body of his brother in his arms, his broad chest shaken with sobs. We
scaled the wall, called softly and a moment later our Curaçao men pulled
the boat alongside.”
Leyden paused, relit his pipe, puffed a few times in silence.
“They overran that Dutch steamer like cockroaches,” he continued, with a
chuckle, “and for a while the government seriously considered
withdrawing the privileges of their ports to the line. Ultimately it was
decided to let them off with a reprimand, because, you see, the steamers
were the only opportunity the port officials had of getting their weekly
allowance of spirits for nothing.
“Rosenthal? We made the run back to Curaçao in thirty-six hours,
because, you see, the trade always blows the same way. The day we
arrived Rosenthal paid me fifteen hundred dollars, the price agreed for
the rescue of his brother.
“‘It is too much,’ said I, ‘especially as we did not liberate the other
prisoners.’
“‘It was the price agreed,’ he said, ‘but if you say so I will take off
ten per cent. for cash.’
“‘Even then it is too much. There were the jewels which you gave to
Trocas——’
“Rosenthal chuckled. ‘They were imitations,’ said he. ‘I got them in New
York. Those I left with little Jacob were also imitations. I knew my
little brother’s weaknesses,’ he added, and the tears gushed out of his
eyes.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TWO SAVAGES
“WE must really turn over a new leaf, Doctor,” said my shipmate, Dr.
Leyden, the collector of natural rarities. “Our tales have been growing
more and more gruesome each night, until mere murder has quite lost its
pungency! To-night I will tell you a different sort of story—a love
story, from the view-point of the primitive; a funny story as
well—although it would be hard to say whether the humor belong to the
Stone Age or some age still to come.
“I was telling you last night about the expedition into Borneo for the
heads; this was immediately after. When we reached the sea I was in a
very bad way—running a steady, low fever, with diurnal rises, when I
would become quite delirious, and the region about my spleen was so
tender that it pained me to breathe. My companion and his charge
departed immediately by a vessel which was sailing for Sarawak, but I
waited for a few days and then sailed by a schooner for Sulu, as this
was a shorter voyage, and I wanted medical attendance as soon as I could
get it.
“This was before your war, Doctor, when nine out of ten Americans would
have told you that if Sulu was not in South Africa it must be somewhere
in the West Indies. You know Jolo, the pretty little toy city, with its
mediæval walls, where the sleepy Spanish sentries drowsed on the
ramparts and gaped down into the immured market-place, ogling the pretty
Mestiza girls, when they should have been keeping watch to see that none
of the Moro gentry went _jementado_ and proceeded to reduce the
Christian census. It is the freshest place in the archipelago and the
coolest, although so near the equator, for the trades sweep right across
the little island and blow the most of the time.
“You remember the Englishmen who were doing so well with the pearls? A
temporary manager of theirs proved to be an old acquaintance of mine—a
harum-scarum sort of chap, undoubtedly well-born, unquestionably badly
behaved, handsome, vicious, kind-hearted when the notion took him, at
other times as rough as a Liverpool navvy. I always suspected his
escutcheon of bearing the baton sinister.
“Stewart was his name. I had known him in the Marquesas, where he had
been the agent of an Australian firm. He asked me to his house, and I
was glad to accept, for I liked the scamp, in spite of his wickedness,
and, besides, I was in no condition to be left to the tender mercies of
native inn-keepers.
“Stewart used to swear like a trooper when one of my chills would shake
the whole of the little basket-house and disturb his siesta; then up he
would get, clad only in the lower half of his pajamas, and rough the
servants about and work over me as if he loved me. _Ach!_ how it seems
like yesterday that I have seen him, naked to the waist, leaning over
me, with his hands full of hot-water bottles, and his mouth full of
blasphemies when one of them burned his fingers, the great muscles
rippling the fresh skin of his arms as he moved me in the bed and his
fierce, handsome face, with its deep lines of hard living, puckered in
doubt—one could see the two natures fighting it out within him.
“The officers of the little garrison gave him a wide berth; they were
afraid of him. In fact, about everybody in the place was afraid of him,
from the Governor-General down to his own native women, of whom he had
an interesting collection. He was a sort of blond devil. I am sure that
I do not know why he so befriended me, unless it was because it was
pleasant to find some one who was _not_ afraid of him.
