Hills of Han 2

Hills of Han 2

The brown-legged coolie tucked the robe about her, stepped in between

the shafts of the vehicle; a second coolie fell into place behind, and

they were off down the hill. Just ahead, Mrs. Hasmer’s funny little hat

bobbed with the inequalities of the road. Just behind, Doctor Hasmer,

a calm, patient man who taught philosophy and history in a Christian

college fifteen hundred miles or more up the Yangtse River and who never

could remember to have his silvery beard trimmed, smiled kindly at her

when she turned.

 

And behind him, indifferent to all the human world, responsive in his

frigid way only to the beauties of the Japanese country-side and of the

quaint, gray-brown, truly ancient city extending up and down the valley

by its narrow, stone-walled stream, rode Mr. Jonathan Brachey.

 

The coolies, it would seem, had decided to act in concert. From shop to

shop among the crowded little streets went the four rickshaws. Any mere

human being (so ran Betty’s thoughts) would have accepted good-humoredly

the comradeship implied in this arrangement on the part of a playful

fate; but Mr. Brachey was no mere human being. Side by side stood the

four of them in a toy workshop looking down at toy-like artisans with

shaved and tufted heads who wore quaint robes and patiently beat out

designs in gold and silver wire on expertly fashioned bronze boxes and

bowls. They listened as one to the thickly liquid English of a smiling

merchant explaining the processes and expanding on the history of fine

handiwork in this esthetic land. Yet by no sign did Mr. Brachey’s face

indicate that he was aware of their presence; except once--on a crooked

stairway in a cloisonné shop he flattened himself against the wall to

let them pass, muttering, almost fiercely, “I beg your pardon!”

 

The moment came, apparently, when he could endure this enforced

companionship no longer. He spoke gruffly to his rickshaw coolies, and

rolled off alone. When they finally reached the railway station after a

half-hour spent in wandering about the spacious enclosure of the Temple

of Nishi Otani, with its huge, shadowy gate house, its calm priests, its

exquisite rock garden under ancient mystical trees--the tall journalist

was pacing the platform, savagely smoking a pipe.

 

At Kobe they were united again, riding out to the ship’s anchorage

in the same launch. But Mr. Brachey gave no sign of recognition. He

disappeared the moment of arrival at the ship, reappearing only when

the bugle announced dinner, dressed, as he had been each evening at the

Grand Hotel and the previous evening on the ship, rather stiffly, in

dinner costume.

 

Then the ship moved out from her anchorage into that long,

island-studded, green-bordered body of water known as the Inland Sea

of Japan. Early on the second morning she would slip in between the

closepressing hills that guard Nagasaki harbor. There another day

ashore. Then three days more across the Yellow Sea to Shanghai. Thence,

for the Hasmers and Betty, a five-day journey by steamer up the muddy

but majestic Yangtze Kiang to Hankow; at which important if hardly

charming city they would separate, the Hasmers to travel on by other,

smaller steamer to Ichang and thence on up through the Gorges to their

home among the yellow folk of Szechwan, while Hetty, from Hankow, must

set out into an existence that her highly colored young mind found it

impossible to face squarely. As yet, despite the long journey across

the American continent and the Pacific, she hadn’t begun so much as to

believe the facts. Though there they stood, squarely enough, before her.

It had been easier to surrender her responsive, rather easily gratified

emotions to a day-by-day enjoyment of the journey itself. When the

constant, worried watchfulness of Mrs. Hasmer reached the point of

annoyance--not that Mrs. Hasmer wasn’t an old dear; kindness itself,

especially if your head ached or you needed a little mothering!--why

then, with the easy adaptability and quick enthusiasm of youth, she

simply busied herself sketching. The top layer of her steamer trunk was

nearly full now--sketches of the American desert, of the mountains and

San Francisco, of people on the ship, of the sea and of Honolulu.

 

But now, with Yokohama back among the yesterdays and Kobe falling

rapidly, steadily astern, Betty’s heart was as rapidly and as steadily

sinking. Only one more stop, and then--China. In China loomed the facts.

 

That night, lying in her berth, Betty, forgot the cherry blossoms of

Kioto and the irritating Mr. Brachey. Her thoughts dwelt among the young

friends, the boy-and-girl “crowd,” she had left behind, far off, at the

other edge of those United States that by a queerly unreal theory were

her home-land. And, very softly, she cried herself to sleep.

 

 

 

2

 

Betty Doane was just nineteen. She was small, quick to feel and think,

dark rather than light (though not an out-and-out brunette). She was

distinctly pretty. Her small head with its fine and abundant hair, round

face with its ever-ready smile, alert brown eyes and curiously strong

little chin expressed, as did her slim quick body, a personality of

considerable sprightly vigor and of a charm that could act on certain

other sorts of personalities, particularly of the opposite sex, with

positive, telling effect.

