To me it was all extremely wonderful, and the wonder of it did not lessen during the five years in which, on my way to and from Rebozo, I stopped over at the Trawnbeighs’ several times a year. For, although I knew that they were often financially all but down and out, the endless red tape of their daily life never struck me as being merely a pathetic bluff. Their rising bells and dressing bells, their apparent dependence on all sorts of pleasant accessories that simply did not exist, their occupations (I mean those on which I did not have to turn a tactful back, such as botanizing, crewel work, painting horrible water colors and composing long lists of British sounding things to be “sent out from the Stores”), the informality with which we waited on ourselves at luncheon and the stately, punctilious manner in which we did precisely the same thing at dinner, the preordained hour at which Mrs. Trawnbeigh and the girls each took a bedroom candle and said good night, leaving Trawnbeigh, Cyril and me to smoke a pipe and “do a whisky peg” (Trawnbeigh had spent some years in India), the whole inflexibly insular scheme of their existence was more, infinitely more, than a bluff. It was a placid, tenacious clinging to the straw of their ideal in a great, deep sea of poverty, discomfort and desolation.
And it had its reward, for after fourteen years of Mexican life, Cyril was almost exactly what he would have been had he never seen the place; and Cyril was the Trawnbeighs’ one asset of immense value. He was most agreeable to look at, he was both related to and connected with many of themost historical sounding ladies and gentlemen in England, and he had just the limited, selfish, amiable outlook on the world in general that was sure (granting the other things) to impress Miss Irene Slapp, of Pittsburgh, as the height of both breeding and distinction.
Irene Slapp had beauty and distinction of her own. Somehow, although they all needed the money, I don’t believe Cyril would have married her if she hadn’t. Anyhow, one evening in the City of Mexico he took her in to dinner at the British Legation, where he had been asked to dine as a matter of course, and before the second entrée Miss Slapp was slightly in love with him and very deeply in love with the scheme of life, the standard, the ideal, or whatever you choose to call it, he had inherited and had been brought up, under staggering difficulties, to represent.
“The young beggar has made a pot of money in the States,” Trawnbeigh gravely informed me after Cyril had spent seven weeks in Pittsburgh—whither he had been persuaded to journey on the Slapps’s private train.
“And, you know, I’ve decided to sell the old place,” he casually remarked a month or so later. “Yes, yes,” he went on, “the young people are beginning to leave us” (I hadn’t noticed any signs of impending flight on the part of Edwina, Violet and Maud). “Mrs. Trawnbeigh and I want to end our days at home. Slapp believes there’s gold on the place—or would it be petroleum? He’s welcome to it. After all, I’ve never been fearfully keen on business.”
And I rode away pondering, as I always did, on the great lesson of the Trawnbeighs.
Charles Macomb Flandrau.
Out of doors, darkness and sleet; within the cottage parlor, a grand fire and a good supper, the latter, however, no longer in evidence.
Four people sat round the hearth: a woman not so old in years as aged in looks by what the war had done to her; a burly, bearded, middle-aged man, her brother; a young, rather stern-visaged fellow, the last of her sons; and a girl of twenty or so, with a sedate mouth and bright eyes, her daughter-in-law to be. The two men were obviously seafarers. As a matter of fact, the uncle was skipper of an ancient tramp which had somehow survived those three years of perilous passages; the nephew, a fisherman before war, afterwards and until recently in the patrol service, was now mate on the same old ship, though he had still to make his first trip on her.
Said Mrs. Cathles, breaking silence, to her brother: “Did ye see any U-boats comin’ home, Alick?” Possibly she spoke then just to interrupt her own thoughts, for it was not like her to introduce such a subject.
The skipper was busy charging his pipe. “Is it U-boats ye’re askin’ about, Maggie?” he said slowly, in his loud voice. “I’m tellin’ ye, on that last home’ard trip, the peeriscopes was like a forest!”
David Cathles winked to his sweetheart; thenperceiving that the answer had scared his mother, he said:
“Come, come, Uncle! Surely ’twasn’t quite so bad as that. ‘A forest’ is a bit thick, isn’t it?”
“Well, there was room for the Hesperus to get through, I’ll allow,” the skipper said, striking a match extracted from his vest pocket, “otherwise I wouldn’t be settin’ here tellin’ the blessed truth every time.” He lay back and puffed complacently, staring at the fire.
“Never you mind him, Mother,” said the young man. “’Tis me he’s seekin’ to terrify: he’d just as soon I didn’t sail wi’ him, after all; ’fraid o’ me learnin’ what a poor skipper he is!”
Now David ought to have known better. People who are good at giving chaff are seldom good at taking it. The girl, however, was quick to note the stiffening of the burly figure.
“Captain Whinn,” she remarked promptly, but without haste, “ye must be a terrible brave man to ha’ come through all ye ha’ come through, since the war started.”
“Not at all, my dear,” was the modest reply; “I’m no braver’n several cases I’ve heard on.”
David, who had seen his own blunder, was grateful to Esther for the diversion, and sought to carry it further.
“Well, Uncle Whinn,” he said respectfully, “I think we’d all like to hear what yourself considers the pluckiest bit o’ work done by a chap in the Merchant Service durin’ the—”
“Haven’t done it yet.” With a wooden expression of countenance, the skipper continued to stare at the fire.
Mrs. Cathles spoke. “Ah, David, ’tis little usetryin’ to pick the bravest when all is so brave. But I do think none will ever do braver’n what that fishin’ skipper did—him we was hearin’ about yesterday.”
“Ay, that was a man!” her son agreed.
“What was it?” the girl inquired, with a veiled glance of indignation at Captain Whinn, who appeared quite uninterested, if not actually bored.
“You tell it, David,” said the mother. “Big moniments ha’ been put up for less.”
“Go on, David,” murmured Esther.
