The Web of the Sun (Adventure Magazine, 1922)/Chapter 7
VII
THE disappearance of the lamb from the net registered a shock on the promoter's nerves which he did not realize until night. Then, however, it asserted itself in his dreams and troubled his sleep.
The moment he lost consciousness he fancied himself back at the lakeside with the vicuna in his arms ready to throw it into the net. Every detail was precisely as he had experienced it during the evening, except, just when he was ready to throw, the little vicuna changed into Tilita.
He was under some horrible compulsion to fling the girl into the net. She was clinging to him, beseeching. He could feel her form pressed against him, her milky palm against his face; then just as he swung her into destruction, he awoke with a violent start, gasping for breath, with a hammering heart and a sweating body.
Time after time he was startled awake by this nightmare. The night seemed endless. At his last awakening, he saw, with a great sense of relief, the first silver of dawn whitening the jungle. It came over him like a balm, for he knew if he fell asleep again, it would be dreamless.
The dull silver strengthened in the airy chambers of the paddlewood. Dew, dripping from the leaves made a faint wide pattering. A belated firefly glowed and paled against the dark bole of the tree. The promoter lay looking at the fly, its delicate yellow fire on the verge of sending him to sleep again when gradually he became aware that some one had entered his cubicle.
Without looking he knew it was Birdsong. The colporteur retained his rustic habit of rising during the latter hours of the night, to what purpose Lassiter never could discover.
Lassiter closed his eyes and wooed the sleep the firefly had promised, but the knowledge that Birdsong was standing beside him frustrated his inhospitable design. Finally, without looking or moving he said—
“Well?”
“Are you awake, Brother Lassiter?”
“I haven't slept all night.”
The promotor opened his eyes.
The colporteur had a pack of Bibles on his back evidently just ready to set off on his crusade.
“J'want anything?” slurred the New Yorker at last.
The colporteur fumbled in his packs, moved uneasily and at last blurted out.
“You got more education than I have, Brother Lassiter”
The promoter let that pass.
“But I've read the Bible more than you have.”
“You certainly have,” yawned Lassiter.
“And you could easily—er—quite easily—ah—fall into sin and not know it, Brother Lassiter.”
“Sin!” The promoter opened his eyes fully and looked at the colporteur with a faint amusement in them.
“Yes, sir, sin,” he repeated doggedly.
“What kind of sin?”
“You bent your knee to Bal.”
The promoter lifted his head.
“To—what?”
“To Bal.”
“Birdsong, what are you driving at?”
The revivalist plucked up his determination.
“God have mercy on you, Brother Lassiter, have you fell into sin unbeknownst?”
“But when—where—what”
“Why, yestiddy evening!” cried the colporteur. “I saw you kneeling beside that idolatrous woman down yonder by the lake joining her in her filthy and idolatrous worship of Bal!”
The promoter stared at the stocky little man with a growing amusement.
“Why that didn't amount to anything, Birdsong—I didn't pray.”
“But you bent the knee.”
The definite article before “knee” increased Lassiter's mirth.
“Yes, I bent the knee,” he admitted in faint burlesque.
“Was it in mawkery?”
“Well—no. It wasn't exactly in mockery either.”
Birdsong shook his head.
“Brother Lassiter, to bend the knee to Bal is strickly against God's holy Word. I hope God'll touch your heart, Brother Lassiter”
From this the colporteur glided into an invocation:
“Oh, Lord, do touch his hard heart! Look down on this idolatrous and adulterous man, Lord, and smite him with conviction. He don't know you, Lord, but he has let a strange woman lead him to the altar of Bal. Save him, God! Save Brother Lassiter from consorting with idolatrous women! Save him from his filthy lusts! Save”
All this was in true backwood revival style where the praying heaps every form of abuse and contumely on the audience, but the promoter was not accustomed to any such blanket pleas for pardon. He sat up sharply.
“Look here,” he interrupted. “Where do you get all that stuff about filthy lusts? A prayer is a prayer, but”
The colporteur came out of his sing-song and looked steadily at his friend.
“Didn't you kneel down by her side because she was a woman, Brother Lassiter?”
