Heath, that I know it was the merest chance that brought you there that
evening, but, as you were there, and as Mr. Hartley has got it into his
head that you know something more than you have told him, I beg of you
to bear in mind that if you mention my name you may get me into serious
trouble. You would not do that willingly, I think?"
"I certainly would not. What motive took you there is a question for
your own conscience. It is not for me to press that question, Mrs.
Wilder."
She pressed her lips together tightly.
"I went there to see an old friend who was in great trouble."
"And yet you have to keep it secret?"
"Haven't we all our secrets, Mr. Heath?" Her voice was raised a little.
"Will you pledge me your solemn word to keep this knowledge from anyone
who asks?" She put her elbows on the table and drew closer to him.
"I will respect your confidence," he said slowly. "But is it likely that
Hartley will ask me?"
Mrs. Wilder made a gesture of denial.
"I _think_ not, but who can tell? This thing has been like lead on my
mind and will not let me rest. Oh, Mr. Heath, if you knew what I have
already paid, you would be sorry for me."
"I am sorry," he said gently. "More sorry for you than you can tell.
You, too, saw Absalom, and spoke to him?"
"He has nothing to do with what I came here about,"--her tone grew
impatient. "I only wanted to make sure that I was safe with you. It was
no little thing that drove me to come. I am a proud woman, Mr. Heath,
and I do not usually ask favours, yet I ask you now--"
"Not a favour," he said, taking her up quickly. "God knows I have every
reason to help you if I can. Does Hartley suspect you? Does he question
you? Does he try to wring admissions out of you?"
In the darkness Heath's voice rang hard and, metallic, like the voice of
a man whose thoughts return upon something that maddens him.
"He has not done so, but he has asked me questions that made me
frightened. It is a terrible thing to be afraid."
"And Joicey?" said Heath in a quiet voice. "I saw Joicey, but he did not
stop to speak to me. Has he, too, been interrogated?"
"So far as I know, he has not. But this question presses only on me.
What took you there is, I feel sure, easily accounted for, and what took
Mr. Joicey there is not likely to be a matter of the smallest
importance; it is _I_ who suffer, it is on me that all this weight lies.
If the police begin investigations they come close upon the fact that I
went there to meet a man whom my husband has forbidden me to meet. Any
little turn of evidence that involves me, any little accident that
obliges me to admit it, and I am lost,"--her voice thrilled and pleaded.
"It is you who are lost," he echoed dully. "I can understand how you
feel. If I can ease your burden or lessen the anxiety you suffer from,
you may depend upon me, Mrs. Wilder. This matter is a dark road where I,
too, walk blind, not knowing the path I follow, but, at least, I can
give you my word that under no circumstances shall I be led to mention
your name. You can be sure of that, Mrs. Wilder. If I can add your
trouble to my own burden I shall not feel its weight, but I would
counsel you to be honest with your husband. Tell him the truth."
"I will," said Mrs. Wilder, with an acquiescence that came too quickly.
"I assure you that I will, but even when I do, you see what a position
the least publicity places me in?"
Heath got up and paced the floor with long, restless strides.
"Publicity. The open avowal of a hidden thing; the knowledge that the
whole world judges and condemns, and does not understand."
"That is what I feel."
After all, he was more human than she had expected. Clarice Wilder had
looked upon the Rev. Francis as a hermit, an ascetic, whose
comprehension was limited; and her eyes grew keen as she watched his
gaunt figure.
"To be dragged down, to be accused, to be cast so low," he continued, in
his sad, heavy voice, "so low that the lowest have cause to deride and
to scorn." He stopped before her. "Is it true that I can save you from
that?"
"It is true."
She did not tell him that she had lied to Draycott; it did not appear
necessary; neither did she tell him that Draycott's memory was long and
sure and unerring.
"Then, if there is one man in all God's universe,"--Heath cast out his
arms as he spoke--"one man above all others whom you could appeal to,
could trust most entirely, that man is myself. Give me your burden, your
distress of mind, and I will take them; I cannot say more--"
"Of course, it may never be necessary for you to--to avoid telling Mr.
