of torture was brought to a perfection among them that would have made
the persecutors of the Inquisition turn green with envy. It was refined
torture, such as one would not expect to see save among those who
possessed mental powers equal to their cruelty. No decapitations, no
stranglings, among these delicate fiends, I can assure you; nor were
they satisfied with a day's torment, that should culminate in death.
Captives were kept for weeks, frequently for months: the wounds made by
one day's torture were dressed at night, and stimulating drink given to
keep up the strength, that they might endure for a longer period. It was
the custom to deliver prisoners or offenders to the family of the chief
or king for the first day's torment; then down through the various
nobles, or what corresponded to the aristocracy (and I assure you the
class distinctions were as closely drawn as in May-Fair), until, if the
unfortunate possessed a fine physique, it was not unusual for almost
every family in the tribe to have had a day's amusement with him; and it
was considered a point of honor not to actually take life, but rather
let it spend itself to the last drop, in agonies undreamed of among what
we call the civilized, while to invent some new and horrible form of
torture conferred an honor upon the discoverer such as we give men who
have made some wonderful advance in art or science.
"'How could I endure such sights?' Oh! well, one gets hardened to
anything, you know, and to tell the truth, I was in search of a new
sensation, and I found it. I watched with as much fascination as the
savages--no, more--for it was new to me and old to them. Oh! come,
Lewis, you needn't draw off your chair; and that reproving,
Sunday-school expression is rather refreshing from a man who upholds
vivisection. I tell you candidly that there is nothing on earth
comparable to the fearful, curious combination of pleasure and horror
with which one watches torture one is powerless to stop. It is morbid,
and probably loathsome. No. It is not morbid, after all; it is natural,
and not a diseased state of mind. Have you never seen a sweet little
child, with a face like an angel, pull the wings from a butterfly, or
half kill a pet animal, and laugh joyfully when it writhed about? I
have. The natural man loves bloodshed, and loves to hurt men and
creatures. It is bred in the bone with all of us, only, as far as the
body is concerned, this love is an almost impotent factor in modern
civilization, for we have deified the soul and intellect to such an
extent, that it is them we seek to goad and wound, when the lust of
cruelty oppresses us, since they have grown to be considered the more
important part; and we know, too, that the embittered soul avenges
itself upon its own body, so that we strike the subtler blow. What we
call teasing, is the most diluted form of the appetite. Well, this is
wide of the mark, I suppose. At any rate, my dusky friends, presumably
having no sensitive souls to attack, did their very best with their
enemies' bodies, and as I was saying, theirs was no mean accomplishment
in that line.
"I am not going to wound your susceptibilities by describing some of the
functions which I have witnessed under that blazing sun. I will only
tell you that during one especial occasion of rejoicing, a feast was
given after a victory over a neighboring tribe, when the bound captives
were piled together in black, shining heaps, that had a constant
vermicular movement, each human pile guarded by a soldier. The chief at
whose right hand I sat, being filled with joy, as well as rather too
much drink, began boasting to me of the glories of his tribe, of his
possessions, of the valor of his warriors, and above all of the great
wisdom and learning of his medicine-man, who was beyond all wizards, and
upon whom witchcraft was powerless, and who prepared a poison for such
of the chief's enemies as it was not expedient to openly destroy; and
this poison, he explained to me, was of a secret and mysterious nature,
and unknown to any other tribe.
"My curiosity was somewhat aroused, and I questioned him, whereupon he
told me that the drug, being tasteless, was given in food or drink, and
that the victim was seized with a terrible and immeasurable sadness and
depth of despair, in which life appeared too horrible to endure, and
which the unfortunate always ended by seizing a weapon of some sort and
killing himself; and the chief, being of an inquiring mind, had caused
the poison to be administered to a man who was carefully guarded and
allowed no weapon.
"'And what did he do?' I queried, for the chief assured me that the drug
itself did not produce death, but only caused an irresistible desire for
it.
"The chief did not reply in words, but with a meaning smile, pointed to
a vein on his black wrist, and set his sharp, pointed teeth against it,
in a way that was a reply.
"I was anxious to see for myself, naturally, suspecting some
hocus-pocus, so I ventured to be respectfully dubious.
"The chief was in an amiable mood; he bade me visit his tent with my
servant at moon-rise, and he would prove that this was no lie, but the
truth.
