Part 5

“We’d ha’ let you sleep on, but we wanted to know what you’d be doing. Will ye stay with me and rest—I’m all but blind the day—or will ye go into Fort Recompense with Jooney here and the dogs, and put the dust in safety? Or will ye try the short cut across the pass with Ohlsen?”

He stopped suddenly. Desmond shrank back slowly against the wall of the bunk, his eyes staring on them as a man stares on death, a fleck of froth on his lips. There was no sound in the shack but the quick breathing of four men.

CHEAP

Ransome said that you might pick up specimens of all the unprettiest afflictions of body and soul in Herares ten years ago. He also said that when he saw any particularly miserable bit of human wreckage, white or brown, adrift on the languid tides of life about the jetty, he always said without further inquiry, “It’s Henkel’s house you’re looking for. Turn to the left, and keep on turning to the left. And if God knew what went on under these trees, He’d have mercy on you. . . . .”

The house was the last house on the last road of the town. You won’t find it now, for no one would live in it after Henkel, and in a season or two the forest swamped it as the sea swamps a child’s boat on the beach. It was a white house in a garden, and after rain the scent of vanilla and stephanotis rose round it like a fog. The fever rose round it like a fog, too, and that’s why Henkel got it so cheap. No fever touched him. He lived there alone with a lot of servants—Indians. And they were all wrecks, Ransome said, broken down from accident or disease—wrecks that no one else would employ. He got them very cheap. When they died he got more.

Henkel was a large, soft, yellowish man. Ransome said, “I don’t mind a man being large and yellowish, or even soft, in reason, but when he shines too, I draw the line.” Henkel had thick hands with bent fingers, and large brown eyes. He was a Hollander Jew, and in that place he stood apart. For he didn’t drink, or gamble, or fight, or even buy rubber. He was just a large, peaceful person who bought things cheap.

He was very clever. He always knew the precise moment, the outmost low-water mark, of a bargain. His house was full of things he’d bought cheap from wrecked companies or dying men, from the mahogany logs in the patio to the coils of telegraph wire in the loft. His clothes never fitted for they belonged to men whom the fever had met on the way up the Mazzaron, and who had, therefore, no further use for clothes. The only things Henkel ever paid a fair price for were butterflies.

“I went to his house once,” said Ransome. “Had to. A lame Indian in a suit of gaudy red-and-white stripes opened the door. I knew that striped canvas. It was the awnings of the old ‘Lily Grant,’ and I saw along the seams the smokemarks of the fire that had burnt her inwards out . . . . . Then the Indian opened the jalousies with a hand like a bundle of brown twigs, and the light shone through green leaves on the walls of the room. From ceiling to floor they flashed as if they were jewelled, only there are no jewels with just that soft bloom of colour. They were cases full of Henkel’s butterflies.

“The Indian limped out, and Henkel came in. He was limping, too. I looked at his feet, and I saw that they were in a pair of someone else’s tan shoes.

“That, and the whiff of the servants’ quarter, made me feel a bit sick. I wanted to say what I had to say, and get out as quick as I could. But Henkel would show me his butterflies. Most of us in that place were a little mad on some point. I was myself. Henkel, he was mad on his butterflies. He told me the troubles he’d had, getting them from Indians and negroes, and how his men cheated him. He took it very much to heart, and snuffled as he spoke. ‘And there’s one I haven’t got,’ he said, ‘one I’ve heard of, but can’t find, and my lazy hounds of hombres can’t find it either, it seems. It’s one of the clear-wings—transparent. Here’s a transparent silver one. But this new one is gold, transparent gold, and the spots are opaque gold.’ His mouth fairly watered. ‘I tell you, I will spend anything, anything, to get that gold butterfly. And if the natives can’t or won’t find it for me, my friend, I’ll send for someone who can and will.’

“I quite believed him, though I was no friend of his. I didn’t know much about butterflies, but I guessed that in Paris or London his collection would be beyond price. But I wasn’t prepared, two months later, for Scott and his friend. . . . .

“Derek Scott. Ever meet him? A very ordinary kind of young Northerner. He was only remarkable in having everything a little in excess of his type—a little squarer in jaw and shoulder, a little longer in nose and leg, a little keener of eye and slower of tongue. I’d never have looked at him twice as he landed from the dirty steamer with a lot of tin boxes, if it hadn’t been that he was hale and sound, with hope in his eyes. Health and hope, at Herares . . . .

