The Eyes of the Panther
Between our convictions and our feelings there is no good understanding.
IONE DOES NOT ALWAYS MARRY WHEN INSANE
A man and a woman--nature had done the grouping--sat on a rustic seat,in the late afternoon. The man was middle-aged, slender, swarthy, withthe expression of a poet and the complexion of a pirate--a man at whomone would look again. The woman was young, blonde, graceful, withsomething in her figure and movements suggesting the word "lithe." Shewas habited in a gray gown with odd brown markings in the texture. Shemay have been beautiful; one could not readily say, for her eyes deniedattention to all else. They were gray-green, long and narrow, with anexpression defying analysis. One could only know that they weredisquieting. Cleopatra may have had such eyes.The man and the woman talked."Yes," said the woman, "I love you, God knows! But marry you, no. Icannot, will not.""Irene, you have said that many times, yet always have denied me areason. I've a right to know, to understand, to feel and prove myfortitude if I have it. Give me a reason.""For loving you?"The woman was smiling through her tears and her pallor. That did notstir any sense of humor in the man."No; there is no reason for that. A reason for not marrying me. I've aright to know. I must know. I will know!"He had risen and was standing before her with clenched hands, on hisface a frown--it might have been called a scowl. He looked as if hemight attempt to learn by strangling her. She smiled no more--merely satlooking up into his face with a fixed, set regard that was utterlywithout emotion or sentiment. Yet it had something in it that tamed hisresentment and made him shiver."You are determined to have my reason?" she asked in a tone that wasentirely mechanical--a tone that might have been her look made audible."If you please--if I'm not asking too much."Apparently this lord of creation was yielding some part of his dominionover his co-creature."Very well, you shall know: I am insane."The man started, then looked incredulous and was conscious that he oughtto be amused. But, again, the sense of humor failed him in his need anddespite his disbelief he was profoundly disturbed by that which he didnot believe. Between our convictions and our feelings there is no goodunderstanding."That is what the physicians would say," the woman continued--"if theyknew. I might myself prefer to call it a case of 'possession.' Sit downand hear what I have to say."The man silently resumed his seat beside her on the rustic bench by thewayside. Over-against them on the eastern side of the valley the hillswere already sunset-flushed and the stillness all about was of thatpeculiar quality that foretells the twilight. Something of itsmysterious and significant solemnity had imparted itself to the man'smood. In the spiritual, as in the material world, are signs and presagesof night. Rarely meeting her look, and whenever he did so conscious ofthe indefinable dread with which, despite their feline beauty, her eyesalways affected him, Jenner Brading listened in silence to the storytold by Irene Marlowe. In deference to the reader's possible prejudiceagainst the artless method of an unpractised historian the authorventures to substitute his own version for hers.
IIA ROOM MAY BE TOO NARROW FOR THREE, THOUGH ONE IS OUTSIDEIn a little log house containing a single room sparely and rudelyfurnished, crouching on the floor against one of the walls, was a woman,clasping to her breast a child. Outside, a dense unbroken forestextended for many miles in every direction. This was at night and theroom was black dark: no human eye could have discerned the woman and thechild. Yet they were observed, narrowly, vigilantly, with never even amomentary slackening of attention; and that is the pivotal fact uponwhich this narrative turns.Charles Marlowe was of the class, now extinct in this country, ofwoodmen pioneers--men who found their most acceptable surroundings insylvan solitudes that stretched along the eastern slope of theMississippi Valley, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. For morethan a hundred years these men pushed ever westward, generation aftergeneration, with rifle and ax, reclaiming from Nature and her savagechildren here and there an isolated acreage for the plow, no soonerreclaimed than surrendered to their less venturesome but more thriftysuccessors. At last they burst through the edge of the forest into theopen country and vanished as if they had fallen over a cliff. Thewoodman pioneer is no more; the pioneer of the plains--he whose easytask it was to subdue for occupancy two-thirds of the country in asingle generation--is another and inferior creation. With CharlesMarlowe in the wilderness, sharing the dangers, hardships and privationsof that strange, unprofitable life, were his wife and child, to whom, inthe manner of his class, in which the domestic virtues were a religion,he was passionately attached. The woman was still young enough to becomely, new enough to the awful isolation of her lot to be cheerful. Bywithholding the large capacity for happiness which the simplesatisfactions of the forest life could not have filled, Heaven had dealthonorably with her. In her light household tasks, her child, her husbandand her few foolish books, she found abundant provision for her needs.One morning in midsummer Marlowe took down his rifle from the woodenhooks on the wall and signified his intention of getting game."We've meat enough," said the wife; "please don't go out to-day. Idreamed last night, O, such a dreadful thing! I cannot recollect it, butI'm almost sure that it will come to pass if you go out."It is painful to confess that Marlowe