Henry Milner Rideout

“ Three swans rose noisily from the water and flew in line abreast upstream with a great rushing sound of wings. Even as they went, their whiteness darkened, a cloud and another burst of rain driving after them. Drenched while he rowed, Corsant peered up through the shower and saw at his left hand a gray stone house, that looked down a hillside of rough lawn dotted with shrubs and trees.
From one of its many broad windows fluttered something white—a towel that flapped vigorously and then was whisked indoors. He pulled his right oar, and headed the Daisy for the nearest gravel. ”

“ He had followed them to these ruins: to steal a cat, and meet his death. Why?
Why indeed? The thief sprawled among the vines, tawny as the lifeless ground, agape, mysterious, inaccessible.
There was nothing more to do. Retreating slowly from the rebuke of that presence, Owen turned the corner of the wall.
"Come," he said. They moved off among the ancient mounds, the air before them dancing in blurs of heat. The girl shivered slightly, paused as for breath:
"Was it—?" she whispered. "Did he do it?"
"No," said Owen, as though she had named the guide aloud. "No, I hope—I think not. ”

“ For two days yet, no ship would leave Port Said for Marseilles. He was sure to find her. Chao Phya, in snug quarters below, was sleeping out the voyage. The Burmese ruby, to be sure, was gone. Only the shank of the bell, nipped off as by strong pincers, remained to prove that their past adventures were not a dream. Whether Ho Kong had won, whether Borkman had kept it and survived, or dying had given it to his friend Justine, they would never know. What odds? thought Scarlett: one jewel the less—not worth a grain of this tawny dust where, on the rim of Egypt, he should meet Laura. ”

“ The coolies dropped their brass-bound shafts; Scarlett lifted Aunt Julia to one seat, and shouting "Scott Road!" swung into the other; then, as the coolies caught their balance and jogged off, he saw, over his shoulder, three Malays dart from the mouth of the lane and stand at fault.
It was pleasant—with the grateful breath of motion cooling his cheeks—to jog homeward down the humid vista of overhanging foliage, or under the starry marvel of open sky. Yet Owen's thoughts tugged forward. If Laura should be safe, then their luck held. ”

“ George pierced him with a straight glance to ask if he were trying some bad joke.
"No, I mean it." Leonard's face grew red, his tongue slipped and stammered. "You know, George—the truth is—you know, I'm richer than sin. Rich as a Parsee. Rich as a Bagdad Jew. I'll be gone, you see. Not a soul would know."
Grayland, poising his ax, accepted this truth at once, calmly.
"You never acted purse-proud."
"Don't know about that. Dad always told me not to spend much on myself," said Leonard. "Wish you'd known my father, George. You make me think of him so often. ”

“ Grayland suddenly tilted back his umbrella. "How do you like it?"
Overgrown shrubs, and vines pelted with rain, hid much of the lower story; but above these, the weathered gray forehead of the house rose clear, overlooking the men, the hillside lawn, and the river with a kind of benignity almost human. It was not a large house; yet the two upper tiers of windows, broad, nobly framed and outlined in carven stone, gave it a spacious air that seemed better than grandeur; and Its plainness, thought Leonard, warmed him like the discovery of some new virtue in an old friend. ”

“ Still Marden could not pull himself away from what at once quieted and angered him.
"A man like me?" he stupidly faltered. "Why—what"—
"That's you all over!" cried the woman proudly. "Why, how many of 'em do you s'pose there is nowadays would do what you done for the sake of a woman?"
Once more, as in that meeting on the beach, a light began to grow slowly in his mind. Just so a man underground might see, far ahead, the day glimmering in the mouth of some burrow.
He drew himself free, without violence or scorn. The blood running in his veins was his own again, under control. ”

“ Uncertain that he caught the words right, Leonard was puzzled.
"Grudge? What? None in the world, mother. Not a bit. Why should I?'
The landlady of the Ring of Bells fixed him with a long stare, then kneading her hands together, began to smile darkly.
"Why should he? Hark!" she mumbled. Her smile had the cunning of dotage, and yet other qualities crept into it—something shrewd, something bitter and regretful, something kindly. "Hark to the grand nature. They all do keep it. Free-handed, all—open-hearted. Why should he, the poor lamb!" ”

“ Must life bear all away,
Away, away,
Ah, my beloved, why?"
A murmur of praise went round the group, as she put aside the instrument.
"The sun's getting low," she said lightly, "and I must see that view from the top." Chantel was rising, but sat down again with a scowl, as she turned to Rudolph. "You've never seen it, Mr. Hackh? Do come help me up."
Inside, with echoing steps, they mounted in a squalid well, obscurely lighted from the upper windows, toward which decaying stairs rose in a dangerous spiral, without guard-rail. ”

