Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/110

96 get three hundred identical opinions to agree with. Look at Kiyi. Now, ain't he great?'

"So Gainly Jones went on in this way, unloading his mind of odds and ends. Down on the slope below, Nan was thumping Soaker on the back to make him obedient. She wore a striped cloth and a string of beads for her clothes, but laying down the law appeared to run in her family. Soaker took his thumping in a way that I judged was a custom between them. Little Kiyi crept up the steps, squatted on the stone floor in front of us,—big head and tiny body, arms and legs like dry reeds,—motionless, solemn, and silent, while Jones was unloading his mind; and it seemed to me Kiyi was another mysterious thing, same as the bronze Buddhas in the cone pagoda.

He's got it,' Jones said, speaking husky. 'Worse 'n I did.'

Got what?'

"Jones's face had grown tired, heavy and worn; he was looking at Kiyi: 'Born with it. Got injected with the extract of misery beforehand. Born wishing he wasn't. I know what it is, but he don't know what it is—Kiyi don't. First thing he see was the cholera.'

"All about the gardens was a faint tinkle of bells blown by the wind, and a gong kept muttering somewhere in the distance. Kiyi rolled over on the edge of Gainly Jones's yellow robe, curled up, and went to sleep. He had no clothes but a green loin-cloth. His hair was done up in a topknot. I looked at Jones, and then at Kiyi, and then it seemed to me he was the littlest and the saddest thing in Asia.

"The Annalee being ready to sail, I took the Shway Dagohn road, thinking Gainly Jones might have messages to send. It was a windy afternoon and the hot dust whirled in the road. The yellow old man inside the gate sat alone. There were no children under the trees. The old man came out of his dream, and motioned to stop me, and mumbled something about the 'Tha-Thana-Peing,' which was Jones's title in that neighborhood, though whether it meant 'His Solemn High Mightiness' or just meant 'The Man That Pays the Bills,' I didn't know. 'No go, no go,' mumbled the yellow old man.

Ain't you keeping school to-day?'

Dead,' mumbled the yellow old man.

Who? Not Jones! No—Tha-Tha-na!"

Kishatriya,' he mumbled, 'Kiyi,' and fell back into his drowsy abstractions. So I went past to the little temple behind the gilded cone. Most of the monks were sitting around it on the grass, and up against a pillar sat Gainly Jones, bent over Kiyi's body, that was on his knees. One of the yellow robes recited a monotonous chant. Maybe it was a funeral service, but I got the notion they were going over their laws and gospels for the benefit of Jones.

"When Jones looked up, the reciter stopped and it was all quiet. Then Jones said, huskily: 'See here, Buck, what's the use? They can't make no Oriental of me. This ain't right, Buck. Now, is it? No, it ain't right.'

"Then I backed out of that assembly.

"It seemed to me it was a proposition a man might as well dodge. Only I recollect how little Kiyi looked uncommon little, like a wisp of dried hay, and Gainly Jones uncommon large, with his fist resting on the stone floor, and his big bony arm bare, and his head hung over Kiyi, and his clothes scarcely proper for a white man.

"Ay, I don't know. Maybe Gainly Jones been studying what might be called the Kiyi proposition ever since, but," concluded Captain Buckingham, "I've been dodging it."