THE BLIND ONE

Crimson azaleas in wild profusion, here struck with sun, here shadowed by the cypress trees—a sight to gladden the heart of a poet. Between the cypress trees, beyond the azaleas, beyond country broken by sunlight and cloud shadows, lay the sea hills of Tanagura in the dimmest bluest distance.

"If I could get that into a gold frame," said Leslie, as he inhaled the delicious perfume of the azaleas and bathed his naked foot in the tiny cascade breaking from the bank on which they sat, "I'd take it to London and send it to the Academy—and they'd reject it."

"Vara likely," replied Mac. "It is no fit for a peecture. Who ever saw the like of yon out of Japan? It's nought but a fakement."

"I say," said Leslie, "talking of fakements—in this business of ours I hope we'll steer clear of all that."

"In this beesiness of oors," said Mac, "I thought you distinctly understood my friend Danjuro will be the nominal head of the firrm—we are but the sleeping pairtners."

Mac's Scotch bubbled in him when he grew excited, or when he forgot himself. Ordinarily he talked pretty ordinary English, but when the stopper was off the Scotch came out, and you could tell by the pronunciation of the word "money" whether he was mentioning the article casually or deep in a deal.

"Well," said Leslie, "I don't want my dreams troubled by visions of Danjuro swindling unfortunate tourists; you say we're to export things, but I don't want to have him roping in people, selling them five-shilling pagodas at five pounds a-piece."

Mac sighed as if with regret at the impossibility of such a delightful deal as that.

"It's rather jolly going into business," continued Leslie, dreamily gazing at the azaleas. "Only crime I've never committed, except murder and a few others. Good God! when I started in life I never thought I'd end my days peddling paper lanterns, and cheating people into buying penny-a-dozen kakemonos for a shilling a-piece. Don't talk to me; all trade is cheating."

"You should have known Macbean," said M'Gourley, who had also taken off his boots and stockings and was bathing his broad splay feet in the pretty little torrent.

"Who was he?"

"Forty year ago I was his 'prentice. Mummies, and idols, and pagods, and scarabeuses was the output of the firm, and Icknield Street, Birmingham, its habitation."

"Idols?"

"Ay, idols. Some the size of your thumb, and some the size of bedposts, which they were derived from; some with teeth, and some with hair, and some bald as a bannock. We stocked half West Africa with idols, and the South Seas absorbed the balance."

"Well, you certainly take the cake," said Leslie.

"I took three pun ten a week at Macbean's, and learnt more eelementary theology than's taught in the schules of Edinboro'. Macbean said artistical idols was what the savages wanted, and what they would get as long as old bedposteses were to be bought at knockdown prices, and sold for the waurth of elephants' tusks."

"You disgust me," said Leslie, "upon my word you do."

"That's what Macbean said one day to the boddie I had in mind when I began telling you of this. The boddie came in grumbling about a mummy—a vara fine mummy it was, too—that had been sold to him for export. The mummy had been stuftit with newspapers, but the sachrum ustum used for coloring the stuffing matter being omitted, the printed matter remained in eevidence when the American who bought the article in Cairo opened it to hunt for amulets and scarabeuses. 'Newspapers!' said Macbean. 'And what more do you expect in a fifty-shullin' mummy? Did y' expect it stuffed wi' dimonds?'"

"Well?" said Leslie.

"That's all, and that's the whole of beesiness in a walnut shell; y' canna expect a fifty-shullin' mummy to be stuffed with—"

"Rubbish! the whole of swindling, you mean. Anyhow, we'll keep straight, if you please; a fair profit I don't mind, but I object to rank trickery—by the way, what's the time? my watch has stopped; and how far is Nikko off?"

"It's after two," said Mac, who had no very definite idea of how far Nikko might be off, having led his companion by the wrong road and concealed the fact. "And Nikko is maybe twarree miles, maybe a bit more—wull we go?"

For all answer Leslie took some bar-chocolate from his pocket, gave some to his companion, and proceeded to lunch.

"I daresay you think it funny," said he at last, "my chumming up, and in your heart of hearts—that is, your business heart (excuse me for being frank)—you must think it strange I should put up my money with a man whom I don't know in the least. But, man! the truth of the matter is I'm weary for a friend. I have money enough and to spare, but—I'm weary for a friend.

"I'm the lonest man in the world," went on Leslie, munching his chocolate and gazing at the beautiful scene before him; "the lonest man on God's earth. What is the matter with me that I should never have found and kept a friend? If God had ever given me anything to love I'd have cherished it, but—there is no God that I can see."

