Parrot & Co.

Chapter 8

A WOMAN'S REASON

Elsa stared at the vacant doorway. She recognized only a sense of bewilderment. This was not one of those childish flashes of rudeness that had amused, annoyed and mystified her. She had hurt him. And how? Her first explanation was instantly rejected as absurd, impossible. They had known each other less than a fortnight. They had exchanged opinions upon a thousand topics, but sentiment had had no visible part in these encounters. They had been together three days on the boat, and once he had taken tea with her in Rangoon. She could find nothing save that she had been kind to him when he most needed kindness, and that she had not been stupidly curious, only sympathetically so. He interested her and held that interest because he was a type unlike anything she had met outside the covers of a book. He was so big and strong, and yet so boyish. He had given her visions of the character which had carried his manhood through all these years of strife and bitterness and temptation. And because of this she had shown him that she had taken it for granted that whatever he had done in the past had not put him beyond the pale of her friendship. There had been no degrading entanglements, and women forgive or condone all other transgressions.

And what had she just said or done to put that look of dumb agony in his face? She swung impatiently from the rail. She hated abstruse problems, and not the least of these was that which would confront her when she returned to America. She began to promenade the deck, still cluttered with luggage over which the Lascar stewards were moiling. Many a glance followed the supple pleasing figure of the girl as she passed round and round the deck. Other promenaders stepped aside or permitted her to pass between. The resolute uplift of the chin, and the staring dark eyes which saw but inner visions, impressed them with the fact that it would be wiser to step aside voluntarily. There were some, however, who considered that they had as much right to the deck as she. Before them she would stop shortly, and as a current breaks and passes each side of an immovable object, they, too, gave way.

The colonel fussed and fumed, and his three spinster charges drew their pale lips into thinner paler lines.

"These Americans are impossible!"

"And it is scandalous the way the young women travel alone. One can never tell what they are."

"Humph! Brag and assertiveness. And there's that ruffian who came down the river. What's he doing on the same boat? What?"

Elsa became aware of their presence at the fifth turn. She nodded absently. Being immersed in the sea of conjecture regarding Warrington's behavior, the colonel's glare did not rouse in her the sense of impending disaster.

The first gong for dinner boomed. Elsa missed the clarion notes of the bugle, so familiar to her ears on the Atlantic. The echoing wail of the gong spoke in the voice of the East, of its dalliance, its content to drift in a sargassa sea of entangling habits and desires, of its fatalism and inertia. It did not hearten one or excite hunger. Elsa would rather have lain down in her Canton lounging-chair. The gong seemed out of place on the sea. Vaguely it reminded her of the railway stations at home, where they beat the gong to entice passengers into the evil-smelling restaurants, there to lose their patience and often their trains.

The dining-saloon held two long tables, only one of which was in commission, the starboard. The saloon was unattractive, for staterooms marshaled along each side of it; and one caught glimpses of tumbled luggage and tousled berths. A punka stretched from one end of the table to the other, and swung indolently to and fro, whining mysteriously as if in protest, sometimes subsiding altogether (as the wearied coolie above the lights fell asleep) and then flapping hysterically (after a shout of warning from the captain) and setting the women's hair awry.

Elsa and Martha were seated somewhere between the head and the foot of the table. The personally-conducted surrounded them, and gabbled incessantly during the meal of what they had seen, of what they were going to see, and of what they had missed by not going with the other agency's party. Elsa's sympathy went out to the tired and faded conductor.

There was but one vacant chair; and as she saw Warrington nowhere, Elsa assumed that this must be his reservation. She was rather glad that he would be beyond conversational radius. She liked to talk to the strange and lonely man, but she preferred to be alone with him when she did so. Neither of them had yet descended to the level of trifles; and Elsa had no wish to share with persons uninteresting and uncompanionable her serious views of life. Sometimes she wondered if, after all, she was not as old as the hills instead of twenty-five.

She began as of old to study carelessly the faces of the diners and to speculate as to their characters and occupations. Her negligent observation roved from the pompous captain down to the dark picturesque face of the man Craig. Upon him her glance, a mixture of contempt and curiosity, rested. If he behaved himself and made no attempt to speak to her, she was willing to declare a truce. In Rangoon the man had been drunk, but on the Irrawaddy boat he had been sober enough. Craig kept his eyes directed upon his food and did not offer her even a furtive glance.

