malicious. How clearly she could see the picture! And then, the
ever-recurring comparisons: Arthur would have gone by, Arthur would not
have bothered himself, for he detested scenes and fisticuffs. How few
real men she had met, men who walked through life naturally, unfettered
by those self-applied manacles called "What will people say?"
"Let us go up to the bow," she invited. "I've a little story myself to
tell."
They clambered down and up the ladders, over the windlass and
anchor-chains which a native was busily painting. A school of porpoise
were frolicking under the cutwater. _Plop_! _plop_! they went; and
sometimes one would turn sidewise and look up roguishly with his
twinkling seal-like eyes. _Plop_! _plop_! Finally all save one sank
gracefully out of sight. The laggard crisscrossed the cutwater a dozen
times, just to show the watchers how extremely clever he was; and then,
with a _plop_! that was louder than any previous one, he vanished into
the deeps.
"I love these Oriental seas," said Elsa, with her arms on the rail and
her chin resting upon them. She wore no hat, and her hair shimmered in
the sun and shivered in the wind.
"And yet they are the most treacherous of all seas. There's not a
cloud in sight; in two hours from now we may be in the heart of a
winter storm. Happily, they are rarities along this coast; so you will
not have the excitement of a shipwreck."
"I am grateful for that. Mercy! Think of being marooned on a desert
island with the colonel and his three spinsters! Proprieties, from
morning until night. And the chattering tourists! Heaven forfend!"
"You had a story to tell me," he suggested. His heart was hot within
him. He wanted to sweep her up in his arms and hold her there forever.
But the barrier of wasted opportunities stood between. How delicately
beautiful she was: Bernini's Daphne.
"Oh, yes; I had almost forgotten." She stood up and felt for wandering
strands of hair. "I find the world more amusing day by day. I ought
to feel hurt, but I am only amused. I spoke to the colonel this
morning, merely to say howdy-do. He stared me in the eye and
de-lib-erately turned his back to me."
"The doddering old---"
"There, there! It isn't worth getting angry about."
"But, don't you understand? It's all because of me. Simply because
you have been kind to a poor devil, they start in to snub you, you!
I'll go back to my old seat at the table. You mustn't walk with me any
more."
"Don't be silly. If you return to your chair, if you no longer walk
with me, they'll find a thousand things to talk about. Since I do not
care, why should you?"
"Can't I make it clear to you?" desperately.
"I see with reasonable eyes, if that is what you mean. The people I
know, mine own people, understand Elsa Chetwood."
So her name was Elsa? He repeated it over and over in his mind.
She continued her exposition. "There are but few, gently born. They
are generous and broad-minded. They could not be mine own people
otherwise. They are all I care about. I shun mediocrity as I would
the plague. I refuse to permit it to touch me, either with words or
with deeds. The good opinion of those I love is dear to me; as for the
rest of the world!" She snapped her fingers to illustrate how little
she cared.
"I am a man under a cloud, to be avoided."
"Perhaps that cloud has a silver lining," with a gentle smile. "I do
not believe you did anything wrong, premeditatively. All of us, one
time or another, surrender to wild impulse. Perhaps in the future
there awaits for me such a moment. I cannot recollect the name of
Warrington in a _cause célèbre_," thoughtfully.
He could only gaze at her dumbly.
"Don't you suppose there is a vast difference between you and this man
Craig? Could you commit the petty crime of cheating at cards, of
taking advantage of a woman's kindness, of betraying a man's
misfortune? I do not think you could. No, Mr. Warrington, I do not
care what they say, on board here or elsewhere."
"My name is not Warrington," finding his voice. God in heaven, what
would happen when she found out what his name was? "But my first name
is Paul."
"Paul. I have had my suspicions that your name was not Warrington.
But tell me nothing more. What good would it do? I did not read that
man's letter. I merely noted your name and his. You doubtless knew
him somewhere in the past."
"Might there not be danger in your kindness to me?"
"In what way?"
"A man under a cloud is often reckless and desperate. There is always
an invisible demon calling out to him: What's the use of being good?
You are the first woman of your station who has treated me as a human
being; I do not say as an equal. You have given me back some of my
self-respect. It throws my world upside down. It's a heady wine for
an abstemious man. Don't you realize that you are a beautiful woman?"
