Читать книгу Hills of Han: A Romantic Incident - Samuel Merwin - Страница 17

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A man of Jonathan Brachey's nature couldn't know the power his nervous bold thoughts and words were bound to exert in the mind of a girl like Betty. In her heart already she was mothering him. Every word he spoke now, even the strong words that startled her, she enveloped in warm sentiment.

To Brachey's crabbed, self-centered nature she was like a lush oasis in the arid desert of his heart. He could no more turn his back on it than could any tired, dusty wanderer. He knew this. Or, better, she was like a mirage. And mirages have driven men out of their wits.

So romance seized them. They walked miles the next day, round and round the deck. Mrs. Hasmer was powerless, and perturbed. Her husband counseled watchful patience. Before night all the passengers knew that the two were restless apart. They found corners on the boat deck, far from all eyes.

That night Mrs. Hasmer came to Betty's door; satisfied herself that the girl was actually undressing and going to bed. Not one personal word passed.

And then, half an hour later, Betty, dressed again, tiptoed out. Her heart was high, touched with divine recklessness. This, she supposed, was wrong; but right or wrong, it was carrying her out of her girlish self. She couldn't stop.

Brachey was fighting harder; but to little purpose. They had these two days now. That was all. At Shanghai, and after, it would be, as he had so vigorously said, different. Just these two days! He saw, when she joined him on the deck, that she was riding at the two days as if they were to be her last on earth. Intensely, soberly happy, she was passing through a golden haze of dreams, leaving the future to be what it might.

They sat, hand in hand, in the bow. She sang, in a light pretty voice, songs of youth in a young land—college ditties, popular negro melodies, amusing little street songs.

Very, very late, on the last evening, after a long silence—they had mounted to the boat deck—he caught her roughly in his arms and kissed her.

She lay limply against him. For a moment, a bitter moment—for now, in an instant, he knew that she had never thought as far as this—he feared she had fainted. Then he felt her tears on his cheek.

He lifted her to her feet, as roughly.

She swayed away from him leaning against a boat.

He said, choking:

“Can you get down the steps all right?”

She bowed her head. He made no effort to help her down the steps. They walked along the deck toward the main companionway. Suddenly, with an inarticulate sound, he turned, plunged in at the smoking-room door, and was gone.

Early in the morning the ship dropped anchor in the muddy Woosung. The breakfast hour came around, then quarantine inspection; but the silent pale Betty, her moody eyes searching restlessly, caught no glimpse of him. He must have taken a later launch than the one that carried Betty and the Hasmers up to the Bund at Shanghai. And during their two days in the bizarre, polyglot city, with its European façade behind which swarms all China, it became clear that he wasn't stopping at the Astor House.

The only letter was from her father at T'ainan-fu.

She watched every mail; and inquired secretly at the office of the river steamers an hour before starting on the long voyage up the Yangtse; but there was nothing.

Then she recalled that he had never asked for her address, or for her father's full name. They had spoken of T'ainan-fu. He might or might not remember it.

And that was all.