TELLS HOW SHIRAZ, THE PUNJABI, ADMITTED THE FRAILTIES OF ORDINARY HUMANITY, AND HOW CORYNDON ATTENDED AFTERNOON SERVICE AND CONSIDERED THE VEXED QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT.
The day following Coryndon's vigil outside the lonely house by the river was dull and grey, with a woolly sky and a tepid stillness that hung like a tangible weight in the air. Its drowsiness affected even the native quarter, but it in no way lessened the bustle of preparations for departure on the part of Coryndon, who ordered Shiraz to pack enough clothes for a short journey, and to hold himself in readiness to leave with his master shortly after sunrise the following day. His master also gave him leave to go to the Bazaar and return at his own discretion, as he was going out with Hartley Sahib.
It was about noon, when the sun had struggled clear of the heavy clouds, that Shiraz found himself in the dark colonnade locking an empty house behind him with his own key, and, being a stately, red-bearded follower of the Prophet, with a general appearance of wealth and dignity, he walked slowly until he came to the doorway of Leh Shin's shop. His step caused the Chinaman to look up from the string bed where he lay, gaunt, yellow and unsavoury, his dark clothes contrasting with the flowing white garments of the venerable man who regarded him through his spectacles.
"The hand of Allah has led me to this place," said Shiraz in his low, reflective tones. "I seek for a little prayer-mat and a few bowls of brass for my food; likewise, a bed for myself, and a bed of lesser value for my companion. Hast thou these things, Leh Shin?"
Leh Shin went into his back premises and returned with the bowls and the prayer-mat.
"The bed for thyself, O Haj, and the bed of lesser value for thy friend, I shall make shift to procure. Presently I will send my assistant, the eyes of my encroaching age, to bring what you need."
"It is well," said Shiraz, who was seated on a low stool near the door, and who looked with contemplative eyes into the shop.
Leh Shin huddled himself on to the string couch again, and the slow process of bargain-driving began. Pice by pice they argued the question, and at last Shiraz produced a handful of small coin, which passed from him to the Chinaman.
"I had already heard of thee," said Leh Shin, scratching his loose sleeves with his long, claw-like fingers. "But thy friend, the Burman, who spoke beforehand of thy coming, and who still recalls the mixture of his opium pipe, I cannot remember." He hunched his shoulders. "Yet even that is not strange. My house by the river is a house of many faces, yet all who dream wear the same face in the end," his voice crooned monotonously. "All in the end, from living in the world of visions, become the same."
Shiraz bowed his head with grave courtesy.
"It was also told to me that you served a rich master and have stored up wealth."
"The way of honesty is never the path to wealth," responded Shiraz, in tones of reproof. "So it is written in the Koran."
Leh Shin accepted the ambiguous reply with an unmoved face.
"Thy friend is under the hand of devils?"
He put the remark as an idle question.
"He is tormented," replied Shiraz, pulling at his beard. "He is much driven by thoughts of evil, committed, such is his dream, by another than himself; and yet the Sirkar hath said that the crime was his own. The ways of Allah are veiled, and Mah Myo is without doubt no longer reasonable; yet he is my friend, and doth greatly profit thereby."
"Ah, ah," said the Chinaman, placing a hubble-bubble before his guest, who condescended to shut the mouthpiece in under his long moustache, while he sat silently for nearly half an hour.
"Dost thou sell beautiful things, Leh Shin?" he asked. "I have a gift to bestow, and my mind troubles me. The Lady Sahib of my late master suffered misfortune. She was robbed by some unknown son of a jackal, and thereby lost jewels, the value of which was said to be great, though I know not of the value of such things."
Leh Shin curled his bare toes on the edge of his bed and looked at them with a great appearance of interest.
"Was the thief taken, O son of a Prophet?"
"He was not. I have cried in the veranda, to see the Lady Sahib's sorrow, and I have also prayed and made many offerings at the Mosque, but the thief escaped. Now that my service with the Lord Sahib is finished, and as he has assisted my poverty with small gifts, I would like to make a present to the Lady Sahib. Some trifling thing, costing a small sum in rupees, for her grief was indeed great, and it may avail to console her sorrow."
