Wild Blood/Chapter 15

by Gordon Young

 

THE WOMAN WHO HATED MEN SPEAKS OF LOVE

CARP TAYLOR had sent a false message to Williams and had had the two passengers, who he guessed were Francis Davenant and his “daughter”—known to him as relatives whom Grahame, jealous of his isolation, did not want to see—brought ashore.

Perhaps Carp Taylor, with an itch for deviltry, didn't himself quite know what he was up to; though in also sending word to Williams that I was helping pick a crew that would go out with the ship and bring her back, there was probably at the back of his head the vague idea of rushing natives and Portuguese on board in the guise of a crew and seizing her, evening an old score, getting reward-money and renown, and also control of a valuable schooner.

There appears to be a kind of masonry among the devil's disciples that plunges them even when strangers into sullen fellowship and plot-weaving. When Davenant stepped on the landing he shook a fist at the Sally Martin and cursed Williams. In some moments then of quick speech, questions and answers, Davenant and Carp Taylor were in agreement as to what should happen to Williams.

Davenant's fury at him seemed to have displaced, for the time at least, revenge toward Grahame, whom he had sought half-way across the world.

As they came into the room I tried to stand up, with my face twisted back over my shoulder. My knees were limber and my feet heavy—from sitting so long, probably.

I threw out a steadying, groping hand and touched Davenant. He did not notice; he, almost madly, was already talking. But I jerked my hand back with the shuddering impression of having touched something snaky. Gripping the foot of Grahame's bed, I stood there, holding on tightly.

Dula and Eunice—distinct as figures from a tableau of Night and Day—were side by side. Eunice trembled and on her face was a frozen look of fearfulness. She was frightened but baffled too.

The evil that the world has in it was abruptly appearing before her. She did not understand, but she was afraid; also dazed by many surprising things. She held on to Dula's arm, and Dula's fingers were pressed reassuringly against the fragile hand that held her arm.

Eunice had met them at the door. Carp Taylor had tried to make some kind of introduction—something awkward about being “relatives”—and Dula had glided forward with hands out, saying:

“I am your sister!”

Laulai had at first thought Eunice was a woman with no tongue, one that couldn't speak. She was so silent.

Eunice did not believe it, of course; or more likely did not think of disbelieving it, of taking it literally. Her utter loneliness of life would have made any woman of her own race endearingly welcome and given her the dazed impression of the miraculous.

It would probably never have occurred to her to follow the men into her father's room. But she followed Dula. She knew, perhaps psychically, that Dula was strong and wise. For all of the forced blooming of the tropics, Eunice was little more than a child, and a handful of dirt spread out on an oceanic mountain had been her world. When a woman is utterly innocent she has little left besides the urge to be loved, guided, sheltered, and an eagerness to trust.

Dula stood there alert, tense, her eyes on Grahame in a fascinated sort of way—her whole being concentrated in a kind of agonized suspense as to what he would reply to Davenant. And as I remember her through the shifting haze that dings to that room her attitude was not that of some one awaiting a decision so much as that of some one withholding judgment.

Davenant, as he came into the room, with a sweep of his hand had seemed to discard all the hate between him and Grahame. At least that was his offer in words as he cut interruptingly through the awkward effort at some kind of explanation begun by Carp Taylor.

Williams was to be caught and Davenant was to be given the right to kill him. Those were the terms of the peace offer flung impassionedly at Grahame. Davenant took it for granted that Grahame was not only wishful on any terms of wiping out the grudge between them, but that he would be eager to end Hurricane Williams.

The shock of surprise, that put a quite stupid expression on Grahame's face when the door had opened, rapidly gave way to a look of absorbed interest. Then his two thin, wasted hands stroked the drooping mustache, pulling the ends back along the lines of his prominent jawbone.

He grinned. He laughed. For the length of such a moment as a gambler feels while the dice are falling, I could not tell what that laugh meant—whether pleased acquiescence or pleased scorn.

A second later and there was no doubt. He was jeering at Davenant.

Grahame spoke. His voice was hoarse and strained and evilly gleeful. Williams? Williams was the one man left on earth to have his friendship.

I glanced toward the women. Eunice's face was covered with distress; nothing could have seemed further from reason than what she was hearing her father say.

Dula leaned forward. Her dark face was aglow. Incredulous, amazed, she pressed the closed fingers of one hand to her cheek as if to grip back her delight.

