THE WAY OF THE GODS
"But, Treevor, I am so very dull when you go out, and when you are
working it is as bad. I do miss my baby so to play with."
"You did not strike me as a very devoted mother when I saw you at
Sitka," I answered.
"Oh, Treevor, he was a very fine boy, and I took so much care of him.
Was he not a very large child?"
"Yes, he certainly was, and with a dreadful voice and a furious
temper. It's no use worrying me, Suzee, about the matter. I dislike
children very much, and I do not wish nor intend to have any of my
own."
Suzee began to cry in the easy way she had. She seemed able to
commence and leave off just when she chose.
"You are a little goose," I said jestingly. "You don't know when you
are well off. For months and months you would be ill and disfigured,
unable to come about with me or be my companion, unable to sit to me
for my painting, and afterwards the child would be an unendurable tie
and burden. Besides, as I say, I have an intense dislike to children
and could never live with one anywhere near me. I am afraid, if you
want them, you must go away from me, to some one who has your views."
Suzee came over to where I was sitting and knelt beside my chair,
clasping both hands round my arm.
"Treevor," she said, almost in a whisper, "you are so beautiful with
your straight face, every line in it is so straight, quite straight;
and your black hair and your dark eyes and your dark eyebrows. I want
that for my baby. I want a son just like you; he must be just like
you, and then I should be so happy."
As she spoke, the lines of a poetess flashed across me, indistinctly
remembered--"beauty that women seek after ... that they may give to
the world again."
Was this the reason of woman's love of beauty in men? Ah, not with all
women! Viola loved beauty, as I did, as all artists do, as they love
their art, for itself alone.
I stroked her smooth shining hair, gently, and shook my head, smiling
down upon her.
"Do you not value my love for you?" I asked.
"Oh yes, yes; you know I do."
"Well, then understand this: you would utterly and entirely lose it if
you became a mother."
Suzee shrank away from me.
"But why, Treevor? Hop Lee was so pleased with me...."
"Men have different tastes. And it is well they have, or the world
would be worse than it is. Some men like children and domesticity and
sick-nursing and childish companionship; I don't. I like health and
beauty, and love and intellect about me, and women who are straight
and slim and can inspire my pictures. That's why, Suzee, and I don't
see any reason why I shouldn't gratify my tastes as they do theirs.
There are plenty of men in the world who like being fathers of
families; the world can well allow an artist to give it his art
instead."
"Oh yes, Treevor, of course; but I am so sorry. I am so dull without a
baby."
We were sitting together in a light balcony of one of the hotels at
Tampico, and the subject of our conversation was one which had come up
many times between us lately.
Some months had slipped by since the accident in the bull-ring. Suzee
had recovered from the shock with a few day's rest and care, and as
soon as she was better we had started on a tour through the country
places of Mexico, and as it grew colder we had worked downwards to the
gulf of Vera Cruz in the Tierra Caliente, or Hot Lands, and now were
making a stay here on the coast, caught by the beauty of palm and sea
and shore.
Suzee, though apparently she had all that most young women covet, had
been for some time restless and dissatisfied, and the reason soon
appeared in conversations like that of to-day.
"Come along," I said, getting up; "see what a lovely evening it is,
let's go for a walk along the seashore."
Suzee looked round at the translucent green bell of the sky that hung
over us, disapprovingly.
"It's always fine weather," she said, rather sulkily; "and there's
nothing to see on that old shore."
"Nothing to see!" I exclaimed in sheer amazement. Then I stopped
short, remembering her indifference to all I valued, and added: "There
are most beautiful shells of every shape and colour, wouldn't you like
to get some of those?"
Suzee's face brightened immediately. This idea took her fancy at once.
It appealed to her keen love of material things. Beauty in air and sky
was nothing to her; but something she could pick up and handle, become
possessed of, like the shells, deeply interested her. She rose at
once.
"I had better take a basket, Treevor," she said, "to carry them back
in." And while she went to get it, I leant over the balcony-rail
musing on that great difference in character between woman and woman,
man and man. Humanity might almost be divided into those two great
parts--those who love and live in ideas; and those who love, and are
wholly concerned with, material things.
