KAÚ FAI
At the top of the nunnery stairs, Rudolph met them with awkward
ceremony, and with that smiling air of encouragement which a nurse might
use in trying cheerfully to deceive a sick man. Heywood laughed, without
mercy, at this pious fraud.
"Hallo, you Red-Bristled Ghost!" he cried. "We came early--straight from
our walk. Are the rest coming? And did my cook arrive to help yours?"
Their host, carried by assault, at once became less mournful.
"The cook is here," he replied, "by the kitchen-sounds. They disagree, I
think. I have asked everybody. We should have a full dinner-table."
"Good," said his friend; and then whispering, as they followed Miss
Drake to the living-room, "I say, don't act as though you expected the
ghost of Banquo."
In the bare, white loft, by candle-light, Sturgeon sat midway in some
long and wheezy tale, to which the padre and his wife listened with true
forbearance. Greetings over, the stodgy annalist continued. The story
was forgotten as soon as ended; talk languished; and even by the quaking
light of the candles, it was plain that the silence was no mere waiting
solemnity before meat, but a period of tension.
The relief came oddly. Up from the road sounded a hubbub of voices, the
tramp of feet, and loud halloos.
"By Jove!" cried Sturgeon, like a man who fears the worst; and for all
his bulk, he was first at the window.
A straggling file of lanterns, borne by some small army, came jogging
and crowding to a halt under the walls. Yellow faces gleamed faintly,
bare heads bobbed, and men set down burdens, grunting. Among the
vanguard an angry voice scolded in a strange tongue. "_Burra suar!_" it
raged; then hailed imperiously, "_Ko hai?_"
Where the lanterns clustered brightest, an active little figure in white
waved a helmet, crying,--
"On deck! Where the devil does Maurice Heywood live?"
"I'm up here," called that young man.
For reply, the stranger began to skip among his cohorts, jerking out his
white legs like a dancing marionette. Then, with a sudden drop-kick, he
sent the helmet flickering high into the darkness over the wall.
"Here we come!" he shouted, in hilarious warning. The squabbling
retinue surged after him through the gate, and one by one the lanterns
disappeared under the covered way.
"It's the captain!" laughed Heywood, in amazement. "Kneebone--ashore! He
can't be sober!"
All stared; for Captain Kneebone, after one historically brief and
outspoken visit, had never in all these years set foot in the port. The
two young men hurried to the stairs.
Chinamen and lanterns crowded the courtyard, stuffed the passage, and
still came straggling in at the gate. By the noise and clatter, it might
have been a caravan, or a band of half-naked robbers bringing plunder.
Everywhere, on the stone flags, coolies were dumping down bundles,
boxes, jute-bags crammed with heavy objects. Among them, still brawling
in bad Hindustani, the little captain gave his orders. At sight of
Heywood, however, he began once more to caper, with extravagant
grimaces. By his smooth, ruddy face, and tunic of purest white, he
seemed a runaway parson gone farther wrong than ever.
"I've come to stay a month!" he cried; and dancing up, caught Heywood's
hands and whirled him about. "I was fair bursting to see ye, my boy! And
here we are, at last!"
Though his cheeks were flushed, and eyes alarmingly bright, he was
beyond question sober. Over his head, Heywood and Rudolph exchanged an
anxious glance.
"Good! but this is Hackh's house--the nunnery," said the one; and the
other added, "You're just in time for dinner."
The captain found these facts to be excruciating. He clapped Rudolph on
the arm, and crowed:--
"Nunnery? We'll make it a bloomin' chummery!--Dinner be 'anged! A
banquet. What's more, I've brought the chow"--he swept the huddled boxes
with a prodigal gesture,--"lashin's o' food and drink! That's what it
is: a banquet!"
He turned again to his sweating followers, and flung the head coolie a
handful of silver, crying, "_Sub-log kiswasti!_ Divide, and be off with
ye! _Jao_, ye beggars! Not a pice more. Finish! I'll not spend it all on
_you_!" Then, pouncing on the nearest crate, he burst it open with a
ferocious kick. "Stores? The choicest to be 'ad in all Saigong! Look
here"--He held up a tin and scanned the label triumphantly: "Chow de
Bruxelles, what? Never saw chow spelt with an 'x' before, did ye?
French, my boy. Bad spellers, but good cooks, are the French."
Heywood lost his worried frown. Something had happened,--evidently at
Calcutta, for the captain always picked up his vernacular where he
dropped his latest cargo; but at all events these vagaries were not the
effect of heat or loneliness.
