THE CHINA MAIL FRIDAY SUPPLEMENT, AUGUST 26, 1938
MAN OVERBOARD
(Continued from Page 1).
'I'm subject to malaria,' he ex- plained as he searched. "Usually carry quinine on me, but I seem to have run out. This confounded ague. The quinine always cuts it short if I take it in time. Could you let me have some?'
Craigen brought. him a bottle of quinine powder and went to get a glass of water, but Smith poured out a formidable heap into the palm of one hand and swallowed it dry.
'I've never seen anyone take it like that before,' said Craigen.
"Thanks a little water. It's the best way. Not many people shake off fever as I do,' said the old man, his teeth chattering. He re- fused to go to bed, saying that he -never-took-much-notice-of-these-
bouts.
As he sat opposite Craigen at the long dining-table, he looked about with observant glances, shaking all the while with ague. A set of old prints of the first steeplechase seemed to interest him.
'I used to know some like that,' he said. "They yours?"
"They belong to the factory,'. said Craigen. They've been here as long as I've known the place."
'How long have you known it?” 'I've managed here for fifteen years now, but I was in this dis- trict several years before that at another factory. I started as a youngster further South.'
I
'Did you start in Tirhoot? used to have a friend down there once.'
'Yes, I came out to old Mac- gregor at Hospiapore, Whom did you know in these parts?”.
'Before your time, and I've for- gotten his name,' said Smith. 'You don't own this place, then?'
'No, I manage for the Earn- shaws.'
1Gilbert Earnshaw,' said Smith, as if he were talking to himself. 'Yes, the son of old Simon. Do you know him?'
'No. I saw his name in the paper a month ago. He put in a rather unusual advertisement, asking someone or other to apply here. For the sake of an old friendship, it said. I thought, in an idle moment, I'd like to see Behar, and the name of the fac- tory stuck in my head. I have a good many idle moments,' added Smith, grimly.
His ague had passed, and his eyes now were glittering and his cheeks flushed. His speech was quicker and his tongue unloosed by the heat of the fever.. He ate almost nothing and drank soda thirstily.
“Oh, you saw the annual no- *tice,' said Craigen: A. forlorn hope now, I'm afraid, as no one has responded to it in thirty years. Simon Earnshaw ordered in his will that it was to be put in papers of various countries, as he had put it during his life, for a certain number of years, while the subject of it could reasonably be supposed to be alive...
"And who was the subject, if. I' may ask?' said Smith.
"A man called Wilson, who was supposed to have embezzled some factory funds while -- he this management. He was friend of o
people had
believe
never been
heir
Vird, and
is said to have been more con-. cerned about his friend than about the money. He made certain provisions for him if he were found, as was stated in the no- tice you saw.'
'And so the fatted calf grows cold and the fool of a prodigal never turns up,' said Smith. 'How life spoils a good, story. All this was before your time, I suppose?'
Just in my time, but I was down in Tirhoot in those days, I remember the man was point- ed out to me at a meet, when I first came out, as Wilson of Darya Serai. That was just before the crash, which came quite unex- pectedly.'
'Dead, no doubt,' said Smith, ‘and all the notices wasted. An accumulation of payments which would have bought a tombstone. Well, he left a good place for an- other man
to step into. You should be grateful to him. Here you are, established in. a fine old factory, in a position of trust and respect. You ride about in this dehat, I suppose, and every- one you pass salaams to the malik.'
He was leaning forward, his elbows planted on either side of his plate of untasted food, and his thin hands clasped, knuckle to knuckle. His voice was deliber- ate, though a little querulous and shaky, with age and fever. In his vowels there was an occasion- al suggestion of much speaking of the vernacular.
