HILLS OF HAN
A Romantic Incident
By Samuel Merwin
Illustrated by Walt Louderback
Indianapolis
The Bobbs. Merrill Company Publishers
1919
[Illustration: 0001]
[Illustration: 0010]
[Illustration: 0011]
Hills of Han,
Slumber on! The sunlight, dying,
Lingers on your terraced tops;
Yellow stream and willow sighing,
Field of twice ten thousand crops
Breathe their misty lullabying,
Breathe a life that nei'er stops.
Spin your chart of ancient wonder,
Fold your hands within your sleeve,
Live and let live, work and ponder,
Be tradition, dream, believe...
So abides your ancient plan,
Hills of Han!
Hills of Han,
What's this filament goes leaping
Pole to pole and hill to hill?
What these strips of metal creeping
Where the dead have lain so still.
What this wilder thought that's seeping
Where was peace and gentle will?
Smoke of mill on road and river,
Roar of steam by temple wall...
Drop the arrow in the quiver...
Bow to Buddha.... All is all!
Slumber they who slumber can,
Hills of Han!
NOTE
The slight geographical confusion which will be found by the observant
reader in _Hills of Han_ is employed as a reminder that the story,
despite considerable elements of fact in the background, is a work of
the imagination, and deals with no actual individuals of the time and
place. S. M.
HILLS OF HAN
CHAPTER I--THE SOLITARY
I
ON a day in late March, 1907, Miss Betty Doane sat in the quaintly airy
dining-room of the Hotel Miyaka, at Kioto, demurely sketching a man's
profile on the back of a menu card.
The man, her unconscious model, lounged comfortably alone by one of the
swinging windows. He had finished his luncheon, pushed away his coffee
cup, lighted a cigarette, and settled back to gaze out at the hillside
where young green grasses and gay shrubs and diminutive trees bore
pleasant evidence that the early Japanese springtime was at hand.
Betty could even see, looking out past the man, a row of cherry trees,
all afoam with blossoms. They brought a thrill that was almost poignant.
It was curious, at home--or, rather, back in the States--there was no
particular thrill in cherry blossoms. They were merely pleasing. But so
much more was said about them here in Japan.
The man's head was long and well modeled, with a rugged long face,
reflective eyes, somewhat bony nose, and a wide mouth that was, on
the whole, attractive. Both upper lip and chin were dean shaven. The
eyebrows were rather heavy; the hair was thick and straight, slanting
down across a broad forehead. She decided, as she sketched it in with
easy sure strokes of a stubby pencil, that he must have quite a time
every morning brushing that hair down into place.
He had appeared, a few days back, at the Grand Hotel, Yokohama, coming
in from somewhere north of Tokio. At the hotel he had walked and eaten
alone, austerely. And, not unnaturally, had been whispered about. He
was, Betty knew, a journalist of some reputation. The name was Jonathan
Brachey. He wore an outing suit, with knickerbockers; he was, in
bearing, as in costume, severely conspicuous. You thought of him as a
man of odd attainment. He had been in many interesting corners of the
world; had known danger and privation. Two of his books were in the
ship's library. One of these she had already taken out and secreted in
her cabin. It was called _To-morrow in India_, and proved rather hard to
read, with charts, diagrams and pages of figures.
The sketch was about done; all but the nose. When you studied that nose
in detail it seemed a little too long and strong, and--well, knobby--to
be as attractive as it actually was. There would be a trick in drawing
it; a shadow or two, a suggestive touch of the pencil; not so many real
knobs. In the ship's diningroom she had his profile across an aisle.
There would be chances to study it.
Behind her, in the wide doorway, appeared a stout, short woman of fifty
or more, in an ample and wrinkled traveling suit of black and a black
straw hat ornamented only with a bow of ribbon. Her face wore an anxious
expression that had settled, years back, into permanency. The mouth
drooped a little. And the brows were lifted and the forehead grooved
with wrinkles suggesting some long habitual straining of the eyes that
recent bifocal spectacles were powerless to correct.
“Betty!” called the older woman guardedly. “Would you mind, dear... one
moment...?”
Her quick, nervous eyes had caught something of the situation. There
was Betty and--within easy earshot--a man. The child was unquestionably
sketching him.
Betty's eagerly alert young face fell at the sound. She stopped drawing;
for a brief instant chewed the stubby pencil; then, quite meekly, rose
and walked toward the door.
“Mr. Hasmer is outside. I thought you were with him. Betty.”
“No... I didn't know your plans... I was waiting here.”
“Well, my dear... it's all right, of course! But I think we'll go now.
Mr. Hasmer thinks you ought to see at least one of the temples.
Something typical. And of course you will want to visit the cloisonné
and _satsuma_ shops, and see the Damascene work. The train leaves for
Kobe at four-fifteen. The ships sails at about eight, I believe. We
haven't much time, you see.”
