IV

In the room that had been his since early maturity Gerrit Ammidon gave

an involuntary sigh of relief. Taou Yuen, his wife, was standing in the

middle of the floor, gazing about with a faint and polite smile. Her eyes

rested on a yellow camphor chest--one of the set brought home by his

father--on a severe high range of drawers made of sycamore with six legs,

on her brilliant reflection in the eagle-crowned mirror above the mantel,

and the sleigh bed with low heavily curved ends.

The situation below, however brief and, on the whole, reasonably

conducted, had been surprisingly difficult. At the same time that he had

felt no necessity to apologize for his marriage he had known that Taou

Yuen must surprise, yes--shock, his family. She was Chinese, to them a

heathen: they would be unable to comprehend any mitigating dignity of

rank. Where they'd actually suffer, he realized, would be in the

attitude of Salem, the stupid gabble, the censure and cold pity caused

by his wife.

Personally he regarded these with the contempt he felt for so many of the

qualities that on shore bound the interests of everyone into a single

common concern. It gave him pleasure to assault the authority and

importance of such public prejudice and self-opinion; but, unavoidably

implicating his family, at once a part of himself and Salem, he was

conscious of the fact that he had laid them all open to disagreeable

moments. He was sorry for this, and his regret, principally materialized

by his father's hurt confusion, had unexpectedly cast a shadow on a scene

to which he had looked forward with a distinct sense of comedy. Where the

realities were concerned he had no fear of Taou Yuen's ability to justify

herself completely. He possessed a stupendous admiration for her.

He watched her now with the mingled understanding and mystification that

gave his life with her such a decided charm. Her gaze had fastened on the

mirror-stand above the drawers: she must be wondering if she would have

to paint and prepare herself for him here, openly. He knew that she

considered it a great impropriety for her face to be seen bare; all the

elaborate processes of her morning toilet must be privately conducted. He

recognized this, but had no idea what she actually thought of the room,

of his family, of the astonishing situation into which her heart had

betrayed her.

One and then another early hope he saw at once were vain. It had seemed

to him that in America, in Salem, she might become less evidently

Chinese; not in the incongruous horror of Western clothes, but in her

attitude, in a surrender to superficial customs; he had pictured her as

merging distinctively into the local scene. In China he had hoped that in

the vicinity of Washington Square and Pleasant Street she would appear

less Eastern; but, beyond all doubt, here she was enormously more so. The

strange repressed surrounding accentuated every detail of her Manchu pomp

and color. The frank splendor of her satins and carved jades and

embroidery, her immobile striking face loaded with carmine and glinting

headdress, the flawless loveliness of hands with the pointed nail

protectors, were, in his room, infinitely dramatized.

The other, less secure possibility that she might essentially change

perished silently. In a way his wish had been a presumption--that a

member of the oldest and most subtle civilization existing would, if she

were able, adopt such comparatively crude habits of life and thought.

She moved slowly up to the bed, examining it curiously; and again he

understood her look of doubt--in China beds were called _kang_, or

stoves, from the fact that they were more often than not a platform of

brick with an opening beneath for hot coals. She fingered the ball fringe

of the coverlet, and then turned with amazement to the soft pillow. A

hand with the stone bracelet falling back from her smooth wrist rose to

the complicated edifice of her headdress.

"Your pillow is coming along from the ship," he told her; "the women here

do up their hair every morning."

She considered this with geranium lips slightly parted on flawless teeth,

and nodded slowly. The westering sun striking through the window

overlooking the Common illuminated her with a flat gold unreality.

"I'll have a day bed brought for you," he continued, realizing that, as

the result of fortunate chance, she understood most of what he said

without an actual command of the individual words. In reply she sank

before him in the deep Manchu gesture with one knee sweeping the floor,

the humility of her posture dignified by grace. He touched the crystal

globe of an earring, pinched her chin, in the half light manner by which

he instinctively expressed his affection for her. She was calm and

pleased. "Taou Yuen," he continued, "you miss Shanghai, with the wall of

ten gates and the river Woosung stuck full of masts. You'll never think

Salem is a paradise like Soochow."

"This is your city," she replied, slowly choosing the words. "Your

ancestors are here." There was not a shade of regret in her voice or

manner. He tried once more, and as vainly as ever, to penetrate the veil

of her perfect serenity. She never, it became apparent, descended from

the most inflexible self-control; small emotions--surface gayety of

mood, curiosity, the faintest possible indication of contempt, he had

learned to distinguish; the fact that she cared enough for him to desert

every familiar circumstance was evident; but beyond these he was

powerless to reach.

His own emotions were hardly less obscured: the dominating feeling was

his admiration for her exquisite worldly wisdom, the perfection of her

bodily beauty, and the philosophy which bore her above the countless

trivialities that destroyed the dignity of western minds. He realized

that her paint and embroidery covered a spirit as cold and tempered as

fine metal. She was totally without the social sentiment of his own

world; but she was equally innocent of its nauseous hypocrisy, the

pretensions of a piety covering commercial dishonesty, obscenity of

thought and spreading scandal. The injustice he saw practiced on shore

had always turned him with a sense of relief to the cleansing challenge

of the sea; always, brought in contact with cunning and self-seeking men

and heartless schemes, with women cheapened by a conviction of the

indecency of life, he was in a state of hot indignation. From all this

Taou Yuen offered a complete escape.

On the purely feminine side she was a constant delight, the last possible

refinement, he told himself, of instinct and effect. She was incapable of

the least vulgarity; never for an instant did she flag from the necessity

of beauty, never had he seen her too weary for an adornment laborious in

a hundred difficult conventions. She was, too, a continuous source of

entertainment, even as his wife she never ceased to be a spectacle; his

consciousness of her as a being outside himself persisted.

"I must go down and see where our things are," he said, rising. In the

hall he stopped before the tall clock whose striking was a part of his

early memories. Below, the house seemed empty; and, instead of turning to

the front door and his purpose, he went into the drawing-room.

The long glass doors to the garden were open, and the interior was filled

with the scent of lilacs. The room itself had always reminded him of

them--it was pale in color, cool gilt and lavender brocade and white

panels. Nothing had been moved or changed: the inlaid cylinder fall desk

with its garlands of painted flowers on the light waxed wood stood at the

left, the pole screen with the embroidered bouquet was before the fire

blind, the girandoles, scrolled in ormolu and hung with crystal lusters,

held the shimmer of golden reflections on the walls.

He had remembered the drawing-room at Java Head as a place of enchanted

perfection; in his childhood its still serenity had seemed a presentment

of what might be hoped for in heaven. The thought of the room as it was

now, open but a little dim to the lilacs and warm afternoon, had haunted

him as the measure of all peace and serenity in moments of extreme

danger, his ship laboring in elemental catastrophes and in remote seas.

Its fragrance had touched him through the miasma of Whampoa Reach,

waiting for the lighters of tea to float down from Canton; standing off

in the thunder squalls of the night for the morning sea breeze to take

him into Rio; over a cognac in the coffee stalls of the French market at

New Orleans, the chanteys ringing from the cotton gangs along the levees:

_"Were you ever down in Mobile Bay?

Aye, aye, pump away."_

As he left the room he saw Laurel, William's youngest child, and he

imprisoned her in an arm. "You haven't asked what I've got for you in my

sea chest," he said. Gerrit was very fond of all four of the rosy-cheeked

vigorous girls, and a sense of injury touched him at Laurel's reserved

manner. She studied him with a wondering uneasy concern. This he realized

was the result of bring home Taou Yuen; and an aggravated impatience, a

growing rebellion, seized him. He wouldn't stay with his wife at Java

Head a day longer than necessary; and if anyone, in his family or

outside, showed the slightest disdain he could retaliate with his

knowledge of local pettiness, the backbiting enmities and secret lapses.

God knew he didn't want trouble, all he asked was a reasonable liberty,

the semblance, anyhow, of a courtesy toward his wife. Whatever might be

said would be of no moment to her--except in the attitude of his

father--and Taou Yuen's indifference furnished a splendid example for

himself. He wondered why the devil he was continually putting his fingers

in affairs that couldn't concern him. No one thanked him for his trouble,

they considered him something of a fool--a good sailor but peculiar. The

damned unexpected twists of his sense of the absurd, too, got him into

constant difficulty.

