1
DOANE walked, carelessly erect, to a knoll something less than a
hundred yards northeast of the compound and off to the left of the ride
pits. Here he stood for a brief time, listening. He purposed going out
through the lines as he had come in through them, by crawling, hiding,
feeling his way foot by foot. The line was thinnest in front of the
rifle pits, and just to the left where the upper machine gun commanded a
defile.
He had allowed two hours for the journey through the lines, but it
consumed nearly four. At one point he lay for an hour behind a stone
trough while a squad of Lookers built a fire and brewed tea. A recurring
impulse was to walk calmly in among those yellow men and go down
fighting. It seemed as good a way as any to go. He found it necessary to
hold with a strong effort of will to the thought of his fellow's in the
compound; that to save them, and to save Betty, he must carry through.
Toward one o'clock in the morning, now well to the eastward of the
besieging force, he swung into his stride. It seemed, in the retrospect,
absurdly like the play of children to be hiding and crawling about the
hillsides. But he was glad now that he had somehow, painfully, kept
his head. Barring the unforeseen, the diplomatic gentlemen up at Peking
would find the news awaiting them when they came to their desks in the
morning. After that noting that he might do would greatly matter. He
could follow these powerfully recurring impulses if he chose; let
the end come. That was now his greatest desire. Life had become quite
meaningless. Except for Betty....
2
Shau T'ing was but another of the innumerable rural villages that dot
northern China. Though there were a railway station, and sidings, and
a quaintly American water tank set high on posts. The inns were but the
familiar Oriental caravansaries; no modern hotel, no “Astor House,” had
sprung up as yet to care for newly created travel.
As he approached the stream that ran through a loess canyon a mile or
more west of the village he glimpsed, ahead, a group of soldiers seated
about a fire. Just behind them were stacks of rifles; this much he saw
and surmised with the help of the firelight. And the first glow of dawn
was breaking in the east. He left the highway and swung around through
the fields, passing between scattered grave mounds from whose tops
the white joss papers fluttered in the gray twilight like timid little
ghosts.
He crossed the gorge by the old suspension footbridge, with the
crumbling memorial arches at either end bearing, each characteristic
inscriptions suggestive of happiness and peace. Looking down-stream he
could dimly see that the railway bridge lay, a tangle of twisted steel,
in the stream, leaving the abutments of white stone rearing high in the
air with wisps of steel swinging aimlessly from the tops.
He half circled the village, and waited outside the eastern gate until
the massive doors swung open at sunrise.
He went to the leading inn, and gave up an hour to eating the food in
his knapsack and cleaning his mud-dyed clothing. The innkeeper informed
him, when he brought the boiled water, that another white man had been
there for three days. After this Doane went down to the station. A
solitary engine was puffing and clanking among the sidings, apparently
making up a train.
A number of the blue-turbaned military police stood sentry-go here and
there about the yard, each with fixed bayonet. Within the room that
was at once ticket office and telegraph station sat the Chinese agent
cheerfully contemplating a slack day.
Doane wrote out his messages, and stood over the man until they were
sent; then walked slowly back toward the inn. His task, really, was
done. He would wait until night, of course; there might be replies. But
at most his only further service would be in carrying hopeful messages
to the beleaguered folk at Ting Yang. Beyond that he would be but one
more human unit to fight and to be fed. Debit and credit, they seemed
just about to balance, those two items. Fastening his door he stretched
out on the _kang_.
He was awakened at the close of day by the innkeeper bringing food. The
man set out two plates on the dusty old table. Doane sat on the edge of
the _kang_ and drowsily wondered why. He had slept heavily. He stood up;
moved about the room; he was only a little stiff. Indeed his strength
was surely returning. He felt almost his old self, physically.
There was a knock at the door. In Chinese he called, “Enter!”
The door slowly opened, and a drab little man came in, walking with a
slight limp, and stood looking at him out of dusty blue eyes. He carried
a packet of papers.
“Grigg!” he exclaimed softly.
“Henry Withery!” cried Doane, “What on earth are you doing here?”
Withery smiled, and laid hat and packet on the table.
“I've arranged to dine with you,” he explained. “You won't mind?”
“Of course not, Henry. But why are you here?”
“My plans were changed.”
“Evidently. Do sit down.”
“I came back to find you. I've been waiting here for a chance to get
through. We've worried greatly, of course. A rumor came from the Chinese
that you were killed.”
“I nearly was,” said Doane quietly. A cloud had crossed his face as he
listened. At every point, apparently, at each fresh contact with life,
he was to be brought face to face with his predicament. It would be
pitiless business, of course, all the way through, for the severest
judge of all he had yet to face dwelt within his own breast; long after
the world had forgotten, that judge would be pronouncing sentence upon
him.
