Mandarin-Gold (28 page)

Lin gave a sigh of anticipatory pleasure and clapped his hands for a special dish of black tea to be brought.

He had carried with him from Peking a stone canister of Bohea Padre Souchong, which had been given to him as a special present by His Celestial Majesty. This tea took its name from the Woo-E Hills of Fuh-Keen, where it was grown by priests of the Temple of The Silver Moon.

For generations the same family of priests had tended three small tea' trees near their temples, and every year each tree produced roughly one pound of tea. This was held to be so valuable that it was all presented to the Emperor, who, as a great favour, would give two or three ounces to mandarins and officials to whom he wished to show favour. They drank it sparingly, and only on days of great rejoicing or celebration.

As Lin sat and waited for this tea, and servants pressed damp warm towels on his face, he felt that this was surely such a day.

‘The
Hesperides
is due at Whampoa today, sir,' the head clerk told Jardine. 'She is expected to sail north tomorrow.'

'As you know, I am leaving for England very shortly. I wish .to see Dr Robert Gunn before I sail. Ask him to call upon me as soon as he can.'

'We have already done so, sir. He wonders whether six o'clock this evening would be convenient?'

'I will await him here at that hour.'

Some weeks had passed since Gunn had left the Parsee's house; He had not known what to expect in the way of retaliation from the Parsee, but nothing had happened, nothing whatever, and this surprised him. He had sailed down-river to load a new cargo of opium at Lintin, half expecting to meet obstructions or delays or unpleasantness of some kind, but all had gone smoothly.

Gunn had even received a courteous invitation to call on William Jardine, and now he sat in the back of the longboat —
his
longboat, while Lascars,
his
Lascars — rowed him towards Creek Factory at Canton.

'Wait here until I return,' he told the boatswain as they tied up. ‘I will probably be back within the hour.'

He walked up a long flight of stairs to the pillared verandah. A Chinese servant bowed, and opened the ' green painted front door with its polished brass handles. Inside, the room was cool, and shades had been drawn to filter the afternoon sun. Wicker chairs were scattered about, with lacquered tables and oil lamps on stands. The whole room had a relaxed, lived-in air about it.

Jardine sat reading the latest issue of the
Chinese
Repository,
a quarterly edited and published by an American Protestant missionary. His company owned its rival, the
Canton Press;
he sometimes found it instructive to compare two accounts of the same happenings. As Gunn entered the room, Jardine threw the paper to one side and stood up, hand outstretched.

'I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before, doctor,' he said. 'I know that, like me, you were once a ship's surgeon. And I hear that like me also, you have abandoned the calling of Galen and Aesculapius for trade. Indeed, you are now a major shareholder in Crutchley & Company, which I learn, you have renamed Mandarin-Gold. I thought that it might be agreeable, and perhaps advantageous to both of us, if we could meet. Will you take claret or whisky?'

'Claret, if you please,' said Gunn. His eyes took in the other man's urbanity, the expensive cloth of his suit, his polished shoes and manicured hands, his spotless linen. Jardine had the casual air of one who is above all consideration of counting any cost. Yet there was nothing ostentatious about him: he was successful and he looked it; and he was successful because he had audacity and courage and common sense. Well, thought Gunn to himself, these qualities are not peculiar to him. Our careers have already had much in common: they will have much more.

'I understand,' Jardine continued as he raised his glass, 'that you have had some negotiations with an occasional business colleague of mine, the Parsee?'

'Yes,' admitted Gunn.

'He tells me some surprising news. That Crutchley has apparently decided to abdicate from his position as our nominee and to go ashore up the coast? Moreover, before he set sail on this strange voyage of individual exploration, Crutchley made over to you his share in the company, and now the Parsee has also seen fit to make over
his
controlling share in the company?'

'That is quite correct,' agreed Gunn.

