by Talbot Mundy
Joe nodded but looked incredulous. He wished to hear the full indictment. His mother he knew could pump a man like Muldoon dry in fifteen minutes, and corrupt him utterly in five. If he could hold his own tongue this fool would betray her. Muldoon mistook silence for proof of his own astuteness, so he blundered on:
“You know, Annie Weems isn’t socially recognized. There’s nothing regular about her. Luckily for her she keeps out of politics, or we’d have closed her mission long ago. She has some sort of understanding with the Hindu priests — nobody knows exactly what’s the basis of it, but you know the proverb: ‘love of money is the root of all evil. Love o’ money — superstition — blackmail — black arts — clairvoyance — mixed blood — you can’t make head nor tails of that mess or separate one ingredient from another. The best thing is to let it alone. There was a rich young Englishman who got caught in a mess like that. Clairvoyant humbug. Fooled him. Hypnotized him. Persuaded him to finance a new religion. He took the girl to London. He not only lost social caste but half his fortune with it. Ended by his being blackmailed half out of his senses. And at that, the girl was only a poor half-wit who handed over the cash to a few conspirators behind the scenes!”
“Has Miss Weems ever blackmailed any one?”
“I can’t say. But nobody knows where she gets the money to run the mission. All we know is she gets it. I’ve worked for years on police court cases. It’s one of the commonest occurrences to find criminals, or potential criminals, using a clairvoyant or a trance medium to guide them in a conspiracy. They think they can get information from another world. What often gets them into trouble before any serious harm is done is the neurotic sex-psychosis of the mediums — loose morals — jealousy — vanity — vengeance — and the cat’s out of the bag. That Rita girl is a good-looker, of course. I can easily understand your wanting her. But beware of those Eurasians — they’re too promiscuous. That fellow Hawkes, for instance — you know what soldiers are. Besides, she’s in some way mixed up with the orgies that go on in a Hindu temple. As a medical man with more than a little experience of this country, I advise you to keep clear of her. Good God — I’ve seen scores of fine young fellows sent home ruined — physically, morally, mentally. Cured? Yes, after a fashion — cured of happiness and manhood for the rest of their natural lives. Would you like me to look at those cuts on your face? They’re beautifully bandaged — seems a shame to disturb such a neat job — Annie Weems do it? She and Hawkes, eh? Well — that fellow Hawkes is something of a wizard. Let’s let it rest. We’ll have a look at it to-morrow.”
Another pause — a long one — Joe as conscious of his mother as if she were there in the room. Quick work! And what luck she always had in discovering creatures like Muldoon to do her bidding at a moment’s notice.
Muldoon broke the silence. “My Ford is outside. Let me drive you to the hotel.”
“No, thanks.
“Well, young man, I’ve warned you.”
“Good of you, I’m sure. Will you send me your bill? I’ve no check-book with me.”
“That’s all right. Your mother—” “All right, send the bill to her.
“I think I’d better see you in the morning. Those cuts may need attention.”
“Just as you like.” Joe had opened the door. There was nothing for Muldoon to do but walk out. To preserve his dignity he blustered, snubbing Annie Weems again, ignoring her as he swaggered to the front door, where he turned for a final word to Joe:
“To-morrow then. Meanwhile I’ll have my assistant mix you something — send it to the hotel. Good day.”
Annie Weems stood in the door of the living-room. Joe faced her. Suddenly Rita’s gay laugh broke the silence.
“Can you see his aura, Annie?”
“Hush, child! Do you still wish to see me alone, Mr. Beddington?”
“Yes, more than ever.”
Rita put both her arms around Annie Weems from behind. In that light it looked almost like two heads on one pair of shoulders — one gray but eternally young, the other young but humorously wise. There was something ageless about Rita — something, too, that made a fellow’s heart jump when he saw her suddenly. Her eyes seemed to see beyond surfaces.
