In the Dwellings of the Wilderness/Chapter VI
CHAPTER VI
The One Who Went Away
n the morning, when Deane awoke, he found his patient departed. At breakfast, in the grey dawn before sunrise, Holloway appeared, exceedingly dignified, carefully unconcerned. Deane showed wisdom by making no allusion to what had gone before; so that, by degrees, Holloway's dignity relaxed.
During the morning, Deane spent most of his time in carefully packing cases of antiquities for safe transportation. Merritt, as usual, was in the trenches with his men; Holloway took photographs indefatigably. He swore quite savagely at his boy when the latter spilled a pan of fixative; and this was a thing unusual to Holloway's blithe good temper. Later, he and Deane fell out, over a question whose seriousness at one time threatened to plunge all three into civil war. Deane opened the fray by declaring, à propos of dinners, that the only proper way to create a cocktail of the genus Martini was to add a half-spoonful of sherry after the other ingredients had been satisfactorily mixed, if at all. Holloway declared with vigour that the sherry should go in before the vermouth, in order to blend properly; and announced that he would concoct a specimen on this plan for Deane at the Waldorf the night they reached New York, and stand him a champagne supper if his theory failed. They argued warmly; Merritt, rashly undertaking to mediate, was speedily placed hors de combat and forced to retire ignominiously. The contestants waxed eloquent in invective, losing sight completely of the casus belli; in the end they parted, sulky as two angry children; thereafter ignored each other in high disdain. Merritt, sorely perplexed, strove to pour balm into their wounds, with assurances that both were right—that either way was equally good, and that the sun was responsible for their—er, irritation. Whereat Holloway retorted that the sun had nothing whatever to do with it that it was merely the obstinate pigheadedness of some people who could see no other point of view than their own. To this Deane replied that it was not even this, but—and stopped short. So that Holloway, imagining a taunt where none was meant, glared at him in fury and strode away.
"Now, what's got into him?" Merritt exclaimed, half-irritated, half-amused.
"I guess he imagines I was going to twit him with something that happened—er, once," Deane answered lucidly. "He ought to be taught not to go around with a chip on his shoulder. It's disgusting bad form. I never would have thought of arguing with him if he had not taken the words out of my mouth."
He was very busy all that afternoon. Occasionally, over his lists and identification-slips, he found time to grin somewhat sheepishly at the futile squabble; also for a faint patronising resentment at what he was pleased to term Holloway's crudeness.
At supper Merritt glanced around as though all at once missing something, and said:
"Where's Holloway?"
Deane helped himself to canned apricots, and answered tolerantly:
"Still sulking, I suppose. He doesn't usually go off the tether like this. I always thought him a pretty good-natured sort of cub."
"So he is!" Merritt answered. "Seems to me you were a bit rough on him, Deane. The sun in these parts has a trick of upsetting a fellow once in a while, and the boy isn't seasoned timber yet. Now about that 'perpetual lamp.' I shall give it to Dr. Peabody, at the Museum in Washington, with a written description of the circumstances under which it was found. I haven't touched it, beyond packing it away in the D case. He can extract whatever is inside. It may solve, or help to solve, the problem which men have been working over a good many years—the secret of perpetual light. I wish it to go on exhibition, with some of the tablets and vases, when our men are through with them. How are the squeezes coming on?"
They smoked peaceful after-dinner pipes, and talked over their plans and projects. At times Deane caught himself listening for a quick, boyish step and an outbreak of cheerful slang.
When the next morning's work was under way, Deane, wishing an exposure made of a certain patterned pavement, that the photograph might aid in replacing the numbered pieces when the bit was reconstructed, went for Holloway and his camera. Merritt had got to work earlier than usual that morning; he could hear him shouting from one trench to Ibraheem in another. Abruptly he came upon him, and full of the business in hand, demanded:
"Where's Holloway? I want him to get a shot at the pavement in Square 14."
Merritt glanced at him with a sudden gravity.
"Didn't you know? Holloway did not come back to camp last night. I've got a couple of men out now hunting him among the tombs. He must have fallen down and injured himself. Perhaps a tunnel caved in on him somewhere."
The shock of this announcement turned Deane cold. Uppermost in his mind was the thought—"Two gone! what if the boy should be the third?"
"Oh, he—he's around here somewhere," he said, and strove to speak lightly. Merritt pushed his hat on the back of his head with a gesture full of worry and bewilderment.
"I hope so!" he said slowly. "Of course, it must be so. But… there are Tarfa and Hafiz, you know!"
"Perhaps he came back, and went away so early that we did not see him," Deane suggested. At heart he knew this to be futile. Merritt shook his head.
