Читать книгу The Sand Pebbles - Richard McKenna - Страница 10

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Chien still had life in the morning, like an ember in ashes. The mission doctor wanted him to die on the San Pablo. When a Chinese died in a mission hospital, a story always started that the missionaries had murdered him so they could use his eyes to make camera lenses. If Chien died ashore, it might renew the rioting.

After breakfast Bordelles took his landing force section on a boat trip to a rural mission about fifteen miles from Paoshan. The city looked normal, gates open in the gray stone walls and the line of water coolies chanting and slopping up the stone steps from the river. Not far above the city Farren turned the motor sampan into a broad creek. With his red beard under his white sun helmet and his strong, tanned bare legs, Farren looked like a pirate at the tiller. Bordelles sat beside him. Holman, Crosley, Tullio, Red Dog and Ellis sprawled on the thwarts in the waist.

“You’re gonna light a fire under China Light, huh, Mr. Bordelles?” Red Dog said.

“Going to try,” Bordelles said. “Anyway, it won’t hurt to show the flag and a party of armed men to any bandits down off that mountain today.”

Holman sat up straight. China Light was Miss Eckert’s mission. He wondered if he might see her. He wished he had not spoken so harshly that last time they had talked.

It was a clear, sunny morning and they had a lunch packed under the stern sheets. It began to seem like a picnic to Holman. The creek wound through green fields. It was stone-banked much of the way and overhung by drooping willow and mulberry trees. Children rode on water buffaloes that grazed along the bank. Other children tended duck flocks. They beat the ducks with bright rag scraps at the end of strings dangling like whips from long bamboo poles. The ducks quacked, but it did not hurt them. The children ran and hid and the buffaloes tossed their heads and snorted, when they saw the boatload of armed ocean devils. Then the children peeped out again, very curious. But the grown people working in the fields or floating down to Paoshan in sampans filled with garden stuff only stared with blank faces.

Away from the ship, Bordelles was quite democratic. He was tall and gawky, with a big nose and chin that would make a fine admiral’s mask someday. Holman began asking him questions about China Light. He learned that it was more than just a church and a school. It owned a lot of surrounding farmland. Hundreds of Chinese lived there, and about a dozen palefaces. It was supposed to be under the fat warlord in Paoshan, but it was also claimed by the bandit chief on the mountain, who was squaring around to fight the warlord.

“A few more years and he’ll be the warlord,” Bordelles said. “Poor old General Pan will be going hungry up on the mountain.”

The men laughed. The mountain was a long purple wall off to the left. It came down steeply, without foothills, to the river flood plain. They were getting near enough to make out steep ravines, blue-shadowy with timber. A lot of camphorwood and tung oil came from the mountain, Bordelles said.

“Tell him about Old Man Craddock,” Farren said.

“I seen him,” Holman said. “He was on the steamer I rode up from Shanghai.”

“Did he speak to you at all?” Bordelles asked.

“Once or twice,” Holman said. “Not very kindly.”

Bordelles chuckled. “He wouldn’t. Not old Craddock.”

Craddock was a leader of a group which blamed all anti-Christian trouble in China on the treaties and gunboats, Bordelles explained. He had started a petition to have the San Pablo kept out of Tungting Lake. The people at China Light had notified the consul in Changsha that they were renouncing their personal treaty rights. They wanted no gunboat protection and no reprisals or indemnities, whatever might happen to them. Of course they could not do that. As American citizens, they were as much bound by the treaties as the Chinese were. The consul had told them so.

“They know it and they like it,” Crosley growled. “They’re just making looksee pidgin for the slopeheads.”

China Light was an independent mission. There were no higher echelons to bring pressure on Craddock, Bordelles went on. The China Light people would probably refuse to obey an evacuation order, if the consul had to send one out. So Lt. Collins had composed a waiver they would all have to sign individually.

“They’re good. Read ’em one, Mr. Bordelles,” Red Dog urged.

Bordelles read one. It stated that the undersigned chose to ignore consular advice to evacuate in full knowledge of the risk of harm to himself and embarrassment to the United States of America. “I swear before God that this is my own uninfluenced private and personal decision, and I hereby release the U.S. Government from all further responsibility for my welfare,” the waivers ended.

