CHAPTER XIX
SO the yacht Elsa had turned up at last? William eyed her gloomily and with hostile speculation. He could not deny that she was a thing of beauty among all the nondescript craft which dotted the harbor. How dingy the good old Ajax looked in the background, with her scarred plates, her peeling paint, her rusty anchor chains! Gulls were wheeling circles around her; lighters were thick under her ports; her booms were busy in the service of commerce. She looked like a great bumblebee which had fallen prey to an army of waterbugs. She would be carrying tea all the way to San Francisco. She had a place in the world, this homely Ajax; she was serving mankind honorably. William knew that he loved her. To him the ship had, since the storm, taken on a distinct personality ; she was something more than teak and steel, something more than an inanimate man-driven thing.
And what of the other, the sleek, handsome yacht, with her white enamel, her polished brass, her dazzling awnings? A plaything, a rich man's plaything. William was without envy; his philosophy accepted the fact that there would always be an unequal distribution of wealth; he had no socialistic ideas. But he hated the Elsa, not because she was beyond his possession or represented one of the higher forms of luxury: she was a little kingdom which, to a certain extent, was beyond the reach of man's laws, ruled by a scoundrel whose lightest whim, right or wrong, was the only law. He could not help wondering how many women had cried their hearts out, too late, behind those glistening ports.
For an hour or more he watched the launch which bobbed at the foot of the ladder. He hoped Camden or Colburton, or both, would come ashore. He would speak to them civilly; and if they accepted his warning. … But would words mean anything? What was he to either but scum underfoot? They would either lie easily or ignore him and pass on. If he fought them and beat them—which is what really appealed to his present mood—there would be the infernal British law again. Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon, Singapore, Hong-Kong, all British ports; he was only a lone red-headed Irishman, while yonder man was a millionaire. It wouldn't be worth his while to beat them up and go to jail for it like a drunken sailor. He was literally surrounded by blind alleys.
They were following Ruth. There was nothing arguable about this conclusion. They had not given up the chase simply because they had failed to dispose of the only guardian the girl had. Colburton was rich; he had all the leisure in the world; he could abide his time.
William could understand certain phases of this ignoble pursuit. But what he could not understand was the persistence of it against the established fact that the girl was unwilling. He could not see where the zest of the chase came in under these conditions. To pursue something, some one, that loathed you and had made it patent to your face, suggested a mental make-up wholly beyond normal understanding. Hadn't that morning in Venice been conclusive? What more did the man want? Yet there he was, waiting patiently against the hour when he might safely strike. And how would he strike? From behind, in the dark?
If the girl was fool enough to cast her lot with a man like Colburton, why, there was nothing more to be said. You could not argue with a woman who put clothes and good times above her soul. You wasted your breath. But when the girl had looked into the pit at her feet and drawn back, when she had fled temptation, fought and conquered it, as he knew Ruth had. … Well, it was all past his understanding.
Without much difficulty he could fancy the girl's state of mind. She had failed in the work she loved; a little thing like nerves had barred her from fame and money. No doubt she had been desperate; and the devil always held a Colburton in reserve for this moment. But the innate good in her had won out. He never forgot the prayer; the memory of it was always coming back and filling his throat. Yet that black scoundrel did not intend to give her up!
"To hell with the British jail!" William growled, shaking his fist toward the yacht. He would bump their heads together, come what might. A Cingalese boatman, his mouth and chin spattered with the juice of the betel-nut, hailed William eagerly.
"Sahib wants boat?"
"No. Clear out and don't bother me!"
The Cingalese grinned airily and moved on.
How long had the Elsa been in the harbor? When was she going to haul up her cables? This last he must know definitely. Was Colburton on board or ashore? This little puzzle was shortly straightened out for him. Three men came on to the pier. From their talk William assumed that they were officers in mufti. Servants trailed along behind, carrying huge kit-bags and many gun-cases.
"I call this luck! To make our station after a bit of good shooting, and to travel on a gem of a yacht like that!"
