Fighters of Fear

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by Mike Ashley


  WARBURG TANTAVUL WAS DYING. LITTLE MORE THAN SKIN AND bones, he lay propped up with pillows in the big sleigh bed and smiled as though he found the thought of dissolution faintly amusing.

  Even in comparatively good health the man was never prepossessing. Now, wasted with disease, that smile of self-sufficient satisfaction on his wrinkled face, he was nothing less than hideous. The eyes, which nature had given him, were small, deep-set and ruthless. The mouth, which his own thoughts had fashioned through the years, was wide and thin-lipped, almost colorless, and even in repose was tightly drawn against his small and curiously perfect teeth. Now, as he smiled, a flickering light, lambent as the quick reflection of an unseen flame, flared in his yellowish eyes, and a hard white line of teeth showed on his lower lip, as if he bit it to hold back a chuckle.

  “You’re still determined that you’ll marry Arabella?” he asked his son, fixing his sardonic, mocking smile on the young man.

  “Yes, Father, but—”

  “No buts, my boy”—this time the chuckle came, low and muted, but at the same time glassy-hard—“no buts. I’ve told you I’m against it, and you’ll rue it to your dying day if you should marry her; but”—he paused, and breath rasped in his wizened throat—“but go ahead and marry her, if your heart’s set on it. I’ve said my say and warned you—heh, boy, never say your poor old father didn’t warn you!”

  He lay back on his piled-up pillows for a moment, swallowing convulsively, as if to force the fleeting life-breath back, then, abruptly: “Get out,” he ordered. “Get out and stay out, you poor fool; but remember what I’ve said.”

  “Father,” young Tantavul began, stepping toward the bed, but the look of sudden concentrated fury in the old man’s tawny eyes halted him in midstride.

  “Get—out—I—said,” his father snarled, then, as the door closed softly on his son:

  “Nurse—hand—me—that—picture.” His breath was coming slowly, now, in shallow labored gasps, but his withered fingers writhed in a gesture of command, pointing to the silver-framed photograph of a woman which stood upon a little table in the bedroom window-bay.

  He clutched the portrait as if it were some precious relic, and for a minute let his eyes rove over it. “Lucy,” he whispered hoarsely, and now his words were thick and indistinct, “Lucy, they’ll be married, spite of all that I have said. They’ll be married, Lucy, d’ye hear?” Thin and high-pitched as a child’s, his voice rose to a piping treble as he grasped the picture’s silver frame and held it level with his face. “They’ll be married, Lucy dear, and they’ll have—”

  Abruptly as a penny whistle’s note is stilled when no more air is blown in it, old Tantavul’s cry was hushed. The picture, still grasped in his hands, fell to the tufted coverlet, the man’s lean jaw relaxed and he slumped back on his pillows with a shadow of the mocking smile still in his glazing eyes.

  Etiquette requires that the nurse await the doctor’s confirmation at such times, so, obedient to professional dictates, Miss Williamson stood by the bed until I felt the dead man’s pulse and nodded; then with the skill of years of practice she began her offices, bandaging the wrists and jaws and ankles that the body might be ready when the representative of Martin’s Funeral Home came for it.

  MY FRIEND DE GRANDIN WAS ANNOYED. ARMS AKIMBO, KNUCKLES on his hips, his black-silk kimono draped round him like a mourning garment, he voiced his complaint in no uncertain terms. In fifteen little so small minutes he must leave for the theatre, and that son and grandson of a filthy swine who was the florist had not delivered his gardenia. And was it not a fact that he could not go forth without a fresh gardenia for his lapel? But certainly. Why did that sale chameau procrastinate? Why did he delay delivering that unmentionable flower till this unspeakable time of night? He was Jules de Grandin, he, and not to be oppressed by any species of a goat who called himself a florist. But no. It must not be. It should not be, by blue! He would—

  “Axin’ yer pardon, sir,” Nora McGinnis broke in from the study door, “there’s a Miss an’ Mr. Tantavul to see ye, an’—”

  “Bid them be gone, ma charmeuse. Request that they jump in the bay—Grand Dieu”—he cut his oratory short—“les enfants dans le bois!”

