looked back.
"And why," asked Martha, "did you not tell the man that we sail on the
same ship?"
"You're a simpleton, Martha." Elsa turned the ring round and round on
her finger. "If I had told him, he would have canceled his sailing and
taken another boat."
VII
CONFIDENCES
That night Martha wrote a letter. During the writing of it she jumped
at every sound: a footstep in the hall, the shutting of a door, a voice
calling in the street. And yet, Martha was guilty of performing only
what she considered to be her bounden duty. It is the prerogative of
fate to tangle or untangle the skein of human lives; but still, there
are those who elect themselves to break the news gently, to lessen the
shock of the blow which fate is about to deliver.
"_My dear Mr. Arthur_:
. . . I do not know what to make of it. His likeness to you is the
most unheard of thing. He is a little bigger and broader and he wears
his beard longer. That's all the difference. When he came on the boat
that night, it was like a hand clutching at my throat. And you know
how romantic Elsa is, for all that she believes she is prosaic. I am
certain that she sees you in this stranger who calls himself
Warrington. If only you had had the foresight to follow us, a sailing
or two later! And now they'll be together for four or five days, down
to Singapore. I don't like it. There's something uncanny in the
thing. What if she did forbid you to follow? There are some promises
women like men to break. You should have followed.
Neither of us has the slightest idea what the man has done to exile
himself in this horrible land for ten years. He still behaves like a
gentleman, and he must have been one in the past. But he has never yet
spoken of his home, of his past, of his people. We don't even know
that Warrington is his name. And you know that's a sign that something
is wrong. I wonder if you have any relatives by the name of
Warrington? I begin to see that man's face in my dreams.
I am worried. For Elsa is a puzzle. She has always been one to me. I
have been with her since her babyhood; and yet I know as little of what
goes on in her mind as a stranger would. Her father, you know, was a
soldier, of fierce loves and hates; her mother was a handsome statue.
Elsa has her father's scorn for convention and his independence,
clothed in her mother's impenetrable mask. Don't mistake me. Elsa is
the most adorable creature to me, and I worship her; but I worry about
her. I believe that it would be wise on your part to meet us in San
Francisco. Give my love and respect to your dear beautiful mother.
And marry Elsa as fast as ever you can."
There followed some rambling comments on the weather, the rains and the
dust, the execrable food and the lack of drinking-water. The man who
eventually received this letter never reached that part of it.
The day of sailing was brilliant and warm. Elsa sat in a chair on the
deck of the tender, watching the passengers as they came aboard. A
large tourist party bustled about, rummaged among the heaps of luggage,
and shouted questions at their unhappy conductor. They wanted to know
where their staterooms were, grumbled about the size of the boat,
prophesied typhoons and wrecks, got in everybody's way, and ordered
other people's servants about. Never before had Elsa realized the
difficulties that beset the path of the personal conductor. Whatever
his salary was, he was entitled to it. It was all he got. No one
thought to offer him a little kindness. He was a human guide-book
which his fares opened and shut how and when they pleased.
She saw Hooghly standing in the bow. A steamer-trunk, a kit-bag, a
bedding-bag, and the inevitable parrot-cage, reposed at his feet. He
was watching without interest or excitement the stream passing up and
down the gangplank. If his master came, very well; if he did not, he
would get off with the luggage. How she would have liked to question
him regarding his master! Elsa began to offer excuses for her interest
in Warrington. He was the counterpart of Arthur Ellison. He had made
his fortune against odds. He was a mystery. Why shouldn't he interest
her? Her mind was not ice, nor was her heart a stone. She pitied him,
always wondering what was back of it all. She would be a week in
Singapore; after that their paths would widen and become lost in the
future, and she would forget all about him, save in a shadowy way. She
would marry Arthur whether she loved him or not. She was certain that
he loved her. He had a comfortable income, not equal to hers, but
enough. He was, besides, her own sort; and there wasn't any mystery
about him at all. He was as clear to her as glass. For nearly ten
years she had known him, since his and his mother's arrival in the
small pretty Kentuckian town. What was the use of hunting a fancy?
Yes, she would marry Arthur. She was almost inclined to cable him to
meet her in San Francisco.
