Story of the Month — The Palm Tree with the Bell

We left Honer and his companion Coxon crossing the forest toward the shore — in "Honer's" pocket a silly, worthless draft, and in Coxon's pocket a precious black pearl, snatched from the wife of blind Richard. Uneasiness began to steal over Coxon's soul on this long journey, and Honer invited him into a house on the shore, that they might rest..

— 2 —

They went in... Coxon brought out a bottle of liquor and took great gulps, to calm his nerves..

"Honer" drank with a calm that set "Coxon's" nerves trembling.

Coxon had begun to feel the dangers surrounding him... The affair began to reveal itself to him as a contrived plot, especially when he noticed that "Honer" had drawn his pistol from his hip pocket to place it in the front opening of his shirt, and had gone out to look for the boat.

...to himself: "From a glass of — liquor, this happens to me?!"

The poor man did not know that this was nothing but the working of "nitric acid."

He knew that Coxon had died. Through his burning head circled "the black pearl"... And he kept waiting until he could open his eyes.

But the pain grew fiercer, and all the flesh around his eyes was burning... And when he lifted his hands from his eyes, to see... "Honer" let out a terrible scream — he had gone blind.

He did not believe it... he went on believing that the pain would pass and that he would see. Hours passed over him, and the space around him was vast, black, without limit. And with all this, he did not forget "the black pearl": he began feeling his way to Coxon's corpse, and his fingers groped for the pearl until he found it and took it, and he turned back, feeling his way to the door, his hands stretched out before him..

He fell again and again, reeling with pain, and heard the breaking of the waves on the shore... and a tremendous terror took hold of him.

How would he find his food and drink? How would he reach the village? How would he cross those swamps and inlets?...

But what burned his brain was to know: how had this befallen him from a glass of liquor??!

And when he tried to leave the ruined house, he fell over Coxon's corpse and slept beside it, moaning with pain until morning.

The thunder deafened his ears, the rains whipped his face like lashes, the thorns tore his flesh... but he kept trying to find his way..

He would walk, then return to the house to take shelter in it... feeding on the sea creatures along the shore, and drinking rainwater..

Two full weeks in excruciating pain... He was very weak... but his thinking was steady, and he was determined to save himself... How?... A thought flashed in his head... the bell hung in the palm tree... So he went out, taking his direction from the sound of the sea and straining his ears in hope of hearing the sound of the bell.

The sound of the bell reached him, faint, on the wind... and a shiver of joy ran through his body. And he set off walking, his ears hanging on those rings.

■

On the shore, in the island's bay, an elegant yacht...

And in the house of "Kendy," a tall man, gray-haired, in an elegant white suit, and beside him "Ella":

— "Will he see, doctor?" said "Ella."
And Dr. Steinbau answered her: "Can he recover his sight? He can!!"

"Kendy" lay stretched in his bed, his eyes bandaged... The doctor was looking at his watch; the time had not yet come to remove the bandages...

Ella said tenderly: "But you have not yet told me how you came here, doctor?"

Dr. "Steinbau" smiled and said: "I could not but come... My reputation was in danger... I learned from the captain of one of the steamers that someone had assumed my name and my profession and come here to treat a patient; after that, nothing remained for me but to come."

Ella's eyes brimmed with tears and she said: "Your coming is a kindness and a generosity on your part." The doctor patted her shoulder and said: "My coming deserves no thanks, my dear... I am on a cruise through the seas, and it is a pleasure for me to come here."

He went up to the patient and removed the bandages from Richard's eyes. "Richard" raised his eyes, trying to look, and it seemed to him that something of light was hovering about him... and that a sweet face was beside his bed... And his arms stretched out...

— "Ella...!"

— "Richard, can you see me..."
And she bent down until her wet cheek touched his.
— "Yes, my dear..."

She threw herself into his arms, weeping, and the doctor lifted her gently, saying:
— "We must not excite his nerves!"
She raised her eyes to him and said, sobbing through her tears:

— "Doctor, how grateful we are to you... Doctor, we are poor; we have nothing. We had a precious pearl, but it was lost to us — taken by the one who impersonated you..."

Her voice broke with weeping, and he patted her small shoulder and said with visible emotion: "Do not trouble yourself about the pearl, my little one; the gift of sight is more precious than all the pearls of the sea."
— "But we must pay something, doctor."

And the bell was ringing above her in the palm tree... the little bell that "Ella" had hung to guide her husband... it was ringing in the wind, ring upon ring. The doctor raised his eyes to the palm and said:

— "If it must be so, then give me this bell, to keep as a memento of this strange adventure. 'Richard' has no more need of it."

And Ella cried out... "The bell! The bell!"... and she went climbing the tree with wonderful lightness...

"Honer" was walking in the forest, hearing the bell ring from afar... and he was heading toward it, always toward it... with the ringing... Suddenly... suddenly "Honer" stopped in the middle of the forest, terrified: the sound of the bell had suddenly ceased... The winds were still blowing — so why had the sound of the bell stopped?

And he pressed on, falling, then crawling, and asking himself: why does the bell not ring...
And the winds kept blowing, but the silvery voice that came from the palm tree with the bell rang no more....

Translated from the English writer