THE DREAM OF SIN SIN WA
For a habitual opium-smoker to abstain when the fumes of _chandu_
actually reach his nostrils is a feat of will-power difficult
adequately to appraise. An ordinary tobacco smoker cannot remain for
long among those who are enjoying the fragrant weed without catching
the infection and beginning to smoke also. Twice to redouble the lure
of my lady Nicotine would be but loosely to estimate the seductiveness
of the Spirit of the Poppy; yet Sir Lucien Pyne smoked one pipe with
Mrs. Sin, and perceiving her to be already in a state of dreamy
abstraction, loaded a second, but in his own case with a fragment of
cigarette stump which smouldered in a tray upon the table. His was that
rare type of character whose possessor remains master of his vices.
Following the fourth pipe—Pyne, after the second, had ceased to trouble
to repeat his feat of legerdemain, “The sleep” claimed Mrs. Sin. Her
languorous eyes closed, and her face assumed that rapt expression of
Buddha-like beatitude which Rita had observed at Kilfane’s flat.
According to some scientific works on the subject, sleep is not
invariably induced in the case of Europeans by the use of _chandu_.
Loosely, this is true. But this type of European never becomes an
habitué; the habitué always sleeps. That dream-world to which opium
alone holds the key becomes the real world “for the delights of which
the smoker gladly resigns all mundane interests.” The exiled Chinaman
returns again to the sampan of his boyhood, floating joyously on the
waters of some willow-lined canal; the Malay hears once more the mystic
whispering in the mangrove swamps, or scents the fragrance of nutmeg
and cinnamon in the far-off golden Chersonese. Mrs. Sin doubtless lived
anew the triumphs of earlier days in Buenos Ayres, when she had been La
Belle Lola, the greatly beloved, and before she had met and married Sin
Sin Wa. _Chandu_ gives much, but claims all, and he who would open the
poppy-gates must close the door of ambition and bid farewell to
manhood.
Sir Lucien stood looking at the woman, and although one pipe had
affected him but slightly, his imagination momentarily ran riot and a
pageant of his life swept before him, so that his jaw grew hard and
grim and he clenched his hands convulsively. An unbroken stillness
prevailed in the opium-house of Sin Sin Wa.
Recovering from his fit of abstraction, Pyne, casting a final keen
glance at the sleeper, walked out of the room. He looked along the
carpeted corridor in the direction of the cubicles, paused, and then
opened the heavy door masking the recess behind the cupboard. Next
opening the false back of the cupboard, he passed through to the
lumber-room beyond, and partly closed the second door.
He descended the stair and went along the passage; but ere he reached
the door of the room on the ground floor:
“Hello! hello! Sin Sin! Sin Sin Wa!” croaked the raven. “Number one
p’lice chop, lo!” The note of a police whistle followed, rendered with
uncanny fidelity.
Pyne entered the room. It presented the same aspect as when he had left
it. The ship’s lantern stood upon the table, and Sin Sin Wa sat upon
the tea-chest, the great black bird perched on his shoulder. The fire
in the stove had burned lower, and its downcast glow revealed less
mercilessly the dirty condition of the floor. Otherwise no one,
nothing, seemed to have been disturbed. Pyne leaned against the
doorpost, taking out and lighting a cigarette. The eye of Sin Sin Wa
glanced sideways at him.
“Well, Sin Sin,” said Sir Lucien, dropping a match and extinguishing it
under his foot, “you see I am not smoking _chandu_ tonight.”
“No smokee,” murmured the Chinaman. “Velly good stuff.”
“Yes, the stuff is all right, Sin.”
“Number one proper,” crooned Sin Sin Wa, and relapsed into smiling
silence.
“Number one p’lice,” croaked the raven sleepily. “Smartest—” He even
attempted the castanets imitation, but was overcome by drowsiness.
For a while Sir Lucien stood watching the singular pair and smiling in
his ironical fashion. The motive which had prompted him to leave the
neighboring house and to seek the companionship of Sin Sin Wa was so
obscure and belonged so peculiarly to the superdelicacies of chivalry,
that already he was laughing at himself. But, nevertheless, in this
house and not in its secret annex of a Hundred Raptures he designed to
spend the night. Presently:
“Hon’lable p’lice patrol come ’long plenty soon,” murmured Sin Sin Wa.
