The Road to Mandalay Part 29

"How on earth did it happen? Lucky you were clear of the ship, otherwise you would have been sucked underneath and never been found,"

remarked a friend; "we cannot imagine how you tumbled in--did anyone _shove_ you?"

"Oh, I just tripped over a rope," he announced, when questioned at the Club; but to FitzGerald he confided the truth--the whole truth:

"I was standing pretty close to the edge of the stage--among a lot of natives, as it happened--taking snapshots of the elephants, when all of a sudden I felt a rope twist round my legs; it gave a sort of sharp pull, and the next moment I was in the water! It's a nasty experience to have the Irrawaddy closing over your head; I have its taste in my mouth still! I'll swear that there were hands at the end of the rope, and that I saw no rope about when I first came on the pier, for I happened to be early--and it was pretty empty. Later, there was a big crowd and a lot of pushing and hustling. I noticed several Chinamen hanging round and pressing together; now that I come to think of it, they surrounded me. The rope was not the usual thick hawser, but something thinner and more flexible--more like whipcord such as a fellow could carry in his pocket."

"What did I tell you?" said FitzGerald, thumping on the table with both his fists. "We must get a move on and try to corner Krauss; that rope was a preliminary experiment, and all but landed you in Kingdom Come!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

MA CHIT

Although Shafto had many acquaintances and continual engagements, he never forgot his first friends, the Salters, and still strolled over of an evening, accompanied by Roscoe, to sit in the veranda, talk, smoke, and listen, until his companions began to discuss such abstract questions as, "What is the real driving force of life?" or to argue on the philosophy of Buddhism, or Herbert Spencer's "Descriptive Sociology" and the "Unknowable."

When conversation turned in this direction Shafto felt entirely out of his element and slipped indoors to play games with Rosetta or her mother. Recently it had struck him that Ma Chit appeared to have become more or less a permanent member of the establishment, being so constantly with her cousin. She took an enthusiastic interest in Rosetta's brick-building, superintended and sharply criticised Mee Lay's games of dominoes, and even suggested herself as a subst.i.tute.

Burmese dominoes are black, with bra.s.s points, and held in the hand like cards. Mrs. Slater, a keen and clever opponent, indignantly refused to relinquish her post to her relative, and was radiant and triumphant when she carried off a stake of eight annas. Shafto would have enjoyed these matches, and this contest of wits and luck, had Ma Chit been elsewhere, instead of leaning on his chair, looking over his hand, laughing, throwing quick glances, and making idiotic remarks.

Once he had been not a little startled to find her tiny brown fingers inserted between his collar and his neck! He shook them off impatiently; he hated such practical jokes, and said so in no measured terms.

More than once, he had been solemnly a.s.sured, the fascination of this girl's personality worked like a charm, and it had become disagreeably evident that she wished to cast a spell over _him_. How often had her bright black eyes imparted an alluring tale! However, he felt himself well protected by an impenetrable shield on which was inscribed the name of "Sophy," and Ma Chit gracefully posturing with tingling bangles and twittering talk, had no more effect upon her prey than on a stone image. No; although she hung over him, tapped him with too eloquent fingers, whispered jokes in his ear, and filled his nostrils with an exquisite and voluptuous perfume, she was powerless!

One evening he happened to be playing chess with Salter; Roscoe was at _pwe_; Mee Lay was putting Rosetta to bed, but Ma Chit was present, listening, smiling, and smoking her white cheroot. At the conclusion of a close and hard-fought game, in which Shafto was victorious she leant over, gazed into his eyes, and stroked his face with two caressing fingers. As he drew back quickly, she burst out laughing and exclaimed:

"But why are you so shy, dear boy? Always so shy--so odd and so foolish?"

Shafto found the siren undeniably pretty and seductive, but at the same time irrepressible and odious. He hated her catlike litheness, her undulating walk, and the unmistakable invitation of her whole personality.

"Come, Ma Chit, behave yourself!" said her host sternly. "If you can't--you don't come here again."

The beauty received this admonition with a scream of laughter, tossed a flower at Salter, wafted a kiss to his guest, and faded away into the veranda.

By degrees, thanks to his constant encounters with Ma Chit, Shafto avoided the Salters' bungalow, and Roscoe made his visits alone; but as it was not more than three hundred yards from the chummery Shafto had a painful conviction that, when dusk and darkness had fallen, the neighbourhood of his compound was haunted--not by the malignant and resident _nat_, but by the graceful and sinuous figure of a little Burmese girl! Once a stone, to which was attached a paper, was thrown into his room. On it was inscribed in a babu's clerkly hand:

"Do come and talk to Ma Chit."

CHAPTER XXIX

MUNG BAW

Returning one evening from a lively dinner at the "Barn," Shafto was surprised to see a light in his room, and still more surprised to find the _pongye_ once again seated on his bed.

"Oh, so you've come back!" he exclaimed aghast, and a shadow of annoyance settled on his face.

