CHAPTER II.
THE SWORD AND THE SNAKE.
Colonel Matthew Devon De Warrenne, commanding the Queen’s Own (118th) Bombay Lancers, was in good time, in his best review-order uniform, and in a terrible state of mind.
He strode from end to end of the long verandah of his bungalow with clank of steel, creak of leather, and groan of travailing soul. As the top of his scarlet, blue and gold turban touched the lamp that hung a good seven feet above his spurred heels he swore viciously.
Almost for the first time in his hard-lived, selfish life he had been thwarted, flouted, cruelly and evilly entreated, and the worst of it was that his enemy was—not a man whom he could take by the throat, but—Fate.
Fate had dealt him a cruel blow, and he felt as he would have done had he, impotent, seen one steal the great charger that champed and pawed there at the door, and replace it by a potter’s donkey. Nay, worse—for he had loved Lenore, his wife, and Fate had stolen her away and replaced her by a squealing brat.
Within a year of his marriage his wife was dead and buried, and his son alive and—howling. He could hear him (curse him!).
The Colonel glanced at his watch, producing it from some mysterious recess beneath his belted golden sash and within his pale blue tunic.
Not yet time to ride to the regimental parade-ground and lead his famous corps to its place on the brigade parade-ground for the New Year Review and march-past.
As he held the watch at the length of its chain and stared, half-comprehending, his hand—the hand of the finest swordsman in the Indian Army—shook.
Lenore gone: a puling, yelping whelp in her place…. A tall, severe-looking elderly woman entered the verandah by a distant door and approached the savage, miserable soldier. Nurse Beaton.
“Will you give your son a name, Sir?” she said, and it was evident in voice and manner that the question had been asked before and had received an unsatisfactory, if not unprintable; reply. Every line of feature and form seemed to express indignant resentment. She had nursed and foster-mothered the child’s mother, and—unlike the man—had found the baby the chiefest consolation of her cruel grief, and already loved it not only for its idolized mother’s sake, but with the devotion of a childless child-lover.
“The christening is fixed for to-day, Sir, as I have kept reminding you, Sir,” she added.
She had never liked the Colonel—nor considered him “good enough” for her tender, dainty darling, “nearly three times her age and no better than he ought to be”.
“Name?” snarled Colonel Matthew Devon de Warrenne. “Name the little beast? Call him what you like, and then drown him.” The tight-lipped face of the elderly nurse flushed angrily, but before she could make the indignant reply that her hurt and scandalized look presaged, the Colonel added:—
“No, look here, call him Damocles, and done with it. The Sword hangs over him too, I suppose, and he’ll die by it, as all his ancestors have done. Yes—”
“It’s not a nice name, Sir, to my thinking,” interrupted the woman, “not for an only name—and for an only child. Let it be a second or third name, Sir, if you want to give him such an outlandish one.”
She fingered her new black dress nervously with twitching hands and the tight lips trembled.
“He’s to be named Damocles and nothing else,” replied the Master, and, as she turned away with a look of positive hate, he added sardonically:—
“And then you can call him ‘Dam’ for short, you know, Nurse.”
Nurse Beaton bridled, clenched her hands, and stiffened visibly. Had the man been her social equal or any other than her master, her pent-up wrath and indignation would have broken forth in a torrent of scathing abuse.
“Never would I call the poor motherless lamb Dam, Sir,” she answered with restraint.
“Then call him Dummy! Good morning, Nurse,” snapped the Colonel.
As she turned to go, with a bitter sigh, she asked in the hopeless tone of one who knows the waste of words:—
“You will not repent—I mean relent—and come to the christening of your only son this afternoon, Sir?”
“Good morning, Nurse,” observed Colonel Matthew Devon de Warrenne, and resumed his hurried pacing of the verandah.
It is not enough that a man love his wife dearly and hold her the sweetest, fairest, and best of women—he should tell her so, morning and night.
There is a proverb (the unwisdom of many and the poor wit of one) that says Actions speak louder than Words. Whether this is the most untrustworthy of an untrustworthy class of generalizations is debateable.
Anyhow, let no husband or lover believe it. Vain are the deeds of dumb devotion, the unwearying forethought, the tender care, the gifts of price, and the priceless gifts of attentive, watchful guard and guide, the labours of Love—all vain. Silent is the speech of Action.
