She regarded herself now with distrust; nothing could have been more unpleasant than the failure of her will, this swamping of her equanimity. She never lost for a moment the image of superiority that should be her perfect example, the non-assertion that was the way of heaven; but her comprehension was like a figure ruthlessly dragged about by an overpowering unreflective force. A sharp hatred of Nettie Vollar seared her mind and perished in a miserable sense of weakness.
Against the dark, charged with a confusion of the ten thousand things, she stared wearily and wakeful. She reminded herself again that Gerrit would soon be gone from Salem, alone with her on the long voyage to China; but he'd return to America, come back to Salem; and she knew that he would never bring her westward again. A period of depression followed which seemed to have no immediate connection with Gerrit; she had an indefinable feeling of struggling in vain against adversity, of opposition to an implacable power.
For a short while after she rose in the morning it appeared that she had regained her self-control, her reason; and a consequent happy relief irradiated her. But when Gerrit came up after she had finished her toilet and she saw, from his haggard face, that he too must have been awake, tormented, through the night, a passion of bitterness enveloped her at which all that had gone before turned pale. She could scarcely restrain herself from a noisy wailing accusation, and stood regarding him with a tense unnatural grimace, the result of her effort to preserve propriety. She told herself, at the tempest of vulgar phrases storming through her consciousness, that what Edward Dunsack had said about her being no better than the tea house girls was true, and she was aghast at the inner treachery capable of such self-betrayal. Not a quivering word, however, escaped; she managed a commonplace phrase and turned aside in a trivial pretext of occupation.
"I am going into Boston with Captain Dunsack on business connected with his schooners." The girl's grandfather! "Very well." She spoke placidly, and with a tempestuous heart watched him stride quickly about the park.
She settled herself in a long motionless contemplation, fastening her mind upon the most elevated and revered ideas conceivable. She saw the eternal Tao flowing like a great green river of souls, smooth and mighty and resistless; and she willed that she too might become a part of that desirable self-effacement, safe in surrender. Men striving to create a Tao for personal ends beat out their lives in vain. It was the figure of the river developing, like floating on a deliberate all-powerful tide or struggling impotently against it.
Later a message came up from Mrs. Ammidon—she hoped that Taou Yuen would drive with her that afternoon. She dressed with the most particular care, in blue and dark greens, her shoulders thick with embroidered garlands and silver shou, her piled hair ornamented in glittering silver leaves and garnets.
She went down when she heard the horses on the street below but the barouche was empty except for the coachman. "Mrs. Ammidon left a half hour ago," a servant told her; "and sent the carriage back for you." They moved forward, going, she saw, into a part of the town where they seldom drove—the narrow crowded way by the wharves—and, turning shortly into a street that ended abruptly at the water, drew up before a dingy house on her right.
The door was open, and they waited, confident that Mrs. Ammidon would hear the clatter of hoofs and come out; but a far different appeared. She gazed for a silent space at Taou Yuen seated above her, as if confused by the glittering magnificence. It was probable that Gerrit's brother's wife had come there on an errand of charity for the woman was poor, dingy like the house, with a face drawn by suffering and material struggle.
"Of course you're Captain Ammidon's wife," she said; "and you are here after Mrs. William Ammidon. Well, she's gone; but she left a message for you. She will be at Henry Whipple's, the bookseller. After she saw Nettie she went right off to send her some things; wouldn't wait for the carriage. A kind-hearted determined body."
Taou Yuen leaned out to command the coachman to drive on; but the other, plainly bent on making the most of a rare opportunity for such a conversation, continued talking in her low resigned way.