Part 11

I wanted her to protest, but she did not. She got up calmly and went with him out onto the rock spit. I was between them and the mainland. They could not go away by river. No harm would come to her, it seemed. “Some tribal custom to be attended to,” I thought. It is best not to be too curious about such matters up among the hills of Burma and Siam, ma’am. If you are, your wife suffers, not you.

For a long time I could hear them talking out there in the dark, with the river talking in between whiles. Once I heard a sound like a great sigh or sobbing moan. “The whirlpool at the river’s bed,” I thought, “taking in a great tree or raft.”

Soon after that the back mat of the house lifted, and I thought they had come in by that way. I sat, peering into the gloom inside, ready to greet them, when something crashed on to the back of my head and I forgot for a time.

I came back to memory in a daze and feeling much pain in my head. The brazier flared beside me. Bending over me was Pra Oom Bwaht, with a knife in his hand.

“Son of a pig!” he said.

“Where is Nagy N’Yang?” I asked.

He smiled at me—his cursed twisty smile.

“On the river’s brink she waits, bound to a great teak log lodged at the end of the spit,” he cried hoarsely. “When the flood comes to its full, she will float away—”

I spat full into his face. I thought it would make him slay me.

He wiped the spittle from his chops calmly. When an Oriental takes an insult calmly, beware! There is more to come.

“She was my wife,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“Was or is, it makes no difference to me,” I stormed. “She is mine now.”

“She is Siva’s,” he jeered. “Think you that as she swirls down into the whirlpool at the river’s bend the great river python, mother of all the pythons, will not take her? Placed I the yellow scale of Nagy in her hand for naught?”

I shuddered. The legend of the great river python at Kalgai Gorge had been told to me oft. It slept in the great pool where the whirlpool formed in flood-time and only came out for prey when the depths were stirred by a monstrous flood such as this one, the natives said.

“Why did you tell me she was your sister?” I demanded.

“We made it up, she and I. She was wedded, as the priest told you, but to me. I was listening in the bamboos when you planned your trip here from Karen that night after the priest cursed you from the door of Siva’s temple. I heard him curse you and saw you turn down the path to our hut. If you had slain the python in the temple, without me helping, she would have been freed. We planned that you should make love, a little. Enough so you would kill the great snake and win her from it; I to come after and take her. But you won her whole heart, curse you—”

Up went his hand to slay. While he had raved and chattered at me, my head had been clearing. As he stiffened for the death stroke, I reached for the down-coming hand and caught his wrist—the wrist whose sinewy muscles were driving the knife home. I held his arm back. He clutched for my throat with his other hand. We strove, and I rolled him and came on top. Up I surged, dragging him with me. With one awful thrust I sent him crashing against the wall.

He had barely come to rest against the teak beams before his hand went up and I dodged—just as his knife whizzed past my ear. Plucking the great dagger of Ali Beg from my bosom, I cast it, in the manner of the Inner Mongolian Mohammedans. The great blade plunged forward. I had pinned him to the wall as a butterfly collector pins a specimen to a card in his collecting box.

I stepped forward to get my dagger. Pra Oom Bwaht, his throat full of blood, his heart seared with black hatred, glared at me.

“The Curse of Siva remain on you and yours....”

So he died.

Plucking my dagger from him, I kicked over the glowing brazier and raced for the rock spit’s end as he crashed down—mere battered clay.

As I came to it, the last of the rain for the night whipped my face, reviving me. The moon peeped forth. There was no teak log there!

Another rift in the clouds made plain my error. The flood was over all former flood-marks. The teak log, as the moon’s second peep showed, was on the point of rocks, but they were now in the stream, many paces from the present shore-line. The log, caught on the jagged stones, hung and swayed. It was just on the point of going out. I could see a dark mass, midway of the log. “It is Nagy N’Yang,” I thought. The hut was blazing now from the brazier’s scattered coals, giving me plenty of light.

I glanced about the rock spit. A few paces to the right something black showed in the gloom. I went to it quickly, hoping to find a boat. It was a great chest. Feeling for the key or handle, I clutched a catch. I turned it, threw up the lid, just as the moon came forth.

