Java Head Part 6

I guess it's time for us to go, Oh, leave her, Johnny, leave her.

I thought I heard the old man say, Oh, leave her, Johnny, leave her.

To-morrow we will get our pay .......leave her"_

Rhoda Ammidon discovered herself leaning forward tensely, her hands shut in excitement and emotion; and she relaxed with a happy laugh as the _Nautilus_, with her yards exactly square and rigging taut, her sides and figurehead and ports bright with newly laid on paint, moved to the wharf.

It seemed to her that Gerrit, descending a short stage from the deck, looked markedly older than when he had last sailed. Yet he had a surprisingly youthful air still; partly, she thought, from the manner in which he wore his hair, falling in a waving thick line about his cheeks.

His mouth was at once fresh and severe, his face clean shaven, and his eyes--if possible--more directly blue than ever.

"I'll take the s.h.i.+p's manifest to the Collector," he said, greeting them and impatiently waving aside the vendors after the cook's slush, the excited women and runners and human miscellany crowding forward. "Then Java Head." He paused, speaking over his shoulder: "I'd be thankful if you would send the barouche down in an hour or so."

Driving back, her hand on Jeremy Ammidon's knee, Rhoda wondered at Gerrit's request. It was entirely unlike him to ride in the barouche; rather he had always derided it in the terms of his calling. However, unable to find a solution for her surprise, she listened to the other's comments and speculations:

"I suppose William's first question will be about the cargo, and, of course, I hope the s.h.i.+p has done well. But I'm just glad to have Gerrit back; I am for a fact, Rhoda."

"We all are," she a.s.sured him, "and William as happy as any. You mustn't be misled by his manner, father. I hope the supper will be good and please you."

"Gerrit will be satisfied with anything," he chuckled. "Probably he's been out of beans even for a month. Did you notice that fore-royal mast and yard? They were rigged at sea: Gerrit carried them away. It hurts him to take in a sail. Some day I tell him he'll drag the spars out of his s.h.i.+p. His confounded pride will founder him." He made these charges lightly, with a palpable underlying pride; and, Rhoda knew, would permit no one else to criticize his son.

She found her daughters in a state of gala excitement on the front steps.

"Uncle Gerrit in the _Nautilus,_" Laurel chanted; and it was evident that Camilla herself was thrilled. They all went up to put on holiday dress.

Rhoda turned to the coachman, "Have the barouche at the head of Derby Wharf in an hour."

Gerrit's unusual demand again puzzled her. A fantastic possibility lodged in her brain--perhaps he was not alone. She pulled the bell rope for her maid, changed into black moire with cut steel bretelles, and selected the peac.o.c.k coloring of a Peri-taus shawl. She found her husband with his father in the library. "I understand it's a splendid cargo," William remarked. Jeremy nodded triumphantly at her, and she expressed a half humorous resentment at this mercenary display. "He ought to be here," the younger man declared, consulting his watch. As he spoke Rhoda saw the barouche draw up before the house. She had a glimpse of a figure at Gerrit Ammidon's side in extravagantly brilliant satins; there was a sibilant whisper of rich materials in the hall, and the master entered the library with a pale set face.

"Father," he said, "Rhoda and William, allow me--my wife, Taou Yuen."

Rhoda Ammidon gave an uncontrollable gasp as the Chinese woman sank in a fluttering prostration of color at Jeremy's feet. He e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "G.o.d bless me," and started back. William's face was inscrutable, unguessed lines appeared about his severe mouth. Her own sensation was one of incredulity touched with mounting anger and feeling of outrage. The woman rose, but only to sink again before William: she was on her knees and, supported by her hands, bent forward and touched her forehead to the floor three times. Gerrit laughed shortly. "She was to shake your hands; we went over and over it on s.h.i.+pboard. But anything less than the _Kul'on_ was too casual for her."

She was now erect with a freer murmur of greeting to Rhoda. The latter was instantly aware of one certainty--Chinese she might be, she was, but no less absolutely aristocratic. Her face, oval and slightly flat, was plastered with paint on paint, but her gesture, the calm scrutiny of enigmatic black eyes under delicately arched brows, exquisite quiet hands, were all under the most admirable instinctive command. Rhoda said:

"I see that I am to welcome you for Gerrit's family." The other, in slow lisping English replied:

"Thank you greatly. I am humbled to the earth before your goodness."

"You will want to go to your room," Rhoda continued mechanically. "It was only prepared for one, but I'll send a servant up at once." She was enraged at the silent stupidity of the three men and flashed a silent command at her husband.

"This is a decided surprise," the latter at last addressed his brother; "nor can I pretend that it is pleasant." Jeremy Ammidon's gaze wandered blankly from Gerrit to the woman, then back to his son.

Never before had Rhoda seen such lovely clothes: A long gown with wide sleeves of blue-black satin, embroidered in peach-colored flower petals and innumerable minute sapphire and orange b.u.t.terflies, a short sleeveless jacket of sage green caught with looped red jade b.u.t.tons and threaded with silver and indigo high-soled slippers crusted and ta.s.seled with pearls. Her hair rose from the back in a smooth burnished loop.