She came back in a moment with a basket swinging in her hand. It had
not seemed so necessary here in Mexico that she should dress in
Western clothes, so she had gradually relapsed into her gaily coloured
silks and embroidered muslins and Zouave jackets. This style of
dressing suited the tropical climate, and the convenances of Europe
and America were too far off for anything to matter much here. It gave
her constant occupation, too, the making of her costumes; for she was
marvellously quick and dexterous with her needle, and if I gave her
the silks she fancied she made them into dainty forms and embroidered
them with the greatest skill. As she came back now with her basket the
light fell softly on her lilac silk, all worked with gold thread, and
on her pretty bare head with its block of black shining hair.
We started for the shore, Suzee all animation now and chattering on
the possibility of sewing sea-shells into gold tissue or muslin.
The sky all round and overhead was palest green and strangely
luminous, the sea before us stretched to the far horizon in tones of
gentlest mauve and violet, beneath our feet was the firm brown sand
for miles and miles unrolled like a glossy, sepia carpet. On one side
broke the tiny waves in undulating lines of white; on the other, the
wild sand-dunes, grown over with rough grass and waving cocoanut
palms, came down towards the sea.
We walked on, both contented. I, in the strange colouring and the warm
salt breath in the air, that stirred the palm leaves till they tossed
joyfully in it; she, in the absorbing pursuit of the shells which lay
along the sand, positively studding it, like jewels, with colour. The
tide had recently gone down over the shore where we walked and left
them radiant, gleaming with moisture in the low light of the sun, pink
and scarlet, deepest purple and gold. She ran ahead of me, picking
them up and filling her basket rapidly. I walked on slowly, thinking,
while my eyes wandered over that shining, palpitating, gently heaving
violet sea. She had given herself to me entirely--and what beauty she
had to give! And yet she had failed to chain me to her in any way,
greatly though she pleased my senses. It is, after all, something in
the soul of a woman, in her inner self, that has the power of throwing
an anchor into our soul and holding it captive. Mere beauty throws its
anchor into the flesh, and after a time the flesh gives way.
In a little while Suzee came running back to me; her basket was full
to overflowing: she was quite happy.
"Take me up in your arms and kiss me," she said. "Look, Treevor, we
are all alone. What a great, great beach it is here, with not another
soul to see anywhere."
As she said, the firm brown plain of glistening sand stretched behind
us and before us with not another footfall to disturb its silence,
the wide white sand-dunes were deserted, the palms tossed their
greeting to the sea through the glory of calm evening light.
"Let us lie under those palms now; I am tired," she said as I kissed
her. And we went together and lay down under the palms on a ragged
tussock of grass, and the light fell and grew deeper in tone round us
and the amethystine sea, flushed with colour, swayed and heaved,
murmuring its low eternal song by our side.
A great vulture flapped heavily by and perched on a sand-hill not far
from us, eyeing us somewhat askance, and some sea-gulls circled over
us--otherwise we were undisturbed.
The following day we planned to come down the river Tamesi, which
flows out at Tampico. We could not go up by boat, as the river was in
flood and nothing could make headway against it, but the natives were
adepts at steering a boat down with the rapid current, and knew how to
handle it on the top of the flood.
We took the train some distance up the line, and alighted at a place
where the river flowed by between high banks and where boats could be
had from the villagers.
It was a perfect, cloudless day, and we reached our destination in the
sweet fresh early hours of the morning. A walk through the tiny
Mexican village brought us to the bank of the river where the Tamesi
flowed by, heavily, grandly, in all the majesty of its flood.
The waters were brown and discoloured, but the sun glinting on its
ripples turned them into gold, and the tamarisk on the bank drooped
over it, letting its long strands float on the gliding water.
A little way down the bank, moored to the side, rocked a boat, of
which the outline delighted me, and, to Suzee's annoyance, I stood
still and drew out my note-book to make a sketch of it.
It appeared to be the larger half of one immense tree of which the
inside had all been hollowed out, both ends were raised and pointed
and, in the centre, four bent bamboo poles, inclined together,
supported a finely plaited wicker-work screen, which shielded a patch
about two yards square in the boat from the burning rays of the sun.
