He had skimmed about Singapore in a jinrickshaw all the morning. He
wanted to find Mr. Kow Watt Loon. That Chinaman was as elusive as the
glamour of the East. And he was not used to ’rickshaws. He was sure he
looked a lazy fool when being dragged about in the heat on a high perch
and a pair of silent wheels by a sweating fellow creature. It had been
nearly a week before he could summon the courage to travel in a little
cart drawn by another man. It made him feel like the hated subject of a
revolutionary cartoonist’s satire.
He could not find Mr. Kow Watt Loon, who kept a pawnshop somewhere in
Singapore, so he had been told, where Kelanton _sarongs_ of silk were
to be found occasionally, rare krises, and silverware from the Linga
Islands. Not that Mr. Loon would be sure to sell those things if his
shop were found and if he had them, for he was reported to be suspicious
and morose; an embarrassing shopkeeper who would forget all his English
and decline to sell to you if he misliked your appearance. But Mr. Loon
could not be found; and a city near the equator is much more extensive,
relatively, than a city with a wholesome climate. Singapore’s streets in
their heavy and slumbering heat seemed to his despairing eye prolonged to
an impossible distance. Oh, Heaven! Where was this Mr. Loon?
This coolie was the third experiment that morning with a ’rickshaw.
Young Bennett from London, in his quest of the romance of the East,
watched below him the old man’s back muscles playing under the glistening
drab skin. He ought to tell the old fellow to walk—to stop. It was
too hot for this game. Besides, the coolie didn’t know where to go,
though he pretended he did; no doubt he was merely running about. They
always did that. The first, picked up near Raffles Place, was a bronze
giant, a wonderful youngster, whose hat was a round straw thatch with
a pinnacle. As soon as he was spoken to he made cheerful noises of
understanding, lifted his shafts in confident play, took a strange side
turning promptly (how lucky—this fellow knew!), loped off swiftly, and
they were completely lost in ten minutes, though Bennett did not know
that at the time. His coolie loped along swiftly but leisurely. That
running figure and its style would have inspired the poets of old Athens,
but in the romantic East it was only a blob of life. The sun and the
easy gait infected the passenger with a haughty languor. The coolie’s
pale-blue cotton shorts and shirt became dark and limp with sweat; but
the fellow ran on, deliberately, unerringly, taking unlikely byways into
queer seclusions where brown life poured in noisy streams. Evidently this
fellow knew where to go.... But did he? Or did he just run on? Where the
devil were they? _Brente!_ Stop! As cheerful as ever, sweating but fresh,
that coolie did not appear to know where he was, and evidently his glad
smile would be unchanged even in death. He was an imbecile.
The second coolie, who had stopped to be entertained by the language
thrown at the first, was a lean and elderly man, and big veins corded
his arms in a mesh. His torso was bare. He ran his ’rickshaw elsewhere,
occasionally looking back over his shoulder doubtfully at his fare. He
was shy of any street in which he saw the khaki uniform of a Malay or
a Sikh. That journey came to nothing in a strange market place in the
middle of a horrible smell. The coolie walked to a curb; there he gently
rested his shafts, turned and shook his head dolefully, and held out his
hand for largess.
Another hour wasted! It was blazing noon, and a row of Chinamen were
squatting in the shade, eating slops from basins with two sticks. They
did not even look up. The naked children at play did not appear to see
him. Nobody in Singapore knew anything, and did not care what happened
to anybody. He had never seen this part of the city before. Was it
Singapore? It might have been the grotesque country of a dream, all these
people inimical shadows who did not even glance at their victim, and
he the only live man, caught in an enchantment, lost and imprisoned in
an illusion where the face of things had a meaning which he could not
guess, though it was important for him. The man from London wiped the
perspiration from his hands and looked round. A high wall was opposite,
with a gateway, and crouched on the top of the wall, on either side of
the opening, were two big bulls in pink stone. In the shadow on the
pavement beneath were heaps of colored rags, fast asleep. Was that a
temple to Siva? It was then that the third ’rickshaw man entered the
dream, stopped and looked at Bennett as though he knew at once the man
for whom he was seeking, and drew near seductively. This figure of evil,
its face pock-marked, had only a rag about its loins and his ’rickshaw
was a self-supporting wreck. Well, it would serve to escape from those
pink bulls and that unmoving smell. By luck, too, they might pass into a
part of the city he recognized, and then he would be released from the
spell and wake up. But he went farther, and saw nothing that he knew. He
was abandoned under some cocoanuts, and outside the city, by the look of
it.
