words, they can quickly discover the young woman who goes about
unprotected? Don't you think that the trend of the conversation has
taken rather a remarkable turn, not as impersonal as it should be?"
"I beg your pardon!"
"I am neither an infant nor a fool, Mr. Warrington."
"Shall I go?"
"No. I want you to tell me some stories." She laughed. "Don't worry
about me, Mr. Warrington. I have gone my way alone since I was
sixteen. I have traveled all over this wicked world with nobody but
the woman who was once my nurse. I seldom put myself in the way of an
affront. I am curious without being of an investigating turn of mind.
Now, tell me something of your adventures. Ten years in this land must
mean something. I am always hunting for Harun-al-Raschid, or Sindbad,
or some one who has done something out of the ordinary."
"Do you write books?"
"No, I read them by preference."
"Ah, a good book!" He inclined against the rail and stared down at the
muddy water. "Adventure?" He frowned a little. "I'm afraid mine
wouldn't read like adventures. There's no glory in being a stevedore
on the docks at Hongkong, a stoker on a tramp steamer between Singapore
and the Andaman Islands. What haven't I been in these ten years?" with
a shrug. "Can you fancy me a deck-steward on a P. & O. boat, tucking
old ladies in their chairs, staggering about with a tray of
broth-bowls, helping the unsteady to their staterooms, and touching my
cap at the end of the voyage for a few shillings in tips?"
"You are bitter."
"Bitter? I ought not to be, with twenty thousand pounds in my pocket."
"Tell me more."
He looked into her beautiful face, animated by genuine interest, and
wondered if all men were willing so readily to obey her.
"It always interests me to hear from the man's own lips how he overcame
obstacles."
"Sometimes I didn't overcome them. I ran away. After all, the strike
in oil was a fluke."
"I don't think so. But go on," she prompted.
"Well, I've been manager of a cocoanut plantation in Penang; I've
helped lay tracks in Upper India; had a hand in some bridges; sold
patent-medicines; worked in a ruby mine; been a haberdasher in the
Whiteaway, Laidlaw shop in Bombay; cut wood in the teak forests; helped
exterminate the plague at Chitor and Udaipur; and never saved a penny.
I never had an adventure in all my life."
"Why, your wanderings were adventures," she insisted. "Think of the
things you could tell!"
"And never will," a smile breaking over his face.
How like Arthur's that smile was! thought the girl. "Romantic persons
never have any adventures. It is to the prosaic these things fall.
Because of their nearness you lose their values."
"There is some difference between romance and adventure. Romance is
what you look forward to; adventure is something you look back upon.
If many disagreeable occupations, hunger and an occasional fisticuff,
may be classed as adventure, then I have had my run of it. But I
always supposed adventure was the finding of treasures, on land and on
sea; of filibustering; of fighting with sabers and pistols, and all
that rigmarole. I can't quite lift my imagination up to the height of
calling my six months' shovel-engineering on _The Galle_ an adventure.
It was brutal hard work; and many times I wanted to jump over. The
Lascars often got out of trouble that way."
"It all depends upon how we look at things." She touched the
parrot-cage with her foot, and Rajah hissed. "What would you say if I
told you that I was unconventional enough to ask the purser to
introduce you?"
The amazement in his face was answer enough.
"Don't you suppose," she went on, "the picture you presented, standing
on that ledge, the red light of the torch on your face, the bird-cage
in your hand,--don't you suppose you roused my sense the romantic to
the highest pitch? Parrot & Co.!" with a wave of her hands.
She was laughing at him. It could not be otherwise. It made him at
once sad and angry. "Romance! I hate the word. Once I was as full of
romance as a water-chestnut is of starch. I again affirm that young
women should not travel alone. They think every bit of tinsel is gold,
every bit of colored glass, ruby. Go home; don't bother about romance
outside of books. There it is safe. The English are right. They may
be snobs when they travel abroad, but they travel securely. Romance,
adventure! Bah! So much twaddle has been written about the East that
cads and scoundrels are mistaken for Galahads and D'Artagnans. Few men
remain in this country who can with honor leave it. Who knows what
manner of man I am?"
