But when Doctor Strike and Mr. Jackson returned about six o'clock
they brought the disquieting news that they had been unable to get
into Chapei and to do so it would be necessary to get permits from so
many authorities, English, French and Chinese, that they would be
obliged to wait till the next morning. All evening they talked about
it off and on, and Megan saw it was greatly on their minds, though no
one seemed to think the orphanage was in any immediate danger.
The next day was a typical one of the lower Yangtze Valley, an
enclosed day of gray, low-hung sky, rather warm. Doctor Strike and
Mr. Jackson left the house early. As they did not return or even
telephone at noon, Megan after tiffin persuaded Mrs. Jackson to go
into town with her. They walked down Nanking Road through dense
crowds. It was easy to see that something was hanging over the city;
the streets were thronged but the shops were empty, even the drums
beating and the screech of mechanical pianos in the cheaper shops
could not draw any one from the streets. Rickshaws passed, their air
of gliding swiftness an illusion created by the angle of the coolies'
bodies, and more coolies carried a heavy piano by on bamboo poles.
"He, ho, he, ho," they sang as sweat streamed into their eyes. Megan
stopped to watch the skirted Chinese dart through the crowds between
crossings. She saw that they never looked at what was coming toward
them but only at what had already passed. They were saved by auto
horns and shouts of coolies. At one crossing came an old man with a
venerable thin beard and a big blue smocked apron swinging from his
hips. As the Sikh policeman gave the signal for traffic to swoop
down once more upon him he stopped, held up one hand admonishingly
and looked about with an air of pained surprise. Then he sneezed
twice, and having done so, with dignity moved on. It became
difficult to move among so many people.
"Let us go to the Astor for a cup of tea," suggested Megan. She was
touched to see by Mrs. Jackson's expression that she considered this
casual invitation an occasion of social importance and that in the
crowded lobby she lost her air of assurance and became suddenly a
timid, badly dressed woman, but one who is nevertheless enjoying
herself. They found a table wedged close to others where they could
see through a window the Soviet Consulate across the way and a corner
of the Garden Bridge.
It was not five o'clock, yet because of the grayness the lights were
on. Three men and a woman sat at the table closest to them. They
were leaning forward and talking confidentially, but they had to
raise their voices. Their words came over the hum of the
tea-drinkers and the clink of crockery, and Megan, hearing them,
became gradually aware of their stinging, their fantastic
incredibility.
"--spent bullet came into her room, right here. The clerk at the
desk just told me."
"Who is she, do I know her?"
"--they say the whole of Chapei is on fire now. You know what those
Chinese houses are. It is one fiery furnace."
Mrs. Jackson and Megan looked quickly at each other.
"--Yes, a shambles too. Full of cornered Northern troops, fighting
from house to house. They are so desperate they'll probably try to
break into the Settlement for safety."
"--But the worst is those Russians. You know, White Russians in
Northern pay. They are in an armored car on a siding over by the
North Station, they are shelling everything around till their
ammunition gives out. They're doomed and they know it. What will
happen to them?"
"I hate to think."
Megan leaned toward Mrs. Jackson.
"Do you hear what they say?"
Mrs. Jackson nodded absently.
Megan felt her heart beating faster. She could not drink her tea and
wondered how Mrs. Jackson could go on eating large cream cakes and
toast with jam. But war was a commonplace to Mrs. Jackson, while tea
in a hotel lobby was not.
"Can't they do something about it?" Megan asked.
"Oh, no, that is all Chinese territory."
Megan took out her leather cigarette case and put it back again.
"I see," said Mrs. Jackson, "they are wearing lots of red fox. And
it used to be so out of date. Isn't it funny how things always come
back?"
And she continued to look around her with a politely furtive
greediness at this delightful world which she knew only too well she
would shortly have to leave.
"Isn't that Mr. Jackson?" asked Megan.
Mrs. Jackson turned. "Why, so it is."
He was talking to a man who, Mrs. Jackson said, was one of the
American consuls. Presently he saw them, nodded absently, and in a
moment came over and joined them. His face was very flushed, his
eyes looked heavy.
"Doctor Strike is still trying to get his pass," he told them. "He
has been trying all afternoon to reach General Hsu at the Nantao
Yamen. I don't know with what success. I advised him if that failed
to try to get hold of General Yen. You know, the paper said he was
somewhere in the French Concession. I have just been trying to get
the Orphanage by telephone but can't get it. The whole district is a
blaze of fire, it seems."
"Well, you've done all you can. Sit down and have some tea."
"Yes, do have some tea," said Megan.
Mr. Jackson sat down heavily with a sigh. Megan poured him a strong
cup and he drank it without saying a word. Then he made an effort to
recover his cheerfulness.
"Well, I've always been a little afraid of Miss Reed," he said;
"maybe the Cantonese will feel the same way."
"It seems to me I smell smoke," said Megan.
"You probably do. Chapei is not far."
