1
IT WAS early morning--the first day of April--when the Pacific liner
that carried Betty Doane and Jonathan Brachey out of Yokohama dropped
anchor in the river below Shanghai and there discharged passengers and
freight for all central and northern China.
Brachey, on that occasion, watched from his cabin porthole while Betty
and the Hasmers descended the accommodation ladder and boarded the
company's launch. Then, not before, he drank coffee and nibbled a roll.
His long face was gray and deeply lined. He had not slept.
He went up to Shanghai on the next launch, walked directly across
the Bund to the row of steamship offices, and engaged passage on a
north-bound coasting steamer. That evening he dined alone, out on the
Yellow Sea, steaming toward Tsingtau, Chefu and (within the five days)
Tientsin. He hadn't meant to take in the northern ports at this time;
his planned itinerary covered the Yangtse Valley, where the disorderly
young shoots of revolution were ripening slowly into red flower. But he
was a shaken man. As he saw the problem of his romance, there were
two persons to be saved, Betty and himself. He had behaved, on the one
occasion, outrageously. He could see his action now as nothing other
than weakness, curiously despicable, in the light of the pitiless facts.
Reason had left him. Gusts of emotion lashed him. He now regarded
the experience as a storm that must be somehow weathered. He couldn't
weather it in Shanghai. Not with Betty there. He would surely seek her;
find her. With his disordered soul he would cry out to her. In this
alarming mood no subterfuge would appear too mean--sending clandestine
notes by yellow hands, arranging furtive meetings.
He was, of course, running away from her, from his task, from himself.
It was expensive business. But he had meant to work up as far as
Tientsin and Peking before the year ran out. He was, after all, but
taking that part of it first. To this bit of justification he clung. He
passed but one night at Tientsin, in the curiously British hotel, on an
out-and-out British street, where one saw little more to suggest the
East than the Chinese policeman at the corner, an occasional passing
amah or mafoo, and the blue-robed, soft-footed hotel servants; then
on to Peking by train, an easy four-hour run, lounging in a European
dining-car where the allied troops had fought their way foot by foot
only seven years earlier.
Brachey, though regarded by critical reviewers as a rising authority
on the Far East, had never seen Peking. India he knew; the Straits
Settlements--at Singapore and Penang he was a person of modest but real
standing; Borneo, Java, Celebes and the rest of the vast archipelago,
where flying fish skim a burnished sea and green islands float above a
shimmering horizon against white clouds; the Philippines, Siam, Cochin
China and Hongkong; but the swarming Middle Kingdom and its Tartar
capital were fresh fuel to his coldly eager mind. He stopped, of course,
at the almost Parisian hotel of the International Sleeping Car Company,
just off Legation Street.
Peking, in the spring of 1907, presented a far from unpleasant aspect to
the eye of the traveler. The siege of the legations was already history
and half-forgotten; the quarter itself had been wholly rebuilt. The
clearing away of the crowded Chinese houses about the legations left
_à glacis_ of level ground that gave dignity to the walled enclosure.
Legation Street, paved, bordered by stone walks and gray compound-walls,
dotted with lounging figures of Chinese gatekeepers and alert sentries
of this or that or another nation--British, American, Italian, Austrian,
Japanese, French, Belgian, Dutch, German--offered a pleasant stroll of
a late afternoon when the sun was low. Through gateways there were
glimpses to be caught of open-air tea parties, of soldiers drilling,
or even of children playing. Tourists wandered afoot or rolled by in
rickshaws drawn by tattered blue and brown coolies.
From the western end of the street beyond the American _glacis_, one
might see the traffic through the Chien Gate, with now and then a
nose-led train of camels humped above the throng; and beyond, the vast
brick walls and the shining yellow palace roofs of the Imperial City.
Around to the north, across the Japanese _glacis_, one could stroll, in
the early evening, to the motion-picture show, where one-reel films from
Paris were run off before an audience of many colors and more nations
and costumes, while a placid Chinaman manipulated a mechanical piano.
2
Brachey had letters to various persons of importance along the street.
With the etiquette of remote colonial capitals, he had long since
trained himself to a mechanical conformity. Accordingly he devoted his
first afternoon to a round of calls, by rickshaw; leaving cards in the
box provided for the purpose at the gate house of each compound. Before
another day had gone he found return cards in his box at the hotel;
and thus was he established as _persona grata_ on Legation Street.
Invitations followed. The American minister had him for tiffin. There
were pleasant meals at the legation barracks. Tourist groups at the
hotel made the inevitable advances, which he met with austere dignity.