The promoter was angry.
“I did it just as I would with any sincere worshiper, Birdsong. I hope I am broadminded enough in my views not to allow creed or”
“Brother Lassiter,” drawled the colporteur unruffled, “I've been praying to Jesus Christ for your soul every morning and night for over a month and a half. You've seen me lots of times, but you never have knelt down by my side”
The promoter reached up and scratched his jaw. “Well—I—I overlooked it”
“No, you didn't, Brother Lassiter.”
This ushered in an uncomfortable pause. During the pause, Lassiter pondered which would most become his dignity, to answer this reflection with quiet denial, or with that restrained sarcasm, of which Lassiter, in common with most other men, considered himself a master, or simply to say nothing. Further reflection convinced him there was little to say.
It was Birdsong who began again.
“Do you know what old Nehemiah said about Solomon in his blessed thirteenth chapter and twenty-eighth verse, Brother Lassiter?”
“No, it, I don't!” snapped the promotor, forming an instant prejudice against the remarks of old Nehemiah on any subject whatever.
“Well, he said there was no king like Solomon, who was beloved of God; nevertheless did outlandish women cause him to sin.”
The colporteur stopped flatly on the word “sin.”
“So that's what he said!”
“That's what he said, Brother Lassiter,” responded the Arkansan unruffled, “and if your intentions are honorable, Brother Lassiter, as I hope they be, I will quote you the next verse, which may fit your case to a tiddyyumptum.
“In the next verse old Nehemiah says, 'Hearken ye unto this great evil!'” Here Birdsong shook his finger at the promoter. “'Hearken ye unto this great evil, ye, who transgress against our God in marrying strange wives'—strange wives—hearken ye— Are you harking, Brother Lassiter, if that fits you any better?”
To Lassiter's relief, Birdsong took down his finger and adjusted his Bible packs.
“Well, I got to be going now,” he said in a casual tone, “You think them things over, Brother Lassiter. It's for your good I'm saying 'em. You see, Brother Lassiter, we've got souls—both of us. If it wasn't for that, I'd fade your sin and go you one better, Brother Lassiter.”
And the colporteur moved away with his pack on his back and presently was lost in the faint morning light.
FOR several minutes the promoter sat rather stunned at this onslaught. It was so utterly undeserved. Then the humor of the thing seeped in to him and he began smiling; presently the phrase “strange wives” revisited his imagination.
One of the distinctive differences between the Orient and the Occident, between pessimism and optimism, is that to one the word “strange” connotes something sinister; to the other, something glamorous.
There is little doubt that when the prophet Nehemiah wrote his celebrated thirteen, twenty-eight, and nine, which Birdsong had so ably quoted, he was far from meaning any flattery when he used the word “nokri,” “strange wives.”
To his Hebrew hearers, steeped in oriental pessimism, it would have carried no commendation. But the spirit of peoples change with their geography, and this changing spirit is very likely to breathe new connotations into one and the same word.
In Lassiter's ears, the expression, “strange wives” carried a certain lure. So he sat musing in his hammock and repeated aloud two or three times—“a strange woman—a strange wife—an idolatrous woman—” and the phrases spread colorful intentions before the dreamer. They suggested bizarre wooings, gorgeous and barbaric ceremonies and exotic satisfactions—a strange wife”
He fancied himself marrying Tilita in the vast baroque temple of the sun. He could see himself kneeling with her before a golden altar. Above them stood the vast naked Gogoma, dripping with sweat—and annointing with perfume—the beat of barbaric music—then their return to one of these vast trees—the slow luxury of day and night—the springing up of children about them—many children, such as old Prymoxl bore, and of whom, only one remained.
But theirs would not fade. They would be gay, laughing, half arboreal little cherubs and they, in their turn, would come and kneel in the temple of the sun—and so life would go on.
The flare of color suggested by this vision shivered through the poet.
He arose briskly, shook off his absurd reverie and dressed himself, for it was now plain day.
The thought of Prymoxl's children somehow suggested the web of the sun. In the more rational daylight, the promoter made a shrewd guess as to the function of the net. It was merely a priestly device for collecting tithes and meats for the sacerdotal table.
