Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 242, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 October 1920 — Yellow Men Sleep [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Yellow Men Sleep

By Jeremy Lane

: ; Illustrated by IRWIN MYERS I •_ CHAPTER Xl—Continued. "Do you dream often F ■ “Often. Ido not care for sleep, but It Is pleasaht to dream. , Have you found it so?” He thought carefully. “Yes, I’ve always dreamed. It runs in your family, and in mine.” “I come here every day,” said /- Helen. “The sun must be very hot ” “I am accustomed to it. 1 do not resist it. There Is great life in it” “It has made you lovely,” he, said. “But it was unkind to you,” she replied. And a faint, cool smile touched her lipa. Innocence or utter sophistication — from an ultimate degree of one of these opposites she was regarding him. It was a helpless moment for the young man behind the rock. He gazed _ out for relief over the stinging white sand, where all of yesterday is sacrificed in the drift of today. One horseman dotted out there, not far from the city, a pair of keen eyes that might be able to see through stone. “I had arranged with Chee Ming,” aaM the girl, "for you and my father to live in peace with us* .Now that cannot be, for you have tMed to run away. You have wounded his emo- ! tiOnS.” * " “Your father and I. expect to get away, but we are coming back soon.” “No,” she said. “No man goes from here to tell the world what he has seen. Chee Ming only, of all men, goes and comes, and he tells nothing. The empire must fall when its , secrecy is gone." _ Con felt the chill of a stone wall. “You are deeply Interested in the empire of the Yellow Sun,” he said duUy. “It is to bear a wonderful fruit,” said the princess. "It is very cruel,” said Levington. “I do not agree with Chee Ming abput everything.” “You have a merciful heart, a heart that would -be at home In America, where this idea, of-racial fusion, the blendlhg of all into one, has borne good fruit for two centuries.”" “I have learned but little of America, except concerning the red men,” said Helen. , ' . , “Chee Ming has been careful. The red men are gone. It is the New World. Hl fell you all about it. You would* not be satisfied with the oppression and thievery of Tan Kuan, if you knew the ways of America.” “Mother used to talk like that” - . “You belong in America,” said Levingtofi, scarcely awdFe of how much he dared in making the statement “My father’ mentioned that yesterday. He is a good man.” _ - . "Yes, I love him, too.” . j “He needs you,” said the girt. “He needs you,” returned Con. "America would be a splendid place » for you. There are dreams there, too,

If you like.” “I am not interested. Here Is the heart of the world. This is the center of power, the light of ages to- come. Here my will is obeyed, and all the good things of earth are brought before me.” ’ • ? “Most of .them from America,” added Con. But he was hurt deep. He felt, the snare of dominion around her heart. Perhaps she was without a heart. But that did not correspond to her innate kindness. She did not agree with the policy of state. - “I am needed here,” said the princess, rather wearily. “There is work, endless work. The desert Is a league of cities that have fallen, and those cities must me made to bloom again." “Why do you plant seeds of poison?” “You do not understand dreaming. , It is unbearable without a dream. I have not your courage.” “Are you happy?” “I am not happy as a child is." ' i “And you love~power?” ' "That is part of my destiny.” _ “Cruelty, sterility, poison—ttat is Tan Kuan.” said Levington, washing her closely. “It need not be'so,” said referring to her coming regency. - “Then you are satisfied, happy r “QnmoHTnoQ hnt— w » ~ * -I cannot say. Why do you quesevening, I think that In the west where the goes may‘be what I want. If AWA. If ’ V ueve **• _ l.. 1 • * low the sun westward, andsee for yourself?” ■ i ■■ " * M < a not aV urn wu. « • dice tn perfect noil.

her^each^day 8 her, and she does not speak.” “Why doesn’t the yellow prince help youF “I have not asked help of him.” " “Perhaps your father will advise 99 She shook her head slowly. Her face was yet filled with a remote pain. Beauty was about her eyes, but Something was holding back. Now the fires in Con’s own heart would not wait, and he said: “I wish I could tell you. I have nothing of my own to offer, except America, and I can give that to you, There are books that have been kept from you. The white blood in your veins has been carefully shadowed. Your heart is American. I‘marvel how well they have made you forget that. You long for your pwn birthright; that Is why you look Into the west, and are filled with a desire do not comprehend. I never knew what my country meant to me until I got away from it, working under Its orders in faraway places like this. You are longing for home and your own people. Your soul is sick of yellow faces, your mind is weary with Oriental contact—” •He checked himself, for she did not seem-to be following well. The distant rider had changed his position, coming nearer. The rock seemed smaller than at first, the sun hotter. Silence between them. From the saddle the princess looked afar over the yellow earth. The palace walls were Indistinct in foe trembling heat. She seemed lost in a cloud of dreams. It was maddening to Levington, until a great light broke within him. She said simply, without looking at him : “You are making me unhappy.” Even before the full joy of sols utterance was clear to him, he was up beside her, forgetful of the sentinel, the sun, the whole world but this. A honeyed fragrance came to him from her nearness. The words that burned his heart stopped in his throat, but his eyes held hers an instant, and tragically her unhappiness deepened; yet it made him glad. Without speaking, she spurred her mount wheeled, covering Jhe man who loved her, and then rode for the city gate, J.

