Gods Men (5 page)

The Chief Eunuch stepped forward instantly and hurried them away.

“Why did the Empress get angry with me?” William asked his father when at home he was once again warmed and fed.

“Who can understand the heart of the Empress?” he replied.

Mrs. Lane hastened to speak. “William, we must remember that you are the only American boy who has ever seen the great Empress Dowager of China. That's the important thing, isn't it?”

Dr. Lane had not liked this.

“Helen, in the sight of God, all are alike,” he had reminded his wife.

“Of course, I know that,” she replied. “But we aren't God, are we? The Empress is still the Empress and there is no use in pretending that William has not had a great honor, for he has. It's a wonderful thing and I must say that if I hadn't had the courage to push forward and ask for it, he would not have had the chance.”

Dr. Lane, thinking now of his son, sighed as he so often did, without knowing it. Helen had not changed very much. Sometimes, although she observed quite carefully all the outward forms of religion, he feared that at heart she was nevertheless a worldly woman.

William, who had been named for Helen's father, not his, had grown up clever and proud. Whether the boy's heart had ever been touched he did not know. Perhaps a boy's heart was never touched until the dews of young manhood fell upon it. Dr. Lane remembered even himself as a callous youth until suddenly one day when he was almost twenty he had perceived that life was a gift in his hand, to be used or wasted. God had spoken to him at that moment.

The Chinese dinner gong struck softly, and he turned the oil lamp low. It was a fine bit of furnishing, something Helen had contrived from a Ming jar. She had a taste for luxury. Outside Peking it might not have been fitting to a minister of Christ who secretly believed in poverty, but in Peking the houses of the diplomats were so much richer that this house was not remarkable. The fantastic extravagance of the Imperial Court set the atmosphere of the city. Yet the old Empress was conscience-stricken now. The monies which had been collected from the people for a modern navy she had spent upon a huge marble boat, set in the lake at the Summer Palace. While her ministers prophesied disaster from the West and the young Emperor fomented secret rebellion, she was dickering with that absurd secret society of the Boxers. They, excited by her notice, were boasting like fools that they were invulnerable. Neither swords nor bullets, they declared, could pierce their flesh. They had a magic, they told the superstitious Empress, and she might be desperate enough to believe them.

He went slowly down the carpeted stairs, uneasy in his heart, not knowing what to do. Precautions would be taken, of course, by the American Embassy. Yet should he wait for this? William was ready for college, and Helen longed for a summer at home. Home was always America.

He went into the dining room where his family was waiting for him and took his seat at the head of the oval table. The linen was fine and the Chinese nuns at the Catholic convent had embroidered it with a large heavy monogram. It was the sort of thing, he told himself, which looked expensive but was not. The nuns worked cheaply and he had not the heart to deny Helen beauty of so little cost. After all, she had given up a great deal to become his wife. She missed the New York season every year, music and theater and parties. She had never enjoyed Chinese theater although the finest was here in Peking and this was as well, perhaps, for most of the missionaries were still puritans and he was always uneasily conscious of their criticism, unspoken, of his wife. Most of them came from simpler homes than his in America and this did not make them more merciful. Perhaps had she had time to learn Chinese—yet for that he could scarcely blame her. William had been born a scant year after their marriage and the two girls followed quickly. Since her passionate anger with him that day when she found herself pregnant for the third time, there had been no more children.

He folded his napkin and looked about the table at every face. Ruth was growing very pretty. She looked like his side of the family. William and Henrietta took after their mother, the boy was handsome but Henrietta had missed her mother's distinction. She would have to go in for good works. He was not sure that he wanted any of his children to be missionaries. That was as God willed. He smiled at them.

“How would my family like to go home for this summer?”

Wang, robed in a long white linen gown, was serving the soup. From it rose the smell of chicken delicately flavored with fresh ginger.

“Why, Henry!” his wife exclaimed. “I thought you said we couldn't this year because the house at Peitaiho was costing so much.”

Like most of the missionaries they had a summer home at the seashore. A hurricane had torn the roof from the walls during the winter and it had cost some hundreds of Chinese dollars to replace.

“We could rent the house,” he replied. “That would pay something toward the tickets. I don't think we can ask the Board for expenses, since my furlough is not due yet.”