“They sign after they’ve had a warning,” Bordelles said. “Might not be so easy, then. I have to make old Craddock sign a receipt for these and a promise to mail them to Changsha, if they ever refuse to evacuate.”

“He’ll give you a bad time, Mr. Bordelles,” Tullio said.

“I’ll give him one right back.”

“They’ll run from real trouble, Craddock out in front,” Crosley said.

“Don’t be too sure about old Craddock.”

Bordelles told them about the file on Craddock in the consulate at Changsha. His mission up north had been wiped out in the Boxer. His wife and several others had been killed. He got a big indemnity for them out of the Boxer Settlement, which also opened Hunan to missionaries. He married again and led the rush into Hunan, founding China Light in the same year the San Pablo had come to Tungting Lake. He was wiped out again in the 1910 riots and with the indemnity for that he bought enough local farmland to make the mission self-supporting. He owned it like a ranch.

“Give him his due, he’s a tough old devil,” Bordelles said.

They tied up at a stone jetty near a cluster of huts in a bamboo grove. Farren and Ellis stayed as boat guards. Bordelles led the four others in single file, arms slung, along a raised flagstoned path that was like a dike through fields blue with fat cabbages. The mission was about a mile away. It was a very long brick-walled compound with tiled roofs and treetops showing above the wall and the U.S. flag on a pole rising highest of all. Chinese huts scattered off from one end of it, into the fields. Bordelles took a branch of the path that led to the other end. It was hot walking under the high sun and dust stuck to their sweating bare legs and arms. Farmers in the fields watched them pass from under wide bamboo hats. They crunched across packed gravel and stopped before big wooden, ironbound double gates. The gates were closed. Bordelles knocked on the small side door. No one answered. Bordelles frowned and spat.

“Not a word out of you men from here on,” he said. “You in particular, Shanahan.”

“Arf arf, sir!” the Red Dog said softly, and they all grinned.

Bordelles drew his pistol and fired a shot into the ground. An old Chinese opened the side door, but he kept it on a chain and he could not understand anything. Finally a bearded white man came and flung the door open and stood there.

“You are impatient, Mr. Bordelles,” he said. “I wish you had not done that.”

He was Craddock. He was tall in a black suit, with a beak nose and fierce eyes deepset under shaggy eyebrows. His black beard was streaked with gray and he radiated power like an admiral. Bordelles was not abashed.

“And I wish you had answered my knock,” he said. “I’ve come on duty, Mr. Craddock. To check your safety and discuss changes in our evacuation plan.”

“We are in God’s care here and we are all right.” Craddock had a deep, harsh voice. “All you accomplish, by coming here with your arms and your uniforms, is to imperil our standing with the Chinese. And we will never evacuate China Light, sir!”

“So you wrote the consul. That’s why I’m here, sir.” Bordelles was being very formal. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

“We are talking.”

“I have papers you must read. I would prefer to talk privately, indoors.”

Bordelles took a step toward the door. Craddock did not budge.

“No doubt your arms are your warrant for forcible entry,” he said.

Bordelles flushed scarlet. “Not at all, sir,” he said tautly. “My men are tired, hungry and thirsty. I thought you might have a sterilized stone you could give them.”

“You are pleased to mock me, sir. Very well, come in.” Craddock stepped aside from the door. “I must ask you to leave your arms and cigarettes in the gate house.”

They went in. “Put your cigarettes on that shelf, men,” Bordelles said.

“The arms too, if you please, sir,” Craddock said behind them.

“I am not free to please, sir. We are ashore on duty under arms,” Bordelles said. “Go ahead through, men.”

It was abruptly cool and clean and green inside the wall. Three big white clapboard houses with green shutters lined each side of a flagstoned street. They were set back among trees and rose arbors and flower beds on neat lawns marked off by white picket fences. All the houses had downstairs and upstairs verandas with white railings and rocking chairs. Nobody was in sight except some coolies sprinkling water on flower beds and borders. It was a sharp change from the hot, dusty cabbage fields.

“This way, please.”

