Out in the dark of Lovett's Court I found people all about me, the
congregation, let out, hobbling and skipping and jostling shoreward, a
curious rout. Others were there, not of the church; Kibby Baker, the
atheist, who had heard the news through the church window where he
peeped at the worshipers; Miah White's brother, the ship-calker,
summoned by his sister; a score of others, herding down the dark wind.
At the shore street, folks were coming from the Westward. It was strange
to see them all and to think it was only a heathen dying.
Or, perhaps, it wasn't so strange, when one remembered Minister Malden
coming down the years with that light in his eyes, building his slow
edifice, like one in Israel prophesying the coming of the Messiah.
I shall never forget the picture I saw that night from the deck of the
Chinaman's scow. The water here in the lee was as smooth as black glass,
save for the little ground-swell that rocked the outer end of the craft.
The tide was rising; the grounded end would soon be swimming. There were
others on the deck with me, and more on the dock overhead, their faces
picked out against the sky by the faint irradiations from the lighted
shanty beneath. And over and behind it all ran the tumult of the
elements; behind it the sea, where it picked up on the Bight out there
beyond our eyes; above it the wind, scouring the channels of the crowded
roofs and flinging out to meet the waters, like a ravening and
disastrous bride.
Mate Snow stood by the counter in the little cabin, his close-cropped
head almost to the beams, his voice, dry austere, summoning the Chinaman
to repentance. "Verily, if a man be not born again, he shall not enter
into the Kingdom of Heaven." His eyes skipped to the door.
"And to be born again," he went on with a hint of haste, "you must
confess, Yen Sin, and have faith. That is enough. The outer and inner
manifestations--confession and faith."
"Me, Mista Yen Sin--confessee?"
A curious and shocking change had come over the Chinaman in the little
time I had been away. He lay quite motionless on his couch, with a bit
of silken tapestry behind his head, like a heathen halo protecting him
at last. He was more alive than he had been, precisely because the life
had gone out of him, and he was no longer bothered with it. His face was
a mask, transparent and curiously luminous, and there for the first time
I saw the emotion of humor, which is another name for perception.
His unclouded eyes found me by the door and he moved a hand in a vague
gesture. I went, walking stiff-legged, awe mingling with
self-importance.
"Mista Boy, please," he whispered in my ear. "The collas on the shelf
theah. Led paypah--"
Wondering, I took them down and piled them on the couch beside him, one
after another, little bundles done up carefully in flaring tissue with
black characters inked on them.
"That one!" he whispered, and I undid the one under his finger,
discovering half a dozen collars, coiled with their long imprisonment.
"And that one, and that one--"
They covered his legs and rose about his thin shoulders, those treasured
soiled collars of his, gleaming under the lamp like the funeral-pyre of
some fantastic potentate. Nothing was heard in the room save the faint
crackling of the paper, and after a moment Lem Pigeon murmuring in
amazement to his neighbor, over in a corner.
"Look a-there, will ye? He's got my collar with the blood spot onto it
where the Lisbon woman's husband hit me that time down to New Bedford.
What ye make o' that now?"
Yen Sin lifted his eyes to Mate Snow's hanging over him in wonder.
"Mista Matee Snow confessee, yes?"
There was a moment of shocked silence while our great man stared at Yen
Sin. He took his weight from the counter and stood up straight.
"I confess my sins to God," he said.
The other moved a fluttering hand over his collars. "Mista Yen Sin allee
same like Mista God, yes."
In the hush I heard news of the blasphemy whispering from lip to lip,
out the door and up the awe-struck dock. Mate Snow lifted a hand.
"Stop!" he cried. "Yen Sin, you are standing in the Valley of the Shadow
of Death--"
"Mista Matee Snow wickee man? No? Yes? Mista Matee Snow confessee?"
The Chinaman was making a game of his death-bed, and even the dullest
caught the challenge. Mate Snow understood. The yellow man had asked him
with the divine clarity of the last day either to play the game or not
to play the game. And Mate Snow wanted something enough to play.
"Yes," he murmured, "I am weak. All flesh is weak." He faltered, and his
brow was corded with the labor of memory. It is hard for a good man to
summon up sins enough to make a decent confession; nearly always they
fall back in the end upon the same worn and respectable category.