received this solemn statementwith less of gravity than was due to the mysterious nature of thecalamity foreshadowed. In truth, he laughed."Try to remember," he said. "Maybe you dreamed that Baby had lost thepower of speech."The conjecture was obviously suggested by the fact that Baby, clingingto the fringe of his hunting-coat with all her ten pudgy thumbs was atthat moment uttering her sense of the situation in a series of exultantgoo-goos inspired by sight of her father's raccoon-skin cap.The woman yielded: lacking the gift of humor she could not hold outagainst his kindly badinage. So, with a kiss for the mother and a kissfor the child, he left the house and closed the door upon his happinessforever.At nightfall he had not returned. The woman prepared supper and waited.Then she put Baby to bed and sang softly to her until she slept. By thistime the fire on the hearth, at which she had cooked supper, had burnedout and the room was lighted by a single candle. This she afterwardplaced in the open window as a sign and welcome to the hunter if heshould approach from that side. She had thoughtfully closed and barredthe door against such wild animals as might prefer it to an open window--of the habits of beasts of prey in entering a house uninvited she wasnot advised, though with true female prevision she may have consideredthe possibility of their entrance by way of the chimney. As the nightwore on she became not less anxious, but more drowsy, and at last restedher arms upon the bed by the child and her head upon the arms. Thecandle in the window burned down to the socket, sputtered and flared amoment and went out unobserved; for the woman slept and dreamed.In her dreams she sat beside the cradle of a second child. The first onewas dead. The father was dead. The home in the forest was lost and thedwelling in which she lived was unfamiliar. There were heavy oakendoors, always closed, and outside the windows, fastened into the thickstone walls, were iron bars, obviously (so she thought) a provisionagainst Indians. All this she noted with an infinite self-pity, butwithout surprise--an emotion unknown in dreams. The child in the cradlewas invisible under its coverlet which something impelled her to remove.She did so, disclosing the face of a wild animal! In the shock of thisdreadful revelation the dreamer awoke, trembling in the darkness of hercabin in the wood.As a sense of her actual surroundings came slowly back to her she feltfor the child that was not a dream, and assured herself by its breathingthat all was well with it; nor could she forbear to pass a hand lightlyacross its face. Then, moved by some impulse for which she probablycould not have accounted, she rose and took the sleeping babe in herarms, holding it close against her breast. The head of the child's cotwas against the wall to which the woman now turned her back as shestood. Lifting her eyes she saw two bright objects starring the darknesswith a reddish-green glow. She took them to be two coals on the hearth,but with her returning sense of direction came the disquietingconsciousness that they were not in that quarter of the room, moreoverwere too high, being nearly at the level of the eyes--of her own eyes.For these were the eyes of a panther.The beast was at the open window directly opposite and not five pacesaway. Nothing but those terrible eyes was visible, but in the dreadfultumult of her feelings as the situation disclosed itself to herunderstanding she somehow knew that the animal was standing on itshinder feet, supporting itself with its paws on the window-ledge. Thatsignified a malign interest--not the mere gratification of an indolentcuriosity. The consciousness of the attitude was an added horror,accentuating the menace of those awful eyes, in whose steadfast fire herstrength and courage were alike consumed. Under their silent questioningshe shuddered and turned sick. Her knees failed her, and by degrees,instinctively striving to avoid a sudden movement that might bring thebeast upon her, she sank to the floor, crouched against the wall andtried to shield the babe with her trembling body without withdrawing hergaze from the luminous orbs that were killing her. No thought of herhusband came to her in her agony--no hope nor suggestion of rescue orescape. Her capacity for thought and feeling had narrowed to thedimensions of a single emotion--fear of the animal's spring, of theimpact of its body, the buffeting of its great arms, the feel of itsteeth in her throat, the mangling of her babe. Motionless now and inabsolute silence, she awaited her doom, the moments growing to hours, toyears, to ages; and still those devilish eyes maintained their watch.Returning to his cabin late at night with a deer on his shouldersCharles Marlowe tried the door. It did not yield. He knocked; there wasno answer. He laid down his deer and went round to the window. As heturned the angle of the building he fancied he heard a sound as ofstealthy footfalls and a rustling in the undergrowth of the forest, butthey were too slight for certainty, even to his practised ear.Approaching the window, and to his surprise finding it open, he threwhis leg over the sill and entered. All was darkness and silence. Hegroped his way to the fire-place, struck a match and lit a candle.Then he looked about. Cowering on the floor against a wall was his wife,clasping his child. As he sprang toward her she rose and broke intolaughter, long, loud, and mechanical, devoid of gladness and devoid ofsense--the laughter that is not out of keeping with the clanking of achain. Hardly knowing what he did he extended his arms. She laid thebabe in them. It was dead--pressed to death in its mother's embrace.
