I was looking down as Maurice made this remark; gazing into the interior court yard behind the Nagkon Wat, a space surrounded by low, crumbling stone structures, any one of which, even if we had run down stairs at the top of our speed, it would have taken us a good ten minutes to reach.
Five had not elapsed since the disappearance of Mr. Mirrikh—I doubt greatly if it was more than three.
“Look! Look!” I cried, suddenly seizing Maurice by the arm. “Look! Now will you believe?”
“Great God! It is the man himself! ”
He was as pale as death as these words burst from his lips, and even I felt that strange cold thrill pass through my frame again.
I remember hearing the voice of the singer drawing nearer—of being conscious that he was coming up the last of the stairs and we must encounter him in a moment more. Yet I thought nothing of this now. How could it be expected, when looking down into the courtyard of the Nagkon Wat I saw the mysterious Mr. Mirrikh standing at the head of a short flight of steps between the columns of a massive portico.
As we gazed, he lifted his eyes toward the tower and saw us.
Raising his hand he waved it lightly in our direction, bowed, and passing into the shadows of the door-way disappeared.
CHAPTER IV. OUR REVEREND GUEST.
I wish I possessed that great gift, “a facile pen.”
How I would like to describe that glorious sunrise in the elegant and finely rounded periods of Bulwer; to discourse upon the antiquity of that mighty and mysterious temple with the confident assurance of a Lenormant or a Lyell.
Or even were I gifted with the power of stringing flowery phrases, how poetic could I grow about the balmy air, the thrilling songsters whose notes now began to fill the forest, the nodding palms and delicious odors wafted past us on our lofty perch with each breeze that blew.
But pshaw! I am neither poet nor novelist; history I hate, and science I abhor. I am only a plain, every day American; a little brushed up by foreign travel, perhaps; but neither brighter nor better read than the average of my race.
Thus, as Maurice De Veber truly remarked, I am incapable of comprehending the mystical; my mind and thought methods are unadapted to the tenets of Buddhist theology.
Even now that my knowledge has advanced in this direction; even now that I know of that knowledge and must believe because I know, because I have seen and heard, I find myself still incapable of so expressing my thoughts to others as to carry conviction with my statements. But after all, that is a gift, and one which few men possess.
Here was I brought face to face with a man and a mystery. A man more mysterious even than the temple in which we had met. A man whose facial appearance violated all the laws of ethnology; a man seemingly possessed of powers which opposed physical law. Yet now that my friend had seen what I had seen, I found myself forced to admit the truth of that which for weeks past I had been trying to persuade myself was but the outgrowth of an over morbid mind.
“George! George! You saw him?” cried Maurice, staring down at the portico through which Mr. Mirrikh had disappeared.
“Decidedly I saw him. And you—now you are forced to admit that my experience at Panompin was no dream?”
“I admit nothing. All my life—that is ever since I was old enough to read and think—I have longed to be a witness to something of this sort. But, George, once seeing is not enough to convince me that the man exists who can set at naught the laws of nature. I must see and see, test and re-test again and again. I admit the possibility—no more.”
“But,” I began, “such business is done by others than Buddhists. Our modern Spiritualists for instance——”
“Oh bother the modern Spiritualists!” he exclaimed impatiently. “There is something different here from your vulgar table tipping, spirit rappings and banjo playings. How did that man get down from this tower? George, I tell you my dear fellow—pshaw! we can talk no longer now!”
He was right. The moment had come when our attention was to be distracted.
Quick footsteps were heard upon the topmost stairs and the full, rich voice of the singer drew nearer. An instant later and we were no longer alone. The singing ceased, a man stepped out upon the platform and advanced to where we stood.
“Ah! So I am not the only one who has had the courage to brave these infernal stairs!” he exclaimed. “Good morning, gentlemen. English I perceive, or American. My name is Philpot—Miles Philpot. I am glad to meet you—glad to meet any one capable of speaking the only respectable language on God’s footstool—I am indeed.”
Let me describe him. It must be done, and the sooner we are through with introductions the sooner my strange story may be told.
A man of forty years, perhaps, of medium height, slightly inclined to corpulency, with brown hair, big, bulging blue eyes and smooth shaven, florid cheeks, stood before us with outstretched hand.
The face was an intelligent one, and yet there was about the mouth a certain sneering expresssion which repelled me. I thought then—and afterward I knew it to be true—that here was a man who had drunk of life’s pleasures to the dregs; a man who had seen everything and forgotten nothing; whose life had been a moral failure; one who had lacked sufficient tenacity of purpose to make life a pecuniary success.
And yet why I should thus have estimated him, I scarcely know.
Certainly his dress did not warrant the drawing of any such conclusion.
A suit of rusty black; a waistcoat with innumerable little buttons extending from a dirty collar turned “hindside foremost,” as Maurice put it, and a broad brimmed straw hat all went to indicate a Church of England clergyman. No; it was the face. That spoke louder than broadcloth and buttons. There was no spirituality there.
Maurice was the first to recover himself from the somewhat confused condition of mind into which this abrupt, though not unexpected interruption had thrown us, and taking the proffered hand, he returned the greeting with more warmth than I, under the circumstances, could have displayed.
“Glad to meet you, sir!” he said heartily. “I am Maurice De Veber; this is Mr. George Wylde, my friend. It is unnecessary to ask if you are our countryman, Mr. Philpot. Your manner speaks too plainly. You are an American, of course."
The new comer laughed lightly.
Ah, how many times was I destined to hear that light, sneering laugh in the weeks to come.
“On the contrary,” he replied, “I am an Englishman. There, don’t stare! Don’t expect me to be a boor in consequence. Don’t look round for my bath-tub, my valet, hat box and travelling rug. I said I was an Englishman—so I am by birth, and I am proud of it; but I am prouder still of being a citizen of the world, and of having spent the best part of my life in the United States. Gentlemen, to all intents and purposes I am an American. You have hit the nail squarely on the head.”
“Singular words for one of your cloth, sir,” I replied with a slight tinge of sarcasm.
“Cloth! Well you are right. I am a Reverend, boys, but the title is about all there is left of it. I have enjoyed many charges and lost them all, and that which I have now is not a charge! Ha! ha! It is only an existence. Being deprived of a charge does not deprive me of the right to live. Briefly, I am a reformed parson. I am sponging on the world.”
He