Craddock passed them with quick, chopping strides, stiff and angry, and they followed him up the path to the first house on the right. A house servant in a gray gown came out and Craddock gave him sharp orders in Chinese. He led the sailors around by the side veranda to a back porch and pointed to some benches. He was being very snotty, in a Chinese way. They sat down, leaning on their rifles upright between their knees, and looked at each other disgustedly.

“I guess we ain’t going to get any chow,” Crosley said.

“Don’t look like it,” Holman agreed.

Crosley was a signalman, a squat, ugly little man with a big head, pop eyes and a wide mouth like a frog. He had a hoarse, croaking voice to match his face.

“That cheap, biblebacked old devil!” he said.

“Bordelles broke a few off in him,” Tullio said. “He’s giving him hell in there right now.”

From time to time they could hear voices rise angrily somewhere inside the house. A servant came at last, with a basket of damp towels and bowls of tea. The sailors swabbed their faces and arms and legs with the towels, for momentary freshening. The towels were tepid instead of hot. They were getting second-chop treatment. Crosley scowled at his bowl of tea.

“Don’t drink this slop, guys,” he warned. “They prob’ly pissed in it.”

“Watch it!” Tullio whispered sharply.

Shirley Eckert was seated at her desk in the faculty office when she heard the shot. She went to the open window and saw Mr. Craddock stride angrily across to the gatehouse. She knew the gunboat was in Paoshan and the danger was supposed to be past. She was still nervous. Then armed sailors in white sun helmets and shorts came through the gatehouse. They swung along jauntily. Mr. Craddock took their officer into his house and sent the sailors around to the back veranda. Shirley lingered at the window.

“I hope you’re not alarmed, Miss Eckert.”

She turned. Mr. Gillespie had come in. His brown hair was rumpled and his tanned, pleasant face looked concerned.

“I thought that shot might have alarmed you,” he said. “It’s only a bit of navy arrogance. Mr. Craddock will soon get rid of them.”

“He’ll be rude to them, you mean?”

“Well ... very formal.” Gillespie smiled. “Their coming here is deliberate provocation, you understand. They know they’re not wanted here.”

Shirley was not sure she did not want them. Gillespie noted her hesitation.

“Our only chance to carry on our work in China lies in breaking the association in Chinese minds between gunboats and missions, at least China Light,” he said. “That officer could just as well have come alone, in civilian clothes, if he had to come at all. He is deliberately trying to strengthen the association.”

“I know,” Shirley said.

They had all been telling her about it. It was true enough. But something was not right.

“All right, Mr. Craddock will be rude,” Gillespie said. “The Chinese will see and talk about his rudeness. Thus he makes this visit weaken the association rather than strengthen it, as they mean it to.”

She nodded. Gillespie sat on a desk corner, one leg dangling.

“The men. The sailors,” she said. “They can’t help it. They have to obey orders.”

“They’re hard men who have chosen a hard life.”

“They’ll think we despise them.”

“We must persuade the Chinese that we do.” He leaned forward. “They come flaunting rifles,” he said. “Rifles are for killing people, killing Chinese, in this case. How could we honestly welcome them, even without Chinese watching us?”

Mr. Gillespie was an evangelist, not one of the teachers, but he had been quietly attentive and helpful to Shirley in getting settled at China Light. She did not want to disagree with him.

“I think I will just go down and see if they want water,” she said.

“I’m sure Mrs. Craddock will have tea and towels sent out to them.”

If she dares, Shirley thought. Mr. Craddock utterly dominated his fragile wife.

“Then just to say hello,” she said. “One friendly word.”

He stood up, frowning slightly. “I’ll go with you.”

“No. Please,” she said. “Not against your convictions, Mr. Gillespie. I’m new and ignorant. It won’t spoil anything, if I go.”

He protested. She went out alone, taking stock of herself. She had on a tan dress with long sleeves and of course no makeup. She was having to let her hair grow out and she had scarcely enough yet for the skimpy knot she kept it in. Loose wisps straggled. She had to walk slowly so that perspiration would not soak through her dress. She was not going to charm anyone. But she could speak a friendly word.

