The Tree of Life (Beadle)/Chapter 8

S A lover hastens to a tryst, so rose the sun and rising seemed to dally in the pleasance of his love. With the hot kiss upon the dew-tipped crest of the giant tree the two white men hustled the last of the empty pods into the latrine behind the hut. Just as a bird raucously announced the capture of his prey to his nearby mate, Warren-Dukely, peering through the fence, saw the first of the six young girls who daily brought his food, for to a layman or woman of the age of puberty was it worse than death to come within the orbit of the sacred magician's sight, the husband of the Tree of Life, arbiter of fecundity in crops and women, mother of all, potent and terrible.

Across the glade they came: lithe young forms of ebony moving lissomely from their slender waists, bearing upon their immobile heads a slain goat, chickens and calabashes of sweet water, milk and eggs—for must the holy mate of the goddess be propitiated and fed sumptuously to avoid his great displeasure.

"Better lie perdue, Doc," warned Warren-Dukely, "while I find out whether they know where you are or not—that's if these children know."

At the entrance to the palisade the six stooped and, having placed the loads upon the ground, called shrilly the prescribed greeting. Dukely replied. One responded in the chanting speech which was obligatory in addressing a sacred person. Then in single file they turned and glided down the glade as if well content to have completed their dangerous duties.

"As I thought, old man," reported Dukely, returning into the hut with the groceries. "They know that you're here. And, by way of precaution, I instructed 'em to tell our invaluable friend, Yamala, that I had summoned you, my brother, to take my place after I had—entered into connubial felicity."

"D'you think they'll swallow that?" inquired the little doctor, squatted upon an overturned calabash, stroking his beard. "Oh Lord, yes! You haven't learned as I have the great prestige of a medicine-man. They will expect crops an' what not as never before by the union of such a great white magician as I. God, so thoughtful, too! I even provide a successor as mighty!"

"Why," demanded the doctor with a calabash of milk in his hands, "don't they cultivate the glade here near to the source of magic power? Seems queer."

"Oh no. They dare not do that. The island is sacred, as I've told you. They seem to look upon the ground here as a part of the body of the great mother and 're scared to hurt her feelings by scratchin' her skin. That's the idea as I've understood."

"H'm, homeopathic magic as usual."

Dukely sank down upon the camp-bed.

"Phew! I'm fagged out. Sorry, old man," he added swiftly, "I'm forgettin' my duties. You must be starving. There's some cold goat in that calabash beside you an' some cornbread of a sort—sourdough, y'know. When you've eaten, we'd better have a sleep. You must need it, by Jove—so's we'll be fit for the—Diamond Sculls tonight," he added with a chuckle that was less harsh. "Oh, by the way, we'll need your gun, Doc; so let me have it, and I'll toddle along an' hide it in a bough near where I know now the canoes will be. We can pick it up as we go."

"Good. And you may as well take these few cartridges in case they should take a fancy to them, eh?"

As soon as he had gone with the rifle and the belt, the little doctor, whose curiosity had been excited by the first glimpse of the interior of the hut by daylight, rose to note the contents. At one end was the camp-bed with a bepatched mosquito-net; in the middle, facing the door, was a chair beside a crude bookcase of shelves formed of sapling logs burned off and strung together with bark fiber, containing about a dozen volumes, of winch the most conspicuous were a volume of the Royal Geographical Society's journals, a Swinburne and a Rabelais and some chunky volumes bound in canvas; at the far end was a green canvas table on which, set in orderly array before a shaving-minor, were a number of small objects which gleamed in the hall-light.

Chewing a rib of goat, the doctor rose stealthily for a surreptitious peep at a complete manicure-set and hair-brushes in ivory, gold inlaid. As he handled them curiously, he observed on each one a crest of what appeared to be a naked scimitar blade clasped by a mailed hand. The little man took the bone from the nest of his beard to grin as he remarked:

"Totemism! Complete case. Most interesting, bless the dear! No wonder they wanted him for a medicine-man!"

The sound of the balks of the gate being dropped into place sent him scuttling back guiltily to his seat on the calabash.

"Do yourself well!" he observed as Dukely entered.

"Oh yes. But, by the Lord, Doc, old man, if it hadn't been for my pals there, I couldn't have stood it. My God, no!" The expression in his eyes as they glanced at the primitive library was almost like a dog who knew he is about to be parted from his master. He swore quietly and remarked, "D'you know, Doc, the hardest thing's goin' to be to leave my pals there tonight."

"Rot," said the doctor with the rib of goat in his beard. "You can get other editions." But with a glance at the bulky canvas books, "It does seem a pity to leave these note-books. They are, aren't they? Um."

Warren-Dukely sighed as he stretched himself on the bed.

