CHAPTER IV—THE RIDDLE OF LIFE, AND OF DEATH
1
DOANE stood on the Bund at Hankow, by the railing, his great frame towering above the passers-by. He had lunched with the consul general, an old acquaintance. He had arranged to stop overnight, with Betty, in a missionary compound. In the morning they would take the weekly Peking Express northward.
The wide yellow Yangtse flowed by, between its steep mud cliffs, crowded with sampans—hundreds of them moored, rail to rail, against the opposite bank, a compact floating village that was cluttered and crowded with ragged river-folk and deck-houses of arched matting and that reared skyward a thick tangle of masts and rigging. The smaller boats and tubs of the water-beggars lay against the bank just beneath him, expectantly awaiting the Shanghai steamer. Out in the stream several stately junks lay at anchor; and near them a tiny river gunboat, her low free-board glistening white in the warm spring sunshine, a wisp of smoke trailing lazily from her funnel, the British ensign hanging ir folds astern.
Down and up the water steps were moving continuously the innumerable water bearers whose business it was to supply the city of near a million yellow folk that lay just behind the commercial buildings and the pyramid-like godowns of the Bund.
To Doane the picture, every detail of which had a place in the environment of his entire adult life, seemed unreal. The consul general, too, had been unreal. His talk, mostly of remembered if partly mellowed political grievances back home, of the great days when a certain “easy boss” was in power, and later of the mutterings of revolution up and down the Yangtse Valley, sounded in Doane's ears like quaint idle chatter of another planet.... His own talk, it seemed now, had been as unreal as the rest of it.
Of the compliment men of affairs usually paid him, despite his calling, in speaking out as man to man, Doane had never thought and did not think now. He was not self-conscious.
The hours of sober thought that followed his talk with Henry Withery had deepened the furrow between his brows.
In an odd way he was dating from that talk. It had been extraordinarily futile. It had to come, some sort of outbreak. For two or three years he had rather vaguely recognized this fact, and as vaguely dreaded it. Now it had happened. It was like a line drawn squarely across his life. He was different now; perhaps more honest, certainly franker with himself, but different... It had shaken him. Sleep left him for a night or two. Getting away for this trip to Hankow seemed a good thing. He had to be alone, walking it off, and thinking... thinking.... He walked the two hundred and ninety li to M. Pour-mont's compound, at Ping Yang, the railhead that spring of the new meter-guage line into Hans' Province in two days. The mule teams took three.
He dwelt much with memories of his daughter. She had been a winning little thing. Until the terrible Boxer year, that ended, for him, in the death of his wife, she had brought continuous happiness into their life.
She would be six years older now. He couldn't picture that. She had sent an occasional snapshot photograph; but these could not replace his vivid memories of the child she had been.
He was tremulously eager to see her. There would be little problems of adjustment. Over and over he told himself that he mustn't be stern with her; he must watch that.
He felt some uncertainty regarding her training. It was his hope that she would fit into the work of the mission. It seemed, indeed, necessary. She would be contributing eager young life. Her dutiful, rather perfunctory letters had made that much about her clear. They needed that.
During the talk with Withery—it kept coming, up—he had heard his own voice saying—in curiously deliberate tones—astonishing things. He had sent his friend away in a state of deepest concern. He thought of writing him. A letter might catch him at Shanghai. There would be time in the morning, during the long early hours before this household down here would be awaking and gathering for breakfast. It would help, he felt impulsively, to explain fully... But what? What was it that was to be so easily explained? Could he erase, with a few strokes of a pen, the unhappy impression he had made that night on Henry's brain?
The suggestion of marriage, with its implication of a rather cynical worldly wisdom, had come oddly from the devout Henry. Henry was older, too. But Doane winced at the mere recollection. He was almost excitedly sensitive on the topic. He had put women out of his mind, and was determined to keep them out. But at times thoughts of them slipped in.
On the walk to Ping Yang, the second afternoon, he was swinging down a valley where the road was no more than the stony bed of an anciently-diverted stream. The caravan of a mandarin passed, bound doubtless from Peking to a far western province. That it was a great mandarin was indicated by his richly decorated sedan chair borne by sixteen footmen with squadrons of cavalry before and behind. Five mule litters followed, each with a brightly painted, young face pressed against the tiny square window, the wives or concubines of the great one. Each demurely studied him through slanting eyes. And the last one smiled; quickly, brightly. It was death to be caught at that, yet life was too strong for her. He walked feverishly after that. He had said one thing to Henry... something never before formulated, even in his own thinking. What was it? Oh, this!—“Henry, I'm full of a fire and energy that no longer find an outlet in my work. I want to turn to new fields. If I don't, before it's too late, I may find myself on the rocks.”
There was something bitterly, if almost boyishly true in that statement. The vital, vigorous adult that was developing within him, now, in the forties, seemed almost unrelated to the young man he had been. He felt life, strength, power. In spirit he was younger than ever. All he had done, during more than twenty years, seemed but a practising for something real, a schooling. Now, standing there, a stern figure, on the Hankow Bund, he was aware of a developed, flowering instinct for the main currents of the mighty social stream, for rough, fresh contacts, large enterprises. His religion had been steadily widening out from the creed of his youth, gradually including all living things, all growth, far outspreading the set boundaries of churchly thought. This development of his spirit had immensely widened his spiritual influence among the Chinese of the province while at the same time making it increasingly different to talk frankly with fellow churchmen.
He had come to find more of the bread of life in Emerson and Montaigne, Chaucer and Shakespeare; less in Milton and Peter. He could consider Burns now with a new pity, without moral condescension, with simple love. He could feel profoundly the moral triumph of Hester Prynne, while wondering at what seemed his own logic. He struggled against a weakening faith in the authenticity of divine revelation, as against a deepening perception that the Confucian precepts might well be a healthy and even sufficient outgrowth of fundamental Chinese characteristics.
He thought, at times rather grimly, of the trials for heresy that now and then rocked the church; and wondered, as grimly, how soon the heresy hunters would be getting around to him. The smallest incident might, sooner or later would, set them after him.