“You got through to Shanghai?” he asked abruptly.
Withery, touched by his appearance, a little disturbed by his nervously
abrupt manner, inclined his head.
“Well, it's out, I suppose. What are they saying about me, Henry?
Really, you'd better tell me. I've got to live through this thing, you
know. I may as well have the truth at once.”
Withery lowered his eyes; fingered the chopsticks that lay by his plate.
“No,” he said slowly. “No, Grigg, it's not out.”
“But you know of it. Surely others do, then. And they'll talk. It's the
worst way. It'll run wild. I'd rather face a church trial than that.”
He was himself unaware that he had been constantly brooding upon this
aspect of his trouble, yet the words came snapping out as if he had
thought of nothing else.
“Now, Grigg,” said Withery, in the same deliberately thoughtful way,
“I want you to let me talk. I've come way back here just to do that.
Hidderleigh showed me your letter. Then in my presence, he destroyed it.
I have promised him I would speak of it to no one but you. ... Neither
you nor I could have foreseen just how Hidderleigh would take this.
He is, of course, as he has always been, a dogmatic thinker. But like
others of us, he has grown some with the years. He's less narrow, Grigg.
He knows you pretty well--your ability, your influence. He respects
you.”
“Respects me?” Doane nearly laughed.
“Yes. He sees as clearly as you or I could that any human creature may
slip. And he knows that no single slip is fatal. Grigg, he wants you to
go back and take up your work.”
Doane could not at once comprehend this astonishing statement. He was
deeply moved. Withery by his simple friendliness had already done much
to restore in his mind, for the moment, a normal feeling for life.
“But he feels, Grigg, that you ought to marry again.”
Doane shook his head abruptly.
“No,” he cried, “I can't consider that. Not now.”
“As he said to me, Grigg, 'It is not good for man to be alone!'”
Withery let the subject rest here, and asked about the fighting. The
whole outside world was watching these Hansi hills, it appeared. The
Imperial Government was already disclaiming responsibility. Troops were
on their way, from Hong Kong, from the Philippines, from Indo-China.
“It will be a month or so before they can get out here,” mused Doane.
“Oh, yes! At best.”
“Meantime, the compound will fall at the first really determined attack.
They've been afraid of Pour-mont's machine guns--I heard some of their
talk last night, and the night before--but let Kang come to a decision
to drive them in and they'll go. That will settle it in a day.”
“Will they have the courage?”
“I think so. You and I know these people, Henry. They're brave enough.
All they lack is leadership, and organization. And this crowd have a
strong fanaticism to hold them up. Once let Kang appeal to their spirit
and they'll have to go in to save face. For if they can't be seen the
only danger is of an accident here and there. And, for that matter, Kang
may simply be waiting for Pourmont to use up his ammunition. It can't
last a great while, not in a real siege, which this is.”
“By the way,” said Withery a little later, “here is a lot of mail for
Pourmont's people. It's been accumulating. There was no way to get it to
them.”
“I'll take it in,” said Doane.
“You? You don't mean that you're going to ran that gauntlet again,
Grigg?”
“Yes.” He untied the packet, and looked through the little heap of
envelopes. One was a cablegram addressed to Jonathan Brachey. He held
it in tense fingers; gazed at it long while the pulse mounted in his
temples. “Oh, yes,” he said, almost casually then, “I'm going hack in.
They'll be looking for me.” But his thoughts were running wild again.
Withery said, before he left, “I'm going to ask you not to answer
Hidderleigh's request until you've thought it over carefully. My own
feeling is that he is right.”
“Suppose,” said Doane, “my final decision should be--as I think it
will--that I can't go back. What will they do?”
“Then I've promised him, I'll go in and take up your work. As soon as
this trouble is over.”
“That knocks out your year at home, Henry.”
“Yes, but what matters it? Very likely I shall find more happiness in
working, after all. That isn't what disturbs me.... Grigg, if you leave
the church it will be, I think, the severest blow of my life. I--I'm
going to tell you this--for years I've leaned on you. You didn't know,
but I've made a better job of my life for knowing that you too were hard
at it, just beyond the mountains. We haven't seen much of each other, of
late years, but I've felt you there.”
Doane's stern face softened as he looked at his old friend.
“And I've felt you, Henry,” he replied gently.
“Your blunders are those of strength, not of weakness, Grigg. Perhaps
your greatest mistake has been in leaning a little too strongly on
yourself. What I want you to consider now is giving self up, in every
way.”