But resonant loud is the speech of Words and profitable their investment in the Mutual Alliance Bank.
“Love me, love my Dog?” Yes—and look to the dog for a dog’s reward.
“Do not show me that you love me—tell me so.” Far too true and pregnant ever to become a proverb.
Colonel de Warrenne had omitted to tell his wife so—after she had accepted him—and she had died thinking herself loveless, unloved, and stating the fact.
This was the bitterest drop in the bitter cup of the big, dumb, well-meaning man.
And now she would never know….
She had thought herself unloved, and, nerve-shattered by her terrible experience with the snake, had made no fight for life when the unwanted boy was born. For the sake of a girl she would have striven to live—but a boy, a boy can fend for himself (and takes after his father)….
Almost as soon as Lenore Seymour Stukeley had landed in India (on a visit with her sister Yvette to friends at Bimariabad), delighted, bewildered, depolarized, Colonel Matthew Devon de Warrenne had burst with a blaze of glory into her hitherto secluded, narrow life—a great pale-blue, white-and-gold wonder, clanking and jingling, resplendent, bemedalled, ruling men, charging at the head of thundering squadrons—a half-god (and to Yvette he had seemed a whole-god).
He had told her that he loved her, told her once, and had been accepted.
Once! Only once told her that he loved her, that she was beautiful, that he was hers to command to the uttermost. Only once! What could she know of the changed life, the absolute renunciation of pleasant bachelor vices, the pulling up short, and all those actions that speak more softly than words?
What could she know of the strength and depth of the love that could keep such a man as the Colonel from the bar, the bridge-table, the race-course and the Paphian dame? Of the love that made him walk warily lest he offend one for whom his quarter of a century, and more, of barrack and bachelor-bungalow life, made him feel so utterly unfit and unworthy? What could she know of all that he had given up and delighted to give up—now that he truly loved a true woman? The hard-living, hard-hearted, hard-spoken man had become a gentle frequenter of his wife’s tea-parties, her companion at church, her constant attendant—never leaving the bungalow, save for duty, without her.
To those who knew him it was a World’s Marvel; to her, who knew him not, it was nothing at all—normal, natural. And being a man who spoke only when he must, who dreaded the expression of any emotion, and who foolishly thought that actions speak louder than words, he had omitted to tell her daily—or even weekly or monthly—that he loved her; and she had died pitying herself and reproaching him.
Fate’s old, old game of Cross Purposes. Major John Decies, reserved, high-minded gentleman, loving Lenore de Warrenne (and longing to tell her so daily), with the one lifelong love of a steadfast nature; Yvette Stukeley, reserved, high-minded gentlewoman, loving Colonel de Warrenne, and longing to escape from Bimariabad before his wedding to her sister, and doing so at the earliest possible date thereafter: each woman losing the man who would have been her ideal husband, each man losing the woman who would have been his ideal wife.
Yvette Stukeley returned to her uncle and guardian, General Sir Gerald Seymour Stukeley, K.C.B., K.C.S.I., at Monksmead, nursing a broken heart, and longed for the day when Colonel de Warrenne’s child might be sent home to her care.
Major John Decies abode at Bimariabad, also nursing a broken heart (though he scarcely realized the fact), watched over the son of Lenore de Warrenne, and greatly feared for him.
The Major was an original student of theories and facts of Heredity and Pre-natal Influence. Further he was not wholly hopeful as to the effect of all the post-natal influences likely to be brought to bear upon a child who grew up in the bungalow, and the dislike of Colonel Matthew Devon de Warrenne.
Upon the infant Damocles, Nurse Beaton, rugged, snow-capped volcano, lavished the tender love of a mother; and in him Major John Decies, deep-running still water, took the interest of a father. The which was the better for the infant Damocles in that his real father had no interest to take and no love to lavish. He frankly disliked the child—the outward and visible sign, the daily reminder of the cruel loss he so deeply felt and fiercely resented.
Yet, strangely enough, he would not send the child home. Relations who could receive it he had none, and he declined to be beholden to its great-uncle, General Sir Gerald Seymour Stukeley, and its aunt Yvette Stukeley, in spite of the warmest invitations from the one and earnest entreaties from the other.