CHAPTER XIL ‘ • — The Yellow Bowl. As he returned to the mouth of the shaft with no thought of caution, even the Gobi seemed familiar and right to Levington, its purple band of horizon. Its scarlet rocks, the mighty pour of the sun no longer inimical, for his

head was filled her find! words. They brought hope and hurt together. -When once more in a-normal state. Con was frightened at the intensity of his speech, the fire he had sent out to her. Earth held no other fear than ' that he had said too much, that he had stumbled over the fealty in her nature, in-attacklhg her expectations of empire. Also he saw afresh the extent of the consequences of March’s blunder, the forcing* of escape last night Helen had secured a sort of truce for them, but it was unavailable’ now. Con grimly remembered the blows he had given the soldier in March’s rooms. : ■ / ..... - He wanted to find her father. The drop down the shaft did not seem so long this time, but the darkness at the -bottom was overpowering. His eyes remained full of green patches of sunlight Then he 1 started back, as i nearly as he could remember, along the tunnel toward the larger cavern where the gas burned.' He thought he j could smell the burned gas, or the baking lentils. Unmistakably he scented camels. None of the dwarfs was In vtew. He had to grope.having no„ torch. It was like a starless night It was some time before he saw a I m - __ _ p^ul- 1 • A aXv> c *' TFo woa I • ■■ . M : e _ I

miner*. They were iTtue each With a twisted knee and spine made hideous in childhood. Under the flaring light Con dould not steady a shudder at the picture they made. Halfstarved, long-armed, dark creatures, with the eyes narrowed, air humanity drawn from their faces, they peered at the large man in foe tunnel before them, and a united whisper rustled from lip so Ito. ' - “Where is my friend—white manF Levington made signs and variously indicated his desire to find March. The eyes turned upon him grew piglike, and the whisper was . repeated. Heads turned back, then toward MB. Hostility was like powder to the match.- 'They were blatnlng him for the taking off of their kin. Con felt that he was a bad omen to them, which was the greater need for finding March and the Arab friend. Now the little party-lined up against one side bf the plainly intending the white man to pass. “That way?” Con inquired also with his hands if they were directing him to go on. Perhaps they had just come from'March. Now they' made no response, their s'tony countenances full upon him in the' flickering light Having small choice. Con nodded his thanks and strode, past them. Again the soft crackle of their voices. He turned. They were going on with the torch. Darkness closed about him onde more. His reverie was spoiled for the moment A touch of the horror of numberless generations was upon him, the burial-fear. He could touch the earth over bls head, as in a tomb, and span the walls from side to side. Then he laughed at himself. It was a relief, a necessity. He came back to himself; Identity was renewed, another ■ necessity, for new worlds bad been flitting through him and he had forgotten'' much. Confident of locating bls friend or the brown-skinned sailor who bad gone from Aden to Buffalo in bls time, Levington pushed onward down the tunnel.

He thought of Helen’s face—oval, cairn, day-kissed, unawakened. Yet each moment she seemed different, for now she was fully awakened, a princess of evening lights and dear Wine and music, subtle eastern wisdom —a princess only, a mottled flower. This latter was a form of torture to him whose heart had opened.. But, always there was the same pale light in her eyes, whither she were learned of kings and princes, or quite Innocent. It further troubled him to find that he could not be certain as to the color, if they were lit with the green of the sea at daybreak or the blue of sky at sunset They could be as steady as jade, pure in their gaze, and their loveliness sent him out upon a tide of yearning. A warm flood seemed to rise when he remembered her slim throgt, and it startled him to recall the manner of her breathing. At moments now, with the earthen blackness beating in upon him, Con was almost ready to believe that she was a phantom; that foe Gobi had done something to him; that possibly there was no Sha Mo at aH, and - was merely coming to foe surface after a plunge deeper and darker than usual, to find himself ill with life, in a room at the old club; that sols Helen was-foe shadow of his unrealized desires, of all hls.postponed. aspiration, and nothing more. Yet he could,hear her voice as if she were just ahead in the darkness, and be had sometime touched her hand. The delicacy of thht moment was still upon him.-He.sbook it off and tried to laugh again, to clear his mind, but sols time the happy effect was more elusive.

