Hills of Han 11

Hills of Han 11

Doane broke out, with a touch of impatience: “We approach the shrewdest,

most keenly analytical people or; earth, the Chinese, with something

near a hundred and fifty conflicting varieties of the one true religion.

Too often, Henry, we try to pass to them our faith but actually succeed

only in exhibiting the curious prejudices of narrow white minds.”

 

This was, clearly, not a happy topic. Withery sighed.

 

“This--this attitude that you find yourself in--is really a conclusion,

Grigg?”

 

“It is a conclusion.”

 

“What are you going to do?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“It would be a calamity if you were to give up your work here, in the

midst of reconstruction.”

 

“No man is essential, Henry But of course, just now, it would lie

difficult. I have thought, often, if Boatwright had only turned out a

stronger man....”

 

“Grigg, one thing! You must let me speak of it.... Has the possibility

occurred to you of marrying again?”

 

Doane sprang up at this; walked the floor,

 

“Do you realize what you’re saying, Henry!” he cried out.

 

“I understand, Grigg, but you and I are old enough to know that in the

case of a vigorous man like yourself--”

 

Doane threw out a hand.

 

“Henry, I’ve thought of everything!”

 

A little later he stopped and stood over his friend.

 

“I have fought battles that may as well be forgotten,” he said

deliberately. “I have won them, over and over, to no end whatever. I

have assumed that these victories would lead in time to a sort of peace,

even to resignation. They have not. Each little victory now seems to

leave me further back. I’m losing, not gaining, through the years. It

was when I finally nerved myself to face that fact that I found myself

facing it all--my whole life.... Henry, I’m full of a fire and energy

that no longer finds an outlet in my work. I want to turn to new fields.

If I don’t, before it’s too late, I may find myself on the rocks.”

 

Withery thought this over. Doane was still pacing the floor. Withery,

pale himself now, looked up.

 

“Perhaps, then,” he said, “you had better break with it.”

 

Doane stopped at the window; stared out. Withery thought his face was

working.

 

“Have you any means at all?” he asked.

 

Doane moved his head in the negative.... “Oh, my books. A few personal

things.”

 

“Of course”--Withery’s voice softened--“you’ve given away a good deal.”

 

“I’ve given everything.”

 

“Hum!... Have you thought of anything else you might do?”

 

Doane turned. “Henry, I’m forty-five years old. I have no profession,

no business experience beyond the little administrative work here. Yet

I must live, not only for myself, but to support my little girl. If I do

quit, and try to find a place in the business world, I shall carry to my

grave the stigma that clings always to the unfrocked priest.” He strode

to the door. “I tell you, I’ve thought of everything!... We’re getting

nowhere with this. I appreciate your interest. But... I’m sorry, Henry.

Sleep if you can. Good night.”

 

They met, with M. Pourmont and the others, at breakfast.

 

There was a moment, on the steps of the gate house, overlooking the

narrow busy street, when they silently clasped hands.

 

Then Henry Withery crawled in under the blue curtains of his cart and

rode away, carrying with him a mental picture of a huge man, stooping a

little under the red lintel of the doorway, his strong face sternly set.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IV--THE RIDDLE OF LIFE, AND OF DEATH

 

 

1

 

DOANE stood on the Bund at Hankow, by the railing, his great frame

towering above the passers-by. He had lunched with the consul general,

an old acquaintance. He had arranged to stop overnight, with Betty, in

a missionary compound. In the morning they would take the weekly Peking

Express northward.

 

The wide yellow Yangtse flowed by, between its steep mud cliffs,

crowded with sampans--hundreds of them moored, rail to rail, against the

opposite bank, a compact floating village that was cluttered and crowded

with ragged river-folk and deck-houses of arched matting and that reared

skyward a thick tangle of masts and rigging. The smaller boats and tubs

of the water-beggars lay against the bank just beneath him, expectantly

awaiting the Shanghai steamer. 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.