As she went down the side veranda of the Craddock house, she heard the old man’s angry voice inside. On the rear veranda one of the sailors whispered, “Watch it!” fiercely, as if danger threatened. The four men jumped to their feet facing her, each with his rifle. It was awkward. She scanned their faces and words would not come. Then, with a small thrill, she recognized the big, square man.

“Mr. Holman!” she said. “I’m so glad to see you again!”

“Miss Eckert. Hello there.”

She had not meant her greeting to be so warm. Holman named off the other men for her like objects. They grinned, very ill at ease. It was hard to make talk. The nice-looking Italian boy was from Brooklyn. The impish redhead was a Californian. The froggy little man was from New Jersey. She felt they wished she would go away and leave them to their man talk. She started to excuse herself.

“If you’d care to walk through the grounds, I’ll be glad to show you around,” she said, instead.

Dutifully polite, they mumbled thanks and began to sling their rifles.

“Oh, you’d have to leave your rifles here,” she told them.

“Then we can’t go,” the froggy one said.

“I’ll go,” Holman said. He leaned his rifle on a bench. “Take charge, Crosley,” he told the froggy man.

“You can’t! You’re on duty!” Crosley objected.

“If any enemy attacks, you guys just open fire,” Holman said. “I’ll be back here before you see the whites of their eyes.”

“It ain’t funny, Holman!” Crosley said angrily.

“Let’s go, Miss Eckert.”

They walked away. “Arf! Arf!” one of the men said softly behind them. Holman grinned.

“We call that one Red Dog on the ship,” he said.

“I hope you won’t get in trouble, leaving your rifle.”

“They all make-believe with guns,” he said dryly. “Soon as they pick one up they’re John Paul Jones defending the Alamo, or something.”

“And you don’t make-believe?”

“Not with guns. I’m an engineer.” He glanced around. “These houses and lawns and flowers sure look nice.”

“They’re for the American staff. Most of them are away now, at Kuling for the summer.”

They came into the grassy quadrangle with the flagpole in its center. Holman looked husky and sunburned and much more sure of himself than he had seemed on the steamer from Shanghai.

“That’s the middle school, where I will teach,” she told him, pointing. “And that’s the chapel and that one is the student dormitory. And down at the other end is the hospital.”

They were handsome two-story brick buildings with arcaded verandas and Chinese roofs, quiet because of summer vacation. Only the hospital had its verandas crowded and people coming and going. She told him about the Chinese doctor and nurses and all the work they did.

“They have to send serious cases, like major surgery, to Paoshan,” she said. “But they do a lot of good.”

“I’ll bet they do,” he agreed. “Say, you know, this is a pretty place.” He was sniffing the air and looking at the flowering shrubs and borders. “It’s like a park,” he said.

She led him on through into the Chinese section of low houses in walled courts, all whitewash and gray-tiled roofs. The streets there were busy with cart and coolie traffic and children scrambling. She nodded and said hello to several Chinese wearing gowns.

“They’re native staff—I mean, not servants,” she explained. “I don’t know them all apart yet. They live in these houses.”

“This is a big place.”

He was looking all around. Just inside the shop and storehouse section she halted.

“I don’t know what all is in here,” she said. “It goes on outside the gate. Some of the people are staff and some rent their shops and stores from the mission and work on their own.”

“Like a little town, ain’t it?” The high chatter of voices and the tool noises of men at work came through the sour-smoky smell. He sniffed. “It even smells like a Chinese town,” he said.

“It’s not dirty,” she said defensively. “It’s the food and cooking oil they use, and incense. Lacquer and camphorwood in the workshops.”

“Hell, I like it!” he said. “I’m sorry if you thought—I mean, I know Chinese ain’t any dirtier than they’re forced to be.”

“Those long buildings, godowns,” she said. “The mission takes a share of the crops for land rent. Mr. Craddock keeps a reserve in those godowns, for bad years. No one ever starves around China Light.”

“Like in the Bible. The skinny cows,” he said. “You know, this is all right. I guess I always thought missions only saved souls.”

“They do, but that’s not in my department,” she said. “Mr. Craddock has all sorts of plans for China Light. He has some machinery set up to make sugar out of beets, but nobody can make it work right. He has an electric light plant, still in the crates, someone told me.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Somewhere in there.” She waved vaguely. “It’s too hot here. Let’s go on.”

