CROCKER has not yet appeared. I borrowed his key from the office, just before lunch, and looked in his room. His bed had not been, slept in. There is certainly no indirection about Crocker, no introspective uncertainty; he meets life as it presents itself, roughly and squarely.
On the whole, I find I like him much better than I expected. He is really a companionable chap. He is not so eager to tell his troubles as I had thought he would be. In fact, barring that one moment on the ship, he has not even referred to them; and I myself drew that out by telling him he was drinking too much.
Sir Robert came over and sat with me just now in the dining-room while I finished my lunch. I cut the meal as short as I could. He was distinctly affable. He asked point-blank where I am going, and I had to tell. It seems that he is bound for Peking also,viaShanghai and Nanking. Fortunately, he announced his route before asking about mine. I decided on the spot to go around by the Korean and Chinese Imperial Railways, through Fusan, Mukden, and Shanhaikwan.
However, he perhaps did me a service by telling me of a pleasant little French hotel at Peking, on the Italianglacis, whatever that is. The big hotel in the Legation Quarter, he says, is rather expensive and at this time of year will be swarming with tourists. The littleHôtel de Chine, on the other hand, is frequented only by queer types of the Coast, and is really very cheap.
“Thecuisine,” said Sir Robert, “is atrocious. But, being French, they serve excellent coffee, which does for breakfast and one can, in a pinch, put together a fair luncheon there. For dinner, theWagon-lits, of course. Above all, make no experiments with the cellar of theHôtel de Chine. They will show you an imposing wine-card. Shun it!”
I merely bowed at this. It was no use telling Sir Robert that I should certainly not know one alleged vintage from another.
There is one difficulty. Sir Robert himself, affecting a taste for the quaint, will be stopping at our less pretentious hostelry; again, with my eyes closed at night, I shall see that bad old face with the one drooping eyelid; again that loose voice will sound in my ears. But then, I shall be very busy.
Some one is knocking at my door. Crocker is calling.
CROCKER was in the worst shape I have seen him in so far. His eyes were red. And when he dropped on my couch, the first thing he did was to stretch out his right hand and watch it critically. It was decidedly unsteady.
“Ring up a boy, old chap, will you?” he said. I did so. He ordered a quart bottle of whisky and a half-dozen bottles ofTan San.
“Steady my nerves,” he observed, half to himself. “It's that dam'saké. Gets to me like absinthe.” He chuckled. “I must have a quart of the stuff in me. Some night, my boy!”
Curiously, a few drinks of the whisky did seem to steady his nerves. After a while he came over to the table, sat down opposite me, and lighted a cigar. We talked for an hour or two—until I finally explained that I really had to get at my work. Then he returned to the sofa, stretched out comfortably, with the whisky and an ash-tray on a chair beside him, and watched me, with only an occasional good-natured interruption.
He seemed greatly interested in my method of musical notation. Of course, the ordinary staff of five lines would not serve me at all, since I find it necessary to indicate intervals much closer ===than the usual half-step. I use large sheets of paper, ruled from top to bottom with fine lines, every sixteenth line being heavier. Thus I can record intervals as fine as the sixteenth of a tone. In fact, as I told Crocker, and as Rameau and von Stumbostel both recognize,I have actually done so!I undoubtedly possess the most delicate aural perception of any scientist that has ever investigated the so-called primitive music. My ears are to me what the eyes of the great astronomer are to him. This is why all my contemporaries, particularly the great von Stumbostel, are following my present inquiry with such extraordinary interest.
It was six o'clock before I finished noting down the songs andkotomelodies from my records of the preceding evening. Crocker sipped continuously at his whisky andTan San—to my surprise, without the slightest apparent ill effect. Perhaps he grew a little mellower, a little more human, as the phrase runs, but that was all. When my work was done, I drew a chair to the sofa, put my feet up, and encouraged him to talk.
At a little after seven he went to his room to dress for dinner. I scrubbed some of the ink off my fingers and slipped into my dinner-jacket, then knocked at his door.
As we descended the wide stairs, I observed that Crocker was walking down very rigidly, placing his foot squarely in the middle of each step. On the landing he paused, and turned to me with a slight smile.
“Am I acting all right?” he asked.
“Perfectly. Why?”
“My boy,”—he lowered his voice,—“I'm drunk as a lord. But I reckon I can get away with it. Come along.”
He really handled himself surprisingly well. I am not an expert, of course, in the various psychological reactions from drink. I should have said he was a little over-stimulated, nothing more. He kept away from the bar, and at the table in the big dining-room drank very little—only a cocktail and a light wine with the roast. And he discussed this with me at the start, finally deciding that it would not be wise for him to stop abruptly.
All went well until the dessert. There was quite a choice of items on the bill. I ordered vanilla ice cream. I distinctly heard him order the same. I recall wondering a little, at the moment; for surely vanilla ice cream was not the most desirable addition to the various substances already on his alcohol-poisoned stomach.
When the waiter set the dish before him, he astonished me with a sudden outburst of anger.
“Good God!” he cried, quite loud, “am I to be treated like this! Has nobody any regard for my feelings!”
I began to feel unpleasantly conspicuous.
“This is past all endurance!” he shouted, pushing back his chair.
The Chinese waiter had turned back, by this time, and stood, bowing respectfully by his chair.
Crocker swore under his breath, sprang to his feet, and with a short, hard swing of his right hand struck the unsuspecting Chinaman on the jaw.
I never before saw a man fall in precisely that way. Indeed, it was not a fall in the ordinary sense of the word. It was more like a sudden paralysis. His knees appeared to give, and he sank to the floor without the slightest sound that I was conscious of.
There was a good deal of confusion, of course. Women made sounds. One or two, I think, ran from the room. There was much scraping of chairs as men got up and made for us. The manager of the hotel appeared, crowding through toward us.
The Chinaman did not stir; he was now merely a heap of blue clothing at our feet, huddled against the table-leg.
Crocker stood beside the table, steadying himself by gripping the back of his chair, and smiling with an air of rather self-conscious distinction. He bowed slightly to the breathless manager.