"For which sorrow thou, also, wept in the veranda," added Leh Shin.
"The Lady Sahib had many bowls of lacquer, some green, some red, some spotted like the back of a poison snake, but she lacked a golden bowl, and, should I be able to procure one for a moderate price, it would add greatly to her pleasure in remembering her servant, for, says not the Wise One, 'a gift is a small thing, but the hand that holds it may not be raised to smite.'"
Shiraz, all the time he was speaking, had regarded the Chinaman from behind his respectable gold-rimmed spectacles, and he noticed that Leh Shin did not seem to care for the subject of lacquer, for his face darkened and he stopped scratching.
"I deal not in lacquer," he said quickly. "Neither touch thou the accursed thing, O Shiraz. Leave it to Mhtoon Pah, who is a sorcerer and whose lies mount as high as the topmost pinnacle of the Pagoda." The Chinaman's lips drew back from his teeth, and he snarled like a dog. "I will not speak of him to thee, but I would that the face of Mhtoon Pah was under my heel, and his eyeballs under my thumbs."
"Yet this golden bowl has been in my thought," the voice of Shiraz flowed on evenly. "And I said that here, in Mangadone, I might find such an one. Thou art sure that lacquer is accursed to thine eyes, Leh Shin? That thou hast not such a bowl by thee, neither that thy assistant, when he seeks the bed for myself and the lesser bed for my friend, could not look craftily into the shop of this merchant, and ask the price as he passeth, if so be that Mhtoon Pah has such a bowl to sell?"
Leh Shin spat ferociously.
"There was a bowl, a bowl such as you describe, O servant of Kings, and I thought to procure it, for word was brought me that Mhtoon Pah had need of it, and I desired to hold it before him and withdraw it again, and to inspire his covetousness and rage and then to sell it from my own hand, but he leagues with devils and his power is great, for, behold, Honourable Haj, the bowl that was mine was lost by the man from the seas who was about to sell it to me. Lost, in all truth, and after the lapse of many days, Mhtoon Pah had it in his shop, and sold it to the Lady Sahib."
"The hands of a man of wealth are more than two," said Shiraz oracularly.
"Nay, not so, for all thy learning, Pilgrim from the Shrine of Mahomet. The hands of this merchant, at the time I speak, were as my hands, or thine," he held out his claws and snatched at the air as though it was his enemy's throat. "For his boy, his assistant, the Christian Absalom, who served him well, and whom Mhtoon Pah fed upon sweets from the vendor's stall, was suddenly taken from him, and has vanished, like the smoke of an opium pipe."
Shiraz expressed wonder, and agreed with Leh Shin that sorcery had been used, shaking his head gravely and at length rising to his feet.
"The shadows lengthen and the hour of prayer draws near. It is time for the follower of the Prophet to give a poor man's alms at the gate of the Mosque, and to pray and praise," he said. "Thy assistant tarries, Leh Shin; let him go forth with speed and place my purchase in thy keeping, since I met thee in a happy hour, and shall return upon the morrow from the Serai, where it is Allah's will that I pass the night in peace."
Walking with a slow, regular pace, he left the native quarter, and taking a tram, got out on the road below the bungalow where Hartley's servant waited in the veranda.
"Thy Sahib has cursed thy beard and thine age, and says that he will replace thee with a younger man if thy dealings in the Bazaar are of such long duration."
"Peace, owl," said Shiraz. "The Sahib can no more travel without my assistance than a babe of one day without his mother. Presently, when the Sahib has drunk a peg, he will return to reason."
"The Sahib is not within; he has but now gone out once more, asking from my Sahib for the loan of a prayer-book. Doubtless, there is a Tamasha at the 'Kerfedril,' and Coryndon Sahib goes thither to pray."
"I shall place the buttons in his shirt, and recover an eight-anna piece from the floor, which the master dropped yesterday, to deliver to him when he shall return. Seek to be honest in thy youth, my son, for in later life it will repay thee."
Hartley's boy had not been mistaken when he heard Coryndon ask for a prayer-book and saw him go out on foot. The small persistent bell outside St. Jude's Church was ringing with desperate energy to collect any worshippers who might feel inclined to assemble there for evensong, and the worshippers when collected under the tin roof numbered nearly a dozen.
