The Complete Simon Iff (41 page)

Some instinct prompted Simon Iff to play the spy. Perhaps it was that he did not want to disturb the singer, possibly to frighten her. So he slipped off his horse, and tied the bridle to a tree, then crept warily through the undergrowth. He had been a successful shikari in the Hambantota province of Ceylon, and cared nothing for any shooting but the stalk. Five or six minutes later he was in full view of the quarry.

He judged her to be of sixteen years of age. Her body was sinewy and agile, though rather short and sturdy. Her face had something of the satyr in it, with a double curve to strong voluptuous lips. The face was oval, with deep set violet eyes, and dark lines under them, the complexion otherwise absolutely pallid, a dead ivory. Her hair was long and loose, deep violet like her eyes, hanging in heavy masses that curled Medusa-wise about her head. She was clad only in a cotton shift, but her dress, a coarse brown merino, lay with her shoes and stockings a little distance behind her.

Hardly had he taken notice of these matters when her song stopped, and she began to dance. It was a savage romp, reminding him of certain Spanish girls at Granada. But this was a true witch-dance, done with the deliberate purpose of invocation.

She stopped suddenly, with curious naïvété; sat down, and began to put on her dress.

The magician read her soul easily, for it was close kin to his own. He knew that there was but one way to approach her. He began in a very low deep voice, like the muttering of distant thunder, to chant the Hymn to Pan from the Ajax of Sophocles.

At first the girl did not hear; but as the magician grew louder and bolder and more dynamic, she rose and looked about her. Simple Simon was far too well hidden for such crude search. His voice soared and sank, roared and rolled in passionate ecstasy, like the beating of African drums.

Suddenly the girl fell upon her knees. She tore off her clothes, even the shift itself, closed her eyes, threw her head back, and extended her arms.

The magician ceased his song. He came forward quietly toward her, and caught her in his arms. A terrible shudder passed through her frame as he put his mouth on hers; she went limp, and he laid her upon the ground unconscious. Then he covered her with her own dress, and stood with folded arms, waiting. In a few minutes she came out of her swoon. As she saw Iff she trembled, and put her forearm over her eyes. The word "Pan" came in a whisper from her lips.

"Yes, child," said the magician very gently. "It is well, Syrinx, that you never 'ran into the forest from Arcadian Pan.' But I am not Pan only; I am one Simon Iff, 'a desperate magician concealed within the circle of this forest.' In that capacity, I am quite quiet and harmless, and I have lost my way. I will turn back while you dress, and then you will come with me to my horse and put me on my way. Also, I will put you on yours."

"My name is Alma," she said very coolly. "I am a witch."

"Glad to meet you," said Simon, "and glad to hear it. But don't try to bewitch me when I'm not looking. It's easier, anyhow, when I am!"

He turned his back. In two minutes he felt her arm slip through his. They went dancing together out of the hummocks.

"Oh, there's the Devil's black horse!"

"And me the Devil!"

"Of course you are. I belong to you, you know."

"Certainly, certainly."

"I sold my soul for an hour's happiness, and your voice told me that I should have it, and you would come to take me away in a year and a day. Oh how splendid of you to keep your word! The year and a day are up to-day!"

"But where am I to take you?"

"To hell, of course."

The magician regarded her with growing surprise.

"I've had my happiness," she said, "when you put your arms round me and kissed me. Don't you dare think I want to get out of the bargain!"

"So you are really willing to go to hell?"

"Of course I am."

Simon Iff considered her keenly for a few moments.

"The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman," he quoted at last, "Modo he's called, and Mahu. As a gentleman, I don't want to take unfair advantage. So would you mind telling me exactly what you mean by hell?"

"Why, the bottomless pit, of course. The lake of fire and brimstone that burneth for ever and ever, whose worm dieth not and whose fire is not quenched, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and they gnaw their tongues for pain."

"I understand," said Simon Iff. "That place!"

"Don't you realize how much better that is than Titusville? I could be happy there, I think. There's a great gulf fixed, isn't there? No one could get across from heaven to torture me."

"So that was why you sold your soul?"

"I just had to be eternally lost. I was in horrible danger. They had baptized me in my infancy, by total immersion, not the other kinds that don't count; at any moment I might have died and gone to heaven, where mother is."

