CHAPTER VI—CONFLAGRATION
A BEWILDERED, crushed Rocky Kane stood tightly holding the rail; staring down at the softly black water that ran so smoothly along the hull beneath; muttering in whispers that at intervals broke out into heated speech. This strange princess had humiliated him perfectly, completely; there had been nothing he could say, nothing to do but go; and she had let him go without a look or a further thought. He told himself it was unfair. He had swallowed his pride and apologized. Could a man do more?
But pressing upward through this chaotic mental surface of hurt pride and insistent self-justification came an equally insistent memory of his outrageous conduct toward her. As the moments passed, the memory intensified into a painfully vivid picture. His native intelligence, together with the undeveloped decency that was somewhere within him, kept at him with dart-like, stinging thoughts. He had insulted not only herself but her race as well, in assuming a ruthless right to make free with her.
Then self-justification again; how could he know that she spoke English and dressed like the girls back home? Was it fair of her to masquerade like that?
He was miserably wrong, of course. And his nerves were terribly upset. That was at least part of the trouble, his nerves; he lighted a cigarette to steady them. The match shook in his hand. This nervous trembling had been increasing lately; he found it an alarming symptom. Perhaps the trouble was inherent weakness. Ability like his father's often skipped a generation; and character. Yes, he was weak, he had failed at everything. His college career was a wreck; a monstrous wreck, he believed, echoes from which would follow him through life. To his incoherent mind it seemed that he had about all the vices—drinking, gambling, pursuing helpless girls, even smoking opium. His one faith had been money; but now he suddenly, wretchedly, knew that even the money might fail him. It was as easy to toss away a million as a hundred on the red or the black. And then young men who wasted themselves acquired diseases from the terrors of which no fortune could promise release; a thought that had long dwelt uncomfortably in a sensitive, deep-shadowed corner of his brain.... a brain that was racing now, beyond control.
Her unfairness lay in so publicly snubbing him. Her father knew the facts, as did Miss Carmichael, and the big mate, that old preacher with a mysterious past. Who was he, anyhow—setting up to regulate other people's lives?
Then rose among these turbulent thoughts a picture of the princess as she was now, there in the social hall. Tears welled into his eyes; he brushed them away, lighted a fresh cigarette and deeply inhaled the smoke. He had rushed out; suddenly, wildly, he desired to rush back. She was beautiful. She had quaintly moving charm. A rare little lady! It seemed almost that he might compel her to listen while he explained. But what was it that he was to explain? That he was some other than the dirty sort they all knew him to be, that he had proved himself to be?
The wild thoughts were like a beating in his brain. It was his father's fault, this crazy nervousness, and his mother's.... He hated that big mate. Self-pity rose like a tidal wave, and engulfed him. He stared and stared at the softly dark water. Beginning with about his sixteenth year he had wrestled often with the thought of suicide, as so many sensitive young men do. Now the water fascinated him; it was so still, it moved so resistlessly on to the sea. “A pretty easy way to slip out. Just a little splash—-I could climb down. Nobody'd know. Nobody'd care much of a damn. Oh, the old man would think he cared, but he wouldn't. He'll never make a bank president out of me. And that's all he wants.”
A voice, guardedly friendly, said, “Better not let yourself talk that way.”
He turned with a start. Miss Carmichael was standing there by the rail. So he had talked aloud—another unpleasant symptom.
“You—you saw what—”
She inclined her head. “What's the good of letting it upset you? Lie down for a while. A pipe or two wouldn't hurt you. You're nervous as a witch. It would soothe you.” He stared at her.
“Better lie down anyway,” she said, taking his arm and moving him toward his cabin. “You don't want them to see you like this.”
He yielded. His will was powerless. He dropped on the seat, while she lingered, almost sympathetically, in the doorway, an unbelievably girlish figure in the half light. Something of the influence she had been exerting on him—which had seemed to die when Miss Hui Fei entered the social hall—fluttered to life now. He found relief, abruptly, in recklessness.
“Come on in,” he said huskily. “Have a pipe with me!”
Quietly, wholly matter-of-fact, she closed and locked the door. “We'll shut the window, too, this time,” she said.
“You needn't turn on the light.” He was reaching for his trunk. “Excuse me—a minute! I can see all right. I know just where everything is.”
“Leave the trunk out,” said she. “And lay your suit-case on it. Then we can put the lamp on that.”
Miss Hui Fei led Doane to a seat under the curving front windows.
“We mus' talk as if ever'thing were ver' pleasan'.” The question rose again, but without bitterness now, how she could smile so brightly. “I have learn' some more. It is ver' difficul' to tell you, but.... it is difficul' to think, even.... so strange that at firs' I laugh'.”.... Yes, there were tears in her eyes. But how bravely she fought them back and smiled again. He felt his own eyes filling, and turned quickly to the window; but not so quickly that she failed to see. She was sensitively observant, despite her own trouble. For a moment, then, they were silent, lost in a deep common sympathy that was bread to his starving heart.
It was in that moment that their little conspiracy nearly broke down. Had any of the others in the big room looked just then, gossip would have spread swiftly; certainly sharp-eyed mandarins would have found matter for consideration; for Hui Fei impulsively found his hand as it rested between them on the seat, and was met with a quick warm pressure.
And then, in another moment, she was speaking, quite herself. “My maid has foun' out tha' they are sending the head eunuch from the Forbidden C'ty to our home. An' that is agains' the law.”
“Of course,” said he. “Even the Old Buddha never tried but once to send out a eunuch on government business. That was the notorious An Te-hai. And he never returned; he was caught in Shantung—in a barge of state on the Grand Canal—and beheaded. Even the Old Buddha couldn't do that. This woman is amazing. But of course there is really no government at Peking now—only this strange anachronism.”
“He has orders to seize all father's beautifu' things the paintings an' stones an' carvings.”
“The rebels may catch him. They'd make short work of him.”
“I ask about that. The rebels have cross the river from Wu Chang to Han Yang, but they have not yet reach the railway. That comes into Hankow from this side.”
“Even so,” he mused, “the train service from Peking must have broken down. Though they're running troop trains south, of course.”
“I haven't tol' you all of it.” Her voice was low and unsteady. “This eunuch, Chang Yuan-fu, is ordered, by the empress, to take me to Peking too. They are all whispering about it. The empress is angry at my foreign ways, and will marry me to a Manchu duke. She di'n' like it when my father tol' her I mus' marry no man I di'n' choose myself.... I think you ough' to smile.”
Mechanically he obeyed.
“It seems almos' funny.” murmured Miss Hui. “Sometimes I can no' believe tha' such a thing could happen. When I think of America an' England and all the worl' we know to-day, I can no' believe that such wicked things can happen.”