“ He searched the cabin with one long look, as though to add this last to the scenes that thronged in his old memory; then preceded his brother mariner up into the fog.
At the rail the two shook hands. Captain Christy looked down, with lips compressed, as if something hurt.
"She's a clever bo't, Cap'n Follansbee," he said. "Treat her kind, now, won't ye?" And he swung himself over to the pier.
"Like—like a kitten!" shouted the younger man, already busied with ropes. "Here, Joe, ye stootchit, bear a hand with the spring!" The gap widened between her side and the pier-spilings. "Like a kitten!" ”

“ A memorial clock in a dumpy little tower, staring blear-eyed through fog, rang the half hour past ten as he crossed the square. Few persons were abroad. In belated stillness and gloom, a kind of Black Monday reigned.
To gain variety in his return, Leonard chose another route; but for three hours of good tramping he saw no more than the green borders along its way, the same hedge, the same branches of elm, ash, thorn, or beech, the same margin of field continually repeated through a world of smoky drift and dampness. ”

“ And except for Maurice Heywood--Oh, you need not frown; he's the best friend I ever had."
Mrs. Forrester had walked on, with the same cloudy aspect, the same light, impatient step. He felt the greater surprise when, suddenly turning, she raised toward him her odd, enticing, pointed face, and the friendly mischief of her eyes.
"The best?" she echoed, in the same half-whisper as when she had flattered him, that afternoon in the dusky well of the pagoda stairway. "The very best friend? Don't you think you have a better?"
Rudolph stared. ”

“ The waiter thawed, became human again, and flung off a most inimitable farewell with his hands.
"Ah, that brute! Ah, that white-eyed vassal! I never saw him before, sir."
"Nor I," said Leonard.
He was not so sure. That stiff wheel and turn of the back all in a piece reminded him how someone had watched him go out of church.
"For all his garments and his altitude," said Gino, grinning, "he behaved as one in a hurry. No repose. Why fluster so grandly? Why should one hurry, sir? The man cannot consume the time; no, the time consumes the man."
Corsant agreed. ”

“ There were long, comforting walks in the warm air; now that he felt the settled calm of knowing himself irretrievably alone, the return of spring seemed no longer a cruel mechanism of nature. Summer found him at work again on the beach, pausing now and then to look shoreward, with a kind of sad beatitude, at the house that he guarded.
Once when he was at the wharf to help in shipping some of the Yankee's barrels, he saw among the bystanders, city and country loungers, the woman of that memorable noon. He recognized her with an odd emotion that he could not name. She had seen him, he was sure ”

“ Rare and far, the sails of junks patched the horizon with umber polygons. Rudolph, sitting among his boxes in the sampan, viewed by turns this desolate void astern and the more desolate sweep of coast ahead. His matting sail divided the shining bronze outpour of an invisible river, divided a low brown shore beyond, and above these, the strips of some higher desert country that shone like snowdrifts, or like sifted ashes from which the hills rose black and charred. Their savage, winter-blasted look, in the clear light of an almost vernal morning, made the land seem fabulous. ”

“ Corsant thanked him and passed on.
The cluster of cottages hidden under green leaves and gray vapor had swum into view quietly as part of a dream, and even now, though plain, solid, built four-square to last, it kept a dreamy old look. Sleep had been poured on its head; an exposition of slumber lay warm on the gables. Mother Goose might have lived and written here—nothing happened since her day. The Bottle of Hay, a beetle-browed tavern, sat squinting down at a causeway and a veiled strip of marsh.
Leonard stepped through the open door, but nearly backed out again at once. ”

“ The bitter smell of burnt hoofs drifted after him, in the sunlight and hawthorn shade. A wall crossed the foot of the lane; a stile mounted the wall; and beyond these a path descended green fields to the river. Near the stream Leonard turned and looked back as though someone called. No one had made a sound; but far uphill by the blacksmith's door two small figures stood watching him—the aproned Peacock and his taller gossip. Though distant, they had somehow the air of men watching long and sharply. It was not Peacock, but the other, who raised one arm overhead and waved a genial flourish. ”

“ Archer went on, through the stink of fish among the gray huts, down to the beach; and here he came upon small groups, some twenty men in all, smoking, talking, and looking down over the long slope of wet pebbles and seaweed to where a few boats waited at the water's edge.
One of the groups he joined, with an odd reluctance. They peered at him through the dusk, with perhaps a little surprise, then smoked and spat in unconcern. They were sober to-night. By their faces—all dark and thin, some vicious, some dull—they were simple men enough, quiet, ordinary, and poor. ”

“ She looked down the dusky lanes, where glowworm lanterns began to bob and wink. "Oh, this land! where you see the days running into years!"
"The Dragon's a wise old beast," he ventured. "He teaches--something."
She assented gravely:--
"And in those days I thought it was a dark continent--of lost souls."
"There are no dark continents," declared Heywood suddenly, in a broken voice. "The heart of one man--can hold more darkness--You would never see into it--"
"Don't!" she cried sharply. "What did we promise?" ”

