by Talbot Mundy
“Good spear!” he said laughing, but Joe and the Maharajah hardly heard him. They were face to face, toe to toe, glaring, Joe’s nose dripping blood on to his shirt and the blood from his forehead trickling past his eyes; but even the blood did not make him uglier than Poonch-Terai, whose glowering eyes and outthrust underlip told of more than pain in his sprained wrists. There was hatred there — racial, temperamental and intuitive, increased, set flaring, but not caused by rivalry. Beneath it there was the deadlier enmity of one ideal for another.
“Damn you, what do you think this game is — polo?” Joe demanded.
Poonch-Terai backed away from him, nursing his wrists, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Bruce was out of earshot.
“Your pig,” he said. “But go back to America and stick them in the slaughter-yards. That’s something that you understand.”
“When your wrists are in shape to protect yourself I will thrash you for that,” Joe answered.
Poonch-Terai grinned savagely. “You? You will thrash me? Go back to America before you learn what I can do to you! And meanwhile, stay away from temples!”
Bruce came with the horses and dismounted to help Poonch-Terai into the saddle, interrupting that low-voiced conversation, which had left Joe strangely cool but with a queer sensation up his spine. They rode slowly campward until they met the Maharajah’s men, who fussed over his wrists and swarmed around him to escort him to his own camp. Bruce waited until some of his own shikaris came, and when he had sent them to cut out the dead boar’s tushes he and Joe cantered toward the club tents for a bath, rough bandages and breakfast.
“I can get the dirt out for you. It may hurt a bit, but I’m a dabster at getting a cut clean. However, don’t forget to let Hawkes go over you afterward. The man’s a wizard. If you asked me, I’d say it’s magic that he learned from some Yogi or other. I was telling him only the other day, he’s a fool not to buy his discharge and go home and open up a beauty parlor — make his fortune!”
Tent-club operations are not pleasant to endure, nor were Bruce’s bandages artistic; an hour’s work made Joe fairly comfortable, but he was still bleeding a little and it was fortunate for more than his vanity that he did not catch sight of his face in a mirror; had he known how unpresentable he looked he might have postponed calling on Annie Weems. However, Bruce encouraged him to call on her:
“It may be she who taught Hawkes how to tittivate a cut skin. Let her look at it; she’ll be no worse than a military saw-bones, and she’s sure to improve on what I’ve done to you. And by the way, thank you for keeping your hands off Poonch-Terai. You had a perfect right to kick him. But if you had — I don’t know what might happen.”
Joe had read the murder in the Maharajah’s eyes. He knew that the brief exchange of insults only hinted at such hatred as could never have been caused by rough-stuff in the hunting field.
There was a woman — a girl whom he had talked with only once, the color of whose eyes he did not know. She was at the bottom of it. He knew that, though he could not understand it. Not for a moment did he think of himself as in love with her, since that would be ridiculous. He could not be. Beyond the fact that she was possibly the daughter of his mother’s bridesmaid, she meant nothing whatever to him. With his trained, deliberate mind he knew he was the last man likely to fall in love with a young girl met by moonlight near a prison wall. She had preached to him. She had mocked him. She had made him feel like ten cents. She was in some mysterious way involved in a religious cult with which he had no sympathy. He would be likelier to fall in love with a Salvation Army lassie in Union Square, New York, tambourine and all. If he did, it would startle his friends less, though it might offend his mother more; she would prefer to be able to make up lies, perhaps, about an Indian princess and get them printed in the papers and in Who’s Who.
He could hardly talk to Bruce, for thinking of Amrita. Strange name, it stuck in his memory; he could not normally recall a girl’s name fifteen minutes after he had met her. Meeting girls never excited him — never had. But he was excited about meeting this one again. He put part of that down to the shock of being thrown from a horse. But he knew there was more than that to it. He wished he could remember what color her eyes were — ass!