There were long pins of pink jade carved into blossoms, a quivering decoration of paper-thin gold leaves with moonstones in glistening drops, and a band of coral lotus buds. Pierced stone bracelets hung about her delicate wrists, fretted crystal b.a.l.l.s swung from the lobes of her ears; and clasped on the ends of several fingers were long pointed filagrees of ivory.

"Taou Yuen," Gerrit repeated shortly, with his challenging bright gaze.

"That means Peach Garden. My wife is a Manchu," he a.s.serted in a more biting tone; "a Manchu and the daughter of a n.o.ble. Thank you, Rhoda, particularly. But I have always counted on you. Will you go up with her?

That is if--if my father has a room, a place, for us."

"This will always be your home, Gerrit," Jeremy said slowly, with the long breath of a diver in deep waters.

IV

In the room that had been his since early maturity Gerrit Ammidon gave an involuntary sigh of relief. Taou Yuen, his wife, was standing in the middle of the floor, gazing about with a faint and polite smile. Her eyes rested on a yellow camphor chest--one of the set brought home by his father--on a severe high range of drawers made of sycamore with six legs, on her brilliant reflection in the eagle-crowned mirror above the mantel, and the sleigh bed with low heavily curved ends.

The situation below, however brief and, on the whole, reasonably conducted, had been surprisingly difficult. At the same time that he had felt no necessity to apologize for his marriage he had known that Taou Yuen must surprise, yes--shock, his family. She was Chinese, to them a heathen: they would be unable to comprehend any mitigating dignity of rank. Where they'd actually suffer, he realized, would be in the att.i.tude of Salem, the stupid gabble, the censure and cold pity caused by his wife.

Personally he regarded these with the contempt he felt for so many of the qualities that on sh.o.r.e bound the interests of everyone into a single common concern. It gave him pleasure to a.s.sault the authority and importance of such public prejudice and self-opinion; but, unavoidably implicating his family, at once a part of himself and Salem, he was conscious of the fact that he had laid them all open to disagreeable moments. He was sorry for this, and his regret, princ.i.p.ally materialized by his father's hurt confusion, had unexpectedly cast a shadow on a scene to which he had looked forward with a distinct sense of comedy. Where the realities were concerned he had no fear of Taou Yuen's ability to justify herself completely. He possessed a stupendous admiration for her.

He watched her now with the mingled understanding and mystification that gave his life with her such a decided charm. Her gaze had fastened on the mirror-stand above the drawers: she must be wondering if she would have to paint and prepare herself for him here, openly. He knew that she considered it a great impropriety for her face to be seen bare; all the elaborate processes of her morning toilet must be privately conducted. He recognized this, but had no idea what she actually thought of the room, of his family, of the astonis.h.i.+ng situation into which her heart had betrayed her.

One and then another early hope he saw at once were vain. It had seemed to him that in America, in Salem, she might become less evidently Chinese; not in the incongruous horror of Western clothes, but in her att.i.tude, in a surrender to superficial customs; he had pictured her as merging distinctively into the local scene. In China he had hoped that in the vicinity of Was.h.i.+ngton Square and Pleasant Street she would appear less Eastern; but, beyond all doubt, here she was enormously more so. The strange repressed surrounding accentuated every detail of her Manchu pomp and color. The frank splendor of her satins and carved jades and embroidery, her immobile striking face loaded with carmine and glinting headdress, the flawless loveliness of hands with the pointed nail protectors, were, in his room, infinitely dramatized.

The other, less secure possibility that she might essentially change perished silently. In a way his wish had been a presumption--that a member of the oldest and most subtle civilization existing would, if she were able, adopt such comparatively crude habits of life and thought.

She moved slowly up to the bed, examining it curiously; and again he understood her look of doubt--in China beds were called _kang_, or stoves, from the fact that they were more often than not a platform of brick with an opening beneath for hot coals. She fingered the ball fringe of the coverlet, and then turned with amazement to the soft pillow. A hand with the stone bracelet falling back from her smooth wrist rose to the complicated edifice of her headdress.

"Your pillow is coming along from the s.h.i.+p," he told her; "the women here do up their hair every morning."

She considered this with geranium lips slightly parted on flawless teeth, and nodded slowly. The westering sun striking through the window overlooking the Common illuminated her with a flat gold unreality.

"I'll have a day bed brought for you," he continued, realizing that, as the result of fortunate chance, she understood most of what he said without an actual command of the individual words. In reply she sank before him in the deep Manchu gesture with one knee sweeping the floor, the humility of her posture dignified by grace. He touched the crystal globe of an earring, pinched her chin, in the half light manner by which he instinctively expressed his affection for her. She was calm and pleased. "Taou Yuen," he continued, "you miss Shanghai, with the wall of ten gates and the river Woosung stuck full of masts. You'll never think Salem is a paradise like Soochow."

