slipped in quietly and without causing much comment. He went to the Club
with Hartley and made the acquaintance of nearly all his host's friends,
and they, in return, gave him the casual notice accorded to a passing
stranger who had no part or lot in their lives or interests. Coryndon
was very quiet and listened to everything; he listened to a great deal
in the first three days, and Fitzgibbon, a barrister, offered to take
him round and show him the town.
Coryndon was "shown the town," but apparently he found a lasting joy in
sight-seeing, and could witness the same sights repeatedly without
failing interest. He climbed the steps to the Pagoda, under the guidance
of Fitzgibbon, the first afternoon they met.
"Won't you come, too, Hartley?" asked the Barrister.
"Not if I know it. I've been there about sixty times. If Coryndon wants
to see it, I'm thankful to let him go there with you."
Fitzgibbon, who had a craze for borrowing anything that he was likely
to want, had persuaded Prescott, the junior partner in a rice firm, to
lend him his car, and as he sat in the tonneau beside Coryndon, he
pointed out the places of interest. Their way lay first through the
residential quarter, and Hartley's guest saw the entrance gate and
gardens of Draycott Wilder's house.
"The most interesting and certainly the best-looking woman in Mangadone
lives there, a Mrs. Wilder. Hartley ought to have told you about her; he
is rather favoured by the lady. Her husband is a rising civilian. Mrs.
Wilder has bought Asia, and is wondering whether she'll buy Europe
next."
Coryndon hardly appeared impressed or even interested.
"So she is a friend of Hartley's?" he said carelessly. "I hadn't heard
that."
Fitzgibbon laughed.
"It's something to be a friend of Mrs. Wilder--that is, in Mangadone."
They sped on over the level road, and the car swung through the streets
that led towards the open space before the temple.
"That is the curio dealer's shop. Don't get any of your stuff there. The
man's a robber."
"Which shop?" asked Coryndon patiently.
"We're past it now, but it was the one with a dancing man outside of it,
a funny little effigy."
Coryndon's eyes were turned to the Pagoda, and he was evidently
inattentive.
"It strikes you, doesn't it?" asked Fitzgibbon, in the tones of a
gratified showman. "It always does strike people who haven't seen it
before."
"Naturally, when one has not seen it before," echoed his companion, as
the car drew up.
Coryndon stood for a moment looking at the entrance, and surveying the
huge plaster dragons with their gaping mouths and vermilion-red tongues.
They were ranged up a green slope, two on either side of the brown
fretted roof that covered the steep tunnel that led up a flight of more
than a hundred steps to the flat plateau, where the golden spire towered
high over all, amid a crowd of lesser minarets.
Surrounded by baskets of roses and orchids, little silk-clothed Burmese
girls sat on the entrance steps, and sold their wares. Fitzgibbon would
have hurried on, but Coryndon, in true tripper fashion, stopped and
bought an armful of blossoms.
"What am I to do with these things?" he asked helplessly.
"Oh, you'd better leave them before one of the _Gaudamas_, and acquire
merit. If you let them all plunder you like this, we'll never get to the
top."
Flight after flight, the two men climbed slowly, and Coryndon stood at
intervals to watch the crowd that came up and down. The steps were so
steep that the arch above them only disclosed descending feet, but
Coryndon watched the feet appear first and then the rest of the hurrying
or loitering men and women, and he sat on a seat beside a little
gathering of yellow-robed _Hypongyis_ until Fitzgibbon lost all
patience.
"There is a whole town of piety to see up at the top. Come on, man; we
have hours of it yet to get through. Don't waste time over those stalls.
Every picture of the Buddha story was made in Birmingham."
Progressing a little faster, Fitzgibbon piloted Coryndon past a stall
where yellow candles and bundles of joss-sticks in red paper cases were
sold at a varying price.
"I must get some of these," objected Coryndon, who added a rupee's worth
of incense and a white cheroot to his collection.
When they passed through the last archway and gained the plateau, he
looked round with eyes that spoke his keen interest. Even though he had
been there many times before, Coryndon looked at the sight with eyes
that grew shadowed by the dreaming soul that lived within him.
Twilight was gathering behind the trees; only the gold-laced spires of a
thousand minarets caught the last light of the sun. On the plateau below
the great pillar, that glimmered like a golden sword from base to
bell-hung _Htee_, lay what Fitzgibbon had described as "a little town of
piety." A village of shrines and Pagodas, each built with seven roofs,
open-fronted to disclose the holy place within; some large as a small
chapel; some small, giving room only for the figure of the _Gaudama_.
