Читать книгу The Sapphire - A. E. W. Mason - Страница 5

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THE great headlight was switched on to the channel, the Dagonet shook and rumbled from stem to stern, the gap widened between it and the shore. I stood by the rail of the ship aft of the saloon. In a few minutes nothing of Tagaung was visible but the storm-lamp on the ground in the tiny square. It diminished to a spark. A cool wind blew through the ship. The spark on the shore flickered. I suppose that I had been more deeply moved by the odd episode than I was aware; and there’s always, I think, a particular sadness, not of separations but of leaving people behind. Anyway, that little shaking flame in the heart of the darkness seemed to me the very image and symbol of a soul in great distress. I turned to find Michael Crowther at my elbow. He, too, was watching the tiny flame wavering, pleading, desperately calling. A bend of the river hid it from our sight.

I wondered what Crowther’s reactions would be to its utter disappearance. I turned and looked at him. His face was one wide smile of gross content.

“That’s that,” said he, and followed his words with a great gasp of relief. He slapped the pocket of his jacket and I noticed that it bulged unnaturally. He winked cheerfully at me and strode forward through the saloon. He took the wheel himself, smiling like a man fresh out of prison, and between the white poles and the red he drove his steamer down to Thabeikyin. The river was low and now and again the steamer grounded with a bump upon a sand-bank and must go astern and wriggle itself clear.

“I’ll dine afterwards,” Crowther said to the steward when the dinner-bell rang; and the dinner for the passengers was over when the ship was moored to the bank. Thabeikyin is bigger than most of the villages along the upper river. It is the port of the Ruby Mines sixty miles away over the hills at Mogok. It has a Government rest-house, a telegraph office and a row of shops along the river’s edge. The other passengers accordingly trooped on shore, leaving the saloon to the Captain and the cool, dark porch to me. But I was not to enjoy my solitude for long. Crowther was laughing aloud whilst he ate. He was in one of those moods of high spirits and relief when he must confide or burst. Anyone with a pair of ears would have served, and mine were the only pair handy. He turned round towards the open door and called to me.

“Won’t you join me, Mr. Legatt?” he asked.

I rose reluctantly.

“If you’ll take a liqueur with me,” I answered.

“A double one, if that’ll make you easy.” Was there a hint of contempt in his voice? There was. “You’re a very sensitive, delicate-minded young man, aren’t you?” he continued, and then shouted to the steward.

“At Mr. Legatt’s expense,” he shouted.

I was all at sea with this man. I spoke to him like a meticulous prig and he showed me that he thought me one, and there I sat with no more power of repartee than an owl. I ordered a cup of coffee and a glass of brandy for myself, and for a while Crowther forgot me. He wagged his head and chuckled and winked, and every now and then his hand stole secretly down to his side pocket and felt it. The side pocket still bulged. The little packet which I had seen in his hand at Tagaung was still concealed there. I had not a doubt of it and I became possessed suddenly by a quite unreasonable curiosity to know what it contained. I did not have to ask, however. For as I leaned upon the table Crowther nudged my elbow with his.

“Tagaung!” said he. “I saw you on the deck and you saw me on the beach. You can put two to two and make four, eh? Well, this time you’ve only to make three.”

It dawned upon Crowther that he had cracked a joke.

“By Jiminy, that’s a good one!” he roared, and he flapped his hand upon the table. “Two and two make three! I call that wit, Mr. Legatt. Cripes, I do! Just as smart as your birds in the trees, what? Two and two make three. Me and Ma Shwe At and little Ma Sein.”

“Ma Sein’s the child, I suppose?”

“That’s so, Mr. Legatt. Little Miss Diamond. Pretty kid, eh?”

He cocked his head sideways at me, seeking admiration not so much for little Miss Diamond as for himself, who had been clever enough to beget her.

“Yours?” I asked indifferently.

Michael D. Crowther was hurt.

“Well, what do you think?” he cried indignantly. “Didn’t I tell you she was a pretty little kid? Of course she’s mine.”

