by Max Brand
“Enemy?”
“Because I knew that one of us had to win, and the other one had to lose.”
She sat stiff and straight and watched him out of hostile eyes. Whatever kindliness she might feel for him now, might she not lose it if she learned the rest of his story? And yet he kept on. That imp of the perverse was still driving him as it had driven him, on a day, to lead his army of brown-skinned revolutionists into the jaws of death, tempting chance for the very sake of the long odds themselves.
“I watched Tommy Vance like a hawk,” he went on. “I was hunting for weaknesses. I was hunting for something which would prove him to be unworthy of you. And if I had found it, “—here he raised his head and met her startled glance squarely—”I should have brushed him from my path with no more care than I feel when my heel crushes a beetle. But as the game went on I saw that he was a fine fellow to the core, brave, generous, kind, and true as steel!”
He wrung those words of commendation from himself one by one.
“And I saw,” he went on, “that as long as he was on the ground my case was hopeless.”
He paused again.
“Well, in love and in war, Kate, men do bad things. I managed it so that I could leave the game when he did.
He was walking up the hill to meet you, and I set myself to prevent him from coming to your cabin. I told myself that if I succeeded there was still a fighting chance for me. But if I failed I would pack up and leave town and forget you if I could, or at least try to obscure the memory of you with other faces and other countries. But luck helped me. There is a jealous string in every lover. I plucked at that until I had Tommy in agony.”
“How horrible!” breathed Kate Maddern.
“Yes, wasn’t it? But I was fighting for something better than life, and I took every weapon I could lay my hands on! He was a wide-eyed young optimist. But I planted the seed of eternal doubt in him. He began with an unquestioning faith in you. And before half an hour had passed, I had made a wager of a thousand dollars with him that if he left Culver City for a while and let you wonder why he had gone, when he returned he would find that you had forgotten him. Well, he made the wager, and he left the town that same night. And that’s where he is now!”
“Oh, poor Tommy!” she cried. “And I’ve doubted him and hated him all these days, when all the time….”
“When all the time he was simply making the test. But he was right, after all, and I was hopelessly wrong. At least, Kate, I’ve made a good hard fight out of it. And the other day when I taught you how to manage Sorrow…just for an instant when you leaned and laughed down to me I thought my dream was to come true after all.”
He rose from his chair and confronted her courteously.
“But to send him away by trickery…and all these days to let me think…oh, it was detestable!”
“It was detestable,” he admitted gravely.
And, encountered by that calm confession, her fire of anger was smothered before it had gained headway. She began to regard him with a sort of blank fear.
“What is it that you do to people?” she asked suddenly throwing out her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “There is Red Charlie, who stood as though his hands were chained while you shamed him. And there is poor Tommy of whom you made a fool and sent away. And then there is Cheyenne Curly whom you have turned from a brave man into a coward! Is it hypnotism?”
“Do you think it is?” he asked. At least, they have seen the last of me around here.”
He tossed his cigarette into the fireplace.
“Perhaps the devil inspires me to mischief, but the good angel who guards you, Kate, forced me to confess, and so all the evil I have done to Tommy is undone again. I’ll leave tonight and trail him until I find him. I’ll give him back to you as I found him. And, having been tried by fire, you’ll go on loving each other to the end of time!”
He picked up his hat.
“You see that I retain one grace in a graceless life. I shall not ask you to forgive me, Kate.”
“You are going…really?”
“Yes.”
“To get Tommy?”
“Yes.”
“For Heaven’s sake, Gerald, don’t do that!”
The hat dropped from his finger tips.
“What on earth do you mean?”
“I mean…nothing! Only, don’t you see…?”
She had fallen deeper and deeper into a confusion of words from which she could not extricate herself. Now she looked around her as though searching for a place of retreat.
“Won’t you understand?” she pleaded.
“Understand what?” asked Gerald huskily.
Then, as some wild glimmer of hope dawned on his brain, he sprang to her and drew her to the window so that the gray and pale light of the winter day beat remorselessly into her face.
“Kate!” he cried. “Speak to me!”
She had buried her face in the crook of her arm.
“Let me go!” whispered Kate.
Instantly, his hands fell away from her. And there she stood blindly swaying.
“Oh,” she said, “it is hypnotism. And what have you done to me? What have you done to me?”
“I’ve loved you, my dear, with all the strength that is in me!”
“Hush!”
“It is solemn truth.”
She broke into inexplicable tears and dropped into a chair, and Gerald, white-faced, trembling as Cheyenne Curly had trembled in Canton’s place, stood beside her.
“Tell me what I can do, Kate. Anything…and I’ll do it. But it tortures me with fire to see you weep!”
“Only don’t leave me,” she whispered.
He was instantly on his knees beside her.
“I didn’t know until you spoke of going,” she sobbed. “And then it came over me in a wave. I had never really loved Tommy. He was simply a big brother. I was simply so used to him. You see that, Gerald?”
“I’m trying to see it, dear. But my mind is a blank. I can’t make out what is happening, except that you are not hating me as I thought you would, Kate. Is that true?”
“Come closer!”
