Read Ebook: Fate Knocks at the Door: A Novel by Comfort Will Levington

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Ebook has 1416 lines and 113541 words, and 29 pages

Ninth Chapter: The Long-Awaited Woman Tenth Chapter: The Jews and the Romans Eleventh Chapter: Two Davids Come to Beth Twelfth Chapter: Two Lesser Adventures Thirteenth Chapter: About Shadowy Sisters Fourteenth Chapter: This Clay-and-Paint Age Fifteenth Chapter: The Story of the Mother Sixteenth Chapter: "Through Desire for Her." Seventeenth Chapter: The Plan of the Builder Eighteenth Chapter: That Park Predicament Nineteenth Chapter: In the House of Grey One Twentieth Chapter: A Chemistry of Scandal Twenty-first Chapter: The Singing Distances Twenty-second Chapter: Beth Signs the Picture Twenty-third Chapter: The Last Ride Together Twenty-fourth Chapter: A Parable of Two Horses

FATE KNOCKS AT THE DOOR

ASIA

FIRST CHAPTER

THE GREAT WIND STRIKES

Andrew Bedient, at the age of seventeen, in a single afternoon,--indeed, in one moment of a single afternoon,--performed an action which brought him financial abundance for his mature years. Although this narrative less concerns the boy Bedient than the man as he approaches twice seventeen, the action is worthy of account, beyond the riches that it brought, because it seems to draw him into somewhat clearer vision from the shadows of a very strange boyhood.

The little Captain was fastidious in dress, wearing soft shirts of white silk, fine duck trousers and scented silk handkerchiefs, which he carried in his left hand with the meerschaum-bowl. The Carreras perfume, mingled with fresh tobacco, was never burdensome, and unlike any other. The silk handkerchief was as much a feature of the Captain's appearance as the skull-cap. To it was due the really remarkable polish of the perfect clays so regularly cushioned in his palm. Always for dinner, the Captain's toilet was fresh throughout. Invariably, too, he brought with him an unfolded handkerchief upon which he placed, at the farther end of the table when the weather was fair , a ready-filled pipe. This he took to hand when coffee was brought.

His voice was seldom raised. He found great difficulty in expressing himself, except upon affairs of the ship; yet, queerly enough, there were times when he seemed deeply eager to say the things which came of his endless silences. As unlikely a man as you would find in the Pacific, or any other merchant-service, was this Carreras; a gentleman, if a very bashful one; a deeply-read and kindly man, although it was quite as difficult for him to extend a generous action, directly to be found out,--and his mind was continually furnishing inclinations of this sort,--as it was to express his thoughts. Either brought on a nervous tension which left him shaken and drained. The right woman would have adored Captain Carreras, and doubtless would have called forth from his breast a love of heroic dimension; but she would have been forced to do the winning; to speak and take the initiative in all but the giving of happiness. Temperate for a bachelor, clean throughout, charmingly innocent of the world, and a splendid seaman. To one of fine sensibilities, there was something about the person of Captain Carreras of softly glowing warmth, and rarely tender.

Then the Captain had a box of books, the marvel of which cannot begin to be described. Andrew's books were but five or six, chosen for great quantity and small bulk; tightly and toughly bound little books of which the Bible was first. This was his book of fairies, his Aesop; his book of wanderings and story, of character and mystery; his revelations, the source of his ideality, the great expander of limitations; his book of love and adventure and war; the book unjudgable and the bed-rock of all literary judgment. He knew the Bible as only one can who has played with it as a child; as only one can who has found it alone available, when an insatiable love of print has swept across the young mind. Nothing could change him now; this was his book of Fate.

