Love and the Capello

by W. A. Fraser

LOVE AND THE CAPELLO.^[1]

A Tale of India.

THE lights from the Gymkhana club were streaming across Halpin road, and the drone of the band came lazily across the open, filtering itself through the octopus limbs of the big banyans, and over the lake of roses the professor had filled the compound with. That was the professor's hobby—roses. That and snakes—only the snakes were real business, the roses were for pleasure. But both thrived equally well in Rangoon—jacquiminat and the capello.

It was paradise, this land where the roses grew even as cabbages, and the hooded devils came up out of the jungle of their own accord to be dissected. So thought Professor Conti.

But the professor was over at the gym. now, and the drowsy music, elbowing and jostling the straggling light as they crowded through the Kush-Kush tatties, mingled with the soft patter of small talk with which Minora Conti was beguiling the minutes as they sat there, she and the major, waiting the return of the professor.

Of course, the major's pony, Nat Thue, would win the Tharawady plate, she was saying, when she stopped suddenly, and steadied herself as one does when a 10-foot ditch suddenly opens its yawning maw under the forefeet of one's mount.

The light which streamed out from the drawing room, and offered battle to the glimmer of the Gymkhana, showed the sudden paling of her cheek. Parian marble was not more white than that set face.

"Do not move, major," she said; "do not move your lips even, if you value your life."

Herkomer looked straight into the great, strong eyes of the girl, and they told him more of the danger, more of the horror, than even her words had.

"Keep perfectly still," she continued, "and do not interfere with me in any way."

"Is it a snake?" asked the major, disregarding her injunction to remain silent.

"Yes, a cobra!" the lips whispered.

From the direction of Minora's eyes Herkomer knew that the hooded demon was on the high back of his chair.

Surely it was the light of inspiration which came into the eyes of this strange girl, as she broke into a low Italian chant, weaving her slender arms back and forth, back and forth.

Herkomer could feel that the cobra was following her movements. Great heads of perspiration stood out on his forehead—not so much at his own proximity to the heated thing, but because of the grand, cool courage Minora was showing, and the risk she was running in drawing the attention of the viper to herself.

"She's going to hypnotize the beast," he thought. He knew she could do it, too; the face told him that. It seemed cowardly to sit there and allow a woman to face the snake, but her command to keep perfectly still had been as much entreaty as command, and he felt that by moving he would only increase the danger to both.

With the same sinuous movement Minora had risen from her seat, and gently swaying her body as the soft cadences of the chant rose and fell, glided toward the cobra.

"My God, keep back!" Herkomer groaned, scarcely moving his lips. "Stand back and wait till he goes away."

But the chant continued, and there were the interjected two English words "keep still!"

Before Herkomer could move or remonstrate further there was the flash of a white arm, a rustle of the soft folds of Minora's muslin dress, and he sprang to his feet to see the cobra being held at arm's length, firmly grasped by those slender fingers close up to its ugly wedge-shaped head,

"Wait please!" she cried, stepping back, as Herkomer advanced toward her with evident intention of taking the snake; "father's tomtom has just driven up to the door—he will take the cobra—it is one of his patients."

She was still holding the repulsive creature at arm's length as the professor ran up the cemented steps, calling for the bearer to come and take his topee.

He stopped short when he observed the gruesome tableau in front of him, stopped short until startled into activity by his daughter's voice asking to be relieved of her terrible captive.

In an instant the professor had the cobra by the tail, and calling to Minora to let go quickly, he swung him clear, and holding him thus, carried him back to the box from which he had escaped.

Overcome by the reaction, the brave girl sank into the chair she had risen from, and gave way to a flood of nervous, hysterical tears.

Of course, there could only be one reward for such gallantry, if the term may be applied to woman's brave deeds. A "V.C." was out of the question; besides, the great Italian eyes had worked sad havoc with Herkomer long before the advent of the cobra.

"Love made her brave," mused the major, as his Burma pony rattled him over the metalled road of the cantonment late that night; "but she's a well-bred one any way, and blood will tell. God! how she stood there and never flinched, with that devil in her hand!" And then he thought of the soft maidenly blushes that had swept over the sweet face as he talked to her of love, of the love that had been in his mind for days and weeks before the appearance of that sinister visitor.

With Jesuitical complaisance Herkomer began to feel deuced glad that the cobra had precipitated matters by poking his ugly head into their tête-à-tête. It had given him the opportunity to risk it all on a single throw of the dice, and he had won—won with the other fellow, her father's great friend. Count Rubitino, a bad second.