Henry Withery was certain, in spite of his personal loyalty, out of his very concern, to drop a word. And there was literally no word he could drop, after their talk, but would indicate potential heresy in his friend, James Griggsby Doane.
Or it might come from within the compound. Or from a passing stranger. Or from remarks of his own at the annual conference. Or from letters.
There were moments when he could have invited exposure as a relief from doubt and torment of soul. There was nothing of the hypocrite in him. But in soberer moments he felt certain that it was letter to wait until he could find, if not divine guidance, at least an intelligent earthly plan.
All he could do, as it stood, was to work harder and harder with body and mind. And to shoulder more and more responsibility. Without that he would be like a wild engine, charging to destruction.
His daughter would be, for a time certainly, one more burden. He was glad. Anything that would bring life real again! Work above all; every waking moment, if possible, filled; his mental and physical powers taxed to their uttermost; that was the thing; crowd out the brooding, the mere feeling. Action, all the time, and hard, objective thought. The difficulty was that his powers were so great; he seemed never to tire any more; his thoughts could dwell on many planes at once; he actually needed but a few hours' sleep.... And so Betty would be a young woman now, mysteriously as old as her mother on her wedding day: a young woman of unknown interests and sympathies, of a world he himself had all but ceased to know. And it came upon him suddenly, then with tremendous emotional force, that he had no heritage to leave her but a good name.
He stood gripping the railing, head back, gazing up out of misty eyes at a white-flecked blue sky. A prayer arose from his heart and, a whisper, passed his lips: “O God, show me Thy truth, that it may set me.”
In the intensity of his brooding he had forgotten to watch for the steamer. But now he became aware of a stir of life along the river-front. The beggars were paddling out into the stream, making ready their little baskets at the ends of bamboo poles.
Over the cliffs, down-stream, hung a long film of smoke. The steamer had rounded the bend and was plowing rapidly up toward the twin cities. He could make out the two white stripes on the funnel, and the cluster of ventilators about it, and the new canvas across the front of the bridge. A moment later he could see the tiny figures crowding the rail.
The steamer warped in alongside a new wharf.
Doane stood near the gangway, all emotion, nearly out of control.
From below hundreds of coolies, countrymen and ragged soldiers swarmed up, to be herded off at one side of the wharf. The local coolies went aboard and promptly started unloading freight, handling crates and bales of half a ton weight with the quick, half grunted, half sung chanteys, intricately rhythmical, with which all heavy labor is accompanied in the Yangtse Valley.
Two spectacled Chinese merchants in shimmering silk robes came down the gangway. A tall American, in civilian dress and overcoat but carrying a leather sword case, followed. Two missionaries came, one in Chinese dress with a cue attached to his skull-cap, bowing to the stern giant as they passed. Then a French father in black robe and shovel hat; a group of Englishmen; a number of families, American, British, French; and finally, coming along the shaded deck, the familiar kindly face and silvery heard of Doctor Hasmer—he was distinctly growing older, Hasmer—then his wife, and, emerging from the cabin, a slim little figure, rather smartly dressed, extraordinarily pretty, radiating a quick charm as she hurried to the gangway, there pausing a moment to search the wharf.
Her eyes met his. She smiled.
It was Betty. He felt her charm, but his heart was sinking.
She kissed him. She seemed all enthusiasm, even very happy. But a moment later, walking along the wharf toward the Bund, her soft little face was sad. He wondered, as his thoughts whirled around, about that.
Her clothes, her beauty, her bright manner, indicating a girlish eagerness to be admired, wouldn't do at the mission. And she couldn't wear those trim little shoes with heels half an inch higher than a man's.
She had, definitely, the gift and the thought of adorning herself. She was a good girl; there was stuff in her. But it wouldn't do; not out there in T'ainan. And she looked like anything in the world but a teacher.
She fascinated him. She was the lovely creature his own little girl had become. Walking beside her up the Bund, chatting with the Hasmers, making a fair show of calm, his heart swelled with love and pride. She was delicate, shyly adorable, gently feminine.
It was going to be difficult to speak about her costume and her charming ways. It wouldn't do to crush her. She was quick enough; very likely she would pick up the tone of the compound very quickly and adapt herself to it.
3
Young Li Hsien, of T'ainan had come up on the boat. Doans talked a moment with him on the wharf. He was taking the Peking Express in the morning, traveling first-class. The boy's father was a wealthy banker and had always been generous with his firstborn son.
Li appeared in the dining-car at noon, calmly smiling, and, at Doane's imitation, sat with him and Betty. He carried a copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra, in English, with a large number of protruding paper bookmarks.
Doane glanced in some surprise at the volume lying rather ostentatiously on the table, and then at the pigtailed young man who ate foreign food with an eagerness and a relish that indicated an excited interest in novel experiment not commonly found among his race.
They talked in Chinese. Li had much to say of the Japanese. He admired them for adopting and adapting to their own purposes the material achievements of the Western world. He had evidently heard something of Theodore Roosevelt and rather less of Lloyd George and Karl Marx. Doane was of the opinion, later, that during the tiffin hour the lad had told all he had learned in six months at Tokio. When asked why he was not finishing out his college year he smiled enigmatically and spoke of duties at home. He knew, of course, that Doane would instantly dismiss the reason as meaningless; it was his Chinese way of suggesting that he preferred not to answer the question.
Twenty-four hours later they transferred their luggage to the Hansi Line, and headed westward into the red hills; passing, within an hour, through the southern extension of the Great Wall, now a ruin. The night was passed in M. Pourmont's compound at Ping Yang. After this there were two other nights in ancient, unpleasant village inns.
Duane made every effort to lessen the discomforts of the journey. Outwardly kind, inwardly emotions fought with one another. He felt now that he should never have sent for Betty; never in the world She seemed to have had no practical training. She grew quiet and wistful as the journey proceeded. The little outbreaks of enthusiasm over this or that half-remembered glimpse of native life came less frequently from day to day.
There were a number of young men at Ping Yang; one French engineer who spoke excellent English; an Australian; others, and two or three young matrons who had adventurously accompanied their husbands into the interior. They all called in the evening. The hospitable Pourmont took up rugs and turned on the talking-machine, and the young people danced.
