LIPS THAT SPEAK NOT
Howland was not a man easily susceptible to a pair of eyes and a pretty
face. The practical side of his nature was too much absorbed in its
devices and schemes for the building of material things to allow the
breaking in of romance. At least Howland had always complimented himself
on this fact, and he laughed a little nervously as he went back to his
seat near the window. He was conscious that a flush of unusual
excitement had leaped into his cheeks and already the practical side of
him was ashamed of that to which the romantic side had surrendered.
"The deuce, but she was pretty!" he excused himself. "And those eyes--"
Suddenly he checked himself. There had been more than the eyes; more
than the pretty face! Why had the girl paused in front of the window?
Why had she looked at him so intently, as though on the point of speech?
The smile and the flush left his face as these questions came to him and
he wondered if he had failed to comprehend something which she had meant
him to understand. After all, might it not have been a case of mistaken
identity? For a moment she had believed that she recognized him--then,
seeing her mistake, had passed swiftly down the street. Under ordinary
circumstances Howland would have accepted this solution of the incident.
But to-night he was in an unusual mood, and it quickly occurred to him
that even if his supposition were true it did not explain the pallor in
the girl's face and the strange entreaty which had glowed for an instant
in her eyes.
Anyway it was none of his business, and he walked casually to the door.
At the end of the street, a quarter of a mile distant, a red light
burned feebly over the front of a Chinese restaurant, and in a
mechanical fashion his footsteps led him in that direction.
"I'll drop in and have a cup of tea," he assured himself, throwing away
the stub of his cigar and filling his lungs with great breaths of the
cold, dry air. "Lord, but it's a glorious night! I wish Van Horn
could see it."
He stopped and turned his eyes again into the North. Its myriad stars,
white and unshivering, the elusive play of the mysterious lights
hovering over the pole, and the black edge of the wilderness beyond the
river were holding a greater and greater fascination for him. Since
morning, when he had looked on that wilderness for the first time in his
life, new blood had entered into him, and he rejoiced that it was this
wonderful world which was to hold for him success and fortune. Never had
he dreamed that the mere joy of living would appeal to him as it did
now; that the act of breathing, of seeing, of looking on wonders in
which his hands had taken no part in the making, would fill him with the
indefinable pleasure which had suddenly become his experience. He
wondered, as he still stood gazing into the infinity of that other
world beyond the Saskatchewan, if romance was really quite dead in him.
Always he had laughed at romance. Work--the grim reality of action, of
brain fighting brain, of cleverness pitted against other men's
cleverness--had almost brought him to the point of regarding romance in
life as a peculiar illusion of fools--and women. But he was fair in his
concessions, and to-night he acknowledged that he had enjoyed the
romance of what he had seen and heard. And most of all, his blood had
been stirred by the beautiful face that had looked at him from out of
the night.
The tuneless thrumming of a piano sounded behind him. As he passed
through the low door of the restaurant a man and woman lurched past him
and in their irresolute faces and leering stare he read the verification
of his suspicions of the place. Through a second door he entered a large
room filled with tables and chairs, and pregnant with strange odors. At
one of the farther tables sat a long-queued Chinaman with his head
bowed in his arms. Behind a counter stood a second, as motionless as an
obelisk in the half gloom of the dimly illuminated room, his evil face
challenging Howland as he entered. The sound of a piano came from above
and with a bold and friendly nod the young engineer mounted a pair
of stairs.
"Tough joint," he muttered, falling into his old habit of communing with
himself. "Hope they make good tea."
At the sound of his footsteps on the stair the playing of the piano
ceased. He was surprised at what greeted him above. In startling
contrast to the loathsome environment below he entered a luxuriously
appointed room, heavily hung with oriental tapestries, and with half a
dozen onyx tables partially concealed behind screens and gorgeously
embroidered silk curtains. At one of these he seated himself and
signaled for service with the tiny bell near his hand. In response there
appeared a young Chinaman with close-cropped hair and attired in
evening dress.
"A pot of tea," ordered Howland; and under his breath he added, "Pretty
deuced good for a wilderness town! I wonder--"
He looked about him curiously. Although it was only eleven o'clock the
place appeared to be empty. Yet Howland was reasonably assured that it
was not empty. He was conscious of sensing in a vague sort of way the
presence of others somewhere near him. He was sure that there was a
faint, acrid odor lurking above that of burned incense, and he shrugged
his shoulders with conviction when he paid a dollar for his pot of tea.
"Opium, as sure as your name is Jack Howland," he said, when the waiter
was gone. "I wonder again--how many pots of tea do they sell in
a night?"
He sipped his own leisurely, listening with all the eagerness of the new
sense of freedom which had taken possession of him. The Chinaman had
scarcely disappeared when he heard footsteps on the stair. In another
instant a low word of surprise almost leaped from his lips. Hesitating
for a moment in the doorway, her face staring straight into his own,
was the girl whom he had seen through the hotel window!
For perhaps no more than five seconds their eyes met. Yet in that time
there was painted on his memory a picture that Howland knew he would
never forget. His was a nature, because of the ambition imposed on it,
that had never taken more than a casual interest in the form and feature
of women. He had looked on beautiful faces and had admired them in a
cool, dispassionate way, judging them--when he judged at all--as he
might have judged the more material workmanship of his own hands. But
this face that was framed for a few brief moments in the door reached
out to him and stirred an interest within him which was as new as it was
pleasurable. It was a beautiful face. He knew that in a fraction of the
first second. It was not white, as he had first seen it through the
window. The girl's cheeks were flushed. Her lips were parted, and she
was breathing quickly, as though from the effect of climbing the stair.
