Page images
PDF
EPUB

me of you, and how kind you were to her. You have found me at a sad task, mynheer."

"Indeed. What is that?" Van Leason's voice was flat and cold. Without doubt the fellow had been burying somebody; some native brat he supposed, nothing to him or to any one else, neither here nor there. He was, indeed, so altogether indifferent to everything apart from himself, and that one other, that he did not even feel annoyed at finding this silly little man at home. After all, he had nothing whatever to do with either of them.

"He was very small and weak when he was born," continued the missionary. "Happily, by the grace of God, I got back here in time to be with my dear wife in the moment of her trial."

"Her what?" Van Leason was conscious of his own voice, like an angry bark.

"But surely-surely you knew must have observed that my wifethat we were expecting to-hoping to be blest-”

[ocr errors]

"How should I notice anything? What have things like that to do with me? I've got my own business to attend to," broke out Van Leason furiously.

"It was born just a fortnight ago, and it died at dawn this morning," went on the missionary, almost as if the other man had not spoken. "My poor wife is wonderful-wonderful! Such resignation to the will of God! Of course she is still in a weak condition, but that will soon mend-soon mend. It is, indeed, a happy chance that you have come now, mynheer; it will force her to exert herself, divert her thoughts. You are both

young; she tells me that you know her part of Holland."

His eyes, very blue in their reddened lids, were so amazingly direct and calm, as he raised them to the young lieutenant, that for the first time Van Leason realized him as a real person, a man like himself.

"I have to leave home again this afternoon," the missionary continued; "and if so be you were staying here for a day or two, I'd feel much happier."

"Oh, you would, would you?" Van Leason gave an ugly laugh, and was silent for moment. Then he broke out again, "You don't mind leaving a man whom you know nothing of here alone with your wife?"

"You forget that I know my wife. That we are everything to each other." There was a great dignity in the little missionary's voice, and the other man who was so big and strong himself that he could not have been put down by anything in the way of threats or bluster-feeling rebuked, moved on by the missionary's side in silence toward the house.

To Van Leason's surprise the missionary's wife was up and about, herself served them with their meager lunch. At first her husband helped her with the dishes; then a couple of natives came up to the veranda, stood a long while talking to him; and when he returned to the room again his face was aglow, his eyes wide and shining; while he moved as though in a dream, and the moment the makeshift meal was over, sat down at the side-table, started to write.

Tilting back his rickety chair, staring in front of him, smoking furiously, frowning, Van Leason

watched the missionary's wife gather up the dishes from the table and carry them out. When she came back from the lean-to kitchen, however, and bending over little Charlotte, who had fallen asleep on the floor, attempted to raise her, he jumped to his feet and pushed her to one side.

[ocr errors]

"Look here, you know; you've no business to do that sort of thing,' he said roughly, and lifting the child in his arms carried her into the next room, laid her upon her little cot, stood staring while her mother bent over her, straightening out the frail little limbs, tucking in the mosquitocurtain; realizing her in a way he had never done before, seeming to draw her in to himself with every breaththe new appealing fragility of her, the slightly hollowed cheeks in which the color, like a faintly tinted appleblossom, came and went, the milk whiteness of her hands. For the first time that sort of impatient anger with which she had inspired him seemed to die down, sink away into a sense of deep peace and wellbeing; and he realized, with a feeling of delightful joy, as fresh as though everything had been clear between them for it seemed impossible to think of the negligible little man in the next room as in any way related to her that he loved her; not only desired, indeed at the moment he was not conscious of that, but loved, deeply and tenderly.

As she rounded the rough little bed, bent, tucking in the curtain on the side nearest to him, then straightened herself, he took her in his arms, held her from the back with his head bent, his cheek pressed against hers. For a moment or so they stood like

[merged small][ocr errors]

"It's time she was out of this. She'd be all right at home in Holland." "Holland! Ah-h!" She drew a deep ecstatic breath, and tipping back her head their lips met in a long kiss; a kiss free of all passion and greed, such a kiss as might have passed between a deeply loving married couple.

