There were times when Cordelia lost all sense of direction and then they drifted in an aimless way, merely looking. Then by one impulse they would go a month’s journey in a straight line, looking neither right nor left, only to be disappointed again at the end. And yet a chart of their movements—Dreadwind had plotted one and showed it to me—clearly revealed a blind tendency from every angle to converge upon a certain point.
For some time Dreadwind had been silent, smoking slowly, his thoughts dwelling upon their travels, as I knew from now and then a wistful smile upon his face or an involuntary contraction of the grief muscles in his forehead.
“That’s all,” he said suddenly. “You passed us several times, you say. Therefore you know. It took us nearly three years to find it.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Nearly three years.”
“Then it wasn’t true?”
“What wasn’t true?”
“Weaver’s notion about his spirit. Three years, you say. Well? His spirit ought long ago to have departed. And if it had, or you thought it had, you would not continue here.”
“Oh! I see,” he said, his puzzled look breaking away. “You assume that the money has been lost. Of course. Anyone would think so. I haven’t told you. It sounds incredible. The money has not been lost. On the contrary, it has multiplied. I could show you the broker’s reports. The first year half of it was lost. The next year the surviving half increased itself threefold. And this year—I’ve just heard—it has doubled. It now amounts to about three million dollars.”
“And the tree meanwhile is flourishing,” I commented.
He looked at me steadily, nodding his head. “I don’t suppose anyone ever tried to lose money in the wheat pit,” he said. “It may be in the nature of chance that it’s as hard to lose as to win if that’s what you set out to do. Of course... I might... No, I couldn’t do that. We shall have to see.”
What it was he might do he did not say and I did not ask. One is permitted to guess.
It was strange that Weaver’s money had not been lost. But you see, in placing it Dreadwind had in mind not the losing of it primarily but the effect Weaver wished it to have in the pit, which was to support the price of wheat in the glut of the harvest; and it had been demonstrated to everyone’s amazement that money employed in that way need not be lost. It was the Joseph thing over again—buying grain when there was too much of it because there was too much, and, behold! it turned out to pay. Yes, but on the other side, if Dreadwind now wished more to lose the money than to prove Weaver’s theory he could very easily do so. Any experienced wheat gambler would know how to do that. Superstition aside, one could do it with certainty.
Dreadwind’s dilemma is clear. He was torn between an impulse to break the spell that enthralled them both and a powerful sentiment of veneration for the form and meaning of it. I have said once that I could not be sure that in his mind he believed it at all, and that yet he unconsciously did, for believing was implicit in his acts. Here it was. He would not change those first instructions to the broker in any way to place the money in greater jeopardy.
There he is. I leave him to you. A man living in a bamboo hut with the woman he loves and cannot possess, unable to destroy the invisible thing that keeps them apart
CHAPTER XII
“A NIGHT’S tale,” I said, looking around the table. “Dawn is breaking. So it was in Burma when Dreadwind finished.”
Sylvester and Selkirk looked first at the sky over the sea and then at their watches. Goran stretched. Moberly sat quite still. He was the first to speak.
“How long ago was that?” he asked. “When were you with Dreadwind, I mean?”
“Four months ago,” I said. “A little more. Four and a half.”
“They are there still?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Waiting for old Weaver’s money to be lost?”
“Yes.”
I noticed that he framed these questions carefully and I wondered, too, at their sincerity. I had not expected him to be the one most impressed.
Chairs were pushed back.
“Wait a minute,” said Goran. “I’ve a feeling you have left something out. Something about Cordelia. Didn’t you see her before you left?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
I hesitated for an answer and marveled at Goran’s subtle penetration.
“You did of course,” he said, not waiting. “And I have a feeling that she spoke with you to some purpose. That is what is missing.”
“I suspect you know too much about women,” I said.
“Only that they are unknowable,” he answered. “Can you tell us what she said?”
This was what she said. Goran apparently had already guessed it, not the words, but the sense. She had been with us for breakfast. It was nine o’clock when we were ready to start for the boat landing. She meant to go with us, and we were on the veranda waiting for Dreadwind. He called out that he would overtake us; he had a letter to finish that he wished me to post. So we walked on through the forest without him—Cordelia and I. As we passed the tree I noticed she did not look at it; and her not doing so was rather pointed, since she must have been aware that I was regarding it with deep curiosity.
“The day will be very hot,” she said. “I’m 0sorry to have kept you up all night. Mr. Dreadwind told you, did he not, it was I who wished you to know everything?”
“Yes,” I answered, “he told me that. And he seemed a little surprised,” I added.
She ignored the provocative part of my statement and was silent for several minutes.
“Are you familiar with the wheat pit?” she asked.
I said that I was.