Oh-ho-ho! Did Davenant's flesh still hurt from the bitter caress of hemp? To be beaten like a dog—and he the son of a marquis!

Then came curses and a tumult of broken sentences, scarcely connected phrases, as Grahame told of the things he could not forget—things much the fresher in his mind for having just rehearsed them to me.

Sick, drunk, feverish, he was burning up the very marrow of his bones to say what he wanted to say in that half-hour's supreme revenge on an old enemy that came with a truce on his lips. Strange; but though drunk, feverish, there was a cold sardonic strain in Grahame's fury, due no doubt to the exalted sense of triumph.

“Grahame,” Davenant had said excitedly, “we cross our score from the books—by-gones wiped out— I want the life of that Williams— These hands shall drip with his blood—! You know, Winwood Grahame, when I want a man's life not God himself can keep me from getting it! Shall I let that dog live?

“Get him on shore, Grahame. Get him on shore. After all, we ought to be friends, Grahame. You and I—— And I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't rest, I can't die, till that dog has been drowned in his own blood at my feet! Grahame, I swear to forget everything between us——

“After all, we're of a family, Winwood. You never liked me, and I hated you for that—— But I'll go back to London. Don't you see all I want in this life or in the next is the whine for pity in my ears from that dog, as he dies?”

It was then Grahame had laughed and begun to speak. And before he had finished he had said Williams was a man; that he would trust Williams.

“If you hate him, you devil-born snake, he is my friend. He can have my ships, my money, my land, my island.

“Wipe out any of my score with you! I've lived wickedly as I could just to be sure of hell, where I can rake coals over you, you black-hearted, double-tongued, venomous spider.

“Williams—I'm going to make Williams my friend so there will be something more than old ruffian blackbirders and Portuguese to look after Dakaru when I'm dead!”

Afterward I found my hands were cramped—so tightly I had gripped, hanging on, the foot of the bed.

I remember assuring myself in the pause after Grahame stopped that it wasn't so—none of it—nothing of it, possibly except the rum, which was Jamaican in flavor and always treacherous.

Also, part of the time the room swayed and heaved like a ship in long swells. And though everything seemed to be taking place at a distance, a great distance off, as things do on the stage or in dreams, I saw and heard perfectly. The trouble was that I couldn't be sure that it happened just as I saw it. There are times when a man isn't sure of the things he sees and hears. I stared hard and saw clearly, but the picture was jumbled and for a little while not believable.

Why should Grahame have thrown himself back, his body writhing under the brown-stained coverlet, his lean fingers tearing at his breast, and his face twisted as if fighting with somebody, when nobody had touched him?

Dula swiftly reached him—and I gasped. But she did not strike. There was no knife in her hands. She talked to him rapidly. She was not angry.

It was hard to catch what she said, for Eunice was crying, with her eyes open; and sobbing something too. The innocent are always helpless in the midst of evil, being truly meant for Heaven rather than for earth. She stood twisting her slender, transparent fingers, almost choking herself with:

“Poor, poor father! What is wrong? Oh, dear God!”

Davenant was motionless; and there seemed to be nothing to him but eyes—like a basilisk, a basilisk that had been in some way terribly surprised and angered. I once saw a madman, and his eyes were like that; only Davenant's did not roll or move. Just glared.

From a long way off there were shouts, indistinct, excited. I thought at first that it was Carp Taylor shouting, and that his voice in some weird way was barely reaching me. He had Davenant's arm. Both hands were on Davenant's arm.

When I understood his words at all they were close enough, though a little muffled by his beard and thick tongue and the effort not to have what he said go beyond Davenant's ears. But Taylor was agitated.

“Bide your time. We'll get 'im. Grahame? He's drunk an' crazy. 'Nother spell of his heart.”

People were excited away off some place. The shouts came faintly. I heard because my ears in a kind of trance-like daze were straining to catch words from wherever they fell.

“Father ”

That was not Eunice's voice.

I leaned swayingly over the bed.

“—I am sorry—I am sorry. Oh, God, how I have thought wrong of you!”

Grahame was lying back, quiet now. His trembling arms lifted with effort toward Dula's low-bent face. But her face was too far away—probably swimming in the distance before his dulled eyes. He was breathing with his mouth open, heavily, wearily.

