In Red and Gold

“Yes. It puzzle’ me – a little.”

He turned the paper over and over in his fingers, once again struggling to think… She sat motionless, gazing at the dahlias.

Blindly then he groped for her hands, found them and impulsively gripped them.

“Hui” – he whispered huskily – “tell me – if it’s like this – if you – if he… All this time I’ve supposed you and he were… I want you to come with me to America. We both do love it there. I’ll give up my life to making you happy. I’ll slave for you. I’ll make of my life what you say. just let us try it together…”

She silently heard him out – through this and much more, leaving her hands quietly in his. Finally then, when the emotional gust seemed in some measure to have spent itself, she said, gently:

“Rocky, I wan’ you to listen to what I’m going to tell you. You said I make you feel young. Well – can’ you see why? Can’ you see that I’m quite an ol’ lady?”

“But that’s nonsense! You – ” His eyes were feasting on her soft skin and on the exquisite curve of her cheek.

“No – you mus’ listen! First tel me how old you are.”

Unexpectedly on the defensive, Rocky had to compose himself, arrange his dignity, before he could reply. “I was twenty-one in the summer.”

“Ver’ good. An’ I was twenty-five in the spring.”

“But – ”

“Please! I don’ know what you coul’ have thought – how young you thought I was when I wen’ to college. But tha’s the way it is. I’m an ol’ lady. I have learn’ to like you ver’ much. I’m fond of you. I wan’ to feel always tha’ we’re frien’s. But we coul’n’ be happy together. Our interes’ aren’ the same – they coul’n’ be. Can’ you see, Rocky? If there is something abou’ me tha’ stirs you – that is ver’ won’erful. But we mus’n’ let it hurt you. An’ that isn’ the same as marriage. Marriage is differen’ – there mus’ be so much in common – if a man an’ woman are to live together an’ work together, they mus’ think an’ hope an’…”

Her voice died out. She was gazing again, mournfully at the dahlias. When he released her hands they lay limp in her lap.

With a great effort of will he wished her every happiness, promised to write, and got himself away.

This was on Thursday. Rocky walked at a feverish pace from the native city to the European settlement that was so quaintly not Chinese – more, with its Western-style buildings that were decorated with ornamental iron balconies and richly colored Chinese signs, like a “China-town” in an American city – and wandered for a time along Nanking Road; then out to Bubbling Well Road; away out, past the Country Club to the almost absurdly suburban quarter with its comfortably British villas; seeing, however, little of the busy life that moved about him, threading his way over cross-streets without a conscious glance at the motorcars and pony-drawn victorias (with turbanned mafoos cracking their whips) and bicycles and the creaking passenger wheelbarrow’s on which fat native women with tiny stumps of feet rode precariously. For those few hours were to be recalled in later years as the quietly darkest in the young man’s life. There was no question now of dissipation; he knew with the decisiveness of the Kanes that he had turned definitely away from the morbid oblivion of alcohol and opium, as from the unhealthy if exciting diversion of loveless women. But the bitterness would not down all at once. Indeed it was savagely powerful, still, to cloud his reason. The only evidence of victory over self of which he was aware was the fact that he could now look almost objectively at himself, and could fight.

He was back at the hotel between seven and eight, but couldn’t eat. For an hour he walked his room, locked in. Then, in sheer loneliness, a little afraid of himself, he went down to the spacious lounge and sat in a corner, behind a palm, staring at a copy of the China Press and listening, all overstrung nerves, to the cackle and laughter of the self-centered tourists and the curiously bold and loud commercial men from across the Pacific. He heard this, in his younger way, as Doane would have heard it, even as Hui; it was all heedless, light-brained; careless… Confused with the bitterness (in a bewildering degree) was a sense of the finely reflective atmosphere that had lately enveloped him and that he was not to lose easily. He felt – sitting, all nerves, in this babel – the fine old Chinese gentleman who had gone serenely to the death that was his destiny. He felt – constantly, intensely – the princess who had brought to her American college an instinct for culture the like of which neither he nor any of his friends at home had brought or found there. And he felt Mr. Doane – felt a spaciousness of mind in the man, a patience, a tolerance – felt him as a gentleman – felt him while still, in his heart, he was bitterly fighting him… The thing had closed over his head – the sheer quality of these remarkable folk. He was simply out of a cruder world. He hadn’t the right to stand with them – the simple right of character and breeding. And no amount of determination, no amount of storming at it could alter the fact. It would take years of patient work. Ever, then he might miss it; for his environment soon again would be that of the cackling tourists he now hated. Even at college it would be all the dominant athletics, the parties and the motors and girls and drinking, the association with those sons of prosperous families who were all consciously cementing alliances with the financial upper class that quietly ruled America while hired politicians prated and performed without in the smallest measure controlling or even altering the blatant facts… He and his kind, at college, despised the “grind.” And you had to be a grind if you weren’t the other thing. Yet Hui Pei had managed it differently. She was neither and both. It seemed to be a difference of mental texture…

