CHAPTER II.
THE SHADOWS OF THE NAGKON WAT.
The mists still hung thick above the forests when we reached a resting place on those seemingly interminable steps and leaned panting for breath against the embrasure of one of the little windows up near the top of the grand central pagoda of the Nagkon Wat. Far below us—two hundred and fifty feet is said to be the height of the pagoda—lay the tropical jungle, with its nodding atap palms alive with the screams of monkeys, the notes of peacocks, quails and parrots, a dense mass of green stretching off as far as the eye could reach. At our feet was the inner court of that strange old temple, the very name of whose builders is lost in the mists of ages, the sloping roofs, projecting cornices and crumbling columns gilded by the first rays of the rising sun.
“Too late!” exclaimed Maurice De Veber; “too late George; old Sol is up before us. Next time you arouse me from my peaceful slumbers to witness a Siamese sunrise, I shall know enough to refuse to lend myself to your mad schemes. Why there’s not a particle of breath left in my body, to say nothing of the condition of my legs.”
“Peaceful slumbers, indeed!” I replied, contemptuously. “For my part, what with the mosquitoes and the howling of the jackals I haven’t slept a wink all night. Who was it, pray, that insisted upon dragging me two hundred miles into the wilderness to visit those miserable ruins? And now you complain because I make you share my discomforts. Come, Maurice, that’s not fair.”
Maurice laughed.
“My friend,” he said, “I take it all back. It’s grand, it’s glorious! I am beginning to breathe now, and my legs are rapidly returning to their normal condition. It is worth two years of a man’s life to gaze upon this view ten minutes. I for one do not regret my climb.”
But as for myself, I was indifferent. Two months had elapsed since my singular adventure in the streets of Panompin. Two months more had been given me to forget my troubles, yet they had not been forgotten. I needed something besides the dreamy existence I had been leading in the society of my friend Maurice De Veber to drive them from my thoughts.
On that night my escape from the mob had been less difficult than might be supposed.
It was not me they were after; besides they took me for a Frenchman, I fancy, and to interfere with a Frenchman in Cambodia would be a very dangerous matter.
When at last I succeeded in pushing my way through the excited throng and found myself at the door of the American consulate, I discovered that I still held the little hand bag which had been dropped by the stranger and which I must have picked up, although I have no recollection of having done anything of the sort.
I was dazed—absolutely confounded.
What I had seen I had seen. In one moment that man with his peculiar face had stood before me; his eyes had looked into my eyes; he had spoke; he had pressed my hand; and in the next he had disappeared as completely as if he had never been.
Where? How?
Absolutely there was no explanation of the mystery; and the next day when I visited the alley, making a most critical examination, I found myself still further mystified.
At its end was the wall which the man had failed to climb. On the right rose the solid bamboo side of a Chinese merchant’s warehouse, while on the left was the side wall of another warehouse, and as both faced the other street with neither window or door opening on the alley, what conclusion was I to draw?
“Pshaw! The sun has affected your head George,” said Maurice when I told him about it. “You had better take a dose of quinine and keep indoors out of the night air. The fellow may have had a most extraordinary birth-mark, I’m willing to admit, but you may be sure he managed to scale the wall while you were looking back at that crowd. Probably he’ll turn up to-day and claim his bag, explaining the whole affair.”
But he did not.
Day after day elapsed and still nothing was heard of the man.
I fairly forced poor Maurice into making inquiries about him, and he, as American consul at Panompin, had every facility for gaining information if it was to be had.
A few persons had observed a tall, peculiar appearing man, with the lower part of his face concealed under a black cloth, walking along the main street of Panompin that night, but no one was able to furnish the slightest information as to who he was, or where he came from; nor could I convince myself that anyone had seen him after he left me at the end of the alley in that strange and altogether unaccountable fashion.
Meanwhile the days came and went. Maurice busy with his consular engagements grew tired of hearing me talk about the affair, and so I ceased to mention it. I hung the bag upon a nail in my sleeping room, but as it was locked, I made no attempt to open it, for I have a particular dislike to prying into other people’s business—besides it was very light and probably contained nothing but a change of clothing.
In fact the matter had begun to fade from my memory, and growing tired of the monotonous, idle life I was leading at Panompin, I was planning to go to Calcutta with the idea of engaging in business, when one afternoon Maurice burst into the room where I sat reading, blurting out:
“Now then, old fellow, here’s something to make you forget your troubles. I have the promise of a passage in a steamer bound up to lake Thalaysap and the Siamrap river. I am going to take a month’s vacation and visit the world-famed ruins of Angkor—will you go along?
“Go!”
Why I would have gone to the South Pole with Maurice De Veber willingly, and yet he was only a chance aquaintance, after all.
We had met two years before on a steamer plying between Swatow and Hong Kong, to which latter port I was bound upon certain official business, I had been attracted by his manly figure, dark, handsome face, and regular features, from the moment I first laid eyes on him at the supper table, just after we left Swatow; and when I found he was an American and a New Yorker, of course an acquaintance sprang up at once.
Maurice was a splendid fellow; positively my ideal of young American manhood. What, therefore, did it matter that I had seen forty years and he not more than twenty-five?
