“Better than my old self, dear,” he said, with a tender smile, and kissed her forehead.
“I can't stay, Dad. I just ran out. Wasn't it strange—I saw you from the window! But what's happened? What is it? Everybody's so puzzled. Have the troops come?”.
He shook his head.
“But it's something. Everybody's terribly excited.”
“I don't understand it myself, dear. Though I walked through it, apparently.”
“Oh, look! They're opening the gate! What is it?” She hopped with impatience, like a child, and clapped her hands. “Oh, I mustn't stay! But tell m, do you think this dreadful business is over?”
“I believe it is, Betty.”
She ran back to her post. And he returned to the gate.
An odd little cavalcade was moving deliberately up the hill. In front marched a soldier in blue bearing a large white flag (an obviously Western touch, this). Behind him came a squad in column of fours, on foot and unarmed; then a green sedan chair with four pole-men; behind this three pavilions with carved wooden tops, of the sort carried in wedding processions, each with four bearers; and last another squad of foot soldiers.
Just outside the gate they came to a halt. The soldiers formed in line on either side of the road. An officer advanced and asked permission to enter. This was granted. At once the chairmen set down their burden. The carved door opened, and a young Chinese gentleman stepped out. He was tall, slim, with large spectacles; and moved with a quiet dignity that amounted to a distinction of bearing. His long robe was of shimmering blue silk embroidered in rose and gold; and the embroidered emblem on his breast exhibited the silver pheasant of a mandarin of the fifth class. On his head, the official, bowl-shaped straw hat with red tassel was surmounted with a ball or button of crystal an inch in diameter set in a mount of exquisitely worked gold. His girdle clasp also was of worked gold with a plain silver button. The shoes that appeared beneath the hem of his robe were richly embroidered and had thick white soles.
Calmly, deliberately, he entered the compound. One of the engineers, an American, addressed him in the Mandarin tongue. He replied, in a deep musical voice, with a pronounced intonation that gave this mellow language, to a casual ear, something the sound of French.
The engineer bowed, and together they moved toward the residence, where a somewhat mystified M. Pourmont awaited them. But first the mandarin turned and signaled to the pavilion bearers, who still waited outside the gate. These came in now, and it became evident that the ornate structures were laden with gifts. There were platters of fruits and of sweetmeats, bottles of wine, cooked dishes, and small caskets, some carved, others lacquered, that might have contained jewels.
Doane, quietly observing the scene, found something familiar in the appearance of the envoy. Something vaguely associated with the judge's yamen at T'ainan-fu. Certainly, on some occasion, he had seen the man. He stood for a brief time watching the two figures, a white man in stained brown clothing, unkempt of appearance but vigorous in person, walking beside the elegant young mandarin, appearing oddly crude beside him, curiously lacking in the grace that marked every slightest movement of the silk-clad Oriental; and the picture dwelt for a time among his thoughts—the oldest civilization in the world, and the youngest. Crude vigor, honest health, contrasted with a decadence that clung meticulously to every slightest subtlety of etiquette. And behind the two, towering above the heads of the ragged bearers, the curving pointed roofs of the three pavilions, still gaily bizarre in form and color despite the weatherbeaten condition of the paint; a childish touch, suggestive of circus day in an American village. Suggestive, too, whimsically, of the second childhood of the oldest race.
Doane, reflecting thus, slowly followed them to the residence.
5
Jonathan Brachey sat moodily on the parapet. Down below, the compound (a crowded mass of roofs within a rectangle of red-gray wail) and below that the straggling village, stood out as blocked-in masses of light and shadow under the slanting rays of the morning sun.
A French youth, beside him, polishing his rifle with a greasy rag, looked up with a question.
Brachey shook his head; he had no information. He looked over toward the other pit. The Australian in command there (three nights earlier they had buried Swain) waved a carelessly jocular hand and went on nibbling a biscuit.
The thing might be over; it might not. Brachey found himself almost perversely disturbed, however, at the prospect of peace. He had supposed that he hated this dirty, bloody business. He saw no glory in fighting, merely primitive blood-lust; an outcropping of the beast in man; evidence that in his age-long struggle upward from the animal stage of existence man had yet a long, long way to climb. But from the thought of losing this intense preoccupation, of living quietly with the emphasis again placed on personal problems, he found himself shrinking. What a riddle it was!
He spoke shortly to the French youth, took up his own rifle, and led the way up the hill to the bullet-spattered farm compounds. They were quite deserted. Only the huddled, noxious dead remained. He went on up the hillside, searching all the hiding-places of those red and yellow vandals who had filled his thoughts by day and haunted his sleep at, night; but all were empty of human life. A great amount of rubbish was left—cooking utensils, knives, old Chinese-made rifles and swords, bits of uniforms. He found even a jade ring and a few strings of brass cash.
Weary of spirit he returned to the rifle pits only to find these, too, deserted. From the upper redoubt a man was waving, beckoning. Apparently the compound gate was open, and a group of soldiers standing in line outside; but these soldiers wore blue. Through his glasses he surveyed the moving dots near the village; none wore red and yellow.
