Cornell University Library 
 
 PS3515.E67J4 
 
 Java Head / 
 
 3 1924 020 765 537 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924020765537 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
BOOKS BY 
 JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER 
 
 JAVA HEAD 
 
 GOLD AND IRON 
 
 THE THREE BLACK PENNYS 
 
 MOUNTAIN BLOOD 
 
 THE LAY ANTHONY 
 
TAVA HEAD 
 
 BY 
 JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER 
 
 "It is only the path of pure simplicity 
 uihidi guards and preserves the spirit." 
 
 Chwang'tze 
 
 ^.Si, 
 
 .^'- 
 
 NEW YORK 
 ALFRED 'A' KNOPF i/y/^, 
 1919 ^(^. 
 
 I tl l/,l,V "' 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1918. BY 
 ALTEED A. KNOPF, IHO. 
 
 First and second printings before publication 
 
 Published Januarti, 1919 
 
 Third PriTiting, January, 1919 
 
 FttnmB nr thi vkitbd itatss or amsbioa 
 
HAZLETON MIRKIL, Jr. 
 
 from 
 
 Dtrotby 
 
 and 
 
 Jastph Hergesheimtr 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
VERY late indeed in May, but early in the morn- 
 ing, Laurel Ammidon lay in bed considering 
 two widely different aspects of chairs. The 
 day before she had been eleven, and the comparative ma- 
 turity of that age had filled her with a moving disdain 
 for certain fanciful thoughts which had given her extreme 
 youth a decidedly novel if not an actually adventurous set- 
 ting. Until yesterday, almost, she had regarded the 
 various chairs of the house as beings endowed with 
 life and character; she had held conversations with some, 
 and, with a careless exterior not warranted by an inner 
 dread, avoided others in gloomy dusks. All this, now, she 
 contemptuously discarded. Chairs were — chairs, things 
 to sit on, wood and stuffed cushions. 
 
 Yet she was slightly melancholy at losing such a satis- 
 factory lot of reliable familiars: unlike older people, vic- 
 tims of the most disconcerting moods and mysterious 
 changes, chairs could, always be counted on to remain 
 secure in their individual peculiarities. 
 
 She could see by her fireplace the elaborately carved 
 teakwood chair that her grandfather had brought home 
 from China, which had never varied from the state of 
 a brown and rather benevolent dragon; its claws were 
 always claws, the grinning fretted mouth was perpetually 
 fixed for a cloud of smoke and a mild rumble of com- 
 plaint. The severe waxed hickory beyond with the broad 
 
 [9] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 arm for writing, a source of special pride, had been an 
 accommodating and precise old gentleman. The spindling 
 gold chairs in the drawing-room were supercilious crea- 
 tures at a king's ball; the graceful impressive formality of 
 the Heppelwhites in the dining room belonged to the love- 
 liest of Boston ladies. Those with difficult haircloth 
 seats in the parlor were deacons; others in the breakfast 
 room talkative and unpretentious; while the deep easy- 
 chair before the library fire, was a ship. There were ma- 
 hogany stools, dwarfs of dark tticks; angry high-backed 
 things in the hall below; and a terrifying shape of gleam- 
 ing red that, without question, stirred hatefully and 
 reached out curved and dripping hands. 
 
 Anyhow, such they had all seemed. But lately she had 
 felt a growing secrecy about it, an increasing dread of 
 being laughed at; and now, definitely eleven, she recog- 
 nized the necessity of dropping such pretense even with 
 herself. They w'ere just chairs, she repeated; there was 
 an end of that. 
 
 ' The tall clock with the brass face outside her door, after 
 a premonitory whirring, loudly and firmly struck seven, 
 and Laurel wondered whether her sisters, in the room 
 open from hers, were awake. She listened attentively 
 but there was no sound of movement. She made a noise 
 in her throat, that might at once have appeared accidental 
 and been successful in its purpose of arousing them; but 
 there was no response. She would have gone in and 
 frankly waked Janet, who was not yet thirteen and rea- 
 sonable; but experience had shown her that Camilla, re- 
 posing in the eminence and security of two years more, 
 would permit no such light freedom with her slumbers. 
 
 [10] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Sidsall, who had been given a big room for herself on the 
 other side of their parents, would greet anyone cheerfully 
 no matter how tightly she might have been asleep. And 
 Sidsall, the oldest' of them all, was nearly sixteen and had 
 stayed for part of their cousin Lucy Saltonstone's dance, 
 where no less a person than Roger Brevard had asked 
 her for a quadrille. 
 
 Laurel's thoughts grew so active that she was unable 
 to remain any longer in bed; she freed herself from the 
 enveloping linen and crossed the room to a window 
 through which the sun was pouring in a sharp bright 
 angle. She had never known the world to smell so de- 
 lightful — it was one of the notable Mays in which the 
 lilacs blossomed — and she stood responding with a 
 sparkling life to the brilliant scented morning, the honey- 
 sweet perfume of the lilacs mingled with the faintly 
 pungent odor of box wet with dew. 
 
 She could see, looking back across a smooth green cor- 
 ner of the Wibirds' lawn next door, the enclosure of their 
 own back yard, divided from the garden by a white lattice 
 fence and row of prim grayish poplars. At the farther 
 wall her grandfather, in a wide palm leaf hat, was stirring 
 about his pear trees, tapping the ground and poking among 
 the branches with his ivory headed cane. 
 
 Laurel exuberantly performed her morning toilet, half 
 careless, in her soaring spirits, of the possible effect of 
 numerous small ringings of pitcher on basin, the clatter 
 of drawers, upon Camilla. Yesterday she had worn a 
 dress of light wool delaine; but this morning, she decided 
 largely, summer had practically come; and, on her own 
 authority, she got an affair of thin pineapple cloth out of 
 
 [11] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 the yellow camphorwood chest. She hurriedly finished 
 weaving her heavy chestnut hair into two gleaming plaits, 
 fastened a muslin guimpe at the back, and slipped into 
 her dress. Here, however, she twisted her face into an 
 expression of annoyance — her years were affronted by 
 the length of pantalets that hung below her skirt. Such 
 a show of their narrow ruffles might do for a very small 
 girl, but not for one of eleven; and she caught them up 
 until only the merest fulled edge was visible. Then she 
 made a buoyant descent to the lower hall, left the house 
 by a side door to the bricked walk and an arched gate 
 into the yard, and joined her grandfather. 
 
 " Six bells in the morning watch," he announced, con- 
 sulting a thick gold timepiece. " Head pump rigged and 
 deck swabbed down? " Secure in her knowledge of the 
 correct answers for these sudden interrogations Laurel im- 
 patiently replied, " Yes, sir." 
 
 "Scuttle butt filled?" 
 
 '' Yes, sir." She frowned and dug a heel in the soft 
 ground. 
 
 " Then splice the keel and heave the galley overboard." 
 
 This last she recognized as a sally of humor, and con- 
 trived a fleeting perfunctory smile. Her grandfather 
 turned once more to the pears. " See the buds on those 
 Ashton Tovms," he commented. Laurel gazed critically: 
 the varnished red buds were bursting with white blossom, 
 the new leaves unrolling, tender green and sticky. " But 
 the jargonelles — " he drew in his lips doubtfully. She 
 studied him with the profound interest his sheer being 
 always invoked: she was absorbed in his surprising large 
 roundness of body, like an enormous pudding; in the de- 
 
 [12] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 liberate care with which he moved and planted his feet; 
 but most of all by the fact that when he was angry his 
 face got quite purple, the color of her mother's paletot or 
 a Hamburg grape. 
 
 They crossed the yard to where the vines of the latter, 
 and of white Chasselas — Laurel was familiar with these 
 names from frequent horticultural questionings — had 
 been laid down in cold frames for later transplanting; and 
 from them the old man, her palm tightly held in his, trod 
 ponderously to the currant bushes massed against the 
 closed arcade of the stables, the wood and coal and store 
 houses, across the rear of the place. 
 
 At last, with frequent disconcerting mutterings and ex- 
 plosive breaths, he finished his inspection and turned to- 
 ward the house. Laurel, conscious of her own superiority 
 of apparel, surveyed her companion in a frowning attitude 
 exactly caught from her mother. He had on that mussy 
 suit of yellow Chinese silk, and there was a spot on the 
 waistcoat straining at its pearl buttons. She wondered, 
 maintaining the silent mimicry of elder remonstrance, why 
 he would wear those untidy old things when his chests were 
 heaped with snowy white linen and English broadcloths. 
 It was very improper in an Ammidon, particularly in one 
 who had been captain of so many big ships, and in court 
 dress with a cocked hat met the Emperor of Russia. 
 
 They did not retrace Laurel's steps, but passed through 
 a narrow wicket to the garden that lay directly behind 
 the house. The enclosure was full of robin-song and 
 pouring sunlight; the lilac trees on either side of the sum- 
 mer-house against the gallery of the stable were blurred 
 with their new lavender flowering; the thomed glossy 
 
 [13] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 foliage of the hedge of June roses on Briggs Street glit- 
 tered with diamonds of water; and the rockery in the far 
 comer showed a quiver of arbutus among its strange and 
 lacy ferns and mosses. 
 
 Laurel sniffed the fragrant air, filled with a tumult of 
 energy; every instinct longed to skip; she thought of 
 jouncing as high as the poplars, right over the house and 
 into Washington Square beyond. "Miss Fidget!" her 
 grandfather exclaimed, exasperated, releasing her hand. 
 " You're like holding on to a stormy petrel." 
 
 " I don't think that's very nice," she replied. 
 
 " God bless me," he said, turning upon her his steady 
 blue gaze; " what have we got here; all dressed up to go 
 ashore? " She sharply elevated a shoulder and retorted, 
 " Well, I'm eleven." His look, which had seemed quite 
 fierce, grew kindly again. " Eleven," he echoed with a 
 satisfactory amazement; " that will need some cumshaws 
 and kisses." The first, she knew, was a word of plesisant 
 import, brought from the East, and meant gifts; and, 
 realizing that the second was unavoidably connected with 
 it, she philosophically held up her face. Lifting her over 
 his expanse of stomach he kissed her loudly. She didn't 
 object, really, or rather she wouldn't at all but for a strong 
 odor of Manilla cheroots and the Medford rum he took 
 at stated periods. 
 
 After this they moved on, through the bay window of 
 the drawing-room that opened on the garden, where a 
 woman was brushing with a nodding feather duster, under 
 the white arch that framed the main stairway, and turned 
 aside to where breakfast was being laid. Laurel saw 
 that her father was already seated at the table, latent upon 
 
 [14] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 the tall, thickly printed sheet of the Salem Register. He 
 paused to meet her dutiful lips; then with a " Good 
 morning, father," returned to his reading. Camilla en- 
 tered at Laurel's heels ; and the latter, in a delight slightly 
 tempered by doubt, saw that she had been before her sis- 
 ter in a suitable dress for such a warm day. Camilla still 
 wore her dark merino; and she gazed with mingled sur- 
 prise and annoyance at Laurel's airy garb. 
 
 " Did mother say you might put that on? " she de- 
 manded. " Because if she didn't I expect you will have 
 to go right up from breakfast and change. It isn't a dress 
 at all for so early in the morning. Why, I believe it's 
 one of your very best." The look of critical disapproval 
 suddenly became doubly accusing. 
 
 " Laurel Ammidon, wherever are your pantalets? " 
 
 " I'm too big to have pantalets hanging down over my 
 shoetops," she replied defiantly, " and so I just hitched 
 them up. You can still see the frill." Janet had come 
 into the room, and stood behind her. " Don't you notice 
 Camilla," she advised; " she's not really grown up." 
 They turned at the appearance of their mother. " Dear 
 me, Camilla," the latter observed, " you are getting too 
 particular for any comfort. What has upset you now? " 
 
 "Look at Laurel," Camilla replied; " tliat's all you 
 need to do. You'd think she went to dances instead of 
 Sidsall." 
 
 Laurel painfully avoided her mother's comprehensive 
 glance. " Very beautiful," the elder said in a tone of 
 palpable pleasure. Laurel advanced her lower lip ever 
 so slightly in the direction of Camilla. " But you have 
 taken a great deal into your own hands." She shifted 
 
 [IS] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 apparently to another topic. " There will be no lessons 
 to-day for I have to send Miss Gomes into Boston." At 
 this announcement Laurel was flooded with a joy that 
 obviously belonged to her former, less dignified state. 
 " However," her mother continued addressing her, " since 
 you have dressed yourself like a lady I shall expect you 
 to behave appropriately; no soiled or torn skirts, and an 
 hour at your piano scales instead of a half." 
 
 Laurel's anticipation of pleasure ebbed as quickly as 
 it had come — she would have to move with the greatest 
 caution all day, and spend a whole hour at the piano. 
 It was the room to which she objected rather than the 
 practicing; a depressing sort of place where she was care- 
 ful not to move anything out of the stiff and threatening 
 order in which it belonged. The chair-deacons in par- 
 ticular were severely watchful; but that, now, she had 
 determined to ignore. 
 
 She turned to johnnycakes, honey and milk, only half 
 hearing, in her preoccupation with the injustice that had 
 overtaken her, the conversation about the table. Her gaze 
 strayed over the walls of the breakfast room, where water 
 color drawings of vessels, half models of ships on teak- 
 wood or Spanish mahogany boards, filled every possible 
 space. Some her grandfather had sailed in as second 
 and then first mate, of others he had been master, and the 
 rest, she knew, were owned by Ammidon, Ammidon and 
 Saltonstone, her grandfather, father and uncle. 
 
 Just opposite her was the Two Capes at anchor in 
 Table Bay, the sails all furled except the fore-topsail which 
 hung in the gear. A gig manned by six sailors in tar- 
 paulin hats with an officer in the stem sheets swung with 
 
 [16] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 dripping oars across the dark water of the foreground; 
 on the left an inky ship was standing in close hauled 
 on the port tack with all her canvas set. It was lighter 
 about the Two Capes, and at the back a mountain with a 
 flat top — showing at once why it was called Table Bay — 
 rose against an overcast sky. Laurel knew a great deal 
 about the Two Capes — for instance that she had been a 
 barque of two hundred and nine tons — because it had 
 been her grandfather's first command, and he never tired 
 of narrating every detail of that memorable voyage. 
 
 Laurel could repeat most of these particulars: They 
 sailed on the tenth of April in 'ninety-three, and were 
 four and a half months to the Cape of Good Hope; twenty 
 days later, on the rocky island of St. Paul, grandfather 
 had a fight with a monster seal; a sailor took the scurvy, 
 and, dosed with niter and vinegar, was stowed in the 
 longboat, but he died and was buried at sea in the Dol- 
 drums. Then, with a cargo of Sumatra pepper, they 
 made Corregidor Island and Manilla Bay where the old 
 Spanish fort stood at the mouth of the Pasig. The 
 barque, the final cargo of hemp and indigo and sugar in 
 the hold, set sail again for the Cape of Good Hope, and 
 returned, by way of Falmouth in England and Rotterdam, 
 home. 
 
 The otjier drawings were hardly less familiar; ships, 
 barques, brigs and topsail schooners, the skillful work of 
 Salmon, Anton Roux , and Chinnery. There was the 
 Celestina becalmed off Marseilles, her sails hanging idly 
 from the yards and stays, her hull with painted ports 
 and carved bow and stem mirrored in the level sea. 
 There was the Albacore running through the northeast 
 
 [17] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 trades with royals and all her weather studding sails 
 set. Farther along the Pallas Athena, in heavy weather 
 off the Cape of Good Hope, was being driven hard 
 across the Agulhas Bank under double-reefed topsails, 
 reefed courses, the fore-topmast staysail and spanker, with 
 the westerly current breaking in an ugly cross sea, but, 
 as her grandfather always explained, setting the ship 
 thirty or forty miles to windward in a day. She lingered, 
 finally, over the Metacom, running her easting down far to 
 the southward with square yards under a close-reefed 
 maintopsail, double-reefed foresail and forestaysail, dead 
 before a gale and gigantic long seas hurling the ship on 
 in the bleak watery desolation. 
 
 Laurel was closely concerned in all these. One cause 
 for this was the fact that her grandfather so often selected 
 her as the audience for his memories and stories, during 
 which his manner was completely that of one navigator 
 to another; and a second flourished in the knowledge that 
 Camilla affected to disdain the sea and any of its con- 
 nections. 
 
 Sidsall appeared and took her place with a collective 
 greeting; while Laurel, coming out of her abstraction, 
 realized that they were discussing the subject in which 
 nearly every conversation now began or ended — the 
 solemn speculation of why her Uncle Gerrit Ammidon, 
 master of the ship Nautilus, was so long overdue from 
 China. Laurel heard this from two angles, or, otherwise, 
 when her grandfather was or was not present, the tone of 
 the first far more encouraging than that of the latter. 
 Her father was speaking: 
 
 f My opinion is that he was unexpectedly held up at 
 [18] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Shanghai. It's a new port for us, and, Captain Verney 
 tells me, very difficult to make: after Woosung you have 
 to get hold of two bamboo poles stuck up on the bank a 
 hundred feet apart as a leading mark, and, with these in 
 range, steer for the bar. The channel is very narrow, 
 and he says the Nautilus would have to wait for high 
 water, perhaps for the spring tide. She may have got 
 ashore, strained and sprung a leak, and had to discharge 
 her cargo for repairs." 
 
 " That's never Gerrit," the elder replied positively. 
 " There isn't a better master afloat. He can smell shoal 
 water. I was certain we'd hear from him when the 
 Sorsogon was back from Calcutta. Do you suppose, 
 William, that he took the Nautilus about the Horn 
 and — ?" Laurel wondered at the unmannerly way in 
 which he gulped his coffee. " He might have driven into 
 the Antarctic winter," he proceeded.^ " My deck was 
 swept and all the boats stove off the Falklands in April." 
 
 " Gerrit's got a ship," the other asserted, " not a her- 
 maphrodite brig built like a butter box. You'll find that 
 I am right and that he has been tied up in port." 
 
 " I made eight hundred per cent on a first cargo for my 
 owners," the elder retorted. " Then there was trading, 
 yes, and sailing, too. No chronometers with confounded 
 rates of variation and other fancy parlor instruments 
 to read your position from. When I first navigated it 
 was with an astrolabe and the moon. A master knew 
 his !^ead, latitude and lookout then. 
 
 " Eight hundred barrels of flour and pine boards to 
 Rio and back with coffee and hides for Salem," he con- 
 tinued ; " then out to Gibraltar and Brazil with wine and 
 
 [19] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 on in ballast for Calcutta. Tahiti and Morea, the Sand- 
 wich Islands and the Feejees. Sandalwood and tortoise 
 shell and beche de mer; sea horses' teeth, and saltpeter 
 for the Chinese Government. I don't want to hear about 
 your bills of exchange and kegs of Spanish dollars and 
 solid cargoes of tea. run back direct. Why, with your 
 Canton and India agents and sight drafts the China service 
 is like dealing with a Boston store." 
 
 Laurel saw that her father was assuming the expres- 
 sion of restrained annoyance habitual when the elder con- 
 trasted old shipping ways with new. " Unfortunately," 
 he said, " the patient Chinaman will no longer exchange 
 silks and lacquer and teas for boiled sea slugs. He has 
 learned to demand something of value." 
 
 " Why, damn it, William," the other exploded, " noth- 
 ing's more valuable to a Chinese than his belly. They'll 
 give eighteen hundred dollars a pecul for birds' nests any 
 day. As for your insinuation that we used to diddle 
 them — I never ran opium up from India to rot their 
 souls. And when the Chinese Government tried to stop 
 it there's the British commercial interests forcing it on 
 them with cannon in 'forty-two. 
 
 " Look at the pepper we brought into Salem — " he was, 
 Laurel realized with intense interest, growing beautifully 
 empurpled; "—lay right off the beach at Mukka and did 
 business with the Dato himself. We forded the bags on 
 the crew's backs across a river with muskets served in case 
 the bloody heathen drew their creeses. When we made sail 
 everything was running over with pepper — the boats and 
 forecastle and cabins and between decks." 
 
 [20] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " Well, father, the heroic times are done, of course; I 
 can't say that I'm sorry. I shouldn't like to finance a 
 voyage that reached out to three years and depended on 
 the captain's picking up six or seven cargoes." 
 
 The old man rose; and, muttering a plainly uncompli- 
 mentary period about the resemblance of modem ship 
 owners to clerks, walked with his heavy careful tread 
 from the room. 
 
 " You are so foolish to argue and excite him," Wil- 
 liam's wife told him. 
 
 Laurel regarded her with a passionate admiration for 
 the shining hair turning smoothly about her brow and 
 drawn over her ears to the low coil in the back, for her 
 brown barege dress with velvet leaves and blue forget- 
 me-nots and tightest of long sleeves and high collar, and 
 because generally she was a mother to be owned and 
 viewed with pride, She met Laurel's gaze with a little 
 friendly nod and said: 
 
 " Don't forget about your clothes, and I think you ought 
 to finish the practicing before dinner, so you'll be free for 
 a walk with your grandfather in the afternoon." 
 
 Soon after, Laurel stood in the hall viewing with dis- 
 favor the light dress she had put on so gayly at rising. 
 In spite of her sense of increasing age she had a strong 
 desire to play in the yard and climb about in the wood- 
 house. Already the business of being grown up began to 
 pall upon her, the outlook dreary^ that included nothing 
 but a whole hour at the piano, an endless care of her 
 skirts, and the slowest kind of walk through Washington 
 Square and down to Derby Wharf, where — no matter in 
 
 [21] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Which direction and lor wnat purpose they started fortli 
 — her grandfather's way invariably led. 
 
 Janet joined her, and they stood irresolutely balancing 
 on alternate slippers. " Did you notice," the former 
 volunteered, " mother is letting Camilla have lots of starch 
 in her petticoats, so that they stand right out like crino- 
 line? Wasn't she hateful this morning! " Laurel heard 
 a slight sound at her ha.qk., and, wheeling, saw her grand- 
 father looking out from the library door. A swift 
 premonition of possible additional misfortune seized her. 
 Moving toward the side entrance she said to Janet, 
 " We'd better be going right away." 
 
 It was, however, too late. " Well, little girls," he re- 
 marked benevolently, " since Miss Gomes has left for the 
 day it would be as well if I heard your geography lesson." 
 
 " I don't think mother intended for us to study to-day," 
 Laurel replied, making a face of appeal for Janet's sup- 
 port. But the latter remained solidly and silently neutral. 
 
 "What, what," the elder mildly exploded; "mutiny in 
 the forecastle! Get right up here in the break of the 
 quarter-deck or I'll harry you." He stood aside while 
 Laurel and Janet filed into the library. Geography was 
 the only subject their grandfather proposed for his in- 
 struction, and the lesson, she knew, might take any one 
 of several directions. He sometimes heard it with the 
 precision of Miss Gomes herself; he might substitute 
 for the regular questions such queries, dravnti , from his 
 wide voyages, as he thought to be of infinitely greater use 
 and interest; or, better still, he frequently gave tliem the 
 benefit of long reminiscences, through which they sat 
 blinking in a mechanical attention or slightly wriggling 
 
 [2?] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 / 
 with minds far away from the old man's periods, full of 
 outlandish names and places, and, when he got excited, 
 shocking swears. 
 
 He turned the easy-chair — the one which Laurel had 
 thought of as a ship — away from the fireplace, now cov- 
 ered with a green slatted blind for the summer; and they 
 drew forward two of the heavy chairs with shining claw 
 feet that stood against the wall. Smiley's Geography, a 
 book no larger than the shipmaster's hand, was found and 
 opened to Hindoostan, or India within the Ganges. There 
 was a dark surprising picture of Hindoos doing Penance 
 under the Banyan tree, and a confusing view of the 
 Himaleh Mountains. 
 
 " Stuff," he proceeded, gazing with disfavor at the 
 illustrations. " This ought to be written by men who 
 have seen the world and know its tides and landmarks. 
 Do you suppose," he demanded heatedly of Janet, " that 
 the fellow who put this together ever took a ship through 
 the Formosa Channel against the northeast monsoon?'' 
 
 " No, sir," Janet replied hastily. 
 
 " Here are Climate and Face of the country and Re- 
 ligion," he located these items with a blunt finger, " but I 
 can't find exports. I'll lay he won't know a Bengal chintz 
 from a bundle handkerchief." 
 
 " I don't think it says anything about exports," Laurel 
 volunteered. " We have the boundaries and — " 
 
 " Bilge," he interrupted sharply. " I didn't fetch 
 boundaries back in the Two Capes, did I? " He thrust 
 the ofi'ending volume into a crevice of his chair. 
 " Laurel," he added, " what is the outport of St. Peters- 
 burg?" 
 
 [23] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " Cronstadt," she answered, after a violent searching of 
 her memory. 
 
 " And for Manilla? " he turned to Janet. 
 
 " I can't think," she admitted. 
 
 "Laurel?" 
 
 " Cavite," the latter pronounced out of a racking men- 
 tal effort. 
 
 " Just so, and — " he looked up at the ceiling, " the 
 port for Boston? " 
 
 " I don't believe we've had that," she said firmly. His 
 gaze fastened on her so intently that she blushed into her 
 lap. " Don't believe we've had it," he echoed. " Why, 
 confound it — " he paused and regarded her with a new 
 doubt. " Laurel," he demanded, " what is an outport? " 
 
 She had a distinct feeling of justifiable injury. A 
 recognized part of the present system of examination was 
 its strict limitation to questions made familiar by con- 
 stant repetition; and this last was entirely new. She was 
 sure of several kinds of ports — one they had after 
 dinner, another indicated a certain side of a vessel, and 
 still a third was Salem. But an outport — Cronstadt, 
 Cavite, what it really meant, what they were, had escaped 
 her. She decided to risk an opinion. 
 
 " An outport," she said slowly, "is a — a part of a 
 ship," that much seemed safe — "I expect it's the place 
 where they throw things like potato peels through." 
 
 " You suppose what ! " he cried, breathing quite hard. 
 " A place where they — " he broke off. " And you're 
 Jeremy Anunidon's granddaughter! By heaven, it would 
 make a coolie laugh. It's like William, who never would 
 go to sea, to have four daughters in place of a son. I'm 
 
 [24] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 done with you; go tinker on the piano." They got down 
 from their chairs and departed with an only half con- 
 cealed eagerness. " Do you think he means it," Janet 
 asked hopefully, " and he'll never have any geography 
 again ? " 
 
 " No, I don't," Laurel told her shortly. She was in- 
 wardly ruffled, and further annoyed at Janet's placid 
 acceptance of whatever the day brought along. Janet was 
 a stick! She turned away and found herself facing the 
 parlor and the memory of the impending hour of prac- 
 tice. Well, it had to be done before dinner, and she went 
 forward with dragging feet. 
 
 Within the formal shaded space of the chamber she 
 stopped to sjjeculate on the varied and colorful pictures 
 of the wall paper reaching from the white paneling above 
 her waist to the deep white carving at the ceiling. The 
 scene which absorbed her most showed, elevated above a 
 smooth stream, a marble pavilion with sweeping steps and 
 a polite company about a reclining gentleman with bare 
 arms and a wreath on his head and a lady in flowing robes 
 playing pipes. To the right, in deep green shadow, a 
 charmer was swinging from ropes of flowers, lovers hid be- 
 hind a brown mossy trunk; while on the left, against a 
 weeping willow and frowning rock, four serene creatures 
 gathered about a barge with a gilded prow. 
 
 Still on her reluctant progress to the piano she stopped 
 to examine the East India money on the lowest shelf of a 
 locked corner cupboard. There was a tiresome string of 
 cash with a rattan twisted through their square holes; 
 silver customs taels, and mace and candareen; Chinese 
 gold leaf and Fukien dollars; coins from Cochin China 
 
 [25] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 in the shape of India ink, with raised edges and charac- 
 ters; old Carolus hooked dollars; Sycee silver ingots, 
 smooth and flat above, but roughly oval on the lower sur- 
 face, not unlike shoes; Japanese obangs, their gold stamped 
 and beaten out almost as broad as a hand's palm; men 
 hurs and pieces from Singapore; Dutch guilders from 
 Java; and the small silver and gold drops of Siam called 
 tical. 
 
 She arrived finally at the harplike stool of the piano; 
 but there she had to wait until the clock in the hall above 
 struck some division of the hour for her guidance, and 
 she rattled the brass rings that formed the handles of 
 drawers on either side of the keyboard. Later, her fingers 
 picking a precarious way through bass and treble, she 
 heard Sidsall's voice at the door; the latter was joined by 
 their mother, and they went out to the clatter of hoofs, the 
 thin jingle of harness chains, where the barouche waited 
 for them in the street. Once Camilla obtruded into the 
 room. " I wonder you don't give yourself a headache," 
 she remarked; " I never heard more nerve-racking 
 sounds." 
 
 Laurel gathered that Camilla was proud of this ex- 
 pression, which she must have newly caught from some 
 grown person. She considered a reply, but, nothing suf- 
 ficiently crushing occurring, she ignored the other in a 
 difficult transposition of her hands. Camilla left; the 
 clock above struck a second quarter; the third, while she 
 honestly continued her efforts up until the first actual note 
 of the hour. 
 
 " Thank God that's over," she said in the liberal man- 
 ner of a shipmaster. Now only the walk with her grand- 
 
 [26] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 father remained of the actively tiresome duties of the 
 day. After dinner the sun blazed down with almost the 
 heat of midsummer, and Laurel felt unexpectedly indiffer- 
 ent, content to linger in the house. Only too soon she 
 heard inquiries for her; and in her gaiter boots, a silk 
 bonnet with a blue scarf tied under her chin and flowing 
 over a shoulder and palm leaf cashmere shawl, she ac- 
 companied the old man across Pleasant Street and over 
 the wide green Square to the arched west gate with its 
 gilt eagle and Essex Street. 
 
 " Will we be going on Central Street? " she asked. 
 
 " No reason for turning down there," he replied, forget- 
 ful of the gingerbread shop with the shaky little bell inside 
 the door, the buttered gingerbread on the upper shelf for 
 three cents and that without on the lower for two. She 
 gathered her hopes now about Webb's Drugstore, where 
 her grandfather sometimes stopped for a talk, and bought 
 her rock candy, Gibraltars or blackjacks. It was too 
 hot for blackjacks, she decided, and, with opportunity, 
 would choose the cooling peppermint flavor of the 
 Gibraltars. 
 
 The elms on Essex Street were far enough in leaf to cast 
 a flickering shade in the faintly salt air drifting from 
 the sea; and they progressed so slowly that Laurel was 
 able to study the contents of most of the store windows they 
 passed. Some held crewels and crimped white cakes of 
 wax, gayly colored reticule beads with a wooden spoon for 
 a penny measure, and " strawberry " emery balls. There 
 was a West India store and a place where they sold oil 
 and candles, another had charts for mariners; while 
 across the way stood the East India Marine Hall. 
 
 [27] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Here her grandfather hesitated, and for a moment it 
 seemed as if he would go over and join the masters always 
 to be found about the Museum. But in the end he con- 
 tinued beyond the Essex House with its iron bow and lamp 
 over the entrance, past Cheapside to Webb's Drugstore, 
 where he purchased a bag of Peristaltic lozenges, and — 
 after pretending to start away as if nothing more were to 
 be secured there — the Gibraltars. 
 
 They were returning, in the general direction of Derby 
 Wharf, when Jeremy Ammidon met a companion of past 
 days at sea, and stopped for the inevitable conversational 
 exchange. The latter, who had such a great spreading 
 beard that Laurel couldn't determine whether or not he 
 wore a neck scarf, said: 
 
 " Barzil Dunsack all but died." 
 
 "Ha! " the other exclaimed. Laurel wondered at the 
 indelicacy in speaking about old Captain Dunsack to her 
 grandfather, when everyone in Salem knew they had 
 quarreled years ago and not spoken to each other since. 
 
 "He was bad off," he persisted; " a cold grappled in 
 his chest and went into lung fever. Barzil's looking 
 wasted, what with sickness and the trouble about Ed- 
 ward." At a nod, half encouraging, he added, " It ap- 
 pears Edward left Heard and Company in Canton and 
 took ship back to Boston. He's there now for what I 
 know. Never sent any word to Salem or his father. 
 Looks a little as if he had been turned out of his berth. 
 Then one of Barzil's schooners caught the edge of the last 
 hurricane off the Great Bank and went ashore on Green 
 Turtle Key. Used him near all up." 
 
 Laurel saw that her grandfather was frowning heavily 
 [28] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 and silently moving his lips. The other left them 
 standing and her companion brought his cane down 
 sharply. " Boy and boy," he said. " Barzil was a good 
 man . . . looking old. So am I, so am I. Feet al- 
 most useless. Laurel," he addressed her, " I want you 
 to go right on home. I've got to stop around and see 
 an old friend who has been sick." She left obediently, 
 but paused once to gaze back incredulously at the bulky 
 shape of her grandfather moving toward Barzil Dunsack's. 
 That quarrel was part of their family history, she had 
 been aware of it as long as she had of the solemn clock in 
 the second hall; and not very far back, perhaps when 
 she was eight, it had taken a fresh activity of discussion 
 around the person of her Uncle Gerrit, who, it was feared, 
 might now be drowned at sea. What it had all been about 
 neither she nor her sisters knew, for not only was the sub- 
 ject dropped at the approach of any of them but they were 
 forbidden to mention it. 
 
 At home she was- unable to communicate her surpris- 
 ing news at once because of the flood of talk that met her 
 from the drawing-room. Olive Wibird and Lacy, her 
 cousin, were engaged with Sidsall in a conversation often 
 a duet and sometimes a trio. Laurel took a seat at the 
 edge of the chatter and followed it comprehensively. She 
 didn't like Olive Wibird who would greet her in a sugary 
 voice; but elsewhere Olive was tremendously admired, 
 there were always men about her, serenades rising from 
 the lawn beneath her window, and Laurel herself had 
 seen Olive's dressing table laden with bouquets in frilly 
 lace paper. She had one now, in a holder of mother-of- 
 pearl, with a gilt chain and ring. Her wide skirt was a 
 
 [29] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 mass of overdrapery, knots of moss roses and green gauze 
 ribbons; while a silver cord ending in a tassel fell for- 
 ward among her curls. 
 
 Lacy Saltonstone, almost as pl3,inly dressed as Sidsall, 
 was as usual sitting straighter than anyone else Laurel 
 ever saw; she had a brown face with a finely curved nose 
 and brown eyes, and her voice was cool and decided. 
 
 " For me," she said, " he is the most fascinating person 
 in Salem." 
 
 Olive Wibird made a swift face of dissent. " He's too 
 stiff and there is gray in his hair. I like my men more 
 like sparkling hock. Dancing with him he holds you as ' 
 if you were glass." 
 
 " I don't seem to remember you and Mr. Brevard to- 
 gether," Lacy commented. 
 
 " He hasn't asked me for centuries," the other admitted. 
 " He did Sidsall, though, as we all remember; didn't he, 
 love? " 
 
 Sidsall's cheeks turned bright pink. Laurel dispas- 
 sionately wished that her sister wouldn't make such a 
 show of herself. It was too bad that Sidsall was so — 
 so broad and well looking; she was not in the least pale or 
 interesting, and had neither Lacy's Saltonstone's thin 
 gracefulness nor Olive's popular manner. 
 
 " It was very noble of him," Sidsall agreed. 
 
 " But he was extremely engaged," Lacy assured her 
 with her wide slow stare. " He told me that you were 
 like apple blossoms." 
 
 That might please Sidsall, thought Laurel, but she 
 personally held apple blossoms to be a very common sort 
 of flower. Evidently something of the kind had occurred 
 
 [30J 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 to Olive, too, for she said : " Heaven only knows what 
 men will admire. It's clear they don't like a prude. I 
 inknd to have a good time until I get married — " 
 
 " But what if you love in vain? " Sidsall interrupted. 
 
 " There isn't any need for that," Olive told her. 
 " When I see a man I want I'm going to get him. It's 
 easy if you know how and make opportunities. I always 
 have one garter a little loose." 
 
 " Laurel," her sister turned, " I'm certain your supper 
 is ready. Go along like a nice child." 
 
 In her room a woman with a flat worn face and a dusty 
 wisp of hair across her neck was spreading underlinen, 
 ironed into beautiful narrow wisps of pleating, in a 
 drawer. It was Hodie, a Methodist, the only one Laurel 
 knew, and the latter was always entranced by the servant's 
 religious exclamations, doubts and audible prayers. She 
 was saying something now about pits, gauds and vanities ; 
 and she ended a short profession of faith with an amen so 
 loud and sudden that Laurel, although she was waiting for 
 it, jumped. 
 
 It was past seven, the air was so sweet with lilacs that 
 they seemed to be blooming in her room, and the sunlight 
 died slowly from still space. By leaning out of her 
 window she could see over the Square. The lamplighter 
 was moving along its wooden fence, leaving faint twink- 
 ling yellow lights, and there were little gleams from the 
 windows on Bath Street beyond. 
 
 The gayety of her morning mood was replaced by a 
 dim kind of wondering, her thoughts became uncertain like 
 the objects in the quivering light outside. The palest pos- 
 sible star shone in the yellow sky; she had to look hard or 
 
 [31] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 it was lost. Janet, stirring in the next room, seemed so 
 far away that she might not hear her, Laurel, no matter 
 how loudly she called. " Janet! " she cried, prompted by 
 unreasoning dread. " You needn't to yell," Janet com- 
 plained, at the door. But already Laurel was oblivious of 
 her: she had seen a familiar figure slowly crossing Wash- 
 ington Square — her grandfather coming home from 
 Captain Dunsack's. 
 
 Gracious, how poky he was; she was glad that she 
 wasn't dragging along at his side. He seemed bigger and 
 rounder than usual. She heard the tap of his cane as he 
 left the Common for Pleasant Street; then his feet moved 
 and stopped, moved and stopped, up the steps of their 
 house. 
 
 She was sorry now that she hadn't known what an out- 
 port was, and determined to ask him to-morrow. She 
 liked his stories, that Camilla disdained, about crews and 
 Hong Kong and the stormy Cape. The thought of Cape 
 Horn brought back the memory of her Uncle Gerrit, ab- 
 sent in the ship Nautilus. Her mental pictures of him 
 were not clear — he was almost always at sea — but she 
 remembered his eyes, which were very confusing to en- 
 counter, and his hair parted and carelessly brushing the 
 bottoms of his ears. 
 
 Laurel recalled hearing that Gerrit was his father's 
 favorite, and she suddenly understood something of the 
 unhappiness that weighed upon the old man. She hoped 
 desperately that Janet or Camilla wouldn't come in and 
 laugh at her for crying. In bed she saw that the room 
 was rapidly filling with dusk. Only yesterday she would 
 have told herself that the dragon in the teakwood chair 
 
 [32] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 was stirring; but now Laurel could see that it never 
 moved. She rocked like the little boats that crossed the 
 harbor or came in from the ships anchored beyond the 
 wharves, and settled into a sleep like a great placid sea 
 flooding the world of her home and the lamplighter and 
 her grandfather sorrowing for Uncle Gerrit. 
 
 [33] 
 
II 
 
 WHEN Jeremy Ammidon sent his granddaugh- 
 ter home alone, and turned toward Captain 
 Dunsack's, on Hardy Street, he stopped for a 
 moment to approve the diminishing sturdy figure. All 
 William's childreil, though they were girls, were remark- 
 ably handsome, with glowing red cheeks and clear eyes, 
 tumbling masses of hair and a generous vigor of body. 
 He sighed at Laurel's superabundant youth, and moved 
 carefully forward; he was very heavy, and his progress 
 was uncertain. His thoughts were divided between the 
 present and the past — Barzil Dunsack, aged and ill and 
 unfortunate, and the happening long ago that had resulted 
 in a separation of years after a dose youthful companion- 
 ship. 
 
 It had occurred while Barzil was master of the brig 
 Luna, owned by Billy Gray, and he, Jeremy, was first 
 mate. In the exactness with which he recalled every de- 
 tail of his life in ships he remembered that at the time 
 they were off Bourbon Island, about a hundred and ten 
 miles southwest of the lie de France. The Luna was close 
 hauled, and, while Barzil was giving an order at the wheel, 
 she fetched a bad lee lurch and sent him in a heap across 
 the deck, striking his head against the bumkin bitts. He 
 had got up dazed but not apparently seriously injured; 
 and after his head had been swabbed and bound by the 
 steward he returned to the poop. There, however, his 
 
 [34] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 conduct had been so peculiar — among other things send- 
 ing down the watch to put on Sunday rig against a pos- 
 sible hail by the Lord — that, after a long consultation 
 with Mr. Patterson, the second mate and the boatswain, 
 and a brief announcement to the crew, he, Jeremy Ammi- 
 don, had taken command in their interest and that of the 
 owner. 
 
 Barzil had made difficulties: Mr. Patterson struck up 
 a leveled pistol in the master's hand just as it ex- 
 ploded. They had confined him, in charge of the un- 
 happy steward, to his cabin; where, after he had com- 
 pletely recovered from the effects of the blow, and Jeremy 
 had been upheld by the authorities at Table Bay, he stub- 
 bornly remained until the Luna had been warped into 
 Salem. 
 
 From the moment of their landing they had not ex- 
 changed a word. Jeremy was surprised to find himself 
 at present bound toward the other's house. He was not 
 certain that Barzil would even see him; but, he muttered, 
 the thing had lasted long enough, they were too old for 
 such foolishness; and the other had come into adverse 
 winds, ndw, when he should be lying quietly in a snug 
 harbor. 
 
 He had never paid serious attention to the threatened 
 complication two or three years before, when Gerrit had 
 been seen repeatedly with Kate Dunsack's irregularly born 
 daughter. He was sorry for the two women. It was his 
 opinion that the man had been shipped drunk by some 
 boarding house runner; anyhow, only the second day out 
 Vollar had been lost overboard from the main-royal yard, 
 and Kate's child bom outside the law. It was hard, he 
 
 [35] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 told himself again, walking down Orange Street, past the 
 Custom House to Derby. 
 
 The girl, Nettie Vollar — they had adopted the father's 
 name — was attractive in a decided French way, with 
 crisp black hair, a pert nose and dimple, and, why, 
 good heavens, twenty-one or two years old if she was 
 a week! How time did run. It was nothing extraor- 
 dinary if Gerrit had been seen a time or two with her on 
 the street, or even if he had called at the Dunsacks'. 
 Barzil's and his quarrel didn't extend to all the members 
 of their families; and as for the Dunsacks being common 
 — that was nonsense. Barzil was as good as he any 
 day; only where he had prospered, and moved up into a 
 showy place on the Common, the other had had the head 
 winds. Through no fault of his own the reputation had 
 fastened on him of being unlucky in his cargoes: if he 
 carried tea and colonial exports to, say, Antwerp, they 
 would have been declared contraband while he was at sea, 
 and seized on the docks; he had been blown, in an im- 
 penetrable fog, ashore on Tierra del Fuego, and, barely 
 making Cape Pembroke, had been obliged to beach his 
 ship, a total loss. Then there was Kate's trouble. Bar- 
 zil was a rigorously moral and religious man and his pain 
 at that last must have been heavy. 
 
