|THE _Yen Hsin_ would arrive at Kiu Kiang by mid-afternoon.
Half an hour earlier. Doane, on the lower deck, came upon a group of
his excellency's soldiers--brown deep-chested men, picturesque in their
loose blue trousers bound in above the ankles and their blue turbans and
gray cartridge belts--conversing excitedly in whispers behind the stack
of coffins near the stern. At sight of him they broke up and slipped
away.
A moment later, passing forward along the corridor beside the engine
room, he heard his name: “Mr. Doane! If you please!” This in English.
He turned. Just within the doorway of one of the low-priced cabins stood
a pedler he had observed about the lower decks; a thin Chinese with an
overbred head that was shaped, beneath the cap, like a skull without
flesh upon it; the eyes concealed behind smoked glasses.
“May I have a word with you, Mr. Doane?”
The mate considered; then, stooping, entered the tiny cabin. The pedler
closed the door; quietly shot the bolt; then removed his cap and the
queue with it, exposing a full head of stubbly black hair, trimmed, as
is said, pompadour. The glasses came off next; discovering wide alert
eyes. And now, without the cap, the head, despite the hair and the
seriously intellectual face, looked, balanced on its thin neck, more
than ever like a skull.
“You will not know of me, Mr. Doane. I am Sun Shi-pi of Shanghai. I
was attached, as interpreter, to the yamen of the tao-tai. I left his
service some months ago to join the republican revolutionary party. I
was arrested shortly after that at Nanking and condemned to death, but
his excellency, the viceroy--”
“Kang?”
“Yes. He is on this boat. He released me on condition that I go to
Japan. I kept my word--to that extent; I went to Japan--but I could
not keep my word in spirit. My life is consecrated to the cause of the
Chinese Republic. Nothing else matters. I returned to Shanghai, and was
made commander there of the 'Dare-to-dies.' You did not know of such
an organization? You will, then, before the winter is gone. We shall be
heard from. There are other such companies--at Canton, at Wuchang--at
Nanking--at every center.”
Doane seated himself on the narrow couch and studied the quietly eager
young man.
“You speak English with remarkable ease,” he said.
“Oh, yes. I studied at Chicago University. And at Tokio University I
took post-graduate work.”
“And you are frank.”
“I can trust you. You are known to us, Mr. Doane. Wu Ting Fang trusts
you--and Sun Yat Sen, our leader, he knows and trusts you.”
“I did know Sun Yat Sen, when he was a medical student.”
“He knows you well. He has mentioned your name to us. That is why I am
speaking to you. America is with us. We can trust Americans.”
Doane's mind was ranging swiftly about the situation. “You are running a
risk,” he said.
Sun Shi-pi shrugged his shoulders. “I shall hardly survive the
revolution. That is not expected among the 'Dare-to-dies.'”
“If his excellency's soldiers find you here they will kill you now.”
“The officers would, of course. Many of the soldiers are with us.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.”
“What is your errand?”
“I will tell you. The revolution, as you doubtless know, is fully
planned.”
“I've assumed so. There has been so much talk. And then, of course, the
outbreak in Szechuen.”
“That was premature. It was the plan to strike in the spring. This
fighting in Szechuen has caused much confusion. Sun Yat Sen is in
America. He is going to England, and can hardly reach China within
two months. He will bring money enough for all our needs. He is the
organizer, the directing genius of the new republic. But the Szechuen
outbreak has set all the young hotheads afire.”
“I am told that the throne has sent Tuan Fang out there to put down the
disturbance. But we have had no news lately.”
“That is because the wires are cut. Tuan Fang will never come back. We
will pay five thousand taels, cash, to the bearer of his head, and ask
no questions. We must exterminate the Manchus. It has finally come down
to that. It is the only way out. But we must pull together. Did you know
that the Wu Chang republicans plan to strike at once?”
“No.”
“I have been sent there to tell them to wait. That is our gravest danger
now. If we pull together we shall win. If our emotions run away with our
judgment--”
“The throne will defeat your forces piecemeal and destroy your morale.”
“Exactly. My one fear is that I may not reach Wu Chang in time.
But”--with a careless gesture--“that is as it may be. I will tell you
now why I spoke to you. We need you. Our organization is incomplete as
yet, naturally. One matter of the greatest importance is that our spirit
be understood from the first by foreign countries. There is an enormous
task--diplomatic publicity, you might call it--which you, Mr. Doane, are
peculiarly fitted to undertake You know both China and the West. You
are a philosopher of mature judgment. You would work in association with
Doctor Wu Ting Fang at our Shanghai offices. There will be money. Will
you consider this?”
“It is a wholly new thought,” Doane replied slowly. “I should have to
give it very serious consideration.”
“But you are in sympathy with our aims?”
“In a general way, certainly. Even though I may not share your
optimism.”
“On your return to Shanghai would you be willing to call at once on
Doctor Wu and discuss the matter?”
