|THERE came for his excellency, as the sun mounted the sky, a large
junk of his own river fleet--great brown sails flapping against the five
masts of all heights that pointed up at crazily various angles, pennons
flying at each masthead, hull weathered darkly, mats and fenders of
woven hemp hung over the poop-rail, and a swarming pigtailed crew at the
sweeps and overside on the spunson and hard at the tracking ropes as
the _tai-kung_ screamed from the bow and the _laopan_ shouted from the
poop.
They were ferried aboard in the small boat, Kang with his daughters and
his suite and servants, a handful of pitifully wailing women, young Kane
and Griggsby Doane. Then the trackers cast off from the shore and
the mooring poles, the sweeps moved, and with the _lao pan_ musically
calling the stroke the junk moved laboriously up-stream toward the home
of his excellency's ancestors.
Crowded into the uninviting cabins the weary travelers sought a few
hours of rest. Even the servants and the mourning women, under the
mattings forward, fell swiftly asleep. Only Rocky Kane, his eyes staring
widely out of a sensitively white face, walked the deck; until
the thought--a new sort of thought in the life of this headstrong
youth--that he would be disturbing those below drove him aft, out beyond
the steersman to the over-hanging gallery. Here he sat on the bamboo
rail and gazed moodily down at the tireless, mighty river flowing off
astern.
The good in the boy--made up of the intelligence, the deep-smoldering
conscience, the fineness that were woven out of his confused heritage
into his fiber--was rising now like a tide in his spirit; and the
experience was intensely painful. It seemed to his undisciplined mind
that he was, in certain of his aspects, an incredible monster. There had
been wild acts back home, a crazy instinct for excess that now took on
distinctness of outline; moments of careless evil in Japan and Shanghai;
the continuous subtle conflict with his father in which any evasion had
seemed fair; but above all these vivid memory-scenes that raced like an
uncontrollably swift panorama through his over-alert brain stood out his
vicious conduct on the ship. It was impossible at this moment to realize
mentally that the Princess Hui Fei was now his friend; he could see her
only in the bright Manchu costume as she had appeared when he first so
uncouthly spoke to her. And there were, too, the ugly moments with
the strange girl known as Dixie Carmichael. That part of it was only a
nightmare now.... The racing in his brain frightened him. He stared at
the dimpling yellow river, at a fishing boat, and finally lifted his
hurt eyes to the bright sky.... He had been going straight to hell, he
told himself, mumbling the words softly aloud. And then this lovely girl
had brought him into confusion and humility. Suddenly he had broken with
his father; that, in itself, seemed curiously unaccountable, yet there
the fact stood.... Life--eager, crowding--had rushed him off his feet.
He felt wildly adrift, carried on currents that he could not stem....
He was, indeed, passing through one of life's deepest experiences, one
known to the somewhat unimaginative and intolerant people whose blood
ran in his veins as conviction of sin. His own careless life had
overtaken and confronted him. It had to be a bitter moment. There was
terror in it. And there was no escaping; it had to be lived through.
A merry voice called; there was the patter of soft-clad feet, and in a
moment the little princess in her yellow hood with the fox head on
the crown was climbing into his lap. Eagerly, tenderly, he lifted her;
cuddled her close and kissed her soft cheek. Tears were frankly in his
eyes now.
He laughed with her, nervously at first, then, in the quick
responsiveness of youth, with good humor. She came to him as health.
Together they watched the diving cormorants and the wading buffalo.
Then he hunted about until he found a bit of board and a ball of twine;
whittled the board into a flat boat, stuck a little mast in it with
a white sail made from a letter from his pocket, and towed it astern.
Together they hung on the rail, watching the craft as it bobbed over the
little waves and laughing when it capsized and lost its sail.
She climbed into his lap again after that, and scolded him for making
the unintelligible English sounds, and made signs for him to smoke; and
he showed her his water-soaked cigarettes.
At a low-pitched exclamation he turned with a nervous start. The tall
eunuch stood on the cabin roof; came quickly forward for the child. And
beside him was Miss Hu Fei, still of course wearing the Chinese coat
and trousers in which she had escaped from the steamer. She had, under
the warm sun, thrown aside the curiously modern opera wrap. She was
slim, young, delicately feminine. The boy gazed at her reverently. She
seemed to him a fairy, an unearthly creature, worlds beyond his reach.
