by Bridge, Ann;
‘Why, that certainly adds to the sense of their antiquity,’ said Miss Hande, turning to him with a startled gleam behind her lorgnette, as happened when a new idea struck her.
‘I suppose that’s why they used coal before anyone else did,’ said Judith, with the thoughtless inanity which overtakes us all sometimes, when most of our mind is concentrated on something else.
‘Do you suggest that they were there when it was laid down, and never forgot the place?’ said Vinstead, eyeing her with benevolent amusement.
Judith blushed furiously then, conscious, too late, of her folly. But the party wandered on to the shrine of Kwan-yin, and stared in the dim light at the portrait of Miao Yen, the daughter of Kublai Khan, who left the pleasure domes of Xanadu to become a nun at T’an Chüeh Ssu, worshipping, with shaven head, night and day at the shrine of the Goddess of Mercy. One or two priests came and talked to them, standing restrained and still, their delicate hands tucked into their wide grey sleeves, their discreet eyes gravely scanning the strangers; but they saw no other Europeans.
At 12.30 – Vinstead remembered the time because Derek looked at his watch and said they would have to wait for lunch – the heat and glare off the white pavements decided them to return to their pavilion. Vinstead fell a little behind with Laura on the way and inquired how Judith and Derek were getting on.
‘Being rather sensible, I think,’ Laura replied. ‘They’re thrashing it all out. It troubles her rather.’
‘His past?’
‘Yes, and his present.’ They both laughed.
‘She doesn’t approve of the theory of sowing one’s wild oats before marriage, then?’ said Vinstead.
‘It’s more that she mistrusts it, I think. She doubts whether the dog Sex, even after being given such a prodigious run in the garden beforehand, will settle down quietly in his kennel forever afterwards.’
‘A very prudent doubt. And does he think it will?’
‘Oh, Derek’s too feckless to think sensibly of the future at all. So far he’s entirely taken up with the novelty of his own sensations. If he’s ever been seriously in love before it’s so long ago that he’s forgotten about it. What engrosses him at the moment is really the discovery that someone else has the power to cause him pain.’
Her words gave Vinstead a sharp small prick. Actually that was really, he realised, what had been engrossing him for the last twelve hours. And it had taken away the completeness of his ease and freedom in discussing with Mrs Leroy the amusing peculiarities of sex. With a certain stubbornness he forced himself to go on, nevertheless.
‘It’s idle to suppose that anyone can take out an all-risks insurance policy against emotion by any means whatever,’ he said, with a curious bitter pleasure in the personal truth of his words. ‘The dog Sex, as you call it, is a long-lived animal, and a wild one.’
‘With a tendency to bark at a stranger’s step,’ said Mrs Leroy merrily.
Vinstead winced, and glanced at her. No, she was quite unaware, but for some reason the words hurt him, almost as if she had been addressing them to him with full knowledge of his state. Involuntarily, in his sudden pain, half-forgotten phrases floated to the surface of his mind. ‘Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams’ – where had he heard that? ‘A careless stranger, him with reckless words to waken.’ That was from the song last night, and he had struggled at the time against the thought that she, the stranger, should awaken the sleeper hidden in his heart. With a sudden movement of resentment at her gaiety, her unawareness, he looked at her walking beside him, in her shorts and shirt – the length and strength of her body, the ease of her movements, her face as usual with a faraway expression; and with something of his former stubbornness mingling with his irritation he repeated the lines aloud:
Come you not, a careless stranger,
Him with reckless words to waken.
She turned towards him, then, with a look of amused inquiry, clearly pondering the precise apropos of the quotation – one of the things he had so liked in her was the way she visibly took up a remark, turned it over and examined it, before replying. But now he saw her face change, and a startled look come for a fleeting second into her eyes. Something in his tone, something in his face, had struck her. She half paused – but they were already within a dozen yards of the island pavilion, and Derek called out to her, ‘Laura, can’t you ginger up the lunch a little?’