 Jeremy Ammidon's mind turned to Gerrit, his son; this 
 interest in Nettie Vollar, if it had existed, was character- 
 istic of the boy, who had a quick heart and an honest dis- 
 dain for the muddling narrow ways of the land. He 
 would have sought her out simply from the instinct to pro- 
 test against the smugness of Salem opinion. A fine sailor, 
 and a master at twenty-two. A great one to carry sail; 
 
 [36] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 yet in the sixteen years of his commands he had had no 
 more serious accident than the loss of a fore-topgallant 
 mast or splitting a couple of courses. It was Gerrit's 
 ability, the splendid qualities of his ship, that made 
 Jeremy hope he would still come sailing into the harbor 
 with some narration of delay and danger overcome. 
 
 He was now on Derby Street, in a region of rigging and 
 sail lofts, block and pump makers, ships' stores, spar 
 yards, gilders, carvers and workers in metal. There was 
 a strong smell of tar and new canvas and the flat odor 
 that rose at low water. Sailors passed, yellow powerful 
 Scandinavians and dark men with earrings from southern 
 latitudes, in red or checked shirts, blue dungarees and 
 glazed black hats with trailing ribbons, or in cheap and 
 clumsy shore clothes. There was a scraping of fiddle 
 from an upper window, the sound of heavy capering feet 
 and the stale laughter of harborside women. 
 
 On Hardy Street he continued to the last house at the 
 right, the farther side of which gave across a yard of un- 
 even bricks, straggling bushes and aged splitting apple 
 trees and an expanse of lush grass ending abruptly in a 
 wooden embankment and the water. A short fence turned 
 in from the sidewalk to the front door, where Jeremy 
 knocked. A long pause followed, in which he became 
 first impatient and then irritable; and he was lifting his 
 hand for a second summons when the door suddenly 
 opened and he was facing Kate VoUar. There was only 
 a faint trace of surprise on her apathetic — Jeremy Ammi- 
 don called it moon-like — countenance; as if her over- 
 whelming mischance had robbed her features of all fur- 
 ther expressions of interest or concern. 
 
 [37] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " I heard," Jeremy said in a voice pitched loud enough 
 to conceal any inward uncertainty, " that your father had 
 been sick. Met Captain Rendell on Essex Street and he 
 said Barzil had lung fever. Thought I'd see if there was 
 any truth in it." 
 
 " He just managed to stay alive," Kate Vollar replied, 
 gazing at him with her stilled gray eyes. " But he's 
 better now, though he's not up and about yet. Shall I tell 
 him that — that you are here? " 
 
 " Yes. Just say Jeremy Ammidon's below, and would 
 like to pass a greeting with him." 
 
 He followed the woman in, and entered a large gloomy 
 chamber while she mounted the stair leading directly from 
 the front. The blackened fireplace gaping uncovered 
 for the summer, the woodwork, painted yellow with an 
 artificial graining, and a stiff set of ebonized chairs, their 
 dingy crimson plush backs protected by elaborate thread 
 antimacassars, seemed to hold and reflect the misfortunes 
 of their owner. Jeremy picked up an ostrich egg, painted 
 with a clump of viciously green coconut palms and a 
 cottony surf; he put it down with an absent smile and 
 impatiently fingered a volume of " The Life of Harriet 
 Atwood Newell." She was one of the missionaries who 
 had gone out on the Caravan, with Augustine Heard, to 
 India, but forbidden to land there had died not long after 
 on the lie de France. 
 
 " Houqua was a damned good heathen," he said aloud; 
 " and so was Nasservanjee." He left the table and pro- 
 ceeded to a window opening upon the harbor, here fretted 
 with wharves. A barque was fast in a small stone-bound 
 dock, newly in, his practiced glance saw, from a blue 
 
 [38] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 water voyage, Africa probably. Her standing gear was 
 in a perfection and beauty of order that spoke of long 
 tranquil days in the trades, and that no mere harbor 
 riggers could hope to accomplish. The deck was bur- 
 dened with the ugly confusion of unloading. Jeremy 
 studied the jibs stowed in harbor covers, the raking masts 
 and tapering royal poles over the stolid roofs. Ordinarily 
 seeing no more he could not only name a vessel trading out 
 of Salem, but from her rig recognize anyone of a score of 
 masters who, otherwise unheralded, might be in command. 
 
 However, here he was at a loss, and he thought again 
 of the change, the decline, that had overtaken Salem ship- 
 ping, the celebrated merchants; the pennants of William 
 Gray, he reflected, had flown from the main truck of 
 fifteen ships, seven barques, thirteen brigs and schooners. 
 Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone, in spite of his vehe- 
 ment protests, the counsel of the oldest member of the firm, 
 were moving shipment by shipment all their business to 
 Boston, listening to the promptings of State Street and 
 Central Wharf. 
 
 To the right was the sagging landing from which 
 Barzil's schooners sailed trading with the West Indies; 
 and back of it, and of his house, stood the small office. 
 His mind had turned to this inconsiderable commerce 
 when Kate Valla,r entered and told him that her father 
 would see him. 
 
 Barzil Dunsack was propped up in bed in a room 
 above that in which Jeremy had been waiting. He, 
 totally different from the other, showed his age in sunken 
 dry cheeks, a forehead like an arch of bone, and a thick 
 short gray beard. A long faded lock of hair had been 
 
 [39] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 hastily brushed forward and an incongruously bright 
 knitted scarf drawn about his shoulders. 
 
 Jeremy Ammidon concealed his dismay not only at 
 Barzil's wrecked being but at the dismal aspect of the 
 interior, the worn rugs with their pieces of once bright ma- 
 terial frayed and loose, the splitting veneer of an old 
 chest of drawers and blistered mirror above a dusty iron 
 grate. "You have got in among the rocks!" he ex- 
 claimed. " Still they tell me you've weathered the worst. 
 Copper bound and oak ribs. Don't build them like that 
 to-day." 
 
 Barzil Dunsack's eyes were bright and searching behind 
 steer-rimmed spectacles, and he studied Jeremy without 
 replying. " Well, isn't there a salute in you ? " the latter 
 demanded, incensed. " I'm not a Malay proa." 
 
 The grim shadow of a smile dawned on Barzil's coun- 
 tenance. " I mind one hanging on our quarter by For- 
 mosa," he returned; " I trained a cannon aft and fired a 
 shot, when she sheered off. That was in the Flora in 
 'ninety-seven." 
 
 A long silence enveloped them. Jeremy's mind was 
 thronged with memories of ports and storms, mates and 
 ships and logged days. " Remember Oahu like it was 
 when we first made it,", he queried, " and the Kanaka 
 girls swimming out to the ship with hybiscus flowers 
 in their hair? Yes, and the anchorage at Tahiti with 
 the swells pounding on the coral reef and Papeete 
 under the mountain? It was nice there in the afternoon, 
 lying off the beach with the white cottages among the 
 palms and orange trees and the band playing in the grove 
 by Government House." 
 
 [40] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Captain Dimsack frowned at the trivial character of 
 these memories. He muttered something about the weight 
 of the Lord, and the carnal hearts of the men in ships. 
 Jeremy declared, " Stuff ! He'll wink at a sailor man 
 with hardly a free day on shore. It wasn't bad at Cal- 
 cutta, either, with an awning on the quarter-deck, watch- 
 ing the carriages and syces in the Maidan and maybe a 
 corpse or two floating about the gangway from the burn- 
 ing ghauts." 
 
 " A mean entrance," Barzil Dunsack asserted. " I 
 don't know a worse with the southwest monsoon in the 
 Bay of Bengal and the pilot brigs gone from the Sand 
 Heads. That's where Heard got pounded with the 
 Emerald drawing nineteen feet, and eighteen on the bar. 
 Shook the reefs out of his topsails, laid her on her beam 
 ends, and with some inches saved scraped in." 
 
 " Pick up the three Juggernaut Pagodas of Ganjam," 
 Jeremy remarked absently. 
 
 " ' Thou Shalt have no other God — ' " 
 
 Jeremy, with a glint in his eye, asked, " Wasn't your 
 last consignment of West India molasses marked Med- 
 ford?" 
 
 " You always were a scoffer," the other replied, un- 
 moved. 
 
 "How's Nettie?" Jeremy Ammidon inquired with a 
 deliberate show of interest. 
 
 Barzil's lips tightened. " I haven't seen her for a 
 little," he replied. " She's been visiting at Ipswich." 
 Jeremy added, " A good girl," but the man in bed made no 
 further comment. His undimmed gaze was fastened 
 upon a wall, his mouth folded in a hard line on a harsh 
 
 [41] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 and deeply seamed countenance. An able man pursued 
 by bad luck. 
 
 " Nothing's been heard from Gerrit," Jeremy said after 
 a little. Still the other kept silent. His face darkened: 
 by God, if Barzil hadn't a decent word for the fact that 
 Gerrit was seven months overdue, perhaps lost, this was 
 not a house for him. " I say that we've had nothing 
 from my son since he lay in the Lye-ee-Moon Pass off 
 Hong Kong,'' he repeated sharply. 
 
 A spasm of suffering, instantly controlled, passed over 
 Barzil's face. " Gerrit called once and again before he 
 last sailed for Montevideo," he finally pronounced. " I 
 stopped it and he left in a temper. I — I won't have an- 
 other mortal sin here like Kate's." 
 
 " Do you mean that Gerrit's loose? " Jeremy hotly de- 
 manded, rising. " A more honorable boy never breathed." 
 Barzil was cold. " I told him not to come back," he re- 
 peated; "it would only lead to — to shamefulness." 
 Jeremy shook his cane toward the bed. " I may be a 
 scoffer," he cried, " but I wouldn't hold a judgment over a 
 child of mine! I'm not so damned holy that I can look 
 down on a misfortunate girl. If Gerrit did come to see 
 Nettie and the boy had a liking for her, why you drove 
 away a cursed good husband. And if you think for a 
 minute I wouldn't welcome her because that Vollar fell 
 off a yard before he could find a preacher you're an old 
 fool!" 
 
 " Nettie must bear her burden : far better be dead than 
 a stumbling block." 
 
 " Well, I'd rather be a drunken pierhead jumper on the 
 Waterloo Road than any such pious blue nose. I'll tell 
 
 [42] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 you this, too — I'd hate to ship afore the mast uader you 
 for all you'd have the ensign on the booby hatch with 
 prayers read Sunday morning. I don't wonder you got 
 into weather; I'd have no word for a Creator who didn't 
 blow in your eye." 
 
 " I'll listen to no blasphemy, Captain Ammidon," Bar- 
 zil Dunsack said sternly. 
 
 "And I'll speak my mind. Captain Dunsack; it's this 
 — your girls are a long sight too good for you or for any 
 other judgmatical, psalm-singing devil dodger." He 
 stood fuming at the door. " Good afternoon to you." 
 
 Barzil Dunsack reclined with his gaunt bearded head 
 sunk forward on his thin chest swathed in the gay worsted 
 wrap, his wasted hands, the tendons corded with pale vio- 
 let veins, clenched outside the checkered quilt beneath 
 which his body made scarcely a mark. 
 
 Outside, in the soft glow of beginning dusk, Jeremy 
 blamed himself bitterly for his anger at the sick man. He 
 had gone to see him in a spirit friendly with old memories, 
 forgetful of their long quarrel in the stirred emotions of 
 the past days of youth and first manhood; and he had 
 shouted at Barzil as if he were a lubber at the masthead. 
 
 He realized that in order to be in time for supper he 
 must turn toward the Common and home; but his gaze 
 caught the spars of the strange barque; and, mechanically, 
 he made his way over a narrow grassy passage to the 
 wharf. She was the Cora Sellers of Marblehead, and he 
 recognized from a glance at the cargo that she had been 
 out to the East Coast of Africa — Mozambique and Zan- 
 zibar, Aden and Muscat. A matted ffail of dates swung 
 ponderously in air, there were baled goatskins and sacks of 
 
 [43] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Mocha coffee, sagging baskets of reddish unwashed gum 
 copal carried in bulk, and a sun-blackened mate smoking 
 a rat-tail Dutch cigar was supervising the moving of ele- 
 phant tusks in a milky glimmer of ivory ashore. 
 
 There was a vague murmur of the rising tide, beyond the 
 wharves and warehouses the water was faintly rippled in 
 silver and rose, and a ship was standing into the harbor 
 with all her canvas spread to the light wind. He turned 
 away with a sigh and walked slowly up toward the elms 
 of Pleasant Street. At his front door he stopped to re- 
 gard the polished brass plate where in place of his name 
 he had caused to be engraved the words Java Head. 
 They held for him, coming into this pleasant dwelling after 
 so many tumultuous years at sea, the symbol of the safe 
 and happy end of an arduous voyage; just as the high 
 black rock of Java Head thrusting up over the horizon 
 promised the placidity and accomplishment of the Sunda 
 Strait. Whenever he noticed the plate he felt again the 
 relief of coasting that northerly shore: 
 
 He saw the mate forward with the crew passing the 
 chains through the hawse pipes and shackling them to the 
 anchors. The island rose from level groves of shore 
 palms to lofty blue peaks terraced with rice and red- 
 massed kina plantations, with shining streams and green 
 kananga flowers and tamarinds. The land breeze, fra- 
 grant with clove buds and cinnamon, came off to the ship 
 in the vaporous dusk; and, in the blazing sunlight of 
 morning, the Anjer sampans swarmed out with a shrill 
 chatter of brilliant birds, monkeys and naked brown hu- 
 manity, piled with dark green oranges and limes and pur- 
 ple mangosteen. 
 
 [44] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 In the last few years, particularly with Gerrit away, 
 he had tui'ned more and more from the surroundings of 
 his house — rather it had become William's house — to 
 an inner life of memories. His own active life seemed to 
 him to have been infinitely fuller, more purposeful and 
 various, than that of present existence at Java Head. All 
 Salem had been different: he had a certain contempt for 
 the existence of his son William and the latter's associates 
 and friends. He had said that the trading now done in 
 ships was like dealing at a Boston store, and the mer- 
 chants reminded him of storekeepers. The old days, 
 when a voyage was a public affair, and a ship's manifest 
 posted in the Custom House on which anyone might write 
 himself down for a varying part of the responsibility 
 and profit, had given place to closed capital; the passages 
 from port to port with the captain, as often as not, his own 
 supercargo and a figure of importance, had become sched- 
 uled affairs in which a master was subjected to any count- 
 inghouse clerk with an order from the firm: the ships 
 themselves were fast being ruined. 
 
 He was in his room, after supper, seated momentarily 
 on a day bed with a covering of white Siberian fox skins, 
 and he pronounced aloud, in a tone of satirical contempt, 
 the single word, " Clipp)er." Nearly everyone in the ship- 
 ping business seemed to have been touched by this mad- 
 ness for the ridiculous ideas of an experimental Griffiths 
 and his model of a ship with the bows turned inside out, 
 the greatest beam aft and a dead rise like an inverted roof. 
 That the Rainbow, the initial result of this insanity, 
 hadn't capsized at her launching had been due to some 
 freak of chance; just as her miraculous preservation 
 
 [45] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 through a voyage or so to China could have been made 
 possible only by continuously mild weather. 
 ' Even if the Rainbow had been fast — her run was 
 called ninety-two days out to Canton and home in eighty- 
 eight — it was absurd to suppose that there had been the 
 usual monsoon. And if she did come in a little ahead of 
 vessels built on a solid full-bodied model, why her hold 
 had no cargo capacity worth the name. 
 
 Things on the seas were going to the devil! He 
 moved down to the library, where he lighted a cheroot and 
 addressed himself to the Gazette; but his restlessness in- 
 creased: the paper drooped and his thoughts turned to 
 Gerrit as a small boy. He saw him leaving home, for the 
 first time, to go to the school at Andover, in a cloth cap 
 with a glazed peak, striped long pantaloons and blue coat 
 and waistcoat; later at the high desk in the counting- 
 rooms of Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone; then sail- 
 ing as supercargo on one of the Company's ships to Rus- 
 sia and Liverpool. He had soon dropped such clerking 
 for seamen's duties, and his rise to mastership had been 
 rapid. 
 
 Rhoda, William's wife, entered and stood before him 
 accusingly. " You are worrying again," she declared ; 
 " in here all by yourself. It really seems as if you didn't 
 believe in our interest or affection. I have a feeling, and 
 you know they are always right, that Gerrit will sail into 
 the harbor any day now." 
 
 He had always liked Rhoda, a large handsome woman 
 with rich coloring — her countenance somehow reminded 
 him of an apricot — and fine clothes. She paused, studied 
 
 [46] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 him for a moment, and then asked, "Was your call on 
 Captain Dunsack pleasant? " 
 
 " It ought to have been," he confided, " but I got mad 
 and talked like a Dutch uncle, and Barzil went off on a 
 holy tack." 
 
 " About Nettie Vollar?" 
 
 Jeremy nodded. " Look here, Rhoda," he demanded, 
 " did Gerrit ever say anything to you about her? " 
 
 " Yes," she told him; " Gerrit was very frank." 
 
 "Did he like the girl?" 
 
 " I couldn't make that out. But if there hadn't been, 
 well — something unusual in her circumstances I think he 
 would never have noticed her. Gerrit is a curious mix- 
 ture, a very impressionable heart and a contrary stubborn 
 will. He was sorry for Nettie, and, at the way a great 
 many pyeople treated her, threw himself into opposition. 
 Nettie's father made him very mad, and Gerrit pretty 
 well damned all Salem before he left in the Nautilus. 
 He was excruciatingly funny: you know Gerrit can be, 
 particularly when he imitates anybody. I think being 
 away at sea a great deal, and having absolute command 
 of everything, give men a different view of things from 
 ours. What is terribly important to Salem hardly touches 
 Gerrit; it's all silly pretense, or worse, to him. 
 
 " I wouldn't mind that if it weren't for the sense of 
 humor that leads him into the wildest extravagances, and 
 the fact that he'll act on his feelings. You know I'm 
 devoted to him but I give a sigh of relief whenever he 
 gets away on his ship without doing anyone of the hun- 
 dred insanities he threatens." 
 
 [47] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " Gerrit's like me," he said. 
 
 " More than William," she agreed. " William is never 
 impetuous, and he's often impatient with his brother. 
 He's a splendid husband, but Gerrit would make a won- 
 derful lover. I'm thankful I never fell into his affec- 
 tions ... too wearing for an indolent woman." 
 
 " You've been a great comfort and pleasure, Rhoda," 
 he told her. " I only wish Gerrit could marry someone 
 like you — " 
 
 " But who would give him sons," she interrupted. 
 
 " It's just as you say about him, and I've always been 
 uneasy. God knows what he won't do — on land. Wil- 
 liam's a great deal happier, for all his brother's humor. 
 I joke William, but he's very satisfactory and solid. He'll 
 make port if he doesn't get tied up with newfangled no- 
 tions. Why, it stands to reason that a ship built like a 
 knife would double up in the seas off the Falklands." 
 
 " He has a lot of confidence in Mr. McKay." 
 
 " McKay is a good man unsettled. The May Brough- 
 ton is a fine barque, and his packet ships are as seaworthy 
 as any, but — " his indignation increased so that he sput- 
 tered, and Rhoda laughed. " Now your girls," he added, 
 " fine models, all of them, plenty of beam, work in any 
 kind of weather." 
 
 " That's very complimentary," she assured him, rising. 
 " You mustn't worry about Gerrit. Remember, my pre- 
 dictions never fail." 
 
 When she had gone his mind returned to storms he had 
 safely weathered — the gray gales of Cape Horn, black 
 hurricanes and the explosive tempests in eastern straits 
 and seas. He took from the drawer of a bookcase with 
 
 [48] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 glass doors set in geometrical pattern a thin volume bound 
 in black boards. A paper label was inscribed in a small, 
 carefully formed script, " Journal of my intended voyage 
 from Salem to the East Indies in the Ship Woodbine." 
 He opened at random : 
 
 " Comes in with strong wind from SSE with rain 
 squalls. Very ugly sea on. Double reefed the Topsails, 
 reefed the courses and furled the mainsail. At six p.m. 
 shipped a very heavy sea that carried away the bulwarks 
 on the larboard quarter and stove those on the starboard 
 quarter and amidships . . . upper cabin filled with water. 
 Through the night strong gales. . . . Lightning at all 
 points of the compass." 
 
 The memory of this night, six days out from Manilla 
 to Hong Kong, was clearer than the actuality of the room 
 in which he sat, an old man with his activity, his strength, 
 his manhood, far behind him, a hulk. 
 
 " At ten split the mainsail in pieces. Close reefed the 
 fore and double reefed the main-topsails. Rising gales 
 and heavy head sea. Shipping a great quantity of water 
 and leaking considerable. Bent a new mainsail and set 
 it. Reefed and set the jib. Pumping near two thousand 
 strokes an hour. 
 
 " October seventh, Sunday. Comes in with strong gales 
 and a heavy head sea. Both officers crippled and man 
 laid up. Through the night the same. Leaking badly. 
 A great number of junks in sight . . . and so at five p.m. 
 come to anchor." 
 
 He had been a good man then, sixteen days on the 
 quarter-deck without going below; insensible to ice or 
 fever or weariness. He had been autocratic, too; and had 
 
 [49] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 his boy servant carrying areca nuts, chunam and tobacco 
 in two silk bags, another with a fan and a third holding 
 an umbrella. Such things were all over now, he under- 
 stood, in this driving age. 
 
 His mind continually returned to Gerrit, to dwell on 
 the vast number of perils held in store by the sea; there 
 was always the possibility of scurvy, an entire crew rot- 
 ting alive in the forecastle and the ship broached to, dis- 
 masted; of mutiny; the sheer smothering finality of vol- 
 canic waves. He had never realized until now, in the 
 misery of uncertainty, the hellish loneliness of a shipmas- 
 ter at sea; the pride of duty, the necessity of discipline, 
 that put him beyond all counsel, all assistance and human 
 interdependence. Jeremy, who had arrogantly accepted 
 this responsibility without a question, through so many 
 long years and voyages, now dreaded it, found it an in- 
 human burden, for his son. 
 
 William couldn't be expected to appreciate the diffi- 
 culties of his brother's position: all the former's experi- 
 ence had been got when, with James Saltonstone and a 
 party of Salem merchants, he ventured to the lighthouse 
 at the entrance of the harbor, had a cold collation, and 
 returned with the pilot or in the Custom House sloop. 
 These occasions of huzzas and salutes and speeches were 
 supplemented with a hasty inspection, now and then, of a 
 vessel lying still at the wharf with sails harbor furled. 
 William guessed little of the long effort through which a 
 ship won from the first of those moments to the last. He 
 was solely concerned with the returns of the cargo. 
 
 However, Rhoda was right, and this mooning wouldn't 
 bring Gerrit into port. He turned to the bookcase, where 
 
 [50] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 a squat bottle of Medford rum rested beside a tumbler; 
 after a drink he lighted a cheroot and smoking vigorously, 
 with hands clasped behind him, paced back and forth 
 in an undeviating line between the door to the hall and 
 a dark polished secretary he had bought in London. 
 
 While he was walking Camilla came into the room and 
 sedately took a seat on one of the formal chairs against the 
 wall. " I guess you think that's the deck of a ship," she 
 said conversationally. He regarded her with a faint 
 threatening glint of humor. Camilla's dignity was stu- 
 pendous; particularly now, when, he observed, her skirts 
 stood out in a thoroughly grown manner. He liked 
 Laurel best of William's children; she had, in spite of her 
 confusion in regard to outports, a surprising grasp upon 
 many of the details of life on shipboard, and a largeness 
 of manner and expression entertaining in a little girl. 
 Sidsall was the most ingratiating — she had Gerrit's di- 
 rect kindling gaze; Janet showed no individuality yet 
 beyond an entire willingness to conform to outward cir- 
 cumstance while pursuing deeply secret speculations 
 within. But Camilla impressed the entire family by the 
 rigidity of her correctness in personal and social niceties. 
 At times, he felt, she would be a nuisance but for the firm 
 hand of her mother and his own contribution to their 
 well-being by an occasional sly sally. 
 
 " It might be that," he admitted; " if it weren't for the 
 facts that it's a house and library, and I'm an old man, 
 and you're not at all like the second mate." 
 
 " I should hope not," she replied decidedly. " A sec- 
 ond mate isn't anything, and I am a — a young lady any- 
 how." 
 
 [51] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " You'll soon be out at dances." 
 
 " I go to parties now ; that is, mother let me stay at the 
 Coggswells' on Thursday until the men came at nine for 
 sangaree. And I'm at all the Ballad Soirees." 
 
 He made a gesture of pretended surprise and admira- 
 tion. " I don't suppose they ever have a good chantey 
 with the stuff they play ? " he queried. " Dear me, no. 
 Mr. Dempster sings The Indian's Lament, and The May 
 Queen: that's a cantata and it's in three parts." 
 
 Jeremy began to hum, and in a moment was intoning in 
 a loud monotonous voice, sweeping a hand up and down: 
 
 " To my hero, Bangedero, 
 Singing hey for a gay Hash girl." 
 
 " I don't think that's very nice," she said primly. 
 
 " What do you mean — not very nice ? " he demanded, 
 incensed. " There's nothing finer with a rousing chan- 
 teyman leading it and the watch hauling on the braces. 
 You'd never hear the like at any Ballad Soiree. And: 
 
 " Sweet William, he married a wife, 
 ' Gentle Jenny,' cried Rose Marie, 
 To be the sweet comfort of his life, 
 As the dew flies over the mulberry tree." 
 
 " There isn't much sense to it," she observed. 
 
 For a little, indignant at her disparagement of such 
 noble fragments, he tramped silently back and fortli, 
 followed by a cloud of smoke from the cheroot. No one 
 on land could understand the absorbing significance of 
 every detail of a ship's life. . . . Only Gerrit, of all his 
 family, knew the chanteys and watches, the anxiety and 
 
 [52] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 beauty of landfalls — the blue Falklands or Teneriffe 
 rising above the clouds, the hurried making and taking of 
 sail in the squalls of the Doldrums. 
 
 " In India," he told her, stopping in his measured 
 course, " female children are given to the crocodiles." 
 
 Her mouth parted at this, her eyes became dilated, and 
 she slipped from the chair. " That's perfectly awfully 
 appalling," she breathed. " The little brown girl babies. 
 Oh, father," she cried, as William Ammidon came into the 
 library, " what do you suppose grandfather says, that in 
 India female children are . . . crocodiles." Words failed 
 her. 
 
 "What's the sense in frightening the child, father?" 
 William remonstrated. " I wish you would keep those 
 horrors for the old heathen of the Marine Society." 
 
 Jeremy had a lively sense of guilt; he had been be- 
 trayed by Camilla's confounded airs and pretensions. He 
 ought to be ashamed of himself, telling the girl such 
 things. " The British Government is putting a stop to 
 that," he added hastily, " and to suttees — " 
 
 " What are they? " she inquired. 
 
 " Never mind, Camilla," her father interposed; " go up 
 with your mother and sisters. 
 
 " I suppose it's no good speaking to you," William con- 
 tinued; " but my family is not a crew and this house isn't 
 the Two Capes. You might make some effort to realize 
 you're on land." 
 
 " I know I'm on land, William; tell that any day from a 
 sight of you. You can afford to listen a little now and 
 then about the sea. That's where all you have came from; 
 it's '.he same with near everybody in Salem. Vessels 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 brought them and vessels kept them going; and, with the 
 wharves as empty as they were this afternoon, soon there 
 won't be any Salem to talk about." 
 
 " The tide's turned from here," the other replied; " with 
 the increase in tonnage and the importance of time we need 
 the railway and docking facility of the larger cities — 
 Boston and New York." 
 
 " It's running out fast enough," Jeremy agreed; " and 
 there's a lot going out with it you'll never see again — 
 like the men who put a reef in England in 'twelve." 
 
 " You are always sounding the same strings ; we're at 
 peace with the world now, and a good thing for shipping." 
 
 " Peace ! " the elder declared hotly ; " you and the Dem- 
 ocrats may call it that, but it's a damned swindle, with 
 the British to windward of you and hardly a sail now 
 drawing in your ropes. What did Edmund Burke tell 
 Parliament in 'seventy-five about our whalers, hey ! Why, 
 that from Davis Strait to the Antipodes, from the Falk- 
 lands to Africa, we outdrove Holland, France and Eng- 
 land. After the laws and bounties Congress passed in 
 'eighty-nine what could you see — something like a half 
 million tonnage gained in three years or so. In the war of 
 'twelve your land soldiers were a pretty show, with the 
 Capitol burning; but when it was finished the privateers 
 had sunk over nine million dollars of British shipping to 
 their sixty thousand. The Chesapeake luggers have gone 
 out with the tide, too. And then, by God, by God, what 
 then: the treaty of Ghent, with England impressing our 
 seamen and tying our ships up in what ports she chose 
 under a right of search ! On top of this your commission- 
 ers repeal the ship laws and the British allow you to carry 
 
 [54] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 only native cargoes to the United Kingdom with a part of 
 the customs and harbor dues off. 
 
 " But in spite of Congress and political sharks we went 
 out to India and China direct, with The George home from 
 Calcutta in ninety-five days, and the East Indiamen six or 
 seven months on the shorter run to England. I can show 
 you what the London Times said about that, it's in my 
 desk : ' Twelve years of peace, and . . . the shipping 
 interest ... is half ruined . . . thousands of our manu- 
 factures are seeking redemption in foreign lands.' It goes 
 on to tell that American seamen already controlled ,an 
 important part of the British carrying trade to the East 
 Indies. Yet your precious lawmakers open our West In- 
 dia trade to Great Britain, but they wouldn't ask the 
 privilege to carry a cargo from British India to Liverpool 
 or Canada." 
 
 " Now, father," William put in, " you are getting ex- 
 cited again. It isn't good for you. We are not all such 
 fools to-day as you make out." 
 
 " Look at the masters themselves," Jeremy continued 
 explosively; " gentlemen like Gerrit, from Harvard Uni- 
 versity, and not lime-juicers beating their way aft with a 
 belaying pin. They could sail a ship with two-thirds the 
 crew of a Britisher with her clumsy yellow hemp sails 
 and belly you could lose a dinghy in. Mind, I don't 
 say the English aren't handy in a ship and that they 
 wouldn't clew up a topsail clean at the edge of hell. What 
 we are on the seas came over from them. But we bettered 
 it, William, and they knew it; and, naturally enough, laid 
 out to sail around us. I don't blame England, but I do 
 our God damn — " 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " Father," the other firmly interrupted, " you are shout- 
 ing as if you were on the quarter-deck in a gale. I muSt 
 insist on your quieting down; you'll burst a blood vessel." 
 
 "Maybe I am," Jeremy muttered; "and it wouldn't 
 matter much if I did. When I see a nation with ship- 
 masters who would set their royals when others hove too, 
 and get there, all snarled up with shore lines and political 
 duffel, I'm nigh ready to burst something." 
 
 " Rhoda said that you were at the Dunsacks' this after- 
 noon; I saw Edward in Boston yesterday." 
 
 " I don't care if you saw the Flying Dutchman," the 
 other asserted, breathing stormily. 
 
 " It's curious about the China service," William went 
 on; " anyone out there for a number of years gets to look 
 Chinese. Edward is as yellow as a lemon, but nothing 
 like as pleasant a color. Thin, too, and nervous; hands 
 crawling all over themselves, never still for a moment. He 
 didn't say why he had left Heard and Company, and I 
 didn't quite like to ask. Edward came on from England 
 in the Queen of the West, the Swallow Tail Line. I did 
 ask him if he were going to settle in Salem, but he 
 couldn't say; there was something about a Boston house. 
 It seems that Gerrit carried his chest and things from 
 Canton in the Nautilus as an accommodation." 
 
 Suddenly Jeremy felt very insecure, his body heavy and- 
 knees weak, failing. He stumbled back into the chair 
 by the fireplace, William at his side. " You must pay 
 some attention to what you're told, father," the latter said 
 anxiously. " How are you now? " 
 
 " I'm all right," he declared testily, trying to brush away 
 the dimness floating before his eyes. 
 
 [56] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " Shall I help you up to bed? " 
 
 " I'll go to bed when I've a mind to," Jeremy retorted. 
 " I am not under cover yet by a long reach." To 
 establish his well-being he rose and moved to the secre- 
 tary, where he got a fresh cheroot, and lighted it with 
 slightly trembling fingers. He grumbled inarticulately, 
 remembering his own exploits in the carrying of sail and 
 record runs under the bluff bows of the Honorable John 
 Company itself. The ebb tide, he thought, returning to 
 William's figure and its amplification by himself. So 
 much that had been good sweeping out to sea never to re- 
 turn. . . . Gerrit long overdue. 
 
 Once more he shook himself free of numbing dread; 
 automatically he had fallen back into the passage from the 
 secretary to the hall door. He saw that he had worn 
 threadbare a narrow strip where his feet had so often 
 pressed. It would be necessary for him to see about a 
 fresh case of cheroots soon, primes, too; they needn't 
 try to put him off with the second quality. He was put 
 off a great deal lately; people pretended to be listening to 
 him, and all the time their thoughts were somewhere else, 
 either that or they were merely politely concealing the 
 opinion that he was out of date, of no importance. 
 
 His family were always providing against his fatigue or 
 excitement; at the countinghouse the gravest problems, he 
 was certain, were withheld from him. At the occurrence 
 of this possibility a fresh indignation poured through his 
 brain. Fuming and tramping up and down he determined 
 that to-morrow he would show any of the clerks who 
 didn't attend to his wishes or counsel that he was still 
 senior partner of Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone. 
 
 [57] 
 
Ill 
 
 THE evening was surprisingly warm and still, with 
 an intermittent falling of rain, and the windows 
 were open in the room where Rhoda Ammidon 
 sat regarding half dismayed her reflection in the mirror of 
 a dressing table. A few minutes before she had discovered 
 her first gray hair. It was not only the mere assault upon 
 her vanity, but, too, a realization far deeper — here was 
 the stamp of time, the mark of a considerable progress 
 toward the end itself. Her emotions were various; but, 
 curiously enough, almost the first had been a wave of pas- 
 sionate tenderness for William- and her little girls. The 
 shock of finding that arresting sign was now giving place 
 to a purely feminine reaction. She considered for a mo- 
 ment the purchase of a bottle of hair coloring, then with 
 a disdainful gesture dismissed such a temporary and 
 troublesome measure. 
 
 She kept an undiminishing pride in her appearance and 
 a relentless care and choice in the details of her dress, 
 pleased by the knowledge that the attention men paid 
 her showed no indication yet of growing perfunctory. 
 She had been much admired both in Boston and London 
 through her youth, and she recalled her early doubts at 
 the prospect of life in Salem; but she realized now that, 
 as her years and children multiplied, she was by imper- 
 
 [58] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 ceptible degrees returning to a traditional New England 
 heritage. 
 
 She was glad, however, that William's wide connections 
 lifted him above a purely local view; William was really 
 a splendid husband. Rhoda was conscious of this together 
 with a clear recognition of his faults, and quite aside from 
 both existed her unreasoning affection. The latter vividly 
 dominated her, shut out, on any occasion of stress, all else; 
 but for the most part she held him in an attitude of mildly 
 amused comprehension. 
 
 Gerrit Ammidon she hadn't seen until after her engage- 
 ment to William, and she sometimes thought of the former 
 in connection with marriage. Gerrit, she admitted to her- 
 self, was a far more romantic figure than William; not 
 handsomer — William Ammidon was very good looking 
 — but more arresting, with his hair swinging about his 
 ears and intense blue gaze. An exciting man, she de- 
 cided again, for whom one would eternally put on the love- 
 liest clothes possible; a man to make you almost as ravish- 
 ingly happy as miserable, and, therefore, disturbing as a 
 husband. 
 
 At this her mind returned to her gray hair and the fact 
 that the metal backlog of the kitchen fire, which supplied 
 the house with hot water, had been leaking over the hearth. 
 A feeling of melancholy possessed her at the turning 
 of younger visions into commonplace necessities, but she 
 dismissed it with the shadow of a smile — it was absurd 
 for a woman of her age to dwell on such frivolous things. 
 Yet she still lingered to wonder if men too kept intact 
 among their memories the radiant image of their youth, if 
 they ever thought of it with tenderness and extenuation. 
 
 [59] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 She decided in the negative, convinced that men, even at 
 the end of many years, never definitely lost connection 
 with their early selves, there was always a trace of hope- 
 fulness, of jaunty vanity — sometimes winning and some- 
 times merely ridiculous — attached to their decline. 
 
 Rhoda stirred and moved to a window, gazing vaguely 
 out into the moist blue obscurity. Sidsall, she realized, 
 was maturing with a disconcerting rapidity. Depths were 
 opening in the girl's being at which she, her mother, could 
 only guess. It was exaptly as if a crystal through and 
 through which she had gazed had suddenly been veiled by 
 rosy clouds. Sidsall had a charming nature, direct and 
 unsuspicious and generously courageous. 
 
 There was a sound at the door, and William entered, 
 patently ruffled. It was clear that he had had another 
 disagreement with his father. " It's shameful how you 
 disturb him," she declared. 
 
 " Look here, Rhoda," he replied vigorously. " I won't 
 continually be put in the wrong. It seems as if I had no 
 affection for the old gentleman. I always have the diffi- 
 cult thing to do, and he has been slightly contemptuous 
 ever since I was a boy because I didn't go to sea. The 
 truth is — while I wouldn't think of letting him know — 
 he's a. tremendous nuisance pottering about the counting- 
 rooms with his stories of antediluvian trading voyages. 
 And worse is to come — these new clipper ships and pas- 
 sages have knocked the wind out of the old slow full- 
 bottomed vessels. We have about determined to reorgan- 
 ize our fleet entirely, and are in treaty with Donald McKay 
 for an extreme clipper type of twelve hundred tons. 
 
 " Of course, he's my parent ; but I wonder at Salton- 
 [60] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 stone's patience. Father won't heat of the opium trade 
 and it's turning over thousand per cent profits. We are 
 privately operating two fast topsail schooners in India 
 now, but it's both inconvenient and a risk. They ought 
 to be put right under our house flag for credit alone. It is 
 all bound to come up, and then he'll go off like a cannon." 
 
 " Couldn't you wait till he's dead, William ? " she asked. 
 " It won't be a great while now. I can see that he has 
 failed dreadfully from this worry about Gerrit." 
 
 " Five years will make all the difference. We are losing 
 tea cargoes every month to these ships making sensational 
 runs. I don't talk much, Rhoda, about, well — my fam- 
 ily; but I am as upset over Gerrit as anyone else. Except 
 for a tendency to carry too much sail there's not a better 
 shipmaster out of New England. Not only that . . . 
 he's my brother. It's easy to like Gerrit ; his opinions are 
 a little wild, and an exaggerated sense of justice gets him 
 into absurd situations; yet his motives are the purest pos- 
 sible. Perhaps that word pure describes him better than 
 any other, however people who didn't know might smile. 
 As a man, Rhoda, I can assert that he is surprisingly 
 clean-hearted." 
 
 "That's a wonderful quality," she agreed; "why any- 
 one should smile is beyond me. William, would you 
 know that my hair is turning gray, do I look a lot older 
 than I did five years ago? " 
 
 He studied her complacently. " You've hardly changed 
 since I married you," he asserted; " a great deal prettier 
 than these young cramped figgers I see about. The girls, 
 too, are just like you — good armfuls all of them." 
 
 The next day was flawlessly sunny, the slightly stir- 
 [61] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 ring air reminiscent of the sea, and the lilacs every- 
 where were masses of purple and white bloom. Stepping 
 down from her carriage on the morning round of shopping 
 Rhoda encountered Nettie Vollar leaving one of the stores 
 of Cheapside. 
 
 " Why, Nettie," she exclaimed kindly, " it's been the 
 longest time since I've seen you. It is just no use 
 asking you to the house, and it seems, with nothing 
 to do, I never have a minute for the visits I'd like to 
 make." Nettie, she thought, was a striking girl, no — 
 woman, with her stack of black hair, dark sparkling eyes 
 and red spot on either cheek. More fetching in profile 
 than full face, her nose had a pert angle and her cleft chin 
 was enticingly rounded. Later she would be too fat but 
 now her body was ripely perfect. 
 
 " I don't go anywhere much," she responded, in a voice 
 faintly and instinctively antagonistic. " I don't like kind- 
 ness in people; but I suppose I ought to be contented — 
 that's all I'll probably ever get from anybody who is a 
 thing in the world. Mrs. Ammidon," she hesitated, then 
 continued more rapidly, her gaze lowered, " have you had 
 any word about Captain Ammidon yet ? Have they given 
 up hope of the Nautilus? " 
 
 " We've had no news," Rhoda told her, and then she 
 added her conviction that Gerrit would return safely. 
 
 " He was better than kind," Nettie Vollar said. " I'm 
 sure he liked me, Mrs. Ammidon, or he would have if 
 everything hadn't been spoiled by grandfather. He thinks 
 I'm a dreadful sin, you know, a punishment on mother. 
 But inside of me I don't feel different from others. Some- 
 times I — I wonder that I don't actually go sinful, I've 
 
 [62] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 had opportunities, and being good hasn't offered me much, 
 has it?" 
 
 " You are naturally a good girl, Nettie," Rhoda an- 
 swered simply; " but you must be braver than ordinary. 
 If we think differently from Salem still it is in Salem we 
 must live; I keep many of my beliefs secret just as you 
 must control most of your feelings." 
 
 The other responded with a hard little laugh. " Thank 
 you, though. You are more like Gerrit, Captain Am- 
 midon, than Mrs. Saltonstone, his own sister. I hate her," 
 she declared. " I hate all the Salem women, so superior 
 and condescending and Christian. They always have a 
 silly look of wonder at their charity in speaking to me 
 . . . when they do. They act as if it's just a privilege 
 for me to be in their church. I'd rather go to a cotillion 
 at Hamilton Hall any day." 
 
 " Of course you would," Rhoda agreed. There seemed 
 to be so little for her to offer or say that she was relieved 
 when they parted. The afternoon grew really sultry, but, 
 when the shadows had lengthened, she encountered Jeremy 
 Ammidon wandering aimlessly about the hall and, his 
 fine palmetto hat and wanghee in her hand, urged him out 
 to the East India Marine Society. " It's much too beau- 
 tiful a day for the house," she insisted. 
 
 "There's nothing remarkable about it," he returned; 
 " wind's too light and variable, hardly enough to hold 
 way on a ship." There were the stirring strains of a 
 quickstep without; at the door they saw the Salem Cadets, 
 preceded by Flag's Band, marching in columns of fours 
 into Washington Square. The white breeches with scarlet 
 coats and brass buttons made a gay showing on the green 
 
 [63] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Common, the sunlight glittered on silver braid and tassels, 
 gilt and pompons, scaled chin straps and varnished 
 leather. 
 
 The old man's face grew dark at the brilliant line drawn 
 up for inspection, and he muttered a period about cursed 
 young Whigs. " Wouldn't have one of the scoundrels in 
 my house if I could help it. Don't understand William; 
 he's too damned mild for my idea of a good citizen. 
 
