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            Twenty-Three Stories by Twenty and Three Authors




                        TWENTY-THREE STORIES
                                 BY
                      TWENTY AND THREE AUTHORS

                       D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
                         NEW YORK    MCMXXIV




                         COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY
                       D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                                CONTENTS

    KERFOL                                               Edith Wharton
    THE CHINK AND THE CHILD                               Thomas Burke
    THE NOMAD                                           Robert Hichens
    THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST                         W. B. Yeats
    THE DRUMS OF KAIRWAN              The Marquess Curzon of Kedleston
    A LIFE—A BOWL OF RICE                                    L. De Bra
    HODGE                                              Elinor Mordaunt
    HATTERAS                                               A. W. Mason
    THE RANSOM                                           Cutliffe Hyne
    THE OTHER                                               Edwin Pugh
    THE NARROW WAY                                    R. Ellis Roberts
    DAVY JONES’S GIFT                                   John Masefield
    THE CALL OF THE HAND                                 Louis Golding
    THE SENTIMENTAL MORTGAGE                              Arthur Lynch
    CAPTAIN SHARKEY                                     A. Conan Doyle
    VIOLENCE                                        Algernon Blackwood
    THE REWARD OF ENTERPRISE                                 Ward Muir
    GREAR’S DAM                                         Morley Roberts
    THE KING OF Maleka                            H. De Vere Stacpoole
    ALLELUIA                                               T. F. Powys
    THE MONKEY’S PAW                                      W. W. Jacobs
    THE CREATURES                                    Walter de la Mare
    THE TAIPAN                                     W. Somerset Maugham




KERFOL

By EDITH WHARTON

    From Xingu and Other Stories, by Edith Wharton.
    Copyright, 1917, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.




                                   1




“You ought to buy it,” said my host; “it’s just the place for a
solitary-minded devil like you. And it would be rather worth while to
own the most romantic house in Brittany. The present people are dead
broke, and it’s going for a song—you ought to buy it.”

It was not with the least idea of living up to the character my friend
Lanrivain ascribed to me (as a matter of fact, under my unsociable
exterior I have always had secret yearnings for domesticity) that I took
his hint one autumn afternoon and went to Kerfol. My friend was motoring
over to Quimper on business: he dropped me on the way, at a cross-road
on a heath, and said: “First turn to the right and second to the left.
Then straight ahead till you see an avenue. If you meet any peasants,
don’t ask your way. They don’t understand French, and they would pretend
they did and mix you up. I’ll be back for you here by sunset—and don’t
forget the tombs in the chapel.”

I followed Lanrivain’s directions with the hesitation occasioned by the
usual difficulty of remembering whether he had said the first turn to
the right and second to the left, or the contrary. If I had met a
peasant I should certainly have asked, and probably been sent astray;
but I had the desert landscape to myself, and so stumbled on the right
turn and walked across the heath till I came to an avenue. It was so
unlike any other avenue I have ever seen that I instantly knew it must
be _the_ avenue. The grey-trunked trees sprang up straight to a great
height and then interwove their pale-grey branches in a long tunnel
through which the autumn light fell faintly. I know most trees by name,
but I haven’t to this day been able to decide what those trees were.
They had the tall curve of elms, the tenuity of poplars, the ashen
colour of olives under a rainy sky; and they stretched ahead of me for
half a mile or more without a break in their arch. If ever I saw an
avenue that unmistakably led to something, it was the avenue at Kerfol.
My heart beat a little as I began to walk down it.

Presently the trees ended and I came to a fortified gate in a long wall.
Between me and the wall was an open space of grass, with other grey
avenues radiating from it. Behind the wall were tall slate roofs mossed
with silver, a chapel belfry, the top of a keep. A moat filled with wild
shrubs and brambles surrounded the place; the drawbridge had been
replaced by a stone arch, and the portcullis by an iron gate. I stood
for a long time on the hither side of the moat, gazing about me, and
letting the influence of the place sink in. I said to myself: “If I wait
long enough, the guardian will turn up and show me the tombs—” and I
rather hoped he wouldn’t turn up too soon.

I sat down on a stone and lit a cigarette. As soon as I had done it, it
struck me as a puerile and portentous thing to do, with that great blind
house looking down at me, and all the empty avenues converging on me. It
may have been the depth of the silence that made me so conscious of my
gesture. The squeak of my match sounded as loud as the scraping of a
brake, and I almost fancied I heard it fall when I tossed it onto the
grass. But there was more than that: a sense of irrelevance, of
littleness, of futile bravado, in sitting there puffing my
cigarette-smoke into the face of such a past.

I knew nothing of the history of Kerfol—I was new to Brittany, and
Lanrivain had never mentioned the name to me till the day before—but one
couldn’t as much as glance at that pile without feeling in it a long
accumulation of history. What kind of history I was not prepared to
guess: perhaps only that sheer weight of many associated lives and
deaths which gives a majesty to all old houses. But the aspect of Kerfol
suggested something more—a perspective of stern and cruel memories
stretching away, like its own grey avenues, into a blur of darkness.

Certainly no house had ever more completely and finally broken with the
present. As it stood there, lifting its proud roofs and gables to the
sky, it might have been its own funeral monument. “Tombs in the chapel?
The whole place is a tomb!” I reflected. I hoped more and more that the
guardian would not come. The details of the place, however striking,
would seem trivial compared with its collective impressiveness; and I
wanted only to sit there and be penetrated by the weight of its silence.

“It’s the very place for you!” Lanrivain had said; and I was overcome by
the almost blasphemous frivolity of suggesting to any living being that
Kerfol was the place for him. “Is it possible that any one could _not_
see—?” I wondered. I did not finish the thought: what I meant was
undefinable. I stood up and wandered toward the gate. I was beginning to
want to know more; not to _see_ more—I was by now so sure it was not a
question of seeing—but to feel more: feel all the place had to
communicate. “But to get in one will have to rout out the keeper,” I
thought reluctantly, and hesitated. Finally I crossed the bridge and
tried the iron gate. It yielded, and I walked through the tunnel formed
by the thickness of the _chemin de ronde_. At the farther end, a wooden
barricade had been laid across the entrance, and beyond it was a court
enclosed in noble architecture. The main building faced me; and I now
saw that one half was a mere ruined front, with gaping windows through
which the wild growths of the moat and the trees of the park were
visible. The rest of the house was still in its robust beauty. One end
abutted on the round tower, the other on the small traceried chapel, and
in an angle of the building stood a graceful well-head crowned with
mossy urns. A few roses grew against the walls, and on an upper
window-sill I remember noticing a pot of fuchsias.

My sense of the pressure of the invisible began to yield to my
architectural interest. The building was so fine that I felt a desire to
explore it for its own sake. I looked about the court, wondering in
which corner the guardian lodged. Then I pushed open the barrier and
went in. As I did so, a dog barred my way. He was such a remarkably
beautiful little dog that for a moment he made me forget the splendid
place he was defending. I was not sure of his breed at the time, but
have since learned that it was Chinese, and that he was of a rare
variety called the “Sleeve-dog.” He was very small and golden brown,
with large brown eyes and a ruffled throat: he looked like a large tawny
chrysanthemum. I said to myself: “These little beasts always snap and
scream, and somebody will be out in a minute.”

The little animal stood before me, forbidding, almost menacing; there
was anger in his large brown eyes. But he made no sound, he came no
nearer. Instead, as I advanced, he gradually fell back, and I noticed
that another dog, a vague rough brindled thing, had limped up on a lame
leg. “There’ll be a hubbub now,” I thought; for at the same moment a
third dog, a long-haired white mongrel, slipped out of a doorway and
joined the others. All three stood looking at me with grave eyes; but
not a sound came from them. As I advanced they continued to fall back on
muffled paws, still watching me. “At a given point, they’ll all charge
at my ankles: it’s one of the jokes that dogs who live together put on
one,” I thought. I was not alarmed, for they were neither large nor
formidable. But they let me wander about the court as I pleased,
following me at a little distance—always the same distance—and always
keeping their eyes on me. Presently I looked across at the ruined
façade, and saw that in one of its empty window-frames another dog
stood: a white pointer with one brown ear. He was an old grave dog, much
more experienced than the others; and he seemed to be observing me with
a deeper intentness.

“I’ll hear from _him_,” I said to myself; but he stood in the
window-frame, against the trees of the park, and continued to watch me
without moving. I stared back at him for a time, to see if the sense
that he was being watched would not rouse him. Half the width of the
court lay between us, and we gazed at each other silently across it. But
he did not stir, and at last I turned away. Behind me I found the rest
of the pack, with a newcomer added: a small black greyhound with pale
agate-coloured eyes. He was shivering a little, and his expression was
more timid than that of the others. I noticed that he kept a little
behind them. And still there was not a sound.

I stood there for fully five minutes, the circle about me—waiting, as
they seemed to be waiting. At last I went up to the little golden-brown
dog and stooped to pat him. As I did so, I heard myself give a nervous
laugh. The little dog did not start, or growl, or take his eyes from
me—he simply slipped back about a yard, and then paused and continued to
look at me. “Oh, hang it!” I exclaimed, and walked across the court
toward the well.

As I advanced, the dogs separated and slid away into different corners
of the court. I examined the urns on the well, tried a locked door or
two, and looked up and down the dumb façade: then I faced about toward
the chapel. When I turned I perceived that all the dogs had disappeared
except the old pointer, who still watched me from the window. It was
rather a relief to be rid of that cloud of witnesses; and I began to
look about me for a way to the back of the house. “Perhaps there’ll be
somebody in the garden,” I thought. I found a way across the moat,
scrambled over a wall smothered in brambles, and got into the garden. A
few lean hydrangeas and geraniums pined in the flower-beds, and the
ancient house looked down on them indifferently. Its garden side was
plainer and severer than the other: the long granite front, with its few
windows and steep roof, looked like a fortress-prison. I walked around
the farther wing, went up some disjointed steps, and entered the deep
twilight of a narrow and incredibly old box-walk. The walk was just wide
enough for one person to slip through, and its branches met overhead. It
was like the ghost of a box-walk, its lustrous green all turning to the
shadowy greyness of the avenues. I walked on and on, the branches
hitting me in the face and springing back with a dry rattle; and at
length I came out on the grassy top of the _chemin de ronde_. I walked
along it to the gate-tower, looking down into the court, which was just
below me. Not a human being was in sight; and neither were the dogs. I
found a flight of steps in the thickness of the wall and went down them;
and when I emerged again into the court, there stood the circle of dogs,
the golden-brown one a little ahead of the others, the black greyhound
shivering in the rear.

“Oh, hang it—you uncomfortable beasts, you!” I exclaimed, my voice
startling me with a sudden echo. The dogs stood motionless, watching me.
I knew by this time that they would not try to prevent my approaching
the house, and the knowledge left me free to examine them. I had a
feeling that they must be horribly cowed to be so silent and inert. Yet
they did not look hungry or ill-treated. Their coats were smooth and
they were not thin, except the shivering greyhound. It was more as if
they had lived a long time with people who never spoke to them or looked
at them: as though the silence of the place had gradually benumbed their
busy, inquisitive natures. And this strange passivity, this almost human
lassitude, seemed to me sadder than the misery of starved and beaten
animals. I should have liked to rouse them for a minute, to coax them
into a game or a scamper; but the longer I looked into their fixed and
weary eyes the more preposterous the idea became. With the windows of
that house looking down on us, how could I have imagined such a thing?
The dogs knew better: they knew what the house would tolerate and what
it would not. I even fancied that they knew what was passing through my
mind, and pitied me for my frivolity. But even that feeling probably
reached them through a thick fog of listlessness. I had an idea that
their distance from me was as nothing to my remoteness from them. The
impression they produced was that of having in common one memory so deep
and dark that nothing that had happened since was worth either a growl
or a wag.

“I say,” I broke out abruptly, addressing myself to the dumb circle, “do
you know what you look like, the whole lot of you? You look as if you’d
seen a ghost—that’s how you look. I wonder if there _is_ a ghost here,
and nobody but you left for it to appear to?” The dogs continued to gaze
at me without moving....

                   *       *       *       *       *

It was dark when I saw Lanrivain’s motor lamps at the cross-roads—and I
wasn’t exactly sorry to see them. I had the sense of having escaped from
the loneliest place in the whole world, and of not liking loneliness—to
that degree—as much as I had imagined I should. My friend had brought
his solicitor back from Quimper for the night, and seated beside a fat
and affable stranger I felt no inclination to talk of Kerfol....

But that evening, when Lanrivain and the solicitor were closeted in the
study, Madame de Lanrivain began to question me in the drawing-room.

“Well—are you going to buy Kerfol?” she asked, tilting up her gay chin
from her embroidery.

“I haven’t decided yet. The fact is, I couldn’t get into the house,” I
said, as if I had simply postponed my decision, and meant to go back for
another look.

“You couldn’t get in? Why, what happened? The family are mad to sell the
place, and the old guardian has orders——”

“Very likely. But the old guardian wasn’t there.”

“What a pity. He must have gone to market. But his daughter——?”

“There was nobody about. At least I saw no one.”

“How extraordinary! Literally nobody?”

“Nobody but a lot of dogs—a whole pack of them—who seemed to have the
place to themselves.”

Madame de Lanrivain let the embroidery slip to her knees, and folded her
hands on it. For several minutes she looked at me thoughtfully.

“A pack of dogs—you saw them?”

“Saw them? I saw nothing else!”

“How many?” She dropped her voice a little. “I’ve always wondered——”

I looked at her with surprise: I had supposed the place to be familiar
to her. “Have you never been to Kerfol?” I asked.

“Oh, yes; often. But never on that day.”

“What day?”

“I’d quite forgotten, and so had Hervé, I’m sure. If we’d remembered, we
never should have sent you to-day—but then, after all, one doesn’t half
believe that sort of thing, does one?”

“What sort of thing?” I asked, involuntarily sinking my voice to the
level of hers. Inwardly I was thinking: “I _knew_ there was
something....”

Madame de Lanrivain cleared her throat and produced a reassuring smile.
“Didn’t Hervé tell you the story of Kerfol? An ancestor of his was mixed
up in it. You know every Breton house has its ghost-story; and some of
them are rather unpleasant.”

“Yes—but those dogs?”

“Well, those dogs are the ghosts of Kerfol. At least, the peasants say
there’s one day in the year when a lot of dogs appear there; and that
day the keeper and his daughter go off to Morlaix and get drunk. The
women in Brittany drink dreadfully.” She stooped to match a silk; then
she lifted her charming, inquisitive Parisian face. “Did you _really_
see a lot of dogs? There isn’t one at Kerfol,” she said.




                                   2




Lanrivain, the next day, hunted out a shabby calf volume from the back
of an upper shelf of his library.

“Yes—here it is. What does it call itself? _A History of the Assizes of
the Duchy of Brittany._ _Quimper_, 1702. The book was written about a
hundred years later than the Kerfol affair; but I believe the account is
transcribed pretty literally from the judicial records. Anyhow, it’s
queer reading. And there’s a Hervé de Lanrivain mixed up in it—not
exactly my style, as you’ll see. But then he’s only a collateral. Here,
take the book up to bed with you. I don’t exactly remember the details;
but after you’ve read it, I’ll bet anything you’ll leave your light
burning all night!”

I left my light burning all night, as he had predicted; but it was
chiefly because, till near dawn, I was absorbed in my reading. The
account of the trial of Anne de Cornault, wife of the lord of Kerfol,
was long and closely printed. It was, as my friend had said, probably an
almost literal transcription of what took place in the court-room; and
the trial lasted nearly a month. Besides, the type of the book was very
bad....

At first I thought of translating the old record. But it is full of
wearisome repetitions, and the main lines of the story are forever
straying off into side issues. So I have tried to disentangle it, and
give it here in a simpler form. At times, however, I have reverted to
the text because no other words could have conveyed so exactly the sense
of what I felt at Kerfol; and nowhere have I added anything of my own.




                                   3




It was in the year 16— that Yves de Cornault, lord of the domain of
Kerfol, went to the _pardon_ of Locronan to perform his religious
duties. He was a rich and powerful noble, then in his sixty-second year,
but hale and sturdy, a great horseman and hunter and a pious man. So all
his neighbours attested. In appearance he was short and broad, with a
swarthy face, legs slightly bowed from the saddle, a hanging nose and
broad hands with black hairs on them. He had married young and lost his
wife and son soon after, and since then had lived alone at Kerfol. Twice
a year he went to Morlaix, where he had a handsome house by the river,
and spent a week or ten days there; and occasionally he rode to Rennes
on business. Witnesses were found to declare that during these absences
he led a life different from the one he was known to lead at Kerfol,
where he busied himself with his estate, attended mass daily, and found
his only amusement in hunting the wild boar and water-fowl. But these
rumours are not particularly relevant, and it is certain that among
people of his own class in the neighbourhood he passed for a stern and
even austere man, observant of his religious obligations, and keeping
strictly to himself. There was no talk of any familiarity with the women
on his estate, though at that time the nobility were very free with
their peasants. Some people said he had never looked at a woman since
his wife’s death; but such things are hard to prove, and the evidence on
this point was not worth much.

Well, in his sixty-second year, Yves de Cornault went to the _pardon_ at
Locronan, and saw there a young lady of Douarnenez, who had ridden over
pillion behind her father to do her duty to the saint. Her name was Anne
de Barrigan, and she came of good old Breton stock, but much less great
and powerful than that of Yves de Cornault; and her father had
squandered his fortune at cards, and lived almost like a peasant in his
little granite manor on the moors.... I have said I would add nothing of
my own to this bald statement of a strange case; but I must interrupt
myself here to describe the young lady who rode up to the lych-gate of
Locronan at the very moment when the Baron de Cornault was also
dismounting there. I take my description from a faded drawing in red
crayon, sober and truthful enough to be by a late pupil of the Clouets,
which hangs in Lanrivain’s study, and is said to be a portrait of Anne
de Barrigan. It is unsigned and has no mark of identity but the initials
A. B., and the date 16—, the year after her marriage. It represents a
young woman with a small oval face, almost pointed, yet wide enough for
a full mouth with a tender depression at the corners. The nose is small,
and the eyebrows are set rather high, far apart, and as lightly
pencilled as the eyebrows in a Chinese painting. The forehead is high
and serious, and the hair, which one feels to be fine and thick and
fair, is drawn off it and lies close like a cap. The eyes are neither
large nor small, hazel probably, with a look at once shy and steady. A
pair of beautiful long hands are crossed below the lady’s breast....

The chaplain of Kerfol, and other witnesses, averred that when the Baron
came back from Locronan he jumped from his horse, ordered another to be
instantly saddled, called to a young page to come with him, and rode
away that same evening to the south. His steward followed the next
morning with coffers laden on a pair of pack mules. The following week
Yves de Cornault rode back to Kerfol, sent for his vassals and tenants,
and told them he was to be married at All Saints to Anne de Barrigan of
Douarnenez. And on All Saints’ Day the marriage took place.

As to the next few years, the evidence on both sides seems to show that
they passed happily for the couple. No one was found to say that Yves de
Cornault had been unkind to his wife, and it was plain to all that he
was content with his bargain. Indeed, it was admitted by the chaplain
and other witnesses for the prosecution that the young lady had a
softening influence on her husband, and that he became less exacting
with his tenants, less harsh to peasants and dependents, and less
subject to the fits of gloomy silence which had darkened his widowhood.
As to his wife, the only grievance her champions could call up in her
behalf was that Kerfol was a lonely place, and that when her husband was
away on business at Rennes or Morlaix—whither she was never taken—she
was not allowed so much as to walk in the park unaccompanied. But no one
asserted that she was unhappy, though one servant-woman said she had
surprised her crying, and had heard her say that she was a woman
accursed to have no child, and nothing in life to call her own. But that
was a natural enough feeling in a wife attached to her husband; and
certainly it must have been a great grief to Yves de Cornault that she
bore no son. Yet he never made her feel her childlessness as a
reproach—she admits this in her evidence—but seemed to try to make her
forget it by showering gifts and favours on her. Rich though he was, he
had never been open-handed; but nothing was too fine for his wife, in
the way of silks or gems or linen, or whatever else she fancied. Every
wandering merchant was welcome at Kerfol, and when the master was called
away he never came back without bringing his wife a handsome
present—something curious and particular—from Morlaix or Rennes or
Quimper. One of the waiting-women gave, in cross-examination, an
interesting list of one year’s gifts, which I copy. From Morlaix, a
carved ivory junk, with Chinamen at the oars, that a strange sailor had
brought back as a votive offering for Notre Dame de la Clarté, above
Ploumanac’h; from Quimper, an embroidered gown, worked by the nuns of
the Assumption; from Rennes, a silver rose that opened and showed an
amber Virgin with a crown of garnets; from Morlaix, again, a length of
Damascus velvet shot with gold, bought of a Jew from Syria; and for
Michaelmas that same year, from Rennes, a necklet or bracelet of round
stones—emeralds and pearls and rubies—strung like beads on a fine gold
chain. This was the present that pleased the lady best, the woman said.
Later on, as it happened, it was produced at the trial, and appears to
have struck the Judges and the public as a curious and valuable jewel.

The very same winter, the Baron absented himself again, this time as far
as Bordeaux, and on his return he brought his wife something even odder
and prettier than the bracelet. It was a winter evening when he rode up
to Kerfol, and, walking into the hall, found her sitting by the hearth,
her chin on her hand, looking into the fire. He carried a velvet box in
his hand and, setting it down, lifted the lid and let out a little
golden-brown dog.

Anne de Cornault exclaimed with pleasure as the little creature bounded
toward her. “Oh, it looks like a bird or a butterfly!” she cried as she
picked it up; and the dog put its paws on her shoulders and looked at
her with eyes “like a Christian’s.” After that she would never have it
out of her sight, and petted and talked to it as if it had been a
child—as indeed it was the nearest thing to a child she was to know.
Yves de Cornault was much pleased with his purchase. The dog had been
brought to him by a sailor from an East Indian merchantman, and the
sailor had bought it of a pilgrim in a bazaar at Jaffa, who had stolen
it from a nobleman’s wife in China: a perfectly permissible thing to do,
since the pilgrim was a Christian and the nobleman a heathen doomed to
hell-fire. Yves de Cornault had paid a long price for the dog, for they
were beginning to be in demand at the French court, and the sailor knew
he had got hold of a good thing; but Anne’s pleasure was so great that,
to see her laugh and play with the little animal, her husband would
doubtless have given twice the sum.

So far all the evidence is at one, and the narrative plain sailing; but
now the steering becomes difficult. I will try to keep as nearly as
possible to Anne’s own statements; though toward the end, poor thing....

Well, to go back. The very year after the little brown dog was brought
to Kerfol, Yves de Cornault, one winter night, was found dead at the
head of a narrow flight of stairs leading down from his wife’s rooms to
a door opening on the court. It was his wife who found him and gave the
alarm, so distracted, poor wretch, with fear and horror—for his blood
was all over her—that at first the roused household could not make out
what she was saying, and thought she had suddenly gone mad. But there,
sure enough, at the top of the stairs lay her husband, stone dead, and
head foremost, the blood from his wounds dripping down to the step below
him. He had been dreadfully scratched and gashed about the face and
throat, as if with curious pointed weapons; and one of his legs had a
deep tear in it which had cut an artery, and probably caused his death.
But how did he come there, and who had murdered him?

His wife declared that she had been asleep in her bed, and hearing his
cry had rushed out to find him lying on the stairs; but this was
immediately questioned. In the first place, it was proved that from her
room she could not have heard the struggle on the stairs, owing to the
thickness of the walls and the length of the intervening passage; then
it was evident that she had not been in bed and asleep, since she was
dressed when she roused the house, and her bed had not been slept in.
Moreover, the door at the bottom of the stairs was ajar, and it was
noticed by the chaplain (an observant man) that the dress she wore was
stained with blood about the knees, and that there were traces of small
blood-stained hands low down on the staircase walls, so that it was
conjectured that she had really been at the postern-door when her
husband fell and, feeling her way up to him in the darkness on her hands
and knees, had been stained by his blood dripping down on her. Of course
it was argued on the other side that the blood-marks on her dress might
have been caused by her kneeling down by her husband when she rushed out
of her room; but there was the open door below, and the fact that the
finger-marks in the staircase all pointed upward.

The accused held to her statement for the first two days, in spite of
its improbability; but on the third day word was brought to her that
Hervé de Lanrivain, a young nobleman of the neighbourhood, had been
arrested for complicity in the crime. Two or three witnesses thereupon
came forward to say that it was known throughout the country that
Lanrivain had formerly been on good terms with the lady of Cornault; but
that he had been absent from Brittany for over a year, and people had
ceased to associate their names. The witnesses who made this statement
were not of a very reputable sort. One was an old herb-gatherer
suspected of witchcraft, another a drunken clerk from a neighbouring
parish, the third a half-witted shepherd who could be made to say
anything; and it was clear that the prosecution was not satisfied with
its case, and would have liked to find more proof of Lanrivain’s
complicity than the statement of the herb-gatherer, who swore to having
seen him climbing the wall of the park on the night of the murder. One
way of patching out incomplete proofs in those days was to put some sort
of pressure, moral or physical, on the accused person. It is not clear
what pressure was put on Anne de Cornault; but on the third day, when
she was brought in court, she “appeared weak and wandering,” and after
being encouraged to collect herself and speak the truth, on her honour
and the wounds of her Blessed Redeemer, she confessed that she had in
fact gone down the stairs to speak with Hervé de Lanrivain (who denied
everything), and had been surprised there by the sound of her husband’s
fall. That was better; and the prosecution rubbed its hands with
satisfaction. The satisfaction increased when various dependents living
at Kerfol were induced to say—with apparent sincerity—that during the
year or two preceding his death their master had once more grown
uncertain and irascible, and subject to the fits of brooding silence
which his household had learned to dread before his second marriage.
This seemed to show that things had not been going well at Kerfol;
though no one could be found to say that there had been any signs of
open disagreement between husband and wife.

Anne de Cornault, when questioned as to her reason for going down at
night to open the door to Hervé de Lanrivain, made an answer which must
have sent a smile around the court. She said it was because she was
lonely and wanted to talk with the young man. Was this the only reason?
she was asked; and replied: “Yes, by the Cross over your Lordships’
heads.” “But why at midnight?” the court asked. “Because I could see him
in no other way.” I can see the exchange of glances across the ermine
collars under the Crucifix.

Anne de Cornault, further questioned, said that her married life had
been extremely lonely: “desolate” was the word she used. It was true
that her husband seldom spoke harshly to her; but there were days when
he did not speak at all. It was true that he had never struck or
threatened her; but he kept her like a prisoner at Kerfol, and when he
rode away to Morlaix or Quimper or Rennes he set so close a watch on her
that she could not pick a flower in the garden without having a
waiting-woman at her heels. “I am no Queen, to need such honours,” she
once said to him; and he had answered that a man who has a treasure does
not leave the key in the lock when he goes out. “Then take me with you,”
she urged; but to this he said that towns were pernicious places, and
young wives better off at their firesides.

“But what did you want to say to Hervé de Lanrivain?” the court asked;
and she answered: “To ask him to take me away.”

“Ah—you confess that you went down to him with adulterous thoughts?”

“No.”

“Then why did you want him to take you away?”

“Because I was afraid for my life.”

“Of whom were you afraid?”

“Of my husband.”

“Why were you afraid of your husband?”

“Because he had strangled my little dog.”

Another smile must have passed around the courtroom: in days when any
nobleman had a right to hang his peasants—and most of them exercised
it—pinching a pet animal’s wind-pipe was nothing to make a fuss about.

At this point one of the Judges, who appears to have had a certain
sympathy for the accused, suggested that she should be allowed to
explain herself in her own way; and she thereupon made the following
statement.

The first years of her marriage had been lonely; but her husband had not
been unkind to her. If she had had a child she would not have been
unhappy; but the days were long, and it rained too much.

It was true that her husband, whenever he went away and left her,
brought her a handsome present on his return; but this did not make up
for the loneliness. At least nothing had, till he brought her the little
brown dog from the East: after that she was much less unhappy. Her
husband seemed pleased that she was so fond of the dog; he gave her
leave to put her jewelled bracelet around its neck, and keep it always
with her.

One day she had fallen asleep in her room, with the dog at her feet, as
his habit was. Her feet were bare and resting on his back. Suddenly she
was waked by her husband: he stood beside her, smiling not unkindly.

“You look like my great-grandmother, Juliane de Cornault, lying in the
chapel with her feet on a little dog,” he said.

The analogy sent a chill through her, but she laughed and answered:
“Well, when I am dead you must put me beside her, carved in marble, with
my dog at my feet.”

“Oho—we’ll wait and see,” he said, laughing also, but with his black
brows close together. “The dog is the emblem of fidelity.”

“And do you doubt my right to lie with mine at my feet?”

“When I’m in doubt I find out,” he answered. “I am an old man,” he
added, “and people say I make you lead a lonely life. But I swear you
shall have your monument if you earn it.”

“And I swear to be faithful,” she returned, “if only for the sake of
having my little dog at my feet.”

Not long afterward he went on business to the Quimper Assizes; and while
he was away his aunt, the widow of a great nobleman of the duchy, came
to spend a night at Kerfol on her way to the _pardon_ of Ste. Barbe. She
was a woman of piety and consequence, and much respected by Yves de
Cornault, and when she proposed to Anne to go with her to Ste. Barbe, no
one could object, and even the chaplain declared himself in favour of
the pilgrimage. So Anne set out for Ste. Barbe, and there for the first
time she talked with Hervé de Lanrivain. He had come once or twice to
Kerfol with his father, but she had never before exchanged a dozen words
with him. They did not talk for more than five minutes now: it was under
the chestnuts, as the procession was coming out of the chapel. He said:
“I pity you,” and she was surprised, for she had not supposed that any
one thought her an object of pity. He added: “Call for me when you need
me,” and she smiled a little, but was glad afterward, and thought often
of the meeting.

She confessed to having seen him three times afterward: not more. How or
where she would not say—one had the impression that she feared to
implicate some one. Their meetings had been rare and brief; and at the
last he had told her that he was starting the next day for a foreign
country, on a mission which was not without peril and might keep him for
many months absent. He asked her for a remembrance, and she had none to
give him but the collar about the little dog’s neck. She was sorry
afterward that she had given it, but he was so unhappy at going that she
had not had the courage to refuse.

Her husband was away at the time. When he returned a few days later he
picked up the animal to pet it, and noticed that its collar was missing.
His wife told him that the dog had lost it in the undergrowth of the
park, and that she and her maids had hunted a whole day for it. It was
true, she explained to the court, that she had made the maids search for
the necklet—they all believed the dog had lost it in the park.

Her husband made no comment, and that evening at supper he was in his
usual mood, between good and bad: you could never tell which. He talked
a good deal, describing what he had seen and done at Rennes; but now and
then he stopped and looked hard at her, and when she went to bed she
found her little dog strangled on her pillow. The little thing was dead,
but still warm; she stooped to lift it, and her distress turned to
horror when she discovered that it had been strangled by twisting twice
round its throat the necklet she had given to Lanrivain.

The next morning at dawn she buried the dog in the garden, and hid the
necklet in her breast. She said nothing to her husband, then or later,
and he said nothing to her; but that day he had a peasant hanged for
stealing a faggot in the park, and the next day he nearly beat to death
a young horse he was breaking.

Winter set in, and the short days passed, and the long nights, one by
one; and she heard nothing of Hervé de Lanrivain. It might be that her
husband had killed him; or merely that he had been robbed of the
necklet. Day after day by the hearth among the spinning maids, night
after night alone on her bed, she wondered and trembled. Sometimes at
table her husband looked across at her and smiled; and then she felt
sure that Lanrivain was dead. She dared not try to get news of him, for
she was sure her husband would find out if she did: she had an idea that
he could find out anything. Even when a witch-woman who was a noted
seer, and could show you the whole world in her crystal, came to the
castle for a night’s shelter, and the maids flocked to her, Anne held
back.

The winter was long and black and rainy. One day, in Yves de Cornault’s
absence, some gypsies came to Kerfol with a troop of performing dogs.
Anne bought the smallest and cleverest, a white dog with a feathery coat
and one blue and one brown eye. It seemed to have been ill-treated by
the gypsies, and clung to her plaintively when she took it from them.
That evening her husband came back, and when she went to bed she found
the dog strangled on her pillow.

After that she said to herself that she would never have another dog;
but one bitter cold evening a poor lean greyhound was found whining at
the castle-gate, and she took him in and forbade the maids to speak of
him to her husband. She hid him in a room that no one went to, smuggled
food to him from her own plate, made him a warm bed to lie on and petted
him like a child.

Yves de Cornault came home, and the next day she found the greyhound
strangled on her pillow. She wept in secret, but said nothing, and
resolved that even if she met a dog dying of hunger she would never
bring him into the castle; but one day she found a young sheep-dog, a
brindled puppy with good blue eyes, lying with a broken leg in the snow
of the park. Yves de Cornault was at Rennes, and she brought the dog in,
warmed and fed it, tied up its leg and hid it in the castle till her
husband’s return. The day before, she gave it to a peasant woman who
lived a long way off, and paid her handsomely to care for it and say
nothing; but that night she heard a whining and scratching at her door,
and when she opened it the lame puppy, drenched and shivering, jumped up
on her with little sobbing barks. She hid him in her bed, and the next
morning was about to have him taken back to the peasant woman when she
heard her husband ride into the court. She shut the dog in a chest, and
went down to receive him. An hour or two later, when she returned to her
room, the puppy lay strangled on her pillow....

After that she dared not make a pet of any other dog; and her loneliness
became almost unendurable. Sometimes, when she crossed the court of the
castle, and thought no one was looking, she stopped to pat the old
pointer at the gate. But one day as she was caressing him her husband
came out of the chapel; and the next day the old dog was gone....

This curious narrative was not told in one sitting of the court, or
received without impatience and incredulous comment. It was plain that
the Judges were surprised by its puerility, and that it did not help the
accused in the eyes of the public. It was an odd tale, certainly; but
what did it prove? That Yves de Cornault disliked dogs, and that his
wife, to gratify her own fancy, persistently ignored this dislike. As
for pleading this trivial disagreement as an excuse for her
relations—whatever their nature—with her supposed accomplice, the
argument was so absurd that her own lawyer manifestly regretted having
let her make use of it, and tried several times to cut short her story.
But she went on to the end, with a kind of hypnotised insistence, as
though the scenes she evoked were so real to her that she had forgotten
where she was and imagined herself to be re-living them.

At length the Judge who had previously shown a certain kindness to her
said (leaning forward a little, one may suppose, from his row of dozing
colleagues): “Then you would have us believe that you murdered your
husband because he would not let you keep a pet dog?”

“I did not murder my husband.”

“Who did, then? Hervé de Lanrivain?”

“No.”

“Who then? Can you tell us?”

“Yes, I can tell you. The dogs—” At that point she was carried out of
the court in a swoon.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It was evident that her lawyer tried to get her to abandon this line of
defence. Possibly her explanation, whatever it was, had seemed
convincing when she poured it out to him in the heat of their first
private colloquy; but now that it was exposed to the cold daylight of
judicial scrutiny, and the banter of the town, he was thoroughly ashamed
of it, and would have sacrificed her without a scruple to save his
professional reputation. But the obstinate Judge—who perhaps, after all,
was more inquisitive than kindly—evidently wanted to hear the story out,
and she was ordered, the next day, to continue her deposition.

She said that after the disappearance of the old watchdog nothing
particular happened for a month or two. Her husband was much as usual:
she did not remember any special incident. But one evening a pedlar
woman came to the castle and was selling trinkets to the maids. She had
no heart for trinkets, but she stood looking on while the women made
their choice. And then, she did not know how, but the pedlar coaxed her
into buying for herself a pear-shaped pomander with a strong scent in
it—she had once seen something of the kind on a gypsy woman. She had no
desire for the pomander, and did not know why she had bought it. The
pedlar said that whoever wore it had the power to read the future; but
she did not really believe that, or care much either. However, she
bought the thing and took it up to her room, where she sat turning it
about in her hand. Then the strange scent attracted her and she began to
wonder what kind of spice was in the box. She opened it and found a grey
bean rolled in a strip of paper; and on the paper she saw a sign she
knew, and a message from Hervé de Lanrivain, saying that he was at home
again and would be at the door in the court that night after the moon
had set....

She burned the paper and sat down to think. It was nightfall, and her
husband was at home.... She had no way of warning Lanrivain, and there
was nothing to do but to wait....

At this point I fancy the drowsy court-room beginning to wake up. Even
to the oldest hand on the bench there must have been a certain relish in
picturing the feelings of a woman on receiving such a message at
nightfall from a man living twenty miles away, to whom she had no means
of sending a warning....

She was not a clever woman, I imagine; and as the first result of her
cogitation she appears to have made the mistake of being, that evening,
too kind to her husband. She could not ply him with wine, according to
the traditional expedient, for though he drank heavily at times, he had
a strong head; and when he drank beyond its strength it was because he
chose to, and not because a woman coaxed him. Not his wife, at any
rate—she was an old story by now. As I read the case, I fancy there was
no feeling for her left in him but the hatred occasioned by his supposed
dishonour.

At any rate, she tried to call up her old graces; but early in the
evening he complained of pains and fever, and left the hall to go up to
the closet where he sometimes slept. His servant carried him a cup of
hot wine, and brought back word that he was sleeping and not to be
disturbed; and an hour later, when Anne lifted the tapestry and listened
at his door, she heard his loud regular breathing. She thought it might
be a feint, and stayed a long time barefooted in the passage, her ear to
the crack; but the breathing went on too steadily and naturally to be
other than that of a man in a sound sleep. She crept back to her room
reassured, and stood in the window watching the moon set through the
trees of the park. The sky was misty and starless, and after the moon
went down the night was black as pitch. She knew the time had come, and
stole along the passage, past her husband’s door—where she stopped again
to listen to his breathing—to the top of the stairs. There she paused a
moment, and assured herself that no one was following her; then she
began to go down the stairs in the darkness. They were so steep and
winding that she had to go very slowly, for fear of stumbling. Her one
thought was to get the door unbolted, tell Lanrivain to make his escape,
and hasten back to her room. She had tried the bolt earlier in the
evening, and managed to put a little grease on it; but nevertheless,
when she drew it, it gave a squeak ... not loud, but it made her heart
stop; and the next minute, overhead, she heard a noise....

“What noise?” the prosecution interposed.

“My husband’s voice calling out my name and cursing me.”

“What did you hear after that?”

“A terrible scream and a fall.”

“Where was Hervé de Lanrivain at this time?”

“He was standing outside in the court. I just made him out in the
darkness. I told him for God’s sake to go, and then I pushed the door
shut.”

“What did you do next?”

“I stood at the foot of the stairs and listened.”

“What did you hear?”

“I heard dogs snarling and panting.” (Visible discouragement of the
bench, boredom of the public, and exasperation of the lawyer for the
defence. Dogs again! But the inquisitive Judge insisted.)

“What dogs?”

She bent her head and spoke so low that she had to be told to repeat her
answer: “I don’t know.”

“How do you mean—you don’t know?”

“I don’t know what dogs....”

The Judge again intervened: “Try to tell us exactly what happened. How
long did you remain at the foot of the stairs?”

“Only a few minutes.”

“And what was going on meanwhile overhead?”

“The dogs kept on snarling and panting. Once or twice he cried out. I
think he moaned. Then he was quiet.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then I heard a sound like the noise of a pack when the wolf is thrown
to them—gulping and lapping.”

(There was a groan of disgust and repulsion through the court, and
another attempted intervention by the distracted lawyer. But the
inquisitive Judge was still inquisitive.)

“And all the while you did not go up?”

“Yes—I went up then—to drive them off.”

“The dogs?”

“Yes.”

“Well——?”

“When I got there it was quite dark. I found my husband’s flint and
steel and struck a spark. I saw him lying there. He was dead.”

“And the dogs?”

“The dogs were gone.”

“Gone—where to?”

“I don’t know. There was no way out—and there were no dogs at Kerfol.”

She straightened herself to her full height, threw her arms above her
head, and fell down on the stone floor with a long scream. There was a
moment of confusion in the court-room. Some one on the bench was heard
to say: “This is clearly a case for the ecclesiastical authorities”—and
the prisoner’s lawyer doubtless jumped at the suggestion.

After this, the trial loses itself in a maze of cross-questioning and
squabbling. Every witness who was called corroborated Anne de Cornault’s
statement that there were no dogs at Kerfol: had been none for several
months. The master of the house had taken a dislike to dogs, there was
no denying it. But, on the other hand, at the inquest, there had been
long and bitter discussions as to the nature of the dead man’s wounds.
One of the surgeons called in had spoken of marks that looked like
bites. The suggestion of witchcraft was revived, and the opposing
lawyers hurled tomes of necromancy at each other.

At last Anne de Cornault was brought back into court—at the instance of
the same Judge—and asked if she knew where the dogs she spoke of could
have come from. On the body of her Redeemer she swore that she did not.
Then the Judge put his final question: “If the dogs you think you heard
had been known to you, do you think you would have recognized them by
their barking?”

“Yes.”

“Did you recognize them?”

“Yes.”

“What dogs do you take them to have been?”

“My dead dogs,” she said in a whisper.... She was taken out of court,
not to reappear there again. There was some kind of ecclesiastical
investigation, and the end of the business was that the Judges disagreed
with each other, and with the ecclesiastical committee, and that Anne de
Cornault was finally handed over to the keeping of her husband’s family,
who shut her up in the keep of Kerfol, where she is said to have died
many years later, a harmless mad-woman.

So ends her story. As for that of Hervé de Lanrivain, I had only to
apply to his collateral descendant for its subsequent details. The
evidence against the young man being insufficient, and his family
influence in the duchy considerable, he was set free, and left soon
afterward for Paris. He was probably in no mood for a worldly life, and
he appears to have come almost immediately under the influence of the
famous M. Arnauld d’Andilly and the gentlemen of Port Royal. A year or
two later he was received into their Order, and without achieving any
particular distinction he followed its good and evil fortunes till his
death some twenty years later. Lanrivain showed me a portrait of him by
a pupil of Philippe de Champaigne: sad eyes, an impulsive mouth and a
narrow brow. Poor Hervé de Lanrivain: it was a grey ending. Yet as I
looked at his stiff and sallow effigy, in the dark dress of the
Jansenists, I almost found myself envying his fate. After all, in the
course of his life two great things had happened to him: he had loved
romantically, and he must have talked with Pascal....




THE CHINK AND THE CHILD

By THOMAS BURKE

    From Limehouse Nights, by Thomas Burke.
    Copyright, 1917, by Robert M. McBride and Company.


It is a tale of love and lovers that they tell in the low-lit Causeway
that slinks from West India Dock Road to the dark waste of waters
beyond. In Pennyfields, too, you may hear it; and I do not doubt that it
is told in far-away Tai-Ping, in Singapore, in Tokio, in Shanghai, and
those other gay-lamped haunts of wonder whither the wandering people of
Limehouse go and whence they return so casually. It is a tale for tears,
and should you hear it in the lilied tongue of the yellow men, it would
awaken in you all your pity. In our bald speech it must, unhappily, lose
its essential fragrance, that quality that will lift an affair of
squalor into the loftier spheres of passion and imagination, beauty and
sorrow. It will sound unconvincing, a little ... you know ... the kind
of thing that is best forgotten. Perhaps....

But listen.

It is Battling Burrows, the lightning welter-weight of Shadwell, the box
o’ tricks, the Tetrarch of the ring, who enters first. Battling Burrows,
the pride of Ratcliff, Poplar and Limehouse, and the despair of his
manager and backers. For he loved wine, woman and song; and the boxing
world held that he couldn’t last long on that. There was any amount of
money in him for his parasites if only the damned women could be cut
out; but again and again would he disappear from his training quarters
on the eve of a big fight, to consort with Molly and Dolly, and to drink
other things than barley-water and lemon-juice. Wherefore Chuck
Lightfoot, his manager, forced him to fight on any and every occasion
while he was good and a money-maker; for at any moment the collapse
might come, and Chuck would be called upon by his creditors to strip off
that “shirt” which at every contest he laid upon his man.

Battling was of a type that is too common in the eastern districts of
London; a type that upsets all accepted classifications. He wouldn’t be
classed. He was a curious mixture of athleticism and degeneracy. He
could run like a deer, leap like a greyhound, fight like a machine, and
drink like a suction-hose. He was a bully; he had the courage of the
high hero. He was an open-air sport; he had the vices of a French
decadent.

It was one of his love adventures that properly begins this tale; for
the girl had come to Battling one night with a recital of terrible
happenings; of an angered parent, of a slammed door.... In her arms was
a bundle of white rags. Now Battling, like so many sensualists, was also
a sentimentalist. He took that bundle of white rags; he paid the girl
money to get into the country; and the bundle of white rags had existed
in and about his domicile in Pekin Street, Limehouse, for some eleven
years. Her position was nondescript; to the casual observer it would
seem that she was Battling’s relief punch-ball—an unpleasant post for
any human creature to occupy, especially if you are a little girl of
twelve, and the place be the one-room household of the lightning
welter-weight. When Battling was cross with his manager ... well, it is
indefensible to strike your manager or to throw chairs at him, if he is
a good manager; but to use a dogwhip on a small child is permissible and
quite as satisfying; at least he found it so. On these occasions, then,
when very cross with his sparring partners, or overflushed with victory
and juice of the grape, he would flog Lucy. But he was reputed by the
boys to be a good fellow. He only whipped the child when he was drunk;
and he was only drunk for eight months of the year.

For just over twelve years this bruised little body had crept about
Poplar and Limehouse. Always the white face was scarred with red, or
black-furrowed with tears; always in her steps and in her look was
expectation of dread things. Night after night her sleep was broken by
the cheerful Battling’s brute voice and violent hands; and terrible were
the lessons which life taught her in those few years. Yet, for all the
starved face and the transfixed air, there was a lurking beauty about
her, a something that called you in the soft curve of her cheek that
cried for kisses and was fed with blows, and in the splendid
mournfulness that grew in eyes and lips. The brown hair chimed against
the pale face, like the rounding of a verse. The blue cotton frock and
the broken shoes could not break the loveliness of her slender figure or
the shy grace of her movements as she flitted about the squalid alleys
of the docks; though in all that region of wasted life and toil and
decay, there was not one that noticed her, until....

Now there lived in Chinatown, in one lousy room over Mr. Tai Fu’s store
in Pennyfields, a wandering yellow man, named Cheng Huan. Cheng Huan was
a poet. He did not realise it. He had never been able to understand why
he was unpopular; and he died without knowing. But a poet he was, tinged
with the materialism of his race, and in his poor listening heart
strange echoes would awake of which he himself was barely conscious. He
regarded things differently from other sailors; he felt things more
passionately, and things which they felt not at all; so he lived alone
instead of at one of the lodging-houses. Every evening he would sit at
his window and watch the street. Then, a little later, he would take a
jolt of opium at the place at the corner of Formosa Street.

He had come to London by devious ways. He had loafed on the Bund at
Shanghai. The fateful intervention of a crimp had landed him on a boat.
He got to Cardiff, and sojourned in its Chinatown; thence to Liverpool,
to Glasgow; thence, by a ticket from the Asiatics’ Aid Society, to
Limehouse, where he remained for two reasons—because it cost him nothing
to live there, and because he was too lazy to find a boat to take him
back to Shanghai.

So he would lounge and smoke cheap cigarettes, and sit at his window,
from which point he had many times observed the lyrical Lucy. He noticed
her casually. Another day, he observed her, not casually. Later, he
looked long at her; later still, he began to watch for her and for that
strangely provocative something about the toss of the head and the hang
of the little blue skirt as it coyly kissed her knee.

Then that beauty which all Limehouse had missed smote Cheng. Straight to
his heart it went, and cried itself into his very blood. Thereafter the
spirit of poetry broke her blossoms all about his odorous chamber.
Nothing was the same. Pennyfields became a happy-lanterned street, and
the monotonous fiddle in the house opposite was the music of his
fathers. Bits of old song floated through his mind: little sweet verses
of Le Tai-pih, murmuring of plum blossom, ricefield and stream. Day by
day he would moon at his window, or shuffle about the streets, lighting
to a flame when Lucy would pass and gravely return his quiet regard; and
night after night, too, he would dream of a pale, lily-lovely child.

And now the Fates moved swiftly various pieces on their sinister board,
and all that followed happened with a speed and precision that showed
direction from higher ways.

It was Wednesday night in Limehouse, and for once clear of mist. Out of
the coloured darkness of the Causeway stole the muffled wail of reed
instruments, and, though every window was closely shuttered, between the
joints shot jets of light and stealthy voices, and you could hear the
whisper of slippered feet, and the stuttering steps of the satyr and the
sadist. It was to the café in the middle of the Causeway, lit by the
pallid blue light that is the symbol of China throughout the world, that
Cheng Huan came, to take a dish of noodle and some tea. Thence he moved
to another house whose stairs ran straight to the street, and above
whose doorway a lamp glowed like an evil eye. At this establishment he
mostly took his pipe of “chandu” and a brief chat with the keeper of the
house, for, although not popular, and very silent, he liked sometimes to
be in the presence of his compatriots. Like a figure of a shadowgraph he
slid through the door and up the stairs.

The chamber he entered was a bit of the Orient squatting at the portals
of the West. It was a well-kept place where one might play a game of
fan-tan, or take a shot or so of _li-un_, or purchase other varieties of
Oriental delight. It was sunk in a purple dusk, though here and there a
lantern stung the gloom. Low couches lay around the walls, and strange
men decorated them: Chinese, Japs, Malays, Lascars, with one or two
white girls; and sleek, noiseless attendants swam from couch to couch.
Away in the far corner sprawled a lank figure in brown shirting, its
nerveless fingers curled about the stem of a spent pipe. On one of the
lounges a scorbutic nigger sat with a Jewess from Shadwell. Squatting on
a table in the centre, beneath one of the lanterns, was a musician with
a reed, blinking upon the company like a sly cat, and making his melody
of six repeated notes.

The atmosphere churned. The dirt of years, tobacco of many growings,
opium, betel nut, and moist flesh allied themselves in one grand assault
against the nostrils.

As Cheng brooded on his insect-ridden cushion, of a sudden the lantern
above the musician was caught by the ribbon of his reed. It danced and
flung a hazy radiance on a divan in the shadow. He saw—started—half
rose. His heart galloped, and the blood pounded in his quiet veins. Then
he dropped again,—crouched, and stared.

O lily-flowers and plum blossoms! O silver streams and dim-starred
skies! O wine and roses, song and laughter! For there, kneeling on a
mass of rugs, mazed and big-eyed, but understanding, was Lucy ... his
Lucy ... his little maid. Through the dusk she must have felt his intent
gaze upon her; for he crouched there, fascinated, staring into the now
obscured corner where she knelt.

But the sickness which momentarily gripped him on finding in this place
his snowy-breasted pearl passed and gave place to great joy. She was
here; he would talk with her. Little English he had, but simple words,
those with few gutturals, he had managed to pick up; so he rose, the
masterful lover, and, with feline movements, crossed the nightmare
chamber to claim his own.

If you wonder how Lucy came to be in this bagnio, the explanation is
simple. Battling was in training. He had flogged her that day before
starting work; he had then had a few brandies—not many; some eighteen or
nineteen—and had locked the door of his room and taken the key. Lucy
was, therefore, homeless, and a girl somewhat older than Lucy, so old
and so wise, as girls are in that region, saw in her a possible source
of revenue. So there they were, and to them appeared Cheng.

From what horrors he saved her that night cannot be told, for her ways
were too audaciously childish to hold her long from harm in such a
place. What he brought to her was love and death.

For he sat by her. He looked at her—reverently yet passionately. He
touched her—wistfully yet eagerly. He locked a finger in her wondrous
hair. She did not start away; she did not tremble. She knew well what
she had to be afraid of in that place; but she was not afraid of Cheng.
She pierced the mephitic gloom and scanned his face. No, she was not
afraid. His yellow hands, his yellow face, his smooth black hair ...
well, he was the first thing that had ever spoken soft words to her; the
first thing that had ever laid a hand upon her that was not brutal; the
first thing that had deferred in manner towards her as though she, too,
had a right to live. She knew his words were sweet, though she did not
understand them. Nor can they be set down. Half that he spoke was in
village Chinese; the rest in a mangling of English which no distorted
spelling could possibly reproduce.

But he drew her back against the cushions and asked her name, and she
told him; and he inquired her age, and she told him; and he had then two
beautiful words that came easily to his tongue. He repeated them again
and again:

“Lucia ... l’il Lucia.... Twelve.... Twelve.” Musical phrases they were,
dropping from his lips, and to the child who heard her name pronounced
so lovingly, they were the lost heights of melody. She clung to him, and
he to her. She held his strong arm in both of hers as they crouched on
the divan, and nestled her cheek against his coat.

Well ... he took her home to his wretched room.

“Li’l Lucia, come-a-home ... Lucia.”

His heart was on fire. As they slipped out of the noisomeness into the
night air and crossed the West India Dock Road into Pennyfields, they
passed unnoticed. It was late, for one thing, and for another ... well,
nobody cared particularly. His blood rang with soft music and the
solemnity of drums, for surely he had found now what for many years he
had sought—his world’s one flower. Wanderer he was, from Tuan-tsen to
Shanghai, Shanghai to Glasgow, Cardiff ... Liverpool ... London. He had
dreamed often of the women of his native land; perchance one of them
should be his flower. Women, indeed, there had been. Swatow ... he had
recollections of certain rose-winged hours in coast cities. At many
places to which chance had led him a little bird had perched itself upon
his heart, but so lightly and for so brief a while as hardly to be felt.
But now—now he had found her in this alabaster Cockney child. So that he
was glad and had great joy of himself and the blue and silver night, and
the harsh flares of the Poplar Hippodrome.

You will observe that he had claimed her, but had not asked himself
whether she were of an age for love. The white perfection of the child
had captivated every sense. It may be that he forgot that he was in
London and not in Tuan-tsen. It may be that he did not care. Of that
nothing can be told. All that is known is that his love was a pure and
holy thing. Of that we may be sure, for his worst enemies have said it.

Slowly, softly they mounted the stairs to his room, and with almost an
obeisance he entered and drew her in. A bank of cloud raced to the east
and a full moon thrust a sharp sword of light upon them. Silence lay
over all Pennyfields. With a bird-like movement, she looked up at
him—her face alight, her tiny hands upon his coat—clinging, wondering,
trusting. He took her hand and kissed it; repeated the kiss upon her
cheek and lip and little bosom, twining his fingers in her hair.
Docilely, and echoing the smile of his lemon lips in a way that thrilled
him almost to laughter, she returned his kisses impetuously, gladly.

He clasped the nestling to him. Bruised, tearful, with the love of life
almost thrashed out of her, she had fluttered to him out of the evil
night.

“O li’l Lucia!” And he put soft hands upon her, and smoothed her and
crooned over her many gracious things in his flowered speech. So they
stood in the moonlight, while she told him the story of her father, of
her beatings, and starvings and unhappiness.

“O li’l Lucia.... White Blossom.... Twelve.... Twelve years old!”

As he spoke, the clock above the Milwall Docks shot twelve crashing
notes across the night. When the last echo died, he moved to a cupboard,
and from it he drew strange things ... formless masses of blue and gold,
magical things of silk, and a vessel that was surely Aladdin’s lamp, and
a box of spices. He took these robes, and, with tender, reverent
fingers, removed from his White Blossom the besmirched rags that covered
her and robed her again, and led her then to the heap of stuff that was
his bed, and bestowed her safely.

For himself, he squatted on the floor before her, holding one grubby
little hand. There he crouched all night, under the lyric moon,
sleepless, watchful; and sweet content was his. He had fallen into an
uncomfortable posture, and his muscles ached intolerably. But she slept,
and he dared not move nor release her hand lest he should awaken her.
Weary and trustful, she slept, knowing that the yellow man was kind and
that she might sleep with no fear of a steel hand smashing the delicate
structure of her dreams.

In the morning, when she awoke, still wearing her blue and yellow silk,
she gave a cry of amazement. Cheng had been about. Many times had he
glided up and down the two flights of stairs, and now at last his room
was prepared for his princess. It was swept and garnished, and was an
apartment worthy a maid who is loved by a poet-prince. There was a bead
curtain. There were muslins of pink and white. There were four bowls of
flowers, clean, clear flowers to gladden the White Blossom and set off
her sharp beauty. And there was a bowl of water, and a sweet lotion for
the bruise on her cheek.

When she had risen, her prince ministered to her with rice and egg and
tea. Cleansed and robed and calm, she sat before him, perched on the end
of many cushions as on a throne, with all the grace of the child
princess in the story. She was a poem. The beauty hidden by neglect and
fatigue shone out now more clearly and vividly, and from the head
sunning over with curls to the small white feet, now bathed and
sandalled, she seemed the living interpretation of a Chinese lyric. And
she was his; her sweet self and her prattle, and her bird-like ways were
all his own.

