CHAPTER XVIIENTANGLING ALLIANCES
It was cherry-blossom time in Japan.
Not only had the war ended in precisely the way the war should end, but Nathan and Madelaine had lived through that horrible winter of 1918-1919 in the typhus pest house that was Siberia and come through unscathed.
It had been an overwhelming revelation to Nathan of the woman he was growing to love with all the untwisted, unleashed, latent forces that were best within him during the horror days of that winter. Cool, poised, positive, Madelaine had never flinched, never complained, never shirked the most terrible and revolting of situations. For two months she had lain down to sleep each night in a medical train side-tracked but fifty feet from carloads of frozen corpses piled like billets of wood on freight trains in the forty-below-zero weather, waiting wholesale interment far outside the city in the spring.
Nathan had been obliged to leave her in January. The central Siberian Government at Omsk had fallen. The Czechs were departing for home. Steadily and deadly, the bloody hand of the Lenine Government was reaching out for crazed jurisdiction over all the Russias. Nathan made the long trip out to Vladivostok and remained there helping to wind up the post-war activities of the Red Triangle. Then he went down to Japan. From January to the last of April he did not hear from the girl, and there were nights when fear that she had succumbed to the typhus tortured him so that the furrows in his cheeks and forehead were like saber scars.
But the nightmare ended. He had gone down to Tsuruga to meet her. A typhoon had churned the Japan Sea to a two-day fury. She had been ill. With a stab of compassion Nathan beheld how weak and spent she was. They dined inthe little European restaurant on the second floor of the ticket building at the length of the wharf.
“And you succeeded in getting sailings?” asked Madelaine.
“On theSiberia Marufor the twenty-first. We’ve almost ten days to rest and look around Japan. I’m sorry you look so tired. You need the holiday!”
“How glorious it will be to get back to God’s country,” the girl returned, “where there’s law and order and cleanliness and decency. Where you can address a stranger on the street,” she laughed, “and have him understand you at once!”
After lunch they had takenkurumasacross Tsuruga City to the station where the train was being made up for Yokohama. Gradually Madelaine recovered her buoyancy of heart, shutting away thought of the Siberian horror which no panacea in the world but time could cure. In fact, there were periods in the reaction when she was almost childish in her effort to live now only for the present and the future. All that day they had followed the great northern sweep of the Inland Sea whose colors and vistas were like a painting on a Japanese screen. They had reached Yokohama at seven o’clock.
They were like lovers on their honeymoon already. They changed into civilian clothes. In the next few days they visited Tokio, Nikko, Fujiyama, the Great Buddha and Torii at Kamakura.
It was cherry-blossom time now in Japan. And in cherry-blossom time in Japan came that night when Nathan asked the Girl-Without-a-Name to take his own and be his wife.
He had not meant to ask her to be his wife, not then. But the night before they sailed he had gone with her on a last walk about Yokohama, their final contact with the quaint, droll, beautiful empire of cloisonné, and iris, of weird distances and romantic shrines, of—well, just Japan.
It was a moonlit, lazy-warm May evening. They sank down to rest finally in the little park opposite the International Y. M. C. A. The great treaty port was hushed, thatfantastic, pregnant, unreal hush which permeates all Nipponese cities by night, even though they know little clash of traffic by day. The hour was late. The park was deserted. Street lamps had been extinguished; the moonlight made them superfluous. The exotic shrubbery, the great yellow moon peeping over the top of a gigantic pepper-tree, the sharp, intermittent cleek of the cicadas and other night insects singing out of tune around them, now and then the light of a pink-paper lantern bobbing along on the shafts of a distant rickshaw turned that park into a Garden of Dreams.
Madelaine was clothed in a white frock, white pumps; she carried a white parasol splashed over with quaint figures in pink. Nathan wore pongee and a Panama. They had fallen into talk about the future; what each expected to do when they reached home. They sank down upon a wooden bench just off the main pathway and Nathan drew aimless marks in the powdered trap-rock with his stick.