“I don't want to go,” Henrietta announced in a flat voice. She was gulping her soup but Dr. Lane did not correct her. He had a sympathy with Henrietta which he himself could not explain.

“But is William quite ready for Harvard?” Mrs. Lane asked. Her eyes were upon Wang as he served croutons.

“Since he has been taught by English standards, I believe he would have no difficulty,” Dr. Lane replied. He disliked soup, and he helped himself well to the crisp croutons.

“I'd like to go,” William said. The thought of having no more to face the arrogance of English boys, who still called all Americans rebels and missionaries yellow dogs, cheered him. He began to eat with sudden appetite.

Ruth was silent, her mild blue eyes stealing from face to face.

“I had better tell you the truth,” Dr. Lane decided. “I do not at all like the way things look. Something is seething in the countryside. The young Emperor is in difficulties again with the Old Empress and she has locked him up. The gossip is that she is determined to kill his tutors for encouraging his Western ideas. But she will have to do something to satisfy her ministers. They are outraged with the new foreign concessions she has been compelled to give the German government. If she should take it into her ignorant old head to exterminate all foreigners, I don't want my family here.”

He tried to speak humorously, but they saw that he was anxious. His quiet rather delicate face, always pale, now looked white above his clipped gray beard and mustache.

“I've always said the Chinese hate us,” Mrs. Lane said.

“I don't believe they hate us,” he said mildly.

“They've killed those German missionaries,” she argued.

He put down his soup spoon. “That was an accident, as I've told you, Helen. The bandits just happened to attack a town where the Germans were.”

“Even bandits have no right to kill foreigners,” she retorted. No one paid any heed to Wang until she said almost violently, “Wang, take away the soup plates!”

“I don't think Wang hates us, Mother,” Ruth said when he had left the room. Her voice, soft and timid, was different from the other voices. Even Dr. Lane, accustomed to many years of preaching, spoke with an articulate clarity which was almost forceful.

“That's because he gets paid,” Mrs. Lane replied.

Dr. Lane felt obliged, for the sake of the children, to pursue truth. “If the Chinese feel antiforeign, it is the result of the way Germany has behaved. To seize ports and demand the use of the whole bay, besides all that indemnity, just made an excuse for the murder of the missionaries. Then Russia, then England, then even our own government—all this is at the bottom of these so-called antiforeign outbreaks. Naturally the Chinese don't want to see their country sliced away.”

Mrs. Lane interrupted. “Oh, of course, Henry, you always think the Chinese are right!” She went on, repressing his attempted reply. “If there is any danger, I want to go away at once. But I won't go without you. I will not allow you to sacrifice yourself for these people. Your first duty is to the children and to me.”

“I don't think I can go,” he replied. “I don't think I ought to go. The Chinese Christians will expect me to stay. The Boxers will be against them as well as us, if things break loose. Of course the Legation soldiers will protect us, but I don't want you and the children to face a siege, if it comes to that. But it would not look well for me to run. It would not be possible for my conscience. My duty to God comes first.”

The children fell into silence. By the patient firmness with which their father spoke they understood that he was determined to go through an argument with their mother. Usually she won, but when their father brought God into the conversation this early, they guessed the end. Alone he might lose, but under that divine leadership, he would prevail even against her.

Yet only a few days later Mrs. Lane was ready to go and at once. It was Saturday and Dr. Lane was working on his usual Sunday sermon. He had chosen a text strangely inept for the times. “The wicked flee when no man pursueth,” and he was weaving his thoughts, divinely directed, about the profound meaning hidden in these words, when he heard Mrs. Lane's voice crying aloud his name. Almost immediately the door of his study opened, and he saw William. The boy's garments were covered with dust, his face was ashen and there was a cut on his forehead. He stood there speechless.

Dr. Lane cried out, rising from his chair. “William! What has happened to you?”

William's lips moved. “The—the people—a mob—”

“What?” Dr. Lane exclaimed. He hurried into the hall and there found his wife sitting upon one of the carved Chinese chairs, looking faint.

“Helen, what—”

“There was a mob!” she cried. “I thought we couldn't get away. If it hadn't been for Lao Li—William and I crowded into the same riksha.”