“I had begun to get about a little, but was still an invalid, when there
arrived in the port the auxiliary yacht of the Count Asquin. I was
admiring the vessel from our little balcony, when Stewart came up and
suggested that we go out aboard her. At first I declined, as the people
were not known to us, nor we to them.
“‘What’s the odds!’ said he. ‘Perfectly good form in a hole like this.
They’ve come purposely to see the place and people. They’re our guests,
by Gad!’
“There was something in this, so I agreed and we put off. I am rather
diffident, Doctor, but I knew that Stewart would carry the thing off
with his usual blunt, reckless, high-bred ease; there was so much style
to the fellow, and he looked so fresh and well-groomed and aristocratic,
and altogether the gentleman, which in so very many ways he was not.
There was a strong ranginess about him which suggested the university
athlete; the curly, crisp, yellow hair, the close-cropped mustache and
the fresh but weather-beaten skin, all marked him for a thoroughbred. If
he had got drunk every night of the week and slept in all his clothes he
could have got up in the morning and given himself a shake and looked
the same. The secret lay in good blood somewhere—the close set of his
small, well-shaped ears and the poise of his small head on his broad
shoulders. _Ach!_ If his behavior had only been as fine as his
appearance——
“As we pulled alongside we saw a lady and a gentleman under the after
awning, but they did not rise. There was a burly Breton quartermaster at
the gangway, and he saluted and called a natty steward to take our
cards. A moment later the owner came to greet us, and we observed that
he was a man past middle age, gray, sallow, delicate, but distinguished
in face and carriage. He regarded us for a moment in polite inquiry;
then, divining that the call was purely social, courteously invited us
aboard.
“‘Hope we’re not intruding,’ said Stewart, as he stepped on the deck,
‘but we exiles are so keen for news from the outer world; besides, it’s
no end of a treat to see new faces, and if you’re going to stop any
length of time perhaps we may be of service. I’m Stewart; this is Dr.
Leyden.’
“Our host bowed his acknowledgment. ‘I am the Count Asquin,’ he said. I
had already observed that the schooner was under the French flag.
Stewart was staring at the woman under the awning; the Count was
scrutinizing Stewart. I murmured acknowledgments and took a mental
photograph of the Count. ‘A French nobleman,’ I thought. ‘An invalid who
does best at sea; asthma possibly; a student, erudite, polished—a
philosopher, and withal a man of heart.’ Physically he seemed a wreck,
but one saw at a glance that a high vitality had been consumed in his
body and conserved in his brain. His eyes were very large, very
lustrous, of the reddish-brown which told of sentiment, of mind—the eyes
of a poet. There was kindness in the large nose and the full-lipped
mouth was sensual, but neither weak nor selfish; pleasure-loving, but
wishful to share with others. He wore a grizzled mustache and imperial,
which gave a bizarre mask of the martial to a face which clearly could
not have countenanced the killing of a mouse. It was a pleasant face—the
face of a man with more friends than admirers.
“Stewart was still staring at the woman under the awning with that bold,
British stare which would be insulting were it not so primitive—the
stare of a savage, inquiring only, and utterly lacking in the volume of
suggestion which makes the stare of the Latin so insupportable.
“The Count, satisfied with his scrutiny, invited us aft, and as he
glanced from Stewart to me I thought that I caught a flicker of
amusement in his lustrous eyes. I also had obtained a glance at the
lady. She was evidently young and more than evidently lovely; quite
young enough for a daughter and far too lovely for the wife of this
burned-out elderly invalid.
“‘Will you come aft, messieurs?’ said the Count. ‘Doctor, it is evident
that you have been ill; permit me to offer you a _chaise-longue_ here in
the breeze.’ He led the way, and as we drew near the lady I saw that I
had done her injustice. She was more than lovely; she was positively
radiant with a beauty of the most alluring type in a land where every
one is weary and relaxed; glowing with youth and health and high
vitality, she was as fresh in that sodden clime as a clear wind from the
north—and yet, there was something beside, something less clear, more
earthy, a lavishness of charm and form and feature; her type suggested a
creature bred for the slave mart. It was evident that she was an
American; the women of no other race possess that peculiar blending of
subtlety, ignorance and audacity. ‘A Californian,’ thought I; ‘a
survival of the fittest New England stock transplanted from a climate
where only the very fit _do_ survive to a country whose finest crop is
babies.’
