted gravely, and went down.
"No, no!" panted Nesbit, wrestling with Rudolph. "Easy on, now! Let you go? No fear!"
Heywood wrenched the captive loose, but only to shake him violently, and thrust him into a chair.
"Be quiet, you little ass!" he scolded. "I've a great mind, myself, to run after the bounder and kick him. But that sort of thing—you did enough. Who'd have thought? You young spitfire! Chantel took you on, exactly as he wanted."
The fat sleeper continued to snore. Wutzler came slinking back from his refuge in the shadows.
"It iss zo badt!" he whined, gulping nervously. "It iss zo badt!"
"Right you are," said Heywood. With arms folded, he eyed them sternly. "It's bad. We might have known. If only I'd reached him first! By Jove, you must let me fight that beast. Duels? The idiot, nobody fights duels any more. I've always—His cuffs are always dirty, too, on the inside!"
Rudolph leaned back, like a man refreshed and comforted, but his laugh was unsteady, and too boisterous.
"It is well," he bragged. "Pistol-bullets—they fly on the wings of chance! No?—All is well."
"Pistols? My dear young gentleman," scoffed his friend, "there's not a pair of matched pistols in the settlement. And if there were, Chantel has the choice. He'll take swords."
He paused, in a silence that grew somewhat menacing. From a slit in the wall the wheel of the punkah-thong whined insistently,—rise and fall, rise and fall of peevish complaint, distressing as a brain-fever bird.
"Swords, of course," continued Heywood. "If only out of vanity. Fencing,—oh, I hate the man, and the art's by-gone, if you like, but he's a beautiful swordsman! Wonderful!"
Rudolph still lay back, but now with a singular calm.
"It's just as well," he declared quietly.
Heywood loosed a great breath, a sigh of vast relief.
"My word!" he cried, grinning. "So you're there, too, eh? You young Sly-boots! If you're another expert—Bravo! We'll beat him at his own game! Hoist with his own what-d'-ye-call-it! I'd give anything"—He thumped the table, and pitched the cards broadcast, like an explosion of confetti, in a little carnival of glee. "You old Sly-boots!—But are you sure? He's quick as lightning."
"I am not afraid," replied Rudolph, modestly. He trained his young moustache upward with steady fingers, and sat very quiet, thinking long thoughts. A quaint smile played about his eyes.
"Good for you!" said Heywood. "Now let him come, as the Lord Mayor said of the hare. What sport! With an even chance—And what a load off one's mind!"
He moved away to the window, as though searching for air. Instead of moonlight, without, there swam the blue mist of dawn.
"Not a word must ever reach old Gilly," he mused. "Do you hear, Nesbit?"
"If you think," retorted the clerk, stiffly, "I don't know the proper course of be'aviour! Not likely!"
The tall silhouette in the window made no reply, but stood grumbling privately: "A club! Yes, where we drink out of jam-pots—dead cushions, dead balls—no veranda—fellow that soils the inside of his cuffs first! We're a pack of beach-combers."
He propped his elbows on the long sill, and leaned out, venting fragments of disgust. Then of a sudden he turned, and beckoned eagerly. "Come here, you chaps. Look-see."
The others joined him. Gray vapors from river and paddy-field, lingering like steam in a slow breeze, paled and dispersed in the growing light, as the new day, worse than the old, came sullenly without breath or respite. A few twilight shapes were pattering through the narrow street—a squad of Yamen runners haling a prisoner.
"The Sword-Pen remains active," said Heywood, thoughtfully. "That dingy little procession, do you know, it's quite theatrical? The Cross and the Dragon. Eh? Another act's coming."
Even Rudolph could spare a misgiving from his own difficulty while he watched the prisoner. It was Chok Chung, the plump Christian merchant, slowly trudging toward the darkest of human courts, to answer for the death of the cormorant-fisher. The squad passed by. Rudolph saw again the lighted shop, the tumbled figure retching on the floor; and with these came a memory of that cold and scornful face, thinking so cruelly among the unthinking rabble. The Sword-Pen had written something in the dark.
"I go find out"; and Wutzler was away, as keen as a village gossip.
"Trouble's comin'," Nesbit asserted glibly. "There's politics afloat. But I don't care." He stretched his arms, with a weary howl. "That's the first yawn I've done to-night. Trouble keeps, worse luck. I'm off—seek my downy."
Alone with the grunting sleeper, the two friends sat for a long time and watched the flooding daylight.
"What," began Rudolph, suddenly, and his voice trembled, "what is your true opinion? You are so kind, and I was just a fool. That other day, I would not listen. You laughed. Now tell me, so—as you were to die next. You were joking? Can I truly be proud of—of her?"
He leaned forward, white and eager, waiting for the truth like a dicer for the final throw.
"Of yourself, dear old chap. Not of the lady. She's the fool, not you. Poor old Gilly Forrester slaves here to send her junketing in Japan, Kashmir, Ceylon, Home. What Chantel said—well, between the two of us, I'm afraid he's right. It's a pity."
Heywood paused, frowning.
"A pity, too, this quarrel. So precious few of us, and trouble ahead. The natives lashing themselves into a state of mind, or being lashed. The least spark—Rough work ahead, and here we are at swords' points."
"And the joke is," Rudolph added quietly, "I do not know a sword's point from a handle."
Heywood turned, glowered, and twice failed to speak.
"Rudie—old boy," he stammered, "that man—Preposterous! Why, it's plain murder!"
Rudolph stared straight ahead, without hope, without illusions, facing the haggard light of morning. A few weeks ago he might have wept; but now his laugh, short and humorous, was worthy of his companion.
"I do not care, more," he answered. "Luck, so called I it, when I escaped the militar' service. Ho ho! Luck, to pass into the Ersatz!—I do not care, now. I cannot believe, even cannot I fight. Worthless—dreamer! My deserts. It's a good way out."
CHAPTER IX
PASSAGE AT ARMS
"Boy."
"Sai."
"S'pose Mr. Forrester bym-by come, you talkee he, master no got, you chin-chin he come-back."
"Can do."