The mysterious disappearance of the lamb, which had given him a turn the preceding evening, no doubt was nothing more than some priestly hocus-pocus. He decided that he would walk down and look more closely into the mechanism of the contrivance.
The promoter set out lakeward and after some thirty minutes' brisk walking reached the lake and the stony inlet where the net was stretched. The agent clambered down the stones for a more detailed inspection of the hammock.
It was an ingeniously made contrivance. The whorl of limed cords in the center were a marvelous mechanism. Each strand was made of two hollow tubes twisted together and filled with a viscous limy material. This limy liquid oozed out through the colloidal tubes and constantly renewed their sticky surfaces. Instead of drying in the hot sunshine, the net grew stickier and stickier.
Lassiter took a bamboo from a bit of jetsam at the edge of the lake, then went back and touched it to this viscid center. When he tried to pull it away the strands untwisted and resisted his pull with the flexibility of limed rubber. If a captive drew out one foot, it would surely thrust the other into a deeper viscosity.
It was such a powerful and devilish gin that Lassiter's surprize expanded to wonderment. This was far too much craft to expend on a mere priestly device for gathering alms. It held sinister implications.
The priests of the sun would not construct a club to kill a midge. This net was far beyond the strength of a vicuna lamb, or a vicuna—the thing would have held a tiger. Such preparations suggested a far grimmer purpose than holding a lamb for Gogoma's table.
The promoter stepped gingerly on the first transverse cord, and then from cord to cord toward the limed center. He stood, balancing himself, speculating on the thing. No doubt the hot climate developed this contrivance. Meat for the temple must be kept alive or it would spoil. So this extraordinary fabrication had been evolved by necessity, that fecund mother of all inventions. The same ingenuity turned toward aviation would have flown over the encircling cliffs to freedom!
The water over which the net was suspended was a profound blue and appeared of great depth. It was full of shadows and half forms. Amid the reflections of rocks and palms and distant palisades, he saw the slow sway of undergrowth; then presently made out a sort of pale blob that protruded from some subaqueous cavern. He shaded his, eyes with his hands and peered down.
It was confused with the reflection of a solitary cloud. At last he decided he would thrust his bamboo down and punch the thing. It might be the clew to the whole contrivance. He was addressing his pole for this purpose when a voice on the bank called to him sharply to desist.
SURPRIZE brought Lassiter up, and he saw a tall raw-boned brown man with the priestly heron feather in his hair. Besides, he was armed with a long pole with an obsidian blade on it, something like an elongated scythe. Coiled around his arm was a great loop of the colloidal rope used in the net.
The fellow looked as if he might have been sent down from the temple to mow down the trespasser on the net, so Lassiter got ashore and asked what was the matter.
“It is dangerous there, señor.”
“What's the danger?”
The fellow drew down an ironic mouth—
“One does not care to rush into the bright mansions of the sun, before it is absolutely necessary, señor.”
A certain cynicism about this remark caused the promoter to look him over carefully.
“I am Jagala,” said the man, “a priest and a rope gatherer—” he shook the coil on his arm—“and the holy Gogoma told me of you, a Señor Lassiter.”
The promoter acknowledged the introduction.
“A rope gatherer?”
“Si, señor.”
“Don't you mean a rope maker?”
“I make this rope?” Jagala had a long face, and now the lift of his pointed brows gave him a Mephistophelean look.
“Well, some one makes it!” cried Lassiter.
“No one makes it, señor. I gather it from the cliffs.”
“How does it come there?” exclaimed the promoter.
Jagala shrugged.
“It is the gift of the sun, señor. When the sun climbs down the side of the cliff into the {{lake”}}
“I've heard all that.”
“If you don't believe it, señor,” defended the rope gatherer, “just look at this rope and tell me if any man can make such a rope!”
Lassiter took the rope and reperused it for the hundredth time.
“You really mean to tell me you find this cordage hanging from the cliffs?”
“Si, señor."
“And you have no idea how it came there?”
“Señor,” snapped the priest, “I have told you twice that the sun in its climb down the sides of the cliff leaves this rope as a gift to his people!”