0059
“It was quite unavoidable,” he said. “As a gentleman you will readily see that.” His tongue was thicker now. “Nobody regrets it more'n I—nobody more'n I.”
The manager gave me a look and caught him by one arm. I took the other. Crocker hung back.
“This is quite unnecessary,” he said, “quite unnecessary. I'm perf'kly sober, I assure you. As a matter o' fac', I'm soberes' man in th 'ole big room. Very big room. Ver' big room indeed. Bigges' room ever saw.”
Between, us, the manager and I got him upstairs and into his room. Then I was left alone with him to undress him and get him into his bed. The task consumed all of an hour. He was rough, almost violent, one moment, and absurdly polite the next. His mind developed a trick of leaping off on unexpected tangents. He tried to point out reasons against removing each article of clothing as we came to it. It was interesting, on the whole. I have since almost regretted that I did not make exact notes of these curious mental flights. But at the moment it seemed too remote from my own field of study. And I suppose my decision was reasonable.
It occurs to me, in glancing back over the foregoing paragraph, that Crocker—had I been the drunk one and he the sober—would not have drifted into this highly self-conscious theorizing; he would not have felt this detachment from the fact. Perhaps that is the secret of my difference from other men. Perhaps that is the peculiar respect in which I am not wholly normal. If this is so, am I doomed to dwell always apart from my fellows in a cold region of pure thought? I am going to set this confession down here: I have almost envied Crocker to-night—not, of course, the frightful things he does, but the human, yes, the animal quality of the man that makes it possible for him to get drunk now and then.For I can't do it!I am farther from the norm than he; on the opposite side, to be sure, but farther. Is not this why I have never had a man chum?
Is not this why no good woman has ever looked on me with the eye of love?
I got him to bed, finally, and sat by him until he fell asleep. I am going back there now to pass the night on his sofa, first undressing here. I shall feel somewhat conspicuous, walking down the hall in the gay kimono I bought this morning. But I do not think any one will notice it. They seem not to mind such things out here.
The manager has just been up to see me. He says that the waiter is all right now, excepting a slight nausea. And he suggests that Crocker leave the hotel as soon as convenient. Poor fellow, I shall have to carry this word to him. I found, on pinning the manager down, that by the phrase “as soon as convenient” he means as early to-morrow as possible. But I shall not wake Crocker up; he shall have his sleep before they turn him out on the Bund.
Well, I must get ready now for my night watch. It is the first time I have ever been responsible for a drunken man.
To-morrow I leave over the Tokaido Railway for the Straits of Tsushima, Korea, Manchuria, and the barbaric old capital of the newest republic on earth. It has been a curious experience throughout, this with Crocker. But it will soon be over now. And I do not regret it. I may never again be drawn so deeply into the rough current of actual life. My way lies far from this.
CROCKER'S story came out, after all. This morning, in his room. It is rather difficult writing here on the train, with only a suit-case for a table; but I feel that I must set down the last of this strange story, now that I have given so much of my time and thought to the man; and it must be written before any new experiences may arise to claim my attention and perhaps erase some salient detail of the narrative. Then, who knows? This may not be the last. I may find myself involved in it again. Sir Robert observed yesterday: “The China Coast is even smaller than the well-known world. Even if I should miss you at Peking, we shall meet again.” He is doubtless right. We shall meet again. And Crocker and I, too, shall meet again, I think. When and how, I can only wonder.
I slept badly last night, on his sofa. Early this morning I returned to my own room, dressed, ordered up a light breakfast, and then spent two hours in packing. It was nearer eleven than ten when I tapped on the door.
“Come in!” he called.
He had pulled an extra pillow in behind his head, and was sitting up in bed. He was whiter than I had before seen him. And the hand that he extended to me shook so that he could hardly hold it up. It was cold to the touch.
For a few moments after I had sent a boy for his coffee, we talked about next to nothing—the time, the weather, my departure. But his hollow eyes were searching me.
“Who put me here?” he asked, finally.
I told him.
“Any trouble?”
I hesitated.
“Tell me. Don't play with me. Did I break out?”
There was nothing to do but tell him the whole story; which I did. He listened in complete silence, sipping the coffee (for which he seemed to feel some repugnance).
“Hurt the fellow?” he asked, when I had done.
“No. He is reported all right this morning.”
His chin dropped on his deep chest. He seemed to be mediating, in a crestfallen sort of way; but I observed that his eyes wandered aimlessly about the room. Finally he said:
“Suppose I had killed him.”
“You did n't,” I replied shortly.
He covered his face with his shaking hands.
“It's the murder in my heart,” he muttered.
I could only look at him.
After a little he dropped his hands, leaned back on the pillow, and gazed at me.
“You're blaming me,” he said.
I shook my head.
“You are. But not so much as you will. Do you know what I'm doing out here? Do you suppose I left my business to come halfway around the world on a pleasure trip—at my age? Chuck everything worth while, just when I'm at the top of my stride? No, you don't know; but I'm going to tell you.”
I put up my hand, but he plunged gloomily on: “My wife eloped with a man. A man I knew. They came out here. I've come to find them. I'm going to kill him and her. With a knife.”
“You must not do that,” said I. I recall now that the thought came to me to deal with him as if he were a lunatic, and humor him. So I said, “You must not do that.”
“It is the only thing to do,” said he, rather dogmatically. “How can I face my friends again if I fail? A man who doesn't even try to protect his home!”
“It would be murder.”
He shook his head. “No honest jury would hang me for that. It is the unwritten law.” Then, as if conscious of the weakness of his argument, he added: “Besides, what difference does it make? Those two have committed worse than murder against me. It does n't matter a particle now what becomes of me. I loved my wife. I gave her everything that money could buy. I bought her an automobile for her own only last year. I took her to Europe. And when I married her she had never had anything or been anywhere. I wanted her to be the mistress of my home, and she insisted on sacrificing all that—and me—to her music. So I got her the best teachers in New York and Paris. Even left her in Paris to study. That's where she met him. She insisted on going into opera. I forbade that—naturally. I wanted children—she refused. Tell me—is that asking too much?”
He had been talking in a monotonous tone; but now his voice began rising, and his face was twitching nervously.
