AT the point where the ancient highway, linking Northern China with
Thibet, the Kukunor region and Mongolia, emerges from the treeless,
red-brown tumbling hills of Hansi Province there stands across the
road--or stood, before the revolution of 1911--a scenic arch of masonry
crowned with a curving elaborately ornamented roof of tiles. Some
forgotten philanthropist erected it, doubtless for a memorial to
forgotten dead. Through this arch the west-bound traveler caught his
first view of the wide yellow valley of the Han, with its yellow river,
its square-walled, gray-green capital city, and, far beyond, of the
sharp purple mountains that might have been cut out of cardboard.
The gray of old T'ainan lay in the massive battle-mented walls and in
the more than six square miles of closely packed tile roofs; the green
in its thousands of trees. For here, as in Peking and Sian-fu they
had preserved the trees; not, of course, in the innumerable tortuous
streets, where petty merchants, money-changers, porters, coolies,
beggars, soldiers and other riffraff passed freely through mud or dust,
but within the thousands of hidden private courtyards, in the yamens of
governor, treasurer, and provincial judge, in temple grounds outside the
walls, and in the compound of the American Mission. At this latter
spot, by the way, could be seen, with the aid of field-glasses, the only
two-story residence in T'ainan; quite a European house, built after
the French manner of red brick trimmed with white stone, and rising
distinctly above the typically gray roofs that clustered about its lower
windows.
There were bold gate towers on the city wall; eight of them, great
timbered structures with pagoda roofs rising perhaps fifteen yards above
the wall and thirty above the lowly roadway. The timber-work under the
shadowing eaves had sometime been painted in reds, blues and greens;
and the once vivid colors, though dulled now by weather and years, were
still richly visible to the near-observer.
Many smaller settlements, little gray clusters of houses, lay about the
plain on radiating highways; for T'ainan boasted its suburbs. The
hill slopes were dotted with the homes and walled gardens of bankers,
merchants and other gentry. On a plateau just north of the Great Highway
stood, side by side, two thirteen-roof pagodas, the pride of all central
Hansi.
About the city, on any day of the seven, twisting through the hundreds
of little streets and in and out at the eight gates, moved tens of
thousands of tirelessly busy folk, all clad in the faded blue
cotton that spells China to the eye, and among these a slow-moving,
never-ceasing tangle of wheeled and fourfooted local traffic.
And along the Great Highway--down the hill slopes, through suburbs and
city, over the river and on toward the teeming West; over the
river, through city and suburbs and up the hills, toward the teeming
East--flowed all day long the larger commerce that linked province with
province and, ultimately, yellow man with white, at the treaty ports,
hundreds of miles away. There were strings of laden camels with
evil-looking Mongol drivers; hundreds and thousands of camels,
disdainfully going and coming. There were hundreds and thousands of
asses, patient little humorists, bearing panniers of coal lumps and iron
ore from the crudely operated mines in the hills. There were hundreds
and thousands of mule-drawn carts, springless, many with arched roofs of
matting.
Along the roadside, sheltered by little sagging canopies of grimy
matting, or squatting in the dirt, were vendors of flat cakes and
vinegary _sumshoo_ and bits of this and that to wear. Naked children
swarmed like flies in the sun.
The day-by-day life of the oldest and least selfconscious civilization
in the world was moving quietly, resistlessly along, as it had moved for
six thousand years.
2
Reverend Henry B. Withery, on a morning in late March, came, by
springless cart, out of Kansu into T'ainan. A drab little man, with
patient fervor in his eyes and a limp (this latter the work of Boxers in
1900). He was bound, on leave, for Shanghai, San Francisco and home;
but a night at T'ainan with Griggsby Doane meant, even in the light of
hourly nearing America, much. For they had shared rooms at the seminary.
They had entered the yielding yet resisting East side by side. Meeting
but once or twice a year, even less often, they had felt each other
deeply across the purple mountains.
