Five Nights: A Novel

by Victoria Cross

CHAPTER XI

THE WAY OF THE GODS

"But, Treevor, I am so very dull when you go out, and when you are working it is as bad. I do miss my baby so to play with."

"You did not strike me as a very devoted mother when I saw you at
Sitka," I answered.

"Oh, Treevor, he was a very fine boy, and I took so much care of him.
Was he not a very large child?"

"Yes, he certainly was, and with a dreadful voice and a furious temper. It's no use worrying me, Suzee, about the matter. I dislike children very much, and I do not wish nor intend to have any of my own."

Suzee began to cry in the easy way she had. She seemed able to commence and leave off just when she chose.

"You are a little goose," I said jestingly. "You don't know when you are well off. For months and months you would be ill and disfigured, unable to come about with me or be my companion, unable to sit to me for my painting, and afterwards the child would be an unendurable tie and burden. Besides, as I say, I have an intense dislike to children and could never live with one anywhere near me. I am afraid, if you want them, you must go away from me, to some one who has your views."

Suzee came over to where I was sitting and knelt beside my chair, clasping both hands round my arm.

"Treevor," she said, almost in a whisper, "you are so beautiful with your straight face, every line in it is so straight, quite straight; and your black hair and your dark eyes and your dark eyebrows. I want that for my baby. I want a son just like you; he must be just like you, and then I should be so happy."

As she spoke, the lines of a poetess flashed across me, indistinctly remembered—"beauty that women seek after … that they may give to the world again."

Was this the reason of woman's love of beauty in men? Ah, not with all women! Viola loved beauty, as I did, as all artists do, as they love their art, for itself alone.

I stroked her smooth shining hair, gently, and shook my head, smiling down upon her.

"Do you not value my love for you?" I asked.

"Oh yes, yes; you know I do."

"Well, then understand this: you would utterly and entirely lose it if you became a mother."

Suzee shrank away from me.

"But why, Treevor? Hop Lee was so pleased with me…."

"Men have different tastes. And it is well they have, or the world would be worse than it is. Some men like children and domesticity and sick-nursing and childish companionship; I don't. I like health and beauty, and love and intellect about me, and women who are straight and slim and can inspire my pictures. That's why, Suzee, and I don't see any reason why I shouldn't gratify my tastes as they do theirs. There are plenty of men in the world who like being fathers of families; the world can well allow an artist to give it his art instead."

"Oh yes, Treevor, of course; but I am so sorry. I am so dull without a baby."

We were sitting together in a light balcony of one of the hotels at Tampico, and the subject of our conversation was one which had come up many times between us lately.

Some months had slipped by since the accident in the bull-ring. Suzee had recovered from the shock with a few day's rest and care, and as soon as she was better we had started on a tour through the country places of Mexico, and as it grew colder we had worked downwards to the gulf of Vera Cruz in the Tierra Caliente, or Hot Lands, and now were making a stay here on the coast, caught by the beauty of palm and sea and shore.

Suzee, though apparently she had all that most young women covet, had been for some time restless and dissatisfied, and the reason soon appeared in conversations like that of to-day.

"Come along," I said, getting up; "see what a lovely evening it is, let's go for a walk along the seashore."

Suzee looked round at the translucent green bell of the sky that hung over us, disapprovingly.

"It's always fine weather," she said, rather sulkily; "and there's nothing to see on that old shore."

"Nothing to see!" I exclaimed in sheer amazement. Then I stopped short, remembering her indifference to all I valued, and added: "There are most beautiful shells of every shape and colour, wouldn't you like to get some of those?"

Suzee's face brightened immediately. This idea took her fancy at once. It appealed to her keen love of material things. Beauty in air and sky was nothing to her; but something she could pick up and handle, become possessed of, like the shells, deeply interested her. She rose at once.

"I had better take a basket, Treevor," she said, "to carry them back in." And while she went to get it, I leant over the balcony-rail musing on that great difference in character between woman and woman, man and man. Humanity might almost be divided into those two great parts—those who love and live in ideas; and those who love, and are wholly concerned with, material things.