It was anything but unreal to Doane. He knew too well that America and England, even all the white peoples, make up but a fraction of the inhabitants of this strange earth. His eyes filled again as he considered the possible—yes, the probable fate of the lovely girl at his side. In such a time of disorganization the reckless Manchu woman at Peking could do much. Chang might lose his head at the sound of gunfire in Han Yang and fly back to the capital, or he might not. A capable and corrupt eunuch would run heavy risks to gain such a prize. For a huge prize the viceroy's collection would indeed be; many of the priceless stones and paintings would never reach the throne.
The thought came of trying to persuade her to save herself; a thought that was as promptly discarded. She would not leave her father while he lived. He, of course, would not take his own life elsewhere than in his ancestral home. And to that home, with his inevitable escort of underlings and soldiers, was hurrying—if not already there—this Chang Yuan-fu, one of those powerfully venomous creatures that have figured darkly at intervals in the history of China.
Doane spoke low and quickly: “Can you find out when Chang's train left Peking, Miss Hui?”
“No, I have try ver' har' to learn. I think they don' know that. It is so importan' to know that, too, because my father”—Her voice faltered. Doane once again, with a swift glance to left and right, took her hand and, for a brief moment, gripped it firmly. “You haven' yet spoken to my father?”
“Not yet, dear Miss Hui.... you must smile!.... I have found it very difficult to think out a way of approaching him. Your father is a great viceroy. He might take it ill that I should venture to interfere in what he would feel to be the supreme sacred act of his life. He might”—Doane hesitated—“even for you he might feel that he couldn't turn back.”
“I know,” she said, very low. “I have thought of tha', too. But they shall never take me to Peking.”
He understood. The suicide of girls as a protest against unwelcome marriage was a commonplace in China. It was, indeed, for thousands the only way out. She knew that, of course. And she spoke there out of her blood.
“I will speak to-morrow,” he murmured. “Before we reach Huang Chau. We have nothing to lose. He can only rebuff me.”
He felt now that in this tragic drama was bound up all that might be left to him of happiness. The guiding motive of his life was—there was a divine recklessness in the thought—to save Hui Fei, to make her smile again, with a happy heart. She whispered now:
“Thank you.”
He asked her, abruptly changing his manner, almost distantly courteous, about her life in an American college. Little by little, as she made the effort to follow him into this impersonal atmosphere, her brightness returned.
The record was scraping its last. Applause came from the dancers, in which she joined. The Manila Kid wound the machine again, and the dancers swung again into motion.
“I am asking too much of you,” she murmured. “But I have been frighten'. I coul'n' think wha' to do.”
He had to set his teeth on the burning phrases that rushed from his long unpractised heart, eager for utterance. “I will take you back to your father,” he said.
In his mind it was settled. Whatever strange events might lie before them, they should not take her to Peking. His own life, as well as hers, stood in the way. It had come to that with him.
It was near to midnight when the Yen Hsin, on advices from Hankow, headed again upstream. At the first throb of the engine the white passengers stopped dancing and came out on deck. There was gaiety, even a little cheering.
It was perhaps two hours later when Doane, asleep in his cabin, heard the shots, confused with the incidents of a dream. But at the first screams of the women below decks he sprang from his berth. Some one was banging on his door; he opened; the second engineer stood there, coatless and hatless, a revolver in his hand, and a little blood on his cheek.
“All hell's broken loose below,” said the young Scotchman. “Chief's down there. I tried to get to him, but—God, they're all over the place—fighting one another.”
“Who are, MacKail?” Doane hurriedly drew on trousers and coat, and thrust his feet into his slippers.
“The viceroy's soldiers. Revolutionary stuff.”
Doane got his automatic pistol from a drawer in the desk; quickly filled an extra clip with cartridges; went forward. The Scotchman had already gone aft.
The engine was still running, the steamer moving steadily up the moonlit river. The uproar below decks sounded muffled, far-away. It might have been nothing more than a little night excitement in a village along the shore. The shooting continued. Men were shouting. There were more shrill screams; and then splashes overside. As he hurried forward, staring over the rail, Doane caught a passing glimpse of a face down there in the foam and a white arm. The white men were stumbling drowsily out of their cabins; he saw one of the customs men, in pajamas, and Tex Connor. They hurled questions at him but he brushed them aside.
Captain Benjamin stood over the cringing pilot with a revolver.
“Engine room don't answer!” he shouted coolly enough. “And we can't get to it. Take MacKail and try to get through. I'll make this rat keep her in the channel.”
Doane ran back. More of the men were out, talking excitedly together. He paused to say: “Get any weapons you have, every man of you, and see that none but women get up to this deck! Keep the men down!”
MacKail stood at the head of the port after stairway, outside the rear cabins, a big Australian beside him.
“They're just naturally carving one another up,” observed the Australian.
“Come,” said Doane, and went down the steps.
The noise and confusion were great down here. Women were crowding out of the lower cabins, sobbing hysterically, tearing their hair and beating their breasts, crowding forward and aft along the deckway or climbing awkwardly over the rail and slipping off into the river.
Doane shouted a reassuring word in their own tongue; pointed to the steps; finally drew one girl forcibly back from the rail and started her up. Others followed, screaming all the way. Still others clung to the white men.
Doane broke away and plunged into the dim interior of the boat. Most of the lights were out. Dark figures were wrestling. There were grunts, groans, savage cries of rage and triumph. A huge pole-knife caught the light as it swung. Doane was aware of men breathing hard as they struggled.
He stumbled over an inert body; would have fallen had not the Australian caught him. A tall soldier who lunged toward them with a dripping bayonet was shot by MacKail.... There were no means here of distinguishing the parties to this savage struggle, but in the inner corridor it was lighter. Near at hand two of the republicans—queues cut off, dressed in an indistinguishable but odd-appearing uniform of some light gray stuff with a white cloth tied about the left arm, had heaped bodies across the corridor and were shooting over them at a darker mass just forward of the engine room.
Doane shouted at the republicans, ordering them to withdraw. They shook their heads angrily. One, even as he tried to reply, sank into a limp heap with a dark stream trickling from a hole in his forehead. His comrade bent low to reload his rifle. With the shouting of many hoarse voices the dark mass up forward came charging down the corridor. Doane was firing into them when MacKail and the Australian caught his arm and drew him back through the doorway. From that position, however, all three could shoot the blue-clad attackers as they plunged by the opening. Then, however, they had to defend themselves. The soldiers came on by dozens. Doane had his second clip of cartridges in his pistol.
“Get back!” he shouted to the others. “Guard the steps—they'll be coming up for loot!”
