Читать книгу The Last Ditch - Will Levington Comfort - Страница 4

4

It was a whirlwind fortnight at Hankow. Romney was game, rather big game, for a questing beauty a-wing around the world. His soul had been asleep to her kind of magic. She touched him awake. His education and many attitudes towards life were torn down and rebuilt. There was a furious lover in the man, and serious weaknesses that had never been tested before. Though he did not acknowledge, and perhaps was not aware of the fact, he had been in his own way a terrific worker. The passions of his life, in a single day, had been turned from his tasks to Moira Kelvin. She had to be a rather splendid creature to take gracefully the full tumult from such a man's heart, but this was her genius.

Romney's woman matters heretofore had been sundry and discursive.

She took his all and was not filled. No other pressure could be brought to bear upon a man to make him greater, to make him surpass himself, than an encounter with a woman who could contain him at his highest force, and still have an aching void to spare.

Moira Kelvin was thirty years old, in full bloom, trusting nothing under the sun but her own heart. Whether it was mania or the excellence of her evolution, her conviction remained upstanding that there was one man somewhere who could fully awaken her. She was without laws and without fears, but she would have considered it the most vulgar form of failure to give herself to a man who called her only in part. She was in the height of her power, and modern enough to wish to know a man well before she revealed to him more than the usual arts of woman. Her one great mistake had been made at the end of girlhood in the case of the tiger-hunter. She held her body and her beauty even more sacred now because of that failure. Yet she looked into the faces of men everywhere. Any man brave enough could have his chance. Romney made the most of his.

For hours on their last day together Romney could not speak. He looked long into her face from time to time—until it turned into a mist before his eyes, or other shadowy faces passed before it. He could see nothing beyond her but his own death, and he knew enough to realise there could not be much help in that, considering his present frame of mind.... They were at Longstruth's, a sultry evening. She was tender and tyrannical in turn.

"... We are not enemies," she said. "I have been no more to you than you have called. I know you are not holding that ancient balderdash that I lured you on. I have never from the first day kept from you my conviction that the one had not been found in Sir Romney. And yet you were more to me than I thought at first. Why not take the full honour of that now?"

"You are going away," he said dully.

"It is a mercy to you—though I am not merciful. If you were a fool, like most men, you would think me a devil."

"I suppose men who are not big enough to make good with a woman—call her a devil—"

"Or a vampire," she laughed.

He shook his head. He had lost his sense of humour for the time. "I'm not making any mistake about you. I've been away about world matters like most men. The women we meet usually call us to be less than we are, rather than more—"

"Men have made women that way," she said quickly.

"The way doesn't matter. That's what happens, or at least men think so, and fail to get on the ground where even an average woman is at her best.... But it's not generalities for me. I perceived myself lost in you. I loved from the first the great open nature which you drew from—mates in everything, your whole creativeness lost in the one subject—your whole power and reason for being—love. When I came to you I seemed to come into my own country.... I did not seek you. I was happy enough in the old. I looked bleak and blind to myself before your coming. Oh, I praise you right enough—only it's hard, damned hard, to give up—"

"You will be tremendous for some woman," she whispered. "Let me tell you—there was one day when I rocked before you—"

"To think I could diminish after that," he said slowly. His voice chilled her.

"You have said it all, Sir Romney. We did not seek this thing. At least, I had no wish to hurt you. I do not play in these great matters. Some have thought otherwise, but I do not play. You would not have known me an hour if you had not been worth knowing—"

"I have ceased to be worth knowing then—only to-day?"

"That is not kind, Sir Romney. You are less than yourself to say that. We have been much together. If you are hurt by this, it is because you are less than I think you are. Hurt—I mean enduringly. Hurt, of course now, but constructively. You will not die. Perhaps you will not break training seriously. Listen, do you think I fail to know what will happen to you—if you make the best of this? ... You will be a greater lover for some other woman. She will have to be a greater woman to call you. You will know her more in the first hour because of these days with me. You will be less apt to make the one hideous mistake which men and women make in the world—that of choosing the wrong mate. You will be a quester because of these days with me. There's something precious about that."

"If there is but one woman in the world for me—as you say there is but one man for you—then why is it that I want you so?"

"This is your initiation. Mine was more sordid and revolting with the tiger-hunter. I am your awakener. You think I am everything, because I am older, deeper in the world of love—demanding so much—thinking so much of these things. Remember this—there is no such thing as the triangle among real people. Mark the woman as common-minded who is in doubt between two men whom she knows well. All shuffling and experimenting is the cause of misery in the world. The higher the soul of a man or woman, the more essential is the voice, the hand of one. Any key will fit common locks. As for you—you were held in your work. All the natural fury of you was compressed in the gray and the silence of mere men-things. You were like a sleeping prince, Sir Romney. I but break the enchantment, and look into your face as your eyes open, and say sorrowfully—'No, it is not he,' and pass on."

"Moira Kelvin—you pass on."

"You would not want me to take less than I dream of?"

"But I love you. I never said it before. I have no place to put this great thing—that you have called. It doesn't come back to me. It's got all of me. It leaves me so much less than alive—when you pass on." He smiled at her. "Sounds weak and pleady. I don't mean it that way. I want nothing of pity, of course. Pity, that would be obscene. I'm not making a picture of the heart bereft. This is no doom-song to a gracious lady—only knowing you is an insult to the rest of the world."