But it was her eyes that sent Howland's blood a little faster through
his veins. They were glorious eyes.
The girl turned from his gaze and seated herself at a table so that he
caught only her profile. The change delighted him. It afforded him
another view of the picture that had appeared to him in the doorway, and
he could study it without being observed in the act, though he was
confident that the girl knew his eyes were on her. He refilled his tiny
cup with tea and smiled when he noticed that she could easily have
seated herself behind one of the screens. From the flush in her cheeks
his eyes traveled critically to the rich glow of the light in her
shining brown hair, which swept half over her ears in thick, soft waves,
caught in a heavy coil low on her neck. Then, for the first time, he
noticed her dress. It puzzled him. Her turban and muff were of deep gray
lynx fur. Around her shoulders was a collarette of the same material.
Her hands were immaculately gloved. In every feature of her lovely face,
in every point of her dress, she bore the indisputable mark of
refinement. The quizzical smile left his lips. The thoughts which at
first had filled his mind as quickly disappeared. Who was she? Why
was she here?
With cat-like quietness the young Chinaman entered between the screens
and stood beside her. On a small tablet which Howland had not before
observed she wrote her order. It was for tea. He noticed that she gave
the waiter a dollar bill in payment and that the Chinaman returned
seventy-five cents to her in change.
"Discrimination," he chuckled to himself. "Proof that she's not a
stranger here, and knows the price of things."
He poured his last half cup of tea and when he lifted his eyes he was
surprised to find that the girl was looking at him. For a brief interval
her gaze was steady and clear; then the flush deepened in her cheeks;
her long lashes drooped as the cold gray of Howland's eyes met hers in
unflinching challenge, and she turned to her tea. Howland noted that the
hand which lifted the little Japanese pot was trembling slightly. He
leaned forward, and as if impelled by the movement, the girl turned her
face to him again, the tea-urn poised above her cup. In her dark eyes
was an expression which half brought him to his feet, a wistful glow, a
pathetic and yet half-frightened appeal to him. He rose, his eyes
questioning her, and to his unspoken inquiry her lips formed themselves
into a round, red O, and she nodded to the opposite side of her table.
"I beg your pardon," he said, seating himself. "May I give you my card?"
He felt as if there was something brutally indecent in what he was doing
and the knowledge of it sent a red flush to his cheeks. The girl read
his name, smiled across the table at him, and with a pretty gesture,
motioned him to bring his cup and share her tea with her. He returned to
his table and when he came back with the cup in his hand she was writing
on one of the pages of the tablet, which she passed across to him.
"You must pardon me for not talking," he read. "I can hear you very
well, but I, unfortunately, am a mute."
He could not repress the low ejaculation of astonishment that came to
his lips, and as his companion lifted her cup he saw in her face again
the look that had stirred him so strangely when he stood in the window
of the Hotel Windsor. Howland was not a man educated in the trivialities
of chance flirtations. He lacked finesse, and now he spoke boldly and to
the point, the honest candor of his gray eyes shining full on the girl.
"I saw you from the hotel window to-night," he began, "and something in
your face led me to believe that you were in trouble. That is why I have
ventured to be so bold. I am the engineer in charge of the new Hudson
Bay Railroad, just on my way to Le Pas from Chicago. I'm a stranger in
town. I've never been in this--this place before. It's a very nice
tea-room, an admirable blind for the opium stalls behind those walls."
In a few terse words he had covered the situation, as he would have
covered a similar situation in a business deal. He had told the girl
who and what he was, had revealed the cause of his interest in her, and
at the same time had given her to understand that he was aware of the
nature of their present environment. Closely he watched the effect of
his words and in another breath was sorry that he had been so blunt. The
girl's eyes traveled swiftly about her; he saw the quick rise and fall
of her bosom, the swift fading of the color in her cheeks, the
affrighted glow in her eyes as they came back big and questioning
to him.
"I didn't know," she wrote quickly, and hesitated. Her face was as white
now as when Howland had looked on it through the window. Her hand
trembled nervously and for an instant her lip quivered in a way that set
Howland's heart pounding tumultuously within him. "I am a stranger,
too," she added. "I have never been in this place before. I came
because--"
She stopped, and the catching breath in her throat was almost a sob as
she looked at Howland. He knew that it took an effort for her to write
the next words.
"I came because you came."
"Why?" he asked. His voice was low and assuring. "Tell me--why?"
He read her words as she wrote them, leaning half across the table in
his eagerness.
"I am a stranger," she repeated. "I want some one to help me.
Accidentally I learned who you were and made up my mind to see you at
the hotel, but when I got there I was afraid to go in. Then I saw you in
the window. After a little you came out and I saw you enter here. I
didn't know what kind of place it was and I followed you. Won't you
please go with me--to where I am staying--and I will tell you--"
She left the sentence unfinished, her eyes pleading with him. Without a
word he rose and seized his hat.
"I will go, Miss--" He laughed frankly into her face, inviting her to
write her name. For a moment she smiled back at him, the color
brightening her cheeks. Then she turned and hurried down the stair.
Outside Howland gave her his arm. His eyes, passing above her, caught
again the luring play of the aurora in the north. He flung back his
shoulders, drank in the fresh air, and laughed in the buoyancy of the
new life that he felt.
"It's a glorious night!" he exclaimed.
The girl nodded, and smiled up at him. Her face was very near to his
shoulder, ever more beautiful in the white light of the stars.
They did not look behind them. Neither heard the quiet fall of
moccasined feet a dozen yards away. Neither saw the gleaming eyes and
the thin, dark face of Jean Croisset, the half-breed, as they walked
swiftly in the direction of the Saskatchewan.