They retreated. Two bodies lay huddled on the steps they had left but a few moments earlier. A few dead women were on the deck and one or two men.
Even as they stepped over the bodies and mounted to the deck above, all three men, their faculties sharpened to a supernatural degree by the ugly thrill of combat, took in the details of what was evidently accepted among these republican rebels as their uniform—a suit of unmistakably American woolen underwear, the drawers supported by bright-colored American suspenders; socks worn outside (like the suspenders) with garters that bore the trademark name of an American city, and finally, American shoes. So the enthusiasm of these young revolutionists for the greatest of republics found expression! And across the breast of each, lettered on a strip of white cloth, was the inscription that Sun Shi-pi had so glibly translated as “Dare to Die.” Sun must have brought along these supposedly Western uniforms in his pedler's trunks.
It was never to be known what surprising incidents had preceded this sudden slaughter. The chief engineer might have told, but his mutilated body Doane found, on his second attempt to get through, lying just across the sill of the engine room, as if he had been stepping out to reason with them.
The entire battle lasted barely half an hour. It was, for the white folk, a period of confusion and terror. Toward the end, the blue men, utter outlaws now, made rush after rush up the various stairways and ladders, only to be fought back at every point by the white men and the few surviving officers of his excellency's force. They were like the most primitive savages, knowing neither fear nor reason. The blood-lust that at times captures the spirit of this normally phlegmatic and reasonable people drove them for the time to the point of madness.
At last, however, they drew off below. Two of the boats were within their reach. These they lowered, and despite the speed of steamer and current, though not without evident loss of life, they got them over, tumbled into them, and fell away into the night astern. Then for the first and last time this night Doane saw the redoubtable Tom Sung. He stood in the nearer boat, brandishing a rifle and screeching wild phrases in Chinese.
MacKail took the engine room. Captain Benjamin, still, grimly, pistol in hand, held the pilot to his task. There was no crew to clean the shambles below decks, yet with the few loyal soldiers who had managed to hide away now at the furnaces, the steamer wound her way steadily up-stream.
Doane found what had once been the earnest Sun Shi-pi in the starboard corridor, below. On his body were the uniform, white brassard and motto of the “Dare to Dies.” They had beheaded him.
The passengers, clad and half clad, nervous, talkative, hung about the decks. The two teachers, curiously self-possessed, sat side by side at the dining table. From the quarters of his excellency, aft, came the continuous sound of women moaning and wailing.... It was, to the eye, but a river steamer plowing up-stream in the moonlight. But to the senses of those aboard the situation was a nightmare, already an incredible memory while sleep-drugged eyes were slowly opening.... To the mighty river it was but one more incident in the vivid, often bloody drama of a long-suffering, endlessly struggling people....
In his spacious cabin, his eyes shaded from the electric light by a screen of jade set in tulip wood, dressed in his robes of ceremony, wearing the ruby-crowned hat of state with the down-slanting peacock feather, his excellency sat quietly reading the precepts of Chuang Tzü.
“Hui Tzü asked,” (he read) 'Are there, then, men who have no passions? If he be a man, how can he be without passions?'
“'By a man without passions,' replied Chuang Tzü, I mean one who permits neither evil nor good to disturb his inner life, but accepts whatever comes.... The pure men of old neither loved life nor hated death. Cheerfully they played their parts, patiently awaited the end. This is what is called not to lead the heart away from Tao.... The true sage ignores God; he ignores man; he ignores a beginning; he ignores matter; he accepts life as it may be and is not overwhelmed. If he fail, what matters it? If he succeed, is it not that he was provided through no effort of his own with the energy necessary to success.... The life of man passes like a galloping horse, changing at every turn. What should he do; what should he not do? It passes as a sunbeam passes a small opening in a wall—here for a moment, then gone.... let knowledge stop at the unknowable. That is perfection.'”
It is to be doubted if even Doane gave regard at the moment to the possible origin of the fire. It had spread through two or three of the upper cabins by way of the ventilating grills and was roaring out through a doorway by the time he heard the new outcry and ran to the spot. The white men were rushing about. Rocky Kane, collarless, disheveled, was fumbling ineffectually at the emergency fire hose; him Doane pushed aside. But the flames spread amazingly; worked through the grill-work from cabin to cabin; soon were licking at the walls and furniture of the social hall.
Doane left Dawley Kane and Tex Conner—an oddly matched couple—manning the hose, others at work with the chemical extinguishers, while he went forward through the thickening smoke to the bridge.
Captain Benjamin said, huskily, almost apologetically—his eyes red and staring, his face haggard: “I'm beaching her.”
And in another moment she struck, where the channel ran close under an island.
Lowering the boats without a crew proved difficult. Already the fire had reached those forward. Doane, the other mate and MacKail did what they could. The Chinese women crowded hither and thither, screaming, rendering order impossible. In the confusion one boat drifted off with only Connor, the Manila Kid, and Miss Carmichael.
Captain Benjamin was cut off by the quick progress of the flames. The whole forward end of the cabin structure was now a roaring furnace, fortunately working forward on the down-stream breeze rather than aft. The flames blazed from moment to moment higher; sparks danced higher yet; the heat was intense. Doane sent the viceroy and his suite below, aft, where the deck was still strewn with bodies and slippery with blood. With three available boats, fighting back the crowding women and the more excitable among his excellency's secretaries, he sent ashore, first the women, then his excellency and the men. Hui Fei—she had slipped hastily into the little Chinese costume she wore at their midnight talk, and had thrown about it an opera cloak from New York—went in one of the first boats; Doane himself handed her in. The two teachers, pale, very composed, followed. At the oars were two of the customs men, faces streaked with grime and sweat.
To his excellency, as the last boats got away, Doane said: “I will follow you soon. I must look once more for the captain.”
“I will send back a boat,” said the viceroy.
Doane ran up to the upper and promenade decks. There was no sound save the roaring and crackling of the fire. There seemed no chance of getting forward. In the large after cabin stood the six-fold Ming screen. Quickly he folded it; there seemed a chance of getting it ashore. He thought, with a passing regret, of the pi of jade; but there was no reaching his own cabin now. He stepped out on deck. There, clear aft, leaning against the cabin wall, stood Rocky Kane, like a man half asleep, rubbing his eyes; and crouching against his knee, clinging to his hand, was the little princess in her gay golden yellow vest over the flowered skirt and her quaint hood of fox skin.
Doane caught the young man's shoulder; swung him about; looked closely into the dull eyes with the tiny pupils.
“So!” he cried, “that again, eh!”
“I can't understand”—thus Rocky—“I don't see how it could have happened. It couldn't have been my fault.”
