The Four Corners of the World Part 12

"Opium!" cried Mr. Endicott, as if he had been stung. How many times had he voted for the suppression of everything to do with opium.

"You'll find none of that abominable drug here!"

He surveyed the Asiatic, outraged in every feeling. He lifted the latch. He was on the point of flinging open the door. He had actually begun to open it, when his mood changed. North of the Tropic of Capricorn. The lilt of the words was in his ears. He remembered the talk of the Australian in the railway-carriage about the overcrowding of the East. The coming of this strange brown man seemed to him of a sudden curiously relevant. He closed the door again.

"You pa.s.sed the house? Where do you come from? Who are you? How do you come here?"

The Asiatic, who had stood gathered like a runner at the starting-point while the door was being opened, now cringed and smiled.

"Protector of the poor, I tell you my story"; and Mr. Endicott found himself listening in that quiet farm-house of the c.u.mberland dales to a most enlightening Odyssey.

The man's name was Ahmed Ali, and he was a Pathan of the hills. His home was in the middle country between Peshawur and the borders of Afghanistan, and he belonged to a tribe of seven hundred men, every one of whom had left his home and his wife and his children behind him, and had gone down to Bombay to seek his livelihood in the stokeholds of ships. Ahmed had been taken on a steamer of the Peninsula and Oriental Line bound for Australia, where he hoped to make his fortune. But neither at Sydney nor at Melbourne had he been allowed to land.

"But I am a British citizen," he said, having acquired some English.

"Well, and what of it?" said the Port authorities.

Nevertheless the night before the boat sailed he slipped overboard and swam ash.o.r.e, to be caught when the smoke of that steamer was no more than a stain on the horizon. He was held in custody and would have been returned by the next steamer to India. But there was already in the harbour a cargo boat of the Clan Line bound for Quebec round the Cape; and the boat was short of its complement in the stokehold.

Ahmed Ali, accordingly, signed on, and sailed in her and acquired more English to help him on in the comfortable life he now proposed to make for himself in Canada.

"But again they would not let me go away into the country," he continued. "I told them I was British citizen, but it did not help me; no, not any more than in Australia. They put me on a ship for England, and I came to Liverpool steerage like a genelman. And at Liverpool I landed boldly. For I was a British citizen."

"Ah!" interjected Mr. Endicott proudly. "Here, in England, you see the value of being a British citizen."

"But, no, my genelman. For here there's no work for British citizen. I land and I walk about and I ask for work. But everyone says, 'Why don't you stay in your own country?' So I come away across the fields, and no man give me one piece opium."

Mr. Endicott nodded his head when the story was ended.

"Well, after all, why don't you stay in your own country?" he asked.

Mr. Endicott had already had his answer from the Australian, but he was now thirsty for details, and his ears in consequence were afflicted with a brief description of British rule from the Pathan's point of view.

"The all-wise one will pardon me. You keep the peace. Therefore we cannot stay in our own country. For we grow crowded and there is no food. In old times, when we were crowded and hungry, we went down into the plains and took the land and the wives of the people of the plains and killed the men. But the raj does not allow it. It holds a sword between us and the plains, a sword with the edge towards us. Neither, on the other hand, does it feed us."

Mr. Endicott was aghast at the perverted views thus calmly announced to him.

"But we can't allow you to come down into India murdering and robbing and taking the wives."

The Asiatic shrugged his shoulders.

"It is the law."

Mr. Endicott was silent. If it were not the law, there were certainly a great many precedents. The men of the hills and the people of the plains--yes, history would say it _was_ the law. Mr. Endicott's eyes were opening upon unknown worlds. The British Power stood in India then cleaving a law of nature?

"Also, you send your doctors and make cures when the plague and the cholera come, so that fewer people die. Also, when the crops fail and there is famine, you distribute food, so that again fewer people die.

No, there is no room now for us in our own country because of you, and you will not let us into yours."

"But we can't do anything else," cried Mr. Endicott. "We keep the peace, we feed when there is famine, we send our doctors when there is plague, because that is the law, also--the law of our race."

Ahmed Ali did not move. He had placed the dilemma before Endicott. He neither solved nor accepted it. Nor Was Endicott able to find any answer. There must be one, since his whole race was arraigned just for what it most prided itself upon--oh, no doubt there was an answer. But Mr. Endicott could not find it. His imagination, however, grasped the problem. He saw those seven hundred tribesmen travelling down the pa.s.ses to the rail head, loading the Bombay train and dispersing upon the steamers. But he had no answer, and because he had no answer he was extremely uncomfortable. He had lived for a year in the world of politicians where, as a rule, there are answers all ready-made for any question, answers neatly framed in aphorisms and propositions and provided for our acceptance by thoughtful organisations. But he could not remember one to suit this occasion. He was at a loss, and he took the easy way to rid himself of discomfort. He dived into his trouser-pocket and fished out a handful of silver.

"Here!" he said. "This'll help you on a bit. Now go!"

He stood aside from the door and the Asiatic darted to it with an extraordinary eagerness. But once he had unlatched it, once it stood open to the hillside and the sky, and he free in the embrasure, he lost all his cringing aspect. He turned round upon Mr. Endicott.

