The silence returned intensified.
"I remember," the Manchu went on, "this will amuse you. My father-in-law,
who was in the Canton Customs, told me that some boxes of Bibles came out
from America, with other objects, and when they were opened at the
Mission they were the wrong ones and filled with rum."
There was not, however, any marked appreciation of this on the part of
the Salem women. They rose to leave and Taou Yuen sank on her knee. She
gazed without a trace of emotion at the three flooding the door with
their belled skirts. "They are the same everywhere," she told the girl.
The latter moved out into the garden. There she subconsciously picked a
rose and fastened it in her hair; her thoughts turned to Roger Brevard.
In his place her Uncle Gerrit came out through the drawing-room window.
The usual shadow of the house, lengthening with afternoon, was pleasantly
enveloping, and they walked slowly over the grass.
"A flower in your hair," he said, "and by yourself. You have been
thinking about true love." She blushed vividly at this unexpected angle
on her mind and found it impossible to meet his keen blue eyes. "Love
must be a remarkable thing." She raised a swift glance to his face and
discovered that he had not spoken to her at all, but, hat in hand, was
looking away with an expression of abstraction.
"I mean the unreasonable silly divine kind," he specified, now gazing
at her quizzically, as if lost in a mood over which he had no control;
"the sort that is as long as life and stronger. It is entirely
different and ages older than the reasonable logical love, all proper
and suitable and civilized; or the love that is the result of a
determination, the result of a determination," he repeated, frowning
darkly at their feet. Sidsall held her breath, thrilled by the wealth
of what she had heard, fearful of diverting what might be yet revealed.
But he moved away abruptly, in a manner that enforced solitude, and
stood apparently examining the rockery.
Her brain rang with the splendid phrase, "Love as long as life and
stronger." It seemed to clarify and state so much of her lately confused
being. Hodie, artfully drawn into the consideration of earthly affection,
was far less satisfactory than Gerrit Ammidon. She dwelt on the treasure
beyond moth or rust, lost in an ecstasy of contemplation expressed in her
customary explosive amens. At the same time she admitted that lower
unions were blessed of God, and recommended Sidsall to think on "a man
who has seen the light and by no means a sea captain." Sidsall replied
cuttingly, "I think you must forget where you are."
"I forget nothing," Hodie stoutly maintained; "I'll witness before
anyone." She settled the flounces of Sidsall's skirt with a deft hand.
Walking toward the Saltonstones' for tea, with a mulberry silk parasol
casting a shifting glow on her expanse of clear madras, Sidsall
wondered at the sudden change of almost all her interests and
preoccupations. It was very disturbing--she fell into daydreams that
carried her fancy away on a search that was a longing, a soft confusion
of opening her arms to mystery. This varied with a restless melancholy;
the old securities of her life were hidden in a mist of uncertainty in
which her consciousness was troubled by nameless pressures; something
within her held almost desperately back from further adventuring. But
all the time a latent fascination was drawing her on, putting aside the
curtain for her better view.
The Saltonstones' dwelling on Chestnut Street was one of a pair--a large
solid square of brick--with two identical oval white porticoes and rows
of windows keyed in white stone. Within the staircase swept up to a
slender pillared opening, through which Lacy, calmly dressing, waved a
deliberate hand. Mrs. Saltonstone was seated by the tall gilt framed
mirror on a low marble stand between long front windows. "As usual," she
said, in connection with her daughter, "Lacy's as cool as a water monkey;
gets it from James; they wouldn't hurry if--" She searched in vain for an
expression of her family's composure. "Now I am an impetuous woman." She
promptly exhibited this quality in the vigor with which she met the wrong
canister of tea brought by a servant. She didn't intend to serve Padre
Souchong to a lot of people who apparently confused afternoon tea with an
invitation to dinner.
In the small press which followed Sidsall stopped in the dining room with
Lacy and Olive Wibird. Olive was still discussing men. "He sat holding my
hand right on that bench by your hedge, Sidsall, and said that nothing
could keep him from coming back for me, but he died of yellow fever in
Batavia." She left in the company of a beau of fifty anyhow, with a
glistening bald head, a silly smirking bow and flood of compliments. Lacy
moved away and Sidsall found herself facing Roger Brevard.
