It was an elaborate, brass bed enclosed on three sides and heaped
with bright satin quilts. Megan had been in it all the afternoon of
her arrival and all the next day. Now it was morning again. She had
wakened to a tumult of birds but they had quieted now and in spite of
certain small noises about the house the underlying stillness struck
her as remarkable. She moved her arms and legs tentatively and as
she held up one arm the white-silk sleeve of a Chinese coat fell back
from it, showing an ugly green bruise reaching almost from shoulder
to elbow. She examined her hands. They looked veined and tired.
She could not distinctly remember how she had got here. Only a vague
impression of a station in which throngs of clamoring Chinese were
pushed aside to make way for her chair, a closed car with the
curtains down where she leaned her head on the shoulder of the lady
with the green coat. And they had driven perhaps half an hour,
perhaps less. Then she had stepped out before a gate in a red stucco
wall, had insisted she could walk and fainted. Since then she had
dozed or slept, waking to sip tea brought her by the amah and
sometimes by the lady. Now for the first time her head felt clear
and the pain in it was almost gone.
She turned on one side and looked curiously at the room she was in.
It was rather bare. There were a few pieces of blackwood furniture,
differing at once from the blackwood pieces of the missionaries by an
air of unmistakable sophistication. By the octagon-shaped window, in
a dark blue bowl, bloomed a twisted miniature tree bearing
translucent yellow Chinese plum flowers. On the wall across from her
bed was a hanging painting on brownish silk of two dark, furry
monkeys eating orange-red persimmons. Megan looked at this a long
time. It was impossible not to feel in sympathy with these monkeys;
they pecked at the fruit so absently, they were so distrait, unable
to concentrate on anything, forever vaguely and obstinately pursued
by some great, mysterious sadness in all things, a sadness that not
caperings, malice, nor a full stomach could quite take away. It was
a true portrait, delicately executed, precise but summary; it gave
character to the whole room, making unimportant the offense of the
brass bed, the phonograph and records piled on a table, a gilt clock
and candlesticks empty of candles, such as one sees on the mantels of
cheaper French hotels. Yes, in spite of these things the room had an
appearance of style in the sense that a defective work of art may
still have style because whoever created it has been able to set on
it the seal of a superior personality.
Megan liked the room, her father she thought would like it. And
suddenly she realized that her father at this very moment must be
believing her dead. Her parents' grief, Bob's grief, struck her too
vividly, with too strong an implication of reproach, to be endured.
Her headlong rush into this disaster blazed itself like a trail from
the moment when she had sat with Bob's letter on her knee and told
her parents that she had to go to China come what might, down to the
moment when she had demanded a miracle from God. The miracle had
come but already it had lost its sheen, as though it had been tossed
to her carelessly by One who knew that miracles are not always of
very great account. A depression began to settle over her because
she felt that she had been humiliated by something more profound even
than fear. Then she thought, "Well, perhaps it is all of no
importance, I am not dead. I will let them know it in the quickest
way possible. As soon as I can get a paper and pencil, write a note,
have a telegram sent. And after all, I am in China, where I felt I
had to be, and maybe I was even right."
She thought of the General and his concubine, of all Doctor Strike
had told her about the General. Apparently for all the Doctor's
ardor, his knowledge, he had never been able really to touch the
General. And how much he had wanted to! All the time he had been
talking of him Megan felt she must have been half aware that she
herself had already touched the General's life by the mere brushing
of a wing and that she would inevitably touch it again more deeply.
Perhaps this was to be the miracle.
She was too recently humbled to be willing to dwell much on this, but
in spite of herself vague and glorious pictures began slowly to flood
her mind. A Chinese man. A Chinese woman. Truly that was all of
China. Her pictures merged into sleep and she awoke again,
determined at once to get up. She sat on the edge of the bed and
waited until the dizziness and slight pain in her head passed. She
sat there wondering if the house she was in could possibly be in the
midst of a city. It was so quiet. In the early morning there had
been so many birds and even now the air coming in the open
octagon-shaped window was fresh and there was about it some
indefinite coolness, an aroma, as of water near by. Occasionally she
heard soft slippered feet cross a tiled or brick pavement outside her
window, and there was a telephone somewhere in the house that rang at
intervals, answered by a Chinese voice, monotonous and persistent.
But the telephone was not ringing just now. From a greater distance
she heard on a soft road the march of feet, then a staccato command.
