menu_book Chapter 8

CHAPTER VII PART II OF JAVA-HEAD BY JOSEPH HERKESHEIMER. THIS LIBRIVOX RECORDING IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. RECORDING BY MARGARET S. BAYAT. No further mention was made of the opium, no hint escaped from the two men of what Barzal Dunsack had said to his son after the evening reading of the Bible.

An evidence of the miserable episode was visible for a while in the difficulty of any attempted general conversation. then that died away, and everything was seemingly as it had been before. But the rising gaiety and widespread public preparations at the approach of the Fourth of July made her existence drabber than ever. There was, too, unusual planning, for later in the month

President Polk was to be in Salem. The various military organizations drilled incessantly. the Salem Light Infantry, the Mechanic Light Infantry, the Salem Cadets and Independents, and a squad of the Salem artillery might be seen at any hour of the morning or early evening, smartly marching and counter-marching, led by flags or the Salem Band. Strange constructions of light wood climbed in Washington Square,

the set pieces of the celebrated pyrotechnist secured at a staggering expense. Preliminary strings of firecrackers were exploded by impatient boys, and the dawn of the holiday was greeted with a sustained uproar of powder. All this was communicated to Nettie in the form of a determination to forget the dreariness of home and for once, anyhow, to be part of the careless holiday town.

Edward Dunsack opened the day by deprecating what fireworks Salem could show and recalling the extravagant art of China in that particular. No one, he said, of the least moment would be abroad in the rabble, and he intended to spend the day over the invoice of a schooner returned from Curaçao. She was glad of this, for it left her free to get an uninterrupted pleasure from the morning parade,

the floats and fantasies, the afternoon drilling in Washington Square, and see the last colored disk of the fireworks. works. Maybe, she told herself, tying the becoming ribbon of her bonnet beneath a round chin with the lurking dimple, maybe she wouldn't come back home once during the entire day. She ignored, in the rush of her spirits, even her mother's lonely labors, for once they'd

have to do without her. Nettie took a scarlet merino shawl for the cooler evening, shook forward the little black curls about her face, and hurried away from Hardy Street. She was swept along in the crowd on Essex Street until, before the office of the Salem Register, she found a place that commanded the parade. There Nettie lost all memory of the dreariness that pressed upon her.

She became one of the throng, applauding the members of the East India Marine Society, carrying the palanquin from the museum in native dress, or stood with sentimental tears blurring her vision. The parade ended, and currents of people swept toward dinner, but she stopped at a baker's and got a paper of seed cakes made in the shape of oak leaves and sat contentedly eating

them in the common. The thought of Gerrit Amidon, with all the other deeper aspects of her life, was thrust into the back of her consciousness. She was existing as she breathed. will, the instinctive lighter qualities had her in full possession. She felt that her cheeks were

glowing and hummed the refrains of the music she had heard. One by one the military companies marched into the square. She was fascinated by the tall leather helmets and silver straps under severe young lips. The Newburyport men were in new scarlet uniform. That was the Boston brass band it was painted on the bass drum with the independents. There were the Beverly Taylor guards. The massed onlookers filled the broad plain. The drilling and counter-marching proceeded,

and the afternoon waned. At the disposal of the spectacle, when, for an hour or two, Washington Square was comparatively deserted, when the sun sank lower and lower over the roofs of Brown Street, and the gold haze thickened, turning to blue, Nettie became quieter, but no less happy. The time sped. Never was she conscious of being lonely, by herself in a multitude composed of grouped family and friends. It was all such a beautiful relief to the other constant dwelling

on somber and hopeless facts. Already people were streaming in under the wooden arched gates for the evening display. Already she could see a star in the clear shining green east. The fireworks, the papers said, were to be in two parts, ending with a bombardment of Veracruz, five hundred feet long, and a series of triumphant arches with full-length portraits and colored lights of celebrated Americans. There was a sudden salute of artillery, and a flight of

Rockets soared upward in long flaming curves, dissolving in showers of liquid emerald and ruby and silver against the night. Bengola lights casting a blue glare over the standing mob and farther housefronts were followed by a great Peruvian cross, a silvery fountain of water, and grand representation of Bunker Hill Monument. With this, the first came all too soon to an end, and Nettie was folding the shawl about her shoulders when almost the entire Amidon family

were upon her. In an instinctive confusion she saw William Amidon and his wife and their daughters, the old man, Jeremy, and Jarrett. They stopped before her in an assured, not unkindly inquisitiveness, the girls fresh and bright-faced, with crisp, lovely clothes, their mother in a smart mantle and a little bonnet of knots with French flowers, greeted her with a direct question tempered by a smile.