The long-coated boy scuffed away, across the chunam floor, and disappeared in the darkness. Heywood submitted his head once more to the nimble hands of his groom, who, with horse-clippers and a pair of enormous iron shears, was trimming the stubborn chestnut locks still closer. The afternoon glow, reflected from the burnt grass and white walls of the compound, struck upward in the vault-spaces of the ground floor, and lighted oddly the keen-eyed yellow mafoo and his serious young master.
Nesbit, pert as a jockey, sat on the table swinging his feet furiously.
"Sturgeon would take it all right, of course," he said, with airy wisdom. "Quite the gentleman, he is. Netch'rally. No fault of his."
"Not the least," Heywood assented gloomily. "Did everything he could. If I were commissioned to tell 'em outright—'The youngster can't fence'—why, we might save the day. But our man won't even listen to that. Fight's the word. Chantel will see, on the spot, directly they face. But will that stop him? No fear: he's worked up to the pitch of killing. He'll lunge first, and be surprised afterward.—So regrettable! Such remorse!—Oh, I know him!"
The Cockney fidgeted for a time. His face—the face of a street-bred urchin—slowly worked into lines of abnormal cunning.
"I say! I was thinking," he ventured at last. "Two swords, that's all? Just so. Now—my boy used to be learn-pidgin at Chantel's. Knows that 'ouse inside out—loafs there now, the beggar, with Chantel's cook. Why not send him over—prowling, ye know—fingers the bric-a-brac, bloomin' ass, and breaks a sword-blade. Perfectly netch'ral. 'Can secure, all plopah,' Accident, ye know. All off with their little duel. What?"
Heywood chuckled, and bowed his head to the horse-clippers.
"Last week," he replied. "Not to-day. This afternoon's rather late for accidents. You make me feel like Pompey on his galley: 'This thou shouldst have done, and not have spoken on't,'—Besides, those swords belonged to Chantel's father. He began as a gentleman.—But you're a good sort, Nesbit, to take the affair this fashion."
Lost in smoke, the clerk grumbled that the gory affair was unmentionable nonsense.
"Quite," said Heywood. "We've tried reasoning. No go. As you say, an accident. That's all can save the youngster now. Impossible, of course." He sighed. Then suddenly the gray eyes lighted, became both shrewd and distant; a malicious little smile stole about the corners of his mouth. "Have-got! The credit's yours, Nesbit. Accident: can do. And this one—by Jove, it won't leave either of 'em a leg to stand on!—Here, mafoo, makee finish!"
He sprang up, clapped a helmet on the shorn head, and stalked out into the sunlight.
"Come on," he called. "It's nearly time. We must pick up our young Hotspur."
The clerk followed, through the glowing compound and the road. In the shade of the nunnery gate they found Rudolph, who, raising his rattan, saluted them with a pale and stoic gravity.
"Are we ready?" he asked; and turning, took a slow, cool survey of the nunnery, as though looking his last—from the ditch at their feet to the red tiles, patched with bronze mould, that capped the walls and the roof. "I never left any place with less regret. Come, let's go."
The three men had covered some ground before Rudolph broke the silence.
"You'll find a few little things up there in my strong-box, Maurice. Some are marked for you, and the rest—will you send them Home, please?" He hesitated. "I hope neither of you will misunderstand me. I'm horribly afraid, but not—but only because this fellow will make me look absurd. If I knew the first motion!" He broke out angrily. "I cannot bear to have him laugh, also! I cannot bear!"
Heywood clapped him on the shoulder, and gave a queer cough.
"If that's all, never you fear! I'll teach you your guard. 'Once in a while we can finish in style.' Eh?—Rudie, you blooming German, I—I think we must have been brothers! We'll pull it off yet."
Heywood spoke with a strange alacrity, and tried again to cough. This time, however, there was no mistake—he was laughing.
Rudolph shot at him one glance of startled unbelief, and then, tossing his head, marched on without a word. Pride and loneliness overwhelmed him. The two at his side were no companions—not even presences. He went alone, conscious only of the long flood of sunset, and the black interlacing pattern of bamboos. The one friendly spirit had deserted, laughing; yet even this last and worst of earthly puzzles did not matter. It was true, what he had read; this, which they called death, was a lonely thing.
On a broken stone bench, Sturgeon, sober and dejected, with puffy circles under his eyes, sat waiting. A long parcel, wrapped in green baize, lay across his knees. He nodded gloomily, without rising. At his feet wandered a path, rankly matted with burnt weeds, and bordered with green bottle-ends, the "dimples" choked with discs of mud. The place was a deserted garden, where the ruins of a European house—burnt by natives in some obscure madness, years ago—sprawled in desolation among wild shrubs. A little way down the path stood Teppich and Chantel, each with his back turned and his hands clasped, like a pair of sulky Napoleons, one fat, one slender. The wooden pretense of their attitude set Rudolph, for an instant, to laughing silently and bitterly. This final scene,—what justice, that it should be a mean waste, the wreck of silly pleasure-grounds, long forgotten, and now used only by grotesque play-actors. He must die, in both action and setting, without dignity. It was some comfort, he became aware, to find that the place was fairly private. Except for the breach by which they had entered, the blotched and spotted compound walls stood ruinous yet high, shutting out all but a rising slant of sunlight, and from some outpost line of shops, near by, the rattle of an abacus and the broken singsong of argument, now harsh, now drowsy.
Heywood had been speaking earnestly to Sturgeon:—
"A little practice—try the balance of the swords. No more than fair."
"Fair? Most certainly," croaked that battered convivialist. "Chantel can't object."
He rose, and waddled down the path. Rudolph saw Chantel turn, frowning, then nod and smile. The nod was courteous, the smile full of satire. The fat ambassador returned.
"Right-oh," he puffed, tugging from the baize cover a shining pair of bell-hilted swords. "Here, try 'em out." His puffy eyes turned furtively toward Rudolph. "May be bad form, Hackh, but—we all wish you luck, I fancy." Then, in a burst of candor, "Wish that unspeakable ass felt as seedy as I do—heat-stroke—drop dead—that sort of thing."
Still grumbling treason, this strange second rejoined his principal.