"No, I asked Hamd, his boy." He braced himself visibly against a certain depression, a premonition of hopelessness. "They may bring him in at noon," he said, with an obvious effort at cheerfulness. "If not—well, we'll send out more men. I'm afraid he's had a touch of the sun lately, to tell the truth. He's such a worker, and so willing to take any job that comes his way, that I—half the time I forget he's green, and ought to have an eye kept on him, and take it out of him more than he can stand, I'm afraid. And he'd go till he dropped, the beggar, and never open his mouth. That's the worst of him; I can't tell when he's done up. Oh, yes; he'll come in with the men at noon, sure."
They cheered themselves with this refrain throughout the afternoon. But towards evening Merritt's grey face was greyer and greatly worn, and Deane was silent and very thoughtful. Candidly he confessed that he had been a brute; had he also got a touch of the sun? His mind went back to the scene in his tent the night before; he heard the high, boyish voice, keyed to nervous confession, saying: "All I wanted was to be within range of somebody, where I could hear somebody moving … I knew if I stayed in that tent alone an hour longer, I'd be off among those tombs again … I cannot keep away from the place … I've been there for the last four nights, and I'm afraid as death of it." He lost himself in a maze of vain imaginings. Had the boy wanted him last night—needed the support of human companionship, and not come to him because of their foolish squabble, fearing scorn and ridicule? Had he fought off his madness by himself, hour after hour in the darkness, and at last given way and wandered into the place he dreaded—and what had happened then? Deane knew that imagination is a terribly real factor in certain crises of life, let it but get its grip upon its victim. And Holloway … at the thought that he might be following in the footsteps of those other two, vanished utterly from the face of the earth, Deane started up to pace the camp in an agony of restlessness.
Ibraheem, scorching himself before the fire in devoted tendance of a covered dish containing dainties saved from supper for the return of Holloway, whom he loved, looked up at Deane's sudden motion.
"Ne master have send out more man," he said mournfully.
Deane nodded. Ibraheem nursed his dish.
"Saar, I ask a word, mos' respectful. What nis go to mean. What is eraishouf-perluserpy?"
Deane pondered.
"Give it up! Where did you hear that?"
"Mister Holloway said um. To me. Las' night. I am sit by fire. He come walkun queek; see me and stop. He say, 'Ibraheem, it is late, eh?' I say vurry late. He say, 'Ibraheem, I have saw her, ne woman what is a what you call jinn.' Jus' lak nat."
"The woman! That empty superstition again!" Deane groaned.
"I say, 'Saar, for Lord-God sake don't not go. Come queek and lie in bed.' And he say, 'Oh, I'm not goin' after her, you old fool. Jus' goin' down in tombs a leetle.' Nen he laugh and say, 'Nere is more affair in Heaven-Earth eraisho nan in er perluserpy'—I don't know what else. Some kind dam' bad Englis' nat, eh? So he go, and byumby I go to hole and look down for to see um. But I see um comin' to me, on ne ground, saar, all white in she face, wiv um eyes green lak fire, sleepin' round mound-earths lak um cat at night, sayin' so sof': 'I won't not go—I won't not go.' Nen he go, and I run queek to ne mens and fall down, and go to slip to keep um spucks away."
Deane went off to Merritt.
"I'm going to look for the boy myself. If what Ibraheem says is straight, I'm afraid he's gone as Tarfa and Hafiz went."
Merritt looked at him.
"You mean"
Deane nodded miserably.
"Yes. It seems he saw the same thing. Ibraheem heard him talking."
"Why didn't Ibraheem stop him?" Merritt cried with a flash of anger.
"Oh, because he's a fool," Deane retorted. "I shall take half a dozen men, with food and all the water you can spare. Somehow"—he drew a long breath, setting his teeth—"I feel as though it had been partly my fault. You see—a couple of nights ago he came and told me a thing or two. And I shouldn't have spoken as I did yesterday. I ought to have remembered." Suddenly he struck one fist into the palm of his open hand. "Oh, it's impossible!" he cried harshly. "Nothing so hellish could happen! He must be around somewhere; surely we'll overtake him in a couple of miles! I wish to Heaven we'd never set eyes on this cursed place!"
Two hours later Deane and his party started. Deane, the last to leave, came to Merritt and held out his hand.
"Good-bye," he said. "Will you run up a flag on the tallest pole on the highest mound, and leave it there until we get back?"
Merritt's hand gripped his hard.
"Aye," he said. "I'll do it. God grant you bring the poor lad back safe with you. But … take care of yourself, Deane. Remember that if you don't find him within the week, it … will be no use to look further."
They rode away towards the darkening east, away from the sunset; and he watched, without speech or motion, until they were mere black dots crawling upon the desert floor.
