Then he left the path, and, breaking through the corn, vanished in
that direction. The three pursuers followed suit, and their heads and
gesticulating arms above the corn, after a brief interval, also went
out of Bailey's field of vision.
Bailey so far forgot himself as to swear. "Just as things were getting
lively!" he said. Something like a woman's shriek came through the
air. Then shouts, a howl, a dull whack upon the balcony outside that
made Bailey jump, and then the report of a gun.
"This is precious hard on an invalid," said Bailey.
But more was to happen yet in his picture. In fact, a great deal more.
The Malay appeared again, running now along the bank up stream.
His stride had more swing and less pace in it than before. He was
threatening someone ahead with the ugly krees he carried. The blade,
Bailey noticed, was dull--it did not shine as steel should.
Then came the tall, fair man, brandishing a boat-hook, and after him
three other men in boating costume, running clumsily with oars.
The man with the grey hat and red belt was not with them. After an
interval the three men with the gun reappeared, still in the corn,
but now near the river bank. They emerged upon the towing-path,
and hurried after the others. The opposite bank was left blank and
desolate again.
The sick-room was disgraced by more profanity. "I would give my life
to see the end of this," said Bailey. There were indistinct shouts up
stream. Once they seemed to be coming nearer, but they disappointed
him.
Bailey sat and grumbled. He was still grumbling when his eye caught
something black and round among the waves. "Hullo!" he said. He looked
narrowly and saw two triangular black bodies frothing every now and
then about a yard in front of this.
He was still doubtful when the little band of pursuers came into sight
again, and began to point to this floating object. They were talking
eagerly. Then the man with the gun took aim.
"He's swimming the river, by George!" said Bailey.
The Malay looked round, saw the gun, and went under. He came up so
close to Bailey's bank of the river that one of the bars of the
balcony hid him for a moment. As he emerged the man with the gun
fired. The Malay kept steadily onward--Bailey could see the wet hair
on his forehead now and the krees between his teeth--and was presently
hidden by the balcony.
This seemed to Bailey an unendurable wrong. The man was lost to him
for ever now, so he thought. Why couldn't the brute have got himself
decently caught on the opposite bank, or shot in the water?
"It's worse than Edwin Drood," said Bailey.
Over the river, too, things had become an absolute blank. All seven
men had gone down stream again, probably to get the boat and follow
across. Bailey listened and waited. There was silence. "Surely it's
not over like this," said Bailey.
Five minutes passed--ten minutes. Then a tug with two barges went up
stream. The attitudes of the men upon these were the attitudes of
those who see nothing remarkable in earth, water, or sky. Clearly the
whole affair had passed out of sight of the river. Probably the hunt
had gone into the beech woods behind the house.
"Confound it!" said Bailey. "To be continued again, and no chance this
time of the sequel. But this is hard on a sick man."
He heard a step on the staircase behind him and looking round saw the
door open. Mrs Green came in and sat down, panting. She still had her
bonnet on, her purse in her hand, and her little brown basket upon her
arm. "Oh, there!" she said, and left Bailey to imagine the rest.
"Have a little whisky and water, Mrs Green, and tell me about it,"
said Bailey.
Sipping a little, the lady began to recover her powers of explanation.
One of those black creatures at the Fitzgibbon's had gone mad, and
was running about with a big knife, stabbing people. He had killed
a groom, and stabbed the under-butler, and almost cut the arm off a
boating gentleman.
"Running amuck with a krees," said Bailey. "I thought that was it."
And he was hiding in the wood when she came through it from the town.
"What! Did he run after you?" asked Bailey, with a certain touch of
glee in his voice.
"No, that was the horrible part of it," Mrs Green explained. She had
been right through the woods and had _never known he was there_. It
was only when she met young Mr Fitzgibbon carrying his gun in the
shrubbery that she heard anything about it. Apparently, what upset
Mrs Green was the lost opportunity for emotion. She was determined,
however, to make the most of what was left her.
"To think he was there all the time!" she said, over and over again.
Bailey endured this patiently enough for perhaps ten minutes. At last
he thought it advisable to assert himself. "It's twenty past one, Mrs
Green," he said. "Don't you think it time you got me something to
eat?"
This brought Mrs Green suddenly to her knees.