William Amidon, smoking, was unconcerned, while Jarrett stayed obscured outside the group. "'Whom are you with, Nettie?' Rhoda Amidon asked, and when she admitted that she was alone, the elder, with visible disapproval, asserted,

"'That won't do at all in this rough assembly. I must see that you are taken care of.' She hesitated, with a slight frown on her handsome brow. But you will want to see the rest of the fireworks. Yes, what you must do is come over to our steps.

The view from there is fairly good, and then someone can walk home with you. They moved resolutely forward, giving Nettie Voller no opportunity for protest, the expression of what she might prefer, and, with so many determined minds, she dropped silently into their progress. She was beside Rhoda Amidon.

the girls trooped on before, and the men, Jarrett Amidon, followed. Her peace of mind had been broken into a hundred half-formed doubts and acute questions. She wished that she had declined to go with them. The invitation, no, command, had been a criticism, really. Now, after so long, it wasn't necessary for them to become suddenly responsible for her. The happiness of the day sank a little. Thoughts of her mother and grandfather and Uncle Edward returned.

But at the same time, she realized that she was near Jarrett once more. This made a confusion of her emotions that hid what she most felt about him. It wasn't a proximity that meant anything, however. It had been utterly different when he came to see her before his marriage. Yet, just the fact of his being close behind her,

and that she would be on the steps at the Amidons with him, undoubtedly had a power to stir her heart. It brought, like her carefree excursion, a certain momentary glow, a warmth, without relation to what had gone before or might follow. There was the same quality of momentary rest, refreshment, complete and isolated as a jewel in a ring. She didn't analyze it further, but drifted with the vigorous chattering tide of the Amidons. They arrived at the impressive entrance open on a

high dim interior. Jeremy and William Amidon went in. Rhoda lingered while a chair was brought out for her, and Sidsall and Camilla, Laurel and Janet, ranged themselves facing the square. Jarrett hung silent in the doorway. Perhaps Tao Yuan will come down, Rhoda Amidon suggested, and Nettie's throat was pinched at the possibility of seeing Jarrett's Chinese wife. But he answered shortly in the negative.

Tao Yuan preferred to stay in her room. The view from her window was better than this. The latter was easily possible, for here the set pieces were almost unintelligible. An impressive beehive could be seen surrounded by swarming golden bees. A pyramid of Roman candles discharged their rushes of colored balls and streamers,

but the bombardment of Veracruz was a cause of bitter complaint to the children. The fireworks had ceased to have the slightest significance for Nettie. She was luxuriating in the suavity of the Amidon steps and company. It seemed to her that an actual air of ease rolled out over her from within. Seen from her place of vantage, the great throng in the square was without feature.

The passerby on Pleasant Street, as Edward Dunsack and herself had been, were unimportant. The massive portico and dignified fence, the sense of spaciousness and gardens and lofty formal ceilings, the feeling of fine silks and round, clear, direct voices, of servants for everything, everyone, transcended in force all her speculations. She was familiar, who wasn't in Salem, with the meaning of the house's name, Java Head. It was more, quite heaven. Thoughts of Jarrett

winged in and out of her mind like wayward birds. She turned with studied caution and glanced swiftly but intently at as much of his countenance as she could see. Her memory vividly supplied the rest. There wasn't another like it, one so clear and compelling to read in the world. The past in which he had had a part seemed like an impossibly happy dream. She was hardly able to believe that he had been in their sitting-room, walked with her in the evening to the grassy edge of the harbor,

or held her fingers in his hard, cool grasp. Now she wondered if he were contented. She couldn't quite decide from glimpses of his face, but something that had nothing to do with vision disturbed her with a certainty that he was troubled. It might mean unhappiness, but she wasn't sure. Now there go the arches, a young voice exclaimed, and I just can't see anything. You'd never know at all it was a temple of eight columns. Oh, look, there's a number coming out.

