The general steamship agency on The Bund was a hive of bustling
travelers, their faces alight with the eagerness with which they desired
to be gone their many ways up and down the world. A stranger might have
imagined that most of Yokohama's European or "white" population had been
possessed of a sudden desire to flee beyond the seas.
It was a scene common enough, however, for that season in the gateways
of the Far East. Spring, with its heart call to distant homelands, had
come again to break the spell of the Orient for many and to stir an
unutterable longing in the breasts of others--the men and women who
dream always of the day they will "go back," but who never do.
The crowd was a conglomerate, as crowds go, and not lacking in
picturesque touches--here where a Chinese of mandarin rank went with a
silky retinue; there where a pair of turbaned Sikhs stood near two
begoggled Korean priests, muttering in gutturals over their tickets for
the South. The placidity and impenetrable calm of these few Oriental
faces served but to accentuate the mobile expressiveness of the dominant
Caucasian countenance.
Still there was one white man whose features betrayed no expression of
interest in the scene. He stood head and shoulders over those around him
in a line of applicants at a booking desk toward the rear. There was an
air of detachment about him. Apparently he was untouched of the spirit
of mystic restlessness and excitement which pervaded the place--that
resistless, undeniable spirit which takes hold of even the most
unimaginative and lackadaisical in railway depots or wherever else men
in numbers set out upon journeys. There was no gleam of the
homeward-bounder in his eye--that gleam which is more like the light of
love than anything else; there was no expectancy; no sign of eagerness.
At a first glance this man's face seemed no more than a mask. At a
second one realized that the features were those of one who must have
won unto the priceless possession of self-control. The nose was large
and yet as sensitively formed as the freshly shaven lips and chin. The
ears were perfectly lobed--the ears of a thoroughbred. The jaw was that
of the natural fighter, not heavy and jowly, but cut in a sharp,
straight line from the hinge to the point. Tiny wrinkles in the outer
corners of the eyelids, which come from facing long distances on sea or
land, kept forming and reforming as his gray eyes wandered idly over the
heads of the crowd. It is thus that the tribes of the earth's big spaces
are marked.
Several times he pushed his small gray felt hat back from his brow and
then as absently pulled it down again. When he did this one saw the seam
of a jagged scar, still pink from recent healing, which traversed the
left temple and disappeared in the dark-brown hair over the ear.
Although the forelock and the temples were quite gray, he was not more
than thirty-five years old.
His blue serge suit fitted well and the trimness of his setting-up--his
whole hearing, in fact--spoke of one of military training. Perhaps it
was this suggestion of the soldier that made the Sikhs turn and look
back at him as they passed out on The Bund. Yet it was not as a soldier
that the port of Yokohama knew him, but by the name of Whitridge and as
the captain of the sorriest-looking piece of sea grist that had ever
made Tokyo Bay. A brute of a Chinese tramp she was, and men who knew
deep waters were still marveling how he had brought her through the
vitals of a typhoon--the worst in their memory--which had swept the
coast in a fury of destruction.
Chinese tramps and those who go in them are of little moment, but on the
morning two months before that the port had awakened to find in its
fairway a salt-crusted thing called the _Kau Lung_, minus funnels and
masts and suggesting only vaguely a steamship, it knew that it looked on
one of the deep's wonders. The sea must have swallowed her and spat her
up again, and those who said this had in mind that tramps which fly the
dragon cloth are the unsweetest things upon big waters.
Yet not only through stress of storm had he weathered her, but through a
mutiny whose blood rusted her decks. Without mates and alone save for a
big Cantonese serang he had done this thing and then come silently
ashore to nurse his wounds.
Presently Whitridge stood at the head of the line. A man who looked ill
and who told the booking clerk with a nervous laugh that he hadn't seen
"the home country" in twenty years gave way to him.
"Now, sir, your pleasure," said the clerk.
"Oh," answered Whitridge as if bringing his thoughts from a great
distance. "I wish to--to book on the _Cambodia_, please."
"She's pretty full, sir," said the clerk, with a doubtful shake of the
head and turning away to get a stateroom diagram.
A momentary hush fell on the crowd.
"Gad!" exclaimed a young Englishman standing beside Whitridge.