"When we went out, it was about eleven o'clock, and the surrounding
jungle was full of the horrible noises of an African night; the wail of
the small lemur, that sounds like the death-moan of a child; the more
distant roar of the lion in the black depths of the forest, too thick
for the moonlight to ever penetrate; the giant trees of the bombax
around the encampment, wreathed with llianes and parasitical poison
vines that cast fantastic shadows on the ground, white with the
perfectly white moonlight of the tropics, that reminds one of the
electric light in its purity of ray and the blackness of the shadows
that contrast with it.
"Noiselessly my black servant and I proceeded to the chief's enclosure.
His slaves permitted us to pass, by his orders, and we found ourselves
in his tent, where he sat in grave silence on a pile of skins, the flare
of a torch revealing fitfully the ugly face of the medicine-man,
crouched with due humility on the earthen floor at his master's feet.
After an exchange of compliments, his highness informed me that he had
ordered one of his female slaves to be brought, that the poison had
already been administered without her knowledge, and he also briefly
remarked, as a proof of his clemency, that it was fortunate for her that
the white man had doubted the drink, as otherwise she would have been
given over to torture, since she had proved unfaithful to her lord, the
chief having bestowed her on one of his sentries, whom she had betrayed
with a soldier.
"As he spoke sounds were heard outside, and, between two guards, the
unfortunate woman was dragged into the tent. It was not lawful for her
to address the chief, so she stood, panting, dishevelled, but silent, in
the yellow torchlight. Her hair was nearly straight and hung in tangles
on her beautiful shoulders; without so much as a girdle for covering,
she felt no shame, but only looked about with rolling, terrified eyes,
the picture of a snared animal.
"No one spoke. She stood swaying from side to side, her beautiful figure
pliant as grass.
"Finally, with a long moan, she threw herself at the chief's feet. He
regarded her impassively, and she gathered herself into a sitting
posture, rocking to and fro, her head buried in her arms."
"And you made no remonstrance?" I said.
"The poison had already been administered, my dear Lewis," said Hilyard.
"And beside, it was in the interest of science. It really seemed a
shame to pick out such a beautiful creature; they are so rare in those
tribes," he continued, regretfully.
"Well, we sat there, perfectly mute, for about half an hour, I suppose.
The chief was almost as impassive as an Englishman. I have seen the
Almehs in Cairo, but I have never seen real poetry of motion--mind more
completely expressed by matter--than that woman's body translating the
anguish she endured; languor turning to deep weariness, weariness to
agony, agony to despair. There was not a note in the gamut of mental
suffering that she left unstruck--that savage, whom one would not guess
possessed a mind. There came a pause. She looked about with a wild,
fixed purpose in her eyes; like a panther she leaped on me with her
sinuous body, in a second she had snatched the knife from my belt, and
had fallen on the earthen floor, her head almost severed from the trunk
by the violence of the blow she had struck at her throat with the keen
blade. The chief made a sign to the guards who had brought her in (one
of whom, by the way, was her deceived husband) to remove the body, and
then he inquired, with some satisfaction, if I believed in the drug.
"I was about to leave on the morrow for the coast, and I begged with all
humility for the formula, or what answered for it, of the medicine-man,
who shook his head decidedly.
"From a corner of the tent he produced a small wicker cage, in the
bottom of which lay coiled a snake of a bright orange yellow color,
whose very triangular head showed it to be an especially venomous
variety of the _naja_ species.
"Muttering a few words and crooning to it after the manner of
snake-charmers, it presently became lethargic, and he seized it by the
neck and poured a few drops from an earthen bottle down its throat; then
he dropped its tawny coils into its cage again, and placed the cage in
front of me. Soon the serpent roused. It glided frantically about its
cage; like a trail of molten gold was its color. Suddenly it coiled upon
itself in a spiral, and _stung itself to death_!
"After the most profound praise and flattery, and the present of a
little glass medicine dropper which I chanced to have with me, and a
small quantity of arsenic, which he tested with very satisfactory
results, on a dog, he gave me a portion of the drug, but I'm sorry to
say I could not prevail on the old scoundrel to give or sell the secret
of its composition," concluded Hilyard regretfully, lifting the phial
with tenderness. "I've tried to analyze it myself, and I sent it to a
celebrated chemist, but the ingredients completely defy classification,
and tests seem powerless to determine anything except that they are
purely vegetable," he said, shaking the liquid angrily, and then rising
to lock it in his cabinet.
