Oriental Stories/Volume 1/Issue 1/The Tiger's Eye
The Tiger's Eye
By Pearl Norton Swet
A strange curse followed the killing of a tiger with a blue eye—a weird story of Bengal and a disastrous tiger-hunt
The first time that Wynne Carson saw Marie Pilotte, the singer, on the terraces at Monte Carlo, pink and white under a lacy hat, he mentally called her a professional beauty, and dismissed the thought of her frivolous daintiness.
The second time that Carson saw the singer was at the Lido, a year later. At that time she was more beautiful than ever, and Carson's eyes strayed to her more than once, as she sat on the sundrenched sands in her green and gold bathing-suit, her black hair spread over her shoulders, rippling and uncut. By chance he was introduced to her; began to find her company very pleasant; learned that she was English, not French, as he had supposed. She said the season being over, she was going out to India, where her brother was stationed at a place called Judhpore.
Then, being a pawn on the great chessboard of the press, the master-finger pushed Carson into Delhi, the very next year, and so he saw Marie Pilotte again.
It happened this way. Carson was at a table in the shady courtyard of the Hotel Metropole, sipping cold drinks and watching the kaleidoscopic effect of the passing crowds, when he saw a native slowly approaching, wheeling an invalid's chair. And pacing, with the erect, easy carriage of the king's men in India, a man in the uniform of an English officer strolled beside the chair.
As they came opposite Carson, the officer's face lighted with recognition. He stopped and motioned the native to bring the chair up to Carson's table.
Carson arose and held out his hand. Captain Rawlins was known to journalists from Siam to Finland. Many a story of Rawlins' travels and explorations had secured for the men fortunate enough to get them, that particularly genial expression of editorial pleasure for which the correspondent is ever striving. So Carson was brought out of his lazy contemplation of the crowds, into an attitude of animated greeting.
The captain turned to the occupant of the wheel-chair: "My sister, Carson." And to the invalid: "Marie, this is Wynne Carson—the Wynne Carson, you know, of the News-Eagle, New York City. He can make celebrities go through their paces for the public."
Carson saw a woman apparently years older than the captain—shriveled, wrinkled, her graying hair drawn smoothly over her ears. When she looked up in greeting, Carson saw that her eyes were wondrously, beautifully blue and youthful, yet filled with a strange, hunted expression. Carson experienced a shock of surprize. The woman was Marie Pilotte! And yet he had seen her but a year before, radiantly beautiful and young and in glowing, perfect health.
She extended a claw-like hand, the hand of an old woman, and spoke in the soft contralto voice that Carson knew as that of Marie Pilotte, the sweet singer.
"Oh, but we've met before, haven't we, Mr. Carson? The Lido?"
"He spoke hysterically, pointing to the dead tiger."
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Carson's power of speech seemed to have left him. He bowed over the wrinkled hand; smiled. And she went on, "I never used to forget the press men—the big ones like you, I mean. It meant a write-up, and if it was favorable" She laughed a low, rippling laugh, youthful and sweet. A man, in passing, looked at her shriveled old face in surprize.
"Come around and see us, won't you?" the captain invited. "We've a bungalow. Been stationed here only a short time. I came down from that hole in the ground they call Judhpore." He laid a visiting-card on the table and penciled an address on it. Then the chair was wheeled away.
Carson sat for some moments in deep thought, after they left his table. Marie Pilotte an old woman—and she not yet twenty-five, if reports were true? And she had spoken of her career in the past tense; had said, "I never used to forget the press men." What could it mean?
About a week later Carson went to
dine at the captain's bungalow, set in
a swirl of trees and shrubs on a road out of
Delhi, a road called by the natives "the
Road of Siva's Bull."
Marie Pilotte, gowned in white, had the appearance of a woman past sixty. It seemed to Carson that Captain Rawlins was watching his sister furtively during the courses. The native servants came and went almost noiselessly. Instinctively Carson awaited something—he did not know just what. His sixth sense—the queer sense that belongs to the Fourth Estate—was awakened to some new adventure.
It was a sultry, Indian night. The room where the three sat seemed charged with some powerful clement that might at any moment strike them in a terrible, unknown way.
