THE PAGODA
He was spared that inconvenience. The untimely rain and cold, some
persons said, the few days of untimely heat following, had drowned or
dried, frozen or burnt out, the seeds of peril. But accounts varied,
reasons were plentiful. Soldiers had come down from the chow city,
two-score _li_ inland, and charging through the streets, hacking and
slashing the infested air, had driven the goblins over the walls, with a
great shout of victory. A priest had freighted a kite with all the evil,
then cut it adrift in the sky. A mob had dethroned the God of Sickness,
and banished his effigy in a paper junk, launched on the river at night,
in flame. A geomancer proclaimed that a bamboo grove behind the town
formed an angle most correct, germane, and pleasant to the Azure Dragon
and the White Tiger, whose occult currents, male and female, run
throughout Nature. For any or all of these reasons, the town was
delivered. The pestilence vanished, as though it had come but to grant
Monsieur Jolivet his silence, and to add a few score uncounted living
wretches to the dark, mighty, imponderable host of ancestors.
The relief, after dragging days of uncertainty, came to Rudolph like a
sea-breeze to a stoker. To escape and survive,--the bare experience
seemed to him at first an act of merit, the deed of a veteran. The
interim had been packed with incongruity. There had been a dinner with
Kempner, solemn, full of patriotism and philosophy; a drunken dinner at
Teppich's; another, and a worse, at Nesbit's; and the banquet of a
native merchant, which began at four o'clock on melon-seeds, tea, black
yearling eggs, and a hot towel, and ended at three in the morning on
rice-brandy and betel served by unreal women with chalked faces and
vermilion-spotted lips, simpering and melancholy. By day, there was
work, or now and then a lesson with Dr. Earle's teacher, a little aged
Chinaman of intricate, refined, and plaintive courtesy. Under his
guidance Rudolph learned rapidly, taking to study as a prodigal might
take to drink. And with increasing knowledge came increasing
tranquillity; as when he found that the hideous cry, startling him at
every dawn, was the signal not for massacre, but buffalo-milk.
Then, too, came the mild excitement of moving into his own house, the
Portuguese nunnery. Through its desolate, lime-coated spaces, his meagre
belongings were scattered all too easily; but the new servants, their
words and ways, not only kept his hands full, but gave strange food for
thought. The silent evenings, timed by the plash of a frog in a pool, a
cry from the river, or the sing-song of a "boy" improvising some endless
ballad below-stairs; drowsy noons above the little courtyard, bare and
peaceful as a jail; homesick moments at the window, when beyond the
stunted orangery, at sunset, the river was struck amazingly from bronze
to indigo, or at dawn flashed from pearl-gray to flowing brass;--all
these, and nights between sleep and waking, when fancy peopled the
echoing chambers with the visionary lives, now ended, of meek, brown
sisters from Goa or Macao, gave to Rudolph intimations, vague, profound,
and gravely happy, as of some former existence almost recaptured. Once
more he felt himself a householder in the Arabian tales.
And yet, when his life was growing all but placid, across it shot some
tremor of disquieting knowledge.
One evening, after a busy day among his piece-goods, he had walked
afield with Heywood, and back by an aimless circuit through the
twilight. His companion had been taciturn, of late; and they halted,
without speaking, where a wide pool gleamed toward a black, fantastic
belt of knotted willows and sharp-curving roofs. Through these broke the
shadow of a small pagoda, jagged as a war-club of shark's teeth. Vesper
cymbals clashed faintly in a temple, and from its open door the first
plummet of lamplight began to fathom the dark margin. A short bridge
curved high, like a camel's hump, over the glimmering half-circle of a
single arch. Close by, under a drooping foreground of branches, a stake
upheld an oblong placard of neat symbols, like a cartouche to explain
a painting.
"It is very beautiful," ventured Rudolph, twisting up his blond
moustache with satisfaction. "Very sightly. I would say--picturesque, no?"
"Very," said Heywood, absently. "Willow Pattern."
"And the placard, so finishing, so artistic--That says?"
"Eh, what? Oh, I wasn't listening." Heywood glanced carelessly at the
upright sentence. That's a notice:--
"'Girls May Not be Drowned in This Pond.'"
