Megan slept out the rest of the afternoon until well after dark. At
about nine o'clock she ate again and while she was eating the
General's orderly brought her a note.
"My dear Miss Davis [she read], will you not join us in a little
game of cards, with which we are trying to pass the evening
hours?"
She was about to refuse but thought that perhaps over the friendly
relaxation of cards she might go far toward winning the confidence of
the General and Mah-li.
She followed the orderly into the outer room and across the court
into a room where at a table under a light sat the General, Captain
Li, Mah-li and a man she had not seen before. He got up as Megan
came in and walked around the table to shake hands with her. He was
a stout man, with a red face merging into a bald head; his eyes were
clear, childlike, blue, and when he smiled at her his teeth were the
most dazzling and regular she had ever seen. His smile gave a sudden
ingenuousness to a face gross and inexpressive. His clothes of an
American business man were light gray, lately pressed and foppish.
"I am very pleased to meet you, Miss Davis. I am the General's
financial adviser, Mr. Shultz. I've already heard a lot about you
from the General." He looked steadily at her as he spoke and there
was a not too faint insolence in his look.
Megan, a little dazed, murmured:
"How do you do."
The General said:
"Good evening, Miss Davis. We are playing poker; as it's an American
game I thought you might like to join us."
"No, thank you, I'll look on," said Megan. "I don't play poker. And
besides I have no money."
"I'll be glad to carry you," suggested Mr. Shultz. His voice was a
fine tenor, marred by the looseness and indecision of his accent.
"It's just a little friendly game," he added, "the kind of friendly
game where you gotta lose to the General. Captain Li and I'll be out
a few thousand before the evening is over."
"I think I'll watch."
Megan sat down in a vacant chair by Mah-li, who was delicately
dealing the cards.
"But do you play?" she asked her.
Mr. Shultz had sat down opposite them.
"Sure she plays," he said. "All these girls play and Mah-li is a
terror. She is the only one here dares get money off the General."
Megan watched them. Beside the delicate small-boned Chinese faces,
with their shallow shadows, the face of Mr. Shultz was as unformed as
a lump of baking-dough. There was a glass of whisky and soda beside
him and he handled this and his cards with the clumsiness, the surety
of a derrick hoisting a load of gravel. His stubby nails were highly
manicured and he wore a large diamond ring. The game progressed,
punctuated by a few ejaculations. Every now and then Mr. Shultz
looked up at Megan with a cold curiosity, unquickened by any
sympathy. It was obvious that he did not approve of her being here,
and whatever the circumstances that brought her, she should certainly
have managed to avoid them. Megan read this opinion definitely in
one of his slow glances and she met his judgment with an equally
visible scorn. She did not in her turn approve of his being here.
The financial adviser to a Chinese general indeed! Perhaps he was
one reason why the finances of the province were shrouded in such
disrepute. It seemed to her a bitter irony that the General should
have rejected a man like Doctor Strike only to fall into the hands of
Mr. Shultz. She saw the General looking from one to the other of
them with a faint smile. It had perhaps amused him to bring them
together, capable of discerning, as he certainly was, some of the
differences that must lie between them, in spite of their common
tongue. His amusement became so apparent on his face that Mr.
Shultz, looking up, saw it. His blue eyes hardened and for a moment
this lump of flesh, without having made a movement, became
formidable. The General's smile grew abstracted.
"Well, Miss Davis," said Mr. Shultz in a more friendly tone, "you're
a newcomer here I take it."
"Yes, indeed."
"How long you been in China?"
"Several days only."
"Several days! Well, this is a strange situation, finding yourself
in a place like this."
"Is it? Yet I'm sure plenty of missionaries have found themselves
from time to time in Chinese families."
"Missionaries! Maybe. But then they do lots of things a lady like
you wouldn't think of."
"They are much more courageous than I, if that is what you mean."
"Well, that isn't exactly what I mean. Sweeten up here everybody,
sweeten up."
He began to deal the cards out heavily and surely. The General sat
back in his chair watching him as if he had been a juggler hired for
the evening.