She came back in a moment with a basket swinging in her hand. It had not seemed so necessary here in Mexico that she should dress in Western clothes, so she had gradually relapsed into her gaily coloured silks and embroidered muslins and Zouave jackets. This style of dressing suited the tropical climate, and the convenances of Europe and America were too far off for anything to matter much here. It gave her constant occupation, too, the making of her costumes; for she was marvellously quick and dexterous with her needle, and if I gave her the silks she fancied she made them into dainty forms and embroidered them with the greatest skill. As she came back now with her basket the light fell softly on her lilac silk, all worked with gold thread, and on her pretty bare head with its block of black shining hair.

We started for the shore, Suzee all animation now and chattering on the possibility of sewing sea-shells into gold tissue or muslin.

The sky all round and overhead was palest green and strangely luminous, the sea before us stretched to the far horizon in tones of gentlest mauve and violet, beneath our feet was the firm brown sand for miles and miles unrolled like a glossy, sepia carpet. On one side broke the tiny waves in undulating lines of white; on the other, the wild sand-dunes, grown over with rough grass and waving cocoanut palms, came down towards the sea.

We walked on, both contented. I, in the strange colouring and the warm salt breath in the air, that stirred the palm leaves till they tossed joyfully in it; she, in the absorbing pursuit of the shells which lay along the sand, positively studding it, like jewels, with colour. The tide had recently gone down over the shore where we walked and left them radiant, gleaming with moisture in the low light of the sun, pink and scarlet, deepest purple and gold. She ran ahead of me, picking them up and filling her basket rapidly. I walked on slowly, thinking, while my eyes wandered over that shining, palpitating, gently heaving violet sea. She had given herself to me entirely—and what beauty she had to give! And yet she had failed to chain me to her in any way, greatly though she pleased my senses. It is, after all, something in the soul of a woman, in her inner self, that has the power of throwing an anchor into our soul and holding it captive. Mere beauty throws its anchor into the flesh, and after a time the flesh gives way.

In a little while Suzee came running back to me; her basket was full to overflowing: she was quite happy.

"Take me up in your arms and kiss me," she said. "Look, Treevor, we are all alone. What a great, great beach it is here, with not another soul to see anywhere."

As she said, the firm brown plain of glistening sand stretched behind us and before us with not another footfall to disturb its silence, the wide white sand-dunes were deserted, the palms tossed their greeting to the sea through the glory of calm evening light.

"Let us lie under those palms now; I am tired," she said as I kissed her. And we went together and lay down under the palms on a ragged tussock of grass, and the light fell and grew deeper in tone round us and the amethystine sea, flushed with colour, swayed and heaved, murmuring its low eternal song by our side.

A great vulture flapped heavily by and perched on a sand-hill not far from us, eyeing us somewhat askance, and some sea-gulls circled over us—otherwise we were undisturbed.

The following day we planned to come down the river Tamesi, which flows out at Tampico. We could not go up by boat, as the river was in flood and nothing could make headway against it, but the natives were adepts at steering a boat down with the rapid current, and knew how to handle it on the top of the flood.

We took the train some distance up the line, and alighted at a place where the river flowed by between high banks and where boats could be had from the villagers.

It was a perfect, cloudless day, and we reached our destination in the sweet fresh early hours of the morning. A walk through the tiny Mexican village brought us to the bank of the river where the Tamesi flowed by, heavily, grandly, in all the majesty of its flood.

The waters were brown and discoloured, but the sun glinting on its ripples turned them into gold, and the tamarisk on the bank drooped over it, letting its long strands float on the gliding water.

A little way down the bank, moored to the side, rocked a boat, of which the outline delighted me, and, to Suzee's annoyance, I stood still and drew out my note-book to make a sketch of it.

It appeared to be the larger half of one immense tree of which the inside had all been hollowed out, both ends were raised and pointed and, in the centre, four bent bamboo poles, inclined together, supported a finely plaited wicker-work screen, which shielded a patch about two yards square in the boat from the burning rays of the sun.

