WINGS 
 
 TALES OF THE PSYCHIC 
 
WINGS 
 
 TALES OF THE PSYCHIC 
 
 BY 
 
 ACHMED ABDULLAH 
 
 Author of "The Trail of the Beast" 
 "The Honorable Gentleman and Others" 
 "The Man On Horseback," Etc., etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY 
 1920 
 

 Copyright 1920 by 
 THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Printed in U. S. A. 
 
To MY 
 F. ELLIOT CABOT 
 
 "Lonely! Why should 
 I feel lonely? Is not 
 our planet in the 
 Milky Way?" 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 WINGS . . . :-, .. >. >- > > 
 
 DISAPPOINTMENT . : .. >: : > >: >: > 
 
 To BE ACCOUNTED FOR . : ..: >: : > 63 
 
 TARTAR . < >j >: > ; >: w > - 
 
 RENUNCIATION . . > : x IO 3 
 
 KRISHNAVANA, DESTROYER OF SOULS . . 115 
 
 THAT HAUNTING THING .... .. .- 1.35 
 
 THE MAN WHO LOST CASTE . ... ... . .. IS3 
 
 SILENCE , ... > .-; *: w -: w a !* l6 3 
 
 KHIZR .- >: >: [: >i w M > W M l8 3 
 
 FEAR , . >: * w w < ? m * > 
 
 LIGHT >: >: M BB- m . .oa ai w 
 
WINGS 
 
 TALES OF THE PSYCHIC 
 
WINGS 
 I 
 
 THAT Saturday night at the height of the Lon 
 don season when Martab Singh, Maharaja of Oney- 
 J)ore, made his initial bow to Belgravia in the salon 
 bf the Dowager Duchess of Shropshire, properly 
 introduced and vouched for by Sir James Spottis- 
 woode of the India Office, there wasn t a man in the 
 great scarlet and purple room, nor woman either, 
 who did not look up quite automatically when the 
 big, bearded, turbaned figure crossed the threshold 
 and bent over the wrinkled, perfumed hand of Her 
 Grace. 
 
 There wasn t a person in that room and people 
 of all classes crowded the gossipy old duchess s 
 Saturday night at homes, from recently knighted, 
 pouchy, sharp-voiced barristers to gentlemen of the 
 bench who hid their baldness and their forensic 
 wisdom under tremendous, dusty wigs; from the 
 latest East African explorer returned from a six- 
 
 1 
 
2 . WINGS 
 
 months unnecessary slaughter, to the stolidest nov 
 elist of mid-Victorian respectability; from the most 
 Parisianized Londoner to the most Anglified Pari 
 sian; from the latest shouting evangelist out of the 
 State of Wisconsin to the ungodly Yorkshire peer 
 who had varied the monotony of last year s mar 
 riage to, and divorce from, a Sussex dairymaid by 
 this year s elopement with a Gaiety chorus-girl; 
 from Mayfair Dives to Soho Lazarus there wasn t 
 a person in all that mixed assembly who did not feel 
 a shiver of expectation as the raja entered. 
 
 Expectation of something. 
 
 Waiting tensely, dramatically, silently, for some 
 thing. 
 
 "Not waiting for something to happen," Charlie 
 Thorneycroft put it. "Rather waiting for some 
 thing that had already happened, you know. Which 
 of course is infernal rot and asinine drivel. For 
 how in the name of my canonized great-grandaunt 
 can you wait for the future of the past tense? But 
 there you are !" 
 
 And Thorneycroft, of London, Calcutta, Pesha 
 war, Melbourne, Capetown, and the British Empire 
 in general, vaguely attached to some mythical diplo 
 matic bureau in some unknown diplomatic capacity, 
 
WINGS 3 
 
 would drop his monocle and look up with a sharp, 
 challenging stare of his ironic gray eyes, as if ex 
 pecting you to contradict him. 
 
 It was not that the presence of a raja, or any 
 other East Indian potentate or near-potentate was 
 an unusual occurrence in London. Rajas are more 
 common there than Nevada plutocrats at a Florida 
 resort, or black-cocks on a Yorkshire moor. Lon 
 don is the capital of a motley and picturesque em 
 pire, and pink turbans soften the foggy, sulfurous 
 drab of Fleet Street; lavender turbans bob up and 
 down the human eddy of the Burlington Arcade; 
 green and red and white turbans blotch the sober, 
 workaday atmosphere of East Croydon and 
 Pimlico. 
 
 Nor was it anything in Martab Singh s appear 
 ance or reputation. 
 
 For, as to the first, he was good-looking in rather 
 a heavy, simple, bovine fashion, with two hundred 
 pounds of flesh and brawn carried by his six foot 
 two of height, his great, staring, thick-fringed, 
 opaque eyes, his melancholy smile, and his magnifi 
 cent beard, dyed red with henna, which was split 
 from the chin down the center and then curled up 
 on either side of his face so that the points, which 
 
4 WINGS 
 
 touched his ridiculously small ears, looked like the 
 horns of a combative ram. 
 
 And as to his reputation and standing, Sir James 
 Spottiswoode had vouched for it. 
 
 There was also Charlie Thorneycroft s drawling, 
 slightly saturnine corroboration. 
 
 Tremendously swanky beggar in his own coun 
 try/* he said to pretty, violet-eyed Victoria de 
 Rensen. "Descendant of the flame on his father s 
 side, and related to the moon on the bally distaff. 
 Cousin to Vishnu, Shiva, Doorgha, and what-not, 
 and college chum to all the assorted and hideous 
 divinities of the Hindu heaven. His principality is 
 small, barren, poor. A mixture of rocks and flies 
 and hairy and murderous natives. But he is the 
 very biggest among the bigwigs of India. To two 
 hundred million benighted Hindus he is the deity 
 Brahm, what? all the gods rolled into one and 
 topped by a jolly, crimson caste-mark. He s the 
 gods earthly representative, you know, Vic darling. 
 Not only that. For" he dropped his voice to a 
 flat whisper "this is the first time in the history 
 of the world hang it, before the history of the 
 world that a Maharaja of Oneypore has left his 
 native soil." 
 
WINGS 5 
 
 "Why shouldn t he?" 
 
 "Because by leaving India he pollutes his soul, he 
 loses caste. And that s just why I wonder " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing!" 
 
 Quite suddenly he looked up, and his long, white 
 fingers gripped the girl s arm nervously. 
 
 "Did you feel it?" he whispered. 
 
 There was no need for an answer. Nor, really, 
 had there been need for the question in the first 
 place. 
 
 For, as the raja, arm in arm with Sir James 
 Spottiswoode, stepped away from the door and 
 farther into the room, it came. 
 
 Nobody heard it. Nobody saw it or smelt it. 
 Nobody even felt it, either consciously or subcon 
 sciously. 
 
 But again, through the mixed company that 
 crowded the duchess s salon, there passed a shiver. 
 A terrible, silent, hopeless shiver. 
 
 Then noises: human noises, and the relief that 
 goes with them. A distinct sound of breath sucked 
 in quickly, of tea-cups clacking as hands trembled, 
 of feet shuffling uneasily on the thick Turkish carpet, 
 of the very servants, placidly, stolidly English, stop- 
 
6 WINGS 
 
 ping in their rounds of hospitable duties, standing 
 stock-still, silver trays gripped in white-gloved 
 fingers, and staring, breathless, like pointers at bay. 
 
 "Something like great wings, rushing, rushing !" 
 murmured Charlie Thorneycroft, dropping his usual 
 slang like a cloak. 
 
 "Like wings " echoed Victoria de Rensen with 
 a little sob. 
 
 Yet there was nothing formidable or sinister in 
 the raja s progress through the room, by the side of 
 Sir James, who played guide, philosopher, and 
 friend. A charming, childlike smile was on his lips. 
 His great, opaque eyes beamed with honest, kindly 
 pleasure. He bowed here to a lady, shook the hands 
 of barrister and judge and artist, mumbled friendly 
 words in soft, halting English, accepted a cup of 
 tea from a servant who had regained his composure, 
 and dropped into a low Windsor chair, looking at 
 the people with the same melancholy, childlike ex 
 pression. 
 
 Very gradually the huge, voiceless excitement 
 died. 
 
 Once more servants pussyfooted through the 
 salon with food and drink; once more the Paris 
 cubist tore the artistic theories of the white-bearded 
 
WINGS 7 
 
 Royal Academician into shreds ; once more the Wis 
 consin evangelist bent to the ear of the Mayfair 
 debutante and implored her to hit the trail of sal 
 vation ; once more lion growled at lion. 
 
 But Charlie Thorneycroft could not shake off the 
 strange impression which he had received. He was 
 still aware of the thing, whatever it was, and of the 
 great rushing of wings. It came out of the East, 
 from far across the sea, and it was very portentous, 
 very terrible, very tragic. 
 
 "I didn t hear the wings!" he exclaimed later on. 
 "Nor did I feel them. If I had felt or heard I 
 wouldn t have minded so, you know. I felt with 
 them and I was sorry for them, awfully, awfully 
 sorry. No sense to that? Of course not. There 
 wasn t a bally ounce of sense to the whole wretched 
 thing from beginning to end -and that s the worst 
 of it!" 
 
II 
 
 Such was the entree of the Maharaja of Oneypore 
 into London society; and for three weeks, to a day, 
 an ho^r, a minute "Hang it ! To a bally second !" 
 Charlie Thorneycroft commented the impression 
 which had accompanied him into the salon of Her 
 (Grace of Shropshire clung to him. 
 
 Not that people feared or mistrusted him. [There 
 was nothing personal about it, and indeed the man 
 was kindness itself. He could not pass by beggar, 
 by effusive, tailwagging street cur, or by mewing, 
 rubbing, dusty, ash-bin cat, without giving what he 
 thought was demanded of him money or caress or 
 soft word. 
 
 Nor was it Because he was too foreign. For he 
 improved his English rapidly, and, well-bred, a 
 gentleman, it did not take him long to master Eu 
 ropean social customs, including the prejudices. 
 He tried his best to become Western, in every sense 
 of the word, and to that end he abandoned his 
 
 8 
 
WINGS 9 
 
 Hindu dress, his turban, his magnificent jewels. 
 He even shaved off his split, henna-stained beard, 
 and there remained nothing about him reminiscent 
 of his native land except the expression in his eyes 
 melancholy, ancient, tired; more the eyes of a race 
 than those of an individual and the vivid, crimson 
 caste-mark painted on his forehead. 
 
 It seemed rather incongruous, topping, as it did, 
 his correct English clothes tailored by a Sackville 
 Street craftsman. 
 
 Then, at the end of three weeks, the aura of 
 suspense, the aura of waiting for something that 
 had already happened which hovered about him, dis 
 appeared quite as suddenly, and quite as terribly as 
 it had come. 
 
 It was on the occasion of a ball given at Marl- 
 borough House, and the rooms were gay with fluffy 
 chiffon and stately brocades, with glittering uni 
 forms, and the sharp contrast of black and white 
 evening dress. The orchestra, hidden behind a 
 palm screen, sobbed a lascivious Brazilian tango. 
 Paired off, the young danced and flirted and 
 laughed. So did the middle-aged and the old. In 
 the buffet-room the majordomo was busy with the 
 
io WINGS 
 
 preparation of the famous Marlborough cham 
 pagne-punch. 
 
 At half past eleven the raja entered, together with 
 Charlie Thorneycroft, who had attached himself to 
 him, and at once the usual enormous shiver brushed 
 through the assembly, like a wedge of ferocious, 
 superhuman evil, with a hidden thunder of un- 
 guessed-at immensity. 
 
 People stopped still in the middle of a dance-step. 
 The music broke off with a jarring discord as a 
 B-string snapped. The Marchioness of Liancourt 
 swooned against a priceless Sevres vase and sent it 
 splintering to the waxed floor. The majordomo 
 dropped his mixing-ladle into the silver punch-bowl. 
 
 Remote, gigantic, extended, the impression of 
 voiceless fear gathered speed. It gathered breath- 
 clogging terror. It stabbed the regions of sublimi 
 nal consciousness. 
 
 Strident yet unheard, huge yet unseen, torrential 
 yet non-existent, it swelled to a draft of sound 
 "sound beyond the meaning of the word words 
 are so inadequate sound which you could not 
 hear!" Thorneycroft put it that sucked through 
 the rooms with the strength of sky and sea and stars, 
 with the speed of splintering lances thrown by 
 
WINGS ii 
 
 giants hands, with a passionate, tragic leaping and 
 yearning that was as the ancient call of Creation 
 itself. It flashed outward with a wrenching, tame 
 less glory and savagery that fused all these London 
 molecules of humanity into one shivering whole. 
 
 Two minutes it lasted, and at exactly twenty^ 
 eight minutes to twelve Thorneycroft, obeying a 
 peculiar impulse, had looked at his watch, and he 
 never lived to forget the time nor the date : the 1 5th 
 of January, 1913 the nameless impression passed 
 into the limbo of unremembered things. 
 
 It passed as enormously by contrast as it had 
 come. It passed with an all-pervading sense of 
 sweetness and peace : of intimate sweetness, too inti 
 mate peace. It passed with a wafting of jasmine 
 and marigold perfume, a soft tinkling of far-away 
 bells, and the muffled sobs of women coming from 
 across immeasurable distances. 
 
 The raja smiled. 
 
 He raised a high-veined hand in salutation. 
 Then he trembled. He gave a low sigh that 
 changed rapidly into a rattling gurgle. His eyes 
 became staring and glassy. His knees gave way, 
 and he fell straight back, dead, white-faced, the 
 crimson caste-mark on his forehead looking like 
 
12 WINGS 
 
 some evil thing, mocking, sardonic, triumphant. 
 
 "God !" Thorneycroft bent over the rigid form, 
 feeling the heart that had ceased to beat. He spoke 
 a quick word, and servants came and carried out 
 the body. 
 
 But the people who crowded the rooms seemed 
 quite unaware that death had stalked among them. 
 Suddenly a wild wave of gayety surged through 
 the house. They laughed. They chattered. They 
 jested. They clinked glasses. The orchestra led 
 away with a Paris waltz that was as light as foam. 
 
 That night champagne flowed like water. Half 
 a dozen love-affairs were finished, another half- 
 dozen begun. Scandal was winked at and condoned. 
 Gayety, the madness of Bacchanalian gayety, 
 invaded every nook and cranny of Marlborough 
 House, invading the very servants hall, where the 
 majordomo balanced the third up-stairs parlor-maid 
 on his knees and spoke to her of love in thickly 
 dignified terms. . 
 
 Two days later Martab Singf Maharaja of 
 Oneypore, descendant of the many gods, was buried 
 in state, with twenty file of Horse Guards flanking 
 the coffin, and all the purple- faced gentry of the 
 India Office rolling behind in carriages, dressed in 
 
WINGS 13 
 
 pompous black broadcloth and smoking surreptitious 
 cigars. 
 
 On the same day Charlie Thorneycroft called on 
 Victoria de Rensen, kissed her pouting lips, and told 
 her in his vague manner that he was off to India. 
 
Ill 
 
 India came to Charlie Thorneycroft as it had 
 come to him a dozen times : with a sudden rush of 
 splendor, flaming red, golden tipped, shot through 
 with purple and emerald-green, and hardly cloaking 
 the thick, stinking layer of cruelty and superstition 
 and ignorance that stewed and oozed beneath the 
 colorful surface. He knew it all, from the Rajput 
 gentleman s stately widow who gives herself to the 
 burning pyre in spite of British laws, to the meanest 
 half-caste money-lender who devils the souls of 
 sporting subalterns amid the flowering peepul-trees 
 of Fort William barracks; and so he yawned his 
 way from the moment when the big P. and O. liner 
 nosed kittenishly through the sucking sand-banks 
 of the Hoogly to the Hotel Semiramis. 
 
 There he had a lengthy and whispered conversa- 
 ton with a deputy commissioner recently returned 
 from Rajputana, who bowed low and spoke softly 
 in spite of the fact that Thorneycroft was his 
 
 14 
 
WINGS 15 
 
 junior by twenty years and seemed to have no 
 especial diplomatic rank or emoluments. 
 
 All the next morning he yawned away the hours 
 that creep to the sweating west, took a late train 
 for the north, and continued his bored prog 
 ress through twelve hundred miles of varied 
 scenery. 
 
 He had no eye for the checker-board landscape 
 of neat Bengal, nor for the purple and orange tints 
 of the Indian sky that changed the far hills into 
 glowing heaps of topaz, the scorched ridges into 
 carved masses of amethyst and rose-red. Rajpu- 
 tana, gold and heliotrope, sad with the dead cen 
 turies, the dead glory, interested him not. 
 
 His thoughts were far in the north, near the 
 border, where Rajput and Afghan wait for a re 
 newal of the old, bitter fight for supremacy when 
 Britain shall have departed; and still, waking and 
 sleeping, he could feel he could feel with the 
 silent whirring of immense wings "like the wings 
 of a tortured soul trying to escape the cage of the 
 dust-created body," he put it with a lyric soaring 
 that clashed incongruously with his usual horsy 
 slang. 
 
 The whirring of wings ! 
 
1 6 WINGS 
 
 And there was sjome accent In it of secret dread, 
 of terrible, secret melancholy, deeper than his soul 
 could perceive, his brain could classify. The terror 
 of a mighty struggle was behind it: a mighty 
 struggle awfully remote from individual existence 
 and individual ambition and life, individual death 
 even. It partook of India itselfj the land, the 
 ancient races, the very gods. 
 
 The farther north he traveled the more strongly 
 grew the shapeless, voiceless impression. At times, 
 suddenly, a light flashed down the hidden tunnels 
 of his inner consciousness, and made visible for one 
 fleeting second something which he seemed too slow 
 to comprehend. 
 
 A whisper came to him from beyond the ration 
 ally knowable. 
 
 And so, two days later, he dropped from the train 
 at a small up-land station that consisted of a chaotic 
 whirlwind of stabbing sand, seven red-necked vul 
 tures squatting on a low wall and making un 
 seemly noises, a tumble-down Vishnavite shrine, and 
 a fat, patent-leather-slippered babu, who bowed be 
 fore Charlie Thorneycroft even lower than the 
 deputy commissioner had done, called him Protec- 
 
WINGS 17 
 
 tor of the Pitiful, and otherwise did him great 
 honor. 
 
 "All right, all right!" came Thorneycroft s im 
 patient rejoinder. "I see that you got my cable. Is 
 the bullock-cart ready?" 
 
 "Yes, heaven-born!" And the babu pointed at 
 the tonga, the bullock-cart, that came ghostlike out 
 of the whirling sandstorm. 
 
 "Good enough." He swung himself up. 
 "Ready. Chuck the bedding and the ice in the 
 back. Let her go !" he said to the driver, who had 
 his jaws bandaged after the manner of desertmen, 
 and the tonga started off, dipping and plunging 
 across the ridges like a small boat in a short sea. 
 
 The babu squatted by Thorneycroft s side, talk 
 ing softly, and again the Englishman yawned. But 
 this time there was a slight affectation in his ya\vn, 
 and affectation, too, as of one weaving close to the 
 loom of lies, in his words : 
 
 "Yes, yes. I fancy it is the old story. Some 
 jealous wildcat of a hill woman " 
 
 "No, heaven-born !" cut in the babu. He winked 
 his heavy-lidded eyes slowly as if to tell the other 
 that he was "on." "This time it is different. This 
 time there is no woman s jealousy brewing unclean 
 
1 8 WINGS 
 
 abominations behind the curtains of the zenana. 
 This time it is " 
 
 "Priestcraft?" 
 
 "You have said it, sahib !" came the babu s reply 
 in a flat, frightened whisper. 
 
 "All right!" Thorneycroft gave a short, un 
 pleasant laugh. "Let s go to Deolibad first and call 
 on my friend Youssef Ali." And a few words of 
 direction to the driver, who grunted a reply, jerked 
 the heads of the trotting animals- away from the 
 north and toward the northwest, and plied their fat 
 sides with the knotted end of his whip. 
 
 All night they drove. They rested near a 
 shallow river. But they did not tarry long. They 
 watered the team, rubbed them down with sand, and 
 were off again. 
 
 It was a long, hot drive. The silence, the inso 
 lent nakedness of the land, the great, burning sun 
 lay on Thorneycroft s soul like a heavy burden. 
 Time and again he was conscious of the whirring 
 of wings, and with each league it seemed to lay 
 closer to the ears of his inner self. It seemed born 
 somewhere in the heart of the purple, silver-nicked 
 gloom that draped the hills of Rajputana. 
 
 The babu, too, was conscious of it. His teeth 
 
WINGS 19 
 
 clicked. His body trembled, and he looked at the 
 Englishman, who looked back at him. 
 
 Neither spoke. Something utterly overwhelming 
 enfolded them. For the whirring was at once of 
 enchanting peace and sweetness, and of a mournful, 
 tragic, sobbing strength that was like the death of a 
 soul. 
 
 Once the babu put it into words : 
 
 "Like the death of a soul " 
 
 "Shut up!" Thorneycroft whispered, and then 
 silence again but for the pattering hoofs of the 
 bullocks. 
 
 There were few signs of life. At times a gecko 
 slipped away through the scrub \vith a green, 
 metallic glisten. Once in a while a kite poised high 
 in the parched, blue sky. Another time they over 
 took a gigantic cotton-wain drawn by twenty 
 bullocks about the size of Newfoundland dogs. 
 
 Then, late one night, they reached Deolibad, 
 They passed through the tall southern gate, studded 
 with sharp elephant-spikes, paid off their driver, 
 walked through the mazes of the perfume-sellers 
 bazaar, and stopped in front of an old house. 
 
 Three times Thomeycroft knocked at the age- 
 gangrened, cedarwood door, sharp, staccato, with a 
 
20 WINGS 
 
 long pause between the second and third knocks, and 
 then again three times in rapid succession. 
 
 It was as if the ramshackle old house were listen 
 ing in its sleep, then slowly awakening. Came the 
 scratch of a match, a thin, light ray drifting through 
 the cracks in the shutters, a shuffling of slippered 
 feet, and the door opened. 
 
 A man stood there, old, immensely tall, im 
 mensely fat, an Afghan judging from his black silk 
 robe and his oiled locks, holding a candle in his 
 right hand. 
 
 He peered at the two figures in front of him. 
 Then he broke into high-pitched laughter and 
 gurgling words of greeting. 
 
 "Thorneycrof t ! Thorneycroft, by the Prophet! 
 Young heart of my old heart !" 
 
 And in his excitement he dropped the candle, 
 which clattered to the ground, and hugged the Eng 
 lishman to his breast. The latter returned the em 
 brace; but, as the Afghan was about to renew his 
 flowery salutations, cut them short with: 
 
 T need your help, Youssef Ali." 
 
 "Anything, anything, child ! I will give you any 
 help you ask. I will grant you anything except 
 sorrow. Ahi! These are like the old days, when 
 
WINGS 21 
 
 you, with your mother s milk not yet dry on your 
 lips, rode by my side to throw the dragnet of the 
 British Raj s law around the lying priests of this 
 stinking land. Heathen priests of Shiva and 
 Vishnu, worshiping a monkey and a flower! 
 Aughrrr!" He spat. 
 
 Thorney croft laughed. 
 
 "Still the old, intolerant Youssef, aren t you? 
 All right. But I don t need much. Simply this 
 and that " He crossed the threshold side by side 
 with the Afghan and followed by the babu. He 
 said a few words, adding: "I hear that you are a 
 much-married man, besides being an amateur of 
 tuwaifs, of dancing-girls. So I m sure you will be 
 able to help me out. I could have gone to the 
 bazaar and bought the stuff. But there are leaky 
 tongues there " 
 
 It was Youssef s turn to laugh. 
 
 "A love affair, child ? Perhaps with the daughter 
 of some hill raja?" 
 
 "No. Not love. But lifeand death. And 
 perhaps " He was silent. There was again the 
 giant whirring of wings. Then he went on: 
 "Perhaps again life! Who knows?" 
 
 "Allah knows !" piously mumbled Youssef. "He 
 
22 WINGS 
 
 is the One, the All-Knowing. Come with me, 
 child," he went on, lifting a brown-striped curtain 
 that shut off the zenana. "Sitt Kumar will help 
 you a little dancing-girl whom" he coughed 
 apologetically "I recently encountered, and whose 
 feet are just now very busy crushing my fat, foolish 
 old heart. Wait here, O babu-jee!" he said to the 
 babu, while he and the Englishman disappeared be 
 hind the zenana curtain. 
 
 There was a moment s silence. Then a woman s 
 light, tinkly laughter, a clacking of bracelets and 
 anklets, a rapid swishing of linen and silk. 
 
 Again the woman s light laughter. Her words: 
 
 "Keep quiet, sahib, lest the walnut-dye enter thy 
 eye!" And ten minutes later the zenana curtains 
 were drawn aside to- disclose once mo-re the Afghan, 
 arm in arm with a middle-aged, dignified Brahman 
 priest, complete in every detail of outer sacerdotal 
 craft, from the broidered skull-cap and the brilliant 
 caste-mark on his forehead to the patent-leather 
 pumps, the open-work white stockings, and the 
 sacred volume bound in red Bokhara leather that he 
 carried in his right hand. 
 
 "Nobody will recognize you," said Youssef. 
 
 "Good!" said the Brahman in Thorneycroft s 
 
WING? 23 
 
 voice. "And now can you lend me a couple of 
 horses?" 
 
 "Surely. I have a brace of Marwari stallions. 
 Jewels, child! Pearls! Noble bits of horseflesh! 
 Comer 
 
 He led the way to the stable, which was on the 
 other side of his house, and sheltered by a low wall. 
 He lit an oil-lamp, opened the door, soothed the 
 nervous, startled Marwaris with voice and knowing 
 hand, and saddled them. 
 
 He led the horses out, and Thorneycroft and the 
 babu mounted. 
 
 "Where to?" asked the Afghan. 
 
 Thorneycroft waved his hand in farewell. 
 
 "To Oneypore!" he replied. "To interview a 
 dead raja s soul!" He turned to the babu. "We 
 must hurry, O babu-jee ! Every minute counts !" 
 
 And he was off at a gallop, closely followed by 
 the other. 
 
IV 
 
 The night was as black as pitch, but Thorneycroft 
 rode hard. 
 
 He figured back. 
 
 The Maharaja of Oneypore had died on the 
 fifteenth of January. To-day was the tenth of 
 February. Twenty-five days had elapsed since the 
 raja s death. 
 
 Would he be in time? 
 
 "Come on, babu-jee!" he cried, and rode harder 
 than ever. 
 
 Once his stallion reared on end and landed stiffly 
 on his forefeet, nearly throwing him. But that 
 night he could not consider the feelings of a mere 
 horse. He pressed on the curb with full strength 
 and brought his fist down between the animal s ears ; 
 and, after a minute or two of similar reasoning, the 
 Marwari stretched his splendid, muscled body and 
 fell into a long, swinging fox-trot. 
 
 The road to Oneypore was as straight as a lance 
 24 
 
WINGS 25 
 
 and fairly good. They rode their horses alternat 
 ing between a fast walk and a short hand gallop. 
 
 Thorneycroft had not eaten since noon of the 
 preceding day, and was tired and hungry. But he 
 kept on. For there was something calling him, call 
 ing him, from the ragged hills that looped to the east 
 in carved, sinister immensity; and through the vel 
 vety gloom of the night, through the gaunt shadows 
 of the low, volcanic ridges that trooped back to 
 Deolibad and danced like hobgoblins among the 
 dwarf aloes, through the click-clank etty-click of the 
 stallions pattering feet, there came to him again the 
 whirring like a tragic message to hurry, hurry. 
 
 Morning blazed with the suddenness of the 
 tropics. The sun had hardly risen, but already it 
 was close and muggy. A jaundiced heat veiled the 
 levels foretaste of the killing, scorching heat of 
 March and April and the birds, true weather 
 prophets, the parrots and the minas, the tiny, blue- 
 winged doves and the pert, ubiquitous crows, were 
 opening their beaks with a painful effort and gasp 
 ing for air another week, and they would be off 
 for the cool deodars of the higher hills. 
 
 In the distance a dark mass was looming up: 
 
26 WINGS 
 
 Oneypore and the horses were about to give in. 
 Their heads were bowed on their heaving, lathering 
 chests, and they breathed with a deep, rattling noise. 
 
 Thorneycroft dismounted and stretched his 
 cramped legs. 
 
 "Ride down there/ he said to the babu, point 
 ing at a narrow valley to the west, black with trees 
 and gnarled shrub, that cleft the land. "Wait until 
 you hear from me. I fancy you ll find some brother 
 babu in the valley fattening his pouch and increas 
 ing his bank-account at the expense of the Rajput 
 villagers. He will give you food and drink and a 
 roof over your head. Tell him anything you wish 
 as long as you don t tell him the truth." 
 
 "Of course I shall not tell him the truth," replied 
 the babu, slightly hurt. "Am I a fool or " 
 
 "An Englishman?" Thorneycroft completed the 
 sentence. "Never mind. I am English. But I 
 learned the art of deceit in Kashmere, the home of 
 lies, and Youssef Ali, too, gave me some invaluable 
 lessons." 
 
 And while the babu rode off to the valley, leading 
 the other horse, Thorneycroft set off at a good clip 
 toward Oneypore, which was becoming more dis 
 tinct every minute as the morning mists rolled up 
 
WINGS 27 
 
 and away like torn gauze veils. It was seven 
 o clock when he reached the western gate, an ancient 
 marble structure, incrusted with symbolistic figures 
 and archaic terra-cotta medallions, and topped by a 
 lacy, fretted lotus-bud molding. 
 
 Beyond, the city stretched like a flower of stone 
 petals. 
 
 Oneypore ! 
 
 The sacred city of Hindustan! The holy soil 
 where the living descendants of the gods had ruled 
 for over five thousand years and one of them 
 dead, on unclean, foreign soil buried in unclean, 
 foreign soil ! 
 
 An outcast! He, the descendant of Rama, an 
 outcast ! 
 
 Oneypore ! And it was a fascinating town, with 
 crooked streets and low, white houses, cool gardens 
 ablaze with mangoes and mellingtonia and flowering 
 peepul-trees and, in the distance, a gigantic palace, 
 built out of a granite hillside, and descending into 
 the dip of the valley with an avalanche of bold 
 masonry. 
 
 Toward it, without hesitation, Thorneycroft set 
 his face. 
 
 He had to cross the Oneypore River, only second 
 
28 WINGS 
 
 in holiness to the palace : the river which, for cen 
 turies, had been the last resting-place of thousands 
 of Afghans and Rajputs massacred in the narrow 
 streets of the city or slain in fierce combats outside 
 its brown, bastioned walls. Sorrowing widows, in 
 accordance with the marriage vows of their caste, 
 had sought the solace of oblivion beneath its placid 
 surface. Faithless wives and dancing girls had 
 been hurled into the waters from the convenient 
 battlements and windows of the palace. 
 
 The river s sinister reputation, in spite of its 
 holiness, was such that though the natives bathed 
 in its limpid depth they never, knowingly, allowed 
 a drop of it to pass their lips. River of grim 
 tragedies and its hour of grim glory came when 
 a Maharaja of Oneypore died, and when his corpse, 
 attired in its most magnificent costume, the arms 
 encircled by jeweled bracelets, shimmering necklaces 
 of pearls and moonstones and diamonds descending 
 to the waist, and a huge, carved emerald falling like 
 a drop of green fire from the twisted, yellow Rajput 
 turban, was carried out of the palace, through the 
 streets of the town, sitting bolt upright on a chair 
 of state, and back to the banks of the Oneypore 
 River, where the body was burnt and its ashes 
 
,WINGS 29 
 
 thrown into the waters while the women wailed 
 and beat their breasts, while white-robed priests 
 chanted long-winded litanies, while the conches 
 brayed from the temples, and while the smoke from 
 many ceremonial fires ascended to the sky in thick, 
 wispy streams and hung in a ruddy, bloodshot cloud 
 above the glare of the funeral pyre /that lit up the 
 palace and told to all the world that another one of 
 the divine race of Oneypore had gone to join 
 Brahm, his kinsman. 
 