July 4, 1776. A tide of hand-clappings swept over the dark masses. No, Laurel continued. That's Salem. It's Washington. No, General Taylor. The amazing day, Nettie realized, was over. The people flowed back through the gates like a lake breaking in streams from its bank. There was a stir on the steps. Looking up, she saw that the stars were obscured, and a low rumble of thunder sounded from a distance, a flash lit the horizon.

Now she must go back, return to Hardy Street, to her bitter grandfather like an iron statue eaten by rust and storms, to Edward Dunsack following her with his dragging feet and thin, insinuating voice, to her hopeless mother. It's the powder, she heard, about what she had no conception. Rhoda Amidon turned decidedly to her. It was nice to have you, Nettie, she declared, but we must see about getting you safely home. The carriage would be best since it's threatening

rain. She didn't, she replied, want to give them so much bother. She often went on errands after supper. She'd be all right. Nonsense, Mrs. Amidon interrupted impatiently. Then Jarrett advanced from the doorway. I'll walk down with her, he said almost roughly. No need to take the horses out so late. Nettie Voller thought that his sister-in-law's mouth tightened in protest, but he gave them no chance for further argument. He descended the steps with a quick grinding tread,

and she was forced to hurry through her acknowledgments in order to overtake him. The night at once absorbed them. The air, charged with the fumes of gunpowder and rumbling with low intermittent thunder, was oppressive and disturbing. Jarrett's head was exactly opposite her own, and she could see his profile, pale and still, moving on a changing dark background. He walked, with a short, firm stride, men a choir on the unsteady decks of vessels, swinging his arms but

slightly. Neither spoke. The rain, Nettie saw, was hanging off. Probably it would not reach Salem. Washington Square was already empty except for a small, obscure stir by the scaffolding for the fireworks. A murmur of young voices came from a door on Bath Street. Such minute observations filled her mind. Beneath their surface, she was conscious of a deep, a fathomless turmoil.

It was a curious sensation, curious because she couldn't tell whether it was happiness or misery. One now exactly resembled the other to Nettie Voller. She grasped, however, one difference. It was happiness now. The misery belonged to tomorrow.

But suddenly that last unrealized fact, at once immaterial and the most leaden reality of all, lost its weight. The greater freedom she had lately grown into became an absolute indifference,

a half-willful and half-automatic shutting of her eyes to everything but the present, the actuality of Jarrett Amidon walking by her side. She wanted him to speak so that she could discover his thoughts, feelings, yet she was reluctant to have their companionship of silence broken. Words, almost all the possible terms she could imagine, would only emphasize the distance between them. She was thinking of one now, a word he had never pronounced, but which she had felt

had been, however obscurely, at the back of the attention he had paid her, love. It was a queer thing. It seemed to be, everyone agreed that it was, of the greatest, perhaps the first importance, and yet all sorts of other considerations, some insignificant, and others mean and more. Yes, cowardly. Held it in check. Drove it back out of sight, as you might hurriedly shut some shabby object into a closet at the arrival of visitors. How have you been? he demanded,

in the abrupt voice of the expression of his determination to see her home. Well enough, she assured him, if he meant her health. He glanced at her with somber eyes. Not altogether, he admitted. It included your family, things generally. They are as bad as possible, she told him. She admitted this frankly, a part of her entire surrender to the moment, careless of how it might affect him.

They would be, he muttered savagely. It's a habit, here. The here, she knew, referred to life on shore. His gloomy attitude toward the management and affairs of the land had caused her a great deal of precious laughter. He had revealed an almost astonishing ignorance of necessities that she had understood instinctively when hardly more than a child, and this simplicity had, as much as anything, brought her affection for him to life.

At the same time she in particular had felt the justice of a great many of his charges. But no one could reasonably hope for the sort of world, a world as orderly and trim as that of a narrow ship he thought should be brought about by a mere command. Nettie wished that it could. She sighed, gazing at him. Then it's no better than before, he asked, adding with a descriptive gesture. The town and people? I hardly speak to ten in a year, outside the stores and like that.