Nurse Beaton fed, tended, clothed and nursed the baby by day; a worshipping ayah wheeled him abroad, and, by night, slept beside his cot; a devoted sepoy-orderly from the regiment guarded his cavalcade, and, when permitted, proudly bore him in his arms.
Major John Decies visited him frequently, watched and waited, waited and watched, and, though not a youth, “thought long, long thoughts”.
He also frequently laid his views and theories on paternal duties before Colonel de Warrenne, until pointedly asked by that officer whether he had no duties of his own which might claim his valuable time.
Years rolled by, after the incorrigible habit of years, and the infant Damocles grew and developed into a remarkably sturdy, healthy, intelligent boy, as cheerful, fearless, impudent, and irrepressible as the heart of the Major could desire—and with a much larger vocabulary than any one could desire, for a baby.
On the fifth anniversary of his birthday he received a matutinal call from Major Decies, who was returning from his daily visit to the Civil Hospital.
The Major bore a birthday present and a very anxious, undecided mind.
“Good morrow, gentle Damocles,” he remarked, entering the big verandah adown which the chubby boy pranced gleefully to meet his beloved friend, shouting a welcome, and brandishing a sword designed, and largely constructed, by himself from a cleaning-rod, a tobacco-tin lid, a piece of wood, card-board and wire.
“Thalaam, Major Thahib,” he said, flinging himself bodily upon that gentleman. “I thaw cook cut a fowl’s froat vis morning. It squorked boofly.”
“Did it? Alas, that I missed those pleasing-er-squorks,” replied the Major, and added: “This is thy natal day, my son. Thou art a man of five.”
“I’m a debble. I’m a norful little debble,” corrected Damocles, cheerfully and with conviction.
“Incidentally. But you are five also,” persisted the senior man.
“It’s my birfday to-day,” observed the junior.
“I just said so.”
“That you didn’t, Major Thahib. This is a thword. Father’s charger’s got an over-weach. Jumping. He says it’s a dam-nuithanth.”
“Oh, that’s a sword, is it? And ‘Fire’ has got an over-reach. And it’s a qualified nuisance, is it?”
“Yeth, and the mare is coughing and her thythe is a blathted fool for letting her catch cold.”
“The mare has a cold and the syce[4] is a qualified fool, is he? H’m! I think it’s high time you had a look in at little old England, my son, what? And who made you this elegant rapier? Ochterlonie Sahib or—who?” (Lieutenant Lord Ochterlonie was the Adjutant of the Queen’s Greys, a friend of Colonel de Warrenne, an ex-admirer of his late wife, and a great pal of his son.)
“’Tithn’t a waper. It’th my thword. I made it mythelf.”
“Who helped?”
“Nobody. At leatht, Khodadad Khan, Orderly, knocked the holes in the tin like I showed him—or elthe got the Farrier Thargeant to do it, and thaid he had.”
“Yes—but who told you how to make it like this? Where did you see a hand-part like this? It isn’t like Daddy’s sword, nor Khodadad Khan’s tulwar. Where did you copy it?”
“I didn’t copy it…. I shot ten rats wiv a bow-and-arrow last night. At leatht—I don’t think I shot ten. Nor one. I don’t think I didn’t, pwaps.”
“But hang it all, the thing’s an Italian rapier, by Gad. Some one must have shown you how to make the thing, or you’ve got a picture. It’s a pukka[5] mediaeval rapier.”
“No it’th not. It’th my thword. I made it…. Have a jolly fight”—and the boy struck an extraordinarily correct fencing attitude—left hand raised in balance, sword poised, legs and feet well placed, the whole pose easy, natural, graceful.
Curiously enough, the sword was held horizontal instead of pointing upward, a fact which at once struck the observant and practised eye of Major John Decies, sometime champion fencer.
“Who’s been teaching you fencing?” he asked.
“What ith ‘fenthing’? Let’th have a fight,” replied the boy.
“Stick me here, Dam,” invited the Major, seating himself and indicating the position of the heart. “Bet you can’t.”
The boy lunged, straight, true, gracefully, straightening all his limbs except his right leg, rigidly, strongly, and the “sword” bent upward from the spot on which the man’s finger had just rested.