His father was standing outside the principal entrance; and, as he joined

him on the steps, he saw two men from the _Nautilus_ carrying his ship's

desk by the beckets let in the ends. The wind was blowing gently up

Pleasant Street; the men, at his gesture, lifted their burden up the

steps, between the direction of the wind and Jeremy Ammidon. The latter

rose instantly into one of his dark rages:

"What do you mean, you damned packetrats--coming up a companionway to the

windward of me! I'll have no whalers' habits here." He repeated

discontentedly that everything on sea and land had fallen into a decline.

Others followed with a number of Korean boxes, strapped and locked with

copper, and wicker baskets. A man in charge said to Gerrit Ammidon:

"The chest was left for Mr. Dunsack at the foot of Hardy Street, sir, as

you ordered. The inspector sent it off complimentary with your personal

things." Gerrit asked, "He didn't stop to get a whiff of it then?" The

other shook his head. "Edward Dunsack asked me to ship it here and

explained that it was only junk he was bringing home, but what it amounts

to is about a case of Patna opium. He's lucky."

They turned inside, William was in the library, and Gerrit instinctively

followed his father into the room. William surveyed him with a moody

discontent. "What I can't understand," he proceeded; "is why you call it

a marriage, why you brought your woman here to us, to Rhoda and the

children."

"It's simple enough," Gerrit replied; "Taou Yuen is my wife, we are

married exactly as Rhoda and you are. She is not my woman in the sense

you mean. I won't allow that, William."

"How can it matter what you will or will not allow when everyone'll think

the other? Shipmasters have had Chinese mistresses before, yes, and

smuggled them into Salem; but this conduct of yours is beyond speech."

Gerrit Ammidon said:

"Don't carry this too far." Anger like a hot cloud oppressed him. "I am

married legally and, if anything, by a ceremony less preposterous than

your own. Taou Yuen is not open to any man or woman's suspicions. I am

overwhelmingly indebted to her."

"But she's not your race," William Ammidon muttered; "she is a Confucian

or Taoist, or some such thing."

"You're Unitarian one day a week, and father is Congregational, Hodie's

a Methodist, and no one knows what I am," Gerrit cried. "Good God, what

does all that matter! Isn't a religion a religion? Do you suppose a

Lord worth the name would be anything but entertained by such spiteful

little dogmas. A sincere greased nigger with his voodoo must be as good

as any of us."

"That is too strong, Gerrit," Jeremy objected. "You'll get nowhere crying

down Christianity."

"If I could find it," the younger declared bitterly, "I'd feel

differently. It's right enough in the Bible. ...Well, we'll go on to

Boston to-morrow."

"This is your home," his father repeated. "Naturally William, all of us

have been disturbed; but nothing beyond that. I trust we are a loyal

family. What you've done can't be mended with hard words."

"She may become very fashionable," Gerrit mockingly told his

brother. "It'll be a blow to Camilla," Jeremy chuckled. "Some rice

must be cooked."

"Manchus don't live on rice," Gerrit replied. "They don't bind the

feet either nor wear the common Chinese clothes. Rhoda will

understand better."

Again in his room he found his wife bending over a gorgeous heap of

satins, bright mazarines and ornaments. "We'll go down to supper soon,"

he told her. Already there were signs of her presence about the room:

the chest of drawers was covered with gold and jade and green amber,

painted paper fans set on ivory and tortoise shell, and lacquer fan

boxes; coral hairpins, sandalwood combs, silver rouge pots and rose

quartz perfume bottles with canary silk cords and tassels. On a familiar

table was her pipe, wound in gilt wire, and the flowered satin tobacco

case. An old coin was hanging at the head of the bed, a charm against

evil spirits; and on a stand was the amethyst image of Kuan-Yin _pu

tze_, the Goddess of Mercy.

Taou Yuen sank on the floor with a little embarrassed laugh at the

confusion in which he had surprised her. "Let your attitude be grave," he

quoted from the Book of Rites with a pretended severity. Her amusement

rose in a ripple of mirth. He opened his desk, rearranging the disorder

brought about by its transportation; and, when he turned, she was

prostrate in the last rays of the sun. "_O-me-to-Fuh_," she breathed;

"_O-me-to-Fuh_," the invocation to Buddha. This at an end she announced,

"Now I am grave and respectful for your family."

Supper, Gerrit admitted to himself, promised to be a painful occasion;

conversation rose sporadically and quickly died in glances of

irrepressible curiosity directed at his wife. She, on the contrary,

showed no pointed interest in her surroundings; and, in her hesitating

slurred English, answered Rhoda's few questions without putting any in

return. Camilla preserved a frozen silence; Sidsall was pleasantly

conciliating in her attitude toward the novel situation; Janet, her lips

moving noiselessly, was rapt in amazement; and Laurel smiled, abashed at

meeting Taou Yuen's eyes.

The recounting of his delayed return offered Gerrit a welcome relief from

the pervading strain: "There's no tea to speak of at Shanghai, and I took

on a mixed cargo--pongees and porcelain and matting. I got camphor and

cassia and seven hundred peculs of ginger; then I decided to lay a course

to Manilla for some of the cheroots father likes. The weather was fine, I

had a good cargo, and, well--we pleasured out to Honolulu. I was riding

the island horses and shipping oil when the schooner _Kahemameha_ arrived

from the coast with the news of the gold discovery in California. Every

boat in the harbor was loaded to the trucks, crowded with passengers at

their weight in ginseng, and laid for San Francisco.... Well, I was

caught with the rest.

"Five thousand dollars was offered me to carry a gentleman and his

attendant. Two others would pay three for the same purpose. Stowage was

worth what you asked.... The _Nautilus_ made a good run; then, about a

day from land, Mr. Broadrick told me that there wouldn't be a seaman on

the ship an hour after we anchored. They were all crazy with gold fever,

he said. I could see, too, that they were excited; the watch hung under

the weather rail jabbering like parrots; an uglier crew of sea lawyers

never developed.

"There was one thing to do and I did it--called them aft and gave them

some hot scouse. They'd shipped for Salem and there they must go. I

didn't anchor, but stood off--the harbor was crowded with deserted

vessels like some hell for ships--and sent the jolly boat in with the

passengers and a couple of men. They didn't come back, you may be sure.

The consignment for San Francisco I carried out that evening, for I made

sail at once."

"You had a pretty time getting a way on her," Jeremy Ammidon remarked.

"I did," Gerrit acknowledged shortly. "The second mate's ear was taken

loose by a belaying pin that flew out of the dark like a gull. Mr.

Broadrick had a bad minute in the port forecastle after he had ordered

all hands on deck a third time. The fine weather left us, though, and

that kept the crew busy; we carried away the fore-royal mast and yard

before we were within a thousand miles of the latitude of the Horn. That

hit us like a cannon ball of ice. You know what it is at its worst," he

told his father; "weeks of snow and hail and fog and gales; and not for

anything can you keep an easting. God knows how a ship lives through the

seas; but she does, she does, and you lose the Magellan clouds astern."

The old man nodded.

Gerrit was relieved, however, when supper ended and his wife formally

departed for her room. Immediately slipping a hand inside Rhoda's arm he

conducted her to the drawing-room. "I'd like you to know more about it,"

he said directly.

"It was very extraordinary. A Lú Kikwáng was a high official of the

Canton Customs, and when Shanghai was declared an open port in forty-two

they made him hoppo there. I remembered him at Canton, a dignified old

duck with eighty or a hundred servants to keep anyone from possibly

speaking to him of business, but there had been some trouble about

foreign vessels selling saltpeter illegally and--he knew some English--we

had quite a friendly little consultation. Yet it hadn't prepared me for

his coming off to the _Nautilus_ at Shanghai with a linguist and an air

of the greatest mystery. His manner was beautiful, of course, absolutely

tranquil and that made what they said, what he hoped, seem even wilder

than it was.

"His son, it appeared, had married and was accidentally drowned in the

Great Canal hardly a month after the ceremony. His widow belonged, then,

to the husband's family, and from that moment her father-in-law had had

nothing but bad luck. He had been robbed, his best stallion died, there

had been a flood in his tea which not only spoiled the crop but filled

the ground with silt--it was impossible to relate his calamities. He

consulted a necromancer at last and learned that it was all caused by the

presence of Taou Yuen.

"This, you see, made the difficulty, as it's a frightful disgrace to

return a married daughter to her own father's home, and Lú had grown very

fond of her. She was extremely clever and virtuous, he said. The other

thing was to kill her or force her to commit suicide. He told me very

calmly that he would like to avoid this.

"Then, in the linguist's most flowery manner, they went on with what Lú

Kikwáng proposed. He had recognized that I was a man of 'superior

propriety' and he wondered if I would take Taou Yuen away to America with

me. Very secretly though--there would be an uproar if it were known that

a Manchu woman had been married to a foreigner. I could see her first in

his garden without her knowing anything about it.