Doane saw now that his head had been burned above one ear; and the hand that pressed his face was blistered white.
“It wasn't my fault! I found myself out on deck. I tried to get the hose.”
“Yes, I saw you. Quick—get below.”
Doane tenderly lifted the little princess.
Rocky was still incoherently talking; promising reform; blaming himself in the next breath after hotly defending himself. His voice was somewhat thick. He was drowsy—swayed and stumbled as he moved toward the stairs.
Doane, speaking gently in Chinese to the child, stood a moment considering. The heat was becoming intolerable. It wouldn't do to keep the little one here. He carried her down the stairs.
Below, the boy faced him. “I'm no good,” he whimpered. “I can't wake up. Hit me—do something—I won't be like this.”
Doane considered him during a brief instant. They were standing under a light, their feet slipping on the deck, bodies lying about. With the flat of his hand, then, Duane struck the side of the boy's head that was not burned; struck harder than he meant, for the boy went down, and then, after sprawling about, got muttering to his feet.
“It's all right!” he cried unsteadily. “I asked you to do it. I'm going to get hold of myself. I've been no good—rotten. I've touched bottom. But I'm going to fight it out—get somewhere.” His egotism, even now amazingly held him. Even as he spoke he was dramatizing himself. But his pupils were widening a little; he was in earnest, crying bitterly out of a drugged mind and conscience. And Doane, looking down at him, felt stirring in his heart, though curiously mixed with a twinge of jealousy for his youth and the hopes before him, something of the sympathy his long deep experience had instilled there toward blindly struggling young folk. Boys, after all, were normally egotists. And Heaven knew this boy had so far been given no sort of chance!
Doane led the way clear aft. The heat was terrific. From a row of fire buckets he sprinkled the little princess; bathed her temples. The water was warm, but it helped.
Young Kane, with a nervous movement, suddenly picked up one, then another, of the buckets and dashed them over himself. Distinctly he was coming to life. “We may never come out of this, Mr. Doane,” he said. “It's a terrible fix.” More and more, as he came slowly awake, he was dramatizing the situation and himself. “But I want to say this. I've never known a man like you. You're fine—you're big—you've helped me as no one else has. I'll never be like you—it isn't in me. I've already gone as close to hell as a man can go and perhaps still save himself—”
“Can you swim?” asked Doane shortly.
“I—why, yes, a little. I'm not what you'd call a strong swimmer.”
Doane was wetting the princess's face and his own. There would be little time left. There was smoke now. He found a slight difficulty in breathing; evidently the fire had eaten through, forward, to the lower decks.
“They won't be able to get a boat back here,” he said, and quietly pointed out the still blazing pieces of board that, after whirling into the air, were drifting by. A terrific blast of heat swept about them, indicating a change of wind.
“Wait here a moment for me,” he added. “I must make one more effort to find Captain Benjamin. If that fails, we can swim ashore.”
He tried working his way forward when the heat proved too great in the corridor, climbing out on the windward side of the hull. But the flames were eating steadily aft; he could not get far. Beaten back, he returned to the stem to discover that the child and Rocky Kane were gone. After a moment he saw them in the water, a few rods away, first a gleam of yellow that would be the jacket of the little princess, then their two heads close together.
He lowered himself down a boat-line and swam after them. In the water this giant was as easily at home as in any form of exercise on land. Within the year he had swum at night, alone, for the sheer vital pleasure the use of his strength brought him, the nine miles from Wusung to Shanghai—slipping between junks and steamers, past the anchored war-ships and a great P. & O. liner from Bombay. The water was cool, refreshing. He stretched his full length in it, rolling his face under as one arm and then the other reached out in slow powerful strokes.
Young Kane was having no easy time of it. He was clearly out of wind. And the child whimpered as she clung tightly about his neck.
“I gave you up,” he sputtered weakly. Then added, with an evidence of spirit that Doane found not displeasing: “No, don't take her, please! Just steady me a little.” He was struggling in short strokes, splashing a good deal. “We ought to touch bottom now pretty quick.”
Sampans and the boats of the cormorant fishers were edging into the wide circle of light about the steamer. Along the shore of the island clustered the groups of mandarins, their silk and satin robes forming a bright spot in the vivid picture.
Doane found the sand then; walked a little way and helped the nearly exhausted boy to his feet.
“They're coming down the shore,” said Rocky, trying, without great success, to speak casually.
Doane looked up and saw them running—white men, Chinese servants, mandarins holding up their robes, women, and last, walking rapidly, his excellency.
It was Hui Fei, throwing off her cloak and running lightly ahead, who took the frightened child from young Kane's arms and carried her tenderly up the bank. There as the attendants gathered anxiously about them, she tossed the child high, petted her, kissed her, until the tears gave place to laughter. The tall eunuch wrapped the little princess then in his own coat; and Hui Fei accepted the opera cloak that transformed her again in an instant from a slimly quaint Manchu girl to a young woman of New York.
Doane stood by. Toward him she did not look. But to Rocky Kane, who lay on the bank, she turned with bright eagerness. He got, not without effort, to his feet.
Smiling—happily, it seemed to the bewildered, brooding Doane—she gave him her hand; led him to meet her father.
“You have met Mr. Kane,” she said. “It was he who save' little sister. He risk' his life to bring her here, father.”
Rocky, throwing back his hair and brushing the water from his eyes, stood, his sensitive face working nervously, very straight, very respectful, and took the hand of the viceroy.
There was, then, manhood in him. The viceroy recognized the fact in his friendly smile. Hui Fei plainly recognized it as she walked, chatting brightly, at his side, while he bent on her a gaze of boyish adoration.
As for Doane, he moved away unobserved; dropped at length on a knoll, rested his great head on his hands, and gazed out at the blazing steamer. She would soon be quite gone. Poor Benjamin was gone already; a strange little man, one of the many that drift through life without a sense of direction, always bewildered about it, always hoping vaguely for some better lot. It had been a tragic night; and yet all this horror would soon seem but an incident in the spreading revolution. It had always been so in China. In each rebellion, as in the mighty conquests of the Mongols and the Manchus, death had stalked everywhere with a casual terribleness. Life meant, at best, so little. Genghis Khan's men had boasted of slaying twenty millions in the northwestern provinces alone within the span of a single decade. The new trouble must inevitably run its course; and what a course it might prove to be! From the mere effort to face this immediate future Doane found his mind recoiling; much as strong minds were to recoil, only three years later, when the German army should march through Belgium.
