1
WELL,” continued Mr. Po expansively, “I've certainly had a pretty
kettle of fish about my ears.”
Brachey filled and lighted his pipe, and yielded his senses for a
moment to the soothing effect of the fragrant smoke.
“Is the fighting really over?” he asked.
“Oh, yes!”
“But why? What's happened?”
Mr. Po indulged in his easy, quiet laugh.
“To begin at first blush,” he said, settling comfortably back as If
launched on a long narrative, “while out on scouting leap in dark I
stumbled plump on Lookers, and by thunder, it was necessary to trust
broken reed of lying on stomach hi open ground!”
“They caught you?”
“Oh, yes! For hell of a while I held breath, but with dust in nose it
became unavoidable to sneeze. I would then have lost head promptly but
officer of yamen entourage of Kang spotted me and said, 'What the devil
you doing here!' With which I explain of course that I escape by hook
or crook from white devils. Then I appear before general and demand
audience discussion with old Kang. Old reprobate received me and made
long speech. Perfectly absurd! He said I must go to T'ainan-fu as his
particular guest and speak to His Excellency Pao Ting Chuan his message,
like this:
“'For many years I have known and respected your abilities as scholar
and statesman of huge understanding ability. We have both seen, you and
I, continuing unprincipled encroachment of foreign devil on preserves
of our ancient and fruitful land, while the sorrow of our own Hansi
Province under heel of foreign mining syndicate despot is matter of
common ill repute to us both. Now as loyal friend and unswervingly
determined on destroying all evil influence of foreign devils, I invite
you as guest to share with me pleasure of witnessing capture and utter
destruction of foreign compound at Ping Yang. Omens agree on midnight of
to-day week, following banquet of state and theatrical performance at
my headquarters, at which favorite amateur actor Wang Lo Hsu will recite
historical masterpiece, “The Song of Wun Hsing.” And as my cooks are all
wretched creatures, unworthy of catering to poorest classes, I beg of
you bring delicately expert cook of Canton that I may again rejoice in
delightful memory of sweet lotus soup.'”
Mr. Po paused to light a cigarette.
“So you went back to Tiainan?” asked Brachey.
“Oh, no, I was taken back against grain as prisoner of large armed
guard.”
“And you delivered the message?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Pao didn't accept, of course. Though I don't see how he could get out
of it. He had no soldiers to speak of, did he?”
“Oh, yes, some. These he sent by northern road to region of Shan Tang,
only thirty _li_ away from Ping Yang. And then he accept, for His
Excellency is great statesman. Nobody yet ever put it over on His
Excellency, not so you could notice it. Without frown or smile he
assemble secretaries, runners and lictors of yamen. banner-men, some
concubines and eunuchs and come post-haste.”
“So he's here now?”
“Oh, yes. We have large establishment at temple over on neighboring
hill. And everything's all right. O. K.”
“You'll forgive me if I don't at all understand why.”
“Naturally. I am going to make clear as cotton print. For a day or so
everything was as disorderly as the dickens, of course. You couldn't
hear yourself think. And sleep? My God, there wasn't _any_. And of
course after death of old reprobate Lookers went to pieces and raised
Ned. It became necessary to punish leaders and all that sort of thing.
You see, Dame Rumor gets move on in China, runs around like scared
chicken, faster than telegraph, I sometimes think. And when Lookers
heard stories, that Imperial Government up at Peking wasn't so crazy
about giving them support, and might even hand them double-cross lemon,
they began to think about patching holes in fences. They just blew
up. And His Excellency”--he chuckled--“he grasped situation like chain
lightning. Oh, but he's whale of a fellow, His Excellency!” Brachey
smoked reflectively as he studied this curiously bloodless enthusiast.
Evidently behind the humorously inadequate English speech of Mr. Po
there was, if it could be got at, a stirring drama of intrigue. A
typical Oriental drama, bearing a smooth surface of silken etiquette
but essentially cruel and bloody. The difficulty would be, of course, in
getting at it, drawing it out piecemeal and putting it together.