Her slim hand darted out to him.

For a moment his voice choked. The touch of her was like a greater self. He was tortured with a vision of what it would mean to have all of this woman—to command her tenderness utterly, her bestowals, the full deep look of woman to man, the night and day presence, the child she dreamed of—this woman lovely as a golden cloud.... He trembled and his head turned away.

Her face came around to his.

"Romney," she whispered. "It isn't nearly so easy as it would be if you were less a man. Oh, don't you see that? I would have had the heart of a girl and pitied you, and thought it love. You're enough to make that—except for the life I learned in England. Now it's the one covenant. Why, the man I want—I'll do the winning. I would bring the fight to him. Nothing could stand between us. I could be saint or wanton. You don't know me. You would not want half of me. You could only want that part of me you are able to command. Perhaps, as that Hunchback said to you, 'We shall meet again.' I feel that you are a big fellow—brave and quiet and generous—that you have the stuff to make a lover. The real lover must be a bit of a mystic and you have that—but not now, and I must go on.... See, how I have stayed—"

Romney stared hard at her a moment, and then beyond. It was all black, a depth of bamboo clumps like a jungle, over her bent left shoulder. He saw his end in that blackness. She was light and power and beauty and art. A group of waiting-girls were playing the vina, behind the lattice by the bank of the river. It was like the slow song of nightingales. The scent of roses passed between them like a spirit hand. Her face was nearer. The warm scent of her was in his nostrils, and power came to him that he had not known at all that day. Romney spoke:

"Don't think of me as holding you. I love you too much for that—how easy to say that after once it is spoken.... I have nothing but praise and gladness to give you. Yes, you have stayed—that I might be with you—that I might have my full chance. I know what you mean by its being worth death—and what a man he would be to command your heart once, even—and live on afterward.... No, I wouldn't hold you. I wouldn't cry out. I would hold you by sheer love for me—but I am not great enough for that. I would cry out if you came to my arms, but they are not magnetic enough. I have had my chance. I know what a woman is. Forgive me if I disagree about there being another—for me. I'm afraid there isn't, because I've known you—"

His voice became very soft. "You'll feel it," he added. "You'll feel it following you around—a man's love for you—mine. I win—to know what I know to-night. And when you find him—know that I drink his health. I could do that devoutly.... I have had your baggage taken to the boat. The launch will call here for you.... In a few minutes.... I think—I think you are not a woman at all—but an immortal! You see I cannot suffer thinking of you that way—"

"Romney—"

"Yes—"

"Romney—no one is watching. I would not care if they were—put your head a moment on my breast.... Ah, and now upon my knee ... dear boy ... Romney, I am blind. I almost hate to go. Don't let me stay, will you? ... Ah, kiss me—once ... lips ... ice cold ... once? It isn't true! It's just passion, Romney! I hate myself. Don't let me stay to-night ... once—"

They were standing. She had not spoken for long. The launch was waiting.

"I want something that you have on—something of yours," he managed to say steadily.

She unfastened her cloak, gave it to him to hold—took off the waist she wore—a bit of gold-rose chiffon that he could cover in his palm. Then she put on her cloak again.

He helped her into the launch. Her bowed head turned to him a moment, and she covered her eyes. The launch sputtered away.

Romney went back to the seat near the bamboo thicket. The scent of roses wavered past, and the music of the vina came in to him. Romney drank. Once he raised his head. It was her steamer passing down the river. Hours afterwards he was drinking there alone.... Toward morning Longstruth himself came and sat down, but the American did not speak. Neither was he drunk in the least.

PART ONE: THE GREAT DRIFT

SUNDRY ADVENTURES

1

The night was starless, windless. The funnels of the John Dividend, a tramp steamer, lying in the yellow water off Woosung, were smearing the deck; the cinders crunched under the boots of the solitary forward watch. This was a white man who leaned over the railing, and reflected in the dull fashion of a bruised mind, that he would have to scrub down that deck at dawn. A live cinder dropped on the back of his neck. He brushed it away stolidly without haste. The action was that of one so accustomed to suffering that the finer sense was deadened to ordinary pangs. The tall attenuated figure was clad in loose and dirty garments of cotton. One of his reckless eyes a fist had rimmed with black. In some respects this was the most miserable man that ever swabbed the decks of the John Dividend.

He had been given a berth without undue questioning while the ship lay in Manila harbour; had spent eleven days and nights on board the tramp, learning what the deeper hell is like. He had been refused the privilege of going ashore at Woosung, had been abused by the captain and the crew, beaten by the second mate and bitten by the engineer's dog. Besides he had gotten onto McLean's books to the extent of twenty-five dollars.

McLean was the second engineer, a sober Scot who augmented his earnings by loaning money to the crew at interest. The murderous rate which he charged reinforced him somewhat against the big chances necessary in dealing with lawless, ship-jumping wanderers. Yet his losses were smaller than men believed. McLean had a sleepless gray eye—only one, but that sufficed—and a memory for faces and wrongs as remorseless as temporal things can be.

He never accounted a debt lost until he had seen the dead body of the debtor and found it barren. He was a profound believer in the smallness of the world and in the efficacy of time. He had money banked in all the Oriental seaport towns from Aden to Yokohama. He was a money-lender by nature. The sea was a means, not a labour of love. In a word it was wisdom to keep away from McLean; and if that were impossible, the next best thing was to pay what he had coming with interest in full, for he had a way of overturning cities and draining seas for his own.