Here and there, the votive offerings had fallen into decay, and the
gold-leaf covering the Buddha was black and dilapidated by the passing
of years, for there is no merit to be acquired in rebuilding or
renovating a sacred place. From innumerable shrines, uncounted Buddhas
looked out with the same long, contemplative eyes; in bronze, in jade,
in white and black marble, in grey stone and gilded ebony, the
passionless face of the great Peace looked out upon his children.
Near to where Coryndon and the Barrister stood together, in the
peach-coloured evening light, a large shrine with a fretted roof was
thronged with worshippers, and Coryndon stood on the steps and looked
in. The floor of black, polished marble dimly reflected the immense gold
pillars that supported a lofty ceiling, lost entirely in the gloom, and
before a blaze of candles and a floating veil of scented grey smoke a
priest bowed himself, and prayed in a low, chanting voice. The face of
the Lord Buddha behind the rails was lighted by the wind-blown flame of
many tapers, so that it almost looked as though he smiled out of his
far-away Nirvana upon his kneeling worshippers, who could ask nothing of
him, not even mercy, since the salvation of a man is in his own hands.
Before the rails, a settle with low gilt legs was covered with offerings
of flowers, that added their scent to the heavy air, and on a small
table a feast of cakes and sweets was placed, to be distributed later on
among the poor. Coryndon disposed of his burden of pink and white roses
and little magenta prayer-flags, and lighted a bundle of joss-sticks,
before they came out again and wandered on.
As the daylight faded the lights from the shrines and the small booths
grew stronger, and the rising night wind, coming in from the river, rang
the silver bells around the spires, filling the whole air with tinkling
sound, and the slow-moving crowd around them laughed and joked, like
people at a fair. His eyes still full of dreams, Coryndon followed with
them, keeping one small packet of amber candles to light in honour of
some other Buddha in another shrine.
"Funny devils, these Burmese," remarked the Barrister. "They never clean
up anything. Look at the years of tallow collected under that spiked
gate that is falling off its hinges. That black little Buddha inside
must once have been a popular favourite, but no one gives him anything
now."
They turned a corner past a booth where bottles full of pink and yellow
fluid, and green leaves, wrapped around betel-nut, appeared to be the
chief stock-in-trade, and a noise of hammering struck on their ears.
Here a new shrine was being erected and was all but completed. A few
Chinamen, who had been working at it, were putting their tools into
canvas bags, preparatory to withdrawing like the remaining daylight.
"This is Mhtoon Pah's edifice," said Fitzgibbon, coming to a standstill.
"He doesn't seem to have spared expense, either. Shall we go in?"
The shrine was not a very large one, and the entrance was like the
entrance to a grotto at an Exhibition. Tiny facets of glass were crusted
into grass-green cement, shining like a thousand eyes, and, seated on a
vermilion lacquer daïs, a Buddha, with heavy eyelids that hid his
strange eyes, presided over an illumination of smoking flame. The smell
of joss-sticks was heavy on the air, and the filigree cloak worn by the
Buddha was enriched with red and green glass that shone and glittered.
"They say the caste-mark in his forehead is a real diamond," remarked
the Barrister. "I don't suppose it is, but at least it is a good
imitation."
Coryndon was not listening to him; he had gone close to the marble
rails, and was lighting his little bunch of yellow tapers. He lighted
them one by one, and put each one down on the floor very slowly and
carefully, and when he had finished he turned round.
"Mhtoon Pah is the man who has the curio shop?" he asked.
"The very same. It gives you some idea of his percentage on sales,
what?"
Coryndon joined in his laugh, and they went out again into the street of
sanctity. Fitzgibbon was now getting exhausted, for his companion's
desire to "do" the Pagoda was apparently insatiable; and he asked
interminable questions that the Barrister was totally unable to answer.
Coryndon seemed to find something fresh and interesting around every
corner. The white elephants delighted him, particularly where green
creepers had grown round their trunks, giving them a realistic effect of
enjoying a meal. The handles off very common English chests-of-drawers,
that were set along a rail enclosing a sleeping Buddha, pleased him like
a child, as did the bits of looking-glass with "Black and White Whisky,"
or "Apollinaris Water," inscribed across their faces.