I finished the sketch in a few minutes, and we went on towards the boat; its owners, two Mexican Indians, were sitting on the bank engaged in mending one of their paddles. They were quite naked except for their loin cloths, and their bare, brown crouching figures gave the last touch of suggested savagery to the scene. The red, earthy banks of the river stretched before us desolate and sunburnt; the swollen, muddy river itself rolled swiftly and heavily along, silent, impressive; the dug-out, looking like a craft of primeval times, rocked and swayed noiselessly on the flood; the naked savages crouched over their broken paddle beneath the waving tamarisk; the sunlight fell torrid, blighting in its scorching heat, over all. The scene, with its rough, fresh, vigorous barbarism, delighted me. I slackened my pace and stood still again before disturbing or interrupting the men.

"Suzee," I said suddenly, "I admire this picture before us immensely. I should like to see it in the Academy to cheer up jaded Londoners next season. I should be glad to stop here to-day to paint it. We can go down the river to-morrow."

Suzee stared at me in dismay.

"Oh, Treevor, you don't want to stay here all day, do you? It's so hot, and there's nothing to do, and, we shall miss the fair at Tampico to-night. You promised we should see it"

I sighed. It was true, I had said something about the fair, but I had forgotten it. Suzee, however, never forgot things of this sort and she radically objected to any change being made in a programme. She did not adapt herself quickly and easily to changed moods or circumstances.

Had Viola been with me, she would have said at once:

"Would you like to stay here instead of going on? Do let's stay, then. We can go down the river any time." And had I suggested there would be nothing for her to do, she would have answered:

"Oh yes, I shall enjoy sitting watching you." Her interest had always lain in me, in her companion; to what we did she was indifferent; provided we were together and I was pleased, she was content. It is just this difference in women that makes it so delightful to live with some, so impossible to live with others. There are some, very few, of whom Viola was one, who delight in the society of the man they love, who drink in pleasure for themselves from his enjoyment; there are others, like Suzee, the majority, who are always at conflict with his wishes in little things, striving after some independent aim or project.

And they wonder why, after a time, their companionship grows irksome and they are deserted. They also wonder why sometimes the other woman is adored and worshipped and grows into the inner life of a man till he cannot exist without her.

I felt then an extraordinary longing to be free from Suzee, to be alone. Here was a picture, set ready to my hand. A scene we had come upon accidentally and that, in its barbaric simplicity, was not easily to be found again. It was strong, striking, original. I saw it before my mind's eyes on the canvas already, with "On the Tamesi, Mexico" written on the margin.

How could she ask me to lose it? But I could not break my word, as she chose to keep me to it.

I said nothing, and, after a pause of keen disappointment, I walked slowly on again towards the boat.

The men were Indians, but they understood a little Spanish and I bargained with them to take us down to Tampico where we should arrive about seven the same evening, in time for the fruit-market and general fair held in the Plaza.

They were glad enough to take us as they were going down in any case with a load of bananas and our fares would pay them well for the extra space we took up in the boat.

They hauled the dug-out to the bank and jumped in, clearing it of old fruit baskets and arranging some rugs and mats under the shade of the wicker screen. Behind that, to the stem, the boat was filled with the rich yellow of the bananas, the ruddy pink of the plantains, and mellow, translucent orange of the mangoes. They lay there in great heaps, leaving only just space enough for the stem paddler to stand.

The men motioned us to get in, which we did, and took our seats cross-legged in the centre on the mats, beneath the awning; glad of its shade, for the sun's rays grew fiercer every moment.

I put my unused sketch-pad behind me, gazing back regretfully over the yellow flood. The men pushed the boat out on to the waters and sprang in themselves, each armed with a long paddle; one taking his stand in front of us, one at the stern, and directed our little craft to the centre of the huge and sullen stream. It rolled from side to side as it shot out over the surface, but as soon as the men got their paddles to work, evenly with long alternate strokes, the flood bore us along, swiftly, smoothly, the dug-out floating steadily without rocking.

