CHAPTER XVIII—THE DARK
1
Elmer Boatwrights chin sagged a little way. For a long moment he stood motionless, making no sound; then, without change of expression on his gray thin face, he moved with a slow gliding motion backward, backward, until his knees struck the bed; and stood, bent forward, his palsied hand tipping the candle so far that the hot tallow splashed in white drops on the matting.
Slowly the giant figure stirred, straightened up, came slowly into the room; closed the door, leaned back against it.
Then Boatwright spoke, slowly, huskily:
“It—it is you?”
“Yes.” It was plainly an effort for Doane to speak. “But—but I don't see how you could have got through.”
“Men do get through now and then.” Doane spoke with the quick irritability of the man whose powers of nervous resistance have been tried to the uttermost.
“You're wounded. You must be tired.” Boatwright was quite incoherent. “You'd better lie down. Here—take my bed! How did you ever find me? How did you get in in the first place?”
“I'll sit for a moment.” Duane lowered himself painfully to the bed. “Betty is here?”
“Betty? Oh, yes! We're all safe.”
“Where is she?”
“I—I don't know exactly.”
“You don't know!”
“Why, Madame Pourmont has been caring for her.”
“You mean that she is ill?”
“No. Oh, no! One moment. You've been hurt. I must tell the others. You must have attention at once. Mary Cassin is right here—and my wife.” The little man moved to the door. His color was returning now; he was talking rapidly, out of a confused mind. “You must have had a terrible time.”
“They left me for dead at the Hung Chan Gate. I crawled to the house of a convert.” Doane's great eyes, staring out of shadowy hollows, burned with tragic memories. Those eyes held Boatwright fascinated; he shivered slightly. “As soon as I felt able to travel I started toward T'ainan. Several of our native people came with me, walking at night, biding by day. On the way we learned that you had left. So I came here. I must see Betty.”
“But not like this,” the little man blurted out. Doane's eyes wandered down over his muddy tattered clothing.
“I'll call the others first,” said Boatwright He set down his candle on the wash-stand, just inside the door, and slipped out.
Doane sat erect, without moving. His eyes stared at the candle and at the grotesque wavering shadows of the wash-howl and pitcher on the wall. At each small night sound he started nervously—the scratching of a mouse, a voice in the compound, a distant sputter of shots.
Boatwright slipped back into the room.
“They're coming,” he said breathlessly. “In a minute. Mary sleeps in most of her clothes anyway, these days.”
“What is it about Betty?” Doane asked sharply.
“Oh—she's quite all right. We don't see much of her, not being in the same house. We're all pretty busy here, these days. It's an ugly time. I—I was just wondering. I don't know what we can dress you in. You could hardly wear my things. One of the Australians is nearly as big as you. Perhaps in the morning...”
His voice had risen a little, nearly to the querulous, as he hurriedly drew on his outer clothing. From the way his eyes wandered about the room it appeared that his thoughts had run far afield. And he was clumsy about the buttons. Even the intensely preoccupied Doane became aware of this, and for a moment studied him with a puzzled look.
The little man's tongue ran on. “Mary'll fix you up for now. Sleep'll be the best thing. In the morning you can use my shaving things. And I'll look up that Australian.... There they are!”
He hurried to the door. Dr. Cassin came in, greeted
Griggsby Doane with a warm hand-clasp, and at once examined his shoulder. Boatwright she sent over to the dispensary for bandages.
A moment later Mrs. Boatwright appeared, her strong person wrapped in a quilted robe.
“This is a great relief,” she said. “We had given you up.”
Duane's eyes fastened eagerly on this woman.
“Have you sent word to Betty?” he asked quickly.
Mrs. Boatwright looked at him for a moment, without replying, then moved deliberately to the window.
“Please don't move,” cautioned Dr. Cassin, who was working on his shoulder.
“Have you sent word?” Doane shot the question after Mrs. Boatwright.
There was no reply.
“What is it?” cried Doane then.
“If you please!” said Dr. Cassin.
“Something is wrong! What is it?”
Mrs. Boatwright was standing squarely before the window now, looking out into the dark courtyard.
“What is it? Tell me! Is she here?”
“Really, Mr Doane”—thus the physician—“I can not work if you move. Yes, she is here.”
“But why do you act in this strange way?”
Dr. Cassin compressed her lips. All her working adult life had been spent under the direction of this man. Never before had she seen him in the slightest degree beaten down. She had never even seen him tired. In her steady, objective mind he stood for unshakable, enduring strength. But now, twitching nervously under her firm hands, staring out of feverish eyes after the uncompromising woman by the window, his huge frame emaciated, spent with loss of blood, with suffering and utter physical and nervous exhaustion, he had reached, she knew', at last, the limits of his great strength. He had, perhaps, even passed those limits; for there was a morbid condition evident in him, he seemed not wholly sane, as if the trials he had passed through had been too great for his iron will, or as if there was something else, some consuming fire in him, burning secretly but strongly, out of control. All this she saw and felt. His temperature was not dangerously high, slightly more than two degrees above normal. His pulse was rapid, but no weaker than was to be expected. Worry might explain it; worry for them all, but particularly for Betty. Though she found this diagnosis not wholly satisfactory. Of course it might be, after all, nothing more than exhaustion. Sleep was the first thing. After that it would be a simpler matter to study his case.
Then, starling up suddenly, wrenching himself free from her skilful hands, Doane stood over her, staring past her at the woman by the window'.
