The Portal of Dreams Part 8

His eager eyes gazed up at me out of a face stiffened and set with elephantiasis, and by his mat lay, unwrapped from their fiber coverings, that they might comfort his pa.s.sing spirit, two excellently preserved negroid heads. I shuddered, but I laid my hand on his slanting forehead--and I have seen men die with less dignity.

As night brought the closing in of choking jungle shadows, a half-dozen red fires leaped up to drive their ribbons of red flare into the blackness. They wavered fitfully and grotesquely upon twisting, leaping bodies, which were paradoxically preparing for the ordeal of the morrow by hideous orgies and dances and fatigue and nerve waste. But when the first light of sunrise attacked the reek of dew that veiled the jungle, while the dying fires still smouldered into gray ash and my throat labored in stifling gasps of wet, they trailed out silently into the bush. They were a long line of shadow shapes whose footfall made no sound, and whose pigmy bodies melted into the tangle as impalpably as the dissipating mists. My bearers carried me back to the sh.o.r.e. Two days later their delegation came chattering in hysterical delight and bringing in native triumph the head of the king who had three hundred stones about his house.

About this time I inst.i.tuted an important policy. By night I had signal fires kept burning on every high place along the coast. I disingenuously told my people that where a great shrine is, there must also be at nightfall mighty banners of flame. They liked the idea. Despite their hideous ferocity, they liked everything which might have appealed to the imagination of a child. They liked music, they liked color. The greatest privilege that their warriors could earn, was that of coming, to the number of a dozen at a time, to my plateau by night and after due reverence of squatting for hours on their haunches, while I coaxed from the violin airs from opera or music hall.

On the point above us blazed one of our signal fires, and between the reddened crevices of rock its flare struck down and yellowed our gathering. The portrait would catch the light and leap from its shadow.

Over us were the stars. In a circle of silent absorption sat dark immovable figures, with high lights gleaming, here and there, on the mahogany of cheek-bone or forehead. Some fantastic painter might portray these gatherings on canvas. He would need a bold brush. I find no words for its description, but fantastic it was and strange. Under the fetich of the starlight I would find myself drifting away into realms of storied romance with the woman I loved and had not seen. Then my bow would all unconsciously drift into love songs. I would find myself singing--"Ever the wide world over, la.s.s"--and oftentimes when my voice rose to the strain I could fancy that She joined me in its singing. Her voice sang in my brain definitely and with the sweetness of the beloved and familiar. I had, of course, never heard a syllable from her lips, and yet I was sure that could I hear her voice in life I should instantly recognize it, though blindfolded. I thought of it as a richly sweet contralto. It never for a moment occurred to me to fancy it might be anything else.

Once for a week the sky ceased to smile, and grew black. The jungle was lashed and stripped with hurricanes and on several occasions the earth trembled. The sea pounded our porous coast and boiled into a tremendous tide. I knew that if the cyclonic scope was general, ships were having trouble, but in that thought lurked a vague hope. If any power were to drive a vessel to my rescue it would be a power which carried sailors out of their ordered courses. One night, some six months after the wreck of the _Wastrel_, when the skies were serene again I found myself more than ordinarily adrift on the tide of imagination. The march of the stars showed that midnight had pa.s.sed, and yet the natives sat unhurried, and I, as unhurried as they, was still absorbed with the violin.

My eyes traveled out to sea, absently and without reason. Suddenly the bow stopped half-way across the strings with a rasping gasp of the catgut. The instrument itself fell from my hands and I sat rigid and staring like a man suddenly stricken. The other eyes followed mine and also remained riveted. Leagues away over the phosph.o.r.escent waste of water, but clear and unblinking, glowed the green spot of a ship's starboard light. I tried to speak, but for the moment my grasp on their dialect slipped from me and left me dumb. I was trembling with heart-bursting excitement, and at sight of my emotion they began to stir uneasily with a threat of panic.

As suddenly as it had left me my self-possession returned. With a sweeping gesture I pointed to the myriad stars that gemmed the heavens and told them that one of these had come down to the sea, bringing other demi-G.o.ds like myself. I adjured them to build up the fires of welcome until the island might seem a mountain of flame. Their strongest men must feed, as never fires had before been fed, and all others must go to their huts and await the morrow.

Alone on my plateau I saw the fires leap up in a coast-wise line of beacons that dyed the night vermilion. The tiny point of seaward green was crawling snail-like on the sea and at last my gaze was rewarded by a slender flowering spray of rocket fire, followed by another and another. Then the point of light ceased crawling and stood still. I let my head fall forward in my palms and my breath came in spasmodic gasps.

But as I raised my eyes they fell on the smiling lips of the portrait.

It seemed to me that Her lips and eyes, still gracious, even congratulatory, held a touch of wistful sadness which had not been there before. They seemed such lips and eyes as say, "_Bon voyage_ and farewell."

The glow of wine-like exultation died in my arteries and a chill settled on my heart. There, in the world of tangible things and unrelenting facts, what room would there be for such a companionship? Was this strongest love of my life to melt into nothing now that I no longer needed its support? Was it a dream? If so it was a dream from which I should awake to an empty life. No! I would set out to find her in the flesh. I halted my reflections with a start. And when I found her--what?