IIITHE THEORY OF THE DEFENSEThat is what occurred during a night in a forest, but not all of it didIrene Marlowe relate to Jenner Brading; not all of it was known to her.When she had concluded the sun was below the horizon and the long summertwilight had begun to deepen in the hollows of the land. For somemoments Brading was silent, expecting the narrative to be carriedforward to some definite connection with the conversation introducingit; but the narrator was as silent as he, her face averted, her handsclasping and unclasping themselves as they lay in her lap, with asingular suggestion of an activity independent of her will."It is a sad, a terrible story," said Brading at last, "but I do notunderstand. You call Charles Marlowe father; that I know. That he is oldbefore his time, broken by some great sorrow, I have seen, or thought Isaw. But, pardon me, you said that you--that you--""That I am insane," said the girl, without a movement of head or body."But, Irene, you say--please, dear, do not look away from me--you saythat the child was dead, not demented.""Yes, that one--I am the second. I was born three months after thatnight, my mother being mercifully permitted to lay down her life ingiving me mine."Brading was again silent; he was a trifle dazed and could not at oncethink of the right thing to say. Her face was still turned away. In hisembarrassment he reached impulsively toward the hands that lay closingand unclosing in her lap, but something--he could not have said what--restrained him. He then remembered, vaguely, that he had neveraltogether cared to take her hand."Is it likely," she resumed, "that a person born under suchcircumstances is like others--is what you call sane?"Brading did not reply; he was preoccupied with a new thought that wastaking shape in his mind--what a scientist would have called anhypothesis; a detective, a theory. It might throw an added light, albeita lurid one, upon such doubt of her sanity as her own assertion had notdispelled.The country was still new and, outside the villages, sparsely populated.The professional hunter was still a familiar figure, and among histrophies were heads and pelts of the larger kinds of game. Talesvariously credible of nocturnal meetings with savage animals in lonelyroads were sometimes current, passed through the customary stages ofgrowth and decay, and were forgotten. A recent addition to these popularapocrypha, originating, apparently, by spontaneous generation in severalhouseholds, was of a panther which had frightened some of their membersby looking in at windows by night. The yarn had caused its little rippleof excitement--had even attained to the distinction of a place in thelocal newspaper; but Brading had given it no attention. Its likeness tothe story to which he had just listened now impressed him as perhapsmore than accidental. Was it not possible that the one story hadsuggested the other--that finding congenial conditions in a morbid mindand a fertile fancy, it had grown to the tragic tale that he had heard?Brading recalled certain circumstances of the girl's history anddisposition, of which, with love's incuriosity, he had hitherto beenheedless--such as her solitary life with her father, at whose house noone, apparently, was an acceptable visitor and her strange fear of thenight, by which those who knew her best accounted for her never beingseen after dark. Surely in such a mind imagination once kindled mightburn with a lawless flame, penetrating and enveloping the entirestructure. That she was mad, though the conviction gave him the acutestpain, he could no longer doubt; she had only mistaken an effect of hermental disorder for its cause, bringing into imaginary relation with herown personality the vagaries of the local myth-makers. With some vagueintention of testing his new "theory," and no very definite notion ofhow to set about it he said, gravely, but with hesitation:"Irene, dear, tell me--I beg you will not take offence, but tell me--""I have told you," she interrupted, speaking with a passionateearnestness that he had not known her to show--"I have already told youthat we cannot marry; is anything else worth saying?"Before he could stop her she had sprung from her seat and withoutanother word or look was gliding away among the trees toward herfather's house. Brading had risen to detain her; he stood watching herin silence until she had vanished in the gloom. Suddenly he started asif he had been shot; his face took on an expression of amazement andalarm: in one of the black shadows into which she had disappeared he hadcaught a quick, brief glimpse of shining eyes! For an instant he wasdazed and irresolute; then he dashed into the wood after her, shouting:"Irene, Irene, look out! The panther! The panther!"In a moment he had passed through the fringe of forest into open groundand saw the girl's gray skirt vanishing into her father's door. Nopanther was visible.
