Chapter 23 of 23 · 1515 words · ~8 min read

Part 23

Finally, early one morning, she was taken most awful bad, vomiting blood, and twisting and twitching in a way horrible to see, she being so mountainous fat, and gibbering crazily in the Gilbert language--all about me and little Benny, and devils snapping at her toes, and a giant squid what was dragging her down to drown. Then of a sudden she grew very quiet, and Doc, looking close to her face, said, "Good God, she is dead!" Yes, dead, just as Doctor Funk hurried in, glaring to see Doc there, and saying something out loud about God damn quacks, and looking and smelling savagely at the different bottles. Doc slunk out of sight, and then Funk, he calmed down, and spoke to me very sympathetic and kind as to what I was to do, and how, after all, it was a merciful release.

I buried her the same day, that being the rule in the tropics, and the better part of the town followed her to the grave in the foreign cemetery, that being a kind of rule or custom, too, in Apia, as well as everybody getting tight afterwards at the Tivoli bar.

It was a strange feeling to come back to the house and to know that Rosie was gone out of it forever, and that I had passed another big landmark in my life. For all it was such a release, I was bluer than blue, yet I won't deny I was glad, too, but in a frightened kind of way, and half wishing again and again that she was back. Her running on about Benny and me before she died stuck in my throat, and seemed awful pitiful; and I remembered how pretty she once had been, and always such a good, true wife, and how me and the little store was all the world to her before sorrow broke her heart.

I went upstairs, and sat looking out on the bay, thinking it all over, and how in time death comes to every one of us, high or low; thinking, too, that I was a free man now--a prosperous, respected, looked-up-to man, and an ex-Councillor with a home that many a woman would consider well worth sharing. I wondered if Miss Nelson up at the Mission would consider a man as unrefined as I was and thirty-seven years old, she so sweet and young and with such gentle, winning ways. She was a governess to their children, and that made me think she would, for no woman likes to be a dependent and at the beck and call of another. I sat there dreaming of her, and of the place nicely fixed up, and of us driving out of a Sunday to Vailele in a smart little buggy, with me reëlected to the Council, and people saying: "How d'ye do, won't you drop in a moment"--to me and Miss Nelson, married.

If this sounds wrong, remember Rosie had been no wife to me for three years--only a torment and a disgrace--and I deserved some credit for having stood it like I did. I had never dared have such thoughts before, though I'd often remarked what a pretty creature Miss Nelson was, just like a man does without anything further in his head. Yet looking back on it, and the few times she had been in the store when we had spoken together, I kind of felt she liked me, and she had certainly never been in any hurry to leave; with this much to go on, and the fact that she always smiled at me most winsome the few times we passed each other on the street, I couldn't help thinking I had made a start without my knowing it, and that if I followed it up hard this dream of her and me might be made to come true.

I was turning this over in my mind when a squall of rain came tearing along, the sky all black with it, and the roof hammering like a boiler factory. In Samoa you needn't look out of the window to see if it is raining. It comes down deafening, and the iron roars with the weight and smash of it. This was how I didn't notice Doc till he stood right there beside me. There was something awful strange and grave about him, and I give a little jump I was that taken by surprise.

He lit a cigar, and waited very impatient for the squall to pass; and as he went to the window and beat a little tattoo on it with his finger nail, I noticed he was all dressed up like I'd never seen him before. Then he came back, looking at me very steadfast, and says: "Well, Ben, you're out of the woods at last."

"Yes, thank the Lord!" says I.

"Same here," he says, meaning himself. "When the mail comes in to-night, I'm off to San Francisco."

"Why, Doc!" I cried out, utterly flabbergasted.

"Yes," he says, "and for all I care, the whole damned island may sink in the sea, and stay there, with nothing but coconuts and my old accordion to mark the place and maybe one of the wheels of that bloody handcart."

I was still knocked silly.

"But, Doc," I says, "you can't have enough to pay your passage."

Then he laughs.

"A hundred and seventy-five ain't much out of two thousand," he says.

"Two thousand?" I says, more mystified than ever.

"Yes," he answers, facing me square. "The two thousand that you owe me, Mr. Ben."

I was just going to answer I didn't owe him nothing when the words stopped midway on my tongue. I began to tremble instead--tremble till my hands could hardly hold to my chair, till I couldn't keep my mouth from dribbling.

"It's a debt of honor," he went on. "You can repudiate it if you want to, and snap your fingers in my face, but I trusted you, I got you out of your mess, and now I ask you for my money."

I couldn't answer anything, but looked at him speechless while he goes to the door, peeks outside of it very careful lest any one might be listening, and then comes tiptoeing back. It was so plain what he meant to tell me that I managed to cry out, "No, no," and shook worse nor ever.

"You're a straight man, Ben," he says. "What you owe, you pay. I wouldn't have risked it if I had had any doubt about that."

I stumbled to the sideboard, poured myself out a big drink, never minding what I spilled, and then went up to the attic where the bag of money was still lying under the old mattress. I brought it down and give it to him, only asking him not to count it as that was more than I could bear.

He made a grab for it, never saying a word, and as he went out of the doorway that was the last I ever saw of him.

Was I a fool to have paid him? Was it all a bluff, and just his hellish ingeniousness for turning everything to account? Funk never questioned she had died a natural death. Yet true or untrue, paying Doc that two thousand dollars made me a murderer. In the bottom of my heart I believe he did it, and there are nights when I wake up in a sweat of horror. But wouldn't it have been a dirty act to bilk him of his money, all the more as it would have been so easy? To this day I don't know whether I ought to have paid or not, though if I hadn't it would have lightened my conscience of a frightful load. But when I think that I always see him closing the door and tiptoeing back, ready to whisper the truth.

If it was the truth.

Well, what would you have done?

THE END