Hartley," broke in Mrs. Wilder quickly. Heath was getting on her nerves,
and she rose to her feet. "I cannot thank you sufficiently, and I fear
that I have upset you, made you feel my own cares too profoundly,"--her
voice grew almost tender. "I have never known such ready sympathy, but
you feel too intensely, Mr. Heath. You make my little trouble your own,
and you have made me very grateful. Are you in any trouble yourself?"
Heath stopped for a moment, an outline against the light of the window.
She thought he was going to speak, and she waited with an odd feeling of
excitement to hear what was coming, when he suddenly retired back into
his usual manner.
A light was travelling up the staircase, casting great shadows before
it, and when the boy came to the door of the Padré Sahib's room, he saw
his master saying good-bye to a tall, dark lady who smiled at him and
gave him her hand.
"Good night, Mr. Heath, I hardly know how to thank you sufficiently."
She hurried down the staircase, and as she walked out, she met Atkins
coming in on his bicycle. He jumped off as he saw her, and spoke in
surprise.
"I have just been calling on the Padré," replied Mrs. Wilder pleasantly,
as he commented with ever-ready tactlessness upon her presence in the
Compound. "One of my servants is ill; a member of his community. By the
way, do you think that Mr. Heath is quite well himself?"
"Indeed I do not think so. He overworks. I have a great admiration for
Heath."
"He must be rather depressing in the rains," she said, with a careless
laugh. "He positively gave me the shivers. I can hardly envy you boxed
up there with him. I believe he sees ghosts, and I think they must be
horrid ghosts or he couldn't look as he does."
Her car was waiting down the road, and Atkins walked beside her and saw
her get in. Mrs. Wilder was very charming to him; she leaned out and
smiled at him again.
"Do take care of the Padré," she called as she drove off.
"There goes a sensible, good-looking woman," thought Atkins, and he
thought highly of Mrs. Wilder for her visit to Heath. He said so to the
Rector of St. Jude's as they dined together, remarking on the fact that
very few women bothered about sick servants, and he was surprised at the
cold lack of enthusiasm with which Heath accepted his remark.
"That was what she said?"
"Yes, and I call it unusual in a country where servants are treated like
machines. I've never known Mrs. Wilder very well, but she is an
interesting woman; don't you think so, Heath?"
"I don't know," said Heath absently. "I never form definite opinions
about people on a slight knowledge of them."
Atkins felt snubbed, but he only laughed good-naturedly, and Heath
relapsed into silence.
Mrs. Wilder was dining out that night, and she looked so superbly
handsome and so defiantly well that everyone remarked upon her; and even
Draycott Wilder, who might have been supposed to be used to her beauty
and her wit, watched her with his slow, following look. Hartley was not
at the dinner-party, but afterwards echoes of its success reached him,
and a description of Mrs. Wilder herself that thrilled his romantic
sense as he listened.
Hartley was worried about the Padré, and he had warned the policeman to
watch the Compound at night; but all the watching in the world did not
explain the cause of these visits. There was a connection somewhere and
somehow between Heath and the missing Absalom, and Hartley wondered if
he could venture to speak to Mrs. Wilder again about the night of the
29th of July, and implore her to let him know if she had seen Heath with
Absalom.
It seemed, judging by what Atkins had heard, that Heath was paying for
silence, and Hartley disliked the idea of working up evidence against
the Padré. The more he thought of it the less he liked it, and yet his
duty and his sense of responsibility would not let him rest. Mrs. Wilder
had said that she had seen Heath and Absalom, and had then refused to
say anything more, but Hartley saw in her reserve a suggestion of
further knowledge that could not be ignored or denied.
Mhtoon Pah was quieter for the moment. He believed that Leh Shin was
being cautiously tracked, and the pointing image had held no further
traces of bloodshed upon his yellow hands. Hartley had grown to loathe
the grinning figure, and to loathe the whole tedious, difficult tragedy
of the lost boy. If it had lain in the native quarter he could have
found interest in the excitement of the chase, but if it ramified into
the Cantonment, Hartley had no mind for it. He was a man first, a
sociable, kindly man, and, later, an officer of the law.