One day or another, nine or ten years ago, young Crowther, newly appointed to the Irrawaddy Service with a single gold stripe upon his sleeve, had made the acquaintance of Ma Shwe At. He may have been the Junior Officer on one of the Bazaar boats, those travelling shops which, while carrying passengers, supply the river-side population. And Ma Shwe At may have come aboard to haggle merrily and daintily and very firmly for a strip of silk to make a new skirt or for some household implement. He may have been attached to a mail-boat which tied up at Tagaung for the night, and stepping ashore when his duty was done, have bought some trifle at her booth. I do not remember ever to have heard how the ill-assorted pair began its fateful courtship. It was difficult for me at the time to picture Michael Crowther without his arrogance and his leer, his loud laugh and his essential vulgarity. But no doubt youth had lent him its seemly mask and Ma Shwe At was flattered by the white man’s attentions. A trip or two more up and down the river and they contracted a Burmese marriage, as the phrase runs. Marriage has no ceremonial in that country. The religion of Buddha sets no seal upon it and offers no obstacle to divorce. Both states are matters of consent between the parties. The worldly wisdom of the village headman and the wishes of parents have in practice an influence, but there is no binding authority behind them.

“Of course she’s mine,” Crowther repeated. He drank a little of his brandy. I should be painting an untrue picture of the man if I did not state clearly that at that time when he was at his worst he was always a temperate drinker. He just took a sip of his brandy and his mind slipped away from this trifle of his fatherhood. He nudged me again with his elbow.

“I’ll give you a word of advice, Mr. Legatt. Watch out! You haven’t got my authority, of course, behind you. On the other hand you have some looks I haven’t got,” he was kind enough to say. “These Burmese girls with their white teeth and the roses in their dark hair. Pretty little playthings, all right, all right! But passionate, too! Take care they don’t get their hooks into you! The taste of the flesh, what?” And he drew in his breath with a long, sucking sound which was simply revolting. He drew a line with a stumpy forefinger on the cloth. “Toys on this side! The things of life and death on the other!”

Very sound advice, no doubt; but whilst he was speaking I was wondering with all the conceit of my youth how incredible it was that this blatant, leering creature should have inspired passion into any woman. But the vision of Ma Shwe At with her flower of a face crumpling into tears and ugliness rose before my eyes. It was not incredible. It was intolerable.

“Full of fun, too!” Captain Michael D. Crowther continued. “The tricks of a kitten! Make you laugh till your sides ache. But, by Jiminy——!” And he let himself go in a paroxysm of mirth, a gross and shaking figure. He rolled in his chair, he choked and he bellowed till the tears ran down his cheeks. If there had been any real heartiness or geniality in his laughter I might have called it Homeric, it was so loud and encompassing. But he was applauding himself for his cunning and congratulating himself upon his astonishing good luck.

“Of all the good laughs Ma Shwe At ever gave me,” he explained, “the best she gave me to-night.”

He pushed his coffee-cup and his glass away. He slipped his hand at last into the bulging side pocket which had so provoked my curiosity and drew out of it a little bag of pink silk with the mouth knotted tight by a pink silk string. He laid it on the table in front of him and it rattled as he set it down.

“This surely is my lucky day,” he said. “Who could have guessed that just at this time—when we’re on this trip—not the last one and not the next one, a band of dacoits should start in robbing the houses round Tagaung? Fairly providential, I call it.”

He fell to chuckling again and to pushing about the little bag with the tip of his forefinger like a cat playing with a mouse.

“Can you tell me what this little silk bag holds, Mr. Legatt?”

I had an idea of what it held. For his words had given me a clue. But he wanted to tell me, not to hear me guess correctly. So I merely shook my head. Michael D. Crowther was pleased. He looked at me tantalisingly.

“Not a notion, eh?”

“I can’t say that. I’ve got a notion.”

