The Bitter Tea of General Yen (21 page)

Megan watched him anxiously for a visible effect of her words, saw none in his profile and lowered eyes and became more warmly personal.

“Oh, General, with all you have, and you have so much—yes, I appreciate your real superiority—it hurts me to see you blind to the possibilities that are in you. You are thinking of yourself always as a man. Think of yourself as a child of God’s love. Of Mah-li as a child of the same love. Yes, and of me too, all of us His creatures. Then there is no barrier between us. Do this thing I ask you. Do it even blindly if you must, and I promise you, I am so sure of it, I promise you you will know for the first time what happiness is. You will know——”

Words failed her suddenly and she turned her head to hide tears starting from her eyes. She wiped them away with her finger-tips and leaned her head against the glass, feeling in waves that exultant happiness she had promised the General.

The General did not speak nor even turn his head, and after a few moments Megan began to sense an awkwardness in his silence. She had been carried so far beyond the prescribed limits that the question of whether she had been splendidly justified or only ridiculous now seemed to hang on the result in him.

“Please go back,” she said unsteadily.

The General leaned forward and gave the order. The car stopped, made the turn and went back toward the yamen. They did not speak again. Megan was afraid to add a word. As his silence continued she was further convinced that she had said all there was to say, and moreover that what she said had been justified.

At the gate of the yamen the guards on the running-board jumped off and held open the car door, standing at attention on either side. The General got out and held his hand to help Megan
from the car. Still not wishing to look at him she looked only at his hand. She saw it for the first time palm up, the fingers curled slightly toward her in a gesture that seemed like a gracious according of mercy. As she fleetingly touched it, she gave it a sudden involuntary pressure, a pressure that was quickly returned. Then she walked hurriedly past him, so hurriedly that it became almost flight. No one joined her, and she reached her room alone.

Back in her room, Megan sat by the window and watched the daylight slowly fade into a twilight opalescent with mists from the lake and mountains. The essential lines of the roofs, of the moon door and the rugged stones on their pedestals, stood more firmly revealed in the slightly blurred atmosphere. Against the opposite wall the downward spray of the willow trees had a grace too rarefied, too apparitional, for earthly things of sap, leaf and bark. The yamen was more than ordinarily quiet, drilling had stopped, the telephone no longer rang, slippered feet no longer passed in the court. Megan sat quite still, looking out on the ideal province, the province of low blue mountains, of rice and mulberry, glimmering canals, of a lake with islands for pleasure houses, lotus gardens, little pavilions of red lacquer, all bathed in the moist air, freshness of space and silence. And she saw even more clearly the ideal ruler, a hieratic figure sculptured from the Eastern rock, wise, subtle and patient, from whose hands, stretched toward his people, streamed enlightenment and mercy. Megan knew that such a province, such a ruler, can have no existence in this world, yet the capacity for holding these images in her spirit filled her with a sense of power and of rest. A knock on her door sounded sharply in the stillness.

“Come in!”

It opened and she saw Mr. Shultz standing outside.

“Come in,” she repeated and pointed to a chair opposite her by the window.

Mr. Shultz came toward her slowly, but instead of sitting down he leaned over the back of the chair. In the twilight his face had none of its ruddy look and was even more formless, his blue eyes were almost invisible, only his teeth gleamed in a smile. The sound of his heavy hands falling on the back of the chair suggested fatigue and strain.

“Tired?” she asked.

“You bet,” he answered wearily.

“Don’t you want to sit down?”

“Haven’t time. I just wanted to be sure you were all right. Been out to-day?”

“Only with the General.”

“The General go out?” he exclaimed in surprise.

“Yes, we drove over to see a temple in the hills.”

Mr. Shultz gave a low whistle and after a pause devoted to astonishment said:

“Seen Mah-li to-day?”

“I saw her this morning; she came in here. The General had sent her away evidently, and she was on the point of leaving.”

“Did she try to get you to go along?”

“Me! Of course not. Why should she?”

Mr. Shultz made no reply.

