CHAPTER XII—AT THE HOUR OF THE TIGER
THEY passed, that evening, the region of Peng-tze where Tao Yuan-ming, after a scant three months as district magistrate, surrendered his honors and retired to his humble farm near Kiu Kiang, there to write in peace the verse and prose that have endured during sixteen crowded centuries; and on, then, moving slowly through the precipitous Gateway of Anking and, later, around the bend that bounds that city on the west, south and east. Those on deck could see, indistinctly in the deepening twilight, the vast area of houses and ruins—for Anking had not yet recovered from the devastations of the T'ai-ping rebels in the eighteen-sixties—where half a million yellow folk swarm like ants; and very indistinctly indeed, farther to the north, they could see: the blue mountains. Slowly, quietly, then, Anking, with its ruins and its memories fell away astern.
Half an hour later the sweeps were lashed along the rail. The great dark sails, with their scalloped edges between the battens of bamboo, seeming more than ever, in the dusk, like the wings of an enormous bat, were lowered; and with many shouts and rhythmic cries the tracking ropes were run out to mooring poles on the bank. Forward the mattings were adjusted for the night. The smells of tobacco and frying fish drifted aft. A youth, sipping tea by the rail, put down his cup and sang softly in falsetto a long narrative of friendship and the mighty river and (incidentally) the love of a maiden who slipped away from her mother's side at night to meet a handsome student only to be slain, as was just, by the hand of an elder brother.... From the cabin aft drifted a faint odor of incense. A flageolet mingled its plaintive oboe-like note with the song of the youth by the rail.... From a near-by village came soft evening sounds, and the occasional barking of dogs, and the beat of a watchman's gong.... The greatest of rivers—greatest in traffic and in rich memories of the endless human drama—was settling quietly for the night.
At the first rays of dawn the forward deck would be again astir. Sails would be hoisted, ropes hauled aboard and coiled; and the shining yellow craft would resume her journey down-stream, with carven and brightly painted eyes peering fixedly out at the bow, with carefully tended flowers perfuming the air about the after gallery, a thing of rich and lovely color even on the rich and lovely river; slipping by busy ports, each with its vast tangle of small shipping and its innumerable families of beggars in slipper-boats or tubs awaiting miserably the steamers and their strangely prodigal white passengers. T'ai-ping itself, of bloody memory, lay still ahead; and farther yet Nanking the glorious, and Chin-kiang, and the great estuary. Slowly the huge craft would drift and sail and tie, moving patiently on toward the Shanghai of the ever-prospering white merchants, the Shanghai that somewhat vaingloriously had dubbed itself “the Paris of the East.” And no one of the thousands, here and there, that idly watched the golden junk as it moved, not without a degree of magnificence, down the tireless current, was to know that a Manchu viceroy, a prince hunted to the death by his own blood, a statesman known to the courts of great new lands, was in hiding within those timbers of polished cypress. Nor would they know that a princess, his daughter yet strangely of the new order, voyaged with him clad in the simple costume of a young Chinese woman. Nor would they dream of certain inexplicable whites. Nor would they have cared; for the voyage of the yellow junk was but a tiny incident in the crowded endless drama of the river; to the millions of struggling, breeding, dying souls along the banks and on the water, merely living was and would be burden enough. So China merely lives—dreaming a little but hoping hardly at all—with every eye on the furrow or the till; lives, and dies, and—lives again and on.
Late in the third afternoon, Rocky Kane, sitting, head forlornly in hands, in his narrow room, heard a light step—heard it with every sensitive nerve-tip—and, springing up, softly drew his curtain. But the quick eagerness faded from his eyes; for it was Dixie Carmichael.
Her thin lips curved in the faintest of smiles as she moved along the corridor toward her own curtained door. But then, as she passed and glanced back, her skirt, in swinging about, caught on a nail; caught firmly; and as she stooped to release it, a string of pearls swung down, broke, and rolled, a score of little opalescent spheres, along the deck, a few of them nearly to Rocky's feet. He stooped—without a thought at first—picked them up and turned them over in his fingers; then, stepping forward to return them, observed with an odd thrill of somewhat unpleasant excitement, that the girl had gone an ashen color and was staring at him with something the look of a wild and hostile animal. She turned then; glanced with furtive eyes up and down the corridor; and swiftly gathering up the remaining pearls clutched them tightly in one hand, extending the other and saying, in a quick half-whisper: “Give me those.”
He hesitated, confused, unequal to the quick clear thinking he felt, even then, was demanded of him.
“What are you doing with them?” he asked.
“Not so loud! Come here!” She was indicating her own doorway; even drawing the curtain; while her head moved just perceptibly toward the room immediately beyond her own where Miss Hui Fei, he knew, would be resting at this time.
“Where did you get them?” he asked, huskily, doggedly.
There was a long pause. Again her subtle gaze swept the corridor. “You'd better step in here,” said she, very quiet. “I've something to say to you.”
Sensing, still confusedly, that he ought to see the thing through, struggling to think, he yielded to her stronger will.
She followed him into the room and let the curtain fall. “Give me those pearls,” she commanded again.
He shook his head.
During a tense moment she studied him. She moved over by the translucent window of ground oyster shells, itself, in the mellow afternoon light, as opalescent as the pearls in her hand and his. Her gaze, for an instant, sought the wide stain on the floor where the Manila Kid had, so recently, wretchedly died; and her instant imagination considered the incomprehensible mental attitude of these quiet Chinese who had, without a word, disposed of the body and painstakingly cleansed the spot. No one, observing them day by day, now, as they calmly pursued their tasks, could suspect that the slanting quiet eyes had so lately seen murder.... As for the youth before her she was, now that her moment of fright had passed, supremely confident in her skill and mental strength. He was, still, little more than an undeveloped boy. And his position, now that he had set up his flag of reform, would be absurdly vulnerable.