"I confess to the sin of pride," he pronounced slowly. "And to good
deeds and kind acts undone; to moments of harshness and impatience--"
"Mista Matee Snow confessee?" Yen Sin shook a weary protest at the
cheater wasting the precious moments with words. Mate Snow lifted his
eyes, and I saw his face whiten and a pearl of sweat form on his
forehead. A hush filled the close cave of light, a waiting silence,
oppressive and struck with a new expectancy. Little sounds on the dock
above became important--young Gilman Pilot's voice, cautioning: "Here,
best take my hand on that ladder, Mr. Malden. Last rung's carried away."
It was curious to see Mate Snow's face at that; it was as if one read
the moving history of years in it as he leaned over the counter and
touched the dying man's breast with a passion strange in him.
"I will tell you how wicked I am, Yen Sin. Three years ago I did Ginny
Silva out of seventy dollars wages in the bogs; and if he's here tonight
I'll pay him the last cent of it. And--and--" He appealed for mercy to
the Chinaman's unshaken eyes. Then, hearing the minister on the deck
behind, he cast in the desperate sop of truth. "And--_and I have coveted
my neighbor's wife_!"
It was now that Minister Malden cried from the doorway: "That is
nothing, Yen Sin--_nothing_--when you think of _me_!"
You may laugh. But just then, in that rocking death-chamber, with the
sea and the dark and the wind, no one laughed. Except Yen Sin, perhaps;
he may have smiled, though the mask of his features did not move.
Minister Malden stepped into the room, and his face was like new ivory.
"Look at me! I have wanted to bring your soul to Christ before I died.
That is white, but all the rest of me is black. I have lived a lie; I
have broken a law of God; to cover that I have broken another,
another--"
His voice hung in the air, filled with a strange horror of itself. The
Chinaman fingered his collars. Without our consent or our understanding,
he had done the thing which had so shocked us when he said it with his
lips; the heathen sat in judgment, weighing the sins of our little
world.
"Yes?" he seemed to murmur. "And then?"
The minister's eyes widened; pain lifted him on his toes.
"I am an adulterer," he cried. "And my child is a--a--bastard. Her
mother's husband, Joshua Gibbs, didn't go down with his vessel after
all. He was alive when I married her. He is alive today, a wanderer. He
learned of things and sent me a letter; it found me at the Infield
Conference the day before I came home that time to see my baby. Since
that day it has seemed to me that I would suffer the eternity of the
damned rather than that that stain should mar my child's life, and in
the blackness of my heart I have believed that it wouldn't if it weren't
known. I have kept him quiet; I have hushed up the truth. I have paid
him money, leaving it for him where he wrote me to leave it. I have gone
hungry and ragged to satisfy him. I have begged my living of a friend. I
have drained the life of the woman I love. And yet he is never content.
And I have betrayed even _him_. For he forbade me to see his wife ever
again, or even to know the child I had begotten, and I have gone to
them, in secret, by night. I have sinned not alone against God, but
against the devil. I have sinned against--_everything_!"
* * *
The fire which had swept him on left him now of a sudden, his arms hung
down at his sides, his head drooped. It was Mate Snow who broke the
silence, falling back a step, as if he had been struck.
"God forgive me," he said in awe. "And _I_ have kept you here. _You_! To
preach the word of God to these people. God forgive me!"
"I think Mista God laugh, yes."
Yen Sin wasn't laughing himself; he was looking at his collars. Mate
Snow shrugged his shoulders fiercely, impatient of the interruption.
"I have kept you here," he pursued bitterly, "for the good of my own
soul, which would have liked to drive you away. I have kept you here,
even when you wanted to go away--"
"Little mousie want to go away. Little cat say, 'no--no.'" Yen Sin's
head turned slowly and he spoke on to the bit of yellow silk, his words
clear and powerless as a voice in a dream. "No--no, Mousie, stay with
little cat. Good little cat. Like see little mousie jump. Little cat!"
Mate Snow wheeled on him, and I saw a queer sight on his face for an
instant; the gray wrinkles of age. My cousin Duncan was there, constable
of Urkey village, and he saw it too and came a step out of his corner.
It was all over in a wink; Mate Snow lifted his shoulders with a sigh,
as much as to say: "You can see how far gone the poor fellow is."
The Chinaman, careless of the little by-play, went on.
"Mista Sam Kow nice China fella. Mista Minista go to Mista Sam Kow in
Infield, washy colla. Mista Yen Sin lite a letta to Mista Sam Kow, on
Mista Minista colla-band. See? Mista Sam Kow lite a letta back on
colla-band. See?"
We saw--that the yellow man was no longer talking at random, but slowly,
with his eyes on the collar he held in his hand, like a scholar in his
closet, perusing the occult pages of a chronicle.