“Gad! Who has taught you to lunge? I shall have a bruise there, and perhaps—live. Who’s behind all this, young fella? Who taught you to stand so, and to lunge? Ochterlonie Sahib or Daddy?”
“Nobody. What is ‘lunge’? Will you buy me a little baby-camel to play with and teach tricks? Perhaps it would sit up and beg. Do camelth lay eggth? Chucko does. Millions and lakhs. You get a thword, too, and we’ll fight every day. Yeth. All day long——”
“Good morning, Sir,” said Nurse Beaton, bustling into the verandah from the nursery. “He’s as mad as ever on swords and fighting, you see. It’s a soldier he’ll be, the lamb. He’s taken to making that black orderly pull out his sword when he’s in uniform. Makes him wave and jab it about. Gives me the creeps—with his black face and white eyes and all. You won’t encourage the child at it, will you, Sir? And his poor Mother the gentlest soul that ever stepped. Swords! Where he gets his notions I can’t think (though I know where he gets his language, poor lamb!). Look at that thing, Sir! For all the world like the dressed-up folk have on the stage or in pictures.”
“You haven’t let him see any books, I suppose, Nurse?” asked the Major.
“No, Sir. Never a book has the poor lamb seen, except those you’ve brought. I’ve always been in terror of his seeing a picture of a you-know-what, ever since you told me what the effect might be. Nor he hasn’t so much as heard the name of it, so far as I know.”
“Well, he’ll see one to-day. I’ve brought it with me—must see it sooner or later. Might see a live one anywhere—in spite of all your care…. But about this sword—where could he have got the idea? It’s unlike any sword he ever set eyes on. Besides if he ever did see an Italian rapier—and there’s scarcely such a thing in India—he’d not get the chance to use it as a copy. Fancy his having the desire and the power to, anyhow!”
“I give it up, Sir,” said Nurse Beaton.
“I give it upper,” added the Major, taking the object of their wonder from the child.
And there was cause for wonder indeed.
A hole had been punched through the centre of the lid of a tobacco tin and a number of others round the edge. Through the centre hole the steel rod had been passed so that the tin made a “guard”. To the other holes wires had been fastened by bending, and their ends gathered, twisted, and bound with string to the top of the handle (of bored corks) to form an ornamental basket-hilt.
But the most remarkable thing of all was that, before doing this, the juvenile designer had passed the rod through a piece of bored stick so that the latter formed a cross-piece (neatly bound) within the tin guard—the distinctive feature of the ancient and modern Italian rapiers!
Round this cross-piece the first two fingers of the boy’s right hand were crooked as he held the sword—and this is the one and only correct way of holding the Italian weapon, as the Major was well aware!
“I give it most utterly-uppermost,” he murmured. “It’s positively uncanny. No uninitiated adult of the utmost intelligence ever held an Italian-pattern foil correctly yet—nor until he had been pretty carefully shown. Who the devil put him up to the design in the first place, and the method of holding, in the second? Explain yourself, you two-anna[6] marvel,” he demanded of the child. “It’s jadu—black magic.”
“Ayah lothted a wupee latht night,” he replied.
“Lost a rupee, did she? Lucky young thing. Wish I had one to lose. Who showed you how to hold that sword? Why do you crook your fingers round the cross-piece like that?”
“Chucko laid me an egg latht night,” observed Damocles. “He laid it with my name on it—so that cook couldn’t steal it.”
“No doubt. Look here, where can I get a sword like yours? Where can I copy it? Who makes them? Who knows about them?”
“I don’t know, Major Thahib. Gunnoo sells ‘Fire’s’ gram to the methrani for her curry and chuppatties.”
“But how do you know swords are like this? That thing isn’t a pukka sword.”
“Well, it’th like Thir Theymour Thtukeley’s in my dweam.”
“What dream?”
“The one I’m alwayth dweaming. They have got long hair like Nurse in the night, and they fight and fight like anything. Norful good fighters! And they wear funny kit. And their thwords are like vis. _Egg_zackly. Gunnoo gave me a ride on ‘Fire,’ and he’th a dam-liar. He thaid he forgot to put the warm jhool on him when Daddy was going to fwash him for being a dam-fool. I thaid I’d tell Daddy how he alwayth thleepth in it himthelf, unleth he gave me a ride on ‘Fire’. ‘Fire’ gave a norful buck and bucked me off. At leatht I think he didn’t.”