But he told himself he had a right to be curious. Curiosity amused him; that was it, he was amused. In Joe’s life there had been precious little genuine amusement. Always his mother there to embitter the juice of things. He had a right to taste amusement while he could. And he would take care this time that his mother should have no finger in the pie until he had his fill of it. It even occurred to him to take Amrita for his mistress for a while, but the thought was colorless and insincere. He could say that to himself; the words came easily enough; but he could not quite imagine it; it gave him no thrill.
“Well, why should it? If I were in love with her it might be different. I wonder how it feels to be in love. I’d like to try it. But I suppose I’d play the damned ass, just like all the others.”
In a sort of day-dream he dismounted at the front door of the mess and waited inside for the dog-cart that Bruce offered to lend him. Bruce ascribed his silence to shock from the accident and made no attempt to force conversation.
“You’ll be all right in a day or two. Keep quiet and stay off liquor. Show your cuts to Annie Weems, and let Hawkes see them, but avoid the doctor like the devil unless something serious sets in — which it won’t if you keep good-tempered. Here’s the dog-cart. So long. Enjoyed your company no end. I’ll send those tushes to you. When you’re through with the dog-cart tell the sais to come straight home. Come and see me again when you’re well enough — or if you’re not, send for me and I’ll come and see you. So long.”
Joe liked him. But he was glad to leave him. He let the sais drive. It suited him to sit still and imagine what the next hour might bring forth, and to think of steps he might take to prevent that blackguard Poonch-Terai from having his will of Amrita, as he had no doubt whatever now was his intention. He always did despise a man who employed agents to bag women for him. Also he despised women who fell for that kind of negotiation — not that it made them worse than other women — they were merely lacking in dignity. The whole world was a whoresome mess of guile and blackmail. Might as well stick to dignity as long as possible — it can be done — costs nothing pays not bad dividends, in self-esteem, which may be silly but feels good.
He grew more and more excited as he neared the mission — more and more pleased with the thought that he was stealing a march on his mother — more and more confident that he would manage the whole business of Amrita and her future without even consulting his mother. He would tell the old termagant what he had done. She could like it or lump it. All one to himself. The day had dawned at last when her authority was broken. He would not stand by and see his mother bind this young girl captive to her chariot as she had bound so many other men and women. But it would be easier to manage if he kept his discovery secret from her for a while.
As they entered the quiet square and the horse’s hoofs rang on ancient pavement he heard Annie Weems piano going — strangely brilliant sound amid that quiet setting. Then he heard song — recognized Amrita’s voice — but the words were unintelligible, in a language he did not know. He climbed down and stood by the mission door listening; the upper half was ajar on a long brass hook. The song ceased. He heard a girl’s laughter and then voices in conversation, but there was a curtain in the passage and the only voice he could recognize was Amrita’s — as clear as a bell, yet not unpleasantly assertive.
“Why, yes. I have written all my songs in English. Annie insists on it. Would you like to hear this one?”
She began to sing in English something about stars that wonder at men’s inconsistency. As she sang the curtain parted and Hawkes strode through into the outer room. He saw Joe — beckoned to him — tiptoed to the door and led the way in. In the passage he turned to speak behind his hand:
“I took you at your
word, sir—” But Joe was listening to the song. Hawkes led the way — parted the curtain. Facing the door, at the piano, sat Amrita, singing, with the soft light through slatted shutters making an aureole around her. Annie Weems sat in an armchair wearing spectacles, seeming to be studying some one else who sat in a corner near the door. That some one was invisible to Joe until he strode into the room.
“You said for me to—” Joe strode in, aware of something damnable and resolute to meet it, but not yet guessing what it might be. Amrita stopped singing and stared at the blood on Joe’s bandages. Annie Weems sprang to her feet. Joe turned toward the corner near the door and faced his mother.
“You? Oh, hello.”
“You said for me to see your mother, sir, about that thousand pounds, and—” “And I have told him it’s too much. I won’t pay it,” said Mrs. Beddington. “If you make promises like that, Joe, you may keep them yourself. Possibly you think you can afford it. Why did you keep this secret from me?”
Joe kept silence.
“Have you been brawling? What have you done to your face?”