It was a bare, barn-like Church, for the wealth of the Cantonment had flowed in the direction of the Cathedral. The punkah mats flapped languidly, and the lower part of the church was dark, only the chancel being lighted with ungainly punkah-proof lamps, and the two altar candles that threw their gleam on a plain gold cross, guttered in the heat. A strip of cocoa-nut matting lay along the aisle, and the chancel and altar steps were covered in sad, faded red. The organist did not attend except on Sundays or Feast Days, and the service was plain, conducted throughout by the Rev. Francis Heath.
Coryndon took a seat about half-way up the nave, and when Heath came into the church, he watched him with interest. He liked to watch a man, whom it was his business to study, without being disturbed, and Heath's face in profile, as he knelt at the reading desk, or in full sight as he stood to read the lesson, attracted the fixed gaze of, at least, one member of the small congregation. There was no sermon and the service was short, and as he sat quietly in his place, Coryndon wondered what frenzied moment of fear or despair could have driven this man into the company of Joicey and Mrs. Draycott Wilder, unconscious perhaps of their connection with him, but linked nevertheless by an invisible thread that wound around them all.
Beyond the fact that he had seen Mrs. Wilder, he had not taken her under the close observation of his mental microscope. She stood on one side until such time as he should have need to probe into her reasons for silence, and he wondered if Hartley was right, and if, by chance, the earnest face of the clergyman, with its burning, stricken eyes, had appealed to her sympathy. Could it be so, he asked himself once or twice, but the immediate question was the one that Coryndon gave his mind to answer, and just then he was forming an impression of the Rev. Francis Heath.
He looked at his hands, at his thin neck, at the hollows in his cheeks and the emotional quiver at the corner of his mouth, and he knew the man was a fanatic, a civilized fanatic, but desperately and even horribly in earnest. A believer in torment, a man who held the vigorous faith that makes for martyrdom and can also pile wood for the fires that burn the bodies of others for the eventual welfare of their souls. Unquestionably, the Rev. Francis Heath was a man not to be judged by an average inch rule, and Coryndon thought over him as he listened to his voice and watched his strained, tempest-tossed face. Whether he was involved in the disappearance of Absalom or not, he recognized that Heath was a strong man, and that his ill-balanced force would need very little to make him a violent man. It surprised him less to think that Hartley attached suspicion to the Rector of St. Jude's than it had at first, and he left the church with a very clear impression of the clergyman put carefully away beside his appreciation of Leh Shin's assistant. He had caught just a glimpse of the personality of the man, and was busy building it up bit by bit, working out his idea by first trying to fathom the temperament that dwelt in the spare body and drove and wore him hour after hour.
The Rev. Francis Heath had paid some Chinaman to keep silence, but though he might pay a Chinaman, he could do nothing with his own conscience, and it was with a hidden adversary that he wrestled day and night. Coryndon's face was pitiless as the face of a vivisecting surgeon. Had she known of his mission, Mrs. Wilder might have beaten her beautiful head on the stones under his feet, and she would have gained nothing whatever of concession or mercy.
Atkins and the Barrister were dining with Hartley that night, and as Coryndon never cared to hurry over his dressing, he went at once to his room and called Shiraz.
"All is well, my Master," said Shiraz, in a low voice. "But it would be wise if the Master were to curse his servant in a loud voice, since it is expected that he will do so, and the monkey-folk in the servants' quarter listen without, concealing their pleasure in the Sahib's wrath."
When the proceedings terminated and Coryndon had accepted his servant's long excuse for his delay, the doors were closed, Shiraz having first gone out to shake his fist at Hartley's boy.
"Thus much have I discovered, Lord Sahib," said Shiraz, when he had explained that the house was in readiness and the necessary furniture bought and stored temporarily at the shop of Leh Shin, the Chinaman. "There is an old hate between these two men, he of the devil shop, and the Chinaman, a hate as old as rust that eats into an iron bar."
Coryndon lay back in his chair and listened without remark.
