Samuel Merwin

“ He was dressed almost stiffly—not in knickerbockers now, but in what would be called at home a business suit, with stiff white collar and a soft but correct hat; and he carried a stick—like an Englishman, Betty thought, careful to the last of appearances. As if there were no such thing as danger; only stability. She might have been back in the comfortable New Jersey town and he a casual caller. And then, after taking him in, in a quick conflict of moods that left her breathless, she glanced hurriedly about. ”

“ Brachey was aware of no glances of more than the usual passing curiosity from slanting eyes. He saw only the traditional peaceful countryside of the Chinese interior.
This sense of peace and calm had an effect on his moody self that increased as the day wore on. Life was turning unreal on his hands. His judgment wavered and played tricks with memory. Had it been so dangerous back there in T'ainan? Could it have been? He had to look steadily at the ragged, trudging figure of the erstwhile elegant Mr. Po to recapture a small degree of mental balance.... He had brought Betty away. ”

“ Seated on the parapet of a rifle pit Betty and Brachey looked out over the red-brown valley. Long, faintly purple shadows lay along the hillside and in the deeper hollows. From the compound, half-way down the slope, a confusion of pleasant sounds came to their ears—youthful voices, snatches of song, an energetically whistled Sousa march, the quaintly plaintive whine of Chinese woodwinds—while above the roofs of tile and iron within the rectangle of wall (that was still topped with brown sand-bags) wisps of smoke drifted lazily upward. ”

“ The clearing away of the crowded Chinese houses about the legations left à glacis of level ground that gave dignity to the walled enclosure. Legation Street, paved, bordered by stone walks and gray compound-walls, dotted with lounging figures of Chinese gatekeepers and alert sentries of this or that or another nation—British, American, Italian, Austrian, Japanese, French, Belgian, Dutch, German—offered a pleasant stroll of a late afternoon when the sun was low. Through gateways there were glimpses to be caught of open-air tea parties, of soldiers drilling, or even of children playing. ”

“ Three.
3 A man of Jonathan Brachey's nature couldn't know the power his nervous bold thoughts and words were bound to exert in the mind of a girl like Betty. In her heart already she was mothering him. Every word he spoke now, even the strong words that startled her, she enveloped in warm sentiment.
To Brachey's crabbed, self-centered nature she was like a lush oasis in the arid desert of his heart. He could no more turn his back on it than could any tired, dusty wanderer. He knew this. Or, better, she was like a mirage. And mirages have driven men out of their wits. ”

“ Here in the compound, with all his burden of responsibility settled on his broad shoulders, he had receded from her. He would sit and look at her, with sadness in his eyes, not catching all she said; then would start a little, and smile, and take her hand.
She found that she couldn't unpack all her things; not for days. There were snapshots of boy and girl members of “the crowd,” away off there, beyond the brown hills, beyond the ruined wall, beyond the yellow plains, and the Pacific Ocean and the wide United States, off in a little New Jersey town, on the other side of the world. ”

“ And Brachey observed him through narrowed eyes.
Here, thought the journalist, before him, smoking a cigarette, sat modern China; in robe and queue, speaking of the future but ridden by the past; using strong words but with no fire, no urge or glow in the voice; as if eager to hope without the substance of hope; at once age and youth, smiling down the weary centuries at himself. ”

“ What man?”
“No savvy.”
“China man?”
“No China man. White man. Too big.”
Brachey sprang up; dropped his book on the table with a bang; brushed John aside and opened the door. The only light out there came slanting down from a brilliant moon. Dimly outlined as shadowy masses were the now familiar objects of the inn courtyard—the row of pack-saddles over by the stable, the darkly moving heads of the horses ami mules behind the long manger, the two millstones on their rough standard; above these the roofs of curving tile and a glimpse of young foliage. ”

“ It was close upon noon when Betty, sketching portfolio under arm, came slowly down the stairs. Mrs. Boatwright, at her desk in the front room, glanced up, called:
“Oh, Betty—just a moment!”
The girl stood in the doorway. She looked so slim and small and, even, childlike, that the older woman, to whom responsibility for all things and persons about her was a habit, knit her heavy brows slightly. What on earth were you to do with the child? What had Griggsby Doane been thinking of in bringing her out here? Anything, almost, would have been better. And just now, of all times! ”

“ If the old dogmatic religion was gone, he was sensing a new personal religion of work, of healthy functioning, of unquestioning service in the busy instinctive life of the world. He would turn, not away from life to a mystical Heaven, but straight into life at its busiest, head up, as now on the old highway of Hansi, trusting his instinct as a human creature. No matter how difficult the start he would plunge in and live his life out honestly. Betty remained the problem; he knit his brows at the thought ”

“ Boatwright stood thinking. Betty had run up the stairs. The two men were coming slowly across the courtyard, talking. Or her husband was talking; she could hear his light voice. The other man was silent; a gloomy figure in knickerbockers. She studied him. Already he was catalogued in her mind, and permanently. For nothing that might happen to present Brachey in another light could ever, now, shake her judgment of him. No new evidence of ability or integrity in the man or of genuine misfortune in marriage, would influence her. ”