 " Why, it's only reasonable that a country's got to be run 
 like a ship, from the quarter-deck. How far do you sup- 
 pose a vessel would get if the crew hung about aft and 
 chose representatives from the port and starboard "watches 
 and galley for a body to lay the course and make sail ? " 
 
 " Please, father," she protested, laughing. " Do go 
 along into the sun." She gently pushed him toward the 
 door. Rhoda realized the fact that William was more 
 than half Whig already. That threatened still another 
 point of difference, of departure, from all that his father 
 held to be sacred necessities. Jeremy, like most of the 
 older shipmasters, was a bitter Federalist, an upholder of 
 a strongly centralized autocratic government. He left, 
 grumbling, and the staccato commands of the military evo- 
 lutions on the Common rang through the slumberous after- 
 noon. 
 
 She lingered in the doorway and Laurel appeared, 
 jigging with excitement. 
 
 " Can't I get nearer," she begged; "there's nothing to 
 see from here." Her mother replied, " Ask Camilla to 
 take you over to the Square." Camilla appeared indif- 
 ferently. " I don't know why anyone should be flustered," 
 
 [64] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 she observed; " it isn't like the Fourth of July with a 
 concert and fireworks." 
 
 As they were going, Sidsall came out in a white tarlatan 
 dress worked with sprays of yellow barley, her face glowing 
 with color, and sat on the steps. " Positively," her mother 
 said, looking down on the mass of bright chestnut hair in 
 a chenille net, '' we'll soon hav€ to have you up in braids." 
 
 " I wish I might," she responded. " And Hodie is too 
 silly — I can't get her to lace me tightly enough. She 
 says such things are engines of the devil." 
 
 " It's still a little soon for that — " Rhoda broke off 
 as a slight erect man at the verge of middle age turned in 
 from Pleasant Street upon them. " Roger," she said cor- 
 dially as he came quickly up the steps. He greeted her 
 lightly and bent over Sidsall with an extended hand : 
 
 " The apple blossoms, I see, are here." 
 
 Rhoda wondered what nonsense Roger Brevard was re- 
 peating; Sidsall's face was hidden from view. But then 
 Roger was always like that, his manner was never at a 
 loss for the appropriate gesture'. He had a great many 
 points in common with her, she thought; neither had been 
 born in Salem, and his rightful setting was in the best 
 metropolitan drawing-rooms. He had been here for a 
 dozen years, now, in charge of the local affairs of the, Mon- 
 golian Marine Insurance Company; and she often won- 
 dered why, a member of a family socially notable in New 
 York, he continued in a city, a position, of comparative 
 unimportance. 
 
 ■ She was, she said, going back to the lawn, the glare of 
 Pleasant Street was fatiguing; and she proceeded through 
 
 [65] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 the house with the surety of his following. But on the 
 close-cut emerald sod there was no sign of him, and she 
 found a seat in a basket chair by the willow tree beyond. 
 She waited for Roger with a small but growing impatience; 
 he must be done immediately with whatever he might say 
 to Sidsall, and she wished to discuss the possibilities of a 
 rumor that President Polk intended to visit Salem. There 
 would be a collation, perhaps a military ball, to arrange; 
 Franklin Hall would be the better place for the latter. 
 She heard a faint silvery echo of laughter — Sidsall. It 
 was extremely nice, of course, in Roger Brevard to enter- 
 tain her daughter, though she didn't care to have the 
 child give the effect of receiving men yet. 
 
 It was, finally, Sidsall who appeared, unaccompanied, 
 in the drawing-room window. She came forward to where 
 Rhoda sat, her face still stirred with amusement. " Mr. 
 Brevard went on," she said in response to her mother's 
 look of inquiry. " " That's rather odd," the latter com- 
 mented almost sharply. " He had only a few minutes," 
 the girl explained. She sank into a seat and mood of ab- 
 straction. Rhoda studied her with a veiled glance. Hers 
 were exceptional children, they had given her scarcely an 
 hour's concern; and she must see that in the unsettling 
 period which Sidsall was now entering she was not sf>oiled. 
 
 Perhaps Laurel entertained her more than the others. 
 She was a very normal little girl, not thoughtful like 
 Janet, and without Camilla's exaggerated poise; but she 
 had a picturesque imagination; and her companionship 
 with her grandfather was delightful. The latter addressed 
 her quite as if she were a fellow shipriiaster; and she 
 had acquired scane remarkable sea expressions, some de- 
 
 [66] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 plorable and others enigmatic: only to-day, questioned 
 about the order of her room, she had said that it was "all 
 square by the lifts and braces." For this her grandfather 
 had given her a gold piece. 
 
 There was, she knew, an excellent school for older girls 
 at Lausanne; and, revolving the possibility of obtaining 
 for Sidsall some of the European advantages she, Rhoda, 
 had enjoyed, the following afternoon she drove to the Clif- 
 fords' on Marlboro Street for a consultation with Madra, 
 who had spent a number of seasons on Lake Leman. In a 
 cool parlor with yellow Tibet rugs and marodn hangings 
 she had tea while Madra Clifford, thin and imperious, 
 with a settled ill health like white powder and a price- 
 less Risajii shawl, conversed in a shrill key. 
 
 " Caroline has been in bed for a week. That vulgar 
 Dr. Fisk, with his elbow in her bosom, tried five times to 
 extract her tooth, and then broke it to the roots. I hear 
 there is a galvanic ring for rheumatism. The pain in my 
 joints is excruciating; I have an idea my bones are 
 changing into chalk; the right knee will hardly bend." 
 The darkly colored shawl with its border of cypress inten- 
 sified her sunken blue-traced temples and the pallid lips. 
 She developed the subject of her indisposition, sparing 
 no detail; while Rhoda Ammidon, from her superabun- 
 dance of well-being, half pitied the other and was half 
 revolted at the mind touched, too, by bodily ill. The for- 
 tune accumulated by the hardy Clifford men, flogged out of 
 crews and stained by the blood of primitive and dull sav- 
 ages — the Cliffords were notorious for their brutal driv- 
 ing^ — now served only to support Madra's debility and a 
 horde of unscrupulous panderers to her obsession. 
 
 [67] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " Edward Dunsack is in Salem," she continued; " and 
 I've heard he has the most peculiar appearance. Very 
 probably the result of the unmentionable practices of the 
 Orient. Father liked the Chinese though ; so many of our 
 shipmasters have, and not always the merchants. . . . 
 What was I saying? Oh, yes, Edward Dunsack. I un- 
 derstand you had a distinct alarm in that quarter, about 
 the girl and Gerrit Ammidon. But I forgot to say how 
 glad I am about Gerrit. You must have been horribly 
 worried — " 
 
 " What do you mean? " Rhoda demanded. 
 
 " Why, haven't you heard ! The Nautilus was sighted. 
 News came from Boston. She ought to be in to-day, I be- 
 lieve. I suppose William has been too concerned to get 
 you word at home." 
 
 Rhoda Ammidon rose immediately, surprised at the force 
 of the emotion that blurred her eyes with tears. Gerrit 
 was safe ! Possibly they had been told at Java Head now, 
 but she must be there with Jeremy Ammidon; surprises, 
 even as joyful as this, were a great strain on him. Neg- 
 lecting the object of her visit she returned at once to 
 Pleasant Street, urging the coachman to an undignified 
 haste, and keeping the carriage at the door. 
 
 Her father-in-law was at his secretary in the library, 
 and it was evident that he had heard nothing of his son's 
 return. " Well, Rhoda," he said, swinging about; " what 
 a bright cheek you have — like Laurel's." 
 
 " I feel bright, father," she replied with a nod and smile. 
 " After this none of you will be able to laugh at my pre- 
 dictions. You see, a woman's feeling is often more correct 
 than masculine judgment." His momentary bewilderment 
 
 [68J 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 gave place to a painfully strained interrogation. " Yes," 
 she told him, " but we are none of us surprised — Gerrit 
 is almost in Salem harbor." She moved near him and, 
 with a veiled anxiety, laid her hand upon his shoulder. 
 
 " A splendid sailor," he muttered. It seemed as if 
 Rhoda could really hear the dull rising pounding of his 
 shaken heart. But his excitement subsided, gave way to 
 a normal concern, a flood of vain questions and prepara- 
 tion to go down to the wharf. In the midst of this a 
 message came from the countinghouse of Ammidon, Am- 
 midon and Saltonstone that the Nautilus would dock 
 within an hour. 
 
 A small crowd had already gathered on Derby Wharf 
 when Rhoda and her companion made their way past the 
 warehouses built at intervals along the wharf to the place 
 where the Nautilus would be warped in. The wharfinger 
 saluted them, William Ammidon joined his wife, and 
 beyond she could see James Saltonstone conversing with 
 the Surveyor of the Port. 
 
 The afternoon was serene, a faint air drew in from the 
 sea; and with it, sweepiiig slowly inside Peach's Point, 
 was the tall ship with her canvas towering gold in the 
 western sun against the distance of sea and sky. As 
 Rhoda watched she saw their house flag — a white field 
 checkered in blue — fluttering from the main royal truck. 
 
 " The royals are coming in ! " Jeremy Ammidon ex- 
 claimed, gripping Rhoda's arm. " He is lowering his top- 
 gallant yards and hauling up the courses! My dear, 
 there's nothing on God's earth finer than a ship." 
 
 The Nautilus slipped along surprisingly fast. Rhoda 
 could now see the crew moving about and coiling the gear. 
 
 [69] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " Look, father, there's Gerrit on the quarter-deck." 
 
 The shipmaster, shorter than common, with broad asser- 
 tive shoulders in formal black, was easily recognizable. 
 A woman with a worn flushed face pressed by Jeremy. 
 " Andrew's there, too," she told them, " Mr. Broadrick, the 
 mate.'' 
 
 The ship moved more slowly, under her topsails and 
 jibs, in a soundless progress with the ripples falling away 
 in water like dark green glass, liquid and still. She was 
 now but a short distance from the end of the wharf. Mr. 
 Broadrick was forward between the knightheads with the 
 crew ranged to the starboard and at the braces, while Ger- 
 rit Ammidon stood with one hand on the quarter-deck 
 railing and the other holding a brass speaking trumpet 
 to his lips: 
 
 " Let go your port fore and after braces, Mr. Broadrick; 
 brace the fore and mizzen yards sharp up, leave the main 
 braces fast, and lay the main topsail to the mast. As she 
 comes to the wind let the jibs run down." He turned to 
 the man at the wheel, " Helm hard a starboard." 
 
 " Hard a starboard, sir." 
 
 The ship answered quickly and rounded to while her 
 weather fore and mizzen yards flew forward until they 
 touched the starboard backstays and the men hauled in 
 the slack of the braces. With the main yard square to 
 check her way the jibs drooped down along the stays. 
 " Mr. Broadrick, you may let go the starboard anchor and 
 furl sails." The mate grasped a top maul and struck the 
 trigger of the ring stopper a clean blow, the anchor 
 splashed into the water with a rumbling cable, and the 
 Nautilus was home. 
 
 [70] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Gerrit Ammidon walked hurriedly to the companionway 
 and went below, while the mate continued, " Stand by to 
 let go your topsail halliards and man the gear. Sharper 
 with the mizzen sheets and unbend those clew lines and 
 garnets . . . stow the clews in a harbor furl." At a 
 rhythmic shout the bunts of the three topsails came up 
 together. 
 
 The wind had died away and the flags hung listlessly 
 from the main truck and spanker gaff. The water of 
 the harbor was unstirred except for the swirls at the oar 
 blades of an incoming quarter boat and the warp paying 
 out at her stem. The voice of the mate, the chantey of 
 the crew heaving at the capstan bars, came to Rhoda sub- 
 dued: 
 
 " The times are hard and wages low, 
 Oh, leave her, Johnny, leave her. 
 I guess it's time for us to go, 
 
 Oh, leave her, Johnny, leave her. 
 I thought I heard the old man say, 
 Oh, leave her, Johnny, leave her. 
 To-morrow we will get our pay 
 
 leave her." 
 
 Rhoda Ammidon discovered herself leaning forward 
 tensely, her hands shut in excitement and emotion; and she 
 relaxed with a happy laugh as the Nautilus, with her yards 
 exactly square and rigging taut, her sides and figurehead 
 and ports bright with newly laid on paint, moved to the 
 wharf. ' 
 
 It seemed to her that Gerrit, descending a short stage 
 from the deck, looked markedly older than when he had 
 last sailed. Yet he had a surprisingly youthful air still; 
 
 [71] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 partly, she thought, from the manner in which he wore 
 his hair, falling in a waving thick line about his cheeks. 
 His mouth was at once fresh and severe, his face clean 
 shaven, and his eyes — if possible — more directly blue 
 than ever. 
 
 " I'll take the ship's manifest to the Collector," he said, 
 greeting them and impatiently waving aside the vendors 
 after the cook's slush, the excited women and runners and 
 human miscellany crowding forward. " Then Java 
 Head." He paused, speaking over his shoulder: " I'd 
 be thankful if you would send the barouche down in an 
 hour or so." ^ 
 
 Driving back, her hand on Jeremy Ammidon's knee, 
 Rhoda wondered at Gerrit's request. It was entirely un- 
 like him to ride in the barouche; rather he had always 
 derided it in the terms of his calling. However, unable 
 to find a~ solution for her surprise, she listened to the 
 other's comments and speculations: 
 
 " I suppose William's first question will be about the 
 cargo, and, of course, I hope the ship has done well. But 
 I'm just glad to have Gerrit back; I am for a fact, Rhoda." 
 
 " We all are," she assured him, " and William as happy 
 as any. You mustn't be misled by his manner, father. I 
 hope the supper will be good and please you." 
 
 " Gerrit will be satisfied with anything," he chuckled. 
 " Probably he's been out of beans even for a month. Did 
 you notice that fore-royal mast and yard? They were 
 rigged at sea: Gerrit carried them away. It hurts him to 
 take in a sail. Some day I tell him he'll drag the spars 
 out of his ship. His confounded pride will founder him." 
 He made these charges lightly, with a palpable underly- 
 
 [72] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 ing pride; and, Rhoda knew, would permit no one else to 
 criticize his son. 
 
 She found her daughters in a state of gala excitement 
 on the front steps. " Uncle Gerrit in the Nautilus," 
 Laurel chanted; and it was evident that Camilla herself 
 was thrilled. They all went up to put on holiday dress. 
 Rhoda turned to the coachman, " Have the barouche at 
 the head of Derby Wharf in an hour." 
 
 Gerrit's unusual demand again puzzled her. A fan- 
 tastic possibility lodged in her brain — perhaps he was not 
 alone. She pulled the bell rope for her maid, changed 
 into black moire with cut steel bretelles, and selected the 
 peacock coloring of a Peri-taus shawl. She found her 
 husband with his father in the library. " I understand 
 it's a splendid cargo," William reijnarked. Jeremy nodded 
 triumphantly at her, and she expressed a half humorous 
 resentment at this mercenary display. " He ought to be 
 here," the younger man declared, consulting his watch. 
 As he spoke Rhoda saw the barouche draw up before the 
 house. She had a glimpse of a figure at Gerrit Am- 
 midon's side in extravagantly brilliant satins; there was a 
 sibilant whisper of rich materials in the hall, and the mas- 
 ter entered the library with a pale set face. 
 
 " Father," he said, " Rhoda and William, allow me — 
 my wife, Taou Yuen." 
 
 Rhoda Ammidon gave an uncontrollable gasp as the 
 Chinese woman sank in a fluttering prostration of color 
 at Jeremy's feet. He ejaculated, " God bless me," and 
 started back. William's face was inscrutable, unguessed 
 lines appeared about his severe mouth. Her own sensa- 
 tion was one of incredulity touched with mounting anger 
 
 [73] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 and feeling of outrage. The woman rose, but only to sink 
 again before William: she was on her knees and, sup- 
 ported by her hands, bent forward and touched her fore- 
 head to the floor three times. Gerrit laughed shortly. 
 " She was to shake your hands; we went over and over 
 it on shipboard. But anything less than the Kil Von was 
 too casual for her." 
 
 She was now erect with a freer murmur of greeting to 
 Rhoda. The latter was instantly aware of one certainty 
 — Chinese she might be, she was, but no less absolutely 
 aristocratic. Her face, oval and slightly flat, was plas- 
 tered with paint on paint, but her gesture, the calm scru- 
 tiny of enigmatic black eyes under delicately arched brows, 
 exquisite quiet hands, were all under the most admirable 
 instinctive command. Rhoda said: 
 
 " I see that I am to welcome you for Gerrit's family." 
 The other, in slow lisping English replied : 
 
 " Thank you greatly. I am humbled to the earth before 
 your goodness." ' 
 
 " You will want to go to your room," Rhoda continued 
 mechanically. " It was only prepared for one, but I'll 
 send a servant up at once." She was enraged at the silent 
 stupidity of the three men and flashed a silent command 
 at her husband. 
 
 " This is a decided surprise," the latter at last addressed 
 his brother; " nor can I pretend that it is pleasant." Jer- 
 emy Ammidon's gaze wandered blankly from Gerrit to the 
 woman, then back to his son. 
 
 Never before had Rhoda seen such lovely clothes: A 
 long gown with wide sleeves of blue-black satin, em- 
 broidered in peach-colored flower petals and innumerable 
 
 [74] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 minute sapphire and orange butterflies, a short sleeveless 
 jacket of sage green caught with looped red jade buttons 
 and threaded with silver and indigo high-soled slippers 
 crusted and tasseled with pearls. Her hair rose from the 
 back in a smooth burnished loop. There were long pins 
 of pink jade carved into blossoms, a quivering decoration 
 of paf)er-thin gold leaves with moonstones in glistening 
 drops, and a band of coral lotus buds. Pierced stone 
 bracelets hung about her delicate wrists, fretted crystal 
 balls swung from the lobes of her ears; and clasped on the 
 ends of several fingers were long pointed filagrees of ivory. 
 
 " Taou Yuen," Gerrit repeated shortly, with his chal- 
 lenging bright gaze. " That means Peach Garden. My 
 wife is a Manchu," he asserted in a more biting tone; " a 
 Manchu and the daughter of a noble. Thank you, Rhoda, 
 particularly. But I have always counted on you. Will 
 you go up with her? That is if — if my father has a 
 room, a place, for us." 
 
 " This will always be your home, Gerrit," Jeremy said 
 slowly, with the long breath of a diver in deep waters. 
 
 [75] 
 
IV 
 
 IN the room that had been his since early maturity 
 Gerrit Ammidon gave an involuntary sigh of relief. 
 Taou Yuen, his wife, was standing in the middle of 
 the floor, gazing about with a faint and polite smile. Her 
 eyes rested on a yellow camphor chest — one of the set 
 brought home by his father — on a severe high range of 
 drawers made of sycamore with six legs, on her brilliant 
 reflection in the eagle-crowned mirror above the mantel, 
 and the sleigh bed with low heavily curved ends. 
 
 The situation below, however brief and, on the whole, 
 reasonably conducted, had been surprisingly difficult. At 
 the same time that he had felt no necessity to apologize 
 for his marriage he had known that Taou Yuen must 
 surprise, yes — shock, his family. She was Chinese, to 
 them a heathen : they would be unable to comprehend any 
 mitigating dignity of rank. Where they'd actually suffer, 
 he realized, would be in the attitude of Salem, the stupid 
 gabble, the censure and cold pity caused by his wife. 
 
 Personally he regarded these with the contempt he felt 
 for so many of the qualities that on shore bound the inter- 
 ests of everyone into a single common concern. It gave 
 him pleasure to assault the authority and importance of 
 such public prejudice and self-opinion; but, unavoidably 
 implicating his family, at once a part of himself and Salem, 
 he was conscious of the fact that he had laid them all open 
 
 [76J 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 to disagreeable moments. He was sorry for this, and his 
 regret, prmcipally materialized by his father's hurt confu- 
 sion, had unexpectedly cast a shadow on a scene to which 
 he had looked forward with a distinct sense of comedy. 
 Where the realities were concerned he had no fear of 
 Taou Yuen's ability to justify herself completely. He pos- 
 sessed a stupendous admiration for her. 
 
 He watched her now with the mingled understanding 
 and mystification that gave his life with her such a de- 
 cided charm. Her gaze had fastened on the mirror- 
 stand above the drawers: she must be wondering if she 
 would have to paint and prepare herself for him here, 
 openly. He knew that she considered it a great impro- 
 priety for her face to be seen bare; all the elaborate pro- 
 cesses of her morning toilet must be privately conducted. 
 He recognized this, but had no idea what she actually 
 thought of the room, of his family, of the astonishing 
 situation into which her heart had betrayed her. 
 
 One and then another early hope he saw at once were 
 vain. It had seemed to him that in America, in Salem, 
 she might become less evidently Chinese; not in the incon- 
 gruous horror of Western clothes, but in her attitude, in a 
 surrender to superficial customs; he had pictured her as 
 merging distinctively into the local scene. In China he 
 had hoped that in the vicinity of Washington Square and 
 Pleasant Street she would appear less Eastern; but, be- 
 yond all doubt, here she was enormously more so. The 
 strange repressed surrounding accentuated every detail of 
 her Manchu pomp and color. The frank splendor of her 
 satins and carved jades and embroidery, her immobile 
 striking face loaded with carmine and glinting headdress, 
 
 [77] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 the flawless loveliness of hands with the -pointed nail pro- 
 tectors, were, in his room, infinitely dramatized. 
 
 The other, less secure possibility that she might essen- 
 tially change perished silently. In a way his wish had 
 been a presumption — that a member of the «oldest and 
 most subtle civilization existing would, if she were able, 
 adopt such comparatively crude habits of life and thought. ■ 
 
 She moved slowly up to the bed, examining it curi- 
 ously ; and again he understood her look of doubt — in 
 China beds were called kang, or stoves, from the fact that 
 they were more often than not a platform of brick with 
 an opening beneath for hot coals. She fingered the ball 
 fringe of the coverlet, and then turned with amazement to 
 the soft pillow. A hand with the stone bracelet falling 
 back from her smooth wrist rose to the complicated edifice 
 of her headdress. 
 
 " Your pillow is coming along from the ship," he told 
 her; " the women here do up their hair every morning." 
 
 She considered this with geranium lips slightly parted 
 on flawless teeth, and nodded slowly. The westering sun 
 striking through the window overlooking the Common 
 illuminated her with a flat gold unreality. 
 
 " I'll have a day bed brought for you," he continued, 
 realizing that, as the result of fortunate chance, she under- 
 stood most of what he said without an actual command 
 of the individual words. In reply she sank before him in 
 the deep Manchu gesture with one knee sweeping the floor, 
 the humility of her posture dignified by grace. He 
 touched the crystal globe of an earring, pinched her chin, 
 in the half light maimer bv which he instinctively ex- 
 
 [78] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 pressed his affection for her. She was calm and pleased. 
 " Taou Yuen," lie continued, " you miss Shanghai, with 
 the Avail of ten gates and the river Woosung stuck full of 
 masts. You'll never think Salon is a paradise lil^e Soo- 
 chow." ' 
 
 " This is your city," she replied, slowly choosing the 
 words. " Your ancestors are here." There was not a 
 shade of regret in her voice or manner. He tried once 
 more, and as vainly as ever, to penetrate the veil of her 
 perfect serenity. She never, it became apparent, descended 
 from the most inflexible self-control; small emotions — 
 surface gayety of mood, curiosity, the faintest possible indi- 
 cation of contempt, he had learned to distinguish; the fact 
 that she cared enough for him to desert every familiar 
 circumstance was evident; but beyond these he wa^ power- 
 less to reach. 
 
 His own emotions were hardly less obscured: the domi- 
 nating feeling was his admiration for her exquisite worldly 
 wisdom, the perfection of her bodily beauty, and the 
 philosophy which bore her above the countless trivialities 
 that destroyed the dignity of western minds. He realized 
 that her paint and embroidery covered a spirit as cold 
 and tempered as fine metal. She was totally without the 
 social sentiment of his own world; but she was equally 
 innocent of its nauseous hypocrisy, the pretensions of a 
 piety covering commercial dishonesty, obscenity of thought 
 and spreading scandal. The injustice he saw practiced on 
 shore had always turned him with a sense of relief to the 
 cleansing challenge of the sea; always, brought in contact 
 with cunning and self-seeking men and heartless schemes, 
 
 [79] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 with women cheapened by a conviction of the indecency 
 of life, he was in a state of hot indignation. From all this 
 Taou Yuen offered a complete escape. 
 
 On the purely feminine side she was a constant delight, 
 the last possible refinement, he told himself, of instinct and 
 effect. She was incapable of the least vulgarity; never for 
 an instant did she flag from the necessity of beauty, never 
 had he seen her too weary for an adornment laborious in 
 a hundred difficult conventions. She was, too, a continu- 
 ous source of entertainment, even as his wife she never 
 ceased to be a spectacle; his consciousness of her as a being 
 outside himself persisted. 
 
 " I must go down and see where our things are," he said, 
 rising. In the hall he stopped before the tall clock whose 
 striking was a part of his early memories. Below, the 
 house seemed empty; and, instead of turning to the front 
 door and his purpose, he went into the drawing-room. 
 
 The long glass doors to the garden were open, and the 
 interior was filled with the scent of lilacs. The room 
 itself had always reminded him of them — it was pale in 
 color, cool gilt and lavender brocade and white panels. 
 Nothing had been moved or changed: the inlaid cylinder 
 fall desk with its garlands of painted flowers on the light 
 waxed wood stood at the left, the pole screen with the em- 
 broidered bouquet was before the fire blind, the girandoles, 
 scrolled in ormolu and hung with crystal lusters, held the 
 shimmer of golden reflections on the walls. 
 
 He had remembered the drawing-room at Java Head as 
 a place of enchanted perfection; in his childhood its still 
 serenity had seemed a presentment of what might be hoped 
 for in heaven. The thought of the room as it was now, 
 
 [80] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 open but a little dim to the lilacs and warm afternoon, 
 had haunted him as the measure of all peace and serenity 
 in moments of extreme danger, his ship laboring in ele- 
 mental catastrophes and in remote seas. Its fragance had 
 touched him through the miasma of Whampoa Reach, 
 waiting for the lighters of tea to float down from Canton; 
 standing off in the thunder squalls of the night for the 
 morning sea breeze to take him into Rio; over a cognac in 
 the coffee stalls of the French market at New Orleans, the 
 chanteys ringing from the cotton gangs along the levees : 
 
 " Were you ever down in Mobile Bay? 
 Aye, aye, pump away." 
 
 As he left the room he saw Laurel, William's youngest 
 child, and he imprisoned her in an arm. " You haven't 
 asked what I've got for you in my sea chest," he said. 
 Gerrit was very fond of all four of the rosy-cheeked 
 vigorous girls, and a sense of injury touched him at 
 Laurel's reserved manner. She studied him with a won- 
 dering uneasy concern. This he realized was the result 
 of bringing home Taou Yuen; and an aggravated impa- 
 tience, a growing rebellion, seized him. He wouldn't stay 
 with his wife at Java Head a day longer than necessary; 
 and if anyone, ir his family or outside, showed the slight- 
 est disdain he could retaliate with his knowledge of local 
 pettiness, the backbiting enmities and secret lapses. 
 
 God knew he didn't want trouble, all he asked was a 
 reasonable liberty, the semblance, anyhow, of a courtesy 
 toward his wife. Whatever might be said would be of no 
 moment to her — except in the attitude of his father — 
 and Taou Yuen's indifference furnished a splendid ex- 
 
 [81] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 ample for himself. He wondered why the devil he was 
 continually putting his fingers in affairs that couldn't con- 
 cern him. No one thanked him for his trouble, they con- 
 sidered him something of a fool — a good sailor but pe- 
 culiar. The damned unexpected twists of his sense of the 
 absurd, too, got him into constant difficulty. 
 
 His father was standing outside the principal entrance; 
 and, as he joined him on the steps, he saw two men from 
 the Nautilus carrying his ship's desk by the beckets let in 
 the ends. The wind was blowing gently up Pleasant 
 Street; the men, at his gesture, lifted their burden up the 
 steps, between the direction of the wind and Jeremy Am- 
 midon. The latter rose instantly into one of his dark 
 rages : 
 
 " What do you mean, you damned packetrats — coming 
 up a companionway to the windward of me! I'll have no 
 whalers' habits here." He repeated discontentedly that 
 everything on sea and land had fallen into a decline. 
 Others followed with a number of Korean boxes, strapped 
 and locked with copper, and wicker baskets. A man in 
 charge said to Gerrit Ammidon: 
 
 "The chest was left for Mr. Dunsack at the foot of 
 Hardy Street, sir, as you ordered. The inspector sent 
 it off complimentary with your personal things." Gerrit 
 asked, " He didn't stop to get a whiff of it then ? " The 
 other shook his head. " Edward Dunsack asked me to 
 ship it here and explained that it was only junk he was 
 bringing home, but what it amounts to is about a case 
 of Patna opium. He's lucky." 
 
 They turned inside, William was in the library, and 
 [82J 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Gerrit instinctively followed his father into the room. 
 William surveyed him with a moody discontent. " What 
 I can't understand," he proceeded; " is why you call it a 
 marriage, why you brought your woman here to us, to 
 Rhoda and the children." 
 
 "It's simple enough," Gerrit replied; " Taou Yuen is 
 my wife, we are married ejfactly as Rhoda and you are. 
 She is not my woman in the sense you mean. I won't 
 allow that, William." 
 
 " How can it matter what you will or will not allow 
 when everyone'll think the other? Shipmasters have had 
 Chinese mistresses before, yes, and smuggled them into 
 Salem; but this conduct of yours is beyond speech." 
 
 Gerrit Ammidon said: 
 
 " Don't carry this too far." Anger like a hot cloud 
 oppressed him. " I am married legally and, if anything, 
 by a ceremony less preposterous than your own. Taou 
 Yuen is not open to any man or woman's suspicions. I 
 am overwhelmingly indebted to her." 
 
 " But she's not your race," William Ammidon muttered; 
 " she is a Confucian or Taoist, or some such thing." 
 
 " You're Unitarian one day a week, and father is Con- 
 gregational, Hodie's a Methodist, and no one knows what 
 I am," Gerrit cried. " Good God, what does all that 
 matter! Isn't a religion a religion? Do you suppose a 
 Lord worth the name would be anything but entertained 
 by such spiteful little dogmas. A sincere greased nigger 
 with his voodoo must be as good as any of us." 
 
 " That is too strong, Gerrit," Jeremy objected. " You'll 
 ■ get nowhere crying down Christianity." 
 
 [83] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " If I could find it," the younger declared bitterly, " I'd 
 feel differently. It's right enough in the Bible. . . . 
 Well, we'll go on to Boston to-morrow." 
 
 " This is your home," his father repeated. " Naturally 
 William, all of us have been disturbed; but nothing be- 
 yond that. I trust we are a loyal family. What you've 
 done can't be mended with hard words." 
 
 " She may become very fashionable," Gerrit mockingly 
 told his brother. " It'll be a blow to Camilla," Jeremy 
 chuckled. " Some rice must be cooked." 
 
 " Manchus don't live on rice," Gerrit replied. " They 
 don't bind the feet either nor wear the common Chinese 
 clothes. Rhoda will understand better." 
 
 Again in his room he found his wife bending over a 
 gorgeous heap of satins, bright mazarines and ornaments. 
 " We'll go down to supper soon," he told her. Already 
 there were signs of her presence about the room : the chest 
 of drawers was covered with gold and jade and green am- 
 ber, painted paper fans set on ivory and tortoise shell, and 
 lacquer fan boxes; coral hairpins, sandalwood combs, 
 silver rouge pots and rose quartz perfume bottles with 
 canary silk cords and tassels. On a familiar table was 
 her pipe, wound in gilt wire, and the flowered satin to- 
 bacco case. An old coin was hanging at the head of the 
 bed, a charm against evil spirits; and on a stand was the 
 amethyst image of Kuan-Yin pu tze, the Goddess of Mercy. 
 
 Taou Yuen sank on the floor with a little embarrassed 
 laugh at the confusion in which he had surprised her. 
 " Let your attitude be grave," he quoted from the Book of 
 Rites with a pretended severity. Her amusement rose in 
 a ripple of mirth, He opened his desk, rearranging the 
 
 [84] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 disorder brought about by its transportation; and, when he 
 turned, she was prostrate in the last rays of the sun. " O- 
 me-to-Fuh," she breathed; " 0-me-to-Fuh," the invocation 
 to Buddha. This at an end she announced, " Now I am 
 grave and respectful for your family." 
 
 Supper, Gerrit admitted to himself, promised to be a 
 painful occasion; conversation rose sporadically and 
 quickly died in glances of irrepressible curiosity directed 
 at his wife. She, on the contrary, showed no pointed 
 interest in her surroundings; and, in her hesitating slurred 
 English, answered Rhoda's few questions without putting 
 any in return. Camilla preserved a frozen silence; Sid- 
 sall was pleasantly conciliating in her attitude toward the 
 novel situation; Janet, her lips moving noiselessly, was 
 rapt in amazement; and Laurel smiled, abashed at meet- 
 ing Taou Yuen's eyes. 
 
 The recounting of his delayed return offered Gerrit a 
 welcome relief from the pervading strain : " There's no 
 tea to speak of at Shanghai, and I took on a mixed cargo 
 — pongees and porcelain and matting. I got camphor 
 and cassia and seven hundred peculs of ginger; then I 
 decided to lay a course to Manilla for some of the 
 cheroots father likes. The weather was fine, I had a good 
 cargo, and, well — we pleasured oift to Honolulu. I was 
 riding the island horses and shipping oil when the 
 schooner Kahemameha arrived from the coast with the 
 news of the gold discovery in California. Every boat in 
 the harbor wak loaded to the trucks, crowded with passen- 
 gers at their weight in ginseng, and laid for San Francisco. 
 . . . Well, I was caught with the rest. 
 
 " Five thousand dollars was offered me to carry a gen- 
 [85] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 tlemaix and his attendant. Two others would pay three 
 for the same purpose. Stowage was worth what you asked. 
 . . . The Nautilus made a good run; then, about a day 
 from land, Mr. Broadrick told me that there wouldn't be a 
 seaman on the ship an hour after we anchored. They 
 were all crazy with gold fever, he said. I could see, too, 
 that they were excited; the watch hung under the weather 
 rail jabbering like parrots; an uglier crew of sea lawyers 
 never developed. 
 
 " There was one thing to do and I did it — called them 
 aft and gave them some hot scouse. They'd shipped for 
 Salem and there they must go. I didn't anchor, but stood 
 off — the harbor was crowded with deserted vessels like 
 some hell for ships — and sent the jolly boat in with the 
 passengers and a couple of men. They didn't come back, 
 you may be sure. The consignment- for San Francisco I 
 carried out that evening, for I made sail at once." 
 
 " You had a pretty time getting a way on her," Jeremy 
 Ammidon remarked. 
 
 " I did," Gerrit acknowledged shortly. " The second 
 mate's ear was taken loose by a belaying pin that flew out 
 of the dark like a gull. Mr. Broadrick had a bad minute 
 in the port forecastle after he had ordered all hands on 
 deck a third time. The fine weather left us, though, and 
 that kept the crew busy; we carried away the fore-royal 
 mast and yard before we were within a thousand miles of 
 the latitude of the Horn. That hit us like a cannon ball 
 of ice. You know what it is at its worst," he told his 
 father; " weeks of snow and hail and fog and gales; and 
 not for anything can you keep an easting. God knows 
 
 [86] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 how a ship lives through the seas; but she does, she does, 
 and you lose the Magellan clouds astern." 
 
 The old man nodded. 
 
 Gerrit was relieved, however, when supper ended and 
 his wife formally departed for her room. Immediately 
 slipping a hand inside Rhoda's arm he conducted her to 
 the drawing-room. " I'd like you to know more about it," 
 he said directly. 
 
 " It was very extraordinary. A Lii Kikwang was a 
 high official of the Canton Customs, and when Shanghai 
 was declared an open port in forty-two they made him 
 hoppo there. I remembered him at Canton, a dignified 
 old duck with eighty or a hundred servants to keep anyone 
 from possibly speaking to him of business, but there had 
 been some trouble about foreign vessels selling saltpeter 
 illegally and — he knew some English — we had quite a 
 friendly little consultation. Yet it hadn't prepared me 
 for his coming off to the Nautilus at Shanghai with a 
 linguist and an air of the greatest mystery. His manner 
 was beautiful, of course, absolutely tranquil and that made 
 what they said, what he hoped, seem even wilder than it 
 was. 
 
 " His son, it appeared, had married and was acciden- 
 tally drowned in the Great Canal hardly a month after 
 the ceremony. His widow belonged, then, to the husband's 
 family, and from that moment her father-in-law had had 
 nothing but bad luck. He had been robbed, his best 
 stallion died, there had been a flood in his tea which not 
 only spoiled the crop but filled the ground with silt — it 
 was impossible to relate his calamities. He consulted a 
 
 [87] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 necromancer at last and learned that it was all caused by 
 the presence of Taou Yuen. 
 
 " This, you see, made the difficulty, as it's a frightful 
 disgrace to return a married daughter to her own father's 
 home, and Lii had grown very fond of her. She was ex- 
 tremely clever and virtuous, he said. The other thing 
 was to kill her or force her to commit suicide. He told 
 me very calmly that he would like to avoid this. 
 
 " Then, in the linguist's most flowery manner, they went 
 on with what Lii Kikwang proposed. He had recog- 
 nized that I was a man of ' superior propriety ' and he 
 wondered if I would take Taou Yuen away to America 
 with me. Very secretly though — there would be an 
 uproar if it were known that a Manchu woman had 
 been married to a foreigner. I could see her first in his 
 garden without her knowing anything about it. 
 
 " It's needless to tell you that I went with them that 
 afternoon. A meeting was arranged for the next day — " 
 he broke off, sitting forward with elbows on knees, gazing 
 fixedly at his clasped hands. 
 
 " You make that very clear, Gerrit," his sister-in-law 
 replied; " I now understand the past almost as well as 
 yourself; but it's the future I'm in doubt about. I saw 
 immediately that your wife was not aa ordinary woman; 
 it would be much easier if she were. Certainly you don't 
 intend to stay here, at Java Head; but that is immaterial. 
 Wherever you go in America it will not be suitable for her. 
 She'll be no more at home with your friends than you 
 with hers. I feel terribly sad about it, Gerrit; you were 
 as selfish as only a man can be." 
 
 " You are unjust, Rhoda," he protested. " Taou Yuen 
 [88] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 was willing to come. She had read about other countries 
 and saw a great deal of the English wife of a rich Dutch 
 factor at Shanghai; as Lii Kikwang said, she's wonder- 
 fully intelligent. I think she is happy, too." 
 
 " Rubbish! Of course she loves you; I am not talking 
 about that. How will she get along while you are away 
 on your long voyages? She couldn't possibly live in the 
 cabin of a ship, and do you suppose she'd be contented 
 in Salem with you absent for a year ! " 
 
 " We have as many chances of success as any other 
 marriage," he asserted. " The whole business is foolish 
 enough." 
 
 " That opinion might do for a single shipmaster, with 
 only a month or two out of the year on land. When you 
 were free, Gerrit, your impatience with convention was 
 refreshing and possible. But can't you see that you have 
 given up your liberty ! You have tied your hands. How- 
 ever loudly you may cry out against society now you are 
 a part of us, foolish or not. You'll find that your wife 
 has anchored you in Salem, Boston or Singapore, no mat- 
 ter where you go: people will reach and hurt you through 
 her. 
 
 " She is very gorgeous and placid, superior on the 
 surface; but the heart, Gerrit — that isn't made of jade 
 and ivory and silk." 
 
 " I'll bring down your presents to-morrow," he told 
 her, avoiding any further present discussion of his mar- 
 riage. "Has father failed, do you think? His tempers 
 are vigorous as ever." 
 
 " He seems baggier about the eyes and throat. He is 
 just as quick, but it exhausts him more. Things would be 
 
 [89] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 much better if he were only content to let William manage 
 at the countinghouse. Times are shifting so quickly with 
 these new clipper ships and direct passages and political 
 changes." 
 
 " There's no longer any doubt about the clippers," Ger- 
 rit declared ; " the California gold rush will attend to 
 that." 
 
 In his room he found Taou Yuen, in soft white silk 
 worked with bamboo leaves, on the day bed, smoking. 
 She rose immediately as he entered; and, coming close to 
 him, ran her cool fingers through his hair. He stood 
 gazing out at the dim oil flares that marked the confines 
 of Washington Square, considering all that Rhoda had 
 said. Strangely enough it led his thoughts away from his 
 wife; they reverted to Nettie Vollar. 
 
 He had been, he realized, very nearly in love with her: 
 what he meant by that inaccurate term was that if the af- 
 fair had continued a little longer he would have insisted 
 on marrying her. Nettie was not indifferent to him. An 
 impersonal feeling had attracted him to her — a resent- 
 ment of her treatment by the larger part of Salem, par- 
 'ticularly the oblique admiration of the men. His super- 
 sensitiveness to any form of injustice had driven him into 
 the protest of calling and accompanying her, with an exag- 
 gerated politeness, about the streets. It had not been dif- 
 ficult; she was warm-blooded, luxurious, a very vivid 
 woman. Gerrit, however, had made a point of repressing 
 any response to that aspect of their intercourse — the sheer- 
 est necessity for the preservation of his disdain. 
 
 She had cried on his shoulder, in his arms, practically; 
 he had acted in the purely fraternal manner. But the 
 
 [90] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 thing was reaching a natural conclusion when her grand- 
 father, Barzil Dunsack, had interfered with his unsup- 
 portably frank accusations and command. The Nautilus 
 had been ready for sea, and his, Gerrit's, imperious re- 
 sentment had carried him out of the Dunsacks' house — ■ 
 to Shanghai and Taou Yuen — without another word to 
 Nettie. 
 
 How strangely life progressed, without chart or intelli- 
 gent observations or papers! He heard the tap of his 
 wife's pipe; there was a faint sweetish odor of drugged 
 tobacco and the scent of cloves in which she saturated 
 herself. Outside was Salem, dim and without perceptible 
 movement; the clock in the hall struck ten. Taou Yuen 
 didn't approach him again nor speak; her perceptions were 
 wonderfully acute. 
 
 The sense of loneliness that sometimes overtook him 
 on shore deepened, a feeling of impotence, as if he had 
 suddenly waked, lost and helpless, in an unfamiliar planet. 
 There was the soft whisper of his wife's passage across 
 the room. In the lamplight the paint on her cheeks made 
 startling unnatural patches of — paint. The reflections 
 slid over the liquid black mass of her hair, died in the 
 lustrous creamy folds of her garment. She was at once 
 grotesque and impressive, like a figure in a Chinese pan- 
 tomime watched from the western auditorium of his inher- 
 itance. His fondness for her, his admiration, had not les- 
 sened. He surveyed his position, the presence here, in his 
 room at Java Head, of Taou Yuen, with amazement; all 
 the small culminating episodes lost, the result was beyond 
 credence. His thoughts returned to Rhoda's accusation of 
 selfishness, the disaster implied in her pity for his wife. 
 
