THE HOT NIGHT
Rudolph paced his long chamber like a wolf,--a wolf in summer, with too
thick a coat. In sweat of body and heat of mind, he crossed from window
to window, unable to halt.
A faintly sour smell of parched things, oppressing the night without
breath or motion, was like an interminable presence, irritating,
poisonous. The punkah, too, flapped incessant, and only made the lamp
gutter. Broad leaves outside shone in mockery of snow; and like snow the
stifled river lay in the moonlight, where the wet muzzles of buffaloes
glistened, floating like knots on sunken logs, or the snouts of
crocodiles. Birds fluttered, sleepless and wretched. Coolies, flung
asleep on the burnt grass, might have been corpses, but for the sound of
their troubled breathing.
"If I could believe," he groaned, sitting with hands thrust through his
hair. "If I believe in her--But I came too late."
The lamp was an added torment. He sprang up from it, wiped the drops off
his forehead, and paced again. He came too late. All alone. The collar
of his tunic strangled him. He stuffed his fingers underneath, and
wrenched; then as he came and went, catching sight in a mirror, was
shocked to see that, in Biblical fashion, he had rent his garments.
"This is bad," he thought, staring. "It is the heat. I must not stay
alone."
He shouted, clapped his hands for a servant, and at last, snatching a
coat from his unruffled boy, hurried away through stillness and
moonlight to the detested club. On the stairs a song greeted him,--a
fragment with more breath than melody, in a raw bass:--
"Jolly boating weather,
And a hay harvest breeze!"
"Shut up!" snarled another voice. "Good God, man!"
The loft was like a cave heated by subterranean fires. Two long punkahs
flapped languidly in the darkness, with a whine of pulleys. Under a
swinging lamp, in a pool of light and heat, four men sat playing cards,
their tousled heads, bare arms, and cinglets torn open across the chest,
giving them the air of desperadoes.
"Jolly boating weather," wheezed the fat Sturgeon. He stood apart in
shadow, swaying on his feet. "What would you give," he propounded
thickly, "for a hay harvest breeze?"
He climbed, or rolled, upon the billiard-table, turned head toward
punkah, and suddenly lay still,--a gross white figure, collapsed and
sprawling.
"How much does he think a man can stand?" snapped Nesbit, his lean
Cockney face pulled in savage lines. "Beast of a song! He'll die
to-night, drinking."
"Die yourself," mumbled the singer, "'m goin' sleep. More 'n you can
do."
A groan from the players, and the vicious flip of a card, acknowledged
the hit. Rudolph joined them, ungreeting and ungreeted. The game went on
grimly, with now and then the tinkle of ice, or the popping of soda
bottles. Sharp cords and flaccid folds in Wutzler's neck, Chantel's
brown cheeks, the point of Heywood's resolute chin, shone wet and
polished in the lamplight. All four men scowled pugnaciously, even the
pale Nesbit, who was winning. Bad temper filled the air, as palpable as
the heat and stink of the burning oil.
Only Heywood maintained a febrile gayety, interrupting the game
perversely, stirring old Wutzler to incoherent speech.
"What's that about Rome?" he asked. "You were saying?"
"Rome is safed!" cried the outcast, with sudden enthusiasm. "In your
paper _Tit-bit_, I read. How dey climb der walls op, yes, but Rome is
safed by a flook of geeze. Gracious me, der History iss great sopjeck!
I lern moch.--But iss Rome yet a fortify town?"
Chantel rapped out a Parisian oath.
"Do we play cards," he cried sourly, "or listen to the chatter of
senility?"
Heywood held to the previous question.
"No, Wutz, that town's no longer fortified," he answered slowly. "Geese
live there, still, as in--many other places."
Dr. Chantel examined his finger-tips as though for some defect; then,
snatching up the cards, shuffled and dealt with intense precision. The
game went on as before.
"I read alzo," stammered Wutzler, like a timid scholar encouraged to
lecture, "I read zo how your Englishman, Rawf Ralli, he spreadt der fine
clock for your Queen, and lern your Queen smoking, no?" He mopped his
lean throat with the back of his hand. "In Bengal are dere Rallis. Dey
handle jute."
"Yes?" Heywood smiled a weary indulgence. Next instant he whirled on
Rudolph in fury.--"Is this a game, or Idiot's Joy?"
"I'm playing my best," explained Rudolph, sulkily.