She went forward then, sat down at the table under the cupola, and called, ‘Lai!’ Niu fluttered out from some building close by. ‘K’ai fan!’ (Open the rice!) said Laura – the phrase always used when ordering a meal to be served. Niu vanished, and they sat about the table, waiting.
From where they sat they could look down, past a green octagonal roof and the tops of a lesser pair of ginkgo trees, into one of the great courtyards below, which had a large isolated shrine standing like an island in the middle of it, the back towards them; beyond the shrine, in the further corner, a little dark bolt-hole of a passage led away out of sight. The main entrance into the court was hidden from them by the shrine itself; its huge bulk, shadowed by the immense eaves, stood dark and almost colourless under the blazing flood of the noonday light. As they sat looking idly down into this courtyard, sipping their cocktails, they saw a curious thing. A couple of priests emerged from the little dark passage, stood for a moment in the shadow, looking right and left, and then ran like hares across the open space to the back of the great shrine. One of them pulled out a large key and opened a small door in the lattice; and then both nipped in with the alacrity of frightened animals. Bonzes usually move with the utmost slowness and dignity, and it was astonishing, and somehow sinister, to see these two men run – they were so far off that their slippered feet made no sound, and the watchers had a curious impression of looking on at the silent drama in a shadow show, set on some strange architectural stage, as they saw the doll-like grey figures dart from shade into light, and then into shade again, and disappear, minute specks, into the great shrine.
‘What the devil are they up to?’ said Derek, his eyeglass fixed on the door. ‘Can they be thieves?’
‘They’re frightened men, whoever they are,’ said Vinstead, who had also observed the small scene.
For some moments past a vague noise of commotion and shouting had been audible from somewhere far below, in the direction of the monastery entrance; but, watching the scene in the courtyard, none of the party paid any attention to it. They continued to watch the shrine. A sound of banging, and dull clangings as of the shooting of bolts, came up to their ears. Then the little door opened again, and the two priests peeped cautiously out. Seeing no one, they swiftly locked the door. Still with hurried sideways glances, the one who held the key ran along in the shadow of the shrine for some distance, darted across the open to one of the small goldfish pools which ornamented the court, and stooping down, slipped the key into the water. Then he ran back to his companion, and together, still in complete silence, they scuttled back across the blazing pavement, darted like rabbits into the little passage, and disappeared.
‘Why, I believe they have been locking it up! Now why in the world would they do that?’ asked Miss Hande, turning as usual to Laura for information.
Before she could answer, ‘Hullo! Listen!’ said Derek.
A sharp dry crack, like the crack of a whip, broke lightly across the hot sun-washed air that filled the temple courts – and then another, and another. Snap, snap, snap – rather like someone breaking tough sticks for firewood. Such a little harmless sound across the blazing afternoon; to Judith, Lilah and Miss Hande it conveyed nothing at all. But the two men looked at one another with faces positively luminous with a common intelligence. Involuntarily Vinstead glanced quickly at Mrs Leroy. Snap, snap – two more whips were cracked across the glittering roofs, away down by the gate.
‘Those damned T’ao-pings!’ she said, rather resentfully.
‘Why, what is it?’ Judith asked.
As if in answer, a loud and ter
rible screaming rang up for a moment from below, and as suddenly fell silent.
‘It’s rifle fire,’ said Mrs Leroy.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
OUT TO THE island pavilion Niu came slippering in his white coat. His pale-green skin was paler and greener than ever; his teeth chattered as he addressed his mistress, gesticulating and pointing first downwards in the direction of the gate, and then up towards the hill behind them.
‘What does he say?’ asked Derek and Vinstead together.
‘He wants us to go, by the upper gate. He says there are lots of bandits, and that they’ve shot two monks already down by the entrance.’
‘I bet he’s exaggerating,’ said Derek. ‘Niu’s a frightful old funk stick. Remember him on that trip in the hills, when Touchy christened him Aeolus because he got the wind up so often? They won’t touch us. I think we’d much better have lunch first, anyhow.’
‘I rather think so too,’ said Laura. ‘But, Derek, we’d better see about the donkeys. If the T’ao-pings do get in they’ll almost certainly collar them.’
