Читать книгу Stolen Idols - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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“Well,” Claire exclaimed, laughing at Gregory Ballaston across the table, “how have you enjoyed your dinner?”

“Immensely,” he answered, with enthusiasm.

“Have you ever dined more strangely?”

“I don’t think I have,” he confessed. “It was most frightfully kind of your uncle to ask me. I was never so surprised in my life.”

“Nor I,” she admitted candidly. “To tell you the truth, when we all came together in the warehouse this afternoon, it seemed to me from his manner that you were not particularly good friends, and I was afraid he was going to hurry me off without a word. Then your intense curiosity to have another look at that Image——”

“Entirely assumed,” he interrupted. “I wanted a chance to be introduced to you.”

“Of course that wasn’t in the least obvious,” she laughed. “Anyhow, even then I never dreamed of this. It was just when you were going that he asked your name again and seemed so interested. Do you realise that he must know something about you or your family?”

“I wondered,” Gregory admitted.

She glanced at the door through which her uncle had disappeared in search of cigarettes.

“Anyhow,” she continued, “it is delightful to think that you are going to be a fellow passenger on the Kalatat. Don’t you sympathise with me for being rather glad to get away from here?”

He looked around at the almost empty room, at the comfortless linoleum upon the floor, the Chinese servants, moving like ghosts about the table, at the cane-bottomed chairs, the few articles of cheap furniture. It was an amazing environment.

“Your uncle,” he remarked, a little hesitatingly, “apart from his household surroundings, seems to be a man of great taste.”

“He has wonderful knowledge,” she said, “and a wonderful sense of beauty, but he lives absolutely within himself. I am perfectly certain he doesn’t know that he has eaten curried chicken and rice every night for a week. Why, if I hadn’t thought of it, we’d have had nothing but water for dinner.”

“You’re a good Samaritan,” he murmured.

“Come and sit outside,” she invited. “The verandah is the only possible place here. We’re a great deal too near the rest of the houses, but the city looks almost beautiful now the lights are out, and the harbour is wonderful. The chairs, as you will discover, are horrible, and there isn’t a cushion in the place.”

“Tell me about yourself,” he begged, when they were established, “and why you came here.”

“You see,” she confided, “Mr. Endacott’s brother, my father, was a professor at Harvard. He died when I was eleven years old and my mother died a year afterwards. I was sent to boarding school in Boston and New York. When I was nineteen I was to be sent either to an aunt in England or to my uncle here. My aunt in England lives at a place which reminds me of your name—Market Ballaston, it is called.”

He looked at her in astonishment.

“Why, that is where I live!” he exclaimed. “Tell me your aunt’s name?”

“De Fourgenet,” she replied. “She married a Frenchman, the Comte de Fourgenet.”

“Good God! Madame!”

“Madame?”

“That is what we call your aunt in the neighbourhood,” he explained. “She is my father’s greatest friend. You know, of course, that she is an invalid.”

“I have heard so,” the girl admitted. “A motor accident, wasn’t it?... Uncle,” she went on, as he stepped through the window, “do you realise that Mr. Ballaston knows Aunt Angèle?”

“I imagined that he might,” Mr. Endacott acknowledged, a little drily. “It was not until I heard your name for the second time,” he continued, turning to the younger man, “that I realised who you must be.”

“It is a very small world,” Gregory Ballaston remarked tritely, as he accepted one of the cigars which Mr. Endacott was offering.

“Geographically it has contracted for me during the last twenty-five years into a radius of a few miles round the city here,” Mr. Endacott confided. “To come back into the world again at my time of life will seem strange.”

“But you won’t really mind it,” the girl assured him. “You will find a country house not too far from Aunt Angèle, you will have all your manuscripts, your books, your treasures round you. It is true, isn’t it, that you sit in your little office every day without stirring? Why, you can do the same thing in England as here. And then, there must be some of your old Oxford friends who would like to see you.”

Mr. Endacott smiled thinly.

“Thirty years,” he reminded her, “is a long way to look back. To pick up the threads, the friendships dropped more than a quarter of a century ago, is not easy. At the same time,” he went on, “it is right that I should return to England. It marches well with affairs here.”