"It's needless to tell you that I went with them that afternoon. A

meeting was arranged for the next day--" he broke off, sitting forward

with elbows on knees, gazing fixedly at his clasped hands.

"You make that very clear, Gerrit," his sister-in-law replied; "I now

understand the past almost as well as yourself; but it's the future I'm

in doubt about. I saw immediately that your wife was not an ordinary

woman; it would be much easier if she were. Certainly you don't intend to

stay here, at Java Head; but that is immaterial. Wherever you go in

America it will not be suitable for her. She'll be no more at home with

your friends than you with hers. I feel terribly sad about it, Gerrit;

you were as selfish as only a man can be."

"You are unjust, Rhoda," he protested. "Taou Yuen was willing to come.

She had read about other countries and saw a great deal of the English

wife of a rich Dutch factor at Shanghai; as Lú Kikwáng said, she's

wonderfully intelligent. I think she is happy, too."

"Rubbish! Of course she loves you; I am not talking about that. How will

she get along while you are away on your long voyages? She couldn't

possibly live in the cabin of a ship, and do you suppose she'd be

contented in Salem with you absent for a year!"

"We have as many chances of success as any other marriage," he asserted.

"The whole business is foolish enough."

"That opinion might do for a single shipmaster, with only a month or two

out of the year on land. When you were free, Gerrit, your impatience with

convention was refreshing and possible. But can't you see that you have

given up your liberty! You have tied your hands. However loudly you may

cry out against society now you are a part of us, foolish or not. You'll

find that your wife has anchored you in Salem, Boston or Singapore, no

matter where you go: people will reach and hurt you through her.

"She is very gorgeous and placid, superior on the surface; but the heart,

Gerrit--that isn't made of jade and ivory and silk."

"I'll bring down your presents to-morrow," he told her, avoiding any

further present discussion of his marriage. "Has father failed, do you

think? His tempers are vigorous as ever."

"He seems baggier about the eyes and throat. He is just as quick, but it

exhausts him more. Things would be much better if he were only content to

let William manage at the countinghouse. Times are shifting so quickly

with these new clipper ships and direct passages and political changes."

"There's no longer any doubt about the clippers," Gerrit declared; "the

California gold rush will attend to that."

In his room he found Taou Yuen, in soft white silk worked with bamboo

leaves, on the day bed, smoking. She rose immediately as he entered; and,

coming close to him, ran her cool fingers through his hair. He stood

gazing out at the dim oil flares that marked the confines of Washington

Square, considering all that Rhoda had said. Strangely enough it led his

thoughts away from his wife; they reverted to Nettie Vollar.

He had been, he realized, very nearly in love with her: what he meant by

that inaccurate term was that if the affair had continued a little longer

he would have insisted on marrying her. Nettie was not indifferent to

him. An impersonal feeling had attracted him to her--a resentment of her

treatment by the larger part of Salem, particularly the oblique

admiration of the men. His supersensitiveness to any form of injustice

had driven him into the protest of calling and accompanying her, with an

exaggerated politeness, about the streets. It had not been difficult; she

was warm-blooded, luxurious, a very vivid woman. Gerrit, however, had

made a point of repressing any response to that aspect of their

intercourse--the sheerest necessity for the preservation of his disdain.

She had cried on his shoulder, in his arms, practically; he had acted in

the purely fraternal manner. But the thing was reaching a natural

conclusion when her grandfather, Barzil Dunsack, had interfered with his

unsupportably frank accusations and command. The _Nautilus_ had been

ready for sea, and his, Gerrit's, imperious resentment had carried him

out of the Dunsacks' house--to Shanghai and Taou Yuen--without another

word to Nettie.

How strangely life progressed, without chart or intelligent observations

or papers! He heard the tap of his wife's pipe; there was a faint

sweetish odor of drugged tobacco and the scent of cloves in which she

saturated herself. Outside was Salem, dim and without perceptible

movement; the clock in the hall struck ten. Taou Yuen didn't approach him

again nor speak; her perceptions were wonderfully acute.

The sense of loneliness that sometimes overtook him on shore deepened, a

feeling of impotence, as if he had suddenly waked, lost and helpless, in

an unfamiliar planet. There was the soft whisper of his wife's passage

across the room. In the lamplight the paint on her cheeks made startling

unnatural patches of--paint. The reflections slid over the liquid black

mass of her hair, died in the lustrous creamy folds of her garment. She

was at once grotesque and impressive, like a figure in a Chinese

pantomime watched from the western auditorium of his inheritance. His

fondness for her, his admiration, had not lessened. He surveyed his

position, the presence here, in his room at Java Head, of Taou Yuen, with

amazement; all the small culminating episodes lost, the result was beyond

credence. His thoughts returned to Rhoda's accusation of selfishness, the

disaster implied in her pity for his wife. He tried again to analyze his

marriage, discover whatever justification, security, it possessed. Was

his admiration for Taou Yuen sufficient provision for his part of their

future together? It was founded largely on her superiority to the world

he had known; and here it was necessary for him to convince himself that

his wedding had not been merely the result of romantic accident. He knew

that the sensual had had almost no part in it, it had been mental; an act

of pity crystallizing his revolt against what he felt to be the impotence

of "Christian" ethics. Yet this was not sufficient; for he, like Rhoda,

had found under his wife's immobility the flux of immemorial woman.

No, it wasn't enough; but more existed, he was certain of that. No one

could expect him, now, to experience the thrill of idealized passion that

was the sole property of youth. What feeling he had had for Nettie--he

was obliged to return to her from the fact that it was the only possible

comparison--had come from very much the same source as the other. The

old impersonal motives!

The danger, Rhoda pointed out, had been admitted when his marriage made

impossible the continuation of that aloof position. He doubted that it

could change him so utterly. The thought of the entertainment his wife

would afford him in Salem expanded. He regretted that the best, the

calling and comments of the women, was necessarily lost to him, but Taou

Yuen would repeat a great deal: she, too, had a sly sense of the

ridiculous. He hoped that his sister-in-law didn't suppose her helpless;

the impenetrable Manchu control gave her a pitiless advantage over any

less absolute civilization. In the darkness before sleep the heavy exotic

scents in the room oppressed him strangely.

He rose early, and quietly dressing went out into the garden: buds on

the June roses against the high blank fence on the street were swelling

into visible crimson; there were the stamping of horses' feet on the

cobbles of the stable inclosure, the heavy breathing and admonitions of

the coachman wielding a currycomb. The sunlight streamed down through

pale green willow and tall lilac bushes, through the octagonal latticed

summerhouse and across the vivid sod to the drawing-room door. Gerrit

turned, and entered the farther yard, where his father was inspecting the

pear trees.

"The _Nautilus_ will need new copper sheathing," Gerrit said: "she's

pretty well stripped forward."

"Take her around to the Salem Marine Railway at the foot of English

Street. A fine ship, Gerrit, with a proper hull. I tell you they'll never

improve on the French lines."

"She won't go into the wind with a clipper," he admitted; "but I'll sail

her on a fair breeze with anything afloat."

"If you come to that," his father asserted; "nothing handsomer will

ever be seen than an East India-man in the northeast trades with the

captain on the quarter-deck in a cocked hat and sword, the shoals of

flying fish and albacore skittering about a transom as high and carved

and gilded as a church, the royal pennant at the mainmast head. Maybe

it would be the _Earl of Balcarras_ with her cannons shining and the

midshipmen running about."

"Yes," the younger man returned, "and taking in her light sails at

sunset, dropping astern like an island. The John Company's ruining

British shipping."

Jeremy Ammidon muttered one of his favorite pessimistic complaints. "What

did you say her name was?" he demanded abruptly.

"Taou Yuen."

"Taou Yuen Ammidon," the elder pronounced experimentally. "It doesn't

sound right, the two won't go together."

"But they have," Gerrit declared. He thought impatiently that he must

listen to a repetition of Rhoda's assertions.

"I don't know much about 'em," Jeremy proceeded. "All I saw, when I was

younger, was the little singing-girls playing mora and wailing over their

infernal three-stringed fiddles something about the moon and a bowl of

water lilies."

Taou Yuen did not come down to breakfast, and Gerrit stayed away from

their room until her toilet must be finished. It was Sunday; and with the

customary preparation for church under way William said:

"I suppose you will go down to the ship?"