‘Yes, that’s true. What a damned nuisance they are!’ grumbled Derek. ‘Well, tell him to send that chap of Nina’s down to bring the mokes up here; he’ll be too frightened to go himself.’
‘I’ll tell him myself,’ said Laura. She spoke to Niu, who presently reappeared with a fat jolly-faced house coolie in blue clothes. Laura told him in Chinese to go down and find the donkeys, and bring them up to the pavilion. He bowed over his clasped hands and went. ‘K’ai fan!’ (Open the rice!) said Laura to Niu again.
Miss Hande put up her lorgnette now, and gazed at her deputy hostess. ‘Do you really consider it prudent to remain here, if the temple is just full of bandits?’ she inquired, with her usual flat mildness.
‘Oh, I think so,’ replied Mrs Leroy, beginning to drink the soup which Niu brought in little cups. ‘They very rarely bother Europeans. It would be the most extraordinary bad luck if they were to interfere with us.’
‘You and the Professor are due for some bad joss,’ observed Lilah casually.
Vinstead frowned at this inopportune remark, and the soup was consumed in a rather uneasy silence. The knowledge that men were shooting to kill within a few hundred yards of him produced in the Professor that particular stimulus to the nervous system which is usual to civilised man in such circumstances. He could not judge, stranger as he was, what was the proper course to take. Given the presence of that most inconvenient adjunct to trouble known to Englishmen as ‘women in the party’, his normal instinct would have been to get away, as far and as fast as possible. But he might well be mistaken. What he could judge of to some extent was the attitude of those who were taking the decision. And he was clear of this – Mrs Leroy and Derek might be careless, but they were sincere. Vinstead had been through the war on three fronts, and he was familiar with fear, and with every form of bravado which men used to mask fear. And he recognised that these two people, if they were being criminally casual, were at least being so in good faith, with the simplicity of those to whom wars and rumours of wars have become such a commonplace as to cause no particular excitement.
They finished their soup, but there was no sign of the donkeys. ‘What a time he is! I hope nothing’s happened to him,’ said Laura presently, rather anxiously.
‘Well, let’s have the next course, anyhow,’ said Derek. ‘Lai!’ he called loudly.
No one came.
‘Lai!’ be bellowed again. Still no one either came or answered. ‘Damn them! What are they up to? I’ll go and see,’ he said, jumping up.
He reappeared in a couple of minutes looking a good deal disturbed.
‘They’ve gone!’ he said.
‘What, the servants? Oh, nonsense, Derek – you can’t have found the right place.’
‘Yes, I did – they’d left this,’ he held out a little saucer which Laura recognised as belonging to Nina’s coffee set. ‘But they’ve done a clean bunk with everything else.’
‘Goodness! How monstrous of Niu,’ said Mrs Leroy.
‘Might we not perhaps go ourselves?’ suggested Vinstead, ‘since we can’t have any more lunch.’
‘We must wait till Nina’s chap – what’s-his-name – who went for the donkeys, comes back,’ said Derek.
‘We can’t very well leave him behind, and besides, we want the beasts.’
‘The servants may have met him and taken him along, mayn’t they?’ said Lilah, lighting a cigarette.
‘Yes, they may – but then we don’t know,’ said Derek impatiently.
They decided to wait a few more minutes, and waited, now in considerable discomfort. Nothing is more trying than uncertainty as to the right thing to do, in a position of possible danger; the suspense and inaction weigh on the spirits, and apply nettle stings to the nerves. Miss Hande, after her one protest, sat silent, gazing about her; Lilah smoked, and Vinstead also lit a cigarette; Judith, declaring – ‘This is rather fun’, went over to a balustrade and stared down into the court below.
‘Which way would he come up with the donkeys?’ she called.
‘Oh, a hundred ways!’ said Derek irritably, ‘these places are perfect rabbit warrens,’ and then turned back to discussing with Laura the way out by the upper gate. ‘Do you know how one gets to it?’ he asked.
