Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

“Wouldn’t want to.”

  They strode along so fast that Burberton had difficulty in keeping up. Ommony went ahead through the tangled undergrowth with the gait and tirelessness of a shrimp-catcher in the surf, and the naked, mud-matted devil trotted behind, silent and tireless in his element. But the pace told on Burberton.

  “How do you keep yourself from growing crazy here?” he asked, hoping to gain time by conversation.

  “By thinking of the forest. Thought I would go crazy when I first came. Thought of myself — think of the forest now — keep sane.”

  A minute later Ommony noticed his heavy breathing and slowed down. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “that was stupid of me — I forgot.”

  They emerged soon into a clearing, where a wood-and-mud brick bungalow stood framed in a garden, with a fence around it. There were native servants busied about the place, and on the small veranda a grizzled old man waited, who salaamed and smiled at sight of them. He looked like the Peace-God’s older brother.

  “How often do you see a white man here?”

  “Hardly ever. Have a drink,” suggested Ommony.

  The old man had arranged the chairs for them on the veranda, and they sat down facing each other. Burberton studied his host at length, but Ommony seemed to have been satisfied with half a glance. If he looked at Burberton at all it was sideways — not slyly, but as a jungle denizen that watches even while it rests.

  “Know Hamilton Howe at all well?” asked Burberton, bursting to speak, but at a loss for subjects.

  “Yes. Had him here a month — five — six years ago. Cured him.”

  “Of what?”

  “Not listening.”

  Burberton stared hard, between sips at a long cool drink. It dawned on him that Ommony was always listening.

  “What do you find to listen to?”

  “The forest. Stay on and I’ll show you.”

  A string of naked, lean savages emerged into the clearing, bearing Burberton’s luggage on their heads. No one spoke to them, but they filed round behind the bungalow and stowed it all somewhere; Burberton could hear the thud as the packages were lowered to the floor.

  “You seem to have good servants?” he volunteered.

  “They and the forest taught me nearly all I know. They were bad at first — but I learned. Now there are none better anywhere.”

  They kept silence then until the sun went down with Indian suddenness and the black night glowed with moving phosphorescent dots. A little breeze sprang up and the ghostly trees responded to it until the night was full of silence rendered audible, and Burberton thought that the drums of his ears would burst.

  “Dinner-time,” said Ommony, so suddenly that Burberton was startled. “You’ll find a bath all ready in your room.”

  He found more than a bath waiting. His dress-clothes were unpacked and laid out for him on the bed.

  “Is Ommony sahib married, then?” he asked the grizzled servant. The old man did not understand.

  “Memsahib hai?”

  The old man shook his head.

  So he dressed himself, stiff shirt, white-silk waistcoat, patent-leather shoes — and laughed at his reflection in the glass. He suspected that the whole thing was a mistake on the old servant’s part, and that Ommony — in khaki, with his sleeves rolled up — would laugh at him. The laughter, he thought, might serve to break the dreadful silence.

  But he found Ommony waiting for him at a snow-white dinner table, in a suit that lacked a dozen years of fashion but in a shirt that was immaculate.

  “Do you always dress for dinner?”

  “Of course,” said Ommony. The question seemed superfluous.

  It was a six-course dinner, beautifully served, and not hurried over. Ommony appeared to be astonishingly well-informed, and said nothing of his forest. Burberton had expected to be bored with interminable details about woodcraft and other matters of indifference. Gradually Ommony drew Burberton on to talking of America, and then he listened — keeping the monologue going by a deftly inserted question here and there.

  “Up at dawn,” Ommony said at last, in a momentary pause. ‘‘Better go to bed.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Midnight.”

  Norman Burberton stared harder now than ever. He — the blase, money-weary cynic — had talked, and had been interested in his own talk, for four long hours on end. And on the table between them stood a bottle of Madeira still half full. This was wizardry.

