Wang the Ninth Part 11

Deep calm followed that night. It was so calm the next morning that it seemed unnatural. Hardly a soul was abroad in the foreign quarter; and apart from some dozing foreign sentries at the street-corners, the whole neighbourhood seemed deserted--particularly that broad leafy thoroughfare called in the vernacular "The People's Communication,"

along which were grouped the foreigners' houses.

A great exodus of the inhabitants had indeed taken place during the hours after dawn; and even now it was possible in the side-lanes to see the last little groups of blue-coated people slinking away--determined to seek safety no matter how far they had to go. The foreigner was all very well in times of peace. He was a good paymaster and worth cultivating. But in the face of murder and outrage, money lost its value, and safety was the only consideration.

w.a.n.g the Ninth, after a short troubled sleep, had gone out and picked up these facts for himself. By his system of gossiping with all and sundry, he knew in a few minutes everything that had taken place.

Marvellous tales were recounted to him, gross and palpable exaggerations all cast in the same mould of fear.... And yet these are the things people believe in times of excitement, and he believed them too. At last having exhausted the subject he returned home, only to find that all his mates, excepting one, had deserted the stables during his absence.

He stood dumbfounded for quite a minute by this development.

"Here's a nice business," he remarked aloud, scratching his ugly face thoughtfully and coiling up his little queue tightly round his head as a sign that he was going to set to work. "We have nine ponies and there are two of us left. Where have these eaters of foreign rice gone?"

The remaining man said nothing. He went on morosely sweeping the cobblestones. It was only the fact that he came from a distant province that had prevented him from running at once. But he was meditating flight as he worked--that was plain.

The boy, reading these things in his sullenness, eyed him distastefully.

"Tomorrow, if not before, I shall be alone," he announced, "Well, I shall be the senior then, with no small-hearted fellows to show how much fear there is about."

The man took a step in his direction.

"What do you mean?" he blurted out, making a threatening gesture.

For reply the boy coolly picked up a pitchfork, and a.s.sumed a defiant att.i.tude. He was nearly sixteen now, and although small was muscular and as quick as lightning.

"What is your Honourable intention?" he inquired mockingly, making a thrust or two in the air in the manner of native gymnasts as if he proposed to impale his adversary. "Do you wish to fight?"

The man eyed him for a few seconds. Then, in the face of this determined att.i.tude, he retreated, cursing his opponent under his breath. w.a.n.g the Ninth threw down his pitchfork and went on with his work.

"A dog like the rest," he remarked, now thoroughly aroused. "He will disappear too. Who cares! Look here--you fellow--come near me again and I will hurl a brick in your face. Such as you are not required--your places will be filled when the appointed hour comes."

He began mixing the feed in basket after basket with the skill of long practice. The ponies, tied to a long rope stretched across the stable-yard, eyed this process anxiously with much whinnying and stamping of hoofs.

When he had finished he was tired and sweating profusely, but pride kept him from confessing that the work was too much. He seated himself on a watering-trough, and stripping off his well-worn coat, pinched the brown skin on his arms and chest in a mechanical way. Presently he sighed as he realized that the last man had also disappeared.

"It's a bad business," he remarked aloud.

"What's a bad business?" said his master, appearing a little unexpectedly, and making him scramble to his feet. For the steward having been informed by the gatekeeper that the others had left, had communicated the information to the master in the non-committal form that there was "trouble in the stables."

"The others have fled," announced the boy in his democratic manner. "I was just thinking aloud that it would be no easy matter to attend to my work, Your Honour."

His master reflected a bit and then said:

"It is unimportant. All these ponies will be taken away soon. They will be wanted as food."

"As food!" echoed this child of the Chinese ghetto, his eyes round with astonishment and his squat, flat nose pointing upwards.

"We will all be hungry soon enough," was the master's grim rejoinder.

Then he was silent for a long while as he looked at the ponies and patted one or two, saying at last:

"Stay here until our soldiers come this evening to lead the ponies away.

When that is over, come and find me."

In the evening the foreign soldiers came--a small party who spoke not a word of the language of the country. But they consulted a paper, and then held up nine fingers and slapped w.a.n.g the Ninth on the back and pointed into the stables, all of which was very intelligible to him.

"_Li-t'ou_ (in there)," he said, nodding vigourously and laughing at them. Three men detached themselves from the others and each came out in a minute leading three animals.

When the party had gone and the stables were completely empty, the boy felt depressed--he was no longer "high-hearted" as he expressed it. Not that he was lonely. No Chinese is ever really lonely although, paradoxically, they are the most gregarious race on earth. But this dropping away of everybody impressed him unfavourably. It had the flavour of ruin about it--it was like the loss of much money. He remembered his master's injunction to seek him as soon as the ponies were gone; but somehow he had no desire to move.

He went into his tiny sleeping place, and fetched out from under the coverlet a little bamboo flute; and seating himself on the watering-trough, with his knees drawn up under him and his elbows resting on them, began playing fragments of plaintive tunes picked up in days gone by. He kept this up for a long time repeating little trills and mournful notes because they gave him odd pleasure. In the growing dusk the sparrows hopped nearer and nearer, stealing grain that had fallen on the cobblestones from the last feed he had mixed, and never paying any attention to him and his music. They fitted into the evening as a shadow fits under a tree, and were there because the tree was there.

At last he tired of it, and desisted. Quickly he cooked his evening meal of millet and cabbage, and boiled some tea. When he had finished he changed his tunic and put on his foreign hat and his riding-gaiters.

"It is time," he announced to himself.

He went off slowly, stopping whenever anything attracted his attention, and playing for a few minutes with a dog. But presently, in spite of these delays, he reached the house and slowly walked round to the back.

He peered into the kitchen and the pantry, but everybody was busy. The master was already having dinner and there were guests. In the most indifferent manner he marched to the front of the house; then on to the verandah outside the dining-room.

The master was sitting at the head of the table; with him were five or six foreign gentlemen, all eating and drinking and talking and waving their hands.

He coughed and moved forward into the light.

"Who is that?" called the master.

"It is I," he said, stepping into the room and standing there without awkwardness. "The foreign soldiers have taken away the ponies as ordered and now I await fresh commands."

He noted without surprise that the guests had firearms with them and that the dinner was being served not by the steward and his a.s.sistants, but by two coolies who were working awkwardly and noisily. He had the feeling that the natural order of things had come to an end.

The master was explaining to the others something about him; but his foreign talk was unintelligible to the boy. He guessed, however, that it was not to his discredit from the glances cast at him. He fidgetted a bit, more because he was unaccustomed to standing still than from any other feeling.

"I have just been telling these gentlemen," said his master at length, "that you are worthy of confidence because you have not run off. From today you will be paid a man's full wages."

The boy flushed:

"Money is unimportant. I am content to remain because it would be foolish for me to go away."

The master shook his head:

"Nevertheless you shall be paid as a man. These are your duties for the time being. To watch and report all you can find out. Find me and tell me everything you can learn. Do you understand?"

"Yes, your honour," said the boy very gravely. "That is all?"

When he was safe by himself in the darkness of the compound the boy gave a hop, skip, and a jump, and then rushed madly round as if he were a four-footed animal.

He was to get man's pay and to do as he pleased. This meant at least eight dollars a month--eight dollars when he had been only getting three.

It was almost greater than he could bear.