I sat there in the midst of silences, and the sweep of essential things.

About me lay leagues of sea, miles of rock, an infinity of sky. They brooded gigantically over me and whispered that there are mysterious influences greater than man's cold facts. Man's thought became only a fluttering stir in a center of protoplasm. I was as near to the beginnings of things as to the present. It was as easy to believe in the love of souls that had not met as in other matters.

"No--no!" I cried out, bending before the face, "Whatever it be, there are loves great enough to burn into miracles. This is not the first time I have loved you--nor the last. Through aeons of reincarnation a love like this runs on." I paused awhile, then added, with an effort to smile. "Don't you remember even one or two former lives, dear?

"'... happy we lived and happy we loved And happy at last we died; And deep in the rift of a Caradoc drift We slumbered side by side.

The world turned on in the lathe of time, The hot sands heaved amain, Till we caught our breath from the womb of death And crept into light again.'"

My eyes were fixed so tensely on the portrait that it grew blurred.

Slowly it seemed to me to vanish and in its place stood a real and living figure. I could give no detail of its dress or coloring, but it was a figure of marvelous beauty, and it gazed into my eyes and shook its head. Then it faded and I was looking again at the portrait. There was a choke in my throat, and, falling to my knees, I kissed the printed lips.

CHAPTER XIII

ENTER THE INFANTRYMAN

The morning would bring by rescuers and the breaking up of housekeeping in my cave. I had no wish that profane eyes should look upon the portrait or the devout worship of my beloved cannibals. Now that I was leaving them I realized that they were beloved. In my memory loomed a hundred acts of simple courtesy. The portrait I took down from its shrined position; the Damascus daggers I put again into their places, and the Mandarin's kimono I folded carefully into a package. On all these things, as on the era for which they stood, I dropped the lid of the mate's chest.

The morning came on brilliant and fresh with the cleansing sweep of the trades. Sky and sea sparkled in a diamond clarity, and below me on the beach patiently waited the dignitaries of my tribe in festal regalia.

Since this was our parting, I too came out decked in the finery of bird plumage. I did not allow them to climb to the now empty shrine, but led them down with me to the beach, where shortly a boat came bobbing over the water.

A queer enough spectacle we must have made, like a flock of blackbirds patched with the oriole's vermilion and the c.o.c.katoo's rose. I myself, burned out of my Caucasian birthright, differed from them only in my size.

For a time the handful of white men on the boat hesitated to risk the chances of landing and being _kai-kai'd_. As they circled at a distance I made my throat raw, shouting rea.s.surances in English, while my wondering blacks contemplated with deep awe this talking of the G.o.ds.

At last the rescuers rowed in, and I waded out waist deep to meet them.

The officer in command was a colossal Scotchman with a ruddy face and an honest mouth as stiffly sober as though it had never yielded to the seduction of a smile. He gave me a detail of two kanakas whose brawny arms carried down the chest and its contents.

At last came the moment I had dreaded. I must break the news to these waiting children that the priests from the stars had not come to bring them new and permanent wonders, but to take back to the lands of mystery their G.o.ddess and myself. I wished then for a full knowledge of their tongue, that I might soften the tidings, but I could not bring myself to the mendacity of promising a return, though they pleaded. When it came to parting with Ra Tuiki, I forgot my quasi-divinity and seized the old head-hunter's hand in an unG.o.dlike, Anglo-Saxon grip.

Their island would now be charted. Missionaries would come to them with teachings of a new faith, but treading on their heels would come men of another sort, and as I thought of these I wished that we might be able to leave the place unchronicled. The contract trader would soon arrive, supported if need be by the authority of his flag's navy, bringing to my cannibals, or some of them, long terms of peonage under hard plantation masters.

"What, if I may ask," suggested the solemn-visaged Scot at the helm, when the bow was turned outward and the boat crew was bending to the oars, "was all the demonstration of th' n.i.g.g.e.rs?"

"They were saying good-bye," I explained, "We came to have a very satisfactory understanding."

He pondered my answer for a time in sober silence, then dismissed the matter with a single observation.

"They took it cruel hard, sir."

Over the side of the _Gretchen_ I went to a kindly reception. I told all of my story that I wished to tell, admitting that I had posed as a sort of demi-G.o.d, but breathing no hint of the G.o.dship which was over my priesthood.

A week of hurricane and storm had tested the ship's endurance, exhausted the crew, and driven the _Gretchen_ into unknown waters.

"If it hadn't been for your signal fires," the captain told me, "we might have gone to smash on the outlying needles. Your lights probably saved us as well as yourself."

This was no larger ship than the _Wastrel_, but when one went to his berth at night it was with confidence that his sleep would not be interrupted by the sudden necessity of getting up to die. She had carried a cargo of trade stuffs south and was returning to Singapore by way of Brisbane, laden with copra and pearl sh.e.l.l. Her direction lay westerly while I wished to go east, but that was secondary. At the Australian port, I could reship. Indeed, I was told our course might shortly cross that of a regular line of steamers between Brisbane and Honolulu. For a few days it was satisfying enough to pick up the lost ends of the world's stale news. While I had been marking time the world had been marching; a hundred paragraphs had been lived into history.