“’Twas something like this,” he began. “They had hauled the nets and was makin’ for port in the early mornin’, in hazy weather, when a U-boat comes up almost alongside. I reckon they was scared, for at that time fishin’ boats was bein’ sunk right and left. Then the commander comes on deck and asks, in first-class English, which o’ the seven was skipper. And the skipper he holds up his hand like as if he was a little boy in the school. ‘All right,’ says the ’Un, ‘I guess you can navigate hereabouts—eh?’ The skipper answers slow that he has been navigatin’ thereabouts ’most all his life. ‘Very well,’ says the ’Un, ‘there’s a way you can save your boat, and the lives o’ them six fine men, and your own.’ He waits for a little while; then he says: ‘This is the way. You come on board here, and take this ship past the defenses and into —. That’s all. I give you three minutes to make up your mind.’
“’Tis said the skipper looked like a dyin’ man then, and all the time one o’ the U-boat’s guns was trained on the fishin’ boat. ‘Time’s up,’ says the ’Un; ‘which is it to be?’ And the skipper says: ‘I’ll do what ye want.’ I never heard what hismates said; and I should think their thoughts was sort o’ mixed. But they puts him on board the U-boat and clears out, as he told them to do; and the last they see of him was him standin’ betwixt two ’Uns, each wi’ a revolver handy. And then him and the ’Uns goes below, and so does the U-boat.”
“He was surely a coward!” the girl exclaimed.
“Wait a bit,” said David. “Can’t ye see that he saved the lives o’ his mates?”
“And his own!” she cried. “And he took the U-boat in!”
“Ay, he did that—and her commander, too! Oh, he took her in right enough—safe into the big steel net! . . . They found him there wi’ the dead ’Uns, later on—only he had been murdered.”
Esther clasped her hands. “None braver’n that!” she said in a whisper.
Mrs. Cathles turned to her brother, who had not altered his attitude, though he had let his pipe go out.
“Alick,” she said, “what do ye say to that?”
“’Twasn’t so bad,” he said softly, “’twasn’t so bad, Maggie. Ha’ ye any matches?”
Shortly afterwards he took his departure, and then David saw Esther home.
On the way she broke a silence by remarking: “David, I wish ye wasn’t sailin’ wi’ that man.”
“How so?”
“He’s not natural. Something’s wrong about him.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be sayin’ that, Esther,” said David. “I allow I can’t make anything o’ Uncle Whinn nowadays, but the war has turned many a man queerish. Still, I never heard him so boastful-like afore tonight—”
“‘’Twasn’t so bad,’” she quoted resentfully, “‘’twasn’t so bad!’—and it the bravest thing a human man could do? Oh, David, I do wish ye wasn’t sailin’ wi’ him, though he is your uncle. He’s a coward—that’s what he is, I’m sure.”
“I wouldn’t be sayin’ that, neither,” the young man gently protested. “He’s maybe feared—I surely doubt he is—but that’s not the same as bein’ a coward—not by a long chalk.”
“He’s got neither wife nor family, and he’s oldish,” she persisted.
“But I s’pose life’s sweet even when a man’s oldish. As for bein’ feared—out yonder wi’ the patrol, I was seldom anything else,” said David quietly.
“David Cathles, I don’t believe ye!”
“I’m feared now; I’ll be feared all this comin’ trip. Uncle Whinn has got more to be feared o’ ’n me.
“I don’t see that.”
“Well, if a U-boat gets the better o’ the old Hesperus—and she hasn’t got a gun yet—’tis ten to one the ’Uns make a prisoner o’ Uncle Whinn. ’Tisn’t cheerful to ha’ that on your mind all the time—is it now, Esther?”
“I grant ye that, David,” she said, with unexpected compunction. “Only he shouldn’t be so big about hisself and so small about the pluck o’ other men. I’d ha’ said he was feared o’ the very sea itself.”
“A common complaint, my dear! But now ye ha’ touched on a thing which is maybe only too true, for I could ’most allow my uncle is feared o’ death in the water—not that his fear is aught to be ashamed on.”
“Not if a man be modest about hisself!”
“Uncle Whinn used to be modest enough, and careless enough, too, about what happened to him,” said David. “But when I was on board wi’ him, this mornin’, I see a thing so queer and strange, it makes me creep yet.”
“David, I knew there was something wrong!”
“And ’twas only a simple matter, after all,” he proceeded. “’Twas all about a life belt hangin’ above his bunk, in the chart room, where he berths nowadays. ’Twas an ordinary, everyday life belt, but all the time we was settin’ there smokin’ an’ chattin’, I noticed he never hardly took his eyes off o’ it. And at last I gets up and goes over, just to see if there was anything extra about it. Well, he was after me like a tiger! ‘Don’t ye put finger on that, my lad!’ he says, not so much as if he was angered as feared. And then he draws me back to the table, and says, as if he was a bit ’shamed o’ hisself: ‘Ye’ll excuse me, David, but I can’t bear to see that there life belt touched. T’other day, I was as near as near to killin’ the cook—the poor sinner said it needed dustin’. ’Tis my foolishness, no doubt, but we’ve all got our fancies, and I don’t want the belt to be missin’ or unhandy when the time comes. So there it hangs, an’ I’ll thank ye for your word, here and now, David, that ye won’t never touch it.’ Of course I give him my word, but wi’ no great feelin’ o’ pleasure. . . . What do ye think about it, Esther?”
“’Tis terrible that a great big man should be so feared. Now I’m sort o’ sorry for him. I daresay he needs ye badly on his ship, and so I’ll say no more about it, David.”
“Ye always see things right, once ye let yourkind heart go,” he said tenderly. “And I can’t think that Uncle Whinn’ll play the coward if ever he’s really up against it. . . . And now, what about us two gettin’ married on my next leave?”
The Hesperus sailed a couple of days later. The outward voyage was completed without mishap or adventure, and she was within a day’s run of the home port when her end came.
After a brief but havoc-working bombardment, her helpless skipper gave orders to abandon ship, and signaled the enemy accordingly. There were two lifeboats,—the third had been smashed,—and in the natural course of things David would have been in charge of one of them. But Captain Whinn decreed otherwise.
“I want ye wi’ me,” he said to his nephew, as they came down from the tottering bridge. “Cast off!” he bawled at the boat whose crew included the second mate.
