Hills of Han 8

Hills of Han 8

Reverend Henry B. Withery, on a morning in late March, came, by

springless cart, out of Kansu into T’ainan. A drab little man, with

patient fervor in his eyes and a limp (this latter the work of Boxers in

1900). He was bound, on leave, for Shanghai, San Francisco and home;

but a night at T’ainan with Griggsby Doane meant, even in the light of

hourly nearing America, much. For they had shared rooms at the seminary.

They had entered the yielding yet resisting East side by side. Meeting

but once or twice a year, even less often, they had felt each other

deeply across the purple mountains.

 

They sat through tiffin with the intent preoccupied workers in the

dining-room of the brick house; and Mr Withery’s gentle eyes took in

rather shrewdly the curious household. It interested him. There were

elements that puzzled him; a suggestion of staleness in this face, of

nervous overstrain in that; a tension.

 

The several native workers smiled and talked less, he thought, than on

his former visits.

 

Little Mr. Boatwright--slender, dustily blond, always hitherto burning

with the tire of consecration--was continually fumbling with a spoon, or

slowly twisting his tumbler, the while moodily studying the table-cloth.

And his larger wife seemed heavier in mind as in body.

 

Mr. Withery found the atmosphere even a little oppressive. He looked up

about the comfortable, high ceiled room. Mounted and placed on the walls

were a number of interesting specimens of wild fowl. Elmer Boatwright,

though no devotee of slaughter or even of sport, had shot and mounted

these himself.

 

Withery asked him now if he had found any interesting birds lately. The

reply was little more than monosyllabic; it was almost the reply of a

middle-aged man who has lost and forgotten the enthusiasm of youth.

 

There was talk, of course; the casual surface chatter of folk who are

deeply united in work. A new schoolroom was under construction. Jen Ling

Pu, a native preacher, was doing well at So T’ung. The new tennis court

wasn’t, after all, long enough.

 

During all this, Withery pondered. Griggsby was driving too hard, of

course. The strongly ascetic nature of the man seemed to be telling on

him; or perhaps it was running out, the fire of it, leaving only the

force of will. That happened, of course, now and then, in the case of

men gifted with great natural vitality.

 

Then too, come to reflect on it, the fight had been hard, here in Hansi.

Since 1900. Harder, perhaps, than anywhere else except Shantung and

Chihli. Harder even than in those more easterly provinces, for they were

nearer things. There were human contacts, freshening influences... . The

Boxers had dealt heavily with the whites in Hansi. More than a hundred

had been slain by fire or sword. Young women--girls like these two or

three about the dinner table--had been tortured. Griggsby and his wife

and the little girl had missed destruction only through the accident of

a journey, in the spring, to Shanghai. And he had returned, dangerously

early, to a smoldering ruin and plunged with all the vigor in his

unusual body and mind at the task of reconstruction. The work in the

province was shorthanded, of course, even yet. It would be so. But

Griggsby was building it up. He even had the little so-called college,

down the river at Hung Chan, going again, after a fashion. Money was

needed, of course. And teachers. And equipment. All that had been

discussed during tiffin. It was a rather heroic record. And it had not

passed unobserved. At the Missionary Conference, at Shanghai, in 1906,

Griggsby’s report--carefully phrased, understated throughout, almost

colorless--had drawn out unusual applause.

 

Mrs. Doane’s death occurred during the first year of that painful

reconstruction. Griggsby’s course, after that, from the day of the

funeral, in fact, as you looked back over it, recalling this and that

apparently trivial incident, was characteristic. The daughter was sent

back to the States, for schooling. Griggsby furnished for himself, up

in what was little more, really, than the attic of the new mission

residence, a bare, severe little suite of bedroom and study. The newly

married Boatwrights he installed, as something near master and mistress,

on the second floor. The other white workers and teachers filled all

but the two guest rooms, and, at times, even these. And then, his little

institution organized on a wholly new footing, he had loaded himself

sternly with work.

 

Dinner was over. One by one the younger people left the room. And within

a few moments the afternoon routine of the mission compound was under

way.

 

Through the open window came a beam of warm spring sunshine. Outside,

across the wide courtyard Withery noted the, to him, familiar picture

of two or three blue-clad Chinese men lounging on the steps of the gate

house; students crossing, books in hand; young girls round and fresh of

face, their slanting eyes demurely downcast, assembling before one of

the buildings; two carpenters working deliberately on a scaffold. A

soft-footed servant cleared the table. Now that the two friends

were left free to chat of personal matters, the talk wandered into

unexpectedly impersonal regions. Withery found himself baffled, and

something puzzled. During each of their recent visits Griggsby’s

manner had affected him in this same way, but less definitely.

