The Pointing Man Part 15

It was nearly dawn when he got between the cool linen sheets, and was asleep almost as his dark head lay back against the soft white pillow.

XII

SHOWS HOW A MAN MAY CLIMB A HUNDRED STEPS INTO A Pa.s.sIONLESS PEACE, AND RETURN AGAIN TO A WORLD OF SMALL TORMENTS

By the end of a week Coryndon had slipped into the ways of Mangadone, slipped in quietly and without causing much comment. He went to the Club with Hartley and made the acquaintance of nearly all his host's friends, and they, in return, gave him the casual notice accorded to a pa.s.sing stranger who had no part or lot in their lives or interests. Coryndon was very quiet and listened to everything; he listened to a great deal in the first three days, and Fitzgibbon, a barrister, offered to take him round and show him the town.

Coryndon was "shown the town," but apparently he found a lasting joy in sight-seeing, and could witness the same sights repeatedly without failing interest. He climbed the steps to the PaG.o.da, under the guidance of Fitzgibbon, the first afternoon they met.

"Won't you come, too, Hartley?" asked the Barrister.

"Not if I know it. I've been there about sixty times. If Coryndon wants to see it, I'm thankful to let him go there with you."

Fitzgibbon, who had a craze for borrowing anything that he was likely to want, had persuaded Prescott, the junior partner in a rice firm, to lend him his car, and as he sat in the tonneau beside Coryndon, he pointed out the places of interest. Their way lay first through the residential quarter, and Hartley's guest saw the entrance gate and gardens of Draycott Wilder's house.

"The most interesting and certainly the best-looking woman in Mangadone lives there, a Mrs. Wilder. Hartley ought to have told you about her; he is rather favoured by the lady. Her husband is a rising civilian. Mrs.

Wilder has bought Asia, and is wondering whether she'll buy Europe next."

Coryndon hardly appeared impressed or even interested.

"So she is a friend of Hartley's?" he said carelessly. "I hadn't heard that."

Fitzgibbon laughed.

"It's something to be a friend of Mrs. Wilder--that is, in Mangadone."

They sped on over the level road, and the car swung through the streets that led towards the open s.p.a.ce before the temple.

"That is the curio dealer's shop. Don't get any of your stuff there. The man's a robber."

"Which shop?" asked Coryndon patiently.

"We're past it now, but it was the one with a dancing man outside of it, a funny little effigy."

Coryndon's eyes were turned to the PaG.o.da, and he was evidently inattentive.

"It strikes you, doesn't it?" asked Fitzgibbon, in the tones of a gratified showman. "It always does strike people who haven't seen it before."

"Naturally, when one has not seen it before," echoed his companion, as the car drew up.

Coryndon stood for a moment looking at the entrance, and surveying the huge plaster dragons with their gaping mouths and vermilion-red tongues.

They were ranged up a green slope, two on either side of the brown fretted roof that covered the steep tunnel that led up a flight of more than a hundred steps to the flat plateau, where the golden spire towered high over all, amid a crowd of lesser minarets.

Surrounded by baskets of roses and orchids, little silk-clothed Burmese girls sat on the entrance steps, and sold their wares. Fitzgibbon would have hurried on, but Coryndon, in true tripper fashion, stopped and bought an armful of blossoms.

"What am I to do with these things?" he asked helplessly.

"Oh, you'd better leave them before one of the _Gaudamas_, and acquire merit. If you let them all plunder you like this, we'll never get to the top."

Flight after flight, the two men climbed slowly, and Coryndon stood at intervals to watch the crowd that came up and down. The steps were so steep that the arch above them only disclosed descending feet, but Coryndon watched the feet appear first and then the rest of the hurrying or loitering men and women, and he sat on a seat beside a little gathering of yellow-robed _Hypongyis_ until Fitzgibbon lost all patience.

"There is a whole town of piety to see up at the top. Come on, man; we have hours of it yet to get through. Don't waste time over those stalls.

Every picture of the Buddha story was made in Birmingham."

Progressing a little faster, Fitzgibbon piloted Coryndon past a stall where yellow candles and bundles of joss-sticks in red paper cases were sold at a varying price.

"I must get some of these," objected Coryndon, who added a rupee's worth of incense and a white cheroot to his collection.

When they pa.s.sed through the last archway and gained the plateau, he looked round with eyes that spoke his keen interest. Even though he had been there many times before, Coryndon looked at the sight with eyes that grew shadowed by the dreaming soul that lived within him.