I finished the sketch in a few minutes, and we went on towards the
boat; its owners, two Mexican Indians, were sitting on the bank
engaged in mending one of their paddles. They were quite naked except
for their loin cloths, and their bare, brown crouching figures gave
the last touch of suggested savagery to the scene. The red, earthy
banks of the river stretched before us desolate and sunburnt; the
swollen, muddy river itself rolled swiftly and heavily along, silent,
impressive; the dug-out, looking like a craft of primeval times,
rocked and swayed noiselessly on the flood; the naked savages
crouched over their broken paddle beneath the waving tamarisk; the
sunlight fell torrid, blighting in its scorching heat, over all. The
scene, with its rough, fresh, vigorous barbarism, delighted me. I
slackened my pace and stood still again before disturbing or
interrupting the men.
"Suzee," I said suddenly, "I admire this picture before us immensely.
I should like to see it in the Academy to cheer up jaded Londoners
next season. I should be glad to stop here to-day to paint it. We can
go down the river to-morrow."
Suzee stared at me in dismay.
"Oh, Treevor, you don't want to stay here all day, do you? It's so
hot, and there's nothing to do, and, we shall miss the fair at Tampico
to-night. You promised we should see it"
I sighed. It was true, I had said something about the fair, but I had
forgotten it. Suzee, however, never forgot things of this sort and she
radically objected to any change being made in a programme. She did
not adapt herself quickly and easily to changed moods or
circumstances.
Had Viola been with me, she would have said at once:
"_Would_ you like to stay here instead of going on? Do let's stay,
then. We can go down the river any time." And had I suggested there
would be nothing for her to do, she would have answered:
"Oh yes, I shall enjoy sitting watching you." Her interest had always
lain in me, in her companion; to what we did she was indifferent;
provided we were together and I was pleased, she was content. It is
just this difference in women that makes it so delightful to live with
some, so impossible to live with others. There are some, very few, of
whom Viola was one, who delight in the society of the man they love,
who drink in pleasure for themselves from his enjoyment; there are
others, like Suzee, the majority, who are always at conflict with his
wishes in little things, striving after some independent aim or
project.
And they wonder why, after a time, their companionship grows irksome
and they are deserted. They also wonder why sometimes the other woman
is adored and worshipped and grows into the inner life of a man till
he cannot exist without her.
I felt then an extraordinary longing to be free from Suzee, to be
alone. Here was a picture, set ready to my hand. A scene we had come
upon accidentally and that, in its barbaric simplicity, was not easily
to be found again. It was strong, striking, original. I saw it before
my mind's eyes on the canvas already, with "On the Tamesi, Mexico"
written on the margin.
How could she ask me to lose it? But I could not break my word, as she
chose to keep me to it.
I said nothing, and, after a pause of keen disappointment, I walked
slowly on again towards the boat.
The men were Indians, but they understood a little Spanish and I
bargained with them to take us down to Tampico where we should arrive
about seven the same evening, in time for the fruit-market and general
fair held in the Plaza.
They were glad enough to take us as they were going down in any case
with a load of bananas and our fares would pay them well for the extra
space we took up in the boat.
They hauled the dug-out to the bank and jumped in, clearing it of old
fruit baskets and arranging some rugs and mats under the shade of the
wicker screen. Behind that, to the stem, the boat was filled with the
rich yellow of the bananas, the ruddy pink of the plantains, and
mellow, translucent orange of the mangoes. They lay there in great
heaps, leaving only just space enough for the stem paddler to stand.
The men motioned us to get in, which we did, and took our seats
cross-legged in the centre on the mats, beneath the awning; glad of
its shade, for the sun's rays grew fiercer every moment.
I put my unused sketch-pad behind me, gazing back regretfully over the
yellow flood. The men pushed the boat out on to the waters and sprang
in themselves, each armed with a long paddle; one taking his stand in
front of us, one at the stern, and directed our little craft to the
centre of the huge and sullen stream. It rolled from side to side as
it shot out over the surface, but as soon as the men got their paddles
to work, evenly with long alternate strokes, the flood bore us along,
swiftly, smoothly, the dug-out floating steadily without rocking.