Direction was an impossible subject -and depth another. He reached an intersection, a trying moment for the nerves as his hands went out into soft nothing. He waited, in a tension, and beard's slow thudding, like the tread of giants within the earth. The air of the passages was narcotic. In thinking of the fierce evaporation of the desert this difference was gratefdL - . Well aware that he was lost, he thought of many things old and new, dwelling strangely upon the potentialities of his own spirit. The well-rub-bed coinage Gt life had enriched him and he longed to spend. Leaning against the rough walls, scarcely able to see his hands before his face, Levington discovered the innermost door of himself. Soul-currents that he had toqchedln boyhood seemed close about him again. Heart’s dusk cried softly within, a lonely twilight in spring. The air was figured with the memory of BUI the yellow cook, of those tales in a magic tongue, told in the hot, thick evenings to the sway of the ship. Probably Bill’s stories had been of Tan Kuan, its piled-up curving roofs; ot dose-guarded maidens in t jhci r D 3 i sty silks; of the diamonds that spatter from the shaken plumage of a cockatoo at the fountain down upon white and ivory limbs; or perhaps of these choking tunnels where one tiny flawed nerve would set the luckless a-tearing Off his nails in frenzy against Bandstone walls, the source of the fragrant Web of korest Levington smiled a mad, faint welcome to the shade or the murdered Chiney, and drove himself erect, onward. So gradual was the soul-dark in Its. claiming of him that his will was reUdous weakness fit convalescence, a ew aid 1 flowers of gossamer grew about his foot and • thunder that was DCOfOUnd shaft, greenish and wavering. LevtogI thliml to so nearer but It did not seem

now as air odor like lilies to a sealed room made bis lungs tremble for air. The tunnel was ending to awall or barrier, across the top of which an artificial light reached the wanderer. He could not stop short ot the wall; his feet carried him against it. Moments of an unreal clarity came to tils brain, in which everything was outlined with indelible severity, Inklines of memory. There was an uncanny view of a certain room to Dory street, long ago, a man sleeping, mumbling as he slept, one hand twitching upon the side of the cot He was whispering, Tm going,” and the room was- surcharged with the warm spent of cinnamon and roses. Levington gasped, snatching at the wall, and this vision of his father and koresh broke away—only the dark agato, with a green gl°w overhead somewhere, and a great pulsing like seismic threats. Someself now commanded, and with surprising difficulty Con stretched his fingers up the barrier and began to lift himself. His eyes came level with the top, and. he blinked into the glow. A low altar of rock was sending up the very crystalline soul of smoke, clear as water risjng in a spring, or lifting gas to still >tr. Round about the altar, or reclining against the walls of the low chamber, were figures, motionless, their colored robes and the silken draperies of their couches as lifeless as the sandstone that encased aIL The light came from an inverted bowl of jade upon the wall. One couch was higher than the rest, nearer the peak of stones that made the altar, and beside this couch an old woman stood, robed in black. Of all the figures in the chamber, thtnanclent female alone moved, and. her arms, swaying -so gradually, the tips of tier sleeves drifting, were the essence of stillness. Levington was gripped cold as he discerned through the vapors that this person was stroking the eyelids of his princess. Gowned in celestial blue and gold gemmed ankle rings lax-upon the cushions, Helen lay as one in death beyond the colorless font of smoke, and her lover’s torture was complete. From a yellow bowl, the woman in black moistened her fingers and continued the drugged caresses. The hag was proof against the fumes that had dizzied Levington when he was yet far down the passage, and that drove the souls from the bodies of all the devotees within the subterranean chamber.

Stupidly tie observed the gash In the rock behind the bowl- of jade from which the flaming gas emerged to illumine the room; he noted the door .beyond, and an iron ring to the door. In the crisis he dully observed details —the tangled long mustaches of one waxen face In a corner, the glint of polished nails on a royal fat hand, the silken dragons that stood forever licking the throat of one (male or female, he could not tell), who lounged with a frozen smile on a couch of crimson. Under the weight of agony, Levington held on stiffly, and had thWtoept recollection that this was the state religion, a godless and inverted prayer, a blowing upon the senses, soft as the tongues of serpents, deadly as their fangs. Then came the thought that centered him once more. He heard Helen ; saying to him, an hour, an age,' since, “Ton are making me unhappy.” To forget, his words, to loose the tangle he had brought Into her life, she had descended to pay this visit to the darker gods. The old hag went on and on, rubbing gently, diminishing more and more the slight rise and fall of Helen’s breast. The gas hissed dryly from the wall. Con felt.a murderous impulse, buj it did not extend to his muscular'system. His eyes narrowed with rage and pain; yet be could not overcome the smother of koresh in the air. He hated the oriental garments of his beloved, hated the jeweled bands on her naked ankles, the chains of jade and wrought gold about her body. These textures and precious things were taking her further from him, and they aggravated the loss of his own bodily control. Hisjnouth opened and certain muscles of the jaw tightened in a laugh of hysterical anger, but his lungs gave forth no cry, and his emotion remained silent All that he had formerly known to be himself was now but an encasement a lock, a dry dam upon the real man. He pictured himself in a leap into the chamber, past the cone of rock, up the side of his princess. He would carry her away, out somehow into sunlight and sanity.

But the old Con Levington of nerve and would not respond, hanging half-blindly upopa ledge of sandstone, helpless, while*jfee new Levington was out of command—clear-eyed, able to suffer, yet equally helpless. He had a .final glimpse of the dead colorful figures reclined in static delight about the chamber, a final furious wish to seize Helen in his arms, crush her silks and golden veils to his heart, and bear her away; and then the violence of his emotions seemed to wreck him. He slipped. The world was a purring wind over valves of giant clover blossoms and flowering cinnamon. The universe went black and singing. - (TO be CONTINUED.) .

Each With a Twisted Knee and Spine Made Hideous In Childhood.