They sat through tiffin with the intent preoccupied workers in the
dining-room of the brick house; and Mr Withery's gentle eyes took in
rather shrewdly the curious household. It interested him. There were
elements that puzzled him; a suggestion of staleness in this face, of
nervous overstrain in that; a tension.
The several native workers smiled and talked less, he thought, than on
his former visits.
Little Mr. Boatwright--slender, dustily blond, always hitherto burning
with the tire of consecration--was continually fumbling with a spoon, or
slowly twisting his tumbler, the while moodily studying the table-cloth.
And his larger wife seemed heavier in mind as in body.
Mr. Withery found the atmosphere even a little oppressive. He looked up
about the comfortable, high ceiled room. Mounted and placed on the walls
were a number of interesting specimens of wild fowl. Elmer Boatwright,
though no devotee of slaughter or even of sport, had shot and mounted
these himself.
Withery asked him now if he had found any interesting birds lately. The
reply was little more than monosyllabic; it was almost the reply of a
middle-aged man who has lost and forgotten the enthusiasm of youth.
There was talk, of course; the casual surface chatter of folk who are
deeply united in work. A new schoolroom was under construction. Jen Ling
Pu, a native preacher, was doing well at So T'ung. The new tennis court
wasn't, after all, long enough.
During all this, Withery pondered. Griggsby was driving too hard, of
course. The strongly ascetic nature of the man seemed to be telling on
him; or perhaps it was running out, the fire of it, leaving only the
force of will. That happened, of course, now and then, in the case of
men gifted with great natural vitality.
Then too, come to reflect on it, the fight had been hard, here in Hansi.
Since 1900. Harder, perhaps, than anywhere else except Shantung and
Chihli. Harder even than in those more easterly provinces, for they were
nearer things. There were human contacts, freshening influences... . The
Boxers had dealt heavily with the whites in Hansi. More than a hundred
had been slain by fire or sword. Young women--girls like these two or
three about the dinner table--had been tortured. Griggsby and his wife
and the little girl had missed destruction only through the accident of
a journey, in the spring, to Shanghai. And he had returned, dangerously
early, to a smoldering ruin and plunged with all the vigor in his
unusual body and mind at the task of reconstruction. The work in the
province was shorthanded, of course, even yet. It would be so. But
Griggsby was building it up. He even had the little so-called college,
down the river at Hung Chan, going again, after a fashion. Money was
needed, of course. And teachers. And equipment. All that had been
discussed during tiffin. It was a rather heroic record. And it had not
passed unobserved. At the Missionary Conference, at Shanghai, in 1906,
Griggsby's report--carefully phrased, understated throughout, almost
colorless--had drawn out unusual applause.
Mrs. Doane's death occurred during the first year of that painful
reconstruction. Griggsby's course, after that, from the day of the
funeral, in fact, as you looked back over it, recalling this and that
apparently trivial incident, was characteristic. The daughter was sent
back to the States, for schooling. Griggsby furnished for himself, up
in what was little more, really, than the attic of the new mission
residence, a bare, severe little suite of bedroom and study. The newly
married Boatwrights he installed, as something near master and mistress,
on the second floor. The other white workers and teachers filled all
but the two guest rooms, and, at times, even these. And then, his little
institution organized on a wholly new footing, he had loaded himself
sternly with work.
Dinner was over. One by one the younger people left the room. And within
a few moments the afternoon routine of the mission compound was under
way.
Through the open window came a beam of warm spring sunshine. Outside,
across the wide courtyard Withery noted the, to him, familiar picture
of two or three blue-clad Chinese men lounging on the steps of the gate
house; students crossing, books in hand; young girls round and fresh of
face, their slanting eyes demurely downcast, assembling before one of
the buildings; two carpenters working deliberately on a scaffold. A
soft-footed servant cleared the table. Now that the two friends
were left free to chat of personal matters, the talk wandered into
unexpectedly impersonal regions. Withery found himself baffled, and
something puzzled. During each of their recent visits Griggsby's
manner had affected him in this same way, but less definitely.