"Mista Sam Kow say: 'This man go night-time in Chestnut Stleet; pickee
out letta undah sidewalk, stickee money-bag undah sidewalk, cly, shivah,
makee allee same like sick fella. Walkee all lound town allee night.
Allee same like Chlistian dlunk man. No sleepee. That's all--Sam Kow.'
Mista Yen Sin keepee colla when Mista Minista come back; give new colla:
one, two, five, seven time; Mista Minista say: 'You washy colla fine,
Yen Sin: this colla, allee same like new.' Mista Matee Snow, his colla
allee same like new, too--"
* * *
Something happened so suddenly that none of us knew what was going on.
But there was my cousin Duncan standing by the counter, his arm and
shoulder still thrust forward with the blow he had given; and there was
our great man of the hill flung back against the wall with a haggard
grimace set on his face.
"No, you don't!" Duncan growled, his voice shivering a little with
excitement. "No, you don't, Mate!"
Mate Snow screamed, and his curse was like the end of the world in Urkey
island.
"Curse you! The man's a thief, I tell you. He's stolen my property! I
demand my property--those collars there in his hand now. You're
constable, you say. Well, I want my--"
He let himself down on the bench, as if the strength had left his knees.
"He's going to tell you lies," he cried. "He's making fools of you all
with his--his--Duncan, boy! Don't listen to the black liar. He's going
to try and make out 'twas _me_ put the letter under the walk in Chestnut
Street, up there to Infield; that it was _me_, all these years, that
went back and got out money he put there. _Me! Mate Snow._ Duncan, boy;
he's going to tell you a low, black-hearted lie!"
"_How do you know?_" That was all my cousin Duncan said.
To the dying man, nothing made much difference. It was as if he had only
paused to gather his failing breath, and when he spoke his tone was the
same, detached, dispassionate, with a ghost of humor running through it.
"How many times?" He counted the collars with a finger tip. "One two,
tlee, six, seven time. Seven yeahs. Too bad. Any time Mista Minista
wantee confessee, Mista God makee allee light. Mista Yen Sin allee same
like Mista God. Wait. Wait. Wait. Laugh. Cly inside!"
Mate Snow was leaning forward on the bench in a queer, lazy attitude,
his face buried in his hands and his elbows propped on his knees. But no
one looked at him, for Minister Malden was speaking in the voice of one
risen from the dead, his eyes blinking at the Chinaman's lamp.
"Then you mean--you mean that he--isn't alive? After all? That he wasn't
alive--_then_? You mean it was all a--a kind of a--_joke_? I--I--Oh,
Mate! _Mate Snow!_"
It was queer to see him turning with his news to his traditional
protector. It had been too sudden; his brain had been so taken up with
the naked miracle that Gibbs was not alive that all the rest of it, the
drawn-out and devious revenge of the druggist, had somehow failed to get
into him as yet.
"Mate Snow!" he cried, running over to the sagging figure. "Did you
hear, Mate? Eh? It isn't true! It was all a--a joke, Mate!" He shook
Snow's shoulder with a pleading ecstasy. "It's been a mistake, Mate, and
I am--she is--little Hope is--"
He fell back a step, letting the man lop over suddenly on his doubled
knees, and stared blankly at a tiny drug-phial, uncorked and empty,
rolling away across the floor. He passed a slow hand across his eyes.
"Why--why--I--I'm afraid Mate is--isn't very--well."
Urkey had held its tongue too long. Now it was that the dam gave way and
the torrent came whirling down and a hundred voices were lifted. Crowds
and shadows distracted the light. One cried. "The man's dead, you fools;
can't you see?" A dozen took it up and it ran out and away along the
rumbling dock. "Doctor!" another bawled. "He's drank poison! Where's the
doctor at?" And that, too, went out, and a faint shout answered from
somewhere shoreward that the doctor was out at Si Pilot's place and Miah
White was after him, astraddle of the tar-wagon horse. Through it all I
can remember Aunt Nickerson's wail continuing, undaunted and
unquenchable, "God save our souls! God save our souls!"
And then, following the instinct of the frightened pack, they were all
gone of a sudden, carrying the dead man to meet the doctor. I would
have gone, too, and I had gotten as far as the door at their heels, when
I paused to look back at the Chinaman.
