IN TOWN
Night, in that maze of alleys, was but a more sinister day. The same
slant-eyed men, in broken files, went scuffing over filthy stone, like
wanderers lost in a tunnel. The same inexplicable noises endured, the
same smells. Under lamps, the shaven foreheads still bent toward
microscopic labor. The curtained window of a fantan shop still glowed in
orange translucency, and from behind it came the murmur and the endless
chinking of cash, where Fortune, a bedraggled, trade-fallen goddess,
split hairs with coolies for poverty or zero. Nothing was altered in
these teeming galleries, except that turbid daylight had imperceptibly
given place to this other dimness, in which lanterns swung like tethered
fire-balloons. Life went on, mysteriously, without change or sleep.
While the two white men shouldered their way along, a strange chorus
broke out, as though from among the crowded carcasses in a butcher's
stall. Shrill voices rose in unearthly discord, but the rhythm was
not of Asia.
"There goes the hymn!" scoffed Heywood. He halted where, between the
butcher's and a book-shop, the song poured loud through an open doorway.
Nodding at a placard, he added: "Here we are: 'Jesus Religion Chapel.'
Hear 'em yanging! 'There is a gate that stands ajar.' That being the
case, in you go!"
Entering a long, narrow room, lighted from sconces at either side, they
sat down together, like schoolmates, on a low form near the door. From a
dais across at the further end, the vigorous white head of Dr. Earle
dominated the company,--a strange company, of lounging Chinamen who
sucked at enormous bamboo pipes, or squinted aimlessly at the vertical
inscriptions on the walls, or wriggling about, stared at the
late-comers, nudged their neighbors, and pointed, with guttural
exclamations. The song had ended, and the padre was lifting up his
giant's voice. To Rudolph, the words had been mere sound and fury, but
for a compelling honesty that needed no translation. This man was not
preaching to heathen, but talking to men. His eyes had the look of one
who speaks earnestly of matters close at hand, direct, and simple. Along
the forms, another and another man forgot to plait his queue, or squirm,
or suck laboriously at his pipe. They listened, stupid or intent. When
some waif from the outer labyrinth scuffed in, affable, impudent,
hailing his friends across the room, he made but a ripple of unrest,
and sank gaping among the others like a fish in a pool.
Even Heywood sat listening--with more attention than respect, for once
he muttered, "Rot!" Toward the close, however, he leaned across and
whispered, "The old boy reels it off rather well to-night. Different to
what one imagined."
Rudolph, for his part, sat watching and listening, surprised by a new
and curious thought.
A band of huddled converts sang once more, in squealing discords, with
an air of sad, compulsory, and diabolic sarcasm. A few "inquirers"
slouched forward, and surrounding the tall preacher, questioned him
concerning the new faith. The last, a broad, misshapen fellow with
hanging jowls, was answered sharply. He stood arguing, received another
snub, and went out bawling and threatening, with the contorted face and
clumsy flourishes of some fabulous hero on a screen.
The missionary approached smiling, but like a man who has finished the
day's work.
"That fellow--Good-evening: and welcome to our Street Chapel, Mr.
Hackh--That fellow," he glanced after the retreating figure, "he's a
lesson in perseverance, gentlemen. A merchant, well-to-do: he has a
lawsuit coming on--notorious--and tries to join us for protection.
Cheaper to buy a little belief, you know, than to pay Yamên fines.
Every night he turns up, grinning and bland. I tell him it won't do, and
out he goes, snorting like a dragon."
Rudolph's impulse came to a head.
"Dr. Earle," he stammered, "I owe you a gratitude. You spoke to these
people so--as--I do not know. But I listened, I felt--Before always are
they devils, images! And after I hear you, they are as men."
The other shook his great head like a silver mane, and laughed.
"My dear young man," he replied, "they're remarkably like you and me."
After a pause, he added soberly:--
"Images? Yes, you're right, sir. So was Adam. The same clay, the same
image." His deep voice altered, his eyes lighted shrewdly, as he turned
to Heywood. "This is an unexpected pleasure."
"Quite," said the young man, readily. "If you don't mind, padre, you
made Number One talk. Fast bowling, and no wides. But we really came for
something else." In a few brief sentences, he pictured the death in the
shop.--So, like winking! The beggar gave himself the iron, fell down,
and made finish. Now what I pieced out, from his own bukhing, and the
merchant's, was this:--
"The dead man was one Aú-yöng, a cormorant-fisher. Some of his best
birds died, he had a long run of bad luck, and came near starving. So he
contrived, rather cleverly, to steal about a hundred catties of Fuh-kien
hemp. The owner, this merchant, went to the elders of Aú-yöng's
neighborhood, who found and restored the hemp, nearly all. Merchant lets
the matter drop. But the neighbors kept after this cormorant fellow,
worked one beastly squeeze or another, ingenious baiting, devilish--Rot!
you know their neighborhoods better than I! Well, they pushed him
down-hill--poor devil, showing that's always possible, no bottom! He
brooded, and all that, till he thought the merchant and the Jesus
religion were the cause of all. So bang he goes down the
pole,--gloriously drunk,--marches into his enemy's shop, and uses that
knife. The joke is now on the merchant, eh?"
