Nelia Crele had laughed in her heart at Elijah Rasba as he sat there
listening to her reading. She knew what she was doing to the mountain
parson! She played with his feelings, touched strings of his heart that
had never been touched before, teased his eyes with a picture of
feminine grace, stirred his mind with the sense of a woman who was
bright and who knew so much that he had never known. At the same time,
there was no malice in it--just the delight in making a strong man
discover a strength beyond his own, and in humbling a masculine pride by
the sheer superiority of a woman who had neglected no opportunity to
satisfy a hunger to know.
She knew the power of a single impression and a clear, quick getaway.
She left him dazed by the fortune which heaped upon him literary
classics in a dozen forms--fiction, essays, history, poetry, short
stories, criticism, fable, and the like; she laughed at her own quick
liking for the serious-minded, self-deprecatory, old-young man whose big
innocent eyes displayed a soul enamoured by the spirited intelligence of
an experienced and rather disillusioned young woman who had fled from
him partly because she did know what a sting it would give him.
So with light heart and singing tongue she floated away on the river,
not without a qualm at leaving those books with Rasba; she loved them
too much, but the sacrifice was so necessary--for his work! The river
needed him as a missionary. He could help ease the way of the old
sinners, and perhaps by and by he would reform her, and paint her again
with goodness where she was weather-beaten.
It is easy to go wrong on the Mississippi--just as easy, or easier, than
elsewhere in the world. The student of astronomy, gazing into the vast
spaces of the skies, feels his own insignificance increasing, while the
magnitude of the constellations grows upon him. What can it matter what
such a trifling thing, such a mere atom, as himself does when he is to
the worlds of less size than the smallest of living organisms in a drop
of water?
Nelia Crele looked around as she left the eddy and saw that her
houseboat was but a trifle upon a surface containing hundreds of square
miles. A human being opposite her on the bank was less in proportion
than a fly on the cabin window pane. Then what could it matter what she
did? Why shouldn't she be reckless, abandoned, and live in the gaiety of
ages?
She had read thousands of pages of all kinds with no guide posts or
moral landmarks. A picture of dangerous delights had come into her
imagination. Having read and understood so much, she had not failed to
discover the inevitable Nemesis on the trail of wrongdoing, as well as
the inevitableness of reward for steadfastness in virtues--but she
wondered doubtfully what virtue really was, whether she was not absolved
from many rigid commandments by the failure of the world to keep faith
with her and reward her for her own patience and atone for her own
sufferings.
It was easy, only too easy, on the surface to feel that if she wanted to
be gay and wanton, living for the hour, it was no one's affair but her
own. She fought the question out in her mind. She fixed her
determination on the young and, in one sense, inexperienced newspaper
man whose ambitions pleased her fancy and whose innocence delighted her
own mood.
He was down the river somewhere, and when she landed in at Mendova in
the late twilight she saw his skiff swinging from the stern of a
motorboat. Having made fast near it, she quickly learned that he had
gone up town, and that someone had heard him say that he was going to
Palura's.
Palura's! Nelia had heard the fascination of that den's ill-fame. She
laughed to herself when she thought that Terabon would excuse his going
there on the ground of its being right in his line of work, that he must
see that place because otherwise he would not know how to describe it.
"If I can catch him there!" she thought to herself.
She went to Palura's, and Old Mississippi seemed to favour her. She
found another woman who knew the ropes there and who was glad to help
her play the game. From a distance Nelia Crele discovered that Terabon
was with Carline, her own husband. She dismissed him with a shrug of her
shoulders, and told her companion to take care of him.
Nelia, having plagued the soul of the River Prophet, Rasba, now with
equal zest turned to seize Terabon, careless of where the game ended if
only she could begin it and carry it on to her own music and in her own
measure.
They had it all determined: Carline was to be wedged away with his
friend, a cotton broker that Daisy--Nelia's newfound accomplice--knew,
and Terabon was to be tempted to "do the Palace," and he was to be
caught unaware, by Nelia, who wanted to dance with him, dine with him
under bright lights, and drink dangerous drinks with him. She knew him
sober and industrious, good and faithful, a decent, reputable working
man--she wanted to see him waked up and boisterous, careless for her
sake and because of her desires.
She just felt wicked, wanted to be wicked, and didn't care how wicked
she might be. She counted, however, without the bonds which the
Mississippi River seems at times to cast around its favourites--the
Spirit of the river which looks after his own.
She had not even seen Policeman Laddam standing at the main entrance of
the notorious resort, for Daisy had taken her through another door. She
went to the exclusive "Third," and from there emerged onto the dancing
floor just as Palura ostentatiously went forth to drive Laddam away, or
to kill him.
Daisy checked her, for the minute or two of suspense, and then the whole
scene, the tragedy, was enacted before her gaze. She was not frightened;
she was not even excited; the thing was so astonishing that she did not
quite grasp its full import till she saw Palura stumbling back, shot
again and again. Daisy caught her arm and clutched it in dumb panic, and
when the policeman calmly bent the cohorts of the dead man to his will
and carried away his victims, Daisy dragged Nelia away.
Then Daisy disappeared and Nelia was left to her own devices.