'You must be a gentleman of remarkably persuasive powers,' said Jardine. 'I speak, of course, as a shareholder in Crutchley & Company, and therefore, I assume, in your new company, Mandarin-Gold. Would you care to divulge to me the details of this transaction?'

'As the majority shareholder,' replied Gunn suavely, 'I do not see any cause to add to what you already know. And indeed there is very little I could add. Your information is quite accurate. But should you feel dissatisfied with the way I conduct the new company, Dr Jardine, then I would be prepared to purchase your few shares at their value.'

'That is most considerate of you, I am sure, Dr Gunn. But, of course, you will appreciate that these shares — and indeed yours — have no value unless
my
company
allows
them a value.'

'I do not quite understand you, sir?'

'Then I will explain. I have had a report from Captain Ferguson of the
Bosphorus
that you undercut him deliberately, despite his warning to you. Indeed, your unfriendly conduct forced him to sail for several more weeks before he could be rid of his cargo.'

'He could have cut his prices,' Gunn pointed out. 'I offered him that option.'

'Perhaps not a very generous option, since Ferguson is a wholly employed man, not a shareholder, who was under orders from his directors to sell at a fixed price.

'You will readily appreciate that since my company has virtually the monopoly of Indian opium here, and our only serious competitors are the Americans with their inferior Turkish mud, it is not in our interest to cut prices. We also have considerable overheads, of which you may not be aware. For instance, I pay one local mandarin twenty thousand Spanish dollars a year not to trade with any other freebooters of your type.'

Jardine sipped his drink. Despite his own. involvement, he could not help being amused by Gunn's bravado; the fellow must realize he had no possible chance of succeeding as a freelance opium dealer, yet he showed no sign of repentance or regret.

'I feel I am not making the situation clear enough to you, Dr Gunn,' he-said at last. 'You can only trade because we permit you to trade. We have an infinite number of boats. You have one. If you put your one vessel into any harbour where we have dealings, we will put one of ours alongside, with orders to undersell you anywhere along the coast, until you desist from your challenge to us. You will appreciate, I am sure, that it does not take many voyages to break a man with only one boat
and no
capital.

‘Then how would you pay your crew? How would you victual your craft? How would you buy your mud? We have been reluctantly forced to pursue this course on several previous and unhappy occasions and each time the freebooters have withdrawn from the scene. What makes your situation any different, doctor?'

'One thing,' replied Gunn, draining his glass, and holding it out for more wine. ‘I am involved here, and I was not concerned in these other unfortunate cases you mention. I admit that you are infinitely more powerful than me, and in every way more astute than I am — or will possibly ever become. But surely, speaking as one medical man to another, you would not bring the vast weight of your great success and influence to crush my very modest-and individual enterprise?'

'Your enterprise might not always be modest. It could grow, and eventually even threaten ours. It is easier, therefore, to cut it down now before such a situation could arise. If you owned six boats, say, or even three, we might not wish to come to what is virtually open commercial warfare between two gentlemen of the same profession. But because you have only one, I think that you should trade in another area, and with other goods.'

'Thank you, sir, for your advice. I am sorry that you view me as a possible predator on your profits. It is not my wish to engage you as an enemy, but to seek you as a colleague, a companion of the same calling in a distant land.

'I submit, sir, that we all have a right to live and ply what trade we can. After all, you and Mr Matheson had to begin in a relatively small way yourselves. So, sir, having thanked you for your warning, I will therefore withdraw.'

'You mean, withdraw from the trade?' asked Jardine hopefully.

'No, sir. From your company. The
Hesperides
will sail north as planned on the morning tide.'

13

In Which Dr Gunn Treats a Patient and Makes a Deal

Mackereth came up on deck unsteadily, shambled over to the starboard side of the
Hesperides
and leaned thankfully on the rail, balancing a bunch of leaflets on the smooth wood.

Sampans were moving out towards them like painted boats on a shining, waveless sea. One, with the local mandarin seated in the stern, under his. red silk canopy, crossed beneath the bows to the port gangway. Three others came alongside under him. An official in a rattan hat called up: 'You wantee sell number one chop? Wantee buy any good thing, what you have?'