 Brahm, his kinsman! 
 
 And Martab Singh had mingled the bones of his 
 dead body with those of the mleMias, the for 
 eigners, the barbarians, the Christians on foreign, 
 Christian soil! 
 
 Something like a shudder of apprehension passed 
 over Thorneycroft, but he kept sturdily on his way, 
 returning the salutations with which the hook-nosed, 
 saber-rattling, swaggering Rajputs greeted him be 
 cause of his Brahman garb. He went up a steep 
 ascent that led to the chowk, the outer courtyard 
 of the palace, and the soldiers salaamed and stepped 
 aside : 
 
 "Enter, O holy one!" 
 
30 WINGS 
 
 Like a man sure of his way, he passed through a 
 low gate, through another courtyard crammed with 
 human life, and into still another, which was life 
 less except for the whir and coo of hundreds of blue- 
 winged pigeons and for the figure of a very old 
 priest, squatting on a goat s-skin rug and de ep in 
 the perusal of a massive Sanskrit tome. 
 
The old priest looked up when Thorneycroft ap 
 proached, and the latter gave an involuntary start, 
 though rapidly suppressed. 
 
 In former years, pursuing his vague, mysterious 
 diplomatic career in different parts of that immense 
 block of real estate called the British Empire, but a 
 good half of the time in India, he had heard about 
 this priest, the Swami Pel Krishna Srina. He 
 knew that the man was the prime minister, that be 
 fore him his father had held the same position, be 
 fore his father his grandfather, and thus back for 
 many generations. For the Brahmans of the house 
 of Pel Srina were cousins in blood and caste to the 
 reigning house of Oneypore, and like them descend 
 ants of the gods. 
 
 Neither the maharaja nor his prime minister had 
 ever taken much interest in the muddy, coiling 
 
 
 
 politics of India. It was indifferent to them what 
 particular foreign barbarian English or Afghan or 
 
 31 
 
32 WINGS 
 
 Mogul or Persian was overlord of the great 
 peninsula. They seemed satisfied with ruling the 
 little rocky, barren principality, with the faded glory 
 of the dead centuries, and with the decidedly theo 
 logical and just as decidedly unworldly fact that the 
 Oneypores were considered the living repre 
 sentatives of the gods by the vast majority of 
 Hindus. 
 
 Thus Thorneycroft had never taken the trouble 
 of meeting Swami Pel Srina, and now, seeing him 
 for the first time, he was startled out of his cus 
 tomary English calm. 
 
 Nor was it a psychic impression. Here, in this 
 shelteTed courtyard and for the first time since 
 that day when the Maharaja of Oneypore had made 
 nfs appearance in the salon of the Duchess of Shrop 
 shire he was unaware, quite unaware of the silent, 
 gigantic whirring of wings. 
 
 What made him suck in his breath was the face 
 of the swami. 
 
 "I wish I could picture it to you as I aw it," he 
 said afterward. "It would take the hand of some 
 mad cubist sculptor to clout the meaning of it. The 
 features? No, no. Nothing extraordinary about 
 them. Just those of an elderly, dignified, rather 
 
WINGS 33 
 
 conceited Brahman. But the expression of the thin, 
 compressed lips, the great staring, gray eyes ! Gad ! 
 I am an Englishman, a Christian and a public 
 school product. Thus I m a jolly good Episco 
 palian, take me all round. But when I saw those 
 eyes oh the whole cursed thing seemed suddenly 
 rational, possible inevitable even! Right then 
 Christian, Englishman, and public school product 
 I believed the absurd claim of the rajas and prime 
 ministers of Oneypore that they were the descend 
 ants of Rama and Vishnu. It was all in those eyes 
 that were staring at me. They looked oh un 
 earthlythat s the word!" 
 
 Perhaps the whole sensation, the whole flash of 
 superstitious emotion lasted only a moment. Per 
 haps it was contained in the short time it took the 
 swami to look up, to drop his book, and to raise a 
 thin, high- veined hand with the words: 
 
 "Greetings, brother priest !" 
 
 At all events Thorneycro-ft was himself again. 
 He bowed over the withered old hand and said 
 he had thought it all out carefully beforehand that 
 he had come to Oneypore to hear with his own ears, 
 to see with his own eyes, the great miracle which 
 the swami had performed. 
 
34 WINGS 
 
 "Ah!" breathed the swami, and he did not alto 
 gether hide a faint accent of nervousness "then 
 it has been talked about in the south ?" 
 
 "No!" Thorneycroft replied quickly. "Not 
 talked about. I do not even know what it is. But 
 a voice came to me in the night whispering, 
 whispering; it was like the whirring of wings, and 
 I followed, followed, followed ! Straight on I fol 
 lowed until I came here, to Oneypore, to the palace, 
 the courtyard, your presence, O swami ! And now" 
 he really spoke the truth there, and he used to 
 say afterward that it was doubtless the fact of his 
 speaking the truth which made him so utterly con 
 vincing "now the whirring of wings has stopped. 
 Now there is sweetness and peace as there was" 
 he shot the words out suddenly "that day, a few 
 weeks back, on the I5th of January!" 
 
 "At what hour?" as suddenly asked the priest. 
 
 "At twenty-eight minutes to midnight!" replied 
 jThorneycroft, who had never forgotten the day nor 
 the hour when the Raja of Oneypore had died in 
 the salon of Her Grace of Shropshire. 
 
 "Good !" said the swami, rising slowly and lead 
 ing the way to a massive door. 
 
 He drew a foot-long, skewerlike key from his 
 
WINGS 35 
 
 waist-shawl, opened the door, and motioned 
 Thorneycroft to enter. 
 
 The gate clicked behind them. 
 
 "Good !" he said again, stopped, and faced the 
 other squarely. "You have wondered," he went on, 
 "as to the why and whe-refore you, to whom the 
 voice of the miracle came in the night?" 
 
 "Yes," replied Thorneycroft in low accents, his 
 heart beating like a trip-hammer. "I have won 
 dered indeed. I knew the thing was done. I 
 heard the whirring of wings. I knew the raja 
 died" 
 
 "But did he die, brother Brahman?" The swami 
 looked at the Englishman, deep, brooding melan 
 cholia in his gray eyes. "Ahi! Did he die?" 
 And he made a hopeless gesture and led on again 
 through empty suites of rooms supported by double 
 rows of pillars, past balconies which clung like 
 birds nests to the sheer side of the palace, again 
 through more rooms and up and down steep steps. 
 Once in a while they encountered liveried, turbaned 
 officials. But always the latter would salaam deeply 
 and step aside. 
 
 Finally the swami stopped in front of a door 
 which was a great slab of tulip-wood inlaid with 
 
36 WINGS 
 
 nacre and lac. He lifted his hand, and Thorney- 
 croft noticed that it was trembling violently. 
 
 "Brother Brahman," he said, "Martab Singh was 
 my kinsman, my friend, my king. He was cousin 
 to me, and cousin to the gods. I loved him greatly, 
 and for years, with me by his side, he stepped in 
 the footsteps of his ancestors, in the way of salva 
 tion, the way of the many gods. Then one day 
 shall I ever forget it ? madness came to him. He, 
 the Maharaja of Oneypore, he, the incarnation of 
 Rama and Vishnu and Brahm himself, declared that 
 the desire was in his nostrils to leave India. To 
 leave the sacred soil! To go traveling in the far 
 lands and see the unclean witchcraft of the for 
 eigners, the Christians, the English, the mlechhas! 
 Gently I spoke to him as I might to a child. This 
 and that I told him, quoting the sacred books, the 
 words of Brahm, our blessed Lord. This is lust/ 
 I quoted, born of the quality of rajas. Know this 
 to be a great devourer, great sin, and the enemy on 
 earth. As by smoke fire is enveloped, and the look 
 ing-glass by rust, as the womb envelops the unborn 
 child, so by this it is enveloped. By this the 
 eternal enemy of the wise man, desire-formed, hard 
 to be filled, insatiate discrimination is enveloped. 
 
WINGS 37 
 
 The senses and organs, the thinking faculty, as well 
 as the faculty of judgment, are said to be its seat. 
 It enveloping the discriminative faculty with these 
 deludes the lord of the body! Thus I spoke to 
 him, often, gently!" 
 
 "And he? Martab Singh?" 
 
 "Would laugh in his beard. He would say that, 
 if Vishnu was his kinsman, so was Indra and 
 Indra was the god of travel. And so " 
 
 "He traveled ? He went to England ?" 
 
 "Not" 
 
 "No?" echoed Thorneycroft. He felt his hair 
 rise as if drawn by a shivery wind. His thought 
 swirled back, and he remembered how the maharaja 
 had entered the salon of the Duchess of Shropshire, 
 how he had bowed over the withered old hand, how 
 Sir James Spottiswoode, of the India Office, had 
 vouched for him, how 
 
 "No?" he said again, stupidly. 
 
 "No, by Shiva!" came the swarm s hushed voice. 
 "He did not travel. He did not leave the sacred 
 soil of India. He is in here!" At the same time 
 opening the door, drawing Thorneycroft inside, and 
 shutting the door behind him. 
 
VI 
 
 For a moment the Englishman was utterly lost, 
 utterly confounded. He had thought. He had 
 imagined. He had conferred with the babu and 
 had spoken to him of. priestcraft. But this 
 this 
 
 The whirring of wings, which he had not heard 
 since he had entered the inner courtyard, was once 
 more, suddenly, upon him with terrific force, with 
 the strength of sun and sea and the stars. He felt 
 himself caught in a huge, invisible net of silent 
 sound that swept out of the womb of creation, 
 toward death, and back toward throbbing life. The 
 whirring rose, steadily, terribly, until it filled the 
 whole room from floor to ceiling, pressing in with 
 ever-deepening strength. It was like the trembling 
 of air in a belfry where bells have been ringing 
 ceaselessly for days but bells without sound, bells 
 with only the ghost of sound 
 
 He feared it. 
 
 38 
 
WINGS . 39 
 
 It seemed to strike, not at his life, but at the 
 meaning, the plausibility, the saneness of life. 
 
 It took possession of his body and his soul, and 
 forged them into something partaking of neither the 
 physical nor the spiritual, yet at the same moment 
 partaking of both something that was beyond the 
 power of analysis, of guessing, of shivering dread 
 even. 
 
 Quite suddenly it stopped, as caught in an air- 
 pocket, and he became conscious of the swami s 
 pointing finger, and his low words : 
 
 "Look there, Brother Brahman !" 
 
 And, stretched on a bed of state in the far corner 
 of the room, he saw the figure of Martab Singh, 
 Maharaja of Oneypore, as he had seen him that first 
 day in London, with his large, opaque eyes, the 
 melancholy, childlike smile, the split, curled beard, 
 the crimson caste mark. 
 
 The figure was rigid. There wasn t a breath of 
 life. It was like a marvelously painted, lifelike 
 statue yet Thorneycroft knew that it was not a 
 statue. He knew that it was the maharaja the 
 same maharaja whom, on the I5th of January, he 
 had seen die in Marlborough House, whom he had 
 seen burie d in an English cemetery, with twenty files 
 
40 .WINGS 
 
 of Horse Guards flanking the coffin and all the 
 gentry of the India Office rolling behind in com 
 fortable carriages. 
 
 "Butwhat" 
 
 He stammered. His voice seemed dead and 
 smothered. He began to shake all over, feverishly ; 
 and again the whirring of wings rushed upon him, 
 and again, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, an 
 eternity later, he became conscious of the swami s 
 low, sibilant voice : 
 
 "He wanted to travel. Nor could I dissuade 
 him, and I I loved him. Thus I said to him: 
 You yourself cannot leave the sacred soil of India. 
 It would bring pollution unthinkable on yourself, on 
 Hindustan, on the blessed gods themselves. But 
 I am a master of white magic. I shall take your 
 astral body from the envelope of your living body, 
 and I shall breathe a spell upon it so that it shall be 
 even as your living body, feeling, hearing, seeing, 
 touching. Your astral self shall go to the land of 
 the mlechJias the land of the infidels while your 
 body, rigid as in death, shall await its return/ 
 
 "And " whispered Thorneycroft. 
 
 "So it was done. But I gave him warning that 
 the spell would last only a certain number of days. 
 
WINGS 41 
 
 On the 1 5th of January his astral self must be back, 
 here, in the palace of Oneypore. On the I5th of 
 January! Three times I gave him warning! And 
 he promised and " 
 
 "He broke the promise !" 
 
 "Yes. His astral self was caught in the eddy of 
 foreign life, foreign desires, foreign vices per 
 haps" he smiled with sudden kindliness "foreign 
 virtues. I waited. Day after day I waited. 
 Came the I5th of January and he did not return. 
 For-" 
 
 "His astral self died in England. It was buried 
 in foreign soil," Thorneycroft interjected. 
 
 "You have said it, Brother Brahman. And now" 
 he raised his hands in a gesture of supplication 
 "though I have prayed to Vishnu, who is my cousin, 
 to Shiva, to Doorgha, to Brahm himself, though I 
 have offered the slaughter of my own soul for the 
 homeless soul of him whom I loved, the evil is 
 done. He is neither dead, nor is he alive. His 
 soul is a fluttering, harrowed thing, whirling about 
 on the outer rim of creation, cursed by the gods, his 
 kinsmen. His physical body is here on this couch 
 and the spiritual self, his astral body, is in foreign 
 soil sullied, sullied!" 
 
42 WINGS 
 
 "And there is no hope?" 
 
 "Yes!" Again the swami smiled with sudden 
 kindliness. "There is hope the shadow of hope. 
 Perhaps some day the great wrong shall be forgiven 
 by the gods. Perhaps some day they will cause the 
 two parts of his body, his physical and his astral, 
 to blend into one. Perhaps some day they will per 
 mit him to regain caste and to die ! Daily I pray 
 for it" and, with utter simplicity, as he opened the 
 door "will you pray, too, brother priest?" 
 
 Thorneycroft inclined his head. He was an Eng 
 lishman, a Christian and a public school product. 
 
 But he inclined his head. 
 
 "Yes, swami," he replied. "I will pray. Every 
 day will I pray!" 
 
 And the door shut behind him with a little dry 
 click of finality. 
 

 DISAPPOINTMENT 
 
 IT was Paul Mayol, the inimitable low comedian 
 of the Scala, who started the ball rolling, as far as 
 Paris was concerned. 
 
 Perhaps he had the original tip from the desk 
 clerk of the Hotel Saint James, where Prince Pavel 
 Narodkine had put up temporarily; perhaps he had 
 it from his mistress, who had it from her sister, 
 the laundress of the hotel, who, in her turn, had it 
 from the prince s Italian courier; perhaps, even, he 
 had brought it back from the green-rooms of Mos 
 cow, where he had filled a triumphant engagement 
 the season before, and whence Narodkine had re 
 cently arrived. 
 
 At all events, it was Paul Mayol who was first 
 to sense the tang of mystery which clung to the big, 
 melancholy Russian, and who since in Paris it is 
 the stage, and not, as in New York, the yellow press 
 which does the scavenger work for society in 
 cluded him among the characters whom he imper 
 sonated and satirized in the new Scala Revue. 
 
 43 
 
44 WINGS 
 
 Mayol came on in act two, in the burlesque 
 make-up of a Russian aristocrat which was a far 
 cical mingling of whiskers, sable furs, vodka bot 
 tles, ikons, and an obligato knout, did a Cossack 
 dance with Argentine excrescences and George- 
 cohanesque frills, and introduced himself to the 
 audience with a tense, cavernous "Sh-sh! I am 
 Pavel Narodkine, the great Moscovite enigma!" 
 after which he peered right and left with all the 
 time-hallowed stage business of a conspirator, 
 caused his legs and his whiskers to shiver violently, 
 whipped the property calves of the chorus girls with 
 his property knout, and then danced off to the 
 pizzicato of a dozen balalaikas which were striving 
 to syncopate the Russian national anthem. 
 
 Thus the beginning; and the boulevards caught 
 the ball of rumor and mystery which Mayol had 
 tossed in the air. They gilded and tinseled and em 
 bossed it. They flung it wide and caught it again. 
 
 The next morning, cut in below a screaming bit 
 of editorial hysterics which accused the ministry of 
 having sold the country to the freemasons, the 
 atheists, and the stock exchange, the royalist Gaulois 
 brought half a dozen lines about Prince Pavel 
 Narodkine speaking with pontifical unction about 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT 45 
 
 his great ancestry which partook of Rurik Vikings 
 and Tartar Khans of the Silver Horde, and con 
 gratulating the legitimist clique of the Faubourg on 
 the arrival of such a thumping blue-blood and 
 tossed the gossip ball to its editorial neighbor, the 
 Vie Parisienne. 
 
 The latter weekly acted up splendidly. It printed 
 a rotogravure portrait of the prince in a border of 
 cupids, chorus girls, three-horse troikas, sacks of 
 gold, and grisettes ; mentioned that he was young, a 
 bachelor, and immensely wealthy ; and added that as 
 yet he had not thrown his scented handkerchief at 
 the feet of either montfaine or demi-mondaine. 
 
 "Why?" demanded the final, tart, succinct word 
 of the page in four-inch Gothic. 
 
 The next move was up to the Revue Diplomati 
 que. In its personality column, entitled "Mustard 
 and Cress," and signed "Junior Attache," it alluded 
 to the fact that even in his native Russia the prince 
 was considered an engima. "The Sphinx" was the 
 nickname by which he was known in the salons of 
 Moscow and Petrograd. 
 
 A.nd justly. 
 
 For he had no intimate friends ; he had used all 
 sorts of political influence until he was finally ex- 
 
46 WINGS 
 
 cused from military service; he never set foot in a 
 dark place ; he eschewed all sport ; and he never went 
 abroad without a body-guard of five heavily armed 
 peasants. 
 
 "Sic semper tyrannis!" screamed the socialistic 
 daily, La Patrie. 
 
 It stated boldly that Prince Pavel Narodkine was 
 a reactionary, a leading member of the Black Hun 
 dred, a blood-gorged oppressor of the masses, and 
 that it was his fear of becoming the target of a 
 patriot s bullet which caused him to shun the dark 
 and to seek the protection of steel-girt retainers 
 a report promptly branded by the Gaulois as "a 
 filthy and reeking falsehood sired and darned in the 
 fetid gray-matter of our socialistic colleague." The 
 article added that the prince had no enemy either 
 among the revolutionists or the reactionaries, that 
 he had, in fact, never occupied himself with politics. 
 
 Here the Vie Parisienne scored again with a snap 
 shot of the prince walking down the Boulevard des 
 Italiens surrounded by his armed body-guard; the 
 Patrie followed by demanding why "the titled 
 blood-sucker" should thus be allowed to break the 
 laws of the republic which enjoined the carrying of 
 arms ; the official Mercure de France explained that 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT 47 
 
 the prince had applied for a special permit, and had 
 been granted it and thus Paris discovered that it 
 housed a deep, mysterious sensation, and began to 
 wonder what it was all about. 
 
 From Montmartre to the Quartier Latin, from 
 the Porte Saint Martin to the Ternes, the great 
 macrocosm of Paris commenced to stir and buzz like 
 a beehive. 
 
 A string of would-be visitors besieged the desk 
 of the Hotel Saint James shirt-makers and boot 
 makers and English breeches-makers, perfumers 
 and florists and jewelers, cranks and reporters and 
 solicitors for charitable institutions, beggars, genteel 
 and ungenteel they came, they were met by the 
 urbane Italian courier, and were sent on their way 
 without having gratified either their curiosity or 
 their greed. 
 
 The great society ladies fared no better. They 
 littered the prince s writing-desk with invitations to 
 balls and dinners and receptions and garden fetes and 
 theater parties. Those with marriageable daughters 
 made ready for a regular siege. They consulted 
 with milliner and modiste, with Paquin and Virot 
 and Doucet and Reboux; slim, clever fingers ma 
 nipulated silk and lawn, satin and gauze, lace and 
 
48 WINGS 
 
 embroidery, canvas and whalebone ; the granite pav 
 ing blocks of the Place Vendome echoed under the 
 rapid feet of models and saleswomen and errand- 
 runners; mothers and daughters stuck their heads 
 together they consulted they sought the advice 
 of ancient dowagers versed in marital and pre 
 marital warfare and still more invitations were 
 heaped on the prince s breakfast table with every 
 morning mail. 
 
 But the crested notes were acknowledged by the 
 Russian s secretary, who read them, threw them 
 away, while regretting "the inability of Monsieur le 
 Prince to accept mad&me s so charming hospitality" 
 and then the real-estate brokers came to the 
 rescue of Mme. Gossip, though they only succeeded 
 in deepening the mystery which enveloped the 
 prince. 
 
 It became known that he had sent for MM, 
 Dufour and Cazanet, a reputable and well-known 
 firm of real-estate men who in the past had sold 
 palaces and chateaux to Chicago pork kings, Welsh 
 coal barons, and Oriental potentates. They called 
 on Narodkine flattered, delighted, expectant; and 
 they left sadder, but no wiser. 
 
 For the prince refused to buy the sort of show 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT 49 
 
 place which befitted -his rank and station in life. 
 He asked, instead, MM. Dufour and Cazanet to 
 get him a house somewhere in the most crowded 
 quarter of Paris. 
 
 "No, no, no!" he exclaimed when Dufour spoke 
 of an aristocratic old stone pile buried under the 
 pink chestnut-trees of the Rue de Varenne. "I 
 want light, gentlemen. I want crowds around 
 
 me." 
 
 Here Dufour thought of the armed retainers who 
 accompanied the prince everywhere, and he winked 
 at his partner; but the Russian did not seem to see 
 the incongruity of his remark. 
 
 "Yes," he continued, "I want to sense the stir 
 and throb of life life right, left, everywhere!" 
 
 "But, Monsieur le Prince, I assure you this house 
 in the Rue de Varenne is " 
 
 "It is gray and dark and lonely," the prince cut 
 in. "I know. And I want life" he shivered a lit 
 tle "life and the dear breath of life !" 
 
 He bent over a map of Paris and pointed at a 
 certain section. 
 
 "Here, gentlemen," he went on in a tone which 
 admitted of no further argument ; "get me a house 
 here if not a house, then a flat, a hut, a hovel 
 
50 WINGS 
 
 anything, anything! But it must be here where 
 there are crowds and light and life !" 
 
 The two Frenchmen looked at the prince, who 
 had dropped trembling into a chair. Then they 
 looked at each other. 
 
 Dufour shrugged his expressive shoulders and 
 motioned to his partner. 
 
 "Very good, Monsieur le Prince." 
 
 And they bowed themselves out of his presence 
 and set about to fulfill his wish. 
 
 But of course they talked, and Paris listened and 
 wondered and laughed a little. 
 
 Society, still smarting under its recent defeat, 
 fried to attribute Prince Narodkine s choice of res 
 idence to stinginess a report quickly given the lie 
 when it became known that he had been the anon 
 ymous donor of a lavish contribution to Paris s pet 
 charity. The Patrie made sinister allusions to 
 royalist intrigues; the Vie Parisienne to a tragic 
 love-affair back home ; but nobody could explain the 
 prince s choice. 
 
 For, as soon as the lease had been negotiated, 
 he moved to a little house of the Cour de Rouen 
 the tortuous alley which branches off from the Pas 
 sage du Commerce, and which, generations ago, had 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT 51 
 
 been the Paris home of the Archbishops of Rouen 
 
 -a packed, crowded, noisy alley where mansions 
 of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries lean 
 against each other for mutual support; where the 
 windows are spotted with bird-cages and linen hung 
 out to dry and the frowzy heads of housewives; 
 where there is no verdure except an occasional 
 sickly fig-tree straggling along a rusty, bent water- 
 pipe, and here and there a dusty bit of clematis and 
 convolvulus stretching up a neighborhood echoing 
 to the shrill sounds and shouts of its motley popu 
 lation, news-venders and fruiterers, bookbinders and 
 cobblers, dealers in all kinds of second-hand odds 
 and ends, locksmiths and knife-sharpeners a neigh 
 borhood made yet more noisy with the screams and 
 laughter and jests of a school for little girls who 
 file through the alley twice a day, copy-books and 
 satchels under their arms. 
 
 Indeed, an alley clanking and beating with life! 
 
 And Prince Pavel Narodkine moved in, together 
 with his armed peasant retainers while Paris sat 
 on its haunches and waited developments. 
 
 There \vere none. 
 
 Prince Pavel Narodkine lived in his little house 
 .of the Cour de Rouen as he had lived in the Hotel 
 
52 WINGS 
 
 Saint James, and as formerly he had lived in Mos 
 cow; never leaving the house after dark, never set 
 ting foot in a lonely place nor where the shadows 
 were blotched and deep, never moving an inch with 
 out his armed peasants big, lumpish, brooding 
 men, savagely silent and intensely loyal, who shook 
 their heads and gave no reply when curious peo 
 ple addressed and questioned them about their 
 master. 
 
 So, with the slow, pitiless swing of time and the 
 familiarity which time breeds, Pavel Narodkine be 
 came part of the city s contemporary history he 
 became one more of Paris s unexplained and, in a 
 way, accepted mysteries ; like the tall, white-bearded 
 Highland Scot who for years has walked every aft 
 ernoon from the Porte Saint Martin to the Arc de 
 Triomphe, dressed in kilts and plaid, horn-handled 
 dagger in his stockings, sporran swinging rhyth 
 mically to the skirl of an imaginary war-pipe; like 
 the blind American who twice a week, rain or shine, 
 takes his seat on the pavement outside of the Cafe 
 de Naples and distributes gold-pieces to all passers- 
 by; like the plum-colored, turbaned Senegalese who 
 promptly, every morning at five, prays in front of 
 the statue of Strasbourg, his hands spread out like 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT 53 
 
 the sticks of a fan, his huge, round head bobbing 
 up and down with the fervor of his incantations. 
 
 Another year came and passed. Another sensa 
 tion boomed along and stirred the boulevards and 
 set the tongues of Paris a-wagging; the personality 
 of the prince blended still more deeply into the 
 shadow of accepted things and when strangers 
 saw him walk down the street, accompanied by his 
 armed servants, with his big body slightly trem 
 bling, his great purple-black eyes shooting anxiously 
 from right to left as if expecting something or 
 somebody to pop out at him from every corner and 
 doorway, the people of Paris smiled kindly and, 
 too, tolerantly. 
 
 "Why, yes," they would say; "it s that Russian 
 Prince Pavel Narodkine it s a habit of his, you 
 know" as if that were sufficient explanation. 
 
 Perhaps the whole mystery would have been for 
 gotten for all time to come if it had not been for 
 Dr. Marc Henri, who explained it, but only after 
 the death of the prince, and even then very gently 
 and apologetically quite on the side of the prince, 
 you understand. 
 
 For the doctor, a short, stocky, ugly little man 
 with a clever, narrow face which sloped wedge- 
 
54 WINGS 
 
 shaped to a pointed, inquisitive chin, was a French 
 man, with the sane, sweet logic and the sane, sweet 
 sympathy of the Frenchman ; a man who endeavored 
 to understand everything and everybody, and to con 
 done according to his understanding. 
 
 He lived just around the corner from the prince, 
 in an old house of the Passage du Commerce, next 
 door to Durel s quaint book-shop a stone s throw 
 from the spot where, many years ago, famed M. 
 Guillotin had made experiments on sheep with the 
 blade of his newly invented "philanthropic machine 
 for beheading." 
 
 The doctor was a busy man. The bell of his 
 little apartment was forever tinkling ; he had no time 
 to read more than the headlines of either Gaulois or 
 Patrie, and he had never had sufficient leisure to 
 speculate about Prince Pavel Narodkine s strange 
 habits. 
 
 And then, late one warm spring evening, a lump 
 ish Russian, in tall, oiled boots and silken blouse, 
 burst into his office and implored him, in a terrible 
 jargon and by half a dozen assorted Greek orthodox 
 saints, to come at once to the bedside of his mas 
 ter "He is sick, sick, very sick !" The doctor felt 
 there was no time to lose, and so he picked up his 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT 55 
 
 ever-ready black leather case and was out of the 
 house on a run. 
 
 "I am suffering! I cannot sleep / was Narod- 
 kine s thin, querulous greeting, and the physician 
 smiled. 
 
 "I don t wonder," he replied tartly, with a com 
 prehensive gesture which took in the whole of the 
 bedroom. 
 
 For the windows were tightly closed, in spite of 
 the warm spring air; every lamp there were half 
 a dozen of them was lit ; and the air was yet more 
 hot and stuffy with the presence of the prince s 
 peasants big, hulking men who filled the atmos 
 phere with a tang of tobacco and leather and raw; 
 spirits. 
 
 The doctor was astonished, and a little angry, 
 too, when he had finished examining the patient. 
 He was in the habit of being called away from his 
 house at all hours; but the prince s messenger had 
 led him to believe that his master was on the very 
 point of death, and there was really nothing the 
 matter with him except a slightly congested head 
 and a corresponding rise in temperature an ail 
 ment cured easily with a little aspirin, a sound 
 night s sleep, and, of course, fresh air. 
 
56 WINGS 
 
 So it was with something like impatience that 
 he threw open the window and ordered Narodkine s 
 peasants to leave the bedroom, and he was more 
 than ever astonished when the latter remained stol 
 idly where they were and when the prince backed 
 their dumb, passive refusal with eager, excited 
 words. 
 
 "No, no !" he cried. "They will remain with me 
 I need them I " 
 
 "You tell em to clear out!" the doctor cut in 
 impatiently. "You have to do as I tell you if you 
 want me to treat you!" 
 
 It was only when he picked up his leather case 
 and threatened to leave that Narodkine spoke to his 
 servants in purring Russian, ordering them out of 
 the room. 
 
 They left and the doctor, keenly tuned to ob 
 servations and impressions, was positive that they 
 had only gone as far as the next room, ready to 
 return at their master s slightest gesture or word. 
 But he paid no further attention to them. 
 
 "You need sleep," he said to the prince, "and a 
 cool, dark room." 
 
 But when he lifted his hand to turn out the great 
 Venetian chandelier which swung from the center 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT 57 
 
 of the ceiling, a cry from the bed halted him. He 
 turned and he was aghast when he saw the prince s 
 face. The man had suddenly turned a grayish yel 
 low "yellow as a dead man s bones," the doctor 
 described it afterward and his whole body was 
 trembling with a terrible palsy. 
 
 "No, no!" he cried. "Leave the lamps burn 
 all of them!" 
 
 Then, in a sort of whine which was both ridicu 
 lous and pathetic, given the size of the man: "I 
 will not have a dark room by myself ! The thing 
 will come!" 
 
 "What thing?" asked the doctor, and he added 
 jestingly: "You aren t afraid of the dark, are 
 you?" 
 
 He was utterly amazed when he heard the prince s 
 reply. 
 
 "Yes, doctor," in a hushed voice, but absolutely 
 matter-of-fact, like stating a tiresome sort of truth, 
 "I am afraid." 
 
 And when the doctor, who had no respect for 
 titles, made a succinct allusion to "cowards," Na- 
 rodkine told him. 
 