The hidden question, the purpose of the inquiry, at once stirred into

being all Gerrit's perversity. "No," he replied carelessly; "we'll go

with you this morning."

"That's unheard of," William exclaimed heatedly; "a woman in all her

paint and perfume and outrageous clothes in North Church, with--with my

family! I won't have it, do you understand."

"No worse than what you see there every week," Gerrit retorted calmly;

"corsets and feathers and female gimcracks. Plenty of rouge and cologne

too. It will give them something new to stare at and whisper about."

William Ammidon choked on his anger, and his wife laid a gloved hand on

his arm. "You must make up your mind to it," she told him. "It can't hurt

anyone. She is Gerrit's wife, you see."

Above, the shipmaster said to Taou Yuen: "We are going to church with the

family." He surveyed her clothes with a faint glimmer of amusement. She

had, he saw, made herself especially resplendent as a Manchu. The long

gown was straw-colored satin with black bats--a symbol of

happiness--whirling on thickly embroidered silver clouds, over which she

wore a sleeve coat fastened with white jade and glittering with spangles

of beaten copper. Her slippers were pale rose, and fresh apple blossoms,

which she had had brought from the yard, made a headdress fixed with

long silver and dull red ivory pins.

She smiled obediently at his announcement, and, with a fan of peacock

silks and betel nuts in a pouch like a tea rose hanging by a cord from a

jade button, she signified her readiness to proceed.

William had gone on foot with his girls, Jeremy was seldom in church, and

Rhoda, Taou Yuen beside her with Gerrit facing them, followed in the

barouche. It seemed to the latter that they were almost immediately at

the door of North Church. The leisurely congregation filling the walk

stiffened in incredulous amazement as Gerrit handed his wife to the

pavement. Rhoda went promptly forward, nodding in response to countless

stupefied greetings; while Gerrit Ammidon moved on at Taou Yuen's side.

Prepared, he restrained the latter from a prostration in the hall of the

church. Nothing had changed: the umbrella trough still bore the numbers

of the pews, the stair wound gloomily up to the organ loft. He again

found the subdued interior, the maroon upholstery, the flat Gothic

squares of the ceiling and dark red stone walls, a place of reposeful

charm. The Ammidons had two of the box pews against the right wall: his

brother and children were in the second, and, inside the other small

inclosure, he shut the gate and took his place on a contracted corner

bench. Taou Yuen sat with Rhoda against the back of the pew. The former,

blazing like a gorgeous flower on the shadowed surface of a pool, smiled

serenely at him.

He could hear the hum of subdued comment running like ignited powder

through the church, familiar faces turned blankly toward him or nodded in

patent confusion. The men, he noted, expressed a single rigid

condemnation. The women, in crisp light dresses and ribboned bonnets,

were franker in their curiosity. Taou Yuen was a loadstone for their

glances. As the service progressed her face grew expressionless. Fretted

sandalwood bracelets drooped over her folded hands, and miniature dragon

flies quivered on the gold wires of her earrings; the sharp perfumes of

the East drifted out and mingled with the Western scents of extracts and

powders. He only saw that she was politely chewing betel nut. It wasn't,

he told himself, reverting to his critical attitude toward Salem, that he

was lacking in charity toward his neighbors, or that he felt any

superiority; but the quality that signally roused his antagonism was

precisely the men's present aspect of heavy censure and boundless

propriety, their stolid attitude of justifying the spiritual consummation

promised by the sermon and hymns.

The long night watches, the anxiety of the sea, the profound mysteries of

the wheeling stars and the silence of the ocean at dawns, had given him,

he dimly realized, an inarticulate reverence for the supreme mystery of

creation. He was unable to put it into words or facile prayer but it was

the guarded foundation of most that he was, and it bred in him a contempt

for lesser signs. The religion of his birth, the faith of Taou Yuen, the

fetishism of the Zanzibar Coast, he had regarded as equally important, or

futile--the mere wash of the immensity of beauty, the inexorable destiny,

that had seemed to breathe on him alone at the stern of his ship.

He lost himself now in the keenness of his remembered emotion: the

church faded into a far horizon, he felt the slight heave of the ship

and heard the creaking of the wheel as the steersman shifted his hands;

from aloft came the faint slapping of the bunt lines on rigid canvas,

the loose hemp slippers of the crew sounded across the deck, the water

whispered alongside, the ship's bell was struck and repeated in a

diminished note on the topgallant forecastle. The morning rose from

below the edge of the sea and the pure air freshened.... His thoughts

were recalled to the present by the dogmatic insistence of the

clergyman's voice, promising heaven, threatening hell. His gaze rested

on the chalky debility of Madra Clifford.

The service over, the aisle past the Ammidon pews was filled with a

slow-moving inquisitive throng. Rhoda chose to wait until the greater

part was past, and then she followed with the unmoved Taou Yuen and

Gerrit. "This is my brother's wife," he heard the former say. "Mrs.

Saltonstone, Gerrit's sister, Mrs. Clifford and Miss Vermeil. Yes... from

Shanghai. Overdue. We were worried, of course." Taou Yuen smiled

vigorously and flapped the vivid fan. Against her brilliant colors, the

carved jade and embroideries, silver and apple blossoms, the other women

looked colorless in wide book muslin and barége, with short veils of

tulle illusion hanging from bonnets of rice straw and glazed crêpe.

Palpably shocked by her Oriental face masked in paint, her Chinese

"heathen" origin, yet they fingered the amazing needlework and wondered

over the weight of her satins.

The men he knew gave him, for the most part, a curt greeting. They

glanced more covertly at his wife; he understood exactly what thoughts

brought out this condemnation soiled by private speculation; and his

disdain mounted at their sleek backs and glossy tile, hats supported on

stiffly bent arms.

After dinner he walked through the warm sunny emptiness of the afternoon

to Derby Wharf and the _Nautilus_. Standing on the wharf, smoking a

cheroot, he leaned back upon his cane, studying the ship with a gaze that

missed no detail. There was not a sound from the water; across the harbor

Peach's Point seemed about to dissolve in a faint green haze; a strong

scent of mingled spices came from the warehouses. There was the splash of

oars in the Basin beyond, and the more distant peal of a church bell.

At the sound of footfalls behind him he turned and saw Nettie Vollar and

her uncle, Edward Dunsack. A dark color rose in the girl's cheek, and her

hand pulled involuntarily at Dunsack's arm, as if she wished to retreat.

Gerrit thought that she had aged since he had latest met her: Nettie's

mouth, with its full, slightly drooping lower lip, had lost something of

its fresh arch; her eyes, though they still preserved their black

sparkle, were plainly resentful. Edward Dunsack, medium tall but thin

almost to emaciation, had a riven sallow face with close-cut silvery hair

and agate-brown eyes with contracted pupils.

"Well, Nettie," Gerrit said, moving forward promptly, "it's pleasant to

see you again." Her hand was cold and still. "Dunsack, too."

"I am obliged to you for my chest," the latter told him, unmoved by

Gerrit's quizzical gaze.

"Glad to do it for you," the other replied; "it came ashore with my

personal things, and so, perhaps, saved you something."

"Perhaps," Dunsack agreed levelly.

Looking down at the cob filling of the wharf, Nettie Vollar said, "You

came home married, I hear, and to a Chinese lady."

Gerrit assented. "You'll certainly know her, and like her, too. Taou

Yuen is very wise and without the prejudices--" he stopped, conscious of

the stupidity of his attempted kindness. Nettie looked up defiantly,

biting her lip--a familiar trick, he recalled. Dunsack interposed:

"You will find that the Chinese have none of your little sympathetic

tricks. No foreigner could ever grasp the depth of their indifference to

what you might call humanity. They are born wise, as you say, but weary.

I suppose your wife plays the guitar skillfully and sings the Soochow

Love Song."

Gerrit Ammidon studied him with somber eyes and a gathering temper: it

was, however, impossible to decide whether the implication was

deliberately insulting. He wouldn't have any Canton clerk, probably

saturated with opium, insinuate that his affair was on the plane of

that of a drunken sailor! "My wife," he said deliberately, "is a

Manchu lady. You may know that they don't learn dialect songs nor

ornament tea houses."

"Very remarkable," Dunsack returned imperturbably. "We never see them.