“Is it so difficult to lose money there if that is one’s real intention?” she asked. As I did not reply at once she added: “You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “No, I shouldn’t have thought it would be so difficult. But it’s hard to say. There is no experience, you see. Never before has anyone tried to lose money there.”
That was as far as I was willing at the time to satisfy Goran’s curiosity. There was more. And there was the sign. I did not tell him of that either. He was regarding me with a superior indulgent smile; and when he understood that I meant to tell no more he said: “Enough. Men are so stupid! They don’t deserve their luck, now do they? We never know what we want. Only the woman does.”
What else passed there on the forest path before Dreadwind overtook us is no longer inhibited, and may as well be set down at once. My reply as to the difficulty of losing money in the wheat pit left her dissatisfied, though she did not say so. She said nothing. After a little while I said: “Why did you so particularly wish me to know?” She did not answer, therefore I added: “I ask because I haven’t been told how I shall treat it. I mean, whether to treat it as if I had never heard it... or-----” I stopped, hardly knowing myself what I wished to say. I had only the intuition that somewhere in all this lay a veiled purpose; also the feeling that I was expected to sense it. And the assumption that I am a subtle person causes me always a little irritation, precisely because I am not.
“You are going back,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “Directly back.”
It was then, as I said in the beginning, that she drew me. a little aside. We had come to the landing and Dreadwind was not yet in sight. She stood with her hands behind her, the sun in her face, her eyes wide open; and I saw for myself the expression that had so long baffled Dreadwind. When she spoke she was not as before. She was not quite herself. Her words were stilted. “In a far place,” she said, “by the water, you will be alone among many people. Four men will meet you as if by chance. They will take you to sup with them. Tell them, and tell no one else until then. Only be sure they are the right men. You will think of a sign.”
Then Dreadwind came with his letter and bade me good-bye.
None of this did I tell at the table.
We broke up. The others were for going to bed and spoke of meeting at lunch time; but Sylvester asked me to go for a walk. I went. We had taken a long turn down the boardwalk and were watching the sun rise out of the sea when he said, most abruptly:
“I am that broker.”
“What broker?” I asked, unable for an instant to make any connection of ideas.
“The one that has old Weaver’s money under Dreadwind’s instructions,” he said. “I thought all the time it was Dreadwind’s own. He told me only what he appears to have repeated to you—that he couldn’t explain it and I might regard it as an affair of conscience. All of that Weaver stuff was new to me.”
“How extraordinary!” I exclaimed.
“But what on earth prompted you to tell the story in that company?” he asked. His tone was disapproving.
“I was prompted. That’s all I can say,” I answered.
“Well, you’ve done it all right,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’ve turned the cards face up. That’s the end of Weaver’s money.”
“I begin to see,” I said; “but go on.”
“Didn’t you notice a change in Moberly’s face toward the end.”
“If I did,” I said, “I failed to construe it. What was it?”
“You might not have noticed it,” he said. “You were telling the story. Everyone else did.”
“But what was it?”
“It was that look any hunting animal has, man of beast, when the image of prey falls suddenly upon the eye. Look. Weaver’s three million dollars in the wheat pit. You have told Moberly the money is there. You have told him how it is played in July and September wheat—not only how it has been played but how it will continue to be played until it is lost. You have shown him all the cards. Now you see. He will get it. He will not rest until he does.”
“May you be right,” I said; which surprised him, for that was not his state of feeling. I understood what his reaction was. He had none of Goran’s sentimental insight. He was deeply shocked by the fact that a matter left secretly to his care and responsibility in terms of unlimited trust had been rudely exposed. Now he was helpless. The Weaver-Dreadwind account would be slaughtered in his hands and he could not save it. A broker would feel that way; a broker like Sylvester would.
“And Goran was right,” I answered. “A woman knows what she wants.”
That was too much. He regarded me with gloomy disfavor not at all concealed, and so we parted.
I did not see them again—not then. They went their way and I went mine. When I thought of it I devoutly wished that Sylvester’s foreboding should not be disappointed; also that he would be unable to communicate with Dreadwind, who might be tempted to protect the money. I learned afterward that he had tried to get word to Dreadwind, but it was too late.
The next August it occurred that I was passing through Chicago and the impulse came to me suddenly to stop and call on Sylvester. How easily one puts aside what is not one’s own. I at least am that kind of person. Although Dreadwind’s affair interested me enormously I had not thought of it for several weeks. I might have been half around the world before thinking of it again. And here I was, in the city of the wheat pit, where the sequel would be, if one there was.
Sylvester was too busy to see anyone, they told me at his office door; it was with much difficulty that I got my name to him. He sent out for me immediately.
I found him standing at the grain ticker in his private office. He looked at me as I came in and turned his eyes again to the tape. I stood for several minutes at his side, looking at it too. September wheat was 941/2 and the quotations were coming fast.