He drew David into the chartroom.
When they emerged, a couple of minutes later, he was wearing the belt, and his countenance was pale. But the young man’s was ghastly.
Now there were blurs of smoke on the horizon. Captain Whinn indicated them, remarking:
“A little bit too late. Poor old Hesperus!”
The blurs had evidently been observed from the U-boat also, for a “Hurry up!” came in the form of a shell aimed just high enough to clear the deck.
Skipper and mate went down the ladder, and the boat was cast off. At a safe distance, the rowers, at a sign from the skipper, lay on their oars. Speedily the U-boat put her victim into a sinkingcondition. During the operation Whinn neither moved nor spoke; seemingly he did not hear the several remarks softly addressed to him by his nephew. His face was set; all the skin blemishes stood out against the tan of many years, upon which had come a grayish pallor; there was moisture on his brow.
Then through the slightly ruffled sea the U-boat, her gunners’ job over, moved toward them. A hail came from the commander, a tall young man with an unslept, nervous look on his thin face.
“Come alongside, and look sharp about it. I want the captain,” he called.
None of the boat’s crew moved, but all at once the elderly cook broke forth in a voice of grievous exasperation:
“Godalmighty, Cap’n, whatever made ye put on your best duds? Why the hell didn’t ye get into some old slops?—an’ then I could ha’ passed for ye easy!”
The glimmer of a smile appeared in the skipper’s eyes, and his mouth quivered pathetically just for an instant. Then he said briefly:
“Get alongside.”
“Maybe they would take me instead,” said David, but again his uncle seemed not to have heard.
Whinn did not speak again until he was standing on the submarine’s deck. Then steadily he addressed his nephew:
“Kind love to your mother, David; best respects to your young lady.”
To the crew: “So long, lads,” he said, and gave a little wave of the hand.
Then he was hurried below, and almost beforethe Hesperus’ boat was clear, the great engine of destruction began to submerge.
David sat with his face bowed in his hands, and now and then a shudder went through him.
Two nights later he was back in his mother’s house, seated with Esther at the parlor fire, which burned as grandly as on that night a month ago. Mrs. Cathles had gone to the kitchen to make the supper.
There had been a long silence. Suddenly David’s clasp of the girl’s hand tightened almost painfully.
“Why, what is it, lad?” she exclaimed.
“Esther, I don’t know what to do. . . . Ye see, when I was telling you an’ mother about Uncle Whinn, I kept back something—a lot. I couldn’t think how to tell the whole tale—to mother, anyway.”
“Is it—dreadful, David?”
“Ay, dreadful—in a way. Well, I’ll try and tell yourself now, an’ then, perhaps— ’Sh! I bear her comin’! ’Twill have to wait.”
Mrs. Cathles came in, but without the expected laden tray. She crossed to her accustomed place and seated herself. Presently she looked over at her son.
“David, I was thinkin’ just now, and it came on me that ye hadn’t told me everything about your uncle, my own brother, Alick. Now, dearie, ye must not keep aught back. ’Tis my right to know, and I can bear a lot nowadays.” She wetted her lips. “David, tell me true, what happened to my brother when they got him on board the U-boat. Did they—shoot him?”
“No, Mother”—David cleared his throat—“‘’twas far finer’n that! . . . Ah, well, now I’ll tell everything. ’Twas this way. You—we’ll never see Uncle Whinn again, Mother, but he was a great man. He stepped on board that U-boat as brave as a lion, and when the ’Un commander spoke to him, polite enough, too—he looked at him as if he was dirt. And then he give me the messages I ha’ told ye. And then they took him below. And then the U-boat started for to dive— Now don’t ye be too upset, Mother.”
“Go on, David.”
“Well, then, the U-boat, as I was tellin’ ye, started for to dive. . . . But she wasn’t half under when—when she blowed up—all to smash—exploded into little bits, it seemed—our boat was near to bein’ swamped.” David ceased abruptly.
In the silence the girl rose and went to the woman, and put her arm about the bent shoulders.
David spoke again, in little more than a whisper. “’Tis not all told; and now comes the worst—and the best, too. . . . When all was over on the old Hesperus, and we was makin’ ready to leave her, Uncle Whinn draws me into the chartroom. Without sayin’ anything he takes off his old coat and cap and puts on split new ones. After that, he takes down the life belt that hung above his bunk, and puts it on very careful. Then, at last, he speaks to me. ‘David,’ he says, ‘they’re nailin’ us skippers in these times, so maybe you and me shan’t meet again.’ And he holds out his hand. Hardly knowin’ what to say, I says: ‘Even if they do take ye prisoner, the war won’t last for ever and ever, and maybe ye’ll escape afore long.’ He shakes his head, smilin’ a little. ‘If they takesme, they takes the consequences, and so does I.’ And then he tells me his secret— God! to think o’ the man’s pluck!”
David wiped his face.
“My Uncle Whinn says to me: ‘My lad, I thought to tell nobody, but ’twould be too lonesome-like for me to go like that. But ye needn’t make a story about it. . . . This here life belt,’ says he, ‘was my own idea. ’Tisn’t made o’ corks. T’is made o’ high, powerful explosive—enough to wreck a battleship. And all I ha’ got to do is just to pull this little bit o’ string.’ . . .”
J. J. Bell.
Waldo, brought face to face with the actuality of the unbelievable—as he himself would have worded it—was completely dazed. In silence he suffered the consul to lead him from the tepid gloom of the interior, through the ruinous doorway, out into the hot, stunning brilliance of the desert landscape. Hassan followed, with never a look behind him. Without any word he had taken Waldo’s gun from his nerveless hand and carried it, with his own and the consul’s.
The consul strode across the gravelly sand, some fifty paces from the southwest corner of the tomb, to a bit of not wholly ruined wall from which there was a clear view of the doorway side of the tomb and of the side with the larger crevice.
“Hassan,” he commanded, “watch here.”
Hassan said something in Persian.
“How many cubs were there?” the consul asked Waldo.
Waldo stared mute.
