第43章

"That finished, he picked out a book from the shelves, opened it, and laid it face downward upon the couch. When he had completed all things to his satisfaction he unlocked the door and came out, very pleased with himself.

"After dinner he lit a cigar and sat smoking a while in silence.

"'Are you feeling tired?' he said to her at length, with a smile.

"She laughed, and, calling him a lazy old thing, asked what it was he wanted.

"'Only my novel that I was reading. I left it in my den. Do you mind? You will find it open on the couch.'

"She sprang up and ran lightly to the door.

"As she paused there for a moment to look back at him and ask the name of the book, he thought how pretty and how sweet she was; and for the first time a faint glimmer of the true nature of the thing he was doing forced itself into his brain.

"'Never mind,' he said, half rising, 'I'll--'; then, enamoured of the brilliancy of his plan, checked himself; and she was gone.

"He heard her footsteps passing along the matted passage, and smiled to himself. He thought the affair was going to be rather amusing.

One finds it difficult to pity him even now when one thinks of it.

"The smoking-room door opened and closed, and he still sat gazing dreamily at the ash of his cigar, and smiling.

"One moment, perhaps two passed, but the time seemed much longer.

The man blew the gray cloud from before his eyes and waited. Then he heard what he had been expecting to hear--a piercing shriek.

Then another, which, expecting to hear the clanging of the distant door and the scurrying back of her footsteps along the passage, puzzled him, so that the smile died away from his lips.

"Then another, and another, and another, shriek after shriek.

"The native servant, gliding noiselessly about the room, laid down the thing that was in his hand and moved instinctively towards the door. The man started up and held him back.

"'Keep where you are,' he said hoarsely. 'It is nothing. Your mistress is frightened, that is all. She must learn to get over this folly.' Then he listened again, and the shrieks ended with what sounded curiously like a smothered laugh; and there came a sudden silence.

"And out of that bottomless silence, Fear for the first time in his life came to the man, and he and the dusky servant looked at each other with eyes in which there was a strange likeness; and by a common instinct moved together towards the place where the silence came from.

"When the man opened the door he saw three things: one was the dead python, lying where he had left it; the second was a live python, its comrade apparently, slowly crawling round it; the third a crushed, bloody heap in the middle of the floor.

"He himself remembered nothing more until, weeks afterwards, he opened his eyes in a darkened, unfamiliar place, but the native servant, before he fled screaming from the house, saw his master fling himself upon the living serpent and grasp it with his hands, and when, later on, others burst into the room and caught him staggering in their arms, they found the second python with its head torn off.

"That is the incident that changed the character of my man--if it be changed," concluded Jephson. "He told it me one night as we sat on the deck of the steamer, returning from Bombay. He did not spare himself. He told me the story, much as I have told it to you, but in an even, monotonous tone, free from emotion of any kind. I asked him, when he had finished, how he could bear to recall it.

"'Recall it!' he replied, with a slight accent of surprise; 'it is always with me.'"