A chair scraped. Jonathan Brachey had picked up his hat, his pocket
camera and his unread copy of the Japan _Times_, and was striding toward
her, or toward the door. He would pass directly by, of course, without
so much as a mental recognition of her existence. For so he had done
at Yokohama; so he had done last evening and again this morning on the
ship.
But on this occasion, as he bore down on her, the eyes of the
distinguished young man rested for an instant on the table, and for a
brief moment he wavered in his stride. He certainly saw the sketch. It
lay where she had carelessly tossed it, face up, near the edge of the
table. And he certainly recognized it for himself; for his strong facial
muscles moved a very little. It couldn't have been called a smile; but
those muscles distinctly moved. Then, as coolly as before, he strode on
out of the room.
Betty's cheeks turned crimson. A further fact doubtless noted by this
irritatingly, even arrogantly composed man.
Betty, with desperate dignity, put the sketch in her wrist bag, followed
Mrs. Hasmer out of the building, and stepped into the rickshaw that
awaited her.
The brown-legged coolie tucked the robe about her, stepped in between
the shafts of the vehicle; a second coolie fell into place behind, and
they were off down the hill. Just ahead, Mrs. Hasmer's funny little hat
bobbed with the inequalities of the road. Just behind, Doctor Hasmer,
a calm, patient man who taught philosophy and history in a Christian
college fifteen hundred miles or more up the Yangtse River and who never
could remember to have his silvery beard trimmed, smiled kindly at her
when she turned.
And behind him, indifferent to all the human world, responsive in his
frigid way only to the beauties of the Japanese country-side and of the
quaint, gray-brown, truly ancient city extending up and down the valley
by its narrow, stone-walled stream, rode Mr. Jonathan Brachey.
The coolies, it would seem, had decided to act in concert. From shop to
shop among the crowded little streets went the four rickshaws. Any mere
human being (so ran Betty's thoughts) would have accepted good-humoredly
the comradeship implied in this arrangement on the part of a playful
fate; but Mr. Brachey was no mere human being. Side by side stood the
four of them in a toy workshop looking down at toy-like artisans with
shaved and tufted heads who wore quaint robes and patiently beat out
designs in gold and silver wire on expertly fashioned bronze boxes and
bowls. They listened as one to the thickly liquid English of a smiling
merchant explaining the processes and expanding on the history of fine
handiwork in this esthetic land. Yet by no sign did Mr. Brachey's face
indicate that he was aware of their presence; except once--on a crooked
stairway in a cloisonné shop he flattened himself against the wall to
let them pass, muttering, almost fiercely, “I beg your pardon!”
The moment came, apparently, when he could endure this enforced
companionship no longer. He spoke gruffly to his rickshaw coolies, and
rolled off alone. When they finally reached the railway station after a
half-hour spent in wandering about the spacious enclosure of the Temple
of Nishi Otani, with its huge, shadowy gate house, its calm priests, its
exquisite rock garden under ancient mystical trees--the tall journalist
was pacing the platform, savagely smoking a pipe.
At Kobe they were united again, riding out to the ship's anchorage
in the same launch. But Mr. Brachey gave no sign of recognition. He
disappeared the moment of arrival at the ship, reappearing only when
the bugle announced dinner, dressed, as he had been each evening at the
Grand Hotel and the previous evening on the ship, rather stiffly, in
dinner costume.
Then the ship moved out from her anchorage into that long,
island-studded, green-bordered body of water known as the Inland Sea
of Japan. Early on the second morning she would slip in between the
closepressing hills that guard Nagasaki harbor. There another day
ashore. Then three days more across the Yellow Sea to Shanghai. Thence,
for the Hasmers and Betty, a five-day journey by steamer up the muddy
but majestic Yangtze Kiang to Hankow; at which important if hardly
charming city they would separate, the Hasmers to travel on by other,
smaller steamer to Ichang and thence on up through the Gorges to their
home among the yellow folk of Szechwan, while Hetty, from Hankow, must
set out into an existence that her highly colored young mind found it
impossible to face squarely. As yet, despite the long journey across
the American continent and the Pacific, she hadn't begun so much as to
believe the facts. Though there they stood, squarely enough, before her.
It had been easier to surrender her responsive, rather easily gratified
emotions to a day-by-day enjoyment of the journey itself. When the
constant, worried watchfulness of Mrs. Hasmer reached the point of
annoyance--not that Mrs. Hasmer wasn't an old dear; kindness itself,
especially if your head ached or you needed a little mothering!--why
then, with the easy adaptability and quick enthusiasm of youth, she
simply busied herself sketching. The top layer of her steamer trunk was
nearly full now--sketches of the American desert, of the mountains and
San Francisco, of people on the ship, of the sea and of Honolulu.