“His Excellency will now clean up whole shooting match,” Mr. Po went on.
“No more Ho Shan Company!” And he waved his cigarette about to indicate
the compound.
“Oh, that goes, too?”
“Oh, yes! His Excellency has at once telegraphed agent-general
at Tientsin for final show-down price on surrender of all leases,
agreements, expenses, bribes and absolute good riddance. They say three
million taels cash. To-morrow we shall throw it at their heads. And so
much for that!”
“H'm!” mused Brachey. “Pretty quick work. Rather takes one's breath
away.”
“Oh, yes! But His Excellency's son of a gun.”
“Evidently. But I'm still in the dark as to how this rather
extraordinary change came about. Did I understand you to say that Kang
is dead?”
“Oh, yes! Night before last.”
“How did that happen?”
“Oh, well--it's just as well not to give this away--on arrival at Ping
Yang His Excellency made at once prepare bowl of sweet lotus soup and
send it with many compliments and hopes of good omens to old devil.”
“You mean--there was poison in it?”
“Oh, yes! Pretty darned hard to put it over His Excellency. After that
it was no trouble at all to behead commanders of Looker troops.”
“Naturally,” was Brachey's only comment. He proceeded to draw out, bit
by bit, other details of the story.
Some one stepped before the tent, and a strong voice called:
“Mr. Brachey.”
With a nervously abrupt movement Brachey sprang up and threw back the
flaps; and beheld, standing there, stooping in order that he might see
within, the giant person of Griggsby Doane.
2
Brachey bowed coldly. Doane's strong gaunt face worked perceptibly.
Brachey said:
“Won't you come in, sir? The tent is”--there was a pause--“the tent
is small, but... You are perhaps acquainted with Mr. Po Sui-an of the
yamen of His Excellency Pao Ting Chuan.”
Mr. Doane bowed toward the Chinese gentleman.
“I think I have seen Mr. Po at the yamen,” he said, speaking now in the
slow grave way of the old Griggsby Doane. “You bring good news?”
“Oh, yes!” Mr. Po lighted a cigarette. “We shall doubtless in jiffy see
you again at T'ainan-fu.”
Doane looked thoughtfully, intently at him, then replied in the simple
phrase, “It may be.” To Brachey he said now, producing a white envelope,
“I found this, cablegram held for you at Shau T'ing, sir.”
Brachey took the envelope; stood stiffly holding it unopened before him.
For a moment the eyes of these two men met. Then Doane broke the tension
by simply raising his head, an action which removed it from the view of
the men within the tent.
“Good morning,” he said rather gruffly. And “Good morning, Mr. Po.”
He was well out of ear-shot when Brachey's gray lips mechanically
uttered the two words, “Thank you.” From a distant corner of the
compound came the fresh voices of young men--Americans and Australian
and English--raised in crudely pleasant harmony They were singing _My
Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean_. As they swung into the rolling, rollicking
refrain, women's voices joined in faintly from here and there about
the compound.... Brachey seemed to be listening. Then, again, abruptly
starting into action, he stepped outside the tent and stared across the
courtyard after Griggby Doane.... Then, as abruptly, he remembered his
guest and returned within the tent, with an almost muttered “I beg your
pardon.”
“Oh, go on--read your cablegram!” said Mr. Po good-humoredly.
Bradley looked at him; then at the envelope--turning it slowly over. His
hands trembled. This fact appeared to disturb him. He held one hand
out before his face and watched it intently, finally lowering it with
a quick nervous shake of the head. He seated himself again on the cot;
tore off an end of the envelope; caught his breath; then sat motionless
with the bit of paper that meant to him everything in life, or nothing,
hanging between limp fingers. A puzzling reminder of the strange man,
Griggsby Doane, was the painful throbbing in his head.... They were
singing again, about the compound--it was the college song of his youth,
_Solomon Levi_.
