Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “Oh, Jimmy, how he talked to me then. He told me all about the life I was in. He told me where it would all end, and he told me what every woman’s happiness really consists of, and how I was bound to miss it all. Then he talked about his home, and how he had been a boy, and about his mother, and the good, clean people he had always lived among.

  “‘You haven’t had the chance, Madge,’ he said, ‘not half of a chance. Everything went wrong with you from the first. All that you have saved is a clean body, but what a topsy-turvy, twisted mind you have, Madge! My dear, they have spoiled everything about you, these dirty curs who have exploited your cleverness. They have spoiled everything about you except the possibility of a return to the dear, quiet ways of good womanhood.

  “‘Now listen to me. You are going to put everything you have in a heap, your money and your trinkets and your clothes, and you are going to burn it all up, all except enough to wear. And when you burn those clothes, you will burn your past. Here is two hundred dollars of clean money. Take it and make a clean start. Start all new. Get simple clothes. Go to work at honest work. Be a trained nurse. Learn to give, instead of always trying to get something for nothing. The more you give out of an empty heart the fuller that heart will grow with happiness.’

  “He said a little more, and then he got up and shook hands with me, and I promised him, man to man, to try to do as he told me to do. Then he walked out of the room and out of my life.

  “That’s all, Jimmy, except that I have tried hard these two years to do as he told me, and I am very happy, and very sad, too. And I hope you won’t hate me for double-crossing you that time.”

  He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. “You’re so far away from me, Madge,” he said. “There is a whole world between us. You belong to such men as John Gleason now, and my hands fall away from you, Madge, because they are... slimy.”

  Jimmy fell strangely silent during the rest of his convalescence. His eyes followed Madge dumbly about the room, but he rarely spoke. The wonder and the aloofness had never gone from his gaze, and sometimes it hurt her like a spoken reproof, but she went on her way. His recovery was rapid now, and she watched his increasing strength with a vague dread of the day when he should walk out of her life and disappear among the shadows of New York.

  But it chanced that on the evening of his release from the hospital it was her night off, and she was curiously happy and anxious at the same time when he asked her to go out with him. It was a crisp February night, glitteringly clear, and, as Jimmy took the fresh sweep of the outdoors for the first time in many weeks, his shoulders snapped back and his chin went high.

  “Let’s walk,” he said, “just walk and walk till we get tired, and after that... well, after that, I suppose it’s good bye. What a long good bye it will be, Madge, eh?”

  She looked at him closely but made no answer, and they walked on without direction. They came to the Fifty-ninth Street bridge and turned onto it instinctively. At the central arch they stopped. For half an hour neither of them had spoken.

  Before them stirred the ominously lighted shadows of the East River, and on either side the lights of Brooklyn and New York blinked through the night. Jimmy took off his hat.

  “Madge,” he said, “in a few hours most of those lights will go out and you will be in bed and fast asleep, but I go back to the other life, to the shadows that run always under the lights. Ain’t it queer how there are two worlds inside this funny old life of ours? There’s your life with the steady happiness that keeps on and never changes, and there’s my life where the lure and the draw is the big drunk of the gambling chance. There’s the calm old age at the end of your life, but at the end of a life of a guy like me there’s just a... morning after. What a funny old world.

  “By rights,” he went on, “we should be standing on opposite sides of this bridge, there’s such a river in between us.” He groaned faintly and turned to her and tilted her head so that her steady eyes looked up to him. “And still I love the gambling chance,” he muttered. “Madge, dear, there’s only one fine thing in my life, and that’s loving you, and honest to God, I’ve kept my life clean of other women since I met you. Madge, is it a gambling chance? Will just plain love ever make a guy like me worthy of a girl like you?”

  She drew his arm closer about her and smiled gravely up at him. “Sometimes I don’t care the least bit about worthiness,” she said, “but I like you a terrible lot, Jimmy... oh, such an awful lot you’d never guess!”

  “Madge,” he whispered, “you’re not kidding me along? You wouldn’t double-cross me now? Madge.”