The road was empty, except for a bullock cart at a standstill. A haze of
little flies quivered about the sleepy heads of the two animals, and the
shadows under their bellies were black. The dark folk, Klings and Malays,
who padded by occasionally, were probably in another world. They were
certainly not in his. He could not speak with them. The heat was so still
and heavy that he felt he could not move in it, especially as he did not
know which way to take.
“Can I help you? Are you looking for anyone about here, sir?” The voice
was so like Oxford that it exorcized the spectral East completely; for a
moment it steadied his bewilderment in the midst of what was quick, but
was alien and enigmatic. He was too surprised to answer at once, but in
the shade of those palms stared at a young fellow who was so attractively
dressed in neat and unctuous white, with a flourishing black silk bow
to a collar not in the least stained, though the heat was many hours
old, that Bennett felt mean and soiled in the regard of that friendly
curiosity. Bennett explained. He was lost. He had been unable to make the
’rickshaw men understand. What he wanted now was the Europe Hotel.
“Some distance, the Europe. This is the Ayer Laut Estate. Sorry, but
our cars are out. Would you come with me? Then we can telephone to your
hotel.”
They went off through somber avenues of sleeping trees. Their trunks were
scored with pale scars and under the wounds were stuck small glass cups.
His companion said nothing, but strode briskly forward. The crepuscular
aisles were deserted, though Bennett noticed that he and his companion
were not alone in that silent and shadowy plantation. But what were the
figures he could see in the distance he did not know. They might have
been Dryads, those slender and motionless forms in robes of scarlet,
orange, and emerald, who were intent on some ritual among the trees. They
were retired into the twilight quiet of the aisles, and seemed unaware
of the intruding Englishmen. But Bennett was startled by one of those
figures. It had been hidden by the gray column of a tree near the path.
As he went by it raised its head, with its piled black hair and a gold
comb diminishing its dark and delicate face, which had a gold stud in the
bold curve of a nostril. Her drowsy eyes looked at him, but he remembered
only the spot of gold in her nose, and the astonishing orange of the silk
wound round her lithe figure.
They came to a house in a shrubbery of crotons, and ascended a flight of
wooden steps to a veranda. A Malay was there, crouched in the portico;
but he might have been inanimate. His gaze was fixed beyond them. And
the house was deserted. Their footsteps made an embarrassing din on
the boards. Bennett with his brisk friend, who seemed to know exactly
what to do, went to an upper room, open to the air on three sides, and
overlooking everywhere the green roof of the plantation.
The skin of a tiger was on the floor. Its head grinned toward the door in
shabby and fatuous defiance. Dusty native weapons were disorderly on the
wooden partition at the back. There was a picture of Salisbury Cathedral
hanging next to a photograph of a dead elephant with a man nursing a gun
sitting on its head.
“Wait a minute,” said the young fellow in white, and went to the most
noticeable object in the dingy and neglected apartment, a bright
telephone instrument. He leaned against the wall in superior and casual
attention with the receiver to his ear. While waiting like that, suddenly
and brusquely he spoke to Bennett.
“I say, sorry, what’s your name?” Then he turned in a tired way to the
instrument, murmured softly and allusively to the wall for a few seconds,
and came away. “That’s all right. The car will be here presently. I must
go. But you wait here. Whisky and soda on that sideboard. Make yourself
at home”; and he was gone.