The man was still waving from the redoubt. The French youth, he found now, was looking up at him, that eager question still in his eyes. He nodded. With a sudden wild shout the boy ran down the hill, waving bis rifle over his head.
So it was peace—sudden, enigmatic. Brachey sat again on the parapet. Griggsby Doane was doubtless there (Brachey knew nothing of his journey; he had not seen Betty. What could he say to him, to the father whom Betty loved?
This wouldn't do, of course. He rose, a set dogged expression on his long, always serious face, and went slowly down the hill; and with only a nod to this person and that got to his tent. Once within, he closed the flaps and sat on the cot. He discovered then that he had brought with him one of the strings of cash, and jingled it absently against his knee.
Voices sounded outside. Men were standing before the tent.
Then the flaps parted, and he beheld the spectacled, pleasantly smiling face of Mr. Po.
“Oh,” he said, more shortly than he knew. “Come in!”
Mr. Po stepped inside, letting the flaps fall together behind him. He made a splendid figure in blue and gold, as he removed the round hat with its red plume and crystal ball and laid it on the rude table.
“I'm glad to see you're still sound of life and limb and fresh as a daisy,” he remarked cheerfully. “With permission I will sit here a bit for informal how-do chin-chin, and forget from minute to minute all ceremonial dam-foolishness.”
CHAPTER XXI—THE SOULS OF MEN
1
WELL,” continued Mr. Po expansively, “I've certainly had a pretty kettle of fish about my ears.”
Brachey filled and lighted his pipe, and yielded his senses for a moment to the soothing effect of the fragrant smoke.
“Is the fighting really over?” he asked.
“Oh, yes!”
“But why? What's happened?”
Mr. Po indulged in his easy, quiet laugh.
“To begin at first blush,” he said, settling comfortably back as If launched on a long narrative, “while out on scouting leap in dark I stumbled plump on Lookers, and by thunder, it was necessary to trust broken reed of lying on stomach hi open ground!”
“They caught you?”
“Oh, yes! For hell of a while I held breath, but with dust in nose it became unavoidable to sneeze. I would then have lost head promptly but officer of yamen entourage of Kang spotted me and said, 'What the devil you doing here!' With which I explain of course that I escape by hook or crook from white devils. Then I appear before general and demand audience discussion with old Kang. Old reprobate received me and made long speech. Perfectly absurd! He said I must go to T'ainan-fu as his particular guest and speak to His Excellency Pao Ting Chuan his message, like this:
“'For many years I have known and respected your abilities as scholar and statesman of huge understanding ability. We have both seen, you and I, continuing unprincipled encroachment of foreign devil on preserves of our ancient and fruitful land, while the sorrow of our own Hansi Province under heel of foreign mining syndicate despot is matter of common ill repute to us both. Now as loyal friend and unswervingly determined on destroying all evil influence of foreign devils, I invite you as guest to share with me pleasure of witnessing capture and utter destruction of foreign compound at Ping Yang. Omens agree on midnight of to-day week, following banquet of state and theatrical performance at my headquarters, at which favorite amateur actor Wang Lo Hsu will recite historical masterpiece, “The Song of Wun Hsing.” And as my cooks are all wretched creatures, unworthy of catering to poorest classes, I beg of you bring delicately expert cook of Canton that I may again rejoice in delightful memory of sweet lotus soup.'”
Mr. Po paused to light a cigarette.
“So you went back to Tiainan?” asked Brachey.
“Oh, no, I was taken back against grain as prisoner of large armed guard.”
“And you delivered the message?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Pao didn't accept, of course. Though I don't see how he could get out of it. He had no soldiers to speak of, did he?”
“Oh, yes, some. These he sent by northern road to region of Shan Tang, only thirty li away from Ping Yang. And then he accept, for His Excellency is great statesman. Nobody yet ever put it over on His Excellency, not so you could notice it. Without frown or smile he assemble secretaries, runners and lictors of yamen. banner-men, some concubines and eunuchs and come post-haste.”
“So he's here now?”
“Oh, yes. We have large establishment at temple over on neighboring hill. And everything's all right. O. K.”
“You'll forgive me if I don't at all understand why.”
“Naturally. I am going to make clear as cotton print. For a day or so everything was as disorderly as the dickens, of course. You couldn't hear yourself think. And sleep? My God, there wasn't any. And of course after death of old reprobate Lookers went to pieces and raised Ned. It became necessary to punish leaders and all that sort of thing. You see, Dame Rumor gets move on in China, runs around like scared chicken, faster than telegraph, I sometimes think. And when Lookers heard stories, that Imperial Government up at Peking wasn't so crazy about giving them support, and might even hand them double-cross lemon, they began to think about patching holes in fences. They just blew up. And His Excellency”—he chuckled—“he grasped situation like chain lightning. Oh, but he's whale of a fellow, His Excellency!” Brachey smoked reflectively as he studied this curiously bloodless enthusiast. Evidently behind the humorously inadequate English speech of Mr. Po there was, if it could be got at, a stirring drama of intrigue. A typical Oriental drama, bearing a smooth surface of silken etiquette but essentially cruel and bloody. The difficulty would be, of course, in getting at it, drawing it out piecemeal and putting it together.