That there was real danger in her interest in Warrington did not occur
to her. The fact that she was now willing to marry Arthur, without
analyzing the causes that had brought her to this decision, should have
warned her that she was dimly afraid of the stranger. Her glance fell
upon the mandarin's ring. She twirled it round undecidedly. Should
she wear it or put it away? The question remained suspended. She saw
Craig coming aboard; and she hid her face behind her magazine. Upon
second thought she let the magazine fall. She was quite confident that
that chapter was closed. Craig might be a scoundrel, but he was no
fool.
A sharp blast from the tender's whistle drew her attention to the
gangplank. The last man to come aboard was Warrington. He appeared in
no especial hurry. He immediately sought James; and they stood
together chatting until the tender drew up alongside the steamer of the
British-India line. The two men shook hands finally. There seemed to
be some argument, in which Warrington bore down the servant. The
latter added a friendly tap on the Eurasian's shoulder. No one would
have suspected that the white man and his dark companion had been
"shipmates," in good times and in bad, for nearly a decade. Elsa,
watching them from her secure nook, admired the lack of effusiveness.
The dignity of the parting told her of the depth of feeling.
An hour later they were heading for the delta. Elsa amused herself by
casting bits of bread to the gulls. Always they caught it on the wing,
no matter in what direction she threw it. Sometimes one would wing up
to her very hand for charity, its coral feet stretched out to meet the
quick back-play of the wings, its cry shallow and plaintive and
world-lonely.
Suddenly she became aware of a presence at her side.
A voice said: "It was not quite fair of you."
"What wasn't?" without turning her head. She brushed her hands free of
the crumbs.
"You should have let me know that you were going to sail on this boat."
"You would have run away, then."
"Why?" startled at her insight.
"Because you are a little afraid of me." She faced him, without a
smile either on her lips or in her eyes. "Aren't you?"
"Yes. I am afraid of all things I do not quite understand."
"There is not the least need in the world, Mr. Warrington. I am quite
harmless. My claws have been clipped. I am engaged to be married, and
am going home to decide the day."
"He's a lucky man." He was astonished at his calm, for the blow went
deep.
"Lucky? That is in the future. What a lonely thing a gull is!"
"What a lonely thing a lonely man is!" he added. Poor fool! To have
dreamed so fair a dream for a single moment! He tried to believe that
he was glad that she had told him about the other man. The least this
information could do would be to give him better control of himself.
He had not been out in the open long enough entirely to master his
feelings.
"Men ought not to be lonely," she said. "There's the excitement of
work, of mingling with crowds, of going when and where one pleases. A
woman is hemmed in by a thousand petty must-nots. She can't go out
after dark; she can't play whist or billiards, or sit at a table in the
open and drink and smoke and spin yarns. Woman's lot is wondering and
waiting at home. When I marry I suppose that I shall learn the truth
of that."
Perhaps it was because he had been away from them so long and had lost
track of the moods of the feminine mind; but surely it could not be
possible that there was real happiness in this young woman's heart.
Its evidence was lacking in her voice, in her face, in her gestures.
He thought it over with a sigh. It was probably one of those marriages
of convenience, money on one side and social position on the other. He
felt sorry for the girl, sorry for the man; for it was not possible
that a girl like this one would go through life without experiencing
that flash of insanity that is called the grand passion.
He loved her. He could lean against the rail, his shoulder lightly
touching hers, and calmly say to himself that he loved her. He could
calmly permit her to pass out of his life as a cloud passes down the
sea-rim. He hadn't enough, but this evil must befall him. Love! He
spread out his hands unconsciously.
"What does that mean?" she asked, smiling now. "An invocation?"
"It's a sign to ward off evil," he returned.
"From whom?"
"From me."
"Are you expecting evil?"
"I am always preparing myself to meet it. There is one thing that will
always puzzle me. Why should you have asked the purser to pick out
such a tramp as I was? For I was a tramp."
"I thought I explained that."
"Not clearly."
"Well, then, I shall make myself clear. The sight of you upon that
bank, the lights in your face, struck me as the strangest mystery that
could possibly confront me. I thought you were a ghost."
"A ghost?"
"Yes. So I asked the purser to introduce you to prove to my
satisfaction that you weren't a ghost. Line for line, height for
height, color for color, you are the exact counterpart of the man I am
going home to marry."