“Indeed?” said Sir Lucien, glancing at his wristwatch. “The door is
open above.”
Sin Sin Wa raised one yellow forefinger, without moving either hand
from the knee upon which it rested, and shook it slightly to and fro.
“Allee lightee,” he murmured. “No bhobbery. Allee peaceful fellers.”
“Will they want to come in?”
“Wantchee dlink,” replied Sin Sin Wa.
“Oh, I see. If I go out into the passage it will be all right?”
“Allee lightee.”
Even as he softly crooned the words came a heavy squelch of rubbers
upon the wet pavement outside, followed by a rapping on the door. Sin
Sin Wa glanced aside at Sir Lucien, and the latter immediately
withdrew, partly closing the door. The Chinaman shuffled across and
admitted two constables. The raven, remaining perched upon his
shoulder, shrieked, “Smartest leg in Buenos Ayres,” and, fully
awakened, rattled invisible castanets.
The police strode into the stuffy little room without ceremony, a pair
of burly fellows, fresh-complexioned, and genial as men are wont to be
who have reached a welcome resting-place on a damp and cheerless night.
They stood by the stove, warming their hands; and one of them stooped,
took up the little poker, and stirred the embers to a brighter glow.
“Been havin’ a pipe, Sin?” he asked, winking at his companion. “I can
smell something like opium!”
“No smokee opium,” murmured Sin Sin Wa complacently. “Smokee Woodbine.”
“Ho, ho!” laughed the other constable. “I _don’t_ think.”
“You likee tly one piecee pipee one time?” inquired the Chinaman.
“Gotchee fliend makee smokee.”
The man who had poked the fire slapped his companion on the back.
“Now’s your chance, Jim!” he cried. “You always said you’d like to have
a cut at it.”
“H’m!” muttered the other. “A ‘double’ o’ that fifteen over-proof
Jamaica of yours, Sin, would hit me in a tender spot tonight.”
“Lum?” murmured Sin Sin blandly. “No hate got.”
He resumed his seat on the tea-chest, and the raven muttered sleepily,
“Sin Sin—Sin.”
“H’m!” repeated the constable.
He raised the skirt of his heavy top-coat, and from his trouser-pocket
drew out a leather purse. The eye of Sin Sin Wa remained fixed upon a
distant corner of the room. From the purse the constable took a
shilling, ringing it loudly upon the table.
“Double rum, miss, please!” he said, facetiously. “There’s no treason
allowed nowadays, so my pal’s—”
“I stood _yours_ last night Jim, anyway!” cried the other, grinning.
“Go on, stump up!”
Jim rang a second shilling on the table.
“_Two_ double rums!” he called.
Sin Sin Wa reached a long arm into the little cupboard beside him and
withdrew a bottle and a glass. Leaning forward he placed bottle and
glass on the table, and adroitly swept the coins into his yellow palm.
“Number one p’lice chop,” croaked the raven.
“You’re right, old bird!” said Jim, pouring out a stiff peg of the
spirit and disposing of it at a draught. “We should freeze to death on
this blasted riverside beat if it wasn’t for Sin Sin.”
He measured out a second portion for his companion, and the latter
drank the raw spirit off as though it had been ale, replaced the glass
on the table, and having adjusted his belt and lantern in that
characteristic way which belongs exclusively to members of the
Metropolitan Police Force, turned and departed.
“Good night, Sin,” he said, opening the door.
“So-long,” murmured the Chinaman.
“Good night, old bird,” cried Jim, following his colleague.
“So-long.”
The door closed, and Sin Sin Wa, shuffling across, rebolted it. As Sir
Lucien came out from his hiding-place Sin Sin Wa returned to his seat
on the tea-chest, first putting the glass, unwashed, and the rum bottle
back in the cupboard.
To the ordinary observer the Chinaman presents an inscrutable mystery.
His seemingly unemotional character and his racial inability to express
his thoughts intelligibly in any European tongue stamp him as a
creature apart, and one whom many are prone erroneously to classify
very low in the human scale and not far above the ape. Sir Lucien
usually spoke to Sin Sin Wa in English, and the other replied in that
weird jargon known as “pidgin.” But the silly Sin Wa who murmured
gibberish and the Sin Sin Wa who could converse upon many and curious
subjects in his own language were two different beings—as Sir Lucien
was aware. Now, as the one-eyed Chinaman resumed his seat and the
one-eyed raven sank into slumber, Pyne suddenly spoke in Chinese, a
tongue which he understood as it is understood by few Englishmen; that
strange, sibilant speech which is alien from all Western conceptions of
oral intercourse as the Chinese institutions and ideals are alien from
those of the rest of the civilized world.