“Rather active,” I said.
“Rather,” he replied, dryly.
The price was falling: 94?... 941/4... 94?... then back to 941/4. I could imagine what was going on in the wheat pit—how wild and excited it was, how savage the uproar. In Sylvester’s office, however, there was no sound but the steady purr and gnash of the ticker.
“And the sellers seem to have it,” I said.
“Don’t you know what is happening?” he asked. “You ought to be interested. Moberly is shooting for Weaver’s money. He’s got the hide. There’s only a little of the tail left and he wants that too. See!” He crimped the tape at the last quotation for September wheat, which was 94?. “When the price touches 94, as it will, that will be tail and all. There!”
The very next quotation was 94. He flung the tape down and turned away.
“Well,” he said, facing me suddenly. “How do you like it?”
“I am delighted,” I said. “And don’t let it run in your head that I was a blundering idiot who brought a tale to the wrong place.”
Then to comfort him I told him why. He listened with a neutral air and at the end he grunted.
Two months passed. I took no steps to satisfy my curiosity, for by this time I had placed the Dreadwind romance in a field by itself, an irrational field, where the bit of superstition which survives in the most unbelieving of us might have its orgy out. The end would disclose itself, I said, in its own way. And so it did.
One evening in a London hotel, while I was dressing, a note was brought in. Compliments of Mr. and Mrs. Dreadwind, and would I be pleased to dine with them in their rooms? They were in the same hotel.
They greeted me as if I had rights in them—as shy children bursting with a secret that you must not suspect the existence of but stumble upon amazedly in the dark. It was no secret. Anyhow, it cannot be told. All the words about it are silly. You have to see it. I could hardly see anything else. And it was something a lone, selfish man ought not to be permitted to see. For his own sake he ought not to see it. It makes his world seem very empty for a while and it is never quite the same again, even when he thinks he has got well over it.
They pressed me with food and wordless attentions and laughed together at the little mishaps that came of their anxiety to include me in their happiness; which of course made me feel as one who sitteth outside the wall in gross darkness and hath no way of communion. They did speak of their plans. They were going to Kansas to buy a farm—a certain farm, one they had fastened their hearts upon—and make them a paradise.
“A large farm?” I asked. “Tell me about it?”
They were a little embarrassed and then smiled together. Of course. They knew nothing about this farm except that in the front yard was an apple tree with a bench around it, and that across and down the road was a wheat field where a mystical experience had befallen them one morning in the dawn.
When I had made sure there were no untouchable recollections I said: “I was with Sylvester the day the last of the money was lost,” and I was going on to describe the scene when suddenly a look of extreme surprise appeared on Dreadwind’s face. Cordelia was gazing at me pensively. I turned it off abruptly. There was a silence.
“Then you knew Sylvester?” Dreadwind asked.
“Very well,” I said.
“But I never told you he was the broker.”
That was a tight place for me. It was clear that Cordelia and I knew more than Dreadwind. She was still gazing at me, more with wondering what I should say than with any sign of uneasiness.
“No, you didn’t,” I said. “But you will recall that as you were telling me the story out there in the bamboo hut and came to the fact of the money having multiplied itself incredibly you spoke of showing me the broker’s reports, as though I might look at them if I cared to do so. Well, some of them were lying there open on the table. Naturally I glanced at them, and I couldn’t very well help seeing the broker’s name in large type at the top of every sheet.”
That passed. Cordelia smiled, not as one smiles whose anxiety is happily relieved but as if she were amused.
“What I meant to ask,” I said, “was how you knew when the end came?”
“We knew it at once,” said Dreadwind. “The same day.”
“How?”
“By the sh
adow,” he said simply. Then he added: “Sylvester sent a cable message, but it missed us on our way out. I first heard from him here in London only two weeks ago.”
They bought the farm in Kansas. I have seen them there many times. I hate to go because of what happens to my own world when I see them together; and yet I cannot resist it.
Only a few days ago I met Goran again.
“Have you found out yet what was in that silver locket?” he asked. He meant the locket Cordelia gave to Dreadwind when he went to war, with instructions to bring it back unopened. Goran had already asked, me this question three times.
“Wheat,” I said. “Two grains of wheat.”
“Don’t try to be stupid,” he said. “What two grains of wheat? I have guessed, but I want to know for sure.”
I told him.
Cordelia went back and got two grains of ripe wheat from the very stalk at which she, Dreadwind and Weaver knelt down in the dawn to witness one of Nature’s most beautiful acts. They were in the locket. And they were planted on the Dreadwind farm. I have myself eaten bread from them. It is served on wedding anniversaries.
THE END
Table of Contents
Cover Image
Title Page
Copyright
By the Same Author
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Satan's Bushel Page 16