He thought, with another of those odd little mental and physical jerks,
again of his guest; and heard himself saying--weakly it seemed, like
a man talking in dreams--“You will think me...” But found himself
addressing an empty enclosure of canvas. Mr. Po had slipped out and
dropped the flaps. That he could have done this unobserved frightened
Brachey a little. He looked again at his trembling hand.
Again he raised the envelope. Until this moment he had assumed that it
could be but one message to himself and Betty; but now he knew vividly
better.
Anything might have happened. It was unthinkable that he should want the
courage to read it. He had foreseen no such difficulty. Perhaps if it
had come by any other hand than that of Griggsby Doane....
His thoughts wandered helplessly back over the solitary life he had
led... wandering in Siam and Borneo and Celebes, dwelling here and there
in untraveled corners of India, picking up the quaint folklore of the
Malay Peninsula, studying the American sort of social organization in
the Philippines... eight years of it! He had begun as a disheartened
young man, running bitterly away from the human scheme in which he found
no fitting niche. Yes, that was it, after all; he had run away! He had
begun with a defeat, based his working life on just that. The five
substantial books that now stood to his name in every well-stocked
library in America, as in many in England and on the Continent, were,
after all, but stop-gaps in an empty life. They were a subterfuge, those
books.........All the hard work, the eager close thinking, was now,
suddenly, meaningless. That he had chosen work instead of drink, that he
had been, after all, a decent fellow, pursuing neither chance nor women,
seemed immaterial.
The curse of an active imagination was on him now, and was riding him as
wildly as ever witch rode a broomstick.
The very bit of paper in his hand was nothing if not the symbol of his
terrible failure in the business called living. As he had built his work
on failure, was he, inevitably, to build the happiness of himself and
Betty on the same painful foundation. Even if the paper should announce
his freedom? Bitterly he repeated aloud the word, “Freedom!” Then
“Happiness?”... What were these elusive things? Were they in any sense
realities?
He nerved himself and read the message:
“Absolute decree granted you are free.”
He tossed it, with its unpunctuated jumble of words, on the table.
A little later, though he still indulged in this scathing self-analysis,
the habit of meeting responsibilities that was more strongly a part of
his nature than in this hour of utter emotion he knew, began to assert
itself. The strong character that had led him, after all, out to fight
and to build his mental house, was largely the man.
He slowly got up and stood before the square bit of mirrror that hung
on the rear tent-pole; then looked down at his mud-stained clothes.
Deliberately, almost painfully, he shaved and dressed. It was
characteristic that he put on a stiff linen collar.
There was, to a man of his stripe, just one thing to do: and that thing
he was going at directly, firmly. Until it was done he could not so much
as speak to Betty. Of the outcome of this effort he had no notion; he
was going at it doggedly, with his character rather than with his
mind. Indeed the mind quibbled, manufactured little delays, hinted at
evasions. He even listened to these whisperings, entertained them; but
meanwhile went straight on with his dressing.
3
As he emerged from the tent sudden noises assailed his ears. A line of
young men danced in lock step, doing a serpentine from one areaway to
another, and waving and shouting merrily as they passed. There was still
the singing, somewhere; one of the songs of Albert Chevalier, who
had not then been forgotten. He heard vaguely, with half an ear, the
enthusiastic outburst of sound on the final line:
“Missie 'Enry 'Awkins is a first-class nyme!”
So it was a day of celebration! He had forgotten that it would be.
But of course! Even the Chinese were at it; he could hear one of their
flageolets wailing, and, more faintly, stringed instruments.
He walked directly to the building occupied by the Boatwrights; sent in
his card to Mr. Doane.
He was shown into a little cubicle of a room. Here was the huge man,
rising from an absurdly small work table that had been crowded in by
the window, between the wall and the foot of the bed. He was writing,
apparently, a long letter.