“Yes.... Yes, I will do that. I must leave you now. We are nearly at Kiu
Kiang.”
Sun, glancing out the window, raised his hand. Doane looked; two small
German cruisers, the kaiser's flag at the taff, were steaming up-stream.
“They know,” murmured Sun, with meaning. “I wish to God I could find
their means of information. They _all_ know. From the Japanese in
particular nothing seems to be hidden. Two or three of your American
war-ships are already up there. And the English, naturally, in force.”
“They must be on hand to protect the foreign colony at Hankow. The
Szechuen trouble would justify such a move.”
But Sun shook his head. “They _know_,” he repeated. Then he clasped
Doane's hand. “However.... that is a detail. It is now war. You will find
events marching fast--faster, I fear, than we republicans wish. Good-by
now. You will call on Doctor Wu.”
The steamer moved slowly in toward the landing hulk. Doane, from the
boat deck, by the after bell pull, gazed across at the park-like
foreign bund, with its embankment of masonry and its trees. Behind
lay, compactly, the walled city. Everything looked as it had always
looked--the curious crowd along the railing, the water carriers passing
down and up the steps, the eager shouting swarm of water beggars. Below,
the coolies swung out from the hulk, ready to make their usual breakneck
leap over green water to the approaching steamer. Now--they were
jumping. The passengers were leaning out from the promenade deck to
watch and applaud.... Doane's thoughts, as he went mechanically through
his familiar duties, wandered off inland, past the battlements and
towers of the ancient city to the thousands of other ancient cities
and villages and farmsteads beyond; and he wondered if the scores of
millions of lethargic minds in all those centers of population could
really be awakened from their sleep of six hundred years and stirred
into action.
Could a republic, he asked himself, possibly mean anything real to
those minds? The habit of mere endurance, of bare existence, was so
deep-seated, the struggle to live so intense, the opportunity so slight.
Sun Shi-pi and his kind were a semi-Western product. They were, when all
was said and done, an exotic breed. They were the ardent, adventurous
young; and they were the few. There had always been a throne in
China, always extortionate mandarins, always a popular acceptance of
conditions.
The lines were out now. And suddenly a blue-clad soldier climbed over
the rail, below, balanced along the stern hawser, leaped to the hulk,
and was about to disappear among the coolies there when a rifle-shot
cracked and he fell. He seemed to fall, if anything, slightly before the
shot. Another soldier, following close, was caught by a second shot as
he was balancing on the hawser, and spun headlong into the water where
the propeller still churned.
A few moments later, when Doane moved among the passengers, it became
clear that they knew nothing of the casual tragedy astern. They were all
pressing ashore for a walk in the native city, eager to buy the worked
silver that is traditionally sold there. The slim girl in the middy
blouse had apparently captured young Rocky Kane; they strolled off
across the bund together. But Dawley Kane remained aboard, stretched
out comfortably in a deck chair, listening thoughtfully to the stocky
little Japanese, one Kato, who was by now generally known to be his
_alter ego_ in the matter of buying objects of Oriental art.
None of these folk knew or cared about China. Excepting this Kato. Him
Doane was continually encountering below decks, chatting smilingly
in Chinese with the good-natured soldiers. His work along the river,
doubtless, ranged over a wider field than his present employer would
ever learn. It would be interesting, now, to know what he was saying,
talking so rapidly and always, of course, smiling.... The rest of this
upper-deck white man's existence Doane dismissed from his mind as he
went about his work. It was all too familiar. Though later he thought of
Rocky Kane. The boy, wild though he might be, had attractive qualities.
It was not pleasant to see that girl get her hands on him. Just one more
evil influence.
He thought, at this juncture, of the--the word came--appalling change
in himself. That he, once a fervid missionary, could stand back like
a sophisticated European, and let the wandering and vicious and broken
human creatures about him go their various ways, as might be, was
disturbing, was even saddening. Something apparently had died in him.
Sun had called him a philosopher. The Oriental, of course, even the
blazing revolutionist, admired this passive quality, this fatalistic
acceptance of the fact. He sighed. To be a philosopher was, then, to
be emotionally dead. The church had been taken out of his life,
leaving--nothing. A mate on a river steamer, in China. Life had gone
quite topsy-turvey. Even the amazing courtesy of his excellency--it
was that, when you considered--and this profound compliment from the
revolutionary junta seemed but incidents. Too many promises had smiled
at Doane, these years of his spiritual Odyssey--smiled and faded to
nothing--to permit an easy hope of anything new and beautiful. He was
beginning to believe that a man can not build and live two lives. And he
had built and lived one.
Captain Benjamin found him; a dogged little captain with dull fright
in his eyes. “It's happened,” he said, trying desperately to attain an
offhand manner. “Company wire. They're fighting at Wu Chang. What do you
know about that!”
Doane was silent. It was extraordinarily difficult, here by this calm
old city, on a sunny afternoon, to believe that it was, as Sun had put
it, war.
