|THE yellow junk was now abreast the landing hulks of the great
international shipping companies just below the city. Rocky left the
bow and made his way to the after cabins without once lifting his somber
gaze to the silent figures on the poop. Slowly--his eyes wild, his
thoughts beyond control, bitterness in his heart--he moved along the dim
corridor.
A puff of wind found its way through an open window; a blue curtain
swung out, discovering, through a doorway, Miss Carmichael, seated in
a chair beneath the window. It was lighter in her cabin. She had laid
aside the familiar middy blouse and skirt, and appeared to be sewing
something on her petticoat. For an instant she looked up, her eyes
meeting those of the pale youth who stood motionless in the corridor.
The curtain swung back then; but as it swung the youth stepped through
the doorway and stood within the room.
“I don't know that I asked you in,” said she coolly.
His eyes were intent on the amazing, glistening strings of pearls that
were looped everywhere about her clothing.
Through narrowed lids she watched him, sitting very still, needle poised
just as she had drawn it through. On his young face was an expression of
firm decision that she had not before seen there. He looked oddly, now,
like his father. There was, apparently, a trace of the Kane iron in him.
The situation was of wholly accidental origin; he couldn't have planned
it; his first expression, out in the corridor, had been of startled
surprise; the decision to step within must have been instant; yet now,
suddenly, he meant business. She caught all that.... Here, after all,
was a young man who presented difficulties.
“Take off those pearls,” said he quietly.
“You are in my room,” said she as quietly.
“I shall take the pearls when I go.”
“You'll have my life to answer for.”
“Your life is nothing to me.”
“Your own life is.”
“Never mind about that.”
“I've warned you fairly.”
“Stand up.”
“You propose to take them from me by force?”
“Yes. Unless you choose to give them to me.”
“And you expect me to trust you with them.”
“Yes.”
There was a silence.
“Of course you are stronger than I,” she observed musingly.
He offered no reply to this.
Her thin mouth curved into the faint smile that was as cold as her
calculating brain. “So”--said she “we're enemies, then?”
This evidently did not interest him.
“I think,” she went on, quietly desperate, “that I'll try crying and
screaming. I'm something of an actress.”
“Scream your head off,” said he, the slang phrase sounding almost
courteous in this new quiet voice of his.
“There's not a person--alive--that could prove these pearls aren't my
own.” Her voice dwelt on that one telling word, “alive,” with an almost
caressing note of satisfaction.
He shook his head with a touch of impatience. And she was studying him,
her quick thoughts darting sharply about---darting in every conceivable
direction--for an avenue of escape. She knew, however, as the moments
passed and the pale youth stood his ground that there was only one. She
had supposed him weak. It hardly seemed that her judgment could have
gone so far wrong.
“You're cruel to me,” she said softly.
“Stand up.”
Now she obeyed. He drew near.
“I didn't think you'd turn out this sort, Rocky. You liked me at first.”
She moved a hand, hesitatingly, within reach of his own. But he ignored
it. “Aren't we going to see each other at Shanghai? Are you just going
to be brutal with me--like this?.... I'd like to see you.”
“Will you take them off,” said he, “or must I?”
She turned to him, with curiously mixed passions coming to life in her
face.
“Oh, my God, Rocky!” she cried very low, “haven't you any human
feelings? Can you just come in here--into my own room--and rob me,
without a decent word?.... Haven't I played fair with you? Haven't I kept
out of your way? Haven't I?....” She moved close against him, slid her
sensitively thin hands over his shoulders; looked straight up into his
eyes, almost honestly. “Rocky, don't tell me you're this kind!”.... She
was clinging to him now.
He caught her hands, and, without roughness but with his young strength,
removed them. She let them fall at her side.
“I'm not going to wait much longer on you,” he said.