“How many young ones did you see?” the consul asked again.
“Twenty or more,” Waldo made answer.
“That’s impossible,” snapped the consul.
“There seemed to be sixteen or eighteen,” Waldo reasserted. Hassan smiled and grunted. The consul took from him two guns, handed Waldo his, and they walked around the tomb to a pointabout equally distant from the opposite corner. There was another bit of ruin, and in front of it, on the side toward the tomb, was a block of stone mostly in the shadow of the wall.
“Convenient,” said the consul. “Sit on that stone and lean against the wall; make yourself comfortable. You are a bit shaken, but you will be all right in a moment. You should have something to eat, but we have nothing. Anyhow, take a good swallow of this.”
He stood by him as Waldo gasped over the raw brandy.
“Hassan will bring you his water bottle before he goes,” the consul went on; “drink plenty, for you must stay here for some time. And now, pay attention to me. We must extirpate these vermin. The male, I judge, is absent. If he had been anywhere about, you would not now be alive. The young cannot be as many as you say, but, I take it, we have to deal with ten, a full litter. We must smoke them out. Hassan will go back to camp after fuel and the guard. Meanwhile, you and I must see that none escape.”
He took Waldo’s gun, opened the breech, shut it, examined the magazine and handed it back to him.
“Now watch me closely,” he said. He paced off, looking to his left past the tomb. Presently he stopped and gathered several stones together.
“You see these?” he called.
Waldo shouted an affirmation.
The consul came back, passed on in the same line, looking to his right past the tomb, and presently, at a similar distance, put up another tiny cairn, shouted again and was again answered. Again he returned.
“Now you are sure you cannot mistake those two marks I have made?”
“Very sure indeed,” said Waldo.
“It is important,” warned the consul. “I am going back to where I left Hassan, to watch there while he is gone. You will watch here. You may pace as often as you like to either of those stone heaps. From either you can see me on my beat. Do not diverge from the line from one to the other. For as soon as Hassan is out of sight I shall shoot any moving thing I see nearer. Sit here till you see me set up similar limits for my sentry-go on the farther side, then shoot any moving thing not on my line of patrol. Keep a lookout all around you. There is one chance in a million that the male might return in daylight—mostly they are nocturnal, but this lair is evidently exceptional. Keep a bright lookout.
“And now listen to me. You must not feel any foolish sentimentalism about any fancied resemblance of these vermin to human beings. Shoot, and shoot to kill. Not only is it our duty, in general, to abolish them, but it will be very dangerous for us if we do not. There is little or no solidarity in Mohammedan communities, but on the comparatively few points upon which public opinion exists it acts with amazing promptitude and vigor. One matter as to which there is no disagreement is that it is incumbent upon every man to assist in eradicating these creatures. The good old Biblical custom of stoning to death is the mode of lynching indigenous hereabouts. These modern Asiatics are quite capable of applying it to any one believed derelict against any of these inimical monsters. If we let one escape and the rumor of it gets about,we may precipitate an outburst of racial prejudice difficult to cope with. Shoot, I say, without hesitation or mercy.”
“I understand,” said Waldo.
“I don’t care whether you understand or not,” said the consul. “I want you to act. Shoot if needful, and shoot straight.” And he tramped off.
Hassan presently appeared, and Waldo drank from his water bottle as nearly all of its contents as Hassan would permit. After his departure Waldo’s first alertness soon gave place to mere endurance of the monotony of watching and the intensity of the heat. His discomfort became suffering, and what with the fury of the dry glare, the pangs of thirst and his bewilderment of mind, Waldo was moving in a waking dream by the time Hassan returned with two donkeys and a mule laden with brushwood. Behind the beasts straggled the guard.
Waldo’s trance became a nightmare when the smoke took effect and the battle began. He was, however, not only not required to join in the killing, but was enjoined to keep back. He did keep very much in the background, seeing only so much of the slaughter as his curiosity would not let him refrain from viewing. Yet he felt all a murderer as he gazed at the ten small carcasses laid out arow, and the memory of his vigil and its end, indeed of the whole day, though it was the day of his most marvelous adventure, remains to him as the broken recollections of a phantasmagoria.
On the morning of his memorable peril Waldo had waked early. The experiences of hissea-voyage, the sights at Gibraltar, at Port Said, in the canal, at Suez, at Aden, at Muscat, and at Basrah had formed an altogether inadequate transition from the decorous regularity of house and school-life in New England to the breathless wonder of the desert immensities.
Everything seemed unreal, and yet the reality of its strangeness so besieged him that he could not feel at home in it, he could not sleep heavily in a tent. After composing himself to sleep, he lay long conscious and awakened early, as on this morning, just at the beginning of the false-dawn.
The consul was fast asleep, snoring loudly. Waldo dressed quietly and went out; mechanically, without any purpose or forethought, taking his gun. Outside he found Hassan, seated, his gun across his knees, his head sunk forward, as fast asleep as the consul. Ali and Ibrahim had left the camp the day before for supplies. Waldo was the only waking creature about; for the guards, camped some little distance off, were but logs about the ashes of their fire.
When he had begun camp life he had expected to find the consul, that combination of sportsman, explorer and archæologist, a particularly easy-going guardian. He had looked forward to absolutely untrammeled liberty in the spacious expanse of the limitless wastes. The reality he had found exactly the reverse of his preconceptions. The consul’s first injunction was:
“Never let yourself get out of sight of me or of Hassan unless he or I send you off with Ali or Ibrahim. Let nothing tempt you to roam about alone. Even a ramble is dangerous. You might lose sight of the camp before you knew it.”
At first Waldo acquiesced, later he protested. “I have a good pocket compass. I know how to use it. I never lost my way in the Maine woods.”
“No Kourds in the Maine woods,” said the consul.
Yet before long Waldo noticed that the few Kourds they encountered seemed simple-hearted, peaceful folk. No semblance of danger or even of adventure had appeared. Their armed guard of a dozen greasy tatterdemalions had passed their time in uneasy loafing.