“Is it?” he went on. “Is it asking too much for a husband to have sons to bear his name and inherit his property? When I saw what was going on, she told me to divorce her. I said, 'By God, that's one thing I won't do for you! I've some sense of honor, if you haven't! You're mine, and yuu stay mine!' Then she ran away with that crook. But she can't have him, I tell you! She can't have him!”
I suggested that he lower his voice. He gave me a curious, wild glance, and fell silent.
It occurred to me that, knowing all this, I had no right to go away—that I must stay and prevent this terrible thing from taking place. I said as much to him.
“No,” he replied, with some vehemence; “there's nothing in that. You could n't prevent anything. The best thing you can do is to run along. I don't even know where they are; but I'll find them. You can't hide long on the China Coast—not from a man that's really looking.”
I thought this over for quite a little time. It was true enough that I could not prevent his giving me the slip. I could not lock him up or detain him in any forcible way. It seemed to me that I must do something; but as the moments passed it grew increasingly difficult to imagine what it could be.
It was all very disturbing. I helped him get up. Then, as he seemed fairly well able to dress himself, I went out and walked for a while on the Bund. When I returned I found him stretched out on my sofa, smoking.
“Come on in,” he said in a strong, sober voice. What an extraordinary fund of vitality the man has to draw on! “I want to talk to you.”
As I sank into a chair beside him, I felt once more that he was the stronger of us, I the weaker, even after all we had been through.
He knocked the ash off his cigar. It missed the ash-tray and fell, part of it, on the leg of my trousers. “I beg your pardon, old man,” he said, and carefully brushed it off. Then he settled back against the wall and stared up through his smoke at the pattern on the ceiling.
“My hand is n't quite steady yet,” he added calmly.
Then he went on: “I should n't have told this to you, Eckhart. It is n't the sort of thing a man can tell. But, as it happens, you know why I did it. I've been stewed to the brim for two days. I'm through with that now, though. Until a certain job is done, I touch nothing stronger than wine. Here's my hand on it.”
I had to clear my throat. I managed to say huskily: “I can't take your hand on that, Crocker.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Very well,” he said. “If you prefer it that way. It goes, however. I drink no more now. That is one thing I really have you to thank for, Eckhart. Until you spoke out, back there on the ship, I did n't realize how much I was drinking. What you told me this morning has clinched the business. I'm through. And you will find that I am a man of my word.”
“I am glad of that,” said I, “because I believe that, with the drink out of your system, your philosophy of life will change. I hope it will.”
He shook his head at this.
“No, Eckhart. Now, see here. You have today seen deep into a man's heart. What you saw was not drink, merely; it was fact.”
His manner of saying this gave me an uncomfortable feeling that he was speaking the truth. Indeed, my increasing conviction as to the great reserve power of the man was distressing me.
“As I told you this morning,” he went on, “there is absolutely nothing you can do in the matter. Except killing me, of course—you could do that. But you won't.”
“No,” said I sadly; “I won't.”
“And I'm going to ask you to take the only course that an honorable man can take in the private quarrel of another—stand aside and try to forget what I have told you. You have my drunken confidences; forget them.”
“See here!” I broke out. “Were you faithful to your wife before she turned against you?” His eyes hardened. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“Precisely what I say.”
“You're talking nonsense, Eckhart—”
“I amnottalking non—”
“Yes,you are!”
He had swung around, and was sitting up, looking me squarely in the eye, as he shouted me down. My heart sank. Mere squabbling would get us nowhere. I did not know what to do. I do not now know what to do.
He went on:
“Yes; I was, to all intents and purposes, faithful to her. I did as well as a normal, healthy man can be expected to do. Let us not be childish about this. You and I know that man is physiologically different from woman. We know that what there is of purity and sacredness in marriage and in life will be lost forever once we lower our ideal of woman's virtue.”
“No,” said I; “as a scientific man—”
I could not go on with my protest; for thoughts of a few wild moments in my own relatively quiet life had come floating to the surface of memory. Who was I, to oppose the double standard of morality that has ruled the world so long!
He was still looking at me in that intent way. There was deep sadness behind the hard surface of his eyes.
“I came here to thank you for all your kindness, Eckhart,” he said then. “As for what you have heard, remember it is mine, not yours. That is all. Now, if you don't mind, I'll help you get your truck down to the train.”
I did as he said. I am on my way to Peking to pursue my research. He is plunging off to scour the ports of Japan, all the way to Nagasaki, for the man and the woman who have assailed his honor and (what I am tempted to think even more to the point) outraged his pride as the head of his own house. Then he will go on, if necessary, to Shanghai,—that port of all the world,—to Hongkong, Manila, and Singapore, perhaps up the coast to Tientsin and Peking. And he has made me believe that he will do as he has sworn. It is very strange—very sad.
At the station I made my last weak protest.
“Crocker,” I blurted out, “for God's sake, try to win her back. Perhaps you drove her away. Perhaps you were harsher, less understanding, than you knew. Perhaps you should beg her forgiveness, not she yours.”
He shook his head. “That may be so,” he said. “All that you say may be so. But I could n't take her back. Don't you see?”
“No,” I replied stoutly, “I don't see.”
He raised both his hands in a despairing gesture.
“She is—-she—” His voice suddenly failed him. “She's a woman—and she's soiled!” His eyes filled; a tear rolled down his cheek. He made a queer, convulsive face; then threw up his hands and turned away.
That was all. I boarded my train.
The young German did not return the fifteen dollars. This China Coast is a hive of swindlers—so says Sir Robert. Henceforth I intend hardening my heart against every man. And against every woman, above all. For they, says Sir Robert, are the subtler and the worse.
THAT Crocker affair haunts me with the power of a bad dream.
I do not like this at all.
I was too sympathetic with that man. I opened the gates of my mind to his ugly story; now I can not thrust it out and close those gates. My first impulse, to hold him at arm's length, was sound. I should have done that. But at least, and at no small cost, I have again learned my little lesson; from now on I purpose dwelling apart from the tangle of contemporary life. It has no bearing on my work, on my thoughts. None whatever. It merely confuses me.