“You're hard as nails, Rocky.” Her underlip was quivering; her pale eyes
were a little darker, and seemed full of feeling. She turned suddenly to
the rough bed, and reached under the cover for her shopping bag. Hiding
it from him with her body, she opened it and took out the triangular
bottle; then lingered an instant to look at the clasps of the pearl cape
that were set with large, perfectly cut diamonds. There were five of the
clasps, and perhaps fifty of the sparkling, glittering stones. In value
they would vary somewhat-: but in themselves, even without the pearls,
they represented a fortune. She quietly closed the bag and replaced it
under the covers.
With the rough-edged little bottle in her hand she faced him.
“I knew a girl,” she said, with a far-away look in her eyes, “who took
five of these tablets and then lived two days. She suffered terribly,
of....”
He caught the bottle from her hand and threw it against the wall, where
it broke. The green pills rolled about the floor.
“Oh, well,” she remarked--“I can take them after you've gone.”
“After I've gone you can do as you think best.”
“But something will have to be done about me. Rocky. You'll have to get
me ashore. And see about burying me.... And you'll have to explain me.”
This moved him not at all. Apparently he _was_ to be one of the
Kanes--strong, pitiless, destined for success and power. There would
be weak moments; but all that her uncannily shrewd eyes saw in him.
For that matter, Miss Carmichael had known many men of the sort that
in America are termed “big”--certain of them with an unpleasant secret
intimacy--and each had possessed and (at moments) been possessed by
strong passions. It had never been wholly a matter of what is called
brain; always there had been emotional force, with a dark side as well
as a bright.
Overhead the great clumsy sails creaked. Soft feet pattered about
the deck. The nasal voices of the crew broke into a chantey. A chain
rattled.
“We must be there,” said she. “We're anchoring, I think.” And she
glanced out the window at one of the roofed-over opium hulks that lay in
those days directly opposite the bund. Finally she looked again at him.
“Very well,” she said then; and raised her arms above her head. Swiftly,
at once, he began stripping off the festoons of pearls. The only other
thing said was her remark, in a casual tone: “It's understood that
you're using force. And you'll hear from it, of course.”
As soon as he had gone she slipped into her blouse and skirt. Once again
she looked thoughtfully at the radiant gems that were left to her; then
went, coolly swinging the little bag, up on deck, where certain of the
crew were already drawing around to the ladder at the side the sampan
that had been towing astern.
Rocky had gone directly, on tiptoe, to Doane's cabin. The huge sad-faced
man was there; quick, however, with a kindly smile.
Rocky said--“I beg your pardon, sir?”--stiffly, not unlike a proud young
Briton--and from a tied-up handkerchief and bulging pockets--even from
his shirt above his tightly drawn belt--produced enormous quantities of
perfectly matched large pearls; laid them on the bed in a heap; helped
Mr. Doane make a bundle of them in a square of blue cloth.
“They are yours, sir,” he explained.
He withdrew then, with a coldness of manner that to the older man was
moving; and went out on deck to await his turn in the sampan.
Doane found a temporary home for Hui Fei and her sister at the mission
compound of his friend, Doctor Henry Withery, in the Chinese city;
himself lodging with other friends. Rocky went to the Astor House,
across Soochow Creek, which was still, in 1911, a famous stopping place
for the tourists, diplomats, military and commercial men, and all the
other more prosperous among the white travelers that pour into
Shanghai from everywhere else in the world by the great ships that plow
unceasingly the Pacific and Indian Oceans and the Yellow and China
Seas; to pour out again (in peaceful times) from Shanghai by rail and
by lesser craft of the river and the coast to Hong Kong and Manila
to Hankow, to Tientsin and Peking, to Nagasaki, Kobe, Yokohoma and
Tokio.... and Shanghai had never been so crowded as now, with its
thousands of travelers detained, awaiting news from this or that
revolutionary center; with the American Marines and the British
and German sailors; with Manchu refugees swarming into the foreign
settlements; with revolutionists, queueless, wearing unaccustomed
European dress, parading everywhere.