“Will you please go to Betty,” he said, in a voice that trembled with feeling, “and tell her that I am here. Wake her. She must know at once. And try to prepare her mind—she mustn't see me first like this.”
There was a breathless pause. Then Mrs. Boatwright turned and moved deliberately toward the door. Then she paused.
“You'll see her?” cried the father. “At once?”
“No,” replied Mrs. Boatwright. “No. I am sorry. I would like to spare you pain at this time, Griggsby Doane. But I do not feel that I can see her. I'll tell you though, what I will do. I'll tell Monsieur Pourmont.” And she went out.
2
She was closing the door when it abruptly opened. Elmer Boatwright stood there, looking after his wife as she went along the dark hallway. He came in then.
“I brought the bandages,” he said.
“You must sit down again,” said the physician.
Doane, evidently bewildered, obeyed. And she began bandaging his shoulder.
He even sat quietly. He seemed to be making a determined effort to control his thoughts. When he finally spoke he seemed almost his old self.
“Elmer, something is wrong with Betty. Whatever it is, I have a right to know.”
Boatwright cleared his throat.
Dr. Cassin broke the silence that followed.
“Mr. Doane,” she said, “sit still here and try to listen to what I am going to tell you. We have been disturbed about Betty. I won't attempt to conceal that. This Mr. Brachey—”
“Brachey? Is he—”
“Please! You must keep quiet!”
“But what is it? Tell me—now!”
“I'm trying to. Mr. Brachey came to the compound the morning after you left—”
“But he gave me his word!”
“You really must let me tell this in my own way. He brought the news of your death. He had it from Pao's yamen. He demanded that we all leave T'ainan at once, with him. If he gave you his word, it is probable that he regarded your death as a release. Well....” For a moment she bent silently over her task of bandaging.
“Yes. Tell me?” Doane's voice was quieter still. More and more, to Boatwright, who stood by the wash-stand lingering a towel, he looked, felt, like the old Griggsby Doane... except his eyes; they were fixed intently on the matting; they were wide open, staring open.
“Well... Mrs. Boatwright felt that it was not yet the time to go. She distrusted this man. So we stayed a few days longer.”
“You are not telling me.”
“Yes. I am coming to it. Betty... Betty felt that she couldn't let him go alone.”
In a hushed, almost a reflective voice Doane asked: “So she came with him?”
Dr. Cassin bowed. Elmer Boatwright bowed. Doane glanced up briefly, and took them in; then his gaze centered again on the matting.
“And they are here now?”
“Betty is staying with Madame Pourmont. Mr. Brachey is living in a tent.”
“Where? What tent?”
Elmer Boatwright did not wait to hear this question answered, or the rush of other palliative phrases that were pressing nervously on the tip of Dr Cas-sin's not unsympathetic tongue. Never had he heard the quiet menace in Griggsby Doane's voice that was in it as he almost calmly uttered those three words, “Where? What tent?” He could nut himself think clearly; his mind was a blur of fears and nervous impulses. Doane wasn't normal; that was plain. Dr. Cassin's bare announcement was a blow so severe that even as he framed that tense question he was struggling to control the blind wild forces that were ravaging that giant frame of his. Once wholly out of control, he might do anything. He might kill Brachey. Yes, easily that! It was in his eyes.... And so, without a plan, all confused impulses, Elmer Boatwright slipped out, closing the door behind him. On the outer sill of the little building he paused, trying desperately to think; but, failing in this effort, harried through the night to Brachey's tent.
He was, of course, far from understanding himself. It was a moment in which no small dogmatic mind, once touched by the illogic of merely human sympathy, could hope to understand itself. Though he and Brachey were barely speaking, he had watched the man during the capture of the Chinese gun and ammunition. And since that incident he had observed that Brachey was steadily winning the respect of all in the compound. The confusing thought was that a sinner could do that. For he believed, with his wife, and Miss Hemphill, that Brachey and Betty had sinned. Dr. Cassin had been more guarded in her judgment but probably she believed it, too. Sin, of course, to what may without unpleasant connotation be termed the professionally religious mind, is a definite, really a technical fact. In the faith of the Boatwrights it could be atoned only by an inner conviction followed by the blessing of the Holy Spirit. No mere good conduct, no merely admirable human qualities, could save the sinner. And neither Betty nor Brachey had shown the slightest sign of the regenerative process. In Mrs. Boatwright's judgment, therefore, since she was a woman of utter humorless logic, of unconquerable faith in conscience, the two stood condemned. But her husband, in this time of tragic stress, was discovering certain merely human qualities that were bound to prove disconcerting to his professed philosophy. He wanted, now, to help Brachey; and yet, as he ran through courtyard after courtyard, he couldn't wholly subdue certain strong misgivings as to what his wife might think if she knew.
3
Before the tent he hesitated. The flap was tied; he shook it, with a trembling hand. He heard, then, the steady breathing of the man within. He tried knocking on the pole, through the canvas, but without effect on the sleeper. Then, with a curious sensation of guilt, he reached in and untied the flap, above, then below; and passed cautiously in. The night was warm. Brachey lay uncovered, dressed, as Boatwright saw when he struck a match to make certain of his man, in all but coat, collar and shoes.
Boatwright blew out the match. For another moment he stood wondering at himself; then laid a hand on the sleeper's shoulder. Brachey started up instantly; swung his feet to the floor; said in a surprisingly alert, cautious voice:
“What is it?”
“It's Elmer Boatwright.”
“Oh!” was Brachey's reply to this. He quietly lighted the candle that stood on a small table by the head of his cut. Then he added the single word, “Well?”