“We're to tie up,” the captain went on, “until further orders. The
foreign concessions at Hankow were safe enough this noon, but with an
artillery battle just across the river, and an imperial army moving down
from the north over the railway, they stand a lot of show, they do.”
“I wonder if they'll send us on.”
“What difference will it make?” The captain's voice was rising. “You
know as well as I do that they'll be fighting at Nanking before we
could get back there. Here, too, for that matter. I tell you the whole
river'll be ablaze by to-morrow. This bloody old river! And us on a
Manchu-owned boat! A lot o' chance we stand.”
The sight-seers strolled across the shady bund, passed a stone residence
or two and a warehouse, and made their way through the tunneled gateway
in the massive city wall. Little Miss Andrews was escorted by young
Mr. Braker. Miss Means walked with one of the customs men. Two or three
others of the men wandered on ahead. Rocky Kane and the thin girl in the
middy blouse brought up the rear.
As they entered the crowded city within the wall a babel of sound
assailed their ears--the beating of drums and gongs, clanging cymbals,
a musket shot or two, fire-crackers; and underlying these, rising even
above them, never slackening, a continuous roar of voices. The teachers
paused in alarm, but the customs man smilingly assured them that in a
busy Chinese city the noise was to be taken for granted.
Nearly every shop along the way was open to the street, and at each
opening men swarmed--bargaining, chaffering, quarreling. The only women
to be seen were those in black trousers on a wheelbarrow that pushed
briskly through the crowds, the barrow man shouting musically as he
shuffled along. Beggars wailed from the niches between the buildings.
Dogs snarled and barked--hundreds of dogs, fighting over scraps of offal
among the hundreds of nearly naked children.
A mandarin came through in a chair of green lacquer and rich gold
ornament, supercilious, fat, carried by four bearers and followed by
imposing officials who wore robes of black and red and hats with red
plumes. As the street was a scant ten feet in width and the crowds must
flatten against the walls to make way the roar grew louder and higher in
pitch.
There were shops with nothing but oils in huge jars of earthenware or
in wicker baskets lined with stout paper. There were tea shops with high
pyramids of the familiar red-and-gold parcels, and other pyramids of the
brick tea that is carried on camel back to Russia. There were the shops
of the idol makers, and others where were displayed the carven animals
and the houses and carts and implements that are burned in ancestor
worship, and the tinsel shoes. There were shops where remarkably large
coffins were piled in square heaps, some of glistening lacquer with
the ideograph characters carven or embossed in new gold. There were
varnishers, lacquerers, tobacconists; open eating houses in which could
be seen rows of pans set into brickwork. There were displays of bean
cakes, melon seeds and curious drugs.
Two Manchu soldiers sauntered by, in uniforms of red and faded blue;
fans stuck in their belts and painted paper umbrellas folded in their
hands. One bore a hooded falcon on his wrist.
Miss Andrews sniffed the penetrating odor of all China, that was spiced
just here with smells of garlic cooking and frying fish and pork and
strong oil? and--like the perfume of a dainty lady amid the complex
odors of a French theater--an unexpected whiff of burning incense. She
looked up between the high walls, on which hung, close together, the
long elaborate signs of the tradesmen, black and green and red with
gold, always the gold. Across the narrow opening from roof to roof,
extended a bamboo framework over which was drawn coarse yellow matting
or blue cotton cloths; and through these the sunbeams, diffused, glowed
in a warm twilight, with here and there a chance ray slanting down with
dazzling brightness on a golden sign character.
“It's all rather terrifying,” murmured Miss Andrews, at Braker's ear,
“but it's beautiful--wonderful! I never dreamed of China being so human
and real.”
“And to think,” said he eagerly, “that it has always been like this, and
always will be. It was just so in the days of Abraham and Isaac. The
one people in the world that doesn't change. It's their whole
philosophy--passive non-resistance, peace. And-do you know, I'm
beginning to wonder if they aren't right about it. For here they are,
you know. Greece is dead. Rome's dead. And Assyria, and Egypt. But here
they are. It's their philosophy that's done it, I suppose. Almost be
worth while to come out here and live a while, when our part of the
world gets too upset. Just for a sense of stability--somewhere.”
These two young persons, dreaming of stability while the earth prepared
to rock beneath their feet!
Rocky Kane and the slim girl had dropped out of sight, lingering at this
shop and that. The party later found them at a silversmith's counter.
They had bought a heap of the silver dragon-boxes and cigarette cases;
and then devised a fresh little idea in gambling, weighing ten Chinese
dollars against other ten in the balanced scales, the heavier lot
winning.
Young Kane had got through his clothing, somehow, there in the street,
to his money belt, for he held it now carelessly rolled in one hand. He
was flushed, laughing softly. He and the thin girl were getting on.
“Come along, you two,” remarked the customs man. “We stop only two hours
here.”
The young couple, gathering up their purchases and the heaps of silver
dollars, slowly followed.