Likewise Waldo noticed that the consul seemed indifferent to the ruins they passed by or encamped among, that his feeling for sites and topography was cooler than lukewarm, that he showed no ardor in the pursuit of the scanty and uninteresting game. He had picked up enough of several dialects to hear repeated conversations about “them.” “Have you heard of any about here?” “Has one been killed?” “Any traces of them in this district?” And such queries he could make out in the various talks with the natives they met; as to what “they” were he received no enlightenment.
Then he had questioned Hassan as to why he was so restricted in his movements. Hassan spoke some English and regaled him with tales of Afrits, ghouls, specters and other uncanny legendary presences; of the jinn of the waste, appearing in human shape, talking all languages, ever on the alert to ensnare infidels; of the woman whose feet turned the wrong way at the ankles, luring the unwary to a pool and there drowning her victims; of the malignant ghosts of dead brigands, more terrible than their living fellows; of the spirit in the shape of a wild ass, or of a gazelle, enticing its pursuersto the brink of a precipice and itself seeming to run ahead upon an expanse of sand, a mere mirage, dissolving as the victim passed the brink and fell to death; of the sprite in the semblance of a hare feigning a limp, or of a ground-bird feigning a broken wing, drawing its pursuer after it till he met death in an unseen pit or well-shaft.
Ali and Ibrahim spoke no English. As far as Waldo could understand their long harangues, they told similar stories or hinted at dangers equally vague and imaginary. These childish bogy-tales merely whetted Waldo’s craving for independence.
Now, as he sat on a rock, longing to enjoy the perfect sky, the clear, early air, the wide, lonely landscape, along with the sense of having it to himself, it seemed to him that the consul was merely innately cautious, over-cautious. There was no danger. He would have a fine, leisurely stroll, kill something perhaps, and certainly be back in camp before the sun grew hot. He stood up.
Some hours later he was seated on a fallen coping-stone in the shadow of a ruined tomb. All the country they had been traversing is full of tombs and remains of tombs, prehistoric, Bactrian, old Persian, Parthian, Sassanian, or Mohammedan, scattered everywhere in groups or solitary. Vanished utterly are the faintest traces of the cities, towns, and villages, ephemeral houses or temporary huts, in which had lived the countless generations of mourners who had reared these tombs.
The tombs, built more durably than mere dwellings of the living, remained. Complete or ruinous, or reduced to mere fragments, they were everywhere. In that district they were all of one type.Each was domed and below was square, its one door facing eastward and opening into a larger empty room, behind which were the mortuary chambers.
In the shadow of such a tomb Waldo sat. He had shot nothing, had lost his way, had no idea of the direction of the camp, was tired, warm and thirsty. He had forgotten his water bottle.
He swept his gaze over the vast, desolate prospect, the unvaried turquoise of the sky arched above the rolling desert. Far reddish hills along the skyline hooped in the less distant brown hillocks which, without diversifying it, hummocked the yellow landscape. Sand and rocks with a lean, starved bush or two made up the nearer view, broken here and there by dazzling white or streaked, grayish, crumbling ruins. The sun had not been long above the horizon, yet the whole surface of the desert was quivering with heat.
As Waldo sat viewing the outlook a woman came round the corner tomb. All the village women Waldo had seen had worn yashmaks or some other form of face-covering or veil. This woman was bareheaded and unveiled. She wore some sort of yellowish-brown garment which enveloped her from neck to ankles, showing no waist line. Her feet, in defiance of the blistering sands, were bare.
At sight of Waldo she stopped and stared at him as he at her. He remarked the un-European posture of her feet, not at all turned out, but with the inner lines parallel. She wore no anklets, he observed, no bracelets, no necklace or earrings. Her bare arms he thought the most muscular he had ever seen on a human being. Her nails were pointed and long, both on her hands and her feet. Herhair was black, short and tousled, yet she did not look wild or uncomely. Her eyes smiled and her lips had the effect of smiling, though they did not part ever so little, not showing at all the teeth behind them.
“What a pity,” said Waldo aloud, “that she does not speak English.”
“I do speak English,” said the woman, and Waldo noticed that as she spoke, her lips did not perceptibly open. “What does the gentleman want?”
“You speak English!” Waldo exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “What luck! Where did you learn it?”
“At the mission school,” she replied, an amused smile playing about the corners of her rather wide, unopening mouth. “What can be done for you?” She spoke with scarcely any foreign accent, but very slowly and with a sort of growl running along from syllable to syllable.
“I am thirsty,” said Waldo, “and I have lost my way.”
“Is the gentleman living in a brown tent, shaped like half a melon?” she inquired, the queer, rumbling note drawling from one word to the next, her lips barely separated.
“Yes, that is our camp,” said Waldo.
“I could guide the gentleman that way,” she droned; “but it is far, and there is no water on that side.”
“I want water first,” said Waldo, “or milk.”
“If you mean cow’s milk, we have none. But we have goat’s milk. There is to drink where I dwell,” she said, sing-songing the words. “It is not far. It is the other way.”
“Show me,” said he.
She began to walk, Waldo, his gun under his arm, beside her. She trod noiselessly and fast. Waldo could scarcely keep up with her. As they walked he often fell behind and noted how her swathing garments clung to a lithe, shapely back, neat waist and firm hips. Each time he hurried and caught up with her, he scanned her with intermittent glances, puzzled that her waist, so well-marked at the spine, showed no particular definition in front; that the outline of her from neck to knees, perfectly shapeless under her wrappings, was without any waist-line or suggestion of firmness or undulation. Likewise he remarked the amused flicker in her eyes and the compressed line of her red, her too red, lips.
“How long were you at the mission school?” he inquired.
“Four years,” she replied.
“Are you a Christian?” he asked.
“The Free-folk do not submit to baptism,” she stated simply, but with rather more of the droning growl between her words.
He felt a queer shiver as he watched the scarcely moved lips through which the syllables edged their way.
“But you are not veiled,” he could not resist saying.
“The Free-folk,” she rejoined, “are never veiled.”
“Then you are not a Mohammedan?” he ventured.
“The Free-folk are not Moslems.”