  “I was thinking of leaving in the morning,” he said. “I just looked in on you because I promised Howe I would—”

  “Howe wrote me. I answered him. I promised him I’d keep you.”

  “I—”

  “Try one more day — then answer.”

  “But—”

  “You’re all right — just as he was. You don’t drink — you don’t boast — you’re intelligent — stay on — you’ll be glad afterward.”

  “I’d go crazy.”

  “Try a day of it — two days — before you answer. I’ll show you things you never dreamt of.”

  They had gone out to the veranda, and Ommony had moved himself away from the light that streamed through the open door; his voice came like a ghost’s from the black darkness.

  “Don’t be afraid. All that—” Burberton could not see him, but he knew as well as he knew that it was dark that Ommony was stretching out his hand toward the forest— “will heal you; it won’t hurt you.”

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” said Burberton.

  “Then stay.”

  “I see what you mean. You don’t see a white man very often — you’re lonely — that’s it?”

  “Stay for that reason if you like.”

  So, with a little glow of virtue undermining his feeling of self-sacrifice, Burberton agreed to stay on for a day or two. He did it a little condescendingly and very grudgingly; and because of the darkness he failed to see the smile on Ommony’s firm, weather-beaten face.

  § IV.

  BURBERTON never remembered afterward all the details of the month that followed. They were like a dream, between the evening of his former life and the morning of his reawakening. Ommony — lone-handed in responsibility — ruled, watched, and listened to eight hundred square miles of forest; he was part of it, as were the animals he knew, and the naked forest-helpers who seemed to understand his thoughts; and he made his guest free of all of it.

  He said little at any time, but he showed untiringly; and he taught Burberton the secret of the silences, that are never silent when one listens to them. And Burberton stayed condescendingly (at first) — revolted (that was on the third day) — stayed on a little longer out of curiosity — stayed yet another week because the fancy seized him, and then — threw his heart into the thing and stayed.

  Week after week they rode together under rioting waves of branches that filtered the fierce sun grudgingly through a wonder-mesh of green; or galloped boot-to-boot down twenty-mile-long glades, hand-hewn and goat-grazed to keep the fires in check. They watched the sambur feeding, nose upwind, and came on the wild pig rooting in the clearings. The whole jungle and its occupants were an open book to Ommony, and he showed it all until the feel of it crept under Burberton’s skin.

  Once, three weeks after Burberton’s arrival, when they had breasted a rock-and-jungle rise by a roaring waterfall, Ommony said suddenly, “I’ll show you Ali Beg;” and they dismounted and crept cautiously between the boulders and lay side by side, peering through the jungle-grass.

  “What’s Ali Beg?”

  “Look.”

  Careless in his strength, sun-bathed in a rock-strewn clearing, newly gorged, a tiger lay and licked himself, and Burberton, with held breath, watched him — strangely enough, without a white man’s lust to kill. Then Ommony stood up head and shoulders above the grass and whistled; and fifty yards away the brute leaped to his feet and faced him, his tail swaying gently from side to side, and his huge fangs showing.

  Ommony smiled back. H
e had no rifle in his hands. “No goats, Ali Beg!” he warned in a level voice. “Remember — leave the goats alone!”

  At the sound of his voice the great, sleek brute turned and strode away, swaggering, with his weight hung down between his shoulder-blades, and not once looking back.

  “He’s past his prime,” said Ommony. “He’s getting lazy. Next he’ll get stiff. Then he’ll find goats easier than sambur. Then—”

  He looked down, and almost from between his feet a naked rifle-bearer rose. But it was always that way; men seemed to crop up from the jungle to obey his thoughts.

  “Almost seemed as if the tiger understood you,” said Burberton.

  “He understands that I rule this jungle, and I understand him. That’s enough. There are five like him in the forest, and they mayn’t kill goats or men — that’s all.”

  He sat down and signed to the boy to bring the tiffin basket; he almost never gave a spoken order, but he absolutely never went unwaited on.

