The Spinners' Book of Fiction Part 36

How melancholy is the voice of a flood! Its resurgent dirge will move a new-born babe to frightened wailing, and stirs in strong men a vague uneasiness that roots in the vast and calamitous experience of the race.

Call of hungry waters, patter of driving rain, sough of the weird wind, it requires good company and a red-coal fire to offset their moanings of eternity. Yet though the fireless tropics could not supply one, and she lacked the other, the storm voices were hardly responsible for Ethel Steiner's sadness the third morning after her arrival.

Neither was it due to the fact that Paul had failed to come in the preceding night from the mine. Seeming relieved rather than distressed, she had gone quietly to bed. No, it was neither the storm, his absence, nor any of the small miseries that afflict young wives. Poor Desdemona!

The curtain was rising early on the tragedy which Bachelder foresaw.

Already the glamour was falling from Paul to the tropics, where it rightfully belonged; this morning she was living her bitter hour, fighting down the premonition of a fatal mistake.

What with her thoughtful pauses, she made but a slow toilet, and when the last rebellious curl had been coaxed to its place behind her small ear, she turned, sighing, to the window. One glance, and she started back, pale, clutching her hands. A rocky snout, thrusting far out into the belly of the river's great bow, the Promontory stood high above the ordinary flood level. Once, in far-away Aztec times, a Tewana tradition had it that a cloudburst in the rains had swept it clear of houses, and now Time's slow cycle had brought the same deadly coincidence. Where, last night, a hundred lights had flickered below her windows, a boil of yellow waters spread, cutting off her house, the last and highest, from the mainland. Black storm had drowned the cries of fleeing householders.

The flood's mighty voice, bellowing angrily for more victims as it swallowed house after house, had projected but a faint echo into her dreams. Now, however, she remembered that Carmencita, her new maid, had failed to bring in the morning coffee.

Wringing her hands and loudly lamenting the deadly fear that made her forget her mistress, Carmencita, poor girl, was in the crowd that was helping Paul and Bachelder to launch a freight canoe. When Paul--who had ridden in early from the little village, where he had been storm-stayed--had tried to impress a crew, the peon boatman had sworn volubly that no pole would touch bottom and that one might as well try to paddle the town as a heavy canoe against such a flood. But when Bachelder stepped in and manned the big sweep, a half-dozen followed.

Notwithstanding, their river wisdom proved. Paddling desperately, they gained no nearer than fifty yards to the pale face at the window.

"Don't be afraid!" Bachelder shouted, as they swept by. "We'll get you next time!"

If the walls did not melt? Already the flood was licking with hungry tongues the adobe bricks where the plaster had bulged and fallen, and an hour would fly while they made a landing and dragged the canoe back for another cast. The boatmen knew! Their faces expressed, antic.i.p.ated that which happened as they made the landing half a mile below. Paul saw it first. Through the swift pa.s.sage he sat, facing astern, helplessly clutching the gunwale, and his cry, raucous as that of a maimed animal, signaled the fall of the house. Sobbing, he collapsed on the bank.

Bachelder looked down upon him. Momentarily stunned, his thought returned along with a feeling of relief that would have framed itself thus in words: "Poor Desdemona! Now she will never know!"

"_Senor! Senor! Mira!_" A boatman touched his shoulder.

Two heads were swirling down the flood, a light and a dark. Bachelder instantly knew Ethel, but, as yet, he could not make out the strong swimmer who was at such infinite pains to hold the fair head above water. Though, time and again, the dark head went under for smotheringly long intervals, Ethel's never once dipped, and, up or down, the swimmer battled fiercely, angling across the flood. She--for long hair stamped her a woman--gained seventy yards sh.o.r.eward while floating down two hundred. Three hundred gave her another fifty. So, rising and sinking, she drifted with her burden down upon Paul and Bachelder. At fifty yards the artist caught a glimpse of her face, but not till she was almost under their hands did Paul recognize the swimmer.

"Andrea!" he shouted.

Rea.s.sured by Bachelder's cheery shout, Ethel had busied herself collecting her watch and other trinkets from the bureau till a smacking of wet feet caused her to turn, startled. A woman stood in the door, a woman of matchless amplitudes, such as of old tempted the G.o.ds from heaven. Stark naked, save for the black cloud that dripped below her waist, her bronze beauty was framed by the ponderous arch.

"I don't know who you are," Ethel said, recovering, "but you are very beautiful, and, under the circ.u.mstances, welcome. Under ordinary conditions, your advent would have been a trifle embarra.s.sing. I must find you a shawl before the canoes come. Here, take this blanket."

She little imagined how embarra.s.sing the visitation might have proved under very ordinary conditions. Though the news of Paul's return did cross before the bridge was carried away, Andrea did not hear it till that morning, and she would never have had it from a Tewana neighbor.

They pitied the bereavement to which widowhood in the most cruel of forms was now added. But among them she unfortunately counted a peon woman of the upper Mexican plateau, one of the cla.s.s which took from the Conquest only Spanish viciousness to add to Aztec cruelty. Jealous of Andrea's luck--as they had deemed it--in marriage, Pancha had thirsted for the opportunity which came as they drew water together that morning from the brink of the flood.

"'Tis the luck of us all!" she exclaimed, malevolently ornamenting her evil tidings. "They take their pleasure of us, these Gringos, then when the hide wrinkles, ho for a prettier! They say Tewana hath not such another as his new flame, and thy house is a hovel to that he fits up for her on the Promontory."

