I looked at it, then at her steadily.
"Suzee, did your husband make that bruise?"
"Yes. He pinched me so hard in a rage with me," she said a little sulkily.
"Give me your arm," I said.
She held it out reluctantly. I looked at the bruise, then I rolled the sleeve back a little farther, and in it found a heavy gold bangle with a boss on one side corresponding with the size of the mark on the flesh.
"I think it is the gold bracelet your kind old husband gave you that you have pressed into the flesh," I said, "that has marked it. That is about what his cruelty to you amounts to." I dropped her arm contemptuously, and rose suddenly.
She had succeeded in dispelling for the moment the charm of her beauty. Her prudery, her deceit, her lies made up to me a peculiarly obnoxious mixture.
She sprang up, too, as I rose and threw herself on her knees, clasping her arms round mine so that I could not move.
"Oh Treevor, I do love you so much. You are my real master, not he. A woman loves a man who conquers her, but not by buying her. But because he is better and stronger than she. Because he has great muscles, as you have, and could kill her, and because she can"t deceive him, because he sees all her lies, as you do. Yes, Treevor, I love you now very much indeed. Come here again, kiss me again."
But somehow her pleading did not move me. The moment when I had been drawn to her had gone by, swallowed up in a feeling of disgust.
I stooped down and unlocked her hands and put her back among her cushions.
"Good-bye, Suzee, for to-day," I said. "To-morrow I will come and take you for a walk. You must let me go now. I do not want to stay any longer."
She looked at me in silence, but did not offer to move from where I had put her.
I gathered up my portfolio and left the room, went down the stairs and through the pa.s.sage and courtyard to the sun-filled street.
I went on slowly, and after a time found myself close to the church again. I went in, for the interior interested me, and found service was being held. A Russian priest, wholly in white clothing, stood before the altar, the cross light from the aisle windows falling on the long twist of fair hair that lay upon his shoulders. The whole air was full of incense that rose in white clouds to the domed roof. I sat down near the door and listened while the priest intoned a Latin hymn.
The figure of the young priest at the altar attracted me. I thought I should like a sketch of it; but I hesitated to take one of him in the church, even surrept.i.tiously, so I fixed the picture of him as he stood there on my eyes as far as I could, and then, in a convenient pause of the service, quietly slipped outside.
Near the church was a great outcrop of rock surmounted by a weather-beaten tree. In the shade thrown by these I got out a sheet of loose paper and made a sketch of the fair, long-haired priest, with the quaint frame building of the church, its green copper dome and bell tower and double gold crosses behind him.
After I had been there some time I was suddenly surprised by Morley.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "You here? Why, I thought you would be in the arms of the fair Suzee by this time."
"So I might have been," I answered, looking up from the sketch, "but I got put off somehow, so I left her and went to church instead!"
Morley burst out laughing.
"You _are_ the funniest fellow," he exclaimed, taking his seat beside me on the ground and clasping his hands round his knees. "So Suzee has offended you, has she? Do you know, I think that"s where we ordinary people get ahead of fellows like you. You are too sensitive. We"re not so particular. When I"m stuck on Mary Ann it doesn"t matter to me what she says or does. It doesn"t interfere with my happiness."
I went on painting in silence.
"Funny those chaps look with their long hair, don"t they?" he remarked after a moment, as I painted the light on the priest"s long curl.
"Very picturesque, don"t you think?" I said.
"No, I don"t," returned the Briton stoutly. "I think it"s beastly."
I laughed this time, and having completed the portrait, slipped it into my portfolio and prepared to put away my paints.
"Don"t you want any dinner?" asked Morley. "You must be hungry."
"Well, I hadn"t thought of it," I answered. "But, now you mention it, perhaps I am. Do you know of any place where one can get anything?"
"There"s one place at the end of the town where you can have soup and bread," replied Morley, and we started off to find it.