Yet, through momentary weakness, I have permitted my precious line of pure thought to be clouded with the vision of a strong man's face with tears on it. I see it at night. And, worse, I can not stop myself from hunting for the woman he is going to kill. The mere sight of a youngish couple sets my pulse to racing. I watch—on trains, in station crowds, on the street—for a beautiful woman with a sad face. That she will be beautiful I am certain; for Crocker would have had nothing less in that house of which he felt himself so strongly and dominantly the master. And I think she will be sad.
I study the throats of the beautiful young women I see. She will have the full, rather broad throat of the singer. And the deep chest and erect bearing. And I think her head will be well poised.
Thereisa woman here in the hotel—a particular woman, I mean—on this second floor. Though, for that matter, there are only the two floors. I have passed her twice, in the hall. But the light is dim, and I have been unable to observe her throat or her face. She is of a good height, for a woman,—quite as tall as I,—and she steps firmly on the balls of her feet. Her figure is slim. The chest, I think, is deep. And in a way that I, as a man (and a man who knows little of woman outside the psychology books), can not explain in any satisfactory way, she conveys, even in this dim light, the impression of being exquisitely dressed.
I think she has her meals served in her room. At least, I have on three occasions met a waiter coming upstairs with a tray; and I can not make out that if would be for any other.
As Sir Robert intimated, these other guests are a queer lot. There can not be more than twelve or fourteen, in all. The men are seedy, and rather silent. They sit about a good deal, reading the papers (copies of the more suggestive French weeklies are strewn about on every chair and sofa in the lounge), and they eye me and one another with a sort of cool distrust. The women, three or four in all, seem to come and go rather freely. And each has the eye, the manner, even the physical bearing, of the woman for whom the halfworld has no secrets. Then, there is a discreet, drifting class of transients—men from the Legation Quarter, I believe (often, indeed, they come in full uniform), who are always accompanied by young women. Sometimes, as it may happen, these are the familiar women of the place; but quite as often they are strangers to my eyes. And always, day and night, there is in the manner of the guests and in that of the little French manager and his half-caste clerk an air of carefully refraining from questions. It is as if every one said to every one else: “You are here, but you are quite safe, for I make it a rule never to see who comes or what goes on here. Perhaps one day I may have to ask the same discreet courtesy from you. It is quite all right, believe me.”
In this odd atmosphere I live and have my being. The building is a mere rambling collection ofmansardes. The chairs in the bedrooms—at least, in my own—are of the common bent-iron variety usually seen in gardens. The beds are of the most simple iron sort, once painted with a white enamel that has been largely chipped off. The linen is threadbare, even ragged,—there is a hole in my nether sheet through which my foot slips at night, not infrequently catching there and waking me from dreams of the pillory and chains,—but it is not unclean. There would be no excuse for that, in a whole world of laundry-men. On each mantel and iron-legged table is an ash-tray that blatantly advertises a Japanese whisky.
Yes, in this odd atmosphere I live and, in a manner, breathe—I and the slim, beautifully dressed woman who walks so firmly on the balls of her feet. Whoever she may be, she belongs here no more than I.
Of course, the chances are all against—yet I wonder! For one thing, she is alone. I am positive of this. All the other guests I have seen, now, coming and going. But she never comes or goes—excepting apparently for a short walk each afternoon, and always unaccompanied. He would not have deserted her—away out here. Surely a man would not do that to a woman he has loved.
But wait—I am forgetting the sort of world this is. There is nothing—nothing—man does not do to woman. Or that woman does not do to man. Nothing is too subtly selfish, nothing too cruel.
To-day I mean to time my own walk with hers. I must see her in the light. I must observe her throat and her face.... At the thought of what I may see my nerves behave abominably. My forehead burns. My heart beats with an absurd irregularity. These facts alone appear to indicate that my place is not in this wild world of passion and conflict.
It is not wholly unpleasant here in my dingy little room—though the carpet is a rag, and the door between me and my next neighbor has shrunk its lock out of alignment and appears to be blocked off, on the farther side, by some bulky piece of furniture. This door opens on my side of the partition.
No, it is not so unpleasant. Outside, the sun is shining. To my nostrils comes floating the quaint, pungent odor that has in the minds of so many travelers characterized the East. Over the low-tiled roofs of a row of Chinese houses I can see—beyond an open space—the masonry wall of the fortified Legation Quarter, with a sentry-box peeping above it, and the flag of Italy, and trees.
IT is she.
This afternoon I was revising my notation of the Japanese music; quite late, five o'clock or so. Suddenly I heard a voice—a woman's voice—singing very softly, in the next room, beyond that shrunken door and the bulky piece of furniture. It is a bureau, I think, with a mirror above it that is nearly as high as the door.
She was singing “Aus Meinen Grossen Schmerzen” of Robert Franz, that saddest and most exquisite of Germanlieder. The voice is a full, even soprano. It is a big voice, I am sure, though she sang so softly. The impression I received was that she was carefully holding it down to apianissimo. It is, I should say, a remarkable organ. Even in her softest voice there is what the great singers call an “edge”—that firm, fine resonance that will send the lightest thread of tone floating out over all the volume of sound of a full orchestra.
She sang the little song with a tone color of poignant sadness—as if her heart were throbbing with all the sorrow of the world, and yet as if she could not keep from singing. She has plainly studied much. The impulse to sing and the habit of singing are strong within her.
But the voice, so beautiful and under such fine control, was not what suddenly caused me to leap up from my chair and tiptoe to that rather useless door, and then to turn to my kit-bag and fumble wildly for my tuning-fork. No; what excited me—for it did excite me out of all reason—was her sense of pitch. The mezzo-soprano or baritone transposition of that Franz song is in the key off-major, ending ind-minor. I stood by her door, thec-fork resting lightly against my teeth, waiting for that lovely voice to descend the final minor third, linger, tenderly and sadly, on thed. Then I bit the fork. She was singing a perfectd. Certainly there was no piano in any of these miserable little rooms. And she had employed no other instrument; she had simply and naturally broken into song because she could not help singing.She has absolute pitch!