The footsteps halted and at another command she heard the muffled
clatter of rifles as the company came to rest Bugles sounded and the
notes dissolved instantly like bubbles in the tranquillity of the
air. And from somewhere a cock crowed. Certainly she was not in a
city.
Beside her bed on a small table was a wicker basket. She opened it
and found silver tea things kept warm by the wadded lining. She
poured herself a cup and drank it. When she put her feet to the
floor she had another moment of dizziness, but she was stronger than
she expected. She had to wait a moment until her head grew steadier.
Then she moved slowly and with shaking knees but she managed to reach
the window.
It opened on a courtyard where flower-beds were set in patterns among
tiled walks. Willow trees, fragile and green, posed with an air of
artifice against the opposite wall, and there were three gray
boulders fretted by water into curious hollows and contours that were
placed like statues on gray stone pedestals. Over a low wall curving
like a dragon's back Megan could see another garden with a pine tree
in the center, growing in dark scaly strata, and beyond more tiles
and ornamented roofs of buildings. A round moon doorway led from her
court into the next and Megan decided it was all one estate, a series
of small houses connected by courts and gardens. Over one more
distant roof rose the bold, smoky blue outline of a low mountain,
giving a final secretiveness and intricacy to the small hidden
gardens. Megan leaned her elbows against the window and looked as
far around as she could.
A servant crossing the court looked up and saw her, turned and ran
back into the house. In a moment the door behind her opened and the
lady who was the concubine of the General came in. She stood on the
threshold, holding her hands in a little conventional gesture of
surprise at seeing Megan up and about.
"But you feel so well?" she asked.
Megan said that she did.
"Then you must have something to eat. You must be very weak. And
please sit down. Don't tire yourself."
Megan sat down by the center table and the lady rang a bell near the
door. A servant appeared.
"What would you like to eat?" the lady asked. "We can give you some
foreign food. Would you like ham and eggs and some fried potatoes
and toast? We can give you coffee too, if you prefer it to tea."
"I'll have it all, please. I do feel rather desperately hungry."
"Perhaps you would like to dress. I can only offer you my clothes.
Yours are very nearly ruined, though I have had amah mend them as
well as she can."
"I believe I would feel better if I dressed. It is very kind of you
to offer me something of yours."
The lady rang again and spoke to her amah. Presently the amah
returned with clothes and a toilet box which she and the lady set on
the table. They opened it and arranged its folding-mirror. There
were foreign brushes inside with silver backs.
"You must use this box," said the lady. "I will leave it here with
you. And I will send you some soap. When you feel stronger and want
a bath, amah will help you, though we have only a Soochow tub. But
the coolie will bring all the hot water you want. You must ask for
anything you want."
She stood behind her and watched attentively while Megan brushed her
hair into shape till it fitted her head like a thin dark cap. Then
she and the amah dressed her in a stiff coat of sulphur-yellow
brocade with a little Chinese collar and loose sleeves, the hybrid
dress of the treaty port. The amah put silk stockings on her feet
and slippers of satin, very pointed, with soft felt soles, a little
too small for comfort. The lady offered her the use of various
powders, eye pencils and lipsticks of French make, in all
colors--almond, rose, blue lilac and geranium--but Megan refused.
When they had finished with her she looked at herself, and the amah
and the lady peered over her shoulder into the glass. The long white
face and eyes heavily shadowed, the body enclosed in a rigid tube of
shining yellow, gave her a hieratic, Byzantine look.
When the food came she ate ravenously, and the lady sat beside her,
her shell-like hands crossed neatly in her lap.
"That is very good, that will make you strong again," she said.
"Yes, it is delicious. I feel strong already."
"I am so glad you are well again," and she added, "The General wants
to know when you are feeling well enough to receive him. He wants to
talk to you."
The faint chill she felt at these words surprised Megan. She looked
about her. This room with the old painting, the blossoming plum, the
garden outside, herself in a costume for a fantastic portrait, these
were all still vaguely dreamlike. The General would instantly
introduce the note of reality and of struggle. She felt a reluctance
to take up life again. But she forced a little enthusiasm, because
the whole significance of things now lay in the General's being, in a
sense, delivered into her hands.
"I suppose I feel well enough now, but don't go yet," she added
hastily, as the lady made a movement of rising. "Do stay and talk to
me. Tell me your name so that I will know what to call you."
The lady sat back again, folding her hands in her lap with the
instant acquiescence of one accustomed to obey.
"My name is Mah-li," she said.
"Doctor Strike told me he had known you years ago in Soochow and that
you were brought up in a Mission school. Is that so?"
