Always Celia went with him.
Sometimes, toward late afternoon, they still hunted Ole Hawg, sometimes Scipio brought out their horses and the melancholy-jowled hounds, and they galloped till sunset with the optimistic negro intent upon jumping the big, fierce old boar from his lurking place in hammock or cypress tangle.
But Ole Hawg remained invisible; and Celia began to believe that the murderous old reprobate had gone clean off, when, one afternoon as she was watching Gray climbing among the lower branches of a slender magnolia tree, something unusual caught her eye.
It seemed to be stirring, too; and after a moment she rose and walked forward through the woods, her grey eyes fixed on the dark and distant mass which certainly stirred at intervals yet did not move from the place where it lay.
A moment later she comprehended: a dead deer lay there, dreadfully mutilated and slashed by the villainous fury of a boar; and on the motionless carcass sat a dozen gorged vultures, too logy to fly or to do more than ruffle their unclean plumage and sidle heavily from the dead flesh they perched upon.
And at first she thought the strong rank odour in the air was from the horrid scene before her; but something drew her gaze to the left, where soft ground sloped to a branch that ran dimpling and sparkling over silvery sands out of a black and evil bog set with cypress and palmetto.
And there, almost under her feet, was the big, deep, and perfectly fresh hoofprint of Ole Hawg.
Nobody could mistake it. No other pig in the forest had such a hoof.
Silently she inspected it; water still oozed into it. Ole Hawg must have passed like a phantom. Huge, crafty, noiseless, the big boar had stolen about his murderous business with all the horrid cunning of the born assassin. To catch a deer he must have been very still about it.
And now, like other assassins, he had come back to the scene of his villainy.
Cautious, holding her breath, scarcely moving, Celia’s intent gaze searched the vicinity of the bog into which the great hoof imprints led.
Her rifle stood against a tree back there among the magnolias, where Gray was fussing about. Curiosity, fear lest Ole Hawg, in ambush somewhere, might at that very instant be watching her out of his little red and evil eyes, and that he might skulk silently away unless she started for him instantly, left her standing stock still and fairly rigid with excitement.
The next instant she had whipped the heavy revolver from her hip holster, and, half crouching, her grey eyes agleam, she took her first step toward the swamp, cautious, alert, noiseless, dainty as a velvet-footed panther gliding to its kill.
Gray, prowling from branch to branch amid the glossy foliage of his tree, had not missed her. In fact, he was far too intent on what he was doing to heed anything or anybody else.
What had happened — and so suddenly and quickly that it was all over before he could see clearly — was this: in his movement among the branches of the magnolia tree, he had disturbed something that had darted out into the sunshine, circled erratically like a disconcerted chimney swift in a lamp-lit room, and, before he could see whether it was really a bird, had fluttered back into the foliage again.
Dazed by the abruptness of the episode, almost paralyzed by what he surmised, he clung to the tree trunk to collect his ideas and steady his nerves.
For whether or not he was now the victim of a lively imagination, he did not know, but it had certainly seemed to him that his brief glimpse of the swallowlike, fluttering thing had revealed a flash of gorgeous, iridescent colour.
And there was no bird of that size which wore such metallic colours in the entire state of Florida.
He was trembling a little when he drew the big cyanide jar from his pocket, and, moving very cautiously, edged his way toward the limb of the tree where the creature had disappeared among the leaves.
Over every inch of the visible bark his eyes travelled, over patches of sunlit lichen and shadowy moss. Gingerly he gazed at the under side of the big, glossy leaves, searched patiently every crotch, every branch scar.
He had laid one hand on the main trunk, and was manœuvering noiselessly for a foothold to support him so that he might examine the other side of the trunk.
And suddenly he saw it!
Breath left him instantly; he froze where he stood, his fascinated dilated eyes fixed upon a soft dusty pyramid of living jewels — a big, downy, tent-like mass sticking to the bark.
