"When he came in he merely said, "A jar of wind.
""A jar of wind!" Mrs. Fleming mocked him. The knock came again as she spoke. Once, twice, then the light tap: I have described Gideon"s knock.
We did not pretend again it was the wind.
""You go this time;" Fleming tried to laugh. "See if there is anything doing."
"There was nothing doing whatever, and nothing to be seen. I turned on the electrics outside, and Fleming, seeing the light, came out to join me. I asked him if those were his tracks--a man"s footsteps could be seen printed in the fresh, light snow as far as the lowest step and back. All beyond, where the light streamed down the path to the gate, was sky-fresh snow softly laid without wind. "Those are my tracks," he said. "There were no others before--sure," he repeated, "and there is no one down at the gate. You need not go down there. Say nothing to her,"
he continued as we re-opened the door.
"She was expecting us. She was very pale but half smiling, braving it out. She fixed her eyes on Fleming and then on me. "Did you not _both_ hear that knock?" As she spoke it came again. I stood nearest the door; I hurled it open. Absolutely nothing. The lights, burning in a silly way, made shadows on the steps. Not a mark, not even a leaf-track on the path we could see below.
"I went over to the telephone and called up the post-office. What happened at the house in absence I do not know. I found the drawing-room empty; Fleming joined me coming from his wife"s room.
""She is fearfully upset by that knocking," he said. "Can"t we think up some explanation?"
"I feared he would have less courage for inventing explanations after what I had to tell him.
"I had followed the track of a horse and cart to the stable and found Gideon"s old mare at her hitching-post; the cart was empty, the muddy lap-robe dragging over the wheel. At the post-office they told me Gideon had started for the mine an hour and a half ago. "Hasn"t he got out there with that telegram yet?" they added. From the telegraph office, where they knew Gideon"s hours, they had sent a message across to the post-office to be carried out by him with the mail. The voice on the telephone remarked, "I guess they ought to get that wire pretty soon. It was marked _Important."_
"Fleming was cold and shaking as he listened. "Drive back along the road through the woods, Joshua"--he seldom called me by that name. "I think something has happened to the old man. His knock is on duty tonight, but where is he?"
"It came again, and following it a low cry from pa.s.sage behind closed doors. "She heard it too," said Fleming. And he went to his wife.
"I called up the landing-man to help me--Tommy Briscoe; I knew he wouldn"t spread any talk about. The search was not long. A lantern burning by itself in the woods showed us where he had stopped the cart and half turned and tramped around in the snow. He"d dropped the bag out, probably, missed it and looked for it on foot, setting his lantern down. He"d gone back quite a bit along the road, and, coming back with it, the light in his eyes, he had made a misstep, and the shaft--the old Granite Hill shaft, you know--it"s close to the road. We found him in the sump at the bottom. There had been too much rain, but it is a deep shaft anyway. He kept his hold on the bag, and he kept his senses long enough to hook it onto a poor little stray pine-root above the water, where he died. It was a cruel death, but his face was good to look at."
"And the telegram?" I asked.
"It was safe. He"d saved everything, except himself. They were driven over to Colfax that night, with not a moment to spare----"
"But you haven"t told me what it was."
"The message? Yes, it was from her, Constance--sent from an address in the city. It said--I suppose I may repeat it. It is part of the night"s work.
""Come to me, mother," it said. "I am here. I need you.""
"And they were in time?"
"To bid her good-by," said Joshua. "There was no hope for her but in death. Of course, they never explained. She simply fled from--we don"t know what. As long as she could she bore it without complaint, and then she came home. She had them both with her and she knew them.
"I believe they were willing to give her up. It was the only solution left. They were very fixed in their ideas about divorce, and what comes after. They believed in staking all or nothing and abiding the result.
The logic of her choice was death. They saw her free, without a stain, without an obligation in this life even to her child, for it lay dead beside her. They did grieve for that. They wanted it to live. It would have been something--yet, I believe, even that was best.
"They lived on here for a while, if you call it living; but the silence in these rooms was more than she could endure. And I need not tell you that the watchman, who was put on after Gideon, had orders to leave that knocker alone."
"And you think," I asked, "that while Gideon lay dead at the bottom of the shaft, his knock was "marching on"?" I regretted instantly the turn of my last sentence. Joshua stiffened as he replied:
"No; I cannot a.s.sert that he was dead, but I am convinced that what was left of him, of his mortal--or immortal--consciousness, was not concerned with himself. What may happen to us at that last boundary post is one of the mysteries no man can solve till he gets there."
"Joshua," I said, "the drift of your conclusion is a tribute to Gideon"s faithfulness--well deserved I have no doubt. But if you"ll allow me to say so, it is not a tribute to the healthy state of your mind. I regret to say it, but I fear that I agree with you: I think you have lived in this house too long."
"If I had lived here too long for any other reason," he answered gently, "enough has been said. It is better we should understand each other.
But, as to my mind--I prefer to keep it unhealthy, if by that you mean the tendency to project it a little further than reason, founded on such laws of the universe as we know, can help us. Healthy minds are such as accept things--endeavor to forget what gives immeasurable pain. I prefer the pain."
A YELLOW MAN AND A WHITE
BY
ELEANOR GATES
Reprinted from _Scribner"s Magazine_ of June, 1905 by permission
FONG WU sat on the porch of his little square-fronted house, chanting into the twilight. Across his padded blouse of purple silk lay his _sam-yen_ banjo. And as, from time to time, his hymn to the Three Pure Ones was prolonged in high, fine quavers, like the uneven, squeaky notes of a woman"s voice, he ran his left hand up the slender neck of the instrument, rested a long nail of his right on its taut, snake"s-skin head, and lightly touched the strings; then, in quick, thin tones, they followed the song to Sang-Ching.