Megan looked out of the window. She could see the patrols on the
Garden Bridge, Spanish marines from the _Blas de Lezo_. In the
ballroom of the hotel the orchestra was tuning up for the tea dance
which began at five.
"Do let us go and walk a little," she said. "If you are not too
tired, let us walk toward Chapei."
Mr. Jackson thought they would not get very far, but he got up and
Mrs. Jackson reluctantly followed.
They walked along North Szechuen Road. There were so many Chinese on
the sidewalks, they had to elbow their way through. The Chinese
stood about not moving, not even talking much. There was none of the
nervous activity of Nanking Road. They stood looking dully at the
passing motorcars, wheelbarrows, rickshaws, loaded with the refugees
pouring in from Chapei. Several stretchers passed, carried by
coolies. On one a Japanese child in a gaudy kimono lay face
downward, joggling helplessly.
"Most of the Japanese live this way," Mr. Jackson called over his
shoulder. He walked ahead of them, elbowing his way along. "There
must be sniping going on."
A Sikh stopped them and told them by signs that they could go no
farther. He held out his arms and made a pantomime of shooting.
"Click, click," he said, "plenty shoot." His face crinkled into
smiles, his eyes nearly shut, his teeth and tongue showed in the
midst of his handsome black beard; his smile was so infectious they
could not help smiling with him and liking him. They stood for a
moment, feeling friendly but not knowing what to do.
Then the Sikh moved off and they turned up Range Road, a street of
red brick houses with small garden plots in front behind brick walls,
like a street in an English Midland town or in a London suburb. The
street was nearly empty and instead of sky a great cloud of smoke
rolled up from behind the roofs. There was an all-pervading acrid
smell of charred wood and burning paints and varnish. At the far end
was some sort of barricade with a few people standing before it.
They walked down toward it, wondering why the street was so empty and
hearing every now and then a soft spat on the walls of the opposite
side.
Suddenly Megan almost tripped over a bundle that looked as if it
might have been dropped from a passing truck, and saw other bundles
lying about, gray, the color of the road itself. They were Northern
soldiers in gray woolen uniforms. One lay with his head hidden on
his arm as if asleep; another, his face turned toward the sky, was as
livid as though a green light had been turned on him, and still
another had his arms stretched out in an arrested, a histrionic
gesture of abandon. Megan noticed his hands, which were very plump
and delicate; they reminded her of the hands of the man in the
wrecked car.
Mr. Jackson shook his head over them.
"Poor fellows," he said, "they were trying to get in here to save
their skins."
At the barricade a few British soldiers, Durhams, stood by a
machine-gun, and just outside, about fifty yards farther on, a
hundred or more Northern soldiers sat about on the ground, their arms
in a pile in front of them. Like school children they were waiting
to be told what to do next. But there was no one to tell them. A
few civilians, Japanese and European, had gathered around the
barricade, and a good-looking young Jew in riding clothes came up to
Mr. Jackson and began to tell him what had happened.
"I came along just here like this and I say to myself, these boys are
going to make a rush for it. There were some on the roofs firing
into the street,--they are still there, better keep close to the
wall. They came in a rush, and they scared the daylights out of me,
I'll tell the world." But he moved on, leaving unexplained what a
young Jew in riding clothes, without a horse, was doing in that
galley.
Mr. Jackson spoke to one of the young Durhams. The cornered Northern
troops had tried to break into the Settlement for safety, so they had
had to kill about sixteen of them. The rest had thrown down their
arms. He himself was nineteen years old and had never been under
fire before. His eyes were shining, his voice cracked a little, and
when a Japanese wishing to hear pushed too near him, he kicked him
violently away, not because he was brutal,--his face was that of a
good-tempered child,--but because he was excited into a state
bordering on exaltation.
A car came along Range Road and with a sharp scream of brakes stopped
at the barricade. It carried a Japanese flag and Japanese Marines on
the running-board. A British car followed it. Three British
officers, among them General Duncan's Chief-of-Staff, got out and
walked through to where the Northern prisoners sat about waiting for
something to happen. Fifteen or twenty Sikhs on horseback trotted
along the road, at the end a magnificent one who rode thoughtfully,
stroking his gray beard, deep in contemplation of some private
matter, neither hurried nor indifferent but as obviously made for war
as the Chinese are for peace. An ambulance came with great honking,
for the road was becoming crowded. An army doctor and several
hospital corpsmen got out and bent over the bodies. Over one who was
alive they held a consultation. The Chief-of-Staff came back and
gave orders for the road to be cleared. The Durhams began to push
people along.
As Megan turned, she saw one of the doctors light a cigarette and put
it in the mouth of the Chinese soldier. She held back long enough to
be sure that a faint breath of smoke drifted between his colorless
lips. She walked along content that at least one of these hunted
creatures had escaped, that in the midst of all this defeat she might
identify herself with one tangible victory.
[Illustration: Chapter VII headpiece]