The men stood, alert and watchful, on the lookout for submerged trees and floating débris; for at the swift rate we were now floating, any collision would have brought great danger.

I leant back, watching the banks pass swiftly by, mile upon mile of red earth and waving tamarisk under the scorching blue. Suzee seemed more interested in the stalwart figure of our forward boatman and the play of his fine muscles under the smooth brown skin of his shoulders where the sun struck them.

Had I loved her more I should have been angry; as it was, I was only amused, and glad of anything that occupied her attention and relieved me of the necessity of listening and replying to her childish chatter.

How fast the boat sped on over the surface of the whirling stream that rushed by those red banks, swift as the flash of life, hurrying on to lose itself in the ocean as life hurries on to lose itself in the infinite.

The banks were getting flatter, here and there the stream widened, the wild tamarisk, child of the desert, disappeared and gave way to cultivated fields and wide tracts of the maguey plant, dear and valuable to the Mexican as the date-palm to the East-Indian. Rough yellow adobe huts stood here and there, their crude colouring of unbaked mud turned into gold by that great painter, the tropical sun; and sometimes a palm stood by a hut, cutting the fierce light blue of the sky with its delicate, fine, curved, drooping branches; sometimes the dark, glossy green of the organ cactus rose like jade pillars beside it. All these sped by us quickly, though at times the scene was so engaging I could have held it with my eyes; but ruthlessly we were whirled forward and the scenes on the bank kept slipping behind us, just as our dearest scenes and incidents in life keep slipping past, swallowed up by the ever-pursuing distance.

Our red banks had been growing flatter and flatter and now they seemed to disappear, and the river instantly broadened itself out and spread into a lake, as if glad of the expansion. Over each bank, far on either side, it rolled itself out in great shining flats of water, glittering and dazzling, impossible to look at in this hour of noon; and as if tranquillity had come to it with its greater freedom, the river flowed more slowly and gently.

Our boatmen stood at ease at their paddles, pushing quietly along, and I looked round with interest. We were in the centre of a great lake in which here and there submerged trees and bushes made green islands. An endless lake it seemed, a great waste of gleaming water. We floated along gently like this for some time, and then almost suddenly when I looked ahead, I saw the end of the lake was closing in, there were woods and forests now upon its margin; a few more strokes of the paddle and we were in shade, heavy, cool shade, where the water gleamed with a bronze shimmer. Narrower still the lake end became, the margins drew together, and with a swift push forwards, like the bolt of a rabbit to its hole, our boat shot forwards into a little tunnel of darkness before us over which the interlacing boughs of the trees made a perfect arch. We were in the forest, and it was dark and cool as it had been brilliant, dazzling with light and heat, on the lake. A dim, green twilight reigned here, and the river went with a swift, dark rush, past the roots of the overhanging trees. How they stooped over the water! Swinging down, interlacing boughs from which vine and flowering creeper trailed. The standing figure of the boatman had to bend down and sway from side to side to avoid the clinging wreaths or mossy boughs and be wary with his paddle to escape the snags projecting from the banks.

How grand the great spanning arches of the trees were, above our heads! Finer than any cathedral roof wrought by man. How soft the luminous green twilight seemed in the long aisle! And constantly from bough to bough twined a great scarlet-flowered creeper, glowing redly in all this mystery of shade. The banks were thick with vegetation, one thing growing over another, with tropical luxuriance, until sometimes here and there groups of plants, weary with the struggle each to assert itself, had all fallen together over the bank and trailed their long strands wearily in the water.

The stream zigzagged on before us, here darkly green to blackness; there, where the light pierced through the upper boughs, a golden bronze; then blue and silver where it caught and eddied and played round a fallen tree or a stump in the river bed.

