The Bitter Tea of General Yen (10 page)

“I don’t think there is any one inside; they must be gone,” murmured Megan.

The Doctor did not answer.

“Maybe they are dead,” added Megan.

The Doctor shook his head. He rapped on the door once more, and raised his voice to a shout, “Miss Reed! Miss Reed!”

Suddenly the door opened before them. They stepped inside and it was closed behind them with a firm and reassuring bang.

They stood in complete blackness in which Megan heard heavy breathing and felt the nearness of human bodies.

“Just a moment,” a whisper sounded close to her ear. There was the scratch of a match and a nimbus of yellow light appeared on the dark in which, as in a fluid, was caught the small, lined face of a woman with large pale eyes. It was the redoubtable Miss Reed, who would not take any advice and whose obstinacy had brought them all to this predicament. She held a candle in her hand. Behind her stood another woman, a sturdy, sandy-haired girl, stout and asthmatic. It was she whose breathing Megan had heard. Miss Reed looked at them a moment and then exclaimed in a singularly sweet, low voice:

“Oh, Doctor Strike, is this really you? How like you to come, how like you!”

The Doctor nodded and said brusquely: “I have Miss Davis with me.”

His air of good-fellowship had vanished, he looked sterner than Megan had ever seen him.

Miss Reed smiled gently at Megan and said, turning to her companion:

“This is Miss Minton. I am sorry we have no lights, but we didn’t want to provide a target and besides the electricity is cut off. We have been staying in the back of the house. That is why we didn’t open the first time you called. We came as soon as we could.” She apologized as if she had said, “The butter is not so fresh to-day.”

“Are you all here?” asked the Doctor.

“Only Miss Minton and myself and five Russian children. The rest were all taken away by Chinese friends. I couldn’t find refuge for the others so I stayed with them, and Miss Minton very generously preferred to stay with me.”

The stout girl, breathing heavily, nodded in corroboration of this.

“Won’t you come into the parlor? It opens into the court, we’ll be more comfortable there.”

“No, I think not,” said Doctor Strike. “You had better get the children together and come with me at once. I think any delay at all would be the worst thing possible. I have a car outside.”

“I don’t believe, Doctor,” said Miss Reed hesitatingly, “that we will be allowed out. You’ll find there is a guard there, supposedly to protect us but actually to keep us in. I tried several times to-day but wasn’t allowed to pass.”

“I saw your guard. It came out of an eating-house across the way as we drove up. There are a few others with them. But it is our only chance just the same. I must try to jolly our way through. You know a whole mob of Chinese has been known to turn if you can only give them something to laugh about.”

“Yes, but——”

At that moment a noise from the street made them all start, a commonplace noise but nothing could have been more ominous. It was the Ford engine. The Doctor swung around and for a moment wrestled with the double latch of the door. Miss Reed blew out the candle. After an infinitesimal delay the Doctor got the door open. It framed a square of dimly lighted street, in which the Ford was just starting amid the group of Chinese who scattered a little to let it pass. When it had gone they all with one accord turned toward the open doorway and Megan saw on every face one sudden grotesque disturbance of line, while a wave of sound broke from them, terrifying in its simplicity, like the laughter of children tormenting a cat. Doctor Strike slammed the door and once more they stood in darkness.

Megan said to herself that at any rate they had given the Chinese something to laugh about.

They stood for a moment without moving and Megan heard the heavy breathing of Miss Minton, punctuated by one long sigh of resignation from Miss Reed. Then a match scratched once more and Miss Reed’s candle was relighted.

“Who could have taken it?” she asked.

“My driver,” said the Doctor bitterly. “He must have followed us. I should have counted on that possibility. I should never have left the car.”

“But what else could you have done?” cried Megan, anxious to reassure him.

“You could have come to the door. I should have stayed in the car.”

He dropped his head forward between his shoulders for a moment, like a man overcome by exhaustion.

“Well,” said Miss Reed, “we may as well go to the parlor now.”