"That looks remarkably like a garden," he said, waving toward an open
door. The sun had become obscured in a veil of cloud, drooping until it
almost seemed to rest on the bright green foliage; her companion's mood,
too, was shadowed. "I thought you'd be here," he added outside, "and
looked for you at once."
"There was something special you wanted to say?"
"My dear child," he replied, "can't you guess how absolutely refreshing
you are? No, I have nothing special. But you'll soon get used to men
around with no more reason than yourself."
She studied this seriously; and, as its complimentary intent emerged,
a corresponding color stained her cheeks. Her gaze rested on him for
the fleetest moment possible and, to her surprise, she saw that he
was frowning.
"I came here just to see you. No," he corrected his period, "only to see
you." His manner was surprisingly abrupt and disconcerting. "I can quite
realize," he went on, "that I shouldn't say any of this. Yet, on the
other hand, it is the most natural thing in the world. I have been
listening to the conventional babble of teas and cotillions for so long
that you are like a breath of lost youth. Certainly that is appropriate.
I think," he told her, "that you are the youngest thing alive." Then he
laughed, "So young that I have annoyed you."
"I feel a great deal older than I did, well--last month," she said.
"That is a tragedy." She felt that if he were still amused at her she was
furious, but he was even graver than before. "To tell you helps hurry the
charm to an end. That is what might be complained against me. Yet flowers
will open, you know, and it might as well be in an honest sun."
"I don't understand," she admitted, troubled.
"Why, it means, Sidsall, that I am offering you an experienced hand, that
I'm certain I can do you more good than harm--"
"That's silly," she interrupted. "If you mean that we might be friends,
really confidential friends, it would help me awfully. But then it's so
one-sided."
"You'll have to overlook that," he answered; "probably all that I can
give you, experience, isn't worth the smallest of your feelings. Probably
you won't need me for an instant. Certainly the pleasure will be mine."
"You didn't understand," she told him, with dignity; "it's the other way
round. I am not a particle interesting and everyone agrees that I'm too
healthy. But I can't help it if my cheeks are red and mother won't let
me have powder." It was obviously impossible to explain about Hodie and
the lacing.
"I like it," he insisted. "I'll admit that I am unfashionable there. I
think we'll hit on a great deal to share privately." There was a faint
patter among the leaves, and a cold drop of rain fell on Sidsall's arm.
Others struck Roger Brevard but he continued without apparently noticing
them. "You must understand that I am entirely at your service. Sometimes,
although they won't come yet, there are things a--a friend can do better
than one's family. You'll ask me, Sidsall?"
"Yes," she said solemnly. More rain struck her; she could see it now
plainly, falling between them. Roger Brevard's face was dark, the frown
still scarred his forehead. Personally she was happier than she
remembered ever being before and she wondered at his severity of bearing.
"But you must go in at once," he cried, suddenly energetic, his familiar
self; "you are getting wetter every minute."
The clouds dissolved into a late sunlight that streamed in long bars
through the canopies of elms on the streets. From her windows Sidsall saw
a world of flashing greenery and limpid sky. Usually when she was happy
she sang unimportant bits of light song, but her present state was
serious and inarticulate. The indeterminate questions, the disturbing
vague moods, of the past days somehow combined and took on the tangible
shape of Roger Brevard. Her curiosity about love was resolved into a
sudden inner shrinking from its possibilities and meaning.
She was lost in her aloofness from mundane affairs: Taou Yuen in
whispering silk, her grandfather's rotund tones, Laurel and Camilla and
her mother, were distant, immaterial. In the evening she sat on the
front steps, a web of white, dreamily intent on the shimmering sweep of
Washington Square. After a little she was joined by Gerrit Ammidon. He
wore linen trousers and a short blue sea jacket; and the wavering
delicately lavender trail of smoke from his cheroot was like her
floating thoughts.
"Already," he said, "I am full of getting back on my ship."
She smiled at him absently.
"The land doesn't do for a sailor," he continued. "They are always into
trouble on shore. I can't say why it should be so but it is. If there's
not one kind there is another; rum and such varnish for the able seaman,
and--and complications for a master. I suppose that's because there are
so confounded many unexpected currents and slants of wind, as you might
say. On shipboard everything pretty much is charted; a thing will be
followed more or less by a fixed consequence. The waves break so and so
on coral or rocks or sand; there is usually the sun for an observation;
a good man knows his ship, how many points she'll hold on the wind, how
a cargo must be stowed, when to take in the light canvas. You can give
the man at the wheel a course and turn in or stay on deck and beat your
way through hell. It's exact, you know, but on shore--" he made a
hopeless gesture.
