Hills of Han 49
“Oh, yes!” Mr. Po lighted a cigarette. “We shall doubtless in jiffy see
you again at T’ainan-fu.”
Doane looked thoughtfully, intently at him, then replied in the simple
phrase, “It may be.” To Brachey he said now, producing a white envelope,
“I found this, cablegram held for you at Shau T’ing, sir.”
Brachey took the envelope; stood stiffly holding it unopened before him.
For a moment the eyes of these two men met. Then Doane broke the tension
by simply raising his head, an action which removed it from the view of
the men within the tent.
“Good morning,” he said rather gruffly. And “Good morning, Mr. Po.”
He was well out of ear-shot when Brachey’s gray lips mechanically
uttered the two words, “Thank you.” From a distant corner of the
compound came the fresh voices of young men--Americans and Australian
and English--raised in crudely pleasant harmony They were singing _My
Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean_. As they swung into the rolling, rollicking
refrain, women’s voices joined in faintly from here and there about
the compound.... Brachey seemed to be listening. Then, again, abruptly
starting into action, he stepped outside the tent and stared across the
courtyard after Griggby Doane.... Then, as abruptly, he remembered his
guest and returned within the tent, with an almost muttered “I beg your
pardon.”
“Oh, go on--read your cablegram!” said Mr. Po good-humoredly.
Bradley looked at him; then at the envelope--turning it slowly over. His
hands trembled. This fact appeared to disturb him. He held one hand
out before his face and watched it intently, finally lowering it with
a quick nervous shake of the head. He seated himself again on the cot;
tore off an end of the envelope; caught his breath; then sat motionless
with the bit of paper that meant to him everything in life, or nothing,
hanging between limp fingers. A puzzling reminder of the strange man,
Griggsby Doane, was the painful throbbing in his head.... They were
singing again, about the compound--it was the college song of his youth,
_Solomon Levi_.
He thought, with another of those odd little mental and physical jerks,
again of his guest; and heard himself saying--weakly it seemed, like
a man talking in dreams--“You will think me...” But found himself
addressing an empty enclosure of canvas. Mr. Po had slipped out and
dropped the flaps. That he could have done this unobserved frightened
Brachey a little. He looked again at his trembling hand.
Again he raised the envelope. Until this moment he had assumed that it
could be but one message to himself and Betty; but now he knew vividly
better.
Anything might have happened. It was unthinkable that he should want the
courage to read it. He had foreseen no such difficulty. Perhaps if it
had come by any other hand than that of Griggsby Doane....
His thoughts wandered helplessly back over the solitary life he had
led... wandering in Siam and Borneo and Celebes, dwelling here and there
in untraveled corners of India, picking up the quaint folklore of the
Malay Peninsula, studying the American sort of social organization in
the Philippines... eight years of it! He had begun as a disheartened
young man, running bitterly away from the human scheme in which he found
no fitting niche. Yes, that was it, after all; he had run away! He had
begun with a defeat, based his working life on just that. The five
substantial books that now stood to his name in every well-stocked
library in America, as in many in England and on the Continent, were,
after all, but stop-gaps in an empty life. They were a subterfuge, those
books.........All the hard work, the eager close thinking, was now,
suddenly, meaningless. That he had chosen work instead of drink, that he
had been, after all, a decent fellow, pursuing neither chance nor women,
seemed immaterial.
The curse of an active imagination was on him now, and was riding him as
wildly as ever witch rode a broomstick.
The very bit of paper in his hand was nothing if not the symbol of his
terrible failure in the business called living. As he had built his work
on failure, was he, inevitably, to build the happiness of himself and
Betty on the same painful foundation. Even if the paper should announce
his freedom? Bitterly he repeated aloud the word, “Freedom!” Then
“Happiness?”... What were these elusive things? Were they in any sense
realities?
He nerved himself and read the message:
“Absolute decree granted you are free.”
He tossed it, with its unpunctuated jumble of words, on the table.
A little later, though he still indulged in this scathing self-analysis,
the habit of meeting responsibilities that was more strongly a part of
his nature than in this hour of utter emotion he knew, began to assert
itself. The strong character that had led him, after all, out to fight
and to build his mental house, was largely the man.
