Читать книгу Fate Knocks at the Door - Will Levington Comfort - Страница 16

ALL these impressive years, from seventeen to thirty-two, had brought Andrew Bedient nothing in the civilized sense of success. It is quickly granted that he was a failure according to such standards. He had never been in want nor debt, nor so poor that he could not cover another's immediate human need if presented; yet the reserve energy of all these years, in fact, of his whole life, as represented in gold, amounted to less than three hundred dollars. Probably, outside of Asia, there was not a white man who had accumulated three hundred dollars with less thought; certainly in Asia there was none, white or black, who carried this amount with less vital concern. Up the years, he had given no thought to the oft-expressed eagerness of Captain Carreras to help him in a substantial way. He had always felt that he would go to his friend—at times had hungered for him—and now he answered the call.

Fifteen years since he had taken the hand of Captain Carreras and laughingly refused to share the other's fortunes! Bedient remembered how bashfully, but how genuinely, that had been suggested. Then the Captain's manner had become crisp and nervous to hide his heart-break, and the order was given with all the authority of the quarter-deck, that Bedient must never fail in any extremity to make known his need. But there had been no need—save for the friendship. …

Strange old true heart that could not forget! Bedient felt it in every letter. Thousands of acquaintances, but not a friend nor relative! He thought about Bedient every day; an old man's heart turned to the boy whose hands had suddenly fallen upon him with such amazing power. Occasionally in the letters, there was an obvious effort to cover this profundity of affection with a surface of humor, but it always broke through before a page was blotted. … Equatoria, and his really remarkable acquisitions there, were invariably matters for light touches. He had picked up big lands for almost nothing; and he found himself presently in strong favor with what was probably the most stable government Equatoria had ever known. The Captain's original purpose of acquiring the mineral rights of certain rich rivers had greatly prospered. Yes, there was gold in the river-beds. … Incidentally, to keep his hands "from mauling the natives," he had caused to be planted at different times, several thousand acres of cacao trees, all of which were now bearing. The Captain explained naïvely that these had turned out rather handsomely, since the natives harvested the nuts for him at a ludicrously low figure, and Holland sent ships twice a year for the product. "Just suggest anything to this soil, and the answer is perennials. We can't bother with stuff that has to be planted more than once," he observed. Bedient returned many times to the letter that told about the goats. Part of it read:

"There was a rocky strip of land in the fork of two rivers—several thousand acres—that almost shut itself off, so narrow and rocky was the neck. … For a long time this big bottle of land troubled me—couldn't think of any use to put it to—until somebody mentioned goats. In a fit of industry, I shipped over a few goat families from Mexico, turned them loose in the natural corral—and forgot all about them for a couple of years. You see, the natives are fruit-eaters, and it's too hot for skins. My men occasionally brought me word that the goats were doing well. Finally, I sent a party over to pile a few more rocks at the mouth. They came back pale and awed, begging me to come and look. I went. I tell you, boy, there were parades, caravans, pageants of goats in there—all happy in the stone-crop. … I haven't dared to look for a year or more, but with a good marine-glass from the upper window of the hacienda, you can see a portion of the tract. They're hopping about over there—thick as fleas! … That's the way everything multiplies. Come and extricate me from the goat problem! … Dear lad, I do need you—not for goats, nor for fruit, nor mining, nor chocolate interests, not to be my cook—forgive the mention of a delightful memory—but as a lonely old man needs a boy—his boy."

* * * * *

Only a half-day in New York on the way down to Equatoria, or the alternative of waiting over a ship, meaning eight days later with Captain Carreras. Bedient could not bring his mind to the latter delay at this stage of the journey, though the metropolis called to him amazingly. Here he had been born; and here was the setting of many early memories, now seen through a kind of faëry dusk. With but an hour or so in lower Manhattan, he swept in impressions like a panorama-film, his mind held to no single thought for more than an instant. The finest outer integument had never been worn from his nerves, so that nothing of the pandemonium distressed; but what his oriental training called the illusion of it all—really dismayed. It seemed as if the millions were locked in some terrible slavery, which they did not fully understand, only that they must hurry, and never cease the devouring toil. In the hideous walled cities of China, the same thought had often come to Bedient—that these myriads had been condemned by the sins of their past lives, blindly to gather together and maim each others' souls.

Still there was some big meaning for him in New York. Bedient realized that sooner or later he would return. Toward the end of the afternoon, as he looked back from the deck of the Dryden steamer Hatteras, he realized that New York had dazed him; that something of the grand gloom, something of the granite, had entered his heart. Perhaps it was well for him to have these glimpses, and to hurry away to adjust himself in the silence—before he took up his place in New York again.

A week later the Hatteras awaited dawn, sixty miles off the northern coast of Equatoria. Treacherous coral reefs extend that far out to sea, and the lights of the passage into port are few. This is an ugly part of the Caribbean in high seas. Moreover, the coral has a way of changing its ramifications; its spires build rapidly in the warm surface water.