"Darling-darling!" breathed Van Leason, and was silent, just holding her; then: "It's time you had your siesta-lay down to rest. You must take care of yourself now, you know." He did not add, "Now that we belong to each other," for the simple reason that the thought was there too certainly to require any words. For a moment his hands moved over her. He had an idea of loosening her dress, taking off her shoes, putting her to lie down, tucking in the curtain as she had tucked it round little Charlotte. But for some reason or other, which had nothing whatever to do with any sense of wrong, even awkwardness, he refrained; and taking her face between his hands, kissing her again upon the lips, murmuring to her to sleep well, he turned and left the room.

Late that afternoon Van Leason saw the missionary tiptoeing into the bedroom to say good-by to his wifefor the last time-and felt himself, quite suddenly, filled with horror

at the thought of his own treachery. But what was to be done? What was to be done? Suppose he went back and confronted the little man, stopped him on his way through the villages, down to the shore, where he already saw him moving, told him that he intended to take away his wife from him, what good could come of it? In any case the husband would be left alone.

And even supposing that he should prevail upon her to stay-though of course there was no chance of thatwhat sort of a cur would he himself, Van Leason, feel for allowing her to remain in a place where both she and her child would surely die of fever, or something worse; unless it so first happened that the husband died, left her alone among these unutterable people, at the mercy of that terrible and lascivious-looking priest.

No, no, a confession like this would be the worst sort of weakness, like the confessions in silly novels, used for no other purpose than the upsetting of everything and everybody.

For a long while Van Leason walked to and fro under the trees. Somewhere there was a country where one could sit down upon smooth green grass in the open; but here, in a moment, one would be devoured by giant ants and mosquitoes, set upon by land-crabs.

23

The dusk was beginning to fall when he went back to the house, found the missionary's wife seated on the veranda, and dropping down upon the steps leaned his head against one of the posts.

"He has gone," she said at last.
"Yes." A vision, that he would

rather have been without, of the desolate little figure moving along the dirty gray sand, came to Van Leason at her words.

"Lottie is still asleep." It seemed as though she scarcely knew what to say.

"That's a good thing; she will be all the fresher," answered Van Leason, for never had it occurred to him to ask her to leave the child behind; indeed he could not have borne the thought. "Beloved"-he moved a little way along the step and leaned his head against her knee, throwing his arm around her "directly dusk falls the prau will be within the reef; they will send off my dinghy-my sergeant has gone about it. You must take warm things, blankets, pillows; it's perfectly calm, and there's a moon, with just enough wind-we can sail all night. Tomorrow it will be very hot, but there's an awning. To-morrow night we ought to be at Batjan."

He was conscious of his own voice as though it were some one else's, so matter-of-fact, almost curt; while he felt her draw a long breath that was almost a shudder-and for a moment he thought that she might protest, struggle against him-then relax within his arm.

"If he minded, it would be terrible if he needed me! But he doesn't -he has God!" She spoke without bitterness. "He is very good-too good for me. If we stayed here, Lottie would die too, and I should be alone! No child could live here. Every day I see her fading-it is agony for me to watch her; it's like being bled, drop by drop."

"But you don't only think of her; you are not only coming for that—

you love me? My dear, my dear, you do love me?" He flung both arms around her, gazing up to her face; raised his hands and drew it down until it was close to his. "You

do you do love me I couldn't bear it if you didn't love me," he cried, all his aggressive cocksureness

gone.

"I do I do." She pressed her face against his, while he felt tears— hers or his, he could not have said which wet against his cheek. "I say I think of Lottie; I don't say I think of you, because how can I how can I think when I feel-feel as I do-that you are part of me—all of me, me, myself?"

"You are not frightened; you trust me." He was on his knees infolding her.