This had become a pleasant feature in the young man's life--the queer kindly heart of the Captain. There were few confidences between them, but a fine unspoken regard, pleasing and permanent like the Carreras perfume. Bedient's desire to show his gratitude and admiration was expressed in ways that could not possibly shock the Captain's delicacy--in the small excellences of his art, for instance. To say that the boy was consummate in the limited way of a ship's cook does not overstate his effectiveness. He did unheard-of things--even fruit and berry-pies, from preserves two years, at least, remote from vine and orchard. The two mates and boatswain, who also messed aft, bolted without speech, but marvelled between meals. To these three, the tension of the Captain's embarrassment became insupportable, beyond four or five minutes; so that Carreras, a discriminating, though not a valiant trencherman, was always the last to leave the table.

"You're a very prime and wonderful chap, sir!"

Moreover, Bedient's arm had been pressed for an instant by the softest, plumpest hand seaman ever carried. Coughing alarmingly in the first fragrant cloud from his Latakia and Virginia leaf, the Captain beat forth to recover himself on deck.

The China Sea can generate much deviltry to a square mile. The calm of death and the burn of perdition are in its bosom. Cholera, glutted with victims, steals to his couch in the China Sea; and since it is the pool of a thousand unclean rivers, the sins of Asia find a hiding-place there. It has ended for all time the voyages of brave mariners and mighty ships, and become a vault for the cargoes, and a tomb for the bones of men. The China Sea fostered the pirate, aided him in his bloody ways, and dragged him down, riches and all. Bed of disease, secret-place of the unclean, and graveyard of the seas; yet, this yellow-breasted fiend, ancient in devil-lore, can smile innocently as a child at the morning sun, and beguile the torrid stars to twinkling.

It was in this black heart that was first conceived the Tai Fung , and there the great wind has its being to-day, resting and rising.

The Captain's eyes were deep in the North. Bedient's soul seemed to sense the awful solemnity on the face of the waters. He was unable afterward to describe his varying states of consciousness, from that first moment. He remembered thinking what a fine little man the Captain was; that their sailing together was done.... A sympathetic disorder was brewing deep down on the ocean floor; the water now had a charged appearance, and was foul as the roadstead along the mouths of the Godivari--a thick, whipped, yeasty look. The changes were very rapid. Every few seconds, Bedient glanced at the Captain, and as often followed his gaze into the churning, blackening North.

A chill came into the deathly heat, but it was the cold of caverns, not of the vital open. The heat did not mix with it, but passed by in layers--a novel movement of the atmospheres. Had the coolness been clean and normal, the sailors would have sprung to the rigging to breathe it, and to bare their bodies to the rain--after two days of hell-pervading calm--but they only murmured now and fell to work.

An unearthly glitter, like the coloring of a dream, wavered in the East and West, while the North thickened and the South lay still in brilliant expectation.... In some hall-way when Bedient was a little boy, he recalled a light like this of the West and East. There had been a long narrow pane of yellow-green glass over the front door. The light used to come through that in the afternoon and fill the hall and frighten him. It was so on deck now.

A moment more and the Destroyer itself was visible in the changing North. It was sharp-lined--a great wedge of absolute night--and from it, the last vestiges of day dropped back affrighted. And Bedient heard the voice of It; all that the human ear could respond to of the awful dissonances of storm; yet he knew there were ranges of sound above and below the human register--for they awed and preyed upon his soul.... He thought of some papers dear to him, and dropped below for them. The ship smelled old--as if the life were gone from her timbers.

Water now came over the ship in huge tumbling walls. Bedient slid over the deck, like a bar of soap from an overturned pail--clutching, torn loose, clutching again.... Then the Thing eased to a common hurricane such as men know. Gray flicked into the blackness, a corpse-gray sky, and the ocean seemed shaken in a bottle.

Another boat was put over and filled with men. Another sea flattened them out and carried the stains away on the surge. There were only nine men left and a small boat that would hold but seven. Bedient helped to make a rigging to launch this over the stern. He saw that the thing might be done if the small craft were not broken in two against the rudder.