“His Excellency will now clean up whole shooting match,” Mr. Po went on. “No more Ho Shan Company!” And he waved his cigarette about to indicate the compound.
“Oh, that goes, too?”
“Oh, yes! His Excellency has at once telegraphed agent-general at Tientsin for final show-down price on surrender of all leases, agreements, expenses, bribes and absolute good riddance. They say three million taels cash. To-morrow we shall throw it at their heads. And so much for that!”
“H'm!” mused Brachey. “Pretty quick work. Rather takes one's breath away.”
“Oh, yes! But His Excellency's son of a gun.”
“Evidently. But I'm still in the dark as to how this rather extraordinary change came about. Did I understand you to say that Kang is dead?”
“Oh, yes! Night before last.”
“How did that happen?”
“Oh, well—it's just as well not to give this away—on arrival at Ping Yang His Excellency made at once prepare bowl of sweet lotus soup and send it with many compliments and hopes of good omens to old devil.”
“You mean—there was poison in it?”
“Oh, yes! Pretty darned hard to put it over His Excellency. After that it was no trouble at all to behead commanders of Looker troops.”
“Naturally,” was Brachey's only comment. He proceeded to draw out, bit by bit, other details of the story.
Some one stepped before the tent, and a strong voice called:
“Mr. Brachey.”
With a nervously abrupt movement Brachey sprang up and threw back the flaps; and beheld, standing there, stooping in order that he might see within, the giant person of Griggsby Doane.
2
Brachey bowed coldly. Doane's strong gaunt face worked perceptibly.
Brachey said:
“Won't you come in, sir? The tent is”—there was a pause—“the tent is small, but... You are perhaps acquainted with Mr. Po Sui-an of the yamen of His Excellency Pao Ting Chuan.”
Mr. Doane bowed toward the Chinese gentleman.
“I think I have seen Mr. Po at the yamen,” he said, speaking now in the slow grave way of the old Griggsby Doane. “You bring good news?”
“Oh, yes!” Mr. Po lighted a cigarette. “We shall doubtless in jiffy see you again at T'ainan-fu.”
Doane looked thoughtfully, intently at him, then replied in the simple phrase, “It may be.” To Brachey he said now, producing a white envelope, “I found this, cablegram held for you at Shau T'ing, sir.”
Brachey took the envelope; stood stiffly holding it unopened before him. For a moment the eyes of these two men met. Then Doane broke the tension by simply raising his head, an action which removed it from the view of the men within the tent.
“Good morning,” he said rather gruffly. And “Good morning, Mr. Po.”
He was well out of ear-shot when Brachey's gray lips mechanically uttered the two words, “Thank you.” From a distant corner of the compound came the fresh voices of young men—Americans and Australian and English—raised in crudely pleasant harmony They were singing My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. As they swung into the rolling, rollicking refrain, women's voices joined in faintly from here and there about the compound.... Brachey seemed to be listening. Then, again, abruptly starting into action, he stepped outside the tent and stared across the courtyard after Griggby Doane.... Then, as abruptly, he remembered his guest and returned within the tent, with an almost muttered “I beg your pardon.”
“Oh, go on—read your cablegram!” said Mr. Po good-humoredly.
Bradley looked at him; then at the envelope—turning it slowly over. His hands trembled. This fact appeared to disturb him. He held one hand out before his face and watched it intently, finally lowering it with a quick nervous shake of the head. He seated himself again on the cot; tore off an end of the envelope; caught his breath; then sat motionless with the bit of paper that meant to him everything in life, or nothing, hanging between limp fingers. A puzzling reminder of the strange man, Griggsby Doane, was the painful throbbing in his head.... They were singing again, about the compound—it was the college song of his youth, Solomon Levi.
He thought, with another of those odd little mental and physical jerks, again of his guest; and heard himself saying—weakly it seemed, like a man talking in dreams—“You will think me...” But found himself addressing an empty enclosure of canvas. Mr. Po had slipped out and dropped the flaps. That he could have done this unobserved frightened Brachey a little. He looked again at his trembling hand.
Again he raised the envelope. Until this moment he had assumed that it could be but one message to himself and Betty; but now he knew vividly better.
Anything might have happened. It was unthinkable that he should want the courage to read it. He had foreseen no such difficulty. Perhaps if it had come by any other hand than that of Griggsby Doane....
