Fate Knocks At The Door
_A Novel_
By
Will Levington Comfort
Author of
"Routledge Rides Alone,"
"She Buildeth Her House," etc.
1912
In speaking of the first four notes of the opening movement, Beethoven
said, some time after he had finished the Fifth Symphony: "So pocht das
Shicksal an die Pforte" ("Thus Fate Knocks at the Door"); and between
that opening knock, and the tremendous rush and sweep of the Finale,
the emotions which come into play in the great conflicts of life are
depicted.
--From Upton's _Standard Symphonies_.
To
THE MOTHERS OF MEN
Contents
I. ASIA. (_Allegro con brio_.)
First Chapter: The Great Wind Strikes
Second Chapter: The Pack-Train in Luzon
Third Chapter: Red Pigment of Service
Fourth Chapter: That Adelaide Passion
Fifth Chapter: A Flock of Flying Swans
Sixth Chapter: That Island Somewhere
Seventh Chapter: _Andante con Moto_--Fifth
Eighth Chapter: The Man from _The Pleiad_
II. NEW YORK. (_Andante con moto_.)
Ninth Chapter: The Long-Awaited Woman
Tenth Chapter: The Jews and the Romans
Eleventh Chapter: Two Davids Come to Beth
Twelfth Chapter: Two Lesser Adventures
Thirteenth Chapter: About Shadowy Sisters
Fourteenth Chapter: This Clay-and-Paint Age
Fifteenth Chapter: The Story of the Mother
Sixteenth Chapter: "Through Desire for Her."
Seventeenth Chapter: The Plan of the Builder
Eighteenth Chapter: That Park Predicament
Nineteenth Chapter: In the House of Grey One
Twentieth Chapter: A Chemistry of Scandal
Twenty-first Chapter: The Singing Distances
Twenty-second Chapter: Beth Signs the Picture
Twenty-third Chapter: The Last Ride Together
Twenty-fourth Chapter: A Parable of Two Horses
III. EQUATORIA. (_Allegro. Scherzo_.)
Twenty-fifth Chapter: Bedient for _The Pleiad_
Twenty-sixth Chapter: How Startling is Truth
Twenty-seventh Chapter: The Art of Miss Mallory
Twenty-eighth Chapter: A Further Note from Rey
Twenty-ninth Chapter: At _Treasure Island Inn_
Thirtieth Chapter: Miss Mallory's Mastery
Thirty-first Chapter: The Glow-worm's One Hour
Thirty-second Chapter: In the Little Room Next
Thirty-third Chapter: The Hills and the Skies
Thirty-fourth Chapter: The Supreme Adventure
Thirty-fifth Chapter: Fate Knocks at the Door
IV. NEW YORK. (_Allegro. Finale_.)
Thirty-sixth Chapter: The Great Prince House
Thirty-seventh Chapter: Beth and Adith Mallory
Thirty-eighth Chapter: A Self-Conscious Woman
Thirty-ninth Chapter: Another _Smilax_ Affair
Fortieth Chapter: Full Day Upon the Plain
FATE KNOCKS AT THE DOOR
I
ASIA
_Allegro con brio_
FIRST CHAPTER
THE GREAT WIND STRIKES
Andrew Bedient, at the age of seventeen, in a single
afternoon,--indeed, in one moment of a single afternoon,--performed an
action which brought him financial abundance for his mature years.
Although this narrative less concerns the boy Bedient than the man as
he approaches twice seventeen, the action is worthy of account, beyond
the riches that it brought, because it seems to draw him into somewhat
clearer vision from the shadows of a very strange boyhood.
April, 1895, the _Truxton_, of which Andrew was cook, found herself
becalmed in the China Sea, midway between Manila and Hong Kong, her
nose to the North. She was a smart clipper of sixty tons burden, with a
slightly uptilted stern, and as clever a line forward as a pleasure
yacht. She was English, comparatively new, and, properly used by the
weather, was as swift and sprightly of service as an affectionate
woman. Her master was Captain Carreras, a tubby little man of
forty-five, bald, modest, and known among the shipping as "a perfect
lady." He wore a skull-cap out of port; and as constantly, except
during meals, carried one of a set of rarely-colored meerschaum-bowls,
to which were attachable, bamboo-stems, amber-tipped and of various
lengths.
The little Captain was fastidious in dress, wearing soft shirts of
white silk, fine duck trousers and scented silk handkerchiefs, which he
carried in his left hand with the meerschaum-bowl. The Carreras
perfume, mingled with fresh tobacco, was never burdensome, and unlike
any other. The silk handkerchief was as much a feature of the Captain's
appearance as the skull-cap. To it was due the really remarkable polish
of the perfect clays so regularly cushioned in his palm. Always for
dinner, the Captain's toilet was fresh throughout. Invariably, too, he
brought with him an unfolded handkerchief upon which he placed, at the
farther end of the table when the weather was fair (and in the socket
of the fruit-bowl when the weather-frames were on), a ready-filled
pipe. This he took to hand when coffee was brought.
