Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  One does not study one’s own comfort at a time like that. I walked home — ten miles. It was about daylight when I let myself in and lay down on a couch, not expecting to sleep. I was imagining that interview, wondering what they would say to each other. I suppose because I was so upset, it did not occur to me until then to wonder why she should have taken me into her confidence at all. Why had she not told Ramon first? I puzzled over that until I tubbed and drove back. Then it was already too late to ask her. I heard Ramon calling for her, and I found her for him.

  She had killed herself. Poison. I don’t know where she got the stuff. She had been dead perhaps fifteen minutes, and it was I who had to break that news to Ramon. Of course, I understood then why she had told me. She was preparing me to stand by Ramon and befriend him.

  He actually stood up when I told him what had happened. It was the first time he had stood without help since his accident. He was naked — he always lay naked in bed — and he stood like a man hearing sentence of death on himself. I think he did die, in a certain sense; he was never again the man he had been, nor I, either. I supported him out to the foundry and he stood there looking at her body without speaking, until at last he collapsed from weakness and I carried him back to bed. He said nothing at all — not one word until the wretched business of the inquest, which was held in the studio. The doctor and I gave almost all the evidence, so Ramon was spared that torture. He merely had to nod his head in answer to about a dozen questions.

  I stayed on, of course, and had my hands full. Ramon almost passed out, and perhaps he should have done. But the doctor and I between us pulled him through it.

  At the end of six weeks he could walk about a bit. I took him to the seaside, to a beach like this one; and it was there, as we lay in the sun, that at last he told me what took place that night when Dorothy had sent me home and went into his room to tell him what he knew already. He swore to me that he had known it for more than a month. He had merely been waiting for her to tell him in her own good time, so that he could take her into his arms and somehow make her understand that not even that had changed his love for her.

  But when she at last did tell him, in a hundred dry words that sounded like the cinders of her self-respect, his own emotion got the better of him and he could not speak as he intended to. His words sounded hard and lifeless even to his own ears. The phrases he had studied so carefully and stored up against that moment sounded trite and stilted. Then his voice broke, because he knew it was all his own fault; and she thought it broke out of grief for her having deceived him. He said they must do the right thing; meaning get married at once. She said, certainly she would do the right thing; and suddenly she braced herself, threw off her depression and kissed him, saying she was grateful that he had not spoken one unkind word. He told her to go and get some sleep.

  “I sent her to her doom,” was the way he phrased it. “I should have kept her there and talked to her and made her promise to begin with me all over again. But I felt so guilty — so damned guilty.”

  To get that sense of guilt out of his head I had to get him interested in something else. He had an uncanny gift for understanding metal, so I persuaded him to design and cast some bells and he began before long to experiment with almost his old eagerness. He had a notion that some bells are alive and some dead; and he reverted again and again to the ancient superstition that caused so many bell founders to throw living men into the molten metal.

  “Something in it,” he insisted. “And what’s the difference. You doom one poor devil to death by fire or bayonet or drowning, for the sake of another’s fame or for a foul political idea. Then you call him the Unknown Soldier, and you say he died well. Doom’s a strange thing. Why not doom him to death for the sake of a sound that shall boom forth in beauty for ever? I’d prefer that to being skewered in a Flanders slaughter-yard to please a bigot in a brass hat.”

  Morbid. However, he became less morbid as the weeks went by. I had found him a place in London where he could work sixteen hours a day if he wished; and I introduced him to a man who owned an enormous foundry, where he could study as much as he pleased and keep abreast of metallurgical invention. I began to have hopes of his making a name in the world. He was beginning to make exquisite bells with a tone as good as anything I have ever heard. He was even beginning to speak of Dorothy without a break in his voice — when the damned unpredictable happened.

  There came a letter from Proudman in India, addressed to Dorothy, in care of me. I couldn’t keep it from Ramon; he was having lunch with me the day the servant laid it on the table. He seized it and tore it open. When he had read it he said nothing, but passed it back to me, and I knew all my work had gone for nothing — his too. There was hell in his eyes. He had reverted, as suddenly as a man dies from a bullet, to the point where he and Dorothy and Proudman were the three ingredients of one apparently predestined doom. I don’t believe in destiny. I don’t believe in anything much. I am simply telling you what happened.

