“Our monks travel far,” he said, “and they hear much, and they carry their tidings to other monasteries. Wherever you go you will find eyes and ears and tongues which will aid you. Use them so that you may come back to us the sooner.”
Michael turned to the old American with a smile.
“I thank you,” he said; and he strode through the gateway of the stockade and was gone.
Chapter 9 On Adam’s Peak
I HAVE DESCRIBED the rape of the sapphire in its order of time, although I only heard of it later, and of the perils and terrors which beset the robbers later still. But its proper place in the story is, I think, where I have put it. For in that way only a few circumstances in which at the time I saw no danger can carry their true meaning. In a sentence, I believed Ma Shwe At’s anklets and Ma Sein’s filigree bracelet and the sapphire still to be decorating the empty air two hundred feet above the earth; and my business finished, I returned to Rangoon on the date arranged under that belief.
I had left myself a clear month to do with as I chose. I could shudder over the un après at Monte Carlo, or simply luxuriate in Paris. I did neither of these things. It was clear to me that many years must pass before I could again find myself eastward of the Gulf of Aden, and I determined to realise a dream which on every voyage had beset me, whilst I still had the strength and zest for such adventures. I sailed for Ceylon. I spent a couple of days at the Galle Face outside Colombo, made my arrangements, hired a car and rode inland to Hatton in Dickoya, the little capital of the tea district. There a great wonder awaited me. I booked my room at the hotel and had hardly moved a couple of yards from the door when a clear, rather high voice suddenly called out on a note of welcome and surprise:
“Darling!”
I knew the voice. A snake couldn’t have turned quicker than I did towards it. There, on the opposite side of the road, her arms stretched wide apart, stood Imogen Cloud, her face one adorable smile. All Imogen’s friends were darlings, and I, alas! no more so than any other.
“Imogen!”
I ran across to her, took her hands and laughed. “This is the world’s birthday. Let me look at you!” — and I held her away from me.
Imogen Cloud was always amusing to look at. In London, some queer little tip-tilted hat or another trickery of the fashion tickled one pleasantly. Here it was something else. The sun was low and Imogen wore no hat. The glossy ripple of her golden, shingled head and the vermilion of her lips were deliciously at odds with her small sun-browned face.
“Martin!” she cried. “What are you doing here?”
“What you are, I hope,” I answered. “I am going up Adam’s Peak to-morrow.”
It was indeed that mountain, seen so often from the deck of a steamer afar and apart in the light of an evening sky, which had brought me to Ceylon. I had read all the descriptions of it upon which I could lay my hands. I was well grounded in its romantic and immemorial associations. It had become important to me. But I had never dreamed how real that importance was to become, or what unforgettable associations of my own I was now to add to those which history recorded in the books.
“Lovely!” said Imogen. “So are we.”
She slipped her arm through mine and took possession of me. How many friends of hers — again, alas! — had I seen swell with pride at the flattery of this annexation! Also, she danced up and down a little as lightly as the eight-year-old Miss Diamond in the sandy square of Tagaung.
“Yes,” she said. “I am here with Pamela Brayburn. We ran away from the fogs together.” Pamela Brayburn was a girl of Imogen’s age, twenty-two or thereabouts. They were both among the livelier spirits of the day: Imogen, the daughter of a West Country squire who had put his money into ships in the great age of shipping and had retired in time to keep it, and Pamela Brayburn, her cousin and the child of a famous judge.
“We shall start at midnight,” said Imogen.
“And go to bed at nine,” I added.
“Carefully putting on our bed-socks first,” said she.
We were standing in the road outside the door of the hotel. I have a vague recollection now that I did see someone, a native of the island perhaps, a man of the East, anyway, slip by us from the direction of the servants’ quarters. I was hardly aware of him, or indeed of anyone except Imogen. But the next moment my attention was attracted, as any small familiar thing happening in an unfamiliar place will attract it whether it’s my attention or another’s. I heard some words spoken behind me, and I spun round on my heel. The words meant nothing at all to me. They were as commonplace as words could be.