Twilight was gathering behind the trees; only the gold-laced spires of a thousand minarets caught the last light of the sun. On the plateau below the great pillar, that glimmered like a golden sword from base to bell-hung _Htee_, lay what Fitzgibbon had described as "a little town of piety." A village of shrines and PaG.o.das, each built with seven roofs, open-fronted to disclose the holy place within; some large as a small chapel; some small, giving room only for the figure of the _Gaudama_.

Here and there, the votive offerings had fallen into decay, and the gold-leaf covering the Buddha was black and dilapidated by the pa.s.sing of years, for there is no merit to be acquired in rebuilding or renovating a sacred place. From innumerable shrines, uncounted Buddhas looked out with the same long, contemplative eyes; in bronze, in jade, in white and black marble, in grey stone and gilded ebony, the pa.s.sionless face of the great Peace looked out upon his children.

Near to where Coryndon and the Barrister stood together, in the peach-coloured evening light, a large shrine with a fretted roof was thronged with worshippers, and Coryndon stood on the steps and looked in. The floor of black, polished marble dimly reflected the immense gold pillars that supported a lofty ceiling, lost entirely in the gloom, and before a blaze of candles and a floating veil of scented grey smoke a priest bowed himself, and prayed in a low, chanting voice. The face of the Lord Buddha behind the rails was lighted by the wind-blown flame of many tapers, so that it almost looked as though he smiled out of his far-away Nirvana upon his kneeling worshippers, who could ask nothing of him, not even mercy, since the salvation of a man is in his own hands.

Before the rails, a settle with low gilt legs was covered with offerings of flowers, that added their scent to the heavy air, and on a small table a feast of cakes and sweets was placed, to be distributed later on among the poor. Coryndon disposed of his burden of pink and white roses and little magenta prayer-flags, and lighted a bundle of joss-sticks, before they came out again and wandered on.

As the daylight faded the lights from the shrines and the small booths grew stronger, and the rising night wind, coming in from the river, rang the silver bells around the spires, filling the whole air with tinkling sound, and the slow-moving crowd around them laughed and joked, like people at a fair. His eyes still full of dreams, Coryndon followed with them, keeping one small packet of amber candles to light in honour of some other Buddha in another shrine.

"Funny devils, these Burmese," remarked the Barrister. "They never clean up anything. Look at the years of tallow collected under that spiked gate that is falling off its hinges. That black little Buddha inside must once have been a popular favourite, but no one gives him anything now."

They turned a corner past a booth where bottles full of pink and yellow fluid, and green leaves, wrapped around betel-nut, appeared to be the chief stock-in-trade, and a noise of hammering struck on their ears.

Here a new shrine was being erected and was all but completed. A few Chinamen, who had been working at it, were putting their tools into canvas bags, preparatory to withdrawing like the remaining daylight.

"This is Mhtoon Pah's edifice," said Fitzgibbon, coming to a standstill.

"He doesn't seem to have spared expense, either. Shall we go in?"

The shrine was not a very large one, and the entrance was like the entrance to a grotto at an Exhibition. Tiny facets of gla.s.s were crusted into gra.s.s-green cement, shining like a thousand eyes, and, seated on a vermilion lacquer das, a Buddha, with heavy eyelids that hid his strange eyes, presided over an illumination of smoking flame. The smell of joss-sticks was heavy on the air, and the filigree cloak worn by the Buddha was enriched with red and green gla.s.s that shone and glittered.

"They say the caste-mark in his forehead is a real diamond," remarked the Barrister. "I don't suppose it is, but at least it is a good imitation."

Coryndon was not listening to him; he had gone close to the marble rails, and was lighting his little bunch of yellow tapers. He lighted them one by one, and put each one down on the floor very slowly and carefully, and when he had finished he turned round.

"Mhtoon Pah is the man who has the curio shop?" he asked.

"The very same. It gives you some idea of his percentage on sales, what?"

Coryndon joined in his laugh, and they went out again into the street of sanct.i.ty. Fitzgibbon was now getting exhausted, for his companion's desire to "do" the PaG.o.da was apparently insatiable; and he asked interminable questions that the Barrister was totally unable to answer.

Coryndon seemed to find something fresh and interesting around every corner. The white elephants delighted him, particularly where green creepers had grown round their trunks, giving them a realistic effect of enjoying a meal. The handles off very common English chests-of-drawers, that were set along a rail enclosing a sleeping Buddha, pleased him like a child, as did the bits of looking-gla.s.s with "Black and White Whisky,"

or "Apollinaris Water," inscribed across their faces.

"That sort of thing seems to attract them," explained Fitzgibbon. "In one of the shrines there is a fancy biscuit-box at a Buddha's feet. It has got 'Huntley and Palmer' on the top, and pictures of children and swans all around it. Funny devils, I always say so."