Java Head Part 14

There Nettie found herself beside a little girl clasping the hand of a bulky old gentleman in pongee and a palm leaf hat and following every operation with a grave critical regard. "I guess," she said to her companion, "it's only the cheap sort of tea, a late picking, or it would be in canisters." She was, Nettie realized, the youngest Ammidon child with her grand-father. The latter looked round and recognized Nettie Vollar. "How's Barzil Dunsack?" he asked immediately.

She was at a loss for an answer, since she could not describe the subject of the inquiry as all right nor explain their unhappy condition. "Intend to stop in," Jeremy Ammidon continued; "last time I was there I went up like a rocket." Laurel--that was the child's name, she remembered--gazed at her intently. "I was saying to grandfather," she repeated precisely, "that this wasn't really much of a cargo. Nothing like the one Uncle Gerrit brought back in the Nautilus. We were having an argument about Salem too. But, of course, all the big cargoes are going into Boston,"

she st.u.r.dily confronted the flushed old man.

"You're William all over again," he a.s.serted, almost annoyed. Both their expressions grew stubborn in a manner that, in view of their great difference in age and experience, Nettie thought quite absurd. What a beautiful dress the child had on--Porto Rico drawn work, with pale yellow ribbons to her bonnet. "I wish you'd stay here a minute with Nettie Vollar," Jeremy told her, "while I see the wharfinger." He went unhurried along the wharf, and Laurel Ammidon drew closer to her.

"She's not much of a ship either," Laurel said, indicating the _Rose and Rosalie_. "She's built like--like grandfather. They're different now. I went to New York to see the _Sea Witch_ launched, and she's the tallest vessel afloat, with three standing skysail yards and, ringtail and water sails. She's black and has a gilded dragon for a figurehead; and, although she went out in a gale, got to Rio in twenty-five days. I talked to Captain Waterman, too; he commanded the _Natchez_, you know."

How the child ran on! "You've studied a lot on, ships," Nettie commented.

"I know the main truck from a jewel block," Laurel replied complacently.

"But Camilla's a frightful lubber. I should think she'd make Uncle Gerrit sick. She does me." Nettie Vollar was seized by the temptation to question Laurel about Gerrit Ammidon, about his wife--anything that touched or concerned him. A wave of emotion swept over her, a loneliness and a desire the cause of which she would not face. She wanted to take Laurel's hand in hers, and with the old ponderous comfortable gentleman go up to the serenity of their gardens and wide happy house. She wanted Gerrit Ammidon to smile at her with his eyes blue like a fair sea... His father was returning.

Laurel again grasped the large hand and they turned to leave. Jeremy Ammidon nodded to Nettie. Nothing remained for her but the place on Hardy Street; then she saw that the others had stopped and were signaling for her. "Captain Dunsack... old friend," the elder said abruptly. "Stubborn as the devil. No worse than me, though, no worse than me. Confounded proud, too. You let me know if there is anything, that is, if you need--"

he paused, breathing stormily, glaring at her in an a.s.sumed angry impatience.

"Thank you," she answered, "but there's nothing."

What most shocked her on the return home was the manner in which their life callously continued when she felt it should have been shattered by their suffering in Edward Dunsack's room; yet not so much theirs as her grandfather's. He took his place at the head of the table, the grace went up as loudly as ever above their heads; but in spite of that she saw that the old man suddenly looked infinitely spent. His knife slipped insecurely and sc.r.a.ped against the plate in fumbling and palsied hands.

All at once she had a feeling of gazing straight into his heart, and finding--like a burning ruby hidden in earth--such an agony beneath his schooled exterior that she choked thinking about it.

Nettie wondered what he would do if she put an affectionate arm about his neck and told him of their sympathy. She knew now that her Uncle Edward had been smoking opium, and that it was a worse vice, more hopeless and destructive, than drink. But she was certain that he'd repel her; he looked on them all, Edward Dunsack, her mother and herself, as sinful, "degenerate plants." Even now, she realized, there was no weakening of his spiritual fibers such as had plainly overtaken his physical being. He had a blasting contempt for the unrighteous flesh.

When they had risen from the table, Edward Dunsack appeared and sinking weakly into a chair demanded a cup of tea. He knew nothing of their discovery, of the fact that they had stood above his revolting insensibility. After the tea he seemed to revive; he lighted a cheroot and said something about going out. It wasn't possible, however; his knees sagged walking the length of the floor; in the sitting room he fell into a leaden apathy. Nettie Vollar's gaze rested on the volume of the life of the missionary who had died at such an early age on the ile de France. The lamplight spread over the depressing mustard yellow paint of the woodwork with its obviously false graining and deepened the blackness of the fireplace. Throughout the reading of the Scripture Edward Dunsack never shifted his slumped position; his face, with smudged closed eyes, seemed fixed in a skeptical smile. The hollows of his temples were green.

