Too Late
: The Monster MenFor a moment the two stood in silence; Bulan tortured by thoughts of
the bitter humiliation that he must suffer when the girl should learn
his identity; Virginia wondering at the sad lines that had come into
the young man's face, and at his silence.
It was the girl who first spoke. "Who are you," she asked, "to whom I
owe my safety?"
The man hesitated. To speak aught than the truth had nev
him during his brief existence. He scarcely knew how to lie. To him a
question demanded but one manner of reply--the facts. But never before
had he had to face a question where so much depended upon his answer.
He tried to form the bitter, galling words; but a vision of that lovely
face suddenly transformed with horror and disgust throttled the name in
his throat.
"I am Bulan," he said, at last, quietly.
"Bulan," repeated the girl. "Bulan. Why that is a native name. You
are either an Englishman or an American. What is your true name?"
"My name is Bulan," he insisted doggedly.
Virginia Maxon thought that he must have some good reason of his own
for wishing to conceal his identity. At first she wondered if he could
be a fugitive from justice--the perpetrator of some horrid crime, who
dared not divulge his true name even in the remote fastness of a
Bornean wilderness; but a glance at his frank and noble countenance
drove every vestige of the traitorous thought from her mind. Her
woman's intuition was sufficient guarantee of the nobility of his
character.
"Then let me thank you, Mr. Bulan," she said, "for the service that you
have rendered a strange and helpless woman."
He smiled.
"Just Bulan," he said. "There is no need for Miss or Mister in the
savage jungle, Virginia."
The girl flushed at the sudden and unexpected use of her given name,
and was surprised that she was not offended.
"How do you know my name?" she asked.
Bulan saw that he would get into deep water if he attempted to explain
too much, and, as is ever the way, discovered that one deception had
led him into another; so he determined to forestall future embarrassing
queries by concocting a story immediately to explain his presence and
his knowledge.
"I lived upon the island near your father's camp," he said. "I knew
you all--by sight."
"How long have you lived there?" asked the girl. "We thought the
island uninhabited."
"All my life," replied Bulan truthfully.
"It is strange," she mused. "I cannot understand it. But the
monsters--how is it that they followed you and obeyed your commands?"
Bulan touched the bull whip that hung at his side.
"Von Horn taught them to obey this," he said.
"He used that upon them?" cried the girl in horror.
"It was the only way," said Bulan. "They were almost brainless--they
could understand nothing else, for they could not reason."
Virginia shuddered.
"Where are they now--the balance of them?" she asked.
"They are dead, poor things," he replied, sadly. "Poor, hideous,
unloved, unloving monsters--they gave up their lives for the daughter
of the man who made them the awful, repulsive creatures that they were."
"What do you mean?" cried the girl.
"I mean that all have been killed searching for you, and battling with
your enemies. They were soulless creatures, but they loved the mean
lives they gave up so bravely for you whose father was the author of
their misery--you owe a great deal to them, Virginia."
"Poor things," murmured the girl, "but yet they are better off, for
without brains or souls there could be no happiness in life for them.
My father did them a hideous wrong, but it was an unintentional wrong.
His mind was crazed with dwelling upon the wonderful discovery he had
made, and if he wronged them he contemplated a still more terrible
wrong to be inflicted upon me, his daughter."
"I do not understand," said Bulan.
"It was his intention to give me in marriage to one of his soulless
monsters--to the one he called Number Thirteen. Oh, it is terrible
even to think of the hideousness of it; but now they are all dead he
cannot do it even though his poor mind, which seems well again, should
suffer a relapse."
"Why do you loathe them so?" asked Bulan. "Is it because they are
hideous, or because they are soulless?"
"Either fact were enough to make them repulsive," replied the girl,
"but it is the fact that they were without souls that made them totally
impossible--one easily overlooks physical deformity, but the moral
depravity that must be inherent in a creature without a soul must
forever cut him off from intercourse with human beings."