"I don't know-I don't know anything" There was a sudden wildness in her voice, in the way in which she clung to him. "Only that we belong to each other, that where you are I must be. Oh, my dear, dear, love me, love me always; it's so terrible to be alone."

In the stress of their love, which was at once an agony and joy, they had both risen; and now, half turned with his cheek against hers, Van Leason became aware of eyes watching them through the thick dusk; a face thickly barred with white paint which, in a flash, was gone.

A few moments later, strangely calmed by the sense of danger, all his vigilance awake, sitting once more at her feet, just touching her knees, Van Leason asked her, "Which among the native fellows here paint their faces with white bars?"

"Only one-that horrible priest I'm so frightened of. Why?"

[ocr errors]

"Oh, nothing Now you'd better wake the child, get something to eat, put together the things you'll need,' he added; and raising her to her feet, held her for a moment without embracing her, almost away from him, by both elbows; then gave her a little push. "Go; don't be long; I shall have you altogether after this," he said thickly, and moving to the top of the steps stood stiffly upright, staring in front of him; feeling himself to be all eyes, with an odd double, sliding vision-crossing and recrossing the darkness—of the white bars, the eyes of that otherwise invisible face, the drooping figure of the little missionary as he had seen it two or three hours before, disappearing through the hole in the fence; starting violently, with the sudden consciousness of another sense which he seemed to have forgotten, as the quick beat of drums, clang of gongs, broke upon his ear.

Half an hour later as he took the little girl into his own arms ready to go, and they moved on to the veranda, the lamp, which had seemed to go out, flickered up again, and the missionary's wife dragged her hand from out of his arm. "It's not out; I must go back I must go," she panted unreasonably; then, as it flickered and dropped, hesitated for a moment, trembling violently from head to foot, stiffened herself and moved on at his side; while the ear-splitting tumult dropped to the slow deep thrum-thrum-thrum of a single

drum.

As Van Leason stooped to go through the hole in the fence, it struck him-with an odd unpleasant feeling, as though things were being made altogether too easy for him

that it had been enlarged, while the beat of the drum grew still slower, with an almost unbearable pause after each.

The heathen crew had a new image in front of the tumbledown temple he realized that as he stooped to help the missionary's wife through after him-with a half-circle of torches stuck in the ground round it.

It could have been no more than twenty seconds. But in these seconds he realized so many other things also: the grinding sound of the dinghy striking a ridge of coral; his own thought, "We must hurry, the tide's falling"; a fine thread of light from the torches, falling on something which he knew to be the barrel of a rifle; his instinctive movement to throw himself in front of the woman he loved, checked by the realization that it would put him in the position of using the child as a screen; the moment he lost in shifting her from one arm to another; the sharp crack of the rifle; the cry of the missionary's wife as she fell:

"My dear, my dear-oh, my dear!" And then another crack; a feeling like the bite of an insect as a second shot-turned aside by the thick shawl in which Lottie was inwrapped -grazed his arm; his own men shouting, running; more lights, more shots;

his stupid bewilderment as to what he was to do with the child in his arms as he bent over her mother; bending and then straightening himself-with an agony which seemed to rend his breast in a tearing sob, that somehow or other could not get free -the flash of the torch which some one tore from the half-ring of torches; the realization of the little missionary -not an idol at all, but the missionary, his eyes wide and staring, his mouth open, with a dark stain, like a pierced heart, on the breast of his white coat-tied upright to a post, his bare feet pointing like a dancer's to the ground.

[ocr errors]

Yes, I have seen her, little Charlotte, sixteen years old now, and with such odd, wide blue eyes, very silent at old Mevrouw Leason's side, pacing the streets of Leiden, pouring out tea for Mevrouw Leason's friend in Mevrouw Leason's parlor; never quite like other girls. So much too quiet and abstracted, unless you happened to see her with the man whom others called her adopted father, but whom she herself had always refused to call anything, to address in any way, save as “you”regarding him with an odd sort of antagonism, an unchildlike and passionate affection.

« PreviousContinue »