The reading finished, old Barzil said:

"I wish to speak to Edward alone."

The latter straightened up. "Eh!" he exclaimed. "What?" He resettled his stock and crossed a knee with a show of ease. Nettie followed her mother from the room. Her last impression was that of a startling resemblance between the young man and old--her uncle's face was as ruined as the other's--between father and son. "I wish he'd go away," her mother surprisingly a.s.serted; "I won't sleep for thinking of him lying there like a corpse."

"He'll not," Nettie replied, musing; "something is holding him we still don't know of."

She had lately begun to realize a great many things of which only a month before she had not been aware--that sudden illuminating grasp of old Barzil's inner pain, of her mother's wasted spirit, and the sense that some unguessed potent motive was at the back of her Uncle Edward's apparently erratic strolling and reiterations. Nettie stopped to wonder a little at the change in herself: she was more alive, more included. There were no reasons that she could see why this should be so; never had the present, the entire future, been darker. With her deeper consciousness, too, came an increased shrinking from life, a greater capacity for injury; and there could be no doubt that it was an older Nettie Vollar who, in her mirror, returned the questioning in the resentful black eyes.

No further mention was made of the opium, no hint escaped from the two men of what Barzil Dunsack had said to his son after the evening reading of the Bible. An evidence of the miserable episode was visible for a while in the difficulty of any attempted general conversation; then that died away and everything was seemingly as it had been before.

But the rising gayety and widespread public preparations at the approach of the Fourth of July made her existence drabber than ever.

There was, too, unusual planning, for later in the month President Polk was to be in Salem.

The various military organizations drilled incessantly: the Salem Light Infantry, the Mechanic Light Infantry, the Salem Cadets and Independents and a squad of the Salem Artillery might be seen at any hour of the morning or early evening smartly marching and countermarching, led by Flag's or the Salem Band. Strange constructions of light wood climbed in Washington Square--the set pieces of the celebrated pyrotechnist secured at a "staggering expense." Preliminary strings of firecrackers were exploded by impatient boys and the dawn of the holiday was greeted with a sustained uproar of powder.

All this was communicated to Nettie in the form of a determination to forget the dreariness of home and for once anyhow be a part of the careless holiday town. Edward Dunsack opened the day by deprecating what fireworks Salem could show and recalling the extravagant art of China in that particular. No one, he said, of the least moment would be abroad in the rabble; and he intended to spend the day over the invoice of a schooner returned from Curacao. She was glad of this, for it left her free to get an uninterrupted pleasure from the morning parade, the floats and fantasies, the afternoon drilling in Washington Square, and see the last colored disk of the fireworks. Maybe, she told herself, tying the becoming ribbon of her bonnet beneath a round chin with a lurking dimple, maybe she wouldn't come back home once during the entire day! She ignored, in the rush of her spirits, even her mother's lonely labors: for once they'd have to do without her. Nettie took a scarlet merino shawl for the cooler evening, shook forward the little black curls about her face, and hurried away from Hardy Street.

She was swept along in the crowd on Ess.e.x Street until, before the office of the Salem _Register_, she found a place that commanded the parade.

There Nettie lost all memory of the dreariness that pressed upon her; she became one of the throng, applauding the members of the East India Marine Society carrying the palanquin from the Museum in native dress, or stood with sentimental tears blurring her vision. The parade ended, and currents of people swept toward dinner; but she stopped at a baker's and got a paper of seed cakes, made in the shape of oak leaves and sat contentedly eating them in the Common.

The thought of Gerritt Ammidon, with all the other deeper aspects of her life, was thrust into the back of her consciousness; she was existing as she breathed--without will; the instinctive lighter qualities had her in full possession. She felt that her cheeks were glowing and hummed the refrains of the music she had heard. One by one the military companies marched into the Square. She was fascinated by the tall leather helmets and silver straps under severe young lips. The Newburyport men were in a new scarlet uniform, that was the Boston Bra.s.s Band--it was painted on the ba.s.s drum--with the Independents; there were the Beverly Taylor Guards. The ma.s.sed onlookers filled the broad plain.

The drilling and countermarching proceeded and the afternoon waned. At the disposal of the spectacle, when for an hour or two Washington Square was comparatively deserted, when the sun sank lower and lower over the roofs of Brown Street and the gold haze thickened, turning to blue, Nettie became quieter but no less happy. The time sped; never was she conscious of being lonely, by herself in a mult.i.tude composed of grouped families and friends. It was all such a beautiful relief to the other constant dwelling on somber and hopeless facts! Already people were streaming in under the wooden arched gates for the evening display; already she could see a star in the clear-shining green east.

