student of the drama always puts another when peradventure they meet.
I asked him, namely, what he thought was the future of the theatre.
I had an idea that he said, oh hell, but on reflection I believe his
exclamation must have been, _ô ciel!_ He sighed, he shook his head, he
threw up his elegant hands; he looked the picture of dejection. It was
certainly a comfort to find that all thoughtful people considered the
drama's state in China no less desperate than all thoughtful people
consider it in England.
XLIX
THE TAIPAN
No one knew better than he that he was an important person. He was
number one in not the least important branch of the most important
English firm in China. He had worked his way up through solid ability
and he looked back with a faint smile at the callow clerk who had
come out to China thirty years before. When he remembered the modest
home he had come from, a little red house in a long row of little red
houses, in Barnes, a suburb which, aiming desperately at the genteel,
achieves only a sordid melancholy, and compared it with the magnificent
stone mansion, with its wide verandahs and spacious rooms, which was
at once the office of the company and his own residence, he chuckled
with satisfaction. He had come a long way since then. He thought of the
high tea to which he sat down when he came home from school (he was at
St. Paul's), with his father and mother and his two sisters, a slice
of cold meat, a great deal of bread and butter and plenty of milk in
his tea, everybody helping himself, and then he thought of the state in
which now he ate his evening meal. He always dressed and whether he was
alone or not he expected the three boys to wait at table. His number
one boy knew exactly what he liked and he never had to bother himself
with the details of housekeeping; but he always had a set dinner with
soup and fish, entrée, roast, sweet and savoury, so that if he wanted
to ask anyone in at the last moment he could. He liked his food and he
did not see why when he was alone he should have less good a dinner
than when he had a guest.
He had indeed gone far. That was why he did not care to go home now,
he had not been to England for ten years, and he took his leave in
Japan or Vancouver where he was sure of meeting old friends from the
China coast. He knew no one at home. His sisters had married in their
own station, their husbands were clerks and their sons were clerks;
there was nothing between him and them; they bored him. He satisfied
the claims of relationship by sending them every Christmas a piece of
fine silk, some elaborate embroidery, or a case of tea. He was not a
mean man and as long as his mother lived he had made her an allowance.
But when the time came for him to retire he had no intention of going
back to England, he had seen too many men do that and he knew how often
it was a failure; he meant to take a house near the race-course in
Shanghai: what with bridge and his ponies and golf he expected to get
through the rest of his life very comfortably. But he had a good many
years before he need think of retiring. In another five or six Higgins
would be going home and then he would take charge of the head office
in Shanghai. Meanwhile he was very happy where he was, he could save
money, which you couldn't do in Shanghai, and have a good time into the
bargain. This place had another advantage over Shanghai: he was the
most prominent man in the community and what he said went. Even the
consul took care to keep on the right side of him. Once a consul and he
had been at loggerheads and it was not he who had gone to the wall. The
taipan thrust out his jaw pugnaciously as he thought of the incident.
But he smiled, for he felt in an excellent humour. He was walking back
to his office from a capital luncheon at the Hong-Kong and Shanghai
Bank. They did you very well there. The food was first rate and there
was plenty of liquor. He had started with a couple of cocktails, then
he had some excellent sauterne and he had finished up with two glasses
of port and some fine old brandy. He felt good. And when he left he did
a thing that was rare with him; he walked. His bearers with his chair
kept a few paces behind him in case he felt inclined to slip into it,
but he enjoyed stretching his legs. He did not get enough exercise
these days. Now that he was too heavy to ride it was difficult to get
exercise. But if he was too heavy to ride he could still keep ponies,
and as he strolled along in the balmy air he thought of the spring
meeting. He had a couple of griffins that he had hopes of and one of
the lads in his office had turned out a fine jockey (he must see they
didn't sneak him away, old Higgins in Shanghai would give a pot of
money to get him over there) and he ought to pull off two or three
races. He flattered himself that he had the finest stable in the city.
He pouted his broad chest like a pigeon. It was a beautiful day, and it
was good to be alive.