A slim girl, richly dressed, with a sable wrap about her shoulders and a pretty little hat, was threading her way among the crowding chairs and tables and the talkative groups in the lounge. He glanced up: then looked closely. It was Dixie Carmichael. She stood before him, wearing her icy, faintly mocking smile. He rose.

“How are you?” said she.

He could only incline his head with a sort of courtesy, and contrive an artificial smile. He seemed to have been dreaming, outrageously. Life had begun now’.

“I’m running down to Singapore,” said she. “Friends there. And a look-see?”

“Oh,” he murmured, “indeed.” She looked out-and-out rich; and she was surprisingly pretty, without a sign that she had ever known danger or even care.

“Staying here?” she asked.

“No. I start back home Saturday.”

“So?.. Well, that’ll be pleasant.” With a final glance of what seemed almost like triumph she sailed away. And he knew that in taking the pearls he had not taken all from her. Apparently, too, she meant him to know it. That would be her moment of triumph. And that was all; not a word was spoken regarding his violence or her threats… He saw the yellow porters carrying out her luggage of bright new leather.

He resumed his seat; twitched for a time with increasing nervousness; got up and went aimlessly over to the desk; asked the Malay clerk for mail.

A smiling little Japanese appeared, rather officious about a great lot of bags and a trunk or two that were coming in. He had a familiar look; even raised his hat and stepped forward with outstretched hand. It was Kato… And then Dawley Kane came in – tall, quiet, neatly dressed, his nearly white mustache newly cropped.

To his pale son Dawley Kane said merely – “Well!” – as he took his hand; and then was busy registering. That done, he asked: “Had dinner?” Rocky shook his head. “I don’t care for any.” Daw ley Kane’s quietly keen eyes surveyed his son. “What’s the matter? Not well.”

“I’m well enough.”

“Sit down with me, can’t you?” And turning to the attending Japanese he said: “You’ll excuse me Kato. I’ll be dining with my son. And tell Mr. Braker, please… Just a minute. Rocky, till I wash my hands.”

They were shown to a table in the great diningroom, where the cackling was louder than in the lounge (they dine late on the coast) – where blue-gowned waiters moved softly about as if there had never been a revolution and wine glasses glistened and prettily bared shoulders gleamed roundly under the electric lights.

And Rocky, seated gloomily opposite this powerful quiet man – who took him unerringly in of course; dishearteningly, Rocky felt – found himself in a depression deeper than any he had known before. His father was so strong and he brought back with him the enveloping atmosphere of the mighty, splendidly successful white world in which they both belonged – a world that crushed the heart out of weaker peoples while it blandly talked the moralities. He felt it as a Juggernaut. It had the amazingly successful racial blend of character and plausibility. That would be the British quality; and, more roughly and confusedly, the American.

“Getting rather interesting up the river.” remarked Dawley Kane, over his soup. “How’d you get down?”

“On a junk.”

“Any trouble?”

“Oh – some.”

“Been here long?”

“Several days. I’m sailing Saturday.”

“Sailing?” Mr. Kane raised his eyebrows. “Where?”

“Home.”

“You decided not to consult me?”

“Oh… Don’t ride me, father! It’s the next thing. I’m going back to college.”

“Oh – I see.” Mr. Kane looked over the menu, ordered his roast, and selected a red wine, cautioning the waiter to set it near the stove for five minutes. “It’s wicked to heat Burgundy,” he said, when the waiter had gone, “but it’s the only way you can get it served at the right temperature. I discovered that when we were here before… I gather, my boy, that you’ve come to your senses in the matter of that little yellow girl.”