“That was great!” exclaimed Rocky Kane. The thin girl, he had decided,
was a good fellow. She was always quiet, discreet, attractive. In her
curiously unobtrusive way she seemed to know everything. The face was
cold in appearance. Yet she was distinctly friendly. Made you feel that
nothing you might say could disturb or shock her. He wondered what could
be going on behind those pale quiet eyes, behind the thin lips. The
men had remarked on the fact that she was traveling alone. She was
a provocative person--the curiously youthful costume; the black hair
gathered at the neck and tied, girlishly, with a bow--really an exciting
person. The way she had taken that little scene out on deck with the
gorgeous Chinese girl--Rocky knew nothing of the distinctions between
the Asiatic peoples--who spoke English; quite as a matter of course.
Though she took everything that way. This little gambling, for instance.
She loved it--was quick at it.
“I'm wondering about you,” he said, as they wandered along.
“Wondering--you know--why you're traveling this way. Have you got folks
up the river?”
“Oh, no,” she replied--never in his life had he known such self-control;
there wasn't even color in her voice, just that easy quiet way, that
sense of giving out no vitality whatever. “Oh, no. I have some business
at Hankow and Peking.”
That was all she said. The subject was closed. And yet, she hadn't
minded his asking. She was still friendly; he felt that. His feelings
rose. He giggled softly.
“Lord!” he said, “if only the pater wasn't along!”
“Does he hold you down?”
“Does he? Brought me out here to discipline me. Trying to make me go
back to college--make a grind of me.... I was just thinking--here's a
nice girl to play with, and plenty of fun around, and not a thing to
drink. He gave me fits at Shanghai because I took a few drinks.”
“You have the other stuff,” said she. He turned nervously; stared at
her. But she remained as calmly unresponsive as ever. Merely explained:
“I smelt it, outside your cabin. You ought to be careful--shut your
window tight when you smoke it.”
He held his breath a moment; then realized, with an uprush of feeling
warmer than any he had felt before, that he had her sympathy. She would
never tell, never in the world. That big mate might, but she wouldn't.
She added this: “I can give you a drink. Wait until things settle down
on the boat and come to my cabin--number four. Just be sure there's no
one in the corridor. And don't knock. The door will be ajar. Step right
in. Do you like saké?”
“Do I--say, you're great! You're wonderful. I never knew a girl like
you!”
She took this little outbreak, as she had taken all his others, without
even a smile. It was, he felt, as if they had always known each other.
They understood--perfectly.
If he had been told, then, that this girl had been during two or three
vivid years one of the most conspicuous underworld characters along the
coast--that coast where the underworld was still, at the time of our
narrative, openly part of what small white world there was out here--a
gambler and blackmailer of what would very nearly have to be called
attainment--he would have found belief impossible, would have defended
her with the blind impulsiveness of youth.
It was said that the steamer would not proceed at the scheduled hour,
might be delayed until night. Disgruntled white passengers settled down,
in berth and deck chair, to make the best of it. There was, it came
vaguely to light, a little trouble up the river, an outbreak of some
sort.
Rocky Kane, a flush below his temples, slipped stealthily along the
corridor. At number four he paused; glanced nervously about; then,
grinning, pushed open the door and softly closed it behind him.
The strange thin Miss Carmichael was combing out her black hair. With a
confused little laugh he extended his arms. But she shook her head.
“Sit down and be sensible,” she said. “Here's the saké.”
She produced a bottle and poured a small drink into a large glass. He
gulped it down.
“Aren't you drinking with me?” he asked.
“I never take anything.”
“You're a funny girl. How'd you come to have this?”
“It was given to me. You'd better slip along. I can't ask you to stay.”
“But when am I going to see you, for a good visit?”
“Oh, there'll be chances enough. Here we are.”
“That's so. Looks as if we'd stay here a while, too. There's a battle
on, you know, up at Wu Chang and Hankow. Big row. We get all the
news from Kato. He's that Japanese that father has with him. The
revolutionists have captured Wu Chang, and are getting ready to cross
over. The imperial army's being rushed down to defend Hankow. Regular
doings. Shells were falling in the foreign concessions this morning.
Kato's got all the news there is. It's a question whether we'll go on
at all. You see the Manchus own this boat, and the republicans would
certainly get after us. There are enough foreign warships up there to
protect us, of course.... How about another drink?”
“Better not. Your father will notice it.”
“He won't know where I got it.” Rocky chuckled. He felt himself an
adventurous and quite manly old devil--here in the mysterious girl's
cabin, watching her as she smoothed and tied her flowing hair, and
sipping the potent liquor from Japan. “It's funny nothing seems to
surprise you. Did you know they were fighting up there?”
“No.”
“Wouldn't you be a little frightened if we were to steam right into a
battle?”
“I shouldn't enjoy it particularly.”
“Aren't you even interested? Is there anything you're interested in?”
“Certainly--I have my interests. You must go--really.... No, be quiet!