Dula put her hands to his face, but his jaw fell away again. She stroked his forehead and cheeks, and when her hands were withdrawn his eyes were closed and his mouth, too.

“Sh-h,” said Dula to Eunice, who was about to throw herself across the bed, weeping. “He's asleep.”

I came out of my trance-like condition with a start. My hair stood up, or tried to. The rest of me could not move.

Davenant, on his way toward the door, for the first time seemed to notice me. His were at that moment the eyes that petrify. His bearded lips curled back. The clenched white teeth showed in a grimace meant for a smile.

“I'll kill you—now!” he hissed in a fearful, low, almost confidential whisper.

His hand struck down to his belt, but it did not come out with a knife. The door opened in his face, and Hurricane Williams stood in the doorway. I won't be more glad to see the angel that comes down into hell with my pardon written in mother's tears, signed by God.

Now it was one thing for a man to say that he couldn't rest or sleep or eat, or anything like that, until Williams was dead. It was another and very different thing to stand to his face and try to kill him. Practically all the blows ever struck at Williams came from behind.

His face was hard then, even harder, more severe in line and bronze-like, than was usual. His eyes could outstare a basilisk.

Davenant drew back unsteadily. Williams gave him no more than a glance. No more than a glance went to Carp Taylor. His eyes paused on my face, and burned; I was drunk again.

Carp Taylor plucked Davenant by the arm, and they went out.

Williams looked at Dula, then at Grahame, then at Dula and said:

“You had better wake him. The Friedrich is in the offing.”

That was how we were trapped at Dakaru. The Friedrich had cannon, steam and fourscore men thereabouts. There was no escaping her.

Captain Lumholtz had stopped at Apia and displayed his prisoner. He was indubitably recognized as nothing like Hurricane Williams. So Shaylor's version of the story was at last really believed.

Captain Lumholtz, furious, returned to Lelela. The Sally Martin had gone. There was a set-to with the natives. Much of the village was burned. European chancelleries eventually heard that there had been a native war at Lelela, and that sailors from the Friedrich landed to protect German interests. It was the usual explanation—only the agitation started at Lelela led some years later to real native wars. The upshot of the affair was that the Germans with a combination of cunning and bluff ultimately secured possession of both Upolu and Savaii—the richest and largest islands.

The Friedrich had hastened on toward Dakaru, struck the southern tip of the island and come north along the coast to Grahame's harbor. That was how she chanced to be almost on top of Williams before being seen.

“The gunboat!” Dula exclaimed in a low voice, coming anxiously toward him.

Williams's eyes met hers, and in hers were alarm, tenderness, a caressing anxiety.

“Can you get away?” she asked breathlessly.

At the same time she was very close to him and made a little gesture as if to put her hands on him. Then she drew them back. I don't think she noticed at all what she was doing with her hands. The urge to touch him was strong. For that one moment the urge was repressed by the forces of hesitancy that dwell in women to keep them modest, or what is thought to be modest.

“I don't know,” he said, his eyes very narrow.

It was too late to try to take out a ship. Besides the Friedrich had steam. May the curse of all good deep-water seamen fall on him who first put boilers into ships and gave a brute with a shovel place over bold sailormen who straddle the yard and grip the leech.

“Wake him,” Williams said. “He ought to meet her. The German is wild. I'm taking to the hills. I came for McGuire.”

“Watch out for Davenant! Oh, please! But he”—she put her hand toward Grahame; her eyes did not leave Williams's face—“he was magnificent! He said——”

The boom of guns, reverberantly crashing, came upon us. The Germans, right at the mouth of the harbor, had sent a broadside into the Sally Martin. She was deserted. There was no reason for the broadside except that the Friedrich was very angry with her and had cannon. The poor Sally Martin was sadly shattered between wind and water.

Williams turned abruptly. “Come, McGuire.”

I moved a little unsteadily. I could walk all right, but probably from standing still so long my feet had grown a bit awkward.

Eunice, with her hands to her ears, collapsed trembling into a chair.

Dula caught at Williams's arm.

Then there was revealed the woman within her, that mystic woman that had seemed to lurk under the black cloak, lined with crimson; that had nestled in the shadows behind the curtains of eyes, dark and impenetrable. How scant the line between crime and love; and often the line is erased. Her potentiality for either was great. It takes something of the recklessness of crime for a woman to break through the instinctive hesitancy of her sex and speak as Dula spoke—of love, to Hurricane Williams. I knew her; with an inner sheltered vanity I felt that I knew her as no man alive knew her; and I was not surprised at the way she spoke.