VIII
SHOWS HOW THE CLOAK OF DARKNESS OF ONE NIGHT HIDES MANY EMOTIONS, AND
MRS. WILDER IS FRANKLY INQUISITIVE
Darkness brooded everywhere, but the gloom of night is a darkness that
is impenetrable only to our eyes because we creatures of the hard glare
of daylight cannot see in the strange clearness that brings out the
stars. Only in the houses of men real darkness has its habitation. Under
close roofs, confined within walls, shut into rooms, and lurking in
corners: there, darkness may be found, and because man made it, it has
its own special terror, as have all the creatures of man's hand. Dark,
menacing and noiseless, the shadows flock in as daylight wanes, filing
up like heavy thoughts and sad thoughts, and casting a gloom with their
coming that is not the blackness of earth's restful night.
Mrs. Wilder paced her room with the steps of a woman whose heart drives
sleep out with scorpion-whips of memory; and she went softly, for sound
travels far at night, and Draycott Wilder, in the next room, was a light
sleeper. She was thinking steadily, and she was trying to force her will
across the distance into the stronghold of Hartley's inner
consciousness.
Night brought no more rest to Mrs. Draycott Wilder than it did to Craven
Joicey, the Banker, but Joicey did not sit in the dark. Madness lies in
the dark for some minds, and he had turned on the electric light, that
showed his face yellow and weary. On the wall the lizards, awakened by
the sudden glare, resumed their fly-catching, and scuttled with a dry,
scurrying sound over the walls, breaking the silence with a perpetual
"chuck-chuck" as they chased each other. Joicey looked as though he was
dreaming evil dreams, and nothing of his surroundings was real to him.
The room became another room, the tables and chairs grew indistinct, the
face of a small _Gaudama_ on the mantel-piece became a living face that
menaced him, and the "chuck-chuck" of the lizards, the rattle of dice
falling on to a board at some remote distance miles and miles away, and
yet strangely audible to his dull ears. Still he sat there, and flashes
of fancies came and went. Sometimes he stood in an English garden, with
a far-away sunlit glimpse of glittering waters, and a cuckoo crying in a
wood of waving trees, and then he knew that he was a boy, and that he
had forgotten everything that had happened since; and then, without
warning, he was swept out of the garden and stood under Eastern trees,
lost in a wild place, with the haunting face of the image at his
shoulder. The face altered. Sometimes it was Mhtoon Pah's pointing man,
and what he pointed at was never clear. The mistiness bothered him
horribly.
The _Durwan_ outside played on a wistful little flute, thinking that his
master was asleep; he heard it, and it did not concern him; he was dead
to all outward things just then, and the flute only added to the mystery
of the dream that spun itself in his brain. He wandered in a place so
near actual things and yet so far from them, that the gigantic mistake
of it all, and the consciousness that the inner life could at times
conquer the outer life, made him fall away between the two conditions,
lost and helpless. His head nodded forward, and his lower lip dropped,
and yet his eyes were open, as he sat facing the small squatting Buddha,
whose changeless face changed only for him.
The three little flute-notes tripped out after each other with no
semblance at a tune, repeating and reiterating the sound in the dark
outside, and Joicey listened as though something of weight depended upon
his hearing steadily. The sound was the one thing that made him know
that he was real, and once it ceased, or he ceased to hear it, he would
be across the gulf and terribly lost; a mind without a body, let loose
in a world where there were no landmarks, no known roads, nothing but
windy space, and he was afraid of that place, and feared terribly to go
there.
Something shuffled on the stone veranda, another sound, and sound was of
value to Craven Joicey, since it made a vital note in the circling
numbness around him. He could hear whispering voices, and the thump of
the _Durwan's_ stick, as that musically-minded man walked round to the
back of the house, where his lighted window showed that Craven Joicey
did not sleep. Again a voice whispered, and a low sound of discreet
knocking followed.
Joicey sprang up and called out hoarsely:
"Who is it?"
"Sahib, Sahib"--the _Durwan's_ whine was apologetic. "Is the Sahib
awake?"
"Who wants me?"
"Leh Shin, the Chinaman."
Joicey wiped his face with his handkerchief and pulled open the door
with a violent movement.
"Come in," he said, trying to speak naturally. "What is it, Leh Shin?"
The Chinaman held a tweed hat in his hand and stole into the room like a
shadow.
"What now, Leh Shin?"
Joicey spoke in Yunnanese with the fluency of long habit, and even
though he was angry he kept his voice low as though he feared to be
overheard.