"I am afraid I shall have to talk seriously to you about theology. Did it never occur to you that some of your pastors and teachers might be liable to some slight inaccuracy at times?"

"Do you mean - it might not be all true?"

"I fear I do."

"But it is true, for I've sold my soul to you, and you've come to take me on the very day you said you would!"

"But I didn't promise to take you to hell, did I?"

"Not exactly. But where else could you take me?"

"Well, I rather thought I would send you over to Paris to some friends of mine who teach little girls to sing when they have voices like yours - only, they haven't. Yours happens to be the finest natural voice I've heard in forty years. And you've got the personality, and the temperament, and the religious feeling, and the dramatic power. When you are twenty-two you will be the greatest singer in the world."

"But I haven't a cent. Oh if only I could have got to Jacksonville, like Selma Spring! She went on the streets, you know, and now she's a dancer in a cabaret in New York. Tom Biddle told me."

"Spring! Spring! I know that name. Is that the girl whose mother married Thorpe?"

Alma nodded.

"So the plot thickens? Aha! I smell battle," he murmured to himself.

"Well, let me extend my holiday awhile, and save the living before I go to take vengeance for the dead."

"And you can't get away?" he added aloud. "Ah, but you can when the Devil takes you."

"My father would catch me and drag me back."

"The only safe place is hell, you think? I'll show you that the Devil is Prince of this world. I'm sorry if you miss the brimstone, but I'll do all I can. Now up we get on the Demon Horse, and away!"

He lifted her lightly to the saddle.

"I have a friend at Ormond, a very charming girl named Mollie Madison. Let us get to some place where I can telephone, and this Young Lochinvar Act will go great at the first house. Direct me, Alma child, we mustn't run into people just now."

She knew the country perfectly. They never saw a soul until, near a cross-road, they came upon a hamlet which boasted a post-office. Iff left her with the horse in a little grove, well out of sight, and went forward to send his message. His excellent French was too much, he hoped, for any eavesdropping clerks.

An hour later Miss Mollie Madison arrived at the edge of the grove in Simon's big limousine. She had one of her own dresses ready for the girl, who was sitting at the feet of the magician, acquiring elementary instruction in the Art of Geomancy. The change was quickly made, toilet and all, for Mollie would have made a first class lady's maid had all else failed. Alma still looked a little like a satyr, but oh! a satyr in the very best society.

"Take her to Jacksonville in the car," commanded Simon. "There you can get the limited. Fix her up in New York with money and clothes and a story, and introduce her to plenty of nice people. Then leave her in charge of the apartment, and come back to finish the rest-cure."

"But I thought you were going to take me away yourself," pouted Alma.

"The fact is, dear child, I've a date to take somebody else away. And this time there's going to be the smell of brimstone, and a little over."

"You'll come for me soon, though?"

"If you're good - I mean bad - and stick to your singing!"

"Kiss me good-bye!"

Simon Iff took the child in his arms for a moment, and touched her lips.

"The Devil gives good measure," he said. "You bargained for an hour's happiness; you shall have a lifetime of it. And your soul's all your own for ever!"

He kissed her again, and put her into the car. Mollie put down the lever. They were off.

"Exit the Chorus," observed Simon, a trifle surly. "Now let us get to business!"

He made no mistake about his road on the second time of asking, and came to the house of the Thorpes a little before sundown.

Mrs. Thorpe was at the door, sweeping. He looked fully upon her. Not yet thirty-five! Her eyes seemed enormous because of the emaciation of her cheeks, sunken upon her toothless jaws. Her hair was scanty and turning grey over the temples. Her lean breasts sagged in her thin dress. She stooped as if with age. Her hands were coarse, dirty, like claws. Her thin long straight mouth was colourless, the lips pinched inwards.

She turned from her mechanical sweep, sweep of the worn broom, and looked up. The sun was setting angrily over the swamps, whose miasma turned his rays to a dull red. In that light Simon on his giant steed towered terrific and menacing. The foul crone fixed her eyes upon his face. It was convulsed by a Satanic sneer.

"Who are you?" she gasped, in a thin squeak.

His voice was hoarse and rasping and malignant. "I am the Devil, come to take his own."