“You must have found the life out in these parts very interesting, sir,” Gregory Ballaston remarked. “I don’t know whether it would get monotonous to you, but to any one coming upon it suddenly it is an amazing corner of the world. Off the ship, I have only seen three Europeans since I have been here.”

“It is for that reason,” Mr. Endacott pointed out, “an unsuitable place for my niece. My establishment here, too, is impossible. No European woman could keep house under the prevailing conditions. That is why I am hurrying my niece off, although I myself shall follow before long.”

“My father will be interested to see you again,” Gregory ventured.

“Your father, if his tastes had lain that way,” Mr. Endacott ruminated, “might have been a brilliant scholar. He preferred sport and life. We met, not so many years ago, in Pekin. He was dabbling in diplomacy then. He certainly had the gifts for it. He was, in fact, the most popular Englishman who ever appeared at the Court there. He was received and granted privileges where I could never follow him. He was, I suppose, your instigator in this buccaneering expedition of yours.”

The young man laughed a little uneasily. There had been a vein of contempt in the other’s tone.

“I suppose it must have seemed a horrible piece of vandalism to you, sir,” he remarked. “However, there it is. The adventure appealed to me and we wanted the money badly enough.”

His host looked out across the harbour at the swaying lanterns of the small boats and beyond to the great lighthouse.

“Money!” he repeated. “The password of the West. Somehow I never thought I should return to it.”

“Money counts for something out here, too,” Gregory protested. “Look at your friend and partner, Wu Ling, trading up the river with machine guns and rifles to protect himself. For what? To make money. He’s doing it for Johnson and Company. You’re one of the firm, Mr. Endacott.”

The latter nodded.

“Touché,” he admitted. “But let me point out to you, young gentleman, that the things Wu Ling brings back to our warehouses are things of beauty.”

“Which he pays for with rubbish,” Gregory rejoined. “Half of your warehouse is an abomination; the other half, I admit, a treasure house.”

Mr. Endacott gently inclined his head.

“I cannot defend myself,” he acknowledged. “I am a partner in the firm because they insisted. All my savings for twenty years, which I advanced to them, were, they tell me, the foundation from which the business has been built up. But, believe me, I have never seen inside a ledger. Once every twelve months, a strange little man brings me a slip of paper. I look at it, and the business for the year is finished.”

“It is perhaps as well,” Gregory observed, “that your associates are probably honest. Wu Ling, for instance.”

“Wu Ling is an amazing person,” Mr. Endacott pronounced.

“Is he altogether Chinese?” Gregory enquired. “There have been times when he has puzzled me.”

“No one but Wu Ling knows who Wu Ling is or where he comes from,” was the enigmatic reply. “He is a power unto himself.”

“He saved my life,” Gregory remarked, “but I don’t think that he approves of me.”

“Tell me, Mr. Ballaston,” the girl asked, “have you looked at your Image yet, the one you have on the ship?”

“Not yet.”

Mr. Endacott turned his head. He was seated on the most uncomfortable of the three uncomfortable cane chairs; a stiff, unbending figure. His eyes were turned speculatively upon his visitor.

“If there be any truth in the legend,” he advised, “you will do well to leave it in its case.”

Gregory was doubtful.

“I rather wanted to examine it,” he admitted. “The part of the legend which interests me most is the part which has to do with the jewels.”

“Naturally,” Mr. Endacott agreed, with unconcealed sarcasm. “Yet, in the story of the fashioning of the Images, there has been nothing more vehement than the warning issued by the High Priest in whose day it was done. Here, he pointed out, by the great art of the sculptor, the Body and Soul were torn apart. All that was good and virtuous and that made towards the beautiful in life was carven into the Image which our friend Wu Ling seems to have purchased from the robber. All that was debased and evil and which prompted towards sin was graven into the features of the one which you possess. Together, side by side, they were supposed to make up the sum of humanity—the good and the evil balancing. Side by side, they might be looked at without evil effect; they might inspire thought—reflection of the highest order. There were indications there of what to avoid, what passions to fight against; indications there, too, of what a man’s aim should be, how to uplift oneself above sin and how to climb always in one’s thoughts towards the spiritual.”

They both listened, fascinated, to Mr. Endacott’s thin, reedy voice; his still words, spoken without emphasis or enthusiasm, as they might have been spoken to a class of student philosophers. It was the girl who first ventured upon a question.

