Cursed

“Yes, sir, if it’s a lot of money, or a corner lot in a live town. I think there’s six things to make a man happy. One is a good cook an’ the other five is cash. However, fur be it from me to argy with you. I got to clear fer Dudley’s, or there wun’t be no dinner.”

Ezra withdrew.

“It’s that damn McLaughlin, I betcha,” he pondered. “I got an intuition the cap’n’s got to pay him heavy. Intuition’s a guess, when it comes out right; an’ I’ll bet a schooner to a saucepan I’m right this time. If I was half the man I used to be, it wouldn’t be money McLaughlin’d be gittin’, but this!” Menacingly, he doubled his fist.

Captain Briggs took from the safe a packet of bills and counted off four hundred dollars. This money he put into his wallet. Hal watched every move; while above, from behind the blinds, Dr. Filhiol observed him with profound attention.

“We are getting a bit low in the treasury,” admitted the captain, inspecting the remainder of the cash. “Only a matter of seven hundred and fifty left, to stand us till January. A bit low, but we’ll manage some way or other. Sail close to the wind, and make it. After all, what’s a little money when the boy’s whole life is at stake?”

He put the remaining bills back and closed the safe. To the desk he walked, dropped the combination into it and shut it, tight. Silently Hal slid back to his seat under the elm, and once more set himself to writing.

Filhiol peered down at him with animosity.

“A nice little treatment of strychnine or curaré might make a proper man of you, you brute,” he muttered, “but, by the living Lord, I don’t think anything else could!”

CHAPTER XXXII

THE READING OF THE CURSE

The kitchen door slammed. Ezra, turning the corner of the house, paused to gaze with admiration at Hal.

“Hello, Master Hal, sir,” said he. “Always studyin’, ain’t you?” Voice and expression alike showed intense pride. Above, Filhiol bent an ear of keenest attention. “Ain’t many young fellers in this town would be workin’ over books, when there’s petticoats in sight.”

“You don’t approve of the girls, eh?” asked Hal with a smile. A smile of the lips alone, not of the eyes.

“No, sir, I don’t,” answered Ezra with resentment – for once upon a time a woman had misused him, and the wound had never healed. “They ain’t what I call good reliable craft, sir. Contrary at the wheel, an’ their rig costs more ’n what their hull’s wu’th. No, sir, I ain’t overly fond of ’em.”

“Your judgment’s not valid,” said Hal. He seemed peculiarly expansive, as if for some reason of his own he wanted to win Ezra to still greater affection. “What do you know about women, an old bach like you?”

“I know!” affirmed Ezra, coming over the lawn to the table. “Men are like nails – when they’re drove crooked, they’re usually drove so by a woman. Women can make a fool of almost any man, ef nature don’t git a start on ’em.”

Hal laughed. A certain malevolent content seemed radiating from him. Lazily he leaned back, and drew at his pipe. “Right or wrong, you’ve certainly got definite opinions. You know your own mind. You believe in a man knowing himself, don’t you?”

“Ef some men knowed themselves they’d be ashamed o’ the acquaintance,” opined Ezra. “An’ most women would. No, sir, I don’t take no stock in ’em. There ain’t nothin’ certain about love but the uncertainty. Women ain’t satisfied with the milk o’ human kindness. They want all the cream. What they expect is a sealskin livin’ on a mushrat salary. Love’s a kind of paralysis – kind of a stroke, like. Sometimes it’s only on one side an’ there’s hope. But ef it gits on both sides, it’s hopeless.”

“Love makes the world go ’round, Ezra!”

“Like Tophet! It only makes folks’ heads spin, an’ they think the world’s goin’ ’round, that’s all. Nobody knows the value of a gold-mine or a woman, but millions o’ men has went busted, tryin’ to find out! Not fer me, this here lovin’, sir,” Ezra continued with eloquence. “I never yet see a matrimonial match struck but what somebody got burned. Marriage is the end o’ trouble, as the feller says – but which end? I ask you!”

“You needn’t ask me, Ezra; I’m no authority on women. There’s a nice little proverb in this book, though, that you ought to know.”

“What’s that, Master Hal?”

“Here, I’ll find it for you.” Hal turned a few pages, paused, and read: “‘Bounga sedap dipakey, layou dibouang.’”

“Sufferin’ snails! What is that stuff, anyhow? Heathen Chinee?”

“That’s Malay, Ezra,” Hal condescended. The doctor, listening, felt a strange little shiver, as of some reminiscent fear from the vague long-ago. Those words, last heard at Batu Kawan, fifty years before, now of a sudden rose to him like specters of great evil. His attention strained itself as Hal went on:

“That’s a favorite Malay proverb, and it means: ‘While the flower is pleasing to man, he wears it. When it fades, he throws it away.’”

