menu_book Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII, PART I OF JAVA-HEAD BY JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER. THIS LIBRIVOX RECORDING IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. RECORDING BY MARGARETE ESPAYAT. THE DAYS TO NETTI VALAR SEEMED TO BE BOTH UNUTTERABLY DULL AND COLORED BY A POSSIBILITY OF EXCITEMENT LIKE AN UNDERCURRENT OF HARDLY PERCEPTIBLE FEVER.

HER MOTHER, IT WAS TRUE, TOOK ON HERSELF MOST OF THE DUTIES OF BARZIL DUNSACK'S HOUSE, but there were still a large number of little things that returned unvaried with every morning, noon, and night for the girl's attention. The cause of any impending excitement, except the mere presence of Jarrett Amidon in Salem, now surely of no moment to her, she was unable to place. The feeling that pervaded her most was the heavy conviction

that her life was a complete waste. She had the sensation of being condemned to stay in surroundings, in a service that never for a moment represented her desire or true capabilities. Her family, as she had grown into maturity, seemed strange, her place there an unhappy accident. At her brightest periods she pictured being suddenly, arbitrarily removed into happier, appropriate regions. For a time that vision had assumed the tangible shape of Gerrit Amidon.

Then this comfortable figure had abruptly left her to an infinitely more seldom return of her faint, indefinite hope. Through the inordinate number of hours when she was potentially alone, she had developed a strain of almost painful thought out of keeping with the whole of her naturally unreflective being.

In moments such as the present, she was sitting in her room overlooking Hardy Street on its landward reach. She followed the slow turnings of her mind in the manner of a child spelling out a sentence. Two things seemed to her of the first importance, the existence into which she had been forced by the circumstance of her birth, and her unknown father himself, unknown, that is,

except for vague promptings and desires which, for need of a better reason, she traced to his personality. That he was superior, in that he had had a distinct measure of gentle blood, she was assured by her mother on one of the rare occasions when the subject was touched between them. To that she credited the greater part of her obscure dissatisfaction with conditions, which she described as mean. The latter evidently didn't disturb her mother or grandfather.

She realized that the long-drawn, silent severity of the old man had crushed what spirit her mother may have had. It was clear that the elder woman had been very pretty, with wide, fluttering eyes which made you think of gray moths and delicately colored cheeks,

but all that had been crushed, too. She was meek in a way that filled her daughter with determined resentment and fear. The resentment sprang from the silent assertion that she wouldn't be worn down like that.

The fear followed the realization of the rigid power of the old man, and the weight of all that held her powerless to escape. Naturally, she was rather cheerful than somber. An involuntary gaiety rose from her in the drabbest moments. She even defied Barzil Dunsack with ribbons and flowers on her bonnet.

The prospect from her window offered no relief from the interior. It was true that in the other direction she could catch glimpses of the harbor. By leaning out she could get the comparatively full sweep at the bottom of the street. But there were usually things ugly and restraining between her and the freedom of the horizon. Her favorite place had been at the edge of the grass above the tide.

But since his return, Edward Dunsack had hit upon it too, and his proximity made her increasingly uneasy. For one thing, he talked to himself out loud, principally in Chinese, and the sliding, unintelligible tongue, accompanied by the sight of his gaunt yellow face, his inattentive fixed eyes, gave her an icy shiver. It was almost worse when he conversed with her in a palpable effort

at an effect of sympathy. She rose and wandered finally to the embankment of the garden. The water shimmered under the full flood of afternoon. She was gazing at the distance in an aimless manner that had lately fastened on her when she heard a stirring of the grass behind her and Edward Dunsack approached. He was livid in the pitiless light and seemed terribly fragile, a thing that a mere clap

of thunder might crumble to nothing. She felt that she could sweep him away with a broom, yet at the same time there were startling gleams of inner violence, a bitter energy, an effect of deepness that appalled her. If you should ask me, he declared, if my opinion is of any value, I'd say that Amidon owed you considerable. He led you to expect something better than his running away without a word.