Doane sat apart, watched the gracefully gliding couples; tried to smile. The dance was on, Betty in the thick of it, before he realized what was meant. He couldn't have spoken without others hearing. It was plain enough that she entered into it without a thought; though as the evening wore on he thought she glanced at him, now and then, rather thoughtfully. And he found himself, at these moments, smiling with greater determination and nodding at her.
The incident plunged him, curiously, swiftly, into the heart of his own dilemma. He rested an elbow on a table and shaded his eyes, trying, as he had been trying all these years, to think.
What a joyous little thing she was! What a fairy! And dancing seemed, now, a means of expression for her youth and her gift of charm. And there was an exquisite delight, he found, in watching her skill with the young men. She was gay, quick, tactful. Clearly young men had, before this, admired her. He wondered what sort of men.
She interrupted this brooding with one of those slightly perturbed glances. Quickly he lowered his hand in order that she might see him smile; but she had whirled away.
Joy!... Not before this moment, not in all the years of puzzled, sometimes bitter thinking, had he realized the degree in which mission life—for that matter, the very religion of his denominational variety—shut joy out. They were afraid of it. They fought it. In their hearts they associated it with vice It was of this world; their eyes were turned wholly to another.
His teeth grated together. The muscles of his strong jaws moved; bunched on his cheeks. He knew now that he believed in joy as an expression of life.
Had he known where to turn for the money he would gladly have planned, at this moment, to send Betty back to the States, give her more of an education, even arrange for her to study drawing and painting. For on the train, during their silences, she had sketched the French conductor, the French-speaking Chinese porter, the sleepy, gray-brown, walled villages, the wide, desert-like flats of the Hoang-Ho, the tumbling hills. He was struck by her persistence at it; the girlish energy she put into it.
That night, late, long after the music had stopped and the last guests had left for their dwellings about the large compound, she came across the corridor and tapped at his door. She wore a kimono of Japan; her abundant brown hair rippled about her shoulders.
“Just one more good night, Daddy,” she murmured.
And then, turning away, she added this, softly:
“I never thought about the dancing until—well, we'd started...”
He stood a long moment in silence, then said:
“I'm glad you had a pleasant evening, dear. We—we're rather quiet at T'ainan.”
4
Pao Ting Chuan was a man of great shrewdness and considerable distinction of appearance, skilled in ceremonial intercourse, a master of the intricate courses a prominent official must steer between beautifully phrased moral and ethical maxims on the one hand and complicated political trickery on the other. But, as Doane had said, he knew the cost of indemnities. It was on his shrewdness, his really great intelligence, and on his firm control of the “gentry and people” of the province that Doane relied to prevent any such frightful slaughter of whites and destruction of their property as had occurred in 1900. Pao, unlike most of the higher mandarins, was Chinese, not Manchu.
The tao-tai of the city of T'ainan-fu, Chang Chih Ting, was an older man than Pao, less vigorous of body and mind, simpler and franker. He was of those who bewail the backwardness of China.
From the tao-tai's yamen, on the first day of the great April fair, set forth His Excellency in full panoply of state—a green official chair with many bearers, an escort of twenty footmen, with runners on ahead.
Behind this caravan, hidden from view in the depths of a blue Peking cart, with the conventional extra servant dangling his heels over the foreboard, rode Griggsby Doane.
The principal feature of the opening day was a theatrical performance. The play, naturally, was an historical satire, shouted and occasionally sung by the heavily-costumed actors, to a continuous accompaniment of wailing strings. The stage was a platform in the open air, under a tree hung with bannerets inscribed to the particular spirit supposed to dwell within its encircling bark.
His Excellency stood, with Doane, on a knoll, looking out over the heads of the vast audience toward the stage. Doane estimated the attendance at near ten thousand.
The play, begun in the early morning, was now well advanced. At its conclusion, the audience was beginning to break up when a slim blue-clad figure mounted the platform and began a hurried speech.
Chang and Doane looked at each other; then as one man moved forward down the knoll with the throng. The tao-tai's attendants followed, in scattered formation.
The speaker was Li Hsien.
Slowly the magistrate and the missionary made their way toward the stage.
At first the crowd, at sight of the magistrate's button and embroidered insignia, made way as well as they could. But as the impassioned phrases of Li Hsien sank into their minds resistance developed. From here and there in the crowd came phrases expressing a vile contempt for foreigners such as Doane had not heard for years.
Li was lashing himself up, crying out more and more vigorously against the Ho Shan Company, the barbarous white governments from which it derived force, foreign pigs everywhere. The crowds closed, solidly, before the two advancing men.
The magistrate waved his arms; shouted a command that Li leave the platform. Li, hearing only a voice of opposition in the crowd, poured out voluble scorn on his head. The crowd jostled Duane. A stick struck his cheek. He whirled and caught the stick, but the wielder of it escaped in the crowd.
Chang tried to reason, then, with the few hundred within ear-shot.
The sense of violence seemed to be increasing. A few of the magistrate's escort were struggling through. These formed a circle about him and Doane.
Li shouted out charge after charge against the company. He begged his hearers to be brave, as he was brave; to destroy all the works of the company with dynamite; to wreck all the grounds of the foreign engineer at Ping Yang and kill all the occupants; to kill foreigners everywhere and assert the ancient integrity and superiority of China. “Be brave!” he cried again. “See, I am brave. I die for Hansi. Can not you, too, die for Hansi? Can not you think of me, of how I died for our cause, and yourself, in memory of my act, fight for your beloved country, that it may again be the proud queen of the earth?”
He drew a revolver from his sleeve; shot twice; fell to the stage in a widening pool of blood.
At once the vast crowd went wild. Those near the white man turned on him as if to kill him. His clothes were torn, his head cut. Man after man he knocked down with his powerful fists. Before many moments he was exulting in the struggle, in his strength and the full use of it.
The magistrate, struggled beside him. For the people. In their frenzy, forgot or ignored his rank and overwhelmed him.
The runners fought as well as they could. Two or three of them fell. Then a body of horsemen came charging into the crowd, soldiers from the judge's yamen, all on shaggy little Manchu ponies, swinging clubbed carbines as they rode. Right and left, men and boys fell. The crowd broke and scattered.