We were going fast now, and as we shot along the glimmering stream we left the thick green part of the forest behind us. The river broadened out, expanded widely on either side, and in a few more minutes we seemed on a chain of infinite lakes spreading out on every side under and through the trees, which, though they met far overhead forming a perfect and continuous roof, were bare of leaves and flowering vines beneath. Grey trunks and bare brown branches in bewildering numbers now surrounded us, and the sheets of water reflected all so perfectly down to infinite depths that one lost sense of reality. Boughs and branches, all arching and curving and spreading above us in the softened light, and boughs and branches and inverted trees below us, arches and curves and twisted networks; between, those long gleaming flats of water on which we floated silently without sense of motion, ever onwards.

"It is a little like the wood at Sitka in times of river flood," Suzee said to me, as we sat together watching the mirrored stems and branches glide by beneath our boat.

"Yes?" I answered, smiling back upon her at the remembrance of the wood.

The stream was a wide flat here, and our boatmen suddenly directed the boat to the bank and brought it to a standstill. "We want to go on land here and buy mangoes," he explained in Spanish.

"Very good mangoes can be got here."

We looked round and saw, some distance from the margin, amongst the stems of the trees standing thickly together, an adobe building, low and flat, and some figures, not much more clothed than our boatmen, squatting in front of it, counting mangoes from a great pile into baskets.

He fastened the dug-out to one of the many tree stems, drawing it close to the bank, and then he and his companion landed, leaving us alone in the lightly swaying boat.

"We'll have lunch here, Suzee, don't you think?" I asked her, beginning to unpack the small basket we had brought. "Can you make tea for us there, do you think?"

"Oh yes, quite easily; they have a little kitchen here."

In the forepart of the boat the Indians had fixed a piece of tin with a few bricks round it, forming a hearthstone and stove. On this they cooked their own food as their surrounding pots and kettles shewed. A few embers from their last cooking glowed still between the bricks. Suzee leant over them, blew them into a blaze and then set our kettle on, getting out her little cups and saucers and ranging them on the floor of the boat.

I sat back and watched her. The whole scene was a delightful one and rivalled the one I had noted at starting. The gleaming water spread itself in large flat mirrors on every side, and the trees standing in it reflected beneath, and reaching up to the lofty roof of overarching, interlaced boughs above us, gave the effect of a hall of a thousand columns. The adobe house of the fruit-seller seemed standing on a precarious island, so high had the floods risen round it, and numerous empty baskets and crates, evidently lifted from their moorings on the bank, drifted slowly about on the silvery tide. Our boat itself was a lovely object with its fairy lines, its thread of smoke going up from it, and the little Oriental figure bending over the red embers in its prow.

We lunched and had our tea in this cool retreat of softened light, and knew the sun was beating with its murderous noonday glare just without. The boatmen came back after an interval with a huge load of mangoes which they piled into the boat, and offered us sixty for five cents. I gave them the five cents and took two or three of the fruits for myself and Suzee. Then the moorings were undone, the men jumped in, and paddled us swiftly onwards. The proprietor of the adobe hut came to the edge of his grove and saluted, as we passed by on a rapid current; then he and hut and mangoes all glided from us, quickly as a dream, and we were borne forward through the wonderful maze of trees over the tranquil sheets of water.

All through the golden Mexican afternoon we descended the river, down, ever downwards, to the sea. Sometimes in the deep green shadows of overhanging trees, passing through the heart of a forest; sometimes out in the burning open beneath the clear blue of the sky, between flat plains of open country; sometimes on the breast of wide lakes; sometimes between high banks, where the boat went dizzily fast and the waters passed the paddles with a sharp hiss as we rushed on; and each of those moments was a delight to me, and even Suzee seemed affected by the beauty and the poetry of the river, for she leant against me silent and absorbed and her eyes grew soft and dreaming as the visions on the golden banks swept by; fields of sugar-cane and maguey, coffee plantations with their million scarlet berries, waving banana and palm, masses of delicate bamboo rustling as the warm breeze stirred them.

As the day melted into evening, the sky flushed a deep rosy red and seemed to hang over us like a great hollowed-out ruby glowing with crimson fires. The waterway of the river before us turned crimson, and all the ripples in it were edged and flecked with gold. The great lagoons, when we passed through them now, reflected the peace of the painted skies and the marsh lilies floating on their surface became jewels set in gold as the water eddied round them.

