# Atmosphere

By Murray Leinster

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Argosy, January 26, 1918.]

It was all in the atmosphere. People don't take incredible revenges in civilized places. Anywhere else in the world the thing would have been impossible.

The heat and the sun, combined with the neat, well-kept horror across the water, with a background of riotous green, and waves constantly plashing gently against the shore, made an atmosphere in which strange things occurred. If it hadn't been for the horror we saw every time we looked across the water, the whole affair I'm going to tell you about would never have happened.

That thing got on our nerves and rendered us unfit for sober thought or intelligent action. It was the leper village of Molokai. Our little settlement was just back from the beach that faced the small iron wharf of the Molokai village. We could see the road leading down to the wharf, the neat, sanitary, comfortable houses, and if we took glasses to it we could sometimes see figures moving about.

We did not take glasses. Every one of us had at one time or another been to Molokai and seen the things that live there. I'll not try to describe them to you. Kipling once said something about men with mildew on their faces. London once wrote a story in which all the people were lepers: a woman, full-breasted, mature, well-formed, and no face: a man who struck out with a hand which had no fingers. Those were appetizing beside some of the things on Molokai.

Mind you, I'm not criticising the colony. The creatures are probably better looked after there than they would be anywhere else, and they can't pass on their disease to clean people. They have comfortable cottages, their food is supplied them, with little occupations to pass the time, and so on. I even believe they have organized a band.

Molokai hasn't anything, really, to do with my story. It was the fact that we could see it by looking across the water, and the effect of having it constantly before our eyes and minds, that makes me tell you about it.

Once a month a boat came to the wharf across the way and dropped food and supplies—perhaps another patient or two. We would sit on the veranda of Colin Drew's house and watch it. Drew's was a sort of club for us, you understand. We never spoke of Molokai. About six o'clock in the evening we'd begin to gather at Drew's. We'd have drinks, and smoke, and possibly play cards or pool, then scatter for dinner, and come back again afterward unless one or two of us had to stay at home to write up reports, or something of that sort that had to be done.

Our gathering was a regular nightly affair. We chipped in for the drinks, and considered that our company paid Drew for the use of his house and servants. There is no doubt it did. When there are no other White men but a Spaniard who has "gone native" within thirty miles, four men who will come to one's house night after night are godsends.

We made a regular society circle. Because the heat and sun rendered us irritable, we were nearly always polite. We knew each other far too well to need to stand on ceremony anywhere else; but with the sun broiling out our brains all day, the hot calm for an hour after sunset until the sea breeze came, and Molokai across the way, we had to be careful.

You don't know how irritable a man can be until you've ridden about for hours in a hot sun that threatens to fry your brains inside your skull, then gone to an office and labored over figures and reports, and above all, striven with the stupidity of natives. Mental work in hot climates is damnable.

We were polite until the sea breeze came. When the palms began to sigh—they always got the breeze a little before we did—we would sigh, too, with relief, and relax. The best stories and the keenest talk always came after the sea breeze set in.

We never mentioned the horror across the way. Before sundown we could see it plainly, and after dark we could still see the twinkle of the lights, but we never spoke of it. Perhaps that was why it rode our nerves so badly.

Drew was more inclined to overdo the drinking than the rest of us. I think that was because his house was nearest the beach and he had to see more of Molokai than we did.

It did get on his nerves badly. The doctors say leprosy is found among people who eat fish, particularly raw fish. Drew, after he heard that, would not eat fish at all. He had been through the settlement twice, and it had gripped his imagination.

I remember one time we were all sitting on his veranda, sipping our drinks and waiting for the breeze. The sun had just set, and dusk was not yet over. The boat had been tied up at the wharf at Molokai all the afternoon, and we saw a white plume of steam shoot up. The whistle was being blown.

The sound did not reach us because of the distance, but we saw the boat swing away from the wharf, begin to forge ahead, and then she steamed off. We did not speak, but presently I heard Drew whisper to himself in an unconsciously horrified fashion:

"There are people being left behind there to become things!"

I glanced sharply at him. He was staring across the water with a fascinated gaze. As I looked, he jerked his eyes away. Stealthily, he reached out his finger and touched the lighted tip of his cigarette lying on the table by his hand.

What for?

It was a sign of blue funk. The first, absolutely the first symptom of leprosy is anesthesia at the tips of the fingers and toes—loss of sensation in the finger-tips. Drew, with no cause but panic, was testing his sensation.