 [91] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 He tried again to analyze his marriage, discover whatever 
 justification, security, it possessed. Was his admiration 
 for Taou Yuen sufficient provision for his part of their 
 future together? It was founded largely on her superior- 
 ity to the world he had known; and here it was necessary 
 for him to convince himself that his wedding had not been 
 merely the result of romantic accident. He knew that 
 the sensual had had almost no part in it, it had been 
 mental; an act of pity cr}'stallizing his revolt against 
 what he felt to be the impotence of " Christian " ethics. 
 Yet this was not sufficient; for he, like Rhoda, had found 
 under his wife's immobility the flux of immemorial woman. 
 
 No, it wasn't enough; but more existed, he was cer- 
 tain of that. No one could expect him, now, to experi- 
 ence the thrill of idealized passion that was the sole prop- 
 erty of youth. What feeling he had had for Nettie — he 
 was obliged to return to her from the fact that it was the 
 only possible comparison — had come from very much the 
 same source as the other. The old impersonal mptives ! 
 
 The danger, Rhoda pointed out, had been admitted 
 when his marriage made impossible the continuation of 
 that aloof position. He doubted that it could change him 
 so utterly. The thought of- the entertainment his wife 
 would afford him in Salem expanded. He regretted that 
 the best, the calling and comments of the women, was 
 necessarily lost to him, but Taou Yuen would repeat a 
 great deal: she, too, had a sly sense of the ridiculous. He 
 hoped that his sister-in-law didn't suppose her helpless; 
 the impenetrable Manchu control gave her a pitiless advan- 
 tage over any less absolute civilization. In the darkness 
 
 [92] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 before sleep the heavy exotic scents in the room oppressed 
 him strangely. 
 
 He rose early, and quietly dressing went out into the 
 garden: buds on the June roses against the high blank 
 fence on the street were swelling into visible crimson; 
 there were the stamping of horses' feet on the cobbles of 
 the stable inclosure, the heavy breathing and admonitions 
 of the coachman wielding a currycomb. The sunlight 
 streamed down through pale green willow and tall lilac 
 bushes, through the octagonal latticed summerhouse and 
 across the vivjd sod to the drawing-room door. Gerrit 
 turned, and entered the farther yard, where his father was 
 inspecting the pear trees. 
 
 " The Nautilus will need new copper sheathing," Gerrit 
 said; " she's pretty well stripped forward." 
 
 " Take her around to the Salem Marine Railway at the 
 foot of English Street. A fine ship, Gerrit, with a proper 
 hull. I tell you they'll never improve on the French 
 lines." 
 
 " She won't go into the wind with a clipper," he ad- 
 mitted; " but I'll sail her on a fair breeze with anything 
 afloat." 
 
 " If you come to that," his father asserted; "nothing 
 handsomer will ever be seen than an East Indiaman in the 
 northeast trades with the captain on the quarter-deck in a 
 cocked hat and sword, the shoals of flying fish and alba- 
 core skittering about a transom as high and carved and 
 gilded as a church, the royal pennant at the mainmast 
 head. Maybe it would be the Earl of Balcarras with her 
 cannons shining and the midshipmen running abtnit." 
 
 [93] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " Yes," the younger man returned, " and taking in her 
 light sails at sunset, dropping astern like an island. The 
 John Company's ruining British shipping." 
 
 Jeremy Ammidon muttered one of his favorite pessi- 
 mistic complaints. " What did you say her name was? " 
 he demanded abruptly. 
 
 "Taou Yuen." 
 
 " Taou Yuen Ammidon," the elder pronounced experi- 
 mentally. " It doesn't sound right, the two won't go to- 
 gether." 
 
 " But they have," Gerrit declared. He thought impa- 
 tiently that he must listen to a repetition of Rhoda's asser- 
 tions. 
 
 " I don't know much about 'em," Jeremy proceeded. 
 " All I saw, when I was younger, was the little singing- 
 girls playing mora and wailing over their infernal three- 
 stringed fiddles something about the moon and a bowl of 
 water lilies." 
 
 Taou Yuen did not come down to breakfast, and Gerrit 
 stayed away from their room until her toilet must be fin- 
 ished. It was Sunday; and with the customary prepara- 
 tion for church under way William said: 
 
 " I suppose you, will go down to the ship? " 
 
 The hidden question, the purpose of the inquiry, at 
 once stirred into being all Gerrit's perversity. " No," he 
 replied carelessly; " we'll go with you this morning." 
 
 " That's unheard of," William exclaimed heatedly; " a 
 woman in all her paint and perfume and outrageous clothes 
 in North Church, with — with my family ! I won't have 
 it, do you understand." 
 
 [94] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " No worse than what you see there every we^," Gerrit 
 retorted cahnly; " corsets and feathers and female gim- 
 cracks. Plenty of rouge and cologne too. It will give 
 them something new to starp at and whisper about." 
 
 William Ammidon choked on his anger, and his wife 
 laid a gloved hand on his arm. " You must make up your 
 mind to it," she told him. " It can't hurt anyonfe. She is 
 Gerrit's wife, you see." 
 
 Above, the shipmaster said to Taou Yuen : " We are 
 going to church with the family." He surveyed her 
 clothes with a faint glimmer of amusement. She had, 
 he saw, made herself especially resplendent as a Manchu. 
 The long gown was straw-colored satin with black bats — 
 a symbol of happiness — whirling on thickly embroid- 
 ered silver clouds, over which she wore a sleeve coat fas- 
 tened with white jade and glittering with spangles of 
 beaten copper. Her slippers were pale rose, and fresh 
 apple blossoms, which she had had brought from the 
 yard, made a headdress fixed with long silver and dull 
 red ivory pins. 
 
 She smiled obediently at his announcement, and, with a 
 fan of peacock silks and betel nuts in a pouch like a tea 
 rose hanging by a cord from a jade button, she signified 
 her readiness to proceed. 
 
 William had gone on foot with his girls, Jeremy was 
 seldom in church, and Rhoda, Taou Yuen beside her with 
 Gerrit facing them, followed in the barouche. It seemed 
 to the latter that they were almost immediately at the door 
 of North Church. The leisurely congregation filling the 
 walk stiffened in incredulous amazement as Gerrit handed 
 
 [95] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 his wife to the pavement. Rhoda went promptly forward, 
 nodding in response to countless stupefied greetings; while 
 Gerrit Ammidon moved on at Taou Yuen's side. 
 
 Prepared, he restrained the latter from a prostration in 
 the hall of the church. Nothing had changed: the um- 
 brella trough still bore the numbers of the pews, the stair 
 wound gloomily up to the organ loft. He again found 
 the subdued interior, the maroon upholstery, the flat 
 Gothic squares of the ceiling and dark red stone walls, 
 a place of reposeful charm. The Ammidons had two of 
 the box pews against the right wall : his brother and chil- 
 dren were in the second, and, inside the other small in- 
 closure, he shut the gate and took his place on a con- 
 tracted corner bench. Taou Yuen sat with Rhoda against 
 the back of the pew. The former, blazing like a gor- 
 geous flower on the shadowed surface of a pool, smiled 
 serenely at him. 
 
 He could hear the hmn of subdued Comment running 
 like ignited powder through the church, familiar faces 
 turned blankly toward him or nodded in patent confusion. 
 The men, he noted, expressed a single rigid condemna- 
 tion. The women, in crisp light dresses and ribboned 
 bonnets, were franker in their curiosity. Taou Yuen was 
 a loadstone for their glances. As the service progressed 
 her face grew expressionless. Fretted sandalwood brace- 
 lets drooped over her folded hands, and miniature dragon 
 flies quivered on the gold wires of her earrings; the sharp 
 perfumes of the East drifted out and mingled with the 
 Western scents of extracts and powders He only saw 
 that she was politely chewing betel nut. It wasn't, he told 
 himself, reverting to his critical attitude toward Salem, 
 
 [96] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 that he was lacking in charity toward his neighbors, or that 
 he felt any superiority ; but the quality that signally roused 
 his antagonism was precisely the men's present aspect of 
 heavy censure and boundless propriety, their stolid atti- 
 tude of justifying the spiritual consummation promised by 
 the sermon and hymns. 
 
 The long night watches, the anxiety of the sea, the pro- 
 found mysteries of the wheeling stars and the silence of 
 the ocean at dawns, had given him, he dimly realized, an 
 inarticulate reverence for the supreme mystery of creation. 
 He was unable to put it into words or facile prayer but 
 it was the guarded foundation of most that he was, and it 
 bred in him a contempt for lesser signs. The religion of 
 his birth, the faith of Taou Yuen, the fetishism of the 
 Zanzibar Coast, he had regarded as equally important, or 
 futile- — the mere wash of the immensity of beauty, the 
 inexorable destiny, that had seemed to breathe on him 
 alone at the stern of his ship. 
 
 He lost himself now in the keenness of his remembered 
 emotion: the church faded into a far horizon, he felt the 
 slight heave of the ship and heard the creaking of the 
 wheel as the steersman shifted his hands; from aloft came 
 the faint slapping of the bunt lines on rigid canvas, the 
 loose hemp slippers of the crew sounded across the deck, 
 the water whispered alongside, the ship's bell was struck 
 and repeated in a diminished note on the topgallant fore- 
 castle. The morning rose from below the edge of the sea 
 and the pure air freshened. . . . His thoughts were re- 
 called to the present by the dogmatic insistence of the 
 clergyman's voice, promising heaven, threatening hell. 
 His gaze rested on the chalky debility of Madra Clifford. 
 
 [97] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 The service over, the ^isle past the Ammidon pews was 
 filled with a slow-moving inquisitive throng. Rhoda chose 
 to wait until the greater part was past, and then she 
 followed with the unmoved Taou Yuen and Gerrit. 
 " This is my brother's wife," he heard the former say. 
 " Mrj. Saltonstone, Gerrit's sister, Mrs. Clifford and Miss 
 Vermeil. Yes . . . from Shanghai. Overdue. We were 
 worried, of course." Taou Yuen smiled vigorously and 
 flapped the vivid fan. Against her brilliant colors, the 
 carved jade and embroideries, silver and apple blossoms, 
 the other women looked colorless in wide book muslin and 
 barege, with short veils of tulle illusion hanging from bon- 
 nets of rice straw and glazed crepe. Palpably shocked by 
 her Oriental face masked in paint, her Chinese " heathen " 
 origin, yet they fingered the amazing needlework and won- 
 dered over the weight of her satins. 
 
 The men he knew gave him, for the most part, a curt 
 greeting. They glanced more covertly at his wife; he un- 
 derstood exactly what thoughts brought out this condemna- 
 tion soiled by private speculation; and his disdain mounted 
 at their sleek backs and glossy tile hats supported on stiffly 
 bent arms. 
 
 After dinner he walked through the warm sunny empti- 
 ness of the afternoon to Derby Wharf and the Nautilus. 
 Standing on the wharf, smoking a cheroot, he leaned back 
 upon his cane, studying the ship with a gaze that missed no 
 detail. There was not a sound from the water; across the 
 harbor Peach's Point seemed about to dissolve in a faint 
 green haze; a strong scent of mingled spices came from 
 the warehouses. There was the splash of oars in the 
 Basin beyond, and the more distant peal of a church bell. 
 
 [98] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 At the sound of footfalls behind him he turned and 
 saw Nettie Vollar and her uncle, Edward Dunsack. A 
 dark color rose in the girl's cheek, and her hand pulled 
 involuntarily at Dunsack's arm, as if she wished to retreat. 
 Gerrit thought that she had aged since he had latest met 
 her: Nettie's mouth, with its full, slightly drooping lower 
 lip, had lost something of its fresh arch; her eyes, though 
 they still preserved their black sparkle, were plainly re- 
 sentful. Edward Dunsack, medium tall but thin almost 
 to emaciation, had a riven sallow face with close-cut silvery 
 hair and agate-brown eyes with contracted pupils. 
 
 " Well, Nettie," Gerrit said, moving forward promptly, 
 " it's pleasant to see you again." Her hand was cold and 
 still. " Dunsack, too." 
 
 " I am obliged to you for my chest," the latter told him, 
 unmoved by Gerrit's quizzical gaze. 
 
 " Glad to do it for you," the other replied ; " it came 
 ashore with my personal things, and so, perhaps, saved 
 you something." 
 
 " Perhaps," Dunsack agreed levelly. 
 
 Looking down at the cob filling of the wharf, Nettie 
 Vollar said, " You came home married, I hear, and to a 
 Chinese lady." 
 
 Gerrit assented. " You'll certainly know her, and like 
 her, too. Taou Yuen is very wise and without the prej- 
 udices — " he stopped, conscious of the stupidity of his 
 attempted kindness. Nettie looked up defiantly, biting her 
 lip — a familiar trick, he recalled. Dunsack interposed : 
 
 " You will find that the Chinese have none of your little 
 sympathetic tricks. No foreigner could ever grasp the 
 depth of their indifference to what you might call human- 
 
 [99] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 ity. They are bom wise, as you say, but weary. I sup- 
 pose your wife plays the guitar skillfully and sings the 
 Soochow Love Song." 
 
 Gerrit Ammidon studied him with somber eyes and a 
 gathering temper: it was, however, impossible to decide 
 whether the implication was deliberately insulting. He 
 wouldn't have any Canton clerk, probably saturated with 
 opium, insinuate that his affair was on the plane of that 
 of a drunken sailor! "My wife," he said deliberately, 
 " is a Manchu lady. You may know that they don't learn 
 dialect songs nor ornament tea houses." 
 
 " Very remarkable," Dunsack returned imperturbably. 
 " We never see them. How did you manage a go-between, 
 _ and did you send the hour of your birth to the Calculator 
 of Destinies? Then there is so much to remember in a 
 Chinese wedding — the catties of tea and four silver in- 
 gots, the earrings and red and green silk and Tao priest 
 to consult the gods." Gerrit heard this with a frowning 
 countenance. If Nettie were not there he would put Dun- 
 sack forward with the hypothetical Crew to which he be- 
 longed. He felt as sorry for Nettie, he discovered, as ever. 
 It moved him to see her vivacity of life, her appealingly 
 warm color, slowly dulled by Salem and the adventitious 
 circumstance of her birth. What a dreary existence she 
 led in the harsh atmosphere of her grandfather and the 
 solemn house on Hardy Street! At one time he had fan- 
 cied that he might change it . . . when now here was 
 Taou Yuen, detached and superior, waiting in his room 
 at Java Head. 
 
 " I stopped for a moment to look at the ship," he said, 
 with the trace of an ungracious bow, " and must get back." 
 [100] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 The sunlight flung a warm moted veil over Nettie Vollar. 
 She gave him a startled uncakulated glance of almost 
 desperate appeal and his heart responded with a quickened 
 thud. Edward Dunsack was sallow and enigmatic, with 
 thin pinched lips. 
 
 [101] 
 
**^ ■ ^HE stupid bruiser," Edward Dunsack de- 
 I dared in a thin bitterness that startled the 
 M girl at his side. " The low sea bully ! " He 
 was gazing at the resolute back of Captain Ammidon. A 
 surprising hatred filled him at the memory of the other's 
 intolerant gaze, the careless contempt of his words. He 
 thought, oddly enough, of the delicate and ingenious tor- 
 tures practiced on offenders in China; the pleasant mental 
 picture followed of Ammidon bowed in a wooden collar, of 
 Gerrit Ammidon bambooed, sliced, slowly choking. . . . 
 With/ an intense sense of horror he caught himself dwelling 
 on these dripping visions. His hands clasped rigidly, a 
 sweat stood out on his brow, in a realization that was at 
 once dread and a self-loathing. 
 
 About him lay the tranquil Salem water, the still 
 wharves, the familiar roofs and green tree tops. This 
 wasn't Canton, he told himself, but America: there was 
 Nettie; only a few streets away was his father's house, his 
 own home, all solid and safe and reassuring. China was 
 a thing of the past, its insidious secret hold broken. 
 It was now only a dream of evil fascination from which he 
 had waked to the reality, the saving substance, of Derby 
 Wharf. " It's his domineering manner," he explained 
 the outburst to Nettie; "all shipmasters have it — as if 
 the world were a vessel they damned from a quarter-deck 
 in the sky. I never could put up with them." 
 [102] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " He is very kind, really," she replied, looking away 
 over the harbor. " It is so queer — marrying a Chinese 
 woman like that. How will he ever get along with her 
 or be happy ? " 
 
 " He won't," Edward Dunsack asserted. " Leave that 
 to time." He studied her attentively. " Was it anything 
 to you ? " he asked. 
 
 " It might have been," she acknowledged listlessly, her 
 gaze still on the horizon. " He came to see me two or 
 three times, quite differently from other nice men, and took 
 me to a concert at the Philharmonic Society. He was get- 
 ting to like me, I could tell that, when grandfather inter- 
 fered — " 
 
 " I see," Dunsack interrupted, " with the immorality of 
 the supermoral." 
 
 " Whatever it was he was past bearing. No one could 
 blame Gerrit for getting into a fury. The next day I 
 stood almost in this spot, it was late afternoon too, and 
 watched the Nautilus sail away. All the canvas was set 
 and I could see her for a long time. When the last trace 
 had gone it seemed to me that my life had sunk too . . . 
 out there." 
 
 " The old man's a fool," he said bluntly of his father. 
 " How do you suppose he got hold of a Manchu ? " he 
 shifted his thought, addressing the stillness about them 
 rather than his companion. " Don't imagine for a min- 
 ute that you are superior to her," he told Nettie more di- 
 rectly. " There is nothing more remarkable. They must 
 be gorgeous," a faint color stained his long cheeks. 
 " What incredible luck," he murmured. 
 
 He was thinking avidly of the women of China — the 
 [103] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 little gay girls like toys, the momentary glimpses of enam- 
 eled faces in hurrying red-flowered sedan chairs, faces of 
 ivory stained with carmine, in gold-crusted headdresses. 
 A sudden impatience at Nettie VoUar's obvious person and 
 clothes expanded to a detestation of an atmosphere he had 
 but a minute or so before welcomed as an escape from 
 something infinitely worse l;han death. Now it seemed 
 impossible to spend a life in Salem. It would have been 
 better, when he had been released by Heard and Company, 
 to have taken the position open in the Dutch Hong. 
 
 He was in a continual state of such vacillation, as if he 
 were the seat of two separate and antagonistic personali- 
 ties; rather, he changed the figure, in him the East strug- 
 gled with the West. It was necessary for the latter to tri- 
 umph. The difficulty lay in the fact that the first was 
 represented by an actual circumstance while the other was 
 only a dim apprehension, a weakened allegiance to ties 
 never strong. 
 
 He cursed the extraordinary chance that, against every 
 probability, had brought the chest of opium safely to him 
 here. Its purchase had been the result of habit evading 
 his will, he had despatched it — in that seesawing contest 
 — by a precarious route, half hoping that it would be lost 
 or seized; and, when he had seen the chest carried down' 
 Hardy Street to his door, a species of terror had fastened 
 upon him, a premonition of an evil spirit flickering above 
 him in a turning of oily smoke. Why hadn't he pitched 
 the thing into the water at the foot of their yard! There 
 was time still : he would take the balls of opium and dis- 
 pose of them secretly. A sudden energy, a renewed sense 
 of strength, flooded him. This distaste for Nettie changed 
 [104] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 into a pity at the ill luck that had followed her: she didn't 
 deserve it. Generous emotions expanded his heart. He 
 dreamed of taking hold of his father's small commerce in 
 rum and sugar with the West Indies and turning it into a 
 concern as rich and powerful as Ammidon, Ammidon and 
 Saltonstone. 
 
 Why not! 
 
 They, too, would have a big white house on Washing- 
 ton Square or Chestnut Street, with servants — Chinese 
 servants — and horses and great ships sailing in, laden 
 with the East. Why not indeed ! He, Edward Dunsack, 
 had more brains than Jeremy Ammidon, that stiff old man 
 with a face the color of a damask plum. His niece would 
 go to all the balls at Franklin and Hamilton Halls, the 
 injustice of her position overcome by an impressively in- 
 creasing fortune. Abstractly he patted her shoulder with 
 a hand as long and gaunt and yellow as his face. All 
 this would come as a result of throwing the opium into the 
 harbor. It was as good as accomplished. 
 
 In the face of his prospective well-being he felt already 
 the equal of anyone in Salem. If Gerrit Ammidon had 
 married a Manchu lady it was his privilege, no, duty, to 
 call and put his experience in things Chinese at their 
 command. She would speak only a little if any Eng- 
 lish; no one here understood the preparation of her food 
 — her delicate necessity for dishes not the property of an 
 entire household; a hundred such details of which the 
 infinitely cruder West must be ignorant. He thought 
 complacently that he would understand her better than 
 anyone else in Salem, in Boston, in America; far better 
 than her husband. She would without doubt learn to de- 
 
 [105] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 pend on him: they would laugh together at the manners 
 and people about them. Ammidon would be away for 
 long periods on the China service — . 
 
 His dreams broke off with a sardonic laugh, a repetition 
 of the tone in which he had objurgated the shipmaster. 
 Such visions were the property of youth, and he was forty- 
 two, forty-two and nothing more than a discredited clerk 
 who had fled across the world from a shadow. But he 
 was right — he had seen white men who had caught the 
 breath of China accepting just such opportunities as the 
 one offered to him after his dismissal by Augustine Heard. 
 At the Dutch Hong he'd be expected to talk about his late 
 employer. Such situations, he had realized in a, rarely 
 illuminating flash, were only temporary, a descending 
 flight. 
 
 These men resembled the fate of, say, a brig sailing into 
 the China Sea in all the perfection of order of the British 
 Marine : at, perhaps. Hong Kong, sold to a native firm, she 
 would be refitted under an extravagant flag, and slowly the 
 order would depart until, in a slovenly tangle of rigging 
 and defilement, she'd be seen yawing on secret and nau- 
 seous errands. 
 
 A homely chime of bells was repeated from the town; 
 a ship's fast strained resinously with the changing tide. 
 " It will be getting on toward supper," Nettie told him. 
 They walked slowly from the wharf, turned silently into 
 Derby Street and Hardy on their way home. Beyond the 
 inner fence of the garden the thick uneven sod reaching to 
 the water was dark and cool against the luminous flush of 
 evening. A sound of frying and heavy odor came from 
 ' [106] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 the kitchen, and Kate VoUar's voice infonned them that 
 the meal was ready. 
 
 Barzil Dunsack bowed his head over the table and pro- 
 nounced a grace in startlingly resonant tones, the reverent 
 humility of his words oddly emphasized by a sort of angry 
 impatience. It seemed as if he at once subjected himself 
 to his God and expressed a certain dissatisfaction with His 
 forbearance. Edward Dunsack was plunged in the 
 thought of the resolution he intended to fulfill that evening. 
 
 The throwing away of the opium had lost a part of its 
 symbolic meaning. It now seemed even a little rash when 
 he could find an immediate highly profitable marjiet — 
 the opium had cost him seven hundred dollars in China. 
 But he must, he realized, be firm. Afterwards, in his 
 room facing away from the street over darkening yards 
 and gables and foliage, he stood gazing at the chest of 
 mango wood that held the drug. Edward Dunsack un- 
 locked and lifted the lid. On the tray before him were 
 twenty balls, each the size of his two fists, wrapped, in a 
 hard skin of poppy leaves, and there was a similar num- 
 ber underneath. It was obvious that he couldn't carry a 
 tray through the house, and he took out two balls, after 
 which he secured the remainder. 
 
 He walked quickly down the stair and through the close 
 turning of the lower hall that led through a side door to 
 the yard. A pale rectangle of lamplight fell from the sitting 
 room window over a brick path and ground tramped bare 
 of grass; a clinking of dishes sounded in the kitchen. The 
 sod was damp, and perhaps eight feet below the wooden 
 buttress of the land the water showed impenetrably black. 
 
 [107] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Safely there he passed a tense hand over a brow sud- 
 denly wet; he was shaking as if in the grip of a chill. 
 His condition needed drastic measures. The cold heavy 
 opium gave out its tantalizing odor. In a minute it would 
 be disposed of and he would go for more. He calculated 
 that this necessitated twenty trips at the present rate — a 
 bag might serve his purpose better. He raised an arm 
 with an opium ball, but his hand remained suspended in 
 air. An inarticulate protest seized him, a suffocating 
 sense of impending loss. He would never be able to get 
 Patna opium here; it was a valuable medical property. 
 His nerves shook at the thought of its delights. Then, as 
 if without his volition and against every intention, his arm 
 described a short arc and his hand was empty. There was 
 the impact of a solid object striking the water, a faint 
 ripple on the motionless expanse, and then absolute silence. 
 
 He was aghast at his wanton act, the irreparable waste 
 of a precious substance, and cursed in a low audible Can- 
 tonese. Whose concern was it if he did, very occasionally, 
 smoke a " pistol "? How could it possibly matter! The 
 dreams about a great foreign commerce, a white house like 
 the Ammidons', were futile; it was too late. He could 
 expect nothing from life but the unspeakable monotony of 
 his father's dwelling, the bare office. He had worked 
 hard, been as full of splendid early resolutions as anyone, 
 and he wasn't blamable if chance balked his ambition. A 
 soul was nothing more than a twisting leaf in the wind of 
 fate. There remained only to take what escape was offered 
 — golden visions, luxury, beauty beyond all earth. 
 
 His contrary determination seemed of less actuality than 
 [108] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 the imagined echoing of the splash that still hung in his 
 brain. It was a thing far away, belonging to another 
 time, another man; like the memory of a period of charm- 
 ing ignorance. The thought of it wove a strand of mel- 
 ancholy into his present mature realization like the delicate 
 scent of blossoming trees borne to him on the evening air, 
 barely perceptible and then lost in the pungency of the 
 opium. The latter became, mystically, all China, the irre- 
 sistible fascination that had gradually possessed his imag- 
 ination, dulling the associations of his heredity and birth, 
 calling him further and further into its secretive heart. 
 
 He returned to his room, where he put back the second 
 ball in the tray of its chest. An extraordinary weariness 
 hung over him, there was a sense of leaden weight in his 
 arms and feet. Flashes of a different perception pierced 
 his apathy; a voice, seemingly outside his being, whis- 
 pered of danger, evil and danger. ... A twisting leaf, he 
 told himself again with his deep fatalism. 
 
 The memory of Gerrit Ammidon's crisp blue gaze, his 
 vigorous gestures and speech, became an intolerable af- 
 front, representing the far lost point of his own departure. 
 His contrary feelings met and grappled in his mind; but 
 in the end the past, Salem, was always defeated, weaker, 
 more faintly perceived. In a great many essentials, he 
 told himself, he had become Chinese in sympathy and 
 fiber. 
 
 The lamp threw a smooth gleam over the mango wood 
 chest, and he bent, turning the key in the ornamental brass 
 lock. He could reconsider the disposal of the opium to- 
 morrow; there was no hurry; he had no intention of 
 
 [109] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 becoming a victim to the drug. That would be an incon- 
 ceivable stupidity, the negation of all the philosophy he 
 had gained. Very occasionally — 
 
 His thoughts swung to the surprising fact of Ammidon's 
 Chinese wife: if, as he had first suspected, she were a 
 common woman of the port who had made a fool of the 
 dull sailor he perceived the making of a very entertaining 
 comedy. There would be the keenest irony in exposing 
 her to himself before the complacent ignorance of her hus- 
 band. He knew such women : convicted in Chinese, per- 
 haps before the entire Ammidon family, not a muscle of 
 her face would betray surprise or concern. She might 
 try to murder him, very ingeniously, but never descend to 
 the intrigue, the lies, of a Western woman placed in the 
 same position. She'd stoically accept the situation. 
 These visions ran rapidly, vividly, through his brain; he 
 was accustomed to them; a greater part of his waking life 
 was filled with 'such pictures, infinitely more alluring, 
 persuasive, than the disappointing actuality. He got out 
 of his clothes, and, in a loose gown of black silk, sat at 
 his open window, his chin sunk in the pahn of a hand, 
 his face set against the night. 
 
 The next morning, at the- breakfast table, he listened 
 with a fleering mouth to his father's long dogmatic grace 
 before meat. His sister sat opposite their parent, her 
 gaze lowered in a perpetual amazement, her entire person 
 stamped with a stupid humility. There was nothing 
 humble, however, in Nettie; the crisp French coloring pos- 
 itively crackled with an electric energy; her mouth was set 
 in a rebellious red blot. Studying her, Edward Dunsack 
 saw that she was prettier than he had first realized on 
 [110] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 his return to Salem. He speculated over the story she 
 had told him yesterday about Gerrit Ammidon's attach- 
 ment. What an incredible idiot their father had been: 
 Edward would have relished Gerrit as a brother-in-law; 
 good would have come to them all from such a connection. 
 
 If he had been in America at the time no such error 
 would have been permitted. With his counsel Nettie 
 would have caught Ammidon beyond any escape. He 
 wondered if the girl had actually cared for the shipmas- 
 ter or if the affair had been nothing more than a sop to 
 her wounded pride and isolation. In a way beyond his 
 present understanding this seemed to be considerably im- 
 portant. If she had loved him no one could predict what 
 her attitude might be in any future development of their 
 contact; but if her pride only had been involved, injured, 
 she might readily be an instrument for his own obscure 
 purposes. 
 
 The office where Barzil Dunsack conducted the limited 
 affairs of his West India trading was a sm£tll one-room 
 building back of the dwelling. There was a high desk at 
 which a clerk stood, or balanced on a long-legged stool, 
 a more formal secretary against the length of the wall, with 
 a careful model of a full ship, the spars and standing 
 rigging slack and the whole gray with dust, a built-in 
 cupboard opposite, a dilipidated chair or so and a ten- 
 plate iron stove for wood. A window looked out across 
 the grass to the harbor and another opened blankly against 
 a board fence. 
 
 There Edward Dunsack made a column of entries in a 
 script fine and regular but occasionally showing an un- 
 controllably tremulous line. He was conscious of this 
 
 [111] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 tendency, growing through the past year; and he surveyed 
 his writing with a feeling of angry dismay. Try as he 
 might, with a frowning concentration, to pen the words 
 and numerals firmly, presently his attention would slip, 
 his hand waver ever so slightly, and a sudden stricken 
 appearance of old age fasten on the characters. ... By 
 heaven, to-night he'd throw all that stinking stuff away! 
 
 Outside the day was immaculate, the expanse of the 
 water was like celestial silk, such sails as he saw resem- 
 bled white clouds. The early morning bird song had sub- 
 sided, but a persistent robin was whistling from the grass 
 by the open door. The curd-like petals of a magnolia 
 were slowly shifting obliquely to the ground, he could hear 
 the stir of Derby Street. He was inexpressibly weary of 
 the struggle always racking his being: it seemed to him 
 that in the midst of a serene world he was tormented by 
 some inimicable and fatal power. 
 
 He fastened his thoughts on commonplace happier ob- 
 jects, on the page under his hand, the entries of Medford 
 rum and sugar cane and molasses, and the infinitely larger 
 affairs of Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone. There 
 was no reason why he shouldn't call on Jeremy Ammidon's 
 family. The latter had signified by his visit the desire 
 to end the misunderstanding between them. He was as 
 well bom as Gerrit Ammidon; only ill chance had made 
 them seem differently situated. Anyhow, unlike Canton, 
 mere exterior position had comparatively little weight in 
 Salem. The shipmasters, the more important merchants, 
 arrogated a certain superiority to themselves : but it broke 
 down before the inborn democracy of the local spirit. 
 
 That afternoon, he decided, he'd be in Pleasant Street; 
 [112] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 and later he dressed with the most meticulous care. A 
 growing doubt seized him as he mounted the outside steps 
 of the Ammi dons' impressive house; but he crushed it 
 down and firmly rapped with the polished knocker on the 
 opened door. 
 
 The family, a servant told him, was in the garden; and 
 he followed through a large white-paneled hall into a 
 formal drawing-room and green space beyond. He was 
 again uncertain before the number of people grouped about 
 a summerhouse and apparently watching his approach 
 with cold surprise. But Gerrit Ammidon stepped forward 
 and greeted him with an adequately level civility. 
 
 " You know my father," he said, and Jeremy Ammidon, 
 his heavy body in linen above which his face was dusky, 
 put out an abrupt hand. There was a Mr. Brevard, a 
 slender unconcerned person in very fashionable but re- 
 strained clothes; William Ammidon's wife, a large woman 
 in India muslin, handsome enough, Edward Dunsack 
 conceded, in the obvious American sense; a daughter of 
 William's, a girl blooming into womanhood, far too vigor- 
 ous and brightly colored for his taste; and Gerrit's wife. 
 
 The latter had been hidden from him at first, and he saw 
 her suddenly, completely: his surprise caused him to stand 
 in an awkward suspense — never had he imagined that a 
 woman, even a Manchu, could be so beautiful ! He recog- 
 nized, in a score of unmistakable details, that she was of 
 irreproachably high birth; her satins were embroidered 
 with the symbols of nobility and matrimonial felicity; the 
 gold fingernail guards, the jade and flowering pearls, her 
 earrings and tasseled tobacco pouch and ivory fan, were 
 all in the most superlative manner. 
 [113] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 A deep pleasurable excitement filled him as he made 
 his greeting in correct Chinese. The long delicate oval of 
 her face showed no emotion at the sound of her native 
 speech and she returned his periods in a slowly chosen me- 
 chanical English. Edward Dunsack thought that as he 
 spoke an expression of distaste stamped Gerrit's features. 
 However, he was left in no doubt : " My wife," the other 
 instructed him, " prefers to speak English. That is the 
 only way she has of picking it up." 
 
 A contempt filled Dunsack which he was barely able to 
 keep from his voice and manner. He nodded shortly, and 
 subsided into a study of Taou Yuen so open that she must 
 have become aware of his interest. Seated on the bench 
 that circled the interior of the latticed suramerhouse she 
 moved so that he could no longer see her face. Brevard 
 was beside her, talking in a low amused voice: there was 
 a ringing peal of laughter from Sidsall Ammidon and a 
 faint infinitely well-bred ripple from Taou Yuen. The 
 brilliant patch of her gown made an extraordinary effect 
 in the Salem garden. Edward Dunsack recognized the 
 scents that stirred from her, more Eastern and disturbing 
 even than opium: there was a subtle natural odor of 
 musk, the perfumes of henna and clove blossoms and 
 santal. 
 
 A curious, double feeling possessed him in the split con- 
 sciousness of which he was capable — he had the sensa- 
 tion of having come, in the suave afternoon garden, on 
 overwhelming disaster, and at the same time he was en- 
 raged by the play of Fate that had given such a woman to 
 Gerrit Ammidon and denied him, with his special appre- 
 ciation of Oriental charm, the slightest satisfaction. A 
 
 [114] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 more general hatred of Gerrit tightened to a consuming re- 
 sentment of the other's blind fortune. 
 
 One thing was unmistakably borne upon him — in spite 
 of the courtesy he was meeting it was clear that he could 
 not hope to become a customary visitor at the Ammidons'. 
 He was put definitely outside the community of interests 
 in which Brevard easily entered. William Ammidon 
 joined them, and something like astonishment at Dun- 
 sack's presence was visible on his complacent face. 
 
 He remained, however, in a stubborn resistance to small 
 adverse signs in the hope of gaining some additional facts 
 about Taou Yuen. She had been, he learned, a widow 
 and Gerrit had married her with her father-in-law's 
 consent although the latter was a rich official. He wanted 
 to ask a thousand questions, but he knew that even if the 
 Ammidons were too dense to grasp his curiosity, Taou 
 Yuen herself would comprehend his impoliteness. No- 
 where else could be found the wisdom and poise of a Man- 
 chu lady. 
 
 Jeremy Ammidon, in a lawn chair, a smoking cheroot 
 in his fingers, asked him about affairs of Chinese gov- 
 ernment and commerce. As the old man talked he flushed 
 darkly with quick indignation. " The English have made 
 our political diplomats look like stuffed gulls!" he de- 
 clared. " Look at their Orders in Council and the British 
 Prize Courts," he proceeded, waving his cheroot; " stop 
 an American vessel anywhere and pretend to find a desert- 
 ing English sailor. With the Treaty of Ghent and cod- 
 headed commissioners and a Congress that wouldn't know 
 a ship from a bread barge the country's going to hell on 
 greased ways! I've said it a thousand times and any man 
 
 [115] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 not a complete ass knows that you can't run a government 
 without a strong head. Locofocos," he muttered. 
 
 Edward Dunsack listened to this tirade with an air of 
 polite attention which hid completely the fact that he 
 heard or comprehended scarcely a word. His thoughts 
 were filled by the fragrant vision of Taou Yuen; already 
 he was deep in the problem of how to see her again, to- 
 morrow. It would be excessively difficult. Eastern 
 women never, if they could avoid it, walked; and they 
 were, he knew, entirely without the necessity that drove 
 the women of Salem into a ceaseless round of calling and 
 gossip. It was probable that, except to ride, she wouldn't 
 leave the house and grounds. He cursed the chance quar- 
 rel that had set a customary void between the houses of 
 Dunsack and Ammidon, the unfortunate affair of his sister 
 and Vollar inescapably adding to the permanency of the 
 breach; he particularly cursed Nettie. There, however, 
 his mind took up the twisted thread of the vague possibil- 
 ity that the latter might be useful to him : he was amazed 
 at the way in which his premonitions fitted into the~pat- 
 tern of situations yet to be materialized. 
 
 Edward Dunsack turned from his contemplation of 
 Taou Yuen to a careful consideration of Gerrit Ammidon. 
 The latter had a countenance which showed strong, easily 
 summoned emotions. It was an intolerant face, Dunsack 
 judged, and yet sentimental ; and it was surprisingly young, 
 guileless. At the same time it was unusually determined 
 — an affair of uncomplicated surfaces, direct gaze, marked 
 bone. 
 
 He questioned sharply, irritably, the length to which his 
 [116] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 projections had reached. What were they all about? 
 The answer was presented by the glittering iigure of the 
 Manchu; she had risen and was standing in the entrance 
 of the summerhouse. He thought, with a jerking pulse, of 
 Oriental similes; she was a lotus-woman, a green slip of 
 willow, an ambrosial moon, a mustard flower. Her teeth 
 were white buds, her breasts blanched almonds. 
 
 His entire life in China had been a preparation for the 
 realization of the present moment. The sense of danger, 
 of anger at Gerrit Ammidon, perished before the supreme 
 emotion called up by Taou Yuen. He wanted to embrace 
 her satin-shod feet, to cling to her odorous hands, such 
 hands as were never formed out of China, like petals of 
 coral. Not only her bodily charm intoxicated him, but 
 the thought of her subtle mind added its attraction, its 
 shadows never to be pierced by the blunted Western in^ 
 stinct, the knowledge of pleasures like perfumes, the calm 
 blend of the eight diagrams of Confucius, the stoicism of 
 the Buddhistic soul revolving perpetually in the urn of 
 Fate, and of the aloof Tao of Lao-tze. 
 
 Brevard left with an easy familiarity, already planning 
 a return, that filled Edward Dunsack with resentful envy. 
 The sun had disappeared behind the house; long cool 
 shadows swept down the garden; it was past time for him 
 to go. A reluctance to move from the magic of Taou Yuen 
 possessed him: he was unable to think how, when, he 
 would next see her. He raged at the prohibition against 
 speaking Chinese; that ability should give him an over- 
 whelming advantage of Gerrit Ammidon. This was, of 
 course, the reason that he had been virtually commanded 
 
 [117] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 to limit himself to English. Many of the forms of ex- 
 treme Chinese courtesy were impossible to express in an- 
 other language. 
 
 Finally he rose; in departing he emphasized the im- 
 portance of Jeremy Ammidon — Taou Yuen should recog- 
 nize and applaud that. He saw that she was watching 
 him obliquely, her lips in repose, her hands still among 
 the satin draperies. An American would have betrayed 
 something of her reaction to him, he could have discov- 
 ered a trace, an indication, of her thoughts; but the Man- 
 chu's face was as inscrutable as porcelain. William Am- 
 midon nodded, the old man responded to his leave- 
 taking with a degree of warraness, Gerrit at least smiled 
 in a not unfriendly manner. Edward Dunsack bowed 
 to Taou Yuen, and she gravely inclined her head. He 
 had a last glimpse of her glowing in the green light of 
 the inclosure of rosebushes and poplars, emerald sod and 
 tangled lilac trees. 
 
 At the supper table his sister's appearance in somber 
 untidy black barege, Nettie's unrestrained gestures and 
 speech, the coarse red cloth and plain boiled fare, all added 
 to a discontent that he could scarcely restrain. With the 
 utmost discrimination in delicate shades of beauty and 
 luxury he was yet condemned to spend his days in sur- 
 roundings hardly raised aboye poverty-stricken squalor. 
 Incongruous as it was he could yet imagine Taou Yuen 
 moving with a certain appropriateness about the Ammi- 
 dons' spacious grounds and house; but he was absolutely 
 unable to picture her here, on Hardy Street. 
 
 All the' vivid scenes that continually formed and shifted 
 in his mind gathered about Gerrit Ammidon's wife. He 
 [118] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 used this phrase in a contemptuously satirical manner: it 
 was impossible for Ammidon actually to marry a Manchu. 
 Such racial mating, he told himself, could not be consum- 
 mated; there were too many deep antipathies of flesh and 
 spirit; the man was too — too stupidly normal. Sooner 
 or later he would swing back to his own. With him, 
 Edward Dunsack, it wa& different ; he always had an inner 
 kinship with China; at first sight its streets and sounds, 
 odors and ways, had seemed familiar, admirable. 
 
 The realization of this, when his place with Heard and 
 Company collapsed, had sent him back to America, in a 
 strange dread. He remembered how the vague fear had 
 followed him to Derby Wharf. Now he laughed at it, 
 welcoming every Chinese instinct he had. They seemed to 
 throw a bridge across enormous difficulties, bringing him 
 finally to Taou Yuen. 
 
 He lingered at the table after supper, his head sunk on 
 his chest, revolving the various aspects of his position. 
 One thing was definite — he must have Taou Yuen ; it 
 was unthinkable that she should continue with Gerrit Am- 
 midon. It needed skillful plaiming, tortuous execution, 
 but in the end he'd get his desire. He had no doubt of 
 that. It was necessary. If she opposed him she would 
 discover that he, too, could be subtle, Oriental, yes — dan- 
 gerous. None of the stupid inhibitions that, for example, 
 bound his father interfered with the free exercise of his 
 personal wishes. He was beyond primitive morality. 
 
 An ecstasy of contemplation ravished his senses. 
 
 " Goodness, Uncle Edward," Nettie exclaimed, " you 
 scared me, you looked so like a Chinee." 
 
 " There are no such people," he retorted sharply, exas- 
 [119] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 perated by the vulgar error. She was undismayed; and 
 when, in reply to the question, she learned that he had been 
 at the Ammidons' her surprise increased his irritation. 
 He saw from her manner that his calling there had been 
 at least unexpected. Nettie interrupted the preparation 
 of the table for breakfast, and dropped into a chair beyond 
 him, her hands — the sleeves were rolled back to her el- 
 bows — clasped before her. 
 
 " You must tell me everything," she declared eagerly. 
 " What is she like ? Do they seem happy ? Did he hold 
 her hand ? Do Chinese women kiss ? Is she tall or — " 
 
 " I can't remember a question out of your rattle," he 
 interrupted her. He was about to give expression to his 
 admiration for Taou Yuen, when he stopped, with tight 
 lips. Here, perhaps, was the lever by which so much was 
 to be shifted. 
 