Oh, beautifully they loved. For two days he held her. Soft caresses from
his yellow hands and long, devout kisses were all their demonstration.
Each night he would tend her, as might mother to child; and each night
he watched and sometimes slumbered at the foot of her couch.

But now there were those that ran to Battling at his training quarters
across the river, with the news that his child had gone with a Chink—a
yellow man. And Battling was angry. He discovered parental rights. He
discovered indignation. A yellow man after his kid! He’d learn him.
Battling did not like men who were not born in the same great country as
himself. Particularly he disliked yellow men. His birth and education in
Shadwell had taught him that of all creeping things that creep upon the
earth the most insidious is the Oriental in the West. And a yellow man
and a child. It was ... as you might say ... so ... kind of ... well,
wasn’t it? He bellowed that it was “unnacherel.” The yeller man would go
through it. Yeller! It was his supreme condemnation, his final epithet
for all conduct of which he disapproved.

There was no doubt that he was extremely annoyed. He went to the Blue
Lantern, in what was once Ratcliff Highway, and thumped the bar, and
made all his world agree with him. And when they agreed with him he got
angrier still. So that when, a few hours later, he climbed through the
ropes at the Netherlands to meet Bud Tuffit for ten rounds, it was Bud’s
fight all the time, and to that bright boy’s astonishment he was the
victor on points at the end of the ten. Battling slouched out of the
ring, still more determined to let the Chink have it where the chicken
had the axe. He left the house with two pals and a black man, and a
number of really inspired curses from his manager.

On the evening of the third day, then, Cheng slipped sleepily down the
stairs to procure more flowers and more rice. The genial Ho Ling, who
keeps the Canton store, held him in talk some little while, and he was
gone from his room perhaps half-an-hour. Then he glided back, and
climbed with happy feet the forty stairs to his temple of wonder.

With a push of a finger he opened the door, and the blood froze on his
cheek, the flowers fell from him. The temple was empty and desolate;
White Blossom was gone. The muslin hangings were torn down and trampled
underfoot. The flowers had been flung from their bowls about the floor,
and the bowls lay in fifty fragments. The joss was smashed. The cupboard
had been opened. Rice was scattered here and there. The little straight
bed had been jumped upon by brute feet. Everything that could be smashed
or violated had been so treated, and—horror of all—the blue and yellow
silk robe had been rent in pieces, tied in grotesque knots, and slung
derisively about the table legs.

I pray devoutly that you may never suffer what Cheng Huan suffered in
that moment. The pangs of death, with no dying; the sickness of the soul
which longs to escape and cannot; the imprisoned animal within the
breast which struggles madly for a voice and finds none; all the agonies
of all the ages—the agonies of every abandoned lover and lost woman,
past and to come—all these things were his in that moment.

Then he found voice and gave a great cry, and men from below came up to
him; and they told him how the man who boxed had been there with a black
man; how he had torn the robes from his child, and dragged her down the
stairs by her hair; and how he had shouted aloud for Cheng and had vowed
to return and deal separately with him.

Now a terrible dignity came to Cheng, and the soul of his great fathers
swept over him. He closed the door against them, and fell prostrate over
what had been the resting-place of White Blossom. Those without heard
strange sounds as of an animal in its last pains; and it was even so.
Cheng was dying. The sacrament of his high and holy passion had been
profaned; the last sanctuary of the Oriental—his soul dignity—had been
assaulted. The love robes had been torn to ribbons; the veil of his
temple cut down. Life was no longer possible; and life without his
little lady, his White Blossom, was no longer desirable.

Prostrate he lay for the space of some five minutes. Then, in his face
all the pride of accepted destiny, he arose. He drew together the little
bed. With reverent hands he took the pieces of blue and yellow silk,
kissing them and fondling them and placing them about the pillow.
Silently he gathered up the flowers, and the broken earthenware, and
burnt some prayer papers and prepared himself for death.

Now it is the custom among those of the sect of Cheng that the dying
shall present love-gifts to their enemies; and when he had set all in
order, he gathered his brown canvas coat about him, stole from the
house, and set out to find Battling Burrows, bearing under the coat his
love-gift to Battling. White Blossom he had no hope of finding. He had
heard of Burrows many times; and he judged that, now that she was taken
from him, never again would he hold those hands or touch that laughing
hair. Nor, if he did, could it change things from what they were.
Nothing that was not a dog could live in the face of this sacrilege.

As he came before the house in Pekin Street, where Battling lived, he
murmured gracious prayers. Fortunately, it was a night of thick river
mist, and through the enveloping velvet none could observe or challenge
him. The main door was open, as are all doors in this district. He
writhed across the step, and through to the back room, where again the
door yielded to a touch.

Darkness. Darkness and silence, and a sense of frightful things. He
peered through it. Then he fumbled under his jacket—found a match—struck
it. An inch of a candle stood on the mantelshelf. He lit it. He looked
around. No sign of Burrows, but ... Almost before he looked he knew what
awaited him. But the sense of finality had kindly stunned him; he could
suffer nothing more.

On the table lay a dog-whip. In the corner a belt had been flung. Half
across the greasy couch lay White Blossom. A few rags of clothing were
about her pale and slim body; her hair hung limp as her limbs; her eyes
were closed. As Cheng drew nearer and saw the savage red rails that ran
across and across the beloved body, he could not scream—he could not
think. He dropped beside the couch. He laid gentle hands upon her, and
called soft names. She was warm to the touch. The pulse was still.

Softly, oh, so softly, he bent over the little frame that had enclosed
his friend-spirit, and his light kisses fell all about her. Then, with
the undirected movements of a sleep-walker, he bestowed the rags
decently about her, clasped her in strong arms, and crept silently into
the night.

From Pekin Street to Pennyfields it is but a turn or two, and again he
passed unobserved as he bore his tired bird back to her nest. He laid
her upon the bed, and covered the lily limbs with the blue and yellow
silks and strewed upon her a few of the trampled flowers. Then, with
more kisses and prayers, he crouched beside her.

So, in the ghastly Limehouse morning, they were found—the dead child,
and the Chink, kneeling beside her, with a sharp knife gripped in a
vice-like hand, its blade far between his ribs.

Meantime, having vented his wrath on his prodigal daughter, Battling,
still cross, had returned to the Blue Lantern, and there he stayed with
a brandy tumbler in his fist, forgetful of an appointment at
Premierland, whereby he should have been in the ring at ten o’clock
sharp. For the space of an hour Chuck Lightfoot was going blasphemously
to and fro in Poplar, seeking Battling and not finding him, and
murmuring in tearful tones: “Battling—you dammanblasted Battling—where
are yeh?”

His opponent was in his corner sure enough, but there was no fight. For
Battling lurched from the Blue Lantern to Pekin Street. He lurched into
his happy home, and he cursed Lucy, and called for her. And finding no
matches, he lurched to where he knew the couch should be, and flopped
heavily down.

Now it is a peculiarity of the reptile tribe that its members are
impatient of being flopped on without warning. So, when Battling
flopped, eighteen inches of writhing gristle upreared itself on the
couch, and got home on him as Bud Tuffit had done the night before—one
to the ear, one to the throat, and another to the forearm.

Battling went down and out.

And he, too, was found in the morning, with Cheng Huan’s love-gift
coiled about his neck.




THE NOMAD

By ROBERT HICHENS

    From Snakebite, by Robert Hichens.
    Copyright, 1919, by George H. Doran Company.




                                   1




The fate of Madame Lemaire had certainly not been an ordinary one. She
was French, of Marseilles, as you could tell by her accent, especially
when she said “_C’est bien!_” and had been an extremely coquettish and
lively girl, with a strong will of her own and a passionate love of
pleasure and of town life. From her talk when she was seventeen, you
would have gathered that if she ever moved from Marseilles it would be
to go to Paris. Nothing else would be good enough for her. She felt
herself born to play a part in some great city.

And yet, at the age of forty, here she was in the desert of Sahara,
keeping an _auberge_ at El-Kelf under the salt mountain! She sometimes
wondered how it had ever come about, when she crossed the court of the
inn, round which mules of customers were tethered in open sheds, or when
she served the rough Algerian wine to farmers from the Tell, or to some
dusty commercial traveller from Batna, in the arbour trellised with
vines that fronted the desert.

Marie Lemaire, who had been Marie Bretelle, at El-Kelf! Marie Lemaire in
the desert of Sahara attending upon God knows whom: Algerians, Spahis,
camel-drivers, gazelle-hunters! No; it was too much!

But if you have a “kink” in you, to what may you not come? Marie
Bretelle’s “kink” had been an idiotic softness for handsome faces.

She wanted to shine in the world, to cut a dash, to go to Paris; or, if
that were impossible, to stay in Marseilles married to some rich city
man, and to give parties, and to get gowns from Madame Vannier, of the
Rue de Cliche, and hats from Trebichot, of the Rue des Colonies, and to
attend the theatres, and to be stared at and pointed out on the
race-course, and—and, in fact, to be the belle of Marseilles. And here
she was at El-Kelf and all because of that “kink” in her nature!

Lemaire had had a handsome face and been a fine man, stalwart, bold,
muscular, determined. He did not belong to Marseilles, but had come
there to give an acrobatic show in a music-hall; and there Marie
Bretelle had seen him, dressed in silver-spangled tights, and doing
marvellous feats on three parallel bars. His bare arms had lumps on them
like balls of iron, his fair moustaches were trained into points, his
bold eyes were lit with a fire to fascinate women; and—well, Marie
Bretelle ran away with him and became Madame Lemaire. And so she came to
Algiers, where Lemaire had an accident while giving his performance. And
that was the beginning of the Odyssey which had ended at El-Kelf.

“Fool—fool—fool!”

Often she said that to herself, as she went about the inn doing her
duties with grains of sand in her hair.

“Fool—fool—fool!”

The word was taken by the wind of the waste and carried away to the
desert.

After his accident Lemaire lost his engagements. Then he lost his looks.
He put on flesh. He ceased to train his moustaches into points. The
great muscles got soft, were covered with flabby fat. Finally he took to
drink. And so they drifted.

To earn some money he became many things—guide, _concierge_, tout for
“La Belle Fatma.” He had impossible professions in Algiers. And Marie?
Well, it were best not to scrutinise her life too closely under the
burning sun of Africa. Whatever it was, it was not very successful; and
they drifted from Algiers. Where did they go? Where had they not been in
this fiery land? Oran on the Moroccan border had seen them, and the
mosques of Kairouan, windy Tunis, and rock-bound Constantine, laughing
Bougie in its wall by the water, Fort National in the Grande Kabyle.
They had been everywhere. And at last some wind of the desert had blown
them, like poor grains of desert sand, from the bending palms of Biskra
to the mud walls of El-Kelf.

And here—Gold help them!—for ten years they had been keeping the inn,
“Au Retour du Desert.”

For ten, long, dry years, and such an inn! Why, at Marseilles they would
have called it—well, one cannot tell what they would have called it on
the Cannebiere! But they would have found a name for it, that is
certain.

It stood alone, this inn, quite alone in the desert, which at El-Kelf
circles a small oasis in which there is hidden among fair-sized palms a
meagre Arab village. Why the inn should have been built outside of the
oasis, away from the village, I cannot tell you. But so it is. It seems
to be disdainful of the earth houses of the Arabs, to be determined to
have nothing to do with them. And yet there is little reason in its
disdain.

For it, too, is built on sun-dried earth for the most part, and has only
the ground floor possessed by most of them. It stands facing flat but
not illimitable desert. The road that passes before it winds away to
land where there is water; and from the trellised arbour, but far off,
one can see in the sunshine the sharp, shrill green of crops, grown by
the Spahis whose tented camp lies to the right of the caravan track that
leads over the Col de Sfa to Biskra.

Far, far along that road one can see from the inn, till its whiteness is
as the whiteness of a thread, and any figures travelling upon it are
less than little dolls, and even a caravan is but a moving dimness
shrouded in a dimness of dust. But towards evening, when the strange
clearness of Africa becomes almost terribly acute, every speck upon the
thread has a meaning to attract the eye, and set the mind at work
asking:

“What is this that is coming upon the road? Who is this that travels? Is
it a mounted man on his thin horse, with his matchlock pointing to the
sky? Or is it a woman hunched upon a trotting donkey? Or a Nomad on his
camel? Or is it only some poor desert man, half naked in his rags, who
tramps on his bare brown feet along sun-baked track, his hood drawn
above his eyes, his knotted club in his hand?”

After ten years Madame Lemaire still asked herself such questions in the
arbour of the inn, when business was slack, when her husband was away,
or was lying half drunk upon the bed after an extra dose of absinthe,
and the one-eyed Arab servant, Hadj, was squatting on his haunches in a
corner smoking keef.

Not that the answer mattered at all to her. She expected nothing of the
road that led from the desert. But her mind, stagnant though it had
become in the solitude of Africa, had to do something to occupy itself.
And so she often stared across the plain, with an aimless “_Je me
demande_” trembling upon her lips, and a hard expression of inquiry in
her dark brown eyes, whose lids were seamed with tiny wrinkles. Perhaps
you will wonder why Madame Lemaire, having once had a passionate love
for pleasure and a strong will of her own, had consented to remain for
ten years in the solitude of El-Kelf, drudging in a miserable _auberge_,
to which few people, and those but poor ones, ever came.

Circumstances and Robert Lemaire had been too much for her. Both had
been cruel. She was something of a slave to both. Lemaire was an utter
failure, but there lurked within him still, under the waves of absinthe,
traces of the dominating power which had long ago made him a success.

Madame Lemaire had worshipped him once, had adored his strength and
beauty. They were gone now. He was a wreck. But he was a wreck with
fierceness in it. And command with him had become a habit. And Africa
bids one accept. And so Madame Lemaire had stayed for ten long years
drudging at the inn beside the salt mountain, and staring down the long
white road for the something strange and interesting from the desert
that never, never came.

And still Lemaire drank absinthe, and cursed and drowsed. For ten long
years! And still Hadj squatted upon his haunches and drugged himself
with keef. And still Madame Lemaire stood under the trellised vine, with
the sand-grains in her hair, and gazed and gazed over the plain.

And when a black speck appeared far off upon the whiteness of the track,
she watched it till her eyes ached, demanding who, or what, it
was—whether a Spahi on horseback, a woman on her donkey, a Nomad on his
camel, or some dark and half-naked pedestrian of the sands, that
travelled through the sunset glory towards the lonely inn.

Although Robert Lemaire was a wreck he was not an old man in years, only
forty-five, and the fine and tonic air of the Sahara preserved from
complete destruction. Shaggy and unkept he was, with a heavy bulk of
chest and shoulders, a large, pale face, and the angry and distressed
eyes of the absinthe slave. His hands trembled habitually, and on his
bad days fluttered like leaves. But there was still some force in his
prematurely aged body, still some will in his mind. He was a wreck, but
he was the wreck of one who had been really a man and accustomed to
dominate women. And this he did not forget.

One evening—it was in May, and the long heats of the desert had already
set in—Lemaire was away from the _auberge_, shooting near the salt
mountain with an acquaintance, a colonist who had a small farm not far
from Biskra, and who had come to spend the night at El-Kelf. This man
had a history. He had once been a hotel-keeper, and had reason to
suspect a guest in his hotel of having guilty intercourse with his wife.

One night, having discovered beyond possibility of doubt that his
suspicions were well founded, he waited till the hotel was closed, then
made his way to his guest’s room, and put three bullets into him as he
lay asleep in his bed. For this murder, or act of justice, he got only
ten months’ imprisonment. But his business as a hotel-keeper was ruined.
So now he was a small farmer. He was also, perhaps, the only real friend
Lemaire had in Africa, and he came occasionally to spend a night at the
Retour du Desert.

Upon this evening of May, Madame Lemaire was alone in the inn with the
one-eyed servant Hadj preparing supper for the two sportsmen. The flies
buzzed about under the dusty leaves of the vine, which were unstirred by
any breeze. The crystals upon the flanks of the salt mountain glittered
in the sun that was still fiery, though not far from its declining.

Upon the dry, earthen walls of the inn and over the stones of the court
round which it was built, the lizards crept, or rested with eager,
glancing patience, as if alert for further movement, but waiting for a
signal. A mule or two stamped in the long stable that was open to the
court, and a skeleton of a white Kabyle dog slunk to and fro searching
for scraps with his lips curled back from his pointed teeth.

And Madame Lemaire went slowly about her work with the sand-grains in
her hair, and the flies buzzing around her.

Nothing had happened. Nothing ever did happen at El-Kelf. But for some
mysterious reason Madame Lemaire suddenly felt to-day that her existence
in the desert had become insupportable. It may have been that Africa,
gradually draining away the Frenchwoman’s vitality, had on this day
removed the last little drop of the force that had, till now, enabled
her to face her life, however dully, however wearily.

It may have been that there was some peculiar and unusual heaviness in
the air that was generally of a feathery lightness. Or the reason may
have been mental, and Africa may have drawn from this victim’s nature,
on this particular day, a grain, small as a grain of sand, of will-power
that was absolutely necessary for the keeping of the woman’s stamina
upon its feet.

However it was, she felt that she collapsed. She did not cry. She did
not curse. She did not faint, or lie down and stare with desperate eyes
at the vacant dying day. She did not neglect her domestic duties, and
was even now tearing, with a flat key, the cover from some tinned veal
and ham for the evening’s supper. But something within her had abruptly
raised its voice. She seemed to hear it saying: “I can’t bear any more!”
and to know that it spoke the truth. No longer could she bear it: the
African sun on the brown-earth walls, the settling of the sand-grains in
her hair, the movement of the flies about her face, wrinkled prematurely
by the perpetual dry heat and by the desert winds; the brazen sky above
her, the iron land beneath, the silence—like the silence that was before
creation, or the monotonous sounds that broke it; the mule’s stamp on
the stones, the barking of the guard-dogs upon the palm roofs of the
distant houses in the village, the sneering laugh of the jackals by
night, that whining song of Hadj, as he wagged his shaven head over the
pipe-bowl into which he pressed the keef that was bringing him to
madness.

She could not bear it any more.

The look in her face scarcely altered. The corners of her mouth, long
since grown grim, did not droop any more than usual. Her thin, hard
hands were steady as they did their dreary work. But the woman who had
resisted somehow during ten terrible years of incomparable monotony
suddenly died within Marie Lemaire, and the girl of Marseilles, Marie
Bretelle, shrieked out in the middle-aged, haggard body.

“This fate was not meant for me. I cannot bear it any more.”

Presently the tin which had held the veal and ham was empty, save for
some bits of opaque jelly that still clung round its edges; and Madame
Lemaire went over to the dimly burning charcoal with a dirty old pan in
her hand.

Marie Bretelle was still shrieking out, but Madame Lemaire must get
ready the supper for her absinthe-soaked husband, and his friend the
murderer from Alfa.

The sportsmen were late in returning, and Madame Lemaire’s task was
finished before they came. She had nothing more to do, and she came out
to the arbour that looked upon the road. Here there was an old table
stained with the lees of wine. About it stood three or four rickety
chairs. Madame Lemaire sat down—dropped down, rather—on one of these,
laid her arms upon the table, and gazed down the empty road.

“_Mon Dieu!_” she said to herself. “_Mon Dieu!_” She beat one hand on
the table and said it aloud.

“_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_”

She stared up at the vine. The leaves were sandy, and she saw insects
running over them. She watched them. What were they doing? What purpose
could they have? What purpose could anything have?

Always the hand tapped, tapped upon the table.

And Marseilles! It was still there by the sea, crowded, gay with life.
This was the time when the life began to grow turbulent. The cascades
were roaring under the lifted gardens, where the beasts roamed in their
cages. The awnings were out over the cafés in that city of cafés. She
could almost see the coloured edges of stuff fluttering in the wind that
came from the arbour and from the Château d’If. There was a sound of
hammering along the sea. They were putting up the bathing sheds for the
season. It would be good to go into the sea. It would cool one.

A beetle dropped from the vine on to the table, close to the beating
hand. Madame Lemaire started violently. She got up, and went to stand in
the entrance of the arbour. Marseilles was gone now. Africa was there.

For ten years she had been looking down the road. She looked down it
once more.

It was the wonderful evening hour when Africa seems to lift itself
toward the light, reluctant to be given to the darkness. Very far one
could see, and with an almost supernatural distinctness. Yet Madame
Lemaire strained her eyes, as people do at dusk when they strive to
pierce a veil of gathering darkness.

What was coming along the road?

Her gaze travelled onwards over the hard and barren plain till it
reached the green crops, on and on past the tents of the Spahis’
encampment, near which rose a trail of smoke into the lucent air;
farther still, farther and farther, until the whiteness narrowed towards
the mountains, and at last was lost to sight.

And this evening, perhaps because she longed so much for something, for
anything, there was nothing on the road. It was a white emptiness under
the setting sun.

Then the woman felt frantic, and she beat her hands together, and she
cried aloud:

“If the Devil himself would only come along the road and ask me to go
from this cursed hole of a place, I’d go with him! I’d go! I’d go!”

She repeated it shrilly, making wild gestures with her hands towards the
desert. Her face was twisted awry. She looked just then like a desperate
hag of a woman.

But it was the girl of Marseilles who was crying out in her. It was
Marie Bretelle who was demanding the joys she had flung away in her
youth for the sake of a handsome face.

“I’d go! I’d go!”

The shrill cry went up to the setting sun. But no one answered, and
nothing darkened the arid whiteness of the road that wound across the
plain and passed before the inn-door.




                                   2




Night had fallen when the two sportsmen rode in on mules, tired and
hungry. Hadj came from his keef to take the beasts, Madame Lemaire from
her kitchen to ask if there were any birds for her to cook. Her husband
gave her a string of them, and she turned away from him without a word,
and went back into the house.

There was nothing odd in this, but something in his wife’s face, seen
only for a moment in the darkness of the court, had startled Lemaire,
and he looked after her as if he were inclined to call her back; then
said to his companion, Jacques Bouvier:

“Did you see Marie?”

“Yes. She looks as if she had just stumbled over a jackal,” and he
laughed.

Lemaire stood for a minute where he was. Then he shouted to Hadj:

“Hadj! A—Hadj!”

The one-eyed keef-smoker came.

“Who has been here to-day?”

“No one. A few have passed the door, but no one has entered.”

“Good business!” said Bouvier, shrugging his shoulders.

“Business!” exclaimed Lemaire, with an oath. “It’s a fine business we do
here. Another ten years, and we shan’t have put by ten sous.”

“Perhaps that is why madame has such a face to-night!”

“We’ll see at supper. Now for an absinthe!”

The two men walked stiffly into the inn, put their guns in a corner,
went into the arbour that fronted the desert, and sat down by the table.

“Marie!” bawled Lemaire.

He struck his flabby fist down upon the wood.

“Marie, the absinthe!”

Madame Lemaire heard the hoarse shout in the kitchen, and her face went
awry again:

“I’d go! I’d go!”

She hissed it under her breath.

“_Sacré nom de Dieu!_ Marie!”

“_V’là!_”

“The devil! What a voice!” said Bouvier in the arbour.

Lemaire was half turned in his chair. His hands were slightly shaking,
and his large white face, with its angry and distressed eyes, looked
startled.

“Who was that?” he said, moving in his chair as if he were going to get
up.

“Who? Your wife!”

“No, it wasn’t!”

“Well, then——”

At this moment there was a clink and a rattle, and Madame Lemaire came
slowly out from the inn, carrying a tray with an absinthe bottle, a
bottle of water, and two thick glasses with china saucers. She set it
down between the two men. Her husband stared at her like one who stares
suspiciously at a stranger.

“Was that you who called out?” he asked.

“Of course! Who else should it be? Who ever comes here?”

“Madame is a bit sick of El-Kelf,” said Bouvier. “That’s what is the
matter.”

Madame Lemaire compressed her lips tightly and said nothing.

Her husband looked more suspicious.

“Why should she be sick of it? She’s done very well with it for ten
years,” he said roughly.

Madame Lemaire turned away and left the arbour. She was wearing slippers
without heels, and went softly.

The two men sat in silence, looking at each other. A breath of wind, the
first that had come that day, stole from the desert and rustled the
leaves of the vine above their heads. Lemaire stretched out his
trembling hand to the absinthe bottle.

“For God’s sake let’s have a drink!” he said. “There’s something about
my wife that’s given my blood a turn.”

“Beat her!” said Bouvier, pushing forward his glass. “If you don’t beat
them be sure they’ll betray you.”

His wife’s treachery had set him against all women. Lemaire growled
something inarticulate. He was thinking of the days in Algiers, of their
strange and often disgraceful existence there. Bouvier knew nothing of
that.

“Come on!” he said.

And he lifted his glass of absinthe to his lips.

At supper that night Lemaire perpetually watched his wife. She seemed to
be just as usual. For years there had been a sort of sickly weariness
upon her face. It was there now. For years there had been a dull sound
in her voice. He heard it to-night. For years she had had a poor
appetite. She ate little at supper, had her habitual manner of
swallowing almost with difficulty. Surely she was just as usual.

And yet she was not—she was not!

After supper the two men returned to the arbour to smoke and drink, and
Madame Lemaire remained in the kitchen to clear away and wash up.

“Isn’t there something the matter with my wife?” asked Lemaire, lighting
a thin, black cigar, and settling his loose, bulky body in the small
chair, with his fat legs stretched out, and one foot crossed over the
other. “Or is it that I’m out of sorts to-night? It seems to me as if
she were strange.”

Bouvier was a small, pinched man, with a narrow face, evenly red in
colour, large ears that stood out from his closely shaven head, and
hot-looking, prominent brown eyes.

“Perhaps she’s taken with some Arab,” he said.

“P’f! She’s dropped all that nonsense. The devil! A woman of forty’s an
old woman in Africa.”

Bouvier spat.

“Isn’t she?”

“Oh, don’t ask me about women. Young or old, they’re always calling the
Devil to their elbow.”

“What for?”

“To put them up to wickedness. Perhaps your wife’s been calling him
to-night. You look behind her presently, and you may catch a sight of
him. He’s always about where women are.”

“Ha, ha, ha!”

Lemaire laughed mirthlessly.

“D’you think he’d show himself to me?”

He emptied his glass. Bouvier suddenly looked terrible—looked like the
man who had put three bullets into his sleeping guest.

“How did I know?” he said.

He leaned across the table towards Lemaire.

“How did I know?” he repeated in a low voice.

“What—when your wife——”

“Yes. They didn’t let me see anything. They were too sharp. No; it was
one night I saw _him_, with his mouth at her ear, coming in behind her
through the door like a shadow. There!”

He sat back with his hands on his knees. Lemaire stared at him again.

Again the wind rustled furtively through the diseased vine-leaves of the
arbour.

“It was then that I got out my revolver and charged it,” continued
Bouvier, in a less mysterious voice, as of one returned to practical
life. “For I knew she’d been up to some villainy. Pass the bottle!”...

“Pass the bottle!... Why don’t you pass the bottle?”

“Pardon!”

Lemaire pushed the bottle over to his friend.

“What’s the matter with you to-night?”

“Nothing. You mean to say ... why d’you talk such nonsense? D’you think
I’m a fool to be taken in by rubbish like that?”

“Well, then, why did you sit just as if you’d seen him?”

“I’m a bit tired to-night, that’s what it is. We went a long way. The
wine’ll pull me together.”

He poured out another glass.

“You don’t mean to say,” he continued, “you believe in the Devil?”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why not! Why should I? Nobody does—me, I mean. That sort of thing is
all very well for women.”

Bouvier said nothing, but sat with his arms on the table, staring out
towards the desert. He looked at the empty road just in front of him,
let his eyes travel along until it disappeared into the night.

“I say, that sort of thing is all very well for women,” repeated
Lemaire.

“I hear you.”

“But I want to know whether you don’t think the same.”

“As you?”

“Yes; to be sure.”

“I might have done once.”

“But you don’t now?”

“There’s a devil in the desert; that’s certain.”

“Why?”

“Because I tell you he came out of the desert to turn my wife wrong.”

“Then you weren’t joking?”

“Not I. It’s as true as that I went and charged my revolver, because I
saw what I told you. Here’s Madame coming out to join us.”

Lemaire shifted heavily and abruptly in his chair.

“Hallo!” he said, in a brutal tone of voice. “What’s up with you
to-night?”

As he spoke he stared hard at his wife’s shoulder, just by her ear.

“Nothing. What are you looking at? There isn’t——”

She put up her hand quickly to her shoulder and felt over her dress.

“Ugh!” She shook herself. “I thought you’d seen a scorpion on me.”

Bouvier, whose red face seemed to be deepening in colour under the
influence of the red Algerian wine, burst out laughing.

“It wasn’t a scorpion he was looking for,” he exclaimed. His thin body
shook with mirth till his chair creaked under him.

“It wasn’t a scorpion,” he repeated.

“What was it, then?” said Madame Lemaire.

She looked from one man to the other—from the one who was strange in his
laughter, to the other who was even stranger in his gravity.

“What have you been saying about me?” she said, with a flare-up of
suspicion.

“Well,” said Bouvier, recovering himself a little, “if you must know, we
were talking about the Devil.”

The woman stared and gave the table a shake. Some of her husband’s wine
was spilled over it.

“The Devil take you!” he bawled with sudden fury.

“I only wish he would!”

The two men jumped back as if a viper of the sands had suddenly reared
up its thin head between them.

“I only wish he would!”

It was Marie Bretelle who had spoken, the girl of Marseilles, who still
lived in the body of Marie Lemaire. But it was Marie Lemaire from whom
the two men shrank away—Marie Lemaire changed, startling, terrible, her
haggard face furious with expression, her thin hands clutching at the
edge of the table, from which the wine-bottle had fallen, to be smashed
at their feet.

For a moment there was a dead silence succeeding that second shrill cry.
Then Lemaire scrambled up heavily from his chair.

“What do you mean?” he stammered. “What do you mean?”

And then she told him, like a fury, and with the words which had surely
been accumulating in her mind, like water behind a dam, for ten years.
She told him what she had wanted, and what she had had. And when at last
she had finished telling him, she stood for a minute, making mouths at
him in silence, as if she still had something to say, some final word of
summing up.

“Stop that!”

It was Lemaire who spoke; and as he spoke he thrust out one of his
white, shaking hands to cover that nightmare mouth. But she beat his
hand down, and screamed, with the gesture.

“And if the Devil himself would come along the road to fetch me from
this cursed place, I’d go with him! D’you hear? I’d go with him! I’d go
with him!”

When the scream died away, one-eyed Hadj was standing at the entrance to
the arbour. Madame Lemaire felt that he was there, turned round, and saw
him.

“I’d go with him if he was an Arab,” she said, but almost muttering now,
for her voice had suddenly failed her, though her passion was still
red-hot. “Even the Arabs—they’re better than you, absinthe-soaked,
do-nothing Roumis, who sit and drink, drink——”

Her voice cracked, went into a whisper, disappeared. She thrust out her
hand, swept the glasses off the table to follow the bottle, turned, and
went out of the arbour softly on her slippered feet.

And one-eyed Hadj stood there laughing, for he understood French very
well, although he was half mad with keef.

“She’d go with an Arab!” he repeated. “She’d go with an Arab!” And then
he saw his master.

The two Frenchmen sat staring at one another across the empty table
under the shivering vine-leaves, which were now stirred continually by
the wind of night. Lemaire’s large face had gone a dusky grey. About his
eyes there was a tinge of something that was almost lead colour. His
loose mouth had dropped, and the lower lip disclosed his decayed teeth.
His hands, laid upon the table as if for support, shook and jumped, were
never still even for a second.

Bouvier was almost purple. Veins stood out about his forehead. The blood
had gone to his ears and to his eyes. Now he leaned across to Lemaire.

“Beat her!” he said. “Beat her for that! Hadj heard her. If you don’t
beat her, the Arabs——”

But before he had finished the sentence Lemaire had got up, with a wild
gesture of his shaking hand, and gone unsteadily into the house.

That night Madame Lemaire suffered at the hands of her husband, while
Bouvier and Hadj listened in the darkness of the court.




                                   3




It was drawing towards evening on the following day, and Madame Lemaire
was quite alone in the inn. Hadj had gone to the village for some more
keef, and Lemaire and Bouvier had set out together in the morning for
Batna.

So she was quite alone. Her face was bruised and discoloured near the
right eye. Her head ached. She felt immensely listless. To-day there was
no activity in her misery. It seemed a slow-witted, lethargic thing,
undeserving even of respect.

There were no customers. There was nothing to do, absolutely nothing.
She went heavily into the arbour, and sank down upon a chair. At first
she sat upright. But presently she spread her arms out upon the table,
and laid her discoloured face on them, and remained so for a long time.

Any traveller, passing by on the road from the desert, would have
thought that she was asleep. But she was not asleep. Nor had she slept
all night. It is not easy to sleep after such punishment as she had
received.

And no traveller passed by.

The flies, finding that the woman kept quite still, settled upon her
face, her hair, her hands, cleaned themselves, stretched their legs and
wings, went to and fro busily upon her. She never moved to drive them
away.

She was not thinking just then. She was only feeling—feeling how she was
alone, feeling that this enormous sun-dried land was about her,
stretching away to right and left of her, behind her and before, feeling
that in all this enormous, sun-dried land there was nobody who wanted
her, nobody thinking of her, nobody coming towards her to take her away
into a different life, into a life that she could bear.

All this she was dully feeling.

Perfectly still were the diseased vine-leaves above her head, motionless
as she was. On them the insects went to and fro, actively leading their
mysterious lives, as the flies went to and fro on her.

For a long time she remained thus. All the white road was empty before
her as far as eye could see. No trail of smoke went up by the growing
crops beside the distant tents of the Spahis. It seemed as if man had
abandoned Africa, leaving only one of God’s creatures there, this woman
who leaned across the discoloured table with her bruised face hidden on
her arms.

The hour before sunset approached, the miraculous hour of the day, when
Africa seems to lift itself towards the light that will soon desert it,
as if it could not bear to let the glory go, as if it would not consent
to be hidden in the night. Upon the salt mountain the crystals
glittered.

The details of the land began to live as they had not lived all day. The
wonderful clearness came, in which all things seem filled with
supernatural meaning. And, even in the dullness of her misery, habit
took hold of Madame Lemaire.

She lifted her head from her arms, and she stared down the long white
road. Her gaze travelled. It started from the patch of glaring white
before the arbour, and it went away like one who goes to a tryst. It
went down the road, and on, and on. It reached the green of the crops.
It passed the Spahis’ tents. It moved towards the distant mountains that
hid the plains and the palms of Biskra.

The flies buzzed into the air.

Madame Lemaire had got up from her seat. With her hands laid flat upon
the table she stared at the thread of white that was the limit of her
vision. Then she lifted her hands and curved them, and put them above
her eyes to form a shade. And then she moved and came out to the
entrance of the arbour.

She had seen a black speck upon the road.

There was dust around it. As so often before she asked herself the
question: “Who is it coming towards the inn from the desert?” But to-day
she asked herself the question as she had never asked it before, with a
sort of violence, with a passionate eagerness, with a leaping
expectation. And she stepped right out into the road, as if she would go
and meet the traveller, would hasten with stretched-out hands as to some
welcome friend.

The sun dropped its burning rays upon her hair, and she realised her
folly, took her hands from her eyes, and laughed to herself. Then she
went back to the arbour and stood by the table waiting. Slowly—very
slowly it seemed to Madame Lemaire—the black speck grew larger on the
white. But there was very much dust to-day, and always the misty cloud
was round it, stirred up by—was it a camel’s padding feet, or the hoofs
of a horse, or—? She could not tell yet, but soon she would be able to
tell.

Now it was approaching the watered land, was not far from the Spahis’
tents. And a great fear came upon her that it might turn aside to them,
that it might be perhaps a Spahi riding home from his patrol of the
desert. She felt that she could not bear to be alone any longer; that if
she could not see and speak to someone before sunset she must go mad.

The traveller passed before the Spahis’ camp without turning aside; and
now the dust was less, and Madame Lemaire could see that it was a Nomad
mounted on a camel.

With a smothered exclamation she hurried into the inn. A sudden resolve
possessed her. She would prepare a couscous. And then, if the Nomad
desired to pass on without entering the inn, she would detain him.

She would offer him a couscous for nothing, only she must have company.
Whoever the stranger was, however poor, however filthy, ragged, hideous,
or even terrible, he must stay a while at the inn, distract her thoughts
for an instant.

Without that she would go mad.

Quickly she began her preparations. There was time. He could not be here
for twenty minutes yet, and the meal for a couscous was all ready. She
had only to——

She moved frantically about the kitchen.

Twenty minutes later she heard the peevish roar of a camel from the
road, and ran out to meet the Nomad, carrying the couscous. As she came
into the arbour she noticed that it was already dark outside.

The night had fallen suddenly.

                   *       *       *       *       *

That night, as Lemaire and Bouvier were nearing the inn, riding slowly
upon their mules, they heard before them in the darkness the angry
snarling of a camel.

Almost immediately it died away.

“Madame has company,” said Bouvier. “There’s a customer at the Retour du
Desert.”

“Some damned Arab!” said Lemaire. “Come for a coffee or a couscous. Much
good that’ll do us!”

They rode on in silence. When they reached the inn, the road before it
was empty.

“_Mai foi_,” said Bouvier. “Nobody here! The camel was getting up, then,
and Madame is alone again.”

“Marie!” called Lemaire. “Marie! The absinthe!”

There was no reply.

“Marie! _Nom d’un chien!_ Marie! The absinthe! Marie!”

He let his heavy body down from the mule.

“Where the devil is she? Marie! Marie!”

He went into the arbour, stumbled over something, and uttered a curse.

In reply to it there was a shrill and prolonged howl from the court.

“What is it? What’s the dog up to?” said Bouvier, whipping out his
revolver and following Lemaire. “The table knocked over! What’s up?
D’you think there’s anything wrong?”

The Kabyle dog howled again, slunk into the arbour from the court, and
pressed itself against Lemaire’s legs. He gave it a kick in the ribs
that sent it yelping into the night.

“Marie! Marie!”

There was the anger of alarm in his voice now; but no one answered his
call.

Walking furtively, the two men passed through the doorway into the
kitchen. Lemaire struck a match, lit a candle, took it in his hand, and
they searched the inn, and the court, then returned to the arbour. In
the arbour, close to the overturned table, they found a broken bowl,
with a couscous scattered over the earth beside it. Several vine-leaves
were trodden into the ground near by.

“Someone’s been here,” said Lemaire, staring at Bouvier in the
candlelight, which flickered in his angry and distressed eyes.
“Someone’s been. She was bringing him a couscous. See here!”

He pointed with his foot.

Bouvier laughed uneasily.

“Perhaps,” he said—“perhaps it was the Devil come for her. You remember!
She said last night, if he came, she’d go with him.”

The candle dropped from Lemaire’s shaking hand.

“Damn you! Why d’you talk like that?” he exclaimed furiously. “She must
be somewhere about. Let’s have an absinthe. Perhaps she’s gone to the
village.”

They had an absinthe and searched once more.

Presently Hadj, who was half mad with keef, joined them. The rumour of
what was going forward had got about in the village; and other Arabs
glided noiselessly through the night to share in the absinthe and the
quest, for that night Lemaire forgot to lock up the bottle.

                   *       *       *       *       *

But the hostess of the inn at El-Kelf has not been seen again.




THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST

By W. B. YEATS

    From The Secret Rose, by W. B. Yeats.
    Copyright, 1914, by the Macmillan Company.


A man, with thin brown hair and a pale face, half ran, half walked along
the road that wound from the south to the Town of the Shelly River. Many
called him Cumhal, the son of Cormac, and many called him the Swift,
Wild Horse; and he was a gleeman, and he wore a short parti-coloured
doublet, and had pointed shoes, and a bulging wallet. Also he was of the
blood of the Ernaans, and his birth-place was the Field of Gold; but his
eating and sleeping places were the four provinces of Eri, and his
abiding place was not upon the ridge of the earth. His eyes strayed from
the Abbey tower of the White Friars and the town battlements to a row of
crosses which stood out against the sky upon a hill a little to the
eastward of the town, and he clenched his fist, and shook it at the
crosses. He knew they were not empty, for the birds were fluttering
about them; and he thought, how, as like as not, just such another
vagabond as himself was hanged on one of them; and he muttered; “If it
were hanging or bow-stringing, or stoning or beheading, it would be bad
enough. But to have the birds pecking your eyes and the wolves eating
your feet! I would that the red wind of the Druids had withered in his
cradle the soldier of Dathi, who brought the tree of death out of
barbarous lands, or that the lightning, when it smote Dathi at the foot
of the mountain, had smitten him also, or that his grave had been dug by
the green-haired and green-toothed merrows deep at the roots of the deep
sea.”

While he spoke, he shivered from head to foot, and the sweat came out
upon his face, and he knew not why, for he had looked upon many crosses.
He passed over two hills and under the battlemented gate, and then round
by a left-hand way to the door of the Abbey. It was studded with great
nails, and when he knocked at it, he roused the lay brother who was the
porter, and of him he asked a place in the guest-house. Then the lay
brother took a glowing turf on a shovel, and led the way to a big and
naked outhouse strewn with dirty rushes: and lighted a rush-candle fixed
between two of the stones of the wall, and set the glowing turf upon the
hearth and gave him two unlighted sods and a wisp of straw, and showed
him a blanket hanging from a nail, and a shelf with a loaf of bread and
a jug of water, and a tub in a far corner. Then the lay brother left him
and went back to his place by the door. And Cumhal the son of Cormac
began to blow upon the glowing turf, that he might light the two sods
and the wisp of straw; but his blowing profited him nothing, for the
sods and the straw were damp. So he took off his pointed shoes, and drew
the tub out of the corner with the thought of washing the dust of the
highway from his feet; but the water was so dirty that he could not see
the bottom. He was very hungry, for he had not eaten all that day; so he
did not waste much anger upon the tub, but took up the black loaf, and
bit into it, and then spat out the bite, for the bread was hard and
mouldy. Still he did not give way to his wrath, for he had not drunken
these many hours; having a hope of heath beer or wine at his day’s end,
he had left the brooks untasted, to make his supper the more delightful.
Now he put the jug to his lips, but he flung it from him straightway,
for the water was bitter and ill-smelling. Then he gave the jug a kick,
so that it broke against the opposite wall, and he took down the blanket
to wrap it about him for the night. But no sooner did he touch it than
it was alive with skipping fleas. At this, beside himself with anger, he
rushed to the door of the guest-house, but the lay brother, being well
accustomed to such outcries, had locked it on the outside; so Cumhal
emptied the tub and began to beat the door with it, till the lay brother
came to the door, and asked what ailed him, and why he woke him out of
sleep. “What ails me!” shouted Cumhal, “are not the sods as wet as the
sands of the Three Headlands? and are not the fleas in the blanket as
many as the waves of the sea and as lively? and is not the bread as hard
as the heart of a lay brother who has forgotten God? and is not the
water in the jug as bitter and as ill-smelling as his soul? and is not
the foot-water the colour that shall be upon him when he has been
charred in the Undying Fires?” The lay brother saw that the lock was
fast, and went back to his niche, for he was too sleepy to talk with
comfort. And Cumhal went on beating at the door, and presently he heard
the lay brother’s foot once more, and cried out at him, “O cowardly and
tyrannous race of friars, persecutors of the bard and the gleeman,
haters of life and joy! O race that does not draw the sword and tell the
truth! O race that melts the bones of the people with cowardice and with
deceit!”

“Gleeman,” said the lay brother, “I also make rhymes; I make many while
I sit in my niche by the door, and I sorrow to hear the bards railing
upon the friars. Brother, I would sleep, and therefore I make known to
you that it is the head of the monastery, our gracious Coarb, who orders
all things concerning the lodging of travellers.”

“You may sleep,” said Cumhal, “I will sing a bard’s curse on the Coarb.”
And he set the tub outside down under the window, and stood upon it, and
began to sing in a very loud voice. The singing awoke the Coarb, so that
he sat up in bed and blew a silver whistle until the lay brother came to
him. “I cannot get a wink of sleep with that noise,” said the Coarb.
“What is happening?”

“It is a gleeman,” said the lay brother, “who complains of the sods, of
the bread, of the water in the jug, of the foot-water, and of the
blanket. And now he is singing a bard’s curse upon you, O brother Coarb,
and upon your father and your mother, and your grandfather and your
grandmother, and upon all your relations.”

“Is he cursing in rhyme?”

“He is cursing in rhyme, and with two assonances in every line of his
curse.”

The Coarb pulled his night-cap off and crumpled it in his hands, and the
circular brown patch of hair in the middle of his bald head looked like
an island in the midst of a pond, for in Connaught they had not yet
abandoned the ancient tonsure for the style then coming into use. “If we
do not somewhat,” he said, “he will teach his curses to the children in
the street, and the girls spinning at the doors, and to the robbers on
the mountain of Gulben.”

“Shall I go then,” said the other, “and give him dry sods, a fresh loaf,
clean water in a jug, clean foot-water, and a new blanket, and make him
swear by the blessed St. Benignus, and by the sun and moon, that no bond
be lacking, not to tell his rhymes to the children in the street, and
the girls spinning at the doors, and the robbers on the mountain of
Gulben?”

“Neither our blessed Patron nor the sun and the moon would avail at
all,” said the Coarb: “for to-morrow or the next day the mood to curse
would come upon him, or a pride in those rhymes would move him, and he
would teach his lines to the children, and the girls, and the robbers.
Or else he would tell another of his craft how he fared in the
guest-house, and he in his turn would begin to curse, and my name would
wither. For learn there is no steadfastness of purpose upon the roads,
but only under roofs, and between four walls. Therefore I bid you go and
awaken Brother Kevin, Brother Dove, Brother Little Wolf, Brother Bald
Patrick, Brother Bald Brandon, Brother James and Brother Peter. And they
shall take the man, and bind him with ropes, and dip him in the river
that he may cease to sing. And in the morning, lest this but make him
curse the louder, we will crucify him.”

“The crosses are all full,” said the lay brother.

“Then we must make another cross. If we do not make an end of him
another will, for who can eat and sleep in peace while men like him are
going about the world? Ill should we stand before blessed St. Benignus,
and sour would be his face when he comes to judge us at the Last Day,
were we to spare an enemy of his when we had him under our thumb!
Brother, the bards and the gleemen are an evil race, ever cursing and
ever stirring up the people, and immoral and immoderate in all things,
and heathen in their hearts, always longing after the Son of Lir, and
Angus, and Bridget, and the Dagda, and Dana the Mother, and all the
false gods of the old days; always making poems in praise of those kings
and queens of the demons, Finvaragh of the Hill in the Plain, and Red
Aodh of the Hill of the Shee, and Cleena of the Wave, and Eiveen of the
Grey Rock, and him they call Don of the Vats of the Sea; and railing
against God and Christ and the blessed Saints.” While he was speaking he
crossed himself, and when he had finished he drew the night-cap over his
ears, to shut out the noise, and closed his eyes, and composed himself
to sleep.

The lay brother found Brother Kevin, Brother Dove, Brother Little Wolf,
Brother Bald Patrick, Brother Bald Brandon, Brother James and Brother
Peter sitting up in bed, and he made them get up. Then they bound
Cumhal, and they dragged him to the river, and they dipped him in at the
place which was afterwards called Buckley’s Ford.

“Gleeman,” said the lay brother, as they led him back to the
guest-house, “why do you ever use the wit which God has given you to
make blasphemous and immoral tales and verses? For such is the way of
your craft. I have, indeed, many such tales and verses well nigh by
rote, and so I know that I speak true! And why do you praise with rhyme
those demons, Finvaragh, Red Aodh, Cleena, Eiveen and Don? I, too, am a
man of great wit and learning, but I ever glorify our gracious Coarb,
and Benignus our Patron, and the princes of the province. My soul is
decent and orderly, but yours is like the wind among the salley gardens.
I said what I could for you, being also a man of many thoughts, but who
could help such a one as you?”

“My soul, friend,” answered the gleeman, “is indeed like the wind, and
it blows me to and fro, and up and down, and puts many things into my
mind and out of my mind, and therefore am I called the Swift, Wild
Horse.” And he spoke no more that night, for his teeth were chattering
with the cold.

The Coarb and the friars came to him in the morning, and bade him get
ready to be crucified, and led him out of the guest-house. And while he
still stood upon the step a flock of great grass-barnacles passed high
above him with clanking cries. He lifted his arms to them and said, “O
great grass-barnacles, tarry a little, and mayhap my soul will travel
with you to the waste places of the shore and to the ungovernable sea!”
At the gate a crowd of beggars gathered about them, being come there to
beg from any traveller or pilgrim who might have spent the night in the
guest-house. The Coarb and the friars led the gleeman to a place in the
woods at some distance, where many straight young trees were growing,
and they made him cut one down and fashion it to the right length, while
the beggars stood round them in a ring, talking and gesticulating. The
Coarb then bade him cut off another and shorter piece of wood, and nail
it upon the first. So there was his cross for him; and they put it upon
his shoulder, for his crucifixion was to be on the top of the hill where
the others were. A half-mile on the way he asked them to stop and see
him juggle for them: for he knew, he said, all the tricks of Angus the
Subtle-Hearted. The old friars were for pressing on, but the young
friars would see him: so he did many wonders for them, even to the
drawing of live frogs out of his ears. But after a while they turned on
him, and said his tricks were dull and a shade unholy, and set the cross
on his shoulders again. Another half-mile on the way, and he asked them
to stop and hear him jest for them, for he knew, he said, all the jests
of Conan the Bald, upon whose back a sheep’s wool grew. And the young
friars, when they had heard his merry tales, again bade him take up his
cross, for it ill became them to listen to such follies. Another
half-mile on the way, he asked them to stop and hear him sing the story
of White-Breasted Deirdre, and how she endured many sorrows, and how the
sons of Usna died to serve her. And the young friars were mad to hear
him, but when he had ended, they grew angry, and beat him for waking
forgotten longings in their hearts. So they set the cross upon his back,
and hurried him to the hill.

When he was come to the top, they took the cross from him, and began to
dig a hole to stand it in, while the beggars gathered round, and talked
among themselves. “I ask a favour before I die,” says Cumhal.

“We will grant you no more delays,” says the Coarb.

“I ask no more delays, for I have drawn the sword, and told the truth,
and lived my vision and am content.”

“Would you then confess?”

“By sun and moon, not I; I ask but to be let eat the food I carry in my
wallet. I carry food in my wallet whenever I go upon a journey, but I do
not taste of it unless I am well-nigh starved. I have not eaten now
these two days.”

“You may eat, then,” says the Coarb, and he turned to help the friars
dig the hole.

The gleeman took a loaf and some strips of cold fried bacon out of his
wallet and laid them upon the ground. “I will give a tithe to the poor,”
says he, and he cut a tenth part from the loaf and the bacon. “Who among
you is the poorest?” And thereupon was a great clamour, for the beggars
began the history of their sorrows and their poverty, and their yellow
faces swayed like the Shelly River when the floods have filled it with
water from the bogs.

He listened for a little, and, says he, “I am myself the poorest, for I
have travelled the bare road, and by the glittering footsteps of the
sea; and the tattered doublet of parti-coloured cloth upon my back, and
the torn pointed shoes upon my feet have ever irked me, because of the
towered city full of noble raiment which was in my heart. And I have
been the more alone upon the roads and by the sea, because I heard in my
heart the rustling of the rose-bordered dress of her who is more subtle
than Angus, the Subtle-Hearted, and more full of the beauty of laughter
than Conan the Bald, and more full of the wisdom of tears than
White-Breasted Deirdre, and more lovely than a bursting dawn to them
that are lost in the darkness. Therefore, I award the tithe to myself;
but yet, because I am done with all things, I give it unto you.”

So he flung the bread and the strips of bacon among the beggars, and
they fought with many cries until the last scrap was eaten. But
meanwhile the friars nailed the gleeman to his cross, and set it upright
in the hole, and shovelled the earth in at the foot, and trampled it
level and hard. So then they went away, but the beggars stared on,
sitting round the cross. But when the sun was sinking, they also got up
to go, for the air was getting chilly. And as soon as they had gone a
little way, the wolves, who had been showing themselves on the edge of a
neighbouring coppice, came nearer, and the birds wheeled closer and
closer. “Stay, outcasts, yet a little while,” the crucified one called
in a weak voice to the beggars, “and keep the beasts and the birds from
me.” But the beggars were angry because he had called them outcasts, so
they threw stones and mud at him, and went their way. Then the wolves
gathered at the foot of the cross, and the birds lighted all at once
upon his head and arms and shoulders, and began to peck at him, and the
wolves began to eat his feet. “Outcasts,” he moaned, “have you also
turned against the outcast?”




THE DRUMS OF KAIRWAN

By the MARQUESS CURZON OF KEDLESTON

    From Tales of Travel, by The Marquess Curzon of Kedleston.
    Copyright, 1923, by George H. Doran Company..


When the appointed hour arrived, I presented myself at the mosque, which
is situated outside the city walls of Kairwan, not far from the
Bab-el-Djuluddin, or Tanners’ Gate. Passing through an open courtyard
into the main building, I was received with a dignified salaam by the
sheik, who forthwith led me to a platform or divan at the upper end of
the central space. This was surmounted by a ribbed and white-washed
dome, and was separated from two side aisles by rows of marble columns
with battered capitals, dating from the Empire of Rome. Between the
arches of the roof small and feeble lamps—mere lighted wicks floating on
dingy oil in cups of coloured glass—ostrich eggs, and gilt balls were
suspended from wooden beams. From the cupola in the centre hung a
dilapidated chandelier in which flickered a few miserable candles. In
one of the side aisles a plastered tomb was visible behind an iron
lattice. The _mise en scène_ was unprepossessing and squalid.

My attention was next turned to the _dramatis personae_. Upon the floor
in the centre beneath the dome sat the musicians, ten or a dozen in
number, cross-legged, the chief presiding upon a stool at the head of
the circle. I observed no instrument save the _darabookah_, or earthen
drum, and a number of tambours, the skins of which, stretched tightly
across the frames, gave forth, when struck sharply by the fingers, a
hollow and resonant note. The rest of the orchestra was occupied by the
chorus. So far no actors were visible. The remainder of the floor, both
under the dome and in the aisles, was thickly covered with seated and
motionless figures, presenting in the fitful light a weird and fantastic
picture. In all there must have been over a hundred persons, all males,
in the mosque.

Presently the sheik gave the signal for commencement, and in a moment
burst forth the melancholy chant of the Arab voices and the ceaseless
droning of the drums. The song was not what we should call singing, but
a plaintive and quavering wail, pursued in a certain cadence, now
falling to a moan, now terminating in a shriek, but always pitiful,
piercing and inexpressibly sad. The tambours, which were struck like the
keyboard of a piano, by the outstretched fingers of the hand, and,
occasionally, when a louder note was required, by the thumb, kept up a
monotonous refrain in the background. From time to time, at moments of
greater stress, they were brandished high in the air and beaten with all
the force of fingers and thumb combined. Then the noise was imperious
and deafening.

Among the singers, one grizzled and bearded veteran, with a strident and
nasal intonation, surpassed his fellows. He observed the time with
grotesque reflections of his body; his eyes were fixed and shone with
religious zeal.

The chant proceeded, and the figures of the singers, as they became more
and more excited, rocked to and fro. More people poured in at the
doorway, and the building was now quite full. I began to wonder whether
the musicians were also to be the performers, or when the latter would
make their appearance.

Suddenly a line of four or five Arabs formed itself in front of the
entrance on the far side of the orchestra, and exactly opposite the
bench on which I was sitting. They joined hands, the right of each
clasped in the left of his neighbour, and began a lurching, swaying
motion with their bodies and feet. At first they appeared simply to be
marking time, first with one foot and then with the other; but the
movement was gradually communicated to every member of their bodies; and
from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet they were presently
keeping time with the music in convulsive jerks and leaps and
undulations, the music itself being regulated by the untiring orchestra
of the drums.

This mysterious row of bobbing figures seemed to exercise an
irresistible fascination over the spectators. Every moment one or other
of these left his place to join its ranks. They pushed their way into
the middle, severing the chain for an instant, or joined themselves on
to the ends. The older men appeared to have a right to the centre, the
boys and children—for there were youngsters present not more than seven
or eight years old—were on the wings. Thus the line ever lengthened;
originally it consisted of three or four, presently it was ten or
twelve, anon it was twenty-five or thirty, and before the
self-torturings commenced there were as many as forty human figures
stretching right across the building, and all rocking backwards and
forwards in grim and ungraceful unison, Even the spectators who kept
their places could not resist the contagion; as they sat there they
unconsciously kept time with their heads and shoulders, and one child
swung his little head this way and that with a fury that threatened to
separate it from his body.