"Oh Lord, sir!" she said. "Oh! don't go making me go out of this room,
sir, till I know he's caught. He might have got into the house, sir.
He might be creeping, creeping, with that knife of his, along the
passage this very--"
She broke off suddenly and glared over him at the window. Her lower
jaw dropped. Bailey turned his head sharply.
For the space of half a second things seemed just as they were. There
was the tree, the balcony, the shining river, the distant church
tower. Then he noticed that the acacia was displaced about a foot to
the right, and that it was quivering, and the leaves were rustling.
The tree was shaken violently, and a heavy panting was audible.
In another moment a hairy brown hand had appeared and clutched the
balcony railings, and in another the face of the Malay was peering
through these at the man on the couch. His expression was an
unpleasant grin, by reason of the krees he held between his teeth,
and he was bleeding from an ugly wound in his cheek. His hair wet to
drying stuck out like horns from his head. His body was bare save for
the wet trousers that clung to him. Bailey's first impulse was to
spring from the couch, but his legs reminded him that this was
impossible.
By means of the balcony and tree the man slowly raised himself until
he was visible to Mrs Green. With a choking cry she made for the door
and fumbled with the handle.
Bailey thought swiftly and clutched a medicine bottle in either
hand. One he flung, and it smashed against the acacia. Silently and
deliberately, and keeping his bright eyes fixed on Bailey, the Malay
clambered into the balcony. Bailey, still clutching his second bottle,
but with a sickening, sinking feeling about his heart, watched first
one leg come over the railing and then the other.
It was Bailey's impression that the Malay took about an hour to get
his second leg over the rail. The period that elapsed before the
sitting position was changed to a standing one seemed enormous--days,
weeks, possibly a year or so. Yet Bailey had no clear impression of
anything going on in his mind during that vast period, except a vague
wonder at his inability to throw the second medicine bottle. Suddenly
the Malay glanced over his shoulder. There was the crack of a rifle.
He flung up his arms and came down upon the couch. Mrs Green began a
dismal shriek that seemed likely to last until Doomsday. Bailey stared
at the brown body with its shoulder blade driven in, that writhed
painfully across his legs and rapidly staining and soaking the
spotless bandages. Then he looked at the long krees, with the reddish
streaks upon its blade, that lay an inch beyond the trembling brown
fingers upon the floor. Then at Mrs Green, who had backed hard against
the door and was staring at the body and shrieking in gusty outbursts
as if she would wake the dead. And then the body was shaken by one
last convulsive effort.
The Malay gripped the krees, tried to raise himself with his left
hand, and collapsed. Then he raised his head, stared for a moment
at Mrs Green, and twisting his face round looked at Bailey. With a
gasping groan the dying man succeeded in clutching the bed clothes
with his disabled hand, and by a violent effort, which hurt Bailey's
legs exceedingly, writhed sideways towards what must be his last
victim. Then something seemed released in Bailey's mind and he brought
down the second bottle with all his strength on to the Malay's face.
The krees fell heavily upon the floor.
"Easy with those legs," said Bailey, as young Fitzgibbon and one of
the boating party lifted the body off him.
Young Fitzgibbon was very white in the face. "I didn't mean to kill
him," he said.
"It's just as well," said Bailey.
THE TEMPTATION OF HARRINGAY
It is quite impossible to say whether this thing really happened. It
depends entirely on the word of R.M. Harringay, who is an artist.
Following his version of the affair, the narrative deposes that
Harringay went into his studio about ten o'clock to see what he could
make of the head that he had been working at the day before. The
head in question was that of an Italian organ-grinder, and Harringay
thought--but was not quite sure--that the title would be the "Vigil."
So far he is frank, and his narrative bears the stamp of truth. He
had seen the man expectant for pennies, and with a promptness that
suggested genius, had had him in at once.
"Kneel. Look up at that bracket," said Harringay. "As if you expected
pennies."
"Don't _grin_!" said Harringay. "I don't want to paint your gums. Look
as though you were unhappy."
Now, after a night's rest, the picture proved decidedly
unsatisfactory. "It's good work," said Harringay. "That little bit in
the neck ... But."
He walked about the studio and looked at the thing from this point and
from that. Then he said a wicked word. In the original the word is
given.
