Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “I beg pardon,” he said. “Haven’t I done what I can to make you comfortable? Would you like my shirt too?”

  He looked as if he expected her to say yes, and for the life of her she did not know why she was not angry with him. But something rather wistful about his mouth and eyes made her keep on looking at him when she thought he was not looking at her; and that was quite easy to do, because he seemed to turn his eyes the other way as much as possible.

  “Have you lost everybody, too?” she asked at last.

  “No,” he said curtly, then glanced at her sharply again.

  “I told you your mother’s safe. She’s dry by now.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say that Consuelo was not her relative, but she suddenly remembered the shrieking headlines of the newspaper, and in a panic she decided to say nothing. He played with the dog until the dog crawled on to his lap, curled up and went to sleep.

  “What is the dog’s name?” she asked at last, feeling that was surely a safe subject.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Isn’t he your dog?”

  “From now on yes, probably. I fished him out of the water.”

  “Oh, then let’s give him a name!”

  “Not ‘Buster’!” he said instantly. “Every dam-dog anybody finds gets called that.”

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Mansfield — Sherry Mansfield. San Francisco’s my home. Sorry — I ought to have mentioned it.”

  “Sherry? That’s rather nice. Nuts go with sherry, don’t they? Call him ‘Nut.’”

  He nodded, reappraising her. “His name is Nut from now on,” he answered. “What’s yours? I’ve told mine.”

  He looked straight at her and she shrank back with reawakened panic — fearing above all that he might see that she was afraid. So that little frown that always mocked her real emotion began dancing above the blue eyes, and he thought she was puzzled by his own stupidity.

  “Oh, of course,” he said, “I remember. Conchita — let’s see, what was your mother’s name — Martinez — Conchita Martinez then. Spanish, eh?”

  “Spanish ancestry,” she answered, wondering at her own readiness, and thankful she had not told a downright lie. The Lanier blood is mixed of French and Spanish and New England.

  “Your mother looked more like a—”

  “Like a Dago?” she suggested, looking mischievous. Anything to keep him going!

  “More like a Spaniard than you do,” he said, laughing. “My own folks come from England, but we’re mixed up like all the rest. I’d a hot tamale grandmother — never saw the lady, but they say she turned my granddad’s head over the top of a fan in Mexico City, and killed him finally.”

  “Oh! How old was he when—”

  “When he checked out? Ninety. They say he died all tired out.”

  He was perfectly serious. Her little answering bubble of laughter puzzled him, and that made her laugh all the more, until it got beyond control, and the dog woke up and wagged his tail, and barked in sympathy. So Sherry Mansfield had to laugh too. She did not sound hysterical, although she felt so.

  “Hey! We’re going to miss it!” he said suddenly, and jumped up. “Give me your hand — quick! Bring my coat! Where are your shoes?”

  “I’ve got them.”

  “Come on now — and jump when I tell you!”

  She could jump and she did not need assistance. But she liked the way he told her to carry his coat, and she liked the way he thought about her shoes; so she let him hold her hand, and ran down the roof beside him. They had drifted close to a barn that stood hay-loft-high out of the water, and the roof they were on was slowly swinging so that a corner of it would miss the barn by not much.

  “Now never mind if you fall in — I’ll look after you. Come here, Nut!”

  He picked up the dog and seized Jacqueline unceremoniously by the wrist.

  “Now!”

  They jumped in together through a hay-loft door, the dog struggled free from Sherry’s arms to go careering about, barking at imaginary rats and what not. At one end there was a sort of cubicle without a door, and the rest of the space was a kind of general storehouse, in which all sorts of odds and ends looked as if they had been accumulating for a generation. There was very little hay. The cubicle faced a stair-head and Sherry went at once with a businesslike air to see where the stairs might lead to. He turned back looking glum.

  “The second step down’s under water,” he said. “We’re still marooned.”