He paused as he came to the cemetery. It stood there, neat and orderly,
as an evident sign of the community's opulence. He never passed the
cemetery without a little glow of pride. He was pleased to be an
Englishman. For the cemetery stood in a place, valueless when it was
chosen, which with the increase of the city's affluence was now worth
a great deal of money. It had been suggested that the graves should
be moved to another spot and the land sold for building, but the
feeling of the community was against it. It gave the taipan a sense of
satisfaction to think that their dead rested on the most valuable site
on the island. It showed that there were things they cared for more
than money. Money be blowed! When it came to "the things that mattered"
(this was a favourite phrase with the taipan) well, one remembered that
money wasn't everything.
And now he thought he would take a stroll through. He looked at the
graves. They were neatly kept and the pathways were free from weeds.
There was a look of prosperity. And as he sauntered along he read the
names on the tombstones. Here were three side by side; the captain,
the first mate, and the second mate of the barque _Mary Baxter_, who
had all perished together in the typhoon of 1908. He remembered it
well. There was a little group of two missionaries, their wives and
children, who had been massacred during the Boxer troubles. Shocking
thing that had been! Not that he took much stock in missionaries; but,
hang it all, one couldn't have these damned Chinese massacring them.
Then he came to a cross with a name on it he knew. Good chap, Edward
Mulock, but he couldn't stand his liquor, drank himself to death, poor
devil, at twenty-five: the taipan had known a lot of them do that;
there were several more neat crosses with a man's name on them and the
age, twenty-five, twenty-six, or twenty-seven; it was always the same
story; they had come out to China: they had never seen so much money
before, they were good fellows and they wanted to drink with the rest:
they couldn't stand it, and there they were in the cemetery. You had to
have a strong head and a fine constitution to drink drink for drink on
the China coast. Of course it was very sad, but the taipan could hardly
help a smile when he thought how many of those young fellows he had
drunk underground. And there was a death that had been useful, a fellow
in his own firm, senior to him and a clever chap too: if that fellow
had lived he might not have been taipan now. Truly the ways of fate
were inscrutable. Ah, and here was little Mrs. Turner, Violet Turner,
she had been a pretty little thing, he had had quite an affair with
her; he had been devilish cut up when she died. He looked at her age
on the tombstone. She'd be no chicken if she were alive now. And as he
thought of all those dead people a sense of satisfaction spread through
him. He had beaten them all. They were dead and he was alive, and by
George he'd scored them off. His eyes collected in one picture all
those crowded graves and he smiled scornfully. He very nearly rubbed
his hands.
"No one ever thought I was a fool," he muttered.
He had a feeling of good-natured contempt for the gibbering dead.
Then, as he strolled along, he came suddenly upon two coolies digging
a grave. He was astonished, for he had not heard that anyone in the
community was dead.
"Who the devil's that for?" he said aloud.
The coolies did not even look at him, they went on with their work,
standing in the grave, deep down, and they shovelled up heavy clods of
earth. Though he had been so long in China he knew no Chinese, in his
day it was not thought necessary to learn the damned language, and he
asked the coolies in English whose grave they were digging. They did
not understand. They answered him in Chinese and he cursed them for
ignorant fools. He knew that Mrs. Broome's child was ailing and it
might have died, but he would certainly have heard of it, and besides
that wasn't a child's grave, it was a man's and a big man's too. It was
uncanny. He wished he hadn't gone into that cemetery; he hurried out
and stepped into his chair. His good humour had all gone and there was
an uneasy frown on his face. The moment he got back to his office he
called to his number two:
"I say, Peters, who's dead, d'you know?"
But Peters knew nothing. The taipan was puzzled. He called one of the
native clerks and sent him to the cemetery to ask the coolies. He began
to sign his letters. The clerk came back and said the coolies had gone
and there was no one to ask. The taipan began to feel vaguely annoyed:
he did not like things to happen of which he knew nothing. His own boy
would know, his boy always knew everything, and he sent for him; but
the boy had heard of no death in the community.
"I knew no one was dead," said the taipan irritably. "But what's the
grave for?"
He told the boy to go to the overseer of the cemetery and find out what
the devil he had dug a grave for when no one was dead.
"Let me have a whisky and soda before you go," he added, as the boy was
leaving the room.
He did not know why the sight of the grave had made him uncomfortable.