“I have come on a peculiar errand, Mr. Brachey...” Boatwright was fumbling for words.
“Yes?”
“There is little time for talk. A queer situation... let me say this—when you came to the mission and asked us to leave T'ainan with you it was under the supposition that Griggsby Doane was dead.”
“Yes.... You mean that now... that the news was inaccurate?”
Boatwright inclined his head.
“He is alive, then?”
Another bow.
“Where is he?”
“Well... it is... I must ask you to consider the situation calmly. It is difficult.”
Boatwright felt the man's eyes on him, coolly surveying him. It did seem a bit absurd to be cautioning this strange being to be calm. Had he ever been otherwise? Here he was, roused abruptly from slumber, listening, and looking, like a judge. He said now with quick understanding:
“He is here?”
Boatwright's head inclined.
“How did he ever get through?”
“We haven't heard the details yet. There's so much else.... I want to make it plain to you that he isn't altogether himself. He has evidently been through a terrible experience. He was wounded. He has some fever now, I believe.... Let me put it this way. He has just now learned that you are here—-that you—”
“That I brought his daughter here?” The remark was cool, clear, decisive.
“Well—yes. Now please understand me. He isn't himself. The news shocked him. I could see that. My suggestion is—well, that you move over to the residence for the rest of the night.”
“Why?”
“You see—Mr. Doane asked where you might be found, in what tent. He has had no time to reflect over the situation. His present mood is—well, as I said, not normal. I've thought that to-morrow—after he has slept—some—we can prevail on him to consider it calmly.”
“You mean that he may attack me?”
“Well—yes. It's quite possible. Monsieur Pour-mont would take you in now. I'm sure. In the morning you'll be back in your trenches. That will give us time to...”
His voice died out. His gaze anxiously followed Brachey's movements. The man had buttoned on his collar, and was knotting his tie before the little square mirror that hung on the rear tent-pole. Next he brushed his hair. Then he got into his coat. And then he discovered that he was in his stocking feet. That bit of absent-mindedness was the only sign he gave of excitement.
“If I might suggest that you hurry a little,” thus Boatwright... “it's possible that he's on his way here now.”
“Who?” asked Brachey coolly, raising his head. “Oh—you mean Doane.”
“Yes. I really think—”
Brachey waved him to be still. He moved to the tent opening, peered out into the night, then turned and looked straight at his caller, slightly pursing his lips.
“Where is Mr. Doane?” he asked.
“He was in my room. But you're not—you don't mean—”
“I'm going to see him, of course.”
“But that's impossible. He may kill you.”
“What has that to do with it?”
This blunt question proved difficult to meet. Boatwright found himself saying, rather weakly, “I'm sure everything can be explained later.”
“The time to explain is now.”
With this, and a slight added sound that might have been an indication of impatience, Brachey strode out.
4
For a moment Boatwright stood in the paralysis of fright; then, catching his breath, he ran out after this strangely resolute man; quickly caught up with him, but found himself ignored. He even talked—incoherently—as his short legs tried to keep pace with the swift long stride of the other. He didn't himself know what he was saying. Nor did he stop when Brachey's arm moved as if to brush him off; though he perhaps had been clinging to that arm.
Brachey stopped, looking about.
“This is the house, isn't it?” he remarked; then turned in toward the steps.
The door burst open then, and a huge shadowy figure plunged out. A woman's voice followed: “I must ask you to please come back, Mr. Doane. Really, if you—”
At the name—“Mr. Doane”—Brachey stopped short (one foot was already on the first of the three or four steps) and stiffened, his shoulders drawn back, his head high, Doane, too, stopped, peering down.
“Mr. Doane,” said the younger man, firmly but perhaps in a slightly louder tone than was necessary, “I am Jonathan Brachey.”
A hush fell on the group of them—Brachey waiting at the bottom step, Boatwright just behind him. Dr. Cassin barely visible in the shadows of the porch, silhouetted faintly against the light of a candle somewhere within, and Griggsby Doane staring down in astonishment at the man who stood looking straight up at him.
Brachey apparently was about to speak again. Perhaps he did begin. Boatwright found it impossible afterward to explain in precise detail just what took place. But the one clear fact was that Doane, with an exclamation that was not a word, seemed to leap down the steps, waving his stick about his head. There was the sound of a few heavy blows; and then Brachey lay huddled in a heap on the the walk, and Doane stood over him, breathing very hard..
Dr. Cassin hurried down the steps and knelt lie-side the silent figure there. To Elmer Boatwright she said, briskly: “My medicine case is in your room. Bring it at once, please? And bring water.”
Boatwright vaguely recalled, afterward, that he muttered, “I beg your pardon,” as he finished past Doane and ran up the steps. And he heard the sound of some, one running heavily toward them.
When he came out the scene was curiously changed.
Some of the natives were there, and one or two whites. An iron lantern with many perforations to let out the candle-light stood on the tiles. One of the Chinese held another. Dr. Cassin was seated on the ground examining a wound on Brachey's scalp; and the man himself was struggling back toward consciousness, moving his arms restlessly, and muttering.
But the voice that dominated the little group that stood awkwardly about was the voice of M. Pourmont.