In half an hour the glory faded, leaving a transparent lilac sky over which the darkness closed with all the swiftness of the tropics.

As we neared the sea and the warm salt breath came up to us we saw the light over the Market Square in Tampico and the masses of soft shadow of the trees in the Plaza.

Frail, wooden boat-houses, with shaky landing-stages built out over the water, lined the banks on either side, and at one of them our boatmen suddenly drew in, and we disembarked in the soft darkness, suffused with the red light from the square and vibrating with the music from a band playing there behind the trees.

We got out and walked along the river-bank towards the seashore, where the sea lay calm and still, its black, gently heaving surface reflecting the light of the stars. Where the river debouched, there was a sheltered cove of fine white sand, and here every species of gaily painted craft was drawn up. The light from the Market Square, ablaze with lamps, reached out to it and shewed boat after boat of fantastic shape and colour, with striped awnings fixed on bamboo poles over their centre, lying in the shelter of the palm-trees that fringed the cove. We rounded the slight promontory on our left hand and came full into the light of the animated town.

The fair was in progress, and numbers of fruit-sellers from all the country round, from the adobe hut and the large hacienda, or estate, of the Mexican gentleman, alike, had brought down their load of fruit to sell in Tampico.

Not only was the Plaza itself filled to overflowing with fruit and other stalls, but they reached down almost to the shore, and very rich and Oriental the scene looked, framed in deepest shadow from the Plaza trees on one side, and the smooth, black, starlit darkness of the sea on the other.

Each stall had its own light, a bowl of flaming naphtha mounted on a bamboo pole, and the light fell over the golden fruit—mangoe, plantain, and banana piled high upon it, and also all round the vender's feet as he stood by his stall in town costume of one long white muslin robe.

There were other stalls where they sold Mexican drawn-work, carved leather and filigree silver, others again with chairs set round where one could have iced-fruit drinks or coffee, and the band played sonorously and the crowd, good-natured, laughing, gaily dressed, men, women, and children of all sizes, strolled amongst the stalls, buying, looking, chattering, flirting, in the soft, damp heat of the night.

Suzee was enchanted and stared about her with bold, lustrous glances, pleased at the admiring looks of the men on her strange pretty face. She steered me up to the silver-filigree stall and there had all the vender's wares put out for her inspection. She was keen enough where her own particular interests were concerned, and the sellers of artificial jewellery tempted her with their sparkling gewgaws not at all. Real solid worth was what she intended to obtain, and her taste in choosing the silver was excellent.

Would I buy her this? Would I buy her that? And I assented to everything. I only wished I could buy myself pleasure as easily.

She chose a necklet, a brooch, and numberless bangles for her arms, all the smallest she could find, those generally made for children. When these loaded her little arms and the necklet was clasped round her throat she was happy, and the curious, interested Mexicans gathered in a little knot round us, looked on with interest and evident approval at the Englishman's money being spent amongst them.

We stayed in the square buying to her heart's content till eleven, and then, after supper at a little table beneath the Plaza trees where the band played loudest, for Suzee loved music when it meant noise, we went back to the hotel and to bed.

The next day I went by train to the place where we had embarked for our voyage down the Tamesi, fully equipped with my materials for a sketch—and alone.

Suzee, adhering to her idea that it would be dull and hot on the river-bank, had preferred to stay in the hotel playing with some of the treasures bought yesterday at the fair.

Alone and undisturbed I sat all day sketching, till the fires were lighted in the West and warned me I must turn homewards. I had a good picture, and I packed up my traps with that deep sense of satisfaction that accomplished work alone can give and walked slowly to the station. As my thoughts slipped on to Suzee a sense of anxiety came over me. Time was going on. The year would soon be over. What did I intend to do? Once the year was past it would be impossible for me to continue living with her, even for a day. And now I felt so often I would rather be alone than with her. How would she feel over our separation? How could I provide for her happiness when I took back my freedom?