He started on, without comment. Without reply, Rudolph followed,
gathering as he walked the force of this tremendous hint. Slow,
far-reaching, it poisoned the elegiac beauty of the scene, alienated the
night, and gave to the fading country-side a yet more ancient look,
sombre and implacable. He was still pondering this, when across their
winding foot-path, with a quick thud of hoofs, swept a pair of
equestrian silhouettes. It was half glimpse, half conjecture,--the tough
little ponies trotting stubbornly, a rider who leaned across laughing,
and a woman who gayly cried at him: "You really do understand me, don't
you?" The two jogging shadows melted in the bamboo tracery, like things
blown down the wind. But for years Rudolph had known the words, the
laugh, the beguiling cadence, and could have told what poise of the head
went with them, what dangerous glancing light. Suddenly, without reason,
he felt a gust of rage. It was he that understood. It was to him these
things belonged. The memory of her weakness was lost in the shining
memory of her power. He should be riding there, in the dusk of this
lonely and cruel land.
Heywood had thrown after them a single gloomy stare, down the pointed
aisle of bamboos.
"Well matched!" he growled. "Chantel--He bounds in the saddle, and he
bounds afoot!"
Rudolph knew that he had hated Chantel at sight.
He could not bring himself, next day, to join their party for tiffin at
the Flowery Pagoda. But in the midst of his brooding, Teppich and the
fat Sturgeon assailed the nunnery gate with pot-valiant blows and
shouts. They had brought chairs, to carry him off; and being in no mood
to fail, though panting and struggling, they packed him into a
palanquin with many bottles of the best wine known to Fliegelman and
Sons. By a short cut through the streets--where checkered sunshine,
through the lattice roof, gave a muddy, subdued light as in a roiled
aquarium--the revelers passed the inland wall. Here, in the shade,
grooms awaited them with ponies; and scrambling into saddle, they
trotted off through gaps in the bamboos, across a softly rolling
country. Tortuous foot-paths of vivid pink wound over brilliant green
terraces of young paddy. The pink crescents of new graves scarred the
hillsides, already scalloped and crinkled with shelving abodes of the
venerable dead. Great hats of farmers stooping in the fields, gleamed in
the sun like shields of brass. Over knolls and through hollows the
little cavalcade jogged steadily, till, mounting a gentle eminence, they
wound through a grove of camphor and Flame-of-the-Forest. Above the
branches rose the faded lilac shaft of an ancient pagoda, ruinously
adorned with young trees and wild shrubs clinging in the cornices.
At the foot of this aged fantasy in stone, people were laughing. The
three riders broke cover in time to see Mrs. Forrester, flushed and
radiant, end some narrative with a droll pantomime. She stood laughing,
the life and centre of a delighted group.
"And Gilbert Forrester," she cried, turning archly on her husband,
"said that wasn't funny!"
Gilly tugged his gray moustache, in high good-nature. Chantel, Nesbit,
and Kempner laughed uproariously, the padre and the dark-eyed Miss Drake
quietly, Heywood more quietly, while even stout, uneasy Mrs. Earle
smiled as in duty bound. A squad of Chinese boys, busy with
tiffin-baskets, found time to grin. To this lively actress in the white
gown they formed a sylvan audience under the gnarled boughs and
the pagoda.
"Too late!" called the white-haired giant, indulgently, to the
dismounting trio. "Mr. Hackh, you should have come spurring."
Rudolph advanced, pale, but with a calmness of which, afterward, he was
justly proud. The heroine of the moment turned toward him quickly, with
a look more natural, more sincere, than she had ever given him.
"Is this Mr. Hackh?" she said graciously. "I've heard so much about
you!"
The young man himself was almost deceived. Was there a German mail-boat?
Was there a club, from which he had stolen out while she wept,
ignominiously, in that girl's arms? And then of a sudden he perceived,
with a fatuous pleasure, how well she knew him, to know that he had
never spoken. His English, as he drew up a stool beside Miss Drake, was
wild and ragged; but he found her an astonishing refuge. For the first
time, he recalled that this quiet girl had been beautiful, the other
night; and though now by day that beauty was rather of line than of
color, he could not understand how it had been overlooked. Tiffin,
meanwhile, sped by like an orgy. He remembered asking so many questions,
about the mission hospital and her school for orphans, that the girl
began at last to answer with constraint, and with puzzled, sidelong
scrutiny. He remembered how even the tolerant Heywood shot a questioning
glance toward his wine-glass. He remembered telling a brilliant story,
and reciting "Old Captain Mau in Vegesack,"--rhymes long forgotten, now
fluent and spontaneous. The applause was a triumph. Through it, as
through a haze, he saw a pair of wide blue eyes shining with startled
admiration.