“Me too — talk in front of me,” she urged him. “She would tell me afterward and besides, I know what you are going to say.”
“All right.” Joe accepted the challenge. He followed them into the living-room, where Rita again sat on the arm of Annie Weems’ chair. “Where’s Hawkes?” he asked. He did not want Hawkes to listen in.
“Hawkesey is on the roof, mending the valve of the water-tank.”
She had the light behind her, through the slats of the window-shade. It streamed in layers on her dark hair, edging it with gold. One stream of it poured on her hand; she was pressing the tips of her fingers, perhaps excitedly, on the book that lay on the table beside the chair; Joe noticed that the half-moons of her nails showed no trace of telltale color.
Annie Weems folded her hands in her lap. “Well?”
“No,” said Joe, “let Rita say it. She said she knows what I’m going to say. Let’s see if she’s bluffing.”
“I know part of it and I can guess part of it,” said Rita. “You’re curious, and yet you know the answer to what you’re chiefly curious about; but when you think about it with your brain you’re not so sure you know. And what you’re quite sure that you know is where you’re wholly wrong.”
“Say it in plain English,” Joe retorted.
“Last first. You think you know a Hindu temple is an awful place, where there are orgies. So there are, in some temples, but only in some of them. You think my mind, and probably my soul has been corrupted. And you wonder about my body. You wonder whether I’m loose, as you would call it.”
“Right,” said Joe.
“But you are wrong,” she answered. “If it is your business to know that, you know it without my telling you. If it is not your business, nothing I could tell you would make the slightest difference. You would form your own opinion, and if it differed from my statement, you would think me a liar. But that would not alter the truth.”
“Frankly, I’m deeply interested.”
“In me? What else do you wish to know? Do you wish me to tell that, too. Very well. You wonder why Annie let me continue in a Hindu temple instead of sending me to the United States as soon as she discovered who I was. Is there a color-line in the United States?”
“There is,” said Joe.
“Do you know now why I pressed my fingers on this book? I have no Indian or Eurasian blood, but who can prove it?”
Joe hesitated. All the arguments that occurred to him seemed trite before he turned them on his tongue.
“Civilization—” he began.
“Am I a savage?”
“I should say you have had experiences that you should have been spared from.”
“For what are we in the world, except for experiences? Could I do more good in the United States than I can here? Could I learn more? Tell me something you know that I don’t.”
Again Joe hesitated. “Cultural surroundings are important,” he said awkwardly. “There’s an indefinable something that a college education gives—” “I lack it?”
She did not wait for him to answer. She came over to him, stood beside his chair, speaking in a voice that thrilled him so strangely that he felt as he did when listening to organ-music stealing by a stair of overtones toward infinity.
“Joe — I don’t want to humiliate you. If we talk to each other like this we’ll both be sorry, because it’s something you don’t understand. It’s something you will have to find out for yourself, since nobody can tell you — not even the wisest person — although you can have help — I can try to help you.”
Puzzled more than ever, trying to resent what he felt was a slur on his dignity, Joe looked up at her. But that is not an attitude from which a man can easily assert his superior manhood. He found himself smiling. The smell of her body was s
weeter than honey and wine in his nostrils.
“Funny,” he said. “I came here to help you.”
“It was funny, wasn’t it? Something like helping a plant by pulling it out by the roots!”
He almost ached to put his hands on her. The artist half of him danced to the sweep of the line of her figure; she was one of Botticelli’s springtime mistresses, more maddening because nature seemed so in love with her that she was guarded by something impassable — something that checked impulse. The part of him that had been trained to make cold appraisal and to view ironically anything that named its price or did not name it, recognized a challenge. The opposing force locked him in a sort of vise in which speech died unspoken.