Meanwhile, the music had been growing in intensity, the orchestra
sharing the excitement, which they communicated. The drummers beat their
tambours with redoubled force, lifting them high above their heads and
occasionally, at some extreme pitch, tossing them aloft and catching
them again as they fell. Sometimes in the exaltation of frenzy they
started spasmodically to their feet and then sank back into their
original position. But ever and without a pause continued the insistent
accompaniment of the drums.

And now the oscillating line in front of the doorway for the first time
found utterance. As they leaped high on one foot, alternately kicking
out the other, as their heads wagged to and fro and their bodies
quivered with the muscular strain, they cried aloud in praise of Allah.
_La ilaha ill Allah!_ (There is no God but Allah)—this was the untiring
burden of their strain. And then came _Ya Allah!_ (O God), and sometimes
_Ya Kahhar!_ (O avenging God), _Ya Hakk!_ (O just God), while each burst
of clamorous appeal culminated in an awful shout of _Ya Hoo!_ (O Him).

The rapidity and vehemence of their gesticulations was now appalling;
their heads swung backwards and forwards till their foreheads almost
touched their breasts, and their scalps smote against their backs. Sweat
poured from their faces; they panted for breath; and the exclamations
burst from their mouths in a thick and stertorous murmur. Suddenly, and
without warning, the first phase of the _zikr_ ceased, and the actors
stood gasping, shaking, and dripping with perspiration.

After a few seconds’ respite the performance recommenced, and shortly
waxed more furious than ever. The worshippers seemed to be gifted with
an almost superhuman strength and energy. As they flung themselves to
and fro, at one moment their upturned faces gleamed with a sickly polish
under the flickering lamps, at the next their turbaned heads all but
brushed the floor. Their eyes started from the sockets; the muscles on
their necks and the veins on their foreheads stood out like knotted
cords. One old man fell out of the ranks, breathless, spent, and
foaming. His place was taken by another, and the tumultuous orgy went
on.

Presently, as the ecstasy approached its height and the fully initiated
became _melboos_ or possessed, they broke from the stereotyped litany
into domoniacal grinning and ferocious and bestial cries. These writhing
and contorted objects were no longer rational human beings, but savage
animals, caged brutes howling madly in the delirium of hunger or of
pain. They growled like bears, they barked like jackals, they roared
like lions, they laughed like hyænas; and ever and anon from the
seething rank rose a diabolical shriek, like the scream of a dying
horse, or the yell of a tortured fiend. And steadily the while in the
background resounded the implacable reverberation of the drums.

The climax was now reached; the requisite pitch of cataleptic
inebriation had been obtained, and the rites of Aissa were about to
begin. From the crowd at the door a wild figure broke forth, tore off
his upper clothing till he was naked to the waist, and, throwing away
his fez, bared a head close-shaven save for one long and dishevelled
lock that, springing from the scalp, fell over his forehead like some
grisly and funereal plume. A long knife, somewhat resembling a cutlass,
was handed to him by the sheik, who had risen to his feet, and who
directed the phenomena that ensued. Waving it wildly above his head and
protruding the forepart of his figure, the fanatic brought it down blow
after blow against his bared stomach, and drew it savagely to and fro
against the unprotected skin. There showed the marks of a long and livid
weal, but no blood spurted from the gash. In the intervals between the
strokes he ran swiftly from one side to the other of the open space,
taking long stealthy strides like a panther about to spring, and
seemingly so powerless over his own movements that he knocked blindly up
against those who stood in his way, nearly upsetting them with the
violence of the collision.

The prowess or the piety of this ardent devotee proved extraordinarily
contagious. First one and then another of his brethren caught the
afflatus and followed his example. In a few moments every part of the
mosque was the scene of some novel and horrible rite of self-mutilation,
performed by a fresh aspirant to the favour of Allah. Some of these
feats did not rise above the level of the curious but explicable
performances which are sometimes seen upon English stages; _e.g._, of
the men who swallow swords, and carry enormous weights suspended from
their jaws; achievements which are in no sense a trick or a deception,
but are to be attributed to abnormal physical powers or structure
developed by long and often perilous practice. In the Aissaiouian
counterpart of these displays there was nothing specially remarkable,
but there were others less commonplace and more difficult of
explanation.

At length, several long iron spits or prongs were produced and
distributed; these formidable implements were about two and a half feet
in length and sharply pointed, and they terminated at the handle in a
circular wooden knob about the size of a large orange. There was great
competition for these instruments of torture, which were used as
follows: Poising one in the air, an Aissioui would suddenly force the
point into the flesh of his own shoulder in front just below the
shoulder blade. Thus transfixed, and holding the weapon aloft, he strode
swiftly up and down. Suddenly, at a signal, he fell on his knees, still
forcing the point into his body, and keeping the wooden head uppermost.
Then there started up another disciple armed with a big wooden mallet,
and he, after a few preliminary taps, rising high on tip-toe with
uplifted weapon would, with an ear-splitting yell, bring it down with
all his force upon the wooden knob, driving the point home through the
shoulder of his comrade. Blow succeeded blow, the victim wincing beneath
the stroke, but uttering no sound, and fixing his eyes with a look of
ineffable delight upon his torturer, till the point was driven right
through the shoulder and projected at the back. Then the patient marched
backwards and forwards with the air and the gait of a conquering hero.
At one moment there were four of these semi-naked maniacs within a yard
of my feet, transfixed and trembling, but beatified and triumphant. Amid
the cries and the swelter, there never ceased for one second the sullen
and menacing vociferation of the drums.

Another man seized an iron skewer, and, placing the point within his
open jaws, forced it steadily through his cheek until it protruded a
couple of inches on the outside. He barked savagely like a dog, and
foamed at the lips.

Others, afflicted with exquisite spasms of hunger, knelt down before the
chief, whimpering like children for food, and turning upon him imploring
glances from their glazed and bloodshot eyes. His control over his
following was supreme. Some he gratified, others he forbade. At a touch
from him, they were silent and relaxed into quiescence. One maddened
wretch who, fancying himself some wild beast, plunged to and fro,
roaring horribly, and biting and tearing with his teeth at whomever he
met, was advancing, as I thought, with somewhat truculent intent in my
direction, when he was arrested by his superior and sent back, cringing
and cowed.

For those whose ravenous appetites he was content to humour the most
singular repast was prepared. A plate was brought in, covered with huge
jagged pieces of broken glass, as thick as a shattered soda-water
bottle. With greedy chuckles and gurglings of delight, one of the hungry
ones dashed at it, crammed a handful into his mouth, and crunched it up
as though it were some exquisite dainty, a fellow-disciple calmly
stroking the exterior of his throat, with intent, I suppose, to
lubricate the descent of the unwonted morsels. A little child held up a
snake or a sand-worm by the tail, placing the head between his teeth,
and gulped it gleefully down. Several acolytes came in, carrying a big
stem of the prickly pear, or _fico d’India_, whose leaves are as thick
as a one-inch plank, and are armed with huge projecting thorns. This was
ambrosia to the starving saints. They rushed at it with passionate
emulation, tearing at the solid slabs with their teeth, and gnawing and
munching the coarse fibers, regardless of the thorns which pierced their
tongues and cheeks as they swallowed them down.

The most singular feature of all, and the one that almost defies belief,
though it is none the less true, was this—that in no case did one drop
of blood emerge from scar, or gash, or wound. This fact I observed most
carefully, the _mokaddem_ standing at my side, and each patient in turn
coming to him when his self-imposed torture had been accomplished, and
the cataleptic frenzy had spent its force. It was the chief who
cunningly withdrew the blade from cheek or shoulder or body, rubbing
over the spot what appeared to me to be the saliva of his own mouth;
then he whispered an absolution in the ear of the disciple, and kissed
him on the forehead, whereupon the patient, but a moment before writhing
in maniacal transports, retired tranquilly and took his seat upon the
floor. He seemed none the worse for his recent paroxysm, and the wound
was marked only by a livid blotch or a hectic flush.

This was the scene that for more than an hour went on without pause or
intermission before my eyes. The building might have been tenanted by
the Harpies or Laestrygones of Homer, or by some inhuman monsters of
legendary myth. Amid the dust and sweat and insufferable heat the naked
bodies of the actors shone with a ghastly pallor and exhaled a sickening
smell. The atmosphere reeked with heavy and intoxicating fumes. Above
the despairing chant of the singers rang the frenzied yells of the
possessed, the shrieks of the hammerer, and the inarticulate cries, the
snarling and growling, the bellowing and miauling of the self-imagined
beasts. And ever behind and through all re-echoed the perpetual and
pitiless imprecation of the drums.

As I witnessed the disgusting spectacle and listened to the pandemonium
of sounds, my head swam, my eyes became dim, my senses reeled, and I
believed that in a few moments I must have fainted, had not one of my
friends touched me on the shoulder, and, whispering that the _mokaddem_
was desirous that I should leave, escorted me hurriedly to the door. As
I walked back to my quarters, and long after through the still night,
the beat of the tambours continued, and I heard the distant hum of
voices, broken at intervals by an isolated and piercing cry. Perhaps yet
further and more revolting orgies were celebrated after I had left. I
had not seen, as other travellers have done, the chewing and swallowing
of red-hot cinders,[1] or the harmless handling and walking upon live
coals. I had been spared that which others have described as the climax
of the gluttonous debauch, _viz._, the introduction of a live sheep,
which then and there is savagely torn to pieces and devoured raw by
these unnatural banqueters. But I had seen enough, and as I sank to
sleep my agitated fancy pursued a thousand avenues of thought,
confounding in one grim medley all the carnivorous horrors of fact and
fable and fiction. Loud above the din and discord the tale of the false
prophets of Carmel, awakened by the train of association, rang in my
ears, till I seemed to hear intoned with remorseless repetition the
words: “They cried aloud and cut themselves after their manner with
knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them”; and in the
ever-receding distance of dreamland, faint and yet fainter, there
throbbed the inexorable and unfaltering delirium of the drums.

-----

[1] For an account of this exploit, _vide_ Lane’s _Modern Egyptians_,
cap. xxv.; and compare the description of Richardson, the famous
fire-eater, in Evelyn’s _Memoirs_ for October 8, 1672.




A LIFE—A BOWL OF RICE

By L. DE BRA


Bow Sam stood in the doorway by his sugar-cane stand and watched with
narrowed eyes an old man who shuffled uncertainly down the alley towards
him.

“_Hoo la ma!_” cried Bow Sam, in surprised Cantonese as the old man drew
near. “Hello, there! I scarcely knew you, venerable Fa’ng!”

Fa’ng, the hatchetman, straightened his bent shoulders and looked up.
There was a gleam in his deep bronze eyes that was hardly in keeping
with his withered frame.

“_Hoo la ma_, Bow Sam,” he said, his voice strangely deep and vibrant.

“You have grown very thin,” remarked Bow Sam with friendly interest.

“_Hi low_; that is true. But why carry around flesh that is not food?”

The sugar-cane vendor eyed the other shrewdly. What was the gossip he
had heard concerning Fa’ng, the famous old hatchetman? Was it not that
the old man was always hungry? Yes, that was it! Fa’ng, whose long knife
and swift arm had been the most feared thing in all Chinatown, was
starving—too proud to beg, too honest to steal.

“You have eaten well, venerable Fa’ng?” The inquiry was in a casual
tone, respectful.

“_Aih_, I have eaten well,” replied the old hatchetman, averting his
face.

“How unfortunate for me! I have not yet eaten my rice; for when one must
dine alone, one goes slowly to table. Is it not written that a bowl of
rice shared is doubly enjoyed? Would you not at least have a cup of tea
while I eat my mean fare?”

“I shall be honoured to sip tea with you, estimable Bow Sam,” replied
the hatchetman with poorly disguised eagerness.

“Then condescend to enter my poor house! Ah, one does not often have the
pleasure of your company in these days!”

Bow Sam preceded his guest to the wretched hovel that was the sugar-cane
vendor’s only home. There he quickly removed all trace of the bowl of
rice he had eaten but a moment before.

“Will you take this poor stool, venerable Fa’ng?” said Bow, setting out
the only stool he possessed, and placing it so that the hatchetman’s
back would be to the stove.

Wearily, Fa’ng sat down. Bow put out two small cups, each worn and badly
chipped, and filled them with hot tea. Then, while the hatchetman sipped
his tea, Bow uncovered the rice kettle. There was but one bowl of rice
left. Bow Sam had intended to keep it for his evening meal; for until he
sold some sugar-cane, he had no way of obtaining more food.

Behind Fa’ng’s back, Bow took two rice bowls and set them on the stove.
One bowl he heaped full for the hatchetman. In the other he put an
upturned tea bowl and sprinkled over it his last few grains of rice.

“Let us give thanks to the gods of the kitchen that we have food and
teeth and appetite,” chuckled Bow Sam, seating himself on a sugar-cane
box opposite Fa’ng.

“Well spoken,” returned the old hatchetman, quickly filling his mouth
with the nourishing rice. “_Aih_, there is much in life to make one
content.”

With his chop-sticks Bow Sam deftly took up a few grains of rice, taking
care lest he uncover the upturned tea bowl. He was deeply grateful that
he had a few teeth left, that he quite often had enough rice, and
sometimes had meat as often as once a month; but to hear the proud old
hatchetman express such sentiments on an empty stomach filled him with
admiration.

“What a virtue to be content with one’s lot!” he exclaimed, refilling
the hatchetman’s tea bowl. “Yet the younger generation are always
fretting because they think they have not enough; while, as anyone
knows, they have much more than we who first came to this land of the
white foreign devil.”

“They are young,” spoke Fa’ng, nodding his head slowly. “For us the days
have fled, the years have not tarried. And we have learned that if one
has but a bowl of rice for food and a bent arm for pillow, one can be
content.”

“_Haie!_ How can you speak so softly of the younger generation when it
is they who have robbed you of your livelihood? I know the gossip. You,
the most famous killer in Chinatown, find yourself cast out like a
worn-out broom by these young upstarts who have no respect for their
elders. Is it not true?”

With his left hand the old hatchetman made an eloquent gesture,
peculiarly Chinese, much as one quickly throws open a fan.

“Of what value are words, my friend? They cannot change that which is
changeless. A word cannot temper the wind, nor a phrase procure food for
a hungry stomach.”

“Nevertheless, I do not like such things,” persisted Sam. “I love the
old ways. You were an honourable and fearless killer. When you were
hired to slay one’s enemy you went boldly to your victim and told him
your business. Then, swiftly, even before the doomed one could open his
lips, you struck—cleaned your blade and walked your way.

“The modern killers!” Bow Sam spewed the words out as one does sour
rice. “They are too cowardly to use the knife. They hide on roofs, fire
on their victims, then throw away their guns and flee like thieves.
_Aih_, what have we come to in these days!

“It was but yesterday after mid-day rice that I had speech with Gar
Ling, a gunman of the Sin Wah tong. He stopped to buy sugar-cane, and I
told him that had I the money I would hire him. There is one of the
younger generation, the pock-marked son of Quong, the dealer in jade,
who has greatly wronged me and my honourable family name, and my
distinguished ancestors. As you very well know, one cannot soil one’s
own hands with the blood of vengeance. Moreover, I have no weapon, not
even a dull cleaver. Neither can I afford to hire a fighting man.

“I was telling all this to Gar Ling,” went on Bow, straining the last
drop of tea into Fa’ng’s bowl, “and he told me he would settle my
quarrel, but it would cost one thousand dollars. When I told him I had
not even a thousand copper _cash_, he became angry and abusive. As he
walked his way, quickly, like a foreign devil, he spat in my direction
and called me an unspeakable name.”

“_Ts, ts!_ You should have wrung his neck. Repeat to me his unspeakable
words.”

“He said,” cried Bow Sam, his face twisted in fury, “that I am the son
of a turtle!”

“_Aih-yah!_ How insulting! As anyone knows, in all our language there is
no epithet more vile!”

“That is true. But what is even worse, I did not remember until after he
had gone that he had not paid me for the piece of sugar-cane. Such is
the way of the younger generation; and we, who have been long in the
land, can do nothing.”

“Yet it is by such things that one learns the lesson of enduring
tranquillity,” remarked Fa’ng, smacking his lips and moving back from
the table.

For about the time, then, that it takes one to make nine bows before the
household gods, neither man made speech. Then Fa’ng arose.

“An excellent bowl of rice, my good friend.”

“_Aih_, it shames me to have to give you such mean fare.”

“And the tea was most fragrant.”

“_Ts_, it was only the cheapest Black Dragon.”

The two old men went to the door.

“_Ho hang la_,” said the hatchetman.

“_Ho hang la_,” echoed the sugar-cane vendor. “I hope you have a safe
walk.”

Fa’ng, the hatchetman, made his way down the alley to the rear entrance
of a pawnshop. There he spoke a few words with the proprietor.

“I know you are honest, old man,” said the pawnbroker. “But instead of
bringing it back, I hope, for your own sake, you will be able to pay
what you owe me.”

Then from a safe he took a knife with long, slender blade and a handle
of ebony in which had been carved an unbelievable number of notches.
Fa’ng took the knife, handling it as one does an object of precious
memories, concealed it beneath his tattered blouse, and went his way.

Near the entrance of a gambling house in Canton Alley the old hatchetman
met the pock-marked son of Quong, the dealer in jade.

“For the wrong you have done Bow Sam, his family name, and his
distinguished ancestors,” said Fa’ng quietly; and before the other could
open his lips the long blade was through his heart.

In front of a cigar store in Shanghai Place, Fa’ng found Gar Ling, the
gunman. “I have business of moment with you, Gar Ling,” said the
hatchetman. “Come.”

Gar Ling hesitated. He stood in great fear of the old killer, yet he
dared not show that fear before his young friends. So with his left hand
he gave a peculiar signal. A boy standing near with a basket of _lichee_
nuts on his arm turned quickly and followed the two men down the alley.
Drawing near his employer, the boy held up the basket as though
soliciting the gunman to buy. Gar’s hand darted swiftly into the basket,
beneath the lichee nuts, and came out with a heavy automatic pistol
which he quickly concealed beneath his blouse.

The old hatchetman knew all the tricks of the young gunman, but he
pretended he had not seen. As they turned a dark corner, he paused.

“For the insulting words you spoke to Bow Sam,” he said calmly, and the
long blade glided between the gunman’s ribs.

As Fa’ng drew the steel away, Gar Ling staggered, fired once, then
collapsed.

Bow Sam stood in the doorway by his sugar-cane stand and watched with
narrowed eyes an old man who shuffled uncertainly down the alley toward
him.

“_Hoo la ma!_” he cried, as the old man drew near. “I did not expect to
see you again so soon.”

The old hatchetman did not raise his head nor reply. Staggering, he
crossed the threshold and fell on his face on the littered floor.

With a throaty cry Bow Sam slammed the door shut. He bent over Fa’ng.

“This knife,” said the hatchetman; “take it—to Wong the pawnbroker. Tell
him—all. Worth—more—than I owe.”

“But what’s——”

“For the wrong that the pock-marked one did you, for the insult Gar Ling
spoke to you, I slew them,” said Fa’ng, with sudden strength. “My debt
is paid. _Tsau kom lok._”

“_Haie!_ You did that! Why did you do that? I could never pay you! And
look! _Aih-yah_, oh, how piteous! You are dying!”

With awkward fingers, the vendor of sugar-cane tried to staunch the flow
of blood where Gar Ling’s bullet had struck with deadly effect.

“Pay me?” breathed Fa’ng the hatchetman. “Did you—not—feed me? Can
one—put a value—on food—when the stomach—is empty? _Aih_, what—matters
it? A life,”—his eyelids fluttered and closed—“a life—a bowl of
rice....”




HODGE

By ELINOR MORDAUNT.


People are accustomed to think of Somerset as a country of deep, bosky
bays, sunny coves, woods, moorlands, but Hemerton was in itself
sufficient to blur this bland illusion. It lay a mile and a half back
from the sea, counting it all full tide; at low tide the sly, smooth
waters, unbroken by a single rock, slipped away for another mile or more
across a dreary ooze of black mud.

The village lay pasted flat upon the marsh, with no trees worthy of the
name in sight: a few twisted black-thorn bushes, a few split willows,
one wreck of a giant blighted ash in the Rectory gardens, and that was
all.

For months on end the place swam in vapours. There were wonderful
effects of sunrise and sunset, veils of crimson and gold, of every shade
of blue and purple. At times the grey sea-lavender was like silver, the
wet, black mud gleaming like dark opals; while at high summer there was
purple willow-strife spilled thick along the ditches, giving the strange
place a transitory air of warm-blooded life; but for the most part it
was all as aloof and detached as a sleep-walker.

The birds fitted the place as a verger fits his quiet and dusky church:
herons and waders of all kinds; wild-crying curlew; and here and there a
hawk, hanging motionless high overhead.

There were scarcely fifty houses in Hemerton, and these were all alike,
flat and brown and grey; where there had been plaster it was flaked and
ashen. The very church stooped, as though shamed to a sort of
poor-relation pose by the immense indifference of the mist-veiled
sky—the drooping lids on a scornful face—for even at midday, in
mid-summer, the heavens were never quite clear, quite blue, but still
veiled and apart.

The Rectory was a two-storied building, low at that, and patched with
damp: small, with a narrow-chested air, tiny windows, a thin, grudging
doorway, blistered paint, which gave it a leprous air; and just that one
tree, with its pale, curled leaves in summer, its jangling keys in
winter.

It was amazing to find that any creature so warmly vital as the Rector’s
daughter, Rhoda Fane, had been begotten, born, reared in such a place;
spent her entire life there, apart from two years of school at Clifton,
and six months in Brussels, cut short by her mother’s death.

She was like a beech wood in September: ruddy, crisp, fragrant. Her
hair, dark-brown, with copper lights, was so springing with life that it
seemed more inclined to grow up than hang down; her face was almost
round, her wide, brown eyes frank and eager. She was as good as any man
with her leaping-pole: broad-shouldered, deep-breasted, with a soft,
deep contralto voice.

Her only brother, Hector, was four years younger than herself. Funds had
run low, drained away by their mother’s illness, before it was time for
him to go to school; he was too delicate for the second-best, roughing
it among lads of a lower class, and so he was kept at home, taught by
his father: a thin trickle of distilled classics and wavering
mathematics; a good deal of history, no geography.

He, in startling contrast to his sister, was a true child of the
marshes: thin light hair, vellum-white, peaked face, pale grey eyes
beneath an overhanging brow, large, transparent ears: narrow-chested,
long-armed, stooping, so that he seemed almost a hunchback.

In all ways he was the shadow of Rhoda, followed her everywhere; and as
there is no shadow without the sun, so it seemed that he could scarcely
have existed apart from her. Small as he already was, he almost puled
himself out of life while she was away at school; and after a bare week
from home she would get back to find him with the best part of his
substance peeled from him, white as a willow-wand.

Different as these two were, they were passionately attached to each
other. The Rector was a kind father when he drew himself out of the
morass of melancholy and disillusion into which he had fallen since his
wife died, wilting away with damp and discontent, and sheer loathing of
the soil in which it had been his misfortune to plant her. But still, at
the best, he was a parent, and so apart, while there were no neighbours,
no playfellows.

Once or twice Rhoda’s school-friends came to stay at the Rectory, and
for the first day or so it seemed delightful to talk of dress, of a
gayer world, possible lovers. But after a very little while they began
to pall on her: they understood nothing of what was her one absorbing
interest—the natural life of the place in which she lived: were
discontented, disdainful of the marshland, hated the mud, feared the
fogs, shivered in the damp.

Anyhow, the brother and sister were sufficient to each other, for they
shared a never-failing, or even diminishing, interest—and what more can
any two people wish for?—a passionate absorption in, a minute knowledge
of, the wild life of the marshland; its legends and folklore; its habits
and calls; the mating seasons and manners of the birds; the place and
habit of every wild flower; the way of the wind with the sky, and all
its portents; the changing seasons, seemingly so uneven from year to
year, and yet working out so much the same in the end.

They could not have said how they first came to hear of the Forest: they
had always talked of it. To Hector, at least, it was so vivid that he
seemed to have actually struggled through its immense depths, swung in
its hanging creepers, smelt its sickly-sweet orchids, breathed its hot,
damp air—so far real to both alike that they would find themselves
saying, “Do you remember?” in speaking of paths that they had never
traversed.

Provisionally they had fixed their Forest at the Miocene Period. Or,
rather, this is what it came to: the boy ceasing to protest against the
winged monsters, the rhinoceros, the long-jawed mastodon which
fascinated the girl’s imagination; though there was one impassioned
scene when he flamed out over his clear remembrance of a sabre-toothed
tiger, putting all those others—stupid, hulking brutes!—out of court by
many thousands of years.

“They couldn’t have been there, couldn’t—not with us and with ‘It’—I saw
it, I tell you—I tell you I saw it!” His pale face flamed, his eyes were
as bright as steel. “The mastodon! That’s nothing—nothing! But the
sabre-toothed tiger—I tell you I saw it. What are you grinning at
now?—in our Forest—ours, mind you!—I saw it!”

“Oh, indeed, indeed!” Suddenly, because the day was so hot, because they
were bored, because she was unwittingly impressed, as always, by her
brother’s heat of conviction, Rhoda’s serene temper was gone. “And did
you see yourself? and what were you doing there, may I ask—you! Silly
infant, don’t you know that there weren’t any men then? Phew! Everyone
knows that—everyone. You and your old tiger!”

There was mockery in her laugh as she took him by the lapels of his
coat; shook him.

Then, next moment when he turned aside, sullen and pale, his brows in a
pent-house above his eyes, she was filled with contrition. The rotten,
thundery day had set her all on edge; it was a shame to tease him like
this; and, after all, how often had she herself remembered back? Though
there was a difference, and she knew it, a sense of fantasy, pretending;
while Hector was as jealous of every detail of their Forest as a
long-banished exile over every cherished memory of his own land.

Though, of course, there were no men contemporary with that wretched
tiger: he knew that; he must know.

Lolling under their one tree, in the steamy, early afternoon, she coaxed
him back to the subject, and was beaten upon it, as the half-hearted
always are.

He was so amazingly clear about the whole thing.... Why, it might have
happened yesterday!

He had been up in the trees, slinking along—not the hunting man, but the
hunted—watchful, furtive; a picker-up of what other beasts had slain and
taken their fill of: more watchful than usual because he had already
come across a carcass left by the long-toothed terror, all the blood
sucked out of it. Swinging from bough to bough by his hands—which, even
when he stood upright, as upright as possible, dangled far below his
knees—he had actually seen it; seen its gleaming tusks, its shining
eyes; seen it, and fled, wild with terror.

Was it likely that he could ever forget it? “It and its beastly teeth!”
he added; then fell silent, brooding; while even Rhoda was awed to
silence.

It was that very evening that they found their Forest, or, rather, a
part of it. They had gone over to the shore meaning to bathe, but for
once their memories were at fault; and they found that the tide was out,
a mere rim of molten lead on the far edge of the horizon.

They were both tired, but they could not rest. They cut inland for a
bit, then out again; crossing the mudflats until the mud oozed above
their boots and drove them back again.

They must have wandered about a long time, for the light—although it did
not actually go—became illusive; the air freshened with that salty scent
which tells of a flowing tide.

Hector insisted that they ought to wait until it was full in, and have
their bath by moonlight; but, as Rhoda pointed out, that would mean no
supper, dawdling about for hours. After some time they compromised: they
would go out and meet the tide; see what it was like.

Almost at the water’s edge they found It—their Forest.

There it was, buried like a fly in amber: twisted trunks and boughs,
matted creepers, all ash-grey and black.

How far it stretched up and down the shore they could not have said, the
time was too short, the sea too near for any exploration; but not far,
they thought, or they must have discovered it before. “Nothing more than
a fold out of the world, squeezed up to the surface”; that was what they
agreed upon.

They divided and ran in opposite directions—“Just to try and find out,”
as Rhoda said. But after a few yards, a couple of dozen, maybe, they
called back to each other that they had lost it.

The darkness gathering, the water almost to their feet; they were
bitterly disappointed, but anyhow there was to-morrow, many
“to-morrows.”

All that evening they talked of nothing else. “It’s been there for
thousands and tens of thousands of years! It will be there to-morrow,”
they said.

It was towards two o’clock in the morning that Hector, restless with
excitement and fear, padded into his sister’s room; found her
sleeping—stupidly sleeping—with the moonlight full upon her, and shook
her awake; unreasonably angry, as wakeful people always are with the
sleepers.

“Suppose we never find it again! Oh, Rhoda, suppose we never find it
again!”

“Find what?”

“The Forest, you idiot!—our Forest.”

“Hector, don’t be silly. Go back to bed; you’ll get cold. Of course
we’ll find it.”

“Why of course? I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking. There
wasn’t a tree or bush or landmark of any sort: we had pottered about all
over the shop: supposing we’ve lost it for ever? Oh, supposing, Rhoda,
Rhoda! What sillies we were! Why didn’t we stay there, camp opposite it
until the tide went out? I feel it in my bones—we’ll never find it
again—never—never—never! There might have been skulls, all sorts of
things—long teeth—tigers’ teeth! And now we’ve lost it. It’s no good
talking—we’ve lost it; I know we’ve lost it—after all these years! After
thousands and thousands and thousands of years of remembering!”

The boy’s forehead was glistening with sweat; the tears were running
down his face, white as bone in the moonlight. Rhoda drew him into her
bed, comforted him as best she could, very sleepy, and unperturbed—for,
of course, they would find it. How could they help finding it? And after
a while he fell asleep, still moaning and crying, searching for a lost
path through his dreams.

He was right in his foreboding. They did not find it. Perhaps the tide
had been out further than usual: they had walked further than they
thought; they had dreamt the whole thing; the light had deceived
them—impossible to say.

At first, in the broad light of day, even Hector was incredulous of
their misfortune. Then, as the completeness of their loss grew upon
them, they became desperate—possessed by that terrible restlessness of
the searcher after lost things. Day after day they would come back from
the sea worn out, utterly hopeless; declaring that here was the end of
the whole thing; sick at the very thought of the secret mud, the long
black shore.

They gave it up. They would never go near “the rotten thing” again.

Then, a few hours later, the thought of the freshly-receding tide began
to work like madness in their veins, and they would be out and away.

It was easier for Rhoda; for she was of those who “sleep o’ nights”;
easier until she found that her brother slipped off on moonlight nights
while she slumbered: coming back at all hours, haggard and worn to
fainting-point.

He stooped more than ever: his brow was more overhung, furrowed with
horizontal lines. Sometimes, furious with herself for her sleepiness,
Rhoda would awake, jump out of bed and run to the window in the fresh
dawn, to see the boy dragging himself home, old as the ages, his hands
hanging loose to his knees.

At last the breaking-point came. He was very ill: after a long
convalescence, money was collected from numerous relations, family
treasures were sold, and he was sent away to school.

He came back for his holidays a changed creature, talking of footer,
then of cricket; of boys and masters; of school—school—school—nothing
but school; blunt and practical.

But all this was at the front of him, deliberately displayed in the
shop-windows.

At the back of him, buried out of sight, there was still the visionary
rememberer. Rhoda, who loved him, realised this.

At first she did not dare to speak of the Forest. Then, trying to get at
something of the old Hector, she pressed the point; pressed it and
pressed it. It was she now who kept on with that eternal, “Don’t you
remember?”

The worst of the whole thing was that he did not even pretend to forget.
He did worse—he laughed. And in her own pain she now realised how often
and how deeply she must have hurt him.

“Oh, that rot! What silly idiots we were! Such rot!”

And yet, at the back of him, at the back of his too-direct gaze, his
laughter, there was _something_. Oh, yes, there was something. She was
certain of that.

Deep, deep, hidden away at the back of him, at the back of that most
imperturbable of all reserves, a boy’s reserve, he remembered, felt as
he had always felt. He shut her out of it, that was all: her—Rhoda.

At the end of a year they ceased to talk of the Forest; all those
far-back things dropped away from their intercourse. To outward seeming
their love for the countryside, their strange, unyouthful interest in
geology, the age-buried world, seemed a thing of the past.

Hector had a bicycle now: he was often away for hours at a time. He
never even spoke of where he had been, what he had been doing. It was
always: “Nowhere in particular; nothing in particular.”

Then, two years later, upon just such a breathless mid-summer day, he
burst in upon his sister, his face crimson with excitement.

“I’ve found it! I never gave up—never for a moment! I pretended—I
thought you thought it rot—were drawing me on—but it’s there. We were
right. It’s there—there! Quick! quick! Now the tide’s just almost full
out.... Oh, by Jingo! to think I’ve found it! Rhoda, hurry up—quick!” He
was dancing with impatience.

“I can ride the bike—you on the step,” breathed Rhoda, and snatched up a
hat.

They flew. The village shot past them: the flat country swirled like a
top. At last they came to a place where there was a tiny rag of torn
handkerchief tied to a stick stuck upright in the ground. Here they left
the road, laid the bicycle in a dry ditch, and cut away across the
marsh; guided by more signals—scraps of cambric, then paper; towards the
end, one every ten yards or less, until Rhoda wondered how in the world
had the boy curbed himself to such care!

Then—there it was.

They stepped it: just on fifty yards long, indefinitely wide, running
out into little bays, here and there tailing off so that it was
impossible to discover any definite edge, sinking away out of sight like
a dream.

The sun was blazing hot and the top of the mud dry. In places they went
down upon their hands and knees, peering; but really one saw most
standing a little way off, with one’s head bent, eyeing it sideways.

It was in this way that Rhoda found It—Him!

“Look—look! Oh, I say—there’s something.... A thing—an animal!
No—no—a—a——”

“Sabre-toothed tiger!” The boy’s wild shriek of triumph showed how he
had hugged that old conjecture.

He came running, but until he got his head at exactly the same slant as
hers he could see nothing, and was furiously petulant.

“Idiot! Silly fool!—nothing but a bough. You——” A lucky angle, and, “Oh,
I say, by Jove! I’ve got it now! A man—a man!”

“A monkey—a great ape; there were no men, then, with ‘It.’” There, it
seemed, she conceded him his tiger. “A little nearer—now again, there!”

They crept towards it. It was clear enough at a little distance; but
nearer, what with the blazing sun and the queer incandescent lights on
the mud, they found difficulty in exactly placing it. At last they had
it, found themselves immediately over it; were able, kneeling side by
side, to gaze down at the strange, age-old figure, lying huddled
together, face forward.

It was not more than a couple of feet down; the semitransparent mud must
have been silting over it for years and years: silted away again through
centuries. And all for them—just for them. What a thought!

Hector raced off for his bicycle, and so on to the nearest cottage to
borrow a spade.

The mental picture of the “man” and the sabre-toothed tiger met and
clashed in his brain. If he was so certain of the man he must concede
the tiger, given in to Rhoda and her later period. Unless—unless....
Suddenly he clapped his hands to his ears as though someone were
shouting: his eyes closed, shutting out sight and sound. There _was_ a
tiger, he remembered—of course he remembered! And if he were there,
others were there also—not one tiger, not one man, but tigers and men;
both, both!

By the time he got back to where he had left his sister, the water was
above her knees, the tide racing inwards.

They were not going to be done this time, however.

It was five o’clock in the afternoon, and their father was away from
home. Rhoda went back and ordered the household with as much sobriety as
possible; collected a supply of food and a couple of blankets—they had
camped out before and there was nothing so very amazing in their
behaviour—then returned to the shore, the shrine.

Hector was sitting at the edge of the water, staring fixedly, white as a
sheet.

Rhoda collected driftwood and built a fire; almost fed him, for he took
nothing but what was put into his hand.

“It will still be there, even if we go to sleep,” she said; then,
“Anyhow, we’ll watch turn and turn about.”

But it was all of no use. The boy might lie down in his turn, but he
still faced the sea with steady, staring eyes.

Soon after three he woke his sister, shaking her in a frenzy of
impatience. Oh, these sleepers!

“Sleeping! Sleeping! You great stupid, you! I never! I.... Just look at
the tide—only look!”

The tide was pretty far out, the whole world a mist of pinkish-grey.
Step by step they followed the retreating lap of water.

                   *       *       *       *       *

By six o’clock they had the heavy body out, and were dragging it across
the rapidly-drying mud.

It was not as big as Hector: five-foot-one at the most, but almost
incredibly heavy, with immense rounded shoulders.

By the time they reached the true shore they were done, and flung
themselves down, panting, exhausted. But they could not rest. A few
minutes more and they were up again, turning the creature over, rubbing
the mud away from the hairy body with bunches of grass; parting the
long, matted locks which hung over its lowering face, with the overhung
brow, flat nose, almost non-existent chin. The eyes were shut, but oddly
unsunken: it smelt of marsh slime, of decayed vegetation, but nothing
more.

Hector poked forward a finger to see if he could push up one eyelid, and
drew back sharply.

“Why—hang it all—the thing’s warm!”

“No wonder, with this sun. I’m dripping from head to foot. Hector, we
must go home. Matty will tell; there’ll be the eyes of a row.”

For all her insistence it was another hour before Rhoda could get her
brother away. Again and again he met the returning tide with her hat,
bringing it back full of water; washing their find from head to foot,
combing its matted hair with a clipped fragment of driftwood. But at
last they dragged it to a dry dyke, covered it with dry yellow grass,
and were off, Rhoda on the step this time, Hector draped limply over the
handle of the bicycle.

He slept like a dead thing for the best part of that day. But soon after
three they were away again: no use for Rhoda to raise objections; the
unrest of an intense excitement was in her bones as in his, and he knew
it.

It had been a cloudless day, the veil of mist fainter than usual, the
sky bluer.

As they left the bicycle and cut across the rough foreshore the sun beat
down upon them with an almost unbearable fierceness. There was a shimmer
like a mirage across the marshes: the sea was the colour of burnt steel.

They dog-trotted half the way, arguing as they ran; Hector, still fixed,
pivoting upon his sabre-toothed tiger, and yet insistent that _this_ was
a man—a real man—contemporary with it: the first absolute proof of human
existence anterior to the First Glacial age.

“An ape—a sort of ape—nearish to a man, but—well, look at his hair.”
She’d give him his tiger, but not his man.

“By Gad, you’d grow hair, running wild as he did—a man——”

“Hector, what rot! Why, anyone—anyone could see—” She thought of her
father, the smooth curate, the rubicund farmers.... A man!

“Well, stick to it—stick to it! But I bet you anything—anything....”

Hector’s words were jerked out of him as he padded on:

“We’ll get hundreds and hundreds of pounds for him! Travel—see the
world—go to Java, where that other chap—what’s his name—was found. Why,
he’s older than the Heidelberg Johnny—a thousand thousand times
great-grandfather to that Pitcairn thing—older—older—oh, older than
any!”

Panting, stumbling, half-blind with exhaustion, the boy was still a good
six yards in front of his sister as he reached the dry dyke where they
had left their treasure.

Rhoda saw him stand for a moment, staring, then spin round as though he
had been shot, throwing up his arms with a hoarse scream.

By the time she had her own arms about him, he could only point,
trembling from head to foot.

                   *       *       *       *       *

There was nothing there! Torn grass where they had pulled it to rub down
their find; the very shape of the body distinct upon the sandy,
sparsely-covered soil; the stick with the pennant of blue ribbon which
Rhoda had taken from her hat to mark the spot.... Nothing more, nothing
whatever.

Up and down the girl ran, circling like a plover, her head bent. It must
be somewhere, it must—it must!

She glanced at her brother, who stood as though turned to stone: this
was the sort of thing which sent people mad, killed them—to be so
frightfully disappointed, and yet to stand still, to say nothing.

She caught at his arm and faced him, the tears streaming down her
cheeks.

“Oh, my dear, my dear—” she began, then broke off, staring beyond him.

“Why ... why—Hector—I say—” Her voice broke to a whisper: she had a
feeling as though she must be taking part in some mad dream. Quite
inconsequently the thought of Balaam came to her. How did Balaam feel
when the ass spoke to him? As she did—with eye more amazed than any ears
could ever be.

“Hector—look.... It—It....”

As her brother still stood speechless, with bent head and ashen face,
she dropped to silence: too terrified of It, of her plainly deluded
self, of everything on earth, to say more....

One simply could not trust one’s own eyes; that’s what it came to.

Her legs were trembling; she could feel her knees touching each other,
cold and clammy.

It would have been impossible to say a word, even if she had dared to
reveal her own insanity; she could only pluck the lapels of her
brother’s coat, running her dry tongue along her lips.

Something in her unusual silence must have stirred through the boy’s own
misery, for after a moment or so he looked up, at first dimly, as though
scarcely recognising her. Then—slowly realising her intent glance fixed
on something beyond his own shoulder, he turned—and saw.

Twenty yards or more off, on a mound of coarse grass and sand just above
the high-tide mark, “It” was sitting, its long arms wound round its
knees, staring out to sea.

For a moment or so they hung, open-mouthed, wide-eyed.

For the life of her, Rhoda could not have moved a step nearer. The
creature’s heavy shoulders were rounded, its head thrust forward.
Silhouetted against sea and sky, white in contrast to its darkness, it
had the aloofness of incredible age; drawn apart, almost sanctified by
its immeasurable remoteness, its detachment from all that meant life to
the men and women of the twentieth century: the web of fancied
necessities, trivial possessions, absorptions.

“There was no sea—of course, there was no sea anywhere near here then!”
The boy’s whisper opened an incalculable panorama of world-wide change.

There _had_ been no sea here then; no Bristol Channel, no Irish Sea.
Valley and river, that was all!

This alien being who had lived, and more than half-died, in this very
spot, was gazing at something altogether strange: a vast, uneasy sheet
of water with but one visible bank; no golden-brown lights, no shadows,
no reflections: a strange, restless and indifferent god.

“Well—anyhow.... Oh, blazes! here goes! if—” Young Fane broke off with a
decision that cut his doubts, and moved forward.

In a moment the creature was alert, its head flung sideways and up,
sniffing the air like a dog.

It half turned, as though to run; then, as the boy stopped short, it
paused.

“Rhoda—get the grub—go quietly—don’t run.... Bread-and-butter—anything!”

They had flung down the frail with the bottle of milk, cake,
bread-and-butter that they had brought with them—enough for tea and
supper—heedless in their despair. Rhoda moved a step or two away, picked
up a packet, unfolded it and thrust the food into her brother’s
hand—cake, a propitiation!

The strange figure, upright—and yet not upright as it is counted in
these days—remained stationary; there was one quick turn of the head
following her, then the poise of it showed eyes immovably fixed upon the
male.

Hector moved forward very slowly, one smooth step after another. Rhoda
had seen him like that with wild birds and rabbits. He wore an old suit
of shrunken flannels, faded to a yellowish-grey, which blurred him into
the landscape. Far enough off to catch his outline against the molten
glare of the sea, she noted that his shoulders were almost as bent as
those of that Other.... Other what?—man?—ape? The speculation zigzagged
to and fro like lightning through her mind. She could scarcely breathe
for anxiety.

As the boy drew quite near to the dull, brownish figure it jerked its
head uneasily aside—she knew what Hector’s eyes were like, a steady,
luminous grey under the bent brows—made a swinging movement with its
arms, half turned; then stopped, stared sideways, crouching, sniffing.

The boy’s arm was held out at its fullest stretch in front of him.
Heaven—the old, old gods—only knew upon what beast-torn carrion the
creature had once fed; but it was famished, and some instinct must have
told it that here was food, for it snatched and crammed its mouth.

Hector turned and Rhoda’s heart was in her throat, for there was no
knowing what it might not do at that. But as he moved steadily away,
without so much as a glance behind him, it hesitated, threw up its hand,
as though to strike or throw; then followed.

                   *       *       *       *       *

That was the beginning of it. During those first days it would have
followed him to the end of the world. Later on, he told himself bitterly
that he had been a fool not to have seen further; gone off anywhere—oh,
anywhere, so long as it was far enough—dragging the brute after him
while his leadership still held.

It was with difficulty that they prevented it from dogging them back to
the Rectory—just imagine it tailing through the village at their heels!
But once it understood that it must stay where it was, it sat down on a
grassy hummock, crouching with its arms round its knees, one hand
tightly clenched, its small, light eyes, overhung by that portentous
brow, following them with a look of desolate loneliness.

Again and again the boy and girl glanced back, but it still sat there
staring after them, immovable in the spot which Hector had indicated to
it. They had left it all the food they had with them, and one of the
blankets which they had been too hot to carry home that morning. As it
plainly had not known what to do with the thing, Rhoda, overcome by a
sort of motherliness, had thrown it over its shoulders. Thus it sat,
shrouded like an Arab, its shaggy head cut like a giant burr against the
pale primrose sky.

“A beastly shame leaving it alone like that!” They both felt it;
scarcely liked to meet each other’s eyes over it. And yet, pity it as
they might, engrossed in it as they were, they couldn’t stay there with
it after dark. No reason, no fear—just couldn’t! Why? Oh, well, for all
its new-found life, it was as far away as any ghost.

“Poor brute!” said Rhoda.

“Poor chap!” Hector’s under-lip was thrust out, his look aggressive. But
there was no argument; and when he treated her—“Don’t be silly; of
course it’s not a man; any duffer could see that”—with contemptuous
silence, Rhoda knew that he was absolutely fixed in his convictions.

He proved it, too, next morning, leading the creature out into the
half-dried mud and back again to where his sister sat, following his
apparently aimless movements with puzzled eyes.

“Now, look,” he crowed. “Just you look, Miss Blooming-Cocksure!”

He was right. There was the mark of his own heavy nailed boot, and
beside it the track of other feet; oddly-shaped enough, but with the
weight distinctly thrown upon the heel and great-toe, as no beast save
man has ever yet thrown it—that fine developed great-toe, the emblem of
leadership. Hardly a trace of such pressure as the three greater apes
show, all on the outer edge of the foot; not even flat and even as the
baboon throws his.

It was after this that—without another word said—Rhoda, meek for once,
followed her brother’s example, and began to speak of the creature as
“He.”

They even gave him a name. They called him Hodge; only in fun, and yet
with a feeling that here was one of the first of all countrymen: less
learned, and yet in some way so much more observant, self-sufficing,
than his machine-made successors.

He could run at an almost incredible rate, bent as he was; climb any
tree; out-throw either of them, doubling the distance. It was there that
they got at the meaning of that closed fist; for at least three days he
had never let go of his stone—his one weapon.

“He didn’t trust us.” Rhoda was hurt, her vanity touched; and when they
had seemed to be making such progress, too!

“Not that—a sort of ingrained habit; the poor devil didn’t feel dressed
without it,” protested Hector. “Of course he trusts us as much as a
perfectly natural creature ever trusts anything or anybody.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

The Rector had gone on a visit to their only relative, an old aunt, who
was dying in as leisurely a fashion as she had lived, and was unable to
leave her. A neighbouring curate took that next Sunday’s service.

It had been a Monday when Hector found Hodge, and a very great deal can
happen in that time.

From the first it had seemed clear that nothing in the way of
communicating with authorities, experts, could be done until their
father was there to back them, adding his own testimony. It was no good
just writing—Hector did, indeed, begin a letter to Sir Ray Lankester,
but tore it up, appalled by his own formless, boyish handwriting. “He’d
think we were just getting at him—a couple of silly kids,” was his
reflection.

He knew a lot for his age; was very certain of his own knowledge; felt
no personal fear of this wild man of his. But ordinary grown-up people!
That was altogether a different matter. And here he touched the
primitive mistrust of all real youth for anything too completely
finished and sophisticated.

Of course, from the very beginning, there were all sorts of minor
troubles with Matty over their continued thefts of food; difficulties in
keeping the creature away from the house and village.

But all that was nothing to what followed.

The first dim, unformulated sense of fear began on the night when
Hector, awakened by a loud rustling among the leaves of that one tree,
discovered Hodge there, climbing along a bough which ended close against
Rhoda’s window.

Rhoda’s, not his—that was the queer part of it!

The boy felt half huffed as he drove him off. But when he came again,
some instinct, something far less plain than thought, began to worry
him: something which seemed ludicrous, until it gathered and grew to a
feeling of nausea so horrible that the cold sweat pricked out upon his
breast and forehead.

At the third visit the fear was more defined. But still.... That brute
“smitten” with Rhoda! He tried to laugh it off. Anyhow, what did it
matter? And yet.... Hang it all! there was something sickening about it
all. It was impossible to sleep at night, listening, always listening.

He was only thirteen. Of course he had heard other chaps talking, but he
had no real idea of the fierce drive of physical desire. And yet it was
plain enough that here was something “beastly” beyond all words.

He told Rhoda to keep her window bolted, and when she protested against
such “fugging,” touched on his own fears, tried, awkwardly enough, to
explain without explaining.

“I’m funky about Hodge—he’s taken to following us. He might get in—bag
something.”

“The darling!” cried Rhoda. “Look here, old chap. I really believe he’s
fond of me; fonder of me than of you!”

She persisted in putting it to the test next day; left “Hodge” sitting
by her brother, and walked away.

The creature moved his head uneasily from side to side, glanced at
Hector, and his glance was full of hatred, malevolence; then, scrambling
furtively to his feet, helping himself with his hands, one fist
tight-closed, in the old fashion, he passed round the back of the boy,
and followed her.

For a minute or two Hector sat hunched together, staring doggedly out to
sea. If Rhoda chose to make an ass of herself—well, let her. After all,
what could the brute do? She was bigger than he was, had nothing on her
worth stealing; nothing of any use to Hodge, anyhow, he told himself.

Then, of a sudden, that half-formulated dread, that sick panic seized
him afresh. He glanced round; both Hodge and his sister were out of
sight, and he started to run with all his might, shouting.

There was an answering cry from Rhoda, shriller than usual, with a note
of panic in it. This gave him the direction; and, plunging off among a
group of shallow sand-dunes, he found himself almost upon them.

Rhoda was drawn up very straight, laughing nervously, her shoulders
back, flushed to the eyes, while Hodge stood close in front of her,
gabbling—they had tried him with their own words, but the oddly-angled
jaw had seemed to cramp the tongue beyond hope of articulate
speech—gabbling, gesticulating.

“Oh, Hector!” The girl’s cry was full of relief as she swung sideways
toward him; while Hodge, glancing round, saw him, raised his hand, and
threw.

The stone just grazed the boy’s cheek, drawing a spurt of blood; but
this was enough for Rhoda, who forgot her own panic in a flame of
indignation.

The creature could not have understood a word of what she said: her
denunciation, abuse, “the wigging” she gave him. But her look was
enough, and he shrank aside, shamed as a beaten dog.

They did not bid him good-night. They had taught him to shake hands; but
now that he was in disgrace all that was over, and they turned aside
with the set severity of youth: bent brows and straightened, hard
mouths.

Rhoda was the first to relent, half-way home, breaking their silence
with a laugh: “Poor old Hodge! I don’t know why I was so scared—I must
have got him rattled, or he’d never have thrown that stone. Why, it was
always you he liked best, followed,” she added magnanimously.

And yet she was puzzled, all on edge, as she had never been before. The
look Hodge had cast at her brother was unmistakable; but why?—why? What
had changed him? She never even thought of that passion common to man
and beast, interwoven with all desire, hatred—the lees of love—jealousy.

All that evening Hector scarcely spoke. He was not so much scared as
gravely anxious in a man’s way. If that brute got him with a stone, what
would happen to Rhoda? Even supposing that there had been anyone to
consult, he could not, for the life of him, have put his fear into
words. So much a man, he was yet too much a boy for that. Terrified of
ridicule, incredulity, he hugged his secret, as that strange man-beast
hugged his—the highest and lowest—the most primitive and the most
cultured—forever uncommunicative; those in the midway the babblers.

He was so firm in his insistence upon Rhoda changing her room that night
that she gave way, without argument, overawed by his gravity, by an odd,
chill sense of fear which hung about her. “I must have got a cold. I’ve
a sort of feeling of a goose walking over my grave,” was what she said
laughingly, half-shamefaced, accustomed as she was to attribute every
feeling to some natural cause.

That night, soon after midnight, the brute was back in the tree. Hector
heard the rustling, then the spring and swish of a released bough.
Before he lay down he had unbolted one of the long bars from the
underneath part of his old-fashioned iron bedstead; and, now taking it
in his hand, he ran to Rhoda’s room.

The white-washed walls and ceiling were so flooded with moonlight that
it was almost as light as day.

Hodge was already in the room: the clothes were torn from the bed; the
cupboard doors wide open; the whole place littered with feminine attire.

He—It—the impersonal pronoun slid into its place in the boy’s mind, and
no words of self-reproach or condemnation could have said more—stood at
the foot of the empty bed, with something white—it might have been a
chemise—in its hand, held up to its face. Hector could not catch its
expression, but there was something inexpressibly bestial in the
silhouette of its head, bent, sniffing; he could actually hear the
whistling breath.

He would have given anything if only it had stayed, fought it out then.
But it belonged to a state too far away for that—defensive, at times
aggressive, but forever running, hiding, slinking: a thrower from among
thick boughs behind tree-trunks—and in a moment it was out of the
window, bundling over the sill, so clumsy and yet so amazingly quick.

He could hear the swing of a bough as it caught it. There was a loud
rustle of leaves, and a stone hurtled in through the window; but that
was all.

Hector tidied the room, tossed the scattered garments into the bottom of
the wardrobe, and re-made the bed in his awkward boy-fashion, moving
mechanically, as if in a dream; his hands busied over his petty tasks,
his mind engrossed with something so tremendous that he seemed to be two
separate people, of which the one, the greater, revolved slowly and
certainly in an unalterable orbit, quite apart from his old everyday
life, from that Hector Fane whom he had always known, thought of, spoken
of as “myself.”

He went to his own room, put on his collar and coat—for he had lain down
upon his bed without undressing, every nerve on edge—laced up his boots
with meticulous care. He was no longer frightened or hurried; he knew
exactly what he was going to do, and that alone hung him—moving slowly,
surely—as upon a pivot.

The moonlight was so clear that there was no need for a candle, flooding
the stairway, the study with its shabby book-shelves.

Easy enough to take the old shot-gun from the nails over the
mantelshelf; only last holiday—years and years ago, while he was still a
child—he had been allowed to use it for wild-duck shooting—and run his
hand along the back of the writing-table drawer in search of those three
or four cartridges which he had seen there a couple of days earlier.

The cartridges in his pocket swung against his hip as he mounted his
bicycle and rode away—guiding himself with one hand, the gun lying
heavily along his left arm; it was like someone nudging, reminding.

The scene was entirely familiar; but what was so strange in himself lent
it an air of something new and uncanny. The winding road had a swing,
drawing him with it; the mingled mist and moonlight were sentient,
watchful, holding their breath.

Once or twice he seemed to catch sight of a low, stooping figure amid
the rough grass and rush-tufted hollows to the left of him; but he could
not be sure until he reached the very shore, left his bicycle in the old
place.

Then a stone grazed his shoulder, and there was a blurred scurry of
brown, from hummock to hummock, low as a hare to the ground.

Once in the open he got a clear sight of Hodge. The far-away tide was on
the flow, but there was still a good half-mile of mud, like lead in the
silvery dawn.

The man-beast bundled down the sandy strip of shore and out on to the
mud: ungainly, stumbling; the boy behind it—“It.” Hector held to that:
the pronoun was altogether reassuring now—something to hold to, hard as
a bone in his brain.

On the edge of the tide it tried to turn, double; then paused,
fascinated, amazed: numb with fear of the strange level pipe pointing,
oddly threatening, the first ray of sunlight running like an arrow of
gold along the top of it.

There was something utterly naïve and piteous in the misplaced
creature’s gesture: the way in which it stood—long arms, short, bandy
legs—moving its head uneasily from side to side; bewildered, yet
fascinated.

“Poor beggar!” muttered Hector. He could not have said why, but he was
horribly sorry, ashamed, saddened.

Years later he thought more clearly—“Poor beggar! After all, what did he
want but life—more life—the complete life of any man—or animal, either,
come to that!”

As he pressed his finger to the trigger he saw the rough brown figure
throw up its arms, leap high in the air, and drop.

Something like a red-hot iron burnt up the back of his own neck; his
head throbbed. After all, what did death matter when life was so rotten,
so inexplicable? It wasn’t that, only—only.... Well, it was beastly to
feel so tired, so altogether gone to pieces.

With bent head he made his way, ploughing through the mud and sand, back
to the shore; sat down rather suddenly, with a feeling as though the
ground had risen up to meet him, and winding his arms round his knees,
stared out to sea; washed through and through, swept by an immense sense
of grief, a desperate regret which had nothing whatever to do with his
immediate action—the death of Hodge.

That was something which had to be gone through with; it wasn’t that—not
exactly that.... But, oh, the futility, the waste of ... well, of
everything!

