Some one knocked at the door. Megan said, "Come in" several times
before it was opened. The young orderly with the salmon-pink silk
cord about his neck stood in the doorway. He said something she did
not understand, stood aside, and after a perceptible moment the
General came into the room. He walked over to her and, clicking his
heels together in the proper manner, bowed. He carried his cap under
his arm.
"Good morning," he said. "I hope you are better."
"Yes, much better."
He drew up another chair to the window and when he was seated took
out a gold cigarette case. He was smiling in a conventional manner
with little nods of the head as he offered her a cigarette.
"I have Turkish and Virginia tobacco."
It had occurred to her that this meeting might be to him as startling
in its novelty as to her. The assurance gave her more confidence.
She took a cigarette from him and the General snapped a gold briquet
(he was really most opulently provided), lighting first her cigarette
then his.
"Are you quite comfortable here?" he asked. "Do you like this room?"
"Yes, it is very nice. I have been enjoying the view of the garden.
And that painting on the wall, I admire that very much."
"Do you? I am glad, because I like it too." The General turned in
his chair to look at it. "It is by an artist of the early Ming
dynasty. It is not very old as things are old here in China. But I
always take it with me. It possesses a great variety and excellence
of brush stroke."
They smoked in silence, neither looking directly at the other. A
large ash fell on to Megan's lap.
"I will send you ash-trays," said the General. "You must excuse this
house. I use it now as my yamen, but it is not my house. It is the
pleasure house of a friend of mine."
"Is it in town?"
"No, it is on the lake. You will see by and by, it is a very
beautiful location."
There was another silence. The General looked so fixedly at the end
of his cigarette that Megan was able to look at him. He was smaller
than she realized, his gray uniform fitted dapperly over a shoulder
too plump, there was a smoothness about his skin and hair that was
unpleasant to her, and even his hands were faintly repellent by their
abnormal delicacy.
He said suddenly, as though he had been turning it over and had come
to a decision, "I want to assure you again that you are quite safe in
my house. I don't want you to feel that you are in an equivocal
position."
"Why insist so?" thought Megan. "I would have felt no concern over
my safety if he hadn't brought it up." She looked at him more
sharply and was disconcerted to realize she could be so affected by a
physical repugnance. She was quite unprepared both for the
repugnance and its effect.
"I feel," she said, "I am in a position requiring an explanation."
The General raised his eyebrows a little and his eyes appeared
absurdly prominent.
"But your position is very mysterious to me! I myself don't know why
I should find you in Chinese territory, early in the morning,
surrounded by an unfriendly crowd, from whom incidentally I saved
you."
"I know you saved me. I am grateful to you for that, but I had a
perfect right to be in Chinese territory. I had a safe-conduct pass
signed by you."
"By me!" The General's eyes began to show amusement and
astonishment. "By me! Then is it possible Doctor Strike was with
you?"
"Yes, we were together. He was struck on the head by a coolie with a
carrying-pole. I got him in a rickshaw and it went off with him. I
was left behind but it was not his fault, he was unconscious. We
also had with us five children and two women from St. Andrew's
Orphanage in Chapei. But Doctor Strike explained all this to you.
We were relying, as I said, on a safe-conduct pass signed by you."
"Ah, these safe-conduct passes!" The General waved them aside with
one hand. "You people expect too much of them. Do you suppose the
coolie who struck Doctor Strike knew of your pass, or would have
respected it if he had?"
Megan waited to see if he would express any concern over Doctor
Strike's fate, but that aspect of it did not seem to occur to him.
She said rather bitterly:
"I see now your safe-conduct was worthless. But I did not know at
the time. You see, I have lived all my life in a country where if a
situation comparable to this were possible, such a pass would be
effective. The whole training and temper of the people would make it
so."
The General looked at her, doubtful how to take this.
"Do you speak seriously?" he asked. "Where is this country you are
talking about that has no mob spirit, no race hatred, but only a
perfect respect for law and authority? I had supposed you were an
American."
Megan realized too late that she had been carried away, and
simultaneously that she must not be carried away again. It was she
and not he who had given way to a sense of antagonism.
