Hills of Han 14

Hills of Han 14

During the first few days after her arrival Betty appeared on time. It

was clearly necessary. Mrs. Boatwright was hostile. Her father was busy

and preoccupied. She herself was moved deeply by a girlish determination

to find some small niche for herself in this driving little community.

The place was strange to her. There seemed little or no companionship.

Even Miss Hemphill, the head teacher, whom she remembered from her

girlhood, and Dr. Mary Cassin, who was in charge of the dispensary

and who had a pleasant, almost pretty face, seemed as preoccupied as

Griggsby Doane. During her mother’s lifetime there had been an air of

friendliness, of kindness, about the compound that was gone now. Perhaps

less work had been accomplished then than now under the firm rule of

Mrs. Boatwright, but it had been a happier little community.

 

From the moment she rode in through the great oak, nail-studded gates

of the compound, and the mules lurched to their knees, and her father

helped her out through the little side door of the red and blue litter,

Betty knew that she was exciting disapproval. The way they looked at her

neat traveling suit, her becoming turban, her shoes, worked sharply

on her sensitive young nerves. She was aware even of the prim way they

walked, these women--of their extremely modest self-control--and of the

puzzling contrast set up with the free activity of her own slim body;

developed by dancing and basketball and healthy romping into a grace

that had hitherto been unconscious.

 

And almost from that first moment, herself hardly aware of what she was

about but feeling that she must be wrong, struggling bravely against

an increasing hurt, her unrooted, nervously responsive young nature

struggled to adapt itself to the new environment. A pucker appeared

between her brows; her voice became hushed and faintly, shyly earnest

in tone. Mrs. Boatwright at once gave her some classes of young girls.

Betty went to Miss Hemphill for detailed advice, and earnestly that

first evening read into a work on pedagogics that the older teacher,

after a kindly enough talk, lent her.

 

She went up to her father’s study, just before bedtime on the first

evening, in a spirit of determined good humor. She wanted him to see how

well she was taking hold.... But she came down in a state of depression

that kept her awake for a long time lying in her narrow iron bed, gazing

out into the starlit Chinese heavens. She felt his grave kindness, but

found that she didn’t know him. 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. There were

parcels of dance programs, with little white pencils dangling from

silken white cords. There were programs of plays, with cryptic

pencilings, and copies of a high-school paper, and packets of letters.

She couldn’t trust herself to look at these treasures. And she put her

drawing things away.

 

And other more serious difficulties arose to provoke sober thoughts.

One occurred the first time she played tennis with her father; the day

before Li Hsien’s suicide. The court had been laid out on open ground

adjoining the compound. Small school buildings and a wall shut it off

from the front street, and a Chinese house-wall blocked the other end;

but the farther side lay open to a narrow footway. Here a number of

Chinese youths gathered and watched the play. It happened that none of

the white women attached to the mission at this time was a tennis

player; and the spectacle of a radiant girl darting about with grace and

zest and considerable athletic skill was plainly an experience to the

onlookers. At first they were respectful enough; but as their numbers

grew voices were raised, first in laughter, then in unpleasant comment.

Finally all the voices seemed to burst out at once in chorus of ribaldry

and invective. Betty stopped short in her play, alarmed and confused.

 

These shouted remarks grew in insolence. All through her girlhood Betty

had grown accustomed to occasional small outbreaks from the riff-raff of

T’ainan. She recalled that her father had always chosen to ignore

them. But there was a new boldness evident in the present group, as

the numbers increased and more and more voices joined in. And it was

evident, from an embroidered robe here and there, that not all were

riff-raff.

 

Her father lowered his racket and walked to the net.

 

“I’m sorry, dear,” he said; “but this won’t do.”

 

Obediently she returned to the mission house; while Doane went over to

the fence. But before he could reach it the youths, jeering, hurried

away. That evening he told Betty he would have a wall built along the

footway.

 

2

 

Within less than a week Betty found herself fighting off a

heart-sickness that was to prove, for the time, irresistible. On the

sixth evening, after the house had became still and her big, kind father

had said good night--in some ways, at moments, he seemed almost close to

her; at other moments, especially now, at night, in the solitude, he was

hopelessly far away, a dim figure on the farther shore of the gulf that

lies, bottomless, between every two human souls--she locked herself in

her little room and sat, very still, with drooping face and wet eyes, by

the open window.

 

The big Oriental city was silent, asleep, except for the distant sound

of a watchman banging his gong and shouting musically on his rounds.