I, too, rose with a shudder, half-believing, half-sceptical, yet none
the less with a strong distaste for the memory of the story I had just
heard. I left Hilyard arranging the shelf of his cabinet, and opening
the long French window I walked out on the lawn.
Under the elm I saw Mrs. Mershon, Amy's aunt, with whom we were all
staying. Kate Mershon was idly tossing a tennis-ball into the air, and
making ineffectual strokes at it with a racquet, and at Mrs. Mershon's
feet sat Amy, reading, the golden sunlight resting tenderly on her head,
and bringing out the reddish tones of her hair. We were to be married in
a month, and she looked so beautiful in the peace and quiet of the
waning day, that I wished we two were alone that I might take her in my
yearning arms and raise that exquisite colorless face to my lips. She
never seemed so lovely as when contrasted with Kate's mature, sensual
beauty, dark and rich as the Creole, and completely devoid of that touch
of the pure and heavenly without which no woman's face is perfect to me.
Amy was brilliant, full of raillery at times, but in the depths of
those great clear eyes, like agates, in the candor of that white face,
like a tea-rose, one read the beautiful chastity of soul in whose
presence passion becomes mixed with a reverence that sanctifies it.
Later that evening, when the drawing-room was gay with light and music,
and Kate was singing one of Judie's least objectionable songs, with a
verve and grace of gesture that the prima donna herself need not have
despised, Amy and I went out on the moonlit lawn, leaving Hilyard
leaning over the piano, and Mrs. Mershon sleeping peacefully in a
corner. We strolled up and down the gravelled path in a silence more
pregnant than words, and I felt my darling's hands clasped on my arm,
and heard her gown sweep the little pebbles along the walk.
Something brought to my mind the conversation with Hilyard, and I half
thought to repeat it, but the night seemed too peaceful to sully by
telling a tale of such horrors, and beside, I fancied Amy disliked
Hilyard, although he had been intimate with the family for years, and in
fact, he and Amy had almost grown up together; but he had been
travelling for three years, and since his return Amy declared that he
had grown cynical and hard, and altogether disagreeable, and as I really
liked him, although our ideas on most subjects were radically opposed, I
thought I would not connect him, in Amy's mind, with an unpleasant
story.
I looked down into the delicate face lifted to mine, and pressed a
fervent kiss on the cream-white cheek. There was usually, even in her
tenderest moments, a certain virginal shrinking from a caress that was
an added charm, but to-night she moved closer to my side, and even
touched her lips to mine shyly, an occurrence so rare that I trembled
with joy, realizing as never before, that this sweet white flower was
all my own. I wanted to kiss her again, and with more fervor, upon the
mouth, but for her I had the feeling that I could not guard her, this
dear blossom of purest whiteness, too jealously. I would no more have
permitted myself, during our betrothal, to give her a very ardent
caress, the memory of which, however harmless it might seem to the
majority of affianced people, might cause her a troubled thought, than I
would have permitted a stranger to kiss my sister. Her maiden shyness
was a bloom which I did not wish to brush off. I took her hand in my own
as we turned to retrace our steps to the house, and stood looking down
at her in the wonderful September moonlight. She seemed a vestal virgin,
in her long, clinging dress of white wool, with a scarf thrown about her
head and throat.
Within, Kate had finished her selections from opera and bouffe, and out
into the soft evening drifted her rich contralto in the yearning strains
of the "Blumenlied."
"I long to lay in blessing
My hands upon thy hair,
Praying that God may preserve thee
So pure, so bright, so fair!"
I bent over and touched my lips to Amy's forehead reverently. "God keep
you, my snow-flower!" I whispered. And then we went silently in
together.
The next day was so fine that Mrs. Mershon decided to drive over to the
neighboring town in the afternoon for some shopping, and Hilyard,
needing some simple chemicals for an experiment, which he hoped to find
there at the chemist's, accompanied her. Kate and Amy and I had intended
to go to a friend's for tennis, but at luncheon I received a telegram
calling me to the city on urgent business. We were only a half hour's
trip out, but I thought I might be detained until too late for dinner,
so promising to return as early in the evening as possible, I hurried
off.