  Truly, there was something reminiscent of the Babes in the Wood in the couple who had followed Nora to the study door. Dennis Tantavul looked even younger and more boyish than I remembered him, and the girl beside him was so childish in appearance that I felt a quick, instinctive pity for her. Plainly they were frightened, too, for they clung hand to hand like frightened children going past a graveyard, and in their eyes was that look of sick terror I had seen so often when the X-ray and blood test confirmed preliminary diagnosis of carcinoma.

  “Monsieur, Mademoiselle!” The little Frenchman gathered his kimono and his dignity about him in a single sweeping gesture as he struck his heels together and bowed stiffly from the hips. “I apologize for my unseemly words. Were it not that I have been subjected to a terrible, calamitous misfortune, I should not so far have forgotten myself—”

  The girl’s quick smile cut through his apology. “We understand,” she reassured. “We’ve been through trouble, too, and have come to Dr. Trowbridge—”

  “Ah, then I have permission to withdraw?” he bowed again and turned upon his heel, but I called him back.

  “Perhaps you can assist us,” I remarked as I introduced the callers.

  “The honor is entirely mine, Mademoiselle,” he told her as he raised her fingers to his lips. “You and Monsieur your brother—”

  “He’s not my brother,” she corrected. “We’re cousins. That’s why we’ve called on Dr. Trowbridge.”

  De Grandin tweaked the already needle-sharp points of his small blond mustache. “Pardonnez-moi?” he begged. “I have resided in your country but a little time; perhaps I do not understand the language fluently. It is because you and Monsieur are cousins that you come to see the doctor? Me, I am dull and stupid like a pig; I fear I do not comprehend.”

  Dennis Tantavul replied: “It’s not because of the relationship, Doctor—not entirely, at any rate, but—”

  He turned to me: “You were at my father’s bedside when he died; you remember what he said about marrying Arabella?”

  I nodded.

  “There was something—some ghastly, hidden threat concealed in his warning, Doctor. It seemed as if he jeered at me—dared me to marry her, yet—”

  “Was there some provision in his will?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the young man answered. “Here it is.” From his pocket he produced a folded parchment, opened it and indicated a paragraph:

  To my son Dennis Tantavul I give, devise and bequeath all my property of every kind and sort, real, personal and mixed, of which I may die seized and possessed, or to which I may be entitled, in the event of his marrying Arabella Tantavul, but should he not marry the said Arabella Tantavul, then it is my will that he receive only one half of my estate, and that the residue thereof go to the said Arabella Tantavul, who has made her home with me since childhood and occupied the relationship of daughter to me.”

  “H’m,” I returned the document, “this looks as if he really wanted you to marry your cousin, even though—”

  “And see here, sir,” Dennis interrupted, “here’s an envelope we found in Father’s papers.”

  Sealed with red wax, the packet of heavy, opaque parchment was addressed:

  “To my children, Dennis and Arabella Tantavul, to be opened by them upon the occasion of the birth of their first child.”

  De Grandin’s small blue eyes were snapping with the flickering light they showed when he was interested. “Monsieur Dennis,” he took the thick envelope from the caller, “Dr. Trowbridge has told me something of your father’s death-bed scene. There is a mystery about this business. My suggestion is you read the message now—”

  “No, sir. I won’t do that. My father didn’t love me—sometimes I think he hated me—but I never disobeyed a wish that
he expressed, and I don’t feel at liberty to do so now. It would be like breaking faith with the dead. But”—he smiled a trifle shame-facedly—“Father’s lawyer Mr. Bainbridge is out of town on business, and it will be his duty to probate the will. In the meantime I’d feel better if the will and this envelope were in other hands than mine. So we came to Dr. Trowbridge to ask him to take charge of them till Mr. Bainbridge gets back, meanwhile—”

  “Yes, Monsieur, meanwhile?” de Grandin prompted as the young man paused.