Meantime he busied himself discussing with experts the vast problems
confronting the Chinese in adjusting their racial life to the modern
world, and within a few days was jotting down notes and preparing
tentative outlines for his book.
This activity brought him, at first, some relief from the emotional
storm through which he had been passing. Work, he told himself, was the
thing; work, and a deliberate avoidance of further entanglements.
If, in taking this course, he was dealing severely with the girl whose
brightly pretty face and gently charming ways had for a time disarmed
him, he was dealing quite as severely with himself; for beneath his
crust of self-sufficiency existed shy but turbulent springs of feeling.
That was the trouble; that had always been the trouble; he dared not let
himself feel, lie had let go once before, just once, only to skim the
very border of tragedy. The color of that one bitter experience of his
earlier manhood ran through every subsequent act of his life. Month by
month, through the years, he had winced as he drew a check to the hard,
handsome, strange woman who had been, it appeared, his wife; who was,
incredibly, his wife yet. With a set face he had read and courteously
answered letters from this stranger. A woman of worldly wants, all of
which came, in the end, to money. The business of his life had settled
down to a systematic meeting of those wants. That, and industriously
employing his talent for travel and solitude.
No, the thing was to think, not feel. To logic and will he pinned his
faith. Impulses rose every day, here in Peking, to write Betty. It
wouldn't be hard to trace her father's address. For that matter he
knew the city. He found it impossible to forget a word of hers. Vivid
memories of her round pretty face, of the quick humorous expression
about her brown eyes, the movements of her trim little head and slim
body, recurred with, if anything, a growing vigor They would leap into
his mind at unexpected, awkward moments, cutting the thread of sober
conversations. At such moments he felt strongly that impulse to explain
himself further. But his clear mind told him that there would be no good
in it. None. She might respond; that would involve them the more deeply.
He had gone too far. He had (this in the bitter hours) transgressed. The
thing was to let her forget; it would, he sincerely tried to hope, be
easier for her to forget than for himself He had to try to hope that.
3
But on an evening the American military attaché dined with him. They
sat comfortably over the coffee and cigars at one side of the large
hotel dining-room. Brachey liked the attaché. His military training, his
strong practical instinct for fact, his absorption in his work, made
him the sort with whom Brachey, who had no small talk, really no
social grace, could let himself go. And the attaché knew China. He had
traversed the interior from Manchuria and Mongolia to the borders of
Thibet and the Loto country of Yunnan, and could talk, to sober ears,
interestingly. On this occasion, after dwelling long on the activity
of secret revolutionary societies in the southern provinces and in the
Yangtse Valley, he suddenly threw out the following remark:
“But of course, Brachey, there's an excellent chance, right now, to
study a revolution in the making out here in Hansi. You can get into
the heart of it in less than a week's travel. And if you don't mind a
certain element of danger...”
The very name of the province thrilled Brachey. He sat, fingering his
cigar, his face a mask of casual attention, fighting to control the
uprush of feeling. The attache was talking on. Brachey caught bits here
and there; “You've seen this crowd of banker persons from Europe around
the hotel? Came out over the Trans Siberian with their families. A
committee representing the Directorate of the Ho Shan Company. The story
is that they've been asked to keep out of Hansi for the present for fear
of violence.... You'd get the whole thing, out there--officials with a
stake 'n the local mines shrewdly stirring up trouble while pretending
to put it down; rich young students agitating, the Chinese equivalent of
our soap-box Socialists; and queer Oriental motives and twists that you
and I can't expect to understand.... The significant thing though, the
big fact for you, I should say--is that if the Hansi agitators succeed
in turning this little rumpus over the mining company into something of
a revolution against the Imperial Government, it'll bring them into an
understanding with the southern provinces. It may yet prove the deciding
factor in the big row. Something as if Ohio should go democratic this
year, back home. You see?... There are queer complications. Our Chinese
secretary says that a personal quarrel between two mandarins is
a prominent item in the mix-up.... That's the place for you, all
right--Hansi! They've got the narrow-gauge railway nearly through to
T'ainan-fu, I believe. You can pick up a guide here at the hotel. He'll
engage a cook. You won't drink the water, of course; better carry a few
cases of Tan San. And don't eat the green vegetables. Take some beef and
mutton and potatoes and rice. You can buy chickens and eggs. Get a money
belt and carry all the Mexican dollars you can stagger under. Provincial
money's no good a hundred miles away. Take some English gold for a
reserve. That's good everywhere. And you'll want your overcoat.”
