On a Chinese Screen W. Somerset Maugham (books for 10th graders TXT) đź“–
- Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Book online «On a Chinese Screen W. Somerset Maugham (books for 10th graders TXT) 📖». Author W. Somerset Maugham
“No one ever thought I was a fool,” he muttered.
He had a feeling of good-natured contempt for the gibbering dead. Then, as he strolled along, he came suddenly upon two coolies digging a grave. He was astonished, for he had not heard that anyone in the community was dead.
“Who the devil’s that for?” he said aloud.
The coolies did not even look at him, they went on with their work, standing in the grave, deep down, and they shovelled up heavy clods of earth. Though he had been so long in China he knew no Chinese, in his day it was not thought necessary to learn the damned language, and he asked the coolies in English whose grave they were digging. They did not understand. They answered him in Chinese and he cursed them for ignorant fools. He knew that Mrs. Broome’s child was ailing and it might have died, but he would certainly have heard of it, and besides that wasn’t a child’s grave, it was a man’s and a big man’s too. It was uncanny. He wished he hadn’t gone into that cemetery; he hurried out and stepped into his chair. His good humour had all gone and there was an uneasy frown on his face. The moment he got back to his office he called to his number two:
“I say, Peters, who’s dead, d’you know?”
But Peters knew nothing. The taipan was puzzled. He called one of the native clerks and sent him to the cemetery to ask the coolies. He began to sign his letters. The clerk came back and said the coolies had gone and there was no one to ask. The taipan began to feel vaguely annoyed: he did not like things to happen of which he knew nothing. His own boy would know, his boy always knew everything, and he sent for him; but the boy had heard of no death in the community.
“I knew no one was dead,” said the taipan irritably. “But what’s the grave for?”
He told the boy to go to the overseer of the cemetery and find out what the devil he had dug a grave for when no one was dead.
“Let me have a whisky and soda before you go,” he added, as the boy was leaving the room.
He did not know why the sight of the grave had made him uncomfortable. But he tried to put it out of his mind. He felt better when he had drunk the whisky, and he finished his work. He went upstairs and turned over the pages of Punch. In a few minutes he would go to the club and play a rubber or two of bridge before dinner. But it would ease his mind to hear what his boy had to say and he waited for his return. In a little while the boy came back and he brought the overseer with him.
“What are you having a grave dug for?” he asked the overseer point blank. “Nobody’s dead.”
“I no dig glave,” said the man.
“What the devil do you mean by that? There were two coolies digging a grave this afternoon.”
The two Chinese looked at one another. Then the boy said they had been to the cemetery together. There was no new grave there.
The taipan only just stopped himself from speaking.
“But damn it all, I saw it myself,” were the words on the tip of his tongue.
But he did not say them. He grew very red as he choked them down. The two Chinese looked at him with their steady eyes. For a moment his breath failed him.
“All right. Get out,” he gasped.
But as soon as they were gone he shouted for the boy again, and when he came, maddeningly impassive, he told him to bring
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