She looked up into his eyes quickly, but she saw nothing there
indicating flattery, only a somber gravity.
"I should be silly to deny it. I know that had I been a frump, the
colonel would not have snubbed me. I wonder why it is that in life
beauty in a woman is always looked upon with suspicion?"
"Envy provokes that."
She resumed her inclination against the rail again. "After Singapore
it is probable that we shall not meet again. I admit, in my world, I
could not walk upon this free and easy ground. I should have to ask
about your antecedents, what you have done, all about you, in fact.
Then, we should sit in judgment."
"And condemn me, off-hand. That would be perfectly right."
"But I might be one of the dissenting judges."
"That is because you are one woman in a thousand."
"No; I simply have a mind of my own, and often prefer to be guided by
it. I am not a sheep."
Silence. The lap-lap of the water, the long slow rise and fall, and
the dartling flying-fish apparently claimed their attention.
But Warrington saw nothing save the danger, the danger to himself and
to her. At any moment he might fling his arms around her, without his
having the power to resist. She called to him as nothing in the world
had called before. But she trusted him, and because of this he
resolutely throttled the recurring desires. She was right. He had
scorned what she had termed as woman's instinct. She had read him with
a degree of accuracy. In the eyes of God he was a good man, a
dependable man; but he was not impossibly good. He was human enough to
want her, human enough to appreciate the danger in which she stood of
him. He was determined not to fail her. When she went back to her own
world she would carry an unsullied memory of him. But, before God, he
should not have her.
"Why did you do that?" she asked whimsically.
"Do what?"
"Shut your jaws with a snap."
"I was not conscious of the act."
"But you were thinking strongly about something."
"I was. Tell me about the man who looks like me." His gaze roved out
to sea, to the white islands of vapor low-lying in the east. "In what
respect does he resemble me?"
"His hair is yellow, his eyes are blue, and he smiles the same way you
do."
He felt the lump rise and swell in his throat.
"If you stood before a mirror you would see him. But there the
resemblance ends."
"You say that sadly. Why?"
"Did I? Well, perhaps I was thinking strongly, too."
"Is he a man who does things?" a note of strained curiosity in his
tones. Ten years!
"In what way do you mean?"
"Does he work in the world, does he invent, build, finance?"
Mayhap her eyes deceived her, but the tan on his face seemed less brown
than yellow.
"No; Mr. Ellison is a collector of paintings, of rugs, of rare old
books and china. He's a bit detached, as dreamers usually are. He has
written a book of exquisite verses. . . . You are smiling," she broke
off suddenly, her eyes filling with cold lights.
"A thousand pardons! The thought was going through my head how unlike
we are indeed. I can hardly tell one master from another, all old
books look alike to me, and the same with china. I know something
about rugs; but I couldn't write a jingle if it was to save me from
hanging."
"Do you invent, build, finance?" A bit of a gulf had opened up between
them. Elsa might not be prepared to marry Arthur, but she certainly
would not tolerate a covert sneer in regard to his accomplishments.
Quietly and with dignity he answered: "I have built bridges in my time
over which trains are passing at this moment. I have fought torrents,
and floods, and hurricanes, and myself. I have done a man's work. I
had a future, they said. But here I am, a subject of your pity."
She instantly relented. "But you are young. You can begin again."
"Not in the sense you mean."
"And yet, you tell me you are going back home."
"Like a thief in the night," bitterly.
XI
THE BLUE FEATHER
Elsa toyed with her emeralds, apparently searching for some flaw. Like
a thief in the night was a phrase that rang unpleasantly in her ears.
Her remarkable interest in the man was neither to be denied nor
ignored. In fact, drawing her first by the resemblance to the man she
wanted to love but could not, and then by the mystery that he had
thrown about his past simply by guarding it closely, it would have been
far more remarkable if she had not been deeply interested in him. But
to-night she paused for a moment. A little doubt, like one of those
oblique flaws that obscured the clarity of the green stones, appeared.