Doane found time to call at the hotel and leave word regarding the
burial of his excellency; but was not to know that Rocky, himself,
immured in his room, gave the word that he was out and there awaited the
friendly chit that Doane sent up by the blue-robed servant. Nor was he
to know that the boy dressed carefully for the ceremony, only to
find the ordeal too great for his overstrung emotions. It was as an
afterthought, a day or two later that Doane sent him Hui Fei's address.
It was after this sad experience that Doane, in accordance with his
promise to the late Sun Shi-pi, called on Doctor Wu Ting Fang and
offered his services to the revolutionary party. Another day and he was
hard at work, bending his strong, finely trained and experienced mind
to the great task of presenting the dreams and the activities of Young
China fairly and sympathetically to the press and the governments of the
Western World.... And so Griggsbv Doane, concealing--at moments
almost from his own inner eye--the ache in his heart, the unutterable
loneliness of his solitary existence, found himself once more fitting
into the scheme of organized human life. A grave man, with sad eyes but
with a slow kindly smile, always courteously attentive to the person and
problem of the moment, thinking always clearly and objectively out of a
comprehensively tolerant background that seemed to include all nations
and all men; a gently tactful man; a tireless, powerful figure of a man,
who could work twenty hours on end without a trace of fatigue, going
through masses of minor detail without for a moment losing his broad
view of the major problems--such was the Griggsby Doane one saw at
revolutionary headquarters during that late autumn of 1911.... Life had
caught him up. Whatever his private sorrow, the world needed him now.
Rapidly, in all that confusion, he was formulating policies, helping
to direct the current of one stream of destiny. In past years Griggsby
Doane had been discussed and forgotten. He had even been laughed at as
an unfrocked missionary by ribald, dominant, not infrequently drunken
whites along the coast. It occurred to no one to laugh at him now.
These were the days when in half the provincial capitals of China the
Manchus that had ruled during nearly three centuries were hunted to
their death, men and women alike, like vermin. Bloody heads decorated
the lamp posts that had been erected in the Western fashion beside
freshly macadamized streets. Slaughter, as in other dramatic moments in
Oriental history, had become a pastime. Palaces and wealthy homes in a
hundred cities were looted and burned, and a vast new traffic started
up in the silks and paintings and pottery and objects of art suddenly
thrown into the market.... Hankow had been taken by the imperial troops,
but was to be recaptured as a charred, gutted ruin. General Li Yuan-hung
was now “president of the Republic of China,” up at Wu Chang, by right
of military organization and popular acclaim. Admiral Sah, of the
Imperial Navy, was about to witness the unanimous mutiny of his fleet.
The great Yuan Shi-K'ai, himself a Chinese born, was in command of the
imperial troops while negotiating on either hand with the frantic throne
and the upsurging revolutionists. At Peking heads were falling and
great princes were fleeing or hiding pitifully within the walls of the
legations.... Within a few weeks Sun Yat Sen was to leave London on
his long journey eastward by way of Suez and Singapore, but without the
enormous golden treasure so confidently expected by the revolutionists.
Before his arrival, even, he was to be elected president of the new
China, in the recently captured Nanking--where a National Assembly
in cropped heads and frock coats already would be grinding out fresh
tangles of legislation.... The event was outrunning the mental
capacity of man. What was now tragic confusion would grow through the
swift-following years into tragic chaos, as the most numerous and most
nearly inert of peoples struggled out of the sluggish habit of centuries
toward the dubious light of modernity.