But now, with Yokohama back among the yesterdays and Kobe falling
rapidly, steadily astern, Betty's heart was as rapidly and as steadily
sinking. Only one more stop, and then--China. In China loomed the facts.
That night, lying in her berth, Betty, forgot the cherry blossoms of
Kioto and the irritating Mr. Brachey. Her thoughts dwelt among the young
friends, the boy-and-girl “crowd,” she had left behind, far off, at the
other edge of those United States that by a queerly unreal theory were
her home-land. And, very softly, she cried herself to sleep.
2
Betty Doane was just nineteen. She was small, quick to feel and think,
dark rather than light (though not an out-and-out brunette). She was
distinctly pretty. Her small head with its fine and abundant hair, round
face with its ever-ready smile, alert brown eyes and curiously strong
little chin expressed, as did her slim quick body, a personality of
considerable sprightly vigor and of a charm that could act on certain
other sorts of personalities, particularly of the opposite sex, with
positive, telling effect.
Mrs. Hasmer, who had undertaken, with misgivings, to bring her from
suburban New Jersey to Hankow, found her a heavy responsibility. It
wasn't that the child was insubordinate, forward, or, in anyway that you
could blame her for, difficult. On the contrary, she was a dear little
thing, kind, always amusing, eager to please. But none the less there
was something, a touch of vital quality, perhaps of the rare gift of
expressiveness, that gave her, at times, a rather alarming aspect. Her
clothes were simple enough--Griggsby Doane, goodness knew, couldn't
afford anything else--but in some way that Mrs. Hasmer would never fully
understand, the child always managed to make them look better than they
were. She had something of the gift of smartness. She had, Mrs. Hasmer
once came out with, “too much imagination.” The incessant sketching, for
instance. And she did it just a shade too well. Then, too, evening after
evening during the three weeks on the Pacific, she had danced. Which
was, from the only daughter of Griggsby Doane--well, confusing. And
though Mrs. Hasmer, balked by the delicacy of her position, had gone
to lengths in concealing her disapproval, she had been unable to feign
surprise at the resulting difficulties. Betty had certainly not been
deliberate in leading on any of the men on the ship; young men, by the
way that you had no means of looking up, even so far as the certainty
that they were unmarried. But the young mining engineer on his way to
Korea had left quite heart-broken. From all outer indications he had
proposed marriage and met with a refusal. But not a word, not a hint,
not so much as a telltale look, came from Betty.
Mrs. Hasmer sighed over it. She would have liked to know. She came to
the conclusion that Betty had been left just a year or so too long in
the States. They weren't serious over there, in the matter of training
girls for the sober work of life. Prosperity, luxury, were telling on
the younger generations. No longer were they guarded from dangerously
free thinking. They read, heard, saw everything; apparently knew
everything. They read openly, of a Sunday, books which, a generation
earlier, would not have reached their eyes even on a week-day. The
church seemed to have lost its hold (though she never spoke aloud of
this fact). Respect for tradition and authority had crumbled away. They
questioned, weighed everything, these modern children.... Mrs. Hasmer
worried a good deal, out in China, about young people in the States.
But under these surface worries, lurked, in the good woman's mind, a
deeper, more real worry. Betty was just stepping over the line between
girlhood and young womanhood. She was growing more attractive daily. She
was anything but fitted to step into the life that lay ahead. Wherever
she turned, even now--as witness the Pacific ship--life took on fresh
complications. Indeed, Mrs. Hasmer, pondering the problem, came down on
the rather strong word, peril. A young girl--positive in attractiveness,
gifted, spirited, motherless (as it happened), trained only to be happy
in living--was in something near peril.
One fact which Mrs. Hasmer's mind had been forced to accept was that
most of the complications came from sources or causes with which the
girl herself had little consciously to do. She was flatly the sort of
person to whom things happened. Even when her eager interest in life and
things and men (young and old) was not busy.
In the matter of the rather rude young man in knickerbockers, at Kioto,
Betty was to blame, of course. She had set to work to sketch him.
Evidently. The most you could say for her on that point was that she
would have set just as intently at sketching an old man, or a woman,
or a child--or a corner of the room. Mrs. Hasmer had felt, while on the
train to Kobe, that she must speak of the matter. After all, she had
that deathly responsibility on her shoulders. Betty's only explanation,
rather gravely given, had been that she found his nose interesting.
The disturbing point was that something in the way of a situation was
sure to develop from the incident. Something. Six weeks of Betty made
that a reasonable assumption. And the first complication would arise in
some quite unforeseen way. Betty wouldn't bring it about. Indeed, she
had quickly promised not to sketch him any more.
This is the way it did arise. At eleven on the following morning Mr. and
Mrs. Hasmer and Betty were stretched out side by side in their steamer
chairs, sipping their morning beef tea and looking out at the rugged
north shore of the Inland Sea. Beyond Betty were three vacant chairs,
then this Mr. Brachey--his long person wrapped in a gay plaid rug.