On the fourth day a slender thread of smoke rose over the western horizon which grew into a clean-painted and white-cabined steamer. As the gap closed white-clad men and even women stood crisply out against the deck-rail. Then with much signaling from the halyards the two vessels had converse of which I was the subject, and I with my chest went over the side of the _Gretchen_. I told the steamer's purser as much of my story as I had told on the _Gretchen_, and when that evening I appeared at the captain's table transformed by bathing in a real tub and submission to a real razor in the hands of a real barber, it was to find that my story had traveled forward and aft.

St. Paul was a very good man. He had piety and fervor, but also in a superior and G.o.dly fashion he was a man of the world. Perhaps he gained a firmer grip on his following by reason of his ability to say to the youth of his generation, "I have been twice stoned and thrice shipwrecked." I had been only once shipwrecked, yet a ready-made audience awaited entertainment.

It was on the second afternoon that Captain Keller appeared in the smoke-room. He was a man of about my own build and almost as bronzed, but fair haired and his carriage proclaimed the soldier before he introduced himself. I was idly enjoying the comfort of wicker chairs and windows which framed white decks and dancing seas. The few other occupants of the place were lounging about in pongee and linen, chatting lazily of those things which make talk among men coming out of the East: tribal risings in Java, the late race-meet in Melbourne. The military-looking young man dropped into a seat at my table and signaled to the spotless j.a.p, who officiated as smoking-room steward.

"Left you alone yesterday," he began by way of introduction. "I saw you didn't relish being treated like the newest and strangest animal in captivity. I guess they're accustomed to you now. What will you have?"

"Brandy and soda," I decided; then I added, "Perhaps after being rescued I ought to make myself more volatile and amusing, but the fact is I'm readjusting. Did you ever happen to spend six months on an undiscovered, cannibal island?"

He shook his head and laughed with a pleasant gleam of strong, regular teeth.

"Then," I a.s.sured him, "you don't understand the desire to sit still for a while. You don't understand the sheer wonder of a soft chair, white woodwork and the regular throb of engines and the sight of white-skinned, white-clad men and women. Look there." I held out my copper-colored forearm.

He smiled again and nodded. "I'm going back to the States," he said, "after three years in the Islands, capped with two months in India and Australia. I'm Keller of the 23rd Infantry."

He paused, then went on in a matter-of-fact way. "I've been in the jungle three months on end. I know what it means. This is my second term of Philippine service and it's the first time I've gone home quite sane.

After the first three years the melancholia had me. When the transport left Manila, and I thought of the three weeks before I could see the Golden Gate, it took three good huskies to keep me from jumping overboard. It touches one here." With a finger at the temple, he paused, then added gravely: "And I know some fellows who weren't stopped in time. One must readjust slowly."

I nodded, puffing with a sense of supreme luxury at the Cairene cigarette he had offered me, and listening to the tinkle of ice in my tall gla.s.s.

There were some days of almost pure creature contentment and as we sat under deck awnings or burned cigars in the smoking-room our acquaintanceship ripened to intimacy. The engines with their m.u.f.fled throb were churning out their fifteen knots an hour and the timbers creaked their complaint to the rise and fall of the prow. Of course all the time during those days was not spent chatting with the infantryman, and of course the point of intimate confidence was not at once established between us. Indeed, I, at first, let him do the talking, and though he was a modest man he had much to tell. But in the hours I spent alone I found my thoughts revolving about many things which I could not generally share. A man may admit to himself without shame that he has fallen in love with a woman of whose very existence he is uncertain, but he hesitates to announce it to another. Now, although the picture which had given me companionship and protection was packed away out of sight; though I was no longer a dweller in fantastic surroundings, I still had that presence with me. Whenever I closed my eyes I saw again the smiling lips and gracious eyes. I knew that I was henceforth destined to scan all faces until I found hers.

So, being unable to discuss matters that were distracting me I found need of an outlet, and sought it in transcribing this diary. Of course the impulse that had stirred me on the island to write down my emotions each day was one I could no longer gratify. Now I must do the thing in retrospect and my pen would lack the force which an impending shadow of fatality might have given it. I had emerged from that pall only to pa.s.s into the shadow of something quite as important. I was dedicated to a quest. When I found Her I wished to have the story ready to present in as convincing a form as possible. Sometimes at night Keller and I hung elbow to elbow over the after-rail, watching the broken phosphorus of the wake.

We were standing so on the night before reaching Honolulu where Keller was to spend a few days while I made immediate connection for the States. He was telling me many things about himself. There was a baby, born after he had left G.o.d's country, now old enough to chatter, and do wonderful things, whom he was to see for the first time when he reached 'Frisco. His confidence invited mine, and over our pipes, I told him the whole and true story of my experiences and of how an unknown G.o.ddess had safeguarded me.

"You spoke of the loneliness," I said at the end. "You know now why it didn't slug me into insanity."