Here it was that Benham stayed and talked with his host, a man robed in marvellous silks and subtle of speech even in the European languages he used, and meanwhile Prothero, it seemed, had gone down into the wickedness of the town below.It was a very great town indeed, spreading for miles along the banks of a huge river, a river that divided itself indolently into three shining branches so as to make islands of the central portion of the place.And on this river swarmed for ever a vast flotilla of ships and boats, boats in which people lived, boats in which they sought pleasure, moored places of assembly, high-pooped junks, steamboats, passenger sampans, cargo craft, such a water town in streets and lanes, endless miles of it, as no other part of the world save China can display.In the daylight it was gay with countless sunlit colours embroidered upon a fabric of yellow and brown, at night it glittered with a hundred thousand lights that swayed and quivered and were reflected quiveringly upon the black flowing waters.
And while Benham sat and talked in the garden above came a messenger who was for some reason very vividly realized by White's imagination.He was a tall man with lack-lustre eyes and sunken cheeks that made his cheek bones very prominent, and gave his thin-lipped mouth something of the geniality of a skull, and the arm he thrust out of his yellow robe to hand Prothero's message to Benham was lean as a pole.So he stood out in White's imagination, against the warm afternoon sky and the brown roofs and blue haze of the great town below, and was with one exception the distinctest thing in the story.The message he bore was scribbled by Prothero himself in a nerveless scrawl: "Send a hundred dollars by this man.I am in a frightful fix."Now Benham's host had been twitting him with the European patronage of opium, and something in this message stirred his facile indignation.Twice before he had had similar demands.And on the whole they had seemed to him to be unreasonable demands.He was astonished that while he was sitting and talking of the great world-republic of the future and the secret self-directed aristocracy that would make it possible, his own friend, his chosen companion, should thus, by this inglorious request and this ungainly messenger, disavow him.He felt a wave of intense irritation.
"No," he said, "I will not."
And he was too angry to express himself in any language understandable by his messenger.
His host intervened and explained after a few questions that the occasion was serious.Prothero, it seemed, had been gambling.
"No," said Benham."He is shameless.Let him do what he can."The messenger was still reluctant to go.
And scarcely had he gone before misgivings seized Benham.
"Where IS your friend?" asked the mandarin.
"I don't know," said Benham.
"But they will keep him! They may do all sorts of things when they find he is lying to them.""Lying to them?"
"About your help."
"Stop that man," cried Benham suddenly realizing his mistake.But when the servants went to stop the messenger their intentions were misunderstood, and the man dashed through the open gate of the f pulling down and trying again.Hope and disappointments and much need for philosophy....
I see myself now for the little workman I am upon this tremendous undertaking.And all my life hereafter goes to serve it...."He turned his sombre eyes upon his friend.He spoke with a grim enthusiasm."I'm a prig.I'm a fanatic, White.But I have something clear, something better worth going on with than any adventure of personal relationship could possibly be...."And suddenly he began to tell White as plainly as he could of the faith that had grown up in his mind.He spoke with a touch of defiance, with the tense force of a man who shrinks but overcomes his shame."I will tell you what I believe."He told of his early dread of fear and baseness, and of the slow development, expansion and complication of his idea of self-respect until he saw that tgarden and made off down the winding road.
"Stop him!" cried Benham, and started in pursuit, suddenly afraid for Prothero.
The Chinese are a people of great curiosity, and a small pebble sometimes starts an avalanche....
White pieced together his conception of the circles of disturbance that spread out from Benham's pursuit of Prothero's flying messenger.
For weeks and months the great town had been uneasy in all its ways because of the insurgent spirits from the south and the disorder from the north, because of endless rumours and incessant intrigue.
The stupid manoeuvres of one European "power" against another, the tactlessness of missionaries, the growing Chinese disposition to meet violence and force with violence and force, had fermented and brewed the possibility of an outbreak.The sudden resolve of Benham to get at once to Prothero was like the firing of a mine.This tall, pale-faced, incomprehensible stranger charging through the narrow streets that led to the pleasure-boats in the south river seemed to many a blue-clad citizen like the White Peril embodied.
Behind him came the attendants of the rich man up the hill; but they surely were traitors to help this stranger.
Before Benham could at all realize what was happening he found his way to the river-boat on which he supposed Prothero to be detained, barred by a vigorous street fight.Explanations were impossible; he joined in the fight.
For three days that fight developed round the mystery of Prothero's disappearance.
It was a complicated struggle into which the local foreign traders on the river-front and a detachment of modern drilled troops from the up-river barracks were presently drawn.It was a struggle that was never clearly explained, and at the end of it they found Prothero's body flung out upon a waste place near a little temple on the river bank, stabbed while he was asleep....