His voice was seldom raised. He found great difficulty in expressing
himself, except upon affairs of the ship; yet, queerly enough, there
were times when he seemed deeply eager to say the things which came of
his endless silences. As unlikely a man as you would find in the
Pacific, or any other merchant-service, was this Carreras; a gentleman,
if a very bashful one; a deeply-read and kindly man, although it was
quite as difficult for him to extend a generous action, directly to be
found out,--and his mind was continually furnishing inclinations of
this sort,--as it was to express his thoughts. Either brought on a
nervous tension which left him shaken and drained. The right woman
would have adored Captain Carreras, and doubtless would have called
forth from his breast a love of heroic dimension; but she would have
been forced to do the winning; to speak and take the initiative in all
but the giving of happiness. Temperate for a bachelor, clean
throughout, charmingly innocent of the world, and a splendid seaman. To
one of fine sensibilities, there was something about the person of
Captain Carreras of softly glowing warmth, and rarely tender.
Bedient had been with him as cook for over a year, during which the
_Truxton_ had swung down to Australia and New South Wales, and called
at half the Asiatic and insular ports from Vladivostok to Bombay. Since
he was a little chap (back of which were the New York memories, vague,
but strange and persistent), there had always been some ship for
Bedient, but the _Truxton_ was by far the happiest.... It was from the
_Truxton_ just a few months before that he had gone ashore day after
day for a fortnight at Adelaide; and a wee woman five years older, and
a cycle wiser, had invariably been waiting with new mysteries in her
house.... Moreover, on the _Truxton_, he had nothing to do with the
forecastle galley--there was a Chinese for that--and Captain Carreras,
fancying him from the beginning, had quartered him aft, where, except
on days like this, when Mother Earth's pneumatic cushion seemed limp
and flattened, there was a breeze to hammock in, and plenty of candles
for night reading.
Then the Captain had a box of books, the marvel of which cannot begin
to be described. Andrew's books were but five or six, chosen for great
quantity and small bulk; tightly and toughly bound little books of
which the Bible was first. This was his book of fairies, his Aesop; his
book of wanderings and story, of character and mystery; his
revelations, the source of his ideality, the great expander of
limitations; his book of love and adventure and war; the book
unjudgable and the bed-rock of all literary judgment. He knew the Bible
as only one can who has played with it as a child; as only one can who
has found it alone available, when an insatiable love of print has
swept across the young mind. Nothing could change him now; this was his
book of Fate.
Except for those vision-times in the big city, Andrew could not
remember when he had not read the Bible, nor did he remember learning
to read. He seemed to have forgotten how to read before he came to sea
at seven, but when an old sailor pointed out on the stern of the
jolly-boat, the letters that formed the name of his first ship--it had
all come back to the child; and then he found his first Bible. Slowly
conceiving its immensity, its fullness _for him_--he was almost lifted
from his body with the upward winging of happiness. It was his first
great exaltation, and there was a sacredness about it which kept him
from telling anybody.... And now all the structures of the great
Scripture were tenoned in his brain; so that he knew the frame of every
part, but the inner meanings of more and more marvellous dimension
seemed inexhaustible. Always excepting the great Messianic Figure--the
white tower of his consciousness--he loved Saint Paul and the
Forerunner best among the men....
There was also a big book in the Captain's chest--_Life and Death on
the Ocean_--quarto-sized and printed in agate. It was filled with
mutiny, murder, storm, open-boat cannibalism and agonies of thirst,
handspike and cutlass inhumanities. No shark, pirate nor man-killing
whale had been missed; no ghastly wreck, derelict nor horrifying
phantom of the sea had escaped the nameless, furious compiler. For four
days and nights, Andrew glared consumingly into this terrible book, and
when he came to the writhing "Finis," involved in a sort of typhoon
tailpiece--he was whipped, and never could bring himself to touch the
book again. One reading had burned out his entire interest. It was not
Life nor Death nor Ocean, as he had seen them in ten solid years at
sea. He had given the book his every emotion, and discovered it gave
nothing back; but had shaken, terrified, played furious _tarantellas_
upon his feelings--and replenished naught. So he turned for unguent to
his Book of Books. Here was the strong steady light in contrast to
which the other was an "angled spar." True, here crawled hate, avarice,
lust, flesh and its myriad forms of death--not in their own elemental
darkness--but as scurrying vermin forms suddenly drenched with
light.... There were other and really wonderful books in Captain
Carreras' chest--a bashful welcome to his cabin, and such eager lending
from the Captain himself!
This had become a pleasant feature in the young man's life--the queer
kindly heart of the Captain. There were few confidences between them,
but a fine unspoken regard, pleasing and permanent like the Carreras
perfume. Bedient's desire to show his gratitude and admiration was
expressed in ways that could not possibly shock the Captain's
delicacy--in the small excellences of his art, for instance. To say
that the boy was consummate in the limited way of a ship's cook does
not overstate his effectiveness. He did unheard-of things--even fruit
and berry-pies, from preserves two years, at least, remote from vine
and orchard. The two mates and boatswain, who also messed aft, bolted
without speech, but marvelled between meals. To these three, the
tension of the Captain's embarrassment became insupportable, beyond
four or five minutes; so that Carreras, a discriminating, though not a
valiant trencherman, was always the last to leave the table.