They followed her down the hall and through a door into a room where on a center table burned an oil lamp with a green shade. It was a room bare of rugs, with a few pieces of blackwood furniture made by native carpenters; on the walls were some of Hoffman’s religious pictures; a quantity of mats and doilies of
cross-stitch and filet hung over tables and chairs, and on the top of an harmonium there were vases of paper flowers, like the needlework probably the work of the orphans. In one corner stood a splendid old Korean chest, looking almost abashed to be keeping such company.

They sat down about the center table in silence. It was cold so Megan kept on her coat. She said nothing, she was absorbed in the wonder of having been so calm, of still feeling calm. Miss Reed picked up a pencil and began to follow with invisible lines the pattern of the cover. Her finger-nails were quite blue with cold. She was watching her pencil, her rather prominent pale eyes cast down; her colorless lashes, unusually long, absurdly suggested under the light the feathery antennæ of an insect. Megan began to take an interest in her. She looked at her more closely and at the Doctor. She guessed that between Miss Reed and the Doctor there was an antagonism of some sort, perhaps of long standing. From the look of his set face it might be even active dislike. He sat with his arms folded across his chest and in the light of the oil lamp his head was reduced to its essential structure, almost skull-like, but it no longer suggested weakness to Megan. It was the same head only now its bareness was formidable.

“What has been happening to you here?” he asked. “And why have you been so unwilling to leave?”

Miss Reed might easily have felt that some reproach was due her but apparently she did not. She answered in her sweet, gentle voice:

“I believe up until yesterday we were quite safe. I have been through a great deal in my time. I was in Senchow in 1903, my first year in China. I was only eighteen then. You couldn’t expect me to seek shelter at the first alarm. But yesterday things grew suddenly worse. Shells fell from somewhere very near, my amah said from a car on a siding by the North Station. One of them wrecked the servants’ quarters across the court, but no one was
hurt, fortunately. I could tell that areas near us were on fire. There has been a tremendous amount of smoke. And there was plenty of street fighting all afternoon. But by that time we had abandoned the front of the house because about noon an unfriendly crowd gathered outside and broke the windows with stones. Once some one set fire to our buildings in the back here, but we managed to put it out, with God’s help. To my surprise a guard was appointed by some one to protect the property. I don’t know by whom. They spend most of their time in the eating-house across the street and they did not help us a bit when the crowd gathered. But when I try to go out they always stop me. All yesterday afternoon I sent my amah out with the children, one by one, to the houses of various Christian Chinese, who I knew would take care of them. But the little Russians I had no place for, and besides, the amah never came back after the last trip. So there are only the five Russians, Miss Minton and I here. Miss Soames, you know, is in the Shanghai General, she was taken ill over a week ago.”

“Why do you suppose a crowd gathered, just general animosity or something special?”

“Rather special, I am afraid. A child was run over by a truck in front of the house about a week ago. We took him in here and gave him first aid but he died shortly after, and the parents came and made a terrible to-do, blaming us for his death. He was an only son and the father is a foreman in one of the Naigai cotton mills, a prominent labor leader, rather important in this district. Of course we’ve always had a great deal of antagonism from the people here, but I think the incident would account for the crowd. I believe if it had not been for our little guard and the fact that there were so many snipers about in the streets and on the house-tops they might have—well, they might have done nearly anything to us.”

She sighed resignedly and dropped her eyes again so that her lashes hung antennæ-like against the light. Miss Minton, whose
heavy face and rather congested eyes had been turned toward her while she spoke, now looked anxiously to Doctor Strike to see what the effect was on him. But he made no comment, he was not looking at any of them, and Megan felt that he was trying over in his mind the various possibilities left open to them. She wondered what they would do now. The little back parlor suggested to her vaguely a room where she had gone to Sunday-school as a child, and it seemed, by association of ideas, safe. But she was afraid to dwell on ideas of safety and security lest they should weaken her. She stared at a cross-stitch camel embroidered on the table cover and turned her thoughts to schoolboy stories of journeys across the Gobi and wild Mongol raids.

“How long would it take you to get the children ready?” asked the Doctor.

“They are in the next room,” said Miss Reed, “sleeping in their clothes.”