Chang, bleeding from several small wounds, his exquisitely embroidered silken garments torn nearly off his body, made his way back to the green chair.
Doane was escorted by soldiers to the mission compound. He slipped in to wash off the blood and change his clothes without being seen by Betty or any of the whites.
Shortly came two runners of His Excellency, Pao Ting Chuan, bearing trays of gifts. And a Chinese note expressing deepest regret and pledging complete protection in the future.
Doane dismissed the runners with a Mexican dollar each, and thoughtfully considered the situation. Pao was strong, very strong. Yet the self-destruction of Li Hsien would act as a flaming signal to the people It was the one appeal that might rouse them beyond control.
CHAPTER V—IN T'AINAN
1
THE Boatwrights were at this time in the thirties; he perhaps thirty-six or seven, she thirty-three or four. As has already been noted through the observing eyes of Mr. Withery, Elmer Boatwright had lost the fresh enthusiasm of his first years in the province. And he had by no means attained the mellow wisdom that seldom so much as begins to appear in a man before forty. His was a daily routine of innumerable petty tasks and responsibilities. He had come to be a washed-out little man, whose unceasing activity was somehow unconvincing. He had stopped having opinions, even views. He taught, he kept accounts and records, he conducted meetings, he prayed and sometimes preached at meetings of the students and the native Christians, he was kind in a routine way, his rather patient smile was liked about the compound, but the gift of personality was not his. Even his religion seemed at times to have settled into routine....
He was small in stature, not plump, with light thin hair and a light thin mustache.
His wife was taller than he, more vigorous, more positive, with something of an executive gift. The domestic management of the compound was her province, with teaching in spare hours. Her husband, with fewer petty activities to absorb his energy until his life settled into a mold, might have exhibited some of the interesting emotional quality that is rather loosely called temperament; for that matter it was still a possibility during the soul-shaking changes of middle life; certainly his odd, early taste for taxidermy had carried him to the borders of a sort of artistry; but her own gift was distinctly that of activity. She seemed a wholly objective person. She was physically strong, inclined to sternness, or at least to rigidity of view, yet was by no means unkind. The servants respected her. She was troubled by no doubts. Her religious faith, like her housekeeping practise, was a settled thing. Apparently her thinking was all of the literal things about her. Of humor she had never shown a trace. Without the strong proselyting impetus that had directed and colored her life she might have become a rather hard, sharp-tongued village housewife. But at whatever cost to herself she had brought her tongue under control. As a result, having no mental lightness or grace, she talked hardly at all. When she disapproved, which was not seldom, she became silent.
The relation between this couple and Griggsby Doane had grown subtly complicated through the years that followed the death of Mrs. Doane. Doane, up in his simply furnished attic room, living wholly alone, never interfered in the slightest detail of Mrs. Boatwright's management. Like her, when he disapproved, he kept still. But he might as well have spoken out, for she knew, nearly always, what he was thinking. The deepest blunder she made during this period was to believe, as she firmly did, that she knew all, instead of nearly all his thoughts. The side of him that she was incapable of understanding, the intensely, warmly human side, appeared to her merely as a curiously inexplicable strain of weakness in him that might, some day, crop out and make trouble. She felt a strain of something disastrous in his nature. She regarded his growing passion for solitude as a form of self-indulgence. She knew that he was given more and more to brooding; and brooding—all independent thought, in fact—alarmed her. Her own deepest faith was in what she thought of as submission to divine will and in self-suppression. But she respected him profoundly. And he respected her. Each knew something of the strength in the other's nature. And so they lived on from day to day and year to year in a practised avoidance of conflict or controversy. And between them her busy little husband acted as a buffer without ever becoming aware that a buffer was necessary in this quiet, well-ordered, industrious compound.
Regarding the change of tone for the more severe and the worse that had impressed and disturbed Withery, none of the three but Duane had formulated a conscious thought. Probably the less kindly air was really more congenial to Mrs. Boatwright. Her husband was not a man ever to survey himself and his environment with detachment. And both were much older and more severe at this time than they were to be at fifty.
The introduction of Betty Doane into this delicately balanced household precipitated a crisis. Breakfast was served in the mission house at a quarter to eight. Not once in a month was it five minutes late. A delay of half an hour would have thrown Mrs. Boatwright out of her stride for the day.
During the first few days after her arrival Betty appeared on time. It was clearly necessary. Mrs. Boatwright was hostile. Her father was busy and preoccupied. She herself was moved deeply by a girlish determination to find some small niche for herself in this driving little community. The place was strange to her. There seemed little or no companionship. Even Miss Hemphill, the head teacher, whom she remembered from her girlhood, and Dr. Mary Cassin, who was in charge of the dispensary and who had a pleasant, almost pretty face, seemed as preoccupied as Griggsby Doane. During her mother's lifetime there had been an air of friendliness, of kindness, about the compound that was gone now. Perhaps less work had been accomplished then than now under the firm rule of Mrs. Boatwright, but it had been a happier little community.
From the moment she rode in through the great oak, nail-studded gates of the compound, and the mules lurched to their knees, and her father helped her out through the little side door of the red and blue litter, Betty knew that she was exciting disapproval. The way they looked at her neat traveling suit, her becoming turban, her shoes, worked sharply on her sensitive young nerves. She was aware even of the prim way they walked, these women—of their extremely modest self-control—and of the puzzling contrast set up with the free activity of her own slim body; developed by dancing and basketball and healthy romping into a grace that had hitherto been unconscious.
And almost from that first moment, herself hardly aware of what she was about but feeling that she must be wrong, struggling bravely against an increasing hurt, her unrooted, nervously responsive young nature struggled to adapt itself to the new environment. A pucker appeared between her brows; her voice became hushed and faintly, shyly earnest in tone. Mrs. Boatwright at once gave her some classes of young girls. Betty went to Miss Hemphill for detailed advice, and earnestly that first evening read into a work on pedagogics that the older teacher, after a kindly enough talk, lent her.