The promoter nodded, “Yes, yes,” and stood studying the rope, with an occasional glance at the web of the sun.
As he stood looking first at one, then at the other, he saw something slowly rising through the water beneath the net. The priest also saw it for he walked down to the margin of the lake, thrust his pole and hook under the net and drew the object to him. He swung it out on the stones. To Lassiter's amazement, it was the very lamb he had thrown into the net on the preceding evening.
The little creature was stiff and water soaked. Its legs were bound tightly to its body by several turns of the mysterious rope. Jagala clipped one end of this binding cord with his obsidian blade, tossed the little animal back into the water, and unwound the cord by letting the cadaver revolve in the water. As he salvaged the line, he wound it on his arm with the rest of his findings.
When Jagala finished, the promoter took his bamboo and fished the dead body out on the stones. Jagala strolled on back toward the temple. After the carcass had dried out somewhat, Lassiter settled himself for a careful study of the dead animal.
Its throat was not cut. The region over the heart where butchers stick their kills was intact. A painstaking search over its whole body failed to discover the slightest blemish to its skin. Its death duplicated the slaying of the pack mules on the cliff. Apparently the priestly contrivance could destroy at a distance—or else some athletic fellow like Jagala climbed the cliff.
The promoter was considering which of these clews he would pursue when he started to arise, and pressed down on the cadaver to lift himself. His hand crushed into the body as if it had been an empty sack. Lassiter drew out his knife and opened the vicuna.
The viscera of the little creature seemed dried up. Its heart was a blackish knot; its entrails might have been tripe. If some one had turned a tinner's blow-pipe into the lamb, it would have produced the same desiccated appearance. It was another link in the chain of enigmas that surrounded existence in Motobatl.
By the time Lassiter finished his inspection it was high noon. Profound silence and a fulgor of sunlight lay over lake and temple. The vicuna was spread open before Lassiter, and the brilliance of the light upon its withered entrails accented its sinister significance.
A vast loneliness fell over the promoter. With all these grim riddles accumulating about him, there was not one person in all the crater from whom he could expect even a sensible discussion of the matter.
Nunes was superstitious, and besides had been rather grum toward the promoter since their little tiff over Tilita. Birdsong solved every riddle by a fiat straight out of the blue. If the priests knew, they retained their knowledge; and as for old Prymoxl and other ordinary Indians, they were in as hopeless a welter of theological explanation as Birdsong.
And Lassiter's own brain had come to a complete balk; yet he had a profound feeling that it was because he had no human contact by which he could orientate himself. He felt, in his heart, if he had just an ordinary man-on-the-street, picked up off of Broadway, a man who would think straight, whose brain did not skid at once into absurdities—he would solve it.
Moreover the solution must be hovering almost in sight. One isolated conundrum may prove insoluble, but half a dozen, all focusing on the same point, are mutually explanatory and suggestive. He was amazed; he was chagrined that the web of the sun lay under his eyes as inscrutable as the first time he ever saw it.
PRESENTLY into the promoter's self disgust crept the murmur of distant voices. They were just audible and for several minutes did not interrupt Lassiter's brooding. Indeed, this slight human touch somehow helped the agent to his first tenable theory. It was exceedingly simple. An underground tunnel led from temple to net. The priests had watched him from the window and had timed the thrusting out of the vicuna under his eyes to help mystify him. It was the simplest of ruses; worthy of an intelligence such as Jagala's.
Then he attacked the problem of the peculiar condition of the lamb, but just here the voices he had heard became so loud as to distract his thought. It was a man and a woman quarreling. He became attentive and could distinguish the edged tilts of a woman's soprano, and the peculiar monotonous buzzing of a man's baritone which mark the sexes in anger.
He looked over the crest of the little knoll and presently saw two figures emerge from the palms coming toward the beach. The woman carried a calabash. Both were gesticulating angrily. Their voices reared at each other.
Suddenly the man seized her free hand. The woman screamed, tried to wrench loose, when her companion caught her in his arms and began one of those dodging struggles to kiss her. She dropped the calabash, clawed at his face and twisted her head from side to side to escape his lips.