  “You know human nature, Doctor,” Dennis turned to me; “no one can see farther into hidden meanings than the man who sees humanity with its mask off, the way a doctor does. D’ye think Father might have been delirious when he warned me not to marry Arabella, or—” His voice trailed off, but his troubled eyes were eloquent.

  “H’m,” I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, “I can’t see any reason for hesitating, Dennis. That bequest of all your father’s property in the event you marry Arabella seems to indicate his true feelings.” I tried to make my words convincing, but the memory of old Tantavul’s dying words dinned in my ears. There had been something gloating in his voice as he told the picture that his son and niece would marry.

  De Grandin caught the hint of hesitation in my tone. “Monsieur,” he asked Dennis, “will not you tell us of the antecedents of your father’s warning? Dr. Trowbridge is perhaps too near to see the situation clearly. Me, I have no knowledge of your father or your family. You and Mademoiselle are strangely like. The will describes her as having lived with you since childhood. Will you kindly tell us how it came about?”

  The Tantavuls were, as he said, strangely similar. Anyone might easily have taken them for twins. Like as two plaster portraits from the same mold were their small straight noses, sensitive mouths, curling pale-gold hair.

  Now, once more hand in hand, they sat before us on the sofa, and as Dennis spoke I saw the frightened, haunted look creep back into their eyes.

  “Do you remember us as children, Doctor?” he asked me.

  “Yes, it must have been some twenty years ago they called me out to see you youngsters. You’d just moved into the old Stephens house, and there was a deal of gossip about the strange gentleman from the West with his two small children and Chinese cook, who greeted all the neighbors’ overtures with churlish rebuffs and never spoke to anyone.”

  “What did you think of us, sir?”

  “H’m; I thought you and your sister—as I thought her then—had as fine a case of measles as I’d ever seen.”

  “How old were we then, do you remember?”

  “Oh, you were something like three; the little girl was half your age, I’d guess.”

  “Do you recall the next time you saw us?”

  “Yes, you were somewhat older then; eight or ten, I’d say. That time it was the mumps. You were queer, quiet little shavers. I remember asking if you thought you’d like a pickle, and you said, ‘No, thank you, sir, it hurts.’”

  “It did, too, sir. Every day Father made us eat one; stood over us with a whip till we’d chewed the last morsel.”

  “What?”

  The young folks nodded solemnly as Dennis answered, “Yes, sir; every day. He said he wanted to check up on the progress we were making.”

  For a moment he was silent, then: “Dr. Trowbridge, if anyone treated you with studied cruelty all your life—if you’d never had a kind word or gracious act from that person in all your memory, then suddenly that person offered you a favour—made it possible for you to gratify your dearest wish, and threatened to penalize you if you failed to do so, wouldn’t you be suspicious? Wouldn’t you suspect some sort of dreadful practical joke?”

  “I don’t think I quite understand.”

  “Then listen: In all my life I can’t remember ever having seen my father smile, not really smile with friendliness, humour or affection, I mean. My life—and Arabella’s, too—was one long persecution at his hands. I was two years or so old when we came to Harrisonville, I believe, but I still have vague recollections of our Western home, of a house set high on a hill overlooking the ocean, and a wall with climbing vines and purple flowers on it, and a pretty lady who would take me in her arms and cuddle me against her breast and feed me ice cream from a spoon, sometimes. I have a sort of recollection of a little baby sister in that house, too, but these things are so far back in babyhood that possibly they were no more than childish fancies which I built up for myself and which I loved so dearly and so secretly they finally came to have a kind of reality for me.

  “My real memories, the things I can recall with certainty, begin with a hurried train trip through hot, dry, uncomfortable country with my father and a strangely silent Chinese servant and a little girl they told me was my cousin Arabella.

  “Father treated me and Arabella with impartial harshness. We were beaten for the slightest fault, and we had faults a-plenty. If we sat quietly we were accused of sulking and asked why we didn’t go and play. If we played and shouted we were whipped for being noisy little brats.