The white man on watch had seen the more favoured members of the crew return from the port in song and sottishness. He thought of the lights of Shanghai up the river, beyond fourteen miles of foul marsh mist. His own various and recent miseries had often recurred. On this night that the John Dividend dropped anchor off the Shanghai port, they brought the white man a kind of madness. There was nothing in particular to watch. Overside, the sea and dark were one, though the ship was surrounded by Chinese junks. Some of the junks were manned by begging lepers, but the needy would have fared ill from the mercy of the John Dividend's crew.

As if moved by an involuntary impulse, the white man tumbled forward into the dark. The junks shot toward the splash, like a school of sharks after a chunk of pork. The nearest dragged in the prize, and the forward deck of the John Dividend was left without a watch. This was not exactly a loss, since the missing man as a sailor was equally worthless above and below, but there was a bad debt and a bad name left behind, consequently a memory. McLean held the memory and the missing man's note for five pounds.

Dawn was upon the water as the junk approached the city. From either bank came the shrill voices of the river-dwellers not unlike the waking sound of winged scavengers. Hoarse shouts were heard ahead. The American buried his face while the last drunken party of the John Dividend pulled past, headed for the ship. When the voices could be heard no more, the fugitive raised his head, shuddering. It was then that he noticed the other occupant of his own junk—a hairless female without hand, without teeth, with an empty socket in the place of one eye. She manipulated the oars by means of straps attached from her wrists to the handles. A child was in her lap, and the child was so far clean.

This was the creature who had helped him into the boat before light, who had touched him. When the junk bumped into the masonry of the city's front, he tossed a silver dollar into the leper's dress. She screamed for more as she would have done had the piece been a double-eagle. Fearful lest she should spring at him, the white man threw another coin into her lap and fled.

Yet after all, he took Shanghai with something of a smile that day. The first thought was to get clean clothes, but there is always formality and inconvenience about such purchases that are not connected with the barter of rum.

Within a few hours he had fallen once more into the great drift; resumed his classic jaunt over Asia and the Islands. It had begun far up a certain big yellow drain many months before.

Of the two days which followed, only distorted passages that touched McLean, the money-lender, came to surface. Certain foreigners, however, were stopped upon the streets of Shanghai by a dilapidated American who seemed to have a wild laugh back in his brain, and who inquired with manner, "Has the John Dividend put to sea?"

The drift took him at length to the Walled City where a white man may truly be lost, and where countless animals, roughly shaped like men, move about to a dirge-like beat of many afflictions and seem waiting for death.

Three days after the white man disappeared into the walled city of Shanghai, a great liner's nose cleaved the yellow water off Woosung. On the hurricane deck, well away from the enthusiastic party of American tourists, a small slant-eyed man stood alone by the landward rail. To him every puff of the warm breeze was lotus and memory-laden, though he kept his sentiments in chilled steel.

"Dr. Huan Ti Kung, San Francisco to Shanghai," was all the ship's registry told of him.... He might have been twenty or forty, as you preferred. One couldn't tell anything definite from the styleless black suit and hat he wore, nor from the sombre repose of the classically Chinese face.

Throughout the final two hours of the passage between Nagasaki and the Shanghai port, Dr. Ti Kung did not once leave the liner's deck. The ship was now churning the yellow emptyings of the Yang-tze, and that which held his eyes ahead, looked very much like a swamp to the eyes of the Americans and English. To Dr. Ti Kung it was not marshland, but the garment's hem of the Mother Empire, not seen these many years. There were no tears in his eyes; it is doubtful if his pulse had quickened. It is dangerous to suggest the nature of a yellow man's emotion. None but a yellow man could understand exactly. Yet this was certain, Dr. Ti Kung had not stood on the deck heretofore during the three weeks' voyage from San Francisco. He had not gone ashore in Japanese ports. The expression on his face was as serene and contemplative as usual while the liner lay on the different days in the three harbours of Nippon. But the face of the yellow man is not an authoritative document.

The recent ten years in America had been years of much movement, study and mystery. He had lived much in college towns, in Toronto, Vancouver, also in California and New England. It had not been the mere matter of an education, though he had specialised rather extensively at chemistry and biology. Plentiful education is to be had in Peking.

Dr. Ti Kung had made friends in America. There were Americans of his own age who had tried to know him as a white man knows another. It may be certain of these believed they succeeded. The Chinese accepted with equal mind the condescension of his inferiors, who held the belief that the Celestial Empire was a kind of giant laundry, and the frank, emotional friendliness of those of his classmates and business affiliates who had found that he was equally prodigious as athlete and student. His was a manner of profound gentility, with a mental background sumptuous in colour and experience. To Dr. Ti Kung most of these Americans were acquaintances, nothing more. The word friend in his language was something to which only the best aspired.

In spite of his various appearances for a year or more in different colleges and commercial establishments, none of these affairs had made up the real life of Dr. Ti Kung, nor had anything to do with his present journey home. He had not worked for money. A certain class of American acquaintances had found him not only approachable for temporary benefit but admirable in forgetfulness as he was unswerving in bestowal. His material means seemed inexhaustible from the first. A large portion of his life in America was unaccounted for, except by the few men and women whose lips were as well governed as his own.

