The Seeds of Enchantment | Page 8

only sometimes."
"Was this drug prescribed by a proper medical man?"
"I do not know. I do not even know the name of the drug. But it is quite
harmless. Of that, I can assure you; because I have partaken of it
myself."
Beamish reached out a hand for the glittering bauble on the table; and
Dicky faculties still benumbed with the shock of Melie's passing saw it
to be an enamelled snuffbox of obvious eighteenth-century work, the
lid flowerdecorated in conventional design and garlanded with a
truelover's knot of paste stones. "French," thought Dicky, "Louis the
Sixteenth"... but already the doctor's spatulate fingers had found the
catch, pressed the case open, revealing two small compartments, each
lined with a curious fibre, wall-flower-brown in colour and silky to the
touch.
One of the compartments was empty; in the other, almost filling it, lay
some twenty or thirty tiny purple beans. Bending down to inspect these,
Dicky's nostrils were aware of a faint, sweet perfume, a perfume as of
tuberoses only rarer, less cloying. De Gys, too, smelt that perfume: his
memory leapt at it. "Melie is not dead," said memory. "Only Melie's
body is dead. This is the soul of Melie; take and crush the soul of Melie
between your teeth so that you may remember the body of Melie."
"The coroner will want these," cut in Beamish's voice. "There'll have to
be an inquest, of course. I couldn't certify..."
"Doctor," interrupted the Frenchman, "if I pledge you my word that the

contents of this box are perfectly harmless a sweetmeat a mere Oriental
sweetmeat..."
"No," said Beamish, stubbornly, all the officialdom in him at bay. "No.
I couldn't do it. Besides, you admitted just now that she took some
drug."
There was a moment's silence, broken only by the creak and whirr of
the fan as it swung on its long shafting. Then de Gys shrugged huge
shoulders, a gesture Dicky remembered from old days as sign of
reluctant decision, and said: "Very well. Since you do not accept my
pledge, we will eat of this sweetmeat, doctor: we three, so that you may
know it harmless."
He drew the box across the table, picked out one of the purple beans.
"Do not swallow them. Chew with your teeth, thus." The two
Englishmen watched him take the bean in his mouth, saw the
sorrow-drawn lines of his face vanish as wrinkles vanish from washed
linen at stroke of the iron.
"Eat," said de Gys, and fell silent, a quiet happiness dawning in his
red-brown eyes.
Dicky hesitated for a second: he had all the Anglo-Saxon fear of "dope",
all the peasant's distrust of strange foods.
"Because you could not help loving her; because you coveted her;
because, even despite our friendship, your heart plotted to take her from
me, eat!"
De Gys spoke without emotion, without haste, as men speak of what is
long past. His friend's lips tightened under the flat moustache; almost, a
blush suffused the white of his temples.
"You accuse me," began Dicky.
De Gys smiled. "I accuse you of nothing, dear friend. I only ask you to
eat one of these little seeds." He pushed over the snuff-box; the

Long'un extracted a bean, crushed it between his teeth...
De Gys spoke truth. He, Dicky, had coveted Melie; sitting at table with
her, passion had enmeshed him suddenly with a thousand tentacles of
desire, set every nerve in his body aching for her possession. And when
he realized her dead, it had been as though desire's self perished with
her... What a long time ago that must have been... The thing in his
mouth tasted so cool like summer moonlight, or snow-chilled
mulberries... He looked across the table at his friend's red-bearded face.
"You were quite right, de Gys, I did covet the woman," said the
Honourable Dicky, and de Gys answered, "If she had lived, I would
have given her to you at Moon-fade."
They began to converse; and the doctor listened to them, amazed.
Whatever the drug they had taken might be ' * and drug it is," decided
Beamish the physical effect seemed nil. He watched their eyes: the
pupils remained normal no con- - traction, no dilation. He looked for
signs of slowed or accelerated blood-pressures, found none. He even
put a questing finger on Dicky's pulse it beat steadily at twenty to the
quarter minute. Speech, sight, nerves, muscle all appeared to function
regularly. Of hypnotic, as of excitatory influence, there was no trace:
both men seemed fully conscious, in possession of all their faculties.
Yet subtly, undefinably, both men had altered. A happiness, scarcely of
earth, radiated from their placid features, from their untroubled eyes.
They took no notice of Beamish, spoke in a rapid French which he
found difficult to