Fate Knocks at the Door: A Novel

by Will Levington Comfort

A knock at the door broke the notturno appassionato. She had left word not to be called for any reason. Furiously now she rushed across the room…. Bedient did not see the female servant at the door, but heard the frightened voice uttering the word, "Brigadier——." The answer from the woman who had left his arms was mercifully vague, but the voice at the door whimpered, "Only it was the General——!"…

It was all hideously clear. Bedient was left sterile, polar. The door slammed shut; the woman faced him—and understood. There was no restoring this ruin…. She now damned military rank and her establishment in a slow, dreadful voice. Her knuckles seemed driven into her temples. She wanted to weep, to be soothed and petted—to have her Hour brought back, but she saw that her beauty was gone from him—and all the mystery which had been in their relation a minute before…. Her rebellion, so far hard-held, now became fiendish. It was not against him, but herself. So vivid and terrible was her concentration of hatred upon the cause, that Bedient caught the picture of the Brigadier in her mind. He saw the man afterward—a fat and famous soldier…. She spat upon the floor. Her lower lip was drawn in and the small white teeth snapped upon it.

There was nothing in the Block-House ever to bring him back. Her last vestige of attraction for him had disintegrated. Bedient had nothing to say; he caught up her clenched hand and kissed it…. And in the street he heard feminine voices rising to the pitch of hysteria. A servant rushed forth for a surgeon. The woman had fallen into "one of her seizures."…

Pack-train Thirteen took the field a day or two afterward. Bedient was not at all himself…. In all the months that followed meeting David Cairns in Alphonso, the Block-House incident was too close and horrible for words—though Bedient spoke of Adelaide and the great wind and a hundred other matters.

There was another slight Manila experience, which took place after the first parting with David Cairns, the latter being called to China by rumors of uprising. Pack-train Thirteen had rubbed itself out in service—was just a name. Bedient was delighting in the thought of hunting up Cairns in China…. It was dusk again, that redolent hour. Bedient had just dined. So sensitive were his veins—that coffee roused him as brandy might another. His health was brought to such perfection, that its very processes were a subtle joy, which sharpened the mind and senses. Bedient had been so long in the field, that the sight of even a Filipino woman was novel. Strange, forbidding woman of the river-banks—yet in the twilight, and with the inspired eyes of young manhood, that dusk-softened line from the lobe of the ear to the point of the shoulder—a passing maid with a tray of fruit upon her head—was enough to startle him with the richness of romance. It was not desire—but the great rousing abstraction, Woman, which descends upon full-powered young men at certain times with the power of a psychic visitation. His heart poured out in a greeting that girdled the world, to find the Woman—somewhere.

Bedient did not know at this time of the heart emptiness of the world's women—a longing so vast, so general, that interstellar space is needed to hold it all. Still, he had so much to give, it seemed that in the creative scheme of things there must be a woman to receive and ignite all these potentials of love…. In this mood his mind reverted to that isle of the sea—the woman, and the room that was her house…. He was sitting in the plaza before the Hotel d'Oriente. A little bamboo-table was before him and a long glass of claret and fruit-juice. The night was still; hanging-lanterns were lit, though the darkness was not yet complete. There was a mingling of mysterious lights and shadows among the palm-foliage that challenged the imagination—like an unfinished picture…. Only a few of the tables were occupied. The native servants were very quiet. Bedient heard a girlish voice out of the precious and perilous South.

… It was not Adelaide. He had only started to turn, when his consciousness told him that. But the voice was much like hers—the same low and lazy loveliness in the formation of certain words. The appeal was swift. Bedient did not turn, though he sat tingling and attentive…. At this time not a few of the American officers had been joined by their wives in Manila, and most of these were quartered at the Oriente…. He knew the man's voice, too, but in such a different way—the voice of a soldier heard afield.

What was said had little or no significance—a man's tolerant, sometimes laughing monosyllables; and silly, cuddling, unquotable nothings from his companion. It was the ardor in her tones—the sort of completion of sensuous happiness—and the strange kinship between her and the woman he had known—these, that brought to Bedient a sudden madness of hunger to hear such words for his own….

The man had but recently come in from field-work. The woman was fresh from a transport voyage from the States. He talked laughingly of the "niggers" his company had met—of small, close fighting and surprises. She wanted to hear more, more,—but alone. She was pressing him, less with words than manner, to come into the hotel and relate his adventures, where they could be quite alone…. She had been so passionately lonely without him—back in Washington … and the long voyage…. Her voice enthralled Bedient.

They were married. The man laughed often. The tropics had enervated him, though he made no such confession. He wanted drink and lights. To him, the present was relishable. Their chairs scraped the tiles before Bedient turned…. They had not risen. She caught his eyes. Hers were not eyes of one who would be lonely in Washington nor during a long transport voyage. She was very young, but a vibrant feminine, her awakening already long-past. There was just a glimpse of light hair, a red-lipped profile and slow, shining dark eyes. She was not even like Adelaide, but a blood sister in temperament. Bedient saw this in her hands, wrists, lips and skin, in the pure elemental passion which came from her every tone and motion. One of the insatiate—yet frail and lovely and scented like a carnation; a white flower, red-tipped—sublimate of earthy perfume.