"Just a moment," begged the padre. "One thread I don't follow--the
religion. Who was Christian? The merchant?"
"Well, rather! Thought I told you," said Heywood. "One of yours--big,
mild chap--Chok Chung."
The elder man sat musing.
"Yes," the deep bass rumbled in the empty chapel, "he's one of us.
Extremely honest. I'm--I'm very sorry. There may be trouble."
"Must be, sir," prompted the younger. "The mob, meanwhile, just stood
there, dumb,--mutes and audience, you know. All at once, the hindmost
began squalling 'Foreign Dog,' 'Goat Man.' We stepped outside, and
there, passing, if you like, was that gentle bookworm, Mr. Fang."
"Fang?" echoed the padre, as in doubt. "I've heard the name."
"Heard? Why, doctor," cried Heywood, "that long, pale chap,--lives over
toward the Dragon Spring. Confucian, very strict; keen reader; might be
a mandarin, but prefers the country gentleman sort; bally
mischief-maker, he's done more people in the eye than all the Yamên
hacks and all their false witnesses together! Hence his nickname--the
Sword-Pen."
Dr. Earle sharpened his heavy brows, and studied the floor.
"Fang, the Sword-Pen," he growled; "yes, there will be trouble. He hates
us. Given this chance--Humph! Saul of Tarsus.--We're not the Roman
Church," he added, with his first trace of irritation. "Always
occurring, this thing."
Once more he meditated; then heaved his big shoulders to let slip the
whole burden.
"One day at a time," he laughed. "Thank you for telling us.--You see,
Mr. Hackh, they're not devils. The only fault is, they're just human
beings. You don't speak the language? I'll send you my old teacher."
They talked of things indifferent; and when the young men were stumbling
along the streets, he called after them a resounding "Good-night!
Thanks!"--and stood a resolute, gigantic silhouette, filling, as a right
Doone filled their doorframe, the entrance to his deserted chapel.
At his gate, felt Rudolph, they had unloaded some weight of
responsibility. He had not only accepted it, but lightened them further,
girt them, by a word and a look. Somehow, for the first time since
landing, Rudolph perceived that through this difficult, troubled,
ignorant present, a man might burrow toward a future gleam. The feeling
was but momentary. As for Heywood, he still marched on grimly, threading
the stuffed corridors like a man with a purpose.
"No dinner!" he snapped. "Catchee bymby, though. We must see Wutzler
first. To lose sight of any man for twenty-four hours, nowadays,--Well,
it's not hardly fair. Is it?"
They turned down a black lane, carpeted with dry rubbish. At long
intervals, a lantern guttering above a door showed them a hand's-breadth
of the dirty path, a litter of broken withes and basket-weavers' refuse,
between the mouldy wall of the town and a row of huts, no less black and
silent. In this greasy rift the air lay thick, as though smeared into
a groove.
Suddenly, among the hovels, they groped along a checkered surface of
brick-work. The flare of Heywood's match revealed a heavy wooden door,
which he hammered with his fist. After a time, a disgruntled voice
within snarled something in the vernacular. Heywood laughed.
"Ai-yah! Who's afraid? Wutzler, you old pirate, open up!"
A bar clattered down, the door swung back, and there, raising a
glow-worm lantern of oiled paper, stood such a timorous little figure as
might have ventured out from a masquerade of gnomes. The wrinkled face
was Wutzler's, but his weazened body was lost in the glossy black folds
of a native jacket, and below the patched trousers, his bare ankles and
coolie-sandals of straw moved uneasily, as though trying to hide behind
each other.
"Kom in," said this hybrid, with a nervous cackle. "I thought you are
thiefs. Kom in."
Following through a toy courtyard, among shadow hints of pigmy shrubs
and rockery, they found themselves cramped in a bare, clean cell,
lighted by a European lamp, but smelling of soy and Asiatics. Stiff
black-wood chairs lined the walls. A distorted landscape on rice-paper,
narrow scarlet panels inscribed with black cursive characters, pith
flowers from Amoy, made blots of brightness.
"It iss not moch, gentlemen," sighed Wutzler, cringing. "But I am ver'
glad."