 " She's Chinese," he said indifferently, " and that means 
 yellow." Nettie made a gesture of distaste. " They 
 seem to get along well enough. Of course, it's ridiculous 
 to call it a marriage, and it seems to me very questionable 
 to impose it on the Ammidons as that. The thing is — 
 how long will it last, how soon will he get tired of her 
 and send her back to Canton ? " 
 
 Nettie VoUar closed her eyes, her hands were rigid. 
 The lamplight, streaming up over her face, showed him 
 that it was tense and pale and answered a question. Her 
 feeling for Gerrit Ammidon had been more than a mere 
 hurt pride. In addition to that he saw beyond any doubt 
 the proof of its existence still. This complicated his prob- 
 lem: inspired only by a resentment that he might fan into 
 hatred she would be far more pliable than in the grip of 
 
 [120] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 a genuine affection for Gerrit Ammidon. He understood 
 the processes of the former, a flexible and useful steel; but 
 no one could predict the vagaries, the absurd self-sacrifices, 
 of love. Well, he'd have to work with what offered. 
 That, he realized, was the strength of his philosophy — 
 he accepted promptly, without vain regret, the means that 
 lay at his hand. 
 
 " Ammidon seems worn," he said generally; " they were 
 in the garden, and I had a few words privately with him." 
 Nettie glanced swiftly across the table; her lips moved; 
 but she repressed the obvious question trembling on them. 
 " He showed, I think," he continued carefully, " a very 
 improper interest in you." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " He asked if you were well and happy. I most cer- 
 tainly told him, for any number of reasons, for pride alone, 
 that you were." 
 
 " Then you told a lie," she cried in a tone so hard that 
 it surprised him. 
 
 " Of course," he went on smoothly, " I know that you 
 are not, almost all your circumstances prohibit that. But 
 I don't intend to circulate it in Salem. Opinion here may 
 have forced you into a long loneliness, but I shan't give 
 anyone the satisfaction of knowing it. And, after all, you 
 have your grandfather mostly to blame. You would have 
 been married to Gerrit Ammidon now if he hadn't inter- 
 fered ; you would have been walking about the Ammidons' 
 garden with your hand on his arm in place of that Chinese 
 prostitute." 
 
 " I don't see why you should make me so miserable," she 
 declared. " I don't care anything about the garden, it 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 isn't that. Why do you suppose he brought such a woman 
 home." 
 
 " Pique," he told her; " he couldn't care for her in the 
 way he might for, well — you. As I said, he'll drop her 
 on his next voyage to the East; he will leave her and 
 probably never come back to Salem again. I hear that 
 Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone are planning a new 
 policy — bigger ships, clippers in the China and Cali- 
 fornia trade; and that means removal to Boston. Their 
 facilities here are no longer suitable." 
 
 She moved, her chin fell upon her hands, propped up 
 with her elbows on the table. Apparently Edward Dun- 
 sack was gazing at the wall beyond her. Her breast gavfe 
 a single sharp heave. When Nettie looked up her face 
 was flushed. " I wish that I were really a bad woman," 
 she spoke in a low vibrant voice. 
 
 " What is bad and what is good? " He still seemed to 
 ignore her, considering a question that had no personal 
 bearing. " In one country a thing is thought wrong and 
 in another it is the highest virtue. In one age this or 
 that is condemned, when, turn the calendar, and everyone 
 is praising it." He became confidential, the image of 
 kindness. " I'll tell you what I think is wicked," he 
 pronounced, leaning toward her, " and that is the way you 
 two were kept apart; unchristian is what I call it." 
 
 " Gerrit doesn't care," she said. 
 
 " How do you know? " he demanded. " I cannot agree 
 with you. I don't find a great deal in him to admire, he 
 is too simple and transparent; but there's no doubt of 
 this, he is faithful. One idea, one affection, is all his head 
 will hold." 
 
 [122] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " That's a beautiful trait." A palpable wistfulness set- 
 tled over her. 
 
 " It's greatly admired," he agreed; " although not by 
 me. I believe in taking what is yours, what you need, 
 from life. I suppose that I have been away from propri- 
 eties so long that they have lost their importance. They 
 seem to me of no greater weight than barriers of straw. 
 But, of course, that mightn't suit you; probably, living in 
 Salem as you have, its opinion is valuable." 
 
 " Salem! " she exclaimed bitterly. " What has it ever 
 been to me but an unfair judgment ? I owe Salem no con- 
 sideration; I can't see that I owe any to life." 
 
 " I don't want to insist on that," he proceeded deliber- 
 ately. " The tragedy of your position is that married to 
 Ammidon everything in the past would have been over- 
 looked, forgotten. Even now — " he stopped with a ges- 
 ture indicating the presence still of large possibilities. 
 
 God, what a vacillating fool the girl was! He could 
 say no more at present, and he rose, leaving the room with 
 Nettie staring dully across the table. He went outside, to 
 the grass fronting on the harbor. Here, last night, he 
 had thrown the opium into the water. It seemed to him 
 that he had lived through a complete existence since then : 
 the presence of Taou Yuen had created a new world. He 
 thought she walked to him through the gloom; he saw her 
 slender body grow brighter as she approached; he heard 
 her speak in a low native murmur; their hands caught in 
 an eager tangle. 
 
 He put aside, momentarily, the problem of the diffi- 
 culties of going again to the Ammidons' for an easier one 
 — the bringing of Gerrit Ammidon here. He was confi- 
 
 [123] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 dent that, thrown together on the still rim of the water, at 
 evening, the emotion born between his niece and the ship- 
 master and prematurely choked would revive. He had 
 no means of knowing Ammidon's present exact feeling for 
 Nettie; he was counting only on a general theory of men 
 and nature at large. He was already convinced, from 
 very wide knowledge, experience, that the other could not 
 form a permanent attachment to the Manchu; and Nettie's 
 great difference, together with the romance of her unhappy 
 position, must have a potent effect on the fellow's evident 
 sentimentality. A dank air rose from the water, like the 
 smell of death; and, with an uncontrollable shiver, he 
 turned back toward the house. 
 
 In his room Edward Dunsack recalled that he had 
 promised himself to throw away the remainder of the 
 opium on this and succeeding nights. In view of that his 
 movements were inexplicable: he got out from a locked 
 chest the yen tsiang, a heavy tube of dark wood inlaid 
 with silver ideograms and diminutive earthen cup at one 
 end. Then he produced a small brass lamp, brushes, 
 long needles, and a metal rod. Taking off his clothes, 
 and in the somber black folds of the silk robe, he made 
 various minutely careful preparations. Finally, extended 
 on his bed, he dipped the end of the rod into opium the 
 color of tar, kept it for a bubbling moment near the blaze 
 of the lamp, and then crowded the drug into the pipe. 
 He held the bowl to the flame and drew in a long deep 
 inhalation. A second followed and the pipe was empty. 
 He repeated this until he had smoked a mace. 
 
 A vivacious and brilliant state of being flooded him; 
 he felt capable of profoundly witty conversation, and 
 
 [124] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 laughed at the solemn absurdities of the Ammidons, at his 
 father attempting to call down a blessing out of the 
 empty sky upon their food, at his sister's lugubrious coun- 
 tenance, the childish emotions of Nettie. What a non- 
 sensical strutting business life was. 
 
 The confines of his room were lost in an amber radiance 
 that filled all space; it was at once a light and a perfume 
 and charged with a sense of impending rapture. A spark- 
 ling crimson shape floated down from infinite skies — 
 Taou Yuen. She wore a bridal costume, cunningly em- 
 broidered with the phoenix, a hood of thin gold plate, and 
 a band of red silk about her brow bore the eight copper 
 figures of the beings who are immortal. Her hair was 
 ornamented by the pure green jade pins of summer, her 
 hanging wrists were heavy with virgin silver, while her 
 face was like the desirous August moon flushed in low 
 vapors. 
 
 He raised his bony arms — the wide silk sleeves fall- 
 ing back — his emaciated yellow hands. From under his 
 dark eyelids there was a glitter of vision like the sheen 
 on mica . . . Taou Yuen floated nearer. 
 
 Edward Dunsack woke suddenly, at the darkest ebb of 
 night, and started hurriedly to his feet. A sickening ver- 
 tigo, a whirling head, sent him lurching across the room. 
 He came in contact with a chest of drawers, and clung to 
 it with the feeling that his legs were shriveling beneath 
 him. His consciousness slowly returned, and with it a 
 pain like ruthless tearing fingers searched his body. The 
 rectangle of the open window, only less dark than the room, 
 promised a relief from the strangled effort of his breathing, 
 and he fell across the ledge, lifting his face to a starless 
 
 [12SJ 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 and unstirring heat. Waves of complete physical exhaus- 
 tion passed over him. An utter horror fastened on his 
 brain. 
 
 " Oh, God," he said, with numb lips, " we thank Thee 
 for this. Thy daily blessing — " He broke off with an 
 effort. That was his father pronouncing a grace. " Oh 
 God — " he said again, when it seemed to him that in the 
 darkness he saw the blank placidity of a Buddha carved 
 from gray stone. Tears ran over his sunken cheeks, salt 
 and warm like blood. 
 
 [126] 
 
VI 
 
 THE night was so oppressive, continuing such 
 an unusually sultry period for the season, that 
 Sidsall, ordinarily impervious to the effects of 
 weather, was unable to sleep. Although the door between 
 her room and her parents' was shut, she heard her father 
 — his step, at once quick and firm, was easily recog- 
 nizable — moving about beyond. Her restlessness in- 
 creased and she got up, crossing the floor to the window 
 open on the garden, where she knelt, the thick plait of 
 her hair across her cheek and shoulder, with her arms 
 propped on the ledge. The depths of sky were hidden 
 in a darkness like night made visible; and, in place of 
 moving air, there were slow waves of perfume, now from 
 the lilacs and now from the opening hedge of June roses. 
 Her brain was filled by a multitude of minor images 
 and speculations, but fixed at their back was the pres- 
 ence of Roger Brevard. She approved of him absolutely. 
 He had exactly the formal manner that gave her a pleas- 
 ant sense of delicate importance, and his clothes were 
 beautiful, a sprig of rose geranium in a buttonhole and 
 his gloves and boots immaculate. She liked rather slight 
 graceful men, she thought, with the quiet voices of a 
 polite ancestry. Naturally Olive Wibird preferred less 
 restrained companions, although Heaven knew that Olive 
 appeared to make all kinds welcome. Olive's opinion 
 [127] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 of Roger Brevard would have been very different if he 
 had asked her to dance. 
 
 Sidsall recalled the quadrille he had led her through 
 at Lacy's party; he had been a perfect partner, at once 
 light and firm. He had been a habitual caller at Java 
 Head before that occasion, and had come in the same man- 
 ner since. That is, casually viewed, his visits seemed 
 the same; but in reality there were some small yet sig- 
 nificant differences. They were all held in his attitude of 
 the afternoon when he had stayed talking exclusively to 
 her on the steps. 
 
 She couldn't say just what the change was; when she 
 attempted to examine it her thoughts became confused 
 and turned to a hundred absurd considerations, such as 
 — at present — the loveliness of the night. The scents of 
 the flowers were overwhelming. He got on, too, better 
 than almost anyone else with her Uncle Gerrit's Manchu 
 wife. She had watched them together until it had dawned 
 on her that the two had some important qualities in 
 common — they both appeared to stand a little aside 
 from the world, as if they were against the wall at a 
 cotillion. She thought this in spite of tlie fact that it 
 was precisely what Roger Brevard never did; it was true 
 in the mysterious way of so much now that came from 
 ideas over which she had no control. 
 
 The subject of Uncle Gerrit's wife — she had not yet 
 been told or decided for herself what to call her — was in- 
 exhaustibly enthralling. But, before she was again fairly 
 launched in it, she paused to wonder at the presence of the 
 dreadful Dunsack man on their lawn. His hollow yellow 
 cheeks and staring brown eyes which somehow made her 
 
 [128] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 think of pain, his restless hands and speech, all repelled 
 her violently. Taou — Taou Yuen hadn't liked him 
 either: when, after the longest time, he had gone, she 
 replied to a short comment from her, Sidsall's, father: 
 
 " Rotten wood cannot be carved." 
 
 Some one else had mentioned opium. She had in- 
 tended to ask more particularly about this, but it slipped 
 from her mind. She remembered that her grandfather 
 made one of his familiar exclamations peppered with an 
 appalling word. He was really very embarrassing, and 
 she was glad that Roger Brevard had left. It was a 
 bad example for Laurel, too, who copied him, and only 
 that morning said " My God " to Miss Gomes. Her 
 mind swung back to the consideration of the Manchu : 
 
 The latter was the fact upon which Camilla was so 
 insistent, that in this case a Manchu was a noble, almost 
 a princess. Camilla suffered dreadfully from the end- 
 less questions put to her outside their house about Uncle 
 Gerrit's wife. She had more than once wept at the public 
 blot laid on them. Laurel was frankly inquisitive and 
 Janet as puzzling as usual. 
 
 The clothes of course were enchanting, the richness of 
 the materials and hand embroidery marvellous ; her jewelry 
 was never ending^. It didn't seem quite like clothing, in 
 the sense of her own tarlatan and crinoline, her waist 
 which Hodie wouldn't properly lace and tulle draping; 
 there was a certain resemblance to the dressing in Van 
 Amburgh's circus; but — in spite of Camilla's private 
 laments — every inch of it was distinguished. The lay- 
 ers of paint upset them, but Uncle Gerrit had explained, a 
 little impatiently, that it was a Manchu custom, adding 
 
 [129] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 that the world couldn't be all measured and judged by 
 Salem. 
 
 Sidsall liked her rather than not, she decided; and de- 
 termined to make an effort to know her better. She 
 wanted specially to discover the nature of the bond that 
 held one to the other, and explore, in safety, the depths 
 of love. She could not help feeling that her uncle's 
 affair, extraordinary as it was, must throw light on the 
 whole complicated business of marriage. . . . The clock 
 in the hall struck an indeterminate half hour, it ap- 
 peared to grow lighter outside, and there was a twittering 
 of martins from the stables. From above came the vigor- 
 ous harsh cawing of crows. Suddenly sleepy she returned 
 to bed and almost immediately the room was flooded with 
 sunlight. 
 
 It was an accepted fact now that Taou Yuen, the 
 Garden of Peaches, stayed in her room until long after 
 breakfast; and when Sidsall, rising from the table, found 
 a servant taking up a pot of hot water for tea, she secured 
 it and knocked carefully on the door above. The slurring 
 hesitating voice said " Come in," and she entered with a 
 diffidence covered by a cheerfully polite morning greet- 
 ing. She found the other in crepe de Chine pantaloons 
 wrapped tightly about her ankles and bound over quilted 
 nluslin socks with gay brocaded ribbons and a short float- 
 ing gown of gray silk worked with willow leaves. Her 
 hair was an undisturbed complication of lustrous black, 
 gold bodkins and flowers massed on either side; and 
 her face, without paint or powder, was as smooth as ivory 
 and the color of very pale coffee and cream. 
 
 Sidsall saw that she was at her toilet, and she put 
 [130] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 down the pot of steaming water, moving toward the door; 
 but Taou Yuen, with a charmingly shy gesture, begged 
 her to stay. She swiftly drew a cup of tea from silvery 
 leaves, filled and lighted the minute bowl of her tobacco 
 pipe, deeply inhaled the smoke; then returned to a mirror. 
 
 Fascinated, Sidsall followed every motion. 
 
 Taou Yuen polished her face sharply with a hot damp 
 cloth and then dipped her fingers in a jar that held a 
 sticky amber substance. " Honey," she said briefly, rub- 
 bing it into her cheeks and palms. Next she attacked 
 her eyebrows, and skillfully wielding a thin silk cord 
 left arches like pencil markings. At times she inter- 
 rupted her preparations to turn to Sidsall with a little smile 
 so engaging that the girl smiled sympathetically in an- 
 swer. There were a gilt paper box of rice powder, with 
 which she drenched her countenance, leaves of carmine 
 transferred to her cheeks with a wet finger, and a silver 
 pot of rouge from which she coated her lips. As she 
 gazed approvingly at her reflection Sidsall said: 
 
 "It's very beautiful." 
 
 Her eyes, drawn up toward her temples,, shone gayly; 
 and, close to Sidsall, she touched the latter affectionately 
 on the cheek. The cold sharp contact of the long curv- 
 ing finger guard gave the girl an unpleasant shock. It 
 seemed lifeless, or like the scratching of a beetle. Sud- 
 denly the woman's glittering gaze, her expressionless face 
 stiff with paint, the blaze of her barbaric colors, filled 
 Sidsall with a shrinking that was almost dread. 
 
 She was even more oppressed by an instinctive feeling 
 of what she could express to herself only as cruelty hidden 
 under the other's scented embroidery. At the same time 
 
 [131] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 her curiosity persisted, conquered. She was unable, how- 
 ever, to think of any possible manner of introducing the 
 new subject of her interest, love, and was forced to 
 be content with an indifferent opening. 
 
 " We were all quite surprised when Mr. Dunsack called 
 yesterday," she said. " He isn't in the least a friend of 
 the family. Grandfather went to sea with his father, but 
 even they didn't speak for years in Salem. The Dunsacks 
 are a little common." 
 
 " I know," Taou Yuen replied. " Mr. Dunsack — a 
 long time in Canton, at the American agents. China is 
 bad for men like him. Black spirits get in them and 
 the ten sins." 
 
 " He stared at you in the rudest way." 
 
 " He never saw a Manchu lady before. In China the 
 dog would not have passed by the first gate. Here it 
 is nothing to be a Manchu or an honorable wife; it is 
 all like the tea hou.ses and rice villages. Men walk 
 up to you with bold eyes. I tell Gerrit and he laughs. 
 I stay in the room and he brings me shamefully down. 
 This Mr. Dunsack comes and the wise old man talks to 
 him like a son. He touches your mother's hand. He 
 sees the young girls like white candles." 
 
 " We wouldn't let him really bother us," Sidsall ex- 
 plained; "probably if he comes again we'll all be out." 
 
 Taou Yuen made a comment in Chinese. " A bad 
 thought is a secret knife," she continued; "it is more 
 dangerous than the anger of the Emperor, a sickness that 
 kills with the stink of bodies already dead." 
 
 This seemed rather absurd to Sidsall. She considered 
 once more the introduction of the subject of her new 
 [132] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 concern; but, in spite of Taou Yuen's extravagant appear- 
 ance, there was a quality of being which made impossible 
 any blunt interrogation. She had a decidedly aloof man- 
 ner. Her mother, Sidsall recognized, and the older women 
 they knew, had a trace of this; but in the Manchu it 
 was carried infinitely further, a most autocratic disdain. 
 Her feeling for the other shifted rapidly from attitude 
 to attitude. 
 
 She watched, she was certain, these same sensations come 
 over her Aunt Caroline Saltonstone, Mrs. Clifford and 
 Mrs. Wibird, who called on Gerrit Ammidon's wife that 
 afternoon. They were sitting with their crinoline wide- 
 spread against their chairs, gazing with a concerted bat- 
 tery of curiosity at Taou Yuen's shimmering figure in the 
 drawing-room screened against the sun. Mrs. Wibird, 
 Sidsall thought — a woman of fat and faded prettiness, 
 with wine red splotches beneath her eyes, and a voice 
 that went on and on in the relating of various petty 
 emotional disturbances — must have resembled Olive as 
 a girl. It was probable, then, that Olive would look 
 like her mother when in turn she was middle-aged. Mrs. 
 Clifford, unseasonably huddled in her perpetual shawl, 
 more than ever suggested a haggard marble in somberly 
 rich clothes. Aunt Caroline sat with complacent hands 
 and loud inattentive speech. Taou Yuen smiled at them 
 placidly. 
 
 " Our men," said Mrs. Clifford, " went out to China 
 for years. It never occurred to them however to marry 
 a Chinese woman; but I dare say they didn't see the 
 right sort." 
 
 " Most of the captains like China," Taou Yuen said. 
 [133] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " They are so far away from their families — " she made a 
 brief philosophical gesture, and Madra Clifford studied 
 her with a narrowed gaze. " It would be the same," she 
 continued, " if Chinamen came to America." Mrs. Wi- 
 bird shuddered. " A yellow skin," she cried impetuously; 
 " I can't bide the thought." 
 
 " I'm sure we'd be tremendously interested," Mrs. 
 Saltonstone hurriedly put in, " if you'd tell us about your 
 wedding. A Chinese wedding must be — be very gay, 
 with firecrackers and — " 
 
 " My marriage with Captain Ammidon was not beauti- 
 ful — I was a widow and he foreign. The Manchu 
 wedding is very nice. First there is the engagement cere- 
 mony. I sit like this," she sank gracefully to the floor, 
 cross-legged, " on the bed with my eyes shut, and, if I 
 am noble, two princesses come and put the ju yi, it's jade 
 and means all joy, on my lap. Two little silk bags hang 
 from the buttons of my gown with gold coins, and two 
 gold rings on my fingers must be marked with Ta hsi, 
 that's great happiness." 
 
 " I'm told polygamy is an active practice," Mrs; Wibird 
 remarked with a rising interest. 
 
 "Yes?" Taou Yuen asked. 
 
 " One man — a lot of wives." 
 
 " The Emperor has a great many and. some Manchus 
 take a second and third. You think that is wrong here. 
 Who knows! The Chinese women are very good, very 
 modest. The Four Books For Girls teach perfect sub- 
 mission; the five virtues are benevolence, righteousness, 
 propriety, wisdom, sincerity. Confucius says,' ' The root 
 is filial piety.' " 
 
 [134] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " Very admirable," Mrs. Wibird nodded, agitating the 
 small dyed ostrich plumes tipped with marabou of her 
 bonnet; but it was clear to Sidsall that this was not the 
 revelation for which she had hoped. A momentary silence, 
 the edge of an uneasiness, enveloped the visitors. 
 
 " What lovely satins," Mrs. Saltonstone cotamented. 
 
 " Please — I have a box full; you will let me give you 
 some? " 
 
 " Indeed yes, and thank you." 
 
 Mrs. Wibird, growing resentful, said that a cousin of 
 her aunt's had been a missionary to China, " and did a 
 very blessed work too." 
 
 Taou Yuen smoothly agreed that it was quite possible. 
 " Our poor have a great many wrong and lustful ideas," 
 she acknowledged; " they tell lies and beat their wives 
 and gamble. The higher classes too, the mandarins and 
 princes, use the people for their own security and rob 
 them. Sometimes the law is not honest, and a man with 
 gold gets free when a laborer is put in the bamboo 
 cage." 
 
 Mrs. Clifford said very vigorously, " Ha 1 " 
 
 The silence returned intensified. 
 
 " I remember," the Manchu went on, " this will amuse 
 you. My father-in-law, who was in the Canton Customs, 
 told me that some boxes of Bibles came out from America, 
 with other objects, and when they were opened at the 
 Mission they were the wrong ones and filled with rum." 
 
 There was not, however, any marked appreciation of 
 this on the part of the Salem women. They rose to leave 
 and Taou Yuen sank on her knee. She gazed without 
 a trace of emotion at the three flooding the door with 
 
 [135] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 their belled skirts. " They are the same everywhere," 
 she told the girl. The latter moved out into the garden. 
 There she subconsciously picked a rose and fastened it 
 in her hair; her thoughts turned to Roger Brevard. In 
 his place her Uncle Gerrit came out through the draw- 
 ing-room window. The usual shadow of the house, length- 
 ening with afternoon, was pleasantly enveloping, and 
 they walked slowly over the grass. 
 
 " A flower in your hair," he said, " and by yourself. 
 You have been thinking about true love." She blushed 
 vividly at this unexpected angle on her mind and found 
 it impossible to meet his keen blue eyes. " Love must be 
 a remarkable thing." She raised a swift glance to his 
 face and discovered that he had not spoken to her at all, 
 but, hat in hand, was looking away with an expression 
 of abstraction. 
 
 " I mean the unreasonable silly divine kind," he speci- 
 fied, now gazing at her quizzically, as if lost in a mood 
 over which he had no control; "the sort that is as long 
 as life and stronger. It is entirely different and ages older 
 than the reasonable logical love, all proper and suitable 
 and civilized; or the love that is the result of a determina- 
 tion, the result of a determination," he repeated, frowning 
 darkly at their feet. Sidsall held her breath, thrilled by 
 the wealth of what she had heard, fearful of diverting 
 what might be yet revealed. But he moved away abruptly, 
 in a manner that enforced solitude, and stood apparently 
 examining the rockery. 
 
 Her brain rang with the splendid phrase, " Love as 
 long as life and stronger." It seemed to clarify and 
 state so much of her lately confused being. Hodie, art- 
 [136] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 fully drawn into the consideration of earthly affection, was 
 far less satisfactory than Gerrit Ammidon. She dwelt 
 on the treasure beyond moth or rust, lost in an ecstasy 
 of contemplation expressed in her customary explosive 
 amens. At the same time she admitted that lower unions 
 were blessed of God, and recommended Sidsall to think 
 on " a man who has seen the light and by no means a 
 sea captain." Sidsall replied cuttingly, " I think you 
 must forget where you are." 
 
 " I forget nothing," Hodie stoutly maintained; " I'll 
 witness before anyone." She settled the flounces of 
 Sidsall's skirt with a deft hand. 
 
 Walking toward the Saltonstones' for tea, with a mul- 
 berry silk parasol casting a shifting glow on her expanse 
 of clear madras, Sidsall wondered at the sudden change 
 of almost all her interests and preoccupations. It was 
 very disturbing — she fell into daydreams that carried 
 her fancy away on a search that was a longing, a soft con- 
 fusion of opening her arms to mystery. This varied with 
 a restless melancholy; the old securities of her life were 
 hidden in a mist of uncertainty in which her conscious- 
 ness was troubled by nameless pressures; something 
 within her held almost desperately back from further 
 adventuring. But all the time a latent fascination was 
 drawing her on, putting aside the curtain for her better 
 view. 
 
 The Saltonstones' dwelling on Chestnut Street was one 
 of a pair — a large solid square of brick — with two 
 identical oval white porticoes and rows of windows keyed 
 in white stone. Within the staircase swept up to a slen- 
 der pillared opening, through which Lacy, calmly dress- 
 
 [137] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 ing, waved a deliberate hand. Mrs. Saltonstone was 
 seated by the tall gilt framed mirror on a low marble 
 stand between long front windows. " As usual," she said, 
 in connection with her daughter, "Lacy's as cool as a 
 water monkey; gets it from James; they wouldn't hurry 
 if — " She searched in vain for an expression of her fam- 
 ily's composure. " Now I am an impetuous woman." 
 She promptly exhibited this quality in the vigor with 
 which she met the wrong canister of tea brought by a serv- 
 ant. She didn't intend to serve Padre Souchong to a lot 
 of people who apparently confused afternoon tea with an 
 invitation to dinner. 
 
 In the small press which followed Sidsall stopped in the 
 dining room with Lacy and Olive Wibird. Olive was 
 still discussing men. " He sat holding my hand right 
 on that bench by your hedge, Sidsall, and said that noth- 
 ing could keep him from coming back for me, but he 
 died of yellow fever in Batavia." She left in the com- 
 pany of a beau of fifty anyhow, with a glistening bald 
 head, a silly smirking bow and flood of compliments. 
 Lacy moved away and Sidsall found herself facing Roger 
 Brevard. 
 
 " That looks remarkably like a garden," he said, waving 
 toward an open door. The sun had become obscured in a 
 veil of cloud, drooping until it almost seemed to rest on 
 the bright green foliage; her companion's mood, too, was 
 shadowed. " I thought you'd be here," he added out- 
 side, " and looked for you at once." 
 
 " There was something special you wanted to say ? " 
 
 " My dear child," he replied, " can't you guess how 
 absolutely refreshing you are? No, I have nothing spe- 
 [138] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 cial. But you'll soon get used to men aroUnd with no 
 more reason than yourself." 
 
 She studied this seriously; and, as its complimentary 
 intent emerged, a corresponding color stained her cheeks. 
 Her gaze rested on him for the fleetest moment possible 
 and, to her surprise, she saw that he was frowning. 
 
 " I came here just to see you. No," he corrected his 
 period, " only to see you." His manner was surprisingly 
 abrupt and disconcerting. " I can quite realize," he went 
 on, " that I shouldn't say any of this. Yet, on the other 
 hand, it is the most natural thing in the world. I have 
 been listening to the conventional babble of teas, and cotil- 
 lions for so long that you are like a breath of lost youth. 
 Certainly that is appropriate. I think," he told her, " that 
 you are the youngest thing alive." Then he laughed, " So 
 young that I have annoyed you." 
 
 " I feel a great deal older than I did, well — last 
 month," she said. 
 
 " That is a tragedy." She felt that if he were still 
 amused at her she was furious, but he was even graver 
 than before. " To tell you helps 'hurry the charm to 
 an end. That is what might be complained against me. 
 Yet flowers will open, you know, and it might as well be 
 in an honest sun." 
 
 " I don't understand," she admitted, troubled. 
 
 " Why, it means, Sidsall, that I am offering you an 
 experienced hand, that I'm certain I can do you more 
 good than harm — " 
 
 " That's silly," she interrupted. " If you mean that 
 we might be friends, really confidential friends, it would 
 help me awfully. But then it's so one-sided." 
 
 [139] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 "You'll have to overlook that," he answered; "prob- 
 ably all that I can give you, experience, isn't worth the 
 smallest of your feelings. Probably you won't need me 
 for an instant. Certainly the pleasure will be mine." 
 
 " You didn't understand," she told him, with dignity; 
 " it's the other way round. I am not a particle interest- 
 ing and everyone agrees that I'm too healthy. But I 
 can't help it if my cheeks are red and mother won't let 
 me have powder." It was obviously impossible to ex- 
 plain about Hodie and the lacing. 
 
 " I like it," he insisted. " I'll admit that I am un- 
 fashionable there. I think we'll hit on a great deal to 
 share privately." There was a faint patter among the 
 leaves, and a cold drop of rain fell on Sidsall's arm. 
 Others struck Roger Brevard but he continued without 
 apparently noticing them. " You must imderstand that 
 I am entirely at your service. Sometimes, although they 
 won't come yet, there are things a — a friend can do 
 better than one's family. You'll ask me, Sidsall ? " 
 
 " Yes," she said solemnly. More rain struck her; she 
 could see it now plainly, falling between them. Roger 
 Brevard's face was dark, the frown still scarred his fore- 
 head. Personally she was happier than she remembered 
 ever being before and she wondered at his severity of 
 bearing. " But you must go in at once," he cried, sud- 
 denly energetic, his familiar self; "you are getting wetter 
 every minute." 
 
 The clouds dissolved into a late sunlight that streamed 
 in long bars through the canopies of elms on the streets. 
 From her windows Sidsall saw a world of flashing green- 
 ery and limpid sky. Usually when she was happy she 
 [140] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 sang unimportant bits of light song, but her present state 
 was serious and inarticulate. I'he indeterminate ques- 
 tions, the disturbing vague moods, of the past days some- 
 how combined and took on the tangible shape of Roger 
 Brevard. Her curiosity about love was resolved into a 
 sudden inner shrinking from its possibilities and mean- 
 ing. 
 
 She was lost in her aloofness from mundane affairs: 
 Taou Yuen in whispering silk, her grandfather's rotund 
 tones. Laurel and Camilla and her mother, were distant, 
 immaterial. In the evening she sat on the front steps, a 
 web of white, dreamily intent on the shimmering sweep 
 of Washington Square. After a little she was joined by 
 Gerrit Ammidon. He wore linen trousers and a short 
 blue sea jacket; and the wavering delicately lavender 
 trail of smoke from his cheroot was like her floating 
 thoughts. 
 
 " Already," he said, " I am full of getting back on my 
 ship." 
 
 She smiled at him absently.' 
 
 " The land doesn't do for a sailor," he continued. 
 " They are always into trouble on shore. I can't say why 
 it should be so but it is. If there's not one kind there is 
 another; rum and such varnish for the able seaman, and 
 — and complications for a master. I suppose that's be- 
 cause there are so confounded many unexpected currents 
 and slants of wind, as you might say. On shipboard 
 everything pretty much is charted; a thing will be fol- 
 lowed more or less by a fixed consequence. The waves 
 break so and so on coral or rocks or sand ; there is usually 
 the sun for an observation; a good man knows his ship, 
 
 [141] 
 
 V 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 how many points she'll hold on the wind, how a cargo 
 must be stowed, when to take in the light canvas. You 
 can give the man at the wheel a course and turn in or 
 stay on deck and beat your way through hell. It's 
 exact, you know, but on shore — " he made a hopeless 
 gesture. 
 
 " There are no regulations," he observed moodily; " or 
 else nobody follows them: collisions alKthe time, sinkings 
 and derelicts drifting round, awash and dismasted. But 
 they are everywhere. That fellow, Edward Dunsack — " 
 he stopped, lost in speculation. Then, " He seems harm- 
 less enough," he resumed, "even pitiful; but he sticks 
 in your head. I wish I'd never brought his damned chest 
 to Salem. A fool -would have known better. I'm worse 
 — a childish fool. A derelict,'' he said again. " You 
 are smashing over a swell at twelve knots or more, every- 
 thing spread, when, in a hollow, there it is squarely across 
 your bow. No time to shift the wheel, and a ship's miss- 
 ing, perhaps in a hundred fathom. It might be the 
 best ship afloat, the best master and stoutest crew, but in 
 a minute she's only a salty tangle." 
 
 He laughed uneasily at the vividness of his fancy. 
 " If it's hard for us what must it be for Taou Yuen ? " 
 he demanded. "Married to me! Here! That's cour- 
 age for you." He tramped dovm the steps, across Pleas- 
 ant Street, with his bare head sunk, and vanished into 
 the obscurity of the Square. She caught a last glimmer 
 of white trousers, a faint rapid gleam where his lighted 
 cheroot described the arc of a passionate gesture on the 
 night. 
 
 The spring, like the full buds of the hedge roses in the 
 [142J 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Ammidons' garden, passed swiftly into early summer. 
 The flowers against the house showed gay perennial 
 colors, the stocks and larkspur and snapdragons suc- 
 ceeded the retreating flood of the lilacs. The days were 
 still yellow pools of heat, or else cooled by the faintly 
 salt sea wind drawing down the elms and chestnuts, fol- 
 lowed by purple-green nights of moonlight. They seemed, 
 to Sidsall to hold everything in a pause. She saw less 
 and less of Taou Yuen who now scarcely came out of her 
 room except for an occasional ride in the barouche with 
 Mrs. Ammidon or a contemplative hour in the garden, 
 usually at dusk. Apparently content with the elaborate 
 rearrangement of her headdress, she sat for long periods, 
 gazing out over Washington Square, idle except for the 
 regular tap of her pipe emptying the ashes of the minute 
 bowl. 
 
 Yet Sidsall's first interest in her had almost completely 
 shifted to Gerrit Ammidon. He evidently preferred her 
 company to that of the other members of his family, and 
 they often took short largely silent walks, usually down 
 to the Salem Marine Railway where the Nautilus was 
 undergoing repairs. His protracted silences were broken 
 by the sudden vehement protests against the generally 
 muddled aspect of affairs or longer monologues of in- 
 ner questioning and search. He almost never referred 
 to her or made her part of a conversation; she was free 
 to dwell on her own emotions while he, with a corrugated 
 brow, went on in his tortuous and solitary course. 
 
 On an afternoon when they had walked to the foot of 
 Briggs Street, and were gazing out over the tranquil water 
 of Collins Cove, Gerrit Ammidon asked abruptly: 
 
 [143J 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 "Have you seen Nettie Vollar lately?" 
 
 Sidsall was unable to remember exactly when that 
 had been. She rather thought she had caught a glimpse 
 of her in Lawrence Place with books under her arm which 
 she was probably taking from the Athenaeum for her 
 grandfather. Anyone, she told herself privately, could 
 see that Nettie Vollar wouldn't care for books. 
 
 Something had occurred, or threatened to occur, be- 
 tween her uncle and Nettie; what it was she had never 
 been told; but she realized that only one thing could 
 really happen between a man and girl — they must have 
 been iij love. In the interest of this she recalled Nettie 
 VoUar's appearance, but was unable to discover any 
 marked attractions. The elder had a good figure, rather 
 full for her age, and totally different from her own square 
 solidity. Her hair was coarse and carelessly arranged, 
 her clothes noticeable for a love of brightness rather than 
 care in the spending of a small sum. 
 
 Gerrit Ammidon had the strangest tastes! 
 
 He was standing immobile, looking across the Cove 
 as if he were on a quarter-deck searching for a hidden 
 land. His legs were slightly spread, firmly planted in 
 a manner to defeat any sudden lurching. She grew a lit- 
 tle impatient at him staring like a block at nothing at all; 
 she felt older than he, superior in the knowledge of life; 
 he seemed hardly more than an absurd boy. Sidsall had 
 a desire to shake him. He was so — so impracticable. 
 "Don't you think we'd better be going?" she asked 
 finally. Gerrit Ammidon turned and followed her 
 obediently. 
 
 There were lights in the rope walk on Briggs Street; 
 [144] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 through a window she could see a man pacing down the 
 long narrow interior laying a strand of hemp from the 
 burden on his shoulders. It made her shudder to think 
 of the monotonous passage forward and back, an eternity 
 of slow-twisting rope. Yet life was something like that 
 — she took the happenings of each day and wove them 
 into a strand dark and bright: a strand, she realized, 
 that grew stronger as it lengthened. . . . That would be 
 true of everyone — of her companion and grandfather and 
 Hodie. 
 
 They reached the house as the family were gathering 
 in the dining room, when Sidsall found Roger Brevard 
 unexpectedly staying for supper. She met his direct 
 greeting and smile with a warm stir of pleasure and sat 
 in a happy silence listening to the voices about the table. 
 Her uncle had brought his wife down and the candles 
 glittering among the lusters on the walls spread their 
 light over the Manchu's strange vivid figure. Everything 
 about life was so confusing, Sidsall thought. The night 
 flowed in at the open windows drenched with magic: here 
 were candles but outside were stars. The port in its 
 engraved glass decanter seemed to bum with a ruby flame. 
 " Bah ! " her grandfather was exclaiming. " I'll put a 
 thousand dollars on Gerrit and the Nautilus against any 
 clipper built; but mind, in all weathers." 
 
 " Voyage by voyage," William Ammidon insisted, " he 
 would be left in the harbor. The California gold depos- 
 its — ." 
 
 Later a crowd, slowly collecting, recalled the fact that 
 the Salem Band was to play that night in the Square. 
 " Oh, mother, look," Laurel cried; "they've got lamps in 
 
 [145] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 their hats." Small wavering flames were being lighted 
 on the musicians' hats; there were melancholy discon- 
 nected hoots from bassoons and the silver clear scale 
 of a bugle. " Can't I get nearer, mother? " Laurel im- 
 plored as usual. " Can't I go and see the little lamps on 
 their heads? " 
 
 " Sidsall and I will look after her," Roger Brevard 
 put in, and almost immediately the three were entering 
 Washington Square. The throng was thickest directly 
 behind the band, radiating in thinning numbers to the 
 wooden boundary fence. Laurel led them to an advan- 
 tageous position, where they could watch the curious effects 
 of the ring of lights above intent faces drawn hollow- 
 cheeked by the vigorous blowing of instruments. The 
 leader, in the center of the flickering smoky illumination, 
 now beat with his arms in one direction, now in another. 
 
 A second selection followed, and a third, during which, 
 in surprising pauses, the band shouted a concerted 
 " Hurrah ! " Sidsall was infinitely contented. How 
 splendidly erect and calm and distinguished Roger Bre- 
 vard was! She hated younger men, they were only boys, 
 who kept up a senseless talk about college humor. He 
 saw instantly that the people were crushing her skirts, 
 and firmly conducted them out of the crowd. It was 
 nicer here beyond the wavering dark mass : a waltz flowed 
 about her so tender and gracious that her eyes filled with 
 tears. 
 
 But Laurel had to be taken home; and, clasping Mr. 
 Brevard's hand, the little girl talked volubly as they 
 moved away. " And so," she said, " I told her to keep 
 her topsails full." 
 
 [146] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 "What?" he demanded. 
 
 " She was falling off, you know — losing way. Hell's 
 hatches — " 
 
 " Laurel," Sidsall corrected her sharply. " No, you 
 mustn't laugh at her." 
 
 Only Gerrit Ammidon was on the steps, the other men 
 were in the library; her mother had gone up with Janet. 
 Laurel left them, and, without speech, they walked 
 through the house to the lawn. The stars had aj)par- 
 ently retreated to new infinities of distance and night, 
 there was a throb of music so faint that it might be only 
 an echoing memory; Roger Brevard's face was pale and 
 strained. He asked: 
 
 " Have you forgotten that we are friends? " 
 
 " No," she returned seriously, lifting her look to his. 
 He was very close to her and her heart beat unsteadily. 
 She had a choking premonition of what was about to 
 occur, but she stood without the slightest attempt to pre- 
 vent his kiss. It affected him even more than herself, 
 for he stepped back sharply with his hands clenched. 
 Roger was silent for so long that she said, timidly: 
 
 " I didn't mind, so much." 
 
 " Thank you," he replied almost harshly. " There's 
 no need for you to regret it. No need, no need. But if 
 it were only a year more — ." 
 
 " We all grow older," she told him wisely. 
 
 " So we do, Sidsall, and we change. But you should 
 stay exactly as you are now, white and young and fra- 
 grant. Never the fruit but always the blossom, and al- 
 ways a night in early summer. The afterwards is an 
 indifferent performance." 
 
 [147] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " I don't understand," her voice was shadowed. 
 
 " Sidsall for a moment. Don't move — opening petals, 
 shy pure heart . . . loveliness. . . ." 
 
 " I don't understand," she repeated, but the trouble had 
 vanished. She even smiled at him: she was filled with 
 an absolute security in her vision of Roger Brevard. 
 Why, she had no need to question; it was an instinct be- 
 yond search and above knowledge; perhaps, she thought 
 as they turned toward the house, its name was love. 
 
 [148] 
 
VII 
 
 THE days, to Nettie Vollar, 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 her- 
 self most of the duties of Barzil Dunsack's house; but there 
 were still a large number of little things that returned un- 
 varied with every morning, noon and night for the girl's 
 attention. The cause of any impending excitement — 
 except the mere presence of Gerrit Ammidon 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 La sur- 
 roundings, in a service, that never for a moment repre- 
 sented 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 Ammidon; then this comfortable figure had ab- 
 ruptly 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 
 
 [149] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 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 im- 
 portance — 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 sub- 
 ject 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 grand- 
 father; 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 gay- 
 ety rose from her in the drabbest moments; she even defied 
 Barzil Dunsack with ribbons and flowers on her bonnet 
 [ISO] 
 
JAVA he;ad 
 
 The prospect from her window offered no relief from 
 the iaterior; 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 favotite 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 -un- 
 easy. For one thing he talked to himself out loud, prin- 
 cipally in Chinese, and the sliding unintelligible tongue, 
 accompanied by the sight of his gaunt yellow face, his in- 
 attentive fixed eyes, gave her an icy shiver. It was al- 
 most 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 aim- 
 less 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 Ammidon owed you consid- 
 erable. 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 — 
 
 [151] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 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 Ammidon. " The truth is," he ended, 
 "that you were a little fool; you had everything, every- 
 thing, 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 got in this country either." 
 