“Meanin’ a woman, o’ course? Uhuh! I see. Well, them heathens has it pretty doggone nigh correct, at that, ain’t they? So that there is Malay, is it? All them twisty-wisty whirligigs? An’ you can read it same as if it was a real language?”

“It is a real language, Ezra, and a very beautiful one. I love it. You don’t know how much!” A tone of real sincerity crept into the false camaraderie of Hal’s voice. Filhiol shook his head. Vague, incomprehensible influences seemed reaching out from the vapors of the Orient, fingering their way into the very heart of this trim New England garden, in this year of grace, 1918. The doctor suddenly felt cold. He crouched a little closer toward the blinds.

“Holy halibut, Master Hal!” exclaimed Ezra in an awed tone, peering at the book. “What a head you got on you, sir! Fuller o’ brains than an old Bedford whaler is o’ rats!”

“You flatter me, Ezra. Think so, do you?”

“I know so! Ef I’d had your peak I wouldn’t of walloped pots in a galley all my natural. But I wan’t pervided good. My mind’s like a pint o’ rum in a hogshead – kind of broad, but not very deep. It’s sort of a phonograph mind – makes me talk a lot, but don’t make me say nothin’ original. So that’s Malay, is it? Well, it’s too numerous fer me. There’s only one kind o’ Malay I know about, an’ that’s my hens. They may lay, an’ then again they may not. That’s grammatical. But this here wiggly printin’ – no, no, it don’t look reasonable. My eye, what a head! Read some more, will you?”

“Certainly, if you like it,” said Hal, strangely obliging. “Here’s something I’ve been translating, in the line of cursing. They’re great people to curse you, the Malays are, if you cross them. Their whole lives are full of vengeance – that’s what makes them so interesting. Nothing weak, forgiving or mushy about them!” He picked up the paper he had been writing on, and cast his eyes over it, while Ezra looked down at him with fondly indulgent pride. “Here is part of the black curse of Vishnu.”

“Who’s he?”

“One of their gods. The most avenging one of the lot,” explained Hal. The doctor, crouching behind the blinds, shivered.

“Gods, eh? What’s this Vishnu feller like?” asked Ezra, with a touch of uneasiness. “Horns an’ a tail?”

“No. He’s got several forms, but the one they seem most afraid of is a kind of great, blind face up in the sky. A face that – even though it’s blind – can watch a guilty man all his life, wherever he goes, and ruin him, crucify him, bring him to destruction, and laugh at him as he’s dying.”

“Brrr!” said Ezra. He seemed to feel something of the same cold that had struck to the doctor’s heart – a greater cold than could be accounted for by the veiling of the sun behind the clouds now driving in from the sea, or by the kelp-rank mists gathering along the shore. “You make me feel all creepylike. You’re wastin’ your time on such stuff, Master Hal, same as a man is when he’s squeezing a bad lemon or an old maid. None o’ that cursin’ stuff fer me!”

“Yes, yes, you’ve got to listen to it!” insisted Hal maliciously. Ezra’s trepidation afforded him great enjoyment. “Here’s the way it goes:

“‘The curse of Vishnu, the great black curse, can never end unsatisfied when it has once been laid upon a human head. Beyond the land it carries, and beyond the sea, beyond the farthest sea unsailed. Beyond the day, the month, the year, it carries; and even though the accursèd one flee forever, in some far place and on some far day it will fall on him or his!’”

“Great grampus!” cried the old man, retreating a little with wide eyes. “That’s some cussin’, all right!”

The doctor sensed an insistent fear that would not be denied. What if old Captain Briggs should overhear this colloquy? What if Ezra should repeat to him these words that, now arising from the past, echoed with ominous purport? At realization of possible consequences, Filhiol’s heart contracted painfully.

“Damn you, Hal!” thought he, peering out through the blinds. “Damn you and your Malay books. If any harm comes to the captain, through you, look out!”

“Some awful cussin’,” Ezra repeated. “I wouldn’t want to have no sech cuss as that rove onta me! You b’lieve that stuff, do ye?”

“Who am I to disprove it?”

“Ain’t there no way to kedge off, ef you’re grounded on a cuss like that?”

“Only one, Ezra, according to this book.”

“What way’s that?”

“Well,” and Hal once more glanced at the paper, “well, this is what the book says:

“‘The curse must be fulfilled, to the last breath, for by Shiva and the Trimurthi, what is written is written. But if he through whom the curse descendeth on another is stricken to horror and to death, then the Almighty Vishnu, merciful, closes that page. And he who through another’s sin was cursed, is cleansed. Thus may the curse be fulfilled. But always one of two must die. Tuan Allah poonia krajah! It is the work of the Almighty One! One of two must die!’”

“Gosh!” ejaculated Ezra. “I reckon that’ll be about enough fer me, Master Hal. Awful, ain’t it?”