The Spoilers of the Valley Part 29

Phil set out to make inquiries.

At the Kenora he heard of someone who had seen Jim the day before at the town of Salmon Arm, between thirty and forty miles away. He took the stage there, only to find that Langford had left presumably for Vernock. Back again he came, and it was late at night when he got to town. On dropping off the stage, he ran into the faithful Smiler.

"Hullo, kid! You see Jim Langford?" he asked.

Smiler nodded.

"Know where he is?"

He nodded again excitedly, hitching up his trousers which were held round his middle by a piece of cord.

"Might have known it," thought Phil, "and saved myself a lot of running about.

"Lead on, MacDuff!" he cried. "Show me Jim Langford and I'll give you two-bits."

Smiler led the way in the darkness, down a side street into the inevitable and dimly lit Chinatown. Smiler stopped up in front of the dirty, dingy entrance of a little hall occasionally used for Chinese theatricals. He pointed inside with a grin, refused Phil's proffered twenty-five cents, backing up and finally racing away.

A special performance in Chinese was being given by a troupe of actors from Vancouver and all Chinatown who could were there.

Phil paid his admission to a huge, square-jawed Chinaman at the pay-box, and pushed through the swing doors, inside.

The theatre was crowded with Orientals, who, for the most part, were dirty, vile-smelling and expectorating.

About half-way down the centre of the aisle, he took a vacant seat on the end of one of the rough, wooden, backless benches which were all that were provided for the comfort of the audience. The place was very badly lighted, although the stage stood out in well-illuminated contrast.

Phil's first anxiety was to locate Jim. He scanned the packed benches, but all he could see was stolid, gaunt-jawed, slit-eyed Chinamen.

There did not seem to be another white man in the place.

Someone nudged him on the arm. He turned. A sleek Chinaman, whom Phil had often seen on the streets--the janitor, Phil remembered, for The Pioneer Traders,--grinned at him.

"You tly catch Missee Langfod?" he whispered.

"Yes!" nodded Phil.

"He down there, flont seat."

Phil looked in the direction indicated and, sure enough, there was Jim--alone, in the middle of the foremost and only otherwise unoccupied bench in the hall--all absorbed in the scene that was being enacted on the platform.

Contented in the knowledge that he now had his friend under surveillance, Phil directed his interest to the stage, for he had never before been present at so strange a performance.

The opera, for such it appeared to be, was already under way. The lady, the Chinese equivalent of a prima-donna--dressed in silks emblazoned with gold spangles, tinsel and gla.s.s jewels, with a strange head-dress, three feet high, consisting of feathers and pom-pons--was holding forth in what was intended to be song. It occurred to Phil that he had thrown old boots at tom-cats in Mrs. Clunie's back-yard for giving expression to what was sweet melody in comparison.

The actress's face was painted and powdered to a mere mask. Her finger nails were two inches longer than her four-inch-long feet. She rattled those fingers nails in a manner that made Phil's flesh creep, although this action seemed highly pleasing to the audience in general. The lady, Phil learned from the Chinaman at his side, was a famous beauty.

The scenery required no description, being merely a number of plain, movable part.i.tions, draught-screens and chairs. There was no drop-curtain, and the scene shifters worked in full view of the audience, removing furniture and knocking down part.i.tions with hammers during the vocal rendering of some of the thrilling pa.s.sages of the opera. On another platform, behind the stage, the orchestra was making strenuous, and at times, very effective attempts to drown the squeals of the Leading Lady, who did not seem to mind it a bit. The conductor, in his shirt sleeves, was laying on, alternately, to a Chinese drum and what looked like two empty cocoanut sh.e.l.ls, whacking out a species of rag-time all on his own, while the two other members of the band were performing on high-pitched Chinese fiddles, determined evidently on keeping up the racket at all costs.

Phil noticed no evidence of sheet music, so familiar in a white man's orchestra. These were real artists and they played entirely from memory.

In an endeavour to be enlightened, Phil touched a Chinaman in front of him--for the familiar one at his side had slipped quietly to some other part of the hall.

"John,--what all this play about--you know?" he asked.