"The Master of Masters will speak for me," said the Chinaman, standing
before him. "All day the police stand near to my house, and at night
they do not leave it. At one word from the Master, whose speech is
constructed of gold and precious metals, they can be withdrawn, and for
that word I wait--" He made a quick gesture with his tweed cap.
"You will gain nothing by coming to my house, you swine," said Joicey,
his eyes staring and his veins standing out on his forehead. "I will see
what Mr. Hartley will do, but if you drag in my name or refer him to me
you will do yourself no good, do you hear? No good."
Leh Shin watched him passively and waited until he had finished.
"I will swear the oath," he said, blinking his eyes. "I will not speak
the name of the Master, but my doors are locked, my house is a house for
the water-rats, and until the big Lord frees me I am a poor man."
Joicey sat down heavily on a low chair.
"It shall be stopped," he said desperately. "I will see that there is no
more of this police supervision; you may take my word for it."
The Chinaman stood still, moving one foot to the other.
"In dreams the Master has spoken these promises to me before. Can I be
sure that it is not in a dream that the Master speaks again?"
"I am awake," said Joicey, bitterly. "Mr. Hartley is looking for the
boy, and if the boy were found, all search would stop,"--he eyed the
Chinaman carefully, but the mask-like face did not change.
"And the little boy? Perhaps, Ruler and King, the little boy is gone
dead."
"You ask me _that_, you devil?"
"It is for the servant to ask," said Leh Shin, dropping his lids for a
second.
"Now, get out," said Joicey, between his clenched teeth. "And if you
come here to me again, at night, I'll kill you."
"The Great One will not do that," said Leh Shin, placidly. "My
assistant waits for me. It would be known as fire is known when the
forest is dry. To-morrow or next day, if the police are gone, my little
house will be open again." He spoke the words with deep emphasis.
"Get out," said Joicey, turning away his head.
Leh Shin looked at him with a sudden, oblique glance like the flash of a
knife.
"Speak no more, Lord of men and elephants; the _Durwan_ is now outside
the door, and he listens."
"Good-night," said Joicey loudly, and he clicked off the light and went
to bed.
If the darkness was close in the large houses of the Cantonment, it was
shut into the very essence of itself in the curio shop in Paradise
Street. It hid the carved devils from one another, it obliterated the
stone monsters that no one ever bought, and which had grown to belong to
the shop itself; it dropped its black veil over the green dragons, and
the china ladies, and the silver bowls and the little ivories, hiding
everything out of sight; but it did not hide the figure outside in the
street. The little man, with his pointed headdress and short jacket, had
the clear darkness all to himself. He was just as polite by night as he
was by day, and he bowed and ushered imaginary buyers up the stone steps
with the same perpetual civility, and the same unceasing smile, that
bagged out his varnished cheeks into joviality.
Dark as it was inside the shop, it must have been darker along the
rat-burrows of stairs, and the loft-like rooms near the roof, but either
up above or down below, the scent of cassia and sandal-wood clung
everywhere inside the curio shop, smelling strongest around the glass
cases and bales of delicate silks.
Mhtoon Pah's _Durwan_ slept across the doorway, and was therefore the
only object for the attention of the little man, and likewise,
therefore, he did not point to his master, who came in, in the dead,
heavy hours before dawn. He could not have been far; there was hardly
any dust on his red velvet slippers, and he brushed what there was from
them with a careful hand. As he placed his lamp on the floor, the light
threw odd shadows up the walls, turning that of Mhtoon Pah himself into
a grotesque and gigantic mass of darkness, and when he stooped and stood
erect it jumped with a sudden living spring.
Mhtoon Pah moved about the shop on light feet. He bent here and there to
examine some of the objects closely, with the manner and gesture of a
man who loves beautiful things for their own sakes as well as for the
profit he hoped to gain from their sale. When he had twice made a tour
of inspection, he placed an alabaster Buddha in the centre of a carved
table and sat down before it. The Buddha was dead white, with a red
chain around his neck, and on his head a gold cap with long, gem-set
ears hanging to the shoulders, and Mhtoon Pah sat long in front of the
figure, swaying a little and moving his lips soundlessly. He appeared
like a man who is self-mesmerized by the flame of a candle, and his face
worked with suppressed and violent emotion; at any moment it seemed as
though he might break the silence with some awful, passion-tossed
sound.
