Pack-train Thirteen took the field a day or two afterward. Bedient was not at all himself. … In all the months that followed meeting David Cairns in Alphonso, the Block-House incident was too close and horrible for words—though Bedient spoke of Adelaide and the great wind and a hundred other matters.
There was another slight Manila experience, which took place after the first parting with David Cairns, the latter being called to China by rumors of uprising. Pack-train Thirteen had rubbed itself out in service—was just a name. Bedient was delighting in the thought of hunting up Cairns in China. … It was dusk again, that redolent hour. Bedient had just dined. So sensitive were his veins—that coffee roused him as brandy might another. His health was brought to such perfection, that its very processes were a subtle joy, which sharpened the mind and senses. Bedient had been so long in the field, that the sight of even a Filipino woman was novel. Strange, forbidding woman of the river-banks—yet in the twilight, and with the inspired eyes of young manhood, that dusk-softened line from the lobe of the ear to the point of the shoulder—a passing maid with a tray of fruit upon her head—was enough to startle him with the richness of romance. It was not desire—but the great rousing abstraction, Woman, which descends upon full-powered young men at certain times with the power of a psychic visitation. His heart poured out in a greeting that girdled the world, to find the Woman—somewhere.
Bedient did not know at this time of the heart emptiness of the world's women—a longing so vast, so general, that interstellar space is needed to hold it all. Still, he had so much to give, it seemed that in the creative scheme of things there must be a woman to receive and ignite all these potentials of love. … In this mood his mind reverted to that isle of the sea—the woman, and the room that was her house. … He was sitting in the plaza before the Hotel d'Oriente. A little bamboo-table was before him and a long glass of claret and fruit-juice. The night was still; hanging-lanterns were lit, though the darkness was not yet complete. There was a mingling of mysterious lights and shadows among the palm-foliage that challenged the imagination—like an unfinished picture. … Only a few of the tables were occupied. The native servants were very quiet. Bedient heard a girlish voice out of the precious and perilous South.
… It was not Adelaide. He had only started to turn, when his consciousness told him that. But the voice was much like hers—the same low and lazy loveliness in the formation of certain words. The appeal was swift. Bedient did not turn, though he sat tingling and attentive. … At this time not a few of the American officers had been joined by their wives in Manila, and most of these were quartered at the Oriente. … He knew the man's voice, too, but in such a different way—the voice of a soldier heard afield.
What was said had little or no significance—a man's tolerant, sometimes laughing monosyllables; and silly, cuddling, unquotable nothings from his companion. It was the ardor in her tones—the sort of completion of sensuous happiness—and the strange kinship between her and the woman he had known—these, that brought to Bedient a sudden madness of hunger to hear such words for his own. …
The man had but recently come in from field-work. The woman was fresh from a transport voyage from the States. He talked laughingly of the "niggers" his company had met—of small, close fighting and surprises. She wanted to hear more, more—but alone. She was pressing him, less with words than manner, to come into the hotel and relate his adventures, where they could be quite alone. … She had been so passionately lonely without him—back in Washington … and the long voyage. … Her voice enthralled Bedient.
They were married. The man laughed often. The tropics had enervated him, though he made no such confession. He wanted drink and lights. To him, the present was relishable. Their chairs scraped the tiles before Bedient turned. … They had not risen. She caught his eyes. Hers were not eyes of one who would be lonely in Washington nor during a long transport voyage. She was very young, but a vibrant feminine, her awakening already long-past. There was just a glimpse of light hair, a red-lipped profile and slow, shining dark eyes. She was not even like Adelaide, but a blood sister in temperament. Bedient saw this in her hands, wrists, lips and skin, in the pure elemental passion which came from her every tone and motion. One of the insatiate—yet frail and lovely and scented like a carnation; a white flower, red-tipped—sublimate of earthy perfume.
Bedient had seen the man in the field, a young West Point product, with a queer, rabbit face, lots of men friends, the love of his company, and a remarkable kind of physical courage—a splendid young chap, black from the heats, who was being talked about for his grisly humor under fire. This officer had seen his men down—and stayed with them. … His was a different and deeper love. He did not hurry. It seemed as if she would take his hand, after all, and lead him into the hotel. Just a little girl—little over twenty.
For the first time it struck Bedient that he must leave. He was startled that he had not left. His only palliation for such a venture into two lives—was the memories her voice roused. His lips tightened with scorn of self. And yet the thought became a fury as he walked rapidly through the dark toward the river—what it would mean to have a woman want him that way! … His thoughts did not violate the soldier's domain. Quite clean, he was, from that; yet she had shown him afresh what was in the world. It was nearing midnight; sentries of the city, still under martial law, ordered him off the streets before he realized passing time. … And the hours did not bring to his mind the woman of the Block-House, nor anyone of those flaming desert-women who love so fiercely and so fruitlessly; whose relations with men do not weave, but only bind the selvage of the human fabric. …
* * * * *
Bedient was glad to get away to sea. … David Cairns, overtaken in China, had changed a little. It appears that the very best of young men must change when they begin to wear their reputation. Riding with Thirteen had made easily the best newspaper fodder which the Luzon campaigns furnished, and the sparkling wine of recognition eventually found its own. It must be repeated that only a boy-mind can depict war in a way that fits into popular human interest.
The David Cairns whom Bedient met at the Taku forts, near the mouth of the Pei-ho, had a bit of iron tonic in his veins. His sentences were shorter, less faltering and more frequent. He knew things that he had formerly held tentatively. His conceptions (during night-talks) were called in quickly from the dream-borders, and given the garb and weight of matter. The stamina of decision had hardened. He was eager to call Bedient his finest friend, but he had forgotten for the time the amazing subtleties which at first had deepened and broadened this wanderer's place in his inner life. A touch of success and the steady drive of ambition had gradually moved the abiding place of Cairns' consciousness from his heart to his brain. Few would have detected other than manliness and improvement. Bedient did not trust himself to think much about it, for fear he would do his friend an injustice. The fact that he could not see Cairns differently in the latter's first fame-flush, and observing past doubt, that he was lifted for the world's eyes, helped Bedient to realize that he was a bit weird in judgment. At all events, something was gone from the friendship. He was sore at heart, more than ever alone. … The two separated a second time in Peking after the relief of the Legations. Bedient went to Japan, where he made the acquaintance of an old Buddhist priest—a scabby, long-nailed Zarathustra who roamed the boxwood hills above Nikko, and meditated.
Bedient was farther from such things now, but he could not avoid noting that Japan is an old and easy shoe for the passions. The women of Japan are but finished children, preserving a sense of innocence in their bestowals. Many little Adelaides in fragrance, without will, without high hopes, only momentary and baby hopes—children happy in the little happinesses they give and take. This is the extraordinary feature of an empire of dangerous half-grown men. Moreover, above the delicate charm of sex, these little creatures are so remote and primitive in race and idea, so intrinsically foreign and undeveloped—that one leaves the fairest with a mitigated pang …
Bedient never repeated an action which once had brought home to him the sense of his own evil. The emotions here narrated are but moments in years. He accounted