482

By Proxy.

BY JAMES PAYN.

CHAPTER V.

THE INFORMER.

DIFFERENT as the two Englishmen were in almost all particulars, they differed also in this, that Pennicuick, though he was much the stronger, and could keep awake night after night, if it were necessary, was a heavy sleeper; while Conway was a light one. The passing by of the first pilgrim on the paved towing-path the next morning awoke him, and he at once got up and looked about him. The first object his eyes rested on was Fu-chow, just stepping from

the boat to shore.

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'Where are you going, captain?'

Topside-galow, much plenty walk before chow-chow.'
Not a bit of it; there is no time for going up hill.

And as to chow-chow, we mean to take that with his Excellency the redbuttoned mandarin.'

He had produced his watch in corroboration of the first part of this statement, for an illustration is the best sort of language to all aliens; but the captain appealed to it as a witness on the other side.

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'One piecey hand look plenty time for chin-chin.'

Yes; but the other hand says No. You can chin-chin here just as well as at that blessed temple, and in short you sha'n't go. 'Chop-chop,' pleaded Fu-chow, and moved his legs like Mr. Payne of pantomimic celebrity, to express rapidity of movement. • One young man walkey, no step.'

'I don't care how quick a young man can walk. We are going on with the boat at once.'

"What is that dancing ape about?' inquired Pennicuick, roused by the noise of the argument, and putting his head out of the shoreward cabin. Fu-chow skipped back into the boat with all the celerity of which he had just been boasting.

Oh, nothing,' said Conway. I am only telling him to move on, since we mean to breakfast with the mandarin.'

To be sure, with old red-button. He will give us "frogs and snails and puppy dogs' tails," no doubt; but what is enlargement of the liver compared with that of the mind?' Then, with a supercilious

glance at the pilgrims: 'So all this Ay-tum-foo tomfoolery is beginning again, I see. What surprises me is the egotism of these idiots in each imagining that he possesses a soul.'

'Perhaps he does,' said Conway drily.

'Well, of course it is possible; but you must allow even in that case that it can't be possibly worth saving.'

Although it was almost certain that the mandarin to whom they had been recommended would presently ask them to breakfast (for, though by no means hospitable to strangers, the Chinese pay considerable attention to persons who have letters of introduction), the two Englishmen thought it prudent to take what is called a 'summer oyster.' Oysters are very plentiful in the Flowery Land in the proper season, and during the remainder of the year a substitute-thanks, we believe, to barbarian' ingenuity-has been discovered for them. The yolk of an egg is put into a wineglass; a few drops of water and as many of vinegar are added, with salt and pepper. Then the recipient shuts his eyes and opens his mouth,' as in the nursery game of our childhood, and Heaven sends him,' or seems to send him, an oyster.

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Pennicuick approved of this delicacy in his unenthusiastic manner, and appeared in better spirits than on the previous evening: he acknowledged that his temper had not been what it should have been on that occasion, which he attributed to being shut up in a horrid boat; and now that they were on their way again, he grew animated and full of talk. His quick eye roved hither and thither and found a theme for sprightly scorn wherever it fell; on the teafarms that now began to sprinkle the banks, where every parasitic plant was Twining"; on the family tombs with their groups of pines or junipers ('there's another hearse and feathers'); on the blocks of granite cut into forms of gigantic animals, in imitation, as he affirmed, of the antediluvian department of the gardens of the Crystal Palace; and on the pagodas, the idea of which he maintained was derived from Kew. Presently glancing nearer home, he noticed that the number of soldiers in attendance upon them was diminished. 'There are but five men here, and there should be six,' observed he in a quick tone of anger.

Fu-chow, how is this?' inquired Conway, who as usual saw no reason for such excitement. It had happened more than once that some of their guards had got out and walked beside the boat.

Fu-chow seemed to think that this was the case now; for he gazed earnestly along the footpath, as if expecting to see the truant following them, ere he replied: Man plenty dirtey, plenty wash.' 'He says the fellow has stopped to bathe,' explained Conway.

A celebrated tea-firm in London is so called, Cousin Jonathan.

'He is a liar,' said Pennicuick grimly; they never washYou, sir, come here.'

'Fu-chow came up close to the bunk that separated the two compartments, and stood face to face with his enemy. The contrast between the two men-typical as it was, too, of their respective races-was very remarkable: the European, unyielding, confident, and implacable; the Asiatic, dismayed, conciliatory, and full of guile.

'Do not strike him,' cried Conway quickly.

'I don't intend to do so,' answered the other. But if I do strike him I shall kill him. Please say to him that he had better tell the truth.' Conway had seen his friend in tempers' more than once; but never in one like this, which was all the more terrible because of its calmness. He himself was more than annoyed; he was indignant with Pennicuick, and made up his mind that this sort of thing should cease, or he would return to Shanghae alone, and leave his companion to get on without him as he could; but for the present he restrained himself, for he knew that the captain's life was in danger.

'See here, Fu-chow, my friend is displeased because you have told him a lie. He says he will cut your pigtail off if you tell him another.' For the first time the Chinaman lost colour; the red faded from his cheek and left it yellow. To lose his pigtail would have been far worse than to lose life itself, and this white devil' was capable of any extremity of outrage.