"Colburton is a good sort, the infernal lucky beggar! Didn't Chetwynd kill two black panthers up around Perak last spring? Ah, here comes the launch for us. We'll be able to pick up a few quid on the way. Colburton plays a rotten game of bridge, I understand."
Neither Camden nor Colburton was aboard the launch. William did not know whether he was relieved or sorry.
"What yacht is that?" he asked, casually, as the boatswain made fast.
"Elsa, out of New York."
"Where's she bound?"
"Perak," said the boatswain, not very civilly.
This was welcome news to William. The Elsa would be out of the way for at least eight weeks. He could now go through India and Burma without looking over his shoulder every time he passed an alley after dark. What if the man had given up the chase? What if he had suddenly tired of the game? No; a man did not travel ten or twelve thousand miles without having made up his mind rather definitely. It was a temporary truce; William refused to deceive himself. He determined to lessen his vigilance in no respect.
He spoke to the boatswain again, prompted by the desire to throw a mild bomb into the enemy's camp. For the moment the gamin was in the ascendant.
"Say, you tell Mr. Colburton that Mr. Grogan says he hopes the worst will happen. Ye-ah." The boatswain stared at him in open-mouth amazement. "And you might add that if either he or Mr. Camden speaks to Miss Jones again, it 'll be a cot on the sunny side of the hospital—that is, if it turns out to be a doctor's job instead of an undertaker's. So long, Mary!"
A gamin, when he shoots his verbal bolt, tarries not for reply. His victory depends upon the last word. William turned and marched away, whistling cheerfully. Anyhow, the jackal and his master would understand that the brindle watch-dog was loose in the front yard o' nights.
Then, too late, he realized that his gamin's instincts had betrayed him. Camden would now be on the watch for him. There would be no catching him unaware.
Next morning, when the tourists boarded the Ajax, William was very glad to note that the Elsa had cleared out early. What sister Ruth did not know she would not worry about. Not only was he going to play the watch-dog, but he was going to play it without her suspecting in the least. Only the Cumæan Sibyl could have picked a flaw in his gaiety that morning.
He romped with the children and played for them, jested and laughed with everybody, from the aloof missioners down to the little girl who had fallen in love with the chief officer; and all the while his Irish heart was heavy with a man's burden in which there were hopeless love, pain, and bewilderment of doubt, since what he really knew of Ruth's story was based on half-truths and suppositions. He did not care what she had done; his faith in her lay in what she had not done.
And on top of this, the missioner who had constituted himself a committee of one to regulate the morals of the tourists sequestered William that afternoon and mildly remonstrated with him as to his thoughtless conduct in regard to Miss Jones.
Whereupon William boiled over. "This is the second time you've spoken to me on this subject. If you didn't wear that kind of a collar and neck-tie I'd make that wrestling-match between Esau and the angel look like a frame-up!"
"Mr. Grogan!"
"Ye-ah. What's your idea of a Christian, anyhow?"
"Mr. Grogan, my intentions—"
"Sure! Your intentions are the best in the world, but you come to me with the idea that mine aren't. That's what makes me kick. Can't a man be decent and clean, to your thinking, without crawling around on his hands and knees all day praying? You've been holding the club over Hottentots too long; you've lost track of white men."
"Never have I heard such language!"
"If you hang around me, you'll hear worse 'n that. Anyhow, it's about time you heard some real language. Everybody seems afraid of you, but I'm not. Miss Jones came on board unhappy; and it's none of your business nor mine what the cause was. People who aren't happy naturally don't go running around laughing and giggling; they like to be left alone. Just as the cobwebs are getting cleared up, you have to come along with this kind of a song and dance. She wanted somebody who could laugh and talk; she wasn't aching to hear sermons. This ship, according to your idea, is as bad as the front porch of a summer hotel. As a matter of fact, everybody seems to be enjoying themselves, everybody but you. If they put on airs at first, they soon got over it. They're all human and kindly. I know it because I can see. Where do you get the noise that because folks laugh frequently they must be bad?"
"Mr. Grogan, you misunderstand me!"
