Civilization Part 5

And one Cambodian, a murderer, true enough, but gentle enough now.

Three house-boys and a cook. As for the old Kling, he was a marvel--he had been a thief in his day, but now--well now, he was body-servant for her daughter and a more faithful soul it would be hard to find.

For seven years she had lived upon the island, surrounded by these men. She knew them well enough. True, there was the graveyard back of the prison compound, eloquent, mute testimony of certain lapses from trustworthiness, but she was not afraid. She had no imagination, and Mercier, failing to make her sense danger, gave it up. It had been a great effort. He had been pleading for protection against himself.

Mercier awoke one morning very early. It was early, but still dark, for never, in these baleful Tropics, did the dawn precede the sunrise, and there was no slow, gradual greying and rosying creeping of daylight, preceding the dawn. It was early and dark, with a damp coolness in the air, and he reached down from his cot for his slippers, and first clapped them together before placing them upon his slim feet. Then he arose, stepped out upon his verandah, and thought awhile. Darkness everywhere, and the noise of the surf beating within the enclosed crescent of the harbour. Over all, a great heat, tinged with a damp coolness, a coolness which was sinister. And standing upon his verandah, came rushing over him the agony of his wasted life. His prisoner life upon this lonely island in the Southern Seas. Exchanged, this wasted life, for his romantic dreams, and a salary of a few hundred francs a year. That day he would write and ask for his release--send in his resignation--although it would be weeks or months before he could be relieved. As he stood there in agony, the dawn broke before him suddenly, as Tropic dawns do break, all of a sudden, with a rush. Before him rose the high peaks of the binding mountains, high, impa.s.sable, black peaks, towering like a wall of rock. It was the wall of the world, and he could not scale it. Before him stretched the curve of the southern sea, in a crescent, but for all its fluidity, as impa.s.sable as the backing wall of rock. Between the two he was hemmed in, on a narrow strip of land, enclosed between the mountain wall and the curving reach of sea. He and all his futile interests lay within that narrow strip of land, between the mountain wall and the sea--and the strip was very narrow and small.

He went forth from his bungalow, pulling upon his feet clumsy native sandals of wood, with a b.u.t.ton between the toes. For underfoot lay the things he dreaded, the heat things, the things bred by this warm climate enclosed between the high wall of the mountains and the infitting curve of the sea. He tramped awkwardly along in his loose fitting sandals, fast at the toe, clapping up and down at the heel.

The one street of the town through which he pa.s.sed was bordered by the houses of the officials, all sleeping. They were accustomed to sleeping. Only he, Mercier, could not sleep. He was not yet accustomed to being a prisoner. Perhaps--in time----

He clapped along gently, though to him it seemed very noisily, past the bungalows of the officials, past the big prison, also sleeping.

Past the Administration buildings, past the weed-grown, unused tennis courts, out upon the red road leading to the mountains. Turn upon turn of the red road he pa.s.sed, and then stopped, halted by a sight. A sight which for weeks past he had worn in his heart, but which he had never hoped to see fulfilled. She was there, that child! That child so young, so voluptuous in her development, so immature in her mentality, and beside her, a little way away, sat the Kling prisoner who guarded her. The Kling squatted upon his heels, chewing areca nut, and spitting long distances before him. The child also squatted upon the gra.s.s by the roadside, very listless. The Kling did not move as Mercier approached, clapping in his sandals. But the child moved and cast upon him a luminous, frightened gaze, and then regarded him fixedly. Therefore Mercier sat down by the child, and noted her. Noted her with a hungry feeling, taking in every beautiful detail. Her exquisite little hands, and her exquisite little feet, shod in wooden sandals, with a b.u.t.ton between the toes, such sandals as he was wearing. He talked to her a little, and she answered in half-shy, frightened tones, but underneath he detected a note of pa.s.sion--such as he felt for her. She was fourteen years old, you see, and fully developed, partly because she was half-witted, and partly because of these hot temperatures under the Equator.