The fireworks, the papers said, were to be in two parts, ending with a bombardment of Vera Cruz, five hundred feet long, and a series of triumphant arches with full-length portraits in colored lights of celebrated Americans. There was a sudden salute of artillery, and a flight of rockets soared upward in long flaming curves, dissolving in showers of liquid emerald and ruby and silver against the night. Bengola lights casting a blue glare over the standing mob and farther house fronts were followed by a great Peruvian Cross, a silvery fountain of water and Grand Representation of Bunker Hill Monument.

With this the first came all too soon to an end, and Nettie was folding the shawl about her shoulders when almost the entire Ammidon family were upon her.... In an instinctive confusion she saw William Ammidon and his wife with their daughters, the old man, Jeremy, and Gerrit.

They stopped before her in an a.s.sured, not unkindly inquisitiveness, the girls fresh and bright-faced, with crisp lovely clothes; their mother, in a smart mantle and little bonnet with knots of French flowers, greeted her with a direct question tempered by a smile. William Ammidon, smoking, was unconcerned; while Gerrit stayed obscured outside the group. "Whom are you with, Nettie?" Rhoda Ammidon asked; and when she admitted that she was alone the elder, with visible disapproval, a.s.serted:

"That won't do at all in this rough a.s.sembly. I must see that you are taken care of." She hesitated, with a slight frown on her handsome brow.

"But you will want to see the rest of the fireworks. Yes, what you must do is to come over to our steps, the view from there is fairly good, and then some one can walk home with you."

They moved resolutely forward, giving Nettie Vollar no opportunity for protest, the expression of what she might prefer; and, with so many determined minds, she dropped silently into their progress. She was beside Rhoda Ammidon, the girls trooped on before, and the men--Gerrit Ammidon--followed. Her peace of mind had been broken into a hundred half-formed doubts and acute questions. She wished that she had declined to go with them: the invitation, no, command, had been a criticism, really. Now, after so long, it wasn't necessary for them to become suddenly responsible for her.

The happiness of the day sank a little, thoughts of her mother and grandfather and Uncle Edward returned. But, at the same time, she realized that she was near Gerrit once more. This made a confusion of her emotions that hid what she most felt about him. It wasn't a proximity that meant anything, however; it had been utterly different when he came to see her before his marriage. Yet, just the fact of his being close behind her, and that she would be on the steps at the Ammidons' with him, undoubtedly had a power to stir her heart.

It brought, like her carefree excursion, a certain momentary glow, a warmth, without relation to what had gone before or might follow; there was the same quality of momentary rest, refreshment, complete and isolated as a jewel in a ring. She didn't a.n.a.lyze it further; but drifted with the vigorous chattering tide of the Ammidons.

They arrived at the impressive entrance open on a high dim interior.

Jeremy and William Ammidon went in, Rhoda lingered while a chair was brought for her, and Sidsall and Camilla, Laurel and Janet ranged themselves facing the Square. Gerrit hung silent in the doorway.

"Perhaps Taou Yuen will come down," Rhoda Ammidon suggested, and Nettie's throat was pinched at the possibility of seeing Gerrit's Chinese wife.

But he answered shortly in the negative. Taou Yuen preferred to stay in her room; the view from her window was better than this. The latter was easily possible, for here the set pieces were almost unintelligible: an impressive beehive could be seen surrounded by swarming golden bees, a pyramid of Roman candles discharged their rushes of colored b.a.l.l.s and streamers; but the bombardment of Vera Cruz was a cause of bitter complaint to the children.

The fireworks had ceased to have the slightest significance for Nettie; she was luxuriating in the suavity of the Ammidon steps and company. It seemed to her that an actual air of ease rolled out over her from within.

Seen from her place of vantage the great throng in the Square was without feature, the pa.s.sersby on Pleasant Street--as Edward Dunsack and herself had been--were unimportant. The ma.s.sive portico and dignified fence, the sense of s.p.a.ciousness and gardens and lofty formal ceilings, the feeling of fine silks and round clear direct voices, of servants for everything, everyone, transcended in force all her speculations. She was familiar--who wasn't in Salem?--with the meaning of the house's name, Java Head. It was more, quite heaven.

Thoughts of Gerrit winged in and out of her mind like wayward birds. She turned with studied caution and glanced swiftly but intently at as much of his countenance as she could see. Her memory vividly supplied the rest. There wasn't another like it--one so clear and compelling to read--in the world.