On arriving in New York, I found the affair which had threatened to be
a prolix one, only demanded a few minutes' attention from me. I strolled
into the Club; there chanced to be no one there whom I cared to see; the
city was hot and ill-smelling, and I decided I could not do better than
surprise Amy by returning earlier than she expected, and accordingly I
took the first train out, walking up from the station.
The little villa looked quite deserted as I approached. I wondered if
Amy and Kate had gone to the Waddells' without me. I went to the side
door, and hearing voices in the library, I went softly into the back
drawing-room, with the foolish, boyish thought that I would walk in
suddenly and interrupt an exchange of confidences which I should pretend
to have overheard. I do not know what impelled me to play such an
antiquated, worn-out trick; however, I was just advancing into the room
through the wide-open but curtained doorway, when a chance sentence
made me pause, struck as by a blow in the face. Through an interstice,
left by an ill-adjusted fold of the portière, I had a glimpse of the
room. My betrothed, in one of her favorite white negligées, was
stretched on the Turkish divan by the open fireplace, filled now with an
enormous bowl of flowers. Her arms were raised above her head, and there
was an enigmatic smile on her lips; her face had the sleepy wisdom of
the Sphinx. Kate was crouched on the floor by her side, listening
eagerly. Now and then she would say: "Oh! how clever you were!" "So he
never guessed." "Yes, yes, and then, what did he say then?" urging her
on with a feverish greed for details, which my affianced did not disdain
to impart lazily, the faint, contemptuous smile always upon the pink
lips I had not ventured to kiss with ardor.
I did not know that I was listening, as I stood there, panting for
breath, my hand clutched against my throat, lest I should groan in my
agony. Phrase by phrase, I heard the whole dreadful story, told,
without the shadow of regret or repentance, by the woman in whom I
believed as I believed in Heaven, told with cynical laughter instead,
and impatient contempt of the innocence, sullied years ago by
Hilyard--the friend I trusted and loved. I could draw to-day exactly the
pattern of that portière, the curling leaves of dull crimson, the
intricate tracery of gold thread.
"And Lewis?" suggested Kate, at length.
Amy rolled her head restlessly on the pillow. The soft golden hair was
loosened from its pins, and fell over the slender shoulders. "Oh! well,
one must marry, you know," she said, indifferently.
I moved away silently and unnoticed. I went to brush my hair aside from
my wet forehead, and noticed, parenthetically, that my hand was soiled
with blood, where my nails had bitten the palm. With the death of love
and faith in me had come an immense capacity for cunning, concealment
and cruelty, the trinity of power that abides in certain beasts. Came
also a dull purpose, growing each moment in strength.
I do not remember that I felt a single throe of expiring love, the love
that had filled my heart to the brim. An immeasurable nausea of disgust
overcame me, to the exclusion of other ideas, a fixed sense that a thing
so dangerous in its angelic disguise, so poisonous and loathsome, must
not remain on earth; this jest of Satan must be removed lest it
contaminate all with whom it came in contact. Yet did there live any
being uncontaminated already? Were not all vile, even as she was vile?
My brain reeled. Surely to the eyes of any beholder, she was the
incarnation of purity! That which animated me was not a personal sense
of grievance so much as the inborn, natural desire one feels to
exterminate a pest, to crush a reptile, the more dangerous that it
crawls through flowers to kill. As I have said, I felt power for
strategy, unknown to my nature before, rising in me. Certain ideas were
suggested to me, on which I acted with coolness and promptness. I felt
like a minister of God's will, charged with destruction. It no longer
remained for me to decide what to do: some power dwelling in me impelled
me, against which I could not, even if I would, have struggled.
I went to my room, still unobserved, washed my face and hands, and
looking in the mirror, saw my face reflected, calm and placid, unmarked
by the last half-hour. I descended the stairs, and came in by the porch.
Amy sprang up from the couch as I entered, gaily humming a tune. It
chanced to be the song to which we had listened the night before:
"I fain would lay in blessing,"--
She drew her loose tea-gown about her, and tried to gather up the
unfastened masses of golden hair, with a charming blush.
"Lewis!" she exclaimed. "Where did you come from? How you frightened
me!"