The aloofness--he had once or twice ever, thought of it as an
evasiveness--had been only a tendency. The old friendship had soon
warmed through it and brought ease of spirit and tongue. But the
tendency had grown. The present Griggsby was clearly going to prove
harder to get at. That remoteness of manner had grown on him as a habit.
The real man, whatever he was coming to be, was hidden now; the man
whose very soul had once been written clear in the steady blue eyes.
And what a man he was! Mr. Withery indulged in a moment of sentiment as
he quietly, shrewdly studied him, across the table.
In physical size, as in mental attainments and emotional force, James
Griggsby Duane had been, from the beginning, a marked man. He was
forty-five now; or within a year of it. The thick brown hair of their
student days was thinner-now at the sides and nearly gone on top.
But the big head was set on the solid shoulders with all the old
distinction. A notable fact about Griggsby Doane was that after winning
intercollegiate standing as a college football player, he had never
allowed his body to settle back with the years. He weighed now, surely,
within a pound or two or three of his playing weight twenty-four years
earlier. He had always been what the British term a clean feeder, eating
sparingly of simple food. Hardly a day of his life but had at least its
hour or two of violent exercise. He would rise at five in the morning
and run a few miles before breakfast. He played tennis and handball. He
would gladly have boxed and wrestled, but a giant with nearly six and
a half feet of trained, conditioned muscle at his disposal finds few
to meet him, toe to toe. His passion for walking had really, during the
earlier years, raised minor difficulties about T'ainan. The Chinese were
intelligent and, of course, courteous; but it was more than they could
be asked to understand at first.
It had worked out, gradually. They knew him now; knew he was fearless,
industrious, patient, kind. During the later years, after the
Boxer trouble, his immense figure, striding like him of the fabled
seven-league-boots, had become a familiar, friendly figure in central
Hansi. Not infrequently he would tramp, pack on shoulders, from one
to another of the outlying mission stations; and thought nothing of
covering a hundred and thirty or forty _li_ where your cart or litter
mules or your Manchu pony would stop at ninety and call it a day.
Withery was bringing the talk around to the personal when Doane looked
at his watch.
“You'll excuse me, Henry,” he said. “I've a couple of classes. But I'll
knock off about four-thirty. Make yourself comfortable. Prowl about.
Use my study, if you like.... Or wait. We were speaking of the Ho Shan
Company. They've had two or three mass meetings here during the winter,
and got up some statements.”
“Do they suggest violence?”
“Oh, yes.” Doane waved the thought carelessly aside. “But Pao will keep
them in hand, I think. He doesn't want real trouble. But he wouldn't
mind scaring the company into selling out. The gossip is that he is
rather heavily interested himself in some of the native mines.”
“Is Pao your governor?”
“No, the governor died last fall, and no successor has been sent out.
Kang, the treasurer, is nearly seventy and smokes sixty to a hundred
pipes of opium a day. Pao Ting Chuan is provincial judge, but is ruling
the province now. He's an able fellow.”... Doane drew a thick lot of
papers from an inner pocket, and selected one. “Read this. It's one of
their statements. Pao had the translation made in his yamen. I haven't
the original, but the translation is fairly accurate I believe.”
Withery took the paper; ignored it, and studied his friend, who had
moved to the door. Doane seemed to have lost his old smile--reflective,
shrewd, a little quizzical. The furrow between his eyes had deepened
into something near a permanent frown. There were fine lires about and
under the eyes that might have indicated a deep weariness of the
spirit. Yet the skin was clear, the color good.... Griggsby was fighting
something out; alone; through the years.
Feeling this, Henry Withery broke out, in something of their old frank
way.