Bennett sat down. Singapore was an unexpected sort of place. He felt
imprisoned now in the silence. Nothing moved. There was no sound but
once, when a wasp as big as a bird bolted in heavily, blundered and
hummed among the wooden rafters, and went again so straight and suddenly
that Bennett thought something in the overhead shadows had flung it out.
He began to feel bitter about that romance of the East. Sometimes it
seemed lost in a brooding quiet, or else it stirred into episodic and
irrelevant activity directed to God knew what. He put his sun helmet
on the floor, wiped his brow, and regretted the childish folly which
had sent him to look for what perhaps did not exist on earth. What did
people mean by romance? What was it? How could it be found in ’rickshaws
and rubber plantations? He could not get the hang of Singapore. Ships,
temples to all the gods, cocoanuts, and men and women of so many
different colors that they could not talk to one another. And who was
that fellow who had just gone out? How did he come into the picture?
It was a life which went on outside his own, and he could not follow
it. Didn’t even know that fellow’s name. He might have been created
among those trees just to let a Londoner know that the East, though it
pretended never to observe him, yet wanted him to understand that he was
making a fool of himself in a place not his. He might as well have some
of that drink.
The siphon made so immense a noise that he thought the invisible watchers
must hear it and send another messenger to mock him politely. He began to
drink gratefully.
“Mix me one,” grumbled a deep voice.
He almost dropped the glass, and looked round in a little panic. He could
not see anybody. A lounge chair with its back to him stood by the veranda
at the far end of the room. He went to it. An old man, with a mass of
riotous white hair and a white beard stained brown about the lips,
reclined there at full length. His eyes were shut. His open shirt showed
gray hair on his ribs.
“Did you speak?” asked Bennett.
“Of course,” said the man, without opening his eyes. “You heard me. I
want a drink.”
Bennett brought it. The old man sat up sideways in his chair with
surprising swiftness, opened his eyes at the glass in sullen criticism,
and emptied it at once. He sat looking at the tumbler thoughtfully,
while Bennett stood by, hoping that the car would arrive soon. Then the
bearded figure looked up at him and surveyed him with dark disapproving
eyes.
“Who are you?”
Bennett felt very modest. “Oh—nobody—just out from London. I found this
estate by chance—got lost, you know. A good friend here, whose name I
don’t know, has telephoned for a car.”
“Well, Mr. Nobody, sit down. No. Get me another drink. Put more whisky in
it.”
Bennett was meekly obedient.
“Now you can sit down. Go on. Sit down.”
Bennett felt that the heat of the day was much worse as he took a near
chair. The stranger flung up his glass again with the suggestion that the
liquid must fall into a hollow, held the tumbler away from him, turned it
about reflectively, put it on the floor, and lay back, closing his eyes.
He sighed. His feet were bare, except for a pair of crimson slippers
which hung loosely from his toes. Bennett listened through five minutes
of tense silence for sounds of an approaching car. The figure reclining
on the chair then opened its querulous eyes, raised its head, and spoke.
“My name’s Hopkins. Ever heard of me, Mr. Nobody?”
“No, sir. I’m afraid not. I’m only just out, you see.”
Mr. Hopkins chuckled in his beard. “Then don’t stop unless you want to.”
“Never heard of me,” mumbled Mr. Hopkins, several times. “Never heard of
me.”
This old fellow, thought Bennett, is not in his right mind, and here
I am, told to wait till somebody comes for me, though I’m not sure
that they know I’m here. How can I keep this graybeard amused? He’s a
truculent old ruffian. Bennett looked out over the treetops in the sun.
The crowns of some palms were individual above the mass of green. They
were lifeless. A bird or something was calling, “Raup, Raup.” What could
he talk about to an old reprobate like that?
