Hills of Han 50

Hills of Han 50

It seemed an hour later when footsteps sounded outside, and the outer

door opened. Then they came in, father and daughter.

 

Betty, rather white, stood hesitant, looking from one to the other.

Doane placed a gently protecting arm about her slim shoulders.

 

“I haven’t told her,” he said. “That is for you to do. I want you both

to wait while I look for the others.”

 

He was gone. Betty came slowly forward. Brachey handed her the

cablegram.

 

“I--I can’t read it,” she said, with a tremulous little laugh.

“John--I’m crying!”

 

4

 

The door squeaked. Miss Hemphill looked in; stopped short; then in

a sudden confusion of mind in which indignation struggled with

bewilderment for the upper hand, stepped back into the hall. Before

she could come down on the decision to flee, Dr. Cassin joined her;

curiously, carrying her medicine case.

 

To the physician’s brisk, “Mr. Doane sent word to come here at once.

Do you know what is the matter?” Miss Hemphill could only reply, rather

acidly, “I can’t imagine!”

 

Mrs. Boatwright came into the corridor then, followed by Doane. She

walked with firm dignity, her enigmatic face squarely set. And when he

ushered them into the room, she entered without a word, but remained

near the door.

 

For a long moment the room was still; a hush settling over them that

intensified the difficulty in the situation. Miss Hemphill stared down

at the matting. Mrs. Boatwright’s eyes were fixed firmly on the wall

over the bed. The one audible sound was the heavy breathing of Griggsby

Doane, who stood with his back to the door, brows knit, one hand

reaching a little way before him. He appeared, to the shrewd eyes of Dr.

Cassin, like a man in deep suffering. But when he spoke it was with

the poise, the sense of dominating personality, that she had felt and

admired during all the earlier years of their long association. Of late

he had been ill of a subtle morbid disease of which she had within the

week witnessed the nearly tragic climax; but now he was well again....

Mary Cassin was a woman of considerable practical gifts. Her medical

experience, illuminated as it had been by wide scientific reading,

gave her a first-hand knowledge of the human creature and a tolerant

elasticity of judgment that contrasted oddly with the professed tenets

of her church, with their iron classification as sin of much that is

merely honest human impulse, that might even, properly, be set down

as human need. She saw clearly enough that the quality in the human

creature that is called, usually, force, is essentially emotional in its

content--and that the person gifted with force therefore must be plagued

with emotional problems that increase in direct ratio with the gift.

Unlike Mrs. Boatwright, who was, of course, primarily a moralist,

Mary Cassin possessed the other great gift of dispassionate, objective

thought. I think she had long known the nature of Doane’s problem.

Certainly she knew that no medical skill could help him; her

advice, always practical, would have taken the same direction as Dr.

Hidderleigh’s. It brought her a glow of something not unlike happiness

to see that now he was well. The cure, whatever it might prove to have

been, was probably mental. Knowing Griggsby Doane as she did, that was

the only logical conclusion. For she knew how strong he was.

 

“There has existed among us a grave misapprehension”--thus Doane--“one

in which, unfortunately, I have myself been more grievously at fault

than any of you. I wish, now, before you all, to acknowledge my own

confusion in this matter, and, further, to clear away any still existing

misunderstanding in your minds.... Mr. Brachey has established the fact

that he is eligible to become Betty’s husband. That being the case, I

can only add that I shall accept him as my only son-in-law with pride

and satisfaction. He has proved himself worthy in every way of our

respect and confidence.”

 

Mary Cassin broke the hush that followed by stepping quickly forward

and kissing Betty; after which she gave her hand warmly to Brachey. Then

with a word about her work at the hospital she went briskly out.

 

Miss Hemphill started forward, only to hesitate and glance in a spirit

of timid inquiry at the implacable Mrs. Boatwright. To her simple,

unquestioning faith, Mr. Doane and Mary Cassin could not together be

wrong; yet her closest daily problem was that of living from hour to

hour under the businesslike direction of Mrs. Boatwright. However,

having started, and lacking the harsh strength of character to be cruel,

she went on, took the hands of Betty and Brachey in turn, and wished

them happiness. Then she, too, hurried away.