He picked up the parrot-cage and strode away.
"Jah, jah!" began the bird.
Not all the diplomacy which worldly-wise men have at their disposal
could have drawn this girl's interest more surely than the abrupt rude
manner of his departure.
IV
TWO DAYS OF PARADISE
At first Elsa did not know whether she was annoyed or amused. The
man's action was absurd, or would have been in any other man. There
was something so singularly boyish in his haste that she realized she
could not deal with him in an ordinary fashion. She ought to be angry;
indeed, she wanted to be very angry with him; but her lips curled, and
laughter hung upon them, undecided. His advice to her to go home was
downright impudence; and yet, the sight of the parrot-cage, dangling at
his side, made it impossible for her to take lasting offense. Once
upon a time there had been a little boy who played in her garden. When
he was cross he would take his playthings and go home. The boy might
easily have been this man Warrington, grown up.
Of course he would come and apologize to her for his rudeness. That
was one of the necessary laws of convention; and ten years spent in
jungles and deserts and upon southern seas could not possibly have
robbed him of the memory of these simple ethics that he had observed in
other and better times. Perhaps he had resented her curiosity; perhaps
her questions had been pressed too hard; and perhaps he had suddenly
doubted her genuine interest. At any rate, it was a novel experience.
And that bewildering likeness!
She returned to her chair and opened the book again. And as she read
her wonder grew. How trivial it was, after all. The men and women she
had calmly and even gratefully accepted as types were nothing more than
marionettes, which the author behind the booth manipulated not badly
but perfunctorily. The diction was exquisite; there was style; but now
as she read there was lacking the one thing that stood for life, blood.
It did not pulsate in the veins of these people. Until now she had not
recognized this fact, and she was half-way through the book. She even
took the trouble to reread the chapter she had thought peculiarly
effective. There was the same lack of feeling. What had happened to
her since yesterday? To what cause might be assigned this opposite
angle of vision, so clearly defined?
The book fell upon her knees, and dreamily she watched the perspective
open and divaricate. Full in her face the south wind blew, now warmed
by the sun and perfumed by unknown spices. She took in little sharp
breaths, but always the essence escaped her. The low banks with their
golden haze of dust, the cloudless sky, the sad and lonely white
pagodas, charmed her; and the languor of the East crept stealthily into
her northern blood. She was not conscious of the subtle change; she
only knew that the world of yesterday was unlike that of today.
Warrington, after depositing Rajah in the stateroom, sought the bench
on the stern-deck. He filled his cutty with purser-loaned tobacco, and
roundly damned himself as a blockhead. He had forgotten all the
niceties of civilization; he no longer knew how to behave. What if she
had been curious? It was natural that she should be. This was a
strange world to her, and if her youth rosal-tinted it with romance,
what right had he to disillusion her? The first young woman in all
these years who had treated him as an equal, and he had straightway
proceeded to lecture her upon the evils of traveling alone in the
Orient! Double-dyed ass! He had been rude and impudent. He had seen
other women traveling alone, but the sight had not roused him as in the
present instance. In ten years he had not said so much to all the
women he had met; and without seeming effort at all she had dragged
forth some of the half-lights of his past. This in itself amazed him;
it proved that he was still weak enough to hunger for human sympathy,
and he of all men deserved none whatever. He had been a fool as a boy,
a fool as a man, and without doubt he would die a fool. He was of half
a mind to leave the boat at Prome and take the train down to Rangoon.
And yet he had told her the truth. It was not right that a young and
attractive woman should wander about in the East, unattended save by a
middle-aged companion. It would provoke the devil in men who were not
wholly bad. Women had the fallible idea that they could read human
nature, and never found out their mistake until after they were
married. He knew her kind. If she wanted to walk through the bazaars
in the evening, she would do so. If a man followed her she would
ignore the fact. If he caught up with her and spoke, she would
continue on as if she had not heard. If a man touched her, she would
rely upon the fire of her eyes. She would never call out for help.