Major Decies’ face was curiously intent—as of some midnight worker in research who sees a bright near glimpse of the gold his alchemy has so long sought to materialize in the alembic of fact.
“Come back to sober truth, young youth. What about the dream? Who are they, and what do they say and do?”
“Thir Theymour Thtukeley Thahib tellth Thir Matthew Thahib about the hilt-thwust. (What is ‘hilt-thwust’?) And Lubin, the thervant, ith a white thervant. Why ith he white if he ith a Thahib’s ‘boy’?”
“Good Gad!” murmured the Major. “I’m favoured of the gods. Tell me all about it, Sonny. Then I’ll undo this parcel for you,” he coaxed.
“Oh, I don’t wemember. They buck a lot by the tents and then Thir Theymour Thtukeley goes and fights Thir Matthew and kills him, and it’th awful lovely, but they dreth up like kids at a party in big collars and silly kit.”
“Yes, I know,” murmured the Major. “Tell me what they say when they buck to each other by the tents, and when they talk about the ‘hilt-thrust,’ old chap.”
“Oh, I don’t wemember. I’ll listen next time I dweam it, and tell you. Chucko’s egg was all brown—not white like those cook brings from the bazaar. He’s a dam-thief. Open the parcel, Major Thabib. What’s in it?”
“A picture-book for you, Sonny. All sorts of jolly beasts that you’ll shikar some day. You’ll tell me some more about the dream to-morrow, won’t you?”
“Yeth. I’ll wemember and fink, and tell you what I have finked.”
Turning to Nurse Beaton, the Major whispered:—
“Don’t worry him about this dream at all. Leave it to me. It’s wonderful. Take him on your lap, Nurse, and—er—be ready. It’s a very life-like picture, and I’m going to spring it on him without any remark—but I’m more than a little anxious, I admit. Still, it’s got to come, as I say, and better a picture first, with ourselves present. If the picture don’t affect him I’ll show him a real one. May be all right of course, but I don’t know. I came across a somewhat similar case once before—and it was not all right. Not by any means,” and he disclosed the brilliantly coloured Animal Picture Book and knelt beside the expectant boy.
On the first page was an incredibly leonine lion, who appeared to have solved with much satisfaction the problem of aerial flight, so far was he from the mountain whence he had sprung and above the back of the antelope towards which he had propelled himself. One could almost hear him roar. There was menace and fate in eye and tooth and claw, yea, in the very kink of the prehensile-seeming tail wherewith he apparently steered his course in mid-air. To gaze upon his impressive and determined countenance was to sympathize most fully with the sore-tried Prophet of old (known to Damocles as Dannle-in-the-lines-den) for ever more.
The boy was wholly charmed, stroked the glowing ferocity and observed that he was a pukka Bahadur.[7]
On the next page, burning bright, was a tiger, if possible one degree more terrible than the lion. His “fearful cemetery” appeared to be full, judging by its burgeoned bulge and the shocking state of depletion exhibited by the buffalo on which he fed with barely inaudible snarls and grunts of satisfaction. Blood dripped from his capacious and over-furnished mouth.
“Booful,” murmured Damocles. “I shall go shooting tigerth to-mowwow. Shoot vem in ve mouth, down ve froat, so as not to spoil ve wool.”
Turning over the page, the Major disclosed a most grievous grizzly bear, grizzly and bearish beyond conception, heraldic, regardant, expectant, not collared, fanged and clawed proper, rampant, erect, requiring no supporters.
“You could thtab him wiv a thword if you were quick, while he was doing that,” opined Damocles, charmed, enraptured, delighted. One by one, other savage, fearsome beasts were disclosed to the increasingly delighted boy until, without warning, the Major suddenly turned a page and disclosed a brilliant and hungry-looking snake.
With a piercing shriek the boy leapt convulsively from Nurse Beaton’s arms, rushed blindly into the wall and endeavoured to butt and bore his way through it with his head, screaming like a wounded horse. As the man and woman sprang to him he shrieked, “It’th under my foot! It’th moving, moving, moving out” and fell to the ground in a fit.
