TROUBLED SOULS
Dr. Filhiol trembled as he took the letter and read:
Cambridge, Massachusetts,
June 18, 1918.
DEAR SIR:
I regret that I must write you again in regard to your grandson,
Haldane Briggs, but necessity leaves no choice. This communication
does not deal with an unimportant breach of discipline, such as we
overlooked last year, but involves matters impossible to condone.
During the final week of the college year Mr. Briggs’s conduct cannot
be too harshly stigmatized. Complaint has been entered against him for
gambling and for having appeared on the college grounds intoxicated.
On the evening of Thursday last Mr. Briggs attempted to bring liquor
into a college dormitory, and when the proctor made a protest, Mr.
Briggs assaulted him.
In addition, we find your grandson has not applied the money sent by
you to the settlement of his term bill, but has diverted it for his
own uses. The bill is herewith enclosed, and I trust that you will
give it your immediate attention.
Mr. Briggs, because of his undesirable habits, has not recently been
properly attending to his courses, with the exception of his Oriental
language work, in which he has continued to take a real interest. His
examination marks in other studies have been so high as to lead to
an inquiry, and we find that Mr. Briggs has been hiring some person
unknown to take his place in three examinations and to pass them for
him—a form of cheating which the large size of some of our courses
unfortunately renders possible.
Any one of Mr. Briggs’s infractions of the rules would result in his
dismissal. Taken as a total, they render that dismissal peremptory and
final. I regret to inform you that your grandson’s connection with
the university is definitely terminated.
Regretting that my duty compels me to communicate news of such an
unpleasant nature, I am,
Very sincerely yours,
HAWLEY D. TRAVERS, A.B., A.M., LL.B.
To CAPTAIN ALPHEUS BRIGGS,
South Endicutt, Massachusetts.
Down sank the head of Captain Briggs. The old man’s beard flowed over
the smart bravery of his blue coat, and down his weather-hardened
cheeks trickled slow tears of old age, scanty but freighted with a
bitterness the tears of youth can never feel.
For a moment the captain sat annihilated under life’s most grievous
blow—futility and failure after years of patient labor, years of
saving and of self-denial, of hopes, of dreams. One touch of the harsh
finger of Fate and all the gleaming iridescence of the bubble had
vanished. From somewhere dark and far a voice seemed echoing in his
ears:
“Even though you flee to the ends of the earth, my curse will reach
you. You shall pray to die, but still you cannot die! What is written
in the Book must be fulfilled!”
Suddenly the captain got up and made his way into the house. Like a
wounded animal seeking its lair he retreated into his cabin.
The doctor peered after him, letter in hand. From the galley Ezra’s
voice drifted in nasal song, with words strangely trivial for so tragic
a situation:
“Blow, boys, blow, for Californ-io!
There’s plenty of gold, so I’ve been told,
On the banks of Sacramento!”
“H-m!” grunted the doctor. “Poor old captain! God, but this will finish
him! That Hal—damn that Hal! If something would only happen to him
now, so I could have him for a patient! I’m a law-abiding man, but
still—”
In the cabin Briggs sank down in the big rocking-chair before the
fireplace. He was trembling. Something cold seemed clutching at his
heart like tentacles. He looked about, as if he half-thought something
were watching him from the far corner. Then his eye fell on the Malay
kris suspended against the chimney. He peered at the lotus-bud handle,
the wavy blade of steel, the dark groove where still lay the poison,
the _curaré_.
“Merciful God!” whispered Captain Briggs, and covered his eyes with a
shaking hand. He suddenly stretched out hands that shook. “Oh, haven’t
I suffered enough and repented enough? Haven’t I labored enough and
paid enough?” He pressed a hand to his forehead, moist and cold. “He’s
all I’ve got, Lord—the boy is all I’ve got! Take me, _me_—but don’t
let vengeance come through _him_! The sin was mine! Let me pay! Don’t
drag him down to hell! Take me—but let him live and be a man!”
No answer save that Briggs seemed to hear the words of the old
witch-woman ringing with all the force of long-repressed memories:
“Your blood, your blood I will have! Even though you flee from me
forever, your blood will I have!”
“Yes, yes! My blood, not his!” cried the old captain, standing up.
Haggard, he peered at the kris, horrible reminder of a past he would
have given life itself to obliterate so that it might not go on forever
poisoning his race. There the kris hung like a sword of Damocles
forever ready to fall upon his heart and pierce it. And all at once a
burning rage and hate against the kris flared up in him. That thing
accursed should be destroyed. No longer should it hang there on his
fireplace to goad him into madness.
Up toward the kris he extended his hand. For a moment he dared not
lay hold on it; but all at once he forced himself to lift it from its
hooks. At touch of it again, after so long a time, he began to tremble.
But he constrained himself to study it, striving to fathom what power
lay in it. Peering with curiosity and revulsion he noted the lotus-bud,
symbol of sleep; the keen edge spotted with dark stains of blood and
rust; the groove with its dried poison, one scratch thereof a solvent
for all earthly problems whatsoever.
And suddenly a new thought came to him. His hand tightened on the grip.
His head came up, his eye cleared, and with a look half of amazement,
half triumph, he cried:
“I’ve got the answer here! The answer, so help me God! Before that boy
of mine goes down into the gutter—before he defiles his family and all
the memories of his race, here’s the answer. Lord knows I hope he will
come about on a new tack yet and be something he ought to be; but if he
don’t, he’ll never live to drag our family name down through the sewer!”
Savage pride thrilled the old man. All his hope yearned toward the
saving of the boy; but, should that be impossible, he knew Hal would
not sink to the dregs of life.
The kris now seemed beneficent to Captain Briggs. Closely he studied
the blade, and even drew his thumb along the edge, testing its
keenness. Just how, he wondered, did the poison work? Was it painless?
Quick it was; that much he knew. Quick and sure. Not in anger, but with
a calm resolve he stood there, thinking. And like the after-swells of
a tempest, other echoes now bore in upon him—echoes of words spoken
half a hundred years ago by Mahmud Baba:
“Even though I wash coal with rosewater a whole year long, shall I
ever make it white? Even though the rain fall a whole year, will it
make the sea less salt? One drop of indigo—and lo! the jar of milk is
ruined! Seed sown upon a lake will never grow!”
Again the captain weighed the kris in hand.
“Maybe the singer was right, after all,” thought he. “I’ve done my
best. I’ve given all I had to give. He’ll have his chance, the boy
shall, but if, after that—”