Thus it befell that every morning Mercier arose early, clad his feet in noisy, clapping sandals, and went out for a walk along the red road underlying the mountain. And every morning, almost by accident, he met the half-witted child with her faithful Kling attendant. And the Kling, squatting down upon his heels, chewed areca nut, and spat widely and indifferently, while Mercier sat down beside the little girl and wondered how long he could stand it--before his control gave way. For she was a little animal, you see, and yearned for him in a sort of fourteen-year-old style, fostered by the intense heat of the Tropics. But Mercier, not yet very long from home, held back--because of certain inhibitions. Sometimes he thought he would ask for her in marriage--which was ridiculous, and showed that life in the Far East, especially in a prison colony, affects the brain. At other times, he thought how very awkward it would be, in such a little, circ.u.mscribed community as that, if he did not ask her in marriage. Suppose she babbled--as she might well do. There is no accounting for the feeble-minded. But as the days grew on, madder and wilder he became, earlier and earlier he arose to meet her, to go forth to find her on the red road beneath the mountains. There she was always waiting for him, while the Kling, her attendant, squatted chewing betel nut a little farther on.

In time, he had enough. He had had quite enough. She was a stupid fool, half-witted. He grew quite satiated. Also she grew alarmed. Very much alarmed. But always, in the distance, with his back discreetly turned, sat her Kling guardian, the paroled prisoner, chewing betel nut. So his way out was easy. One day, about eleven o'clock in the morning, clad in very immaculate white clothes, he came to call upon the child's parents, with a painful duty to perform. He must report what he had seen. When out taking his const.i.tutional, he had seen certain things in an isolated spot of the red road, leading up to the mountains. These paroled prisoners could not be trusted--he had intimated as much weeks ago. Therefore he made his report, his painful report, as compelled by duty. In his pocket was his release--the acceptance of his resignation. His recall from his post. When the boat came in next time--that day, in fact--he would go. But he could not go, with a clear conscience, till he had reported on what he had seen.

The Kling--the old, stupid, trusted Kling--stupid to trust a child like that with a servant like that----

So the Kling was hanged next morning, and Mercier sailed away that afternoon, when the little steamer came in. The little colony on the island of prisoners went on with its life as usual. Ah, bah! There was no harm done! She was so very immature! Mercier need not have exacted the life of the Kling servant, after all. He was supersensitive and over-scrupulous. Life in a prison colony in the Far East certainly affects one's judgment.

CANTERBURY CHIMES

VII

CANTERBURY CHIMES

I

The Colonial Bishop lay spread out on his long, rattan chair, idly contemplating the view of the harbour, as seen from his deep, cool verandah. As he lay there, pleasant thoughts crossed his mind, swam across his consciousness in a continuous stream, although, properly speaking, he was not thinking at all. The thoughts condensed in patches, were mere agglomerations of feelings and impressions, and they strung themselves across his mind as beads are strung along a string. His mental fingers, however, slipped the beads along, and he derived an impression of each bead as it pa.s.sed before his half closed eyes. The first that appeared was a sense of physical well-being. He liked the climate. This climate of the Far Eastern Tropics, which so few people could stand, much less enjoy. But he liked it; he liked its enclosing sense of warmth and dampness and heavy scented atmosphere.

Never before had he brought such an appet.i.te to his meals, or so enjoyed his exercise, or revelled in perspiration after a hard bicycle ride, and so enjoyed the cool wash and splash in the Java jar afterwards. The climate suited him admirably. It made one very fit, physically, and was altogether delightful. From this you will see that the Bishop was a young man, not over forty-five.

Then the servants. Good boys he had, well trained, obedient, antic.i.p.ative, amusing, picturesque in their Oriental dress. Rather trying because of their laziness, but not too exasperating to be a real irritant. So many people found native servants a downright source of annoyance--even worse than the climate--but for himself, he had never found them so. They gave him no trouble at all, and he had been out ten years, so ought to know.

The native life was charming too, so rich in colour, in all its gay costumes. Surely the first Futurists must have been the Orientals. No modern of the most ultra-modern school had ever revelled in such gorgeous colour combinations, in such daring contrasts and lurid extremes, as did these dark hued people, in their primitive simplicity. He liked them all, decent and docile. He liked their earrings--only that day he had counted a row of nine in the ear of some wandering juggler. Nose rings too--how pretty they were, nose rings. Rubies too, and most of them real, doubtless. How well they looked in the nostril of a thin, aquiline brown nose. It all went with the country. Barbaric, perhaps, contrasted with other standards, but beautiful--in its way. He would not change it for the world.