And once after a first supper at sea out of Singapore (there had been a
green salad, a fish baked whole, a cut of ham with new potatoes, and a
peach-preserve tart), the Captain put down his napkin and coffee-cup,
drank a _liqueur_, reached for his pipe and handkerchief, and suddenly
encountering the eyes of Andrew, who lit a flare for him, jerked up
decisively, as one encountering a crisis. His face became hectic, and
the desperate sentence he uttered was almost lost in the frantic
clearing of his throat:
"You're a very prime and wonderful chap, sir!"
Moreover, Bedient's arm had been pressed for an instant by the softest,
plumpest hand seaman ever carried. Coughing alarmingly in the first
fragrant cloud from his Latakia and Virginia leaf, the Captain beat
forth to recover himself on deck.
* * * * *
The _Truxton_ was now six days out of Manila. For the past thirty-six
hours, she might as well have been sunk in pitch, for any progress she
made.... The ship's bell had just struck four. Bedient had finished
clearing away tiffin things, and stepped on deck. The planking was like
the galley-range he had left, and the fresh white paint of the three
boats raised in blisters. The sea had an ugly look, yellow-green and
dead, save where a shark's fin knifed the surface. The crew was lying
forward under the awnings--a fiend-tempered outfit of Laskars and
Chinese. Captain Carreras appeared on deck through the companion-way
still farther aft and nodded to Bedient. Then both men looked at the
sky, which was brassy above, but thickening in the North. It augmented
darkly and streakily--like a tub of water into which bluing is added
drop by drop.... A Chinese arose and tossed a handful of joss-tatters
into the still air. And now the voice of the Captain brought the rest
of the crew to its feet.
The China Sea can generate much deviltry to a square mile. The calm of
death and the burn of perdition are in its bosom. Cholera, glutted with
victims, steals to his couch in the China Sea; and since it is the pool
of a thousand unclean rivers, the sins of Asia find a hiding-place
there. It has ended for all time the voyages of brave mariners and
mighty ships, and become a vault for the cargoes, and a tomb for the
bones of men. The China Sea fostered the pirate, aided him in his
bloody ways, and dragged him down, riches and all. Bed of disease,
secret-place of the unclean, and graveyard of the seas; yet, this
yellow-breasted fiend, ancient in devil-lore, can smile innocently as a
child at the morning sun, and beguile the torrid stars to twinkling.
It was in this black heart that was first conceived the Tai Fung
(typhoon), and there the great wind has its being to-day, resting and
rising.
The Captain's eyes were deep in the North. Bedient's soul seemed to
sense the awful solemnity on the face of the waters. He was unable
afterward to describe his varying states of consciousness, from that
first moment. He remembered thinking what a fine little man the Captain
was; that their sailing together was done.... A sympathetic disorder
was brewing deep down on the ocean floor; the water now had a charged
appearance, and was foul as the roadstead along the mouths of the
Godivari--a thick, whipped, yeasty look. The changes were very rapid.
Every few seconds, Bedient glanced at the Captain, and as often
followed his gaze into the churning, blackening North.
A chill came into the deathly heat, but it was the cold of caverns, not
of the vital open. The heat did not mix with it, but passed by in
layers--a novel movement of the atmospheres. Had the coolness been
clean and normal, the sailors would have sprung to the rigging to
breathe it, and to bare their bodies to the rain--after two days of
hell-pervading calm--but they only murmured now and fell to work.
An unearthly glitter, like the coloring of a dream, wavered in the East
and West, while the North thickened and the South lay still in
brilliant expectation.... In some hall-way when Bedient was a little
boy, he recalled a light like this of the West and East. There had been
a long narrow pane of yellow-green glass over the front door. The light
used to come through that in the afternoon and fill the hall and
frighten him. It was so on deck now.
The voices of the sailors had that same unearthly quality as the
light--ineffectual, remote. Out of the hold of the _Truxton_ came a
ghostly sigh. Bedient couldn't explain, unless it was some new and
mighty strain upon the keel and ribs.
A moment more and the Destroyer itself was visible in the changing
North. It was sharp-lined--a great wedge of absolute night--and from
it, the last vestiges of day dropped back affrighted. And Bedient heard
the voice of It; all that the human ear could respond to of the awful
dissonances of storm; yet he knew there were ranges of sound above and
below the human register--for they awed and preyed upon his soul.... He
thought of some papers dear to him, and dropped below for them. The
ship smelled old--as if the life were gone from her timbers.
Above once more, he saw a hideous turmoil in the black fabric--just
wind--an avalanche of wind that gouged the sea, that could have shaken
mountains.... The poor little _Truxton_ stared into the End--a puppy
cowering on the track of a train.
And then It struck. Bedient was sprawled upon the deck. Blood broke
from his nostrils and ears; from the little veins in his eyes and
forehead. Parts of his body turned black afterward from the mysterious
pressure at this moment. He felt he was being _born again into another
world_.... The core of that Thing made of wind smashed the _Truxton_--a
smash of air. It was like a thick sodden cushion, large as a
battle-ship--hurled out of the North. The men had to breathe it--that
seething havoc which tried to twist their souls free. When passages to
the lungs were opened, the dreadful compression of the air crushed
through, tearing the membrane of throat and nostril.