"I am sorry," she said hastily. "I am afraid I was too rhetorical.
Yes, I am an American."
He acknowledged her withdrawal with a nod, slight enough not to
attach undue importance to it.
"I have never been to America," he said gently, "but I have lived in
England for a time and in France and Germany. Are you also, like
Doctor Strike, a missionary?"
"No. But I came out to be married to one of the doctors at Changsha,
at Yale-in-China."
"Ah, yes. Well, I am glad you are not a missionary, even if you are
to become one."
"Why?" said Megan. "Do you dislike them?"
"No," said the General. "Only I have found few agreeable friends
among them."
"Doctor Strike however admires you greatly."
"I greatly admire Doctor Strike, though I must say I was rather
relieved when he decided to leave my province. He was too much like
an atom of radium locked in a desk drawer. Yes, I had been wondering
all along if you were not with Doctor Strike or in some way connected
with that orphanage. But what did you go with him for? I don't
understand it. For the excitement perhaps?"
Megan did not answer and he shook his head, smiling as if he found
her an impossible subject for analysis.
"When Doctor Strike asked me for the famous safe-conduct pass," he
continued, "I didn't want to give it to him because I felt sure he
would put too great a strain upon it. He found me, as perhaps he
told you, in a Shanghai hotel dining with some friends, and he urged
me at a time when I could not well refuse. You see, I was not
supposed to be in the European sections of Shanghai. At the time you
saw me I was going in under a false name as a prominent official of
the Northern government, a man who, unknown to the authorities, was
at that moment actually dead. When Doctor Strike found me I had
completed the negotiation I came for, but it would still have been
very unpleasant for me to have been obliged to explain my presence to
the foreign authorities. Of course as soon as the Doctor began to
urge me, I thought of the position I was in. But I am quite sure it
never occurred to the Doctor to make use of it to get his pass. No,
I am quite sure he never thought of it for a moment." The General
stopped to smile at this further aspect of the comedy.
Megan looked at him intently. "Yes," she said, with an insistence on
each word, "I am sure he was not only unwilling but even incapable of
betraying you."
The General's smile became inquiring; he looked at her a moment, then
let his gaze wander toward the ceiling as he did when he wished to
withdraw his attention from the more immediate considerations. He
grew deeply thoughtful and she had the satisfaction of seeing his
urbanity appear to be invaded by a sudden, sharp uncertainty. But he
dismissed that.
"When I spoke of the situation in which I could not very well
refuse," he went on to explain, "I meant that Doctor Strike was in a
fair way to spoil the gaiety of the party my friends were giving me.
He is the sort of man who would infallibly respect one's grief but be
incapable of respecting one's gaiety. That would have been
regrettable. I wanted very much to get rid of him. I wrote him the
pass on the back of a menu card. It was the only paper available
except a bill from the hotel and I chose it because it had a design
of Kuomintang flags at the top. Yes, my host is very Europeanized.
He not only believes that menus are desirable as stimulating the
appetite and perhaps falsifying the origins of certain dishes but he
believes in the sacredness of a flag. And I too at that moment,
perhaps under the influence of a beneficent champagne, believed that
if my safe-conduct pass were to have any efficacy, it would be due to
those flags!"
Megan did not answer. She could not decide whether he was trying to
offend her or if, unable in this novel situation to achieve the
proper balance and perhaps a little fearful lest she attempt to bully
him, he was only making futile alternate gestures of courtesy and
warning.
"My friends," he said, "knew I was leaving the city at a certain
hour; so, because of the extreme merriment of the party, they
themselves accompanied me to the station. When I got there I found
you being handled very roughly by the crowd around the gate. A
coolie was hitting you on the head with a carrying-pole. It must
have been the coolie you said struck Doctor Strike a moment before.
He was probably emboldened by his success in felling the Doctor. I
had my guard extricate you. And then I really had no idea what to do
with you. I have explained to you that for various reasons I had to
leave without involving myself in explanations with the foreign
authorities. I was already in Chinese territory, my train was
waiting, so I brought you along. As soon as I can make suitable
arrangements you shall return. In the meantime you must consider
yourself my guest."