“Then you had better wake them up and we will start at once.”

Miss Minton looked hastily from the Doctor back to Miss Reed and she began to breathe asthmatically again.

“Why, Doctor,” exclaimed Miss Reed softly, “you don’t think of our starting out now on foot, do you?”

Miss Minton looked around with an expression almost of triumph, as if Miss Reed’s obstinacy were a source of satisfaction and even pride to her.

“I certainly do. I insist on it. We are actually only a short distance from Range Road. The streets are as empty now as they ever will be. In one hour, in half an hour, they will begin to fill again. It is unfortunate that the guard promised me did not come and still more unfortunate I lost the car, but you cannot stay here.”

Miss Reed, who had been assiduously making designs on the table cover with her pencil, lifted her eyes to Doctor Strike, and Megan was startled to observe under the long pale lashes the fixed idolatrous gaze of a schoolgirl.

“I don’t feel it would be wise to leave,” she said gently. “I feel if we stay here with our guard we are comparatively safe, but if we start out, even if we are allowed to leave the house, we will be attacked before we reach the barricade.”

Doctor Strike let his quicksilver eyes flicker angrily over her for a moment.

“I don’t understand you,” he cried. “Do you really suppose Miss Davis and I came here to shut ourselves up in your orphanage, where the best we can hope for is to cower under cover until some one else comes to take us out?”

“I am sorry about Miss Davis. I did not ask any of you to come, though I appreciate your devotion in doing so. But I am responsible to God for the safety of these children and Miss Minton. I don’t feel it would be wise to expose them in the streets now.”

“You prefer to keep them here and be burned out, hit by a shell, or butchered by the mob?”

“I don’t believe we would even be allowed to leave.”

“I have a pass from General Yen. I have got by on it so far. If I can get you out, will you come?”

“No,” said Miss Reed. “I don’t think it would be wise.”

The Doctor turned from them and slumped forward in his chair till his long legs stretched straight in front of him. He folded his arms across his chest and stared at the floor. He looked as if he were going to sleep, worn out by discouragement. Miss Reed added little flourishes to her invisible designs, and Miss Minton breathed out an explosive, “Well!”

Megan said, “I think you ought to consider, Miss Reed. The Doctor has been working for days to get you safely out. I think you ought to do as he says.”

“You must really let me use my own judgment,” replied Miss Reed, but she did not look at Megan, only at the Doctor, and Megan saw she drew a positive intoxication from this opposition of their wills. She felt as if it were a taut cord between them
which, as soon as Miss Reed gave in, would snap and leave them separated once more.

“Horrible woman,” she said to herself. “If Mrs. Jackson were here she would know what to say to her. One commonplace word from her would shatter the spell.” For she knew it was useless to talk to her of sacrifice and death and torture. She had already accepted these possibilities with complacency. Exasperation with Miss Reed began to take possession of her. She looked at her watch and saw it was after five o’clock. In a short time, she was not sure how short, it would be daylight. She looked at the Doctor. His head sunk between his shoulders was the head of a sick old bird of prey.

Perhaps he felt he had undergone enough humiliation even for the sake of saving their lives. As she looked at him, he came to a decision. His head jerked up from his chest; he said shortly:

“You are probably right. I believe after all you are safer here.”

“Yes, that is what I think.” Miss Reed drew in a deep breath and laid down her pencil. “I feel sure I am right.”

The Doctor got up and took out his watch.

“I forgot this doesn’t run,” he said, “it hasn’t for the last week, but I don’t seem to remember to have it fixed. What time is it, Miss Davis?”

“Five ten.”

“Well, shall we once more brave the dangers of Chapei?” He spoke again with his air of using English laboriously. “Unless, like Miss Reed, you prefer the safety of the orphanage. How about that? I don’t like to ask you to take a chance that she is not willing to take.”

“Oh, I’m willing.”

“Good,” he said cheerfully. “I am proud of you!”

Megan buttoned up her coat. The Doctor had taken his off and it hung over the back of his chair. As he lifted it to put it on, Miss Reed ran around the table and held it for him.