"I used to be in the Customs," said Mr. Shultz, "the outdoor Customs.
I was inspecting a ship once sailing for Amoy and way down in the
hold, among all the Chinese passengers, was a black-haired girl,
lying on a bunk reading a Chinese book. She was the best-looking
girl I ever saw anywhere in my life. Her hair was all slicked down
and she had on trousers and a little coat. Her feet were large but I
didn't notice that then. I leaned against the bulkhead and looked
hard at her, but she only went on turning the pages very carefully,
till finally I couldn't stand it any longer. I said, 'Honey, who
belong your master?' Well, the moment she looked up I saw I was
wrong, but before I could get away she said loud and clear, 'Christ
is my master,' so I said, 'Then I beg your pardon,' and shoved off.
But I certainly couldn't approve of that girl, traveling in Chinese
quarters in Chinese clothes and all. Missionary, of course. They
always used to dress and live Chinese."
"What an extraordinary anecdote," said the General, and not the hard
look which Mr. Shultz gave him could quite banish the delighted smile
from his face, "and it proves that in reality you are only capable of
being attracted by what is familiar to you."
"Oh, I know what you mean," said Mr. Shultz negligently. "But I am
very broad-minded just the same. I know you've got your good points
same as we have."
"I also am broad-minded," said the General. "I also am willing to
admire. For instance, just at present I am suffering from a
toothache, so I admire in you a dazzling monument to the efficacy of
your nation. I refer, Shultz, to your teeth."
Mr. Shultz smiled, revealed the teeth and said, "Well, have another
whisky soda then. Scotch is the best thing I know for toothache."
"And you, Miss Davis," said the General. "What do American ladies
drink ordinarily? What would you like? May I offer you some
champagne?"
"Nothing, thank you. Unless perhaps a glass of cold water."
"Better not," said Mr. Shultz. "I can have the boy bring some of my
chow water if you like. But you'd better try White Rock or Perrier."
"Cold water! White Rock!" said the General. "Is that the stuff by
which great civilizations are nourished!"
But Megan interrupted him. His levity made her uneasy though she
could not quite tell why. Perhaps it was because the presence of Mr.
Shultz, far from simplifying her situation, seemed to have
complicated it. She did not want Mr. Shultz to feel that he had to
protect her from anything, because that would cast a cloud over her
relations with the General. Mr. Shultz's presence made an even more
delicate balance necessary and the General's boisterousness might
inadvertently upset it.
"Have you lived here long, Mr. Shultz?" she asked coolly.
"Longer than you've lived anywhere," he replied. Then he gave his
attention to his hand for a moment. As the three cards he called for
were dealt him he held them tightly against his chest, moving them
only enough to see the edge of their marking. "Yes, longer than
you've lived anywhere," he repeated and laying them face down on the
table he pushed a stack of chips forward. "I'll raise that fifty,"
he said, and after having called the General's three queens, he
remarked, "Well, sometimes it pays to believe them. Yes, Miss Davis,
I know China well. I guess I know all their bad points and their
good points too."
"What are some of their good points?"
"We've always known how to build walls," said the General, raking in
chips with his delicate fingers.
"Ah, yes, walls. To keep people out, I suppose?"
"A lot of good that did you," said Mr. Shultz. "You never kept 'em
out. What you ought to have done was to grow a little hair on your
chests."
"Would that have kept them out!" exclaimed the General.
Megan felt an even more complete disgust with Mr. Shultz. It wiped
out any repulsion or antagonism she had felt for the General, which
after all had been largely physical and as she believed unimportant.
Now she felt sorry for him in the hands of this terrible Shultz,
convinced that there was nothing in him capable of resistance to such
a brutal vulgarity. She felt she ought to make an attempt to defend
him herself. Mr. Shultz leaned back in his chair and took from his
vest pocket a fat cigar. He held it up to his nose and smelled it
meditatively.