 Dr. Marc Henri never found out if it was be 
 cause of a sudden liking Narodkine had taken to 
 
58 WINGS 
 
 him, or because of a sudden, crushing feeling of 
 loneliness, that the other confided in him. But he 
 did confide. 
 
 "It was terrible/ the doctor said afterward, 
 when speaking of the whole happening to some col 
 leagues of his at the Cafe des Reines; "it was dra 
 matic, and it was true what he told rne ! You see, 
 in a few words he gave me the reason for those 
 strange habits of his which so intrigued Paris at 
 the time. 
 
 "His choice of icsidence, there, in that packed, 
 pulsing quarter on the other hand, his refusal to 
 take his share in the amenities of society sport, 
 dancing anything in fact which in the slightest de 
 gree was connected with danger yes, danger! 
 accidents, you see; his hatred of dark places and 
 of the hours of night; his demand for bright lights; 
 the armed servants who accompanied him every 
 where why, my friends, it was nothing but a huge 
 and intricate stage-setting for his daily, continuous 
 fight with death. 
 
 "Yes ! he feared death ! Nor was it the every 
 day, shivering fear of the coward. It was some 
 thing more terrible, more gigantic. It was some 
 thing in a way primitive and sublime " and Dr. 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT 59 
 
 Marc Henri continued in the prince s own words: 
 
 "Doctor," had said the prince, "it is not that I love 
 to live nor that I am afraid to die. I fear death 
 not dying. I fear that fraction of a second when 
 my body will step from life to death, don t you 
 understand ? I dread the ah the utter uselessness 
 of it and, too, the utter ignorance! What is it? 
 What does it feel like? What does the whole mys 
 tery consist in? Why are we so helpless against 
 it? 
 
 "I I have felt this fear all my life since I can 
 remember waking and sleeping my life has been 
 a continuous martyrdom and I have always tried 
 to fight death to fight sickness and accidents 
 with light and life and even with steel. So I shun 
 sport, I shun darkness and loneliness, and my serv 
 ants never leave my side. But what is the use, doc 
 tor? What is the use? 
 
 "For death is a coward death may be watching 
 me even now from the corner of the room about 
 to pounce on me and strangle me !" 
 
 "You see/ the doctor went on as he told his col 
 leagues across the marble-topped table of the Cafe 
 des Reines, "the prince convinced me that there is 
 a grain of truth in the Bible after all. His fear 
 
60 WINGS 
 
 of death was not the result of his character, his 
 temperament, his mode of life, his education, or his 
 ancestry as we reckon ancestry. It was an ata 
 vistic throw-back to our first forefather Adam or 
 perhaps Adam s son, Cain when he realized first 
 that there was such a thing as cessation of life, but 
 before his racial memory and instinct allowed him 
 to coin the word or to feel the meaning of death. 
 That was the trouble with Prince Pavel Narod- 
 kine " 
 
 "Was?" demanded Dr. Ruoz, and the other in 
 clined his head. "Yes he died just a moment 
 after he finished telling me about his fear of 
 death" 
 
 "But why you said he had only a slight con 
 gestion " 
 
 "Exactly! But you know how it is with these 
 big, full-blooded people. His confession excited 
 him terribly a blood vessel burst in his brain " 
 
 "Did he realize that he was dying?" 
 
 "Yes," Dr. Marc Henri smiled gently, "and he 
 why he was disappointed! You see right on 
 the moment of death, when he knew that he had 
 lost his life-long battle, he whispered a few words 
 to himself really Death! he breathed; and then, 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT 61 
 
 not with relief, but in an agony of disappointment, 
 Is that all? " 
 
 "Yes," added the doctor, rising and calling for 
 his check, "and he repeated it, I should say about 
 a minute later " 
 
 "When did he say it just before he died, I sup 
 pose?" asked a young medical student who had 
 joined the party. And the doctor replied rather 
 wearily as he walked toward the door : 
 
 "No, no he said it just after he died, you 
 know!" 
 
TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR 
 
 IT was now his custom to sit by the open win 
 dow. 
 
 He would look out into the mean, cramped streets, 
 at the jerry-built houses, and up at the high, sharp- 
 contoured sky, which seemed to be always packed 
 with dirty clouds. Then he would pity himself, and 
 hate the rest of the world. 
 
 He despised the present. Yet he clutched at it 
 with both hands, and was surprised and irritated 
 because he could not get away from the past. 
 
 And the tale of the past, the shame of it, was 
 hot and acrid in his brain. 
 
 That s why he sat by the window. That s why 
 he soaked his ears and his soul in the terrible, muf 
 fled noise of the great city those sounds of death 
 and hate, of love and joy, and the sharp drum 
 beats of thousand-armed business. At least, they 
 spelled a living, pulsing world. There were men 
 there, and women and in a measure they com- 
 
 63 
 
64 WINGS 
 
 forted him, because he did not know them and 
 because they did not know him. 
 
 So he felt safe with them. He could look at 
 them without blushing. 
 
 It was only when he turned his bad . to the win 
 dow, when he shut out the world from his ears and 
 his eyes, when he felt the choking, mephitic solitude 
 of the four walls that he thought. And he did not 
 like to think. 
 
 For here, in the little gray room on East Eleventh, 
 with his back to the world of strangers who cr ^wded 
 the streets, he saw the life which he lived as he was 
 living it ; and it was mainly expressed by the furni 
 ture which packed its corners the iron bed, the 
 gangrened deal table, the ridiculous spindle-legged 
 bureau, and the horrible, fly-specked chromos on 
 the walls. 
 
 Then he thought, of course, of the little cabinet 
 in his mother s salon, back there in the castle of 
 the Puys de Dome; the little glass cabinet all filled 
 with Tanagra statuettes, cups of Ming celadon, 
 enamel from Norway, Meissen and Sevres china, 
 and boxes in Vernis-Martin. 
 
 Dry, lifeless things they were, representing so and 
 so much money and so and so much skill and artis- 
 
TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR 65 
 
 try. But to him they meant more. They meant 
 the brave, clanking hopes of his youth. They meant 
 the name and the pride of the family to which he 
 belonged. His memory had ensouled them with a 
 softness, a tr- obbing which was deeper than the 
 heart of woman. 
 
 For they meant to him the things he had lost. 
 They meant to him the things he had thrown away, 
 the things he had hurt and cheated and polluted; 
 the name he had disgraced, the escutcheon he had 
 f ouled the mother, cold and haughty, dry-eyed and 
 thin-lipped, who had given up everything for him, 
 and given up in vain the sister, bitter and dower- 
 less, forced into the convent which she hated and 
 feared the younger brother who had to sacrifice 
 the diplomatic career for which he had been trained, 
 to go into the office of a fat agent de change, who 
 patronized him and bullied him because of the no 
 ble name he bore. 
 
 Why, even the little glass cabinet had been sold; 
 even the dun-colored Tanagra statuettes, the boxes 
 in Vernis-Martin, the glasses of Galle-Nancy, and 
 the many other objects of virtu. 
 
 The forests had been sold, the fields, the paintings, 
 the famed wine cellar; finally the house itself; the 
 
66 WINGS 
 
 huge gray castle, which had housed one of his name 
 and race since the days of Pepin the Bold. 
 
 Only the keeper s lodge remained; and there, in 
 the damp, flat-roofed hovel built of rough-hewn 
 stones, his mother lived now lived like a peasant 
 woman. 
 
 And he was here in New York, worthless and 
 nameless. 
 
 He clenched his fists. He gave a little cry of 
 impotent fury. 
 
 Then he laughed. He thought of the life-insur 
 ance agent who somehow had drifted up to his room 
 that very morning and had tried to insure him 
 against death. 
 
 The fool! To ask a man to protect himself 
 against the only hopeful, the only pure moment 
 of life! 
 
 His memory swayed up into the past as the sea 
 sways to the touch of the moon. 
 
 It had been cards at first; and afterward the lit 
 tle ivory ball which drops so noiselessly, so fate- 
 fully: 
 
 Vingt-quatre noir impaire passe. 
 
 Those foolish words and the bits of gaudy paste- 
 
TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR 67 
 
 board what a tragedy they held what a record 
 of weakness and selfishness and self-contempt ! 
 
 He felt a puling, selfish satisfaction in convincing 
 himself that it had not been an inborn passion with 
 him ; that it had not even been his own fault. Dur 
 ing his school years and during the years spent at 
 the military academy he had never touched a card. 
 Even during his first ten months of actual army 
 life, after he had received his commission in the 
 Forty-Third Infantry, he had never thought of 
 them had never used them. 
 
 Came the maneuvers. The long, heart-breaking 
 marches, the bivouac at night ; and then one evening 
 the drawling voice of his company commander, 
 Captain Xavier Lesueur, asking him if he played 
 cards baccarat by preference: 
 
 "Non, mon capitaine." 
 
 Lesueur had laughed. 
 
 "Very well, my little innocent provincial, you 
 must learn. We must have a little distraction. I ll 
 teach you baccarat. Nothing to it. Simply watch 
 the nines, and look sharp after the naturals. You ll 
 get the hang of it in no time." 
 
 The rules of the game had been simple indeed. 
 He had mastered them inside of a few minutes, 
 
68 WINGS 
 
 and the other congratulated him on his quickness. 
 
 So he had played. 
 
 And he had lost. 
 
 "Never mind," the captain had consoled him. 
 "We must all stump up for our apprenticeship." 
 
 The play had been small, and that first day he 
 had not lost much just a few gold pieces, which 
 did not worry him. 
 
 But the next evening some cavalrymen had 
 dropped in; they were wealthy men, sons of Nor 
 man farmers and Lyons bankers. They had forced 
 the game again and again until finally the roof was 
 the limit. 
 
 He had lost more than the rest. He had wired 
 to his mother, and she had promptly remitted. 
 
 Her husband had been in the army, her father, 
 her grandfather. She knew. She understood. She 
 even laughed a little at the tragic wording of the 
 telegram which he had sent. 
 
 "We must all grow up, my boy," she had told 
 him on his visit home in October, when he had 
 taken a short leave to shoot birds. "A little cards 
 will not hurt you. We re not paupers." 
 
 At the end of the maneuvers his regiment had 
 been sent to Paris. There had been more cards. 
 
TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR 69 
 
 More losses. Again he had been forced to write 
 home. This time there was no ready money in the 
 bank. His mother had been forced to sell some 
 forest land. 
 
 He was the first son, after all. The estate was 
 his. 
 
 And he had played again. He had tried to win 
 back what he had lost ; and that not because he was 
 greedy after either money or cards, but simply be 
 cause his people were not over-wealthy, and he 
 wanted to recuperate what he had lost. 
 
 So he had made a study of cards. He had the 
 cold, logical Latin mind, and set himself to do the 
 thing in earnest. He learned poker, trente et quar- 
 ante, and then he joined the Cercle Richelieu and 
 passed night after night playing roulette. 
 
 Steadily he had lost. 
 
 Steadily his mother had sold acres and acres of 
 forest land then a few rich acres his family owned 
 in Corsica, and finally the vineyard of her father in 
 the Champagne country which had been her dowry, 
 and which she had meant to pass on as a dower to 
 her only daughter. That also had gone. 
 
 But she had not complained. 
 
 Cold and haughty he was her first-born son? 
 
o WINGS 
 
 his was the name, the title, the traditions he must 
 keep up his position among those shopkeepers who 
 crowded the army since the empire had given way 
 to the republic. 
 
 Let him play. Let him lose. 
 
 Presently he would settle down. He would 
 marry a wealthy bourgeoise, and with her money 
 he would buy back everything he had lost in gam 
 bling. 
 
 She had already picked out a bride for him. 
 
 He had laughed light-heartedly. 
 
 "And what does she look like, the little one?" 
 
 "What difference does it make? You will not 
 marry her for her looks. You will marry her be 
 cause it is your duty to yourself and to your fam- 
 ily." 
 
 Then with light heart he had returned to Paris, 
 and had gambled more than ever. Enfin, he said 
 to himself, soon I shall have to settle down and 
 marry. Then I shall have to quit the army and 
 Paris, and all the fun, and cultivate my paternal 
 acres in the Puy de Dome, and wear gahers and 
 altogether be an animal of a farmer; therefore, 
 vogue la galere. Let s play, and the devil take the 
 hindmost. 
 
TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR 71 
 
 The end of it all had been sudden, shockingly 
 unexpected. 
 
 A large sum, gold and paper and I. O. U. s, had 
 been on the green cloth. 
 
 One more ace, he thought, studying his hand, and 
 the pot would be his enough to buy back every 
 acre his mother had been forced to sell, enough to 
 give back his sister s dowry, enough to give a de 
 cent life competence for the little brother who was 
 studying for the diplomatic service, enough to re 
 lease him from a loveless marriage. 
 
 Just the one pot, the one big gain and he would 
 never again touch cards. 
 
 Just the ace. That was all he needed. 
 
 And it was there in full view, in front of hirrL 
 His right-hand neighbor had dropped out of the 
 game, and had thrown down his cards upside 
 down. 
 
 He had turned the trick very clumsily. There 
 was a shout, a roar, a sharp-cutting word. 
 
 "You cheat, monsieur! You cheat! 
 
 That had been the end of it all. Of course,, 
 there had been no court-martial. Nothing of that 
 sort ever happened in the Forty-Third Infantry. 
 That regiment never preferred charges against 
 
72 WINGS 
 
 brother officers. [They washed their dirty linen in 
 private. 
 
 Just the colonel s hard, dry words. 
 
 "Adieu! Jhe Forty-Third does not want you. 
 Nor does the army. Nor does France." 
 
 And his mother -haughty, stone-faced, thin- 
 lipped, dry-eyed had echoed the simple words. 
 
 "The Puy de Dome does not want you. Your 
 family does not want you." A little pause. "I 
 do not want you, my son." 
 
 She had settled his debts, and it had ruined her. 
 She had paid his passage to America. Now he was 
 here, in the little gray room on East Eleventh, 
 looking at the strangers who crowded the streets, 
 and thinking of France, of his mother, of his reg 
 iment. 
 
 He picked up the afternoon paper. He studied 
 the contents, though he knew them by heart. 
 
 They were fighting fighting under the walls of 
 Lille. They were hanging on by their teeth. 
 
 One report mentioned the Forty-Third Infan 
 try, cut to pieces in a gallant charge. There were 
 three lines devoted to the colonel "Killed in ac 
 tion." 
 
 It was the colonel who had told him: 
 
TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR 73 
 
 "The Forty-Third does not want you. Nor the 
 army. Nor France." 
 
 Oh, yes, he remembered that; would always re 
 member it. He laid down the paper. His head 
 sank on his breast. 
 
 Vague shadows seemed to come from the dis 
 tance; they enfolded him; they took his breath 
 away. He shut his eyes. 
 
 Somewhere to the east he thought it very 
 strange he could hear voices singing: 
 
 "Amour sacre de la Patrie!" 
 
 Oh, yes, the marching song of the Forty-Third. 
 They were fighting down there, near Lille, hanging 
 on by their teeth. 
 
 There was a sound like the tearing of fine silk, 
 a shrieking and whistling; then a sickening thud. 
 
 Sergeant Castel wiped his powder-blackened 
 brows. He inserted another cartridge in his rifle, 
 drew a bead, and fired. Then he turned to La- 
 grange, the lance- jack. 
 
 "The end, mon vieux! Presently they will eat 
 us up." 
 
 Lagrange had no time to reply. His elbow was 
 in continuous, jerky motion load, fire load, fire! 
 
74 WINGS 
 
 There was another tearing, whistling noise. 
 Then a thud and a gurgle. This time it had done 
 for Lesueur, the company commander. 
 
 Castel looked at the stark figure. 
 
 "The last of them the last of the officers !" 
 
 Lagrange paused between shots. His rifle was 
 red-hot. It needed cooling. Half a cigarette was 
 stuck behind his left ear. He lit it, and blew the 
 smoke into the air. 
 
 "Right, mon bougre! The last one indeed. And 
 we need officers God, what do I say? We need 
 one officer, just one to give the word to lead 
 to charge." He sobbed. The tears flowed down 
 into his thick, matted beard. "Just one officer 
 one!" 
 
 His voice snapped off in mid air. 
 
 He stared open-eyed. A trim, boyish figure rose 
 from the trench, sword in hand. He waved it in 
 circles. 
 
 "Fix bayonets! Charge, my boys; charge!" 
 
 Lagrange rubbed his eyes. He was utterly be 
 wildered. 
 
 "But it is the little lieutenant. But he had been 
 kicked out of the regiment." 
 
 He could not understand it at all. Again he 
 
TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR 75 
 
 looked at the trim, boyish figure. Then he charged, 
 together with the others. On toward that belching 
 belt of fire. 
 
 The servant girl knocked at the door twice, 
 three times. There was no answer. The landlady 
 came. 
 
 "Open up there open up ! You can t play pos 
 sum with the likes of me. You pay your rent to 
 day or " 
 
 Suddenly a great fear engulfed her. She called 
 the police. They forced the door open. 
 
 The Frenchman was dead. A bullet had pierced 
 his heart. No weapon was found in his room. No 
 trace of the assassin was ever found. 
 
 But the doctor who examined the body shook his 
 head. 
 
 "Can t account for it," he murmured. "That 
 bullet was fired from a great distance from a very 
 great distance. And yet there is no hole in win 
 dow nor door nor wall." 
 
 And then he entered the case in the little book 
 which contained his private collection of inexpli 
 cable deaths. 
 
TARTAR 
 
 IT was only when Professor Barker Harrison 
 was in his private study, on the top floor of the 
 little house which overlooked a corner of the Uni 
 versity Campus, that faculties in his soul, hitherto 
 silent because none had known how to sound them, 
 rose, singing and dancing, to the surface. 
 
 These faculties bred thoughts and dreams, and 
 he did not speak of them to anybody; not even to 
 his wife, whom he loved. They were free, un 
 fettered thoughts, and since they were imaginary 
 and quite unrelated to exact, academic science, he 
 was slightly ashamed of them. 
 
 They seemed a direct throwback to the earliest 
 germs of his racial development and consciousness, 
 dealing as they did with clanking, half -forgotten 
 centuries of savage memory : the days of stone pil 
 lars bearing the rudimentary likeness of an idol; 
 the days when man killed man glorying in the deed 
 of it, and drank fermented mare s-milk from the 
 
 77 
 
78 WINGS 
 
 blanched skull of his enemy; the days when Rome, 
 jeering and rude, stole an alien civilization without 
 understanding it, and when Gaul was the home of 
 inarticulate barbarians. 
 
 Professor Barker Harrison was sane, academic 
 and Anglo-Saxon. For he did not believe in mes 
 merism, table-moving, and other forms of occult 
 acrobatics; he judged and dismissed poetry with 
 a Spencerian smile of amused sympathy; and his 
 family had lived in the same small Vermont town 
 for more than three hundred years, after having 
 thrived for the preceding seven centuries in the Eng 
 lish Midlands. 
 
 Yet in his study, when his primitive Self disen 
 tangled itself from the pack-threads of his every 
 day life and surroundings, when his mind returned 
 to the youth of his race and the beginnings of his 
 Ego, he seemed to see himself a short, bow-legged, 
 yellow man, with a square chin, heavy snub nose, 
 angular jaws nearly piercing the hairless, cracked 
 skin, slanting eyes, and pointed, wolfish teeth. He 
 seemed to see himself a man on horseback, whose 
 horizon was bounded by the endless plains of Cen 
 tral Asia, whose only reason for life was eating 
 and drinking and rapine, whose highest aim in life 
 
TARTAR 79 
 
 was to kill single-handed a Mongolian tiger or a 
 Siberian bear. 
 
 And when, directly on the heel of such imag 
 inative half -hours, he went for a stroll through the 
 eastern part of the town, which housed many for 
 eign factory workers, he felt a queer straining of 
 sympathy and racial communion with the Finns 
 and Letts who were returning from their work, and 
 also with the red-faced, smiling Cantonese coolie 
 who was smoking his long, purple-tasseled pipe in 
 the doorway of his little laundry shop. 
 
 But and this was most strange of all, since an 
 old-fashioned Knownothingism was his political 
 credo and since he was heartily in favor of a strict 
 literacy test for European immigrants he felt the 
 greatest sympathy and, in a way, kinship at those 
 moments for one Ivan Sborr, a man of unclassified 
 Eastern European race who eked out a meager liv 
 ing by cobbling and who went on wicked, weekly 
 drunks. 
 
 Ivan Sborr was a mild-eyed, timid man of huge 
 physique who had once owed allegiance to the Tsar 
 of all the Russias. Now he owed allegiance to 
 anybody who looked in the least like an official. 
 3ut during his periodic drunks he had been known 
 
8o WINGS 
 
 to give a bad half -hour even to Patrick O Mahoney, 
 the new Irish sergeant of police, who was kept 
 in continuous training by encounters with victory- 
 flushed members of the University football team. 
 
 Professor Barker Harrison became so used to his 
 fantastic thoughts that finally they seemed more to 
 him than mere projections of his racial conscious 
 ness run amuck. They whirled about his mind 
 with a magnificent thunder of action, filling him, 
 somehow, with deep, primitive longings which were 
 oddly at variance with his chosen work and his 
 day-by-day life. 
 
 Not that he disliked his life work. He took a 
 massive pride in it; and in the small New England 
 university, famed for its exact, scholastic accom 
 plishments and its minute research work, his name 
 was not the least known. He was an authority in 
 Slavonic languages and literature. 
 
 But there came moments, after he had explained 
 for the thousandth time the baroque mazes of the 
 Cyrillic alphabet, after he had explained for the 
 thousandth time that the Russian guttural K has 
 the spirantal value of the German word Dach, when 
 a certain impatience took him by the forelock and 
 shook him . . . quite gently. 
 
TARTAR 81 
 
 He would hurry through dinner, giving short re 
 plies to his young wife (they had no children), 
 and walk up to his study. He would then close the 
 door, light his pipe, and surrender himself to the 
 backward sweep of his thoughts. And at those 
 moments an age-old, unborn life seemed to come 
 up from the pile of books and reviews which lit 
 tered his desk, working subtly to bring about a 
 transformation of himself. 
 
 He pondered with an ever-growing measure of 
 bitterness over the fact that his wife, college-bred 
 and, like himself, the descendant of three academic, 
 well-laundried generations, did not understand these 
 moods. She loved him with a fine, precise love; 
 and he loved her. There was no doubt of it. For 
 she w r as an honest, upstanding woman. 
 
 But in the depths of his soul he resented the fact 
 that with the unconscious selfishness of the good 
 woman she had folded him in completely, that day 
 after day she tried to reach more deeply into the 
 core of himself, without ever guessing or feeling 
 that her mate had an imaginative quality and an 
 imaginative double life which was as literally real 
 to him as a house, a tree, or a flower. 
 
 Thus he blamed her because she did not compre- 
 
82 WINGS 
 
 hend the richness which ran in his blood undiluted. 
 
 Also he blamed her because he knew that, even 
 given her understanding of his unspoken thoughts, 
 she would discourage their trend and analyze them 
 quite impersonally. 
 
 She on her side felt the blame without formulat 
 ing to herself either the reason of or the possibility 
 for its existence. And the unformed blame, trick 
 ling down into her heart, charged her manner with 
 impatience and her lips with drooping bitterness. 
 
 So she nagged him. 
 
 This nagging was at first unconscious, unpointed ; 
 a simple and logical reflex action of her hurt fem 
 ininity. But when she saw that her husband was 
 perfectly indifferent to the change in the atmosphere 
 about him her nagging became invested with driv 
 ing, acrid purpose. 
 
 Yet never did the Professor by word or by deed 
 lay himself open to the domestic challenge : 
 
 "Why did you do this? Why did you say that?" 
 
 It was true that he hurried through his dinner, 
 that he took the cup of coffee which she handed him 
 with an impatient gesture, that he lit his cigarette 
 with fingers that trembled absurdly, and smoked as 
 hard and rapidly as though his life depended on his 
 
TARTAR 83 
 
 finishing it in a prescribed time. It was true that 
 he left the dining-room as soon as he had finished 
 his smoke, that he ran up the stairs to his study 
 with a youthful rush of speed, and that on two 
 occasions she had heard drifting down from there 
 savage shouts and strange, barbarous chants which 
 had made her blood run cold. 
 
 One day she forgot her pride and asked him 
 point-blank : 
 
 "Are you doing any special work up there?" 
 
 He replied in the negative. Then he added, 
 quite unconscious of what he was saying, but with 
 a queer, thin whisper that conveyed the gravity of 
 his conviction with a greater impressiveness than a 
 loud-spoken word would have done : 
 
 "You would not understand, my dear. Nobody 
 would. I oh, well " 
 
 "What?" she cut in acidulously. 
 
 "I I " He stopped, blushed painfully, guilt 
 ily; then continued with a rush: "I am living the 
 days when my race was young and was about to 
 conquer the world. I am living the days when my 
 forefathers ate and slept and fought and loved on 
 horseback, when they worshiped the god who was a 
 naked sword, when they slaughtered a thousand 
 
84 WINGS 
 
 white stallions on the graves of their dead war- 
 chiefs. Ho !" The last he pronounced with a high- 
 pitched, throaty yell. 
 
 His wife paled. 
 
 "Good Heavens, Barker," she said tremulously, 
 "don t give such yells. Your undergraduate days 
 
 are over." 
 
 But he continued as if he had not noticed her 
 interruption. 
 
 "I am living the days when a strong man killed 
 and took to himself the cattle and the wives of his 
 slain enemy." 
 
 This time his wife turned red. 
 
 "Cattle! Wives! Barker Harrison!" she cried 
 sharply. "What do you mean? You speak as if 
 you were a Tartar ! And your name is good, sound 
 Anglo-Saxon, thank Heaven!" 
 
 But she spoke the last words to the empty air. 
 For already her husband had rushed up the stairs 
 two steps at a time. 
 
 Upstairs in his study he sat down at his desk 
 and lit his pipe. 
 
 It had been several months since first the idea 
 that the understanding, the very reliving, of for 
 mer phases of civilization and racial development, 
 
TARTAR 85 
 
 of former individual lives, was a definitely know- 
 able power, accessible to the trained mind of the 
 pandit, had commenced to haunt him. As time 
 went on the idea had grown on him until it was 
 only thinly separated from actual belief, until finally 
 it was accepted as true not by his whole conscious 
 ness, but by some outlying tract of it which was 
 inactive as long as he was in the company of 
 others. 
 
 When he lectured at the University and when he 
 was alone with his wife he suffered from spiritual 
 nostalgia. Only here in his study he was at home, 
 and he wandered deeper and ever deeper into him 
 self, into some state of tremendous freedom, sim 
 plicity and brutality, toward a zone where he lost 
 touch with all that had hitherto constituted Life to 
 him including his wife. 
 
 And to-day the belief was there, alive, palpable. 
 Unconsciously his wife had touched the releasing 
 spring when she had spoken of Tartars. 
 
 He trembled with a fearful joy. 
 
 For he was suddenly positive that the power 
 which had haunted him was his, that it was flash 
 ing across his brain with a dazzling sheen that 
 brought him to the threshold of ecstasy. 
 
86 WINGS 
 
 The past enveloped him. It possessed him com 
 pletely. 
 
 He saw himself in the remote, untamed youth of 
 his race. The past came to him, a record of the 
 measure of his vision. A portion of his brain 
 very sane, very active caused him to perceive him 
 self as he had been before the Migration of Peo 
 ples, the earth-wide wanderings of Celt, Tartar, 
 Visigoth and Scythian, and the subsequent crossing 
 and mingling of races had tempered and changed 
 the original germ which was his Ego into Profes 
 sor Barker Harrison, Christian, Aryan, Anglo- 
 Saxon, American. 
 
 He beheld himself on the banks of the Volga. 
 He saw himself a warrior among warriors, fight 
 ing, riding, looting, burning; then, in the scanty 
 shelter of a black felt tent, which was surmounted 
 by a standard of buffalo hide bearing the rough 
 cognizance of his chief, he saw himself at meal, 
 tearing like a mastiff at raw lumps of horseflesh 
 and quaffing down curdled milk poured into human 
 skulls. 
 
 Shadowy figures were about him. Some of them 
 reminded him of the high-cheeked foreigners, Finns 
 and Letts, who worked in the factories of the town. 
 
TARTAR 87 
 
 One, for all the blue tattoo marks on his forehead 
 and on the roots of his flat nose, for all the loose 
 tunic of Mongolian tiger which covered his mas 
 sive body, was an exact double of the peaceful, red- 
 faced Cantonese coolie who kept the little laundry 
 shop. And another, famed for his great strength, 
 his massive thirst, and his loud, hoarse, reedy Av,j.r 
 yells, was to him an incarnation of Ivan Sborr, the 
 cobbler of Russian nationality and unclassified race. 
 
 Factory-workers? Laundry coolie? Cobbler? 
 What did those terms signify? 
 
 To-night they were his equals, his friends, his 
 tribemates, his brothers-in-arms ! 
 
 He saw them in the twilight which grew from 
 pink to green and from green to black. They were 
 lifting their crude weapons to the naked sword 
 which was their god, and shouting a barbarous 
 song of triumph. 
 
 He joined in it, and his voice rose clear above 
 the voices of the others. 
 
 "Ho!" he chanted. 
 
 "I have ridden through the desert which dried up my 
 
 skin and burnt the feet of my horses. 
 I have made crimson war in the North where rivers 
 
 roll waters that are solid and white. 
 
88 WINGS 
 
 And there I left a monument to my prowess ; 
 
 A pyramid built of ten thousand heads. 
 
 No more will the North make war. 
 
 I have drunk from a thousand skulls set in gold. 
 
 I have slain the men and the women and the little 
 children of the many lands. 
 
 The cowardly Emperor of the East has paid me ran 
 som. 
 
 But I took his wives for slaves. 
 
 The Emperor of the South opposed me with his 
 hordes clad in silver and in iron. 
 
 I smashed them as the whirling millstones smash the 
 dry grains of the field. 
 
 Beyond the flat lands of the West I have ridden, a 
 Conqueror, and the shivering men called me the 
 Scourge of God. 
 
 For I am Attila, the Hun !" 
 
 Three times he repeated the last line, winding 
 up each time with a blood-curdling war-whoop. 
 Then his imagination took another magnificent 
 bound into the past centuries. 
 
 Attila? Only Attila? Of course he was Attila. 
 
 But he was also Attila s descendant. He was 
 Genghis Khan himself, and, by a second magnif 
 icent, imaginative flight, he was also the Tartar 
 Khan s great-grandson, Tamerlane, he whose mau 
 soleum still stands in the ancient city of Samarkand. 
 
 "Ho!" 
 
TARTAR 89 
 
 He gave another war-whoop, and turned to his 
 friends, his tribemates, whose shadowy figures were 
 crowding the narrow room. There was chiefly the 
 red-faced warrior. 
 
 What was his name? 
 
 Oh, yes, he remembered that was Jemchug the 
 Tchuktche Chief to whom he had given as fief the 
 Empire of Khorassan ; and the other, he of the great 
 thirst why, it was Kublai Khan, his own brother 
 soon he would send him to the farthest East to 
 conquer China and Japan so, before the parting, 
 once more a chant of triumph, brothers ! 
 
 "Hai-yai-hai!"he yelled. 
 
 "From all the world men came and acknowledged me 
 
 Master. 
 They came from the broad plains of the Danube and 
 
 from China. 
 From golden Byzanze they came, and from the eternal 
 
 city whose founders were suckled by a she-wolf. 
 Bringing presents they came, the many envoys. 
 But I spat my contempt into their faces. 
 For I am Genghis Khan !" 
 
 ,Then he yelled as an afterthought: 
 
 "I am Tamerlane! 
 