Of course they nod going into church, or a lady, I mean really your sister-in-law, will say something nice. Even do what you saw tonight, although it's the first time anything like that has happened. She caught a repressed bitter oath. I suppose I'll get used to it, she continued. No, I won't, she added differently. Never, never, never. If you were a man now, he said with an incredible stupidity.

She wondered angrily if he'd rather have her a man. There had been a time Nettie reflected, when such a possibility would have stirred him to violent protest, and this brought out the reflection that, while at one time he might have cared for her, now perhaps he was merely sorry for her unhappiness. Yes, this must be it. She had a momentary fatal impulse to throw back at him scornfully any such small kindness. She didn't,

she told herself, want condescending sympathy. What silenced her was the sudden knowledge that she did. She wanted anything whatsoever from Jarrett Amidon. The fact that he had a Chinese wife was powerless to alter her feelings in the smallest degree. On the contrary, she was shocked to find that it had increased immensely. It was growing with every minute. She wondered drearily if her stubborn love—the term took its place without remark in the

procession of her thoughts, for Jarrett didn't, in the spite of her protest to the contrary, stamp her as quite bad. Perhaps her grandfather was right about them all, her mother and Uncle Edward and herself, and they were wicked, lost. The energy with which she had combated this charge now faced by the circumstance of her realized affection for a man married to someone else, even Chinese, wavered. All the cheerful influences of the day,

rising to the supreme tranquil hour on the Amidon porch, sank to dejection. It was like the flight of the rockets. She walked listlessly. Her brain was numb. She was terribly tired. Jarrett Amidon's head was bent, and she was unable to see his expression. He might even have forgotten, by the token of his self-absorbed progress, that she was at his side. There's going to be a stir in Amidon, Amidon and Saltonstone, he said presently,

when my father hears of the new program. Everything is turning to the fastest California runs possible. William and James Saltonstone want me to take command of a clipper. But I find I'm like my father, Nettie. All my experience has been in the East and the China service.

I'm used to it. I'd never get on navigating a passenger boat, a packet ship from Boston to San Francisco and San Francisco to Boston. The others in my blood, too, running the northeast trades to Brazil and coming up into the southwest passage winds for the Cape of Good Hope.

A long reach nearly to Australia and then north again to the Indian Ocean and southeast trades. I'm fit for that, for long voyages, a blue-water sailor and all it means. "'But battering back and forward around the horn with my deck cluttered up by prospectors and shore crews, "'the mates would have to slam into the rigging!'

"'His exclamation refused every face of such a possibility. "'She understood his necessity completely, and the brief account of such far happy journeys, "'safe from everything that Salem had come to mean for her, filled her with longing. I'm beginning to see, he took up again the self-examination, that I am to blame for a good deal that I've found fault with in others.

I mean that I'm a different variety of animal, and naturally no judge of the kinds of holes they live in or the way their affairs are managed. Your worlds are better, she cried. He turned to her, obviously startled,

and she held for a long breath his unguarded, intense gaze. Not very useful, I am afraid, he replied at last. Not today, anyhow. I belong to a life that is dying, Nettie. Mark my words, dying, if not already dead. And I'm newfangled to my father. It goes as quickly as that. This was a fresh mood to all her knowledge of his impatient arrogance, and one that sent her to him in a passionate, unperceived emotion. They had arrived at her

home and were waiting aimless and silent. Beyond, the gate to the yard was standing open, and Nettie saw that his discovery of the fact had occurred at the identical moment of her own. She made an involuntary movement forward, and he followed her through to the blurred tangle of bushes and bare-trodden earth. Mutely, they turned to the sod spread at the harbor. The thunder had died away, but pale sheets of reflected lightning hovered at short intervals

low in the sky. Directly above them, stars shone again. The window of the sitting-room still bore the illumination of the lamp within, and Nettie could picture her mother with stained and rough hands loose on their wrists, opposite Barzil Dunsack's gaunt-set countenance. "'You said something about things as bad as possible.' In a level voice, she told him about her discovery of Edward Dunsack unconscious in his black wrap on the bed.