“Once more”—her low voice was cool and soft as river ice—“give them to me.”
He shook his head. “Tell me first where you got them.”
“If you're determined to make a scene,” said she, “I advise you to be quiet about it. You wouldn't want—her—to know you're in here.”
“I—I”—this was the merest boyishness—“I've told her about—well, that I tried to make love to you. I'm not afraid of that.”
“Still—you wouldn't want her to hear you now.” This was awkwardly true. And his hesitation as he tried to consider it, to work out an attitude, ran a second too long.
“The pearls are mine,” she pressed calmly on. “The best advice I can give you is to return them and go.”
“But—”
“Do you think I want the people aboard this junk—anybody—to know that I have them?”
“I believe you stole them from the viceroy's place.”
“That, of course—Well, never mind! What you may believe is nothing to me.”
“Will you tell Mr. Doane about them?”
“Certainly not. And you won't.”
“Why shouldn't I?”
“It's none of your business.”
“Perhaps it's my duty.”
“Listen”—he felt himself wholly in the right, yet found difficulty in meeting her cold pale eyes—“it's my impression that I've been acting rather decently toward you. Of course, I could have—”
“What could you have done?”
“For you own good, keep your voice down. I will tell you just this—you were pretty wild in Shanghai for a week or two.”
“Well?” This was hurting him; but he met it. “And there's no likelihood that you've told her all of it. Were you such a fool as to think you could keep it all secret? Out here on the coast—and from a woman with as many underground connections as I have?”
“There's nothing that!—”
“Listen! I'm not through with you. You've been a very, very rough proposition. I know all about it. No—wait! There's something else. I knew all about you when you were making up to me on the steamer. I could have trapped you then—tangled your life so with mine that you could never have got away from me, never in the world. But I didn't. I liked you, and I didn't want to hurt you—then.”
“You do want to hurt me now?”
“It may be necessary.”
“Since you're taking this position”—he was finding difficulty in making his voice heard; there seemed to be danger of explosive sounds—“probably I'd better just go to Mr. Doane myself with these things.”
“If you do that I'll wreck your life.”
“You don't mean that you'd—”
“You seem to be forgetting a good deal.”
“But you—”
“I will defend myself to the limit. I've really been easy with you. You see, you don't know anything about me. Least of all what harm I can do. You'd be a child in my hands. Turn against me and I'll get you if it takes me ten years. You'll never be safe from me. Never for a minute.”
He looked irresolutely down at the lustrous jewels in his hand.
“You had these sewed in your skirt. There must be more there.”
“Are you proposing to search me?”
“No—but”.... His black youth was stabbing now, viciously, at his boyishly sensitive heart; but still, in a degree, he met it. “I'm going to Mr. Doane. I don't care what happens to me.”
He even moved a soft step toward the door; but paused, lingered, watching her. For she was rummaging among the covers of her bed. He caught a brief glimpse of a hand-bag that she meant him not to see. She took from a bottle two green tablets. Then she faced him.
To the startled question of his eyes she replied: “They're corrosive sub mate. I shall take them now unless you—give me the pearls. If you want to have my death on your hands, take them to Mr. Doane. But it's only fair to tell you that if you do it—if you mix in this business—your own life won't be worth a nickel. They'll get you, and they'll get the pearls. You're caught in a bigger game than you can play.
“Get out, while you can”—as the low swift words came she reached out and took the pearls from his nerveless hand—“and I'll protect you. You can have your pretty Manchu girl. You can ride around in a rickshaw and look at old temples and buy embroideries. Just don't mix in affairs that don't concern you.”
“I”—he was pressing a hand to a white forehead—“I've got to think it over.”
“Remember this, too”—she laid a hand on his arm—“you could never fasten anything on me. The proof doesn't exist. Nobody can identify unmounted pearls. As a matter of fact I got these”... during a brief but to her perverse imagination an intensely pleasing moment she closed her eyes and lived again through that strange scene on the steps of the pavilion; again in vivid fancy rolled over the inert body that had been Tex Connor, took the amazing cape of pearls from his shirt and rolled the body heavily back...."I got these from a man I knew—an old friend. Just mind your own business and no one will harm you. But remember, you're walking among dangers. Step carefully. Keep quiet. Better go now.”
He found himself in the corridor; walked slowly, uncertainly, up to the deck; sat by the rail and, head on hand, moodily watched the river and the hills. He asked himself if he had, by his very silence, struck a bargain with the girl; but could find no answer to the question, only bewilderment. Could it be that she was only a daring thief? It could, of course, but how to get at the truth? Abruptly, then his thoughts turned inward. His wild days had seemed, since his change of heart, of the remote past; but they were not, they had still been the stuff of his life within about a week. It was unnerving. He thought, something morbidly, as the sensitive young will, about habits.... The day had gone awry, too, in the matter of his love. A reaction had set in. Hui Fei was keeping much to herself. It had become difficult to talk with her at all. And that had bewildered him.... He was all adrift, with neither sound training nor a mature philosophy to steady him, life had turned unreal on his hands; nothing was real—not Hui or her father, certainly not himself, not even Mr. Doane. His background, even, was slipping away, and with it his sense of the white race. This, it seemed, was a yellow world—swarming, heedless, queerly tragic. His soul was adrift, and nobody cared. Toward his father and mother he felt only bitterness. There were, it appeared, no friends.