Some women were just that silly.
He bit hard upon the stem of his pipe. What was all this to him? Why
should he bother his head about a woman he had known but a few hours?
Ah, why lie to himself? He knew what Elsa, usually quick and
receptive, did not know, that he was not afraid of her, but terribly
afraid of himself. For things ripen quickly in the East, men and
women, souls and deeds. And he was something like the pariah-dog;
spoken kindly to, it attached itself immediately and enduringly.
He struck the cutty against his boot-heel. Why not? It would be only
for two days. At Rangoon their paths would separate; he would never
see her again. He got up. He would go to her at once and apologize
abjectly. And thus he surrendered to the very devil he had but a
moment gone so vigorously discountenanced.
He found her asleep in her chair. The devil which had brought him to
her side was thrust back. Why, she was nothing more than a beautiful
child! A great yearning to brother her came into his heart. He did
not disturb her, but waited until five, that grave and sober hour, when
kings and clerks stop work for no logical reason whatever--tea. She
opened her eyes and saw him watching her. He rose quickly.
"May I get you some tea?"
"Thank you."
And so the gulf was bridged. When he returned he set the cup and plate
of cakes on the arm of her chair.
"I was very rude a little while ago. Will you accept my apologies?"
"On condition that you will never take your playthings and go home."
He laughed engagingly. "You've hit it squarely. It was the act of a
petulant child."
"It did not sound exactly like a man who had stoked six months from
Singapore to the Andaman Islands. But there is one thing I must
understand before this acquaintance continues. You said, 'Who knows
what manner of man I am?' Have you ever done anything that would
conscientiously forbid you to speak to a young unmarried woman?"
Take care of herself? He rather believed she could. The bluntness of
her question dissipated any doubt that remained.
"No. I haven't been that kind of a man," simply. "I could look into
my mother's eyes without any sense of shame, if that is what you mean."
"That is all I care to know. Your mother is living?"
"Yes. But I haven't seen her in ten years." His mother! His brows
met in a frown. His proud beautiful mother!
Elsa saw the frown, and realized that she had approached delicate
ground. She stirred her tea and sipped it slowly.
"There has been a deal of chatter about shifty untrustworthy eyes," he
said. "The greatest liars I have ever known could look St. Peter
straight and serenely in the eye. It's a matter of steady nerves,
nothing more. Somebody says that so and so is a fact, and we go on
believing it for years, until some one who is not a person but an
individual explodes it."
"I agree with you. But there is something we rely upon far more than
either eyes or ears, instinct. It is that attribute of the animal
which civilization has not yet successfully dulled. Women rely upon
that more readily than men."
"And make more mistakes," with a cynicism he could not conceal.
She had no ready counter for this. "Do you go home from Rangoon, now
that you have made your fortune?"
"No. I am going to Singapore. I shall make my plans there."
Singapore. Elsa stirred uneasily. It would be like having a ghost by
her side. She wanted to tell him what had really drawn her interest.
But it seemed to her that the moment to do so had passed.
"Vultures! How I detest them!" She pointed toward a sand-bar upon
which stood several of these abominable birds and an adjutant, solemn
and aloof. "At Lucknow they were red-headed. I do not recollect
seeing one of them fly. But I admire the kites; they look so much like
our eagles."
"And thus again the eye misleads us. There is nothing that flies so
rapacious as the kite."
Little by little she drew from him a sketch here, a phase there. She
was given glimpses into the life of the East such as no book or guide
had ever given; and the boat was circling toward the landing at Prome
before they became aware of the time.
Warrington rushed ashore to find the dry-goods shop. His social
redemption was on the way, if vanity went for anything. It was
stirring and tingling with life again. With the money advanced by the
purser he bought shirts and collars and ties; and as he possessed no
watch, returned barely in time to dress for dinner. He was not at all
disturbed to learn that the inquisitive German, the colonel and his
fidgety charges, had decided to proceed to Rangoon by rail. Indeed,
there was a bit of exultation in his manner as he observed the vacant
chairs. Paradise for two whole days. And he proposed to make the most
of it. Now, his mind was as clear of evil as a forest spring. He
simply wanted to play; wanted to give rein to the lighter emotions so
long pent up in his lonely heart.
