I SEEK ORCHIDS
Internally I was quaking, and thinking very fast. The first shock of
their astonishment was dissipating, and two of the three faces were
clouding into a glowering scrutiny which augured darkly for my escape.
The gaze of the third held a grave perplexity, touched with awe, and in
the interval of overcharged silence the other eyes dwelt questioningly
on his.
I knew from their spell-bound attitudes that I was the first white man
they had seen and an apparition. Measured by their pigmy standards, I
was a gigantic being of a new type and order, possibly I was even
immortal.
As a man they had no fear of me. The revolver which I had slipped from
its holster and cocked had not impressed them. They knew nothing of its
death-dealing quality. That was a point in my favor. It would afford, if
need be, six miracles of mortality, but the jungle that had disgorged
them could disgorge hundreds of others like them--perhaps thousands.
Gods must carry themselves, when they walk among men, with a godlike
scorn of mundane dangers. I turned to the one man who was above the
others, exposing my back to the two spears, as though safe in my
consciousness of immunity. I extended one arm with a gesture intended to
epitomize great majesty. It was a pose borrowed from some old sculptor's
conception of the Olympian Zeus--albeit shamefully exaggerated.
It was an anxious moment. Should he, to whom I made my commanding plea,
lift his finger in signal, the spears from behind, poisoned spears
perhaps, would strike me down. But as I strode forward, with one hand
still pointing heavenward, I commanded him in a mighty voice to stand
aside.
He on his part eyed me dubiously, never shifting his attitude or raising
his club from the earth, but he permitted me to pass from the
amphitheatre unmolested. I went, deliberately, holding my gaze rigidly
to the front and using every ounce of self-control to curb the impulse
of my feet to run, and the impulse of my neck to crane. A vestige of
misgiving, a note of human anxiety, would have destroyed me.
My peril was superlative, and yet as I look back on the occasion, I can
see that it overdid comedy and became pure farce. I was defending my
life with burlesque. My audience would not be impressed by finesse, and
impressing it was a matter of life and death. In the words of the
east-side bruiser, I was "makin' it strong."
At all events my bearing, in a situation without precedent of etiquette,
found sufficient favor to cover my retreat and I went down to the sea
unfollowed. I had none the less seen enough to set me thinking and
thought brought little solace. Were I accepted on the basis of my own
divine assumption, and regarded as a being from another world, the story
would travel fast among their villages. Its wonder would be promulgated
and men would burn with curiosity to behold me. Among those who came as
pilgrims would be some demanding proofs and miracles. I was now
committed to a permanent policy of bluff. I had always been regarded as
a facetious individual. Now my life depended on attaining a supreme
flippancy of attitude on pain of sacrifice to rites for which I had no
reverence. When at sundown I reached the place where the portrait smiled
whimsically at me from its post of honor, I sat for a while looking into
the comprehending eyes and my thoughts took more cheerful color. Before
me lay a situation in which I was to pit my legacy of human development
against the brute odds of minds lighted only to the mistiness of dawn.
"Frances," I said, "you smile. Of course since you are fixed in print,
you can't do otherwise than smile. I wonder--" I broke off and became
suddenly and unaccountably serious. "I wonder if you would smile, were
you here with me in the flesh as well as merely in the spirit. I wonder
if you would."
Then with a feeling which was tremendously real, I added fervently and
aloud, "Thank God you are not here in the flesh--but I am grateful for
your smiling. Somehow I find it reassuring."
After a little reflection I summarized the entire situation to the lady
with whom I discussed my affairs.
"You see, my dear," I informed her, "to their untutored and man-eating
minds I present a dilemma. I am either a great immortal, whom it would
be most unwise to heckle--or I am very good eating, in which case it is
a pity to let me grow thinner."
"It shall be our care, dear lady," I added, "to maintain this status of
godship and to that end we must arrange a little program of simple
miracles from time to time. You see," I explained, "it won't be long
before they will be coming here and demanding what manner of deity I am,
and what is my immortal name. Do you know what I shall tell them?"
I paused and grinned into the smiling eyes and the lips that seemed
trembling on the verge of speech.