I'd have an explanation out of him. Of course, if he had come back married. This affair with a Chinese woman isn't that. It would be all over. But somehow, with things as they are, I can't believe that it is. Do you expect me to go to their house like you did? She replied resentfully. He turned such a malicious face on her that instinctively she moved back. For a moment he was silent, his meager, leaden lips drawn tight over dark teeth

in a dry grin, his fingers like curved wires, then relaxing, he cursed the entire house of Amidon. The truth is, he ended, that you were a little fool. You had everything, everything in your hand, and threw it away. His gaze strayed from her to the surface of the water, a short distance from the land. Threw it away, he repeated. It can't be God in this country, either. He was, she thought, crazy. However, all that he said about Jarrett lingered in her mind. It fanned to new life the

embers of her rebellion. If a chance should come, she would let Jarrett Amidin know something of the wrong he had done her. As her uncle had pointed out, the Chinese woman was different from an American, a white woman. Their entire position, Jarrett's and her own, was peculiar, outside ordinary judgments. She saw him occasionally from a distance, as she must continue to do while he was in Salem, since no opportunity had been made for them to exchange

words. That must come from Jarrett. Her mother called her, and she went in, finding the elder in the kitchen. I can't get enough heat to bake, she worried. You can bury your right hand in the oven. Your father won't have his sponge biscuit for supper. Nettie declared, I certainly wouldn't let it bother me. Just tell him and let him say what he likes. Her mother turned, palpably startled. But, she began weakly, I know exactly what you're going to say, Nettie cut in. He has it every night

and he'll expect it. How much, I'd like to ask, have you been expecting all your life and getting nothing? And now I am the same. I don't believe we're as wicked as grandfather lets on, and I'm certain he's not so good as he thinks. I don't admit we are going to hell, either. If I did, I can tell you I'd be different. I'd have a good time like some other girls I see. I guess it would be good anyhow with silk flounces four yards around.

I'm what I am because I don't listen to him. I don't pay any attention to the pious old women who make long faces at us. You mustn't talk like that, Nettie, her mother protested anxiously. It has a right hard sound. Your grandfather is a very upright religious man.

It's proper for those who sin to suffer in this world that they may be humble for the next. I don't want to be humble, Nettie told her. The Amidons aren't humble. Mrs. Saltonstone isn't. A pain deepened visibly on the elder's pale countenance.

You mustn't think it doesn't hurt me, Nettie, to see you away from all the pleasure. It tears at my heart dreadful. That is part of the punishment. The girl made a vivid gesture. But you sit back and take it, she cried.

You talk of it as punishment. I won't. I won't. I'm going to do something different. What? her mother demanded, terrified. I don't know, Nettie admitted.

But if I had to do it over, I'd kiss Jarrett Amidon as soon as he looked for it. Nettie, do you, do you think he wanted to marry you? Yes, she answered shortly. He's like that. Whatever you might say against him, he's honest. Her mother began to cry.

large, slow tears that rolled out of her eyes without a sound. She sat with lax, hopeless hands in her lap of cheap, worn dress stuff. Nettie Voller felt no impulse toward crying. She was bright with anger. Anger at what Barzil Dunsack had done with her mother,

at the harm he had worked in her. You are a saint compared to Uncle Edward, she asserted. I don't know what's wrong with him, but there is something. "'I've noticed it, too. "'Times his eyes are glazed-like,

"'and then his staring at you like a cat. "'It's a fact he doesn't eat right, "'and he forgets what's said as soon as a body speaks. "'Might he have some Chinese disease, do you think?' "'It's not like a real sickness.'

"'The evening in the dreary sitting-room, "'with only the reddish illumination of one lamp, "'was almost unendurable. Her grandfather sat with broad, wasted hands gripping his shrunken knees, his eyes gazing stonily out above a nose netted with fine blue veins

and harsh mouth almost concealed by the curtain of a beard. Edward rose uneasily and returned, casting a swelling and diminishing shadow, obscurely unnatural like himself, over the faded and weather-stained wallpaper. her. Her mother was bowed, speechless. Nettie wanted to scream, to horrify them all with some outrageous remark. She would have liked to knock the lamp from the table, send it crashing over

the floor, and see the flames spread out. Consume the house. Consume. She stopped, horrified at her thoughts. She didn't want things like that in her mind, she continued, but the echo of dancing, of music, of the Salem band marching up Essex Street with Mr. Morse playing his celebrated silvery fanfare on the bugle. She wanted to laugh, to talk, yes, to love. Why, she was young, barely twenty-one, and here she was in a house like the old cemetery on Charter Street.

Before they went to bed, her grandfather would read out from the Bible, but always the Old Testament. Finally he rose and secured the volume, bound in dusty calf, its pages brown along the edges. His voice rang in a slow, emphasized fervor. Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, when he led thee by the way? And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt to drink the waters of Syhor? Or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria

to drink the waters of the river? Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee. Know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts. For of old I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bonds, and thou saidst, I will not transgress, when upon every high hill and under every green tree thou wanderest plain the harlot.

Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed. How then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me? For though thou wash thee with niter. Nettie was impressed, intimidated, in spite of the contrary resolution in the kitchen. The words seemed to burn into her mother, herself, like boiling fat from a pan. and a great relief flooded her when she could escape again to the temporary relief of her room.