After anesthesia comes a tiny whitening or silvering of the skin at the tips of the fingers, and then the darkening of a band of skin across the forehead. That last gives a peculiar expression to a face. It's called the leonine look, I believe.

When I saw Drew deliberately burn his finger with his cigarette to assure himself that he was absolutely safe, I had a moment of fright. I waited until the others had left and hinted that he'd better take a vacation. He said he would. He admitted that he needed it, but he did not. Instead, he began to make love to Maria.

Maria was the daughter of Don José.

It's odd how some forms cling to one. This man had married a native woman, lived in a native hut, though he seemed to have plenty of money, and dressed almost like a native, yet he still trimmed his beard in a jaunty imperial and still expected to be given the courtesy of a don.

We gave it to him. He had been a gentleman. Maria showed his blood in her carriage.

She hardly looked like a hapa-haole—a half-breed. Her skin was dark, but no darker than many a Spanish señora of the greatest pretensions to blue blood. Her hair was black, but it was a fine, delicately spun hair that hung in soft masses instead of the coarse bunches of the wholly native girls.

We white men left her alone. One does not marry a hapa-haole girl in Hawaii if one can help it. As they are often startlingly pretty, the best plan is to avoid them, to keep the temptation away, unless they are of the sort that one needn't marry.

Maria was distinctly not of this last class. Her father had been a gentleman, and Maria was a lady. You saw it instantly, the way she walked, the way she moved her hands, in the very inflection of her voice. Drew should have left her alone. As I said, one does not marry hapa-haole, and Maria was too fine to regard as less than a girl to marry.

It may be that I put the objection to marriage with Maria too strongly. White men may marry hapa-haoles; they have done so, and they do it even now; but it is horribly uncomfortable for every one concerned. Of course, if one loves the girl enough it's another matter; but a commonplace romance would not last the ostracism of the wholly white people, and a gentleman would hardly care to make the average hapa-haole society his own.

I dare say Drew loved Maria in his way. She was the daintiest, dearest little creature you ever saw when she was fifteen. I hadn't seen much of her after she came back from school, however.

Did I mention that her father seemed to have what even we whites would have considered plenty of money? I don't believe I saw Maria on more than half a dozen occasions between the time she was fifteen, when she used to swim with the native children, until the last time any one saw her, which I'm going to tell you about.

Her love for Drew must have been a quick, hot-blooded passion, sprung up in a moment and complete within the hour. Sometimes we hear about love at first sight. That's absurd, of course. But love may burst through the barrier of ignorance in an instant.

Maria had been seeing Drew at intervals for months. His work brought him into closer contact with her father than that of any of the rest of us. He must have seen Maria and talked idly with her as he did with any number of native girls. She must have been talking with him as she would chat with any of us, quite ignorant of emotion lying in wait. And then in an instant—

You can't conceive of the full tide of passion until you've seen no women that you consider as other than natives for months, and then suddenly realize that you love one of them. It's amazing and almost unbelievable, the overpowering longing that comes over one.

It came to me once. Luckily for both the girl and myself, I was transferred from that station almost as soon as I found I loved her. Drew had no such luck.

What I am telling you I learned later. They met under the tall palms by the beach, where it jutted out and formed a small peninsula. They would sit side by side, with the waves breaking before them, the long palm fronds above them moving back and forth in mysterious fashion, stirred by the sea breeze. Behind them all was mystery and shadow. They talked of love.

Of course it was all very improper, but what would you have done? Consider Maria's position, the only girl of her kind. The native young men were far beneath her, the rest of us avoided her for her own good as well as our own, and when one of the only men she could possibly consider as a companion of any sort showed interest in her, what could she do? Have him come to her home?

You do not know what a native hut is like. Maria lived in one. I will not go into details, but I assure you that for the reception of a European making a social call upon a young lady, they leave many things to be desired.

So Maria met Drew out on the peninsula. They talked. They loved. The waves broke at their feet; the palms rustled overhead. There was darkness and mystery behind them—and they were in love.

If Don José had not been a European, the thing might have been arranged. If Maria had not been a lady the thing might still have been arranged. If Drew had been decent, there would never have been any difficulty.