"That sort of thing seems to attract them," explained Fitzgibbon. "In
one of the shrines there is a fancy biscuit-box at a Buddha's feet. It
has got 'Huntley and Palmer' on the top, and pictures of children and
swans all around it. Funny devils, I always say so."
At length he had to drag Coryndon away, almost by main force.
"I'd like to have seen Mhtoon Pah," he objected. "He ought to be on view
with his chapel."
"Shrine, Coryndon. You can see him in his shop," and they began the
descent down the steep steps.
"Look," said the Barrister quickly, "there is Mhtoon Pah. No, not the
man in white trousers, that's a Chinaman with a pigtail under his hat;
the fat old thing in the short silk _loongyi_ and crimson head-scarf."
Coryndon hardly glanced at him, as he passed with a scent of spice and
sandal-wood in his garments; his attention had been attracted by a booth
where men were eating curry.
"It is a curious custom to sell food in a place like this," he remarked
to the Barrister.
"It's part of the Oriental mind," replied his guide. "No one understands
it. No one ever will; so don't try and begin, or you'll wear yourself
out."
When they got back to the Club it was already late, and the hall of the
bar was crowded with men, standing together in groups, or sitting in
long, uncompromising chairs under the impression that they were
comfortable seats.
"Hullo, Joicey," said the Barrister, as he fell over his legs. "I'm
dog-beat. Been doing the Pagoda with Coryndon. Do you know each
other--?" He waved his hand by way of introduction, and Coryndon took an
empty chair beside the Banker, who heaved himself up a little in his
seat, and signalled to a small boy in white, who was scuffling with
another small boy, also in white, and ordered some drinks.
"I am new to it," explained Coryndon, and his voice sounded tired, as
though the Pagoda had been a little too much for him.
Joicey did not reply; he was looking away, and Coryndon followed his
eyes. Near the wide staircase, and just about to go up it, a man was
standing, talking to a friend. He was dressed in an ill-cut suit of
white, with a V-shaped inlet of black under his round collar; he held a
_topi_ of an old pattern under his arm, and the light showed his face
cadaverous and worn. Joicey was holding the arm of his chair, and his
under-lip trembled.
"Inexplicable," he muttered, and drank with a gulping sound.
"What did you say?" asked Coryndon politely.
"Say? Did I say anything? I can't remember that I did." The Banker's
voice was irritable, and he still watched the clergyman.
"What strikes me about the Pagoda is the strong Chinese element in the
design. I am told that there are a lot of Chinamen in Mangadone. I
should like to see their quarter."
"Hartley should be able to arrange that for you."
Joicey was evidently growing tired of Coryndon's freshness and
enthusiasm, and he passed his hand over his face, as though the damp
heat of the night depressed his mind.
"Hartley is very busy," said Coryndon, with the determination of a man
who intends to see what he has come to see. "I don't like to be
perpetually badgering him. Could I go alone?"
"You could," said Joicey shortly.
"I want to miss nothing."
Coryndon turned his head away and looked at the crowded room, fixing his
gaze on a whirring fan that hung low on a brass rod, and when he looked
round again, Joicey had got up and was making his way out into the
night. Fitzgibbon was surrounded by several other men, and there was no
sign of his friend Hartley, so he got up and slipped out, standing
hatless, until his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness.
The strong lights from the veranda encroached some way into the gloom,
and, here and there, a few people still sat around basket tables,
enjoying the evening air. Coryndon looked at them, with his head bent
forward, a little like a cat just about to emerge through a door into a
dark passage. For a little time, he stood there, watching and listening,
and then he turned away and walked out along the footpath, as though in
a hurry to get back to his bungalow.
XIII
PUTS FORWARD THE FACT THAT A SUDDEN FRIENDSHIP NEED NOT BE BASED UPON A
SUDDEN LIKING; AND PASSES THE NIGHT UNTIL DAWN REVEALS A SHAMEFUL SECRET
Some ten days after Coryndon had taken up his quarters with Hartley, he
informed his host that he intended to disappear for a time, and that he
would take his servant, Shiraz, with him. He had been through every
quarter of Mangadone before he set out to commence operations, and the
whole town lay clear as a map in his mind.