“So you make a profit on your rum, Sin Sin Wa,” he said ironically, “at
the same time that you keep in the good graces of the police?”
Sin Sin Wa’s expression underwent a subtle change at the sound of his
native language. He moved his hands and became slightly animated.
“A great people of the West, most honorable sir,” he replied in the
pure mandarin dialect, “claim credit for having said that ‘business is
business.’ Yet he who thus expressed himself was a Chinaman.”
“You surprise me.”
“The wise man must often find occasion for surprise most honorable
sir.”
Sir Lucien lighted a cigarette.
“I sometimes wonder, Sin Sin Wa,” he said slowly, “what your aim in
life can be. Your father was neither a ship’s carpenter nor a
shopkeeper. This I know. Your age I do not know and cannot guess, but
you are no longer young. You covet wealth. For what purpose, Sin Sin
Wa?”
Standing behind the Chinaman, Sir Lucien’s dark face, since he made no
effort to hide his feelings, revealed the fact that he attached to this
seemingly abstract discussion a greater importance than his tone of
voice might have led one to suppose. Sin Sin Wa remained silent for
some time, then:
“Most honorable sir,” he replied, “when I have smoked the opium, before
my eyes—for in dreams I have two—a certain picture arises. It is that
of a farm in the province of Ho-Nan. Beyond the farm stretch
paddy-fields as far as one can see. Men and women and boys and girls
move about the farm, happy in their labors, and far, far away dwell the
mountain gods, who send the great Yellow River sweeping down through
the valleys where the poppy is in bloom. It is to possess that farm,
most honorable sir, and those paddy-fields that I covet wealth.”
“And in spite of the opium which you consume, you have never lost sight
of this ideal?”
“Never.”
“But—your wife?”
Sin Sin Wa performed a curious shrugging movement, peculiarly racial.
“A man may not always have the same wife,” he replied cryptically. “The
honorable wife who now attends to my requirements, laboring unselfishly
in my miserable house and scorning the love of other men as she has
always done—and as an honorable and upright woman is expected to do—may
one day be gathered to her ancestors. A man never knows. Or she may
leave me. I am not a good husband. It may be that some little maiden of
Ho-Nan, mild-eyed like the musk-deer and modest and tender, will
consent to minister to my old age. Who knows?”
Sir Lucien blew a thick cloud of tobacco smoke into the room, and:
“She will never love you, Sin Sin Wa,” he said, almost sadly. “She will
come to your house only to cheat you.”
Sin Sin Wa repeated the eloquent shrug.
“We have a saying in Ho-Nan, most honorable sir,” he answered, “and it
is this: ‘He who has tasted the poppy-cup has nothing to ask of love.’
She will cook for me, this little one, and stroke my brow when I am
weary, and light my pipe. My eye will rest upon her with pleasure. It
is all I ask.”
There came a soft rapping on the outer door—three raps, a pause, and
then two raps. The raven opened his beady eye.
“Sin Sin Wa,” he croaked, “number one p’lice chop, lo!”
Sin Sin Wa glanced aside at Sir Lucien.
“The traffic. A consignment of opium,” he said. “Sam Tûk calls.”
Sir Lucien consulted his watch, and:
“I should like to go with you, Sin Sin Wa,” he said. “Would it be safe
to leave the house—with the upper door unlocked?”
Sin Sin Wa glanced at him again.
“All are sleeping, most honorable sir?”
“All.”
“I will lock the room above and the outer door. It is safe.”
He raised a yellow hand, and the raven stepped sedately from his
shoulder on to his wrist.
“Come, Tling-a-Ling,” crooned Sin Sin Wa, “you go to bed, my little
black friend, and one day you, too, shall see the paddy-fields of
Ho-Nan.”
Opening the useful cupboard, he stooped, and in hopped the raven. Sin
Sin Wa closed the cupboard, and stepped out into the passage.
“I will bring you a coat and a cap and scarf,” he said. “Your
magnificent apparel would be out of place among the low pigs who wait
in my other disgusting cellar to rob me. Forgive my improper absence
for one moment, most honorable sir.”