It was not to sleep that Emily returned when she carried the water to
Elsie of Shanghai and, crouching in the cramped space, took the woman's
scorching head in her lap. Elsie was murmuring in a semi-coma, sometimes
in English, but more often in Chinese. Occidental though she was, this
woman's long, hard years in the gateways of the Far East had breathed in
her the Orient's spirit of fatalism. The stoicism of the children of the
sunset lands was hers; the immobility of feature which marks them was
sealed in her striking, irregular features. Her manner of speech and
expression were theirs.
"I wonder if they will burn me in hell this way," she gasped as Emily
put the cup to her avid lips.
"No, no, you mustn't have such thoughts," Emily whispered.
Elsie was in pain. The difficulty with which she breathed told that. Yet
only now and then did a hardly audible moan escape her lips.
"He said I must be brave--that I was brave--that I must be patient," and
Emily Granville knew that this strange woman was thinking of what
Lavelle had said to them in the morning. "Did you ask him--the
captain--for this water?" she asked after a seemingly very long time.
"No," Emily told her with a feeling of guilt. "He made me bring it to
you. He said it would be all right."
"God, what a white man--what a white man! Oh, I know men, my dear
child," and Emily imagined that a sneer was upon her lips. "I know them
as the Canton money lenders know their gold." She spoke with a fierce
tenseness. "I've trafficked in them--traded in them--as they trade in
guns--and opium at Macao." Her breath stopped in a quick gasp. Emily
pressed another sup of water between her lips.
"Are you afraid of death, my dear?" Elsie whispered.
"I--I don't know----But you mustn't think these terrible thoughts," and
yet as she spoke Emily Granville wondered at the calmness which
possessed her. A different person than the Emily Granville she had known
for twenty-four years seemed to be speaking and thinking in these wild
and strange surroundings.
"I will not get better--I know," said the Shanghai woman presently. "It
is pneumonia again--the women of the lighted houses cannot stand the
open." She sat up quickly, clutching at her breasts. "I am like
fire--and lead--in here. Oh, God, it is so hard to breathe!"
"Can't I think of something to do for you?"
"Only hold me--just this way," and she sank in Emily's lap again. "I saw
the way you held him. You are--very kind. You were made for--for the
mother of men--strong men--like my--my captain out there. No; do not
draw away from me. You would trust him if you could have seen him--him
and that Chang--that night in Shanghai. There was a place for
everybody--everybody--but the women--the toys from behind the green
jalousies. Ask Chang--he--he will tell you. They picked us out--of the
dark river. It's very dark now, isn't it? Very dark----" Her whisper
trailed away in a low moan. Emily tried to make her take a drink of
water, but she refused it. "Will you say, 'Our--Our Father'"--and Emily
repeated the Lord's Prayer very slowly and sensed that the other woman's
lips were following the words dumbly. "Ask him--my captain--please if
he--will not speak to me," Elsie murmured after a long silence.
Emily heard a movement aft and, pushing back the flap of the rug, saw
Chang relieving Lavelle at the helm. The dawn was just pinking the
eastern sky.
Lavelle saw Emily's hand beckoning and he crept forward. Elsie held out
a hand to him and he took it. Her pulse flashed to him a history of what
she was suffering. A glance at her face revealed to him the touch of
death upon it.
"I'm going away--going home," Elsie whispered. "Will you hold----The
dawn!"
Lavelle understood her glance upward and pushed away the rug. He got
behind her and lifted her into a sitting posture. She still clung to his
hand.
"Isn't it wonderful?" she asked, looking toward Emily and then up into
Lavelle's face. He nodded. "I am not afraid, captain. I've learned--last
night I learned--from you--to die unafraid."
A marvelous smile lighted her face. The marks of her hard years sped
from it forever in the glow of the new day which suffused the sea and
the sky with a spirit of the infinite mystery this waif of life was on
the threshold of solving.
"Our Father, who----" she whispered. Then, starting suddenly from
Lavelle's clasp she put out her hands to the dawn. "Mother--mother o'
mine," she called ecstatically. "Moth----"
Elsie of Shanghai fell back into Lavelle's arms, with a sigh of peace
parting her lips in a smile.
Emily looked up at Lavelle and, as he turned away quickly, the pent-up
misery and loneliness in her gave vent in a flood of tears. The sobs
which she could not choke back aroused the sleepers forward. Death had
come and a soul had sped so quietly that it had not disturbed their
slumbers.
Starting to his knees, Rowgowskii beheld Lavelle just laying the burden
out of his arms along the fore-and-aft seat near Chang. The helmsman
might have been an image. The Chinese sailors arising from the bottom of
the boat were seized immediately by the awe of the mystery that had so
swiftly come among them. They huddled together on their haunches,
muttering over some talisman held in common.
Emily followed Lavelle and sat at the feet of the shell of clay,
smoothing down the bedraggled dress over the delicate ankles and feet.
"I--you understand--sometimes we can't find words----" he said to her
gently, and she nodded in understanding. Nothing he could have said
would have conveyed more to her. The gentleness, the kindness, the
comprehension of this man were battering a breach in the barriers of her
terror and hatred of him. Falling on her knees beside Elsie's body she
prayed for strength and fortitude and forbearance.
Emily started up amid a silence broken only by the breeze and the boat
snoring away before it. Lavelle was sitting opposite, his gaze upon her.
She sensed in the faces of Chang and the others a new mystery of
expectancy. Lavelle stood up and handed her into his seat.
One of the Chinamen crawled aft and passed Lavelle a piece of rope and
an iron block which had been left in the bow of the boat when Chang cut
the fall away. Lavelle turned so that what he did with these things was
hidden from Emily's sight, but she understood. As he faced her again she
saw that the block was fastened to Shanghai Elsie's ankles, although he
had endeavored to hide it beneath the silken gown.
"Do you know--would you wish to say a prayer, Miss Granville?" he asked.
Emily stood up and met his gaze. He was asking her to do something; he
expected something of her and she was helpless.
"I know only the simple prayers of the sea," Lavelle added. With that
Emily found her voice.
"She--she would want you to say those--and so would I--if----" Her eyes
closed, and as from a great distance she heard him intoning the Lord's
prayer. She realized that never before had she known its full meaning.
There came a pause and she looked up. The boat was fluttering into the
wind. The Chinamen, save Chang, who had to stand to the helm, and
Rowgowskii, were on their knees.
Lavelle stood with Elsie in his outstretched arms, facing an arc in the
sky where a blush of the dawn still lingered. The breeze seemed to
pause. As Chang checked the boat's way Lavelle bent over and laid the
burden in his arms upon the sea. So might a mother have put down a child
to rest.
"'We therefore commit her body to the deep,'" he said very distinctly,
"'to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of this
body, when the sea shall give up her dead.'"
His gaze lingered overside for a moment and then he added:
"It's a clean grave, little woman."
Turning quickly away from the sea he seemed another man.
"Sail on!" he snapped at the helmsman.