Gold, green, violet, gleamed the slanting, burnished wings; the heavy antennae lay close to the costal margin. Two crimson and daintily-furred feet clung to the bark, flanking the head; the gemmed eyes glowed and pulsated with hidden fire.
And Gray, now icy cool and master of himself, uncorked his wide-mouthed cyanide jar. Far away, somewhere, he heard the racket of pistol shots. They meant nothing to him.
“Jim!”
In his fiercely intent and preoccupied brain a far cry was echoing. That, also, for a moment, meant nothing to him.
“Jim! Come to me!”
Suddenly he realized that it was Celia.
There are seconds so long that the agony of hesitation stretches them instantly into years. One of these was upon Gray. It was only a single second, but in it he had lived and died and learned a knowledge concerning mysteries that he had never dreamed of.
The second was not sped when he dropped from the tree: another second began as he snatched her rifle and started, throwing in a cartridge as he ran. And as he ran the jewelled moth darted from the tree and flashed away before him, deep into the uncharted forest.
“On the way!” he shouted to her, encouragingly. “On the way!” His voice choked as the fierce, snarling roar of a wounded boar broke out from the swamp ahead.
Straight toward the crashing and splashing he ran with death in his heart, for she had not answered his cry, and her shots had ceased.
Black vultures hobbled from their horrible feast, too crippled with plethora to fly; he sprang across the branch, swung from one cypress “knee” to the next, the dreadful, screaming roar of the boar almost deafening him.
Then he saw Celia, cornered, clinging to a sapling in the bog.
She was ashy white, but apparently cool enough, and she was looking all around her for some chance to escape that huge, crashing, splashing horror that floundered straight at her, screaming, bloody, and on murder bent.
Suddenly she caught sight of Gray.
“Turn him, Jim!” she called in a clear, steady voice. “Aim at his head! Quick, please!”
With iron desperation he checked his heavy, irregular breathing, forced his shaking hand to a second’s rigidity, and fired.
An awful scream burst from the boar as he stumbled, fell flat, struggled to his feet, and, roaring, tore blindly past the shrinking girl, headlong into the hammock.
Twice he crashed into trees, painting the ripping scars his tusks left with thickly dripping scarlet. And after him ran Gray, on murder bent in his turn, fiercely intent on this creature’s final destruction.
But Ole Hawg rushed on; only the tossing of the high palmetto scrub betrayed his course now, for he ran silently over the moist mast and sand, far outstripping Gray.
And now Ole Hawg had passed beyond earshot; the scrub no longer betrayed his progress; the clattering palmetto fronds were silent.
Celia, speeding swiftly, came abreast of Gray, all flushed and tremulous with stammered gratitude; and Gray turned and caught her fiercely in his arms.
She looked into his frightened face, without expression; but when he kissed her the tears rushed to her eyes.
“Darling—” he whispered, “Oh, God, what a moment for me!”
She was crying when her arms encircled his neck.
“I — I didn’t know I loved you,” she sobbed; “I didn’t know that! Oh, Jim — Jim! I never understood what it was — I never knew that I have been loving you all these wonderful and blessed days! — I never knew it — I never knew.”
He could not seem to let her go from his arms, so terrible had been the fear within him. An
d she endured it very well, considering what a novice she was.
“Darling,” she said happily, drying her eyes, “what were you doing when you heard me cry out for you?”
“Nothing.... Hunting around in the tree for the Iris Sphinx.”
“You saw nothing, of course?”
“No,” he said, deliberately.
Far to the southward galloped Ole Hawg, straight for Iris Creek, meaning to put this barrier between him and the wrath he had somehow let loose upon his own crafty and murderous self.
And it might have come to pass, and Ole Hawg might have healed him of his wounds in some remote and reedy Avalon and lived to do more murder had he not stopped in midstream to tusk and souse and drink.
Then, silently as a vast shadow, something stirred in the channel, detached itself, floated upward, drifted, nearer, nearer.
And suddenly Ole Hawg plunged forward, fell, bucketed, scrambled, thrashed wildly, shrieked as he had never shrieked before.
But the crocodile had him.