He was not in a happy state of mind. He had taken passage the last moment to avoid meeting again the one man he feared. For ten years this man had been reckoned among the lost. Many believed him dead, and Craig had wished it rather than believed. And then, to meet him face to face in that sordid boarding-house had shaken the cool nerve of the gambler. He was worried and bewildered. He had practically sent this man to ruin. What would be the reprisal? He reached for a mangosteen and ate the white pulpy contents, but without the customary relish. The phrase kept running through his head: What would be the reprisal? For men of his ilk never struck without expecting to be struck back. Something must be done. Should he seek him and boldly ask what he intended to do? Certainly he could not do much on board here, except to denounce him to the officers as a professional gambler. And Paul would scarcely do that since he, Craig, had a better shot in his gun. He could tell who Paul was and what he had done. Bodily harm was what he really feared.

He had seen Elsa, but he had worked out that problem easily. She was sure to say nothing so long as he let her be; and with the episode of the hat-pin still fresh in his memory, he assuredly would keep his distance. He had made a mistake, and was not likely to repeat it.

But Paul! He finished his dessert and went off to the stuffy little smoke-room, and struggled with a Burma cheroot. Paul was a smoker, and sooner or later he would drop in. There would be no beating about the bush on his part. If it was to be war, all right; a truce, well and good. But he wanted to know, and he was not going to let fear stand in the way. He waited in vain for his man that night.

And so did Elsa. She felt indignant at one moment and hurt at another. The man's attitude was inexplicable; there was neither rhyme nor reason in it. The very fact that she could not understand made her wonder march beside her even in her dreams that night. She began to feel genuinely sorry that he had appeared above her horizon. He had disturbed her poise; he had thrown her accepted views of life into an entirely different angle, kaleidoscopically. And always that supernatural likeness to the other man. Elsa began to experience a sensation like that which attends the imagination of one in the clutch of a nightmare: she hung in mid-air: she could neither retreat nor go forward. Just before she retired she leaned over the rail, watching the reflection of the stars twist and shiver on the smooth water. Suddenly she listened. She might have imagined it, for at night the ears deceive. "Jah, jah!" Somewhere from below came the muffled plaint of Rajah.

Next day, at luncheon, the chair was still vacant. Elsa became alarmed. Perhaps he was ill. She made inquiries, regardless of the possible misinterpretation her concern might be given by others. Mr. Warrington had had his meals served in his cabin, but the steward declared that the gentleman was not ill, only tired and irritable, and that he amused himself with a trained parrakeet.

All day long the sea lay waveless and unrippled, a sea of brass and lapis-lazuli; brass where the sun struck and lapis-lazuli in the shadow of the lazy swells. Schools of flying-fish broke fan-wise in flashes of silver, and porpoise sported alongside. And warmer and warmer grew the air.

Starboard was rigged up for cricket, and the ship's officers and some of the passengers played the game until the first gong. Elsa grumbled to Martha. There was little enough space to walk in as it was without the men taking over the whole side of the ship and cheating her out of a glorious sunset. Martha grew troubled and perplexed. If there was one phase of character unknown to her in Elsa it was irritability; and here she was, finding fault like any ordinary tourist.

"Where is Mr. Warrington?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen him since yesterday." Elsa dropped her book petulantly. "I am weary of these namby-pamby stories."

"Why, I thought you admired that author."

"Not to-day at any rate. Silly twaddle."

Martha's eyes had a hopeless look in them as she asked: "Elsa, what is the matter?"

"I don't know, Martha. I believe I should like to lose my temper utterly. It might be a great relief."

"It's the climate."

"It may be. But it's my belief I'm irritable because I do not know my own mind. I hate the stuffy stateroom, the food, the captain."

"The captain?"

"Yes. Nothing seems to disturb his conceit. To-night we sleep on deck, the starboard side. At five o'clock we have to get up and go inside again so they can holystone the deck. And I am always soundest asleep at that time. Doubtless, I shall be irritable all day to-morrow."

"Sleep up here on deck?" horrified.

"That, or suffocate below."

"But the men?"

"They sleep on the port side." Elsa laughed maliciously. "Don't worry. Nobody minds."

"I hate the East," declared Martha vindictively. "Everything is so slack. It just brings out the shiftlessness in everybody."

"Perhaps that is what ails me; I am growing shiftless. When I came on board I decided to marry Arthur, and have done with the pother. Now I am at the same place as when I left home. I don't want to marry anybody. Have you noticed that fellow Craig?"