He slowly got up and stood before the square bit of mirrror that hung
on the rear tent-pole; then looked down at his mud-stained clothes.
Deliberately, almost painfully, he shaved and dressed. It was
characteristic that he put on a stiff linen collar.
There was, to a man of his stripe, just one thing to do: and that thing
he was going at directly, firmly. Until it was done he could not so much
as speak to Betty. Of the outcome of this effort he had no notion; he
was going at it doggedly, with his character rather than with his
mind. Indeed the mind quibbled, manufactured little delays, hinted at
evasions. He even listened to these whisperings, entertained them; but
meanwhile went straight on with his dressing.
3
As he emerged from the tent sudden noises assailed his ears. A line of
young men danced in lock step, doing a serpentine from one areaway to
another, and waving and shouting merrily as they passed. There was still
the singing, somewhere; one of the songs of Albert Chevalier, who
had not then been forgotten. He heard vaguely, with half an ear, the
enthusiastic outburst of sound on the final line:
“Missie ‘Enry ‘Awkins is a first-class nyme!”
So it was a day of celebration! He had forgotten that it would be.
But of course! Even the Chinese were at it; he could hear one of their
flageolets wailing, and, more faintly, stringed instruments.
He walked directly to the building occupied by the Boatwrights; sent in
his card to Mr. Doane.
He was shown into a little cubicle of a room. Here was the huge man,
rising from an absurdly small work table that had been crowded in by
the window, between the wall and the foot of the bed. He was writing,
apparently, a long letter.
Brachey, an odd figure to Doane’s eyes, in his well-made suit and stiff
white collar, stood on the sill, as rigid as a soldier at attent ion.
“I am interrupting you,” he said, almost curtly,
For the first time Griggsby Doane caught a glimpse of the man Brachey
behind that all but forbidding front; and he hesitated, turning for
a moment, stacking his papers together, and with a glance at the open
window laying a book across them.
He had said, kindly enough, “Oh, no, indeed! Come right in.” But his
thoughts were afield, or else he was busily, quickly, rearranging them.
Brachey stepped within, and closed the door. Here they were, these two,
at last, shut together in a room. It was a moment of high tension.
“Sit down,” said Doane, still busying himself at the table, but waving
an immense hand toward the other small chair.
But Brachey stood... waiting... in his hand a folded paper.
Finally Doane lifted his head, with a brusk but not unpleasant, “Yes,
sir?”
Brachey, for a moment, pressed his lips tightly together.
“Mr. Doane,” he said then, clipping his words off short, “may I first
ask you to read this cablegram?”
Doane took the paper, started to unfold it, but then dropped it on the
table and stepped forward.
And now for the first time Brachey sensed, behind this great frame and
the weary, haggard face, the real Griggsby Doane; and stood very still,
fighting for control over the confusion in his aching head. This was, he
saw now, a strong man; a great deal more of a personality than he had
supposed he would find. Even before the next words, he felt something of
what was coming, something of the vigorous honesty of the man. Doane had
been through recent suffering, that was clear Something---and even then,
in one of his keen mental dashes, Brachey suspected that it was a much
more personal experience than the Looker attack--something had upset
him. This wasn’t a man to turn baby over a wound, or to lose his head in
a little fighting. No, it was an illness of the soul that had hollowed
the eyes and deepened the grooves between them. But it didn’t matter.
What did matter was that he was now, in this gentle mood, surprisingly
like Betty. For she had a curious vein of honesty; and she said, at
times, just such unexpectedly frank, wholly open things as he felt
(with an opening heart) that the father was about to say now.
“Mr. Brachey”--this was what he said, with extraordinary simplicity of
manner--“can you take my hand?”
If Brachey had spoken his reply his voice would have broken. Instead he
gripped the proffered hand. And during a brief moment they stood there.
“Now,” said Doane quietly, “sit down.” And he read the cablegram. After
some quiet thought he said, “Have you come to ask for Betty?”
The directness of this question made speech, to Brachey, even more
nearly impossible than before. He bowed his head.
Doane had dropped into the little chair by the little table. He sat,
now, thinking and absently weighing the cablegram in one hand. Finally,
reaching a conclusion, he rose again.
“The best way, I think, will be to settle this thing now.” He appeared
to be speaking as much to himself as to his caller. “I’ll get Betty. You
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