THE FAKIR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2902, 27 October 1909, Page 89

THE FAKIR.

By Mart Austin.

Whenever I come up to judgment ana am hr.rd pushed to make good 011 m\" account (as I expect to be), I shall mention the case of Netta Saybrick. for on the face of it, and by all the traditions in which I was bred, I behaved rather handsomely. S^ say on the face of it, for, except in the matter of keeping my niouth' shut afterward, I am not ©0 snre I had ■_aiytbing to do with the affair. It was one of those incidents that from com« crest of sheer inexplicabkness seems about to direct the imagination over vast tracts of human experience, only to fall away into a pit of its own digging, all fouled "with weed and sapd. But by keeping memory and attention fixed on its pellucfi instant as it mounted- against the sun, 1 can still see the Figure shining through it as I saw it that day at Posada, with the glimmering rails of the P and S. running out behind it, thin lines of light toward the bar of Heaven. Up to that time Netta Saybrick had never liked me, thougß I rever laid it to any other account. than Netta's being naturally a little fool; afterward she explained to m* tha* it was because she thought i gave myself ai*s. The Saybricks lived :n the third house from maie, around the corn?} 1 , so that our back doors overlooked one another, and up to the coming of Dr Challoner there had -never been anything in Netta's conduct that the most censorious of the villagers could remark upon. NOl afterward, for that matter' The Saybricks had been married four years, and the baby was about two. He was not an interesting child to anyone but his moilier, and even Netta was sometimes thought not to be quite absorbed in him. Saybrick was a miner, one of the best drillers in the district, and consequently ,\,TTO.y trow home much of the tim-p. Their house w«« ratlher larger than their needs, and Netta, to avoid loneliness, more than for profit, let out a room or two. That j ■was the way she happened to fall into i the hands of tbe Fakir. j Franklin Ohalloner had begun by being * brilliant and promising student of medicine. I had known him w : hen his natural gifta prophesied the unusual, but I had known him rather better than most, and I was not surprised to have him turn up nme years letter at Maverick as.-^-Falar. It Had began in bi£ '! feeing poor, and ,^L to work his w *y fliroiigh the Medical School at the cost of endless pains and xnottafication to himself. like most briltiaoi people, Challone-r was sensitive and naKl an enormous egotism, and, what nearly always goes with .t, the faculty of being horribly fascinating to women. It was '

thought vsry creditable of him to have put hinisalf through college at his own charge, though in reality it proved a great social vaete. I have a notion that the courage, endurance, and steadfastosss which should have done Prank Challoner a lifetime were squeezed out of him by the stress of those overworked, starved, mortifying years. His egotism made ifc important to his happiness to keep the centre of any sta^e, and this he could do in school by sheer brilliance of scholarship and the distinction of his struggles. But afterward, when he had to establish himself without capital among strangers, he found himself impoverished of manliness. Always there was the compelling need of his temperament to stand well with people, aaad almost the only m>eams of accomplishing it his poverty allowed was the dreadful facility with which he made himself inastsr of women. I suppose this got his real ability discredited among his professional fellows. Between that and the sharp need of money, and the dncnedible appetite which people have for being, fooled, somewhere in the Plateau of Fatigue betweea. promise and accomplishment, Frank Ohalloner lost himself. Therefore I was not surprised when his turned up finally at Maverick, lecturing on phrenology, and from the "shape of their eraniums advising country people of theaT proper careers, at 3dol a sitting. He advertised io do various things in the way of medical practdoe that had a dubious sowed. It was court week when he came, and the only possible lodging to b9 found at Netta Say brick' 8. Doctor Challoner took the two front rooms as being best suited to his clients and himself; and I believe he did very well. I was "not particularly pleased to see him, on account of having known, him before, not wishing to prosecute the acquaintance ; and about that time Indian George brought me word that a variety of "redivivus" song sought was blooming that year in a certain clayey tract over toward Waban. It was "not supposed to flower oftener than once in seven yeaTS, and I was five days finding it. That was why I never knew what went on at Mrs Saybrick's. Nobody else <iid apparently, for I never heard a breath of gossip, and that must have been Doctor Ghalloner's concern, for I am sure Netta would never have known how to avoid it. Netta was pretty, and Saybrick had been gone five months. Challoner had a thin, romantic face, and eyes — even I had to admit the compelling attraction of