“Do knock off, Grigg. Let's have one of the old talks. I think--I think
perhaps you need me a little.” Doane hesitated. It was not like him to
do that. “Yes,” he said gravely, but with his guard up, that curious
guard, “it would be fine to have one of the old talks if we can get at
it.”
He turned to go; then paused.
“Oh, by the way, I'm expecting Pourmont. A little later in the day. He's
resident engineer for the Ho Shan Company, over at Ping Yang. Pierre
François George Marie Pourmont. An amusing person. He feels a good deal
of concern over these meetings. For that matter, he was mobbed here in
February. He didn't like that.”
Withery found himself compressing his lips, and tried to correct that
impulse with a rather artificial smile. It wasn't like Griggsby to speak
in that light way. Like a society man almost. It suggested a hardening
of the spirit; or a crust over deep sensitiveness.
Men, he reflected, who have to fight themselves during long periods of
time are often hardened by the experience, even though they eventually
win.
He wondered, moving to the window, and thoughtfully watching the huge
man striding across the courtyard, if Griggsby Doane would be winning.
3
Up in the little study under the roof Mr. Withery sank into a Morris
chair and settled back to read the views of the “Gentry and People of
Hansi” on foreign mining syndicates. The documents had been typed on an
old machine with an occasional broken letter; and were phrased in the
quaint English that had long been familiar to him.
First came a statement of the “five items” of difference between these
“Gentry and People” and the Ho Shan Company--all of a technical or
business nature. Only in the last “item” did the emotional reasoning
common to Chinese public documents make its appearance.... “_Five_. In
Honan the company boldly introduced dynamite, which is prohibited. The
dynamite exploded and this gave rise to diplomatic trouble, a like thing
might happen in Hansi with the same evil consequences.” Then followed
this inevitable general statement:
“At present in China, from the highest to the lowest, all are in
difficulty--the annual for the indemnities amounts to Taels 30,000,000,
and in every province the reforms involve great additional expenditure,
while the authorities only know how to control the expenditure, but not
how to reach fresh sources of income. Those in power can find no fresh
funds and the people are extremely poor and all they have to trust to
are a few feet of land which have not been excavated by the foreigners.
Westerners say that the coal of Hansi is sufficient to supply the needs
of the world for two thousand years; in other countries there is coal
without iron, or iron without coal, but in Hansi there is abundance of
both coal and iron and it forms one of the best manufacturing countries
in the world. At present if there is no protection for China then that
finishes it, but if China is to be protected how can Hansi be excluded
from protection? Therefore all China and all Hansi must withstand the
claims of the Ho Shan Company.
“The company's agent general says that the agreement was drawn up with
the Chinese Government, but at that time the people were unenlightened
and traitors were suffered to effect stolen sales of Government lands,
using oppression and disregarding the lives of the people. Now all
the Gentry and People know how things are, and of what importance the
consequences are for the lives of themselves and their families, and so
with one heart they all withstand the company in whatever schemes it may
have, for they are not willing to drop their hands and give themselves
up to death, and if the officials will not protect the mines of Hansi
then we will protect our mines ourselves.
“We suggest a plan for the company, that it should state the sum used to
bribe Hu Pin Chili, and to win over Chia Ching Jen and Liu O and Sheng
Hsuan Hui and the Tsung Li Yamen, and the Wai Wu Pu and the Yu Chuan
Pu, at the present time, and the bribes to other cruel traitors, and a
detailed account of their expenditure in opening their mines since their
arrival in China, and Hansi will repay the amount. If the company still
pushes the claim for damages, in consequence of the delay in issuing the
permit then the Hansi people will never submit to it.
“In conclusion the people of Hansi must hold to their mines till death,
and if the Government and officials still unrighteously flatter the
foreigners in their oppression and flog the people robbing them of their
flesh and blood to give those to the foreigners then some one must throw
away his life by bomb throwing and so repay the company, but we trust
the company will carefully consider and weigh the matter and not push
Hansi to this extremity.”