And the perfumes! A faint scent of gardenias was at that moment being wafted in from his well-kept, rich gardens, where somehow his boys managed to make flowers grow in the brown, devitalised earth. For the soil was devitalised, surely. It got no rest, year in, year out. For centuries it had nourished, in one long, eternal season, the great rich ma.s.s of tropical vegetation. European flowers would not grow in the red earth, or the black earth, whichever it was--he had been accustomed to think of red or black earth as being rich, but out here in the Tropics, it was unable to produce, for more than a brief season, the flowers and shrubs that were native to his home land. But gardenias and frangipanni----

The next bead that slipped along was the memory of an Arab street at dusk--the merchants sitting at their shop fronts, the gloom of the little, narrow shops, the glow of rich stuffs and rich colours that lay in neat piles on the shelves, and the scent of incense burning in little earthenware braziers at the door of each shop--how sweet was the warm air, laden with this deeply sweet smell of burning, glowing incense----

A step sounded on the verandah, and the Bishop concluded his revery abruptly. It was not the nearly noiseless step of a bare foot, such as his servants. It was the step of someone in European shoes, yet without the firm, decided tramp of a European. Yet the tread of a European shoe, m.u.f.fled to the slithering, soft effect of a native foot. A naked foot, booted. This was the Bishop's hour of rest, and his servants had instructions to admit no one. Well, no one in a general sense, yet there were always two or three recognised exceptions. But it was not one of these exceptions, coming in noiselessly like that. The Bishop sprang up, standing straddle of his long chair, and looking fixedly in the direction of the approaching sound. He hated interruptions, and was indignant to think that any one should have slipped in, past the eyes of his watchful servants. Just then a figure appeared at the far end of the verandah, a white clad figure rapidly advancing. A dark skinned, slim figure, clad in white linen European clothes, even down to a pair of new, ill fitting, white canvas shoes with rubber soles. That accounted for the sound resembling bare feet. Really, they could never wear shoes properly, these natives, however much they might try.

Still standing straddle across his chair, the Bishop called out angrily to the intruder. Since he was not a European, and obviously not a native Prince--native princes never slithered in like that, all the pomp of the East heralded their coming--the Bishop could afford to let his annoyance manifest itself in his voice. Therefore he called out sharply, asking the stranger's business.

A slim youth stepped forward, bare headed, hollow chested, very dark in the gathering twilight, and his hands clasped together as if in supplication, stood out blackly against the whiteness of his tunic.

The Bishop noticed that they were trembling. Well they might, for he had taken a great liberty, by this presumptuous, unannounced visit. It had a sort of sneaking character about it. Coming to steal, perhaps, and being surprised in the act, had determined to brazen it out under the pretext of a visit. The young man, however, walked boldly up to the Bishop's chair, and the Bishop, rather taken aback, sat himself down again and extended his legs on the rest, in their usual comfortable position.

"I've come to see you, Sir," began the stranger, using very good English though with a marked native accent, "on a question of great importance. On a matter of principle--of high principle. I've never seen you before, but you are known to me by reputation."

The Bishop snorted at this piece of impudence, but the youth went on unabashed.

"A very n.o.ble reputation, if I may presume to say so. But you know that, of course. What you are, what you stand for. Therefore I have dared to come to you for help. It is not a matter of advice--that does not enter in at all. But I want your great help--on our side. To right a great, an immense, an immensely growing wrong."

The youth hesitated and stopped, wringing his dark, thin hands together in evident agitation. The Bishop surveyed him coldly, with curiosity, without sympathy, enjoying his embarra.s.sment. So that was it--some grievance, real or fancied. Fancied, most likely. He felt a distinct sense of resentment that his hour of repose should have been broken in upon so rudely by this native--bringing him wrongs to redress in this uncalled for manner. There were plenty of people in the Bishop's service expressly appointed for the purpose of looking into complaints and attending to them. To bring them up to headquarters, to the Bishop himself, was an act of downright impertinence. Very much as if a native should bring his petty quarrels up to the Governor-General. These thoughts pa.s.sed through the Bishop's mind as he regarded the intruder with a fixed and most unfriendly eye.

