CHAPTER X
Hla Byu's outlook was too Eastern to be contemplated by any woman of the West. Very much the dog's point of view.
There is endless talk about the faithfulness of dogs, but does not experience teach that it really consists of faithfulness to a master rather than to one master? The dog who loses one master, to be kindly adopted by another, suffers from the change only until he has grown accustomed to the new touch upon his head. His heart beats as happily in a little while to the new tread along the garden walk. He is still faithful in his allegiance—to the hand that feeds him. When the old master returns he will remember, till then he will philosophize.
The Burmese woman who is sold to the white man has this advantage over his dog. The Unexpected does not occur. She knows that she will, possibly, change masters more than once in her life. She may prefer one to another, but, in most cases, the change is accepted philosophically and is followed by few heart-burnings and useless regrets. So that the man be just to her and kind, so that he clothe her and approve of her housekeeping, she is content. Her lighthearted affection goes to the children, who are bone of her bone, and of whom she need not stand in awe.
If the man has any notion of fair play, when the time comes for him to leave her, he will provide for the children; if he deny all responsibility, there are still the missions, who look upon such things with solemn and sentimental eyes, and are, consequently, helpful.
Cyprian learnt during the next two years to understand this enduring passivity of the Buddha's children. Not that they followed blindly the precepts of the Great Teacher: they had simply adapted them to the changing times and needs of the Race.
Little Hla Byu was a regular attendant on festival occasions at the Aracan Pagoda in Mandalay. She knelt before the big gold Buddha, solid from many coatings of precious metal, when the flickering candles dripped grease, and the scent of the incense-sticks penetrated through the scent of perspiring humanity.
There, she prayed for her son. She did not consciously connect him with the foreign father who might, any day, desert her for a woman of his own race, and legitimately deny all that linked him to his former life. She prayed quaintly, mechanically, regarding the proceeding in the light of a charm, and with no very clear idea as to who should hear the prayer. The priests should know. But the priests, indeed, if they knew anything up at their bare stone monastery, should have taught that the Master could not hear the cry of human suffering or desire, even if he would, since he had obtained the final Silence, "where beyond these voices there is peace." But, to Hla Byu, spirits there must be—Someone, Anyone. Prayer could do no harm, anyway, and might certainly do good. Contemplation was not for the Burman-in-the-street, but any follower of the Buddha can hold a wooden rosary and repeat two thousand times in a dull monotone, some such golden truth as that "Honesty is the best policy," before leaving the lighted Pagoda and going back to the bazaar to cheat his brother.
At least, her creed gave some outlet to those emotions which the practical things of life cannot satisfy.
She was richer than Cyprian, who had none. The simple honesty of her beautified their relationship. Nature, surely, must have meant just this simplicity between the sexes in ministering to each other's needs. He knew that Ferlie would have been struck with the hypocrisy of Society-life in the big towns of Burma.
There the white women-folk knew of such as little Hla Byu but pretended ignorance. No aspiring mother would encourage her daughter to join hands with an ex-public-school boy at the beginning of his career and flit away into the jungles to share the making of his future. That was Hla Byu's part. But, later, when the same future was assured, when the public-school boy had become submerged in the fever-eaten official with a bank-book and, possibly, a passion-ravaged past, then it was the turn of some clear-eyed débutante to receive with thankfulness God's gift of a good man's love—and his motor-car.
* * * * * *
Cyprian's face, bent over the official note-paper upon which he had been idly sketching while listening to the klop-klop of the postman's mule mounting the hill, was less lean now and far less strained. The great bitterness curving the corners of his mouth was contradicted by the level calm with which his eyes looked out across to the horizon despite their awareness that the Lot had fallen unto him in a rugged ground.
A slight stir in the vicinity of the waste-paper basket caused him to turn his head, and, with an oddly detached air, he surveyed for some moments the explorations therein of a naked baby.
Its creamy amber skin shone like satin in the sunlight, relieved by its stiff cap of black hair. And the eyes riveted suddenly upon Cyprian's were widely set apart and, most incongruously, most tellingly, blue.
The man, unexpectedly, with a brusque movement of his head, shook down the eye-glasses he used to correct his astigmatic vision when concentrating for long upon close writing, and the small inquiring face receded, mercifully blurred.