'I ask once more, where is that soldier gone?' said Pennicuick. Fu-chow understood the question as though it had been addressed to him in the purest accent of Pekin.

time.'

Young joss pidgeon man went to chin-chin at morning

'He says the soldier is a pious young fellow, and went off to the temple when we started,' explained Conway; he will rejoin us, no doubt, at the mandarin's, where he knows we are to stop.'

Pennicuick nodded as if satisfied, and Fu-chow assumed his usual post at the extreme fore part of the boat, of which he formed as it were the figure-head.

At the same moment there fell on the clear air the distant sound of a great bell tolled with rapidity and at unequal intervals. 'What is that, Connie?' inquired Pennicuick, with an unusual display of interest.

I suppose it is the great bell at the temple; we heard it yesterday, though it is true not rung so irregularly. Perhaps a part of those five pounds of yours has gone in drink to the ringers,'

Pennicuick smiled, not very pleasantly; that piece of extravagance was perhaps a sore subject; or perhaps his eye resting for the moment on Fu-chow, caused him to show his teeth.

More tombs, more tea-farms, more pagodas, and presently a villa residence on the riverside, which would have astonished a Thames tourist, accustomed though he is to various styles of architecture. Imagine a Swiss cottage, painted very brightly, and with gilt bells hanging from the verandahs, that shone in the sun and tinkled in the breeze in front a garden with grottoes and fishponds; on one side, and a little to the rear, what in England would have been a coach-house and stables, but was in this instance a 'Hall of Ancestors,' where the memory of one's great-grandfather was a never-tiring subject of devotional exercise. On the other side of the villa a similar range of buildings, the Hall of Education,' or, as we should say, the schoolroom, where the children of the proprietor take in Confucius with their mothers' milk. This was the residence of Twang-hi, the mandarin.

The boat was pulled ashore and one of the soldiers despatched to his Excellency, bearing the Englishmen's credentials: the letter of introduction from their Shanghae acquaintance, and a piece of cardboard of bright vermilion, eight inches long by four wide, which was Conway's visiting card. His name was on the centre, and in one corner, in Chinese, the words, Your stupid younger brother bows his head in salutation.'

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'Well, I don't like children,' observed Pennicuick frankly, ‘but to call these people children is to pay them far too high a compliment. Does the fool who lives in this gimcrack edifice the proper place of which is at the top of a twelfth-cake-wear a peacock's feather, I wonder?'

Certainly not; that is reserved for even greater men. He boasts of the red button only.'

Then he is not allowed to swallow gold-leaf when the Emperor grants his gracious permission to him to die?'

I am not sure, but I think he can only strangle himself with a silken cord,' answered Conway gravely. Now, whatever you do, Penn, when we come into this gentleman's presence, don't you laugh -see, here is his master of the ceremonies.'

Down the steps of the gimcrack villa, like an actor out of a stage castle a trifle too small for him, was seen descending a solemn personage, with a wand in his hand, and a similar address card, only a trifle bigger, to that which had been handed in. He was attired in a blue dressing-gown, so full in its make as almost to give a suspicion of crinoline, and wore upon his head a sort of inverted butter-dish, which wobbled as he moved. As he drew near

the boat, he shook his own hands with cordiality, and then placed them reverently on his stomach.

'My master,' said he, is doubtful whether he shall presume to receive the trouble of your honourable footsteps.'

"Confound him! then he won't give us any breakfast,' observed Pennicuick, when this sentence had been translated to him.

Hush! hush! that is only his form of invitation,' explained Conway. Tell the great Twang-hi, whose reputation reaches beyond the seas, that we crave permission to look upon him.'

This reply was evidently expected, as with a profound obeisance the master of the ceremonies moved his wand and marched before them towards the mansion, like a drum-major at the head of a regiment.

As they drew near the house, they perceived a number of paper lanterns hanging from the eaves of the verandah, each inscribed with the name of the proprietor; and, on the triple door being set wide, Twang-hi himself seated at the end of the entrance-hall. He was a man barely of middle age, but endowed with great gravity of demeanour, though, as Pennicuick thought, by no means with more than was needed to carry off his gown of office, with the tablets of the law worked on the breast, his necklace of huge beads that descended below his middle, and his mandarin's hat with the red button conspicuous on its summit, exactly like a dish-cover with its knob.

He rose on the approach of his guests, with a 'Tsing-tsing!' (Hail! hail!'), then addressed Conway, who, he seemed to divine at once, was the one endowed with talking powers.

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What is your honourable age?'

My worthless number is about five-and-forty.'

'Does the venerable man enjoy happiness?'

My father is happy, I trust; being in the abodes of the blessed.'

For the moment Twang-hi showed some symptoms of embarrassment. He had concluded from his visitor's age that his father was alive, and by this mistake had perhaps awakened sorrowful memories. Conway therefore at once came to the rescue by asking in his turn: Is your honourable wife living?'

The mean person of the inner apartment is still in life,' was the uncomplimentary but conventional reply.

'How many worthy young gentlemen have you?'

'Fate has been unpropitious to me in that particular. I have but one bug.'

He is, however, doubtless doing credit to your Excellency in his education.'