“Who are the Free-folk?” he blurted out incautiously.
She shot one baleful glance at him. Waldoremembered that he had to do with an Asiatic. He recalled the three permitted questions.
“What is your name?” he inquired.
“Amina,” she told him.
“That is a name from the ‘Arabian Nights,’” he hazarded.
“From the foolish tales of the believers,” she sneered. “The Free-folk know nothing of such follies.” The unvarying shutness of her speaking lips, the drawly burr between the syllables, struck him all the more as her lips curled but did not open.
“You utter your words in a strange way,” he said.
“Your language is not mine,” she replied.
“How is it that you learned my language at the mission school and are not a Christian?”
“They teach all at the mission school,” she said, “and the maidens of the Free-folk are like the other maidens they teach, though the Free-folk when grown are not as town-dwellers are. Therefore they taught me as any townbred girl, not knowing me for what I am.”
“They taught you well,” he commented.
“I have the gift of tongues,” she uttered enigmatically, with an odd note of triumph burring the words through her unmoving lips.
Waldo felt a horrid shudder all over him, not only at her uncanny words, but also from mere faintness.
“Is it far to your home?” he breathed.
“It is there,” she said, pointing to the doorway of a large tomb just before them.
The wholly open arch admitted them into a fairly spacious interior, cool with the abidingtemperaturc of thick masonry. There was no rubbish on the floor. Waldo, relieved to escape the blistering glare outside, seated himself on a block of stone midway between the door and the inner partition-wall, resting his gun-butt on the floor. For the moment he was blinded by the change from the insistent brilliance of the desert morning to the blurred gray light of the interior.
When his sight cleared he looked about and remarked, opposite the door, the ragged hole which laid open the desecrated mausoleum. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness he was so startled that he stood up. It seemed to him that from its four corners the room swarmed with naked children. To his inexperienced conjecture they seemed about two years old, but they moved with the assurance of boys of eight or ten.
“Whose are these children?” he exclaimed.
“Mine,” she said.
“All yours?” he protested.
“All mine,” she replied, a curious suppressed boisterousness in her demeanor.
“But there are twenty of them,” he cried.
“You count badly in the dark,” she told him. “There are fewer.”
“There certainly are a dozen,” he maintained, spinning round as they danced and scampered about.
“The Free-people have large families,” she said.
“But they are all of one age,” Waldo exclaimed, his tongue dry against the roof of his mouth.
She laughed, an unpleasant, mocking laugh, clapping her hands. She was between him and the doorway, and as most of the light came from it he could not see her lips.
“Is not that like a man! No woman would have made that mistake.”
Waldo was confuted and sat down again. The children circulated around him, chattering, laughing, giggling, snickering, making noises indicative of glee.
“Please get me something cool to drink,” said Waldo, and his tongue was not only dry but big in his mouth.
“We shall have to drink shortly,” she said, “but it will be warm.”
Waldo began to feel uneasy. The children pranced around him, jabbering strange, guttural noises, licking their lips, pointing at him, their eyes fixed on him, with now and then a glance at their mother.
“Where is the water?”
The woman stood silent, her arms hanging at her sides, and it seemed to Waldo she was shorter than she had been.
“Where is the water?” he repeated.
“Patience, patience,” she growled, and came a step nearer to him.
The sunlight struck upon her back and made a sort of halo about her hips. She seemed still shorter than before. There was a something furtive in her bearing, and the little ones sniggered evilly.
At that instant two rifle shots rang out almost as one. The woman fell face downward on the floor. The babies shrieked in a shrill chorus. Then she leapt up from all fours with an explosive suddenness, staggered in a hurled, lurching rush toward the hole in the wall, and, with a frightful yell, threw up her arms and whirled backward tothe ground, doubled and contorted like a dying fish, stiffened, shuddered and was still. Waldo, his horrified eyes fixed on her face, even in his amazement noted that her lips did not open.
The children, squealing faint cries of dismay, scrambled through the hole in the inner wall, vanishing into the inky void beyond. The last had hardly gone when the consul appeared in the doorway, his smoking gun in his hand.
“Not a second too soon, my boy,” he ejaculated. “She was just going to spring.”
He cocked his gun and prodded the body with the muzzle.
“Good and dead,” he commented. “What luck! Generally it takes three or four bullets to finish one. I’ve known one with two bullets through her lungs to kill a man.”
“Did you murder this woman?” Waldo demanded fiercely.
“Murder?” the consul snorted. “Murder! Look at that.”
He knelt down and pulled open the full, close lips, disclosing not human teeth, but small incisors, cusped grinders, wide-spaced, and long, keen, overlapping canines, like those of a greyhound: a fierce, deadly, carnivorous dentition, menacing and combative.
Waldo felt a qualm, yet the face and form still swayed his horrified sympathy for their humanness.
“Do you shoot women because they have long teeth?” Waldo insisted, revolted at the horrid death he had watched.
“You are hard to convince,” said the consul sternly. “Do you call that a woman?”
He stripped the clothing from the carcass.
Waldo sickened all over. What he saw was not the front of a woman, but the body of a female animal, old and flaccid—mother of a pack.
“What kind of a creature is it?” he asked faintly.
“A Ghoul, my boy,” the consul answered solemnly, almost in a whisper.
“I thought they did not exist,” Waldo babbled. “I thought they were mythical; I thought there were none.”
“I can very well believe that there are none in Rhode Island,” the consul said gravely. “This is in Persia, and Persia is in Asia.”
Edward Lucas White.
Calderon stopped abruptly in the middle of that long road across the moor. Something had caught his eye as he walked—the slightest possible glitter at the side of the road, where the heavy sunlight was making even the stones throw tiny, dense shadows. He went back a step, intent upon discovering what it was that had disturbed his casual glance. There, half raised by a small mound of hardened dust, was a ring, a plain silver ring, the sight of which struck him as a dagger might have done. As he picked it gently from the roadway, and dusted it with his handkerchief, his fingers trembled. It was his wife’s ring. He had given it to her before their marriage, a memento of an exquisitely happy day. All the time they had been together she had worn it constantly: there had never been a time when she had not borne it upon her finger. The ring was full of memories for him—of memories that were painful now in their happiness because they belonged to a broken time. And these memories pressed upon his heart, stabbing him, as he stood thoughtfully in the roadway among the purple heather, gazing at the ring. His face had grown quite gray and hard, and his eyes were troubled.
