Dragon's blood Part 18

Chantel, from a derisive dumb-show near the window, had turned to waddle solemnly down the room. At sight of Heywood's face he stopped guiltily.

"Chantel!" All the laughter was gone from the voice and the hard gray eyes. "Yesterday we humored you tin-soldier fashion, but to-day let's put away childish things.--I like that magistrate, plainly, a d.a.m.ned deal better than I like you. When you or I show one half his ability, we're free to mock him--in my house."

For the first time within the memory of any man present, the mimic wilted.

"I--I did not know," he stammered, "that old man was your friend." Very quiet, and a little flushed, he took his seat among the others.

"I like him no end." Still more quiet, Heywood appealed to the company.

"Part for his hard luck--stuck down, a three-year term, in this neglected hole. Enemies in power, higher up. Fang, the Sword-Pen, in great favor up there.--What? Oh, said nothing directly, of course.

Friendly call, and all that. But his indirections speak straight enough.

We understood each other. The dregs of the town are all stirred up--bottomside topside--danger point. He, in case--you know--can't give us any help. No means, no recourse. His chief's fairly itching to cashier him.--Spoke highly of your hospital work, padre, but said, 'Even good deeds may be misconstrued.'--In short, gentlemen, without saying a word, he tells us honestly in plain terms, 'Sorry, but look out for yourselves.'"

A beggar rattled his bowl of cash in the road, below; from up the river sounded wailing cries.

"Did he mention," said the big padre, presently, "the case against my man, Chok Chung?"

Heywood's eyes became evasive, his words reluctant.

"The magistrate dodged that--that unpleasant subject. The case was forced on him. Some understrapper tried it. Let's be fair."

Dr. Earle's great elbows left the board. Without rising, he seemed to grow in bulk and stature, and send his vision past the company, into those things which are not, to confound the things which are.

"For myself, it does not matter. 'He buries His workmen, but carries on His work.'" The man spoke in a heavy, broken voice, as though it were his body that suffered. "But it comes hard to hear, from a young man, so good a friend, after many years"--The deep-set eyes returned, and with a sudden l.u.s.tre, made a sharp survey from face to face. "If I have made my flock a remnant--aliens--rejected--tell me, what shall I do? Tell me. I have shut eyes and conscience, and never meddled, never!--not even when money was levied for the village idols. And here's a man beaten, cast into prison--"

He shoved both fists out on the table, and bowed his white head.

"My safety is nothing. But yours--and his.--To keep one, I desert the other. Either way." The padre groaned. "What must I choose?"

"We're all quite helpless," said Heywood, gently. "Quite. It's a long way to the nearest gunboat."

"Tell me," repeated the other, stubbornly.

At the same moment it happened that the cries came louder along the river-bank, and that some one bounded up the stairs.

The runner was Rudolph. All morning he had gone about his errands very calmly, playing the man of action, in a new philosophy learned overnight. But now he forgot to imitate his teacher, and darted in, so headlong that all the dogs came with him, bouncing and barking.

"Look," he called, stumbling toward the farther window, while Flounce the terrier and a wonk puppy ran nipping at his heels. "Come, look at them! Out on the river!"

CHAPTER XIII

THE SPARE MAN

Beyond the scant greenery of Heywood's garden--a ropy little banyan, a low rank of glossy whampee leaves, and the dusty sage-green tops of stunted olives--glared the river. Wide, savage sunlight lay so hot upon it, that to aching eyes the water shone solid, like a broad road of yellow clay. Only close at hand and by an effort of vision, appeared the tiny, quiet lines of the irresistible flood pouring toward the sea; there whipped into the pool of banyan shade black snippets and tails of reflection, darting ceaselessly after each other like a shoal of frightened minnows. But elsewhere the river lay golden, solid, and painfully bright. Things afloat, in the slumberous procession of all Eastern rivers, swam downward imperceptibly, now blurred, now outlined in corrosive sharpness.

The white men stood crowding along the s.p.a.cious window. The dogs barked outrageously; but at last above their din floated, as before, the high wailing cries. A heaping cairn of round-bellied, rosy-pink earthen jars came steering past, poled by a naked statue of new copper, who balanced precariously on the edge of his hidden raft. No sound came from him; nor from the funeral barge which floated next, where still figures in white robes guarded the vermilion drapery of a bier, decked with vivid green boughs. All these were silent.