Joe stared at her.
“Are you drunk, Joe?”
“Stone-cold sober — for the first time in my life, I dare say. How do, Miss Weems. How do, Amrita.”
He was glad he had no pistol in his hand. He knew, for just one fraction of a second, something that no jury ever understood — exactly how some sorts of seemingly motiveless murder happen.
CHAPTER XII. “Taters à la Kaiser Bill.”
“Miss Weems, can you get a doctor for him? Joe is my only son. If anything should happen—” “I’m all right, Mother — scratched, that’s all.” However, he sat down, glad to do it. Annie Weems came over to him and undid the bandages. Swift, silent, sure of herself, she only glanced — then led Joe to a bathroom, where Hawkes pushed up a chair behind him and Amrita produced medicated cotton and a basin, pushing Hawkes out of the way. Joe let go — leaned back — hardly knew that his head was resting on Amrita’s bosom; but he felt a relief that was almost like sleep as her fingers touched his temples and passed through his hair. His mother ceased to have any importance in the scheme of things. Amrita was essential. And the strangest part was, that he seemed always to have known Amrita — always to have trusted Annie Weems — always to have liked Hawkes. He neither belonged to his mother, nor she to him.
He heard Hawkes whistle in the way a man does who is estimating damage. The next thing he really knew, he was lying on a couch not far from the piano and Amrita was singing softly to a tune that Hawkes was strumming, while Annie Weems talked to his mother. At last Amrita stopped, and then he knew the song was nonsense because she said so:
“Hawkesey, won’t you understand that if a song isn’t beautiful it isn’t worth singing?”
“There’s ugly things worth mention,” he objected.
“True, but it’s the contrast between ugliness and beauty that is interesting. This isn’t a comic song.”
“It is,” said Hawkes. “I laughed while I was writing it.”
“You laughed at you.”
“Am I beautiful?”
“You’re comic. There is beauty in your effort to do what I said you could if you would only try. But you must try harder.”
“I sang it to some of the men and they laughed like anything.”
“At you. They would laugh at the song if you put some humor in it. I’ve seen corpses that were funny, but the corpses in your song are only nasty. They’re dead, whereas they ought to be masks and garments that the actors left behind them. You can’t make death funny if you don’t remember there is no such thing as death. Do you know why audiences sometimes laugh when they see a man slain on the stage? It is because they know intuitively, without knowing that they know, that actual death is just like that; they know the actor only takes his costume off and goes home. You go home and write that song again.”
“Teaching’s a trade,” said Hawkes. “It’s like drilling rookies. You have to praise a fellow now and then.”
“Don’t I take pains with you?”
“Yes, but—” “Isn’t that the kindest sort of praise?”
“Maybe, but—” “Bring me something good. I’ll praise it, Hawkesey.”
Joe stirred. His mother crossed the room, resentment bristling through her well spread smile.
“Are you feeling better, Joe?”
He knew he was hardly well enough to fight her just yet. He tried to postpone the issue.
“Feel rotten.”
“Never mind, I’ll take you to the hotel and get you a doctor.” He sat up. “No,” he answered. “Hawkes, would you be kind enough to see my mother back to the hotel?” He caught Miss Weems eye, “May I stay a while?”
Hawkes offered himself. Mrs. Beddington was no terror to him; he had acted orderly to a general with dyspepsia; he had been drilled by a sergeant-major who desired to keep him from promotion; there was nothing Hawkes did not know about enduring insult without letting it sink under his skin. She ignored him, but he did not mind that either.
“It isn’t polite, Joe, to inflict yourself on Miss Weems.”
“I came to talk to her,” said Joe. But he glanced at Amrita.
His mother, too, glanced at Amrita. “Joe, I wish you to come home and talk to me first.”
“What about?” he demanded.
She compressed her lips into a thin line with a trained smile at either corner, meant to seem inscrutable. Her eyes now deliberately avoided Amrita. “About personal matters, she answered.