"I go now," he cried in a high arrogant voice. "But I shall come back very soon, and all our peoples will come with me, all our hungry peoples from the East. Remember that, you genelman!" And then he ran noiselessly out of the house and down the pathway to the gate.

He ran with extraordinary swiftness; so that Endicott followed him to the gate and watched him go. He flew down the road, his shadow flitting in the moonlight like a bird. Once he looked over his shoulder, and seeing Endicott at the gate he leapt into the air. A few yards farther he doubled on his steps, climbed down into the little stream beside the lane and took to the hills. And in another moment he was not. The broad and kindly fell took him to its bosom. He was too tiny an atom to stand out against that great towering slope of gra.s.s and stones. Indeed, he vanished so instantly that it seemed he must have dived into a cave. The next moment Endicott almost doubted whether he had ever been at all, whether he was not some apparition born of his own troubled brain and the Australian's talk. But, as he turned back into the house, he saw upon the flags of the garden path the marks of the man's wet, bare feet. Not only had Ahmed Ali been to the farm-house, but he had crossed the stream to get there.

Mr. Endicott went back to his table in the window and seated himself in front of his lighted candles, more from habit than with any thought of work. He felt suddenly rather tired. He had not been conscious of any fear while Ahmed Ali was in the room, or indeed of any strain. But strain, and perhaps fear, there had been. Certainly a vague fear began to get hold of him now. He had a picture before his eyes of the Asiatic leaping into the air upon the road, and then doubling for the hills. Why had he fled so fast?

"North of the Tropic of Capricorn!"

He repeated the words to himself aloud. Was the Australian right after all? And would they come from the East--those hungry people? Mr.

Endicott seemed to feel the earth tremble beneath the feet of the myriads of Asia. He bent his ear and seemed to hear the distant confusion of their approach. He looked down at his papers and flicked them contemptuously. Of what use would be his fine Bill for the establishment of a Minimum Wage? Why, everything would go down--civilisation, the treasures of art, twenty centuries of man's painful growth--just as that Derby China teapot with its wonderful colour of dark blue and red and gold. The broken fragments of the teapot became a symbol to Endicott.

"And the women would go down too," he thought with a shiver. "They would take the wives."

He had come to this point in his speculations when the inner door opened, and the light broadened in the room. He heard Mrs. Tyson shuffle in, but he did not turn towards her. He sat looking out upon the fell.

"I found the lamp burning on the hall table by the letters, sir," she said, "and I thought you might want it."

"Thank you," said Endicott vaguely, and he was roused by a little gasping cry which she uttered.

"Oh, yes! I am very sorry, Mrs. Tyson. Your teapot has been knocked down. I went out. There was a man in the room when I came back. He knocked it down. Of course I'll make its value good, though I doubt if I can replace it."

Mrs. Tyson made no answer. She placed the lamp on the table. Endicott was still seated at his table in the window with his back to the room.

But he had thrown back his head, and he saw the circle of reflected light upon the ceiling shake and quiver as Mrs. Tyson put the lamp down. The gla.s.s chimney, too, rattled as though her hands were shaking.

"I am very sorry indeed," he continued.

Mrs. Tyson dropped upon her knees and began to pick up the broken pieces from the floor.

"It doesn't matter at all, sir," she said, and Endicott was surprised by the utter tonelessness of her voice. He knew that she set great store upon this set of china; she had boasted of it. Yet now that it was spoilt she spoke of it with complete indifference. He turned round in his chair and watched her picking up the fragments--watched her idly until she sobbed.

"Good heavens," he cried, "I knew that you valued it, Mrs. Tyson, but--" and then he stopped. For she turned to him and he knew that there was more than the china teapot at the bottom of her trouble. Her face, white and shaking and wet with tears, was terrible to see. There was a horror upon it as though she had beheld things not allowed, and a hopeless pain in her eyes as though she was sure that the appalling vision would never pa.s.s. But all she did was to repeat her phrase.

"It doesn't matter at all, sir."

Endicott started up and laid his hand upon her shoulder.

"What has happened, Mrs. Tyson?"

"Oh, I can't tell you, sir." She knelt upon the floor and covered her face with her hands and wept as Endicott had never dreamed that a human being could weep. Fear seized upon him and held him till he shivered with the chill of it. The woman had come in by the inner door. In the hall, then, was to be found the cause of her horror. He lifted the lamp and hurried towards it, but to reach the door he had to pa.s.s the screen which Elsie had arranged on the day of their coming. And at the screen he stopped. The terror which may come to a man once in his life clutched his heart so that he choked. For behind the screen he saw the gleam of a girl's white frock.

"Elsie," he cried, "you have been all this while here--asleep." For he would not believe the thing he knew.

She was lying rather than sitting in the low basket chair in front of the little table on which the chemicals were ranged, with her back towards him, and her face buried in the padding of the chair. Endicott stretched his arm over her and set down the lamp upon the table. Then he spoke to her again chidingly and shaking her arm.