 He was, she thought, crazy. However, all that he 
 said about Gerrit lingered in her mind; it fanned to new 
 life the embers of her rebellion. If a chance should 
 come she would let Gerrit Ammidon 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, Gerrit'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 Gerrit. 
 
 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 bear your hand right in the oven. 
 
 Your grandfather won't have his sponge biscuit for sup- 
 
 [1S2] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 per." Nettie declared, " I certainly wouldn't let it bother 
 me. Just tell him and let him say what he Mkes." 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 pro- 
 tested 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 
 Ammidons aren't humble. Mrs. Saltonstone isn't." A 
 paia deepened visibly on the elder's pale countenance. 
 " You musta't think it doesn't hurt me, Nettie, to — 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. 
 [1S3] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " I don't know," Nettie admitted. " But if I had it 
 to do over I'd kiss Gerrit Ammidon 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. What- 
 ever 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 hope- 
 less hands in her lap of cheap worn dress stuff. Nettie 
 Vollar 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 as-- 
 serted. " 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 beard. Edward rose uneasily 
 and returned, casting a swelling and diminishing shadow 
 — obscurely unnatural like himself — over the faded 
 and weatherstained wall paper. Her mother was bowed, 
 
 [1S4] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 speechless. Nettie wanted to scream, to horrif)* 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 Sihor? 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, 
 playing the harlot 
 
 [155] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " ' 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 nitre — ' " 
 
 Nettie was impressed, intimidated, in spite of the con- 
 trary resolution in the kitchen: the words seemed to bum 
 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 at- 
 tract mosquitoes or force her to draw the close 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 con- 
 viction like a cry. 
 
 She determined to say no prayer to such a ruthless Be- 
 ing; yet, soon after, in her coarse nightgown, she found 
 herself kneeling by the bed with hard-clasped hands. It 
 was a prayer for which Barzil 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 and 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 Gerrit Ammidon. 
 She saw his firm direct countenance, the frosty blue eyes 
 and human warmth. He needn't have come at aU, she 
 [156] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 added, if it had been only to double the dreariness of 
 her existence. 
 
 She wondered a little, her emotion subsiding, at the in- 
 terest 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 Ammidon 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 cur- 
 tains, 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 she were studying them calmly 
 through a window: a large part of the terror her grand- 
 father 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 impa- 
 tience. 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 in- 
 stinctive deep distrust. It was almost impossible for her 
 to remain when — as he so often did now — he approached 
 
 [157] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 her to talk about the injustice of her mode of life and 
 the debt Gerrit Ammidon 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 in- 
 exhaustible desire for her to stroll with him. She oc- 
 casionally agreed for the reason that they invariably 
 passed in the vicinity of Washington Square and Pleas- 
 ant Street, and saw the impressive block of the Ammidon 
 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 gayly 
 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 
 
 [158] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 and Essex and Derby Streets home. The next day, how- 
 ever, 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. Gerrit Ammidon in the family carriage in front of 
 the countinghouse of Ammidon, Ammidon and Salton- 
 stone 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 dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 The afternoon passed the full and Nettie, bound in 
 preparation for supper for Redmond's, the Virginia Oys- 
 terman's 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 cleaned 
 this morning. Just run up and see. . . . He'll be at the 
 office." 
 
 Above, Nettie found the door closed, but it opened 
 readily as she turned the knob : she went in without hesi- 
 tation. 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 
 
 [159] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 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 pointing 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 fol- 
 lowed 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 Net- 
 tie Vollar 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 
 snifling the pungent haze swimming in the interior. Net- 
 tie could see his face, and she was appalled by an ex- 
 pression grimmer than any she remembered; it was 
 both harsh, implacable, and stricken, as empty of blood 
 as the countenance on the bed. The hand on the post 
 [160] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 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 com- 
 manded. They backed confused to the door. " If Ed- 
 ward is sick — " Kate Vollar 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 felt 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 ne- 
 cessities that defied all tragedy and death. 
 
 Nettie escaped with an enormous relief into the sunny 
 normal tranquility of the afternoon. The house had be- 
 come 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 plaited 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 
 
 [161J 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 with sharp conflicting odors, baled silks and half chests 
 of tea wrapped in bamboos and matting painted with the 
 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 a 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 Am- 
 midon child with her grandfather. The latter looked 
 round and recognized Nettie Vollar. " How's Barzil 
 Dunsack ? " he asked immediately. 
 
 She was at a loss for an answer, since she could not de- 
 scribe the subject of the inquiry as all right nor explain 
 their unhappy condition. " Intend to stop in," Jeremy 
 Ammidon 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 Ger- 
 rit 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 man- 
 ner that, in view of their great difference in age and expe- 
 rience, Nettie thought quite absurd. What a beautiful 
 dress the child had on — Porto Rico drawn work, with 
 pale yellow ribbons to her bormet. " I wish you'd stay 
 here a minute with Nettie Vollar," Jeremy told her, " while 
 [162] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 I see the wharfinger." He went unhurried along the 
 wharf, and Laurel Ammidon drew closer to her. 
 
 " She's not much of a ship either," Laurel said, indicat- 
 ing 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 skysail 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 Gerrit sick. She does me." Nettie Vollar was 
 seized by the temptation to question Laurel about Gerrit 
 Ammidon, about his wife — anything that touched or con- 
 cerned him. A wave of emotion swept over her, a loneli- 
 ness 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 Ger- 
 rit Ammidon 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 Ammidon 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, 
 - [163J 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 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 as- 
 sumed 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 Ed- 
 ward Dunsack's room ; yet not so much theirs as her grand- 
 father'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 in- 
 finitely 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 think- 
 ing about it. 
 
 Nettie wondered what he would do if she put an affec- 
 tionate arm about 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 de- 
 structive, than drink. But she was certain that he'd repel 
 her; he 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 
 
 [164] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 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, how- 
 ever; his knees sagged walking the length of the floor; in 
 the sitting room he fell into a leaden apathy. Nettie 
 VoUar's gaze rested on the volume of the life of the mis- 
 sionary who had died at such an early age on the lie de 
 France. The lamplight spread over the depressing mus- 
 tard 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 hol- 
 lows 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 resem- 
 blance between the young man and old — her uncle's face 
 was as ruined as the other's — 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," Nettie 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 un- 
 
 [165] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 guessed potent motive was at the back of her Uncle Ed- 
 ward's apparently erratic strolling and reiterations. Net- 
 tie 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, too, came an increased shrinking from life, 
 a greater capacity for injury ; and there could be no doubt 
 that it was an older Nettie Vollar who, in her mirror, re- 
 turned the questioning ill the resentful black eyes. 
 
 No further mention was made of the opium, no hint es- 
 caped from the two men of what Barzil 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 gayety 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 countermarching, 
 led by Flag's or the Salem Band. Strange constructions 
 of light wood climbed iri Washington Square — the set 
 pieces of the celebrated pyrotechnist secured at a " stag- 
 gering expense." Preliminary strings of firecrackers were 
 
 [166] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 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 be a part of the careless holiday town. Ed- 
 ward Dunsack opened the day by deprecating what fire- 
 works 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 Curasao. 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 Wash- 
 ington Square, and see the last colored disk of the fire- 
 works. Maybe, she told herself, tying the becoming ribbon 
 of her bonnet beneath a round chin with a 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 mem- 
 ory 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 
 
 [167J 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 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 Ammidon, with all the other 
 deeper aspects of her life, was thrust into the back of her 
 consciousness; she was existing as she breathed — without 
 will; the instinctive lighter qualities had her in full pos- 
 session. 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 a new scarlet uniform, that was the Boston Brass 
 Band — it was painted on the bass drum — with the Inde- 
 pendents; there were the Beverly Taylor Guards. The 
 massed onlookers filled the broad plain. 
 
 The drilling and countermarching proceeded and the 
 afternoon waned. At the dispersal 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 families 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 Vera Cruz, five hundred 
 
 [168j 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 feet long, and a series of triumphant arches with full- 
 length portraits in 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 house fronts 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 Ammidon family were upon her. . . . 
 In an instinctive confusion she saw William Ammidon 
 and his wife with their daughters, the old man, Jeremy, 
 and Gerrit. 
 
 They stopped before her in an assured, not unkindly in- 
 quisitiveness, the girls fresh and bright-faced, with crisp 
 lovely clothes; their mother, in a smart mantle and little 
 bonnet with knots of French flowers, greeted her with a 
 direct question tempered by a smile. William Ammidon, 
 smoking, was unconcerned; while Gerrit stayed obscured 
 outside the group. " Whom are you with, Nettie? " Rhoda 
 Ammidon 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 
 to come over to our steps, the view from there is fairly 
 good, and then some one can walk home with you." 
 
 They moved resolutely forward, giving Nettie Vollar 
 [169] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 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 Ammidon, the girls trooped on before, and the men 
 — Gerrit Ammidon — 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 Ger- 
 rit once more. This made a confusion of her emotions 
 that hid what she most felt about him. It wasn't a prox- 
 imity 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 Ammidons' with him, 
 undoubtedly had a power to stir her heart. 
 
 It brought, like her carefree excursion, a certain momen- 
 tary 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 Ammidons. 
 
 They arrived at the impressive entrance open on a high 
 dim interior. Jeremy and William Ammidon went in, 
 Rhoda lingered while a chair was brought for her, and 
 Sidsall and Camilla, Laurel and Janet ranged themselves 
 facing the Square. Gerrit hung silent in the doorway. 
 [170] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " Perhaps Taou Yuen will come down," Rhoda Ammi- 
 don suggested, and Nettie's throat was pinched at the pos- 
 sibility of seeing Gerrit's Chinese wife. But he answered 
 shortly in the negative. Taou Yuen 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 Vera Cruz was a cause 
 of bitter complaint to the children. 
 
 The fireworks had ceased to have the slightest signifi- 
 cance for Nettie; she was luxuriating in the suavity of the 
 Ammidon 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 passers-by on Pleasant Street — 
 as Edward Dunsack and herself had been — were unim- 
 portant. The massive portico and dignified fence, the 
 sense of spaciousness and gardens and lofty formal ceil- 
 ings, 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' name, Java 
 Head. It was more, quite heaven. 
 
 Thoughts of Gerrit winged in and out of her mind like 
 wayward birds. She turned with studied caution and 
 glanced swiftly but intently at as mu.'^ 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. 
 
 [171] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 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 the 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 fourth, seventeen seventy-six.' " 
 A tide of hand clapping swept over the dark masses. 
 " No," Laurel continued, " that's Salem. . . . It's Wash- 
 ington, 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 powde', she heard, about what she had no 
 
 conception. Rhoda Ammidon turned decidedly to her. 
 
 " It was nice to have you, Nettie," she declared; " but 
 
 we must see about getting you safely home. The carriage 
 
 [172] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 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. Ammidon interrupted impatiently. 
 Then Gerrit advanced from the doorway. " I'll walk 
 down with her," he said almost roughly. " No need to 
 take the horses out so late." Nettie Vollar thought that 
 his sister-in-law's mouth tightened in protest, but he gave 
 them no chance for further argumeiit. 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. Gerrit'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 the 
 short firm stride men acquire 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 
 Vollar. 
 
 She grasped, however, one difference — it was happiness 
 [173] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 now, the misery belonged to to-morrow. 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 in- 
 difference, a half willful and half automatic shutting 
 of her eyes to everything but the present, the actuality of 
 Gerrit Ammidon 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 felt had been, however ob- 
 scurely, at the back of the attention he had paid her: Jove. 
 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 insignifi- 
 cant and others mean and more, yes — cowardly, held it 
 in check, drove it back out of sight, as you might hur- 
 riedly 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 alto- 
 gether," 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 
 [174] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 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 a most astonishing ignorance of neces- 
 sities 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 to-night. Though it's the 
 first time anything like that has happened." 
 
 She caught a repressed bitter oath. 
 
 " I suppo.se 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 pos- 
 sibility 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 
 
 [175] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 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 what- 
 soever from Gerrit Ammidon. The fact that he had a 
 Chinese wife was powerless to alter her feeling 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 Gerrit didn't, in spite of her protest to 
 the contrary, s.tamp her as quite bad. Perhaps her grand- 
 father 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 some one else, even Chinese, wavered. All 
 the cheerful influences of the day, rising to the supreme 
 tranquil hour on the Ammidon porch, sank to dejection; it 
 was like the flight of the rockets. 
 
 She walked listlessly, her brain was numb; she was 
 terribly tired. Gerrit Ammidon'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, tliat 
 she was at his side. 
 
 " There's going to be a stir in Ammidon, Ammidon and 
 Saltonstone," he said presently, " when my father hears 
 of the new program. Everything is turning to the fast- 
 est California runs possible. William and James Sal- 
 [176] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 tonstone 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 other's in my blood, too — running the 
 northeast trades to Brazil and coming up into the south- 
 west passage winds for the Cape of Good Hope. A long 
 reach nearly to Australia and then north again to the In- 
 dian 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 round 
 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-ex- 
 amination, " that I am to blame for a gdod 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." 
 
 " You are worlds better! " she cried. 
 
 He turned to her, obviously startled, and she held for a 
 long breath his unguarded intense gaze. " Not very use- 
 ful, I am afraid," he replied at last; " not to-day, 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." 
 
 [177] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 This was a fresh mood to all her knowledge of his im- 
 patient 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 v?rists, 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 re- 
 moved. 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 dis- 
 posed of in that easy manner; it was probable that they 
 
 [17S] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 couldn't be disposed of, righted, at all. Her mother, with 
 her help, must continue to keep Barzil'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, Gerrit Ammidon, wouldn't have it, he asserted in a 
 heated return of his familiar dictatorial manner. The 
 fellow would be out of there to-morrow. It was a damned\ 
 unendurable outrage ! 
 
 She smiled softly and laid a momentary hand on 
 his sleeve. " That's nothing, Gerrit; 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 com- 
 fort, resolved nothing, made no reply to her question. To- 
 morrow offered precisely the same hopeless outlook of 
 yesterday. No answer from Gerrit, Gerrit married, was 
 possible. She saw that. 
 
 " I'm not fit to go around on land blundering and set- 
 ting tongues to clapping," he declared. " I ought to be 
 locked in my cabin when the ship's in port, and let out 
 only after sail's made again." 
 
 She heard a slight movement in the grass; and turning 
 sharply caught the vague outline of a man, the thin un- 
 substantial shape of Edward Dunsack. He vanished im- 
 mediately; Gerrit, 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 
 
 [179] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 which, too, in the form of a woman, a Manchu, had de- 
 stroyed 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 sus- 
 pended at the admittance which she was certain must fol- 
 low. But he fell into another glooming silence. 
 
 After all, she couldn't expect him to continue that de- 
 velopment. A different man might; and Nettie wasn't 
 sure of her refusal to listen ... to the end. But she 
 was familiar with Gerrit'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 over- 
 whelming 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—" 
 
 [180] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " I don't want your Rhoda ! " she interrupted passion- 
 ately. " 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 rirn 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 un- 
 speakable reassurance. She hurried away blindly, sick 
 to the inmost depths of her being. The morning, when 
 she had tied her gay bonnet ribbons and started out with 
 the 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. 
 
 [181] 
 
VIII 
 
 THE dejection, the sense of a difference that held 
 from him any comprehension of the vast maze 
 of shore life, persisted as Gerrit Ammidon 
 walked toward home. It was such an unusual feeling that 
 he was conscious of it; he examined and speculated upon 
 his despondency as if it had been something actually 
 before him. The result of this was a still increased dis- 
 turbance. He didn't like such strange qualities arbi- 
 trarily forcing their way into his being — he had the navi- 
 gator's necessity for a clear understanding of the combined 
 elements within and without which resulted in a har- 
 monious, or at least predictable, movement. He distrusted 
 all fogs. In a manner the course before him was plain 
 — married to Taou Yuen, shipmaster in his family's firm, 
 he had simple duties to perform, no part of which included 
 sailing in strange or dangerous waters; yet though this was 
 beyond argument he was still troubled by a great number 
 of unpleasant conditions of mind and obscure pressures. 
 Gradually, however, his normal indignation returned, 
 the contempt for a society without perceptible justice, cen- 
 tered principally in what Nettie VoUar had had from life. 
 This, he assured himself, wasn't because he was in any 
 way involved with her; but because it was such a flagrant 
 case. She was a very nice girl. It was entirely allow- 
 able that he should admit that. As a fact, he warmly 
 felt that h« was her friend; the past justified, no, in- 
 [182] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 sisted on, that at least. He wondered exactly how fond 
 he had been of her — in other words, how near he had 
 come to marrying her. It had been an obvious possibility, 
 decidedly; but the desire had never become actual. No, 
 his feeling for her had never broken the bounds of a 
 natural liking and a desire to secure decent treatment for 
 her. The last had been vain. 
 
 If his mental searching had ended there it would have 
 presented no difficulties, created no fog; but, unfortunately, 
 there was another element which he admitted with great 
 reluctance, an inborn discomfort. Although he had been 
 clear about what had actually happened with Nettie there 
 was reasonable doubt that the same limitations had 
 operated with her. Briefly she had missed him more than 
 he had realized. He explained this to his sense of innate 
 masculine diffidence by the loneliness of her days. She 
 had missed him . . . something within whispered that she 
 still did. Women, he remembered hearing, were like that. 
 
 In the light, the possibility, of this he saw that he had 
 done her a great wrong. 
 
 It had been his damned headlong ignorance of the dan- 
 gerous quality of life, the irresponsibility of a child with 
 gunpowder. With all this in his mind it seemed doubly 
 imperative that he should do something for her; he owed 
 her, he was forced to admit, more than a mere impersonal 
 consideration. His thoughts returned unbidden to the 
 fact that she — she had liked him. He insisted almost 
 angrily on the past tense, but it surprised him and gave 
 him a perceptible warm glow. Nettie was very pleasing: 
 he inferred that she was a creature of deep emotions, affec- 
 tions. 
 
 [I&33 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 At this he shook himself abruptly — such things were 
 not permissible. Gerrit felt a swift sense of shame; they 
 injured Nettie. His mind shifted to Taou Yuen. He 
 found her asleep on the day bed she preferred, her elab- 
 orate headdress resting above the nanow pillow of black 
 wicker. He could distinguish her face, pallid in the blue 
 gloom, and a delicate, half-shut hand. He was flooded 
 with the intense admiration which increasingly formed his 
 chief thought of her; this, with the obvious racial dif- 
 ference, put her, as it were, on an elevation — a beauti- 
 fully lacquered vase above his own blundering person. 
 She was calm, serious and good, in the absolute Western 
 definitions of those terms; she had her emotions under 
 faultless control. Taou Yuen should be an ideal wife for 
 any man; she was, he corrected the form sharply. All 
 that he knew of her was admirable; the part which con- 
 stantly baffled him didn't touch their relationship. 
 
 It was reasonable to expect small differences between 
 her and Salem: at times her calm chilled him by a swift 
 glimpse of utter coldness, at times he would have liked her 
 gravity to melt into something less than ivory perfection; 
 even her goodness had oppressed him. The last hadn't the 
 human quality of, for example, Nettie Vollar's goodness, 
 colored by rebellion, torn by doubt, and yet triumphing. 
 
 If he only understood the three religions of China, if he 
 were an intellectual man, Gerrit realized, he could have 
 grasped his wife more fully. He was completely ignorant 
 of Chinese history, of all the forces that had united to form 
 Taou Yuen. For instance: he was unable to reconcile 
 her elevated spirit with the " absurd superstitions " that 
 influenced almost her every act — the enormous number of 
 [184] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 lucky and unlucky days, the coin hung on his bed, the 
 yellow charm against sickness and red against evil spirits; 
 only yesterday she had burnt a paper form representing 
 thunder and drunk its ashes in a cup of tea. She was 
 tremendously in earnest about the evil spirits — they were, 
 she maintained, lurking everywhere, in all shapes and de- 
 grees of harm. Edward Dunsack was possessed, she de- 
 clared; but he had pointed out that opium was a sufficient 
 explanation of anything evil in him, and that it was 
 unnecessary to look for a more fantastic reason. 
 
 He lay awake for a comparatively long while, as he had 
 several times lately, divided between his consciousness and 
 the regular breathing of his wife. If the past had brought 
 Nettie VoUar to depend on him in some slight degree Taou 
 Yuen did so absolutely: except for him she was lost in a 
 strange world. Yet Taou Yuen didn't seem helpless in the 
 manner of Nettie. He had once before thought of the 
 former as finely tempered metal. Her transcendent resig- 
 nation, with its consequent lack of sympathetic contact 
 with the imperfect humanity of — well, Nettie, gave 
 Taou Yuen a dangerous freedom from all that bound 
 Salem in comparative safety. 
 
 He dressed first, as usual, in the morning, while she 
 stirred only enough to get her pipe and tobacco, on the 
 floor at her side. Outside, the elms were losing their fresh 
 greenness in the dusty film of midsummer; the Square 
 held an ugly litter from the fireworks of last evening. 
 William, too, was about, but he was uncommunicative, his 
 brow scored in a frown. Their father, always down be- 
 fore the others, had returned from the inspection of his 
 trees, and was tramping back and forth in the library. 
 
 [185] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 The elder seemed unrested by the night, his skin, as Rhoda 
 had pointed out, was baggy. 
 
 " Now that the Nautilus is afloat again," Jeremy Am- 
 midon said, " you'll want to be at sea." Examining this 
 natural conclusion, Gerrit was surprised, startled, to find 
 that it was no longer true. For the first time in his mem- 
 ory he was not anxious to be under sail. This of course 
 was caused by a natural perplexity about Taou Yuen's 
 comfort and happiness. 
 
 " I don't know what the firm's plans are for me," he 
 answered cautiously. " There is some talk of taking me 
 out of the China trade for the California runs. I 
 shouldn't like that." 
 
 ' Jeremy was turning at his secretary, and he stopped to 
 pound his fist on its narrow ledge. " It's that damned 
 Griffiths again and his cursed jackknife hull! " he ex- 
 claimed. The dark tide suffused his countenance. Ger- 
 rit studied him thoughtfully: he didn't know just how 
 much William had yet told their father about the sweep- 
 ing changes taking place in Ammidon, Ammidon and 
 Saltonstone. He did see, however, that it was unwise 
 to excite the old gentleman unduly. 
 
 " I was saying only yesterday," he put in pacifically, 
 " that you and myself are getting to be old models — " he 
 broke off as William entered the library. The latter evi- 
 dently grasped at once the subject of their discussion, for 
 he went on in a firm voice somewhat contradicted by a 
 restrained but palpable anxiety: 
 
 " Now, father, this was bound to come up and you 
 must sit down and listen quietly." The elder, on the 
 verge of a tempestuous reply, constrained himself to a 
 [186] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 painful attention. " It's usdess to point out to you the 
 beneficial changes in sea carrying, for you are certain to 
 deny their good and drag out the past. So I am simply 
 forced to tell you that after careful consideration we have 
 decided to line the firm with the events of the day and hold 
 our place in the growing pressure of competition. This 
 may sound brutal, but it was forced on us by the attitude 
 you have adopted. Shortly, this is what we intend, in 
 fact are doing: 
 
 " Orders have been placed with George Raynes at 
 Portsmouth and Jackson up in Boston for clippers of a 
 thousand and twelve hundred tons and another is almost 
 ready to be launched from Curtis' Chelsea shipyard. It 
 oughtn't to be necessary to call your attention again to the 
 fact that the Sea Witch has brought the passage from 
 Hong Kong to something like three months. The profits 
 of the California trade will be enormous and depend en- 
 tirely on speed. 
 
 " I'll admit that this is a big thing, it will cut sharply 
 into our fimds — something like a quarter of a million 
 dollars. But, if you will be patient for a little only, I can 
 promise that you'll see astonishing returns. At the same 
 time we have no intention of giving up China and India, 
 but we'll limit ourselves more closely in the nature of the 
 cargoes, practically nothing but tea unbroken from Canton 
 to Boston. I'll be glad to go into all this in detail at 
 the countinghouse, where we have the statistics and speci- 
 fications." 
 
 To Gerrit's surprise Jeremy Ammidon sat quietly at 
 the end of William's speech; he wasn't even locking at 
 them, but had his gaze bent upon the floor. There was a 
 
 [187] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 commanding, even impressive, quality in his silence that 
 forced the respect of both his sons. More — it made Ger- 
 rit overwhelmingly conscious of his affection, his deep 
 admiration, for his father. He recalled the latter's mem- 
 orable voyage in the little Two Capes — the barque of two 
 hundred and nine tons — into the dangers, so imminent to 
 a master, of uncomprehended waters and thousands of 
 miles with, for the most part, only the sheerest dead reck- 
 oning. Jeremy AmmidOn said finally: 
 
 " If it's done it's done. I used to think there vi^ere two 
 Ammidons in the firm, not to mention Gerrit; but it seems 
 there's only one. A man who has never been to sea." 
 He rose and marched, slower and more ponderous than 
 ever before, to the cupboard where he kept the square bot- 
 tle of Medf ord rum ; there, with trembling hands, he poured 
 himself out a measure. He shut the glass door, but stood 
 for an oppressive space with his back to the room, seeing 
 what old vision of struggle or accomplishment. 
 
 " I suppose I've been a damned nuisance about the 
 countinghouse for a long time," he pronounced, turning. 
 William rose. " You made it," he said; " it's you. God 
 forgive me if I have been impatient or forgetful of all we 
 owe you." There was a stir of skirts in the doorway, and 
 Rhoda entered. " Breakfast — " she stopped, and with 
 a quick glance at her husband and Gerrit went at once 
 to Jeremy Ammidon. " They've been bothering you 
 again," she declared, and turned an expression of bright 
 anger on the younger men. " Ah, how hard and hateful 
 and blind you are! " she cried. 
 
 William, with a hopeless gesture, walked from the room. 
 Gerritt moved to a window facing the Square; but he saw 
 [188] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 nothing of its sultry yellow-green expanse — he was re- 
 membering how as a child, his mother already dead, a 
 nurse had held him up on Derby Wharf to see his father 
 sweep into port from the long voyage to the East. He 
 caught again the resonant voice, as if sounding from a 
 hold of ribbed oak, the tremendous vigor of the arm that 
 swept him up to a bearded face. He couldn't bring him- 
 self to move now and see an old haggard man clinging 
 with tremulous emotion and tears to the sympathy, the 
 strength, of a woman. 
 
 Later in the morning, to his immense reUef , Jeremy Am- 
 midon regained a surprising amount of composure. At 
 first determined never to return to Liberty Street, toward 
 noon Gerrit found him in the hall with his broad hat and 
 wanghee. " I'll just have a slant at those specifications," 
 he remarked. " Like as not they've left off the hatch 
 coamings." Gerrit suggested, " Since it's so hot why don't 
 you have the carriage round ? " The other voiced his 
 customary disparagement of that vehicle. " If I see that 
 I'm going to be late for dinner," he added, " I'll get one 
 of the young men to fetch me something. I don't want to 
 give Rhoda any trouble." 
 
 Still, on the steps, he lingered, gazing pridefuUy up at 
 the bulk of the house he had built; his eyes rested on the 
 brass plate, engraved with the words Java Head, on the 
 dignified white door. " A lot of talk when I had that 
 done," he commented; " people said they'd never heard of 
 it, ought to have my name there for convenience if noth- 
 ing else. They didn't know. It would take a sailor for 
 that. Don't forget to tell Rhoda not to wait if I'm late. 
 All those girls of hers get hungry. I expect William 
 
 [189] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 consulted Laurel about this new move," he ended with a 
 gleam of humor. " She's a great hand for a dipper since 
 she talked to Captain Waterman." He was down the 
 steps, starting deliberately across the street. There was 
 a last mutter of doubt. The bulky slow figure in yellow 
 Chinese silk moved away and Gerrit returned to the shad- 
 owed tranquillity of the library. 
 
 More than any other place in the house it bore the 
 impression of his father. He wandered about the room, 
 lost in its associations, stopped in front of the tall narrow 
 walnut bookcase and took out one of the small company 
 of Jeremy Ammidon's logs, reading disconnectedly in the 
 precise script: 
 
 " Tuesday, December 24. 132 days out. All this day 
 gentle breezes and cloudy. Saw kdp, birds, etc. 
 
 " Tacked ship to the eastward under short sail. At 
 daylight made all sail to SW. Gentle breezes and clear 
 pleasant weather. Saw huge shoals of flying fish." 
 
 " May 19, 11 days out. Hainan in sight, bearing from 
 W by N to NNW. At sunset the breeze died away and 
 hauled off the land. All night light breezes. Made 
 all possible sail to the SSW. At the same time set the 
 extremity of Hainan which bore NW by N" to N. Past 
 three Chinese vessels steering NNE. Saw much scum mi 
 the water and at 11 a. m. lost sight of land." 
 
 " November 14, 65 days out These twenty-four hours 
 commences with variable breezes at west and smooth sea. 
 Saw brig steering to the Eastward. The land of Sumatra 
 bearing SW by W to SE by S. Tied rips." 
 
 He returned the log to its resting place with a quiet 
 smile at the last period. . It was all incredibly simple — 
 [190] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 a lost simplicity of navigation and a lost innocent wonder 
 at the Mare Atlanticum of old fable. 
 
 Neither William nor Jeremy Ammidon was present for 
 dinner. They were, Gerrit concluded, submerged in the 
 effort to bring the changing activities of the firm into the' 
 latter's comprehension. His foot was on the stair leading 
 up to his wife, when there was a violent knocking on the 
 front door. It sounded with a startling abruptness in 
 the shut hall, and Gerrit instinctively answered without 
 waiting for a servant. The flushed and breathless young 
 man before him was evidently perturbed by his appear- 
 ance. He stammered: 
 
 " Captain Ammidon, you — you must come down to the 
 countinghouse. At once, please! " 
 
 His thoughts, directed upon his father, gathered into a 
 chilling certainty. " Captain Jeremy is sick? " he de- 
 manded instantly. The hesitation of the other seemed to 
 confirm an infinitely greater calamity. "Dead?" he 
 asked again, in a flooding misery of apprehension. The 
 clerk nodded: 
 
 " In a second, like," he continued. " All we know they 
 were talking in Mr. William Ammidon's room — one of 
 the boys was out that minute getting the old gentleman 
 some lunch — when we heard a fall, it was quite plain, 
 and Mr. Saltonstone — " 
 
 " That will do," Gerrit, cut him short. He turned into 
 the house, rapidly considering what must follow. He'd 
 go, certainly; but first he must warn Rhoda, she would 
 have the girls to prepare. . . . Rhoda had always been 
 exceptionally considerate and fond of Jeremy Ammidon. 
 He found her at the entrance to her room, and said, " My 
 
 [191J 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 father is dead." Her warm color sank and tears filled 
 her eyes. 
 
 Hurrying over Bath Street to Liberty his grief was held 
 in check by the pressing actualities of the moment. He 
 had time, however, to feel glad that he had spent the 
 morning largely in warm thoughts of the dead man. 
 
 He passed rapidly into the entrance of the establish- 
 ment of Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone. Im- 
 mediately on the right there was an open railed enclosure 
 of desks in the center of which a group of clerks watched 
 him with mingled respect and curiosity as he continued 
 to the inner shut space. It was a large light room with 
 windows on Charter Street. William's expansive flat- 
 topped desk with its inked green baize was on the left, 
 and, under a number of framed sere ships' letters and 
 privateersmen's Bonds of the War of 1812, Gerrit saw 
 the heavy body extended on a broad wooden bench, a 
 familiar orange Bombay handkerchief spread over the face. 
 
 Never in all the memory of his brother had William 
 Ammidon been so stricken. As he entered James Salton- 
 stone left studying a list hastily scribbled on a half sheet 
 of the firm's writing paper. He nodded silently to Gerrit, 
 who advanced to the covered face and lifted the handker- 
 chief. There were still traces of congestion, but a marble- 
 like pallor had taken the place of the familiar ruddy color. 
 Something of the heaviness of his old age, the blurring 
 thickness of long inactivity, had vanished, giving his still 
 countenance an expression of vigor, resolution, contradicted 
 by an arm trailing like the loose end of a heavy rope on 
 the floor. William, with a clenched hand on his desk, 
 spoke mHi difficulty: 
 
 [192] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " You must know this, Gerrit; and then I'll ask you 
 never to allude to it again. It might be argued that — 
 that James and I killed him, but absolutely without in- 
 tention, by accident. Gerrit, I loved him more than I took, 
 time to know. Well, you may or piay not have heard that 
 we own two topsail schooners in the opium trade, between 
 India, Ningpo and Amoy, but you do know how father 
 detested anything to do with the drug. We said nothing 
 to him about this; it seemed necessary, no — permissible. 
 But to-day when we were coming to a peaceable under- 
 standing about the new contracts he stumbled over one of 
 the schooner's manifests. Mislaid, you see — a clerk ! 
 It swept him to his feet in a rage, he couldn't speak, and 
 — and he had walked, it was hot. . . ." 
 
 Gerrit Ammidon made no answer; there was nothing 
 to be said. He was shaken by a burning anger at the 
 cupidity, the ugly commercial grasping, to which his 
 father had been sacrificed. A gulf opened between him 
 and his brother and James Saltonstone; he was as dif- 
 ferent from them as the sea was from the land, as the 
 vsrind-swept deck of the Nautilus was from this dry build- 
 ing with its stifling papers and greed. He might be in 
 the service of the firm — Gerrit was not incorporated in 
 the partnership — he might carry their cargoes for the mul- 
 tiplication of the profit, but his essential service and re- 
 sponsibility, his life, were addressed to another and in- 
 finitely higher and more difficult consummation than the 
 stowed kegs of Spanish dollars, the bills of sale. This 
 was composed of the struggle with the immeasurable 
 elements 'of the seas and winds, the safety of lives, the 
 endless trying of his endurance and will and luck. 
 
 [193] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " Now," he spoke with a perceptible bitterness, " you 
 can have your way without interference, without his mix- 
 ing up your papers or making the blunders of a slow sort 
 of honesty." 
 
 " I am under no obligation to your judgment or opinion," 
 William replied stiffly. " There are always complications 
 you will never penetrate nor .carry. At present your as- 
 sistance is more necessary than any display of temper." 
 
 The funeral gathered and ebbed in a long procession 
 of carriages through a sultry noon, the services at the 
 grave concluded by the symbolic dropping of the earth 
 on Jeremy Ammidon's coffin lowered into the deep narrow 
 clay pit. The large varied throng lingered for a breath, 
 as if unable to take their attention from the raw opening 
 that had absorbed the shipmaster, and then there was a 
 determined and reassuring commonplace murmur, a hur- 
 rying away into the vital warmth of the day. 
 
 The evening was the loveliest summer and the garden of 
 Java Head could afford: a slow moon disentangled itself 
 from the indigo foliage at the back of the stable and 
 soared with an increasing brilliancy, bathing the sod and 
 summerhouse and poplars, the metallic box borders and 
 spiked flower beds, in a crystal clearness. The Ammidons 
 sat about the willow, Rhoda with a hand affectionately on 
 her husband's arm, the children — Laurel and Janet stay- 
 ing without remark long past their accustomed hours for 
 bed — still and white under the blanching moon. Gerrit 
 intently studied his wife, Taou Yuen, in a concentrated 
 manner. She, too, was in white, the Chinese mark of 
 sorrow. 
 
 Suddenly in the face of his suffering and memories 
 [194] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 she had appeared startlingly remote, as if, from standing 
 close beside him, she were moving farther and farther 
 away. The image was made profoundly disconcerting by 
 the fact that they acted without their own accord; it took 
 the aspect of a purely arbitrary phenomenon over which 
 they had no control. At the same time Nettie VoUar was 
 surprisingly near, actual — he could see every line and 
 shading of her vivid face; he felt the warm impact of her 
 instant sympathy. He had caught a glimpse of Barzil 
 Dunsack at the funeral; but the other was immediately 
 hidden by the crowd, and Gerrit had been unable to dis- 
 cover whether his son and daughter or Nettie had accom- 
 panied him. 
 
 His thoughts turned in a score of associations and ques- 
 tions to Nettie; but when he found himself trying to pic- 
 ture her exact employment at, the present moment he was 
 angrily aroused. He had, he realized, considered nothing 
 else for the past hour, and his preoccupation was growing 
 more intense, personal. He stirred abruptly, and fixed his 
 mind on the imminent changes from his father's death. 
 First the possibility would develop of his becoming a 
 member of the firm; but to this, he silently declared, he 
 would not agree. His gaze rested with a faint underlying 
 animosity on William, seated upright in a somber absorp- 
 tion, and a disparagement of the latter's activities and 
 scale of values. Gerrit saw that there must be a pacific 
 legal knot to untangle; the division of Jeremy's estate 
 would require time — he had somewhere heard that such 
 affairs often dragged on for a year; and now he was again 
 in a fever of impatiencei to be away, safe, at sea. He 
 added the more portentous word with the vague self- 
 
 [195] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 assurance that it was only the customary expression of his 
 notable ignorance of land; but it echoed with an ominous 
 special insistence in his mind. 
 
 The Nautilus,' he recalled, was once more afloat, re- 
 paired; and a plan occurred to him that seemed to dispose 
 of all his difficulties, even of the distasteful possibility of 
 the California clipper service. He could take the ship 
 as part of his inheritance; and, though ostensibly sailing 
 her in the interest of the firm, make such voyages and 
 ports, carry such cargoes, as his independence dictated. 
 The Nautilus, with a cargo out of tin and dyes and cotton 
 manufactures, and forty or fifty thousand trade dollars, 
 would represent a sum of nearly two hundred thousand; 
 but as a family they were very rich; he'd have more than 
 that; and bank the remainder intact to the credit of his 
 wife. 
 
 There were many practical aspects of his marriage 
 that he had not stopped to weigh in its precipitant con- 
 summation. The problem, pointed out by Rhoda, of his 
 absence from Taou Yuen on cruise could not be solved 
 with the facility he had taken for granted. It was as 
 impossible to leave her happily here — he was aware of 
 her growing impatience with Western habit — as it would 
 be for him to become a contented part of Chinese home 
 life; and not only was she uncomfortably cramped and 
 sick on shipboard, but he doubted whether he could per- 
 suade his crews to sail with her. Superstitious able sea- 
 men balked at the presence of even a normal wife aft; and 
 a Chinese would be regarded as a sign of certain disaster. 
 
 He would have to establish her somewhere in the East 
 Indies; and he viewed with a new dislike all such tropical 
 [196] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 settings. His entire life threatened to become an affair of 
 damnable palm trees and Oriental stenches. Gerrit Am- 
 midon broke into a cold sweat at the realization of the far 
 more direct implication that had taken substance in his 
 mind. The thing was going entirely too far! He won- 
 dered irritably at the obscure cause for such violent inner 
 agitations. 
 
 Rhoda Ammidon with a dim smile rose, gathering her 
 daughters about her, and departed in a pale cloud of mus- 
 lin. Taou Yuen, with her murmuring formal politeness, 
 moved away too, leaving the brothers together. What- 
 ever sympathetic intercourse they might otherwise have had, 
 whatever shared memories of their boyhood and their 
 father, were made impossible by William's admission of 
 the immediate cause of the elder's death. 
 
 " The Saltonstones are going into Boston this fall," 
 William said abruptly. " It is necessary for -one of us to 
 live there; and Caroline has always had a hankering for 
 wider society. Rhoda, I was surprised to learn, wishes to 
 remain here at Java Head for a year or so anyway. She 
 has a very real affection for the place. But I tell her 
 when the girls are older Boston, or perhaps New York, 
 will give them far greater opportunities. Sidsall, stranger 
 still, was in tears at the whole thing; she seemed ridicu- 
 lously upset about leaving." 
 
 The vision of Nettie Vollar persisted, bright and disturb- 
 ing. Once he was at sea, Gerrit told himself, on the cir- 
 cumscribed freedom of his quarter-deck, he would lose the 
 unsettling fever burning at that instant in his veins. But 
 the memory of long solitary passages with nothing to dis- 
 tract his mind through week upon week after the ship 
 
 [197] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 took the trades, when hour upon hour his thoughts turned 
 inward on themselves and reviewed every past act and 
 feeling, made doubtful even that old release. The trouble 
 was that he instinctively avoided any square facing of the 
 difficulty that had multiplied with such amazing rapidity 
 — like a banyan tree — about the present and the shad- 
 owed future. This he was forced to admit, but grimly 
 added that there could be only one answer to whatever he 
 might lay bare — the adherence to the single fundamental 
 duty of which he never lost sight. No port was gained by 
 changing blindly from course to course, that way lay the 
 reefs; a, man could but keep steadily by the compass. 
 That, at least, was all he could see, propose, for himself, 
 being rather limited and lacking the resources which others 
 of greater knowledge so confidently explored. 
 
 After breakfast on the following morning he mounted 
 the dignified staircase, with the sweeping railing of red 
 narra wood and high Palladian window at the turn, to his 
 wife. In their room he was bathed in a cold sweat of dis- 
 may at a sudden detached view of Taou Yuen in her com- 
 plete Manchu mourning for his father. An unhemmed 
 garment of coarse white hemp hung in ravelings about 
 slippers of sackcloth; what had been an elaborate head- 
 dress was hidden under a binding of the bleached hemp; 
 she wore no paint nor flowers; her pins and earrings were 
 pasted with dough, and her expression was drugged with 
 the contemplative fervor of what had evidently been a re- 
 ligious ceremonial. 
 
 " For the wise old man, for your father," she said. She 
 was exhausted and sank onto the day bed; but almost im- 
 mediately her hand reached out in the direction of her 
 [198] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 pipe, and she smiled faintly at him. He clenched his 
 sinewy hands, the muscles of his jaw knotted, as he gazed 
 steadily at the woman, the Manchu woman, he had of his 
 own free accord married. It sickened him that, for the 
 drawing of a breath, he had regarded Taou Yuen with 
 such appalling injustice — injustice, the evil he hated and 
 condemned more than any other. What, in the name of 
 God, was he made of that he could sink so low ! 
 
 " We'll leave here soon," he declared abruptly; " the 
 Nautilus will be ready for sea almost any time." 
 
 He could recognize, from his slight knowledge of her, 
 that Taou Yuen welcomed the news. " Shanghai? " she 
 asked. He nodded. It came over him that he was no 
 longer young. His father had retired from the sea within 
 a few years of his own present age and built Java Head, 
 the house that was to be a final harbor of unalloyed hap- 
 piness. No such prospect awaited him; he had one of the 
 premonitions that were more certain than the most solid 
 realities — as long as he lived he must sail in ships, strug- 
 gling with winds and calms, with currents' and cockling 
 and placid seas. Well, that was natural, inevitable, what 
 he would have chosen. At the same time he dwelt, with a 
 sensation of loneliness, on the green garden and drawing- 
 room filled in June with the scent of lilacs, on Rhoda sur- 
 rounded by her girls. 
 