But through the chaos Griggsby Doane was never for a moment to lose the
new vision that had finally cleared his long troubled mind. Behind the
crumbling of the empire, underlying the torn and bleeding surface of
Chinese life, lay a tradition finer, he was to believe until his
dying day, than any so far developed in the truculent West--a delicate
responsiveness to beauty in nature and art, a reflective quality, an
instinct for peace--it was all these at once, and more; a blend of art
in living and living in art; a finish that was exquisite in concept, a
sensitiveness that lifted the soul of man above the ugly fact. Even the
brittle perfection of Chinese etiquette--regulating every passing human
contact, clothing in silken manner the naked thought--was like a fine
lacquer over the knotted wood of life... America, he felt, with all its
earnestly insistent young virtues, worshiped the fact. To the Americans
must be preached the gospel of sensitive thought, of reflective
enjoyment of the beautiful. Those old master painters of Tang and Sung
breathed beauty; it was sweet air in their lungs; whereas in America
beauty was too often like a garment to be bought in a shop and worn for
show.... Yes, this revolutionary work was a gratifying opportunity for
service, of great momentary importance because the Chinese people must
be rescued from Manchu conquerors and their eunuchs, from disease and
famine, and from ignorance of the new world that had come amazingly,
brutally, into being while the old Middle Kingdom slumbered; but it was
not the main work. The aggressively greedy West, now, with its merchants
and war-ships and armies, was destroying the soul of China even while
teaching her a smattering of the materialistic new faith. There must be
a counter-influence; as the East now so strongly felt the West, so must
be the West made sensitively aware of the East. It was fair give and
take. It might yet help the world to find a stable balance.... This was
what the difficult life of Griggsby Doane was coming to mean. The East
had crept into his heart. So he must turn back to the West.
For three days Mr. Doane's brief chit--with the address of Hui Fei in
the native city--burned in Rocky Kane's pocket; then, early in the third
afternoon, he went down to the Japanese steamship offices (for the keen
little brown people had already captured the Pacific traffic from the
Americans) and bought the second officer's room on a crowded liner
leaving at the end of the week for San Francisco.... On the fourth
afternoon he called a rickshaw and rode out beyond the American
post-office to the address the older man had given him.
But Mr. Doane, it appeared, was not in; already he was established at
Doctor Wu's revolutionary headquarters. Rocky considered driving there;
even took the address and rode part of the way: but reconsidered,
returned to the hotel, and sent a messenger to Hui Fei with this chit:
“_I'm sailing Saturday. Do you feel that you could see me for a few
moments?_”
The reply, within the hour, bade him come. He found her in Western
dress---a tailored suit, very simple; her glistening black hair parted
smoothly--as he would always most vividly remember it--gently sad in
manner, yet able to smile. She would be like that, come to think of
it; not crushed by the tragedy, not sunken in the grief that, among
Westerners, is so often a sort of histrionic egotism.... They sat in a
tiled courtyard among dahlias. More than ever like a proud young Briton
was Rocky.
“It is good of you to see me.” Thus he began.... “I couldn't go without
a word.”
She murmured then: “Of course not.”
“I want you to know, too, that I am coming to see”--he had to pause;
in this new phase of sober young manhood he had not yet achieved steady
self-control.
She broke the silence with a question about the revolution. It is to
his credit that he talked, stumbling only at first, clearly. And as the
strain of the meeting gradually relaxed, he became aware of her sobered
but still intense absorption in the struggle; aware, too, increasingly,
of her strong gift of what is called personality. Her mind was quick,
bright, eager--better, it seemed (he had to fight bitterness here)
than his own. And she was impersonal to a degree that he couldn't yet
attain--couldn't, in fact, quite understand. He had to speak slowly and
carefully; feeling his way with a dogged determination among uprushing
emotions, moved as never before by the charm of appearance and
manner and speech of which she was so prettily unconscious.... He had
come--perhaps with more than a touch in him of (again) that Western
histrionism, the intense overstressing of the individual and his
feelings--as a man who was effacing himself that the woman he loved
might be happy with another man. Confused with this wholly unconscious
call upon the sympathies, undoubtedly, was an unphrased incredulity that
she--so strongly a person, fine and courageous and outstanding as he
knew her to be--could accept this being almost casually left as part
of a legacy to that other man. It was incredible. Unless she loved
the other man.... So he came around again to the personal; unaware, of
course, that he was feeling inevitably with his strongly individualistic
race. Even when she dwelt on race, a little later in their talk, he
found no light. He couldn't have; for the American seldom can see what
lies outside himself.