“I glanced at the Count, the lax, yellow tissues of whom suggested a
squeezed orange, and when he introduced us to her as his wife I almost
laughed. _His wife!_ The conceit of the term, Doctor; he in whose eyes
one could see the after-glow of extinguished flames. And yet—her fate
might be far worse. One saw with what care he fostered the orchids
hanging from the awning ridge-rope; beautiful, interesting, a care, a
treat for the eye, costly epiphytes requiring support. Ah, Doctor, youth
cannot appreciate the higher motives which inspire age with its craving
for beauty.
“The Countess murmured a few words, and I judged her neither well-born
nor clever. You know, Doctor, there are in nature certain freaks of
superabundant beauty just as there are freaks of deformity, and she was
one of these. There was not much else; planted with powerful instincts
to take the place of mind, as in the lower animals; fairly well educated
in a machine-made, American way—‘advanced,’ very possibly, but as savage
as if she roamed the Carpathian scarp clad only in her abundant hair,
which no doubt she would have very much enjoyed.
“She offered us her hand after the manner of ‘the Slope,’ and as Stewart
took it in his I saw the blood surge up beneath his yellow, tropic tan;
his pale eyes shone like those of a gull, and one could see the deep
chest swell suddenly as he caught his breath. Consider the nature of the
man, Doctor—more animal than a well-bred dog, who, after all, has many
elevated traits, whereas Stewart’s were mostly low—and the fact that he
had not seen a fair woman for months.
“The deep blue eyes of the Countess were fixed upon Stewart with a sort
of startled wonder; no doubt the contrasts of the man’s crushing
masculinity with the colorless shell of her husband’s sex may have
struck her as a positive shock. There was almost a physical weight in
the impulse which he projected toward her. One saw that she took it with
a little shudder—as an hereditary drunkard might gulp his first glass of
spirits.
He stood holding her hand and saying what was necessary, and while he
was saying it his light, wicked eyes were devouring her. The thing was
so outrageous that I could not help glancing at the Count, and at the
same moment his soft, dark eyes met mine, and, to my amazement, he
actually smiled! He saw the thing as I saw it; no one could have seen it
differently; in fact, there was a sort of mutual understanding in his
smile, but nothing unkindly.
“The Countess was quick to recover her poise; not through breeding nor
modesty, but from sheer combativeness. She seemed suddenly to
realize—and I have no doubt that it struck her as quite a new idea—that
a man could be too familiar with his eyes alone. There was plenty of
fight in her, as one could see from the flash of her dark blue eyes and
the rounded squareness of her jaw. She promptly assumed so great an air
of chilly condescension that Stewart stared again and then began to
grin. He was a good talker, however, in his rough, staccato way, and
soon I saw that she was beginning to forget about herself and think
about him.
“‘You have been ill, Doctor?’ said the Count to me. ‘Myself, I am also
in feeble health—asthma, with a uric acid diathesis and a bad leak in
the mitral valve. Hence the sea, the tropics, a sedentary life. By
nature I am active, and I find it less difficult to remain quiet where
there is abundant passive motion, as aboard a vessel.’
“I explained to him the nature of my own illness and my reason for
coming to Sulu.
“‘_I_ came to rest in smooth waters,’ he replied. ‘It is a charming
island.’ We talked of other things and soon discovered many mutual
friends. When at last we left, at my insistence, the Countess, at the
suggestion of her husband, invited us to dine the following night.
“Stewart was silent on the way in—moody, taciturn, tugging at his crisp
mustache. As we entered the house he burst out:
“‘Did you ever see a more beautiful woman, Leyden? Jove, what hair! what
a figure!’
“‘I find the husband more interesting,’ said I. ‘Any white woman would
be beautiful if one stood her up against the shadow of the equator.’
“He grunted like a peccary. ‘Her husband?—her proprietor!—it’s gross
flattery to speak of that wreck as her husband. What right has a cadaver
like that to a wife? A widow would be a jolly lot more becoming. What’s
he got to hold her with?’
“‘A yacht, a title, a good mind and a wedding ring,’ said I.
“‘Might hold some women,’ he growled; ‘can’t hold that one,’ and he took
himself off to bed.
“We went aboard the yacht the following night, and I do not think that I
have ever spent a more disagreeable social evening. The Countess was
glorious in the most daring of black décolleté gowns. Her great blue
eyes were gleaming like sapphires, and her hair put one in mind of the
burnished copper one sees when the schooner heels to the trade-wind.