Doane had sunk down on the steps, his head in his hands. And over him, somewhat out of breath, gesturing emphatically with raised forefinger, the engineer was speaking as follows:
“Monsieur Doane, it gives me ze great plaisir to know zat you do not die. To you here I offair ze vel-come viz all my 'eart. But zis I mus' say. It is here la guerre. It is I who am here ze commandair. An' I now' comman' you, Alonsieur Doane, zer mus' be here no more of ze mattair personel. We here fight togezzer, as one, not viz each ozzer. You have made ze attack on a gentleman zat mus' be spare' to us, a gentleman ver' strong, ver' brave, who fear nozzing at all. It is not pairmit' zat you make 'arm at Monsieur Brashayee. Zis man is one I need. It is on 'im zat I lean.”
Here Boatwright found himself breaking in, all eagerness, all nerves:
“If you had only known how it was! Mr. Brachey insisted on coming straight to you.”
“Monsieur Boatright, if you please! I mus' have here ze quiet! Monsieur Doane, you vill go at once to bed. It is so I order you. Go at once to bed!” Doane slowly lifted his head and looked at M. Pour-munt. “Very well,” he said quietly. “You are right, of course.” On these last few words his voice broke, but he at once recovered control of it. He rose, with an effort, moved a few slow steps, hesitated, then got painfully down on one knee beside the limp groaning figure on the walk. He looked directly at Dr. Cassin, as he said:
“Is he badly hurt?”
“I don't think so,” replied the physician simply, wholly herself. “The skull doesn't seem to be fractured. We may find some concussion, of course.” Doane's breath whistled convulsively inward. He knelt there, silent, watching the deft fingers work. Then he said—under his breath, but audibly enough: “What an awful thing to do! What a terrible thing to do!” And got up.
Boatwright hurried to help him.
“I'll go with you, Elmer,” said Doane.
CHAPTER XIX—LIVING THROUGH
1
WHEN Griggsby Doane moved, pain shot through his lame muscle. A vaguely heavy anxiety clouded his brain, engaged as it still was with the specters of confusedly ugly dreams.
The speckled area overhead was gradually coming clear; it appeared to be a plastered ceiling, very small; a little cell of a place... oh, yes, Elmer Boatwright's room!
Faintly through the open window at the foot of the bed came the sound of a distant, shot; another; a rattle of them. And other, nearer shots. Then a slow whistling shriek and a crash. Then the rattle of a machine gun, quite clear. Then a lull.
He sensed a presence; felt rather than heard low breathing; with an effort that was as much of the will as of the body he turned his head.
Betty was sitting there, close by the bed, gently smiling. Almost painfully his slow eyes took her in. She bent over and kissed him, then her little hand nestled in his big one. They talked a little; he in a natural enough manner, if very grave, spoke of his joy in finding her safe. But as he spoke his mind, not yet wholly awake, took on a morbid activity. Did she know what he had done in the night? Had they told her? Anxiously, as she answered him, he searched her delicately pretty face. How young she was! Dwelling amid tragedy, in a degree sobered by it, the buoyancy of youth glowed in her brown eyes, in the texture of her skin, in the waving masses of fine hair, in the soft vividness of her voice; the touch of tragedy would, after all, rest lightly on her slim shoulders. To her the world was young; of the bitter impasse of middle age she knew no hint. Men loved her, of course. Men had died for less than she.... He pondered, swiftly, gloormly, the problem her very existence presented. And he looked on her and spoke with a finer tenderness than any he had before felt toward any living creature, even toward the wife who had left her soul on earth in the breast of this girl.
He decided that they hadn't told her. After all, they wouldn't. They were, when all was said, adult folk. He couldn't himself tell her. But his predicament was pitiful. He knew now, from the honest love in her eyes, that not the least black of his sins had been the doubting her. Never again could he do that. But this realization brought him to the verge of an attitude toward Jonathan Braehey that it was impossible for him to entertain; the mere thought of that man roused emotions that he could not control. But emotions, all sorts, must be controlled, of course; on no other understanding can life be lived. If direct effort of will is insufficient, then counter-activity must be set up.
Betty protested when he told her he meant to get up at once. But it was afternoon. He assured her that his wound was not serious; Dr. Cassin had admitted that, and he had slept deeply. H is muscles were lame; but that was an added reason for exercise.
They had brought in some of the clothing of the large Australian. As he pieced out a costume, he shaped a policy He couldn't, at once, fit into the life of the compound. He couldn't face Brachey. Not yet. The only hope of getting through these days of his passion lay in keeping himself desperately active. He weighed a number of plans, finally discarding all but one. Then he rang for a servant; and sent, while he ate a solitary breakfast, a chit to M. Pourmont.
2
The engineer received him at three. Neither spoke of the incident that had brought them together in the night. To Doane, indeed, it was now, in broad daylight and during most of the time, but a nightmare, unreal and impossible. During the moments when it did come real, he could only set his strong face and wait out the turbulence and bewilderment it stirred in him.
M. Pourmont found him very nearly himself; which was good. He seemed, despite the bandaged shoulder and the thinner face, the Griggsby Doane of old. But his proposal—-he was grimly bent on it—was nothing less than to make the effort, that night, to get through to the telegraph station at Shau T'ing.
M. Fourmunt took the position that the thing couldn't be done. After losing two natives in the attempt, he had decided to conserve his meager manpower and fall back on the certain fact that the legations knew of the siege and were doubtless moving toward action of some sort. Besides, he added, Duane with his courage and his extensive knowledge of the local situation was the man above all others he could least well spare.