“Muhammed is already at Ratnapura.”
That was all. Ratnapura had a sound of Ceylon even to one who had disembarked at Colombo only three days before. But I had never seen the place, and the name of Muhammed, of course, east of Cape Spartel was as one grain of sand in a Sahara. But the words were spoken in Talaing, the language of the old kingdom of Pegu, still the vernacular of a quarter of a million people in Lower Burma. We were after all four days’ steaming from Rangoon. It seemed odd that I should hear this tongue immediately in this upland town of Dickoya. I only saw the backs of two men, however. They were moving away, but one of them was reading a telegram — a telegram, no doubt, from one Muhammed who had arrived at Ratnapura.
“Do you know those men?” Imogen asked curiously.
“No. But they are from Burma.”
Then an explanation of their presence occurred to me.
“The guide-books tell us that Hatton is the headquarters of the tea district. There are likely to be a good many coolies of all races here from the plantations.”
“I don’t think they are coolies,” said Imogen. “They are more probably pilgrims for the Peak.”
“Why?” I asked, only interested because Imogen was too.
“I rather think that I saw them in Kandy,” said she.
There is a mark on the flat summit of the mountain which vaguely resembles the imprint of a giant’s foot. Who first discovered it, no one knows. But the Buddhists claim it for a footstep of Gautama, the Hindus hold that Siva passed that way, the Mohammedans say quite simply that Adam made it. Thus eight hundred million Eastern men venerate Adam’s Peak for one of three reasons and send their annual contingents to watch the dawn break upon that high shrine. It was very likely that the two Burmans were bound upon the same journey as ourselves.
“Of course, that’s it!” I agreed. “Why were you curious about them?”
“I was thinking that we shall want a man or two, shan’t we?” Imogen replied. “I’m told that before morning it is very cold up on the top. One or two to carry wraps. If they’re from Burma you might prefer to have them. They would make their pilgrimage and earn a little money at the same time.”
“That’s true.”
It would be an advantage to have them. For I could talk their language and I could not do that in the case of a Cingalese. I turned about again to call to the men. But they had disappeared into some alley. We waited for a few moments on the chance that they might reappear and then walked on again.
“It can’t be helped, my dear,” I said. “After all, if we take a guide from the hotel, he’ll know the way and be reliable besides.”
But I did not finish the word “besides.” I broke off with a cry.
“Imogen!”
“Yes.”
She stopped and faced me, puzzled, as indeed she well might be. For I have no doubt that my face spoke my consternation as loudly as my voice.
“Martin! What’s the matter?”
Imogen was wearing a coat and skirt of a thin tussore silk with a white silk shirt open at the neck so that her slender throat rose free. Round it was fastened a light platinum chain, and dangling as a pendant to the chain was a large square sapphire, a quite flawless stone of a deep and lovely blue. I had not noticed it until this moment. I don’t think, indeed, that it could have been noticeable. It must have lain against Imogen’s breast underneath her shirt, and some movement
must have now revealed it. But there it hung, darkly gleaming, with just that spark of fire in its depths which had burned in the stone that Crowther had rolled on to the table-cloth of the Dagonet from Ma Shwe At’s pink silk bag. Of course, it was not the same stone. I told myself that over and over again. It could not be. That one hung far out of reach on the spire of a pagoda a couple of thousand miles away. And Crowther sat at the foot of it reading in his big Book of Enfranchisement. But this sapphire about Imogen’s throat was its very twin, even to the fire-spark like some tiny lantern shining sharply in the deep of Indian seas. It was its twin — yes — discovered, very likely, in the same native claim on the road to Mogok — but not the same. I would not have it so — no, not for the world.
“Where did you get that sapphire?... Please!” I asked, a little breathlessly.
“Darling!” she answered. Some trifle of concern caused by my agitation clouded her face for a moment. Her fingers closed upon the stone. Even though I knew it to be merely the sister stone, I hated to see Imogen touch and hold and claim it. “Darling, I bought it.”
