“Pshaw! The sun has affected your head George,” said Maurice when I told him about it. “You had better take a dose of quinine and keep indoors out of the night air. The fellow may have had a most extraordinary birth-mark, I’m willing to admit, but you may be sure he managed to scale the wall while you were looking back at that crowd. Probably he’ll turn up to-day and claim his bag, explaining the whole affair.”
But he did not.
Day after day elapsed and still nothing was heard of the man.
I fairly forced poor Maurice into making inquiries about him, and he, as American consul at Panompin, had every facility for gaining information if it was to be had.
A few persons had observed a tall, peculiar appearing man, with the lower part of his face concealed under a black cloth, walking along the main street of Panompin that night, but no one was able to furnish the slightest information as to who he was, or where he came from; nor could I convince myself that anyone had seen him after he left me at the end of the alley in that strange and altogether unaccountable fashion.
Meanwhile the days came and went. Maurice busy with his consular engagements grew tired of hearing me talk about the affair, and so I ceased to mention it. I hung the bag upon a nail in my sleeping room, but as it was locked, I made no attempt to open it, for I have a particular dislike to prying into other people’s business—besides it was very light and probably contained nothing but a change of clothing.
In fact the matter had begun to fade from my memory, and growing tired of the monotonous, idle life I was leading at Panompin, I was planning to go to Calcutta with the idea of engaging in business, when one afternoon Maurice burst into the room where I sat reading, blurting out:
“Now then, old fellow, here’s something to make you forget your troubles. I have the promise of a passage in a steamer bound up to lake Thalaysap and the Siamrap river. I am going to take a month’s vacation and visit the world-famed ruins of Angkor—will you go along?
“Go!”
Why I would have gone to the South Pole with Maurice De Veber willingly, and yet he was only a chance aquaintance, after all.
We had met two years before on a steamer plying between Swatow and Hong Kong, to which latter port I was bound upon certain official business, I had been attracted by his manly figure, dark, handsome face, and regular features, from the moment I first laid eyes on him at the supper table, just after we left Swatow; and when I found he was an American and a New Yorker, of course an acquaintance sprang up at once.
Maurice was a splendid fellow; positively my ideal of young American manhood. What, therefore, did it matter that I had seen forty years and he not more than twenty-five?
You see there was a great void in my heart waiting to be filled by some one. It was the place my wife might have filled, should have filled, but at that time the very sight of womankind was disgusting to me. I execrated the sex; in my lonely hours of self-communion I had brought my mind into that condition where I looked upon every married man as one to be pitied; where I longed for my vanished youth and its opportunities, where I reversed the order of nature, and despising the affection of woman, sighed for that of the brother or the faithful friend. Positively my mental state, just then, must have bordered upon insanity, for I never had but one brother and he was a drunkard and a most precious rascal, and as for my early friends there was not one I could name who had not used me in a shameful way.
Long before we reached Hong Kong I stood ready to give Maurice De Veber my head if he had asked it, and I know that I made myself noticeable by the way I followed him about.
Still he seemed to like it without making the least pretence of returning the absurd affection which I could scarcely help displaying for him.
Possibly some one had said to him, “that old fellow Wylde is as rich as a Jew." I should not wonder, for there were those on board who knew me, and the snug little fortune left me by my father had been greatly exaggerated among my associates in China. Indeed, I often thought of that, and I found the thought making me so miserable that I was positively relieved when we reached Hong Kong and our intimacy was broken off.
“Good-bye,” said Maurice, as I took leave of him on the deck of the Singapore steamer, in which he had taken passage for Saigon, from there to proceed to Panompin, where he had just been appointed consul. “Good-bye! If you get tired of Swatow take a run down to Cambodia and pay me a visit. Bring Mrs. Wylde with you and I’ll promise to entertain you both as well as a poor bachelor can.”
Well, when the crisis came, I took the run down to Cambodia, but I did not bring Mrs. Wylde.
Of course I am morbid. I know it. Very likely if I had been different my wife would have been different. There are those who do not hesitate to say so, and doubtless they are right.
But I am what my hereditary tendencies have made me; or perhaps I should say, what, by a careful fostering of those tendencies, I have made myself. I had longed to be free from the chains which held me down, but now that freedom had actually come I found myself bound by chains still more powerful—regret for what had been, thoughts of what might have been, sad memories of the past.
Not but what Maurice tried to make life pleasant for me at Panompin.
He did everything that a man could do, and I honestly believe that by this time he had conceived as sincere an affection for me as it is possible for a young man to feel for a comparative stranger so much his senior.
Indeed, I believe that the trip to Angkor was arranged for my especial benefit, for it was I and not he who had expressed a desire to visit that wonderful city of the ancient Buddhists, which has lain buried in the dense forests of Cambodia for more years than man can count.
We were off within an hour, for the opportunity had presented itself suddenly and had to be embraced at once if at all. Indeed, our departure from Panompin was so hasty that we had barely time to throw together the necessary articles of clothing, leaving our heavier baggage to be brought up by Maurice’s Chinese servant, in a native boat, which was to go up to the lake on the following day.
This was the dawning of our fourth day at the ruins—the others had been spent in exploring the great temple, studying its bas-reliefs and unreadable inscriptions, silent memorials of a forgotten race.
Yes, the enjoyment should have been all mine, not his; and to a certain extent it was so. Even in my unhappy frame of mind I could not gaze down from that height unawed at the mighty monuments of a lost people which lay beneath us; nevertheless they had failed to amuse me as I had hoped.
“Hark!” exclaimed Maurice suddenly, as we stood there gazing off upon that ocean of green, tinged at the horizon with a broad dash of orange, deepening in its lower lines into crimson; “hark, George! Don’t you hear someone on the platform above us? I am certain I heard a step.”
“I thought I heard something a moment or two ago,” I replied, “but I hear nothing now.”
“Nor I, but I did as I spoke.”
“It is very unlikely that any of those lazy priests can have gone up before us,” said I, alluding to the dull-eyed old Cambodians, who, dwelling in the group of low thatched huts far below us, have charge of the temple. “Unless something special calls them they have shown no anxiety to leave their rice and betel since we’ve been at Angkor.”
“True, George; and yet I heard——”
“What my dear fellow?”
“Some one praying, I think—at least it sounded that way, though I couldn’t understand the words.”
“Then your hearing is a precious sight more acute than mine, Maurice,” I answered. “I thought I heard some one shuffling about on the