She led him to what had already become her favorite retreat, a stone bench in a nook among trees around the little American cemetery. Climbing roses covered the rough stone wall and tinged the air with delicate scent and color. Bees and one little bird were busy there. He sat beside her and fanned them both with his sun helmet. It had the name U.S.S. San Pablo in gold on a black ribbon sewed across the front brim. She looked at his face, strong, blunt and honest. He looked at her and she became abruptly conscious of her appearance.

“I’m letting my hair grow out,” she apologized. “It’s at its most wretched stage now.” She tried to tuck away stray wisps. “They don’t want me to wear most of the dresses I brought.”

“You’re so young and pretty, nothing could spoil how good you look.”

He said it honestly. She was not pretty, but if he thought she was, that made her so for him. She warmed to him.

“Thank you, Mr. Holman.”

Delicately, she tried to excuse Mr. Craddock’s bad manners. “He has strong opinions,” she said. “I’m afraid he’s right. Only I wish it didn’t have to make such a difference between people. That’s why ... what I ...”

“I know,” he said. “The guys felt it. They won’t blame you.”

“Not just me ...”

She couldn’t discuss it. She told him how she was studying Chinese six hours a day with Mr. Lin. She would have one class, of senior students who spoke fair English, when school started. By the next year she would know enough Chinese to take a full teaching load.

“How long they got you signed up for?” he asked.

“Seven years.”

“We ship for four at a time,” he said. “I been in China a little over seven years.”

“Without going home?”

“My ship’s home. That’s how it is with us.”

“Mr. Craddock says it will be that way with me at China Light,” she said. “It isn’t now. I wonder how long it takes?”

“Depends on the person, I guess. For me it was quick.”

They talked about the riots in Paoshan. He was not pressing any claim. Still, she could not deny that the riots had sprung up in the gunboat’s absence and stopped with its arrival. She confessed to her own fear during those two days, and her relief when the gunboat came.

He smiled. “I’m glad we came.”

One of the Craddock house servants found them and chattered in Chinese. They stood up.

“Your officer is ready to go,” she told him. “I hope he won’t be angry with you.”

“I don’t think so.”

Constraint grew between them. She wondered if he was remembering how he had taken leave of her that other time. Suddenly he had both her hands. She realized she had held them out, slightly and involuntarily.

“Good-bye, Miss Eckert,” he said. “I don’t feel any danger here. But if there ever is, we’ll be back.”

He pressed her hands and dropped them. She watched him walk away behind the servant, husky and red, erect and square-shouldered. She did not feel any danger, either. She sat down again.

Sometimes you met people and something flashed across, she thought. It was over in a flash, and you only knew about it afterward. This was the second time with Holman.

The first time was on the steamer from Shanghai to Hankow. Riots were going on in Shanghai, with people killed. The passengers on the steamer were nervous and angry and they quarreled terribly. Holman took no part in it. The others talked of past wars and massacres and they were making her very fearful of China.

It had been warm and sunny also, that other day. They were just passing a wooded bluff with gray walls and towers, very Marco Poloish in the watery sunshine. From nowhere the American destroyer came like a long gray spear flying. Brown smoke rolled from its four rakish stacks, sailors in white stood by the deck guns, and a string of colored signal flags danced gaily above the bridge. It was beautiful and deadly and it brought a catch to her throat. The steamer, rocking in its wake, was instantly all alarm. Men shouted and ran and clanged shut the steel doors penning the Chinese on the lower decks. Mr. Craddock hustled her to her cabin for safety. There would be shooting, he said.

Alone there and fearful, she peeped from her window as the steamer rounded the wooded point. Gray walls slanted across a green hill and dark tiled roofs curved above them. Brown junks lay all along shore. The anchored destroyer swam into view, guns trained ashore. Two power boats filled with armed sailors drew V’s in the brown water, heading in past some wooden ship hulls with house roofs above their decks. Buildings showed through trees along a stone embankment. Black smoke rose above the trees. She heard a distant noise of shouting.