"Whisht, man," said Mac. "Dinna talk like that."

"I know I was wild," went on Leslie, "before I left England, but other men have been as bad. I quarreled with my father, but other men's fathers are different from what mine was. He drove me beyond the sea to be an alien and an outcast. I've seen drunken loafers in the bars of Sydney, where I was stuck as a remittance man three years; they had friends of a sort—friends who stuck them, but friend or dog never stuck to me."

"No wumman?" asked M'Gourley, spitting out the remains of the chocolate he was eating, and lighting a vile-looking Hankow cigar.

"I loved a woman once," said Leslie, staring before him with eyes that saw not Japan or the cypress trees or the azaleas. "Her name was Jane Deering; we were boy and girl together, cousins, and her people lived quite close to mine. We got engaged, and were to have been married, and—she threw me over."

"For why?" asked Mac.

"Said she didn't want to get married."

"Well, that was deefinite."

"Damned definite. What's that noise?"

"Tap, tap, tap." It was the tapping of a stick upon the ground, and a man in the dress of a coolie, with a saucer-shaped hat upon his head, turned the corner of the road, coming in the direction of Nikko. He was tapping the ground before him with a staff. He was blind.

"What an awful-looking face!" said Leslie, as the figure approached. "Look, Mac! Did you ever see the like of that?"

One sees many extraordinary and sinister faces in the East, but the face of the on-comer would have been hard to match, even in the stews of Shanghai.

The nose seemed to have been smashed flat by a blow. The face was flat and possessed an awful stolidity, so that at a little distance one could have sworn that it was carved from stone. It impressed one as the countenance of a creature long in communion with evil.

The two Scotchmen held motionless to let this undesirable pass, but he must have possessed some sixth sense, for instead of passing he stopped and begun to whine.

He spoke in a light, flighty, chanting voice, like the voice of a man either insane or delirious.

"What's he say?" asked Leslie.

"He's a Chinee, and wants money."

"Tell the beast to go."

"Says he knows we're foreigners."

"Clever that; why, even I can hear your Scotch sticking out of the gibberish you're talking."

"Says he wants opium—hasn't had any the whole day, and if we will give him opium, or money to buy it, he'll show us things."

"What things?"

"Lord sakes! the creeture's daft; says he can make great magic—snakes out of mud or flowers out of nothing."

"Why doesn't he make some opium if he's so clever?"

"Says the woods around here are full of devils."

"Tell him to show us a devil, then."

Mac translated and the person so well acquainted with devils made answer.

"For a piece of gold he will show us one. Why, Leslie, man, don't you be a fule."

Leslie had taken half a sovereign from his pocket.

"Give it him and tell him to show us a devil, and if he plays any tricks I'll chivy him into Nikko, and give him up to the police."

"Don't be a fule," said Mac testily. "A'weel!"

Leslie put the piece of gold into the creature's hand, who put it to his ear for a moment, and then hid it in his rags. Then he bent his head sideways to the road.

"What's he doing now?"

"He's listening if the road's clear; he says there's nothing on it for two ri on either side, but he hears seven rikshas coming in the direction of Nikko, but he'll have time to do what he wants before they arrive."

The Blind One bent down rapidly and traced an almost perfect circle around himself in the dust of the road; then hurriedly outside this he traced what an initiate might have taken for the form of the Egg, the horns of Simara, and another form needless to describe. Then he said something to Mac.

"He says, we're not to speak, or touch the circle or go near it. I have not paid for this entertainment, and I juist think I'll take a bit walk doon the road."

"Sit down, you old coward," said Leslie. "I'm the one that has paid, and I'm the one the 'deevil' will carry off if there is a deevil. Look!"

The Blind One took from his rags a cane pipe such as blind men use in Japan, only larger, and began to blow mournful notes out of it. It was as strange a sound as ever left human lips, now ear-piercing, now low, low and soothing; his face flushed and swelled; he seemed enraptured, entranced with his own music, and the searching sound of it caused things to move disturbedly in the trees around, and a low croaking, as if from some feathered creature disturbed, to come from the cypress wood.

As he played, he turned north, south, east, and west, lingering, at last, with the reed pipe pointing between the cypress trees, as though he were calling to the blue hills in the distance.

As he stood thus, Leslie, who had been looking at the mysterious symbols around the circle, was seized with an impish impulse, and leaning forward with his walking-stick, he made in the dust inside the circle, and just behind the Blind One's heel, the form of a cross.

In doing this, the point of the stick touched the Blind One's heel.