Thereafter, Merritt discovered that he had fresh troubles on his hands. The fourth day after Deane's departure a man raced into the camp at supper-time, crying shrilly. His words brought the camp about him, nervous, ready for any new alarm. Ibraheem dragged him to Merritt, leaving a tumult of excited voices in his wake; and reported that the man, returning to the farthest trench after the workmen were gone, to look for a lost pick-head, had found the mummy of the Princess in a shallow cave in a heap of rubbish. Ibraheem further stated that the men demanded instant permission to wall it up in its tomb again, that the evil spell of the place might thus be broken.
Merritt was surprised and amused and indignant. The finding of the mummy was a big piece of luck; the man should be rewarded. But as for burying it again, that was not to be thought of. It was entirely senseless for the men to connect that bit of harmless dried skin and bones with all their troubles; such a theory was not worth serious consideration. The mummy should be recovered and packed securely that same night. Also the finder was to go with Merritt at once to point out its whereabouts. In vain the man protested. Merritt's grey eye overawed him; he yielded and went, first borrowing all the amulets he could find from any who would lend. Thus equipped and fortified against the Devil, he led the way, shivering and whining, past the trenches nearest the camp to one of the old diggings. Here he searched until he came to a shallow cave in the further side of the rubbish-heap.
"This is the place, my master," he said, and crept forward to look. Then he dropped upon his knees and felt for all his amulets and prayed crazily, even as Merritt said with sternness:
"You've forgotten the place. There's no mummy here."
"But it is the place, my master, where one hour ago my eyes did see it. By Allah, it is the place! It has gone, and because I tracked it, its wrath shall come upon me, and I shall perish as did my master and my friends. Oh, master, come away! The place is cursed. It is the lair of the evil soul, which we have freed from death to lure us into death. Ai, master, come!"
"Get along With you, you chicken-heart!" Merritt muttered in wrathful Anglo-Saxon, and waved him off. The man knew not the words, but took the hint and fled. For an hour Merritt patiently searched the mounds, the abandoned trenches, the deserted tombs. Once he looked up, feeling eyes upon him, and said with annoyance:
"Get back to camp, I tell you! If you won't work, I won't have you peering around here." Again, later, he repeated his command, with growing anger. In the end he found nothing, and became convinced that the man had lied. He marched back to camp, hot and much disgusted, and sent for the culprit, who came in serene innocence.
"Why did you lie to me?" Merritt asked. "When I sent you from the place, why did you return? So that you might laugh when you saw that I followed your worthless directions?"
"I was not from the camp, my master!" the man declared. "And where I said I saw the mummy, there I saw it. When it went I do not know; where it went I do not know either."
"That 'll do. Perhaps you don't. Only bring no more fairy tales here. I won't have 'em. Understand?"
But in the morning a new complication rose. Ibraheem hunted up Merritt, an uneasy scowl on his dark face, and told him that the men absolutely refused to enter the trenches. The workman's tale had done its business. They were afraid, they acknowledged frankly; they would do anything under heaven to please their master, whom they loved as they loved their fathers and their mothers, but enter the accursed city and its devil-haunted tombs, they would not. Merritt saw that unless he played his cards with care, he would have a mutiny upon his hands. Superstition was rampant; they were an hundred, he was one. Only the workman who had given the false alarm stuck to Merritt. For three days the two laboured, doing what two pair of willing arms might do; for three days the army of shirkers ate and loafed and smoked and slept in the shade, embarrassingly respectful to Merritt, stubborn as polite mules when it came to the test.
Then the devoted one disappeared, even as three before him had done, in the night, in silence and mystery. This raised an open panic. The men became utterly convinced of an influence for evil working actively in their midst; each man looked upon himself as the next possible victim. Ibraheem hinted to Merritt that they might, in an excess of terror, capture the animals and provisions and desert in a body, taking the law into their own hands; and Merritt leaped from his camp-chair and strode out into the sunlight, his jaw set, his eyes ablaze with the light of coming battle. The men, gathered into muttering groups, drew apart as he appeared among them. He seized the instant's advantage their pause gave him and spoke, not loudly, not angrily, but so that every man heard his voice, and felt his courage oozing from him under the fire of the grey Saxon eyes. His words were Arabic, and understood by all; he stood upon a hillock of rubbish, bareheaded, his shirt blowing free from his tanned neck, head thrown back, unarmed, dominating them by sheer force of will and the heritage of the blood that was in him.