The purser, used to these sudden changes and desertions in his
passenger-lists, gave the situation no thought. But Elsa saw a mild
danger, all the more alluring because it hung nebulously. For years
she had walked in conformity with the cramped and puerile laws that
govern society. She had obeyed most of them from habit, others from
necessity. What harm could there be in having a little fling? He was
so amazingly like outwardly, so astonishingly unlike inwardly, that the
situation held for her a subtle fascination against which she was in
nowise inclined to fight. What had nature in mind when she produced
two men exactly alike in appearance but in reality as far apart as the
poles? Would it be worth while to find out? She was not wholly
ignorant of her power. She could bend the man if she tried. Should
she try?
They were like two children, setting out to play a game with fire.
She thought of Arthur. Had he gone the length of his thirty-five years
without his peccadillos? Scarcely. She understood the general run of
men well enough to accept this fact. Whomever she married she was
never going to worry him with questions regarding his bachelor life.
Nor did she propose to be questioned about her own past. Besides, she
hadn't married Arthur yet; she had only promised to. And such promises
were sometimes sensibly broken. There ran through her a fine vein of
mercilessness, but it was without cruelty, it was leavened with both
logic and justice. When the time came she would name the day to
Arthur, or she would with equal frankness announce that she would not
marry him at all. These thoughts flashed through her mind,
disconnectedly, while she talked and laughed.
It never occurred to her to have Martha moved up from the foot of the
table. Once or twice she stole a glance at the woman who had in the
olden days dandled her on her knees. The glance was a mixture of guilt
and mischief, like a child's. But the glance had not the power to
attract Martha's eyes. Martha felt the glances as surely as if she had
lifted her eyes to meet them. She held her peace. She had not been
brought along as Elsa's guardian. Elsa was not self-willed but
strong-willed, and Martha realized that any interference would result
in estrangement. In fact, Martha beheld in Warrington a real menace.
The extraordinary resemblance would naturally appeal to Elsa, with what
results she could only imagine. Later she asked Elsa if she had told
Warrington of the remarkable resemblance.
"Mercy, no! And what is more, I do not want him to know. Men are vain
as a rule; and I should not like to hurt his vanity by telling him that
I sought his acquaintance simply because he might easily have been
Arthur Ellison's twin brother."
"The man you are engaged to marry."
"Whom I have promised to marry, provided the state of my sentiments is
unchanged upon my return; which is altogether a different thing."
"That does not seem quite fair to Mr. Ellison."
"Well, Martha?"
"I beg your pardon, Elsa; but the stranger terrifies me. He is
something uncanny."
"Nonsense! You've been reading tales about Yogii."
"It is a terrible country."
"It is the East, Martha, the East. Here a man may wear a dress-suit
and a bowler without offending any one."
"And a woman may talk to any one she pleases."
"Is that a criticism?"
"No, Elsa; it is what you call the East."
"You have been with me twenty years," began Elsa coldly.
"And love you better than the whole world! And I wish I could guard
you always from harm and evil. Those horrid old Englishwomen . . ."
"Oh; so there's been gossip already? You know my views regarding
gossip. So long as I know that I am doing no wrong, ladies may gossip
their heads off. I'm not a kitten."
"You are twenty-five, and yet you're only a child."
"What does that signify? That I am too young to manage my own affairs?
That I must set my clock as others order? Good soul!" putting her arms
around the older woman. "Don't worry about Elsa Chetwood. Her life is
her own, but she will never misuse it."
"Oh, if you were only married and settled down!"
"You mean, if I were happily married and settled down. There you have
it. I'm in search of happiness. That's the Valley of Diamonds. When
I find that, Martha, you may fold your hands in peace."
"Grant it may be soon! I hate the East!
"And I have just begun to love it."