Dr. Ti Kung made himself very small in the crowded launch on the way up the river, and was one of the first to step forth upon the stones of the Bund. A word to a coolie there and his baggage and other matters of disembarkation were taken from his hands. He moved into the foreign quarter swiftly, passing through the streets with as little interest as if it were a daily custom. A mile deep in the Nankin Road, well past the row of German tobacconists, he hailed a particular 'rickshaw coolie from a group and was carried by a round-about journey through the northeast gate of the Walled City. Here Dr. Ti Kung sniffed; at least something of relaxation was for the first time apparent. His surroundings were not pleasant, but it was China herself.

The street had now narrowed to a passageway. There was not room for two 'rickshaws. The beggars were forced to move back close to the stall-fronts as he passed, and the progress of his coolie was necessarily slow. Presently the passage was broken by a series of broad stone steps to the right. Half way up these, in the midst of a group of beggars, sat a white man, very drunk. He appeared to be expounding some great matter in a lingual mixture straight from nowhere. His head rocked leisurely from side to side. But one eyelid could withstand its heaviness at a time. On occasion both of the lids would drop, whereupon the white man's hand would fumble to his face and prop up the nearest with a very soiled finger, an effort that quite commanded his faculties so that speech halted for the moment.

Dr. Ti Kung spoke to the 'rickshaw coolie, who halted promptly. Leaning forward, he surveyed the figure with thoughtful interest. It now appeared that an insect threatened the lean inflamed face of the American, for the propping finger was withdrawn and waved laboriously before the beaked nose, the eyelids meanwhile falling in abandon. Just a word was spoken from the 'rickshaw and the next instant the figure on the steps was alone. Dr. Ti Kung now took one shoulder, ordering his coolie to the other, and the American was lifted to his feet. Walking rigidly on either side, they steadied the limp and slender giant to the vehicle, where he sprawled across the wheel and was pushed with considerable effort into the seat. He sighed luxuriously and called for a cigarette. Dr. Ti Kung brought forth his case, lit the match, and resumed his way on foot, a man's length or more behind the 'rickshaw.

Thus they proceeded for some distance along the numerous unsavoury passages. Keeping to a direction was impossible in trending the intricate alley-ways; the coolie seemed merely to be following the paths of greatest smell.

By degrees the novelty of the ride wore off for the tall fellow in the 'rickshaw. Even the cigarette stump, burning into the padding of the seat, failed to interest him. The eyes of Dr. Ti Kung, walking behind, were presently held to the back of the vehicle which strained and creaked outrageously. A moment later, it stopped. Stepping forward and around, the Chinese gentleman found his 'rickshaw coolie standing like a faithful horse, waiting to be extricated from the embrace of the American who had launched forward over the handles, with the intention seemingly of depositing himself upon the neck and shoulders of the native. He had not altogether succeeded. Dr. Ti Kung decided that his charge must have a change.

They were now at the junction of the passage and a broader artery, where a barbershop was in operation, partly upon the corner and partly within doors. Dr. Ti Kung beckoned and three of the barbers were at his side in an instant. The idea was not broached to the white man. He was seized and benched, lather applied at once. He had evidently met Chinese at home. His jaw hardened and he appeared to await some brutality from without, before taking exception to events. At the first scrape of the blade, however, he lay back at ease—a white man's long training under the knife.

Meanwhile the chief barber, disdaining other than to officiate in the present activity, turned to Dr. Ti Kung as if resuming a conversation halted yesterday:

"... The amazement of this low-minded proprietor in having his unmentionable shop patronized by so enlightened a personage, is without bounds and earth-defying." He produced a water-pipe of silver mounting and proceeded: "To say nothing of this illustrious foreigner who thus disguises his exalted rank—"

"You suffer from slight misconception," said Dr. Ti Kung, "only as regards the companion of this foreign prince. Behold in myself a rural born of lowest degree—"

The barber drowned the utterances in the loud bubbling of his water-pipe. "This day will ever linger in the memory of one degraded chief of barbers, for the patronage of a court companion of the great Yi—"

Dr. Ti Kung again courteously depreciated himself, and they turned to the American. The chief of barbers said:

"The illustrious one now occupying the chair has relapsed in revery, having given no directions. Is it desirable that the entire head be denuded?"

Ti Kung uncovered his own queue-less head. "Let the hair be short-cropped merely, as this of his servant—and the features shaven."

"So be," said the chief, shuffling over to direct the operators. In a moment he was back in his position beside the Chinese gentleman.

"This illiterate one," he began again, as the gurgling of the water-pipe was renewed, "perceived in the reports today that the wrestler, Kwong, won all honours in the athletic contests at the Imperial Pavilion. His prowess has doubtless come under court attention before. Today the trained cormorant of the Mandarin Pih has proved to be the best diver in a tournament that has been held three successive days on the river. Probably, however, this fact is already known to one whose relatives recline in the Yellow Palanquin...."

Just now one of the barbers drew back a step to survey his half-finished task. The eyes of the others were drawn to the strange voices at the turning of the street. A small party of American tourists, exploring the Walled City, had reached this point. Dr. Ti Kung recognised the party as belonging to the ship he had left this morning. Just at this moment the white man leaped up from the barber's chair and staggered forth, waving his hands. Dr. Ti Kung observed that his charge had been whipped back to consciousness by the voices of the tourist party.