“ It was a dingy little old restaurant, a narrow room which in those days before the war ran through catercornered from Sword Street to Sun Street. A dingy little old waiter leaned against the wall as though put there and abandoned like a worn-out umbrella. If alive, he was the only living creature to be seen. Leonard had chosen a table nearest the source of heat—a cavern mouth that breathed out greasy kitchen odors—and had settled himself on a bench, before the old solitary moved or so much as blinked. ”

“ A horse, left alone in the island pasture where the tide had cut him off, whinnied out of the distant dark. Even in Marden's torment, the sound brought back that evening when his brother had returned. Memories and questions swarmed in his brain again, rioting. Why could not he that now lay there dead in the gully, why could not he have stayed away? The world was so big, and full of a million other mishaps. If he were to die, a drunken lurch on the string-piece of a pier, a slip on an icy foot-rope, and Fate would have been satisfied without this dreadful means. ”

“ In one reach, a "war-junk," her sails furled, lay at anchor, the red and white eyes staring fish-like from her black prow: a silly monster, the painted tompions of her wooden cannon aiming drunkenly askew, her crew's wash fluttering peacefully in a line of blue dungaree.
Beyond the next turn, a fowling-piece cracked sharply, close at hand; something splashed, and the ruffled body of a snipe bobbed in the bronze flood alongside.
"Hang it!" complained a voice, loudly. "The beggar was too--Hallo! Oh, I say, Gilly! Gilly, ahoy! Pick us up, there 's a good chap! ”

“ High in the air, a firefly was blown down the wind, so that at the first glance he mistook it for a falling star. And in the sudden coolness Marden found himself thinking clearly and sweetly of his mother, whom he saw again, as in the blue December dawn, with the firelight shining upward on the gentle face and the sad gray eyes. It was all very distant, and belonged not to him; but at all events the vision was there.
"She'd understand even this," he thought. "Whether she ever forgave it or not, she knows what's been fighting in my veins. That's as much as a man deserves." ”

“ A greasy, bitter smell of cooking floated after. Then no change or break in the darkness, except a dim lantern or two creeping low in a sampan, with a fragment of talk from unseen passers; until, as the stars multiplied overhead, the night of the land rolled heavily astern and away from another, wider night, the stink of the marshes failed, and by a blind sense of greater buoyancy and sea-room, the voyagers knew that they had gained the roadstead. Ahead, far off and lustrous, a new field of stars hung scarce higher than their gunwale, above the rim of the world. ”

“ On a clear September evening the Amirald put out to sea, before a dying wind that veered among the black fir islands. Bunty and Zwinglius stood amidships, watching the infant endeavors of the new foresail. By the taffrail sat Joyce, bareheaded, her hair darkly ruddy in the level glow of sunset waves, against which the captain, a giant silhouette, revolved a quick pattern of radiating spokes. Down the vastness of the sky astern thin arcs of cloud, white overhead, pearl, rose, and saffron toward the west, curved from the zenith like frail ribs of an infinite vaulted aisle spanning sea and land. ”

“ Gray vapors from river and paddy-field, lingering like steam in a slow breeze, paled and dispersed in the growing light, as the new day, worse than the old, came sullenly without breath or respite. A few twilight shapes were pattering through the narrow street--a squad of Yamên runners haling a prisoner.
"The Sword-Pen remains active," said Heywood, thoughtfully. "That dingy little procession, do you know, it's quite theatrical? The Cross and the Dragon. Eh? Another act's coming."
Even Rudolph could spare a misgiving from his own difficulty while he watched the prisoner. ”

“ More than once he reads the written decree, or in echoing memory hears the spoken; and while coming to believe and deeply understand that a strange hour has struck, that his life has swung into a new cycle whose grief lies onward and whose joy behind, he must—alone, with the thing in his pocket or the words in his head—work at a desk, or navigate a ship, or chat with strangers, or walk floors, or sit in theatres, or paint steps. Slowly, therefore, but with fixed heart and equal mind, the captain had accepted his message in its finality. ”

“ The sunken flags in the road formed a narrow aqueduct that wavered down a lane of mire. A few grotesque wretches, thatched about with bamboo matting, like bottles, or like rosebushes in winter, trotted past shouldering twin baskets. The smell of joss-sticks, fish, and sour betel, the subtle sweetness of opium, grew constantly stronger, blended with exhalations of ancient refuse, and (as the chairs jogged past the club, past filthy groups huddling about the well in a marketplace, and onward into the black yawn of the city gate) assailed the throat like a bad and lasting taste. ”

“ It was a happy time in the little house: the cloud descended sometimes on the captain, but more rarely and briefly. There were long evenings when Zwinglius rolled out to gather news at Laurel's; when age and youth sat together trading confidences, slowly, with many intervals; when the clock ticked, the Northern Spies roasted sputtering between the andirons, the wood fire purred for snow, or a frosty nail started like a pistol shot in the night.
"And now why," Joyce questioned, as if their talk had not faltered, "why do they seem to think young people are always happy, and all that? ”