"And you think that regardless of their physical appearance the fact
that they were without souls would have been apparent?" asked Bulan.
"I am sure of it," cried Virginia. "I would know the moment I set my
eyes upon a creature without a soul."
With all the sorrow that was his, Bulan could scarce repress a smile,
for it was quite evident either that it was impossible to perceive a
soul, or else that he possessed one.
"Just how do you distinguish the possessor of a soul?" he asked.
The girl cast a quick glance up at him.
"You are making fun of me," she said.
"Not at all," he replied. "I am just curious as to how souls make
themselves apparent. I have seen men kill one another as beasts kill.
I have seen one who was cruel to those within his power, yet they were
all men with souls. I have seen eleven soulless monsters die to save
the daughter of a man whom they believed had wronged them terribly--a
man with a soul. How then am I to know what attributes denote the
possession of the immortal spark? How am I to know whether or not I
possess a soul?"
Virginia smiled.
"You are courageous and honorable and chivalrous--those are enough to
warrant the belief that you have a soul, were it not apparent from your
countenance that you are of the higher type of mankind," she said.
"I hope that you will never change your opinion of me, Virginia," said
the man; but he knew that there lay before her a severe shock, and
before him a great sorrow when they should come to where her father was
and the girl should learn the truth concerning him.
That he did not himself tell her may be forgiven him, for he had only a
life of misery to look forward to after she should know that he, too,
was equally a soulless monster with the twelve that had preceded him to
a merciful death. He would have envied them but for the anticipation
of the time that he might be alone with her before she learned the
truth.
As he pondered the future there came to him the thought that should
they never find Professor Maxon or von Horn the girl need never know
but that he was a human being. He need not lose her then, but always
be near her. The idea grew and with it the mighty temptation to lead
Virginia Maxon far into the jungle, and keep her forever from the sight
of men. And why not? Had he not saved her where others had failed?
Was she not, by all that was just and fair, his?
Did he owe any loyalty to either her father or von Horn? Already he
had saved Professor Maxon's life, so the obligation, if there was any,
lay all against the older man; and three times he had saved Virginia.
He would be very kind and good to her. She should be much happier and
a thousand times safer than with those others who were so poorly
equipped to protect her.
As he stood silently gazing out across the jungle beneath them toward
the new sun the girl watched him in a spell of admiration of his strong
and noble face, and his perfect physique. What would have been her
emotions had she guessed what thoughts were his! It was she who broke
the silence.
"Can you find the way to the long-house where my father is?" she asked.
Bulan, startled at the question, looked up from his reverie. The thing
must be faced, then, sooner than he thought. How was he to tell her of
his intention? It occurred to him to sound her first--possibly she
would make no objection to the plan.
"You are anxious to return?" he asked.
"Why, yes, of course, I am," she replied. "My father will be half mad
with apprehension, until he knows that I am safe. What a strange
question, indeed." Still, however, she did not doubt the motives of
her companion.
"Suppose we should be unable to find our way to the long-house?" he
continued.
"Oh, don't say such a thing," cried the girl. "It would be terrible.
I should die of misery and fright and loneliness in this awful jungle.
Surely you can find your way to the river--it was but a short march
through the jungle from where we landed to the spot at which you took
me away from that fearful Malay."
The girl's words cast a cloud over Bulan's hopes. The future looked
less roseate with the knowledge that she would be unhappy in the life
that he had been mapping for them. He was silent--thinking. In his
breast a riot of conflicting emotions were waging the first great
battle which was to point the trend of the man's character--would the
selfish and the base prevail, or would the noble?
With the thought of losing her his desire for her companionship became
almost a mania. To return her to her father and von Horn would be to
lose her--of that there could be no doubt, for they would not leave her
long in ignorance of his origin. Then, in addition to being deprived
of her forever, he must suffer the galling mortification of her scorn.