The Chinese gentleman spoke quickly, a low, intense order. One of the barbers darted after the white man who had turned down an alley-way to the rear of the shop, Dr. Ti Kung following leisurely. A moment later, he watched without concern while two brawny bare-shouldered natives overcame the half-shaven one, and carried him through the nearest door.... It was still early in the day. The tourist party had passed on.

2

The white man awoke several hours later on the floor of a small stone cell containing one table and one chair. The chair was cemented to the floor. He had not jarred it loose, though the cell was so small that his body had been forced to adjust itself to it during sleep. The table was also stationary. The door was of heavy black wood, intended to preserve silence from without and possibly from within. There was a small metal disc in the door and by the finger-marks around it, the prisoner grasped the fact that it doubtless covered a hole.

Gaining his feet he had to bend considerably to put his mouth to the opening. He called and turned his ear to the disc for answer. He was about to make further outcry when he heard a peculiar scuffling step in a distant corridor. It soon halted before the door and inquired in a nasal, whining tone, something which sounded like:

"Pai ning?"

The white man now recalled that he was in China. Recollections came quickly. He sank down into the chair, the thick table pressing against him. He heard the scuffling step depart and wondered what he was in for. There was no doubt in his mind regarding the nature of the place. There is a similarity to such places around the world. The stationary table and chair, however, were new.

He was dry. He was in pain. His face felt sticky, and rubbing his fingers across it, he was at first inclined to doubt his senses. The right side of his face witnessed to several days neglect, while the left cheek and part of the chin were cleanly shaven.

"Pai ning," he repeated. "Or was it pai ning?"

He could not tell. He remembered a native barber, but did not know if this were a new day or still last night. The last he remembered clearly was a vow of mortal friendship delivered in Shropshire dialect by a sailor from his Majesty's cruiser Dunedin, and that they were about to anoint the vow in a bar-room close to the water-front. He wondered if all the lights had gone out at that instant or just his own. He patted his face in several places, regarding his hands intently in the gloom for blood, but none appeared. He was all right muscularly; the choking which he experienced was to be expected. Now the vital questions appeared: How long was he in for? Had he been tried?

"Pai ning," he repeated. "Yes, that's what he said."

He now arose and shoved back the metal disc once more, but his call was touched with a different respect. Listening was again rewarded with the scuffling step and a whining voice.

"Pai ning?"

"Sure! Pai ning," said the American.

There was hesitation without, after which the question was repeated. The prisoner explained his need for drink in Chinese and found himself making signs of draining a fourth-dimension cup against the black door. The scuffling retreated.

He now relapsed in awe. His first impulse had been to use strength. He was aware of his strength because it had been tested and failed. The awe had to do with thirst. He had felt this before and became deadly afraid at the memory. He pressed his body into the seat again and cleared his throat.

Just now there was a voice in the corridor, a key in the door, and a Chinese gentleman in European attire entered smilingly, holding out his hand. The white man took the hand and tried to recall where he had seen that face before. It had nothing to do with China, nothing to do with recent years, yet somewhere before he had seen that smile, and something was glad within him.

"Well, Mr. Romney," said Dr. Ti Kung, "did you rest well?"

"Let me have a cigarette," the other said unsteadily.

A certain case was proffered again.

"Thanks. You haven't a touch of heartener—have you?"

"I have ordered refreshments," said Dr. Ti Kung, lighting a match.

"How did you hear of my trouble?"

"Trouble?"

"Well, the fact is," said Romney, "I was not altogether there when it happened—just a sort of night-shift working.... What did I do?"

Dr. Ti Kung lit a cigarette. "This morning in passing by the waterfront," he began pleasantly, "I came upon you in the midst of a group of friends—sitting and talking, you know. I recognized you at once, waited until you were not engaged. We had a short ride in my 'rickshaw up to the street of the Everlasting Spring. Here you became restless; you were not feeling yourself. We stopped at a barber-shop, but you were impatient to be off. In fact, you insisted upon leaving before the—"

Romney smiled painfully, passing his hand again over his half-shaven face. However, a certain appreciation formed in his mind for the man who described his condition so delicately.

"And after that?"

Dr. Ti Kung hesitated.... Here the door swung back on silent hinges and the old man whom the American had called to through the chink, scuffed in with glasses and a bottle. He made a curious little bobbing bow to Dr. Ti Kung, and scuffed out.

Romney added, when the door had closed: "I mean the lock-up, this calaboose, what am I in for?"

"This is not a jail. You're merely in one of our examination cells."

The other turned white and arose.

"What am I enlisting for? Some conscript mess I got into with your countrymen?"

"Not at all," laughed Dr. Ti Kung. "This is an educational institution; this chamber is connected with one of our colleges. We put aspiring young men in these chambers together with a set of questions and a large quantity of white paper, leaving them in quiet contemplation until the questions are answered. Here, exchange of thoughts with any other student is impossible and one is able to put his best concentration upon the task."

"I see," said the American, looking about at the thickness of the stone walls.

"Our young literati," continued Dr. Ti Kung, "are rigorously brought up." He eyed Romney with narrowed lids through the smoke. "It so happened that this place was at hand when you required rest, so we carried you in. By the way, you are very light for your length."