For a moment he could do nothing but gaze at the ring, busy with his urgent thoughts. He could not yet wonder how the ring had come there, uponthis lonely road from dale to dale. Behind him the road was white, narrowing through the heather, unshadowed by any tree. To right and left of him the moor stretched in purple masses until it darkened at the sky line. In front, the road began already to decline for the steep descent into Wensleydale. The grass could be seen ahead of him; and beyond it, far in the burning mist of the late afternoon, he saw gleaming, like quicksilver, a sheet of water. The wind came at that great height in powerful gusts, freshening the air, pressing warmly against his face and hands as pleasantly as water presses against the swimmer. No other person was in sight upon the moor: he was alone, with Evelyn’s ring in his hand, and poignant memories assailing him.
Calderon’s love for his wife had been as intense and as true as any love could be. Her love for him, more capricious, more ardent, had been as great. Yet in the fifth year of their marriage, such was the conflict of two strong personalities, they had quarreled vehemently, and had parted. Both had independent means, and both had many activities. Calderon had been working very hard for two years since the quarrel, and they had not met. The two or three letters exchanged early in their estrangement had never suggested a continued correspondence; and although he knew that his wife had been living in the eastern counties, Calderon had now no idea at all of her whereabouts. How strange that he should find upon this lonely road that precious ring! Engraved within it he read: “Evelyn: Maurice”—the inscription she had desired. Calderon sighed, slipping the ring into his pocket, and thoughtfully continuing uponhis way. Was Evelyn before him, or behind him? Who could tell? They had never been together to Yorkshire. He most go as a blind man.
Then the question came to him: if they met, what had he to say to her? He knew no more of his journey down into Wensleydale, for the passionate unreasonings that overwhelmed him.
And then, when he was arrived in the little village to which the road over the moor leads, he again hesitated. So much depended upon his action. He must find Evelyn this evening, for his return to London was urgent. Already the shadows were growing long, and the evening was heavy. Which way should he go? Upon his choice might depend the whole course of his future life. For a few moments he halted, irresolute. Then he went slowly forward to the first inn he saw, his fingers playing in his waistcoat pocket with the little ring that had suddenly plunged him into the past. He thought it certain that the loss of it was accidental. She would not have kept the ring for so long, and she could not have brought it with her to Yorkshire, if she had intended to throw it away forever. And yet how came it upon the moorland road?
Calderon stopped outside the comfortable inn. It attracted him; but, as though he had put some kind of reliance upon telepathy, he felt sure that Evelyn was not there. Should he enter, make inquiry? No; he knew she was not there. His steps led him forward. As if he were trying to follow some invisible thread, he went onward, pausing no more, through the village, over to the other side of the dale, marveling at the heavy outline of Mount Caburn, silhouetted against the sky. Hefound himself upon a good road, with hedges on both sides. It was an adventure. He was following the bidding of his instinct. He did not really believe in it, Calderon told himself; it was too silly. There would be a disappointment, a sense of having been “sold”; and the morning would find him unsatisfied, with his single opportunity gone. Yet even while his thoughts poured doubt upon his action he was pursuing his way at a regular pace. How curious it was! It was as though there were two Calderons—one brain, the other overmastering instinct.
“You’ll see,” he warned himself. “Nothing will happen. You’ll have an uncomfortable night, and a trudge back in the morning. It’s no good. No good!”
Yet he continued upon his way beside the silent hedges, his knapsack upon his shoulder, his arms swinging, and the silver ring hidden in his waistcoat pocket.
It was quite dark when he reached Bainbridge. He knew well the aspect of the open common, because he had passed through it a dozen years before, and the place is unforgettable. There was a large green, he remembered, and the houses hedged the green, as they did at East Witton. He smiled at the memory and at the comparison. Yorkshire held such variety of scene, from east to west, that he could pick from among old associations a pleasant thought of every part of it. And here at Bainbridge he knew there was an old inn, quiet and spacious, where he might find Evelyn. She was not one to seek the smaller inns such as he would himself have chosen: she would endure the discomforts of loquacious companionship ratherthan those of primitive bathing arrangements. Had it not, then, been instinct which had led him here? Had it perhaps been a subconscious guessing at her inclinations? Calderon could not discuss that now. He was here; it was too late to go farther; he must endure whatever disappointment might be in store for him.
A bedroom was available; he was supplied with hot water, and he groomed himself as well as his small store of belongings allowed. Whimsically he foresaw a number of women in semi-evening dress, one or two men in suitably dark clothes, himself the only palpable “tourist.” There would be a solitary meal, as dinner time was past; and he would then seek among the company the owner of the silver ring. Calderon found himself laughing rather excitedly, even trembling slightly. Well, he would see what happened. He ventured down the stairs, nervously grinning at the thought that Evelyn might appear from any one of the doors along that silent passage.
When he reached the foot of the stairs he went instinctively to the door, to watch the two or three faint, sudden lights that started across the green out of a general blackness. It was a very dark night; clouds had come swiftly from the southwest, and the sky was entirely hidden. There was a wind, and he thought that as soon as it dropped the rain might begin to patter.
And then, while he was thus prophesying the weather, Calderon was held to the spot by a new sensation. Within, from some room which he had not entered, came an unknown voice, singing. The voice was sweet, but he did not listen; only the air that was sung made him follow the voice, wordsforming in his mind, as though he were himself singing:
“The little silver ring that once you gave to meKeeps in its narrow band every promise of ours. . . . ”
“The little silver ring that once you gave to meKeeps in its narrow band every promise of ours. . . . ”
Surely he was dreaming! He could not move. The clouds hurried; the darkness enwrapped him. He could not smile at a coincidence, because he could not believe that the song was really being sung. It was too much for him to take in. If Evelyn were there, what could she be feeling, thinking? Calderon was a very honest man, and was considered generally a very cool, unsentimental one; but he was easily moved by the one love of his life. Evelyn was the only woman for him; they were parted; he had found a ring which held just such associations, “memories of the past,” as the song pictured. The ring was more than a ring. It was not merely an ornament; it was the material sign of their love. Calderon was deeply stirred.