Megan thought for a moment before answering him. He had not said a
single unreasonable word. Except for the anxiety for her parents,
for which he was hardly responsible, she was glad to be here. She
had no thought that she was in any personal danger; on the contrary
it was she herself who was the disruptive element in the midst of a
long-established plan. The prospect of troubling all this false
security filled her with excitement and genuine pleasure, yet she was
at the same time on the verge of anger. Surely she was not really
disturbed by so trivial a thing as the nearness of a stridently alien
flesh; perhaps it was the pressure and the will to dominate of an
alien mind.
The General in his turn, she could feel it, was taking advantage of
her abstraction to scrutinize her more closely. She threw her
cigarette out the window and turned to him.
"I see I owe you a great deal," she said; "please forgive me for not
being more gracious about it. The truth is I am still a bit
bewildered."
"That is quite natural. It must be bewildering to you to wake up
unexpectedly in China."
"By the way, there is something I would like to ask you to do for me
that will put my mind very much at rest."
The General nodded.
"It is to send a telegram to Shanghai to my friends there so that
they can let my parents and the man I came here to marry know I am
safe."
"The parents and the bridegroom! But certainly I will send one at
once. In all probability they believe you dead. Now there will be
rejoicing, even though they will not be able to think so ill of us as
they might have liked."
"I feel sure," said Megan stiffly, "that in this case they will be
glad to be mistaken."
"No doubt at all. And I shall see about reassuring them at once."
He leaned toward her, his cigarette case held open, but Megan shook
her head.
"No more, thanks."
"As it turns out," said the General, tapping a cigarette on his
thumb-nail and slowly lighting it, "as it turns out I shall not be
able to arrange for your return immediately. An incident occurred at
Nanking, at the same time I brought you here, which has aroused so
much feeling, both among my people and among yours, that I do not yet
know what will come of it."
"What sort of incident?"
"In capturing the city of Nanking the troops of General Chen Chien
got a little out of hand. War, you know, does not bring out the best
qualities of tolerance and self-control; that is one reason why we
Chinese are so unfitted for it."
"But what was the incident?"
"A number of people were shot and some were killed, missionaries
largely, Doctor Williams of the Nanking College, some ladies, the
British Consul too, I believe."
"Shot by Chinese?"
"By troops, yes."
"But that is an outrage!" cried Megan, overwhelmed with anger. "We
are not at war with you!"
"No? Well, at any rate your gunboats, in retaliation, fired on the
unarmed, civilian population of Nanking, killing hundreds. But after
all, why should you and I talk about it?"
"I don't believe they fired on the civilian population, or if they
did, they must have been forced into it."
The General shrugged his shoulders.
"We will get nowhere by discussing this. It would only drag us both
into the vulgarity of open anger. I will send you some Shanghai
papers which have just come to me. You can read there all your own
point of view."
But if the General was not already angry, he was agitated. His hand
holding the cigarette shook nervously. This shaking hand made Megan
realize how near she herself had come to losing control, perhaps
irreparably. What about all the vast misery of China which had in no
wit changed? What about the word of God that was to illumine the
drowsy twilight of its spirit? Christianity had always spread to an
inevitable accompaniment of bloodshed, its own and, it must be
admitted, that of others. But the loss of life was not to be
considered in the saving of a soul. Life, blood, flesh, were
nothing; the spirit everything. Megan sat with clinched hands, and
while for several moments neither she nor the General had said a
word, she was as exhausted as though they had been engaged in a
mortal struggle.
"Yes, you are right," she said. "We won't talk about that. I want
as a matter of fact to see your point of view as far as I can. I
believe I can do it better when you don't argue with me."
The General smiled suddenly and taking out his handkerchief wiped his
forehead.
"Delightful," he murmured. "Do you know," he said, "for a moment you
quite terrified me. There is something about the European eye, I
can't explain the effect it has on me. It gets so--large." He
returned his handkerchief carefully to its pocket. "But I am glad
you are trying not to think too ill of us."