Count Rubitino was a dilettanti, an amateur scientist, ostensibly devoted, like Minora's father, the professor, to the discovery of an antidote to the virus of the cobra and kharite.

"All d—n rot!" said Herkomer to the little iron gray that was carrying him so gallantly along. "Minora's his game, and I have beaten him, my boy, beaten him clean out of his boots, by Jove!" and he chuckled to himself as he thought of the bally row both the count and the professor would kick up when they learned how the land lay.

As he jogged home from parade next morning, Herkomer brought his pony up alongside of Surgeon Thornycroft.

"Come over and have breakfast with me, I want to have a talk with you, old man," he said.

The preliminary of the talk was an account of what had happened the night before over the advent of the thing with the spectacles, for he and Thornycroft were even as Damon and Pythias in the olden time.

"Now for the sequel, my boy," he said, as he drew his chair closer to Thornycroft, "and then I want you to tell what is the matter with me."

Thornycroft shot a suspicious professional look over the physical map of his friend's exterior, searching for touches of "liver," "sun," "Burmah head," "pegcitis" or other unique complaints indigenous to that land.

"It's this," said Herkomer thoughtfully. "I woke up about 3 o'clock in the morning, as near as I can judge, with a peculiar tingling sensation through every nerve of my body, as though some poison were coursing through my veins. Sitting in a chair beside my bed was the figure of a man.

"I spoke to it, thinking that the bearer had fallen asleep there.

"The figure did not move. I got up and struck a match, lighting a candle which stood on the table; I dislodged a bottle of soda in my fumbling about for a match and it rolled off, striking the cement floor and exploding with a report like a gun.

"Still the figure did not move. It must be the bearer, I thought, only a bearer could sleep through such a jolly

"When I turned the light of the candle on the face of the sleeper, what do you suppose I saw, Thornycroft?" And Herkomer leaned over until his troubled, questioning eyes were brought close into the surgeon's face, and he gripped Thornycroft's wrist till his fingers seemed eating into the flesh.

"One of the fellows who had tarried long at the gym. and lost the number of his mess," answered the other carelessly, knocking the ashes off the end of his cheroot.

"I saw myself—dead!" continued the major, taking no notice of his friend's chaff; "dead, and a cobra clinging to my arm!"

"Liver and sun both," sighed Thornycroft mentally.

"Of course you'll call it a dream," added Herkomer, "but this morning the soda bottle was in fragments on the floor, the candle had been lighted, and the sole of my foot was bleeding where 1 had stepped on a piece of the broken glass; besides, I know I was awake. Now, what do you make of that?" he asked triumphantly.

"What do you make of it?" queried the surgeon, as he hunted about for his helmet, "make nothing of it; only don't let it occur again, and as preventative is better than cure in this country, take a run up to Darjeeling, it may save you the expense of a trip home. There is a little angel sits up above, in these days of robbery by ruinous exchange, who sends us these warnings, with a postcript added, "Look to your liver." So the next time your chum comes take Him up to Darjeeling, and let the mountain winds carpet-beat the jungle fever out of his system."

"No, I'm quite well," said Herkomer; "quite well, and that's the deuce of it," he added plaintively: "I can't make it out. When a man is well and sees things, it's—it's the devil."

Often after that Herkomer had company of the same sort; always the same, sitting there in the chair waiting. "What the thunder is it waiting for?" Herkomer used to ask himself. Only he did not bother his friend any more about it—it was no use.

Physically he was all right. He could put the best man in the regiment on his back; aye, and hold him there, too, for ten seconds, with both points of the shoulder touching the ground. Neither did he go to Darjeeling. He was in a happier place, had climbed into heaven, otherwise known as the haunts of Minora Conti. Not but what the hot Chinook winds which blow up from hades sometimes withered and scorched his paradise.

It was Count Rubitino who always started these hot blasts. He and Minora were unnecessarily too much together, it seemed to Herkomer, but then he was jealous, and consequently no judge of such matters.

As often as Minora assured him that she cared nothing for the count he believed her, and as often as he stumbled upon them in close communion over some secret matter did he feel the hot winds blow, and vow that he would break away from his bondage and leave her to the count. But it always ended the same way. It wasn't what Minora said that put things right. It was the eyes—the great, soft Italian eyes looking straight and truthfully at and through him, bowling over his jealous resolves like tenpins and bringing him back into leash, like a whipped beagle.

And still it sat there, almost nightly now, beside his bed. He had grown accustomed to seeing it. What was it waiting for?