Some one will hear! We can visit to-night--out on deck.”
“But you're--I don't understand! Here we are--like this--and you shoo me
out. I don't even know your first name.”
“My name is Dixie--but I don't want you to call me that.”
“Why not? We're friends, aren't we--”
“Of course, but they'd hear you.”
“Oh!”
“Wait--I'll look before you go.... It's all clear now.”
They visited long after dinner. He was brimming with later advices from
the center of trouble up the river. Mostly she listened, studying him
with a mind that was keener and quicker and shrewder in its sordid
wisdom than he would perhaps ever understand.
Everything that Kato had told his father and himself he passed eagerly
on to her. He was a man indeed now; making an enormous impression;
possessor of inside information of a vital sort--the viceroy's priceless
collection of jewels, jades, porcelains and historic paintings, which
Kato was advising his father to pick up for a song while red revolution
raged about the old Manchu, the dramatic plans of the republicans, their
emblems and a pass-word (Kato knew everything)--“Shui-li”--“union is
strength”; the small meeting below decks ending in the death of two
soldiers. He dramatized this last as he related it.
The girl, lying still in her chair, listened as if but casually
interested, while her mind gathered and related to one another the
probable facts beneath his words. She was considering his dominant
quality of ungoverned hot-blooded youth. Of discretion he clearly enough
had none; which fact, viewed from her standpoint, was both important and
dangerous. For the information he so volubly conveyed she had immediate
use. That was settled, however cloudy the details. But this further
question as to the advisability of holding the boy personally to herself
she was still weighing. Two courses of action lay before her, each
leading to a possible rich prize. If the two could be combined, well and
good; she would pursue both. But it was not easy to sense out a possible
combination. The obvious first thought was to go whole-heartedly after
the larger of the prizes and as whole-heartedly forget the other. As
usual in all such choices, however, the lesser prize was the easier to
secure. Perhaps, even, by working--the word “working” was her own--with
great rapidity she might make--again her word--a killing with this wild
youth in time to discard him and pursue the still richer prize.
Because he was, at least, the bird in hand, she submitted passively when
his fingers found hers under the steamer rug. Twilight was thickening
into night now on the river. And they were in a dim corner. He was, she
saw, at the point of almost utter disorganization. He was sensitive,
emotional, quite spoiled. It was almost too easy to do what she might
choose with him. It would be amusing to tantalize him, if there
were time; watch him struggle in the net of his own nervously unripe
emotions, perhaps shake him down (we are yet again dropping into her
phraseology) without the surrender of a _quid pro quo_. That would
please her sense of cool sharp power. But he might in that event, like
the young naval officer down at Hong Kong, shoot himself; which wouldn't
do. No, nothing in that!
This other larger matter, now, was a problem indeed; really, as yet,
only a haze in her sensitive, strangely gifted mind. It put to the test
at once her imagination, her instinct for dangerous enterprise,
her skill at organizing the sluggish minds of others. It would mean
dangerous and intense activity.
She asked, in a careless manner, where the viceroy kept his treasures;
and fixed in her mind the place he named--Huang Chau.
The fool was squeezing her fingers now; unquestionably building in his
ungoverned brain an extravagant image of herself; an image wrapped
in veils of somewhat tarnished but certainly boyish innocence,
sentimentalized, curiously less interesting than the complicated
wickedness and intrigue of actual human life as it presented itself to
her.
When he tried to kiss her she left him. But lingered to listen to
his proposal that she should follow him to his own cabin; smiled
enigmatically in the dusk beneath the deck light; humming lightly,
pleasingly, she moved away; turned to watch him bolting for his room.
She strolled around the deck then. Apparently none other was sitting
out. The teachers and the young men were spending the evening, she knew,
with Dawley Kane at the consulate. Rocky had got out of that. Tex Connor
was in his cabin; reading, doubtless, with his one good eye. For rough
as he might be, this gambler and promoter of boxing and wrestling
reveled secretly in love stories. He read them by the hundred, the
old-fashioned paper-covered romances and tales of adventure. A pretty
able man. Tex; useful in certain sorts of undertakings; certainly useful
now; but with that curious romantic strain--a weakness, she felt. And
a difficult man, strong, arrogant, leaning on crude power and threats
where she leaned on delicately adjusted intrigue. Had Tex known better
how to cover his various trails he would be in New York or London now,
not out here on the coast picking up small change. Approaching him would
be a bit of a problem; for a year or so their ways, hers and his, had
lain far apart. It was not known, here on the boat, that they were so
much as casually acquainted. They bowed at the dining table; nothing
more.
The Manila Kid was in the social hall, rummaging through the shelf
of battered and scratched records above the taking machine. A quaint
spirit, the Kid; weak, oddly useless, gloomily devoted to music of a
simple sort, quite without enterprise. But.... by this time the delicate
steel machinery of her mind was functioning clearly.... he would
serve now, if only as a means of solving that first little problem of
interesting Tex.