She had always been more or less indifferent to public opinion, but it
had been a careless thoughtless indifference; it had not possessed the
insolent twist of the past fortnight. To receive the cut direct from a
man whose pomposity and mental density had excited her wit and
amusement, surprised her even if it did not hurt. It had rudely
awakened her to the fact that her independence might be leading her
into a labyrinth. She was compelled to admit that at home she would
have avoided Warrington, no matter how deeply sorry she might have
been. His insistent warning against himself, however, served to arouse
nothing more than a subtle obstinacy to do just as she pleased. And it
pleased her to talk to him; it pleased her to trifle with the unknown
danger.
Something new had been born in her. All her life she had gone about
calmly and aloofly, her head in the clouds, her feet on mountain-tops.
She had never done anything to arouse discussion in other women.
Perhaps such a situation had never confronted her until lately. She
had always looked forth upon life through the lenses of mild cynicism.
So long as she was rich she might, with impunity, be as indiscreet as
she pleased. Her money would plead forgiveness and toleration. . . .
Elsa shrugged. But shrugs do not dismiss problems. She could have
laughed. To have come all this way to solve a riddle, only to find a
second more confusing than the first!
Like a thief in the night. She did not care to know what he had done,
not half so much as to learn what he had been. Peculations of some
order; of this she was reasonably sure. So why seek for details, when
these might be sordid?
Singapore would see the end, and she would become her normal self again.
She clasped the necklace around her lovely throat. She was dressing
for dinner, really dressing. An impish mood filled her with the
irrepressible desire to shine in all her splendor to-night. Covertly
she would watch the eyes of mediocrity widen. Hitherto they had seen
her in the simple white of travel. To-night they should behold the
woman who had been notable among the beauties in Paris, Vienna, Rome,
London; who had not married a duke simply because his title could not
have added to the security of her position, socially or financially;
who was twenty-five years of age and perfectly content to wait until
she met the man who would set to flight all the doubt which kept her
heart unruly and unsettled.
Into the little mirror above the wash-stand she peered, with smiling
and approving eyes. Never had she looked better. There was unusual
color in her cheeks and the clarity of her eyes spoke illuminatingly of
superb health. The tan on her face was not made noticeable in contrast
by her shoulders and arms, old ivory in tint and as smooth and glossy
as ancient Carrara.
"You lovely creature!" murmured Martha, touching an arm with her lips.
"Am I really lovely?"
"You would be adorable if you had a heart."
"Perhaps I have one. Who knows?"
"You are foolish to dress like this." Martha finished the hooking of
Elsa's waist.
"And why?"
"In the first place there's nobody worth the trouble; and nobody but a
duchess or a . . ." Martha paused embarrassedly.
"Or a what? An improper person?" Elsa laughed. "My dear Martha, your
comparisons are faulty. I know but two duchesses in this wide world
who are not dowdies, and one of them is an American. An improper
person is generally the most proper, outside her peculiar environments.
Can't you suggest something else?"
Martha searched but found no suitable reply. One thing she felt
keenly, a feverish impatience for the boat to reach Singapore where
Elsa's folly must surely end. She believed that she saw more clearly
into the future than Elsa. Some one would talk, and in that strange
inscrutable fashion scandal has of reaching the ends of the earth, the
story would eventually arrive home; and there, for all the professions
of friendship, it would find admittance. No door is latched when
scandal knocks. Over here they were very far from home, and it was
natural that Elsa should view her conduct leniently. Martha readily
appreciated that it was all harmless, to be expressed by a single word,
whim. But Martha herself never acted upon impulse; she first
questioned what the world would say. So run the sheep.
For years Martha had discharged her duties, if mechanically yet with a
sense of pleasure and serenity. At this moment she was as one pushed
unexpectedly to the brink of a precipice, over which the slightest
misstep would topple her. The world was out of joint. Shockingly bad
wishes flitted through her head. Each wish aimed at the disposal,
imaginary of course, of Warrington: by falling overboard, by being
seized with one of the numerous plagues, by having a deadly fracas with
one of those stealthy Lascars.
"I wish we had gone to Italy," she remarked finally.
"It would not have served my purpose in the least. I should have been
dancing and playing bridge and going to operas. I should have had no
time for thinking."
"Thinking!" Martha elevated her brows with an air that implied that
she greatly doubted this statement.
"Yes, thinking. It is not necessary that I should mope and shut myself
up in a cell, Martha, in order to think. I have finally come to the
end of my doubts, if that will gratify you. From now on you may rely
upon one thing, to a certainty."