You see there was a great void in my heart waiting to be filled by some one. It was the place my wife might have filled, should have filled, but at that time the very sight of womankind was disgusting to me. I execrated the sex; in my lonely hours of self-communion I had brought my mind into that condition where I looked upon every married man as one to be pitied; where I longed for my vanished youth and its opportunities, where I reversed the order of nature, and despising the affection of woman, sighed for that of the brother or the faithful friend. Positively my mental state, just then, must have bordered upon insanity, for I never had but one brother and he was a drunkard and a most precious rascal, and as for my early friends there was not one I could name who had not used me in a shameful way.
Long before we reached Hong Kong I stood ready to give Maurice De Veber my head if he had asked it, and I know that I made myself noticeable by the way I followed him about.
Still he seemed to like it without making the least pretence of returning the absurd affection which I could scarcely help displaying for him.
Possibly some one had said to him, “that old fellow Wylde is as rich as a Jew." I should not wonder, for there were those on board who knew me, and the snug little fortune left me by my father had been greatly exaggerated among my associates in China. Indeed, I often thought of that, and I found the thought making me so miserable that I was positively relieved when we reached Hong Kong and our intimacy was broken off.
“Good-bye,” said Maurice, as I took leave of him on the deck of the Singapore steamer, in which he had taken passage for Saigon, from there to proceed to Panompin, where he had just been appointed consul. “Good-bye! If you get tired of Swatow take a run down to Cambodia and pay me a visit. Bring Mrs. Wylde with you and I’ll promise to entertain you both as well as a poor bachelor can.”
Well, when the crisis came, I took the run down to Cambodia, but I did not bring Mrs. Wylde.
Of course I am morbid. I know it. Very likely if I had been different my wife would have been different. There are those who do not hesitate to say so, and doubtless they are right.
But I am what my hereditary tendencies have made me; or perhaps I should say, what, by a careful fostering of those tendencies, I have made myself. I had longed to be free from the chains which held me down, but now that freedom had actually come I found myself bound by chains still more powerful—regret for what had been, thoughts of what might have been, sad memories of the past.
Not but what Maurice tried to make life pleasant for me at Panompin.
He did everything that a man could do, and I honestly believe that by this time he had conceived as sincere an affection for me as it is possible for a young man to feel for a comparative stranger so much his senior.
Indeed, I believe that the trip to Angkor was arranged for my especial benefit, for it was I and not he who had expressed a desire to visit that wonderful city of the ancient Buddhists, which has lain buried in the dense forests of Cambodia for more years than man can count.
We were off within an hour, for the opportunity had presented itself suddenly and had to be embraced at once if at all. Indeed, our departure from Panompin was so hasty that we had barely time to throw together the necessary articles of clothing, leaving our heavier baggage to be brought up by Maurice’s Chinese servant, in a native boat, which was to go up to the lake on the following day.
This was the dawning of our fourth day at the ruins—the others had been spent in exploring the great temple, studying its bas-reliefs and unreadable inscriptions, silent memorials of a forgotten race.
Yes, the enjoyment should have been all mine, not his; and to a certain extent it was so. Even in my unhappy frame of mind I could not gaze down from that height unawed at the mighty monuments of a lost people which lay beneath us; nevertheless they had failed to amuse me as I had hoped.
“Hark!” exclaimed Maurice suddenly, as we stood there gazing off upon that ocean of green, tinged at the horizon with a broad dash of orange, deepening in its lower lines into crimson; “hark, George! Don’t you hear someone on the platform above us? I am certain I heard a step.”
“I thought I heard something a moment or two ago,” I replied, “but I hear nothing now.”
“Nor I, but I did as I spoke.”
“It is very unlikely that any of those lazy priests can have gone up before us,” said I, alluding to the dull-eyed old Cambodians, who, dwelling in the group of low thatched huts far below us, have charge of the temple. “Unless something special calls them they have shown no anxiety to leave their rice and betel since we’ve been at Angkor.”
“True, George; and yet I heard”
“What my dear fellow?”
“Some one praying, I think—at least it sounded that way, though I couldn’t understand the words.”
“Then your hearing is a precious sight more acute than mine, Maurice,” I answered. “I thought I heard some one shuffling about on the platform above us, but praying—nonsense! Don’t fancy those fellows would climb that terrible stairway simply to mutter a prayer which could be just as well mumbled before the big statue of Buddha in the room below.”
Maurice laughed shortly and leaning forward attempted to look up to the next platform above. He was, however, able to distinguish nothing.
Understand the design of the three great towers of the Nagkon Wat; it is necessary for the full comprehension of that which is to follow. Briefly I may describe them as vast, circular stone terraces, platform placed upon platform, each slightly receding from the one beneath, until the apex of the cone is reached. The central and largest of these remarkable piles, Maurice, when he first caught a glimpse of it, compared to a huge Papal tiara—no inapt comparison, by the way, for it certainly looked more like that than anything else. In spite of the distance we had climbed, there still remained three of the platforms to be passed before the top could be reached.
