HSIEN SGAM
Nightfall found the Manchester's prow bearing into a thin mist. The rain had slackened to a fine diamond-drizzle; lightning no longer wrote livid ideographs upon the sky, but flashed far away in faded flares.
Trent did not see Dana Charteris at dinner, as he expected. "Dummkopf Englischer"—thus he was catalogued by a German merchant from Celebes who sat at the same table in the dining-salon and succeeded in drawing only monosyllables from him. The gentleman from Celebes was hot, damp and irritable, and he found fuel for his ill-humor in the Englishman who sat beside him and ate mangosteens with the air of one who liked such beastly heathen food.
After the meal Trent sought the smoking-room with a volume of lyrics, much to the disgust of his German dinner-companion, who, in passing, read, "Poems of Alan Seeger" over his shoulder. But Trent could not fix his attention upon the reading matter, and he sat with the book in one hand, a lighted cheroot in the other, and his interest nowhere in particular. He was suffering the first anæsthetizing effects of a drowsy boredom.
"... You'll have to go higher than that if you want to see me!" rasped a voice close by, and there followed a click of chips, a laugh.
Clouds of grayish smoke, fanned into fantastic shapes by electric punkas, floated on dead atmosphere, personifying the languor that had suddenly quartered in Trent. A white-clad deck-steward slid through the vaporous whorls, serving frosty glasses of arrica, or whiskey and soda to those less favorably inclined toward exotic liquors.
"... But surely, my friend, you would resent it if we sent missionaries to your country," a voice not far behind him was saying; a quiet voice that separated itself from the drone of conversation, a voice with a peculiar, alien note that caused Trent to wonder, after he heard it, why it had not penetrated to him before. "Why, imagine the indignation of your—what do you call them, New Yorkers?—if Buddhist priests established a mission in that vast and bewildering city; if they so presumed as to try to press their creed upon those of another religion."
Trent was possessed of a desire to turn; he merely sat expelling smoke from his nostrils, listening without consciousness of eavesdropping.
Another voice, quieter still and more reserved—an American voice—answered. "The result of such a thing," it said, "would be ... well, in the first place no Christian would...."
"That is precisely it. Do you wonder, then," resumed the voice with the alien note, "that we resent the intrusion of missionaries? What does it matter if Deity is symbolized by Buddah, Mohammed or a Nazarene? God is one. No, my friend, you cannot convince me that it is better for my people to substitute your God for theirs. In other relationships they should be friendly, and they are, but in religion ... a colossal misunderstanding. My people are declining; soon, as a man of letters once said, the rust of our departed glory will corrode us and reduce us to the dust into which our empire has dwindled. Russian wine, Japanese greed and Western vices—a combination too strong for the slender potencies of our flesh. On the other hand, you Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Normans, Huns and Slavs will continue to build your empires; to fight among yourselves (there will be no war between East and West); to go forward in science and invention.... Yes, I am returning home."
The American voice asked a question. A laugh, selvaged with irony, answered it, and—
"No, I shall not attempt to 'enlighten' my people. I have studied in your universities, dipped into your learning; now, true to the blood, I go back. Perhaps, were you to see me in a few months, you would be shocked, for I shall be a 'barbarian'.... What? Satisfied? Yes, I believe I will. Your country has its dramas, its libraries—so very much—yet I could not but feel, when I was there, that the structure of your land is a—a Frankenstein, do you call it?—of self-stimulated delight, something soulless. Millions worshipping the false gods of body-pleasure; vassals of the senses, ignoring the fact that there are hungers above mere flesh-appetite."
The voice fascinated Trent, gave him a picture of deft fingers inlaying a mosaic; thoughts chosen with care and spoken as though filtered through many translations before they left the tongue in the integument of English.
"... I hope I have not offended you," the voice resumed. "I feel no rancour, you understand, only an ache—a very great ache—over this colossal misunderstanding.... You must go? Then, good night!"
A chair moved. After a moment a man in somber clerical garb passed and left the smoking-room. Trent closed his book; placed his burnt-out cheroot in an ash-bowl; got up. And the quiet voice behind him asked:
"Your pardon. Have you a match?"
Trent turned. Whatever he expected, he was surprised at what he saw. An Oriental of no common type. He registered an impression of bronze, almost beautiful, features; a high, Mongoloid skull; dark eyes, veiled by an impalpable haze of tobacco smoke; moist, sensitive lips, rather thin and too red. Features that drew and repelled him in the same instant—face of a Buddha, and eyes.... He groped in an effort to understand the eyes. The man wore tweeds with the air of one accustomed to Western clothing, and he had a poise, a finish to the minutest detail of dress, that, in a yellow man, seems sleek and "dossied" to the eyes of the Occident.
"Thank you," said the Oriental, as Trent gave him a match.
The Englishman nodded perfunctorily and left the smoking-room, a picture of the bronze, beautiful face, lighted by the flaring match, engraved upon his brain.
His curiosity led him to the purser's office where he consulted the register. His eyes paused as they encountered the name "Dana Charteris"; roved down the list of first-class passengers to a signature that stood out from the others by its very bizarrerie.
"Hsien Sgam," he mused aloud. "Hmm.... Sgam—Sgam.... Mongolian."
And he went to his cabin to fetch a raincoat, still thinking of the bronze face of Hsien Sgam.