“Then little Daurillac ran up the gangway, laughing. I looked at him—everyone did—and wondered. And then, to cap the wonder, they two came up to me with their friendly, confident young faces, and asked for Henkel’s house.

“‘Turn to the left,’ I said. And then I said, ‘You’ll excuse me, but what does Henkel want of you?’

“Scott didn’t answer at first, but looked me over with his considering eyes, and I remembered a collarless shirt and a four days’ beard. But Daurillac said, ‘He wants butterflies of us, Monsieur. I am an entomologist, and my friend, he assists me.’ He drew up very straight, but his eyes were laughing at himself. Then we exchanged names and shook hands, and I watched them going along the path to Henkel’s . . . . .

“Next day, Scott came down to the jetty. He sat on a stump and stared at everything. He was ready enough to talk, in his guarded way. Yes, he was new to the tropics; in some ways they were not what he had expected, but he was not disappointed. He was here for the novelty, the experience. But his friend, Louis Daurillac, had been in the Indies, and with some of Meyer’s men in Burma, after orchids. Louis’ father was a great naturalist, and Louis was very clever. Yes, Henkel had got hold of him through Meyer. He wanted someone to find this butterfly for him, this golden butterfly at the headwaters of the Mazzaron—someone whose name was yet in the making, someone he could get cheap . . . . . So Louis had come. He was very keen on it. Henkel was to bear all costs, to supply food, ammunition, trade-goods, etc., and pay them according to the number of the new specimens that they found. ‘So you see,’ said Scott, with his clean smile, ‘Louis and I can’t lose by it.’ . . . .

“We talked a bit more, and then young Scott said to me, suddenly, ‘Henkel has everything ready, and we start in the morning. You seem to be the only white man about here. Come and see us off, will you?’ I said yes; afterwards it struck me as curious that he should not have counted Henkel as a white man. He laughed, and apologised for the touch of sentiment. ‘It’s like plunging head first into a very deep sea,’ he explained, ‘and one likes to have someone on the shore. You’ll be here when we come back?’ And I said, ‘Yes, either unloading on the jetty or in the new cemetery by the canal.’ But he didn’t smile. His light northern eyes were gravely considering this land, where life was held on a short lease, and he looked at me as if he were sorry for me.

“I saw them off the next day. There were six or eight men of Henkel’s, loaded with food and trade-goods, and I saw that two of them were sickening where they stood. I looked in Daurillac’s brilliant young face, and I hadn’t the courage to say anything but ‘Have you plenty of quinine?’ He tapped a big tin case, and I nodded. ‘And what are you taking the Indianos?’ I asked.

“He fairly bubbled over with laughter. ‘You would never guess, Monsieur, but we take clocks, little American clocks. The Indianos of the Mazzaron desire nothing but little clocks, they like the tick.’

“Their men had turned down one of the jungle paths. They shook hands with me, and Scott met my eyes with his grave smile. ‘Just drawing breath for the plunge,’ he said, with a glance at the forest beyond the last white roof. Daurillac slipped his arm through Scott’s, and drew him after their slow-going hombres. At the bend of the path they turned and waved to me; Scott with a quick lift of the hand. But little Daurillac swept off his hat and stood half-turned for a minute; the sun splashed on his dark head, on his Frenchified belt and puttees, on his white breeches, and on an outrageous pink shirt Henkel seemed to have supplied him with. He looked suddenly brilliant and insubstantial, a light figure poised on the edge of the dark. One gets curious notions in Herares. The next moment they were gone. The jungle had shut down on them, swallowed them up. They were instantly lost in it, as a bubble is lost in the sea.

“Two days before I hadn’t known of their existence. But I was there to see them off, and I was there when Scott came back.

“It was well on into the rainy season, and I was down with fever. I was in my house, in my hammock, and the wind was swinging it. It was probably the hammock that did all the swinging, but I thought it was the house, and I had one foot on the floor to try and steady it. But it was no use. The walls lifted and sank all in one rush, like the side of a ship at sea. Outside I could see a pink roof, a white roof, a tin roof, and then the forest, with the opening of a path like the black mouth of a tunnel. I wanted to watch this tunnel, because I had an idea I’d seen something crawl along it a good while before. But I couldn’t manage it; I had to shut my eyes. And then I felt the scratching on my boot . . .