Fancy, Doctor, one of those profuse Californians, abundant as a cluster
of Tokay grapes, thrust close against a yellow-haired atavism of the
Neolithic age like my poor acquaintance Stewart. _Ach!_ he was drunk
before he had finished his sherry; at every sip he tasted the subtle
perfume of her, and the cup she held to him was filled with wine as old
as the race and as deep as the blue of her sapphire eyes. She was
receiving, I fancy, as well as giving. _Ach!_ it was very primitive!
Instead of the yacht and the sparkle of the yellow lamp-light on the
plate and glass there should have been a forest and the pale moonlight
filtering through the boughs of giant hemlocks....
“I looked at the Count, and upon my word, Doctor, I saw that he was
relishing the thing!—more than that, he was enjoying it! Perhaps it was
the interest of the student; perhaps he was absorbing the warmth of
fires which no longer kindled on his own hearth. At any rate, he was
eagerly receptive of this spectacle, repellant to me in its unfitness,
and was drinking it with parted lips, a tinge of color in his hollow
cheeks, a deep glow in his red-brown eyes. There was nothing malicious
in his regard; rather, it was the acme of benevolence. He caught my eye
and smiled as he had done the day before.
“The dinner, which was elaborate, completed, we adjourned to the
quarter-deck, where the Count skilfully drew me into a discussion
regarding racial and tribal peculiarities, and I soon found him
_savant_. Soon, and to-day I know that it was by express design, I
became oblivious to our _milieu_ and harked back to the era when my
science was in its infancy, for although myself but a mere collector of
those rare things in which science properly interests herself, I hold
the greatest respect for the founders of my craft, who were themselves
both scientists and collectors. We discussed the early labors of these
masters, until soon I was soaring in heights of professional exaltation
which made me quite oblivious to the other discussion being carried on
in the shadow by these two savages, whose vigorous young bodies, with
their attendant embryonic psychic impulses, were at a phase so many
thousands of years ahead, or perhaps behind, our own epoch of mental
autocracy. Here was this woman with the beauty, temperament, and
principles, no doubt, of Helen of Troy, and mind enough to go after what
she wanted; Stewart an avatar of Jove himself, the sire of all
profligates, but with mind enough to smirch his classic duality; myself,
all cerebrum, ultra mental and analytic, perhaps because my blood was
just ridding itself of millions of sporulating _plasmodia_; the Count,
who had at some time, I fancy, swung in the orbits of the lot of us. He
certainly had the mind, and he _had_ had the body before he gave it to
his mind to squander, and it seemed to me, as I pulled up suddenly from
some peroration and caught the expression of his eye as he turned his
face to mine in the yellow lamp-light, that he was listening to the
echoes of an early anthem—and found them sweet—even at the cost of his
so-called _honor_!
“I was glad when the time came for us to leave, for I could see that
between the wine and the woman Stewart was fast shedding his restraint.
There was a cut to his voice, a fierce deviltry in the ring of his
laughter, and I have seen men shot for less than the expression of his
eyes. At first it appeared that the Countess had an eye for her husband;
then, seeing nothing but indulgence in his aristocratic face, she had
yielded gradually to the fascinations of the hour, until one could see
that she had quite lost the focus of her conventional perspective. You
see, Doctor, she was not a high-bred woman, so that she was quite
untrammeled by the instincts which come of long generations of culture.
The only thing which held her in check was the fear of jeopardizing her
official position as the wife of an invalid millionaire nobleman, but,
seeing that he found only diversion in her coquetries, she gradually
yielded to the potent attractions beside her, until I do not believe
that she realized how ridiculously naked her emotions had become. It was
evident that Stewart was holding her hand beneath the table, and he was
sitting so close that their knees touched. It was very primordial!—and
all of the while the Count was talking easily and with an expression
which seemed to say: ‘Dear, innocent children—what a pleasing spectacle
is youth and ardor!’
“I was glad when the time came for us to leave, as I am a simple old
bushman, Doctor, and I found the spectacle embarrassing.
“The following day Stewart had the Count and Countess to luncheon, and
after a very well-ordered repast asked if they would enjoy a drive into
the country.
“‘You would enjoy it,’ said the Count to his wife. ‘Myself, I dread the
dust and the heat. Go with Mr. Stewart, if you wish’—his smile was
nothing short of angelic as he said this—‘and I will remain and talk
with Dr. Leyden, if he will permit me.’
