A Transient Guest, and Other Episodes Part 1

A Transient Guest.

by Edgar Saltus.

I.

Since the _Koenig Wilhelm_, of the Dutch East India Service, left Batavia, the sky had been torpidly blue, that suffocating indigo which seems so neighborly that the traveller fancies were he a trifle taller he could touch it with the ferule of his stick. When night came, the stars would issue from their ambush and stab it through and through, but the glittering cicatrices which they made left it bluer even, more persistent than before. And now, as the s.h.i.+p entered the harbor, there was a cruelty about it that exulted and defied. The sun, too, seemed to menace; on every bit of bra.s.s it placed a threat, and in the lap of the waters there was an understanding and a pact. Beyond, to the right, was one long level stretch of sand on which the breakers fawned with recurrent surge and swoon. Behind it were the green ramparts of a forest; to the left were the bungalows and booths of Siak; while in the distance, among the hills and intervales, where but a few years before natives lurked beneath the monstrous lilies and clutched their kriss in fierce surmise, a locomotive had left a trail of smoke.

"Sumatra, too, has gone the way of the world," thought one who lounged on deck.

He was a good-looking young fellow, browner far than he had been when he left New York, and he was garbed in a fas.h.i.+on which would have attracted the notice of the most apathetic _habitue_ of Narragansett Pier. Save for a waistband of yellow silk, he was clad wholly in that dead white which is known as _fromage a la creme_. Had his cork hat been decorated with a canary bird's feather, you would have said a prince stepped from a fairy tale. At his heels was a fox terrier, which he had christened Zut. When he wished to be emphatic, however, Zut was elongated into Zut Alors.

"The general's compliments, sir, and are you ready?"

It was the polyglot steward addressing him, with that deference which is born of tips.

Tancred Ennever--the only son of Furman Ennever, who, as every one knows, is head and front of the steadiest house in Wall Street--turned and nodded. "Got my traps up?" he asked, and without waiting for a reply sauntered across the deck. He had met the general--Petrus van Lier, Consul of the Netherlands to Siak--at the Government House at Batavia, and although the trip which he had outlined for himself consisted, for the moment at least, in making direct for that sultry hole which is known as Singapore, yet the general had so represented the charms and pleasures of Sumatra that he had consented to become his guest. In extending the invitation the general may have had an ulterior motive, but in that case he let no inkling of it escape.

And now, as Tancred crossed the deck, the general stretched his hand. He was a man whose fiftieth birthday would never be feted again. He had the dormant eyes of his race, those eyes in which apathy is a screen to vigilance, and his chin had the tenacity of a rock. His upper lip was furnished with a cavalry moustache of indistinctest gray, the ends upturned and fierce. In stature he was short and slim. It should be added that he was bald.

Though the s.h.i.+p had barely halted, already it was surrounded by prahus and sampans, the indigenous varieties of skiff, and among them one there was so trim it might have come from a man-of-war. In the bow a fluttering pennon proclaimed it a belonging of the Dutch. The c.o.xswain had already saluted, and sat awaiting the orders of his chief.

The general motioned with a finger, the c.o.xswain touched his forehead, and in a moment the boat was at the slanting ladder. Tancred and the general descended, there was a sullen command, and the oarsmen headed for the sh.o.r.e.

"We are so late my people will be worried," confided the consul, as the landing was reached. "Usually--" and, as he ran on dilating on the unpunctuality of the service, Tancred remembered to have heard that his host was about to be married to an English widow, who, with her brother, was then stopping at the consul's bungalow.

"Be still, Zut," ordered Tancred, for the dog was yelping like mad at a fawn-colored b.u.t.terfly that floated, tantalizingly, just out of reach.

It was as big as a bird, and its eyes were ruby. "Be still."

On the wharf a crowd of Malays and Chinese impeded the way, the Celestials garbed in baggy breeches and black vests, the Malays, nakeder, wickeder, darker, and more compact. Beyond was an open square, a collection of whitewashed booths, roofed with tiles of mottled red, and cottages of thatched palm. In the air was the odor of spices and cachous.