 Also am I Attila, the Scourge of God !" 
 
90 WINGS 
 
 "Barker!" a sharp voice came from the open 
 door. "Barker Harrison!" His wife came into 
 the room. "For goodness sake, what are you 
 shouting about? What is the matter?" 
 
 The Professor turned on her with a savage roar. 
 
 The impudent slave woman, he said to himself 
 for weeks she had been behaving as no woman 
 should behave to her master and now she had en 
 tered, unbidden, the tent of warriors! 
 
 He raised his right arm, about to strike her, 
 Then^he reconsidered. No, he would not sully his 
 hand. 
 
 He turned to one of the many slaves whom he 
 imagined about him. 
 
 "Urbeck!" he said majestically. "Have this im 
 pudent slave woman well beaten with knotted 
 ropes !" 
 
 Mrs. Barker Harrison swooned dead away. The 
 Professor looked at her huddled figure unmoved. 
 Again he commenced his barbarous chant. 
 
 But suddenly it seemed to him that all the others 
 had disappeared. Where were they, those yellow- 
 skinned, high-cheeked men? And chiefly the two 
 his brother Kublai Khan, the great drinker whom 
 he would send to conquer the farthest East, and 
 
TARTAR 91 
 
 also Jemchug, the red-faced warrior whose massive 
 body was covered with a loose tunic of Mongolian 
 tiger? 
 
 Was there treachery in his army? 
 
 "Ho!" he shouted. "My trusty sword! * 
 
 And with a splendid gesture he picked up a light 
 rattan cane which was leaning peacefully in a cor 
 ner of his room. 
 
 Professor Barker Harrison, wild-eyed, bare 
 headed, his right hand tightly clutching the cane, 
 rushed down the stairs and out of the house. He 
 cleared the front step in one bound. It was late 
 at night; it was lucky for him that the neighbor 
 hood was asleep and that nobody saw his martial 
 exit. 
 
 On Cedar Street he had his first encounter with 
 the enemy. He was swinging his cane in the air, 
 chanting at the same time another song of triumph : 
 
 "Hai-yai-hai !" he chanted. 
 
 "I am the Chief of the Far Tribes! 
 
 Raw horse-flesh is my food! 
 
 Curdled milk is my drink ! 
 
 I bathe my mighty limbs in the blood of my ene 
 mies!" 
 
 He made a stabbing motion with his rattan cane, 
 
92 .WINGS 
 
 and something soft and human squirmed rapidly 
 to one side, giving a loud howl of pain and pas 
 sionate entreaty. 
 
 Professor Barker Harrison s blood was up, 
 
 "Ho!" he shouted. "Dog! Swine! Traitor!" 
 He made another stab with his rattan, connected 
 again, and caused another, louder howl of pain and 
 entreaty. "To-night I shall drink from thy blanched 
 skull!" 
 
 The man whom he had poked fell on his knees 
 and held up both his hands. He was a peaceful, 
 elderly negro by the name of George Washington 
 Jefferson Ransome, and he was not, as a rule, afraid 
 of undergraduates, drunk or sober. 
 
 But this one was dangerous, he thought. He 
 was singing of eating raw flesh and of bathing his 
 mighty limbs in the blood of his enemies. 
 
 "Lawdamessy !" he bawled. "I ain t done yoh 
 no ha m, suh. Fo* de Lawd s sake, doan yoh do 
 dis yeah thing to me. / ain t yoh enemy! No, 
 suh. Please . . . doan yoh go an* bathe yoh 
 mighty limbs in dis po* niggah s blood !" 
 
 The Professor did not reply. He stabbed again 
 with his rattan cane. 
 
 But the old negro did not wait. He jumped 
 
TARTAR 93 
 
 backward and ran away as fast as his elderly legs 
 would let him. 
 
 Barker Harrison smiled. He turned to an imag 
 inary chief. 
 
 "Catch me this black man !" he commanded curtly. 
 "To-morrow morning we shall crucify him to a 
 wooden cross!* 
 
 Then he thought again of Jemchug, the red- faced 
 one. Where was he? Had he really turned trai 
 tor? He passed his hand across his face. Why 
 ... he knew . . . the red- faced one was down 
 there ... in his shop, on the corner of Main 
 Street. 
 
 Shop? Main Street? What was a shop ? What 
 was Main Street? What, in the name of the many 
 gods, was a street f There was only the Volga, the 
 plains, the tents and the skies ! 
 
 Still ... he must find him ... his brother-in% 
 arms, ... so that together they could find his 
 brother Ktiblai Khan, the mighty drinker. . . . 
 
 Professor Barker Harrison ran up Main Street 
 and straight into the shop of Wu Kee, laundryman. 
 
 When the latter saw the strange, wild-eyed figure 
 bounce in, cane in hand, his instinct advised him 
 to beat a hasty retreat 
 
94 WINGS 
 
 Although he had lived in America for over thirty 
 years, he still considered the foreigners a mad race, 
 who should be mistrusted on sight and who were 
 moved by impulses which were partly savage, partly 
 amusing, but altogether incredible. But he kept his 
 seat and his sang-froid when he recognized the fea 
 tures of his visitor. For he had done his laundry 
 for five years, had received payment promptly every 
 Thursday morning, and had exchanged daily and 
 very punctilious greeting with him. 
 
 So he bade him a pleasant "good evening/ 
 
 But the next moment he wished that he had fol 
 lowed the original promptings of his instinct. 
 
 For the Professor lifted him bodily out of his 
 chair, threw his arms about his shoulders, drew 
 him to his bosom, and apostrophized him as "war 
 rior" and "Jemchug" and "brother-in-arms." 
 
 The Chinese disengaged himself from the other s 
 embrace. 
 
 "Hey? You dlunk?" he queried dispassionately. 
 
 The Professor did not reply. He embraced the 
 Chinaman again, and so once more the latter re 
 peated his words. 
 
 Only this time they were less a question than the 
 statement of a calm, prosaic fact. 
 
TARTAR 95 
 
 "You dlunk! You velly dlunk!" he said. 
 
 The Professor did not understand the meaning 
 of the words. But he felt, he understood, the con 
 tempt which underlay them. For a moment he was 
 hurt. 
 
 Could it, then, be that Jemchug, the great 
 Tchuktche Chief to whom he had given as fief the 
 Empire of Khorassan, had turned traitor? 
 
 Suddenly a great rage overcame him. 
 
 "Die, traitor!" he shouted, and he smote the 
 Chinaman over the head with his elastic rattan cane. 
 
 Wu Kee became enraged in his turn. 
 
 "Wassahellamallajowf " he asked, all in one word. 
 
 He picked up a nearly red-hot pressing-iron and 
 applied it with savage aim on the seat of the Pro 
 fessor s trousers. 
 
 Barker Harrison yelled with pain and fury. 
 
 "Treason! Treason!" he shouted. "Kublai 
 Khan! Brother mine! To the rescue! To the 
 rescue!" 
 
 He rushed out of the shop. 
 
 He ran up and down the street, waving his rat 
 tan cane. 
 
 Where was Kublai Khan? Where was his be 
 loved brother, he of the great thirst? 
 
96 WINGS 
 
 A vague remembrance came back to him. Why 
 yes Kublai Khan was hiding in the land of the 
 enemies he was spying out the land under the 
 menial guise of a cobbler. He went by the name 
 of Ivan Sborr. 
 
 And there was that not Kublai Khan s voice 
 calling for help, for help? 
 
 Professor Barker Harrison followed the direction 
 of the voice, and he was not mistaken. 
 
 For Ivan Sborr had gone that evening on an 
 extra-luxurious spree, and was now engaged in sav 
 age battle with Patrick O Mahoney, the Irish ser 
 geant of police, who was trying to propel him to 
 ward the station house. 
 
 Professor Barker Harrison saw the scene and 
 gave his war-whoop. 
 
 "Ho!" he shouted. "Take heart, lion-brother of 
 mine! For I am coming to thy rescue!" 
 
 He came. 
 
 But by this time the sergeant had clubbed the 
 Russian into unconsciousness and was ready for the 
 new protagonist. 
 
 "So ye ll be afther helpin them f what s thryin 
 to resist arrest, are yez ?" he cried. "Take thot for 
 a starter, me lad!" and he paralyzed the Profes- 
 
TARTAR 97 
 
 sor s right arm with a blow of his hickory, so that 
 the rattan cane fell to the ground. 
 
 O Mahoney jerked the Professor up by the collar. 
 
 "An fwhat may yer name be, me bucko?" 
 
 "I am Attila, the Scourge of God!" chanted the 
 Professor. 
 
 The Irishman smiled. 
 
 "Glory be but it s a foine scourrge ye are, me 
 lad! Take thot then for bein a scourrge!" and 
 he tapped him, not very gently, with his hickory. 
 
 But the Professor was not subdued. 
 
 "I am Attila!" he shouted again. "I am Genghis 
 Khan! I am Tamerlane!" 
 
 O Mahoney whistled through his teeth. 
 
 "Ye are, are ye? All three of them? Begorry, 
 I think ye re a dangerous character, and the chief ll 
 be afther wantin ye." 
 
 And so he fetched him a wallop on the ear, whis 
 tled for the police wagon, tumbled both his prison 
 ers inside, and made a long report to the captain, 
 
 "Captain," he said, "of course, I know old Ivan. 
 It s just his weekly dhrunk, and divil a bit o harrm 
 did he mean. But there s another lad and I think 
 he ll be wanted by the police in Boston. He gave 
 me three aliases wait till I write em down." 
 
98 WINGS 
 
 He took the blotter, and there, under the proper 
 rubric, he filled in the following: 
 
 O Dillora, Christian name unknown. 
 
 He looked up at the captain. 
 
 "Faith," he said, "and he added that the lads 
 call him the scourrge, the fwhich I think is one o 
 them blood-currlin names the Boston gangsters are 
 afther givin to each other/ 
 
 Again he wrote in the blotter. 
 
 Alias Gennis Kahn. 
 
 "Sounds Sheeny to me, captain," he commented, 
 "though, begabs, he don t look like one." 
 
 Once more the pen scratched over the hard paper : 
 
 Alias Thomas Lane. 
 
 "And that last one," concluded O Mahoney, "may 
 be his real name. For, faith, Lane s a Noo Eng 
 land name, and the lad looks to me more like a 
 native than like O Dillon, which is Irish, or Kahn, 
 which is Sheeny." 
 
 "All right," said the captain. "Let s have a look 
 at the prisoner." 
 
TARTAR 99 
 
 He walked over to the cell and opened the door. 
 The Professor was stretched out on the narrow 
 bench, snoring quite peacefully. The captain gave 
 one look. Then he let out a yell of surprise. 
 
 "Good heavens! It s Professor Barker Harri 
 son!" 
 
 He explained to the mystified O Mahoney in a 
 furious whisper. 
 
 The latter shook his head. 
 
 "Begabs an I can t help it at all, at all. He 
 assaulted me. He gave me them aliases. And I 
 swear by the Blessed Virgin that he was sober as 
 you and me, captain." 
 
 The captain shook his head. 
 
 "Poor fellow!" he said. "Overwork or I m a 
 Dutchman." 
 
 So he quashed the charges and telephoned to the 
 Professor s wife, who by this time had come out 
 of her swoon and was horribly worried over her 
 husband s absence. 
 
 She came. The captain explained to her. To 
 gether they awakened the Professor. 
 
 When the Professor came to he gave another 
 war-w r hoop. 
 
 "Ho!" he said. "There is that impudent slave 
 
ioo WINGS 
 
 woman again. Did I not give orders to have her 
 soundly beaten?" 
 
 Nobody answered him. But they all stared at 
 him, puzzled, wondering what to do. He stared at 
 them in return. 
 
 Then, very gradually, a peculiar dislocation of 
 ideas came over his mind. For a few moments he 
 seemed to be taking part in a whirling gambol in 
 which his own Ego, that of the people around him 
 and twenty centuries of human history and civiliza 
 tion were madly mixed up together. Then a small 
 fragment of his consciousness seemed to separate 
 itself. It seemed to be watching, within his brain, 
 the other fragments of his consciousness which were 
 behaving in a perfectly incredible and perfectly in 
 sane manner. He saw and studied those fragments 
 like detached and separate projections of his Ego. 
 
 Very slowly, he recognized his body. He rec 
 ognized the body and the personality of his wife, 
 of the captain of police, of the sergeant. His eyes 
 traveled, and he recognized the body and the per 
 sonality of Ivan Sborr who was sleeping out his 
 drunk in the next cell. 
 
 And, suddenly, he understood. He put his hand 
 to his head. 
 
TARTAR 101 
 
 "Good Lord !" he murmured. 
 
 The captain touched him on the shoulder. 
 
 "Go home with your wife, Professor," he said 
 in a kindly voice. "You ve worked too hard. No- 
 body ll hear about your little escapade." 
 
 The Professor did as he was bid. He took ten 
 grains of veronal and slept the next day until noon. 
 He dressed, went downstairs, and took his accus 
 tomed place at the luncheon table. 
 
 His wife was mixing the dressing for the salad. 
 She looked up. 
 
 "Barker!" she said. 
 
 The Professor was all attention. 
 
 "Yes, dearest?" he asked in a small voice. 
 
 "Will you do me a favor?" 
 
 "Yes, dearest. Anything! Anything!" 
 
 His wife smiled and to his dying day the Pro 
 fessor did not know if the smile was sweet or 
 bitter. 
 
 "Would you mind, Barker, the next time you live 
 through a period of the past, picking out a char 
 acter from Bishop Taylor s Lives of the Saints ?" 
 
 And she rang the bell for the maid to bring in 
 hot plates. 
 
RENUNCIATION 
 
 WHEN she came to him that night, forty-eight 
 hours before he sailed for France with his battalion, 
 she did so of her own free will. 
 
 For he had not seen her; he had not written to 
 her; he had even tried not to think of her since that 
 shimmering, pink-and-lavender noon of early June, 
 two years earlier, when, in rose point lace and 
 orange-blossoms, she had walked up the aisle of 
 St. Thomas s Church and had become the wife of 
 Dan Coolidge. 
 
 Her low, trembling "I will!" had sounded the 
 death-knell of Roger Kenyon s tempestuous youth. 
 He had plucked her from his heart, had uprooted 
 her from his mind, from his smoldering, subcon 
 scious passion had cast the memory of her pale, pure 
 oval of a face to the limbo of visions that must be 
 forgotten. 
 
 It seemed strange that he could do so ; for Roger 
 had always been a hot-blooded, virile, inconsiderate 
 
 103 
 
104 WINGS 
 
 man who rode life as he rode a horse, with a loosf 
 rein, a straight bit, and rowel-spurs. He had al 
 yvays had a headstrong tendency to hurdle with 
 tense, savage joy across the obstacles he encoun 
 tered which were of his own making as often 
 as not. 
 
 He had been in the habit of taking whatever sen 
 sations and emotions he could until he had met 
 Josephine Erskine up there in that sleepy, drab New 
 England village where, for a generation or two, her 
 people had endeavored to impose upon the world 
 with a labored, pathetic, meretricious gentility. 
 
 Heretofore, woman had meant nothing to him 
 except a charming manifestation of sex. 
 
 Then suddenly, like a sweet, swift throe, love had 
 come to him in Josephine s brown, gold-flecked eyes 
 and crimson mouth. 
 
 He had told her so quite simply as they walked 
 in the rose-garden ; but she had shaken her head. 
 
 "No, Roger," she had replied. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "I do not love you." 
 
 She told him that she was going to become the 
 wife, for better or for worse, of Dan Coolidge, a 
 college chum of his a mild, bald-headed, paunchy, 
 
RENUNCIATION 105 
 
 stock-broking chap with a steam-yacht, a garage full 
 of imported, low-slung motor-cars, a red-brick-and- 
 white- woodwork house on the conservative side of 
 Eleventh Street, a few doors from Fifth Avenue, 
 a place in Westchester County at exactly the correct 
 distance between suburbia and yokeldom ; four serv 
 ants, including a French not an English butler; 
 and a mother who dressed in black bombazine and 
 bugles. 
 
 "Yes," she had said in a weak, wiped-over voice, 
 "I am going to marry Dan." 
 
 "Because you love him and because you don t 
 love me ?" 
 
 "Yes, Roger!" 
 
 He had laughed a cracked, high-pitched laugh 
 that had twisted his dark, handsome face into a sar 
 donic mask. 
 
 "You lie, my dear," he had replied brutally, and 
 when she gasped and blushed he had continued: 
 "You lie and you know you do! You love me I 
 I can feel it in my heart, my soul, in every last fiber 
 and cell of my being. I can feel it waking and 
 sleeping. Your love is mine, quite mine a thing 
 both definite and infinite. You don t love Dan !" 
 
 "But" 
 
io6 WINGS 
 
 "I ll tell you why you re going to marry him. 
 It s because he has money, and I have no financial 
 prospects except a couple of up-State aunts who 
 are tough and stringy, and who have made up their 
 minds to survive me, whatever happens." 
 
 "I must think of mother and the girls," had come 
 her stammered admission through a blurred veil 
 of hot tears; "and Fred he must go to Har 
 vard" 
 
 "Right! You have your mother, and the girls, 
 and Fred, and the rest of your family, and they ll 
 all live on Dan s bounty and on the sacrifice you re 
 making of yourself not to mention myself I" 
 
 Then, after a pause, taking her by both her slen 
 der shoulders, he went on: 
 
 "I could make love to you now, my dear. I could 
 crush you in my arms and you d marry Dan aft 
 erward, and somehow strike a compromise between 
 your inbred, atavistic Mayflower Puritanism and 
 the resolute Greek paganism which is making your 
 mouth so red. But" as she swayed and trem 
 bled "I won t! I m going to play the game!" 
 
 She said nothing. He laughed and spoke again : 
 
 "Confound it! You can put your foot on every 
 decency, on every bully, splendid emotion, on the 
 
RENUNCIATION 107 
 
 blessed decalogue itself as long as you play the 
 game!" 
 
 So he had gone away, after being Dan s best man, 
 to his little plantation in South Carolina. 
 
 For two years he had not seen her, had not writ 
 ten to her, had even tried not to think of her 
 
 And there she stood now on the threshold of 
 his room in the discreet little hotel where he had 
 put up, with a grinning, plump boy in buttons, his 
 hand well weighted with money, winking as if to 
 say: 
 
 "It s O. K., boss. I m goin to keep mum, all 
 right, all right!" 
 
 Then the boy closed the door, and the bolt 
 snapped into the lock with a little steely, jeering 
 click. 
 
 She was dressed in white from head to foot ; only 
 her lips were red, and the long-stemmed Gloire de 
 Dijon rose that she held in her hand. 
 
 She spoke in a matter-of-fact voice, as if contin 
 uing a conversation that had been interrupted just 
 for a second by the entry of a servant or the post 
 man s whistle: 
 
 "Don t you see, Roger? I had to come. I had 
 
io8 WINGS 
 
 to say good-by to you before you sail for France !" 
 
 He did not move from where he stood between 
 the two windows, with the moonlight drifting across 
 his shoulders into the dim, prosy hotel room, and 
 weaving a fantastic pattern into the threadbare 
 carpet. 
 
 There was surprise in his accents, and a keen, 
 peremptory challenge. 
 
 "How did you know that I was booked to sail? 
 Our orders are secret. I am here on a special mis 
 sion until the day after to-morrow incognito, at 
 that Josephine, how did you find me out? Who 
 told you that I was here ?" 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 "Of course I knew, dear. How could I help 
 knowing?" 
 
 Suddenly, strangely, the explanation what there 
 was of it seemed lucid and satisfactory and rea 
 sonable, and he crossed the room and bowed over 
 her hand. He took the rose from her narrow, 
 white fingers and inhaled its heavy, honeyed 
 fragrance. 
 
 "A rose from your garden!" He heard his own 
 voice coming in an odd murmur. "From your gar 
 den up there in the little New England village!" 
 
RENUNCIATION 109 
 
 "Yes, Roger." 
 
 "Did your mother send it to you?" 
 
 "No, I picked it myself. It kept fresh, didn t it, 
 Roger dear?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 He remembered the garden where they had 
 walked side by side, two years earlier where he 
 had told her of his love. 
 
 It was the one splotch of color, the one sign of 
 the joy of life, in the whole drab Massachusetts 
 community, this old garden which the Erskine fam 
 ily had jealously nursed and coddled for genera 
 tions. It was a mass of roses, creepers as well as 
 bushes, scrambling and straining and growing and 
 tangling in their own strong-willed fashion, cloth 
 ing old stones with hearts of deep ruby and ame 
 thyst, building arches of glowing pink and tea-yel 
 low against the pale sky, lifting shy, single, dewy 
 heads in hushed corners, as if praying. 
 
 But he had always liked the scarlet Gloire de 
 Dijon roses best. 
 
 They were like her lips. 
 
 He looked up. 
 
 "What about Dan?" he asked. 
 
no WINGS 
 
 "Oh, Danny-" She smiled. 
 
 "He is my friend, and your husband. If he 
 knew " 
 
 "Danny won t mind, dear/ she said. 
 
 Her words carried conviction. Somehow he 
 knew that Dan wouldn t mind. 
 
 He sat down on the hard couch that faced the 
 windows, drew her down beside him, and put his 
 arm around her shoulder. 
 
 Her hand, which sought and found his, was very 
 steady and very cool. 
 
 He did not speak ; neither did she. Twisting his 
 head sidewise, he looked at her. 
 
 She was in shadow from the shoulder downward. 
 Only her face was sharply defined in the moon 
 light. The scarlet lips seemed to swim to him 
 along the slanting, glistening rays, and he leaned 
 over. 
 
 There was hunger in his soul, in his mind, in his 
 heart, in his body. 
 
 "I am going to play the game !" 
 
 Jhe words came from very far, from across the 
 bitter bridge of years, with the jarring, dissonant 
 shock of a forgotten reproach. 
 
 "Dear, dear heart !" he whispered. 
 
RENUNCIATION ill 
 
 She did not resist. She did not draw back; nor 
 did she say a word. 
 
 Only, just as his lips were about to touch hers, 
 something "an immense, invisible, and very sad 
 presence," he described it afterward seemed to 
 creep into the room, like a winged thing. 
 
 It came soundlessly; but he felt the sharp dis 
 placement of air. It was as if a huge bird s 
 pinions had cut through it, the left tip resting 
 on the farther window-sill, the right on a chair 
 near the bed, on which he had thrown his khaki 
 overcoat and his campaign hat. 
 
 With it came a sense of unutterable peace and 
 sweetness, strangely flavored with a great pain. As 
 he leaned back without having touched her lips, the 
 pain was mysteriously transmuted. 
 
 It became a realization, not a vision, of color 
 clear, deep scarlet with a faint golden glow in the 
 center. Then began to assume a definite form 
 that of a gigantic Gloire de Dijon rose, which, as he 
 watched, slowly shrank to its natural proportions 
 until it rested, velvety, scented, where he had 
 dropped the rose among the books on his writing- 
 desk. 
 
 He rose to pick it up. 
 
112 WINGS 
 
 When he turned back again, he saw that she had 
 left the couch and was standing on the threshold 
 of the open door, a blotch of filmy, gauzy white. 
 
 She was gone before he could rush to her side. 
 When he tried to cross the threshold, to run after 
 her, he felt again the wings, and the feeling brought 
 with it a sense of ineffable sweetness and peace, 
 which enveloped his subconscious self in a rush of 
 blind delight. 
 
 It was Captain Donaldson of his regiment who 
 startled him out of his sleep early the next morning. 
 
 "Hurry up, old man!" he said. "The transport 
 sails this afternoon instead of to-morrow." 
 
 Roger Kenyon tumbled out of bed and walked 
 over to the desk where he had dropped the rose the 
 night before. 
 
 "What are you looking for?" asked his friend. 
 "A cigarette ? Here have one of mine !" 
 
 "No, no. I thought I had left a rose here last 
 night a scarlet Gloire de Dijon rose ; but " 
 
 "Gallant adventure, eh?" laughed Donaldson. 
 "Say, you must have been drinking! Why, this 
 isn t a rose it s a white lily !" 
 
 He picked up the stiff, sweet-scented flower. 
 
RENUNCIATION 113 
 
 "By the way," asked Donaldson, facing his friend 
 over coffee and toast and eggs, "have you heard 
 that Danny Coolidge s wife died last night?" 
 
 "Yes," replied Roger Kenyon. 
 
KRISHNAVANA, 
 DESTROYER OF SOULS 
 
 THIS is the story of the pale shadow of a for 
 gotten love and of the death which therefrom came 
 to the soul of a man. It is also the story of an 
 other man, a man of Hindustan, who took the soul 
 of the first man for the sake of revenge, and 
 squeezed it until it was as dry as a dom-nut and as 
 bitter as a Dead-Sea apple. 
 
 But, if the whole truth be told, it is the story of 
 the jest which Allah made of the human heart, 
 when he breathed life into one lump of clay and 
 gave to it blue eyes and a white skin, and then, with 
 a strange wink at the Fallen Angel, breathed life 
 into another lump of clay and gave to it blue-black 
 hair and a brown complexion. 
 
 Krishnavana, a young Hindu of highest Brahman 
 caste, came to England thirty years ago, in the good 
 old days when the w r ord sedition was unknown in 
 
 115 
 
n6 .WINGS 
 
 Bengal and when even a nervous, overworked 
 Viceroy enjoyed occasional nights untroubled by 
 dreams of massacre and rebellion and the Seven 
 Holy Rivers red with English blood. 
 
 He studied jurisprudence in the legendary days, 
 when the dark-skinned Indian students who flashed 
 the sharp colors of their turbans in the gray maze 
 of Lincoln s Inn were apt to be more royalist than 
 the king. 
 
 And Krishnavana was of Young-India. He had 
 indeed a written pedigree reaching back to the time 
 when the East was slowly emerging from its 
 chrysalis, while the West was still in the throes of 
 primitive erosion. But he freely acknowledged the 
 power of the white-skinned Helots who had become 
 masters overnight, while Asia was having one of her 
 periodical naps. 
 
 And so he plucked with both hands at the fruit 
 of the tree of Western wisdom; he steeped himself 
 in English literature, history and political ideals ; he 
 deposed the many-armed, lust-scabbed gods of his 
 ancestors and set up in their place brand-new, neat 
 little idols, labeled Burke, John Stuart Mill, Topi- 
 nard, and Universal-Brotherhood-Regardless v f 
 Race, Faith and Color. 
 
KRISHNA VAN A 117 
 
 He even became an adept at cricket, and the very 
 day on which he made a "century" at the Oval, he 
 gave a tentative tug at the Sacred Thread which 
 was the secret emblem of his caste, and had qualmy 
 thoughts of the gentle Christ, a house in Hemp- 
 stead, a subscription to the Winning Post, admission 
 to the English Bar, a potential Q. C, and English- 
 born children, a little dark-skinned perhaps, but with 
 the blue eyes of the Master-Beast and a thorough 
 command of Public School slang . . . the last par 
 ticular dream due to Miss Agnes Couzens, who 
 loved him and whom he loved. 
 
 At least that s what they both claimed. It may 
 have been that it was only the mystery of the Orient 
 in his eyes which captured her, and the mystery of 
 the Occident in hers which captured him. But they 
 were eager to jump over the barrier which the 
 prejudices of a dozen centuries have erected be 
 tween East and West. 
 
 Unfortunately the girl had a brother, Oughtred 
 Couzens, who was cursed with a malignant form of 
 youth. He was a very young man, temporarily 
 domiciled at Christ Church, Oxford, and his three 
 chief deities were High Church, High Toryism and 
 Old Port. He was not a bad sort, but simply one 
 
n8 WINGS 
 
 of those young men about whom you may easily 
 produce a false impression if you describe them at 
 all. His education had been the ordinary education 
 of English gentlemen : in other words, he ate well, 
 and he knew things that were information, but he 
 did not know things that were things. 
 
 He was positive only about the one fact, that the 
 white race was the race, that Asia had not even a 
 sporting chance, and that men like Tamerlane, 
 Genghis Khan, Akbar, and Aurangzeb were "rum 
 blighters with unpronounceable names." 
 
 And so there was a nasty scene when Krish- 
 navana and Agnes mentioned their miscegenating 
 intentions. Agnes s love for the Hindu could not 
 stand up against High Church and Old Port; her 
 brother won, and the Brahman took his medicine. 
 
 Only when he was about to turn the handle of 
 the door, he said : 
 
 "Where is the religion of robbers; where is the 
 forbearance of a fool; where is the affection of a 
 courtezan; where is the truth of a Christian?" 
 
 Couzens, who was very busy with his sister who 
 had fainted, made some remark about crazy Oriental 
 metaphors. But perhaps he would have thought a 
 little differently if he could have heard what the 
 
KRISHNAVANA 119 
 
 Hindu was saying, over and over again, on his way 
 back to his lodgings. It was a queer exclamation, 
 and it ran: 
 
 "I pray God that there is a hell . . . for the sake 
 of mine enemies, for the peace of my soul." 
 
 Couzens should also have considered that the wise 
 man guards against the vengeance of an elephant, 
 a cobra and a Hindu. But Couzens was not a wise 
 man. Also, what does a monkey know of the taste 
 of ginger? 
 
 It was not really Couzens s complexional preju 
 dice which infuriated Krishnavana : for if the 
 White does not like the Brown from an esthetic 
 point of view, the Brown replies in the flowery lan 
 guage of the Orient that fairer even than the white 
 is the leper. 
 
 Krishnavana was chiefly outraged because Cou 
 zens had made gentle remarks about family, 
 mesalliance, suitable marriage, and similar fetishes. 
 
 Now the Englishman was the descendant of a 
 knight who had crossed the Channel with William 
 the Conqueror in comparatively recent times . . . 
 a matter of eight hundred years or so ago . . . 
 while Krishnavana s father was a Tomara of Delhi, 
 claiming kinship with the flame, and his mother a 
 
120 WINGS 
 
 Rathor of Kanauj, thus tracing her origin back to 
 an indiscretion between the sun and the moon. 
 
 And then to be told that Agnes should marry an 
 equal . . . that s what hurt. 
 
 It is easily understood that, when Krishnavana 
 reached his rooms, he solemnly cursed Burke, John 
 Stuart Mill, Topinard, and Universal-Brotherhood- 
 Regardless-of-Race, Color and Creed, that he made 
 a few unparliamentary remarks about Christianity, 
 England, and the white race in general, and prayed 
 long and fervently to Kali, the Mother, the great 
 goddess of destruction. 
 
 He nursed no thoughts of killing; for he was of 
 an old race and knew that blood cannot be washed 
 out with blood. Also there is no sweetness in giv 
 ing death, since the last moment of life is but as a 
 quick, twisting lance-thrust, since the memory of 
 pain is of the body and not of the soul, and since 
 the man who is killed is born again in a child s body, 
 free of wounds and blemishes. 
 
 To kill well, you must kill the soul. And the 
 soul of Oughtred Couzens was the soul of the 
 System which had conceived him. 
 
 Thus Krishnavana swore calm and terrible re 
 venge against the System, cherishing his hatred as 
 
KRISHNAVANA 121 
 
 Paricarika cherished her love for Sakka, the power 
 ful god of ruddy color. 
 
 And so, when he returned to India, he declared 
 war against England and the Cross. 
 
 It was a trial of patience, and knowing that to 
 practice the patience of Job one must have the age 
 of Noah, he nursed the health of his body and 
 worked carefully and soundly. 
 
 He went amongst the villages, living on alms, and 
 reciting in return the Abhangs and Tukaram and 
 Namdev, and writing letters for the illiterate. But 
 in every village he left behind him a tiny seed of 
 poison-wheat in the hearts of the peasants. 
 