The men stood, alert and watchful, on the lookout for submerged trees
and floating débris; for at the swift rate we were now floating, any
collision would have brought great danger.
I leant back, watching the banks pass swiftly by, mile upon mile of
red earth and waving tamarisk under the scorching blue. Suzee seemed
more interested in the stalwart figure of our forward boatman and the
play of his fine muscles under the smooth brown skin of his shoulders
where the sun struck them.
Had I loved her more I should have been angry; as it was, I was only
amused, and glad of anything that occupied her attention and relieved
me of the necessity of listening and replying to her childish chatter.
How fast the boat sped on over the surface of the whirling stream that
rushed by those red banks, swift as the flash of life, hurrying on to
lose itself in the ocean as life hurries on to lose itself in the
infinite.
The banks were getting flatter, here and there the stream widened,
the wild tamarisk, child of the desert, disappeared and gave way to
cultivated fields and wide tracts of the maguey plant, dear and
valuable to the Mexican as the date-palm to the East-Indian. Rough
yellow adobe huts stood here and there, their crude colouring of
unbaked mud turned into gold by that great painter, the tropical sun;
and sometimes a palm stood by a hut, cutting the fierce light blue of
the sky with its delicate, fine, curved, drooping branches; sometimes
the dark, glossy green of the organ cactus rose like jade pillars
beside it. All these sped by us quickly, though at times the scene was
so engaging I could have held it with my eyes; but ruthlessly we were
whirled forward and the scenes on the bank kept slipping behind us,
just as our dearest scenes and incidents in life keep slipping past,
swallowed up by the ever-pursuing distance.
Our red banks had been growing flatter and flatter and now they seemed
to disappear, and the river instantly broadened itself out and spread
into a lake, as if glad of the expansion. Over each bank, far on
either side, it rolled itself out in great shining flats of water,
glittering and dazzling, impossible to look at in this hour of noon;
and as if tranquillity had come to it with its greater freedom, the
river flowed more slowly and gently.
Our boatmen stood at ease at their paddles, pushing quietly along,
and I looked round with interest. We were in the centre of a great
lake in which here and there submerged trees and bushes made green
islands. An endless lake it seemed, a great waste of gleaming water.
We floated along gently like this for some time, and then almost
suddenly when I looked ahead, I saw the end of the lake was closing
in, there were woods and forests now upon its margin; a few more
strokes of the paddle and we were in shade, heavy, cool shade, where
the water gleamed with a bronze shimmer. Narrower still the lake end
became, the margins drew together, and with a swift push forwards,
like the bolt of a rabbit to its hole, our boat shot forwards into a
little tunnel of darkness before us over which the interlacing boughs
of the trees made a perfect arch. We were in the forest, and it was
dark and cool as it had been brilliant, dazzling with light and heat,
on the lake. A dim, green twilight reigned here, and the river went
with a swift, dark rush, past the roots of the overhanging trees. How
they stooped over the water! Swinging down, interlacing boughs from
which vine and flowering creeper trailed. The standing figure of the
boatman had to bend down and sway from side to side to avoid the
clinging wreaths or mossy boughs and be wary with his paddle to escape
the snags projecting from the banks.
How grand the great spanning arches of the trees were, above our
heads! Finer than any cathedral roof wrought by man. How soft the
luminous green twilight seemed in the long aisle! And constantly from
bough to bough twined a great scarlet-flowered creeper, glowing redly
in all this mystery of shade. The banks were thick with vegetation,
one thing growing over another, with tropical luxuriance, until
sometimes here and there groups of plants, weary with the struggle
each to assert itself, had all fallen together over the bank and
trailed their long strands wearily in the water.
The stream zigzagged on before us, here darkly green to blackness;
there, where the light pierced through the upper boughs, a golden
bronze; then blue and silver where it caught and eddied and played
round a fallen tree or a stump in the river bed.