Martha hesitated to put the question.
"I am not going to marry Arthur. He is charming, graceful,
accomplished; but I want a man. I should not be happy with him. I can
twist him too easily around my finger. I admit that he exercises over
me a certain indefinable fascination; but when he is out of sight it
amounts to the sum of all this doddering and doubting. It is probable
that I shall make an admirable old maid. Wisdom has its disadvantages.
I might be very happy with Arthur, were I not so wise." She smiled
again at the reflection in the mirror. "Now, let us go and astonish
the natives."
There was a mild flutter of eyelids as she sat down beside Warrington
and began to chatter to him in Italian. He made a brave show of
following her, but became hopelessly lost after a few minutes. Elsa
spoke fluently; twelve years had elapsed since his last visit to Italy.
He admitted his confusion, and thereafter it was only occasionally that
she brought the tongue into the conversation. This diversion, which
she employed mainly to annoy her neighbors, was, in truth, the very
worst thing she could have done. They no longer conjectured; they
assumed.
Warrington was too strongly dazzled by her beauty to-night to be
mentally keen or to be observing as was his habit. He never spoke to
his neighbor; he had eyes for none but Elsa, under whose spell he knew
that he would remain while he lived. He was nothing to her; he readily
understood. She was restless and lonely, and he amused her. So be it.
He believed that there could not be an unhappier, more unfortunate man
than himself. To have been betrayed by the one he had loved, second to
but one, and to have this knowledge thrust upon him after all these
years, was evil enough; but the nadir of his misfortunes had been
reached by the appearance of this unreadable young woman. Of what use
to warn her against himself, or against the possible, nay, probable
misconstruction that would be given their unusual friendship? Craig
would not be idle with his tales. And why had she put on all this
finery to-night? To subjugate him?
"You are not listening to a word I am saying!"
"I beg your pardon! But I warned you that my Italian was rusty." He
pulled himself together.
"But I have been rattling away in English!"
"And I have been wool-gathering."
"Not at all complimentary to me."
"It is because I am very unhappy; it is because Tantalus and I are
brothers."
"You should have the will to throw off these moods."
"My moods, as you call them, are not like hats and coats."
"I wish I could make you forget."
"On the contrary, the sight of you makes memory all the keener."
He had never spoken like that before. It rather subdued her, made her
regret that she had surrendered to a vanity that was without aim or
direction. Farthest from her thought was conquest of the man. She did
not wish to hurt him. She was not a coquette.
After dinner he did not suggest the usual promenade. Instead, he
excused himself and went below.
They arrived at Penang early Monday morning. Elsa decided that
Warrington should take her and Martha on a personally conducted tour of
the pretty town. As they left for shore he produced a small beautiful
blue feather; he gave it to Elsa with the compliments of Rajah; and she
stuck it in the pugree of her helmet.
"This is not from the dove of peace."
"Its arch-enemy, rather," he laughed. "I wish I had the ability to get
as furious as that bird. It might do me a world of good."
"How long is it since you were here?"
"Four years," he answered without enthusiasm. He would not have come
ashore at all but for the fact that Elsa had ordered the expedition.
There was no inclination to explore the shops; so they hired a landau
and rode about town, climbed up to the quaint temple in the hills, and
made a tour of the botanical gardens.
"Isn't it delicious!" murmured Elsa, taking in deep breaths of the warm
spice-laden air. Since her visit to the wonderful gardens at Kandy in
Ceylon, she had found a new interest in plants and trees.
She thoroughly enjoyed the few hours on land, even to the powwow
Warrington had with the unscrupulous driver, who, at the journey's end,
substituted one price for another, despite his original bargain. It
was only a matter of two shillings, but Warrington stood firm. It had
of necessity become a habit with him to haggle and then to stand firm
upon the bargain made. There had been times when half an hour's
haggling had meant breakfast or no breakfast. It never entered into
his mind what Elsa's point of view might be. The average woman would
have called him over-thrifty. All this noise over two shillings! But
to Elsa it was only the opening of another door into this strange man's
character. What others would have accepted as penuriousness she
recognized as a sense of well-balanced justice. Most men, she had
found, were afflicted with the vanity of spending, and permitted
themselves to be imposed on rather than have others think that money
meant anything to them. Arthur would have paid the difference at once
rather than have stood on the pier wrangling. As they waited for the
tender that was to convey them back to the ship, Elsa observed a
powerful middle-aged man, gray-haired, hawk-faced, steel-eyed, watching
her companion intently. Then his boring gaze traveled over her, from
her canvas-shoes to her helmet. There was something so baldly
appraising in the look that a flush of anger surged into her cheeks.