He too was sipping beef tea and enjoying the landscape; if so dry,
so solitary a person could be said to enjoy anything. A note-book lay
across his knees.
Mrs. Hasmer had thought, with a momentary flutter of concern, of moving
Betty to the other side of Doctor Hasmer. But that had seemed foolish.
Making too much of it. Betty hadn't placed the chairs; the deck steward
had done that. Besides she hadn't once looked at the man; probably
hadn't thought of him; had been quite absorbed in her sketching--bits of
the hilly shore, an island mirrored in glass, a becalmed junk.
A youngish man, hatless, with blond curls and a slightly professional
smile, came up from the after hatch and advanced along the deck, eagerly
searching the row of rug-wrapped, recumbent figures in deck chairs.
Before the Hasmers he stopped with delighted greetings. It came out
that he was a Mr. Harting, a Y. M. C. A. worker in Bttrmah, traveling
second-class.
“I hadn't seen the passenger list, Mrs. Hasmer, and didn't know you were
aboard. But there's a Chinese boy sitting next to me at table. He has
put in a year or so at Tokio University, and speaks a little English. He
comes from your city, Miss Doane. Or so he seems to think. T'ainan-fu.”
Betty inclined her head.
“It was he who showed me the passenger list. At one time, he says, he
lived in your father's household.”
“What is his name?” asked Betty politely.
“Li Hsien--something or other.” Mr. Harting was searching his pockets
for a copy of the list.
“I knew Li Hsien very well,” said Betty. “We used to play together.”
“So I gathered. May I bring him up here to see you?”
Betty would have replied at once in the affirmative, but six weeks of
companionship with Mrs. Hasmer had taught her that such decisions were
not expected of her. So now with a vague smile of acquiescence, she
directed the inquiry to the older woman.
“Certainly,” cried Mrs. Hasmer, “do bring him!”
As he moved away, Betty, before settling back in her chair, glanced,
once, very demurely, to her left, where Jonathan Brachey lay in what
might have been described, from outer appearances, supercilious comfort.
He hadn't so much as lifted an eyelid. He wasn't listening. He didn't
care. It was nothing to him that Betty Doane was no idle, spoiled girl
tourist, nothing that she could draw with a gifted pencil, nothing that
she knew Chinese students at Tokio University, and herself lived at
T'ainan-fu!... It wasn't that Betty consciously formulated any such
thoughts. But the man had an effect on her; made her uncomfortable; she
wished he'd move his chair around to the other side of the ship.
3
Li Hsien proved to be quite a young man, all of twenty or twenty-one.
He had spectacles now, and gold in his teeth. He wore the conventional
blue robe, Liack skull-cap with red button, and queue. More than four
years were yet to elapse before the great revolution of 1911, with its
wholesale queue-cutting and its rather frantic adoption, on the part of
the better-to-do, of Western clothing--or, rather, of what they supposed
was Western clothing.... He was tall, slim, smiling. He shook hands with
Betty, Western fashion; and bowed with courtly dignity to Doctor and
Mrs. Hasmer.
His manner had an odd effect on Betty. For six years now she had lived
in Orange. She had passed through the seventh and eighth grades of the
public school and followed that with a complete course of four years in
high school. She had fallen naturally and whole-heartedly into the life
of a nice girl in an American suburb. She had gone to parties, joined
societies, mildly entangled herself with a series of boy admirers.
Despite moderate but frank poverty she had been popular. And in this
healthy, active young life she had very nearly forgotten the profoundly
different nature of her earlier existence. But now that earlier feeling
for life was coming over her like a wave. After all, her first thirteen
years had been lived out in a Chinese city. And they were the most
impressionable years.
It was by no means a pleasant sensation. She had never loved China; had
simply endured it, knowing little else. America she loved. It was of
her blood, of her instinct. But now it was abruptly slipping out of her
grasp--school, home, the girls, the boys, long evenings of chatter and
song on a “front porch,” picnics on that ridge known locally as “the
mountain,” matinées in New York, glorious sunset visions of high
buildings from a ferry-boat, a thrilling, ice-caked river in
winter-time, the misty beauties of the Newark meadows--all this was
curiously losing its vividness in her mind, and drab old China was
slipping stealthily but swiftly into its place.
She knit her brows. She was suddenly helpless, in a poignantly
disconcerting way. A word came--rootless. That was it; she was rootless.
For an instant she had to fight back the tears that seldom came in the
daytime.
But then she looked again at Li Hsien.
He was smiling. It came to her, fantastically, that he, too, was
rootless. And yet he smiled. She knew, instantly, that his feelings were
quite as fine as hers. He was sensitive, strung high. He had been that
sort of boy. For that matter the Chinese had been a cultured people when
the whites were crude barbarians. She knew that. She couldn't have put
it into words, but she knew it. And so she, too, smiled. And when she
spoke, asking him to sit in the vacant chair next to her, she spoke
without a thought, in Chinese, the middle Hansi dialect.