“What ship did you come out in?” asked Mr. Hopkins, playing with the end
of his beard.
“The _Trojan_.” The young man relapsed at once into a bankrupt memory.
Hopkins stared at him fixedly, as though waiting. “Well, is that all? But
I suppose it is. You came out, and here you are. That’s how it’s done.
Not in my time, though. Not when I was alive.”
“Have you been here long, sir?”
“Me? I’ve been here too long. Seen too much for some of them. I’m old
Hopkins—but what’s the good of talking to you? You just came, and here
you are.” Mr. Hopkins rubbed his bare ribs plaintively. “The ships I
knew couldn’t just come and go.” He leaned forward with one of his
sly chuckles, and looked round furtively while secretly enjoying a
recollection. “I was in the _Nellie Bligh_.” He nodded his head at
Bennett, and watched for the full effect of his news.
Bennett smiled awkwardly, but nodded back to his companion
appreciatively. It was better to keep him in a good humor.
“Yes. You don’t know what ships are like, not you fellers. Nor men. No
Billy Ringbolts now.” Mr. Hopkins began to shake in silent laughter over
something that had occurred to him.
“Oh, I don’t know, Mr. Hopkins. I’ve heard about the clippers, and
Whampoa, and Java Head. But I never saw a sailing ship during all the
voyage out. Not one. And yet I know the East India Dock Road, too.”
Mr. Hopkins looked startled for a moment. “Poplar,” he mumbled. “You say
you know the Dock Road! And not a sailing ship.” His beard about his
mouth continued to move, as though he were talking to himself.
“The _Nellie Bligh_ came out from Poplar,” mused Mr. Hopkins. “So did I.
But not in her. She found me in Java because—well, because I was there.”
The old man looked very artful and amused.
“She picked me up at Sourabaya. She was in the coolie trade to the Chinca
Islands then, and her skipper was a Chilean. She was going to China to
take in coolies. Ever heard of the trade? You were paid for what you
delivered. So it was no good taking in just enough to fill the ship. Some
died.”
Bennett smiled politely at this little joke. “Some died, did they?”
“The _Nellie_,” went on Mr. Hopkins, “was not the ship to choose if you
knew of a better. I didn’t. She was all Dago, but there are worse things.
We got up to China—are you listening?—I say we got out all right. She
found her own way, though she nearly finished up on Borneo. The wind fell
and she was set inshore on a current.... What a damn noise those big
wasps make! There’s another just come in.... Did you hear of a man named
Smollet in London? I’m told he’s often in the papers, very important, and
gives a lot to the missionaries. So he ought. Buying off his dad below,
I suppose. His dad was in the coolie trade. I know. I didn’t do so bad,
myself. But the missionaries get nothing out of me. I wouldn’t worry over
a few Chinks more or less. They’re not human. We took in three hundred
on the _Nellie_. One of ’em looked at me as he came aboard. After that I
went to have a look at the hatch gratings—I wanted to see whether they
were sound and handy.”
Mr. Hopkins sank back languorously on his long chair, closed his eyes,
and lapsed into silence. His long bony hands were folded limply on his
bare chest. Somewhere outside, a bell sunk in the depths of the foliage
began to toll. The silly story was finished, Bennett thought. There was
a smell which reminded him of incense. Mr. Hopkins’s cane chair creaked.
Where was that car, to get him out of this?
The old man began to drawl again. He spoke with his eyes shut, as though
wearily confessing his sins. He looked like a dying man, too, Bennett
thought, for his white beard hung from cheek bones that were projecting
eaves, and the skin of his long hooked nose was so white over the sharp
bridge that a touch might have broken it. His eyes were pits, with white
bushes overhanging their shadows. One of his slippers fell to the boards.