He gave up that problem, came down to the particular thought of this swiftly growing new love that had stolen into his heart. The hope of personal happiness had passed now. Self seemed, like the life to which it so eagerly clung, not to matter. Instead that hope was growing into a profound tenderness toward the girl. She was, after all—the thought came startlingly—about the age of his own daughter, Betty, whom he had not seen during these three strange years. Betty and her journalist husband would be somewhere in Turkestan now; he was studying central Asia for a book, she sketching the native types. For a long time no letter had come.... It was a fine experience, this unbidden stir of the emotions, this thrill. There was mystery in it, and wonder. Merely to have that almost youthful responsiveness still at call within his breast was an indication that life might yet hold, even for him, the derelict, rich promise. And it was a reminder, now, to his clearing brain that his life must be service. He must find terms on which to offer himself, his gifts. His spirit had been molded, after all, to no lesser end.
The viceroy drew away then from the group about the child; came deliberately along the bank. The increasing tenderness Doane felt toward Hui Fei reached also to her father, who was facing with such fine dignity the grim ending of a richly useful life. Now, perhaps, he could plead with him for the daughter's sake. Somehow, certainly, happiness must be found for her. In pleading he would be serving her.
His brain was swinging into something near balance; it was, after all, a good brain, trained to function clearly, mellowed through patient years of unhappiness. It would help him now to fight for the girl, to save her, if he might, from the dark ways of the Forbidden City. She called herself so naively an “American.” The West had thrilled her. She must not be given over to the eunuch, Chang.
So, even as he contrived a sort of self-control, even as he determined to forget his own little moment of romantic hopefulness, the lover within him stood triumphant over all his other selves.
CHAPTER VII—THE INSCRUTABLE WEST
DOANE knew nothing of the dignified figure he presented as he took the viceroy's hand, a profoundly sobered giant, his huge frame outlined beneath his wet garments like a Greek statue of an athlete.
“You have helped to save the life of my child, Griggsby Doane”—thus his excellency, in what proved to be a little set speech—“and with all my heart I thank you. I am old. Little time is left to me. But life follows upon death. Death is the beginning of life. It has been said by Chuang Tzü that the personal existence of man results from convergence of the vital fluid, and with its dispersion comes what we term death. Therefore all things are one. All vitality exists in continuing life. And I, when what I have thought of as my self arrives at dispersion, shall live on in my children. My words are inadequate. My debt to you is beyond my power to repay. Command me. I am your servant.”
Doane bowed, hearing the words, catching something of the warm gratitude in the heart of the old man, yet at the same moment flogged on to action by the sense of passing time and present opportunity. It was no simple matter, it seemed, to approach this seasoned, calmly determined mind regarding the final personal matter of life and death. But he plunged at it; stating simply that he had heard the gossip of the impending tragedy, and that in conversing with the lovely Hui Fei, who was in obvious difficulty in existing between the two greatest civilizations without a solid footing in either, he could not bear to think of her possible fate.
Rang Yu listened attentively.
“Your Excellency,” Doane pressed on, “it is not right that you should listen to the command of a decadent throne. Forgive my frankness, my presumption, but I must say this! True, you are a Manchu. While this revolution continues it will be difficult for you. But before another year shall have gone by there will be a new China. The bitter animosities of to-day will pass. Though a Manchu, your wise counsel will be needed. Your knowledge of the Western World will temper the over-emphatic policies of the young hot-heads from the universities of Japan.”
The viceroy considered this appeal during a long moment; then, soberly, he looked up into the massive, strongly lined face of the white man and asked, simply: “But what would you have me do, Griggsby Doane?”
“Your Excellency knows of the plan to seize your property?”
Kang inclined his head.
“If you go on to your home, it may be that everything will be taken, even the money on your person.”
Kang bowed again.
“Then, Your Excellency, why not now—while you yet have the means to do so—escape down the river with your daughter and myself? Can you not trust yourself and her in my hands? I will find means to convey you safely to Shanghai—perhaps to Japan or Hong Kong—where you will be secure until further plans may be laid.”
“Griggsby Doane,” replied the viceroy with simple candor, “you speak indeed as a friend. And I would be false to the blood that flows in my veins did I not prize the friendship of man for man, second only to the love of a son for a parent, above every other quality in life. Friendship is most properly the theme of many of the noblest poems in our language. It is to us more than your people, who place so strong an emphasis on love between the sexes, can perhaps bring themselves to understand. And therefore, Griggsby Doane, your feeling toward myself and my daughter moves my heart more deeply than I can express to you.
“It is not surprising that news of my sorrow—of this sad ending that is set upon my long life—should have reached you. But since you know so much, I will tell you, as friend to friend, more. Do you know why this sentence has been passed upon me? It is because I could not bring myself to obey the order of the throne that the republican agitator, Sun Shi-pi who had sought sanctuary at my yamen in Nanking should be at once beheaded. Instead I sent for Sun Shi-pi to counsel him. I permitted him to go to Japan on condition that he engage in no conspiracies and that he remain away. Instead of complying with my condition he hastened to organize revolutionary propaganda. He returned to China, appeared in disguise on the steamer that is burning out yonder, and is now dead, there, in his republican uniform.”
So his information was complete! A picture rose in Doane's mind of the headless trunk of Sun Shi-pi amid the horrors of the lower deck.
His excellency continued: “I was denounced at the Forbidden City as a traitor. The sentence of death followed, in the form of an edict from the empress dowager in the name of the young emperor. Were I now to follow Sun Shi-pi into exile in a foreign land I would mark myself for all time as a traitor indeed; as one who, while sharing as an honored viceroy the prosperity and dignity of the reigning dynasty, conspired toward its downfall.”
“But, Your Excellency, the empress dowager and the young emperor no longer speak with the voice of the Chinese people.”
“That could make no difference, Griggsby Doane. By edict of the Yellow Dragon Throne of Imperial China I have been instructed to go to my ancestors. My allegiance is only to that throne. I will obey.... Already, Griggsby Doane, you have done for me more than one can ever demand of a friend. And yet one more demand I must make upon you. There is no other to whom I can turn. I have no other friend to-night. Within a short time my secretaries will secure a launch or a junk to convey us to my home near Huang Chau. Will you come with us there?”
Doane, surprised, bowed in assent.
“Thank you. The gratitude of myself and all my family and friends will remain with you. You are a princely man.... Until later, then, good night, Griggsby Doane.”
He was gone.
Doane walked farther along the bank; stood for a time absorbed in thought that led, at length, to what seemed a new ray of light in the darkness that was his mind. And he strode back, hunting in this group and that for Dawley Kane. That man had offered help. Now he could give it.