“Where?”
“At Kandy.”
“When?”
“A week ago.”
“You are sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. You don’t think sapphires like this are lying about in heaps. I saw it in a jeweller’s shop under the hotel, and since there was no generous young man within range of my flashing eyes, I gave myself a present.”
I drew a breath of relief. It was not so long ago since I had parted from Michael at Schwegu; and Michael within that time had assuredly not recanted. Besides, Crowther’s stone was unset. I remembered that clearly. It was still unset when Crowther had discovered it still wrapped in its strip of napkin at the bottom of his trunk after his return from Farm Street. Imogen’s sapphire, on the other hand, was set simply and beautifully in a perfectly plain, thin, square frame of platinum. No, they couldn’t be the same stone. I was catching at every possible argument, you see, which would dissociate the sapphire which Crowther had stolen from Ma Shwe At from that which now gleamed against Imogen’s breast.
“I am very glad,” I stammered. “I mean that I should have adored to have given it to you — if you would have taken it. But I’m glad that it was bought at Kandy.... Oh, you must think me a perfect idiot.”
I was furious with myself. The sight of that duplicate stone — on no account would I allow that it could be anything but a duplicate — hanging from Imogen’s neck had given me a sharper shock than I was ready to meet. Crowther and his sapphire had been growing to be elements rather too disturbing to suit me. I didn’t want to meet them at every corner of the road. I was all for an equable level life if I could get it — or rather if I could keep it. Storms of the soul, whirlpools of passion which sucked the heart down in dizzy spirals and then flung it up and up into thin air — anyone might have my share of these raptures who wanted it. I did not want to be disturbed by Crowther and his sapphire. The jewel had brought nothing but unhappiness to little Mrs. Golden Needle and Miss Diamond, to Crowther himself, and it had seemed in a queer, sinister way to be trying to entangle me. As though some malignant spirit lived in its blue loveliness — that spark of fire, for instance, shooting out always its tiny ray. I had been getting obsessed by it in Burma. It was setting a spell upon me; and all the way to Ceylon I had been growing more and more conscious of relief, like a man throwing off a malady. Fear — yes, I will be frank — fear had begun to fall away from me as we dropped down the river from Rangoon; and each new day upon the sea was another door to freedom. Miles away Crowther and his sapphire, and more miles with every hour. And now, suddenly, here in Ceylon, was the very image of that stone, resting lovely and menacing against the breast of the last person in the world whom I wished unhappiness to threaten. Oh, yes, I was troubled, and no doubt my face showed it. It was as if the original sapphire spoke:
“You don’t get away from me like that! See where I am? Here’s a friend of yours going to do some work for me now.”
Not if I could help it!
But it was Imogen who spoke and not the sapphire. She used those very words. She glanced at me. No doubt I had spoken rather strenuously. She tucked her arm again through mine and gave it a little squeeze.
“You can’t get away from me like that. I shall want to hear about this sapphire,” she said.
“When we are back in England.”
Imogen shook her head decidedly.
“Before that!”
“I am going to refuse,” said I.
“Martin, darling” — she was apparently arguing with an unreasonable child— “you can’t keep jewel-stories to yourself when there’s a young woman at your elbow.”
I knew that it would be difficult when the young woman was Imogen Cloud. Did I say that she was lovely? She had a broad, low forehead, eyes of a golden brown which grew bigger and bigger the longer you looked at them, with long eyelashes which had an upward curl at the end of them and were set there to entangle hearts. Her eyes were set wide apart, with a delicately-chiselled nose between them. She had a short upper lip, rows of white teeth and a little firm chin. She was slender and supple and just the right height; tall enough not to look small, and small enough not to over-tower you; and her ankles and wrists were sculpture at its best. But a description of her features is no more than a catalogue. It is perhaps more illuminating to say that young men went down before her like so many ninepins; that the middle-aged at the sight of her thought of the fine things which they had done and wished that she could know of them; and that the aged, in the same position, thanked their stars that modern hygiene had turned senility into a legend of the past. The truth is there was a grace of soul in her which matched the grace of her limbs. Though she had a quick eye for a foible and a sense of humour which made play of it, she was kind. Those who talked with her understood very soon that she considered them. But I make no further excuses for the deplorable exhibition which I made later on that evening. We dined together, Imogen, Pamela Brayburn and myself. Imogen did not harry me until dinner was finished and we were smoking over our coffee.