The great regret of my life is that my own sense of pitch is not absolute. It is very nearly but not quite perfect, despite my extremely delicate ear for close intervals. Yet this young woman, who to my own knowledge has not sung a note for several days, and who can not conceivably have heard any Occidental music whatever, breaks into song, and casually and unconsciously employs the correct pitch to the twentieth part of a tone.
My first thought was that it might be an accident. So I waited, tuning-fork in hand.
Having begun to sing, of course she could not stop. I am thinking now that probably it was the first time she had released her voice for a considerable period, and that at last she simply could not help making use of what was the natural outlet for her emotions.
She next hummed a few bars of “Im Herbst,” also by Franz. Evidently she is fond of the work of this fine lyric composer. This is in the key ofc-minor. Again I tested her with my tuning-fork, and again she was correct to the minutest shade of a tone. Her voice had leaped the interval between the two keys apparently without a conscious thought on her own part.
This second song perhaps failed as a vehicle for her mood; at any rate, she stopped it abruptly, and was silent for a time. Standing there close to the door, I could hear her moving about with light, restless feet. Myself, I held my breath at moments. Then the sound of her footsteps ceased, and there was a sudden creaking sound, as if she had thrown herself upon the bed. But still I waited, breathless, balancing there with my left hand against the door-frame, the right clutching the tuning-fork. I was sure she would sing again.
She did. But it must have been after quite a long time, for I realized afterward that my feet ached and that the arm I held up against the door frame had, as we say, gone to sleep.
Finally there came another creaking. She was getting up. Doubtless she was quite too restless to lie down long. Again I heard the quick, light sound of her feet moving about the room. Then the voice again. And again it was that saddest and most exquisite of songs.
”Aus meinen grossen Schmerzen
Mach' ich die kleine Lieder...”
she sang, very low. I felt nearly certain that she had slipped naturally back into the key off-major, but not absolutely certain.
It was disturbing, this partial uncertainty on my part. No person in the world—not a single living being—has quite so great a need for absolute pitch as I. With that, coupled with my ear for intervals, I would stand as the one scholar perfectly equipped for my own line of investigation. As it is, I am not unlike an astronomer with enthusiasm, exhaustive knowledge, a fine mathematical brain, and a marvelous seeing eye, but with a very slight—oh,—very slight—touch of color-blindness. And I never before missed this one attribute quite so keenly as I miss it now, out here on the ground for the great first-hand investigation of my whole life.
So at last I had to give up my effort to place precisely the key in which she was singing, and sound the fork. As I supposed, she was right again. There was no doubt now. Not the slightest. As I have already written down, she has it—a sheer, prodigal gift of nature. And, of course, it is of no particular value to her. She is not even, at present, a professional singer; and, if she were, she could do very well without this precise gift.... I have supposed for years that I had a philosophy. I long ago realized that to waste time and tissue in concerning myself with the one defect in my equipment would be simply by that much to impair my actual effectiveness. But to-day my philosophy failed me, as I thought of that sad little woman who has what I lack, and who does not need it. I even had a wild notion of knocking on the door and making myself known to her.
As for what actually did follow, I think I will try to set down just as simply and naturally as I can, reconstructing the curious scene more or less coolly as I recall it now, with my excitement spent and my mind reasonably steady. That is surely the best way, in the case of such an extraordinary occurrence—just write it down and let it go at that.
She was silent for a little time, perhaps standing at her dresser. I wonder if it is like mine, a rickety chest of drawers, sadly in need of paint, with a narrow mirror above it. My mirror is broken in the right-hand lower corner; and at that point I see, instead of the reflection of the dingy room, only an irregular triangle of pine backing. I should like to think that hers is at least a little fresher and brighter, and that the mirror is not broken. These things mean a great deal to a woman, I think. I might have observed all this for myself, doubtless; but at the moment I was too full of the thrill of my discovery to indulge in a single personal thought.
I was still standing there by the door, my left hand quite numb, my feet a little cold from remaining motionless so long, when she began lightly to run over those remarkable exercises of hers.
She began by striking octaves. Her voice flew ever so lightly, yet firmly and surely, from lowerato middleato uppera. Then the two octaves ofa-sharp. Thenb. And so on, until she was touching, in that same light, sure way, thed-sharp above highc.
Next she sang an ordinary chromatic scale, no differently from the performance of other singers I have heard excepting perhaps for the remarkable evenness and firmness and pure, floating quality of herpianissimotone. It was after all this that the remarkable gift that amazed me came to light.
She returned to singing octaves. Only, as if testing and trying her own precision of pitch, she began striking the upper octave note, in making the leap from the lower to the higher, first correctly according to the accepted tempered scale of the Western world, then a fraction of a tone fiat, then a fraction of a tone sharp, then back to the normal octave. She played with, these fractional tones as easily and surely as the ordinary good singer plays with mere semitones. She actually took them in succession, quite as easily as she had, a little earlier, taken the semitones of the chromatic scale.
This was too much. I could not stand still any longer. In all my experience I had never found a white person with anything approaching my fineness of ear in merely hearing close intervals.
But I can not sing them as I hear and know them. I have no voice at all; my vocal chords will not obey my will with any degree of precision. Yet here, in this queer, rather unpleasant little French hotel in the great, barbaric city of Peking, in the next room to mine, is an American woman who can actually sing the intervals that I can only hear.
I knocked on the door.
There was instant and utter silence in the next room.
I knocked again.
She must have been holding her breath. I could not hear so much as the rustle of her skirt.
I spoke, in what I suppose was an excited whisper.
“Please let me speak with you,” I said. “Please let me speak with you!”
Still no sound.
Then it was that I opened the door—the shrunken door that would not lock.
TIS sometime in the very early morning. Peking is still. Even in this rookery of night birds every light is out but mine. I had to stop writing a while back and go for a long hard walk—around the Legation Quarter, outside the walls. But now I shall force myself to write down the rest of it. I shall not go to bed until it is done. It is too absurd that a scientist of proved ability and of highly trained will power should be overcome by his emotions in this way.
I have just tiptoed to the shrunken door that so inadequately separates her room from mine. I heard her irregular breathing: and, while I stood there, caught a low jumble of words spoken with the thick tongue of the sleeper.