She went up to her father's study, just before bedtime on the first evening, in a spirit of determined good humor. She wanted him to see how well she was taking hold.... But she came down in a state of depression that kept her awake for a long time lying in her narrow iron bed, gazing out into the starlit Chinese heavens. She felt his grave kindness, but found that she didn't know him. Here in the compound, with all his burden of responsibility settled on his broad shoulders, he had receded from her. He would sit and look at her, with sadness in his eyes, not catching all she said; then would start a little, and smile, and take her hand.
She found that she couldn't unpack all her things; not for days. There were snapshots of boy and girl members of “the crowd,” away off there, beyond the brown hills, beyond the ruined wall, beyond the yellow plains, and the Pacific Ocean and the wide United States, off in a little New Jersey town, on the other side of the world. There were parcels of dance programs, with little white pencils dangling from silken white cords. There were programs of plays, with cryptic pencilings, and copies of a high-school paper, and packets of letters. She couldn't trust herself to look at these treasures. And she put her drawing things away.
And other more serious difficulties arose to provoke sober thoughts. One occurred the first time she played tennis with her father; the day before Li Hsien's suicide. The court had been laid out on open ground adjoining the compound. Small school buildings and a wall shut it off from the front street, and a Chinese house-wall blocked the other end; but the farther side lay open to a narrow footway. Here a number of Chinese youths gathered and watched the play. It happened that none of the white women attached to the mission at this time was a tennis player; and the spectacle of a radiant girl darting about with grace and zest and considerable athletic skill was plainly an experience to the onlookers. At first they were respectful enough; but as their numbers grew voices were raised, first in laughter, then in unpleasant comment. Finally all the voices seemed to burst out at once in chorus of ribaldry and invective. Betty stopped short in her play, alarmed and confused.
These shouted remarks grew in insolence. All through her girlhood Betty had grown accustomed to occasional small outbreaks from the riff-raff of T'ainan. She recalled that her father had always chosen to ignore them. But there was a new boldness evident in the present group, as the numbers increased and more and more voices joined in. And it was evident, from an embroidered robe here and there, that not all were riff-raff.
Her father lowered his racket and walked to the net.
“I'm sorry, dear,” he said; “but this won't do.”
Obediently she returned to the mission house; while Doane went over to the fence. But before he could reach it the youths, jeering, hurried away. That evening he told Betty he would have a wall built along the footway.
2
Within less than a week Betty found herself fighting off a heart-sickness that was to prove, for the time, irresistible. On the sixth evening, after the house had became still and her big, kind father had said good night—in some ways, at moments, he seemed almost close to her; at other moments, especially now, at night, in the solitude, he was hopelessly far away, a dim figure on the farther shore of the gulf that lies, bottomless, between every two human souls—she locked herself in her little room and sat, very still, with drooping face and wet eyes, by the open window.
The big Oriental city was silent, asleep, except for the distant sound of a watchman banging his gong and shouting musically on his rounds. The spring air, soft, moistly warm, brought to her nostrils the smell of China; and brought with it, queerly disjointed, hauntlike memories of her childhood in the earlier mission house that had stood on this same bit of ground. She closed her eyes, and saw her mother walking in quiet dignity about the compound, the same compound in which Luella Brenty, a girl of hardly more than her-own present age, was, in 1900, burned at the stake. Down there where the ghostly tablet stood, by the chapel steps.
She shivered. There was trouble now. They were talking about it among themselves, if not in her presence. That would doubtless explain her father's preoccupation.... She must hurry to bed. She knew she was tired; and it wouldn't do to be late for breakfast. And she had a class in English at 8:45.
But instead she got out the bottom tray of her trunk and mournfully staring long at each, went through her photographs. She had been a nice girl, there in the comfortable American town. Here she seemed less nice. As if, in some way, over there in the States, her nature had changed for the worse. They looked at her so. They were not friendly. No, not that. Yet this was home, her only home. The other had seemed to be home, but it was now a dream... gone. She could never again pick up her place in the old crowd. It would be changing. That, she thought, in the brooding reverie known to every imaginative, sensitive boy and girl, was the sad thing about life. It slipped away from you; you could nowhere put your feet down solidly. If, another year, she could return, the crowd would be changed. New friendships would be formed. The boys who had been fond of her would now be fond of others. Some of the girls might be married... She herself was changed. A man—an older man, who had been married, was, in a way, married at the time—-had taken her in his arms and kissed her. It w'as a shock. It hurt now. She couldn't think how it had happened, how it had ever begun. She couldn't even visualize the man, now, with her eyes closed. She couldn't be sure even that she liked him. He was a strange being. He had interested her by startling her. Romance had seized them. He said that. He said it would be different at Shanghai. It was different; very puzzling, saddening. There was no doubt as to what Mrs. Boatwright would say about it, if she knew. Or Miss Hemphill. Any of them.... She wondered what her father would say. She couldn't tel! him. It had to be secret. There were things in life that had to be; but she wondered what he would say.
But she was, with herself, here in her solitude, honest about it. It had happened. She didn't blame the man. In his strange way, he was real. He had meant it. She had read his letter over and over, on the steamer, and here in T'ainan. It was moving, exciting to her that odd letter. And he had gone without a further word because he felt it to be the best way. She was sure of that.... She didn't blame herself, though it hurt. No, she couldn't blame him. Yet it was now, as it had been at the time, a sort of blinding, almost an unnerving shock.... Probably they would never meet again. It was a large world, after all; you couldn't go back and pick up dropped threads. But if they should meet, by some queer chance, what would they do, what could they say? For he lingered vividly with her; his rough blunt phrases came up, at lonely moments, in her mind. He had stirred and, queerly, bewilderingly, humbled her.... She wondered, all nerves, what his wife was like. How she looked.
Perhaps it was this change in her that these severe women noticed. Perhaps her inner life lay open to their experienced eyes. She could do nothing about it, just set her teeth and live through somehow.... Though it couldn't be wholly that, because she had worn the clothes they didn't like before it happened, and had danced, and played like a child. And they didn't seem to care much for her drawing; though Miss Hemphill had, she knew, suggested to Mr. Boatwright that he let her try teaching a small class of the Chinese girls.... No, it wasn't that. It must, then, be something in her nature.