We were going fast now, and as we shot along the glimmering stream we
left the thick green part of the forest behind us. The river broadened
out, expanded widely on either side, and in a few more minutes we
seemed on a chain of infinite lakes spreading out on every side under
and through the trees, which, though they met far overhead forming a
perfect and continuous roof, were bare of leaves and flowering vines
beneath. Grey trunks and bare brown branches in bewildering numbers
now surrounded us, and the sheets of water reflected all so perfectly
down to infinite depths that one lost sense of reality. Boughs and
branches, all arching and curving and spreading above us in the
softened light, and boughs and branches and inverted trees below us,
arches and curves and twisted networks; between, those long gleaming
flats of water on which we floated silently without sense of motion,
ever onwards.
"It is a little like the wood at Sitka in times of river flood," Suzee
said to me, as we sat together watching the mirrored stems and
branches glide by beneath our boat.
"Yes?" I answered, smiling back upon her at the remembrance of the
wood.
The stream was a wide flat here, and our boatmen suddenly directed the
boat to the bank and brought it to a standstill. "We want to go on
land here and buy mangoes," he explained in Spanish.
"Very good mangoes can be got here."
We looked round and saw, some distance from the margin, amongst the
stems of the trees standing thickly together, an adobe building, low
and flat, and some figures, not much more clothed than our boatmen,
squatting in front of it, counting mangoes from a great pile into
baskets.
He fastened the dug-out to one of the many tree stems, drawing it
close to the bank, and then he and his companion landed, leaving us
alone in the lightly swaying boat.
"We'll have lunch here, Suzee, don't you think?" I asked her,
beginning to unpack the small basket we had brought. "Can you make tea
for us there, do you think?"
"Oh yes, quite easily; they have a little kitchen here."
In the forepart of the boat the Indians had fixed a piece of tin with
a few bricks round it, forming a hearthstone and stove. On this they
cooked their own food as their surrounding pots and kettles shewed. A
few embers from their last cooking glowed still between the bricks.
Suzee leant over them, blew them into a blaze and then set our kettle
on, getting out her little cups and saucers and ranging them on the
floor of the boat.
I sat back and watched her. The whole scene was a delightful one and
rivalled the one I had noted at starting. The gleaming water spread
itself in large flat mirrors on every side, and the trees standing in
it reflected beneath, and reaching up to the lofty roof of
overarching, interlaced boughs above us, gave the effect of a hall of
a thousand columns. The adobe house of the fruit-seller seemed
standing on a precarious island, so high had the floods risen round
it, and numerous empty baskets and crates, evidently lifted from their
moorings on the bank, drifted slowly about on the silvery tide. Our
boat itself was a lovely object with its fairy lines, its thread of
smoke going up from it, and the little Oriental figure bending over
the red embers in its prow.
We lunched and had our tea in this cool retreat of softened light, and
knew the sun was beating with its murderous noonday glare just
without. The boatmen came back after an interval with a huge load of
mangoes which they piled into the boat, and offered us sixty for five
cents. I gave them the five cents and took two or three of the fruits
for myself and Suzee. Then the moorings were undone, the men jumped
in, and paddled us swiftly onwards. The proprietor of the adobe hut
came to the edge of his grove and saluted, as we passed by on a rapid
current; then he and hut and mangoes all glided from us, quickly as a
dream, and we were borne forward through the wonderful maze of trees
over the tranquil sheets of water.
All through the golden Mexican afternoon we descended the river, down,
ever downwards, to the sea. Sometimes in the deep green shadows of
overhanging trees, passing through the heart of a forest; sometimes
out in the burning open beneath the clear blue of the sky, between
flat plains of open country; sometimes on the breast of wide lakes;
sometimes between high banks, where the boat went dizzily fast and the
waters passed the paddles with a sharp hiss as we rushed on; and each
of those moments was a delight to me, and even Suzee seemed affected
by the beauty and the poetry of the river, for she leant against me
silent and absorbed and her eyes grew soft and dreaming as the visions
on the golden banks swept by; fields of sugar-cane and maguey, coffee
plantations with their million scarlet berries, waving banana and
palm, masses of delicate bamboo rustling as the warm breeze stirred
them.
As the day melted into evening, the sky flushed a deep rosy red and
seemed to hang over us like a great hollowed-out ruby glowing with
crimson fires. The waterway of the river before us turned crimson, and
all the ripples in it were edged and flecked with gold. The great
lagoons, when we passed through them now, reflected the peace of the
painted skies and the marsh lilies floating on their surface became
jewels set in gold as the water eddied round them.