And she stirs restlessly in her bed. Even from my chair I can hear that.
But I must tell what happened this afternoon.
I opened her door. I was quite beside myself.
Behind it not quite blocking off the opening, the unpainted, dusty back of her bureau confronted me. I looked through the narrow space between the mirror post and the door frame, and saw her.
She was standing by the foot of the bed.
I laid hands on the creaky old bureau and moved it aside. It was heavy, and it had no castors. I had to exert all my strength, tugging and pushing at it. Then I had to wait a moment to recover my breath.
She was standing rigidly, very white, holding with one hand to the bent iron tube over the foot of the little bed. She has long, slender fingers.
She never moved. Her wide eyes were fixed on me.
The sweat was breaking out on my forehead. A drop fell on the right lens of my spectacles. I took them off and fumbled for my handkerchief. Then I said—
“You have absolute pitch!”
She did not move or speak.
“But that is not all,” I went on, more rapidly. “You have the finest sense of intervals of any one in the world. Excepting myself.”
Her eyes narrowed a very little. And she glanced toward the other door, the one that led into the hall. It seemed to me that her tense muscles relaxed somewhat.
But when I had put on my spectacles and, now quite myself, came forward into the room, she swung back a step and flashed her eyes on me again. And I saw her fingers tighten around the iron tube at the foot of the bed.
This would n't do. I had frightened her dreadfully. Of course she could n't possibly know how mistaken she was in this. The thing to do was to explain everything to her.
“My name is Eckhart, Anthony Ives Eckhart,” I began; then paused, thinking that she, being a musical person, might have heard the name. But there was no light of recognition in her eyes.
“You can not imagine what it means to me to find you,” I went on. It seemed to me that from moment to moment she was on the point of interrupting me, so I talked very rapidly, trying at the same time to make my voice and manner as easy and matter-of-fact as possible.
“I have come all the way to China to make phonographic records of Chinese music. I shall make at least two thousand such records, and when I have finished my work will be recognized as the one great contribution to the study of the Oriental tone sense. For I shall secure and preserve on my cylinders the primitive scale intervals that underlie all natural musical expression.”
For some reason this explanation did not seem to get me anywhere. Excepting that now she looked bewildered as well as frightened. But I could not retreat. For here before me was a woman who had the great gift and who could understand. At this thought my mind began racing excitedly ahead. I thought of what she could do for me. And it was so absurdly simple, so little to ask! My forehead was burning now, and the hand that pressed the handkerchief against it was shaking perceptibly. It was a great moment—the greatest, perhaps, in my life.
“God has sent you to me!” I cried, my voice rising and becoming shrill. “Imustmake you understand!”
She was glancing again toward the hall door. I could n't make her out at all. But I lowered my voice.
“I must make you understand,” I repeated. “To-day, at the very beginning of my work, I find you. I need you more than anything else in the world—and right now. Yet an hour ago I did not know you existed. It is unbelievable. It is a miracle! I must have a phonographic record of a close-interval scale. For years I have dreamed of securing one. I myself can hear the closest intervals, but I can not sing them. Now you—you—shall sing this scale for me—not the artificial half-tones of our barbarous piano keyboard, but quarter-tones, even eighth-tones. With such a scale, the sounds recorded unerringly on a cylinder from which they can be reproduced at will, we shall at last have an absolute standard for the comparison of all tones and scales. Tell me”—I was trembling with eagerness—“do you think you could sing eighth-tones?Doyou think you could?”
She just stood there.
“But you must do this!” I cried. “You have no right to withhold such a gift! God has sent you to me, and I shall use you. It will take a little time, but we shall practise, practise, practise! There will be failures, but we shall be patient. My life work is to be a true science at last. They can no longer say that it depends on the caprice of a single human ear. They shall now hear for themselves, they shall make their own comparisons, working with our absolute phonographic scale. Who knows, perhaps we shall yet make the final perfect scale of eighty-one distinct notes to the octave. No voice has yet done that. And no violin. For no living performer has the delicacy of ear and muscle.”
I began chuckling excitedly at this thought. I admit that my condition bordered on hysteria; but has not a man the right to be very slightly hysterical in the great moment of his life?
“We shall make many records,” I said to her, mopping my wet forehead. “Von Stumbostel shall have one, in Berlin—and Boag. Ramel and Fourmont shall have them, at Paris. And de Musseau, at the Sorbonne. And Sir Frederick Rhodes, at Cambridge. The new scale record shall be the basis of volume six—on 'True Intervals and Natural Song.' One copy I shall seal in a metal tube for preservation at the British Museum, together with my other records. And—yes, I shall send one to that miserable little von Westfall, of Bonn. I shall silence him. I shall crush him. It will amuse me to do that.”
I stopped, all glowing.
She looked at me until her lids drooped, and I could see her long lashes against the whiteness of her skin.
She fell back a step, hesitating, and shrinking a little, still clinging to the foot of the bed, and made a listless gesture with her left hand.
“You have broken into my room,” she said, steadily enough, but very low.
Womenareliteral.
But it was so. I had done just that. Doubtless it was an outrageous thing to do, but it had not seemed outrageous. It had come about quite naturally.
Still, she confused me. I had been talking volubly; now, all of a sudden, I could not speak at all. For the first time I fully realized how pale she was. And she looked tired about the eyes, where nervous exhaustion always shows first. It occurred to me, too, that her eyes were very blue and distinctly beautiful. I never saw longer lashes.
So I stood stupidly there, looking at her. I had flown too high. Now my spirits were dropping fast into a pit of depression. She suddenly appeared to me as a helpless, pitiful creature. God knows there was little enough privacy for her in this shabby hotel with its thin partitions and its ill-fitting doors and its drifting, dubious class of guests; and what little privacy she had I had violated. I looked at the dilapidated bureau that had stood across our common door. It had taken all my strength to push it aside. I wondered if she herself had moved it there. What a pitiful effort, if she had, to shield her tired, hunted soul from intrusion! “Will you please go!” she breathed.
I am afraid this nettled me a little At least, my coming in that wild way had not been a personal matter I had tried to make that much plain to her. Then why make it so personal! But that, of course, is the woman of it. And God knows I was wrong—all wrong.