Out of the depths of the box reared a great python, hissing horribly. I recoiled in terror. The box, as I saw in the moon-glow, was the snake box of Karen temple, the one in which Nagy N’Yang’s serpent had been kept.

Pra Oom Bwaht had had it carried to Kalgai Gorge and also to our rock spit that night to suit some of his own black schemes of vengeance. His bearers had carried the box unwittingly. While I trembled, the great snake glided to the river’s brink and disappeared. I now had the big chest and thought to use it as a rough boat to rescue my love.

Then I turned to view the teak log again. I tugged at the chest. It was too heavy for me. Another fitful rift of moonlight came, and I saw the giant teak log sway. Without waiting for more ill fortune, I plunged into the river and swam through the swirling eddies for the log.

I just made it. But at the touch of my numbed finger on its root ends, it started. The mere touch was enough to set it adrift. I clutched, caught a root fiber, held, edged along the rootlet till I had a better hold, drew myself up on to the root end of the huge log—and then heard the sobbing moan of Kalgai whirlpool.

Already we were at the pool’s edge. The log began to whirl and sway. I made a prayer for my Laos girl, that she might be unconscious during the plunge below. If she were, she would live, as she would not be breathing. As for me, I felt I could hold my breath the two minutes necessary. I often had seen the logs go down the suck-hole and come up. The average time was two minutes for that. What happened to them under the pool I had no means of knowing. I hoped to be able to cling to the log. The girl was bound fast.... The log up-ended and went down!

We swirled through great depths, and often I felt us hit against rocks and other logs in the lower silences. At the pit’s bottom there seemed no sound, but on the way down and up there was a great roaring. It seemed that my lungs would burst. But I kept my breath, having, as you see, great lung space. We began to rise, and as I felt it, something slowed us down. I felt weak and was about to drop off when something bound me to the great log, pressing me tightly against the mass of roots. So we shot into the moonlight.

I was wrapped in the folds of the mighty python, who had thrown a coil about the tree-trunk in the lowest depths of the pool! That immense weight it was that had kept us from emerging sooner. We had come up below the maelstrom upon emerging.

My right arm was free. I reached my belt with it and found my dagger there. In the moonlight, over the coils of the monster, I could see the ivory-white face of my Laos girl as she lay out on the huge log like a crushed lily. I could not tell if she still lived or had died.

The motion of reaching for my dagger aroused the python. It thrust its head back toward my face, questing with its tongue, that queer organ with which it sees in the dark. I felt the darting, forked terror on my dripping features. The python threw back its coil a bit and thrust at my forehead with its wedge-shaped head, using the python’s death stroke. I had still sense enough to draw my head to one side, but not before the hornlike, rounded head-front had dazed me with a glancing blow on the brow, where the mark of Siva had been tattooed by Nagy N’Yang.

Again I saw the beast draw back its head for a surer stroke. As it struck, I held the dagger true in front of its oncoming head. The force of the blow, not my strength, caused the blade of the dagger to sink into the immense, hard, tense neck-muscles, through and through. The snake, furious with pain, stricken to death, in one awful convulsive struggle cast itself into the raging Salwin, taking the dagger of Ali Beg with it. Why it did not take me down in its coils, I know not....

Yes, I _am_ sweating now. I feel better. My head is clearer....

I wish Nagy N’Yang were here to lay her cool, ivory-white hand on my forehead where the python’s wedge-shaped head crashed against mine—on the black mark of Siva....

But my fever is breaking.

Yes, I feel easier, much easier....

Yes, that is all of my story....

What? Ali Beg found us together on a giant teak log at the river’s bend at Maung Haut, where he had stopped to trade? And, tightly clasped in Nagy’s hand was something strange? Show it me!

It is the belly scale of a great river python.

_Burn it! Hold the night taper flame to it! Ah, that ends the fat priest’s evil spell!_

Where is Ali Beg? Here! And Nagy? Here, too!!

Wheel our cots together, ma’am!

Only let me clasp her hand again. Thanks; _it is warm; she is alive_!