In his excitement, but a few hours back--in what he had supposed to be
their last moment together, in what, indeed, had seemed the end of the
world--he had declared his love for her. That had been an uprush of pure
emotion.... He recalled it now, yet found it difficult to accept as an
occurrence. The actual world had turned unreal to him, as it does to the
sensitively young that suffer poignantly.
To this grave young woman, oddly his shipmate, he could hardly, he felt
now, have spoken a personal word. Their acquaintance had begun at a high
emotional pitch; now it must begin again, normally. So it seemed to him.
“We were looking for my li'l sister,” she explained, and half turned.
The eunuch had already disappeared with the child.
“Won't you sit out here--with me?” He spoke hesitantly. “That is, unless
you are too tired to visit.”
“I coul'n' sleep,” said she.
Slowly she came out on the gallery.
“There aren't any chairs,” said he. “Perhaps I could find--”
“I don' mind.” She sank to the floor; leaned wearily against the rail.
He settled himself in a corner.
“I couldn't sleep either. You see--Miss Hui--Miss Fei”--he broke into a
chuckle of embarrassment--“honest I don't know what to call you.”
The unexpected touch of boyish good humor moved her nearly to a smile.
Boyish he was, sitting with his feet curled up, stabbing at the deck
with his jackknife, coatless, collarless, his thick hair tousled,
blushing pleasantly.
“My frien's call me Hui,” she replied simply.
“Oh--really! May I--If you would--of course I know that--but my friends
call me Rocky. The whole thing is Rockingham Bruce Kane. But....”
“I'll call you Misser Kane,” said she.
His face fell a very little; but quickly he recovered himself.
“You must have wondered--I suppose it seems as if I've done a rather
crazy thing--it _must_ seem so...” She murmured, “Oh, no!”
“Attaching myself to your party this way---at such a difficult time. I
know it was a pretty impulsive thing to do, but....”
His voice trailed into silence. For a brief moment this wild act seemed,
however different in its significance to himself, of a piece with his
other wild acts. It was, perhaps, like all those, merely ungoverned
egotism. Her voice broke sweetly in on this moment of gloomy reverie.
“We know tha' you woul' help us if you coul'. An' you were so
won'erful.”
“If I only could help! You see when I spoke that way to you--I mean
telling you I loved you--”
“Please! We won' talk abou' tha'.”
“No. We won't. Except just this. I was beside myself. But even then, or
pretty soon afterward, I knew it was just plain selfishness.”
“You mus'n' say that, either. Please!”
“No--just this! Of course you don't know me. What you do know is all
against me--”
“I have forgotten--”
“You will never forget. But even if you were some day to like me more
than you could now, I know it would take a long time. I've got to earn
the right to be really your friend first. I'm going to try to do
that. I've started all over--to-day---my life, I mean. I'm just simply
beginning again. There's a good long scrap ahead of me. That's all about
that! But please believe that I've got a little sanity in me.”
“Oh, I'm sure--”
“I have. Jumping overboard like that, and swimming back to you--it
wasn't just crazy impulse, like so many of the things I've done. You
see, my father knows you and your father--yes, I mean the terrible
trouble you're in. Oh, everything comes to him, sooner or later. All the
facts. You have to figure on that, with the pater. He--well, he wanted
me to stop thinking about you. He was afraid I'd be writing to you, or
something. You see, he'd watched us talking there by the fire. And he
told me about this--this dreadful thing. And then I had to come back.
Don't you see? I couldn't go on, leaving you like this. Of course,
it's likely enough I'm just in the way here--” She was smiling wearily,
pathetically, now.
“Oh, no--” she began.
“It's this way,” he swept impetuously on. “Maybe I _can_ help. Anyway,
I've got to try. If your father--really--” He saw the slight shudder
that passed through her slender body, and abruptly checked the rapid
flow of words. “We've got to take care of you,” he said, with surprising
gravity and kindness. “You'll have to get back with the white people.
You mustn't be left with the yellow.”
“I know,” said she, the strength nearly gone from her voice. “It always
seems to me that I'm an American. Though sometimes I ge' confuse'. It
isn' easy to think.”