And then Mr. Jonathan Brachey looked up, turned squarely around and
stared at her for one brief instant. After which he recollected himself
and turned abruptly back.
Mr. Harting dropped down on the farther side of Doctor Hasmer. Which
left his good wife between the two couples, each now deep in talk.
Mrs. Hasmer's Chinese vocabulary was confined to a limited number of
personal and household terms; and even these were in the dialect of
eastern Szechwan. Just as a matter of taste, of almost elementary taste,
it seemed to her that Betty should keep the conversation, or most of
it, in English. She went so far as to lean over the arm of her chair and
smile in a perturbed manner at the oddly contrasting couple who chatted
so easily and pleasantly in the heathen tongue. She almost reached the
point of speaking to Betty; gently, of course. But the girl clearly had
no thought of possible impropriety. She was laughing now--apparently at
some gap in her vocabulary--and the bland young man with the spectacles
and the pigtail was humorously supplying the proper word.
Mrs. Hasmer decided not to speak. She lay hack in her chair. The
wrinkles in her forehead deepened a little. On the other side Mr.
Halting was describing enthusiastically a new and complicated table
that was equipped with every imaginable device for the demonstrating
of experiments in physics to Burmese youth. It could be packed, he
insisted, for transport from village to village, in a crate no larger
than the table itself.
And now, again, she caught the musical intonation of the young Chinaman.
Betty, surprisingly direct and practical in manner if unintelligible in
speech, was asking questions, which Li Hsien answered in turn, easily,
almost languidly, but with unfailing good nature. Though there were a
few moments during which he spoke rapidly and rather earnestly.
Mrs. Hasmer next became aware of the odd effect the little scene was
plainly having on Jonathan Brachey. He fidgeted in his chair; got up
and stood at the rail; paced the deck, twice passing close to the
comfortably extended feet of the Hasmer party and so ostentatiously
_not_ looking at them as to distract momentarily the attention even of
the deeply engrossed Betty. Mr. Harting, even, looked up. After all of
which the man, looking curiously stern, or irritated, or (Betty decided)
something unpleasant, sat again in his chair.
Then, a little later, Mr. Harting and Li Hsien took their leave and
returned to the second-class quarters, astern.
Mrs. Hasmer thought, for a moment, that perhaps now was the time to
suggest that English be made the common tongue in the future. But
Betty's eager countenance disarmed her. She sighed. And sighed again;
for the girl, stirred by what she was saying, had unconsciously raised
her voice. And that tall man was listening.
“It's queer how fast things are changing out here,” thus Betty. “Li
Hsien is--you'd never guess!--a Socialist! I asked him why he isn't
staying out the year at Tokio University, and he said he was called
home to help the Province. Think of it--that boy! They've got into some
trouble over a foreign mining syndicate--”
“The Ho Shan Company,” explained Doctor Hasmer.
Betty nodded.
“They've been operating rather extensively in Plonan and southern
Chihli,” the educator continued, “and I heard last year that they've
made a fresh agreement with the Imperial Government giving them
practically a monopoly of the coal and iron mining up there in the Hansi
Hills.”
“Yes, Doctor Hasmer, and he says that there's a good deal of feeling
in the province. They've had one or two mass meetings of the gentry and
people. He thinks they'll send a protest to Peking. He believes that the
company got the agreement through bribery.”
“Not at all unlikely,” remarked Doctor Hasmer mildly. “I don't know
that any other way has yet been discovered of obtaining commercial
privileges from the Imperial Government. The Ho Shan Company is... let
me see... as I recall, it was organized by that Italian promoter,
Count Logatti. I believe he went to Germany, Belgium and France for the
capital.”
“Li has become an astonishing young man,” said Betty more gravely. “He
talks about revolutions and republics. He doesn't think the Manchus can
last much longer. The southern provinces are ready for the revolution
now, he says--”
“That,” remarked Doctor Hasmer, “is a little sweeping.”
“Li is very sweeping,” replied Betty. “And he's going back now to
T'ainan-fu for some definite reason. I couldn't make out what. I asked
if he would be coming in to see father, and he said, probably not; that
there wouldn't be any use in it. Then I asked him if he was still a
Christian, and I think he laughed at me. He wouldn't say.”
The conversation was broken by the appearance of a pleasant Englishman,
an importer of silks, by the name of Obie. He had been thrown with the
Hasmers and Betty in one of their sight-seeing jaunts about Tokio.
Mr. Obie wore spats, and a scarf pin and cuff links of human bone from
Borneo set in circlets of beaded gold. His light, usually amusing talk
was liberally sprinkled with crisp phrases in pidgin-English.
He spoke now of the beauties of the Inland Sea, and resumed his stroll
about the deck. After a few turns, he went into the smoking-room.
