THE LAST TABLET
OVER the Valley of Arcana the snow banners streamed from the mastheads
of the surrounding peaks. Snow fell in the valley--soft snow that
somehow seemed warm instead of cold. It disappeared on the bosom of
the river, but thickened in eddies and made slush against piles of
driftwood. The Valley of Arcana had not yet felt the grip of winter,
but up above the banners of triumph waved and the artillery of the
blizzards boomed.
The Cave of Hypocritical Frogs was comfortable. The cold did not
penetrate to its inner recesses. At the mouth Andy kept a fire going,
and enough deadwood had been gathered to last all winter.
The snowbound prisoners sat together below the cave, on boulders close
to the redwood saplings which made a bridge over the waterfall that
told them weird tales of the waste places night and day. Often the
speech of the talkative water changed to music, gathered unto itself
rhythm and tunefulness. Sometimes choir boys were singing; sometimes
male quartets; more often they fancied that ghost women, wild and
distraught from woes undreamed of by mortal beings, were wiping their
wet, clinging hair from their faces and lifting their voices in a
piercing heathen chant of denunciation.
They sat together above the fall and watched the boiling water in the
pool below--marvelled over the frenzied happiness of a lone water ouzel
that frolicked there.
He stood on a half-submerged stone and danced, this odd diving bird of
the riffles and waterfalls, who seems to sing best when the water is
cold as ice and dashing over him and about him. He courtesies and nods
to right and left and sings happily whether or not the sun is shining;
and then he dives. His are the pounding torrents, his the screaming
rapids, his the showers of coldest spray that never chill his song.
Alone, bobbing--smiling, one almost imagines--he seeks the cold dark
cañons where water roars, for dashing sprays are his sunshine. “The
mountain stream’s own darling, the hummingbird of blooming waters,”
wrote “Wonderful John” of him--John Muir, lover of God’s own!
Hand in hand they sat and watched the ouzel, bobbing and bowing as
if pretending to shrink from the plunge he loved, and listened to
his misty notes and the changing oratory of the waterfall. They were
silent. Both were thinking deeply. For the day before Andy Jerome
had swallowed the last half-tablet, and up above the snow was hourly
closing the way for Dr. Shonto to come to them with more. Over them
hung this thought like the thread-held sword of old.
“Dear,” said Charmian, with that little upward twist of her mouth
that always made him want to kiss it, “do you know that your beard is
growing fearfully long? You see, I’m taking a proprietary interest in
you already. What’ll I do to you after we’re married?”
Andy laughed. “To tell the truth,” he replied, “I made a great blunder
on this trip. Usually, out in the woods, I carry an old-fashioned
razor. But this time I brought along my safety. And every blade is dull
as a hoe. Can’t sharpen razor blades on sandstone, as I do my axe and
knife.
“But wouldn’t I be out of character if I failed to grow a beard? Ought
to hang down on my manly breast and be full of burrs or something. And
you ought to be wearing a knee-length skin dress, with the hair on. I’m
afraid we aren’t playing up to our rôles properly.”
“I’m glad to see you so light-hearted,” she observed pensively.
“I’m--I’m afraid I’m worrying a little too much, Andy.”
His brow clouded instantly, and she knew that his lightness of heart
was feigned.
“It _is_ storming like the dickens up there,” he admitted. “Doctor
Shonto will never be able to get through that stretch of chaparral if
it continues. And--”
“Yes?” she prompted.
“And I guess it’ll continue, all right,” he finished gloomily.
The hand that he held trembled a little.
“It wouldn’t be so bad,” she mused, “if--if-- Well, we could live here
all winter, I believe. We can get plenty to eat--such as it is--and we
can always keep warm. But--”
“Yes, I know.” He squeezed her fingers. “It’s the devil. If we only
knew what to expect! What the dickens is the matter with me, anyway?
And why didn’t the doctor tell _you_, at least?”
“He explained that--almost. He wants to be fair. He hoped that he could
get back in time to save you from--from whatever is to happen to you.
Then there would be no need to tell what he knows. He took that chance,
do you understand? But now he won’t get back in time, and--and we’ll
soon know what your great trouble is.”
She sighed wearily.
“Whatever it is, Charmian, you’ll never give me up, will you, dearest?”
“Never!”
They kissed long and tremulously, then the girl rose to her feet and
pulled at his hand till he stood beside her.
“Let’s go back to the Cave of Hypocritical Frogs,” she said. “It’s
getting cold out here. And see, Andy--the snow is beginning to thicken
on the ground. It’ll be white by morning.”