No; we won’t go up-country again. Why? Because when our first child comes, I want it born outside—out from under the shadow of the dread Curse of Siva!

THE FATHER’S HAND

_By_ G. HUMPHREY From _The Bookman_ _Copyright, 1918, by Dodd, Mead, and Company._ _Copyright, 1919, by George Humphrey._

The Dean and I were sitting after dinner discussing the shortage of students at Oxford since the war began.

“You have no idea,” he was saying, “how strange it is to lecture to a class of four or five when one has been accustomed to forty or fifty. This morning, for instance....”

“Well, Dean,” I put in, “after the war there will be no lectures on Latin poetry. The times are changing.”

The old man threw back his head, and his silvery beard waved in the candle-light.

“Listen,” he began, “you remember the passage where a father was trying to carve a picture of his son’s death?”

“_Bis patriae manus cecidere_,” I quoted. “Twice the hands of the father fell. Icarus, was it not, for whom his father had made wings, and who flew too near the sun and fell down to earth?”

He nodded. “_Bis patriae manus cecidere_—twice the father’s hands fell to his sides. In our village in the first few months of the war, there came an old man, a refugee from Alsace-Lorraine. By profession, he was a monument carver, and out of the exercise of his craft he had acquired a considerable familiarity with what one might call Phœnix-Latin, the kind that is only called into being when ‘Our Esteemed Fellow-Townsman’ dies. He had all the pedant’s love for the language. Often he would exchange tags with me when I met him in the street.

“‘_Quomodo es?_ How are you,’ he would laugh in the tiny general store, to the mystification of the little spectacled proprietress.

“‘_Bene, domine_,’ was my grave answer,—‘Very well, sir.’

“Soon he became very popular in the village, though he was regarded as something of a crank. It appeared that he was of the old days when Alsace-Lorraine belonged to the French. Of his private affairs we could learn nothing, except that he had married young and that his wife had died at the birth of a son. When he was questioned about his early life, he would affect not to understand—‘_Je ne comprend pas, m’sieu_’—this and a shrug of the shoulders was all that we could get out of him.

“Well, the old fellow prided himself on his excellent eyesight, and in the fairly frequent air raids, he refused to go into shelter, preferring instead to remain lying down on the hill outside the village, where he would watch the hostile aeroplane pursued by our guns until it became a speck in the distance toward London. Then he would trudge back again.

“‘The pigs are gone,’ he would reassure us in our cellars, shaking his fist at the sky. ‘Ah the _cochons_! _Sus Germanicus!_’ and we would crawl out again into God’s air, pleased to see him and knowing that there was no longer any danger even if the ‘all clear’ signal had not yet sounded. For he was always right. He knew from bitter experience.

“One day I saw him in conference with the little knot of sailors that presided over our anti-aircraft defences. He was pointing to the sky rather excitedly and telling them in his broken English something about aeroplanes and ‘it is necessaire that they pass so,’ at the same time indicating a track of sky.

“‘What is it?’ I asked the petty officer.

“‘He’s got an idea for bringing down the Germans,’ explained the man, twitching his thumb rather contemptuously toward my old friend. ‘He says they always pass over that point above the headland before they turn to London. I never noticed it myself, but there may be something in it. I’ll tell the captain.’

“‘_En hostes_,’ cried the old man in Latin to me, pointing to the place. ‘Behold the enemy. It is quite necessaire that he pass by here what you call the landmark, is it not? The German precision, _toujours_ the same.’

“I laughed and took him by the arm, down to the village, marvelling at the intense hatred with which he spat out the words. ‘The German pigs,’ he muttered as we went along. ‘They have my country.’

“Soon after there came another raid. We heard the gunfire, without paying much attention to it, so customary had it become. When the safety siren was heard, we all went back to our occupations as usual. I wondered why the old fellow had not appeared, and began to grow anxious, thinking he might have been killed. I was just setting out to look for him when I caught sight of him running toward me over a ploughed field, stopping every other moment to pick up his battered black hat, and looking, even at a quarter of a mile, as if he was full of news of some kind. When he came within a hundred yards or so, still running, he shouted something at me, raising his hands to the sky and then pointing to the earth.

