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Page 65
"And if I say that I am dying to hear a Beethoven sonata, and stamp my
foot when I say it, he must know by that that what my soul craves is
salted almonds; and he will have them ready in his pocket."
"Now," said I, "I am at a loss. I do not know whether your soul's
affinity is to be an impresario or a fancy grocer."
Chole turned her pearly smile upon me.
"Take less than half of what I said as a jest," she went on. "And
don't think too lightly of the little things, Boy. Be a paladin if
you must, but don't let it show on you. Most women are only very big
children, and most men are only very little ones. Please us; don't
try to overpower us. When we want a hero we can make one out of even
a plain grocer the third time he catches our handkerchief before it
falls to the ground."
That evening I was taken down with pernicious fever. That is a kind
of coast fever with improvements and high-geared attachments. Your
temperature goes up among the threes and fours and remains there,
laughing scornfully and feverishly at the cinchona trees and the coal-
tar derivatives. Pernicious fever is a case for a simple
mathematician instead of a doctor. It is merely this formula:
Vitality + the desire to live--the duration of the fever the result.
I took to my bed in the two-roomed thatched hut where I had been
comfortably established, and sent for a gallon of rum. That was not
for myself. Drunk, Stamford was the best doctor between the Andes and
the Pacific. He came, sat at my bedside, and drank himself into
condition.
"My boy," said he, "my lily-white and reformed Romeo, medicine will do
you no good. But I will give you quinine, which, being bitter, will
arouse in you hatred and anger-two stimulants that will add ten per
cent. to your chances. You are as strong as a caribou calf, and you
will get well if the fever doesn't get in a knockout blow when you're
off your guard."
For two weeks I lay on my back feeling like a Hindoo widow on a
burning ghat. Old Atasca, an untrained Indian nurse, sat near the
door like a petrified statue of What's-the-Use, attending to her
duties, which were, mainly, to see that time went by without slipping
a cog. Sometimes I would fancy myself back in the Philippines, or, at
worse times, sliding off the horsehair sofa in Sleepytown.
One afternoon I ordered Atasca to vamose, and got up and dressed
carefully. I took my temperature, which I was pleased to find 104. I
paid almost dainty attention to my dress, choosing solicitously a
necktie of a dull and subdued hue. The mirror showed that I was
looking little the worse from my illness. The fever gave brightness
to my eyes and color to my face. And while I looked at my reflection
my color went and came again as I thought of Chloe Greene and the
millions of eons that had passed since I'd seen her, and of Louis
Devoe and the time he had gained on me.
I went straight to her house. I seemed to float rather than walk; I
hardly felt the ground under my feet; I thought pernicious fever must
be a great boon to make one feel so strong.
I found Chloe and Louis Devoe sitting under the awning in front of the
house. She jumped up and met me with a double handshake.
"I'm glad, glad, glad to see you out again!" she cried, every word a
pearl strung on the string of her sentence. "You are well, Tommy--or
better, of course. I wanted to come to see you, but they wouldn't let
me.
"Oh yes," said I, carelessly, "it was nothing. Merely a little fever.
I am out again, as you see."
We three sat there and talked for half an hour or so. Then Chloe
looked out yearningly and almost piteously across the ocean. I could
see in her sea-blue eyes some deep and intense desire. Devoe, curse
him! saw it too.
"What is it?" we asked, in unison.
"Cocoanut-pudding," said Chloe, pathetically. "I've wanted some--oh,
so badly, for two days. It's got beyond a wish; it's an obsession.
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