 When the question of the division of Jeremy Ammi- 
 don's estate came up, he was, as he had foreseen, urged 
 to become a partner of the firm; and, when that failed, told 
 that it was his vested duty to continue in his present 
 capacity as a shipmaster in all their interests. He was 
 seated with Saltonstone and William in the countinghouse 
 
 [199] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 and he could tell from his brother's ill-restrained impa- 
 tience that the other considered him hardly more than a 
 clumsy-witted, stubborn fool before the mast of the facts 
 of actual life. 
 
 His gaze, above their heads, rested on the framed pass j 
 of the ship Mocha, one of his father's last commands, over 
 the bench where he had lain dead. It was given by the 
 President, James Monroe, in 1818, its white paper seal 
 embossed on the stained parchment. It had an engraving 
 of a lighthouse and spired town on the dark water's edge, 
 and above, a picture of a ship with everything drawing in 
 a fair wind, the upper sails torn off on a dotted wavering 
 line for the purpose of identification with its stub. 
 
 " No," he told them quietly, " I'll go my own way as I 
 said; with the Nautilus, if that can be arranged." He 
 rose with a nod of finality, and James Saltonstone re- 
 marked, " Jeremy to the life." Gerrit replied, " I'd not 
 ask anything better." 
 
 Through the evening he heard little but the discussion 
 of Mr. Polk's approaching visit to Salem. The President 
 was to leave the train at the Beverly Depot at three p. M. 
 and be fetched with Secretary Buchanan and Marshal 
 Barnes in a barouche with six horses and met at the out- 
 skirts of Salem by the city authorities. 
 
 There would be a Beverly cavalcade, the city guard was 
 ordered to muster at the armory; while an evening parade 
 at five o'clock and the military ball in Franklin Hall 
 were to follow. 
 
 But when the day and occasion actually arrived it was 
 spoiled by a succession of unforeseen mishaps. The train 
 was late and the presidential party in a fever of haste — 
 [200] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 the procession, hurrying thrpugh the massed public-school 
 children and throngs of Chestnut Street, gave a perfunc- 
 tory attention to the salutes and short address of the mayor. 
 The President's reply, hardly more than a few introduc- 
 tory phrases, cut short, the barouche was sent plunging 
 over its route with the Secretary crying, "Drive on! 
 Drive on! " and Marshal Barnes swearing and expecto- 
 rating in callous profusion. 
 
 Some of the crowd, the Ammidons heard, had been 
 knocked down and injured in the pell-mell of the rush. 
 Gerrit's countenance showed his contempt of what he held 
 to be a characteristically ludicrous farce. After all, his 
 wishes in regard to the Nautilus had been easy of execu- 
 tion, the ship was now his; he was already contract- 
 ing for a cargo. He had been to see Mr. Broadrick, his 
 first mate, and the latter was assembling the chief members 
 of the crew. As always at the prospect of sailing he was 
 unsettled, concerned with countless details of departure 
 — like a vessel straining at her last anchor. 
 
 Seated in the library with Taou Yuen — he had called 
 her aside from her fixed passage to their room from the 
 garden — he was recounting his main plans for the near 
 future, when he became aware of an arrival on the steps 
 outside. He heard a servant's voice, and, immediately 
 after, the woman appeared in the doorway; but she was 
 forced aside by Edward Dunsack. Gerrit's quick resent- 
 ment flared at such an unmannered intrusiort, and he 
 moved ungraciously forward. The servant explained im- 
 potently, " I told him I would see — " 
 
 " Yes? " Gerrit Ammidon demanded. 
 
 Dunsack bowed ceremoniously to Taou Yuen, then he 
 [201] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 faced the other. On the ver^e of speech he hesitated, as 
 if an unexpected development made inadequate whatever 
 he had been prepared to say; then, with a sudden decision, 
 he hurried into an emotional jumble of words. " I can tell 
 you in a breath — Nettie was badly hurt in that cursed 
 rabble yesterday. It looks as if she was actually struck 
 by one of the horses. She was unconscious, and then 
 delirious; now she is in her right mind but very weak; 
 and, since she wished to see you, I volunteered to put our 
 pride in my pocket and carry her message." 
 
 An instant numbing pain compressed Gerrit's heart; he 
 felt that, in an involuntary exclamation, he had clearly 
 shown the depth of his dismay. Damn the fellow, why 
 had he burst out in this public indecent manner! The 
 situation he had plausibly created, the thing he managed to 
 insinuate, was, an insult to them all — to his wife, Taou 
 Yuen, coldly composed beyond, himself and to Nettie. He 
 stood with his level gaze fixed in an enraged perplexity on 
 Edward Dunsack's sallow countenance, deep sunk on its 
 bony structure, conscious that there was no possibility of a 
 satisfactory or even coherent reply. 
 
 " Something was said about this afternoon," the other 
 added. That period, Gerrit realized, was nearly over. 
 But above every other consideration rose the knowledge 
 that he would have to see Nettie Vollar, badly injured, as 
 she desired. The common humanity of that necessity left 
 him no choice. 
 
 He turned to Taou Yuen with a brief formal explana- 
 tion. A friend, their families had been associated for 
 years, had been hurt and sent for him. . . . Return im- 
 [202] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 mediately. He paused, in the act of leaving, at the door 
 of the library, waiting for Edward Dunsack to join him; 
 but the other had resolutely turned his back upon Gerrit. 
 He showed no indication of departure. Gerrit Ammidon 
 was at the point of an exasperated direction; but that, in 
 , the light of Dunsack's purpose there, appeared ridiculously 
 abrupt; and confident of his wife's supreme ability to con- 
 trol any situation he continued without further hesitation 
 to the street, hurrying in a mounting anxiety toward the 
 Dunsacks'. 
 
 Dwelling on his conduct in the library, at the sudden 
 announcement of Nettie's accident, he felt that he had 
 acted in a precipitant if not actually confused way. As a 
 fact, it had all been largely mechanical; his oppression, 
 his dread for Nettie, had made everything else dim to see 
 and faint to hear. Dunsack's grimacing face, the immo- 
 bile figure of his wife, the familiar sweep of the room, had 
 been things of no more substance than a cloud between him 
 and the only other reality existing. He had no memory, 
 for instance, of having stopped to secure his hat, but he 
 found it swinging characteristically in a hand. And now 
 even the semblance of reasonable speech and conduct he 
 had managed to command vanished before a panic that all 
 but forced him into a run. 
 
 The main door of Barzil Dunsack's house was open on 
 the narrow somber region within; he knocked sharply 
 against the wood at the side and was immediately an- 
 swered by the appearance of Kate Vollar. 
 
 " This is a great kindness, Captain Ammidon," she told 
 him in her negative voice; "come in here, please." He, 
 
 [203] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 looked hastily about the formal space into which she led 
 him, expecting to see Nettie prostrate, but she was not 
 there. "How is she?" he demanded impatiently. 
 
 "Nettie?" her mother turned as if surprised by an 
 unexpected twist of the situation. " Oh, why she'll mend 
 all right, the doctor says; but it will be slow. Her arm 
 had an ugly slithering break, and she suffers with it all 
 the time." A pause followed, in which she met his in- 
 terrogation with a growing mystification. " I suppose 
 Edward told you," she ventured finally. The sense of 
 being at a loss was swiftly communicated to him. 
 
 " Your brother said Nettie wanted to see me," he re- 
 turned bluntly. 
 
 " Now, however could Edward do a thing like that ! " 
 she cried in deep distress. " Why, there's no truth to it. 
 I asked him myself to see if you'd kindly stop and give me 
 some advice. What put it in my head was that once your 
 father offered — he told Nettie to let him know if there 
 was anything to be done. Edward Dunsack isn't just 
 right in his head." 
 
 Gerrit was filled with a mingling sense of disappoint- 
 ment, relief that Nettie was no worse, and the uncom- 
 fortable conviction that he had behaved like an hysterical 
 fool. He, too, but angrily, wondered why Dunsack had 
 invented such an apparently pointless lie. Probably Kate 
 Vollar was right, and her brother's wits, soaked in opium, 
 had wandered into a realm of insane fabrications. He 
 composed himself — the first feeling blotting out his other 
 emotions — to meet the deprecating interrogation before 
 him. 
 
 [204] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " I should be glad to do what I could in my father's 
 place." 
 
 " In a way," she continued, " it's about Edward. When 
 he came back from China and decided to stay in Salem 
 his father turned all the books over to him; he was to 
 tend to everything in the way of accounts and shipments; 
 and, he said, he would make us all rich in a year or so. 
 But, instead, he has neglected the clerking until we can't 
 tell what's going or coming. Edward hasn't — hasn't 
 quite been himself lately," she paused and Gerrit nodded 
 shortly. " Now we're not wealthy. Captain Ammidon, we 
 never got more than just enough from our West India 
 trade; but in the last couple of months, with Edward like 
 he is and father too old for columns of figuring — he's 
 dreadful forgetful now — not a dollar was made. The 
 schooners are slow, behind the times I guess, we've had to 
 
 scrape; yet it's been something They're both awful 
 
 hard to do with," she stopped hopelessly. 
 
 " You must get a reliable man in charge. Some one 
 who knows the West India shipping should go over your 
 entire property, decide what is necessary, then borrow the 
 money. We can find that without trouble. I'll make 
 only one condition: That is the complete restraint of 
 your brother. It is known that he has the opium habit, 
 he is a dangerous — " 
 
 He stopped at the echo of a thin persistent tapping from 
 above. " That's Nettie," Kate Vollar said; " the way she 
 calls me. I'll ask you to excuse me for a minute." 
 When she returned her face bore an unaccustomed flush. 
 " Nettie heard you in the hall or through the stovepipe." 
 She spoke doubtfully: " She'd like to see you, but I don't 
 [205] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 know if it would be right with her in bed. Still, I prom- 
 ised I'd tell you." 
 
 He rose promptly. The woman stood aside at the 
 upper door and he at once saw Nettie lying with her 
 vigorous black hair sprawling in a thick twist across the 
 pillow. Her face was pinched, it seemed thin, and the 
 brilliancy and size of her eyes were exaggerated. One 
 arm, clumsy and inanimate in splints, was extended over 
 the cotton spread; but with the other hand she was 
 feverishly busy with her appearance. She smiled, a wan 
 tremuloiis movement that again shut the pain like a leaden 
 casket about his heart. 
 
 "Do go away, mother! " Nettie directed Kate VoUar 
 hovering behind them. " Your fidgeting will make me 
 scream." With an incoherent murmur she vanished from 
 the room. The girl motioned toward a chair, and Gerrit 
 drew it forward to a table that bore water and a small 
 glass bowl partly covered by a sheet of paper, holding a 
 number of symmetrical reddish-black pills. " Opium," 
 Nettie told him, following his gaze; " I cried dreadfully 
 with the hurt at first. It's dear, and Edward made those 
 from some he had. You know, I watched him roll them 
 right, here; it was wonderful how quickly .he did it, each 
 exactly alike, two grains." She told him the circum- 
 stances of her accident while he sat with his eyes steadily 
 on her face, his hands folded. 
 
 He was quiet, without visible emotion or speech; but 
 there was an utter tumult, a tumult like the spiral of a 
 hurricane, within him. Rebellious feelings, tyrannical de- 
 sires and thoughts, swept through him in waves of heat 
 and cold. Nettie's voice grew weak, the shadows deepened 
 [206] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 under her eyes, for a little they closed; and but for the 
 faint stir of the coverlet over her heart she was so pallid, 
 so still, that she might have been dead. Moved by an un- 
 controllable fear he bent toward her and touched her hand. 
 Her gaze slowly widened, and, turning over her palm, she 
 weakly grasped his fingers. A great sigh of contentment 
 fluttered from her dry lips. " Gerrit," she whispered, 
 barely audible. He leaned forward, blinded by his pas- 
 sion for her. 
 
 He admitted this in an honest self-knowledge that he 
 had refused recognition until now. Tender and reassur- 
 ing words, wild declarations and plans for the future, 
 croWded for expression; nothing else before the immensity 
 of desire that possessed him was of the slightest concern; 
 but not a syllable was spoken. A sharp line was ploughed 
 between his brows; his breath came in short choked gusts, 
 he was utterly the vessel of his longing, and yet an ulti- 
 mate basic consideration, lost in the pounding of his veins, 
 still restrained him. 
 
 " I love you, Gerrit," Nettie said; " I'll never stop till 
 I die." Her face and voice were almost tranquil; she 
 seemed to speak from a plane above the ordinary neces- 
 sities of common existence, as if her pain, burning out her 
 color, and vigor and emotions, had given her the privilege 
 of truth. Curiously enough when it seemed to him that 
 she had expressed what should have sent him into a single 
 consuming flame he grew at once completely calm. He, 
 too, for the moment, reached her state of freedom from 
 earth and flesh. 
 
 " I love you, Nettie," he replied simply. 
 
 However, he speedily dropped back into the sphere of 
 [207] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 actual responsibilities. He saw all the difficulties and 
 hovering insidious shadows in which they might be lost. 
 This, in turn, was pushed aside by the incredulous real- 
 ization that Nettie's life and his had been spoiled by a 
 thing no more important than a momentary flare of temper. 
 If, as might have happened, he had overlooked Barzil 
 bunsack's ridiculous tirade, if he had turned into the 
 yard where Nettie was standing instead of tramping away 
 up Hardy Street, everything would have been well. 
 
 It was unjust, he cried inwardly, for such infinite con- 
 ' sequences to proceed from unthinking anger ! A great or 
 tragic result should spring from great or tragic causes, the 
 suffering and price measured by the error. He could see 
 that Nettie was patiently waiting for him to solve the 
 whole miserable problem of their future; she had -an ex- 
 pression of relief which seemed to take a happy issue for 
 granted. None was possible. A baffled rage cut his 
 speech into quick brutal words flung like shot against her 
 hope. 
 
 " I love you," he repeated, " yes. But what can that 
 do for us now ? I had my chance and I let it go. To-day 
 I'm married, I'll be married to-morrow, probably till I 
 die. Perhaps that wouldn't stop a man more intelligent 
 — it might be just that — than I am ; perhaps he'd go right 
 after his love or happiness wherever or however it offered. 
 There are men, too, who have the habit of a number of 
 women. That is understood to be a custom with sailors. 
 It has never been with me; as I say, maybe I am too 
 stupid. 
 
 " What in the name of all the heavens would I do with 
 Taou Yuen? " he demanded. " I can't desert her here, in 
 
 [208] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 America, leave her with William. I brought her thousands 
 of miles away from her home, from all she knows and 
 is. If I took her back and dropped her in China it would 
 be murder." 
 
 An expression of unalloyed dreariness overspread Net- 
 tie's features. " I wish I had been killed right out," she 
 said. The starkness of the words, of the reality they 
 spoke, flowed over him like icy water; he felt that he was 
 sinking, strangling, in a sea grimmer than any about Cape 
 Horn. He was continually appalled by the realization 
 that there was no escape, no smallest glimmer, leading from 
 the pit into which they had stumbled. He had the sen- 
 sation of wanting enormously to go with Nettie but was 
 fast in chains that were locked on him by a power greater 
 than his will. 
 
 " It's no good," his voice was flat. 
 
 " I don't believe I'll see you again," Nettie articulated; 
 " now the Nautilus is near ready to sail. I can't stand 
 it," she sobbed; " that last time you went out the harbor 
 just about ended me, but this is worse, worse, worse. I'll 
 — I'll take all the opium." 
 
 " No, you won't," he asserted, standing, confident that 
 her spirit was too normal, too vitally healthy, for that. 
 His gaze wandered about the room: her clothes were 
 neatly piled and covered by a skirt on a chair; the mirror 
 on her chest of drawers was broken, a corner missing; 
 there was a total absence of the delicate toilet adjuncts of 
 Rhoda and Taou Yuen — only a small paper of powder, a 
 comb and brush, and the washstand with a couple of coarse 
 towels. What dresses she had were hung behind a 
 ridiculously inadequate drapery. She had so little with 
 
 [209] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 which to accomplish what, for a girl, was so much. 
 
 His emotion had retreated, leaving him dull-eyed, heavy 
 of movement. The moment had come for his departure. 
 Gerrit stood by the bed. Nettie turned away from him, 
 her face was buried in the pillow, the uppermost free 
 shoulder shook. " Good-by," he said. There was no 
 answer and he patiently repeated the short tragic phrase. 
 Still there was no sound from Nettie. There would be 
 none. Even the impulse to touch her had died — died, he 
 thought, with a great many feelings and hopes he once had. 
 A fleet surprise invaded him at the absence of any impulse 
 now to protest or indulge in wild passionate terms; he 
 was surprised, too, at the fact that he was about to leave 
 Nettie. The whole termination of the affair was bathed 
 in an atmosphere of stale calm, like the air in a ship's hold. 
 
 Gerrit Ammidon gazed steadily at her averted head, at 
 the generous line of her body under the coverlet; then, 
 neither hasty nor hesitating in his walk, he left the room. 
 Kate "Vollar met him at the foot of the stair. "You under- 
 stood," she said, " that I only bothered you because your 
 father . . . because I was so put on? " 
 
 " You were quite right," he replied in a measured 
 voice; " it will all be attended to. With the agreement I 
 mentioned." 
 
 " How they'll take it I don't know." 
 
 " In some positions," he told her, " certain persons are 
 without any choice. The facts are too great for them. I 
 said nothing to Nettie of Edward Dunsack's reason for my 
 coming," he added significantly. Out in the street he 
 Stopped, facing toward Java Head and evening; but, with 
 [210] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 a quiver of his lips, the vertical bitter line between his 
 drawn brows, he turned and marched slowly, his head 
 sunk, to where the Nautilus was berthed. 
 
 [211] 
 
IX 
 
 SEATED in the library, placidly waiting for Edward 
 Dunsack to go, Taou Yuen studied him briefly. A 
 long or thoughtful survey was unnecessary; the 
 opium was rapidly mastering him. That fact absorbed 
 all the rest. She had an immeasurable contempt for such 
 physical and moral weakness ; all the three religions fused 
 in her overwhelmingly condemned self-indulgence; her 
 philosophy, the practical side of Lao-tze's teaching, em- 
 phasized the utter futility of surrender to the five senses. 
 At the same time he was the subject of some interest: he 
 was an American who had lived in China, and not only on 
 the fringe of the treaty ports — he had penetrated to some 
 extent into the spirit, the life, of things Chinese; while she, 
 Taou Yuen, was amazingly married to Gerrit Ammidon, 
 was a Manchu here, in America. 
 
 Absolutely immobile, her hands folded in her lap, 
 she considered these facts, each in relation to the other: 
 there was wisdom hidden in them for her. If Mr. Dun- 
 sack had retained the ordinary blustering Western com- 
 mercial mind, his knowledge of China confined to the 
 tea houses and streets, he would probably be prosperous 
 and strong to-day. The wisdom lay in this — that here 
 she must remain Manchu, Chinese; any attempt to be- 
 come a part of this incomprehensible country, any effort 
 [212] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 to involve herself in its mysterious acts or thought, would 
 be disastrous. She must remain calm, unassertive, let the 
 eternal Tao take its way. 
 
 Edward Dunsack looked actually comic :^he was staring 
 rudely, with a foolish air of flattery, and breathing in 
 labored gasps — like a coolie who had run miles with a 
 heavy palanquin. Then her mind, hardly reacting from 
 immediate objects, returned to the contemplation of the 
 deeper significance of her presence here. Bent in on it- 
 self her thought twisted like a moonflower vine about the 
 solid fact of Gerrit. She realized, of course, that he 
 must have had the past of any healthy honorable man of 
 his age, and that it would have included at least one 
 woman. However, when even the present was an almost 
 complete puzzle his past had been so lost to her that 
 she had not considered it until now. 
 
 " You must overlook my unceremonious speech," Ed- 
 ward Dunsack proceeded in creditable Chinese. " It 
 was clumsy, but I was deeply affected. It is my niece, you 
 see, who was hurt, and who has a very sad history. Then 
 there are some special circumstances. I'd have to explain 
 a great deal before you could understand why she sent 
 for your husband and why he left so hurriedly." 
 
 " There is nothing you need tell me," Taou Yuen replied 
 in her slow careful English. " Manchu eyes can see as 
 well as American." 
 
 " A thousand times better." He, too, returned to his 
 native speech. " It is delightful to talk to a truly civilized 
 being. All that would have to be shouted at the women 
 of Salem is unnecessary now. You see — you under- 
 stand the heart of a man." 
 
 [213] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " I understand you," she said impersonally. 
 
 " I wonder if you do," he speculated. " You ought 
 to see what — how piuch — I think of you. My brain 
 holds nothing else," he declared in a low intense voice, 
 drawing nearer to her. 
 
 She had a momentary, purely feminine shrinking from 
 his emaciated shaking frame, the burning eyes in a face 
 dead like a citron; then her placidity returned, the assur- 
 ance that it was all ordained, that his gestures, the pump- 
 ing of his diseased heart, had no more individual signifi- 
 cance than the movements of a mechanical figure operated 
 by strings, here the strings of supreme Fate. She even 
 smiled slightly, a smile not the mark of approval or humor, 
 but an expression of absolute composure. It drove him 
 at once into febrile excitement. 
 
 '' At least I understand you," he cried; " far more than 
 you suppose! You can't impress me with your air of 
 a Gautama. I know the freedom of your country. It 
 doesn't shock you to realize that your husband has gone 
 to see a woman he loved, perhaps loves still, , and you 
 are not disturbed at my speaking like this." 
 
 Here, she knew, regarding him no more than a shrilling 
 locust, was the center about which for a moment blindly 
 her thoughts of Gerrit and herself had revolved. His 
 past — "a woman he loved." But it didn't in the least 
 upset her present peace of mind, her confidence in Gerrit. 
 There was a sharp distinction between the eternal, the 
 divine, Tao, that which is and must prevail, and the per- 
 sonal Tao, subject to rebellion and all the evil of Yin; 
 and she felt that her husband's Tao was good. Out of 
 this she remarked negligently: 
 [214] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " After all, you are more ignorant of China than I 
 thought. But, of course, you saw only the common and 
 low side. You have not heard of the books girls are 
 taught from — ' The Sacred Edict ' and ' Mirror of the 
 Heart.' You don't know even the first rule of ' The Book 
 of Rites,' ' Let your face and attitude be grave and 
 thoughtful,' and the second, ' Let your steps be deliberate 
 and regular.' " She paused, conveying by her manner 
 that he was already vanishing and that she was relieved. 
 
 " That would do well enough if you were a scholar, or 
 a bonze," he retorted ; " but such innocence in a fash- 
 ionable woman is a pretense. If you are so pure how 
 can you explain your gold and bracelets and pins, all the 
 marks of your worldly rank? Lao-tze taught, ' Rich and 
 high but proud brings about its own misfortune.' " He 
 was so close to her now that she caught a faint sickly 
 reek from his body. It seemed to her that she could see 
 his identity, his reason, vanish, replaced by madness in 
 his staring eyes. 
 
 " I worship you," he murmured. 
 
 " Opium," she spoke disdainfully. 
 
 " Your own tobacco is drugged," he asserted. " But 
 that's not important. I tell you I worship you, the most 
 beautiful person in the world. These fools in Salem, 
 even your husband, can't realize one-tenth of your per- 
 fection; they can't venerate you as I do. And now that 
 Ammidon has gone back to the first, we are free too." 
 
 " You are a liar," she said with an unexpected col- 
 loquial ease. 
 
 A darker color stained his dry cheeks. " You saw 
 him," he replied. " Did he get pale or didn't he? And 
 
 [215] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 did he or not rush from the room like a man in a fever? 
 I tell you it's no use pretending with me; say what you 
 please I know how delicate your senses are. I'll tell you 
 this too: It's written in our progression that we should 
 meet here, yes, and be a great deal to each other. It was 
 written in the beginning, and we had been drawing to- 
 gether through a million cycles before Gerrit Ammidon 
 stumbled across you." 
 
 Taou Yuen was surprised by a sudden conviction that 
 a part of this, at least, was so. No living thing, however 
 minute, escaped from the weariness of movement, either 
 ending in final and blessed suspension or condemned to 
 struggle on and on through countless lives of torment- 
 ing passion. All had this dignity of hope or despair; 
 all she encountered were humble, impressive or debased 
 in the working of the mighty law. She had been guilty, 
 as this American had pointed out, of dangerous and 
 wrong pride, and she accepted her lesson willingly. 
 There was, however, an annoying conflict between Edward 
 Dunsack, the example, the impersonal, and Edward Dun- 
 sack making violent profession of his unspeakable desire 
 for her. Even the word seemed to soil her; but there was 
 no other. He went recklessly on, trying to increase his 
 advantage : 
 
 " We're made to be together." 
 
 " If we are it is because of some great wickedness of 
 mine. If we are, then perhaps I am lost. But it is 
 allowed to resist evil, at least, as far as staying out of 
 its touch is resistance." 
 
 " Nothing can keep you from me," he declared. An- 
 other short step and his knees would be brushing her 
 [216] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 gown. A stronger wave of dislike, shrinking, anger, 
 drowned her logical and higher resignation. " It is time 
 for you to go," she said, her voice still even. 
 
 " Never." 
 
 It seemed to her that she could feel his hot quivering 
 touch and, all her philosophy dropping from her, she 
 rose quickly. " If this were China," she told him, in a 
 cold fury, " you'd be cut up with knives, in the courtyard 
 where I could look on. But even here I can ring for a 
 servant; and when Captain Ammidon comes back he'll 
 know what to say to you." 
 
 She could see that the last affected him; he hesitated, 
 drew back, his hanging fingers clasping and unclasping. 
 That, she thought, relieved, would dispose of him. Then 
 it was clear that his insanity persisted even in the face of 
 the considerable threat of Gerrit's hot pride and violent 
 tempers. 
 
 " It's our destiny," he repeated firmly in his borrowed 
 faith, at once a little terrifying and a little ridiculous in 
 the alien mold. His lips twitched and his bony forehead 
 glistened in a fine sweat. Now, thoroughly roused, she 
 laughed at him in open contempt. 
 
 "Diseased," she cried, "take your sores away! Dog 
 licked by dogs. Bowl of filth," she was speaking in 
 Chinese, in words of one syllable like the biting of a 
 hair whip. Edward Dunsack gasped, as if actual blows 
 cut him; he stood with one hand half raised, appalled at 
 the sudden vicious rush of her anger. A leaden pallor 
 took the place of his normal sallow coloring, and it was 
 evident that he had difficulty in withstanding the pressure 
 of his laboring heart. He stood between her and the 
 
 [217] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 door and she had a premonition that it would be useless 
 to attempt to avoid him or escape. She could, however, 
 call, and some one, there were a score of people about 
 the house, must certainly appear. At that moment she 
 saw a deep change sweep over his countenance, taking 
 place in his every fiber. There was an inner wrenching of 
 Edward Dunsack's being, a blurring and infusion of 
 blood in his eyes, a breath longer and more agonized 
 than any before, and she was looking closely into the 
 face of an overwhelming hatred. 
 
 For a moment, she realized, he had even considered 
 killing her with his flickering hands. Then that im- 
 pulse subsided before a sidelong expression of cunning. 
 " With all your Manchu attitudes," he mocked her, " yes, 
 your aristocratic pretense of mourning and marks of 
 rank, you are no different from the little pleasure girls. 
 Your vocabulary and mind are the same. I was a fool 
 for a while; I saw nothing but your satins and painted 
 face. I forgot you were yellow, I had forgotten that all 
 China's yellow. It's yellow, yellow, yellow and never 
 can be white. I shut my eyes to it and it dragged me 
 down into its slime." His voice was hysterical with an 
 agony of rending spiritual torment and hopeless grief. 
 " It poisoned me little by little, with the smell of its 
 rivers and the cursed smell of its pleasures. Then the 
 opium. A year after I had lost my position, everything; 
 and when I came over here it followed me ... in my 
 own blood. Even then I might have broken away, I 
 almost had, when Gerrit Ammidon brought you to Salem. 
 You came at a time when I was fighting hardest to 
 [218J 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 throw it all off. You see — you fascinated me. You 
 were all that was most alluring of China, a&d I wanted 
 you so badly, it all came back so, that I went to the 
 opium to find you." 
 
 " Progression," she said ironically. 
 
 " Perhaps," he muttered. " Who knows ? I'm fin- 
 ished for this life anyhow. You did that. I can't even 
 keep th6 books for my father's penny trade." 
 
 His hands crept rigidly toward her. If they touched 
 her she would be degraded for ever. Yet she was in- 
 capable of flight, her throat refused the cry which she had 
 been debating; alternate waves of revulsion and stoical 
 resignation passed over her with chills of acute terror. 
 Yet she managed to preserve an unstirred exterior; and 
 that, she observed, began to influence him. His loathing 
 was as great as ever; but his vision, that had been fixed 
 in a blaze of fury, broke, avoided her direct scrutiny, her 
 appearance of statue-like unconcern. 
 
 There was a sound of quick light feet in the hall, the 
 bright voice of one of Gerrit's nieces. Edward Dunsack 
 fell into a profound abstraction: he turned and walked 
 away from her, standing with his back to the room at a 
 window that opened upon the broad green park. He was 
 so weak that he was forced to support himself with a 
 hand on the wall. 
 
 Taou Yuen was motionless for a perceptible space, and 
 then moved toward the door in a dignified composure. 
 All this had come from the utter impropriety of the life 
 in America. Dunsack glanced at her as she withdrew, and 
 for a moment she saw his fine profile sharp and dark 
 [219] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 against the light-flooded window. His lips stirred but 
 she heard no sound. Then she was on the stair mount- 
 ing to her room. 
 
 There mechanically she filled her pipe; but doing 
 this she noticed that her hands were trembling. How 
 lamentably she had failed in the preservation, the as- 
 sertion, of her superiority, not as a Manchu, but in 
 the deeper, the only true sense of the word: — in sub- 
 mission. 
 
 " Requite hatred with virtue." 
 
 She spoke Lao-tze's admonition aloud and, in the 
 customary devious channel of her mental processes, her 
 thoughts returned to her early life, her girlhood, so marred 
 by sickness that the Emperor had surrendered his cus- 
 tomary proprietary right in the daughters of Manchu 
 nobles. 
 
 Surrounding the fact of her early suffering, which had 
 kept her out of the active gayety of brothers and sisters, 
 she remembered in the clearest detail her father's house 
 in the north ; the later residences in Canton and Shanghai, 
 even the delightful river gardens of the summer place at 
 Soochow, were less vivid. Inside the massive tiled stone- 
 wall the rooms — there were a hundred at least — faced 
 in squares on the inner courtyard, and were connected 
 by glass enclosed verandas. The reception houses of 
 the front court, the deeply carved wooden platform with 
 its scarlet covering, were of the greatest elegance; they were 
 always asHr with the numerous secretaries, the Chinese 
 writers and messengers, the mafoos and chair coolies, the 
 servants and blind musicians with the old songs. The 
 Millet's in Flower and Kuan Kuan Go to the Ospreys. 
 [220] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 The side door to the women's apartments, however, 
 opened into a retreat, where her father's concubine, he 
 had but one, trailed like a bird of paradise, and there 
 was the constant musical drip of a fountain in an old 
 granite basin. There, during the years when she was 
 lame, Taou Yuen mostly stayed. 
 
 She had been dropped from a palanquin in her sixth 
 year; sharp pains soon after burned in her hip, and 
 the corresponding leg had perceptibly shortened. A 
 great many remedies were tried in vain — burning with 
 charcoal, the application of black plasters, sweating, 
 acupuncture — sticking long needles into the afflicted 
 part. The doctors declared that the five' elements of 
 her body — the metal, wood, water, fire and earth, were 
 hopelessly out of equilibrium. Her mother had then 
 called necromancers and devil charmers; lucky and un- 
 lucky days were explored; strange rites were conducted 
 before her terrified eyes screwed into the determination 
 to show no alarm. 
 
 A year, perhaps, after they had become resigned to her 
 injury, her father, always a man of the most liberal ideas, 
 had suddenly brought into the garden to see her an Eng- 
 lish doctor passing through China. Against the wailing 
 protests of the women the Englishman had been given 
 authority to treat her; and he had caused to be made a 
 thin steel brace, clasping Taou Yuen's waist and extend- 
 ing in a rigid band down the length of her injured leg. 
 After putting ^a high shoe on her other foot he had com- 
 manded them to keep the brace on her for two years. 
 
 It was through that period of comparative inactivity 
 that she acquired a habit of reading and thought, a certain 
 
 [221] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 grasp of philosophical attitude, common to the higher 
 masculine Chinese mind but rare among their women. 
 She had, for instance, later, read Lao-tze's Tao-teh-king, 
 and been impressed by his tranquil elevation above the 
 petty ills and concerns of life and the flesh. Her father, 
 like all the ruling class, regarded Taoism — which had, 
 indeed, degenerated into a mass of nonsense about the 
 transmutation of base metals into gold and the elixir of 
 life — with contempt. But this seemed to her no de- 
 preciation of the Greatly Eminent One or his philosophy 
 of the two Taoes. 
 
 The household, or at least the family, worshipped in 
 the form of Confucius; his precepts and admonitions, the 
 sacred hiao or filial submission, the tablets and ancestral 
 piety, were a part of her blood; as was the infinitely 
 fainter infusion of Buddhism; yet in her intellectual 
 brooding it was to the Tao-teh-king that she returned. 
 She paused to recall that, the brace at last removed, she 
 was practically completely recovered; but the bent, the 
 bracing, given her mind had remained. 
 
 The colorful pageant of her first marriage, the smaller 
 but splendidly appointed house of her husband — he was 
 extremely intelligent and had honorably passed the ex- 
 amination for licentiate, one of only two hundred success- 
 ful bachelors out of twenty thousand — and the period 
 following his accidental drowning wheeled quickly through 
 her brain. . . . 
 
 Only Gerrit Ammidon was left. 
 
 She loved him, Taou Yuen realized, for a quality en- 
 tirely independent of race: he had more than anyone 
 else she knew the virtues of simplicity and purity an- 
 [222] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 nounced by Chwang-Tze as the marks of the True Man. 
 " We must become like little children," the Old Master 
 had written. She had seen this at once in the amazing 
 interview sanctioned by her father-in-la\y. Most women 
 of her class, even widows, would have perished with 
 shame at being exposed to a foreigner. But Lu Kik- 
 wang had expressed her difference from them in the 
 terms of his proposal. His words had been " finely bet- 
 ter " although the truth was that her curiosity had al- 
 ways mastered the other and more prudent instincts. Yet 
 that alone would not have prostrated her before Gerrit 
 Ammidon — death was not unthinkable — nor carried her 
 into his strange terrifying ship and stranger life. The 
 love had been bom almost simultaneously with her first 
 recognition of his character. Now her passion for him 
 was close and jealous. A constant shifting between such 
 humanity and the calm detachment which prefigured heaven 
 was what most convinced her of the truths of Lao-tze. 
 
 All this took body at the announcement of Edward 
 Dunsack about Gerrit and his niece. Certainly he might 
 have had an affair; that she dismissed; but the insinuated 
 permanence of this other affection was serious. She would 
 not have believed Mr. Dunsack for an instant, but, as he 
 had pointed out, Gerrit had undoubtedly been upset; he 
 had turned pale and hurried away impolitely. It was by 
 such apparently slight indications that the great inner 
 currents of life were discovered. The fact that Chinese 
 of&cials had more than one wife, or, to speak correctly, 
 concubines in addition, had no bearing with Gerrit; such 
 was not the custom with American men. It represented 
 for him, yes — dishonor. 
 
 [223] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 She laboriously recalled his every attitude since they 
 had landed in America, and was obliged to admit that 
 he had changed — he was less gay and though his man- 
 ner was always considerate she recognized a growing im- 
 patience beneath his darker calm. Her philosophy was 
 again torn in shreds by sharp feminine emotions. She 
 was filled with jealousy and hatred and hurt pride. The 
 clearest expression of his possible discontent had marked 
 his face when he had suddenly come into their room and 
 saw her rising from a prayer for his father. Gerrit's 
 lips had been compressed, almost disdainful; at that 
 moment, she knew unerringly, he found her ugly. Of 
 course it had been the hideous garments of mourning. 
 
 She must wear the unhemmed sackcloth and dull slip- 
 pers, bind her headdress and cover her pins with paste, 
 for a hundred days; and then a second mourning of black 
 or dark blue, and no flowers, for three years. It might 
 well be that by then Gerrit, blind to these proprieties, 
 would find her unendurable. Suddenly, in the tremen- 
 dous difficulty of hdlding him against an entire world, 
 his own and of which she was supremely ignorant, it 
 seemed to her that she needed every possible means, 
 every coral blossom and gold filament and finger of 
 paint, the cunning intoxication of subtle dress and color 
 and perfume. With a leaden sense of guilt, but in a 
 fever of impatience, of haste, she stripped off the coarse 
 hemp for her most elaborate satins, her santal and cloves 
 and carmine. 
 
 When Gerrit came in it had grown dark with night, 
 and he explained that he had been busy inspecting 
 the Nautilus' spars. She lighted a lamp, then another, all 
 [224] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 she could find, and studied him unobtrusively. She was 
 shocked at the worn expression of his face; it seemed 
 as if he had aged in the few hours since he had left the 
 library. He was uneasy, silent; and, secretly dismayed, 
 she saw that he was indifferent to her changed appear- 
 ance, too. Taou Yuen debated the wisdom of telling him 
 about the painful scene with Edward Dunsack; against her 
 original intent she decided in the negative. She in- 
 formed herself that the reason for this was a wish to 
 preserve him, now that they were practically at the day 
 of departure, from an unpleasant duty. But there was 
 an underlying dimly apprehended and far different mo- 
 tive: she was afraid that it would blow into flame a 
 situation that might otherwise be avoided, bring to life a 
 past naturally dying or dead. 
 
 She saw that he was scarcely aware of her presence in 
 the room, perhaps in his life. A period of resentment 
 followed. " You are dull," she declared, " and I am 
 going down to the garden for entertainment." Gerrit 
 nodded. He would, he told her, be along shortly. Be- 
 low she found Roger Brevard, with the oldest Ammidon 
 girl and her mother. 
 
 Roger Brevard, she had discovered, was in love with 
 Sidsall. The latter, it developed, was to leave shortly 
 for a party; Mr. Brevard was not going; and, when 
 Gerrit's sister-in-law walked across the grass with her 
 daughter the man dropped into an easy conversation with 
 Taou Yuen. She had a feeling, which she had tried in 
 vain to lose, of the vulgarity, the impropriety of this. 
 Yet she recognized that there was none of the former in 
 Roger Brevard; he resembled quite a little her dead 
 
 [225] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 husband, Sie-Ngan-kwan; and for that reason she was 
 more at ease with him — in spite of such unaccustomed 
 familiarity — than with anyone else in Salem but Gerrit. 
 
 He was, she admitted condescendingly, almost as cul- 
 tivated as the ordinary Chinese gentleman. Many of his 
 thoughts, where she could understand their expression, 
 might have come from a study of the sacred kings. At 
 the same time her feminine perception realized that he 
 had a genuine liking for her. 
 
 " You'll be delighted to leave Salem," he said, leaning 
 forward and studying her. 
 
 " That would not be polite," she answered formally. 
 " You have been so good. But if will give me pleasure to 
 see Shanghai again. Anyone is happier with customs he 
 understands." 
 
 " And prefers," he added. " Indeed, I'd choose scane 
 of your manners rather than ours. You see, you have 
 been at the business of civilization so much longer than 
 the rest of us." 
 
 " Our history begins two thousand years before your 
 Christ," she told him; " our language has been spoken 
 without change for thirty- three centuries, as you call 
 them. But such facts are nothing. I would rather hear 
 your nan — nonsense," she stumbled over the word. 
 
 " Do you mean that what we call nonsense is really 
 the most important? " 
 
 " Perhaps," she replied. " Devotion to the old and 
 dead is greatly necessary yet you smile at it. I didn't 
 mean that, but moons and lovers and music." He cried in 
 protest, " We're terribly serious about those! " 
 [226] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 " I hear nothing but talk about cargoes and sales and 
 money." 
 
 " We keep the other under oux hats," he instructed 
 her. She was completely mystified, and he explained. 
 
 " In China," she remarked tentatively, " it is possible 
 for a man to love two women at once, maybe one a little 
 more than the other, but he can be kind and just and 
 affectionate to them both. Tell me, is — is that possible 
 with an American? " 
 
 " No! " he spoke emphatically. " We can love, in the 
 way you mean, only one, perhaps only once. I wouldn't 
 swear to that, but there are simply no exceptions to the 
 first. Men are unfaithful, yes; but at a cost to them- 
 selves, or because they are incapable of restraint. To be 
 unfaithful in anything is to fail, isn't it? You can lie tA 
 yourself as effectively as to anybody else." 
 
 She fixed a painful attention upon him, but lost at 
 least a half of his meaning. However, one ^f act was 
 clearer than ever — that Edward Dunsack had said an 
 evil thing about her husband. " It seems," he went on, 
 " that even spiritual concerns can be the result of long 
 custom." If he was trying to find an excuse for Chi- 
 nese habit she immediately disposed of it. " No," she 
 ^id, " you are upside down. The spirit is first, the 
 eternal Tao, everywhere alike, but the personal spirit is 
 different in you and in us." 
 
 A sudden dejection seized her — now the difference 
 seemed vaster than anything she had in common with Ger- 
 rit. A wave of oppressive nostalgia, of confusion and 
 dread, sutxnerged her in a faintly thunderous darkness. 
 
 [227] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 She felt everywhere about her the presence of evil and 
 threatening shades. The approach of her husband, his 
 heavy settling into a chair, did nothing to lighten her ap- 
 prehension. 
 
 " How soon do we go? " she asked faintly. 
 
 " In two weeks, with nothing unexpected," he responded 
 without interest or pleasure. It flashed through her mind 
 that he was depressed at leaving Salem, that other woman. 
 His present indifference was very far from the manner 
 in which he had first discussed their leaving. Yet, even 
 that, she recalled in the light of her present sensitive- 
 ness, had been unnaturally abrupt and clothed in a 
 great many loud-sounding words. She told herself arbi- 
 trarily that Edward Dunsack had lied — for the purpose 
 which his conduct afterward made clear — but her very 
 feeling was proof that she believed he had spoken the 
 truth. 
 
 She was a victim of an uneasy curiosity to see . . . 
 she made a violent mental effort and recaptured the name 
 — Nettie VoUar. Of course the latter had been the de- 
 liberate cause of whatever wickedness had threatened at 
 the return of Gerrit with her, Taou Yuen. She had how- 
 ever no doubt of the extent of this: Gerrit was upright, 
 faithful to the necessity Roger Brevard had explained; all 
 that assaulted her happiness was on an incorporate plane, 
 or, anyhow, in a procession of consequences extending 
 far back and forward of their present lives. 
 