But Crowther did not propose to hear it. He interrupted me quickly:

“Well, I had better tell you at once and put you out of your misery, Mr. Legatt. This bag holds all the little bits of jewellery and ornament which I have given to Ma Shwe At during the last ten years.”

He looked at me for an exclamation. So I made it.

“Really?”

It was not very adequate, but then Michael D. Crowther’s generosity had not been very adequate either.

“Yes,” said he.

“And since there were dacoits busy in her neighbourhood Ma Shwe At gave them to you to keep safe for her?”

He sat back in his chair and his shoulders heaved with his merriment. It was a very dainty affair, that little bag, made from a piece of silk woven, no doubt, by Ma Shwe At herself, and then delicately embroidered with her name and fitted with a silk string to match; all so that it might make a fitting tabernacle to hold the gifts of her lover. It seemed to me shameful that after so many hours and so much loving care spent upon it, it should serve only for mocking laughter in the saloon of the Dagonet.

“Just made on purpose!” Crowther exclaimed. “Don’t that add to the joke!”

“Yes, I want to hear that joke,” said I.

Captain Crowther wiped his eyes.

“It’s a corker of a joke. A pound to a penny you’ll never guess it, quick as you are.”

“That’s very probable,” said I.

“Well, it’s this!” cried Crowther, and once more the humour of the situation overwhelmed him. “I’m never going back to Tagaung. I’ve resigned from the service. This is my last passage. I’m for home.”

The news did take me by surprise. I pushed my chair back.

“You’re going to England!”

“I am that, and by the first boat, sir. I’ve been here sixteen mortal years and I’ve got to run or I’ll never get away.” And I found myself looking at a stranger. The Crowther I knew had already run away. The triumph had gone from him. His laughter had died away. His arrogance had dwindled to a pin’s point. Behind the sham and the shoddy I suddenly touched something real and big—fear. Fear was bright in his eyes. His voice was uneasy. His shoulders took black care upon them and threw it off again and took it on again blacker than ever. I was never to forget the startling change in him.

“It turns my heart right over when I remember the young fellows I’ve seen come out to the East slappin’ their chests, going to found great business houses and make great fortunes, and in a few years the sun and the indolence and the ease have melted their bones to putty. Prisoners, Mr. Legatt! Prisoners of the sun!”

“Lots succeed,” I rejoined.

Crowther nodded his head gloomily.

“The to-and-fro people. The men who can go up into the hills. A few of the others too, extra hardwood men. But for the ruck and run of us—we’re the little grey flower Ouida used to write about. We flourish above the snow line. Look here!”

He took out of his breast pocket a short stubby nigger-black cheroot.

“Do you see that? A cheroot. A Watson Number One. Twenty for twopence. That’s the proper emblem of Burma—not a pagoda nor an elephant nor an image of Buddha nor a pretty-pretty girl in a silk skirt—but just this, a cheap, ugly, strong black cheroot. For why? Because once you’ve got the taste for it, the finest cigar out of Havana’ll be nothing to you but brown paper in a schoolboy’s pipe. This is what you’ll want. No, sir, I’m not going to wander up and down the Irrawaddy in the sunshine any more. I’m afraid. What with my commissions and my pay and a lucky speculation or two I’ve made a bit. Often there’s a tourist on board who’ll put you on to a good thing. So whilst Michael D. Crowther still remembers the flavour of a Havana, he’s going to quit the cheroot.”

He stopped, struck a match, lit his cheroot and inhaled deeply the smoke of it. I do not know what vague association of ideas made me ask idiotically:

“What does D. stand for?”

He looked at me blankly.

“Eh?”