"This is your city," she replied, slowly choosing the words. "Your ancestors are here." There was not a shade of regret in her voice or manner. He tried once more, and as vainly as ever, to penetrate the veil of her perfect serenity. She never, it became apparent, descended from the most inflexible self-control; small emotions--surface gayety of mood, curiosity, the faintest possible indication of contempt, he had learned to distinguish; the fact that she cared enough for him to desert every familiar circ.u.mstance was evident; but beyond these he was powerless to reach.

His own emotions were hardly less obscured: the dominating feeling was his admiration for her exquisite worldly wisdom, the perfection of her bodily beauty, and the philosophy which bore her above the countless trivialities that destroyed the dignity of western minds. He realized that her paint and embroidery covered a spirit as cold and tempered as fine metal. She was totally without the social sentiment of his own world; but she was equally innocent of its nauseous hypocrisy, the pretensions of a piety covering commercial dishonesty, obscenity of thought and spreading scandal. The injustice he saw practiced on sh.o.r.e had always turned him with a sense of relief to the cleansing challenge of the sea; always, brought in contact with cunning and self-seeking men and heartless schemes, with women cheapened by a conviction of the indecency of life, he was in a state of hot indignation. From all this Taou Yuen offered a complete escape.

On the purely feminine side she was a constant delight, the last possible refinement, he told himself, of instinct and effect. She was incapable of the least vulgarity; never for an instant did she flag from the necessity of beauty, never had he seen her too weary for an adornment laborious in a hundred difficult conventions. She was, too, a continuous source of entertainment, even as his wife she never ceased to be a spectacle; his consciousness of her as a being outside himself persisted.

"I must go down and see where our things are," he said, rising. In the hall he stopped before the tall clock whose striking was a part of his early memories. Below, the house seemed empty; and, instead of turning to the front door and his purpose, he went into the drawing-room.

The long gla.s.s doors to the garden were open, and the interior was filled with the scent of lilacs. The room itself had always reminded him of them--it was pale in color, cool gilt and lavender brocade and white panels. Nothing had been moved or changed: the inlaid cylinder fall desk with its garlands of painted flowers on the light waxed wood stood at the left, the pole screen with the embroidered bouquet was before the fire blind, the girandoles, scrolled in ormolu and hung with crystal l.u.s.ters, held the s.h.i.+mmer of golden reflections on the walls.

He had remembered the drawing-room at Java Head as a place of enchanted perfection; in his childhood its still serenity had seemed a presentment of what might be hoped for in heaven. The thought of the room as it was now, open but a little dim to the lilacs and warm afternoon, had haunted him as the measure of all peace and serenity in moments of extreme danger, his s.h.i.+p laboring in elemental catastrophes and in remote seas.

Its fragrance had touched him through the miasma of Whampoa Reach, waiting for the lighters of tea to float down from Canton; standing off in the thunder squalls of the night for the morning sea breeze to take him into Rio; over a cognac in the coffee stalls of the French market at New Orleans, the chanteys ringing from the cotton gangs along the levees:

_"Were you ever down in Mobile Bay?

Aye, aye, pump away."_

As he left the room he saw Laurel, William's youngest child, and he imprisoned her in an arm. "You haven't asked what I've got for you in my sea chest," he said. Gerrit was very fond of all four of the rosy-cheeked vigorous girls, and a sense of injury touched him at Laurel's reserved manner. She studied him with a wondering uneasy concern. This he realized was the result of bring home Taou Yuen; and an aggravated impatience, a growing rebellion, seized him. He wouldn't stay with his wife at Java Head a day longer than necessary; and if anyone, in his family or outside, showed the slightest disdain he could retaliate with his knowledge of local pettiness, the backbiting enmities and secret lapses.

G.o.d knew he didn't want trouble, all he asked was a reasonable liberty, the semblance, anyhow, of a courtesy toward his wife. Whatever might be said would be of no moment to her--except in the att.i.tude of his father--and Taou Yuen's indifference furnished a splendid example for himself. He wondered why the devil he was continually putting his fingers in affairs that couldn't concern him. No one thanked him for his trouble, they considered him something of a fool--a good sailor but peculiar. The d.a.m.ned unexpected twists of his sense of the absurd, too, got him into constant difficulty.

His father was standing outside the princ.i.p.al entrance; and, as he joined him on the steps, he saw two men from the _Nautilus_ carrying his s.h.i.+p's desk by the beckets let in the ends. The wind was blowing gently up Pleasant Street; the men, at his gesture, lifted their burden up the steps, between the direction of the wind and Jeremy Ammidon. The latter rose instantly into one of his dark rages:

"What do you mean, you d.a.m.ned packetrats--coming up a companionway to the windward of me! I'll have no whalers' habits here." He repeated discontentedly that everything on sea and land had fallen into a decline.

Others followed with a number of Korean boxes, strapped and locked with copper, and wicker baskets. A man in charge said to Gerrit Ammidon:

"The chest was left for Mr. Dunsack at the foot of Hardy Street, sir, as you ordered. The inspector sent it off complimentary with your personal things." Gerrit asked, "He didn't stop to get a whiff of it then?" The other shook his head. "Edward Dunsack asked me to s.h.i.+p it here and explained that it was only junk he was bringing home, but what it amounts to is about a case of Patna opium. He's lucky."