It, and Other Stories Part 39

"May I bring Don?"

He hesitated.

"Why--yes--of course."

"If you'd rather not?"

"No, bring him. I want to make friends again if I can."

So we started for Graves's house, Don very close at my heels.

"Graves," I said, "surely a taboo by a lot of fool islanders hasn't upset you. There's something on your mind. Bad news?"

"Oh, no," he said. "She's coming. It's other things. I'll tell you by and by--everything. Don't mind me. I'm all right. Listen to the wind in the gra.s.s. That sound day and night is enough to put a man off his feed."

"You say you found something very curious back there in the gra.s.s?"

"I found, among other things, a stone monolith. It's fallen down, but it's almost as big as the Flatiron Building in New York. It's ancient as days--all carved--it's a sort of woman, I think. But we'll go back one day and have a look at it. Then, of course, I saw all the different kinds of gra.s.ses in the world--they'd interest you more--but I'm such a punk botanist that I gave up trying to tell 'em apart. I like the flowers best--there's millions of 'em--down among the gra.s.s.... I tell you, old man, this island is the greatest curiosity-shop in the whole world."

He unlocked the door of his house and stood aside for me to go in first.

"Shut up, Don!"

The dog growled savagely, but I banged him with my open hand across the snout, and he quieted down and followed into the house, all tense and watchful.

On the shelf where Graves kept his books, with its legs hanging over, was what I took to be an idol of some light brownish wood--say sandalwood, with a touch of pink. But it was the most lifelike and astounding piece of carving I ever saw in the islands or out of them. It was about a foot high, and represented a Polynesian woman in the prime of life, say, fifteen or sixteen years old, only the features were finer and cleaner carved. It was a nude, in an att.i.tude of easy repose--the legs hanging, the toes dangling--the hands resting, palms downward, on the blotter, the trunk relaxed. The eyes, which were a kind of steely blue, seemed to have been made, depth upon depth, of some wonderful translucent enamel, and to make his work still more realistic the artist had planted the statuette's eyebrows, eyelashes, and scalp with real hair, very soft and silky, brown on the head and black for the lashes and eyebrows. The thing was so lifelike that it frightened me. And when Don began to growl like distant thunder I didn't blame him. But I leaned over and caught him by the collar, because it was evident that he wanted to get at that statuette and destroy it.

When I looked up the statuette's eyes had moved. They were turned downward upon the dog, with cool curiosity and indifference. A kind of shudder went through me. And then, lo and behold, the statuette's tiny brown b.r.e.a.s.t.s rose and fell slowly, and a long breath came out of its nostrils.

I backed violently into Graves, dragging Don with me and half-choking him. "My G.o.d Almighty!" I said. "It's alive!"

"Isn't she!" said he. "I caught her back there in the gra.s.s--the little minx. And when I heard your signal I put her up there to keep her out of mischief. It's too high for her to jump--and she's very sore about it."

"You found her in the gra.s.s," I said. "For G.o.d's sake!--are there more of them?"

"Thick as quail," said he, "but it's hard to get a sight of 'em. But _you_ were overcome by curiosity, weren't you, old girl? You came out to have a look at the big white giant and he caught you with his thumb and forefinger by the scruff of the neck--so you couldn't bite him--and here you are."

The womankin's lips parted and I saw a flash of white teeth. She looked up into Graves's face and the steely eyes softened. It was evident that she was very fond of him.

"Rum sort of a pet," said Graves. "What?"

"Rum?" I said. "It's horrible--it isn't decent--it--it ought to be taboo. Don's got it sized up right. He--he wants to kill it."

"Please don't keep calling her It," said Graves. "She wouldn't like it--if she understood." Then he whispered words that were Greek to me, and the womankin laughed aloud. Her laugh was sweet and tinkly, like the upper notes of a spinet.

"You can speak her language?"

"A few words--Tog ma Lao?"

"Na!"

"Aba Ton sug ato."

"Nan Tane dom ud lon anea!"

It sounded like that--only all whispered and very soft. It sounded a little like the wind in the gra.s.s.

"She says she isn't afraid of the dog," said Graves, "and that he'd better let her alone."

"I almost hope he won't," said I. "Come outside. I don't like her. I think I've got a touch of the horrors."

Graves remained behind a moment to lift the womankin down from the shelf, and when he rejoined me I had made up my mind to talk to him like a father.