“I suppose I should go on with my medical studies,” Madelaine observed. “But somehow—oh, dear!—they seem so colorless and prosaic now, after what has happened in Siberia. I feel I have paid my debt there. Oh, laddie, my whole life has changed so! Things that I thought so great and vital have shrunken to such inconsequence. And others which have been only vague instincts and intuitions seem to matter more than all else in the world—even its sufferings just now. I don’t believe I can explain it so you’d understand.”
But Nathan did understand.
“Madelaine,” he said slowly after a time, “I received a letter from Ted Thorne about a month ago; he’s my sales manager who sent me out here in the first place. Mosely, manager of our New York office, was killed in France. The man who took his place can’t handle the work. Ted has offered it to me. It carries ten thousand a year, now. You remember me telling you how I expected the position once, but felt I lost caste at Mrs. Mosely’s dinner party? Well, I’d like to go to New York now and try again. But—but——”
“You have a ten-thousand dollar position awaiting you? How perfectly splendid!”
“Madelaine, I can’t go back to what I left—the emptiness, the petty troubles with petty people, the groping aroundblindly for social cues, the—the—loneliness, Madelaine! I can’t go back to half-a-life again. Despite all the horrors of war, I’ve been happy out here!—I’ve found happiness out here. I want it to stay. It must stay! I can’t go down into the Fog. Not again. I feel I’ve gained a little hilltop. I mustn’t lose even that partial height. I can’t.”
“Nathan,” came the girl’s whisper, “do you know what you want?”
Did he know? The poet in Nathan spoke then.
“Yes,” he cried hoarsely. “I want to go on. I want to leave sordid mediocrity behind me forever. I want fine, rare, delicate, beautiful things about me. I want to live in an atmosphere of them and a home of them. I want to feed my heart and my soul upon them. I want to make them a part of me. I want to gain from life every last iota of artistry and softness and richness it has to give. I want to do my work with a song in my heart. I want every hour a golden moment and time just something to pass away. I want money and opportunity to indulge that deep and vital impulse that once prompted me to express myself in rhyme. Do I know what I want? You ask me that! Yes, I know what I want! I want all of these things. Not to imitate somebody else or because I was once a poor, distraught young colt working in an abattoir for a dollar a day. Not that! But for the sake of beautiful things and one hundred per cent. living in itself—because beauty is—next to godliness! Yes, it is! But there’s something I want more than all of that, Madelaine. I want the woman I first saw above me on a Hill Top, standing in glorious sunshine looking off across a far country. I want the good angel who saw me wounded and exhausted, struggling up from low-lying Fog, and came down to me and gave me her strength to make the Summit. I want the woman who listened to my foolish, pent-up heartache that winter’s night in far-away Irkutsk and opened her lap and told me that nothing else mattered except lack of belief in myself. I want the woman who’s been patient and ministering and inspiring in a thousand hours since—to go home with me, Madelaine—to dwell with me—in a Palace Beautiful, dear girl—whose windows look out upon Delectable Mountains. I want you, dear Madelaine! And my heart is filled with such rich, mellowed love for you that it chokes my throat. You stand for all of the things I’vetotaled, dear girl. You’re the best and biggest thing that’s ever come into my life. I want you—and I want you terribly!”
A pause. An insect cheeping somewhere under boxwood.
“Then why don’t you take me, foolish boy?” Woman Beautiful laughed softly.
Hushed Japanese night, the moon riding hazily above the rakish branches of eucalyptus now, cicadas singing on into eternity, paper lanterns bobbing far across elfin dark! They stood amid the trillion blossoms of cherry trees whose petals sifted all around them, and Nathan knew for the first time in twenty-nine barren, heart-breaking years, the sensation of a real woman’s soft arms about his neck and the sweet, scented, delicate impress of a real woman’s kiss upon his lips, returning his caress with a warmth and a tenderness that fused his heart and his soul and made them as one forever.