How did you manage a go-between, and did you send the hour of your birth

to the Calculator of Destinies? Then there is so much to remember in a

Chinese wedding--the catties of tea and four silver ingots, the earrings

and red and green silk and Tao priest to consult the gods." Gerrit heard

this with a frowning countenance. If Nettie were not there he would put

Dunsack forward with the hypothetical crew to which he belonged. He felt

as sorry for Nettie, he discovered, as ever. It moved him to see her

vivacity of life, her appealingly warm color, slowly dulled by Salem and

the adventitious circumstance of her birth. What a dreary existence she

led in the harsh atmosphere of her grandfather and the solemn house on

Hardy Street! At one time he had fancied that he might change it... when

now here was Taou Yuen, detached and superior, waiting in his room at

Java Head.

"I stopped for a moment to look at the ship," he said, with the trace of

an ungracious bow, "and must get back." The sunlight flung a warm moted

veil over Nettie Vollar. She gave him a startled uncalculated glance of

almost desperate appeal and his heart responded with a quickened thud.

Edward Dunsack was sallow and enigmatic, with thin pinched lips.

V

"The stupid bruiser," Edward Dunsack declared in a thin bitterness that

startled the girl at his side. "The low sea bully!" He was gazing at the

resolute back of Captain Ammidon. A surprising hatred filled him at the

memory of the other's intolerant gaze, the careless contempt of his

words. He thought, oddly enough, of the delicate and ingenious tortures

practiced on offenders in China; the pleasant mental picture followed of

Ammidon bowed in a wooden collar, of Gerrit Ammidon bambooed, sliced,

slowly choking.... With an intense sense of horror he caught himself

dwelling on these dripping visions. His hands clasped rigidly, a sweat

stood out on his brow, in a realization that was at once dread and a

self-loathing.

About him lay the tranquil Salem water, the still wharves, the familiar

roofs and green tree tops. This wasn't Canton, he told himself, but

America: there was Nettie; only a few streets away was his father's

house, his own home, all solid and safe and reassuring. China was a

thing of the past, its insidious secret hold broken. It was now only a

dream of evil fascination from which he had waked to the reality, the

saving substance, of Derby Wharf. "It's his domineering manner," he

explained the outburst to Nettie; "all shipmasters have it--as if the

world were a vessel they damned from a quarter-deck in the sky. I never

could put up with them."

"He is very kind, really," she replied, looking away over the harbor. "It

is so queer--marrying a Chinese woman like that. How will he ever get

along with her or be happy?"

"He won't," Edward Dunsack asserted. "Leave that to time." He studied her

attentively. "Was it anything to you?" he asked.

"It might have been," she acknowledged listlessly, her gaze still on the

horizon. "He came to see me two or three times, quite differently from

other nice men, and took me to a concert at the Philharmonic Society. He

was getting to like me, I could tell that, when grandfather interfered--"

"I see," Dunsack interrupted, "with the immorality of the supermoral."

"Whatever it was he was past bearing. No one could blame Gerrit for

getting into a fury. The next day I stood almost in this spot, it was

late afternoon too, and watched the _Nautilus_ sail away. All the canvas

was set and I could see her for a long time. When the last trace had

gone it seemed to me that my life had sunk too ... out there."

"The old man's a fool," he said bluntly of his father. "How do you

suppose he got hold of a Manchu?" he shifted his thought, addressing the

stillness about them rather than his companion. "Don't imagine for a

minute that you are superior to her," he told Nettie more directly.

"There is nothing more remarkable. They must be gorgeous," a faint color

stained his long cheeks. "What incredible luck," he murmured.

He was thinking avidly of the women of China--the little gay girls like

toys, the momentary glimpses of enameled faces in hurrying red-flowered

sedan chairs, faces of ivory stained with carmine, in gold-crusted

headdresses. A sudden impatience at Nettie Vollar's obvious person and

clothes expanded to a detestation of an atmosphere he had but a minute or

so before welcomed as an escape from something infinitely worse than

death. Now it seemed impossible to spend a life in Salem. It would have

been better, when he had been released by Heard and Company, to have

taken the position open in the Dutch Hong.

He was in a continual state of such vacillation, as if he were the seat

of two separate and antagonistic personalities; rather, he changed the

figure, in him the East struggled with the West. It was necessary for the

latter to triumph. The difficulty lay in the fact that the first was

represented by an actual circumstance while the other was only a dim

apprehension, a weakened allegiance to ties never strong.

He cursed the extraordinary chance that, against every probability, had

brought the chest of opium safely to him here. Its purchase had been the

result of habit evading his will, he had despatched it--in that seesawing

contest--by a precarious route, half hoping that it would be lost or

seized; and, when he had seen the chest carried down Hardy Street to his

door, a species of terror had fastened upon him, a premonition of an evil

spirit flickering above him in a turning of oily smoke. Why hadn't he

pitched the thing into the water at the foot of their yard! There was

time still: he would take the balls of opium and dispose of them

secretly. A sudden energy, a renewed sense of strength, flooded him. This

distaste for Nettie changed into a pity at the ill luck that had followed

her: she didn't deserve it. Generous emotions expanded his heart. He

dreamed of taking hold of his father's small commerce in rum and sugar

with the West Indies and turning it into a concern as rich and powerful

as Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone.

Why not!

They, too, would have a big white house on Washington Square or Chestnut

Street, with servants--Chinese servants--and horses and great ships

sailing in, laden with the East. Why not indeed! He, Edward Dunsack, had

more brains than Jeremy Ammidon, that stiff old man with a face the color

of a damask plum. His niece would go to all the balls at Franklin and

Hamilton Halls, the injustice of her position overcome by an impressively

increasing fortune. Abstractly he patted her shoulder with a hand as long

and gaunt and yellow as his face. All this would come as a result of

throwing the opium into the harbor. It was as good as accomplished.

In the face of his prospective well-being he felt already the equal of

anyone in Salem. If Gerrit Ammidon had married a Manchu lady it was his

privilege, no, duty, to call and put his experience in things Chinese at

their command. She would speak only a little if any English; no one here

understood the preparation of her food--her delicate necessity for dishes

not the property of an entire household; a hundred such details of which

the infinitely cruder West must be ignorant. He thought complacently that

he would understand her better than anyone else in Salem, in Boston, in

America; far better than her husband. She would without doubt learn to

depend on him: they would laugh together at the manners and people about

them. Ammidon would be away for long periods on the China service.--

His dreams broke off with a sardonic laugh, a repetition of the tone in

which he had objurgated the ship-master. Such visions were the property

of youth, and he was forty-two, forty-two and nothing more than a

discredited clerk who had fled across the world from a shadow. But he was

right--he had seen white men who had caught the breath of China accepting

just such opportunities as the one offered to him after his dismissal by

Augustine Heard. At the Dutch Hong he'd be expected to talk about his

late employer. Such situations, he had realized in a rarely illuminating

flash, were only temporary, a descending flight.

These men resembled the fate of, say, a brig sailing into the China

Sea in all the perfection of order of the British Marine: at, perhaps,

Hong Kong, sold to a native firm, she would be refitted under an

extravagant flag, and slowly the order would depart until, in a

slovenly tangle of rigging and defilement, she'd be seen yawing on

secret and nauseous errands.

A homely chime of bells was repeated from the town; a ship's fast

strained resinously with the changing tide. "It will be getting on toward

supper," Nettie told him. They walked slowly from the wharf, turned

silently into Derby Street and Hardy on their way home. Beyond the inner

fence of the garden the thick uneven sod reaching to the water was dark

and cool against the luminous flush of evening. A sound of frying and

heavy odor came from the kitchen, and Kate Vollar's voice informed them

that the meal was ready.

Barzil Dunsack bowed his head over the table and pronounced a grace in

startlingly resonant tones, the reverent humility of his words oddly

emphasized by a sort of angry impatience. It seemed as if he at once

subjected himself to his God and expressed a certain dissatisfaction with

His forbearance. Edward Dunsack was plunged in the thought of the

resolution he intended to fulfill that evening.

The throwing away of the opium had lost a part of its symbolic meaning.

It now seemed even a little rash when he could find an immediate highly

profitable market--the opium had cost him seven hundred dollars in China.

But he must, he realized, be firm. Afterwards, in his room facing away

from the street over darkening yards and gables and foliage, he stood

gazing at the chest of mango wood that held the drug. Edward Dunsack

unlocked and lifted the lid. On the tray before him were twenty balls,

each the size of his two fists, wrapped in a hard skin of poppy leaves,

and there was a similar number beneath. It was obvious that he couldn't

carry a tray through the house, and he took out two balls, after which he

secured the remainder.

He walked quickly down the stair and through the close turning of the

lower hall that led through a side door to the yard. A pale rectangle of

lamplight fell from the sitting room window over a brick path and ground

tramped bare of grass; a clinking of dishes sounded in the kitchen. The

sod was damp, and perhaps eight feet below the wooden buttress of the

land the water showed impenetrably black.