Had Lassiter been a younger man, he would have rushed to the assistance of assaulted beauty, but he was wise. He watched the love fight with the amused tolerance of a bachelor of thirty-nine. The grand passion often takes the form of blows and resisted kisses. The result of these hostilities would be another tree commandeered for housekeeping in Motobatl— At that instant Lassiter saw the girl was Tilita.
The promoter leaped to his feet with a kind of spasm in his chest. Next instant he was in full charge down the slope and up the sand. The glare of the sun went red. The man's back was to him, but Tilita saw him and screamed—
“Primo!”
Next moment the fellow whirled. For an instant, Lassiter saw Balthasar staring at him with bloodless face. The Colombian made a grab for his pistol. Tilita's arms prevented. Lassiter jumped in with a furious swing at the brown man's chin. Nunes yelled and dodged. Next moment the two men went down on the sand together.
The promoter fell on top, but his attack was ineffective from its very fury. He grabbed the Colombian's ears and jounced his head against the ground. He loosed a hand to seize the wretch's mustache and yank his mouth into monstrous shapes. He mauled at the eyes, trying to smash the yellow countenance.
The muleteer used only one hand for defense; with the other he grappled under his hip for his automatic. He wriggled and pitched and sputtered Spanish oaths. He almost threw Lassiter over his head by heaving up his stomach, but the promoter lunging and lurching, pounded the saddle-colored face with every blow raising a splotch.
It was a mere spurt of fighting, but Lassiter tired as swiftly as he fought. He was soft to the core. In two minutes his head was roaring and his mouth so full of slime he could hardly breathe. He seemed in a furnace. Sweat ceased to flow on him. He was burning up.
Suddenly he saw Balthasar was drawing his automatic. He grabbed the muleteer's elbow. During the pause, Nunes caught Lassiter's right. They came to a straining impasse. The promoter stared into Balthasar's bleeding face. Gradually the yellow man's pistol arm strained out. Lassiter flung all his failing force against it, but the muleteer's sweaty skin slipped through his hold. A panic siezed Lassiter.
He suddenly realized he would be killed. In three minutes he would have his brains blown out over a half-breed girl's kiss! It was absurd! He tried to pant out some words through his slimy mouth, to reason before—he clenched desperately—
“Nunes”
At that moment, a third hand was laid on Balthasar's pistol arm and stopped it absolutely.
“Here, gentlemen,” called a cheerful voice. “Have you forgot what the Good Book says, 'How good it is for brethren to dwell together in unity?' Git up, brother, leave off this scuffing and rejoice with me!”
As Birdsong's fresh strength had complete control of the situation, both men let go. The colporteur lifted Lassiter by one arm and got him to his feet, then he picked up the. maltreated muleteer, keeping one hand casually on the pistol arm. He brushed aside the whole affair as trivial.
“Brothers, rejoice with me!” he cried. “I have garnered three souls into the blessed fold of the master!”
The promoter stared unsteadily at the jubilant colporteur. The blood pounded in Lassiter's ears and his head was splitting. It was all he could do to keep from falling.
The Colombian spat out a mouthful of blood, touched his raw face, but said with a certain return of his habitual courtesy—
“Señor, that is good news!”
“Glorious news!” pæaned the colporteur. “And it was all accomplished, my dear Brother Balthasar, in the twinkling of an eye, through a miracle!”
“A miracle,” repeated Nunes, starting toward the lake to wash out his mouth.
“Yes, a miracle, with the aid of ordinary parlor matches! I never saw a more divine manifestation. I'll ask you two brothers now, to give me all the matches you happen to have in your pockets.”
Both the fighters fished out their lucifers and handed them over. Then Lassiter got unsteadily to the girl where she stood clinging to a palm. Every nerve in the man jangled. He could not make heads or tails of what Birdsong was saying.
“Come on, Tilita—come on!”
Before he could say more, he spat out ropy saliva.
The two started off aimlessly through the jungle. Birdsong and Nunes walked on down to the lake. Birdsong was drawling away with great enthusiasm about his miracle.