Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories Part 10

"Ain't you gwine help me back in bed fust?" he asked from where he still lay on the floor.

"What fer?" she exclaimed. "Ain't the spell lifted? I'm goin' to set the table in the kitchen, an' ef you wants any of that possum an' sweet pertater an' that apple-dumplin' an' hard sa.s.s, you got to walk in there to git em."

For ten minutes Gordon Lee Surrender Jones lay flat on his back on the floor, trying to trace the course of human events during the last half-hour. Against the dim suspicion that Amanda had in some way outwitted him rose the staggering evidence of that very live cricket that still hopped about the room, chirping contentedly.

Twice Amanda spoke to him, but he refused to answer. His silence did not seem to affect her good spirits, for she continued her work, singing softly to herself.

Despite himself, he became aware of the refrain, and before he knew it he was going over the familiar words with her:

"Oh, chicken-pie an 'pepper, oh!

Chicken-pie is good, I know; So is wattehmillion, too; So is rabbit in a stew; So is dumplin's, b'iled with squab; So is cawn, b'iled on de cob; So is chine an' turkey breast; So is aigs des f'om de nest."

Gordon Lee rose unsteadily. Holding to a chair, he reached the table, then the door, through which he shambled, and sheepishly took his old place at the foot of the table. Amanda outdid herself in serving him, emptying the larder in honor of the occasion; but neither of them spoke until the apple-dumpling was reached. Then Gordon Lee turned toward her and said confidentially:

"I wished we knowed some corpse we could sell dat coffin to."

A MATTER OF FRIENDSHIP

When a jovial young person in irreproachable pongee, and a wholly reproachable brown topi, scrambled up the lifting gang-plank of the big Pacific liner, setting sail from Yokohama, he was welcomed with acclaim.

The Captain stopped swearing long enough to megaphone a greeting from the bridge, the First Officer slapped him on the back, while the half dozen sailors, tugging at the ropes, grinned as one man.

Three months before this good ship _East India_ had carried Frederick Reynolds out to the Orient and deposited him on the alien soil, an untried youth of unimpeachable morals with a fatal facility for making friends.

The temporary transplanting had had a strange and exotic effect. The East has a way of developing crops of wild oats that have been neglected in the West, and by the end of his sojourn Mr. Frederick Reynolds had seen more, felt more, and lived more than in all of his previous twenty-four years put together. He had learned the difference between a "straight flush" and a "full house" under the palms at Raffles Hotel in Singapore; he had been instructed in the ways of the wise in Shanghai by a sophisticated attache of the French Legation, who imparted his knowledge between sips of absinthe, as he looked down on the pa.s.sing show from a teahouse on the Bubbling Well Road; he had rapturously listened to every sweet secret that j.a.pan had to tell, and had left a wake of smiles from Nagasaki to Yokohama.

In fact, in three short months he was fully qualified to pa.s.s a connoisseur's judgment on a high-ball, to hold his own in a game of poker, and to carry on a fairly coherent flirtation in four different languages.

With this newly acquired wisdom he was now setting sail for home, having accomplished his downward career with such alacrity that he did not at all realize what had happened to him.

Nor did the return voyage promise much in the way of silent meditation and timely repentance. The Captain placed Reynolds next to him at table, declaring that he was like an electric fan on a sultry day; the Purser, with the elasticity of conscience peculiar to pursers, moved him from the inexpensive inside room which he had engaged, to a s.p.a.cious state-room on the promenade deck, where sufficient corks were drawn nightly to make a small life preserver.

The one person who watched these proceedings with disfavor was a short, attenuated, bow-legged Chinaman, with a face like a grotesque bra.s.s knocker, and a taciturnity that enveloped him like a fog.

On the voyage out, Tsang Foo, the a.s.sistant deck steward, had gotten into a fight with a brother Chinaman, and had been saved from dismissal by Reynolds's timely intercession at headquarters. In dumb grat.i.tude for this service, he had laid his celestial soul at the feet of the young American and sworn eternal allegiance.

From the day Reynolds reembarked, Tsang's silken, slippered feet silently followed him from smoking-room to bar, from bar back to smoking-room. Whatever emotion troubled the depths of his being, no sign of it rose to his ageless, youthless face. But whether he was silently performing his duties on deck, or sitting on the hatchway smoking his opium, his vigilant eyes from their long, narrow slits kept watch.

For thirteen days the sun sparkled on the blue waters of the Pacific, and favoring breezes gave every promise of landing the _East India_ in port with the fastest record of the season. Bets went higher and higher on each day's running, and the excitement was intense each evening in the smoking-room when the numbers most likely to win the next day's pool were auctioned off to the highest bidder.