Guided by his host, Tancred entered an open vehicle that waited there.

Then, after a brisk drive through the town, a long sweep through a quiet lane that was bordered now by rice-fields, now by giant trees festooned by lianas and rattans, and again by orchards of fruit and betel-nut, at last, in a grove of palms, a house was reached, a one-story dwelling, quaint, roomy, oblong, and still. An hour later the general and his guest were waiting dinner in the bale-bale of the bungalow.

Presently from the panoplied steps came the tinkle of moving feet. The general rose from his chair.

"My future wife," he announced, in an aside. "Mrs. Lyeth," he continued, "this is Mr. Ennever."

She was a woman such as the midland counties alone produce, one whom it would be proper to describe as queenly, were it not that queens are dowds. She just lacked being tall. Her hair was of that hue of citron which is noticeable in very young children, and it was arranged in the fas.h.i.+on we have copied from the Greeks, but her features were wholly English, features that the years would remold with coa.r.s.er thumb, but which as yet preserved the freshness and the suavity of a pastel. One divined that her limbs were strong and supple. She held herself with a grace of her own, on her cheeks was a flush, her mouth seemed to promise more than any mortal mouth could give; in short, she was beautiful, a northern splendor in a tropic frame.

Tancred, who had risen with the general, stared for a second and bowed.

"Muhammad's prophecy is realized," he murmured; and as Mrs. Lyeth eyed him inquiringly, "At sunset," he added, "I behold a rising sun."

And moving forward he took her wrist and brushed it with his lips.

"One might fancy one's self at Versailles," Mrs. Lyeth replied, and sank into a wicker chair.

"Olympus, rather," Tancred corrected, and found a seat at her side.

"H'm," mused the lady; but evidently nothing pertinent could have occurred to her, for she hesitated a moment and then graciously enough remarked, "The general tells me he knows your father."

"Yes, it may even be that we are connected; there was a Sosinje van Lier who married an Ennever, oh, ages ago. The general, however, thinks she was not a relative of his."

"I have forgotten," the general interjected, and glanced at his future bride. "Is Liance never coming?"

From without came the hum of insects, a hum so insistent, so enervating, and yet so Wagnerian in intensity that you would have said a nation of them celebrating a feast of love. Presently the murmurs were punctuated by the beat of a wooden gong, and as the reverberations fainted in the night, a young girl appeared.

The general left his chair again.

"My daughter," he announced; and as Tancred bowed he remembered that the general had been a widower before he became engaged to the divinity that sat at his side.

"You're an American, aren't you?" the girl asked.

There was nothing forward in her manner: on the contrary, it was languid and restrained, as though the equatorial sky had warped her nerves. But her eyes had in them the flicker of smoldering fire; they seemed to project interior flames. Her complexion was without color, unless indeed olive may be accounted one. Her abundant hair was so dark it seemed nearly blue. At the corners of her upper lip was the faintest trace of down. Her frock was like the night, brilliant yet subdued; it was black, but glittering with little sparks; about her bare arms were coils of silver, and from her waist hung cords of plaited steel. She looked as barbaric as Mrs. Lyeth looked divine.

"Yes," Tancred answered, smilingly; but before he could engage in further speech, the general's "boy" announced that dinner was served.

"What do you think of it there?" asked Mrs. Lyeth, whose arm he found within his own.

And as they pa.s.sed from the bale-bale, as an uninclosed pavilion is called, to the dining-room beyond, Tancred answered:

"What does one think of the Arabian Nights?"

But there was nothing Arabesque about the meal of which he was then called upon to partake. It began with oysters, rather brackish but good, and ended with cheese. Save for some green pigeons with their plumage undisturbed, and a particularly fiery karri, it was just such a dinner as the average diner-out enjoys on six nights out of seven. There were three kinds of French wine and a variety of Dutch liqueurs. During its service the general held forth, as generals will, on the subject of nothing at all. And when the meal was done, for several hours the little group, reunited in the bale-bale, exchanged the usual commonplace views.