“Michael D. Crowther,” I said, throwing all my weight on to the D. Upon my word, he didn’t know. His ignorance suddenly enlightened me. His over-emphasised American accent, his use of American colloquialisms, the Michael D. Crowther—they were all tokens of his enthusiasm for the great legend of American hustle. For myself, I have never been able to believe that when things had to be done the Americans are really much slippier than other races. People still make a song about it, but I have been to New York. You may see two gentlemen any morning hurrying along Fifth Avenue to keep an appointment. But it does not necessarily follow that they are so bolstered and crammed with business that they have not a moment to spare. It may just mean that they have been drinking a cocktail in the office. And I know no country where it takes longer to cash a cheque except France. However, Captain Michael D. Crowther was obsessed by the notion of an abnormally slick, swift race of men, whose methods he meant to transplant in London.

“I’m going to be a hundred per cent Englishman. Got me?” he said. “I’m going to be an outside broker. I am going to rattle up that old Stock Exchange in Throgmorton Street till it’s dizzy. See here, Mr. Legatt! When you read a fine notice of a company put on the market by Michael D. you come along to me and you’ll hit the sky. I’ve taken a liking to you.”

I could not respond in the same hearty spirit but I did my best, for I was grateful for the odd little glimpse he had given me of another man whom, as yet, I did not know at all.

“That’s very kind of you, Captain,” I returned. “But meanwhile, what of Ma Shwe At and Ma Sein?”

Captain Crowther stared at me.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re going to leave them in the lurch?”

“I bequeath them here and now to you,” he replied with a grin.

His anxieties had slipped off his shoulders. He was back again in all the enjoyment of his impish vulgarity. “But you must make your own presents. I can’t have you handing out mine as if you had paid for them, can I now? It wouldn’t be reasonable.”

He turned his eyes again to the little silk bag. He took it up and untied the strings and dipped his fingers into it as if it were a lucky bag at a bazaar. He brought out a filigree bracelet. “I bought that at Mandalay.” Then came a silver necklet. “I bought that cheap from a pedlar in Rangoon, so cheap that I reckon he stole it.” A pair of nadoungs of gold, the plugs with which the women ornament their ears, followed; then a jade pendant and an acorn of a deep red amber slung upon a gilt chain. “I bought those at Bhamo. Cost me a sovereign the lot.” He drew out an anklet next, then an elephant, that, too, carved from amber, with a dead fly in the middle of it, and finally, tiring of his examination, he emptied the bag on to the cloth. It was, after all, a trumpery collection of trinkets hardly worth stealing from a girl by a man who proposed to go home and upset Throgmorton Street. But Michael Crowther gloated over it, pushing the shining, tinkling little gifts of his about as if he had recovered the lost treasure of the Cocos Islands. Suddenly he bent forward. He made a wall about the heap with his hands. He sat with his mouth open and his eyes staring out of his head like the eyes of a fish.

“My Gawd!” he whispered.

Then he scattered the trinkets here, there and everywhere with a sweep of the palms, and sat back. Burning on the white cloth by itself lay a big sapphire. It was certainly, if not the most precious, the most lovely stone which I had ever seen. By some miracle of nature it was a perfect square; it was thick through; and in colour it was the deep bright blue of tropical seas. Crowther lifted it reverently, stood up and held it against the lamp swinging above the table. It was flawless. Crowther’s limited vocabulary of oaths held nothing which could cope with his amazement. He could only sit down again and stare, speechless.

“Well, one thing’s clear,” said I. “That’s not one of your presents to Ma Shwe At.”

Crowther looked at me as if he knew me for a born fool.

“I give her that! Why, Mr. Legatt, that stone’s worth money.” He pulled at his moustache for a moment. “It comes from one of the native workings up to Mogok, I’ll bet.” He jerked his thumb landwards. Sixty miles away on the far side of the mountain chain lay the great ruby mines, where sapphires, spinels, zircons and all sorts of minor gems were to be found amongst the rubies. As you drew near to the town on that undulating road through the forest where the monkeys played, you passed on this side and on that, native claims with their primitive equipments. But, nevertheless, every now and then some stone of real value was retrieved by those native equipments from the earth. “Yes, that’s where it comes from,” Captain Crowther repeated, and his face darkened. “Only, who gave it to her?” He thumped the table with his fist and added to the natural unpleasantness of his face another degree of unpleasantness. “Who gave a stone like that to Ma Shwe At? By gum, I’d like to know that!” And his voice descended to a whisper or rather a hiss between his closed teeth. “Jiminy, but I would!”