“I'm simply wearing you out. I mustn't. But just this--remember that I
know all about it. I've broken with my father, for the present, and I'm
happy about that. I have got some money of my own--quite a little. I've
even got a wet letter of credit in my pocket. I had just sense enough
last night to get it out of my coat. It's no good, of course, outside
of the treaty ports, but it's there. I'm here to help. And I do want to
feel that you'll call on me--for anything--and as for the rest of it--”
He had thought himself unusually clear and cool, but at this point his
voice clouded and broke. He glanced timidly at her, and saw that her
eyes were full of tears. He had to look away then. And during a long few
moments they sat without a word.
Then the thought came, “I'm here to help!” It was a stirring thought. He
had never helped, never in his life that he could remember. And yet the
Kanes did things; they were strong men.
He was moodily skipping his knife over his hand, trying to catch the
point in the soft wood. Abruptly, with a surprising smile, he looked up
and asked: “Ever play mumbletepeg?”
Her troubled eyes for an instant met his. He chuckled again in that
boyish way. And she, nervously, chuckled too. That seemed good.
“It's sort of hard to make the blade stick in this wood,” he said
eagerly. “But we can do some of the things.”
Griggsbv Doane, too, was far from sleep. For that matter, he was of
the strong mature sort that needs little, that can work long hours and
endure severe strain without weakening. Moving aft over the poop he saw
them, playing like two children, and stepped quietly behind the slanting
short mast that overhung the steersman.
They made a charming picture, laughing softly as they tossed the knife.
It hadn't before occurred to him that young Kane had charm. Plainly,
now, he had. And it was good for Hui Fei, in this hour of tragic
suspense. Youth, of course, would call unto youth. That was the natural
thing. He tried to force himself to see it in that light but he moved
forward with a heavy heart.
The junk plowed deliberately against the current. The monotonous voice
of the chanting _lao pan_, the rhythmical splash and creak of the
sweeps, the syncopated continuous song of the crowded oarsman, an
occasional warning cry from the tai-kung--these were the only sounds.
Elsewhere, lying in groups about the deck, the castaways slumbered.
But Doane knew that his excellency was awake, shut away in the
_laopan's_ cabin, for repeatedly he had heard him moving about. Once,
through a thin partition, had come the sound of a chair scraping. It
would mean that Kang was preparing his final papers. These would be
painstakingly done. There would be memorials to the throne and to
his children and friends, couched in the language of a master of the
classics, rich in the literary allusions dear to the heart of the
scholar, Manchu and Chinese alike.
Doane found a seat on a coil of the heavy tracking rope. His own part in
the drama through which they were all so strangely living could be
only passive. He would serve as he might. His little dream of personal
happiness, with a woman to love and new strong work to be somehow begun,
was wholly gone.
Slowly, foot by foot, the clumsy craft crept up the river. And strangely
the scene held its peaceful, intensely busy character. Everywhere, as if
there were no revolution, as if the old river had never known wreckage
and bloodshed, the country folk toiled in the fields. Junks passed.
Irrigating wheels turned endlessly. Fishermen sat patiently watching
their cormorants or lowering and lifting their nets. A big English
steamer came booming down, with white passengers out of bloody Hankow
(the looting and burning of the native city must have been going on just
then, before the reinforced imperial troops drove the republicans back
across the river). They layabout in deck chairs, these white passengers;
or, doubtless, played bridge in the smoking-room. And Doane, as so
often during his long life, felt his thoughts turning from these idle,
self-important whites, back to the oldest of living peoples; and he
dwelt on their incalculable energy, their incredible numbers, their
ceaseless individual struggle with the land and water that kept them, at
best, barely above the line of mere sustenance.
It was difficult, pondering all this, to believe that any revolution
could deeply stir this vast preoccupied people, submerged as they
appeared to be in ancient habit. The revolution could succeed only if
the Manchu government was ready to fall apart from the weakness of sheer
decadence. It was nothing, this revolution, but the desperate work of
agitators who had glimpsed the wealth and the individualistic tendencies
of the West. And the hot-blooded Cantonese, of course. Most of the
Chinese in America were Cantonese. The revolution was, then, a Southern
matter; it was these tropical men that had come to know America. That
was about its only strength. The great mass of yellow folk here in the
Yangtze Valley, and through the coast provinces, and all over the great
central plain and the North and Northwest were peaceable at heart; only
those Southerners were truculent, they and the scattered handfuls of
students.