“Rotten luck!” He shuddered as he dragged himself wearily to his feet.
He could not have gone before, not while there was the mud with “that”
on it; not even so long as the shining sands were bare. It would have
seemed too hurried, almost indecent. But now that an unbroken,
glittering sheet of water lapped the very edge of the shore, the funeral
ceremony—with all its pomp of sunrise—was over; and, turning aside, he
stumbled wearily through the rough grass to the place where he had left
his bicycle.




HATTERAS

By A. W. MASON


The story was told to me by James Walker in the cabin of a seven-ton
cutter, one night when we lay anchored in Helford River. It was towards
the end of September; during this last week the air had grown chilly
with the dusk, and the sea when it lost the sun took on a leaden and a
dreary look. There was no other boat on the wooded creek and the swish
of the tide against the planks had a very lonesome sound. All these
circumstances I think provoked Walker to tell the story, but most of all
the lonely swish of the tide against the planks. For it is the story of
a man’s loneliness and the strange ways into which loneliness misled his
soul. However, let the story speak for itself.

Hatteras and Walker had been schoolfellows, though never classmates.
Hatteras indeed was the head of the school and prophecy vaguely sketched
out for him a brilliant career in some service of importance. The
definite law, however, that the sins of the fathers shall be visited
upon the children overbore this prophecy. Hatteras, the father,
disorganized his son’s future by dropping unexpectedly through one of
the trapways of speculation into the Bankruptcy Court beneath, just two
months before Hatteras, the son, was to have gone up to Oxford. The lad
was therefore compelled to start life in a stony world with a
stock-in-trade which consisted of a schoolboy’s command of the classics,
a real inborn gift of tongues and the friendship of James Walker.

The last item proved of the most immediate value. For Walker, whose
father was the junior partner in a firm of West African merchants,
obtained for Hatteras an employment as the bookkeeper at a branch
factory in the Bight of Benin.

Thus the friends parted. Hatteras went out to West Africa alone, and met
with a strange welcome on the day when he landed. The incident did not
come to Walker’s ears until some time afterwards, nor when he heard of
it did he at once appreciate the effect which it had upon Hatteras. But
chronologically it comes into the story at this point, and so may as
well be immediately told.

There was no settlement very near to the factory. It stood by itself on
the swamps of the Forcados River with the mangrove forest closing in
about it. Accordingly the captain of the steamer just put Hatteras
ashore in a boat and left him with his traps on the beach. Half-a-dozen
Kru boys had come down from the factory to receive him, but they could
speak no English, and Hatteras at this time could speak no Kru. So that
although there was no lack of conversation there was not much
interchange of thought. At last Hatteras pointed to his traps. The Kru
boys picked them up and preceded Hatteras to the factory. They mounted
the steps to the verandah on the first floor and laid their loads down.
Then they proceeded to further conversation. Hatteras gathered from
their excited faces and gestures that they wished to impart information,
but he could make neither head nor tail of a word they said, and at last
he retired from the din of their chatter through the windows of a room
which gave on to the verandah, and sat down to wait for his superior,
the agent.

It was early in the morning when Hatteras landed and he waited until
midday patiently. In the afternoon it occurred to him that the agent
would have shown a kindly consideration if he had left a written message
or an intelligible Kru boy to receive him. It is true that the blacks
came in at intervals and chattered and gesticulated, but matters were
not thereby appreciably improved. He did not like to go poking about the
house, so he contemplated the mud banks and the mud river and the
mangrove forest, and cursed the agent. The country was very quiet. There
are few things quieter than a West African forest in the daytime. It is
obtrusively, emphatically quiet. It does not let you forget how
singularly quiet it is. And towards sundown the quietude began to jar on
Hatteras’ nerves. He was besides very hungry. To while away the time he
took a stroll round the verandah.

He walked along the side of the houses towards the back, and as he
neared the back he heard a humming sound. The further he went the louder
it grew. It was something like the hum of a mill, only not so metallic
and not so loud; and it came from the rear of the house.

Hatteras turned the corner and what he saw was this—a shuttered window
and a cloud of flies. The flies were not aimlessly swarming outside the
window; they streamed in through the lattice of the shutters in a busy,
practical way; they came in columns from the forest and converged upon
the shutters; and the hum sounded from within the room.

Hatteras looked about for a Kru boy for the sake of company, but at that
moment there was not one to be seen.

He felt the cold strike at his spine. He went back into the room in
which he had been sitting. He sat again but he sat shivering. The agent
had left no word for him.... The Kru boys had been anxious to
explain—something. The humming of the flies about that shuttered window
seemed to Hatteras a more explicit language than the Kru boys’
chatterings. He penetrated into the interior of the house, and reckoned
up the doors. He opened one of them ever so slightly and the buzzing
came through like the hum of a wheel in a factory revolving in the
collar of a strap. He flung the door open and stood upon the threshold.
The atmosphere of the room appalled him; he felt the sweat break cold
upon his forehead and a deadly sickness in all his body. Then he nerved
himself to enter.

At first he saw little because of the gloom. In a while, however, he
made out a bed stretched along the wall and a thing stretched upon the
bed. The thing was more or less shapeless because it was covered with a
black furry sort of rug. Hatteras, however, had little trouble in
defining it. He knew now for certain what it was that the Kru boys had
been so anxious to explain to him. He approached the bed and bent over
it, and as he bent over it the horrible thing occurred which left so
vivid an impression on Hatteras. The black furry rug suddenly lifted
itself from the bed, beat about Hatteras’ face, and dissolved into
flies. The Kru boys found Hatteras in a dead swoon on the floor
half-an-hour later, and next day, of course, he was down with the fever.
The agent had died of it three days before.

Hatteras recovered from the fever, but not from the impression. It left
him with a prevailing sense of horror and, at first, with a sense of
disgust too.

“It’s an obscene country,” he would say. But he stayed in it, for he had
no choice. All the money which he could save went to the support of his
family, and for six years the firm he served moved him from district to
district, from factory to factory.

Now the second item of his stock-in-trade was a gift of tongues, and
about this time it began to bring him profit. Wherever Hatteras was
posted, he managed to pick up a native dialect, and with the dialect
inevitably a knowledge of native customs. Dialects are numerous on the
west coast, and at the end of six years Hatteras could speak as many of
them as some traders could enumerate. Languages ran in his blood; he
acquired a reputation for knowledge and was offered service under the
Niger Protectorate, so that when, two years later, Walker came out to
Africa to open a new branch factory at a settlement on the Bonny River,
he found Hatteras stationed in command there.

Hatteras, in fact, went down to Bonny River town to meet the steamer
which brought his friend.

“I say, Dick, you look bad,” said Walker.

“People are not, as a rule, offensively robust about these parts.”

“I know that; but you’re the weariest bag of bones I’ve ever seen.”

“Well, look at yourself in a glass a year from now for my double,” said
Hatteras, and the pair went up river together.

“Your factory is next to the Residency,” said Hatteras. “There’s a
compound to each running down to the river, and there’s a palisade
between the compounds. I’ve cut a little gate in the palisade as it will
shorten the way from one house to the other.”

The wicket gate was frequently used during the next few months—indeed
more frequently than Walker imagined. He was only aware that, when they
were both at home, Hatteras would come through it of an evening and
smoke on his verandah. There he would sit for hours cursing the country,
raving about the lights of Piccadilly Circus, and offering his immortal
soul in exchange for a comic opera tune played upon a barrel-organ.
Walker possessed a big atlas, and one of Hatteras’ chief diversions was
to trace with his finger a bee-line across the African continent and the
Bay of Biscay until he reached London.

More rarely Walker would stroll over to the Residency, but he soon came
to notice that Hatteras had a distinct preference for the factory and
for the factory verandah. The reason for the preference puzzled Walker
considerably. He drew a quite erroneous conclusion that Hatteras was
hiding at the Residency—well, someone whom it was prudent, especially in
an official, to conceal. He abandoned the conclusion, however, when he
discovered that his friend was in the habit of making solitary
expeditions. At times Hatteras would be absent for a couple of days, at
times for a week, and, so far as Walker could ascertain, he never so
much as took a servant with him to keep him company. He would simply
announce at night his intended departure, and in the morning he would be
gone. Nor on his return did he ever offer to Walker any explanation of
his journeys. On one occasion, however, Walker broached the subject.
Hatteras had come back the night before, and he sat crouched up in a
deck chair, looking intently into the darkness of the forest.

“I say,” asked Walker, “isn’t it rather dangerous to go slumming about
West Africa alone?”

Hatteras did not reply for a moment. He seemed not to have heard the
suggestion, and when he did speak it was to ask a quite irrelevant
question.

“Have you ever seen the Horse Guards’ Parade on a dark rainy night?” he
asked; but he never moved his head, he never took his eyes from the
forest. “The wet level of ground looks just like a lagoon and the arches
a Venice palace above it.”

“But look here, Dick!” said Walker, keeping to his subject, “you never
leave word when you are coming back. One never knows that you have come
back until you show yourself the morning after.”

“I think,” said Hatteras slowly, “that the finest sight in the world is
to be seen from the bridge in St. James’ Park when there’s a State Ball
on at Buckingham Palace and the light from the windows reddens the lake
and the carriages glance about the Mall like fireflies.”

“Even your servants don’t know when you come back,” said Walker.

“Oh,” said Hatteras quietly, “so you have been asking questions of my
servants?”

“I had a good reason,” replied Walker. “Your safety”; and with that the
conversation dropped.

Walker watched Hatteras. Hatteras watched the forest. A West African
mangrove forest night is full of the eeriest, queerest sounds that ever
a man’s ears hearkened to. And the sounds come not so much from the
birds or the soughing of branches; they seem to come from the swamp-life
underneath the branches, at the roots of the trees. There’s a ceaseless
stir as of a myriad reptiles creeping in the slime. Listen long enough
and you will fancy that you hear the whirr and rush of innumerable
crabs, the flapping of innumerable fish. Now and again a more
distinctive sound emerges from the rest—the croaking of a bull-frog, the
whining cough of a crocodile. At such sounds Hatteras would start up in
his chair and cock his head like a dog in a room that hears another dog
barking in the street.

“Doesn’t it sound damned wicked?” he said with a queer smile of
enjoyment.

Walker did not answer. The light from a lamp in the room behind them
struck obliquely upon Hatteras’ face and slanted off from it in a
narrowing column until it vanished in a yellow thread among the leaves
of the trees. It showed that the same enjoyment which rang in Hatteras’
voice was alive upon his face. His eyes, his ears, were alert, and he
gently opened and shut his mouth with a little clicking of the teeth. In
some horrible way he seemed to have something in common with, he
appeared almost to participate in, the activity of the swamp. Thus had
Walker often seen him sit, but never with the light so clear upon his
face, and the sight gave to him a quite new impression of his friend. He
wondered whether all these months his judgment had been wrong. And out
of that wonder a new thought sprang into his mind.

“Dick,” he said, “this house of mine stands between your house and the
forest. It stands on the borders of the trees, on the edge of the swamp.
Is that why you prefer it to your own?”

Hatteras turned his head quickly towards his companion, almost
suspiciously. Then he looked back into the darkness, and after a little
said:

“It’s not only the things you care about, old man, which tug at you;
it’s the things you hate as well. I hate this country. I hate these
miles and miles of mangroves, and yet I am fascinated. I can’t get the
forests and the undergrowth and the swamp out of my mind. I dream of
them at night. I dream that I am sinking into that black oily batter of
mud. Listen,” and he suddenly broke off with his head stretched forward.
“Doesn’t it sound wicked?”

“But all this talk about London?” cried Walker.

“Oh, don’t you understand?” interrupted Hatteras roughly. Then he
changed his tone and gave his reason quietly. “One has to struggle
against a fascination of that sort. It’s devil’s work. So for all I am
worth I talk about London.”

“Look here, Dick,” said Walker. “You had better get leave and go back to
the old country for a spell.”

“A very solid piece of advice,” said Hatteras, and he went home to the
Residency.

The next morning he had again disappeared. But Walker discovered upon
his table a couple of new volumes, and glanced at the titles. They were
Burton’s account of his pilgrimage to El Medinah and Mecca.

Five nights afterwards Walker was smoking a pipe on the verandah when he
fancied that he heard a rubbing, scuffling sound as if someone very
cautiously was climbing over the fence of his compound. The moon was low
in the sky and dipping down toward the forest, indeed the rim of it
touched the treetops so that while a full half of the enclosure was lit
by the yellow light, that half which bordered on the forest was inky
black in shadow, and it was from the furthest corner of this second half
that the sound came. Walker leaned forward listening. He heard the sound
again, and a moment after a second sound, which left him in no doubt.
For in that dark corner he knew that a number of palisades for repairing
the fence were piled, and the second sound which he heard was a rattle
as someone stumbled against them. Walker went inside and fetched a
rifle.

When he came back he saw a negro creeping across the bright open space
towards the Residency. Walker hailed to him to stop. Instead the negro
ran. He ran towards the wicket gate in the palisade. Walker shouted
again; the figure only ran the faster. He had covered half the distance
before Walker fired. He clutched his right forearm with his left hand,
but he did not stop. Walker fired again, this time at his legs, and the
man dropped to the ground. Walker heard his servants stirring as he ran
down the steps. He crossed quickly to the negro and the negro spoke to
him, but in English, and with the voice of Hatteras.

“For God’s sake keep your servants off!”

Walker ran to the house, met his servants at the foot of the steps and
ordered them back. He had shot at a monkey he said. Then he returned to
Hatteras.

“Dicky, are you hurt?” he whispered.

“You hit me each time you fired, but not very badly, I think.”

He bandaged Hatteras’ arm and thigh with strips of his shirt, and waited
by his side until the house was quiet. Then he lifted him and carried
him across the enclosure to the steps, and up the steps into his
bedroom. It was a long and fatiguing process. For one thing Walker dared
make no noise and must needs tread lightly with his load; for another,
the steps were steep and rickety, with a narrow balustrade on each side
waist-high. It seemed to Walker that the day would dawn before he
reached the top. Once or twice Hatteras stirred in his arms, and he
feared the man would die then and there. For all the time his blood
dripped and pattered like heavy raindrops on the wooden steps.

Walker laid Hatteras on his bed and examined his wounds. One bullet had
passed through the fleshy part of the forearm, the other through the
fleshy part of his right thigh. But no bones were broken and no arteries
cut. Walker lit a fire, baked some plantain leaves, and applied them as
a poultice. Then he went out with a pail of water and scrubbed down the
steps. Again he dared not make any noise; and it was close on daybreak
before he had done. His night’s work, however, was not ended. He had
still to cleanse the black stain from Hatteras’ skin, and the sun was up
before he stretched a rug upon the ground and went to sleep with his
back against the door.

“Walker,” Hatteras called out in a loud voice, an hour or so later.

Walker woke up and crossed over to the bed.

“Dicky, I’m frightfully sorry. I couldn’t know it was you.”

“That’s all right, Jim. Don’t you worry about that. What I wanted to say
was that nobody had better know. It wouldn’t do, would it, if it got
about?”

“Oh, I am not so sure. People would think it a rather creditable
proceeding.”

Hatteras shot a puzzled look at his friend. Walker, however, did not
notice it, and continued, “I saw Burton’s account of his pilgrimage in
your room; I might have known that journeys of the kind were just the
sort of thing to appeal to you.”

“Oh, yes, that’s it,” said Hatteras, lifting himself up in bed. He spoke
eagerly—perhaps a thought too eagerly. “Yes, that’s it. I have always
been keen on understanding the natives thoroughly. It’s after all no
less than one’s duty if one has to rule them, and since I could speak
their lingo—” he broke off and returned to the subject which had
prompted him to rouse Walker. “But, all the same, it wouldn’t do if the
natives got to know.”

“There’s no difficulty about that,” said Walker. “I’ll give out that you
have come back with the fever and that I am nursing you. Fortunately
there’s no doctor handy to come making inconvenient examinations.”

Hatteras knew something of surgery, and under his directions Walker
poulticed and bandaged him until he recovered. The bandaging, however,
was amateurish, and, as a result, the muscles contracted in Hatteras’
thigh and he limped—ever so slightly, still he limped—he limped to his
dying day. He did not, however, on that account abandon his
explorations, and more than once Walker, when his lights were out and he
was smoking a pipe on the verandah, would see a black figure with a
trailing walk cross his compound and pass stealthily through the wicket
in the fence. Walker took occasion to expostulate with his friend.

“It’s too dangerous a game for a man to play for any length of time. It
is doubly dangerous now that you limp. You ought to give it up.”

Hatteras made a strange reply.

“I’ll try to,” he said.

Walker pondered over the words for some time. He set them side by side
in his thoughts with that confession which Hatteras had made to him one
evening. He asked himself whether, after all, Hatteras’ explanation of
his conduct was sincere, whether it was really a desire to know the
native thoroughly which prompted those mysterious expeditions, and then
he remembered that he himself had first suggested the explanation to
Hatteras. Walker began to feel uneasy—more than uneasy, actually afraid
on his friend’s account. Hatteras had acknowledged that the country
fascinated him, and fascinated him through its hideous side. Was this
masquerading as a black man a further proof of the fascination? Was it,
as it were, a step downwards towards a closer association? Walker sought
to laugh the notion from his mind, but it returned and returned, and
here and there an incident occurred to give it strength and colour.

For instance, on one occasion after Hatteras had been three weeks
absent, Walker sauntered over to the Residency towards four o’clock in
the afternoon. Hatteras was trying cases in the Court-house, which
formed the ground floor of the Residency. Walker stepped into the room.
It was packed with a naked throng of blacks, and the heat was
overpowering. At the end of the hall sat Hatteras. His worn face shone
out amongst the black heads about him white and waxy like a gardenia.

Walker, however, thinking that the Court would rise, determined to wait
for a little. But, at the last moment, a negro was put up to answer to a
charge of participation in fetish rites. The case seemed sufficiently
clear from the outset, but somehow Hatteras delayed its conclusion.
There was evidence and unrebutted evidence of the usual details—human
sacrifice, mutilations, and the like, but Hatteras pressed for more. He
sat until it was dusk, and then had candles brought into the
Court-house. He seemed indeed not so much to be investigating the
negro’s guilt as to be adding to his own knowledge of fetish
ceremonials. And Walker could not but perceive that he took more than a
merely scientific pleasure in the increase of his knowledge. His face
appeared to smooth out, his eyes became quick, interested, almost
excited; and Walker again had the queer impression that Hatteras was in
spirit participating in the loathsome ceremonies, and participating with
an intense enjoyment. In the end the negro was convicted and the Court
rose. But he might have been convicted a good three hours before. Walker
went home shaking his head. He seemed to be watching a man deliberately
divesting himself of his humanity. It seemed as though the white man was
ambitious to decline into the black. Hatteras was growing into an
uncanny creature. His friend began to foresee a time when he should hold
him in loathing and horror. And the next morning helped to confirm him
in that forecast.

For Walker had to make an early start down river for Bonny town, and as
he stood on the landing-stage Hatteras came down to him from the
Residency.

“You heard that negro tried yesterday?” he asked with an assumption of
carelessness.

“Yes, and condemned. What of him?”

“He escaped last night. It’s a bad business, isn’t it?”

Walker nodded in reply and his boat pushed off. But it stuck in his mind
for the greater part of that day that the prison adjoined the
Court-house and so formed part of the ground floor of the Residency. Had
Hatteras connived at his escape? Had the judge secretly set free the
prisoner whom he had publicly condemned?

The question troubled Walker considerably during his month of absence,
and stood in the way of his business. He learned for the first time how
much he loved his friend, and how eagerly he watched for that friend’s
advancement. Each day added to his load of anxiety. He dreamed
continually of a black-painted man slipping among the tree-boles nearer
and nearer, towards the red glare of a fire in some open space secure
amongst the swamps, where hideous mysteries had their celebration. He
cut short his business and hurried back from Bonny. He crossed at once
to the Residency and found his friend in a great turmoil of affairs.

“Jim,” said Hatteras, starting up, “I’ve got a year’s leave; I’m going
home.”

“Dicky!” cried Walker, and he nearly wrung Hatteras’ hand from his arm.
“That’s grand news.”

“Yes, old man, I thought you would be glad; I sail in a fortnight.” And
he did.

For the first month Walker was glad. A year’s leave would make a new man
of Dick Hatteras, he thought, or at all events restore the old man, sane
and sound, as he had been before he came to the West African coast.
During the second month Walker began to feel lonely. In the third he
bought a banjo and learnt it during the fourth and fifth. During the
sixth he began to say to himself, “What a time poor Dick must have had
all those years with these cursed forests about him. I don’t wonder—I
don’t wonder.” He turned disconsolately to his banjo and played for the
rest of the year—all through the wet season while the rain came down in
a steady roar and only the curlews cried—until Hatteras returned. He
returned at the top of his spirits and health. Of course he was
hall-marked West African, but no man gets rid of that stamp. Moreover
there was more than health in his expression. There was a new look of
pride in his eyes, and when he spoke of a bachelor it was in terms of
sympathetic pity.

“Jim,” said he, after five minutes of restraint, “I am engaged to be
married.”

Jim danced round him in delight. “What an ass I have been,” he thought;
“why didn’t I think of that cure myself?” And he asked, “When is it to
be?”

“In eight months. You’ll come home and see me through.”

Walker agreed and for eight months listened to praises of the lady.
There were no more solitary expeditions. In fact, Hatteras seemed
absorbed in the diurnal discovery of new perfections in his future wife.

“Yes, she seems a nice girl,” Walker commented. He found her upon his
arrival in England more human than Hatteras’ conversation had led him to
expect, and she proved to him that she was a nice girl. For she listened
for hours to his lectures on the proper way to treat Dick without the
slightest irritation and with only a faintly visible amusement. Besides
she insisted on returning with her husband to Bonny River, which was a
sufficiently courageous thing to undertake.

For a year in spite of the climate the couple were commonplace and
happy. For a year Walker clucked about them like a hen after its
chickens, and slept the sleep of the untroubled. Then he returned to
England and from that time made only occasional journeys to West Africa.
Thus for a while he almost lost sight of Hatteras, and consequently
still slept the sleep of the untroubled. One morning, however, he
arrived unexpectedly at the settlement and at once called on Hatteras.
He did not wait to be announced, but ran up the steps outside the house
and into the dining-room. He found Mrs. Hatteras crying. She dried her
eyes, welcomed Walker, and said that she was sorry, but her husband was
away.

Walker started, looked at her eyes, and asked hesitatingly whether he
could help. Mrs. Hatteras replied with an ill-assumed surprise that she
did not understand. Walker suggested that there was trouble. Mrs.
Hatteras denied the truth of the suggestion. Walker pressed the point
and Mrs. Hatteras yielded so far as to assert that there was no trouble
in which Hatteras was concerned. Walker hardly thought it the occasion
for a parade of manners, and insisted on pointing out that his knowledge
of her husband was intimate and dated from his schooldays. Therefore
Mrs. Hatteras gave way.

“Dick goes away alone,” she said. “He stains his skin and goes away at
night. He tells me that he must, that it’s the only way by which he can
know the natives, and that so it’s a sort of duty. He says the black
tells nothing of himself to the white man—never. You must go amongst
them if you are to know them. So he goes, and I never know when he will
come back. I never know whether he will come back.”

“But he has done that sort of thing on and off for years, and he has
always come back,” replied Walker.

“Yes, but one day he will not.”

Walker comforted her as well as he could, praised Hatteras for his
conduct, though his heart was hot against him, spoke of risks that every
man must run who serves the Empire. “Never a lotus closes, you know,” he
quoted, and went back to the factory with the consciousness that he had
been telling lies.

It was a sense of duty that prompted Hatteras, of that Walker assured
himself he was certain, and he waited—he waited from darkness to
daybreak in his compound, for three successive nights.

On the fourth he heard the scuffling sound at the corner of the fence.
The night was black as the inside of a coffin. Half a regiment of men
might have passed him and he not have seen them. Accordingly he walked
cautiously to the palisade which separated the enclosure of the
Residency from his own, felt along it until he reached the little gate
and stationed himself in front of it. In a few moments he thought that
he heard a man breathing, but whether to the right or the left he could
not tell; and then a groping hand lightly touched his face and drew away
again. Walker said nothing, but held his breath and did not move. The
hand was stretched out again. This time it touched his breast and moved
across it until it felt a button of Walker’s coat. Then it was snatched
away, and Walker heard a gasping indraw of the breath and afterwards a
sound as of a man turning in a flurry. Walker sprang forward and caught
a naked shoulder with one hand, a naked arm with the other.

“Wait a bit, Dick Hatteras,” he said.

There was a low cry, and then a husky voice addressed him respectfully
as “Daddy” in trade-English.

“That won’t do, Dick,” said Walker.

The voice babbled more trade-English.

“If you’re not Dick Hatteras,” continued Walker, tightening his grasp,
“you’ve no manner of right here. I’ll give you till I count ten, and
then I shall shoot.”

Walker counted up to nine aloud and then——

“Jim,” said Hatteras in his natural voice.

“That’s better,” said Walker. “Let’s go in and talk.”

He went up the steps and lighted the lamp. Hatteras followed him and the
two men faced one another. For a little while neither of them spoke.
Walker was repeating to himself that this man with the black skin, naked
except for a dirty loincloth and a few feathers on his head, was a white
man married to a white wife who was sleeping—nay, more likely crying—not
thirty yards away.

Hatteras began to mumble out his usual explanation of duty and the rest
of it.

“That won’t wash,” interrupted Walker. “What is it? A woman?”

“Good Heaven, no!” cried Hatteras suddenly. It was plain that that
explanation was at all events untrue. “Jim, I’ve a good mind to tell you
all about it.”

“You have got to,” said Walker. He stood between Hatteras and the steps.

“I told you how this country fascinated me in spite of myself,” he
began.

“But I thought,” interrupted Walker, “that you had got over that
since—why, man, you are married,” and he came across to Hatteras and
shook him by the shoulder. “Don’t you understand? You have a wife!”

“I know,” said Hatteras. “But there are things deeper at the heart of me
than the love of woman, and one of these things is the love of horror. I
tell you, it bites as nothing else does in the world. It’s like
absinthe, that turns you sick at the beginning and that you can’t do
without once you have got the taste of it. Do you remember my first
landing? It made me sick enough at the beginning, you know. But now——”
He sat down in a chair and drew it close to Walker. His voice dropped to
a passionate whisper, he locked and unlocked his fingers with feverish
movements, and his eyes shifted and glittered in an unnatural
excitement.

“It’s like going down to hell and coming up again and wanting to go down
again. Oh, you’d want to go down again. You’d find the whole earth pale.
You’d count the days until you went down again. Do you remember Orpheus?
I think he looked back, not to see if Eurydice was coming after him, but
because he knew it was the last glimpse he would get of hell.” At that
he broke off and began to chant in a crazy voice, wagging his head and
swaying his body to the rhythm of the lines—

    Quum subita incautum dementia cepit amantem
    Ignoscenda quidem scirent si ignoscere manes;
    Restitit Eurydicenque suam jam luce sub ipsa
    Immemor heu! victusque animi respexit.

“Oh, stop that!” cried Walker, and Hatteras laughed. “For God’s sake,
stop it!”

For the words brought back to him in a flash the vision of a classroom
with its chipped desks ranged against the varnished walls, the droning
sound of the form-master’s voice, and the swish of lilac bushes against
the lower window panes on summer afternoons. Then he said, “Oh, go on,
and let’s have done with it.”

Hatteras took up his tale again, and it seemed to Walker that the man
breathed the very miasma of the swamp and infected the room with it. He
spoke of leopard societies, murder clubs, human sacrifices. He had
witnessed them at the beginning, he had taken his share in them at the
last. He told the whole story without shame, with indeed a glowing
enjoyment. He spared Walker no details. He related them in their
loathsome completeness until Walker felt stunned and sick. “Stop,” he
said again, “stop! That’s enough.”

Hatteras, however, continued. He appeared to have forgotten Walker’s
presence. He told the story to himself, for his own amusement, as a
child will, and here and there he laughed, and the mere sound of his
laughter was inhuman. He only came to a stop when he saw Walker hold out
to him a cocked and loaded revolver.

“Well?” he asked. “Well?”

Walker still offered him the revolver.

“There are cases, I think, which neither God’s law nor man’s law seems
to have provided for. There’s your wife, you see, to be considered. If
you don’t take it I shall shoot you myself now, here, and mark you I
shall shoot you for the sake of a boy I loved at school in the old
country.”

Hatteras took the revolver in silence, laid it on the table, fingered it
for a little.

“My wife must never know,” he said.

“There’s the pistol. Outside’s the swamp. The swamp will tell no tales,
nor shall I. Your wife need never know.”

Hatteras picked up the pistol and stood up.

“Good-bye, Jim,” he said, and half pushed out his hand. Walker shook his
head, and Hatteras went out on the verandah and down the steps.

Walker heard him climb over the fence and then followed as far as the
verandah. In the still night the rustle and swish of the undergrowth
came quite clearly to his ears. The sound ceased, and a few minutes
afterwards the muffled crack of a pistol-shot broke the silence like the
tap of a hammer. The swamp, as Walker prophesied, told no tales. Mrs.
Hatteras gave the one explanation of her husband’s disappearance that
she knew, and returned broken-hearted to England. There was some loud
talk about the self-sacrificing energy which makes the English a
dominant race, and there you might think is the end of the story.

But some years later Walker went trudging up the Ogowe River in Congo
Français. He travelled as far as Woermann’s factory in Njob Island, and,
having transacted his business there, pushed up stream in the hope of
opening the upper reaches for trade purposes. He travelled for a hundred
and fifty miles in a little sternwheel steamer. At that point he
stretched an awning over a whale-boat, embarked himself, his banjo and
eight blacks from the steamer, and rowed for another fifty miles. There
he ran the boat’s nose into a clay cliff close to a Fan village, and
went ashore to negotiate with the chief.

There was a slip of forest between the village and the river banks, and
while Walker was still dodging the palm creepers which tapestried it he
heard a noise of lamentation. The noise came from the village, and was
general enough to assure him that a chief was dead. It rose in a chorus
of discordant howls, low in note and very long drawn out—wordless,
something like the howls of an animal in pain, and yet human by reason
of their infinite melancholy.

Walker pushed forward, came out upon a hillock fronting the palisade
which closed the entrance to the single street of huts, and passed down
into the village. It seemed as though he had been expected. For from
every hut the Fans rushed out towards him, the men dressed in their
filthiest rags, the women with their faces chalked and their heads
shaved. They stopped, however, on seeing a white man, and Walker knew
enough of their tongue to ascertain that they looked for the coming of
the witch-doctor. The chief, it appeared, had died a natural death, and
since the event is of sufficiently rare occurrence in the Fan country,
it had promptly been attributed to witchcraft, and the witch-doctor had
been sent for to discover the criminal. The village was consequently in
a lively state of apprehension, for the end of those who bewitch chiefs
to death is not easy. The Fans, however, politely invited Walker to
inspect the corpse. It lay in a dark hut, packed with the corpse’s
relations, who were shouting to it at the top of their voices on the
off-chance that its spirit might think better of its conduct and return
to the body. They explained to Walker that they had tried all the usual
varieties of persuasion. They had put red pepper into the chief’s eyes
while he was dying; they had propped open his mouth with a stick; they
had burned fibres of the oil-nut under his nose. In fact they had made
his death as uncomfortable as possible, but none the less he had died.

The witch-doctor arrived on the heels of the explanation, and Walker,
since he was powerless to interfere, thought it wise to retire for a
time. He went back to the hillock on the edge of the trees. Thence he
looked across and over the palisade, and had the whole length of the
street within his view.

The witch-doctor entered in from the opposite end to the beating of many
drums. The first thing Walker noticed was that he wore a square-skirted
eighteenth century coat and a tattered pair of brocaded knee breeches on
his bare legs; the second was that he limped—ever so slightly. Still he
limped, and with the right leg. Walker felt a strong desire to see the
man’s face, and his heart thumped within him as he came nearer and
nearer down the street. But his hair was so matted about his cheeks that
Walker could not distinguish a feature. “If I was only near enough to
see his eyes,” he thought. But he was not near enough, nor would it have
been prudent for him to have gone nearer.

The witch-doctor commenced the proceedings by ringing a handbell in
front of every hut. But that method of detection failed to work. The
bell rang successfully at every door. Walker watched the man’s progress,
watched his trailing limb, and began to discover familiarities in his
manner: “Pure fancy,” he argued with himself. “If he had not limped I
should have noticed nothing.”

Then the doctor took a wicker basket, covered with a rough wooden lid.
The Fans gathered in front of him; he repeated their names one after the
other, and at each name he lifted the lid. But that plan appeared to be
no improvement, for the lid never stuck. It came off readily at each
name. Walker, meanwhile, calculated the distance a man would have to
cover who walked across country from Bonny River to the Ogowe, and he
reflected with some relief that the chances were several thousand to one
that any man who made the attempt, be he black or white, would be eaten
on the way.

The witch-doctor turned back the big square cuffs of his sleeves as a
conjurer will do, and again repeated the names. This time, however, at
each name he rubbed the palms of his hands together. Walker was seized
with a sudden longing to rush down into the village and examine the
man’s right forearm for a bullet mark. The longing grew on him. The
witch-doctor went steadily through the list. Walker rose to his feet and
took a step or two down the hillock, when, of a sudden, at one
particular name, the doctor’s hands flew apart and waved wildly about
him. A single cry from a single voice went up out of the group of Fans.
The group fell back and left one man standing alone. He made no defence,
no resistance. Two men came forward and bound his hands and his feet and
his body with tie-tie. Then they carried him within a hut.

“That’s sheer murder,” thought Walker. He could not rescue the victim,
he knew. But he could get a nearer view of the witch-doctor. Already the
man was packing up his paraphernalia. Walker stepped back among the
trees, and running with all his speed, made the circuit of the village.
He reached the further end of the street just as the witch-doctor walked
out into the open.

Walker ran forward a yard or so until he, too, stood plain to see on the
level ground. The witch-doctor did see him and stopped. He stopped only
for a moment and gazed earnestly in Walker’s direction. Then he went on
again towards his own hut in the forest.

Walker made no attempt to follow him. “He has seen me,” he thought. “If
he knows me he will come down to the river bank to-night.” Consequently,
he made the black rowers camp a couple of hundred yards down stream. He
himself remained alone in his canoe.

The night fell noiseless and black, and the enclosing forest made it yet
blacker. A few stars burned in the strip of sky above his head. Those
stars and the glimmering of the clay bank to which the boat was moored
were the only light which Walker had. It was as dark as that night when
Walker waited for Hatteras at the wicket gate.

He placed his gun and a pouch of cartridges on one side, an unlighted
lantern on the other, and then he took up his banjo, and again he
waited. He waited for a couple of hours, until a light crackle as of
twigs snapping came to him out of the forest. Walker struck a chord on
his banjo, and played a hymn tune. He played, “Abide with me,” thinking
that some picture of a home, of a Sunday evening in England’s summer
time, perhaps of a group of girls singing about a piano, might flash
into the darkened mind of the man upon the bank, and draw him as with
cords. The music went tinkling up and down the river, but no one spoke,
no one moved upon the bank. So Walker changed the tune, and played a
melody of the barrel organs and Piccadilly Circus. He had not played
more than a dozen bars, before he heard a sob from the bank, and then
the sound of something sliding down the clay. The next instant, a figure
shone black against the clay. The boat lurched under the weight of a
foot upon the gunwale, and a man plumped down in front of Walker.

“Well, what is it?” asked Walker, as he laid down his banjo and felt for
a match in his pocket.

It seemed as though the words roused the man to a perception that he had
made a mistake. He said as much hurriedly in trade-English, and sprang
up as though he would leap from the boat. Walker caught hold of his
ankle.

“No, you don’t,” said he; “you must have meant to visit me. This isn’t
Henley,” and he jerked the man back into the bottom of the boat.

The man explained that he had paid a visit out of the purest
friendliness.

“You’re the witch-doctor, I suppose,” said Walker.

The other replied that he was, and proceeded to state that he was
willing to give information about much that made white men curious. He
would explain why it was of singular advantage to possess a white man’s
eyeball, and how very advisable it was to kill anyone you caught making
Itung. The danger of passing near a cotton tree which had red earth at
the roots provided a subject which no prudent man should disregard; and
Tando, with his driver ants, was worth conciliating. The witch-doctor
was prepared to explain to Walker how to conciliate Tando. Walker
replied that it was very kind of the witch-doctor, but Tando did not
really worry him. He was, in fact, very much more worried by an
inability to understand how a native so high up the Ogowe River had
learned to speak trade-English.

The witch-doctor waved the question aside, and remarked that Walker must
have enemies. “Pussin bad too much,” he called them. “Pussin woh-woh.
Berrah well! Ah send grand krau-krau and dem pussin die one time.”

Walker could not recollect for the moment any “pussin” whom he wished to
die one time, whether from grand krau-krau or any other disease. “Wait a
bit,” he continued, “there is one man—Dick Hatteras!” and he struck the
match suddenly. The witch-doctor started forward as though to put it
out.

Walker, however, had the door of the lantern open. He set the match to
the wick of the candle, and closed the door fast. The witch-doctor drew
back. Walker lifted the lantern and threw the light on his face. The
witch-doctor buried his face in his hands, and supported his elbows on
his knees. Immediately Walker darted forward a hand, seized the loose
sleeve of the witch-doctor’s coat, and slipped it back along his arm to
the elbow. It was the sleeve of the right arm, and there on the fleshy
part of the forearm was the scar of a bullet.

“Yes,” said Walker. “By God, it is Dick Hatteras!”

“Well?” cried Hatteras, taking his hands from his face. “What the devil
made you tum-tum ‘Tommy Atkins’ on the banjo? Damn you!”

“Dick, I saw you this afternoon.”

“I know, I know. Why on earth didn’t you kill me that night in your
compound?”

“I mean to make up for that mistake to-night!”

Walker took his rifle on to his knee. Hatteras saw the movement, leaned
forward quickly, snatched up the rifle, snatched up the cartridges,
thrust a couple of cartridges into the breech, and handed the loaded
rifle back to his old friend.

“That’s right,” he said. “I remember. ‘There are some cases neither
God’s law nor man’s law has quite made provision for.’” And then he
stopped, with his finger on his lip. “Listen!” he said.

From the depths of the forest there came faintly, very sweetly the sound
of church-bells ringing—a peal of bells ringing at midnight in the heart
of West Africa. Walker was startled. The sound seemed fairy work, so
faint, so sweet was it.

“It’s no fancy, Jim,” said Hatteras, “I hear them every night, and at
matins and vespers. There was a Jesuit monastery here two hundred years
ago. The bells remain, and some of the clothes.” He touched his coat as
he spoke. “The Fans still ring the bells from habit. Just think of it!
Every morning, every evening, every midnight, I hear those bells. They
talk to me of little churches perched on hillsides in the old country,
of hawthorn lanes, and women—English women. English girls—thousands of
miles away, going along them to church. God help me! Jim, have you got
an English pipe?”

“Yes; an English briarwood and some bird’s-eye.”

Walker handed Hatteras his briarwood and his pouch of tobacco. Hatteras
filled the pipe, lit it at the lantern, and sucked at it avidly for a
moment. Then he gave a sigh and drew in the smoke more slowly and yet
more slowly.

“My wife?” he asked at last, in a low voice.

“She is in England. She thinks you dead.”

Hatteras nodded.

“There’s a jar of Scotch whisky in the locker behind you,” said Walker.

Hatteras turned round, lifted out the jar and a couple of tin cups. He
poured whisky into each and handed one to Walker.

“No, thanks,” said Walker. “I don’t think I will.”

Hatteras looked at his companion for an instant. Then he emptied
deliberately both cups over the side of the boat. Next he took the pipe
from his lips. The tobacco was not half consumed. He poised the pipe for
a little in his hand. Then he blew into the bowl and watched the dull
red glow kindle into sparks of flame as he blew. Very slowly he tapped
the bowl against the thwart of the boat until the burning tobacco fell
with a hiss into the water. He laid the pipe gently down and stood up.

“So long, old man,” he said, and sprang out on the clay. Walker turned
the lantern until the light made a disc upon the bank.

“Good-bye, Jim,” said Hatteras, and he climbed up the bank until he
stood in the light of the lantern. Twice Walker raised the rifle to his
shoulder, twice he lowered it. Then he remembered that Hatteras and he
had been at school together.

“Good-bye, Dicky,” he cried, and fired. Hatteras tumbled down to the
boat-side. The blacks down river were roused by the shot. Walker shouted
to them to stay where they were, and as soon as their camp was quiet he
stepped ashore. He filled up the whisky jar with water, tied it to
Hatteras’ feet, shook his hand, and pushed the body into the river. The
next morning he started back to Fernan Vaz.




THE RANSOM

By CUTLIFFE HYNE


Methuen wriggled himself into a corner of the hut, rested his shoulders
against the _adobe_ wall, and made himself as comfortable as the
raw-hide thongs with which he was tied up would permit. “Well, Calvert,”
said he, “I hope you quite realise what an extremely ugly hole we’re
in?”

“Garcia will hang the pair of us before sunset,” I replied, “and that’s
a certainty. My only wonder is we haven’t been strung up before this.”

“You think a rope and a tree’s a sure thing, do you? I wish I could
comfort myself with that idea. I wouldn’t mind a simple gentlemanly dose
of hanging. But there are more things in heaven and earth, Calvert——” He
broke off and whistled drearily.

I moistened my dry, cracked lips, and asked him huskily what he meant.

“Torture, old man. That’s what we’re being saved for, I’m very much
afraid. A Peruvian guerilla is never a gentle-minded animal at the best
of times, and Garcia is noted as being the most vindictive brute to be
found between the Andes and the Pacific. Then if you’ll kindly remember
how you and I have harried him, and shot down his men, and cut off his
supplies, and made his life a torment and a thing of tremors for the
last four weeks, you’ll see he had got a big bill against us. If he’d
hated us less, he’d have had us shot at sight when we were caught; as it
is, I’m afraid he felt that a couple of bullets in hot blood wouldn’t
pay off the score.”

“If he thinks the matter over calmly, he’ll not very well avoid seeing
that if he wipes us out there’ll be reprisals to be looked for.”

“And a fat lot,” replied Methuen grimly, “he’ll care for the chance of
those. If we are put out of the way, he knows quite well that there are
no two other men in the Chilian Service who can keep him on the trot as
we have done. No, sir. We can’t scare Garcia with that yarn. You think
that because we’re alive still there’s hope. Well, I’ve sufficient faith
in my theory for this: If anyone offered me a shot through the head now,
I’d accept it, and risk the chance.”

“You take the gloomy view. Now the man’s face is not altogether cruel.
There’s humour in it.”

“Then probably he’ll show his funniness when he takes it out of us,”
Methuen retorted. “Remember that punishment in the ‘Mikado’? That had
‘something humorous’ in it. Boiling oil, if I don’t forget.”

Involuntarily I shuddered, and the raw-hide ropes cut deeper into my
wrists and limbs. I had no great dread of being killed in the ordinary
way, or I should not have entered the Chilian Army in the middle of a
hot war; and I was prepared to risk the ordinary woundings of action in
return for the excitements of the fight. But to be caught, and held a
helpless prisoner, and be deliberately tortured to death by every
cruelty this malignant fiend, Garcia, could devise, was a possibility I
had not counted on before. In fact, as the Peruvians had repeatedly
given out that they would offer no quarter to us English in the Chilian
Service, we had all of us naturally resolved to die fighting rather than
be taken. And, indeed, this desperate feeling paid very well, since on
two separate occasions when Methuen and myself had been cornered with
small bodies of men, and would have surrendered if we could have been
guaranteed our lives, we went at them each time so furiously that on
each occasion we broke through and escaped. But one thinks nothing of
the chances of death and maiming at those times. There is a glow within
one’s ribs which scares away all trace of fear.

“I suppose there’s no chance of rescue?” I said.

“None whatever,” said Methuen, with a little sigh. “Think it over,
Calvert. We start out from the _hacienda_ with an escort of five men,
sing out our adios, and ride away to enjoy a ten days’ leave in the
mountains. The troops are left to recruit; for ten days they can drop us
out of mind. Within twelve hours of our leaving them, Garcia cleverly
ambushes us in a cañon where not three people pass in a year. The poor
beggars who form our escort are all _gastados_.”

“Yes, but are you sure of that?” I interrupted. “I saw them all drop off
their horses when we were fired upon, but that doesn’t prove they were
dead. Some might have been merely wounded, and when the coast cleared,
it is just possible they crawled back to our post with the news. Still,
I own it’s a small chance.”

“And you may divest yourself of even that thin rag of hope. Whilst you
were being slung senseless across a horse, I saw that man without the
ears go round with a _machete_, and—well, when the brute had done, there
was no doubt about the poor fellows being as dead as lumps of mud. Ah,
and talk of the devil——”

The earless man swung into the hut.

“_Buenas_, Señores,” said he mockingly. “You will have the honour now of
being tried, and I’m sure I hope you will be pleased with the result.”

“I suppose we shall find that out later,” said Methuen with a yawn; “but
anyway, I don’t think much of your hospitality. A cup of wine now after
that ugly ride we’ve had to-day would come in very handy, or even a nip
of _aguardiente_ would be better than nothing.”

“I fancy it might be a waste of good liquor,” was the answer; “but you
must ask Garcia. He will see to your needs.”

A guard of twelve ragged fellows, armed with carbine and _machete_, had
followed the earless man into the hut, and two of them, whilst he
talked, had removed the seizings from our knees and ankles. They helped
us to our feet, and we walked with them into the dazzling sunshine
outside.

“I’ll trouble some of you for my hat,” said Methuen, when the glare
first blazed down on him; and then, as no one took any notice of the
request, he lurched against the earless man with a sudden swerve, and
knocked his sombrero on to the brown baked turf. “Well, I’ll have yours,
you flea-ridden _ladron_,” said he; “it’s better than nothing at all.
Pick up the foul thing, and shake it, and put it on my head.”

The guerilla bared his teeth like an animal, and drew a pistol. I
thought he would have shot my comrade out of hand, and by his look I
could see that Methuen expected it. Indeed, he had deliberately invited
the man to that end. But, either because the nearness of Garcia and fear
of his discipline stayed him, or through thought of a finer vengeance
which was to come, the earless man contented himself by dealing a
battery of kicks and oaths, and bidding our guards to ward us more
carefully.

In this way, then, we walked along a path between two fields of vines,
and passed down the straggling street of the village which the guerillas
had occupied, and brought up in a little _plaza_ which faced the
white-walled chapel. In the turret a bell was tolling dolefully with
slow strokes, and as the sound came to me through the heated air, it did
not require much imagination to frame it into an omen. In the centre of
the _plaza_ was a vast magnolia tree, filled with scented wax-like
flowers, and splashed with cones of coral-pink.

We drew up before the _piazza_ of the principal house. Seated under its
shade in a split-cane rocker, Garcia awaited us, a small, meagre, dark
man, with glittering teeth, and fingers lemon-coloured from cigarette
juice.

He stared at us and spat; and the trial, such as it was, began.

I must confess that the proceedings astonished me. Animus there
certainly was; the guerillas as a whole were disposed to give us short
shrift; but their chief insisted on at least some parade of justice. The
indictment was set forward against us: We had shot, hanged, and harried,
and in fact used all the harshness of war. Had we been Chilians in the
Chilian Service, this might have been pardonable; but we were aliens
from across the sea; mere freebooters, fighting, not for a country, but
each for his own hand; and as such we were beyond the pale of military
courtesy. We had earned a punishment. Had we any word to speak why this
should not be given?

Garcia looked towards us expectantly, and then set himself to roll a
fresh cigarette.

I shrugged my shoulders. It seemed useless to say anything.

Methuen said: “Look here, sir! You’ve got us, there is no mistake about
that. It seems to me you’ve two courses before you, and they are these:
Either, you can kill us, more or less barbarously, in which case you
will raise a most pestilential hunt at your heels; or, you can put us up
to ransom. Now neither Calvert here, nor myself, are rich men; but if
you choose to let us go with sound skins, we’re prepared to pay ten
thousand Chilian dollars apiece for our passports. Now, does that strike
you?”

Garcia finished rolling his cigarette, and lit it with care. He inhaled
a deep breath of smoke.

“Señor,” he said (the words coming out from between his white teeth with
little puffs of vapour), “you do not appear to understand. You fight as
a soldier of fortune, and I am merely in arms as a patriot. I am no
huckster to traffic men’s lives for money, nor am I a timorous fool to
be scared into robbing a culprit of his just dues.”

“Very well, then,” said Methuen, “murder the pair of us.”

Garcia smiled unpleasantly. “You may be a very brave man,” said he, “but
you are not a judicious one. To a judge less just than myself this
insolence might have added something to your punishment; but as it is I
shall overlook what you have said, and only impose the penalty I had
determined upon before you spoke.”

He lifted his thin yellow fingers, and drew a fresh breath of smoke.
Then he waved the cigarette towards the magnolia tree in the centre of
the _plaza_. “You see that bough which juts out towards the chapel?”

“It’s made for a gallows,” said Methuen.

“Precisely,” said the guerilla, “and it will be used as one inside ten
minutes. I shall string one of you up by the neck, to dangle there
between heaven and earth. The other man shall have a rifle and
cartridges, and if, standing where he does now, he can cut with a bullet
the rope with which his friend is hanged, then you shall both go free.”

“I hear you say it,” said Methuen. “In other words you condemn one of us
to be strangled slowly without chance of reprieve. But what guarantee
have we that you will not slit the second man’s throat after you have
had your sport out of him?”

Garcia sprang to his feet with a stamp of passion, and the chair rolled
over backwards. “You foul adventurer!” he cried. “You paid man-killer!”
and then he broke off with a bitter “Pah!” and folded his arms, and for
a minute held silence till he got his tongue in hand again. “Señor,” he
said coldly, “my country’s wrongs may break my heart, but they can never
make me break my word. I may be a hunted guerilla, but I still remain a
gentleman.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Methuen.

“We will now,” continued Garcia icily, “find out which of you two will
play which part. Afterwards I will add another condition which may lend
more skill to what follows. I will not coerce you. Kindly choose between
yourselves which of you will hang and which will shoot.”

My comrade shrugged his shoulders. “I like you, Calvert, old man,” said
he, “but I’m not prepared to dance on nothing for you.”

“It would be simplest to toss for exit,” I said.

“Precisely; but, my dear fellow, I have both hands trussed up, and no
coin.”

“Pray let me assist you,” said Garcia. “Señor Calvert, may I trouble you
for an expression of opinion?”

He leant over the edge of the _piazza_, and span a dollar into the air.
I watched it with a thumping heart, and when for an instant it paused, a
dazzling splash of brightness against the red-tiled roof, I cried:
“Heads!”

The coin fell with a faint thud in the dust a yard from my feet.

“Well?” said Methuen.

“I congratulate you, old fellow. I swing.”

He frowned and made no reply. Garcia’s voice broke the silence.
“_Bueno_, Señor Methuen,” he said. “I advise you to shoot straight, or
you will not get home even now. You remember I said there was still
another condition. Well, here you are: you must cut your friend down
with a bullet before he is quite dead, or I’ll string you up beside
him.”

Methuen let up a short laugh. “Remember what I said about that fellow in
‘the Mikado,’ Calvert? You see where the ‘humour’ comes in? We’ve had
that coin spun for nothing. You and I must change positions.”

“Not at all. I take what I’ve earned.”

“But I say yes. It works this way: I took it that the man who was
hanging stood a delicate chance anyway, and I didn’t feel generous
enough to risk it. But now the Señor here has put in the extra clause,
the situation is changed altogether. You aren’t a brilliant shot, old
man, but you may be able to cut me down with a bullet if you remember
what you’re firing for, and shoot extra straight. But it’s a certain
thing that I couldn’t do it if I blazed away till Doomsday. The utmost I
could manage would be to fluke a pellet into your worthy self. So you
see I must wear the hemp, and you must apply your shoulder to the rifle
butt. Laugh, you fool,” he added in English. “Grin, and say something
funny, or these brutes will think we care for them.”

But I was incapable of further speech. I could have gibed at the
prospect of being hanged myself, but the horror of this other ordeal
turned me sick and dumb. And at what followed I looked on mutely.

There was a well at one side of the plaza, and the earless man went and
robbed the windlass of its rope. With clumsy landsman’s fingers he
formed a noose, took it to the great magnolia tree, and threw the loose
end over the projecting branch. The bell of the little white chapel
opposite went on tolling gravely, and they marched my friend up to his
fate over the sun-baked dust. They passed a thong round his ankles; the
earless man fitted the noose to his throat; a dozen of the guerillas
with shouts and laughter laid hold of the hauling part of the line; and
then a voice from behind fell upon my ear. Garcia was speaking to me.
With a strain I dragged my eyes away from the glare of the _plaza_, and
listened. He was smiling wickedly.

“——, and so your pluck has oozed away?” he was saying, as the cigarette
smoke billowed up from between the white walls of his teeth. “Well, of
course, if you do not care for the game, you can throw up your hand at
once. You’ve only to say the word, and you can be dangling on that bough
there inside a couple of minutes. It’s quite strong enough to carry more
fruit than it will bear just now. But it’s rather hard on your friend
not to try——”

My wits came to me again. “You dolt!” I cried; “how can I shoot with my
arms trussed up like this? If the whole thing is not a mockery, cut me
adrift and give me a rifle.”

He beckoned to one of his men, and the fellow came up and cut off the
lashings from my wrists and elbows; and then, with a sour smile, he
motioned to some of the others, who drew near and held their weapons at
the ready. “I dare wager, Señor Calvert,” he said, “that if you’d me for
a mark you would not score a miss. So I wish to insure that you do not
shoot in this direction.” He raised his voice, and shouted across the
baking sunlight: “Quite ready here, _amigos_. So up with the target.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Now up to this point I am free to own that since our capture I had cut a
pretty poor figure. I had not whined, but at the same time I had not
seen my way to put on Methuen’s outward show of careless brazen courage.
But when I watched the guerillas tighten on the rope and sway him up
till his stretched-out feet swung a couple of hand-spans above the
ground, then my coolness returned to me, and my nerves set like icicles
in their sockets. He was sixty yards away, and at that distance, the
well-rope dwindled to the bigness of a shoemaker’s thread. Moreover, the
upper two-thirds of it was almost invisible, because it hung before a
background of shadows. But the eighteen inches above my poor friend’s
head stood out clear and distinct against the white walls of the chapel
beyond, and as it swayed to pulsing of the body beneath, it burnt itself
upon my eyesight till all the rest of the world was blotted out in a red
haze. I never knew before how thoroughly a man could concentrate
himself.

They handed me the rifle, loaded and cocked. It was a single-shot
Winchester, and I found out afterwards, though I did not know it then,
that either through fiendish wish to further hamper my aim, or through
pure forgetfulness, they had left the sights cocked up at three hundred
yards. But that did not matter; the elevation was a detail of minor
import; and besides, I was handling the weapon as a game shot fires,
with head up, and eyes glued on the mark, and rifle-barrel following the
eyes by instinct alone. You must remember that I had no stationary mark
to aim at. My poor comrade was writhing and swaying at the end of his
tether, and the well-rope swung hither and thither like some contorted
pendulum.

Once I fired, twice I fired, six times, ten times, and still the rope
remained uncut, and the bullets rattled harmlessly against the white
walls of the chapel beyond. With the eleventh shot came the tinkle of
broken glass, and the bell, after a couple of hurried nervous clangs,
ceased tolling altogether. With the thirteenth shot a shout went up from
the watching crowd. I had stranded the rope, and the body which dangled
beneath the magnolia tree began slowly to gyrate.

Then came a halt in the firing. I handed the Winchester back to the
fellow who was reloading, but somehow or other the exploded cartridge
had jammed in the breach. I danced and raged before him in my passion of
hurry, and the cruel brutes round yelled in ecstasies of merriment. Only
Garcia did not laugh. He re-rolled a fresh cigarette, with his thin
yellow fingers, and leisurely rocked himself in the split-cane chair.
The man could not have been more unmoved if he had been overlooking a
performance of Shakespeare.

At last I tore the Winchester from the hands of the fellow who was
fumbling with it, and clawed at the jammed cartridge myself, breaking my
nails and smearing the breech-lock with blood. If it had been welded
into one solid piece, it could scarcely have been firmer. But the thrill
of the moment gave my hands the strength of pincers. The brass case
moved from side to side; it began to crumple; and I drew it forth and
hurled it from me, a mere ball of shapeless, twisted metal. Then one of
the laughing brutes gave me another cartridge, and once more I
shouldered the loaded weapon.

The mark was easier now. The struggles of my poor friend had almost
ceased, and though the well-rope still swayed, its movements were
comparatively rhythmical, and to be counted upon. I snapped down the
sights, put the butt-plate to my shoulder, and cuddled the stock with my
cheek. Here for the first time was a chance of something steadier than a
snap-shot.

