the general steamship agency on the bund was a hive of bustling travelers, their faces alight with the eagerness with which they desired to be gone their many ways up and down the world. a stranger might have imagined that most of yokohama's european or "white" population had been possessed of a sudden desire to flee beyond the seas.
it was a scene common enough, however, for that season in the gateways of the far east. spring, with its heart call to distant homelands, had come again to break the spell of the orient for many and to stir an unutterable longing in the breasts of others—the men and women who dream always of the day they will "go back," but who never do.
the crowd was a conglomerate, as crowds go, and not lacking in picturesque touches—here where a chinese of mandarin rank went with a silky retinue; there where a pair of turbaned sikhs stood near two begoggled korean priests, muttering in gutturals over their tickets for the south. the placidity and impenetrable calm of these few oriental faces served but to accentuate the mobile expressiveness of the dominant caucasian countenance.
still there was one white man whose features betrayed no expression of interest in the scene. he stood head and shoulders over those around him in a line of applicants at a booking desk toward the rear. there was an air of detachment about him. apparently he was untouched of the spirit of mystic restlessness and excitement which pervaded the place—that resistless, undeniable spirit which takes hold of even the most unimaginative and lackadaisical in railway depots or wherever else men in numbers set out upon journeys. there was no gleam of the homeward-bounder in his eye—that gleam which is more like the light of love than anything else; there was no expectancy; no sign of eagerness.
at a first glance this man's face seemed no more than a mask. at a second one realized that the features were those of one who must have won unto the priceless possession of self-control. the nose was large and yet as sensitively formed as the freshly shaven lips and chin. the ears were perfectly lobed—the ears of a thoroughbred. the jaw was that of the natural fighter, not heavy and jowly, but cut in a sharp, straight line from the hinge to the point. tiny wrinkles in the outer corners of the eyelids, which come from facing long distances on sea or land, kept forming and reforming as his gray eyes wandered idly over the heads of the crowd. it is thus that the tribes of the earth's big spaces are marked.
several times he pushed his small gray felt hat back from his brow and then as absently pulled it down again. when he did this one saw the seam of a jagged scar, still pink from recent healing, which traversed the left temple and disappeared in the dark-brown hair over the ear. although the forelock and the temples were quite gray, he was not more than thirty-five years old.
his blue serge suit fitted well and the trimness of his setting-up—his whole hearing, in fact—spoke of one of military training. perhaps it was this suggestion of the soldier that made the sikhs turn and look back at him as they passed out on the bund. yet it was not as a soldier that the port of yokohama knew him, but by the name of whitridge and as the captain of the sorriest-looking piece of sea grist that had ever made tokyo bay. a brute of a chinese tramp she was, and men who knew deep waters were still marveling how he had brought her through the vitals of a typhoon—the worst in their memory—which had swept the coast in a fury of destruction.
chinese tramps and those who go in them are of little moment, but on the morning two months before that the port had awakened to find in its fairway a salt-crusted thing called the kau lung, minus funnels and masts and suggesting only vaguely a steamship, it knew that it looked on one of the deep's wonders. the sea must have swallowed her and spat her up again, and those who said this had in mind that tramps which fly the dragon cloth are the unsweetest things upon big waters.
yet not only through stress of storm had he weathered her, but through a mutiny whose blood rusted her decks. without mates and alone save for a big cantonese serang he had done this thing and then come silently ashore to nurse his wounds.
presently whitridge stood at the head of the line. a man who looked ill and who told the booking clerk with a nervous laugh that he hadn't seen "the home country" in twenty years gave way to him.
"now, sir, your pleasure," said the clerk.
"oh," answered whitridge as if bringing his thoughts from a great distance. "i wish to—to book on the cambodia, please."
"she's pretty full, sir," said the clerk, with a doubtful shake of the head and turning away to get a stateroom diagram.
a momentary hush fell on the crowd.
"gad!" exclaimed a young englishman standing beside whitridge.
turning, whitridge followed the man's glance toward the agency entrance.
a woman with hair of the color of gold that has been washed in sea water was coming in out of the sunshine of the radiant march morning. a picture hat of rough bronze straw accentuated the wealth and beauty of her wonderful crown. a long, loose tan coat with full sleeves, made her appear a shade taller than she really was, but her erect, healthy carriage threw the garment about her in clinging folds which softened its fashionable modernness.
she paused for a second, a tilt of inquiry to her vivid head. then she moved swiftly to the desk where whitridge was standing.
"i have a letter—i wish to see the director—the manager, please," she said to the clerk in a low, well-bred voice.
looking up, the clerk gave a start of surprise, recovered himself quickly, and indicated a door to the left. she opened it and passed inside followed by a woman in black, evidently a maid. the clerk's eyes trailed after her with something of awe in them. there was hardly a glance in the room which was not turned in the same direction.
"out east here we—we see nothing but little, dark women," the clerk began apologetically, facing whitridge again.
"ever see burne-jones' 'springtime'?" interrupted the englishman eagerly. whitridge nodded. "gad! isn't she like it?" another nod answered him.
"now, sir," interrupted the clerk, spreading out a diagram. "the cambodia calls at honolulu, you——"
"i wish to book through to san francisco—an outside room, if possible."
"luck's with you, sir. the last one," and he indicated with a pencil point a small space aft on the port side. whitridge nodded his acceptance and at that moment the office door at the left opened quickly.
a middle-aged man, evidently the agency manager, emerged, preceding the "springtime" woman.
"burr! reserve an outside room on the cambodia at once," he called to the clerk booking whitridge.
"too late, sir. i've just sold the last one to this gentleman."
whitridge turned. a shadow of keen disappointment passed over the face of the golden-haired woman.