Without turning round, the Oriental sang to him in a top-storey voice:--

"Lu-w.a.n.g Kah Chek-tho, chiu-si. Tung-Kwo chi Ku-su. Savvy?"

Phil did not "savvy," but another Chinaman, more obliging and more English, who introduced himself as Mee Yi-ow, told him the gist of the tale in pigeon English, up to the point where Phil had come in, so that he was able to follow the performance with some intelligence, from there on.

Away back in the middle ages, a bold, bad, blood-thirsty brigand chief kidnapped the only daughter of the Empress, because of that young lady's irresistible beauty and charm and because of his own unquenchable love for her. He, in turn, was trapped and captured by the Royal Body Guard, who brought him--manacled in chains with cannon b.a.l.l.s at the ends of them--before the haughty Empress. He was sentenced to death by nibbling--a little piece to be skewered out of him every two hours, Chinese time.

The Brigand Chief, on the side, was a hand-cuff expert. One day he managed to slip out of his chains and away from his tiresome cannon b.a.l.l.s. He made a daring dash for liberty, disarming and killing a sentry. Boldly, he sought out the Captain of the Royal Guard and fought a very realistic duel with him before the Empress and all the members of her retinue who came out from the wings specially to witness the sight.

The rank and file of the Royal Bodyguard--with emphasis on the _rank_--also stood idly by enjoying the spectacle.

At last, the Brigand Chief slew the Captain of the Guard, and the latter, as soon as he had finished dying, rose to his feet and walked calmly off the stage. Then, amid the rattle of drums and empty cocoanut sh.e.l.ls, accompanied by fiddle squeaks, the Royal Guard rushed upon the Brigand Chief, overpowering him and loading him up afresh with his lately lamented chains and cannon b.a.l.l.s.

A number of influential people--Princes, Mandarins and things, including the recently kidnapped only daughter of the Empress--pleaded for the gallant fighter's life.

But,--up to closing time that night--the Empress remained obdurate; this being absolutely necessary, as the play continued for six successive evenings.

Throughout the most intensely dramatic incidents, Phil failed to hear a hand-clap or an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of admiration or pleasure from the sphinx-faced yellow men about him. Yet they seemed intensely interested in the performance.

Cabbages and bad eggs, so dear to the heart of the white actor, would have been preferable to that funereal silence.

Phil was just thinking how discouraging it must be to be a Chinese actor, when, by some signal, unintelligible to him, the play ended for the night. He rose with the audience, made quickly for the only exit and took up his position on the inside, there to await Jim's arrival.

When the greater portion of the audience had pa.s.sed out, Jim rose from his seat in front, picked up a white sheet from a corner of the stage and whirled it about him, throwing an end of it over his left shoulder in the manner of the ancient Grecian sporting gentlemen.

From his looks, he had about three days' growth of whiskers on his face. His eyes, big and dark-rimmed, glowed with an intense inner fire that would have singled him out from among his fellows anywhere.

Jim was well-known and respected among the Chinamen, the more so because of his vagaries.

Suddenly, he raised his arm in a rhythmic gesture of appeal. He uttered one word, arresting and commanding in its intonation:--

"Gentlemen!"

There were not very many gentlemen there, but each one present took the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n as personal. The little crowd stopped and gathered round, gazing up with interest at the erect figure in the aisle, white robed, with hand still outstretched.

After a moment of tense silence, he commenced to recite Burns'

immortal poem on brotherly love.

Never had Phil heard such elocution. The intonation, the fervour and fire, the gesticulation were the perfect interpretation of a poet, a mystic, a veritable Thespian. On and on Jim went in uninterrupted, almost breathless silence. Phil was anxious for his friend's well-being, but he stood at the door listening spellbound, as did the Orientals about Jim, and the low whites who had straggled in toward the end of the Chinese performance, half-drunk and doped.

Vigorously, Jim concluded:--

"Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a' that, That sense and worth o'er a' the earth May bear the gree, and a' that.

For a' that, and a' that, It's coming yet, for a' that, That man to man, the world o'er Shall brothers be for a' that."

When he finished there was a round of applause, in which the Chinamen joined most noisily--an unusual thing for them who had sat throughout the entire evening's play of their own without the slightest show of appreciation.