"The trouble with you is you don't understand yourself. I haven't seen you crack a smile since we left New York. The world isn't as bad as all that. Of course, Miss Jones and I sit at the same table, in the same seats on trains, and go shopping together. Aren't we always with the bunch? Where's the harm? There's other parsons on board, and they have a good time like the rest of the folks. Isn't Miss Haines always tagging after the chief officer? Have you told her how wicked that is? Aw, piffle! Aren't all the young folks paired off in some innocent way? Is there anything unnatural about it? You need an oculist."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Grogan, that you look upon my good offices in this abrupt manner," said the missioner, with asperity. He rose from his chair.
"You ought to be shouting glad I didn't look at 'em from another roost. I guess the trouble with you is you want a scandal. You're yearning for one. You want to save something so bad that you'd be glad if something bad happened. You'd have started a riot on the Ark, believe me. Some folks are built that way. Anything good looks suspicious to 'em. Gee! I wish my old archeologists were back. They had whiter whiskers than you, and they saw good in everything, even me. I've nothing more to say for publication," William concluded.
He could see by the expression on the missioner's pale face that he had turned an officious meddler into a bitter enemy; but he did not care. His Jeremiade could lay as it fell.
"Talking to me like that! I know what's the trouble with him. He sees things just the same as I do, but when they get into his head they begin walking backward."
Half an hour later he had forgotten the incident. The agile mind is generally nearer happiness than the plodding one; and William had the faculty of leaping mentally from one object to another, like a chamois. Ruth found him drawing pictures of elephants for the children.
"What are you drawing?" she asked.
"Elephants."
"Really?" She laughed.
"Sure." He extended a finished product. His ideas of anatomy were certainly wonderful to behold. Had such an elephant existed, every hunter in the world would have been scouring the jungles.
"Goodness! what is it?" she asked, holding the drawing flat, then endways, then upside down. "Oh, I see. It's Vesuvius."
"Aw! Say, kids, what is this picture?" he demanded, snatching back the drawing.
"Elephunt!" they shrieked.
"There, smarty!"
She sat down on the deck. "Let me draw one."
The children clamored about her shoulders and William craned his neck. With a few deft strokes a real elephant appeared; he had the right kind of ears, trunk, wrinkles, eyes.
"Oh, that's a real elephunt!" cried one of the children.
And there's your child. They don't want real elephants, they want make-believes, for they live in a world of make-believe.
"We like Uncle Bill's elephants, 'cause they're so high up!"
"I see," replied Ruth, gravely. "You are all cubists. I didn't know that."
The children seized the two drawings and made off to exhibit them.
"You're as bad as they are," she laughed.
"Ain't they great? But they like my zebra best. All you have to do is to draw a donkey and send him to jail."
"You are always thinking of that elephant."
"Sure I am. If I don't ride an elephant between Bombay and Calcutta, it's going to break my heart. Ever since I was five I've been wanting to ride elephants. None of your zoo stuff, but the real article, howdahs with masonic aprons hanging down the sides, and W. G. embroidered with pearls, like the sleight-o'-hand fakers use in the vaudeville. Great! And now I'm going to tell you a secret. I've ordered the biggest, highest elephant in Jaipur."
"What?"
"Ye-ah. He'll be there at the station for us, and we'll have him all the way up to Amber and back, howdah and all."
"William Grogan, and after all my efforts to make you save your money!"
"'Sh! Here's the joke. It's the state elephant, and all it costs me is five dollars, including the howdah. It's first come, first served. They told me all about it back at Cook's in New York. And they say the elephant's as big as Jumbo. You and me and some of the kids—huh? Style? Believe me, nothing that ever walked around Coney will touch us."
Ruth smiled back into his eyes, but she was deep in wonder. It was utterly impossible to associate this boy with the caveman who had dragged her off the deck during the storm. The terrible strength of him when he was roused! There were marks upon her arm yet. She had been as a feather in his grasp. After all, it was easy to understand why the children loved him; he was a child whose body alone had grown up. His brain would never develop much beyond what it was. When all this wonderful journey was over he would return to his drain-pipes and bathtubs, his cravings satisfied. To have dreamed all his life of elephants and spangled howdahs! If that wasn't pure boy, what was? He was the kind children ran to and dogs fawned over.