  I read that letter. It appeared that Dorothy had written to Proudman telling him that she expected to become the mother of his child. Of course, there is no knowing what she had really written to him, but I can’t imagine her, with her pride, doing more than to inform him briefly how matters stood. It was one of those letters one has to imagine, and perhaps it was hysterical. But I imagine it as pitifully brave. Most likely she had already made up her mind to kill herself. She may have wanted to give Proudman an impulse to examine himself and find, if he could, the seeds of decency. If so, her aim missed.

  He had taken his time about answering. He had deliberately waited until the baby had time to be born; and now he wrote bluntly that of course she had been sensible enough to pretend the child was Ramon’s. He added he would come and see her, one of these days, when he could find an official excuse for a trip to London. And he assured her he would keep her secret on condition she should continue being gracious to himself.

  I have never read such a vile letter. Killing is not in my line. I am probably too lazy or too indifferent to practise murder, and perhaps I lack the skill. But if he had been in that room, then, I know I would have tried to kill him.

  I knew Ramon intended to do it. He made no comment, but his face set hard, like moulded brass. And you remember his eyes as they were when you knew him? They changed then; the humour went out of them then, in that minute, and never returned. They became as you knew them. Two minutes later he asked me to sell all his bronzes for any price they should bring, and he brought all the stuff that evening — about a ton of it, in hampers, in a hired van. It was then that he gave me the bronze that I have on my desk. It is the only portrait I have of Dorothy — the statuette that brought about our introduction. He kept nothing for himself.

  I turned my place into a showroom and sold his stuff for quite good prices considering the pressure I was under. Ramon could hardly wait for the money. He did not talk, read or amuse himself. I don’t think he slept. He merely paced up and down; and when I drove him out of my place because I could not endure his restlessness he went for long walks, returning after dark to ask what pieces had been sold. I could not persuade him to touch liquor; he drank water and ate scraps of whatever was set in front of him.

  As soon as I had all the money I turned it over to him. He bought a passage to India, second class. Then he counted what he had left, made an estimate and returned about half of the balance to me. I was to mail it to him if he should discover he needed it after three or four months. Then he packed one suitcase and travelled overland to Brindisi, catching the mail steamer at Port Said.

  He did not write and I began to worry about him at the end of the third month. Also I became deadly curious. I knew a tragedy was marching hour by hour to a conclusion that would smash all theories of right and wrong but leave us no step nearer to knowing why things happen. Perhaps if we did know why, we might lose interest.

  Perhaps I should say I was fascinated, like a sentimentalist at a bull-fight or a witnes
s at a hanging. Anyhow, I went to India, without a notion of Ramon’s whereabouts. But Proudman’s name was in the Army List and I discovered he was engaged on special duty, at a place called Angaut, not far from Benares. Special duty means secret service. So to Angaut I went. It’s a hell of a place — no club — no hotel — nothing. But I reasoned that Ramon probably would not be far from Proudman, and I had a good excuse for visiting the place; there are foundries there. Some of the better Benares temple bells were cast at Angaut, and even to-day there are men in Angaut who possess the traditional skill.

  Have you heard of the bell Kabadar? It received a lot of notice in the papers, all over the world. They built a special temple for it on the bank of the Ganges. A special priesthood, none of whom is less than ninety years old, ring it by hauling a rope that swings a beam against the rim. They ring it at dawn, at noon, at sunset and at midnight. Their special teaching is that anyone may do exactly as he pleases but must take all the consequences of whatever he chooses to do; and the beam strikes the bell in such fashion that by a trick of the timber on metal it seems to cry out — yell describes it better — the word Kabadar! Kabadar! Kabadar! That means beware. You may do what you wish; but beware.