I pressed home the trigger as the well-rope reached one extremity of its
swing. Again a few loose ends sprang from the rope, and again the body
began slowly to gyrate. But was it Methuen I was firing to save, or was
I merely wasting shot to cut down a mass of cold dead clay?

I think that more agony was compressed for me into a few minutes then
than most men meet with in a lifetime. Even the onlooking guerillas were
so stirred that for the first time their gibing ceased, and two of them
of their own accord handed me cartridges. I slipped one home and closed
the breech-lock. The perspiration was running in a stream from my chin.
Again I fired. Again the well-rope was snipped, and I could see the
loosened strands ripple out as a snake unwraps itself from a branch.

One more shot. God in heaven, I missed! Why was I made to be a murderer
like this?

Garcia’s voice came to me coldly. “Your last chance, Señor. I can be
kept waiting here no longer. And I think you are wasting time. Your
friend seems to have quitted us already.”

Another cartridge. I sank to one knee and rested my left elbow on the
other. The plaza was hung in breathless silence. Every eye was strained
to see the outcome of the shot. The men might be inhuman in their
cruelty, but they were human enough in their curiosity.

The body span to one end of its swing: I held my fire. It swung back,
and the rifle muzzle followed. Like some mournful pendulum it passed
through the air, and then a glow of certainty filled me like a drink. I
knew I could not miss that time; and I fired; and the body, in a limp
and shapeless heap, fell to the ground.

With a cry I threw the rifle from me and raced across the sunlit dust.
Not an arm was stretched out to stop me. Only when I had reached my
friend and loosened that horrible ligature from his neck, did I hear
voices clamouring over my fate.

“And now this other Inglese, your excellency,” the earless man said.
“Shall we shoot him from here, or shall we string him up in the other’s
place?”

But the answer was not what the fellow expected. Garcia replied to him
in a shriek of passion. “You foul, slaughtering brute,” he cried,
“another offer like that and I’ll pistol you where you stand. You heard
me pass my word: do you dream that I could break it? They have had their
punishment, and if we see one another again, the meeting will be none of
my looking for. We leave this _puebla_ in five minutes. See to your
duties. Go.”

The words came to me dully through the heated air. I was almost mad with
the thought that my friend was dead, and that the fault was mine,
_mine_, mine alone!

I listened for his breaths; they did not come. I felt for a heart-throb;
there was not so much as a flutter. His neck was seared by a ghastly
ring. His face was livid. And yet I would not admit even then that he
was dead. With a cry I seized his arms, and moved them first above his
head till he looked like a man about to dive, and then clapped them
against his sides, repeating this an infinite number of times, praying
that the airs I drew through his lungs might blow against some
smouldering spark of humanity, and kindle it once more into life.

The perspiration rolled from me; my mouth was as a sandpit; the heavy
scent of the magnolia blossoms above sickened me with its strength; the
sight departed from my eyes. I could see nothing beyond a small circle
of the hot dust around, which waved and danced in the sunlight, and the
little green lizards which came and looked at me curiously, and forgot
that I was human.

And then, of a sudden, my comrade gave a sob, and his chest began to
heave of itself without my laborious aid. And after that for a while I
knew very little more. The sun-baked dust danced more wildly in the
sunshine, the lizards changed to darker colours, the light went out, and
when next I came to my senses Methuen was sitting up with one hand
clutching at his throat, looking at me wildly.

“What has happened?” he gasped. “I thought I was dead, and Garcia had
hanged me. Garcia——No one is here. The _puebla_ seems deserted. Calvert,
tell me.”

“They have gone,” I said. “We are alive. We will get away from here as
soon as you can walk.”

He rose to his feet, swaying. “I can walk now. But what about you?”

“I am an old man,” I said, “wearily old. In the last two hours I have
grown a hundred years. But I think I can walk also. Yes, look, I am
strong. Lean on my arm. Do you see that broken window in the chapel?
When I fired through that, the bell stopped tolling.”

“Let us go inside the chapel for a minute before we leave the village,”
said Methuen. “We have had a very narrow escape, old man. I—I—feel
thankful.”

There was a faint smell of incense inside that little white-walled
chapel. The odour of it lingers by me still.




THE OTHER TWIN

By EDWIN PUGH


It was the hour of siesta. Santa Plaza lay blistering, sweltering, in
the white-hot glare of the noontide sun. The dust lay thick on the roads
and terraces, the copings and the roofs of the houses, like untrodden
snow. The sea shone like a shield of brass reflecting a brassy sky.
There was not the least sign of movement anywhere.

Then Franker, the Englishman, came limping along the Lido, sat down in
the shadow of the old sea-wall, and examined with grave solicitude a
swollen and blistered foot swathed in filthy, blood-stained rags.

This Franker had once been a well-known figure in all the ports of those
far-off southern seas. It was whispered that in the long ago he had been
a gentleman. Now he was just the sport of circumstance, a jack of all
trades, so long as they were indifferent honest; sailorman, stock-rider,
storekeeper, croupier, crimp, anything that happened along in his hour
of need. But lately he had disappeared from his old haunts, and it was
unlikely that any of his old acquaintances would have recognised in that
ragged and gaunt, unwashed and black-bearded wastrel on the beach the
spruce adventurer of former days.

He had the look of a hunted creature. There was fear in his eyes. Even
as he sat there nursing his aching foot, parched and hungry, haggard and
weary, his head was perpetually turning from side to side, and ever and
again he looked over his shoulder, to left and right, as if he were in
dread expectation that at any moment some enemy might creep upon him
unawares. And, indeed, he was in parlous case. For he had killed a man,
not in itself an exceptional incident of course—only in this instance
the man was one of twins, and the other twin had vowed a vendetta
against him.

These twins were named Bibi and Bobo, and the extraordinary likeness
between them was accentuated by their habit of always dressing alike,
talking alike, thinking alike. There were some who said that they could
distinguish one twin from the other, but these were foolish,
vainglorious men. The thing was manifestly impossible. Even Franker did
not know whether it was Bibi or Bobo he had killed.

It happened in a gambling den in Suranim, up country. They were playing
the childish game of boule, and some silly dispute had arisen. Franker
had lost his temper, and knocked one of the twins down. For once in a
way the other twin had not been present, or most assuredly Franker would
have been chived in the back before he could turn round. As it was, he
saw his fallen adversary rise slowly, slowly draw a red smear across his
face with the back of his hand, and then quicken on a sudden into antic
activity. There was the flash of a knife. Franker dodged. The other men
stood back to watch the fun—not to see fair play. Fair play was a jewel
of little value in the estimation of that crew. A moment Franker
hesitated, then whipped out his gun and fired point-blank at the twin.
He dropped dead. Before the smoke had cleared away or the echoes of the
report had subsided into stillness, Franker had left the gambling-house
and was running for his life into the wilderness.

There, for three days, he lost himself. That was his idea: to lose
himself. He wanted to be lost, utterly lost to the world. For he knew
that so long as the other twin lived his own chances of living were
reduced to the last recurring decimal. Bibi or Bobo—whichever it
was—would never rest until he had wrought vengeance on his brother’s
murderer. Though it wasn’t a murder, of course, but a duel in which each
had taken the same risk of death. If Franker had not killed Bibi or
Bobo, Bibi or Bobo would have killed him. He wished he knew which of the
twins it was he had killed. So idiotic not to know. So confusing. It
made your head ache, wondering. And in your sleep you dreamed of
horrible, two-headed monsters coming at you crabwise, with arms and legs
all round them.

On the third day of his sojourn in the wilderness the other twin had
very nearly caught him napping. He had sunk down exhausted in a sandy
hollow fringed with palms, and for a moment closed his eyes. And in that
moment the redness of his lowered eyelids had been suddenly clouded by a
shadow. In an instant he was on his feet, wide awake again. And there
was the figure of the other twin in the act of flinging itself upon him.
He fired an aimless shot at that black apparition, then bolted.

And all that day and all that night he had wound and wound an intorted
course through virgin forest, hoping thus to shake off his pursuer. And
all that day and all that night he had known that his pursuer followed
him, shadowed him, stalked him, with a merciless delight in that
persecution born of an insatiate hate.

Next day Franker, having doubled on his tracks, found himself on a
quayside, and had shipped as a forecastle hand on an old iron hooker
bound for the Caribs with a mixed cargo. He never knew or cared what
that mixed cargo consisted of. He was too busy sleeping, when he wasn’t
too sore from being kicked into wakefulness, to bother about trivial
details. He could have left the ship at the first of the Caribs, but an
island is a prison, and his yearning was for wide free spaces where a
man can at least get a run for his money. So he had returned on the
hooker, and had been paid off with the lurid compliments of the purser,
and was once more adrift.

But the story of his wanderings and adventures over the greater part of
the southern hemisphere would fill many books. Months passed, a year
passed, two years, and all the while Franker was dogged by the avenger.
Ever and again, just when he thought that he had at last shaken off that
deadly pursuit, the other twin turned up again. And gradually it was
borne in upon him that the other twin might have killed him long since
had he wished. He had had numberless opportunities, and had not taken
them. This puzzled Franker a bit, and then he hit upon the truth. There
is more joy in the hunting than in the killing. There is more cat-like
satisfaction in the slow torture of its victim than in the crunching up
of its dead bones. He began to think of the other twin as a cat-like
creature, exercising a cruelty of the mind far more subtle and devilish
than any mere crude cruelty of tooth and claw. When the avenger tired of
the sport, then he would strike. And not till then. Meanwhile, Franker
was condemned to a daily round of unremitting vigilance, ceaseless
watchfulness, unending apprehension.

He had been a big man, strong and fearless, with bold eyes and the voice
of a bull. Now he had become a shuffling, whimpering, trembling thing of
nerves and tears, who dared look no one in the face lest it should be
the face of his enemy. In the old days, with no other resources than his
health and vigour, bodily and mental, he had used to take chances with
an overbearing recklessness, and thrust and curse his way through the
mob of other roustabouts like unto himself, with whom he had fought for
the means of existence. And he had been—he realised that now—quite happy
then. There were times when he told himself that he would stand fast
against his pursuer, force him into the open, then turn upon him and
rend him, and so make an end of this long-drawn-out agony. But when the
moment came his wits fled, he was distraught and afraid, he could think
only of flight.

It was now a full fortnight since he had seen Bibi—or Bobo. But there
had been other fortnights during which he had not seen him. And always,
inevitably, he had reappeared. So would he reappear again.

Franker gazed out from the shadow of the old seawall across the
glittering, limitless sea, and wished that he might drown himself in its
depths. But he was not yet quite mad enough for that. Though life had
become as a nightmare to him, and death as the awakening to the cool,
calm peace of dawn; though life offered nothing but torment, and death
offered surcease of pain, he still clung to life. It was in the nature
of his being to cling to life. He was not of the stuff that gives in.

But if only he could rest awhile! If only he could lie still in some
sheltered place, safe from his enemy, and thus regain his old control
over his faculties, recuperate his strength!

At the western end of the Lido, where the coast swept in a wide curve to
the lighthouse and the harbour, there was a long white wall. And as he
remembered what that wall enclosed, what it signified, Franker had an
inspiration. His face was suddenly irradiated. He laughed aloud. What a
fool!—God in Heaven!—what a fool he had been not to think of that
before! He rose on tremulous legs and began to shamble along the beach
towards that far-off haven of refuge.

The prison official, in his gaudy livery of gold and scarlet and his
immense cocked hat, conducted him to the chief inspector’s office.

“Yes?”

Franker desired to be sworn. He had a crime to confess: it had troubled
his conscience for years.

“Yes?”

An affair of opium smuggling, ship’s papers forged, and customs burked.
It was a true story enough, only Franker himself had not been implicated
in it. The police had been so long on the track of that crime they had
given it up as hopeless. And now here there was the chief criminal, a
fine fat bird, dropping into the net of his own free will. The chief
inspector rubbed his dry palms together as he thought of the luscious
report he would send to the magistracy.

Then he committed Franker to the custody of another prison official,
less gaudy than the first, and Franker was led away to the cell.

This was a big, bare, barn-like place of stone, that sometimes contained
as many as twenty prisoners huddled indiscriminately together. But just
now crime was slack. Franker had the whole cell to himself.

As the gaoler slammed the door on him he fell on his knees with a
weeping face, and offered up thanks for this blessed refuge, this safe
harbour of retreat from his relentless enemy, this sanctuary. Here, at
last, he was free from the fear of pursuit. Here, during the year or two
of his imprisonment, he could rest and sleep, rest his mind and find his
sleep that sweet relief from the tortures of the last two years which
would gradually restore him again to health and sanity.

Even as he prayed he toppled down face forward and lay there quite
still, breathing softly, evenly, in peaceful slumber.

The light was fading, there was a red stain of sunset on the wall when
he awoke. It was a rattling and clanging of bolts and chains that had
roused him. He sat up, blinking stupidly, at first not knowing where he
was. Then, as he remembered, he shed tears of joy again, and clasped his
hands together in an access of delight.

The sounds drew nearer. The heavy, barred door of the prison chamber was
flung open. He saw the burly figure of a gaoler over-shadowing another
smaller figure that seemed to be precipitated from behind into the misty
vastness of the cell. It fell head-long at Franker’s feet, and lay there
stirring feebly like a wounded beetle.

Franker watched his writhings ... and a slow, cold horror grew upon him.

His fellow-prisoner raised himself on all fours, then sat up and
squatted there, cross-legged, like a Chinese bonze.

It was Bibi—or Bobo.

Franker uttered a cry.

“And hast thou found me, O mine enemy!”

The other twin had leapt to his feet. He shrank back, crouching,
snarling, spitting like a cat. The moment for the happy dispatch was
come at last. He drew his knife and fingered its keen blade lovingly,
then came mincing on tiptoe towards Franker.

As Franker’s hands closed round his throat he drove the blade deep into
Franker’s breast.




THE NARROW WAY

By R. ELLIS ROBERTS




                                   1




At his confirmation he had annoyed the Bishop of London (at that time it
was Frederick Temple) by insisting on taking the additional names of
Alfonso Mary Alexander. He had surprised him by the resolute manner in
which he had answered his questions about the origin of taking names at
confirmation; and enraged him by his explanation that he desired to be
called Alexander in memory of that great Pope, the Lord Alexander VI,
who had put the whole Christian world under an obligation by his
discovery of the devotion of the Angelus. “This devotion,” the boy
murmured to the astounded Bishop, “as your Lordship no doubt knows, has
been from eternity the privilege of the Holy Angels, and was not
entrusted to men until the proximity of the horrible heresies of the
German reformation rendered the patronage of Mary necessary for the
protection of her son.” The Bishop’s chaplain had tried to prevent Frank
Lascelles’ indiscretion; but Temple’s abrupt gesture had hindered his
efforts. When Lascelles finished the Bishop gazed at him in silence for
a minute.

“Well, I hope you’ll live to grow out of this foolery. But you know your
rights and you shall have ’em.”

Temple, was, as his old foes had discovered years before, eminently
just.

More than twenty years had passed since that confirmation. Frank Alfonso
Mary Alexander Lascelles had gone to Oxford and to Ely, and had been
ordained to a small country parish in that diocese. After two years of
his curacy, an injudicious layman presented him to the living of S. Uny
and S. Petroc in the north of Cornwall. He had been there now for over
nineteen years. When he had come he found his church empty; now it was
full. It was full of children and boys. Occasionally a few mothers, and,
when he was sober, the village drunkard, and, when she was penitent, the
prostitute from the Church Town, came to Mass as well; but generally the
Church of S. Uny, down by the beach, was filled only by children and
boys.

This result Frank Lascelles had been long in attaining. The parish he
served was predominantly Methodist. He had found a congregation of
three—the publican, the ostler of the hotel, and an old maiden lady who
rang the bell, and called herself the pew-opener. Lascelles soon shocked
the respectability of the publican and the Protestantism of the ostler:
but the old lady remained faithful to him. She did not stir when he had
the three-decker cut down, and a new altar reared at the East end. She
seemed to welcome the great images, Our Lady of the Immaculate
Conception, The Sacred Heart, S. Joseph and S. Anthony which Lascelles
put up in his church. She did not care whether he said Mass in Latin or
English; and incense and holy water both left her tranquil. It was
otherwise with the village. Though the Methodists never entered the
church, except for a wedding or a funeral, they thought they had a right
to control its services and its priest. There were stormy Easter
vestries; there was a Protestant churchwarden. One horrible day the
fishermen broke into the church and took out the images and threw them
down the cliff: by next week new ones were in their places. Lascelles
was boycotted by his parishioners, except a few would-be bold spirits;
and was outlawed, in the genial English way, by his Bishop; but he stuck
at his job, went on saying offices to an empty church, and singing Mass
to his pew-opener and an occasional visitor. Then after five years or so
the change began.

It was not along the usual lines of such changes. Generally priests of
Lascelles’ religion are eager, masculine people who soon win over the
more turbulent elements in the parish, and put them, too, in search of
the great adventure of Christianity. But Lascelles, though he had grown
up, still remained the boy who had chosen Liguori and Alexander for his
patrons. He was obsessed with the reality of the spiritual world, of
good and evil. His pillow was wet with the tears he shed for the sins of
his parish. He was horrified at the evil of the world, and yet
constitutionally unable to defy it in any active way. He had only one
strong human affection—and that was a great love for children.

At first this was not reciprocated. His odd figure, his shuffling walk,
his stoop and his occasional outbursts of anger produced ridicule and
fear rather than love. Then one child somehow found how large the heart
of him was; and then another, and then another. He had won the children.
But this would have availed him little had it not been for the arrival
at S. Uny of the Rev. Paul Trengrowse. Mr. Trengrowse came to minister
to the Primitives about three years after Lascelles’ appointment to the
parish. He was young, keen, and sincere. He had not been long in the
village when the leading members of his congregation told him of the
sins of the parish priest, and horrors of the parish church. Trengrowse
prayed for light. He disliked interfering with the affairs of an alien
church; but, if half he was told was true, Lascelles must be fought. So
he paid a visit to the church, which was always open, and was duly
distressed at the idols he saw there.

As he was gazing at the smirking fatuity of S. Anthony, he heard a
footstep. It was Lascelles who was coming from the sacristy to the
altar. Fortunately, before he began Mass, Lascelles looked down the
church and saw “a congregation.” So he said Mass in English.

Now Trengrowse was no ordinary minister. He was a man of personal
holiness, and of real devotion; and that in his spirit which was sincere
and mystical recognised in the Popish-seeming priest, muttering his
Mass, a kindred soul. Lascelles’ absorption in his work, his grave, yet
joyful solemnity, his keen sense of the other world made an immense
effect on Trengrowse. The Mass proceeded, and when Trengrowse heard
“Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven,” he
felt that he had had the answer to his prayer. This man was a Christian,
however erroneous he might be in details.

So the next Sunday the Primitives who were hoping for a strong sermon
against the Scarlet Woman, were disagreeably surprised. “Mr. Lascelles
may be wrong. I think he is wrong, sadly wrong, in many things; but he
du love the Lord, and he du worship Him. And, brethren, no man calls
Jesus Lord save by the Holy Ghost. Let us pray for Mr. Lascelles and the
church people of S. Uny; and that we may all be led along the narrow way
to everlasting life.”

Had Trengrowse been a man of less character he might have failed in his
defence of Lascelles. But he was an acceptable preacher, and a man whose
plain love of his religion it was impossible to doubt. So, first with
grumbling, later with a ready acquiescence, the villagers of S. Uny
followed his lead.

The result was odd. Lascelles attracted the children more and more; and
his services attracted them. This worried Trengrowse not a little; but
when one of his congregation said scornfully, “Those bit games to the
church be only fit for babes,” he looked gravely at him and replied,
“Ah! Eli, but the book says ‘Unless ye become as little children.’” This
silenced Eli, but it did not silence Trengrowse’s own heart. How was it
Lascelles could do anything with children, a good deal with boys up to
fifteen or so, and nothing with men and women, and little with girls?
Lascelles’ own explanation was simple. His Bishop would not confirm his
children until they were thirteen. Lascelles presented them year after
year when they were six or seven. He preached an amazing sermon on the
three great aids to the Devil in the parish of S. Uny—and the three
heads of his sermon were: Lust, Hypocrisy and the Lord Bishop. The more
respectable of the neighbouring clergy were furious, but the Bishop, who
was a simple, humble-minded man (quite unlike to the ex-head-master who
had inducted Lascelles), refused to take any notice of the attack; but
also refused to relax his rule about the age of confirmation candidates.
The Archdeacon told Lascelles that his parish was the plague-spot of the
diocese, and Lascelles retorted that in a mass of corruption any sign of
health looks ominous and unusual. But, although he kept up a brave front
to the disapprovers, his failure with his people galled him. He would
not have minded if they had still been actively hostile. But that had
long ceased. They were now fond of their priest. They liked and shared
in his notoriety. They supported him against the officials; and when a
malicious Protestant from London attempted to stir up a revolt against
Lascelles, he was promptly put into the harbour; and Trengrowse started
a petition to the Bishop, expressing the affection “all we, whether
church people or Methodists, feel for Mr. Lascelles.”

Lascelles’ philosophy refused to permit him to see in his failure
evidences of his incapacity for his work. He had the proud humility of
the perfect priest. Regarding himself as a mere channel for divine
grace, he forgot that his personality was so distinctive that it
affected the way in which grace reached his people. Once an old friend
had tried to make him see this; but the task was hopeless.

“My dear fellow,” said Lascelles, “I don’t see what you mean. All they
want is the Gospel. And that I give them. I say Mass for them. I will
hear their confessions. I instruct them. I lead their devotions. All
beside is mere human embellishment. No doubt a more competent man would
be more pleasing to them, but he could not do more than give them the
Gospel, could he?”

On All Souls’ Day, 1912, Lascelles was depressed. Early that morning he
had gone up to the cemetery, and said a Requiem in the little chapel.
Then there had been the early Mass at 8.30 in church. The church had
been full. Not only were all his children there, but there were a good
many fathers and mothers: for the services on the day of the dead
appealed to a deep human instinct with a power which not even Lascelles
could spoil. The Dies Iræ, sung in Latin, had sounded oddly from a
congregation so predominantly childish: and Lascelles had preached a
short sermon on the “Significance of Death.”

“We exaggerate the importance of death. It is to us death matters, not
to the dead. For them it is a release, for us it is a warning. Death of
the body is only a symbol. It is death of the soul we must fear. Believe
me, it would be worth while for every one of you in this church to die,
if by dying, you could bring a soul to Jesus. God knows, I would die for
you, if that would bring you. There are those here to-day—you,
Penberthy, and you, Trevose—who have not been to Mass since you were
boys. Make a new resolution to-day, and ask the Holy Souls to help you
keep it. Come to your duties, and return to your church.”

Lascelles felt at the time that his appeal lacked force. He knew that
after Mass, Penberthy would say to Trevose:

“Bootivul service, bean’t it, Tom?”

“Iss—it be that. I du like it for once or twice. But for usual give me
the chapel. It be more nat’ral like.”

“Iss—it be. Poor Mr. Lascelles, I did think he would have a slap at us.”

“Iss—it be his way. My gosh! I don’t mind.”

So Lascelles was depressed. He sat among his books, reading a Renascence
treatise on “Death.” He thought a great deal about death. Sometimes he
feared it horribly. It seemed the great enemy of faith. It was so
disconcerting a thing, so heartless, so unregarding. At other times he
felt defiant. But never did he reach the spirit of S. Francis about
death. He was too remote from natural life and the events of animal
birth and death to understand death as an ordinary thing, something not
less usual than the sunset.

“It may be”—he read, “that there be more deaths than one. For it is
evident that some are so hardened in sin that the death of the body
comes long after the man has been really dead. Such men are commonly gay
and cheerful: for with the death of their soul, has died all godly fear,
all apprehension of judgment, all hope of salvation. They become but as
brutes. Wherefore the church has always held that heretics, if they be
obstinate and beyond recall, may be handed over to the secular arm for
the death of the body. It should not trouble us that they display
ordinary human virtues: for these be common in the unregenerate, and are
but devices of the devil who would persuade men that religion matters
naught. They are his children, and may be lawfully treated as such by
any godly prince. The church herself kills not: though the Lord Pope,
being a Temporal King, has the power of the sword, and may exercise the
same.”

Lascelles put the book down and stared at the fire. The words roused a
train of thought that almost frightened him. But he was not the man to
dismiss any idea because it was terrifying. He believed in giving the
devil his due, and always insisted that all temptations should be met
boldly, not evaded. He left his chair, and knelt at his prie-dieu,
looking at the wounds of the great Crucifix which hung above it.

Half an hour later he rose with a look of resolution on his face.




                                   2




The first case of the plague, as the villagers insisted on calling it,
happened just before Epiphany. It attacked Penberthy, who had never been
ill before; and in four days he was dead. His disease puzzled the doctor
from the market-town, but he put it down as a curious case of infantile
paralysis. His colleague from Truro, whom he consulted after the third
case had occurred, insisted that the symptoms did not disclose anything
more definite than shock following on status lymphaticus. The most
serious thing was, however, not their incapacity to name, but their
inability to cure the mysterious disease, which was spreading in S. Uny.
Except for a general weariness, a disinclination to move, and a curious
“wambling in the innards,” there were no definite symptoms at all to go
on. After the second case they had an inquest, but it yielded no results
at all, and Dr. Marlowe began to talk of getting an expert from London.

It was not until February, however, that anyone came. Then by a
fortunate chance Sir Joshua Tomlinson came down to S. Ives for a
holiday. The “plague” at S. Uny had got into the London paper. There had
been ten deaths, and two women, the first to be attacked, were lying
seriously ill. Dr. Marlowe called on Sir Joshua, and the great physician
said he would come over and see the patients. Marlowe was glad that
chance had sent him a great general physician rather than a surgeon or a
specialist. Although he was willing to defy any specialist to find his
pet disease in the mysterious sickness that had killed the ten
fishermen, he was relieved that no specialist was to be given the
opportunity.

“You see, Lascelles,” he said to the priest, “it’s not as if we were in
the fifteenth century. We may be in theology, but I’m hanged if we are
in medicine. These men are dying like savages: but the savage makes up
his mind he has got to die, and dies through sheer hysteria. These
fellows want to live. They lust for life.”

“You are right, Marlowe. Their desire for life is a lust. It is scarcely
decent in a Christian to cling so to this existence. But there—it’s not
my business to judge. You know, Marlowe, I have sometimes thought this
last month that this mysterious disease is a judgment on S. Uny. It is
God’s hand held out over our village. Let us pray for those who are
dead, and those who are dying, and most of all, dear God, for those who
are not yet to die.”

Marlowe, though friendly with Lascelles, was more than a little afraid
of him. The vicar had worked like two men during this distress. He had
nursed the sick, he had consoled the mourners, he had said Masses and
had a service of general humiliation. Somehow he had identified himself
with his parish to a degree he had never reached before, and S. Uny was
grateful to him. But the little doctor was rather afraid. Lascelles was
strained and odd in manner. He spent too long a time in prayer, and not
long enough at meals or in bed.

“No, Lascelles. I don’t agree with you there. Oh! I’m a good Catholic, I
hope, and I know God could intervene; but I don’t see why He should.”

“No: you don’t see why. No one does, Marlowe, until He speaks, and then
they are forced to.”

On the Saturday Sir Joshua came over, he saw Mrs. Pentreath and Mrs.
Wichelo, and he shook his head over both of them. He asked them
questions about their diet, and about their way of living, while Marlowe
stood by, silent and impatient. Then, he said a few kindly, cheerful
words, and left them in the big room, which the vicar had had fitted up
as a hospital ward; for Marlowe thought the cases were better isolated.

“Well, sir, what do you think?”

“What sort of a man is your vicar? He seems liked.”

“Yes—he is. He’s an odd chap—a bit mad, I think. A very keen Catholic,
and very depressed at his failure to keep the people.”

“Ah! they don’t go to church.”

“Well they _do_ now. They have done since this damned illness. He’s been
awfully good to them. And the children have always gone.”

“It’s a funny thing, Dr. Marlowe, that no child has been ill.”

“Isn’t it? That’s what I say to young Jones of Truro. He will insist on
his shock theory, following on status lymphaticus. I keep on pointing
out to him that most of the patients are men who have had shocks every
week of their lives since they were twelve. They’d have all been dead
long since.”

“Yes. I am sure Jones is wrong. But I don’t know what this disease is,
Dr. Marlowe. I suspect, but I don’t know.”

“Here is the vicar coming, Sir Joshua. Shall I introduce you?”

“Please do.”

Lascelles was walking rapidly towards them. He looked ill but eager. His
eyes were full of a fanatic pleasure, a kind of holy rapture that
appeared to make him even taller than he actually was. He acknowledged
the introduction with a bow, and would have passed on, but Sir Joshua
stopped him with a question.

“You have come from your sick people, Mr. Lascelles?”

“Yes. They are no longer sick. I was just in time to hear their
confessions and give them the viaticum.”

“Good God!” Sir Joshua was evidently shocked. “It’s not ten minutes
since we left them.”

“No? The end has always been very sudden, hasn’t it, Marlowe?”

“Yes. But this is quicker than usual. Do you think, Sir Joshua”—and he
lowered his voice—“a post-mortem?”

“No. It would be useless. At least it would be no help to me. By the
way, Marlowe, how have you entered the cause of death?”

“Well, sir—I’ve frankly put ‘Heart failure, cause unknown.’ There seemed
to be nothing between that and ‘Act of God.’”

“Ah! Marlowe, that’s what you should have put,” intervened Lascelles.
“It is the hand of God—the hand of God.” Then, with a bow to Sir Joshua,
he hurried away.

“So your vicar thinks it is the hand of God! He may be right. God works
through human agents. He is an interesting man, Dr. Marlowe.”

“Yes: he is. But this trouble has worried him frightfully. I’m rather
nervous for him. Have you got any theory, sir? You talked of suspicion.”

“Well, Dr. Marlowe, I’ll tell you what I think. Your patients have been
murdered.”

Marlowe looked at the great physician, as if he was afraid for his
sanity.

“No, Dr. Marlowe, I’m not mad, though I have no proof of my assertion.
All I ask is this, that I may be allowed to see the next patient within
at least half an hour of the beginning of the illness. By the way, can
they give me a bed here, do you think? Where do you put up?”

“Oh! I’m staying at the vicar’s. I expect he’d be charmed to have you.”

“No. I don’t think I will stay with Father Lascelles. I would rather
not. I’ll find a room somewhere. I think there will be another case
to-morrow night.”




                                   3




That Sunday morning Lascelles preached on the “Hand of Judgment.” The
church was packed. Trengrowse had his service at nine and brought all
his congregation to the Mass at eleven. Lascelles seemed wonderfully
better. His eye was clearer, his step gayer and his whole figure more
buoyant. His tone as he gave out his text was exultant.

“They pierced his hands.

“The symbolism of the Divine Body is strangely arresting. The Jews
thought of God as an eye watching, caring for them from heaven. We
Christians watch God—here in the Tabernacle, or in the arms of Mary. His
care for us we typify by his Hand—the Hand we pierced. This last month
God has been with us very wonderfully. He is always with us in the Holy
Sacrament: but lately he has been with us in the Sacrament of Death. His
Hand of Judgment has been over, and under us; it has clasped us—and some
of us it has not let go.

“Our natural feeling is one of fear. We are not used to such immediate
handling as this of our God’s. We have most of us tried to apply
religion to our life, now we have to try and apply our life to religion.
God will have us think of nothing but Him, speak to none save Him, hope
for none save Him. His Hand is still with us. It will bear yet more away
from S. Uny before we learn our lesson. Let me help you to learn that
lesson right. Let us all take care that we renew our trust in God, that
we recognise His Hand, that we answer His Love.”

Sir Joshua had listened attentively to Lascelles’ sermon. He seemed
vaguely disappointed, and he was unwilling to discuss it with Marlowe
afterwards. There was no doubt that Lascelles’ almost fatalist attitude,
while it annoyed the doctor, had a strange welcome from the villagers.
They turned in a child-like way to the words of this man who spoke as
one who knew the ways and the meaning of the Almighty. Never had
Lascelles so much real devotion from his people as he secured during the
“plague.” It was not that they shared his feeling of complete
abandonment to the Will of God; but the fact that he had such a feeling
made their fate seem more tolerable.

On Sunday evening there was a new case, as Sir Joshua had expected. The
disease attacked Mrs. Bodilly, the wife of the chief grocer in S. Uny.
Marlowe was summoned immediately, but he found Sir Joshua already at the
poor woman’s bedside.

She was frankly terrified; in this her case differed from previous ones,
in which the sufferers, though generally resentful, had been not the
least afraid. Mrs. Bodilly had been at Mass that morning. She had got
back and prepared the dinner. At tea-time she had “felt queer,” but
after tea she was better. Then, as she was getting ready to go to the
special service of Exposition, she fell down and had to be carried up to
her room by her husband and sons.

She was, unlike most of the tradesmen’s wives, a nominal church woman,
but she had never been confirmed and rarely went to church. The fit of
external piety roused in her by the “plague” was frankly based on
nervous alarm. She felt that God was taking it out of S. Uny in this
way; and she was anxious to escape.

Her illness found her divided between anger and fear. She was angry that
her efforts to placate Divine wrath had not been more successful—she was
terrified of dying, terrified still more of death as a punishment. In
the most desolate way she sought reassurances from Marlowe and Sir
Joshua; but neither could give her any certain consolation. The disease
presented no different aspects. It indeed presented no aspect at all,
except extreme weakness, astonishing slowness of the pulse, and
irregular beating of the heart. Although Sir Joshua was there within
five minutes of the seizure, he admitted to Marlowe that he could
discover nothing of what he suspected.

“I’ll be frank, Dr. Marlowe, I suspected poison. I still suspect it. I
believe all these people have been poisoned in an extremely subtle way
by a man so fanatical as to be almost mad. But I can find no trace of
the poison. In this case, I will, if you will permit me, conduct a
post-mortem, but I expect I shall fail. If I do, I must take my own
line, if you wish me to help you.”

“Really, Sir Joshua, you talk more like a detective than a physician.”

“This is a detective’s business, Dr. Marlowe. I wish it were not.”

Before they left Lascelles arrived. He had been summoned by Mr. Bodilly,
and he came prepared to give Mrs. Bodilly the last rites. As the boy
with the light and the bell approached the stairs, Sir Joshua whispered
to Marlowe:

“Your vicar seems very certain of her death.”

Marlowe shrugged his shoulders. “We haven’t saved a case, you know.”

The post-mortem yielded no result. That evening Marlowe dined with Sir
Joshua at the village inn, and after dinner the great physician told him
of his suspicions. Marlowe listened at first angrily, then with an
incredulous horror.

“It can’t be. The man lives for his parish, I tell you. Why, he would
die for it.”

“Yes: I believe he would. Had I found what I looked for, he certainly
would.”

“But, my dear sir, there isn’t a trace of any known drug. There’s no
trace of anything.”

“No. I had expected to find—but never mind. I have a great deal of
experience, Dr. Marlowe, and I am convinced that your vicar has been
murdering his parishioners. And to-night I am coming to tell him so. I
will walk home with you. You may be present or not, as you please.”




                                   4




Lascelles looked up a little wearily when Sir Joshua had finished
speaking.

“Is that all?”

Marlowe intervened.

“Look here, old man—I only came because—you’ll forgive me, Sir Joshua—I
didn’t want you to be alone under this monstrous, this fantastic
accusation of Sir Joshua’s. You’ve only got to contradict him, and we’ll
go.”

Lascelles looked gratefully at his friend.

“Thank you, Marlowe. But Sir Joshua is right in telling me his
suspicions. You have finished, Sir Joshua?”

“Yes. I should like your explanation if you have one, or your admission
of my charge, and your promise that this—this—plague shall cease.”

“You use strange words, sir, for a man who has no evidence for what he
says.”

“Yes,” ejaculated Marlowe, “yes, by Jove, you do——”

“Please, Marlowe. You will not be content with having relieved your
mind, Sir Joshua. You wish me to answer you?”

“I do. I require it.”

“You know, sir, you great doctors have one failing. It is one priests
have, too. You cannot avoid talking to me as if I were your patient—a
mental, a nervous case. You can’t help believing that your firm tone,
your almost—may I say it—discourteous manner will impress me. Well, it
doesn’t.”

Sir Joshua got red. Lascelles’ words too entirely diagnosed his method.
He was annoyed that he should seem so transparent to a man whom he
regarded as at least half-crazy.

“I beg your pardon. There is something in what you say. Men in all
professions have their—ah! tricks.”

“Thank you.”

Lascelles got up and stood by the fireplace looking down on his visitor.
In the last month he had changed. He seemed bigger and more
masculine—more as if he now had personal responsibilities; he looked
less of an official, more of a man. He spoke rather slowly.

“You have accused me of murder, Sir Joshua. You ask me to admit my
crime, and to promise to cease. Well, I expected your visit. I have long
been familiar with your Treatise on Renascence Toxicology; it is as
complete as any published book. And I am glad you and Marlowe came
to-night. I have my answer ready. I admit nothing, and I promise
nothing.”

Sir Joshua looked with a puzzled air at the priest. For a moment his
accusation seemed a monstrous thing to himself. Then his common sense
surged back.

“Father Lascelles, your answer does not satisfy me. I must take other
steps.”

“They will not lead anywhere, Sir Joshua. If you find no evidence, no
other man can. You say my poor people were poisoned. Well, find the
poison. Ah—you know you cannot. It is foolish to threaten me. But I will
tell you what I had determined to tell Marlowe to-night. First, I do not
expect there will be any more deaths from this plague for a long time.

“Secondly, I have a confession to make. Last All Hallows I was
depressed. The work here has not gone as it should. I had the children,
but not their parents. I thought much of Death and the Departed at that
season of all the dead—and at last I prayed to God that if nothing else
would move these people, He would send Death. Send Death mysterious and
as a judgment. Death has come, and my people have learnt their lesson.
All of those who died were reconciled to Holy Church before death. Of
those who remain nearly all have adhered to the Church. This afternoon
Mr. Trengrowse came and asked to be prepared for Confirmation——”

“Trengrowse, the minister——” cried Marlowe.

“And this evening I had notice that all who are competent intend to make
their Communion next Sunday. This parish has been won for God, Sir
Joshua, and at the cost of thirteen deaths. Isn’t it worth it?”

“Father Lascelles, I cannot regard you as sane. You are not only
practically admitting your crime, you are disclosing your motives.”

“I beg your pardon, I admit nothing. I acknowledge I prayed to God to
visit this people, if necessary, by His secret Death. That is not a
crime. Next Sunday I shall tell my people.”

“And have you _prayed_ that the deaths shall cease?” asked Sir Joshua
ironically.

“I was doing so when you entered,” replied Lascelles quietly.

“Good God, man, your hypocrisy sickens me. You prate of God’s
intervention, and all the time you’ve been sending man after man to
death by some foul poison of your own.”

“Sir Joshua—do you believe God commonly works without human
intervention?”

“Bah! That is sophistry.”

“You condemn the machinery of justice, the compromise of war, our human
evasion of rope and guillotine?”

“Surely, Marlowe,” exclaimed Sir Joshua, “you can’t sit and listen
quietly to this damnable nonsense?”

Marlowe had been sitting dazed, looking at Lascelles as if he were
fascinated. He replied in a remote voice.

“I don’t know. I’m wondering”—he gave a nervous laugh—“wondering if
Lascelles is a saint or a devil.”

Lascelles went on imperturbably.

“You don’t answer me. You can’t. Why should you think I, an anointed
priest, am less fit to be the doorkeeper of death than Lord Justice
Ommaney? At least I use no case-law. I am the slave of no precedent. I
know my people. I know them individually. I love them as persons. And as
persons I judge them.”

The tall figure of the man seemed to glow. His face was lit with an
unnatural beauty as he stood looking down on the other two, and dared
them to answer him.

Sir Joshua rose. He had lost his somewhat pompous judicial air. He was
deeply, humanly moved; and he spoke with an anxiety far more impressive
than his previous authoritative tone.

“Father Lascelles, I have nothing more to say. I believe you have done a
very horrible, a very wicked thing. I have heard how you would defend
yourself if you were legally brought to book for such an offence. Your
defence has, as you are aware, no legal force. I think it has no moral
force. You are deceiving yourself strangely. One day you will have a
great loneliness of heart. You will realise how terrible a
responsibility you have taken. Without the sanction of society, without
the approval of your church, you have decided, alone, the fate of your
fellow-creatures. I am sorry for you. Good-night.”

The light left Lascelles’ face. He looked suddenly ill and careworn.
Then with a high, frantic gesture he flung his hand towards the
Crucifix.

“He, too—He, too—was made sin.”




DAVY JONES’S GIFT

By JOHN MASEFIELD

    From A Tarpaulin Muster, by John Masefield,
    by permission of Dodd, Mead and Company.


“Once upon a time,” said the sailor, “the Devil and Davy Jones came to
Cardiff, to the place called Tiger Bay. They put up at Tony Adam’s, not
far from Pier Head, at the corner of Sunday Lane. And all the time they
stayed there, they used to be going to the rum-shop, where they sat at a
table, smoking their cigars, and dicing each other for different
persons’ souls. Now you must know that the Devil gets landsmen, and Davy
Jones gets sailor-folk; and they get tired of having always the same, so
then they dice each other for some of another sort.

“One time they were in a place in Mary Street, having some burnt brandy,
and playing red and black for the people passing. And while they were
looking out on the street and turning the cards, they saw all the people
on the sidewalk breaking their necks to get into the gutter. And they
saw all the shop-people running out and kowtowing, and all the carts
pulling up, and all the police saluting. ‘Here comes a big nob,’ said
Davy Jones. ‘Yes,’ said the Devil; ‘it’s the Bishop that’s stopping with
the Mayor.’ ‘Red or black?’ said Davy Jones, picking up a card. ‘I don’t
play for bishops,’ said the Devil. ‘I respect the cloth,’ he said. ‘Come
on, man,’ said Davy Jones. ‘I’d give an admiral to have a bishop. Come
on, now; make your game. Red or black?’ ‘Well, I say red,’ said the
Devil. ‘It’s the ace of clubs,’ said Davy Jones; ‘I win; and it’s the
first bishop ever I had in my life.’ The Devil was mighty angry at
that—at losing a bishop. ‘I’ll not play any more,’ he said; ‘I’m off
home. Some people gets too good cards for me. There was some queer
shuffling when that pack was cut, that’s my belief.’

“‘Ah, stay and be friends, man,’ said Davy Jones. ‘Look at what’s coming
down the street. I’ll give you that for nothing.’

“Now, coming down the street there was a reefer—one of those apprentice
fellows. And he was brass-bound fit to play music. He stood about six
feet, and there were bright brass buttons down his jacket, and on his
collar, and on his sleeves. His cap had a big gold badge, with a
house-flag in seven different colours in the middle of it, and a gold
chain cable of a chinstay twisted round it. He was wearing his cap on
three hairs, and he was walking on both the sidewalks and all the road.
His trousers were cut like wind-sails round his ankles. He had a fathom
of red silk tie rolling out over his chest. He’d a cigarette in a
twisted clay holder a foot and a half long. He was chewing tobacco over
his shoulders as he walked. He’d a bottle of rum-hot in one hand, a bag
of jam tarts in the other, and his pockets were full of love-letters
from every port between Rio and Callao, round by the East.

“‘You mean to say you’ll give me that?’ said the Devil. ‘I will,’ said
Davy Jones, ‘and a beauty he is. I never see a finer.’ ‘He is, indeed, a
beauty,’ said the Devil. ‘I take back what I said about the cards. I’m
sorry I spoke crusty. What’s the matter with some burnt brandy?’ ‘Burnt
brandy be it,’ said Davy Jones. So then they rang the bell, and ordered
a new jug and clean glasses.

“Now the Devil was so proud of what Davy Jones had given him, he
couldn’t keep away from him. He used to hang about the East Bute Docks,
under the red-brick clock-tower, looking at the barque the young man
worked aboard. Bill Harker his name was. He was in the West Coast
barque, the _Coronel_, loading fuel for Hilo. So at last, when the
_Coronel_ was sailing, the Devil shipped himself aboard her, as one of
the crowd in the fo’c’sle, and away they went down the Channel. At first
he was very happy, for Bill Harker was in the same watch, and the two
would yarn together. And though he was wise when he shipped, Bill Harker
taught him a lot. There was a lot of things Bill Harker knew about. But
when they were off the River Plate, they got caught in a pampero, and it
blew very hard, and a big green sea began to run. The _Coronel_ was a
wet ship, and for three days you could stand upon her poop, and look
forward and see nothing but a smother of foam from the break of the poop
to the jib-boom. The crew had to roost on the poop. The fo’c’sle was
flooded out. So while they were like this the flying jib worked loose.
‘The jib will be gone in a half a tick,’ said the mate. ‘Out there, one
of you, and make it fast, before it blows away.’ But the boom was
dipping under every minute, and the waist was four feet deep, and green
water came aboard all along her length. So none of the crowd would go
forward. Then Bill Harker shambled out, and away he went forward, with
the green seas smashing over him, and he lay out along the jib-boom and
made the sail fast, and jolly nearly drowned he was. ‘That’s a brave
lad, that Bill Harker,’ said the Devil. ‘Ah, come off,’ said the
sailors. ‘Them reefers, they haven’t got souls to be saved.’ It was that
that set the Devil thinking.

“By and by they came up with the Horn; and if it had blown off the
Plate, it now blew off the roof. Talk about wind and weather. They got
them both for shore aboard the _Coronel_. And it blew all the sails off
her, and she rolled all her masts out, and the seas made a breach of her
bulwarks, and the ice knocked a hole in her bows. So watch and watch
they pumped the old _Coronel_, and the leak gained steadily, and they
were hove to under a weather cloth, five and a half degrees to the south
of anything. And while they were like this, just about giving up hope,
the old man sent the watch below, and told them they could start
prayers. So the Devil crept on to the top of the half-deck, to look
through the scuttle, to see what the reefers were doing, and what kind
of prayers Bill Harker was putting up. And he saw them all sitting round
the table, under the lamp, with Bill Harker at the head. And each of
them had a hand of cards, and a length of knotted rope-yarn, and they
were playing able-whackets. Each man in turn put down a card, and swore
a new blasphemy, and if his swear didn’t come as he played the card,
then all the others hit him with their teasers. But they never once had
a chance to hit Bill Harker. ‘I think they were right about his soul,’
said the Devil. And he sighed, like he was sad.

“Shortly after the _Coronel_ went down, and all hands drowned in her,
saving only Bill Harker and the Devil. They came up out of the
smothering green seas, and saw the stars blinking in the sky, and heard
the wind howling like a pack of dogs. They managed to get aboard the
_Coronel’s_ hen-house, which had come adrift, and floated. The fowls
were all drowned inside, so they lived on drowned hens. As for drink,
they had to do without for there was none. When they got thirsty they
splashed their faces with salt water; but they were so cold they didn’t
feel thirst very bad. They drifted three days and three nights, till
their skins were all cracked and salt-caked. And all the Devil thought
of was whether Bill Harker had a soul. And Bill kept telling the Devil
what a thundering big feed they would have as soon as they fetched to
port, and how good a rum-hot would be, with a lump of sugar and a bit of
lemon peel.

“And at last the old hen-house came bump on to Terra del Fuego, and
there were some natives cooking rabbits. So the Devil and Bill made a
raid of the whole jing bang, and ate till they were tired. Then they had
a drink out of a brook, and a warm by the fire, and a pleasant sleep.
‘Now,’ said the Devil, ‘I will see if he’s got a soul. I’ll see if he
give thanks.’ So after an hour or two Bill took a turn up and down and
came to the Devil. ‘It’s mighty dull on this forgotten continent,’ he
said. ‘Have you got a ha’penny?’ ‘No,’ said the Devil. ‘What in joy d’ye
want with a ha’penny?’ ‘I might have played you pitch and toss,’ said
Bill. ‘I give you up,’ said the Devil; ‘you’ve no more soul than the
inner part of an empty barrel.’ And with that the Devil vanished in a
flame of sulphur.

“Bill stretched himself, and put another shrub on the fire. He picked up
a few round shells, and began a game of knucklebones.”




THE CALL OF THE HAND

(A Story of the Balkans)

By LOUIS GOLDING




                                   1




No one knew what sin Nikolai Kupreloff had committed to bring on his
head so terrible a penalty. Year after year his wife and he had prayed
for a child, to their ikons in the tiny basilica in the wood, and when
his wife gave birth at last, it was neither a child nor children. She
had given birth to two little boys, perfectly made, exquisitely
proportioned, but there was a deadly thing had befallen them ... the
tiny right hand of the one was inexorably seized by the left hand of the
other.

The little woodcutter’s cottage of Nikolai lay deeply hidden in the
great pine woods of Lower Serbia, miles from his nearest neighbour. Yet
even in that wild country the fame of the intertwined children travelled
far, and the wise old women from those parts came to see if herbs or
chanting or any of their dark gifts might be of the least avail. They
were no more useful than a real doctor who had studied at Belgrade, was
practising at Monastir, and was stimulated to great interest by the
account of these strange children. The case defied all the arts of black
or white magic, and the interest of the episode flickered and died down.

So it was that Nikolai reconciled himself to the inevitable, and as the
boys grew older he would cross himself devoutly and say: “Thank God, it
might have been a thousand times worse!” They were lads of extraordinary
beauty. Peter and Ivan he called them, Ivan being the lad who held so
irrevocably the wrist of his brother within his fingers. In appearance
they were identical—the light, tough hair and the laughing blue eyes of
the Serbian Slav, sturdy, well-knit limbs, and a sterling robustness of
physique. It was only their parents and themselves who knew that between
them there was one slight but unmistakable mark of distinction—below the
knuckle of Ivan’s thumb was marked dully a little red arrow. In fact, a
stranger might not have known that this abnormal bond existed between
the two brothers as he saw them swinging along under the pines. “What a
loving little pair!” he would exclaim, as he heard them laugh and
chatter in complete harmony, and look into each other’s eyes with the
understanding born of flawless love.

When they were about fifteen years old their mother died, and the father
Nikolai began more and more to remain behind in his cottage attending to
the frugal needs of the little family, while Peter and Ivan, as the
years went on, grew even more skilful in the art of woodcutting; for
Peter wielding the axe in his left hand, Ivan in his right, achieved
such a fine reciprocity of movement, that Nikolai would laugh in his
great yellow beard and mutter: “Truly the ways of God are inscrutable,
for even out of their calamity has He made a great blessing!” The
passing of time only knit closer their perfect intimacy, so that they
almost did not notice when their father Nikolai sickened and died. Now
they were left to their cottage and their woodcutting and their complete
love, the whole being crowned by the splendid physique of young
foresters at twenty-one; so that life, it seemed, had nothing in store
for them but long years of undivided love and content.

Yet even into their seclusion rumours came of the great world beyond.
Now and again they would catch glimpses of the marvels of Salonika in
the eyes of travelled men. They would hear of a city where lovely women,
infinitely more beautiful than the queen of the tousled gypsies who
flickered from time to time along the forest paths, sang upon stages of
golden wood, in gardens full of hanging lights. They would hear of the
sea and glowing ships, and men who spoke low musical languages uttered
in countries beyond the sea.

So it was the brothers determined to leave their woodcutting behind them
for a season and adventure forth into the world of ships and songs and
lovely women.




                                   2




To Peter and Ivan Salonika was a revelation of wonders they barely
thought actual. From a little room in the street of Johann Tschimiski
they saw the multicoloured tides of cosmopolitan humanity sweeping down
from Egnatia Street, down Venizelos Street to the Place de la Concorde.
They would walk along the quay-side past the great hotels to the Jardins
de la Tour Blanche, and were sent into an ecstasy of delight by the
_chic_ little women who smiled archly at these two fair-headed lads from
the up-country, who walked along hand clasped in wrist in so naïve and
rustic a manner. Yet when they entered the Théatre des Variétés at the
White Tower it seemed to them that the very portals of heaven had opened
wide. They would return in a daze of delight to their room and recount
with an almost religious fervour the beauties and enchantments of the
show. Each little Spanish or French girl who came to do her song or
minuet had seemed to them more enchanting than the last. Never a cloud
of disagreement came between them. There was a perfect coincidence in
their tastes, and never, they felt, had their love for each other been
so sympathetic and complete as it was now.

The brothers had no large sum of money at their disposal. The time of
their holiday was drawing to a close. One evening they turned up at the
theatre for the last time, their nerves keyed up to a pitch of delighted
impatience, the more tense as the brothers knew that the next day would
see them on the arduous road back to their Serbian forest. Turn followed
turn with alluring consequence. Then at one stage the music ceased for
some moments and there was an atmosphere of expectance in the air. It
was then that a simple and delightful English girl came half-shyly from
the wings. There was nothing flamboyant in her appearance or her manner.
Yet at once she seemed to seize the house with the graceful and reticent
winsomeness of her song. So she sang her song through, a dainty little
ballad of old-world gardens and fragrant flowers and love unto death.
Peter felt the fingers of Ivan tighten round his wrist. He himself had
been so stirred to his depths by the gentle grace of the girl that it
was with a slight feeling of resentment he realised that Ivan had been
experiencing once again an identical emotion. As he involuntarily moved
away his arm Ivan uttered a slight cry of impatience. He turned round
and looked into Peter’s eyes and found them aflame with a light deeper
than mere appreciation. Peter was aware of his brother’s glance and
looked at Ivan in return to find his face flushed almost as if he were
half-drunk.

That night for the first time in their history there occurred a slight
bickering between the two. No mention of the little English actress
passed between them, but each of them determined that some day, when his
brother’s interest had died away, he should broach the subject and the
possibility of a rediscovery of the English actress at Salonika.

Next day they entrained for Monastir, and a few days later saw them
installed once again in their father’s cottage in the wood.




                                   3




In proportion as the fortunes of the Kupreloff brothers increased,
something that had once existed between them receded further away. The
perfection of their old intimacy became a memory of the past. No longer
did the most minute physical or spiritual experience of the one become
automatically part of his brother’s consciousness. So that now for the
first time their indissoluble partnership became more and more galling.

There was no doubt of it. Everything dated from that last night at
Salonika, when the English girl appeared on the stage. They would still
occasionally revive something of the old fervour as they discussed from
time to time their impressions of the unforgettable holiday. Yet never a
word passed between them concerning the unconscious girl who had
captured both their hearts. At night they would lie awake, each thinking
that the other was asleep. Bitterly, definitely, they would confess to
their own deep hearts: “She is mine, she is mine; I am hers for ever.”
And yet to each their love seemed hopeless beyond recall. There was the
double sting that each of them loved the girl with an intensity reserved
hitherto for his brother; but, if possible, more fatal was the
despairing conviction that no girl could ever love the one of two
brothers to whom the other would remain physically attached till death
carried them both away. As the months passed by the friction between
them increased. They were now in a position to buy land and a little
livestock. But if Peter insisted upon keeping pigs, in the fashion of
the majority of Serbians, Ivan would insist upon cattle. If Peter felt
that he had done enough woodcutting for the day, Ivan felt that the day
was only just beginning.

One night in late autumn Peter lay tossing very heavily in his sleep.
Ivan lay awake, thinking, thinking for ever of the girl, his whole heart
full of rancour against the brother who must for ever prevent the
consummation of his love. Heavily, wearily, Peter heaved on the bed.
Outside the wind was howling. The dreariness of the wind seemed to enter
Peter’s heart. “My little girl,” he murmured, “my little girl! When
shall we meet, my little girl? Never, never, never!” Ivan’s forehead
contracted with hate. He was filled suddenly with a tremendous loathing
of his brother. “Never, never, never!” moaned Peter. Suddenly, obeying a
frantic impulse, Ivan pulled with all his strength away from his
brother’s wrist to which Fate had so viciously fastened him. With a
great scream of pain Peter half leapt from the bed.

“What’s this? What do you mean?” he shouted, his voice thick with pain
and sleep. “Nothing! Nothing! I couldn’t help it! I was dreaming!”
replied Ivan savagely, and the brothers settled down again for the
night.

Night after night the same thing happened. Peter would murmur for ever
in his sleep, “My little girl, when shall we meet? Never, never, never!”
Ivan would lie awake, hatred surging violently through his whole body,
till his eyes would see nothing but flames in the darkness of their
log-built room; and the sound of the branches in the forest would begin
to mutter and moan: “Have done with it, Ivan, have done with it! She is
waiting for you, waiting, always waiting. Have done with it! Have done
with him—with him—with _him_!”

One desolate night towards mid-winter the room was full of the miserable
sleep-cries of Peter. Outside thunder ripped among the clouds. A finger
of lightning came suddenly through the windows and pointed with a
gesture of flame towards the open breast of Peter. A sudden and terrible
thought flooded into Ivan’s soul! Whatever there was of human kindness
and brother-love seemed in one sinister moment to be washed away from
before the onset of the flood. All the branches upon all the trees
shrieked across the night. “We shall be quiet, you shall have rest. She
shall be yours. Have done with him, have done with him!”

