The Window-Gazer Part 54

"Li Ho no let," said the Chinaman simply. "You better now, p'laps?" he went on. "We go catch honor-able Boss before missy wake." Spence nodded. He felt extraordinarily tired. But it seemed that tiredness did not matter, would never matter. The empty world had become warm and small again. Desire was safe.

Together he and Li Ho slid and scrambled down the mountain's face, by ways known only to Li Ho. And there, on a strip of beach left clean and wet by the receding tide, they found the dead man. Beside him, and twisted beneath, lay the green umbrella.

"How did it really happen, Li Ho?" asked Spence. Not that he expected any information.

"Moon-devil velly mad," said Li Ho. "Honorable Boss no watch step.

Moon-devil push--too bad!"

"And the fight in the kitchen? And on the trail?"

Li Ho shook his head.

"No fight anywhere," he said blandly.

"And this long rip in your coat?"

"Too much old coat--catch 'um in bush," said Li Ho.

So when they lifted the body and it was found that the arm beneath the torn coat was useless, Spence said nothing. And somehow they managed to carry the dead man home.

It was dawn when they laid him down. Birds were already beginning to twitter in the trees. Desire would be waking soon. The world was going to begin all over presently. Spence laid his hand gently on the Chinaman's injured arm.

"You saved her, Li Ho," he said. "It is a big debt for one man to owe another."

The Chinaman said nothing. He was looking at the dead face--a curious lost look.

"He velly good man one time," said Li Ho. "All same before moon-devil catch 'um."

"You stayed with him a long time, Li Ho. You were a good friend."

Li Ho blinked rapidly, but made no reply.

"Will you come with us, Li Ho?" The inscrutable, oriental eyes looked for a moment into the frank eyes of the white man and then pa.s.sed by them to the open door--to the dawn just turning gold above the sea. The uninjured hand rose and fell in an indescribable gesture.

"Li Ho go home now!"

The words seemed to flutter out like birds into some vast ocean of content.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

Desire was waking. She had slept without a dream and woke wonderingly to the shadows of dancing leaves upon the white canvas above her. It was a long time since she had slept in a tent--a lifetime. She felt very drowsy and stupid. The brooding sense of fatality which had made her return so dreamlike still numbed her senses. She had come back to the mountain, as she had known she must come. And, curiously enough, in returning she had freed herself. In coming back to what she had hated and feared she had faced a bogie. It would trouble her no more. For all that she had lost she had gained one thing, Freedom. But even freedom did not thrill her. She was too horribly tired.

Idly she let her thought drift over the details of her home-coming. Li Ho had been so surprised. His consternation at seeing her had been comic. But he had asked no questions, and had given her breakfast in hospitable haste. In the cottage nothing was altered. It was as if she had been away overnight. And against this changelessness she knew herself changed. She was outside of it now. It could never prison her again.

While she drank Li Ho's coffee, Dr. Farr had come in. He had been told, she supposed, of her return, for he showed no surprise at seeing her--had greeted her absently--and sat for a time without speaking, his long hands folded about the green umbrella. This, too, was familiar and added to the "yesterday" feeling. He had not changed. It was her att.i.tude toward him which was different. The curious fear of him, which she had hidden under a mask of indifference, was no longer there to hide. Even the fact of his relationship had lost its sharp significance. She was done with the thing which had made it poignant.

Parentage no longer mattered. So little mattered now.

She had spoken to him cheerfully, ignoring his mood, and he had replied irritably, like a bad-tempered child who resents some unnecessary claim upon its attention. But she did not observe him closely. Had she done so, she might have noticed a curious glazing of the eyes as they lifted to follow her--shining and depthless like blue steel.

"I do not expect to stay long, father," she told him. "Only until I find something to do. I am a woman now, you know, and must support myself."

She spoke as one might speak to a child, and he had nodded and mumbled: "Yes, yes ... a woman now ... certainly." Then he had begun to laugh. She had always hated this silent, shaking laugh of his. Even now it stirred something in her, something urgent and afraid. But she was too tired to be urged or frightened. She refused to listen.

In the afternoon she had sat out in the sun, not thinking, willing to be rested by the quiet and drugged by the scent of pine and sea. To her had come Sami, appearing out of nothing as by magic, his b.u.t.ter-colored face aglow with joy. Sami had almost broken up her weary calm. He was so glad, so warm, so alive, so little! But even while he snuggled against her side, her Self had drifted away. It would not feel or know.

It was not ready yet for anything save rest.

Li Ho had made luncheon, Li Ho had brought tea. Otherwise Li Ho had left her alone. About one thing only had he been fussy. She must not sleep in her old room. It was not aired. It needed "heap scrub." He had arranged, he said, a little tent "all velly fine." Desire was pa.s.sive.

She did not care where she slept.

When bedtime had come, Li Ho had taken her to the tent. It was cozily hidden in the bush and, as he had promised, quite comfortable. But she thought his manner odd. "Are you nervous, Li Ho?" she asked with a smile.

The Chinaman blinked rapidly, disdaining reply. But in his turn asked a question--his first since her arrival. Had the honorable Professor Spence received an insignificant parcel? Desire replied vaguely that she did not know. What was in the parcel?

"Velly implotant plasel," said Li Ho gravely. "Honorable husband arrive plenty click when read um insides."

There had seemed no sense to this. But Desire did not argue. She did not even attend very carefully when Li Ho added certain explanations.

He had found, it appeared, some papers which had belonged to her mother and had felt it his duty to send them on.

"Where did you find them, Li Ho?"

Instead of answering this, Li Ho, after a moment's hesitation, had produced from some recess of his old blue coat an envelope which he handled with an air of awed respect.

"Li Ho find more plasel too. Pletty soon put um back. Honorable Boss indulge in fit if missing."

"Which means that it belongs to father and that you have--borrowed it?"

suggested she, delicately.

"No b'long him. B'long you," said Li Ho, thrusting the packet into her hand. And, as if fearful of being questioned further, he had taken the candle and departed.

"Leave me the candle, Li Ho," she had called to him. But he had not returned. And a candle is a small matter. She was used to undressing in the dusk. Almost at once she had fallen asleep.

Now in the morning, as she lay and watched the shadows of the leaves, she remembered that, though he had taken the candle, he had left the letter. It lay there on the strip of old carpet beside her cot. Desire withdrew her attention from the leaves and picked it up. With a little thrill she saw that Li Ho had been right. It was her own name which was written across the envelope ...

Her own name, faded yet clear on a wrinkled envelope yellowed at the edges. The seal of the envelope had been broken....

Sometime in her childhood Desire must have seen her mother's writing.

Conscious memory of it was gone, but in the deeper recesses of her mind there must have lingered some recognition which quickened her heart at sight of it.

A letter from the dead? No wonder Li Ho had handled it with reverence.

With trembling fingers the girl drew it from its violated covering.

"Little Desire"--the name lay like a caress--"if you read this it will be because I am not here to tell you. And, there is no one else. My great dread is the dread of leaving you. If I could only look into the future for one moment, and see you in it, safe and happy, nothing else would matter. But I am afraid. I have always been too much afraid. You are not like me. I try to remember that. You are like your grandfather.

He was a brave man. His eyes were grey like yours. He died before you were born and he never knew that Harry was not really my husband. I did not know it either, then. You see, he had a wife in England. I suppose he thought it did not matter. But when he died, it did matter. There was no one then on whom either you or I had any claim. I should have been brave enough to go on by myself. But I was never brave.

"It was then that Dr. Farr, who had been kind through Harry's illness, asked me to marry him. He was a middle-aged man. He said he would take care of w both. You were just three months old.