All the forenoon the liner crawled in toward the harbor, and at last through the blazing noon, Bedient saw Coral City in a foreground of palm-decked hills. Certain fresh-tinned roofs close to the water-front reflected the sun like a burning-glass. Nearer still, a few white buildings on the seaward slopes shone through the heat haze with the vividness of jewels—whitened walls gleaming among the palms and colorful turrets of pure Spanish line. The strip of beach, white as a road of shells, lost itself on either side of the city in its own dazzling light. Films of heat danced upon the painted roofs. The sky was a blinding azure that tranced the hills and harbor with its brilliance, silence and magic.

Clouds of yellow mud boiled up from the bottom of the oozy harbor as the Hatteras dropped her hook; and the sharks moved about, all the more shuddery in their tameness. Two launches were making for the steamer, and Bedient, sheltering his eyes from the light, discovered the little Captain standing well-forward on the nearest—a puffy, impatient face, pathetically unconscious of its own workings in anxiety. Bedient's uplifted hand caught the other's eye as the launch neared. The old adventurer needed a second or two to take in the tall figure and the changed countenance—then a look of gladness, full, deep and tender with embarrassment, crowned the years and the long journey.

Bedient had to remember hard, after dozens of fluent and delightful letters, that he must encounter the old bashfulness again. … Plainly the Captain showed the years. There was the dark dry look of some inner consuming, and the trembling mouth was lined and assertive where formerly it was unnoticed in the general cheer. There was a break in rotundity. Perhaps this, more than anything else, put a strange hush upon the meeting. Bedient was glad he had not delayed longer; and he saw he must break through the embarrassment, as the boy and the cook of years ago would not have thought of doing. The old perfume sought his nostrils delicately with a score of memories.

The Captain seemed to have an absurd number of natives at his disposal. Bedient's small pieces of baggage were prodigiously handled. A carriage was provided, and the two drove up the main thoroughfare, Calle Real. The little city was appointed and its streets named by the Spanish. Parts of it were very old, and Bedient liked the setting, which was new to him—the native courtesy and the mellowness of architecture which that old race of conquerors has left in so many isles of the Western sea.

At the head of the rising highway shone a gilded dome, a sort of crown for the city. Bedient had seen it shining from the harbor, and supposed it to be the capitol. The building stood upon an eminence like a temple. Calle Real parted to the right and left at its gates. Their carriage passed to the right, and within the walls were groves of palms, gardens of rose, rhododendron, jasmine, flames of poinsettia, and a suggestion of mystic glooms where orchids breathed—fruit, fragrance, fountains.

"The Capitol?" laughed the Captain. "No, my boy, those little rain-rotted, stone buildings near the water-front are the government property. However, you never can tell about Equatoria. There are folks who believe that this stone palace of Señor Rey is fated to become the Capitol. It might happen in two ways. Señor Rey might overturn the government and move headquarters to his own house. You see, he loves fine things too well to reside back yonder. Or, the government overturning Celestino Rey—would ultimately move up here on the hill."

Bedient laughed softly. It was all delightfully young to him. "Then

Señor Rey aspires?"

"That's the idea—only we put it 'conspires' down here. … It is really a remarkable institution—this of Señor Rey's," Carreras went on. He forgot himself in a narrative. "Now, if you were in New York and had a hundred thousand dollars of another man's money, and wanted to relax—you would come here to Equatoria, and put up with Celestino Rey. To all appearances, The Pleiad is a hotel, but in reality it's just a club for those who have taken the short cut to fortune—the direct and amiable way of loot. There's so much red tape in Equatoria that a New York warrant for arrest would be about as compelling in our city as a comic valentine.

"So you see, Andrew, those who used to fly to Mexico now come here. This is the most interesting colony of crime-cultured gentlemen in the world—ex-cashiers, penmen, promoters and gamblers, all move in those great halls and gardens. There are big games. Señor Rey is an artist in many ways, not only as a master of gambling chances. His palace is filled with art treasures from all lands. He was a pirate in these waters—yes, within your years. I heard of him in Asia as the most murderous pirate the Caribbean had ever known—and this was the Spanish Main. Of course, stories build about a picturesque figure. The Señor must be seventy years old now, but a man of mystery, fabulously rich. … Just a little while ago, he brought over a fresh bride from South America. They say she's a thriller to look at. The Spaniard calls her his 'Glow-worm'——"

"Truly a honeymoon name," Bedient observed.