"Among many lies told unto me, that is true; and again, among many lies, it is also true that he had not, neither did he ever possess, the gold lacquer bowl, on the subject of which my Master bade me question him. He knows not how Mhtoon Pah found it, but he believes that it was through a sorcery he practised, for the man is as full of evil as the chatti lifted from the brink of the well is full of water."
Coryndon smiled and glanced at Shiraz.
"And you think so also, grandson of a Tucktoo, for though you are old, your white hairs bring you no wisdom."
"I am the Sahib's servant, but who knoweth the ways of devils, since their footprints cannot be seen, neither upon the sand of the desert nor in the snows of the great hills?"
"Did he speak of Absalom?"
"He told me, Protector of the Poor, that the boy, though of Christian caste, was to Mhtoon Pah as the apple of his eye, and that he fed him upon sweets from the vendor's stall. Let it be said, for thy wisdom to unravel, that therefore Leh Shin felt mirth in his mind, knowing that the heart of his foe was wrung as the Dhobie wrings the soiled garment."
Shiraz fell silent and looked up from the floor at the face of his master, who got up and stretched himself.
"Is my bath ready, Shiraz?"
"All is prepared, though the pani walla, a worker of iniquity, steals the wood for his own burning; therefore, the water is not hot, and ill is done to the good name of Hartley Sahib's house."
When he was dressed he strolled into the drawing-room, and sat down at the piano, playing softly until Hartley came in.
"Shall you be away long, do you suppose?" he asked, looking with interest at Coryndon's smooth, black head.
"I may be, but it is impossible to tell. If I want you, I will send a message by Shiraz."
The dinner passed off without incident, and not once did Coryndon open the secret door of his mind, to add to the strange store of facts he had gathered there. He wanted nothing from Atkins, who knew less of the Rev. Francis Heath than he did himself, and he had to sustain his rôle of ignorance of the country. The two men stayed late, and it seemed to Coryndon that when men talk they do more than talk, they tell many things unconsciously.
Perhaps, if people realized, as Coryndon realized, the value of restrained speech, we should know less of our neighbours' follies and weaknesses than we do. There was a noticeable absence of interest in what anyone else had to say. Atkins had his own foible, Fitzgibbon his, and Hartley, who knew more of the ways of men, a more interesting, but not less egoistic platform from which he desired to speak. They seemed to stalk naked and unashamed before the eyes of the one man who never gave a definite opinion, and who never asserted his own theories or urged his own philosophy of life.
Coryndon listened because it amused him faintly, but he was glad when the party broke up and they left. What a planet of words it was, he thought, as he sat in his room and reflected over the day. Words that ought to carry value and weight, but were treated like so many loose pebbles cast into void space; and he wondered as he thought of it; and from wondering at the wordy, noisy world in which he found himself, he went on to wonder at the greater silence that was so much more powerful than words. "The value of mystery," was the phrase that presented itself to his mind.
During the evening, three men had enjoyed all the pleasure of self-betrayal, and, from the place where he stood, unable ever to express anything of his own nature in easy speech, he wondered at them, with almost childlike astonishment. Fitzgibbon, garrulous and loose of tongue, Atkins, precise and easily heated to wrath, conscious of some hidden fear that his dignity was not sufficiently respected, and Hartley, who had something to say, but who oversaid it, losing grip because of his very insistence. Not one of them understood the value of reserve, and all alike strove to proclaim themselves in speech, not knowing that speech is an unsound vehicle for the unwary, and that personality disowns it as a medium.
Out of the mouth of a man comes his own condemnation: let him prosper who remembers this truth. The value of mystery, the value of silence, and above all things, the supreme value of a tongue that is a servant and not a master; Coryndon considered these values and wondered again at the garrulity of men. Talk, the fluid, ineffectual force that fills the world with noise, that kills illusions and betrays every latent weakness; surely the high gods laughed when they put a tongue in the mouth of man. He pinched his lips together and his eyes lighted with a passing smile of mirth.
"In Burma, there are no clappers to the bells," he said to himself. "Each man must strike hard before sound answers to his hand, and truly it is well to think of this at times." And, still amused by the fleeting memory of the evening, he went to bed and slept.