On one of those blue and white days that sometimes come as a
voluptuous relief in the midst of rain, and at about noon, the city
was taken. Mrs. Jackson and Megan spent the morning in small shops
along the Rue du Consulat looking for jade to send to Megan's mother.
The small streets running between the Rue du Consulat and the Rue des
Deux Republiques, which is Chinese territory, ended in grilles, and
they were further guarded by barbed-wire entanglements and
chevaux-de-frise. At intervals along the Rue du Consulat were
redoubts of sand-bags guarded by French Marines, and as Megan and
Mrs. Jackson walked along the sidewalks crowded with Chinese, they
passed, every hundred yards or so, groups of Annamites under French
officers slowly patrolling. Among the usual flutter of banners, red,
white and yellow outside the shops, were a great number of
Nationalist flags, red with a white sun on a blue field.
"See," said Mrs. Jackson, pointing to them, "they know the city is
going to fall and they have turned already."
But they themselves did not know it had fallen until they reached
home about noon to find the telephone ringing. Mr. Jackson was
calling.
"The Cantonese have taken over the Native City and the railroad
station," he said. "I think you had better stay indoors until we see
if anything further is going to happen."
Megan thought there must be some mistake.
"But do cities fall like this?" she asked. "I have not even heard a
shot."
Mrs. Jackson said: "Now I guess Miss Reed will be sorry she did not
move out of Chapei."
"Maybe she was right after all and there is no danger."
"We'll see," said Mrs. Jackson.
When Mr. Jackson came in a half-hour later he brought Doctor Strike,
whom he had met in the city. They all had a late tiffin together.
The windows were open and sunlight poured in with a spring odor of
flowering bulbs in the garden. They could hear the rumble of heavy
trucks passing and once firing a long way off. Doctor Strike said:
"When I was on the Bund they were firing on the Pootung side, but you
couldn't hear it here."
He was a tall gaunt man almost entirely bald, with a salient jaw and
fine large mouth; his pale eyes under bushy brows burned with such
intensity that he himself seemed to realize their gaze would be
difficult to bear and let them only flicker over those he looked at.
As soon as he came into the room Megan felt that here was a man of a
totally different caliber from the Jacksons. There was something
restless, fluid and molten about him, that one felt even under his
quiet voice and rather laboring speech. Megan wondered if it was
because he was a great Chinese scholar that he spoke English
laboriously, used it as if it were a not too familiar vehicle,
hesitating over some words and then bringing them out with a sudden
impatience.
After they had talked for a while Megan asked him about his work at
the Christian College in the capital of the province of which General
Yen Tso-Chong was military governor.
"I was president of the college a great many years," he said, "and
certainly they were the best years of my life. It is a lovely city,
Miss Davis, a capital of old China, classical China. I wish you
might see it. But it is impossible now, every one has cleared out; I
don't believe there is a white man there. In my time there were a
hundred or so, not counting those of us out at the college. Yes, it
was a wonderful time. I had fine young men to work with, the best
type of Chinese. Among them was General Yen, not a general then of
course, but a brilliant youngster, already a Chinese scholar, and
coming from one of the old Mandarin families of the province. I was
very attached to him. When he left me he went to Europe for a few
years and when he came back I still saw him, but of course not so
much. He was interested in politics then and very occupied. He went
to Wampoa for some military training. We rather drifted apart, but I
always admired him and when he made himself tupan of the province I
believed it was the best thing that could have happened. I had
confidence in him. I knew there would be certain traditional things
he would do that would be wrong, but I hoped for others, for an
increasing number of others, that would be right." Doctor Strike
flashed his eyes absently over them all for a moment, then looked
down at his plate.
"It is hard to tell when things first began to go wrong," he said,
"but it came about slowly and surely. All this political unrest to
begin with. Then the General, once the power was in his hands, began
to abuse it. He took over all the revenues of the province and gave
no accounting for them; he began to train large bodies of troops,
troops ha conscripted and paid off by loans from the local chambers
of commerce. I say 'loans' but of course they were actually levies
never meant to be paid. Then he stopped all the exportation of rice
(rice, you know, is one of the chief products of the province), and
made large sums out of kumshaw from the smugglers. Why, when I left
he had actually collected all the taxes of the province up to 1930!
Of course he did a few admirable things too. He kept strict order;
he made expenditures on public works. Certainly the roads were never
in better condition (he was fond of motoring), and unexpectedly he
even endowed a few charities here and there. Well, as I said, all
this happened gradually and in the meantime the political situation
grew more and more acute. The Cantonese, or Nationalists, as they
like to call themselves, were practically at his doors. It was about
then he told me he was obliged to put in a Chinese as president of
the college. He did not say who obliged him, but I got nothing out
of argument except that I might remain, because of his friendliness
to me, as adviser to the Board. Then he said the whole foreign staff
would have to leave to make way for Chinese instructors, the
instructors all men we had educated of course. So they left, but I
hung on. The man he had selected for president was a fine fellow, I
knew him well, I hoped to work through him, or at least to save our
property and all our gear for better days. But the General had no
intention of my remaining. He had just sold out to the Nationalists,
not from conviction but from pure political expediency. He saw they
would win anyway. He felt himself particularly strong, particularly
successful. He ordered me to leave. There was no getting around him
this time; I had to go. An armed guard escorted me to the train and
we parted," the Doctor smiled bitterly, "with all the flowery
speeches you could think of. And since then I have been waiting here
to see what happens."
"Well, I'm surprised," said Mrs. Jackson. "I thought the General was
always a great admirer of yours." It seemed that Mrs. Jackson was
gratified by the General's defection, whether because of a natural
satisfaction in some one else's disappointment or because it
illustrated some conviction of her own that the Chinese could not be
depended upon.