In half an hour the glory faded, leaving a transparent lilac sky over
which the darkness closed with all the swiftness of the tropics.
As we neared the sea and the warm salt breath came up to us we saw the
light over the Market Square in Tampico and the masses of soft shadow
of the trees in the Plaza.
Frail, wooden boat-houses, with shaky landing-stages built out over
the water, lined the banks on either side, and at one of them our
boatmen suddenly drew in, and we disembarked in the soft darkness,
suffused with the red light from the square and vibrating with the
music from a band playing there behind the trees.
We got out and walked along the river-bank towards the seashore, where
the sea lay calm and still, its black, gently heaving surface
reflecting the light of the stars. Where the river debouched, there
was a sheltered cove of fine white sand, and here every species of
gaily painted craft was drawn up. The light from the Market Square,
ablaze with lamps, reached out to it and shewed boat after boat of
fantastic shape and colour, with striped awnings fixed on bamboo poles
over their centre, lying in the shelter of the palm-trees that fringed
the cove. We rounded the slight promontory on our left hand and came
full into the light of the animated town.
The fair was in progress, and numbers of fruit-sellers from all the
country round, from the adobe hut and the large hacienda, or estate,
of the Mexican gentleman, alike, had brought down their load of fruit
to sell in Tampico.
Not only was the Plaza itself filled to overflowing with fruit and
other stalls, but they reached down almost to the shore, and very rich
and Oriental the scene looked, framed in deepest shadow from the Plaza
trees on one side, and the smooth, black, starlit darkness of the sea
on the other.
Each stall had its own light, a bowl of flaming naphtha mounted on a
bamboo pole, and the light fell over the golden fruit--mangoe,
plantain, and banana piled high upon it, and also all round the
vender's feet as he stood by his stall in town costume of one long
white muslin robe.
There were other stalls where they sold Mexican drawn-work, carved
leather and filigree silver, others again with chairs set round where
one could have iced-fruit drinks or coffee, and the band played
sonorously and the crowd, good-natured, laughing, gaily dressed, men,
women, and children of all sizes, strolled amongst the stalls, buying,
looking, chattering, flirting, in the soft, damp heat of the night.
Suzee was enchanted and stared about her with bold, lustrous glances,
pleased at the admiring looks of the men on her strange pretty face.
She steered me up to the silver-filigree stall and there had all the
vender's wares put out for her inspection. She was keen enough where
her own particular interests were concerned, and the sellers of
artificial jewellery tempted her with their sparkling gewgaws not at
all. Real solid worth was what she intended to obtain, and her taste
in choosing the silver was excellent.
Would I buy her this? Would I buy her that? And I assented to
everything. I only wished I could buy myself pleasure as easily.
She chose a necklet, a brooch, and numberless bangles for her arms,
all the smallest she could find, those generally made for children.
When these loaded her little arms and the necklet was clasped round
her throat she was happy, and the curious, interested Mexicans
gathered in a little knot round us, looked on with interest and
evident approval at the Englishman's money being spent amongst them.
We stayed in the square buying to her heart's content till eleven, and
then, after supper at a little table beneath the Plaza trees where the
band played loudest, for Suzee loved music when it meant noise, we
went back to the hotel and to bed.
The next day I went by train to the place where we had embarked for
our voyage down the Tamesi, fully equipped with my materials for a
sketch--and alone.
Suzee, adhering to her idea that it would be dull and hot on the
river-bank, had preferred to stay in the hotel playing with some of
the treasures bought yesterday at the fair.
Alone and undisturbed I sat all day sketching, till the fires were
lighted in the West and warned me I must turn homewards. I had a good
picture, and I packed up my traps with that deep sense of satisfaction
that accomplished work alone can give and walked slowly to the
station. As my thoughts slipped on to Suzee a sense of anxiety came
over me. Time was going on. The year would soon be over. What did I
intend to do? Once the year was past it would be impossible for me to
continue living with her, even for a day. And now I felt so often I
would rather be alone than with her. How would she feel over our
separation? How could I provide for her happiness when I took back my
freedom?