She paused in the doorway; caught his furtive eye, and with a slight
beckoning movement of her head, moved back into the comparative
darkness. Slowly--thick-headedly of course--he came out.
“Jim,” she said, “I'm wondering if you and Tex wouldn't like to pick up
a little money.”
“What do you think we are?” he replied in a guarded sulky voice. “Tex
dropped three thousand at that fight. There's no talking to him. He's
rough--that's what he is.”
“Jim--” she considered the man before her deliberately; his lank
spineless figure, his characterless, hatchet face: “Jim, send Tex to
me.”
“Why should I, Dix? Answer me that.”
“Don't act up, Jim. I've never handed you anything that wasn't more
than coming to you. I know all about you, Jim. Everything! I'm not
talking--but I know. This is a big proposition I've got in mind, and
you'll get your share, if you come in and stick with me? How about half
a million in jewels?”
“I don't know's Tex would care to go in for anything like that. If it's
a yegg job--”
“I'm not a yegg,” she replied crisply. “Ask Tex to slip around here. I
don't want to talk on that side of the deck.”
“I suppose you wouldn't like young Kane to know what you are--er?”
“That sort of talk won't get you anywhere, Jim.”
“Well--I've got eyes, you know.”
“Better learn how to use them. You hurry around to Tex's cabin. We may
have to move quickly.” Sulkily the Kid went; and shortly returned.
“Well”--this after a silence--“what did he say? Is he coming?”
“He wants you to go around there--to his stateroom.”
“I won't do that. He's got to come here.”
This decision lightened somewhat the gloom on the Kid's saturnine
countenance. He went again, more briskly.
The girl slipped into her own cabin and consulted a folding map of China
she had there. Huang Chau--she measured roughly from the scale with her
thumb--would be seventy or eighty miles up-stream from Kiu Kiang here,
perhaps thirty-five down-stream from Hankow.
Tex was chewing a cigar by the rail. At her step his round impassive face
turned toward her.
She said, “Hello, Tex!”
He replied, his one eye fixed on her: “Well, what is this job?”
“Listen, Tex--are you game for a big one?”
“What is it?”
“The revolution's broken out at Hankow--or across at Wu Chang--”
“Yes, I know!”
“There's going to be another big battle near Hankow. The republicans are
moving over. Sure to be a mix-up.”
“Oh. yes!”
“There'll be loot--”
“Oh, that!”
“Wait! I know where there's a collection of jewels--diamonds, pearls,
rubies, emeralds--all kinds.”
“Do you know how to get it?”
“Yes. It's a big thing. We'd be selling stones for years in America and
Europe, Will you go in with me, fifty-fifty?”
“What's the risk?”
“Not much--with things so confused. Looks to me like one of those
chances that just happens once in a hundred years. Take some imagination
and nerve.”
“Where is this stuff?”
“I'll tell you when we get there. You'll have to trust me about that.
I've never lied to you, and you have lied to me.”
“But--”
“Listen! Here's the idea. There's a lot of nervous soldiers on this boat
that wouldn't mind a little loot on their own. Here's your boxer--what's
his name?”
“Tom Sung.” Connor's eye never left her face; and she, on her part,
never flinched.
“To those soldiers he's the biggest man on earth. _He_ wouldn't mind a
little clean-up either. Oh, there's enough, Tex--plenty! You see what
I'm getting at. With your Tom for a leader you can pick up a few of
those soldiers, enough to get away clean--”
“But they're shooting 'em!”
“They shot two. They'd have trouble shooting forty. Make Tom do the
work--right now, to-night, while we're lying up here. They'll follow
him; and you won't have to stand back of him if he's caught. He'll just
be one of the rebels then. Get this right, Tex! It's a real chance.
You'll never get another like it. With the soldiers we can get a
launch--hire it, even, if you want to play safe--and go right up there
and get the stuff. Nobody'll ever know it wasn't just a case of soldiers
on the loose.”
“How're you going to get away? They'd know we weren't here, wouldn't
they?”
“Don't try to tell me we couldn't slip out of China, if we had to. This
isn't England or America. I don't believe we'd even have to. Just a case
of playing it right--using your head.”
“Where is this place?”
“It's there, and I'll take you to it.”
“You'll have to tell me.”
Quietly she moved her head in the negative. He would hardly know that
the viceroy was not going on through to Hankow and Peking; she had the
information herself only from Rocky Kane. Nor would he know, by any
chance, the situation of his excellency's ancestral home. For Tex was
not what they termed a “sinologue”; he knew white men and women and
yellow servants, the steamers and railways, the gambling clubs and race
tracks; little else. There was then, little reason why he should think
of the viceroy at all.
“It's anything from a million or two up, Tex,” she said coolly. “And
my information comes straight. I'll prove it by taking the chance with
you.”
He shook his head; half turned. “Where is it?” She smiled.