Satiety was beginning to creep over the passion I had for her, and that was still farther checked now that I knew she looked upon it more as a means to an end—the child—rather than enjoyed it for itself.

It worried me greatly this thought of her future and how I was going to provide for it, and it seemed sometimes as if it might be better to give in to her; perhaps without me she would be happy if she had a child as she wished, provided I could make, as I could, a good allowance to both. But then even with a child I could not imagine Suzee would want to remain alone, and what would be the fate of a child if other lovers came, or a husband?…

While I did not think that Suzee loved me deeply, deep emotion not being within her range of powers, it was difficult to see how I could find for her an existence as pleasant as she led with me.

All these things worried me greatly, and as Fate willed it, needlessly.

How often in this life a way is suddenly opened out through circumstances where we least expect it.

The Greeks said—"For these unknown matters a god shall find out the way." And often indeed it happens that Fate steps in, and in some way our wildest dreams have never pictured turns all our life to another hue suddenly before our eyes.

One night when I had been making a little head of Suzee in her prettiest mood on my canvas, she came and sat on my knee and begged me to give her, as a reward for her sitting, a narrow band of gold I always wore on my left arm above the elbow.

I refused, for Viola had given it to me and locked it on my arm. She had the key and I, even had I wished, could only have had it taken off by means of another key or melting the gold.

At my refusal there was a storm of tears as usual, but it soon passed over on my kissing her and promising we would go to a jeweller's on the morrow and have one something like it put on her own arm.

She soon fell asleep after peace was restored, but I lay awake for hours watching the tracery of palm shadows on the wall opposite, thrown there by the light of the square. At midnight the lamp was put out, the room grew black, without a ray of light, and after a time I, too, fell asleep.

I was awakened by a curious sense of a presence in the room. My eyelids flew open, my ears strained. The room was one solid block of blackness, there was no ray of light anywhere. I could see and hear nothing for a moment, though I was certain another living thing had entered the room. Then at the same instant there was a violent vibration of the bed beneath me and a piercing scream from Suzee, a blind, wild cry to me for protection.

Instinctively I threw my arms out to her. Her body was struggling, writhing. I felt it as my hands shot out and gripped fiercely, in the thick darkness, round two hard hairy arms, tense, rigid, as they held her down.

Suzee's voice broke out suddenly as my grip possibly loosened the pressure of those other hands upon her throat, and she was speaking in Chinese. A hot breath came on my eyes, some face must have been close to mine in the blackness; under my arms, on Suzee's wildly heaving body, I felt something moving, warm and slow and soft, and knew that it was blood.

"Suzee," I called to her across her clamour of terrified entreaty, "get a light if you can."

The hot breath came nearer.

"Devil! Devil! This is your promise, your English word." The sound came to me like the hiss of steam close to my ear, but I knew the voice of Hop Lee—Hop Lee buried in Sitka, thousands of miles away.

The arms in my clutch struggled furiously; in their spasm of muscular effort they tore me upwards from the bed, as the lock of my fingers would not give way.

Suzee's voice clamoured in passionate entreaty, unintelligible to me. Then suddenly came a terrific twist, which wrenched away one of the arms, and a lightning stab, a deep burning in my shoulder, and simultaneously a blaze of light. Over me hung the bent old form of Hop Lee, his right arm, lifted up, held a long knife raised for its second stab. His face was alight with fury. Scarlet was already running in bright ribands over the whiteness of the bed, Suzee's blood and my own. I threw up my left arm and caught his wrist and turned the hand and knife upwards till it pointed to the ceiling, my own arm stretched to the fullest length upright. Suzee gave one horrible cry of terror, animal terror, and then there was silence beside me.

"She has fainted, has fainted," my brain muttered in itself. A sickening fear came into it as silence fell after that one awful cry.

I had my revolver under my pillow. If I could reach it! I looked up to the small red eyeballs of the Chinaman.