"But I'm saved, I do assure you, I'm saved. I've been baptized, adult baptism by sprinkling, not the ways that aren't any good. I always go to chapel to Brother Teague's. I - I -"

Simon's frown had become more frightful than at first. "Oh, you can't take me, you can't take me!" she screamed. "I read the Bible everyday."

The magician gave a sardonic laugh, grating and hideous.

"Is that all? Come!"

"No, no, I'm not ready," wailed the hag, and, falling on her knees, began to call upon 'Jesus'.

It was an incoherent flood of blasphemies, had she known it.

Simon sat silent. Presently the prayer gave her some sort of courage, and became intelligible.

"Did I do wrong, Lord," she screamed, "oh don't tell me I did wrong to throw Mamie to the alligators, dear, dear Lord Jesus, don't say that! Didn't you say, Lord, 'Suffer the little children to come unto me?' I couldn't, I couldn't let her grow up like Selma to disgrace me!"

She began to babble again; when she looked up, the horseman had gone as silently as he had come. She had a great story to tell her husband of a miraculous answer to her prayer.

Simon Iff rode all through the night. He was chilled to the marrow; he rode like a dead man. Dawn found him near Ormond; the rising sun awoke him from his trance. The stallion gave a weak sigh. "Damnation!" cried Simon, "I've been a brute to my horse!" He dismounted, and led him to the stable.

He stumbled wearily up the steps to the verandah of the hotel.

As it chanced, Dr. Buzzard had been out early, and saw him. "Lord, that man wants a doctor!" he thought, and ran forward to assist him.

Simon sank wearily into a chair. All the virtue seemed to have gone out of him. Buzzard called the waiter to bring some brandy. Simon waved it aside. "I only drink brandy," he faltered, "when I'm feeling fiery and martial." He tried to smile.

"Damnation!" he roared suddenly, like a lion, "and I ought to be feeling fiery and martial, not moping like a dumb beast in agony. That's better. A damned good suggestion of yours, doctor, here's thanks - and jolly good luck to you and to all brave men that are out to fight ignorance!" He drained the liquor at a gulp.

"I'm good at finding excuses for a drink, you see," he laughed defiantly. There was a false note in his voice. To Buzzard it suggested the strained artificiality of a man in dreadful pain, striving with all his pride or courage to conceal the fact.

"But I am rather tired, now you don't mention it, and I think I'll go up and have a nap. Meet me at lunch, will you? I can a tale unfold 'whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood' - oh, you finish the quotation, it's all too ghastly apt!"

He left the doctor a little confirmed in the less optimistic aspects of his original diagnosis.

But at lunch he was his own jovial self once more, though he had gone back to grape-fruit and beef-steak and mineral water.

"Dr. Buzzard, you are a famous alienist. It is perhaps impertinent of me to offer you a clinical picture of what is called sanity in the back-blocks of America. But I have my object.

"Imagine yourself a woman born into a universe containing three sections. The first is a colourless place, described as joyful by people who have had no joy to colour their imaginations. The second is a place of dreadful, senseless agony, readily enough realized by those whose whole lives are full of pain. It is very much more real than the first, because both places are merely shadowy expansions to infinity of what they actually know. Eternal fire is much more suggestive than eternal - I won't call it music.

"The third place is a place of continual torment. Childhood is one long round of scoldings and punishments varied by threats of unknown terrors. Youth is an apprenticeship to slavery. Marriage means an increased dose of drudgery, with an annual agony of childbearing, more joyless and sordid than a sow's. All pleasures without exception are sins, and incur the penalty of going after death to the place which has been defined as the eternal and infinite exaggeration of all the known miseries of life. Oh strait is the gate and narrow is the way, when of the seventy-seven methods of baptism only one is efficacious, and the neighbours are as sure that their way is right as you are about yours! Life is a trackless abyss of pain and fear - above all, fear.

"Then remove all human society, even those naughty neighbours! Remove books! Remove music! Remove art! Remove even interest in politics, and the wide world! Leave such a woman for a while in an isolated house in a swamp, sick with malaria, acrid with mosquitoes, a year-long stench of putrefying weeds. Add a hot climate, with a summer of steaming rains. Can you, with all your educated imagination, picture a more abominable hell, physical, mental, moral, spiritual - can you?"