“Let us pray that dinner today will be better than it was yesterday.” (God does not mind a man being witty at His expense.) “O God, who daily turnest our bread into a stone——”
Well, even if the Matron was looking at him, she could appreciate wit, couldn’t she? He laughed a little to give her a lead. Her hard white collar and cap seemed to heave like the ruff and crest of an affronted bird. Women had no sense of humor. And anyway it was he, not she, who was on duty. He could say what grace he liked. The matron was gone now. She had realised that she had no business there. The boys were all laughing. They were a broad-minded crew, these boys.
Someone took him quite rudely by the arm. It was the headmaster. He looked drunk, Edward thought. So that was how the headmaster spent Sunday afternoons—and he a parson. He pulled Edward out of the room. It was outrageous that the headmaster should so interrupt Edward’s duties.
After a short talk, during which the headmaster gave voice to some most insolent personalities, Edward realised quite suddenly that he himself was drunk. He wanted immediately to go away from the people who had noticed this humiliating fact. He wanted new faces around him, unreproachful faces.
“I’m going,” said Edward; the chair span away from him unkindly as he rose. “After the way I’ve been treated——”
“Please go tonight,” said the headmaster.
Everything was going well. Soon he would be away from these people who only witnessed his moments of indignity. The boys would never triumph over him again now. He would be alone, travelling in search of Emily. People who did not know him would think, “Who is that thin eager young man with the far-off look in his eyes?”
The Matron packed his clothes for him. She did not speak. She touched his possessions as though they were dirty. The headmaster called a ricksha for him and, without speaking, put Edward’s suitcase into it. Nobody said good-bye. The stars were like dew on Edward’s eyes. Inside his head pulsed the impact of the ricksha coolie’s feet on the ground. The street was narrow and crowded and quiet, at least there were only voices in it. Across the lighted booths and under the hanging bannered shop signs hurried the coolies at a half trot on their bare feet. Their burdens swung at either end of long poles; they had slung the great absurd shields which were their hats on their backs, the heat of the day being over. “Hai-ya ho, hoi-ya hai-ya, hai-ya ho, hoi-ya hai-ya....” Two withered women, with thin bare legs under their turned-up trousers, were beating a child’s garment with poles. Fierce treatment for so small a thing. But the devil of sickness was in the garment; it required fierce treatment. The lights glared on the scarlet and gold banners and on the gilt filigree woodwork that framed the doors of the shops. It seemed as if one heard noise more with one’s eyes than with one’s ears. The glare seemed to drown the voices and the barefoot tread of the crowds. Wherever one street crossed another, however, there was a great clamoring of coolies forging their own right of way through the tangle. Edward’s ricksha coolie said “Hao hao” when anyone crossed his path; the “hao” was always in time with the thumping of his running feet, as if jerked from his throat. Tall Sikh policemen pushed coolies roughly about. In the sight of the policemen the little crowd of almost naked beggar children running after Edward momentarily evaporated.
Edward could now pay for his passage to Tientsin by sea and for a ticket from Tientsin to Peking. He could not pay for the new cool suit of clothes. Emily must take him as he was—hot or cold.
He was the only passenger in the ship to Tientsin. It was carrying simply a great deal of indigo—and Edward. It was intent upon this duty and stopped at only one port.