Mr. Withery laid the documents on Doane's desk, and gave up an hour to
jotting down notes for his own annual report. Then he took a long
walk, in through the wall and about the inner city. He was back by
four-thirty, but found no sign of his friend.
At five a stout Frenchman arrived, a man of fifty or more, with a long,
square-trimmed beard of which he was plainly fond. Doane returned then
to the house.
4
The three men had tea in the study. M. Pourmont, with an apology,
smoked cigarettes. Withery observed, when the genual Frenchman turned
his head, that the lobe of his left ear was missing.
M. Pourmont regarded the local situation seriously.
“Zay spik of you,” he explained to Griggsby Doane.
“Zay say zat you have ze petit papier, ze little paper, all yellow, cut
like ze little man an' woman. An' it is also zat zay say zat ze little
girl, ze student, all ze little jeunes filles, is ze lowair vife of
you, Monsieur It is not good, zat. At Paree ve vould say zat it is _se
compliment_, but here it is not good. It is zat zay have not bifore spik
like zat of Monsieur Doane.”
Doane merely considered this without replying.
“That statement of the Gentry and People looks rather serious to me,''
Mr. Withery remarked.
“It has its serious side,” said Doane quietly. “Put you see, of course,
from the frankness and publicity of it, that the officials are back
of it. These Gentry and People would never go so far unsupported. It
wouldn't surprise me to learn that the documents originated within the
yamen of his Excellency Pao Ting Chuan.”
“Very good,” said Withery. “Put if he lets it drift much further the
danger will be real. Suppose some young hothead were to take that last
threat seriously and give up his life in throwing a bomb---what then?”
“It would be serious then, of course,” said Doane. “But I hardly think
any one here would go so far unsupported.”
“Yes!” cried M. Pourmont, in some excitement, “an' at who is it zat zay
t'row ze bomb? It is at me, _n'est ce pas?_ At me! You tlink I forget
v'en ze mob it t'rowr ze _bierre_ at me? _Mais non!_ Zay tear ze cart
of me. Zay beat ze head of me. Zay destroy ze ear of me. _Ah, c' était
terrible, ça!_”
“They attacked Monsieur Pourmont while he was riding to the yamen for an
audience with Pao,” Doane explained. “But Pao heard of it and promptly
sent soldiers. 1 took it up with him the next day. He acted most
correctly. The ringleaders of the mob were whipped and imprisoned.”
“But you mus' also say to Monsieur Vitieree zat ze committee of my
_compagnie_ he come to Peking--_quinze mille kilometres he come!_--an'
now _Son Excellence_ he say zay mus' not come here, into _ze province_.
It is so difficult, ça! An' ze committee he is ver' angry. He swear at
Peking. He cool ze--vat you say---heels. An' ze work he all stop. No
good! Noz-zing at all!”
“That is all so, Henry.” Thus Doane, turning to his friend. “I don't
mean to minimize the actual difficulties. But I do not believe we are in
any such danger as in 1900. Even then the officials did it, of course.
If they hadn't believed that the incantations of the Boxers made them
immune to our bullets, and if they hadn't convinced the Empress Dowager
of it, we should never have had the siege of the legations. But I am to
have an audience with His Excellency tomorrow, at one, and will go over
this ground carefully. I have no wish, myself, to underestimate the
trouble. My daughter arrives next week.”
“Oh!” said Withery. “Oh... your daughter! From the States, Grigg?”
“Yes, I am to meet her at Hankow. The Hasmers brought her across.”
“That's too bad, in a way.”
“Of course. But there was no choice.”
“But zat is not all zat is!” M. Puurmont was pacing the floor now. “A
boy of me, of ze _cuisine_, he go home las' week to So T'ung an' he say
zat a--vat you call?--a circle..
“A society?”
“_Mais oui!_ A society, she meet in ze night an' _fait l'exercise_--”
“They are drilling?”
“_Oui!_ Ze drill. It is ze society of Ze Great Eye.”