‘Yes – you go down on to that long narrow terrace just below here, and along it, and then through a few more small courts, up into the corner. It’s almost in the same position as we are, but the opposite side of the temple.’
‘There’s no other way out, is there?’
‘Not that I ever heard of.’
‘And what do you come out to?’
‘The track over from the temple of the Jade Emperor. But I think there’s a small side track that brings you down towards Men-t’ou-kou. I’ve never actually been along it. Henry showed the start of it to me once.’
‘Look – oh, look!’
Judith’s voice, on a soft breath of excitement, made them turn their eyes where she pointed.
Down in the courtyard, which since the departure of the two priests had lain empty except for the black shadows on the pale pavement – empty, and perfectly still, with a complete architectural stillness which gardens never know – there was a movement. A little black shadow, like that of a monkey with a cap and stick, was suddenly projected round the corner of the great shrine, silently. Then a small figure, rather monkey-like in grey uniform, followed his shadow round the shrine – a soldier with a rifle. Two followed him, and then three more. They stood a moment or two, uncertainly, and then with the purposeless inquisitiveness of monkeys they scattered over the court, poking and peering here and there. They spat into the goldfish ponds, and rattled the lock of the door in the shrine. Gathered there, in the shadow, they were out of sight of the exit from the little dark passage by which the two priests had come and gone – and a lay brother who now emerged from it did not see them. He had some object clasped to his blue bosom, and peering out, started to run swiftly up the side of the court. As he came abreast of the shrine, he saw the soldiers and they saw him, at the same moment. He turned back, scuttling for his life towards the passage, but they were too quick for him. A pack of grey monkeys, with the high if awkward turn of speed of apes, they streamed across the court, and intercepted him just as he reached the bolt-hole. One of them made a grab at the thing he held clasped to his chest; the monk resisted, protesting; clutched it more desperately than ever. Grinning and jabbering, they scuffled with him; one of them inserted a rifle butt under his left arm, and while the others held him, prised it free of his body and twisted it cruelly. The monk writhed and screamed, and at last, suddenly, let the object go. A porcelain vase, it fell with a crash on the pavement – the bright splinters flew in all directions. The soldiers pounced with insane acquisitiveness on the fragments, handled them, and then tossed them aside. Defrauded of their booty, a gust of senseless fury seemed to overtake the group. Before the sickened eyes of the onlookers, one
snatched up the rifle which he had used before, and while two more held his victim by the arms, he plunged the bayonet into his body – once, twice, a third time. The blue figure turned limp, and sank down between the hands of his tormentors – they loosed their hold, and it rolled over, with a horrible boneless collapse, on to the pavement, among the shards of the broken vase. A dark patch appeared beside it, under the pitiless light, spreading over the flagstones. But the soldiers were now bored – casually they kicked the corpse, and then turned to seek fresh amusement elsewhere – chattering and grinning, they entered the little passage and disappeared.
When modern civilised people see such a thing take place in front of them, it has a curiously paralysing effect. Judith and Miss Hande each made a little moaning sound, surprisingly alike – but except for that, for some moments the whole party remained quite still, staring down at the courtyard, empty again now save for the two patches on the pavement – the shapeless blue one and the darker one which spread and spread, slowly, over the paving stones. In the glaring heat they felt chilly, and a little sick. Vinstead was the first to throw off the numbness of the shock.
‘I suggest that we go, now,’ he said – rather temperately, in the circumstances, he thought. ‘Can we do any good by waiting?’
‘No,’ said Laura decidedly. ‘Now that they’ve got inside, the coolie will never get the donkeys up here. They’ve very likely been pinched already. We’d better go at once.’ As she spoke she took off her pearls and slipped them into her pocket. ‘You’d better take off your brooches and things,’ she said to Miss Hande and Lilah.
‘Why?’ asked Miss Hande.
‘Because they might tempt the T’ao-pings, if we meet any. They covet what they see, like magpies.’
Action of any sort was a relief after that silent paralysis.
‘Where shall I put these?’ asked Lilah, who ran rather to jewellery and was encumbered with pearl-and-coral chains and long fringed earrings to match.