But he tried to put it out of his mind. He felt better when he had
drunk the whisky, and he finished his work. He went upstairs and turned
over the pages of _Punch_. In a few minutes he would go to the club and
play a rubber or two of bridge before dinner. But it would ease his
mind to hear what his boy had to say and he waited for his return. In a
little while the boy came back and he brought the overseer with him.
"What are you having a grave dug for?" he asked the overseer point
blank. "Nobody's dead."
"I no dig glave," said the man.
"What the devil do you mean by that? There were two coolies digging a
grave this afternoon."
The two Chinese looked at one another. Then the boy said they had been
to the cemetery together. There was no new grave there.
The taipan only just stopped himself from speaking.
"But damn it all, I saw it myself," were the words on the tip of his
tongue.
But he did not say them. He grew very red as he choked them down. The
two Chinese looked at him with their steady eyes. For a moment his
breath failed him.
"All right. Get out," he gasped.
But as soon as they were gone he shouted for the boy again, and when
he came, maddeningly impassive, he told him to bring some whisky. He
rubbed his sweating face with a handkerchief. His hand trembled when
he lifted the glass to his lips. They could say what they liked, but
he had seen the grave. Why, he could hear still the dull thud as the
coolies threw the spadefuls of earth on the ground above them. What
did it mean? He could feel his heart beating. He felt strangely ill at
ease. But he pulled himself together. It was all nonsense. If there
was no grave there it must have been an hallucination. The best thing
he could do was to go to the club, and if he ran across the doctor he
would ask him to give him a look over.
Everyone in the club looked just the same as ever. He did not
know why he should have expected them to look different. It was a
comfort. These men, living for many years with one another lives
that were methodically regulated, had acquired a number of little
idiosyncrasies--one of them hummed incessantly while he played
bridge, another insisted on drinking beer through a straw--and these
tricks which had so often irritated the taipan now gave him a sense
of security. He needed it, for he could not get out of his head that
strange sight he had seen; he played bridge very badly; his partner
was censorious, and the taipan lost his temper. He thought the men
were looking at him oddly. He wondered what they saw in him that was
unaccustomed.
Suddenly he felt he could not bear to stay in the club any longer. As
he went out he saw the doctor reading _The Times_ in the reading-room,
but he could not bring himself to speak to him. He wanted to see for
himself whether that grave was really there and stepping into his chair
he told his bearers to take him to the cemetery. You couldn't have an
hallucination twice, could you? And besides, he would take the overseer
in with him and if the grave was not there he wouldn't see it, and if
it was he'd give the overseer the soundest thrashing he'd ever had. But
the overseer was nowhere to be found. He had gone out and taken the
keys with him. When the taipan found he could not get into the cemetery
he felt suddenly exhausted. He got back into his chair and told his
bearers to take him home. He would lie down for half an hour before
dinner. He was tired out. That was it. He had heard that people had
hallucinations when they were tired. When his boy came in to put out
his clothes for dinner it was only by an effort of will that he got up.
He had a strong inclination not to dress that evening, but he resisted
it: he made it a rule to dress, he had dressed every evening for twenty
years and it would never do to break his rule. But he ordered a bottle
of champagne with his dinner and that made him feel more comfortable.
Afterwards he told the boy to bring him the best brandy. When he had
drunk a couple of glasses of this he felt himself again. Hallucinations
be damned! He went to the billiard room and practised a few difficult
shots. There could not be much the matter with him when his eye was so
sure. When he went to bed he sank immediately into a sound sleep.
But suddenly he awoke. He had dreamed of that open grave and the
coolies digging leisurely. He was sure he had seen them. It was absurd
to say it was an hallucination when he had seen them with his own
eyes. Then he heard the rattle of the night watchman going his rounds.
It broke upon the stillness of the night so harshly that it made him
jump out of his skin. And then terror seized him. He felt a horror of
the winding multitudinous streets of the Chinese city, and there was
something ghastly and terrible in the convoluted roofs of the temples
with their devils grimacing and tortured. He loathed the smells that
assaulted his nostrils. And the people. Those myriads of blue clad
coolies, and the beggars in their filthy rags, and the merchants and
the magistrates, sleek, smiling, and inscrutable, in their long black
gowns. They seemed to press upon him with menace. He hated the country.