"Queer," he observed, staring at the grass roof, "a while ago I was willing to—oh, cut a dean's throat to get out of this hell, an' now, when I think I'm good as free, I'm wanting to raise Cain 'cause I can't take my worldly goods an' chattels with me."

"Human nature, ol' boy," commented the doctor, chewing away as contentedly as a terrier at the bone.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, ol' man!" suddenly cried Dukely, springing from his bed. "Look here, you make yourself comfortable here! Yes, yes. Courtesy goes to the devil an' all here!"

"Umgh. Umgh," grunted the doctor through his bone. "Sit down an' don't be a fool. I'm all right."

"No, no." Dukely dragged one yellow pillow from the bed and sprawled on the floor. "Turn in when you feel like it. Anyway, as soon as you've finished sitting on my wardrobe, I'll change. They'd probably put me in gaol at Kavaballa's if I arrived in this kit!" he added with a slight return of the hysterical note in his voice.

THE doctor, who appeared to have lost every trace of his normal irritability, did not dispute the point but, having finished another bone and drunk some more milk, rolled on to the bed and was asleep in live minutes. Flies buzzed in freedom, walked upon the doctor's nose and danced upon his eyelids with impunity; they essayed to hold a carnival upon the long figure in khaki crouched upon the floor but were repulsed by the bony hand of perfect nails. Shadows dwindled toward the west. Parrots began to squawk; a wart-hog and his family nosed inquisitively around the palisade and went a truffling farther up the glade.

Hornets played busily between the forest and a nest of clay beneath the eaves. A lizard progressed in suspicious darts across the earthen floor, reached the calabash of goat abandoned by the doctor and feasted most lizardly upon the swarming flies. Suddenly a streak of cobalt blue struck the empurpled lizard like dulled lightning, and a small snake, startled by a throttled gurgle, slithered into a hollow in the wattle and daub wall. From the southern end of the glade parrots streamed, screeching a pessimistic warning.

Warren-Dukely stirred and arose as his keen ears caught a distant chanting. He awoke the slumbering doctor.

"What the—" mumbled the doctor resentfully. "Oh." He sat up abruptly. "Oh Lord, yes, I'd forgotten. What's the matter?"

"Curtain's going up, old man. Pull yourself together. You stop here an' don't come out unless I call. I've got to go an' parley with our pal, Yamala. He's chanting Gilbert an' Sullivan stuff down there at the end of the grove."

"What! Are they beginning already?"

"Not until sunset. My magic is too powerful for any except the anointed sorcerers or whatever you like to call 'em while the sun is up. Then the crowd comes with a rush, an' they start with a song an' dance act."

"But—Dukely, d'you think that they've already wiped out my camp? That Arab of mine, Ali, will put up a fight if he gets any warning, an' he's no slouch."

"God knows! Perhaps they'll bring him up to see the show an'—or—else they may take it into their heads to keep him for the next year's magician—particularly if he's a pure-blooded Arab; that is, looks it."

"Um. If he knows, he'll fight like a wild-cat. Fine chap, Ali, even if he is tiresome sometimes." A smile twitched the doctor's shaggy eyebrows. "I hope they do bring him along if only to see a carven image get excited for once. Dear me, how sentimental one becomes in post-mortem contemplation."

"Oh, shut up!" exclaimed Dukely sharply. Then, turning away abruptly, "Look here, I'll toddle along!"

As he strode from the hut, the little doctor watched him keenly.

"Um," he remarked sotto voce, "careless of me—very. Nerves in rags. Still, rather natural. Um. That food and sleep did me good though." His eyes wandered over the ground and alighted on an empty pod of the Tree of Life. He picked it up and sniffed at it again. "Queer, familiar odor." He stared reflectively at the glare of sunshine without. " if I can recall what it reminds me of. Um."

From without came Warren-Dukely's voice pitched in the high native chant. As it ceased, above the recurring buzz of flies came the response like a thin streak of troubled sound from a distance. The doctor moved toward the door and saw the bearded white man turn away from the fence to regard the giant tree; he noted a certain rigidity in the body and the clenching of the fists. The doctor dodged back swiftly as Warren-Dukely came to the hut.

"Come on, old man!" he shouted a trifle boisterously. "It's about an hour to sunset. Let's feed, an' I'll fry some eggs an' goat. We can stuff 'em in our pockets for the trip tonight." Averting his eyes, he plumped down into the chair by the library. "An', by God, we mustn't forget to stir up the beer before—before the bar opens!"

"Certainly," assented the doctor, "an', talkin' about bars, there's another wee droppie left, laddie!"

"Thank Heaven!" exclaimed Dukely. "Let's drink to—to the holy estate of matrimony, by the Lord!"

"Um," reflected the little doctor as he unscrewed the flask, "he's fightin' it through, but he may collapse on my hands at any moment. Confound it, what does that stuff remind me of?"