But Duane shook his great head.
“No, Henry--no! I've given to the uttermost for years. And it has
wrecked my life--”
“No, Grigg! Don't say that!”
“Well--put it as you will. The trouble has been that I was doing wrong
all the time--for years--as I told you back in Tiaman, I was doing the
wrong thing. It led, all of it, to sin. For that sin, of course, I've
suffered, and must suffer more. The best reason I could think of for
going back would be to keep this added burden off your shoulders. But
that would be wrong too. It's getting a little clearer to me. I know
now that I've got to face my doubts and my sins, take them honestly for
whatever they may be. Each life must function in its own way. In the
eagerness of youth I chose wrong. I must now take the consequences.
Good-by, now! There's barely time to slip through the lines before
dawn.”
Withery rose. “I'll go with you,” he said.
“No. I won't allow that. You haven't the strength. You're not an
outdoor man We should have to separate anyway; together we should almost
certainly be caught. No. You stay here and get word through to them
from day to day if you can find any one to undertake it. It will mean
everything to them to hear from the outside world. Good luck!”
He took the packet and went out.
3
Again it was dawn Griggsby Doane stood on the crest of a terraced hi'!
looking off into the purple west. But a few miles farther on lay Ping
Yang.
Beneath him, near the foot of the slope, four coolies were already at
the radiating windlasses of a well, and tiny streams of yellow water
were trickling along troughs in the loess toward this and that field,
where bent silent farmers waited clod in hand to guide the precious
fluid from furrow to furrow. Still farther down, along the sunken
highway, a few venturesome muleteers led their trains. No outposts in
the Looker uniform were to be seen. And he heard no shots. It would be a
lull, then, in the fighting.
He descended the hill, dropped into the road, and walked, head high,
toward Ping Yang. As he swung along he heard, far off, the shots his
ears had strained for on the hill; one, another, then a spattering
volley; but he walked straight on. The Mongols and Chihleans on the road
gave him no more than the usual glance of curiosity. He passed through
a village; Ping Yang would be the next. The railway grade--here
an earthen rampart, there a cutting, yonder a temporary wooden
trestle--paralleled the highway, cutting into the heart of old China
like a surgeon's knife, letting out superstition and festering poverty,
letting n the strong fluids of commerce and education. He felt the
health of it profoundly, striding on alone through the cool, dear
morning air. It was imperfect, of course, this Western civilization that
he had so nearly come to doubt; yet, materialistic in its nature or not,
it was the best that the world had to offer at the moment. It was what
the amazing instinct in man to push on, to better his body and his
brain, had brought the world to. It seemed, now, a larger expression of
the vitality he felt within himself, the force that he had so lavishly
expended in a direction that was wrong for him.
He felt this, which could not have been less than the beginning of a new
focus of his misdirected, scattered powers, and yet he walked straight
on toward the red army that was sworn to kill all the whites. And
though his brain still told him, coolly, without the slightest sense of
personal concern, that he would probably be slain within the hour, his
heart, or his rising spirit, as calmly dismissed the report.
It might come, of course. He literally didn't care. Death might come at
any moment to any man. The present moment was his; and the next, and the
next, until the last whenever it should come. He walked with a thrilling
sense of power, above the world. For the world, life itself, was
suddenly coming back to him. He had been ill--for years, he knew now--of
a sick faith. Now he was well. If the old dogmatic religion was gone, he
was sensing a new personal religion of work, of healthy functioning,
of unquestioning service in the busy instinctive life of the world. He
would turn, not away from life to a mystical Heaven, but straight
into life at its busiest, head up, as now on the old highway of Hansi,
trusting his instinct as a human creature. No matter how difficult the
start he would plunge in and live his life out honestly. Betty remained
the problem; he knit his brows at the thought; but the new flame in
his heart blazed steadily higher. Whatever the problems, he couldn't he
headed now.
“What a morbid, sick fool I've been!” It was the cry of a heart new born
to health. It occurred to him, then, as he heard his own voice, that
this new sense of light had come to him as suddenly as that other light
that smote Paul on the Damascus road. It had the force, as he considered
it now, of a miracle....
4
The road was blocked ahead. Drawing near, he saw beyond the mules and
horses and men of the highway and the curious, pressing country folk a
considerable number of yellow turbans crowding the road canyon. There
must have been a hundred or more, with many rifle muzzles slanting
crazily above them. After a moment the rabble broke toward him.
Doane did not wait for them to discover him, but raising his stick and
calling for room to pass he walked in among them. He stood head and
shoulders above them, a suddenly appearing white giant whom a few
resisted at first, but more gave way to as he pushed firmly through.