  A moment later he stepped back from her with a sunken head.

  “Aw, what’s the use?” said Jimmy. “I’ve made a rotten mess of things, Madge, and why should I mess up two lives instead of one? And how could we get married? God, what a fool I am. The bunch of fancy keys I’ve been collecting all my life was lost at the hospital. It’ll be a long time before I can break back into the old game without them.”

  She handed him the bunch of keys. “I got them from the clerk,” she said. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t want them back, so I didn’t say anything. Jimmy, do you need them terribly bad? Jimmy dear, can’t we do without them? They won’t unlock any door where we both can enter now. Won’t you make my way your way? We can go to some other place where the old gang can’t draw you back, and we can start all over and pull together hard, and make a home.”

  “Madge,” he said, “what is it they say when a man is getting well after being terrible sick?”

  “Convalescence,” she said.

  “Well,” he said after a silence, “I reckon I’ve been sick most of my life, but I’m all well now, Madge, all well.”

  A light jingling, a glittering of falling light, and a splash came up to them from the river far below.

  “If the New York bulls knew what had just happened, Madge,” said Jimmy Erickson, “I think they’d all have a drink to celebrate.”

  THE HOUSE OF RULAKI

  HE MET RULAKI on such a day as exists only in the South Seas and in books. It was at that period in the evening, when the west is yet pink enough to make one conscious that day has been but does not obtrude the fact upon the attention with flaring strokes of color. The languor in the air, in the wind, was rich as perfume, and the mind went out in a thousand strong feelings while the body was content to lie passively. But not the body of “Hercules” Martin. The vigor of the Occident was still tense in his muscles; the Orient was as yet only strong because of its newness. The littered studio, the thousand dreary details of his Parisian life, had indeed been washed from his memory, and, while his will lay dormant, his instincts grew younger by several thousand years. Yet he still had what to the Eastern mind is a species of insanity, an over-plus of energy which must be expended in exercise.

  Therefore on that night he followed his custom of swimming in the surf, plunging out through the breakers, and then floating on his back in the long, lazy swells that rise and fall as gently, as evenly, as the breasts of a sleeping woman. Confident in his strength and the swimmer’s skill, he had paid no attention to the stories of the whirlpools which sweep close in upon the coast of Tutuila, develop in one fearful moment, and draw down many a strong swimmer. But on this night, surely of all nights a fated one for Martin, while he lay drowsily content in the warmth of the water and half conscious of the astonishing nearness of the stars and moon, he felt a sharp current whirl him around. The suddenness of the thing left him dazed. He could only fight blindly for his life. It was a long, nightmare fight, and, when the whirlpool relaxed its grip, he was far out from land, his arms numb with weariness and only moving through the force of instinct, and his lungs choked with water. It was clearly impossible to reach shore, and Martin shouted for help. He confessed this afterward with shame, and indeed for such a man as Martin it was a matter of shame.

  It takes a loud voice to reach past the sound of the breakers, but the fear of death was as air in his big lungs, and he w
as heard. After a time, he swears it was hours, during which his progress had become a thing almost as terrible as death itself, he heard a reassuring voice which he answered. Rulaki says that she was guided by his voice, that and something else. Next the moon flashed on a white arm and forehead, and, as the swimmer approached him, she bade him swing in behind, place his left hand on her right shoulder, and throw his head far back. In this way they made slow progress to the line of the breakers, by which time Martin was so far recovered that he could make his own way to the shore. There they collapsed together, he too tired to express gratitude, or she to expect it.

  They rose to their elbows, facing each other at the same moment. Martin always thought that this was a miracle, in a small way. But Rulaki thought that it was something else. I remember when I first saw Rulaki so that I am not surprised that Martin first sat up, then stood bolt upright, and stared dumbly. To Rulaki, as he stood there, his wet body alive in the moonlight and that mighty chest still heaving, he was a god. Then she spoke in that wonderful voice of hers. I could never find the word for it, but Parker says that it was warm. Still Martin only stared and said nothing. He felt a hunger within him, a hunger that was not for food, and which for the first time in his atheistical life made him wonder if after all he had the thing popularly known as a “soul.”