And yet, China, in the hopeful hearts of those who knew and loved the
old traditions, must somehow be modernized. Sooner or later the Manchus
would fall. The vast patient multitude must then either learn to think
for themselves in terms of modern, large-scale organization or fall into
deeper degradation. The European trading nations would strike deep and
hard in a sordid struggle for the remaining native wealth. The Japanese,
with iron policy and intriguing hand would destroy their institutions
and bring them into a pitiful slavery, economic and military.
His own life, Doane reflected, must be spent in some way to help this
great people. The individual, confronted by so vast a problem, seemed
nothing. But the effort had to be made. Since he was not a trader, since
he could not hope now to find himself in step with the white generation
that had passed him by, all that was left was to pitch in out here. The
call of the martyred Sun Shi-pi pointed a way.
The personal difficulty only remained. The man who loses step with
his own people and his own time must submit to being rolled under and
trampled on. There is no other form of loneliness so deep or so bitter.
And seeing nothing above and about him but the hard under side of this
hard white civilization, the unfortunate one can not hope to retain in
full vigor the incentive to effort that is the magic of the creative
white race. Every circumstance now seemed combined to hold him down and
under. The philosophy of the East with which his spirit was saturated
argued for contemplation, submission, negation (as did, for that
matter, the gospel of that Jesus to whose life the peoples that called
themselves Christian, in their every activity, every day, gave the lie).
His only driving power, then, must come out of the white spark that was,
after all, in his blood. It was only as a discordantly active white
that he could help the yellow men he loved.... And the one great
incentive--love, companionship, for which his strong heart hungered--had
flickered before him only to die out. He must somehow, at that,
prove worthy. It was to be just one more great effort in a life of
prodigiously wasted effort.... He thought, as he had thought before, in
bitter hours, of Gethsemane. But he knew, now, that he purposed going
on. Once again he was to dedicate his vigor to a cause; but this time
without the hope of youth and without love walking at his side.
And then, quaintly, alluringly, the picture of Hui Fei took form before
his mind's eye, as if to mock his laborious philosophy, charm it away.
Like that of a boy his quick imagination wove about her bright youth,
her piquant new-old worldliness, shining veils of illusion. It was,
then, to be so. He was to live on, sadly, with a dream that would not
die.... He bowed his head.
Their play brought relief to the overwrought nerves of the two young
people. After a time they settled comfortably against the rail.
“You lost all your things on the steamer?” said he. “Ever'thing.”
“So did I.” He smiled ruefully. “Even part of my clothes. But it doesn't
matter.”
“I di'n' like to lose all my pretty things.” said she. “But they're gone
now. All excep' my opera cloak. An' I'm jus' a Manchu girl again. It's
so strange--only yes'erday it seem' to me I was a real American. I los'
my books, too--all my books.”
He glanced up quickly. “You're fond of reading?”
“Oh, yes. Aren' you?”
“Why--no, I haven't been. The fellows and girls I've known didn't read
much.”
“Tha' seems funny. When you have so much. And it's so easy to read
English. Chinese is ver' hard.”
“What books have you read mostly?”
She smiled. “Oh, I coul'n' say. So many! I've read the classics, of
course--Shakespeare an' Milton and Chaucer. Chaucer is so modern--don'
you think? I mean the way he makes pictures with words.”
“What would you think,” said he, “if I confessed that I cut all those
old fellows at school and college?”
“I've thought often,” said she gravely, “tha' you Americans are spoil'
because you have so much. So much of everything.”
“Perhaps. I don't know. The fellows feel that those things don't help
much in later life.”
“Oh, bu' they _do!_ You mus' have a knowledge of literature an'
philosophy. Wha' do they go to college for?”
“Well--” Inwardly, he winced. He felt himself, without resentment,
without the faintest desire to defend the life he had known, at a
disadvantage. “To tell the truth, I suppose we go partly for a good
time. It puts off going into business four years, you know, and once
you start in business you've got to get down to it. Then there's all
the athletics, and the friends you make. Of course, most of the fellows
realize that if they make the right kind of friendships it'll help,
later, in the big game.”
“You mean with the sons of other rich men?” she asked.