Here the hag paused, for two good reasons. That the barbed shaft might sink deep and rankle from Andrea's belief that her supplanter was a girl of her tribe, but princ.i.p.ally because, just then, she went down under the ruins of her own _olla_. A fighter, after her kind, with many a cutting to her credit, she cowered like a snarling she-wolf among the sharp potsherds cowed by the enormous anger she had provoked; lay and watched while the tall beauty ripped shawl, slip and skirt from her magnificent limbs, then turned and plunged into the flood. Pancha rose and shook her black fist, hurling curses after.

"May the alligators caress thy limbs, the fishes pluck thine eyes, the wolves crack thy bleached bones on the strand."

That was the lightest of them, but, unheeding Andrea swam on. As her own house stood in the extreme skirt of the town, the Promontory lay more than a mile below, but she could see neither it nor the night's devastation because of the river's bend. Because of the same bend, she had the aid of the current, which set strongly over to the other sh.o.r.e, but apart from this the river was one great danger. Floating logs, huge trees, acres of tangled greenery, the sweepings of a hundred miles of jungle, covered its surface with other and ghastlier trove. Here the saurians of Pancha's curse worried a drowned pig, there they fought over a cow's swollen carca.s.s; yet because of carrion taste or food plethora, they let her by. There an enormous saber, long and thick as a church, turned and tumbled, threshing air and water with enormous spreading branches, creating dangerous swirls and eddies. These she avoided, and, having swum the river at ebb and flood every day of her life from a child, she now easily clove its roar and tumble; swam on, her heat unabated by the water's chill, till, sweeping around the bend, she sighted the lone house on the Promontory.

That gave her pause. Had death, then, robbed her anger? The thought broke the spring of her magnificent energy. Feeling at last the touch of fatigue, she steered straight for the building and climbed in, to rest, at a lower window, without a thought of its being occupied till Ethel moved above.

Who shall divine her thoughts as, standing there in the door, she gazed upon her rival? Did she not recognize her as such, or was she moved by the touch of sorrow, aftermath of the morning's bitterness, that still lingered on the young wife's face? Events seemed to predicate the former, but, be that as it may, the eyes which grief and despair had heated till they flamed like small crucibles of molten gold, now cooled to their usual soft brown; smiling, she refused the proffered blanket.

"_Ven tu! Ven tu!_" she exclaimed, beckoning. Her urgent accent and gesture carried her meaning, and without question Ethel followed down to a lower window.

"But the canoe?" she objected, when Andrea motioned for her to disrobe.

"It will soon be here!"

"_Canoa_?" From the one word Andrea caught her meaning. "_No hay tiempo.

Mira!_"

Leaning out, Ethel looked and shrank back, her inexperience convinced by a single glance at the wall. She a.s.sisted the strong hands to rip away her enc.u.mbering skirts. It took only a short half-minute, and with that afforded time for a small femininity to come into play. Placing her own shapely arm against Ethel's, Andrea murmured soft admiration at the other's marvelous whiteness. But it was done in a breath. Slipping an arm about Ethel's waist, Andrea jumped with her from the window, one minute before the soaked walls collapsed.

If Ethel's head had remained above, she might have retained her presence of mind, and so have made things easier for her saviour, but, not supposing that the whole world contained a mature woman who could not swim, Andrea loosed her as they took the water. A quick dive partially amended the error, retrieving Ethel, but not her composure. Coming up, half-choked, she grappled Andrea, and the two went down together. The Tewana could easily have broken the white girl's grip and--have lost her. Instead, she held her breath and presently brought her senseless burden to the surface.

Of itself, the struggle was but a small thing to her strength, but coming on top of the long swim under the shock and play of emotion, it left her well nigh spent. Yet she struggled sh.o.r.eward, battling, waging the war of the primal creature that yields not till Death himself reenforces bitter odds.

To this exhaustion, the tales that float in Tehuantepec lay her end, and Bachelder has never taken time to contradict them. But as she floated almost within reach of his hand, she steadied at Paul's shout as under an accession of sudden strength, and looked at her erstwhile husband.

Then, if never before, she knew--him, as well as his works! From him her glance flashed to the fair face at her shoulder. What power of divination possessed her? Or was it Bachelder's fancy? He swears to the chosen few, the few who understand, that her face lit with the same glory of tender pity that she held over her sick child. Then, before they could reach her, she shot suddenly up till her bust gleamed wet to the waist, turned, and dived, carrying down the senseless bride.

Shouting, Bachelder also dived--in vain. In vain, the dives of his men.

Death, that mighty potentate, loves sweetness full well as a shining mark. Swiftly, silently, a deep current bore them far out on the flooded lands and there scoured a sepulcher safe from saurian teeth, beyond the scope Pancha's curse. Later, the jungle flowed in after the receding waters and wreathed over the twin grave morning-glories pure as the white wife, glorious orchids rich as Andrea's bronze.

HERE ENDS THE SPINNERS' BOOK OF FICTION BEING SHORT STORIES BY CALIFORNIA WRITERS COMPILED BY THE BOOK COMMITTEE OF THE SPINNERS' CLUB FOR THE SPINNERS' BENEFIT FUND INA D. COOLBRITH FIRST BENEFICIARY ILl.u.s.tRATED BY VARIOUS WESTERN ARTISTS THE DECORATIONS BY SPENCER WRIGHT THE TYPOGRAPHY DESIGNED BY J. H. NASH PUBLISHED BY PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY AND PRINTED FOR THEM AT THE TOMOYE PRESS NEW YORK NINETEEN HUNDRED AND SEVEN