Rocky did not wince outwardly; he merely sat still. But his mind, at last, was active. And he knew – saw it in a flash – that no explanation he could possibly make, would be intelligible. You can not – yet – talk across the gulf between the worlds. It was his first intelligent glimpse of the tremendous fact that Doane had so long and so clearly felt and seen. So he merely – at last, when his father looked closely at him – inclined his head and said, huskily:

“I’m going to work out this college business’. That’s my job clear enough.”

This new attitude was to bring, later in the evening, confidences from the father.

“It’s been an interesting journey for me, Rocky.” Thoughtfully Dawley Kane smoked his Manila cigar.

“It’s enabled me to understand somewhat the delicate international situation out here. I couldn’t see why our agents weren’t accomplishing more. The trouble is, of course, that every square foot of China’s staked out by the European nations. If you don’t believe that, just get a concession from the Chinese Government – for a big job – water power development, mining, railway building, or an industrial monopoly – that part of it isn’t so hard – and then try to carry it through. You’d find out fast enough who are the real owners of China. And those owners would never let you start. Great Britain controls this great empire of the Yangtze Valley as completely as she controls India. France owns the south – Russia the northwest and the north – Japan, from Korea and Lower Manchuria is penetrating the northwest, too; they’re bound, the Japanese, to tip Russia out one of these days, and they’re very clever and patient about slipping into the British regions. They’ve got the Germans to contend with, too, in the Kiochow region. But someday – either in the event of the final break-up of China or in the event of the European nations coming to an out-and-out squabble (which is almost a certainty, at that) Japan will be found to have pulled off most of the big prizes for herself. We’ll have to fight Japan someday, I suppose – over the control of the Pacific – but in the meantime, those little people are the best bet. They know the East as the rest of us don’t, they’re clever, and their diplomats aren’t hampered by the sort of half-enlightened public opinion that’s always tripping us up in the West – sentimental idealism, that sort of thing – and they control their press infinitely better than we do. They’ve got everything, the Japanese, except money. And we’ve got the money. It’ll be just a question of security, that’s all; and watching them pretty closely. I’ve made up my mind to play it that way… A survey of the actual conditions out here makes our American diplomacy look pretty naive. We talk idealism – open door and all – while all the rest of them are moving in and setting up shop and getting the money.”

Later, in Dawley Kane’s spacious suite overlooking the park-like street where the colored lanterns of the rickshaws glowed pleasantly under the trees, the father said, laying a hand affectionately on the boy’s shoulder:

“I can’t tell you how happy you’ve made me, Rocky. It looks as if you’d turned your corner. Just don’t go in for too much thinking about what you’ve been through. There’s nothing in remorse. As a matter of fact, a little rough experience is a good thing for a boy. After you get your balance you’ll be all the closer to life for it… Go ahead with your college plans, get your degree, and then after a year or two in the New York office I’ll bring you out here. We shall be playing for big stakes. And we shall need good men… That’s the whole problem, really – the men. I had my eyes on this man Doane, but he turned out to be only a sentimentalist after all.”

It was the hopelessness of it that drove Rocky out – after a respectful good night – and over to the revolutionary headquarters. He knew that Mr. Doane worked most of the night; and took what sleep he got on a cot there.

CHAPTER XV – IN A COURTYARD

HE sent in his name, and waited for an hour in an outer office. For even at this late hour in the evening headquarters was a busy place. Chinese gentlemen crowded in and out, dressed, to a man, in the frock coats and the flapping black trousers they didn’t know how to wear. High officers slipped quietly in and out – in khaki, with the white brassard of the Revolution on their left arms; sometimes with merely a handkerchief tied there Orderlies and messengers came and went. And clerks of untiring patience sat at desks.

It was a difficult hour. Rocky had only his confused emotions to guide him, and his hurt heart There were moments, even, when he didn’t know why he had come. But he never thought of giving up. Whatever their curious relations, he had to see Mr. Doane, who was now the only stable figure in the rocking world about him. The man had been fine – square. That he knew now. And his nervous young imagination was veering toward hero-worship. He was utterly humble.