"What's up, Captain?" he laughed.
But now that the coolies had gone, Captain Kneebone's heels were busy,
staving open boxes right and left. A bottle rolled out, and smashed in a
hissing froth of champagne.
"Plenty more," he cried, rejoicing. "That shows ye how much _I_ care!
Oho!" Suddenly he turned from this destruction, and facing Heywood,
began mysteriously to exult over him. "Old fool and his earnings, eh?
Fixed ideas, eh? 'No good,' says you. 'That cock won't fight,' says you.
'Let it alone.'--Ho-ho! What price fixed ideas now?"
The eyes of his young friend widened in unbelief.
"No," he cried, with a start: "you haven't?"
The captain seized both hands again, and took on--for his height--a
Roman stateliness.
"I have." He nodded solemnly. "Bar sells, I have. No more, now.
We'll--be-George, we'll announce it, at the banquet! Announce, that's
the word. First time in _my_ life: announce!"
Heywood suddenly collapsed on a sack, and laughed himself into abject
silence.
"Awfully glad, old chap," he at last contrived to say, and again
choked. The captain looked down at the shaking body with a singular,
benign, and fatherly smile.
"A funny world, ain't it?" he declared sagely. "I've known this boy a
long time," he explained to Rudolph. "This matter's--We'll let you in,
presently. Lend me some coolies here, while we turn your dinner into my
banquet. Eh? You don't care? Once in a bloomin' lifetime."
With a seafaring bellow, he helped Rudolph to hail the servants'
quarters. A pair of cooks, a pair of Number Twos, and all the
"learn-pidgin" youngsters of two households came shuffling into the
court; and arriving guests found all hands broaching cargo, in a loud
confusion of orders and miscomprehension.
The captain's dinner was the more brilliant. Throughout the long, white
room, in the slow breeze of the punkah, scores of candles burned soft
and tremulous, as though the old days had returned when the brown
sisters lighted their refectory; but never had their table seen such
profusion of viands, or of talk and laughter. The Saigon stores--after
daily fare--seemed of a strange and Corinthian luxury. The captain's
wine proved excellent. And his ruddy little face, beaming at the head of
the table, wore an extravagant, infectious grin. His quick blue eyes
danced with the light of some ineffable joke. He seemed a conjurer,
creating banquets for sheer mischief in the wilderness.
"There's a soup!" he had proclaimed. "Patent, mind ye! Stick a knife
into the tin, and she 'eats 'erself!"
Among all the revelers, one face alone showed melancholy. Chantel, at
the foot of the table, sat unregarded by all save Rudolph, who now and
then caught from him a look filled with gloom and suspicion. It was
beside Rudolph that Mrs. Forrester laughed and chattered, calling all
eyes toward her, and yet finding private intervals in which to dart a
sidelong shaft at her neighbor. Rudolph's ears shone coral pink; for now
again he was aboard ship, hiding a secret at once dizzy, dangerous, and
entrancing. Across the talk, the wine, the many lights, came the triumph
of seeing that other hostile face, glowering in defeat. Never before had
Chantel, and all the others, dwindled so far into such nonentity, or her
presence vibrated so near.
Soon he became aware that Captain Kneebone had risen, with a face
glowing red above the candles. Even Sturgeon forgot the flood of
bounties, and looked expectantly toward their source. The captain
cleared his throat, faltered, then turning sheepish all at once,
hung his head.
"Be 'anged, I can't make a speech, after all," he grumbled; and
wheeling suddenly on Heywood, with a peevish air of having been
defrauded: "Aboard ship I could sit and think up no end o' flowery talk,
and now it's all gone!"
He stared at his plate miserably. It was Miss Drake who came to his
rescue.
"Tell us the secret," she begged. "How do you manage all these nice
things?"
The captain's eyes surveyed the motley collection down the length of the
bright table, then returned to her, gratefully:--
"This ain't anything. Only a little--bloomin'--"
"Impromptu," suggested Heywood.
"That's the word!" Captain Kneebone eyed them both with uncommon favor.
"That's it, ye know. I just 'opped about Saigong like a--jackdaw,
picking up these impromptus. But I came here all the way to break the
news proper, by word o' mouth."
He faced the company, and gathering himself for the effort,--
"I'm rich," he declared. "I'm da--I'm remarkable rich."
Pausing for the effect, he warmed to his oratory.