His thoughts wandered helplessly back over the solitary life he had led... wandering in Siam and Borneo and Celebes, dwelling here and there in untraveled corners of India, picking up the quaint folklore of the Malay Peninsula, studying the American sort of social organization in the Philippines... eight years of it! He had begun as a disheartened young man, running bitterly away from the human scheme in which he found no fitting niche. Yes, that was it, after all; he had run away! He had begun with a defeat, based his working life on just that. The five substantial books that now stood to his name in every well-stocked library in America, as in many in England and on the Continent, were, after all, but stop-gaps in an empty life. They were a subterfuge, those books.........All the hard work, the eager close thinking, was now, suddenly, meaningless. That he had chosen work instead of drink, that he had been, after all, a decent fellow, pursuing neither chance nor women, seemed immaterial.
The curse of an active imagination was on him now, and was riding him as wildly as ever witch rode a broomstick.
The very bit of paper in his hand was nothing if not the symbol of his terrible failure in the business called living. As he had built his work on failure, was he, inevitably, to build the happiness of himself and Betty on the same painful foundation. Even if the paper should announce his freedom? Bitterly he repeated aloud the word, “Freedom!” Then “Happiness?”... What were these elusive things? Were they in any sense realities?
He nerved himself and read the message:
“Absolute decree granted you are free.”
He tossed it, with its unpunctuated jumble of words, on the table.
A little later, though he still indulged in this scathing self-analysis, the habit of meeting responsibilities that was more strongly a part of his nature than in this hour of utter emotion he knew, began to assert itself. The strong character that had led him, after all, out to fight and to build his mental house, was largely the man.
He slowly got up and stood before the square bit of mirrror that hung on the rear tent-pole; then looked down at his mud-stained clothes. Deliberately, almost painfully, he shaved and dressed. It was characteristic that he put on a stiff linen collar.
There was, to a man of his stripe, just one thing to do: and that thing he was going at directly, firmly. Until it was done he could not so much as speak to Betty. Of the outcome of this effort he had no notion; he was going at it doggedly, with his character rather than with his mind. Indeed the mind quibbled, manufactured little delays, hinted at evasions. He even listened to these whisperings, entertained them; but meanwhile went straight on with his dressing.
3
As he emerged from the tent sudden noises assailed his ears. A line of young men danced in lock step, doing a serpentine from one areaway to another, and waving and shouting merrily as they passed. There was still the singing, somewhere; one of the songs of Albert Chevalier, who had not then been forgotten. He heard vaguely, with half an ear, the enthusiastic outburst of sound on the final line:
“Missie 'Enry 'Awkins is a first-class nyme!”
So it was a day of celebration! He had forgotten that it would be. But of course! Even the Chinese were at it; he could hear one of their flageolets wailing, and, more faintly, stringed instruments.
He walked directly to the building occupied by the Boatwrights; sent in his card to Mr. Doane.
He was shown into a little cubicle of a room. Here was the huge man, rising from an absurdly small work table that had been crowded in by the window, between the wall and the foot of the bed. He was writing, apparently, a long letter.
Brachey, an odd figure to Doane's eyes, in his well-made suit and stiff white collar, stood on the sill, as rigid as a soldier at attent ion.
“I am interrupting you,” he said, almost curtly,
For the first time Griggsby Doane caught a glimpse of the man Brachey behind that all but forbidding front; and he hesitated, turning for a moment, stacking his papers together, and with a glance at the open window laying a book across them.
He had said, kindly enough, “Oh, no, indeed! Come right in.” But his thoughts were afield, or else he was busily, quickly, rearranging them.
Brachey stepped within, and closed the door. Here they were, these two, at last, shut together in a room. It was a moment of high tension.
“Sit down,” said Doane, still busying himself at the table, but waving an immense hand toward the other small chair.
But Brachey stood... waiting... in his hand a folded paper.
Finally Doane lifted his head, with a brusk but not unpleasant, “Yes, sir?”
Brachey, for a moment, pressed his lips tightly together.
“Mr. Doane,” he said then, clipping his words off short, “may I first ask you to read this cablegram?”
Doane took the paper, started to unfold it, but then dropped it on the table and stepped forward.
And now for the first time Brachey sensed, behind this great frame and the weary, haggard face, the real Griggsby Doane; and stood very still, fighting for control over the confusion in his aching head. This was, he saw now, a strong man; a great deal more of a personality than he had supposed he would find. Even before the next words, he felt something of what was coming, something of the vigorous honesty of the man. Doane had been through recent suffering, that was clear Something—-and even then, in one of his keen mental dashes, Brachey suspected that it was a much more personal experience than the Looker attack—something had upset him. This wasn't a man to turn baby over a wound, or to lose his head in a little fighting. No, it was an illness of the soul that had hollowed the eyes and deepened the grooves between them. But it didn't matter. What did matter was that he was now, in this gentle mood, surprisingly like Betty. For she had a curious vein of honesty; and she said, at times, just such unexpectedly frank, wholly open things as he felt (with an opening heart) that the father was about to say now.
“Mr. Brachey”—this was what he said, with extraordinary simplicity of manner—“can you take my hand?”
If Brachey had spoken his reply his voice would have broken. Instead he gripped the proffered hand. And during a brief moment they stood there.
