Dragons Blood | Page 4

of the same thought.
"I do not yet--Of what?" rejoined Rudolph, at a loss.
"Of all this." She waved an eloquent little gesture toward the azure-lighted gulf.
"Oh," he said. "Of the world?"
"Yes," she answered slowly. "The world. Life." Her tone, subdued and musical, conveyed in the mere words their full enigma and full meaning. "All this that we see."
"Who can tell?" He took her seriously, and ransacked all his store of second-hand philosophy for a worthy answer,--a musty store, dead and pedantic, after the thrilling spirit of her words. "Why, I think--it is--is it not all now the sense-manifest substance of our duty? Pardon. I am obscure. 'Das versinnlichte Material unserer Pflicht' No?"
Her clear laughter startled him.
"Oh, how moral!" she cried. "What a highly moral little griffin!"
She laughed again (but this time it was like the splash of water in a deep well), and turned toward him that curiously tilted point of chin and mouth, her eyes shadowy and mocking. She looked young again,--the spirit of youth, of knowledge, of wonderful brightness and unbelief.
"Must we take it so very, very hard?" she coaxed. "Isn't it just a place to be happy in?"
As through a tumult he heard, and recognized the wisdom of the ages.
"Because," she added, "it lasts such a little while--"
On the rail their hands suddenly touched. He was aware of nothing but the nearness and pallor of her face, the darkness of her eyes shining up at him. All his life seemed to have rushed concentrating into that one instant of extreme trouble, happiness, trembling fascination.
Footsteps sounded on the deck behind them; an unwelcome voice called jocosely:--
"Good efening!" The ship's doctor advanced with a roguish, paternal air. "You see at the phosphor, not?"
Even as she whipped about toward the light, Rudolph had seen, with a touch of wonder, how her face changed from a bitter frown to the most friendly smile. The frown returned, became almost savage, when the fat physician continued:--
"To see the phosphor is too much moon, Mrs. Forrester?"
Had the steamer crashed upon a reef, he would hardly have noticed such a minor shipwreck. Mrs. Forrester? why, then--When the doctor, after ponderous pleasantries, had waddled away aft, Rudolph turned upon her a face of tragedy.
"Was that true?" he demanded grimly.
"Was what true?" she asked, with baby eyes of wonder, which no longer deceived, but angered.
"What the doctor said." Rudolph's voice trembled. "The tittle--the title he gave you."
"Why, of course," she laughed.
"And you did not tell me!" he began, with scorn.
"Don't be foolish," she cut in. From beneath her skirt the toe of a small white shoe tapped the deck angrily. Of a sudden she laughed, and raised a tantalizing face, merry, candid, and inscrutable. "Why, you never asked me, and--and of course I thought you were saying it all along. You have such a dear, funny way of pronouncing, you know."
He hesitated, almost believing; then, with a desperate gesture, wheeled and marched resolutely aft. That night it was no Prussian snores which kept him awake and wretched. "Everything is finished," he thought abysmally. He lay overthrown, aching, crushed, as though pinned under the fallen walls of his youth.
At breakfast-time, the ship lay still beside a quay where mad crowds of brown and yellow men, scarfed, swathed, and turbaned in riotous colors, worked quarreling with harsh cries, in unspeakable interweaving uproar. The air, hot and steamy, smelled of strange earth. As Rudolph followed a Malay porter toward the gang-plank, he was painfully aware that Mrs. Forrester had turned from the rail and stood waiting in his path.
"Without saying good-by?" she reproached him. The injured wonder in her eyes he thought a little overdone.
"Good-by." He could not halt, but, raising his cap stiffly, managed to add, "A pleasant voyage," and passed on, feeling as though she had murdered something.
He found himself jogging in a rickshaw, while equatorial rain beat like down-pouring bullets on the tarpaulin hood, and sluiced the Chinaman's oily yellow back. Over the heavy-muscled shoulders he caught glimpses of sullen green foliage, ponderous and drooping; of half-naked barbarians that squatted in the shallow caverns of shops; innumerable faces, black, yellow, white, and brown, whirling past, beneath other tarpaulin hoods, or at carriage windows, or shielded by enormous dripping wicker hats, or bared to the pelting rain. Curious odors greeted him, as of sour vegetables and of unknown rank substances burning. He stared like a visionary at the streaming multitude of alien shapes.
The coolie swerved, stopped, tilted his shafts to the ground. Rudolph entered a sombre, mouldy office, where the darkness rang with tiny silver bells. Pig-tailed men in skull-caps, their faces calm as polished ivory, were counting dollars endlessly over flying finger-tips. One of these men paused long enough to give him a sealed dispatch,--the message to which the ocean-bed, the Midgard ooze, had thrilled beneath his tardy