“Will you please go!” she breathed again.
I bowed and turned to the door. But then I occurred to me as likely that I would no more than get my door closed before she would be in a frantic hurry to move the bureau back. And that bureau was too heavy for her, or for any woman. It was almost too heavy for me.
So I stepped back into her room and began tugging at the bureau again. When I saw the fresh concern on her face, I nodded toward the hall door and said, “I'll go out that way.”
She understood this. She even came over and watched me as I worked at the thing. It would n't move. Having no castors, the feet had caught in the matting. I went to the other end and pushed, but only succeeded in tipping it up, and spilling several articles to the floor. I let the bureau drop, and went down on my knees to pick them up. There was a hair brush and a nail buffer, both with heavy silver backs bearing the initials “H. C.” Then there was a small bottle with a glass stopper that came out and let the contents of the bottle run over the matting. And there was a wide tortoise-shell comb, of the sort that you pick up at Nagasaki.
I put all these things back on the bureau, and pushed again. She stood beside me in apparent hesitation, then, as if on an impulse, caught hold and pulled with me. But it was no use. The matting was by this time hopelessly wrinkled up about the feet. And after a moment of this we both stepped back and looked at it. I simply had to stop anyway and mop off my forehead and wipe my spectacles. I was all out of breath.
Then, after a moment, I took off my coat and dropped it on a chair.
“If you don't mind helping once more,” I began—
She inclined her head.
“—I'll have to lift it over those wrinkles.”
So I caught hold and lifted with all my strength. She went around to the other side and threw her weight against it. Together we finally got it back squarely across the doorway.
“I've made you a great deal of trouble,” I said, “and I'm sorry.” I could n't resist adding the question, “Did you move it here before, by yourself?”
She looked at me; then, slowly and guardedly, nodded.
I shook my head, ruefully I think. “You are a strong woman.”
“No,” she said, without any change of expression, with not the slightest animation of manner, “but it did n't catch in the matting that time.”
I walked toward the door, with my coat thrown over my arm. It was hard to go away like that. I wonder why it is that I seem always to be walking away from women.
At the door I turned and glanced back at her. She was still there by the bureau, watching me go. I felt that she was looking rather intently at the coat on my arm, and it suddenly occurred to me that I must not leave her room like that, in my shirt sleeves. I felt the color come rushing to my face as I struggled into the coat.
I have read in works on the psychology of women that they often tell with a look what they are unable or unwilling to frame in spoken words. Certainly I knew that she had told me to put my coat on, and she knew that I had understood. And so, even as she drove me out of her room there was an understanding between us that was not wanting in subtlety. She had even asked me to make an effort to protect her; and she was no longer angry.
I had my coat on now, and was reaching for the door knob when a sound outside arrested my hand. Men were coming up the stairs to our hall.
She heard them too. She was rigid again, her hand resting on the bureau.
I could hear the Chinese porter talking pidgin-English as he came along the hall. Behind him sounded a ponderous step. Then came another voice, as the heavy step paused right near us—at my door, I thought.
“Here, boy, this is number nineteen.”
It was a loose throaty voice, unlike any other in the wide world. I should have recognized it anywhere, in a drawing-room or blindfolded at the bottom of a mine. It brought rushing to my mind pictures of a ship's smoking-room where sat an old man with a wrinkled skin and one drooping eyelid who held forth on every subject known to man—pictures of the absurdly Anglo-Saxon hotel at Yokohama, and of a strange evening at the notorious “Number Nine” where an old man had smiled cynically at me.
Sir Robert had arrived at Peking. He had come to this hotel. He was to occupy room number nineteen, directly opposite the closed door behind which I stood, motionless, breathless.
I felt momentarily ill. Which was foolish.
For what is he to me or I to him! But he had stirred a confusion of thoughts in my mind. I saw the face of another man—a strong face, even when flushed with drink—I saw that face with tears on it, working convulsively. And directly behind me stood the woman. There she was, and there, with her, was I myself. I felt the strange, rushing drama of life whirling about me. I suddenly knew that every man is entangled in it—and every woman.... Oh, God, why does she have to be so beautiful! And so terribly alone!
The porter was opening the door of number nineteen, just across the hall. Sir Robert was still at my door, swearing to himself.
“Number nineteen this side,” the porter was saying. “That number sixteen.”
So Sir Robert came heavily along the hall and entered the opposite room. We, the woman and I, heard the porter set down his hand baggage. We heard him order hot water. We heard the door close and the porter rustle away in his robe and his soft Chinese shoes and go off down the stairs.
Then, hardly knowing what I was about, I reached for the knob. But she came swiftly across the floor and caught it ahead of me, holding the door shut. Our hands touched. She looked very lovely, and very tired. My eyes wandered aimlessly over the kimono she wore, of gray crepe silk. It was embroidered from neck to hem in a wistaria pattern of the same soft gray color. I never saw such exquisite embroidery.
“Don't go out there,” she said, low but very positive.
“But,” I whispered lamely, “but—but—”
“The other door,” she said.
So we went back and moved that cursed bureau again. It was even more of a task this time, as we had to be careful about making any noise.
Again I lingered in our common doorway.
“Do you know that man?” I asked, in the guarded tones we were both employing now.
“No,” she replied simply, “but it is quite evident that you do.”
Still I lingered. And she did not drive me out. She quietly busied herself rearranging the innumerable little articles on the bureau. She was very natural and unconscious about it. There was no hint in her manner that she was aware of the curious interest I felt in all those intimate little accessories of her life. Though I find myself wondering if my crudely concealed masculine emotions are not an open book to her, even so soon. The perceptions of women are finer than ours. I have read that in the psychology books, and I believe it. They feel more deeply and see farther. And it is when they feel most deeply and see farthest that they do and say the inconsequential little things that puzzle us so.
She had the bureau arranged to her taste now, and moved slowly over toward the round table with the bent iron legs. There were a few books on this table—a little red “Guide to Peking,” Murray's “Japan,” Dyer Ball's “Things Chinese.”—her shopping bag, her wrist watch propped up to serve as a clock, and the inevitable ash-tray advertising a Japanese whisky.
