Dragon's blood Part 21

An old, withered barber looked up from shaving a blue forehead, under a tree.

"Their women," he growled, "are shameless, and walk everywhere!"

But a stern man, bearing a palm-leaf fan and a lark in a cage, frowned him down.

"She brought my son safe out of the Three Sicknesses," he declared.

"Mind your trade, Catcher of Lively Ones!" Then bending over the cage, with solicitude, he began gently to fan the lark. As Heywood and the girl paused beside him, he glanced up, and smiled gravely. "I give my pet his airing," he said; and then, quickly but quietly, "When you reach the town, do not pa.s.s through the West Quarter. It is full of evil-minded persons. Their placards are posted."

A shrill trio of naked boys came racing and squabbling, to offer gra.s.shoppers for sale.

"We have seen no placards," replied Heywood.

"You will to-morrow," said the owner of the lark, calmly; and squatting, became engrossed in poking a gra.s.shopper between the brown, varnished splints of the cage. "Maker of Music, here is your evening rice."

The two companions pa.s.sed on, with Flounce timidly at heel.

"You see," Heywood broke out. "Warnings everywhere. Now please, won't you listen to my advice? No telling when the next ship _will_ call, but when it does--"

"I can't run away." She spoke as one clinging to a former answer. "I must stand by my dream, such as it used to be--and even such as it is."

He eyed her sadly, shook his head, and said no more. For a moment they halted, where the path broadened on a market-place, part shade, part luminous with golden dust. A squad of lank boys, kicking miraculously with flat upturned soles, kept a wicker ball shining in the air, as true and lively as a plaything on a fountain-jet. Beyond, their tiny juniors, girls and boys knee-high, and fat tumbling babies in rainbow finery, all hand-locked and singing, turned their circle inside out and back again, in the dizzy graces of the "Water Wheel." Other boys, and girls still trousered and queued like boys, played at hopscotch, in and out among shoes that lay across the road. All traffic, even the steady trotting coolies, fetched a lenient compa.s.s roundabout.

"Lucky Hand, Lucky Hand! Allow me to pa.s.s," begged a coffin-maker's man, bent under a plank. "These Long-Life boards are heavy."

"Ho, Lame Chicken!" called another, blocked by the hop-scotch. He was a brown gra.s.s-cutter, who grinned, and fondled a smoky cloth that buzzed--some tribe of wild bees, captured far afield. "Ho, Lame Chicken!

Do not b.u.mp me. They will sting."

He came through safely; for at the same moment the musical "Cling-clank"

of a sweetmeat-seller's bell turned the game into a race. The way was clear, also, for a tiny, aged collector of paper, flying the gay flag of an "Exalted Literary Society," and plodding, between two great baskets, on his pious rounds. "Revere and spare," he piped, at intervals,-- "revere and spare the Written Word!"

All the bright picture lingered with the two alien wayfarers, long after they had pa.s.sed and the sun had withdrawn from their path. In the h.o.a.ry peace of twilight,--

"What can _we_ do here?" the girl cried abruptly. "There--I never meant to say it. But it runs in my head all the time. I work and work, to keep it down. What can we do here?"

Heywood watched her face, set straight before them, and now more clearly cut in the failing light. Were there only pride in those fine and resolute lines, it might have been a face from some splendid coin, or medal of victory.

"You work too hard," he said. "Think, instead, of all the good--"

But at that she seemed to wince.

"The good? As if there weren't dark streets and crooked children at home! Oh, the pride and ignorance that sent me here!" She spoke quietly, with a kind of wonder. "Just blind, ignorant feelings, I took them for--for something too great and mysterious. It's all very strange to look back on, and try to put into words. I remember painted gla.s.s, and solemn music--and thinking--then!--that I knew this lovely and terrible world--and its Maker and Master." She looked down the dusky lanes, where glowworm lanterns began to bob and wink. "Oh, this land! where you see the days running into years!"

"The Dragon's a wise old beast," he ventured. "He teaches--something."

She a.s.sented gravely:--

"And in those days I thought it was a dark continent--of lost souls."

"There are no dark continents," declared Heywood suddenly, in a broken voice. "The heart of one man--can hold more darkness--You would never see into it--"

"Don't!" she cried sharply. "What did we promise?"

They stood close in the dusk, and a tremor, a wave, pa.s.sed through them both.

