halting, tremulous man of the same flesh as yourself, who sought to share with you the hope and the consolation with which his own soul was refreshed, that perhaps in his own way he had something as good to offer as the other.
His story was a little unusual. He had been a soldier and he was pleased to talk of the old days when he had hunted with the Quorn and danced through the London season. He had no unhealthy feeling of past sin.
'I was a great dancer in my young days,' he said, 'but I expect I should be quite out of it now with all these new dances.'
It was a good life so long as it lasted and though he did not for a moment regret it, he had no feeling of resentment for it. The call had come when he was in India. He did not exactly know how or why, it had just come, a sudden feeling that he must give up his life to bringing the heathen to the belief in Christ, but it was a feeling that he could not resist; it gave him no peace. He was a happy man now, enjoying his work.
'It's a slow business,' he said, 'but I see signs of progress and I love the Chinese. I wouldn't change my life here for any in the world.'
The two missionaries said good-bye to one another.
'When are you going home?' asked the Englishman.
'Moi? Oh, in a day or two.'
'I may not see you again then. I expect to go home in March.'
But one meant the little town with its narrow streets where he had lived for fifty jears, since when he left France, a young man, he left it for ever; but the other meant the Elizabethan house in Cheshire, with its smooth lawns and its oak trees, where his ancestors had dwelt for three centuries.
IX
THE INN
IT seems long since the night fell, and for an hour a coolie has walked before your chair carrying a lantern. It throws a thin circle of light in front of you, and as you pass you catch a pale glimpse (like a thing of beauty emerging vaguely from the ceaseless flux of common life) of a bamboo thicket, a flash of water in a rice field, or the heavy darkness of a banyan. Now and then a belated peasant bearing two heavy baskets on his yoke sidles by. The bearers walk more slowly, but after the long day they have lost none of their spirit, and they chatter gaily; they laugh, and one of them breaks into a fragment of tuneless song. But the causeway rises and the lantern throws its light suddenly on a whitewashed wall: you have reached the first miserable houses that straggle along the path outside the city wall, and two or three minutes more bring you to a steep flight of steps. The bearers take them at a run. You pass through the city gates. The narrow streets are multitudinous and in the shops they are busy still. The bearers shout raucously. The crowd divides and you pass through a double hedge of serried curious people. Their faces are impassive and their dark eyes stare mysteriously. The bearers, their day's work done, march with a swinging stride. Suddenly they stop, wheel to the right, into a courtyard, and you have reached the inn. Your chair is set down.
The inn -- it consists of a long yard, partly covered, with rooms opening on it on each side -- is lit by three or four oil lamps. They throw a dim light immediately around them, but make the surrounding darkness more impenetrable. All the front of the yard is crowded with tables and at these people are packed, eating rice or drinking tea. Some of them play games you do not know. At the great stove, where water in a cauldron is perpetually heating and rice in a huge pan being prepared, stand the persons of the inn. They serve out rapidly great bowls of rice and fill the teapots which are incessantly brought them. Further back a couple of naked coolies, sturdy, thickset and supple, are sluicing themselves with boiling water. You walk to the end of the yard where, facing the entrance but protected from the vulgar gaze by a screen, is the principal guest chamber.
It is a spacious, windowless room, with a floor of trodden earth, lofty, for it goes the whole height of the inn, with an open roof. The walls are whitewashed, showing the beams, so that they remind you of a farmhouse in Sussex. The furniture consists of a square table, with a couple of straight-backed wooden arm-chairs, and three or four wooden pallets covered with matting on the least dirty of which you will presently lay your bed. In a cup of oil a taper gives a tiny point of light. They bring you your lantern and you wait while your dinner is cooked. The bearers are merry now that they have set down their loads. They wash their feet and put on clean sandals and smoke their long pipes.
How precious then is the inordinate length of your book (for you are travelling light and you have limited yourself to three) and how jealously you read every word of every page so that you may delay as long as possible the dreaded moment when you must reach the end! You are mightily thankful then to the authors of long books and when you turn over their pages, reckoning how long you can make them last, you wish they were half as long again. You do not ask then for the perfect lucidity which he who runs may read. A complicated phraseology which makes it needful to read the sentence a second time to get its meaning is not unwelcome; a profusion of metaphor, giving your fancy ample play, a richness of allusion affording you the delight of recognition, are then qualities beyond price. Then if the thought is elaborate without being profound (for you have been on the road since dawn and of the forty miles of the day's journey you have footed it more than half) you have the perfect book for the occasion.
But the noise in the inn suddenly increases to a din and looking out you see that more travellers, a party of Chinese in sedan chairs, have arrived. They take the rooms on each side of you and through the thin walls you hear their loud talking far into the night. With a lazy, restful eye, your whole body conscious of the enjoyment of lying in bed, taking a sensual pleasure in its fatigue, you follow the elaborate pattern of the transom. The dim lamp in the yard shines through the torn paper with which it is covered, and its intricate design is black against the light. At last everything is quiet but for a man in the next room who is coughing painfully. It is the peculiar, repeated cough of phthisis, and hearing it at intervals through the night you wonder how long the poor devil can live. You rejoice in your own rude strength. Then a cock crows loudly, just behind your head, it seems; and not far away a bugler blows a long blast on his bugle, a melancholy wail; the inn begins to stir again; lights are lit, and the coolies make ready their loads for another day.
X
THE GLORY HOLE
IT is a sort of little cubicle in a corner of the chandler's store just under the ceiling and you reach it by a stair which is like a ship's companion. It is partitioned off from the shop by matchboarding, about four feet high, so that when you sit on the wooden benches that surround the table you can see into the shop with all its stores. Here are coils of rope, oilskins, heavy sea-boots, hurricane lamps, hams, tinned goods, liquor of all sorts, curios to take home to your wife and children, clothes, I know not what. There is everything that a foreign ship can want in an Eastern port. You can watch the Chinese, salesmen and customers, and they have a pleasantly mysterious air as though they were concerned in nefarious business. You can see who comes into the shop and since it is certainly a friend bid him join you in the Glory Hole. Through the wide doorway you see the sun beating down on the stone pavement of the roadway and the coolies scurrying past with their heavy loads. At about midday the company begins to