It was the afternoon of the fourteenth day, thirty-six hours out from San Francisco, that Mr. Frederick Reynolds, who had bet more, drunk more, talked more, and laughed more than any man on board, suddenly came to his full senses. Then it was that he went quietly to his luxurious state-room with its bra.s.s bed and crimson hangings, and took a forty-two caliber revolver from his steamer trunk. Slipping a cartridge into the cylinder, he sat breathing heavily and staring impatiently before him.

From outside above the roar of the ocean, came the tramp of the pa.s.sengers on deck, and the trivial sc.r.a.ps of conversation that floated in kept side-tracking his thoughts, preventing their reaching the desired destination.

The world, which he had sternly resolved to leave, seemed determined to stay with him as long as possible. He heard Gla.s.s, the actor, inquiring for him, and in spite of himself he felt flattered; he heard the pretty girl whose steamer chair was next his, make a conditional engagement with the high-voiced army-officer, and he knew why she left the matter open; even a plaintive old voice inquiring how long it would be before tea, caused him to wait for the answer.

At last, as if to present his misery in embodied form, he produced a note-book and tried to concentrate his attention upon the items therein recorded. Line after line of wavering figures danced in impish glee before him, defying inspection. But at the foot of the column, like soldiers waiting to shoot a prisoner, stood four formidable units unquestionably pointing his way to doom.

As be looked at them Reynolds's thoughts got back on the main track and rushed to a conclusion. Tearing the leaf from the book, and crushing it in his hand, he jumped to his feet. Seized with a fury of self-disgust, he pulled off his coat and collar, and with the reckless courage of a boy put the mouth of the revolver to his temple.

As he did so the room darkened. He involuntarily looked up. Framed in the circle of the port-hole were the head and shoulders of Tsang Foo.

Not a muscle of the yellow face moved, not a tremor of the slanting eyelids showed surprise. The right hand, holding a bit of tow, mechanically continued polishing the bra.s.s around the port-hole, but the left--long, thin, and with claw-like nails, shot stealthily forward and s.n.a.t.c.hed the pistol.

For a full minute the polishing continued, then face and figure vanished, and Reynolds was left staring in impotent rage at the empty port-hole.

When the room steward appeared in answer to an imperative summons, he was directed to send Tsang Foo to room No. 7 at once.

Tsang came almost immediately, bearing tea and anchovy sandwiches, which he urbanely placed on a camp-stool.

"Where's my pistol?" demanded Reynolds hotly, holding to the door to steady himself.

Tsang's eyes, earnest as a dog's, were lifted to his:

"He fall overboard," he explained suavely, "me velly solly."

Reynolds impulsively lifted his arm to strike, but a second impulse, engulfing the first, made him turn and fling himself upon his berth, struggling to master the heavy sobs that shook him from head to foot.

The Chinaman softly closed the door and slipped the bolt, then he dropped to a sitting posture on the floor and waited.

When the squall had pa.s.sed, Reynolds addressed his companion from the depths of the pillows in language suited to his comprehension.

"Me belong large fool, Tsang!" he said savagely. "Have drink too much.

No good. You go 'long, I'm all right now."

Tsang's eye swept the disordered room and returned to the figure on the bed. "Suppose me go," he said, "you makee one hole in head?"

"That's my business," said Reynolds, his wrath rekindling. "You go 'long, and get my pistol; there's a good chap."

Tsang did not stir; he sat with his hands clasped about his knees, and contemplated s.p.a.ce with the abstract look of a Buddha gazing into Nirvana.

Reynolds pa.s.sed from persuasion to profanity with no satisfactory result. His language, whether eloquent or fiery, beat upon an unresponsive ear. But being in that condition that demands sympathy, he found the mere talking a relief, and presently drifted into a recital of his woes.

"I'm up against it, in the hole, you know, much largee trouble," he amplified with many gestures, sitting on the side of his berth, and pounding out excited, incoherent phrases to the impa.s.sive figure opposite. "Company sent me out to collect money. My have spent all. No can go back home. Suppose my lose face, more better die!"

Tsang shifted his position and nodded gravely. Out of much that was unintelligible, the last statement loomed clear and incontrovertible.

"I'm a thief!" burst out Reynolds pa.s.sionately, not to Tsang now, but to the world at large, "a plain, common thief. And the worst of it is there isn't a man in that San Francisco office that doesn't trust me down to the ground. Then there's the Governor. O G.o.d! I can't face the Governor!"

Tsang sat immovable, lost in thought. Stray words and phrases helped, but it was by some subtle working of his own complex brain that he was arriving at the truth.

"Father, him no can lend money?" he suggested presently.

"The Governor? Good heavens, no. There's not enough money in our whole family to wad a gun! They put up all they had to give me a start, and look where I have landed! Do you suppose I'd go back and ask them to put up a thousand more for my rotten foolishness?" He knotted his hands together until the nails grew white then, seeing the unenlightened face below, he added emphatically: "No, no, Tsang, no can askee!"

"How fashion you losee money!" asked Tsang.