The aloofness--he had once or twice ever, thought of it as an

evasiveness--had been only a tendency. The old friendship had soon

warmed through it and brought ease of spirit and tongue. But the

tendency had grown. The present Griggsby was clearly going to prove

harder to get at. That remoteness of manner had grown on him as a habit.

The real man, whatever he was coming to be, was hidden now; the man

whose very soul had once been written clear in the steady blue eyes.

 

And what a man he was! Mr. Withery indulged in a moment of sentiment as

he quietly, shrewdly studied him, across the table.

 

In physical size, as in mental attainments and emotional force, James

Griggsby Duane had been, from the beginning, a marked man. He was

forty-five now; or within a year of it. The thick brown hair of their

student days was thinner-now at the sides and nearly gone on top.

But the big head was set on the solid shoulders with all the old

distinction. A notable fact about Griggsby Doane was that after winning

intercollegiate standing as a college football player, he had never

allowed his body to settle back with the years. He weighed now, surely,

within a pound or two or three of his playing weight twenty-four years

earlier. He had always been what the British term a clean feeder, eating

sparingly of simple food. Hardly a day of his life but had at least its

hour or two of violent exercise. He would rise at five in the morning

and run a few miles before breakfast. He played tennis and handball. He

would gladly have boxed and wrestled, but a giant with nearly six and

a half feet of trained, conditioned muscle at his disposal finds few

to meet him, toe to toe. His passion for walking had really, during the

earlier years, raised minor difficulties about T’ainan. The Chinese were

intelligent and, of course, courteous; but it was more than they could

be asked to understand at first.

 

It had worked out, gradually. They knew him now; knew he was fearless,

industrious, patient, kind. During the later years, after the

Boxer trouble, his immense figure, striding like him of the fabled

seven-league-boots, had become a familiar, friendly figure in central

Hansi. Not infrequently he would tramp, pack on shoulders, from one

to another of the outlying mission stations; and thought nothing of

covering a hundred and thirty or forty _li_ where your cart or litter

mules or your Manchu pony would stop at ninety and call it a day.

 

Withery was bringing the talk around to the personal when Doane looked

at his watch.

 

“You’ll excuse me, Henry,” he said. “I’ve a couple of classes. But I’ll

knock off about four-thirty. Make yourself comfortable. Prowl about.

Use my study, if you like.... Or wait. We were speaking of the Ho Shan

Company. They’ve had two or three mass meetings here during the winter,

and got up some statements.”

 

“Do they suggest violence?”

 

“Oh, yes.” Doane waved the thought carelessly aside. “But Pao will keep

them in hand, I think. He doesn’t want real trouble. But he wouldn’t

mind scaring the company into selling out. The gossip is that he is

rather heavily interested himself in some of the native mines.”

 

“Is Pao your governor?”

 

“No, the governor died last fall, and no successor has been sent out.

Kang, the treasurer, is nearly seventy and smokes sixty to a hundred

pipes of opium a day. Pao Ting Chuan is provincial judge, but is ruling

the province now. He’s an able fellow.”... Doane drew a thick lot of

papers from an inner pocket, and selected one. “Read this. It’s one of

their statements. Pao had the translation made in his yamen. I haven’t

the original, but the translation is fairly accurate I believe.”

 

Withery took the paper; ignored it, and studied his friend, who had

moved to the door. Doane seemed to have lost his old smile--reflective,

shrewd, a little quizzical. The furrow between his eyes had deepened

into something near a permanent frown. There were fine lires about and

under the eyes that might have indicated a deep weariness of the

spirit. Yet the skin was clear, the color good.... Griggsby was fighting

something out; alone; through the years.

 

Feeling this, Henry Withery broke out, in something of their old frank

way.

 

“Do knock off, Grigg. Let’s have one of the old talks. I think--I think

perhaps you need me a little.” Doane hesitated. It was not like him to

do that. “Yes,” he said gravely, but with his guard up, that curious

guard, “it would be fine to have one of the old talks if we can get at

it.”

 

He turned to go; then paused.

 

“Oh, by the way, I’m expecting Pourmont. A little later in the day. He’s

resident engineer for the Ho Shan Company, over at Ping Yang. Pierre

François George Marie Pourmont. An amusing person. He feels a good deal

of concern over these meetings. For that matter, he was mobbed here in

February. He didn’t like that.”

 

Withery found himself compressing his lips, and tried to correct that

impulse with a rather artificial smile. It wasn’t like Griggsby to speak

in that light way. Like a society man almost. It suggested a hardening

of the spirit; or a crust over deep sensitiveness.

 

Men, he reflected, who have to fight themselves during long periods of

time are often hardened by the experience, even th