"Painting," he says he said. "Just a painting of an organ-grinder--a
mere portrait. If it was a live organ-grinder I wouldn't mind. But
somehow I never make things alive. I wonder if my imagination is
wrong." This, too, has a truthful air. His imagination _is_ wrong.
"That creative touch! To take canvas and pigment and make a man--as
Adam was made of red ochre! But this thing! If you met it walking
about the streets you would know it was only a studio production. The
little boys would tell it to 'Garnome and git frimed.' Some little
touch ... Well--it won't do as it is."
He went to the blinds and began to pull them down. They were made of
blue holland with the rollers at the bottom of the window, so that you
pull them down to get more light. He gathered his palette, brushes,
and mahl stick from his table. Then he turned to the picture and put a
speck of brown in the corner of the mouth; and shifted his attention
thence to the pupil of the eye. Then he decided that the chin was a
trifle too impassive for a vigil.
Presently he put down his impedimenta, and lighting a pipe surveyed
the progress of his work. "I'm hanged if the thing isn't sneering at
me," said Harringay, and he still believes it sneered.
The animation of the figure had certainly increased, but scarcely in
the direction he wished. There was no mistake about the sneer. "Vigil
of the Unbeliever," said Harringay. "Rather subtle and clever that!
But the left eyebrow isn't cynical enough."
He went and dabbed at the eyebrow, and added a little to the lobe of
the ear to suggest materialism. Further consideration ensued. "Vigil's
off, I'm afraid," said Harringay. "Why not Mephistopheles? But that's
a bit _too_ common. 'A Friend of the Doge,'--not so seedy. The armour
won't do, though. Too Camelot. How about a scarlet robe and call him
'One of the Sacred College'? Humour in that, and an appreciation of
Middle Italian History."
"There's always Benvenuto Cellini," said Harringay; "with a clever
suggestion of a gold cup in one corner. But that would scarcely suit
the complexion."
He describes himself as babbling in this way in order to keep down an
unaccountably unpleasant sensation of fear. The thing was certainly
acquiring anything but a pleasing expression. Yet it was as certainly
becoming far more of a living thing than it had been--if a sinister
one--far more alive than anything he had ever painted before. "Call it
'Portrait of a Gentleman,'" said Harringay;--"A Certain Gentleman."
"Won't do," said Harringay, still keeping up his courage. "Kind of
thing they call Bad Taste. That sneer will have to come out. That
gone, and a little more fire in the eye--never noticed how warm his
eye was before--and he might do for--? What price Passionate Pilgrim?
But that devilish face won't do--_this_ side of the Channel.
"Some little inaccuracy does it," he said; "eyebrows probably too
oblique,"--therewith pulling the blind lower to get a better light,
and resuming palette and brushes.
The face on the canvas seemed animated by a spirit of its own. Where
the expression of diablerie came in he found impossible to discover.
Experiment was necessary. The eyebrows--it could scarcely be the
eyebrows? But he altered them. No, that was no better; in fact, if
anything, a trifle more satanic. The corner of the mouth? Pah! more
than ever a leer--and now, retouched, it was ominously grim. The eye,
then? Catastrophe! he had filled his brush with vermilion instead of
brown, and yet he had felt sure it was brown! The eye seemed now to
have rolled in its socket, and was glaring at him an eye of fire. In a
flash of passion, possibly with something of the courage of panic, he
struck the brush full of bright red athwart the picture; and then a
very curious thing, a very strange thing indeed, occurred--if it _did_
occur.
_The diabolified Italian before him shut both his eyes, pursed his
mouth, and wiped the colour off his face with his hand_.
Then the _red eye_ opened again, with a sound like the opening of
lips, and the face smiled. "That was rather hasty of you," said the
picture.
Harringay states that, now that the worst had happened, his
self-possession returned. He had a saving persuasion that devils were
reasonable creatures.
"Why do you keep moving about then," he said, "making faces and all
that--sneering and squinting, while I am painting you?"
"I don't," said the picture.
"You _do_," said Harringay.
"It's yourself," said the picture.
"It's _not_ myself," said Harringay.
"It _is_ yourself," said the picture. "No! don't go hitting me with
paint again, because it's true. You have been trying to fluke an
expression on my face all the morning. Really, you haven't an idea
what your picture ought to look like."
"I have," said Harringay.