“Now,” said Doane quietly, “sit down.” And he read the cablegram. After some quiet thought he said, “Have you come to ask for Betty?”
The directness of this question made speech, to Brachey, even more nearly impossible than before. He bowed his head.
Doane had dropped into the little chair by the little table. He sat, now, thinking and absently weighing the cablegram in one hand. Finally, reaching a conclusion, he rose again.
“The best way, I think, will be to settle this thing now.” He appeared to be speaking as much to himself as to his caller. “I'll get Betty. You won't mind waiting? They don't have call bells in this house.” And he returned the cablegram and went out of the room, leaving the door ajar behind him.
Brachey stepped over to the window, thinking he might see Betty when she came, but it gave on an inner court. He stared out at the gray tiling. The moment was, to him, terrible. He stood on the threshold of that strange region of the spirit that is called happiness. The door, always before closed to him (except the one previous experience when it proved but an entry into bitterness and desolation) had opened, here at the last, amazingly, at his touch. And he was afraid to look.
It seemed an hour later when footsteps sounded outside, and the outer door opened. Then they came in, father and daughter.
Betty, rather white, stood hesitant, looking from one to the other. Doane placed a gently protecting arm about her slim shoulders.
“I haven't told her,” he said. “That is for you to do. I want you both to wait while I look for the others.”
He was gone. Betty came slowly forward. Brachey handed her the cablegram.
“I—I can't read it,” she said, with a tremulous little laugh. “John—I'm crying!”
4
The door squeaked. Miss Hemphill looked in; stopped short; then in a sudden confusion of mind in which indignation struggled with bewilderment for the upper hand, stepped back into the hall. Before she could come down on the decision to flee, Dr. Cassin joined her; curiously, carrying her medicine case.
To the physician's brisk, “Mr. Doane sent word to come here at once. Do you know what is the matter?” Miss Hemphill could only reply, rather acidly, “I can't imagine!”
Mrs. Boatwright came into the corridor then, followed by Doane. She walked with firm dignity, her enigmatic face squarely set. And when he ushered them into the room, she entered without a word, but remained near the door.
For a long moment the room was still; a hush settling over them that intensified the difficulty in the situation. Miss Hemphill stared down at the matting. Mrs. Boatwright's eyes were fixed firmly on the wall over the bed. The one audible sound was the heavy breathing of Griggsby Doane, who stood with his back to the door, brows knit, one hand reaching a little way before him. He appeared, to the shrewd eyes of Dr. Cassin, like a man in deep suffering. But when he spoke it was with the poise, the sense of dominating personality, that she had felt and admired during all the earlier years of their long association. Of late he had been ill of a subtle morbid disease of which she had within the week witnessed the nearly tragic climax; but now he was well again.... Mary Cassin was a woman of considerable practical gifts. Her medical experience, illuminated as it had been by wide scientific reading, gave her a first-hand knowledge of the human creature and a tolerant elasticity of judgment that contrasted oddly with the professed tenets of her church, with their iron classification as sin of much that is merely honest human impulse, that might even, properly, be set down as human need. She saw clearly enough that the quality in the human creature that is called, usually, force, is essentially emotional in its content—and that the person gifted with force therefore must be plagued with emotional problems that increase in direct ratio with the gift. Unlike Mrs. Boatwright, who was, of course, primarily a moralist, Mary Cassin possessed the other great gift of dispassionate, objective thought. I think she had long known the nature of Doane's problem. Certainly she knew that no medical skill could help him; her advice, always practical, would have taken the same direction as Dr. Hidderleigh's. It brought her a glow of something not unlike happiness to see that now he was well. The cure, whatever it might prove to have been, was probably mental. Knowing Griggsby Doane as she did, that was the only logical conclusion. For she knew how strong he was.
“There has existed among us a grave misapprehension”—thus Doane—“one in which, unfortunately, I have myself been more grievously at fault than any of you. I wish, now, before you all, to acknowledge my own confusion in this matter, and, further, to clear away any still existing misunderstanding in your minds.... Mr. Brachey has established the fact that he is eligible to become Betty's husband. That being the case, I can only add that I shall accept him as my only son-in-law with pride and satisfaction. He has proved himself worthy in every way of our respect and confidence.”
Mary Cassin broke the hush that followed by stepping quickly forward and kissing Betty; after which she gave her hand warmly to Brachey. Then with a word about her work at the hospital she went briskly out.
Miss Hemphill started forward, only to hesitate and glance in a spirit of timid inquiry at the implacable Mrs. Boatwright. To her simple, unquestioning faith, Mr. Doane and Mary Cassin could not together be wrong; yet her closest daily problem was that of living from hour to hour under the businesslike direction of Mrs. Boatwright. However, having started, and lacking the harsh strength of character to be cruel, she went on, took the hands of Betty and Brachey in turn, and wished them happiness. Then she, too, hurried away.
