The young man himself was almost deceived. Was there a German mail-boat?

Was there a club, from which he had stolen out while she wept, ignominiously, in that girl's arms? And then of a sudden he perceived, with a fatuous pleasure, how well she knew him, to know that he had never spoken. His English, as he drew up a stool beside Miss Drake, was wild and ragged; but he found her an astonishing refuge. For the first time, he recalled that this quiet girl had been beautiful, the other night; and though now by day that beauty was rather of line than of color, he could not understand how it had been overlooked. Tiffin, meanwhile, sped by like an orgy. He remembered asking so many questions, about the mission hospital and her school for orphans, that the girl began at last to answer with constraint, and with puzzled, sidelong scrutiny. He remembered how even the tolerant Heywood shot a questioning glance toward his wine-gla.s.s. He remembered telling a brilliant story, and reciting "Old Captain Mau in Vegesack,"--rhymes long forgotten, now fluent and spontaneous. The applause was a triumph. Through it, as through a haze, he saw a pair of wide blue eyes shining with startled admiration.

But the best came when the sun had lowered behind the grove, the company grown more silent, and Mrs. Forrester, leaning beside the door of the tower, turned the great pegs of a Chinese lute. The notes tinkled like a mandolin, but with now and then an alien wail, a lament unknown to the West. "Sing for us," begged the dark-eyed girl; "a native song." The other smiled, and bending forward as if to recollect, began in a low voice, somewhat veiled, but musical and full of meaning. "The Jasmine Flower," first; then, "My Love is Gathering Dolichos"; and then she sang the long Ballad of the Rice,--of the husband and wife planting side by side, the springing of the green blades, the harvest by millions upon millions of sheaves, the wealth of the State, more fragrant to ancestors than offerings of spice:--

"...O Labor and Love and hallowed Land!

Think you these things are but still to come?

Think you they are but near at hand, Only now and here?--Behold.

They were the same in years of old!"

In her plaintive interlude, the slant-eyed servants watched her, nodding and muttering under the camphor trees.

"And here's a song of exile," she said. "I render it very badly."--Rudolph had never seen her face like this, bending intently above the lute. It was as though in the music she found and disclosed herself, without guile.

"...Blue was the sky, And blue the rice-pool water lay Holding the sky; Blue was the robe she wore that day.

Alas, my sorrow! Why Must life bear all away, Away, away, Ah, my beloved, why?"

A murmur of praise went round the group, as she put aside the instrument.

"The sun's getting low," she said lightly, "and I _must_ see that view from the top." Chantel was rising, but sat down again with a scowl, as she turned to Rudolph. "You've never seen it, Mr. Hackh? Do come help me up."

Inside, with echoing steps, they mounted in a squalid well, obscurely lighted from the upper windows, toward which decaying stairs rose in a dangerous spiral, without guard-rail. A misstep being no trifle, Rudolph offered his hand for the mere safety; but she took it with a curious little laugh. They climbed cautiously. Once, at a halt, she stood very close, with eyes shining large in the dusk. Her slight body trembled, her head shook with stifled merriment, like a girl overcome by mischief.

"What a queer little world!" she whispered. "You and I here!--I never dreamed you could be funny. It made me so proud of you, down there!"

He muttered something vague; and--the stairs ending in ruin at the fourth story--handed her carefully through the window to a small outer bal.u.s.trade. As they stood together at the rail, he knew not whether to be angry, suspicious, or glad.

"I love this prospect," she began quietly. "That's why I wanted you to come."

Beyond the camphors, a wide, strange landscape glowed in the full, low-streaming light. The ocean lay a sapphire band in the east; in the west, on a long ridge, undulated the gray battlements of a city, the antique walls, warmed and glorified, breasting the flood of sunset. All between lay vernal fields and hillocks, maidenhair sprays of bamboo, and a wandering pattern of pink foot-paths. Slowly along one of these, a bright-gowned merchant rode a white pony, his bells tinkling in the stillness of sea and land. Everywhere, like other bells more tiny and shrill, sounded the trilling of frogs.

As the two on the paG.o.da stood listening,--

"It was before Rome," she declared thoughtfully. "Before Egypt, and has never changed. You and I are just--" She broke off, humming:--

"Only here and now? Behold They were the same in years of old!"

Her mood colored the scene: the aged continuity of life oppressed him.

Yet he chose rather to watch the straggling battlements, far off, than to meet her eyes or see her hair gleaming in the sun. Through many troubled days he had forgotten her, despised her, bound his heart in triple bra.s.s against a future in her hateful neighborhood; and now, beside her at this time-worn rail, he was in danger of being happy. It was inglorious. He tried to frown.

"You poor boy." Suddenly, with an impulse that must have been generous, she rested her hand on his arm. "I was sorry. I thought of you so often."

At these close quarters, her tremulous voice and searching upward glance meant that she alone understood all his troubles. He started, turned for some rush of overwhelming speech, when a head popped through the window behind them.

"Boot and saddle, Mrs. Forrester," announced Heywood. His lean young face was very droll and knowing. "We're leaving, bottom-side."

"Thank you so much, Maurice," she answered, perhaps dryly. "You're a dear, to climb all those dreadful stairs."

"Oh!" said Heywood, with his gray eyes fastened on Rudolph, "no trouble."

All three went down the dark well together.