From that night in the shack at Turkee when I, drunk, had thrust a wavering candle to her face and stood fascinated, I had not doubted that she would do whatever she wanted to do; and her love of Hurricane Williams had not been hidden. She would leave no way for him to be unaware of it. She even had had me confess for her to murder; which was scarcely less daring than the deed itself. Somehow both deed and vicarious confession seemed far from her at that hour; as far removed as the chill, Satanic beauty that had thrilled me shiveringly in the flickering candlelight, when I first saw her. Beauty she now had, too; but it was softer, not cruel. Her face was suffused with an anxious tenderness.

How when a leopard can not change his spots can woman so change? It may be that within them they do not change, but only cast off cloaks, draw back curtains. The hearts of all of them perhaps are as the alabaster box broken above the head of Christ. I doubt not but that He who knows all things, knows the inmost hearts of the wicked and loves them for what they might be if ever their hearts were struck open, as was the alabaster box of precious ointment of spikenard.

“Whom else,” I have asked bitterly of myself, “but some man fierce and stern could have struck fire from her—taught in the nursery to kiss a knife over which curses had been said?”

The very iron and flinty mold that gave her disturbing fear lest he could not be moved, made her love him. And now her hour had come for speaking out, even to his face. Some psychic sense may have warned her that what is put off to the morrow may not always be done. Perhaps too the great fear that his last chance of escape from Dakaru was utterly lost increased the eager tension to have done with doubts.

Her face, its strange irregular outline framed by the downward coils of hair, so black as to have something of a raven's sheen, was aglow with daring as she looked up and said with sweet and low inflections, clear but almost whispering:

“I love you, Hurricane Williams. Am I without shame for having told you in a hundred ways? And now I use the words: I love you. Something made me nearly love you when I first heard of you. And you were so like what I wanted you to be when I first saw you—so unlike what I had feared, Hurricane Williams.

“I love the very name! Oh, I shall blush to remember this minute, but I shall blush without shame. I love you—I love you—I love you! And oh, I am afraid for you!

“Gra—my father—he is my father!—he was wonderful. All the prayers of all the saints can not relieve me of my sorrow for the way I hated him. I will waken him. He's worn out. He will help you no matter what.”

I hated Hurricane Williams at that moment. I could have forgiven him—and her too—if he had swept her into his arms. I don't know what I would have forgiven them for; but there would have been forgiveness anyhow. He did not fling her away—there would never have been forgiveness then. But he was like a man fleshed with bronze. He scarcely moved. He did not turn from her. He did not draw his arm away.

He looked from her to Grahame. His eyes paused steadily, searchingly, on Grahame's face and seemed to be looking far beyond the death-like mask of the man that lay there.

With the nearest thing to softness that ever came into his voice he said, interrupting her:

“No. Don't try to waken him. That will be best. Let him sleep—sleep.”

He stopped, but he had not finished. Dula, as she had said, shameless, had her hands on his breast. She stood close to him and waited, her cheeks on fire, her eyes brightly eager.

“First there must be a fight out there.” He motioned slightly. “Then I will come back.”

“You will come back to me?” she whispered. Her hands reached caressingly to his burned, leathern face.

“I will come back,” he repeated evenly.

She did not seem to notice what little that really promised. She saw only the promise, and read it by the flame of her desire.

“Kiss me! Kiss me! Oh, kiss me and kill me. … That's how I love you!” She put his unresisting arm around her and with tiptoed tenseness, her dark eyes burning hungrily, reached up—waiting—to him.

Then the rattle of rifles, shouts, cries. He turned from her as if snapped by a spring.

“McGuire!”

His hand caught my shoulder. I was almost flung through the door; and it closed on something like a sob—as a woman of great thirst might sob when she pressed lips to a glass, suddenly empty.

I hung back stubbornly, his hand on my wrist gripping like a manacle, riveted.

“Stop till I tell you, Skipper. I'm not drunk—I've Heard things. What's an old gunboat and Germans! Listen to me. Grahame——”

The way he said it left no doubt. The way he knew I never thought. The words fell slowly—“Grahame is dead.”