“Now,” she said.
“No,” said I.
“What?” asked Pamela Brayburn.
“Nothing,” said I.
Imogen turned to Pamela.
“Martin’s all up in the air about this sapphire I bought at Kandy,” she said. “He has got a story about it and wants to keep it to himself.”
“I haven’t got a story about it,” I declared in desperation. “I have got a story about a quite different sapphire.”
My declaration did not help me at all. For Imogen rejoined:
“Then we’ll hear the story about the different sapphire.”
“Not now,” I answered. “It’s a very long story — very, very long and tedious. Some afternoon when we’re half-way across the Indian Ocean I’ll tell it you.”
“I don’t think that we can all go home on the same ship unless we’re told this jewel-story to-night,” said Pamela Brayburn. She was a brown-haired girl of Imogen’s age and no doubt attractive. At the moment I resented her.
“Very well, we’ll go on different ships,” I returned.
Pamela looked at me. I might have been a nonesuch. She smiled at Imogen.
“I think Martin’s stupid,” she said sweetly.
What can you do with people like that? Argument was out of the question. There was a big clock upon the wall and I pointed to it.
“It’s nine o’clock,” I said. “The difference between enjoyment and fatigue to-morrow means two and a half hours in bed now with your clothes off.”
Pamela looked at me broodingly, and turned with a nod to Imogen.
“He’s a sexual maniac, I suppose.”
“I’m nothing of the sort,” I cried hotly, and stopped. I was not going to be betrayed into behaving still more like an idiot than I had been doing for Pamela Brayburn’s amusement.
“But, Martin, darling,” Imogen ask
ed, “how can you expect us to go to bed and sleep with that untold story upon our minds?”
“You must put it out of your heads altogether,” I explained with perhaps an accent of the instructor. For I saw Imogen’s cheeks dimple suddenly. “And the best way is five minutes’ general conversation and then to bed.”
“Yes,” said Pamela.
“Yes,” said Imogen.
And they both waited, with their eyes round and serious upon my face, for me to begin. They were baiting me — these two girls. If they had been tigers in the jungle they wouldn’t have dared to do it. But I couldn’t say that. It would have sounded boastful and it wouldn’t have been general conversation. I had to think of something which would set the ball rolling and so I made as lamentable a remark as any man gravelled for lack of a subject could have let slip. I said:
“Is not the peacock a beautiful bird?”
The reaction of my companions was immediate. Imogen clapped her handkerchief to her mouth and rolled and shook in her chair. Pamela openly screamed her delight so that everyone in the room looked at us. It was the end of my resistance. I began to think that I was after all making too much of a coincidence. I had no wish to infect the girls with my forebodings. So out the whole story came, the history of the sapphire and Ma Shwe At and Ma Sein at Tagaung and the evolution of Michael D. into Uncle Sunday.
“I think that I should like to meet your Uncle Sunday,” Imogen said in a very quiet voice when I had finished.
“I hope that you won’t,” I exclaimed fervently.
Imogen’s eyes rested for a moment upon my face.
“But you think I will,” she replied quietly.
“No! I don’t!” I cried.
But did I? Was the violence of my denial due to an unacknowledged fear that she would at some destined time meet Michael Crowther and be swept up into a web of peril and misfortune, at the heart of which the deep blue of a sapphire softly gleamed? I cannot tell. All I know is that I felt a chill creep along my spine and I shuddered. Somebody was walking over my grave. “Let us go,” I said, and I got up.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 644