Megan said, “I was very worried about her. I am sure the General sent her away because of what you said last night.”

“Maybe so,” said Mr. Shultz, and a sardonic inflection to his voice stirred her a little.

“You shouldn’t have turned him against her, you know. It really wasn’t for you to protect his domestic life.” But Megan stopped at once; the question of interference was one he might too easily
seize and retaliate on, and it had not been only a question of the General’s domestic life. “It wasn’t very chivalrous of you,” she said rather weakly.

Mr. Shultz thought.

“No, it wasn’t,” he admitted, “but I said a little more than I meant to when I got to talking. It made me so sore to think she would double-cross him like that. She would just as soon see him shot in front of her, so long as no one took her jade rings off her. Yes, it made me sore all right. I think she had it coming to her.” And he murmured reflectively, “The damned little tart.”

“No, I don’t think she did,” said Megan. “And I don’t believe a Western man like yourself can have any conception of her position or what her chance has been to be anything else.”

“Maybe not,” said Mr. Shultz. “I suppose it is true the kid never had much chance. Anyway, it does my heart good to hear one woman stand up for another. But I guess,” he added, “she don’t seem much like a real woman to you, more like a doll.”

Mr. Shultz was as ready to sentimentalize over Mah-li as to condemn her. He seemed to think her as delightful as she was dangerous and, except for moments when he was stirred to real anger, would no doubt treat her with a leniency amounting to weakness.

“How are the Communists getting on?” asked Megan lightly. “Will they keep us awake tonight?”

To her surprise, Mr. Shultz answered more gravely. “I’m afraid they will.” But he said no more, perhaps not wishing to frighten her.

Megan wondered why she wasn’t frightened. Because it seemed unreal, and unlike the capture of Shanghai, it was an affair between Chinese. How strange that even though these people now held all her interest they still lacked some essential reality for her. She puzzled over this but the possible night of alarms remained chimerical and apart from herself.

“Mist’s clearing,” exclaimed Mr. Shultz.

She looked out the window and saw that in spite of the gathering darkness the garden stood out more distinctly, as though breath had evaporated off the surface of a mirror. Above the black carved ridge-line of a roof she saw in a green sky a sharply burning star.

“Wind from the bay,” exclaimed Mr. Shultz, but Megan was not listening. In the same way had the relations of the General and Mah-li been essentially unimportant, the vital point being that the General should show mercy because Megan asked him to. Having acknowledged this she allowed herself to go no further. But she turned to Mr. Shultz with an anxiety in her eyes that made them, for the moment, starry.

“Don’t worry!” murmured Mr. Shultz and leaning across the chair back patted her arm. “Don’t worry,” he repeated as he turned and went out.

The amah came in, turned on the light, and a moment later her supper arrived. Megan ate it, conscious that she was tired now mentally and physically. The food brought a warmth to her body and a soothing dulness to her mind. It occurred to her that Mr. Shultz in spite of his vulgarity reminded her faintly of Bob. She could not put her finger on the resemblance, unless (she chose the best traits) it might be a certain efficient and unimaginative acceptance of difficult situations. Almost as casually it struck her that she would probably never marry Bob. It seemed that she had just heard those words spoken lightly by some one, not as though she herself had formulated them. A pang so deep that it touched some raw inner root shot through her. Megan dropped her spoon and rested her head in her hands. It was better not to think when thinking produced only unexpected and unhappy thoughts, dangerous thoughts. She resolved to put Bob and the General out of her mind, to let their relations slide past her for the time being, and of course take them up again to-morrow. She managed to keep her mind blank by eating, with great attention to the soothing effects of warm food. She looked at the objects around the room once more, the gaudy quilts on the bed, the painting of the monkeys, the dark blue bowl of plum, a replica of which was in every
room in the yamen, like an intimate personal signature. Whose, she wondered, Mah-li’s or the General’s?

Megan did not wait to smoke a cigarette, she dropped over on the bed and lay inviting fatigue to overcome her. She fell asleep.