Satiety was beginning to creep over the passion I had for her, and
that was still farther checked now that I knew she looked upon it more
as a means to an end--the child--rather than enjoyed it for itself.
It worried me greatly this thought of her future and how I was going
to provide for it, and it seemed sometimes as if it might be better to
give in to her; perhaps without me she would be happy if she had a
child as she wished, provided I could make, as I could, a good
allowance to both. But then even with a child I could not imagine
Suzee would want to remain alone, and what would be the fate of a
child if other lovers came, or a husband?...
While I did not think that Suzee loved me deeply, deep emotion not
being within her range of powers, it was difficult to see how I could
find for her an existence as pleasant as she led with me.
All these things worried me greatly, and as Fate willed it,
needlessly.
How often in this life a way is suddenly opened out through
circumstances where we least expect it.
The Greeks said--"For these unknown matters a god shall find out the
way." And often indeed it happens that Fate steps in, and in some way
our wildest dreams have never pictured turns all our life to another
hue suddenly before our eyes.
One night when I had been making a little head of Suzee in her
prettiest mood on my canvas, she came and sat on my knee and begged me
to give her, as a reward for her sitting, a narrow band of gold I
always wore on my left arm above the elbow.
I refused, for Viola had given it to me and locked it on my arm. She
had the key and I, even had I wished, could only have had it taken off
by means of another key or melting the gold.
At my refusal there was a storm of tears as usual, but it soon passed
over on my kissing her and promising we would go to a jeweller's on
the morrow and have one something like it put on her own arm.
She soon fell asleep after peace was restored, but I lay awake for
hours watching the tracery of palm shadows on the wall opposite,
thrown there by the light of the square. At midnight the lamp was put
out, the room grew black, without a ray of light, and after a time I,
too, fell asleep.
I was awakened by a curious sense of a presence in the room. My
eyelids flew open, my ears strained. The room was one solid block of
blackness, there was no ray of light anywhere. I could see and hear
nothing for a moment, though I was certain another living thing had
entered the room. Then at the same instant there was a violent
vibration of the bed beneath me and a piercing scream from Suzee, a
blind, wild cry to me for protection.
Instinctively I threw my arms out to her. Her body was struggling,
writhing. I felt it as my hands shot out and gripped fiercely, in the
thick darkness, round two hard hairy arms, tense, rigid, as they held
her down.
Suzee's voice broke out suddenly as my grip possibly loosened the
pressure of those other hands upon her throat, and she was speaking in
_Chinese_. A hot breath came on my eyes, some face must have been
close to mine in the blackness; under my arms, on Suzee's wildly
heaving body, I felt something moving, warm and slow and soft, and
knew that it was blood.
"Suzee," I called to her across her clamour of terrified entreaty,
"get a light if you can."
The hot breath came nearer.
"Devil! Devil! This is your promise, your English word." The sound
came to me like the hiss of steam close to my ear, but I knew the
voice of Hop Lee--Hop Lee buried in Sitka, thousands of miles away.
The arms in my clutch struggled furiously; in their spasm of muscular
effort they tore me upwards from the bed, as the lock of my fingers
would not give way.
Suzee's voice clamoured in passionate entreaty, unintelligible to me.
Then suddenly came a terrific twist, which wrenched away one of the
arms, and a lightning stab, a deep burning in my shoulder, and
simultaneously a blaze of light. Over me hung the bent old form of Hop
Lee, his right arm, lifted up, held a long knife raised for its second
stab. His face was alight with fury. Scarlet was already running in
bright ribands over the whiteness of the bed, Suzee's blood and my
own. I threw up my left arm and caught his wrist and turned the hand
and knife upwards till it pointed to the ceiling, my own arm stretched
to the fullest length upright. Suzee gave one horrible cry of terror,
animal terror, and then there was silence beside me.
"She has fainted, has fainted," my brain muttered in itself. A
sickening fear came into it as silence fell after that one awful cry.
I had my revolver under my pillow. If I could reach it! I looked up to
the small red eyeballs of the Chinaman.
They were insane, glaring, full of the wild, unreasoning lust to kill.