“I don' know yet what I can do,” she was saying, very honestly and
simply (they hadn't yet mentioned Mr. Doane). “Of course I'm a Manchu,
after all. An' blood does coun'. I feel that. A good many people to-day
talk differen'ly, I know. We saw a good 'eal of Socialism at college.
The idealists to-day--the Jews an' Russians an' even some of our Chinese
students--the younger men--talk as if race doesn' matter. But of course
it does. It will ta' thousan's of years, I suppose, to bring the races
together. An' maybe it's impossible. Maybe it can' be done at all. I
think tha's the tragedy of so much of this beautiful dreaming.... An'
here you see I'm a Manchu, an' yet I wan' the Manchus put out of China.
Because they won' let China grow. An' China mus' grow, or die.”
He was moodily watching her; head bowed a little, gazing out under knit
brows. “Do you know,” he said, “it's a queer thing to say, of course,
but sometimes you make me feel terribly young.”
She smiled faintly. “You are--rather young, Rocky.”
He closed his eyes and compressed his lips; his name, on her lips, was
dangerously thrilling music to him. After a moment he went doggedly on.
“The crowds I've gone with at home haven't talked about these things.
They wouldn't think it good form.”
“I know,” said she. “They woul'n'.”
“I'm beginning to wonder if we're--well, intelligent, exactly. You
know--just motors and horses and girls and bridge and 'killings' in Wall
Street.”
“Killings?” Her brows were lifted.
“Oh--picking up a lot of money, quick.”
“That,” she mused, “is what I sometimes worry about. You know, I love
America. I have foun' happiness there. I love the books an' the colleges
and the freedom an' all the goo' times. But it is true, I think--money
is God in America. Pipple don' like to have you say it, of course. But
I'm afraid it is true. Ever'-thing has to come to money--the gover'men',
the churches, ever'thing. I have seen that. That is the hard side of
America. I don' like that so well.” Finally--coming down, helplessly,
on the personal, yet with a courageous light in his eyes--he said: “I
do want you to know this--Hui. You won't mind my speaking of my love for
you--”
Her hand moved a very little way upward. “Please! I can't help that.
It's my life now. I'm full of you. And it has changed me. I'm--I'm
going back.... I'm going at things differently. I want you to know that.
Because if I hadn't met you it couldn't possibly have happened. And if I
hadn't--well, learned what it means to love a wonderful girl like you. I
want you to know how big the change is that you've made.”
“Rocky,” she said gently--“will you do something for me?” He
waited.... “I wan' you to go back to college.”
“I've already made up my mind to that,” he replied, more quietly. “It's
the job for me now. It's the next thing.”
“I'm glad,” said she. “An' I'd love it if you'd write to me sometimes.”
He inclined his head.
Then, for a moment, his old turbulent inner self unexpectedly (even to
himself), lifted its head.
“I tried to see Mr. Doane--that is, I thought perhaps I ought to tell
him that I was coming out here.”
She seemed slightly puzzled at this. Her lips framed questioningly the
words: “Tell him?”
“I--I perhaps can't say much--but I'm sure you and he will be happy.
I--oh, he's a big man. He's terribly busy now, of course--you know what
he's doing--at Wu Ting Fang's headquarters?”
She inclined her head rather wearily, saying: “He wrote me a ver' kin
note--jus' to say that he was busy.”
“They talk about him some at the hotel. All of a sudden he seems to be a
power here.”
She went without a further word into the house, returning with a slip
of paper. Into her manner had crept at the mention of Doane's name,
a gentler, more wistful quality that she seemed not to think of
concealing; it was even a confiding quality, intimately friendly.
“I don' quite un'erstand it,” she said. “A gen'leman called from the
Hong Kong Bank an' lef' this.”
Rocky read the paper; a receipt for a sealed parcel of pearls and for
other separate jewels and a sum of money.
“Oh--he put it all there in your name,” said he, while a sudden new hope
rose into his drying throat and throbbed in his temples.
“Yes. It puzzle' me--a little.”