Still I lingered there, half in her room, half in mine. She did not look at me. She hesitated at the table and fingered that absurdly vulgar little ash-tray. For the life of me I could not divine what she was thinking or what she wished me to do. I had meant to go straight into my own room and close the door. But I had done nothing of the sort.
It came to me that perhaps she was ready to have me pick up the shattered mood of my musical enthusiasm and carry it forward. Perhaps she would respond to it now. But I could not reconstruct that mood. In a desperate sort of way I was trying from moment to moment to do precisely that, and failing. For across my menial vision was floating, tantalizingly vague, the flushed desperate face of Crocker, as I had last seen him, at the Yokohama station. If this girl only knew it, we have a common interest that binds us a million times closer than the mere gift we both have.
I see I have called her a girl. She seemed so to me at that moment, standing there by the crooked-legged table, slim of body, softly, appealingly feminine in her outlines. I found myself thinking how lonely she must be, and what terrors must lurk ambushed in the byways of her thoughts, particularly at night. I fell to wondering about the man who had brought her out here and left her. Where was he? Did he leave her any money? Not a great deal, surely, or she would not be living in this shabby place. And yet, sad as she is,she does not know what I know!I am sure of that. She did not see Crocker's face, there at the Yokohama station. She does not dream that he is scouring the Coast for her from Mukden to Singapore—that in his heart, where pity should be, there is outraged pride, and the exhausting bewilderment of a man who has only a code where he should have been taught a philosophy—and murder.
This world is hard on women. Perhaps because we men run it.
I slowly drew my foot back across the sill, moving into my own room. I hesitated again, and rested a trembling hand against the door frame.
It broke my heart to look at her, yet I could not keep from it. I wanted to help her. I wanted todosomething. I even thought wildly of marching straight over to that crooked-legged iron table and taking her two hands solidly in mine and saying—“I know who you are, my dear, and I can imagine something of what you are suffering. I know from a glimpse of you that not one of the men who will be so quick to cast stones at you is fit to touch the hem of your skirt. I know, too, that no man can so much as befriend you, without plunging you into a deeper hell of suspicion and torment than the hell you are in now. But I am your friend, and all I ask of you is the opportunity to prove it!”
I was foolish in this, of course.
Suddenly she lifted her head and looked at me
I grew red all at once, and tried to swallow.
We were quite silent. She relieved the tension by stepping casually away from the table and glancing past me into my room.
“Is that your phonograph—in there?” she asked, her voice still low, and now a thought husky.
“Yes,” said I. “You must have heard it.”
She nodded slowly. “Sometimes it sounded like that,” she mused. “And other times it was like music a long way off. You played some melodies on a Chinese stringed instrument. They were quaint.”
“It is a Japanese instrument,” I corrected eagerly. Then I became confused, and knew that I was turning red again. The story of those Yoshiwara melodies and of the outcast girl who had played them for me seemed painfully out of place here. Not for anything in the world would I have told that commonplace story—not to this slim woman with the sad, honest blue eyes. For we do not tell such stories to women.
“You spoke of the piano scale,” she went on, in that musing tone. “I never knew before that other people noticed that. Sometimes, when I'm sitting at the piano, and strike one of the black keys after playing on the white, I can hear all around if—overtones, and fractions of tones.”
“Tell me,” I said—“What is the closest interval you have ever sung?”
She slowly shook her head. “I don't know. There never was any reason for trying. And then there was no way to measure fractional tones.”
“There is now,” said I, emphatically. “My ear. Try it. We shall find out. First give me upperc.”
I got out my tuning fork, and struck the note after her
“Perfect pitch again!” I cried.
“Oh, yes,” she replied listlessly, “I can always do that.”
“Now take the closest interval you can, below the c.”
She did so. Then the next—and the next. I would not permit anapportamento, but made her separate the notes. She sang three distinct notes between thecand theb-natural that, on the piano, is the next step down.
I clapped my hands.
A little color came into her cheeks. She took a deep breath and kept at it. Her performance was not quite perfect—she got in only two clean notes betweenaanda-flat. But at that it was easily the most delicately precise bit of singing I have ever heard. She played with those close intervals with a facility that was amazing. And baring perhaps Sembrich and the earlier Melba, I have never heard such perfection of breath control (Patti doubtless had it, but I never heard her).
She stepped forward, threw her shoulders back (without raising them), swung up on the balls of her feet, and with a fine un-self-consciousness spun out those light, clear threads of tone. When she breathed it was with a quick inhalation that expanded the whole upper part of her body and made you forget how slim she had seemed. She became for the moment a strong, vibrant creature with a light in her eyes. But when she stopped singing that light died out.
“Come!” I cried. “We shall get this down now. We shall prove it on the phonograph. We shall settle that von Westfall beast forever!”
And I rushed back into my own room and prepared the instrument, without so much as ushering her in first. This was rude of me. But I have admitted I was not quite myself.
Before I had the cylinder on and the horn in position she followed. She stood at my side, watching my hands at work. I felt her there, so close, and was elated. I can not describe this sensation. That it is dangerous, I know only too well It is distinctly a tendency to be resisted.
On second thought, I decided not to waste any of my precious cylinders until she should acquire a reasonable degree of certainty with the delicate scale that was our goal. I explained this to her, and she understood. So I made her work upward from middlec, note by note, employing the utmost care to keep the intervals at precisely one-eighth of a tone. Over and over we did this. It called for the closest concentration, on her part as well as mine. I found a sort of wild happiness springing up within me at the thought that this woman has the rarest of all qualities, great capacity for work and for the enthusiasm and utter self-absorption that enter into all real achievement. I can not call her a trained worker. I would not go so far as to say that she has a trained mind. She needs guidance. And I rather imagine that further acquaintance will show that she lacks enterprise. Women of fine quality and great capacity often do, I think. They need stimulus and leadership. Imagine a man with both her extraordinary gift and her striking personality yet stirred by no curiosity to explore and create! “There never was any reason for trying,” was all she had said to that, and it was plainly all that was in her mind on the subject.