"There are no regulations," he observed moodily; "or else nobody follows
them: collisions all the time, sinkings and derelicts drifting round,
awash and dismasted. But they are everywhere. That fellow, Edward
Dunsack--" he stopped, lost in speculation. Then, "He seems harmless
enough," he resumed, "even pitiful; but he sticks in your head. I wish
I'd never brought his damned chest to Salem. A fool would have known
better. I'm worse--a childish fool. A derelict," he said again. "You are
smashing over a swell at twelve knots or more, everything spread, when,
in a hollow, there it is squarely across your bow. No time to shift the
wheel, and a ship's missing, perhaps in a hundred fathom. It might be the
best ship afloat, the best master and stoutest crew, but in a minute
she's only a salty tangle."
He laughed uneasily at the vividness of his fancy. "If it's hard for us
what must it be for Taou Yuen?" he demanded. "Married to me! Here! That's
courage for you." He tramped down the steps, across Pleasant Street, with
his bare head sunk, and vanished into the obscurity of the Square. She
caught a last glimmer of white trousers, a faint rapid gleam where his
lighted cheroot described the arc of a passionate gesture on the night.
The spring, like the full buds of the hedge roses in the Ammidons'
garden, passed swiftly into early summer. The flowers against the house
showed gay perennial colors, the stocks and larkspur and snapdragons
succeeded the retreating flood of the lilacs. The days were still yellow
pools of heat, or else cooled by the faintly salt sea wind drawing down
the elms and chestnuts, followed by purple-green nights of moonlight.
They seemed to Sidsall to hold everything in a pause. She saw less and
less of Taou Yuen who now scarcely came out of her room except for an
occasional ride in the barouche with Mrs. Ammidon or a contemplative hour
in the garden, usually at dusk. Apparently content with the elaborate
rearrangement of her headdress, she sat for long periods, gazing out over
Washington Square, idle except for the regular tap of her pipe emptying
the ashes of the minute bowl.
Yet Sidsall's first interest in her had almost completely shifted to
Gerrit Ammidon. He evidently preferred her company to that of the other
members of his family, and they often took short largely silent walks,
usually down to the Salem Marine Railway where the _Nautilus_ was
undergoing repairs. His protracted silences were broken by the sudden
vehement protests against the generally muddled aspect of affairs or
longer monologues of inner questioning and search. He almost never
referred to her or made her part of a conversation; she was free to dwell
on her own emotions while he, with a corrugated brow, went on in his
tortuous and solitary course.
On an afternoon when they had walked to the foot of Briggs Street, and
were gazing out over the tranquil water of Collins Cove, Gerrit Ammidon
asked abruptly:
"Have you seen Nettie Vollar lately?"
Sidsall was unable to remember exactly when that had been. She rather
thought she had caught a glimpse of her in Lawrence Place with books
under her arm which she was probably taking from the Athenaeum for her
grandfather. Anyone, she told herself privately, could see that Nettie
Vollar wouldn't care for books.
Something had occurred, or threatened to occur, between her uncle and
Nettie; what it was she had never been told; but she realized that only
one thing could really happen between a man and a girl--they must have
been in love. In the interest of this she recalled Nettie Vollar's
appearance, but was unable to discover any marked attractions. The elder
had a good figure, rather full for her age, and totally different from
her own square solidity. Her hair was coarse and carelessly arranged, her
clothes noticeable for a love of brightness rather than care in the
spending of a small sum.
Gerrit Ammidon had the strangest tastes!
He was standing immobile, looking across the Cove as if he were on a
quarter-deck searching for a hidden land. His legs were slightly spread,
firmly planted in a manner to defeat any sudden lurching. She grew a
little impatient at him staring like a block at nothing at all; she felt
older than he, superior in the knowledge of life; he seemed hardly more
than an absurd boy. Sidsall had a desire to shake him. He was so--so
impracticable. "Don't you think we'd better be going?" she asked finally.
Gerrit Ammidon turned and followed her obediently.