 

To Doane the picture, every detail of which had a place in the

environment of his entire adult life, seemed unreal. The consul general,

too, had been unreal. His talk, mostly of remembered if partly mellowed

political grievances back home, of the great days when a certain “easy

boss” was in power, and later of the mutterings of revolution up and

down the Yangtse Valley, sounded in Doane’s ears like quaint idle

chatter of another planet.... His own talk, it seemed now, had been as

unreal as the rest of it.

 

Of the compliment men of affairs usually paid him, despite his calling,

in speaking out as man to man, Doane had never thought and did not think

now. He was not self-conscious.

 

The hours of sober thought that followed his talk with Henry Withery had

deepened the furrow between his brows.

 

In an odd way he was dating from that talk. It had been extraordinarily

futile. It had to come, some sort of outbreak. For two or three years he

had rather vaguely recognized this fact, and as vaguely dreaded it. Now

it had happened. It was like a line drawn squarely across his life. He

was different now; perhaps more honest, certainly franker with himself,

but different... It had shaken him. Sleep left him for a night or two.

Getting away for this trip to Hankow seemed a good thing. He had to be

alone, walking it off, and thinking... thinking.... He walked the two

hundred and ninety _li_ to M. Pour-mont’s compound, at Ping Yang, the

railhead that spring of the new meter-guage line into Hans’ Province in

two days. The mule teams took three.

 

He dwelt much with memories of his daughter. She had been a winning

little thing. Until the terrible Boxer year, that ended, for him, in the

death of his wife, she had brought continuous happiness into their life.

 

She would be six years older now. He couldn’t picture that. She had sent

an occasional snapshot photograph; but these could not replace his vivid

memories of the child she had been.

 

He was tremulously eager to see her. There would be little problems of

adjustment. Over and over he told himself that he mustn’t be stern with

her; he must watch that.

 

He felt some uncertainty regarding her training. It was his hope

that she would fit into the work of the mission. It seemed, indeed,

necessary. She would be contributing eager young life. Her dutiful,

rather perfunctory letters had made that much about her clear. They

needed that.

 

During the talk with Withery--it kept coming, up--he had heard his own

voice saying--in curiously deliberate tones--astonishing things. He

had sent his friend away in a state of deepest concern. He thought of

writing him. A letter might catch him at Shanghai. There would be time

in the morning, during the long early hours before this household down

here would be awaking and gathering for breakfast. It would help, he

felt impulsively, to explain fully... But what? What was it that was to

be so easily explained? Could he erase, with a few strokes of a pen, the

unhappy impression he had made that night on Henry’s brain?

 

The suggestion of marriage, with its implication of a rather cynical

worldly wisdom, had come oddly from the devout Henry. Henry was older,

too. But Doane winced at the mere recollection. He was almost excitedly

sensitive on the topic. He had put women out of his mind, and was

determined to keep them out. But at times thoughts of them slipped in.

 

On the walk to Ping Yang, the second afternoon, he was swinging down

a valley where the road was no more than the stony bed of an

anciently-diverted stream. The caravan of a mandarin passed, bound

doubtless from Peking to a far western province. That it was a great

mandarin was indicated by his richly decorated sedan chair borne by

sixteen footmen with squadrons of cavalry before and behind. Five mule

litters followed, each with a brightly painted, young face pressed

against the tiny square window, the wives or concubines of the great

one. Each demurely studied him through slanting eyes. And the last one

smiled; quickly, brightly. It was death to be caught at that, yet life

was too strong for her. He walked feverishly after that. He had said

one thing to Henry... something never before formulated, even in his own

thinking. What was it? Oh, this!--“Henry, I’m full of a fire and energy

that no longer find an outlet in my work. I want to turn to new fields.

If I don’t, before it’s too late, I may find myself on the rocks.”

 

There was something bitterly, if almost boyishly true in that statement.

The vital, vigorous adult that was developing within him, now, in the

forties, seemed almost unrelated to the young man he had been. He felt

life, strength, power. In spirit he was younger than ever. All he