He left her abruptly then. And coolly she watched him go. It would take
a little time for Tex's imagination to rise to it; and until the last
moment he would try to bluff her down. It was just poker; they had
played that game before, she and Tex. Once he had robbed her. But not
this time--not, as she phrased it, if she saw him first.
The Kid came edging out of the social hall. “Will he do it?” he
whispered hoarsely.
“He says he won't,” replied Dixie.
“Say--that's tough! I didn't think Tex would overlook a thing like that.
What's the matter?” Dixie now considered this curiously useless man. Or
useless he had always seemed to her. Now she was not so sure. “He makes
it a condition that I tell him where the stuff is.”
“Well--Dix, you'd tell him that, wouldn't you?” The Kid was whining. “If
you really knew yourself.”
“Of course I won't tell him, Jim. Not yet.”
His eyes sank before hers. He fumbled in a pocket; produced a tiny wrist
watch of platinum. “Look here. Dix,” he remarked clumsily, “things ain't
always been's pleasant as they might be between you and I, but I was
wondering if you wouldn't put this on, for old times' sake, like.”
She took the gift, weighed in in her hand. “Thank you, Jim,” she
replied. “That's awfully nice of you. Though perhaps I'd better not wear
it here on the boat.”
“I suppose young Kane might ask questions, eh?”
“Nothing like that. I'll wear it. Here--you snap the catch, Jim.”
“I--I might wish it on, Dix, like the kids do.”
“All right. Have you wished?”
“Sure, Say, Dix, you won't mind the little place where the initials got
scratched off inside the back cover. Nobody'll see that.”
“Surely not,” said Dixie.
At a little after midnight Griggsby Doane mounted to the boat deck and
walked quietly aft past the funnels and the engine room ventilators. A
half moon threw shadows along the bund and among the landing hulks and
the moored silent sampans, lorchas, junks. The mile-wide river shimmered
in a million ripples.
A slight figure rose from a skylight.
Hui Fei wore the black jacket and trousers of the lower class Chinese
women below decks. Her head was uncovered, and her hair waved prettily
down across the wide forehead. She should have oiled it flat, of course,
to complete her disguise; this careless arrangement was charming in the
moonlight but was neither Manchu nor Chinese.
Doane found himself holding her small hand and looking gravely down at
her. He even slowly shook his head. “You must tell me quickly what you
have to say, Miss Hui. As soon as possible you must go back. This is
very unsafe.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “It will not be long. It is ver' har' to say. But I
am so alone. There is no one to tell me what I mus' do.”
She plunged bravely into her story. Her information had come from one or
another of her maids. And she had overheard gossip among the mandarins.
The throne had sent her father the silken cord. She could not discover
why. To be sure they called him a secondary devil, meaning one who
sympathised with the foreigners. The reactionary Manchus at Peking,
reveling and plotting within the sacred walls of the Forbidden City,
remembered nothing, it appeared, of the recent past. The eunuchs, always
the stormy petrels of China's darkest days, were again in power at
the palace; the great empress dowager, she whom all China termed,
half-affectionately, “the Old Buddha,” had given them their head, and
now this new young empress with all the arrogance of the Old Buddha and
none of her genius for power or her profound experience, was running
wild. And as a consequence, Kang Yu, the statesman who more than any
other was equipped to counsel her wisely during this stormy time, was
returning to the home of his ancestors to die by his own hand. It
would be said at the Forbidden City that a gracious empress dowager had
“permitted” him to go.... Doane's disturbed thoughts darted back over the
bloodstained recent history of Manchu officialdom. The Old Buddha had
“permitted” Ch'i Ying, late Manchu Viceroy of Canton, to slay himself;
and had graciously extended the same privilege to others after the Boxer
trouble of the year 1900, among them an acquaintance of Doane's, Chao
Shu-ch'iao. Others she had decapitated--Yuan Ch'ang, Li Shan, Controller
of the Household, and Hsu Ching, President of the Board of War. She
killed, too, Hsu Ching-Ch'eng, who, like Kang, had held the post of
minister in more than one of the capitals of Europe. The only known
charge against this Hsu was that he had come to admire foreign customs.
In her narrative the girl spoke only English. Her voice was deep
in quality, without heaviness; musical, like most voices among the
better-to-do in the Middle Kingdom, Chinese and Manchu alike. And,
colored now with deep emotion, it had an appealing quality to which
Doane found a response--difficult, at the moment, to repress--among his
own emotions. He sensed, too, with a pleasure that was, in his lonely
life, stirring, the naiveté of her Western feeling. Standing here in
simple native costume, in the heart of old China, gazing wistfully out
over the tangled hundreds of sleeping junks and sampans, this girl,
freshly out of a Massachusetts college, was pleading against hope that
her father might be spared the final jealous vengeance of the mightiest
remaining Oriental throne.