She was vexed and disappointed. She knew nothing of the war in Mendova.
Politics had never engaged her attention, and the significance of the
artistic killing of Palura did not appear to her mind. She was simply
possessed by an indignant feminine impatience to think that Terabon had
escaped, and she was angry when she had only that glimpse of him, as
with his notebook in hand he raced his pencil across the blank pages,
jotting down the details and the hasty, essential impressions as he
caught them.
She heard the exodus. She heard women sobbing and men gasping as they
swore and fled. She gathered up her own cloak and left with reluctant
footsteps.
She realized that she had arrived there just one day too late to "do"
Palura's. The fugitives, as they scurried by, reminded her of some
description which she had read of the Sack of Rome; or was it the Fall
of Babylon? Their sins were being visited upon the wicked, and Nelia
Crele, since she had not sinned, could not thrill with quite the same
terror and despair of the wretches who had sinned in spite of their
consciences, instead of through ignorance or wantonness. She took her
departure not quite able to understand why there had been so much furore
because one man had been killed.
She was among the last to leave the accursed place, and she saw the
flight of the ones who had delayed, perhaps to loot, perhaps having just
awakened to the fact of the tragedy. She turned toward Mousa Slough, and
her little shanty-boat seemed very cool and bare that late evening. The
bookshelves were all empty, and she was just a little too tired to
sleep, just a little too stung by reaction to be happy, and rather too
much out of temper to be able to think straight and clearly on the
disappointment.
Mendova had been familiar in her ears since childhood; she had heard
stories of its wildness, its gayeties, its recklessness. Impression had
been made upon impression, so that when she had found herself nearing
the place of her dreams, she was in the mood to enter into its wildest
and gayest activities; she had expected to, and she had known in her own
mind that when she met Terabon she would be irresistible.
At last she shuddered. She seemed to hear a voice, the river's voice,
declare that this thing had happened to prevent her seeking to betray
herself and Terabon, not to mention that other matter which did not
affect her thought in the least, her husband's honour.
The idea of her husband's honour made the thing absurd to her. There was
no such thing as that honour. She had plotted to get Carline out of the
way now that she heard he was clear of the pirates. On second thought,
she was sorry that she had been so hasty in returning to the boat,
wishing that she had followed up Terabon.
She walked out onto the bow deck, and standing in the dark, with her
door closed, looked up and down the slough. A dozen boats were in sight.
She heard a number of men and women talking in near-by boats, and the
few words she heard indicated that the river people had a pretty morsel
of gossip in the killing of Palura.
She heard men rustling through the weeds and switch willows of the
boatmen's pathway, and she hailed; she was now a true river woman,
though she did not know it.
"Say, boys, do you know if Terabon and Carline landed here to-night?"
"We just landed in," one answered. "I don't know."
"Going up town?"
"Yes----"
"I want to know about them----"
"Hit's Nelia Crele!" one exclaimed.
"That's right. Hello, boys--Despard--Jet--Cope!"
"Sure! When'd you land?"
"Late this evening; I was up to Palura's when----"
"That ain't no place fo' a lady."
She laughed aloud, as she added, "I was there when Palura was killed by
the policeman."
"Palura killed a policeman!" Despard said. "He's killed----"
"No, Palura was killed by a policeman. Shot him dead right on the
dance-hall floor."
The pirates choked. The thing was unbelievable. They came down to the
boat and she described the affair briefly, and they demanded details.
They felt that it would vitally affect Mendova. They whispered among
themselves as to what it meant. They learned that a policeman had been
stationed in front of the notorious resort and that that policeman had
done the shooting during a fight with waiters and bouncers and with
Palura himself.
"We hadn't better get to go up town," Jet whimpered. "Hit don't sound
right!"
They argued and debated, and finally went on their way, having promised
Nelia that they would see and tell Terabon, on the quiet, that she had
come into the slough, and that she wanted to see him.
She waited for some time, hoping that Terabon would come, but finally
went to sleep. She was tired, and excitement had deserted her. She slept
more soundly than in some time.
Once she partly awakened, and thought that some drift log had bumped
into her boat; then she felt a gentle undulation, as of the waves of a
passing steamer, but she was too sleepy to contemplate that phenomenon
in a rather narrow water channel around a bend from the main current.
It was not till she had slept long and well that she began to dream
vividly. She was impatient with dreams; they were always full of
disappointment.
Daylight came, and sunshine penetrated the window under which she slept.
The bright rays fell upon her closed eyes and stung her cheeks. She
awakened with difficulty, and looked around wonderingly. She saw the
sunlight move along the wall and then drift back again. She felt the
boat teetering and swaggering. She looked out of the window and saw a
distant wood across the familiar, glassy yellow surface of the
Mississippi. With a low whisper of dismay she started out to look
around, and found that she was really adrift in mid-river.
On the opposite side of the boat she saw the blank side of a boat
against her cabin window. As she stood there, she heard or felt a motion
on the boat alongside. Someone stepped, or rather jumped heavily, onto
the bow deck of her boat and flung the cabin door open.
She sprang to get her pistol, and stood ready, as the figure of a man
stumbled drunkenly into her presence.