The Captain made no movement, had no thought to join these stragglers. He was alone at the wheel, which played with his strength. His face was calm, but a little dazed. It did not occur to him other than to go down with his ship--the old tradition. The fatuousness of this appealed suddenly to Bedient. Carreras was his friend--the only other white man left. The two mates and boatswain had tried out the first two boats--eagerly.

He remembered hearing that typhoons always double on their tracks; and that a ship is not done that manages to live through the first charge. This one never came back. They had five days of thirst and equatorial sun. Two men died; two fell into madness; Captain Carreras, Andrew Bedient and a Chinese made Hong Kong without fatal hurt.

SECOND CHAPTER

THE PACK-TRAIN IN LUZON

The first letter from Captain Carreras was a real experience for Bedient. Hours were needed to adjust the memories of his timid old friend to this flowing and affectionate expression. Captain Carreras, shut in a room with pen and white paper, loosed his pent soul in utterance. A fine fragrant soul it was, and all its best poured out to his memorable boy.

The letter had been written in England, of which the Captain was already weary. He must have more space about, he confessed; and although he did not intend to break his pledge on the matter of navigating, he was soon to book a passage for the Americas. He imagined there was the proper sort of island for him somewhere in those waters. He had always had a weakness for "natives and hot weather." Bedient was asked to make his need known in any case of misfortune or extremity. This was the point of the first letter, and of all the letters....

At length Captain Carreras settled in Equatoria, a big island well out of travel-lines in the Caribbean. The second and third letters made it even plainer that the old heart valves ached for the young man's coming. A mysterious binding of the two seems to have taken place in the months preceding the day of the great wind; and in that instant of stress and fury the Captain realized his supreme human relationship. It grew strong as only can a bachelor's love for a man. Indeed, Carreras was probably the first to discover in Andrew Bedient a something different, which Bedient himself was yet far from realizing.... The latter wished that the letters from the West Indies would not always revert to the strength of his hands. It brought up a memory of the despoiled face of the Chinese with the knife, and of the inert figure afterward on the planking.... Bedient knew that sometime he would go to find his friend.

It is to be doubted if history furnishes a more picturesque service than that which fell to Luzon pack-trains throughout the following two years. It was like Indian fighting, but more compact, rapid and surprising. The actions were small enough to be seen entire; they fell clean-cut into pictures and were instantly comprehensive. As the typhoon confirmed Carreras, this Luzon service brought to Bedient an important relation--his first real friendship with a boy of his own age.

In the fall of 1899, David Cairns, the youngest of the American war-correspondents, stood hungry and desolate in the plaza of the little town of Alphonso, two days' cavalry march below Manila--when Pack-train Thirteen arrived with provisions. The mules swung in with drooping heads and lolling tongues, under three-hundred-pound packs. The roars of Healy, the boss-packer, filled the dome of sky where a young moon was rising in a twilight of heavenly blue--dusk of the gods, indeed. A battalion of infantry in Alphonso had been hungry for three days--so the Train had come swiftly, ten hours on the trail, and forced going. It was a volunteer infantry outfit, and apt to be a bit lawless in the sight of food. Some of the men began pulling at the packs. Healy and his iron-handed, vitriol-tongued crew beat them back with the ferocity of devils--and had the battalion cowed and whimpering, before the officers withdrew the men and arranged an orderly issue of rations.

Bedient had seen the hunger in the eyes of David Cairns, the empty haversack, and noted that he was neither officer nor enlisted man. Bedient had plenty of water, but with a smile he offered the other a pail and pointed to the stream. This was a pleasantry for the eyes of Boss Healy. Cairns appeared presently through the infantry, and around the end of the picket-line--a correspondent serving mule-riders with all the enthusiasm of a pitifully-tightened belt.... The packers were at their pipes and cigarettes and were spreading blanket-rolls, and groups of "chucked" infantry had warmed into singing--when the two boys sat down to supper. The cook said:

"I'm Andrew Bedient--and are you a correspondent?"