Water now came over the ship in huge tumbling walls. Bedient slid over
the deck, like a bar of soap from an overturned pail--clutching, torn
loose, clutching again.... Then the Thing eased to a common hurricane
such as men know. Gray flicked into the blackness, a corpse-gray sky,
and the ocean seemed shaken in a bottle.
Laskars and Chinese, their faces and hands dripping red, were trying to
get a boat overside when Bedient regained a sort of consciousness. The
_Truxton_ was wallowing underfoot--as one in the saddle feels the
tendons of his mount give way after a race. The Captain helped a huge
Chinese to hold the wheel. The sea was insane.... They got the boat
over and tumbled in--a dozen men. A big sea broke them and the little
boat like a basket of eggs against the side of the ship.
Another boat was put over and filled with men. Another sea flattened
them out and carried the stains away on the surge. There were only nine
men left and a small boat that would hold but seven. Bedient helped to
make a rigging to launch this over the stern. He saw that the thing
might be done if the small craft were not broken in two against the
rudder.
The Captain made no movement, had no thought to join these stragglers.
He was alone at the wheel, which played with his strength. His face was
calm, but a little dazed. It did not occur to him other than to go down
with his ship--the old tradition. The fatuousness of this appealed
suddenly to Bedient. Carreras was his friend--the only other white man
left. The two mates and boatswain had tried out the first two
boats--eagerly.
Bedient ran to the wheel, tore the Captain from it and carried him in
his arms toward the stern. A Chinese tried to knife him, but the man
died, _as if_ struck by a flying bit of tackle. Bedient recaptured the
Captain, who during the brief struggle had dumbly turned back to the
wheel. It was all done in thirty seconds; Carreras was chucked into the
stern-seat of the little boat, where he belonged. The body of a Laskar
cushioned the craft from being broken against the rudder. And now they
were seven.
The _Truxton_ had been broken above and below. She strangled--and was
sucked down. Bedient saw her stern fling high like an arm; saw the big
"X" in the centre of the name in the whitish light.
He remembered hearing that typhoons always double on their tracks; and
that a ship is not done that manages to live through the first charge.
This one never came back. They had five days of thirst and equatorial
sun. Two men died; two fell into madness; Captain Carreras, Andrew
Bedient and a Chinese made Hong Kong without fatal hurt.
Captain and cook took passage for London. The former declared he was
through with the sea, except as a passenger. In twenty-five years he
had never encountered serious accident before; he had believed himself
accident-proof; and learning differently, did not propose to lose a
second ship. He could bring himself to say very little about Bedient's
action of the last moment on deck, but he asked the young man to share
his fortunes. Captain Carreras intended to stay for a while at his
mother's house in Surrey, but realized he could not stand that long....
Bedient told him he was not finished with Asia yet. On the day they
parted, the Captain said there would be a letter for Bedient, on or
before July first of every year, sent care the "_Marigold, New
York_."... The old embarrassment intervened at the last moment--but the
younger man did not miss the Captain's heart-break.
SECOND CHAPTER
THE PACK-TRAIN IN LUZON
The first letter from Captain Carreras was a real experience for
Bedient. Hours were needed to adjust the memories of his timid old
friend to this flowing and affectionate expression. Captain Carreras,
shut in a room with pen and white paper, loosed his pent soul in
utterance. A fine fragrant soul it was, and all its best poured out to
his memorable boy.
The letter had been written in England, of which the Captain was
already weary. He must have more space about, he confessed; and
although he did not intend to break his pledge on the matter of
navigating, he was soon to book a passage for the Americas. He imagined
there was the proper sort of island for him somewhere in those waters.
He had always had a weakness for "natives and hot weather." Bedient was
asked to make his need known in any case of misfortune or extremity.
This was the point of the first letter, and of all the letters....
At length Captain Carreras settled in Equatoria, a big island well out
of travel-lines in the Caribbean. The second and third letters made it
even plainer that the old heart valves ached for the young man's
coming. A mysterious binding of the two seems to have taken place in
the months preceding the day of the great wind; and in that instant of
stress and fury the Captain realized his supreme human relationship. It
grew strong as only can a bachelor's love for a man. Indeed, Carreras
was probably the first to discover in Andrew Bedient a something
different, which Bedient himself was yet far from realizing.... The
latter wished that the letters from the West Indies would not always
revert to the strength of his hands. It brought up a memory of the
despoiled face of the Chinese with the knife, and of the inert figure
afterward on the planking.... Bedient knew that sometime he would go to
find his friend.
Three years after the great wind, the excitement in Manila called
Bedient across the China Sea. There had been a _coup_ of the American
fleet, and soldiers from the States were on the way to the Islands....
In the following weeks, there was much to do and observe around that
low large city of Luzon, the lights of which Andrew had seen many times
at night from the harbor and the passage--lights which seemed to lie
upon still waters. When Pack-train Thirteen finally took the field from
the big corral, to carry grub and ammunition to the moving forces and
the few outstanding garrisons, Bedient had already been tried out and
found excellent as cook of the outfit.
It is to be doubted if history furnishes a more picturesque service
than that which fell to Luzon pack-trains throughout the following two
years. It was like Indian fighting, but more compact, rapid and
surprising. The actions were small enough to be seen entire; they fell
clean-cut into pictures and were instantly comprehensive. As the
typhoon confirmed Carreras, this Luzon service brought to Bedient an
important relation--his first real friendship with a boy of his own
age.