"What will you do if he speaks?"

"I have half a dozen good hat-pins left," dryly.

"I hate to hear you talk like that."

"It's the East. . . . There goes that hateful gong again. Soup, chicken, curry, rice and piccalilli. I am going to live on plantains and mangosteens. I'm glad we had sense enough to order that distilled water. I should die if I had to drink any more soda. I wish I had booked straight through. I shall be bored to death in Japan, much as I wish to see the cherry-blossom dance. Probably I shan't enjoy anything. Come; we'll go down as we are to dinner, and watch the ridiculous captain and his fan-bearer. The punka will at least give us a breath of fresh air. There doesn't seem to be any on deck. One regrets Darjeeling."

Martha followed her young mistress into the dining-saloon; she was anxious and upset. Where would this mood end? With a glance of relief she found Warrington's chair still vacant.

The saloon had an air of freshness to-night. All the men were in drill or pongee, and so receptive is the imagination that the picture robbed the room of half its heat. To and fro the punka flapped; the pulleys creaked and the ropes scraped above the sound of knives and forks and spoons.

Elsa ate little besides fruit. She spoke scarcely a word to Martha, and none to those around her. Thus, she missed the frown of the colonel and the lifted brows of the spinsters, and the curious glances of the tourists. The passenger-list had not yet come from the ship's press, so Elsa's name was practically unknown. But in some unaccountable manner it had become known that she had been making inquiries in regard to the gentleman in cabin 78, who had thus far remained away from the table. Ship life is a dull life, and gossip is about the only thing that makes it possible to live through the day. It was quite easy to couple this unknown aloof young woman and the invisible man, and then to wait for results. The average tourist is invariably building a romance around those persons who interest them, attractively or repellently. They have usually saturated their minds with impossible impressions of the East, acquired long before they visit it, and refuse to accept actualities. It would have amused Elsa had she known the interest she had already created if not inspired. Her beauty and her apparent indifference to her surroundings were particularly adapted to the romantic mood of her fellow-travelers. Her own mind was so broad and generous, so high and detached, that so sordid a thing as "an affair" never entered her thoughts.

As she refused course after course, a single phrase drummed incessantly through her tired brain. She was not going to marry Arthur; never, never in this world. She did not love him, and this was to be final. She would cable him from Singapore. But she felt no elation in having arrived at this determination. In fact, there was a tingle of defiance in her unwritten, unspoken ultimatum.

That night Craig found it insupportable in the cabin below; so he ordered his steward to bring up his bedding. He had lain down for half an hour, grown restless, and had begun to walk the deck in his bath-slippers. He had noted the still white figure forward, where the cross-rail marks the waist. As he approached, Craig discovered his man. He hesitated only a moment; then he touched Warrington's arm.

Warrington turned his dull eyes upon his ancient enemy. "So it is you? I understood you were on board. Well?" uncompromisingly.

"I've been looking for you. Bygones are bygones, and what's done can't be undone by punching a fellow's head. I'm not looking for trouble," went on Craig, gaining assurance. "I am practically down and out myself. I can't go back to the States for a while. All I want is to get to Hongkong in peace for the April races. What stand are you going to take on board here? That's all I want to know."

"It would give me great pleasure, Craig, to take you by the scruff of your neck and drop you overboard. But as you say, what's been done can't be remedied by bashing in a man's head. Well, here you are, since you ask. If you speak to me, if I catch you playing cards or auctioneering a pool, if you make yourself obnoxious to any of the passengers, I promise to give you the finest thrashing you ever had, the moment we reach Penang. If you don't go ashore there, I'll do it in Singapore. Have I made myself clear?"

"That's square enough, Paul," said the gambler resignedly. There wasn't much money on board these two-by-four boats, anyhow, so he wasn't losing much.

Warrington leaned forward. "Paul? You said Paul?"

"Why, yes," wonderingly.

"Better go."

"All right." Craig returned to his mattress. "Now, what made him curl up like that because I called him Paul? Bah!" He dug a hole in his pillow and tried to sleep.

"Paul!" murmured Warrington.

He stared down at the flashes of phosphorescence, blindly. The man had called him Paul. After ten years to learn the damnable treachery of it! Suddenly he clenched his hand and struck the rail. He would go back. All his loyalty, all his chivalry, had gone for naught. This low rascal had called him Paul.