It was hot, the windows were up, and she made no light that might attract mosquitoes or force her to draw close the shades. She stood undressed, luxuriating in the sense of freedom of body. She was richly white in the gloom. Her full young beauty gave her a feeling of contentment and strength,

and equally a great loneliness. It wasn't corrupt, a degenerate plant, she thought, with a passionate conviction like a cry. She determined to say no prayer to such a ruthless being. Yet soon after, in her coarse nightgown, she found herself kneeling by the bed with hard clasped hands. It was a prayer for which Barzal Dunsack would have had nothing but condemnation. She implored the dark, the mystery of augustness, for carnal and light things, yes, for waltzes

and quadrilles and songs and pleasure, young pleasure, all the aching desires of her health and spirit and nature in years, but most for love. She said the last blindly, in an instinct without definition, with the feeling that it was the key, the door to everything else, and in her mind rose the image of Jarrett Amidon. She saw his firm, direct countenance, the frosty blue eyes, and human warmth.

He needn't have come at all, she added, if it had been only to double the dreariness of her existence. She wondered a little, her emotion subsiding, at the interest her uncle showed in her affairs. It wasn't like what else she had gathered of him, and she searched, but without success, for any hidden reason he might have. He actively blackened the name of Amidon while he was lost in too great an indifference to be moved by any but extraordinary pressures. Everything left

his mind, as her mother had said, almost immediately. Suddenly weary, she gave up all effort at understanding. A wind moved in from the sea, fluttering the light curtains, and brought her a sense of coolness and release. It came from the immense free sweep of ocean to which her sinking consciousness turned in peaceful recognition and surrender. Altogether, in the days that followed, she realized a greater degree of mental freedom than before her revolt. She had removed

herself, it appeared, a little outside the family, almost as if it were studying them calmly through a window. A large part of the terror her grandfather had possessed for her had disappeared, leaving for her recognition a very old and worn man. She was sorry for her mother, with a deep affection mixed with impatience. At first she had tried to put something of her own revived spirit in the older woman, but it was like pouring water into a

cracked glass. Her mother was too utterly broken to hold any resolution whatever. Nettie's feeling for Edward Dunsack became an instinctive, deep distrust. It was almost impossible for her to remain when, as he so often did now, he approached her to talk about the injustice of her mode of life and the debt Jarrett Amidon owed her. He would stand with his fingers twitching, talking in a rapid, sharp voice, blinking continuously against any light brighter

than that of a shaded room or dusk. He seldom left the office or went out through the day. His place at the dinner-table was far more often empty than not. But after their early supper, in the long, late June twilights, he had an inexhaustible desire for her to stroll with him. She occasionally agreed for the reason that they invariably passed in the vicinity of Washington Square and Pleasant Street and saw the impressive block of the Amidon Mansion.

However, they never met any of its inmates. Once they had walked directly by the entrance. Some girls, perhaps a woman, certainly two men, were grouped in the doorway. It was growing dark, and Nettie couldn't be certain. Edward Dunsack clearly hesitated before the bricks leading in between the high white fence-posts,

topped with carved, twisting flames. And, in a sudden agony at the possibility of his stopping, Nettie hurried on, her cheeks flaming and her heart, she thought, thumping in her throat. Her uncle followed her. There was a trail of intimate merriment from the portico,

a man's voice mingling gaily with those of the girls. That was the Brevard who's in the Mongolian Marine Insurance Company, Edward Dunsack informed her. I hear he's a great hand for leading cotillions and balls, the balls you ought to take part in.

On and on he went with the familiar recital of her wrongs. It carried them all the way over Pleasant and Essex and Derby Streets home. The next day, however, he was forced to go about the town, and returned for dinner in a state of excitement evident to anyone. He ate without attention whatever was before him, and extravagantly pleasant, related how he had conversed with Mrs. Jarrett Amidon in the family carriage in front of

the counting-house of Amidon, Amidon, and Saltonstone on Liberty Street. Nettie was surprised that his concern was caused by such a commonplace event. The women of China! Words failing him, he waved a thin, dry hand. His father frowned heavily.