She had read, back home—or in the States—in a woman's magazine, that every woman has two men in her life, the one she loves, or who has stirred her, and the one she marries. The girls, in some excitement, had discussed it. There had been confidences.
She might marry. It was possible. And even now she saw clearly enough, as every girl sees when life presses, that marriage might, at any moment, present itself as a way out. The thought was not stimulating. The pictures it raised lacked the glowing color of her younger and more romantic dreams.... That mining engineer was writing her, from Korea. His name was Apgar, Harold B. Apgar; he was stocky, strong, with an attractive square face and quiet gray eyes. She liked him. But his letters were going to be hard to answer.
The soft air that fanned her softer cheek brought utter melancholy. She felt, as only the young can feel, that her life, with her merry youth, was over. Grim doors had closed on it. Joy lay behind those doors. Ahead lay duties, discipline, the somber routine of womanhood.
She shivered and stirred. This brooding wouldn't do.
She got out a pad of paper and a pencil, and sitting there in the dim light, sketched with deft fingers the roofs and trees of T'ainan, as they appeared in the moonlight of spring, with a great faint gate tower bulking high above a battlemented wall. Until far into the morning she drew, forgetful of the hours, finding a degree of melancholy pleasure in the exercise of the expressive faculty that had become second nature to her.
She slept, then, like a child, until mid-forenoon. It was nearly eleven o'clock when she hurried, ready to smile quickly to cover her confusion, down to the dining-room.
The breakfast things had been cleared away more than two hours earlier. The table boy (so said the cook) had gone to market. She ate, rather shamefaced, a little bread and butter (she was finding it difficult to get used to this tinned butter from New Zealand).
In the parlor Mrs. Boatwright sat at her desk. She heard Betty at the door, lifted her head for a cool bow, then resumed her work. Not a word did she speak or invite. There was an apology trembling on the tip of Betty's tongue, but she had to hold it back and turn away.
3
The day after the suicide of Li Hsien rumors began to drift into the compound. News travels swiftly in China. The table “boy” (a man of fifty-odd) brought interesting bits from the market, always a center for gossip of the city and the mid-provincial region about it. The old gate-keeper, Sun Shao-i, picked up much of the roadside talk. And the several other men helpers about the compound each contributed his bit. The act of the fanatical student had, at the start, as Doane anticipated, an electrical effect on public sentiment. Suicide is by no means generally regarded in China as a sign of failure. It is employed, at times of great stress, as a form of deliberate protest; and is then taken as heroism.
So reports came that the always existent hatred of foreigners was rising, and might get out of control. A French priest was murdered on the Kalgan highway, after protracted torture during which his eyes and tongue were fed to village dogs. This, doubtless, as retaliation for similar practises commonly attributed to the white missionaries. The fact that the local Shen magistrate promptly caught and beheaded a few of the ringleaders appeared to have small deterrent effect on public feeling.
Detachments of strange-appearing soldiers, wearing curious insignia, were marching into the province over the Western Mountains. A native worker at one of the mission outposts wrote that they broke into his compound and robbed him of food, but made little further trouble.
Reports bearing on the activities of the new Great Eye Society—already known along the wayside as “The Lookers”—were coming in daily. The Lookers were initiating many young men into their strange magic, which appeared to differ from the incantations of the Boxers of 1900 more in detail than in spirit.
And in the western, villages this element was welcoming the new soldiers.
Here in T'ainan disorder was increasing. An old native, helper of Dr. Cassin in the dispensary, was mobbed on the street and given a beating during which his arm was broken. He managed to walk to the compound, and was now about with the arm in a sling, working quietly as usual. But it was evident that native Christians must, as usual in times of trouble, suffer for their faith.
On the following afternoon the tao-tai called, in state, with bearers, runners, soldiers and secretaries. The main courtyard of the compound was filled with the richly colored chairs and the silks and satins and plumed ceremonial hats of his entourage. For more than an hour he was closeted with Griggsby Doane, while the Chinese schoolgirls, very demure, stole glances from curtained windows at the beautiful young men in the courtyard.
By this impressive visit, and by his long stay, Chang Chih Ting clearly meant to impress on the whole city his friendship for these foreign devils. For the whole city would know of it within an hour; all middle Hansi would know by nightfall.
He brought disturbing news. It had been obvious to Doane that the menacing new society could hardly spread and thrive without some sort of secret official backing. He was inclined to trust Chang. He believed, after days of balancing the subtle pros and cons in his mind, that Pao Ting Chuan would keep order. And he knew that the official who was responsible for the province—as Pao virtually was—could keep order if he chose.
Chang, always naively open with Doane, supported him in this view. But it was strongly rumored at the tao-tai's yamen that the treasurer, Kang Hsu, old as he was, weakened by opium, for the past two or three years an inconsiderable figure in the province, had lately been in correspondence with the Western soldiers. And officers from his yamen had been recognized as among the drill masters of the Looker bands. Chang had reported these proceedings to His Excellency, he said (“His Excellency,” during this period, meant always Pao, though Kang Hsu, as treasurer, ranked him) and had been graciously thanked. It was also said that Kang had cured himself of opium smoking by locking himself in a room and throwing pipe, rods, lamp and all his supply of the drug out of a window. For two weeks he had suffered painfully, and had nearly died of a diarrhea; but now had recovered and was even gaining in weight, though still a skeleton.
Doane caught himself shaking his head, with Chang, over this remarkable self-cure. It would apparently be better for the whites were Kang to resume his evil ways. It was clear to these deeply experienced men that Kang's motives would be mixed. Doubtless he had been stirred to jealousy by Pao. It seemed unlikely that he, or any prominent mandarin, could afford to run the great risks involved in setting the province afire so soon after 1900. Perhaps he knew a way to lay the fresh troubles at Pao's gate. Or perhaps he had come to believe, with his befuddled old brain, in the Looker incantations. Only seven years earlier the belief of ruling Manchus in Boxer magic had led to the siege of the legations and something near the ruin of China. Come to think of it, Kang, unlike Pao and Chang, was a Manchu.