He lay so still over there on the couch--the thought came to me that he,
too, was dead. And of a sudden, leaning there on the door-frame, the
phantom years trooped back to me, and I saw the man for the first time
moving through them--a lone, far outpost of the thing he knew, one
yellow man against ten thousand whites, unshaken, unappalled, facing the
odds, working so early, so late, day after day and year after year, and
smiling a little, perhaps, as he peeped behind the scenes of the thing
which we call civilization. Yes, cry as he might inside, he must have
smiled outside, sometimes, through those years of terror, at the sight
of Minister Malden shrinking at the shadow of the ghost of something
that was nothing, to vanish at a touch of light.
And now his foreign service was ended; his post was to be relieved; and
he could go wherever he wanted to go.
Not quite yet. He had been dreaming, that was all. His eyes opened, and
rested, not on me, but to the right of me. Then I saw for the first time
that I wasn't alone in the room with him after all, but that Minister
Malden was standing there, where he had stood through all the din like a
little boy struck dumb before a sudden Christmas tree.
And like a little boy, he went red and white and began to stammer.
"I--I--Yen Sin--" He held his breath a moment. Then it came out all
together. "_I'll run and fetch them--both!_" With that he was past me,
out of the door and up the ladder, and I heard his light feet drumming
on the dock, bearing such news as never was.
* * *
The Chinaman's eyes had come to me now, and there was a queer light in
them that I couldn't understand. An adventure beyond my little
comprehension was taking shape behind them, and all I knew enough to do
was to sneak around behind the counter and take hold of one of his
fingers and shake it up and down, like one man taking a day's leave of
another. His eyes thanked me for my violence; then they were back again
to their mysterious speculations. An overweening excitement gathered in
them. He frightened me. Quite abruptly, as if an unexpected reservoir of
energy had been tapped, the dying man lifted on an elbow and slid one
leg over the edge of the couch. Then he glanced at me with an air almost
furtive.
"Boy," he whispered. "Run quick gettee Mista Minista, yes."
"But he's coming _himself_," I protested. "You better lay back."
"Mista Yen Sin askee _please_! Please, boy."
What was there for me to do? I ran. Once on the dock above, misgivings
assailed me. I was too young, and the night was too appalling. I had
forgotten the wind, down in the cabin, but in the open here I felt its
weight. It grew all the while; its voice drowned the world now, and
there was spindrift through it, picked from the back shore of the island
and flung all the way across. Objects were lost in it; ghostly things,
shore lights, fish-houses, piers, strained seaward. I heard the packet's
singing masts at the next wharf, but I saw no packet. The ponderous scow
below me became a thing of life and light, an eager bird fluttering at
its bonds and calling to the wide spaces. To my bewildered eyes it
seemed to move--it _was_ moving, shaking off the heavy hands of bondage,
joining itself with the wind. I got down on my knees of a sudden and
peered at the deck.
"_Yen Sin!_" I screamed. "_What you doin' out there?_"
I saw him dimly in the open air outside his door, fumbling and fumbling
at something. This was his great adventure, the thing that had gleamed
in his eyes and had tapped that unguessed reservoir of strength. His
voice crept back to me, harassed by the wind,
"This velly funny countly, Mista Boy. Mista Yen Sin go back China way."
His bow-line was fast to an iron ring on the wharf. I wanted to hold him
back, and I clutched at the rope with my hands as if my little strength
were something against that freed thing. The line came up to me easily,
cast off from the scow at the other end.
He was waning. His window and door and the little fan-light before the
door were all I could see now, and even that pattern blurred and became
uncertain and ghostly on the mat of the night. He was clear of the
wharves now, and the wind had him--sailing China way--so peaceful, so
dreamless, surrounded by his tell-tale cargo of Urkey's unwashed
collars.
* * *
I don't know how long it was I crouched there on the timbers, staring
out into the havoc of that black night, and listening to the hungry
clamor of the Bight. I must have been crying for the minister, over and
over, without knowing it, for when my cousin Duncan's hand fell on my
shoulder and I started up half out of my wits, he pointed a finger
toward the outer edge of the wharf.
And there they were in a little close group, Sympathy Gibbs standing
straight with the child in her arms, and Minister Malden down on his
knees. There were many people on the pier, all with their eyes to sea,
all except Sympathy Gibbs; hers were up-shore, where Mate Snow lay in
state on his own counter, all his sweet revenge behind him and gone.
I thought little Hope was asleep in the swathing shawl, till I saw the
dark round spots of her eyes. If it was a strange night for the others,
it was stranger still to her.
The wind and the rain beat on Minister Malden's bended back. He loved it
that way. The missionary was praying for the soul of the heathen.