There are few crocodiles in Florida — some in Biscayne Bay and near there.
This was one of them.
It did not help Ole Hawg to know that a rather rare reptile had him fast. Perhaps it might have amused his grim and grisly ghost to watch the crocodile after it was all over. Ole Hawg was too much for him. He pulled him under about a hundred times. But it was no good.
And ultimately Ole Hawg floated triumphantly off down Iris Creek until he stranded on a mud bar, where the buzzards and black vultures ultimately made of him a heap of snow-white teeth and bones.
And little by little the soft brown silt covered the remaining fragments of Ole Hawg.
Celia and Gray came wandering back to the house toward sunset. For a few moments they sat on the veranda rail in silence; and the Doctor was too absorbed to notice them. Presently he glanced up. Celia’s hand had dropped into Gray’s, and her eyes were on her lover’s.
“Oh,” said the Doctor; “is that the case?”
“Yes, dear,” said the girl, delicately flushing.
The Doctor inspected them both for a moment without saying anything. Then he bent over his collecting boxes with a grunt:
“I hope,” he said, “that you and your young man will spend a month or two here every winter.”
“If you will spend a month or two North with us every summer,” said Gray, laughing.
“Maybe—”
For a little while it seemed as though he had forgotten them; but when Celia leaned back, letting her lovely childlike head rest on Gray’s shoulder, the Doctor glanced up with irony in his eye:
“Gray,” he said blandly, “is that the only specimen you’re taking North with you?”
“The only one, Doctor; and the rarest in all the world.”
“I thought you’d say something of that sort. It’s very pretty, too. But how about the Sphinx Iris — Xylophanes iris — the great jewelled Sphinx?”
Gray sat silently caressing the soft little hand that lay in his.
“You still believe in it?” demanded her father.
“Yes.”
“But you haven’t seen any yet, have you?”
“No,” said Gray, quietly.
Celia, moved by some subtle instinct, turned her head on his shoulder and lifted her clear, grey eyes to her lover’s. He smiled at her. And, reassured, she smiled back against his arm with a happy sigh.
The world was going very well for Celia. And for Gray it was going very, very well.
THE REAL THING
AS for marrying, he would not until he had found the real thing. He was still looking for it, not very hopefully.
To hope is an art. Some call it patience. The words, however, are not always synonyms. For example, a great many people said that they hoped young Brown would behave himself some day: but they had no patience with him. Few had. He left Harvard by special invitation. Fortunately he had no parents and only a distant relative or two to disgrace. So he backed a musical comedy for six months, and acquired his first knowledge born of experience.
The club he inhabited did him no good. Few clubs do anybody any good.
Brown’s devotion to horses, the drama, automobiles, and games of chance was checked and held in bounds only by an emotionless trust company. And young Brown, whose income had done about all it could to him except kill him, argued in vain with the trust officer and the directors of that sordid corporation.
But it was useless for him to paint pictures of his own moral regeneration in vivid colours. Trusts have no sentimental imagination. And Brown’s principal not only remained intact, but half his income continued to be withheld and set aside for investment, to swell the already disgusting proportions of his principal. It was a sickening situation. The musical comedy blew up.
And in the face of this cruel blow at Art, Brown uttered a terrible threat, to which the trust company paid no attention whatever, hoping that, by ignoring it, Brown might possibly make good his threat. Which was that he meant to go into business and make his own living and do what he pleased with the income derived from that same business, and become once more a patron of the Fine Arts and of Sport.
Meanwhile, people continued to lose patience with Brown and hope he’d be a better man some day.
For a week he sulked in the club window, hat very much on the back of his head, caressing his chin with the knob of his walking stick, and swallowing high ones at intervals.
The world was certainly leagued against him. Also, everybody bored him. The contrary, too, was the case, and he began to be angrily aware of it.