China. Why had he ever come? He was panic-stricken now. He must get
out. He would not stay another year, another month. What did he care
about Shanghai?
"Oh, my God," he cried, "if I were only safely back in England."
He wanted to go home. If he had to die he wanted to die in England.
He could not bear to be buried among all these yellow men, with their
slanting eyes and their grinning faces. He wanted to be buried at home,
not in that grave he had seen that day. He could never rest there.
Never. What did it matter what people thought? Let them think what they
liked. The only thing that mattered was to get away while he had the
chance.
He got out of bed and wrote to the head of the firm and said he had
discovered he was dangerously ill. He must be replaced. He could not
stay longer than was absolutely necessary. He must go home at once.
They found the letter in the morning clenched in the taipan's hand. He
had slipped down between the desk and the chair. He was stone dead.
L
METEMPSYCHOSIS
He was decently though far from richly clad. He had a small round cap
of black silk on his head, and on his feet black silk shoes. His robe
was pale green of the flowered silk which is made in Chia-ting, and
over it he wore a short black jacket. He was an old man, with a white
beard, long and for a Chinese full; his broad face, much wrinkled,
especially between the brows, was benign, and his large horn spectacles
did not conceal the friendliness of his eyes. He had all the look of
one of those sages whom you may see in an old picture seated by a
bamboo grove at the foot of a great rocky mountain contemplating the
Eternal Way. But now his face bore an expression of great annoyance
and his kindly eyes were frowning, for he was engaged in the singular
occupation (for a man of his appearance) of leading a little black pig
along the causeway between the flooded padi fields. And the little
black pig, with sudden jerks, with unexpected dodging, ran hither and
thither, in every direction but that in which the old gentleman wished
to go. He pulled the string violently, but the pig, squealing, refused
to follow; he addressed it in terms of expostulation and of abuse, but
the little pig sat on his haunches and looked at him with malicious
eyes. Then I knew that in the Tang dynasty the old gentleman had been
a philosopher who had juggled with facts, as philosophers will, making
them suit the whims which he called his theories; and now, after who
knows how many existences, he was expiating his sins in suffering in
his turn the stubborn tyranny of the facts which he had outraged.
LI
THE FRAGMENT
When you travel in China I think nothing amazes you more than the
passion for decoration which possesses the Chinese. It is not
astonishing that you should find decoration in memorial arches or in
temples; here the occasion for it is obvious; and it is natural enough
to find it in furniture; nor does it surprise, though it delights you,
to discover it on the commoner objects of household use. The pewter
pot is enriched with a graceful design; the coolie's rice bowl has
its rough but not inelegant adornment. You may fancy that the Chinese
craftsman does not look upon an article as complete till by line or
colour he has broken the plainness of a surface. He will even print an
arabesque on the paper he uses for wrapping. But it is more unexpected
when you see the elaborate embellishment of a shop-front, the splendid
carving, gilt or relieved with gold, of its counter, and the intricate
sculpture of the signboard. It may be that this magnificence serves
as an advertisement; but it does so only because the passer-by, the
possible customer, takes pleasure in elegance; and you are apt to
think that the tradesman who owns the shop takes pleasure in it too.
When he sits at his door, smoking his water pipe and through his great
horn spectacles reading a newspaper, his eyes must rest with good
humour sometimes on the fantastic ornamentation. On the counter, in a
long-necked pot, stands a solitary carnation.
You will find the same delight in the ornate in the poorest villages
where the severity of a door is mitigated by a charming piece of
carving, and where the trellis of the windows forms a complicated
and graceful pattern. You can seldom cross a bridge, in however
unfrequented a district, without seeing in it the hand of an artist.
The stones are so laid as to make an intricate decoration, and it seems
as though these singular people judged with a careful eye whether a
flat bridge or an arched one would fit in best with the surrounding
scene. The balustrade is ornamented with lions or with dragons. I
remember a bridge that must have been placed just where it was for
the pure delight of its beauty rather than for any useful purpose,
since, though broad enough for a carriage and pair to pass over it, it
served only to connect a narrow path that led from one ragged village
to another. The nearest town was thirty miles away. The broad river,
narrowing at this point, flowed between two green hills, and nut trees
grew on the bank. The bridge had no balustrade. It was constructed of
immense slabs of granite and rested on five piers; the middle pier
consisted of a huge and fantastic dragon with a long and scaly tail. On
the sides of the outer slabs, running the whole length of the bridge,
was cut in very low relief a pattern of an unimaginable lightness,
delicacy and grace.