Later on, towards ten o"clock, when we were leaving the little, frame, sailors" restaurant, I looked up to the western sky and saw that strange colour in it of the Alaskan sunset that I have never found in any other sky, a bright magenta, or deep heather pink, a crude colour rather like an aniline dye, but brilliant and arresting in the clean, clear gold of the heavens.
Great ribs and bars and long flat lines of it lay all across the West.
No other cloud, no other colour appeared anywhere in the sky. It was painted in those two tints alone; the brightest magenta conceivable and living gold.
Walking back slowly to the ship, I gazed at it with interest. No other sky that I could recall ever shows this tone of colour. Pink, scarlet, rose, and all the shades of blood or flame-colour are familiar in every sunset, but this curious tint seemed to belong to Alaska alone.
I watched it glow and deepen, then fade, and softly disappear as the sun dipped below the horizon.
CHAPTER III
IN THE WOOD
The next evening, after dinner, I left the ship and made my way to Suzee"s place to take her for the promised walk.
It was just seven when I stepped ash.o.r.e, and light of the purest, most exquisite gold lay over everything. The air had that special quality of Alaska which I have never met anywhere else, an extreme humidity; it hung upon the cheek as a mist hangs, only it was clear as crystal, brilliant as a yellow diamond.
There was no wind, not a breath ruffled the stillness nor stirred the motionless blue water.
The exquisite chain of islands off the mainland was mirrored in the still, shining depths, and lifted their delicate outlines clothed with fir and larch, soft as half-forgotten dreams, against the transparent blue of the sky. Sitka was placid and restful, the streets quiet and empty as I walked along in the sunny silence.
Suzee was at the door waiting for me. She had dressed herself differently, entirely in yellow. The yellow silk of the little square jacket contrasted well with her midnight hair, and the only dash of other colour in the picture she presented was the blue stone in her earrings.
"Good evening, Treevor," she said, smiling up at me. And I bent down and pressed my lips to those little, soft, curved ones she put up for me.
We started out at once. Suzee told me we were going for a long way to see the wood, and had the important air of a person going on a lengthy expedition. She had brought a j.a.panese sunshade with her which she put up, and certainly the hot light falling through the rice-paper had a wonderfully beautiful effect on her creamy skin and soft yellow silk clothing. She walked easily, only with rather short steps. As she was of the lower cla.s.s, there had been no question of the "golden lilies"
or distortion of the feet for her, and they were small and prettily shaped, bare, save for a sort of sandal, or as the Indians call them, "guaraches," bound under the sole.
We pa.s.sed up the main street and soon after turned into a narrow winding road that leads along the coast, Sitka being on a promontory, with a beautiful azure bay running inland behind it.
Our path ran sometimes inland, through portions of wood, part of that great impenetrable primeval forest that at one time completely covered the whole of Sitka, sometimes quite on the edge of the water. Here there were rocks and boulders, and little coves of white sand and stretches of miniature beaches, with the lip of the bay resting on them.
Infinitesimal waves broke on the sunny white sand with a low musical tinkle, across the bay one could see the delicate chain of islands rising with their feathery trees into the blue, warding off the breakers and the storms of the open sea beyond. In here, the peaceful water murmured to itself and repeated tales of the beginning of the world, of the first gold dawn that broke upon the earth, and of later days, when the sombre black forests came to the water"s edge and none knew them but the great black bear, and when the seals played joyously, undisturbed, in the fog-banks off the islands. I was in the mood to appreciate deeply the beauty of the scene, and all the objects round seemed to speak to me of their inner meaning, but my companion was not at all moved by, nor interested in her surroundings. She helped to make the picture more strange and lovely as she sat by me on a rock, with her shining clothes and brilliant face under the gay sunshade, but mentally she jarred on me by her complete indifference to any influence of the scene. I almost wished I were alone here, to sit upon this tremendous sh.o.r.e and dream.
"You are dull, Treevor," she exclaimed pettishly. "You really are."