"The best point the Chinese've got," he said, "is humor. And there
is only one time it fails them. That is on a question of face. They
can't stand their dignity trod on. Never. But they can laugh at
each other like nothing you ever saw. That so, General? Oh, the
General here has got the keenest sense of humor of the lot. By and
by I'll tell you a little incident to illustrate just how far he can
go in laughing at the other fellow."
"I hope," said the General, "you will confine yourself to anecdotes
about yourself. Another episode like that of your inadvertent
assault on the honor of your fellow countrywoman."
Megan again interrupted with determination.
"You are the General's financial adviser, aren't you? Just what does
that mean, Mr. Shultz?"
"It means I can get more money out of this province than any man
alive. Right now I've got nine hundred thousand taels in a box-car
on a siding ready to ship anywhere. But it doesn't mean that the
General follows my advice on what to do with it. Not so you'd notice
it. He keeps me so he can do what I tell him not to."
"What do you spend it on, General? I'm interested to know how a
province is run. Nine hundred thousand taels in a box-car seems a
huge sum to me!"
"Depends on what you're used to," said Mr. Shultz. "The Missions
wouldn't think much of it."
"One thing I spend it on," said the General, "is my arsenal. I am
proud of that. It is my pet. You know we invented gunpowder long
before it was known in Europe, but only used it for fireworks. I am
forced now by circumstances to turn out arms; we produce a trench
mortar the equal of any made in Europe, but if peace ever comes to my
province long enough I shall spend my time in inventing and producing
the most delicious and the strangest varieties of fireworks."
"Hm," said Mr. Shultz, "I doubt it."
"And what else do you do with it?" asked Megan.
"Oh, I don't think it would interest you, Miss Davis. It is all very
dull. Upkeep of my troops, of roads and government buildings,
propaganda."
"Propaganda?"
"Yes, a great amount of my revenue goes into that. Foreign and
local, especially local. I can only govern by force and the good
opinion people have of me. I have to buy both of them, and I find
that good opinion is much the more expensive."
"I believe in the local propaganda all right," said Mr. Shultz. "A
few pamphlets around to the soldiers. They can't read them and they
respect any one that can shower them with information that's a
mystery to them. But not this foreign propaganda. No one cares in
Europe or the States what a bunch of Chinese are doing. 'Don't get
us in on it,' that is all they say. No, you overdo it. Enough's
enough."
"No," said the General, "you are wrong; enough is seldom enough. A
small surplus is generally necessary." He turned to Megan. "You'll
admit, Miss Davis, that in a country like yours, where nearly every
man can read, it is of the utmost importance that he read the truth?"
"Don't make me laugh," said Mr. Shultz. "There isn't such a thing as
truth, the way you mean it."
"You are clever to see the way I mean it," said the General.
"Sure I'm clever," admitted Mr. Shultz. "Say, is this poker we're
playing or lotto? How about a few royalties here, ladies and
gentlemen, how about a few royalties?"
He bit the end off his cigar, spitting it into the corner of the
room. The General offered his briquet. Captain Li, looking politely
aloof, sipped hot tea with a sucking noise.
"Yes, I guess I'm clever enough," Mr. Shultz said, "but I'm a child
alongside you, General. I'll admit that. I'll tell you that little
incident I spoke of, Miss Davis; it'll illustrate what I mean about
the General's sense of humor."
He looked around on them with his shining white smile. His teeth, so
regular, so efficient, were made to chew things into small bits. He
looked greedy. The General gave a slight exclamation, probably of
annoyance, and made with his hand holding a cigarette a gesture of
sudden surrender. Megan wondered that he allowed this Mr. Shultz to
go on as he did. Surely there was something he could do about the
insolence of a man who was in his employ. He was himself presumably
a despot, yet that momentary gesture of his hand, a gesture of an
almost touching beauty, revealed the secret weakness of one who was
peculiarly susceptible to disgust and fear.
