She stretched out her arms to him, but he did not turn his head. Then,
ceding evidently to an overwhelming impulse, she sprang to her feet,
darted after him with the speed of a young deer, and flung both her
arms passionately about his neck. Once more I saw him ask her the
mysterious question, menace in his face. And now she surrendered,
clinging to him desperately, tears coursing down her cheeks, her eyes
wild, but every fibre of her obviously ready to do his bidding rather
than lose him as she nodded her head in frantic assent.
“Once more he spoke, pointing mysteriously across the garden. She drew
away from him, her eyes fixed upon his face, her bosom filling as
with the long, deep breath of some tragic resolve. He was inexorable.
Hopelessly, she prepared to obey, in her attitude the touching dignity
of fate accepted since love imposes it, eternal womanhood fulfilling
itself in immolation. I felt the tears start to my eyes, although I
could not imagine what was the evidently tremendous sacrifice demanded
of her. The white-clad man stepped once more into the shadow of the
bushes. With one last passionate, yearning look toward him, she moved
away. She went crouched, huddled in to herself like a woman who creeps
forth to commit a crime.
“Again the scene changed. I was staring at the exterior of the temple
in the moonlight. The two great figures by the portal gazed now over an
empty courtyard. Only the moon-cast shadows of the trees moved upon its
untenanted space. There was a moment of waiting--for I knew not what,
but the air was filled with expectation. Then, slinking along the wall,
scarcely visible, with halting, furtive step, I saw the girl emerge
from the shadows. Warily she came, close against the wall, stopping
occasionally in the awful terror of the silence which brooded over
everything, moving on again with evidently a fresh effort of highly
strung will. Like a ghost she seemed in the moonlight, as she crept up
to the giant figure by the portal, peered cautiously into the interior
darkness where two yellow flames glimmered. She slipped into the gloom
like a pale shadow that flits across the wall.
“And then, I know not how, I found myself looking as from the doorway
into the interior. Between two guttering torches the great image lifted
itself up into a smoky obscurity, the glinting jewel still upon its
breast--the jewel that was suspended by a flexible snake of reddish
gold. With an impressive serenity the great calm face looked straight
before it, its hands stretched out from the elbow above the legs
crossed for its squatting, ‘earth-touching’ position. Below it, on the
steps of the altar, a priest squatted also, his shaven head nodding
forward in the sleep of a vigil excessively prolonged. By the portal
stood the shrinking figure of the girl, staring in terror at the jewel
winking in the uncertain light of the expiring torches.
“For a long, long moment she stood there, unable to move, her face
looking as carven in its fixed immobility as the image itself. With
a sympathetic thrill, I realized the awful superstitious dread which
had her in its grip. Then her human love triumphed. I saw her glide
stealthily toward the giant figure, so stealthily that the nodding head
of the somnolent priest altered not in the regularity of its drowsy
rise and fall, so stealthily that she seemed but a part of the shifting
shadows cast by the candelabra of the torches. Nimbly and cautiously
she clambered from the altar-steps to the knee of the mighty image,
drew herself up to the arm outstretched in benediction. She balanced
herself precariously, rose suddenly upright upon it, and snatched at
the jewel.
“The clasp of the flexible gold snake broke with the violence of her
pull. I saw it slide like a little stream of ruddy fire into her hands,
saw the last flash of the jewel as she stuffed it into her bosom. And
then, with a start, the priest looked up.
“Ere he could do more than spring to his feet, she had leaped down with
the sure-footed agility of a mountain girl. In a quick movement she
evaded his clutch, was gone.
“Once more I found myself looking at the garden where the white-clad
figure lurked in the shadows. A moment of waiting, then down the
moonlit open space came the flitting figure of the girl. Swiftly she
approached, panic in her wild flight, in the beautiful features now
close enough for distinct view. She was sobbing as she ran. The man
stepped out to her. She stopped, stood for a second regarding him with
a look of inexpressible reproach, and then, averting her head, thrust
into his eager grasp the sacred jewel. He slipped it into his pocket
and caught her in his arms. She gazed at him in yearning doubt, her
head drawn back, her soul seeming to question him through her eyes,
and then suddenly she flung herself toward him, her bare arms round
his neck, her mouth on his, kissing him in a passionate paroxysm of
caresses. Desperately she yielded herself to him, frenziedly claiming
the reward for her crime--his love. I saw the tears rolling down her
cheeks as she kissed him eagerly again and again, all else forgotten
but absorption in his presence. In a thrill of apprehension, I
remembered the priest. Surely the alarm was given--a horde of fanatics
searching for her while she lingered so recklessly! Despite the utter
silence in which all this passed, I almost fancied I could hear the
sonorous booming of a gong.