Turning, Whitridge followed the man's glance toward the agency entrance.
A woman with hair of the color of gold that has been washed in sea water
was coming in out of the sunshine of the radiant March morning. A
picture hat of rough bronze straw accentuated the wealth and beauty of
her wonderful crown. A long, loose tan coat with full sleeves, made her
appear a shade taller than she really was, but her erect, healthy
carriage threw the garment about her in clinging folds which softened
its fashionable modernness.
She paused for a second, a tilt of inquiry to her vivid head. Then she
moved swiftly to the desk where Whitridge was standing.
"I have a letter--I wish to see the director--the manager, please," she
said to the clerk in a low, well-bred voice.
Looking up, the clerk gave a start of surprise, recovered himself
quickly, and indicated a door to the left. She opened it and passed
inside followed by a woman in black, evidently a maid. The clerk's eyes
trailed after her with something of awe in them. There was hardly a
glance in the room which was not turned in the same direction.
"Out East here we--we see nothing but little, dark women," the clerk
began apologetically, facing Whitridge again.
"Ever see Burne-Jones' 'Springtime'?" interrupted the Englishman
eagerly. Whitridge nodded. "Gad! Isn't she like it?" Another nod
answered him.
"Now, sir," interrupted the clerk, spreading out a diagram. "The
_Cambodia_ calls at Honolulu, you----"
"I wish to book through to San Francisco--an outside room, if possible."
"Luck's with you, sir. The last one," and he indicated with a pencil
point a small space aft on the port side. Whitridge nodded his
acceptance and at that moment the office door at the left opened
quickly.
A middle-aged man, evidently the agency manager, emerged, preceding the
"Springtime" woman.
"Burr! Reserve an outside room on the _Cambodia_ at once," he called to
the clerk booking Whitridge.
"Too late, sir. I've just sold the last one to this gentleman."
Whitridge turned. A shadow of keen disappointment passed over the face
of the golden-haired woman.
"Oh, is there nothing you can do?" she asked, looking at the manager
appealingly. He glanced at Whitridge. "You don't know the terror I
feel--the horror I have of being put inside," she went on. There was a
note of genuine distress in her voice.
"There is another ship in eight days," answered the manager.
"But it is imperative that I sail on this one."
"If you will permit me," interrupted Whitridge, baring his head, "I will
resign my room to you."
"Oh, but that would not be fair. You are very kind, but I--I must pay
for my lateness." She met his gaze with an honest, uncompromising
directness in her blue eyes. "You----"
"Really it doesn't much matter where I am put," and a note of sadness in
his voice brought an expression of interest into her brow. For a part of
a second their glances held and then Whitridge turned to the clerk:
"This lady will take my room."
He spoke with a finality which evidently was strange to her. She frowned
slightly and started as if to protest again.
"You should accept, Miss Granville," said the manager anxiously and in a
way that indicated his desire to please a person of some importance. She
paused uncertainly as her lips framed a "No," but meeting Whitridge's
gaze again she gave a nod of decision.
"I will accept. You are rendering me a service greater than you know,"
she said gratefully and there was a brilliance as of tears in her eyes.
"I thank you--very much."
The manager, beaming with delight, thanked Whitridge and led her back to
his private office. At the threshold she paused and turned to surprise
Whitridge's gaze fixed hungrily upon her. A smile with which she
intended to thank him died on her lips. A startled look came into her
eyes. She did not move until he turned toward the clerk, who was asking
him for a record for the customs' clearance.
"Paul Whitridge, thirty-four, master mariner--British subject," he said,
and the clerk recalled afterward the strange hesitancy with which he
gave his name and nationality.
The manager reappeared at this moment and began reading a memorandum to
the clerk: "Miss Emily Granville, twenty-four--American." Whitridge gave
a barely perceptible start of surprise as the name fell from the
manager's lips. He compressed his eyes as if to shut out some unpleasant
thought or memory. The manager threw the slip of paper on the desk. "You
can make it out, Burr. It's all there. Book her and the maid that way,"
he said. Then, turning to Whitridge, he went on: "I'm mightily obliged
to you, sir. I'll send a note to the ship asking to have special care
taken of you. She is one of the big stockholders in the Western Line.