  Rulaki arose. “You are very tired,” she said, “and you will be cold. My palace is there,” she continued, extending her arm toward the house she had inherited from her trader father, “and, if you will come, you may rest until you are able to go home. I will give you brandy, real brandy.” She added this with a smile.

  The house of Rulaki is set on a high rise of ground. All around it roll the besieging waves of forest, splashing it here and there with a spray of green vines. Martin caught his breath, and his eyes brightened when he saw it. Rulaki nodded and smiled appreciatively.

  “I feel the same way about it after all this time,” she said.

  The door was opened to them by a Negro boy clad in a loose jacket and green knee-pants bordered with white. Below his knees his legs were bare, and on his feet were sandals. He grinned welcome to Rulaki and bowed deferentially to Martin. Rulaki handed Martin a gaily-colored dressing gown of some rich stuff which caressed the skin.

  “Be seated,” she said, after Martin had thrown the robe about him with a sudden consciousness of his scanty garb. “I will come again at once. Terry,” she said to the boy, “bring brandy... and here” — finding a silver cigarette case— “are cigarettes.”

  Martin sank into something which was between a divan and a Morris chair and vastly comfortable. Then he selected a cigarette and lighted it at a suspended lamp which burned the faintest of perfumes. Presently the Negro entered, bearing a bamboo tray on which rose a bottle of Grande Chartreuse and two thin stemmed glasses. These he placed on a small table on Martin’s right hand. Martin filled the glasses. When he looked up, the Negro was still waiting.

  “That is all,” said Martin, and the boy disappeared.

  Left to himself, Martin looked about the room. It had impressed him when he first entered as being peculiarly comfortable and complete, neither oppressing the eyes with elaborate decoration nor wearying the mind with a bare monotony. When he set himself now to analyze its charm, he was astonished to find no pictures on the walls, whether of animate or inanimate objects. Soft scroll work only ran here and there, grotesque at the first examination, beautiful at the second. The furniture was all appropriate, but not of any one pattern. In fact, it presented an astonishing variety of material, color, and form. Finally Martin noticed that the room was smaller than he had at first thought. The prevailing light and cheerful tones lent it an exaggerated sense of spaciousness. His observations were interrupted by the entry of Rulaki, laughing as she came. I have seen Rulaki in a hundred costumes and thought of each: “No one but she should wear that.” So it was now with Martin. It was a simple thing she wore, a flowing effect of Japanese pattern, yet to Martin it appeared, he knew not why, to possess something of the majesty, something of the mystery, of priestly robes.

  “They tell me I should go on the stage, I change dresses so quickly,” said Rulaki.

  “It has been a short time,” said Martin clumsily.

  “Oh,” she cried, “you have not touched the cordial. See! It’s the true Chartreuse.” She raised a glass between his eyes and the lamp, which shone through the delicately green liquid until it became a sparkling, living thing, before she handed it to him. “I will pledge you an old toast,” she said, taking the other glass. “The Waves of Tutuila and the gifts of the gods they bring us.”

  “The waves of Tutuila,” said Martin seriously, “I shall ever trust to their guidance.”

  The strong cordial swept the blood up into his face. He leaned forward to look at her, although she was so close he might have touched her with his hand. For the first time he saw the vein which frequently ran a vine of timid blue along her throat. He reached again for the Chartreuse. “Let us find another toast,” he said.

  Within a week all of his luggage was brought to the house of Rulaki. They had almost quarreled about it, for he naturally wished that she should come to him rather than he to her. In the end she conquered for, when he teased, she was inflexible, and, when he commanded, she wept. So he came to live in the house of Rulaki, the house which Rulaki loved almost as if it had been a part of her. For a time people said many things, but at last the talking died away and stopped, and everything was taken as a matter of course. After all, Rulaki was only a half-breed.