“I caught hold of the sides of the hammock, but it was some time before I could manage to pull myself up. Then I looked down.

“A man was lying along on his face on the floor, just as he had crawled into my hut and fallen. The yellowed fingers of one hand clawed on my boot, and that was the only sign that he was alive. He lay quite quiet, except for the slow working of his fingers. And I sat quite quiet, staring down on him with the infinite leisure that follows a temperature of one hundred and five. It was only by slow degrees I realized that this was Derek Scott come back, and that he was probably dying.

“I got to my feet, and bent over him, but I couldn’t raise him, of course. I was afraid he’d die before anyone came. So I took my revolver and aimed as well as I could at that tin roof beneath which my man Pedro was eating his dinner. The barrel went up and down with the walls of the hut, but I must have hit the roof, for the next thing I knew was a lot of smoke and noise, and Pedro’s face, eyes and mouth open, rushing out of it. There seemed no interval before I found myself sitting in the hammock, and saying over and over again, ‘But where’s the little chap? Where’s the little French chap?’

“Scott was still on the floor, but his head was on my man’s shoulder, and Pedro was gently feeding him with sips of brandy and condensed milk. He turned and looked at me, and his eyes were clear and considering as ever, though his answer didn’t sound quite sane. He said, ‘The clocks wouldn’t tick.’

“He said it as if it explained everything. Then he unstrapped a tin case from his belt, laid his head on it, and was instantly asleep.

“I cried out, ‘Is it the fever, Pedro?’ But my man said, ‘No, Senor, it is the hunger.’ He rolled Scott up very cleverly in a blanket. ‘This Senor has had the fever, but it is not upon him now. Without doubt he is a little mad from being in the forest so long. But when he wakes he will be stronger. So much I heard, and no more. Unconsciousness came down on me like a wave. But into the dark heart of that wave I carried the certainty that Pedro knew all about the matter and that he hated Henkel. How or why I was certain of this I don’t know. But I was.

“I woke in the cool of the evening. The fresh breeze off the river was like the breath of life, and Pedro’s face, thrust close to mine, no longer grew large and small by fits. I noticed that it was quite grey, and that his lips twitched as he muttered, ‘Senor, Senor . . .’

“I said, ‘Where is the Senor Scott?’

“‘He woke a little while ago and called for water to wash in and a clean coat, and he used the hair-brush. Then he went out—went out—’

“I got to my feet, threw an arm over Pedro’s shoulder, and he ran with me out into the moonlit street. The track to the fountain lay like a ribbon of silver, the houses were like blocks of silver; and every house was shuttered and silent—breathless. Not a man lounged under the shade of the walls, not a girl went late to draw water, not a dog barked. The little place was deserted in the hold of the forest. It lay like a lonely raft of silver in the midst of a black sea. Only ahead of me a man stumbled slowly in the middle of the road, and his shadow staggered beside him. I have said there was no other living thing visible. Yet as this man stumbled past the shuttered houses, the very blades of grass, the very leaves on the wall, seemed to have conscious life and to be aware of him. When the wind moved the trees, every branch seemed straining to follow him as Pedro and I followed.

“We followed, but we could not gain on him. It was like the dreams of fever. Pedro and I seemed to be struggling through the silence of Herares as if it were something heavy and resistant, and Scott reeled from side to side, but always kept the same distance ahead. We were still behind when we turned into Henkel’s garden, and the scent of the flowers beat in our faces like heat. At the foot of the verandah steps we met the man who had admitted Scott.

“The man was running away. He was a cripple. He came down the steps doubled up, bundled past us, and was gone. Somewhere a door clashed open. There was no other sound. But in a moment the garden seemed full of stampeding servants, all maimed, or ill, or aged. They melted silently into the bushes as rats melt into brushwood, and they took no notice of us. I heard Pedro catch his breath quickly. But when a light flared up in one of the rooms, it showed no more than Scott talking with Henkel.