Hartley was dining out, "dining at the Wilders'," he said casually, and
he further informed Coryndon that Mrs. Wilder had asked him to bring his
friend, but no amount of persuasion could induce Coryndon to forgo an
evening by himself. He pointed out to Hartley that he never went into
society, and that he found it a strain on his mind when he required to
think anything through, and, with a greater show of reluctance than he
really felt, Hartley conceded to his wish, and Coryndon sat down to a
solitary meal. He ate very sparingly and drank plain soda water, and
whilst he sat at the table his long, yellow-white fingers played on the
cloth, and his eyes followed the swaying punkah mat with an odd,
intense light in their inscrutable depths.
He had made Hartley understand that he never talked over a case, and
that he followed it out entirely according to his own ideas, and Hartley
honestly respected his reserve, making no effort to break it.
"When the hands are full, something falls to the ground and is lost,"
Coryndon murmured to himself as he got up and went to his room.
"Shiraz," he called, "Shiraz," and the servant sprang like a shadow from
the darkness in response to his master's summons.
"To-night I go out." Coryndon waved his hand. "To-morrow I go out, and
of the third day--I cannot tell. Let it be known to the servant people
that, like all travelling Sahibs, I wish to see the evil of the great
city. I may return with the morning, but it may be that I shall be
late."
"_Inshallah, Huzoor_," murmured Shiraz, bowing his head, "what is the
will of the Master?"
"A rich man is marked among his kind; where he goes the eyes of all men
turn to follow his steps, but the poor man is as a grain of sand in the
dust-storm of a Northern Province. Great are the blessings of the humble
and needy of the earth, for like the wind in its passing, they are
invisible to the eyes of men."
Shiraz made no response; he lowered the green chicks outside the doors
and windows, and opened a small box, battered with age and wear.
"The servant's box is permitted to remain in the room of the Lord
Sahib," he said with a low chuckle. "When asked of my effrontery in this
matter, I reply that the Lord Sahib is ignorant, that he minds not the
dignity of his condition, and behold, it is never touched, though the
leathern box of the Master has been carefully searched by Babu, the
butler of Hartley Sahib, who knows all that lies folded therein."
While he spoke he was busy unwrapping a collection of senah bundles,
which he took out from beneath a roll of dusters and miscellaneous
rubbish, carefully placed on the top. The box had no lock and was merely
fastened with a bit of thick string, tied into a series of cunning
knots.
When he had finished unpacking, he laid a faded strip of
brightly-coloured cotton on the bed, in company with a soiled jacket and
a tattered silk head-scarf, and, as Shiraz made these preparations,
Coryndon, with the aid of a few pigments in a tin box, altered his face
beyond recognition. He wore his hair longer than that of the average
man, and, taking his hair-brushes, he brushed it back from his temples
and tied a coarse hank of black hair to it, and knotted it at the back
of his head. He dressed quickly, his slight, spare form wound round the
hips with a cotton _loongyi_, and he pulled on the coat over a thin,
ragged vest, and sat down, while Shiraz tied the handkerchief around his
head.
The art of make-up is, in itself, simple enough, but the very much more
subtle art of expression is the gift of the very few. It was hard to
believe that the slightly foreign-looking young man with Oriental eyes
could be the pock-marked, poverty-stricken Burman who stood in his
place.
Slipping on a light overcoat, he pulled a large, soft hat over his head,
and walked out quickly through the veranda.
"Now, then, Shiraz," he called out in a quick, ill-tempered voice. "Come
along with the lamp. Hang it; you know what I mean, the _butti_. These
infernal garden-paths are alive with snakes."
Shiraz hastened after him, cringing visibly, and swinging a hurricane
lamp as he went. When they had got clear of the house and were near the
gate, Coryndon spoke to him in a low voice.
"Pull my boots off my feet." Shiraz did as he was bidden and slipped his
master's feet into the leather sandals which he carried under his wide
belt. "Now take the coat and hat, and in due time I shall return, though
not by day. Let it be known that to-morrow we take our journey of seven
days; and it may be that to-morrow we shall do so."
"_Inshallah_," murmured Shiraz, and returned to the house.
By night the streets of Mangadone were a sight that many legitimate
trippers had turned out to witness. The trams were crowded and the
native shops flared with light, for the night is cool and the day hot
and stifling; therefore, by night a large proportion of the inhabitants
of Mangadone take their pleasure out of doors. In the Berlin Café the
little tables were crowded with those strange anomalies, black men and
women in European clothes. There had been a concert in the Presentation
Hall, and the audience nearly all reassembled at the Berlin Café for
light refreshments when the musical programme was concluded.
