Page:Oriental Stories v01 n01 (1930-10).djvu/74

 she was, I believe, more than half convinced and ashamed of her fears.

"It was only when the native guides were near her that she became unquiet. The brown fellows acted in a strange way whenever they came near her. They made, if possible, wide detours to keep out of her way. I caught them eyeing her with furtive, fearful glances.

"My personal servant, sitting outside my tent one morning, cleaning my gun, sprang aside suddenly as my sister passed by him to enter the tent.

"What is the matter, Durah?" she asked. For answer he pointed to the strip of sun-lit ground before the tent where he had been sitting. His voice fairly hissed at her. 'Your shadow, ladysahib, it is cursed—and it fell upon me as I sat by the doorway the Great Fear will stalk me. Ai-ai-yah!'

"He buried his head on his knees, giving his cry of fear and despair. I heard him, and coming out, saw my sister standing rigidly erect, staring straight before her. She looked as a sleepwalker does, her eyes glazed and wide. The servant was watching her with fearful fascination. As I stepped toward him he slipped away into the shade of the big trees.

"To my questions Marie gave no answer. Her face was ashen and drawn. In a moment she relaxed, and looking very tired, she went to her tent.

"After she had rested a while she told me that there was nothing that she could explain, except that a horrible fear had gripped her suddenly, a fear of she knew not what, but a terror so intense as to paralyze her for the time, seeming to suck away her very life. She only sensed a foul breath of air that approached her and enveloped her and laid its clamminess over her.

"I tried to comfort her, and finally, somewhat reassured, she fell asleep, while her native woman, trained in the missionary school at Delhi and seemingly free from the native fears, fanned her and crooned to her.

she was very quiet. At about three o'clock, in the heat of the day's powerful sun, instead of resting, like the others, my sister paced her tent. Finally she came to my tent and held out her hand without a word, without any seeming emotion. The hand was quite brown and wrinkled, the soft finger-tips turned calloused and claw-like, the wrist bony.

"'You see,' she said, with a fatalistic calm. 'The natives are right. The man Durah says the souls in the care of the sacred tigers must always be replaced by the souls of their slayers. He must be right. This shriveled hand is but the beginning. If I were in England it would be different, perhaps. But this is India, and all things are possible here.'

"In vain I tried to remonstrate with her, as did the rest of the party. We insisted that the maimed hand was the result of some poisonous insect bite or the touch of a poison plant. She only shook her head and smiled.

"Near noon of the next day, I observed Durah, my servant, squatting in the shade, inspecting his features in a small hand-mirror. The man's absorbed attitude was a strained one. His dark, young face was anxious as he scanned his refleaion.

"I went to him. At my approach he sprang to his feet. It seemed to me, at a glance, that his lean cheeks appeared sunken, the flesh hanging loosely about his mouth. He crept near me like a fawning animal.

"'Sahib,' he whispered. Tt has come, has it not? I, too, am marked.'

"'What's that you say?' I asked, not understanding.