 For he had the strength of words which drives 
 thoughts into brains as the wind drives a thin sheet 
 of flame. The sight of the cold, arrogant Cross 
 made his sword-arm ache, and knowing that a man 
 cannot strangle a nation \vith the strength of his 
 fingers, he used the strength of his steely, feline 
 mind. 
 
 Of course he lied ; but he lied in a masterly man 
 ner, for he lied like truth. And wherever he wan 
 dered, the snake of dissatisfaction and rebellion 
 lifted its flat, ugly head . . . not striking, but pois 
 ing its body and measuring its strength for the day 
 
122 WINGS 
 
 when one sudden strike would mean destruction to 
 the sahib-log and humiliation to the Cross. 
 
 When he heard of abuse, he exaggerated the tale 
 of it, and when he heard of good, clean reform 
 achieved by the English, he would sneer and ask if 
 a crow can become a swan by bathing in the Ganges. 
 When loyal Hindus argued with him and asked him 
 to treat the foreigners who ruled India, if not with 
 love, then at least with fairness and understanding, 
 he replied that only a fool pats a scorpion with the 
 hand of compassion; and when he heard of young 
 Rajputs enlisting in the regiments of the British, he 
 demanded why people should give poison to the 
 snake. 
 
 It has been said that harmful is a crow among 
 birds, a rat in the house, a monkey in the forest, 
 and a Brahman among men. And indeed, the 
 Brahman Krishnavana was harmful to the men and 
 the house of India. 
 
 As the sugar-cane has a sweeter taste knot after 
 knot from the top, so his influence grew with each 
 succeeding year, with each succeeding pilgrimage 
 through the broad land of Hind. 
 
 Then, after he had acquired local reputation, he 
 went in for religious revival ; and if the worship of 
 
KRISHNAVANA 123 
 
 Kali, the sanguinary goddess of destruction, and the 
 cult of Shiva ji-Maharaj, the Mahratta chieftain 
 who in his day had humbled the pride of the alien 
 conqueror, played a conspicuous part in this revival, 
 why . . . there was nothing in the Indian Criminal 
 Code taking exception to the worship of any par 
 ticular deity. 
 
 Finally, after many years of preparation, he be 
 gan to preach an aggressive doctrine. And the 
 Government of India said two or three words to 
 the Secret Service, and several well-paid servants 
 of the Crown went on the Brahman s trail. 
 
 But they found themselves face to face with an 
 enigma ; for although nobody knew the past history 
 of the man, although there was a look in his eyes 
 which courted Third Degree methods, he was found 
 to be very much like a jackf ruit : full of juice inside, 
 but very thorny outside. Also there was never 
 a letter found, there was never a conspiracy 
 hatched which pointed directly to him, there 
 was never a plot discovered which compromised 
 him. 
 
 And Krishnavana mentioned the magical words 
 "Habeas Corpus," and went on his way, warring 
 against the Cross. 
 
124 WINGS 
 
 So, when Oughtred Couzens came to India many 
 years later, the Hindu was a power in the land. 
 Oughtred did not recognize him when he met him. 
 Years and a beard and native dress are a wonderful 
 disguise. 
 
 Couzens had also changed. After the scab of 
 youth had rubbed itself off in contact with the harsh 
 corners of the world, he was still a baby overtaken 
 by manhood. The place in his soul which had 
 formerly been filled by Omniscience, was now empty 
 except for a residue of diffidence, so that he was 
 easily influenced, affected and swerved. 
 
 He had become a missionary after a brief spasm 
 of religion due to the harangue of a North Dakota 
 Evangelist who had swooped eagle-wise on Britain s 
 unprotected shores, had obeyed the call and had 
 gone forth to convert Asia. 
 
 His mind was incapable of concise and lucid state 
 ments ; the fruit of his intelligence could only ripen 
 in a congenial soil of mystery and suggestion, and 
 his soul could only communicate with a strange soul 
 by a sort of wireless psychic telegraphy. And so 
 he was a fine subject for Indian mission work . . . 
 but not the way he imagined. 
 
 Let it finally be understood that the Reverend 
 
KRISHNAVANA 125 
 
 Oughtred Couzens was a sincere Christian, happy in 
 his faith and happy in his faith alone, but that 
 he prided himself on his broad-mindedness and 
 his willingness to be convinced, and kept therefore 
 in his soul a little reserve corner inoculated 
 with a subconscious doubt of the very creed whicH 
 meant his happiness and which he had come to 
 preach. 
 
 It was good for the peace of India that the two 
 met one evening in a Punjab village. For when the 
 Hindu saw that the black-frocked missionary was 
 Oughtred Couzens and that the recognition was not 
 mutual, he decided to grant a little breathing-space 
 to the Raj, and to busy himself with the particular 
 destiny of the one man who had planted in his heart 
 the seed of his crimson hatred for the Cross. 
 
 He took the Englishman s measure, and then he 
 began to lay his plans, securely and smilingly. He 
 knew that with the help of a little patience he would 
 soon be able to sacrifice a writhing, smoking, blood 
 stained soul on the altar of Kali, the Great Mother. 
 
 Seeing that the weakest spot in his enemy s armor 
 was a dormant northern love for the mysteries of 
 Asia, he knew where to introduce the thin end of 
 the wedge. 
 
126 WINGS 
 
 Couzens was charmed with the gentle, cultured, 
 clever Brahman. He had never before met a man 
 who could argue in such a strangely convincing 
 manner. 
 
 And indeed, Krishnavana gave of his best. His 
 speech was a butterfly which rests for a second on 
 a trembling leaf; his sarcasm was a thousand 
 splintering lance-points, and his knowledge of the 
 mysterious roots which are the creeds and the hearts 
 of men, was profound and astounding. His mental 
 strength was a cat in climbing, a deer in running, a 
 snake in twisting, a hawk in pouncing, and a dog 
 in scenting. 
 
 And so he got beneath the Englishman s skin, 
 and caused him to delve into the depths of his self- 
 consciousness . . . and to find them empty. And 
 then, gently and slowly, Krishnavana began to fill 
 up the emptiness in Oughtred s heart with new wis 
 dom, new suggestions, and the sweetly pungent 
 odor of the Eastern mysteries which putrify the 
 brains and plague-spot the hearts of Western men. 
 
 It is true that Oughtred fought hard for the old 
 belief which was his happiness, his life, his very 
 reason for existence. But he was as soft clay in 
 a potter s hands. 
 
KRISHNAVANA 127 
 
 And so the wedge of the East entered ever more 
 deeply into his heart. 
 
 It was Couzens himself who first asked the Brah 
 man about the practiced magic of India, about 
 fakirs, yogis, gurus, and that Sixth Sense of the 
 brown man which the baffled white savant dismisses 
 as auto-suggestion and superstition, so as to save his 
 face. 
 
 Krishnavana began by showing him the ordinary 
 tricks of the veranda- fakir : the tricks of the basket, 
 the rope, the mango, and the snake-stone. 
 
 Then one day, in a village of the Ahmednager 
 district, he showed him a Sikh guru who came out 
 of his tent, a drawn sword in his hand, and de 
 manded to be allowed to cut off the head of any one 
 who claimed to be a faithful and believing Bakhta. 
 
 And when the Sikh shouted "Wdkwvak" and 
 two or three disciples, quivering with excitement 
 and drunk with bhang, had their heads cut off, only 
 to be restored to life a minute later, the Indian 
 Episcopal Mission came near to losing a promising 
 missionary. 
 
 Later Krishnavana began to initiate the English 
 man into the mysteries of the left-handed sects and 
 the Vaishnavite cult. And at night, when Couzens 
 
128 WINGS 
 
 returned to his tent and opened the Bible with the 
 idea of fortifying his wavering soul, he would read 
 in the black-bound book tales of other miracles . . . 
 similar to the ones he had seen in the afternoon, 
 but weaker, cheaper, more prosaic. 
 
 Also there is a difference between the miracles 
 of which you read, and the ones which you see with 
 the eyes of your body, in the clear light of the sun. 
 
 It is not the claw of the man-eater, but the sting 
 of the bramra-bee which drives the elephant mad 
 and makes him kill his mahout. It is not the cloud- 
 born hurricane, but the turning and dropping of a 
 small pebble which hurls the avalanche into the 
 valley on its journey of ruin and destruction. 
 
 And even thus it was with the soul of the 
 Reverend Oughtred Couzens. 
 
 For it was a small, dun-colored turtle which 
 caused his final spiritual downfall, and which later 
 on shriveled his soul a small, dun-colored turtle, 
 held in the thin, masterful hand of Krishna vana, 
 Hater of the Cross and Destroyer of Souls. 
 
 For one evening, when they were talking about 
 the unseen forces of nature, the unseen energy 
 which breeds what the priests call miracles, Krish- 
 navana remarked in a gentle voice : 
 
KRISHNAVANA 129 
 
 "An impossible thing should not be spoken ; when 
 it happens before the eyes it is seen : a stone swims 
 in the river, an ape sings a Kashmiri love-song." 
 
 Then he remarked casually that, thanks to fast 
 ing, torturing his body and submitting to the ordeal 
 of fire, Shiva had given to him a certain wisdom 
 which permitted him to cause living things to change 
 as he \villed them to, to increase in size, to expand, 
 and then to shrink back to their original shape. 
 
 Couzens s revolted Christianity and outraged 
 European common sense made one last, desperate 
 stand. He doubted and sneered in a weak, 
 half-hearted manner. And Krishnavana repeated 
 calmly : 
 
 "When the impossible happens before the eyes it 
 is seen/ and he proceeded to perform the miracle. 
 
 He bought a little land-turtle, one span in length, 
 and he told Couzens that, with the help of certain 
 incantations, he would cause the animal to grow 
 every day for three days by a span ; but on the fourth 
 day he would recite another incantation, and then 
 the turtle would decrease by a span every day for 
 three days until, on the morning of the seventh day, 
 it would have returned to its original size. 
 
 Krishnavana put the turtle into a wooden cage, 
 
130 WINGS 
 
 he moved his hands in a mysterious manner, and 
 recited in a hollow voice : 
 
 "Bhut, pret, pisach, dana, 
 Chhee mantar, sab nikal jana, 
 Mane, mane, Shivka khahna . . . ," 
 
 and the miracle happened as foretold by the Brah 
 man. 
 
 Every night the turtle grew, and in the morning 
 it had increased its length by a span, for three days 
 in succession; then it decreased for another three 
 days, until at the end of the week it was again 
 a little animal one span in length. 
 
 And this took place although the cage was put 
 underneath the bed in which Oughtred Couzens 
 slept. And there was no explanation for it. 
 
 Only Krishnavana had taken the precaution to 
 doctor Couzens s good-night cup of tea with a dose 
 of hemp, to creep into the tent night after night, 
 and to put a different turtle into the cage. 
 
 At the end of the week Couzens was a nervous 
 wreck. His old creed was dead, his heart was 
 empty, and he was eager to swallow the new belief, 
 eager to absorb India and in the process become him 
 self absorbed. 
 
KRISHNAVANA 131 
 
 And the gentle Brahman pitied and helped 
 him. 
 
 He took the empty soul of Oughtred Couzens and 
 filled it with golden peace and happiness, he inocu 
 lated it with the ancient wisdom of India, and ever 
 he made a point of dwelling on the fact that it was 
 a little turtle which had worked the final conversion, 
 which had destroyed the pagan belief in the Cross, 
 which had opened to the Englishman the door of 
 Asia s great, mysterious treasure-house. Thus had 
 the many gods of India shown their might in the 
 body of a small animal. 
 
 Couzens wondered and believed and worshiped, 
 and even after Krishnavana had left him, he con 
 tinued more and more to become an integral part of 
 the land in which he lived, believing implicitly in the 
 lessons of the land, and above all things happy in his 
 new belief. 
 
 Never again could Christ come back to his soul. 
 
 But what of it? He had a new faith, a true 
 faith, a faith which worked miracles, a faith in 
 which happiness and wisdom mated. 
 
 And so the Reverend Oughtred Couzens became 
 a Holy Man of Hindustan; he built a little temple 
 near a village, and there, on an altar painted ocher, 
 
132 WINGS 
 
 he worshiped the greatness of Shiva in the shape 
 of a turtle. 
 
 Several years passed through the land, and Krish- 
 navana considered it was time to finish the revenge, 
 and to make the promised offer of a living soul to 
 Kali, the Destroying Goddess. 
 
 And so, late one evening, Krishnavana walked 
 into the village where the "yogi-sahib," as the 
 natives called him, had his temple. He found him 
 doing bhajan in front of the turtle-image, and there 
 was deep devotion and calm happiness on his face 
 in the yellow-and-pink light of the dying sun. 
 
 When he had finished his worship and saw the 
 Brahman, he rushed up to him, with love in his eyes, 
 and took his hands and called him many names of 
 honor and endearment; the East had gone into his 
 blood and his speech, and so he called him a Vast 
 Sea of Excellent Qualities; the Father and Mother 
 of Brahmans, Cows, and Women; the Blood of his 
 Liver, and several other fine things. 
 
 Then he turned again to the ocher-colored altar 
 and bowed before the idol, and thanked Krish 
 navana, saying: 
 
 "I owe to you my happiness and my life. You 
 
KRISHNAVANA 133 
 
 have opened my eyes to the mysteries of this world 
 and of the next. You have given me peace and 
 happiness. And you did it all through the miracle 
 of the turtle . . . blessed be the Holy Name of 
 Shiva." 
 
 And Krishnavana replied : 
 
 "Yes, most dear. It was indeed the miracle of 
 the turtle which lifted the veil of your old, foul 
 creed and which gave to you the mantle of truth. 
 It was the miracle of the turtle which filled the 
 yawning emptiness of your heart. Without it you 
 would be but the shriveled husk of an empty, jin 
 gling soul/ 
 
 Here he smiled and looked at Couzens, and then 
 he continued gently : 
 
 "I shall now explain to you how the miracle of 
 the turtle was done ..." 
 
 That night Krishnavana sacrificed on the blood 
 stained altar of Kali, the Mother, the soul of Ought- 
 red Couzens, and it was as empty as a dried tinduka 
 fruit, as dry as a dom-nut, and as bitter as a Dead- 
 Sea apple . . . 
 
THAT HAUNTING THING 
 
 DIANA MANNING was the very last woman to 
 whom such a thing should have happened. For 
 there was nothing about her in the least psychic or 
 spiritual. 
 
 She was matter with a capital M, and sex with a 
 capital S; $, rather, since hers was sex without the 
 excuse of passion sex dealing entirely and shame 
 lessly with bank accounts, high power racing cars, 
 diamonds, and vintage champagnes. 
 
 She was lovely, and she drove the hearts and the 
 purses of men as a breath drives a thin sheet of 
 flame. 
 
 Only her finger nails gave the mark of the east 
 side tenement (she was a nee Maggie Smith) where 
 she had been born and bred ; for they were too well 
 kept, too highly polished, too perfectly manicured. 
 
 But men did not notice. They seldom looked 
 farther than her hair which was like a sculptured 
 reddish-bronze helmet, her low, smooth, ivory fore- 
 
 135 
 
136 WINGS 
 
 head, her short, delicately curved nose, her lips 
 which were crimson like a fresh sword wound, her 
 eyes which spoke of wondrous promises and lied 
 damnably. 
 
 Her life had been melodramatic from the man s 
 angle, be it understood, and not from her own since, 
 sublimely evil, she was beyond the moralizing sense 
 of bad and, of course, good. 
 
 There had been death in the trail of her shimmer 
 ing gowns, suicide, ruin, the slime of the divorce 
 courts, disgrace to more than one. 
 
 But she had never cared a whit. 
 
 She was always petting her own hard thoughts, 
 puncturing the lives of strangers who never re 
 mained strangers for long with the dagger point 
 of her personality, her greed, her evil ; and men kept 
 on fluttering around the red, burning candle which 
 was her life, like silly willow flies. 
 
 Then more deaths, Requiems bought and paid 
 for, and all that sort of thing. 
 
 Quite melodramatic. Incredibly, garishly so. 
 
 But what will you? 
 
 It isn t always the woman who pays, stage and 
 pulpit to the contrary. And if she does pay it s 
 usually the man who endorses the note. 
 
THAT HAUNTING THING 137 
 
 When she reached her home on the upper west 
 side that Saturday night, she felt the Thing the mo 
 ment she stepped across the threshold. She felt it 
 shrouded, ambiguous, vague. But it was there. 
 Very small at first. Hidden somewhere in the 
 huge, square entrance hall and peeping in upon her 
 mind. 
 
 She wondered what it was, and what it might be 
 doing there. 
 
 So she called to her maid : 
 
 "Annette ! Annette !" 
 
 She did not call to reassure herself. For the 
 woman was not afraid. That was it exactly; she 
 was not afraid from first to last. If she had been, 
 she would have switched on the light. 
 
 But she did not. She left the flat in darkness. 
 Deliberately. 
 
 And that, again, was strange since hitherto she 
 had always hated darkness and half-light and seep 
 ing, graying shadow; had always wanted and 
 gloried in full, orange bursts of color big, cluster 
 ing, massive, cruel lights. She had just that sort of 
 complexion pallid, you know, smooth, with her 
 color rising evenly, dawn-hued and tender, and 
 never in patches and blurry streaks. 
 
138 WINGS 
 
 "Annette! Annette!" she called again, a mere 
 matter of habit; for she relied on her respectable, 
 middle-aged Burgundian maid for anything and 
 everything that troubled her, from wrestling with 
 a cynical, inquisitive reporter to putting the correct 
 quantity of ammonia in her bromo seltzers. 
 
 "Yes, modame" came the maid s sleepy voice. 
 
 "Has anybody called?" 
 
 "No, madame" 
 
 "But" 
 
 She looked into the corner of the entrance hall. 
 The Thing seemed to be crouching amongst the pea 
 cock-green cushions of the ottoman there. 
 
 "But, Annette " she commenced again. 
 
 She did not complete the sentence. Somehow, it 
 did not make any difference. The Thing was there. 
 
 And what did it matter how it had got in ? 
 
 "I am coming, madame" said the maid. 
 
 "Never mind. Go to sleep. I ll undress myself. 
 Good night, Annette !" 
 
 "Good night, madame!" 
 
 Diana Manning shrugged her shoulders, walked 
 across the entrance hall, and put her hand on the 
 door-knob of her boudoir. She said to herself that 
 
THAT HAUNTING THING 139 
 
 she would open the door quickly, slide in, and close 
 it as quickly. 
 
 For she sensed, rather, she knew, that the Thing 
 intended to follow her. It radiated energy and 
 vigor and determination. A certain kindly de 
 termination that, just for a fleeting moment, touched 
 in her the sense of awe. 
 
 But the moment she opened the door, the moment 
 her lithe body slid from the darkness of the entrance 
 hall into the creamy, silky, perfumed darkness of 
 her boudoir, she knew that the Thing flitted in by 
 her side. She felt it blow over her neck, her face, 
 her breast, like a gust of wind. 
 
 It even touched her. It touched her wow-physi 
 cally. That is the only way to put it. 
 
 Nor was she afraid then. On the contrary, she 
 felt rather sorry for the Thing. And that touched 
 in her once more the sense of awe naturally, since 
 to feel sorry was to her a new sensation, since never 
 before in all her life had she felt sorry for anything 
 or anybody. 
 
 The result was that she began to hate the Thing 
 with cold, calculating hatred, hatred without fear. 
 
 She locked the windows and doors. Quite in 
 stinctively her hand brushed the tiny nacre button 
 
I 4 o WINGS 
 
 which controlled the Venetian chandelier. But sht 
 did not press it. She left the boudoir in darkness. 
 
 For she was familiar with every stick of furniture 
 about the place. She knew the exact location of 
 the great, carved, crimson-and-gold Spanish renais 
 sance day bed between the window and the fireplace, 
 the big buhl table in the center of the room, the 
 smaller one, covered with a mass of bric-a-brac, be 
 tween the two windows, the low divan running 
 along the south wall and overlapping toward the 
 fireplace, the three chairs at odd angles, the four 
 little tabourets, and, in the northeast corner, the 
 Chinese screen, inlaid with ivory and lac and jade, 
 behind which she kept a small liquor chest. She 
 knew the room, every inch of it, and could move 
 about it, in spite of the darkness, like a cat. 
 
 The Thing, on the other hand, whatever it was, 
 would find many pitfalls in the cluttered-up boudoir 
 if it tried to get rambunctious. 
 
 These latter were the exact words with which 
 Diana Manning expressed the thought to herself ; in 
 this very moment of awe and hatred. Remember 
 she was born and bred on the east side. Of 
 course, since those days of sooty, sticky, grimy tene 
 ment chrysalis, she had learned to broaden her a s 
 
THAT HAUNTING THING 141 
 
 and slur her r s and to change the slang of the 
 gutters for that of the race tracks. 
 
 But, somehow, she knew that the Thing would be 
 more familiar with her earlier diction. 
 
 She lay down on the couch, staring into the dark 
 ness. 
 
 She had decided to watch carefully, to pounce 
 upon the Thing suddenly and to throttle it. 
 
 For, somehow, the Thing had taken on the sug 
 gestion of deliberate, personal intention of an 
 aggressive hostility something which felt and 
 hated, even suffered, yet which had no bodily 
 reality. 
 
 The realization of it froze Diana into rigidity 
 not the rigidity of fear, but something far worse 
 than fear, partaking of Fate of she didn t know 
 what. 
 
 She only knew that she must watch then pounce 
 and kill. 
 
 "I must have matters out with it," she thought. 
 "One of us two is master in this room; it or I. 
 And I can t afford to wait all night. At half past 
 eleven young Bunny Whipple is calling for me " 
 
 Again, at the thought of Bunny Whipple, she felt 
 that strange, hateful new sensation of awe blended 
 
142 WINGS 
 
 with pity. The Thing was responsible for it the 
 Thing! 
 
 How she hated it! She clenched her fists until 
 the knuckles stretched white. What had the Thing 
 to do with Bunny Whipple and yes with Bunny 
 Whipple s little blue-eyed, golden-haired wife the 
 bride who 
 
 Diana cut off the thought in mid-air and tossed 
 it aside as if it were a soiled glove. 
 
 She watched more carefully than ever, her breath 
 coming in short staccato bursts, her body tense and 
 strained, her mind rigid. She tried to close her 
 mind ; she did not want the Thing to peep in upon 
 it. 
 
 For right then she knew she did not feel nor 
 guess she knew that the Thing had the trick of 
 expanding and decreasing at will. 
 
 It made her angry. She did not consider it 
 fair. 
 
 For it gave to the Thing the advantage of sud 
 denly shrinking to the size of a pin point and hiding 
 in a knot of the Tabriz rug which covered the floor 
 and, immediately afterwards, of bloating into mon 
 strous size, like a balloon, and floating toward the 
 stuccoed ceiling like an immense soap bubble 
 
THAT HAUNTING THING 143 
 
 hanging there looking down with that strange, 
 hateful, rather kindly determination. 
 
 "Bunny Whipple s wife " she thought again. 
 "I saw her yesterday and the silly little fool 
 recognized me. She would have spoken to me had 
 I given her the chance. Spoken to me as she wrote 
 me asking me to give her back her husband s love 
 love " 
 
 Her mind formed the word, caressed it as if it 
 were something futile and soft and na ive and laugh 
 able, like a ball of cotton or a tiny kitten 
 
 The next moment, she whipped it aside with all 
 her hard will. She sat up straight. 
 
 For, at the forming of the word, the Thing which 
 a second earlier had been a pin-point sitting on the 
 gilded edge of a Sevres vase, bloated and stretched 
 gigantically, leaped up, appeared to float, leaped 
 again toward the ceiling as if trying to jerk it away 
 from the cross beams. 
 
 Then, just as suddenly, it dropped on the floor. 
 It lay there, roaring with laughter. 
 
 Diana did not hear the laughter. She felt it. 
 She knew it. 
 
 Too, she knew exactly where it was ; between the 
 large buhl table and the divan. She d get it and 
 
144 WINGS 
 
 choke it while it lay there helpless with merriment. 
 
 She jumped from her couch, her fingers spread 
 like a cat s claws. 
 
 "I ll get you you you Thing!" she said the 
 words out loud. "I ll get you ! I ll get you !" 
 
 Her voice rose in a shrill, tearing shriek step 
 by step, she approached the divan. 
 
 "I ll get you get you get you " 
 
 "Madame! Madame! Did you call me?" 
 
 It was the maid s voice coming from the hall. 
 
 "No no ! Go to bed, Annette ! Go to bed do 
 you hear me?" as the maid rattled the door-knob. 
 "I don t want to be disturbed " 
 
 "I beg your pardon, madame" Annette coughed 
 discreetly. "I didn t know that anybody thought 
 you had come home alone I " 
 
 "Go to bed ! At once !" Diana shrieked ; then, the 
 maid s footsteps pattering away, she fell on the 
 couch, panting. 
 
 She was in a towering rage. She felt sure that 
 if it had not been for the maid she could have 
 pounced upon the Thing while it lay there on the 
 floor, roaring with laughter. 
 
 Now the laughter had died out and the Thing had 
 got away. It had shrunk into a tiny butterfly 
 
THAT HAUNTING THING 145 
 
 that s how Diana felt it which was beating its 
 wings against the brass rod of the portieres. But 
 it was fluttering rather helplessly, blindly, as if it 
 had lost some of its energy and vigor; and again 
 Diana felt sorry and correspondingly her hatred 
 grew. And her determination. 
 
 "I ll get you you " 
 
 She waited until her breath came more evenly, 
 rose, walked noiselessly to the portieres and rustled 
 them. 
 
 The Thing was startled. Diana could feel the 
 tiny wings flutter and beat. She could hear its 
 terrible, straining effort to bloat into a huge soap- 
 bubble and, not succeeding, to shrink into a pin 
 point. 
 
 But something was making it impossible, and 
 Diana knew what it was. 
 
 It was the* fact that, in one of the hidden back 
 cells of her brain, the thought of Bunny Whipple s 
 silly little fool of a golden-haired wife had taken 
 firm root, refused to budge. 
 
 So Diana kept the thought. She nursed it. It 
 seemed like a bait, and she thrust it forward. 
 
 She spoke out loud, her face raised up to the 
 portieres : 
 
146 WINGS 
 
 "Silly little fool of a golden-haired bride!" and 
 she added, out of subconscious volition : "Silly 
 Bunny!" 
 
 She had spoken the last words caressingly, as a 
 naughty boy speaks to a cat before he catches her 
 and tweaks her tail, and the Thing was about to 
 fall into the trap. For a second it hovered on the 
 brass rod, seemed to wait, expectant, undecided. 
 
 Then it came down a few inches. It fluttered 
 within reach of Diana s outstretched hand. 
 
 But when she closed her hand suddenly, viciously, 
 it winged away again, breathless, frightened, but 
 unharmed. It flew into the center of the room. It 
 made a renewed terrible effort to bloat into a 
 Balloon. 
 
 And this time it succeeded partly. 
 
 She did not feel exactly what shape it had as 
 sumed, but it was something amorphous, flabby, 
 covered all over with soft bumps which were very 
 beastly. 
 
 She followed, more determined than ever, and the 
 Thing tried to leap into the air. 
 
 It had nearly succeeded when Diana, with quick 
 presence of mind, thought again of Bunny Whipple 
 and Bunny Whipple s silly, golden-haired wife. 
 
THAT HAUNTING THING 147 
 
 "She asks me to give her back Bunny s love his 
 love! God! Does the silly little fool think that 
 Bunny loves me? Does she call that love?" 
 
 This time it was Diana who burst into a roar of 
 laughter, and the Thing stood still and listened, its 
 head cocked on one side, stupid, ridiculous, foolish; 
 and when Diana neared it, when it tried to fly, to 
 hover, to swing in mid air, all it succeeded in doing 
 was to move swiftly about the room, just an inch or 
 two away from the \voman s groping fingers. 
 
 Diana laughed again, for she knew that the 
 Thing had lost its faculty of flying, that it would 
 not be able to escape her for long with the chances 
 all in her favor. 
 
 For the boudoir was cluttered with furniture, 
 and she knew the location of every piece, while the 
 Thing would lose itself, stumble, fall, and then 
 
 "Wait ! You just wait !" she whispered ; and the 
 Thing backing away from the center of the room 
 toward the carved Chinese screen, she followed step 
 by step, her fingers groping, clawing, the lust of the 
 hunter in her eyes, in her heart. 
 
 "I ll throttle you" 
 
 Then she reconsidered. To throttle so as to kill, 
 she would have to measure her own strength exactly 
 
148 WINGS 
 
 against the Thing s strength of resistance. And 
 that would be hard. 
 
 For the Thing was non-physical. It had no 
 body. 
 
 But it was sure to have a heart. She would stab 
 that heart. 
 
 So she picked from the buhl table the jeweled 
 Circassian dagger which she had admired the day 
 before in a little shop on Lexington Avenue and 
 which Bunny had given to her with some very 
 foolish remark, quite typical of him she remem 
 bered. "I wish to God you d kill yourself with it ! 
 Get out of my life leave me in peace me and 
 Lottie" 
 
 Lottie was the silly, golden-haired v/ife. 
 
 But when, dagger in hand, Diana took up the 
 chase again, she was disappointed. For the Thing 
 seemed as familiar with the room as she herself. 
 It avoided sliding rugs, sharp-cornered buhl tables, 
 tabourets and chairs placed at odd angles. It 
 never as much as grazed a single one of the many 
 brittle bits of bric-a-brac. 
 
 Once it chuckled as if faintly amused at some 
 thing. 
 
 But Diana did not give up heart. She had made 
 
THAT HAUNTING THING 149 
 
 up her mind, and she was a hard woman her soul 
 a blending of diamond and fire-kissed steel. 
 
 "I ll get you!" and she thought of a new, better 
 way. She would corner the Thing. 
 
 Again she advanced, slowly, cautiously, step by 
 step, driving the Thing before her across the width 
 of the room, always keeping uppermost in her mind 
 the thought of Bunny Whipple and his silly fool of 
 a golden-haired wife the thought which was 
 paralyzing the Thing s faculty of bloating and 
 shrinking and flying. 
 
 The end came very suddenly. 
 
 Watching her chance, she had the Thing cornered, 
 straight up against the inlaid Chinese screen. 
 
 It tried to shrink to bloat to fly to get away. 
 
 But Diana had timed her action to the click of 
 a second. She brought the dagger down with all 
 her strength and the Thing crumpled, it gave, it 
 was not. 
 
 There was just a sharp pain, a crimson smear, 
 and a very soft voice from a far, starry, velvety 
 distance. 
 
 "You have killed me, Diana!" 
 
 "Killed whom ? Who are you ?" 
 
 "The evil in your soul, Diana ! The evil " theu 
 
150 WINGS 
 
 something which had been congealed seemed to turn 
 fluid and alive and golden; something rose into a 
 state that was too calm to be ecstasy. 
 
 The next morning, Bunny Whipple s silly, blue- 
 eyed, golden-haired wife was sitting across from 
 her husband at breakfast. 
 
 He was white and haggard and shaky. She 
 looked at him, pity in her eyes. 
 
 "Have you seen the morning paper, Bunny ?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "No! Don t want to. More scandal about me, 
 I guess " he bit the words off savagely. 
 
 "Only that that woman " she faltered. 
 
 "Diana Manning! All right! What about 
 her?" 
 
 "She was found dead last night by her maid. 
 She had stabbed herself through the heart with a 
 Circassian dagger. The the papers say that a 
 smile was on her face a happy, sweet smile as 
 if" 
 
 She picked up the Star and read the reporter s 
 lyric outburst out loud : 
 
 "As if death had brought her happiness and 
 salvation and a deep, calm, glorious fulfillment." 
 