Sometimes it annoyed him; he felt like getting out of bed and kicking it; but the idea was so incongruous, this kicking of himself, this spiritual self, as it were, so he g;ave it up and sighed resignedly.

"Of course it means something," he mused; "something going to happen, but I'm not going to make an ass of myself by talking about it at the mess." So he sat tight and waited for the thing to happen as he would have waited for a Ghazi rush.

It was gruesome, but much in India is gruesome, so he had learned to take things of that order much as he took fighting—with his coffee.

A far greater puzzle to him was Minora herself. Sometimes he found her listless, indifferent, and then again for a time she would be her old brilliant self.

Thinking perhaps that these fits of dejection were due to oppression from her father, or undue influence brought to bear by the count, he made bold to question her, but she shrank from him with horror, and seemed more agitated than she had been when holding the cobra.

It's nerves, he thought. Life with the musty old professor and his cobra associates is depressing enough to wreck the nerves of a bronze Buddha. I'll have to get her out of this.

So he rushed matters a little, and it was all settled for Christmas week. The professor gave his consent reluctantly enough, Herkomer thought, and the count congratulated him with an ironical sneer that made Herkomer long to give him a toss in the air from which he would alight on the top of his curly black head.

When he and common sense sat face to face, common sense told him that Minora loved him with all the strength of her high-strung nature. What else is there in it for her, common sense argued, for the major's inheritance was limited to what his sword might cut down from the pagoda tree, with the exception of a trifling allowance, barely large enough to settle his monthly gym. account.

That was the way common sense put it, but the other, intuition, or whatever other alias he masqueraded under, said there was something behind it all; and for once in a way they were both right.

The love was there right enough, and also something else behind it, and this something else might have all come out one evening if Herkomer had not been so Cooley-headed; honourable he called it at the time.

It lacked two weeks of Christmas time, and they were sitting on the verandah, as they had sat that other evening. Minora, putting her cool white hand on Herkomer's wrist and turning her face a little into the shadow, so that he did not notice how set and white it was, said: "I have a confession to make, Rolando!"

"Don't make it then, little woman. Confessions are silly things for which we are always sorry afterwards."

"But I shall be happier if you let me tell you about this. I can't marry you without telling you first. I wont—"

"Look here. Minora," said the major, turning her around so that he could look into her face, "my objection to your confession is purely selfish. You see, I couldn't let you confess all on your side without unloading some of my sins into your ears, and if we exchanged experiences,—well, well, I fancy the count would appear such a saint by comparison that I should lose you altogether. By the way, I'll compromise," he added, laughingly. "I'll just ask you one question, which you may answer or not, and then we'll call the whole thing off."

"I will answer," she said quietly, "only—only—"

"Well, has it anything to do with the count, what you were going to tell me?"

"No."

"Then I can't possibly listen."

And so the chance went by, the evil went on—went on for two weeks longer, and it was the eve of the wedding day.

Love does many strange things, among others causes a pony to gallop so fast that a syce cannot possibly keep pace with the winged rider. That was why Herkomer arrived at Minora's home syceless. As there was nobody to hold his pony, he led him around behind the bungalow to the stables.

Minora's rooms were in the north wing of the bungalow, and as he passed the great windows opening on to the verandah and reaching from ceiling to floor, and open save for the shutters, voices that he could not help but hear fell upon his ear.

For an instant he stood petrified. It was the count's voice, speaking to Minora.

"You will wreck your happiness for a fancy," sneered the voice.

Herkomer quickened his pace, so that he might hear no more, and of her answer, whatever it was, he only caught the one word "confession," as he turned the corner of the bungalow.

But all the fierce jealous passion that had slumbered in his heart for weeks arose and smothered him—smothered everything—all sense of shame, of justice, of prudence, and he rushed into Minora's boudoir a passion-mad man. What right had she, who was to become his wife the next day, to hold secret intercourse with the count there in her own apartments?

With a startled cry Minora thrust something into the drawer of a secretaire beside which she was standing, and stood with her back to it as though she would guard the secret.

"Perhaps I am de trop," remarked the count, passing beyond the purdah with a low bow, and, as Herkomer thought, a sneer on his pale face.

"Why—why have you rushed in here, Rolando, and frightened me?" asked Minora confusedly.

"I am sorry if I have frightened you," said the major shortly, "and I will answer your question by asking another, for perhaps your answer will suffice for both questions. What have you got in that drawer?"