Romney did not appear to hear the observations, but leaned toward the other, saying apologetically, "You'll have to excuse me, but I give it up. My head is bad. Where did I meet you before?"

Dr. Ti Kung almost smiled. "The first time, I believe, was at a certain field-meet in the Santa Clara valley."

"Lord, that's more than seven years. I have you. I was fit that day—"

"You were fit this morning," beamed Dr. Ti Kung.

Another drink came. Romney was more cheerful.

"Say, what's this pai ning stuff in use here? I know the expression, but didn't get the connection."

"Pal ning?" repeated Ti Kung.

"You've got it. That's the way he said it."

"Why, that means literally, 'f-i-n-ee-s-h-e-d?' It had to do with the examination papers. The hall-boy came at your call. His duty was to inquire if your work was done before turning the key."

"It wasn't," said Romney thoughtfully.

He was thinking of the day of that field-meet in the Santa Clara valley. He had been a distance runner of sorts, a bit too fine physically—a little cough in the throat that had stuck until he came to China, but a superb bit of health compared to the red panting animal he had become in the past nine months.... His throat was cooled; his whole nerve-system had leaped to the stimulant which Ti Kung had ordered. Romney laughed. He wouldn't even have been able to think as coherently as this, but for the two recent drinks. It was a deep ironical laugh from somewhere within, possibly from the soul of things.... Running—and a victory had thrilled him. Cheap things to thrill over. He hadn't asked much in those days. Now he was an inflamed pig, half-bearded, in soiled white clothing that he could get the smell of.... He had sincerely tried to arrive at the end of himself, but he had put on a belated kind of toughness in the years of Asia. He wondered if he would go on trying, or square about and regain something of his old form—form of mind as well as form of body, his old form among men.

Romney looked up at Ti Kung and laughed again. This very thought of rehabilitation was not from the wreck that he felt himself to have become, but from the fresh warmth of alcohol.... No, he had done his living. If he got well enough to think connectedly for any length of time, a certain two weeks would rush back and make a monkey of him. No, this was a false note—this idea of regaining form. He didn't want form among men. Nothing would be interesting. The Immortal had spoiled all the rest. Even China would bore him. And she was gone—on her own blessed highway. It had seemed good to put an end to himself out of extreme boredom of days, but he hadn't counted on being tough as blacksnake.... He would be kicked and trampled around Asia a little longer until something broke—something that had been so perversely strong inside of him.

He looked to find Dr. Ti Kung smiling contentedly and without haste. The Chinese had understood the laugh. It was remarkable how this little yellow man understood. It had been the same, many years ago. They had all commented upon it. They had always found Ti Kung on the dot, without haste, without raising his voice. It was so now.... Why had he stopped to pick up a ruffian white man on the street? Romney felt himself leaning on the other. He hated it, but didn't lie to himself about it.... His hand crept to his face—one clean side, one hairy one. It was like him. He swallowed the shame of it.

"Well," he said, "what are we going to do about all this?"

"I will tell you in three days," said Dr. Ti Kung.

There was something so authoritative, so decisive and prepared, in the statement that Romney identified it with a clean side. It had to do with climbing out.... This man was on the dot. His eyes were full of fire, yet hard-held, steady and kind; full of reason and order. Three days. Ti Kung meant three days. There was no lying, no leaning in that. He had a design. There was something to Romney in his own weakness and vacillation, like the splendour of God in this capacity of vision, this steadiness of eye and clarity of speech; white strength of hand and hard-held manhood.

"And what now?" he remarked. Even in this rare moment of self-examination, he did not know it, but he asked that last question like a child.

He was spared the pathos.

"We'll go to my home," said Dr. Ti Kung. "It's not a 'rickshaw this time. I have ordered a carriage. I take great pleasure in bringing you to my home."

Romney drew his hand across his chin. The other touched his arm.

"All that will be attended to. Don't let's think of it. You will find that all is ready for you."

3

The scent of soap in the fountain-place of the Ti Kung house might be considered by some a preposterous detail, but it was real to Romney. It had to do with Longstruth's, on a certain night when he had felt himself to be a far more reckonable person even than on the day of the field-meet at Palo Alto which brought him a trophy or two. It was on a night about mid-way in the Moira Kelvin revelations when it suddenly appeared that she was wavering a little. Hope lifted and he had felt fit to conquer continents. But that had passed. He had somehow diminished again.

It is true that she had been shaken during their last moments together, but that was different. Romney was man enough not to take any advantage there—even in thought. He understood her that night. She was in a scope of a more common attraction. She had hated herself in it. Had he pressed that advantage, it would merely have meant to unseal a crater for hell to break forth not only for himself but for her. Before knowing her, he might have considered the savage splendour of that passion as having to do with a woman's great gift, but he glimpsed in the days preceding what it would mean to the man who could force the capitulation of the full creature. Even in the blinding of those moments of parting, he knew he was far from that magnitude.