THAT HAUNTING THING 151 
 
 Bunny Whipple did not reply. He stared into 
 his coffee cup. 
 
 Very suddenly he looked up. His wife had risen 
 and walked around the table toward him. 
 
 She put her slim, white hands on his shoulders. 
 
 There were tears in her eyes tears and a trem 
 bling question. 
 
 He drew her to him, and kissed her. 
 
THE MAN WHO LOST CASTE 
 
 IN those days, when the first wave of Hindu emi 
 gration struck the Pacific Littoral, I had a little 
 Oriental shop down Yeslerway, in the city of 
 Seattle. My tiny show-window was crammed with 
 the mellow, scented things of the turbaned places. 
 There were rugs and laces and shawls from many 
 lands, carved ivories and soapstones, white jade and 
 green jade ; and finally there were a few Hindu gods 
 and many and various daggers, bolos and barongs 
 and kurkrees and khyberees. 
 
 Then came the day when he walked into my shop, 
 all the six foot four of him, straight as a lance at 
 rest, bearded, hook-nosed, pink-turbaned, patient- 
 eyed, and silken-voiced. He handled with reverence 
 the little peacock god and the cruel, scissor-like 
 Scinde blade which lay on the counter. And so I 
 knew that he was a Mahratta and a high-caste. 
 
 He told me that he was the servant of a retired 
 Anglo-Indian officer who lived in the Queen Anne s 
 
 153 
 
154 WINGS 
 
 Addition, and Moslim though I am and Mahratta 
 though he was, we became friends, even if we 
 could not break bread together. 
 
 Then one evening, when spring was white and 
 pink, and the night air heavy with the musk of re 
 membrance and homesickness, he told me his story : 
 
 "I am Dajee, the Mahratta. I am a high-caste. 
 The peacock is sacred to my clan. We cannot kill 
 that bird, and we worship its feathers. 
 
 "To-day I serve a beef-eating Englishman, a 
 cannibal of the holy cow, though the coral necklace 
 that I wear was handed down in our family from 
 the time of my great-great-great-grandfather s 
 great-great-great-grand father. 
 
 "But who can avoid what is written by Brahma 
 on the forehead? Rajahs and ryots are alike sub 
 ject to the sports of Fate. 
 
 "To-day I am in a cold land sodden with rain, 
 and once I lived in a golden land pregnant with the 
 beam of the warm sun. To-day I softly obey the 
 voice of the foreigner, though my ancestors were 
 warriors who gave the sword when it was red and a 
 land hissing with blood. 
 
 "We are all the brittle toys of Destiny, even I, 
 who am Dajee, a Mahratta, a high-caste. 
 
THE MAN WHO LOST CASTE 155 
 
 "My father died when I was little, and there were 
 a number of female relatives to feed. Then I 
 borrowed forty-five rupees for my marriage. I 
 married the daughter of Ranjee when she was tall 
 enough to reach my waist. But my wife fell ill 
 when she was still but a child. And she sickened 
 and died. Then my bullock died, and there was the 
 interest on the loan to be paid; and so the Sowcar 
 from whom I had borrowed the money took my 
 ancestral farm in the Moffusil. 
 
 "Thus was I alone. 
 
 "What should a man do? 
 
 "I sat down and awaited the words of Fate. 
 And Fate spoke. 
 
 "The day after the Sowcar took the farm, some 
 pilgrims with crimson banners passed through the 
 village, and they visited the little shrine of Vithal, 
 and in the evening they did bhajan before the 
 images. 
 
 "There were clouds in the sky, and the sunset was 
 red. And the redness fell on the whirling limbs 
 and on the banners and on the feet of the gods and 
 goddesses, and everything seemed bathed in a vast 
 sea of blood. And the red lights and the wild 
 sound of the bhajan turned my head. Madness 
 
156 WINGS 
 
 tugged at my heart-strings. So I leapt in and I 
 joined in the dance. 
 
 "They were Mahars, low-castes, filth unspeakable 
 and reeking. I was Dajee, the Mahratta, a high- 
 caste. 
 
 "Thus I lost my caste. 
 
 "I had lost my farm, my bullock, and my wife. 
 I was a poor man. And how can a poor man feast 
 the many priests ? How can a poor man regain his 
 caste ? 
 
 "I followed my Karma. I bought a piece of red 
 cloth which I tied to a stick. I begged for food, 
 and went with the pilgrims on the road to 
 Phandarpur. 
 
 "I shall never forget the first festival the stifling 
 press of worshipers in the temple, the streams com 
 ing up and down the ghats, the frenzy of the bhajan 
 at night, and the image of the languid full moon in 
 the water of the river. 
 
 "The pilgrims returned to their own country. 
 But what was I to do? Could I return to the 
 Moffusil ? I had lost my caste. 
 
 "So I took stick and bowl and lived on alms. I 
 went to various Vaishnavite shrines. True I was 
 to the worship. Assiduously I repeated the name 
 
THE MAN WHO LOST CASTE 157 
 
 of Hari, and all my thoughts were of release from 
 worldly ambition, and of devotion to him. 
 
 "I wandered from the snows of Dhaulagiri to the 
 lingams of Ceylon, and then I met the ascetic from 
 Kashmere, the worshiper of the Lord Shiva, and I 
 became his pupil and did bodily penance. 
 
 "Gradually I subdued my body. I submitted to 
 the supreme ordeal of fire. I \valked barefoot 
 through the white-hot charcoal, I uncovered my 
 head to the burning fire-bath, and I felt not the pain 
 of the body. 
 
 "Only my tortured soul writhed with the anguish 
 of my Fate. For I was alone and an outcast. 
 
 "I sat in the midday heat during the month of 
 pilgrimages, with seven fires around me and the sun 
 scorching my shaven head, and I turned my eyes 
 toward myself and meditated on the mysterious way 
 which is Life. 
 
 "Then I met the holy man from Guzerat who told 
 me that to clear my vision and fatten the glebe of 
 my understanding, I must do penance with the head 
 hanging downward^ JL^femember well when I 
 started this penance. 
 
 "It was in the Grishna season, and behind the 
 western mountains the sun was setting, shrouded 
 
158 WINGS 
 
 with layers of gloomy clouds tinged with red like 
 fresh-spilt blood. One last look I took at mountain 
 and plain, and never had the mountains seemed so 
 high, never the plains so broad. Then I hang with 
 my head downward and shut my eyes. 
 
 "When I opened them, when I saw it all upside 
 down, the sight was marvelous beyond description, 
 The blue hills had lost their struggling height and 
 were a deep, mysterious, swallowing void. Against 
 them the sky stood out, bold, sharp, intense, like a 
 range of hills of translucent sardonyx and aqua 
 marine, immeasurably distant; and the fringe of 
 clouds at the base of the sky seemed a lake of molten 
 amber with billows of tossing, sacrificial fire. 
 
 "After the penace I went on pilgrimage to the 
 Seven Holy rivers of Hindustan, and I sat in cells 
 in lonely shrines, gazing myself into stupefaction. 
 And so, when I thought that I had freed my soul of 
 fleshly desires, I joined holy mendicants of many 
 degrees. 
 
 "But I found the holy men to be quarrelsome and 
 jealous, greedy and lustful, kissing to-day the feet 
 of the many-armed gods and to-morrow killing men 
 and poisoning cattle : each following his own Fate, 
 toward the bad or toward the good. 
 
THE MAN WHO LOST CASTE 159 
 
 "So what was the use of fighting against Fate ? 
 
 "Then I met the Christian teacher, and he ex 
 plained to me the system of his religion. I began 
 to wonder if his was the right way, and so I got 
 work on the railway so as to be able to watch the 
 Christians. But I found them as gross and as 
 carnal as all the others, and I saw no worship at all, 
 nor heard any man repeat the name of God except 
 to abuse. 
 
 "Also I spoke to the Christian teacher of having 
 lost my caste. But he was angry and said that caste 
 does not exist. Decidedly, he was a gray-minded 
 son of an owl, of no understanding. And I left 
 him. 
 
 "Then I became very despondent and hated Life. 
 And I took to ganja smoking. And then, since I 
 had lost my god, my wife, my farm, my bullock, 
 and my caste, I stole. 
 
 "Several times I was convicted, and finally, two 
 years ago, I got a long sentence in jail." 
 
 The Mahratta stopped in the recital of his tale 
 and looked straight into the distance. So I asked 
 him: 
 
 "A long sentence in jail? But you are here, in 
 America." 
 
160 WINGS 
 
 Calmly he lit a fresh cigarette and replied : 
 
 "Why, yes. I am here. I followed my Fate. 
 
 "One day I remembered the strength of my 
 sword-arm, and I strangled the jailer, and I took 
 ship, and so I am here. 
 
 "What was I to do? In killing the jailer I but 
 followed my Karma, and in gurgling out his last 
 breath under the clutch of my hands, he but fol 
 lowed his. There is neither right nor wrong. All 
 is Karma. 
 
 "I am Dajee, the Mahratta, and a high-caste. 
 The peacock is sacred to my clan. But I work for 
 the beef-eating foreigner in this cold land. 
 
 "In this incarnation Fate stole my caste, so what 
 is it to me where and how I live ? 
 
 "When I walk through the streets in the evening 
 I think of the many ways of release which I tried 
 and found to be vain, and of what will be the end, 
 and what will be my next life. 
 
 "It comforts me to think that as in this life I do 
 not remember the incidents of my last, so in the 
 next one this life will be forgotten. 
 
 "For memory is of the body, and not of the 
 soul. 
 
 "Once I spoke to the Englishman for whom I 
 
THE MAN WHO LOST CASTE 161 
 
 work, but he wishes to live again as the same being 
 after death. For he is a Christian. 
 
 "But why? 
 
 "To remember that I am myself for one lifetime 
 has oppressed me. To be the same being in another 
 life would be w6rse~thaaj;he torments of the ruru 
 worm. 
 
 "To remember oneself forever and ever, with no 
 chance of forgetting, is a thought too horrible for 
 the mind to endure. 
 
 "So what should I do? 
 
 "I follow the way of my Karma. Who can avoid 
 what is written on the forehead?" 
 
SILENCE 
 
 RAOUL D ARGENTAYE, Marquis de Saint-Huber- 
 tin, had the peculiar trick of spreading a sort of 
 hush about him wherever he went; not a hush of 
 dread, but rather one of uneasy expectancy as if he 
 were waiting for the answer to a silent question 
 though at times he put it into thin, trembling words 
 which nobody understood except Father Gustave, 
 the old priest who officiated at the Church of Saint- 
 Jacques-de-Grace. 
 
 The marquis seemed to look for the answer to 
 his question in the face of every man whom he 
 encountered in his daily wanderings through the 
 narrow, packed streets which converge on the 
 Place de Thionville. 
 
 There, in the busiest section of Paris, he had lived 
 for many years, ever since his return from Corsica, 
 in one of those huge apartment barracks of red 
 brick and white stucco, the front pierced with count 
 less and unevenly spaced windows enlivened by bird- 
 
 163 
 
1 64 .WINGS 
 
 cages, and flowers in pots, and rags hung out to 
 dry, and if the weather was warm by the frowzy 
 heads of housewives greeting each other in the rau 
 cous jargon of the neighborhood "Bonjour, la 
 p tite mere! et la sante, go, colic tou jours?" and 
 then some Rabelaisian jest as one of the artisans 
 looked up from his basement shop and joined in 
 the conversation of the women. 
 
 At first the people of the quartier the clock- 
 makers and printers and metal-workers whose an 
 cestors had plied their trade here since long before 
 the Revolution had wondered when the marquis 
 had come among them, with his immaculate clothes, 
 his silk hat with the eight high-lights, and his grave, 
 old-fashioned manners. Some had asked him why 
 he lived here, near the Place de Thionville, in pref 
 erence to his palace of the Rue de Crenelle to 
 receive the never-varying reply : 
 
 "There are Corsicans here. And perhaps one of 
 them will tell me some day!" 
 
 But years had passed, and now they were famil 
 iar with the strange habits of the marquis. They 
 knew that every time he met one of those young, 
 dark-haired, hawk- faced Corsicans, who came to the 
 
SILENCE 165 
 
 quartier as apprentices to some ancient craft, he 
 , would stop him with the flat, trembling question, 
 "Monsieur, did you by any chance recognize the 
 ah the gentleman who called on my wife this aft 
 ernoon?" and then he would walk down the street 
 without waiting for a reply, while the children of 
 the neighborhood, with the instinctive cruelty of the 
 young, would run after him with loud shouts of 
 "Monsieur le marquis! Monsieur le marquis! You 
 haven t got a wife!" and gales of laughter which 
 he did not seem to hear. 
 
 ,The story? Oh, yes the reason for the dumb 
 quest in the marquis s faded old eyes, for the hush 
 which surrounded him, for the strange question 
 with which he approached the hawk-faced young 
 Corsicans the tale of twenty years before which 
 was known only to Father Gustave, the old priest 
 who officiated at the Church of Saint-Jacques-de- 
 Grace. 
 
 In those days the marquis was young and hand 
 some, the possessor of a princely fortune, and hap 
 pily married to the young Countess Laetitia Pozzo- 
 Paoli, the last descendant of an ancient impover- 
 
1 66 WINGS 
 
 ished Corsican house that had flourished and fallen 
 in a gaunt castle which frowned above a little vil 
 lage on the west coast of the island. 
 
 She was superb and placid like a Raphael with 
 a touch of Titian, and beneath the curly mist of 
 her golden hair the heritage, doubtless, of some 
 Viking ancestor black eyes looked out with the 
 sort of feminine pathos which meant nothing in 
 particular except to M. de Saint-Hubertin, who 
 adored her. She was not supremely brilliant, nor 
 haci she the sound education which a Frenchwoman 
 of her rank would have had, but she was filled with 
 something that took the place of both; something 
 best described as a deep, luminous vivacity and a 
 quick, trenchant wit which was slightly cruel at 
 times. 
 
 After their marriage, when her husband wanted 
 to take her away from the little Corsican village, 
 to Paris, to the palace in the Rue de Crenelle, so 
 that she should take the place in society due her by 
 his name and escutcheon, she laughed with a flash 
 of small, white, even teeth. 
 
 She replied that Corsica was her own land, the 
 land which she loved and understood the land 
 which loved and understood her. 
 
SILENCE 1 6; 
 
 "Paris?" she added, in that dramatic southern 
 manner of hers, "society? no, no, my friend, I 
 want nothing of it ! Paris society is only the home 
 of petty and despicable people, of petty and des 
 picable emotions a thing which swings half-way 
 between a modiste s shop and the gallows!" 
 
 "And what is Corsica?" laughed her husband. 
 
 "Don t you feel it?" she countered and then, 
 "Why it is this, this, this!" 
 
 And she pointed from the balcony of the crum 
 bling old castle out to the sea, opaque and green 
 and solid like a metal plaque; at the patches of 
 tufted beach grass that turned from gold to silver 
 as the hot south wind twisted them over, at the 
 sky which was of such an intense blue that at times 
 it quivered with black and purple lights. 
 
 Again, at night, when she and the marquis strolled 
 through the tortuous, hilly streets of the village, she 
 asked him to feel Corsica the heart of it and she 
 pointed at the bold-eyed young girls, brown like 
 Florentine bronzes, who were walking arm in arm, 
 by threes and fours, with rhythmic, feline move 
 ments of their supple hips; at the keen-faced men 
 with their staring eyes and the pose of head and 
 body which spoke of love and hatred and pride 
 
1 68 WINGS 
 
 which spoke, too, of the racial instinct which was 
 theirs. 
 
 "I love it," she murmured, breathing through her 
 teeth in a strangely sensuous manner, and the mar 
 quis felt a tearing pang of jealousy of the flesh, 
 not of the mind as if this harsh, hot land of Cor 
 sica were a man, with a man s feelings. 
 
 For love of his wife he remained. For love of 
 her he tried to identify himself with the land. 
 
 He took part in local politics, he gave largely to 
 local charities, endowing a hospital, a school for 
 orphans, a public library, building an ornamental 
 fountain in the market-place of the little village 
 and he felt that though the people spoke thanks, 
 they did not give thanks. 
 
 They doffed their caps and bowed; they stepped 
 to one side when they met him in the narrow 
 streets; they said "bonjour, monsieur le marquis" 
 with their metallic southern voices; they brought 
 him fruit and flowers on the days of the great 
 saints. 
 
 Yet they made him feel that he was a French 
 man, a foreigner, an intruder, while they were Cor- 
 sicans, sufficient to themselves, doing and feeling 
 nothing in quite the same way as other people, and 
 
SILENCE 169 
 
 placing themselves, perhaps consciously, apart from 
 other people. 
 
 He noticed, too, that they never addressed his 
 wife as "madame la marquise," but by her maiden 
 name of Pozzo-Paoli, and when he mentioned it to 
 her, half jesting and half bitter, she replied that 
 they were right. 
 
 "Marriage/* she said, "is the matter of one life 
 of two lives, rather which begins with a priest s 
 mumbled words and which stops at the grave. But 
 my name, my clan, my blood why, mon pauvre 
 ami, it is like this land eternal the result of cen 
 turies and centuries and centuries!" 
 
 He loved her. In a way, he was happy. But 
 he felt the barrier which was between him and her, 
 and he tried to analyze and dissect it in his sane, 
 logical French way. 
 
 At first he ascribed it to the difference in the 
 sex relations which exist north and south the dif 
 ference which in the north, in France and England, 
 gives the erotic superiority and aggressiveness to 
 the man, and in the south to the woman, together 
 with a sort of intense and grave adjustment of 
 nervous energy. 
 
170 WINGS 
 
 But gradually he understood that, in the case of 
 Laetitia, this analysis was wrong. He felt that the 
 invisible barrier was not the result of inherited tem 
 perament and atavistic qualities and impulses, but 
 due to the direct influence of the land itself a 
 land, he said to himself, which had the physical and 
 spiritual attributes of Man; and he brooded on the 
 thought until often, in his dreams, he felt like tak 
 ing the land by the throat and throttling it as he 
 would a man a man who had stolen his wife s 
 love. 
 
 As he walked through the village he imagined 
 that there was laughter and mocking and enmity 
 in the air in the rustle of the trees, in the hot 
 swing of the breeze, the dim stir of the dry beach 
 grass, and the tinkling of the goat-bells. 
 
 He would have liked to ascribe it to some patho 
 logical disturbance, but he knew that he was per 
 fectly sane and so, early one afternoon in mid 
 summer, he spoke of it to his wife. 
 
 He tried to speak of it jestingly, like a man bur 
 dened by a conviction as certain as fate, and bur- 
 iened, too, by the other conviction that confession 
 and utterance would bring disbelief and stark, gap 
 ing iidicule; and so he was shocked shocked and 
 
SILENCE 171 
 
 afraid when his wife confirmed his subconscious 
 suspicion in a matter-of-fact way. 
 
 "Why, yes, my friend," she said, "you are quite 
 right. This land this village these rocks are liv 
 ing, living. I ve tried to tell you so before. Cor 
 sica has a heart and that heart does not love you 
 it does not like you and I " 
 
 "You you what about you?" he cried, sud 
 denly furious. 
 
 She pulled his long Gallic mustache. 
 
 "Raoul," she said in a burst of lean, wiry vivac 
 ity, and looking straight at him, "I am a woman 
 and a Corsican. And this this land of mine it 
 will lie for me it will kill for me, and" she hes 
 itated, then continued "it will be silent for me!" 
 
 And when, quiet once more, but puzzled, he asked 
 her to explain what she meant by her last words, 
 she gave him a rapid little kiss and told him that 
 it was time for his afternoon walk. 
 
 For, straight through the hottest months of the 
 year, he had the habit of long, daily afternoon 
 walks, at a time when all the villagers were taking 
 their siesta behind closed shutters, and when nobody 
 was abroad except himself and the little, pale-blue 
 butterflies. 
 
172 WINGS 
 
 He walked down the length of the main street, 
 past the little white, stone houses asleep in the sun, 
 past the mairie where the pompous mayor was 
 drowsing across from the pompous chief of gen 
 darmes, past the great cast-iron fountain which he 
 had given to the municipality; and again he felt 
 the harsh enmity of the land. 
 
 It was hotter than usual with a sort of hushed, 
 dry, tense heat which sent the blood racing through 
 his veins; and it seemed to him that, beneath his 
 feet, from the heart of the land, he could hear a 
 muffled, staccato breathing which was like the 
 breathing of a huge, amorphous beast a beast 
 about to rise and stretch and kill as though, 
 across the forests and rocks on its breast, the spirit 
 of Corsica called to him mocking, jeering, cruel, 
 inimical and currents of subterranean earth life 
 tugged and jerked at his self. 
 
 The marquis dried his face with his handker 
 chief. 
 
 Once more he tried to tell himself that it was all 
 the result of a pathological disturbance, and that 
 what he needed was a trip to Paris, three hundred 
 francs paid into the hands of Dr. Hector Laflique, 
 the alienist, and a brome prescription filled at the 
 
SILENCE 173 
 
 nearest drug-store; but even as he tried to force 
 the thought on his subconscious mind, he knew 
 that he was only playing hide-and-seek with his 
 sensations, that he was bluffing himself. 
 
 There was no doubt of it. The land was living, 
 living! just as his wife had said and, beneath 
 his feet, it bunched with a terrible power that 
 sought to dispel and drive him through space like 
 something hated and useless which was not wanted, 
 here, in Corsica. 
 
 His sense of hearing became tensely acute, and, 
 in the hot, still air, the whisper of the earth grew 
 it flew up and called to him with a great, broken, 
 rumbling shout. 
 
 He trembled, then lurched curiously to one side. 
 The balance and adjustment of his physical frame 
 seemed to shift and alter. Very suddenly a black 
 haze shot with sulfurous-yellow, rose in the west. 
 The ocean bloated and recoiled. The harried sun 
 shivered out of sight. The ground writhed and 
 groaned like a woman in travail. A wind sprang 
 up, red-hot as from a gigantic furnace, and rattled 
 all the million leaves. 
 
 Another writhe and groan, of unutterable suffer 
 ing and unutterable loneliness. 
 
174 WINGS 
 
 Then he felt a strange, sinking sensation at the 
 pit of his stomach and fell, face foremost. 
 
 An immense dark shutter dropped noiselessly, 
 with the speed of lightning, across his mind; and, 
 even at the moment of losing consciousness, he told 
 himself that he had lost and that Corsica had won. 
 
 The first thing which he felt when he recovered 
 his senses was that a star was looking at him ; then 
 two, then three, and finally he saw that it was night 
 and that the heavens were clear again. 
 
 He staggered, rubbed his eyes, and stared. He 
 touched his arms and legs no he was not 
 wounded ! 
 
 But what had happened? 
 
 He looked out, to the sea. It stretched, in a 
 sodden, immobile calm; but suddenly it seemed to 
 him that it had changed, that the edge of the hori 
 zon was more flat than it had been before. 
 
 Then he understood there had been an earth 
 quake. He turned quickly, toward the village. 
 
 It was not there. 
 
 There was only a ruined, broken mass, with pink 
 and orange flame-tongues licking over it, while be 
 hind the stiff, lanky poplars which edged the mairie 
 
SILENCE 175 
 
 a high-blazing, fuliginous whirl of smoke was touch 
 ing the skies. 
 
 He stood quite still. His eyes sought the famil 
 iar silhouette of the gaunt old castle and, with a 
 crash in his brain, he realized that that, too, had 
 disappeared. 
 
 The land had taken toll it had wiped out the 
 home which had witnessed his love and his happi 
 ness. 
 
 And Laetitia his wife? She must be among 
 the ruins ! 
 
 With the cry of a wounded animal the marquis 
 stumbled through the battered, crumpled streets. 
 As he passed the mairie the whole side of it gave 
 way and came tumbling down in a mad, twisting, 
 smoking heap. A flaming beam grazed his face. 
 He brushed it aside as he would an insect, and 
 kept on. 
 
 This land, he thought incoherently as he ran, 
 this land of Corsica it had killed his wife; and 
 he shook his fists at the trees and the rocks while 
 great tears blurred his eyes. 
 
 But he kept on in the direction of the gaunt, 
 gray blotch where the castle had stood, stepping 
 
i/6 WINGS 
 
 here and there on shapeless, black things which 
 writhed and moaned as his feet touched them. 
 
 The air was torn with the cries of animals, and 
 of men and women and little children. 
 
 "Padre!" "Madre!" "0 misericordia!" "Au se- 
 cours!" "Dieu!" "Sangu Cristu!" came the shrill, 
 agonized shouts in a mixture of French and Cor- 
 sican; and he passed men who were staggering as 
 if they were drunk, their hands stretched out in 
 front of them; there were others who were sitting 
 on the debris of their homes, still, vacant-eyed, as 
 if turned into stone; and one woman had gone mad 
 she was dancing among the slow-lapping flames, 
 her skirts kilted to her knees, a dead babe in her 
 arms. 
 
 He ran on. 
 
 Would he arrive in time? Perhaps she was still 
 alive, mercifully imprisoned by some stout stones 
 or beams. 
 
 There was a choked, sobbing cry for help from 
 a ruined mass to the left of the church, and he 
 saw, sharp in the moonlight, the naked arm of a 
 woman stretching from between a jagged pile of 
 burning wood. The fingers, covered with rings, 
 groped blindly, like the tentacles of an octopus. 
 
SILENCE 177 
 
 But the marquis did not stop to help. His eyes 
 saw; his brain registered the stark fact of the thing; 
 but there was no meaning to it, nor was there pity 
 in his soul. 
 
 There was only the thought of his wife, up there, 
 among the crumbling, choking ruins. 
 
 When he reached the hill whence once the castle 
 of the Pozzo-Paolis had frowned on the village, 
 he saw that nothing was left standing except an old 
 carved Gothic wall, and above it, supported by iron 
 corbels which were twisted into the silhouette of 
 some grinning, obscene maw, a balcony swinging 
 crazily from side to side like a gigantic spider-web. 
 
 He stopped, out of breath, shivering in spite of 
 the heat which fanned up from the burning village, 
 undecided what to do and how to do it. 
 
 Of course she was down there, somewhere among 
 the jagged stones and the charred timbers. 
 
 But where should he begin his search ? He knew 
 that he must find her even if she was dead that 
 he could not leave her dead body crushed and bur 
 ied by Corsican soil, a trophy to the lust of this 
 sinister, man-killing land ; and so, very gently, with 
 infinite precautions, clutching a broken beam here 
 and a twisted, bent end of metal there, he swung 
 
178 WINGS 
 
 himself up to the ruins of the castle as if he were 
 afraid to hurt the loved body through the heavy 
 layer of stone and masonry which covered it. 
 
 So he worked with superhuman strength, tear 
 ing off wood and metal like so much paper, lifting 
 massive blocks of smooth marble and coarse 
 grained granite, and tossing them over his shoulder 
 as if they were pebbles, attacking with his bare 
 hands beams studded with rusty nails and other 
 beams still smoldering and hot. 
 
 Hour after hour he worked, stopping now and 
 then to call "Laetitia! Laetitia!" 
 
 And when the young sun boomed up in the west 
 he was still there, tearing, jerking, lifting, clawing, 
 pushing with his naked, frenzied hands, while the 
 pulverized plaster ran through his fingers like wa 
 ter, and while occasionally a stone which he had 
 braced up with terrible effort tumbled back into 
 place crushing him, wounding him. 
 
 Quite suddenly there was a shifting and heav 
 ing among the ruins. He saw that his labors had 
 displaced a large mass of stones and masonry which 
 slid to one side with a protesting rumble. 
 
 A hole, black, mysterious, yawned at his feet and, 
 
SILENCE 179 
 
 sticking out of it was a bit of rose-and-silver bro 
 cade the wall-covering of his wife s bedroom. 
 
 The marquis stooped and reached down into the 
 hole. Then he gave a cry. 
 
 He had touched bare flesh flesh which was soft 
 and clay-cold. 
 
 Again he groped. His fingers strayed up. They 
 encountered a tangled mass of curly hair. 
 
 He withdrew his fingers and, without as much 
 as a groan, the marquis recommenced his work. 
 
 She was in there perhaps she was still alive. 
 
 "Mary, Mother of God!" the prayer surged in 
 his heart; and with kicks and jerks, pushing and 
 clawing, frantically, desperately, he bent to the task, 
 and it seemed to him that he was ripping away the 
 very intestines of this harsh land which had impris 
 oned his best beloved in an avalanche of senseless, 
 cruel ruin. 
 
 Finally he summoned all his strength, all his love, 
 and all his despair into a gigantic effort 
 
 There was a crunching, protesting noise a sud 
 den recoil which sent the marquis spinning back 
 ward broken stones fell with a whistling noise 
 like musketry fire, and the hole gaped far apart. 
 
 The marquis stepped down into it. A haggard 
 
i8o WINGS 
 
 sun-ray danced in, as if to show him the way; and 
 there, stretched on a divan, dressed in a foamy, 
 lacy negligee, was his wife. 
 
 He looked at her. He knew at once that she 
 was dead ; and he bent down to kiss her cold lips. 
 
 "Oh, Laetitia, my love, my wife!" he cried in a 
 voice that was a barely audible croak. "Oh, my 
 love" 
 
 Then, suddenly, he drew himself up again. He 
 stood quite still. 
 
 For, bending down, he had seen another body 
 the body of a man a few feet away. 
 
 He looked again at the face of his wife. An 
 ecstatic smile was playing about the cold lips a 
 smile of love of desire 
 
 And over there was the body of a man not a 
 servant come in to warn his mistress when the first 
 rumbling of the earth had shaken the towers of 
 the ancient castle but a well-dressed man, a gentle 
 man and between his cramped fingers there was a 
 spray of stephanotis, the sweet-smelling exotic 
 which was his wife s favorite flower 
 
 The marquis was quite calm, quite silent. He 
 accepted his fate. 
 
 Here, before his eyes, was the fact that his wife 
 
SILENCE 181 
 
 had deceived him, and there was no challeng 
 
 ing it. 
 
 It did not even allow of jealousy; for jealousy 
 is bred by doubt and not by knowledge 
 
 But, somehow, it seemed vital to him that he 
 should know the name of this dead man. 
 
 So he stooped down and looked; and then he 
 gave a cry ; one of those long-drawn, quivering cries 
 in which the soul tries to burst the bonds of the 
 tortured mind and to find refuge in the madness 
 of forgetting. 
 
 His wife had been right. She had said that 
 Corsica would lie for her and kill for her and be 
 silent for her. 
 
 Here was the proof. 
 
 For the soil of Corsica had crushed the face of 
 his wife s lover into unrecognizable pulp. 
 
 Yes Corsica had won in life it had stolen the 
 love of his wife, and in death it still shielded the 
 dishonoring secret; and slowly, like a man in a 
 dream, the marquis walked away from the ruin, 
 back through the streets of the crumbling village. 
 
 He stopped every man with the same, flat, trem 
 bling question : 
 
 "Monsieur, did you by any chance recognize the 
 
182 WINGS 
 
 ah the gentleman who called on my wife this 
 afternoon?" 
 
 But nobody replied, though everybody knew; 
 and so, finally, he came to Father Gustave, the old 
 priest who for years had officiated at the village 
 church the old priest who afterwards followed 
 him to Paris and remained close to him, for the love 
 of Christ and because of the pity in his soul. 
 