"oh, is there nothing you can do?" she asked, looking at the manager appealingly. he glanced at whitridge. "you don't know the terror i feel—the horror i have of being put inside," she went on. there was a note of genuine distress in her voice.
"there is another ship in eight days," answered the manager.
"but it is imperative that i sail on this one."
"if you will permit me," interrupted whitridge, baring his head, "i will resign my room to you."
"oh, but that would not be fair. you are very kind, but i—i must pay for my lateness." she met his gaze with an honest, uncompromising directness in her blue eyes. "you——"
"really it doesn't much matter where i am put," and a note of sadness in his voice brought an expression of interest into her brow. for a part of a second their glances held and then whitridge turned to the clerk: "this lady will take my room."
he spoke with a finality which evidently was strange to her. she frowned slightly and started as if to protest again.
"you should accept, miss granville," said the manager anxiously and in a way that indicated his desire to please a person of some importance. she paused uncertainly as her lips framed a "no," but meeting whitridge's gaze again she gave a nod of decision.
"i will accept. you are rendering me a service greater than you know," she said gratefully and there was a brilliance as of tears in her eyes. "i thank you—very much."
the manager, beaming with delight, thanked whitridge and led her back to his private office. at the threshold she paused and turned to surprise whitridge's gaze fixed hungrily upon her. a smile with which she intended to thank him died on her lips. a startled look came into her eyes. she did not move until he turned toward the clerk, who was asking him for a record for the customs' clearance.
"paul whitridge, thirty-four, master mariner—british subject," he said, and the clerk recalled afterward the strange hesitancy with which he gave his name and nationality.
the manager reappeared at this moment and began reading a memorandum to the clerk: "miss emily granville, twenty-four—american." whitridge gave a barely perceptible start of surprise as the name fell from the manager's lips. he compressed his eyes as if to shut out some unpleasant thought or memory. the manager threw the slip of paper on the desk. "you can make it out, burr. it's all there. book her and the maid that way," he said. then, turning to whitridge, he went on: "i'm mightily obliged to you, sir. i'll send a note to the ship asking to have special care taken of you. she is one of the big stockholders in the western line. cables came last night for her—she's just down from tokyo. some business trouble at home—trustee of her estate dead. something like that. must get home immediately. can't bear to travel in inside rooms. she—her——"
"it's all right," whitridge said, cutting him off. "i'm glad to have been able to do it."
he spoke with an indication of impatience in tone and manner. without another word he gathered up his tickets and went out of the agency. the manager and clerk wished him a pleasant voyage, but if he heard them he made no sign.
"devilish strange sort," said the manager in surprise.
"i should say so. i think he's the captain that brought that wreck of a chink tramp in here a couple of months ago," answered the clerk.
"indeed!" with this exclamation of surprise the manager hurried back to his office where emily granville was waiting and thinking of the inexpressible sadness she had seen in the face of the stranger who had resigned his stateroom to her. it troubled her. in the instant that she had turned to find his gaze fixed on her she saw a pain in his eyes so poignant that it hurt her. a soul sounding the deeps of anguish seemed to have been crying out just behind them.
whitridge, going swiftly along the bund, was torn by the thoughts which the name of granville had started. it had been these thoughts which had driven him out of the agency so strangely. he argued and argued with himself that he must be wrong; that there were undoubtedly others of that name in san francisco. he tried hard to think of other things, but ever the vision of this woman with the golden hair remained dominant. it excluded even the thought of his mother whose message to come home to her before it was too late had decided him in an hour to cross the ocean. his remembrance of the woman was so vivid that she might have waited at his side. the fragrance of her remained in his nostrils. the atmosphere of her girlish freshness clung to him. there was an indefiniteness about her like the mystery of the spring. the englishman had been right in thinking she suggested burne-jones' "springtime." she was a veritable gold woman.
as he came to the little hotel hidden away in the fringe of the bluff's european respectability a chinaman, waiting as a dog waits, greeted him. it was the cantonese serang called chang, who had come out of the maw of death with him in the kau lung. yokohama knew him as whitridge's shadow.
"tlunk all pack, master. him gone ship. what time you sail?" the chinaman asked in a breath.
"two o'clock," he answered and looked at his watch. it was past noon. he told chang to call suki, the flat-faced woman who ran the hotel servants and who had been so good to him in his first few weeks ashore when the doctors were shrugging their shoulders doubtfully; and her daughter, oki, and the boy he had nicknamed "sweeney." he had a little present and a gold piece for each of them—two for suki.
there were big tears in "sweeney's" black eyes when "the honorable captain gentleman" said good-by to him. he would never forget him.
"yes; you will forget, 'sweeney,'" whitridge said in japanese, with a little laugh.
"oh, yes," agreed suki, "he will forget. men forget, but women always remember."
"you know a lot about life, suki," he answered and turned and went into the hotel office.
at whitridge's appearance the boyish-looking clerk behind the desk flushed guiltily and hid something under a book. whitridge handed him an odd silver cigarette case which the young fellow had often admired.
"just a token for your kindness, my boy," he said.
"gee, i—i'm sorry you're going away, captain—whitr—whitridge," stammered the clerk and faltering peculiarly at the name. "i'll always keep this. what you've said has braced me up and—as soon as i get a little more money together i'm going home. good-by and—and the best of luck to you."
"good-by and good luck to you," said the departing guest, shaking the young fellow's hand heartily. "you'll come through all right."
the clerk's gaze followed whitridge and chang through the door and until they were clear of the grounds. then he pulled out an old newspaper. it was what he had hidden at whitridge's unexpected appearance. chang had dropped it in packing whitridge's things. for several minutes he studied the face which looked up at him from a mass of black headlines. it was a portrait of whitridge beyond a doubt.
"he's lavelle all right—but nobody'll ever get it out of me. he's square," he muttered to himself, and as he did so he tore the paper into small bits.