  They were casting that bell at Angaut when I got there. Bells are my peculiar obsession, so I naturally went to look on. That was how I found Ramon. He was nearly naked, in a breech-clout and turban, in charge of the foundry; but I don’t know how he had imposed himself on the proprietors. He was certainly not being paid. He was equally certainly having his own way and had been accepted as a master-guildsman possessed of secrets that were not to be spied into. It appeared that he had mixed the metal, which was nearly ready to be poured. I asked him to let me watch him do it. He refused, looking me straight in the face as we stood side by side on a platform, slightly to one side and higher than the top of the huge crucible in which the liquid mass lay. It was hotter up there than the lid of Tophet; and when he skimmed the stuff with a long- armed ladle I wondered his fists didn’t melt. It looked ready to me. I asked when he proposed to pour it. He looked hard at me again and answered:

  “It lacks an ingredient.”

  Then we got down off the platform and he spent the next few minutes slicing at the furnace and ordering charcoal pitched into what he called the cool holes. When he was satisfied with the fire he ordered his native assistants out of the building. Then he looked at me again and spoke of Proudman without naming him:

  “He is camped,” he said, “outside the town. He has been told that if he comes at midnight, someone here will give him news of Dorothy that may turn out to be important. If he comes at midnight, I will pour at midnight.”

  I asked bluntly: “You will kill him?”

  He answered: “No. Why should I?”

  I asked: “What then?” And he answered:

  “Seeing I didn’t warn Dorothy, ought I to warn him?”

  “Ramon,” I said, “I warn you. You will add one evil to another and it won’t make black white.”

  “I will do what I will do,” he answered; and I turned and left him.

  Now I know what is crossing your mind. Why didn’t I go and warn Proudman? It will surprise you to learn that I did. I found him in his camp outside the town, declined his offer of a chair and a drink, and told him what I had to say in very few words:

  “Proudman, if you go for news of Dorothy you may regret it. Stay away.”

  “Oh?” he said, “is that so? Are you keeping her or only hoping to? And what became of Ramon Turner? Is he cherishing his child? Or did she keep it — or get rid of it — or what?”

  I answered: “I have warned you, Major Proud-man.”

  He laughed. He made it quite clear he was not afraid of me. I suppose that, wandering about the country on special service, he had had no opportunity to read the brief account of Dorothy’s death that may have got into the weekly papers. Plainly he supposed she was in India. He probably suspected she had come in search of him and that the message, somehow sent him by Ramon, was from her or else from someone in her confidence.

  He never can have had the slightest doubt about my being jealous of him, and he probably supposed that jealousy was still my motive.

  “You may go to the devil,” he answered. So I left him; and I can’t say I regret I did. Why I didn’t tell him Dorothy was dead is one of those unanswerable questions that I haven’t let trouble me much. Perhaps he seemed too gross a swine to talk to. Or perhaps I thought it Ramon’s business. Ramon told him, that night.

  But I had qualms. Do you know what Indian night is? Purple — black — solemn with stars and thick with clotted silence. There was no moon. Proudman, I knew, could take care of himself in a fight; but I was not so sure of Ramon, who had so recently recovered from an injury that almost killed him. Besides, Proudman might bring an attendant, although that, considering the man, was more or less improbable, he being a secretive brute who pried into others’ affairs but liked to keep his own entirely to himself. I remembered how often he had quoted the proverb: Keep your own keys and counsel. And as it turned out, he did come alone, ten minutes before midnight, in civilian clothes, bare-headed, walking in the deepest shadow and making rather less noise than a dog would have done, because the dust lay inches deep. He was wearing a dark, alpaca suit, and I could see the white V of his silk shirt when he was about ten yards away. He passed within two feet of me and never knew it. I was behind a buttress of the foundry wall, a few feet from the door. He walked in without hesitating and left the door open behind him. I followed. There was a dark passage before one turned at a right-angle to face the crimson fire-glare and the glow of the molten metal on the smoke-blackened roof. The only audible sound was the smothered murmur of the furnace. Proudman’s voice almost startled me out of my skin.

  “Anyone there?” he demanded. I heard Ramon answer: “I’m here. Come on up.”