Romney threw back his head and laughed at the upper arch of tiles, his arms held out. It was the laugh of a man who stands on the rim of the last ditch.... He had certainly sifted to the bottom of things. The John Dividend was the last of many ships. He had made the grand traverse of the Asiatic coast from the Yellow Sea to the Bay of Bengal and doubled back to Shanghai. This drink-thing was the great weakness he had uncovered. Three days after her steamer had gone down the river, he had fallen into the low eddies of it—a cheap thing, but he felt cheap. He saw that he had always been intoxicated somehow. A turn of a card and he might have become a saint instead of a drunkard. Mother China had intoxicated him first; then the woman. It was all a matter of temperament. Having lost the levitation of cleanness and strength, he had permitted the mother-force of gravitation to take her certain course. From Longstruth's at Hankow he had swirled into the great drift of the water-fronts—deserters, remittance-men, hangovers from every form of human failure. He had spent everything he had within reach—a large amount of money. He had learned the value of money when his pockets flattened to a few thin coins. There was a large slice of his fortune left in Peking, but it was so placed that he would have to go there to get it. He was on the way back now. In fact the John Dividend would have taken him almost there—she was booked for Tientsin—but had been too stagnant and stenchy in her bowels. The fact is he would never have reached Manila and the deck of the John Dividend except for this new something, superlatively fine in his physique. Altogether he had seen a lot of life with the integument off—and had expected little more of the late days than to be found dead somewhere....

The scent of the fountain-place had a certain whipping magic about it. It seemed to cleanse away some weakness.

It made Moira Kelvin draw close in memory, but there was a queer up-pull to it now, as if she said:

"You have played enough, Sir Romney. Give it up—you're too clean-blooded to die soiled. You don't want me. You've forgotten for days at a time what you are trying to kill yourself for. If that next daybreak had found me in your arms—you would have hated me, and I would have had for myself something infinitely worse than hatred. You were big that night to let me go. Nature will not let a man as big as that pass out without doing his work and finding his own. If you want sin—pray, sin magnificently."

The cool running water passed over his fevered and wasted body. There was ample time for everything. A servant brought him a house-gown and slippers. Ti Kung's barber was waiting. A little helpful drink was brought from time to time, not too often, and just a touch. Ti Kung was waiting for him below. Romney had found a fineness of comprehension in the Chinese that he had not revelled in from any man for months. It was almost like a woman's. It liberated the better parts of him, but he was ill and fagged to the core. He looked forward to a long, clean night. First he would go back to the fountain place. He would think of that Longstruth's night before he slept.... Ti Kung showed him his room, opened the door, led him to the window of the low-lit chamber. From the casement he pointed out the stars and the lower lights of the distant shipping.

"I'll be away tomorrow," he said, "but shall return for dinner. You may rest and read. You may go to the city; there is a carriage. There are books; there are servants who understand English. Forgive me, I always forget that you speak our language; in short, anything you may wish. If convenient, be here for dinner at eight to-morrow. If you have another appointment, of course, I can wait—"

"I'll be here," Romney said.

... It was not until the door was shut that he saw the gleam of glass and the half-open door of a walnut cabinet against the wall. He understood all that it meant before he took a step toward it. He wished that Ti Kung had spared him this hospitality.... It was very complete, even to importations from America, even to certain brands that he had not seen for years. There was crystal, silverware, napkins, and this that was covered on the table clinked with ice as he touched it. He was dry and tense. Everything had been designed to turn him loose, even the departure of his host.

Romney thought of the words of Dr. Ti Kung in the examination cell: "I will tell you in three days."

He laughed softly. "And what he will tell me in three days hangs imperatively upon this most perfect cabinet. Romney, here's a ripe chance to use your head. You are allowed one respectable touch. You may choose your poison—but just one."

He measured out a portion by no means of a size that a man is inclined to seize with his last dime, drank it with discretion and without water. Then he stared awhile at the stars and the shipping, took a long drink from the water-pitcher, and went to bed.

But Romney could not sleep. It was not so easy and laughable as when the episode began. His thoughts turned to the walnut cabinet as the eye turns to fire in the night. He lay restless and wide-eyed in the dark. Presently the moon came in and gleamed upon the open door and upon the glasses and bottles on the table, bringing out inner fires from the multi-colored glass. He arose often for water. There was fever burning full-length. The novelty of keeping himself in hand left him and it became fight. The bars had long been down.... The long night crawled.

He heard some English sailors pass through the street below. The Chinese city was full of sounds not to be designated—cries, gongs, the tapping of canes, sounds that the elemental traffic of the day had deluged, for he heard women's voices and the voices of children. One does not hear these in the day-time. He relit the lamp at last, smoked and read, and when the activities of the night had at last died out, there was an hour of blackness and quiet that was like a jungle experience. He was full of fears, not at all the kind of fears that Romney knew when his mind was in order.

Dawn came, and with it a soft breeze that stirred the wind-glasses in the garden below. It was a thirsty tinkle, a sound he had heard somewhere before and found hauntingly sweet. There was a touch of rose in the light, and the scent of rose came to him in the morning dusk, and rushed his thoughts far up the Yellow River.... Old days in the open swept back to mind with rugged value. He was on his feet. The night was gone. He could take a drink now without breaking his word, but the new strength tided him over that.

A servant tapped at the inlaid door and asked if he would have anything. Yes, he would have coffee. He found the place of the fountain. The cool morning air came in as he bathed, and with the scent came back to him the sense of equilibrium that he had not known for many days, a suggestion of self-sanction, perfect but valid.... The coffee was served when he returned to the room. He asked if he might walk in the garden then and the servant tarried to show him the way.