“It was lucky we sighted the Pelew Islands. Our old man might have passed
muster for a sailor with a fair wind and plenty of room. If ever he knew
where he was he must have guessed it. But he was the admiral of the
Pacific in good weather. Three days after we sighted the Pelews, near
eight bells in the morning, the _Nellie_ was doing so well that I wasn’t
so sorry as I had been that I’d left Java when I had to. I’d forgotten
we had any Chinamen aboard. Just as eight bells was being struck there
was a howl below, like a man knifed. Then I heard a rush and I looked
down. The Chinks were swarming for the deck. They hung on the ladder like
bees and were armed with boards they’d stripped from below. The first of
’em was scrambling over the coaming close to me. I lifted him clean by
his pigtail and dropped him on the others.” The old man smiled in his
sleep. “We made those hatch gratings fast, somehow. We got the Chinks
booked. Wolves would have looked prettier. Their faces were turned up
and they were howling at us. Then a pistol went off. That Dago in his
gold lace had come at last. He was trembling and whimpering, and firing
pistols into those faces. It made the noise worse. The Chinks began to
leap and scream.” Mr. Hopkins paused and rubbed the hair about his mouth
slowly.
“As one jumped a shot caught fire to his shirt, and it was funny to see
the way he tore the burning rag off his arm. But it wasn’t so funny when
I saw that chap pushing through the crowd, blowing on the rag to keep it
alight. I half guessed his game and grabbed a pistol for a go at him. He
dropped, but another Chink snatched the burning rag from his hand and got
away with it.” Mr. Hopkins opened his eyes in a smile. “Wanted to light
his pipe, eh?”
A motor horn sounded in the grounds. Then a Malay appeared. “Tuan
Bennett. Motor pergi Europe.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hopkins,” said young Bennett, rising slowly, for he
feared it might be polite to wait for the end of the story, supposing
it were not ended. “Good-morning.” Mr. Hopkins did not speak. He was
staring into the rafters.
The quick journey to the hotel gave Bennett the impression that it had
been in hiding just round the corner all the time. What he had seen
and heard that day might have been the recollections, unreasonable,
unrelated, and prolonged to no end, which are jumbled in the mind when
one wakes up and sees in surprise the familiar objects of the plain
morning. “Another day wasted,” thought Bennett. “I don’t spend one more
hour of it looking for romance. I doubt whether the East has got any.
All gone before I got here.” He thought he would bathe, and then sit
on the veranda; waste the rest of the day looking at the world till
dinnertime. He sat in that corridor, a long shady vista of wicker chairs
and marble-topped tables, where men and women of his own kind, as much
apart from the East as he was himself, gossiped idly as though waiting
for the hour when they could escape. Apologetic Chinamen in white
uniforms were gliding about like ghosts, ministering to weary guests.
The broad thoroughfare outside moved in silent eddies of jinrickshaws
and motor-cars. Bennett was amused by a Chinaman in goggles so fat that
he filled the perch of his ’rickshaw, sitting there with his short legs
wide apart and a child like a solemn idol on one knee. The little coolie
who drew them was trotting along limply with his mouth wide open. A group
of Klings stalked by, figures with long black hair and smooth faces,
each in a stiff cocoon of frail colored cloth. Were they men or women? A
gigantic Sikh domineered with the traffic at the corner. Across the road,
fringing the turf of the esplanade, flat-topped trees were in crimson
bloom, a line of gigantic flambeaux. Through their columns he could
see the roadstead, a plain of burnished pewter to which were fixed the
black shapes of a few ships, a barque, some sampans, coasting steamers
like toys, high-pooped junks, all distinct and remarkable, even when
they were far out toward the indigo islands beyond. The sun was setting.
Immense purple clouds piled from the horizon like the vapors of a planet
which had burst, smoke too heavy for any wind to disperse and shot with
the glow of exposed internal fires. They were high enough to kindle the
sky. The sky was burning. Lightning was exploding in the summits of
the clouds. The ships and the sea were suddenly caught, too, and the
surprised faces of the watchers on that veranda reflected the glow of a
vast catastrophe. The fires died. The islands congealed to cold iron. The
only light was the quivering opalescence of the storm in high clouds. A
group of Chinamen went by, shadows carrying lanterns, beating a tom-tom
and shrilling on curdling instruments.