"I have so," calmly responded this late visitor; "as I was pa.s.sing I thought I'd give you a call in. I came down a couple of weeks back--as I have some small business here and wanted to show myself to a doctor.

I don't hold with them native medicines and charms, and I'm inclined to a weakness in me inside."

"Why, you look as strong as a horse!" was Shafto's unsympathetic rejoinder, as he sank into a chair and pulled out a cigarette. The _pongye_ contributed a special personal atmosphere, composed of turmeric, woollen stuff and some fiercely pungent herb.

"Looks is deceitful, and so is many a fine fellow," observed the _pongye_ in a dreamy voice. After this p.r.o.nouncement he relapsed into a reflective silence--a silence which conveyed the subtle suggestion that the visitor was charged with some weighty mission. At any rate, it was useless for Shafto to think of undressing and going to bed, since his couch was already occupied by the holy man, who appeared to be established for the night.

Interpreting Shafto's envious glance, he said:

"You'll excuse me sitting on the _charpoy_, but I've got entirely out of the use of chairs, and me bones are too stiff to sit doubled up on the floor like a skewered chicken."

"Oh, that's all right," said Shafto, who was very sleepy. "I suppose you have just come from Upper Burma?"

"Yes, that's the part I most belong to and that suits me. I can't do with this soft, wet climate, though I am an Irishman. I'm from Mogok, that's the ruby mine district, but what I like best is the real jungle.

Oh, you'd love to see the scenery and to walk through miles and miles of grand trees on the Upper Chindwin; forests blazing with flowers and alive with birds, not to speak of game. Many's the time I've been aching for the hould of a gun, but, of course, it was an evil thought."

"Your religion forbids you to take life?"

"That's true; I've not tasted meat for years, but there's not a word to be said agin fish or an odd egg."

"Tell me something more about your new faith!"

"Well now, let me think," said the _pongye_ meditatively. "We have no regular service for marriage or burial, and no preaching. We keep the five great rules--poverty, chast.i.ty, honesty, truth, and respect all life. There are two hundred and twenty-seven precepts besides. Most men can say them off out of the big book of the Palamauk, and there are stacks and stacks--thousands of stacks--of sacred writings, but I just stick to the five commandments, the path of virtue and the daily prayers. The singing and chanting is in Pali--a wonderful fine, loud language. Many of the _pongyes_ is teachers, for every boy in Burma pa.s.ses through their hands; but I'm no schoolmaster, though I was once a clerk in the Orderly room. I could not stand the gabble of them scholars, all roaring out the same words at the top of their voices for hours together."

"I can't imagine how you pa.s.s your time," remarked Shafto, "or how you stand the idleness--a man like you who were accustomed to an active life."

"Oh, I get through me day all right. In the early morning there's prayers and a small refreshment, and I sit and meditate; the young fellows, like novices, sweep and carry water and put flowers about the Buddha; then we all go with our bowls in our hands, parading through the village, looking neither right nor left, but we get all we want and more--for giving is a great merit. When we return to the _kyoung_ we have our big midday meal, and then for a few hours I meditate again.

The life suits me. It's a different country from India, with its blazing sun and great bare plains; there the people seldom has a smile on them. Here they are always laughing; here all is green and beautiful, with fine aisy times for flowers and birds and beasts.

There's peace and kindness. Oh! it's a fine change from knocking about in barracks and cantonments, drilling and route-marching and sweating your soul out. By the way, have ye the talisman I give you?"

"If you mean the brown stone--yes."

"That stone was slipped into my begging-bowl one day."

"Not much of a find as an eatable!"

"That is so, though according to fairy tales the likes has dropped out of people's mouths before now. Ye may not suspicion the truth, but it's a fine big ruby! I believe it was found stuck in red mud in the ruby district, and someone who had a wish for me dropped it into the _patta_, and I--who have a wish for you--pa.s.s it on."

"But if it is so valuable I could not dream of accepting such a gift,"

protested Shafto. "You will have to take it back--thanks awfully, all the same."

"Oh, ye never rightly know the price of them stones till they are cut; but the knowledgeable man I showed it to said it might be worth a couple of thousand pounds, and I've come to tell ye this--so that ye can turn it into coin--and if ye wanted to get out of Burma, there ye are!"

"That _is_ most awfully good of you, but I really could not think of accepting your treasure, or its value in money--and I have no wish to leave Burma, the country suits me all right."

As he ceased speaking Shafto got up, unlocked a leather dispatch box and produced the ruby, which he placed in the large, well-kept hand of the visitor.

"Well, now, I call this entirely too bad!" the latter exclaimed as he turned it over. "An' I need not tell ye that I can make no use of the ruby, being vowed to poverty--which you are not; and I want to offer some small return for what ye did for me last time I was down in Rangoon. I can't think what ails ye to be so stiff-necked; is there nothing at all I can do for ye?"

"Well, Mung Baw, since you put it like that, I believe you could give me what would be far more use than a stone--some valuable help."