"Graves," I said, "although that creature in there is only a foot high, it isn't a pig or a monkey, it's a woman, and you're guilty of what's considered a pretty ugly crime at home--abduction. You've stolen this woman away from kith and kin, and the least you can do is to carry her back where you found her and turn her loose. Let me ask you one thing--what would Miss Chester think?"

"Oh, that doesn't worry me," said Graves. "But I _am_ worried--worried sick. It's early--shall we talk now, or wait till after lunch?"

"Now," I said.

"Well," said he, "you left me pretty well enthused on the subject of botany--so I went back there twice to look up gra.s.ses for you. The second time I went I got to a deep sort of valley where the gra.s.s is waist-high--that, by the way, is where the big monolith is--and that place was alive with things that were frightened and ran. I could see the directions they took by the way the gra.s.s tops acted. There were lots of loose stones about and I began to throw 'em to see if I could knock one of the things over. Suddenly all at once I saw a pair of bright little eyes peering out of a bunch of gra.s.s--I let fly at them, and something gave a sort of moan and thrashed about in the gra.s.s--and then lay still. I went to look, and found that I'd stunned--_her_. She came to and tried to bite me, but I had her by the scruff of the neck and she couldn't. Further, she was sick with being hit in the chest with the stone, and first thing I knew she keeled over in the palm of my hand in a dead faint. I couldn't find any water or anything--and I didn't want her to die--so I brought her home. She was sick for a week--and I took care of her--as I would a sick pup--and she began to get well and want to play and romp and poke into everything. She'd get the lower drawer of my desk open and hide in it--or crawl into a rubber boot and play house. And she got to be right good company--same as any pet does--a cat or a dog--or a monkey--and naturally, she being so small, I couldn't think of her as anything but a sort of little beast that I'd caught and tamed.... You see how it all happened, don't you? Might have happened to anybody."

"Why, yes," I said. "If she didn't give a man the horrors right at the start--I can understand making a sort of pet of her--but, man, there's only one thing to do. Be persuaded. Take her back where you found her, and turn her loose."

"Well and good," said Graves. "I tried that, and next morning I found her at my door, sobbing--horrible, dry sobs--no tears.... You've said one thing that's full of sense: she isn't a pig--or a monkey--she's a woman."

"You don't mean to say," said I, "that that mite of a thing is in love with you?"

"I don't know what else you'd call it."

"Graves," I said, "Miss Chester arrives by the next steamer. In the meanwhile something has got to be done."

"What?" said he hopelessly.

"I don't know," I said. "Let me think."

The dog Don laid his head heavily on my knee, as if he wished to offer a solution of the difficulty.

A week before Miss Chester's steamer was due the situation had not changed. Graves's pet was as much a fixture of Graves's house as the front door. And a man was never confronted with a more serious problem.

Twice he carried her back into the gra.s.s and deserted her, and each time she returned and was found sobbing--horrible, dry sobs--on the porch.

And a number of times we took her, or Graves did, in the pocket of his jacket, upon systematic searches for her people. Doubtless she could have helped us to find them, but she wouldn't. She was very sullen on these expeditions and frightened. When Graves tried to put her down she would cling to him, and it took real force to pry her loose.

In the open she could run like a rat; and in open country it would have been impossible to desert her; she would have followed at Graves's heels as fast as he could move them. But forcing through the thick gra.s.s tired her after a few hundred yards, and she would gradually drop farther and farther behind--sobbing. There was a pathetic side to it.

She hated me; and made no bones about it; but there was an armed truce between us. She feared my influence over Graves, and I feared her--well, just as some people fear rats or snakes. Things utterly out of the normal always do worry me, and Bo, which was the name Graves had learned for her, was, so far as I know, unique in human experience. In appearance she was like an unusually good-looking island girl observed through the wrong end of an opera-gla.s.s, but in habit and action she was different. She would catch flies and little gra.s.shoppers and eat them all alive and kicking, and if you teased her more than she liked her ears would flatten the way a cat's do, and she would hiss like a snapping-turtle, and show her teeth.

But one got accustomed to her. Even poor Don learned that it was not his duty to punish her with one bound and a snap. But he would never let her touch him, believing that in her case discretion was the better part of valor. If she approached him he withdrew, always with dignity, but equally with determination. He knew in his heart that something about her was horribly wrong and against nature. I knew it, too, and I think Graves began to suspect it.

Well, a day came when Graves, who had been up since dawn, saw the smoke of a steamer along the horizon, and began to fire off his revolver so that I, too, might wake and partic.i.p.ate in his joy. I made tea and went ash.o.r.e.