‘I give special you all number one speakee topside long fellow up yonder,' Mackereth shouted down to him, pointing with his left forefinger towards the burnished sky. He scattered a few leaflets into the sampan. The Chinese oarsmen scrambled for them, and began to read slowly, mouthing the characters, brows crinkled in perplexity.

'It is the word of the Lord,' Mackereth shouted hoarsely. 'Believe on this, and ye shall be saved. Yea, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Isaiah one, verse eighteen.'

He had been drinking again, and was unable to translate into pidgin all the swarming poignant thoughts that crowded in his mind, for anything sounded absurd in that ridiculous tongue. Instead, he spoke in the local dialect.

'And the Lord said, Go ye out into all the world and preach the Gospel. Blessed is he who is bathed in the blood of the Lamb, for he shall be washed clean. That is the way of love and salvation. Be still then and know that I am God. Psalm forty-six, verse ten.'

The Chinese looked up at him, even more puzzled. Who was this strange Barbarian with the red unhappy sweaty face and dirty shirt and these pieces of paper? What god was he speaking about? Did he not know that many gods dwelt in the air, and others in the forests, and even beneath the surface of the earth and seas?

How could he speak so familiarly of one without offending the others? But then he had the glazed frantic look of a Barbarian who slaked his thirst on firewater. And, of course, so many of the Iron Rats were mad in one way or another. They should be humoured. The oarsmen smiled hopefully and called again: 'You wantee sell, you wantee buyee, say what you wantee, yes?'

Gunn walked up to Mackereth, and leaned over the rail beside him.

'They're taking off fifty chests on the other side,' he announced in a satisfied voice. 'What are you doing? What's in those papers?'

‘They are religious tracts,' Mackereth explained with dignity. 'So that the Word may spread and cover the face of the earth, as the waters cover the sea. I've spent all I earned on my last trip to have them printed. And what you pay me after this voyage I will spend in the same way.'

'So we are offering opium on one side of the vessel, and you are selling eternal life on the other?' said Gunn in amazement.

'What else have I to sell?' asked Mackereth. 'My whole life has been a struggle to help the unbelievers. Blessed is he who bringeth one soul to heaven.'

MacPherson came up silently, barefoot, behind them.
’

'Mackereth has the right idea,' he said. .'I believe that if people weren't meant to smoke opium, then there would be no opium in the world.

'Have you ever thought how strange it is that men, hundreds of years ago, living in the jungle, or in remote mountains, surrounded by flowers, trees and bushes of every kind, subject
one
flower to all kinds of experiments? They cut it, they bleed it, they bake it, they roll it up in balls, simply so that it can produce the essence of dreams and oblivion.

'Why do they pick on this one particular flower? What guides them to it, apart from all the others? There's a thought for you, doctor, something you'll never find in your medical books.

'Alcohol and opium. Wouldn't you agree they are both valuable? Beyond price sometimes?'

'The Greeks and Romans thought so,' agreed Gunn. 'Alcohol was the gift of Dionysus, and opium the gift of Morpheus. One reconciles you to living, and the other to dying.'

'Just what I would have said if I could have thought of the words,' said MacPherson triumphantly.

'And whether a man smokes opium or not is his own decision,' Mackereth pointed out. 'Just as we must decide whether to drink alcoholic liquor — in moderation, of course — or whether to abstain. You give these heathen wretches the chance to buy Lethe — a little brief oblivion. Out of your profits from that transaction — good or bad, I do not wish to argue — I offer them something of infinitely greater value, the priceless chance of eternal salvation.'

'I'd rather have the chance of a certain profit,' replied Gunn, narrowing his eyes against the horizon. 'And from what I see this may be denied us. There's another ship coming up. Hand me your glass, MacPherson.'

He raised the lens to his eye: the
Bosphorus
was heading towards them.