I thought he had died, she repeated almost monotonously. He had such a yellow-gone look. But that can't be allowed, he cried. You mustn't see it. Indecent. Worse. The beast will have to be removed. No one will hear of his staying about with two women and a fanatical old man. She was afraid that he would go into the house at once and appear with her uncle, very much in the manner of a dog with a rat. Her sense of a worldly knowledge,

a philosophy of realization far deeper than his own, returned. Things couldn't be disposed of in that easy manner. It was probable that they couldn't be disposed of righted at all. Her mother, with her help, must continue to keep Barzill's home. There was no other place for Edward Dunsack to go. He won't hurt us, she said vaguely. It's principally bad for him. Then, at first, I didn't know. You get used to so much. He, Jarrett Amidon, wouldn't have it,

he asserted in a heated return of his familiar dictatorial manner. The fellow would be out of there tomorrow. It was a damned unendurable outrage. She smiled softly and laid a momentary hand on his sleeve. That's nothing, Jarrett, nothing compared to the rest, to me. He frowned down at her out of the gloom. What am I to do? she asked. He again cursed Salem and the world with which he had proclaimed himself out of date and sympathy. This, while it communicated to her

a certain warm comfort, resolved nothing, made no reply to her question. Tomorrow offered precisely the same hopeless outlook of yesterday. No answer from Jarrett, Jarrett married, was possible. She saw that. I'm not fit to go around on land blubbering and setting tongues to clapping, he declared. I ought to be locked in my cabin when the ship's in port, and let out only after sails made again. She heard a slight movement in the grass, and turning sharply, caught the vague

outline of a man, the thin, unsubstantial shape of Edward Dunsack. He vanished immediately. Jarrett, absorbed in bitter thought, had missed him. Strangely, her uncle only filled her mind with the image of China, the China that had ruined him, and which, too, in the form of a woman, a Manchu, had destroyed the hope of any acceptable existence of her own. Great pretensions and idiotic results, he went on.

No ballast. Take what your grandfather said to me. Nothing in that unexpected or to drive a man off. Yet off I go, and... He halted oddly, just as her breath was suspended at the admittance which she was certain must follow.

But he fell into another glooming silence. After all, she couldn't expect him to continue that development. A different man might, and Nettie wasn't sure of her refusal to listen to the end. But she was familiar with Jarrett's unbending conception of the necessity of truth alone. If he married a woman, yellow, black, anything, he would perform the obligation to the entire

boundary of his promise. Good and bad seemed equally united against her. Little flashes of resentment struck through her leaden conviction that all this was useless. I must be of some use to you. But, Nettie realized, there was only one way in which he could help her, only one thing she wanted, could take from him.

She was terrified at the completeness with which love had possessed her, making every other fact and consideration of little interest or importance. Suddenly it seemed as if she were being swept by an overwhelming current farther and farther out from safety, into a bottomless immensity that would claim her life.

Yet, he cried, if I lift a hand here in Salem, if I as much as cross the street to speak to you, the clapping tongues, I can do you nothing but harm, though Rhoda might. I don't want your Rhoda, she interrupted passionately. I've managed without them all up to now.

He raised his arms in a hopeless gesture. Nothing's to be done, she concluded. I saw that all along, that is, this last time. It's late, he muttered absently. You have had a day.

He turned mechanically and moved away from the indefinite black rim of the harbor. The lamp in the sitting-room had been extinguished, the house was dark. A brief embarrassment seized her as he stood trying vainly to find something confident, even adequate to say for farewell. And as the stir of his footfalls died away up Hardy Street,

the memory of his last futile words mocked her laboring heart. She turned and faced Edward Dunsack, advancing from an obscurity deeper than the rest. He murmured approvingly. She caught words of commendation and unspeakable reassurance. She hurried away blindly, sick to the inmost depth of her being.

The morning, when she had tied her gay bonnet ribbons and started out with a scarlet merino shawl on her arm, seemed to belong to a long, long time ago to a girl. The popping of a final string of firecrackers died outside. End of Part 2 of Chapter 7