The Seeds of Enchantment | Page 2

am even a
little proud both of the thought and of the struggle.
For without these three, Thought and Struggle and a little clean Pride in
accomplishment, is neither Truth nor Life as even our "Cyprian
Beamishes," to whom I dedicate this adventure, eventually discover.
131, Westbourne Terrace,
Hyde Park, London, England
The first day of January, nineteen twenty-one.

THE SEEDS OF ENCHANTMENT
CHAPTER THE
FIRST

In which the reader makes acquaintance of three white men and a
mystery girl
"INTERNATIONAL Socialism..." began Doctor Cyprian Beamish.
His companion dipped spoon to a plateful of that Mulligatawny soup
which invariably commences Sunday's tiffin throughout the Federated
Malay States, and drawled in the unmistakeable accents of Oxford
University:
"Too hot for Socialism, old man. Give it a rest."
It was hot, stiflingly so. Outside, Singapore City steamed under an
equatorial rain-drizzle: moisture clammy, bloodthinning moisture
permeated the gloomy stucco-pillared tiffin room of the Hotel Europe.
Even See-Sim, the Cantonese "boy" whom the Honourable Dicky had
managed to pick up at Penang, felt uncomfortably warm as he stood,
yellow-faced and impassive, behind his master's chair.
"Ayer baton," commanded Dicky. The boy grinned, and slipped away
his embroidered felt shoes making no noise on the gray stone floor.
"What's ayer baton?" asked Beamish.
"Ice. Literally water, stone. Solid water. Rather a neat way of putting
it," drawled Dicky.
"You've got an extraordinary knack of acquiring languages, Long'un."
"Think so?"
"Globe-trotters," judged the men at the other tables men dressed for the
most part in high silver-buttoned tunics of white linen and chattered
their endless discussions about tin prices arid rubber prices land the
Siamese rice-crop.
The two "globe-trotters" subsided into silence over their Mulligatawny.
See-Sim, returning with the ice, slipped deft lumps into their glasses;
poured out the whisky stengahs fizzed aerated water brim-high; and

resumed his impassive pose, hands tucked away in the sleeves of his
blue silk jacket.
"Of these Fan-qui-lo (foreign devils)," thought See-Sim, "the
fair-haired one is undoubtedly great in riches, wisdom, and strength.
That other seems to me a person of lesser consideration."
So China; but to American minds and eyes the pair require a more
detailed, more sympathetic picture.
The Honourable Richard Assheton Smith, only son of that Lord
Furlmere who married Miss Sylvia Gates of Danville, Virginia, in 1888,
was almost lankily tall, long-handed, fair to freckling point. His
tropical clothes, though tailored in Bombay of Foochow silk, yet
managed to hint of Bond Street, London. He wore his hair, yellow hair
with a touch of gold in it, close-cropped. The moustache above the red
lips and fine teeth curled back flat below clean-cut nostrils. Dark lashes
veiled languid eyes of intense blue. At twentyfour Dicky had only just
escaped being "pretty"; now, in his thirtieth year, he looked merely
aristocratic. And this aristocratic appearance of Dicky's was all the
more curious, because the Purlmere peerage did not date back to the
Norman Conquest, or even to the Restoration: the Honourable
Richard's great-grandfather having been a Lancashire cotton weaver
who succeeded, by hard work and hard saving, in founding one of those
business dynasties which emerged from the Victorian prosperity of the
British Empire.
In the language of Beamish, therefore, the heir of Castle Furlmere
belonged to the "capitalist" class, stood for a scion of "individualism,"
of "competitive industry," and "wage slavery" in their most commercial,
least humanized forms. For Doctor Cyprian Beamish was among other
things an undistinguished member of Fabian Socialist Society!
Thirty-six years old, ascetic-looking, clean-shaven, grayishhaired,
Beamish might well appear of "lesser consideration--" to the wise, tired
eyes of China as represented by the motionless See-Sim. He wore his
silk clothes carelessly; seemed lacking in repose; inclined, thought the
Cantonese, to familiarity. Yet Beamish, apart from his opinions, might

have been a very pleasant fellow.
The Beamishes had never attained commercial prosperity. As a family,
they counted among their remote ancestors an eighteenth-century
beadle and a Bow Street runner, the modern representatives drifting
into minor positions on Parish Councils, the Inland Revenue, and
various Government offices. Cyprian, youngest of a large brood, had
taken a Scotch degree in medicine, and been appointed Officer of
Health to a South Coast holiday resort some two years before the 1914
outbreak of war in Europe.
See-Sim removed empty soup-plates, brought sweet curry of Singapore
custom. The damp heat, which grew more intense every moment,
suppressed all conversation between the two Europeans.
A curious intimacy, this, begun in a dressing-station near Neuve
Chapelle, continued intermittently through four years of battle, and
culminating in a leisurely post-war journey through the East.
The original suggestion of the trip had been Dicky's. Lord Furlmere,
despite his seat in the House of Lords, still drove the complicated
organization founded by his plebeian grandfather; and his son, before
resuming a business career interrupted by