“‘_Fuit Ilium_,’ I heard. ‘Troy is fallen. The German is destroyed. They have him shot, so,’ and he brought his arm from above his head to the ground in a magnificently dramatic sweep.

“‘What is it?’ I asked as I reached him.

“Perspiring and mopping his face with the tricolor handkerchief that some would-be wag had given him, he told his tale. The gunners had taken his advice, and fired at the spot he told them, and a German aeroplane had actually been brought down.

“That week the village was jubilant, and my old friend found himself suddenly a hero. The local papers brought out a long account of the affair, with a leader about the ‘victim of German autocracy, whom we are proud to shelter in our midst. With the courage that we know so well in our brave allies, he stayed out unprotected and discerned the weak spot in the foe’s armor. We are proud of our guest.’ It was, indeed, a proud time for our refugee.

“The naval authorities took over charge of the wrecked aeroplane, and the remains of the fallen aviator were gathered together to be buried the following week in the village cemetery. We were a simple, kind-hearted community, far away in the country, and many of the villagers had themselves sons fighting at the front. So we decided that the village should erect a simple tombstone over the fallen enemy—the resolution being made, I suspect, chiefly as the result of a sermon of the worthy pastor, who pointed out that the dead man was more sinned against than sinning, that he was the victim of the German system, and that we ought not to think bitterly of a fallen foe who died at what he conceived to be his duty.

“The next question was as to the inscription. The old Frenchman brought out a book, which he explained was the ‘_Vade mecum_ for cutters of tombs.’ From it he produced a marvellous quotation, which he said came from Seneca. He was listened to now with respect, but I could see that the idea was not popular. No one liked to oppose him, until I finally remarked that something simpler would perhaps be better, and suggested, ‘Here lies a fallen German,’ with the date. The old refugee was obviously very reluctant to give up his wonderful epitaph, but my reading was clearly the favorite, and it was adopted in the end. The obvious man to do the carving was the old stonecutter who had brought down the aeroplane. He was given the commission.

“The burial took place, and the village went back to its normal routine, the old man being supposed to be working on the inscription.

“It was about the time of the discussion of the epitaph that the relics from the recent raid were exposed for view in the little museum at the school. There was no address found on the body, and almost the only personal effect that had survived the terrible fall was a photograph of a woman, young and fair-haired, with the inscription, ‘Meine Mutter,’ which I translated to the admiring villagers as meaning, ‘My Mother.’ Nothing else. I went to tell the old Frenchman and ask him if he had seen the curiosities. I found him sitting in the garden of the cottage where he lived, in the little shed he called his workshop, where the tombstone had been brought. To my surprise, he was lying on the ground, and beside his open hand lay a chisel.

“‘What is it?’ I asked him.

“He started up when he saw me. ‘I was tired,’ he answered confusedly. ‘_Fatigatus opere_, weary with labor. _N’est-ce-pas?_’ and his poor old face relapsed into a sad attempt at a smile.

“‘But you have not begun to labor,’ I answered, trying to joke away an impending feeling of tragedy that I but dimly understood. ‘Why do you not do the work?’

“‘Ah, I cannot. My hands are old, and I can no more.’

“Then I saw that his hands were shaking, and I grew alarmed. I could see that the strain of the last few days was telling on him. He seemed years older. So I gently helped him up and took him indoors, where the good woman of the house put him to bed. I asked her how long he had been sick, and she told me that he had gone out that afternoon, looking well, and intending to buy a chisel and visit the little museum. She had not seen him again till I brought him in from the garden.

“From that time the poor old man seemed to grow feebler and feebler, and we began to think that his last joke had been cracked and all his troubles ended. He seemed to lose all wish to live, lying on his bed without a word, and only taking food when it was almost forced down his throat. I frequently visited him and tried to console him. For the one thing that now troubled him was that he would not be able to execute his commission before he died. ‘Never have I promised and not perform,’ he would say. ‘Oh, for one day of my _pristini roboris_—my youthful strength.’

