On a Chinese Screen - W. Somerset Maugham (beach read TXT) 📗

myself surprised at. I was like a sailor who, wandering in a tropic sea, has known the lazy loveliness of coral islands and the splendours of the cities of the East, but finds himself once more in the dingy alleys of a Channel port. It is cold and grey and sordid, but it is England.

The doctor⁠—he was a little bald man, with gleaming eyes and an excitable manner⁠—rubbed his hands.

“Do you know it was found within thirty miles of here, on this side of the Tibetan frontier?”

“Found!” I exclaimed. “Found where?”

“Mon Dieu, in the ground. It had been buried for two thousand years. They found this and several fragments more, one or two complete statues, I believe, but they were broken up and only this remained.”

It was incredible that Greek statues should have been discovered in so remote a spot.

“But what is your explanation?” I asked.

“I think this was a statue of Alexander,” he said.

“By George!”

It was a thrill. Was it possible that one of the commanders of the Macedonian, after the expedition into India, had found his way into this mysterious corner of China under the shadow of the mountains of Tibet? The doctor wanted to show me Manchu dresses, but I could not give them my attention. What bold adventurer was he who had penetrated so far towards the East to found a kingdom? There he had built a temple to Aphrodite and a temple to Dionysus, and in the theatre actors had sung the Antigone and in his halls at night bards had recited the Odyssey. And he and his men listening may have felt themselves the peers of the old seaman and his followers. What magnificence did that stained fragment of marble call up and what fabulous adventures! How long had the kingdom lasted and what tragedy marked its fall? Ah, just then I could not look at Tibetan banners or celadon cups; for I saw the Parthenon, severe and lovely, and beyond, serene, the blue Aegean.

LII One of the Best

I could never remember his name, but whenever he was spoken of in the port he was always described as one of the best. He was a man of fifty perhaps, thin and rather tall, dapper and well-dressed, with a small, neat head and sharp features. His blue eyes were good-natured and jovial behind his pince-nez. He was of a cheerful disposition, and he had a vein of banter which was not ineffective. He could turn out the sort of jokes that make men standing at the club bar laugh heartily, and he could be agreeably malicious, but without ill-nature, about any member of the community who did not happen to be present. His humour was of the same nature as that of the comedian in a musical play. When they spoke of him they often said:

“You know, I wonder he never went on the stage. He’d have made a hit. One of the best.”

He was always ready to have a drink with you and no sooner was your glass empty than he was prompt with the China phrase:

“Ready for the other half?”

But he did not drink more than was good for him.

“Oh, he’s got his head screwed on his shoulders the right way,” they said. “One of the best.”

When the hat was passed round for some charitable object he could always be counted on to give as much as anyone else, and he was always ready to go in for a golf competition or a billiards tournament. He was a bachelor.

“Marriage is no use to a man who lives in China,” he said. “He has to send his wife away every summer and then when the kids are beginning to be interesting they have to go home. It costs a deuce of a lot of money and you get nothing out of it.”

But he was always willing to do a good turn to any woman in the community. He was number one at Jardine’s, and he often had the power to make himself useful. He had been in China for thirty years, and he prided himself on not speaking a word of Chinese. He never went into the Chinese city. His compradore was Chinese, and some of the clerks, his boys of course, and the chair coolies; but they were the only Chinese he had anything to do with, and quite enough too.

“I hate the country, I hate the people,” he said. “As soon as I’ve saved enough money I mean to clear out.”

He laughed.

“Do you know, last time I was home I found everyone cracked over Chinese junk, pictures and porcelain, and stuff. Don’t talk to me about Chinese things, I said to ’em. I never want to see anything Chinese as long as I live.”

He turned to me.

“I’ll tell you what, I don’t believe I’ve got a single Chinese thing in my house.”

But if you wanted him to talk to you about London he was prepared to do so by the hour. He knew all the musical comedies that had been played for twenty years and at the distance of nine thousand miles he was able to keep up with the doings of Miss Lily Elsie and Miss Elsie Janis. He played the piano and he had a pleasing voice; it required little persuasion to induce him to sit down and sing you the popular ditties he had heard when last he was at home. It was quite singular to me, the unfathomable frivolity of this grey-haired man; it was even a little uncanny. But people applauded him loudly when he finished.

“He’s priceless, isn’t he?” they said. “Oh, one of the best.”

LIII The Sea-Dog

Ships’ captains for the most part are very dull men. Their conversation is of freights and cargoes. They have seen little more in the ports they visit than their agent’s office, the bar which their kind frequents, and the bawdy houses. They owe the glamour of