Elmer Boatwright was studying his wife. His color was high, his eyes nervously bright. He was studying, too, Griggsby Doane, who had for more than a decade been to him almost an object of worship. Moved by an impulse, perhaps the boldest of his life—and just as his wife said, coldly, “I'm sure I wish you happiness,” and moved toward the door—he went over and caught Betty and Brachey each by a hand.
“I haven't understood this,” he said—and tears stood in his eyes as he smiled on them—“but now I'm glad. Betty, we are all going to be proud of the man you have chosen. I'm proud of him now.”
CHAPTER XXII—BEGINNINGS
1
THE day of sudden and dramatic peace was drawing near its close. Seated on the parapet of a rifle pit Betty and Brachey looked out over the red-brown valley. Long, faintly purple shadows lay along the hillside and in the deeper hollows. From the compound, half-way down the slope, a confusion of pleasant sounds came to their ears—youthful voices, snatches of song, an energetically whistled Sousa march, the quaintly plaintive whine of Chinese woodwinds—while above the roofs of tile and iron within the rectangle of wall (that was still topped with brown sand-bags) wisps of smoke drifted lazily upward.
“It seems queer,” mused he, aloud, “sitting here like this, with everything so peaceful. During the fighting I didn't feel nervous, but now I start at every new sound. I loathed it, too; but now, this evening, I miss it, in a way.” He gazed moodily down into the short trench. “Right there,” he said, “young Bartlett was hit.”
“And you brought him in under fire.”
“A Chinaman helped me.”
“Oh, it was you,” she said. “He wouldn't have done it. I watched from the window.” Her chin was propped on two small lists; her eyes, reflective, were looking out over the compound and the valley toward the walled temple on the opposite slope with its ornate, curving roofs and its little group of trees that were misty with young foliage. “I've been thinking a good deal about that, and some other things. All you said, back there on the ship, about independence and responsibility.”
“I don't believe I care to remember that,” said he quietly.
“But, John, if you will say startling, strong things to an impressionable girl—and I suppose that's all I was then—you can't expect her to forget them right away.”
His face relaxed into a faint, fleeting smile. But she went earnestly on.
“Of course I know it wasn't really long ago. Not if you measure it by weeks. But if you measure it by human experience it was—well, years.”
He was sober again; cheek on hand, gazing out into those lengthening, deepening shadows.
“That was what we quarreled about, John. I felt terribly upset. I was blue—I can't tell you! Just the thought of all your life meant to you, and how I seemed to be spoiling it.”
A strong hand drew one of hers down and closed about it. “I'm going to try to tell you something, dear,” he said. “You thought that what I said to you, on the ship, was an expression of a real philosophy of life.”
“But what else could it have been, John?”
“It was just a chip—right here.” He raised her hand and with it patted his shoulder. “It was what I'd tried for years to believe. I was bent on believing it. You know, Betty, the thing we assert most positively isn't our real faith. We don't have to assert that. It's likely to be what we're trying to convince ourselves of.... I'm just beginning to understand that, just lately, since you came into my life—and during the fighting. I had to bolster myself up in the faith that a man can run away, live alone, because it seemed to be the only basis on which I, as I was, could deal with life. The only way I could get on at all. But you see what happened to me. Life followed me and finally caught me, away out here in China. No, you can't get away from it. You can't live selfishly. It won't work. We're all in together. We've got to think of the others..... I'm like a beginner now—going to school to life. I don't even know what I believe. Not any more. I—I'm eager to learn, from day to day. The only thing I'm sure of”... he turned, spoke with breathless awe in his voice... “is that I love you, dear That's the foundation on which my life has got to be built. It's my religion, I'm afraid.”
Betty's eyes filled; her little fingers twisted in among his; but she didn't speak then.
The shadows stretched farther and farther along the hillside. The sun, a huge orange disc descending amid coppery strips of shining cloud, touched the rim of the western hills; slid smoothly, slowly down behind it, leaving a glowing vault of gold and rose and copper overhead and a luminous haze in the valley. Off to the eastward, toward Shau T'ing and the crumbling ruins of the Southern Wall (which still winds sinuously for hundreds of miles in and out of the valleys, and over and around the hills) the tumbling masses of upheaved rock and loess were deeply purple against a luminous eastern sky.
“Will you let me travel with you, John? I've thought that I could draw while you write. Maybe I could even help you with your books. It would be wonderful—exploring strange places. I'd like to go down through Yunnan, and over the border into Siam and Assam and the Burmah country. I've been reading about it, sitting in the hospital at night.”
“There would be privation—and dangers.”
“I don't care.”
“You wouldn't be afraid?”
“Not with you. And if—if anything happened to you, I'd want to go, too.... Of course, there'd be other problems coming up. Don't think I'm altogether impractical, dear.”
“What are you thinking of?”
She hesitated. “Children, John. I know we shan't either of us be satisfied to live just for our happiness in each other. I couldn't help thinking about that, watching you here, during the siege.”
“No, we shan't.”
“And with your work what it is—what it's got to be there's our first problem.”