IVAN APPEAL TO THE CONSCIENCE OF GODJenner Brading, attorney-at-law, lived in a cottage at the edge of thetown. Directly behind the dwelling was the forest. Being a bachelor, andtherefore, by the Draconian moral code of the time and place denied theservices of the only species of domestic servant known thereabout, the"hired girl," he boarded at the village hotel, where also was hisoffice. The woodside cottage was merely a lodging maintained--at nogreat cost, to be sure--as an evidence of prosperity and respectability.It would hardly do for one to whom the local newspaper had pointed withpride as "the foremost jurist of his time" to be "homeless," albeit hemay sometimes have suspected that the words "home" and "house" were notstrictly synonymous. Indeed, his consciousness of the disparity and hiswill to harmonize it were matters of logical inference, for it wasgenerally reported that soon after the cottage was built its owner hadmade a futile venture in the direction of marriage--had, in truth, goneso far as to be rejected by the beautiful but eccentric daughter of OldMan Marlowe, the recluse. This was publicly believed because he had toldit himself and she had not--a reversal of the usual order of thingswhich could hardly fail to carry conviction.Brading's bedroom was at the rear of the house, with a single windowfacing the forest.One night he was awakened by a noise at that window; he could hardlyhave said what it was like. With a little thrill of the nerves he sat upin bed and laid hold of the revolver which, with a forethought mostcommendable in one addicted to the habit of sleeping on the ground floorwith an open window, he had put under his pillow. The room was inabsolute darkness, but being unterrified he knew where to direct hiseyes, and there he held them, awaiting in silence what further mightoccur. He could now dimly discern the aperture--a square of lighterblack. Presently there appeared at its lower edge two gleaming eyes thatburned with a malignant lustre inexpressibly terrible! Brading's heartgave a great jump, then seemed to stand still. A chill passed along hisspine and through his hair; he felt the blood forsake his cheeks. Hecould not have cried out--not to save his life; but being a man ofcourage he would not, to save his life, have done so if he had beenable. Some trepidation his coward body might feel, but his spirit was ofsterner stuff. Slowly the shining eyes rose with a steady motion thatseemed an approach, and slowly rose Brading's right hand, holding thepistol. He fired!Blinded by the flash and stunned by the report, Brading neverthelessheard, or fancied that he heard, the wild, high scream of the panther,so human in sound, so devilish in suggestion. Leaping from the bed hehastily clothed himself and, pistol in hand, sprang from the door,meeting two or three men who came running up from the road. A briefexplanation was followed by a cautious search of the house. The grasswas wet with dew; beneath the window it had been trodden and partlyleveled for a wide space, from which a devious trail, visible in thelight of a lantern, led away into the bushes. One of the men stumbledand fell upon his hands, which as he rose and rubbed them together wereslippery. On examination they were seen to be red with blood.An encounter, unarmed, with a wounded panther was not agreeable to theirtaste; all but Brading turned back. He, with lantern and pistol, pushedcourageously forward into the wood. Passing through a difficultundergrowth he came into a small opening, and there his courage had itsreward, for there he found the body of his victim. But it was nopanther. What it was is told, even to this day, upon a weather-wornheadstone in the village churchyard, and for many years was attesteddaily at the graveside by the bent figure and sorrow-seamed face of OldMan Marlowe, to whose soul, and to the soul of his strange, unhappychild, peace. Peace and reparation.
The Eyes of the Panther was featured as
TheShort Story of the Day on
Wed, Jun 24, 2015
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