Part 62 (2/2)
Peter s.h.i.+fted his glance momentarily to the armed attendants who guarded this evil life. An inner whisper counseled him: ”Not yet! Not yet! There is time!”
”Yet there is a chance that I may reconsider; that I may permit you to continue to live--perhaps in the mines. But certainly, Peter the foolish, you must not yield to that present impulse. Of course, you are armed. But do not move! Two feet behind you stands an excellent shot with a pistol aimed at your backbone. Men with cracked spines do not live long!” He chuckled.
”What was I about to say? Ah, yes! If I could purchase from you that quality--if I could, I say, anything in my kingdom would be yours--everything! It is the one thing I have been denied. Holy wheel! It is strange, this way I am talking! I have rarely had such an interested audience. Most of my captives at this stage are cringing, are kissing my feet.”
The snarling grin left his lips again, and his mood became strangely soft, like dead flesh, so Peter thought, as he waited--with that pistol at his backbone!
”I intend telling you an amazing story, which you may or may not credit. I am telling it--this confession--partly because I dislike the look in your blue eyes. Like everyone else, you loathe me. But I will erase that look. I intend to show you I am even more human than you!
”By Buddha, I will tell that story to you--you, Peter Moore, the most fortunate man in all China this hour. Think, before I begin, of that mandarin, that bungling Javanese merchant, who, also, are about to die.
Then forget all else--and listen.
”This took place many years ago, when I was a young man, like yourself.
I, too, loved a woman. Can you understand me? I, too, once loved a woman, a maiden of the Punjab. I can conceive her in the veil of my memory still. Eyes like dusty stars, skin the color of the Tibetan dawn, the dawn that you may never again look upon.
”Her heart was gold, so I thought. Yet it was dross. On a night in springtime, in the bazaar at Mangalore, we two first met. I have not forgotten. That night I fell in love with the white orchid from the Punjab. She was more beautiful to me than life or death, a feast of beauty.
”Len Yang was mine then, and I was a rich prince, but not so rich as now. Drunkenly I was casting my gold about the bazaar when we met.
She saw me--and she smiled! It was the first time any woman had smiled upon me, and I was alarmed and troubled. I was no more handsome than now. I was the man that no one loved. _Chuh-seng_--the beast--was my name even then, among those who tolerated my friends.h.i.+p because of my fluent gold.
”And when the Punjab maiden smiled upon me, I thought to myself: '_Chuh-seng_, love has come at last to sweeten your bitter heart.'
What should a young lover have done? I--I bought the bazaar and presented it to her--on bended knees!
”She confessed that she could love me, despite my ugliness, this white orchid of the plains. Peter Moore, do not look at me. You can believe--if you do not look. She kissed me--on my lips! Again she said she loved me. Had I been a thousand times uglier, she would have loved me a thousand times more pa.s.sionately! Heaven had joined us.
And I forgave my enemies, renewed my vows at the wheel, and blessed every virgin star!
”Love had come to me at last! Me--the most hideous in all of Asia.
And I believed her. What would you have done, Peter Moore--you who know so well the heart of woman? Never mind. I believed everything.
”We lingered in Mangalore. But I did not know then of the Singhalese merchant--the trader who owned three miserable camels. He possessed not handsomeness, but the romantic glamour which you possess, Peter the Brazen! Reveling in my love, I was as blind as these imbeciles in my mines. Our child was born.
”She could have taken more, had she not been so lovestruck. She could have had my all--my gems, my pearls, and rubies, and diamonds, more colossal than the treasure of any raja--my mines which dripped with the precious mercury!
”Yet she stole only my gold which was convenient, and went out into the starlit night with the Singhalese trader, to share the romance of the blinding desert--the Singhalese trader, a man of no caste at all!
Love? That was my love!”
The hideous, gray face retreated behind talons as though to blot out the thought of that ancient betrayal. When the talons again dropped down, the dead softness of the face was replaced by the former sneer.
This change was quite shocking.
The beast was laughing harshly. ”If I could not have love, I could at least have hate! I have hated more pa.s.sionately than any man has ever loved!”
Peter said nothing to this, although the gray lips closed and the green eyes looked at him expectantly, almost demanding comment. Surely this creature was insane, with his room of the green death, his wild tales of love of a Punjab maiden, of wholesale hate.
The Gray Dragon seemed irritated. ”What have you to say now?”
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