his eyes ; and his hands were fine and white. Sayiaick's haads were cT&cked, brokennailed, a driller's hands, and one of them was twisted from tihe time he was leaded-, working on the Lucky Jim. If it came to that, though, Netta's husband might have been anything he pleased, and loner would still have had .his way with lier. He always did "with women, as if to make up for not having it with the world. And the life ait Mayerick was deadly, appallingly dull. The stark houses, tho rubbishy streets, the women' who went about, in them -in calico wrappers, the dTaggling speech of the men, tihe wide, ah-adowloss tabie-la.nds, the hard, bright skies, and the days all of one pattern, that went so stillyby that you only knew it vr&s afternoon when you smelled the fried cabbage Mrs Mulligan was cooking for supper. At this distance I cannot say that I blamed Netta, am not sure of not being glad that she had her hour of the rosered glow — if she had it. At that time the stage from Maverick was a local affair, going down to Posada where, passengers from the P. a,nd S. booked for the Mojave line, returning after a wait of hours on th© same day. It happened that the morning I came back* from Waban Doctor Chajioner left Maverick. Being saddle-weary I had pi aimed to send on the horses by IncEan George, and take ths stage where it crossed my trail aa hour out from Posada, ' going home on it in the afternoon. I remember poking tho botany-oase under tb* front seat and tuning round, to be hit straight between the eyes, as it were, by Netta Saybrick and Doctor Challoner. The doctor was wearing liis usual air of romantic mystery — wearing it a little awry, or perhaps it was only knowing the man that made me read the pe-rturba-tion under it. But it was plain to see what Netta was about. Her hat was tilted by the joking of the stage, white alkali dust lay heavy on, the folds of her dress, and she never would wear hairpins enough ; but there was tliat in every turn and posture, in every note of her flat, \ childish voice, that acknowledged the man [ beside her. Her excitement was almost I febidle. It was part of Netta's unsophista- ' j cation that ehe seemed not to know that she gave herself away, and the witness of it was that she had brought the baby. i ! You would not have believed that any , ! woman would plan to rim away with a ' I man like Frank- Challoner and take that great, heavy-lieaded, drooling child. But that Ls what Netta had done. I am not sure it was maternal instinct, either ; she probably did not know what else to do with him. He had pale, protruding eyes and reddish hair, and every time he clawed at the doctor's sleeve I could see tlie man withhold a shudder. I I I suppose it was my being in a manner ' confounded by this extraordinary situation, that made it possible for Doctor ChollonerHo renew his acquaintance with more warmth than the facts allowed. He fairly pitched himself into an- intimacy of reminiscence, and it was partly tihe wish to pay him for this, I suppose, and partly j to gratify a aatral cariosity, that made : me sot abrupt with him afterward-. I re- < • member looking arund, when we got down ■ at the little station where I must wait : two houre for the return, stage, at the seven unpointed pine cabins, at the eating- , house and the store and the two saloons, j in. the instant hope of refuge, and then , out across the alkali flat fringed with , sparse unwholesome pickle-weed, and de- <

eidng that that would not do, and then turning round to take the situation by the throat, as it wore. There was Netta with that great child dragging on her arm and her hat still on oca side, with, her silly consciousness of Doctor Qhalloner's movements, and Ire still trying for the jovial note of old acquaintances met by chaarce. In a moment more I 'had' him around , tha corner of the station-house and out with my question. "Doctor Challoner, are you running away with Netta Saybrick?" "Well, no," trying to carry it jauntily ; "I think she is running away with nie." Then, all his pretension suddenly sagging on thim Hke an empty kayak : "On my soul, I don't know w'bafc's got into the woman. I was as surprised as you were when she got on tfos stage with me." On my continuing to look steadily at him : "She was a pretty little thing . and the life is devilish dull there. . . I srrppose I flirted a little" — blowing himself out, as it were, with an assumption of honesty — "on my word, there was nothing moa 1 © than that." Flirted ! He called it that ; but women do nofc take their babies and run away from home for the sake of a little flirting. The life was devilish dull— did he need to tell me that! And she "tras pretty. Well, whatever had happened he was bound to tell me that it was nothing, and I was bound to bebave as if I believed him. "Sba wall go back," he began to say, lokiag bleak and drawn m the searching light. "She must go back — she must." "Well, maybe you can persuade her," said I, but I relented after that enough to take care of tie' baby while he and 2J«tt-a went for a. walk. The whole mesa and the flat crawled with heat, and the steal rails