Dawley Kane, fully dressed, unruffled, quietly smoking a cigar and looking through a pocket notebook by the light from the river, seemed a note of sanity in an unbelievably confused world. To him, apparently, the nightmare of fighting and slaughter on the steamer, like the fire, were but incidents. The only evidence the man gave out of quickened nerves was that he talked a little more freely than usual. To Doane he presented a surface as clear and hard as polished crystal, impenetrable, in a sense repelling, yet, as we say, a gentleman.
They even chatted casually, as men will, standing there looking out at the fire (which now had reached the stem and eaten down to the lower decks, incinerating alike the bodies of men who had died for faith and for lust) and at the wide circle of light on the rim of which floated the vulture-the boats of the rivermen. Doane forced himself into the vein of the man's interest; riding roughshod over a desperate sense of unreality. For he knew that the great masters of capital were often proud and even finicky men who must be approached with skill. They were kings; must be dealt with as kings.
Kane was interested to learn what relation the fight below decks might have to the rebellion up the river. That, clearly, was characteristic of the man—the impersonal gathering in and relating of observable data. His interest was deeper in the agriculture and commerce of the immense Yangtze basin, to which subject he easily passed. His questions came out of a present fund of knowledge—questions as to the speed, cargo-capacity and operation-cost of the large junks that plied the river by thousands, as to the cost of employing Chinese labor and the average capacity of the coolie. He knew all about the slowly developing railroads of North and Central China; commented in passing on the surprising profits of the young Hankow-Peking line.... He seemed to Doane to have in his mind a map or diagram of a huge, profitmaking industrial world, to which he added such bits of line or color as occurred in the answers to his questions. But he gave out no conclusions, only questions. Famines, other wide-spread suffering so tragically common in the Orient, interested him only as an impairment of trade and industrial man power. The opium habit he viewed as an economic problem.
Doane, settling doggedly to his purpose, found himself analyzing the power of this quiet man. It lay of course, in the control of money. And money would be only a token of human energy. The religion of his own ardent years had taken no account of earthly energy or its tokens; it had directed the eyes of the bewildered seeker toward a mystical other world. Yet human life, in the terms of this earth, must go on. To this point he always came around, of late years, in his thinking, just as the church had always come around to it. Money was vital. The church was endlessly begging for it; in no other way could it survive to continue turning away the puzzled eyes of the seekers.
And the immense energy created in the human struggle to live and prosper must continually be gathering up, here and there, into visible power that shrewd human hands would surely seize. He felt this now as a law. Religion had not left him. He felt more strongly than ever before that this miraculously continuing energy implied a sublime orderly force that transcended the outermost bounds of human intelligence. Religion was surely there: it only wanted discovering. It had, as surely, to do with primitive energy, with the heat of the sun and the disciplined rush of the planets, with the tragic struggle of human business, with work and war and sex and money.... And then he indulged in a half-smile. For this primitive undying energy could be no other than the Tao of Lao-tzu and Chuang Tzü. And so, after all these groping years of his errant faith, he had fetched up, simply in Taoism.
But that law seemed to stand. The human struggle created power that tended to gather at convenient centers. And here beside him, smoking a cigar, stood a man whose uncommon genius fitted him to seize that power as it gathered and administer it; a man to whom money came—the very winds of chance heaped it about him. And to Doane, just now, money—even in quantity that would be to Kane hardly the income of a day or so—meant so much that the grotesque want of it (the word “grotesque” came) stopped his brain.
For it was coming clear to him how completely the throne could at will, obliterate the worldly establishment of Kang Yu. That throne, however politically weak, yet held the savage instruments of despotic power. Kang's sad end would come within the twenty-four hours, perhaps; certainly he would wait only to prepare himself and to write his final papers. The eunuch's men would be everywhere about the household; nothing could be hidden from them, or from the spies among the servants.... With money—a little money—Hui Fei might be saved from an end as tragic as her father's.... The thing, surely, could be managed. For the moment it seemed almost simple. She could be spirted away. There might he missionaries to escort her down the river on one of the steamers.
It was then, while Doane's thoughts still raced hither and thither, that Kane himself broached the vital topic.
“This viceroy”—thus Kane—“seems to be quite a personage. He's been a diplomat, I believe. And Kato tells me has an excellent collection of paintings.”
Doane felt himself turning into a trader. “You are interested in Chinese paintings, are you not, Mr. Kane?” he asked guardedly.
“Oh, yes. I have something of a collection. And now and then Kato picks up something for me.”
“I don't know, of course, how far you would care to go with it Mr. Kane”—Doane was measuring every word as it passed his lips—“but there is a possibility that a bargain could be struck with his excellency at this time.”
“Indeed?”
“It would be advisable to act pretty quickly, I should say.”
“Well! This is interesting. You are informed about his collection?”
“In a general way. It is very well known out here. His collection of landscapes of the Tang and Sung periods is supposed to be the most complete in existence, with fine works of Ching Hao, Kuan Tung, Tung Yuan and Chu-jan. The best known paintings of Li Chang are his. He has several by Kao Ke-ming, and, I know, an original sixfold landscape screen by Kuo Hsi. Then there are works of the four masters of southern Sung—Li Tang, Lui Sungnian, Ma Yuen and Hsia Kuai. You would find nearly all the great men of the Academy represented.”
Doane stopped; waited to see if this list of names impressed the great American. If he knew, in his own person, anything whatever about Chinese painting he must exhibit at least a little feeling. But Dawley Kane said nothing; merely lighted, with provoking deliberation, a fresh cigar.
“It is commonly understood, too”—Doane could not resist pressing him a little further—“that he has authentic paintings by Wu Tao-tzu, and Li Lung-mien.” Surely these two names would stir this man who seemed at moments no more than a calculating machine with manners. But Kane smoked on.... “And I understand that he has a fairly complete collection of portraits by the men of the Brush-strokes-reducing Method.”
He finished rather lamely; fell silent, and looked out over the still brilliantly lighted river; the river of a hundred thousand dramatic scenes—battles and romances and struggles for trade—the great river with its endless memories of gold and bloodshed—the river that for a brief day was running red again. The fire out there, though red flame and rolling smoke and whirling sparks still roared upward, was consuming now the lower deck and the hull. Within the hour the Yen Hsin would be no more than a curving double row of charred ribs; one more casual memory of the river.
Still Dawley Kane smoked on. He clearly knew no enthusiasm. He was an analyst, an appraiser, a trader to the core. He felt no discomfort, even in friendly talk, in letting the other man wait. But Doane would say no more. And finally, knocking the ash off his cigar with a reflective finger, Kane remarked; “You really think that this collection would be a good buy?”
“Unquestionably.”
“Have you any idea what he would ask?”
“I don't even know that he would consider selling it.”
“But if he were properly approached.... there are reasons____”
“You know of his predicament?”