She heard a knocking at her door that grew into pounding before she could rouse herself to answer it.

“Come in,” she said sleepily.

The General’s orderly opened the door and brought her a note. It was from the General and suggested she join the poker game. Megan’s watch said ten-forty. Rather late. But in view of what Mr. Shultz had said it might be better to stay awake and spend the evening in their company. She rather gingerly examined her mental condition, as lately she had been examining her bruised body on awakening. It seemed to be once more sound, empty, untroubled.

Megan got up and brushed her hair carefully before Mah-li’s mirror. She powdered her face and added a touch of lipstick because she did not want to look at all afraid or even anxious. Then she followed the orderly across the court.

As they passed the room with the telephone, she saw through the open window that it was brightly lighted and four officers sat there around a table playing mah jong. It was unusual for them to be up so late, or at any rate when she had passed this room the night before it had been darkened. She paused to look at the effect of the bright window square in the darkness of the court: the four Chinese heads seemed to be set in low relief against a shining wall, depth and perspective were wiped out by the too strong contrast of light and dark, the window square was flat like a picture hung on the night. She looked curiously at the Chinese officers. They were playing absently, not with the usual lightning quickness of a mah jong game, and they talked in their low, teasing Chinese voices, their heads close together over the table. The telephone rang, and one of them pushed back his chair and got
up. While he answered it the others listened with an intensity that was like a heavy weight. Megan turned and saw the face of the orderly beside her. He also was puckered between the eyes by a childish bewilderment. When he saw Megan looking at him, he turned and rather hurriedly crossed the court to the room where the General held his poker games. She followed him.

As she came in the door she saw the same group about the table, with the exception of Mah-li. Mr. Shultz got up, the General also, and it was he who held out a chair for her, saying:

“Come here, Miss Davis, and sit facing the south. That is the place for the most honored guest.”

She sat down beside him in the chair he indicated, Captain Li on her other side and Mr. Shultz across from her. The poker game with its monotonous phrases continued.

“Sweeten up here. How about a few royalties?”

But there was a difference. Mah-li was not here. Although she had scarcely spoken all that other evening, she had been all along the disturbing element, not, Megan felt, through any fault of her own. To her Mah-li was helpless in the midst of circumstance, and no matter what she had actually done, Megan continued to count the final humiliation to her suave and provocative person as a cruelty. But now Mah-li was gone and the disturbing factor to-night was something from without. The pressure of it was felt by all three of them and seemed to push them closer against one another. Megan even felt herself brought closer to them by the common danger, vague as it was.

But she was still sleepy. She yawned once or twice and in spite of polite efforts to swallow it the General noticed.

“You are tired,” he exclaimed. “My note must have wakened you. How stupid of me!”

“No, no,” said Megan, “I’m entirely rested. Don’t pay any attention to me.”

The game continued, but like the officers at the mah jong
game they were all three preoccupied by something else. When the boy came in with the tray of drinks they deliberately put down their cards to fill their glasses. Mr. Shultz, instead of his whisky and soda, drank in little determined gulps a small glass of brandy. The betting was so listless that Megan, who by now understood a little of the game, was bored by it. She was looking at the General’s hand.

“Why did you lay that down?” she asked once.

“Really I don’t know,” he answered.

He looked at her as though he were listening for something. After his first flurry of welcome he seemed to have forgotten her presence. For the moment, and until whatever threatened them passed, they counted only as a group, they were being bundled roughly together and their importance as individuals was in abeyance. Megan realized this herself, feeling no longer keen interest nor antagonism toward any one of them. This bored her too. She watched them play for half an hour, till the smoke began to give her a headache. Then she wondered if it would not be better to go back to bed. She yawned once or twice again, partly from ennui, partly from nervousness.

“I don’t believe anything will happen to-night,” she said to herself. “At any rate I can’t sit here waiting for it.”

She got up, but instead of leaving them she went over to the window opening on the court. It had become chilly and clear. Little sudden gusts of wind blew along the eaves, and the stars trembled as they do on cool windy nights.