“They showed like moving pictures in a frame, and the frame was dark leaves about the window, which was open. I leaned against the side of it, and Pedro squatted at my feet, his head thrust forward as if he were at a cockfight. I did not know just why I was there. Henkel sat at a table, wagging his head backwards and forwards. Scott was sitting opposite him; and he looked as Lazarus might have looked when first he heard the Voice, and stirred . . . .

“Henkel was saying, ‘Dear me, dear me, but why should this have happened?’ And Scott answered him as he had answered me, in that strange, patient voice,

“‘The clocks wouldn’t tick.’

“‘But they were good clocks,’ cried Henkel.

“Scott shook his head. ‘No, they were not good clocks, he explained gently, ‘they were too cheap. They would not go at all in the jungle. An Indian of the Mazzaron does not care what time his clock tells, but he likes it to tick. These were no good. And the food was not good. The things in the tins were bad when we opened them.’

“‘Mismanagement, mismanagement,’ said Henkel, but Scott went on as if he had not heard.

“‘We followed the river for two days and then turned east. In a week after that, two of your men were dead. They died of fever. No, the quinine was no good. There was a lot of flour in it. Two days more, and another man died, but he would have died anyhow. It was very hard to see them die and to be able to do nothing.

“‘The men who were left went so slowly that nearly all our food was gone when we reached the country of the Indios. We made our camp, and I shot a pig. That made us stronger, but Louis was very bad then with the fever.

“‘The Indios came down, and we spoke with their head-men. They thought we were mad, but the clocks pleased them. They sat round our tents and shook them to make them tick louder, until Louis cried out in his fever that all the world was a great clock that ticked. They gave us leave to hunt in their country for butterflies, and the head-men told off six to help us. One was very clever. He used to wear his net on his head with the stick hanging down behind, and he snared the butterflies with a loop of grass, as if they had been birds.

“‘Our tents were of cheap cotton stuff that would not keep the rain out, and the wet came in on Louis and made him worse. But he was young, and I saw to it that he had food, and your men loved him. I do not think he would have died if the clocks had ticked properly.’

“‘I do not understand,’ said Henkel, blinking his heavy brown eyes.

“‘No? They were so cheap that they broke at the first winding. The Indios brought them back, and asked for better ones. I had no better ones.’

“‘Still, I do not understand,’ said Henkel, smoothly, and blinked in the lamplight.

“Scott’s tired voice went on. ‘The Indios were very angry. They brought us no more butterflies and no more food. And presently, as we went about the camp, or the paths of the forest, the little arrows began to fall in front of us and behind, though we never saw who shot at us.’

“‘The little arrows?’ asked Henkel, heavily. ‘I do not understand. Go on.’

“‘There is very little to tell. Only a nightmare of hunger, of wet, of fever, of silence, and the little poisoned arrows quivering everywhere . . . . And one day a little dart flickered through a rent in the rotten cotton tenting and struck Louis. He died in five minutes. Then I and the men who were left broke through and came down to the Mazzaron. The Indios followed us, and I am the only one left. It is a pity the clocks wouldn’t tick, Mister Henkel.’

“‘Ya, ya,’ said Henkel, leaning over the table, ‘but the butterfly? The golden butterfly? You have found it?’

“Scott opened the tin case slowly and clumsily, drew out the perfect insect, and laid it on the table. But it is wrong to speak of that wide-winged loveliness as an insect. Henkel sat staring at its glittering and transparent gold, one big yellowish hand curved on either side of it, too happy to speak. His lips moved, and I fancied he was saying to himself, ‘Cheap, cheap . . . .’

“‘It is very good,’ he said at last, cunningly, ‘but I am sorry there is only one. I do not know that it is worth very much. But now I will pay you as I promised. There was no agreement that you should receive the other young man’s share, and there is only one specimen. But I will pay you.’

“Scott was fumbling in his belt. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you will pay me,’ and he leaned forward with something in his hand. We saw Henkel’s face turn to yellow wax, and he tried to stand up, but he was too stout to lift himself quickly. He had no time to turn before Scott shot him through the heart.

“When I broke through the vines, Scott was moving the butterfly out of the way . . . . . He looked up at me with his old considering look, his old clean smile. ‘It was cheap at the price,’ he said, touching one golden wing with his finger.”

STORIES

Joyce was at his tenth story, the pipes were drawing well, and the birch logs singing softly, while Father John gazed at his entertainers with fascinated eyes.