“Why, no, not--yes, come to think of it, I suppose that's just what I
do mean. Do you know here with you, it doesn't look like much of a
picture--does it?” Thoughtfully she moved her head in the negative. “I
know a goo' deal about it,” said she. “I've watch' the college men in
America. Some of them, I think, are pretty foolish.”
“I suppose we are,” said he glumly. “But would you have a fellow just go
in for digging?”
She inclined her head. “I woul'. It is a grea' privilege to have years
for study.”
He was flushing. “But you're not a dig! You--you dance, you know about
things, you can wear clothes....”
“I don' think study is like work to me. I love it. An' I love
people--every kin', scholars, working people--you know, every kin'.”
His moody eyes took in her eagerly mobile face; then dropped, and he
stabbed his knife at the deck.
“Of course, we know that all is no' right 'n America. The men of money
have too much power. The govemmen' is confuse', sometimes very weak and
foolish. The newspapers don' tell all the things they shoul'. But it
is so healthy, jus' the same! There is so much chance for ever' kin' of
idea to be hear'! An' so many won'erful books! Often I think you real
Americans don' know how' won'erful it is. You get excite' abou' little
things. I love America. The women are free there. There is more hope
there than anywhere else in the worl'. An' I wish China coul' be like
that.”
“I quit college,” said he. “You see, I've never looked at things as you
do.”
“Bu' you have such a won'erful chance!”
“I know. And I've wasted it. But I'm changing. I--it wouldn't be fair of
course to talk about--about what I was talking about--not now--but I
am seeing things--everything--through new eyes. They're your eyes. I'm
going at the thing differently. You see, the Kanes, when you get right
down to it, don't think about anything but money.”
“I like to think about beauty,” said she.
“I wonder if I could do that.”
“Why no'?”
“Well--it's kind of a new idea.”
“Listen!” she reached out, plainly without a personal thought, and took
his hand. “I'm going to reci' some poetry that I love.”
Thrilled by the clasp of her hand, his mind eager wax to the impress of
her stronger mind, his gaze clinging to her pretty mouth, he listened
while she repeated the little poem of W. B. Yeats beginning:
“All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write...”
At first he stirred restlessly; then watching, doglike, fell to
listening. The disconcerting thing was that it could mean so much to
her. For it did--her dark eyes were bright, and her chin was uplifted.
Her quaint accent and her soft, sweet voice touched his spirit with an
exquisite vague pain.
“It is music,” said she.
“I don't see how you remember it all,” said he listlessly.
“Jus' the soun's. Oh, it woul' be won'erful to make words do that. So
often I wish I ha' been born American, so it woul' be my language too.”
She went on, breathlessly, with Yeats's--
“When you are old and gray and full of sleep...”
And then, still in pensive vein, she took up Kipling's _L'Envoi_--the
one beginning--“There's a whisper down the field.” Clearly she felt the
sea, too; and the yearning of those wandering souls to whom life is
a wistful adventure, and the world an inviting labyrinth of beautiful
hours. She seemed to know the _Child's Garden of Verses_ from cover to
cover, and other verse of Stevenson's. It was all strange to him, except
“In winter I get up at night.” He knew that as a song.
And so it came about that on a dingy Yangtze junk, at the feet of a
Manchu girl from America, Rocky Kane felt for the first time the glow
and thrill of finely rhythmical English.
She went on, almost as if she had forgotten him. William Watson's
_April, April_ she loved, she said, and read it with a quick feeling for
the capricious blend of smiles and tears. It dawned on him that she
was a born actress. He did not know, of course, that the theatrical
tradition lies deeper in Manchu and Chinese culture than in that of any
Western people.
She recited the beautiful _Song_ of Richard Le Galliene, beginning:
“She's somewhere in the sunlight strong....”
And followed this with bits from Bliss Carman, and other bits from
Henley's _London Nocturnes_, and from Wilfred Blunt and Swinburne and
Mrs. Browning. She had a curiously strong feeling for the color of
Medieval Italy. She spoke reverently of Dante. Villon she knew, too,
and Racine and the French classicists. She even murmured tenderly de
Musset's _J'ai dis à mon coeur_, in French of which he caught not a word
and was ashamed. For he had cut French, too.
And then, as the sun mounted higher and the gentle rush of the river
along the hull and the continuous chantey of the oarsmen floated, more
and more soothingly to their ears, they fell quiet, her hand still
pleasantly in his. Together they hummed certain of the current popular
songs, he thinking them good, she smiling not unhappily as her voice
blended prettily with his. And Griggsby Doane heard them.