"I saw how he went through the bunch that started to help you unpack," Cairns said laughing.

... Theirs was a quick love for each other. They had not known how lonely their hearts were, until they encountered this fine mutual attraction. Together they cleaned up the supper things, and spread their blankets side by side.... Later, when only the infantry sentries were awake, and the packers' running guard , the two were still whispering, though the day had been terrific in physical expenditure. So aroused and gladdened by each other were they, that intimate matters poured forth in the fine way youths have, before the control and concealment is put on. Grown men imprison each other.... Their low tones trembled with emotion while the night whitened with stars. Cairns wished that something of terror or intensity might happen. He hated a knife to the very pith of his life, but now he would have welcomed a passage of steel in the dark--for a chance to defend the other.

And the cook had that absolute, laughing sort of courage. Cairns divined this--a courage so sure of itself that no boastful explanations were needed. They talked about men, books, their yearnings, the recent fights. Cairns was enthralled and mystified. Bedient did not seem to hope for great things in a worldly way, while the correspondent was driven daily by ambition and its self-dreams. Life apparently had shown this cook day by day what was wisest and easiest to do--the ways of little resistance. He appeared content to go on so; and this challenged Cairns to explain what he meant to do with the next few years. Bedient heard this with fine interest, but no quickening. Cairns was insatiable for details of a life that had been spent in Asia and upon ships of the Eastern seas. Everything that Bedient said had a shining exterior of mystery to the American. His vague memories of New York; the water-fronts that had since called his steps; different ships and captains; the men about him, Healy and the packers; his entire detachment from relatives, and his easy familiarity with the great unhasting years--all these formed into a luminous envelope, containing the new friend.

Somehow, Alphonso smelled of roses that night, as the two lay together in that little plaza, where the mules were picketed and the satisfied infantry slept. In the jungle , bamboo stalks creaked soothingly and stroked each other in the soft night winds, and the zenith sky boiled with millions of white-hot worlds.... Are not the best dreams of this earth to be heard from two rare boys whispering in the night? They have not been frightened by their first real failure, and the latest, most delicate bloom of the race has not yet been brushed from their thoughts. Curled within their minds, like an endless scroll, are the marvellous scriptures of millenniums, and yet their brain-surfaces are fresh for earth's newest concept.... What are they whispering? Their voices falter with emotion over vague bits of dreaming. They ask no greater stimulus to fly to the uttermost bounds of their limitations--than each other and the night. Reason dawns upon their stammered expressions, and farther they fly--thrilling like young birds, when their wings for the first time catch the sustaining cushions of air.... These are the vessels of the future--seals yet unbroken.

THIRD CHAPTER

RED PIGMENT OF SERVICE

Bedient explained that he had come to the Philippines pleased with the thought of seeing his own people, the Americans. He realized that he was not seeing them at their best under martial law. The pair exchanged narratives of action. Cairns pictured his first time under fire, ending:

"Yes, that's the order," said Bedient, who laughed softly, and presently was telling of a recent and terrible baptism of fire. The Pack-train had spurred to the rescue of a small party of sick and footsore, making their way to garrison.

"Why that was the Pony Pack Massacre!" Cairns exclaimed. "I heard about it--one of the worst affairs we've had over here--and you saw it?"

"I wish I hadn't," Bedient answered. "The little party of Americans were down when I first saw them. Six or seven of the sixteen were dead; nearly all the rest wounded. The natives had fired from three sides--and would have finished their work with knives, except for Thirteen. The American lieutenant in charge was clear-grained. He had been trying to withdraw toward the town and carry his wounded--think of that. There were not two others besides himself unscathed. I'll never forget him--striding up and down praying and cursing--his first fight, you know--and his boy's voice--'Be cock sure they're dead, fellows, before you leave 'em behind for the bolos!... For the love of God don't leave your bunkies behind for the butchers!'