  “A hundred years ago there was no forest here — nothing but a wilderness and an occasional clump of trees. It’s grown twenty-five per cent, in my time.”

  “Feels like your forest, I suppose?”

  “No. Did at first. Now I belong to it — that’s the secret. I didn’t know anything until I let the forest take hold of me. It gave me all that’s worth having — peace — strength — understanding — just as soon as I left off hating it and put out all I had. You’ve got to listen to it — listen all the time; then, after a while the forest tells you, and you can use your knowledge on the forest and be happy.”

  “I don’t doubt anything you say — but what’s the use? What’s the end you’re aiming for?”

  “Ask God and the Government! The villagers think it’s all to graze their goats in, and for fuel and building poles. Our friend, Ali Beg, imagines it’s his hunting ground.

  These jungle-wallahs — who know it all and tell me all they know — think I own the forest. And I know I’m its servant. Did it ever strike you that in some ways you’re like Ali Beg?”

  “How d’you mean?”

  But Ommony was not given to repeating things.

  Night after night they dined in semi-regal state, dressed as sahibs, lest the forest take a too strong hold on them and cause them to forget their birthright. And from dawn to dark they rode or strode through growing jungle, inspecting fire-lanes, attending to the planting of the naked places, and seeing that the goats were kept within their grazing limits.

  “You sec, don’t you?” said Ommony one afternoon, in one of his rare bursts of speech. “You can’t stop the forest growing. You can swear at it, and hate it, but it grows. Care for it, love it, stamp the fires out, guard it, and it grows better. But you must listen — always listen!”

  “Why should I listen? I’m not going to start a forest.”

  “I know you’re not. You’re going back into the outside world in three days’ time. Don’t go like Ali Beg. Listen and remember!”

  “What’s Ali Beg been doing?”

  “Killed three goats a little after dawn — one for food, and two out of sheer wantonness.”

  Some strange conceit seemed to tickle Ommony, for he chuckled to himself. “You shall kill Ali Beg — you alone.” he smiled; and after that he was silent until dinnertime. Before dinner, though, he gave certain orders to the hangers-on who clustered to the rearward of his bungalow.

  He was silent all through dinner, even for Ommony, who had learned to love and listen to the silences, and as usual it was Burberton who broke the spell at last.

  “I like you, Ommony,” he said; and it was the first time in his life that he had ever said that to a man. “I’d like to see more of you, and you’ve made me keen on forestry. If you’ll come to America, I’ll buy you a forest — a big one — and put you in charge of it, and pay you five times over what you’re getting now.”

  “I’ll tell you a little story,” answered Ommony. “Listen. Once a trading company that happened to be English came to India, and won the country by the sword. Notice the parallel: once a man became a millionaire by seizing opportunity. If you go deep down to the root of things you’ll find it hard to justify cither of them. Well — the company grew fat and lazy, and talked about ‘inalienable rights.’ The country groaned, and was impoverished; the company grumbled at the selfishness of native India. Then the country mutinied. You know the history. The company was spewed out and extinguished. It left the forests bare and the people starving. It had never listened. Then England came and did listen; and look at India now.”

  “But you don’t imagine, do you, that your Government is popular among the inhabitants? Why — they’d kick you all out to-morrow if they dared begin!”

  “If we left India to-morrow do you suppose there’d be a forest here in ten years’ time — or an acre under irrigation? If some of your rich men — the men who work, I mean — the men who listen and then give out what they’ve learned — were put out of business — stripped — what d’you suppose would happen? India used to be a hunting ground — for money; then it became a burden — then a responsibility, and now — man alive, it’s fun! It’s like a mother with her child; we feed it — it drains our lifeblood — it isn’t grateful — but wc get back what nothing else can give us.”

  “I don’t quite see the parallel, as you call it. I haven’t been spewed out.”

  “No? I wish you could see yourself as you were a month ago! You were Ali Beg. Go back and give.”

  “You mean give money?”