"Jackets off," commanded Heywood; and in their cinglets, each with sword under arm, the two friends took shelter behind a ragged clump of plantains. The yellow leaves, half dead with drought and blight, hung ponderous as torn strips of sheet metal in the lifeless air.
Behind this tattered screen, Rudolph studied, for a moment, the lethal object in his hand. It was very graceful,—the tapering, three-cornered blade, with shallow grooves in which blood was soon to run, the silver hilt where his enemy's father had set, in florid letters, the name of "H.B. St. A. Chantel," and a date. How long ago, he thought, the steel was forged for this day.
"It is Fate." He looked up sadly. "Come, show me how to begin; so that I can stand up to him."
"Here, then." Slowly, easily, his long limbs transformed with a sudden youthful grace, Heywood moved through the seven positions of On Guard. "Try it."
Rudolph learned only that his own clumsy imitation was hopeless.
"Once more.—He can't see us."
Again and again, more and more rapidly, they performed the motions of this odd rehearsal. Suddenly Heywood stepped back, and lowering his point, looked into his pupil's face, long and earnestly.
"For the last time," he said: "won't you let me tell him? This is extremely silly."
Rudolph hung his head, like a stubborn child.
"Do you still think," he answered coldly, "that I would beg off?"
With a hopeless gesture of impatience, Heywood stepped forward briskly. "Very well, then. Once more." And as their blades clashed softly together, a quick light danced in his eyes. "Here's how our friend will stick you!" His point cut a swift little circle, and sped home. By a wild instinct, the novice beat it awkwardly aside. His friend laughed, poised again, disengaged again, but in mid-career of this heartless play, stumbled and came pitching forward. Rudolph darted back, swept his arm blindly, and cried out; for with the full impetus of the mishap, a shock had run from wrist to elbow. He dropped his sword, and in stupefaction watched the red blood coursing down his forearm, and his third finger twitching convulsively, beyond control.
"Dear fellow!" cried his opponent, scrambling upright. "So sorry! I say, that's a bad one." With a stick and a handkerchief, he twisted on a tourniquet, muttering condolence: "Pain much? Lost my balance, you know. That better?—What a clumsy accident!" Then, dodging out from the plantain screen, and beckoning,—"All you chaps! Come over here!"
Nesbit came running, but at sight of the bloody victim, pulled up short. "What ho!" he whispered, first with a stare, then a grin of mysterious joy. Sturgeon gave a sympathetic whistle, and stolidly unwound bandages. At first the two Napoleons remained aloof, but at last, yielding to indignant shouts, haughtily approached. The little group stood at fault.
Heywood wiped his sword-blade very carefully on a plantain leaf; then stood erect, to address them with a kind of cool severity.
"I regret this more than anybody," he declared, pausing, and picking his words. "We were at practice, and my friend had the misfortune to be run through the arm."
Chantel flung out his hands, in a motion at once furious and impudent.
"Zut! What a farce!—Will you tell me, please, since your friend has disabled himself"—
Heywood wheeled upon him, scornfully.
"You have no right to such an expression," he stated, with a coldness which conveyed more rage than the other man's heat. "This was entirely my fault. It's I who have spoiled your—arrangement, and therefore I am quite ready to take up my friend's quarrel."
"I have no quarrel with you," replied Chantel, contemptuously. "You saw last night how he—"
"He was quicker than I, that's all. By every circumstance, I'm the natural proxy. Besides"—the young man appealed to the company, smiling—"besides, what a pity to postpone matters, and spoil the occasion, when Doctor Chantel has gone to the trouble of a clean shirt."
The doctor recoiled, flung up a trembling arm, and as quickly dropped it. His handsome face burned darker, then faded with a mortal pallor, and for one rigid moment, took on such a strange beauty as though it were about to be translated into bronze. His brown fingers twitched, became all nerves and sinews and white knuckles. Then, stepping backward, he withdrew from the circle.
"Very well," he said lightly. "Since we are all so—irregular. I will take the substitute."
Rudolph gave a choking cry, and would have come forward; but Sturgeon clung to the wounded arm, and bound on his bandage.
"Hold still, there!" he scolded, as though addressing a horse; then growled in Heywood's ear, "Why did you go lose your temper?"
"Didn't. We can't let him walk over us, though." The young man held the sword across his throat, and whispered, "Only angry up to here!"
And indeed, through the anxious preliminary silence, he stood waiting as cool and ready as a young centurion.
His adversary, turning back the sleeves of the unfortunate white linen, picked up the other sword, and practiced his fingering on the silver hilt, while the blade answered as delicately as the bow to a violinist. At last he came forward, with thin lips and hard, thoughtful eyes, like a man bent upon dispatch. Both men saluted formally, and sprang on guard.
From the first twitter of the blades, even Rudolph knew the outcome. Heywood, his face white and anxious in the failing light, fought at full stretch, at the last wrench of skill. Chantel, for the moment, was fencing; and though his attacks came ceaseless and quick as flame, he was plainly prolonging them, discarding them, repeating, varying, whether for black-hearted merriment, or the vanity of perfect form, or love of his art. Graceful, safe, easy, as though performing the grand salute, he teased and frolicked, his bright blade puzzling the sight, scattering like quicksilver in the endless whirl and clash.
Teppich was gaping foolishly, Sturgeon shaking his head, the Cockney, with narrow body drawn together, watching, shivering, squatting on toes and finger-tips, like a runner about to spring from a mark. Rudolph, dizzy with pain and suspense, nursed his forearm mechanically. The hurried, silver ring of the hilts dismayed him, the dust from the garden path choked him like an acrid smoke.
Suddenly Chantel, dropping low like a deflected arrow, swooped in with fingers touching the ground. On "three feet," he had delivered the blow so long withheld.
The watchers shouted. Nesbit sprang up, released. But Heywood, by some desperate sleight, had parried the certainty, and even tried a riposte. Still afoot and fighting, he complained testily above the sword-play:—
"Don't shout like that! Fair field, you chaps!"
Above the sword-play, too, came gradually a murmur of voices. Through the dust, beyond the lunging figures, Rudolph was distantly aware of crowded bodies, of yellow faces grinning or agape, in the breach of the compound wall. Men of the neighboring hamlet had gathered, to watch the foreign monsters play at this new, fantastic game. Shaven heads bobbed, saffron arms pointed, voices, sharp and guttural, argued scornfully.