The man turned and said something to his companion, who shrugged and
smiled. Impatiently Elsa tugged at Warrington's sleeve.
"Who is that man over there by the railing?" she asked in a very low
voice. "He looks as if he knew you."
"Knew me?" Warrington echoed. The moment he had been dreading had
come. Some one who knew him! He turned his head slowly, and Elsa, who
had not dropped her hand, could feel the muscles of his arm stiffen
under the sleeve. He held the stranger's eye defiantly for a space.
The latter laughed insolently if silently. It was more for Elsa's sake
than for his own that Warrington allowed the other to stare him down.
Alone, he would have surrendered to the Berserk rage that urged him to
leap across the intervening space and annihilate the man, to crush him
with his bare hands until he screamed for the mercy he had always
denied others. The flame passed, leaving him as cold as ashes. "I
shall tell you who he is later; not here."
For the second time since that night on the Irrawaddy, Elsa recorded a
disagreeable sensation. It proved to be transitory, but at the time it
served to establish a stronger doubt in regard to her independence, so
justifiable in her own eyes. It might be insidiously leading her too
far away from the stepping-off place. The unspoken words in those
hateful eyes! The man knew Warrington, knew him perhaps as a
malefactor, and judged his associates accordingly. She thus readily
saw the place she occupied in the man's estimation. She experienced a
shiver of dread as she observed that he stepped on board the tender.
She even heard him call back to his friend to expect him in from
Singapore during the second week in March. But the dread went away,
and pride and anger grew instead. All the way back to the ship she
held her chin in the air, and from time to time her nostrils dilated.
That look! If she had been nearer she was certain that she would have
struck him across the face.
"There will be no one up in the bow," said Warrington. "Will you go up
there with me?"
After a moment's hesitation, she nodded.
The Lascars, busy with the anchor-chains, demurred; but a word and a
gesture from the Sahib who had turned the hose on a drunken man
convinced them that the two would not be in the way. A clatter of
steel against steel presently followed, the windlass whined and
rattled, and Elsa saw the anchor rise slowly from the deeps, bringing
up a blur of muddy water; and blobs of pale clay dripped from the
anchor-flukes. A moment after she felt the old familiar throb under
her feet, and the ship moved slowly out of the bay.
"Do you know that that man came aboard?"
"I know it." The wide half-circle of cocoanut palms grew denser and
lower as they drew away. "This is the story. It's got to be told. I
should have avoided it if it had been possible. He is the owner of the
plantation. Oh, I rather expected something like this. It's my run of
luck. I was just recovering from the fever. God knows how he found
out, but he did. It was during the rains. He told me to get out that
night. Didn't care whether I died on the road or not. I should have
but for my boy James. The man sent along with us a poor discarded
woman, of whom he had grown tired. She died when we reached town. I
had hardly any money. He refused to pay me for the last two months,
about fifty pounds. There was no redress for me. There was no
possible way I could get back at him. Miss Chetwood, I took money that
did not belong to me. It went over gaming-tables. Craig. I ran away.
Craig knows and this man Mallow knows. Can you not see the wisdom of
giving me a wide berth?"
"Oh, I am sorry!" she cried.
"Thanks. But you see: I am an outcast. To-night, not a soul on board
will be in ignorance of who I am and what I have done. Trust Craig and
Mallow for that. Thursday we shall be in Singapore. You must not
speak to me again. Give them to understand that you have found me out,
that I imposed on your kindness."
"That I will not do."
"Act as you please. There are empty chairs at the second-class table,
among the natives. And now, good-by. The happiest hours in ten long
years are due to you." He took off his helmet and stepped aside for
her to pass. She held out her hand, but he shook his head. "Don't
make it harder for me."
"Mr. Warrington, I am not a child!"
"To me you have been the Angel of Kindness; and the light in your face
I shall always see. Please go now."