  Jacqueline shrugged her shoulders, which seemed to surprise him. He returned to the open door and swung himself outward to look for a means of escape; but there was nothing in view except water, and beyond that miles of mud. Suddenly the dog began barking furiously in a corner where the hay was heaped, and Jacqueline ran to see what the matter might be.

  “Quickly-call him off!” she cried out.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Cat — and bits of baby kittens!”

  Sherry came over and watched the engagement. Nut knew better than to go too near. The cat and five kittens had their backs up against the hay. Nut was satisfied to annoy them from outside scratching-range.

  “Call Nut off!” Jacqueline insisted, down on her knees, trying to soothe the cat’s fears.

  “I wouldn’t worry if I were you,” Sherry answered rudely.

  Jacqueline heaped the kittens into her lap and drove Nut away with a broken piece of wood, the first thing handy.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, looking up at Sherry with puzzled frown, that he thought mocked him.

  “I mean she’s not a woman, she’ll look after her own young,” he answered.

  “Will you keep the dog away?” she demanded.

  She felt her own temper rising. Something in his manner, rather than his words, had stung like a rebuke, and she was not in the least accustomed to being rebuked by strangers.

  Not answering, he found a piece of twine and tied Nut to one of the cubicle stanchions. Then he began whistling as if he had forgotten the incident altogether and started to explore the cubicle.

  “Oh, good!” he called out. “Eats! Lots of ’em! These coons seem to cache stuff just like magpies! Nearly a whole case of canned soup — peanuts — stale bread — soap — shaving-brush — oh, hell! Just my luck: It’s an old-fashioned one.”

  “Old-fashioned what?”

  “Razor. I use a safety. And there’s no mirror. Damn!”

  “It looks like a coon’s shaving brush!” she said, coming to peer over his shoulder.

  “I don’t care if a dozen coons have used it. I’m going to shave! Maybe you’d like to eat, though. I’ll open a can of soup.”

  “No, you may shave first. Perhaps you’ll talk more nicely when you look clean.”

  He flashed another of his sudden, searching glances at her.

  “Have I been rude?” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  But again, in a moment, he seemed to dismiss the thought from mind. Next minute he was whistling again, and trying to sharpen the razor on an old piece of leather harness.

  “Care if I do this in this light?” he asked. “If I bleed much you can look the other way.”

  He smiled as he said that, and she knew intuitively that however he might talk, he was no savage. She guessed he would not willingly hurt anything or any one — unless perhaps himself.

  “You might wait behind the partition,” he suggested.

  But the cubicle was dark and rather smelly. She preferred to watch him, and sat down in the hay beside cat the and kittens. She had seen men being shaved through barber-shop windows on her rare visits to New Orleans, and had watched the Negroes shaving one another in the lane outside the shacks on Don Andres’ estate; it had always struck her as a comical performance, but reaction from the terror she had passed through made this one seem utterly ridiculous.

  “Let me help,” she suggested, giggling.

  “Wish you’d find a mirror!” he answered testily.


  He lay on his stomach and leaned as far as he dared out through the barn door, trying to see his reflection in the muddy water. But that was no good; he could not even use his arms in that position, and he was getting angrier every minute. Jacqueline, sputtering with laughter, went and hunted in the cubicle, but the nearest thing she could find to a mirror was a soup-can. She held that, end toward him; but the tin was too dull, and she could not hold it nearly still enough because of suppressed giggles.

  “Damn!” he exploded at last. “I wish I hadn’t begun this.”

  “Shall I try to finish it?” she asked him.

  “Yes! You can’t do worse than I’ve done!”

  She had not expected him to answer yes, and she would have given a million dollars that minute, if she had them, to take her words back. But he pulled out a box, and sat on it with his face to the light in such a matter-of- fact, determined way that she did not see how to refuse. She wondered what Consuelo would think about it, if she knew, and that made her smile.

  “Dip your brush in the water at the foot of the stairs and put more soap on first,” he said. “Then scrape the soap off with the edge of the razor. Never mind if I swear — I don’t mean anything.”