"Well, it was like this," said Mr. Shultz. "A while back the General
decided that the Nationalists were pretty sure to win out here in
China and he thought he'd better accept some of their secret offers
of negotiation. But at the same time the feeling here was strong
against them, especially among the men who were backing him. He was
in a delicate situation. Any other man would have sent the best
older politician he could lay hands on to negotiate for him. But not
the General. If the Nationalists met any serious defeat, if anything
went wrong here at home, it was important that he be able to back out
quickly and no older man was going to be his goat for him, see? So
he sends a young man, one of those idealistic scholar chaps, fine
family, father great friend of his and all. This lad goes off
thinking it is all for the good of China. But the trouble with all
this was that the negotiations were premature. The Nationalists
couldn't back up their promises at the time, and it was no go. But
this boy was so full of enthusiasm for the Nationalists' aims that he
couldn't bear to have the turn-over fall through. He began to
reproach the General, to talk right and left. The General was
beginning to be in wrong all around, with his own crowd and with the
Nationalists. Every one knew that the boy had got from the
Nationalists a proposition to sell out for so much, and then that the
General had refused to accept the offer. It wouldn't look to you or
I as though there was much could be done about this, because this
boy's father was a great supporter of the General and an old personal
friend. Captain Li here is a cousin of the boy and they say his
intimate friend. They say Li is a scholar too. Well, this is what
the General did: he went through all the motions of being shocked
beyond words, claimed the boy had been carried away by false
doctrines and tried to sell out on his own. And when he heard this
the boy lost his nerve and ran. He didn't seem to have confidence in
the General like he ought, because the General wasn't intending to
harm him at all. He's got too much humor for that."
Megan looked at the General but his face showed only a conventional
and rather absent smile of politeness. He was intent on the game
which was progressing during Shultz's recital. Shultz paused in fact
long enough to call a hand of Mah-li's and having, as usual, lost,
remarked:
"Interesting but expensive." Then, looking at Megan, he went on:
"Well, of course they caught this young man easily enough. It seems
he was passing for a cart coolie and he had got him a brand-new cart.
One day he hid in a farm in a little outshed where they store
vegetables, but he left this cart outside and the soldiers spotted it
right away as being too new-looking. So they went in. He resisted
them, but they got him. And Here's where the General's cleverness
comes in. Did he execute him? Not a bit of it. If he'd done that
every one would have believed he had double-crossed him and was
obliged to get rid of him to keep him from squealing and this boy's
family would have got some revenge on him. No, he pardons him after
allowing himself to be persuaded a bit by all the relatives and all
the prominent men of the province. That way they think he is
straight, and besides, he gets a great reputation for being
magnanimous. Everything O.K. I call that humor."
Megan looked quickly at the General and at Captain Li. They made no
comment.
"Li don't speak English," said Mr. Shultz.
Megan sat in silence. She was not inclined to believe anything Mr.
Shultz, an obvious adventurer, an extremely repulsive personality,
might say. Nevertheless the story struck a memory of what Doctor
Strike had suggested about the General's capacity for treachery. She
looked at the General; she remembered the gesture of helplessness he
had made a moment before, and she decided they must both be wrong,
deceived by what was perhaps an external necessity and had no bearing
on any integral part of the General's character.
"What became of the young man?" she asked, saying to herself that it
really did not matter what Mr. Shultz told her.
"Oh, him? Well, he got badly mauled when they were taking him out of
the farm. Some say they hamstrung him but I'm not sure. Anyway, it
don't matter because he shot himself. He had lost face."
This of course was so obviously an attempt to pile on horror that it
justified her disbelief of the whole story. The General had leaned
back and was looking at the ceiling.
"What do you say about it?" said Megan.
"I? Why, I say he is lying grossly of course. He is trying to
entertain you. I thought you would recognize that."
Megan felt relieved.
"Then it is not true?"
"It is not true. It is based on a real incident of course. But
there is no single motive in it that is correctly stated."
"Oh, it's the truth, all right," said Mr. Shultz easily. "But what's
the use of being upset? I don't want you to think badly of the
General. He is a little hard on his enemies, and even on his
friends, but he believes we are in this life to get what there is out
of it. He knows we've only got one life to live. Everybody is after
the bacon and he might as well be the one to get it. Yes, sir, to
bring home the bacon every time, that's the General's philosophy."