Some instinct moved me to speak.
"You were dead, I heard. I never had your wife while you were alive."
"Liar! Liar! You shall pay me in blood."
His hand with the knife in it twisted itself round in my grip. I felt
my uplifted arm losing its force. What was draining my strength? That
stream coming softly from my shoulder.
I lifted myself, trying to throw him backwards. My arm suddenly bent
at the elbow and his hand with the knife in it zigzagged downwards
very near to my throat. Age and feebleness had disappeared from him.
He was strong now with the strength of insanity and of that blind
leaping fury that glared out of his distorted face. There was a sudden
struggle as he dropped on my chest, then with my hand still locked on
his wrist we rolled together onto the floor.
A moment and we were up on our feet and he had forced me backwards to
the bed. I felt my strength was going, but I still clung with a
steel-like clutch to his wrist and kept the pointed knife at bay. As
he bent me backwards on to the bed near the pillow, I took my right
hand from his arm, snatched the revolver from under the pillow, thrust
it into his face between the eyes, and fired.
He fell forwards, a great hole torn in his forehead, from which a
river of blood poured, joining the bright ribands and with them making
a sea of crimson.
I looked across him to where Suzee lay motionless.
"Suzee," I said, my breath almost dying in my throat.
She stirred slightly. I was beside her in a moment. Her eyelids opened
slowly. Then her eyes filled with terror.
"Where is he?" she muttered.
"Dead; he cannot hurt you any more. You are safe now."
"No, Treevor, I am dying; it pains me so here."
She laid one hand on her breast and I saw the blood well up between
two fingers. I tore aside the muslin veils on her bosom and found the
wound: it was not large, just one clean stab, turning purple at the
edges.
"It is deep, Treevor; so deep. And it bleeds inside me. It is drinking
my life. I have only a few minutes to tell you. Hold up my head. I
can't breathe."
I slipped my arm beneath her little neck. My heart seemed breaking
with distress; black tides of resentment, of rage went through me,
that she should be torn from me.
"Listen, Treevor. It was I that lied to you. I told you he was dead,
and the child. They were not. I ran away. I left them at Sitka. I came
to 'Frisco and took refuge with that woman. Then I wrote to you."
A sudden horror of her seemed to enfold me as I heard.
How she had lied and deceived me! And forced me to break my word!
"Because I wanted you so much and I knew you would never have me if
you thought he was still alive.... Your stupid promise. What are
promises when one loves? I wanted you, Treevor, so much! So much!"
Some of the old fire flashed out of the dying eyes, a hungry,
despairing look.
"Kiss me, Treevor. Say you forgive me."
But I could not. For the moment I was so stunned, so overwhelmed by
this sudden revelation of her deception.
A deathly physical faintness was creeping over me; a sensation like
the beginning of long-denied sleep which rolls at last like an
unconquerable tide, obliterating everything, through the exhausted
frame, was invading my whole body. I clasped one hand mechanically
round the bed-rail to support myself, the ground seemed to lift and
sway beneath my feet.
I looked down on the little oval face that had lived so near to me
through the last year. How pale it was now, framed in the crimson mist
that stretched across the bed! At the slight, exquisite body so often
held in my arms. Was I to lose them now for all time?
"I did it all for you, because I wanted you so much. Do kiss me and
say you forgive. I shall not rest through a thousand years if you will
not."
Grey shadows were collecting in her face, some unseen hand seemed
drawing the eternal veil between us. To me, life, with all its
doings, was far away. I myself was standing in the uncertain mists of
death. Wide, limitless, and grey, the great plains of the hereafter
seemed opening before me, dim, silent, and mysterious.
Life, with its glare of colour, its triumphant music, its crash of
sound, was far behind me, almost forgotten; like clouds of indefinable
tint, piled up on some distant horizon, rose the memories of its
loves, its woes, its crimes.
Her weak voice calling on me to forgive seemed to have little meaning
to me now. I leant forward, clasping her dying body to me, and kissed
her lips, murmuring some words of consolation. Then the grey mists
rose up over my eyes sealing them, and I sank slowly into the perfect
darkness.
PART FIVE
THE WHITE NIGHT