The white parasol was lying on the bench. No one was left in the park but themselves. The moonlight was again shining into a woman’s face as they stood there for an instant and Nathan held her close. But she was not weakly flaccid in his embrace. Her body thrilled to his.
“Dear lad,” she said in a faint whisper, “I’ve waited a dreary time for your strong arms around me and your hard-shaven cheek close to mine. Oh, I don’t mean merely since the Great Noon-time in Siberia. Years before that, dear lad, years and years! Sunlit days, gray days, rainy afternoons, empty twilights, nights when I wanted to sob in the darkness—I thought of you and wondered where you were, and what you were doing, and if in your heart there was a little lonely ache likewise. I wondered how badly you needed me, dear lad, even as I needed you. For my heart ached for Romance, too, until it almost seemed I’d accept my disappointment and believe it had passed me by. But God is good. You’re getting only a little orphaned girl, dear lad, found under a haycock on the edge of a wood. But she loves you—loves you a bit terribly—she has always loved you—loved you even before she knew your name, or where you were, or what the sound of your voice was like. You are her life and her world henceforth. She, too, has found her Other Half and her heart will never greet the sunshine coming across the hill tops in the morning without a song springing to her lipsand tears to her eyes. It has been a bitter wait, dear lad, and the way has not always seemed clear. But the end of the trek—it is sweet, very sweet. We will go back, we will go home. And all the beautiful things you have wanted, that I can help you get—they shall come to you. All the artistry and softness and richness I can help bring to you shall surround you. You shall do your work with a song in your heart also. Every hourshallbe a golden moment. Timeshallbe a thing only to pass away. Oh, Nathan dear, I’m the happiest of women. We’ll go home with the morrow. Together we will go home and dwell—in a Palace Beautiful—whose windows look out on Delectable Mountains, indeed!”
“To-morrow—at two o’clock—home!”
“Home!” she repeated. “Oh, Nathan!”
During that night before their departure, clouds blew in from the Pacific and blanketed the sea-coast country. They awoke the next morning to find a light drizzle falling. But it held up after breakfast and Madelaine declared, as she turned in her room keys:
“I’ve several purchases to make before we go on board. Let’s go penny-shopping together.”
They went out the west door of The Grand, brushing aside the eager, solicitous kuruma men and turned northward along the back street afoot. Madelaine wore a traveling suit of gray worsted, the short skirt permitting a light, easy stride. Her head was covered with a mannish hat of black velour, half the brim turned down. She cared little for the wet.
They picked their way through greasy streets, but always when it was necessary for the woman to walk ahead, the man’s eyes followed her hungrily. Would he never become weary of simply gazing upon her? The sheer grace and delicacy of her every curve and line; her erect, supple carriage; her frank, fearless, appraising eyes; her perfect poise, regardless of the situation; the ephemeral expressions which played upon her cameo features; the neatness of her hair at the back of her neck; what a thoroughbred she was to her finger tips!
They made many little purchases in stores and curio shops. Nathan could not buy her the diamond he wanted until they reached America; his funds were too low and he had no time to draw on home for more. Her diamond must wait until they reached New York. But it would be a—diamond!
They were gradually wending their way toward the Oriental Steamship wharf when a window of carved ivory curios caught Nathan’s fancy.
“Let’s go in and look them over,” Madelaine suggested. “We’ve still four hours to spend somehow before sailing.”
They went inside. The shop was arranged European style, deep showcases running along either side of the back. The proprietor laid out several trays and cases for their inspection. Then a Japanese boy came and jabbered at him.
“You excuse,” the proprietor grinned. “I send Angleese man sell you,” and he went to a door opening into a sort of workshop and called in an order.
The “English” clerk came forward, along behind the counter. Nathan’s head was bent close to Madelaine’s, examining an ingenious carving. Nathan turned to the clerk and held it out, his eyes still on it.
“What’s the price of this?” he asked. As he asked it, he raised his eyes to the clerk’s face.