In the fall of 1899, David Cairns, the youngest of the American
war-correspondents, stood hungry and desolate in the plaza of the
little town of Alphonso, two days' cavalry march below Manila--when
Pack-train Thirteen arrived with provisions. The mules swung in with
drooping heads and lolling tongues, under three-hundred-pound packs.
The roars of Healy, the boss-packer, filled the dome of sky where a
young moon was rising in a twilight of heavenly blue--dusk of the gods,
indeed. A battalion of infantry in Alphonso had been hungry for three
days--so the Train had come swiftly, ten hours on the trail, and forced
going. It was a volunteer infantry outfit, and apt to be a bit lawless
in the sight of food. Some of the men began pulling at the packs. Healy
and his iron-handed, vitriol-tongued crew beat them back with the
ferocity of devils--and had the battalion cowed and whimpering, before
the officers withdrew the men and arranged an orderly issue of rations.
Meanwhile, David Cairns watched the tall, young cook, lean, tanned, and
with an ugly triangle of fresh sunburn under his left shoulder-blade,
where his shirt had been torn with a thorn that day. He loosed the
_aparejos_ and _mantas_, containing the kitchen-kit; almost magically a
fire was started. Water was heating a moment later and slabs of bacon
began to writhe.... Savage as he was from hunger, it was marvellously
colorful to the fresh-eyed Cairns--his first view of a pack-train. The
mules, relieved of their burdens, were rolling on the dusty turf.
Thirty mountain-mules, under packs one-third their own weight, and
through the pressure of a Luzon day; dry, empty, caked with
sweat-salt--yet there were not a few of those gritty beasts that went
into the air squealing, and launched a hind-foot at the nearest rib or
the nearest star, or pressed close to muzzle the bell-mare--after the
restoring roll. Then, some of the packers drove them down to water,
while others made ready the forage and grain-bags; infantry fires were
lit; the provisions turned over; detachments came meekly forward for
rations, and the lifting aroma of coffee enchanted the warm winds.
Cairns remembered all this when the sharp profile of battle-fronts grew
dull in memory.
And now Bedient had three great pans of bacon sizzling, a young
mountain of brown sugar piled upon a _Poncho_, a big can of hard-tack
broken open, and the coffee had come to boil under his hands--three
gallons at least. The watered mules had to do just so much kicking, so
much braying at the young moon; had to be assured just so often,
through their queer communications, that the bell-mare was still in the
land of picket-line--before nose-bags were fastened. Then, with all the
pack rigging in neat piles before the picket-line, and the untouched
stores covered and piled, the packers came in with their mess-tins and
coffee-cups.
Bedient had seen the hunger in the eyes of David Cairns, the empty
haversack, and noted that he was neither officer nor enlisted man.
Bedient had plenty of water, but with a smile he offered the other a
pail and pointed to the stream. This was a pleasantry for the eyes of
Boss Healy. Cairns appeared presently through the infantry, and around
the end of the picket-line--a correspondent serving mule-riders with
all the enthusiasm of a pitifully-tightened belt.... The packers were
at their pipes and cigarettes and were spreading blanket-rolls, and
groups of "chucked" infantry had warmed into singing--when the two boys
sat down to supper. The cook said:
"I'm Andrew Bedient--and are you a correspondent?"
"A cub--and pretty nearly a starved cub.... There's been nothing to
buy, you know, and this outfit was hung up here grubless. The trails
aren't open enough to travel alone. Some of the officers might have
taken me in----"
"We have plenty. The packers hadn't had their coffee when I gave you
the pail," Bedient whispered. "They hate the doughboys. I wanted them
to see you weren't enlisted.... I should say the trails _weren't_ open
for travelling alone. The niggers peppered at us all day. Healy rides
through anything--says we make better time when the natives are
shooting----"
"I saw how he went through the bunch that started to help you unpack,"
Cairns said laughing.
... Theirs was a quick love for each other. They had not known how
lonely their hearts were, until they encountered this fine mutual
attraction. Together they cleaned up the supper things, and spread
their blankets side by side.... Later, when only the infantry sentries
were awake, and the packers' running guard (and a little apart, the
interminable glow from Healy's cigarettes), the two were still
whispering, though the day had been terrific in physical expenditure.
So aroused and gladdened by each other were they, that intimate matters
poured forth in the fine way youths have, before the control and
concealment is put on. Grown men imprison each other.... Their low
tones trembled with emotion while the night whitened with stars. Cairns
wished that something of terror or intensity might happen. He hated a
knife to the very pith of his life, but now he would have welcomed a
passage of steel in the dark--for a chance to defend the other.
And the cook had that absolute, laughing sort of courage. Cairns
divined this--a courage so sure of itself that no boastful explanations
were needed. They talked about men, books, their yearnings, the recent
fights. Cairns was enthralled and mystified. Bedient did not seem to
hope for great things in a worldly way, while the correspondent was
driven daily by ambition and its self-dreams. Life apparently had shown
this cook day by day what was wisest and easiest to do--the ways of
little resistance. He appeared content to go on so; and this challenged
Cairns to explain what he meant to do with the next few years. Bedient
heard this with fine interest, but no quickening. Cairns was insatiable
for details of a life that had been spent in Asia and upon ships of the
Eastern seas. Everything that Bedient said had a shining exterior of
mystery to the American. His vague memories of New York; the
water-fronts that had since called his steps; different ships and
captains; the men about him, Healy and the packers; his entire
detachment from relatives, and his easy familiarity with the great
unhasting years--all these formed into a luminous envelope, containing
the new friend.