Jonathan Brachey, still with that irritably nervous manner, watched him
intently; finally got up and followed him, passing the Hasmers and Betty
with nose held high.
4
It was early afternoon, when Mrs. Hasmer and Betty were dozing in their
chairs, that Mr. Obie, looking slightly puzzled, came again to them. He
held a card between thumb and forefinger.
“Miss Doane,” he said, “this gentleman asks permission to be presented.”
Mrs. Hasmer's hand went out a little way to receive the card; but Betty
innocently took it.
“Mr. Jonathan Brachey,” she read aloud. Then added, with a pretty touch
of color--“But how funny! He was with us yesterday, and _wouldn't_ talk.
And now....”
“My go catchee?” asked Mr. Obie.
To which little pleasantry Betty responded, looking very bright and
pretty, with--“Can do!”
“She gives out too much,” thought Mrs. Hasmer; deciding then and there
that the meeting should be brief and the conversation triangular.
Mr. Obie brought him, formally, from the smoking-room.
He bowed stiffly. Betty checked her natural impulse toward a hearty
hard-grip.
Mrs. Hasmer, feeling hurried, a thought breathless, meant to offer him
her husband's chair; but all in the moment Betty had him down beside
her.
Then came stark silence. The man stared out at the islands.
Betty, finding her portfolio on her lap, fingered it. Then this:
“I must begin, Miss Doane, with an apology....”
Betty's responsive face blanched. “What a dreadful man!” she thought.
His voice was rather strong, dry, hard, with, even, a slight rasp in it.
But he drove heavily on:
“This morning, while not wishing to appear as an eavesdropper... that is
to say... the fact is, Miss Doane, I am a journalist, and am at present
on my way to China to make an investigation of the political--one might
even term it the social--unrest that appears to be cropping out rather
extensively in the southern provinces and even, a little here and there,
in the North.”
He was dreadful! Stilted, clumsy, slow! He hunted painstakingly for
words; and at each long pause Betty's quick young nerves tightened and
tightened, mentally groping with him until the hunted word was run to
earth.
He was pounding on:
“This morning I overheard you talking with that young Chinaman. It is
evident that you speak the language.”
“Oh. yes,” Betty found herself saying, “I do.”
Not a word about the drawing.
“This young man, I gather, is in sympathy with the revolutionary
spirit.”
“He--he seems to be,” said Betty.
“Now... Miss Doane... this is of course an imposition...”
“Oh, no,” breathed Betty weakly.
“... it is, of course, an imposition... it would be a service I could
perhaps never repay...” This pause lasted so long that she heard herself
murmuring, “No, really, not at all!”--and then felt the color creeping
to her face... but if I might ask you to... but let me put it in this
way--the young man is precisely the type I have come out here to study.
You speak in the vernacular, and evidently understand him almost as a
native might. It is unlikely I shall find in China many such natural
interpreters as yourself. And of course... if it is thinkable that you
would be so extremely kind as to... why, of course, I...”
“Heavens!” thought Betty, in a panic, “he's going to offer to pay me. I
mustn't be rude.”
The man plodded on: “... why, of course, it would be a real pleasure to
mention your assistance in the preface of my book.”
It was partly luck, luck and innate courtesy, that she didn't laugh
aloud. She broke, as it was, into words, saving herself and the
situation.
“You want me to act as interpreter? Of course Li knows a little
English.”
“Would he--er--know enough English for serious conversation?”
“No,” mused Betty aloud, “I don't think he would.”
“Of course, Miss Doane, I quite realize that to take up your time in
this way....”
There he stopped. He was frowning now, and apparently studying out the
structural details of a huge junk that lay only a few hundred yards
away, reflected minutely, exquisitely--curving hull and deck cargo,
timbered stern, bat-wing sails--in the glass-like water.
“I'll be glad to do what I can,” said Betty, helplessly. Then, for
the first time, she became aware that Mrs. Hasmer was stirring
uncomfortably on her other hand, and added, quickly, as much out of
nervousness as anything else--“We could arrange to have Li come up here
in the morning.”
“We shall be coaling at Nagasaki in the morning,” said he, abruptly, as
if that settled _that_.
“Well, of course,... this afternoon....
“My dear,” began Mrs. Hasmer.
“This afternoon would be better.” Thus Mr. Brachey. “Though I can not
tell you what hesitation...”
“I suppose we could find a quiet corner somewhere,” said Betty. “In the
social hall, perhaps.”
It was then, stirred to positive act, that Mrs. Hasmer spoke out.
“I think you'd better stay out here with us, my dear.”
To which the hopelessly self-absorbed Mr. Brachey replied:
“I really must have quiet for this work. We will sit inside, if you
don't mind.”