Bennett, almost fearful without knowing why, looked round at the guests
assembling. They reassured him. The electric fans were spinning above
them. They were drinking cocktails. He thought he would go and dress, but
then saw a man signaling to him, and recognized his nameless young friend
of the morning. Beside him was a lady whose little head, in a shadow,
seemed lively and detached above a rosy cloud of gauzy silk upon which
fell the light of a glow-lamp. Bennett went over. Another man was at that
table, but Bennett did not look at him.
“Well, you got your car all right?”
“Yes. You helped me out of that trouble nicely.”
His friend laughed, and turned to the lady to explain the fun of it.
“Found him on our plantation, near the Kling compound, looking for the
Europe.” Bennett smiled shyly, and the lady glanced at him with tired
and faintly insolent eyes. “Why ever was he doing that?” she asked,
indifferently, looking away across the room.
Bennett said, with an attempt at humor, that he was looking for the
romance of the Orient. The lady did not appear to hear him. She began
a conversation in a low tone with her companion. Bennett was about to
leave, with an excuse, when he felt his arm nudged, and saw Mr. Hopkins
beside him in the next chair, severe and correct in evening dress, his
white beard and hair scrupulously groomed. “Hullo, Mr. Nobody!” he
rumbled. “Strictly proper and comfortable here, cocktails and all. Have
one.” He plunged a bell, and when the Chinese apparition appeared, merely
looked at it. The apparition vanished, but almost at once returned with
two little glasses containing a golden liquor in which were scarlet
cherries on match sticks.
“I didn’t finish that story. You were in a hurry to get away, but you
can’t go now.” Mr. Hopkins pushed over a cocktail, holding away a finger
on which was a remarkable topaz. “Men who just come out, and here
they are! But you can tell Poplar about the _Nellie Bligh_, when you
get back. They may wonder where she went. And you can say I said so.
Hopkins—there’s been lots of Hopkinses, perhaps even in my family.” The
old fellow had an interval of private mirth. The young man opposite, and
the lady in rosy silk, were conversing in oblivious animation. “Wasn’t
that Chinaman just getting away with a burning rag when you ran out? I
couldn’t stop him. And the Dago, who was a fool, thought we had finished
with the mutiny. But he soon knew better. He knew when he saw some smoke
coming up by the fore hatch. Of course, Chinks are almost reasonable
creatures. Almost reasonable, Mr. Nobody. We couldn’t let them roast,
could we? Of course not. Not if we wanted to put the fire out. Our Dago
had the puzzle of his life before him. The Chinks were below us again,
clamoring to be let out and pointing back at the fire. They thought
they’d got the right argument that time. And that Dago was going to do
it, too, and save his ship, I suppose, with hundreds of murderous maniacs
round him. Not when I was there, though. Not when I had a gun. Let ’em
roast. There’s lots of Chinks, but only one Mr. Hopkins, and the Pelews
were only three days back. I don’t think, Mr. Nobody, you’ve ever seen
anything like it. But by the time we had the boats provisioned and away
all was quiet again, except for the flames. We made the Pelews. Anyhow,
my boat did. I never heard what became of the other two.”
The lady in rose laughed prettily. Bennett, shocked, stared at her
instantly, but she was not looking at Mr. Hopkins. The other pair had a
joke between them.
“Well, come along, you two. Dinner!” Mr. Hopkins rose, a tall patriarch,
a venerable image of disillusioned wisdom. The young man rose, too, and
moved his chair to allow the lady a path to the dining room. He turned
with a polite smile to Bennett. “Let me hear when you’ve found any
romance in the East. But don’t come looking for it on our plantation. We
haven’t got any there.”