He was looking directly into the features of his father.
His father!
Separated by the width of the show case whose edges both gripped suddenly. Nathan and Johnathan gazed into each other’s suddenly ashen faces.
“You!” cried Johnathan. “You! My—son!”
Johnathan had grown stouter but he had aged twenty years. Remorse, loneliness, self-pity and the ever-present realization that he was an exile had eaten into his features like acid. Both temples were white but it was a weak, rusted, moth-eaten whiteness. His eyes were more watery than ever and his mouth as loose, excepting for the petulant knots of muscles in each corner.
“Father!” the boy gasped huskily.
Madelaine frowned, then looked on wide-eyed. From his son’s bronzed, muscular face, Johnathan’s gaze leaped to Madelaine’s, then back again. Ivory carvings were forgotten.
“What—are you—doing—out here?”
“I’m on my way back home from Russia,” Nathan answered mechanically. His mind was still stunned with the drama of it.
“You have—been—to—Russia?”
“Siberia! Yes! I’ve been up there almost a year and a half, working among the Czechs.”
Johnathan’s body had not moved. Only his eyes and face. Again the father’s eyes sought Madelaine.
“Up in Siberia? Alone?”
“Yes. But I’m not going back alone. This is a very dear friend of mine. Madelaine, apparently I can introduce my father. Father, this is Miss Theddon. She is—going to be—my wife.”
“Your—wife? What’s become of——”
“Of Mildred? She died some time ago.”
“My God!” cried Johnathan weakly. He rubbed the back of a puffy hand across his forehead. Down back of the counter he moved unsteadily to reach the intersection where he could come out from behind the cases. He had not acknowledged Madelaine or the introduction, by the way. It was a distressing moment for Madelaine but she recovered as Johnathan came up.
“I’m sure I’m delighted to meet Nathan’s father,” she said.
Johnathan gave her a slight nod and turned at once to his son. In so far as he was concerned, she might have been marooned on a ring around Saturn.
The tears were streaking down Johnathan’s face. He raised his hands and gripped the boy by his elbows.
“How long have you been in Yokohama?” he cried hoarsely.
“Ten days. But I lived here three months before I went to Siberia.”
“And you never looked me up!”
“I tried hard enough. But nobody knew any Johnathan Forge——”
Johnathan started at the pronouncement of his name. He shot a frightened glance around.
“My name is Smith!” he cried—“John Smith!”
“I couldn’t know that, of course,” returned Nathan dryly. He was beginning to recover from the shock of the encounter.
“You must come with me!” declared the father. “You must tell me all about Paris and—home. I will find a place for you to——”
“I’m sorry, father. But Miss Theddon and I are sailing for San Francisco at two o’clock.”
“Not to-day!”
“To-day, yes.”
“But—but—we’ve only just found each other.”
“That’s lamentable, of course. But I can’t help——”
“You must put off your sailing.” Johnathan said it as though he had settled the entire matter.
Nathan shook his head.
“Sorry, father,” he answered. “It’s impossible! We’ve been lucky enough to secure immediate passage, and we must get back. Miss Theddon is not in the best of health and I’ve got a New York job waiting that can’t go begging another moment.”
“My Lord! You’re not going to run after we’ve just found each other! Not that, Natie, not that!”
“I’m not running. But I’ve been away from home a year and a half and we’re expected back June first without fail.”
Johnathan looked around frantically, desperately.
“No,” he said after a time. “I don’t suppose you would stay, not for me! I never cut much of a figure in your life, anyhow, did I, Nathan? You and your plans never took much account of your father, did they? Maybe if they had, I’d never have left home in the first place.” Again Johnathan smeared the back of his hand across his forehead. He turned to Madelaine. “For twenty-five years it was just like this!” he told her. “And you see what it’s done to me.” He submitted himself abjectly for general compassion and sympathy. Madelaine’s voice was courteous enough but a bit icy as she responded:
“Your son has told me the whole story, Mr. Forge. I understand perfectly.”