Three servants were standing at the street door in the dim-lit lower hall as Romney and his guide passed below. They were engaged in a more or less orderly passage of words. Suddenly a cry arose, and the three servants were seen to leap upon a man in European dress who seemed intent upon entering. Romney disdained more than a side glance at the encounter down the long dark hall, as he followed the footsteps of his diminutive but most engaging guide.

In the garden there were stone and water glasses, cool shallows, deep drinking palms, awakening birds and amazingly perfect roses, all in a space no larger than a city back-yard. A high wall with broken glass on the top, suffocating China outside, and within the beauty of the pearl and the lotus. The American's tension allayed somewhat in that beauty. He smoked and picked his way among the stones, sniffing the blooms while the day rose. The voices of his own countrymen outside the wall hardly broke his reverie at first. Presently a peculiar sound held his attention. It was a scraping, as if some wooden object were being raised against the masonry. He halted as a hand came over the top of the glass. A blue-sleeved arm was picking its way to the inner-coping, the woolen sleeve alone between the flesh and the bare glass. The top of the head that appeared presently was rugged and close-cropped. Something about it was strangely familiar, but no more showed for the present. There was a renewed scraping, the head paused in the air, then dropped back again.

It startled Romney, but he did not feel called upon to protest. The house seemed adequately protected with man-servants; that fact had been impressed at the street-door. He forgot the incident, and was leaning back against the wall a couple of minutes afterward, when his eyes were called to the corner of the wall at his right. Poised motionless above it was the ominous head again, and that light vulture-blue eye, which found his own like an electric contact, and loosed his jaw. McLean had seen him at the same instant.

"Looking for me?" Romney asked.

The answer made him think of the boiler-room of the John Dividend. There was silence after that. The eye remained fixed upon him.

"Come here," added McLean, unwinking.

Romney did not move.

"Come here," reached him again, hoarsely.

There was pull to it. The intensity and concentration of that single utterance had real attraction.

Just then the little house-servant appeared, saw the head above the wall, and called for assistance. Other servants came quickly. There was considerable hub-bub behind in the garden as Romney went indoors sick and slowed-up.

He found his way back to his room. There hadn't been a single coin in the clothes that he wore when entering Ti Kung's house. The contents of these pockets otherwise had been carefully placed on the table in his room, but the clothes were gone. As he stood in his morning-gown reflecting upon the recent affair, his boy came in, bringing a plain black suit of fine quality, suggesting that he try if it would do, and adding apologetically that breakfast was now prepared. The clothing fitted perfectly. Romney realized that they had been made overnight from the dimensions of his old suit, which did not appear again. He wondered if such a thing could be done outside of China.

McLean was both light and heavy upon his mind as he transferred his few belongings to the new coat. Drawing forth his hand, he found that it contained currency of the empire to an amount that he had not seen since the early days of his abandonment. It was an altogether comic-opera amount.

He turned to the servant who stood by, grinning.

"If that one-eyed man comes back again," he said, "show him in."

"One-eye gone way down," grinned the boy.

"What's that?"

The boy made an eloquent gesture to betoken an open grave, supplementing the picture which Romney felt mentally, with: "One-eye gone way down."

"Now, that's too bad," mused Romney. Then there was a crisp, brown, small fish before him that made him forget.

That night the Doctor came for dinner—a cool, delicate meal, exquisitely Chinese—rice, tea, several varieties of sea-food and small high-colored vegetables. Ti Kung appeared alert for the welfare of his guest.

"My dear Romney, I'm afraid things have been pretty dull for you here. A little matter takes me to the Provincial Headquarters. Would you care to come for the ride?"

The American learned more of his friend. Certain officials and older students were encountered. Their deepest respect, even reverence, for Ti Kung interested Romney, as well as their quick and animated interest in himself as he showed acquaintance with their language.

There was a secret meeting which he could not enter, but he became aware as he waited that the long halls of the provincial building were dotted with groups of nobles and elders not in the least pleased with the political activity of the younger men with which Dr. Ti Kung was associated.

Presently Romney retired to the carriage to wait, leaving word with a page for Ti Kung to be informed. Nobles and others were still entering the building, often old men largely attended and in full regalia. A native throng was collecting rapidly and cluttered the street at the entrance of the building. The effects produced on the crowd by the entrance of different personages were varied and absorbing. Some were lauded; others brought forth scowls and mutterings. Excitement seethed and cleared Romney's mind.

Ti Kung was not long in coming forth. He apologised for being detained, quite as if the matter he had attended was of most trivial importance. Even as he talked, the crowd thickened about the carriage, and pressed against the wheels. Dr. Ti Kung leaned forward to speak to the driver, who began to lash furiously at the heads and shoulders of the throng. Romney was the first to see the long knife that whipped up from the wheel, and was lucky enough to jerk the Doctor back into the seat in time. A pistol was thrust into his hand.

"I regret we will have to fire," Ti Kung said.

Neither shot to kill, for the way was instantly cleared for the horses. They passed out of the public square without further molestation. Romney leaned forward whimsically and searched the Doctor's face.

"Quite the usual thing, is it?"

"Of late. They're just children."

"Are they apt to get any less good-natured?"

"Yes, they have suffered much. They do not understand."

Romney fingered the pistol. "I feel quite like a boy," he remarked. "There's a charm about this thing. I never shot one before—without everybody standing well back."

Ti Kung's hand darted over and touched Romney's appreciatively.