At last she murmured: “I think I coul' rest now.”
“I'm glad,” said he, and drew down a coil of rope for a pillow, and left
her sleeping there.
Doane heard his step, but for a moment could not lift his head. Finally
the boy, standing respectfully, spoke his name: “Mr. Doane!”
“Yes.”
“May I sit here with you?”
“Of course. Do.”
“I've got to talk to somebody. It's so strange. You see, she and I--Miss
Hui Fei--it's all been such a whirl I couldn't think, but....”
That sentence never got finished. The boy dropped down on the deck and
clasped his knees. Doane, very gravely, considered him. He was young,
fresh, slim. He had changed, definitely; a degree of quiet had come to
him. And there could be no mistaking the unearthly light in his eyes.
The love that is color and sunshine and exquisite song had touched and
transformed him.
Doane could not speak. He waited. Young Kane finally brought himself
with obvious, earnest effort in a sense to earth. But his voice was
unsteady in a boyish way.
“Mr. Doane,” he asked, “do you believe in miracles?”
Thoughtfully, deliberately, Doane bowed his great head. “I am forced
to,” he replied.
“You've seen men change--from dirty, selfish brutes, I mean, to
something decent, worth while?”
“Many times.”
“Really?.... But does it have to be religion?”
“I don't knew.”
“Can it be love? The influence of a woman, I mean--a girl?”
“Might that not be more or less the same thing?”
“Do you really think that?”
Again the great head bowed. And there was a long silence. Rocky broke it
“I wish you would tell me exactly how you feel about marriage between
the races.”
“Why--really--”
“You must have observed a lot, all these years out here. And the pater
tells me that you're an able man, except that you've sort of lost your
perspective. He did tell me that he'd like to have you with him, if you
could only bring yourself around to our ways.” Rocky, even now, could
see this only as a profound compliment. He rushed on: “Oh, don't
misunderstand me! She doesn't love me yet. How could she? I've got
to earn the right even to speak of it again. But if I should earn the
right--in time--tell me, could an American make her happy?”
“I'm afraid I can't answer that general question.” But Rocky felt that
he was kind. “The pater says I'd be wrecking my life. He says she'd
always be pulled two ways--you know! God! He seemed to think I had only
to ask her, and she'd come. He doesn't understand.”
“No,” said Doane--“I'm afraid he couldn't understand.”
“You feel that too? It's very perplexing. I know I've spoken carelessly
about the Chinese and Manchus. I looked down on them. I did! But oh,
if I could only make it clear to you how I feel now! If I could only
express it! We've been talking a long time, she and I. I don't mind
telling you I'm taking a pretty bitter lesson, right now. She knows so
much. She has such fine--well, ideals--”
“Certainly.”
“Oh, you've noticed that!.... Well, I feel crude beside her. Of course, I
am.”
“Yes--you are. Even more so than you can hope to perceive now.”
The youth winced; but took it. “Well, suppose--just suppose that I
might, one of these days, prove that I'm decent enough to ask her to be
my wife.... Oh, don't think for a minute that I don't understand all it
means. I do. I tell you I'm starting again. I'm going to fight it out.”
“That is fine,” said Griggsby Doane, and looked squarely, gravely,
at the very young face. It was a white face, but good in outline; the
forehead, particularly, was good. And the blue eyes now met his. “I
believe you will fight it out. And I believe you have it in you to win.”
“I'm going to try, Mr. Doane. But just suppose I do win. And suppose I
win her. It's when I think of that, that I.... I'll put it this way--to
my friends, to everybody in New York, she'd be an oddity. A novelty,
not much more. You know what most of them would think, in their hearts.
Either they'd make an exception in her case--partly on my account,
at that--or else they'd look down on her. You know how they are about
people that aren't--well, the same color that we are. Probably I
couldn't live out here. The business is mainly in New York, of course.
And she's such an enthusiastic American herself--she'd want to be there.
Some, anyway. And she's got to be happy. She's like a flower to me, now;
like an orchid. Oh, a thousand times more, but.... What could I do? How
could I plan? Oh, I'd fight for her quick enough. But you know our cold
rich Americans. They wouldn't let me fight. They'd just....”