They were insane, glaring, full of the wild, unreasoning lust to kill.
Some instinct moved me to speak.

"You were dead, I heard. I never had your wife while you were alive."

"Liar! Liar! You shall pay me in blood."

His hand with the knife in it twisted itself round in my grip. I felt my uplifted arm losing its force. What was draining my strength? That stream coming softly from my shoulder.

I lifted myself, trying to throw him backwards. My arm suddenly bent at the elbow and his hand with the knife in it zigzagged downwards very near to my throat. Age and feebleness had disappeared from him. He was strong now with the strength of insanity and of that blind leaping fury that glared out of his distorted face. There was a sudden struggle as he dropped on my chest, then with my hand still locked on his wrist we rolled together onto the floor.

A moment and we were up on our feet and he had forced me backwards to the bed. I felt my strength was going, but I still clung with a steel-like clutch to his wrist and kept the pointed knife at bay. As he bent me backwards on to the bed near the pillow, I took my right hand from his arm, snatched the revolver from under the pillow, thrust it into his face between the eyes, and fired.

He fell forwards, a great hole torn in his forehead, from which a river of blood poured, joining the bright ribands and with them making a sea of crimson.

I looked across him to where Suzee lay motionless.

"Suzee," I said, my breath almost dying in my throat.

She stirred slightly. I was beside her in a moment. Her eyelids opened slowly. Then her eyes filled with terror.

"Where is he?" she muttered.

"Dead; he cannot hurt you any more. You are safe now."

"No, Treevor, I am dying; it pains me so here."

She laid one hand on her breast and I saw the blood well up between two fingers. I tore aside the muslin veils on her bosom and found the wound: it was not large, just one clean stab, turning purple at the edges.

"It is deep, Treevor; so deep. And it bleeds inside me. It is drinking my life. I have only a few minutes to tell you. Hold up my head. I can't breathe."

I slipped my arm beneath her little neck. My heart seemed breaking with distress; black tides of resentment, of rage went through me, that she should be torn from me.

"Listen, Treevor. It was I that lied to you. I told you he was dead, and the child. They were not. I ran away. I left them at Sitka. I came to 'Frisco and took refuge with that woman. Then I wrote to you."

A sudden horror of her seemed to enfold me as I heard.

How she had lied and deceived me! And forced me to break my word!

"Because I wanted you so much and I knew you would never have me if you thought he was still alive…. Your stupid promise. What are promises when one loves? I wanted you, Treevor, so much! So much!"

Some of the old fire flashed out of the dying eyes, a hungry, despairing look.

"Kiss me, Treevor. Say you forgive me."

But I could not. For the moment I was so stunned, so overwhelmed by this sudden revelation of her deception.

A deathly physical faintness was creeping over me; a sensation like the beginning of long-denied sleep which rolls at last like an unconquerable tide, obliterating everything, through the exhausted frame, was invading my whole body. I clasped one hand mechanically round the bed-rail to support myself, the ground seemed to lift and sway beneath my feet.

I looked down on the little oval face that had lived so near to me through the last year. How pale it was now, framed in the crimson mist that stretched across the bed! At the slight, exquisite body so often held in my arms. Was I to lose them now for all time?

"I did it all for you, because I wanted you so much. Do kiss me and say you forgive. I shall not rest through a thousand years if you will not."

Grey shadows were collecting in her face, some unseen hand seemed drawing the eternal veil between us. To me, life, with all its doings, was far away. I myself was standing in the uncertain mists of death. Wide, limitless, and grey, the great plains of the hereafter seemed opening before me, dim, silent, and mysterious.

Life, with its glare of colour, its triumphant music, its crash of sound, was far behind me, almost forgotten; like clouds of indefinable tint, piled up on some distant horizon, rose the memories of its loves, its woes, its crimes.

Her weak voice calling on me to forgive seemed to have little meaning to me now. I leant forward, clasping her dying body to me, and kissed her lips, murmuring some words of consolation. Then the grey mists rose up over my eyes sealing them, and I sank slowly into the perfect darkness.