Johnathan was pitying himself too much in this closing phase of his domestic drama to interpret her sentiment correctly. He assumed that Madelaine was sympathizing with him against Nathan.
“He always was headstrong,” began Johnathan promptly.“Went right along demanding his own way even as a beardless boy that couldn’t——”
“Pardon, Mr. Forge. You misunderstood. I said your son has told me the whole story and therefore I recognize exactly where the blame lies.”
Johnathan gaped for a moment. There was no mistaking her calm hostility. He turned to his son.
“Nathan!—For God’s sake, don’t go!—Don’t desert me now when I’ve just found you again. I never deserted you, Nathan; for twenty-five years I did my duty——”
It was awkward to have his father suddenly begin to act so. Other customers had entered the shop and were beholding. Madelaine read on her lover’s face the distress he was seeking a way to ameliorate, somehow. Her indignation rose.
“Really, Mr. Forge, is it quite fair to appeal to Nathan so? Because I’ve been under the impression you did desert him—and left him to face a somewhat cruel set of circumstances.”
“What do you know about it?” snapped Johnathan. “You’re a stranger to us Forges——”
“Father!That’ll be enough of addressing Miss Theddon so, please! And I suggest we find a place less public where we may talk.”
“Yes, yes!” agreed Johnathan. “The back office here. They’ll leave us alone. Come into the back office, Natie.”
Nathan glanced at Madelaine. She nodded. They moved toward the back office.
“Your woman friend will excuse us,” suggested the father curtly. “We have much to talk over in private, Nathan.”
“Oh, no,” responded the son. “I don’t care to discuss anything I do not wish Miss Theddon to hear.” And Nathan stood aside for Madelaine to precede him into the cluttered little workshop. Johnathan was not so courteous.
Johnathan, in fact, was piqued. In Madelaine he sensed an adversary. Immediately he took no care to keep concealed his estimate of her, of all women. They seated themselves, a smile of grim humor lurking about Madelaine’s pretty mouth.
“First you will cancel your passage,” began Johnathan doggedly. “You must promise me, Nathan! Remember, you’ll never have but one father.”
“I cannot and will not delay our sailing, father.” Nat’svoice was kind but firm. “Now that’s settled, what about home do you especially wish to know?”
Johnathan produced a soiled handkerchief and blew his nose. But he saw that because of the influence of a “female” undoubtedly, the son was the same adamant, bigoted colt he had always been.
“You might tell me about yourself,” he said lamely, petulantly. “You had a wonderful little wife, Nathan. What happened to her?” Johnathan said this for Madelaine. And he did not miss the pallor which took the humorous lip-smile from the girl’s features as he said it. He had a way to wound the girl, perhaps drive a wedge between her and his boy. “And your child, Natie! Little Mary was one of the sweetest tots I ever saw. What became of her?”
“She was killed by a truck a year before Milly died,” was the son’s rejoinder. He said it stiffly. He wondered—if his father was to be deliberately mean—if it might not have been better after all to ask Madelaine to wait until the visit was ended.
“That’s hard, Natie. It must have been awful; you thought so much of her. And Milly? I always loved Milly. She was such a wonderful little woman and did so much for you. I remember she was the only one who stuck by us in the factory the time you had that trouble with the help and they all walked out on you.”
“Milly was untrue to me,” returned Nathan with continued stiffness. “She ran away with that Plumb fellow and was killed—when a munitions plant exploded in Russellville, New Jersey.”
Johnathan assimilated this after a time. He murmured philosophically, “The ways of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Blessed be the name of the Lord!”
Nathan grimaced.
“What else do you wish to know, father?” he asked—and waited.
“And now you’re plunging into matrimony againsoquick! I don’t see how you can do it, Natie—out of respect to Milly’s memory if nothing else.”
Nathan kept his temper admirably. He could apologize to Madelaine for the insult afterward—an entire lifetime of apology.