"Well, you see, after all, I was not detained so long, and I thought if
I hurried back, we might go to the Waddells'! I heard nothing of you, so
I just ran up to get off the city dust concluding you had gone on
without me. In fact, I was starting over there, when I thought you might
be in here, so I came back--and found you. But it's rather late to go,
don't you think?" said I. I had retreated to the window and stood with
my back studiously turned, while my betrothed repaired the ravages made
in her toilet by her siesta.
"Yes, indeed," said Kate, "It is too late by far, and so hot! Let us be
lazy until dinner. Do you want to read to us while we embroider? I know
you do!" and going to the book-case, she brought one of Hamerton's
books which I had been reading aloud to them the day before.
Amy had quietly disappeared, and came down in an incredibly short time
in a fresh, simple gown, with her work in her hand. I read until dinner,
or rather until it was time to dress, and then I laid the book aside,
and went up-stairs with the rest. Hilyard and Mrs. Mershon might return
at any time. I stole downstairs, and into the room devoted to Hilyard's
chemical experiments. Fool! I had forgotten to bring a cup or bottle
with me. I looked hurriedly around the bare room, and discovering a
broken bottle on a shelf, I took the key of the cabinet from its place
and unlocked it.
Yes, there in the corner stood the rough glass bottle, with the metal
around it. I removed the stopper, and having no idea of the amount
necessary to produce the desired result, poured out several
tablespoonfuls, filling up the phial from the faucet at the rough sink
in one corner of the room. I replaced the phial, locked the cabinet,
and concealing the broken bottle in my dressing-gown, lest I should meet
one of the servants, I retraced my steps to my own room. I was not
wholly credulous of its marvellous properties, although Hilyard was not
given to boasting or lying--except to women--but I believed it at least
to be a poison, and I believed that it defied analysis, as he said.
I took from my drawer a pocket flask of sherry, and emptying all but a
wine glass, I added the drug, first tasting and inhaling it, to make
sure it had neither perceptible flavor nor odor. Then I locked the flask
in my dressing-case as the dinner-bell rang.
We were a merry party that night. Mrs. Mershon went to sleep as usual in
the easy-chair in the corner, but Hilyard was gayer than I had seen him
for weeks. A capital mimic, he gave us some of his afternoon's
experiences in the little country town, occasionally rousing Mrs.
Mershon with a start by saying, "Isn't that so, Aunt?" and she, with a
corroborative nod and smile, would doze off again. Cards were suggested,
but, mindful of my hand, its palm still empurpled and scarified, I
suggested that Kate sing for us instead, and we kept her at the piano
until she insisted that Amy should take her place.
Amy was tired, she declared, and indeed, the rose-white face did look
paler than its wont, but she went to the piano and sang Gounod's "Ave
Maria," and two or three airs from Mozart. She always sang sacred music.
Then she sank into a chair, looking utterly fatigued.
"There, Amy," I exclaimed, "I have just the thing for you. I went into
Lafitte's to-day to order some claret down, and he insisted on filling a
flask with some priceless sherry for me. I'll bring you a glass." Amy
protested, "indeed she did not need it, she should be better to-morrow,"
with a languid glance from those clear eyes; but I ran up to my room,
and returned with the flask.
"Just my clumsiness," I said, ruefully looking at the flask, "I uncorked
it, to see if it were really all he said, and I've spilled nearly the
whole of it."
"Oh! come now, Lewis," laughed Hilyard, "Is that the best story you can
invent?"
I laughed too, as I brought a glass, and poured out all that remained.
Hilyard, I had managed, should hold the glass, and as I assumed to
examine the flask, he carried the wine to Amy. Not that I wished, in
case of future inquiries, to implicate him, but I felt a melodramatic
desire that he should give his poison to Amy with his own hand: the wish
to seethe the kid in its mother's milk.
I watched her slowly drain the glass, without one pang that I had given
her death to drink. I experienced an atrocious satisfaction in feeling
that no chance whim had deterred her from consuming it all. I took the
flask to my room again, saying that I had forgotten a letter from my
mother, which I wished Amy to read, as it contained a tender message for
her.
As I stood alone in my room a fear overcame me that I had been a
credulous fool. Suppose the whole story of the drug were a fabrication,
what a farce were this! Who ever heard of a poison with so strange an
effect? True, but who had ever heard of chloroform a century ago? Let it
go that he was a discoverer, and I the first to profit by it. I would
take this ground, at least until it was disproved; time enough then to
devise other means.