The captain's sister laughed and talked, to be sure, yet to Carson there was an undercurrent of nervous dread in her beautiful, youthful eyes that illumined her colorless, old woman's face. From time to time she glanced across the room toward an open window, and it was then that Carson fancied she paused, faltering on a word, seeming to be waiting. Her eyes were widely open, her lips thin and with the parched look of fever.
The servant had just put coffee before them and left the room, when Marie Pilotte suddenly sat erect in her wheelchair. Only a moment before she had forced a jest about the wheel-chair at a dinner party. The words had hardly left her lips when her thin, dead-looking hands gripped the arms of the chair and her wide eyes widened still more, filled with utmost terror.
Rawlins sprang to her side, his face tense with pity. He held her rigid body against his steady arm, patted her shoulder, as one would reassure a terrified child. He seemed entirely oblivious of their guest. Carson sat quietly, helpless, ignorant of what it meant.
In a few moments the thin figure relaxed, drooped, fell limply back against the cushions of the chair. Her eyes were closed. Her bony hands lay inert in her lap. Exhaustion and the mark of swift age was upon Marie Pilotte, who had been but a year before the loveliest woman at the Lido.
The captain rang. A native woman came in and wheeled her mistress away, the rubber wheels making no sound over the polished floor. The captain went to the door with them, kissed his sister tenderly, whispered a few words to her, and came back to his chair.
He poured wine. Carson noted that his hands were trembling and that there were great beads of perspiration on his forehead. He drank his wine in one gulp. Leaning his arms on the table, he faced Carson seriously.
"You are wondering what it is all about, Carson? Well—I wish I knew what it is about. I don't know what it means. She is not ill."
Carson put down his glass. "You don't know—you say your sister is not ill?"
The captain shook his head. "No. It was not illness you just saw. It was a terrible, devilish fear that comes to her."
"Fear? Fear of what?"
"She can't tell. . . doesn't seem to know. That's the worst of it. It's killing her. There's a long story to it. . . . I think I'd be relieved to tell someone—someone who isn't a medic. All the doctors seem to think we're crazy when we tell them. It wouldn't bore you?"
Carson, remembering the lovely face of Marie Pilotte and the hours they had idled away together on the sands at the Lido, replied emphatically.
"Bore me? Why—why, man alive, why should it? I—I can't help remembering"
"All right. Let's get out of this beastly hot room.' It's a bit better on the veranda."
They went out through the swinging doors to comfortable chairs in the dusk. A low, golden half-moon shone through the trees.
"Mother India, ch?" Carson stretched out a wide arm to the darkness about the house.
The captain grunted. "Damn queer mother she is to the white ones in her care. Blisters us with sun. Chokes us with dust. Drowns us in the monsoon floods. Crazes us with her magic and her superstition. Hull! I don't talk like an Englishman and an army man, at that, do I? Well"
They lit cigarettes and the captain
began talking in a low, even voice.
Carson listened, with occasional glances toward a smear of pale light across the
lawns.
"My sister, after her last season, came out to Judhpore where I was stationed. Awfully rum place, but she wanted to 'see India.' Then, shortly after she came, I got a long leave and we went to the hill country for a vacation with friends. We were there perhaps a month, or more, and were on our way to see the sights at the capital when we met a hunting-party at the hotel. They were agreeable English people—I'd met some of them before—and they urged us to join them.
"The tiger season was on. Every coolie was talking about the unusual number of tigers that year. Of course, you know a native wouldn't kill a Bengal tiger. He'd let said tiger chew him up first. That's just what the tiger does, eventually. Well, my sister thought a tiger hunt would be thrilling and I was a bit enthusiastic myself, so we made our preparations and joined the party.
"In the jungle country we saw a new India. One can never forget that jungle country, once he's seen it—and smelled it.
"We were in luck. I should say, the tigers were unlucky. The fourth day Marie begged to be allowed a gun. I never dreamed she'd have the courage to use it, much less even kill a cat.
"But toward evening that very day we heard a great cat pad-padding through the twigs and leaves that led to the stream near the ambush. The wind was right, so that the beast suspected nothing, but bent his big, tawny head to drink. There was a flash, a report, a waft of smoke, and the tiger reared and fell beside the water. My sister proudly held up her gun. She had shot a tiger.