“I owe Milly nothing. I told you she ran away withPlumb. Anyway, we won’t talk about that. You’re only dwelling upon it because you see it annoys Miss Theddon. What other information can I give you?”
Johnathan’s manner changed.
“How about your mother?” he demanded like a challenge.
“Mother had a bitter time after you left us. She sold the Longstreet house but a smooth oil-stock salesman cheated her out of the money. At present she’s living with Edith.”
Johnathan turned to Madelaine.
“And among the things my son has told you,” he demanded, “did he include, perhaps, an account of the twenty-five years of hell I lived with his mother? For twenty-five years she was my trial and my cross. I couldn’t stand it finally. I had to get out. There was no other escape but flight. Human flesh and blood couldn’t stand it, I tell you! Wait till you get to know her. Then you’ll sympathize with me. There’s righteousness and justice in this world somewhere and the wicked get their deserts.”
Madelaine made no comment. The pause which ensued angered Johnathan.
“From the very night I was married,” he went on in a trifle higher tone, “the tussle began. Never once did she try to help me or stand back of me in my battle with the world. She nagged me and she fought me. She——”
“Possibly, Mr. Forge,” interrupted Madelaine. “But why tell me about it?”
“You’re marrying into the family, ain’t you? There’s—things—which you should know.”
“I’m merely marrying Nathan,” responded Madelaine.
The interview was going badly. Great tears continued to roll down Johnathan’s face and he blew his nose again and again.
“What business are you in, Natie?” he finally asked. He was an injured man. There was not a doubt about it. All the world had it in for him.
“I secured a position with the Thorne knitting mills,” returned Nathan. “I traveled for them a year and a half. Then they sent me out here to the Orient. I’m going back as manager of their New York office.”
“Well, Natie, you have your father to thank for that! If it hadn’t been for the business training I gave you, no firms would ever be offering you any New York managementsat your age. Why, when I was your age I was lucky to draw twelve dollars a week. We worked for our money in those days.”
Nathan finally felt it time to put a few inquiries himself.
“How does it happen you’re working here, father? Money give out?”
Johnathan turned quickly and looked through the window into a dismal yard.
“The curse of us Forges, Natie,” he finally responded, “has always been women. You’ll learn it one of these days!”
“How does it happen you’re working here? Money give out?” Nathan repeated.
“I started to tell you, if you’ll be respectful and wait a moment. Don’t be so hot-headed. Hot-headedness and lack of respect always were your faults, Natie!”
Nathan waited as patiently as possible.
“I came out here,” Johnathan went on, “seeking love and surcease from all I’d suffered. I met a woman. I thought she was in every way a woman to be desired, Nathan. I married her——”
“You married her! You were never divorced from mother!”
“Oh, yes, I was! Do you think I’m a bigamist? I got a divorce from your mother under the Japanese laws——”
“Mother never knew about it.”
“I can’t help that.”
“The divorce laws of Japan, Nathan,” explained Madelaine with a faint smile, “are very simple. When a man grows tired of his wife in Japan he may dispense with her by merely walking out and leaving her, first informing the police to that effect, I believe. Then he contracts a new marriage by going to live with his paramour and duly informing the police to that effect also, giving his new residence. One of the Y. W. C. A. girls explained it to me.”
Johnathan ignored Madelaine. He went on:
“I got a divorce from your mother under the laws of Japan. I married what I supposed was a woman who’d be the wife I deserved—after all I’d been through back in the States. But she was like all women. I lived with her just two days. I was fool enough to intrust my bank account to her. The third day she was missing and so was the money. I’ve never got trace of either, since. I had to take a job.”
Nathan flushed again with the new insult to Madelaine. But for an instant his anger was arrested by the announcement that his father had been flimflammed by an adventuress.
“Edith has six children now,” he essayed, after a painful moment.
