Hills of Han 6

Hills of Han 6

He took it; held it a moment firmly; then said:

 

“Will you give me that drawing?”

 

“Yes,” said she.

 

“Now?”

 

“Yes.” And she tiptoed twice again past the Hasmers’ door.

 

“Please sign it,” said he, and produced a pencil. “But it seems so

silly. I mean, it’s nothing, this sketch.”

 

“Please!”

 

She signed it, said good night again, and hurried off, her heart in a

curious flutter.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER II--ROMANCE

 

I

 

UNWILLING either to confess like a naughty child or to go on keeping

this rather large and distinctly exciting secret under cover, Betty,

at teatime, brought the matter to an issue. The morning ashore had been

difficult. Mr. Brachey had severely ignored her, going about Nagasaki

alone, lunching in austere solitude at the hotel.

 

She said, settling herself in the deck chair:

 

“Mrs. Hasmer, will you ask Mr. Brachey to have tea with us?”

 

After a long silence the older woman asked, stiffly: “Why, my dear?”

 

Betty compressed her lips.

 

Doctor Hasmer saved the situation by saying quietly, “I’ll ask him.”

 

It was awkward from the first. The man was angular and unyielding.

And Mrs. Hasmer, though she tried, couldn’t let him alone. She was

determined to learn whether he was married. She led up to the direct

question more otariously than she knew. Finally it came. They were

speaking of his announced plan to travel extensively in the interior of

China.

 

“It must be quite delightful to wander as you do,” she said. “Of course,

if one has ties... you, I take it, are an unmarried man, Mr. Brachey ?”

 

Betty had to lower her face to hide the color that came. If only Mrs.

Hasmer had a little humor! She was a dear kind woman; but this!...

 

The journalist looked, impassively enough, but directly, at his

questioner.

 

She met his gaze. They were flint on steel, these two natures.

 

“You are obviously not married,” she repeated.

 

He looked down at his teacup; thinking. Then, abruptly, he set it down

on the deck, got up, muttered something that sounded like, “If you will

excuse me...” and strode away.

 

Betty went early to her cabin that evening.

 

She had no more than switched on her light when the Chinese steward came

with a letter.

 

She locked the door then, and looked at the unfamiliar handwriting. It

was small, round, clear; the hand of a particular man, a meticulous man.

who has written much with a pen.

 

She turned down the little wicker seat. Her cheeks were suddenly hot,

her pulse bounding high.

 

She skimmed it, at first, clear to the signature, “Jonathan Brachey”;

then went back and read it through, slowly.

 

“I was rude again just now,” (it began). “As I told you last night, it

is best for me not to see people. I am not a social being. Clearly, from

this time on, it will be impossible for me to talk with this Mrs.

Hasmer. I shall not try again.

 

“I could not answer her question. But to you I must speak. It would be

difficult even to do this if we were to meet again, and talk. But,

as you will readily see, we must not meet again, beyond the merest

greeting.

 

“I was married four years ago. After only a few weeks my wife left

me. The reasons she gave were so flippant as to be absurd. She was a

beautiful and, it has seemed to me, a vain, spoiled, quite heartless

woman. I have not seen her since. Two years ago she became infatuated

with another man, and wrote asking me to consent to a divorce. I refused

on the ground that I did not care to enter into the legal intrigues

preliminary to a divorce in the state of her residence. Since then, I am

told, she has changed her residence to a state in which ‘desertion’ is

a legal ground. But I have received no word of any actual move on her

part.

 

“It is strange that I should be writing thus frankly to you. Strange,

and perhaps wrong. But you have reached out to me more of a helping hand

than you will ever know. Our talk last night meant a great deal to me.

To you I doubtless seemed harsh and forbidding. It is true that I am

that sort of man, and therefore am best alone. It is seldom that I meet

a person with whom my ideas are in agreement.

 

“I trust that you will find every happiness in life. You deserve to. You

have the great gift of feeling. I could almost envy you that. It is a

quality I can perceive without possessing. An independent mind, a strong

gift of logic, stands between me and all human affection. I must say

what I think, not what I feel.

 

“I make people unhappy. The only corrective to such a nature is work,

and, whenever possible, solitude. But I do not solicit your pity. I find

myself, my thoughts, excellent company.

 

“With your permission I will keep the drawing. It will have a peculiar

and pleasant meaning to me.”

 

2

 

Betty lowered the letter, breathing out the single word, “Well!”

 

What on earth could she have said or done to give him any such footing

in her life?

 

She read it again. And then again.

 

An amazing man!

 

She made, ready to go to bed, slowly, dawdling, trying to straighten out

the curious emotional pressures on her mind.

 

She read the letter yet again; considered it.

 

Finally, after passing through many moods leading up to a tender

sympathy for this bleak life, and then passing on into a state of sheer

nervous excitement, she deliberately dressed again and went out on deck.

 

He stood by the rail, smoking.

 

“You have my letter?” he asked.

 

“Yes. I’ve read it.” She was oddly, happily relieved at finding him.

 

“You shouldn’t have come.”

 

She had no answer to this. It seemed hardly relevant. She smiled, in the

dark.

 

They fell to walking the deck. After a time, shyly, tacitly, a little

embarrassed, they went up forward again.

 

The ship was well out in the Yellow Sea now. The bow rose and fell

slowly, rhythmically, beneath them.

 

Moved to meet his letter with a response in kind, she talked of herself.

 

“It seems strange to be coming back to China.”

 

“You’ve been long away?”

 

“Six years. My mother died when I was thirteen. Father thought it would

be better for me to be in the States. My uncle, father’s brother, was

in the wholesale hardware business in New York, and lived in Orange, and

they took me in. They were always nice to me. But last fall Uncle Frank

came down with rheumatic gout. He’s an invalid now. It must have been

pretty expensive. And there was some trouble in his business. They

couldn’t very well go on taking care of me, so father decided to have me

come back to T’ainan-fu.” She folded her hands in her lap.

 

He lighted his pipe, and smoked reflectively.

 

“That will be rather hard for you, won’t it?” he remarked, after a time.

“I mean for a person of your temperament. You are, I should say, almost

exactly my opposite in every respect. You like people, friends. You are

impulsive, doubtless affectionate. I could be relatively happy, marooned

among a few hundred millions of yellow folk--though I could forego the

missionaries. But you are likely, I should think, to be starved there.

Spiritually--emotionally.”

 

“Do you think so?” said she quietly.

 

“Yes.” He thought it, over “The life of a mission compound isn’t exactly

gay.”

 

“No, it isn’t.”

 

“And you need gaiety.”

 

“I wonder if I do. I haven’t really faced it, of course. I’m not facing

it now.”

 

“Just think a moment. You’ve not even landed in China yet. You’re under

no real restraint--still among white people, on a white man’s ship,

eating in European hotels at the ports. You aren’t teaching endless

lessons to yellow children, day in, day out. You aren’t shut up in an

interior city, where it mightn’t even he safe for you to step outside

the gate house alone. And yet you’re breaking bounds. Right now--out

here with me.”

 

Already she was taking his curious bluntness for granted. She said now,

simply, gently:

 

“I know. I’m sitting out here at midnight with a married man. And I

don’t seem to mind. Of course you’re not exactly married. Still... A few