“The dark blue eyes of the Countess swept upward, and as they met the
cold gleam in Stewart’s she turned her face from us, but I could see the
crimson creeping to the tip of her ear, partly hid by the mass of her
hair. Stewart nodded indifferently and ordered his pony and chaise.
“When they had gone the Count turned to me. His fine face was serene,
but there was a wistfulness in his lustrous eyes.
“‘What a delightful thing it is to be young, Doctor!’ he remarked. Then,
in the same voice: ‘You were telling me last night about the Dyaks....’
“It was almost dark when they returned. The Countess was very pale and
seemed nervous and irritable, while Stewart was in a state of suppressed
and concentrated fury. I fancy that he had taken too much for granted
and got himself well snubbed. At any rate, his manners were those of a
sulky coal-trimmer, and I was much embarrassed.
“This sort of thing went on for over a week; we visited back and forth.
Stewart’s presence put rather a taboo on the yacht as far as the
garrison was concerned. The Count and I became intimate. Stewart pursued
the Countess with a sort of cold and reckless fury, and while she was
certainly swayed by his dominant force, it was quite evident that he was
not progressing. I guessed that his roughness, while it fascinated her,
at the same time aroused her antagonism. After all, Doctor, I am not
sure but that passion provides its anti-toxine in a temper. I have no
doubt they fought like cats; at any rate the strain began to tell upon
the Countess. One could see that she was growing haggard. Then one fine
day they disappeared!
“I was breakfasting alone when Count Asquin rushed into the room,
weeping and wringing his hands, quite beside himself with grief and
shock.
“‘They have gone!’ he cried. ‘M. Stewart and my wife! They have fled in
one of the pearling yawls!’
“‘I am very sorry for you,’ said I, ‘but I cannot say that I am
surprised.’
“‘He did not seem to hear me; he wrung his hands and the tears ran down
his sallow cheeks.
“‘I am desolated!’ he wailed. ‘Was there ever such ingratitude? But
think of my indulgence!—my consideration!—the unselfishness of my
behavior!’
“‘My dear fellow,’ said I, ‘you are quite incomprehensible! As a man of
the world, could you not see that Stewart was madly in love with the
Countess——’
“‘And she with him!’ he cried. ‘What could have been more evident? But
why this flight? Did she not have everything heart could desire? Has her
single wish been unfulfilled? Only yesterday I bought her a pearl of
Stewart for twenty thousand francs. How could she so deceive me?’ Upon
my word, Doctor, he yelped like a coyote!
“‘And have you lived all of this time,’ I interrupted, quite out of
patience with the old fool, ‘and not discovered that yachts and pearls
and kindness do not count for everything with a beautiful woman like the
Countess when——’
“‘But you do me injustice!’ he protested. ‘Of course, I saw that she
desired M. Stewart for her lover’—he mopped his eyes—‘it was most
natural that she should! One does not retain his youth forever,
Doctor—his voice was deprecating. ‘Stewart is a charming
fellow—handsome, dashing, _libertin_. Few women could resist him. But
since she so much desired him, why in heaven’s name did she not take
him, instead of growing pale and _maigre_ and finally bolting off on a
stinking oyster boat! I ask you, my friend, was not my attitude most
obviously that of _mari complaisant_?’
“Doctor, I got up without a word and lit my big china pipe, and as I
struck the head of the match against the wall I felt tempted to strike
my own head after it. I felt like a fool. The whole thing became so
obvious—should have been so obvious from the very start—and yet, here
these two young savages had run away because it seemed the only thing to
do, when they might just as well have remained and cheered the soul of
the poor old Count, to say nothing of enjoying his hospitality! Here
again was I myself blaming the Count for an infatuated old cuckold—and
he, the only really logical and sensible person in the whole affair,
wailing beside his empty cage!
“Then the humor of the thing struck me and I almost laughed outright. It
was so ridiculous, and such a joke on the runaways, who were cooped up
in a little fifty-foot pearling yawl or stowed away in a Nipa hut in
some little island, when they might have been so comfortable!
“‘Did you ever explain your sentiments regarding this affair to the
Countess?’ I inquired.
“‘Doctor!’ he protested, ‘one cannot be indelicate! Certainly not! Could
she not have inferred it from my behavior?’
“‘I am afraid,’ said I, ‘that her inferences were less flattering. Mine
were—permit me to apologize.’