Even as he stood there, not daring to move, he felt that he was not alone. Another figure, a woman’s, stood in the doorway. He could see her light dress, the whiteness of her neck; and he found himself breathless, suffocated by the sudden dénouement to his dream.
“Evelyn!” he whispered, moving at last.
There was a quick recoil. For a moment it seemed to Calderon that everything was lost, and that he was alone. Then the woman in the doorway stood quite still, breathing quickly, half hidden from him by the doorpost, her face wholly invisible in the murk of the night.
“I didn’t see anybody,” she said unsteadily.“Who are you?” It seemed an unfamiliar voice, rather strangled and more than a little scared.
“Ah! You’re not Evelyn!” Calderon cried. Still he could not see her: only the whiteness glimmered before him. “I’m— My name’s Calderon. I beg your pardon. I thought it was my wife.”
“Calderon!” said the voice; and it seemed to him that it was suddenly filled with a new warmth, as of gayety. Then: “How funny!” said the unknown. He seemed to see her head quickly lowered and averted. Was she smiling? Who could have told, in that foglike darkness? It was as much as he could do to see that she was still before him. But funny? What did that mean?
“Funny?” he exclaimed eagerly. “Is—” He pulled himself up. Here was a complication! If he asked any question, might he not make a new difficulty? He could not ask whether Evelyn was here. He could guess how quickly a story would run through a mischievous party of tourists, unrestrained by any real understanding of the situation, and bent upon canvassing among themselves, merely to beguile gaps in a mealtime conversation, the history of an unhappy marriage. He could not expose Evelyn to such a company. So he went no further with his speech.
“Perhaps you’ve heard—” said the voice. “Perhaps you’ve heard of Alice Bradshaw.” She was quite recovered from her shock, and was ready, it appeared to Calderon, to hold him flirtatiously in the doorway. “I’ve known Evelyn for some time—two years.”
“I’ve got an idea—” hesitated Calderon, racking his brains and lying. It was getting worse and worse! How could he go on without showing howlittle he knew about Evelyn’s recent movements? He frowned, and smiled nervously on the darkness. He was rather glad of the darkness. “I—it’s possible—”
“But not probable!” said the laughing voice. “Don’t pretend to remember me, if you don’t!”
“Well, I don’t!” admitted Calderon. “And that’s quite true.”
“Honest man!” said the voice. Something made him move forward quickly. The figure disappeared. Calderon, putting his hand instinctively forward to stop her, allowed the little ring to jerk from it.
“Oh!” he cried. “Here, I say!”
He was down upon his knees, fumbling on the ground. A match flickered on his fingers. He looked quickly up, hoping to see the unknown’s face; but the match was blown out instantly by the strong wind that was pressing and fluttering about him as he knelt.
“What have you dropped?” asked the voice. The mysterious one had reappeared in the doorway.
“A ring!” Calderon said sharply.
“A ring!” There was sympathy in the voice. “What a pity! Let me look.”
He struck another match, and groped about. It was unavailing. The match went out, and beyond a sudden glimpse of the trodden earth he had seen nothing.
“It’s really your fault,” Calderon said to the unknown, “for starting away.”
“Was it on your finger?”
“No. It isn’t mine. It’s a silver ring.”
“A silver—” There was a moment’s startled pause. “Did you hear the song just now?”
“Yes—Ah!” With the third match he had detected the ring. “Good!”
“Is it your ring?” asked the voice. “I mean . . . Evelyn . . . wears one, doesn’t she?”
“Does she?” Calderon asked drily. “She did.”
“Oh, she—”
“I found it on the moor. This is hers. I brought it—”
Calderon checked himself again. He was rubbing the ring with his handkerchief, in case it had been dirtied.
“How did you know we were here?” said the voice, in a tone of piquant curiosity.
“Then—!” cried Calderon, feeling his face get very hot. He could have shouted at this confirmation of his most rosy hopes. It was with a terrible effort that be restrained himself. “Oh,” he said vaguely, “one does know.” He heard a real laugh this time, but smothered, as though the unknown were holding a handkerchief to her mouth.
“Evidently,” she said. “But how does one know?”
“How do you know that Evelyn didn’t tell me?” he parried. He felt it was a master stroke. “You don’t seem to have exhausted the possibilities.”
“No, of course. She might have,” admitted the mysterious voice. There was the tiniest silence. “But I don’t think she did. Of course, I don’t know.”
“No, of course,” Calderon politely agreed. “Is she quite well?”
“Oh!” cried the voice, shaking with amusement. “Don’t you know that? Hasn’t she told you that? It’s too bad to keep it from you!”
“What!” Calderon moved nearer. “She’s not ill!”
“No. I meant that she was well.”
“She tells me very little about herself—very little,” he explained ingeniously. “You’ll have noticed that she doesn’t think of herself at all.”
A dryness came into the tone of his companion.
“You still idealize her, then?” Calderon heard.
“Yes. You see . . . it’s an odd thing,” he went on, “and one doesn’t talk about it. But you see I’m in love with her.”
There was another pause. A significant pause. “I think you’re very forgiving,” at last said a muffled voice. “I—”
“What I should like to know,” Calderon answered, as if weighing his words, “is whether she’s also very forgiving.”
“Oh,” said the voice, now very low. “You must ask her that.”
“I do,” Calderon ventured. “Are you?”
“Oh, Maurice, you’re crushing me!” cried the unknown suddenly. “There . . . Alice has finished singing. She’ll be coming. . . . Give me my ring. . . . Oh, my dear; of course I do!”
The ring was restored, to rest in its old position until memory’s course should be run.
Frank Swinnerton.