The hilts rang, the blades grated faster. But now it was plain that Heywood could do no more, by luck or inspiration. Fretted by his clumsy yet strong and close defense, Chantel was forcing on the end. He gave a panting laugh. Instantly, all saw the weaker blade fly wide, the stronger swerve, to dart in victorious,—and then saw Doctor Chantel staggering backward, struck full in the face by something round and heavy. The brown missile skipped along the garden path.
Another struck a bottle-end, and burst into milk-white fragments, like a bomb. A third, rebounding from Teppich's girdle, left him bent and gasping. Strange yells broke out, as from a tribe of apes. The air was thick with hurtling globes. Cocoanuts rained upon the company, tempestuously, as though an invisible palm were shaken by a hurricane. Among them flew sticks, jagged lumps of sun-dried clay, thick scales of plaster.
"Aow!" cried Nesbit, "the bloomin' coolies!" First to recover, he skipped about, fielding and hurling back cocoanuts.
A small but raging phalanx crowded the gap in the wall, throwing continually, howling, and exhorting one another to rush in.
"A riot!" cried Heywood, and started, sword in hand. "Come on, stop 'em!"
But it was Nesbit who, wrenching a pair of loose bottles from the path, brandishing them aloft like clubs, and shouting the unseemly battle-cries of a street-fighter, led the white men into this deadly breach. At the first shock, the rioters broke and scattered, fled round corners of the wall, crashed through bamboos, went leaping across paddy-fields toward the river. The tumult—except for lonely howls in the distance—ended as quickly as it had risen. The little band of Europeans returned from the pursuit, drenched with sweat, panting, like a squad of triumphant football players; but no one smiled.
"That explains it," grumbled Heywood. He pointed along the path to where, far off, a tall, stooping figure paced slowly toward the town, his long robe a moving strip of color, faint in the twilight. "The Sword-Pen dropped some remarks in passing."
The others nodded moodily, too breathless for reply. Nesbit's forehead bore an ugly cut, Rudolph's bandage was red and sopping. Chantel, more rueful than either, stared down at a bleeding hand, which held two shards of steel. He had fallen, and snapped his sword in the rubble of old masonry.
"No more blades," he said, like a child with a broken toy; "there are no more blades this side of Saigon."
"Then we must postpone." Heywood mopped his dripping and fiery cheeks. He tossed a piece of silver to one who wailed in the ditch,—a forlorn stranger from Hai-nan, lamenting the broken shells and empty baskets of his small venture.—"Contribution, you chaps. A bad day for imported cocoanuts. Wish I carried some money: this chit system is damnable.—Meanwhile, doctor, won't you forget anything I was rude enough to say? And come join me in a peg at the club? The heat is excessive."
CHAPTER X
THREE PORTALS
Not till after dinner, that evening, did Rudolph rouse from his stupor. With the clerk, he lay wearily in the upper chamber of Heywood's house. The host, with both his long legs out at window, sat watching the smoky lights along the river, and now and then cursing the heat.
"After all," he broke silence, "those cocoanuts came time enough."
"Didn't they just?" said Nesbit, jauntily; and fingering the plaster cross on his wounded forehead, drawled: "You might think I'd done a bit o' dueling myself, by the looks.—But I had some part. Now, that accident trick. Rather neat, what? But for me, you might never have thought o' that—"
"Idiot!" snapped Heywood, and pulling in his legs, rose and stamped across the room.
A glass of ice and tansan smashed on the floor. Rudolph was on foot, clutching his bandaged arm as though the hurt were new.
"You!" he stammered. "You did that!" He stood gaping, thunderstruck.
Felt soles scuffed in the darkness, and through the door, his yellow face wearing a placid and lofty grin, entered Ah Pat, the compradore.
"One coolie-man hab-got chit."
He handed a note to his master, who snatched it as though glad of the interruption, bent under the lamp, and scowled.
The writing was in a crabbed, antique German character:—
"Please to see bearer, in bad clothes but urgent. We are all in danger. Um Gottes willen—" It straggled off, illegible. The signature, "Otto Wutzler," ran frantically into a blot.
"Can do," said Heywood. "You talkee he, come topside."
The messenger must have been waiting, however, at the stairhead; for no sooner had the compradore withdrawn, than a singular little coolie shuffled into the room. Lean and shriveled as an opium-smoker, he wore loose clothes of dirty blue,—one trousers-leg rolled up. The brown face, thin and comically small, wore a mask of inky shadow under a wicker bowl hat. His eyes were cast down in a strange fashion, unlike the bold, inquisitive peering of his countrymen,—the more strange, in that he spoke harshly and abruptly, like a racer catching breath.
"I bring news." His dialect was the vilest and surliest form of the colloquial "Clear Speech."—"One pair of ears, enough."
"You can speak and act more civilly," retorted Heywood, "or taste the bamboo."
The man did not answer, or look up, or remove his varnished hat. Still downcast and hang-dog, he sidled along the verge of the shadow, snatched from the table the paper and a pencil, and choosing the darkest part of the wall, began to write. The lamp stood between him and the company: Heywood alone saw—and with a shock of amazement—that he did not print vertically as with a brush, but scrawled horizontally. He tossed back the paper, and dodged once more into the gloom.
The postscript ran in the same shaky hand:—
"Send way the others both."
"What!" cried the young master of the house; and then over his shoulder, "Excuse us a moment—me, I should say."
He led the dwarfish coolie across the landing, to the deserted dinner-table. The creature darted past him, blew out one candle, and thrust the other behind a bottle, so that he stood in a wedge of shadow.
"Eng-lish speak I ver' badt," he whispered; and then with something between gasp and chuckle, "but der pak-wa goot, no? When der live dependt, zo can mann—" He caught his breath, and trembled in a strong seizure.
"Good?" whispered Heywood, staring. "Why, man, it's wonderful! You are a coolie"—Wutzler's conical wicker-hat ducked as from a blow. "I beg your pardon. I mean, you're—"
The shrunken figure pulled itself together.