She saw the shiver that ran over him; she saw his eyes widen; she saw
his hands knot in pressure over the rail.
"The man you are going to marry!" he whispered.
Abruptly, without explanation, he walked away, his shoulders settled,
his head bent. It was her turn to be amazed. What could this attitude
mean?
"Mr. Warrington!" she called.
But he disappeared down the companionway.
VIII
A WOMAN'S REASON
Elsa stared at the vacant doorway. She recognized only a sense of
bewilderment. This was not one of those childish flashes of rudeness
that had amused, annoyed and mystified her. She had hurt him. And
how? Her first explanation was instantly rejected as absurd,
impossible. They had known each other less than a fortnight. They had
exchanged opinions upon a thousand topics, but sentiment had had no
visible part in these encounters. They had been together three days on
the boat, and once he had taken tea with her in Rangoon. She could
find nothing save that she had been kind to him when he most needed
kindness, and that she had not been stupidly curious, only
sympathetically so. He interested her and held that interest because
he was a type unlike anything she had met outside the covers of a book.
He was so big and strong, and yet so boyish. He had given her visions
of the character which had carried his manhood through all these years
of strife and bitterness and temptation. And because of this she had
shown him that she had taken it for granted that whatever he had done
in the past had not put him beyond the pale of her friendship. There
had been no degrading entanglements, and women forgive or condone all
other transgressions.
And what had she just said or done to put that look of dumb agony in
his face? She swung impatiently from the rail. She hated abstruse
problems, and not the least of these was that which would confront her
when she returned to America. She began to promenade the deck, still
cluttered with luggage over which the Lascar stewards were moiling.
Many a glance followed the supple pleasing figure of the girl as she
passed round and round the deck. Other promenaders stepped aside or
permitted her to pass between. The resolute uplift of the chin, and
the staring dark eyes which saw but inner visions, impressed them with
the fact that it would be wiser to step aside voluntarily. There were
some, however, who considered that they had as much right to the deck
as she. Before them she would stop shortly, and as a current breaks
and passes each side of an immovable object, they, too, gave way.
The colonel fussed and fumed, and his three spinster charges drew their
pale lips into thinner paler lines.
"These Americans are impossible!"
"And it is scandalous the way the young women travel alone. One can
never tell what they are."
"Humph! Brag and assertiveness. And there's that ruffian who came
down the river. What's he doing on the same boat? What?"
Elsa became aware of their presence at the fifth turn. She nodded
absently. Being immersed in the sea of conjecture regarding
Warrington's behavior, the colonel's glare did not rouse in her the
sense of impending disaster.
The first gong for dinner boomed. Elsa missed the clarion notes of the
bugle, so familiar to her ears on the Atlantic. The echoing wail of
the gong spoke in the voice of the East, of its dalliance, its content
to drift in a sargassa sea of entangling habits and desires, of its
fatalism and inertia. It did not hearten one or excite hunger. Elsa
would rather have lain down in her Canton lounging-chair. The gong
seemed out of place on the sea. Vaguely it reminded her of the railway
stations at home, where they beat the gong to entice passengers into
the evil-smelling restaurants, there to lose their patience and often
their trains.
The dining-saloon held two long tables, only one of which was in
commission, the starboard. The saloon was unattractive, for staterooms
marshaled along each side of it; and one caught glimpses of tumbled
luggage and tousled berths. A punka stretched from one end of the
table to the other, and swung indolently to and fro, whining
mysteriously as if in protest, sometimes subsiding altogether (as the
wearied coolie above the lights fell asleep) and then flapping
hysterically (after a shout of warning from the captain) and setting
the women's hair awry.
Elsa and Martha were seated somewhere between the head and the foot of
the table. The personally-conducted surrounded them, and gabbled
incessantly during the meal of what they had seen, of what they were
going to see, and of what they had missed by not going with the other
agency's party. Elsa's sympathy went out to the tired and faded
conductor.