Safely there he passed a tense hand over a brow suddenly wet; he was

shaking as if in the grip of a chill. His condition needed drastic

measures. The cold heavy opium gave out its tantalizing odor. In a minute

it would be disposed of and he would go for more. He calculated that this

necessitated twenty trips at the present rate--a bag might serve his

purpose better. He raised an arm with an opium ball, but his hand

remained suspended in air. An inarticulate protest seized him, a

suffocating sense of impending loss. He would never be able to get Patna

opium here; it was a valuable medical property. His nerves shook at the

thought of its delights. Then as if without his volition and against

every intention, his arm described a short arc and his hand was empty.

There was the impact of a solid object striking the water, a faint ripple

on the motionless expanse, and then absolute silence.

He was aghast at his wanton act, the irreparable waste of a precious

substance, and cursed in a low audible Cantonese. Whose concern was it if

he did, very occasionally, smoke a "pistol"? How could it possibly

matter! The dreams about a great foreign commerce, a white house like the

Ammidons', were futile; it was too late. He could expect nothing from

life but the unspeakable monotony of his father's dwelling, the bare

office. He had worked hard, been as full of splendid early resolutions as

anyone, and he wasn't blamable if chance balked his ambition. A soul was

nothing more than a twisting leaf in the wind of fate. There remained

only to take what escape was offered--golden visions, luxury, beauty

beyond all earth.

His contrary determination seemed of less actuality than the imagined

echoing of the splash that still hung in his brain. It was a thing far

away, belonging to another time, another man; like the memory of a period

of charming ignorance. The thought of it wove a strand of melancholy into

his present mature realization like the delicate scent of blossoming

trees borne to him on the evening air, barely perceptible and then lost

in the pungency of the opium. The latter became, mystically, all China,

the irresistible fascination that had gradually possessed his

imagination, dulling the associations of his heredity and birth, calling

him further and further into its secretive heart.

He returned to his room, where he put back the second ball in the tray of

its chest. An extraordinary weariness hung over him, there was a sense

of leaden weight in his arms and feet. Flashes of a different perception

pierced his apathy; a voice, seemingly outside his being, whispered of

danger, evil and danger.... A twisting leaf, he told himself again with

his deep fatalism.

The memory of Gerrit Ammidon's crisp blue gaze, his vigorous gestures and

speech, became an intolerable affront, representing the far lost point of

his own departure. His contrary feelings met and grappled in his mind;

but in the end the past, Salem, was always defeated, weaker, more faintly

perceived. In a great many essentials, he told himself, he had become

Chinese in sympathy and fiber.

The lamp threw a smooth gleam over the mango wood chest, and he bent,

turning the key in the ornamental brass lock. He could reconsider the

disposal of the opium to-morrow; there was no hurry; he had no intention

of becoming a victim to the drug. That would be an inconceivable

stupidity, the negation of all the philosophy he had gained. Very

occasionally--

His thoughts swung to the surprising fact of Ammidon's Chinese wife: if,

as he had first suspected, she were a common woman of the port who had

made a fool of the dull sailor he perceived the making of a very

entertaining comedy. There would be the keenest irony in exposing her to

himself before the complacent ignorance of her husband. He knew such

women: convicted in Chinese, perhaps before the entire Ammidon family,

not a muscle of her face would betray surprise or concern. She might try

to murder him, very ingeniously, but never descend to the intrigue, the

lies, of a Western woman placed in the same position. She'd stoically

accept the situation. These visions ran rapidly, vividly, through his

brain; he was accustomed to them; a greater part of his waking life was

filled with such pictures, infinitely more alluring, persuasive, than the

disappointing actuality. He got out of his clothes, and, in a loose gown

of black silk, sat at his open window, his chin sunk in the palm of a

hand, his face set against the night.

The next morning, at the breakfast table, he listened with a fleering

mouth to his father's long dogmatic grace before meat. His sister sat

opposite their parent, her gaze lowered in a perpetual amazement, her

entire person stamped with a stupid humility. There was nothing humble,

however, in Nettie; the crisp French coloring positively crackled with an

electric energy; her mouth was set in a rebellious red blot. Studying

her, Edward Dunsack saw that she was prettier than he had first realized

on his return to Salem. He speculated over the story she had told him

yesterday about Gerrit Ammidon's attachment. What an incredible idiot

their father had been: Edward would have relished Gerrit as a

brother-in-law; good would have come to them all from such a connection.

If he had been in America at the time no such error would have been

permitted. With his counsel Nettie would have caught Ammidon beyond any

escape. He wondered if the girl had actually cared for the shipmaster or

if the affair had been nothing more than a sop to her wounded pride and

isolation. In a way beyond his present understanding this seemed to be

considerably important. If she had loved him no one could predict what

her attitude might be in any future development of their contact; but if

her pride only had been involved, injured, she might readily be an

instrument for his own obscure purposes.

The office where Barzil Dunsack conducted the limited affairs of his

West India trading was a small one-room building back of the dwelling.

There was a high desk at which a clerk stood, or balanced on a

long-legged stool, a more formal secretary against the length of the

wall, with a careful model of a full ship, the spars and standing

rigging slack and the whole gray with dust, a built-in cupboard

opposite, a dilapidated chair or so and a ten-plate iron stove for wood.

A window looked out across the grass to the harbor and another opened

blankly against a board fence.

There Edward Dunsack made a column of entries in a script fine and

regular but occasionally showing an uncontrollably tremulous line. He

was conscious of this tendency, growing through the past year; and he

surveyed his writing with a feeling of angry dismay. Try as he might,

with a frowning concentration, to pen the words and numerals firmly,

presently his attention would slip, his hand waver ever so slightly, and

a sudden stricken appearance of old age fasten on the characters.... By

heaven, to-night he'd throw all that stinking stuff away!

Outside the day was immaculate, the expanse of the water was like

celestial silk, such sails as he saw resembled white clouds. The early

morning bird song had subsided, but a persistent robin was whistling from

the grass by the open door. The curd-like petals of a magnolia were

slowly shifting obliquely to the ground, he could hear the stir of Derby

Street. He was inexpressibly weary of the struggle always racking his

being: it seemed to him that in the midst of a serene world he was

tormented by some inimicable and fatal power.

He fastened his thoughts on commonplace happier objects, on the page

under his hand, the entries of Medford rum and sugar cane and molasses,

and the infinitely larger affairs of Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone.

There was no reason why he shouldn't call on Jeremy Ammidon's family. The

latter had signified by his visit the desire to end the misunderstanding

between them. He was as well born as Gerrit Ammidon; only ill chance had

made them seem differently situated. Anyhow, unlike Canton, mere exterior

position had comparatively little weight in Salem. The shipmasters, the

more important merchants, arrogated a certain superiority to themselves:

but it broke down before the inborn democracy of the local spirit.

That afternoon, he decided, he'd be in Pleasant Street; and later he

dressed with the most meticulous care. A growing doubt seized him as he

mounted the outside steps of the Ammidons' impressive house; but he

crushed it down and firmly rapped with the polished knocker on the

opened door.

The family, a servant told him, was in the garden; and he followed

through a large white-paneled hall into a formal drawing-room and green

space beyond. He was again uncertain before the number of people grouped

about a summerhouse and apparently watching his approach with cold

surprise. But Gerrit Ammidon stepped forward and greeted him with an

adequately level civility.

"You know my father," he said, and Jeremy Ammidon, his heavy body in

linen above which his face was dusky, put out an abrupt hand. There was a

Mr. Brevard, a slender unconcerned person in very fashionable but

restrained clothes; William Ammidon's wife, a large woman in India

muslin, handsome enough, Edward Dunsack conceded, in the obvious

American sense; a daughter of William's, a girl blooming into womanhood,

far too vigorous and brightly colored for his taste; and Gerrit's wife.

The latter had been hidden from him at first, and he saw her suddenly,

completely: his surprise caused him to stand in an awkward

suspense--never had he imagined that a woman, even a Manchu, could be so

beautiful! He recognized, in a score of unmistakable details, that she

was of irreproachably high birth; her satins were embroidered with the

symbols of nobility and matrimonial felicity; the gold fingernail guards,

the jade and flowering pearls, her earrings and tasseled tobacco pouch

and ivory fan, were all in the most superlative manner.