He leaned nearer her covered face. And suddenly she caught at him and pressed her face into the hollow of his shoulder.
“How can you be so blind!” she breathed. “Oh, don’t you see, and haven’t you seen almost from the first, that I have loved you, Gerald? And, oh, even when you tell all that is worst in you, it only makes me care for you more and more. What have you done to me?”
“Kismet!” murmured Gerald and, raising his head high, he looked up to the raw-edged rafters and through them and beyond them to the hope of heaven.
IX “A Chance for a Kingdom”
An hour later, Gerald was riding Sorrow straight into the heart of a snow-laden wind, for some action he must have to work out the delirious joy which filled him, and which packed and crammed his body to a frenzy of recklessness. The very edge of the wind was nothing to him and, when the driven snow stung his lips, he laughed at it. For this was his home land, his native country, and all that it held was good to him, for was it not the land, also, which held Kate Maddern?
Lord bless her, and again, Lord bless her! He laughed to himself once more, and this time with tears in his eyes, to think how blind he had been to the truth. And he remembered how, with tears and with laughter, she had confessed that the rolling away of the boulder and the telling of that story to him had all been anxiously planned before in the hope that he would speak then, if ever.
“And I shall be good to her,” said Gerald solemnly to himself. “I shall be worthy of her. Yes, I shall be very worthy of her, so far as a man may be! I shall make her a queen. I shall give her all the beauty of background which she needs. Her hand on velvet…a jewel at her throat and another in her hair….”
His thoughts darted away, every one winged. The energy which he had wasted here and there and everywhere he would now concentrate upon the grand effect. No matter for the wild f
ailures which had marked his past. Was not even the young manhood of Napoleon filled with vain effort and foolish adventures? There was still time and to spare for the founding of an empire!
It was a glorious ride, and the flush of glory was still in his cheeks and bright in his eyes when he came back to the hotel. And there, in the window, he saw a great, rough wreath of evergreen. He studied it in amazement. It was not like Culver City to waste time and energy on such adornments when there was gold to be dug.
Of the proprietor, behind the stove inside, he asked his question.
“And you don’t know?” asked the latter with a twinkle in his eye.
“Of what?” asked Gerald.
“It’s Christmas, man! Tomorrow will be Christmas! And tonight will be Christmas Eve!”
Gerald stared at him, then laughed aloud with the joy of it. This surely was the hand of fate, which brought him for a present, on the eve of the day of giving, Kate Maddern and all her beauty and all her heart and soul, like a great empire!
He went up the stairs still laughing, with the voice of the proprietor coming dimly behind him: “There’s a gentleman waiting in your room for you, Mr. Kern. He looked like I might tell him to go up and make himself to home….”
The rest was lost and Gerald, kicking open the door of his room, looked across to no other than Louis
Jerome Banti sitting in Gerald’s chair and pouring over Gerald’s own Bible. The act in which he was engaged shocked Gerald hardly less than the sight of Banti’s face in this place. It was like seeing the devil busy over the word of God.
“In the name of heaven, Banti,” he said, “how do you come here?”
“In the name of despair, Monsieur Lupri, what keeps you here?”
“Hush!” cautioned Gerald, raising his finger. “There are ears in the wall to hear that name.”
“Are there not?” and Banti chuckled, rubbing his hands together. “Yes, ears in the stones to hear, and a tongue in the wind to give warning of it!”
They shook hands, and as their fingers touched a score of wild pictures slid through the memory of Gerald, fleeter than the motion picture flashes its impressions on the screen—a cold winter morning on a road in Provence, with the crackle of the exhaust thrown back to them from the hills as their machine fled among the naked vineyards—and a night on the Bosphorus when they were stealing, with their launch full of desperadoes, toward the great hulk of the Turkish man-of-war—and a day in hot Smyrna when the….
“Banti here…Banti of all men, and in this of all places.”
“And you, my dear Gerald?”
“How did you find me? How on earth did you trail me?”
“How does one follow the path of fire? By the burned things it has touched.”
“But I left you with the death sentence.…”
“Over my head, and three days of life before me.”
“Yes, yes! I had done my best….”
“And it was better than you knew. The poor girl loved you, Gerald. On my soul, I sorrowed for her when I heard her talk. But she it was who came to me at last. With her own hand she opened the doors for me. She guided me to the last threshold. She put a purse fat with gold in my pocket. She pointed out the way to escape, and she gave me the blessing of Allah and this little letter in French for you…for her beloved…her hero of fire and steel.”
“Be still, Banti, in the name of heaven!”
He took the little wrinkled envelope. He tore open the end of it. Then, pausing, he lighted a match and touched it to the paper. The flame flared. The letter burned to red-hot ash, fluttered from his finger tips, and reached the floor as a crumbling and wrinkled sheet of gray. A draft caught it and whirled it into nothingness.
And that is the end?” quietly said Banti, who had watched all this from a little distance. “And yet there was an aroma in the words of that letter, I dare swear, that would have drawn the winged angels lower out of heaven to hear them!”
“It is better this way,” said Gerald. “I burn the letter, and I send the fair thoughts back to the fair lady.”
And her fat papa,” said Banti.