Cables came last night for her--she's just down from Tokyo. Some
business trouble at home--trustee of her estate dead. Something like
that. Must get home immediately. Can't bear to travel in inside rooms.
She--her----"
"It's all right," Whitridge said, cutting him off. "I'm glad to have
been able to do it."
He spoke with an indication of impatience in tone and manner. Without
another word he gathered up his tickets and went out of the agency. The
manager and clerk wished him a pleasant voyage, but if he heard them he
made no sign.
"Devilish strange sort," said the manager in surprise.
"I should say so. I think he's the captain that brought that wreck of a
Chink tramp in here a couple of months ago," answered the clerk.
"Indeed!" With this exclamation of surprise the manager hurried back to
his office where Emily Granville was waiting and thinking of the
inexpressible sadness she had seen in the face of the stranger who had
resigned his stateroom to her. It troubled her. In the instant that she
had turned to find his gaze fixed on her she saw a pain in his eyes so
poignant that it hurt her. A soul sounding the deeps of anguish seemed
to have been crying out just behind them.
Whitridge, going swiftly along The Bund, was torn by the thoughts which
the name of Granville had started. It had been these thoughts which had
driven him out of the agency so strangely. He argued and argued with
himself that he must be wrong; that there were undoubtedly others of
that name in San Francisco. He tried hard to think of other things, but
ever the vision of this woman with the golden hair remained dominant. It
excluded even the thought of his mother whose message to come home to
her before it was too late had decided him in an hour to cross the
ocean. His remembrance of the woman was so vivid that she might have
waited at his side. The fragrance of her remained in his nostrils. The
atmosphere of her girlish freshness clung to him. There was an
indefiniteness about her like the mystery of the Spring. The Englishman
had been right in thinking she suggested Burne-Jones' "Springtime." She
was a veritable gold woman.
As he came to the little hotel hidden away in the fringe of The Bluff's
European respectability a Chinaman, waiting as a dog waits, greeted him.
It was the Cantonese serang called Chang, who had come out of the maw of
death with him in the _Kau Lung_. Yokohama knew him as Whitridge's
shadow.
"Tlunk all pack, master. Him gone ship. What time you sail?" the
Chinaman asked in a breath.
"Two o'clock," he answered and looked at his watch. It was past noon. He
told Chang to call Suki, the flat-faced woman who ran the hotel servants
and who had been so good to him in his first few weeks ashore when the
doctors were shrugging their shoulders doubtfully; and her daughter,
Oki, and the boy he had nicknamed "Sweeney." He had a little present
and a gold piece for each of them--two for Suki.
There were big tears in "Sweeney's" black eyes when "the honorable
captain gentleman" said good-by to him. He would never forget him.
"Yes; you will forget, 'Sweeney,'" Whitridge said in Japanese, with a
little laugh.
"Oh, yes," agreed Suki, "he will forget. Men forget, but women always
remember."
"You know a lot about life, Suki," he answered and turned and went into
the hotel office.
At Whitridge's appearance the boyish-looking clerk behind the desk
flushed guiltily and hid something under a book. Whitridge handed him an
odd silver cigarette case which the young fellow had often admired.
"Just a token for your kindness, my boy," he said.
"Gee, I--I'm sorry you're going away, Captain--Whitr--Whitridge,"
stammered the clerk and faltering peculiarly at the name. "I'll always
keep this. What you've said has braced me up and--as soon as I get a
little more money together I'm going home. Good-by and--and the best of
luck to you."
"Good-by and good luck to you," said the departing guest, shaking the
young fellow's hand heartily. "You'll come through all right."
The clerk's gaze followed Whitridge and Chang through the door and until
they were clear of the grounds. Then he pulled out an old newspaper. It
was what he had hidden at Whitridge's unexpected appearance. Chang had
dropped it in packing Whitridge's things. For several minutes he studied
the face which looked up at him from a mass of black headlines. It was a
portrait of Whitridge beyond a doubt.
"He's Lavelle all right--but nobody'll ever get it out of me. He's
square," he muttered to himself, and as he did so he tore the paper into
small bits.