“George, you don’t know these Buddhist priests,” Maurice said musingly. “Lazy and indifferent as they appear, they are the most inveterate fanatics on earth. If it were a part of their religion to witness the sunrise from the top of this tower on this particular day, they would move heaven and earth to get here—they would crawl up step by step on their knees, if they could gain their end in no other way.”
“I saw enough of them in China, to understand pretty well what they are like,” I replied.
“Indeed you did not. The Chinese Buddhists are different. With them religion has little or no meaning. Like some of our Christians they make it but a fetich; a bald formula of words and ceremonies which they are alike too ignorant and too indifferent to understand.”
“And are these people different?” I asked skeptically.
“Very different. I have made a study of them since I have been in Cambodia. Of course with the masses it is the same the world over. The Chinese are too practical, too worldly to make deep spiritual thinkers, but among the higher classes of Buddhists in Farther India there are minds capable of the deepest metaphysical reflection; minds stored with an accumulation of spiritual knowledge such as you and I are utterly unable to comprehend.”
“Bosh!” I exclaimed, lighting a cheroot. “Why to hear you talk, old fellow, one would think you were a convert to Buddhism. What are these Buddhists but a parcel of ignorant idolators, worshiping gods of wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor think nor smell, as the Scripture says somewhere. Positively, Maurice, you surprise me—you do indeed.”
He sighed, gazing upon my face with a certain far-away look that I had often observed in his eyes, and had as often set down to a morbid dreaminess of character which he certainly possessed at times. Thrusting his hands into his vest pocket he pulled out a small silver coin, a piece a little smaller than our American quarter dollar, and passed it over to me. Upon one side it bore a representation of the zodiacal constellation pisces , on the other were Persian characters, the meaning of which I was, of course, unable to understand.
“George, what is that?” he asked in the same dreamy fashion.
“One of your Hindoo coins, of course,” I answered, wondering what he was driving at. “I think you told me it was one of a series called the Zodiac rupees.”
“Precisely. I told you so, and having faith in me you believe my assertion.”
“Certainly.”
“Would you have known that those seemingly unmeaning marks on the reverse were Persian letters if I had not told you?”
“No; but of course I should have known they were Oriental letters of some sort.”
“Very likely; because so far and no further has your education in such matters advanced. But suppose you were to take that coin and show it to a New York longshoreman who did not know you, and consequently had no faith in you; suppose you were to assure him that those marks were letters, what conclusion do you suppose he would draw?”
“Either that I was making sport of him or that I was a fool.”
“Then there you have it. As the longshoreman is to the coin so are we to the Buddhist philosophic acumen of the East. To our minds their doctrines are rubbish, absurd to the last degree. Why? Simply because we are incapable of comprehending them; because we are wholly unaccustomed to their methods of thought. Remember this much; when our forefathers were savages, these people were enjoying the height of a glorious civilization. When the naked Britons drove the hosts of Cæsar into the sea, Angkor was old, and, for all we know, even then deserted. George, it required a motive to build this massive pile, as well as unlimited treasure, architectural skill and physical strength. What was that motive? Religion! A profound sense of the littleness of man and the greatness of the God who constructed the mighty temple of the universe; call him Jehovah, call him Buddha, Brahma, or by whatever name you please."
“Bravo!” I cried. “Bravo! Positively I never imagined that I had in my friend so profound a thinker, an adept, a philosopher! Then you don’t regard the Buddhists as idolators, it seems?”
“No more than you are, no more than I am. I speak only of the educated. Long before I left America I entertained these views, and since my residence in the East I have seen much to confirm me in them; but—”
“But not enough to make you willing to credit the mysterious disappearance of my friend with the parti-colored face?” I answered, somewhat sneeringly. “You made game of that, you know.”
“I own that I did, but it was because I did not care to enter into a discussion upon these matters at the time. Your state of mind was not such as to make it desirable that I should do so. It is hardly otherwise now, and I regret— George, there certainly is some one on the platform above us. Hark!”
No need to call my attention. What Maurice heard I heard—could not help hearing. A deep voice had broken out above us, singing, or rather chanting the lines which follow.
Coming suddenly as it did, close upon Maurice’s learned disquisition on Buddhism, every word is as firmly graven on my memory as though heard only yesterday, instead of many long years ago. Let me add that the words were English, as perfectly pronounced as if chanted by myself.
“Lo! in the East comes a glow as of rubies;
Jewels magnificent flash in the sky,
Heralding thee, O King of the morning,
Golden hued sun to gladden the eye.
Hail to thee, Sun God, ruler omnipotent!
Salute we thy coming in splendor and fire,
Low bow we down as thy glory illumes us,
Lord of the earth, our ruler and sire.
Dark is the world when thou hast departed,
Lonely and desolate lies the broad plain,
Mountain and valley awaiting in sadness,
Smile when thy face beams upon them again.”
The song ceased. As the last echo died away, the shadowy mists which had hitherto hung over the horizon were suddenly dispelled and the sun shown forth in all its glory.
Turning my face upward, I, at the same instant, caught sight of a shadow upon the platform above.
It was but a glimpse—then it was drawn back and had vanished.
But that glimpse showed me a man bending over the balustrade.
Instantly I knew him.
It was my mysterious friend at Panompin-the man with the parti-colored face!