  It was at about this time that Parker visited them. After supper they lounged on the porch which opened out over the ocean.

  “You’re hitting up the nicotine rather lively, aren’t you?” said Parker, when Martin lighted his fourth cigarette since black coffee.

  Martin looked up quickly. “Does it show?” he asked. “I have been going at it rather heavy.”

  “Oh,” cried Rulaki, “why shouldn’t he smoke? He likes it.”

  “Of course,” said Parker, noting the unusual sallowness of “Hercules” Martin’s skin. “But it’s rather hard on a fellow here.” He struck himself on the chest.

  “Doing much swimming lately, Henry?”

  “No,” he answered, dropping his chin upon one hand and staring out into the night, “no, I haven’t been swimming much. I’ll have to start again. It’s so lazy here in Tutuila... so infernally lazy.” He threw the cigarette out the window.

  “Swimming is too much hard work,” said Rulaki, “except now and then at night.”

  She leaned back among the cushions of her hammock, delirious curves from ankle to throat. Her lips opened once, as if she were about to speak; then her eyes closed, and she breathed a long breath of content. There was a minute’s silence while Martin gazed moodily at her. Far off on the ocean Parker saw the light of an outgoing ship dwindle, twinkle, and go out.

  “I forgot that I have brought you a Courier des Arts,” he said, recalling himself suddenly and producing the paper from his hip-pocket. “Thought you might be glad to know how your painters’ world is going on.” He watched Martin’s face, hoping for a change, and the change came.

  “Thanks,” Martin said eagerly, reaching for the paper and commencing to run through its pages. “You’ll excuse me for a moment, won’t you? What’s this? Antoni! Not Francisco Antoni? Yes, by the Lord, Francisco Antoni! A year ago he was just a promising cub, and now he’s famous!”

  “Have you been painting much lately?” asked Parker.

  “No,” answered Martin, “no... in fact, I haven’t done anything since I’ve been in Tutuila.”

  He glanced at Rulaki, but she was fast asleep, and her lips were slightly parted, smiling.

  “I’ll leave you to your journal,” said Parker, rising.

  Martin made no answer. He was gazing at Rulaki. At the door Parker glanced back again. The journal was crumpled in Martin’s hand, and he was leaning forward to look at her, although she was so close that he cou
ld have touched her with his hand. Parker tip-toed out.

  It is a strange resolve that will endure over night in Tutuila, but Martin’s purpose held. Themes for his picture were by the hundred in his mind and only waiting for his brush. All that lacked was a model. Naturally Rulaki occurred to him, and, still more naturally his choice was made on the instant. When he broached the subject to her the next day, she was very obstinate. They had walked up the hillside for a little distance and were lying together under an exceptionally tall and heavily foliaged palm.

  When he explained his purpose to her, she was very obstinate for a long time. “If you should make me on the canvas, line for line and every color just as I look, would it be me when you were done? See,” she went on, “there was a silly officer boy....”

  “What!” said Martin.

  “He was only a big boy and very, very silly. I think he was more in love with my hair than with me... he used to say....”

  “It’s beautiful hair,” said Martin, letting one hand luxuriate in the dark, silky mass. “Haven’t I ever told you how beautiful it is?”

  “Do you think it is?”

  “Of course.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “It’s foolish for me to go on describing, for I can never say it right. Did you ever go out and look at the sky at night when the stars are very few and the sky is so close that you can almost touch it? It seems deep, deep black, yet you can feel the blueness in it.”

  Rulaki thought for a moment, chin on hand and eyes studious. “Yes,” she whispered breathlessly, lifting her eyes.

  “Well, that is like your hair. Mind, I don’t say that it is just the same, for your hair has something different, finer, more beautiful... why!... it’s a part of you.”

  “There!” cried Rulaki triumphantly, “that is just what I wanted to say but couldn’t. If you painted every line and color just like me, still it wouldn’t be me, and it would stay there to lie about me forever. The officer boy I started to tell you about....”