It was a great deal to ask of a fledgling morality that was yet
scarcely cognizant of its untried wings; but even as the man wavered
between right and wrong there crept into his mind the one great and
burning question of his life--had he a soul? And he knew that upon his
decision of the fate of Virginia Maxon rested to some extent the true
answer to that question, for, unconsciously, he had worked out his own
crude soul hypothesis which imparted to this invisible entity the power
to direct his actions only for good. Therefore he reasoned that
wickedness presupposed a small and worthless soul, or the entire lack
of one.
That she would hate a soulless creature he accepted as a foregone
conclusion. He desired her respect, and that fact helped him to his
final decision, but the thing that decided him was born of the truly
chivalrous nature he possessed--he wanted Virginia Maxon to be happy;
it mattered not at what cost to him.
The girl had been watching him closely as he stood silently thinking
after her last words. She did not know the struggle that the calm face
hid; yet she felt that the dragging moments were big with the question
of her fate.
"Well?" she said at length.
"We must eat first," he replied in a matter-of-fact tone, and not at
all as though he was about to renounce his life's happiness, "and then
we shall set out in search of your father. I shall take you to him,
Virginia, if man can find him."
"I knew that you could," she said, simply, "but how my father and I
ever can repay you I do not know--do you?"
"Yes," said Bulan, and there was a sudden rush of fire to his eyes that
kept Virginia Maxon from urging a detailed explanation of just how she
might repay him.
In truth she did not know whether to be angry, or frightened, or glad
of the truth that she read there; or mortified that it had awakened in
her a realization that possibly an analysis of her own interest in this
young stranger might reveal more than she had imagined.
The constraint that suddenly fell upon them was relieved when Bulan
motioned her to follow him back down the trail into the gorge in search
of food. There they sat together upon a fallen tree beside a tiny
rivulet, eating the fruit that the man gathered. Often their eyes met
as they talked, but always the girl's fell before the open worship of
the man's.
Many were the men who had looked in admiration at Virginia Maxon in the
past, but never, she felt, with eyes so clean and brave and honest.
There was no guile or evil in them, and because of it she wondered all
the more that she could not face them.
"What a wonderful soul those eyes portray," she thought, "and how
perfectly they assure the safety of my life and honor while their owner
is near me."
And the man thought: "Would that I owned a soul that I might aspire to
live always near her--always to protect her."
When they had eaten the two set out once more in search of the river,
and the confidence that is born of ignorance was theirs, so that beyond
each succeeding tangled barrier of vines and creepers they looked to
see the swirling stream that would lead them to the girl's father.
On and on they trudged, the man often carrying the girl across the
rougher obstacles and through the little streams that crossed their
path, until at last came noon, and yet no sign of the river they
sought. The combined jungle craft of the two had been insufficient
either to trace the way that they had come, or point the general
direction of the river.
As the afternoon drew to a close Virginia Maxon commenced to lose
heart--she was confident that they were lost. Bulan made no pretence
of knowing the way, the most that he would say being that eventually
they must come to the river. As a matter-of-fact had it not been for
the girl's evident concern he would have been glad to know that they
were irretrievably lost; but for her sake his efforts to find the river
were conscientious.
When at last night closed down upon them the girl was, at heart, terror
stricken, but she hid her true state from the man, because she knew
that their plight was no fault of his. The strange and uncanny noises
of the jungle night filled her with the most dreadful forebodings, and
when a cold, drizzling rain set in upon them her cup of misery was full.
Bulan rigged a rude shelter for her, making her lie down beneath it,
and then he removed his Dyak war-coat and threw it over her, but it was
hours before her exhausted body overpowered her nervous fright and won
a fitful and restless slumber. Several times Virginia became obsessed
with the idea that Bulan had left her alone there in the jungle, but
when she called his name he answered from close beside her shelter.
She thought that he had reared another for himself nearby, but even the
thought that he might sleep filled her with dread, yet she would not
call to him again, since she knew that he needed his rest even more
than she. And all the night Bulan stood close beside the woman he had
learned to love--stood almost naked in the chill night air and the cold
rain, lest some savage man or beast creep out of the darkness after her
while he slept.