Five minutes later Brachey heard this:
“A. P. Browning, the Agent General of the Ho Shan Company, is stopping
here now, along with the committee. Talk with him, first. Get the
company's view of it. He'll talk freely. Then go out there and have
a look--see for yourself. Say the word, and I'll give you a card to
Browning.”
Now Brachey looked up. It seemed to him, so momentous was the hour,
that his pulse had stopped. He sat very still, looking at his guest,
obviously about to speak.
The attaché, to whom this man's deliberate cold manner was becoming a
friendly enough matter of course, waited.
“Thanks,” Brachey finally said. “Be glad to have it.”
But the particular card, scribbled by the attaché, there across the
table, was never presented. For late that night, in a bitter revulsion
of feeling, Brachey tore it up.
4
In the morning, however, when he stopped at the desk, the Belgian clerk
handed him a thick letter from his attorney in New York, forwarded from
his bank in Shanghai. He read and reread it, while his breakfast turned
cold; studied it with an unresponsive brain.
It seemed that his wife's attorney had approached his with a fresh
proposal. Her plan had been to divorce him on grounds of desertion and
non-support; this after his refusal to supply what is euphemistically
termed “statutory evidence.” But the fact that she had from month to
month through the years accepted money from him, and not infrequently
had demanded extra sums by letter and telegram, made it necessary that
he enter into collusion with her to the extent of keeping silent and
permitting her suit to go through unopposed. His own instructions to his
lawyer stood flatly to the contrary.
But a new element had entered the situation. She wished to marry again.
The man of her new choice had means enough to care for her comfortably.
And in her eagerness to be free she proposed to release him from payment
of alimony beyond an adjustment to cover the bare cost of her suit, on
condition that he withdraw his opposition.
It was the old maneuvering and bargaining. At first thought it disgusted
and hurt him. The woman's life had never come into contact with his,
since the first few days of their married life, without hurting him. He
had been harsh, bitter, unforgiving. He had believed himself throughout
in the right. She had shown (in his view) no willingness to take
marriage seriously, give him and herself a fair trial, make a job of
it. She had exhibited no trait that he could accept as character. It had
seemed to him just that she should suffer as well as he.
But now, as the meaning of the letter penetrated his mind, his spirits
began to rise. It was a tendency he resisted; but he was helpless. From
moment to moment his heart, swelled. Not once before in four years had
the thought of freedom occurred to him as a desirable possibility. But
now he knew that he would accept it, even at the cost of collusion and
subterfuge. He saw nothing of the humor in the situation; that he, who
had judged the woman so harshly, should find his code of ethics, his
very philosophy, dashed to the ground by a look from a pair of brown
eyes, meant little. It was simply that up to the present time an ethical
attitude had been the important thing, whereas now the important thing
was Betty. That was all there seemed to be to it. But then there had
been almost as little of humor as of love in the queerly solitary life
of Jonathan Brachey.
He cabled his attorney, directly after breakfast, to agree to the
divorce. Before noon he had engaged a guide and arranged with him
to take the morning train southward to the junction whence that
narrow-gauge Hansi Line was pushing westward toward the ancient
provincial capital.
In all this there was no plan. Brachey, confused, aware that the
instinctive pressures of life were too much for him, that he was beaten,
was soberly, breathlessly, driving toward the girl who had touched and
tortured his encrusted heart. He was not even honest with himself; he
couldn't be. He dwelt on the importance of studying the Hansi problem
at close range He decided, among other things, that he wouldn't permit
himself to see Betty, that he would merely stay secretly near her,
certainly until a cablegram from New York should announce his positive
freedom. In accordance with this decision he tore up his letters to her
as fast as they were written. If the fact that he was now writing such
letters indicated an alarming condition in his emotional nature, at
least his will was still intact. He proved that by tearing them up. He
even found this thought encouraging.
But, of course, he had taken his real beating when he gave up his plans
and caught the coasting steamer at Shanghai. He was to learn now that
rushing away from Betty and rushing toward her were irradiations of the
same emotion.
He left Peking on that early morning way-train of passenger and freight
cars, without calling again at the legation; merely sent a chit to the
Commandant of Marines to say that he was off. He had not heard of the
requirement that a white traveler into the interior carry a consular
passport countersigned by Chinese authorities, and also, for purposes
of identification, a supply of cards with the Chinese equivalent of
his name; so he set forth without either, and (as a matter of fixed
principle) without firearms.