It was Hawkes who broke the silence, entering the room with the deliberate calm of a bearer of exciting news. He walked over to Annie Weems as if to whisper to her, changed his mind and broke his news aloud:
“I’ve fixed the valve, Miss Annie. You can have the tank filled now. Did you know you can see down four streets from the bricks the tank rests on? There’s a closed carriage and two good horses waiting about a hundred yards away. Two men on the box. Two footmen. Four tough customers on foot, lurking near, one of ’em speaking now and then through the slats to some one in the carriage — probably a woman. They’re Poonch-Terai’s men.”
“Can you get help?” Annie Weems asked.
“Yes, Miss. I’ll go and attend to it.” He walked out as nonchalantly as he probably would have done if they had told him that the empire was in ruins.
“Amal must have told them where I am,” said Rita laughing. She appeared afraid of nothing. “Poor Amal — she has set her heart on high places for me. She thinks if I were once inside Poonch-Terai’s palace all the world would lie at my feet to be petted and blessed.”
Annie Weems rose from her chair. “That ayah!” She put on her spectacles stared at Rita, then at Joe. Joe stood up; she stepped toward him. “I will tell you something.”
“No, no, Annie!”
“I am determined. Mr. Beddington, that ayah who saved Rita when she was a baby — who has served and watched her ever since — who worships her beyond all reason, as it isn’t right that any human should worship another — Amal, her name is Amal — is the principal reason why I have never sent Rita home to the United States.”
“The other reason is, that I would not have gone,” said Rita.
“You would have gone, child, if I had seen my way to send you without doing you a worse injustice than was done by keeping you in India. Mr. Beddington — that ayah is the only person in the world who actually knows who Rita’s parents were. I say I know, but I have no proof. Amal is a brave, loyal, obstinate, fanatical, devoted woman, with far more intelligence than appears on the surface. Her whole heart and soul is wrapped up in Amrita. She told me the truth, but she has never once told it in the presence of witnesses. She even lied to Rita about there being black blood in her veins, in order to make her dislike the idea of calling herself white.”
“But Rita knows she’s not Eurasian,” Joe objected.
“Yes, I told her. So did Ram-Chittra Gunga. So did the temple priests, who have their own means of judging. But then Amal spread the tale through the bazaar. She spread it so cunningly that it became what the courts would call common knowledge. After that she threatened to go before a judge and swear Amrita is Eurasian if any one should make any kind of move to take the child away. And she got witnesses, of whom one is a snake-charmer; and he found others. I don’t know how Amal found enough money to bribe them, but she did, and she bound them later on into a sort of secret religious cult, based on prophecies about Amrita’s future. You would think Amal is stupid, to look at her. She is as cunning as she is determined.”
Joe smiled, sympathetic but ironical. “An attorney, Miss Weems, could have solved the problem for you.”
“So I thought. I tried one. There are only Indian attorneys here. I chose the best of them, but Amal learned of it. She ran to Maharajah Poonch-Terai. Tell Poonch-Terai about a new young girl and he would cross the Himalayas on foot to take a look at her. Once tempted, he would rather die than let the girl escape him. He saw Rita — Amal told him my attorney’s name. He interviewed the attorney. The following day the attorney washed his hands of the case, saying he had convinced himself that Rita is Eurasian. We were alone in this room. I accused him of dishonesty, and of taking pay from Poonch-Terai. He denied it, but he laughed nervously and threatened to accuse me of trying to procure false evidence, and of conspiracy.”
“Conspiracy to do what?”
“Conspiracy to blackmail the relatives of Rita’s alleged parents, in the United States. He declared he would charge me with it, and would produce witnesses, if I made one move to take her out of India. He meant, out of Poonch-Terai’s reach. In this country, a dishonest person can buy witnesses for any purpose.”
“In other lands,” said Joe, “it’s sometimes easier to buy a juryman — or to send a judge’s wife and daughter for a fine vacation on the continent. A mis-trial is more expensive, but it’s safer than perjured evidence.”
“None of that really matters,” said Rita. “It isn’t the real reason why I stayed in India.”