"See here, men, you're not children to be frightened at the dark like this. Queer things have happened lately, I'm not denying, but they're queer only because we have not happened to hit on the right explanation of them. Don't you know that yourselves?" One or two heads nodded doubtfully. "I'm not going to argue with you; I'm not even going to tell you that you're fools. In regard to Daheer, who went away last night—how do you know but that one of your own number, in revenge for his faithfulness to me, frightened him in the night-time, so that he, thinking the hand of evil was upon him, fled into the desert to escape?"
They did not know. Quickly they saw his point—an Arab is not slow-witted—and discussed it among themselves. Each knew that himself had not done it—that went without saying—but whether another was guilty they could not tell.
"Whoever will may leave this place," Merritt said; and at once there was a turning of heads towards him. "But he must go without food and without water, since I do not intend to equip any personally-conducted expeditions. If he will, let him go from here westward, where in four days, or five, at most, he shall come into the track of caravans. If he is lucky he may find a caravan passing, and receive food and drink. If he finds no caravan, then … it may be that he will wish that he had stayed with me." He paused, to let this idea sink home. "But whoever stays with me"—his voice deepened—"shall work in the trenches or out of the trenches, as I command. I will have no shirking, no complaints. For two days I have waited to see if wisdom would enter you; now I wait no longer. Choose now; will you go or stay?"
A gasp of astonishment followed his words. They had expected time to make up their minds, and in the East time means eternity. To be put to the question thus, brutally, at once, was unexpected. They wavered, chattered, became all at once helpless and vacillating. Merritt spoke once more.
"If you go, you are free to wander as you like, and to perish as you like. But if you stay you will obey my orders without question, will answer fully and completely to my commands; for I am the master here!"
His voice held menace and power and warning. They murmured. Merritt's eyes flashed; he sprang from the low hillock of earth. He was unarmed, but they shrank back. And it was then that a sound broke in upon them; and Ibraheem, wheeling to look, cried aloud, and ran to Merritt and shook his arm, shouting:
"Look see, saar! Oh, Lord-God, look see!"
Behind them, so that they turned to see it, a figure was racing over the sands rapidly, stumbling with staggering steps, a gaunt skeleton with fluttering rags; and as it came it cried three times, hoarsely: "Merritt, Merritt, Merritt!" and stumbled on past Merritt, looking neither to the right nor left, reeling drunkenly, panting like an overridden horse. An instant Merritt stood motionless with his men; but with the voice, he understood and leaped forward and caught the flying figure by its arm.
"Deane! Deane! For God's sake, what's happened?"
And Deane stumbled, recovered himself, reeled, and came slowly to the ground, with Merritt's arm about his shoulders, and his face hidden in his hands.
Merritt looked up, white to the lips with sheer fright.
"Get water, somebody!" he cried.
They brought him a cup, but Deane made no motion to take it until Merritt held it carefully to his lips. Then he snatched it, with a snarl like a hungry beast, and drained it and laughed hoarsely.
"Give me more!" he panted, and struggled to rise.
"There, old boy! keep cool!" Merritt soothed, and held him down. "Take it easy; you'll have enough."
He gave Deane the cup again, and splashed water on the grimed parched skin that drank as a plant drinks rain.
"I had bad times out there," Deane said suddenly. He spoke thickly, out of a stiff throat, with a curious eagerness, yet a certain hesitancy, in short, detached sentences. "My men deserted when I insisted on searching farther. They took all the food. And the water. You see"—the words came painfully—"I … didn't find him. Two nights ago—when was it? I forget. I've been out there years and years. But something happened. I saw something running away from me. So I chased it. And when I found it …" He broke off. "I don't know what I'm talking about. That morning I had been just within sight of your flag, so I was pretty sure of my direction. But I went on, keeping it as well as I could. I was nearly gone then. I heard your voices. And I ran, and called for you." Again he stopped.
Merritt, giving him drink, said uncertainly:
"I don't think I understand. Why do you say 'heard your voices'? Of course, you must have seen the camp before you heard us, or were we making such a racket"
And after his words there came a pause, unexpected, pregnant with hidden meaning. Merritt suddenly saw Deane's hands slowly clench, with a strength which left the knuckles white, clench until they shook to the muscular effort. Deane said, very slowly, in a perfectly expressionless voice:
"I—thought you had found it out by this time. Merritt … I'm blind."
Again there was a pause. The cup in Merritt's hand- remained tilted, its contents spilling upon the ground. Then he said, almost below his breath:
"How did it happen?"
"I'll tell you. Later. Can't we get inside somewhere? I feel the sun," Deane said. He got himself to his feet, unsteady, making a strong effort to get control of his weakness. Merritt passed an arm through his, and led him to his tent. A crowd of natives followed, curious as children, understanding nothing of what had passed …
That night, lying on his bed with a wet cloth about his head, Deane told his story to Merritt, in the darkness.