For what is he to me or I to him! But he had stirred a confusion of
thoughts in my mind. I saw the face of another man--a strong face,
even when flushed with drink--I saw that face with tears on it, working
convulsively. And directly behind me stood the woman. There she was, and
there, with her, was I myself. I felt the strange, rushing drama of
life whirling about me. I suddenly knew that every man is entangled in
it--and every woman.... Oh, God, why does she have to be so beautiful!
And so terribly alone!
The porter was opening the door of number nineteen, just across the
hall. Sir Robert was still at my door, swearing to himself.
“Number nineteen this side,” the porter was saying. “That number
sixteen.”
So Sir Robert came heavily along the hall and entered the opposite room.
We, the woman and I, heard the porter set down his hand baggage. We
heard him order hot water. We heard the door close and the porter rustle
away in his robe and his soft Chinese shoes and go off down the stairs.
Then, hardly knowing what I was about, I reached for the knob. But she
came swiftly across the floor and caught it ahead of me, holding the
door shut. Our hands touched. She looked very lovely, and very tired. My
eyes wandered aimlessly over the kimono she wore, of gray crepe silk. It
was embroidered from neck to hem in a wistaria pattern of the same soft
gray color. I never saw such exquisite embroidery.
“Don't go out there,” she said, low but very positive.
“But,” I whispered lamely, “but--but--”
“The other door,” she said.
So we went back and moved that cursed bureau again. It was even more of
a task this time, as we had to be careful about making any noise.
Again I lingered in our common doorway.
“Do you know that man?” I asked, in the guarded tones we were both
employing now.
“No,” she replied simply, “but it is quite evident that you do.”
Still I lingered. And she did not drive me out. She quietly busied
herself rearranging the innumerable little articles on the bureau. She
was very natural and unconscious about it. There was no hint in her
manner that she was aware of the curious interest I felt in all those
intimate little accessories of her life. Though I find myself wondering
if my crudely concealed masculine emotions are not an open book to her,
even so soon. The perceptions of women are finer than ours. I have read
that in the psychology books, and I believe it. They feel more deeply
and see farther. And it is when they feel most deeply and see farthest
that they do and say the inconsequential little things that puzzle us
so.
She had the bureau arranged to her taste now, and moved slowly over
toward the round table with the bent iron legs. There were a few books
on this table--a little red “Guide to Peking,” Murray's “Japan,” Dyer
Ball's “Things Chinese.”--her shopping bag, her wrist watch propped up
to serve as a clock, and the inevitable ash-tray advertising a Japanese
whisky.
Still I lingered there, half in her room, half in mine. She did not
look at me. She hesitated at the table and fingered that absurdly vulgar
little ash-tray. For the life of me I could not divine what she was
thinking or what she wished me to do. I had meant to go straight into my
own room and close the door. But I had done nothing of the sort.
It came to me that perhaps she was ready to have me pick up the
shattered mood of my musical enthusiasm and carry it forward. Perhaps
she would respond to it now. But I could not reconstruct that mood. In a
desperate sort of way I was trying from moment to moment to do
precisely that, and failing. For across my menial vision was floating,
tantalizingly vague, the flushed desperate face of Crocker, as I had
last seen him, at the Yokohama station. If this girl only knew it, we
have a common interest that binds us a million times closer than the
mere gift we both have.
I see I have called her a girl. She seemed so to me at that moment,
standing there by the crooked-legged table, slim of body, softly,
appealingly feminine in her outlines. I found myself thinking how lonely
she must be, and what terrors must lurk ambushed in the byways of her
thoughts, particularly at night. I fell to wondering about the man who
had brought her out here and left her. Where was he? Did he leave her
any money? Not a great deal, surely, or she would not be living in this
shabby place. And yet, sad as she is, _she does not know what I know!_
I am sure of that. She did not see Crocker's face, there at the Yokohama
station. She does not dream that he is scouring the Coast for her from
Mukden to Singapore--that in his heart, where pity should be, there is
outraged pride, and the exhausting bewilderment of a man who has only a
code where he should have been taught a philosophy--and murder.
This world is hard on women. Perhaps because we men run it.
I slowly drew my foot back across the sill, moving into my own room. I
hesitated again, and rested a trembling hand against the door frame.
It broke my heart to look at her, yet I could not keep from it. I
wanted to help her. I wanted to _do_ something. I even thought wildly of
marching straight over to that crooked-legged iron table and taking her
two hands solidly in mine and saying--“I know who you are, my dear, and
I can imagine something of what you are suffering. I know from a glimpse
of you that not one of the men who will be so quick to cast stones at
you is fit to touch the hem of your skirt. I know, too, that no man
can so much as befriend you, without plunging you into a deeper hell
of suspicion and torment than the hell you are in now. But I am your
friend, and all I ask of you is the opportunity to prove it!”