"No, above!" cried Rudolph, pointing.

After the mourners' barge, at some distance, came hurrying a boat crowded with shining yellow bodies and dull blue jackets. Long bamboo poles plied b.u.mping along her gunwale, sticking into the air all about her, many and loose and incoordinate, like the ribs of an unfinished basket. From the bow spurted a white puff of smoke. The dull report of a musket lagged across the water.

The bullet skipped like a schoolboy's pebble, ripping out little rags of white along that surface of liquid clay.

The line of fire thus revealed, revealed the mark. Untouched, a black head bobbed vigorously in the water, some few yards before the boat. The saffron crew, poling faster, yelled and cackled at so clean a miss, while a coolie in the bow reloaded his matchlock.

The fugitive head labored like that of a man not used to swimming, and desperately spent. It now gave a quick twist, and showed a distorted face, almost of the same color with the water.

The mouth gaped black in a sputtering cry, then closed choking, squirted out water, and gaped once more, to wail clearly:--

"I am Jesus Christ!"

In the broad, bare daylight of the river, this lonely and sudden blasphemy came as though a person in a dream might declare himself to a waking audience of skeptics. The cry, sharp with forlorn hope, rang like an appeal.

"Why--look," stammered Heywood. "He sees us--heading here. Look, it's--Quick! let me out!"

Just as he turned to elbow through his companions, and just as the cry sounded again, the matchlock blazed from the bow. No bullet skipped. The swimmer, who had reached the shallows, suddenly rose with an incredible heave, like a leaping salmon, flung one bent arm up and back in the gesture of the Laoc.o.o.n, and pitched forward with a turbid splash. The quivering darkness under the banyan blotted everything: death had dispersed the black minnows there, in oozy wriggles of shadow; but next moment the fish-tail stripes chased in a more lively shoal. The gleaming potter, below his rosy cairn, stared. The mourners forgot their grief.

Heywood, after his impulse of rescue, stood very quiet.

"You saw," he repeated dully. "You all saw."

The clutching figure, bolt upright in the soaked remnant of prison rags, had in that leap and fall shown himself for Chok Chung, the Christian. He had sunk in mystery, to become at one forever with the drunken cormorant-fisher.

Obscene delight raged in the crowded boat, with yells and laughter, and flourish of bamboo poles.

"Come away from the window," said Heywood; and then to the white-haired doctor: "Your question's answered, padre. Strange, to come so quick." He jerked his thumb back toward the river. "And that's only first blood."

The others had broken into wrangling.

"Escaped? Nonsense--Cat--and--mouse game, I tell you; those devils let him go merely to--We'll never know--Of course! Plain as your nose--To stand by, and never lift a hand! Oh, it's--Rot! Look here, why--Acquitted, then set on him--But we'll _never_ know!--Fang watching on the spot. Trust him!"

A calm "boy," in sky-blue gown, stood beside them, ready to speak. The dispute paused, while they turned for his message. It was a disappointing trifle: Mrs. Forrester waited below for her husband, to walk home.

"Can't leave now," snapped Gilly. "I'll be along, tell her--"

"Had she better go alone?" suggested Heywood.

"No; right you are." The other swept a fretful eye about the company.

"But this business begins to look urgent.--Here, somebody we can spare.

You go, Hackh, there's a good chap."

Chantel dropped the helmet he had caught up. Bowing stiffly, Rudolph marched across the room and down the stairs. His face, pale at the late spectacle, had grown red and sulky, "Can spare me, can you?--I'm the one." He descended, muttering.

Viewing himself thus, morosely, as rejected of men, he reached the compound gate to fare no better with the woman. She stood waiting in the shadow of the wall; and as he drew unwillingly near, the sight of her--to his shame and quick dismay--made his heart leap in welcome. She wore the coolest and severest white, but at her throat the same small furbelow, every line of which he had known aboard ship, in the days of his first exile and of his recent youth. It was now as though that youth came flooding back to greet her.

"Good-morning." He forgot everything, except that for a few priceless moments they would be walking side by side.