The Seeds of Enchantment | Page 6

"Boche talk. You believe their lies you, a man of Science! And if I, Rene de Gys, tell you that war is not dead, that war will never die, that war is the spirit of Man what will you say then?"
"Prussien!" chaffed Dicky.
De Gys fell silent for a moment, then he began to speak very deliberately in cold-blooded, reasoned sentences.
"No. I am no Prussian. War for war's sake I hate. But more than war I hate weakness and indiscipline and smug hypocrisy and lies. Out of these, and not out of strength, war is bred. That old Roman was no fool when he said 'If thou desirest peace, see that thou art prepared for war'."
"He was a barbarian, of a barbarous age," put in Beamish.
"And we, I suppose, are civilized," laughed the Frenchman; "therefore, we must offer the other cheek to the smiter, even if he be a Hun or a yellow man/"
"Nobody's trying to smite you, old firebrand," soothed Dicky. But de Gys rumbled in his beard, "Weakness is danger. The world forgets its lesson"; and he went on to tell them of old fights in the swamp and the jungle, fights of white men against yellow, of brown men against white.
Till lastly he spoke of Indo-Chinese exploration, of de Lagree and Gamier, of their journey up the Mekong into Yunnan; of how de Lagree died at Tong-chuan, and Gamier a few years later in the rice-fields of Son-tay.
"Heroes, my friends," boomed the deep voice. "Patriots. Barbarians--" he glanced furiously at Beamish "who flung away their lives for a scrap of knowledge on a map no one looks at, for a little strip of painted cloth on which your internationalists would fain wipe their dirty noses... Barbarians!" He paused, ineffably contemptuous. "Pah! Such talk makes the blood boil. Were they all 'barbarians', all those white men whose corpses litter the East?"
"They served their day," put in Beamish. "Now, East and West must work together for the regeneration, of the world."
"A fine sermon!" De Gys laughed. "And one that sounds well in the drawing-rooms of the West. But do not preach it here, my friend: nor to me, Rene de Gys. Because I, monsieur, am also a barbarian..."
"And you?" He turned on Dicky. "Are you, too, of this milk-and-coffee creed? Would you embrace the Hun and the yellow man they are both one, believe me who know East and West take him into your country, let him steal the white loaves from your workers' stomachs, the white women from your workers' beds. I think not, my friend. You are of the old faith...
"The old faith!" suddenly the Frenchman burst into gasconade. "The faith in the white above the black and the yellow! Such is my creed. As Gamier was, as Doudart de Lagree, so am I. Fools, soldiers, barbarians call them what you will at least they knew how to die for their beliefs, for the little scrap of knowledge, for the little strip of painted cloth. All up and down the land of gold they lie, men of your stamp and mine, cher ami. Yet the land of gold still keeps one secret from us. Eastward of the Mekong that secret hides; westwards of the Red River..."
Interrupted a voice, a voice the three hardly recognized, the voice of Melie, hoarse and crazy with terror: "Non! Non! Non! Je vous defends" screamed Melie. Then the voice snapped in her throat; and her head crashed forward, lay motionless on the table. Red rinds of the mangosteens showed like enormous clots of blood among the loosened gold of her hair.
CHAPTER THE
SECOND
Three purple seeds
DE GYS sprang to his feet with one quick movement that sent the flimsy chair clattering behind him. His right arm caught up the fainting woman as a harvester catches up the wheat-sheaf, lifted her breast-high; his left gathered her ankles.
"You, doctor, come!" he called over his shoulder, and strode off, threading quick way between the empty tables, up the three steps from the tiffin-room to the hall, out of sight. Beamish and Dicky, pursuing, caught a glimpse of him as he rounded the corner of the stairs; heard the scrape of his shoes on the matting; broke into a run.
Phu-nan, the little brown servant, stood for a moment irresolute. Then, taking the half-empty basket and de Gys' sun-hat, he, too, followed.
By the time Phu-nan reached his master's apartments Melie was lying flat on the great bare bedstead. Over her, carelessly drawn mosquito-curtains brushing his shoulders, bent the doctor. De Gys, fists clenched, stood motionless in the centre of the room. A pile of papers and a bamboo table lay, overturned, between the mats on the red brick floor. Beyond, through the "ehik" curtains, Phu-nan saw the third white man a tall silhouette against the balcony window.
Silently the "boy" set