The China that Doane had so long known, that had, indeed, for better
or worse, been woven into the fiber of his being, was turning suddenly
incredible. He stared, more intently than he knew, straight down at
the slim little figure--for beside his own huge frame this tall girl
appeared as hardly more than a child--at the unadorned face that was
softly girlish, at the Mack hair waving down over the pale forehead,
glistening in the moonlight.
“They mean to confisca'”--she left off, in her eagerness to explain,
the final _te_--“all his property. Tell me, Mister Duane, can they do
that--all his property?”
He reflected. There would be vast areas of tea-lands and rice lands,
almost innumerable shares in these new corporations, the famous
collections of jades, paintings, carvings and jewels. Finally he
inclined his head.
“I'm afraid they could. It would be an outrageous act, but the
government now, I'm sorry to say, is in outrageous hands. If the empress
is determined, as apparently she is, there are ways enough of getting
at all his possessions. Even through the banks.” His heart was full, his
voice tender; but he could not deceive her. He added a question: “Does
his excellency, your father, know all this?”
She nodded. “I have tol' him. But I can no' make him see it like me. Oh,
we are so differen'. I am, you see, an American girl. I am free here,”
she laid a pretty hand on her breast. “When I try to think of all these
dreadful things--of these wicked eunuchs an' the empress who is like
thousan' of years ago--blin', childish!--an' the people who can no' yet
see it differen'--I get bewilder'. You un'erstan'. You are an American,
too. I can speak with you. That is well, because there isn' anybody else
I can speak with. An' my father admires you. If you will only speak with
him--if you will only help me make him think differen'!”
Doane wondered what he could do, what she imagined he could do, without
influence or money. He quite forgot, in this matter of influence alone,
the significance of the viceroy's courtesy, as of Sun Shi-pi's appeal
to him. For a little too long he had been a beaten man. It was becoming
dangerously near a habit so to consider himself. And now, to make active
clear thinking impossible, emotion flooded his brain. Gently he asked her
what she would have him do.
“My father will no' listen when I speak, He is ver' kind, ver' generous.
He has made me an American girl. That is one of the things they say is
wrong. Even for tha' they attack his good name. But when I ask Him no'
to do this, no' to die so wrongly, he speaks to me like an ol' Manchu of
long ago.”
“He is between the worlds,” mused Doane, aloud.
“Yes, it is that. An' I, perhaps, am between the worl's.”
“And I.”
“But he mus' no' do it! It is so simple! The throne will no' live. Not
one year more. I know that. They are fighting now at Wu Chang.”
Doane inclined his head. “I know that, Miss Hui, but the revolution has
not yet gone so far that success is sure.”
“But it is sure. The people will everywhere rise. I know it--here!”
“That is my hope, too. But to stir this great land means so much in
effort and education. You have changed, yes. Your father has changed.
Sun Yat Sen was educated in a medical school and has lived in America
and England; he has changed. But all China--I do not want to dash your
hopes, dear Miss Hui, but I fear China is not nearly so far along as you
and I would wish.”
“Then--even so--mus' my father die because a wicked empress has no
brains? It is no' right. Listen, please! If you, Mis'er Doane, would
jus' try to persua' my father! He will listen to you. Oh, if you woul'
stay with us, an' help us. We coul' take some money, some jewels, an'
escape down the river--to Shanghai--to Japan, or even America. My father
mus' no' die like this. There will be a few servan's we can trus'. You
speak to my father, sir, an' he will listen. I know that. He says you
have the mind of the ol' philosopher--of Lao-tze himself. He said that.
An' you have the Western strength that he admires. An' he says you
un'erstan' China. Oh, will you speak to him?”
Doane stared out into the luminous night. This response in his breast
to her eager youth frightened him now. He had felt of late that life
mattered little; certainly not his own. But youth, and hope, and
faith--they mattered.
He took her small hand in his own. His heart was beating high. It was
going to be hard now, to control his voice. He was, then, after all the
years, the struggles, the beatings, incurably romantic....
Stirred yet by the vibrant pulse of youth that in some men and women
never dies. He himself had thought this negative spirit of the past few
years a philosophy, but apparently, it was nothing of the sort. Or where
was it now? For he was suddenly all nervously alive, a man of vigor and
pride, a man of urgent emotional need....
“I will try,” he said.
She clung to his hand. “I have your promise?”
He bowed. “I must think. I should not like to fail. There will be time.
He will”--it was hard to phrase this--“he will wait, surely, until he is
at home. But you must not stay longer here. And we must not meet again
like this. I will try my best to help you.”
It seemed a pitifully inadequate speech. But the wild impulse was upon
him to clasp her lovely person in his arms--claim her, fight for her,
live again a man's life through and for her. It was, he deliberately
thought, almost insane in him. A man with nothing to offer, not even the
great hope of youth, struggling against an emotion, a hunger, that it
was grotesque to indulge. He compressed his lips tightly.
She seemed breathless. For a moment she pressed her hands to her cheeks
and eyes; then waved to him and went lightly down the ladder.