ran on either side of them like thin fires, as if the slagged track were the appointed way tihat Netta had chosen to walk. The pair went out as far as the section-house and back toward the disserted station till I could, almost read their faces dear, and' turned again, back and forth through the beat-fogged atmosphere like the figures in a dream. I could- see thi3 much from their postures, tisat Challoner was toying to hold to some consistent attitude which ha bad adopted, and Netta wasn't understaaxisuig it. I could see her throw out her hands' in a gesture of abandonment, and then I saw her stand 1 as if tbe Pit yawned under Jier feet. The baby slept on a station bench, aod I kept the flies from him with a branch of pickle-weed-. I was out of it, smitten anew with tb© utter imitility of all he standards which wetfe not bred of experience, but merely came down to me with the family teaspooms. Seen by the fierce desert light they looked like the spoons, thin and worn at the edges ; I should have been ashamed to oSeir them to N-ett-a- Sayorick. It -tras this sense of detached helplessness toward the life at Maverick that Netta afterward exDlainied she and the other ■women sensed" but misread in me. They •fouldm't account for it on any grounds, except that I felt myself jabove them. And ail the time I was sick with the strained, meticulous inadequacy of my own soul. I mndierstood well enough then that the sense of personal virtue comes to most women through an intervening medium of sedulous social guardianship. It is only when they love that it reaches directly , to the centre of consciousness, as if it | were ultimately nothing more than .the j instinctive movement of right love to pre- i serve itself by- a voluntary seclusion. It w-as not .her faithfulness to Saybrick that tormented Netta out there beween the burning rails; it was going back to him that was the intolerable offence. Passion 1 had come upon her like a fiame-'burst, I heaven-sent ; she jm>tified it on the grounds of its completeness, and lacked the sophistication for any other interpretation. Challoner was a bad man, but he was not bad enough to revead to Netta Saybriek the .vulgar cheapness of his own relation to the incident. Besides, he iiadn't time. In two hours the return stage for Maverick left the station, and ha could never in that time get Netta Saybrick to realise the gulf between his situation and he-rs. He came back to the station after a while on some pretext, and said, with hi* back to N«tta, moving his lips with harddy any eound: "She must go b^ok en tbe stage. Slie must!" Then, with a sudden setting of his jaws, "You've got. to help me." He sat down beside me and began to demote lamself to the baby and the flies. Netta stod out for a while expecting • him, and then came and sat provisionally on the edge of the statical platform, rieady at the sliijhtest hint of an opporj tunity to carry him away into the glimmering heat out towaid tlte station house. ! and resume the supremacy of her poor charms. She was l'esentmg my presence as an interference, and I believe always cherished a thought that but for the accident of my being tKere the incident might have turned out differently. I could see that Clkalloner'B attitude, whatever it was, was •beginning to make itself felt. Sbe was ; looking years older, and yet somehow pitiI fully puzzled and young, as if the self of her ihad had a wound which her intelligence had failed to j^rasp. I could see, ie, that Challoner had made up bis mindto be quit of her, quietly it he- could, but at any risk of a ecene, still to be quit. And it was 40 minutes to stage time. Ghailoner sat on the bare station bench vnkh hie arm out above the baby protectingly — ifc was a manner always effective, — and began to tejk about "goodness," of all thing* in tihd world. Don't aak me what he said. It was the sort of tape most women, would hare called beautiful, and though it was mostly a<|dVesaed to m», it was erery word of jfc directed, iff Netta. Saybxw&'s aoul. Much of it Went, high and wide, but I could

I catch the pale reflection of it in her faoa lik'9 a miner guessing the sort of day it is from the glimmer of it on a puddle at the j bottom of a ehaft. In it Netta saw a pair of heroic figures renouncing a trea- j sure they had found for the sake of the ; bitter goodness by which the world is | saved. They had had the courage to take ■ it while they could, but were much too j exemplary to enjoy it at' the cost of pain i to any other heart. Be started with the assumption that she meant to go back to I Mavenick, and irecuwed -to it with a skilful and hypnotic insistence, painting upon her mind by large and general inference the picture of himself, helped greatly in his careei by 'her noble renunciation of him. As a matter of fact, Savbrick, if his wife really had gone away with Doctor Challoner, would have followed him up and shot him, I suppose, and no end of vulgar and disagreeable things might have come from th© affair ; j but Chalktoer managed to keep it on so high a pLaae that even I nev«r thought j of them until long afterward. And right