“We'll have to take life as it comes.”
“Yes, I know.” They were silent again. Gradually the brilliant color was fading from the sky and the distant hills softening into mystery.... “Father says that we'll find marriage a job—”
“Oh, it's that!”
“Full of surprises and compromises and giving up. He says it's very difficult, but very wonderful.”
“I should think,” said Brachey, his voice somewhat unsteady, “that it would be the most wonderful job in the world. Its very complexities, the nature of the demands it must make.”
“I know!”
After a long silence he asked, so abruptly that she looked swiftly up:
“Do you ever pray, dear?”
“Why—yes, I do.”
“Will you teach me? I've tried—up here in the trenches. I've thought that maybe I'd pick up a copy of the English prayer-book. They'd have it at Shanghai or Tientsin....”
2
Dusk was mounting the hill-slopes.
“It was a strange talk father and I had. Nearly all the afternoon—while you were checking up ammunition and things. It's the first time he's really sat down with me like that like a friend, I mean—and talked out, just as he felt. Oh, he's been kind. But it's queer about father and me. You see, when they sent me over to the States, I was really only a child. Mother was dead then, you know. Father was always hoping to get over to see me, but there was all the strain of building up the missions after the Boxer trouble, and then he'd had his vacation. And he couldn't afford to bring me out here just for the journey.”
Brachey broke in here. “Did you ask him if he would marry us?”
She nodded. “Yes. And he won't. That's partly what I'm going to tell you. He's resigned.”
“From the church?”
“Yes. He thought of having Mr. Boatwright do it. But it seems that his position is rather difficult. On account of his wife. She'll never be friendly to us.”
“Oh, no!”
“I could see, though, that Dad was glad about our plan for an early wedding. Of course, he's had me to think of, every minute. He did say that the certain knowledge that I'm cared for will make it easier for him to carry out his plans. But he wouldn't tell me what the plans are. It's odd. He doesn't like to think of me as a responsibility. I could see that. I mean, that he might have to do something he didn't believe in in order to earn money for me. He said that he's been for years in a false position. I never saw him so happy. He acts as if he'd been set free.”
“Perhaps he has,” Brachey reflected aloud. “It is strange—almost as if we represented opposite swings of the pendulum, he and I. Perhaps we do. I've not had enough responsibility, he's had too much. Probably one extreme's as unhealthy as the other.”
“I've worried some about him, John. But he begs me not to. He's planning now to sell all his things.”
“All?”
“Everything. Books, even. And his desk, that he's had since the first years out here. Mr. Withery is going to be in charge at T'ainan, and Dad's leaving the final arrangements to him.”
“You speak as if your father were going away, far off. And in a hurry.”
“He is. That's the strange thing. Just to tell about it, like this, makes it seem'—well, almost wild. But when you talk with him you feel all right about it. He's so steady and sure. Just as if at last he's hit on the truth.”
The night drew its cloak swiftly over the valley. For a long time after this conversation they sat there in silent communion with the dim hills; she nestling in his arms; he dreaming of the years to come in which his life—such was his hope—might through love find balance and warmth.
3
Doane was at the residence when Brachey left Betty there—at the door, chatting with M. Pourmont. He walked away with Brachey. And the tired but still genial Frenchman looked after them with a puzzled frown.
“Stroll a bit with me, will you?” said Doane. “I've got a few things to say to you.” And outside the gate, he added soberly: “About the beastly thing I did.”
“I've forgotten that,” said Brachey; stiffly, in spite of himself.
“No, you haven't. You never will. Neither shall I. What I have to say is just this—it was an overwrought, half-mad man who attacked you.”
“Of course, I've come to see that. All you'd been through.”
“What I'd been through, Brachey, wasn't merely hardship, fighting, wounds. It was something else, the wreck of my life. I'd had to stand by, in a way, and look at the wreckage. I was doing the wrong thing, living wrong, living a lie. For years I fought it, without being able to see that I was fighting life itself. You see, Brachey, the power of dogmatic thinking is great. It circumscribed my sense of truth for years.”
He fell silent for a moment, looking up at the stars. Then, simply, he added this:
“I want you to know the whole truth. I feel that it is due you. My struggle ended in sin. The plainest kind—with a woman—and without a shred of even human justification. Just degradation.... I can see now that it was a terrific shock. It nearly pulled me under, very nearly. They want me to stay in the church, but I can't, of course.”
“No,” said Brachey, “you wouldn't want to do that.”
“I couldn't. I went through the more or less natural morbid phases, of course. That attack on you—”
“That was partly exhaustion,” said Brachey. “You weren't in condition to analyze a situation that would have been difficult for anybody. And of course I was in the position of breaking my pledge to you.”
“It was more than that, Brachey. The primitive resurgence in me simply reached its climax then. No—let me have this out! I suspected you because I had learned to suspect myself. That blow was a direct result of my own sin. And I want you to know that I've come to see it for what it was.”