“My boy,” said Doane. quietly but with an authority that Rocky felt,
“you can't plan that. You can do only one thing.”
“What thing?”
“Stay here in China a year before you offer yourself to that lovely
girl. Study the Chinese--their language, their philosophy, their art. A
year will not advance you far, but it should be enough to show you where
you yourself stand.”
“A year....!”
“Listen to what I am going to try to tell you. Listen as thoughtfully
as you can. First I must tell you this--the Chinese civilization has
been--in certain aspects still remains--the finest the world has known.
With one exception, doubtless.”
“What exception?”
“The Grecian. You see, I have startled you.”
“Well, I'm still sort of bewildered.”
“Naturally. But try to think with me. The Chinese worked out their
social philosophy long ago. They have lived through a great deal that we
have only begun, from tribal struggles through conquest and imperialism
and civil war to a sort of republicanism and a fine feeling for peace
and justice. And then, when they had given up primitive desire for
fighting they were conquered by more primitive Northern tribes--first
the Mongols, and later the Manchus. The Manchus have been absorbed, have
become more or less Chinese.
“And now a few more blunt facts that will further startle you. The
Chinese are the most democratic people in the world. No ruler can
long resist the quiet force of the scores of thousands of villages and
neighborhoods of the empire.
“They are the most reasonable people in the world. You can no more judge
them from the so-called Tongs in New York and San Francisco, made up of
a few Cantonese expatriates, than you can judge the culture of England
by the beachcombers of the South Seas.
“They developed, centuries before Europe, one of the finest schools of
painting the world has so far known. There is no school of reflective,
philosophical poetry so ripe and so fine as the Chinese. They have had
fifty Wordsworths, if no Shakespeare.
“You will find Americans confusing them with the Japanese, whom
they resemble only remotely. All that is finest in Japan--in art and
literature--came originally from China.”
“You take my breath away,” said Rocky slowly. But he was humble about
it; and that was good.
“But listen, please. What I am trying to make clear to you is that in
old Central China--in Hang Chow, and along this fertile Yangtze Valley,
and northwest through the Great Plain to Kai Feng-fu and Sian-fu in
Shensi--where the older people flourished--germinated the thought and
the art, the humanity and the faith, that have been a source of culture
to half the world during thousands of years.
“But you can not hope to understand this culture through Western eyes.
For you will be looking out of a Western background. You must actually
surrender your background. It is no good looking at a Chinese landscape
or a portrait with eyes that have known only European painting. Can you
see why? Because all through European painting runs the idea of copying
nature--somehow, however subtly, however influenced by the nuances
of color and light, copying. But the Chinese master never copied a
landscape He studied it, felt it, surrendered his soul to it, and then
painted the fine emotion that resulted. And, remember this, he painted
with a conscious technical skill as fine as that of Velasquez or
Whistler or Monet.”
The youth whistled softly. “Wait, Mr. Doane, please.... the fact is,
you're clean over my head. I--I don't know a thing about our painting,
let alone theirs. You see I haven't put in much time at--” He stopped.
His smooth young brows were knit in the effort to think along new,
puzzling channels. “But she would understand,” he added, honestly,
softly.
“Exactly! She would understand. That is what I am trying to make clear
to you.”
“But you're sort of--well, overwhelming me.”
“My boy.” said Doane very kindly, “you could go back home, enter
business, marry some attractive girl of your own blood who thinks no
more deeply than yourself, whose culture is as thinly veneered as your
own--forgive me. I am speaking blunt facts.”
“Go on. I'm trying to understand.”
“--And find happiness, in the sense that we so carelessly use the word.
But here you are, in China, proposing to offer your life to a Manchu
princess. You do seem to see clearly that there would be difficulties.
It is true that our people crudely feel themselves superior to this fine
old race. As a matter of fact, one of the worthiest tasks left in
the world is to explain East to West--draw some part of this rich old
culture in with our own more limited background. But as it stands now,
the current will be against you. So I say this--study China. Open your
mind and heart to the beauty that is here for the taking. Try to look
through the decadent surface of this tired old race and see the genius
that still slumbers within. If, then, you find yourself in the new
belief that their culture is in certain respects finer than ours--as
I myself have been forced to believe--if you can go to Hui Fei
humbly--then ask her to be your wife. For then there will be a chance
that you can make her happy. Not otherwise.”