Doane, however, pressed his point. “Getting through the lines will be difficult, but not impossible,” he said. “Remember I did get through last night. I believe I can do it again to-night. Even if I should be captured they may hesitate to kill me. I would ask nothing better than to be taken before Kang. He would have to listen to me, I think. And if I do succeed in establishing communication with Peking I may be able to stir them to action. The Imperial Government can hardly admit that they are backing Kang. It may even be possible to force them, through diplomatic pressure alone, to repudiate him and use their own troops to overthrow him. But first Peking must have the facts.”
M. Pourmont smiled.
“If you vill step wiz me,” he said, and led the way down a corridor to his spacious dining-room. There on the table, stood a large basket heaped with apples and pears. “Vat you t'ink, Monsieur Doane! But yesterday comes un drapeau bianc to ze gate viz a let-tair from zis ol' Kang. He regret vair' much zat ve suffair ici ze derangement, an' he hope zat vair' soon ve are again confortable. In Heaven, perhaps he mean! Chose donnante! An' he sen' des fruits viz ze compliments of Son Excellence Kang Hsu to Monsieur Pourmont. Et je vous demande, qu'est-ce que cela fait?”
Doane considered this puzzle; finally shook his head over it. It was very Chinese. Kang doubtless believed that through it he was deluding the stupid foreigners and escaping responsibility for his savage course.
Finally Doane won M. Pourmont's approval for his forlorn sally. He was, in a wild way, glad.
During the few hours left to him he must work rapidly, think hard. That, too, was good. He decided to write a will. If he had little money to leave Betty, at least there were things of his and her mother's. Elmer Boatwright would help him. And he must tell Betty he was going. It was curiously hard to face her, hard to meet the eye of his own daughter. He winced at the thought.
She had returned to the residence before him. He asked for her now.
M. Pourmont, giving a moment more to considering this man, whom he had long regarded with a respect he did not feel toward all the missionaries, wondered, as he sent word to the young lady, what might underlie that strange quarrel of the early morning. The only explanation that occurred to him he promptly dismissed, for it involved the little Mademoiselle's name in a manner which he could not permit to be considered. M. Pourmont was a shrewd man; and he knew that the Mademoiselle was ashamed of nothing. Nothing was wrong there. Like his wife he had already learned to love the busy earnest girl. And then, leaving M. Doane in the reception-room waiting for her, he returned to his study and dismissed the whole matter from his mind. For the siege was cruel business. One by one, some one every day, men and women and children, were dying. The living had to subsist on diminishing rations, for he had never foreseen housing and feeding so large a number. There were problems—of discipline and morale, of tactics, of sanitation, of burying the dead—that must be met and solved from hour to hour.
On the whole, as he settled again into his endless, urgent task, M. Pourmont was not sorry that M. Doane had won his consent to this last desperate effort to reach those inhumanly deliberate white folk up at Peking; men whose minds dwelt with precedents and policies while their fellows, down here at Ping Yang, on a hillside, held off with diminishing strength the destruction that seemed, at moments, certain to fall.
3
Doane, watching Betty as she entered the room attired in a long white apron over her simple dress, knew that he must again beg the question that lay between them. He could no more listen to the burden of her heart than to the agony of his own. Sooner or later, if he lived, he would have to work it out, decide about his life. If he lived....
“My dear,” he said, quickly for him, holding her hand more tightly than he knew, “I have some news which I know you will take bravely.”
He could feel her steady eyes on him. He hurried on. “I am going out again to-night. There seems a good chance that I may get through to Shau T'ing, with messages. I'm going to try.”
His desire was to speak rapidly on, and then go. But he had to pause at this. He heard her exclaim softly—“Oh, Dad!” And then after a silence—“I'm not going to make it hard for you. Of course I understand. Any of us may come to the end, of course, any moment. We've just got to take it as it comes. But—I—it does seem as if—after all you've been through, Dad—as if—”
He felt himself shaking his head.
“No,” he said. “No. It's my job, dear.”
“Very well, Dad. Then you must do it. I know. But I do wish you could have a day or two more to rest. If you could”—this wistfully—“perhaps they'd let me off part of the time to take care of you. You know, I'm nursing. I'd be stern. You'd have to sleep a lot, and eat just \vhat I gave you.” She patted his arm as she spoke; then added this: “Of course it's not the time to think of personal things. But there's one thing I've got to tell you pretty soon, Dad. A strange experience has come to me. It's puzzling. I can't see the way very clearly. But it's very wonderful. I believe it's right—really right. It's a man.”
She rushed on with it. “I wanted you to meet him to-night. He's—out in the trenches, all day, up the hill. We're expecting word—a cablegram—when they get through to us. And when that comes, I'd have to tell you all about it. He'll come to you then. But I—well, I had to tell you this much. It's been a pretty big experience, and I don't like to think of going through it like this without your even knowing about it from me, and knowing, too, no matter what they may say”—her voice wavered—“that it's—it's—all right.” Her hands reached suddenly up toward his shoulders; she clung to him, like the child she still, in his heart, seemed.
He could trust himself only to speak the little words of comfort he would have used with a child. He felt that he was not helping her; merely standing there, helpless in the grip of a fate that seemed bent on racking his soul to the final Emit of his spiritual endurance.
“This won't do,” she said. “I have no right to give way. They need me in the hospital. I shall think of you every minute, Dad. I'm very proud of you.”
She kissed him and rushed away. He walked back to Elmer Boatwright's room fighting off a sense of unreality that had grown so strong as to be alarming. It was all a nightmare now—the manly dogged faces in the compound, the wailing sounds from the native quarter, the intermittent shots, the smells, the very sun that blazed down on the tiling. Nothing seemed really to matter. He knew well enough, in a corner of his mind, that this mood was the most dangerous of all. It lay but a step from apathy; and apathy, to such a nature as his, would mean the end.