"You see," the Captain concluded, "I can speak of The Pleiad only from the outside. That's the Señor's name for his establishment, possibly because there are seven wings to his castle, but others say it was the name of a gold-ship that he took in the early days. Anyway, Rey and I don't neighbor. He's becoming formidable, I'm told, in the politics of the Island. He's at the head of a very powerful colony nevertheless, and no matter what its inter-relations are, it hangs together against the law and the outside world. Rey wants more say back yonder at headquarters, and our Dictator, Jaffier, all things considered, is a very good man, but old and stubborn and impolitic. He won't be driven even by Celestino Rey, who in turn is not a man to be denied. He is probably richer than Equatoria, and then Coral City lives off this institution as Monaco lives off Monte Carlo. He doubtless commands the whole lower element of the town. The word is, Celestino Rey intends to run the Island first-hand—if he can't run it through the powers that are."

All of which Bedient found of interest, inasmuch as he was passing through the heart of these strange affairs. Having any part in them seemed unearthly remote. The carriage was taking the gradual rise behind a pair of fine ponies, and the view behind, over The Pleiad to the sapphire water, was noble. The horizon, beyond the harbor distances, was a blazing intensity of light that stung the eyes to quick contraction. The Captain sat back in the cushions, weary from talking, but his face was happy, and he took in the exterior, and something of the inner proportions, of the young man, with a sense of awe. He did not try to explain yet—even to himself.

The hacienda was slightly over twenty miles interior. Bedient was entranced by the sunset from the heights. Then the slow ride to the Carreras House through the darkened hills: the smell of warm earth from the thick growths by the trail-side; little stars slipping into place like the glisten of fireflies in a garden, or gems in a maiden's hair; a scandalously-naked new moon lying low, like an arc of white-hot wire in the purple twilight, and always behind them, a majestic splash of jewel-edged crimson which showed the West.

And presently, from a high curve in the road, they saw the lights of the hacienda bold upon its eminence—and a dark valley between. Into this night they descended, for the last course of the journey; and as the ponies clattered upward again, white-coated natives came forth to meet them. Bedient was further astonished at their volubility and easy laughter. They spoke a debased Spanish, which the Captain had fallen into—as difficult of understanding for one whose medium was pure Castilian as for one who spoke English. There was that mystery upon the environs that always comes to one who reaches his destination in the darkness. And to Bedient the sensation was not wholly of joy. These were wild hills, not without grandeur, but there was something of chaos, too, to him who came from the roof of the world. He missed the peace of the greater mountains. His heart hungered to go out to the natives crowding around—white-toothed men and women of incessant laughter—but the tones of their voices checked the current. It was emptiness—but nothing he had to give seemed able to enter.

The Captain was ill with fatigue. His face—the weakness expressed in the smiling mouth—remained before Bedient's mind, as he followed a giggling native boy to the large upper room which was for him. Rows of broad windows faced the South and East, while a corridor ran to the North for the cool wind at night. Electric lights and glistening black floors—the first effect came from these. Then the details: rugs that matched, by art or accident, as perfectly as a valley of various grain-fields pleases the eye from a mountain-side; a great teak bed, caned with bamboo strips and canopied with silk net, yards of which one could crush in his hand, so nearly immaterial was this mosquito fabric; sumptuous steamer-chairs; a leather reading-couch that could be moved to the best breeze or light with a touch of the finger; a broad-side of books and a vast writing-table, openly dimensioned to defy litter—the whole effect was that of coolness and silence and room. Everything a man needed seemed to be there and breathing spaciously. … Turning through a draped door, the astonished wanderer found completeness again—everything that makes a bath fragrant and refreshing—even to Carreras scent and a set of perfect English razors. … It was all new to Bedient. For an hour he tried things—and still there were drawers and cases of undiscovered novelties and luxuries—details of wealth which make delightful and uncommon the mere processes of living. Very much restored in his fresh clothing, and eagerly, he went down to dinner.

The little man was waiting with expectant smile under a dome of sheltered lights in the dining-hall. Something of his dazed, ashen look brought back to Bedient the afternoon of the great wind—the Captain expecting to stick to his ship. … The table was set for two, and on one corner was the fresh handkerchief and the rose-dark meerschaum bowl. Bedient took his old place at the other's chair until the Captain was seated—and both were laughing strangely. … The ships from Holland brought all manner of European delicacies. Fresh meats and Northern vegetables arrived every eight days in the refrigerators of the alternating Dryden steamers, Hatteras and Henlopen, from New York. Most tropical fruits were native to Equatoria—those thick, abbreviated red bananas, and small oranges with thin skin of suede finish, so sharply sweet that one never forgets the first taste. These were served in their own foliage.

Much of the solid and comfortable furnishing of the hacienda had come from the old English house of the Carreras' in Surrey. The Captain's cook, Leadley, and his personal factotum, Falk, were English. A dozen natives kept the great house in order; and their white dress was as fresh and pleasing as the stewards of an Atlantic liner. As a matter of fact, Captain Carreras had softened in this kingly luxury, the infinite resourcefulness of which was startling to Bedient, who had known but simplicities all his years, and who even in the Orient had been his own servant.