The spring air, soft, moistly warm, brought to her nostrils the smell

of China; and brought with it, queerly disjointed, hauntlike memories of

her childhood in the earlier mission house that had stood on this same

bit of ground. She closed her eyes, and saw her mother walking in quiet

dignity about the compound, the same compound in which Luella Brenty,

a girl of hardly more than her-own present age, was, in 1900, burned

at the stake. Down there where the ghostly tablet stood, by the chapel

steps.

 

She shivered. There was trouble now. They were talking about it among

themselves, if not in her presence. That would doubtless explain her

father’s preoccupation.... She must hurry to bed. She knew she was

tired; and it wouldn’t do to be late for breakfast. And she had a class

in English at 8:45.

 

But instead she got out the bottom tray of her trunk and mournfully

staring long at each, went through her photographs. She had been a nice

girl, there in the comfortable American town. Here she seemed less nice.

As if, in some way, over there in the States, her nature had changed for

the worse. They looked at her so. They were not friendly. No, not that.

Yet this was home, her only home. The other had seemed to be home, but

it was now a dream... gone. She could never again pick up her place in

the old crowd. It would be changing. That, she thought, in the brooding

reverie known to every imaginative, sensitive boy and girl, was the sad

thing about life. It slipped away from you; you could nowhere put your

feet down solidly. If, another year, she could return, the crowd would

be changed. New friendships would be formed. The boys who had been fond

of her would now be fond of others. Some of the girls might be married...

She herself was changed. A man--an older man, who had been married,

was, in a way, married at the time---had taken her in his arms and

kissed her. It w’as a shock. It hurt now. She couldn’t think how it had

happened, how it had ever begun. She couldn’t even visualize the man,

now, with her eyes closed. She couldn’t be sure even that she liked him.

He was a strange being. He had interested her by startling her.

Romance had seized them. He said that. He said it would be different at

Shanghai. It was different; very puzzling, saddening. There was no doubt

as to what Mrs. Boatwright would say about it, if she knew. Or Miss

Hemphill. Any of them.... She wondered what her father would say. She

couldn’t tel! him. It had to be secret. There were things in life that

had to be; but she wondered what he would say.

 

But she was, with herself, here in her solitude, honest about it. It had

happened. She didn’t blame the man. In his strange way, he was real. He

had meant it. She had read his letter over and over, on the steamer, and

here in T’ainan. It was moving, exciting to her that odd letter. And he

had gone without a further word because he felt it to be the best way.

She was sure of that.... She didn’t blame herself, though it hurt. No,

she couldn’t blame him. Yet it was now, as it had been at the time,

a sort of blinding, almost an unnerving shock.... Probably they would

never meet again. It was a large world, after all; you couldn’t go back

and pick up dropped threads. But if they should meet, by some queer

chance, what would they do, what could they say? For he lingered vividly

with her; his rough blunt phrases came up, at lonely moments, in her

mind. He had stirred and, queerly, bewilderingly, humbled her.... She

wondered, all nerves, what his wife was like. How she looked.

 

Perhaps it was this change in her that these severe women noticed.

Perhaps her inner life lay open to their experienced eyes. She could do

nothing about it, just set her teeth and live through somehow.... Though

it couldn’t be wholly that, because she had worn the clothes they didn’t

like before it happened, and had danced, and played like a child. And

they didn’t seem to care much for her drawing; though Miss Hemphill had,

she knew, suggested to Mr. Boatwright that he let her try teaching a

small class of the Chinese girls.... No, it wasn’t that. It must, then,

be something in her nature.

 

She had read, back home--or in the States--in a woman’s magazine, that

every woman has two men in her life, the one she loves, or who has

stirred her, and the one she marries. The girls, in some excitement, had

discussed it. There had been confidences.

 

She might marry. It was possible. And even now she saw clearly enough,

as every girl sees when life presses, that marriage might, at any

moment, present itself as a way out. The thought was not stimulating.

The pictures it raised lacked the glowing color of her younger and more

romantic dreams.... That mining engineer was writing her, from Korea.

His name was Apgar, Harold B. Apgar; he was stocky, strong, with an

attractive square face and quiet gray eyes. She liked him. But his

letters were going to be hard to answer.

 

The soft air that fanned her softer cheek brought utter melancholy. She

felt, as only the young can feel, that her life, with her merry youth,

was over. Grim doors had closed on it. Joy lay behind those doors. Ahead

lay duties, discipline, the somber routine of womanhood.