During that interchange Tancred kept himself as near as he could to Mrs.

Lyeth, and when at last the party broke up and he found himself alone in his room he drew a breath which might have been almost accounted one of relief.

Through the open windows came a heaviness, subtle as the atmosphere of a seraglio. Beyond, some palms masked a cl.u.s.ter of stars, but from above rained down the light and messages of other worlds. In the distance was the surge of the sea, sounding afar the approach and retreat of the waves. Beneath, in the underbrush, fire-flies glittered, avoiding each other in abrupt ziz-zags and sudden loops of flame. The moon had not yet risen, but the sky still was visibly blue.

And as Tancred dropped on a seat he loosened his neck-cloth with a thrust of the thumb. "That claret was heady," he told himself, and with a bit of cambric he mopped his brow. But was it the claret? For a little s.p.a.ce he sat gazing at the invitations of the equator. In his ears the hum of insects still sounded, and to his unheeding eyes the stars danced their saraband. The sea seemed to beckon and the night to wait.

Thus far his life had been precisely like that of any other well-nurtured lad of twenty-two. He had been educated at Concord, he was a graduate of Harvard; but during his school and college days the refinement of his own home had accompanied him afar. He was one of those young men, more common now than a few years since, who find it awkward to utter one word that could not be said aloud in a ball-room. And in this he was guided less perhaps by good breeding--for breeding, like every varnish, may cloak the coa.r.s.est fibre--than by native comeliness of thought. He shrank from the distasteful as other men shrink from the base. His parents had had the forethought to provide him with two sisters, one a year older than himself, one a year his junior; and these girls, who at the present hour suggest in our metropolitan a.s.semblies the charm and allurements of a politer age, had taken their brother in hand. They had taught him what is best left undone, the grace of self-effacement, and they had given him some breath of the aroma which they themselves exhaled. To this his parents had added a smile of singular beauty, and features clear-cut and sure. In short, his people had done their best for him. And now that he was seeing the world in that easiest way, which consists in travelling around it, his letter of credit was not only in his pocket, but in his face and manner as well.

"I must go to-morrow," he continued. And as he tried to map his departure, the tinkle of a footfall across the hall routed and disturbed his thoughts. Unsummoned there visited him a melody, heard long since, the accompaniment of a song of love. With a gesture he forced it back.

Had he not understood--? No; he remembered now there was no boat from Siak for several days. He might engage a prahu, though, and in it effect a crossing to Perang; he could even take the train and journey to another place. Indeed, he reflected, he might readily do that. And as he told himself this, from across the hall a tinkle fainter than before reached his ear. He heard a whispering voice, a door closed, and some one beat upon a gong of wood. It was midnight, he knew.

He threw his coat aside and stared at the stars. They were taciturn still, yet more communicative than ever before. One in particular, that shone sheer above the bale-bale, seemed instinct with lessons and sayings of sooth. And to the precepts it uttered, its companions acquiesced, and smiled. Everything, even to the immaterial, the surge of the sea, the trail of the fire-flies, and the glint of a moonbeam, now aslant at his feet, conspired to coerce his will. The very air was alive with caresses, redolent with the balm and the odors of bamboo.

Slowly he undid the lachets of a shoe.

"It is wrong," he muttered, and a breeze that loitered answered, "It is right." "I will go," he continued, and the great stars chorused, "You will stay."

Meditatively still he continued to disrobe; but in spite of the stars and the moonbeams the light must have been insufficient, for presently he lit a candle, monologuing to himself the while. And as he monologued he was aware of that fettering, overmastering force which visits youth but once--the abnegation of self before that which is.

In that struggle in which we lay our arguments down and rejoice in defeat he had wrestled with all the weakness of his years. And now, as he flung himself on the bed, he clasped a pillow in his arms and sighed.

He hoped for nothing, he expected nothing; but it was bliss to be conquered and enchained. The contest was done. During the coming week his captor would move before him, a luring melody, a clear accord sounded for his own delight, and then he would go, leaving the melody undisturbed, yet bearing a strain of it to feed on, a memory of enduring joy.