Naturally he was boyish about it, when they finally led him into that inner office. He said, flushing a little:

“I know you’re busy, Mr. Doane – ”

“Not too busy for you. I kept you waiting to clear up a lot of things.” The man’s great size and calmness of manner – the question rose; had he ever in his life known weariness? – were comforting.

“I’m – sailing Saturday.”

This, for a brief moment, brought the kindly though strong and sober face to immobility.

“You see, sir, I’ve come to feel that the best thing for me is to go back and – start clean.”

A slight mist came over Doane’s eyes. What a struggle the boy had had of it! And how splendidly he was working through!.. Thought came about the children of the rich in America… the problem of it…

“I – couldn’t go without seeing you. You see, sir, it’s you, I guess, that’ve put me on my feet. I sort of – well, I want you to know that I am on them. It’s been a strange experience, all round. A terrible experience, of course. It shakes you…”

“It has shaken me, too,” Doane observed simply.

“I know. That is, I see all that more clearly now. I was going to speak of it – it’s one of the things, but first… Mr. Doane, will you write to me? Once in a while? I mean, will you – could you find time to answer if I write to you? You see, it isn’t going to be easy, over there. I’ve got to go clean outside my own crowd. And outside my family. They won’t one of them understand what I’m up to. Not one. And – when you come right down to it, I suppose it’s a question whether the thing licks me or not. But” – his shoulders squared; he looked directly into that kind, deeply shadowed face – “I don’t believe it will lick me!”

“No,” said Doane, “it won’t lick you.”

“I shall never be able to shake China off now. It’s got me. And I don’t know a thing about it yet Of course I shall be reading and studying it up.”

“I’ll send you a book once in a while.”

“And I know I’m coming back out here someday. But it won’t be as my father wants me to come. You see, I’ll have money.”

“A great responsibility, Rocky.”

“I know. I’m beginning to see that. But – I know all this must sound pretty young to you! – but I’m afraid I shall be leaning on you sometimes – ”

“Write to me at those times.”

“All right. I will.”

“There is an amazing health in the American people.”

“Yes – that’s so, of course.”

“It’s a curiously blundering people, of course. And there’s a hard, really a Teutonic strain – that blend of practical hard-headedness, even of cruelty, with sentimentality – ”

Rocky’s brows came together. Mr. Doane and his father plainly didn’t use that word “sentimental” in the same sense, “ – it comes down to a strain of – well, something between the old Anglo-Saxonism and the modern Prussianism. It’s in us – in our driving business tactics, our narrow moral intolerance, our insistence on standardizing vulgar ideas – forcing every individual into a mold – in our extraordinary glorification of the salesman. We seem to have a good deal both of the British complacency and the rough aggressiveness of the German. But the health is there – wonderfully. What America needs is beauty – not the self-conscious swarming after it of earnest and misguided suburban ladies – but a quiet sense of the thing itself. Beauty – and simplicity – and patience – and tolerance – and faith. Prosperity has for the moment wrecked faith there. Simply too much money. But you’ll find health growing up everywhere. Just let yourself grow with it. You’ve been deeply impressed by China. But if I were you, I’d let all that take care of itself. Never mind what you may come to feel next year or ten years from now. It may be mainly China or mainly America. Just work, and let yourself grow.”

At the door they clasped hands warmly. And then, finally, Rocky got to the point:

“Mr. Doane – this is what I wanted to say – I saw Hui Fei this afternoon, and – ”

Doane was silent; but still gripped his hand, “ – and we talked things all out. She knows I’m – knows I’m going back. And – this is it… You don’t mind my… I think you ought to find time to go over there and see her. She seems puzzled about – I don’t know quite how to say all this. You know how I’ve felt – feel… Of course, the thing is to look the facts in the face. I hope I’m man enough to do that.” His voice was unsteady now. “I’m not the one. I never was. She was dear about it, to-day, but… I think you ought to see her. Oh, I’m sure it isn’t just her father’s will…”

Rocky found himself, without the slightest sense of ungentleness on the part of Mr. Doane, through the door and confusedly saying his good-by before the patient clerks and the waiting crowd in the anteroom. He walked back to the hotel with a warm glow of admiration and friendship in his heart. There would be – he knew, even then – sad hours, probably bitter hours, in the long struggle to come. But this talk was going to help.