"In a half minute, I saw it all--what a thing for white men to be gathered for slaughter on a trail over here. The boys knew it--and fought horribly against it...."

Cairns started to say something about this, but the words didn't come quickly enough, and Bedient went on:

Cairns felt that his companion suffered in this telling--that behind the dark, the face close to his was deadly pale. He couldn't quite understand the depths of Bedient's horror. It was war. All America was behind it. One boy can't stand up against his nation. It was all very queer. He felt that Bedient had a crystal gameness, but here was the sensitiveness of a girl. Cairns thought of the heroes he had read of who were brave as a lion and gentle as a woman, and these memories helped him now to grasp his companion's point of view.... Hesitating, Bedient finished:

Boss Healy growled at them to go to sleep.

Cairns remained with the Pack-train after that until the Rains. Never did a boy have more to write about in three months. Every phase and angle of that service, now half-forgotten, unfolded for his eyes. And the impossible theme running through it all, was the carabao--the great horned sponge that pulls vastly like an elephant and dies easily like a rabbit--when the water is out.... They make no noise about their dying, these mountains of flesh, merely droop farther and farther forward against the yoke, when their skins crack from dryness; the whites of their eyes become wider and wider--until they lay their tongues upon the sand. The Chinese call them "cow-cows" and understand them better than the Tagals, as they understand better the rice and the paddies.

Once Thirteen was yanked out of Healy's hand--as no volley of native shots had ever disordered. The mules were in a gorge trotting into the town of Indang. Natives in the high places about, were waiting for the Train to debouch upon the river-bank--so as to take a few shots at the outfit. Every one expected this, but just as the Train broke out of the gorge into the open, at the edge of the river-bed--there was a great sucking transfiguration from the shallows, a hideous sort of giving birth from the mud.

It was just a soaked carabao rising from his deep wallow in the stream, but that she-devil, the gray bell-mare, tried to climb the cliffs about it. The mules felt her panic, as if an electrode ran from her to the quick of every hide of them. When the fragments of the Train were finally gathered together in Indang, they formed an undone, hysterical mess. The packers were too tired to eat, but sat around dazed, softly cursing, and smoking cigarettes; as they did one day after a big fight, in which one of their number, Jimmy the Tough, was shot through the brain. For days the mules were nervous over the delicate condition of the bell.

Study of Andrew Bedient and weeks in which he learned, past the waver of a doubt, that his friend was knit with a glistening and imperishable fabric of courage, brought David Cairns to that high astonishing point, where he could say impatiently, "Rot!"--as his former ideals of manhood rose to mind. It was good for him to get this so young.... One morning something went wrong with Benton, the farrier. He had been silent for days. Bedient had sensed some trouble in the little man's heart, and had often left Cairns to ride with him. Then came the evening when the farrier was missed. It was in the mountains near Naig. At length, just as the sun went down, the Train saw him gain a high cliff--and stand there for a moment against the red sky. Bedient reached over and gripped Cairns' arm. Turning, the latter saw that his friend's eyes were closed. The remarkable thing was that not one of the packers called to Benton--but all observed the lean tough little figure of one of the neatest men that ever lived afield--regarded in silence the hard handsome profile. Finally Benton drew out his pistol and looked at it, as if to see that the oil had kept out the dust from the hard day on the trail. Then he looked into the muzzle and fired--going over the cliff, as he had intended, and burying himself.

"Some awful inner hunger," Bedient whispered hours afterward. "You see, he couldn't talk--as you and I do.... I've noticed it so long--that these men can't talk to one another--only swear and joke."

Cairns saw the old woman's face. It was sullen, haggard. The eyes were no strangers to hunger nor hatred. She watched the two Americans, as might a crippled tigress, that had learned at last how weak was her fury against chains. He saw that same look many times afterward in the eyes of these women of the riverbanks--as the white troops moved past. There was not even a sex-interest to complicate their hatred.

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