Major John Decies arose from his bachelor dinner-table that evening, lit his “planter” cheroot, and strolled into the verandah that looked across a desert to a mountain range.
Dropping into a long low chair, he raised his feet on to the long leg-rest extensions of its arms, and, as he settled down and waited for coffee, wondered why no such chairs are known in the West; why the trunks of the palms looked less flat in the moonlight than in the daylight (in which, from that spot, they always looked exactly as though cut out of cardboard); why Providence had not arranged for perpetual full-moon; why the world looked such a place of peaceful, glorious beauty by moonlight, the bare cruel mountains like diaphanous clouds of tenderest soothing mist, the Judge’s hideous bungalow like a fairy palace, his own parched compound like a plot of Paradise, when all was so abominable by day; and, as ever—why his darling, Lenore Stukeley, had had to marry de Warrenne and die in the full flower and promise of her beautiful womanhood.
Having finished his coffee and lighted his pipe (vice the over-dry friable cheroot, flung into the garden) the Major then turned his mind to serious and consecutive thought on the subject of her son, his beloved little pal, Dammy de Warrenne.
Poor little beggar! What an eternity it had seemed before he had got him to sleep. How the child had suffered. Mad! Absolutely stark, staring, raving mad with sheer terror…. Had he acted rightly in showing him the picture? He had meant well, anyhow. Cruel phrase, that. How cuttingly his friend de Warrenne had observed, “You mean well, doubtless,” on more than one occasion. He could make it the most stinging of insults…. Surely he had acted rightly…. Poor little beggar—but he was bound to see a picture or a real live specimen, sooner or later. Perhaps when there was no help at hand…. Would he be like it always? Might grow out of it as he grew older and stronger. What would have happened if he had encountered a live snake? Lost his reason permanently, perhaps…. What would happen when he did see one, as sooner or later, he certainly must?
What would be the best plan? To attempt gradually to inure him—or to guard him absolutely from contact with picture, stuffed specimen, model, toy, and the real thing, wild or captive, as one would guard him against a fell disease?
Could he be inured? Could one “break it to him gently” bye and bye, by first drawing a wiggly line and then giving it a head? One might sketch a suggestion of a snake, make a sort of dissimilar clay model, improve it, show him a cast skin, stuff it, make a more life-like picture, gradually lead up to a well-stuffed one and then a live one. Might work up to having a good big picture of one on the nursery wall; one in a glass case; keep a harmless live one and show it him daily. Teach him by experience that there’s nothing supernatural about a snake—just a nasty reptile that wants exterminating like other dangerous creatures—something to shikar with a gun. Nothing at all supernatural….
But this was “super”-natural, abnormal, a terrible devastating agony of madness, inherited, incurable probably; part of mind and body and soul. Inherited, and integrally of him as were the colour of his eyes, his intelligence, his physique…. Heredity … pre-natal influence … breed….
Anyhow, nothing must be attempted yet awhile. Let the poor little chap get older and stronger, in mind and body, first. Brave as a little bull-dog in other directions! Absolutely devoid of fear otherwise, and with a natural bent for fighting and adventure. Climb anywhere, especially up the hind leg of a camel or a horse, fondle any strange dog, clamour to be put on any strange horse, go into any deep water, cheek anybody, bear any ordinary pain with a grin, thrill to any story of desperate deeds—a fine, brave, manly, hardy little chap, and with art extraordinary physique for strength and endurance.
Whatever was to be attempted later, he must be watched, day and night, now. No unattended excursions into the compound, no uncensored picture-books, no juggling snake-charmers…. Yet it must come, sooner or later.
Would it ruin his life?
Anyhow, he must never return to India when he grew up, or go to any snake-producing country, unless he could be cured.
Would it make him that awful thing—a coward?
Would it grow and wax till it dominated his mind—drive him mad?
Would succeeding attacks, following encounters with picture or reality, progressively increase in severity?
Her boy in an asylum?
No. He was exaggerating an almost expected consequence that might never be repeated—especially if the child were most carefully and gradually reintroduced to the present terror. Later though—much later on.
Meanwhile, wait and hope: hope and wait….