Distressed and fearful, vaguely not wanting to be alone, she had slipped out on deck. She saw Holman there, sturdy with his rifle. The sight brought the same catch to her throat that the destroyer had. Then he had pointed his finger through the bars and her focus had widened out to include the three Chinese children.

“Bang bang, you’re dead,” the sailor said gravely.

The children hesitated and then smiled. One pointed and said, “Cah! Cah! Cah!” in an excited voice. Holman grinned at them.

The little play changed everything. Her sense of danger vanished. It all seemed a game in which no one really hated and feared anyone else. That was in the smile they exchanged when he turned, startled and guilty, to meet her understanding smile.

A short while afterward she was in the saloon with the refugee women. They came aboard off the hulks with amahs and crying children and tales of outrage. They had shrill voices and strained, angry faces and the cords stood out in their necks.

“Of course they run away when the sailors come, the cowards!” one woman said. “Tie them to the cannon’s mouth, I say!”

“Whip them! Make their bones drop out!” another shrilled.

Shirley could not hope to tell them what she knew. Nor could she tell the men, at an ensuing dinner-table argument. Mr. Craddock, not too gently, pointed out that the missionaries in Chinkiang had not been molested. They lived out among the natives and they had stayed quietly at home in prayer. The people from the foreign concession, businessmen and the collectors of customs, salt tax and postal revenues, had fled to the hulks and sent for the destroyer. Their homes were looted and some houses were burned. Mr. Outscout, the chronically angry Englishman, had countered with an attack on Christian education in China.

“Your schools. Put notions into Chinese heads. Democracy. Lincoln and cherry tree, that rot,” he said accusingly. “How d’ye know what’s already in the heads, eh? You’re all fools playing chemist.” He fountained with his hands. “Heads pop! Burn! Fizz over!”

It was a great embarrassment, Shirley knew, that mission-educated students were the most virulently anti-Christian. They were so despite considerable missionary support for Chinese independence. The business faction, which clung to the unequal treaties, enjoyed taunting the missionaries about it.

“Christian education!” Mr. Outscout tossed his gray hair scornfully. “Told Graves a few days past in Shanghai. Parade your very campuses, I told him, and for every placard denouncing the treaties there’s another maligning your Christ. Where’s your profit, eh? Eh? Graves couldn’t answer!”

“Our Christ, Mr. Outscout! Will you deny Him, sir?”

The other men calmed the two. Holman, as usual, took no part. She no longer thought it was apathy. He simply did not think it was important. But it was very important to Mr. Craddock, who expected Shirley to side with him. On the trip to Hankow she had learned how deep and angry was the gulf between the two factions of foreigners in China.

Many missionaries believed that the unequal treaties impairing Chinese sovereignty should be canceled. The most visible symbols of the treaties were the gunboats. Gunboats infuriated Mr. Craddock. They made it seem to him that he was preaching Christianity figuratively at gunpoint. He had not liked her talking to Holman.

“The saintliest spirit, if unguarded, may take a coloring from a troubled spirit which comes too near,” he had warned her once, in attempted delicacy. He did not speak to Holman himself.

Since her arrival at China Light, she had wondered more than once whether Mr. Craddock’s spirit was not troubled. He loved fiercely. He trusted God rather than gunboats with emotional speech and gestures which made God seem very like an invisible gunboat in the sky. Shirley did not want to take a coloring from Mr. Craddock.

Gillespie was altogether different. He did not get excited.

“The Chinese are the most civilized people on earth,” he had told her. “Too many of us approach them as if they were tribal Africans. I hope you will not.” He also wanted to get rid of the treaties and gunboats. “The Chinese have a fundamental sense of decency and justice,” he said. “The gunboats only outrage it. We’d be safer without them.”

Shirley found that reasonable. She liked Gillespie. She thought Holman might have been a man much like Gillespie, if chance had not cast him as a sailor. Each man in his own way gave her comfort.

She stood up, abruptly lighthearted. She began picking roses for her desk in the faculty office, where she must go now for her Chinese lesson with Mr. Lin. He was an elderly, dignified man and very patient with her. No one could help but trust and respect China in the presence of Mr. Lin. He gave comfort, too.