Heywood flung himself into a chair.
"Not dead yet, you rascal?" he cried. "And we came all the way to see
you. No chow, either."
"Oh, allow me," mumbled their host, in a flutter. "My--she--I will
speak, I go bring you." He shuffled away, into some further chamber.
Heywood leaned forward quickly.
"Eat it," he whispered, "whether you can or not! Pleases the old one, no
bounds. We're his only visitors--"
"Here iss not moch whiskey." Wutzler came shambling in, held a bottle
against the light, and squinted ruefully at the yellow dregs. "I will
gif you a _kong_ full, but I haf not."
He dodged out again. They heard his angry whispers, and a small
commotion of the household,--brazen dishes clinking, squeals, titters,
and tiny bare feet skipping about,--all the flurry of a rabbit-hutch in
Wonderland. Once, near the threshold, a chubby face, very pale, with
round eyes of shining jet, peered cautious as a mouse, and popped out of
sight with a squeak. Wutzler, red with excitement, came and went like an
anxious waiter, bringing in the feast.
"Here iss not moch," he repeated sadly. But there were bits of pig-skin
stewed in oil; bean-cakes; steaming buns of wheat-flour, stuffed with
dice of fat pork and lumps of sugar; three-cornered rice puddings,
_no-me_ boiled in plantain-leaf wrappers; with the last of the whiskey,
in green cups. While the two men ate, the shriveled outcast beamed
timidly, hovering about them, fidgeting.
"Herr Hackh," he suddenly exclaimed, in a queer, strained voice, "you do
not know how dis yong man iss goot! No! He hass to me--_immer_--" He
choked, turned away, and began fussing with the pith flowers; but not
before Rudolph had seen a line glistening down the sun-dried cheeks.
"Stuff! Cadging for chow, does one acquire merit?" retorted Heywood,
over his shoulder. "You talk like a bonze, Wutz." He winked. "I'd rather
hear the sing-song box."
"_Ach so_, I forget!" Still whimpering, Wutzler dragged something from a
corner, squatted, and jerked at a crank, with a noise of ratchets. "She
blay not so moch now," he snuffled. "Captain Kneepone he has gifen her,
when she iss all op inside for him. I haf rebaired, but she blay only
one song yet. A man does not know, Herr Hackh, what he may be. Once I
haf piano, and viola my own, yes, and now haf I diss small, laffing,
sick teufel!" He rose, and faced Heywood with a trembling, passionate
gesture. "But diss yong man, he stand by der oldt fellow!" The streaming
eyes blinked absurdly.
Behind him, with a whirring sound, a metallic voice assailed them in a
gabble of words, at first husky and broken, then clear, nasal, a voice
from neither Europe nor Asia, but America:--
"Then did I laff?
Ooh, aha-ha ha ha,
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
I could not help but laffing,
Ooh, aha-ha ..."
From a throat of tin, it mocked them insanely with squealing,
black-hearted guffaws. Heywood sat smoking, with the countenance of a
stoic; but when the laughter in the box was silent, he started abruptly.
"We're off, old chap," he announced. "Bedtime. Just came to see you were
all up-standing. Tough as ever? Good! Don't let--er--anything carry
you off."
At the gate, Wutzler held aloft his glow-worm lantern.
"Dose fellows catch me?" he mumbled, "Der plagues--dey will forget me.
All zo many shoots, _kugel_, der bullet,--'_gilt's mir, oder gilt es
dir?_' Men are dead in der Silk-Weafer Street. Dey haf hong up nets, and
dorns, to keep out der plague's-goblins off deir house. Listen, now, dey
beat gongs!--But we are white men. You--you tell me zo, to-night!" He
blubbered something incoherent, but as the gate slammed they heard the
name of God, in a broken benediction.
They had groped out of the cleft, and into a main corridor, before
Heywood paused.
"That devil in the box!" He shook himself like a spaniel. "Queer it
should get into me so. But I hate being laughed at by--anybody."
A confused thunder of gongs, the clash of cymbals smothered in the
distance, maintained a throbbing uproar, pierced now and then by savage
yells, prolonged and melancholy. As the two wanderers listened,--
"Where's the comfort," said Heywood, gloomily, "of knowing somebody's
worse off?--No, I wasn't thinking of Wutzler, then. Talk of germs! why,
over there, it's goblins they're scaring away. Think, behind their nets
and thorns, what wretches--women, too, and kids--may be crouched down,
quaking, sick with terror. Humph!--I don't mind saying"--for a moment
his hand lay on Rudolph's shoulder--"that I loathe giving this muck-hole
the satisfaction--I'd hate to go Out here, that's all."