"Natives helped us examine the huge beast. He was shot cleanly through the heart. There was scarcely a spatter of blood on his black and orange hide. Suddenly one of the natives cried out in dialect to the other, who sprang away from the tiger. Then he spoke hysterically to me, pointing at the dead tiger.
"'The lady-sahib has killed a tiger of the blue eye. It carries the soul of Ramayana. A thrice sacred tiger and with the curse on the one who kills it. Ai-ai-yah!'
"Then he began to weave to and fro, intoning the weird singsong of the ancient curse of Ramayana. It went like this: 'She will die slowly. Her body will be shriveled up like the grass in the time of the great drought. The Great Terror will steal upon her unawares, and she will have the Great Fear in her heart till her life is sucked away. Ai-ai-yah! It has been written.'
"We gathered around the fellow, all talking at once. He understood English, but we could not shake his reiteration of the curse that followed the killing of a tiger of the blue eye. We examined the beast again and again, of course. Its right eye was of a clear and beautiful blue, more like a human eye than the eye of a jungle beast."
The captain paused a moment, and the silence of the Indian night surged about the little bungalow. Carson looked out at the light far across the lawns.
"I've got to pinch myself to realize that you're sitting right there telling me things like that. Why, a fellow might dream a thing like that, but it hardly seems"
"There are a lot of things in India that don't seem true, but are true," interrupted the other. "Shall I go on?"
At Carson's assent his even voice took up the amazing story again.
"You know, we English are slow to believe such things. Marie, of all the party, showed the only signs of agitation. But we were so insistent that the whole thing was native superstition and the blue eye of the tiger a biological freak, that she was, I believe, more than half convinced and ashamed of her fears.
"It was only when the native guides were near her that she became unquiet. The brown fellows acted in a strange way whenever they came near her. They made, if possible, wide detours to keep out of her way. I caught them eyeing her with furtive, fearful glances.
"My personal servant, sitting outside my tent one morning, cleaning my gun, sprang aside suddenly as my sister passed by him to enter the tent.
"What is the matter, Durah?" she asked. For answer he pointed to the strip of sun-lit ground before the tent where he had been sitting. His voice fairly hissed at her. 'Your shadow, ladysahib, it is cursed—and it fell upon me as I sat by the doorway. . . the Great Fear will stalk me. Ai-ai-yah!'
"He buried his head on his knees, giving his cry of fear and despair. I heard him, and coming out, saw my sister standing rigidly erect, staring straight before her. She looked as a sleepwalker does, her eyes glazed and wide. The servant was watching her with fearful fascination. As I stepped toward him he slipped away into the shade of the big trees.
"To my questions Marie gave no answer. Her face was ashen and drawn. In a moment she relaxed, and looking very tired, she went to her tent.
"After she had rested a while she told me that there was nothing that she could explain, except that a horrible fear had gripped her suddenly, a fear of she knew not what, but a terror so intense as to paralyze her for the time, seeming to suck away her very life. She only sensed a foul breath of air that approached her and enveloped her and laid its clamminess over her.
"I tried to comfort her, and finally, somewhat reassured, she fell asleep, while her native woman, trained in the missionary school at Delhi and seemingly free from the native fears, fanned her and crooned to her.
At luncheon she was very quiet.
At about three o'clock, in the heat
of the day's powerful sun, instead of resting,
like the others, my sister paced her
tent. Finally she came to my tent and
held out her hand without a word, without
any seeming emotion. The hand was
quite brown and wrinkled, the soft finger-tips
turned calloused and claw-like,
the wrist bony.
"'You see,' she said, with a fatalistic calm. 'The natives are right. The man Durah says the souls in the care of the sacred tigers must always be replaced by the souls of their slayers. He must be right. This shriveled hand is but the beginning. If I were in England it would be different, perhaps. But this is India, and all things are possible here.'
"In vain I tried to remonstrate with her, as did the rest of the party. We insisted that the maimed hand was the result of some poisonous insect bite or the touch of a poison plant. She only shook her head and smiled.
"Near noon of the next day, I observed Durah, my servant, squatting in the shade, inspecting his features in a small hand-mirror. The man's absorbed attitude was a strained one. His dark, young face was anxious as he scanned his refleaion.