 But, she recognized, she had no excuse nor opportunity 
 
 to see Nettie Vollar. Mrs. Ammidon, when she heard 
 
 of the accident, had at once declared her intention of 
 
 going to the Dunsacks' house; still that promised no 
 
 [228] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 chance of satisfying her own desire. The least politeness 
 in the world prohibited her from going baldly in and 
 demanding to see the woman. She couldn't, all at once, 
 make convincing a sympathy or impersonal interest en- 
 tirely contradictory to her insistent indifference. The 
 best she could hope was for them to sail away as quickly 
 as possible; when on the other side of the seas Gerrit 
 would probably return to the simplicity of being she 
 had adored. 
 
 Then a trivial and yet serious fear occurred to her — 
 perhaps here, among all these dead-white women, he no 
 longer held her beautiful. The word was his own, or 
 it had been his; he had not repeated it, she realized, twice 
 since they had been in Salem. Personally, she found the 
 American women entirely undistinguished and dressed 
 in grotesquely ugly and cheap clothes — not unlike paper 
 lanterns bobbing along the ground. Their faces were 
 shamelessly bare of paint and their manners would have 
 disgraced the lowest servant in a Chinese courtyard. 
 This was natural, from any consideration of the hideous or 
 inappropriate things that surrounded them, and from the 
 complete lack of what she could distinguish as either dis- 
 cipline or reverence. Yet Gerrit, a part of this, would be 
 unable to share her attitude; she had heard him praise 
 the appearance of women so insipid that she had turned 
 expecting vainly an ironic smile. 
 
 Roger Brevard rose and made his bow, the only satisfac- 
 tory approach to a courteous gesture she had met outside 
 Gerrit's occasional half-humorous effort since leaving 
 Shanghai. He stirred, muttered a perfunctory phrase, and 
 sank back into obscurity. 
 
 [229] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Little quirks of unfamiliar disturbing feeling ran 
 through Taou Yuen; her mind, it seemed, had become a 
 thing of no importance; all that at one time had so 
 largely ordered her life was superseded by these illogical 
 emotions spreading apparently from her heart. The 
 truth was, she told herself, that — with all her reading 
 and philosophy — she had had little or no experience of 
 actuality, the injury to her hip and quiet life in the gray 
 garden at Canton, her protected existence in the women's 
 apartments, whatever she might have learned from them 
 neglected because of the general silliness of their chat- 
 ter, the formal early marriage, had all combined for the 
 preservation of her ignorance. 
 
 She regarded herself now with distrust; nothing could 
 have been more unpleasant than the failure of her will, 
 this swamping of her equanimity. She never lost for a 
 mOTnent the image of superiority that should be her per- 
 fect example, the non-assertion that was the way of heaven ; 
 but her comprehension was like a figure ruthlessly dragged 
 about by an overpowering unreflective force. A sharp 
 hatred of Nettie Vollar seared her mind and perished 
 in a miserable sense of weakness. 
 
 Against the dark, charged with a confusion of the ten 
 thousand things, she stared wearily and wakeful. She 
 reminded herself again that Gerrit would soon be gone 
 from Salem, alone with her on the long voyage to China; 
 but he'd return to America, come back to Salem; and 
 she knew that he would never bring her westward again. 
 A period of depression followed which seemed to have 
 no immediate connection with Gerrit; she had an in- 
 definable feeling of struggling in vain against adversity, 
 of apposition to an implacable power. 
 [230] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 For a short while after she rose in the morning it ap- 
 peared that she had regained her self-control, her reason; 
 and a consequent happy relief irradiated her. But when 
 Gerrit came up after she had finished her toilet and she 
 saw, from his haggard face, that he too must have been 
 awake, tormented, through the night, a passion of bit- 
 terness enveloped her at which all that had gone before 
 turned pale. She could scarcely restrain herself from a 
 noisy wailing accusation, and stood regarding him with 
 a tense unnatural grimace, the result of her effort to 
 preserve propriety. She told herself, at the tempest of 
 vulgar phrases storming through her consciousness, that 
 what Edward Dunsack had said about her being no bet- 
 ter than the tea house girls was true, and she was aghast 
 at the inner treachery capable of such self-betrayal. Not 
 a quivering word, however, escaped; she managed a com- 
 monplace phrase and turned aside in a trivial pretext of 
 occupation. 
 
 " I am going into Boston with Captain Dunsack on 
 business connected with his schooners." The girl's grand- 
 father! "Very well." She spoke placidly, and with a 
 tempestuous heart watched him stride quickly about the 
 park. 
 
 She settled herself in a long motionless contemplation, 
 fastening her mind upon the most elevated and revered 
 ideas conceivable. She saw the eternal Tao flowing like 
 a great green river of souls, smooth and mighty and re- 
 sistless; and she willed that she too might become a part 
 of that desirable self-effacement, safe in surrender. Men 
 striving to create a Tao for personal ends beat out their 
 lives in vain. It was the figure of the river develop- 
 
 [231] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 ing, like floating on a deliberate all-powerful tide or 
 struggling impotently a^gainst it. 
 
 Later a message came up from Mrs. Ammidon — she 
 hoped that Taou Yuen would dHve with her that after- 
 noon. She dressed with the most particular care, in 
 blue and dark greens, her shoulders thick with embroidered 
 garlands and silver shou, her piled hair ornamented in 
 glittering silver leaves and garnets. 
 
 She went down when she heard the horses on the street 
 below but the barouche was empty except for the coach- 
 man. " Mrs. Ammidon left a half hour ago," a servant 
 told her; " and sent the carriage back for you." They 
 moved forward, going, she saw, into a part of the town 
 where they seldom drove — the narrow crowded way by 
 the wharves — and, turning shortly into a stireet that 
 ended abruptly at the water, drew up before a dingy house 
 on her right. 
 
 The door was open, and they waited, confident that 
 Mrs. Ammidon would hear the clatter of hoofs and come 
 out; but a far different appeared. She gazed for a silent 
 space at Taou Yuen seated above her, as if confused by 
 the glittering magnificence. It was probable that Gerrit's 
 brother's wife had come there on an errand of charity 
 for the woman was poor, dingy like the house, with a 
 face drawn by suffering and material struggle. 
 
 " Of course you're Captain Ammidon's wife," she said; 
 " and you are here after Mrs. William Ammidon. Well, 
 she's gone; but she left a message for you. She will be 
 at Henry Whipple's, the bookseller. After she saw Nettie 
 she went right off to send her some things; wouldn't 
 wait for the carriage. A kind-hearted determined body." 
 
 [232] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Taou Yuen leaned out to command the coachman to 
 drive on; but the other, plainly bent on making the most 
 of a rare opportunity for such a conversation, continued 
 talking in her low resigned way. 
 
 " I was glad to have her too; Nettie gets pretty fretful 
 up there with nobody but me, really. She hasn't been so 
 well, either, since — " here she stopped abruptly, recom- 
 menced. " I like to see a person myself of Mrs. Am- 
 midon's kind. I've been alone all day; father's gone to 
 Boston and Edward away I don't know where." 
 
 Taou Yuen's curiosity to see Nettie Vollar returned in- 
 finitely multiplied; here, miraculously, was an oppor- 
 tunity for her ito study the woman who was beyond any 
 doubt an important part of Gerrit's past, present — it 
 might be, his future. The men were gone. . . . She got 
 resolutely down from the barouche. " Take me up to 
 your daughter," she directed quietly. 
 
 " Why, that's very kind, but I don't know — Yes, cer- 
 tainly. Mind these stairs with your satin skirts; I don't 
 always get around to the whole house." 
 
 Taou Yuen saw at once that Nettie Vollar was far 
 sicker than she had realized: her head lay on the pillow 
 absolutely spent, her brow damply plastered with hair 
 and her eyes enlarged and dull. Taou Yuen drew a chair 
 forward and sat beside a table with a glass bowl of small 
 dark pills which from a just perceptible odor she recog- 
 nized as opium. She' looked intently, coldly, at the pros- 
 trate figure. A flush like match flames burned in Nettie 
 VoUar's cheeks, and she said in a voice at once weak and 
 sharp: 
 
 "You're her!" 
 
 [233] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Taou Yuen nodded slowly, disdainfully. 
 
 "Oh, how could he! " the other exclaimed in what 
 sounded like the thin echo of a passicmate cry. " I knew 
 you were Chinese, but I never realized it till this min- 
 ute." 
 
 As Gerrit Ammidon's wife had feared she was totally 
 imable to judge a single quality or feature of the girl be- 
 fore her. She looked exactly like all the others she had 
 seen in Salem: in order to realize her she needed Gerrit's 
 eyes, Gerrit's birth. Then one fact crept insidiously into 
 her consciousness — here, in a way, was another being 
 who had Gerrit Ammidon's childlike simplicity. That 
 was the most terrifying discovery she could have made. 
 Taou Yuen felt the return of the hateful irresistible emo- 
 tions which had destroyed her self-control. She wanted to 
 hurt Nettie Vollar in every possible way, to mock her 
 with the fact that she had lost Gerrit perhaps never to 
 see him again ; she wanted to tell her that she, Taou Yuen, 
 entirely understood her hopes, efforts, and that they weie 
 vaiiL 
 
 An utter self-loathing possessed her at tie same time, a 
 feeling of imminent danger as if she were walking witi 
 willfully shut eyes on the edge of a precipice above a 
 black fatal void. Not a trace of this appeared on her 
 schooled countenance; and once more she completely re- 
 strained any defiling speech. She deliberately shifted 
 her point of view to another possible aspect of all that 
 confronted her — it might be that this woman was a 
 specter, a kwei, bent on Gerrit's destruction. Such a 
 thing often happened. How much better if Nettie Vollar 
 had been killed! She studied her with a renewed in- 
 [234] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 terest — ' a fresh question. Perhaps the other would die as 
 it was. She was extremely weak; her spirit, Taou Yuen 
 saw, lay listlessly in a listless body. Nettie Vollar slightly 
 moved her injured arm, and that little effort exhausted 
 her for a moment; her eyes closed, her face was as white 
 as salt. 
 
 A further, almost philosophical, consideration engaged 
 Taou Yuen's mind — this extraordinary occasion, her 
 being with the other alone, Nettie Vollar's fragility, were, 
 it might be, all a part of the working of the righteous 
 Yang. In the light of this, then, she had been brought 
 here for a purpose ... the ending of a menace to her 
 husband. She hesitated for a breath — if it were the 
 opposite malignant Yin there was no bottom to the in- 
 famy into which she might fall. It was a tremendous 
 question. 
 
 The actual execution of the practical suggestion, from 
 either source, was extremely easy; she had but to lean 
 forward, draw her heavy sleeve across the strained face, 
 hold it there for a little, and Nettie Vollar would have 
 died of — of any one of a number of reasonable causes. 
 She, Taou Yuen, would call, pwlitely distressed, for the 
 mother . . . very regrettable. 
 
 Gerrit free — 
 
 Perhaps. 
 
 She had no shrinking from the act itself, nothing that 
 might have been called pity, a few more or less years in 
 a single life were beneath serious consideration; it was 
 the lives to come, the lingering doubt of which power led 
 her on, which restrained and filled her mind. A flicker 
 of rage darted through her calm questioning; her mental 
 
 [-235] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 processes again faded. With her right arm across the 
 supine body and enveloping the face in her left sleeve a 
 single twist and Nettie Vollar would choke in a cloud of 
 thick satin made gay with unfading flowers and the 
 embroidered symbol of long life. She felt her body grow 
 rigid with purpose when the sound of a footfall below 
 held her motionless in an unreasoning dread. 
 
 It was not heavy, yet she was certain that it was not 
 the woman's. A blur of voices drifted up to her, the 
 dejected feminine tone and a thin querulous demand, 
 surprise. Taou Yuen turned cold as stone: the sensa- 
 tion of oppressive danger increased until it seemed as if 
 she, and not Nettie Vollar, were strangling. There was 
 a profound stillness, then a shuffling tread on the stair, and 
 Edward Dunsack entered, entered but stood without ad- 
 vancing, his back against a closed door. 
 
 Even since yesterday he had noticeably wasted, there 
 were muscles of his face that twitched continuously; his 
 hands, it seemed to her, writhed like worms. He said 
 nothing, but stared at her with a fixed glittering vision; 
 all his one time worship — it had been so much — was 
 devoured in the hatred bom in the Ammidon library. 
 Frozen with apprehension she sat without movement; her 
 face, she felt, as still as a lacquered mask. 
 
 To her astonishment — she had forgotten Nettie VoUar's 
 existence — a shaken voice from the bed demanded : 
 
 " Uncle Edward, what's come over you! Don't you see 
 Mrs. Ammidon! Oh — " her speech rose in a choked ex- 
 clamation. Edward Dunsack had turned the key and was 
 crossing the room with a dark twisted face, his eyes 
 stark and demented. Taou Yuen, swung round toward 
 
 [236] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 the advancing figure, heard a long fluttering breath be- 
 hind her. Perhaps Nettie VoUar had died of fright. 
 The terror in her own brain dried up before an over- 
 whelming realization — she had betrayed herself to the 
 principle of evil. She was lost. Her thoughts were at 
 once incredibly rapid and entirely vivid, logical: Edward 
 Dunsack, ruined, in China; herself blinded, confused, de- 
 stroyed in America. Yesterday she had held him power- 
 less with the mere potency of her righteousness; but now 
 she had no strength. 
 
 There was a loathsome murmur from his dusty lips. 
 He intended to kill her, to mar and spoil her throat, a 
 degradation forbidden by Confucius, an eternal disfigure- 
 ment. This filled her with a renewed energy of horror. 
 . . . Here there was none but a feeble woman to hear her 
 if she called. She rose mechanically, a hand on the table; 
 Taou Yuen saw Nettie VoUar's deathly pallid face rolled 
 awkwardly from the pillow, and the bovv'l of opium. There 
 were twenty or more pills. Without hesitation, even with 
 a sense of relief, she swept the contents of the bowl into 
 her palm. The effort of swallowing so many hard parti- 
 cles was almost convulsive and followed with a nauseous 
 spasm. 
 
 Exhausted by mental effort she sank into a chair and 
 a dullness like smoke settled over her. The figure of 
 Edward Dunsack retreated to an infinite distance. The 
 smoke moved in a great steady volume — the eternal and 
 changeless Tao, without labor or desires, without. . . . 
 Hatred requited with virtue . . . attracting all honor — 
 mounting higher and higher from the consuming passions, 
 the seething black lives of her immeasurable fall. 
 
 [237] 
 
ALTHOUGH the late afternoon was at an hour 
 when Derby Street should have been filled by an 
 half-idle throng in the slackening of the day's 
 waterside employments Roger Brevard found it noticeably 
 anpty. In this he suddenly recognized that the street 
 was like the countingroom of the Mongolian Marine 
 Insurance Company, the heart of Salem's greatness — they 
 were weaker, stilled in a decline that yet was not evident 
 in the impressive body of the town. 
 
 When he had first taken charge of this branch both 
 Salem and it had been of sufficient moment to attract him 
 from New York; the company was insuring Boston and 
 New York vessels; the captains had thronged its broad 
 window commanding St. Peters and Essex Streets. Now 
 only an occasional shipmaster, holdiag the old traditions 
 and habits or else retired, sat in the comfortable armchairs 
 with leather cushions drawn up at the coal hearth or ex- 
 pansive in white through the summer. 
 
 His mind shifted to a consideration of these facts in re- 
 lation to himself — whether the same thing overtaking the 
 place and marine insurance had not settled up>on him too 
 — as he made his way from Central Wharf, where he had 
 vainly gone for prospective business. His inquiry was 
 reaching a depressing certainty when, passing and gazing 
 down Hardy Street, he saw the Ammidon barouche stand- 
 ing in front of the Dunsacks'. 
 [238] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Roger Brevard stopped: the Ammidon men, he knew, 
 seldom drove about Salem. He had heard of Nettie Vol- 
 lar's accident and came to the conclusion that Rhoda was 
 within. If this were so, her visit, limited to a charitable 
 impulse, would be shcart; and thinking of the pleasure of 
 driving with her he turned into the side way. As he ap- 
 proached, the coachman met him with an evident impa- 
 tience. 
 
 " No, sir," he replied to Brevard's inquiry. " But we 
 were to get Mrs. Ammidon at the bookstore. Mrs. Captain 
 Gerrit called here for her, but she went inside unex- 
 pected. All of an hour ago. I don't like to ask for the 
 lady, but what may be said later I can't think." 
 
 He had scarcely finished speaking when a woman whom 
 Brevard recognized as Kate VoUar appeared at the door. 
 " Oh, Mr. Brevard! " she exclaimed with an unnaturally 
 pallid and apprehensive face. " I'm glad to find you. 
 Please come upstairs vnth me. Why I don't know but 
 I'm all in a tremble. Mrs. Ammidon went to see Nettie, 
 then Edward came in, and when he heard who was 
 there he acted as if he were struck dumb and went up 
 like a person afQicted. I waited the longest while and 
 then followed them and knocked. Why the door was shut 
 I'd never tell you. But they didn't answer, any of 
 them," she declared with clasped straining hands. 
 " Three in the room and not a sound. Please — " her 
 voice was suddenly suffocated by dread. 
 
 " Certainly. Quarles," he addressed the coachman, 
 " 111 get you to come along. If there is a lodi to break 
 it will need a heavier shoulder than mine." 
 
 Mounting the narrow somber stair, followed by the man 
 [239] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 and Kate Vollar, he wondered vainly what might have 
 happened. Obscurely some of the woman's fear was 
 communicated to him. Brevard knocked abruptly on the 
 door indicated but there was no answering voice or move- 
 ment. He tried the latch: as Nettie's mother had found, 
 it was fastened. 
 
 " Quarks," Roger Brevard said curtly. 
 
 The coachman stepped forward, braced himself for the 
 shove he directed against the wooden barrier, and the 
 door swept splintering inward. Roger advanced first and 
 a grim confusion touched him with cold horror. Taou 
 Yuen was half seated and half lying across a table beside 
 the bed ; he couldn't see her face, but her body was utterly 
 lax. Nettie Vollar, too, was in a dreadful waxen simil- 
 itude of death, with lead colored lips and fixed sightless 
 eyes. A slight extraordinary sound rose behind him, and 
 whirling, Brevard discovered that it was Edward Dun- 
 sack giggling. He was silent immediately under the 
 other's scrutiny, and an expression of stubborn and mali- 
 cious caution pinched his wasted sardonic countenance. 
 
 Brevard turned to the greater necessity of the women, 
 and moved Taou Yuen so that he could see her features. 
 It was evident that she was not, as he had first thought, 
 dead; her breathing was slow and deep and harsh, her 
 pulse deliberate and full; she was warm, too, but her 
 face was suffused by an unnatural blueness and the pupils 
 of her inert eyes were barely discernible. He shook her 
 with an unceremonious vigor, but there was no answering 
 energy; she fell across his arm in a sheer weight of 
 satin-covered body. He moved back in a momentary, un- 
 controllable repulsion when Kate Vollar threw herself past 
 [240] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 him onto the bed. " Nettie! " she cried, " Nettie! Net- 
 tie ! " Brevard was chilled by the possibility of an un- 
 utterable tragedy, when with a faint suffusion of color the 
 girl gave a gasping sigh. Her voice stirred in a terror- 
 shaken whisper: 
 
 "Uncle Edward, don't! Why — don't. Oh!" She 
 pressed her face with a long shudder into the pillow. 
 "Whatever was it — ?" her mother began wildly. Bre- 
 vard caught her shoulder. "Not now," he directed; 
 " you'll come dovmstairs with me. We must have help at 
 once and your daughter quiet." 
 
 However he was in a quandary — he couldn't trust the 
 woman here, he would have to go immediately for assist- 
 ance, and yet it was impossible to leave Nettie VoUar and 
 Gerrit's wife alone. " You will have to wait in the 
 room," he decided, turning to Quarles. 
 
 Edward Dunsack was wavering against a wall; Brevard 
 went swiftly up to him. " We'll need you," he said 
 shortly. Dunsack maintained his silence and air of stub- 
 bom cunning; but, when the other man clasped his in- 
 credibly thin arm, he went willingly followed 1 by Kate 
 Vollar below. There he sat obediently, his judicious 
 detachment broken by a repetition of the thin shocking 
 snigger. 
 
 " You must be responsible for your brother," Roger 
 Brevard told the quivering woman. " I'll be back imme- 
 diately. Now that you know Nettie's safe you must 
 control yourself. No one should go up — keep everybody 
 out -^— till you hear from me or the doctor or Captain 
 Ammidon." 
 
 What an inexplicable accident or crime, he thought, hur- 
 [241] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 riedly approaching the countinghouse of Ammidon, Am- 
 midon and Saltonstone, the first and nearest of the places 
 to which he must go. He could remember no mark of 
 what had overcome Taou Yuen. How was Dunsack, who 
 was now clearly demented, implicated? What racking 
 thing had Nettie VoUar seen? 
 
 In the subsequent exclamatory rush, even on the fol- 
 lowing morning when Roger Brevard learned that — 
 poisoned by opium undoubtedly taken by herself — Ger- 
 rit Ammidon's wife had died without regaining conscious- 
 ness, the greater part of the tragedy became little clearer. 
 No statement could be had from Edward Dunsack other 
 than a meaningless array of precautionary phrases; and 
 returning in a sliding gait toward Hardy Street he was 
 put under a temporary restraint. 
 
 Nettie Vollar, Brevard heard, had relapsed from her 
 injury into a second critical collapse. Yet, he told him- 
 self, entering the room that was his home in Mrs. Cane's 
 large square house on Chestnut Street, that the Manchu 
 still absorbed his speculations. 
 
 It was a pleasant room and a pleasant house with a dig- 
 nified portico; and his tall windows, back on the right of 
 the second floor, opened on the length of the Napiers' gar- 
 den. Brevard sat looking out over a dim leafiness of 
 evening and tried to discipline his thoughts into order and 
 coherence. Any dignity of death had been soiled by the 
 ugly mystery of the aspects surrounding the end of Taou 
 Yuen. 
 
 He had liked her extremely well, agreeing with Rhoda 
 Ammidon that, probably, they had never been permitted 
 to know a more aristocratic breeding or greater degrees of 
 
 [242] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 purely worldly and mental and personal charm than those 
 of Gerrit's wife. 
 
 His mind grew more philosophical and a perception, 
 yet without base in facts, convinced him that Taou Yuen 
 had been killed by America. It was a fantastic thought, 
 and he attempted to dismiss it, waiting for more secure 
 knowledge, but it persisted. She had been killed by un- 
 familiar circumstances, tradition, emotions. In some 
 manner, but how he was unable to disentangle from the 
 pressures of mere curiosity and conjecture, Nettie Vollar 
 — or rather Gerrit's old passing affair with Nettie — had 
 entered into the unhappy occurrence. After an hour's vain 
 search he gave up all effort to pierce the darkness until he 
 had actual knowledge — if he ever had, he was forced 
 to add silently. It was possible that the secret might be 
 entirely guarded from the public, even from the closer part 
 he had played and his familiarity with the Ammidon 
 family. 
 
 He was an inmate of their inner garden with its lilac 
 trees and hedged roses in season, the pungent beds of 
 flowers and box, the moonshade of the poplars. Roger 
 Brevard turned from the consideration of Taou Yuen to 
 the even more insistent claim of his increasing affection 
 for Sidsall. He stopped again both to lament and delight 
 in her youth — another year and he would have unhesitat- 
 ingly announced his feeling as love to them all. It was 
 that, he admitted to himself almost shyly. The obvious 
 thing was for him to wait through the year or more 
 until the Ammidons would hear of a proposal and then 
 urge his desire. . . . He could see her quite often mean- 
 while. 
 
 [243] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Yes, that was the sensible course, even in the face of 
 his own multiplying years. They were twenty-five more 
 than Sidsall's; yet, he added in self-extenuation, he was 
 not definitely snared in middle age; he was still elastic in 
 body and youthful, but for graying hair, in appearance. 
 His birth was eligible from every social consideration; 
 and, though he was not rich, he had enough independently 
 to assure the safety of his wife's future. This did not 
 come entirely, or now even in the larger part, from the 
 Mongolian Marine Insurance Company, but took the form 
 of a comparatively small but secure private income. 
 
 He paused to wonder if it had not been that latter fact 
 which had prevented his being successful — successful, 
 that was, in William Ammidon's meaning of the word. 
 He had not made money nor a position of importance 
 among men of affairs. Such safety, he decided, was a 
 dangerous possession judged by the standards he was now 
 considering. A few thousand a year for life struck at the 
 root of activity. It induced a critical detached attitude 
 toward life, overemphasized the importance of the cut of a 
 trouser and the validity of pedigree. It was a mistake to 
 dance noticeably well. 
 
 Drifting, together with almost everyone else, he had 
 reached his present position, past forty, by imperceptible 
 degrees, obscurely influenced by the play of what he in- 
 trinsically was on circumstances or accident or fate. 
 
 Although he had never done so before, he compared 
 himself with Gerrit Ammidon. The other's refusal to 
 accept a partnership in the family firm or command a 
 California clipper was known. Gerrit and himself were 
 alike in that they apprehended the values of life more 
 [244] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 clearly than did the ordinary mind or heart. But, in 
 retaliation, the world they differed from curtly brushed 
 them aside. Roger Brevard could not see that they had 
 made the least mark on the callous normal cruelty or the 
 aesthetic and spiritual blindness of the existence they 
 shared. But it was always possible that something big- 
 ger than their grasp of justice or beauty was afoot. 
 
 He turned from the darkened prospect of the window 
 and his thoughts to the room. Without a light he removed 
 his formal street clothes, hanging the coat and waistcoat, 
 folding the trousers in a drawer, with exact care ; changing 
 his light boots for fiber slippers he set the former in the 
 row of footgear drawn up like a military review against 
 the wall. Though it was quite obscure now, and no one 
 would see him, he paused to brush his slightly disarranged 
 hair, before — tying the cord of his chamber robe — he 
 resumed his seat. 
 
 The year, he reverted to Sidsall, would pass; but, try 
 as he might, he had no feeling of security in the 
 future, however near. It was the present, this Sidsall, 
 that filled him with a tyrannical and bitter longing. She 
 was unbelievably beautiful now. Against the f aintness of 
 his hope, his patience, he saw the whole slow process of 
 the disintegration of marine insurance, and with it his 
 own fatuous insensibility to the decline: that decline with 
 its exact counterpart in himself. Salem and he were get- 
 ting dusty together. 
 
 He straightened up vigorously in his chair — this would 
 never do. He must wind up his affairs here and return to 
 New York. The tranquil backwater had overpowered him 
 for a time; but, again awake, he would strike out strongly 
 
 [245] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 . . . with Sidsall. Endless doubt and hope fluctuated 
 within him. Voices rose from the Napier garden, and 
 from a tree sounded the whirring of the first locust he had 
 noticed that summer. 
 
 On a noon following he saw the passage of the three or 
 four carriages that constituted the funeral cortege of Taou 
 Yuen's entirely private interment. She would be buried 
 of course by Christian service: here were none of the 
 elaborate Confucian rites and ceremonial ; yet — from what 
 Taou Yuen had occasionally indicated — Confucius, Lao- 
 tze, the Buddha, were all more alike than different; they 
 all vainly preached humility, purity, the subjugation of the 
 flesh. He stopped later in the Charter Street cemetery and 
 found her grave, the headstone marked: 
 
 Taou Yuen 
 a manchurian lady 
 
 THE WIFE 
 OF 
 
 Gereit Ammidon, Esq. 
 
 and the dates. 
 
 He saw, naturally, but little of the Ammidons — a 
 glimpse of Rhoda in the carriage and William on Charter 
 Street; the Nautilus, ready for sea, continued in her berth 
 at Phillips' Wharf. Fragments of news came to him 
 quoted and re-quoted, grotesquely exaggerated and 
 even malicious reports of the tragedy at the Dunsacks'. 
 Standing at his high desk in the countingroom of the Mon- 
 golian Marine Insurance Company, Taou Yuen's glitter- 
 ing passage through Salem already seemed to him a fable, 
 [246] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 a dream. Even Sidsall, robustly near by, had an aspect 
 of unreality in the tender fabric of his visions. Captain 
 Rendell, his spade beard at the verge of filmed old eyes, 
 who was seated at the window, rose with difficulty. For 
 a moment he swayed on insecure legs, |then, barely gather- 
 ing the necessary power, moved out into the street. 
 
 Later, when Roger Brevard was turning the key on the 
 insurance company for the day. Lacy Saltonstone stopped 
 to speak in her charming slow manner: "Mother of 
 course is in a whirl, with Captain Ammidon about to 
 marry that Nettie Vollar, since she is recovering after all, 
 and our moving to Boston. . . . You see I'm there so 
 often it will make really very little difference to me. 
 Sidsall is the lucky one, though you'd never know it from 
 seeing her. ... I thought you'd have heard — why, to 
 Lausanne, a tremendously impressive school for a year. 
 They have promised her London afterward. I would call 
 that a promise, but actually, Sidsall — ." 
 
 " Doesn't she want to go? " he asked mechanically, all 
 the emotions that had chimed through his being sud- 
 denly clashing in a discordant misery. He bowed ab- 
 sently, and hastening to his room softly closed the door 
 and sat without supper, late into the evening, lost in a 
 bitterness that continually poisoned the resolutions formed 
 out of his overwhelming need. He was aghast at the 
 inner violence that destroyed the long tranquility of his 
 existence, the clenched hands and spoken words lost in 
 the shadows over the Napiers' garden. He wanted Sidsall 
 with a breathless tyranny infinitely sharper than any pang 
 of youth: she was life itself. 
 
 She didn't want to go. Lacy had made that clear; and 
 [247] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 he told himself that her reluctance could only, must, pro- 
 ceed from one cause — that she cared for him. As he 
 dwelt on this, the one alleviating possibility, he became 
 certain of its truth. He would find her at once and in 
 spite of Rhoda and William Ammidon explain that his 
 whole hope lay in marrying her. With an utter contempt 
 at all the small orderly habits which, he now saw, were 
 the expression of a confirmed dry preciseness, he left his 
 clothes in a disorderly heap. Such a feeling as Sidsall's 
 and his, he repeated from the oppressive expanse of his 
 bLck walnut bed, was above ordinary precautions and 
 observance. Then, unable to dismiss the thought of how 
 crumpled his trousers would be in the morning, oppressed 
 by the picture of the tumbled garments, he finally rose and, 
 in the dark, relaid them in the familiar smooth array. 
 
 In the morning his disturbance resolved into what 
 seemed a very decided and reasonable attitude: He 
 would see Rhoda that day and explain his feeling and 
 establish what rights and agreement he could. He was 
 willing to admit that Sidsall was, perhaps, too young for 
 an immediate decision so wide in results. The ache, the 
 hunger for happiness sharpened by vague premonitions of 
 mischance, began again to pound in his heart. 
 
 At the Ammidons' it was clear immediately that Rhoda's 
 manner toward him had changed: it had become more 
 social, even voluble, and restrained. She conversed 
 brightly about trivial happenings, while he sat listening, 
 gravely silent. But it was evident that she soon became 
 aware of his difference, and her voice grew sharper, almost 
 antagonistic. They were in the fonAal parlor, a sig- 
 nificant detail in itself, and Roger Brevard saw William 
 [248] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 pass the door. Well, he would soon have to go, he must 
 speak about Sidsall now. It promised to be unexpectedly 
 difficult; but the words were forming when she came into 
 the room. 
 
 There were faint shadows under her eyes, the unmis- 
 takable marks of tears. An overwhelming passion for 
 her choked at his throat. She came directly up to him, 
 ignoring her mother. " Did you hear that they want me 
 to go away? " she asked. He nodded, " It's that I came 
 to see your mother about." 
 
 "They know I don't want to," she continued; "I've 
 explained it to them very carefully." 
 
 " My dear Sidsall," Rhoda Ammidon cut in; " we can't 
 have this. .What Roger has to say must be for me and 
 your father." The girl smiled at her and turned again 
 to Roger Brevard. " Do you want me to go? " 
 
 " No! " he cried, all his planning lost in uncontrollable 
 rebellion. 
 
 " Then I don't think I shall." 
 
 William entered and stood at his wife's shoulder. 
 " You won't insist," Sidsall faced them quietly. " Ridicu- 
 lous," her father replied. Brevard realized that he must 
 support the girl's bravery of spirit. How adorable she 
 was! But, before the overwhelming superior position of 
 the elder Ammidons, their weight of propriety and author- 
 ity, his determination wavered. 
 
 " To be quite frank," the other man proceeded, " since 
 it has been forced on us, Sidsall imagines herself in love 
 with you, Brevard. I don't need to remind you how 
 unsuitable and preposterous that is. She's too young 
 to know the meaning of love. Besides, my dear fellow, 
 
 [249] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 you're a quarter century her elder. We want Sidsall to 
 go to London like her mother, have her cotillions, before 
 she settles into marriage." 
 
 " They can't understand, Roger," Sidsall touched his 
 hand. " We're sorry to disappoint them — " 
 
 " You ought to be made to leave the room," William 
 fumed. 
 
 " That isn't necessary," Rhoda told him. " I am sure 
 Roger understands perfectly how impossible it is. You 
 mustn't be hurt," she turned to him, " if I admit that we 
 have very different plans ... at least a man nearer Sid- 
 sall's age." 
 
 The girl lifted a confident face to him. " You want to 
 marry me, don't you ? " she asked. More than any other 
 conceivable joy. But he said this silently. His courage 
 slowly ebbed before the parental displeasure viewing him 
 coldly. " Then — " Sidsall paused expectantly, a touch 
 of impatience even invaded her manner. " Please tell 
 them, Roger." 
 
 " Why I have to put up with this is beyond me," Wil- 
 liam Ammidon expostulated with his wife. " It's shame- 
 less." 
 
 Roger Brevard winced. He tried to say something about 
 hope and the future, but it was so weak, a palpable re- 
 treat, leaving Sidsall alone and unsupported, that the 
 words perished unfinished. The girl studied him, sud- 
 denly startled, and her confidence ebbed. He turned 
 away, crushed by convention, filled with shame and a 
 sense of self-betrayal. 
 
 A stillness followed of imendurable length, in which he 
 found his attention resting on the diversified shapes of the 
 [250] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 East India money in a comer cabinet. It was Sidaall 
 who finally spoke, slowly and clearly: 
 
 " Forgive me." 
 
 He rfecognized that she was addressing her mother and 
 father. From a whisper of skirts he realized that she was 
 leaving the room. Without the will necessary for a last 
 glimpse he stood with his head bowed by an appalling 
 sensation of weariness and years. 
 
 In a flash of self-comprehension, Roger Brevard knew 
 that hei would never, as he had hoped, leave Salem. 
 He was an abstemious man, one of a family of long lives, 
 and he would linger here, increasingly unimportant, for 
 a great while, an old man in new epochs, isolated among 
 strange people and prejudices. Whatever the cause — the 
 small safety or an inward flaw — he had never been part 
 of the corporate sweating humanity where, in the war of 
 spirit and flesh, the vital rewards and accomplishments 
 were found. 
 
 Soon after he passed Gerrit and Nettie VoUar driving 
 in the direction of the harbor; she was lying back wanly in 
 the Ammidon barouche, but her companion's face was set 
 directly ahead, his expression of general disdain strongly 
 marked. A vigorous hand, Roger noted, was clasped 
 about Nettie's supine palm. She saw him standing on 
 the sidewalk and bowed slightly, but the shipmaster 
 plainly overlooked him together with the rest of Salem. 
 
 The end of summer was imminent in a whirl of yellow 
 leaves and chill gray wind. There was a ringing of 
 bugles through the morning, the strains of military quick- 
 steps, rhythmic tramping feet and the irregular fulmination 
 of salutes. That it was already the day of the annual' 
 
 [251] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 Fall Review seemed incredible to Roger Brevard. He was 
 indifferent to the activities of the Common; but when he 
 heard that the Nautilus was sailing in the middle of the 
 afternoon he left his inconsequential affairs for Phillips' 
 Wharf. 
 
 A small number were waiting on the solid rock-filled 
 reach, the wharfinger's office at its head and a stone ware- 
 house blocking the end, where the Nautilus lay with her 
 high-steeved bowsprit pointing outward. The harbor was 
 slaty, cold, and there was a continuous slapping of small 
 waves on the shore. Darkening clouds hung low in the 
 west, out of which the wind cut in flaws across the 
 open. The town, so lately folded in lush, greenery, 
 showed a dun lift of roofs and stripping branches tossing 
 against an ashy sky. 
 
 Close beside Roger stood Barzil Dunsack, his beard 
 blowing, with Kate VoUar in a bright red shawl, her skirts 
 whipping uneasily against her father's legs. Beyond were 
 the Ammidons — William, and Rhoda in a deep furred 
 wrap, and their daughters. Rhoda waved for him to join 
 them, but he declined with a gesture of acknowledgment. 
 
 The deck of the Nautilus was above his vision but he 
 could see most of the stir of departure. The peremptory 
 voice of the mate rose from the bow, minor directions 
 were issued by the second mate aft, a seaman was aloft 
 on the main-royal yard and another stood at the stage ris- 
 ing sharply from the wharf. Gerrit and his wife had not 
 yet arrived, and the pilot, making a leisurely appearance, 
 stopped to exchange remarks with the Ammidons. He 
 climbed on board the ship and Roger could see his head 
 
 [252] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 and shoulders moving toward the poop and mounting the 
 ladder. 
 
 The wind grew higher, shriller, every moment; it was 
 thrashing among the stays and braces; the man aloft, a 
 small movement against the clouds, swayed in its force. 
 There was a faint clatter of hoofs from Derby Street, Bre- 
 vard had a fleeting glimpse of an arriving carriage, and 
 Gerrit, supporting Nettie Ammidon, advanced over the 
 wharf. The shipmaster walked slowly, the woman cling- 
 ing, almost dragging, at his erect strength. They went 
 close by Roger: Nettie's pale face, her large shining dark 
 eyes, were filled with placid surrender. Her companion 
 spoke in a low grave tone, and she looked up at him in a 
 tired and happy acquiescence. 
 
 The two families joined, and there was a confused 
 determined gayety of farewell and good wishes. Out of it 
 finally emerged the captain of the Nautilus and the slight 
 figure upon his arm. He wore a beaver hat, and, as they 
 mounted the stage, he was forced to hold it on with his 
 free hand. When the quarter-deck was reached they dis- 
 appeared into the cabin. 
 
 " Mr. Broadrick," the pilot called, " you can get in 
 those bow fasts. Send a hawser to the end of the 
 wharf; I'm going to warp out." There was a harsh an- 
 swering clatter as the mooring chain that held the bow of 
 the Nautilus was secured, and a group of sailors went 
 smartly forward with a hemp cable to the end of the 
 wharf's seaward thrust. The Nautilus lay on the eastern 
 side, with the wind beating over the starboard quarter, and 
 there was little difficulty in getting under way. Strain 
 
 [2S3] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 was kept on the stem and breast fasts while the mate 
 directed : 
 
 " Ship your capstan bars." 
 
 The capstan turned and the Nautilus moved forward 
 to the beat of song. 
 
 "Low lands, low lands, hurrah, my John, 
 I thought I heard the old man say. 
 Low lands, low lands, hurrah, my John, 
 
 We'll get some rum 
 
 Hurrah, my John. 
 
 Then shake her — " 
 
 " Vast heaving," Mr. Broadrick shouted. 
 
 The intimate spectators on Phillips' Wharf moved out 
 with the ship. Gerrit Ammidon was now visible on the 
 quarter-deck with the pilot. He walked to the port rail- 
 ing aft and stood gazing somberly back at Salem. The 
 stovepipe hat was not yet discarded, and the hand firmly 
 holding its brim resembled a final gesture of contempt. 
 The pilot approached him, there was a brief exchange 
 of words, and the former sharply ordered: 
 
 " Stand by to run up your jib and fore-topmast stay- 
 sail, Mr. Broadrick. Put two good men at the sheets and 
 see that those sails don't slat to pieces. 
 
 " On the wharf there — take that stem fast out to the 
 last ringbolt. Mr. Second Mate ... get your fenders 
 aboard." The wind increased in a violence tipped with 
 stinging rain. " Give her the jib and staysail." She 
 heeled slightly and gathered steerage way. Roger Brevard 
 involuntarily waved a parting salutation. An extraor- 
 dinary emotion swept over him : a ship bound to the East 
 
 [254] 
 
JAVA HEAD 
 
 always stirred his imagination and sense of beauty, but 
 the departure of the Nautilus had a special significance. 
 It was the beginning, yes, and the end, of almost the 
 whole sweep of human suffering and desp£|,ir, of longing 
 and hope and passion, and a reward. 
 
 " Let go the stem fast. Steady your helm there." 
 
 " Steady, sir." 
 
 A mere gust of song was distinguishable against the blast 
 of storm. Under the lee of the stone warehouse, on the 
 solidity of the wharf, the land, Roger Brevard watched 
 the Nautilus while one by one the topsails were sheeted 
 home and the yards mastheaded. " A gale by night," 
 somebody said. The ship, driving with surprising speed 
 toward the open sea, was now apparently no more than a 
 fragile shell on the immensity of the stark horizon. 
 
 The light faded : the days were growing shorter. Alone 
 Brevard followed the others moving away. Kate Vol- 
 lar's red shawl suddenly streamed out and was secured by 
 a wasted hand. Just that way, he thought, the color and 
 vividness of his existence had been withdrawn. 
 
 THE END 
 
 [2SS] 
 
THE WORKS OF JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER 
 
 "One of the great novelists of the period" — Chicago Tribune 
 
 I. THE LAr ANTHONr 
 
 This first book by Mr. Hergesheimer, a romantic novel, was pub- 
 lished in 1914. 
 
 //. MOUNTAIN BLOOD 
 
 A powerful and masterly story of the Virginia mountains to-day. 
 Pubhshed in 1915. Copies of the first editions of this and of "The 
 Lay Anthony " are greatly sought after by collectors. 
 
 ///. THE THREE BLACK PENNYS 
 
 It was this remarkable novel, published in September, 1917, that 
 brought Mr. Hergesheimer his greater fame. 
 
 The New Tork Times said: " In this story of 'the three black men of 
 the Penny family," three generations of strength and weakness, of love 
 and passion and struggle and insight, set against a century and a) half 
 of 'progress' in the steel mills of Pennsylvania, Mr. Hergesheimer 
 has produced a notable book — one of the most notable books, cet^ 
 tainly, of the year." 
 
 IV. GOLD AND IRON 
 
 Three vivid stories each a complete condensed novel of swift action 
 and boldly outlined character studies. One (The Dark Fleece) is the 
 story of the return of a successful forty-niner to his New England 
 home; one (Wild Oranges) a stirring tale of the orange groves of 
 Georgia; and one (Tubal Cain) of the early iron furnaces of Penn- 
 sylvania, published April, 1918. 
 
 Mr. Hergesheimer' s books are all being published in London by William 
 Heinemann. Mr. Heinemann b rought out the first of his editions, " The 
 Three Black Penny s," late in IQ18. The first review appeared in The London 
 Times and said in part: "An unusal novel, to be read slowly, thoroughly and 
 with a sense of luxury." 
 
 Any reader interested in Mr. Hergfrheimer's writings will be kept informed 
 regularly of his new books in advance of their publication upon sending his 
 (or her) name and address to 
 
 ALFRED A. KNOPF, Publisher 
 220 West Forty-second Street, New York