That same day she was putting their simple belongings to rights in the
Cave of Hypocritical Frogs. Each had a table--a flat-topped stone--on
which articles of daily use were kept. Womanlike, she fussed over his
things, which he consistently left awry. He was outside cutting wood.
She cleaned his comb and military brushes and laid things straight,
then opened the leather-covered case that contained his safety-razor
to make sure that he had not overlooked an unused blade. And in the
little metal container she found three, still sealed in their paper
covers.
She called to him:
“No caveman stuff for you for a time, young fellow! Come in here! I’ve
found three new razor blades!”
“Good work!” he praised her when he reached her side. “Wonder how I
came to overlook ’em. Guess I just took it for granted they were all
gone, and didn’t open the case at all.”
But by next day his beard, which had reached the most unattractive
stage, still covered his face.
“Andy, why don’t you shave?” she asked.
“By George! Forgot all about it. Getting used to this fuzz, I guess.
Maybe I like it--I don’t know.”
His laugh was insincere, and she regarded him in mild surprise.
They were busy at separate tasks throughout that day, Andy having
gone down the river alone to make an effort to get the canoe closer
to the cave, and Charmian washing clothes down by the pool below the
waterfall. At supper she once more reminded him that he had not shaved.
His boyish face grew red with confusion, and he stammered an apology.
The pine cones that they used as torches would not give enough light
for shaving after supper, and next morning he tramped away again with
the beard still covering his face.
She took him to task again when he returned at noon, standing before
him and demanding, with a look of worriment in her eyes, the why of it.
“I--I just don’t seem to want to,” he confessed. “I don’t know why. But
I hate to begin. Always dreaded the thing, and out here it seems so
unnecessary.”
Then it was that she noticed his finger nails, for he had raised one
hand to his shaggy beard and was fondling it abstractedly while it was
under discussion. His finger nails were long and black with dirt.
“Why, Andy!” she began; then stopped short, her face whitening.
Always Andy had been clean and neat, so far as the conditions of camp
life and the trail would permit. In fact, saving Dr. Shonto, she
never had known a more fastidious man. Otherwise she never could have
considered him her equal. A terrible thought came to her: This sudden
shuffling off of the demands of civilization must be the first symptom
of his malady. Considerately she said nothing, but for two days watched
him closely, her heart like lead. He neither washed nor cleansed his
finger nails during those two days, and she imagined that a certain
amount of lustre had left his one-time bright-blue eyes.
And then he yawned directly in her face one night, his mouth wide open,
with no hand raised to cover the gap and no apology. And two days later
she caught him eating broiled meat with his fingers, tearing it apart
as if he never had seen a knife and fork.
She cried herself to sleep that night and rose next morning with terror
in her heart.
And now the change came fast. Andy’s eyes became bleary. The colour
of his face grew leaden, and the cheeks were bloated. His skin took on
a dirty, flabby look. His tongue, which the horrified girl often saw
hanging out at one corner of his mouth, had thickened, and the lips
were perpetually moist. His breath became asthmatic. When he spoke he
mumbled his words. Gradually, but with cruel swiftness, the light of
reason left his leaden eyes; and within ten days after the last tablet
had been swallowed Charmian Reemy knew that the man she loved was
little better than an idiot.
His head lopped forward as he sat at the mouth of the cave and stared,
saying not a word, gazing at nothing, occasionally drawing in his
swollen tongue, but never wiping from the ragged beard the saliva which
he had drooled upon it. Again the tongue would creep out and downward,
as if he lacked the muscular energy to keep it in its place. His long
hair hung over his imbecile eyes; his long finger nails, unsightly with
dirt, looked like the talons of a bird.
He would rouse himself when she shook him and, with tears streaming
down her face, begged him to pull himself together. He would grin at
her then and lick his lips with his thick tongue, but in a moment
or two he would once more lose control of his faculties, and his
head would drop forward, while out would creep the repulsive tongue.
Sometimes he would laugh--a weird, insane chuckle that wrenched from
the tortured girl a sob half of pity, half of horror. He walked
occasionally, but did no work at all. When this occurred he dragged
his steps, swaying loosely from side to side as if his body knew no
joints. He would pause often and, swaying slightly, would gaze this
way and that as if trying to replace in his memory the significance of
familiar objects.
A few days more and he had ceased to speak. He muttered now and then,
for no particular reason whatever, but his wet lips formed no words.
Sometimes he gazed at her as she moved about, but in his eyes was no
question as to what she might be doing; the motion of her body simply
had attracted him momentarily and aroused a flicker of interest. But it
would pass at once, and again he would let his head go forward, and sit
gazing at the ground, while his tongue hung out and dripped.