“ Within its boundaries breathes sufficient power to overwhelm the world, yet only on the self-conscious surface is this power sensed and slightly used. Chinese life, in city and village, as in the teeming countryside, moves in disorganized poverty about its laborious daily tasks, little more aware of the surface political currents than are Crustacea at the bottom of the sea of ships passing overhead; while to these patient minds the mighty adventure of the Western World is no more than a breath upon the waters. ”

“ Brachey, though regarded by critical reviewers as a rising authority on the Far East, had never seen Peking. India he knew; the Straits Settlements—at Singapore and Penang he was a person of modest but real standing; Borneo, Java, Celebes and the rest of the vast archipelago, where flying fish skim a burnished sea and green islands float above a shimmering horizon against white clouds; the Philippines, Siam, Cochin China and Hongkong; but the swarming Middle Kingdom and its Tartar capital were fresh fuel to his coldly eager mind. ”

“ Men of the inn crowded about to help pack the boxes and bags of food and water and clothing on the saddles. The mules plunged and kicked. A rope broke and had to be elaborately repaired. The four soldiers brought out their white ponies, saddled them, slung their carbines over their shoulders; they were handsome men, not so ragged, in faded blue uniforms of baggy Chinese cut, blue half-leggings, blue turbans. Into the litter went Brachey's mattress and pillow. ”

“ And within a few moments the afternoon routine of the mission compound was under way.
Through the open window came a beam of warm spring sunshine. Outside, across the wide courtyard Withery noted the, to him, familiar picture of two or three blue-clad Chinese men lounging on the steps of the gate house; students crossing, books in hand; young girls round and fresh of face, their slanting eyes demurely downcast, assembling before one of the buildings; two carpenters working deliberately on a scaffold. A soft-footed servant cleared the table. ”

“ M. Pourmont was a shrewd man; and he knew that the Mademoiselle was ashamed of nothing. Nothing was wrong there. Like his wife he had already learned to love the busy earnest girl. And then, leaving M. Doane in the reception-room waiting for her, he returned to his study and dismissed the whole matter from his mind. For the siege was cruel business. One by one, some one every day, men and women and children, were dying. The living had to subsist on diminishing rations, for he had never foreseen housing and feeding so large a number. ”

“ You know, Betty, the thing we assert most positively isn't our real faith. We don't have to assert that. It's likely to be what we're trying to convince ourselves of.... I'm just beginning to understand that, just lately, since you came into my life—and during the fighting. I had to bolster myself up in the faith that a man can run away, live alone, because it seemed to be the only basis on which I, as I was, could deal with life. ”

“ Under the gate were lounging soldiers, coolies, beggars, and a money-changer or two with their bags of silver lumps, their strings of copper cash and their balanced scales. Two of the soldiers sprang forward and stopped the cart. Despite their ragged uniforms (of a dingy blue, of course, like all China, and capped with blue turbans) these were tall, alert men. Brachey was rapidly coming to recognize the Northern Chinese as a larger, browner, more vigorous type of being than the soft little yellow men of the South with whom he had long been familiar in the United States as well as in the East. ”

“ They were, when all was said, adult folk. He couldn't himself tell her. But his predicament was pitiful. He knew now, from the honest love in her eyes, that not the least black of his sins had been the doubting her. Never again could he do that. But this realization brought him to the verge of an attitude toward Jonathan Braehey that it was impossible for him to entertain; the mere thought of that man roused emotions that he could not control. But emotions, all sorts, must be controlled, of course; on no other understanding can life be lived. ”

“ Oh, yes, of course! But what is time to China! A few centuries! They are nothing!”
“A few centuries are something to me,” observed Brachey dryly.
“Oh, yes! And to me. That is different. There are times to come of running to and fro and hubbub. It is not easy to adjust.”
“It is not,” said Brachey.
“For myself, I would like to get away. I have observed with too great width customs of white peoples, I have perused with too diligent attention many English books as well as those of French and German authorship, to find contentment in Chinese habit ways. ”

“ Out in the stream several stately junks lay at anchor; and near them a tiny river gunboat, her low free-board glistening white in the warm spring sunshine, a wisp of smoke trailing lazily from her funnel, the British ensign hanging ir folds astern.
Down and up the water steps were moving continuously the innumerable water bearers whose business it was to supply the city of near a million yellow folk that lay just behind the commercial buildings and the pyramid-like godowns of the Bund. ”

“ On the whole, as he settled again into his endless, urgent task, M. Pourmont was not sorry that M. Doane had won his consent to this last desperate effort to reach those inhumanly deliberate white folk up at Peking; men whose minds dwelt with precedents and policies while their fellows, down here at Ping Yang, on a hillside, held off with diminishing strength the destruction that seemed, at moments, certain to fall.
3 Doane, watching Betty as she entered the room attired in a long white apron over her simple dress, knew that he must again beg the question that lay between them. ”

“ At each countryside well the half-naked coolies—two, three, or four of them—were turning windlasses and emptying buckets of water into stone troughs from which trickled little painstakingly measured streams to the sunbaked furrow of this or that or another field. The trains of asses anil camels wound ceaselessly up and down the road that led from the northern hills to T'ainan. The roadside vendors and beggars chanted their wares and their grievances. The villages, always indolent, lived on exactly as always, stirred only by noisy bargains or other trivial excitement. ”