When the company were mounted, and trooping downhill through the camphor shadow, Heywood's pony came sidling against Rudolph's, till legging chafed legging.

"You blossomed, old boy," he whispered. "Quite the star, after your comedy turn." He reined aside, grinning. "What price sympathy on a paG.o.da?"

For that moment, Rudolph could have struck down the one sure friend he had in China.

CHAPTER VII

IPHIGENIA

"Don't chop off a hen's head with a battle-axe." Heywood, still with a malicious, friendly quirk at the corners of his mouth, held in his fretful pony. Rudolph stood bending a whip viciously. They two had fetched a compa.s.s about the town, and now in the twilight were parting before the nunnery gate. "A tiff's the last thing I'd want with you. The lady, in confidence, is not worth--"

"I do not wish," declared Rudolph, trembling,--"I do not wish you to say those things, so!"

"Right!" laughed the other, and his pony wheeled at the word. "I'll give you one month--no: you're such a good, thorough little chap, it will take longer--two months, to change your mind. Only"--he looked down at Rudolph with a comic, elderly air--"let me observe, our yellow people have that rather neat proverb. A hen's head, dear chap,--not with a battle-axe! No. Hot weather's coming, too. No sorrows of Werther, now, over such"--He laughed again. "Don't scowl, I'll be good. I won't say it. You'll supply the word, in two months!"

He let the pony have his way, and was off in a clatter. Lonely, fuming with resentment, Rudolph stared after him. What could he know, this airy, unfeeling meddler, so free with his advice and innuendo? Let him go, then, let him canter away. He had seen quickly, guessed with a diabolic shrewdness, yet would remain on the surface, always, of a mystery so violent and so profound. The young man stalked into his vacant nunnery in a rage, a dismal pomp of emotion: reason telling him that a friend had spoken sense, imagination clothing him in the sceptred pall of tragedy.

Yet one of these unwelcome words had stuck: he was Werther, it was true--a man who came too late. Another word was soon fulfilled; for the hot weather came, sudden, tropical, ferocious. Without gradation, the vernal days and languid noons were gone in a twinkling. The change came like another act of a play. One morning--though the dawn stirred cool and fragrant as all dawns before--the "boy" laid out Rudolph's white tunic, slipped in the shining b.u.t.tons, smeared pipe-clay on his heaviest helmet; and Rudolph, looking from his window, saw that on the river, by the same instinct, boatmen were stretching up their bamboo awnings.

Breakfast was hardly ended, before river, and convex field, and huddling red tiles of the town, lay under a blurred, quivering distortion. The day flamed. At night, against a glow of fiery umber, the western hills broke sharp and thin as sheet-iron, while below them rose in flooding mirage a bright strip of magical water.

Thus, in these days, he rode for his exercise while the sun still lay behind the ocean; and thus her lively, pointed face and wide blue eyes, wondering or downcast or merry, were mingled in his thoughts with the first rousing of the world, the beat of hoofs in cool silences, the wide lights of creation over an aged, weary, alien empire. Their ponies whinnying like old friends, they met, by chance or appointment, before the power of sleep had lifted from eyes still new and strange against the morning. Sometimes Chantel the handsome rode glowering beside them, sometimes Gilly, erect and solid in the saddle, laid upon their talk all the weight of his honest, tired commonplaces.

But one morning she cantered up alone, laughing at her escape. His pony bolted, and they raced along together as comrades happily join forces in a headlong dream. Quivering bamboo swept behind them; the river, on their other hand, met and pa.s.sed in hurrying panorama. They had no time for words, but only laughter. Words, indeed, had never yet advanced them beyond that moment on the paG.o.da. And now, when their ponies fell into a shambling trot, came the first impulse of speech.

"How lucky!" she cried. "How lucky we came this way! Now I can really test you!"

He turned. Her glowing face was now averted, her gesture was not for him, but for the scene. He studied that, to understand her.

The river, up which they had fled, now rested broad and quiet as a shallow lake, burnished faintly, brooded over by a floating, increasing light, not yet compounded into day. Tussocks, innumerable clods and crumbs of vivid green, speckled all the nearer water. On some of these storks meditated,--sage, pondering heads and urbane bodies perched high on the frailest penciling of legs. In the whole expanse, no movement came but when a distant bird, leaving his philosophic pose, plunged downward after a fish. Beyond them rose a shapeless mound or isle, like some half-organic monster grounded in his native ooze.

"There!" said the woman, pointing. "Are you all excuses, like the others? Or do you dare?"

"I am not afraid of anything--now," retorted Rudolph, and with truth, after the dash of their twilight encounter. "Dare what?"

"Go see what's on that island," she answered. "I dared them all. Twice I've seen natives land there and hurry away. Mr. Nesbit was too lazy to try; Dr. Chantel wearing his best clothes. Maurice Heywood refused to mire his horse for a whim. Whim? It's a mystery! Come, now. Do you dare?"

In a rare flush of pride, Rudolph wheeled his stubborn mount and bullied him down the bank. A poor horseman, he would have outstripped Curtius to the gulf. But no sooner had his dancing pony consented to make the first rebellious, sidelong plunge, than he had small joy of his boast.

Fore-legs sank floundering, were hoisted with a terrified wrench of the shoulders, in the same moment that hind-legs went down as by suction.