KHIZR 
 
 AND thus it came about that twelve days after 
 Beiram, the great King Suleiman master of the 
 seven climes, emperor of the winds, illustrious sul 
 tan of jinns and giants took his youngest son, 
 Aziz-Ullah, by the hand and led him into the golden 
 hall of state where he made to seat him on the 
 throne of the Caliphs. Then the King sent out 
 black slaves, dressed in purple and silver, and com 
 manded them to summon to his presence his thirty 
 vezirs and his ninety sons; and when they had all 
 assembled in the golden hall of state, he spoke to 
 them, saying: 
 
 "My youngest son, Aziz-Ullah, shall be ruler in 
 my stead, for he has shown himself to be as wise as 
 Haroun-el-Rashid. Nay, he is as wise as Omar, 
 the great Caliph, on whom be peace; and thus I 
 shall cede to him the mastery of the seven climes, 
 the empire of the winds, the sultanate of jinns and 
 giants. To him I give the hand of the beautiful 
 Princess Zoleide." 
 
 183 
 
WINGS 
 
 And Aziz-Ullah bowed humbly before his father, 
 the great King Suleiman, and all rejoiced; slaves 
 brought sherbet and coffee and pipes with long 
 mouthpieces of amber and diamond, and then a 
 story-teller from Egypt entered the golden hall of 
 state and he told the story of the faithless \vife and 
 the just kadee, which is the story of Khizr, the 
 mighty spirit, and Khassoum ibn Taib, the seeker 
 for wisdom. 
 
 Yes, you children of Arab fathers, gladly I shall 
 tell you the wonderful story, the true story which 
 relates how wickedness was punished, how right 
 eousness found its shining reward, and which 
 also proves once more that woman is the mother 
 of deceit and falsehood Do not bite your mus 
 tache, young brother of my heart, even if your wife 
 is young and the apple of your eye; well we know 
 it, for did we not see you bringing presents to her 
 father s house only two moons ago? Before you 
 drain the wine of life, you will yet learn to remem 
 ber the wise saying of the great King Solomon of 
 the tribe of Israel: "Obedience to women is the 
 entrance gate to Jehenna." 
 
 I shall tell you the story of stories, full of wis- 
 
KHIZR 185 
 
 dom and as clever as the fable of the wolf and 
 the fox ; but, by the beard of the Prophet, on whom 
 be peace, I am but a poor man and my children 
 are many and starving. Alms are the wealth of 
 the poor, my brothers; give me a handful of 
 piastres, a little child s handful of small silver 
 piastres, and may Allah never open to me the gates 
 of Paradise if I do not delight your hearts with 
 the true story of the just kadee and the faithless 
 woman, 
 
 Alhamdulillah! Blessings on him who is open- 
 handed and kind to the poor Thanks, my master, 
 may Allah grant thee eternal happiness; may the 
 hand of Ali protect thy children and thy children s 
 children from the evil eye 
 
 I am poor and my children are starving thanks, 
 son of noble sires, thou art indeed as generous as 
 Mahrcud, the great Sultan, and thou dost not look 
 with indifference on thy starving neighbor pass 
 the bowl to the left, for I see another true believer 
 ready to loosen the strings of his bulging purse to 
 give alms to this poorest of story-tellers. 
 
 Praises be to the Most High! Here is another 
 and even another who know the words in the book 
 
1 86 WINGS 
 
 of the Koran: "O true believers, bestow alms of 
 the good things which ye have gained to those 
 threatened with poverty." 
 
 Ye are indeed Moslim; I take refuge in the cool 
 ing shadow of your generosity, and now I shall tell 
 you the story which delighted the heart of Aziz- 
 Ullah, of his noble father, his ninety brothers and 
 the thirty vezirs ; the story of the wisest of kadees 
 and the most deceitful of women, which is the story 
 of Khassoum and Khizr, the mighty spirit. 
 
 Know then, ye sons of Arab fathers, that once 
 there existed a land which the unbelievers had not 
 yet overrun with their merchants and their soldiers, 
 their railways and their black-coated priests. In 
 this land there was a town which the Prophet him 
 self had honored with his presence; it was a town 
 holier than Kairwan before the French Allah s 
 curse on them and their children had desecrated 
 its sacred buildings, and greater and richer than 
 Stamboul itself, the home of the Caliph, the com 
 mander of the faithful. 
 
 This town was the asylum of knowledge and in 
 struction, the abode of greatness, the home of jus 
 tice and piety; the wondering gaze of the stranger 
 beheld there three thousand public baths, built of 
 
KHIZR 187 
 
 marble and granite; and the minarets of innumer 
 able mosques pointing to the sky like so many thou 
 sands of masts in the port of Algiers great mos 
 ques, white and dazzling in the yellow sunshine, 
 prayers of stone, built to commemorate the holy 
 names of the Most High King of men, the Al 
 mighty, the Everlasting who has created and dis 
 posed of thousands of worlds. There is no God 
 but He. 
 
 In this town there lived two brothers, Nassim 
 and Khassoum, the sons of Hadji Taib, a rich seller 
 of perfumes who had come from Yemen, the home 
 of his ancestors. 
 
 One day a marabout on pilgrimage bent, found 
 hospitality in Taib s house, and he looked at the 
 palms of Nassim and Khassoum who were playing 
 in the courtyard and said : "Taib, thy son Nassim 
 shall be rich and powerful; but he shall perish 
 through his brother s love. Khassoum, thy second- 
 born, shall be poor; but Khizr, the mighty spirit, 
 shall be always at his right and shall teach him to 
 seek for the innermost secret of Islam. He shall 
 know the knowledge of books, the love of the flesh, 
 the bitterness of deceit, the triumph of justice and 
 then he shall know Islam." 
 
i88 WINGS 
 
 Taib listened to the inspired words of the holy 
 marabout, and then he went to the harem and told 
 the mother of his two sons what had been 
 prophesied. 
 
 The two brothers grew up side by side, and when 
 they had reached the age of manhood they went 
 together on pilgrimage to behold the blessed towns 
 of Mecca and Medina. 
 
 Now, Hadji Khassoum was a noble youth and a 
 true Moslim; he was resigned unto Allah, pious 
 and generous; he was an old man in prudence, but 
 a youth in the might of his two strong arms; his 
 face was as fair as the moon on the fourteenth day, 
 and his body as slender and supple as a Damascan 
 blade; his sword was triumphant in the cause of 
 justice, and when he opened his mouth to speak, 
 men would point at him and say: "Listen to the 
 pilgrim whose words are like sweet liquid honey; 
 he is indeed as wise as Asef." 
 
 Such was Khassoum, the son of Taib. 
 
 But his elder brother, Nassim, was shaped in the 
 likeness of Eblis, the cursed father of lies; the fruit 
 of his mouth was bitter and his sharp tongue darted 
 forth venom like the unclean reptile found in the 
 
KHIZR 189 
 
 grass; the poor starved at his door, and he bared 
 his dagger only to further the rule of iniquity and 
 of oppression; he was indeed like the snake which 
 stings his mother and kills her even as she bears 
 him. He, too, was a Hadji; but the circumambu- 
 lation of the shrines had done him little good and 
 he returned from Mecca as bad and cruel and 
 greedy and faithless as on the day when he had 
 donned the pilgrim s garb. Allah had sealed his 
 heart, and whenever he was seen holding converse 
 with another man, the little children would gather 
 around him and say : "Who is the man whom you 
 are duping to-day, O Nassim, son of Taib ?" 
 
 But you know the heart of woman; ana you 
 know that in a mother s eye every scorpion is a 
 fleet gazelle. 
 
 Thus you will not wonder when I tell you that 
 the mother of the two brothers loved Nassim with 
 a far greater love than the noble Khassoum. Her 
 first-born was indeed the apple of her eye, and on 
 him she lavished all her caresses; and when Taib, 
 the father of her children, the rich seller of per 
 fumes, lay on his death-bed, her woman s wit spoke 
 to the great love which she bore her elder son. 
 
190 WINGS 
 
 She thought of the marabout s prophesy and trem 
 bled for the fate of her elder son; and she per 
 suaded Taib to leave to Nassim all his belongings; 
 his town house with its pillared courtyards of inlaid 
 marble, its cooling fountain and its ceilings covered 
 with green and gold arabesques; his country estate 
 with its hanging gardens and its orchards of al 
 mond, date, apricot and orange ; his rich shop in the 
 Sukh Attarin, where his agents sold to the wealthy 
 the perfumes of Arabia, essences of rose, of violet 
 and of geranium. 
 
 Thus, when fate rolled up the scroll of Taib s 
 life, Nassim inherited all his father s fortune, and 
 he prospered exceedingly. Every enterprise he 
 touched turned into gold : he made treaties with the 
 pirates of the Barbary coast, and to him they 
 brought the fairest and strongest of the Giaour 
 slaves whom they captured; his caravans, guarded 
 by armed Bedawin tribes, crossed the desert from 
 the white Nile to the black ranges of the Atlas, 
 from the sweet shores of Tripoli to the desert cities 
 of the far bitter South; his ships brought mer 
 chandise from Stamboul, Oman, Damascus, and 
 even from far off China, and the people looked up 
 when he passed and said to each other: "There 
 
KHIZR 191 
 
 goes Nassim, the son of Taib, the great merchant"; 
 for let but a dog roll in gold, and the men in the 
 bazaar will call him "Sir Dog." 
 
 His fame was great throughout the lands of the 
 Moslim; and from the dazzling palace of the 
 Sheriff at Mecca to the somber tents of the mur 
 derous Tauregs, all knew the name of Nassim, the 
 rich. 
 
 And ever greater became his greed tor the hard 
 yellow gold; forgetting the commandments of the 
 Messenger Mohammed on whom be peace he 
 formed partnerships with the Jew and the Giaour 
 merchants who lived in the coast towns and lent 
 out money at usuring rates of interest. His wealth 
 increased, and the more it increased, the more he 
 tightened the strings of his purse; he endowed no 
 mosques, no libraries rich in written knowledge, no 
 shrines to commemorate the glories of Islam s fight 
 ing marabouts. He built no fountains and dug no 
 wells to assure to himself the gratitude and the 
 blessings of future generations; and the people in 
 the bazaars who called him Effendi to his face, 
 called him a pig, the son of a pig with a pig s heart, 
 as soon as his back was turned; and the little chil 
 dren would run into the houses of their parents 
 
192 WINGS 
 
 when they heard his shuffling gait, and secure be 
 hind the latticed windows they would cry: 
 
 "O Nassim, son of Taib and grandson of a dog, 
 thy feet are as thy knees, thy knees are as thy belly, 
 thy belly is as thy face, and thy face is ugly and 
 fat. Look at the Moslim whose beard is gray and 
 dirty. Do not weep, or thou wilt make us laugh; 
 do not laugh, or thou wilt make us weep. Behold 
 the Moslim to whom was given a cursed stone in 
 stead of a heart. May Allah grant that thou 
 mayest go to bed and never rise again." 
 
 Such was Nassim, the son of Taib, who inherited 
 all his father s fortune and who turned from his 
 door Hadji Khassoum, his only brother, the noble 
 child of the morning. 
 
 But Khassoum laughed the laugh of the free in 
 mind and strong in body; he left the house of his 
 father, and with his last purse he bought himself a 
 fine white racing dromedary, a pedigreed animal, 
 sure-footed and fleet. With a song and a prayer 
 on his lips, he left the town of his birth and went 
 into the desert. 
 
 He rode eastward across the yellow lands until 
 he reached the green oasis of Bir Tef guia, and there 
 he knocked at the gates of a great white monastery. 
 
KHIZR 193 
 
 The holy derwishes of the brotherhood, the beloved 
 ones of Allah, opened the gates and gave him food 
 and shelter. They were old men, with the dignity 
 of white beards, but they loved the youth who had 
 come to them from the West, and they gave to him 
 a little cell which opened towards a garden, rich 
 with fruits and flowers of many colors. 
 
 For seven years Khassoum ibn Taib lived with 
 the inspired ones of the Bir Tefguia; there were 
 thousands of volumes in the library of the monas 
 tery, and the young Hadji would read and read, 
 and think and think until his knowledge became as 
 vast as time, as deep as the sea and as broad as the 
 river Nile. 
 
 But ever and anon the voice of Khizr spoke to 
 him, saying: "Khassoum, a pilgrim thou art and 
 rich in knowledge, but thou hast not yet learned 
 the lesson of true wisdom. Seek on!" 
 
 Khassoum listened to the voice of Khizr and he 
 sought; he read and thought and read again, until 
 his was the knowledge of a thousand generations; 
 at his command the spirits of the soldiers, the 
 saints, the scholars and the great men of the past 
 would fly through the window of his little cell and 
 keep him company. They talked to him and taught 
 
194 WINGS 
 
 him until it seemed that he had reached the limits 
 of earthly knowledge. 
 
 Nature herself was his teacher, and nature taught 
 him the language of the flowers and of the birds, 
 the songs of the desert winds at dawn and the say 
 ings of the gurgling water in the wells but still 
 the voice of Khizr said: "Khassoum, seek on." 
 
 He sought and one day a caravan passed 
 through the oasis of Bir Tefguia, and Khassoum 
 saw amongst it a girl; she was of those Bedawin 
 who do not veil their faces, and he thought her 
 fairer than the young day. He said to himself: 
 "Now have I found what the voice of my mind has 
 commanded me to seek. I have found love." 
 
 He went to the girl of the Bedawin and said : 
 
 "I love thee and thee I must have. I have wan 
 dered far and wide; my roaming feet have brought 
 me to Mecca and Medina, across the four deserts 
 and even to the towns of Greece and of Hindustan, 
 the home of the unbelievers. I have seen the 
 women of many lands. 
 
 "I have seen the women of Baloutchistan, and 
 their eyes were brown and moist like those of the 
 timid gazelle. I have looked at the dark women 
 pf the Nubian plains, and I thought them as beauti- 
 
KHIZR 195 
 
 ful as purple shadows of the dawning sun. My 
 eyes have beheld the raven locks of Persia s 
 maidens, and I compared them to Leila; I dreamt 
 of Jamshid s love. I have heard the love cry of 
 Circassian slaves, and it was like Damascan silk 
 torn by Damascan daggers. But thou art fairer 
 than the earth ; thee I must have, be thou houri or 
 peri. 
 
 "The moon rises only for thee. Thy voice is 
 like the nightingale s, thy breath like the wild 
 jasmine of Lybia s distant shore. My heart is in 
 thy hands, as is the clay in the hands of a potter. 
 
 "Thou art sweeter than the roses of Ispahan, the 
 roses of a thousand leaves; thou art as graceful as 
 the waving pines on Syrian hills. I love thee, thou 
 daughter of Bedawin; I love thee. Thee I must 
 have, or I die." 
 
 These were the words of Khassoum s great love 
 and the voice at his right said: "Khassoum, 
 seek on." 
 
 But love had sealed his ears and he did not hear. 
 
 Aziza, the daughter of the Bedawin, listened to 
 the words of his heart; she looked at him and he 
 seemed comely in her eyes. 
 
 Then there were loud rejoicings among the Beda- 
 
196 WINGS 
 
 win, and they prepared everything for the marriage 
 ceremony. 
 
 But the hearts of the derwisnes in the great 
 monastery of the Bir Tefguia were heavy with sad 
 ness, and El Mansouri, their wise sheykh, took the 
 youth aside and said to him : "Khassoum, thou art 
 young and I am old; but the old heart loves the 
 young heart. Thus I ask thee to remember the say 
 ing of the sage: He is a fool who marries a 
 stranger/ And Khassoum answered, laughing 
 carelessly: "Great sheykh, thou art old and I am 
 young; yet does the young heart love the old heart. 
 Remember thou the saying of the Persian poet: 
 Only he is wise who loves/ 
 
 Then the kind derwishes bowed their heads to 
 the decrees of inevitable fate; and they talked 
 amongst themselves, and out of their scanty belong 
 ings they gave to Khassoum, that he might send a 
 suitable dower to the maiden s father. 
 
 And on the seventh day after the new moon, the 
 marriage ceremonies began. There was feasting 
 during four days; lambs were roasted whole and 
 there were rivers of sherbet, coffee and unfer- 
 mented palm-wine. On the evening of the fourth 
 day the bride went to her master s tent which had 
 
T r\T 
 197 
 
 been prepared by the sheykh, El Mansouri. Her 
 nails were stained with henna, her eyebrows were 
 blackened, and she looked as fair as the rising sun. 
 She was accompanied by her brothers and male 
 cousins who wore branches of almond and jasmine 
 over their right ears, and she became the wife of 
 Khassoum, the son of Taib. 
 
 So they left the hospitable oasis of Bir Tefguia 
 find rode for many a day. His love grew, and he 
 thought of the poets of Teheran and he called her 
 Mer-el-Nissar, the sun amongst women ; but still he 
 could hear the voice of Khizr saying to him at 
 dawn: "Khassoum ibn Taib, seek, seek on, and 
 thou shalt find." But Khassoum was deaf to the 
 voice of Khizr, the mighty spirit. 
 
 One night Mer-el-Nissar said to him: "Khas 
 soum, thy heart is marked with chastity and piety; 
 thine is the strength of body and the clearness of 
 mind. Thine eyes glow with the intense light of 
 those blessed ones who are rich in wisdom. I love 
 thee well. Sweet are the words which flow like 
 honey from thy tongue, and thou callest me the sun 
 amongst women, the loveliest rose amongst the 
 blooming flowers. Thou hast allowed me to par 
 take of the rich fruit of knowledge stored in thy 
 
198 WINGS 
 
 brain, for thou art as good as thou art wise. But 
 tell me, Khassoum, where are thy people? My 
 limbs are weary with the hard yellow desert, and 
 fain would I rest in thy harem, thy one, thy favorite 
 wife. Tell me, Khassoum, where is thy clan? 
 Lead me to them that I may love them even as I 
 love thee." 
 
 And Khassoum answered saying: "Rose of my 
 heart, my father is dead, my mother is dead. I 
 have no relative but one brother, Nassim; he is 
 richer than the Egyptian merchants who live in 
 Jeddah, but his heart is as hard as the rock of 
 Tank." 
 
 When Mer-el-Nissar heard the name of Nassim 
 the rich, the black snake of avarice and greed reared 
 his venomous head in her heart, and she cried : "O 
 Khassoum, let us go to him as thou lovest me. 
 He is thy only brother, and surely he will be glad 
 to see thee, and give us shelter and food and 
 riches." 
 
 Thus she begged and begged until she had 
 wearied his soul and he assented. 
 
 The son of Taib listened not to the voice of Khizr 
 which whispered in his ear: "Khassoum, remem 
 ber the words of Omar, the great Caliph : Let one 
 
KHIZR 199 
 
 take council of a woman and do the opposite of 
 what she says/ 
 
 So they turned their dromedaries heads to the 
 West and rode for many a long night until they 
 came to the village of El Jebwina, which is a day s 
 ride from the holy town where lived Hadji Nassim, 
 the rich merchant. When they reached El Jebwina, 
 they had spent their last purse; so they sold their 
 dromedaries and that night slept among the ani 
 mals hoofs in the courtyard of the Khan. The 
 next morning they set out on foot, just as the sun 
 appeared on Allah s tent, for they hoped to enter 
 the gates of the great town before dawn spread its 
 gray bournous over the land. 
 
 They walked and walked and walked until their 
 feet were tired and sore, when a merchant overtook 
 them. Rubies and diamonds flashed in his green 
 turban, his cloak was of the finest Bokhara silk, 
 and he rode a great white horse which was like 
 Borak, the lion-headed horse of the Prophet, on 
 whom be peace. And behold it was Nassim him 
 self, the rich brother, the man with the heart of 
 stone. 
 
 Khassoum recognized him and said : "Nassim, 
 it is I, thy brother, who is speaking to thee, and this 
 
200 WINGS 
 
 is the woman who shall be the mother of my sons. 
 We are on our way to thy great house. Wilt thou 
 not give us food and shelter?" 
 
 Nassim looked at his brother, and then he looked 
 at the unveiled features of the Bedawin girl; and 
 the devil of lust arose within him, the devil of lust 
 and cunning. 
 
 He jumped from his horse and embraced Khas^ 
 soum, even as Judas, the accursed, embraced Esa, 
 the holy messenger of the house of Imram, and 
 said: "All praise to the Most High God, Creator 
 of the ten thousand worlds! All praise to the 
 most Benign Lord, who weighs life and death in 
 the hollow of His hand! Praise and thanksgiving 
 to the Almighty who has granted me this day of 
 days, who in his munificence has permitted that I 
 may yet behold the beloved, the beloved features of 
 Khassoum, the brother of my heart, before I die! 
 Surely I shall give shelter and food to thee, my 
 brother, and to the noble daughter of the Bedawin 
 who walks at thy side. Gladly I would give to thee 
 my horse, but I am a weak man, my feet are un 
 used to the hard sand-grains of the desert. But 
 my horse is strong enough for two. So let the 
 daughter of the Bedawin mount behind me; and 
 
KHIZR 201 
 
 thou, strong brother, canst follow on foot, until we 
 reach the house of our father, where I shall prepare 
 a great feast." 
 
 Joy and gratitude filled the heart of Khassoum; 
 he helped Mer-el-Nissar upon the saddle behind 
 Nassim, and he heeded not the voice of Khizr which 
 whispered in his ear: "Khassoum, seek on, and 
 do not listen to the words of those rich in in 
 iquity/ 
 
 Thus they proceeded on their journey and gradu 
 ally Nassim increased the distance between himself 
 and his brother until he was safely out of hearing. 
 Then he turned slightly in his high saddle and said : 
 "Girl of the Bedawin, remember the saying of the 
 wise: Do not go with him who is poor and who 
 cannot help thee; for in this world he cannot serve 
 thee, and in the next world thou must be weighed 
 by thyself in the balance-scales of right and wrong, 
 and he cannot intercede in thy behalf/ Even such 
 is my brother who is behind us dragging his tired 
 feet in the sand. He can give thee nothing but the 
 dry fruits of starvation and misery. But me, men 
 call the rich Nassim, and well they may. The gates 
 which bar the entrance to my palace are studded 
 with golden nails and with the light blue stones my 
 
202 WINGS 
 
 caravans bring from Afghanistan. My divans are 
 covered with silken rugs from Khiva and Bokhara, 
 and even the meanest of my black slaves is dressed 
 in purple and silver. Mine are the choicest pearls, 
 and emeralds without flaws ; mine are riches greater 
 than those which Ali Baba found in the caves of the 
 forty thieves. Say but the one word, and whatever 
 I possess is thine. As to Khassoum be not 
 afraid ; I have six Giaour merchants in my pay who 
 will swear to anything I command them to. And 
 who is the kadee who would dare to accept the testi 
 mony of the miserable Khassoum against that of 
 Nassim, the powerful, the rich, and that of the six 
 wealthiest unbelievers in the holy town which thou 
 canst see looming in the blue distance?" 
 
 Sons of Arabs, did not Omar, the great Caliph, 
 the successor of the Prophet on whom be benedic 
 tions say that the heart of woman is always mer 
 cenary? Even so; thus you will not be surprised 
 to hear that Mer-cl-Nissar, the loveliest sun 
 amongst the Bedawin, the beloved one of Khas 
 soum s heart, listened with joy to the words of 
 Nassim and readily agreed to his evil proposal. 
 Accordingly, when they came to a crossroad, the 
 accursed elder son of Taib spurred his horse, and 
 
KHIZR 203 
 
 soon he and the Bedawin woman were nothing but 
 a little gray cloud of dust on the dim horizon. 
 
 In vain did Khassoum protest ; they neither heard 
 nor heeded his entreaties ; black despair and sorrow 
 and a great understanding came over him, and he 
 heard the voice of Khizr, the mighty spirit, which 
 whispered into his ear: "Seek on, thou son of 
 Arab sires, and thou wilt yet learn wisdom. Thou 
 hast learned one lesson to-day : Do not put all thy 
 eggs into one basket, and if thou dost, give not the 
 basket in keeping of a woman her whom Allah 
 has created without soul. Now go to the holy 
 town and prostrate thyself at the feet of the wise 
 kadee, Mohammed Ed-Din, and there thou shalt 
 learn the lesson of justice and true wisdom. Seek 
 on, Khassoum." 
 
 Wearily Khassoum continued his journey 
 towards the holy town, and when he arrived here 
 he went to the house of the kadee and told him what 
 had happened to him. 
 
 Mohammed Ed-Din listened and said: "By the 
 praised name of Hassan, the son of Ali on whom 
 be peace forever justice shall be thine, and dire 
 punishment the lot of those who dare to break the 
 laws of the written word of the Koran. Did not 
 
204 WINGS 
 
 the Prophet blessings on him say that Allah will 
 not wrong any one, even the weight of an ant ?" 
 
 That night the kadee, the protector of the poor 
 and the friend of the oppressed, gave hospitality 
 to the son of Taib, the noble Khassoum, and the 
 next morning, after prayer, he sent summons to 
 Nassim and to the Bedawin woman and ordered 
 them to appear before his divan. Nassim came 
 and with him came the Bedawin woman and also 
 the six Greek merchants who were in his pay and 
 whom he had brought as witnesses. 
 
 The kadee told him of what his brother had ac 
 cused him, and he answered: "O kadee full of 
 wisdom, judge not before thou knowest and remem 
 ber the saying of the wise : Look first to the end 
 of whatever thou undertakest, and then act accord 
 ingly/ Khassoum is indeed my brother, but he is 
 envious of my riches and he loves me not. Give 
 not access in thy heart to his deceptions, and re 
 member the words of the Messenger on whom be 
 peace that lies and cunning deceptions are the 
 forerunners of the accursed work of Satan, the evil 
 one. Thou art just, O kadee, and the dirt of lying 
 deceptions cannot sully the hem of thy white gar 
 ments of knowledge and wisdom. Mohammed 
 
KHIZR 205 
 
 Ed-Din, these are my witnesses, six merchants of 
 this holy town, honored by every one and wealthy 
 in the world s goods; they will swear to thee that 
 they have known this woman for many years as the 
 favorite inmate of my harem." 
 
 The kadee told the six merchants to approach, 
 and the first merchant said : "Verily, O kadee, I 
 have known this woman for long years as the 
 Fatima of the Hadji s harem. Many a shawl and 
 many a cunningly worked rug have I sold to her." 
 
 The second merchant said: "O kadee, truth is 
 ever its own defense. This is the woman which 
 long ago Nassim brought from amongst the tribes. 
 Many a yard of silk have I spread at her feet, that 
 she might choose and buy." 
 
 The third merchant said: "It is she, the apple 
 of Nassim s eye. I remember well how, seven 
 years ago, she came to my little shop in the bazaar, 
 accompanied by two black attendants, and bought 
 from me at a cheap price, be it said, an amber neck 
 lace which had once belonged to his eminent High 
 ness, the great Effendi Bey of Tripoli." 
 
 The fourth merchant said: "Trade is needful 
 for a poor man. Of me Nassim bought slippers 
 and jewels and Turkish sweets when, many years 
 
206 WINGS 
 
 ago, he paid the dower to the father of this 
 
 woman." 
 
 The fifth merchant said: "I am an ignorant 
 man, and speech does not come readily to my lips. 
 But may I never enter the Christian paradise if this 
 is not the shining one of Nassim s harem, and if 
 she has not bought many pounds of spices and sugar 
 in my poor shop." 
 
 The sixth merchant said : "May my right hand 
 wither as does the thirsty date-tree when the well 
 dries up, if I do not speak the truth ; verily I declare 
 that this is the well-beloved favorite woman of 
 Nassim s household! She is a Bedawin, and ac 
 cording to the custom of the tribesmen she came 
 here unveiled; but she obeyed her master s wishes, 
 and I am the merchant who sold to her the first 
 black and gold Egyptian veil, to hide her chaste 
 features from the impudent glance of the multi 
 tude." 
 
 Such was the testimony of the six Giaour mer 
 chants, and the kadee was puzzled; and though he 
 knew in the inmost chamber of his heart that Khas- 
 soum was speaking the truth, he did not know how 
 to prove it. 
 
 He thought and thought and thought, O you chil- 
 
KHIZR 207 
 
 dren of Arabs, until Ilyas, the great Kutb, heard 
 his praying thoughts and left his abode on the roof 
 of the Kaabah in Mecca to fiy across the Western 
 desert and to bring to Mohammed Ed-Din the in 
 spiration which he needed. Ilyas spoke to the soul 
 of the kadee, and the kadee exclaimed : "Hafiz, 
 my faithful slave, go thou to the house of Hadji 
 Nassim and bring to me the dogs which belong to 
 his household." 
 
 The slave bowed and left, and soon he returned 
 leading on a chain the two dogs of Nassim s house, 
 two strong Kabyle dogs with black bristly hair and 
 huge teeth. 
 
 The kadee ordered the woman to confront the 
 dogs: "If thou hast been in Nassim s harem for 
 long years, they will surely recognize thee." She 
 obeyed trembling, and though she tried her best to 
 talk to them with sweet words and gestures of 
 blandishment, the dogs growled at her and showed 
 their teeth and proved clearly that the woman was 
 a stranger to them. 
 
 Then the wise kadee raised his hands and said: 
 "Nassim, and thou, woman of the Bedawin, I 
 sentence you according to the words in the book of 
 the Koran: If any of the true believers commit 
 
208 WINGS 
 
 the crime of adultery, punish them both; produce 
 witnesses against them, imprison them in separate 
 apartments until death release them, or Allah 
 affordeth them a way to escape/ And you, Greek 
 infidels, remember the words : Woe be unto those 
 who give false testimony/ Ye shall have your 
 hands and feet cut off, and be thrown out into the 
 yellow desert, until Allah takes pity on you and re 
 lieves you from your pains." 
 
 Then the kadee clapped his hands and slaves 
 came, and they took Nassim and Mer-el-Nissar and 
 the six merchants and did to them according to the 
 judgment of the kadee. 
 
 Then Mohammed Ed-Din, the judge who was as 
 wise as Haroun-el-Rashid, turned to the men who 
 had gathered to hear him administer justice and 
 punishment, and said : 
 
 "To-day I have proved that the testimony of two 
 dogs is more to be believed than the testimony of 
 Nassim, the rich, and that of six Greek merchants." 
 
 You ask me what became of Khassoum, ye sons 
 of Arabs ? 
 
 Khassoum bowed before the wise judge and 
 praised him, and then he turned his face towards 
 
KHIZR 209 
 
 Mecca ; he wandered towards the rising sun, for the 
 voice of Khizr was still whispering into his ear: 
 "Go out into the yellow lands, Khassoum ibn Taib, 
 and seek on, that thou ma vest find Islam, that thou 
 mayest find true resignation." 
 
 For many a year, he wandered in the wilderness, 
 without sandals to protect his blistering feet, fasting 
 and praying and avoiding the habitations of man 
 kind, until he had become a holy Welee, a master in 
 the true faith. Khizr was always before him, 
 spreading his great silver wings, pointing the way 
 like a shining guiding star and speaking to him at 
 dawn. 
 
 Many a time Eblis and his host of evil demons 
 tried to tempt him, but he was steadfast and prac 
 ticed self-denial until he was a saint, holier than 
 Esh-Shiblee himself. 
 
 One day, during Dhu-l-Hijjeh, the holy month of 
 pilgrimages, he wandered from the mountains into 
 the desert until he came to the caravan road which 
 leads from Timbuctoo to the oasis of the Northern 
 Sahara. He spread his ragged bournous and lay 
 down, his forehead touching the ground, and for 
 three days and three nights he did not sleep, nor 
 did he touch food or drink, but he repeated over and 
 
210 WINGS 
 
 over again the words "La ilah illallah until his 
 mind had absorbed the deepest meaning of Islam: 
 There is no God but the God. 
 