Meanwhile it snowed. The ground was covered two feet deep about the
cave. Up in the higher altitudes the blizzards raged perpetually, and
the air was filled with dismal moanings. All hope of Dr. Shonto’s
returning to the Valley of Arcana, except in an aeroplane, had vanished.
And the idiot sat at the door of the Cave of Hypocritical Frogs and
drooled, staring through his hanging hair!
Never before had Charmian Reemy known fear, but now she suffered abject
terror. All about her was ice and snow, and she shivered when a new
note came in the monotonous roar of the waterfall. No longer sang the
silver-throated choir boys. The high-pitched chorus that her fancy had
once named theirs became the sinfully gleeful giggling of malicious
sprites as they triumphed over her great disaster. The rollicking songs
that the male quartet had sung changed to the bellowing of Satan,
as when the angel of the Lord came down from heaven with the key to
the bottomless pit and chained him for a thousand years. Wrapped in
her blankets, nightmares came to her so that she was afraid to sleep
without the flickering light of a pine knot near her. Often she awoke
screaming, gripped by an icy, throat-contracting fear. And once the
nightmare took upon itself reality--and Madame Destrehan’s prophecy was
fulfilled.
There were fingers at her throat, long, curving talons that were black
with dirt. Maniacal eyes looked into hers through a screen of hanging
hair. Wet lips were close to her face, seen through a mat of unkempt
beard, and from them lolled a tongue, black and swollen.
She thought that she fainted--she did not know. But for a space of
time--how great she never knew--the flickering pine-knot torch was gone
and an icy wave swept over her. Then she was up, shrieking, struggling
madly, hers the strength of half a dozen women. She hurled the ogre
away from her, striking, clawing, pushing, and it crashed against a
wall of the cave and sank to the floor in a disorderly heap.
Panting, one hand clutching her breast, she gazed at it, huddled there,
inert, breathing asthmatically. Then it moved, half rose, reclined once
more in a posture more human and natural.
For an hour she watched, while the cold pierced her bones. Then,
mustering her courage, she stole past IT to the outer chamber of the
cave, where she collected blankets, brought them back, and threw them
over the prostrate figure of what once had been Andrew Jerome. With
her own blankets wrapped about her she remained in a sitting position,
stark awake, until the cold, feeble light of another day in the Valley
of Arcana crept in.
He was not injured. He merely had lost in a twinkling the brief flicker
of energy that had returned to him, perhaps in a dream. Perhaps he
had been asleep throughout, and his subconscious mind had revived and
energized him where his conscious mind had failed to function. Perhaps
her fierce defence had awakened him and had caused him to lapse back.
He dragged himself up when it was light, and she guided him to his
customary seat at the mouth of the cave.
Her daily needs served eventually to turn her mind on necessary tasks,
which helped her to forget the horror of her days and nights. She must
conserve the jerked meat, which together they had smoked so carefully
over the smouldering fires, and attend to the traps. She trudged away
through the snow, forced to leave Andy to his fate, gaping there at the
mouth of the Cave of Hypocritical Frogs. But when she reached the first
dead-fall and found a dead jackrabbit beneath the fallen stone she let
it lie. One by one she visited other traps, springing them when she
found no little dead body, and releasing live quail caught in the quail
traps. She would eat the jerky, and when that was gone-- Well, then
she would find something else. She could not kill!
Sometimes she was almost tempted to pray that something might happen to
Andy--that he might rouse himself and try to wander somewhere through
the rocks, and meet with a fall that would end in instant death. He
was almost helpless. She had brought herself to wash his hands and
face, shuddering with repulsion, and whacked off the offensive claws.
She wanted to shave him, but was afraid that she did not know how,
and shrank from the task. As yet he was able to feed himself, but
in a manner that was wolfish when it was not like the food-cramming
of a two-year-old; and she turned her back and never ate with him.
The firewood was plentiful, and she had only to cut it or break it
with the hunter’s axe. All day long she kept the smoke of the signal
fire streaming aloft, but she imagined that it was dispersed by the
blizzards sweeping overhead, and would serve no purpose even were the
doctor trying to reach her.
She cut wood and washed clothes, pulverized nuts and acorns for bread,
cooked their meals, and watched the snow pile up about the Cave of
Hypocritical Frogs, and when there was nothing to do she left her
charge and sought the waterfall, unable to bear the pitiable sight
of him. Not that there was solace in the roaring and croaking and
murmuring of the water. Its icy sheets depressed her immeasurably. But
below it played and sang the water ouzel, happy, bobbing up and down
and nodding sidewise, singing as if there were no terrors upon the
earth, while over him and about him dashed the freezing spray. He who
could sing at the top of his voice and dance throughout days that were
dull and dreary, in the very teeth of the raging waters, gave solace.