“Then I've only this much to say, my boy. It's the one thing I've
learned from life. Never--never--fall in love with a woman. Play with
them, yes. Use them. But for God's sake don't let yourself fall in love
with them!”
He was speaking with a curious emphasis. His gaze had drifted upward
again toward the dirty ceiling. And now it was suddenly my turn to sit
and watch him.
“Don't do it!” he went on. “Don't do it. They fasten their lives on you,
they smother you. If you don't marry them, it's bad enough. If you do,
it's worse. You are an extremely gifted young man. I do not know that
I ever met a man with a keener mind or one that impressed me as having
more driving, vital force with which to shape a career. You are out here
now, right in your best years, full of enthusiasm for your work. Don't
let any woman into your life. Good or bad, whatever the phrases mean,
a woman is n't happy with a man until she has trimmed the scope of his
life down to the compass of her own understanding. She has to get it
right into her hands, and choke it. Then life begins to mean something
to her. Personally I have come to the conclusion that I get on rather
better with the bad women, so called. They don't expect so much. In a
way they are squarer--better sports, as you Americans say. Remember, my
boy, 'He travels the fastest who travels alone.'.
I was becoming tired of his wandering thoughts. Generalizations are a
bore, anyway. They are always loose, and generally wrong. Then, too, I
may as well admit that he was disturbing me deeply, this loose-minded
but shrewd old man.
“Look here,” I said abruptly, “you know of this obsession of Crocker's?”
He bowed.
“Can't we do something to restrain him?” He slowly shook his head.
“You don't mean to say that we can't stop a man who is bent on murder?”
“Our motives might be regarded as--well, not exactly clear, yours and
mine,” mused Sir Robert. “Besides, he hasn't done anything. You can
hardly restrain a man from becoming indignant if an acquaintance breaks
into his house and steals his wife.”
“But she is n't his property, like his watch!” I exclaimed.
He smiled tolerantly at me. “In a sense, she is,” said he. “In a sense.
The weight of law and tradition is against you there, Eckhart.”
“Traditions are nothing to me!” said I, hotly.
“They still mean a good deal to the rest of the world,” said he dryly.
“And even the law still has weight.” Then he went on, quite as if I had
not interrupted him. “In England it might be possible, in case we could
prove that he had openly threatened murder in the presence of competent
witnesses, to put him under bonds to keep the peace. But this is n't
England--it is the China Coast. At that, what would bonds mean to a
strong, self-willed man in Crocker's state of mind! A jealous man!” He
raised his monocle, held it a few inches before his face, and looked
through it at a speck on the ceiling. He even moved it around a little,
and squinted his right eye, as if sighting through a transit.
I wanted to strike it from his shaking fingers. Instead, I sat up very
straight and clasped my hands tightly together in my lap.
“Do you know,” he continued, in that irritating, musing tone, “I believe
the man is still in love with her, or thinks he is.”
“Love!” I sniffed. “You call _that_ love!” He did n't look at me. He was
still squinting at the ceiling. Pretty soon he sighed. “When you come
right down to it,” he said, “if a man has no right to protect his
home--and that implies some right of control over his wife--'love, honor
and obey,' you know--what becomes of our institutions! You see, Eckhart,
in the eyes of the world Crocker is entitled to a good deal of sympathy.
He took care of this woman for years, supported her in some luxury, I
take it, gave her a much richer sort of life than she had known before.”
“What do you mean by 'richer'.” I cried. “More money?”
He waved me back with his monocle, and went on with his argument. “She
was unwilling to bear him children. Now, Eckhart, that is serious. She
was his wife. She refused there to meet her absolute duty as a wife.
English law, at least, is quite definite on that point.”
This was dreadful. I could hardly keep in my chair.
“And following all this”--he was growing emphatic now--“she deliberately
leaves his home and attaches herself to another man. There is certainly
no doubt there, my boy. That is adultery. She dishonored his home. She
dishonored him--”
Here, I admit, I lost my temper. I sprang up, and for the second time in
my acquaintance with this old man, shook my finger under his nose.
“Rot!” I cried, using his own phrase. “Rot! All rot! He had _dishonored_
her home a hundred times.” My voice rang out on that word “dishonored.”
I fairly jammed it down Sir Robert's throat--made h'm eat that
word, letter by letter. “For God's sake, lower your voice!” said
he. “_Adultery!_” I shouted this, too. “Good God--'adultery' is a
commonplace to Crocker!”
“You don't know this,” said he. Then, “Lower your voice!”
“But I _do_ know,” I answered him. “He told me himself. 'Adultery!' Why,
millions of men commit adultery'--good men, bad men, every sort of
men! That's what the millions of prostitutes are _for!_ And, guilty
or innocent, we all lie about it to the women and the children.