"You have _not_," said the picture: "You _never_ have with your
pictures. You always start with the vaguest presentiment of what you
are going to do; it is to be something beautiful--you are sure of
that--and devout, perhaps, or tragic; but beyond that it is all
experiment and chance. My dear fellow! you don't think you can paint a
picture like that?"
Now it must be remembered that for what follows we have only
Harringay's word.
"I shall paint a picture exactly as I like," said Harringay, calmly.
This seemed to disconcert the picture a little. "You can't paint a
picture without an inspiration," it remarked.
"But I _had_ an inspiration--for this."
"Inspiration!" sneered the sardonic figure; "a fancy that came from
your seeing an organ-grinder looking up at a window! Vigil! Ha, ha!
You just started painting on the chance of something coming--that's
what you did. And when I saw you at it I came. I want a talk with
you!"
"Art, with you," said the picture,--"it's a poor business. You potter.
I don't know how it is, but you don't seem able to throw your soul
into it. You know too much. It hampers you. In the midst of your
enthusiasms you ask yourself whether something like this has not been
done before. And ..."
"Look here," said Harringay, who had expected something better than
criticism from the devil. "Are you going to talk studio to me?" He
filled his number twelve hoghair with red paint.
"The true artist," said the picture, "is always an ignorant man. An
artist who theorises about his work is no longer artist but critic.
Wagner ... I say!--What's that red paint for?"
"I'm going to paint you out," said Harringay. "I don't want to hear
all that Tommy Rot. If you think just because I'm an artist by trade
I'm going to talk studio to you, you make a precious mistake."
"One minute," said the picture, evidently alarmed. "I want to make
you an offer--a genuine offer. It's right what I'm saying. You lack
inspirations. Well. No doubt you've heard of the Cathedral of Cologne,
and the Devil's Bridge, and--"
"Rubbish," said Harringay. "Do you think I want to go to perdition
simply for the pleasure of painting a good picture, and getting it
slated. Take that."
His blood was up. His danger only nerved him to action, so he says.
So he planted a dab of vermilion in his creature's mouth. The Italian
spluttered and tried to wipe it off--evidently horribly surprised. And
then--according to Harringay--there began a very remarkable struggle,
Harringay splashing away with the red paint, and the picture wriggling
about and wiping it off as fast as he put it on. "_Two_ masterpieces,"
said the demon. "Two indubitable masterpieces for a Chelsea artist's
soul. It's a bargain?" Harringay replied with the paint brush.
For a few minutes nothing could be heard but the brush going and the
spluttering and ejaculations of the Italian. A lot of the strokes he
caught on his arm and hand, though Harringay got over his guard often
enough. Presently the paint on the palette gave out and the two
antagonists stood breathless, regarding each other. The picture was
so smeared with red that it looked as if it had been rolling about
a slaughterhouse, and it was painfully out of breath and very
uncomfortable with the wet paint trickling down its neck. Still, the
first round was in its favour on the whole. "Think," it said, sticking
pluckily to its point, "two supreme masterpieces--in different styles.
Each equivalent to the Cathedral..."
"_I_ know," said Harringay, and rushed out of the studio and along the
passage towards his wife's boudoir.
In another minute he was back with a large tin of enamel--Hedge
Sparrow's Egg Tint, it was, and a brush. At the sight of that
the artistic devil with the red eye began to scream. "_Three_
masterpieces--culminating masterpieces."
Harringay delivered cut two across the demon, and followed with
a thrust in the eye. There was an indistinct rumbling. "_Four_
masterpieces," and a spitting sound.
But Harringay had the upper hand now and meant to keep it. With rapid,
bold strokes he continued to paint over the writhing canvas, until at
last it was a uniform field of shining Hedge Sparrow tint. Once the
mouth reappeared and got as far as "Five master--" before he filled
it with enamel; and near the end the red eye opened and glared at him
indignantly. But at last nothing remained save a gleaming panel of
drying enamel. For a little while a faint stirring beneath the surface
puckered it slightly here and there, but presently even that died away
and the thing was perfectly still.
Then Harringay--according to Harringay's account--lit his pipe and sat
down and stared at the enamelled canvas, and tried to make out clearly
what had happened. Then he walked round behind it, to see if the back
of it was at all remarkable. Then it was he began to regret he had not
photographed the Devil before he painted him out.