He turned the paper over and over in his fingers, once again struggling
to think.... She sat motionless, gazing at the dahlias.
Blindly then he groped for her hands, found them and impulsively gripped
them.
“Hui”--he whispered huskily--“tell me--if it's like this--if you--if
he.... All this time I've supposed you and he were.... I want you to come
with me to America. We both do love it there. I'll give up my life to
making you happy. I'll slave for you. I'll make of my life what you say.
just let us try it together....”
She silently heard him out--through this and much more, leaving her
hands quietly in his. Finally then, when the emotional gust seemed in
some measure to have spent itself, she said, gently:
“Rocky, I wan' you to listen to what I'm going to tell you. You said I
make you feel young. Well--can' you see why? Can' you see that I'm quite
an ol' lady?”
“But that's nonsense! You--” His eyes were feasting on her soft skin and
on the exquisite curve of her cheek.
“No--you mus' listen! First tel me how old you are.”
Unexpectedly on the defensive, Rocky had to compose himself, arrange his
dignity, before he could reply. “I was twenty-one in the summer.”
“Ver' good. An' I was twenty-five in the spring.”
“But--”
“Please! I don' know what you coul' have thought--how young you thought
I was when I wen' to college. But tha's the way it is. I'm an ol' lady.
I have learn' to like you ver' much. I'm fond of you. I wan' to feel
always tha' we're frien's. But we coul'n' be happy together. Our
interes' aren' the same--they coul'n' be. Can' you see, Rocky? If there
is something abou' me tha' stirs you--that is ver' won'erful. But we
mus'n' let it hurt you. An' that isn' the same as marriage. Marriage is
differen'--there mus' be so much in common--if a man an' woman are to
live together an' work together, they mus' think an' hope an'....”
Her voice died out. She was gazing again, mournfully at the dahlias.
When he released her hands they lay limp in her lap.
With a great effort of will he wished her every happiness, promised to
write, and got himself away.
This was on Thursday. Rocky walked at a feverish pace from the native
city to the European settlement that was so quaintly not Chinese--more,
with its Western-style buildings that were decorated with ornamental
iron balconies and richly colored Chinese signs, like a “China-town” in
an American city--and wandered for a time along Nanking Road; then out
to Bubbling Well Road; away out, past the Country Club to the almost
absurdly suburban quarter with its comfortably British villas; seeing,
however, little of the busy life that moved about him, threading his
way over cross-streets without a conscious glance at the motorcars and
pony-drawn victorias (with turbanned mafoos cracking their whips) and
bicycles and the creaking passenger wheelbarrow's on which fat native
women with tiny stumps of feet rode precariously. For those few hours
were to be recalled in later years as the quietly darkest in the young
man's life. There was no question now of dissipation; he knew with the
decisiveness of the Kanes that he had turned definitely away from the
morbid oblivion of alcohol and opium, as from the unhealthy if exciting
diversion of loveless women. But the bitterness would not down all at
once. Indeed it was savagely powerful, still, to cloud his reason. The
only evidence of victory over self of which he was aware was the fact
that he could now look almost objectively at himself, and could fight.
He was back at the hotel between seven and eight, but couldn't eat.