“My apprehension quickened to a stab of acute alarm. There, slinking
toward them in the shadows, as stealthily as a cat, came a crouching
figure, nearer and nearer from behind. The steel blade he clutched
flashed in the moonlight. His face looked up, illumined in the soft
radiance which suffused the garden. I recognized it--the priest who
had slumbered at his post!--and then, with a curious little internal
shock, but vaguely, as if these later incidents belonged to another
existence, the full recognition dawned upon me--the wretched native who
had loitered about the deserted pagoda of Cho-lon, the conjurer of the
café, the conjurer who--ages since--had filled the saloon of the _Mary
Gleeson_ with smoke and incense from the red fire of a bronze bowl!
His ugly face contorted with vindictive cunning, he crept now upon the
oblivious lovers locked in their passionate embrace. I saw him gather
himself for the spring, the long, murderous knife openly in his hand.
In a spasm of horror all of me tried frantically to shriek a warning,
but I could not utter a sound. I seemed to be only a watching brain,
divorced from all the other organs of the body. He leaped.
“There was a glimmer of cold light as the knife descended. I waited,
my heart stopping, in doubt as to the victim. The uncertainty lasted
but an instant. The girl, struck in the back, turned her face up to
the sky and crumpled to her knees like a marionette whose string is
cut. For one long moment the grinning evil face of the priest, tugging
to release his knife, and the horrified eyes of the white man looked
into each other in a silence which was appalling in its complete
soundlessness. Then the white man struck savagely downward upon the
shaven head--and sprang away into the darkness.
“Again I heard a gasp, a choked-back cry, from the obscurity at the
side of me. But now it seemed to be startlingly nearer and, as my
bewildered faculties tried to apprehend it, to identify the source
which I knew vaguely must be familiar to me and yet could not bring to
consciousness, my attention wandered for a moment. When I looked again
the vision had disappeared. There was no longer garden or temple.
There was only redly illumined smoke rolling upward from a dull red
glow and an atmosphere of sweet sickly fumes that held my body in a
drugged paralysis.
“Still I gazed, fascinated. Those thick, wreathing masses of smoke
were shaping themselves--shaping themselves into something--something
columnar. I watched like one in a dream, and as I watched a part of
me attained to consciousness of Captain Strong sitting in frozen
immobility by the side of me. The wreathing smoke coalesced, formed
itself into something whose outlines were not yet clear. A brighter,
yellower light emanated from below it, lit it up. A body--a vague
female body--collected itself, and then a girl’s head, strangely
beautiful for all its almond eyes and scanty brows, smiled upon us,
suddenly vivid and real. I recognized it with a shock--the girl of the
garden! She and her body were now one complete living organism that
moved sinuously from the hips. I held my breath in awe. Whereas the
visions I had been watching were like pictures at a distance, this was
an actual living woman a few feet from us. The smoke disappeared. I was
staring at a beautiful native woman, as real as you or I, mysteriously
illumined in yellow light against a background of obscurity, who stood
where the fumes had writhed upward from the bowl.
“Conscious as I now was of Captain Strong’s close neighbourhood, I
craved to turn to him for astonished comment. But still my body was
deprived of function; I could not move a muscle. He made neither move
nor sound. Then I almost forgot him in the fascinated interest which
this apparition compelled.
“Swaying slightly, with a free, graceful motion of the hips, she
moved from her place. Her mouth parted in a pathetic little smile of
melancholy, her dark eyes gazing not at me but at something at my side,
in soulful yearning appeal, she glided toward us through a hushed
silence where I could hear my own heart beat. Slowly she detached
her arms from the simple robe which swathed her, stretched them out
imploringly, with a wistful smile that seemed to beseech a difficult
confidence, to the companion at my side, to Captain Strong. Once more I
heard the gasp of his laboured breathing.
“She approached, and it seemed to me that she and I and the panting
figure at my side whom I could not turn my head to see were the
only things existing in a world that was otherwise dark. She was
illumined from head to foot, clearly and definitely detached from her
surroundings. I marked the soft, lithe roundness of her form. Did she
speak? Her lips moved, but I heard nothing, although it seemed to me
that a gently uttered name echoed far away in illimitable space, echoed
endlessly as though ringing through the vast, incommensurable soul of
things past, present, and to be.
“A name was breathed distinctly, as in awed answer, from the obscurity
at my side. _Héa-Nan!--Héa-Nan!_ The wistful smile on the beautiful
face sweetened as in grateful recognition. The eyes softened in a
tender fondness that had nevertheless a strange, remote dignity. Not
now did she give herself up to the passionate abandonment of that
moonlit garden. Love still yearned from her, but it was the eternal
love of the soul that looks to the unimaginable realities beyond the
body.
“Slowly, slowly, she approached until it seemed that the hands of
her outstretched arms would brush my sleeve as they reached toward
the man I felt recoil back into the darkness at my side. I looked up
into the face of a living, breathing woman--saw the faint flush upon
her Asiatic complexion--saw the dark eyes glowing, swimming in a bath
of tears. Once more the lips moved silently--once more the answering
name--_Héa-Nan!_--came in an emotionally exhaled whisper from the man
who could draw back no farther.