So he busied himself desperately. The simple will he left for Boatwright with instructions that it was to be given to Betty in the event of his death. It seemed that the little man was one of a machine-gun crew and could not be reached until well on in the evening; he had turned fighter, like the others.
He sewed up his tattered knapsack and filled it with a sort of iron ration. He wrote letters, including a long one to Henry Withery, addressed in care of Dr. Hidderleigh's office at Shanghai. He framed with care the messages that were to go over the wires to Peking. He ate alone, and sparingly. And early, as soon as darkness settled over the scene of petty but bitter warfare, he clipped out of the compound and disappeared, carrying no weapon but his walking stick.
CHAPTER XX—LIGHT
1
DOANE walked, carelessly erect, to a knoll something less than a hundred yards northeast of the compound and off to the left of the ride pits. Here he stood for a brief time, listening. He purposed going out through the lines as he had come in through them, by crawling, hiding, feeling his way foot by foot. The line was thinnest in front of the rifle pits, and just to the left where the upper machine gun commanded a defile.
He had allowed two hours for the journey through the lines, but it consumed nearly four. At one point he lay for an hour behind a stone trough while a squad of Lookers built a fire and brewed tea. A recurring impulse was to walk calmly in among those yellow men and go down fighting. It seemed as good a way as any to go. He found it necessary to hold with a strong effort of will to the thought of his fellow's in the compound; that to save them, and to save Betty, he must carry through.
Toward one o'clock in the morning, now well to the eastward of the besieging force, he swung into his stride. It seemed, in the retrospect, absurdly like the play of children to be hiding and crawling about the hillsides. But he was glad now that he had somehow, painfully, kept his head. Barring the unforeseen, the diplomatic gentlemen up at Peking would find the news awaiting them when they came to their desks in the morning. After that noting that he might do would greatly matter. He could follow these powerfully recurring impulses if he chose; let the end come. That was now his greatest desire. Life had become quite meaningless. Except for Betty....
2
Shau T'ing was but another of the innumerable rural villages that dot northern China. Though there were a railway station, and sidings, and a quaintly American water tank set high on posts. The inns were but the familiar Oriental caravansaries; no modern hotel, no “Astor House,” had sprung up as yet to care for newly created travel.
As he approached the stream that ran through a loess canyon a mile or more west of the village he glimpsed, ahead, a group of soldiers seated about a fire. Just behind them were stacks of rifles; this much he saw and surmised with the help of the firelight. And the first glow of dawn was breaking in the east. He left the highway and swung around through the fields, passing between scattered grave mounds from whose tops the white joss papers fluttered in the gray twilight like timid little ghosts.
He crossed the gorge by the old suspension footbridge, with the crumbling memorial arches at either end bearing, each characteristic inscriptions suggestive of happiness and peace. Looking down-stream he could dimly see that the railway bridge lay, a tangle of twisted steel, in the stream, leaving the abutments of white stone rearing high in the air with wisps of steel swinging aimlessly from the tops.
He half circled the village, and waited outside the eastern gate until the massive doors swung open at sunrise.
He went to the leading inn, and gave up an hour to eating the food in his knapsack and cleaning his mud-dyed clothing. The innkeeper informed him, when he brought the boiled water, that another white man had been there for three days. After this Doane went down to the station. A solitary engine was puffing and clanking among the sidings, apparently making up a train.
A number of the blue-turbaned military police stood sentry-go here and there about the yard, each with fixed bayonet. Within the room that was at once ticket office and telegraph station sat the Chinese agent cheerfully contemplating a slack day.
Doane wrote out his messages, and stood over the man until they were sent; then walked slowly back toward the inn. His task, really, was done. He would wait until night, of course; there might be replies. But at most his only further service would be in carrying hopeful messages to the beleaguered folk at Ting Yang. Beyond that he would be but one more human unit to fight and to be fed. Debit and credit, they seemed just about to balance, those two items. Fastening his door he stretched out on the kang.
He was awakened at the close of day by the innkeeper bringing food. The man set out two plates on the dusty old table. Doane sat on the edge of the kang and drowsily wondered why. He had slept heavily. He stood up; moved about the room; he was only a little stiff. Indeed his strength was surely returning. He felt almost his old self, physically.
There was a knock at the door. In Chinese he called, “Enter!”
The door slowly opened, and a drab little man came in, walking with a slight limp, and stood looking at him out of dusty blue eyes. He carried a packet of papers.
“Grigg!” he exclaimed softly.
“Henry Withery!” cried Doane, “What on earth are you doing here?”
Withery smiled, and laid hat and packet on the table.
“I've arranged to dine with you,” he explained. “You won't mind?”
“Of course not, Henry. But why are you here?”
“My plans were changed.”
“Evidently. Do sit down.”
“I came back to find you. I've been waiting here for a chance to get through. We've worried greatly, of course. A rumor came from the Chinese that you were killed.”
“I nearly was,” said Doane quietly. A cloud had crossed his face as he listened. At every point, apparently, at each fresh contact with life, he was to be brought face to face with his predicament. It would be pitiless business, of course, all the way through, for the severest judge of all he had yet to face dwelt within his own breast; long after the world had forgotten, that judge would be pronouncing sentence upon him.
“You got through to Shanghai?” he asked abruptly.
Withery, touched by his appearance, a little disturbed by his nervously abrupt manner, inclined his head.