For an hour he walked his room, locked in. Then, in sheer loneliness, a
little afraid of himself, he went down to the spacious lounge and sat
in a corner, behind a palm, staring at a copy of the _China Press_ and
listening, all overstrung nerves, to the cackle and laughter of the
self-centered tourists and the curiously bold and loud commercial men
from across the Pacific. He heard this, in his younger way, as Doane
would have heard it, even as Hui; it was all heedless, light-brained;
careless.... Confused with the bitterness (in a bewildering degree) was a
sense of the finely reflective atmosphere that had lately enveloped him
and that he was not to lose easily. He felt--sitting, all nerves, in
this babel--the fine old Chinese gentleman who had gone serenely to the
death that was his destiny. He felt--constantly, intensely--the princess
who had brought to her American college an instinct for culture the like
of which neither he nor any of his friends at home had brought or found
there. And he felt Mr. Doane--felt a spaciousness of mind in the man, a
patience, a tolerance--felt him as a gentleman--felt him while still,
in his heart, he was bitterly fighting him.... The thing had closed over
his head--the sheer quality of these remarkable folk. He was simply out
of a cruder world. He hadn't the right to stand with them--the simple
right of character and breeding. And no amount of determination, no
amount of storming at it could alter the fact. It would take years of
patient work. Ever, then he might miss it; for his environment soon
again would be that of the cackling tourists he now hated. Even at
college it would be all the dominant athletics, the parties and the
motors and girls and drinking, the association with those sons of
prosperous families who were all consciously cementing alliances
with the financial upper class that quietly ruled America while hired
politicians prated and performed without in the smallest measure
controlling or even altering the blatant facts.... He and his kind, at
college, despised the “grind.” And you had to be a grind if you weren't
the other thing. Yet Hui Pei had managed it differently. She was neither
and both. It seemed to be a difference of mental texture....
A slim girl, richly dressed, with a sable wrap about her shoulders and
a pretty little hat, was threading her way among the crowding chairs and
tables and the talkative groups in the lounge. He glanced up: then looked
closely. It was Dixie Carmichael. She stood before him, wearing her icy,
faintly mocking smile. He rose.
“How are you?” said she.
He could only incline his head with a sort of courtesy, and contrive an
artificial smile. He seemed to have been dreaming, outrageously. Life
had begun now'.
“I'm running down to Singapore,” said she. “Friends there. And a
look-see?”
“Oh,” he murmured, “indeed.” She looked out-and-out rich; and she was
surprisingly pretty, without a sign that she had ever known danger or
even care.
“Staying here?” she asked.
“No. I start back home Saturday.”
“So?.... Well, that'll be pleasant.” With a final glance of what seemed
almost like triumph she sailed away. And he knew that in taking the
pearls he had not taken all from her. Apparently, too, she meant him to
know it. That would be her moment of triumph. And that was all; not
a word was spoken regarding his violence or her threats.... He saw the
yellow porters carrying out her luggage of bright new leather.
He resumed his seat; twitched for a time with increasing nervousness;
got up and went aimlessly over to the desk; asked the Malay clerk for
mail.
A smiling little Japanese appeared, rather officious about a great lot
of bags and a trunk or two that were coming in. He had a familiar look;
even raised his hat and stepped forward with outstretched hand. It was
Kato.... And then Dawley Kane came in--tall, quiet, neatly dressed, his
nearly white mustache newly cropped.
To his pale son Dawley Kane said merely--“Well!”--as he took his hand;
and then was busy registering. That done, he asked: “Had dinner?” Rocky
shook his head. “I don't care for any.” Daw ley Kane's quietly keen eyes
surveyed his son. “What's the matter? Not well.”
“I'm well enough.”
“Sit down with me, can't you?” And turning to the attending Japanese he
said: “You'll excuse me Kato. I'll be dining with my son. And tell Mr.
Braker, please.... Just a minute Rocky, till I wash my hands.”
They were shown to a table in the great diningroom, where the cackling
was louder than in the lounge (they dine late on the coast)--where
blue-gowned waiters moved softly about as if there had never been a
revolution and wine glasses glistened and prettily bared shoulders
gleamed roundly under the electric lights.
And Rocky, seated gloomily opposite this powerful quiet man--who took
him unerringly in of course; dishearteningly, Rocky felt--found himself
in a depression deeper than any he had known before. His father was so
strong and he brought back with him the enveloping atmosphere of the
mighty, splendidly successful white world in which they both belonged--a
world that crushed the heart out of weaker peoples while it blandly
talked the moralities. He felt it as a Juggernaut. It had the amazingly
successful racial blend of character and plausibility. That would be the
British quality; and, more roughly and confusedly, the American.
“Getting rather interesting up the river.” remarked Dawley Kane, over
his soup. “How'd you get down?”
“On a junk.”