He thought, it seemed, confusedly, excitedly, of everything; of everything except the important fact that he was very young.
Early on the following morning Doane found the little princess playing about the deck, and with a smile seated himself beside her. She settled at once on his knee, chattering brightly in the Mandarin tongue of her play world.
He responded with a note of good-humored whimsy not out of key with her alert clear imagination. It was pleasant to fall again into the little intimacies of the language that had become, during these twenty years and more, almost his own. He pointed out to her the trained cormorants diving for fish, and the irrigating wheels along the banks; and then told quaint stories—of the first water buffalo, and of the magic rice-field.
Soon she, too, was telling stories—of the simpleton who bought herons for ducks, of the toad in the lotus pool, of the child that was born in a conch shell and finally crawled with it into the sea, of the youngest daughter who to save the life of her father married a snake, of the magic melon that grew full of gold and the other melon that contained hungry beggars, of the two small boys and the moon cake, and of the curious beginning of the ant species.
She scolded him for his failure, at the first, to laugh with her. Her happy child quality stirred memories of old-time days in T'ainan-fu, when his own daughter had been a child of six, playing happily about the mission compound. They were poignant memories. His eyes were misty even as he smiled over the bright merriment of this child, and in his heart was a growing wistful tenderness. To be again a father would be a great privilege. He was ripe for it now, tempered by poverty and sorrow, yet strong, with a great emotional capacity on which the world about him had, apparently, no claim to make. He was simply cast aside, left carelessly in an eddy with the great stream of life flowing, bankful, by. The experience was common enough, of course. In the great scheme of life the fate of an individual here and there could hardly matter. He could tell himself that, very simply, quite honestly; and yet the strength within him would rise and rise again to assert the opposite. The end, for himself, lay beyond the range of conscious thought; but at least, he felt, it could not be bitterness. He seemed to have passed that danger.... The little princess was soberly telling the old story of the father-in-law, the father, and the crabs that were eaten by the pig. At the conclusion she laughed merrily; and then Ending his response somewhat unsatisfactory, scowled fiercely and with her plump fingers bent up the corers of his mouth.
He laughed then; and rolled her up in his arms and tossed her high in the air.
When Hui Fei came upon them they were gazing out over the rail. Mr. Doane seemed to be telling a long story, to which the child listened intently. She moved quietly near, smiling; and after listening for a few moments seated herself on the deck behind them.
The story puzzled her. She leaned forward, a charming picture in her simple costume, black hair parted smoothly, oval face untouched with powder or paint. She smiled again, then, for his story was nothing other than a free rendering into Chinese of Stevenson's:=
"In Winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light..."=
He went on, when that was finished, with a version of:=
"Dark brown is the river,
Golden is the sand...."=
—and other poems from The Child's Garden of Verses.
Hui Fei's eyes lighted, as she listened. Mr. Doane, it appeared, knew nearly all of these exquisite verse-stories of happy childhood and exhibited surprising skill in finding the Chinese equivalents for certain elusive words. What a mind he had.... rich in reading as in experience, ripe in wisdom, yet curiously fresh and elastic! It seemed to her a young mind.
The little princess was especially pleased with My Bed Is a Boat, and made him repeat it. At the conclusion she clapped her hands. And then Hui Fei joined in the applause, and laughed softly when they turned in surprise.
“Won't you do The Land of Counterpane?” she asked.
It was later, when the child had run off to play among the flowers, that he and she fell to talking as they had not talked during these recent crowded days. There were silences, at first. Despite his effort to seem merely friendly and kind, he felt a restraint that had to be fought through. In this time, so difficult for her at every point, he felt deeply that he must not fail her. Her greatest need, surely, was for friendship. The excited youth who dogged her steps and hung on her most trivial glance could not offer that. And melancholy had touched her bright spirit; he sensitively felt that when the little princess ran away and her smile faded. Sorrow dwelt not far behind those dark thoughtful eyes.
Early in the conversation she spoke of her father. Her thoughts, clearly, were always with him.
“I wan' to ask you,” said she simply and gravely, “if you know what he is doing.”
Doane moved his head in the negative.
“He has been in his room for more than a day. When I go to his door he is kin' but he doesn' ask me to come in. And he doesn' tell me anything.”
“He is not confiding in me,” said Doane.
“I don' like that, either, Mis'er Doane. For I know he thinks of you now as his closes' frien'. There is no other frien' who knows what you know. An' you have save' his life an' mine. My father is not a man to fail in frien'ship or in gratitu'.”
Doane's eyes, despite his nearly successful inner struggles, grew misty again. Impulsively he took her hand gently in his. At once, simply, her slender fingers closed about his own. It seemed not unlike the trusting affection of a child; he sensed this as a new pain. Yet there was strong emotional quality in her; he felt it in her dark beauty, in the curve of her cheek and the lustrous troubled splendor in her eyes, in the slender curves of her strong young body. She was, after all, a woman grown; aroused, doubtless, to the puzzling facts of life; a woman, with an ardent lover close at hand, who was—this as his wholly adult mind now saw her—already at her mating time. And feeling this he gripped her hand more tightly than he knew. But even so, he was not unaware of his own danger. It wouldn't do; once to release his own tightly chained emotions would be to render himself of no greater value to her in her bewilderment than any merely pursuing male. He set his teeth on that thought, and abruptly withdrew his hand.
She did not look up—her gaze was fixed on the surface of the river. The only indication she gave that she was so much as aware of this odd little act of his was that she started to speak, then paused for a brief instant before going on.
“I ask—ask myself all the time if there is anything we coul' be doing.”
Doane's head moved again in the negative.