"It ain't for me to boast. Sailormen as a rule are bad hands to save
money. But I've won first prize in the Derby Sweepstake Lott'ry, and the
money's safe to my credit at the H.K. and S. in Calcutta, and I'm
retired and going Home! More money than the old Kut Sing earned since
her launching--so much I was frightened, first, and lost my sleep! And
me without chick nor child, as the saying is--to go Home and live
luxurious ever after!"
"Ow!" cried Nesbit, "lucky beggar!"--"Sincerely glad," said Mr.
Forrester. And a volley of compliments went round the board. The captain
plainly took heart, and flushing still redder at so much praise and good
will, stood now at ease, chuckling.
"Most men," he began, when there came a lull, "most men makes a will
after they're dead. That's a shore way o' doing things! Now _I_ want to
see the effects, living. So be 'anged, here goes, right and proper. To
Miss Drake, for her hospital and kiddies, two thousand rupees."
In the laughter and friendly uproar, the girl sat dazed.
"What shall I say?" she whispered, wavering between amusement and
distress. "I can't accept it--"
"Nonsense!" grumbled Heywood, with an angry glance. "Don't spoil the
happiest evening of an old man's life."
"You're right," she answered quickly; and when the plaudits ended, she
thanked the captain in a very simple, pretty speech, which made him
duck and grin,--a proud little benefactor.
"That ain't all," he cried gayly; then leveled a threatening finger,
like a pistol, at her neighbor. "Who poked fun at me, first and last?
Who always came out aboard to tell me what an old ass I was? Fixed
ideas, eh? No go?--Look you here. What did I come so many hundred miles
for? To say what I always said: half-shares." The light-blue eyes, keen
with sea-cunning and the lonely sight of many far horizons, suffered an
indescribable change. "My boy, the half's yours. There's two rich men
here to-night. I've come to take you Home."
It was Heywood's turn to be struck dumb. He grew very pale.
"Oh, I say," he stammered at last, "it's not fair--"
"Don't spoil the happiest evening--" whispered the girl beside him.
He eyed her ruefully, groaned, then springing up, went swiftly to the
head of the table and wrung the captain's brown paw, without a word
to say.
"Can do, can do," said Captain Kneebone, curtly. "I was afraid ye might
not want to come."
Then followed a whirlwind; and Teppich rose with his moustache
bristling, and the ready Nesbit jerked him down again in the opening
sentence; and everybody laughed at Heywood, who sat there so white,
with such large eyes; and the dinner going by on the wings of night, the
melancholy "boy" circled the table, all too soon, with a new silver
casket full of noble cigars from Paiacombo, Manila, and Dindigul.
As the three ladies passed the foot of the table, Rudolph saw Mrs.
Forrester make an angry signal. And presently, like a prisoner going to
his judge, Chantel slipped out of the room. He was not missed; for
already the streaming candle-flames stood wreathed in blue layers, nor
was it long before the captain, mounting his chair, held a full
glass aloft.
"Here," he cried in triumph, "here's to every nail in the hoof--"
The glass crashed into splinters and froth. A flying stone struck the
boom of the punkah, and thumped on the table. Through the open windows,
from the road, came a wild chorus of yells, caught up and echoed by many
voices in the distance.
"Shutters!" called Heywood. "Quick!"
As they slammed them home, more stones drummed on the boards and
clattered against the wall. Conches brayed somewhere, followed by an
unaccountable, sputtering fusillade as of tiny muskets, and then by a
formidable silence. While the banqueters listened in the smoky room,
there came a sullen, heavy sound, like a single stroke on a large and
very slack bass-drum.
"_Kaú fai!_" shrilled the voices below; and then in a fainter gabble, as
though hurrying off toward the sound,--"_kaú fai!_"
"The Black Dog," said Heywood, quietly. "He has barked. Earlier than we
figured, Gilly. Lucky the scaffolding's up. Gentlemen, we all know our
posts. Guns are in the first bedroom. Quietly, now. Rudie, go call
Chantel. Don't frighten the women. If they ask about that noise, tell
'em anything--Dragon Boat Festival beginning. Anything.--We can easily
hold this place, while the captain gets 'em out to his ship."
The captain wheeled, with an injured air.
"What ship?" he inquired testily. "Told ye, plain, I was retired. Came
the last bit in a stinking native boat, and _she's_ cleared by now.
Think I carry ships in my pocket?"
Outside, the swollen discord of shouts, thunder of gongs, and hoarse
calling of the conches came slowly nearer, extending through
the darkness.