Chang also brought with him a copy of the Memorial left by Li Hsien, which it appeared was being widely circulated in the province. The document gave an interesting picture of the young man's complicated mind. His death had been theatrical and, in manner, Western, modern. Suicides of protest were traditionally managed in private. But the memorial was utterly Chinese, written with all the customary indirection, dwelling on his devotion to his parents and his native land, as on his own worthlessness; quoting apt phrases from Confucius, Mencius and Tseng Tzu; quite, indeed, in the best traditional manner. And he left a letter to his elder brother, couched in language humble and tender, giving exact directions for his funeral, down to the arrangement of his clothing and the precise amount to be paid to the Taoist priest, together with instructions as to the disposition of his small personal estate. Doane pointed out that these documents were designed to impress on the gentry his loyal conformity to ancient tradition, while his motives were revolutionary and his final act was designed to excite the mob at the fair and folk of their class throughout the province. Chang believed he had scholarly help in preparing the documents. And both men felt it of sober significance that the memorial was addressed to “His Excellency, Kang Hsu, Provincial Treasurer.”
That Li Hsien's inflammatory denunciation of “the foreign engineer at Ping Yang” had an almost immediate effect was indicated by the news from that village at the railhead. M. Puurmont wrote, in French, that an Australian stake-boy had been shot through the lungs while helping an instrument man in the hills. He was alive, but barely so, at the time of writing. As a result of this and certain lesser difficulties, M. Pourmont was calling in his engineers and mine employees, and putting them to work improvising a fort about his compound, and had telegraphed Peking for a large shipment of tinned food. He added that there would be plenty of room in case Doane later should decide to gather in his outpost workers and fall back toward the railroad.
Doane translated this letter into Chinese for Chang's benefit.
“Has he firearms?” asked the tao-tai.
Doane inclined his head. “More than the treaty permits,” he replied. “He told me last winter that he thought it necessary.”
“It is as well,” said Chang. “Though it is not necessary for you to leave yet. To do that would be to invite misunderstanding.”
“It would invite attack,” said Doane.
It was on the morning after Chang's call that the telegram came from Jen Ling Pu. Doane was crossing the courtyard when he heard voices in the gate house; then Sun Shao-i came down the steps and gave him the message. He at once sent a chit to Pao, writing it in pencil against a wall; then ordered a cart brought around. Within an hour the boy was back. Pao had written on the margin of the note: “Will see you immediately.”
For once the great mandarin did not keep him waiting. The two inner gates of the yamen opened for him one after the other, and his cart was driven across the tiled inner court to the yamen porch. It was an unheard-of honor. Plainly, Pao, like the lesser Chang, purposed standing by his guns, and meant that the city should know. By way of emphasis, Pao himself, tall, stately, magnificent in his richly embroidered robe, the peacock emblem of a civil mandarin of the third-class embroidered on the breast, the girdle clasp of worked gold, wearing the round hat of office crowned with a large round ruby—Pao, deep and musical of voice, met him in the shadowy porch and conducted him to the reception room. Instantly the tea appeared, and they could talk.
“Your Excellency,” said Doane, “a Christian worker in So T'ung, one Jen Ling Pu, telegraphs me that strange soldiers, helped by members of the Great Eye Society, last night attacked his compound. They have burned the gate house, but have no firearms. At eight this morning, with the aid of the engineer for the Ho Shan Company in that region, and with only two revolvers, he was defending the compound. I am going there. I will leave this noon.”
“I hear your alarming words with profound regret,” Pao's deep voice rolled about the large high room. “My people are suffering under an excitement which causes them to forget their responsibility as neighbors and their duty to their fellow men. I will send soldiers with you.”
“Soldiers should be sent, Your Excellency, and at once. Well-armed men. But I shall not wait.”
“You are not going alone? And not in your usual manner, on foot?”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“But that may be unsafe.”.
“My safety is of little consequence.”
“It is of great consequence to me.”
“For that I thank you. But it is to So T'ung a hundred and eighty li. The best mules or horses will need two days. I can walk there in less than one day. I have walked there in twenty hours.”
“You are a man of courage. I will order the soldiers to start by noon.”
Back at the compound, Doane assembled his staff in one of the schoolrooms. Mr. and Mrs. Boatwright were there, Miss Hemphill and Dr. Cassin. He laid the telegram before them, and repeated his conversation with the provincial judge.
They listened soberly. For a brief time one spoke. Then Mrs. Boatwright asked, bluntly:
“You are sure you ought to go?”
Doane inclined his head.
“If things are as bad as this, how about our safety here?”
“You will be protected. Both Pao and Chang will see to that. And in case of serious danger—something unforeseen, you must demand an escort to Ping Yang. You will be safe there with Monsieur Pourmont.”
“How about your own safety?”
“I have put the responsibility squarely on Pao's shoulders. He knows what I am going to do. He is sending soldiers after me. He will undoubtedly telegraph ahead; he'll have to do that.”
4
Betty was in his study, standing by the window. She turned quickly when he came in. He closed the door, and affecting a casual manner passed her with a smile and went into the bedroom for the light bag with a shoulder strap, the blanket roll and the ingenious light folding cot that he always carried on these expeditions if there was likelihood of his being caught overnight at native inns. He put on his walking boots and leggings, picked up his thin raincoat and the heavy stick that was his only weapon, and returned to the study.
He felt Betty's eyes on him, and tried to speak in an offhand manner.
“I'm off to So T'ung, Betty. Be back within two or three days.”
She came over, slowly, hesitating, and lingered the blanket roll.
“Will there he danger at So T'ung, Dad?” she asked gently.
“Very little, I think.”
He saw that neither his words nor his manner answered the questions in her hind. Patting her shoulder, he added:
“Kiss me good-by, child. You've been listening to the chatter of the compound. The worst place for gossip in the world.”
But she laid a light finger on the court-plaster that covered a cut on his cheek-bone.
“You never said a word about that, Dad. It was the riot at the fair. I know. You had to fight with them. And Li Hsien killed himself.”
“But His Excellency put down the trouble at once. That is over.”
She sank slowly into the swivel chair before the desk; dropped her cheek on her hand; said, in a low uneven voice:
“No one talks to me... tells me...”
He looked down at her, standing motionless. His eyes filled. Then, deliberately, he put his park aside, and seated himself at the other side of the desk.