“If not even his gratitu'—”
“Gratitude,” said Doane gently, “becomes less than nothing when it is demanded.”
“True, it can no' be ask', but it can be given.”
“Sometimes”—he was thinking aloud, dangerously—“I wonder if any healthy human act is free from the motive of self-interest. Generosity is so often self-indulgence. Self-sacrifice, even in cases where it may be regarded as wholly sane, may be only a culmination or a confusion of little understood desires.”
She looked up at this; considered it.
“Certainly,” he went on, “your father owes me nothing.”
Her hand moved a little way toward his, only to hesitate and draw back. She looked away, saying in a clouded voice: “He—and I—owe you everything.” It wouldn't do. Doane waited a long moment, then spoke in what seemed more nearly his own proper character—quietly, kindly, with hardly an outward sign of the intensely personal feeling of which his heart was so full.
“Your father has spoken to me of you as an experiment.”
“You mean my life—my education.”
“Yes. He feels, too, that the experiment has not yet been fully worked out. I often think of that—your future. It is interesting, you know. You have responded amazingly to the spirit of the West. And of course you'll have to do something about it.”
“Oh, yes,” said she, musing, “of course.”
“Whatever personal interests may for a time—or at times—absorb your life”.... this was as close as he dared trust himself to the topic of marriage__"I feel about you that your life will seek and find some strong outward expression.”
“Yes—I have often fel' that too. Of course, at college I like' to speak. I went in a good 'eal for the debates, an' for class politics.”
“You have an active mind. And you have a fine heritage. Knowing—even feeling—both East and West as you do, your life is bound to find some public outlet. Something.”
“I know.” She seemed moody now, in a gentle way. Her fingers picked at a rope. “But I don' know what. I don' think I woul' like teaching. Writing, perhaps. Even speaking. That is so easy for me.”
“There is a service that you are peculiarly fitted to perform.” She glanced up quickly, waited. “It is a thought that keeps coming to my mind. Perhaps because it will probably become the final expression of my own life. For my life is curiously like yours in one way. You remember, that—that night when we first talked—on the steamer—”
“I climb' the ladder,” she murmured, picking again at the rope.
“—And we agreed that we were both, you and I”—his voice grew momentarily unsteady—“between the worlds.”
“Yes. I remember.” He could barely hear her, “It is true, of course.”
“It is true. And for myself, I feel more and more strongly every day that I must pitch into the tremendous task of helping to make the East known to the West.”
“Tha' woul' be won'erful!” she breathed.
“I have come to feel that it is the one great want in Western civilization, that the philosophy, the art, the culture, indeed, of China has never been woven into our heritage. It is strange, in a way—we derived our religion from certain primitive tribes in Syria. But they had little culture. The Christian religion teaches conduct but very nearly ignores beauty. And then there is our insistent pushing forth of the Individual. I have come to believe that our West will seem less crass, less materialistic, when the individual is somewhat subdued.” He smiled. “We need patience—sheer quality of thought—the fine art of reflection. We shall not find these qualities at their best, even in Europe. They exist, in full flower, only in China. And America doesn't know that. Not now.”
A little later he said: “That work has been begun, of course, in a small way. A slight sense of Chinese culture is creeping into our colleges, here and there. Some of the poetry is bring translated. The art museums are reaching out for the old paintings. The Freer collection of paintings will some day be thrown open to the public. But traditions grow very slowly. It will take a hundred years to make America aware of China as it is now aware of Italy, Egypt, Greece, even old Assyria.... and the thing must be freed from Japanese influence—we can't much longer afford to look at wonderful, rich old China through the Japanese lens.”
“An' you're going to make tha' your work,” observed Hui Fei.
“I must. I begin to feel that it is to be the only final explanation of my life.”
There was a silence. Then, abruptly, in a tone he did not understand, she asked: “Are you going to work for the Revolution?”
“That is the immediate thing—yes. I shall offer my services.”
“Coul' I do anything, you think? At Shanghai, I mean? Of course, I'm a Manchu girl, but I can no' stand with the Manchu Gover'ment. I am not even with my—my father there.”
“It is possible. I don't know. We shall soon be there.”
“Will you tell me then—at Shanghai?”
He inclined his head. Suddenly he couldn't speak. She was holding to him, as if it were a matter of course; yet he dared not read into her attitude a personal meaning of the only sort that could satisfy his hungry heart. The difficulty lay in his active imagination. Like that of an eager boy it kept racing ahead of any possible set of facts. All he could do, of course, was to go on curbing it, from hour to hour. It would be harder seeing her at Shanghai than running away, as he had half-consciously been planning. But it was something that she clung to him as a friend. He mustn't, couldn't, really, fail her there.
All of the last day they sailed the wide and steadily widening estuary. The lead-colored water was roughened by the following wind that drove the junk rapidly on toward her journey's end. But toward sunset wind and sea died down, and under sweeps, late in the evening-, the craft moved into the Wusung River and moored for the night within sight of a line of war-ships.
A feeling of companionship grew strongly among those fugitives, yellow and white, as the evening advanced. They had passed together through dangerous and dramatic scenes. Now that danger and drama were alike, it seemed, over, with the peaceable shipping of all the world lying just ahead up the narrow channel, with, in the morning to come, a fresh view of the bund at Shanghai, where hotels, banks and European clubs elbowed the great trading hongs, with motor-cars and Sikh police and the bright flags of the home land so soon to be spread before their weary eyes, they gathered on the after gallery to chat and watch the flashing signal lights of the cruisers and the trains on the river bank, and dream each his separate dream. Even Dixie Carmichael, though herself untouched by sentiment, joined, for reasons of policy, the little party. Hui Fei was there, between Doane and the moodily silent Rocky Kane. The Chinese servants smilingly grouped themselves on the deck just above. And finally—though it is custom among these Easterners to sleep during the dark hours and rise with the morning light—his excellency appeared, walking alone over the deck, smiling in the friendliest fashion and greeting them with hands clasped before his breast.
