|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 124
I suppose it was the mood of my queer experiences that set me at
this speculation.
One would expect to find some evidences of India in my uncle's
house. He had been a long time in Asia, on the fringes of the
English service. Toward the end he had been the Resident at the
court of an obscure Rajah in one of the Northwest Provinces. It
was on the edge of the Empire where it touches the little-known
Mongolian states south of the Gobi.
The Home Office was only intermittently in touch with him. But
something, never explained, finally drew its attention and he was
put out of India. No one knew anything about it; "permitted to
retire," was the text of the brief official notice.
And he had retired to the most remote place he could find in the
British islands. There was no other house on that corner of the
coast. The man was as alone as he would have been in the Gobi.
If he had planned to be alone one would have believed he had
succeeded in that intention. And yet from the moment I got down
from the gillie's cart I seemed drawn under a persisting
surveillance. I felt now that some one was looking at me. I
turned quickly. There was a door at the end of the room opening
onto a bit of garden facing the sea. A man stood, now, just
inside this door, his hand on the latch. His head and shoulders
were stooped as though he had been there some moments, as though
he had let himself noiselessly in, and remained there watching me
before the fire.
But if so, he was prepared against my turning. He snapped the
latch and came down the room to where I stood.
He was a big stoop-shouldered Englishman with a pale, pasty face
beginning to sag at the jowls. There was a queer immobility
about the features as though the man were always in some fear.
His eyes were a pale tallow color and seemed too small for their
immense sockets. One could see that the man had been a
gentleman. I write it in the past, because at the moment I felt
it as in the past. I felt that something had dispossessed him.
"This will be Robin," he said. "My dear fellow, it was fine of
you to travel all this way to see me."
He had a nervous cold hand with hardly any pressure in the grasp
of it. His thin black hair was brushed across the top of his
bald head, and the distended, apprehensive expression on his face
did not change.
He made me sit down by the fire and asked me about the family in
America. But there was, I thought, no real interest in this
interrogation until he came to a reflective comment.
"I should like to go to America," he said; "there must be great
wastes of country where one would be out of the world."
The sincerity of this expression stood out in the trivial talk.
It indicated something that disturbed the man. He was as
isolated as he could get in England, but that was not enough.
He sat for a moment silent, the fingers of his nervous hand
moving on his knee. When he glanced up, with a sudden jerk of
his head, he caught me looking at the little image of Buddha in
its glass box on the mantelpiece.
Was this longing for solitude the influence of this mysterious
religion?
Remote, lonely isolation was a cult of Buddha. The devotees of
that cult sought the waste places of the earth for their
meditations. To be out of the world, in its physical contact,
was a prime postulate in the practice of this creed.
"Ah, Robin," he cried, as though he were in a jovial mood and
careless of the subject, "do you have a hobby?"
I answered that I had not felt the need of one. The inquiry was
a surprise and I could think of nothing better to reply with.
"Then, my boy," he went on, "what will you do when you are old?
One must have something to occupy the mind."
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|