"See here," said the General, "I don't mind your lying about my
actions, but I will not have you explaining my philosophy."
And the General smiled, but a bit uneasily. Mr. Shultz also smiled,
his smile of white teeth and clear eyes, all candor and arrogance.
"Why, don't I know you like I know my own self?" he demanded. "Ain't
you and I thick as thieves?"
He leaned over and clapped the General on the shoulder. The General
shrank from him and began to deal, but Mr. Shultz held up two fingers
close together and waved them before his face, to show how little
separated his sympathies from those of the General.
"Don't you tell me everything?" he continued. "And if you don't,
don't I know where to find out anyway?"
"I don't know. Do you?"
Mr. Shultz leaned his elbows on the table and, as his cards came,
turned the edges up just enough to peep under.
"Sure I do. Like to hear, Miss Davis, how I find out what I want to
know about the General, that is, when he hasn't confidence enough to
tell me himself? Well, this is how. I give fifty dollars to his
body-guard."
Megan looked at the General but he did not seem to be very
disconcerted by this news. Perhaps he felt that his body-guard would
not be in possession of any very valuable information. And he had
also just drawn a pair to three of a kind.
"You give too much," he said.
"Oh, sometimes I give more than that," said Mr. Shultz. And when the
hand was finished he repeated, "Yes, it becomes an expensive
business. If fifty isn't enough, why, I give two hundred and fifty
to Captain Li here. Yes, sir! And if it is something I really have
to know, five hundred will do it. Five hundred Mex to Captain Li."
The captain, recognizing his name, looked inquiringly about the
table. The General's face seemed to have shrunk under his smile.
"And how does Captain Li know?"
Megan felt at once by the tone of his voice that he was excited, and
evidently Mr. Shultz recognized it too. He pushed his chair back and
got up.
"You'd better ask him that," he said.
But the General did not ask. He sat counting chips from one hand to
the other and back again. He was looking down at them, and over one
eye a small nerve pulsed visibly. Mr. Shultz walked around the table
and as he passed behind the General he looked at Mah-li and his teeth
flashed in a smile.
In the corner of the room was a phonograph. He went over to that,
and turned on a record. It was _E lucevan le stelle_, sung by
Caruso. The voice poured out so familiar and European that Megan was
startled. Mr. Shultz stood listening a moment, then he came back and
sat down, resting his elbows on the table. The General appeared also
to listen.
"Is that good music?" he asked.
"No," said Megan.
"That's the stuff," said Mr. Shultz, his eyes dreamy with
satisfaction. "That's the greatest voice the world has ever known."
"Is it a love-song?" Mah-li asked Megan in a low voice, but Mr.
Shultz heard and answered for her.
"That's what it is, Mah-li. Red-hot too. You ought to know."
Megan got up and went over to the phonograph, which was near a
window. The window was open and a light rain was falling on the
flags of the court outside. The dwarfed yellow plum, which some one
about the yamen seemed to have placed in every room, bloomed in its
dark glazed bowl, on a table piled high with records. Megan, leaning
over to smell it, saw herself in her yellow robe dimly reflected in
the glaze. The plum had a powdery pollen smell that made her think
of the dust on the wings of moths and butterflies. The perfect voice
continued to flood the room with tones that, despite the banality of
the air, held nobility and glamour. Megan watched the General as he
appeared to listen intently, wondering how it was striking him.
Surely this simple insistence on desire and death must be apparent
even to him, even in its unfamiliar medium. Was he thinking of
Mah-li she wondered? What would a Chinese love-song be like? The
music of the wedding procession she had heard in the afternoon came
suddenly back to her, not as remembered sound, but as a depression of
spirit.
The General was frowning. "I don't know your good music from your
bad," he said. "A music house in Shanghai sends me catalogues and I
order every seventh name on the list."
Megan came back slowly and sat down by Mah-li. The game had stopped.
