Page:Oriental Stories v01 n01 (1930-10).djvu/72

 undercurrent of nervous dread in her beautiful, youthful eyes that illumined her colorless, old woman's face. From time to time she glanced across the room toward an open window, and it was then that Carson fancied she paused, faltering on a word, seeming to be waiting. Her eyes were widely open, her lips thin and with the parched look of fever.

The servant had just put coffee before them and left the room, when Marie Pilotte suddenly sat erect in her wheelchair. Only a moment before she had forced a jest about the wheel-chair at a dinner party. The words had hardly left her lips when her thin, dead-looking hands gripped the arms of the chair and her wide eyes widened still more, filled with utmost terror.

Rawlins sprang to her side, his face tense with pity. He held her rigid body against his steady arm, patted her shoulder, as one would reassure a terrified child. He seemed entirely oblivious of their guest. Carson sat quietly, helpless, ignorant of what it meant.

In a few moments the thin figure relaxed, drooped, fell limply back against the cushions of the chair. Her eyes were closed. Her bony hands lay inert in her lap. Exhaustion and the mark of swift age was upon Marie Pilotte, who had been but a year before the loveliest woman at the Lido.

The captain rang. A native woman came in and wheeled her mistress away, the rubber wheels making no sound over the polished floor. The captain went to the door with them, kissed his sister tenderly, whispered a few words to her, and came back to his chair.

He poured wine. Carson noted that his hands were trembling and that there were great beads of perspiration on his forehead. He drank his wine in one gulp. Leaning his arms on the table, he faced Carson seriously.

"You are wondering what it is all about, Carson? Well—I wish I knew what it is about. I don't know what it means. She is not ill."

Carson put down his glass. "You don't know—you say your sister is not ill?"

The captain shook his head. "No. It was not illness you just saw. It was a terrible, devilish fear that comes to her."

"Fear? Fear of what?"

"She can't tell doesn't seem to know. That's the worst of it. It's killing her. There's a long story to it I think I'd be relieved to tell someone—someone who isn't a medic. All the doctors seem to think we're crazy when we tell them. It wouldn't bore you?"

Carson, remembering the lovely face of Marie Pilotte and the hours they had idled away together on the sands at the Lido, replied emphatically.

"Bore me? Why—why, man alive, why should it? I—I can't help remembering"

"All right. Let's get out of this beastly hot room.' It's a bit better on the veranda."

They went out through the swinging doors to comfortable chairs in the dusk. A low, golden half-moon shone through the trees.

"Mother India, ch?" Carson stretched out a wide arm to the darkness about the house.

The captain grunted. "Damn queer mother she is to the white ones in her care. Blisters us with sun. Chokes us with dust. Drowns us in the monsoon floods. Crazes us with her magic and her superstition. Hull! I don't talk like an Englishman and an army man, at that, do I? Well"

lit cigarettes and the captain began talking in a low, even voice. Carson listened, with occasional glances