“Hush, child, I was speaking. There was another reason, and a very strong one. Rita has gifts of a kind that could not have developed amid harsh surroundings or in a critical atmosphere. She is strong now and perfectly balanced; but it would have been not far short of murder to have sent her to a public institution, where other children would have treated her like chickens picking on a lame one. I don’t mean she could not have survived physically — she is as healthy as a young horse — always has been. But her spiritual nature would have died, like something exotic shrinking from chill wind. Misunderstood, she would either have rebelled against routine, or perhaps have gone mad from suppression. I was not ill-pleased to keep her here. I have given her the very best there is in me, and I have never left this mission even for a short vacation in all these years, for fear of neglecting her for a single minute or of being absent when she might need my help.”
“Did it never occur to you to adopt her?” Joe asked.
“It did. But there were legal difficulties. I have had to protect her as best I could with the aid of those good Hindu priests. But now I can’t protect her any longer. Poonch-Terai is too powerful — too cunning — he has too many agents and too much money for me to be able to resist him, even with native Indian cavalrymen and Sergeant Hawkes to help. Rita must go to the United States.”
“Why do you confide in me?” Joe asked her. The side of him that was trained to examine motives and to disbelieve all unproven statements, doubted her. The other side knew she was telling the truth. “Why me?”
“That is something Rita must tell you,” she answered. He faced Rita, curiously pleased. So he had been discussed already — passed on — in a sense accepted? It gave him an indescribable feeling of cosmic importance, that had no logical basis whatever, but was none the less pleasant. But he was vaguely disturbed by Rita’s eyes that seemed to have lost their quiet humor. They were not hard now, but there was fire behind them. It dawned on him for the first time, and suddenly, that she was a person of terrific strength of character.
“Do you care to tell me?” he asked.
“No. You won’t believe. Annie has told you surfaces. Perhaps she thinks you can’t see deeper than a surface. Few can.”
Rita faced him like a huntress using waves of thought for weapons — hunting for something hidden — something to be caught, not killed. He felt an impulse to help her find it.
“All those reasons Annie gave are surface reasons,” she repeated. “They are fate reasons, provided to protect my destiny. I don’t leave India because my place is here, and I know it is here. Why else was I born here? Here is my opportunity, and Annie knows that.”
“Do you think we are always all in our proper place?” Joe asked her.
“Of course we are. And you know we are. Are
the stars not in their proper places? Are you or I more powerful than the stars that we can pull ourselves out of our orbit?”
“Do you consider it your place to be taken and raped by Poonch-Terai?”
“How do I know? I may have to learn that lesson. May there not be — within his palace — something to be done that I alone can do? If so, does my convenience matter? If not, then he gives me an opportunity to learn how to defeat dark forces, such as he thinks are omnipotent. He may possibly learn from defeat. I am not in the world to learn cowardice, but courage. I have faculties and talents; I will use them where I stand. Joe — did you ever conquer by running away?”
“Conquer what? I’ve conquered very little, come to think of it.”
“Could you conquer your mother by running away?”
“I never thought of running. I was born her son. I accepted the implied obligation; and I have stuck to my job, hoping for illumination that would show me how to tame her without doing murder.”
“I, too, have stuck to my job. I was born in India. And here I stay, until my work is finished.”
“You’ll find plenty to do,” he suggested. “To me it looks like a distressful country.”
“I said, my work — not everybody’s work. When mine is finished I shall find myself picked up and planted elsewhere. Or perhaps I shall die. Are you afraid of death?”
“Not specially.” He laughed. “You think I’m in my proper place, in India, this minute — not in New York?”
She nodded. “You can prove it easily. You can try to go away before your work is done. Fate — that is to say, the sum-total of your liabilities translated into action — may be strong enough to cheat you of your destiny for the time being. But it won’t change destiny. Destiny — which is nothing else than earned character — will make you fight fate sooner or later. The sooner you stand and fight, the simpler will the fight be. No one can escape by running away.”