"Then your best is the worst I ever saw! Better learn, before sitting
in!"
Chantel laughed, without merriment; Rudolph flung down his cards,
stalked to the window, and stood looking out, in lonely, impotent rage.
A long time passed, marked by alarming snores from the billiard-table.
The half-naked watchers played on, in ferocious silence. The night wore
along without relief.
Hours might have lapsed, when Dr. Chantel broke out as though the talk
had but paused a moment.
"So it goes!" he sneered. "Fools will always sit in, when they do not
know. They rush into the water, also, and play the hero!"
Again his laughter was brief but malignant. Heywood had left his cards,
risen, and crossing the room, stood looking over Rudolph's shoulder into
the snowy moonlight. On the shoulder his hand rested, as by accident.
"It's the heat, old chap," he said wearily. "Don't mind what we say
to-night."
Rudolph made no sign, except to move from under his hand, so that, with
their quarrel between them, the two men stared out across the blanched
roofs and drooping trees, where long black shadows at last crept
toward the dawn.
"These heroes!" continued the mocker. "What is danger? Pouf--nothing!
They make it for the rest of us, so easily! Do you know," his voice rose
and quickened, "do you know, the other end of town is in an uproar? We
murder children, it appears, for medicine!"
Rudolph started, turned, but now sat quiet under Heywood's grasp.
Chantel, in the lamplight, watched the punkahs with a hateful smile.
"The Gascons are not all dead," he murmured. "They plunge us all into a
turmoil, for the sake of a woman." He made a sudden startling gesture,
like a man who has lost control. "For the sake," he cried angrily, "of a
person we all know! Oh! we all know her! She is nothing more--"
There was a light scuffle at the window.
"Dr. Chantel," began Heywood, with a sharp and dangerous courtesy, "we
are all unlike ourselves to-night. I am hardly the person to remind you,
but this club is hardly the place--"
"Oh, la la!" The other snapped his fingers, and reverting to his native
tongue, finished his sentence wildly.
"You cad!" Heywood advanced in long strides deliberately, as if
gathering momentum for a collision. Before his blow could fall, he was
sent spinning. Rudolph, his cheeks on fire, darted past and dealt, full
force, a clumsy backhand sweep of the arm. Light and quick as a leopard,
Chantel was on foot, erect, and even while his chair crashed on the
floor, had whipped out a handkerchief.
"You are right, Mr. Heywood," he said, stanching his lips, in icy
composure. His eyes held an odd gleam of satisfaction. "You are right.
We are not like ourselves, at present. I will better ask Mr. Sturgeon to
see your friend to-morrow morning. This morning, rather."
Not without dignity, he turned, stepped quickly to the stairs, saluted
gravely, and went down.
"No, no!" panted Nesbit, wrestling with Rudolph. "Easy on, now! Let you
go? No fear!"
Heywood wrenched the captive loose, but only to shake him violently, and
thrust him into a chair.
"Be quiet, you little ass!" he scolded. "I've a great mind, myself, to
run after the bounder and kick him. But that sort of thing--you did
enough. Who'd have thought? You young spitfire! Chantel took you on,
exactly as he wanted."
The fat sleeper continued to snore. Wutzler came slinking back from his
refuge in the shadows.
"It iss zo badt!" he whined, gulping nervously. "It iss zo badt!"
"Right you are," said Heywood. With arms folded, he eyed them sternly.
"It's bad. We might have known. If only I'd reached him first! By Jove,
you must let me fight that beast. Duels? The idiot, nobody fights duels
any more. I've always--His cuffs are always dirty, too, on the inside!"
Rudolph leaned back, like a man refreshed and comforted, but his laugh
was unsteady, and too boisterous.
"It is well," he bragged. "Pistol-bullets--they fly on the wings of
chance! No?--All is well."
"Pistols? My dear young gentleman," scoffed his friend, "there's not a
pair of matched pistols in the settlement. And if there were, Chantel
has the choice. He'll take swords."
He paused, in a silence that grew somewhat menacing. From a slit in the
wall the wheel of the punkah-thong whined insistently,--rise and fall,
rise and fall of peevish complaint, distressing as a brain-fever bird.
"Swords, of course," continued Heywood. "If only out of vanity.
Fencing,--oh, I hate the man, and the art's by-gone, if you like, but
he's a beautiful swordsman! Wonderful!"