But though the Chinese take such careful pains to avoid fatiguing your
eye, with sure taste making the elaborateness of a decoration endurable
by contrasting it with a plain surface, in the end weariness overcomes
you. Their exuberance bewilders. You cannot refuse your admiration to
the ingenuity with which they so diversify the ideas that occupy them
as to give you an impression of changing fantasy, but the fact is plain
that the ideas are few. The Chinese artist is like a fiddler who with
infinite skill should play infinite variations upon a single tune.
Now, I happened upon a French doctor who had been in practice for many
years in the city in which I then found myself; and he was a collector
of porcelain, bronze, and embroidery. He took me to see his things.
They were beautiful, but they were a trifle monotonous. I admired
perfunctorily. Suddenly I came upon the fragment of a bust.
"But that is Greek," I said, in surprise.
"Do you think so? I am glad to hear you say it."
Head and arms were gone, and the statue, for such it had been, was
broken off just above the waist, but there was a breastplate, with a
sun in the middle of it, and in relief Perseus killing the dragon. It
was a fragment of no great importance, but it was Greek, and perhaps
because I was surfeited with Chinese beauty it affected me strangely.
It spoke in a tongue with which I was familiar. It rested my heart. I
passed my hands over its age-worn surface with a delight I was myself
surprised at. I was like a sailor who, wandering in a tropic sea, has
known the lazy loveliness of coral islands and the splendours of the
cities of the East, but finds himself once more in the dingy alleys of
a Channel port. It is cold and grey and sordid, but it is England.
The doctor--he was a little bald man, with gleaming eyes and an
excitable manner--rubbed his hands.
"Do you know it was found within thirty miles of here, on this side of
the Tibetan frontier?"
"Found!" I exclaimed. "Found where?"
"_Mon Dieu_, in the ground. It had been buried for two thousand years.
They found this and several fragments more, one or two complete
statues, I believe, but they were broken up and only this remained."
It was incredible that Greek statues should have been discovered in so
remote a spot.
"But what is your explanation?" I asked.
"I think this was a statue of Alexander," he said.
"By George!"
It was a thrill. Was it possible that one of the commanders of the
Macedonian, after the expedition into India, had found his way into
this mysterious corner of China under the shadow of the mountains of
Tibet? The doctor wanted to show me Manchu dresses, but I could not
give them my attention. What bold adventurer was he who had penetrated
so far towards the East to found a kingdom? There he had built a temple
to Aphrodite and a temple to Dionysus, and in the theatre actors had
sung the Antigone and in his halls at night bards had recited the
Odyssey. And he and his men listening may have felt themselves the
peers of the old seaman and his followers. What magnificence did that
stained fragment of marble call up and what fabulous adventures! How
long had the kingdom lasted and what tragedy marked its fall? Ah, just
then I could not look at Tibetan banners or celadon cups; for I saw the
Parthenon, severe and lovely, and beyond, serene, the blue Ægean.
LII
ONE OF THE BEST
I could never remember his name, but whenever he was spoken of in the
port he was always described as one of the best. He was a man of fifty
perhaps, thin and rather tall, dapper and well-dressed, with a small,
neat head and sharp features. His blue eyes were good-natured and
jovial behind his pince-nez. He was of a cheerful disposition, and he
had a vein of banter which was not ineffective. He could turn out the
sort of jokes that make men standing at the club bar laugh heartily,
and he could be agreeably malicious, but without ill-nature, about any
member of the community who did not happen to be present. His humour
was of the same nature as that of the comedian in a musical play. When
they spoke of him they often said:
"You know, I wonder he never went on the stage. He'd have made a hit.
One of the best."
He was always ready to have a drink with you and no sooner was your
glass empty than he was prompt with the China phrase:
"Ready for the other half?"