"You are right," he whispered, in the vernacular. "To-night I am a coolie—all but the eyes. Therefore this hat."
Heywood stepped back to the door, and popped his head out. The dim hall was empty.
"Go on," he said, returning. "What is your news?"
"Riots. They are coming. We are all marked for massacre. All day I ran about the town, finding out. The trial of Chok Chung, your—our Christian merchant—I saw him 'cross the hall.' They kept asking, 'Do you follow the foreign dogs and goats?' But he would only answer, 'I follow the Lord Jesus.' So then they beat out his teeth with a heavy shoe, and cast him into prison. Now they wait, to see if his padre will interfere with the law. It is a trap. The suit is certainly brought by Fang the scholar, whom they call the Sword-Pen."
"That much," said Heywood, "I could have told you."
Wutzler glanced behind him fearfully, as though the flickering shadows might hear.
"But there is more. Since dark I ran everywhere, watching, listening to gossip. I painted my skin with mangrove-bark water. You know this sign?" He patted his right leg, where the roll of trousers bound his thigh. "It is for protection in the streets. It says, 'I am a Heaven-and-Earth man.'"
"The Triad!" Heywood whistled. "You?"
The other faltered, and hung his head.
"Yes," he whispered at last. "My—my wife's cousin, he is a Grass Sandal. He taught her the verses at home, for safety.—We mean no harm, now, we of the Triad. But there is another secret band, having many of our signs. It is said they ape our ritual. Fang the scholar heads their lodge. They are the White Lotus."
"White Lotus?" Heywood snapped his fingers. "Nonsense. Extinct, this hundred years."
"Extinct? They meet to-night," said the outcast, in sudden grief and passion. "They drink blood—plan blood. Extinct? Are you married to these people? Does the knowledge come so cheap, or at a price? All these years—darkness—sunken—alone"—He trembled violently, but regained his voice. "O my friend! This very night they swear in recruits, and set the day. I know their lodge-room. For any sake, believe me! I know!"
"Right," said Heywood, curtly. "I believe you. But why come here? Why not stay, and learn more?"
Wutzler's head dropped on his breast again. The varnished hat gleamed softly in the darkness.
"I—I dare not stay," he sobbed.
"Oh, exactly!" Heywood flung out an impatient arm. "The date, man! The day they set. You came away without it!—We sit tight, then, and wait in ignorance."
The droll, withered face, suddenly raised, shone with great tears that streaked the mangrove stain.
"My head sits loosely already, with what I have done to-night. I found a listening place—next door: a long roof. You can hear and see them—But I could not stay. Yes, I am a coward."
"There, there!" Heywood patted his shoulder. "I didn't mean—Here, have a drink."
The man drained the tumbler at a gulp; stood without a word, sniffing miserably; then of a sudden, as though the draught had worked, looked up bold and shrewd.
"Do you?" he whispered. "Do you dare go to the place I show you, and hide? You would learn."
Heywood started visibly, paused, then laughed.
"Excellent," he said. "Tu quoque is good argument. Can you smuggle me?—Then come on." He stepped lightly across the landing, and called out, "You chaps make yourselves at home, will you? Business, you know. What a bore! I'll not be back till late." And as he followed the slinking form downstairs, he grumbled, "If at all, perhaps."
The moon still lurked behind the ocean, making an aqueous pallor above the crouching roofs. The two men hurried along a "goat" path, skirted the town wall, and stole through a dark gate into a darker maze of lonely streets. Drawing nearer to a faint clash of cymbals in some joss-house, they halted before a blind wall.
"In the first room," whispered the guide, "a circle is drawn on the floor. Put your right foot there, and say, 'We are all in-the-circle men,' If they ask, remember: you go to pluck the White Lotus. These men hate it, they are Triad brothers, they will let you pass. You come from the East, where the Fusang cocks spit orient pearls; you studied in the Red Flower Pavilion; your eyes are bloodshot because"—He lectured earnestly, repeating desperate nonsense, over and over. "No: not so. Say it exactly, after me."
They held a hurried catechism in the dark.
"There," sighed Wutzler, at last, "that is as much as we can hope. Do not forget. They will pass you through hidden ways.—But you are very rash. It is not too late to go home."
Receiving no answer, he sighed more heavily, and gave a complicated knock. Bars clattered within, and a strip of dim light widened. "Who comes?" said a harsh but guarded voice, with a strong Hakka brogue.
"A brother," answered the outcast, "to pluck the White Lotus. Aid, brothers.—Go in, I can help no further. If you are caught, slide down, and run westward to the gate which is called the Meeting of the Dragons."
Heywood nodded, and slipped in. Beside a leaf-point flame of peanut-oil, a broad, squat giant sat stiff and still against the opposite wall, and stared with cruel, unblinking eyes. If the stranger were the first white man to enter, this motionless grim janitor gave no sign. On the earthen floor lay a small circle of white lime. Heywood placed his right foot inside it.
"We are all in-the-circle men."
"Pass," said the guard.
Out from shadow glided a tall native with a halberd, who opened a door in the far corner.
In the second room, dim as the first, burned the same smoky orange light on the same table. But here a twisted cripple, his nose long and pendulous with elephantiasis, presided over three cups of tea set in a row. Heywood lifted the central cup, and drank.
"Will you bite the clouds?" asked the second guard, in a soft and husky bass. As he spoke, the great nose trembled slightly.
"No, I will bite ginger," replied the white man.
"Why is your face so green?"
"It is a melon-face—a green face with a red heart."
"Pass," said the cripple, gently. He pulled a cord—the nose quaking with this exertion—and opened the third door.
Again the chamber was dim. A venerable man in gleaming silks—a grandfather, by his drooping rat-tail moustaches—sat fanning himself. In the breath of his black fan, the lamplight tossed queer shadows leaping, and danced on the table of polished camagon. Except for this unrest, the aged face might have been carved from yellow soapstone. But his slant eyes were the sharpest yet.
"You have come far," he said, with sinister and warning courtesy.
Too far, thought Heywood, in a sinking heart; but answered:—
"From the East, where the Fusang cocks spit orient pearls."
"And where did you study?" The black fan stopped fluttering.
