The Desert Islander | Page 9

the scruff of your dirty neck."
Dirty neck! Instantly Constantine sat up--hopeless now of curing this
man's contempt, full of an almost unendurable craving to be far away
from him--to wipe him from his horizon--to be allowed to imagine him

dead. Invigorated by this violent impulse, he rolled out of bed and
sullenly watched Mr. White settle up with the innkeeper and take a few
packages out of that revoltingly refined kit-bag.
"A small tin of water-biscuits," said Mr. White, almost apologetically,
"and the remains of the bloater paste. It's all I have with me, but it
ought to keep you alive till you get to Lao-chow to-morrow morning....
I'll see you down to the river first and then pick up these things." He
spoke as if he were trying to make little neat plans still against this
disorderly and unwonted background. He brushed his splashed coat
with a silver clothes-brush, wearing the eagerly safe expression
Constantine had seen on his face as he bent over the tie-press the night
before last. The orderly man was trying to maintain his quiet
impersonal self-respect amid surroundings that humiliated him. Even
Constantine understood vaguely that his attacker was himself being
attacked. "Well, I've done my best," added Mr. White, straightening his
back after buckling the last strap of the kit-bag, and looking at
Constantine with an ambiguous, almost appealing look.
They left the inn. The steep street that led down to the river between
mean, barricaded shops was deserted. The air of it was outraged by the
whipping sound of rifle fire--echoes clanked sharply from wall to wall.
"It is not safe--it is not safe," muttered Constantine, suddenly standing
rooted, feeling that his next step must bring him into the path of a
bullet.
"It's safer than a gangrenous leg." With his great hand, Mr. White
seized the little Russian's arm and dragged him almost gaily down the
steps. Constantine was by now so hopelessly mired in humiliation that
he did not even try to disguise his terror. He hung back like a rebellious
child, but he was tweaked and twitched along, stumbling behind his
rescuer. He was pressed into the little boat. "Here, take the
biscuits--good-bye--good luck," shouted Mr. White, and a smile of real
gaiety broke out at last upon his face. The strip of rainy air and water
widened between the friends.
"Strike him dead, God!" said Constantine.

The smile did not fade at once from the Englishman's face, as his legs
curiously crumpled into a kneeling position. He seemed trying to kneel
on air; he clutched at his breast with one hand while the other hand still
waved good-bye; he turned his alert, smiling face towards Constantine
as though he were going to say again--"Good-bye--good luck." Then he
fell, head downward, on the steps, the bald crown of his head just
dipping into the water. Mud was splashed over the coat he had brushed
only five minutes before.
There was a loud outcry from the sampan man and his wife. They
seemed to be calling Constantine's already riveted attention to the fallen
man--still only twenty yards away; they seemed uncertain whether he
would now let them row yet more quickly away, as they desired, or
insist on returning to the help of his friend.
"Row on--row on," cried Constantine in Russian and, to show them
what he meant, he snatched up a spare pole and tried to increase the
speed of the boat as it swerved into the current. Spaces of water were
broadening all about the desert islander--home on his desert island
again at last. As Constantine swayed over the pole, he looked back over
his shoulder and flaunted his head, afraid no more of the firing now that
one blessed bullet had carried away unpardonable memory out of the
brain of his friend.
THE END

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