Doane felt a little hand steal for a moment into his with a nervous pressure. His own relief was great.
For this smiling gentleman could hardly be regarded as one about to die. They placed him in the steamer chair of woven rushes from Canton. And pleasantly, then, their last evening together passed in quiet talk.
His excellency was in reminiscent mood. He had been a young officer, it transpired, in the T'aiping Rebellion, and had fought during the last three years of that frightful thirteen-year struggle up and down the great river, taking part in the final assault on Su-chau as a captain in the “Ever Victorious” army of General Gordon. Regarding that brilliant English officer he spoke freely; Doane translating a sentence, here and there, for young Kane.
“Gordon never forgave Li Hung Chang,” he said, “for the murder of the T'ai-ping Wangs, during the peace banquet. It was on Prince Li's own barge, in the canal by the Eastern Gate of the city. Gordon claimed that Li procured the murder. He was a hot-blooded man, Gordon, often too quick and rough in speech. Li told me, years later, that the attack was directed as much against himself as against the Wangs, and regarded himself as fortunate to escape. He never forgave Gordon for his insulting speech. But Gordon was a vigorous brave man. It was a privilege to observe him tirelessly at work, planning by night, fighting by day—organizing, demanding money, money, money—with great energy moving troops and supplies. He could not be beaten. He was indeed the 'Ever Victorious.'”
It was, later, his excellency who asked Hui Fei and young Kane to sing the American songs that had floated on one or two occasions through his window below. They complied; and Dixie Carmichael, in an agreeable light voice, joined in. At the last Duane was singing bass.
The party was breaking up—his excellency had already gone below—when Rocky, moved to the point of exquisite pain, caught the hand of Hui Fei.
“Please!” he whispered. “Just a word!”
“Not now. I mus' go.”
“But—it's our last evening—I've tried to be patient—it'll be all different at Shanghai—I can't let you.”
But she slipped away, leaving the youth whispering brokenly after her. He leaned for a long time on the rail then, looking heavily at the winking lights of the cruisers. It was a relief to see Mr. Doane coming over the deck. Certainly he couldn't sleep. Not now. His heart was full to breaking.... The fighting impulse rose. During this past day or so he had seemed to be losing ground in his struggle with self. The startling incident in Miss Carmichael's room had turned out, he felt, still confusedly, as a defeat. It had left him unhappy. This night, out there in the blossom-scented gallery, he had sensed the strange girl, close at hand, cool as a child, singing the old college songs with apparent quiet enjoyment, as an uncanny thing, a sinister force. Even when speaking to Hui Fei, her influence had enveloped him.... This would be just one more little battle. And it must be won.
Accordingly he told Mr. Doane the story. The older man considered it, slowly nodding.
“It is probably the fact,” he said, at length, “that she stole the pearls at Huang Chau. She was with Connor and Watson. But it is also a fact that she might have pearls of her own. And in traveling alone through a revolution it would be her right to conceal them as she chose. It is true, too, that unset pearls couldn't be identified easily, if at all. And she is clever—she wouldn't weaken under charges.... No, I don't see what we can do, beyond watching the thing closely. As for her threats against you, they are partly rubbish.”
But Rocky cared little, now, what they might be. Once again he had cleaned the black slate of his youth. His head was high again. He could speak to Hui Fei convincingly in the morning.
His excellency, alone in his cabin, took from his hand-bag the book of precepts of Chuang Tzü; and seated on his pallet, by the small table on which burned a floating wick in its vessel of oil, read thoughtfully as follows:
“Chuang Tzü one day saw an empty skull, bleached but intact, lying on the ground. Striking it with his riding whip, he cried, 'Wert thou once some ambitious citizen whose inordinate yearnings brought him to this pass?—some statesman who plunged his country into ruin and perished in the fray?—some wretch who left behind him a legacy of shame?—some beggar who died in the pangs of hunger and cold? Or didst thou reach this state by the natural course of old age?'
“When he had finished speaking, he took the skull and, placing it under his head as a pillow, went to sleep. In the night he dreamt that the skull appeared to him and said: 'You speak well, sir; but all you say has reference to the life of mortals and to mortal troubles. In death there are none of these.... In death there is no sovereign above, and no subject below. The workings of the four seasons are unknown. Our existences are bounded only by eternity. The happiness of a king among men can not exceed that which we enjoy.'
“Chuang Tzü, however, was not convinced, and said: 'Were I to prevail upon God to allow your body to be born again, and your bones and flesh to be renewed, so that you could return to your parents, to your wife and to the friends of your youth, would you be willing?'
“At this the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows and said: 'How should I cast aside happiness greater than that of a king, and mingle once again in the toils and troubles of mortality?'”
He closed the book; laid on the table his European watch; and sat for a long time in meditation. As the hands of the watch neared the hour of three in the morning, he took from the bag a box of writing materials, a small red book and a bottle of white pills.
The leaves of the book were the thinnest gold. On one of these he inscribed, with delicate brush, the Chinese characters meaning “Everlasting happiness.” Tearing out the leaf, then, he wrapped loosely in it one of the pills—these were morphine, of the familiar sort manufactured in Japan and sold extensively in China since the decline of the opium traffic—and swallowed them together. He inscribed and took another, and another, and another.