She sighed. She, too, loved children. But they never put their soft little arms around her neck, because instinctively they sensed the repellence. She dared not soften toward them. There was nothing enigmatical in this attitude. She did not want the hidden depths in her soul stirred by the potent knowledge that never would she have children of her own. -She had failed in everything. And some day this boy would marry and settle down, and there would always be children around him, his children and his children's children.
This isn't a guide-book. It is eight months or more in the life of a young man who was vitally interested in living, who was making his boyhood dreams come true by the sheer force of will. If the fulfilment was not exactly in conformity with the conception, that was due to these unromantic times. If I attempted to chronicle all the things that happened to him, along with a complete itinerary of his travels, I should require the lease of another ninety-nine years.
His principal recollections of India were dung fires at night, tigers (in cages), apes, color, swarming people, and temples which resembled his bedroom windows on frosty winter mornings. Among other things, he arrived at that painful and critical moment when he must make his choice, eschew hotel labels or buy new suit-cases, there being no more room on those he had.
As for his dreams, he knocked down cocoanuts by hand and drank the milk; he picked tea-leaves, cardamon seeds, spices; he rode camels and donkeys; he passed through the tail end of a typhoon; and he rode from Jaipur to ancient Amber on the state elephant, howdah, spangles, and all.
In fact, he had a Durbar all by himself. The natives, upon beholding the huge pachyderm, rheumatic and disgruntled, decked out in all his giddy paraphernalia, concluded that some intimate friend of the British Raj was passing, and forthwith they beat their foreheads in the dust. If you should ask William, no doubt he will tell you that this was the greatest moment in his life.
Great dramatizations do not always get over; the lesson does not always stick in the mind; it is often crowded aside by the false importance of some triviality. Perversely the audience will seize upon the incident, and right away they will proceed to make the dramatist rich, when all he wanted was to be famous.
The drama in William's life was always overshadowed by that comic episode in Jaipur. The least thing stirred him into the telling of it.
He did not find his letter of credit at Rangoon. He was shown a cable, ostensibly written by himself in Aden, by which the letter had been forwarded to Bombay. A wire to Bombay elicited the surprising fact that his money was now on its way to Hong-Kong as per his further instructions dated Colombo. He knew that this bewildering tangle would be due to forgeries, but this knowledge did not help him solve his increasing financial difficulties. He cabled Hong-Kong the facts, however, and ordered them to hold the letter until he called personally for it with the letter of identification. He landed in Singapore with a little less than a hundred dollars. But he was confident that this sum would tide him over until he reached Hong-Kong. They were to stop only three days in Singapore.
He bore up cheerfully, but none the less he worried in secret. Cook's agents confessed that this was a new game to them and was beyond comprehension, since the man who was manipulating the letter's nomadic existence could not possibly benefit by it financially.
The yacht Elsa was not in the harbor of Singapore, and this fact lightened William's burden somewhat.
At four o'clock on the afternoon of the fourth day the Ajax would sail for Hong-Kong direct, as it was proposed to spend considerable time in China and Japan. Ruth went shopping with the two spinsters. She wanted a good supply of those delicious mangosteens. William, on his part, agreed to superintend the shipping aboard of two Canton grass lounges.
Coming on board just before sailing, he saw a bunch of mangosteens in her chair, and concluded that she had gone below to change. He himself elected to take a tubbing and don his new pongee suit. But when at dinner-time Ruth did not appear, he grew alarmed and sought her cabin. One of the spinsters answered his summons.
"Where is Miss Jones?" he asked.
"Isn't she on deck?"
"No. I can't find her." He hesitated. "Did she come on board with you?"
"Why, no. She met Mr. Camden, and the two went over to the markets for more fruit. … Mr. Grogan, what is the matter?"
Deathly white, William suddenly collapsed against the door-jamb.
"She … she has been left behind!"