here is where the uncertainty as to the part I really played begins. I can never 1 make up my mind wbet<bea- Challomer, from long practice in snch affairs, had hit upon just the right note of extrication, or whether, cornered, he fell back desperately on tha eternal rightoess. And what was he, to know Tightness at his need? He wa-s terribly ja earnest, holding Netta's eyes with his own ; his fojqehead sweated, hollows showed about his eyes, and the dreadful slackness at tha corners of his month that cefnes of the whole mind being drawn away upon the object of attack to the neglect of its defences. He was so bent on getting Netta fined in the idea that she must go back to Maverick that if she had not been a good desit of a fool she must have seen- that he had given away the whole situation into my hands. I believed — I .hope— l did the right thing, but I am not sure I • could have helped taking the cue which, was pressed upon me. H© was as bad as they made them,' but £bere I was lending my whole soul to the accomplishment of his purpose, which was, briefly, to get comfortably off from an .occasion in which he had . behaved very badly. AH this time Challoner kept a ion«cious ! attantaon on the stage "stables far at the other end of the shadeless street. The moment he saw the driver come out of it with the horses the man's soul fairly creaked with tba release of tension. It released, too. an accession, of that power of personal fascination for which he was remarkable. Nefcta sat wdth hsr back to the street, and the beautiful solicitude with which bs took up the baby at that momerot, smoothed its drees, and tied on its little, cap, had no significance for her. It was not until she henfpd the rattle of the stage turning into tbs road that sba stood up suddenly, ajarmed. GhaHoner put tbe baby into my arms. Did I tell you that all this time between me and this man there ran the inexplicable sense of being bonded together ; ths same intimation 'of a superior and exclusive which ensnared poor Netta Saybrick, no doubt, the absoluts call of self and sex by which a man, past all reasonableness and belief, ranges a woman on his side? He was a Fakir, a common quack, a scoundrel if you will, but there was the call. I had answered it. I was under the impression, though not remembering vhat he said, when he had handed mo that groat lump of a child, that I had received a command to hold on to it, to get into the stage with it, and not to give it up on any consideration ; and without saying anything I had promised. I do not know if it was the look that must have passed between us at that or the squeal of the running gear that shattered her dream, but I perceived on the instant that Netta had had » glimpse of where she stood. She saw herself for the moment a fallen woman, forsaken, deepised. There was the Pit before her w.hdch OhaUanar'a desertion and my knowledge of it had digged. She clutched once at her bosom and at her ekirsts as if already sb© heard the hiss of crawling shamte. Then dt wae that Ohalloner turned towards hex with the Look. It rose in his faoa and streamed to her from his eyes as though it were the one thing in the world of a compfoteness equal to fhe anguish in her breast, as though before it rested tber* it had been through all the troubled intricacies of em, and come upon the i<ooi of «. superior fineness that every soul feels piteously to lie at the back of ail its own affronting vagaries, brooding over it in a large, gentle way.. It was the forgiveness-— nay, the oblieration of offenc« — and the most Challoner could have known of forgiveness was his own great need of it. Out of that look I could see t/be woman's soul rising rehabilitated, astonished, and on the instant, out there beyond the man and the woman, between the thin fiery lines of the nails leading back to the horizon, the tall, robed Figure writing in the sand. Oh! it was an haHuoination, if you like, of the hour, tho place, the perturbed mind, the dazzling glimmer of the alkali flat, of the incident of a sinful woman and a common fakir, faking an absolution that ho might the more easily avoid an inconvenience, and I the tool made to sea incredibly by some trick of suggestion how impossible it should be that any but the chief of sinners should understand forgiren«s&. But the Look con* tinued to hold the moment In solution, while the woman climbed out of the Pit. I saw her pub out her hand witfh the instinctive gesture of th© sinking, and j Challoner take it with, the formality of | farewell : «nd as the dust of the arriving &ttt,ge bidlowid up between them, tbe Figure turned, fading, dissolving . . . but with tbe Look, consoling, obliterating. . . He too . . ! "It was very good of you, Mrs Saybrick, to give me so much of a good-bye . . ." Ohalloner was saying as he put Netta into the stage ; and then to me, "You must take god care of her . . Good-bye." i (