But the best came when the sun had lowered behind the grove, the company
grown more silent, and Mrs. Forrester, leaning beside the door of the
tower, turned the great pegs of a Chinese lute. The notes tinkled like a
mandolin, but with now and then an alien wail, a lament unknown to the
West. "Sing for us," begged the dark-eyed girl; "a native song." The
other smiled, and bending forward as if to recollect, began in a low
voice, somewhat veiled, but musical and full of meaning. "The Jasmine
Flower," first; then, "My Love is Gathering Dolichos"; and then she
sang the long Ballad of the Rice,--of the husband and wife planting side
by side, the springing of the green blades, the harvest by millions upon
millions of sheaves, the wealth of the State, more fragrant to ancestors
than offerings of spice:--
"...O Labor and Love and hallowed Land!
Think you these things are but still to come?
Think you they are but near at hand,
Only now and here?--Behold.
They were the same in years of old!"
In her plaintive interlude, the slant-eyed servants watched her, nodding
and muttering under the camphor trees.
"And here's a song of exile," she said. "I render it very
badly."--Rudolph had never seen her face like this, bending intently
above the lute. It was as though in the music she found and disclosed
herself, without guile.
"...Blue was the sky,
And blue the rice-pool water lay
Holding the sky;
Blue was the robe she wore that day.
Alas, my sorrow! Why
Must life bear all away,
Away, away,
Ah, my beloved, why?"
A murmur of praise went round the group, as she put aside the
instrument.
"The sun's getting low," she said lightly, "and I _must_ see that view
from the top." Chantel was rising, but sat down again with a scowl, as
she turned to Rudolph. "You've never seen it, Mr. Hackh? Do come help
me up."
Inside, with echoing steps, they mounted in a squalid well, obscurely
lighted from the upper windows, toward which decaying stairs rose in a
dangerous spiral, without guard-rail. A misstep being no trifle, Rudolph
offered his hand for the mere safety; but she took it with a curious
little laugh. They climbed cautiously. Once, at a halt, she stood very
close, with eyes shining large in the dusk. Her slight body trembled,
her head shook with stifled merriment, like a girl overcome by mischief.
"What a queer little world!" she whispered. "You and I here!--I never
dreamed you could be funny. It made me so proud of you, down there!"
He muttered something vague; and--the stairs ending in ruin at the
fourth story--handed her carefully through the window to a small outer
balustrade. As they stood together at the rail, he knew not whether to
be angry, suspicious, or glad.
"I love this prospect," she began quietly. "That's why I wanted you to
come."
Beyond the camphors, a wide, strange landscape glowed in the full,
low-streaming light. The ocean lay a sapphire band in the east; in the
west, on a long ridge, undulated the gray battlements of a city, the
antique walls, warmed and glorified, breasting the flood of sunset. All
between lay vernal fields and hillocks, maidenhair sprays of bamboo, and
a wandering pattern of pink foot-paths. Slowly along one of these, a
bright-gowned merchant rode a white pony, his bells tinkling in the
stillness of sea and land. Everywhere, like other bells more tiny and
shrill, sounded the trilling of frogs.
As the two on the pagoda stood listening,--
"It was before Rome," she declared thoughtfully. "Before Egypt, and has
never changed. You and I are just--" She broke off, humming:--
"Only here and now? Behold
They were the same in years of old!"
Her mood colored the scene: the aged continuity of life oppressed him.
Yet he chose rather to watch the straggling battlements, far off, than
to meet her eyes or see her hair gleaming in the sun. Through many
troubled days he had forgotten her, despised her, bound his heart in
triple brass against a future in her hateful neighborhood; and now,
beside her at this time-worn rail, he was in danger of being happy. It
was inglorious. He tried to frown.
"You poor boy." Suddenly, with an impulse that must have been generous,
she rested her hand on his arm. "I was sorry. I thought of you
so often."
At these close quarters, her tremulous voice and searching upward glance
meant that she alone understood all his troubles. He started, turned for
some rush of overwhelming speech, when a head popped through the window
behind them.
"Boot and saddle, Mrs. Forrester," announced Heywood. His lean young
face was very droll and knowing. "We're leaving, bottom-side."
"Thank you so much, Maurice," she answered, perhaps dryly. "You're a
dear, to climb all those dreadful stairs."
"Oh!" said Heywood, with his gray eyes fastened on Rudolph, "no
trouble."
All three went down the dark well together.
When the company were mounted, and trooping downhill through the camphor
shadow, Heywood's pony came sidling against Rudolph's, till legging
chafed legging.
"You blossomed, old boy," he whispered. "Quite the star, after your
comedy turn." He reined aside, grinning. "What price sympathy on
a pagoda?"
For that moment, Rudolph could have struck down the one sure friend he
had in China.