The circles that whirled around Megan's head came dangerously close,
but there seemed to be no way to stop them because she floated on
darkness unsupported. Then something else touched her, harsh and
ugly even in darkness, and on consideration she found it was within
her and it hurt. But that was exactly it, it was pain. And pain
made her aware of a body that seemed to form sluggishly about her
once more, out of uncertain elements.
The circles swung past, widening, they slewed off, whirled more
remotely. But the pain became something that had to be handled. It
was punctuated by a joggling movement, irritating, persistent. It
was like tiny jets of flickering light.
The last of the circles throbbed dimly a long way off, vanished, and
the joggling went on. Something must be done. An effort of some
sort must be made. But where was the spring of action? In the arms,
in the legs, in the eyelids? Push somehow. And it was easy after
all. It was done.
Megan saw that it was raining again. Another rainy day. She seemed
to be caught in one great, gray, endless spider-web of a rainy day.
But the pain was only a pain in the head, over the eyes, making it
difficult to keep them open.
The joggling went on, modified now and unimportant.
Directly ahead was a little half-moon shining agreeably in the
grayness, a little half-moon of lime-green satin supporting another
moon, full, round, traced with benevolent, surprised eyebrows.
"Do you feel better?"
Some one had said that.
"I believe I do," said Megan and saw a train moving, rain streaming
down a pane, a Chinese face over a collar of lime-green satin.
"Then I want you to drink some tea."
A hand like a curled shell held a glass over which hung steam in a
small fog, with an odor of aromatic flowers.
"I don't think I can drink it."
"Please try."
"I think it will make me sick."
The eyebrows lifted now with such a delicate insistence, not really
eyebrows, only painted lines done with one stroke on a powdered
forehead.
Some one came up from behind and held a hot, wet towel on her
forehead. Surprisingly, it felt well, seemed to dissolve most of the
pain and made her conscious of other lesser pains in the back,
shoulders and arms. But the head was the real pain in spite of
towels.
"You must not be frightened," said the lady, "no one will hurt you."
Suddenly a vista clicked open. She saw the face of the coolie with
the cue wound round his hat, four rickshaws fleeing from her down a
dark street, and she felt again the last draining of strength as she
lifted Doctor Strike into the rickshaw, felt also the humiliation of
her terror which had permitted her to shriek for help in the midst of
a crowd. This last became physical.
"I'm afraid I'm going to be sick," she said.
"Try to drink some tea."
A cool hand slipped under her head. Megan looked into a glass and
saw little tea flowers swimming in it upright like weeds on a river
bottom. They moved up to her and a heat that was pungent flowed down
her throat direct to some center of weakness which was instantly
fortified. She was not sick.
"The General thinks it will do you good."
"The General!"
In the corner of the carriage nearest the window sat a man in a gray
uniform. His prominent eyes held the reflection of some
incomprehensible amusement. As he saw her looking at him he rose out
of his seat and bowed.
"I am so sorry for you," he said. "I am not responsible for what has
happened. But I am charging myself to take care of you and you will
not be harmed." He made a slight gesture with one hand, expressing
an apology more delicate than his words. Megan stared at his hand.
The beauty of it was strangely familiar.
The amah put another towel on her head, and the lady in the green
satin coat at intervals held the tea to her lips. Megan sipped it
slowly. There was a significance to all this which escaped her.
"Haven't I seen you somewhere before, or am I imagining----"
"No," said the General, and he smiled outright, "you do not imagine.
You were kind enough to offer me a handkerchief."
"But of course. You were going into the Concession. The wrecked
car."
He and the lady nodded.
To decide what she was doing in a train with the man of the wrecked
car, with the lady of the green coat, was too much for her. To ask
them did not occur to her. But she had seen them before. That made
the situation reasonable enough that she was able to accept it for
the time being.
"Oh, I guess it is all right," she said vaguely.
They nodded again, both smiling to reassure her. Megan closed her
eyes. She heard them murmur to each other in Chinese. When she
opened her eyes the lady was sitting across from her, over her knees
the amah had spread an embroidered towel and she was feeding herself
with chopsticks out of little bowls, held close to her mouth, which
the amah handed her in turn. The General was not eating. He smoked
a cigarette and, his head leaning back against the cushions, blew
smoke rings toward the ceiling. Megan studied the amazing, wasteful
beauty of the hand with the cigarette. She remembered its
inefficiency when touching a bleeding forehead, when holding open a
car door, yet it remained an exquisite instrument.