"In the Red Flower Pavilion."
"What book did you read?"
"The book," said Heywood, holding his wits by his will, "the book was Ten Thousand Thousand Pages."
"And the theme?"
"The waters of the deluge crosswise flow." "And what"—the aged voice rose briskly—"what saw you on the waters?"
"The Eight Abbots, floating," answered Heywood, negligently.—"But," ran his thought, "he'll pump me dry."
"Why," continued the examiner, "do you look so happy?"
"Because Heaven has sent the Unicorn."
The black fan began fluttering once more. It seemed a hopeful sign; but the keen old eyes were far from satisfied.
"Why have you such a sensual face?"
"I was born under a peach tree."
"Pass," said the old man, regretfully. And Heywood, glancing back from the mouth of a dark corridor, saw him, beside the table of camagon, wagging his head like a judge doubtful of his judgment.
The narrow passage, hot, fetid, and blacker than the wholesome night without, crooked about sharp corners, that bruised the wanderer's hands and arms. Suddenly he fell down a short flight of slimy steps, landing in noisome mud at the bottom of some crypt. A trap, a suffocating well, he thought; and rose filthy, choked with bitterness and disgust. Only the taunting justice of Wutzler's argument, the retort ad hominem, had sent him headlong into this dangerous folly. He had scolded a coward with hasty words, and been forced to follow where they led. To this loathsome hole. Behind him, a door closed, a bar scraped softly into place. Before him, as he groped in rage and self-reproach, rose a vault of solid plaster, narrow as a chimney.
But presently, glancing upward, he saw a small cluster of stars blinking, voluptuous, immeasurably overhead. Their pittance of light, as his eyesight cleared, showed a ladder rising flat against the wall. He reached up, grasped the bamboo rungs, hoisted with an acrobatic wrench, and began to climb cautiously.
Above, faint and muffled, sounded a murmur of voices.
CHAPTER XI
WHITE LOTUS
He was swarming up, quiet as a thief, when his fingers clawed the bare plaster. The ladder hung from the square end of a protruding beam, above which there were no more rungs. He hung in doubt.
Then, to his great relief, something blacker than the starlight gathered into form over his head,—a slanting bulk, which gradually took on a familiar meaning. He chuckled, reached for it, and fingering the rough edge to avoid loose tiles, hauled himself up to a foothold on the beam, and so, flinging out his arms and hooking one knee, scrambled over and lay on a ribbed and mossy surface, under the friendly stars. The outcast and his strange brethren had played fair: this was the long roof, and close ahead rose the wall of some higher building, an upright blackness from which escaped two bits of light,—a right angle of hairbreadth lines, and below this a brighter patch, small and ragged. Here, louder, but confused with a gentle scuffing of feet, sounded the voices of the rival lodge.
Toward these he crawled, stopping at every creak of the tiles. Once a broken roll snapped off, and slid rattling down the roof. He sat up, every muscle ready for the sudden leap and shove that would send him sliding after it into the lower darkness. It fell but a short distance, into something soft. Gradually he relaxed, but lay very still. Nothing followed; no one had heard.
He tried again, crawled forward his own length, and brought up snug and safe in the angle where roof met wall. The voices and shuffling feet were dangerously close. He sat up, caught a shaft of light full in his face, and peered in through the ragged chink. Two legs in bright, wrinkled hose, and a pair of black shoes with thick white soles, blocked the view. For a long time they shifted, uneasy and tantalizing. He could hear only a hubbub of talk,—random phrases without meaning. The legs moved away, and left a clear space.
But at the same instant, a grating noise startled him, directly overhead, out of doors. The thin right angle of light spread instantly into a brilliant square. With a bang, a wooden shutter slid open. Heywood lay back swiftly, just as a long, fat bamboo pipe, two sleeves, and the head of a man in a red silk cap were thrust out into the night air.
"Ai-yah!" sighed the man, and puffed at his bamboo. "It is hot."
Heywood tried to blot himself against the wall. The lounger, propped on elbows, finished his smoke, spat upon the tiles, and remained, a pensive silhouette.
"Ai-yah!" he sighed again; then knocking out the bamboo, drew in his head. Not until the shutter slammed, did Heywood shake the burning sparks from his wrist.
In the same movement, however, he raised head and shoulders to spy through the chink. This time the bright-hosed legs were gone. He saw clear down a brilliant lane of robes and banners, multicolored, and shining with embroidery and tinsel,—a lane between two ranks of crowded men, who, splendid with green and blue and yellow robes of ceremony, faced each other in a strong lamplight, that glistened on their oily cheeks. The chatter had ceased. Under the crowded rows of shaven foreheads, their eyes blinked, deep-set and expectant. At the far end of the loft, through two circular arches or giant hoops of rattan, Heywood at last descried a third arch, of swords; beyond this, a tall incense jar smouldering gray wisps of smoke, beside a transverse table twinkling with candles like an altar; and over these, a black image with a pale, carved face, seated bolt upright before a lofty, intricate, gilded shrine of the Patriot War-God.
A tall man in dove-gray silk with a high scarlet turban moved athwart the altar, chanting as he solemnly lifted one by one a row of symbols: a round wooden measure, heaped with something white, like rice, in which stuck a gay cluster of paper flags; a brown, polished abacus; a mace carved with a dragon, another carved with a phoenix; a rainbow robe, gleaming with the plumage of Siamese kingfishers. All these, and more, he displayed aloft and replaced among the candles.
When his chant ended, a brisk little man in yellow stepped forward into the lane.
"O Fragrant Ones," he shrilled, "I bring ten thousand recruits, to join our army and swear brotherhood. Attend, O Master of Incense."
Behind him, a squad of some dozen barefoot wretches, in coolie clothes, with queues un-plaited, crawled on all fours through the first arch. They crouched abject, while the tall Master of Incense in the dove-gray silk sternly examined their sponsor.
In the outer darkness, Heywood craned and listened till neck and shoulders ached. He could make nothing of the florid verbiage.