Then, abruptly, as if he had been snatched out of his chair by an invisible, powerful clutch, he started up and disappeared. The afternoon passed the full, and Nettie, bound in preparation for supper for Redmond's, the Virginia Oystermans at Derby Wharf, stood waiting for some money. "'I can't think where I left my reticule,' her mother called,

"'unless it's in Edward's room where I clean this morning. Just run up and see. He'll be at the office.' Above, Nettie found the door closed, but opened it readily as she turned the knob. She went in without hesitation. The interior, she naturally thought, was empty,

and then, with an unreasoning cold fear, she saw that Edward Dunsack was lying on the bed. Some of his clothes were tumbled on the floor, and he wore his black Chinese gown. The room was permeated with a heavy, smooth odor. On a stand at her uncle's hand was a curious collection of strange objects, a little brass lamp with a flickering bluish flame, a black and silver object like a swollen unnatural pipe, stained bodkins, a lump of what she took to be

tar. Her attention was caught by Edward Dunsack's face. It had fallen back with his pinched chin pointed toward the ceiling. It was the color of yellow clay, and through his half-opened eyelids was an empty glimmer of gray-white. She shrank away involuntarily, and the word dead formed just audibly on her trembling lips. In an instant she was in the hall, calling in a panic-stricken voice, her icy hands at her throat, and her grandfather mounted the stair with surprising

agility, followed by his daughter Kate. Uncle Edward, Nettie articulated, waving toward the room from which she had fled. The two women followed the rigid advance of Barzil Dunsack. As he saw the figure of his son, there was a stabbing gasp of his breath. He halted for a moment, and it seemed to Nettie Voller that suddenly his determined carriage crumbled, his shoulders sagged, then he went forward.

The bed had high, slender posts that at one time supported a canopy, but now they were bare, and an old hand held to one as he bent over. Is he dead? the older woman asked. Barzil Dunsack made no immediate reply.

His gaze turned from his son to the stand, the fluttering lamp and its accessories. His head moved slowly in the act of sniffing the pungent haze swimming in the interior. Nettie could see his face,

and she was appalled by an expression grimmer than any she had remembered. It was both harsh, implacable, and stricken, as empty of blood as the countenance on the bed. The hand on the post tightened until it, too, was linen white. She drew close to her mother's side,

putting a supporting arm about the soft, shaking shoulders. No, said Barzil Dunsack in a booming voice. Not dead, and yet dead forever. Go downstairs, he commanded. They backed, confused, to the door.

If Edward is sick, Kate Voller began. The old man's face blazed with intolerable pain and anger. Woman, he demanded, can you cure what God has smitten? His eyes alone, hard and bright in the seamed and hairy face, drove them out into the hall. Below in the sitting-room, Nettie exclaimed, He might have told us something.

Whatever it is, her mother returned, it's dreadful bad. I've heard that all along about Edward. He's never been himself this last time. Mechanically, she found her reticule beside the painted ostrich egg from Africa. You'll have to get the oysters anyhow, she told her daughter,

maintaining the inevitable pressure of small necessities that defied all tragedy and death. Nettie escaped with an enormous relief into the sunny, normal tranquility of the afternoon. The house had become too horrible to bear, and even on the thronged length of Derby Wharf, like a street robbed of its supports and thrust out into the harbor, she was followed by the vision of Edward Dunsack's peaked, clayey face.

She got the oysters, and in an overwhelming reluctance to return, walked out to the end of the wharf, where a ship was discharging her cargo. Heavy, plated mats of cassia with a delicate scent, red and blue slabs of marble, baskets of granular cakes of gray camphor,

rough brown logs of teak, smooth, dull yellow rolls of gamboge, bags with sharp, conflicting odors, baled silks, and half-chests of tea wrapped in bamboos and matting painted with a ship's name, Rose and Rosalie.

There Nettie found herself beside a little girl clasping the hand of a bulky old gentleman in pongee and palm leaf hat, and following every operation with a grave critical regard. I guess, she said to her companion, it's only the cheap sort of tea, a late picking, or it would be in canisters. She was, Nettie realized, the youngest Amidon child with her grandfather. The latter looked round and recognized Nettie Valar.

How's Barzil Dunsack? he asked immediately. She was at a loss for an answer, since she could not describe the subject of the inquiry as all right, nor explain their unhappy condition. Intend to stop in, Jeremy Amidon continued. Last time I was there, I went up like a rocket. Laurel, that was the child's name, she remembered, gazed at her intently.

I was saying to Grandfather, she repeated precisely, that this wasn't really much of a cargo, nothing like the one Uncle Jarrett brought back in the Nautilus. We were having an argument about Salem, too, but, of course, all the big cargoes are going into Boston.

she sturdily confronted the flushed old man. You're William all over again, he asserted, almost annoyed. Both their expressions grew stubborn in a manner that, in view of their great difference in age and experience, Nettie thought quite absurd.