“I never heard of that,” mused Griggsby aloud. “I don't really see what
they can do. But I'll take it up to-morrow with, Pao. I would ask
you, however, to remember that if the people don't know the cost of
indemnities, there can be no doubt about Pao. He knows. And it is hard
for me to imagine the province drifting out of his control for a single
day. One event I am planning to watch closely is the fair here after the
middle of April. Some of these agitators of the Gentry and People are
sure to be on hand. We shall learn a great deal then.”
“You'll be back then, Grigg?”
“Oh, yes. By the tenth. I shan't delay at all at Hankow.”
It seemed to Henry Withery that his friend and host maneuvered to
get him to retire first. Then he attributed the suspicion to his own
disturbed thoughts.... Still, Griggsby hadn't returned to the house
until after M. Pourmont's arrival. It was now nearly midnight, and there
had been never a personal word.
But at last, M. Pourmont out of the way for the night, lamp in hand,
Griggsby led the way to the remaining guest room.
Withery, following, looked up at the tall grave man, who had to stoop a
little at the doors. Would Griggsby put down the lamp, speak a courteous
good night, and go off to his own attic quarters; or would he linger? It
was to be a test, this coming moment, of their friendship.... Withery's
heart filled. In his way, through the years, out there in remote Kansu,
he had always looked up to Grigg and had leaned on him, on memories
of him as he had been. He had the memories now--curiously poignant
memories, tinged with the melancholy of lost youth. But had he still the
friend?
Duane set down the lamp, and looked about, all grave courtesy, to see if
his friend's bag was at hand, and if the wash-stand and towel-rack had
been made ready.
Withery stood on the sill, struggling to control his emotions.
Longfellow's lines came to mind:
“A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long
thoughts.”
They were middle-aged now, they two. It was extraordinarily hard to
believe. They had felt so much, and shared so much. They had plunged at
missionary work with such ardor. Grigg especially. He had thrown
aside more than one early opportunity for a start in business. He had
sacrificed useful worldly acquaintances. His heart had burned to save
souls, to carry the flame of divine revelation into what had then seemed
a benighted, materialistic land.
Grigg would have succeeded in business or in the service of his
government. He had a marked administrative gift. And power....
Distinctly power.
Withery stepped within the room, closed the door behind him, and looked
straight up into that mask of a face; in his own deep emotion he thought
of it as a tragic mask.
“Grigg,” he said very simply, “what's the matter?”
There was a silence. Then Doane came toward the door.
“The matter?” he queried, with an effort to smile.
“Can't we talk, Grigg?... I know you are in deep trouble.”
“Well”--Doane rested a massive hand on a bedpost--“I won't say that it
isn't an anxious time, Henry. I'm pinning my faith to Pau Ting
Chuan. But... And, of course, if I could have foreseen all the little
developments, I wouldn't have sent for Betty. Though it's not easy
to see what else I could have done. Frank and Ethel couldn't keep her
longer. And the expense of any other arrangement... She's nineteen,
Henry. A young woman. Curious--a young woman whom I've never even seen
as such, and my daughter!”
“It isn't that, Grigg.”
At the moment Withery could say no more. He sank into a chair by the
door, depressed in spirit.
Doane walked to the window; looked out at the stars; drummed a moment on
the glass.
“It's been uphill work, Henry... since nineteen hundred.”
Withery cleared his throat. “It isn't that,” he repeated unsteadily.
Doane stood there a moment longer; then turned and gazed gloomily at his
friend.
The silence grew painful.
Finally, Doane sighed, spread his hands in the manner of one who
surrenders to fate, and came slowly over to the bed; stretching out his
long frame there, against the pillows.
“So it's as plain as that, Henry.”
“It is--to me.”
“I wonder if I can talk.”
“The question is, Grigg--can I help you?”
“I'm afraid not, Henry. I doubt if any one can.” The force of this sank
slowly into Withery's mind. “No one?” he asked in a hushed voice.