The Captain lit his pipe but forgot to keep it going. His eyes turned to Bedient again and again, and each time with deeper regard. Often he cleared his voice—but failed to speak. The young man plunged into the heart of things—and finally with effort, the other interrupted.

"You are not what I expected—forgive me, Andrew——"

"You mean I've disappointed you? Thinking a long time about one—sometimes throws the mind off the main road of reality—"

"Dear God, not disappointed. … The Man has come to you in a different way than I expected, that's all. What has India been doing to you?"

"It made New York very strange to me," said Bedient.

"You are like an Oriental," Carreras added. "Oh, they are all mad up in The States. … It's very good to have you back. I wonder why it was—that I never doubted you'd come?" Here the Captain swallowed some wine without adequately preparing his throat, and fell to coughing. Then he rose with the remark that he had experienced altogether too much joy for one old man, in a single day—and started for bed in confusion. Bedient sat back laughing softly, but noting the feeble movement of the other's limbs, quickly gave his arm. Up they went together. … In the big room alone, Bedient put on night garments; and unsatisfied, crossed after a time to the Captain's quarters. He found the old man sitting in the dark by the window, the meerschaum glowing. … It may have been the darkness altogether; or that Bedient as a man gave the other an affection that the boy could not; in any event that night, they found each other across the externals.

This was the cue for further grand talks—pajamas and darkness. Often, if it were not too late, they would hear the natives singing in their cabins. The haunting elemental melody of the African curiously blended with the tuneful and cavalierish songs of Spain and fitted into the majestic nights. The darkies sang to the heart of flesh. In such moments, Equatoria was at her loveliest for Bedient—but the clear impersonal meditations did not come to him. In a hundred ways he had been given understanding during the first fortnight, of that something he had missed the first night on the Island. These people were infant souls. They were children, rudimentary in every thought. Theirs were sensations, not emotions; superstitions, not faiths. Their consciousness was never deeper than the skin. And fresh from his spacious years in India, where everything is old in spirit, where more often than not the beggar is a sage—to encounter in this land of beauty, a people who were but babes in the thought of God—gave to Bedient the painful sense that his inner life was dissipating. There was no Gobind to restore him. It was as if the Spirit had favored the East; that Africa and the Western Isles had been cast apart as unfit for the experiment of the soul.

Moments of poignant sorrow were these when Bedient realized he was not of the West; that he irrevocably missed the great inner _con_tent of India, and would continue to hunger for it, until he returned, or coarsened his sensibilities to the Western vibration. This last was as far from him as the commoner treason to a friend. There were moments when he feared Captain Carreras almost understood. That dear old seaman through his solitudes, his natural cleanness and kindness, his real love, and more than all, through those vague visions which come late to men of simple hearts—had seemed, from several startling sayings, to touch the very ache in the young man's breast. These approaches were under the cover of darkness:

"There was something about you then, Andrew," (meaning the long-ago days at sea,) "I haven't been able to forget. … Damme—I haven't done well here—"

Bedient bent forward, perceiving that "here" meant his earthly life, as well as Equatoria.

"I should have stayed over yonder and sat down as you did—before you did. Here"—now the Captain meant Equatoria alone—"I have thought of my stomach and my ease. My stomach has gone back on me—and there is no ease. Over there, I might have—oh, I might have thought more—but I didn't know enough, early enough. And you did—at seventeen, you did! That's what made you. They're all mad up in The States, and they're just little children down here. … I might have profited in India—"

That was a frequent saying of the Captain's about the States. Twice a year at least, he was accustomed to make the voyage to New York. … The truth was, the old man felt a yearning for something the years and India had given Bedient. He felt much more than he said, and often regarded the young man, as one rapt in meditation. … His interest in Gobind and the Himalayas was insatiable; much more eagerly did he listen regarding the Punjab than about the ports he had known so well—and the changes that had passed under the eyes of the young man in Manila and Japan. … When Bedient was relating certain events of days and nights, that had become happy memories through the little things of the soul, Captain Carreras would start to convey the indefinite desires he felt; then suddenly, the deep intimacy of his revelations would appear to his timid nature, and even in the mothering dark, the panic would strike home—and he would swing off with pitiful humor about goats or some other Island affair. …

Bedient had an odd way of associating men whom he liked with mothers of his own imagining. Happily discovering fine qualities in a man, he would conjure up a mother to fit them. … Often, he saw the little Englishwoman whose boy had taken early to the seas. … She was plump and placid in her cap; inclined to think a great deal for herself, but still she allowed herself to be kept in order mentally and spiritually by her husband, whose orthodoxy was a whip. Perhaps she died thinking her tremulous little departures were sure attractions of hell and heresy. Bedient liked to think of her as vastly bigger than her mate, bigger than she dreamed—but alone and afraid.