But its marked and precocious intelligence remained branded upon his mentality as if somebody had pasted an imperfectly-developed photograph there.
"One is responsible," and he turned the word over in his mind, stupidly probing its meaning.
Hla Byu picked up the restless bundle as she flitted into the shaded gloom of the sitting-room, out of the white glare blocked by the verandah chicks.
Cyprian absently received his letters from her hands.
"The school is in Maymyo," he said inconsequently. "It will be best for him to go where there will be others like him."
The puzzled wonderment of her expression merged into amusement. She had learnt something of this man during the last two years. Something, also, of latent powers in herself which he would have paid much, in after life, to have left unstirred. She gave a tiny exclamatory chirp of laughter.
"At fourteen months, Thakin? That would, indeed, be somewhat early, even for him."
With relief he recalled that the time for such decisions was not yet. One might drift a little longer....
But Fate disproved that. Among the official letters lay one in a strange handwriting. He turned it over incuriously, but there was a seal on the back which quickened his interest. He could not recollect where he had seen it before. The first words of the letter startled him.
"Dear Ferlie's Cyprian,"—Stiffening, he turned the sheet over to read the signature, "B. Trefusis." Then he remembered. A tea-shop.... Ferlie buried in ice-cream and, to the right of her, a vivacious shingled head ... the same seal on a thin white wrinkled finger, curved over a plate of honey-coloured scones. He spread the letter out upon the blotting-paper and, resting his drawn forehead on sheltering palms, read it slowly through.
"If you were ever a friend of Ferlie's, try and come to her. Once, I should have said, if you were ever a friend of Ferlie's try and leave her. I never considered you a successful substitute for the uncle she did not possess, but the very difference in age between you, which I deplored, I now rejoice in. Perhaps, she will confide in you; perhaps, you will be able to help where the few that are near and dear to her are excluded from helping.
"For all I know, you may have forgotten that there ever was a Ferlie. This may find you with another woman at your side. You may have ties—children; then, for their sakes, come and hold out your hand in friendship to a child you once knew. I am not satisfied with the little I gleaned about her marriage. I am not satisfied with the accounts I heard of you then. The only thing I am satisfied about is that Ferlie needs you and would tell you what she will not tell me. Perhaps, you may have the key to the whole situation; perhaps, you know nothing. At any rate, if you were ever a friend of Ferlie's come and learn."
After all, the ties which held him were slenderer than cobwebs; surprising the ease with which he snapped them.
Hla Byu did not question. She merely accepted. But her slanting brows creased painfully.
"Will the Thakin let me come back to him?"
Through the rising tumult of his mind he detected the note of alarm.
"There is nothing to fear," he told her. "I will arrange for regular money to be supplied to you. The child shall be provided for all during his life."
The momentary relief in her face struck a feeling of shame to Cyprian's soul. There were men, he knew, who would consider him quixotic. He blinked away the thought. Custom could not lessen the dominion of the Daimon in this matter. Responsible. For all that he had made of life. For the weakness which had originally driven him from his acknowledged sphere. For the narrowness which had spurned Ferlie's confidence in its rightful setting; for the indecision which had kept him from following his truest instincts to love and to declare his love; for the apathetic purposelessness through which he had accepted Burma's bribe of Hla Byu, and the child with the questioning blue eyes.
"What will happen no one can foretell," he said. "Serve another Thakin, or wait; in either case you can always appeal to me for your needs."
Seemingly satisfied, she nodded and then turned from him to hide something on her lashes which made rainbows of the sunshine. She had always been a little afraid of him, although he never got drunk, nor beat her, nor threw things about the house as she knew, from her friends, so many foreign masters did. He was always silent, work-absorbed, apart from her—it was like living with the marble Buddha on the river-bank, who eternally contemplated, in the regulation attitude, the water traffic slipping by on its very mortal affairs, from town to town. She clutched the baby to her in a spasm of passionate regret—although, of course, there remained nothing to regret since their future was assured.
"It has been peace here, Thakin?" she said, on a timid note of interrogation.
He laid a gentle hand upon the yielding shoulder; her tiny bones felt soft like a kitten's bones.
"It is never peace for long, child," he answered.