 

Elmer Boatwright was studying his wife. His color was high, his eyes

nervously bright. He was studying, too, Griggsby Doane, who had for

more than a decade been to him almost an object of worship. Moved by

an impulse, perhaps the boldest of his life--and just as his wife said,

coldly, “I’m sure I wish you happiness,” and moved toward the door--he

went over and caught Betty and Brachey each by a hand.

 

“I haven’t understood this,” he said--and tears stood in his eyes as he

smiled on them--“but now I’m glad. Betty, we are all going to be proud

of the man you have chosen. I’m proud of him now.”

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XXII--BEGINNINGS

 

1

 

THE day of sudden and dramatic peace was drawing near its close. 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.

 

“It seems queer,” mused he, aloud, “sitting here like this, with

everything so peaceful. During the fighting I didn’t feel nervous,

but now I start at every new sound. I loathed it, too; but now, this

evening, I miss it, in a way.” He gazed moodily down into the short

trench. “Right there,” he said, “young Bartlett was hit.”

 

“And you brought him in under fire.”

 

“A Chinaman helped me.”

 

“Oh, it was you,” she said. “He wouldn’t have done it. I watched

from the window.” Her chin was propped on two small lists; her eyes,

reflective, were looking out over the compound and the valley toward the

walled temple on the opposite slope with its ornate, curving roofs and

its little group of trees that were misty with young foliage. “I’ve been

thinking a good deal about that, and some other things. All you said,

back there on the ship, about independence and responsibility.”

 

“I don’t believe I care to remember that,” said he quietly.

 

“But, John, if you will say startling, strong things to an

impressionable girl--and I suppose that’s all I was then--you can’t

expect her to forget them right away.”

 

His face relaxed into a faint, fleeting smile. But she went earnestly

on.

 

“Of course I know it wasn’t really long ago. Not if you measure it by

weeks. But if you measure it by human experience it was--well, years.”

 

He was sober again; cheek on hand, gazing out into those lengthening,

deepening shadows.

 

“That was what we quarreled about, John. I felt terribly upset. I was

blue--I can’t tell you! Just the thought of all your life meant to you,

and how I seemed to be spoiling it.”

 

A strong hand drew one of hers down and closed about it. “I’m going to

try to tell you something, dear,” he said. “You thought that what I said

to you, on the ship, was an __EXPRESSION__ of a real philosophy of life.”

 

“But what else could it have been, John?”

 

“It was just a chip--right here.” He raised her hand and with it patted

his shoulder. “It was what I’d tried for years to believe. I was bent on

believing it. 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. The only way I could get on at all. But you

see what happened to me. Life followed me and finally caught me, away

out here in China. No, you can’t get away from it. You can’t live

selfishly. It won’t work. We’re all in together. We’ve got to think

of the others..... I’m like a beginner now--going to school to life.

I don’t even know what I believe. Not any more. I--I’m eager to learn,

from day to day. The only thing I’m sure of”... he turned, spoke with

breathless awe in his voice... “is that I love you, dear That’s the

foundation on which my life has got to be built. It’s my religion, I’m

afraid.”

 

Betty’s eyes filled; her little fingers twisted in among his; but she

didn’t speak then.

 

The shadows stretched farther and farther along the hillside. The sun,

a huge orange disc descending amid coppery strips of shining cloud,

touched the rim of the western hills; slid smoothly, slowly down behind

it, leaving a glowing vault of gold and rose and copper overhead and a

luminous haze in the valley. Off to the eastward, toward Shau T’ing and

the crumbling ruins of the Southern Wall (which still winds sinuously

for hundreds of miles in and out of the valleys, and over and around the

hills) the tumbling masses of upheaved rock and loess were deeply purple

against a luminous eastern sky.

 

“Will you let me travel with you, John? I’ve thought that I could draw

while you write. Maybe I could even help you with your books. It would

be wonderful--exploring strange places. I’d like to go down through

Yunnan, and over the border into Siam and Assam and the Burmah country.

I’ve been reading about it, sitting in the hospital at night.”