“But, Uncle,” she demanded, “you don’t seriously believe that to live with either of these statues without the other could really affect any one’s character?”

“So runs the legend,” was the quiet, almost solemn reply. “So it is written in one of the manuscripts recording their history. The superstition, if it be a superstition, has at least a logical basis. An environment of beauty and spirituality tends towards holiness; an environment of bestiality must, on the other hand, in time debase. Before these Images were fashioned, the philosophers of past ages used their symbolism for a text, ‘If thou wouldst be holy, live with holy and spiritual things. If thou wouldst avoid sin, turn thy back upon the presentment of evil’.”

“But you don’t really suppose, sir,” Gregory ventured, “although, of course, the idea is beautiful, that there is anything supernatural in the influence which those Images might bring to bear upon any one’s life?”

“My dear young man,” Mr. Endacott expounded, “I do not even know what empires of thought the word supernatural covers. I have pointed out the logical basis for such a teaching. That is all. We are in a world here where one does not lightly reject superstitions. In the West there exists a great world reared to the gods of materialism, unwarmed with the flame of spirituality; the world of gold and stone and huge banking accounts, and prosperous cities, and hurrying, hastening lives. The Western brain holds no corner for superstitions, but casts them scornfully away. Live here for twenty years and you find the brain more elastic, its cells more receptive, even its philosophy less inevitably based upon the fundamental but dry-as-dust mathematical principles. Keep your Image in its packing case, Mr. Gregory Ballaston. It will be time enough when you get home to search for the jewels.”

The ’rickshaw which Gregory had ordered came lumbering up the hill. He rose with reluctance. Even in her stiff, uncomfortable chair, there was something very attractive about Claire, as she lay with her hands clasped behind her head, the light of a lantern upon her suddenly thoughtful face. He reflected, however, with a little thrill of pleasure, that for six weeks she would be more or less his companion.

“If we don’t meet again before I sail, sir,” he begged, turning towards his host, “let me thank you for your hospitality. It will be a great pleasure to see you and your niece in Norfolk.”

“This must be our farewell for the present, at any rate,” Mr. Endacott said, as he shook hands. “My niece is going on board early to-morrow morning, as I myself have a meeting to attend in the afternoon. My respects to your father. We shall meet without a doubt in England.”

“And we,” Gregory added, in a lower tone, as he bent over his young hostess’ fingers, “shall meet before then.”

She looked up at him, smiling. They were young and he was very good-looking. Nevertheless she was American-trained, and it was in a spirit of frank comradeship that she replied.

“I know that we shall have a lovely time on the voyage. Until to-morrow, then!”

Gregory Ballaston was carried down the rough road, past the tangle of high modern buildings—rabbit warrens of humanity—past the plastered and wooden structures of older days, with their curved roofs and narrow windows, through the confused streets which at every step became more thronged, towards the harbour, taking very little note of his progress, his thoughts engrossed, his mind fixed upon one problem. Already the memory of that strange meal, amidst surroundings so sordid that even the girl’s presence had been unable to modify them, was becoming overshadowed. His late host’s cold words of advice seemed to have made not the slightest impression upon him. He thought of the small packing case in the purser’s office with almost feverish impatience, joyful of the permission to sleep on board for the night, anxious only for the moment when he should reach the quay. Somehow or other Endacott’s serious, stilted talk had immensely confirmed his belief in the existence of the jewels, and as for the rest—the warning he had received—this, in all probability, simply proceeded from the vapourings of a mind steeped in Orientalism, the mind of a scholar, removed for half a lifetime from the whole world of common sense and possibilities. Morally, he was as other young men. He would have scorned to cheat or lie; he had an inherited sense of honour and a sportsman’s probity. A mean action would have revolted him—he was capable of a great one. He was a little selfish, a little narrow in his pride of name and race, as courageous as any man might be, with the undoubted conceit of his class. Such as he was, he had no fear of change. He had never indulged in self-analysis. He accepted himself for what he was, which, on the whole, was something a little better than the average. He had no presentiment of even temporary ill-fortune, as he stepped into the ship’s boat waiting by the quay, and looked eagerly across the harbour to where the great steamer lay anchored with her blazing line of lights.