“Any trouble?”
“Oh--some.”
“Been here long?”
“Several days. I'm sailing Saturday.”
“Sailing?” Mr. Kane raised his eyebrows. “Where?”
“Home.”
“You decided not to consult me?”
“Oh.... Don't ride me, father! It's the next thing. I'm going back to
college.”
“Oh--I see.” Mr. Kane looked over the menu, ordered his roast, and
selected a red wine, cautioning the waiter to set it near the stove for
five minutes. “It's wicked to heat Burgundy,” he said, when the waiter
had gone, “but it's the only way you can get it served at the right
temperature. I discovered that when we were here before.... I gather, my
boy, that you've come to your senses in the matter of that little yellow
girl.”
Rocky did not wince outwardly; he merely sat still. But his mind, at
last, was active. And he knew--saw it in a flash--that no explanation
he could possibly make, would be intelligible. You can not--yet--talk
across the gulf between the worlds. It was his first intelligent glimpse
of the tremendous fact that Doane had so long and so clearly felt
and seen. So he merely--at last, when his father looked closely at
him--inclined his head and said, huskily:
“I'm going to work out this college business'. That's my job clear
enough.”
This new attitude was to bring, later in the evening, confidences from
the father.
“It's been an interesting journey for me, Rocky.” Thoughtfully Dawley
Kane smoked his Manila cigar.
“It's enabled me to understand somewhat the delicate international
situation out here. I couldn't see why our agents weren't accomplishing
more. The trouble is, of course, that every square foot of China's
staked out by the European nations. If you don't believe that, just get
a concession from the Chinese Government--for a big job--water power
development, mining, railway building, or an industrial monopoly--that
part of it isn't so hard--and then try to carry it through. You'd find
out fast enough who are the real owners of China. And those owners would
never let you start. Great Britain controls this great empire of the
Yangtze Valley as completely as she controls India. France owns the
south--Russia the northwest and the north--Japan, from Korea and
Lower Manchuria is penetrating the northwest, too; they're bound, the
Japanese, to tip Russia out one of these days, and they're very clever
and patient about slipping into the British regions. They've got
the Germans to contend with, too, in the Kiochow region. But
someday--either in the event of the final break-up of China or in the
event of the European nations coming to an out-and-out squabble (which
is almost a certainty, at that) Japan will be found to have pulled off
most of the big prizes for herself. We'll have to fight Japan someday,
I suppose--over the control of the Pacific--but in the meantime, those
little people are the best bet. They know the East as the rest of us
don't, they're clever, and their diplomats aren't hampered by the sort
of half-enlightened public opinion that's always tripping us up in the
West--sentimental idealism, that sort of thing--and they control
their press infinitely better than we do. They've got everything,
the Japanese, except money. And we've got the money. It'll be just a
question of security, that's all; and watching them pretty closely. I've
made up my mind to play it that way.... A survey of the actual conditions
out here makes our American diplomacy look pretty naive. We talk
idealism--open door and all--while all the rest of them are moving in
and setting up shop and getting the money.”
Later, in Dawley Kane's spacious suite overlooking the park-like street
where the colored lanterns of the rickshaws glowed pleasantly under
the trees, the father said, laying a hand affectionately on the boy's
shoulder:
“I can't tell you how happy you've made me, Rocky. It looks as if you'd
turned your corner. Just don't go in for too much thinking about what
you've been through. There's nothing in remorse. As a matter of fact,
a little rough experience is a good thing for a boy. After you get your
balance you'll be all the closer to life for it.... Go ahead with your
college plans, get your degree, and then after a year or two in the New
York office I'll bring you out here. We shall be playing for big stakes.
And we shall need good men.... That's the whole problem, really--the
men. I had my eyes on this man Doane, but he turned out to be only a
sentimentalist after all.”
It was the hopelessness of it that drove Rocky out--after a respectful
good night--and over to the revolutionary headquarters. He knew that
Mr. Doane worked most of the night; and took what sleep he got on a cot
there.