There were lights in the rope walk on Briggs Street; through a window she
could see a man pacing down the long narrow interior laying a strand of
hemp from the burden on his shoulders. It made her shudder to think of
the monotonous passage forward and back, an eternity of slow-twisting
rope. Yet life was something like that--she took the happenings of each
day and wove them into a strand dark and bright: a strand, she realized,
that grew stronger as it lengthened.... That would be true of
everyone--of her companion and grandfather and Hodie.
They reached the house as the family were gathering in the dining room,
when Sidsall found Roger Brevard unexpectedly staying for supper. She met
his direct greeting and smile with a warm stir of pleasure and sat in a
happy silence listening to the voices about the table. Her uncle had
brought his wife down and the candles glittering among the lusters on the
walls spread their light over the Manchu's strange vivid figure.
Everything about life was so confusing, Sidsall thought. The night flowed
in at the open windows drenched with magic: here were candles but outside
were stars. The port in its engraved glass decanter seemed to burn with a
ruby flame. "Bah!" her grandfather was exclaiming. "I'll put a thousand
dollars on Gerrit and the _Nautilus_ against any clipper built; but mind,
in all weathers."
"Voyage by voyage," William Ammidon insisted, "he would be left in the
harbor. The California gold deposits--."
Later a crowd, slowly collecting, recalled the fact that the Salem Band
was to play that night in the Square. "Oh, mother, look," Laurel cried;
"they've got lamps in their hats." Small wavering flames were being
lighted on the musicians' hats; there were melancholy disconnected hoots
from bassoons and the silver clear scale of a bugle. "Can't I get nearer,
mother?" Laurel implored as usual. "Can't I go and see the little lamps
on their heads?"
"Sidsall and I will look after her," Roger Brevard put in, and almost
immediately the three were entering Washington Square. The throng was
thickest directly behind the band, radiating in thinning numbers to the
wooden boundary fence. Laurel led them to an advantageous position, where
they could watch the curious effects of the ring of lights above intent
faces drawn hollow-cheeked by the vigorous blowing of instruments. The
leader, in the center of the flickering smoky illumination, now beat with
his arms in one direction, now in another.
A second selection followed, and a third, during which, in surprising
pauses, the band shouted a concerted "Hurrah!" Sidsall was infinitely
contented. How splendidly erect and calm and distinguished Roger Brevard
was! She hated younger men, they were only boys, who kept up a senseless
talk about college humor. He saw instantly that the people were crushing
her skirts, and firmly conducted them out of the crowd. It was nicer here
beyond the wavering dark mass: a waltz flowed about her so tender and
gracious that her eyes filled with tears.
But Laurel had to be taken home; and, clasping Mr. Brevard's hand, the
little girl talked volubly as they moved away. "And so," she said, "I
told her to keep her topsails full."
"What?" he demanded.
"She was falling off, you know--losing way. Hell's hatches--"
"Laurel," Sidsall corrected her sharply. "No, you mustn't laugh at her."
Only Gerrit Ammidon was on the steps, the other men were in the library;
her mother had gone up with Janet. Laurel left them, and, without speech,
they walked through the house to the lawn. The stars had apparently
retreated to new infinities of distance and night, there was a throb of
music so faint that it might be only an echoing memory; Roger Brevard's
face was pale and strained. He asked:
"Have you forgotten that we are friends?"
"No," she returned seriously, lifting her look to his. He was very close
to her and her heart beat unsteadily. She had a choking premonition of
what was about to occur, but she stood without the slightest attempt to
prevent his kiss. It affected him even more than herself, for he stepped
back sharply with his hands clenched. Roger was silent for so long that
she said, timidly:
"I didn't mind, so much."
"Thank you," he replied almost harshly. "There's no need for you to
regret it. No need, no need. But if it were only a year more--."
"We all grow older," she told him wisely.
"So we do, Sidsall, and we change. But you should stay exactly as you are
now, white and young and fragrant. Never the fruit but always the
blossom, and always a night in early summer. The afterwards is an
indifferent performance."
"I don't understand," her voice was shadowed.
"Sidsall for a moment. Don't move--opening petals, shy pure
heart...loveliness...."
"I don't understand," she repeated, but the trouble had vanished. She
even smiled at him: she was filled with an absolute security in her
vision of Roger Brevard. Why, she had no need to question; it was an
instinct beyond search and above knowledge; perhaps, she thought as they
turned toward the house, its name was love.