'•Good-bye, Frank" — I had nsver called Doctor Cballoner by hi> name before, i did not like him well enough to call him by it at any tome, but there was the Look ; it had reached out and envrrapp^d me in a kind of rarefied intimacy of cxj tenuation and understanding. He steed ! on the station pdatfor-m staring steadily after us, and as long as we had eight of him in the thick, bitter dust, the Lcok held. If this were a story merely, or a, story of Franklin Challoner, it would end there. Be never thought -of us again, you may, 1 depend, except to thank his -stars for get- | tinjj so Kghtly otf, and to go on in the' security of 'his success to otiher episodes from which he would return as scatheless. But I found out. in a very few, days that whether it was to take rank as an j incident or an event in Netta Saybrick' & life depended on whether or not I said j anything about it. Nobody ha 4 taken ! any notice of her day's ride to Posacr. ' Saybrick oame home in about ten . day;,, ] and Nett» seemed uncommonly^ glad to see him, as if in the paweccupataon of h > presence she found a solace- for her fear.. But from the day 'of our return s- n - » . had evinced an extraordinary lMng f. .■ my company. She would be running m and out of tbe house at all hours, ofit ing to help me with my sewing or to st.up a cake, kindly offices that had to h* paid in kind ; artd if I slipped into, th-c-neighbour's on an errand, there a. mom'en after would come Notta. Very 'soon !„ became clear to ny» that she was afrak. of what I might tell. So long as slwbad me under her immediate eye shi* could be sure I was not taking away her character, but- when I was .iot. _sh.«. must ha to suffered horribly. I migk . have to.d, too, by the woman's code ; sh*Avaa really not respectable, and' we niaoV ;v great deal of that in Maverick. I might have refused to have anything to do with her and "justified myself explau> ing why. But N-etta was not sure how much I knew, and conld not risk beirayal by :; plea. She had, too, the natural reticence • of the villager, and though ehe must, havo bsen aching far news of Doctor Challonr-r, j touch of him, the very sound of his name, i &be rarely ever mentioned it, but grey I' strained and thinner, watching, watching. If that incident were known, Netti would have been, ostracised and Saybrick might hare divorced 6er. And 1 wa;going dumb with amazement to discover that nothing had come of it, nothing could come of it. so long "as I kept still. It was a deadly <iin, as I had been taught, es I believed— of damnabla potentiality ; and as long as nobody toltl It was as if It had neve^ b:*en, as if that look of Chsiloiisr's had raally tbe power, as it had the (Deeming, of absolving her from all soil and stain. I canuot now remember if I was ever tempted to ten 011 Netta Saybrick, buc I know -with the obsession of that look upon my soul I never did. And in tlio meantime, from being so much in each othei**; company, Neista and I became ve»y good friemte. That was why, a little more than c> year afterward-, she choee to huv« me with her when her second child- was born. That wa6 the time when the- suspicion that had lain at the bottom of Netra's shallow eyes, whenever she looked at me w«nt- out of them forever. It was aloxg about midnight, 'and the west yet to come. I sat holding Netta"-» hands, and beyond in the room where, the lamp was tbe doctor lifted Saybrick through h's s<ressful- hour with cribbr.ge and toddy. I could see the gleam of tb? lit;ht on Saybrick's red, hairy hand?, a driller's hands, and whenever a. sound came from the inner room, the uneasy lift cf his fhoi.lders and the twitching oi his lip ; then tha doctor pushed the wJiisky o.ver toward him and jovially dealt the cards anew. Netta, tossing on her pillow, «ame into Targe with Saybrick's Blunt profile o.tuV lined against the cheaply papered wall,and ( sucose her husband's distress' was good to ncr to see. She looked, at him a long time quietly. " Henry's a gdod man," she said at last. " Yes," I said : and then she turned to itte narrowly with the expiring epark of anxious cunning in her eyes. " And l'v«< been a wife to him." said she. It was half a challenge. And T, trapped by the hour, became a fakir in my turn, called instantly on all ?ny soul, and answered — with the Look — " Everybody know 3 that, Netta " — held on steadily till the spark went out. However I had done it I could not tell, but I saw the trouble go out of the woman's soul as the lids dropped, and with it out of my own heart the last • of the virtuous resentment of the untempted. I had really forgiven her; how, then, was ifc possible for the sin to rise up and trouble her more? Mind you, I grew up ;n a church- that makes a grea* deal of the forgiveness of jsin* and tigniiies jf. by a tremendous particularity about behaviour, and the most I had learned of the efficient exercise of forgiveness was from the worst man I had ever, kcown. About an hour before <?,iwn, when * wind began to stir, and out on the mesa the coyotes howled returning from tbe hunt, stooping to tuck the baby in her arncs I felt Netta's lips brush against my hand. '•You've been mighty good to me/ she said. Well — if I were pushed for it, I should think it worth mentioning — but I am not so sure. — Harper* Magazine^

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