Brachey, an odd figure to Doane's eyes, in his well-made suit and stiff
white collar, stood on the sill, as rigid as a soldier at attent ion.
“I am interrupting you,” he said, almost curtly,
For the first time Griggsby Doane caught a glimpse of the man Brachey
behind that all but forbidding front; and he hesitated, turning for
a moment, stacking his papers together, and with a glance at the open
window laying a book across them.
He had said, kindly enough, “Oh, no, indeed! Come right in.” But his
thoughts were afield, or else he was busily, quickly, rearranging them.
Brachey stepped within, and closed the door. Here they were, these two,
at last, shut together in a room. It was a moment of high tension.
“Sit down,” said Doane, still busying himself at the table, but waving
an immense hand toward the other small chair.
But Brachey stood... waiting... in his hand a folded paper.
Finally Doane lifted his head, with a brusk but not unpleasant, “Yes,
sir?”
Brachey, for a moment, pressed his lips tightly together.
“Mr. Doane,” he said then, clipping his words off short, “may I first
ask you to read this cablegram?”
Doane took the paper, started to unfold it, but then dropped it on the
table and stepped forward.
And now for the first time Brachey sensed, behind this great frame and
the weary, haggard face, the real Griggsby Doane; and stood very still,
fighting for control over the confusion in his aching head. This was, he
saw now, a strong man; a great deal more of a personality than he had
supposed he would find. Even before the next words, he felt something of
what was coming, something of the vigorous honesty of the man. Doane had
been through recent suffering, that was clear Something---and even then,
in one of his keen mental dashes, Brachey suspected that it was a much
more personal experience than the Looker attack--something had upset
him. This wasn't a man to turn baby over a wound, or to lose his head in
a little fighting. No, it was an illness of the soul that had hollowed
the eyes and deepened the grooves between them. But it didn't matter.
What did matter was that he was now, in this gentle mood, surprisingly
like Betty. For she had a curious vein of honesty; and she said, at
times, just such unexpectedly frank, wholly open things as he felt
(with an opening heart) that the father was about to say now.
“Mr. Brachey”--this was what he said, with extraordinary simplicity of
manner--“can you take my hand?”
If Brachey had spoken his reply his voice would have broken. Instead he
gripped the proffered hand. And during a brief moment they stood there.
“Now,” said Doane quietly, “sit down.” And he read the cablegram. After
some quiet thought he said, “Have you come to ask for Betty?”
The directness of this question made speech, to Brachey, even more
nearly impossible than before. He bowed his head.
Doane had dropped into the little chair by the little table. He sat,
now, thinking and absently weighing the cablegram in one hand. Finally,
reaching a conclusion, he rose again.
“The best way, I think, will be to settle this thing now.” He appeared
to be speaking as much to himself as to his caller. “I'll get Betty. You
won't mind waiting? They don't have call bells in this house.” And he
returned the cablegram and went out of the room, leaving the door ajar
behind him.
Brachey stepped over to the window, thinking he might see Betty when she
came, but it gave on an inner court. He stared out at the gray tiling.
The moment was, to him, terrible. He stood on the threshold of that
strange region of the spirit that is called happiness. The door, always
before closed to him (except the one previous experience when it proved
but an entry into bitterness and desolation) had opened, here at the
last, amazingly, at his touch. And he was afraid to look.
It seemed an hour later when footsteps sounded outside, and the outer
door opened. Then they came in, father and daughter.
Betty, rather white, stood hesitant, looking from one to the other.
Doane placed a gently protecting arm about her slim shoulders.
“I haven't told her,” he said. “That is for you to do. I want you both
to wait while I look for the others.”
He was gone. Betty came slowly forward. Brachey handed her the
cablegram.
“I--I can't read it,” she said, with a tremulous little laugh.
“John--I'm crying!”
4
The door squeaked. Miss Hemphill looked in; stopped short; then in
a sudden confusion of mind in which indignation struggled with
bewilderment for the upper hand, stepped back into the hall. Before
she could come down on the decision to flee, Dr. Cassin joined her;
curiously, carrying her medicine case.