On Doane the boy’s announcement had an almost crushing effect. His spirit was not adjusted to happiness. The terrific strain of the work was a blessing. He framed, that night and during the following day, innumerable little chits to Hui Fei – pretexts, all, for a visit that needed no pretext. And the day passed. Self-consciousness was upon him; and a constant mental difficulty in making the situation credible. And there was the pressure of time; an awareness that to Hui Fei – perhaps even to the Witherys – his silence would soon demand a stronger explanation than the mere pressure of business. He had to keep reminding himself that the girl was helpless, that he himself was the only guardian whose authority she could recognize; his reason whispering from moment to moment that she would not touch the money he had so promptly put at her disposal. No, she would wait.

It was his old friend Henry Withery who brought him to it; appearing late on the Saturday afternoon, determined to drag him off for dinner… Withery, looking every one of his forty-eight years, patient resignation in the dusty blue eyes, and a fine net of wrinkles about them. His slight limp was the only reminder of tortures inflicted by the Boxers in 1900, out in Kansuh. He had taken over the T’ainan-fu mission for a year after Doane left the church in 1907; and during two years now had been here in Shanghai.

“There’s no good killing yourself here, Grig,” he said. “We’ve not had ten minutes with you yet, remember. And we must talk over that girl’s affairs. She’s very sweet about it, but it’s plain that she’s waiting on you.”

His tone was genial; quite the tone of their earlier friendship, with nothing left of the constraint that had come into their relationship during Doane’s difficult years on the river – the years that couldn’t be explained, even to old friends… And Withery knew nothing of the curious personal problem of his and Hui Fei’s lives. His manner made that clear… It remained to be seen whether Mrs. Withery knew.

… Doane, it will be noted, was still struggling, as of settled habit, with the thought of freeing the girl from the obligation laid upon her.

But Mrs. Withery didn’t know, didn’t dream. She was quite her whole-souled self. He might have been Hui Fei’s father, from anything in her manner. He felt a conspirator.

Her father’s tragic end accounted altogether for the girl’s silence. She met him naturally, though, with a frank grip of the hand.

It was a pleasant enough family dinner. They talked the revolution, of course. No one in Shanghai at the beginning of that November talked anything else. Hui Fei quietly listened; her face very sober in repose. She seemed – she had always seemed – more delicately feminine in Western costume. She was more slender now; her face a perfect oval under the smooth, deep-shadowed hair. Her dark eyes, deep with stoically controlled feeling, rested on this or that speaker. Doane found them once or twice resting thoughtfully on himself.

After dinner Mrs. Withery, with a glance at her husband, laid a sympathetic hand on Hui’s shoulder.

“My dear,” she said, all friendly sympathy, “Mr. Doane’s time is precious, these days and nights. I know that you should take this opportunity to talk over your problems with him. I shall be bustling about here – suppose you take him out into the courtyard.”

Without a word they walked out there; stood by a gnarled tree whose twisted limbs extended over the low tiled roofs. There was a little light from the windows. The long silence that followed was the most difficult moment yet. Doane found himself breathing rather hard. In Hui Fei he felt the calm Oriental patience that underlay all her Western experiences. She simply waited for him to speak.

He looked down at her, quite holding his breath. She seemed almost frail out here, in the half light. He was fighting, with all his strength and experience, the warm sweet feelings that drugged his brain.

“My dear – ” he began; then, when she looked frankly up at him, hesitated. He hadn’t known he was going to begin with any such phrase as that. He got on with it…"I’m wondering how I can best help you. If I were a younger man there would be no question as to what I would have to say to you.” Utterly clumsy, of course; with little light ahead; just a dogged determination to serve her without hurting her.

“I think a good ‘eal of wha’ they tell me you’re doing” – thus Hui Fei, in a low but clear voice; not looking up now. “I’ve almos’ envied you. Helping li’ that.”

“It must be hard for you – with all your mental interests – to sit quietly here.”

“My min’ goes on, of course,” she said. “Yes, it isn’ ver’ easy.”

This was getting them nowhere. Doane, after a deep breath, took command of the situation. Sooner or later he would have to do that.

“Hui, dear,” he said now – very quietly, but directly, “this is a difficult situation for both of us. The only thing, of course, is to meet it as frankly as we can. I learned to love your father – ”