“She smiled, a smile of radiant forgiveness, of understanding and--so
it seemed--of pity, and then I saw her arms make a quick movement. From
the shadow at my side she plucked something, held it aloft. The sacred
jewel of the Buddha blazed in the mouth of the reddish-gold snake that
seemed to curl alive about her arm. For one long moment, I looked up at
her, her face glowing strangely in the glory of the recovered jewel,
yet still a living, human woman with lips that parted as I watched--and
then I found myself staring into a smother of smoke from which issued a
ghastly mocking laughter.
“The red glow near the floor expired in one last flicker. There was a
stab of flame, the simultaneous deafeningly violent detonation of a
revolver fired close to my ear, a savage cry of furious menace, another
gloating chuckle of laughter--and then darkness and silence.
“Brought suddenly to myself, I struggled to my feet in the choking
fumes, and groped feverishly for the switch of the electric light. I
found it and the lamp sprang into dull illumination of the smoke-filled
cabin. The door was open. The conjurer had disappeared--I heard a
splash in the river under the open ports and was left in no doubt that
he was beyond our reach. Then, in sudden alarm at his silence, I turned
to look for Captain Strong.
“He was stretched back unconscious upon the settee where we had sat
together, his hand grasping the revolver which he had vainly fired with
his last strength. He looked livid, pale as death, and for a moment I
thought the native had murdered him. But I could find no mark on him,
and presently he opened his eyes, began to murmur delirious phrases. I
saw at a glance that he was very ill, with the illness that frightens
you when you see it in a place like Saigon. With some difficulty, for
he was a heavy man, I lifted him to his bunk and put him to bed. As I
loosened the shirt from about his throat, I noticed, with a thrill of
the uncanny which made me shudder, that round his neck was a circling
line of blanched skin, and on his chest a similar, broader patch. But
the amulet, whose long wearing had evidently caused these marks, had
disappeared completely.
“Half an hour later I was being rowed in all haste to the black
Messageries Maritimes boat and claiming the services of her doctor.
“It was hopeless from the first, and we both knew it. Captain Strong
died before morning, raving native words in his delirium, and calling
incessantly a native name--_Héa-Nan! Héa-Nan!_
“At dawn I looked up to see the yellow jack fluttering from the
masthead precisely as, not twelve hours before, I had seen the vision
of it from the quay.”
Captain Williamson stopped, glanced at his burnt-out cheroot, threw it
away, and selected another one carefully from his case.
“Well, Professor, what do you make of that?” he asked, as he struck a
match.
The professor assumed an air of wisdom superior to any mystery.
“Of course,” he said, “there is no doubt what happened. Captain Strong
was probably infected with yellow fever coming up the river. Years
before, he had instigated a native girl to rob that Buddhist temple on
his behalf, and finding himself back at the place he was impelled--it
is a common psychological phenomenon in criminals--to revisit the
scene of his crime. The ex-priest saw him and recognized him, and,
wishing to make quite sure whether he still possessed the sacred jewel,
he hypnotized him by chaining his conscious attention on his little
conjuring trick at the café, and then suggested to him the vision of
the jewel by outlining it with his subject’s finger on the table.
Captain Strong’s exclamation and his gesture would be sufficient that
he still wore it.
“As for the scene in the saloon, it was hypnotism on a large scale,
induced by the use of the drugs with which the atmosphere was filled.
Captain Strong’s subconscious mind came to the top and lived once again
through the episodes of the robbery and the death of his agent, seeing
them, as is the habit of the subjective mind when released from the
control of the objective surface consciousness, like actual present
facts. The hallucination of the girl as a living presence in the cabin
is, of course, explained by the silent suggestion of the priest acting
on the already highly excited subconsciousness of the guilty man. Just
as I can make a hypnotic patient believe that you are someone else and
see you as someone else, so the conjurer himself, under cover of the
vision he had suggested, approached the wearer of the sacred jewel and
snatched it from his neck. The emotional crisis undergone by Captain
Strong would, of course, hasten the onset of the yellow fever already
in his body.”
“H’m,” objected Captain Williamson, “but that doesn’t explain why I
should share these visions.”
The professor was nothing daunted.
“Of course,” he said, “you were in close propinquity to Captain Strong
and were doubtless what is known as _en rapport_ with him. The vision
of the yellow flag--the not uncommon hallucination of a death-symbol
produced by the subconsciousness of a doomed person--was communicated
to you when the captain gripped your shoulder----”
“Have a whisky-and-soda, Professor,” interrupted the planter, coarsely,
“and don’t spoil a good story.”
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|Transcriber’s note: |
| |
|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. |
| |
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