“Where was this?” Dr. Lane broke in.

“At that tailor shop on Hatamen Street, where I always go for William's clothes. He needs a new suit—”

“What did William do?” Dr. Lane demanded. Instinctively he knew that someone had done something. Mobs did not gather without cause.

Mrs. Lane sobbed. “Nothing—I don't know! There was a man sleeping against his riksha when we came out—a beggar. William pushed him with his foot; he didn't kick him. The people sprang at us from every door. Oh, Henry, I want to get right out of here—all of us!”

He soothed her gently, directing Wang meanwhile to make some tea. “Helen, I quite agree that you should go. The people are very touchy. Don't go out again, my dear. There might be a real incident.”

“It was an incident!” she insisted. “If you'd seen their frightful faces—where's William? Henry, you must find William! They pushed him down into the dust, and if Lao Li hadn't helped him, they would have trampled him to death.”

“Go into the living room and wait for your tea,” Dr. Lane said. He was very much disturbed, but it would not do to show it. He had told William, how often, never to touch a Chinese. They considered it an indignity to be touched. Once, he remembered, in a New Year's crowd upon the street when he had taken the children out to see the sights, William in six-year-old impatience had pulled the queue of a tall old gentleman standing in front of him, and the man had turned on them in a fury. Dr. Lane had been compelled to apologize again and again, and only William's youth had saved them from serious trouble.

He searched for William and found him upstairs in his room, changing his clothes. He had put a bit of gauze and some sticking plaster on his forehead.

“Did you disinfect that cut?” Dr. Lane asked.

“Yes, sir, thoroughly,” William said.

The boy's face was still white, Dr. Lane noticed. “You had better go downstairs and have some tea with your mother. You look rather shaken.”

“I do feel so, a bit.”

“Never touch a Chinese. Do you remember?” Dr. Lane said with unusual sternness.

“It was a beggar, leaning against the riksha.”

“Never mind who he is or what he is doing. Never touch a Chinese!” Dr. Lane repeated more loudly.

“Yes, sir.”

William turned his back on his father and began tying a fresh tie. His hands were trembling and he stood so that his father could not see him. The people had turned on him, ignorant common people who did not know his name! He, American and white, the son of privilege, had been beset by poor and filthy people. He would never feel safe again. He wanted to get away from Peking, from China, from these hordes of people—

“You might have been killed,” his father said.

William could not deny it. It was true. He might have been trampled upon by vile bare feet. Lao Li had lifted him up and shielded him until he could get to the riksha where his mother was shrieking. They had clung together in the riksha while Lao Li, bending his head, butted his way through the crowd and William had stared out at the angry people, pressing against the wheels. He would never forget the faces, never as long as he lived.

The next week with his mother and sisters he left Peking.

The northern spring drew on. The duststorms subsided, the willow trees grew green and the peach trees bloomed. The festival of Clear Spring was observed with the usual joy and freedom. People strolled along the streets, the men carrying bird cages and the women their children, and over the doorways of houses were hung the mingled branches of willow green and peach pink. The Imperial Court made great holiday of the feast and the Old Empress ordered special theatricals. Outwardly the city was as calm, as stable, as it had been for hundreds of years, and yet every Chinese past childhood knew that it was not so.

The Empress had expressed her feelings in December, when the two German missionaries had been killed in the province of Shantung. The foreign governments had demanded that the provincial governor, Yu Hsien, be removed. The palace news trickled through the city, through eunuchs and servants. Everybody heard that the Old Buddha, as they called the Empress, had at first refused to withdraw Yu Hsien. Her ministers had surrounded her, telling her the size of the foreign guns and the number of soldiers already in the foreign legations. She would not believe that foreigners could prevail against her, but she had been compelled by her ministers. Yet when she had withdrawn Yu Hsien and had appointed Yuan Shih K'ai in his place, as her ministers had recommended, she had given the huge inner province of Shansi to Yu Hsien. In a rage she had set him higher than before, and the people had laughed in rueful admiration. “Our Old Buddha,” they told each other, “our Old Buddha always has her way. She is a woman as well as ruler.” They were proud of her, though they hated her.