"I was always fed somehow," Bedient whispered, as he told about the dim
little lad that was himself. "There was always some one good to me. I
'member one old sailor with rings in his ears----"
The David Cairns of twenty likewise gave all gladly. Queerly enough, he
found the other especially fascinated in anything he told of his mother
and sisters, and the life at home in New York, made easy by the
infinite little cushions of wealth and culture. A youth eight months
away on his first campaign can talk with power on these matters.
Here Cairns was wonderful and authoritative and elect to
Bedient--particularly in the possession of a living, breathing Mother.
This filled the cup of dreams in a way that the dominant exterior
matters of the young correspondent's mind--newspaper beats, New York
honors, great war stories, and a writer's name--could never have done.
Bedient was clearly an inveterate idealist. His dreams were strangely
lustrous, but distant, not to be touched nor handled--an impersonal
kind of dreaming. Cairns was not so astonished that the other had been
of uncommon quality in the beginning, but that his life had not _made_
him common was a miracle, no less.
Elements of glory were in this life he had lived, but those who
belonged to it, whom Cairns had observed heretofore, were
thick-skinned; men of unlit consciousness and hardened hearts,
gruelling companions to whom there was no deadly sin but physical
cowardice, and only muscular virtues. Bedient was not of these, neither
in body, mind nor memory, aspiration, language nor manner. And yet
_they_ believed in him, accepted him in a queer, tentative, subdued
fashion; and he spoke to them warmly, and of them with affection. All
this needed a deeper and more mellowed mind than Cairns' to
comprehend; though it challenged him from the first moment in that
swiftly-darkening night. "It's too good to be true," was his
oft-recurring sentence.... Though apart, Bedient was not scoffed. Could
it be that he was so finished as a cook, as a friend, as an
indefatigable--so rhythmically superior, that the packers took no
offense at his aloofness? Certainly, Bedient felt no necessity of
impressing his values upon his companions, as do those who have come
but a little way in culture.
Somehow, Alphonso smelled of roses that night, as the two lay together
in that little plaza, where the mules were picketed and the satisfied
infantry slept. In the jungle (which seemed very close in the
moonlight), bamboo stalks creaked soothingly and stroked each other in
the soft night winds, and the zenith sky boiled with millions of
white-hot worlds.... Are not the best dreams of this earth to be heard
from two rare boys whispering in the night? They have not been
frightened by their first real failure, and the latest, most delicate
bloom of the race has not yet been brushed from their thoughts. Curled
within their minds, like an endless scroll, are the marvellous
scriptures of millenniums, and yet their brain-surfaces are fresh for
earth's newest concept.... What are they whispering? Their voices
falter with emotion over vague bits of dreaming. They ask no greater
stimulus to fly to the uttermost bounds of their limitations--than each
other and the night. Reason dawns upon their stammered expressions, and
farther they fly--thrilling like young birds, when their wings for the
first time catch the sustaining cushions of air.... These are the
vessels of the future--seals yet unbroken.
THIRD CHAPTER
RED PIGMENT OF SERVICE
Bedient explained that he had come to the Philippines pleased with the
thought of seeing his own people, the Americans. He realized that he
was not seeing them at their best under martial law. The pair exchanged
narratives of action. Cairns pictured his first time under fire,
ending:
"... First you see the smoke; then you hear the bullets--then the
_sound_ of the guns last----"
"Yes, that's the order," said Bedient, who laughed softly, and
presently was telling of a recent and terrible baptism of fire. The
Pack-train had spurred to the rescue of a small party of sick and
footsore, making their way to garrison.
"Why that was the Pony Pack Massacre!" Cairns exclaimed. "I heard about
it--one of the worst affairs we've had over here--and you saw it?"
"I wish I hadn't," Bedient answered. "The little party of Americans
were down when I first saw them. Six or seven of the sixteen were dead;
nearly all the rest wounded. The natives had fired from three
sides--and would have finished their work with knives, except for
Thirteen. The American lieutenant in charge was clear-grained. He had
been trying to withdraw toward the town and carry his wounded--think of
that. There were not two others besides himself unscathed. I'll never
forget him--striding up and down praying and cursing--his first fight,
you know--and his boy's voice--'Be cock sure they're dead, fellows,
before you leave 'em behind for the bolos!... For the love of God don't
leave your bunkies behind for the butchers!'
"In a half minute, I saw it all--what a thing for white men to be
gathered for slaughter on a trail over here. The boys knew it--and
fought horribly against it...."
