Robert Chambers - The Slayer Of souls

Her voice died out; she sat gazing down at her spread fingers, on one of which gleamed her wedding–ring.

After a little, she went on dreamily:

"On that week, each three months, we were free…. If a young man should please us…."

"Free?" he repeated.

"To love," she explained coolly.

"Oh." He nodded, but his face became rather grim.

"There came to me at the yaïlak," she went on carelessly, "one Khassar Noïane—Noïane means Prince—all in a surcoat of gold tissue with green vines embroidered, and wearing a green cap trimmed with dormouse, and green boots inlaid with stiff gold….

"He was so young … a boy. I laughed. I said: 'Is this a Yaçaoul? An Urdu–envoy of Prince Erlik?'—mocking him as young and thoughtless girls mock—not in unfriendly manner—though I would not endure the touch of any man at all.

"And when I laughed at him, this Eighur boy flew into such a rage! Kai! I was amazed.

"'Sou–sou! Squirrel!' he cried angrily at me. 'Learn the Yacaz, little chatterer! Little mocker of men, it is ten blows with a stick you require, not kisses!'

"At that I whistled my two dogs, Bars and Alaga, for I did not think what he said was funny.

"I said to him: 'You had better go home, Khassar Noïane, for if no man has ever pleased me where I am at liberty to please myself, here on the Lake of the Ghost, then be very certain that no boy can please Keuke–Mongol here or anywhere!'

"And at that—kai! What did he say—that monkey?" She looked at her husband, her splendid eyes ablaze with wrathful laughter, and made a gesture full of angry grace:

"'Squirrel!' he cries—'little malignant sorceress of Yian! May everything high about you become a sandstorm, and everything long a serpent, and everything broad a toad, and everything―'

"But I had had enough, Victor," she added excitedly, "and I made a wild bee bite him on the lip! WHAT do you think of such a courtship?" she cried, laughing. But Cleves's face was a study in emotions.

And then, suddenly, the laughing mask seemed to slip from the bewitching features of Keuke Mongol; and there was Tressa Norne—Tressa Cleves—disconcerted, paling a little as the memory of her impulsive confidence in this man beside her began to dawn on her more clearly.

"I—I'm sorry―" she faltered…. "You'll think me silly—think evil of me, perhaps―"

She looked into his troubled eyes, then suddenly she took her face into both hands and covered it, sitting very still.

"We'll go South together," he said in an uncertain voice…. "I hope you will try to think of me as a friend…. I'm just troubled because I am so anxious to understand you. That is all…. I'm—I'm troubled, too, because I am anxious that you should think well of me. Will you try, always?"

She nodded.

"I want to be your friend, always," he said.

"Thank you, Mr. Cleves."

It was a strange spot he chose for Tressa—strange but lovely in its own unreal and rather spectral fashion—where a pearl–tinted mist veiled the St. Johns, and made exquisite ghosts of the palmettos, and softened the sun to a silver–gilt wafer pasted on a nacre sky.

It was a still country, where giant water–oaks towered, fantastic under their misty camouflage of moss, and swarming with small birds.

Among the trees the wood–ibis stole; without on the placid glass of the stream the eared grebe floated. There was no wind, no stirring of leaves, no sound save the muffled splash of silver mullet, the breathless whirr of a humming–bird, or the hushed rustle of lizards in the woods.

For Tressa this was the blessed balm that heals,—the balm of silence. And, for the first week, she slept most of the time, or lay in her hammock watching the swarms of small birds creeping and flitting amid the moss–draped labyrinths of the live–oaks at her very door.

It had been a little club house before the war, this bungalow on the St. Johns at Orchid Hammock. Its members had been few and wealthy; but some were dead in France and Flanders, and some still remained overseas, and others continued busy in the North.

And these two young people were quite alone there, save for a negro cook and a maid, and an aged negro kennel–master who wore a scarlet waistcoat and cords too large for his shrunken body, and who pottered, pottered through the fields all day, with his whip clasped behind his bent back and the pointers ranging wide, or plodding in at heel with red tongues lolling.

Twice Cleves went a little way for quail, using Benton's dogs; but even here in this remote spot he dared not move out of view of the little house where Tressa lay asleep.

So he picked up only a few brace of birds, and confined his sport to impaling too–familiar scorpions on the blade of his knife.

And all the while life remained unreal for him; his marriage seemed utterly unbelievable; he could not realise it, could not reconcile himself to conditions so incomprehensible.

Also, ever latent in his mind, was knowledge that made him restless—the knowledge that the young girl he had married had been in love with another man: Sanang.

And there were other thoughts—thoughts which had scarcely even taken the shape of questions.

One morning he came from his room and found Tressa on the veranda in her hammock. She had her moon–lute in her lap.

"You feel better—much better!" he said gaily, saluting her extended hand.

"Yes. Isn't this heavenly? I begin to believe it is life to me, this pearl–tinted world, and the scent of orange bloom and the stillness of paradise itself."

She gazed out over the ghostly river. Not a wing stirred its glassy surface.

"Is this dull for you?" she asked in a low voice.

"Not if you are contented, Tressa."

"You're so nice about it. Don't you think you might venture a day's real shooting?"

"No, I think I won't," he replied.

"On my account?"

"Well—yes."

"I'm so sorry."

"It's all right as long as you're getting rested. What is that instrument?"

"My moon–lute."

"Oh, is that what it's called?"

She nodded, touched the strings. He watched her exquisite hands.

"Shall I?" she inquired a little shyly.

"Go ahead. I'd like to hear it!"

"I haven't touched it in months—not since I was on the steamer." She sat up in her hammock and began to swing there; and played and sang while swinging in the flecked shadow of the orange bloom:

"Cispangou," she explained, "is the very, very ancient name, among the Mongols, for Japan."

"It's not exactly a gay song," he said. "What's it about?"

"Oh, it's a very ancient song about the Mongol invasion of Japan. I know scores and scores of such songs."

She sang some other songs. Afterward she descended from the hammock and came and sat down beside him on the veranda steps.

"I wish I could amuse you," she said wistfully.

"Why do you think I'm bored, Tressa? I'm not at all."

But she only sighed, lightly, and gathered her knees in both arms.

"I don't know how young men in the Western world are entertained," she remarked presently.

"You don't have to entertain me," he said, smiling.