This is Harringay's story--not mine. He supports it by a small canvas
(24 by 20) enamelled a pale green, and by violent asseverations. It is
also true that he never has produced a masterpiece, and in the opinion
of his intimate friends probably never will.
THE FLYING MAN
The Ethnologist looked at the _bhimraj_ feather thoughtfully. "They
seemed loth to part with it," he said.
"It is sacred to the Chiefs," said the lieutenant; "just as yellow
silk, you know, is sacred to the Chinese Emperor."
The Ethnologist did not answer. He hesitated. Then opening the topic
abruptly, "What on earth is this cock-and-bull story they have of a
flying man?"
The lieutenant smiled faintly. "What did they tell you?"
"I see," said the Ethnologist, "that you know of your fame."
The lieutenant rolled himself a cigarette. "I don't mind hearing about
it once more. How does it stand at present?"
"It's so confoundedly childish," said the Ethnologist, becoming
irritated. "How did you play it off upon them?"
The lieutenant made no answer, but lounged back in his folding-chair,
still smiling.
"Here am I, come four hundred miles out of my way to get what is left
of the folk-lore of these people, before they are utterly demoralised
by missionaries and the military, and all I find are a lot of
impossible legends about a sandy-haired scrub of an infantry
lieutenant. How he is invulnerable--how he can jump over
elephants--how he can fly. That's the toughest nut. One old gentleman
described your wings, said they had black plumage and were not quite
as long as a mule. Said he often saw you by moonlight hovering over
the crests out towards the Shendu country.--Confound it, man!"
The lieutenant laughed cheerfully. "Go on," he said. "Go on."
The Ethnologist did. At last he wearied. "To trade so," he said, "on
these unsophisticated children of the mountains. How could you bring
yourself to do it, man?"
"I'm sorry," said the lieutenant, "but truly the thing was forced upon
me. I can assure you I was driven to it. And at the time I had not the
faintest idea of how the Chin imagination would take it. Or curiosity.
I can only plead it was an indiscretion and not malice that made me
replace the folk-lore by a new legend. But as you seem aggrieved, I
will try and explain the business to you.
"It was in the time of the last Lushai expedition but one, and Walters
thought these people you have been visiting were friendly. So, with an
airy confidence in my capacity for taking care of myself, he sent me
up the gorge--fourteen miles of it--with three of the Derbyshire men
and half a dozen Sepoys, two mules, and his blessing, to see what
popular feeling was like at that village you visited. A force of
ten--not counting the mules--fourteen miles, and during a war! You saw
the road?"
"_Road_!" said the Ethnologist.
"It's better now than it was. When we went up we had to wade in
the river for a mile where the valley narrows, with a smart stream
frothing round our knees and the stones as slippery as ice. There it
was I dropped my rifle. Afterwards the Sappers blasted the cliff with
dynamite and made the convenient way you came by. Then below, where
those very high cliffs come, we had to keep on dodging across the
river--I should say we crossed it a dozen times in a couple of miles.
"We got in sight of the place early the next morning. You know how
it lies, on a spur halfway between the big hills, and as we began to
appreciate how wickedly quiet the village lay under the sunlight, we
came to a stop to consider.
"At that they fired a lump of filed brass idol at us, just by way of a
welcome. It came twanging down the slope to the right of us where the
boulders are, missed my shoulder by an inch or so, and plugged the
mule that carried all the provisions and utensils. I never heard such
a death-rattle before or since. And at that we became aware of a
number of gentlemen carrying matchlocks, and dressed in things like
plaid dusters, dodging about along the neck between the village and
the crest to the east.
"'Right about face,' I said. 'Not too close together.'
"And with that encouragement my expedition of ten men came round and
set off at a smart trot down the valley again hitherward. We did not
wait to save anything our dead had carried, but we kept the second
mule with us--he carried my tent and some other rubbish--out of a
feeling of friendship.
"So ended the battle--ingloriously. Glancing back, I saw the valley
dotted with the victors, shouting and firing at us. But no one was
hit. These Chins and their guns are very little good except at a
sitting shot. They will sit and finick over a boulder for hours taking
aim, and when they fire running it is chiefly for stage effect.
Hooker, one of the Derbyshire men, fancied himself rather with the
rifle, and stopped behind for half a minute to try his luck as we
turned the bend. But he got nothing.