There was but one vacant chair; and as she saw Warrington nowhere, Elsa
assumed that this must be his reservation. She was rather glad that he
would be beyond conversational radius. She liked to talk to the
strange and lonely man, but she preferred to be alone with him when she
did so. Neither of them had yet descended to the level of trifles; and
Elsa had no wish to share with persons uninteresting and
uncompanionable her serious views of life. Sometimes she wondered if,
after all, she was not as old as the hills instead of twenty-five.
She began as of old to study carelessly the faces of the diners and to
speculate as to their characters and occupations. Her negligent
observation roved from the pompous captain down to the dark picturesque
face of the man Craig. Upon him her glance, a mixture of contempt and
curiosity, rested. If he behaved himself and made no attempt to speak
to her, she was willing to declare a truce. In Rangoon the man had
been drunk, but on the Irrawaddy boat he had been sober enough. Craig
kept his eyes directed upon his food and did not offer her even a
furtive glance.
He was not in a happy state of mind. He had taken passage the last
moment to avoid meeting again the one man he feared. For ten years
this man had been reckoned among the lost. Many believed him dead, and
Craig had wished it rather than believed. And then, to meet him face
to face in that sordid boarding-house had shaken the cool nerve of the
gambler. He was worried and bewildered. He had practically sent this
man to ruin. What would be the reprisal? He reached for a mangosteen
and ate the white pulpy contents, but without the customary relish.
The phrase kept running through his head: What would be the reprisal?
For men of his ilk never struck without expecting to be struck back.
Something must be done. Should he seek him and boldly ask what he
intended to do? Certainly he could not do much on board here, except
to denounce him to the officers as a professional gambler. And Paul
would scarcely do that since he, Craig, had a better shot in his gun.
He could tell who Paul was and what he had done. Bodily harm was what
he really feared.
He had seen Elsa, but he had worked out that problem easily. She was
sure to say nothing so long as he let her be; and with the episode of
the hat-pin still fresh in his memory, he assuredly would keep his
distance. He had made a mistake, and was not likely to repeat it.
But Paul! He finished his dessert and went off to the stuffy little
smoke-room, and struggled with a Burma cheroot. Paul was a smoker, and
sooner or later he would drop in. There would be no beating about the
bush on his part. If it was to be war, all right; a truce, well and
good. But he wanted to know, and he was not going to let fear stand in
the way. He waited in vain for his man that night.
And so did Elsa. She felt indignant at one moment and hurt at another.
The man's attitude was inexplicable; there was neither rhyme nor reason
in it. The very fact that she could not understand made her wonder
march beside her even in her dreams that night. She began to feel
genuinely sorry that he had appeared above her horizon. He had
disturbed her poise; he had thrown her accepted views of life into an
entirely different angle, kaleidoscopically. And always that
supernatural likeness to the other man. Elsa began to experience a
sensation like that which attends the imagination of one in the clutch
of a nightmare: she hung in mid-air: she could neither retreat nor go
forward. Just before she retired she leaned over the rail, watching
the reflection of the stars twist and shiver on the smooth water.
Suddenly she listened. She might have imagined it, for at night the
ears deceive. "Jah, jah!" Somewhere from below came the muffled
plaint of Rajah.
Next day, at luncheon, the chair was still vacant. Elsa became
alarmed. Perhaps he was ill. She made inquiries, regardless of the
possible misinterpretation her concern might be given by others. Mr.
Warrington had had his meals served in his cabin, but the steward
declared that the gentleman was not ill, only tired and irritable, and
that he amused himself with a trained parrakeet.
All day long the sea lay waveless and unrippled, a sea of brass and
lapis-lazuli; brass where the sun struck and lapis-lazuli in the shadow
of the lazy swells. Schools of flying-fish broke fan-wise in flashes
of silver, and porpoise sported alongside. And warmer and warmer grew
the air.
Starboard was rigged up for cricket, and the ship's officers and some
of the passengers played the game until the first gong. Elsa grumbled
to Martha. There was little enough space to walk in as it was without
the men taking over the whole side of the ship and cheating her out of
a glorious sunset. Martha grew troubled and perplexed. If there was
one phase of character unknown to her in Elsa it was irritability; and
here she was, finding fault like any ordinary tourist.
"Where is Mr. Warrington?"
"I don't know. I haven't seen him since yesterday." Elsa dropped her
book petulantly. "I am weary of these namby-pamby stories."