He sat, obviously trying to remember the people who might have made the gift, and brooding over their names like a man with a crime to be committed upon his mind. He shook his head in the end and made a statement which, coming from him, paralysed me by its stupendous simplicity.

“Anyway, these Burmese girls have no morals,” he said.

But his mood relaxed. He smacked his lips noisily. He had discovered a compensation for their deplorable deficiency, and he added:

“But I am bound to say they’re lousy with sex appeal.”

As soon as I had recovered my balance I remarked:

“The problem is, how are you going to return the sapphire to her?”

Michael D. had looked at me before as if I was a fool. He now recoiled from me as if I was a dangerous lunatic.

“But she give it to me!” he cried. “You were on the deck when I was on the shore. You saw her. She give it me with her own hands.”

I rose from my chair. I looked at him with dignity and cold disdain—or, to speak truly, with as much of both those manifestations as I could produce. It was the moment for one final annihilating phrase. Unfortunately Captain Crowther discovered it before I did.

“You’re spluttering, Mr. Legatt,” he said pleasantly.

I was, too. The man was just a common thief. But so many epithets were tumbling over one another in my mouth that not one of them would give right of way to the other. I stood and spluttered and was saved by a chirrup of voices from the beach.

The passengers were returning from their explorations. Captain Crowther hurriedly swept his trinkets together and dropped them back into the silk bag. He tore a scrap of linen from his napkin, wrapped the sapphire in it, and put that into the bag more carefully. Then he tied the pink strings tight about the mouth and back went the bag into his pocket. He went out of the saloon and in a moment or two I heard him giving a cheery welcome to his passengers as they climbed the companion from the lower deck to the porch. I had no further speech with him that night. After all, I argued, it was really no concern of mine whether he stole the sapphire or returned it to its owner. But my argument left me still uncomfortable and I did not sleep in my cabin until late.

Long before I awaked the next morning, the Dagonet was rumbling down the river to Mandalay. I was slow in coming to the breakfast-table, for I did not wish to meet Captain Crowther. But I need not have been at so much pains. He was long since perched beside the helmsman at the upper steering house, and though the water was low he never touched a sand-bank. We reached the big town before noon and I confess to some disappointment at Michael D.’s proficiency at his job. I should have liked him to have run plump on a sand-bank in midstream in full sight of all the water-side people and to have wriggled there helplessly like a butterfly with a pin through its body, an offence to his Company and a joke to the rest of the world. But he ran neatly up to the river port. It was crowded, steamer upon steamer moored to the bank and just one small space half-way down the line. I did not think that Crowther could possibly sidle into it without doing a lot of damage. But he did. He might have been commanding an ocean-going mail-boat with twin screws, so easily did he gentle his stern-wheel machine up to the bank. There she was moored, her bows almost touching the stern of the steamer ahead, and her stem almost touching the bows of the steamer abaft.

“Not so bad, Mr. Legatt,” said Crowther genially, as he descended to the porch. I was waiting for my baggage to be taken ashore. “Have a drink before you go?”

“I think not,” said I, towering frostily.

I caught a gleam of amusement in Crowther’s eye.

“I believe you’ve got a come-over against me, Mr. Legatt,” he said. “You think I’ve not treated that girl up the river as a gentleman should. You do indeed! I fancy you’ll appreciate me better when you have more experience of this country. But it’s clear you don’t appreciate me at all now and I have a real respect for you, Mr. Legatt. I want you to have the same for me.”

“That’s quite out of the question,” I returned, looking him in the eye.

Crowther poked his head forward very earnestly.

“No, Mr. Legatt, you’re wrong there. I can prove to you that you misjudge me.”

I laughed, scathingly I hoped.

“How?”

“This way.”