“I'm afraid not.... Do you think the others, my people here, see it?”
“The tone has changed here, Grigg.”
“I've tried not to believe it.”
“I've felt it increasingly for several years. When I've passed through.
Even in your letters. It's been hard to speak before. For that matter, I
had formulated no question. It was just an impression. But today... and
to-night...”
“It's as bad as that, now.”
“Suppose I say that it's as definite as that, Grigg. The impression.”
Doane let his head drop back against the pillows; closed his eyes.
“The words don't matter,” he remarked.
“No, they don't, of course.” Withery's mind, trained through the busy
years to the sort of informal confessional familiar to priests of
other than the Roman church, was clearing itself of the confusions of
friendship and was ready to dismiss, for the time, philosophically; the
sense of personal loss.
“Is it something you've done, Grigg?” he asked now, gently. “Have you--”
Doane threw out an interrupting hand.
“No,” he said rather shortly, “I've not broken the faith, Henry, not in
act.”
“In your thoughts only?”
“Yes. There.”
“It is doubt?... Strange, Grigg, I never knew a man whose faith had in
it such vitality. You've inspired thousands. Tens of thousands. You--I
will say this, now--you, nothing more, really, than my thoughts of you
carried me through my bad time. Through those doldrums when the ardor of
the first few years had burned out and I was spent, emotionally. It was
with your help that I found my feet again. You never knew' that.”
“No. I didn't know that.”
“I worried a good deal, then. I had never before been aware of the
church as a worldly organization, as a political mechanism. I hadn't
questioned it. It was Hidderleigh's shrewd campaign for the bishopric
that disturbed me. Then the money raised questions, of course.”
“There's been a campaign on this winter, over in the States,” said
Doane, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. “Part of that fund is to be
sent here to help extend my work in the province. They're using all the
old emotional devices. All the claptrap. Chaplain Cabell is touring the
churches with his little cottage organ and his songs.”
“But the need is real out here, Grigg. And the people at home must be
stirred into recognizing it. They can't he reached except through their
emotions. I've been through all that. I see now, clearly enough, that
it's an imperfect world. We must do the best we can with it. Because it
is imperfect we must keep at our work.”
“You know as well as I what they're doing, Henry. Cabell, all that
crowd, haven't once mentioned Hansi. They're talking the Congo.”
“But you forget, Grigg, that the emotional interest of our home people
in China has run out. They thought about us during the Boxer trouble,
and later, during the famine in Shensi. Now, because of the talk of
slavery and atrocities in Central Africa, public interest has shifted to
that part of the world.”
“And so they're playing on the public sympathy for Africa to raise
money, some of which is later to be diverted to Central China.”
“What else can they do?”
“I don't know.”
“You find yourself inclined to question the whole process?”
“Yes.”
“Aren't you misplacing your emphasis, Grigg? We all do that, of course.
Now and then.... Isn't the important thing for you, the emphatic
thing, to spread the word of God in Hansi Province?” He leaned forward,
speaking simply, with sincerity.
Doane closed his eyes again; and compressed his lips.
Withery, anxiously watching him, saw that the healthy color was leaving
his face.
After a silence that grew steadily in intensity, Doane at last opened
his eyes, and spoke, huskily, but with grim force.
“Of course, Henry, you're right. Right enough. These things are details.
They're on my nerves, that's all. I'm going to tell you...” He sat up,
slowly swung his feet to the floor, clasped his hands.... “I'll spare
you my personal history of the past few years. And, of course, captious
criticism of the church is no proper introduction to what I'm going
to say. During these recent years I've been groping through my own
Gethsemane. It has been a terrible time. There have been many moments
when I've questioned the value of the struggle. If I had been as nearly
alone as it has seemed, sometimes... I mean, if there hadn't been little
Betty to think of...”
“I understand,” Withery murmured.