“I gather that there is a predicament.”
“Oh.... well, yes, there is. But I don't know how even to guess at the value. Many of the paintings are priceless. In New York, at collector's prices, and without hurrying the sale....”
“A hundred thousand dollars?”
“Many times more.”
“But if he is anxious to sell—must sell”
“There is that, of course.”
“A hundred thousand is a good deal of money. If I were to place that sum to his credit to-morrow, for instance, by wire, at a Shanghai bank, don't you suppose it would tempt him?”
“It might. Though Kang knows the value of every piece.” Doane was finding difficulty in keeping pace with the situation. Kane would shave every penny, as a matter of principle. That, of course, explained him; was the secret of his wealth and power. Paintings, after all, mattered to him only in a remote sense; you could always buy them if you chose, if people would, as apparently they did, think better of you for buying them. It came down to the desirability of building up and solidifying one's name, of what Doane had heard spoken of everywhere in America during his last visit as “publicity.” The word irritated him. It suggested that other word, also heard everywhere in America, “salesmanship.” These words, to the sensitively observant Doane, had connoted an unpleasant blend of aggressive enterprise with an equally aggressive plausibility.
But his wits were sharpening fast. If this man was a buyer, he would be a seller.
“His excellency has another collection that might or might not interest you—the value of it would be only slightly artistic—his precious stones.” Doane threw this cut carelessly. “There is no estimating the value of those. It might run into the millions....” He saw Kane's eyes come to a sudden hard focus behind the veil of smoke. He was really interested at last. And Doane, with mounting pulse, quietly added, “He has historical jewels from many parts of Asia—head ornaments, bracelets, ropes of matched pearls from Ceylon, old careen jade from Khotan, quantities of the jewelry taken from Khorassan and Persia by Genghis Khan and his sons, including a number of famous royal pieces, and some of the jeweled ornaments brought from the temples of India by Kublai Khan.”
This, Doane knew, was enough. He waited, now, himself. Waited and waited.
“Mr. Doane”—Kane, at last, was speaking—“I would be glad to have you approach the viceroy for me. To-night, if you think best. I will be glad, of course, to pay you a commission.”
“Shall I make a definite offer—for the paintings and the jewels?”
“No.” Kane considered. “Let him set a price. Then we will make our offer.”
“It is safe to say, Mr. Kane”—Doane was remembering experiences of men in church and educational work who had had to approach the great capitalists for gifts of money—“that you could sell half the paintings for what you might pay for the two collections at this time. That would enable you to give the other half, as a collection bearing your own name, to one of the art museums at home, at no cost to yourself.”
Kane smoked thoughtfully. “I presume, Mr. Doane,” he said, “that the predicament you spoke of can not interfere in any way with the safe delivery of the collections.”
Doane considered. How much did this man know? That Japanese, behind his mask of a smile, would be deep, of course. With a sudden sinking of the heart, Doane perceived that Kane might easily know the whole story. But even if he did he would admit nothing. He trusted no one; that was his calm cynical strength. He would trade to the last.... Another swift, if random, perception of this tense moment was that much of the common talk regarding the “inscrutable” East was utter nonsense. Read in the light of history and habit the Oriental mind was anything but deeply mysterious; it was, indeed, very nearly an open book. Whereas the Western mind, with its miraculous religion, its sentimentality and materialism and (at the same time) its cynically unscrupulous financial power, could be baffling indeed.
Desperate now, seeing no other way through, Doane spoke out from his tortured heart. “Mr. Kane, the simple fact is that his excellency has been condemned to death, and his daughter to a fate that will almost certainly end in death for her as well. They are seizing his property....”
“Who are they?”
“The Imperial Government—the empress dowager and her crew. They are sending the chief eunuch, Chang Yuan-fu, to take his paintings and jewels, and his daughter, to Peking. Frankly, it may be necessary to hurry matters—smuggle the things out. But the fan paintings can be packed in parcels, the scrolls rolled small on their ivory sticks, the jewels gathered in a few boxes. Once in white hands they would be safe. I think. I believe I can arrange it. The porcelains and carvings you would probably have to leave behind.”
His voice died out. Dawley Kane was coolly appraising him. Their minds were not meeting.
“As you are stating it now, it is a different situation altogether,” said Kane, the ring of tempered metal in his voice. “Obviously the man to deal with is the eunuch, What's-his-name.”
“But—really—”
“He would have the collections complete including the porcelains and the carvings. I should want them all. He would be ignorant and corrupt, of course; we could buy him for a song. And there would be no risk. Yes, let him get possession. Then if you would like to approach him for me I will be glad to see that you make something for yourself.”
Doane drew in his breath. Slowly he said: “But that, Mr. Kane, seems a good deal like taking a profit out of the viceroy's misfortune.”
But he caught himself. To Kane, who had made enormous profits out of wrecked railways, who had cornered stocks and produce and mercilessly squeezed the short sellers, this would be sentimentality.
Doane heard himself saying: “I'm sorry. I could hardly undertake it, Mr. Kane.” And walked away. His failure was complete. Worse, if there had been any gaps in the information supplied by the ubiquitous little Kato, they were filled now. The finely balanced machine that served so smoothly as a brain in the head of the great American, would be working on and on. Through the Japanese he could easily enough reach Chang Yuan-fu from Hankow after the tragedy that now hovered so close over the old viceroy and all that was his. He could make what he and his suave kind would doubtless regard—the slang word came grimly—as a killing.
The white men had made a small fire of dry rushes and thwarts from the boats. There sat Hui Fei, the sleeping little princess in her arms; and, beside her, Rocky Kane. Near by, where the men had spread coats on the ground, Miss Means and Miss Andrews slept side by side.
Doane walking toward the group—stopping, moving away only to turn irresolutely back—saw young Kane reach over and take the child into his own arms, and saw Hui Fei smile at him. He strode away then, struggling to believe that she could do that. But she had.... After all, she knew only that he had acted outrageously toward her, had then apologized publicly, boyishly, and now had brought her little sister ashore, himself falling exhausted on the bank. With those few facts, out of her impulsively young judgment she could strike a balance in his favor. Even at his worst he had bluntly admired her; for that she might, in the end, forgive him. And his youth would call to her.
