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I explained as much as I knew of the seal-cutter’s way of jadoo; but her argument was much more simple: “The magic that is always demanding gifts is no true magic,” said she. “My mother told me that the only potent love-spells are those which are told you for love. This seal-cutter man is a liar and a devil. I dare not tell, do anything or get anything done, because I am in debt to Bhagwan Dass, the bunnia, for two gold rings and a heavy anklet. I must get my food from his shop. The seal-cutter is the friend of Bhagwan Dass, and he would poison my food. A fool’s jadoo has been going on for ten days, and has cost Suddhoo many rupees each night. The seal-cutter used black hens and lemons and mantras before. He never showed us anything like this till to-night. Azizun is a fool, and will be a purdahnashin soon. Suddhoo has lost his strength and his wits. See now! I had hoped to get from Suddhoo many rupees while he lived, and many more after his death; and behold, he is spending everything on that offspring of a devil and a she-ass, the seal-cutter!”
Here I said: “But what induced Suddhoo to drag me into the business? Of course I can speak to the seal-cutter, and he shall refund. The whole thing is child’s talk—shameful—senseless.”
“Suddhoo is an old child,” said Janoo. “He has lived on the roofs these seventy years and is as senseless as a milch-goat. He brought you here to assure himself that he was not breaking any law of Sirkar, whose salt he ate many years ago. He worships the dust off the feet of the seal-cutter, and that cow-devourer has forbidden him to go and see his son. What does Suddhoo know of your laws or the lightning-post? I have to watch his money going day by day to that lying beast below.”
Janoo stamped her foot and nearly cried with vexation; while Suddhoo was whimpering under a blanket, and Azizun was trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth.
Now the case stands thus. Unthinkingly, I have laid myself open to the charge of aiding and abetting the seal-cutter in obtaining money under false pretenses, which is forbidden by Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code. I am helpless in the matter for these reasons. I cannot inform the police. What witnesses would support my statement? Janoo refuses flatly, and Azizun is a veiled woman somewhere near Bareilly—lost in this big India of ours. I dare not again take the law into my own hands, and speak to the seal-cutter; for certain am I that not only would Suddhoo disbelieve me, but this step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is bound hand and foot by her debt to the bunnia. Suddhoo is an old dotard; and whenever we meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the Sirkar rather patronizes the Black Art than otherwise. His son is well now; but Suddhoo is completely under the influence of the seal-cutter, by whose advice he regulates the affairs of his life. Janoo watches daily the money that she hoped to weedle out of Suddhoo taken by the seal-cutter, and becomes daily more furious and sullen.
She will never tell, because she dare not; but I am afraid—unless something happens to prevent her—that the seal-cutter will die of cholera—the white arsenic kind—about the middle of May. And thus I shall have to be privy to a murder in the House of Suddhoo.
(R. L. Ketchum: For Short Stories.)
The great farm-house is ablaze with lights twinkling from every room. Long tables groan beneath the loads of good things the busy housewife has been days preparing.
From the barn come merry voices; joyous laughter.
Let us stand, unobserved, in the open door.
What a happy, merry lot of young folks—stalwart, handsome young men and healthy maidens!
They are ranged around the walls with rapidly-diminishing piles of corn before them, which they husk and throw upon the golden heap which is growing up rapidly in the center.
Ah! That young man has found a red ear in his pile! He leaps to his feet and dashes at one of the prettiest girls! A short chase—a struggle—a resounding smack—and it is over. He has kissed her—maybe on her collar, or her back hair; but that doesn’t matter; she counts it all the same.
How happy they all seem.
But no. Over there in a dark corner sits a tall, powerful, handsome young fellow all alone. He speaks to nobody unless addressed, and then his answers are short and sullen.
Ever and anon he casts a piercing glance at a young man of about his own age who sits at the end of the row opposite, chatting with a pretty young girl. His face darkens. There is murder in his eye. He is in love, perhaps, and jealous.
The bell rings for supper just as the husking is done, and the huskers jump up and scamper pell-mell toward the house, but the tall, handsome young man remains seated and drops his face in his hands with something that sounds like a sob.
For a long time he sits thus alone, then a light, hurried step is heard and a sweet-voiced girl asks:
“Joe, what’s the matter? Had trouble with Mary? You haven’t spoken to her to-night, hardly. Sick? Better come into supper. It will do you good, maybe.”
“No, Sis, it ain’t that.”
“Tell me, Joe,” says his sister kindly.
“Well,” he answers, “I’ve got on my thin pants ... I rid Dobbin over ... thar wuz a nail or a chafe in th’ saddle....”