Rudolph still lay back, but now with a singular calm.
"It's just as well," he declared quietly.
Heywood loosed a great breath, a sigh of vast relief.
"My word!" he cried, grinning. "So you're there, too, eh? You young
Sly-boots! If you're another expert--Bravo! We'll beat him at his own
game! Hoist with his own what-d'-ye-call-it! I'd give anything"--He
thumped the table, and pitched the cards broadcast, like an explosion of
confetti, in a little carnival of glee. "You old Sly-boots!--But are you
sure? He's quick as lightning."
"I am not afraid," replied Rudolph, modestly. He trained his young
moustache upward with steady fingers, and sat very quiet, thinking long
thoughts. A quaint smile played about his eyes.
"Good for you!" said Heywood. "Now let him come, as the Lord Mayor said
of the hare. What sport! With an even chance--And what a load off
one's mind!"
He moved away to the window, as though searching for air. Instead of
moonlight, without, there swam the blue mist of dawn.
"Not a word must ever reach old Gilly," he mused. "Do you hear, Nesbit?"
"If you think," retorted the clerk, stiffly, "I don't know the proper
course of be'aviour! Not likely!"
The tall silhouette in the window made no reply, but stood grumbling
privately: "A club! Yes, where we drink out of jam-pots--dead cushions,
dead balls--no veranda--fellow that soils the inside of his cuffs first!
We're a pack of beach-combers."
He propped his elbows on the long sill, and leaned out, venting
fragments of disgust. Then of a sudden he turned, and beckoned eagerly.
"Come here, you chaps. Look-see."
The others joined him. Gray vapors from river and paddy-field, lingering
like steam in a slow breeze, paled and dispersed in the growing light,
as the new day, worse than the old, came sullenly without breath or
respite. A few twilight shapes were pattering through the narrow
street--a squad of Yamên runners haling a prisoner.
"The Sword-Pen remains active," said Heywood, thoughtfully. "That dingy
little procession, do you know, it's quite theatrical? The Cross and the
Dragon. Eh? Another act's coming."
Even Rudolph could spare a misgiving from his own difficulty while he
watched the prisoner. It was Chok Chung, the plump Christian merchant,
slowly trudging toward the darkest of human courts, to answer for the
death of the cormorant-fisher. The squad passed by. Rudolph saw again
the lighted shop, the tumbled figure retching on the floor; and with
these came a memory of that cold and scornful face, thinking so cruelly
among the unthinking rabble. The Sword-Pen had written something in
the dark.
"I go find out"; and Wutzler was away, as keen as a village gossip.
"Trouble's comin'," Nesbit asserted glibly. "There's politics afloat.
But I don't care." He stretched his arms, with a weary howl. "That's the
first yawn I've done to-night. Trouble keeps, worse luck. I'm off--seek
my downy."
Alone with the grunting sleeper, the two friends sat for a long time and
watched the flooding daylight.
"What," began Rudolph, suddenly, and his voice trembled, "what is your
true opinion? You are so kind, and I was just a fool. That other day, I
would not listen. You laughed. Now tell me, so--as you were to die next.
You were joking? Can I truly be proud of--of her?"
He leaned forward, white and eager, waiting for the truth like a dicer
for the final throw.
"Of yourself, dear old chap. Not of the lady. She's the fool, not you.
Poor old Gilly Forrester slaves here to send her junketing in Japan,
Kashmir, Ceylon, Home. What Chantel said--well, between the two of us,
I'm afraid he's right. It's a pity."
Heywood paused, frowning.
"A pity, too, this quarrel. So precious few of us, and trouble ahead.
The natives lashing themselves into a state of mind, or being lashed.
The least spark--Rough work ahead, and here we are at swords' points."
"And the joke is," Rudolph added quietly, "I do not know a sword's point
from a handle."
Heywood turned, glowered, and twice failed to speak.
"Rudie--old boy," he stammered, "that man--Preposterous! Why, it's plain
murder!"
Rudolph stared straight ahead, without hope, without illusions, facing
the haggard light of morning. A few weeks ago he might have wept; but
now his laugh, short and humorous, was worthy of his companion.
"I do not care, more," he answered. "Luck, so called I it, when I
escaped the militar' service. Ho ho! Luck, to pass into the _Ersatz!_--I
do not care, now. I cannot believe, even cannot I fight.
Worthless--dreamer! My deserts. It's a good way out."