“Well, it's out, I suppose. What are they saying about me, Henry? Really, you'd better tell me. I've got to live through this thing, you know. I may as well have the truth at once.”
Withery lowered his eyes; fingered the chopsticks that lay by his plate.
“No,” he said slowly. “No, Grigg, it's not out.”
“But you know of it. Surely others do, then. And they'll talk. It's the worst way. It'll run wild. I'd rather face a church trial than that.” He was himself unaware that he had been constantly brooding upon this aspect of his trouble, yet the words came snapping out as if he had thought of nothing else.
“Now, Grigg,” said Withery, in the same deliberately thoughtful way, “I want you to let me talk. I've come way back here just to do that. Hidderleigh showed me your letter. Then in my presence, he destroyed it. I have promised him I would speak of it to no one but you. ... Neither you nor I could have foreseen just how Hidderleigh would take this. He is, of course, as he has always been, a dogmatic thinker. But like others of us, he has grown some with the years. He's less narrow, Grigg. He knows you pretty well—your ability, your influence. He respects you.”
“Respects me?” Doane nearly laughed.
“Yes. He sees as clearly as you or I could that any human creature may slip. And he knows that no single slip is fatal. Grigg, he wants you to go back and take up your work.”
Doane could not at once comprehend this astonishing statement. He was deeply moved. Withery by his simple friendliness had already done much to restore in his mind, for the moment, a normal feeling for life.
“But he feels, Grigg, that you ought to marry again.”
Doane shook his head abruptly.
“No,” he cried, “I can't consider that. Not now.”
“As he said to me, Grigg, 'It is not good for man to be alone!'”
Withery let the subject rest here, and asked about the fighting. The whole outside world was watching these Hansi hills, it appeared. The Imperial Government was already disclaiming responsibility. Troops were on their way, from Hong Kong, from the Philippines, from Indo-China.
“It will be a month or so before they can get out here,” mused Doane.
“Oh, yes! At best.”
“Meantime, the compound will fall at the first really determined attack. They've been afraid of Pour-mont's machine guns—I heard some of their talk last night, and the night before—but let Kang come to a decision to drive them in and they'll go. That will settle it in a day.”
“Will they have the courage?”
“I think so. You and I know these people, Henry. They're brave enough. All they lack is leadership, and organization. And this crowd have a strong fanaticism to hold them up. Once let Kang appeal to their spirit and they'll have to go in to save face. For if they can't be seen the only danger is of an accident here and there. And, for that matter, Kang may simply be waiting for Pourmont to use up his ammunition. It can't last a great while, not in a real siege, which this is.”
“By the way,” said Withery a little later, “here is a lot of mail for Pourmont's people. It's been accumulating. There was no way to get it to them.”
“I'll take it in,” said Doane.
“You? You don't mean that you're going to ran that gauntlet again, Grigg?”
“Yes.” He untied the packet, and looked through the little heap of envelopes. One was a cablegram addressed to Jonathan Brachey. He held it in tense fingers; gazed at it long while the pulse mounted in his temples. “Oh, yes,” he said, almost casually then, “I'm going hack in. They'll be looking for me.” But his thoughts were running wild again.
Withery said, before he left, “I'm going to ask you not to answer Hidderleigh's request until you've thought it over carefully. My own feeling is that he is right.”
“Suppose,” said Doane, “my final decision should be—as I think it will—that I can't go back. What will they do?”
“Then I've promised him, I'll go in and take up your work. As soon as this trouble is over.”
“That knocks out your year at home, Henry.”
“Yes, but what matters it? Very likely I shall find more happiness in working, after all. That isn't what disturbs me.... Grigg, if you leave the church it will be, I think, the severest blow of my life. I—I'm going to tell you this—for years I've leaned on you. You didn't know, but I've made a better job of my life for knowing that you too were hard at it, just beyond the mountains. We haven't seen much of each other, of late years, but I've felt you there.”
Doane's stern face softened as he looked at his old friend.
“And I've felt you, Henry,” he replied gently.
“Your blunders are those of strength, not of weakness, Grigg. Perhaps your greatest mistake has been in leaning a little too strongly on yourself. What I want you to consider now is giving self up, in every way.”
But Duane shook his great head.
“No, Henry—no! I've given to the uttermost for years. And it has wrecked my life—”
“No, Grigg! Don't say that!”
“Well—put it as you will. The trouble has been that I was doing wrong all the time—for years—as I told you back in Tiaman, I was doing the wrong thing. It led, all of it, to sin. For that sin, of course, I've suffered, and must suffer more. The best reason I could think of for going back would be to keep this added burden off your shoulders. But that would be wrong too. It's getting a little clearer to me. I know now that I've got to face my doubts and my sins, take them honestly for whatever they may be. Each life must function in its own way. In the eagerness of youth I chose wrong. I must now take the consequences. Good-by, now! There's barely time to slip through the lines before dawn.”
Withery rose. “I'll go with you,” he said.
“No. I won't allow that. You haven't the strength. You're not an outdoor man We should have to separate anyway; together we should almost certainly be caught. No. You stay here and get word through to them from day to day if you can find any one to undertake it. It will mean everything to them to hear from the outside world. Good luck!”
He took the packet and went out.
3
Again it was dawn Griggsby Doane stood on the crest of a terraced hi'! looking off into the purple west. But a few miles farther on lay Ping Yang.