A deep pleasurable excitement filled him as he made his greeting in

correct Chinese. The long delicate oval of her face showed no emotion at

the sound of her native speech and she returned his periods in a slowly

chosen mechanical English. Edward Dunsack thought that as he spoke an

expression of distaste stamped Gerrit's features. However, he was left in

no doubt: "My wife," the other instructed him, "prefers to speak English.

That is the only way she has of picking it up."

A contempt filled Dunsack which he was barely able to keep from his voice

and manner. He nodded shortly, and subsided into a study of Taou Yuen so

open that she must have become aware of his interest. Seated on the bench

that circled the interior of the latticed summerhouse she moved so that

he could no longer see her face. Brevard was beside her, talking in a low

amused voice: there was a ringing peal of laughter from Sidsall Ammidon

and a faint infinitely well-bred ripple from Taou Yuen. The brilliant

patch of her gown made an extraordinary effect in the Salem garden.

Edward Dunsack recognized the scents that stirred from her, more Eastern

and disturbing even than opium: there was a subtle natural odor of musk,

the perfumes of henna and clove blossoms and santal.

A curious double feeling possessed him in the split consciousness of

which he was capable--he had the sensation of having come, in the suave

afternoon garden, on overwhelming disaster, and at the same time he was

enraged by the play of Fate that had given such a woman to Gerrit Ammidon

and denied him, with his special appreciation of Oriental charm, the

slightest satisfaction. A more general hatred of Gerrit tightened to a

consuming resentment of the other's blind fortune.

One thing was unmistakably borne upon him--in spite of the courtesy he

was meeting it was clear that he could not hope to become a customary

visitor at the Ammidons'. He was put definitely outside the community of

interests in which Brevard easily entered. William Ammidon joined them,

and something like astonishment at Dunsack's presence was visible on his

complacent face.

He remained, however, in a stubborn resistance to small adverse signs in

the hope of gaining some additional facts about Taou Yuen. She had been,

he learned, a widow and Gerrit had married her with her father-in-law's

consent although the latter was a rich official. He wanted to ask a

thousand questions, but he knew that even if the Ammidons were too dense

to grasp his curiosity, Taou Yuen herself would comprehend his

impoliteness. Nowhere else could be found the wisdom and poise of a

Manchu lady.

Jeremy Ammidon, in a lawn chair, a smoking cheroot in his fingers, asked

him about affairs of Chinese government and commerce. As the old man

talked he flushed darkly with quick indignation. "The English have made

our political diplomats look like stuffed gulls!" he declared. "Look at

their Orders in Council and the British Prize Courts," he proceeded,

waving his cheroot; "stop an American vessel anywhere and pretend to find

a deserting English sailor. With the Treaty of Ghent and cod-headed

commissioners and a Congress that wouldn't know a ship from a bread barge

the country's going to hell on greased ways! I've said it a thousand

times and any man not a complete ass knows that you can't run a

government without a strong head. Locofocos," he muttered.

Edward Dunsack listened to this tirade with an air of polite attention

which hid completely the fact that he heard or comprehended scarcely a

word. His thoughts were filled by the fragrant vision of Taou Yuen;

already he was deep in the problem of how to see her again, to-morrow. It

would be excessively difficult. Eastern women never, if they could avoid

it, walked; and they were, he knew, entirely without the necessity that

drove the women of Salem into a ceaseless round of calling and gossip. It

was probable that, except to ride, she wouldn't leave the house and

grounds. He cursed the chance quarrel that had set a customary void

between the houses of Dunsack and Ammidon, the unfortunate affair of his

sister and Vollar inescapably adding to the permanency of the breach; he

particularly cursed Nettie. There, however, his mind took up the twisted

thread of the vague possibility that the latter might be useful to him:

he was amazed at the way in which his premonitions fitted into the

pattern of situations yet to be materialized.

Edward Dunsack turned from his contemplation of Taou Yuen to a careful

consideration of Gerrit Ammidon. The latter had a countenance which

showed strong, easily summoned emotions. It was an intolerant face,

Dunsack judged, and yet sentimental; and it was surprisingly young,

guileless. At the same time it was unusually determined--an affair of

uncomplicated surfaces, direct gaze, marked bone.

He questioned sharply, irritably, the length to which his projections had

reached. What were they all about? The answer was presented by the

glittering figure of the Manchu; she had risen and was standing in the

entrance of the summerhouse. He thought, with a jerking pulse, of

Oriental similes; she was a lotus-woman, a green slip of willow, an

ambrosial moon, a mustard flower. Her teeth were white buds, her breasts

blanched almonds.

His entire life in China had been a preparation for the realization of

the present moment. The sense of danger, of anger at Gerrit Ammidon,

perished before the supreme emotion called up by Taou Yuen. He wanted

to embrace her satin-shod feet, to cling to her odorous hands, such

hands as were never formed out of China, like petals of coral. Not only

her bodily charm intoxicated him, but the thought of her subtle mind

added its attraction, its shadows never to be pierced by the blunted

Western instinct, the knowledge of pleasures like perfumes, the calm

blend of the eight diagrams of Confucius, the stoicism of the

Buddhistic soul revolving perpetually in the urn of Fate, and of the

aloof Tao of Lao-tze.

Brevard left with an easy familiarity, already planning a return, that

filled Edward Dunsack with resentful envy. The sun had disappeared behind

the house; long cool shadows swept down the garden; it was past time for

him to go. A reluctance to move from the magic of Taou Yuen possessed

him: he was unable to think how, when, he would next see her. He raged at

the prohibition against speaking Chinese; that ability should give him an

overwhelming advantage of Gerrit Ammidon. This was, of course, the reason

that he had been virtually commanded to limit himself to English. Many of

the forms of extreme Chinese courtesy were impossible to express in

another language.

Finally he rose; in departing he emphasized the importance of Jeremy

Ammidon--Taou Yuen should recognize and applaud that. He saw that she was

watching him obliquely, her lips in repose, her hands still among the

satin draperies. An American would have betrayed something of her

reaction to him, he could have discovered a trace, an indication, of her

thoughts; but the Manchu's face was as inscrutable as porcelain. William

Ammidon nodded, the old man responded to his leave-taking with a degree

of warmness, Gerrit at least smiled in a not unfriendly manner. Edward

Dunsack bowed to Taou Yuen, and she gravely inclined her head. He had a

last glimpse of her glowing in the green light of the inclosure of

rose-bushes and poplars, emerald sod and tangled lilac trees.

At the supper table his sister's appearance in somber untidy black

barége, Nettie's unrestrained gestures and speech, the coarse red cloth

and plain boiled fare, all added to a discontent that he could scarcely

restrain. With the utmost discrimination in delicate shades of beauty and

luxury he was yet condemned to spend his days in surroundings hardly

raised above poverty-stricken squalor. Incongruous as it was he could yet

imagine Taou Yuen moving with a certain appropriateness about the

Ammidons' spacious grounds and house; but he was absolutely unable to

picture her here, on Hardy Street.

All the vivid scenes that continually formed and shifted in his mind

gathered about Gerrit Ammidon's wife. He used this phrase in a

contemptuously satirical manner: it was impossible for Ammidon actually

to marry a Manchu. Such racial mating, he told himself, could not be

consummated; there were too many deep antipathies of flesh and spirit;

the man was too--too stupidly normal. Sooner or later he would swing back

to his own. With him, Edward Dunsack, it was different; he always had an

inner kinship with China; at first sight its streets and sounds, odors

and ways, had seemed familiar, admirable.

The realization of this, when his place with Heard and Company

collapsed, had sent him back to America, in a strange dread. He

remembered how the vague fear had followed him to Derby Wharf. Now he

laughed at it, welcoming every Chinese instinct he had. They seemed to

throw a bridge across enormous difficulties, bringing him finally to

Taou Yuen.

He lingered at the table after supper, his head sunk on his chest,

revolving the various aspects of his position. One thing was definite--he

must have Taou Yuen; it was unthinkable that she should continue with

Gerrit Ammidon. It needed skillful planning, tortuous execution, but in

the end he'd get his desire. He had no doubt of that. It was necessary.

If she opposed him she would discover that he, too, could be subtle,

Oriental, yes--dangerous. None of the stupid inhibitions that, for

example, bound his father interfered with the free exercise of his

personal wishes. He was beyond primitive morality.

An ecstasy of contemplation ravished his senses.

"Goodness, Uncle Edward," Nettie exclaimed, "you scared me, you looked so

like a Chinee."