Suddenly, he stopped in his voiceless worship, and, leaning forward
quickly, extinguished the lamp. If he had heard any sound, it was
apparently from below, for he crouched on the ground with his head close
to the teak boarding, and crawled with slow, noiseless care towards the
door. A silk curtain covered the window, hiding the interior of the shop
from the street, and, when he reached the low woodwork above which it
hung, he twitched the curtain back with a sudden movement of his hand
and raised himself slowly until his head was on a level with the glass.
Mhtoon Pah grew suddenly rigid, and the thick black hair on his head
seemed to bristle. Pressed close against the window, with only a slender
barrier of glass between them, was the face of Leh Shin, the Chinaman. A
ray of white moonlight fell across them both, and its clear radiance
lighted up every feature of the curio dealer's face, changing its brown
into a strange, ghastly pallor. For a moment they stood immovable,
staring into each other's eyes, and the shadows behind Mhtoon Pah in the
shop, and the shadows behind Leh Shin in the street, seemed to listen
and wait with them, seemed to creep closer and enfold them, seemed to
draw up and up on noiseless feet and hang suspended around them. The
moment might have endured for years, so full was it of menace and
passion, and then the man outside moved quickly and the moonlight
flooded in across the face and shoulders of the Burman.
For a second longer he remained as though fascinated, and then Mhtoon
Pah wrenched at the door and thundered back the heavy bolts. There were
flecks of foam on his lips, and his eyes rolled as he dashed through the
door and out down the steps, rending the air with cries of murder. He
was too late, the Chinaman had gone. When the street flocked out to see
what the disturbance meant, Mhtoon Pah was crouching on his steps in a
kind of fit.
"I have seen the face of the slayer of Absalom," he shrieked, when the
crowd had carried him in, and recovered him to his senses.
"Is he a devil?" asked a young Burman, in tones of joyful excitement. "A
devil with iron claws has been seen several nights lately."
"A Chinese devil," groaned Mhtoon Pah, speaking through his clenched
teeth. "One who shall yet be hanged for his crime."
"Ah! ah!" said the watchers. "He dreams that it is a man, but it is
known that a devil has walked in Paradise Street, his jaws open.
Certainly he has eaten little Absalom."
Dawn was breaking, the pale, still hour that is often the hour of death;
and a cool breeze rippled in the date palms and in the flat green leaves
of the rubber plants, and the festoons of succulent green growths that
climbed up the houses of the Cantonments, and dawn found the Rev.
Francis Heath sleeping quietly. He was lying with one arm under his
head, and his worn face in almost child-like repose. Wherever he was,
sleep had carried him to a place of peace and refreshment. When he awoke
he would have forgotten his dream, but for the moment the dream
sufficed, and he rested in the circle of its charm.
All the time that we are young and careless and happy, we are building
retreats for memory that make harbours of rest in later years, when the
storms come with force. All the old things that did not count, come back
to calm and to restore. The school-room, where the light flickered on a
special corner of the ceiling, telling the children to come out and
play; the tapping of the laurels outside the church windows, and the
musty smell of red rep cushions along the pew where the hours were very
slow in passing; the white clover in the field behind the garden, got at
easily through a hole in the privet hedge. The play of light and shadow
over the hills of home, the dusk at nightfall, and the homely cawing of
rooks. All the delicious things that went with the smell of ripe
strawberries under nets, where thieving birds fluttered until the
gardener let them free again; and the mystery of sparks flying up the
chimney when the winter logs blazed. Every simple joy is stored away in
some lumber corner of the minds of men, and when sleep comes, sometimes
the old things are taken out again.
The Rev. Francis Heath, like the rest of the world, had his own secret
doorway that led back to wonderland, and it may have been that he was
far away from Mangadone in this child-world which is so hard to find
again, as he slept, and the outside world grew from grey to green, and
from green to misty gold. The sunlight flamed on the spire of the
Pagoda, it danced up the brown river and threw long shadows before its
coming, those translucent shadows that no artist has ever yet been able
to paint. It turned the mohur trees blood-red, and the grass to shining
emerald green, and Mangadone looked as though it had just come fresh
from the hands of its Creator.