Deane, indeed, forced himself to consider the boy dispassionately. The wild oats of any spoiled youth with too much money at his disposal, if brought together, and closely scrutinized, would make an appalling showing. Wild young men did, of course, recover. There was in this boy a note of intensity—passionate, eager—that was by no means all egotism. And there was in the father a hard sort of character that had proved itself indomitable, and that must be taken into account. Yes, it was a simple fact, that many a young fellow had gone farther wrong than had Rocky Kane without wrecking his adult life. You couldn't tell. And there they were, the eager moody boy and the lovely girl, who was oddly, quaintly conspicuous in her opera wrap, sitting very close, talking in low tones while he walked alone. It was torture.... yet it wras an awakening. He told himself that it was better so... Pacing back and forth, dwelling on the quick changeableness of youth, its ardor and sensitive hopefulness, he thought—reaching out for fellowship as will always the hurt soul—of other lonely lives, of Abelard and Jean Valjean, of St. Francis, even of Christ. It was odd—from his present philosophical position of something near Taoism he felt the legendary Christ as a profoundly human and friendly spirit, immeasurably more tender, finer, gentler than the theological structure of thought and conduct that had been erected in His name. He had thought himself very nearly around the circle, back to essential good.... This process could bring only humility. Life began to matter less. Love was a tormenting problem of self; the mature soul must in some measure attain selflessness if it were not to go down in the trampled dust of life. Worldly success was an accident. It was hardly desirable; hardly mattered. That he had within the hour pinned his hope to money, fairly fought for it, began to seem incredible.
The viceroy found him standing quietly by the river, turning from the slowly dying fire out there to the slowly spreading glow in the eastern sky.
“I like to think,” remarked his excellency, smiling in friendly fashion, “that when the first Buddhist patriarch, Bodhidharma, miraculously crossed the river on a reed plucked from the southern bank, it was not far from here, near my home.”
“Was not your city of Huang Chau the home of Li To?” asked Doane.
“Indeed, yes!” cried his excellency. “In some of his excursions on the river he undoubtedly passed the site of my home.”
Doane quoted from that most famous of rhapsodists in musical Chinese: “'One who has hearkened to the waters roaring down from the heights of Lung, and faint voices from the land of Ch'in; one who has listened to the cries of monkeys on the shores of the Yangtze Kiang and the songs of the land of Pa'.... That”—he was musing aloud, reflectively as the Chinese do—“was written three full centuries before William of Normandy first set foot on British soil.... Li Po so described himself.”
They talked on, of life and philosophy, in, language interwoven with classical allusions. Friendship, the finest relationship in Chinese civilization, as it stood, had come to them.... It brought a kind of peace. Doane failed to recognize this sensation as in some degree but a phase of his painful exaltation. It seemed to him then that his struggle, no matter what atonement might lie before, was over. He forgot again the Western vigor that was, and to the last would be, driving his spirit.
Meanwhile the swiftly growing acquaintanceship of Huj Fei and Rocky Kane was weaving its bright-tinted weft in and out through the dark warp of Rocky's ill-spent youth. His eyes followed the slightest movement of her slim hands and rested dog-like on her finely modeled head about which the shining wet black hair lay close. To his quick youth she was an exquisite fairy. He felt her as perfume in the air he breathed. Her voice, when she drowsily, prettily spoke, fell on his ear like music in an enchanted land. He could say little; he had never before so lost himself.
She tried daintily to conceal a yawn. And he, clasping the child in both arms, turned away to hide its brother. Then, very softly, she laughed and he laughed.
“You must try to sleep,” he said gently.
“I can no' let you keep my sister. You, too, are ver' tire'.”
“It's nothing. I love to hold her. Really! You see, my life hasn't been this way. Maybe, if I'd had a sister...” He stopped; suddenly, vividly sensing what he had been; a hot flush flooded his sensitive face. He could only add then: “I want you to sleep. It may be hours before the boat comes for you. It's been such a horrible night—such a nightmare....”
“But you mus' res', too. One of the servan's will take my sister.”
“No!” he cried, low, fiercely, “I won't let any one else have her!” Sensing crudely that the child was a chord between them, he tightened his hold. The little head rolled back on his arm; he bent over, tenderly kissed the soft cheek, then looked over it at Hui Fei, staring. During one brief moment their eyes met full in the flickering yellow light.
She turned away; in lieu of speech looked about for a spot to lay her head.
“Here!” He laid the child on the ground; and, surprised to find himself collarless and coatless, took off his waistcoat, rolled it up and placed it for a pillow. “It's really pretty well dried out,” he added, with an embarrassed little laugh.... Then, as she still said nothing, went on, “Do just lie down there. I'll keep awake. We can't count on the servants; they're all scared to death.”
Still she hesitated. “I'm afraid I am ver' tire',” she finally remarked unsteadily. “I can't think ver' clearly.”
“Listen!” said he, hardly hearing. “I've got to tell you something. I'm not good enough so much as to speak to you.”
“Please!” she murmured. “I don' wan' you to talk abou'—”
“I don't mean that. It's other things too.” His voice broke, but after a moment he pressed on, a determined look on his curiously youthful face. “I've done every rotten thing I could think of. I'm—well, I guess I'm just a criminal. No, listen—please! It's true. I'm to blame for this awful fire—smoking opium in my cabin. It was my lamp—it must have been. I fell asleep. But I knew better, of course.... Oh, God, it's terrible! All those lives, all this suffering! And you—I've nearly killed you—when it was you....” Here, creditably, he caught himself. “Don't think I'm talking wildly. I'm getting at something. Seeing you, meeting you—and now, this—well, I've never seen anybody like you. It's bowled me off my feet. I know what love is, now—Oh, please! I've got to get this out. I love you. I'm crazy about you. I can say that because pretty soon that boat'll come and you'll go and I'll never see you again. It's right, too! I've got to start again—alone and prove that there's good stuff in me somewhere...”
“I'm ver' tire',” she murmured wistfully; and resting her head on the rolled-up waistcoat she lay still.
If she had only let him finish! There had been something—some point—he was getting at. He hadn't meant to tire her or hurt her.... When the tall eunuch came for the little princess he angrily drove the fellow away. For Hui Fei was sleeping now, peacefully, like the warm little child in his arms.
An English gunboat was the first relief craft to arrive; in the cool dawn; a tiny craft, built for the river, with a white freeboard low as a monitor's and bridge structure forward of the thin high funnel. The small boat that came ashore made a number of trips, taking off the passengers and the surviving white officers of the Yen Hsin.
His excellency refused, with calm courtesy, to set foot on the English gunboat that was built for the river; he would wait for the junk that had been sent for.
Dawley Kane found his son, nodding, with the picturesquely-clad child in his arms. The boy, glancing at the sleeping Hui Fei whose head rested comfortably on the rolled-up waistcoat, gave the child now to the patiently waiting eunuch, then fairly dragged his father to the boat. With the Japanese, Kato, and oddly distant to the big mate and the suddenly exotic-appearing viceroy in his richly embroidered satins who had been after all only casually, for a few days, in their lives, they embarked.