With endless ritual, the crawling novices reached the arch of swords. They knelt, each holding above his head a lighted bundle of incense-sticks,—red sparks that quivered like angry fireflies. Above them the tall Master of Incense thundered:—
"O Spirits of the Hills and Brooks, the Land, the swollen seeds of the ground, and all the Veins of Earth; O Thou, young Bearer of the Axe that cleared the Hills; O Imperial Heaven, and ye, Five Dragons of the Five Regions, with all the Holy Influences who pass and instantly re-pass through unutterable space:—draw near, record our oath, accept the draught of blood."
He raised at arm's length a heavy baton, which, with a flowing movement, unrolled to the floor a bright yellow scroll thickly inscribed. From this he read, slowly, an interminable catalogue of oaths. Heywood could catch only the scolding sing-song of the responses:—
"If any brother shall break this, let him die beneath ten thousand knives."
"—Who violates this, shall be hurled down into the great sky."
"—Let thunder from the Five Regions annihilate him."
Silence followed, broken suddenly by the frenzied squawking of a fowl, as suddenly cut short. Near the chink, Heywood heard a quick struggling and beating. Next instant he lay flattened against the wall.
The shutter grated open, a flood of light poured out.
Within reach, in that radiance, a pair of sinewy yellow hands gripped the neck of a white cock. The wretched bird squawked once more, feebly, flapped its wings, and clawed the air, just as a second pair of arms reached out and sliced with a knife. The cock's head flew off upon the tiles. Hot blood spattered on Heywood's cheek. Half blinded, but not daring to move, he saw the knife withdrawn, and a huge goblet held out to catch the flow. Then arms, goblet, and convulsive wings jerked out of sight, and the shutter slid home.
"Twice they've not seen me," thought Heywood. It was darker, here, than he had hoped. He rose more boldly to the peep-hole.
Under the arch of swords, the new recruits, now standing upright, stretched one by one their wrists over the goblet. The Incense Master pricked each yellow arm, to mingle human blood with the blood of the white cock; then, from a brazen vessel, filled the goblet to the brim. It passed from hand to hand, like a loving-cup. Each novice raised it, chanted some formula, and drank. Then all dispersed. There fell a silence.
Suddenly, in the pale face of the black image seated before the shrine, the eyes turned, scanning the company with a cold contempt. The lips moved. The voice, level and ironic, was that of Fang, the Sword-Pen:—
"O Fragrant Ones, when shall the foreign monsters perish like this cock?"
A man in black, with a red wand, bowed and answered harshly:—
"The time, Great Elder Brother, draws at hand."
"How shall we know the hour?"
"The hour," replied the Red Wand, "shall be when the Black Dog barks."
"And the day?"
Heywood pressed his ear against the chink, and listened, his five senses fused into one.
No answer came, but presently a rapid, steady clicking, strangely familiar and commonplace. He peered in again. The Red Wand stood by the abacus, rattling the brown beads with flying fingers, like a shroff. Plainly, it was no real calculation, but a ceremony before the answer. The listener clapped his ear to the crevice. Would that answer, he wondered, be a month, a week, to-morrow?
The shutter banged, the light streamed, down went Heywood against the plaster. Thick dregs from the goblet splashed on the tiles. A head, the flattened profile of the brisk man in yellow, leaned far out from the little port-hole. Grunting, he shook the inverted cup, let it dangle from his hands, stared up aimlessly at the stars, and then—to Heywood's consternation—dropped his head to meditate, looking straight down.
"He sees me," thought Heywood, and held himself ready, trembling. But the fellow made no sign, the broad squat features no change. The pose was that of vague, comfortable thought. Yet his vision seemed to rest, true as a plumb-line, on the hiding-place. Was he in doubt?—he could reach down lazily, and feel.
Worst of all, the greenish pallor in the eastern sky had imperceptibly turned brighter; and now the ribbed edge of a roof, across the way, began to glow like incandescent silver. The moon was crawling up.
The head and the dangling goblet were slowly pulled in, just before the moonlight, soft and sullen through the brown haze of the heat, stole down the wall and spread upon the tiles. The shutter remained open. But Heywood drew a free breath: those eyes had been staring into vacancy.
"Now, then," he thought, and sat up to the cranny; for the rattle of the abacus had stopped.
"The counting is complete," announced the Red Wand slowly, "the hours are numbered. The day—"
Movement, shadow, or nameless instinct, made the listener glance upward swiftly. He caught the gleam of yellow silk, the poise and downward jab, and with a great heave of muscles went shooting down the slippery channel of the cock's blood. A spearhead grazed his scalp, and smashed a tile behind him. As he rolled over the edge, the spear itself whizzed by him into the dark.
"The chap saw," he thought, in mid-air; "beastly clever—all the time—"
He landed on the spear-shaft, in a pile of dry rubbish, snatched up the weapon, and ran, dimly conscious of a quiet scurrying behind and above him, of silent men tumbling after, and doors flung violently open.
He raced blindly, but whipped about the next corner, leaving the moon at his back. Westward, somebody had told him, to the gate where dragons met.
There had been no uproar; but running his hardest down the empty corridors of the streets, he felt that the pack was gaining. Ahead loomed something gray, a wall, the end of a blind alley. Scale it, or make a stand at the foot,—he debated, racing. Before the decision came, a man popped out of the darkness. Heywood shifted his grip, drew back the spear, but found the stranger bounding lightly alongside, and muttering,—
"To the west-south, quick! A brother waits. I fool those who follow—"
Obeying, Heywood dove to the left into the black slit of an alley, while the other fugitive pattered straight on into the seeming trap, with a yelp of encouragement to the band who swept after. The alley was too dark for speed. Heywood ran on, fell, rose and ran, fell again, losing his spear. A pair of trembling hands eagerly helped him to his feet.
"My cozin's boy, he ron quick," said Wutzler. "Dose fellows, dey not catch him! Kom."
They threaded the gloom swiftly. Wutzler, ready and certain of his ground, led the tortuous way through narrow and greasy galleries, along the side of a wall, and at last through an unlighted gate, free of the town.
In the moonlight he stared at his companion, cackled, clapped his thighs, and bent double in unholy convulsions.