What a beautiful dress the child had on. Puerto Rico drawn work, with pale yellow ribbons to her bonnet. I wish you'd stay here a minute with Nettie Voller, Jeremy told her. "'while I see the wharfinger.' He went unhurried along the wharf, and Laurel Amidon drew closer to her. "'She's not much of a ship, either,' Laurel said, indicating the Rose and Rosalie.

"'She's built like—like Grandfather. They're different now. I went to New York to see the sea-witch launched, and she's the tallest vessel afloat, with three standing sky-sail yards and ringtail and water sails. She's black and has a gilded dragon for a figurehead, and although she went out in a gale, got to Rio in twenty-five days. I talked to Captain Waterman, too. He commanded the Natchez, you know. How the child ran on.

You've studied a lot on ships, Nettie commented. I know the main truck from a jewel block, Laurel replied complacently, but Camilla's a frightful lubber. I should think she'd make Uncle Jarrett sick. She does me. Nettie Voller was seized by the temptation to question Laurel about Jarrett Amidon, about his wife, anything that touched her concerned him. A wave of emotion swept over her, a loneliness and a desire the cause of which she would not face. She wanted

to take Laurel's hand in hers, and with the old, ponderous, comfortable gentleman go up to the serenity of their gardens and wide, happy house. She wanted Gerrit Amidon to smile at her with his eyes blue like a fair sea. His father was returning. Laurel again grasped the large hand, and they turned to leave. Jeremy Amidon nodded to Nettie. Nothing remained for her but the place on Hardy Street. Then she saw that the others had stopped and were signaling for her.

Captain Dunsack, old friend, the elder said abruptly, stubborn as the devil. No worse than me, though, no worse than me. Confounded proud, too. You let me know if there is anything, that is, if you need. He paused, breathing stormily, glaring at her in an assumed angry impatience. Thank you, she answered, but there's nothing. What most shocked her on the return home was the manner in which their life callously continued when she felt it should have been

shattered by their suffering in Edward Dunsack's room, yet not so much theirs as her grandfather's. He took his place at the head of the table. The grace went up as loudly as ever above their heads, but in spite of that, she saw that the old man suddenly looked infinitely spent. His knife slipped insecurely and scraped against the plate in fumbling and palsied hands. All at once she had a feeling of gazing straight into his heart

and finding, like a burning ruby hidden in earth, such an agony beneath his schooled exterior that she choked thinking about it. Nettie wondered what he would do if she put an affectionate arm around his neck and told him of their sympathy. She knew now that her Uncle Edward had been smoking opium

and that it was a worse vice, more hopeless and destructive than drink. But she was certain that he'd repel her. He'd looked on them all, Edward Dunsack, her mother and herself, as sinful, degenerate plants. Even now, she realized, there was no weakening of his spiritual fibers such as had plainly

overtaken his physical being. He had a blasting contempt for the unrighteous flesh. When they had risen from the table, Edward Dunsack appeared, and sinking weakly into a chair, demanded a cup of tea. He knew nothing of their discovery, of the fact that they had stood above his revolting

insensibility. After the tea he seemed to revive, he lighted a cheroot and said something about going out. It wasn't possible, however. His knees sagged walking the length of the floor. In the sitting-room he fell into a leaden apathy.

Nettie Voller's gaze rested on the volume of the life of the missionary who had died at such an early age on the Ile-de-France. The lamplight spread over the depressing mustard-yellow paint of the woodwork with its obviously false graining, and deepened the blackness of the fireplace. Throughout the reading of the scripture, Edward Dunsack never shifted his slumped position.

His face, with smudged, closed eyes, seemed fixed in a skeptical smile. The hollows of his temples were green. The reading finished, old Barzil said, I wish to speak to Edward alone. The latter straightened up. Eh? he exclaimed. What? He resettled his stock and crossed a knee with a show of ease.

Nettie followed her mother from the room. Her last impression was that of a startling resemblance between the young man and old. Her uncle's face was as ruined as the others between father and son. I wish he'd go away, her mother surprisingly asserted. I won't sleep for thinking of him lying there like a corpse. He'll not, Ned replied, musing. Something is holding him we still don't know of. She had lately begun to realize a great many things of which only a month before she had

not been aware. That sudden, illuminating grasp of old Barzil's inner pain, of her mother's wasted spirit and the sense that some unguessed potent motive was at the back of her Uncle Edward's apparently erratic strolling and reiterations. Nettie stopped to wonder a little at the change in herself. She was more alive, more included. There were no reasons that she could see why this should be so. Never had the present, the entire future, been darker. With her deeper

consciousness to came an increased shrinking from life, a greater capacity for injury, and there could be no doubt that it was an older Nettie Voller who, in her mirror, returned the questioning in the resentful black eyes. End of Part 1 of Chapter 7