5
At half past four Mrs. Hasmer sent her husband to look into the
situation. He reported that they were hard at it. Betty looked a little
tired, but was laboriously repeating Li Hsien's words, in English, in
order that Mr. Brachcy might take them down in what appeared to be a
sort of shorthand. Doctor Hasmer didn't see how he could say anything.
Not very well. They hadn't so much as noticed him, though he stood near
by for a few moments.
Which report Mrs. Hasmer found masculine and unsatisfactory. At five she
went herself; took her Battenberg hoop and sat near by. Betty saw her,
and smiled. She looked distinctly a little wan.
The journalist ignored Mrs. Hasmer. He was a merciless driver. Whenever
Betty's attention wandered, as it had begun doing, he put his questions
bruskly, even sharply, to call her back to the task.
Four bells sounded, up forward. Mrs. Hasmer started; and, as always when
she heard the ship's bell, consulted her watch. Six o'clock!... She put
down her hoop; fidgetted; got up; sat down again; told herself she must
consider the situation calmly. It must be taken in hand, of course.
The man was a mannerless brute. He had distinctly encroached. He would
encroach further. He must be met firmly, at once. She tried to think
precisely how he could be met.
She got up again; stood over them. She didn't know that her face was a
lens through which any and all might read her perturbed spirit.
Betty glanced up; smiled faintly; drew a long breath.
Li Hsien rose and bowed, clasping his hands before his breast.
Mr. Bradley was writing.
Mrs. Hasmer had tried to construct a little speech that, however final,
would meet the forms of courtesy. It left her now. She said with blank
firmness:
“Come, Betty!”
“One moment!” protested Mr. Brachey. “Will you please ask him, Miss
Duane, whether he believes that the general use of opium has appreciably
lowered the vitality of the Chinese people? That is, to put it
conversely, whether the curtailment of production is going to leave a
people too weakened to act strongly in a military or even political
way? Surveying the empire as a whole, of course.”
Betty's thoughts, which had wandered hopelessly afield, came struggling
back.
“I--I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm afraid I didn't quite hear.”
“I must ask you to come with me, Betty,” said Mrs. Hasmer.
At this, looking heavily disappointed, Mr. Brachey rose; ran a long bony
hand through his thick hair.
“We could take it up in the morning,” he said, turning from the bland
young Chinaman to the plainly confused girl. “That is, if Miss Doane
wouldn't mind staying on the ship. I presume she has seen Nagasaki.”
His perturbed eyes moved at last to the little elderly lady who had
seemed so colorless and mild; met hers, which were, of a sudden,
snapping coals.
“You will not take it up again, sir!” cried Mrs. Hasmer; and left with
the girl.
The Chinaman smiled, clasped his hands, bowed with impenetrable
courtesy, and withdrew' to his quarters.
Mr. Brachey, alone, looked over his notes with a frown; shook his head;
went down to dress for dinner.
6
Late that night Betty sat in her tiny stateroom, indulging rebellious
thoughts. It was time, after an awkwardly silent evening, to go to bed.
But instead she now slipped into her heavy traveling coat, pulled on her
tam-o'-shanter, tiptoed past the Hasmers' door and went out on deck.
It was dim and peaceful there. The throb of the engines and the wash of
water along the hull were the only sounds. They were in the strait now,
heading out to sea.
She walked around the deck, and around. It was her first free
moment since they left the Pacific ship at Yokohama. After that very
quietly--sweetly, even--the chaperonage of Mrs. Hasmer had tightened.
For Betty the experience was new and difficult. She felt that she ought
to submit. But the rebellion in her breast, if wrong, was real. She
would walk it off.
Then she met Mr. Brachey coming out of the smoking-room. Both stopped.
“Oh!” said he.
“I was just getting a breath of air,” said she.
Then they moved to the rail and leaned there, gazing off at the faintly
moonlit land.
He asked, in his cold way, how she had learned Chinese.
“I was born at T'ainan-fu,” she explained. “My father is a missionary.”
“Oh,” said he. And again, “Oh!”
Then they fell silent. Her impulse at first was to make talk. She did
murmur, “I really ought to be going in.” But he, apparently, found talk
unnecessary. And she stayed on, looking now down at the iridescent foam
slipping past the black hull, now up into the luminous night.
Then he remarked, casually, “Shall we walk?” And she found herself
falling into step with him.
They stopped, a little later, up forward and stood looking out over the
forecastle deck.
“Some day I'm going to ask the chief officer to let me go out there,”
said she.
“It isn't necessary to ask him,” replied Mr. Brachey. “Come along.”
“Oh,” murmured Betty, half in protest--“really?” But she went, thrilled
now, more than a little guilty, down the steps, past hatches and donkey
engines, up other steps, under and over a tangle of cables, over an
immense anchor, to seats on coils of rope near the very bow.
The situation amounted already to a secret. Mrs. Hasmer couldn't be
told, mused Betty. The fact was a little perplexing. But it stood.