Mah-li sat with her hands clasped on the table and Megan saw the jade
rings she wore.
"How pretty," she said, touching one lightly with her finger.
Mah-li spread her hands out fanwise, and the General leaned over and
looked down also at Mah-li's hands.
"Do you know jade?" he asked, and bent closer to examine the rings.
"I know no more of it than you do of music. It does interest me
however. I believe it is a very esoteric taste, isn't it?"
"Do you like it?" He seemed to her unduly persistent. "Look at them
closely," he said.
Mah-li stripped off the rings and Megan, a little embarrassed,
examined them. The jade was set in diamonds on gold bands. She did
not like the settings. The color of the jade was deep and
translucent but it aroused no special emotion in her; she was not
fond of jewels.
"Valuable as diamonds, gem jade like that," said Mr. Shultz with
satisfaction, "and these people would rather have it."
It seemed that he meant even this to be offensive. Megan started to
hand back the rings.
"Yes, I can see they are lovely," she said politely.
The General suddenly caught her hand and closed it firmly about the
rings.
"I want you to keep them," he said, "they are yours."
Megan shook his hand off and dropped the rings as if they had been
hot coals.
"They are yours," the General insisted, "put them on and wear them."
"That is simply preposterous, I wouldn't think of it. I don't want
them."
Megan was stammering with indignation, but more from his peremptory
touch and command than from what he implied. She had not realized
that yet. She turned to look at Mah-li and saw by the fixity of her
eyes, looking directly ahead of her, that she was deeply troubled.
The young captain took a sip of tea with a sucking sound, set down
his cup and politely hiccoughed.
"You must take them," the General repeated. "I assure you they are
mine to give. The money which bought them came from me. Or so I am
told," he looked around at all of them and added with finality, "so
now I give them to you."
"This is too disgusting!" Megan started to get up, but Mah-li
suddenly put out her fragile hand and touched her arm. There was the
urgency of the suppliant in the pressure of her fingers.
"Please take them," she whispered.
Megan turned and looked at her. Then she gave a final exclamation.
"I'll take them," she said, looking at Mah-li and ignoring the
others, "but I'll return them to you in the morning."
She gathered them loosely in one hand and sat staring angrily ahead
of her.
Mr. Shultz burst into a roar of melodious laughter, and under cover
of it Mah-li said something in Chinese to the General. He nodded
indifferently and she slipped from her chair and left the room.
When the door had shut behind her, Megan said:
"I hate you both for humiliating her like that. It was disgusting."
But she did not look at the General, she looked straight at Mr.
Shultz. She got up. "I'm going now."
The General pushed his chair back abruptly. He said nothing, but he
looked at her with an expression of such despair that she did not
know whether it was genuine or assumed to play the buffoon and to
disarm her. As she stood surprised, he took her gently by the arm
and pushed her back into her chair.
"Don't go, please," he said. "Have another cigarette, let me offer
you something to drink."
She shook her head. But she decided not to leave as long as she was
angry.
Mr. Shultz poured himself another drink and puffed at his cigar.
Then holding it between his teeth he began to count up the chips.
"Nice girl, Mah-li," he said, "well-mannered, raised in a Mission
school she tells me." He winked at Megan.
"She is altogether charming," said Megan icily; "she is pretty and
quiet and modest, and I am quite sure she is good."
"Well, that's an idea!" laughed Mr. Shultz.
"Why shouldn't she be quiet and modest?" said the General. "You must
understand that she belongs to a class so accepted that it is not
necessary for her to put forth any lures whatsoever. She does not
have to exert herself. For five thousand years it has all been done
for her. She has only to apply rouge and jewels, to conduct herself
in a certain way, and fifty centuries of seduction act for her. You
must admit, Miss Davis, we make life easy for women in China."
"Isn't he the ladder?" said Mr. Shultz. "I told you he had humor."
Megan rested her head on her hands, covering her ears to shut out Mr.
Shultz's words.
"I really want to go. I can't stand this sort of stuff you both
talk, it is so artificial and confusing and it doesn't mean anything.