Beneath him, near the foot of the slope, four coolies were already at the radiating windlasses of a well, and tiny streams of yellow water were trickling along troughs in the loess toward this and that field, where bent silent farmers waited clod in hand to guide the precious fluid from furrow to furrow. Still farther down, along the sunken highway, a few venturesome muleteers led their trains. No outposts in the Looker uniform were to be seen. And he heard no shots. It would be a lull, then, in the fighting.
He descended the hill, dropped into the road, and walked, head high, toward Ping Yang. As he swung along he heard, far off, the shots his ears had strained for on the hill; one, another, then a spattering volley; but he walked straight on. The Mongols and Chihleans on the road gave him no more than the usual glance of curiosity. He passed through a village; Ping Yang would be the next. The railway grade—here an earthen rampart, there a cutting, yonder a temporary wooden trestle—paralleled the highway, cutting into the heart of old China like a surgeon's knife, letting out superstition and festering poverty, letting n the strong fluids of commerce and education. He felt the health of it profoundly, striding on alone through the cool, dear morning air. It was imperfect, of course, this Western civilization that he had so nearly come to doubt; yet, materialistic in its nature or not, it was the best that the world had to offer at the moment. It was what the amazing instinct in man to push on, to better his body and his brain, had brought the world to. It seemed, now, a larger expression of the vitality he felt within himself, the force that he had so lavishly expended in a direction that was wrong for him.
He felt this, which could not have been less than the beginning of a new focus of his misdirected, scattered powers, and yet he walked straight on toward the red army that was sworn to kill all the whites. And though his brain still told him, coolly, without the slightest sense of personal concern, that he would probably be slain within the hour, his heart, or his rising spirit, as calmly dismissed the report.
It might come, of course. He literally didn't care. Death might come at any moment to any man. The present moment was his; and the next, and the next, until the last whenever it should come. He walked with a thrilling sense of power, above the world. For the world, life itself, was suddenly coming back to him. He had been ill—for years, he knew now—of a sick faith. Now he was well. If the old dogmatic religion was gone, he was sensing a new personal religion of work, of healthy functioning, of unquestioning service in the busy instinctive life of the world. He would turn, not away from life to a mystical Heaven, but straight into life at its busiest, head up, as now on the old highway of Hansi, trusting his instinct as a human creature. No matter how difficult the start he would plunge in and live his life out honestly. Betty remained the problem; he knit his brows at the thought; but the new flame in his heart blazed steadily higher. Whatever the problems, he couldn't he headed now.
“What a morbid, sick fool I've been!” It was the cry of a heart new born to health. It occurred to him, then, as he heard his own voice, that this new sense of light had come to him as suddenly as that other light that smote Paul on the Damascus road. It had the force, as he considered it now, of a miracle....
4
The road was blocked ahead. Drawing near, he saw beyond the mules and horses and men of the highway and the curious, pressing country folk a considerable number of yellow turbans crowding the road canyon. There must have been a hundred or more, with many rifle muzzles slanting crazily above them. After a moment the rabble broke toward him.
Doane did not wait for them to discover him, but raising his stick and calling for room to pass he walked in among them. He stood head and shoulders above them, a suddenly appearing white giant whom a few resisted at first, but more gave way to as he pushed firmly through. Emerging on the farther side he walked on his way without so much as looking back. And not a shot had been fired.
The road wound its way between steep walls of loess, so that ii was impossible at any point to see far ahead. He came upon other, smaller groups of the Lookers. Only one man, the largest of them, threatened him, but as the man raised the butt of his rifle Doane snatched the weapon from him and knocked him down with it; then tossed it aside and strode on as before.
He came at length to a scenic arch in a notch. Through the arch Ping Yang could be seen in its valley.
He stopped and looked. Near at hand were the tents of some of the Looker soldiery; beyond lay the village; and beyond that on the hillside, the compound of the company, lying as still as if it were deserted. There were no puffs of smoke, no sounds along the village street; between the outlying houses small figures appeared to Le bustling about, but they made no noise that could be heard up here. The scene was uncanny.
Doane, however, went on down the hill. None of the Lookers were in evidence now on the winding street, but only the silent, curious villagers; this until two soldiers in blue came abruptly out of a house; and then two others firmly holding by the arms a man in red and yellow with an embroidered square on the breast of his tunic that marked him as an officer of rank. Other soldiers followed, one bearing a large curved sword.
Doane stopped to watch.
Without ceremony the officer's wrists were tied behind his back. He was kicked to his knees. A blue soldier seized his queue and with it jerked his head forward. The swordsman, promptly, with one clean blow', severed the neck; then wiped his sword on the dead man's clothing and marched away with the others, carrying the head.
Duane shivered slightly, compressed his lips, and, paler, walked on. He passed other blue soldiers in the heart of the village, and a row of Lookers standing without arms. Emerging from the straggling groups of houses beyond the village wall he took the road up the hill. Away up the slope he could see the men of the outposts standing and sitting on the parapets of the rifle pits. At the gate of the compound he called out.
The gate opened, and closed behind him. Within stood men of the garrison, and women, and behind them the Chinese. All looked puzzled. Many tongues greeted him at once, eagerly questioning.
He looked about from one to another of the thin weary faces with burning eyes that hung on his slightest gesture, and slowly shook his head. He could answer none of their questions. He was searching for one face that meant more to him than all the others. It was not there. He walked on toward the house occupied by the Boatwrights. Just as he was turning in there he saw Betty. She was tunning across from the residence.
“On, Dad!” she cried. “You're back!” Her arms were around his neck. “How wonderful! And you're well—like your old self.”