“. . . . And so he fell into the car, and the grain poured in on him, and there he was, buried. That car wasn’t unloaded until spring, and then out he came like a board, and they buried him again, and no one knew he was heir to a million.”

Father John made a stunned, murmuring noise, and his hosts looked upon him fondly. Only Morris was discontented.

“I thought he’d have come out alive.”

“Alive?”

“Yes. Fed on the grain . . . .”

Royce turned his back on Morris, and Falconer began, hastily.

“But that’s not so queer as the man at Fort Duchesne. He was a scientific fellow, and he went mad, and ran after the shooting stars with a butterfly net. It was in the Fall, when the sky is generally fizzling with meteors. This fellow would run after them till he fell, exhausted, and they had to tell off a Siwash to retrieve him, which must have been very annoying. He’s in a private asylum in ’Frisco now, keeping copper-filings in a cage; thinks they’re larvæ and feeds them on lettuce leaves.”

“Poor soul, poor soul,” murmured Father John, helplessly, and for a few minutes there was silence.

“But that’s nothing to what happened to Ignatius O’Higgins up north.” Connor’s voice rolled as richly into the flat silence as a plum pudding on a table. “Out snaring rabbuts, he was, and put his foot in a bear trap. A while after, another trapper came by, and he wondering why the snow was all trod up with rabbut tracks, and they marching in squads like Ulstermen, bad luck to ’em. And then he went on a bit, and he knew; and the knowledge he had of the black, bitter heart of a rabbut gave him a turn, and he was a better Christian all his days, Father. All the buck-rabbuts east of the Rockies, fighting and kicking and straggling round that bear trap . . . .”

“Have another drink, Con,” said someone loudly, passing up the decanter. Connor helped himself, and drank, beaming, to the guest of the evening. “Here’s good luck and a fat living to you, Father Jack, and may you never want a bottle of the best to share with a friend.”

“A memorable night,” said Father John, looking very young and pink in the depths of his leather chair. “That’s what it’s been—a memorable night. It was very kind of you to ask me again, to take me in once more among you, to give me a share in this way of all the things you’ve seen and done and heard in all these years. And such things . . . . It’s a terrible world,” and he shuddered, slightly.

“Bless your heart,” said Royce, “but lots of queer things must have come your way since you took to—this,” and he leaned forward, and gently touched the shabby, black sleeve.

Father John looked at his cassock with some discontent. “Old women’s quarrels, and young folks’ love affairs, a mother to be comforted, or an old man ushered into Paradise. It’s God’s work,” finished Father John, wistfully, “but there’s no good denying it’s a bit dull.”

“The confessional?” suggested Royce, delicately.

Father John leaned forward, with a twinkle. “Shall I tell you? Well, it’s my belief all the bad, wild deeds are done by the Protestants, I hear so few of them.”

“But life and death—you must come closer to these than any of us. They’re not dull.”

“In the aggregate I find them so.”

“But surely, sometimes . . . .?”

“Well, I don’t know.” Father John brightened up a little. “There is something under my notice now. Not through the confessional, of course; it’s open, quite open. And it’s—well, curious. Yes,” he went on, judicially, “I should certainly call it curious.”

“Is it war, passion or revenge?” asked Royce, with a smile.

“Well,”—Father John did not smile,—“it is probably murder.”

“Probably murder? Don’t you know, then?”

“No. That’s the curious part of it. I don’t know, and the man who most likely did it, he doesn’t know.”

“O, come now, Father Jack . . . .”

“It’s a fact. He’d tell me if he knew, but he doesn’t.”

“Do you mean to tell us that a fellow could murder, not kill, murder—another fellow, and not know it?”

“Yes, I do,” said Father John, mildly, “that is just M’Cabe’s case.”

“Go on with his case,” said Connor, admiringly.

“Well, I only know it in bits, you understand—in flashes as he tells it to me—a flash of light so clear and vivid it’s painful, and then fog and darkness. I’m afraid it’s a pretty bad case, though I’ve grown fond of M’Cabe. It’s curious, too,” mused Father John, “how fond you do get of anyone or anything that looks to you for help. I ought to detest M’Cabe, he’s always sending one of his brats to call me up at night—thinking he’s going to remember . . . .”

“What was M’Cabe in his off hours?” asked Morris, with envy.