A great calm settled down upon Ivan’s soul—the issue was decided, the
issue which had been hovering for so long in his subconsciousness was
decided at last. There was nothing left to do. The mere deed was the
mere snapping of a thread. With his eyes wide open, a terrible silence
laying upon his soul, he stared into the night, waiting, waiting for the
dawn.

Dawn came at last. The brothers washed and took food. There was a long
way to go, far off into the woods. There was almost a tenderness in
Ivan’s attitude towards Peter. What mattered now? The issue was decided;
the gods had taken the thing out of his hands. With their axes swinging
they made their way into the woods, through a day sharp with frost. At
last they arrived at the clearing where they were to continue their
tree-felling. A brazier stood waiting there, and before work started
they lit a fire in preparation for the midday meal. Then they picked up
their axes and set to. Lustily their strokes rang through the wood.
Chime rang upon chime. It was strenuous work, the work of men with
strong muscles and keen eyes.

The morning went by steadily. There was no hate in Ivan’s soul—only a
deadly patience. He knew the moment would come. He knew when the moment
came that he would act. For a few minutes they stopped and wiped their
foreheads. Peter opened his shirt wide and exposed his breast to Ivan.
The quick vision presented itself of Peter heaving darkly in their bed,
the sudden finger of lightning, the naked breast.

“Come!” said Ivan thickly, “let us begin!”

They both took up their positions against a tree. Peter with the axe in
his left hand struck against the tree. Ivan, quick as the lightning
which last night had shown him his way, whirled his axe round, away from
the tree, and the sharp edge went cracking through Peter’s ribs, deep
beyond the heart. A great fountain of blood spurted into the air. A
long, feeble moan left Peter’s lips. Deeper than the axe had cut, his
eyes looked sorrowfully into the soul of Ivan. His weight tottered and
Ivan felt himself following to the ground. There was not a moment to
lose. Again the axe whirled through the air. With the whole of a strong
man’s strength the axe came down upon his own wrist, and down fell the
body of Peter with the hand of his brother indissoluble in death round
his wrist, as it had been indissoluble in life.

The thing he had brought about was too monstrous for Ivan at that moment
to understand. It was only the little things that his ear and eye
seized—the frightened screech of a bird in a tree, the sullen shining of
the little red arrow in the thumb of his own severed hand.

Ivan felt the blood streaming from the stump of his forearm. He knew
that if he did not reassert complete mastery over himself he would bleed
to death. All would be vain—the call of the far girl, the murder, the
last look in Peter’s eyes. He staggered over to the brazier and plunged
his forearm for one swift instant into the embers. Then darkness
overwhelmed him and he fell backward into unutterable night.




                                   4




It was easy enough to explain. Not the least suspicion attached itself
to Ivan. People came from remote cabins and farms to sympathise with the
bereaved brother. What was more likely in the world than that Ivan’s axe
should slide from a knot in the tree and come crashing against Peter,
who, even if he could see the axe coming, could not by any human means
have disengaged himself from his brother. “I always thought something
like this would happen,” people muttered wisely to each other, and shook
their heads and crossed their breasts.

Of course they all understood how Ivan could no longer remain in the
cottage consecrated by memories of his brother. So Ivan sold his
accumulation of timber and his land and what little stock the brothers
had bought, and it was not many weeks after his forearm was healed that
the jangling train from Monastir was bearing him through the Macedonian
hills upon his quest for the English girl at Salonika.

In Salonika she was nowhere to be found. Forlornly he went from
music-hall to music-hall, but she was gone. He haunted even the _cafés
chantants_ along Egnatia Street, even the degenerate _brasseries_ on the
Monastir Road, where the red-costumed women stood upon improvised
platforms and sang to tipsy crowds with the accompaniment of feeble
violins. But there was no trace of her in the whole city. From the
director at the White Tower he learned that perhaps she had proceeded to
Constantinople, perhaps she had returned to Athens, whence the European
artistes generally came to Salonika on their round of the greater
Levantine towns.

With all the fervour and idealism of a mediæval knight Ivan stepped upon
the deck of a Messageries Maritimes boat returning to Marseilles by way
of the Piræus. When the electric train from the harbour landed him at
the station in Athens a mystic conviction filled him that here in this
city, some day, the English girl would be revealed to him. Ambitiously
he first tried the great _Opéra_, but she was not there. The weeks
lengthened into months and failure followed failure, but the mysterious
foreknowledge of his race held up his weary spirits and bade him put
aside despair.

When at last she appeared upon the stage of one of the lesser
music-halls, it was with no great start of surprise or welcome that he
recognised her arrival. It was as if a mother or a sister had slipped
back into the place from which for some reason she had been absent. Her
features had become engraved upon every curve of his brain. She came
upon the stage and filled his life again as naturally as day fills the
place of night. Life became for him a thing of meaning and splendour. He
realised that at last Life was to begin.

He knew little of the half-measures and half-advances of Western
civilisation. He lost no time in appearing before the girl. After only a
few words of difficult apology, with a voice of low and subdued passion
he told her a fragment or two of his tale. It was a broken French that
he talked—the French of which his mother long ago had taught her boys
the few phrases she knew, and which his experiences in Salonika and
Athens during the last few months had greatly improved.

The large grey eyes of the English girl opened wide in wonder as she
listened, fascinated, to the stammering avowals of this tall stranger
from a shadowy land. Half in fright she drew back against the wall of
her wretched little dressing-room, but, even so soon she realised that
the destiny was overwhelming her which was to bring an end to her
wanderings. She consented shyly to his suggestion that she should see
him for a little while next night, and it was with a thrill of delight
and fear she saw his great figure waiting for her at the gate of the
Museum, as the purple Athenian dusk came wandering down from the
Acropolis and cast velvet glooms among the pillars of Pentelican marble.

For years since her mother had died and her father had become a
confirmed drunkard, it was a very lonely life that Mary Weston had led.
She had no great talent, and she had drifted from theatre to theatre
upon the Continent, for to her England was a place of no kindly
memories. Ivan Kupreloff began to mean for her what her mother had meant
before she died and her father before he had taken to drink.

A few months had passed only. There was no escape from Ivan. There was
nothing importunate about him, but he was irresistible. He was Life.
Proudly he realised that he had conquered her. To world’s end and Time’s
end she was his own.

They were married at length. Athens and all the cities she had known,
the Serbian wood and the murdered brother—these passed utterly from
their souls in the strong kiss which united them for all days.




                                   5




Yet not for ever was the memory of his dead life to vanish from the
heart of Ivan. Even during the times of his most passionate love for
Mary there began to invade him moments of bitter memory and regret.
There was something which prevented the entire fusion with Mary towards
which he yearned and ached. It was something deep in his soul. It was
something which gnawed at his forearm, bit with teeth of contrition at
the place where the axe had fallen and severed the hand from the wrist.

He tried to put all this futility from him. He would seize Mary more
closely, look desperately into her eyes, and in the perfume of her lips
and hair seek anodyne. Between them there was a sufficient store of
money, small though it was, to allow them a few months of liberty,
undisturbed by any thought of the future. They wandered lazily about
Greece for a little time, finding in the Greek day and the immemorial
hills a perfect setting for their love.

And yet ever more insistently came to him the call of the hand—the hand
which had been his own and not his own, the hand which had united in so
unique an embrace his brother with himself.

Again at night voices tormented him. Again, when winds were about, they
called with living words: “The hand! The hand! It is calling you,
calling! Answer! He wants you! Peter!” wailed the wind. “Peter! Peter!”

Lines began to draw across his forehead. With anxiety Mary saw shadows
growing under his eyes, and in his eyes a hunger which grew more and
more forlorn. “What is it, love?” she would murmur. “You’ve not slept
well!”

“Nothing at all, love, nothing! All’s well!” he would reply, trying with
a kiss to forget the wind and the hand and the call.

“There’s something you’re longing for. Tell me, Ivan. Let me help you.
You must.”

“Nothing, Mary. I’ve got you. There’s nothing else in the world.” But
the call of the hand did not abate. “Peter!” the winds wailed, “Peter!
He wants you! Answer!”

The urgency of the call grew more imperious. He was sickening and
growing weak. There was a hot torpidity in the dry Greek noon which
shrivelled his veins. He would drag his coat down from his neck and lift
his head and try to breathe the deep breath he had known in his Serbian
wood. But there was no spaciousness, no great draughts of cool air in
the wind, only voices: “Peter! Peter! Peter!”

“We must go somewhere. We must go away,” said Mary. “We must go to
Athens and see a doctor, Ivan. I’m afraid!”

“Not Athens! No!” he replied with a shudder, his temples contracting as
before the hot blast from an oven. Those dry marble spaces! The dusty
pepper-trees! The sweating crowds in the shops, swallowing sweet cakes
like swine swallowing husks in a sty! Athens became a nightmare.

He was lying awake one night, the body of Mary curled beside him, her
hair floating vaguely on the pillow in the half-light of the moon. She
stirred in her sleep, and her little white hand unconsciously sought his
wrist and fastened tightly round it. That moment bridged the buried
time. Unescapably Mary had brought back to him the sensation of Peter
lying in the grasp of his own hand. Never before was the call of the
hand so imperious. Never so clearly did the wind exclaim, “Peter! He
wants you! Answer!”

An irresistible love for his murdered brother overwhelmed him. He raised
himself from his bed and lifted helplessly his lopped arm into the
whispering room. “Coming, my brother, I am coming! Wait! Peter!” he
moaned, and the wind replied: “Peter! Peter!”

He lay back in bed. He realised that the strongest claim in the world
upon him was the call of the hand. As for Mary—she was nothing different
from himself. For her as for him the call of the hand came
dictatorially. In each other they were one, but without the hand their
unity was uncompleted. The call of the hand must be obeyed. To-morrow
they must leave Greece behind. To-morrow to Serbia, to-morrow the
response to the hand.

Mary was not surprised when Ivan without warning explained that all
their plans were altered. She was used to his unaccountable whims, the
sudden mystic impulses of his Slavonic soul.

They packed up the few things which were all the impediment they
possessed, and next day saw them well started on their way to Monastir,
carefully skirting Athens. Arrived at Monastir, a few days elapsed
before they appeared at the remote wood where Ivan was born. The cottage
built by Ivan Kupreloff was not yet occupied. The strange character of
its former inhabitants combined with the terrible nature of Peter’s
death had succeeded in keeping it empty! They obtained permission from
its owner to occupy the cottage, and with a great sigh of content Ivan
flung open the door where he and his brother had passed so frequently in
former days.

In a little time Mary had made of the house such a palace of delight as
it had not been since Ivan’s mother was dead. Happily, Ivan took in
large draughts of the Serbian pineland air, filling his lungs. Happily,
with Mary beside him on the bed where he and Peter had lain entwined,
the dark drowsy nights melted into dawn. He made his reply to the call
of the hand. Only faintly, if at all, the wind or the branches whispered
“Peter! Peter!” Peter seemed to be happy at last. The severed hand
seemed at last to be tranquil round the wrist of the murdered brother.
Then the winds died away, and there was no sound of “Peter!”; only
fitfully a swaying of twigs and a rustle of pine-needles.

So it seemed. Till summer drooped her drowsing hair. Summer became
wrinkled and old. Summer went and the swift autumn came. The days
shortened into the rigours of winter, the days ever contracted towards
the anniversary of that red day when the axe was lifted and Peter fell.
Never a moment did it occur to Ivan that now when the fatal day was
approaching he might leave behind him his Serbian wood. He knew that,
more tightly than ever during his living days, the wrist of Peter lay
within his own hand, tight, unescapable. Mary and he lay under the thumb
of that severed hand wherefrom the red arrow glowed when the night was
dark and the woodfire threw leaping shadows over the log-walls. There
was no gainsaying the call of the hand till the end of days. Ivan knew
that never again would he leave behind his Serbian wood.

Came the night which was the anniversary of that dead, unburyable night
when Peter’s doom had been sealed. Again there was the rumbling of
thunder, there were evil flashes of lightning that ran among the clouds.
Never with so firm an embrace had Mary been clasped within his arms.
Nothing in the world was so strong as his love for Mary. They had
responded to the call of the hand. There was no further claim upon them.
Ivan kissed her sleeping eyes and was lulled in the music of her
breathing. A drowsiness came over him, and for a time he slid into
sleep.

In his sleep something tightened round him, something growing so tight
that it forced through the barriers of his sleep. Vaguely, faintly a
half-consciousness came back to him. He was not awake. He was not
asleep. He was in a borderland where the other world is not dead and
this world is half-alive. Tighter grew the thing which pressed against
his sleep. It was round his wrist, it was round the wrist where
something had once come crashing down. What was it? What was it had come
crashing down? An axe it was that had come crashing down. It was the
hand of Mary growing tighter round his wrist. No, it could not be the
hand of Mary. Mary had fallen from his arms. Mary was turned away from
him. He could see her hands pale where she had lifted them in sleep
above her head. It was not the hand of Mary growing tighter round his
wrist. But it was a hand. No doubt of that. It was a hand. With a dull
glow of flame a little red arrow gleamed like embers below the thumb of
the hand. Where had he seen that arrow? Where and when? When his hand
had fallen away from him, lopped at the wrist. It was the dead hand
which was not dead. It was his own hand. It was the hand with the red
arrow which had held Peter so tightly. It was the dead hand which was
alive, the living hand which had arisen from the dead. Tighter round his
wrist grew the pressure of the severed hand. The hand was tired of
calling. The hand had come. There was no gainsaying the hand. So tight
grew the clutch of the hand that his whole arm slowly lifted from his
side. Irresistibly the shoulder followed the rising arm. There was no
gainsaying the hand. Neither awake nor asleep, neither living nor dead,
he followed the hand, he rose from the bed where Mary lay, sleeping
sundered from him, his no more. Mary was alive. He was neither living
nor dead. The door of the room was opened wide. Closed doors were no
barrier against the hand which had arisen from the grave. Slowly, with
steady feet, with wide, filmy eyes, Ivan passed through the door. Slowly
through the outer door, slowly into the sound of thunder, into the gleam
of lightning and the voices of winds moaning unceasingly, “Peter! Peter!
He is calling you! Ivan! Peter is calling you! Follow!” and ever again
unceasingly, “Peter! Peter!”

Tighter than the bonds of ice or granite hills, tight only as the bond
of death, the arisen hand held the lopped wrist, drew the slow body of
Ivan through the haunted night far into the wood, far through the
talking trees, far to the place of that tree which had not been cut
down, to the place where an axe had fallen through bones and flesh,
where Peter had fallen, where Peter lay buried, not deep down; where
Peter lay buried under twigs and loose earth.

Tightly round the wrist of the man neither alive nor dead clutched the
resurrected hand. Nearer and nearer to the shallow grave the hand pulled
down the body of Ivan. Methodically, steadily, working with no pause,
the free hand of Ivan moved the twigs and the loose earth—methodically,
with no pause, until at last the body of Peter lay revealed; not
recognisable, dissolute beneath the change through which all men shall
pass, recognisable only to those filmy eyes of Ivan, to that questing
hungry soul of Ivan which had come to claim its own. Closer and closer
to the dead brother the severed hand drew the body of Ivan down; so
close, so close, until at last the hand clutched again and for ever that
wrist to which Fate had fastened it long years ago. Alongside of his
dead brother, quietly, with those eyes which neither saw nor did not
see, Ivan lay down full length. Gradually the severed hand, the hand
which had arisen from the dead to claim him, because the dead brother
called and the severed hand called for its own, gradually the hand
slipped from the lopped wrist; the wrist and the arm became one. The
hand of Ivan had brought Ivan to his own. Indissolubly, Peter and Ivan
lay joined together. But the death which lay cold in the heart and body
of Peter passed from the clutched wrist, passed into the hand which
clutched it, passed along the arm which had been severed once, and along
Ivan’s shoulder, until it made his eyes unseeing discs and of his heart
cold stone which could beat no more.

As the grey light of dawn came emptily down the Serbian woods, the two
brothers lay immortally one again, like the two babies the gods had
given Nikolai Kupreloff upon a long-vanished night.




THE SENTIMENTAL MORTGAGE

By ARTHUR LYNCH


“I can account for the man,” said Carstairs, “but what I am curious
about is the feelings of the girl. He blew out his brains in her
presence, and he did it immediately after she had told him to be gone.
Dramatic of him. He did it for love of her—a warm passion. I suppose
that that would be the deepest idea in her mind.”

“He was a man of his word, at any rate,” said Miss Landells, “for of all
the heroes who are eternally swearing they could die for a smile and all
the rest of it, hardly one would wet his boots unless he thought he
could gain something by it.... I dare say she had begun by despising
him, and when he blew out his brains felt some respect for him. Probably
if he were alive again, though, she would act in the same way.”

“I think I could put a harder case,” said the Colonel, “one where a man
sacrificed more——”

“Sacrificed more?”

“Yes; a man might easily blow out his brains in a burst of rage or
disappointment, but that proves little. Blantyre, the man of whom I was
thinking, did more, and the girl—Miss Trafford—had therefore to deal
with a more complex problem.”

With a warning that we might think the story gruesome, the Colonel told
it.

                   *       *       *       *       *

To understand the circumstances it is necessary to know something of
Blantyre’s character. When I knew him first he had the rank of Captain.
I being second lieutenant and our relations not being very familiar, I
only knew him from what might be called an outsider’s point of view. I
hardly think, however, that anyone knew him much better. That will give
you a hint—he was a reserved man. Yet he had a fund of high-spirits;
also a witty manner, which was at times playful and yet sometimes
bitter.

He was an unusually handsome man. Above average height, slender but
well-made and active, he had regular features, dark complexion and
black, blue-black hair. It was said that he had a dash of the
“tar-brush”—Indian, you know—and this fact, trivial as it may appear,
had, I believe, a powerful influence on his life. I know as a fact, that
he became more reserved after a rather unpleasant occurrence, when an
ill-bred young spark, losing his temper in an argument, called him a
Dago.

Blantyre was always a serious sort of chap. He wrote for the _United
Service Review_ and the _Engineering Magazine_, and other technical
journals, partly of course for the interest he took in that sort of
thing, but also because he was not well-off. That too was his reason for
taking as little part as possible in dances, picnics and the other
little flutters by which we amused ourselves. He seemed, in fact, rather
a fish out of water, and I used to wonder why he remained in the
Service; but he was not only of an energetic and resolute habit of mind,
but also intensely ambitious.

He had the misfortune to fall in love with the prettiest, the most
spoilt and, I believe, the most selfish, minx in England. The word
“brilliancy” was always on her lips, and she thought of nothing but
pleasure and excitement. She was then about twenty.

Imagine her reception of him when, carried off his feet, he proposed to
her. She laughed in his face and, I am told, asked him if he were “an
Indian Nabob”!

She probably only meant that the man who married her must be able to
give her the sort of life to which she was accustomed; and had not
realized—she took it all so lightly and really cared for Blantyre so
little—what the phrase might mean to him. His poverty and his supposed
origin—no words could have cut more deeply.

That very night, he set the wheels in motion and shortly after was
transferred to the Indian battalion. For the next seven years he put in
as much fighting on the frontiers as was humanly possible. He seemed the
veriest glutton for danger, never spared himself, and yet people said he
fought without enthusiasm or any warmth of blood. Oh, I grant you a
queer chap!

At first his men rather disliked him, but in time they became impressed
by his courage and dash, and they soon grew to rely on his steady, his
inexorable justice. He was never a popular man, too stiff and too
reserved, but his men would have followed him to certain death. They
called him “The Sabre Prince.”

After seven years Blantyre was back amongst us, but by that time he had
risen to be Colonel, and his reputation was unique. He was then about
thirty-five, still, you see, a young man, and quite naturally London
went mad over him. He became the lion that particular season.

But India had left her marks on him. He had returned minus his right
arm, and the once blue-black hair was grey. However, he was still as
handsome as ever and had the air of a man who has seen and dealt with
matters of importance. In other words he was distingué. Also he was
still in love with Miss Trafford.

Nor had time and experience and that unique reputation of his failed of
their effect on her. As often happens to a woman of her type she had
failed to bring off a match commensurate with her ambitions, and at
twenty-seven was still unmarried.

The news of their engagement set everybody gossipping. His infatuation
was recalled, and it was said she had refused a great alliance in order
to wait for him. The story even got into the newspapers.

I was not a little pleased, I can tell you, to hear that they were to be
married. She was still wonderfully pretty and, rumour said, less vain
and spoilt. It might be that she would settle down and make him a good
wife. Anyway he wanted her, he had wanted her for a long time, and he
was going to get what he wanted. Blantyre himself wrote to tell me, and
I think the next few weeks were the happiest of his life.

Judge then, of my surprise—sorrow, too—to learn one day, and again from
Blantyre himself that the marriage was off, that he had resigned his
commission and got an engineering job abroad.

Of course I hurried to see him. He was much as usual, cool, collected,
finely-tempered. In fact when I entered he looked up with a smile—and I
had always thought his smile lighting up that austere face peculiarly
winning.

It appeared that it was he who had broken off their engagement, and the
matter can be put in a nutshell—he had found her out. Mercenary motives,
no real affection—also, while he himself had grown and developed, she
had remained the social butterfly.

He told me—what I had not known—the story of his rejection seven years
previously. He had believed he was not worthy of her, and he had gone to
India to fight his way up to her standard. When he came back he had
believed her story, believed she had waited....

Then he had heard things. People talk, you know. I don’t know that he
believed what he was told, but what wrung him to the very vitals was
that he should have loved so deeply something that was—well, a poor
thing, unworthy.

Miss Trafford was in no temper to be jilted. She even went the length of
putting the case into her lawyer’s hands for breach of promise.

                   *       *       *       *       *

“Before I leave England,” he said, “I mean as far as I can to satisfy
justice. The law, I suppose, could not get more from me than I possess,
and everything I have, I mean to give her. It was she who sent me to
India, and I will strip myself for her of everything I gained there.
Will you take my medals?” and he offered me a little mahogany,
gold-ornamented box. “Keep them as a memento. I do not want them. I—I
feel I may have won them fighting against my own people.”

In his words was a something of grief and even shame. I felt I was
looking at a man who regretted what could not be helped, who would
regret it for the remainder of his days.

“There is only now my property in Devonshire. That I have made over to
Miss Trafford. The deeds are in this box. The property is a small one
but it has now no encumbrances. I have been able to clear off
everything; except—” he said musingly—“except something she may or may
not regard as a detriment—it is a sort of Sentimental Mortgage.”

“A skeleton in the cupboard?” said I, thinking of some ghost story, or
creepy legend, or the like.

“Precisely. You have hit it. A skeleton in the cupboard.”

“But, but,” said I, trying to bring him back to the business side of the
matter, “this is not justice, justice to yourself.”

“When all is said and done,” he returned quietly, “you will recognise
that justice—inexorable justice. Money, position, even reputation are
nothing to me now.... No, I am not going to kill myself. I have accepted
a post in an enterprise which, if successful, will make a more enduring
mark, bring me greater wealth, perhaps even fame, than those frontier
exploits of mine.”

I was relieved to hear of his fresh interests.

“I am undertaking the survey of a line to open up the hinterlands of
Argentine. If that be successful, I shall hope to superintend the work.
If I do not succeed—well, at any rate I shall have made a beginning, and
my successor may find encouragement in the spirit in which I have led
the way. But I am dreaming ... I wish you to take this box containing
the deeds, and present it to her—if you will do me that last favour.”

I promised.

                   *       *       *       *       *

I brought the box to her and presented it with ceremony. She was always
charming. She begged me to wait while she opened it.

When I spoke of the “skeleton in the cupboard” I had little guessed how
startlingly true the words must have sounded. It was her fault that
Blantyre had gone to India, and with the gift lay the rebuke, for the
skeleton grasped the deeds.

                   *       *       *       *       *

“The skeleton, Colonel?”

“Yes, the skeleton of his right hand.”




CAPTAIN SHARKEY

HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT’S CAME HOME

By A. CONAN DOYLE


When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end
by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been
fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone. Some
took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce,
others were absorbed into the fishing-fleets, and a few of the more
reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen and the bloody flag at
the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the
whole human race.

With mixed crews, recruited from every nation, they scoured the seas,
disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in
for a debauch at some outlying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants
by their lavishness and horrified them by their brutalities.

On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above
all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant
menace. With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations
by the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer and
dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.

They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that
discipline and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers,
both formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an
account to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken
whim of the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with
longer stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell
into their hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after
serving as boon companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his
cabin table with his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and
salt in front of him. It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his
calling in the Caribbean Gulf.

Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship _Morning Star_, and yet
he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the
falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the
guns of the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt’s was his final port of
call, and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old
England. He had had enough of those robber-haunted seas. Ever since he
had left Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red
pepper, he had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet
edge of the tropical sea. He had coasted up the Windward Islands,
touching here and there, and assailed continually by stories of villainy
and outrage.

Captain Sharkey, of the 20-gun pirate barque _Happy Delivery_, had
passed down the coast, and had littered it with gutted vessels and with
murdered men. Dreadful anecdotes were current of his grim pleasantries
and of his inflexible ferocity. From the Bahamas to the Main his
coal-black barque, with the ambiguous name, had been freighted with
death and many things which are worse than death. So nervous was Captain
Scarrow, with his new full-rigged ship and her full and valuable lading,
that he struck out to the west as far as Bird’s Island to be out of the
usual track of commerce. And yet even in those solitary waters he had
been unable to shake off sinister traces of Captain Sharkey.

One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon the face of the
ocean. Its only occupant was a delirious seaman, who yelled hoarsely as
they hoisted him aboard, and showed a dried-up tongue like a black and
wrinkled fungus at the back of his mouth. Water and nursing soon
transformed him into the strongest and smartest sailor on the ship. He
was from Marblehead, in New England, it seemed, and was the sole
survivor of a schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful Sharkey.

For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, had been adrift beneath
a tropical sun. Sharkey had ordered the mangled remains of his late
captain to be thrown into the boat, “as provisions for the voyage,” but
the seaman had at once committed them to the deep, lest the temptation
should be more than he could bear. He had lived upon his own huge frame
until, at the last moment, the _Morning Star_ had found him in that
madness which is the precursor of such a death. It was no bad find for
Captain Scarrow, for, with a short-handed crew, such a seaman as this
big New Englander was a prize worth having. He vowed that he was the
only man whom Captain Sharkey had ever placed under an obligation.

Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all danger from the
pirate was at an end, and yet the thought of him lay heavily upon the
seaman’s mind as he watched the agent’s boat shooting out from the
custom-house quay.

“I’ll lay you a wager, Morgan,” said he to the first mate, “that the
agent will speak of Sharkey in the first hundred words that pass his
lips.”

“Well, captain, I’ll have you a silver dollar, and chance it,” said the
rough old Bristol man beside him.

The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman
sprang up the ladder.

“Welcome, Captain Scarrow!” he cried. “Have you heard about Sharkey?”

The captain grinned at the mate.

“What devilry has he been up to now?” he asked.

“Devilry! You’ve not heard, then! Why, we’ve got him safe under lock and
key here at Basseterre. He was tried last Wednesday, and he is to be
hanged to-morrow morning.”

Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an instant later was taken
up by the crew. Discipline was forgotten as they scrambled up through
the break of the poop to hear the news. The New Englander was in the
front of them with a radiant face turned up to heaven, for he came of
the Puritan stock.

“Sharkey to be hanged!” he cried. “You don’t know, Master Agent, if they
lack a hangman, do you?”

“Stand back!” cried the mate, whose outraged sense of discipline was
even stronger than his interest at the news. “I’ll pay that dollar,
Captain Scarrow, with the lightest heart that ever I paid a wager yet.
How came the villain to be taken?”

“Why, as to that, he became more than his own comrades could abide, and
they took such a horror of him that they would not have him on the ship.
So they marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of the
Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Portobello trader, who
brought him in. There was talk of sending him to Jamaica to be tried,
but our good little governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it.
‘He’s my meat,’ said he, ‘and I claim the cooking of it.’ If you can
stay till to-morrow morning at ten, you’ll see the point swinging.”

“I wish I could,” said the captain wistfully, “but I am sadly behind
time now. I should start with the evening tide.”

“That you can’t do,” said the agent with decision. “The Governor is
going back with you.”

“The Governor!”

“Yes. He’s had a dispatch from Government to return without delay. The
fly-boat that brought it has gone on to Virginia. So Sir Charles has
been waiting for you, as I told him you were due before the rains.”

“Well, well!” cried the captain, in some perplexity, “I’m a plain
seaman, and I don’t know much of governors and baronets and their ways.
I don’t remember that I ever so much as spoke to one. But if it’s in
King George’s service, and he asks a cast in the _Morning Star_ as far
as London, I’ll do what I can for him. There’s my own cabin he can have
and welcome. As to the cooking, it’s lobscouse and salmagundy six days
in the week; but he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks
our galley too rough for his taste.”

“You need not trouble your mind, Captain Scarrow,” said the agent. “Sir
Charles is in weak health just now, only clear of a quartan ague, and it
is likely he will keep his cabin most of the voyage. Dr. Larousse said
that he would have sunk had the hanging of Sharkey not put fresh life in
him. He has a great spirit in him, though, you must not blame him if he
is somewhat short in his speech.”

“He may say what he likes and do what he likes so long as he does not
come athwart my hawse when I am working the ship,” said the captain. “He
is Governor of St. Kitt’s, but I am Governor of the _Morning Star_. And,
by his leave, I must weigh with the first tide, for I owe a duty to my
employer, just as he does to King George.”

“He can scarce be ready to-night, for he has many things to set in order
before he leaves.”

“The early morning tide, then.”

“Very good. I shall send his things aboard to-night, and he will follow
them to-morrow early if I can prevail upon him to leave St. Kitt’s
without seeing Sharkey do the rogue’s hornpipe. His own orders were
instant, so it may be that he will come at once. It is likely that Dr.
Larousse may attend him upon the journey.”

Left to themselves, the captain and mate made the best preparations
which they could for their illustrious passenger. The largest cabin was
turned out and adorned in his honour, and orders were given by which
barrels of fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to vary
the plain food of an ocean-going trader. In the evening the Governor’s
baggage began to arrive—great ironbound ant-proof trunks, and official
tin packing-cases, with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested
the cocked hat or sword within. And then there came a note, with a
heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that Sir Charles Ewan made
his compliments to Captain Scarrow, and that he hoped to be with him in
the morning as early as his duties and his infirmities would permit.

He was as good as his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun
to deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some
difficulty up the ladder. The captain had heard the Governor was an
eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came
limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick
bamboo cane. He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails like
a poodle’s coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large green
glasses which covered his eyes looked as if they were hung from it. A
fierce beak of a nose, very long and very thin, cut the air in front of
him. His ague had caused him to swathe his throat and chin with a broad
linen cravat, and he wore a loose damask powdering-gown secured by a
cord round the waist. As he advanced he carried his masterful nose high
in the air, but his head turned slowly from side to side in the helpless
manner of the purblind, and he called in a high, querulous voice for the
captain.

“You have my things?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir Charles.”

“Have you wine aboard?”

“I have ordered five cases, sir”

“And tobacco?”

“There is a keg of Trinidad.”

“You play a hand of piquet?”

“Passably well, sir.”

“Then up anchor, and to sea!”

There was a fresh westerly wind, so by the time the sun was fairly
through the morning haze, the ship was hull down from the islands. The
decrepit Governor still limped the deck, with one guiding hand upon the
quarter-rail.

“You are on Government service now, captain,” said he. “They are
counting the days till I come to Westminster, I promise you. Have you
all that she will carry?”

“Every inch, Sir Charles.”

“Keep her so if you blow the sails out of her. I fear, Captain Scarrow,
that you will find a blind and broken man a poor companion for your
voyage.”

“I am honoured in enjoying your Excellency’s society,” said the captain.
“But I am sorry that your eyes should be so afflicted.”

“Yes, indeed. It is the cursed glare of the sun on the white streets of
Basseterre which has gone far to burn them out.”

“I had heard also that you had been plagued by a quartan ague.”

“Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me much.”

“We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon.”

“Ah, the rascal! There was no budging him, for he has a snug business
amongst the merchants. But hark!”

He raised his ring-covered hand in the air. From far astern there came
the low deep thunder of cannon.

“It is from the island!” cried the captain in astonishment. “Can it be a
signal for us to put back?”

The Governor laughed.

“You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to be hanged this morning.
I ordered the batteries to salute when the rascal was kicking his last,
so that I might know of it out at sea. There’s an end of Sharkey!”

“There’s an end of Sharkey!” cried the captain; and the crew took up the
cry as they gathered in little knots upon the deck and stared back at
the low, purple line of the vanishing land.

It was a cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the
invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was
generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial
and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge
and so escaped. At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of
the deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting
his conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and
Governor smoked their long pipes and drank their claret as three good
comrades should.

“And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?” asked the captain.

“He is a man of some presence,” said the Governor.

“I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneering devil,” remarked
the mate.

“Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions,” said the Governor.

“I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his
eyes,” said Captain Scarrow. “They were of the lightest filmy blue, with
red-rimmed lids. Was that not so, Sir Charles?”

“Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much of those of others!
But I remember now that the Adjutant-General said that he had such an
eye as you describe, and added that the jury were so foolish as to be
visibly discomposed when it was turned upon them. It is well for them
that he is dead, for he was a man who would never forget an injury, and
if he had laid hands upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with
straw and hung him for a figure-head.”

The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke suddenly into a
high, neighing laugh, and the two seamen laughed also, but not so
heartily, for they remembered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who
sailed the western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be
their own. Another bottle was broached to drink for a pleasant voyage,
and the Governor would drink just one other on top of it, so that the
seamen were glad at last to stagger off—the one to his watch and the
other to his bunk. But when after his four hours’ spell the mate came
down again, he was amazed to see the Governor in his Ramillies wig, his
glasses, and his powdering-gown still seated sedately at the lonely
table with his reeking pipe and six black bottles by his side.

“I have drunk with the Governor of St. Kitt’s when he was sick,” said
he, “and God forbid that I should ever try to keep pace with him when he
is well.”

The voyage of the _Morning Star_ was a successful one, and in about
three weeks she was at the mouth of the British Channel. From the first
day the infirm Governor had begun to recover his strength, and before
they were half-way across the Atlantic he was, save only for his eyes,
as well as any man upon the ship. Those who uphold the nourishing
qualities of wine might point to him in triumph, for never a night
passed that he did not repeat the performance of his first one. And yet
he would be out upon deck in the early morning as fresh and brisk as the
best of them, peering about with his weak eyes, and asking questions
about the sail and the rigging, for he was anxious to learn the ways of
the sea. And he made up for the deficiency of his eyes by obtaining
leave from the captain that the New England seaman—he who had been cast
away in the boat—should lead him about, and above all that he should sit
beside him when he played cards and count the number of the pips, for
unaided he could not tell the king from the knave.

It was natural that this Evanson should do the Governor willing service,
since the one was the victim of the vile Sharkey, and the other was his
avenger. One could see that it was a pleasure to the big American to
lend his arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all
respect behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great stub-nailed
fore-finger upon the card which he should play. Between them there was
little in the pockets either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first
mate, by the time they sighted the Lizard.

And it was not long before they found that all they had heard of the
high temper of Sir Charles Ewan fell short of the mark. At a sign of
opposition or a word of argument his chin would shoot out from his
cravat, his masterful nose would be cocked at a higher and more insolent
angle, and his bamboo cane would whistle up over his shoulder. He
cracked it once over the head of the carpenter when the man had
accidentally jostled him upon the deck. Once, too, when there was some
grumbling and talk of mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was of
opinion that they should not wait for the dogs to rise, but that they
should march forward and set upon them until they had trounced the
devilment out of them. “Give me a knife and a bucket!” he cried with an
oath, and could hardly be withheld from setting forth alone to deal with
the spokesman of the seamen.

Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he might be only
answerable to himself at St. Kitt’s, killing became murder upon the high
seas. In politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop
of the House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met
a Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his
vapouring and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a
stream of strange anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had
never known a voyage pass so pleasantly.

And then at length came the last day, when, after passing the island,
they had struck land again at the high white cliffs at Beachy Head. As
evening fell the ship lay rolling in an oily calm, a league off from
Winchelsea, with the long dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front
of her. Next morning they would pick up their pilot at the Foreland, and
Sir Charles might meet the king’s ministers at Westminster before the
evening. The boatswain had the watch, and the three friends were met for
a last turn of cards in the cabin, the faithful American still serving
as eyes to the Governor. There was a good stake upon the table, for the
sailors had tried on this last night to win their losses back from their
passenger. Suddenly he threw all his cards down, and swept all the money
into his long-flapped silken waistcoat.

“The game’s mine!” said he.

“Heh, Sir Charles, not so fast!” cried Captain Scarrow; “you have not
played out the hand, and we are not the losers.”

“Sink you for a liar!” said the Governor. “I tell you that I _have_
played out the hand, and that you _are_ a loser.” He whipped off his wig
and his glasses as he spoke, and there was a high, bald forehead, and a
pair of shifty blue eyes with the red rims of a bull terrier.

“Good God!” cried the mate. “It’s Sharkey!”

The two sailors sprang from their seats, but the big American castaway
had put his huge back against the cabin door, and he held a pistol in
each of his hands. The passenger had also laid a pistol upon the
scattered cards in front of him, and he burst into his high, neighing
laugh.

“Captain Sharkey is the name, gentlemen,” said he, “and this is Roaring
Ned Galloway, the quartermaster of the _Happy Delivery_. We made it hot,
and so they marooned us: me on a dry Tortuga cay, and him in an oarless
boat. You dogs—you poor, fond, water-hearted dogs—we hold you at the end
of our pistols!”

“You may shoot, or you may not!” cried Scarrow, striking his hand upon
the breast of his frieze jacket. “If it’s my last breath, Sharkey, I
tell you that you are a bloody rogue and miscreant, with a halter and
hell-fire in store for you!”

“There’s a man of spirit, and one of my own kidney, and he’s going to
make a pretty death of it!” cried Sharkey. “There’s no one aft save the
man at the wheel, so you may keep your breath, for you’ll need it soon.
Is the dinghy astern, Ned?”

“Ay, ay, captain!”

“And the other boats scuttled?”

“I bored them all in three places.”

“Then we shall have to leave you, Captain Scarrow. You look as if you
hadn’t quite got your bearings yet. Is there anything you’d like to ask
me?”

“I believe you’re the devil himself!” cried the captain. “Where is the
Governor of St. Kitt’s?”

“When last I saw him his Excellency was in bed with his throat cut. When
I broke prison I learnt from my friends—for Captain Sharkey has those
who love him in every port—that the Governor was starting for Europe
under a master who had never seen him. I climbed his verandah and I paid
him the little debt that I owed him. Then I came aboard you with such of
his things as I had need of, and a pair of glasses to hide these
tell-tale eyes of mine, and I have ruffled it as a Governor should. Now,
Ned, you can get to work upon them.”

“Help! Help! Watch ahoy!” yelled the mate; but the butt of the pirate’s
pistol crashed down on his head, and he dropped like a pithed ox.
Scarrow rushed for the door, but the sentinel clapped his hand over his
mouth, and threw his other arm round his waist.

“No use, Master Scarrow,” said Sharkey. “Let us see you go down on your
knees and beg for your life.”

“I’ll see you—” cried Scarrow, shaking his mouth clear.

“Twist his arm round, Ned. Now will you?”

“No; not if you twist it off.”

“Put an inch of your knife into him.”

“You may put six inches, and then I won’t.”

“Sink me, but I like his spirit!” cried Sharkey. “Put your knife in your
pocket, Ned. You’ve saved your skin, Scarrow, and it’s a pity so stout a
man should not take to the only trade where a pretty fellow can pick up
a living. You must be born for no common death, Scarrow, since you have
lain at my mercy and lived to tell the story. Tie him up, Ned.”

“To the stove, captain?”

“Tut, tut! there’s a fire in the stove. None of your rover tricks, Ned
Galloway, unless they are called for, or I’ll let you know which one of
us two is captain and which is quartermaster. Make him fast to the
table.”

“Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!” said the quartermaster. “You
surely do not mean to let him go?”

“If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned Galloway, it is still
for me to command and for you to obey. Sink you for a villain, do you
dare to question my orders?”

“Nay, nay, Captain Sharkey, not so hot, sir!” said the quartermaster,
and, lifting Scarrow like a child, he laid him on the table. With the
quick dexterity of a seaman, he tied his spreadeagled hands and feet
with a rope which was passed underneath, and gagged him securely with
the long cravat which used to adorn the chin of the Governor of St.
Kitt’s.

“Now, Captain Scarrow, we must take our leave of you,” said the pirate.
“If I had half a dozen of my brisk boys at my heels I should have had
your cargo and your ship, but Roaring Ned could not find a foremast hand
with the spirit of a mouse. I see there are some small craft about, and
we shall get one of them. When Captain Sharkey has a boat he can get a
smack, when he has a smack he can get a brig, when he has a brig he can
get a barque, and when he has a barque he’ll soon have a full-rigged
ship of his own—so make haste into London town, or I may be coming back,
after all, for the _Morning Star_.”

Captain Scarrow heard the key turn in the lock as they left the cabin.
Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the
companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the
stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the
falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore and
dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles, he
rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way through
the closed door, and rushed hatless on to the deck.

“Ahoy! Peterson, Armitage, Wilson!” he screamed. “Cutlasses and pistols!
Clear away the long-boat! Clear away the gig! Sharkey, the pirate, is in
yonder dinghy. Whistle up the larboard watch, bo’sun, and tumble into
the boats all hands.”

Down splashed the long-boat and down splashed the gig, but in an instant
the coxswains and crews were swarming up the falls on to the deck once
more.

“The boats are scuttled!” they cried. “They are leaking like a sieve.”

The captain gave a bitter curse. He had been beaten and outwitted at
every point. Above was a cloudless, starlit sky, with neither wind nor
the promise of it. The sails flapped idly in the moonlight. Far away lay
a fishing-smack, with the men clustering over their net.

Close to them was the little dinghy, dipping and lifting over the
shining swell.

“They are dead men!” cried the captain. “A shout all together, boys, to
warn them of their danger.”

But it was too late.

At that very moment the dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-boat.
There were two rapid pistol-shots, a scream, and then another
pistol-shot, followed by silence. The clustering fishermen had
disappeared. And then, suddenly, as the first puffs of a land-breeze
came out from the Sussex shore, the boom swung out, the mainsail filled,
and the little craft crept out with her nose to the Atlantic.




VIOLENCE

By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

    From Ten Minute Stories, by Algernon Blackwood,
    by permission of E. P. Dutton and Company.


“But what seems so odd to me, so horribly pathetic, is that such people
don’t resist,” said Leidall, suddenly entering the conversation. The
intensity of his tone startled everybody; it was so passionate, yet with
a beseeching touch that made the women feel uncomfortable a little. “As
a rule, I’m told, they submit willingly, almost as though——”

He hesitated, grew confused, and dropped his glance to the floor; and a
smartly-dressed woman, eager to be heard, seized the opening. “Oh, come
now,” she laughed; “one always hears of a man being _put_ into a strait
waistcoat. I’m sure he doesn’t slip it on as if he were going to a
dance!” And she looked flippantly at Leidall, whose casual manners she
resented. “People are put under restraint. It’s not in human nature to
accept it—healthy human nature, that is?” But for some reason no one
took her question up. “That is so, I believe, yes,” a polite voice
murmured, while the group at tea in the Dover Street Club turned with
one accord to Leidall as to one whose interesting sentence still
remained unfinished. He had hardly spoken before, and a silent man is
ever credited with wisdom.

“As though—you were just saying, Mr. Leidall?” a quiet little man in a
dark corner helped him.

“As though, I meant, a man in that condition of mind is not insane all
through,” Leidall continued stammeringly; “but that some wise portion of
him watches the proceeding with gratitude, and welcomes the protection
against himself. It seems awfully pathetic. Still”—again hesitating and
fumbling in his speech—“er—it seems queer to me that he should yield
quietly to enforced restraint—the waistcoat, handcuffs, and the rest.”
He looked round hurriedly, half suspiciously, at the faces in the
circle, then dropped his eyes again to the floor. He sighed, leaning
back in his chair. “I cannot understand it,” he added, as no one spoke,
but in a very low voice, and almost to himself. “One would expect them
to struggle furiously.”

Someone had mentioned that remarkable book, _The Mind that Found
Itself_, and the conversation had slipped into this serious vein. The
women did not like it. What kept it alive was the fact that the silent
Leidall, with his handsome, melancholy face, had suddenly wakened into
speech, and that the little man opposite to him, half invisible in his
dark corner, was assistant to one of London’s great hypnotic doctors,
who could, an he would, tell interesting and terrible things. No one
cared to ask the direct question, but all hoped for revelations,
possibly about people they actually knew. It was a very ordinary
tea-party indeed. And this little man now spoke, though hardly in the
desired vein. He addressed his remarks to Leidall across the
disappointed lady.

“I think, probably, your explanation is the true one,” he said gently,
“for madness in its commoner forms is merely want of proportion; the
mind gets out of right and proper relations with its environment. The
majority of madmen are mad on one thing only, while the rest of them is
as sane as myself—or you.”

The words fell into the silence. Leidall bowed his agreement, saying no
actual word. The ladies fidgeted. Someone made a jocular remark to the
effect that most of the world was mad anyhow, and the conversation
shifted with relief into a lighter vein—the scandal in the family of a
politician. Everybody talked at once. Cigarettes were lit. The corner
soon became excited and even uproarious. The tea-party was a great
success, and the offended lady, no longer ignored, led all the
skirmishes—towards herself. She was in her element. Only Leidall and the
little invisible man in the corner took small part in it; and presently,
seizing the opportunity when some new arrivals joined the group, Leidall
rose to say his adieux, and slipped away, his departure scarcely
noticed. Dr. Hancock followed him a minute later. The two men met in the
hall; Leidall already had his hat and coat on. “I’m going West, Mr.
Leidall. If that’s your way too, and you feel inclined for the walk, we
might go together.” Leidall turned with a start. His glance took in the
other with avidity—a keenly-searching, hungry glance. He hesitated for
an imperceptible moment, then made a movement towards him, half
inviting, while a curious shadow dropped across his face and vanished.
It was both pathetic and terrible. The lips trembled. He seemed to say,
“God bless you; _do_ come with me!” But no words were audible.

“It’s a pleasant evening for a walk,” added Dr. Hancock gently; “clean
and dry under foot for a change. I’ll get my hat and join you in a
second.” And there was a hint, the merest flavour, of authority in his
voice.

That touch of authority was his mistake. Instantly Leidall’s hesitation
passed. “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly, “but I’m afraid I must take a
taxi. I have an appointment at the Club, and I’m late already.” “Oh, I
see,” the other replied, with a kindly smile; “then I mustn’t keep you.
But if you ever have a free evening, won’t you look me up, or come and
dine? You’ll find my telephone number in the book. I should like to talk
with you about—those things we mentioned at tea.” Leidall thanked him
politely and went out. The memory of the little man’s kindly sympathy
and understanding eyes went with him.

“Who was that man?” someone asked, the moment Leidall had left the
tea-table. “Surely he’s not the Leidall who wrote that awful book some
years ago?”

“Yes—the _Gulf of Darkness_. Did you read it?”

They discussed it and its author for five minutes, deciding by a large
majority that it was the book of a madman. Silent, rude men like that
always had a screw loose somewhere, they agreed. Silence was invariably
morbid.

“And did you notice Dr. Hancock? He never took his eyes off him. That’s
why he followed him out like that. I wonder if _he_ thought anything!”

“I know Hancock well,” said the lady of the wounded vanity. “I’ll ask
him and find out.” They chattered on, somebody mentioned a _risqué_
play, the talk switched into other fields, and in due course the
tea-party came to an end.

And Leidall, meanwhile, made his way towards the Park on foot, for he
had not taken a taxi after all. The suggestion of the other man,
perhaps, had worked upon him. He was very open to suggestion. With hands
deep in his overcoat pockets, and head sunk forward between his
shoulders, he walked briskly, entering the Park at one of the smaller
gates. He made his way across the wet turf, avoiding the paths and
people. The February sky was shining in the west; beautiful clouds
floated over the houses; they looked like the shore-line of some radiant
strand his childhood once had known. He sighed; thought dived and
searched within; self-analysis, that old, implacable demon, lifted its
voice; introspection took the reins again as usual. There seemed a
strain upon the mind he could not dispel. Thought circled poignantly. He
knew it was unhealthy, morbid, a sign of those many years of difficulty
and stress that had marked him so deeply, but for the life of him he
could not escape from the hideous spell that held him. The same old
thoughts bored their way into his mind like burning wires, tracing the
same unanswerable questions. From this torture, waking or sleeping,
there was no escape. Had a companion been with him it might have been
different. If, for instance, Dr. Hancock——

He was angry with himself for having refused—furious; it was that vile,
false pride his long loneliness had fostered. The man was sympathetic to
him, friendly, marvellously understanding; he could have talked freely
with him, and found relief. His intuition had picked out the little
doctor as a man in ten thousand. Why had he so curtly declined his
gentle invitation? Dr. Hancock _knew_; he guessed his awful secret. But
how? In what had he betrayed himself?

The weary self-questioning began again, till he sighed and groaned from
sheer exhaustion. He _must_ find people, companionship, someone to talk
to. The Club—it crossed his tortured mind for a second—was impossible;
there was a conspiracy among the members against him. He had left his
usual haunts everywhere for the same reason—his restaurants where he had
his lonely meals; his music-hall, where he tried sometimes to forget
himself; his favourite walks, where the very policeman knew and eyed
him. And, coming to the bridge across the Serpentine just then, he
paused and leaned over the edge, watching a bubble rise to the surface.

“I suppose there _are_ fish in the Serpentine?” he said to a man a few
feet away.

They talked a moment—the other was evidently a clerk on his way home,
and then the stranger edged off and continued his walk, looking back
once or twice at the sad-faced man who had addressed him. “It’s
ridiculous, that with all our science we can’t live under water as the
fish do,” reflected Leidall, and moved on round the other bank of the
water, where he watched a flight of duck whirl down from the darkening
air and settle with a long, mournful splash beside the bushy island. “Or
that, for all our pride of mechanism in a mechanical age, we cannot
really fly.” But these attempts to escape from self were never very
successful. Another part of him looked on and mocked. He returned ever
to the endless introspection of self-analysis, and in the deepest moment
of it—ran into a big, motionless figure that blocked his way. It was the
Park policeman, the one who had always eyed him. He sheered off suddenly
towards the trees, while the man, recognising him, touched his cap
respectfully. “It’s a pleasant evening, sir; turned quite mild again.”
Leidall mumbled some reply or other, and hurried on to hide himself
among the shadows of the trees. The policeman stood and watched him,
till the darkness swallowed him. “He knows too!” groaned the wretched
man. And every bench was occupied; every face turned to watch him; there
were even figures behind the trees. He dared not go into the street, for
the very taxi-drivers were against him. If he gave an address, he would
not be driven to it; the man would _know_, and take him elsewhere. And
something in his heart, sick with anguish, weary with the endless
battle, suddenly yielded.

“There _are_ fish in the Serpentine,” he remembered the stranger had
said. “And,” he added to himself, with a wave of delicious comfort,
“they lead secret, hidden lives that no one can disturb.” His mind
cleared surprisingly. In the water he could find peace and rest and
healing. Good Lord! How easy it all was! Yet he had never thought of it
before. He turned sharply to retrace his steps, but in that very second
the clouds descended upon his thought again, his mind darkened, he
hesitated. Could he get out again when he had had enough? Would he rise
to the surface? A battle began over these questions. He ran quickly,
then stood still again to think the matter out. Darkness shrouded him.
He heard the wind rush laughing through the trees. The picture of the
whirring duck flashed back a moment, and he decided that the best way
was by air, and not by water. He would fly into the place of rest, not
sink or merely float; and he remembered the view from his bedroom
window, high over old smoky London town, with a drop of eighty feet on
to the pavements. Yes, that was the best way. He waited a moment, trying
to think it all out clearly, but one moment the fish had it, and the
next the birds. It was really impossible to decide. Was there no one who
could help him, no one in all this enormous town who was sufficiently on
his side to advise him on the point? Some clear-headed, experienced,
kindly man?

And the face of Dr. Hancock flashed before his vision. He saw the gentle
eyes and sympathetic smile, remembered the soothing voice and the offer
of companionship he had refused. Of course, there was one serious
drawback: Hancock _knew_. But he was far too tactful, too sweet and good
a man to let that influence his judgment, or to betray in any way at all
that he did know.

Leidall found it in him to decide. Facing the entire hostile world, he
hailed a taxi from the nearest gate upon the street, looked up the
address in a chemist’s telephone book, and reached the door in a
condition of delight and relief. Yes, Dr. Hancock was at home. Leidall
sent his name in. A few minutes later the two men were chatting
pleasantly together, almost like old friends, so keen was the little
man’s intuitive sympathy and tact. Only Hancock, patient listener though
he proved to be, was uncommonly full of words. Leidall explained the
matter very clearly. “Now, what is your decision, Dr. Hancock? Is it to
be the way of the fish or the way of the duck?” And, while Hancock began
his answer with slow, well-chosen words, a new idea, better than either,
leaped with a flash into his listener’s mind. It was an inspiration. For
where could he find a better hiding-place from all his troubles than
Hancock himself? The man was kindly; he surely would not object. Leidall
this time would not hesitate a second. He was tall and broad; Hancock
was small; yet he was sure there would be room. He sprang upon him like
a wild animal. He felt the warm, thin throat yield and bend between his
great hands ... then darkness, peace and rest, a nothingness that surely
was the oblivion he had so long prayed for. He had accomplished his
desire. He had secreted himself forever from persecution—inside the
kindliest little man he had ever met—inside Hancock....

He opened his eyes and looked about him into a room he did not know. The
walls were soft and dimly coloured. It was very silent. Cushions were
everywhere. Peaceful it was, and out of the world. Overhead was a
skylight, and one window, opposite the door, was heavily barred.
Delicious! No one could get in. He was sitting in a deep and comfortable
chair. He felt rested and happy. There was a click, and he saw a tiny
window in the door drop down, as though worked by a sliding panel. Then
the door opened noiselessly, and in came a little man with smiling face
and soft brown eyes—Dr. Hancock.

Leidall’s first feeling was amazement. “Then I didn’t get into him
properly after all! Or I’ve slipped out again, perhaps! The dear, good
fellow!” And he rose to greet him. He put his hand out, and found that
the other came with it in some inexplicable fashion. Movement was
cramped. “Ah, then I’ve had a stroke,” he thought, as Hancock pressed
him, ever so gently, back into the big chair. “Do not get up,” he said
soothingly but with authority; “sit where you are and rest. You must
take it very easy for a bit; like all clever men who have overworked——”

“I’ll get in the moment he turns,” thought Leidall. “I did it badly
before. It must be through the back of his head, of course, where the
spine runs up into the brain,” and he waited till Hancock should turn.
But Hancock never turned. He kept his face towards him all the time,
while he chatted, moving gradually nearer to the door. On Leidall’s face
was the smile of an innocent child, but there lay a hideous cunning
behind that smile, and the eyes were terrible.

“Are those bars firm and strong,” asked Leidall, “so that no one can get
in?” He pointed craftily, and the doctor, caught for a second unawares,
turned his head. That instant Leidall was upon him with a roar, then
sank back powerless into the chair, unable to move his arms more than a
few inches in any direction. Hancock stepped up quietly and made him
comfortable again with cushions.

And something in Leidall’s soul turned round and looked another way. His
mind became clear as daylight for a moment. The effort perhaps had
caused the sudden change from darkness to great light. A memory rushed
over him. “Good God!” he cried. “I am violent. I was going to do you an
injury—you who are so sweet and good to me!” He trembled dreadfully, and
burst into tears. “For the sake of Heaven,” he implored, looking up,
ashamed and keenly penitent, “put me under restraint. Fasten my hands
before I try it again.” He held both hands out willingly, beseechingly,
then looked down, following the direction of the other’s kind brown
eyes. His wrists, he saw, already wore steel handcuffs, and a strait
waistcoat was across his chest and arms and shoulders.




THE REWARD OF ENTERPRISE

By WARD MUIR


This is how it happened [said my friend Harborough].

I’m a novelist, as you know, but if I hadn’t had to take to writing I’d
have been a rolling stone by profession and by inclination. In my more
philosophic moods I perceive that, really, it was sheer luck ... this
occurrence about which you’ve asked me to tell you. I should never have
made a success of any other trade but authorship. I’d have starved;
instead I’m rather well off, as things go. But still——

You understand I was by way of being a bit venturesome, as a young man.
I did a certain amount of journalism, from time to time, but my secret
hopes were set on all that is implied in that specious phrase, “seeing
the world.” I wanted to see the world.