The next day with its night, and the next, and the next were but
repetitions of the first. It had become an agony of suffering for the
man to fight off sleep longer. The girl read part of the truth in his
heavy eyes and worn face, and tried to force him to take needed rest,
but she did not guess that he had not slept for four days and nights.
At last abused Nature succumbed to the terrific strain that had been
put upon her, and the giant constitution of the man went down before
the cold and the wet, weakened and impoverished by loss of sleep and
insufficient food; for through the last two days he had been able to
find but little, and that little he had given to the girl, telling her
that he had eaten his fill while he gathered hers.
It was on the fifth morning, when Virginia awoke, that she found Bulan
rolling and tossing upon the wet ground before her shelter, delirious
with fever. At the sight of the mighty figure reduced to pitiable
inefficiency and weakness, despite the knowledge that her protector
could no longer protect, the fear of the jungle faded from the heart of
the young girl--she was no more a weak and trembling daughter of an
effete civilization. Instead she was a lioness, watching over and
protecting her sick mate. The analogy did not occur to her, but
something else did as she saw the flushed face and fever wracked body
of the man whose appeal to her she would have thought purely physical
had she given the subject any analytic consideration; and as a
realization of his utter helplessness came to her she bent over him and
kissed first his forehead and then his lips.
"What a noble and unselfish love yours has been," she murmured. "You
have even tried to hide it that my position might be the easier to
bear, and now that it may be too late I learn that I love you--that I
have always loved you. Oh, Bulan, my Bulan, what a cruel fate that
permitted us to find one another only to die together!"
More
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In the first book I have wandered so much from my own adventures to tell of the experiences of my brother that all through the last two chapters I and the curate have been lurking in the empty house at Halliford whither we fled to escape the ... Under The Mountains
As we advanced up the river which winds beneath the Golden Cliffs out of the bowels of the Mountains of Otz to mingle its dark waters with the grim and mysterious Iss the faint glow which had appeared before us grew gradually into an all-envelopin... Under The Ocean
By the next day we had nearly forgotten our past sufferings. The first sensation I experienced was surprise at not being thirsty, and I actually asked myself the reason. The running stream, which flowed in rippling wavelets at my feet, was the sat... Under The Vampire's Wing
WHEN our dazzled gaze grew accustomed to the garish blaze of lights we found ourselves standing in an enormous cavern. Around us were glowing fires and shining torches innumerable; the smoke from them half choked us, while above there seemed an ... Unthinkable
If Nature suddenly began to behave differently, what we consider obvious and elementary today might become--unthinkable. In the story THE DESPOILERS in the October 1947 Amazing Stories I raised the question, "Is there anything abso... Upstarts
Earth was being bet on to break her blockade ... but what was the purse ... and who was to collect? The sight of an Earthman on Vega III, where it was impossible for an outlander to be, brought angry crowds to surround John Crow... Urbi Et Orbi
The astronomical, mechanical, and topographical difficulties resolved, finally came the question of finance. The sum required was far too great for any individual, or even any single State, to provide the requisite millions. President Barbican... Vanikoro
This terrible spectacle was the forerunner of the series of maritime catastrophes that the Nautilus was destined to meet with in its route. As long as it went through more frequented waters, we often saw the hulls of shipwrecked vessels that were ro... Venus In Perilous Proximity
The light of the returning sun soon extinguished the glory of the stars, and rendered it necessary for the captain to postpone his observations. He had sought in vain for further trace of the huge disc that had so excited his wonder on the 1st, an... Vertical Descent
Now began our real journey. Hitherto our toil had overcome all difficulties, now difficulties would spring up at every step. I had not yet ventured to look down the bottomless pit into which I was about to take a plunge The supreme hour had come. ... Victory
It seemed Earth was a rich, and undefended planet in a warring, hating galaxy. Things can be deceptive though; children playing can be quite rough--but that ain't war, friend! I From above came the sound of men singing. Captain Duke O'Nei...