"My gracious me!" He laughed immoderately. "Oh, I wait zo fearful, you kom zo fonny!" For a while he clung, shaking, to the young man's arm. "My friendt, zo fonny you look! My gootness me!" At last he regained himself, stood quiet, and added very pointedly, "What did yow lern?"
"Nothing," replied Heywood, angrily. "Nothing. Fragrant Ones! Not a bad name. Phew!—Oh, I say, what did they mean? What Black Dog is to bark?"
"Black Dog? Black Dog iss cannon." The man became, once more, as keen as a gossip. "What cannon? When dey shoot him off?"
"Can't tell," said his friend. "That's to be their signal."
"I do not know," The conical hat wagged sagely. "I go find out." He pointed across the moonlit spaces. "Ofer dere iss your house. You can no more. Schlafen Sie wohl."
The two men wrung each other's hands.
"Shan't forget this, Wutz."
"Oh, for me—all you haf done—" The outcast turned away, shaking his head sadly.
Never did Heywood's fat water-jar glisten more welcome than when he gained the vaulted bath-room. He ripped off his blood-stained clothes, scrubbed the sacrificial clots from his hair, and splashed the cool water luxuriously over his exhausted body. When at last he had thrown a kimono about him, and wearily climbed the stairs, he was surprised to see Rudolph, in the white-washed room ahead, pacing the floor and ardently twisting his little moustache. As Heywood entered, he wheeled, stared long and solemnly.
"I must wait to tell you." He stalked forward, and with his sound left hand grasped Heywood's right. "This afternoon, you—"
"My dear boy, it's too hot. No speeches."
But Rudolph's emotion would not be hindered.
"This afternoon," he persisted, with tragic voice and eyes, "this afternoon I nearly was killed."
"So was I.—Which seems to meet that." And Heywood pulled free.
"Oh," cried Rudolph, fervently. "I know! I feel—If you knew what I—My life—"
The weary stoic in the blue kimono eyed him very coldly, then plucked him by the sleeve.—"Come here, for a bit."
Both men leaned from the window into the hot, airless night. A Chinese rebeck wailed, monotonous and nasal. Heywood pointed at the moon, which now hung clearly above the copper haze.
"What do you see there?" he asked dryly.
"The moon," replied his friend, wondering.
"Good.—You know, I was afraid you might just see Rudie Hackh."
The rebeck wailed a long complaint before he added:—
"If I didn't like you fairly well—The point is—Good old Cynthia! That bally orb may not see one of us to-morrow night, next week, next quarter. 'Through this same Garden, and for us in vain.' Every man Jack. Let me explain. It will make you better company."
CHAPTER XII
THE WAR BOARD
"Rigmarole?" drawled Heywood, and abstained from glancing at Chantel. "Dare say. However, Gilly, their rigmarole may mean business. On that supposition, I made my notes urgent to you chaps."
"Quite right," said Mr. Forrester, tugging his gray moustache, and studying the floor. "Obviously. Rigmarole or not, your plan is thoroughly sound: stock one house, and if the pinch comes, fortify."
Chantel drummed on Heywood's long table, and smiled quaintly, with eyes which roved out at window, and from mast to bare mast of the few small junks that lay moored against the distant bank. He bore himself, to-day, like a lazy cock of the walk. The rest of the council, Nesbit, Teppich, Sturgeon, Kempner, and the great snow-headed padre, surrounded the table with heat-worn, thoughtful faces. When they looked up, their eyes went straight to Heywood at the head; so that, though deferring to his elders, the youngest man plainly presided.
Chantel turned suddenly, merrily, his teeth flashing in a laugh.
"If we are then afraid, let us all take a jonc down the river," he scoffed, "or the next vessel for Hongkong!"
Gilly's tired, honest eyes saw only the plain statement.
"Impossible." He shook his bullet head. "We can't run away from a rumor, you know. Can we, now? The women, perhaps. But we should lose face no end—horribly."
"Let's come to facts," urged Heywood. "Arms, for example. What have we? To my knowledge, one pair of good rifles, mine and Sturgeon's. Ammunition—uncertain, but limited. Two revolvers: my Webley.450, and that little thing of Nesbit's, which is not man-stopping. Shot-guns? Every one but you, padre: fit only for spring snipe, anyway, or bamboo partridge. Hackh has just taken over, from this house, the only real weapons in the settlement—one dozen old Mausers, Argentine, calibre.765. My predecessor left 'em, and three cases of cartridges. I've kept the guns oiled, and will warrant the lot sound.—Now, who'll lend me spare coolies, and stuff for sand-bags?"
"Over where?" puffed Sturgeon. "Where's he taking your Mausers?"
"Nunnery, of course."
"Oh, I say!" Mr. Forrester looked up, with an injured air. "As the senior here, except Dr. Earle, I naturally thought the choice would be my house."
"Right!" cried two or three voices from the foot of the table. "It should be—Farthest off—"
All talked at once, except Chantel, who eyed them leniently, and smiled as at so many absurd children. Kempner—a pale, dogged man, with a pompous white moustache which pouted and bristled while he spoke—rose and delivered a pointless oration. "Ignoring race and creed," he droned, "we must stand together—"
Heywood balanced a pencil, twirled it, and at last took to drawing. On the polished wood he scratched, with great pains, the effigy of a pig, whose snout blared forth a gale of quarter-notes.
"Whistle away!" he muttered; then resumed, as if no one had interrupted: "Very good of you, Gilly. But with your permission, I see five points.—Here's a rough sketch, made some time ago."
He tossed on the table a sheet of paper. Forrester spread it, frowning, while the others leaned across or craned over his chair.
"All out of whack, you see," explained the draughtsman; "but here are my points, Gilly. One: your house lies quite inland, with four sides to defend: the river and marsh give Rudie's but two and a fraction. Boats? Not hardly: we'd soon stop that, as you'll see, if they dare. Anyhow,—point two,—your house is all hillocks behind, and shops roundabout: here's just one low ridge, and the rest clear field. Third: the Portuguese built a well of sorts in the courtyard; water's deadly, I dare say, but your place has no well whatever. And as to four, suppose—in a sudden alarm, say, those cut off by land could run another half-chance to reach the place by river.—By the way, the nunnery has a bell to ring." |
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