  So Proudman groped his way along the wall and climbed the brick steps to the platform that was up above the crucible. I could see them both then — shadows against reflected hell-glow, Ramon naked to the waist and Proudman looking startled, and then pugnacious, as he stared and recognized him. There were no preliminaries.

  “Dorothy is dead. She killed herself on your account,” said Ramon. “Have you anything to say?”

  “Why? Have you any rights in the matter?” Proudman answered. “What’s this? A trap?”

  “It’s doom for one of us,” said Ramon. “In a sense I’m as guilty as you are. I ought to have known you’re a swine, and I ought to have warned her. That’s why I give you an even break. It’s you, or me, or both of us. Are you ready?”

  Proudman was no believer in even breaks. He drew an automatic. Ramon’s fist — I heard, I didn’t see it — struck him like a pole-axe and he fired once as he toppled sideways — sprawling — splash into the liquid metal.

  I can’t describe it. I can see it now with my eyes open. It was indescribable. The metal leaped up like a mass of liquid flame. It crackled and exploded. All the remaining cartridges in Proudman’s automatic burst and sent sprays of the metal squirting up like rockets. Why Ramon wasn’t splashed to death, I don’t know. Nothing touched him. He stood for a moment outlined like a crimson devil in the glare, and I thought he intended to jump in. But the metal suddenly grew quiet. Ramon seized a hammer and beat furiously on a gong he kept up there for summoning the foundry gang, and they came running from their quarters nearby — half-asleep yet, crowding through the door into the passage. Some of them bumped into me. Not knowing me from Adam, and not recognizing me in the weird gloom, those swore afterwards that they had bumped into Proudman, whom they did know, and had seen him leave the foundry a few moments before the pouring of the metal. So much for circumstantial evidence.

  Suddenly Ramon shouted “Pour!” in English, and I waited long enough to see the stream of white-hot metal flow into the mould prepared for it. I don’t know why I should be fool enough to expect to see bones and buttons. Proudman’s body and that bell wer
e one inseparable substance, mixed forever; and I don’t know or care where his soul went, supposing he had one.

  I walked to the beastly dâk-bungalow near the rail-way station and turned in, not to sleep, I can assure you. Two days passed before there was a hue and cry for Proudman. His servants had not thought much of his absence; he was in the habit of disappearing for days at a time on secret business and I don’t know why they reported him missing as soon as they did. He was traced to the foundry; but as I told you already, the men swore they had seen him leave the place. No one asked me any questions. Ramon was patiently watching the cooling process, using methods of his own to keep the casting from cooling too quickly. A policeman asked him whether he had noticed Proudman.

  “Cast a bell like this, and what else would you notice?” he retorted. “Ask the men. Search if you want to. I’m busy.”

  That was all that happened, as far as I know, that concerned us. Someone told a wild tale about Proudman being seen in a dangerous dive in Benares. The search for him widened and widened in rings until it died of inanition. It was several weeks before the bell was ready to be moved and hung in place. I travelled meanwhile. Then I went with Ramon to the ceremony when the bell was dedicated and we sat together on a ghat beside the river, at sunset, waiting for the sun’s red rim to dip below the skyline. We were silent until the bell’s voice greeted darkness — sudden — awe-inspiring.

  There were thousands of people bathing in the Ganges and the lights of funeral pyres glowed in the dusk like rubies.

  “Kabadar! Kabadar! Kabadar!”

  “Perfect!” said Ramon. “Perfect!”

  “Was it?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said after a pause. “You know it wasn’t.”

  “Do as you like,” I said, “but take the conse-quences!”

  “Yes,” he answered, “there are always conse-quences. Doom’s a strange thing.”

  I laughed at that. I don’t believe in doom or destiny. I know too much philosophy to take much stock in human guesses about right and wrong; and I have seen too many so-called just men suffer, and too many blackguards enjoy their goods, to believe in what men call a higher law. Ramon’s phrase gave me a handle to seize and I laid hold. I rated him, ridiculed, ragged him mercilessly — stung him till he struck back. For a while I even brought his sense of humour to the surface and his eyes lost something of their baffle danger. I persuaded him to come with me to England. And in England I persuaded him to take a course in metallurgy.