  “As we weren’t allowed to associate with any of the neighbors’ children we made up our own games. I’d be Geraint and Arabella would be Enid of the dove-white feet, or perhaps I’d be King Arthur in the Castle Perilous, and she’d be the kind Lady of the Lake who gave him back his magic sword. And though we never mentioned it, both of us knew that whatever the adventure was, the false knight or giant I contended with was really my father. But when actual trouble came I wasn’t an heroic figure.

  “I must have been twelve or thirteen when I had my last thrashing. A little brook ran through the lower part of our land, and the former owners had widened it into a lily-pond. The flowers had died out years before, but the outlines of the pool remained, and it was our favourite summer play place. We taught ourselves to swim—not very well, of course, but well enough—and as we had no bathing suits we used to go in in our underwear. When we’d finished swimming we’d lie in the sun until our underthings were dry, then slip into our outer clothing. One afternoon as we were splashing in the water, happy as a pair of baby otters, and nearer to shouting with laughter then we’d ever been before, I think, my father suddenly appeared on the bank.

  “‘Come out o’ there!’ he shouted to me, and there was a kind of sharp, dry hardness in his voice I’d never heard before. ‘So this is how you spend your time?’ he asked as I climbed up the bank. ‘In spite of all I’ve done to keep you decent, you do a thing like this!’

  “‘Why, Father, we were only swimming—’ I began, but he struck me on the mouth.

  “‘Shut up, you little rake!’ he roared. ‘I’ll teach you!’ He cut a willow switch and thrust my head between his knees; then while he held me tight as in a vice he flogged me with the willow till the blood came through my skin and stained my soaking cotton shorts. Then he kicked me back into the pool as a heartless master might a beaten dog.

  “As I said, I wasn’t an heroic figure. It was Arabella who came to my rescue. She helped me up the slippery bank and took me in her arms. ‘Poor Dennie,’ she said. ‘Poor, poor Dennie. It was my fault, Dennie, dear, for letting you take me into the water!’ Then she kissed me—the first time anyone had kissed me since the pretty lady of my half-remembered dreams. ‘We’ll be married on the very day that Uncle Warburg dies,’ she promised, ‘and I’ll be so sweet and good to you, and you’ll love me so dearly that we’ll both forget these dreadful days.’

  “We thought my father’d gone, but he must have stayed to see what we would say, for as Arabella finished he stepped from behind a rhododendron bush, and for the first time I heard him laugh. ‘You’ll be married, will you?’ he asked. ‘That would be a good joke—the best one of all. All right, go ahead—see what it gets you.’

  “That was the last time he ever actually struck me, but from that time on he seemed to go out of his way to invent mental tortures for us. We weren’t allowed to go to school, but he had a tutor, a little rat-faced man named Ericson, come in to give us
lessons, and in the evening he’d take the book and make us stand before him and recite. If either of us failed a problem in arithmetic or couldn’t conjugate a French or Latin verb he’d wither us with sarcasm, and always as a finish to his diatribe he’d jeer at us about our wish to be married, and threaten us with something dreadful if we ever did it.

  “So, Dr. Trowbridge, you see why I’m suspicious. It seems almost as if this provision in the will is part of some horrible practical joke my father prepared deliberately—as if he’s waiting to laugh at us from the grave.”

  “I can understand your feelings, boy,” I answered, “but—”

  “‘But’ be damned and roasted on the hottest griddle in hell’s kitchen!” Jules de Grandin interrupted. “The wicked dead one’s funeral is at two tomorrow afternoon, n’est-ce-pas?

  “Très bien. At eight tomorrow evening—or earlier, if it will be convenient—you shall be married. I shall esteem it a favour if you permit that I be best man; Dr. Trowbridge will give the bride away, and we shall have a merry time, by blue! You shall go upon a gorgeous honeymoon and learn how sweet the joys of love can be—sweeter for having been so long denied! And in the meantime we shall keep the papers safely till your lawyer returns.

  “You fear the so unpleasant jest? Mais non, I think the jest is on the other foot, my friends, and the laugh on the other face!”

 

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