Emerging on the farther side he walked on his way without so much as
looking back. And not a shot had been fired.
The road wound its way between steep walls of loess, so that ii was
impossible at any point to see far ahead. He came upon other, smaller
groups of the Lookers. Only one man, the largest of them, threatened
him, but as the man raised the butt of his rifle Doane snatched the
weapon from him and knocked him down with it; then tossed it aside and
strode on as before.
He came at length to a scenic arch in a notch. Through the arch Ping
Yang could be seen in its valley.
He stopped and looked. Near at hand were the tents of some of the Looker
soldiery; beyond lay the village; and beyond that on the hillside, the
compound of the company, lying as still as if it were deserted. There
were no puffs of smoke, no sounds along the village street; between the
outlying houses small figures appeared to Le bustling about, but they
made no noise that could be heard up here. The scene was uncanny.
Doane, however, went on down the hill. None of the Lookers were in
evidence now on the winding street, but only the silent, curious
villagers; this until two soldiers in blue came abruptly out of a house;
and then two others firmly holding by the arms a man in red and yellow
with an embroidered square on the breast of his tunic that marked him as
an officer of rank. Other soldiers followed, one bearing a large curved
sword.
Doane stopped to watch.
Without ceremony the officer's wrists were tied behind his back. He was
kicked to his knees. A blue soldier seized his queue and with it jerked
his head forward. The swordsman, promptly, with one clean blow', severed
the neck; then wiped his sword on the dead man's clothing and marched
away with the others, carrying the head.
Duane shivered slightly, compressed his lips, and, paler, walked on.
He passed other blue soldiers in the heart of the village, and a row of
Lookers standing without arms. Emerging from the straggling groups of
houses beyond the village wall he took the road up the hill. Away up the
slope he could see the men of the outposts standing and sitting on the
parapets of the rifle pits. At the gate of the compound he called out.
The gate opened, and closed behind him. Within stood men of the
garrison, and women, and behind them the Chinese. All looked puzzled.
Many tongues greeted him at once, eagerly questioning.
He looked about from one to another of the thin weary faces with burning
eyes that hung on his slightest gesture, and slowly shook his head. He
could answer none of their questions. He was searching for one face that
meant more to him than all the others. It was not there. He walked on
toward the house occupied by the Boatwrights. Just as he was turning in
there he saw Betty. She was tunning across from the residence.
“On, Dad!” she cried. “You're back!” Her arms were around his neck. “How
wonderful! And you're well--like your old self.”
[Illustration: 0357]
“Better than my old self, dear,” he said, with a tender smile, and
kissed her forehead.
“I can't stay, Dad. I just ran out. Wasn't it strange--I saw you from
the window! But what's happened? What is it? Everybody's so puzzled.
Have the troops come?”.
He shook his head.
“But it's something. Everybody's terribly excited.”
“I don't understand it myself, dear. Though I walked through it,
apparently.”
“Oh, look! They're opening the gate! What is it?” She hopped with
impatience, like a child, and clapped her hands. “Oh, I mustn't stay!
But tell m, do you think this dreadful business is over?”
“I believe it is, Betty.”
She ran back to her post. And he returned to the gate.
An odd little cavalcade was moving deliberately up the hill. In front
marched a soldier in blue bearing a large white flag (an obviously
Western touch, this). Behind him came a squad in column of fours, on
foot and unarmed; then a green sedan chair with four pole-men; behind
this three pavilions with carved wooden tops, of the sort carried in
wedding processions, each with four bearers; and last another squad of
foot soldiers.
Just outside the gate they came to a halt. The soldiers formed in line
on either side of the road. An officer advanced and asked permission to
enter. This was granted. At once the chairmen set down their burden. The
carved door opened, and a young Chinese gentleman stepped out. He was
tall, slim, with large spectacles; and moved with a quiet dignity that
amounted to a distinction of bearing. His long robe was of shimmering
blue silk embroidered in rose and gold; and the embroidered emblem on
his breast exhibited the silver pheasant of a mandarin of the fifth
class. On his head, the official, bowl-shaped straw hat with red tassel
was surmounted with a ball or button of crystal an inch in diameter set
in a mount of exquisitely worked gold. His girdle clasp also was of
worked gold with a plain silver button. The shoes that appeared beneath
the hem of his robe were richly embroidered and had thick white soles.
Calmly, deliberately, he entered the compound. One of the engineers, an
American, addressed him in the Mandarin tongue. He replied, in a deep
musical voice, with a pronounced intonation that gave this mellow
language, to a casual ear, something the sound of French.