“H'm!” mused Brachey. They were standing by a pile of weathering timbers, beside the old Chinese highway. “Shall we sit a while?” Then—“I'd have to think about that.” Finally—“I don't know but what your analysis is sound. But”—he mused longer, then, his voice clouded with emotion, broke out with—“God, man, what you must have suffered! And after our row.... I can't bear to think of it.” And then, quite forgetting himself, he rested a hand on Doane's arm. It was perhaps the first time in his adult life that he had done so demonstrative a thing.
Doane compressed his lips, in the darkness, and stared away.
“Oh, yes,” he replied, after a moment, “I've suffered, of course. I even made a rather cowardly try at suicide.”
“No—not—”
“On my return from Shau T'ing I walked into the Looker lines in broad daylight. I rather hoped to go out that way. But the fighting was over. I couldn't even get killed.”
He seemed as confiding as a child, this grave powerful man. And he was Betty's father! Brachey was sensitively eager to help him.
“Betty said you had new plans. I wonder if you would feel like telling me of them.”
“Yes. I've meant to.”
“Are you going back to the States?”
“No. Not now. Not with things like this. My worldly possessions, when everything is sold, will probably come down to a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars. My library is worth a good deal more than that, but won't bring it. I have a little in cash; not much. I've estimated that two hundred dollars—gold, not Mex.—will get me down to Shanghai and tide me over the first few delays. I'm giving Betty the rest, and arranging for Withery to turn over to her the proceeds of any sale.”
“But what are you going to do down there?”
“Work. Preferably, for a while, with my hands.”
“You don't mean at common labor?”
“Yes. Why not? I have a real gift for it. And I'm very strong.”
“That would mean putting yourself with yellow coolies. The whites wouldn't like it; probably they wouldn't let you. And you have a brain. You're a trained executive.”
“I won't take a small mental job. A large one—-that would really keep me busy—yes. But there'll be no chance of that at first. And I must be fully occupied. I want to be outdoors. I may take up some branch of engineering, by way of private study. But at the moment I really don't care....” He smiled, in the dark. Brachey felt the smile in his voice when he spoke again. “I was forty-five years old this spring, Brachey. That's young, really. I have this great physical strength. And I'm free. If I have sinned, I have really no bad habits. I probably shan't be happy long without slipping my shoulders under some new burden—a good heavy one. But don't you see how interesting it will be to start new, at nothing, with nothing? What an adventure?”
“It won't be with nothing, quite. There's your experience, your mental equipment. With that, and health, and a little luck you can do anything.”
“Yes,” said Doane, “it is, after all, a clean start. I've been terribly shaken.”
“So have I,” said Brachey gently. “And I'm starting new, too.” He rose; stood for a moment quietly thinking; then turned and extended his hand. “Mr. Doane, here we are, meeting at life's crossroads. You're starting out on something pretty like my old road, and I'm starting on a road not altogether unlike yours. The next few years are going to mean everything to each of us. And what we both do with our lives is going to mean everything to Betty. Let's, between us, make Betty happy.” His voice was a little out of control, but he went resolutely on. “Let's, between us, help her to grow—enrich her life all we can—give her every chance to develop into the woman your daughter has a right to become!”
Doane sprang up; stood over him; enveloped his hand in a huge fist and nearly crushed it.
4
The Reverend Henry Withery came in that night, on a shaggy Manchu pony, with his luggage behind on a cart. And late the following afternoon a wedding took place at the residence. A great event was made of it by the young people of the compound. The hills were searched for flowers. A surprising array of presents appeared. Mrs. Boatwright was prevented from attending by a severe headache, but her husband, at the last moment, came. The other T'ainan folk were there. His Excellency, Pao Ting Chuan, with fifteen attendant mandarins, in full official costume, among whom was Mr. Po Sui-an, lent the color of Oriental splendor to the occasion. His Excellency's gift was a necklace of jade with a pendant of ancient worked gold. Withery performed the ceremony; and Griggsby Doane gave the bride.
The young couple were leaving in the morning for Peking, at which city the groom purposed continuing for the present his study of the elements of unrest in China.
Directly after the wedding and reception a remarkably elaborate dinner was served in the large diningroom, at winch Griggsby Doane appeared for a brief time to join in the merrymaking with an appearance of savoir faire that M. Pourmont, shrewdly taking in, found reassuring; but he early took a quiet leave.
At dusk, after the talking machine had been turned on and the many young men were dancing enthusiastically with the few young women, the newly wedded couple slipped out and walked down to the gate. Here, outside in the purple shadows, they waited until a huge man appeared, dressed in knickerbockers, a knapsack on his back and a weatherbeaten old walking stick in his hand.
The bride clung to him for a long moment. The groom wrung his hand. Then the two stood, arm in arm, looking after him as he descended to the highroad and strode firmly, rapidly eastward, disappearing in the village and reappearing on the slope beyond, waving a final farewell with stick and cap—very dimly they could see him—just before he stepped through the old scenic arch at the top of the hill.