Gradually a sense of drowsy comfort, of utter physical well-being, came over him. The pupils of his eyes shrunk down to the merest pin-points. His head drooped forward. His frail old body fell on the bed and lay peacefully there as his spirit sought its destiny in the unchanging, everlasting Tao.
CHAPTER XIII—HIS EXCELLENCY SPEAKS
IT was daybreak. Doane, standing in his cabin by the opened window, looked out with melancholy in his deep-set eyes over the muddy low reaches that border the Wusung. It was a familiar scene; indeed he knew it better than any spot in his native land—the railroad along the bank, the brick warehouses, the native village of Wusung, the inevitable humble families in the fields gathering in the last crops of the season.
Overhead the laopan was shouting, tackle creaked, the crew half sang, half grunted their chanties. From the cruisers, one after another, floating musically on the still air, came the call of bugles—the reveille of the American navy. So these were ships from home. The stars and stripes would soon, at “colors,” be rippling from each gray stem.... There was an ache in his heart.
Then other noises came—a little confusion of them, somewhere here on the junk—excited whispers, a sound that might have been sobbing, and then—yes!—the low wailing of women.
He turned; listened closely. Light feet came running along the corridor. A familiar, lovely voice called his name, brokenly. Then Hui Fei drew aside his curtain. Her cheeks were stained with tears.
Quickly, his arm about her shoulders as she swayed unsteadily, but without a word, he walked beside her along the corridor to the cabin of his excellency.... There were the few servants, kneeling by the inert body and bowing their heads to the floor as they mourned. Doane straightened the body and closed the eyes.... It was Hui Fei who found the roll of documents on the table and placed them in Doane's hands. He saw then, through the mist that clouded his own eyes, that they were addressed to himself: “To my dear friend, Griggsby Doane, I entrust these my last papers.” The name alone was in English; written in a clear hand, not unlike that of a painstaking schoolboy, each letter carefully and roundly formed.
Hui Fei sent the servants to another cabin, but remained herself, seated on the floor by the side of the huge strong man who was now without question the head of the strangely assorted family. She was calmer. Doane did not again hear her sob; he did not even see tears. During that difficult moment when Rocky Kane appeared in the doorway and asked huskily, sadly, if he could help, she even smiled, very faintly, very gently, as she moved her head in the negative. And the youth, after a hesitant moment, left them.
Doane spread out the documents on the floor. The first, addressed directly to himself, he laid aside for the moment. To the second, addressed to the throne—“by the hand of His Imperial Highness, Prince Ch'un, Regent, as soon as it may be possible to convey to him in this hour of China's sorrow this inadequate expression of my last thoughts”—was attached a paper requesting that “my closest friend, Griggsby Doane” read it thoughtfully, “in order that he may understand fully the circumstances in which I find myself at this the end of my long life.
“I, your unworthy servant,”—it read—“have learned with sorrow and tears of the decree permitting me to withdraw from this troubled life in solitude and peace without the painful consequences of a death by the headsman's sword. And in bowing humbly to your will I, your unworthy servant, recognize that my life lies wholly in your hands to be disposed of as seems best to the imperial wisdom. But in thus proving my never weakening loyalty to the imperial will I also must express the sober thoughts of one who has pondered long over the evils that beset our land and who has ventured at times, weakly, to hope that China might pay heed to certain lessons of recent history and find a way to oppose successfully the pressure of other powerful nations upon us. For it has been my privilege, as a long-time servant of the throne, to observe certain of these other nations at first hand and to learn a little of their power, which is very great.
“On another occasion I, your unworthy servant, wittingly incurred danger of death or imprisonment, because, in the eagerness of my convictions, I dared to suggest certain reforms to the throne. There is a saying that the tree which bends before the gale will never be broken off but will grow to a ripe old age, and my hope has always been for a great and growing China. At that time princes and ministers about the throne asked permission to subject me to a criminal investigation, but his late majesty was pleased to spare me. Therefore my last years have been a boon at the hand of his late majesty.”
There followed a clear, dignified statement of the urgent need for vast reforms. His excellency recalled in detail his long years of service and his decorations and honors. Quietly he called attention to the fact that all, or nearly all, China was in revolt, that the throne tottered, that to permit the government longer to be dominated by corrupt eunuchs was an affront to modern as to ancient thought and morality. It was clear to himself, he stated, that without a skilfully organized system of gradual, perhaps rapid, modernization, China would soon crumble to pieces under the heel of the greedy foreigners. And there was profound pathos in the passing remark that perhaps his suicide, far from home, his vast estate seized by government agents or despoiled by robbers, his person, alone, beyond the reach of harm—safe, in fact, with the hated foreigners—might stand as a final proof of his loyalty to the throne in serving which his long life had been spent.
“But at the moment of leaving this world I feel that my mind is not so clear as I could wish. The text of this my memorial is ill-written and lacking in clarity of thought. I am no such scholar as the men of olden times; how, then, could I face the end with the calm which they showed? But there is a saying, 'The words of a dying man are good.' Though I am about to die, it is possible that my words are not good. I can only hope that the empress and the emperor will pity my last sad utterance, regarding it neither as wanton babbling nor the careless complaint of a trifling mind. Thus shall I die without regret. I wish, indeed, that my words may prove overwrought, in order that those who come after, perhaps more happily, may laugh at my foolishness.
“I pray the empress and the emperor to remember the example of our great rulers of the past in tempering peace with mercy; that they may choose only the worthy for public service; that they may refrain from striving for those things desired by the foreigners, which would only plunge China into deeper woe, but that by a careful study of what is good in foreign lands they may help China to hold up her head among the nations and bring us finally to prosperity and happiness. This is my last prayer, the end and crown of my life.”
