The Seeds of Enchantment | Page 6

God, must I eat mangosteens
with a traitor." He eyed Beamish, who had assumed the superior air of
his breed, as a gardener eyes the slug in a carrot bed.
"Vive la politesse," murmured Dicky.
De Gys apologized; prepared more mangosteens.
"La Socialisme," began Beamish. Now there was no holding the
Frenchman.
"Pah!" he thundered. "Le Socialisme! May the devil fly away with it.
Le Socialisme! War is dead. Vive la paix! Let us wave the red flag and
chant the Internationale. Pah!" His eyes glinted. "Boche talk. You
believe their lies you, a man of Science! And if I, Rene de Gys, tell you
that war is not dead, that war will never die, that war is the spirit of
Man what will you say then?"
"Prussien!" chaffed Dicky.
De Gys fell silent for a moment, then he began to speak very
deliberately in cold-blooded, reasoned sentences.
"No. I am no Prussian. War for war's sake I hate. But more than war I
hate weakness and indiscipline and smug hypocrisy and lies. Out of
these, and not out of strength, war is bred. That old Roman was no fool
when he said 'If thou desirest peace, see that thou art prepared for war'."
"He was a barbarian, of a barbarous age," put in Beamish.
"And we, I suppose, are civilized," laughed the Frenchman; "therefore,
we must offer the other cheek to the smiter, even if he be a Hun or a
yellow man/"
"Nobody's trying to smite you, old firebrand," soothed Dicky. But de
Gys rumbled in his beard, "Weakness is danger. The world forgets its
lesson"; and he went on to tell them of old fights in the swamp and the
jungle, fights of white men against yellow, of brown men against white.

Till lastly he spoke of Indo-Chinese exploration, of de Lagree and
Gamier, of their journey up the Mekong into Yunnan; of how de Lagree
died at Tong-chuan, and Gamier a few years later in the rice-fields of
Son-tay.
"Heroes, my friends," boomed the deep voice. "Patriots. Barbarians--"
he glanced furiously at Beamish "who flung away their lives for a scrap
of knowledge on a map no one looks at, for a little strip of painted cloth
on which your internationalists would fain wipe their dirty noses...
Barbarians!" He paused, ineffably contemptuous. "Pah! Such talk
makes the blood boil. Were they all 'barbarians', all those white men
whose corpses litter the East?"
"They served their day," put in Beamish. "Now, East and West must
work together for the regeneration, of the world."
"A fine sermon!" De Gys laughed. "And one that sounds well in the
drawing-rooms of the West. But do not preach it here, my friend: nor to
me, Rene de Gys. Because I, monsieur, am also a barbarian..."
"And you?" He turned on Dicky. "Are you, too, of this milk-and-coffee
creed? Would you embrace the Hun and the yellow man they are both
one, believe me who know East and West take him into your country,
let him steal the white loaves from your workers' stomachs, the white
women from your workers' beds. I think not, my friend. You are of the
old faith...
"The old faith!" suddenly the Frenchman burst into gasconade. "The
faith in the white above the black and the yellow! Such is my creed. As
Gamier was, as Doudart de Lagree, so am I. Fools, soldiers, barbarians
call them what you will at least they knew how to die for their beliefs,
for the little scrap of knowledge, for the little strip of painted cloth. All
up and down the land of gold they lie, men of your stamp and mine,
cher ami. Yet the land of gold still keeps one secret from us. Eastward
of the Mekong that secret hides; westwards of the Red River..."
Interrupted a voice, a voice the three hardly recognized, the voice of
Melie, hoarse and crazy with terror: "Non! Non! Non! Je vous defends"

screamed Melie. Then the voice snapped in her throat; and her head
crashed forward, lay motionless on the table. Red rinds of the
mangosteens showed like enormous clots of blood among the loosened
gold of her hair.
CHAPTER THE
SECOND
Three purple seeds
DE GYS sprang to his feet with one quick movement that sent the
flimsy chair clattering behind him. His right arm caught up the fainting
woman as a harvester catches up the wheat-sheaf, lifted her breast-high;
his left gathered her ankles.
"You, doctor, come!" he called over his shoulder, and strode off,
threading quick way between the empty tables, up the three steps from
the tiffin-room to the hall, out of sight. Beamish and Dicky, pursuing,
caught a glimpse of him as he rounded the corner of the stairs; heard
the scrape of his shoes on the matting; broke