Natives do not gossip—if orders are given with sufficient authority. I repeat that the whole thing could have been settled in some way if any of three things had not been; that Don José was a European, and had been a gentleman; that Maria was a lady, and that Drew was a cad. He proved this last conclusively when Maria made a discovery and told him of it. He broke with her immediately, instead of seeing her through her difficulty.

Drew's absences while his affair with Maria had been going on had pretty thoroughly disorganized things. We gathered at night as usual, but felt vaguely uncomfortable because one of us was missing. The talk was fragmentary, unsatisfying. Then Drew broke with Maria and came back to us.

The first night he rejoined us after the break was not a propitious one for the complete restoration of the old order of things. A storm was forming somewhere, and the electric tension in the air intensified our normal weariness at the end of a day.

Because of the storm, wherever it was, the sea breeze failed us. We sat on Drew's veranda, sipping our lukewarm drinks, sweating, waiting for the breeze that never came, and listening to the damp flopping of an occasional palm-frond.

We were silent because experience had taught us to keep our mouths shut at times like this. Anything might result in a quarrel. With nothing whatever to annoy us, and simply because of the atmosphere, we felt anger stirring. The stillness, every man holding himself in check, fighting against a peevishness he knew came from sheer nervous strain, was an irritation in itself.

Suddenly Drew slammed his fist down on the table. His quarrel with Maria must have upset him badly, and the hot, still, electric air had completed the job.

"Damn it," he cried sharply, his voice a trifle thin, "I can't stand this! It's—"

In an irritated and peevish chorus we spoke to him adjuring him to shut up. We were all on edge. The whining discontent of his voice provoked me. Heat does unholy things to a man's nerves.

A native boy ran up to the steps with a note. Drew took it and crumpled it in his hand while he stared fretfully at us for a moment. The interruption had in a measure relieved the tension, however, and we relapsed into silence.

Drew read the note and his face went white. "Listen," he said.

"Dear Señor Drew:

"My daughter Maria is dead. Will you please come to me? I need some one of my own race near. If one of two of the other gentlemen will come, too, please have them do so.

"I dare ask this for the friendship I have received from all of them. I am heartbroken. Please come quickly.

"José Felipe Gomez."

Drew stared at us. Even in the lamp-light we could see the ghastly expression on his face. In fretful silence we rose, and all five of us plodded distastefully down the road toward Don José's hut.

He was waiting for us before the door. When we came he shook hands with each of us in turn and led the way inside. He had put candles about a sort of pallet in the center of the room, on which was an object covered with a cloth.

"My daughter," said Don José, with an air of calm grief, indicating the bier.

Drew hesitatingly asked how she had come to die.

"She stabbed herself," said Don José, looking quietly at Drew.

Drew blanched even whiter, and began to pick at his nails furtively. Something in the stealthiness of his movements reminded me of the time I had seen him burn himself with his cigarette.

That had been in a rush of causeless fright about Molokai. He seemed to have forgotten Molokai since then. It weighed on the minds of the rest of us just as before, but still, according to our tacit etiquette, we never spoke of it.

Don José drew out a small piece of paper.

"I wish to read you," he said in a rather hard voice, "her last message to me."

He read. Maria had written in a weary strain that she had loved too well; that disgrace was coming upon her; that she had died rather than cause her father dishonor.

"Dishonor!" said Don José, and smiled very bitterly. For the first time I wondered what his story was.

I could not see, at first, the object in his telling us what Maria had said of publishing her disgrace; but then I understood. Drew looked utterly crushed and absolutely ghastly—

"I know," said Don José, "that Maria would never have loved one of the Hawaiians. It must have been one of you gentlemen."

He knew, of course, that it was Drew. We waited for him to kill Drew. In our mental state it would have seemed the logical thing to do, and none of us would have tried to stop him.

Don José went on:

"For the benefit of that gentleman I have something to say; something that Maria herself did not know. Some time ago I made a discovery which I had not yet broken to her. I considered my duty, however, and communicated with the proper persons."

Don José stood there, quiet and well-mannered, and in eight words he took his revenge for the death of Maria:

"My daughter was to go to Molokai to-morrow."

He lifted the cloth that covered the bier and raised one of the hands underneath. The tips of the fingers were just beginning to show silvery, like the scales of a fish.

Wasn't that a perfect revenge? Don José had put ashes on Maria's finger-tips to whiten them. No, of course Maria wasn't a leper. Don José explained the whole thing to me the day after Drew went mad from fear.