Crowther took the small silk bag from his side pocket and balanced it on the palm of his left hand. He made it dance a little so that the trinkets which it held tinkled.

“I’ll hand this bag over to you with all its contents, here and now, on condition that you with your own hands return it to Ma Shwe At at Tagaung.”

He was as impressive as a man working the confidence trick, but I was not to be taken in so easily. I shook my head.

“With all its contents—yes. But without the sapphire.”

Captain Crowther drew himself up. He was dignified, he was hurt that anyone should hold so low an opinion of his probity. With the neatness of a conjuror demonstrating that there was no trickery in his magic, he untied with his right hand the string of the bag and opened the mouth.

“Please, see for yourself, Mr. Legatt.”

“I don’t wish to.”

“You accuse me. I ask you to be fair.”

I had let myself in for this test. I did not see what else I could do but obey him. I shrugged my shoulders and dipped my fingers into the bag. The first thing which I pulled out was a stone wrapped in a strip of linen.

“Will you open the wrapping and make sure that I haven’t tricked you?”

I had not a doubt now that it was the sapphire which I held. The stone was square, about the right thickness and the right size. Yet I felt that I had been tricked—tricked into making a fool of myself. I dropped the stone back into the bag.

“That’s all right,” I said reluctantly, and still more reluctantly: “I am sorry.”

“Now will you take it back to Tagaung?”

“I will not,” I cried.

I was angry. I was on my way home. I had a few days’ work waiting for me in the office at Rangoon which I must complete before I started.

“I’ll have nothing to do with it,” I added.

“One day and one night upstream,” said he.

“Your affairs are no concern of mine, Captain Crowther.”

Captain Crowther appeared to be perplexed. He tilted his cap back with his right hand and scratched his forehead.

“Yet you seemed to take a very definite interest in them, Mr. Legatt. Come! Oblige me!”

He was still holding the little bag balanced on his outstretched palm. I could not help wondering what would happen if I then and there took it and agreed to return it. It was possible that Crowther had thought over his conduct during the night and come to a more honest mind. I might be wrong and hasty in my judgement. He had already surprised me once by his fear of this easy and indolent country. Why not a second time? I was tempted. I could not, however, sail upstream until to-morrow. It would take me a day and a night to reach Tagaung, and there I should have to wait perhaps the best part of a week for a steamer to bring me back again. No, certainly not! Besides, though I seemed to recognise a sign of grace in this proposal of Captain Crowther’s, I wished that no link of any kind should bind us together. I thrust my hands into my pockets.

“You’ve a surer way to return those ornaments.”

“How?” Crowther asked earnestly.

“By handing them to your First Officer.” I remembered the smile with which the First Officer had heard my remark to Crowther that I supposed that he was meaning to tie up at Tagaung for the night. “He’ll recognise Ma Shwe At, and I shouldn’t. Give the bag to him.”

“With that fine sapphire in it? Not on your life, Mr. Legatt.”

“Seal up the bag then and trust it to one of your brother captains.”

“To no one but you, Mr. Legatt. I don’t want the whole world to think me dippy just as I’m stepping off on a new career. It’s up to you or up to no one.”

He shook the bag again at me till the ornaments inside of it clinked and tinkled. Then with a sigh of resignation he dropped it again into his pocket.

“Here’s to-day’s good deed sticking out a yard and we’re both of us turning our backs upon it. You were in such a taking last night, Mr. Legatt, that I felt sure you’d oblige me this morning. However, I can’t say I’m sorry,” and he suddenly burst into a laugh and made a gutter-boy’s grimace at me. My word, he had been laughing at me the whole time! He had seen my baggage being taken on shore and carried up the beach. He was confident that I would never turn round and go back to Tagaung.

“Captain Crowther,” I said, “I think that you are the most detestable person I have ever met.”

“Well, you do surprise me,” replied Captain Crowther.

It was odd, but it was true. I must suppose that he expected me to take him for a humorist. He was not speaking with any sarcasm. He really was surprised.