“Frightened? I say Norrie, did you see his eyes? When they are fixed on what he thinks may be the truth he wouldn’t see Apollyon in his path.”
“Eh?” Norrie became alert, and turned to his friend, frowning, as if a new thought troubled him. He shook his head sadly. “Colet, you think so? But of course you do. There are such fools in the world. I rather fancy you’re another, and that’s how you know.”
Colet lit his pipe. Norrie, devising with resourcefulness fancies in the macabre which pictured that region as the portal to every horror of the soul, wondered whether a selection would be useful when arguing with Parsell, to warn him off. Colet smiled, but did not answer. At the end of the recital he explained that, as far as he could see, the only way to head off a man like Parsell was to give him an injection. That man would not go forward only if he could not move. Then, indifferently, he asked some questions of Gunong Berching and the country beyond; but Norrie ignored them.
“It’s no good talking about it. You know what this land is like. It has nothing to do with the case. It’s like talking of walking the waves. The man can’t do it. He simply can’t.”
Mr. Parsell came towards them quickly and nervously, his head thrust forward.
“You see,” said Norrie; “he doesn’t know even enough to regulate his speed in this climate. He oughtn’t to have been allowed out.”
“How interesting your men are, gentlemen. Most useful to me.” Mr. Parsell chuckled with a little vanity. “They will be wondering how I knew what part of the country they came from, and I’d never seen them before. Simple, simple. They tell you themselves, but don’t know it. Perhaps you have guessed it already, but they dislike this locality. What they had to say about it was a little mine to me. You’ll excuse me, but I think you will lose them soon. You ought to know that.”
“I know it, Mr. Parsell. We’re turning back here. We’re returning to the coast. You will find our company helpful, if you would care to travel with us.”
“My dear sir. My dear sir. I go on, of course. My work is far from finished.”
There was a brief silence, and then Colet turned to him, with deference.
“I don’t think you understand, sir, what lies ahead. There are very few natives above this point. The main range of the peninsula will have to be crossed, and that has not been done from here. On the other side of it you will be in the unknown till you get to the middle reaches of the Perak river. What we fear is, sir, that you will die.”
“Young man, it is very good of you. But I have considered that.”
“Sorry, sir, but you speak as if that did not matter.”
Mr. Parsell made a gesture, glanced round as though for a more interesting subject, and walked away to the hut.
“Well, Norrie, this ethnologist’s strong point isn’t humour, is it?”
“Of course it isn’t. It never is with these fanatics. In the Middle Ages he’d have been a holy martyr, but now he is only a scientist, offering his life for a ha’porth of facts.”
“What are we to do?”
“What is there to do? Damn the man. Why did he turn up? Isn’t life complicated enough? We can’t go doddering across Malaya behind an inspired crackpot following the Holy Grail, can we? Got something else to do. I wish he hadn’t come. There’s quite enough worries in life, without wondering what one ought to do.”
XXXIV
The two partners were sitting together, pulling on their marching boots. They were returning east, to the China Sea coast, and Mr. Parsell would set out for an Indian Ocean beach. Their Chinaman placed beside them their breakfast. Parsell was over with the Malays. He preferred their circle. The last Colet had seen of him the night before was his back against the firelight of the men’s hut, with the Malays about him. The men knew he was different. An odd character; his simplicity had an importunity which compelled you to defer your own affairs, as though it were the appeal of an innocence which, so you guessed, knew more than its blue eyes rumoured. To Colet then the man was an intimidation which could not be ignored, however much he pretended that it was not really there. Something would have to be done. Parsell certainly had recovered. The respite of a few days, and Norrie’s careful feeding, had so changed the man that occasionally he had intervals of jocosity, elfish phases of erudition which, when the other two men had recovered from their start, caused them to laugh a little awkwardly. Norrie, though, said the benefit would only help Parsell into a further and deeper slough; but the idea that he could be persuaded out of his alarming project was abandoned. It was not worth trying. It was an immovable resolution. The man was going.
Norrie stretched his legs; looked round.
“Colet, not a word from you all the morning. Some worm feeding on your bearded damask? Not worrying over the ill we can’t prevent?”
“No. No. Not now. I’ve just given that up. I’ve been thinking it over. Now there’s no option, I think. It seems to me I ought to go with him.”
Norrie drew his legs up. He tapped with his foot for a time before speaking again.
“Say it once more; perhaps I got it wrong.”
“I’m going with him. Put it like that.”
“Not coming my way?”
“I wish I could.”
Norrie did not move. He smiled, for a spell, at the fire. Then he rose, kicked a box out of his way, walked a little distance, and stood with his back to the hut, considering the forest. Colet went over to him.
“What else is there for me to do? You help me out of this.”
“You could let old destiny takes its course.”
“I don’t know destiny when