“I comforted him and told him, against my belief, that he would be out cutting the inscription next spring. But he shook his head sorrowfully, and at each visit he seemed to grow weaker and weaker. The climax came quite suddenly. Summer had turned to fall, and I was taking my usual walk by the light of the harvest moon, passing through the old churchyard, where the German had been buried and the cross had now been put, uncarved. For we boasted no other stonecutter in the village. I went up to look at it, and by the moonlight I caught sight of the figure of a man. Bending down, I saw my old friend, dead, by the work he had promised. It was not till the next day that they found his chisel by the tombstone, and about a dozen letters which he had chiselled. The villagers thought that the old man had gone out of his mind, for the letters on the stone were not the beginning of the epitaph we had agreed on. They think so yet. For I never told them, and I am the only man who can read what is written on the stone.”

Here the Dean was silent a moment or so.

“Well, what had he carved?” I asked.

“_Bis patriae m_ ... Twice the hand of the father failed. The dead man was his son.”

THE VISIT OF THE MASTER

_By_ ARTHUR JOHNSON From _Harper’s Magazine_ _Copyright, 1918, by Harper and Brothers._ _Copyright, 1919, by Arthur Johnson._

“Have you ever read any of Marian Haviland Norton?”

I didn’t expect, when I put the question, to fall right into a mine of information. It was out of my line, moreover, to talk about authors and books at dinner. But the topic had popped inconsequently into my head, and there was certainly something about the quiet, sly-looking Jane-Austenish woman at my left that inspired confidence.

“I’m distinctly curious about her,” I added. “She’s sprung up so soon, so authoritatively. And she’s so new.”

Up to this point my companion had only listened more quietly, more slyly, than ever; but her eyes now opened wide, her eyebrows went whimsically high, and she turned to me with a twinkling smile.

“_New?_ You really think so?”

She gave me no time, either, to correct my statement.

“I didn’t suppose any one still thought that—except, possibly— Have _you_ ever read Hurrell Oaks?”

I nodded gropingly.

“Miss Haviland was a teacher of mine at Newfair when it happened. That was eight, ten years ago. D’you see?”

“I don’t ‘see’ anything.”

“But you do Hurrell Oaks—you’re, you’re really all ‘for’ him, I mean? So you’d adore it. It’s pathetic, too. Though it is funny!” she cried, avid to tell me more about whatever “it” was.

But the inevitable shift in table talk veered us apart at that moment; and it wasn’t until after the long meal was over that we came together again, and could choose a quiet corner away from interruptions.

“Here goes, now,” she began, “if you’re ready?”

――――

Miss Haviland must have been about thirty when I first saw her. She was tall, handsome in an angular way. Her face was large, her features regular, though somewhat heavy, her coloring brilliant, and her dark hair grayish even then. She was of a stocky leanness, a ruggedness indigenous to northern New England—and perhaps she did “come” from New England; wanderers from those climes can flourish so prodigiously, you know—which only made her pretentious garb and manner the more conspicuous.

To see her at those college parties! She wore black evening-gowns, and a string—a “rope,” I think you could call it—of imitation pearls, and carried a fan always, and a loose wrap with some bright lining, and fur on the neck and sleeves, which she’d just throw, as if carelessly, over her shoulders. We used irreverently to say that she had “corrupted” (one of her favorite words) the premise of the old motto, “When you’re in Rome” to “Whether or not you’re in Rome,” so did she insist on being—or trying to be—incongruously _grande dame_ and not “of” the _milieu_ she was privileged to adorn. Without ever letting herself mix with those gatherings really, she’d show her condescension by choosing a place in the most mixing group, and there carry out her aloofness by just smiling and peering reservedly at—at the way a man set a glass of water upon the table, for instance, as if that constituted enough to judge him by; as if he’d laid his soul, also, sufficiently bare to her in the process. And she must have been, as you’ve seen, a resourceful observer; she had a gift for reacting from people; though how much depended upon the people and what they did and said, and how much upon what she unconsciously—or consciously—adapted from Hurrell Oaks while she gauged them, is a question. The result at least fits the needs of a gaping public. But I’m drifting.