"There are no such people," he retorted sharply, exasperated by the

vulgar error. She was undismayed; and when, in reply to the question, she

learned that he had been at the Ammidons' her surprise increased his

irritation. He saw from her manner that his calling there had been at

least unexpected. Nettie interrupted the preparation of the table for

breakfast, and dropped into a chair beyond him, her hands--the sleeves

were rolled back to her elbows--clasped before her.

"You must tell me everything," she declared eagerly. "What is she like?

Do they seem happy? Did he hold her hand? Do Chinese women kiss? Is she

tall or--"

"I can't remember a question out of your rattle," he interrupted her. He

was about to give expression to his admiration for Taou Yuen, when he

stopped, with tight lips. Here, perhaps, was the lever by which so much

was to be shifted.

"She's Chinese," he said indifferently, "and that means yellow." Nettie

made a gesture of distaste. "They seem to get along well enough. Of

course, it's ridiculous to call it a marriage, and it seems to me very

questionable to impose it on the Ammidons as that. The thing is--how

long will it last, how soon will he get tired of her and send her back

to Canton?"

Nettie Vollar closed her eyes, her hands were rigid. The lamplight,

streaming up over her face, showed him that it was tense and pale and

answered a question. Her feeling for Gerrit Ammidon had been more than a

mere hurt pride. In addition to that he saw beyond any doubt the proof of

its existence still. This complicated his problem: inspired only by a

resentment that he might fan into hatred she would be far more pliable

than in the grip of a genuine affection for Gerrit Ammidon. He understood

the processes of the former, a flexible and useful steel; but no one

could predict the vagaries, the absurd self-sacrifices, of love. Well,

he'd have to work with what offered. That, he realized, was the strength

of his philosophy--he accepted promptly, without vain regret, the means

that lay at his hand.

"Ammidon seems worn," he said generally; "they were in the garden, and I

had a few words privately with him." Nettie glanced swiftly across the

table; her lips moved; but she repressed the obvious question trembling

on them. "He showed, I think," he continued carefully, "a very improper

interest in you."

"How?"

"He asked if you were well and happy. I most certainly told him, for any

number of reasons, for pride alone, that you were."

"Then you told a lie," she cried in a tone so hard that it surprised him.

"Of course," he went on smoothly, "I know that you are not, almost all

your circumstances prohibit that. But I don't intend to circulate it in

Salem. Opinion here may have forced you into a long loneliness, but I

shan't give anyone the satisfaction of knowing it. And, after all, you

have your grandfather mostly to blame. You would have been married to

Gerrit Ammidon now if he hadn't interfered; you would have been walking

about the Ammidons' garden with your hand on his arm in place of that

Chinese prostitute."

"I don't see why you should make me so miserable," she declared. "I don't

care anything about the garden, it isn't that. Why do you suppose he

brought such a woman home?"

"Pique," he told her; "he couldn't care for her in the way he might for,

well--you. As I said, he'll drop her on his next voyage to the East; he

will leave her and probably never come back to Salem again. I hear that

Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone are planning a new policy--bigger ships,

clippers in the China and California trade; and that means removal to

Boston. Their facilities here are no longer suitable."

She moved, her chin fell upon her hands, propped up with her elbows on

the table. Apparently Edward Dunsack was gazing at the wall beyond her.

Her breast gave a single sharp heave. When Nettie looked up her face was

flushed. "I wish that I were really a bad woman," she spoke in a low

vibrant voice.

"What is bad and what is good?" He still seemed to ignore her,

considering a question that had no personal bearing. "In one country a

thing is thought wrong and in another it is the highest virtue. In one

age this or that is condemned, when, turn the calendar, and everyone is

praising it." He became confidential, the image of kindness. "I'll tell

you what I think is wicked," he pronounced, leaning toward her, "and that

is the way you two were kept apart; unchristian is what I call it."

"Gerrit doesn't care," she said.

"How do you know?" he demanded. "I cannot agree with you. I don't find a

great deal in him to admire, he is too simple and transparent; but

there's no doubt of this, he is faithful. One idea, one affection, is all

his head will hold."

"That's a beautiful trait." A palpable wistfulness settled over her.

"It's greatly admired," he agreed; "although not by me. I believe in

taking what is yours, what you need, from life. I suppose that I have

been away from proprieties so long that they have lost their importance.

They seem to me of no greater weight than barriers of straw. But, of

course, that mightn't suit you; probably, living in Salem as you have,

its opinion is valuable."

"Salem!" she exclaimed bitterly. "What has it ever been to me but an

unfair judgment? I owe Salem no consideration; I can't see that I owe

any to life."

"I don't want to insist on that," he proceeded deliberately. "The tragedy

of your position is that married to Ammidon everything in the past would

have been overlooked, forgotten. Even now--" he stopped with a gesture

indicating the presence still of large possibilities.

God, what a vacillating fool the girl was! He could say no more at

present, and he rose, leaving the room with Nettie staring dully across

the table. He went outside, to the grass fronting on the harbor. Here,

last night, he had thrown the opium into the water. It seemed to him

that he had lived through a complete existence since then: the presence

of Taou Yuen had created a new world. He thought she walked to him

through the gloom; he saw her slender body grow brighter as she

approached; he heard her speak in a low native murmur; their hands

caught in an eager tangle.

He put aside, momentarily, the problem of the difficulties of going again

to the Ammidons' for an easier one--the bringing of Gerrit Ammidon here.

He was confident that, thrown together on the still rim of the water, at

evening, the emotion born between his niece and the shipmaster and

prematurely choked would revive. He had no means of knowing Ammidon's

present exact feeling for Nettie; he was counting only on a general

theory of men and nature at large. He was already convinced, from very

wide knowledge, experience, that the other could not form a permanent

attachment to the Manchu; and Nettie's great difference, together with

the romance of her unhappy position, must have a potent effect on the

fellow's evident sentimentality. A dank air rose from the water, like the

smell of death; and, with an uncontrollable shiver, he turned back toward

the house.

In his room Edward Dunsack recalled that he had promised himself to throw

away the remainder of the opium on this and succeeding nights. In view of

that his movements were inexplicable: he got out from a locked chest the

_yen tsiang_, a heavy tube of dark wood inlaid with silver ideograms and

diminutive earthen cup at one end. Then he produced a small brass lamp,

brushes, long needles, and a metal rod. Taking off his clothes, and in

the somber black folds of the silk robe, he made various minutely careful

preparations. Finally, extended on his bed, he dipped the end of the rod

into opium the color of tar, kept it for a bubbling moment near the blaze

of the lamp, and then crowded the drug into the pipe. He held the bowl to

the flame and drew in a long deep inhalation. A second followed and the

pipe was empty. He repeated this until he had smoked a mace.

A vivacious and brilliant state of being flooded him; he felt capable

of profoundly witty conversation, and laughed at the solemn absurdities

of the Ammidons, at his father attempting to call down a blessing out

of the empty sky upon their food, at his sister's lugubrious

countenance, the childish emotions of Nettie. What a nonsensical

strutting business life was.

The confines of his room were lost in an amber radiance that filled all

space; it was at once a light and a perfume and charged with a sense of

impending rapture. A sparkling crimson shape floated down from infinite

skies--Taou Yuen. She wore a bridal costume, cunningly embroidered with

the phoenix, a hood of thin gold plate, and a band of red silk about her

brow bore the eight copper figures of the beings who are immortal. Her

hair was ornamented by the pure green jade pins of summer, her hanging

wrists were heavy with virgin silver, while her face was like the

desirous August moon flushed in low vapors.

He raised his bony arms--the wide silk sleeves falling back--his

emaciated yellow hands. From under his dark eyelids there was a glitter

of vision like the sheen on mica... Taou Yuen floated nearer.

Edward Dunsack woke suddenly, at the darkest ebb of night, and started

hurriedly to his feet. A sickening vertigo, a whirling head, sent him

lurching across the room. He came in contact with a chest of drawers, and

clung to it with the feeling that his legs were shriveling beneath him.

His consciousness slowly returned, and with it a pain like ruthless

tearing fingers searched his body. The rectangle of the open window,

only less dark than the room, promised a relief from the strangled effort

of his breathing, and he fell across the ledge, lifting his face to a

starless and unstirring heat. Waves of complete physical exhaustion

passed over him. An utter horror fastened on his brain.

"Oh, God," he said, with numb lips, "we thank Thee for this, Thy daily

blessing--" He broke off with an effort. That was his father pronouncing

a grace. "Oh God--" he said again, when it seemed to him that in the

darkness he saw the blank placidity of a Buddha carved from gray stone.

Tears ran over his sunken cheeks, salt and warm like blood.