She looked up, with a wistful smile.
“I'm not afraid, Dad.”
“You wouldn't be,” said he gravely.
“No. But there is trouble, of course.”
“Yes. There is trouble.”
“Do you think it will be as—as bad as—nineteen hundred?”
“No... no, I'm sure it won't. The officials simply can't afford to let that awful thing happen again.”
“It would be... well, discouraging,” said she thoughtfully. “Wouldn't it? To have all your work undone again.”
He found himself startled by her impersonal manner. He saw her, abruptly then, as a mature being. He didn't know how to talk to her. This thoughtful young woman was, curiously, a stranger.... And this was the first moment in which it had occurred to him that she might already have had beginning adult experience. She was an individual; had a life of her own to manage. There would have been men. She was old enough to have thought about marriage, even. It seemed incredible.... He sighed.
“You're worried about me,” she said.
“I shouldn't have brought you out here, dear.”
“I don't fit in.”
“It is a great change for you.”
“I... I'm no good.”
“Betty, dear—that is not true. I can't let you say that, or think it.”
“But it's the truth. I'm no good. I've tried. I have, Dad. You know, to put everything behind me and make myself take hold.... And then I draw half the night, and miss my classes in the morning. It seems to go against my nature, some way. No matter how hard I try, it doesn't work. The worst of it is, in my heart I know it isn't going to work.”
“I shouldn't have brought you out here.”
“But you couldn't help that, Dad.”
“It did seem so.... I'm planning now to send you back as soon as we can manage it.”
“But, Dad... the expense...!”
“I know. I am thinking about that. There will surely be a way to manage it, a little later. I mean to find a way.”
“But I can't go back to Uncle Frank's.”
“I must work it out so that it won't be a burden to him.”
“You mean... pay board?”
“Yes.”
“But think, Dad! I've cost you so much already!”
“I am glad you have, dear. I think I've needed that. And I want you to go back to the Art League. You have a real talent. We must make the most of it.” Betty's gaze strayed out the window. Her father was a dear man. She hadn't dreamed he could see into her problems like this. She was afraid she might cry, so she spoke quickly.
“But that means making me still more a burden!”
“It is the sort of burden 1 would love, Betty. But don't misunderstand me—I can't do all this now.”
“Oh, I know!”
“You may have to be patient for a time. Tell me, dear, first though... is it what you want most?”
“Oh... why...”
“Answer me if you can. If you know what you want most.”
“I wonder if I do know. It's when I try to think that out clearly that it seems to me I'm no good.”
“I recognize, of course, that you are reaching the age when many girls think of marrying.”
“I... oh...”
“I don't want to intrude into your intimate thoughts, dear. But in so far as we can plan together... it may help if...”
She spoke with a touch of reserve that might have been, probably was, shyness.
“There have been men, of course, who—-well, wanted to marry me. This last year. There was one in New York. He used to come out and take me riding in his automobile. I—I always made some of the other girls come with us.”
Doane found it impossible to visualize this picture. When he was last in the States there were no automobiles on the streets. It suggested a condition of which he knew literally nothing, a wholly new set of influences in the life of young people. The thought was alarming; he had to close his eyes on it for a moment. Much as his daughter had seemed like a visitor from another planet, she had never seemed so far off as now. And he fell to thinking, along with this new picture, of the terribly hard struggle they had had out here, since 1900, in rebuilding the mission organization, in training new workers and creating a new morale. He felt tired.... His brain was tired. It would help to get out on the road again, swinging gradually into the rhythm of his forty-inch stride. Once more he would walk himself off, even as he hastened on an errand of rescue.
Betty was speaking again.
“And there's one now. He's in Korea, a mining engineer. He's awfully nice. But I—I don't think I could marry him.”
“Do you love him, Betty?”
“N—no. No, I don't. Though I've wondered, sometimes, about these things....” The person she was wondering about, as she said this, was Jonathan Brachey. Suddenly, with her mind's eye, she saw this clearly. And it was startling. She couldn't so much as mention his name; certainly not to her father, kind and human as he seemed. But she would never hear from him again; not now. If he could live through those first few weeks without so much as writing, he could let the years go. That would have been the test for her sort of nature, and she could understand no other sort.
She compressed her lips. She didn't know that her face showed something of the trouble in her mind. She spoke, bravely, with an abruptness that surprised herself a little, as it surprised him.
“No, Dad, I shan't marry. Not for years, if ever. I'd rather work. I'd rather work hard, if only I could fit in somewhere.”
“I'm seeing it a little more clearly, Betty.”' He arose. “On the way out I'll tell Mrs. Boatwright and Miss Hemphill both that I don't want you to do any more work about the compound.... No, dear, please! Let me finish!... When you're a few years older, you'll learn as I have learned, that the important thing is to find your own work, and find it early. So many lives take the wrong direction, through mistaken judgment, or a mistaken sense of duty. And nothing—nothing—can so mislead us as a sense of duty.”
He said this with an emphasis that puzzled Betty.
“The thing for you,” he went on, “is to draw. And dream. The dreaming will work out in more drawing, I imagine. For you have the nature of the artist. Your mother had it. You are like her, with something of my energy added. Don't let the atmosphere of the compound pull you down. It mustn't do that. Live within yourself. Let your energy go into honest expression of yourself. You see what I'm getting at—be yourself. Don't try to be some one else.... You happen to be here in an interesting time. There's a possibility that the drawings you could make out here, now, would have a value later on. So try to make a record of your life here with your pencil. And don't be afraid of happiness, dear.” He pointed to a row of jonquils in a window-box. “Happiness is as great a contribution to life as duty. Think how those flowers contribute! And remember that you are like them to me.”
She clung to him, in impulsive affection, as she kissed him good-by. And it wasn't until late that night, as she lay in her white bed, such a glow did he leave in her warm little heart, that the odd nature of his talk caught her attention. She had never, never, heard him say such things. It was as if he, her great strong dad, were himself starved for happiness. As if he wanted her to have all the rich beauty of life that had passed him grimly by.
She fell to wondering, sleepily, what he meant by finding a way to get the money. There was no way. Though it was dear of him even to think of it.
She fell asleep then.