"Why, I thought you admired that author."
"Not to-day at any rate. Silly twaddle."
Martha's eyes had a hopeless look in them as she asked: "Elsa, what is
the matter?"
"I don't know, Martha. I believe I should like to lose my temper
utterly. It might be a great relief."
"It's the climate."
"It may be. But it's my belief I'm irritable because I do not know my
own mind. I hate the stuffy stateroom, the food, the captain."
"The captain?"
"Yes. Nothing seems to disturb his conceit. To-night we sleep on
deck, the starboard side. At five o'clock we have to get up and go
inside again so they can holystone the deck. And I am always soundest
asleep at that time. Doubtless, I shall be irritable all day
to-morrow."
"Sleep up here on deck?" horrified.
"That, or suffocate below."
"But the men?"
"They sleep on the port side." Elsa laughed maliciously. "Don't
worry. Nobody minds."
"I hate the East," declared Martha vindictively. "Everything is so
slack. It just brings out the shiftlessness in everybody."
"Perhaps that is what ails me; I am growing shiftless. When I came on
board I decided to marry Arthur, and have done with the pother. Now I
am at the same place as when I left home. I don't want to marry
anybody. Have you noticed that fellow Craig?"
"What will you do if he speaks?"
"I have half a dozen good hat-pins left," dryly.
"I hate to hear you talk like that."
"It's the East. . . . There goes that hateful gong again. Soup,
chicken, curry, rice and piccalilli. I am going to live on plantains
and mangosteens. I'm glad we had sense enough to order that distilled
water. I should die if I had to drink any more soda. I wish I had
booked straight through. I shall be bored to death in Japan, much as I
wish to see the cherry-blossom dance. Probably I shan't enjoy
anything. Come; we'll go down as we are to dinner, and watch the
ridiculous captain and his fan-bearer. The punka will at least give us
a breath of fresh air. There doesn't seem to be any on deck. One
regrets Darjeeling."
Martha followed her young mistress into the dining-saloon; she was
anxious and upset. Where would this mood end? With a glance of relief
she found Warrington's chair still vacant.
The saloon had an air of freshness to-night. All the men were in drill
or pongee, and so receptive is the imagination that the picture robbed
the room of half its heat. To and fro the punka flapped; the pulleys
creaked and the ropes scraped above the sound of knives and forks and
spoons.
Elsa ate little besides fruit. She spoke scarcely a word to Martha,
and none to those around her. Thus, she missed the frown of the
colonel and the lifted brows of the spinsters, and the curious glances
of the tourists. The passenger-list had not yet come from the ship's
press, so Elsa's name was practically unknown. But in some
unaccountable manner it had become known that she had been making
inquiries in regard to the gentleman in cabin 78, who had thus far
remained away from the table. Ship life is a dull life, and gossip is
about the only thing that makes it possible to live through the day.
It was quite easy to couple this unknown aloof young woman and the
invisible man, and then to wait for results. The average tourist is
invariably building a romance around those persons who interest them,
attractively or repellently. They have usually saturated their minds
with impossible impressions of the East, acquired long before they
visit it, and refuse to accept actualities. It would have amused Elsa
had she known the interest she had already created if not inspired.
Her beauty and her apparent indifference to her surroundings were
particularly adapted to the romantic mood of her fellow-travelers. Her
own mind was so broad and generous, so high and detached, that so
sordid a thing as "an affair" never entered her thoughts.
As she refused course after course, a single phrase drummed incessantly
through her tired brain. She was not going to marry Arthur; never,
never in this world. She did not love him, and this was to be final.
She would cable him from Singapore. But she felt no elation in having
arrived at this determination. In fact, there was a tingle of defiance
in her unwritten, unspoken ultimatum.
That night Craig found it insupportable in the cabin below; so he
ordered his steward to bring up his bedding. He had lain down for half
an hour, grown restless, and had begun to walk the deck in his
bath-slippers. He had noted the still white figure forward, where the
cross-rail marks the waist. As he approached, Craig discovered his
man. He hesitated only a moment; then he touched Warrington's arm.
Warrington turned his dull eyes upon his ancient enemy. "So it is you?
I understood you were on board. Well?" uncompromisingly.