·‘But,' he said, 'what do you get out of it? You'll retire în due time and live in England, and find it a damned dull little place that you have always called home and don't really know at all. Sentiment, pure sentiment. And you'll feel you've left behind everything you think you really do know. But what do you know? The fact that the raiyats have something to get out of you makes it impossible for you to know anything about them that really matters. Your life is an open book to them. You sit here in your lighted house with all the doors open and they look on from out there in the dark. Your ser- vants see all you do and read' your letters and the others find out through them. But after the servants themselves have salaam- ed and gone off for the night, what do you know about their. real lives, which they live from then till they appear next morn- ing? Nothing. So, you see, you' live in a world of shadows, which you mistake for substance. And that's what goes with a position of respect. He compressed his lips, with the corners
drawn down, and continued to look at Craigen over his clasped hands.
'Well, well,' said Craigen toler- antly, interested to find himself at the bar before this uncommon. judge; I think you over-estimate respect as a barrier between me and my raiyats. Times are dif- ferent sincé. Mr. Gandhi enlight ened the masses. I get a brick. thrown at my car every now and then, and they freely run cases against me, in which I'm handi- capped by a prejudice against buying evidence.”
'Bricks," said Smith, what are they but a compliment to your- power? Call it power, and not respect, that distorts the face of the world you look on. It's all the same. To throw away every. thing you have and wander among" your equals in having nothing that's what shows you where you stand. When you can
ask in a bazaar for the handful of rice that is a beggar's right from any bunnia, and no one thinks you're mad, then you're in a position to talk about knowing this country.'
"You're probably right,' said Craigen. 'I realise more with each year how much I don't know. But there are necessities--
He found it queer to be pro- testing necessities to this old
man.
'Necessities? For living in a manner becoming to a sahib?’
Smith shot out the fingers of one hand and glanced obliquely at the lofty room and all the state' he indicated.
'Yes, well, let's agree there are necessities. They enable you to offer a night's hospitality to an old tramp like me. Scarcely de- cent, is it, to talk to you
as I have? But 've put myself be- yond the reach of the power of which I speak. I can show you things as they are:'-
'And very interesting found it', said Craigen.
I've
He noticed that the old man's bony forehead was beginning to glisten with sweat. Dinner was over and the servants had clear- ed the table of all but the dessert and wine.
'Look here, can't I give you a hand to bed? You ought to be under blankets.”
Smith drank off the glass of soda he had retained, and rose shakily. Craigen put a hand under his arm and went with him to his room.
Don't trouble any more,' said Smith, 'I'll be all right.'
'Your bed's out there.'
+
Craigen lifted the purdah be- tween the dressing-room and the side verandah and showed him the bed out on
the lawn, facing The late moon down the avenue. was coming up, and the bed, with its square of mosquito curtains, was like some unwieldy ghost.
"You're not thinking of going on to-morrow?' said Craigan. till "Why not stay a day or two you're fit?'
'I'll be as fit as ever by the morning. I don't know anyone who shakes off malaria as I do,' repeated old Smith, fumbling with the buttons of his coat while the sweat ran down his face, and looking as if the disease had him at its mercy for life.
"Well, think it over, anyway,' said Craigen. 'Good night."
'Good night.'
4
When Craigen went out to his own bed on the lawn, in line with that of his guest, but separated from it by nearly the length of the-house, he saw-that-old-Smith was already in his and that he had disdained the shelter of mos- quito curtains, piling 'them up on top of their rods. It touched Craigen to see the old man voluntarily going without what most white men in India consider a necessity.
་
'Wonder where he slept last night, he thought, 'and where he'll sleep when he leaves, here. Wish the old fellow had said more about himself."
He lay awake for a little while, watching, across the lawn, the the faintly moving fringe of shadow which the siris trees him. Jackals threw towards
(Continued on Page 8)
"Perhaps I'm hard
to please
When I was younger
I didn't much care what I ate or drank or
smoked. But nowadays I take my pleas- ures, not sadly but seriously. I suppose you would call me faddy. I hate to be put off with second- best, no matter what it is. I won't eat a peach unless it is English. If I order caviare it must be Beluga.
You see what I mean about whisky. While I can obtain a whisky as soft
and smooth as a fine liqueur, why on earth should I be put off with anything less than White Horse? I admit that perhaps I am hard to please—but take it from me, it pays."
WHITE HORSE
WHISKY
You can tell it blindfold!
Sole digents for South China : Jardine Matheson & Co. Ltd.