“See you later, Mother. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”
War — war-war at last; he had declared it and she understood him. Joe felt all the hot exhilaration that accompanies a challenge, but he masked it, not wishing to seem ridiculous, since none but he, he supposed, knew what ferocity and resources he would have to combat. He was not given to mock heroics. He invited no one’s sympathy. He meant to fight this to a finish with his own resources, yet not more than guessing what those might be. He was not fooled by his mother’s instant change of tactics.
“May he stay with you a little while longer, Miss Weems? He seems to be worse shaken than he realizes.”
Annie Weems smile masked nothing. “He may stay here as long as he pleases,” she answered, plainly intimating he should stay until Annie Weems saw fit to let him go. Mrs. Beddington realized it — bridled — accepted the challenge:
“I will send the doctor to him here.”
“Dr. Karter Singh would very likely come if you should ask him.”
“A native?
“A Sikh.”
“Great heavens, is there no white doctor?”
“There’s an army doctor, who is usually busy, and a civilian who is nearly always drunk.”
“For God’s sake send the drunkard,” Joe interrupted. “Tank him up before you send him. I can manage drunkards.”
“Joe!”
“See you later, Mother.”
Mrs. Beddington fussed her way out of the place, ignoring Hawkes deliberately and apparently forgetting to notice Amrita. She kept Annie Weems standing at the front door for several minutes, asking her barbed questions about the mission-school but saying nothing that could be interpreted as actual insolence. Amrita, straight faced, strummed at the piano.
“Don’t you love to know the worst?” she wondered. “Man from Jupiter, why didn’t you tell her about me?”
“And my thousand pounds,” Hawkes added.
“And why are you pretending to be worse hurt than you are?”
“Can’t you see for yourself?” Joe asked her.
“See, yes. I can read your aura. Smoky crimson. Where was Mars in your horoscope? Are you afraid of her?”
“Too many questions.”
“Answer one then.” “No, I’m no longer afraid.”
“You will be soon — unless I’m seeing you and her all crooked. Can’t you read auras? No? You’re psychic, you could learn. Hers is dingy indigo and sulphur, with lu
rid smoky-green tonguelets like the petals of a sunflower. When you see it that color, you perhaps don’t know you see it, but it scares you all the same. It would scare me, if she were my mother. Do you hate her? You shouldn’t. When you hate her, you establish a vibration along which she can get you as a spider gets a fly. If you were sentimental about her, she could get you that way too. She is dreadfully strong. I’d hate her if I dared.”
Her fingers strummed on the piano keys a sort of obbligato to her conversation — strange experiments with chords that seemed to illustrate the color of her thought. It was perhaps not music but it was humorous, like a Greek chorus mocking the speaker. Joe felt intimate, as if she and he had known each other all their lives.
“Why did you keep me secret?” she repeated suddenly. “You have a way of doing that. You boil and sulk inside yourself. It poisons you. That isn’t like a man from Jupiter. Your forte is direct action. It would be good for you to dance and sing — scream — yell — swear — do anything to boil off.”
Joe grinned. He had a sudden mental picture of himself cavorting like a temperamental Frenchman.
“Laugh!” she urged. “That grin is a habit of being solemn. Do you know what solemnity is? It’s the gloom with which asses disguise their ignorance. Why imitate them?”
“It was quite unconscious,” Joe answered humbly.
“That doesn’t make it harmless. If your head didn’t ache I would make you dance with me. Hawkesey used to go everywhere looking like a sermon on the predamnation of unbaptized infants. But I made him dance every time he saw me. When I had corrupted him enough, so that he even began to like himself a little, I made him promise to dance whenever he thought of me. Now see him. Hawkesey is almost human.”
“Cost me money. I wore out a pair of boots,” said Hawkes. “It nearly got me out of the army. I was sat on by a medical committee — two fat doctors and a thin one — claimed I was crazy. I didn’t deny it. I told ’em I danced to try and feel as happy as a nigger. So they gave me a month’s sick-leave and I went to Mount Abu, where a heathen taught me how to dance like Krishna with a flute.”