* * * * * *
He had wired the date of his arrival to Miss Trefusis; the compromise of a reply to the letter he had not felt capable of answering. But he was not prepared to see the severely stately figure of that decisive lady waiting at the docks.
She greeted him as if they had parted yesterday.
"People remain vivid to me," she said in explanation, leading him to the closed limousine. "We are motoring to my place near town, and your heavy luggage can go by train. You are coming to stay with me until you've had time to choose your roost. On the way down in the car I can elucidate. Meanwhile, a brief catechism will clear the air. Married?"
Cyprian shook his head.
"I am glad," said the old lady. "Your having no responsibilities will simplify matters. Was leave due to you?"
"I took 'Urgent Private Affairs'."
"Good. They should more than occupy your attention. Get in."
Her hand directed him towards the car.
Cyprian obeyed, hypnotized. Once they were seated she swung sideways to look him full in the face.
"Do you know why I have risked this? For love of Ferlie. You might have consigned me to the devil, had you developed into an official of high standing, very much married, with a brace of inarticulate, spectacled children. Instinct told me that you were alone in spirit, even if among your fellow-men; overworking, and living at the bottom of a mine, not of rubies, but of buried hopes. Was I right?"
He nodded, blinking nervously at his hands. Her voice had lost its hard-edged clarity.
"When I saw you two, one afternoon at the Zoo—you remember?—I thought that the link, strengthening between you as the years went on, was wholly unnatural. You were Ferlie's sun, though neither of you realized it. And she stood to you for refreshment and comfort and utter peace. Again—Was I right?"
He stirred uneasily.
"Can you not spare me this?"
"No," said Aunt Brillianna emphatically. "I can spare you nothing if Ferlie is to be spared a little. Listen."
She lowered her tone and, above the humming of the car, her voice ran on earnestly. Pain was again wrenching at his nerves and the sentences sounded blurred and disconnected....
"And no one knows the real truth. They are not, officially, separated, but she lives alone at Black Towers with John, her little boy...."
A companion of lesser perception might have faltered discouraged before his immobility. This one had the good sense to keep her eyes upon the shifting hedges.
"She tells us nothing, and lives like a nun, cloistered in her pathetic youth behind the walls of that crumbling old tomb. Mainwaring fills the town house with his friends, and there are queer stories afloat about him. He has never shown any interest in the child—looks upon its arrival as a duty mutually performed. There has been no public quarrel; no cruelty that we know of, and the rumours, however unsavoury, do not provide the evidence for divorce proceedings. In any case, Ferlie has joined the Church of Rome. Gave no explanation why; merely announced it as an accomplished fact. I saw a marble statue once, called 'Endurance.' It was in a private show, by an unknown man. A nude figure with hands extended to push back some invisible advancing foe. I bought it. There is terror in the face, lest the unknown power should crush completely; but there is also cold resistance and the strength of despair. I will show you the thing. You, who remember Ferlie as so poignantly alive...."
The speaker broke off for a moment.
"... But I must come to the incident which prompted my letter to you. I had gone unexpectedly to Black Towers, and only John greeted me in that mausoleum of a hall. He is a Ferlie product all right, but only just four. And ... one never knows.... The servants told me that Lady Greville-Mainwaring was at home but could not be disturbed. I asked if she were ill. They denied that and, politely resistant to further inquiries, supplied me with papers, afternoon tea, and, being well acquainted with my erratic habits, asked if I would stay the night. I said 'yes,' and turned my whole attention to John in the hope of discovering what his mother was doing.
"'No one could ever go up between five and six,' he informed me. 'But go up where, John?' I asked. With some difficulty I extracted the fact that Ferlie was in the West Tower. I knew there were unused rooms in the towers. I asked him what his mother did there between five and six, and he said she shut the door and 'just was quiet,' adding proudly that he took her up messages if it was important.