The junk was moving up the river as Doane finished reading, passing one of the war-ships. The bugles were blowing again. A beam of warm sunlight slanted in through the window of stained glass and threw a kaleidoscope of color on the wall.
Hui Fei sat motionless, her hands folded humbly in her lap, gazing at the floor. Her face was expressionless. She seemed wholly Oriental.
With a sigh, Deane rolled the memorial and tied it with the ribbon. The one beneath it, he saw now, was addressed to Hui Fei. Without a word he handed it to her and then settled to read his own. Hers was the shorter. When she had finished she lowered it to her lap and sat motionless, as before.
Doane now took up the paper addressed to himself and read as follows:
“My friend, Griggsby Doane, grieve not for me, and be sure that in the manner of my end I have had no wish to bring evil upon you. It is in a measure sad that this end should come upon a hired junk instead of on a plot of hallowed ground, as I would have chosen. But there was no choice. I have waited until assured of my daughter's safety.
“Inform the magistrate at Shanghai of my death, and see that my Memorial to the Throne is forwarded promptly. Give to my daughter Hui Fei the letter addressed to her. It my wish that you also should read that letter, and I have so instructed her. It is also my wish that she should read this letter to you. Buy for me a cheap coffin, and have it painted black inside. The poor clothes I wear must serve, but I wish that the soiled soles of my shoes be cut off. Twenty or thirty taels will be ample for the coffin.
“I do not believe it will be necessary for the magistrate to hold an inquest. Please have a coating of lacquer put on the coffin, to fill up any cracks, and have the cover nailed down pending the throne's decision as to my remains. Then buy a small plot of ground near the Taoist temple outside of Shanghai and have me buried as soon as possible. There is no need to consider waiting for an opportunity to bury me at my ancestral home; any place is good enough for a loyal and honest man.
“You will find about a thousand taels in my bag, also the few jewels we found at my home. Sell the jewels and keep for yourself the balance that will remain after my burial expenses are paid. The laopan of this junk has his money. This he will deny, and will cry for more; but do not heed him.
“Remember there is nothing strange or abnormal in my passing; death has become my duty. It may be true that the historic throne of the Manchus is rocking, is falling, but despite the understanding that has been given to me of what is good in Western civilization I have never swayed in my heart from loyalty to that throne and steadfast devotion to its best interests as I can see them, and I do no less than obey the mandate of my empress and my emperor.
“Do not grieve unduly for me. It is my wish that all of you, my friends and family, should live happily in the life that lies before you. To you, Griggsby Doane, out of the gratitude and admiration of my proud heart, I give and bequeath all the little that may be left of my worldly goods, including the money, the pitiful handful of jewels, the historic paintings and my daughter Hui Fei. It is my wish that you will marry her at once, and that in your best judgment you sell any or all of the paintings to provide what money you and she may need, and also that you and she care lovingly for the younger child. It may be better to educate her in the Western manner, but that will be as you may decide. In the matter of this marriage with my daughter, Hui Fei, I have sought the opinion of each of you regarding the other. I have your assurance that it has been your own wish. And Hui Fei informs me that she respects and admires no man more than yourself. You will see, therefore, that I have approached this matter in the Western spirit, and as a result I see no reason why the marriage should be delayed or that my beloved daughter should be left alone at the mercy of an unscrupulous world. I have informed her, also, of my decision. My gifts to you make a most inadequate dowry, but they are all I have. I wish for you both great happiness and many descendants.
“And now, Griggsby Doane, my dear friend, I take my leave of you. I, at seventy-four years of age, can claim an unsullied record. My family tree goes back more than seven hundred years; for three centuries there have been members of my clan in the Imperial Household or in the Government Bureaus, and for four hundred years we have devoted ourselves to husbandry and scholarship. For twenty-four generations my family has borne a good name. I die now in order that a lifetime of devotion to duty and loyalty to the throne may be consummated.”
Slowly Doane lowered the document. He could not speak; he could hardly think. There beside him, still motionless, sat the young woman who was now, by all the traditions of her people, abruptly his.
Dutifully, observing that he had finished reading, she gave him her own letter; and he, in exchange, handed her his. Thus they read on. And then, again quietly exchanging the documents, they sat without a word by the peaceful body.
Little by little Doane's brain cleared. It was a time, he felt—the time, indeed—when all his experience, all his character and skill, must come into use. Now, it ever, he must be wise and steady and kind. Very gently he took her hand; it lay softly in his; she did not lift her eyes.
“We will not think of this matter now,” he said. “Our only thought must be to carry out his plans regarding the funeral. If it shouldn't seem best, later, to fulfill quite all his last wishes, perhaps he, from the other side of the barrier, will understand what he couldn't wholly understand while on this earth. But this I must say now—-whatever direction your life may take, try to think of me as filling, the best I can, your father's place. I shall hope to be your dearest friend. Lean on me. Use me. And be sure I will understand.”
Her slim fingers tightened once again about his.
“He was a won'erful father,” she began, and choked a little.
He left her there; sent in her maid to her; himself mounted to the deck.