"I forgot--I couldn't help"--he stammered; then, as they stumbled forward, he regained his former tone, keen and ready. "Mustn't get to fussing about our work, must we?--Curious thing: speaking of dreams, you know. The other night I thought you were somewhere out on board a junk, and Flounce with you. I swam like anything, miles and miles, but couldn't get out to you. Worked like steam, and no headway. Flounce knew I was coming, but you didn't. Deuced odd, how real it seemed."

She laughed, as though they had walked past some danger.

"And speaking of dragons," she rejoined. "They _do_ help. The man in the story, that dipped in dragon's blood, was made invulnerable."

"Oh?" He stood plainly at a loss. "Oh, I see. German, wasn't he?--Pity they didn't pop Rudie Hackh in!"

Her swift upward glance might have been admiration, if she had not said:--

"Your mind works very slowly."

"Oh?" Again he paused, as though somewhat hurt; then answered cheerfully: "Dare say. Always did. Thought at first you meant the rattan-juice kind, from Sumatra."

The gate of the town yawned black. From the streets glimmered a few lanterns, like candles in a long cave. But shunning these unfriendly corridors, he led her roundabout, now along the walls, now through the dim ways of an outlying hamlet. A prolonged shriek of growing fright and anguish came slowly toward them--the cry of a wheelbarrow carrying the great carca.s.s of a pig, waxy white and waxy red, like an image from a chamber of horrors. In the blue twilight, fast deepening, the most familiar things became grotesque. A woman's voice telling stories behind shadow pictures, and the capricious play of the black puppets on her lighted screen, had the effect of incantation. Before the booth of a dentist, the long strings of black teeth swayed in the lantern-glow, rattling, like horrid necklaces of cannibals. And from a squat den--where on a translucent placard in the dull window flickered the words "Foreign Earth," and the guttering door-lantern hinted "As You Like It"--there came a sweet, insidious, potent smell that seemed more poisonous than mere opium.

"Let's go faster," said the girl. "Somehow, the dark makes me uneasy to-night."

Skirting the town, they struck at last the open road beyond, and saw against a fading sky the low black bulk of the nunnery, pierced with orange squares. Past its landward wall, lanterns moved slowly, cl.u.s.tered here and there by twos and threes, and dispersed. Cackling argument came from the ditch, wherever the lantern-bearers halted; and on the face of the wall, among elbowing shadows, shone dim strips of scarlet. Both pillars of the gate were plastered with them.

"Placards," said Heywood. "Things are ripening fast." Lighting match from match, he studied the long red scrolls, crowded with neat rows of symbols. He read them off slowly.

'The Garden of the Three Exquisites.'--Pshaw! that's a theatre notice: enterprising manager.--Ah, more like it. Long preamble, regular trimetrical plat.i.tudes--here we are:--

"'These Red-Bristled Ghosts teach their dupes to break the ancestral tablets, and to worship the picture of a naked infant, which points one finger toward heaven, another toward earth.--To each man entering the False Religion, a pill is given which confuses and darkens the mind.--Why they dig out babies' eyes: from one hundred pounds of Chinese lead can be extracted seven pounds of silver, and the remaining ninety-three pounds can be sold at the original cost. This silver can be extracted only by the elixir of black eyes. The green eyes of barbarians are of no use.'--Really, what follows is too--er--obscure. But here's the close: 'Tao-tais of the villages, a.s.semble your population.

Patriots, join! Let us hurl back these wizard-beasts beyond the oceans, to take their place among the strange things of creation!'"

"And the big characters," she added, "the big characters you tried to hide, are 'Kill' and 'Burn'?"

Gray eyes and dark eyes met steadily, while the last match, reddening the blood in his fingers, slowly burned out.

CHAPTER XV

KAu FAI

At the top of the nunnery stairs, Rudolph met them with awkward ceremony, and with that smiling air of encouragement which a nurse might use in trying cheerfully to deceive a sick man. Heywood laughed, without mercy, at this pious fraud.

"Hallo, you Red-Bristled Ghost!" he cried. "We came early--straight from our walk. Are the rest coming? And did my cook arrive to help yours?"

Their host, carried by a.s.sault, at once became less mournful.

"The cook is here," he replied, "by the kitchen-sounds. They disagree, I think. I have asked everybody. We should have a full dinner-table."