Cairns started to say something about this, but the words didn't come
quickly enough, and Bedient went on:
"There is a picture of that day which always means _war_ to me. The
soldier was hit mortally just as I got to him, but didn't fall at once,
as one does when the spine or brain is touched. As my hands went out to
him, he got it again and lost his legs, as if they were shot from
under. His body, you see, fell the length of his legs. This second
bullet was a Remington slug that shattered his hip. He had a full
canteen strung over his shoulder, infantry fashion. The bullet that
dropped him sitting on the trail, had gone through this to his hip. The
canteen was spurting water. Mind you, it was the other wound that was
killing him. There he sat dying on the road. I felt like dying for
him--felt that I couldn't bear it if it took long. He was in my
arms--and the canteen was emptying itself through the bullet-holes.
Then he seemed to hear the water flopping out on the sand, and wriggled
around to look at his hip, and I heard him mutter thickly: 'Look--look
at the b-bl-blood run!'"
Cairns felt that his companion suffered in this telling--that behind
the dark, the face close to his was deadly pale. He couldn't quite
understand the depths of Bedient's horror. It was war. All America was
behind it. One boy can't stand up against his nation. It was all very
queer. He felt that Bedient had a crystal gameness, but here was the
sensitiveness of a girl. Cairns thought of the heroes he had read of
who were brave as a lion and gentle as a woman, and these memories
helped him now to grasp his companion's point of view.... Hesitating,
Bedient finished:
"You know, to me all else was hushed when I felt that boy in my arms.
It was like a shouting and laughing suddenly ceased--as when a company
of boys discover that one of their playmates is terribly hurt.... I
imagine it would be like that--the sudden silence and sickness. It was
all so unnecessary. And that boy's mother--he should have been in her
arms, not mine. Poor little chap, he was all pimpled from beans, which
are poison to some people. He shouldn't have been hurt like that....
There was another who had needed but one shot. The Remington had gone
into his throat in front the size of a lead-pencil--and come out behind
like a tea-cup. The natives had filed the tip of the lead, so that it
accumulated destruction in the ugly way. It was like some one putting a
stone in a snow-ball--so vicious. You can't blame the natives--but the
war-game----"
Boss Healy growled at them to go to sleep.
* * * * *
Cairns remained with the Pack-train after that until the Rains. Never
did a boy have more to write about in three months. Every phase and
angle of that service, now half-forgotten, unfolded for his eyes. And
the impossible theme running through it all, was the carabao--the great
horned sponge that pulls vastly like an elephant and dies easily like a
rabbit--when the water is out.... They make no noise about their dying,
these mountains of flesh, merely droop farther and farther forward
against the yoke, when their skins crack from dryness; the whites of
their eyes become wider and wider--until they lay their tongues upon
the sand. The Chinese call them "cow-cows" and understand them better
than the Tagals, as they understand better the rice and the paddies.
Once Thirteen was yanked out of Healy's hand--as no volley of native
shots had ever disordered. The mules were in a gorge trotting into the
town of Indang. Natives in the high places about, were waiting for the
Train to debouch upon the river-bank--so as to take a few shots at the
outfit. Every one expected this, but just as the Train broke out of the
gorge into the open, at the edge of the river-bed--there was a great
sucking transfiguration from the shallows, a hideous sort of giving
birth from the mud.
It was just a soaked carabao rising from his deep wallow in the stream,
but that she-devil, the gray bell-mare, tried to climb the cliffs about
it. The mules felt her panic, as if an electrode ran from her to the
quick of every hide of them. When the fragments of the Train were
finally gathered together in Indang, they formed an undone, hysterical
mess. The packers were too tired to eat, but sat around dazed, softly
cursing, and smoking cigarettes; as they did one day after a big fight,
in which one of their number, Jimmy the Tough, was shot through the
brain. For days the mules were nervous over the delicate condition of
the bell.
Study of Andrew Bedient and weeks in which he learned, past the waver
of a doubt, that his friend was knit with a glistening and imperishable
fabric of courage, brought David Cairns to that high astonishing point,
where he could say impatiently, "Rot!"--as his former ideals of manhood
rose to mind. It was good for him to get this so young.... One morning
something went wrong with Benton, the farrier. He had been silent for
days. Bedient had sensed some trouble in the little man's heart, and
had often left Cairns to ride with him. Then came the evening when the
farrier was missed. It was in the mountains near Naig. At length, just
as the sun went down, the Train saw him gain a high cliff--and stand
there for a moment against the red sky. Bedient reached over and
gripped Cairns' arm. Turning, the latter saw that his friend's eyes
were closed. The remarkable thing was that not one of the packers
called to Benton--but all observed the lean tough little figure of one
of the neatest men that ever lived afield--regarded in silence the hard
handsome profile. Finally Benton drew out his pistol and looked at it,
as if to see that the oil had kept out the dust from the hard day on
the trail. Then he looked into the muzzle and fired--going over the
cliff, as he had intended, and burying himself.
"Some awful inner hunger," Bedient whispered hours afterward. "You see,
he couldn't talk--as you and I do.... I've noticed it so long--that
these men can't talk to one another--only swear and joke."
Early the next morning Cairns awoke, doubtless missing Bedient
subconsciously. It was in the first gray, an hour before Healy kicked
his outfit awake. Bedient was back in camp in time to start breakfast,
having made a big detour to reach the base of the gorge. It wasn't a
thing to speak about, but he had made a pilgrimage to the pit where the
farrier had fallen.... Another time, Cairns awoke in the same way. It
was the absence of Bedient, not the actual leaving, that aroused him.