  She had never been spoken to exactly like that before in all her life. There was not a trace of flattery or of anything false or assumed in his manner. He addressed her as an equal, except that he gave her orders; and he even gave orders as if it were the most natural thing in the world, with no possibility of his attitude being misunderstood. She could imagine him taking orders from some one else in the same way.

  It was the strangest experience she had ever had, but she left off laughing, for in a convent they do not teach you how to shave men and she was mortally afraid of cutting him. She remembered having seen old-fashioned prints in which the barber held his victim by the nose (presumably to keep his head from waggling) and she wondered whether he would be able to breathe if she did that.

  “Carve away!” he urged.

  So she tried holding his nose, and he laughed so that she nearly dropped the razor.

  “If I’m not to hold your nose, how are you to keep your head still?” she asked after one or two dangerous experiments. “Oh, look! I’ve got some hair off already!”

  She showed him the hairs on the razor-edge. “But you’ll have to hold still, you know.”

  He tried leaning back with his head against the side of the barn, but she could not get at him that way. He tried’ standing up, but that was worse. Finally he sat down on the box again, and leaned against her, letting his head fall back against her shoulder, she steadying herself with one knee on the box behind him. Which was a rather intimate arrangement, but it worked. She made a few small cuts on his cheek but shaved him clean, and laughed triumphantly.

  “I’m much obliged,” he said, and went to wash the soap and blood off at the stairway. Jacqueline watched him with her frown going sixteen to the dozen. Some how he might have said more than that. He might have looked back at her and smiled. And yet — he did not give her the impression now of being rude exactly. All of the men she had known hitherto would have spent the time loading her with compliments, and yet not one of them would have inspired her with the confidence that this blunt individual did. She would have felt afraid to be alone with any of the others. She did not feel alone with this man — did not need the least protection from him — knew she could trust him absolutely.

  Then came one of those strange freaks of memory, that persist in the most unlikely places, apropos of nothing. Sister Michaela’s gray eyes, and sober face, and quiet voice

  “Trust your intuition, Jacqueline!”

  And she in a barn — with a man — with the floods all around, and no relief in sight — and a soapy razor in her hand! She looked at the razor wondering. What had Desmio meant when he said the world was dangerous? It did not seem to be!

  Sherry Mansfield broke into her reverie by bringing out three cans of soup and opening them with a broken axe. There were no plates or spoons. They had to dip stale bread into the stuff, and use fingers, and laugh, and act like savages, feeding Nut and the cat between-times, and discovering that Nut could do tricks. Then peanuts for dessert, and soup brown water to drink that Sherry dipped up in one of the empty cans and swore was better than the coffee they gave him in France. She hoped Consuelo was having real bread and hot coffee. She felt she had known Sherry a hundred years when the meal was over, and, girl-like, wondered whether he might be the individual who got the socks she knitted during the war. She even asked him whether he thought it possible.

  “Dunno,” he answered. “I know I got some awful misfits.”

  Not a shadow of a smile. He was stating a fact simply.

  “Have you a mother?” she asked him suddenly. It was the subject of socks that connected up the train of thought. She was thinking wildly of anything that would keep the past out of her mind and was only putting the first question that occurred to her as she sat watching him from the other end of the hay bale. He looked as if he had a mother.

  But the very mention of the word brought a frown to his face. He got up without answering her, and went to rummage in the cubicle, turning things over and taking a long time about it. He seemed to spend as much time in there as he could find excuse for, rearranging everything, and setting the cans of soup in a row along the wall. When he came out at last his manner was distant. He said nothing, but went and stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, staring out at the flood.

  She felt sorry for him and wondered why. He was rude, and she should have been angry. But his face, as he watched the water, had resumed that wistful expression she had noticed when they first met, and the effect it had on her was to make her feel he needed sympathy.