Doane stopped abruptly. His deep voice was rich with emotion. The
boy was stirred; and a moment later, when he felt a huge hand on his
shoulder he found it necessary to fight back the tears. The man seemed
like a father; the sort of father he had never known.
“Don't ask her so long as a question remains in your mind. Defiance
won't do--it must be faith, and knowledge. I can't let you take the life
of that girl into your keeping on any other terms.”
The odd emphasis of this speech passed quite by the deeply preoccupied
young mind.
“You're right,” he replied brokenly. “I've got to wait. Everything that
you say is true--I really haven't a thing in the world to offer. I'm an
ignorant barbarian beside her.”
“You have the great gift of youth,” said Doane gently.
But a moment later Rocky broke out with: “But, Mr. Doane--how can I
wait? She--after her father--they're going to take her away--make her
marry somebody at Peking--somebody she doesn't even know--”
“I don't think they will succeed in that plan,” said Doane very soberly.
“But why not? What can she do? A girl--alone--”
“There are tens of thousands of girls in China that have solved that
problem.”
“But I don't see--”
“You must still try to keep your mind open. You are treading on ground
unknown to our race.” A breathless quality crept into Doane's voice; his
eyes were fixed on the distant river bank. “I wonder if I can help you
to understand. Death--the thought of death--is to them a very different
thing--”
“Oh!” It was more a sharp indrawing of breath than an exclamation. “You
don't mean that she would do that?”
Doane bowed his head.
“But she couldn't do a cowardly thing.”
Doane brought himself, with difficulty, to utter the blunt word.
“Suicide, in China, is not always cowardice. Often it is the finest
heroism--the holding to a fine standard.”
“Oh, no! It wouldn't ever--”
“Please! You are a Westerner. Your feelings are those of the
younger--yes, the cruder half of the world. I must still ask you to try
to believe that there can be other sorts of feelings.” Again the great
hand rested solidly on the young shoulder; and now, at last, the boy
became slightly aware of the suffering in the heart of this older man.
Though even now he could not grasp every implication. That human love
might be a cause he did not perceive. But he sensed, warmly, the ripe
experience and the compassionate spirit of the man.
“You have stepped impulsively into an Old-World drama,” Doane went
quietly on--“into a tragedy, indeed. No one can say what the next
developments will be. You can win, if at all, only by becoming yourself,
a fatalist; You must move with events. Certainly you can not force
them.”
“But I can take her away,” cried the boy hotly; finishing, lamely, with
“somehow.”
“Against her will?”
“Well--surely--”
“She will not leave her father.”
“But--oh, Mr. Doane....”
He fell silent. For a long time they sat without a word, side by side.
Here and there about the junk sleepers awoke and moved about. A few of
the women, forward, set up their wailing but more quietly now. The craft
headed in gradually toward the right bank, passing a yellow junk that
was moored inshore and moving on some distance up-stream. At a short
distance inland a brown-gray village nestled under a hillside.
“That junk passed us before we left the island,” Rocky observed,
gloomily making talk.
Doane's gaze followed his down-stream; then at a sound like distant
thunder, he turned and listened. “What's that?” asked the boy.
Doane looked up into the cloudless, blazing sky. “That would be the guns
at Hankow,” he replied.
The lictors were landed first to seek carts in the village. Then all
were taken ashore in the small boat. His excellency smilingly, with
unfailing poise, talked with Doane of the beauties of the river; even
quoted his favorite Li Po, as his quiet eyes surveyed the hills that
bordered the broad river:
“'The birds have all flown to their trees,
The last, last lovely cloud has drifted off,
But we never tire in our companionship--
The mountains and I,'”
The line of unpainted, springless carts, roofed with arched matting,
yellow with the fine dust of the highway, moved, squeaking, off among
the hills. Following close went the women and the servants. The junk
swung deliberately out and off down the river.
Doane, declining a cart, walked beside that of his excellency; Rocky
Kane, deadly pale, his mouth set firmly, beside Miss Hui Fei. And so,
through the peaceful country-side they came to the long brick wall and
the heavily timbered gate house by the road, and, pausing there, heard
very faintly the soft tinkling of the little bronze bells within. It
was late afternoon. The shadows were long; and the evening birds were
twittering among the leafy branches just within the wall.