I am tired of it."
"Perhaps I'd better go," said Mr. Shultz, getting slowly to his feet.
He looked Megan over as he ground his cigar into the ash-tray.
Without another word he finished counting the chips, those of Mah-li,
of the Captain and the General, then he took out a paper and pencil,
made a note and handed it to the General.
"Settle up to-morrow," he said. "Good night, Miss Davis. Now you
and the General can have a little heart-to-heart talk." He strolled
with a curious lightness of step over to the door and once more
turned to look at her, a ponderous man with a heavy turtle-neck, but
his eyes were youthful and insolent. "Don't forget your rings, Miss
Davis," he drawled.
When he had gone, Megan said to the General, "How did you ever get
hold of him?"
"Oh," said the General with the air of being suddenly confidential,
"he came to me with a letter from a good friend of mine. He is a
remarkable man. He does everything. He understands thoroughly all
Western business methods because he has been connected at one time or
another with various firms, and while he is not actually a graduate
engineer he has had enough experience (he was with a company making
some sort of quartz light and with one making radios) so that now he
manages my arsenal and does it extremely well. I should say the
prosperity of my province is largely due to his efficiency. I am
very attached to him."
"He is ill-bred," said Megan, "and he has no ideals; he is a
thoroughly unscrupulous adventurer. If you knew the West better you
would recognize that at once. Don't let his efficiency blind you."
"He has two virtues besides his efficiency," said the General, "that
are even more indispensable to me. He is courageous and he is loyal."
"Loyal! And yet he talks about you as you heard him talk to-night!"
"You don't understand. He was calling my attention to a betrayal.
He was reminding me first how disliked I am in certain quarters, how
great a bribe might be given, and to whom. He wanted to focus my
distrust on a person whom it would not be possible for him to accuse
directly."
"Maybe so. But I still wish you would get rid of him. That he
should represent all you want to accept from the West is pitiful. I
can't imagine a man like you rejecting Doctor Strike and accepting
Mr. Shultz. Doctor Strike also has courage, and he also is loyal----"
"But not to me," the General interrupted. "Doctor Strike's first
loyalty would always be elsewhere. He would probably say to his God.
And a man who has dedicated himself to the service of any god is
unreliable as a friend."
"Mr. Shultz seems to me to be dedicated to himself, first, last and
always."
"That is just it. That is why he is loyal to me. He is a thoroughly
reasonable man. I am his best chance. My interests are his
interests. As long as that remains so I can count on him absolutely."
"But you yourself told me it did not occur to Doctor Strike to betray
you to the authorities to get his safe-conduct pass."
"The motive was not strong enough. He would betray me to please his
God any time. The difference is I can control the loyalty of Shultz.
I can make it always to his advantage to serve me. When I cannot do
that any longer I can expect to lose him. But how can I possibly
foresee what Doctor Strike will do! On one occasion he actually
tried to persuade me to save a young man's life, at the expense of my
own. When I would not do so he turned against me. No, no, Shultz
has all I want of the West. Doctor Strike has nothing."
The finality of these words silenced Megan. The General sat looking
at her, and Megan, who was never self-conscious, looked back at him,
thinking not of him but of the Jesuit church in the Chinese city, of
the first attempt, simple, gracious and even courtly, to bring the
word of God. Yet after several hundred years during which the
attempt had increased in volume and complicated itself immeasurably,
China, which had accepted so many other things, still felt no need of
the Word. It accepted Mr. Shultz. It rejected Doctor Strike.
Megan sighed as if she herself had partaken in the long struggle.
She looked at her watch. It was eleven-thirty.
"I must be going. I want to say just one more thing. You won't be
hard on little Mah-li, will you? Whatever Captain Li has done I am
sure she is quite innocent. I am going to return these rings to her
to-morrow. Unless you would return them yourself?" She held them
out tentatively but the General did not answer. "Well, then I will.
Good night, General Yen."
The General stood up and bowed as she passed him.
"Good night, Miss Davis."
[Illustration: Chapter XVII headpiece]