She turned her head a little. The corridor behind the glass-topped
door was crowded with soldiers in gray. One leaned with an air of
privilege against the glass. Around his neck he wore a salmon-pink
silk cord attached to a Mauser from which hung a salmon-pink silk
tassel. The other soldiers carried small bath towels and tin cups.
This grander one no doubt was the General's orderly. Megan turned to
the window, trying to raise her head a little, and the amah at once
lifted her, supporting her against a cool linen shoulder. The train
was cutting across a land spread out in the greenness of young rice
and mulberries beginning to leaf, a land webbed with canals bringing
water to the endless fields, on whose muddy shallows fringed with
water hyacinths the laden, unhurried processions of sampans wove
great slow patterns of movement about the arrow-like flight of the
train. The train passed relentlessly the small half-naked men
carrying loads swung from their shoulders, who stepped with the
jogging trot of the heavily burdened along stone trails already
pressed deep into the sod by the weight and weariness of endless
feet. A hill rose and disappeared, carrying on its crest a pagoda,
an unstable shape of inverted bell-flowers stacked one on top of
another, surely a deliberate note of the purest frivolity against the
fatigue, the solemn fertility of the land.
Megan closed her eyes and the amah gently let her slip back on the
seat. She opened her eyes to be sure that nothing had changed, for
already the train, the General, the lady, the door against which
leaned the orderly with the pink-silk cord, the window opening into
China, had become the accepted reality to which she clung. She tried
to stay awake.
The General leaned back, blowing smoke rings, looking up meditatively
at the ceiling; the lady sat beside him, silent because he did not
wish to talk, but with an air of readiness as though her own possible
meditations were held only at his pleasure, never quite losing, even
when he was not looking at her, the lightly seductive smile with
which she turned to him when he spoke or even made a movement.
Megan closed her eyes, opening them suddenly again. The General was
handing his cigarette to the lady to extinguish for him. He leaned
his head more firmly on the seat-back and closed his eyes. The lady
watched him and, seeing he did not appear comfortable, slipped an
embroidered satin pillow back of his head. He did not thank her, his
eyes remained closed and his head slipped forward slightly.
Apparently he was asleep. Megan watched him without restraint. His
hair, growing in a peak from the well-modeled forehead, was smooth
and black as a Spaniard's; with his eyes closed, their prominence,
the effect of the Mongolian slant, were exaggerated and some of the
masculinity of the face was lost, so that he looked like one of those
sculptured heads of androgynous Eastern deities. The lady also
watched him for a time to be quite sure he slept. Then she put a
smaller pillow behind her own head and closed her eyes. Even in her
sleep her smile, fragile and seductive, hovered on her lips.
Megan slept and awoke with the certainty that she had slept long.
"Oh, yes, that Chinese train." She was for a moment even frightened.
Some quality of the light had changed, it must be afternoon. Very
close to the window and throwing its shadow into the compartment
passed a great crenelated wall hung with tattered vines. A towered
water-gate made a fantastic opening in it. The lady had covered her
satin coat with a darker one trimmed with fur. The General with her
help was putting on a military overcoat. Then he bent down to look
out the window, yawned copiously and smoothed back his hair before
putting on his cap. The orderly came in to assemble the luggage. In
the corridor the soldiers were standing at attention, flattened
against the wall to make a passage. Seeing Megan was awake the lady
leaned over her.
"We are here now," she said. "Your tiresome trip is over. Do you
feel well?"
"Not too well."
The General spoke to her in Chinese and after a few words she turned
again to Megan.
"The General thinks it will be better for you not to walk through the
station. He will arrange to have you carried out in a chair. You
must be very quiet."
"Where are we going? What general?" Megan was suddenly angry. "Who
is this general?"
The lady's reply meant nothing until she had repeated it several
times over. Finally she penetrated the unfamiliar pronunciation,
"General Yen Tso-Chong."
Doctor Strike's General.
And the concubine.
[Illustration: Chapter XII headpiece]