So he made up his cub mind to disappear. Then they’d be sorry! He pictured to himself the splash in the social puddle when he dived and did not come up again. There would be uneasiness in Manhattan Town, then inquiry, then alarm, then regret — bitter, unavailing regret for the brilliant young scion of a brilliant race, unappreciated by society when society had him in her skinny, diamond-loaded arms, mourned for when he hopped out of that bony embrace into, perhaps, the Ewigkeit!
But Brown really had no idea of making away with himself, only of making a way for himself.
He was very much irritated at something or other. He’d fix it — whatever it was that irritated him!
He began his vengeance by arranging to deprive all human society of himself, and to that end he abruptly purchased several thousand acres in Florida, adjacent to the vigorous and thriving young town of Sapadillo, Inca County. He did things that way.
Sapadillo consisted of a water tower and a siding, and one freight car permanently rusted to the rails. Brown did not know it.
Fortunately for him, this time, he acted not only on impulse, but with unusual forethought. He bought and shipped a large, expensive, portable bungalow, a carload of gardening tools, an arsenal of firearms, and sufficient furniture to embellish a state capitol and leave a satisfying margin for honest graft. Further, he shipped a ton or two of provisions, house linen, and crockery; and he advertised for a housekeeper not over fifty years of age, and secured one without any bother to himself, through the good offices of an employment agency. Also, he sent a gang of men down to Sapadillo to erect said bungalow over a cemented cellar, install furniture, lock up, and bring the key to him.
The foreman of the gang returned from Florida six weeks later and delivered the keys to Brown. His skin was peeling and he bore scars upon his visage.
“Well, what does the town look like?” inquired Brown cordially, pocketing the keys and slipping him a cheque.
“Maybe,” said the foreman, “I’m nearsighted. I didn’t see no town.”
“Didn’t you see anything?”
“Well, I seen a hell’s mint o’ snakes,” drawled the foreman. “Also several buzzards, pa’ms, an’ niggers.” He accepted a cigar from Brown and placed it behind one generous and sun-blistered ear.
“‘T’s all right if you like it. I once knowed a man what et tripe and parsnips from choice,” he remarked thoughtfully.
“The
advertisement,” insisted Brown, “speaks of Sapadillo as a vigorous young town.”
“Does it? Well, it listens good. But, Mr. Brown, Pm that glad to be back I’d hate to tell you what I’m fixin’ to do to this here hamlet. No bustlin’ an’ vigorous towns for me! No, sir! This quiet little turnpike is good enough for me. Likewise, the simple roadside tavern where I’m a-plannin’ to get mine tonight.... Well, be good.... An’ God help you!”
“Anyway,” thought Brown, “it’s isolation I’m looking for. And I might as well go after it now.”
His cruel resolve to vanish without informing his friends of his intentions, or even mitigating their certain desolation by making any adieux, was carried out with merciless disregard for anybody’s feelings.
And the chances were that he’d have gone without a word to anybody in Gotham had he not, in the station, run across a little girl who had decorated the show he had so persistently and disastrously backed.
She was a perfectly commonplace little thing, slim, white-faced, with violet eyes, ruddy hair, and a voice scarcely noisy enough for a Broadway show.
She had been on the point of entering the Verbena Limited when he noticed her.
“Why, how do you do!” he exclaimed — the more cordially because he had forgotten her name. They shook hands and stepped back upon the train platform for a moment to exchange a word or two of Broadway gossip concerning the late lamented show, the fate of people in the cast, so violently precipitated upon their uppers, and so forth and so on — all the gay, animated, careless, quick-fire small talk which explodes, when two of that profession meet to compare experiences with Destiny.
“And you?” he asked pleasantly. “Why are you?” going South?”
“I had nothing to do here and no money. I had to go.”
“Wouldn’t anybody give you a job?”
“No.”
“Not even in a No. 6 company?”
“You know how it is. They all promised to keep me in mind. I went to every one of them. It was the last call for dinner, and no dinner in sight. So I took what was offered, and I’m on my way there.”
“Where?”
“South, somewhere. A man advertised; I replied; he said, ‘All right, go ahead, and I’ll see you later.’ So I’m going.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1199