To the physician's brisk, “Mr. Doane sent word to come here at once.
Do you know what is the matter?” Miss Hemphill could only reply, rather
acidly, “I can't imagine!”
Mrs. Boatwright came into the corridor then, followed by Doane. She
walked with firm dignity, her enigmatic face squarely set. And when he
ushered them into the room, she entered without a word, but remained
near the door.
For a long moment the room was still; a hush settling over them that
intensified the difficulty in the situation. Miss Hemphill stared down
at the matting. Mrs. Boatwright's eyes were fixed firmly on the wall
over the bed. The one audible sound was the heavy breathing of Griggsby
Doane, who stood with his back to the door, brows knit, one hand
reaching a little way before him. He appeared, to the shrewd eyes of Dr.
Cassin, like a man in deep suffering. But when he spoke it was with
the poise, the sense of dominating personality, that she had felt and
admired during all the earlier years of their long association. Of late
he had been ill of a subtle morbid disease of which she had within the
week witnessed the nearly tragic climax; but now he was well again....
Mary Cassin was a woman of considerable practical gifts. Her medical
experience, illuminated as it had been by wide scientific reading,
gave her a first-hand knowledge of the human creature and a tolerant
elasticity of judgment that contrasted oddly with the professed tenets
of her church, with their iron classification as sin of much that is
merely honest human impulse, that might even, properly, be set down
as human need. She saw clearly enough that the quality in the human
creature that is called, usually, force, is essentially emotional in its
content--and that the person gifted with force therefore must be plagued
with emotional problems that increase in direct ratio with the gift.
Unlike Mrs. Boatwright, who was, of course, primarily a moralist,
Mary Cassin possessed the other great gift of dispassionate, objective
thought. I think she had long known the nature of Doane's problem.
Certainly she knew that no medical skill could help him; her
advice, always practical, would have taken the same direction as Dr.
Hidderleigh's. It brought her a glow of something not unlike happiness
to see that now he was well. The cure, whatever it might prove to have
been, was probably mental. Knowing Griggsby Doane as she did, that was
the only logical conclusion. For she knew how strong he was.
“There has existed among us a grave misapprehension”--thus Doane--“one
in which, unfortunately, I have myself been more grievously at fault
than any of you. I wish, now, before you all, to acknowledge my own
confusion in this matter, and, further, to clear away any still existing
misunderstanding in your minds.... Mr. Brachey has established the fact
that he is eligible to become Betty's husband. That being the case, I
can only add that I shall accept him as my only son-in-law with pride
and satisfaction. He has proved himself worthy in every way of our
respect and confidence.”
Mary Cassin broke the hush that followed by stepping quickly forward
and kissing Betty; after which she gave her hand warmly to Brachey. Then
with a word about her work at the hospital she went briskly out.
Miss Hemphill started forward, only to hesitate and glance in a spirit
of timid inquiry at the implacable Mrs. Boatwright. To her simple,
unquestioning faith, Mr. Doane and Mary Cassin could not together be
wrong; yet her closest daily problem was that of living from hour to
hour under the businesslike direction of Mrs. Boatwright. However,
having started, and lacking the harsh strength of character to be cruel,
she went on, took the hands of Betty and Brachey in turn, and wished
them happiness. Then she, too, hurried away.
Elmer Boatwright was studying his wife. His color was high, his eyes
nervously bright. He was studying, too, Griggsby Doane, who had for
more than a decade been to him almost an object of worship. Moved by
an impulse, perhaps the boldest of his life--and just as his wife said,
coldly, “I'm sure I wish you happiness,” and moved toward the door--he
went over and caught Betty and Brachey each by a hand.
“I haven't understood this,” he said--and tears stood in his eyes as he
smiled on them--“but now I'm glad. Betty, we are all going to be proud
of the man you have chosen. I'm proud of him now.”