 

Mrs. Hasmer, who had undertaken, with misgivings, to bring her from

suburban New Jersey to Hankow, found her a heavy responsibility. It

wasn’t that the child was insubordinate, forward, or, in anyway that you

could blame her for, difficult. On the contrary, she was a dear little

thing, kind, always amusing, eager to please. But none the less there

was something, a touch of vital quality, perhaps of the rare gift of

expressiveness, that gave her, at times, a rather alarming aspect. Her

clothes were simple enough--Griggsby Doane, goodness knew, couldn’t

afford anything else--but in some way that Mrs. Hasmer would never fully

understand, the child always managed to make them look better than they

were. She had something of the gift of smartness. She had, Mrs. Hasmer

once came out with, “too much imagination.” The incessant sketching, for

instance. And she did it just a shade too well. Then, too, evening after

evening during the three weeks on the Pacific, she had danced. Which

was, from the only daughter of Griggsby Doane--well, confusing. And

though Mrs. Hasmer, balked by the delicacy of her position, had gone

to lengths in concealing her disapproval, she had been unable to feign

surprise at the resulting difficulties. Betty had certainly not been

deliberate in leading on any of the men on the ship; young men, by the

way that you had no means of looking up, even so far as the certainty

that they were unmarried. But the young mining engineer on his way to

Korea had left quite heart-broken. From all outer indications he had

proposed marriage and met with a refusal. But not a word, not a hint,

not so much as a telltale look, came from Betty.

 

Mrs. Hasmer sighed over it. She would have liked to know. She came to

the conclusion that Betty had been left just a year or so too long in

the States. They weren’t serious over there, in the matter of training

girls for the sober work of life. Prosperity, luxury, were telling on

the younger generations. No longer were they guarded from dangerously

free thinking. They read, heard, saw everything; apparently knew

everything. They read openly, of a Sunday, books which, a generation

earlier, would not have reached their eyes even on a week-day. The

church seemed to have lost its hold (though she never spoke aloud of

this fact). Respect for tradition and authority had crumbled away. They

questioned, weighed everything, these modern children.... Mrs. Hasmer

worried a good deal, out in China, about young people in the States.

 

But under these surface worries, lurked, in the good woman’s mind, a

deeper, more real worry. Betty was just stepping over the line between

girlhood and young womanhood. She was growing more attractive daily. She

was anything but fitted to step into the life that lay ahead. Wherever

she turned, even now--as witness the Pacific ship--life took on fresh

complications. Indeed, Mrs. Hasmer, pondering the problem, came down on

the rather strong word, peril. A young girl--positive in attractiveness,

gifted, spirited, motherless (as it happened), trained only to be happy

in living--was in something near peril.

 

One fact which Mrs. Hasmer’s mind had been forced to accept was that

most of the complications came from sources or causes with which the

girl herself had little consciously to do. She was flatly the sort of

person to whom things happened. Even when her eager interest in life and

things and men (young and old) was not busy.

 

In the matter of the rather rude young man in knickerbockers, at Kioto,

Betty was to blame, of course. She had set to work to sketch him.

Evidently. The most you could say for her on that point was that she

would have set just as intently at sketching an old man, or a woman,

or a child--or a corner of the room. Mrs. Hasmer had felt, while on the

train to Kobe, that she must speak of the matter. After all, she had

that deathly responsibility on her shoulders. Betty’s only explanation,

rather gravely given, had been that she found his nose interesting.

 

The disturbing point was that something in the way of a situation was

sure to develop from the incident. Something. Six weeks of Betty made

that a reasonable assumption. And the first complication would arise in

some quite unforeseen way. Betty wouldn’t bring it about. Indeed, she

had quickly promised not to sketch him any more.

 

This is the way it did arise. At eleven on the following morning Mr. and

Mrs. Hasmer and Betty were stretched out side by side in their steamer

chairs, sipping their morning beef tea and looking out at the rugged

north shore of the Inland Sea. Beyond Betty were three vacant chairs,

then this Mr. Brachey--his long person wrapped in a gay plaid rug.

He too was sipping beef tea and enjoying the landscape; if so dry,

so solitary a person could be said to enjoy anything. A note-book lay

across his knees.

 

Mrs. Hasmer had thought, with a momentary flutter of concern, of moving

Betty to the other side of Doctor Hasmer. But that had seemed foolish.

Making too much of it. Betty hadn’t placed the chairs; the deck steward

had done that. Besides she hadn’t once looked at the man; probably

hadn’t thought of him; had been quite absorbed in her sketching--bits of

the hilly shore, an island mirrored in glass, a becalmed junk.

 

A youngish man, hatless, with blond curls and a slightly professional

smile, came up from the after hatch and advanced along the deck, eagerly

searching the row of rug-wrapped, recumbent figures in deck chairs.

Before the Hasmers he stopped with delighted greetings. It came out

that he was a Mr. Harting, a Y. M. C. A. worker in Bttrmah, traveling

second-class.

 

“I hadn’t seen the passenger list, Mrs. Hasmer, and didn’t know you were

aboard. But there’s a Chinese boy sitting next to me at table. He has

put in a year or so at Tokio University, and speaks a little English. He

comes from your city, Miss Doane. Or so he seems to think. T’ainan-fu.”