  She found him so intensely interesting that he helped her to forget her own predicament, and only wondered how she could find out what the matter was with him without offending him once more. It hurt her to offend him as much as it seemed to hurt him. For all his bluntness he seemed astonishingly sensitive — in fact he seemed to try to cover it up with bluntness.

  Sherry Mansfield watched the frown over her eyes with deep, almost embarrassing interest.

  “What puzzles you?” he asked at last.

  “You, Mr. Mansfield!”

  “I don’t feel like a mystery. What’s the conundrum?”

  “I was wondering — don’t be angry, please—”

  “Go on. Ask anything. What is it?”

  “Are you — I promise not to tell, but — that is — have you, done anything bad? Are you dangerous? I don’t mean that, I mean—”

  His roars of laughter stopped her — huge, amused, immense laughter, followed by a look of pity that cut her to the bone, although he meant it kindly and she knew it. He got up, looked about him, and brought her the razor, holding it out on the palm of his hand.

  “Take this and keep it by you to protect yourself!” he said, grinning.

  She took the thing and flung it through the open door into the flood. She rose and tried to glare at him. But the glare would not work; the frown danced funnily above the blue eyes and brought an answering smile from him.

  “Now you can’t shave me any more!” he said.

  “At least you know I’m not afraid of you!” she retorted; but she could not make it sound brave, for her voice was choking.

  “If I thought you were afraid of me I’d swim off and leave you,” he answered, puzzled.

  She was panic-stricken instantly. She would kill herself if left alone with her own thoughts. She sat down on the hay and started crying, hating herself, yet crying more the more she struggled not to. She felt suddenly alone, and sick at heart — aching, yearning to be comforted. She longed for Consuelo. The dog came and pushed his nose between her hands. She hugged him to herself, squeezing him so tightly that he whimpered. She wished this man would go away leave her — swim off as he had threatened to. But he kept on standing near her, not touching her or saying any
thing, but just standing still. Perhaps he was waiting for his dog. She let the dog go.

  “Say: please tell me what it’s all about,” Sherry asked at last, in a different tone of voice to any he had used yet. She shook her head violently, her face between her hands, wishing he would not stand there.

  “Is it me? Have I done anything?”

  His appeal was simply pitiful; she could not endure it. She left off crying as suddenly as she had begun, and sat up, staring at him through the tears.

  “Why did you laugh at me?” she asked. “You looked sad and I was sorry for you. Weren’t you cruel to laugh?”

  He looked utterly incapable of cruelty; that truth forced itself on her as he stood dumbly wondering what to say. He looked like a big bewildered boy with his eyes full of tenderness.

  “I don’t see why you felt sorry for me,” he said, as if he were groping for the reason. “I know I feel mighty sorry if I’ve made you feel badly. I don’t know what I did. Won’t you tell me?”

  Neither did she know what he did, now that he asked her! She only did know that she felt compassion for him — that his tenderness and his wistfulness, so utterly different from the other brusk manner, were due to some great grief inside him. Her heart told her that.

  He sat down on the other end of the hay-bale, waiting for her to tell him wherein he had wronged her, as puzzled as she was, only much more master of himself.

  “I think you ought to tell me,” he said quietly.

  There was nothing to tell! She watched him for a full long minute, he keeping his eyes averted in order not to increase her embarrassment. She began to feel not embarrassed, and to know that he was to understand that she had injured him, not he her.

  “What did you mean — ?” she asked suddenly; then stopped. It was none of her business after all. He was a stranger. He had respected her privilege — had asked her nothing that she might not care to answer.

  “Ask anything you like,” he said quietly, still looking straight in front of him. “I’ll answer if I can.”

  “What did you mean by saying what you did about the cat and her kittens?”

  His eyes looked swiftly, straightly into hers. They were challenging — on guard instantly. Her frown was working busily, but it had begun to dawn on him that it might not mean mockery, else why the tears? The blue eyes underneath were brimming with honesty. Wondering, she watched the change of his expression, as he deliberately lowered his guard. He had made up his mind to trust her — she knew it — thrilled.