Part 33 (2/2)

She was beside the bed. He could not see her face, but he heard her voice, and it was over her shoulder that he saw the matador's face.

”There were murmured words in Spanish which he did not understand, and then a phrase at which he could guess, then words which there was no mistaking, and which were not for him or any other man to hear. He backed out.

”Juan, Ferrero, and her father were still at the outer door of the outer room. They were not looking. He saw that from this middle room a window led on to a balcony. He stepped through the window, found a post, dropped to the ground, made his way through the garden in the rear, and so on to a back street. He ran on--one street, another, a dozen, and then uphill to a wall which he seemed to know. He looked about, and saw that near by was the monastery where he had been given his first breakfast in Lima. It was the same old wall.

”He climbed the wall and sat there. He had been sitting so that morning when the pretty flower girl had tossed him the blue flower--blue as the sky. Only now it was night and no one to see and smile. He looked up to the sky, the night sky of the tropics. The twisted Southern Cross shone on him. He turned and faced the north.

”Somewhere he could hear a band playing. In one of the parks probably, and there would be leaves rustling there, and the scent of flowers, and the senoritas walking with their mothers, while the young men hung around the edges, striving to get a word, a look. And there would be the arched jets of a fountain playing under colored lights, and back in Portland, Oregon, by this time was perhaps Tommie Jones married to his plump waitress.

”It was a good band--playing something he had never heard before, but something very soothing. He looked toward the Pacific. He knew where the harbor of Callao should lie, and in the middle of the harbor he could see them, one great cl.u.s.ter of lights, the lights of the battle fleet.

And there were the fleet's search-lights playing on the great stone pier.

”The band was playing again--something fine.

”And then the monastery bell tolled. And presently he heard a chanting--a slow sad chanting! And then the chanting also died away.

”He had been lying on the wall with his hat in his hand and staring up at the sky. Now he sat up, put on his hat, took another look to the lights in the harbor, and hummed softly the Philippine service song--

”It's home, boy, home, it's home you ought to be.”

”And you've no kick coming. Dreams dreams, always dreams, but you've had your hour, too.' He took another look at the lights of the fleet--another to the lights of the city below him--'Good night, Lima,'

he whispered, and dropped off the wall.”

The pump-man had begun his story this evening while sitting with back to the rail and feet stretched out on the deck before him. He finished while lying on his back, hands clasped under the back of his head, and wide eyes on the sky.

The pa.s.senger leaned on the rail, studied the stem of the s.h.i.+p, and listened to the surge of back wash against the s.h.i.+p's bow as she drove on. Abeam, the young moon drooped.

Kieran said nothing more. The pa.s.senger nothing for a long time. Then it was:

”And they were married?”

”I don't know--Cogan didn't wait to see--but of course.”

”Of course,” echoed the pa.s.senger, and in silence resumed his study of the s.h.i.+p's bow cutting through the little seas.

The pa.s.senger turned inboard. ”But Cogan--where is he?”

”There was no Cogan.”

”No Cogan.”

”No, no Cogan.”

”And no bull-fight, and no Valera, and no Torellas, nor Juan, and it never happened?”

”Why, of course it happened, and just as I've told it. But not to anybody named Cogan. There was no Cogan, or rather”--Kieran rolled over on his side and rested his head on his elbow--”I'm Cogan.”

”Oh-h-h. Oh-h-h. And you're Campbell, the old champion athlete?”

”Yes, I'm Campbell. And I'm Cogan. And I'm Kieran, pump-man on this wall-sided oil-tanker at fifty-five per month.”

<script>