"I don't know," replied Strike. "Certainly I was once an admirer of
his."
"Well, what do you suppose caused him to turn on you?"
"Oh, I don't know," Doctor Strike spoke in a low voice, and there was
something painful to Megan about the puzzled, stilled look on his
face. The General's defection from such a man seemed to her
horrible. She wished Mrs. Jackson would leave Doctor Strike alone.
But suddenly he lifted his head and flashed a look around at all of
them. "It doesn't matter what he thinks about me," he said, "it
doesn't matter. I shall never give up hope of him. It is hard to
make clear to others on just what we rest some of our convictions.
They seem to rest on nothing tangible. Perhaps on instinct. Perhaps
they are a truth which we remember, though it was spoken to us when
we were unaware. I only know this, I shall never give up hope of the
General. I know that there is something fine in him, yes, and even
something superfine. It is as though under all the load of falseness
his spirit continually cried out to me, 'I'm here, I'm here, come and
find me.'" The Doctor stopped abruptly and looked down, both hands
clenched beside his plate. As Megan watched him he looked up again,
not seeing her, and suddenly his face was touched by a fluttering,
strange smile, as if before some more vivid memory of the General he
found himself once again charmed and dismayed and hopeful.
"Where is General Yen now?" asked Mr. Jackson. "Mrs. Jackson was
reading in the paper that he had come to Shanghai."
Doctor Strike spoke with an effort at casualness:
"Has he? I don't know. He is probably with friends in the Chinese
city."
Megan was annoyed with the Jacksons for continuing to talk about what
was obviously so poignant a thing to Doctor Strike, but Mr. Jackson
insisted:
"He wouldn't have been safe in the Chinese city until to-day. If he
came while the Northerners had it he must have come incognito and
gone into the Settlement, or into the French Concession. You
probably know, Miss Davis, that the French have always kept their
Concession separate from the International Settlement here in
Shanghai. The paper said he had gone to a Chinese hotel in the
French Concession. Maybe he came to try to buy them out here."
"Perhaps," said the Doctor shortly.
They left the table and went back to the front room, where they could
see the road outside and the refugees who flowed past now as
inevitably as water down-hill. Against their steady stream the big
armored trucks loaded with Annamites in mushroom hats lunged their
way toward Siccawei. Doctor Strike watched them pass, never taking
his eyes from them, as he smoked his pipe by the window. And Megan
watched him, wondering how old he was, what his life had been, what
his thoughts now could be, and filled at the same time by a complete
satisfaction as though she had found something which she had felt all
along must exist.
"Do you like the Chinese people, Doctor Strike?" she asked.
He turned quickly and leveled his colorless, brilliant eyes on her.
"But I love them!" he exclaimed. "Who would not? They are perhaps
the most tragic people that has ever lived. For hundreds of
centuries they have enjoyed the highest plane of living and thinking.
I doubt if even the Greeks ever perfected a more entirely civilized
being than a Chinese gentleman of the Tangs or of the Sungs, and yet
they have so far been permitted to be the victims of what seems the
most colossal irony. Like the Greeks they have been permitted to
miss persistently the one essential truth."
"You mean the existence of God?"
"Not the existence of God," cried the Doctor violently, "of any god,
a god of truth, of justice, of power, of wisdom. No, what would all
that mean, but the existence of a God of love?"
His words had such a naked ring that Megan was momentarily abashed,
even while she more than ever admired him.
Mrs. Jackson got up with some suggestion of hauteur to go up-stairs.
She was offended by an enthusiasm which she felt obscurely was a
reflection on her own value.
"Well, I don't like them," she said coldly, pausing at the door, "and
I've lived among them for years too. But I've done what I could for
them, and I guess I've given the best of my life. Mr. Jackson and I
did a good work in Shasi."
And she went out.
Mr. Jackson spoke hastily and rather at random but with his
habitually good-humored intent.
"I wish we had had a strong central authority in Hupeh like your
General Yen. Any strong hand is better than none. We were overrun
with bandits and deserters from both armies, and the lawlessness has
been such for years that there was practically nothing we could
accomplish. And I sometimes think," he added sadly, "that God's work
is accomplished better by a celibate, like yourself and, well, like
that French priest in Shasi, Father Roget, a great friend of ours.
He had a very humorous way about him, big and fat he was, with beard
and glasses. The Chinese like that. When we left we tried to get
him to come too, but he wouldn't. He was killed finally. Some
roughnecks tried to break into his church and when he tried to stop
them they killed him. But he was beloved for all that. I would have
liked to stay too, but of course I had Mrs. Jackson to think of. You
know, we thought for a time we weren't going to be able to make it.
We missed the gunboat that was to take all refugees away. We were
inland when it came, so when we reached Shasi we had to hide
forty-eight hours in a sampan in a crowd of other sampans till
luckily the gunboat came back for us." And Mr. Jackson looked
affectionately at the spot where his wife had vanished, "Brave little
woman," he said very low to himself. Then he pulled out his watch.
"Well, about time to go for Miss Reed now," he said briskly. There
seemed to be no doubt now Doctor Strike was here that they would get
Miss Reed. "We can put them in the two north rooms," he said.
Megan did not listen to their plans for Miss Reed. She was thinking
of Mrs. Jackson waiting in the sampan for the gunboat they did not
know was coming back. No matter how vividly she could imagine what
Mrs. Jackson ought to have been thinking of in the sampan she felt
sure that in reality Mrs. Jackson's thoughts would always be to her
incalculable, and, it must be admitted, unimportant.
[Illustration: Chapter VI headpiece]