"I hated the sound of these proceedings which he evidently regarded as normal. 'This is important, John,' I said. 'We won't tell anybody else, but you take me up to Mother.' He demurred at first—thought the occasion did not justify that weary journey—but, at last, I persuaded him. The steps were high and dark and narrow. We might have been perambulating in Dante's Purgatory as we circled round and round. We stopped outside the door of a circular room. So strict were her orders that she had ceased to expect intrusion, and only a curtain hid her from us. I stood for some while behind it, listening to the silence. John, queer intense little soul that he is, sat down on the top step nursing his legs, for he was never very strong and I suppose they ached from the climb. And suddenly perched up at that height in the dark, relieved only by the spears of ghost-coloured light shooting through the slit windows behind us on the stair, I lost my nerve and felt that, dishonourable or not, I must know what Ferlie was doing. If she had turned into a witch in that setting I was not prepared to be surprised."
Miss Trefusis stopped to wipe from her face the dampness which had gathered there. She gave a little gasp and moistened her lips.
"Cyprian. I stood and peeped through the curtain folds at a room soaked in gold light. I thought I was demented until I realized that the rays of the western sun must touch this turret last of any room in the house, and then they struck through a round aperture glazed with orange glass. When no longer dazzled by the discovery I found Ferlie. The place was unfurnished save for a cushioned oak chair in which she was sitting, motionless as if she had been dead for years. On the palm of one opened hand lay a spherical object which retained at one spot a pin-point of reflected light like a minute star. On this it seemed to me Ferlie's eyes were fixed, and, even when throwing discretion to the winds, I went in to her she neither spoke nor stirred.
"I stooped low to her face and realized that she could not be aware of my presence. She was in some sort of a trance. Terrified, my first idea was to rush for help. Mercifully, I thought better of it. I did not know what kind of help was needed. I could only guess that Ferlie was self-hypnotized. But with what object? And had the thing been accidental, or deliberate. Not daring to pick up what she held in her hand I saw it was a small golden apple.
"I went back to John and asked him where the nearest doctor lived. We were some while whispering while I dug for information, and during that delay I heard Ferlie give a long sigh. Back I sped to her side. The apple had rolled into her lap and her body relaxed as I hovered round like a distracted hen. Then, to my joy, I perceived that she was realizing me. She did not seem astonished, and lifting her head spoke as if hardly out of a dream.
"'Nearly,' she said. 'Very nearly. But there is always some Presence standing between him and myself—and it is not God.'
"I was tactful and apologetic, putting the blame of my intrusion on to John and pretending I saw nothing out of the way in finding her in the turret.
"But, later, by deduction and confidences half-won, I arrived at some sort of explanation. Ferlie had been dipping deep into the ultra-ancient and ultra-modern volumes of every species of literature which stock the Black Towers library.
"'Do you believe that mankind have lost the power of communicating with one another by thought-transference?' she asked me. 'If they ever had it,' I said, determined not to encourage her.
"But her face checked my inclination to snub.
"'Christ had it,' she said. 'He healed from a distance, and promised that all He did we might do. No one seems to have taken that promise seriously enough to test it—unless perhaps the Christian Scientists.'
"'I'd prefer to rely upon the twopenny post, myself,' I insisted. She shook her head and said, 'That would not be right in my case, Aunt B. I may only struggle to attain the fulfilment of the promise.'
"'With whom do you want to communicate by this unnatural method,' I asked. But she would not tell me. Only by accident I stumbled upon that item.
"Late that same night I heard through my open window a faint sound of somebody crying. It was one of those desperately still star-saturated nights. I was up in an instant and along the corridor without waiting for a candle. Ferlie's room was next to John's. Through his open door I watched her, but this time I did not rush in to put to flight any stray ministering angel who might be in the offing. Cyprian, it is a terrible thing to come, unawares, upon a soul in Gethsemane. What has lain between you two in the past I do not know; what may lie between you in the future I dare not think. But I at my eavesdropping post grew colder and colder. If Ferlie continued much longer to carry this secret burden I was certain she would go out of her mind. And I am convinced that whatever the stereotyped and doubtless to your mind worthy, principles to which you have succumbed in this matter, no man can count himself wholly irresponsible whose name is thus centred in a woman's prayers."
The great car swept forward, increasing speed along a clear stretch of road. Between the occupants for some moments there reigned an unbroken silence.
Then Cyprian spoke, still without moving; his rigidity outlined against the transparent pane.
"How far are we from Black Towers?"
"We pass within thirty miles of it."
"Then...." Their eyes met.
Aunt B.'s head jerked suddenly forward.
"I thought you'd understand." ...