"I shall tell them," I assured her, "that in me they behold the great
god Four-flush."
If I concede to the cold logic of material reasoning that this
dependable companionship and love of a man for a portrait washed up by
the sea was merely the aberration of a brain unseated by solitude, I
must also believe that a series of totally incredible coincidences
subsequently befell me. But if it be that certain things are written in
the stars and certain passions are irrevocably decreed, my life is freed
of grotesqueness and becomes logical.
While I lived under the sword of the problematical to-morrow, suspended
by the hair of an uncertain to-day, my dependence upon her grew greater.
The brave man is said to die once and the coward often, but the line
between the courage and cowardice is not absolute. There were periods
when I felt that I could play the game and die if I must, with the
detached philosophy of a Socrates. At other times I wallowed in the pit
of foreboding and died several times a day. In these moods I wished for
the moment of crisis which should put my resolution to the touch, and
end the matter.
The savages did not approach my cave, but sometimes when evening fell
and the jungle spread itself in a fringed blanket against the moonlight,
I could make out skulking patches of shadow at its edge. In my rambles
too I had a sense of being endlessly watched by unseen eyes, and once
bending over a sunlit pool to drink, I was startled by the haggard face
which looked up from it with streaks of white in its long, tangled hair.
Each day I brought fresh orchids from the jungle's edge and heaped them
before my intangible lady.
"They are more beautiful, Frances," I told her, "than any I could buy
you along the Champs Elysees or Fifth Avenue--and all they cost is a
ship and crew and cargo."
One morning I discovered that where the growth of cane and moss and
vines had formerly been thick and unbroken there were now several
clearly defined alleyways, made by the coming and going of the blacks,
bent on observing me. A few inquisitive steps into one of these trails
revealed, at a little distance, a pool of water. Its basin was of mossy
rock, and its edges were choked with ferns. A slender waterfall fed it,
and through the cloistered half-light of the forest interior fell a few
fervid dashes of sunlight like gold leaf on the somber tones of
greenery. The air hung wet and steamy like the atmosphere of a hot
house. But the marvel of it was the orchids. They climbed and trailed
and illumined the place with a dozen varieties of weird and subtle
beauty. One could understand why men take their lives into their hands
and penetrate fever-infested jungles in search of newer types. Their
delicacy was unearthly and splendid. They were not, it seemed, flowers
growing on dirt-fed stems, but blossoms of the gods. Each one was like
the blooming of some human soul freed from the grossness of the flesh.
Here was a bloom as ethereally pure and pale as the reincarnation of
some flawless virgin spirit; there were flaming petals of such
magnificent color as might have sprung from the heart of a conqueror. I
saw epitomized in petal and stamen, all the poetry of the world's dead
dreams. I took as many as I could carry back to the portrait, and on the
following morning I returned for more.
They lured me strangely with their fox fire of sheer beauty, until I had
penetrated the jungle to the distance of a quarter of a mile and stood
in a small opening where I plucked an armful of their blossoms.
Suddenly, as I started back, I felt a biting pang in my left shoulder,
and knew that I had been speared, though the tangle of the jungle
revealed no human form, and its silence remained unbroken. The spear,
which had come from nowhere, as it seemed, fell to the ground, but not
before it had gashed my flesh and left upon the tattered remnants of my
jacket a tell-tale smear of blood.
I believed myself to have been mortally poisoned by the javelin, and my
one wish now was to escape, with the semblance of greatness still upon
me, and die unseen. I went with as much dignity as possible toward the
beach, backing through the tangle to keep my flow of blood concealed. I
had no doubt that many unseen eyes followed my exit and even if it were
for a brief time, I wished to go with the seeming of divine
invulnerability. I even forced a loud and derisive shout of laughter
which rang weirdly through the silences. Wicked pains shot in white-hot
currents through my blood and racked my muscles. I was weak with
nauseating pain and dizziness swam in my brain. At last the merciful
rocks gave me concealment. I dropped on my knees, my teeth gritted, and
dragged myself back to my cave where I turned my face to the rock wall
to die.