V
BACK TO LIFE
The two days between Prome and Rangoon were distinctly memorable for
the subtle changes wrought in the man and woman. Those graces of mind
and manner which had once been the man's, began to find expression.
Physically, his voice became soft and mellow; his hands became full of
emphasis; his body grew less and less clumsy, more and more leonine.
It has taken centuries and centuries to make the white man what he is
to-day; yet, a single year of misfortune may throw him back into the
primordial. For it is far easier to retrograde than to go forward,
easier to let the world go by than to march along with it. Had he been
less interested in Elsa and more concerned about his rehabilitation,
self-analysis would have astonished Warrington. The blunt speech, the
irritability in argument, the stupid pauses, the painful study of
cunning phrases, the suspicion and reticence that figuratively encrust
the hearts of shy and lonely men, these vanished under her warm if
careless glances. For the first time in ten years a woman of the right
sort was showing interest in him. True, there had been other women,
but these had served only to make him retreat farther into his shell.
If the crust of barbarism is thick, that of civilization is thin
enough. As Warrington went forward, Elsa stopped, and gradually went
back, not far, but far enough to cause her to throw down the bars of
reserve, to cease to guard her impulses against the invasion of
interest and fascination. She faced the truth squarely, without
palter. The man fascinated her. He was like a portrait with following
eyes. She spoke familiarly of her affairs (always omitting Arthur);
she talked of her travels, of the famous people she had met, of the
wonderful pageants she had witnessed. And she secretly laughed at
reproachful conscience that urged her to recall one of those laws Elsa
herself had written down to follow: that which forbade a young
unmarried woman to seek the companionship of a man about whom she knew
nothing. It was not her fault that, with the exception of Martha who
didn't count, they two were the only passengers. This condition of
affairs was directly chargeable to fate; and before the boat reached
Rangoon, Elsa was quite willing to let fate shift and set the scenes
how it would. The first step toward reversion is the casting aside of
one's responsibilities. Elsa shifted her cares to the shoulders of
fate. So long as the man behaved himself, so long as he treated her
with respect, real or feigned, nothing else mattered.
The phase that escaped her entirely was this, that had he not
progressed, she would have retained her old poise, the old poise of
which she was never again to be mistress. It is the old tale: sympathy
to lift up another first steps down. And never had her sympathy gone
out so quickly to any mortal. Elsa had a horror of loneliness, and
this man seemed to be the living presentment of the word. What
struggles, and how simply he recounted them! What things he had seen,
what adventures had befallen him, what romance and mystery! She
wondered if there had been a woman in his life and if she had been the
cause of his downfall. Every day of the past ten years lay open for
her to admire or condemn, but beyond these ten years there was a
Chinese Wall, over which she might not look. Only once had she
provoked the silent negative nod of his head. He was strong. Not the
smallest corner of the veil was she permitted to turn aside. She
walked hither and thither along the scarps and bastions of the barrier,
but never found the breach.
"Will you come and dine with me to-night?" she asked, as they left the
boat.
"No, Miss Innocence."
"That's silly. There isn't a soul I know here."
"But," gravely he replied, "there are many here who know me."
"Which infers that my invitation is unwise?"
"Absolutely unwise."
"Tea?"
"Frankly, I ought not to be seen with you."
"Why? Unless, indeed, you have not told me the truth."
"I have told you the truth."
"Then where's the harm?"
"For myself, none. On the boat it did not matter so much. It was a
situation which neither of us could foresee nor prevent. I have told
you that people here look askance at me because they know nothing about
me, save that I came from the States. And they are wise. I should be
a cad if I accepted your invitation to dinner."
"Then, I am not to see you again?"
The smile would have lured him across three continents. "To-morrow, I
promise to call and have tea with you, much against my better judgment."
"Oh, if you don't want to come . . ."
"Don't want to come!"
Something in his eyes caused Elsa to speak hurriedly. "Good-by until
to-morrow."
She gave him her hand for a moment, stepped into the carriage, which
already held Martha and the luggage, and then drove off to the Strand
Hotel.