But Johnathan was not interested in the fact that Edith had six children. He went on in the same whine:
“I’m living from hand to mouth, Natie. I’ve been here the last three years—waiting on trade, interpreting for my employers because I learned how to speak a little Japanese. Think of it, Natie—waiting on trade for a godless heathen—me!”
“Under the circumstances it ought to be a very good position,” observed the son.
The visit continued in this strain until noontime. Then they went out together to a small restaurant and had tiffin. Johnathan managed to get Nathan alone.
“Son,” he cried brokenly, “you must loan me some money. I’m at the end of my rope. Some days I think there’s nothing left but to jump in the Bay.”
“How much money do you need?”
“All you can spare me,” was Johnathan’s modest request.
“I’m low on funds, father. I’ve got just about enough to get me back to Vermont. I wanted to buy Miss Theddon a diamond but have had to wait until——”
“Could you let me have a thousand yen, say? That’s only five hundred and ten dollars!—in cash!”
“It’s out of the question, just now. I’ve only a hundred and eighty dollars with me and my passage across America will use up a hundred of that.”
Ultimately Nathan gave his father twenty-five dollars,—fifty-five ten-yen notes. Johnathan took them rather sourly. He placed more stock in the money Nathan promised to wire when he reached Vermont.
“Oh, my boy, my boy! What are you doing?” he next cried, anent Madelaine. “You’re fortunate enough for your first wife to die on you. Straightaway you go putting your head in the halter again! After all I tried to save you from! After all your father’s example! Oh, well! You deserve nothing but the misery coming to you! This is a just world!”
“Let’s not talk about Miss Theddon, father. She’s the sort of lady I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand.”
“Wouldn’t I, though? Don’t try to tell me there’s any kind of female I don’t understand! I’m older than you and therefore must know better. And never mind how many miles of land and water separate us, young man, remember I am always your father. I am always your father!”
“Just what has that to do with an understanding of womanhood?” asked Nathan quietly. The old, old feeling of groping in a fog the moment he came in contact with his father came over him. He wanted to fight it savagely.
“Just you wait till you’re married to her a spell—long enough for the ‘new’ to wear off! You’ll see! You think she’s fine and grand now, just because she’s got a pretty face! But you wait! You’ll be sorry not taking your wise father’s advice. Just as you did once before. Wait till you see her running around in broken corsets or dirty underclothes——”
“Father, you’re disgusting. Please change the subject!”
“You can’t tell me nothing about women, young man! Didn’t I live twenty-five years with one! They’re all alike! And ninety-nine per cent. of ’em are bad—bad clean through to the spleen. But I’ll pray for you, my son—I’ll never cease praying for you!”
TheSiberia Maruwas prompt in casting off. Johnathan grew a bit abusive, then hysterical, as the hour drew near for departure. He clutched his boy as though he would hold him by force. Nathan waited until the last moment. Then he turned and extended his hand.
“Good-by, father,” he said.
Johnathan’s face resembled the hue of a drowned corpse when he said good-by in a whisper. Nathan hurried aboard. Hatches were being battened down, winches fastened, the gangplank raised, as he found Madelaine by the rail high on the promenade deck. Side by side they leaned over and watched the crowd below. In that crowd Nathan finally located his father’s upturned face.
Madelaine started to say something sympathetic to her lover, but the three-minute blast of the vessel’s departing whistle drowned out her voice.
Slowly the liner backed from her little stall in the great port. A steam tug at her prow turned her southward.
Nathan lost his father’s figure in the crowd, then found him again.
Johnathan was using his handkerchief alternately to smear his face and then wave the little flash of white as bravely as he could.
“Have I done right by him, Madelaine?” begged the son brokenly. “For heaven’s sake, tell me if I’ve erred?”
“You have not erred, Nathan. This is a world in which our sins punish themselves—always.”
Nathan looked back as the ship’s great engine-beat started, a throbbing which would not cease until they paused in Honolulu harbor, ten days later.
A lone figure was on the farthest point of the dock. A tiny white kerchief was rising and falling weakly. Then an incoming liner hid it from sight.