Lie--lie--lie! I'm sick of it! I'm a scientist, I tell you, and I don't
recognize lies in my business. There's something wrong somewhere. We're
all playing at life--all pretending--all making believe--when we ought
to be studying the facts, working through those facts toward the truth.”
“What did I tell you,” he broke in, talking around my finger--“covering
up!”
“We're afraid of the truth,” I shouted. “So we cling desperately to
our lies, and call them beautiful. And the truth--beaten down,
perverted--undermines us, saps us, beats us at every turn. God, it's
awful!” My hand fell by my side.
“The worst of it is, probably the truth would be beautiful, if we could
only find it.”
Sir Robert again drew a long, long breath. “But what's the use,
Eckhart?” said he. “What you say is of course true. But why make a
Quixote of yourself? Why be a dam' fool! Society does cling to its
little lie. Even at a sacrifice of half the women in the world.
Admitting that some of our traditions are nothing more than outworn
tribal notions, what's the use of beating your brains out against them.
I tell you, my boy, if you talk too much of that sort of truth the world
will kill you. And the women who call themselves good will lead the
attack, for they are the sheltered, the privileged class. No, we must
take it as we find it.”
But I was past all this now--past the influence of all his miserable
sophistry. My head and hands were blazing hot.
“So!” I cried. “You tell _me_ to play the coward! Do you not know that
every one of the great explorers into the wonderful region of scientific
truth has faced the terror and hatred of the world in precisely this
way? Do you not know that if those great-hearted men, one after another,
had not cut their way through the spiritual horrors of 'tradition' We
should to-day be living in medieval darkness and filth? Why, Old Man,
you yourself can remember when 'free-thinker' was a term of obloquy.
To-day our right to _think_ is the finest, greatest right we have.--Do
you suppose I care if they kill me?” Again I waved my finger under his
nose. “Tell me, Old Man, do you really imagine I care? Don't you know,
the scientific mind better than that? Can't you see that I admit no
tradition, no dogma, no authority. I am a scientist! I am of the most
wonderful guild of explorers this wretched old world has yet seen--the
guild that is exploring for the truth. Tradition has not stopped us yet.
It will never stop us.”
I turned away. “Oh, I am disgusted with you,” I said--“with you and your
beastly, cowardly mind! I'm sick of you!--Understand that? I'm sick of
you!” And I walked straight for the door.
Sir Robert followed me. He had to step fast, too. He put his hand on my
shoulder, and checked me. He loomed over me.
“Whatever you do, my boy,” he was saying, “keep your head. That woman
has already wrecked two lives that we know of--possibly a third. Don't
let her wreck yours.”
I wrenched away from him, and struck out alone into the narrow, muddy
street between the Chinese houses.
I walked twice around the _glacis_ that borders the Legation Quarter on
the north, and through the Quarter from end to end on Legation Street.
Scenes flitted past me that I only half saw--Peking carts with blue
covers and little window's in the sides, innumerable street merchants
uttering musical cries and offering trays of queer-smelling foods, and
the usual indolent, good-humored crowds of blue-clad yellow men, with
round yellow' children playing everywhere, underfoot and out in the mud
of the street. In the Ha Ta Road a long wedding procession was passing,
with an ornate red sedan chair for the poor little bride, and musical
instruments that I did not so much as observe. I saw the stiff, cowed
German soldiers on sentry duty at the eastern end of Legation Street,
and, farther along, the solid masonry building of the Hongkong Bank;
and, down a side street, the great, showy, extremely modern Wagon-lits
Hotel. I vaguely noted the walls and trees of the British Compound,
where centered the defense against the Boxer attack a dozen years ago.
I strode by the American Compound, at the western end, and caught a
glimpse through the open gate of lounging American boys in their olive
drab. And, emerging on the plaza between the great Chien Gate in the
Tartar Wall and the entrance to the Imperial City, I came upon a long
train of laden camels, just in from Mongolia, each with a string in its
ugly nose.
And all the way I knew that the confused forces that have been tearing
at me during this disturbing week were merging into a new line of force.
I knew, even then, that this meant a new direction for my life--my
life that I once thought so simply and clearly outlined, so perfectly
centered on a single interest. Now--God knows what is to become of me!
Did Sir Robert do this amazing thing to me? I can not think clearly. I
am that way at times--I let another try to bring me to his own point of
view, he is more likely than not merely to rouse my own inner voices. I
never follow--I lead.
However it be, I only know now that I am a man with blazing fires in
me--fires that both sear and illuminate my mind, my emotions, my soul.
It is glorious. And terrible.
It was nearly six o'clock when I came into my room. I observed that the
connecting door stood part way open. This meant, I had come to know,
that she was in, and that I was welcome.