Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/119

Rh rushed into a small adjoining room, locking the door behind me. There I could give free vent to my fury. I threw myself on the mat-covered floor and rolled in frenzy, cursing and swearing.

"In the middle of my transports, I felt a woman's arms about me and a mouth pressed against mine. I felt no very great surprise. Amongst my slaves of the fourth class, the Sudra caste that is to say, there was a pretty child who had sometimes looked at me in a way I had found agreeable. Her fidelity and sympathy with my calamity at the very time I had completely forgotten the poor girl, touched me.

"'Ah! my poor Holaoheni,' I said to her, 'I think verily there is a curse on me and my wives. So I swear henceforth to marry no more, but having found a pretty mistress like you, to ask no more. See here' and I paid her back the kiss she had given me.

"'Ah!' she sighed five minutes later.

"'Great God!' I cried, 'it is not Holaoheni; then who can it be? Oh God, Oh God, can it again be' And the same cold sweat that I had already experienced on three similar occasions bedewed my brow!

"'Yes! you ungrateful wretch, it is I again, it is I always; it is I who am never weary of being repulsed, insulted and deceived, and still come back to you each time I have good news to tell you.'

"Good!' said I, unlacing the conjugal embrace about my neck:

"I know what your news is; you are come to tell me I am father of a third child?'

"'Whom I have called Philip, in memory of the day when I came to warn you that your third wife was deceiving you. Alas! to-day I have no need to warn you, you have found it out yourself, my poor dear!'

"'Bah,' I cried, losing all patience, 'it is all very well, but here I am with three boys on my hands; surely that's about enough!'

"'Ah! yes, so you would like a girl; well, well, to-day is the twentieth of July, St. Margaret's Day; by that blessed Saint's good offices you may hope to have your prayers fulfilled.'

"I heaved a sigh.

"'Now, my dear!' she resumed, 'you will understand that with a family like mine one cannot stay long away from home; and if it were not for the very honourable the Heer Van Tigel, a senator of Amsterdam, who has promised to cherish and protect our poor Philip, as if he were his own son, and who in my absence is so good as to look after him and his brothers, I should not have been able to pay you even this short visit.'

"'So you are leaving me?' I said.

"'Yes, but before I go, let me give you a piece of advice.'

"'Very good!'

"'You are angry with that poor dear good Brahmin, who, thinking he was doing you a service . . .'

"'Certainly I am!'

"'Be quits with him, that is only fair. But do it cleverly; avenge yourself as they do in these parts, without exposing yourself to danger. Remember, your life belongs to your wife and children.'

"'I cannot deny it,' I faltered, 'still, your advice is good; now, what do you recommend?'

"'Oh! good Lord! you know what it says in the Bible, "Seek, and thou shalt find." You have a ship ready loaded, a good bit of stuff worth two or three thousand rupees in India, twice as much in Ceylon, three times as much in Java. Go to Trincomalee or Batavia, and I promise you a good market. Good-bye, my dear, or rather "au revoir "; for you will force me, I very much fear, to make one or two more voyages in the Indian Ocean. Luckily, I am like Mahomet, and when the mountain will not come to me, I go to the mountain. By-the-bye, do not forget at the first opportunity to burn a taper to St. Margaret.'

"'Yes, yes,' I told her, lapsing into a browm study. 'Never fear, I will do my best to keep sound and well for your sake and our dear children's . . . and if on the way I come across a chapel of St. Margaret . . . Ah! I have found it,' I suddenly cried.

"I waited for the Buchold to ask me what I had just found, but she was already gone.

"What had I found?—A means of vengeance!

"I called one of my slaves, who was famous for his skill in charming snakes, and promised him ten farons, if before to-morrow morning he brought me a green snake. Half-an-hour later he brought me the reptile required in a box. It was the best and most deadly of its kind, a