The warm shadows of a California summer night were settling down over the wooded hills and rocky gulches about Fong Wu"s, and there was little but his music to break the silence. Long since, the chickens had sleepily sought perches in the hen yard, with its high wall of rooty stumps and shakes, and on the branches of the Digger pine that towered beside it. Up the dry creek bed, a mile away, twinkled the lights of Whiskeytown; but no sounds from the homes of the white people came down to the lonely Chinese. If his clear treble was interrupted, it was by the cracking of a dry branch as a cottontail sped past on its way to a stagnant pool, or it was by a dark-emboldened coyote, howling, dog-like, at the moon which, white as the snow that eternally coifs the Sierras, was just rising above their distant, cobalt line.
One year before, Fong Wu, heavily laden with his effects, had slipped out of the stage from Redding and found his way to a forsaken, ramshackle building below Whiskeytown. His coming had proved of small interest. When the news finally got about that "a monkey" was living in "Sam Kennedy"s old place," it was thought, for a while, that laundering, thereafter, would be cheaply done. This hope, however, was soon dispelled. For, shortly after his arrival, as Fong Wu asked at the grocery store for mail, he met Radigan"s inquiry of "You do my washee, John?" with a grave shake of the head. Similar questions from others were met, later, in a similar way. Soon it became generally known that the "monkey at Sam Kennedy"s" did not do washing; so he was troubled no further.
Yet if Fong Wu did not work for the people of Whiskeytown, he was not, therefore, idle. Many a sunrise found him wandering through the chaparral thickets back of his house, digging here and there in the red soil for roots and herbs. These he took home, washed, tasted, and, perhaps, dried. His mornings were mainly spent in cooking for his abundantly supplied table, in tending his fowls and house, and in making spotless and ironing smooth various undergarments--generous of sleeve and leg.
But of an afternoon, all petty duties were laid aside, and he sorted carefully into place upon his shelves numerous little bunches and boxes of dried herbs and numerous tiny phials of pungent liquid that had come to him by post; he filled wide sheets of foolscap with vertical lines of queer characters and consigned them to big, plainly addressed, well-stamped envelopes; he scanned closely the last newspapers from San Francisco, and read from volumes in divers tongues, and he poured over the treasured Taoist book, "The Road to Virtue."
Sunday was his one break in the week"s routine. Then, the coolies who panned or cradled for gold in tailings of near-by abandoned mines, gathered at Fong Wu"s. On such occasions, there was endless, lively chatter, a steady exchange of barbering--one man sc.r.a.ping another clean, to be, in turn, made hairless in a broad band about the poll and on cheek and chin--and much consuming of tasty chicken, dried fish, pork, rice, and melon seeds. To supplement all this, Fong Wu recounted the news: the arrival of a consul in San Francisco, the raid on a slave--or gambling-den, the progress of a tong war under the very noses of the baffled police, and the growth of Coast feeling against the continued, quiet immigration of Chinese. But of the social or political affairs of the Flowery Kingdom--of his own land beyond the sea--Fong Wu was consistently silent.
Added to his Sunday responsibilities as host and purveyor of news, Fong Wu had others. An ailing countryman, whether seized with malaria or suffering from an injury, found ready and efficient attention. The bark of dogwood, properly cooked, gave a liquid that killed the ague; and oil from a diminutive bottle, or a red powder whetted upon the skin with a silver piece, brought out the soreness of a bruise.
Thus, keeping his house, herb-hunting, writing, studying, entertaining, doctoring, Fong Wu lived on at Whiskeytown.
Each evening, daintily manipulating ivory chopsticks, he ate his supper of rice out of a dragon-bordered bowl. Then, when he had poured tea from a pot all gold-encrusted--a cl.u.s.ter of blossoms nodding in a vase at his shoulder the while--he went out upon the porch of the square-fronted house.
And there, as now, a scarlet-b.u.t.toned cap on his head, his black eyes soft with dreaming, his richly wrought sandals tapping the floor in time, his long queue--a smooth, shining serpent--in thick coils about his tawny neck, Fong Wu thrummed gently upon the three-stringed banjo, and, in peace, chanted into the twilight.
Flying hoofs scattered the gravel on the strip of road before Fong Wu"s.
He looked through the gloom and saw a horse flash past, carrying a skirted rider toward Whiskeytown. His song died out. He let his banjo slip down until its round head rested between his feet. Then he turned his face up the gulch.
Despite the dusk, he knew the traveler: Mrs. Anthony Barrett, who, with her husband, had recently come to live in a house near Stillwater. Every evening, when the heat was over, she went by, bound for the day"s mail at the post-office. Every evening, in the cool, Fong Wu saw her go, and sometimes she gave him a friendly nod.
Her mount was a spirited, mouse-dun mustang, with crop-ears, a roached mane, and the back markings of a mule. She always rode at a run, sitting with easy erectness. A wide army hat rested snugly on her fair hair, and shaded a white forehead and level-looking eyes. But notwithstanding the sheltering brim, on her girlish face were set the glowing, scarlet seals of wind and sun.
As he peered townward after her, Fong Wu heard the hurrying hoof-beats grow gradually fainter and fainter--and cease. Presently the moon topped the pines on the foot-hills behind him, bathing the gulch in light. The road down which she would come sprang into view. He watched its farthest open point. In a few moments the hoof-beats began again. Soon the glint of a light waist showed through the trees. Next, horse and rider rounded a curve at hand. Fong Wu leaned far forward.
And then, just as the mustang gained the strip of road before the square-fronted house, it gave a sudden, unlooked-for, outward leap, reared with a wild snort, and, whirling, dashed past the porch--riderless.