Megan's cheeks still burned and her voice was still a little husky.
"Oh, we don't really think ill of you. Certainly not in America. On
the contrary we like to sentimentalize over your superiority to
ourselves. Haven't you noticed that attitude in England too?
Peace-loving exquisites, passionate over tea, philosophy and
calligraphy, that is how we like to think of you."
The General seized with relief this diversion into a wider field.
"And aren't we that?"
"I know nothing about your actual tastes. But as to peace, the
country never seems to have known it. And any one can see that your
philosophy has never brought you good government, justice, or an
equal distribution of happiness."
"Our poor philosophy! So you demand it give us good government,
justice, and an equal distribution of happiness? But you seem to
think it is a safe-conduct pass! Haven't you people rather a mania
for drastic remedies? I have observed that you are very prone to
attach yourself to one thing like religion, or democracy, or even
proper sanitation, and believe that it will cure all. Our philosophy
enables us to support life in the only way it can be supported, by an
endless series of compromises; successful compromises, perfectly
adjusted to our temperament. That is surely a great deal for a
philosophy, don't you think so? It is even a great deal for a
religion. But," he added, "you are right in supposing we are
peace-loving. In the real China we have always been predominantly
agriculturists. A farmer's life is bound down to his plot of earth.
He doesn't need to fight like the herder for new pasture grounds, or
the trader for new markets. So war is not the result of our deeper
necessities and certainly not of our inclinations. We fight because
the corruption of our officials forces us to. But even then we run
as often as we fight, which proves, as Bertrand Russell says, that we
are rational men, because what we fight for is not worth our death."
"It is arguable whether there are not some things worth dying for,
even if you have failed to discover them." Megan tried also to speak
lightly. "So I am right as to your being peace-loving. And as to
tea, is it true you drink only that?"
She remembered then that Doctor Strike had said he had found the
General very drunk, even the General had admitted his weakness, and
was sorry she had spoken, but the General said pleasantly:
"In our period of greatest civilization we drank wine, and those who
could afford it drank it to excess. Only savages and animals
practise sobriety, continence and moderation. Yes, our greatest poet
was drowned in an attempt to catch the moon in the river. I saw once
in a private collection in England--so much of our art has gone
abroad--a very charming painting of Yang Kwei Fei, who was a great
beauty of the Tang dynasty. She is holding a wine-cup and the legend
says, 'Yang Kwei Fei, drunk but still drinking.'"
"I wonder if you can be typical," said Megan. "What you say is very
confusing."
"I don't want to tire you with discussions, when you are just up."
The General got up and threw his cigarette out of the window. "But I
do not see why I should be typical. Fortunately for our
entertainment, men of the same race don't resemble each other, as
ants resemble ants, or tigers tigers. Though it might prove more
convenient in the matter of international relations if we did. Then
we could all behave toward each other without compunction, in the
simple brutality of the animal world."
He held out his hand to her and Megan shook it carefully as though
she were handling porcelain.
"I will send word to Shanghai at once," he said. "And by the way, I
don't yet know your name."
"My name is Megan Davis, Miss Davis. If you will send word to Mr.
Jackson, of the China Inland Mission, and ask him to notify my family
and friends I shall be very grateful."
"Will you please spell all that?" said the General, and he wrote it
down in a little note-book he carried in one pocket. When he had
closed it again he said very formally, in a high strange voice, as if
he were making an official proclamation:
"There is at present only one female in my household. If you have no
repugnance for her society she will be glad to visit you from time to
time. I myself am very busy with the political situation in my
province."
"Of course I have no repugnance," Megan exclaimed. "She has been
very kind and I think she is charming."
"Then she will come again whenever you wish. She speaks English
well."
He took out his handkerchief, wiped his forehead and smoothed his
hair before putting on his cap. His gesture was eloquent of relief
from a considerable strain. He gave her a slight salute and walked
over to the door.
"Good morning," he said, clicking his heels together.
"Good morning," said Megan.
The orderly with the salmon-pink cord, who had been waiting just
outside, opened the door for him and he went out.
[Illustration: Chapter XIV headpiece]