“In a way I've come through my Valley. My head has cleared a little. And
now I know only too clearly; it is very difficult; in a way, the time
of doubt and groping was easier to bear... I know that I am in the wrong
work.”
Withery, with moist eyes, studied the carpet.
“You are sure?” he managed to ask.
He felt rather than saw his friend's slow nod.
“It's a relief, of course, to tell you.” Doane was speaking with less
effort now; but his color had not returned. “There's no one else.
I couldn't say it to Hidderleigh. To me that man is fundamentally
dishonest.”
Withery found it difficult to face such extreme frankness. His mind
slipped around it into another channel. He was beginning to feel that
Grigg mustn't be let off so easily. There were arguments....
“One thing that has troubled me, even lately,” he said, hunting for
some common ground of thought and speech, “is the old denominational
differences back home. I can't take all that for granted, as so many
of our younger workers do. It has seemed to me that the conference last
year should have spoken out more vigorously on that one point. We
can never bring missionary work into any sort of unity here while the
denominational spirit is kept alive at home.”
Doane broke out, with a touch of impatience: “We approach the shrewdest,
most keenly analytical people or; earth, the Chinese, with something
near a hundred and fifty conflicting varieties of the one true religion.
Too often, Henry, we try to pass to them our faith but actually succeed
only in exhibiting the curious prejudices of narrow white minds.”
This was, clearly, not a happy topic. Withery sighed.
“This--this attitude that you find yourself in--is really a conclusion,
Grigg?”
“It is a conclusion.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don't know.”
“It would be a calamity if you were to give up your work here, in the
midst of reconstruction.”
“No man is essential, Henry But of course, just now, it would lie
difficult. I have thought, often, if Boatwright had only turned out a
stronger man....”
“Grigg, one thing! You must let me speak of it.... Has the possibility
occurred to you of marrying again?”
Doane sprang up at this; walked the floor,
“Do you realize what you're saying, Henry!” he cried out.
“I understand, Grigg, but you and I are old enough to know that in the
case of a vigorous man like yourself--”
Doane threw out a hand.
“Henry, I've thought of everything!”
A little later he stopped and stood over his friend.
“I have fought battles that may as well be forgotten,” he said
deliberately. “I have won them, over and over, to no end whatever. I
have assumed that these victories would lead in time to a sort of peace,
even to resignation. They have not. Each little victory now seems to
leave me further back. I'm losing, not gaining, through the years. It
was when I finally nerved myself to face that fact that I found myself
facing it all--my whole life.... Henry, I'm full of a fire and energy
that no longer finds an outlet in my work. I want to turn to new fields.
If I don't, before it's too late, I may find myself on the rocks.”
Withery thought this over. Doane was still pacing the floor. Withery,
pale himself now, looked up.
“Perhaps, then,” he said, “you had better break with it.”
Doane stopped at the window; stared out. Withery thought his face was
working.
“Have you any means at all?” he asked.
Doane moved his head in the negative.... “Oh, my books. A few personal
things.”
“Of course”--Withery's voice softened--“you've given away a good deal.”
“I've given everything.”
“Hum!... Have you thought of anything else you might do?”
Doane turned. “Henry, I'm forty-five years old. I have no profession,
no business experience beyond the little administrative work here. Yet
I must live, not only for myself, but to support my little girl. If I do
quit, and try to find a place in the business world, I shall carry to my
grave the stigma that clings always to the unfrocked priest.” He strode
to the door. “I tell you, I've thought of everything!... We're getting
nowhere with this. I appreciate your interest. But... I'm sorry, Henry.
Sleep if you can. Good night.”
They met, with M. Pourmont and the others, at breakfast.
There was a moment, on the steps of the gate house, overlooking the
narrow busy street, when they silently clasped hands.
Then Henry Withery crawled in under the blue curtains of his cart and
rode away, carrying with him a mental picture of a huge man, stooping a
little under the red lintel of the doorway, his strong face sternly set.