Paradise Street was not behindhand in the matter of entertainment: there
was a wedding festival in progress, and, at the modest café, a thick
concourse of men talking and singing and enjoying life after their own
fashion; only the house of Mhtoon Pah, the curio dealer, was dark, and
it was before this house, close to the figure of the pointing man, that
the weedy-looking Burman who had come out of Hartley's compound stopped
for a moment or two. He did not appear to find anything to keep him
there; the little man had nothing better to offer him than a closed
door, and a closed door is a definite obstacle to anyone who is not a
housebreaker, or the owner with a key in his pocket; so, at least, the
Burman seemed to think, for he passed on up the street towards the river
end.
From there to the colonnade where the Chinese Quarter began was a
distance of half a by-street, and Coryndon slid along, apologetically
close to the wall. He avoided the policeman in his blue coat and high
khaki turban, and his manner was generally inoffensive and harmless as
he sneaked into the low entrance of Leh Shin's lesser curio shop. A
large coloured lantern hung outside the inner room, and a couple of
candles did honour to the infuriated Joss who capered in colour on the
wall.
All the hidden vitality of the man seemed to live in every line of his
lithe body as he looked in, but it subsided again as he entered, and he
stared vacantly around him.
There was no one in the shop but Leh Shin's assistant, who was finishing
a meal of cold pork, and whose heavy shoulders worked with his jaws. He
ceased both movements when Coryndon entered, and continued again as he
spoke, the flap of his tweed hat shaking like elephants' ears. He
informed Coryndon, who spoke to him in Yunnanese, that Leh Shin was out,
so that if he had anything to sell, he would arrange the details of the
bargain, and if he wanted to buy, he could leave the price of the
article with the trusted assistant of Leh Shin.
It took Coryndon some time to buy what he needed, which appeared to be
nothing more interesting than a couple of old boxes. The Burman needed
these to pack a few goods in, as he meditated inhabiting the empty,
rat-infested house next door but one to the shop of Leh Shin. Upon
hearing that they were to be neighbours, the assistant grew sulky and
informed Coryndon that trade was slack if he wished to sell anything,
but his eyes grew crafty again when he was informed that his new
acquaintance did not act for himself, but for a friend from Madras, who
having made much money out of a Sahib, whose bearer he had been for some
years, desired to open business in a small way with sweets and grain and
such-like trifles, whereby to gain an honest living.
The assistant glanced at the clock, when, after much haggling, the deal
was concluded, and the Burman knotted the remainder of his money in a
small corner of his _loongyi_, and stood rubbing his elbows, looking at
the Chinaman, who appeared restless.
"Where shall I find Leh Shin?" The Burman put the question suddenly. "In
what house am I to seek him, assistant of the widower and the
childless?"
The boy leered and jerked his thumb towards the direction of the river.
"Closed to-night, follower of the Way," he said with a smothered noise
like a strangled laugh. "Closed to-night. Every door shut, every light
hidden, and those who go and demand the dreams cannot pass in. I, only,
know the password, since my master receives high persons." He spat on
the floor.
Coryndon bowed his head in passive subjection.
"None else know my quantity," he murmured. "These thieves in the lesser
streets would mix me a poison and do me evil."
The assistant scratched his head diligently and looked doubtfully at the
Burman.
"And yet I cannot remember thy face."
"I have been away up the big river. I have travelled far to that Island,
where I, with other innocent ones, suffered for no fault of mine."
Leh Shin's assistant looked satisfied. If the Burman were but lately
returned from the convict settlement on the Andaman Islands, it was
quite likely that he might not have been acquainted with him.
To all appearances, the bargain being concluded, and Leh Shin being
absent from the shop, there was nothing further to keep the customer,
yet he made no sign of wishing to leave, and, after a little preamble,
he invited the assistant to drink with him, since, he explained, he
needed company and had taken a fancy to the Chinese boy, who, in his
turn, admitted to a liking for any man who was prepared to entertain him
free of expense. Leh Shin's assistant could not leave the shop for
another hour, so the Burman, who did not appear inclined to wait so
long, went out swiftly, and came back with a bottle of native spirit.