Keeping this object in view I shipped on a tramp steamer, with whose
captain I had struck up an acquaintanceship. Nominally I was the purser,
actually I was the Captain’s guest. Cargo boats such as the S.S.
_Peterhof_ do not employ a purser.

No need to narrate the history of that voyage nor dwell upon the trivial
particulars of our life on board. Suffice it to say that in mid-Atlantic
our engines had a break-down. The _Peterhof_ came to a standstill.

If it has ever happened to you during a big voyage you will know that
there is something portentous about the cessation of a steamer’s
machinery in mid-ocean. To be becalmed on a sailing ship may be boring:
to be becalmed—if such an expression can be used—on a steamer is almost
too queer to be boring. Day and night the engines have throbbed until
their throbbing has penetrated into your very marrow, and when the
throbbing abruptly dies you are sensible of a shock. When the _Peterhof_
halted I ran up on deck as speedily as though we had had a collision. I
saw, all round, nothing but sea, sea, sea, and it was far more amazing
than if I had beheld an island or an iceberg or a raft of shipwrecked
mariners, or any of the other picturesque phenomena which my fertile
fancy had hastened to invent as an explanation for our stoppage.

The _Peterhof’s_ engines were antiquated, break-downs had occurred
before, and our two engineers, I learnt, would be able to effect a
repair. Twenty-four hours’ labour would set us going again—it turned out
to be only a slightly over-optimistic prophecy—and meanwhile, we were
free to admire, as best we might, the somewhat monotonous beauties of
the Atlantic.

There was not a breath of wind; the sun blazed from a cloudless sky; as
long as the _Peterhof_ had been in motion we had considered the
temperature fairly cool, but now that her motion was arrested the heat
became very noticeable. The sea was, in a sense, absolutely smooth; but
its smoothness did not imply flatness, any more than the smoothness of a
carpet’s pile implies flatness if the carpet is being shaken. On the
contrary, the _Peterhof_ was rolling upon the undulations of a heavy
ground-swell. The surface of that ground-swell was without a wrinkle,
polished and glossy like lacquer; but its hills and its dales were
gigantically high and deep; far higher and far deeper than I had
realised until the engines relinquished their task of propelling us
athwart them. Now, lying helpless upon the water, we swooped up to a
glazed summit, swooped down to the bottom of a satiny gulf, swooped up
again and down again, in a splendid, even oscillation—and (this was what
seemed so extraordinary to a landsman)—in absolute silence. It was
uncanny. Those fabulous billows never broke. There was not even a hiss
of foam against the side of the steamer. The _Peterhof_ just tobogganned
down one stupendous gradient and up the next as though she had been
sliding on oil.

The thing fascinated me. I stood by the rail, revelling in this
prodigous sea-saw, and only gradually did it dawn upon me that we were
not really rushing down one slant and up the next, we were only being
lifted up and down vertically.

This discovery sounds foolish, but I can’t tell you how it excited me. I
got an empty biscuit tin from the steward and threw it into the sea, as
far as I could, and then watched it floating. You’d have said that that
biscuit tin would have been drawn away by the strength of the swell, or
else dashed against the _Peterhof’s_ side; instead it simply sat there
at exactly the spot where it had fallen; and an hour after I had thrown
it into the water it had shifted, perhaps, only six or eight inches
nearer the steamer.

A project was forming in my mind. I looked at the water. It was a
peculiar, vitreous green, closer under the steamer, was transparent to
the depth of many feet. Beneath my shoe-soles the poop was hot; over
side, the sea looked inexpressibly inviting. And on a sudden I turned to
the drowsing Captain and exclaimed: “I want to bathe.”

“To _bathe_?” The Captain gazed at me.

“Why not?”

The Captain yawned out some lethargic suggestion to the effect that to
bathe would be dangerous because of the depth—as though I’d be more apt
to drown in three miles of water than in three fathoms.

Seafaring people are odd in that way—I don’t mean in their ignorance of
swimming, though, to be sure, the average sailor is seldom a swimmer.
They’re so—how shall I express it?—so unenterprising. In the midst of
adventure and romance they are stirred by no recognition either of the
adventures or the romantic.

I was a city-bred youngster, who had never been out of hail of the
homeland before, and I possessed more enterprise in my little finger
than that far-travelled Captain had in the whole of his weather-worn,
hulking lump of a carcass. I wanted to bathe. I wanted to bathe in the
mid-Atlantic. I had learnt to bathe in the public swimming-bath near my
old school, and now I wanted to try a swimming-bath three miles deep and
tilting continuously at an angle of I don’t know how many degrees. The
notion was gorgeous.

“I can swim,” I said. “You needn’t be afraid.”

“But the waves’ll sweep you away.”

“There aren’t any waves. Watch this biscuit tin. The top of the
Atlantic, at this moment, is like a string which is being twanged. The
vibrations are a hundred yards across, or more, and they look as though
they were travelling along the string; I suppose they are travelling
along the string; but a fly sitting on the string doesn’t travel along
with the vibrations, it only travels up and down. If I go in to bathe I
shan’t be swept away.”

The Captain hadn’t thought of it in that light. He tried to argue—but my
biscuit tin answered his argument. And eventually he allowed me to have
the ladder lowered; I stripped, descended the ladder, and launched
myself into the sea.

I struck out, to get clear of the ship, then ceased swimming and looked
around me. The sea was coldish, but not unendurable—and anyhow I was too
much in love with my situation to bother about that. Behind me the
_Peterhof_ towered, like a cliff; I had never realised, before, how big
a five-thousand-ton vessel looks from the water. At her rail I could see
a cluster of the crew, watching me; the Captain on the poop. From
somewhere in the interior of the ship came the sound of hammering—the
engineers at work—and I noticed that this sound reached me more clearly
now than when I was on board.

But if the _Peterhof_ appeared strange, from the water, how much
stranger was the view in the opposite direction! Or rather, the absence
of view!

The ground-swell had looked formidable when I was on the _Peterhof’s_
deck; here its aspect was terrific. The crystalline slope in which I was
cradled seemed to reach the sky; yet, without having climbed it, I
immediately found myself, instead of looking up the slope, looking down
it—down an oblique abyss of gleaming profundity. I seemed to fall and
fall and fall; nevertheless, there was no spasm of nausea; although I
was falling I was supported, sensuously, in my fall ... and I never
reached the finish of the fall; it merged, imperceptibly, into an
ascent; and a moment later I was surveying a fresh trough of glassiness,
or else gazing audaciously downward, downward on to the deck of the
_Peterhof_.

It was overwhelming. Never in all my life have I attained to a rapture
comparable with that bathe in mid-Atlantic. I knew, even at the time,
that it would be unforgettable. I had aspired to be able to say that I
had swum in water three miles deep ... oh, never mind what vain boast I
had promised myself. Boasting was forgotten. I was experiencing. I was
surrendered to an ecstasy, an enchantment, a glee, beyond expression
grandiose and delicious. I lolled in the pellucid water, not troubling
to swim. I let myself go, in those dizzy soarings and sinkings; I
abandoned myself to this vast and beautiful force; I felt at once
infinitely little and infinitely great.

The whole adventure was half terrifying and half ... well, comfortable.
Perched on the crown of one of those flawless ridges I felt, as I
toppled over, that I must either be smashed to pieces at the end of the
plunge or engulfed in some horrid undertow. But I knew that nothing of
the sort would happen. Quietly I paddled with my arms and feet; almost
contemptuously I gave myself to the puissant and colossal rhythm which
swayed me as high as a cathedral at every swing and then gently rocked
me down as deep as a valley. I tell you, the sensation was sublime ...
and I hadn’t even got my hair wet!

I remembered, in the middle of my bliss, this perfectly incongruous fact
that I hadn’t got my hair wet, and I prepared to “duck.” But at that
moment I heard a shout from the deck of the _Peterhof_.

I turned in the water, and saw that the Captain was gesticulating to me,
but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. The crew were shouting also, and
one of them had got a coil of rope over his arm and seemed to be making
ready to throw it. What did they mean?

Stupidly, in the tingling ardour and gusto of my enjoyment, I didn’t
make out, for a minute, what they were driving at; it occurred to me
that they had taken it into their heads that because I wasn’t swimming I
had got cramp. I signalled cheerily to them, to reassure them; but they
did not cease shouting ... and then, as I turned again, a little, in the
water, I knew....

Near the skyline rim of the superb mountain-range upon which I was
commencing to rise I saw, shadowy in the translucent green, an
unmistakable shape—the shape of a great fish: a shark. Its fin cut the
surface like a knife. For one instant I stared, and in that instant I
observed, with a vivid clearness, all manner of minute details—the
burnished sheen on the water, the glistening tautness of its lofty
skyline, the sapphire blue of the sky itself, and, most lucidly of all,
the silhouette of the shark. Every movement of the shark was now plain
to me; and it was moving, there was no doubt of it: a trail of bubbles
streamed from its flank and a tiny streak of froth fluttered behind the
fin. The shark was not passive, in the element, as I was; it was monarch
of the waves, it could drive through them with the precision of a
torpedo. I had invaded a realm which I had no business to invade ... and
its guardian was come to punish me.

An astonishingly coherent train of reflections such as these whirled
round my brain. They must have occupied a fraction of a second. I know
that, at all events, I struck out for the _Peterhof_ without any
apparent pause. My arms and legs worked frantically; I swum as I had
never swum before. I hurled myself through the water.

Fortunately I had gone only a very short distance from the foot of the
steamer’s ladder. It seemed remote enough, though, I can tell you! My
eyes were bursting out of their sockets, but I could dimly see the
Captain leaning on the rail and shouting, and some of the men running
down the ladder to receive me. Then the rope was flung. It splashed
across me. I grasped it. I dug my nails into it. I clung to it with a
grip so fierce that I felt as though I was crushing it. Simultaneously
the men at the other end of the rope began pulling, and I was jerked
through the water in a lather of spray which swirled round my shoulders.
My arms and head were above the water, I was being dragged so fast up
the steamer’s side. I could still see the Captain, vaguely, confusedly.
His mouth was open, his hands were waving. But I wasn’t interested in
him, I was only interested in what was pursuing behind me. Gad! That was
an awful moment. I dream of it, sometimes, even now: the disgusting,
obscene terror of that dash for safety ... and I wake sweating with the
horror of it.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Harborough paused.

“And how did your adventure end?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I lost consciousness. But I kept tight on to the rope.
They hauled me on board ... they told me afterwards that I hadn’t even
got my hair wet ... but ...” he hesitated.

“I’d had my experience—a never-to-be-forgotten experience. Dash it!” he
laughed. “It was almost worth it, I swear ... and I’m making money, now,
as a novelist, whereas if I’d continued my life of rolling stone I’d
certainly have arrived in prison or the poorhouse. Yes, I suppose that
every disaster has its compensations.

“But I confess I didn’t think so when I awoke on board the _Peterhof_—we
were plug-plugging onwards again by that time—and found that I’d got
only one leg.”




GREAR’S DAM

By MORLEY ROBERTS


There was dust everywhere; it was a red-hot world of dust. It lay upon
the roads where the labouring wheel tracks marked them out; but the
whole long plain was dust as well. Neither grass nor any green thing
showed, and dead, dry salt-bush, eaten by the sheep till it looked like
broken peasticks, was dust colour to the dancing horizon of that world
of thirst. For seven months and a week, by Wilson’s almanac, there had
been no rain, and what dew had fallen the hot air drank when the fierce
sun rose. And now not even the little fenced garden at Warribah showed
any sign of verdure. Water was precious, and each day the north wind
drank the water-holes drier and drier yet.

But, though the world of desolate Warribah was brown, in the roots of
grass and the mere sticks of salt-bush was sufficient nourishment to
keep life in the sheep who moved across the burnt paddocks of the
station; what they needed, and what they began to suffer for was water,
and the cloudless sky, luminous and terrible, bent over their world and
breathed fire upon them. The wind out of the Austral tropics was as
fierce as a blowpipe flame, or so it seemed. Hope and prosperity melted
under it, and the home at Warribah dissolved.

“I shall go mad,” said Wilson. And having said it, he sent his wife away
to the south. He could not keep a cheerful face before her; it was
easier to lie upon paper, easier to drift into silence that was not
disturbed by her tears. He was a lonely man again, as lonely as when he
had first fought with the bush, and conquered a space for himself where
no water ran.

And now the conquered territory that he had hoped to keep for the uses
of civilisation called in the sun and the north wind, and there was a
great fight in progress between man and nature. As he walked over what
he had won, or as he galloped, the caked and cracked earth fell into
powder, and rose choking and impalpable, as fine as flour. The gaunt,
spare box trees of the plains were powdered with its red-white film;
their dry verdure was obscured. The dust was mud upon his lips, mud upon
his cheeks as he sweated ice, to think the day was coming when there
could be no hope for him and no help.

“How long now?” he asked himself.

And all about the plains rose columns of dust as the uneasy, fretful
sheep, to whom his men doled water, moved up the wind seeking more.

“After ten years—this,” said Wilson, and he laughed. But those who heard
him laugh shivered, and contracted their brows. For he was a hard
worker, and had slaved for this—for bankruptcy, a sky of brass.

“The boss is crazy,” said the men at the hut.

An immense, intolerable sense of pity for the sheep possessed him. He
had no children, and the land he held had been as a child to him. Now
the plains he had delighted in were become ingrate. They refused him
help. The sheep were his children and his delight. He knew thousands of
them by sight, for he had the shepherd’s eye. There was a character
about the Warribah sheep that he had bestowed by his care and by his
choice. He had fenced them in against straying; had chased the cowardly
dingo and had slain him; he had rejoiced in the grass and the whitening
cotton-bush, and the succulence of thick-fleshed salt-bush. How often he
had ridden out and watched the sheep graze; it was a happy world when
the rains in their due season ceased, and the time for shearing came. It
was a riotous pleasure to hear the click of the shears. How the white
inner fleece gleamed and fell over, and parted and showed its woven
beauty! The movements of the shearers, and the sound of them, and the
sound of the pent or loosened sheep wove itself into a kind of fabric;
in the loom of time and the due sweet season pleasure grew, and success,
and the joy of well-doing.

And now there was death in the air and in the north wind. And behind it
ruin. There his ten thousand children would perish off the face of the
inexorable earth and be no more than white bones lying heaped against a
northern fence where no water was. He laughed a thin, crackling laugh,
and walked to and fro in front of his lonely house.

“The boss is crazy,” his men had said. Now in the hot and idle noon they
sat in the southward shadow of the crackling hut and watched him. The
old cook, a blear-eyed outcast thrown up by the seas upon the coast of
Australia, broke suddenly into a drivelling yarn.

“I knew it worse nor this—hell’s flames never beat it, on the Bogan that
year——”

He mumbled on.

“So they died, and the horses, too. Oh, it was cruel, cruel. And Webber
cut his throat from ear to ear, cut his crazy ’ead ’arf off.”

“What of your paddock, Jim?” asked Hill, the old hand of Warribah. The
young boundary rider spat drily.

“The jumbucks is suckin’ mud. The water stinks of yolk. You can smell it
a mile off. Ter-morrer I’ll have to fetch ’em in.”

The black and red ants ran riot in the hut and outside of it. The insect
world flourished and abounded. But for all their bronze there was a
pallid look about the men. Nature was no friend of theirs; they looked
out on fire and blinding light.

“I never knowed it worse.”

But old Blear Eyes had.

“So _he_ blew his brains out.”

“Oh, dry up,” said Hill, but the cook murmured of ancient disasters on
the Darling and the Macquarie.

“Did you die of thirst, you old croaker, and jump up to choke us?”

And still Wilson wandered to and fro in the sunlight, though the sky was
inexorable.

“He’ll be shakin’ his fist at it yet,” said the cook, “and when a man
does that he never comes to no good. It’s all up with them as shakes a
fist at ’eaven. I’ve seen it myself. Now it was in ’79 that Jones of
Quandong Flats went mad. He shook ’is fist at the sky. I seen him, and
the next morning ’e was ravin’ ’orrid, as though the ’orrors of drink
was on ’im. And well I knowed ’em then.”

The boss came towards them through the hot sand, and he leant in the
shade against the pole on which the men’s saddles hung. The men looked
downcast and half-ashamed. Sydney Jim lost all his flashness and moved
uneasily. And the old cook shambled into his kitchen and fell to work
upon his bread.

“There’s little water in the Ten-Mile Tank, Jim?”

“They was suckin’ mud this morning, sir,” said Jim.

Wilson tugged at his grizzled beard and pulled his sunburnt hat over his
eyes.

“We should have put down wells,” said Hill.

Wilson broke into sudden blasphemy, and checked it with a kind of gasp,
as though he felt that madness lay just beyond the limits of his
self-control.

“So we should,” he said; “so we should.”

And he walked away.

“You took that cursin’ very quiet,” said Jim. And there was something in
Hill’s eye that made him flinch.

“Oh, well,” he said apologetically, and Hill glared at him. The heat was
in more than one.

“My son,” said Hill, “I’ve half a mind——”

And then he rose and followed Wilson. He caught him up and talked hard
till Wilson shook his head and went inside and slammed the door.

“He should make it up with Grear, and if Grear let him down on to the
river he might save some.”

For Warribah was in the back-blocks, and Grear held all the river
frontage for twenty miles.

“But they hate each other, and Wilson ain’t the man to crawl,” said
Hill. “He’s a good sort. I’ll go myself.”

He went back to the hut and, taking his saddle and bridle, walked to the
horse paddock, which seemed as barren as a stockyard. He caught his
horse, that was standing at the gate and looking wistfully towards the
stable as if he knew that good feed was there.

“Come,” said Hill, and he rode south through the pine scrub towards
Grear’s. He came to the station as the sun went down, and when he asked
for the boss Grear came out.

“Oh you!” he said roughly. “And what d’ye want?”

He was a long, thin man with a cold eye and thin lips, and as he looked
at him Hill felt that it was a foolish errand he had come on. The man
was worse than he had imagined. It seemed that Wilson was right. To ask
Grear for anything was to invite insult. And though Hill had come twenty
miles to ask he turned away.

“I haven’t seen you for nigh on a year,” said he, “and now I’ve seen
you, why, I shan’t weep if I never see you again.”

He got upon his horse solemnly and turned away, leaving Grear with an
open mouth.

“I was a fool to come,” said Hill, as he ploughed his way among the
sandhills. “He used to reckon that all the back-blocks was his, and
Wilson took ’em up. Grear don’t forgive.”

The night had come upon the land, but there was no remission of the hot
north wind. The heated earth radiated heat still, while in the clear
obscure of the heavens the stars glittered like sharp points of steel.
They stabbed Hill’s very heart as he rode and looked into the rainless
depths of heaven. For the sky was no overarching dome at that season. It
was an awful emptiness without form; it was space itself, unmitigated
and terrible, and heaven’s lamps were near and far and farther still,
while black, starless spaces showed like unfathomable patches in a
silent sea.

“Good God!” said Hill, and fear got hold of him suddenly. He roused his
horse to a canter for the sake of the noise of the motion. The sky
appalled him, and a peculiar sense of reversion took him. He was hung
over depths, and seemed to cling to the suspended earth.

“I’m crazy myself,” said Hill, with a quiver in his voice. And his very
voice broke the silence like a pistol shot. It made him start until he
heard a sheep’s faint baa in the distance. And then a mopoke called its
mate in the trees by an old dry creek. Hill pulled up.

“But it ain’t a creek after all,” he said to himself. “It’s a Billabong,
but it’s twenty years since water came out of the Lachlan so far as
Warribah, and Grear put a dam there fifteen years ago. Ah! if the river
only rose up, and came down roarin’. But it won’t; it won’t.”

As he dreamed of the river, now like a low water-hole with never a
current in it, Wilson, at home, lay in an uneasy sleep. He, too,
dreamed, and dreamed of rain, and he woke himself shouting, “Rain!” and
in his confusion called “Mary” to his wife five hundred miles away.

“Oh God! I dreamt it again,” he said. “I dreamed of rain in our old
place east, and the river came down with thunder and floods, and the
land grew green in an hour—green, green!”

He fell asleep again, and when he woke at dawn he was oddly cheerful.
Perhaps the rest from anxiety in that happy dream had taken part of the
strain from his weary mind.

“I do feel as if it had rained somewhere,” he said; “and if the weather
only breaks anywhere we may have it here.”

“Don’t you think it cooler?” he said to Hill next morning. But the sky
was brass and the sun white hot.

That evening a man riding through to Conoble from Condobolin told him
that he had heard it had rained east of Forbes. And another man who
camped at the Ten-Mile Clump said he knew there had been a great
thunderstorm to the east.

“I dreamed it, so I did!” cried Wilson; “and the Lachlan’s coming down.”

His jaw fell even as he spoke. What use was the Lachlan to him out in
the beyond, when Grear’s lay between? He had no river frontage. Grear
had it all.

In such a country, in spite of its apparent desolation, news travels
fast. They heard that the Lachlan, so quiet at Condobolin, was running
hard at Forbes. It was out in the flats, where the felled trees marked
the old mining camp. There had been a storm, a great cloudburst, in its
head waters, and the river grew alive. Wilson saddled up and rode thirty
miles to see it, and came to the gum-lined ditch just in time to hear
the stream awake. It stirred before his eyes, it became turbid, grew
grey, bubbled, moved and ran, with sticks and leaves and branches on its
full tide.

And still the sky overhead was fire, and the sun a flame. Wilson cursed
it, and prayed to the beautiful grey water. Why should not rain come
there? And soon. But as he rode back he came to sheep of his that stood
against a fence, and pressed on it, as though water was beyond it. Pity
stirred him; he drove them through a gate, and let them suck his last
low tank.

That night Wilson came to the men’s hut under its pines in the sand
dune, and called to Hill.

“Hill, I want to speak to you,” he said, and presently his man came out
into the night. The stars were brilliant. Jupiter was like a little
moon, and cast faint shadows.

“There’ll be no rain here,” said Wilson. “Were you sleeping? I can’t
sleep! Do you hear?”

He waved his hand around the barren horizon.

“I hear,” said Hill.

He heard the sheep.

“You say that old Billabong once came down to Warribah?” asked Wilson.

Hill nodded.

“So they say. But Grear’s dam would stop it.”

“He’s no right to have it there,” said Wilson, savagely. “Look, Hill, I
can’t sleep. I’ll ride out to the dam.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Hill.

“You’re a good sort, Jack,” cried the boss. And they rode together
through the wonderful night, that was so terrible to them, with its hot,
dry air out of the oven of the north.

When they came at last to the long, low dam they tied their horses to
saplings, and sat down. Wilson spoke after a quarter of an hour’s
silence.

“It would be hard to lose it after these years,” he said. “And here’s
Grear’s dam with a fence atop of it. He’s a hard one, Jack!”

“Ay,” said Hill, “he’s hard.”

And Wilson, who had not really slept for days, lay down upon the earth
and dozed, while the star shadows of the gaunt thin boxes moved a foot.
In the hollow of the Billabong some dry reeds, like a cane-brake,
rustled faintly in the air. The leaves of the trees crackled, and
underneath these sharper sounds was the hum of the insect world. Far
away, on every side, the sheep called uneasily for water. What had
seemed silence grew into a very chorus, organic with the earth. The
horses champed their bits and pawed the dusty soil; and once one
whinnied, and was answered by a far-off call from Grear’s.

“I wonder what the river’s like,” thought Hill. He pulled out his pipe
and lighted it. The flare of the match extinguished the starlight for a
moment, and then the darkness melted once more, and he saw each separate
tree, each leaf, each reed.

“I wonder.”

For if the river was in high flood, and over the banks, the Billabong
must be full at Grear’s. And suddenly he heard a sound that he knew
well. He laid his hand upon Wilson’s shoulder.

“D’ye hear it, sir? What is it?”

But both knew. Grear’s sheep were moving from east and west towards
water.

“The blackfellows were right,” said Wilson. “The Billabong is coming
down.”

The horses trampled uneasily, and seemed aware of a change. Perhaps they
too smelt the grey flood as it crawled. And all the air seemed full of
whispers, loud and louder yet. For even the thinned bush is alive, and
holds carnival at midnight and beyond it. A snake crawled by them on the
dam, and suddenly being aware of nigh enemies, it slipped away hastily,
and hid in the hollow trunk of a fallen dwarf box. The sheep on Warribah
grew more uneasy; he heard a distant baa, and then a nearer cry, and a
plaintive chorus came down the dry, hot wind.

“I can’t listen to ’em,” said Wilson. “It makes me mad.”

He rested his head upon his knees, and kept his hands to his ears. But
suddenly he rose up.

“If the water comes we’ll cut the dam, Hill.”

“I would,” said Hill.

“Go back and fetch Jim, and bring shovels,” said Wilson. “I’ll cut it.
If the water comes, I’ve a right to it.”

And Hill rode homeward fast. And as he rode the boss sat still upon the
dam, and looked upon the faintly outlined hollow of the ancient
waterway. And again he dozed, and did not see that round the far bend of
the hollow came a sneaking, quiet band of grey water, like a crawling
snake. But as he slept the night chorus increased, and away to the south
the full sheep baa’ed with content. The Warribah sheep heard and knew,
and moved south through the night: and suddenly ten thousand broke into
a gallop, and stayed in a heap against the fence that topped the dam.
Their voices agonised; they woke Wilson suddenly, and he reached out his
hand and touched water.

And he heard horses galloping. This was Hill returning.

“Thank God!” said Wilson, and he prayed to Heaven with sudden
thankfulness.

But then he started, for the horses came from the south. They came from
Grear’s, and he knew what that meant.

“I’ll do it if I have to kill him,” said Wilson. For behind him the
painful chorus of the sheep was deafening. He saw them packed against
the bulging wires. His heart bled for them, his children.

And then three horses burst through the thin bush.

“Oh, we’re in time,” said Grear. “I thought as much, but we’re in time.
Who’s that?”

“Wilson of Warribah,” said Wilson. “Grear, you will let the water
through.”

And Grear laughed.

“To you that sneaked in and took up my back-lots? Oh, it’s likely,
likely!”

“But the sheep are dying, Grear.”

“Mine ain’t,” said Grear. “Get over the fence and off my land. I’ll not
have you here.”

And Wilson burst into a passionate appeal that was almost a scream.

“Look here, man, if you are a man. I’ll give you ten per cent of ’em to
cut the dam. They’re dying. Oh, my God! hear ’em, Grear; hear ’em! And
I’ve bred ’em. I watched ’em grow. Oh, Grear, I’ll give you half!”

And Grear swore horribly.

“I’ll see them die, and see you get out. I don’t want you here.”

And now in the noise the sheep made it was difficult to hear a man
speak. But the water grew up silently, and spread out, filling the
hollow—a grateful and splendid sheet.

“’Tain’t all yours,” screamed Wilson. “The dam’s not legal. You’ve no
right to rob me and my sheep.”

“Then go to law, you dog, and have it proved,” said Grear. And as he
spoke Hill came galloping, and with him Jim and two other men. And they
carried shovels.

“Look,” said Wilson. “We’re five to you three, you and your men. I mean
to have the water.”

“Never!” cried Grear, and getting off his horse he walked up the dam to
where Wilson stood.

“Get over the fence,” he said.

And Wilson leant against the fence and the sheep behind him. He dabbled
with his hand in their wool. Their hot breath fanned him.

“Don’t, Grear, don’t,” he pleaded. “What would you think if I did the
same to you?”

“You can’t,” said Grear, and he laughed. “I’ve the river at my back.”

And Hill with a spade in his hand pressed through the sheep, until he
came to Wilson. He touched the boss’s shoulder, and Wilson calmed as he
took the spade.

“You don’t mean that they’re to die, Grear, do you?” he asked, with a
catch in his voice.

“What’s that to me?”

“It’s much to me,” said Wilson. “Oh, Grear, I’d rather be hanged than
let it be.”

“Would you? Then be hanged, you rat!” said Grear.

And Wilson lifted the spade, and split Grear’s head with it, and the man
fell back into the water, and dyed it with his blood. But he was dead
before he touched the silver grey stream that had slain him.

And Wilson fell to work digging.

“Good God!” said Hill, and the dead squatter’s men cried out.

“Dig, dig,” said Wilson. “Dig! Grear’s got his water. I’ll have mine.”

When the sun rose his sheep were content.

“Now we’ll see what the law says,” cried Wilson. And he rode south to
find the law.




THE KING OF MALEKA

By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE




                                   1




Connart had started in life with a fine, open, believing disposition,
and with that disposition for his chief asset he had entered the world
of business. At thirty he had lost nearly everything but his heart, yet
it was stolen from him, also, by one Mary Bateman of Boston, a
quiet-looking little woman, endowed with common sense, a few thousand
dollars and a taste for travel. It was this taste, combined with a
slight weakness of the lungs, that induced Connart to go into the
Pacific trade, also a legacy, from an English relation, amounting to
some two thousand pounds odd, which enabled him to make the new start in
business without calling on his wife’s capital.

Dobree of San Francisco gave him the pitch. Connart had the qualities of
his defects. Men robbed him, but they liked him. Men are queer things.
Dobree, in business, was a very tough person indeed, quite without any
finer feelings, and never giving a cent or a chance away, yet, taking a
liking to Connart, he gave him a house, a go-down, and the chance of
success on this Island, by name of Maleka, for nothing.

“I had a station there up to six months ago,” said Dobree, “but I’m
getting rid of my copra interests. You can have the house, charter a
schooner and fill up with trade and go down there, it’s a good climate
and will suit your wife. You won’t make a fortune, but you won’t do
badly if you stick to your guns and don’t let the Kanakas get the
weather gauge on you. There’s only one man there, Seedbaum is his name,
he’s a tough customer by all accounts, but there’s copra enough for
two—I know a schooner you can have, the _Golden Gleam_; she’s owned by
old Tom Bowlby. I’ve got a fellow at a station on Tomasu, that’s a
hundred and fifty miles west of Maleka. There’s a cargo waiting shipment
there. Bowlby can drop you and your stuff at Maleka, then pick up my
cargo at the other place. You won’t have your copra ready for some
months and you can make arrangements with him to come back for it. You
might make arrangements to work in future with Bowlby, he’s a straight
man. You might work with him as partner.”

It was easy to be seen that Dobree was not only giving things away, but
going out of his course to make things smooth. Connart felt glowingly
thankful.

“It’s more than good of you,” said he, “but it seems to me you will lose
over this, for a location like that is worth money.”

“So are cigars,” said Dobree, “but if I give a box of cigars to a friend
he doesn’t complain that the gift is worth money. D——n money,” continued
this money-grubber, “it’s worth nothing but the fun of making it—well,
will you take your cigars, or shall I give the box to someone else?”

Connart said no more. In three weeks’ time the _Golden Gleam_, which was
lying at the wharves, had taken her cargo of all the multitudinous
things that go by the name of “trade,” and one bright morning, tacking
against the wind from the sea, she left the Golden Gate behind her.

Mrs. Connart stood on deck, watching bald Tamalpais across the blue,
scudding sea of the wake.

When you go to the Pacific Islands you die to all the things you have
known, but you are at least sure that you are going to heaven—if you
avoid the low islands.

Mrs. Connart knew the first fact. Down below in her cabin she carried
with her the relics of the life she would no longer lead, down to a
well-worn riding habit and a whip that would most likely never touch
horse again, but she was not despondent, quite the reverse.

You may be sea-sick in a Pacific schooner, bucking against the swell and
bending to the north-west trades, you may be mutinous, or angry, or
tipsy, but despondency, that low fever of cities and civilisation, has
no place out there.

“You ain’t feelin’ the sea, ma’am?” said Captain Bowlby, ranging up
alongside of her.

“No,” said she, “I’m a good sailor.”

“I bet you are,” said the captain.

Bowlby had a keen eye for ships and women. He had taken a liking to Mrs.
Connart at first sight. She had a steady eye and sure smile that pleased
him, and some days later, alone with Ambrose the mate, he voiced his
opinions.

“Looks like a mouse, don’t she? Well, there ain’t no mouse about her
barring her look. She’s one of them quiet sorts that’d back-chat a
congressman if she was put to it, or take a lion by the tail if it was
makin’ for one of her kids. I bet she’s rudder and compass both to
Connart. She and he fit as if they was welded. Did you ever take notice
that there’s chaps you meet that’re only half men till they get a woman
that fits them clapped on to them? If she don’t fit they go under the
first beam sea they meet; if she do, weather won’t hurt them.”

Ambrose concurred. He was a concurring individual, with few opinions of
his own on any matters outside his trade.

“I reckon you’re right,” said he, “though I don’t know much about
women—I never had the time,” he finished, apologetically.




                                   2




They raised Maleka at six o’clock one brilliant morning, and by nine it
had developed before them, mountainous and green, showing, through the
glasses, the blowing foliage, torrent traces and the foam on the barrier
reef.

To Connart and his wife there seemed something miraculous in the
unfolding of this island from the wastes of the blue and desolate sea.
They had pictured this new home often in their minds, but they had
pictured nothing like this. It had been waiting for them all their
lives, and it seemed to them now that the souls of all the pleasant
places they had ever seen or dreamed of were waiting to greet them on
that summer-girdled reef.

As they passed the break and entered the lagoon the true island beach of
blinding white sand showed its curve lipped by the emerald waters, and
through the foliage came glimpses of the white houses of the little
town.

“Look,” said Mrs. Connart, wide-eyed and drawing deep breaths as if to
inhale the strangeness and beauty of the scene before her, “there are
people on the beach, natives, and look at the canoes.”

“There’s a boat pushing off,” said Connart, “and a big fellow in a
striped suit in her.”

“That’s Seedbaum,” said Captain Bowlby; “wonder what he wants, comin’ to
inspect—gin, likely.”

The anchor fell, waking the echoes of the woods, and the _Golden Gleam_,
swinging to the tide that was just beginning to steal out of the lagoon,
lay with her nose pointing to the beach whilst the boat came alongside,
and the man in the striped suit scrambled on board.

He was a big man, with bulging eyes, a shaved head, and feet encased in
worn-out tennis shoes. The suit seemed made of flannelette.

Mrs. Connart at first sight took a profound dislike to this individual.

Seedbaum—for Seedbaum it was—saluted Bowlby, gave him good-day, cast his
eye at the strangers and opened up.

“I knew you before you made the anchorage,” said he, “dropped in for
water, I suppose.”

“No, I’ve water enough till I fetch Tomasu,” replied Bowlby, “I’ve
brought some trade.”

“Trade,” said Seedbaum, offering a cigar. “Well, I don’t mind taking
some prints and knives off you at a reasonable price. I’m full up with
canned goods and tobacco, still—at a reasonable figure——”

“The trade’s not mine,” said Bowlby, lighting the cigar. “It belongs to
the new trader—that gentleman there, Mr. Connart’s his name, let me make
you known. Mr. Connart, this is Mr. Seedbaum.”

“Glad to make your acquaintance,” said Connart.

Seedbaum, fingering an unlit cigar, stared at Connart.

“Well, this gets me,” said he. “Why, Dobree cleared his last man out for
good, there’s not business enough in this island for two—that’s
flat—what’d he want sending you for?”

“He didn’t send me,” replied Connart.

“Then,” said Seedbaum, “what brought you here, anyway?”

“I think,” said Mrs. Connart, “this ship brought us here—and, excuse
me—do you own this island?”

Seedbaum stared at her, then his glance fell before that quiet,
unwavering gaze, and he turned to Bowlby.

“Well,” said he, “it’s none of my affair if the whole continent of the
States comes here to find copra—if it’s to be found—but it seems to me
this is a pretty dry ship.”

“Come down below,” said Bowlby.

They went below and the pop of a beer-bottle cork followed upon their
descent.

“Oh, what a creature!” said Mrs. Connart. “George, why is it that
humanity alone produces things like that?”

“I don’t know,” said Connart, “but I wish humanity had not produced it
here.”

Seedbaum came on deck again mollified by beer. Despite the set-down he
had received he nodded to the new-comers as he went over the side, and
as they watched him being rowed ashore, Bowlby, leaning on the rail,
spat into the water and spoke.

“I didn’t much trouble tellin’ you of that chap on the way out,” said
Bowlby. “There’s no use in meetin’ troubles half way, and there’s not an
island in the hull Pacific you won’t find trouble of some sort in. If
you go in for Pacific tradin’ there’s two things you have to face,
cockroaches and men. I’ve kept the old Gleam pretty free of ‘roaches by
fumigatin’, but you can’t fumigate islands. If you could I reckon you’d
see more rats with hands and feet takin’ to the water than’s ever been
seen since the Ark discharged cargo. Seedbaum’d be one of them, but you
have his measure now and you’ll know enough to go careful with him.
Wiart, the last man that was here, got on all right with him. You see,
they were pretty much of a pair, and it’s my belief they were hand in
glove, as you might say, but I reckon you won’t have much use for a
glove like that. Well, I’ll get you ashore now to see your house and
I’ll help to fix it up for you. We’ll begin gettin’ the cargo ashore
to-morrow.”

He ordered a boat to be lowered and they rowed ashore.

Never, not even in dreamland, had Mrs. Connart experienced anything so
strange as that stepping on shore from the bow of the boat run high and
dry on the shelving beach, never anything like the touch of land after
the long, long weeks of seafaring, and the sights, the sounds, the
perfumes all new, belonging to a new life to be lived in a new world.

The white houses set in a little garden at the far end of the village
pleased her as much as the place. Her house is almost as much as her
husband to a woman, for, to a woman a house implies so much more than to
a man. There are good houses and bad houses, crazy houses exhibiting the
folly of their builders in stucco turrets or mad chimney pots, and
stupid houses without character or proper sculleries and sinks. The
house at Maleka, though small and possessing few rooms, was cheerful and
had a pleasant personality of its own, but it did not possess a stick of
furniture. Mrs. Connart with the prescience of a woman and assisted by
the advice of Bowlby, had brought with them from San Francisco articles
of furniture not to be obtained in the islands, unless at a ruinous
cost. Mats, cane chairs and hammocks could be obtained from the natives.
All the same, there had been furniture in the house and it was gone.
Dobree had given them a list of things and amongst them was an article
on which Mrs. Connart had, woman-like, set her heart. “One red cedar
chest, four foot six by three foot,” was its specification.

“But who can have taken them?” said she, as they stood in the empty
front room, after a tour of inspection. “There was crockery ware,
besides, and oh, ever so many things, and Mr. Dobree was so kind. He
would not take a penny for them. You remember, George, he said: ‘When I
give a friend a box of cigars I don’t take the bands off them, whatever
is there you can have’—and now there’s nothing!”

“Maybe the Kanakas have taken them,” said Bowlby.

“Or Seedbaum,” said Connart.

“As like as not,” replied the captain. “He seems to look on the blessed
place as his. He told me down in the cabin he reckoned he was king of
Maleka, and that all the Kanakas jumped to his orders as if he was king.
He’s got a clutch on the place, there’s no denying that, and he manages
to keep missionaries away somehow or ’nother. I’m afraid you’re going to
have trouble with that chap.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” said Connart. “I’ve got a revolver and can use
it if worst comes to the worst.”

“Oh, it’s not revolvers I’m thinkin’ of,” said the captain, “it’s
trickery; he’d trick the devil out of his hoofs and then make gelatine
of them, would Seedbaum; have no trade dealin’s with him; take my
advice, just stick to the Kanakas.”

“Let’s go and ask him, right now, if he knows where the things have gone
to,” said Mrs. Connart.

“Well, that’s not a bad idea,” said Bowlby. “He’s sure to lie; anyhow,
it’ll clear matters.”

Seedbaum’s house was a substantially built coral-lime-washed building,
with a broad verandah in which hung a cage containing a parrot, the
garden was neat and well-tended, and the whole place had an air of quiet
prosperity, neatness and order, as though the better part of the owner’s
character were here exhibited for the general view.

Seedbaum was seated on the verandah, reading a San Francisco paper
obtained from Bowlby.

Seeing them approach he rose to greet them.

“I’ve come to ask you about the furniture in our house,” said Connart.
“There were quite a lot of things left by the last man, and I have a
list of them, but everything has gone, been taken away—do you know
anything of the matter?”

“I don’t know anything of what you call furniture,” said the other.
“Wiart sold me his sticks when he left for fifty dollars, and a bad
bargain it was.”

“He sold you them?”

“Yes.”

“But they belonged to Mr. Dobree.”

“Oh, did they; well, Dobree will have to dispute that with Wiart. Wiart
said they were his.”

“Have you his receipt?”

“Lord, no, there was no receipt in the matter. I handed him over the
dollars and he handed me over the rubbish. It was a favour to him.”

“Was there a cedar-wood chest?” asked Mrs. Connart.

“There was. It’s in my house now, there; you can see it through the
door.”

Through the open door which gave a view of the front room Mrs. Connart
saw the object of her desire. It was a beauty, solid, moth-defying, with
brass corners and brass handles. It was hers by all right, and Seedbaum
had tricked her out of it. She spoke:

“That chest is mine,” said she. “Mr. Dobree gave it to me, it was his
property, and Mr. Wiart had no right to sell it.”

“Well,” said Seedbaum, “he sold it, and if there’s any trouble over it
it will be between Dobree and Wiart, and Wiart was going to Japan, so he
said when he left here, so Dobree had better go to Japan and have it out
with him.”

Mrs. Connart turned.

“Come,” said she to the others, “there is no use talking any more to
this person. I will write to Mr. Dobree.”

They turned away and Seedbaum sat down again to read his newspaper.

“That’s what I said,” spoke Bowlby. “Monkey tricks; you see how he’s
placed; Wiart’s gone Lord knows where, and Pacific Coast law don’t run
here. The way for you to do is to lay low and fetch him in the eye
unexpected, somehow, though if you take my advice you’ll give him a wide
offing. There’s no use in fightin’ with alligators; better leave them
be. Hullo, what’s that?”

They turned.

Seedbaum had come out of the verandah.

A passing native had drawn his ire for some reason or another, and the
redoubtable Seedbaum was storming at him. Then he kicked the native, and
the latter, a big, powerful man, turned and ran.

“The coward!” said Mrs. Connart.

“I expect that chap ain’t a coward,” said Bowlby. “He’s just ’feared of
Seedbaum. I reckon there’re some curious things in nature. I’ve seen a
whole ship’s company livin’ in terror of a hazin’ captain. They could
have hove him overboard and swore he fell over—for the after guard was
as set against him as the fo’c’sle—but they didn’t. Just let themselves
be driv’ like sheep and kicked like terriers. It’s the same with the
Kanakas on this island, I expect.”

“He’s got a personal ascendancy over them,” said Connart.

“I reckon he’s got something like that,” said Captain Bowlby.




                                   3




In a week they were settled down, and a few days later, the cargo having
been landed and stored, the _Golden Gleam_ took her departure.

They went down to the beach to see her off; they watched her topsails
vanish beyond the reef, and they returned, feeling very much alone in
the world. A good man is warmth and light even to the souls of sinners.
Captain Bowlby was illiterate; his language was free; he was not a
saint, but he was a good, human man right through. The sea turns out
characters like this just as she turns out shells. It is a pity that
they have to cling to the ocean and the beaches; the cities want them.

“I feel just as if I had lost a near relation,” said Mrs. Connart.

“Well, we’ll have him back soon,” said her husband. “It’s up to us now
to get the copra to give him a cargo.”

Next morning the new trader began business by laying out a selection of
goods on the verandah of his store. Mrs. Connart, who knew something of
the Polynesian dialects and who had the art of picking up unknown
tongues, had already got in touch with the Kanakas; they charmed and
pleased her, especially the children, and wherever she went she was
greeted by friendly faces. It seemed to her that the population of this
island, leaving out Seedbaum, her husband and herself, consisted
entirely of children, children of different sizes and different ages,
but children all the same.

Returning that day from a long walk in the woods she found Connart
smoking a pipe on the verandah of their house. He looked rather
depressed.

“I can’t make it out,” said he; “there’s no trade doing.”

“Maybe they don’t know you have started in business yet.”

“Oh, yes, they do; lots of them have passed and seen the store open;
they’ve turned to look at the goods, and they seemed attracted, but they
went on.”

“Well, give them time,” said she.

“Look,” said Connart, “there’s copra going to Seedbaum’s; they’re
trading with him, right enough.”

Mrs. Connart watched the copra bearers, but said nothing.

In her heart she felt that Seedbaum was moving against them by some
stealthy means. At first she thought that it might be possible he had
worked upon the native mind and induced the Kanakas to put a taboo upon
the newcomers, but she dismissed this idea at once. There was no taboo.
The Kanakas were not a bit afraid of either her or her husband, on the
contrary, there was every evidence of friendliness.

“Well,” she said that night, when the store was closed for the day
without a knife or a stick of tobacco changing hands, “there’s nothing
to be done till we find out why they are acting so. It’s that creature,
I am sure. He began by robbing me of my beautiful cedar-wood chest, and
he’s going on to rob you of your chances in business. Well, let him
beware. I’m Christian enough not to wish to hurt him, but I’m Christian
enough to believe there’s a power that punishes the wicked, and he’s
wicked. I knew him for a wicked man directly he came on board the ship.”

“He keeps to himself, and that’s one good thing,” said Connart; “but I
don’t see how he can stop the natives from trading with us.”

“I don’t, either, but I know he does,” said she.

The next day passed without business being done, and the next.

“We may as well shut up shop, it seems to me,” said Connart. “How would
it be if you spoke to some of these people and asked them what is the
matter?”

“I’ve thought of that,” said his wife, “and I held off
because—because—oh, I don’t know, it seems sort of indelicate to ask
people why they don’t come to one’s store. I’ll do it to-morrow morning
first thing. One mustn’t let one’s feelings stand in the way when one’s
living is concerned.”

“I wish we had never come here,” said he, “for your sake.”

“Never come here?” she cried. “Why, I wouldn’t for the earth have gone
anywhere else! I love the place and I love people, and what are
difficulties? Why, difficulties are the main excitement in life. If life
wasn’t an obstacle race, it would be a very flat affair. George, we have
got to beat that man, and I’m going to, you wait and see.”

He kissed her and blessed her, and they sat down that night to a game of
cribbage, Seedbaum and the wickedness of the world forgotten.

Next morning after breakfast Mrs. Connart went out. She passed through
the village and on to the beach, brilliant in the morning light,
breeze-blown and filled with the murmurs of the reef; some natives were
pulling in a net and she watched them, chatting to them and playing with
the children who had come down to secure the little fish. Then she had a
talk with a woman who was standing by, a woman dark and straight as an
arrow, a woman mild-eyed and with a voice sweet as the sound of running
water.

Leaving her, Mrs. Connart passed to a man who was engaged in mending an
outrigger of one of the canoes hauled up on the beach; she had a talk
with him.

Then she returned, walking slowly and thoughtfully to the house, where
she found her husband.

“George,” said she. “I am right. It is that Creature. The people hate
him, but they are afraid of him. It seems absolutely absurd, but it is
so. He holds them in a spell. He kicks them and beats them, but they are
not afraid of that. It’s just him.”

“Good Lord,” said Connart, “why on earth don’t they rise against him,
and tell him to go to the devil; he’s only one man, anyway.”

“I don’t know,” said she. “It’s a mystery of human nature. He’s the
tyrant type, and it’s always been the same in the world; there’s some
sort of magnetism in that type that keeps folk under. History is full of
that. It’s the soft man and the kindly man and the good man that’s
assassinated, but tyrants seem to go free. He’s what he said he was, the
king of this place—well, we must see what we can do to pull him from his
throne. I wish there were more whites here.”

“That’s the bother,” said Connart.

Next morning they found a basket of fruit on their verandah, a gift from
some unknown person. It was as though the Kanakas, afraid to show their
sympathy and friendliness openly for the strangers, had done it in this
manner. But no one came to trade.

That night two chickens, some sweet potatoes and another basket of fruit
were deposited in the same place.

“And we can’t thank them,” said Mrs. Connart; “but I believe these
haven’t all come from one person. I think it’s everyone here—they all
like us. Oh, George, isn’t it maddening that we can’t have them openly
our friends, just because of that Beast!”

“It is,” said George.

Now at eleven o’clock that morning, Mrs. Connart, seated on the verandah
and engaged on some needle-work, noticed a little native girl, who,
pausing at the garden gate and seeming undecided, at last picked up
courage, opened the gate and came towards the house.

Connart was in the house, going over some accounts, when his wife ran in
to him.

“George, come at once,” cried she; “such a dreadful thing—they’ve risen
against Seedbaum and they are killing him somewhere in the woods, and
they want us to go and see!”

“Good Lord!” cried he, “killing him! Want us to go and see! Are they
mad?”

He picked up his hat and came out on the verandah, where the pretty
little native girl was waiting, a flower of the scarlet hibiscus in her
hair and calm contentment in her eyes.

“I can’t quite make out all she says,” said Mrs. Connart; “but I can
make out her meaning.”

“You’d better stay here,” said he, “whilst I go; there may be trouble.”

“I am not afraid,” she replied. “Come on, we may be too late.”

They followed the child.

“Tell her to hurry,” said Connart.

“She says we need not hurry,” replied she; “as far as I can make out
they are only going to kill him—I expect they have him a prisoner
somewhere; well, much as I hate him, I am glad we will be able to save
him.”

“That depends on how the natives take it,” said he.

The child led them from the road by a path trod by the copra gatherers,
a path running through the wonderland of the woods, a green gloom where
the soaring palms shot upwards through a twilight roofed with moving
shadows and sun sparkles.

They reached a glade where a number of natives were seated in a circle.
Above them and swinging by a cord from two trees was hanging a little
disk about half the size of a tambourine; the disk was made of cane, and
so constructed as to leave a small hole in the centre. An old native
woman seated under the disk was clapping her hands and repeating
something that sounded like an incantation. Every pair of eyes in the
whole of that assembly was fixed upon the disk.

The child whispered something to Mrs. Connart. Then she turned from the
child and whispered to her husband.

“It’s only witchcraft. That’s a soul trap. They are waiting for a fly to
pass through the hole in that thing. If it does, then Seedbaum will
die.”

“Good heavens,” murmured Connart, with a half-laugh. “Why, the fellow
hasn’t any soul—not enough to furnish out a fly.”

They watched patiently for ten minutes. There were plenty of flies; they
rested on the little tambourine, crawled round its edge, but not one
went through the hole.

“Come,” whispered Connart.

They withdrew, taking the path back.

“It’s pathetic,” murmured she.

“It’s damned foolishness,” he repeated. “They trade with him, and let
him kick them, and then go on with that nonsense. If they refused him
copra, they would bring him to his senses quick enough.”

“Anyhow they hate him,” said she.

“Much good that is,” he replied.




                                   4




Now it came about that the soul trap—turning out a dead failure, since
not a single fly went through the hole—instead of destroying Seedbaum,
fixed him on a pedestal more secure than that which he had hitherto
occupied.

He was indestructible, and the power which he exercised over the native
mind threatened to be as indestructible as himself.

However, vengeance was coming. Retribution for all the wrongs he had
committed, his swindlings, brutalities and beatings.

It came in this wise:

One afternoon Mrs. Connart, seated on the verandah and reading _The
Moths of the Limberlost_, heard the cries of a child.

Right in front of the house, King Seedbaum was beating a native child
for some fault or fancied disrespect towards his royal highness, cuffing
it and cuffing it, whilst the squeals of the cuffed one affronted the
heavens and the ears of all listeners.

Now, to touch a child or dog or cat in Mrs. Connart’s presence was to
raise a devil. White as death she rushed into the house and white as
death she rushed out again. She held her riding-whip, a Mexican quirt,
ladies’ size, but horribly efficient in energetic hands.

Seedbaum saw her coming, couldn’t understand, caught the first lash on
his right arm and along his back—he was wearing the pyjama suit—and his
yell brought the village flocking and Connart running from a field where
he was laying out some plants.

He saw the quirt lashing over Seedbaum’s shoulder, across his legs, and
across the back, for the King of Maleka was now running, running and
pursued for ten yards or so whilst the quirt got one last blow in.

Then he had his wife in his arms, and she was weeping.

“Did he touch you?” cried Connart.

“No—it was a child,” she gasped. “Beast! Look, he has run into his
house.”

The street was filled with a crowd that all through the beating had
remained spell-bound. Now it broke up into knots and small parties, all
talking together excitedly.

Connart, with his arm around his wife, drew her into the house.

She sat down on a couch and laughed and sobbed. She was half hysterical,
but not for long.

“I couldn’t help it,” she said. “I would do it again. It’s not because
of us—but because he was beating a child.”

“Brute!” said Connart. “I’ll go down now and give him more. I want to
have it out with him right now.” He turned to the door. She caught him.

“No,” she cried, “he’s had enough. He won’t do it again. Listen, what’s
that?”

From away in the direction of Seedbaum’s house came a sound like the
swarming of angry bees, also shouts.

They rushed to the door and saw Seedbaum. Seedbaum with fifty people
round him, and every person trying to beat him at the same time.

“Good God,” said Connart, “you’ve taught them the trick—they’ll kill
him.”

“He’s got away,” cried Mrs. Connart.

Seedbaum, breaking from the crowd, was making up the street, the whole
village was after him; he passed the Connarts’ house and headed for the
woods where he disappeared. Then his pursuers drew off, and, rushing to
the house of Connart, swarmed at the railings, shouting and waving and
laughing, whilst Mrs. Connart interpreted.

“They say he’ll never come back to the village again,” said she, “for
they’ll kill him if he does; that he’ll have to live in the woods. Oh,
George! I’m frightened—what will be the end of it all?”

                   *       *       *       *       *

The end was a whale ship that came into the lagoon. Seedbaum, living in
the woods and supported by the generosity of the Connarts, was given
notice by the three chiefs of the island, Matua, Tamura and Ratupea by
name, that if he did not go away in the whale ship he would be killed
before the next ship arrived. And he went.

He was almost friendly with the Connarts, in return for their food and
protection, at the last, and as the natives would allow him to take
nothing with him, he had to leave everything behind him, including the
red cedar-wood chest, which thus came back to its rightful owner.

He did not even threaten the natives with governmental retribution; he
knew he was done and placed out of court by his own conduct.

But the thing that always remained with Connart out of this affair was
the fact that a population of active and vigorous people would still
have been down-trodden by a merciless tyrant but for a little, quiet,
calm-eyed woman, who had unconsciously and just from an uprising of her
own spirit, “shown them the trick.”

Spirit—after all, what else is there in the world beside it?




ALLELUIA

By T. F. POWYS


Follow me into one of those shining days of April, when the blue in the
sky has lost its March iciness and the village of Wallbridge pauses in
its usual grey monotony to look for events.

Events come indeed, as they always do, for those who wait long enough
for them. The first intimation that something was going to happen
chanced to be picked up in the road by Mr. Tapper, labourer of Ford’s
Farm.

Mr. Tapper had once found a penny in the mud, and ever since that
eventful day the good man had kept his eye fixed upon the road when he
walked abroad.

Mr. Tapper handed the paper he had found when teatime came round to his
daughter Lily, remarking as he did so:

“’Tain’t nothink,” which merely meant, of course, that the paper wasn’t
a penny.

Lily—the pretty Lily—gave her head a little shake, and read at the top
of the printed sheet the word “Alleluia.”

It was all out then, of course, as soon as the pretty Lily had got hold
of it, all the whole merry matter of the coming of Alleluia into
Wallbridge. After he had handed in those papers at the doors—with the
exception of the ones that he wisely dropped in the road, well knowing
that anything picked up always interests—invited everyone to his
meetings. Alleluia for he must have known everyone would call him
Alleluia, began to preach and sing in a devout manner in the handsome
tent that he had set up near to his van. He was so gentle and polite and
so good at starting those emotional tunes—invented by Mr. Moody—that
Wallbridge at once praised and patronised him.

Alleluia had come down from Oxford, and his confiding and childlike
look, together with his silky moustache, had led him into the bypaths
and hedges and so on and on until he reached the village of Wallbridge.

There were, of course, troubles in even so gentle a young man’s path;
there were difficulties and doubts—little worries—so that Alleluia’s
eyes were not always without their tears.

The Wallbridge people were not always so loving as they should be. The
Rev. John Sutton, the vicar, disapproved of the preacher’s looks and was
even slightly contemptuous of the glory hymns. This unkindness hit the
young man hard, because, outwardly, the vicar seemed pleased with the
work that he was doing.

And there was Lily. Lily had to be considered even by Mr. Tapper, her
father, as something female. Mr. Tapper put her down entirely, with her
mother included, to the simple fact that he had stayed too long out one
lovely June fair day at the Stickland revels. Even that day he saw as
all Lily’s fault, feeling, truly perhaps, that the child brings her
parents together.

Even then Mr. Tapper was middle-aged, but that only made him blame Lily
the more. If it had not been for Lily, Mr. Tapper might have gone on
hawking saucepan lids and receiving beer in exchange for the country
matters in his tavern songs.