And the stalwart young hayseed Adonis broke down and shed a drenching shower of salt and bitter tears.
(Belgravia.)
It has been said by the wise man of old that “there is no new thing under the sun.” If this means that the adventure I am about to relate was only a repetition of something that occurred to some other hapless damsel in the pre-historic ages, I herewith accord her my sincerest sympathies.
The intelligent reader must be kind enough to understand, as a preliminary, that I am impulsive, and apt to embrace opinions with a degree of enthusiasm and a total disregard of all adverse arguments, however weighty, that is truly feminine. When, therefore, shortly after leaving school, I, as my brother says, “took up” evolution, and read various abstruse treatises upon the “development of species” and the “descent of man,” it was in no half-hearted manner that I rode my hobby, but so thoroughly that I became a thorn in the flesh to most of my relations and friends, and my schoolboy brothers, denouncing the theory laconically, but forcibly, as “awful bosh,” bestowed upon me the contemptuous appellation of the “baboon,” and made unkind allusions to my frequent visits to the Regent’s Park Gardens as being paid to “next of kin.”
Certainly I did resort often, almost every day, to the monkey house to study the attributes of its interesting occupants. Perhaps some lingering, infatuated idea possessed me that it might be my brilliant mission to discover the “missing link;” at any rate, my note-book of that period contains many finely worded desires to “watch the agile monkey in its native habitat,” and to “trace the simian likeness to the human amid the primeval forests of another hemisphere.”
At length I was enabled to partially fulfill my dreams.
Having received a warm invitation from an old school friend to spend some weeks with her at her home in the West of Ireland, I started, with my maid as escort, for Ballynaghader. My friend, Marian Edwards, had married three years before, an Irish gentleman of some property, and I had never seen either her husband or herself since her marriage; so that it was with delightful anticipations of renewing an old friendship, and forming a new one, that I set out on my journey. My brothers accompanied me to the station, and sped me on my way with a unanimous wish that I might meet a gorilla or a chimpanze while taking my walks abroad in what they persisted in calling the “wilds.”
My maid, Hannah, was an estimable woman, very much privileged by reason of her long and faithful service; and as we neared our destination after a long and fatiguing journey, the details of which would be as tiresome as unnecessary, became overwhelmed with dismay, falling into tears, alleging between her sobs that P. C. B. 192 had told her the day before we started that Ireland was a country where nobody cared for the police. This was, in my worthy Hannah’s eyes, the climax of barbarism; and when she proceeded to state from “information received”—presumably from the same reliable source—“that being murdered in one’s bed” was considered in Ireland quite an ordinary and peaceful way of departing this life, I felt that it behooved me to assert myself, and, finding all soothing arguments of no avail, I administered a sharp scolding, which had the desired effect, and induced my abigail to dry her eyes, while she “hoped” with an incredulous snort and desponding shake of her head, “that things would turn out better than she expected.”
The prospective pleasure of my visit was largely enhanced by the discovery that Mr. Ardagh, whom I liked directly I saw him, was a great lover and student of zoölogy, and had quite a menagerie of tame and wild animals, to which he was constantly adding interesting specimens. I promised myself great pleasure in inspecting the animals and cultivating their acquaintance on the morrow, but was recalled from my pleasurable anticipations to devote all my attention to an account Marian was giving me of the mysterious loss of a very handsome and much-valued bracelet which had occurred that very day. Some hours before my arrival her maid had informed her that this bracelet, which had been recently under repair and had been returned that morning from the jeweler, was missing. It had been laid carelessly on the dressing-table when it arrived, and had disappeared. Search had been made in every likely and unlikely spot, servants had been questioned, and, as usual, under such circumstances, had all indignantly, and some tearfully, denied any knowledge of the missing trinket, which, apart from its intrinsic value, was dear to Marian from associations connected with it. I could suggest no steps for its recovery beyond the ordinary English alternative of communicating with the police. This, I found, had been already done, though evidently my friends had small hope of any good results following upon the exertions of that estimable force, of whom, according to Hannah, no one in Ireland stood in awe. Altogether it was an uncomfortable state of things; and although we discussed the subject in all its bearings, entering into the most minute details of any burglaries we had previously heard of or read about, we only succeeded in making ourselves distinctly uneasy, and had to decide at last, as at first, that it was most mysterious.
Directly after dinner I begged that I might be allowed to retire for the night, as my journey had thoroughly tired me. Marian took me to my room, and, wishing me a good night’s rest, left me to the ministrations of Hannah, whose equanimity was thoroughly restored, and who was in a state of discursive contentment, very trying to the patience of one whose eyes were closing fast under the soothing process of hair brushing, and
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