The sun was well up. Other junks sailed up and down the tide. A bluff-bowed freighter, flying the Dutch flag, lay at anchor near one of the Chinese torpedo boats that had gone over to the chaotic new republic. The American steamers were far astern, but a motor launch flying an officer's flag and with blue uniforms visible under the awning, plowed by on her way up to the city. In the distance, up ahead, beyond the crowding masts and funnels of the steamers that came from all the world, could be seen the buildings and spires and the smoke-haze of European Shanghai.... The bund there, within a few hours now, would be crowded with pony-carriages and motor-cars and over-fed tourists riding in rickshaws drawn by ragged coolies. The hotels would be thronging with talkative young women and drink-flushed men, all eagerly retailing confused and inaccurate news of “the revolution”; out at the British country club on Bubbling Well Road blond men would be playing tennis in flannels: and the gambling houses would be brightly illuminated until late at night, and the Chinese shopkeepers in Nanking Road would be selling their souvenir trinkets, their useless little boxes of coinsilver and cloisonne and damascene work and their painted snuff-bottles and green soapstone necklaces and blue-and-white pottery quite as if no troubles could ever arise to disturb the destiny of nations.
Doane sighed again. The last letter of his excellency was in his hand, held tightly; though he was not at this time aware of it. He glanced aft, and saw Rocky Kane standing on the gallery, among the flowers, gazing not forward toward the jangling, money-seeking, pleasure-mad city that is the principal point of contact between the culture of the West and that of the East, but off astern, as if endeavoring to see again the lost Yangtze Kiang of his glowing romance.
Doane went to him; aware, then, of the paper rolled so tightly in his hand, said—a huge figure, towering over the boy, his face sad and more than ever deeply lined, but with a grave kindliness about the eyes:
“My boy, it is important that you and I have a talk. Suppose we sit down.” He indicated the steamer chair; but Rocky insisted that he take it, himself dropping heavily down on the step of the deck.
“How—how is she standing it?” he asked, his troubled eyes searching that strong face before him.
“As well as we could ask. It is bound to be very hard for her—especially during these next few days. But she has courage. And she knows he would wish her not to mourn.... A matter has come up that concerns you, Rocky”—it was the first time he had used that familiar name; the boy's moody eyes brightened momentarily, and a touch of color rose in his cheeks—“and I don't feel I can delay telling you about it. First, you had better let me read you this.”
He had not thought, before this moment, of the necessity that he himself make the translation for the boy. It had to be difficult; he would have given much if the thing could have been managed in some less directly personal way; but for that matter, difficulties lay so thickly about him now that there was no good in so much as giving them a thought. And so—deliberately, with great care to find the nearly precise English equivalent of every obscure phrase—he read the letter through.
He dared not look at the boy's face, but could not but become aware of the hands that twitched, clasping and unclasping, in his lap, and of the feet that at times nervously tapped the deck. When the task was done he quietly folded the paper and slipped it into a pocket.
The silence grew long and trying. Doane searched and searched his own still confused mind for the right, the clear word; but could not, during these earlier moments, find it. The boy, plainly, was crushed; but behind the clouded eyes and the knit brows an emotional storm was gathering. Doane felt that. It had to come, of course. And it would have to be handled.
But the first words were almost calm.
“So that”—thus the brooding youth—“so that's how it is!”
Doane waited. After a little the boy sprang up. “But in God's name, why didn't you tell me!” he cried. “You've let me come and talk to you! You—This isn't fair! You've made a fool of me! You—” Doane rose too. They stood side by side among the heavily scented blossoms. Doane felt moved to put a kindly hand on the slender shoulder beside him; but a following thought cautioned him that even a touch would be resented at this moment.
“I didn't tell you,” he said, “because until I read this paper I didn't know.”
“But you must have known! You told—him. Told him you loved her! Probably you've been telling her, too—here under my eyes. Oh, God, what a fool I've been.... If you'd only been square with me!”
“This is not fair,” said Doane, still very quiet. “We must talk this out, but not now—not while you are angry.”
“Angry! What in heaven's name is the sense of talking it out! It's settled, isn't it?”
“I'm not sure.”
“That's not so!” The boy seemed to be recovering somewhat now from the first shock of unreason. He turned away to hide the tears in his eyes. “You've admitted to her father, if not to her, that you love her.... Oh, why didn't I see it! Why did I have to be such an awful fool!... She knows it now. And you know as well as I what she'll do. She'll never go against her father's last wish—never. You know that!”
“I recognize that she must be seeing it in that light now, but—”
“Oh, what's the use of talk. You know! For God's sake, let me alone, can't you!”
Doane's brows drew slowly together; but this and a note of something near command in his voice, were the only outward indications of the storm within his breast.
“This is not a time for either you or me to be thinking of ourselves. You may be sure that Hui Fei will not be thinking so. And it may help you to realize that this situation is difficult for me, as it is for you. It is true that Hui Fei's only thought, now, under the stress of this sorrow, will be to submit to her father's every wish. But this stress will pass. There is only one course to take—”
“But—”
“Listen to me! And try to meet the thing like a man. We will wait until this sad business is over. We will at least try to give up thinking of ourselves. I will see that Hui Fei and her sister are cared for by friends.”
“But all the time you'll be seeing her, and—”
“I must still ask you to listen and try to think clearly. As soon as it seems wise I will lay the situation before Hui Fei. I will try to persuade her that her own life is, in the last analysis, more important than even her father's dying wish. I believe that she—would—be happier with a young man like yourself than with an—older man. It is possible that she can be led to see that her own happiness must be a factor in her choice. Have you the patience and the courage to wait for that?”
He extended his hand. The boy looked at it, then up at the stern, but still kindly face; hesitated; then, with a quivering of the lip and an explosive—“Oh God!”—rushed away; walked very fast, almost ran, the length of the deck; made his way through the crowded waist and around the cook's well; and stood, his bare head thrown proudly back, in the prow, beside the quietly wondering tai-kung, staring toward the long curving sweep of the tree-shaded bund of Shanghai as it came gradually into view around the bend just below the city.