When Lily was eighteen a very important event happened to her. She
bought a new looking-glass to replace a cracked one that had always
given her face such an ugly cut down the middle. Before this new one—she
had stolen the money for it from her drunken parent’s pocket—she could
touch herself and preen herself, and wonder at a red mark on her bosom
that looked almost like a bite.

That must not happen again; of course it wouldn’t after Alleluia’s
preaching; young Wakely would have to take her home more gently in
future. Following the lovely hymns, it was not quite proper to be
covered and eaten and bitten by kisses all the way home.

“No you mustn’t, Tom.”

Pretty Lily said the words before her glass in order to practise them.
She used to sit quite near to the young preacher, and had got his
child’s look and his silky upper lip quite by heart. He would be always
speaking about love and about doing kind actions to one another, and
every hymn was filled with the delicious savour of subdued sin.

Lily was quite moved by all the excitement, but she wished to be more
careful about Tom, and so she was....

Alleluia had grown fond of looking upwards too, and for many nights he
had seen only one face in the sky. Alleluia was forced to allow that the
pretty face in the sky had nothing whatever to do with the hymns he had
been singing; he knew it was not God’s face, nor David’s, nor any other
heavenly person’s. But, alas, it so pleased Alleluia that he wandered
abroad in search of it sometimes, and often it was midnight before the
preacher opened his van door to go to bed.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The excessive longing for events to happen in a village sometimes
over-reaches itself; it did, indeed, over-reach itself this time in
Wallbridge.

As usual, events pass in a sober grey way in the country. The dismal
sermons of all the Rev. John Suttons are nearly always of the same
dismal colour. And even the Wallbridge quarrel between old Mother Wimple
and Farmer Told had become dull coloured, too. The sun shone as best it
could, and sometimes the moon would appear, though none of these
heavenly lights proved strong enough to break the leaden colouring.

But the people had longed, and when the people long something happens.

It came in this wise. A morning dawned with a splash of red, that
splashed the grey sod, that splashed the hills and the meadows, and even
gave to Farmer Told’s white cow a red blood-stained look.

Her hymn-book soaked, her pretty Sunday clothes so sadly torn, her
pretty lily face rudely beaten and broken: there was quite a little pool
of blood in the chalk-pit, the grey colour lurid for once.

This was more than peaceful Wallbridge had wished for. This dreadful
dash of red made even the April sunshine look a little queer. It could
never be the same usual Wallbridge wind that blew upon the stalwart
forms of the inspectors and policemen who had the case in hand.

Alleluia had been found, almost crazed, near the chalkpit; he had been
looking for pretty Lily all night, he said, and had only found her at
dawn. There was blood upon his clothes, he had held her body in his
arms.

Others told so much, too. They had been seen together very often; they
had been followed, watched, and the stars needs must have blushed, so
folks said. Tom Wakely had been away that red night, so it could not
have been he who had done it.

Honest Mr. Tapper gave the strongest evidence, and Alleluia was hanged.

Perhaps this was a little hard upon Alleluia, but all men said he should
have stuck to his hymn-singing and not gone out to look for pretty
lilies at night-time. One wit even remarked that he could have sung his
hymns in the town in a cheaper fashion without a stretch of the neck at
the end of it.

The red splash of pretty Lily’s blood coloured some dozen or so years of
Wallbridge life, but after that time was passed the old grey began to
hang heavy again and an owl hooted.

The owl must have settled upon Mr. Tapper’s chimney, so near did the
sound of its hooting seem to Mr. Tapper.

It was midnight, two old women—one was Mrs. Tapper—were sitting by the
dying man’s side.

“’E do die ’ard,” Mrs. Tapper remarked in a friendly tone.

Mr. Tapper was thoughtful.

“If only he hadn’t wandered off into the lanes on that fair day in June!
He might even have been drinking beer instead of dying hard.”

The owl perched upon the cottage chimney hooted again. The ice upon
Ford’s pond cracked—the midnight frost was abroad.

Mr. Tapper spoke his last words.

“Our Lily, she weren’t murdered by thik young preacher,” said Mr.
Tapper.

“Who did kill she?” the old women whispered excitedly.

“’Twas I,” said Mr. Tapper, “because young Wakely never give I thik beer
’e’d promised. I did blame she for it.”

The owl hooted, the old women looked at one another—and Mr. Tapper’s jaw
slowly dropped.




THE MONKEY’S PAW

By W. W. JACOBS

    From The Lady of the Barge, by W. W. Jacobs.
    Copyright, 1902, by Dodd, Mead and Company.




                                   1




Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of
Laburnam Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly.
Father and son were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas about the
game involving radical changes, putting his king into such sharp and
unnecessary perils that it even provoked comment from the white-haired
old lady knitting placidly by the fire.

“Hark at the wind,” said Mr. White, who, having seen a fatal mistake
after it was too late, was amiably desirous of preventing his son from
seeing it.

“I’m listening,” said the latter, grimly surveying the board as he
stretched out his hand. “Check.”

“I should hardly think that he’d come to-night,” said his father, with
his hand poised over the board.

“Mate,” replied the son.

“That’s the worst of living so far out,” bawled Mr. White, with sudden
and unlooked-for violence; “of all the beastly, slushy, out-of-the-way
places to live in, this is the worst. Pathway’s a bog, and the road’s a
torrent. I don’t know what people are thinking about. I suppose because
only two houses in the road are let, they think it doesn’t matter.”

“Never mind, dear,” said his wife, soothingly; “perhaps you’ll win the
next one.”

Mr. White looked up sharply, just in time to intercept a knowing glance
between mother and son. The words died away on his lips, and he hid a
guilty grin in his thin grey beard.

“There he is,” said Herbert White, as the gate banged to loudly and
heavy footsteps came toward the door.

The old man rose with hospitable haste, and opening the door, was heard
condoling with the new arrival. The new arrival also condoled with
himself so that Mrs. White said, “Tut tut!” and coughed gently as her
husband entered the room, followed by a tall, burly man, beady of eye
and rubicund of visage.

“Sergeant-Major Morris,” he said, introducing him.

The sergeant-major shook hands, and taking the proffered seat by the
fire, watched contentedly while his host got out whiskey and tumblers
and stood a small copper kettle on the fire.

At the third glass his eyes got brighter, and he began to talk, the
little family circle regarding with eager interest this visitor from
distant parts, as he squared his broad shoulders in the chair and spoke
of wild scenes and doughty deeds; of wars and plagues and strange
peoples.

“Twenty-one years of it,” said Mr. White, nodding at his wife and son.
“When he went away he was a slip of a youth in the warehouse. Now look
at him.”

“He don’t look to have taken much harm,” said Mrs. White, politely.

“I’d like to go to India myself,” said the old man, “just to look round
a bit, you know.”

“Better where you are,” said the sergeant-major, shaking his head. He
put down the empty glass, and sighing softly, shook it again.

“I should like to see those old temples and fakirs and jugglers,” said
the old man. “What was that you started telling me the other day about a
monkey’s paw or something, Morris?”

“Nothing,” said the soldier, hastily. “Leastways, nothing worth
hearing.”

“Monkey’s paw?” said Mrs. White, curiously.

“Well, it’s just a bit of what you might call magic, perhaps,” said the
sergeant-major, off-handedly.

His three listeners leaned forward eagerly. The visitor absent-mindedly
put his empty glass to his lips and then set it down again. His host
filled it for him.

“To look at,” said the sergeant-major, fumbling in his pocket, “it’s
just an ordinary little paw, dried to a mummy.”

He took something out of his pocket and proffered it. Mrs. White drew
back with a grimace, but her son, taking it, examined it curiously.

“And what is there special about it?” inquired Mr. White as he took it
from his son, and having examined it, placed it upon the table.

“It had a spell put on it by an old fakir,” said the sergeant-major, “a
very holy man. He wanted to show that fate ruled people’s lives, and
that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow. He put a spell
on it so that three separate men could each have three wishes from it.”

His manner was so impressive that his hearers were conscious that their
light laughter jarred somewhat.

“Well, why don’t you have three, sir?” said Herbert White, cleverly.

The soldier regarded him in the way that middle-age is wont to regard
presumptuous youth. “I have,” he said, quietly, and his blotchy face
whitened.

“And did you really have the three wishes granted?” asked Mrs. White.

“I did,” said the sergeant-major, and his glass tapped against his
strong teeth.

“And has anybody else wished?” persisted the old lady.

“The first man had his three wishes. Yes,” was the reply; “I don’t know
what the first two were, but the third was for death. That’s how I got
the paw.”

His tones were so grave that a hush fell upon the group.

“If you’ve had your three wishes, it’s no good to you now, then,
Morris,” said the old man at last. “What do you keep it for?”

The soldier shook his head. “Fancy, I suppose,” he said, slowly. “I did
have some idea of selling it, but I don’t think I will. It has caused
enough mischief already. Besides, people won’t buy. They think it’s a
fairy tale; some of them, and those who do think anything of it want to
try it first and pay me afterward.”

“If you could have another three wishes,” said the old man, eyeing him
keenly, “would you have them?”

“I don’t know,” said the other. “I don’t know.”

He took the paw, and dangling it between his forefinger and thumb,
suddenly threw it upon the fire. White, with a slight cry, stooped down
and snatched it off.

“Better let it burn,” said the soldier, solemnly.

“If you don’t want it, Morris,” said the other, “give it to me.”

“I won’t,” said his friend doggedly. “I threw it on the fire. If you
keep it, don’t blame me for what happens. Pitch it on the fire again
like a sensible man.”

The other shook his head and examined his new possession closely. “How
do you do it?” he inquired.

“Hold it up in your right hand and wish aloud,” said the sergeant-major,
“but I warn you of the consequences.”

“Sounds like the Arabian Nights,” said Mrs. White, as she rose and began
to set the supper. “Don’t you think you might wish for four pairs of
hands for me?”

Her husband drew the talisman from pocket, and then all three burst into
laughter as the sergeant-major, with a look of alarm on his face, caught
him by the arm.

“If you must wish,” he said gruffly, “wish for something sensible.”

Mr. White dropped it back in his pocket, and placing chairs, motioned
his friend to the table. In the business of supper the talisman was
partly forgotten, and afterward the three sat listening in an enthralled
fashion to a second instalment of the soldier’s adventures in India.

“If the tale about the monkey’s paw is not more truthful than those he
has been telling us,” said Herbert, as the door closed behind the guest,
just in time for him to catch the last train, “we shan’t make much out
of it.”

“Did you give him anything for it, father?” inquired Mrs. White,
regarding her husband closely.

“A trifle,” said he, colouring slightly. “He didn’t want it, but I made
him take it. And he pressed me again to throw it away.”

“Likely,” said Herbert, with pretended horror. “Why, we’re going to be
rich, and famous and happy. Wish to be an emperor, father, to begin
with; then you can’t be henpecked.”

He darted round the table, pursued by the maligned Mrs. White armed with
an antimacassar.

Mr. White took the paw from his pocket and eyed it dubiously. “I don’t
know what to wish for, and that’s a fact,” he said, slowly. “It seems to
me I’ve got all I want.”

“If you only cleared the house, you’d be quite happy, wouldn’t you?”
said Herbert, with his hand on his shoulder. “Well, wish for two hundred
pounds then; that’ll just do it.”

His father, smiling shamefacedly at his own credulity, held up the
talisman, as his son, with a solemn face, somewhat marred by a wink at
his mother, sat down at the piano and struck a few impressive chords.

“I wish for two hundred pounds,” said the old man distinctly.

A fine crash from the piano greeted the words, interrupted by a
shuddering cry from the old man. His wife and son ran toward him.

“It moved,” he cried, with a glance of disgust at the object as it lay
on the floor. “As I wished, it twisted in my hand like a snake.”

“Well, I don’t see the money,” said his son as he picked it up and
placed it on the table, “and I bet I never shall.”

“It must have been your fancy, father,” said his wife, regarding him
anxiously.

He shook his head. “Never mind, though; there’s no harm done, but it
gave me a shock all the same.”

They sat down by the fire again while the two men finished their pipes.
Outside, the wind was higher than ever, and the old man started
nervously at the sound of a door banging upstairs. A silence unusual and
depressing settled upon all three, which lasted until the old couple
rose to retire for the night.

“I expect you’ll find the cash tied up in a big bag in the middle of
your bed,” said Herbert, as he bade them good-night, “and something
horrible squatting up on top of the wardrobe watching you as you pocket
your ill-gotten gains.”

He sat alone in the darkness, gazing at the dying fire, and seeing faces
in it. The last face was so horrible and so simian that he gazed at it
in amazement. It got so vivid that, with a little uneasy laugh, he felt
on the table for a glass containing a little water to throw over it. His
hand grasped the monkey’s paw, and with a little shiver he wiped his
hand on his coat and went up to bed.




                                   2




In the brightness of the wintry sun next morning as it streamed over the
breakfast table he laughed at his fears. There was an air of prosaic
wholesomeness about the room which it had lacked on the previous night,
and the dirty, shrivelled little paw was pitched on the sideboard and
with a carelessness which betokened no great belief in its virtues.

“I suppose all old soldiers are the same,” said Mrs. White. “The idea of
our listening to such nonsense! How could wishes be granted in these
days? And if they could, how could two hundred pounds hurt you, father?”

“Might drop on his head from the sky,” said the frivolous Herbert.

“Morris said the things happened so naturally,” said his father, “that
you might if you so wished attribute it to coincidence.”

“Well, don’t break into the money before I come back,” said Herbert as
he rose from the table. “I’m afraid it’ll turn you into a mean,
avaricious man, and we shall have to disown you.”

His mother laughed, and following him to the door, watched him down the
road; and returning to the breakfast table, was very happy at the
expense of her husband’s credulity. All of which did not prevent her
from scurrying to the door at the postman’s knock, nor prevent her from
referring somewhat shortly to retired sergeant-majors of bibulous habits
when she found that the post brought a tailor’s bill.

“Herbert will have some more of his funny remarks, I expect, when he
comes home,” she said, as they sat at dinner.

“I dare say,” said Mr. White, pouring himself out some beer; “but for
all that, the thing moved in my hand; that I’ll swear to.”

“You thought it did,” said the old lady soothingly.

“I say it did,” replied the other. “There was no thought about it; I had
just——What’s the matter?”

His wife made no reply. She was watching the mysterious movements of a
man outside, who, peering in an undecided fashion at the house, appeared
to be trying to make up his mind to enter. In mental connection with the
two hundred pounds, she noticed that the stranger was well dressed, and
wore a silk hat of glossy newness. Three times he paused at the gate,
and then walked on again. The fourth time he stood with his hand upon
it, and then with sudden resolution flung it open and walked up the
path. Mrs. White at the same moment placed her hands behind her, and
hurriedly unfastening the strings of her apron, put that useful article
of apparel beneath the cushion of her chair.

She brought the stranger, who seemed ill at ease, into the room. He
gazed at her furtively, and listened in a preoccupied fashion as the old
lady apologised for the appearance of the room, and her husband’s coat,
a garment which he usually reserved for the garden. She then waited as
patiently as her sex would permit, for him to broach his business, but
he was at first strangely silent.

“I—was asked to call,” he said at last, and stooped and picked a piece
of cotton from his trousers. “I come from ‘Maw and Meggins.’”

The old lady started. “Is anything the matter?” she asked, breathlessly.
“Has anything happened to Herbert? What is it? What is it?”

Her husband interposed. “There, there, mother,” he said, hastily. “Sit
down, and don’t jump to conclusions. You’ve not brought bad news, I’m
sure, sir;” and he eyed the other wistfully.

“I’m sorry——” began the visitor.

“Is he hurt?” demanded the mother, wildly.

The visitor bowed in assent. “Badly hurt,” he said, quietly, “but he is
not in any pain.”

“Oh, thank God!” said the old woman, clasping her hands. “Thank God for
that! Thank——”

She broke off suddenly as the sinister meaning of the assurance dawned
upon her, and she saw the awful confirmation of her fears in the other’s
averted face. She caught her breath, and turning to her slow-witted
husband, laid her trembling old hand upon his. There was a long silence.

“He was caught in the machinery,” said the visitor at length in a low
voice.

“Caught in the machinery,” repeated Mr. White, in a dazed fashion,
“yes.”

He sat staring blankly out at the window, and taking his wife’s hand
between his own, pressed it as he had been wont to do in their old
courting-days nearly forty years before.

“He was the only one left to us,” he said, turning gently to the
visitor. “It is hard.”

The other coughed, and rising, walked slowly to the window. “The firm
wished me to convey their sincere sympathy with you in your great loss,”
he said, without looking around. “I beg that you will understand I am
only their servant and merely obeying orders.”

There was no reply; the old woman’s face was white, her eyes staring,
and her breath inaudible; on the husband’s face was a look such as his
friend the sergeant might have carried into his first action.

“I was to say that Maw and Meggins disclaim all responsibility,”
continued the other. “They admit no liability at all, but in
consideration of your son’s services, they wish to present you with a
certain sum as compensation.”

Mr. White dropped his wife’s hand, and rising to his feet, gazed with a
look of horror at his visitor. His dry lips shaped the words. “How
much?”

“Two hundred pounds,” was the answer.

Unconscious of his wife’s shriek, the old man smiled faintly, put out
his hands like a sightless man, and dropped, a senseless heap, to the
floor.




                                   3




In the huge new cemetery, some two miles distant, the old people buried
their dead, and came back to a house steeped in shadow and silence. It
was all over so quickly that at first they could hardly realise it, and
remained in a state of expectation as though of something else to
happen—something else which was to lighten this load, too heavy for old
hearts to bear.

But the days passed, and expectation gave place to resignation—the
hopeless resignation of the old, sometimes miscalled, apathy. Sometimes
they hardly exchanged a word, for now they had nothing to talk about,
and their days were long to weariness. It was about a week after that
the old man, waking suddenly in the night, stretched out his hand and
found himself alone. The room was in darkness, and the sound of subdued
weeping came from the window. He raised himself in bed and listened.

“Come back,” he said, tenderly. “You will be cold.”

“It is colder for my son,” said the old woman, and wept afresh.

The sound of her sobs died away on his ears. The bed was warm, and his
eyes heavy with sleep. He dozed fitfully, and then slept until a sudden
wild cry from his wife awoke him with a start.

“_The paw!_” she cried wildly. “The monkey’s paw!”

He started up in alarm. “Where? Where is it? What’s the matter?”

She came stumbling across the room toward him. “I want it,” she said,
quietly. “You’ve not destroyed it?”

“It’s in the parlour, on the bracket,” he replied, marvelling. “Why?”

She cried and laughed together, and bending over, kissed his cheek.

“I only just thought of it,” she said, hysterically. “Why didn’t I think
of it before? Why didn’t you think of it?”

“Think of what?” he questioned.

“The other two wishes,” she replied, rapidly. “We’ve only had one.”

“Was not that enough?” he demanded, fiercely.

“No,” she cried, triumphantly; “we’ll have one more. Go down and get it
quickly, and wish our boy alive again.”

The man sat up in bed and flung the bed-clothes from his quaking limbs.
“Good God, you are mad!” he cried, aghast.

“Get it,” she panted; “get it quickly, and wish——Oh, my boy, my boy!”

Her husband struck a match and lit the candle. “Get back to bed,” he
said, unsteadily. “You don’t know what you are saying.”

“We had the first wish granted,” said the old woman, feverishly; “why
not the second?”

“A coincidence,” stammered the old man.

“Go and get it and wish,” cried his wife, quivering with excitement.

The old man turned and regarded her, and his voice shook. “He has been
dead ten days, and besides he—I would not tell you else, but—I could
only recognise him by his clothing. If he was too terrible for you to
see then, how now?”

“Bring him back,” cried the old woman, and dragged him toward the door.
“Do you think I fear the child I have nursed?”

He went down in the darkness, and felt his way to the parlour, and then
to the mantelpiece. The talisman was in its place, and a horrible fear
that the unspoken wish might bring his mutilated son before him ere he
could escape from the room seized upon him, and he caught his breath as
he found that he had lost the direction of the door. His brow cold with
sweat, he felt his way round the table, and groped along the wall until
he found himself in the small passage with the unwholesome thing in his
hand.

Even his wife’s face seemed changed as he entered the room. It was white
and expectant, and to his fears seemed to have an unnatural look upon
it. He was afraid of her.

“_Wish!_” she cried, in a strong voice.

“It is foolish and wicked,” he faltered.

“_Wish!_” repeated his wife.

He raised his hand. “I wish my son alive again.”

The talisman fell to the floor, and he regarded it fearfully. Then he
sank trembling into a chair as the old woman, with burning eyes, walked
to the window and raised the blind.

He sat until he was chilled with the cold, glancing occasionally at the
figure of the old woman peering through the window. The candle-end,
which had burned below the rim of the china candlestick, was throwing
pulsating shadows on the ceiling and walls, until, with a flicker larger
than the rest, it expired. The old man, with an unspeakable sense of
relief at the failure of the talisman, crept back to his bed, and a
minute or two afterward the old woman came silently and apathetically
beside him.

Neither spoke, but lay silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A
stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall.
The darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time screwing up
his courage, he took the box of matches, and striking one, went
downstairs for a candle.

At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike
another; and at the same moment a knock, so quiet and stealthy as to be
scarcely audible, sounded on the front door.

The matches fell from his hand and spilled in the passage. He stood
motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was repeated. Then he
turned and fled swiftly back to his room, and closed the door behind
him. A third knock sounded through the house.

“_What’s that?_” cried the old woman, starting up.

“A rat,” said the old man in shaking tones—“a rat. It passed me on the
stairs.”

His wife sat up in bed listening. A loud knock resounded through the
house.

“It’s Herbert!” she screamed. “It’s Herbert!”

She ran to the door, but her husband was before her, and catching her by
the arm, held her tightly.

“What are you going to do?” he whispered hoarsely.

“It’s my boy; it’s Herbert!” she cried, struggling mechanically. “I
forgot it was two miles away. What are you holding me for? Let go. I
must open the door.”

“For God’s sake don’t let it in,” cried the old man, trembling.

“You’re afraid of your own son,” she cried, struggling. “Let me go. I’m
coming, Herbert; I’m coming.”

There was another knock, and another. The old woman with a sudden wrench
broke free and ran from the room. Her husband followed to the landing,
and called after her appealingly as she hurried downstairs. He heard the
chain rattle back and the bottom bolt drawn slowly and stiffly from the
socket. Then the old woman’s voice, strained and panting.

“The bolt,” she cried loudly. “Come down. I can’t reach it.”

But her husband was on his hands and knees groping wildly on the floor
in search of the paw. If he could only find it before the thing outside
got in. A perfect fusillade of knocks reverberated through the house,
and he heard the scraping of a chair as his wife put it down in the
passage against the door. He heard the creaking of the bolt as it came
slowly back and at the same moment he found the monkey’s paw, and
frantically breathed his third and last wish.

The knocking ceased suddenly, although the echoes of it were still in
the house. He heard the chair drawn back, and the door opened. A cold
wind rushed up the staircase, and a long loud wail of disappointment and
misery from his wife gave him courage to run down to her side, and then
to the gate beyond. The street lamp flickering opposite shone on a quiet
and deserted road.




THE CREATURES

By WALTER DE LA MARE

    From The Riddle and Other Stories, by Walter de la Mare.
    Copyright, 1923, by Walter de la Mare.
    By permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.


It was the ebbing light of evening that recalled me out of my story to a
consciousness of my whereabouts. I dropped the squat little red book to
my knee and glanced out of the narrow and begrimed oblong window. We
were skirting the eastern coast of cliffs, to the very edge of which a
ploughman, stumbling along behind his two great horses, was driving the
last of his dark furrows. In a cleft far down between the rocks a cold
and idle sea was soundlessly laying its frigid garlands of foam. I
stared over the flat stretch of waters, then turned my head, and looked
with a kind of suddenness into the face of my one fellow-traveller.

He had entered the carriage, all but unheeded, yet not altogether
unresented, at the last country station. His features were a little
obscure in the fading daylight that hung between our four narrow walls,
but apparently his eyes had been fixed on my face for some little time.

He narrowed his lids at this unexpected confrontation, jerked back his
head, and cast a glance out of his mirky glass at the slip of
greenish-bright moon that was struggling into its full brilliance above
the dun, swelling uplands.

“It’s a queer experience, railway-travelling,” he began abruptly, in a
low, almost deprecating voice, drawing his hand across his eyes. “One is
cast into a passing privacy with a fellow-stranger and then is gone.” It
was as if he had been patiently awaiting the attention of a chosen
listener.

I nodded, looking at him. “That privacy, too,” he ejaculated, “all
that!” My eyes turned towards the window again: bare, thorned, black
January hedge, inhospitable salt coast, flat waste of northern water.
Our engine driver promptly shut off his steam, and we slid almost
noiselessly out of sight of sky and sea into a cutting.

“It’s a desolate country,” I ventured to remark.

“Oh, yes, ‘desolate,’” he echoed a little wearily. “But what frets me is
the way we have of arrogating to ourselves the offices of judge, jury,
and counsel all in one. As if this earth.... I never forget it—the
futility, the presumption. It _leads_ nowhere. We drive in—into all this
silence, this—this, ‘forsakenness,’ this dream of a world between her
lights of day and night time. We desecrate. Consciousness! What restless
monkeys men are.” He recovered himself, swallowed his indignation with
an obvious gulp. “As if,” he continued, in more chastened tones—“as if
that other gate were not for ever ajar, into God knows what of peace and
mystery.” He stooped forward, lean, darkened, objurgatory. “Don’t we
make our world? Isn’t that our blessed, our betrayed responsibility?”

I nodded, and ensconced myself, like a dog in straw, in the basest of
all responses to a rare, even if eccentric, candour—caution.

“Well,” he continued, a little weariedly, “that’s the indictment. Small
wonder if it will need a trumpet to blare us into that last ‘Family
Prayers.’ Then perhaps a few solitaries—just a few—will creep out of
their holes and fastnesses, and draw mercy from the merciful on the
cities of the plain. The buried talent will shine none the worse for the
long, long looming of its napery spun from dream and desire.

“Years ago—ten, fifteen, perhaps—I chanced on the queerest specimen of
this order of the ‘talented.’ Much the same country, too. This”—he swept
his glance out towards the now invisible sea—“this is a kind of dwarf
replica of it. More naked, smoother, more sudden and precipitous, more
‘forsaken,’ moody! Alone! The trees are shorn there, as if with
monstrous shears, by the winter gales. The air’s salt. It is a country
of stones and emerald meadows, of green, meandering, aimless lanes, of
farms set in their cliffs and valleys like rough time-bedimmed jewels,
as if by some angel of humanity, wandering between dark and daybreak.

“I was younger then—in body: the youth of the mind is for men of a
certain age; yours, maybe, and mine. Even then, even at that, I was
sickened of crowds, of that unimaginable London—swarming wilderness of
mankind in which a poor, lost, thirsty dog from Otherwhere tastes first
the full meaning of that idle word ‘forsaken.’ ‘Forsaken by whom?’ is
the question I ask myself now. Visitors to my particular paradise were
few then—as if, my dear sir, we are not all of us visitors, visitants,
revenants, on earth, panting for time in which to tell and share our
secrets, roving in search of marks that shall prove our quest not vain,
not unprecedented, not a treachery. But let that be.

“I would start off morning after morning, bread and cheese in pocket,
from the bare old house I lodged in, bound for that unforeseen nowhere
for which the heart, the fantasy, aches. Lingering hot noondays would
find me stretched in a state half-comatose, yet vigilant, on the
close-flowered turf of the fields or cliffs, on the sun-baked sands and
rocks, soaking in the scene and life around me like some pilgrim
chameleon. It was in hope to lose my way that I would set out. How shall
a man find his way unless he lose it? Now and then I succeeded. That
country is large, and its land and sea marks easily cheat the stranger.
I was still of an age, you see, when my ‘small door’ was ajar, and I
planted a solid foot to keep it from shutting. But how could I know what
I was after? One just shakes the tree of life, and the rare fruits come
tumbling down, to rot for the most part in the lush grasses.

“What was most haunting and provocative in that far-away country was its
fleeting resemblance to the country of dream. You stand, you sit, or lie
prone on its bud-starred heights, and look down; the green, dispersed,
treeless landscape spreads beneath you, with its hollow and mounded
slopes, clustering farmstead, and scatter of village, all motionless
under the vast wash of sun and blue, like the drop-scene of some
enchanted playhouse centuries old. So, too, the visionary bird-haunted
headlands, veiled faintly in a mist of unreality above their broken
stones and the enormous saucer of the sea.

“You cannot guess there what you may not chance upon, or whom. Bells
clash, boom, and quarrel hollowly on the edge of darkness in those
breakers. Voices waver across the fainter winds. The birds cry in a
tongue unknown yet not unfamiliar. The sky is the hawks’ and the stars’.
_There_ one is on the edge of life, of the unforeseen, whereas our
cities—are not our desiccated, jaded minds ever continually pressing and
edging further and further away from freedom, the vast unknown, the
infinite presence, picking a fool’s journey from sensual fact to fact at
the tail of that he-ass called Reason? I suggest that in that solitude
the spirit within us realises that it treads the outskirts of a region
long since called the Imagination. I assert we have strayed, and in our
blindness abandoned——”

                   *       *       *       *       *

My stranger paused in his frenzy, glanced out at me from his obscure
corner as if he had intended to stun, to astonish me with some violent
heresy. We puffed out slowly, laboriously from a “Halt” at which in the
gathering dark and moonshine we had for some while been at a standstill.
Never was wedding-guest more desperately at the mercy of ancient
mariner.

“Well, one day,” he went on, lifting his voice a little to master the
resounding heart-beats of our steam-engine—“one late afternoon, in my
goalless wanderings, I had climbed to the summit of a steep grass-grown
cart-track, winding up dustily between dense, untended hedges. Even then
I might have missed the house to which it led, for, hair-pin fashion,
the track here abruptly turned back on itself, and only a far fainter
footpath led on over the hill-crest. I might, I say, have missed the
house and—and its inmates, if I had not heard the musical sound of what
seemed like the twangling of a harp. This thin-drawn, sweet, tuneless
warbling welled over the close green grass of the height as if out of
space. Truth cannot say whether it was of that air or of my own fantasy.
Nor did I ever discover what instrument, whether of man or Ariel, had
released a strain so pure and yet so bodiless.

“I pushed on and found myself in command of a gorse-strewn height, a
stretch of country that lay a few hundred paces across the steep and
sudden valley in between. In a V-shaped entry to the left, and sunwards,
lay an azure and lazy tongue of the sea. And as my eye slid softly
thence and upwards and along the sharp, green horizon line against the
glass-clear turquoise of space, it caught the flinty glitter of a square
chimney. I pushed on, and presently found myself at the gate of a
farmyard.

“There was but one straw-mow upon its staddles. A few fowls were sunning
themselves in their dust-baths. White and pied doves preened and cooed
on the roof of an outbuilding as golden with its lichens as if the
western sun had scattered its dust for centuries upon the large slate
slabs. Just that life and the whispering of the wind: nothing more. Yet
even at one swift glimpse I seemed to have trespassed upon a peace that
had endured for ages; to have crossed the viewless border that divides
time from eternity. I leaned, resting, over the gate, and could have
remained there for hours, lapsing ever more profoundly into the blessed
quietude that had stolen over my thoughts.

“A bent-up woman appeared at the dark entry of a stone shed opposite to
me, and, shading her eyes, paused in prolonged scrutiny of the stranger.
At that I entered the gate and, explaining that I had lost my way and
was tired and thirsty, asked for some milk. She made no reply, but after
peering up at me, with something between suspicion and apprehension on
her weather-beaten old face, led me towards the house which lay to the
left on the slope of the valley, hidden from me till then by plumy
bushes of tamarisk.

“It was a low grave house, grey-chimneyed, its stone walls traversed by
a deep shadow cast by the declining sun, its dark windows rounded and
uncurtained, its door wide open to the porch. She entered the house, and
I paused upon the threshold. A deep unmoving quiet lay within, like that
of water in a cave renewed by the tide. Above a table hung a wreath of
wild flowers. To the right was a heavy oak settle upon the flags. A beam
of sunlight pierced the air of the staircase from an upper window.

“Presently a dark, long-faced, gaunt man appeared from within,
contemplating me, as he advanced, out of eyes that seemed not so much to
fix the intruder as to encircle his image, as the sea contains the
distant speck of a ship on its wide, blue bosom of water. They might
have been the eyes of the blind; the windows of a house in dream to
which the inmate must make something of a pilgrimage to look out upon
actuality. Then he smiled, and the long, dark features, melancholy yet
serene, took light upon them, as might a bluff of rock beneath a thin
passing wash of sunshine. With a gesture he welcomed me into the large
dark-flagged kitchen, cool as a cellar, airy as a belfry, its sweet air
traversed by a long oblong of light out of the west.

“The wide shelves of the painted dresser were laden with crockery. A
wreath of freshly-gathered flowers hung over the chimney-piece. As we
entered, a twittering cloud of small birds, robins, hedge-sparrows,
chaffinches fluttered up a few inches from floor and sill and
window-seat, and once more, with tiny starry-dark eyes observing me,
soundlessly alighted. I could hear the infinitesimal _tic-tac_ of their
tiny claws upon the slate. My gaze drifted out of the window into the
garden beyond, a cavern of clearer crystal and colour than that which
astounded the eyes of young Aladdin.

“Apart from the twisted garland of wild flowers, the shining metal of
range and copper candlestick, and the bright-scoured crockery, there was
no adornment in the room except a rough frame, hanging from a nail in
the wall, and enclosing what appeared to be a faint patterned fragment
of blue silk or fine linen. The chairs and table were old and heavy. A
low, light warbling, an occasional _skirr_ of wing, a haze-like drone of
bee and fly—these were the only sounds that edged a quiet intensified in
its profundity by the remote stirrings of the sea.

“The house was stilled as by a charm, yet thought within me asked no
questions; speculation was asleep in its kennel. I sat down to the milk
and bread, the honey and fruit which the old woman laid out upon the
table, and her master seated himself opposite to me, now in a low
sibilant whisper—a tongue which they seemed to understand—addressing
himself to the birds, and now, as if with an effort, raising those
strange grey-green eyes of his to bestow a quiet remark upon me. He
asked, rather in courtesy than with any active interest, a few
questions, referring to the world, its business and transports—_our_
beautiful world—as an astronomer in the small hours might murmur a few
words to the chance-sent guest of his solitude concerning the secrets of
Uranus or Saturn. There is another, an inexplorable side to the moon.
Yet he said enough for me to gather that he, too, was of that small
tribe of the aloof and wild to which our cracked old word ‘forsaken’
might be applied, hermits, lamas, clay-matted fakirs, and such-like; the
snowy birds that play and cry amid mid-oceanic surges; the living of an
oasis of the wilderness; which share a reality only distantly dreamed of
by the time-driven thought-corroded congregations of man.

“Yet so narrow and hazardous I somehow realised was the brink of
fellow-being (shall I call it?) which we shared, he and I, that again
and again fantasy within me seemed to hover over that precipice Night
knows as fear. It was he, it seemed, with that still embracive
contemplation of his, with that far-away yet reassuring smile, that kept
my poise, my balance. ‘No,’ some voice within him seemed to utter, ‘you
are safe; the bounds are fixed; though hallucination chaunt its decoy,
you shall not irretrievably pass over. Eat and drink, and presently
return to life.’ And I listened, and, like that of a drowsy child in its
cradle, my consciousness sank deeper and deeper, stilled, pacified into
the dream which, as it seemed, this soundless house of stone now reared
its walls.

“I had all but finished my meal when I heard footsteps approaching on
the flags without. The murmur of other voices, distinguishably shrill
yet guttural even at a distance, and in spite of the dense stones and
beams of the house which had blunted their timbre, had already reached
me. Now the feet halted. I turned my head—cautiously, even perhaps
apprehensively—and confronted two figures in the doorway.

“I cannot now guess the age of my entertainer. These children—for
children they were in face and gesture and effect, though as to form and
stature apparently in their last teens—these children were far more
problematical. I say ‘form and stature,’ yet obviously they were
dwarfish. Their heads were sunken between their shoulders, their hair
thick, their eyes disconcertingly deep-set. They were ungainly; their
features peculiarly irregular, as if two races from the ends of the
earth had in them intermingled their blood and strangeness; as if,
rather animal and angel had connived in their creation.

“But if some inward light lay on the still eyes, on the gaunt,
sorrowful, quixotic countenance that now was fully and intensely bent on
mine, emphatically that light was theirs also. He spoke to them; they
answered—in English, my own language, without a doubt: but an English
slurred, broken, and unintelligible to me, yet clear as a bell,
haunting, penetrating, pining as voice of nix or siren. My ears drank in
the sound as an Arab parched with desert sand falls on his dried belly
and gulps in mouthfuls of crystal water. The birds hopped nearer as if
beneath the rod of an enchanter. A sweet continuous clamour arose from
their small throats. The exquisite colours of plume and bosom burned,
greened, melted in the level sun-ray, in the darker air beyond.

“A kind of mournful gaiety, a lamentable felicity, such as rings in the
cadences of an old folk-song, welled into my heart. I was come back to
the borders of Eden, bowed and outwearied, gazing from out of dream into
dream, homesick, ‘forsaken.’

“Well, years have gone by,” muttered my fellow-traveller deprecatingly,
“but I have not forgotten that Eden’s primeval trees and shade.

“They led me out, these bizarre companions, a he and a she, if I may put
it as crudely as my apprehension of them put it to me then. Through a
broad door they conducted me—if one who leads may be said to be
conducted—into their garden. Garden! A full mile long, between
undiscerned walls, it sloped and narrowed towards a sea at whose dark
unfoamed blue, even at this distance, my eyes dazzled. Yet how can one
call that a garden which reveals no ghost of a sign of human
arrangement, of human slavery, of spade or hoe?

“Great boulders shouldered up, tessellated, embossed, powdered with a
thousand various mosses and lichens, between a flowering greenery of
weeds. Wind-stunted, clear-emerald, lichen-tufted trees smoothed and
crisped the inflowing airs of the ocean with their leaves and spines,
sibilating a thin scarce-audible music. Scanty, rank, and uncultivated
fruits hung close their vivid-coloured cheeks to the gnarled branches.
It was the harbourage of birds, the small embowering parlour of their
house of life, under an evening sky, pure and lustrous as a water-drop.
It cried, ‘Hospital’ to the wanderers of the universe.

“As I look back in ever-thinning, nebulous remembrance on my two
companions, hear their voices gutturally sweet and shrill, catch again
their being, so to speak, I realise that there was a kind of Orientalism
in their effect. Their instant courtesy was not Western, the smiles that
greeted me, whenever I turned my head to look back at them, were
infinitely friendly, yet infinitely remote. So ungainly, so far from our
notions of beauty and symmetry were their bodies and faces, those heads
thrust heavily between their shoulders, their disproportioned yet
graceful arms and hands, that the children in some of our English
villages might be moved to stone them, while their elders looked on and
laughed.

“Dusk was drawing near; soon night would come. The colours of the
sunset, sucking its extremest dye from every leaf and blade and petal,
touched my consciousness even then with a vague fleeting alarm.

“I remember I asked these strange and happy beings, repeating my
question twice or thrice, as we neared the surfy entry of the valley
upon whose sands a tiny stream emptied its fresh water—I asked them if
it was they who had planted this multitude of flowers, many of a kind
utterly unknown to me and alien to a country inexhaustibly rich. ‘We
wait; we wait!’ I think they cried. And it was as if their cry awoke
echo from the green-walled valleys of the mind into which I had strayed.
Shall I confess that tears came into my eyes as I gazed hungrily around
me on the harvest of their patience?

“Never was actuality so close to dream. It was not only an unknown
country, slipped in between these placid hills, on which I had chanced
in my ramblings. I had entered for a few brief moments a strange region
of consciousness. I was treading, thus accompanied, amid a world of
welcoming and fearless life—oh, friendly to me!—the paths of man’s
imagination, the kingdom from which thought and curiosity, vexed
scrutiny and lust—a lust it may be for nothing more impious than the
actual—had prehistorically proved the insensate means of his banishment.
‘Reality,’ ‘Consciousness’: had he for ‘the time being’ unwittingly,
unhappily missed his way? Would he be led back at length to that garden
wherein cockatrice and basilisk bask, harmlessly, at peace?

“I speculate now. In that queer, yes, and possibly sinister company,
sinister only because it was alien to me, I did not speculate. In their
garden, the familiar was become the strange—‘the strange’ that lurks in
the inmost heart, unburdens its riches in trance, flings its light and
gilding upon love, gives heavenly savour to the intemperate bowl of
passion, and is the secret of our incommunicable pity. What is yet
queerer, these things were evidently glad of my company. They stumped
after me (as might yellow men after some Occidental quadruped never
before seen) in merry collusion of nods and wreathed smiles at this
perhaps unprecedented intrusion.

“I stood for a moment looking out over the placid surface of the sea. A
ship in sail hung phantom-like on the horizon. I pined to call my
discovery to its seamen. The tide gushed, broke, spent itself on the
bare boulders, I was suddenly cold and alone, and gladly turned back
into the garden, my companions instinctively separating to let me pass
between them. I breathed in the rare, almost exotic heat, the tenuous,
honeyed, almond-laden air of its flowers and birds—gull, sheldrake,
plover, wagtail, finch, robin, which as I half-angrily, half-sadly
realised fluttered up in momentary dismay only at _my_ presence—the
embodied spectre of their enemy, man. Man? Then who were these?...

“I lost again a way lost early that morning, as I trudged inland at
night. The dark came, warm and starry. I was dejected and exhausted
beyond words. That night I slept in a barn and was awakened soon after
daybreak by the crowing of cocks. I went out, dazed and blinking into
the sunlight, bathed face and hands in a brook near by, and came to a
village before a soul was stirring. So I sat under a thrift-cushioned,
thorn-crowned wall in a meadow, and once more drowsed off and fell
asleep. When again I awoke, it was ten o’clock. The church clock in its
tower knelled out the strokes, and I went into an inn for food.

“A corpulent, blonde woman, kindly and hospitable, with a face
comfortably resembling her own sow’s, that yuffed and nosed in at the
open door as I sat on my stool, served me with what I called for. I
described—not without some vanishing shame, as if it were a treachery—my
farm, its whereabouts.

“Her small blue eyes ‘pigged’ at me with a fleeting expression which I
failed to translate. The name of the farm, it appeared, was Trevarras.
‘And did you see any of the Creatures?’ she asked me in a voice not
entirely her own. ‘The Creatures’? I sat back for an instant and stared
at her; then realised that Creature was the name of my host, and Maria
and Christus (though here her dialect may have deceived me) the names of
my two gardeners. She spun an absurd story, so far as I could tack it
together and make it coherent. Superstitious stuff about this man who
had wandered in upon the shocked and curious inhabitants of the district
and made his home at Trevarras—a stranger and pilgrim, a ‘foreigner,’ it
seemed, of few words, dubious manners, and both uninformative.

“Then there was something (she placed her two fat hands, one of them
wedding-ringed, on the zinc of the bar-counter, and peered over at me,
as if I were a delectable ‘wash’), then there was something about a
woman ‘from the sea.’ In a ‘blue gown,’ and either dumb, inarticulate,
or mistress of only a foreign tongue. She must have lived in sin,
moreover, those pig’s eyes seemed to yearn, since the children were
‘simple,’ ‘naturals’—as God intends in such matters. It was useless.
One’s stomach may sometimes reject the cold sanative aerated water of
‘the next morning,’ and my ridiculous intoxication had left me dry but
not yet quite sober.

“Anyhow, this she told me, that my blue woman, as fair as flax, had died
and was buried in the neighbouring churchyard (the nearest to, though
miles distant from Trevarras). She repeatedly assured me, as if I might
otherwise doubt so sophisticated a fact, that I should find her grave
there, her ‘stone.’

“So indeed I did—far away from the elect, and in a shade-ridden
north-west corner of the sleepy, cropless acre: a slab, scarcely
rounded, of granite, with but a name bitten out of the dark, rough
surface, ‘_Femina Creature_.’”




THE TAIPAN

By W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

    From On a Chinese Screen, by W. Somerset Maugham.
    Copyright, 1922, by George H. Doran Company.


No one knew better than he that he was an important person. He was
number one in not the least important branch of the most important
English firm in China. He had worked his way up through solid ability,
and he looked back with a faint smile at the callow clerk who had come
out to China thirty years before. When he remembered the modest home he
had come from, a little red house in a long row of little red houses, in
Barnes, a suburb which, aiming desperately at the genteel, achieves only
a sordid melancholy, and compared it with the magnificent stone mansion,
with its wide verandahs and spacious rooms, which was at once the office
of the company and his own residence, he chuckled with satisfaction. He
had come a long way since then. He thought of the high tea to which he
sat down when he came home from school (he was at St. Paul’s), with his
father and mother and his two sisters, a slice of cold meat, a great
deal of bread and butter and plenty of milk in his tea, everybody
helping himself, and then he thought of the state in which now he ate
his evening meal. He always dressed, and whether he was alone or not he
expected the three boys to wait at table. His number one boy knew
exactly what he liked, and he never had to bother himself with the
details of housekeeping; but he always had a set dinner with soup and
fish, entree, roast, sweet and savoury, so that if he wanted to ask
anyone in at the last moment he could. He liked his food, and he did not
see why when he was alone he should have less good a dinner than when he
had a guest.

He had indeed gone far. That was why he did not care to go home now; he
had not been to England for ten years, and he took his leave in Japan or
Vancouver where he was sure of meeting old friends from the China coast.
He knew no one at home. His sisters had married in their own station,
their husbands were clerks and their sons were clerks; there was nothing
between him and them; they bored him. He satisfied the claims of
relationship by sending them every Christmas a piece of fine silk, some
elaborate embroidery, or a case of tea. He was not a mean man, and as
long as his mother lived he had made her an allowance. But when the time
came for him to retire he had no intention of going back to England, he
had seen too many men do that and he knew how often it was a failure; he
meant to take a house near the race-course in Shanghai: what with bridge
and his ponies and gold he expected to get through the rest of his life
very comfortably. But he had a good many years before he need think of
retiring. In another five or six Higgins would be going home, and then
he would take charge of the head office in Shanghai. Meanwhile he was
very happy where he was; he could save money, which you couldn’t do in
Shanghai, and have a good time into the bargain. This place had another
advantage over Shanghai: he was the most prominent man in the community
and what he said went. Even the consul took care to keep on the right
side of him. Once a consul and he had been at loggerheads, and it was
not he who had gone to the wall. The taipan thrust out his jaw
pugnaciously as he thought of the incident.

But he smiled, for he felt in an excellent humour. He was walking back
to his office from a capital luncheon at the Hong-Kong and Shanghai
Bank. They did you very well there. The food was first rate and there
was plenty of liquor. He had started with a couple of cocktails, then he
had had some excellent sauterne, and he had finished up with two glasses
of port and some fine old brandy. He felt good. And when he left he did
a thing that was rare with him: he walked. His bearers with his chair
kept a few paces behind him in case he felt inclined to slip into it,
but he enjoyed stretching his legs. He did not get enough exercise these
days. Now that he was too heavy to ride, it was difficult to get
exercise. But if he was too heavy to ride he could still keep ponies,
and as he strolled along in the balmy air he thought of the spring
meeting. He had a couple of griffins that he had hopes of and one of the
lads in his office had turned out a fine jockey (he must see they didn’t
sneak him away, old Higgins in Shanghai would give a pot of money to get
him over there) and he ought to pull off two or three races. He
flattered himself that he had the finest stable in the city. He pouted
his broad chest like a pigeon. It was a beautiful day, and it was good
to be alive.

He paused as he came to the cemetery. It stood there, neat and orderly,
as an evident sign of the community’s opulence. He never passed the
cemetery without a little glow of pride. He was pleased to be an
Englishman. For the cemetery stood in a place, valueless when it was
chosen, which with the increase of the city’s affluence was now worth a
great deal of money. It had been suggested that the graves should be
moved to another spot and the land sold for building, but the feeling of
the community was against it. It gave the taipan a sense of satisfaction
to think that their dead rested on the most valuable site on the island.
It showed that there were things they cared for more than money. Money
be blowed! When it came to “the things that mattered” (this was a
favourite phrase with the taipan), well, one remembered that money
wasn’t everything.

And now he thought he would take a stroll through. He looked at the
graves. They were neatly kept, and the pathways were free from weeds.
There was a look of prosperity. And as he sauntered along he read the
names on the tombstones. Here were three side by side; the captain, the
first mate, and the second mate of the barque _Mary Baxter_, who had all
perished together in the typhoon of 1908. He remembered it well. There
was a little group of two missionaries, their wives and children, who
had been massacred during the Boxer troubles. Shocking thing that had
been! Not that he took much stock in missionaries; but, hang it all, one
couldn’t have these damned Chinese massacring them. Then he came to a
cross with a name on it he knew. Good chap, Edward Mulock, but he
couldn’t stand his liquor, drank himself to death, poor devil, at
twenty-five: the taipan had known a lot of them do that; there were
several more neat crosses with a man’s name on them and the age,
twenty-five, twenty-six, or twenty-seven; it was always the same story;
they had come out to China: they had never seen so much money before,
they were good fellows, and they wanted to drink with the rest: they
couldn’t stand it, and there they were in the cemetery. You had to have
a strong head and a fine constitution to drink drink for drink on the
China coast. Of course it was very sad, but the taipan could hardly help
a smile when he thought how many of those young fellows he had drunk
underground. And there was a death that had been useful, a fellow in his
own firm, senior to him and a clever chap too: if that fellow had lived
he might not have been taipan now. Truly the ways of fate were
inscrutable. Ah, and here was little Mrs. Turner, Violet Turner, she had
been a pretty little thing, he had had quite an affair with her; he had
been devilish cut up when she died. He looked at her age on the
tombstone. She’d be no chicken if she were alive now. And as he thought
of all those dead people, a sense of satisfaction spread through him. He
had beaten them all. They were dead, and he was alive, and by George
he’d scored them off. His eyes collected in one picture all those
crowded graves and he smiled scornfully. He very nearly rubbed his
hands.

“No one ever thought I was a fool,” he muttered.

He had a feeling of good-natured contempt for the gibbering dead. Then,
as he strolled along, he came suddenly upon two coolies digging a grave.
He was astonished, for he had not heard that anyone in the community was
dead.

“Who the devil’s that for?” he said aloud.

The coolies did not even look at him, they went on with their work,
standing in the grave, deep down, and they shovelled up heavy clods of
earth. Though he had been so long in China he knew no Chinese, in his
day it was not thought necessary to learn the damned language, and he
asked the coolies in English whose grave they were digging. They did not
understand. They answered him in Chinese and he cursed them for ignorant
fools. He knew that Mrs. Broome’s child was ailing, and it might have
died, but he would certainly have heard of it, and besides that wasn’t a
child’s grave, it was a man’s and a big man’s too. It was uncanny. He
wished he hadn’t gone into that cemetery; he hurried out and stepped
into his chair. His good humour had all gone and there was an uneasy
frown on his face. The moment he got back to his office he called to his
number two:

“I say, Peters, who’s dead, d’you know?”

But Peters knew nothing. The taipan was puzzled. He called one of the
native clerks and sent him to the cemetery to ask the coolies. He began
to sign his letters. The clerk came back and said the coolies had gone
and there was no one to ask. The taipan began to feel vaguely annoyed:
he did not like things to happen of which he knew nothing. His own boy
would know; his boy always knew everything, and he sent for him; but the
boy had heard of no death in the community.

“I knew no one was dead,” said the taipan irritably. “But what’s the
grave for?”

He told the boy to go to the overseer of the cemetery and find out what
the devil he had dug a grave for when no one was dead.

“Let me have a whisky and soda before you go,” he added, as the boy was
leaving the room.

He did not know why the sight of the grave had made him uncomfortable.
But he tried to put it out of his mind. He felt better when he had drunk
the whisky, and he finished his work. He went upstairs and turned over
the pages of _Punch_. In a few minutes he would go to the club and play
a rubber or two of bridge before dinner. But it would ease his mind to
hear what his boy had to say, and he waited for his return. In a little
while the boy came back, and he brought the overseer with him.

“What are you having a grave dug for?” he asked the overseer point
blank. “Nobody’s dead.”

“I no dig glave,” said the man.

“What the devil do you mean by that? There were two coolies digging a
grave this afternoon.”

The two Chinese looked at one another. Then the boy said they had been
to the cemetery together. There was no new grave there.

The taipan only just stopped himself from speaking.

“But damn it all, I saw it myself,” were the words on the tip of his
tongue.

But he did not say them. He grew very red as he choked them down. The
two Chinese looked at him with their steady eyes. For a moment his
breath failed him.

“All right. Get out,” he gasped.

But as soon as they were gone he shouted for the boy again, and when he
came, maddeningly impassive, he told him to bring some whisky. He rubbed
his sweating face with a handkerchief. His hand trembled when he lifted
the glass to his lips. They could say what they liked, but he had seen
the grave. Why, he could hear still the dull thud as the coolies threw
the spadefuls of earth on the ground above them. What did it mean? He
could feel his heart beating. He felt strangely ill at ease. But he
pulled himself together. It was all nonsense. If there was no grave
there it must have been an hallucination. The best thing he could do was
to go to the club, and if he ran across the doctor, he would ask him to
give him a look over.

Everyone in the club looked just the same as ever. He did not know why
he should have expected them to look different. It was a comfort. These
men, living for many years with one another, lives that were
methodically regulated, had acquired a number of little
idiosyncrasies—one of them hummed incessantly while he played bridge,
another insisted on drinking beer through a straw—and these tricks which
had so often irritated the taipan now gave him a sense of security. He
needed it, for he could not get out of his head that strange sight he
had seen; he played bridge very badly; his partner was censorious, and
the taipan lost his temper. He thought the men were looking at him
oddly. He wondered what they saw in him that was unaccustomed.

Suddenly he felt he could not bear to stay in the club any longer. As he
went out he saw the doctor reading _The Times_ in the reading-room, but
he could not bring himself to speak to him. He wanted to see for himself
whether that grave was really there, and, stepping into his chair he
told his bearers to take him to the cemetery. You couldn’t have an
hallucination twice, could you? And besides, he would take the overseer
in with him, and if the grave was not there, he wouldn’t see it, and if
it was he’d give the overseer the soundest thrashing he’d ever had. But
the overseer was nowhere to be found. He had gone out and taken the keys
with him. When the taipan found he could not get into the cemetery, he
felt suddenly exhausted. He got back into his chair and told his bearers
to take him home. He would lie down for half an hour before dinner. He
was tired out. That was it. He had heard that people had hallucinations
when they were tired. When his boy came in to put out his clothes for
dinner, it was only by an effort of will that he got up. He had a strong
inclination not to dress that evening, but he resisted it: he made it a
rule to dress, he had dressed every evening for twenty years, and it
would never do to break his rule. But he ordered a bottle of champagne
with his dinner, and that made him feel more comfortable. Afterwards he
told the boy to bring him the best brandy. When he had drunk a couple of
glasses of this he felt himself again. Hallucinations be damned! He went
to the billiard room and practised a few difficult shots. There could
not be much the matter with him when his eye was so sure. When he went
to bed he sank immediately into a sound sleep.

But suddenly he awoke. He had dreamed of that open grave and the coolies
digging leisurely. He was sure he had seen them. It was absurd to say it
was an hallucination when he had seen them with his own eyes. Then he
heard the rattle of the night watchman going his rounds. It broke upon
the stillness of the night so harshly that it made him jump out of his
skin. And then terror seized him. He felt a horror of the winding
multitudinous streets of the Chinese city, and there was something
ghastly and terrible in the convoluted roofs of the temples with their
devils grimacing and tortured. He loathed the smells that assaulted his
nostrils. And the people. Those myriads of blue-clad coolies, and the
beggars in their filthy rags, and the merchants and the magistrates,
sleek, smiling, and inscrutable, in their long black gowns. They seemed
to press upon him with menace. He hated the country. China! Why had he
ever come? He was panic-stricken now. He must get out. He would not stay
another year, another month. What did he care about Shanghai?

“Oh, my God!” he cried, “if I were only safely back in England!”

He wanted to go home. If he had to die, he wanted to die in England. He
could not bear to be buried among all these yellow men, with their
slanting eyes and their grinning faces. He wanted to be buried at home,
not in that grave he had seen that day. He could never rest there.
Never. What did it matter what people thought? Let them think what they
liked. The only thing that mattered was to get away while he had the
chance.

He got out of bed and wrote to the head of the firm and said he had
discovered he was dangerously ill. He must be replaced. He could not
stay longer than was absolutely necessary. He must go home at once.

They found the letter in the morning clenched in the taipan’s hand. He
had slipped down between the desk and the chair. He was stone dead.

                                THE END