  “No, you idiot! Give yourself.”

  LONG before dawn next morning fifty or more naked jungle-coolies scattered in a semicircle through the forest; and as day broke, when the opalescent mist was lifting and the leaves were taking on a first faint glow of gold, Burberton stood alone in a clearing, breathing the cool morning air.

  There came a crashing through the undergrowth. The fifty jungle-men were as silent as the tread of Nemesis; but the great striped brute they dodged and worried on from tree to tree was angry, and a tiger can be as silent as a snake or as noisy as a buffalo, just as the fancy seizes him. Ali Beg chose to give the jungle notice of his coming.

  There came a pause — silence — and another crash. Then — head and shoulders protruding through the undergrowth — the tiger came to a stand and glared, twenty yards away. There was a sound behind him — the breaking of a twig — no more, but notice of the closing in. He glanced behind him; there were fifty behind him he could not see, and one in front he could; so he came with a rush and a spring — twelve feet in the air — a flashing, furious yellow streak, that tore the wind, white-fanged, claw-tipped, and snarling. And Burberton dropped him as he came, with a straight, clean shot, up and under, that tore through the breast and backbone. He fell two yards away.

  “Bass!” said Ommony — the word that through the East means “Enough. That ends it. It is finished.”

  “I’d no idea that you were near me!”

  “No? Did you think I’d leave you to the mercy of a driven tiger? That was a good shot. Your nerve’s in fine condition; but it might not have been. I’ve had him covered all the way from where they flushed him. You should have fired when he first showed — I all but wiped your eye for you.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. Glad he fell to me.”

  “Don’t let his ghost haunt you, that’s all.”

  “I’d like to stay on and get another one.”

  “No. One Ali Beg’s enough for any man. Go now. Get back to the place where you belong. I belong here, and you don’t. Pack up your trunks and go.”

  “Won’t you change your mind and come with me?”

  “I? I’d no more leave my world until my time’s up than you’ll care to leave yours two years from now. Go back and remember what I told you — listen, and then give.”

  § V.

  THE Secretary of State in India — gray-haired from forty years of worry — did tell a few friends of the visit paid to him by Burberton; but
they were chosen friends, and the secret was well kept.

  He offered millions upon millions. He said: “Here I am, and I’m ready. You need money — it’s notorious, and I’ve got money; put me to work, and you can have the use of all of it!” But the Secretary shook his head.

  “What we need is men,” he answered.

  “But — millions — think what you — what wc could do with millions!”

  “We could get millions in a week. We can borrow them at three per cent. We could get a tenth of what you offer from almost any Maharajah, if we’d so much as add one gun to his salute. We need the men to use the money and you can’t buy them. If you want to give money there’s a famine relief fund open — there are several universities in need of endowment — the trustees would be very grateful.”

  “Oh, I could do all that at home if I cared to. I want to work.”

  “Can’t you work at home?”

  “But why not here, if you need men?”

  The Secretary shook his head. “We need men whose hearts are in it permanently,” he answered. “We have to train them, and they have to start at the very beginning. You’d never do. Try your own country.”

  But afterward when he told the story to his friends, his verdict was: “He’ll go a long way, that boy will. He’s got the idea.” And the consensus of opinion was with him.

  THE other end of the story is better known — how Burberton went back to America, and what he has done there since. Margaret Brunton said that she had loved him all the time, and nobody ever doubted her. He met her at a dance, one week after his return, and no one was surprised when their engagement was announced fourteen days later. But she, and he, both kept the secret of exactly how it happened.

  “What will be your next amusement?” she had asked him, after a conversation in between two dances.

  “Next? I’m going to make this country hum! I’m going to make it sit up and take notice! The old dad’s business will do all right to start with, but that’s going to be child’s play to what follows. I’m going to pick good men and turn ’em loose to do things — make things — create things — oh, you watch! I’m going to live!”

  “And are vou going to marrv me first?” she asked. “Or—”