Neither had mentioned Mrs. Hasmer. But now he said:
“I was rude to-day, of course.”
“No,” said she. “No.”
“Oh, yes! I'm that way. The less I see of people the better.”
This touched the half-fledged woman in her.
“You're interested in your work,” said she gently. “That's all. And it's
right. You're not a trifler.”
“I'm a lone wolf.”
She was beginning to find him out-and-out interesting.
“You travel a good deal,” she ventured demurely. “All the time. I prefer
it.”
“Always alone?”
“Always.”
“You don't get lonesome?”
“Oh, yes. But what does it matter?”
She considered this. “You go into dangerous places.”
“Oh, yes.”
“You traveled among the head-hunters of Borneo.”
“How did you find that out?”
“There's an advertisment of that book in _To-morrow in India_.”
“Oh, have you read that thing?”
“Part of it. I...”
“You found it dull.”
“Well... it's a little over my head.”
“It's over everybody's. Mine.”
She nearly laughed at this. But he seemed not to think of it as humor.
“Aren't you a little afraid, sometimes--going into such dangerous places
all alone?”
“Oh, no.”
“But you might be hurt--or even--killed.”
“What's the difference?”
Startled, she looked straight up at him; then dropped her eyes. She
waited for him to explain, but he was gazing moodily out at the water
ahead.
The soft night air wrapped them about like dream-velvet. Adventure was
astir, and romance. Betty, enchanted, looked lazily back at the white
midships decks, bridge and wheelhouse, at the mysterious rigging and
raking masts, at the foremost of the huge funnels pouring out great
rolling clouds of smoke. The engines throbbed and throbbed. Back there
somewhere the ship's bell struck, eight times for midnight.
“I don't care much for missionaries,” said Mr. Brachey.
“You'd like father.”
“Perhaps.”
“He's a wonderful man. He's six feet five. And strong.”
“It's a job for little men. Little souls. With little narrow eyes.”
“Oh... No!”
“Why try to change the Chinese? Their philosophy is finer than ours. And
works better. I like them.”
“So do I. But...” She wished her father could be there to meet the man's
talk. There must surely be strong arguments on the missionary side, if
one only knew them. She finally came out with:
“But they're heathen!”
“Oh, yes!”
“They're--they're polygamous!”
“Why not?”
“But Mr. Brachey...” She couldn't go on with this. The conversation was
growing rather alarming.
“So are the Americans polygamous. And the other white peoples. Only
they call it by other names. You get tired of it. The Chinese are more
honest.”
“I wonder,” said she, suddenly steady and shrewd, “if you haven't stayed
away too long.”
His reply was:
“Perhaps.”
“If you live--you know, all by yourself, and for nobody in the world
except yourself--I mean, if there's nobody you're responsible for,
nobody you love and take care of and suffer for...” The sentence was
getting something involved. She paused, puckering her brows.
“Well?” said he.
“Why, I only meant, isn't there danger of a person like that
becoming--well, just selfish.”
“I am selfish.”
“But you don't want to be.”
“Oh. but I do!”
“I can hardly believe that.”
“Dependence on others is as bad as gratitude. It is a demand, a
weakness. Strength is better. If each of us stood selfishly alone, it
would be a cleaner, better world. There wouldn't be any of this mess of
obligation, one to another. No running up of spiritual debt. And that's
the worst kind.”
“But suppose,” she began, a little afraid of getting into depths from
which it might be difficult to extreate herself, “suppose--well, you
were married, and there were--well, little children. Surely you'd have
to feel responsible for them.”
“Surely,” said he curtly, “it isn't necessary for every man to bring
children 'nto the world. Surely that's not the only job.”
“But--but take another case. Suppose you had a friend, a younger man,
and he was in trouble--drinking, maybe; anything!--wouldn't you feel
responsible for him?”
“Not at all. That's the worst kind of dependence. The only battles a
man wins are the ones he wins alone. If any friend of mine--man or
woman--can't win his own battles--or hers--he or she had better go.
Anywhere. To hell, if it comes to that.”
He quite took her breath away.
One bell sounded.
“It's perfectly dreadful,” said she. “If Mrs. Has-mer knew I was out
here at this time of night, she'd...”
This sentence died out. They went back.
“Good night,” said she.
She felt that he must think her very young and simple. It seemed odd
that he should waste so much time on her. No other man she had ever met
was like him. Hesitantly, desiring at least a touch of friendliness, on
an impulse, she extended her hand.
He took it; held it a moment firmly; then said:
“Will you give me that drawing?”
“Yes,” said she.
“Now?”
“Yes.” And she tiptoed twice again past the Hasmers' door.
“Please sign it,” said he, and produced a pencil. “But it seems so
silly. I mean, it's nothing, this sketch.”
“Please!”
She signed it, said good night again, and hurried off, her heart in a
curious flutter.