A few moments of hesitating silence followed, while the Bishop watched the darting movements of a lizard on the wall, and waited for the stranger to continue.

"I want your help," went on the youth in a low voice. "You are so powerful--you can do so much. Not as a man, but because of your office. Perhaps as a man, too, for they say you are a good and just man. But the combination of a strong man in a high office----"

Still no help from the Bishop. That he did not clap his hands together and call for his servants to have this intruder thrown out, marked him, in his estimation, as the kind of man that the youth had suggested. A just and liberal man. Very well, he was ready to listen.

Now that he was caught, so to speak, and obliged to listen against his will.

"It's about the opium traffic," explained the young man, breathing hard with excitement, and wringing his thin hands together in distress.

"Oh, that's it, is it?" exclaimed the Bishop, breaking silence. "I thought it must be some such thing. I mean, something that is no concern of mine--nor yours either," he concluded sharply.

"It is both my concern and your concern," replied the young man solemnly, "both yours and mine. Your race, your country, is sinning against my race and my country----"

"Your country!" interrupted the Bishop disdainfully.

"Yes, my country!" exclaimed the young man proudly. "Mine still, for all that you have conquered it, and civilized it and degraded it!"

The Bishop sprang up from his chair angrily, and then sank back again, determined to listen. He would let this fellow say all he had to say, and then have him arrested afterwards. He would let him condemn himself out of his own mouth. How well they spoke English too, these educated natives.

"What is this Colony, Sir," continued the young man gaining control of himself, "but a market for the opium your Government sells? For you know, Sir, as well as I, that the sale of opium is a monopoly of your Government. And we are helpless, defenceless, powerless to protect ourselves. And do you know what your Government makes out of this trade, Sir--the revenue it collects from selling opium to my people?

Three quarters of the revenue of this Colony are derived from opium.

Your Government runs this colony on our degradation. You build your roads, your forts, your schools, your public buildings, on this vice that you have forced upon us. Before you came, with your civilization, we were decent. Very decent, on the whole. Now look at us--what do you see? How many shops in this town are licensed by your Government for the sale of opium--and the license money pocketed as revenue? How many opium divans, where we may smoke, are licensed by your Government, and the license money pocketed as part of the revenue?"

"You needn't smoke unless you wish to," remarked the Bishop drily. "We don't force you to do it. We don't put the pipe between your teeth and insist upon your drugging yourselves. How many shops do you say there are--how many smoking places? Several hundred? We don't force you into them, I take it. You go of your own choice, don't you? We Europeans don't do it. It's as free for us as it is for you. We have the same opportunities to kill ourselves--I suppose that's how you look at it--as you do. Yet somehow we abstain. If you can't resist----"

The Bishop shrugged his shoulders. Yet he rather despised himself for the argument. It sounded cheap and unworthy, somehow. The youth, however, did not seem to resent it, and went on sadly.

"It's true," he said, "we need not, I suppose. Yet you know," he continued humbly, "we are a very simple people. We are very primitive, very--lowly. We didn't understand at first, and now it's too late.

We've most of us got the habit, and the rest are getting it. We're weak and ignorant. We want you to protect us from ourselves. Just as you protect your own people--at home. You don't import it into your own country--you don't want to corrupt your own people. But what about the races you colonise and subject--who can't protect themselves? It's not fair!" he concluded pa.s.sionately, "and besides, this year you have sold us two millions more than last year----"

"Where did you get your figures?" broke in the Bishop with rising indignation. This cowering, trembling boy seemed to have all the arguments on his side.

"From your own reports, Sir. Government reports. Compiled by your own officials."

"And how did _you_ obtain a Government report?" asked the Bishop angrily. "Spying, eh?"

The young man ignored the insult, and went on patiently. "Some are distributed free, others may be bought at the book shops. There is one lying on your table this moment, Sir."

"Well enough for me," remarked the Bishop, "but how did you come by it?" The sharp eyes had recognised the fat, blue volume buried under a miscellaneous litter of books and pamphlets on a wicker table. A lean finger pointed towards it, and the accusing voice went on.