Cursed

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 – ”

CHAPTER XXVI

PLANS FOR RESCUE

“For Heaven’s sake, captain, what are you up to there?”

The voice of Filhiol startled Briggs. In the door of the cabin he saw the old man standing with a look of puzzled anxiety. Through the window Filhiol had seen him take down the kris; and, worried, he had painfully arisen and had hobbled into the house. “Better put that knife up, captain. It’s not a healthy article to be fooling with.”

“Not, eh?” asked the captain. “Pretty bad poison, is it?”

“Extremely fatal.”

“Even dried, this way?”

“Certainly! Put it up, captain, I beg you!” The doctor, more and more alarmed, came into the cabin. “Put it up!”

“What does it do to you, this curaré stuff?” insisted the captain.

“Various things. And then – ”

“Then you die? You surely die?”

“You do, unless one very special antidote is applied.”

“Nobody in this country has that, though!”

“Nobody but myself, so far as I know.”

“You’ve got it?” demanded the captain, amazed. “Where the devil would you get it?”

“Out East, where you got that devilish kris! You haven’t forgotten that Parsee in Bombay, who gave me the secret cure, after I’d saved him from cholera? But that’s neither here nor there, captain! That kris is no thing to be experimenting with. Put it up now, I tell you! We aren’t going to have any foolishness, captain. Not at our age, mind you! Put it up, now.”

Unwillingly the captain obeyed. He hung the weapon up once more, while Filhiol eyed him with suspicious displeasure.

“It would be more to the point to see how we’re going to get the boy out of his trouble again,” the doctor reproved. “If you can’t meet this problem without doing something very foolish, captain, you’re not the man I think you!”

Briggs made no answer, but hailed:

“Ezra! Oh, Ezra!”

The old man’s chantey – it now had to do with one “Old Stormy,” alleged to be “dead and gone” – promptly ceased. Footfalls sounded, and Ezra appeared. The cut on his cheek showed livid in the tough, leathery skin.

“Cap’n Briggs, sir?” asked he.