And to her fat papa. And now…Banti, you have not changed. You are the same!”
“The very same,” said Banti, and drew himself up proudly to the full of his height. He was a glorious figure of a man. And the cunning of his hand was second only to the cunning of his brain. Well did Gerald know it. Had he not, for three long months in wintry Moscow, dueled with this man a duel in the dark, a thousand shrewd strokes delivered and parried under cover of the darkness of polite intrigue? They had learned to read each other then, and they had learned to dread and respect each other, also. Victory in that battle had fallen to Gerald, but it was a Pyrrhic conquest.
“It is gold, then,” said Banti. “It is gold that keeps you here?”
“No.”
“A mystery, then?”
Gerald shrugged his shoulders.
“No matter. You will come with me?”
Gerald shook his head.
“No?” and Banti smiled. “But listen…there is a kingdom in the sea!”
“Damn the sea and its kingdoms,” said Gerald. “This is my country. And here I stay!”
“There is a kingdom waiting in the sea,” said Banti. “Ah, I laugh with the joy of it, monsieur, when I think! Gerald, dear fellow, we are rich men, great men. The task awaits us!”
“Banti, I shall not listen. And it is useless for you to talk.”
“In two words, Gerald, what has happened to you?”
“I have a charm against your temptations. I have a flower to defy Circe, Louis.”
“A woman?”
“My wife-to-be.”
“She shall go with us, then. Where there is a king, may there not be a queen?”
“You are talking to the wind.”
“You have not heard me yet.”
“I don’t wish to.”
“You are afraid, then, in spite of your charm?”
“Talk if you must, and the devil take you.”
“There is a kingdom in the sea…there is an island in the sea, Monsieur Caprice. Four great powers of Europe and Asia have reached for it…their hands met…and not a finger touched it. So, in mortal fear of one another, they withdrew. They made a compact. They erected the savage chief into a king. They erected the island into a kingdom in the sea, and they swore neutrality. But kings need wars for diversion and, since he could do no better, this amiable idiot of a fat man-eater began to fight with his own subjects. In a trice, a musical comedy set.
“Yonder stands the commerce of the world licking its chops at the sight of the spices of that island and the river dripping with unmined gold and the mountains charged with iron ores and coal, the swamps foul with oil…but yonder is the king fighting his subjects. The island is split into halves. The king holds all the lowlands and the rich towns. The young cousin, with more brains in his little finger than in the whole sconce of the king, holds the uplands with a few hundred stout brigands and makes a living by inroad. Commerce is at a standstill. They kill a white man for the sake of his shoes. And the great, neutral nations and the great, neutral merchants stand about like a circle of lions and find one consolation…that no one is getting a piece of the dainty
“But now, Gerald, enters a man of brains and money. He sees inspiration. He comes to me. He says: ‘I give you money and a shipload of arms and a score of good men. Not too many, or my hand will be too apparent. I send you away. Your ship is wrecked…by unlucky chance…on the shore of the island. You go inland. You open communication with the young prince in the highlands. You offer him money and guns if he will give you the direction of his war. You, with your tact and your diplomacy, make a conquest of that young prince, who is man enough to appreciate a man. He takes you to his heart and into his councils. He turns over his army to you. The guns and the money are brought up. Your few white men are your bodyguard. You train the army of natives for a month. When they can strike the side of a
mountain at fifty paces, you invade the domains of the king. In another month, you have routed him. You establish a new regime. You admit my money into your interior. And of the profits which come out of my ventures, one half goes to the kingdom…that is, to you…and the other half goes to me.’
“This, Gerald, is what the man of money and brains says to me. And I reply: ‘This is all very well. If I were a Napoleon, I should undertake the task. I should agree to do all these things, ingratiate myself with the colored potentate, become ruler of him and his army, and conquer the kingdom. But I am not Napoleon. I am, however, one of his marshals. In a word, I know the man. Give me only six months to bring him to you!’
“That, Gerald, was my reply, and here I am. Pack up your luggage. Pay your bills…I have ten thousand, and half of it is yours…and come with me at once. We can reach a train by tomorrow morning!”
He stopped, panting with the effort, and he found that Gerald was twining his hands together and then tearing them apart and staring down at the floor. But at last he raised his head.
“No,” he said, “I cannot.”
“In the name of heaven, Gerald! It is all as I have said! All that is needed to turn the dream into real gold is your matchless hand, your brain!”
“No again. A month ago, I should have gone with you. Today, not if you offered me England and its empire! Banti, you waste words!”
Banti was pale with despair, but he had learned long years before that words are sometimes worse than wasted. He maintained a long silence.
“Gerald,” he said at last, “if I may see the lady, my long trip will not have been wasted!”
X “The Gathering of the Storm”
Footfalls stormed up the stairs, clumped down the I hall, and a heavy hand beat on the door.
“Come!” said Gerald as Banti discreetly turned his face to the window.
The door was thrown open by Canton himself.
“Kern,” he said, “there’s some devilish bad luck! Young Vance….”
He stopped as he caught sight of Banti.
“This is my friend, Mr. George Ormonde,” said Gerald. “And this is my friend, Canton Douglas.”