 On the evening of the third day, Khizr gently 
 closed his eyes, but the eyes of his soul were wide 
 open, and it seemed to him that he was in the court 
 yard of a huge palace, whose roof melted dimly into 
 the silvery blueness of the skies; the walls of the 
 palace were of pearl and red jacinth and yellow 
 gold; and wherever he turned his eyes, he saw 
 written on these walls the shining words : La ilah 
 illallah. . . . From afar he could hear the rippling 
 waters of Selsebil, the river that flows through 
 Paradise, and he felt an indescribable happiness. 
 
 And Khizr summoned Azrael, the black-winged 
 angel of death, and Azrael came and kissed lightly 
 the lips of Khassoum, the pilgrim, the son of Taib, 
 the Welee, the great saint. 
 
FEAR 
 
 THE fact that the man whom he feared had died 
 ten years earlier did not in the least lessen Stuart 
 McGregor s obsession of horror, of a certain grim 
 expectancy, every time he recalled that final scene, 
 just before Farragut Hutchison disappeared in the 
 African jungle that stood, spectrally motionless as 
 if forged out of some blackish-green metal, in the 
 haggard moonlight. 
 
 As he reconstructed it, the whole scene seemed 
 unreal, almost oppressively, ludicrously theatrical. 
 The pall of sodden, stygian darkness all around; 
 the night sounds of soft-winged, obscene things 
 flapping lazily overhead or brushing against the 
 furry trees that held the woolly heat of the tropical 
 day; the slimy, swishy things that glided and 
 crawled and wiggled underfoot; the vibrant growl 
 of a hunting lioness that began in a deep basso and 
 peaked to a shrill high-pitched, ridiculously inade 
 quate treble; a spotted hyena s vicious, bluffing 
 
 211 
 
212 WINGS 
 
 bark; the chirp and whistle of innumerable 
 monkeys; a warthog breaking through the under 
 growth with clownish crash and somewhere, very 
 far away, the staccato thumping of a signal drum, 
 and more faintly yet the answer from the next in 
 line. 
 
 He had seen many such drums, made from fire- 
 hollowed palm trees and covered with tightly 
 stretched skin often the skin of a human enemy. 
 
 Yes. He remembered it all. He remembered 
 the night jungle creeping in on their camp like a 
 sentient, malign being and then that ghastly, 
 ironic moon squinting down, just as Farragut 
 Hutchison walked away between the six giant, 
 plumed, ochre-smeared Bakoto negroes, and bring 
 ing into crass relief the tattoo mark on the man s 
 back where the shirt had been torn to tatters by 
 camel thorns and wait-a-bit spikes and saber-shaped 
 palm leaves. 
 
 He recalled the occasion when Farragut Hutchi 
 son had had himself tattooed; after a crimson, 
 drunken spree at Madam Celeste s place in Port 
 Said, the other side of the Red Sea traders bazaar, 
 to please a half-caste Swahili dancing girl who 
 looked like a golden madonna of evil, familiar with 
 
FEAR 213 
 
 all the seven sins. Doubtless the girl had gone 
 shares with the Levantine craftsman who had done 
 the work an eagle, in bold red and blue, sur 
 mounted by a lopsided crown, and surrounded by a 
 wavy design. The eagle was in profile, and its 
 single eye had a disconcerting trick of winking 
 sardonically whenever Farragut Hutchison moved 
 his back muscles or twitched his shoulder blades. 
 
 Always, in his memory, Stuart McGregor saw 
 that tatoo mark. 
 
 Always did he see the wicked, leering squint in 
 the eagle s eye and then he would scream, wher 
 ever he happened to be in a theater, a Broadway 
 restaurant, or across some good friend s mahogany 
 and beef. 
 
 Thinking back, he remembered that, for all tkeir 
 bravado, for all their showing off to each other, 
 both he and Farragut Hutchison had been afraid 
 since that day up the hinterland when, drunk with 
 fermented palm-wine, they had insulted the fetish 
 of the Bakotos, while the men were away hunting 
 and none left to guard the village except the women 
 and children and a few feeble old men whose curses 
 and high-pitched maledictions were picturesque, but 
 hardly effectual enough to stop him and his partner 
 
214 WINGS 
 
 from doing a vulgar, intoxicated dance in front of 
 the idol, from grinding burning cigar ends into its 
 squat, repulsive features, and from generally pol 
 luting the juju hut not to speak of the thorough 
 and profitable looting of the place. 
 
 They had got away with the plunder, gold dust 
 and a handful of splendid canary diamonds, before 
 the Bakoto warriors had returned. But fear had 
 followed them, stalked them, trailed them; a fear 
 different from any they had ever experienced be 
 fore. And be it mentioned that their path of life 
 had been crimson and twisted and fantastic, that 
 they had followed the little squinting swart-headed, 
 hunchbacked djinni of adventure wherever man s 
 primitive lawlessness rules, from Nome to Tim 
 buktu, from Peru to the black felt tents of Outer 
 Mongolia, from the Australian bush to the absinth- 
 sodden apache haunts of Paris. Be it mentioned, 
 furthermore, that thus, often, they had stared death 
 in the face and, not being fools, had found the star 
 ing distasteful and shivery. 
 
 But what they had felt on that journey, back to 
 the security of the coast and the ragged Union Jack 
 flapping disconsolately above the British governor s 
 official corrugated iron mansion, had been some- 
 
FEAR 215 
 
 thing worse than mere physical fear ; it had been a 
 nameless, brooding, sinister apprehension which 
 had crept through their souls, a harshly discordant 
 note that had pealed through the hidden recesses of 
 their beings. 
 
 Everything had seemed to mock them the 
 crawling, sour-miasmic jungle; the slippery roots 
 and timber falls; the sun of the tropics, brown, de 
 cayed, like the sun on the Day of Judgment; the 
 very flowers, spiky, odorous, waxen, unhealthy, 
 lascivious. 
 
 At night, when they had rested in some clearing, 
 they had even feared their own camp fire flaring 
 up, twinkling, flickering, then coiling into a ruby 
 ball. It had seemed completely isolated in the pur 
 ple night. 
 
 Isolated ! 
 
 How they had longed for human companionship 
 white companionship! 
 
 White faces. White slang. White curses. 
 White odors. White obscenities. 
 
 .Why they would have welcomed a decent, 
 square, honest white murder; a knife flashing in 
 some yellow-haired Norse sailor s brawny fist; a 
 belaying pin in the hand of some bullying Liverpool 
 
216 WINGS 
 
 tramp-ship skipper; some Nome gambler s six-gun 
 splattering leaden death ; some apache of the Rue de 
 Venise garroting a passerby. 
 
 But here, in the African jungle and how Stuart 
 McGregor remembered it the fear of death had 
 seemed pregnant with unmentionable horror. 
 There had been no sounds except the buzzing of the 
 tsetse flies and a faint rubbing of drums, whisper 
 ing through the desert and jungle like the voices of 
 disembodied souls, astray on the outer rim of crea 
 tion. 
 
 And, overhead, the stars. Always, at night, 
 three stars, glittering, leering; and Stuart Mc 
 Gregor, who had gone through college and had once 
 written his college measure of limping, anemic 
 verse, had pointed at them. 
 
 "The three stars of Africa !" he had said. "The 
 star of violence ! The star of lust ! And the little 
 stinking star of greed !" 
 
 Then had McGregor broken into staccato 
 laughter which had struck Farragut Hutchison as 
 singularly out of place and had caused him to blurt 
 forth with a wicked curse : 
 
 "Shut your trap, you " 
 
 For already they had begun to quarrel, those two 
 
FEAR 217 
 
 pals of a dozen tight, riotous adventures. Already, 
 imperceptibly, gradually, like the shadow of a leaf 
 through summer dusk, a mutual hatred had grown 
 up between them. 
 
 But they had controlled themselves. The dia 
 monds were good, could be sold at a big figure ; and, 
 even split in two, would mean a comfortable 
 stake. 
 
 Then, quite suddenly, had come the end the end 
 for one of them. 
 
 And the twisting, gliding skill of Stuart Mc 
 Gregor s fingers had made sure that Farragut 
 Hutchison should be that one. 
 
 Years after, when Africa as a whole had faded 
 to a memory of coiling, unclean shadows, Stuart 
 McGregor used to say, with that rather plaintive, 
 monotonous drawl of his, that the end of this 
 phantasmal African adventure had been different 
 from what he had expected it to be. 
 
 In a way, he had found it disappointing. 
 
 Not that it had lacked in purely dramatic thrills 
 and blood-curdling trimmings. That wasn t it. 
 On the contrary, it had had a plethora of thrills. 
 
 But, rather, he must have been keyed up to too 
 high a pitch ; must have expected too much, feared 
 
218 WINGS 
 
 too much during that journey from the Bakoto vil 
 lage back through the hinterland. 
 
 Thus when, one night, the Bakoto warriors had 
 come from nowhere, out of the jungle, hundreds of 
 them, silent, as if the wilderness had spewed them 
 forth, it was all quite prosy. 
 
 Prosy, too, had been the expectation of death. 
 It had even seemed a welcome relief from the 
 straining fatigues of the jungle pull, the recurrent 
 fits of fever, the flying and crawling pests, the 
 gnawing moroseness which is so typically African. 
 
 "An explosion of life and hatred/* Stuart Mc 
 Gregor used to say, "that s what I had expected, 
 don t you see? Quick and merciless. And it 
 wasn t. For the end came slow and inevitable. 
 Stolid. Greek in a way. And so courtly! So 
 polite ! That was the worst of it !" 
 
 For the leader of the Bakotos, a tall, broad, 
 frizzy, odorous warrior, with a face like a black 
 Nero with a dash of Manchu emperor, had bowed 
 before them with a great clanking of barbarous 
 ornaments. There had been no marring taint of 
 hatred in his voice as he told them that they must 
 pay for their insults to the fetish. He had not even 
 mentioned the theft of the gold dust and diamonds. 
 
FEAR 219 
 
 "My heart is heavy at the thought, white chiefs," 
 he said. "But you must pay !" 
 
 Stuart McGregor had stammered ineffectual, 
 foolish apologies: 
 
 "We we were drunk. We didn t know what 
 or what we " 
 
 "What you were doing!" the Bakoto had finished 
 the sentence for him, with a little melancholy sigh. 
 "And there is forgiveness in my heart " 
 
 "You you mean to say " Farragut Hutchi 
 son had jumped up, with extended hand, blurting 
 out hectic thanks. 
 
 "Forgiveness in my heart, not in the juju s," 
 gently continued the negro. "For the juju never 
 forgives. On the other hand, the juju is fair. He 
 wants his just measure of blood. Not an ounce 
 more. Therefore," the Bakoto had gone on, and 
 his face had been as stony and as passionless as that 
 of the Buddha who meditates in the shade of the 
 cobra s hood, "the choice will be yours." 
 
 "Choice?" Farragut Hutchison had looked up, a 
 gleam of hope in his eyes. 
 
 "Yes. Choice which one of you will die." The 
 Bakoto had smiled, with the same suave courtliness 
 which had, somehow, increased the utter horror of 
 
220 WINGS 
 
 the scene. "Die oh a slow death, befitting the 
 insult to the juju, befitting the juju s great holi 
 ness!" 
 
 Suddenly, Stuart McGregor had understood that 
 there would be no arguing, no bargaining whatso 
 ever ; quickly, had come his hysterical question. 
 
 "Who? I or " 
 
 He had slurred and stopped, somehow ashamed, 
 and the Bakoto had finished the interrupted ques 
 tion with gentle, gliding, inhuman laughter: 
 "Your friend? White chief, that is for you two 
 to decide. I only know that the juju has spoken 
 to the priest, and that he is satisfied with the life 
 of one of you two; the life and the death. A 
 slow death." 
 
 He had paused; then had continued gently, so 
 very, very gently: "Yes. A slow death, depend 
 ing entirely upon the vitality of the one of you two 
 who will be sacrificed to the juju. There will be 
 little knives. There will be the flying insects which 
 follow the smell of blood and festering flesh. Too, 
 there will be many, crimson-headed ants, many 
 ants and a thin river of honey to show them the 
 trail." 
 
 He had yawned. Then he had gone on : "Con- 
 
FEAR 221 
 
 sider. The juju is just. He only wants the sacri 
 fice of one of you, and you yourselves must decide 
 which one shall go, and which one shall stay. And 
 remember the little, little knives. Be pleased to 
 remember the many ants which follow the honey 
 trail. I shall return shortly and hear your choice." 
 
 He had bowed and, with his silent warriors, had 
 stepped back into the jungle that had closed behind 
 them like a curtain. 
 
 Even in that moment of stark, enormous horror, 
 horror too great to be grasped, horror that swept 
 over and beyond the barriers of fear even in that 
 moment Stuart McGregor had realized that, by 
 leaving the choice to them, the Bakoto had com 
 mitted a refined cruelty worthy of a more civilized 
 race, and had added a psychic torture fully as 
 dreadful as the physical torture of the little 
 knives. 
 
 Too, in that moment of ghastly expectancy, he 
 had known that it was Farragut Hutchison who 
 would be sacrificed to the juju Farragut Hutchi 
 son who sat there, staring into the camp fire, mak 
 ing queer little, funny noises in his throat. 
 
 Suddenly, Stuart McGregor had laughed he re 
 membered that laugh to his dying day and had 
 
222 WINGS 
 
 thrown a greasy pack of playing cards into the 
 circle of meager, indifferent light. 
 
 "Let the cards decide, old boy," he had shouted. 
 "One hand of poker and no drawing to your hand. 
 Show-down! That s square, isn t it?" 
 
 "Sure!" the other had replied, still staring 
 straight ahead of him. "Go ahead and deal " 
 
 His voice had drifted into a mumble while Stuart 
 McGregor had picked up the deck, had shuffled, 
 slowly, mechanically. 
 
 As he shuffled, it had seemed to him as if his 
 brain was frantically telegraphing to his fingers, as 
 if all those delicate little nerves that ran from the 
 back of his skull down to his finger tips were throb 
 bing a clicking little chorus : 
 
 "Do it Mac! Do it Mac! Do it Mac!" 
 with a maddening, syncopated rhythm. 
 
 He had kept on shuffling, had kept on watching 
 the motions of his fingers and had seen that his 
 thumb and second finger had shuffled the ace of 
 hearts to the bottom of the deck. 
 
 Had he done that on purpose? He did not know 
 then. He never found out though, in his mem 
 ory, he lived through the scene a thousand times. 
 
 But there were the little knives. There were the 
 
FEAR 223 
 
 ants. There was the honey trail. There was his 
 own, hard decision to live. And, years earlier, he 
 had been a professional faro dealer at Silver City. 
 
 Another ace had joined the first at the bottom of 
 the deck. The third. The fourth. 
 
 And then Farragut Hutchison s violent: "Deal, 
 man, deal ! You re driving me crazy. Get it over 
 with." 
 
 The sweat had been pouring from Stuart Mc 
 Gregor s face. His blood had throbbed in his 
 veins. Something like a sledge hammer had 
 drummed at the base of his skull. 
 
 "Cut, won t you?" he had said, his voice coming 
 as if from very far away. 
 
 The other had waved a trembling hand. "No, 
 no ! Deal em as they are. You won t cheat me." 
 
 Stuart McGregor had cleared a little space on the 
 ground with the point of his shoe. 
 
 He remembered the motion. He remembered 
 how the dead leaves had stirred with a dry, rasp 
 ing, tragic sound, how something slimy and phos 
 phorous-green had squirmed through the tufted 
 jungle grass, how a little furry scorpion had 
 scurried away with a clicking tchk-tchk-tchk. 
 
 He had dealt. 
 
224 WINGS 
 
 Mechanically, even as he was watching them, his 
 fingers had given himself five cards from the 
 bottom of the deck, four aces and the queen of 
 diamonds. And, the next second, in answer to 
 Farragut Hutchison s choked: "Show-down! I 
 have two pair kings and jacks!" his own well 
 simulated shriek of joy and triumph : 
 
 "I win! Fve four aces! Every ace in the 
 pack!" 
 
 And then Farragut Hutchison s weak, ridiculous 
 exclamation ridiculous considering the dreadful 
 fate that awaited him : 
 
 "Geewhittaker! You re some lucky guy, aren t 
 you, Mac?" 
 
 At the same moment the Bakoto chief had 
 stepped out of the jungle, followed by half a dozen 
 warriors. 
 
 Then the final scene that ghastly, ironic moon 
 squinting down, just as Farragut Hutchison had 
 walked away between the giant, plumed, ocher- 
 smeared Bakoto negroes, bringing into stark relief 
 the tattoo mark on his back where the shirt had 
 been torn to tatters and the leering, evil wink in 
 the eagle s eye as Farragut Hutchison twitched his 
 shoulder blades with absurd, nervous resignation. 
 
FEAR 225 
 
 Stuart McGregor remembered it every day of his 
 life. 
 
 He spoke of it to many. But only to Father 
 Aloysius O Donnell, the priest who officiated in the 
 little Gothic church around the corner, on Ninth 
 Avenue, did he tell the whole truth did he confess 
 that he had cheated. 
 
 "Of course I cheated! * he said. "Of course!" 
 And, with a sort of mocking bravado; "What 
 would you have done, padre ?" 
 
 The priest, who was old and wise and gentle, 
 thus not at all sure of himself, shook his head. 
 
 "I don t know," he replied. "I don t know." 
 
 "Well I do know. You would have done what 
 I did. You wouldn t have been able to help your 
 self." Then, in a low voice: "And you would 
 have paid! As I pay every day, every minute, 
 every second of my life." 
 
 "Regret, repentance," murmured the priest, but 
 the other cut him short. 
 
 "Repentance nothing. I regret nothing! I 
 repent nothing! I d do the same to-morrow. It 
 isn t that oh that what d ye call it sting of 
 conscience, that s driving me crazy. It s fear !" 
 
 "Fear of what?" asked Father O Donnell. 
 
226 WINGS 
 
 "Fear of Farragut Hutchison who is dead !" 
 
 Ten years ago ! 
 
 And he knew that Farragut Hutchison had died. 
 For not long afterward a British trader had come 
 upon certain gruesome but unmistakable remains 
 and had brought the tale to the coast. Yet was 
 there fear in Stuart McGregor s soul, fear worse 
 than the fear of the little knives. Fear of Farragut 
 Hutchison who was dead ? 
 
 No. He did not believe that the man was dead. 
 He did not believe it, could not believe it. 
 
 "And even suppose he s dead," he used to say to 
 the priest, "he ll get me. He ll get me as sure as 
 you re born. I saw it in the eye of that eagle the 
 squinting eye of that infernal, tattooed eagle !" 
 
 Then he would turn a grayish yellow, his whole 
 body would tremble with a terrible palsy and in a 
 sort of whine, which was both ridiculous and pa 
 thetic, given his size and bulk, given the crimson, 
 twisted adventures through which he had passed, he 
 would exclaim: 
 
 "He ll get me. He ll get me. He ll get me even 
 from beyond the grave." 
 
FEAR 227 
 
 And then Father O Donnell would cross himself 
 rapidly, just a little guiltily. 
 
 It is said that there is a morbid curiosity which 
 forces the murderer to view the place of his crime. 
 
 Some psychic reason of the same kind may have 
 caused Stuart McGregor to decorate the walls and 
 corners of his sitting room with the memories of 
 that Africa which he feared and hated, and which, 
 daily, he was trying to forget with a shimmering, 
 cruel mass of jungle curios, sjamboks and assegais, 
 signal drums and daggers, knobkerries and rhino 
 shields and what not. 
 
 Steadily, he added to his collection, buying in 
 auction rooms, in little shops on the water front, 
 from sailors and ship pursers and collectors who 
 had duplicates for sale. 
 
 He became a well-known figure in the row of 
 antique stores in back of Madison Square Garden, 
 and was so liberal when it came to payment that 
 Morris Newman, who specialized in African curios, 
 would send the pick of all the new stuff he bought 
 to his house. 
 
 It was on a day in August one of those tropical 
 New York days when the very birds gasp for air, 
 
228 WINGS 
 
 when orange-flaming sun rays drop from the brazen 
 sky like crackling spears and the melting asphalt 
 picks them up again and tosses them high that 
 Stuart McGregor, returning from a short walk, 
 found a large, round package in his sitting room. 
 
 "Mr. Newman sent it," his servant explained. 
 "He said it s a rare curio, and he s sure you ll like 
 it." 
 
 "All right." 
 
 The servant bowed, left, and closed the door, 
 while Stuart McGregor cut the twine, unwrapped 
 the paper, looked. 
 
 And then, suddenly, he screamed with fear; and, 
 just as suddenly, the scream of fear turned into a 
 scream of maniacal joy. 
 
 For the thing which Newman had sent him was 
 an African signal drum, covered with tightly 
 stretched skin human skin white skin! And 
 square in the center there was a tattoo mark 
 an eagle in red and blue, surmounted by a lopsided 
 crown, and surrounded by a wavy design. 
 
 Here was the final proof that Farragut Hutchison 
 was dead, that, forever, he was rid of his fear. In 
 a paroxysm of joy, he picked up the drum and 
 clutched it to his heart. 
 
FEAR 229 
 
 He gave a cry of pain. His lips quivered, 
 frothed. His hands dropped the drum and fanned 
 the air, and he looked at the thing that had fastened 
 itself to his right wrist. 
 
 It seemed like a short length of rope, grayish in 
 color, spotted with dull red. Even as Stuart Mc 
 Gregor dropped to the floor, dying, he knew what 
 had happened. 
 
 A little venomous snake, an African fer-de-lance, 
 that had been curled up in the inside of the drum, 
 numbed by the cold, had been revived by the splin 
 tering heat of New York. 
 
 Yes even as he died he knew what had hap 
 pened. Even as he died, he saw that malign, 
 obscene squint in the eagle s eye. Even as he died, 
 he knew that Farragut Hutchison had killed him 
 from beyond the grave! 
 
LIGHT 
 
 BENEATH the sooty velvet of the New York 
 night, Tompkins Square was a blotch of lonely, 
 mean sadness. 
 
 No night loungers there waiting for a bluecoat s 
 hickory to tickle their thin patched soles ; no wizen 
 news vendor spreading the remnants of his printed 
 wares about him and figuring out the difference 
 between gain on papers sold and discount on those 
 to be returned; no Greek hawker considering the 
 advisability of beating the high cost of living by 
 supping on those figs which he had not been able to 
 sell because of their antiquity; no maudlin drunk 
 mistaking the blur in his whisky-soaked brain for 
 the happy twilight of the foggy green isle. 
 
 For Tcmpkins Square is both the soul and the 
 stomach possibly interchangeable terms of those 
 who work with cloth and silk and shoddy worsted, 
 with needle and thread, with thimble and sewing- 
 machine, those who out of their starved, haggard 
 East-Side brains make the American women the 
 
 231 
 
232 WINGS 
 
 native-born the best dressed in all the world. 
 Sweatshop workers they are : men from Russia and 
 Poland, men from the Balkans, from Sicily, Cala 
 bria, and Asia Minor; men who set out on their 
 splendid American adventure, not for liberty, but 
 for a chance to earn enough to keep body and soul 
 together and let the ward boss and the ward as 
 sociation attenil to the voting, including the more 
 or less honest counting of votes. 
 
 Work eat sleep and lights out at ten! Such 
 is the maxim of the neighborhood, since lights cost 
 money, and money buys food. 
 
 Thus Tompkins Square on that night, as on all 
 nights, was sad and dark and tired and asleep. 
 Just the scraggly, dusty trees, the empty benches, 
 and a shy gleam of the half -veiled moon where it 
 struck the fantastic, twisted angle of a battered 
 municipal waste-paper receptacle, or a bit of broken 
 bottle glass half hidden in a murky puddle. 
 
 On the north side of the square stood the tene 
 ment house with the lighted window like a wink 
 ing eye directly beneath the roof, high up. The 
 house was gray and pallid; incongruously baroque 
 in spots, distributed irregularly over its warty 
 facade, where the contractor had got rid of some 
 
LIGHT 233 
 
 art balconies and carved near-stone struts left over 
 from a bankrupt Bronx job. It towered over the 
 smug red-brick dwellings remnants of an age 
 when English and German were still spoken there 
 abouts with thin, anemic arrogance, like a tuber 
 cular giant among a lot of short, stocky, well- 
 fleshed people, sick, yet conscious of his height and 
 the dignity that goes with it. 
 
 He saw the lighted window as he crossed the 
 square from the south side, and sat down on one of 
 the benches and stared at it. 
 
 Steadily he stared, until his eyes smarted and 
 burned and his neck muscles bunched painfully. 
 
 For that glimmering light, gilding the fly-specked 
 pane, meant to him the things he hated, the things 
 he had cheated and cursed and ridiculed and, by 
 the same token, longed for and loved. 
 
 It meant to him, life and the reasons of life. 
 
 It meant to him humanity and the faith of hu 
 manity: which is happiness. The right to happi 
 ness ! The eternal, sacerdotal duty of happiness ! 
 
 Happiness ? 
 
 He laughed. Why damn it! happiness was a 
 lie. Happiness was hypocrisy. It meant the diet- 
 
234 WINGS 
 
 ing of man s smoldering, natural passions into an 
 artificial, pinchbeck, thin-blooded puritanism. It 
 spelled the mumming of the thinking mind the 
 mind that was trying to think into the speciosities 
 of childish fairy-tales. It was a sniveling reminder 
 of pap-fed infancy. 
 
 The only thing worth while in life was success 
 which is selfishness. Selfishness sprawling stark- 
 contoured and unashamed, sublimely unself -con 
 scious, serenely brutal a five-plied Nietzscheism 
 on a modern business basis which acknowledges 
 neither codified laws nor principles. 
 
 It had been the measure and route of his life, and 
 he whipped out the thought like something 
 shameful and nasty, like a nauseating drug which 
 his mind refused to swallow it had cheated him. 
 
 Yes, by God ! It had cheated him, cheated him ! 
 
 For, first, it had given him gold and power and 
 the envy of men, which was sweet. 
 
 Then, as a jest of Fate s own black brewing, it 
 had taken everything away from him overnight, in 
 one huge financial crash, and had made of him what 
 he was to-night: gray, middle-aged, bitter, joyless 
 and a pauper. It had brought him here, to Tomp- 
 kins Square, and had chucked him, like a worn-out, 
 
LIGHT 235 
 
 useless rag, into this dusty, sticky bench whence he 
 was staring at the lighted window, high up. 
 
 He wondered what was behind it, and who ? 
 
 Three days earlier he had come to New York 
 with ten dollars his last ten dollars in his pocket. 
 He had taken a room in this tenement-house, and 
 every night he had sat on the bench and had stared 
 at the warty, baroque fa9ade. 
 
 Always it had been dark. Always the tenants, 
 the hard-working people who lived there, had 
 turned out their lights around ten o clock with 
 an almost military regularity that reminded 
 him of barracks and a well-disciplined boarding- 
 school. 
 
 He knew most of them. For they had talked to 
 him, on stairs and landings and leaning from win 
 dows, with the easy garrulousness of the very poor 
 who can t be snobs since they are familiar with each 
 other s incomes and flesh-pots. They had lifted the 
 crude-meshed veils of their hearts and hearths and 
 had bidden him look and all he had seen had been 
 misery. 
 
 He checked the thought. 
 
 No ! That wasn t true ! 
 
 He had also seen love and friendship, and fine, 
 
236 WINGS 
 
 sweet faith and that was why he hated them 
 why he pitied and despised them. 
 
 Faith love friendship! To the devil with the 
 sniveling, weak-kneed lot of em! They spelled 
 happiness and happiness did not exist and 
 
 Happiness ! 
 
 The thought, the word, recurred to his brain witH 
 maddening persistency. It would not budge. 
 
 Happiness. 
 
 "Why, happiness is behind that lighted window !" 
 The idea came to him almost the conviction. 
 
 But what happiness? And whose? 
 
 He speculated who might be up there, in the 
 garret room squeezed by the flat roof. He tried 
 to picture to himself what might be shimmering be 
 hind that golden flash. 
 
 Perhaps it was Fedor Davidoff, the little huncK- 
 backed Russian tailor, with the fat, golden-haired, 
 sloe-eyed wife. He might be celebrating the com 
 ing of freedom to his beloved Russia. Or he might 
 be sitting up late to finish some piece of work to 
 earn extra money. For his wife was expecting a 
 child. He had three already, curly-haired, straight- 
 backed. But he wanted more- "children make 
 happiness, eh ?" he used to say. 
 
LIGHT 237 
 
 Or wait! Perhaps it was Peter Macdonald, 
 the artist, dreaming over his lamp and his rank, 
 blackened pipe, and deliberating with himself where 
 he would live upper West Side or lower Fifth 
 when the world should have acknowledged his 
 genius and backed up the opinion with solid cash. 
 Peter had lived now for over three months in the 
 tenement-house. "Like the neighborhood bully 
 atmosphere marvelous greens and browns," was 
 the reason he gave. But the other tenants smiled. 
 They knew that Peter lived there because his room 
 cost him only two dollars a week, and because he 
 took his meals with the Leibl Finkelsteins on the 
 first floor for three dollars more. 
 
 Perhaps a pair of lovers. Enrique Tassetti, the 
 squat, laughing Sicilian, who had taken to himself 
 a bride of his own people. They would have spent 
 fifty cents for a bottle of Chianti, another fifty for 
 bread and mushrooms and oil and pepper to turn 
 into a dish worthy of a Sicilian or a king. 
 
 Again it might be Donchian, the Armenian, burn 
 ing the midnight oil over the perfection of the 
 mysterious invention of which he spoke at times, 
 after having worked with needle and thread since 
 six o clock in the morning; or old Mrs. Sarah 
 
238 WINGS 
 
 Kempinsky, reading and rereading the letter which 
 her soldier son had sent her from France; or 
 
 What did it matter? 
 
 Whoever was sitting behind that lighted window 
 was happy happy and the man s imagination 
 choked, his mind became flushed and congested. 
 
 He was quite unconscious of his surroundings. 
 The stillness of the streets seemed magical, the lone 
 liness absolute. Only from very far came sounds: 
 the Elevated rattling with a steely, throaty sob; a 
 surface-car clanking and wheezing; a hoarse Klaxon 
 blaring snobbishly; a stammering, alcoholic voice 
 throwing the tail-end of a gutter song to the moist 
 purple veils of the night. 
 
 But he did not hear. 
 
 He was conscious only of the lighted window, 
 high up. It seemed to glitter nervously, to call to 
 him, to stretch out, as if trying to communicate to 
 him an emotion it had borrowed by contact with 
 something with somebody. 
 
 That was just the trouble. He wondered who 
 that Somebody was, what that Something might be. 
 Whoever it was, it seemed urgent, clamorous. 
 Silently clamorous. His subconsciousness grew 
 
LIGHT 239 
 
 thick with amazement and wonder and doubt. It 
 surged up crowded, choking, tumultuous. 
 
 The lighted window! 
 
 ^What was behind it? What was its riddle? 
 
 He knew that he must find out, and so he rose, 
 crossed the street, entered the house, and was up 
 the stairs three steps at the time. 
 
 He found the room without any trouble and 
 opened the door. He did not knock. 
 
 He stepped inside; and there, on the bed, he saw 
 a motionless figure, faintly outlined beneath a plain 
 white sheet, a tall candle burning yellow at the foot 
 of the bed, another at the head. 
 
 He crossed over, lifted a corner of the sheet, and 
 looked. And he saw the face of a dead man. It 
 was calm and serene and unutterably happy. 
 
 Then it dawned upon him : 
 
 The man on the bed was himself. 
 
 THE END 
 
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