Mah-li's eyes opened a little wider.
"_Aiya!_ So you were with Doctor Strike, who wanted the body-guard!"
And she looked at Megan with an obvious wonder. Apparently she could
not imagine what had made Megan go into Chapei but was too courteous
to press the point, and Megan thought that to tell her it was to
rescue some women and children from the inhumanity of her countrymen
would be rude and slightly ridiculous. She felt already that her
relations with Mah-li would have to be conducted with more care than
she had so far been accustomed to expend on any one. There was a
line stretched between them that it was imperative neither should
cross, but whereas Mah-li saw the line clearly, Megan did not.
"Yes, I remembered Doctor Strike," said Mah-li. "He is a very good
man. Every one in Soochow said he was a very good man."
"He is a great friend of China," said Megan; "he admires China very
much."
"Yes, he is a very good man," Mah-li repeated politely and
indifferently, and Megan was annoyed to see that measured on some
invisible scale of hers Doctor Strike did not weigh very heavily.
She would have liked to force an appreciation of Doctor Strike on
Mah-li but instead she said:
"You must have learned your excellent English from the Mission. Did
you?"
"Yes, I learned to speak English and to embroider and to cook and to
use a typewriter."
"Really? That is splendid. I can't use a typewriter myself. Do
you--that is--do you do any typing ever?"
"No. And I don't embroider." After a moment she added, "I don't
cook either."
"Well, you speak English anyway!" Megan smiled heartily, a little
disconcerted by the apparent uselessness of Mah-li's foreign-learned
accomplishments. "It seems to be one of the benefits of education
that one learns a great deal for which one has no use. But it is all
training. It develops one, makes one more efficient."
"More what?" said Mah-li.
"Well, more able to handle whatever comes up. One doesn't always
know what one's needs are going to be. I don't think any training is
ever really lost."
"No," said Mah-li and added, from pure politeness apparently, "A
Christian education is very nice."
Megan was sure Mah-li was finding this conversation hopelessly dull,
her look of pleased curiosity had gone. She looked a little sleepy,
like a child.
"Have you ever been to Soochow?" Mah-li asked.
"No, I've just come to China. I've only been here a few days. I
came here to be married."
"_Aiya!_" A gleam of interest returned to Mah-li's eyes. Her
eyebrows lifted perceptibly. "To Doctor Strike?" she asked.
"No, no," Megan laughed. "Doctor Strike is old enough to be my
father!" It was the first reason she had thought of but she realized
at once it would be the least effective to Mah-li. And she again
felt a necessity for explaining her presence with the Doctor at the
North Station. But she gave it up. They would have plenty of other
times to talk and she sighed from sudden physical weariness. Mah-li
got instantly to her feet. A flicker rather like vexation crossed
her face.
"I am afraid I tire you. I had better go." She spoke a little
stiffly and Megan had an impression of vanity revealed for a moment,
an attribute so unsuspected in Mah-li that she could not take in its
quality or extent.
"I wish you wouldn't go," she protested. "You have been so kind to
me and I have had no chance to thank you properly."
Mah-li smiled a little constrainedly and stood by; the table, resting
her finger-tips on it lightly, poised between going and staying.
"Please do not thank me. I would be lacking in politeness to have
done otherwise. Besides," she added, "it was the General's wish. It
is he you must thank."
Megan looked at her, surprised at the touch of malice in her voice.
It pleased Mah-li for some reason that she should now be dependent on
the General, even to a slight and fortuitous extent; not in any sense
comparable to Mah-li's dependence, which had the weight of five
thousand years behind it. For five thousand years there had been
Mah-lis, with fragile hands, with silks, with eyebrows in an imposed
line of fixed decorum. For what a short time indeed had there been
Megans, whose independence was so new, so slippery, and perhaps even
a little unstable. Megan took one of Mah-li's hands and pressed it
warmly.
"I hope you will come and see me again," she said.
Mah-li murmured, "Thank you," and went out.
The servant came in and cleared away the remains of her breakfast.
Megan took a chair over by the window and sat where she could look
out.
Her interview with Mah-li had not been satisfactory, but it was the
first she had ever had with a Chinese and it would have been foolish
to expect much from it. Soldiers were drilling on the road somewhere
beyond the walls, in the house the telephone rang and the Chinese
voice answered it monotonously and persistently. Perhaps an hour
passed, but Megan was scarcely conscious of it; the minutes passed
over her like soundless waves that never break, flowing from an
unimaginably distant source.
[Illustration: Chapter XIII headpiece]