The Train had camped in a little nameless town. Cairns, this time,
found his companion playing with a child, at the doorway of one of the
shacks of the village. Inside, was an old man sick with
_beri-beri_--swollen, features erased, unconscious; and an old woman
who also had been too weak to flee before the American party. These
two, the child, and a few pariah dogs were all that remained. You could
have put the tiny one in a haversack comfortably. A poor little mongrel
head that shone bare and scabby in places, but big black eyes, full of
puzzles and wonderings; and upon his arms and legs, those deep humors
which come from scratching in the night. The infant sat upon a banana
leaf--brown and naked and wonderful as possible--and Bedient knelt
before him smiling happily, and feeding hard-tack that had been
softened in bacon-gravy.
Cairns saw the old woman's face. It was sullen, haggard. The eyes were
no strangers to hunger nor hatred. She watched the two Americans, as
might a crippled tigress, that had learned at last how weak was her
fury against chains. He saw that same look many times afterward in the
eyes of these women of the riverbanks--as the white troops moved past.
There was not even a sex-interest to complicate their hatred.
One day Thirteen overtook a big infantry column making a wide ford in
the river before Bamban. It was high noon, but they found during the
hold-up, a bit of shade and breeze on a commanding hill. Cairns and
Bedient kicked off their shoes into the tall, moist grass, and
luxuriously poked their feet into the coolness; and presently they were
watching unfold a really pretty bit of action.
A thin glittering cloud of smoke across the river showed where the
trenches of the natives were. The Americans in the river, held their
rifles and ammunition-belts high, and wriggled their hips against the
butting force of the stream. It all became very business-like. The
battalion first across, set out to flank the native works; a rapid-fire
gun started to boom from an opposite eminence, and the infantry took to
firing at the emptying trenches. The Tagals were poked out of their
positions, and in a sure leisurely way that held the essence of
attraction.
After all, it was less the actual bits of fighting that cleared into
memories of permanence, than certain subtleties of the campaign: a
particular instant of one swift twilight, as in the plaza at Alphonso;
a certain moment of a furious mid-day, when the sun was a python
pressure, so that the scalp prickled with the congested blood in the
brain, and men lifted their hats an inch or two as they rode,
preserving the shade, but permitting the air to circulate; some
guttural curse from a packer who could not lift his voice in the heat,
nor think, but only curse, and grin in sickly fashion....
There were moments, reminders of which awoke Cairns in a sweat for many
nights afterward: One day when he was badly in need of a fresh mount,
he saw just ahead of the Train--a perfect little sorrel stallion
fastened to the edge of the trail. He dismounted to change saddles. The
Train was straggling along under an occasional fire. Cairns found that
the pony was held by a tough wire, that led into the jungle. Such was
the braiding at the throat, that only a sapper could have handled it.
The correspondent started to follow the wire into the thicket--when
Bedient caught him by the shoulder and half-lifted him from the ground.
There was strength in that slim tanned hand that had nothing to do with
the ordinary force of men. The cook smiled, but disdained explanation.
It all dawned upon Cairns a second later. He would have followed the
wire to the end in the jungle--where the trap of knives would
spring.... The bolo-men need but a moment.... It was only two or three
days later that one of the packers dropped behind the Train to tighten
a cinch. No one had noticed, and Thirteen filed on.
"For Christ's sake--don't!" they heard from behind.
Wheeling, they found that the man had seen the end--as he had called
out in that horrible echoing voice. He was not more than fifty yards
behind the rear packer--and pinned to the trail. A bolo had been
hammered with a stone--through the upper lip and the base of the brain,
two or three inches into the earth.... He had been butchered besides.
At the end of a terrific ten days, Thirteen was crawling at nightfall
into the large garrison at Lipa. Men and mules had been lost in the
recent gruelling service. The trails and the miles had been long and
hard; much hunger and thirst, and there was hell in the hearts of men
this night. Even Bedient was shaking with fatigue; and Cairns beside
him, felt that there wasn't the brain of a babe in his skull. His
saddle seemed filled with spikes. His spur was gone, and for hours he
had kept his half-dead, lolling-tongued pony on the way, by frequent
jabbing from a broken lead-pencil.... And here was Lipa at last, the
second Luzon town, and a corral for the mules. As they passed a
nipa-shack, at the outer edge, a sound of music came softly forth. Some
native was playing one of the queer Filipino mandolins. The Train
pushed on, without Cairns and Bedient. All the famine and foulness and
fever lifted from these two. They forgot blood and pain and glaring
suns. The early stars changed to lily-gardens, vast and white and
beautiful, and their eyes dulled with dreams.
They did not guess, at least Cairns did not, that the low music brought
tears that night--because they were in dreadful need of it, because
they were filled with inner agony for something beautiful, because they
had been spiritually starved. And all the riding hard, shooting true
and dying game--those poor ethics of the open--had not brought a crumb,
not a crumb, of the real bread of life. Nor could mountains of mere
energy nor icebergs of sheer nerve! In needing the bread of life--they
were different from the others, and so they lingered, unable to speak,
while a poor little Tagal--"one of the niggers"--all unconsciously
played. "Surely," they thought, "his soul is no dead, dark thing when
he can play like that."
* * * * *