The engineer bowed, and together they moved toward the residence, where
a somewhat mystified M. Pourmont awaited them. But first the mandarin
turned and signaled to the pavilion bearers, who still waited outside
the gate. These came in now, and it became evident that the ornate
structures were laden with gifts. There were platters of fruits and
of sweetmeats, bottles of wine, cooked dishes, and small caskets, some
carved, others lacquered, that might have contained jewels.
Doane, quietly observing the scene, found something familiar in the
appearance of the envoy. Something vaguely associated with the judge's
yamen at T'ainan-fu. Certainly, on some occasion, he had seen the man.
He stood for a brief time watching the two figures, a white man in
stained brown clothing, unkempt of appearance but vigorous in person,
walking beside the elegant young mandarin, appearing oddly crude beside
him, curiously lacking in the grace that marked every slightest movement
of the silk-clad Oriental; and the picture dwelt for a time among his
thoughts--the oldest civilization in the world, and the youngest.
Crude vigor, honest health, contrasted with a decadence that clung
meticulously to every slightest subtlety of etiquette. And behind the
two, towering above the heads of the ragged bearers, the curving pointed
roofs of the three pavilions, still gaily bizarre in form and color
despite the weatherbeaten condition of the paint; a childish touch,
suggestive of circus day in an American village. Suggestive, too,
whimsically, of the second childhood of the oldest race.
Doane, reflecting thus, slowly followed them to the residence.
5
Jonathan Brachey sat moodily on the parapet. Down below, the compound
(a crowded mass of roofs within a rectangle of red-gray wail) and below
that the straggling village, stood out as blocked-in masses of light and
shadow under the slanting rays of the morning sun.
A French youth, beside him, polishing his rifle with a greasy rag,
looked up with a question.
Brachey shook his head; he had no information. He looked over toward the
other pit. The Australian in command there (three nights earlier they
had buried Swain) waved a carelessly jocular hand and went on nibbling a
biscuit.
The thing might be over; it might not. Brachey found himself almost
perversely disturbed, however, at the prospect of peace. He had supposed
that he hated this dirty, bloody business. He saw no glory in fighting,
merely primitive blood-lust; an outcropping of the beast in man;
evidence that in his age-long struggle upward from the animal stage of
existence man had yet a long, long way to climb. But from the thought of
losing this intense preoccupation, of living quietly with the emphasis
again placed on personal problems, he found himself shrinking. What a
riddle it was!
He spoke shortly to the French youth, took up his own rifle, and led the
way up the hill to the bullet-spattered farm compounds. They were quite
deserted. Only the huddled, noxious dead remained. He went on up the
hillside, searching all the hiding-places of those red and yellow
vandals who had filled his thoughts by day and haunted his sleep at,
night; but all were empty of human life. A great amount of rubbish was
left--cooking utensils, knives, old Chinese-made rifles and swords, bits
of uniforms. He found even a jade ring and a few strings of brass cash.
Weary of spirit he returned to the rifle pits only to find these, too,
deserted. From the upper redoubt a man was waving, beckoning. Apparently
the compound gate was open, and a group of soldiers standing in line
outside; but these soldiers wore blue. Through his glasses he surveyed
the moving dots near the village; none wore red and yellow.
The man was still waving from the redoubt. The French youth, he found
now, was looking up at him, that eager question still in his eyes. He
nodded. With a sudden wild shout the boy ran down the hill, waving bis
rifle over his head.
So it was peace--sudden, enigmatic. Brachey sat again on the parapet.
Griggsby Doane was doubtless there (Brachey knew nothing of his journey;
he had not seen Betty. What could he say to him, to the father whom
Betty loved?
This wouldn't do, of course. He rose, a set dogged expression on his
long, always serious face, and went slowly down the hill; and with only
a nod to this person and that got to his tent. Once within, he closed
the flaps and sat on the cot. He discovered then that he had brought
with him one of the strings of cash, and jingled it absently against his
knee.
Voices sounded outside. Men were standing before the tent.
Then the flaps parted, and he beheld the spectacled, pleasantly smiling
face of Mr. Po.
“Oh,” he said, more shortly than he knew. “Come in!”
Mr. Po stepped inside, letting the flaps fall together behind him. He
made a splendid figure in blue and gold, as he removed the round hat
with its red plume and crystal ball and laid it on the rude table.
“I'm glad to see you're still sound of life and limb and fresh as a
daisy,” he remarked cheerfully. “With permission I will sit here a bit
for informal how-do chin-chin, and forget from minute to minute all
ceremonial dam-foolishness.”