"I went to him. At my approach he sprang to his feet. It seemed to me, at a glance, that his lean cheeks appeared sunken, the flesh hanging loosely about his mouth. He crept near me like a fawning animal.
"'Sahib,' he whispered. Tt has come, has it not? I, too, am marked.'
"'What's that you say?' I asked, not understanding.
"'The curse, sahib. It is on me, also,' he mouthed, his lips twisting grotesquely. 'Her shadow fell across me as I sat by the doorway—the lady-sahib's shadow.'
"I tried to laugh, in spite of the creepiness that came over me at his words. 'Nonsense, Durah,' I told him. 'You know that's nothing to do with us English people.'
"He clutched at his scrawny throat with long, brown fingers and fairly hissed at me.
"'You laugh, sahib. But I tell you it will take only time to tell which of us will outlive the other.'
"'What do you mean?' I asked, for a second wondering if the fellow was hinting at murder.
"A corner of his mouth twitched. He bowed low and answered respectfully, seriously, so that I was impressed by his words.
"'It is only that I was the first on whom her shadow fell and so there must be a struggle, soul against soul—a race against death, sahib. If I am overtaken first by the Great Fear, your lady lives and will be young again—and beautiful. If she is taken, then I am free, and the curse is removed, it is very simple. It has been so written and it will so happen.'
"His face was the impassive, mystic face of all India, as he bowed and began to slither away toward the natives' quarters.
"'Wait!' I cried, but he moved swiftly away and was lost among the thick shrubbery.
"I stood quite still, I remember, and went over his words, one by one. Then I went to my sister and told her. I found her as she was usually to be found the past three days, lying on her cot, with the native woman at the side fanning and crooning.
"When she heard Durah's story she raised herself with some animation. 'If that is true,' she said, 'I have a chance, then. Is that true, Ashan?'
"The woman, Ashan, nodded. 'It is true, lady-sahib. Even I who know about the English God, know that to be true. My mother has told me.'
"My sister looked at her wrinkled hand. 'Well,' she said, 'we will be going back soon. The hunters have had enough—six tigers and the blue-eyed Thing. I can't call it a tiger. If it's a race with death, I have a chance. I am as young as Durah almost. He is twenty, they say.'
"And so, in time, we returned to
Judhpore. Marie had to cancel her
next season's contract, for every day there
were signs of the terrible thing that had
come to her—her lined, drawn, old face;
her graying, lusterless hair; the tottering
step of advanced age. It was terrible.
"We had every medical aid. They were skeptical. They were of no help to us. Carson, she is under a curse. It has been more than six months since the tiger hunt. Her time is drawing near. I feel it. But what can I do—in India?"
"Well," said Carson, "people say there is no such thing as curse, as the powers of the evil eye, of things like this—but how can we tell?" He added, suddenly, "What of Durah?"
"That's the other side of this horrible thing. Durah stayed on with me as my servant, though it was not many weeks before he was unable to do much work. It is as he said it would be, he is failing, failing rapidly. My sister has never seen him since the tiger hunt. I could not allow it. As it is, the thought of their terrible race is with them always."
"I'd like to see this Durah," said Carson. "Do you suppose"
"That's his little place down there through the trees. You see the light? It seems strange that in six months Durah has changed from a strong, young man to a dim-eyed, trembling wreck. I—I—sometimes I've thought that Durah has gone the farther on the road to death. Durah's eyes did not escape, as did my sister's. Perhaps—I wonder if it would be silly to think that because her eyes were blue—like the tiger's"
He broke off abruptly, rose, and said, bruskly, "Come. You shall see Durah, too."
They walked leisurely across the lawns to Durah's little pagoda-like house which the captain had provided for him. The captain opened the screened door and they entered a dim room, lit faintly by two sputtering candles.
A word in native dialect was spat at them from a corner. The captain answered, "It is I, Durah," and struck a match, lighting a kerosene lamp which swung from the ceiling.
The yellow, wavering light showed a man lying on a high bed with netting hung about it on a wire frame. The old, wrinkled face, the squinting eyes, the toothless, half-open mouth gave Carson a feeling of pity and of revulsion.
"Water, sahib, please," asked Durah, and held out a claw-like hand.