The past in which he had had a part seemed like an impossibly happy dream. She was hardly able to believe that he had been in their sitting room, walked with her in the evening to the gra.s.sy edge of the harbor, or held her fingers in his hard cool grasp. Now she wondered if he were contented. She couldn't quite decide from glimpses of his face; but something that had nothing to do with vision disturbed her with the certainty that he was troubled. It might mean unhappiness, but she wasn't sure.

"Now there go the arches!" a young voice exclaimed, "and I just can't see anything. You'd never know at all it was a temple of eight columns. Oh, look--there's a number coming out, 'July fourth, seventeen seventy-six.'"

A tide of hand clapping swept over the dark ma.s.ses. "No," Laurel continued, "that's Salem.... It's Washington, no, General Taylor."

The amazing day, Nettie realized, was over, the people flowed back through the gates like a lake breaking in streams from its bank; there was a stir on the steps. Looking up she saw that the stars were obscured, and a low rumble of thunder sounded from a distance, a flash lit the horizon. Now she must go back, return to Hardy Street, to her bitter grandfather like an iron statue eaten by rust and storms, to Edward Dunsack following her with his dragging feet and thin insinuating voice, to her hopeless mother.

"It's the powder," she heard, about what she had no conception. Rhoda Ammidon turned decidedly to her. "It was nice to have you, Nettie," she declared; "but we must see about getting you safely home. The carriage would be best since it's threatening rain." She didn't, she replied, want to give them so much bother, she often went on errands after supper, she'd, be all right--

"Nonsense," Mrs. Ammidon interrupted impatiently. Then Gerrit advanced from the doorway. "I'll walk down with her," he said almost roughly. "No need to take the horses out so late." Nettie Vollar thought that his sister-in-law's mouth tightened in protest, but he gave them no chance for further argument. He descended the steps with a quick grinding tread, and she was forced to hurry through her acknowledgments in order to overtake him.

The night at once absorbed them.

The air, charged with the fumes of gunpowder and rumbling with low intermittent thunder, was oppressive and disturbing. Gerrit's head was exactly opposite her own, and she could see his profile, pale and still, moving on a changing dark background. He walked with the short firm stride men acquire on the unsteady decks of vessels, swinging his arms but slightly. Neither spoke. The rain, Nettie saw, was hanging off; probably it would not reach Salem, Washington Square was already empty except for a small obscure stir by the scaffolding for the fireworks. A murmur of young voices came from a door on Bath Street. Such minute observations filled her mind; beneath their surface she was conscious of a deep, a fathomless, turmoil. It was a curious sensation, curious because she couldn't tell whether it was happiness or misery. One now exactly resembled the other to Nettie Vollar.

She grasped, however, one difference--it was happiness now, the misery belonged to tomorrow. But suddenly that last unrealized fact--at once immaterial and the most leaden reality of all--lost its weight. The greater freedom she had lately grown into became an absolute indifference, a half willful and half automatic shutting of her eyes to everything but the present, the actuality of Gerrit Ammidon walking by her side. She wanted him to speak, so that she could discover his thoughts, feelings; yet she was reluctant to have their companionship of silence broken: words, almost all the possible terms she could imagine, would only emphasize the distance between them.

She was thinking of one now--a word he had never p.r.o.nounced, but which she felt had been, however obscurely, at the back of the attention he had paid her: love. It was a queer thing. It seemed to be--everyone agreed that it was--of the greatest, perhaps the first, importance; and yet all sorts of other considerations, some insignificant and others mean and more, yes--cowardly, held it in check, drove it back out of sight, as you might hurriedly shut some shabby object into a closet at the arrival of visitors.

"How have you been?" he demanded in the abrupt voice of the expression of his determination to see her home. Well enough, she a.s.sured him, if he meant her health. He glanced at her with somber eyes. "Not altogether,"

he admitted; "it included your family, things generally."

"They are as bad as possible," she told him. She admitted this frankly, a part of her entire surrender to the moment, careless of how it might affect him. "They would be," he muttered savagely. "It's a habit ...

here." The "here," she knew, referred to life on sh.o.r.e; his gloomy att.i.tude toward the management and affairs of the land had caused her a great deal of precious laughter. He had revealed a most astonishing ignorance of necessities that she had understood instinctively when hardly more than a child; and this simplicity had, as much as anything, brought her affection for him to life. At the same time she in particular had felt the justice of a great many of his charges. But no one could reasonably hope for the sort of world--a world as orderly and trim as that of a narrow ship--he thought should be brought about by a mere command. Nettie wished that it could! She sighed, gazing at him.