If Minora had not gone white with guilty fear it might have been all right yet; but it was the faltering which developed the tiger in the man. He took a quick step forward and grasped her wrist cruelly—harshly, as he fairly hissed out, "You have a letter or something from him there!"

"My God!" she moaned; "back, do not touch it. If you touch that drawer I will never marry you—never." With an exclamation of rage he brushed her to one side, and snatching the drawer open, plunged his hand in.

There was the lightning swish of a dark body, like the coil of a whiplash in motion; an electric shooting of pain through his arm which brought an involuntary cry of anguish from his lips, and the twisting, writhing of the hideous cobra-body as he snatched his hand from the death trap.

A piercing scream had rung out on the still night air as he pulled the drawer open, for, powerless to stop him, Minora had foreseen that he was driving to his death.

It was the scream that brought the professor to the room.

"Quick, father, Rolando is bitten!" and before the major knew what he was about, the professor had grasped his wrist as in a vise and pulled him into his own room, which was next.

From that on it was a head and head finish, with the professor and death as the runners. There were ligatures and lancing, and the injecting of the professor's antidote, and the ceaseless marching up and down of the patient between two sturdy durwans, and the watching of a woman with a great sore heart, and eyes that were too dry and hot for tears.

And the other, the one that had sat night after night by Herkomer's bed, came and sat there just in the center of the verandah. Herkomer would not let the durwans move the chair. "Don't disturb him," he said; "let him sit there."

"Huzoor, it is but an empty chair," said one of them. "No one sits there, sahib."

But still he told them not to move the chair—they could walk around it. "He won't have long to wait now," he muttered.

"Surely the poison was making the sahib a little mad," the durwan thought.

At first Herkomer felt strangely elated. It was like new wine—he was drunk on it; it was good to be bitten by cobras. If he could only get over it he would like to try it again—it was like opium.

And then came the poppy sleep. He begged them to let him lie down and rest.

"If you sleep you die!" the professor yelled in his ear.

The voice was far off, it was like a dream, it was the murmuring of the breakers far away on the coral reefs, and required too much energy to listen to it. Besides, he was so tired and sleepy. This ceaseless walking up and down was like counting sheep, it made his head heavy.

Up and down, up and down, the hard floor of the verandah re-echoing to the clap, clap of the durwans' loose slippers as they marched one on either side of him.

It was a terrible race, and life was the stake.

But as the torturing hours chased each other through the long Burmese night and the gray began to steal up behind the tapering spire of the golden pagoda in the east, and the major still lived, still walked up and down between his relays of Punjabis, the professor knew that he had won—had robbed the hooded fiend of his victim.

And the man who had come back out of the jaws of death, when he was told that he might sleep, went deep down into the rest-world, and lay for hours in a sleep that was first cousin to death.

When he awoke the figure sitting beside his couch had changed—it was Minora; she who had sat there hour after hour watching that the light did not go quite out—that the sleep did not become of closer kin to death.

Very confusedly the questioning eyes looked at her when they opened.

When he had grown a little stronger she told him this, told him the tale that she had tried to tell that night when he had stopped her.

"Father inoculated me with the cobra virus, partly as an experiment, and partly for my own safety, as his cobras were always about.

"As it seemed to be harmless and to make it sure, he performed the operation several times. But he, learned as he is, did not foresee the result. It acted on me like morphine acts on those who have it injected into their veins. It became necessary to my life. The exhilaration you felt would be mine for days, then depression followed as a natural law.

"But why go into detail?" she added, with a faint, wan smile; "without it I was dead. At last I became so that the bite from the cobra was only equal to the dose my father used. This was the simplest plan.

"When you first came into my life I thought that I should overcome it, for love is blind.

"The night you were bitten I meant to tell you all, but to fortify myself, to summon up the moral courage to drown the love which was so great and strong, I had asked Count Rubitino to bring a cobra from my father's box.

"That is all; it is not pleasant," and she smiled again wanly. "I should not have allowed this love to conquer me, but now it has conquered, it has triumphed over all. I will not marry you because I love you."

It was the best that way: "Because 1 love you I will not marry you,"

W. A. Fraser

1. W. A. Fraser, the author of this, has been contributing stories to English and United States magazines for some time. Two or three of these have also appeared in Canadian periodicals. Most of his tales deal with life in India or the Canadian North-West. Mr. Fraser was born in Nova Scotia but has spent nine years of his life in India, and has still more recently spent much time in the North-West. His present home is in Ontario. His stories are bright, cheerful and wholesome, and the Canadian Magazine is pleased to announce that several of these win appear in its forthcoming numbers.