"The Berta who was found in the river, recognizable only by the dress she wore and the locket. And every spring the mother goes there with flowers. Your ghost is not pleasant to see, Berta. The horror of that night in Shanghai, when I learned the truth, that you were alive, notorious! The owner of a gambling-house in the Honan Road! Nightmare! Who was it we buried?" Hilda stepped forward menacingly.
Fine steel and hammered brass, thought Mathison. He could not touch the woman of brass now; she was Hilda's sister, and Hilda should say what should be done. Nor could he smother the spark of admiration. Bad she might be, ruthless and predatory, but she was no weakling. Whatever her end, she would meet it hotly. He saw that Hallowell had been stronger than Samson, since this Delilah had not shorn his locks.
Sisters who had not seen each other in eight years—deadly antagonists! He could not help philosophizing a little over this phenomenon of life. Sisters and brothers; the long roll of bitter tragedies from the day Cain grew jealous of Abel! He wished he was elsewhere. It was sacrilege to witness the baring of two souls.
"Who was it we buried?" repeated Hilda.
Berta frowned. Eight years, a long time to remember the trivial incidents associated with the abandonment of her people. All at once her eyes flashed and a corner of her lip went up in a twisted smile. "I remember now. I gave the old clothes and the locket to a creature on the street. So she killed herself, and I am dead! No wonder you left me in peace!"
"Thief!" cried Hilda, flaming. "You cold-blooded thief! You took the last jewel that mother had and pawned it—the jewel she had been clinging to desperately—the last link to the life she had known. The tragedy was nothing to you. You pawned it to buy a new dress, a new hat. What was her love for you? Something for you to prey upon; and, having preyed upon the last morsel, you took wing, like the kite you are! I discovered what had become of the jewel. Without her knowing it, I worked nights for months to reclaim it. Then I 'found' it. I would waste my breath if I cried 'Shame!'"
"Then don't waste your breath, Hilda. Shame? I am my father's daughter, and I take what pleases me when and where I find it. I ran away because I was tired of poverty, tired of you all. I hated you because you were always whining at my elbow not to do this and not to do that. Fine music! We were born in an hour of hate and terror. I am the daughter of my father, a noble; you are the daughter of a Copenhagen circus-rider. I am a law unto myself, and you are the puppet of circumstances. Love my mother? Love anything? I don't know. But I have avenged her. I have made mankind pay for the blows my father dealt her. And I never forgave her for not claiming her rights when father died. We might have grown up in comfort, and her stupid pride kept us in rags. I did not ask to be born; my birth was not my will. Flesh and blood? What is life but an accident? Selfish? Who would look out for Berta but Berta? I am myself, no more, no less; and the path I travel is of my own choosing. Life! I have lived. No law can take that away from me. You have called me the kite. What is the kite but cousin to the eagle? Look back. Did I ever cringe, whine? If a blow was struck, did I not always strike back? The fault is you were always trying to pour me into another mold. I had already been poured. What you wanted of me was something like this fool parrakeet—something content to live in a cage. Not for Berta Nordstrom! I don't know what my end shall be, but it will be a free end."
A wave of pity surged over Mathison. For Hilda's sake he had contemplated letting this wild, untamed thing go; and now for the same reason he would not dare let her go. There was a chill of fear, too. There was no knowing how far this rising fury might carry The Yellow Typhoon. Never would he forget this picture. The angel and the destroyer; the same blood, the same physical perfections—sisters! And beyond the blood-tie, total strangers. And for days he had been shuttlecock to their battledores; the one trying to save him, the other trying to break him.