He drank thirstily and then sat up in bed, hunched, shaking as with an ague.
He wore a loose, white garment that fell away from his wasted limbs, so that he looked like a dark skeleton in grave clothes. He pushed back the bed-curtains and touched the captain on the sleeve with a plucking movement.
"Sahib," he whispered, hoarsely, "did you hear it as you came in?"
"Hear what, Durah?"
"The pad-pad-pad, sahib. . . the tiger of the blue eye—it is coming for me, sahib."
"You're nervous, Durah. You ought to go to sleep. In the morning, perhaps, you'll be better."
Durah shook his head. "No, sahib. I shall not be better in the morning. You don't understand. It is coming for me. I—think—I lose—the race, sahib."
He touched his brown breast with his trembling, claw like-hand. "Its paw. . . its very soft paw. . . here on my breast, sahib." Then, eagerly: "Perhaps she has heard it, too. . . the lady-sahib, yes?" His breath came panting; his eyes peered into the captain's face.
"No, I think not, Durah. She has not heard—yet."
Durah made a pitiful cry in the dialect. "Ai-ai-yah! Then it is I! Ai-ai-yah!"
He buried his head in his thin arms and rocked back and forth, then suddenly raised his head in a listening attitude.
"Hear, sahib?" he breathed.
The captain said nothing, looking at the poor fellow in pity.
There was a shriek in the still night. Durah pitched backward on the bed, clutching at the curtains and pulling them down with him.
The two men sprang to his side, but Durah was already dead, his wasted face twisted in an agony of fear, his bony hands spread out grotesquely on his breast.
At that moment Carson could have sworn that something passed him, something resembling a current of fetid air. It passed, and he felt his face clammy with the starting sweat of vague, paralyzing fear. Only a second it touched him and was gone.
In the silence that followed the death of Durah, they left the little house. Several natives, hearing the shriek, had come running to the door. In a few quiet words the captain told them that Durah was dead. They heard him in frightened dumbness. Only one wailed and he was hushed by the others.
Carson and the captain went back to the bungalow. Carson could scarcely keep step with the other man's stride.
"If she gets well, Carson—if she gets well, we can no longer ignore the power of mystic India. But it is no place for an English woman. I've always said that."
Carson had his own thoughts, so he merely nodded, scarcely hearing what Rawlins had said. He sat rigidly erect in a bamboo chair on the veranda, while the captain went up to his sister, taking the stairs three at a leap.
He was down in a few moments, his eyes shining in the lamplight, as he stood at the screen-door.
"Carson—she is sleeping—like a child. And there is color creeping into her lips and cheeks again. Go away, now, Carson, like a good fellow. I'm not being rude, but I've got to be alone a while—to think this out."
Carson was the sort that would understand that. He rose, held out his hand. "Don't try to explain, Captain Rawlins; I think I get you. And—if you feel fit tomorrow, come over to the Metropole for lunch."
"Yes, thanks—about one, then, tomorrow," answered the other, and sat down in a big chair, almost forgetting Carson.
Carson went toward his hotel in the silence of the Indian night, and there was in him an exultant thankfulness that Marie Pilotte in her health and beauty would live to be young again. Yes, he would see her again. She wouldn't pass out of his life this time.
But arrived at the hotel, he found a cablegram, and so, with his regrets for the captain left at the desk, Carson was well on his way to Calcutta by noon the next day.
After Calcutta, it was London, but through the months Carson did not forget Made Pilotte.
In a London season, less than two years
after the death of Durah, two men
trained glasses on a box at a certain
theater.
"Who is the beauty who just came into the left box over there?" asked one.
His companion answered, "The woman in silver? Oh, don't you know? She's Marie Pilotte, the singer. But I have heard that she is recently married—to an American newspaper correspondent."
A Hair perhaps divides the False and True
Yes; and a single Alif were the clue—
Could you but find it—to the Treasure-house,
And peradventure to The Master too;
Whose secret Presence, through Creation's veins
Running Quicksilver-like eludes your pains;
Taking all shapes from Máh to Máhi; and
They change and perish all—but He remains;
A moment guess'd—then back behind the Fold
Immerst of Darkness round the Drama roll'd
Which, for the Pastime of Eternity,
He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold.