CHAPTER IV – INTRIGUE

THE Yen Hsin would arrive at Kiu Kiang by mid-afternoon.

Half an hour earlier. Doane, on the lower deck, came upon a group of his excellency’s soldiers – brown deep-chested men, picturesque in their loose blue trousers bound in above the ankles and their blue turbans and gray cartridge belts – conversing excitedly in whispers behind the stack of coffins near the stern. At sight of him they broke up and slipped away.

A moment later, passing forward along the corridor beside the engine room, he heard his name: “Mr. Doane! If you please!” This in English.

He turned. Just within the doorway of one of the low-priced cabins stood a pedler he had observed about the lower decks; a thin Chinese with an overbred head that was shaped, beneath the cap, like a skull without flesh upon it; the eyes concealed behind smoked glasses.

“May I have a word with you, Mr. Doane?”

The mate considered; then, stooping, entered the tiny cabin. The pedler closed the door; quietly shot the bolt; then removed his cap and the queue with it, exposing a full head of stubbly black hair, trimmed, as is said, pompadour. The glasses came off next; discovering wide alert eyes. And now, without the cap, the head, despite the hair and the seriously intellectual face, looked, balanced on its thin neck, more than ever like a skull.

“You will not know of me, Mr. Doane. I am Sun Shi-pi of Shanghai. I was attached, as interpreter, to the yamen of the tao-tai. I left his service some months ago to join the republican revolutionary party. I was arrested shortly after that at Nanking and condemned to death, but his excellency, the viceroy – ”

“Kang?”

“Yes. He is on this boat. He released me on condition that I go to Japan. I kept my word – to that extent; I went to Japan – but I could not keep my word in spirit. My life is consecrated to the cause of the Chinese Republic. Nothing else matters. I returned to Shanghai, and was made commander there of the ‘Dare-to-dies.’ You did not know of such an organization? You will, then, before the winter is gone. We shall be heard from. There are other such companies – at Canton, at Wuchang – at Nanking – at every center.”

Doane seated himself on the narrow couch and studied the quietly eager young man.

“You speak English with remarkable ease,” he said.

“Oh, yes. I studied at Chicago University. And at Tokio University I took post-graduate work.”

“And you are frank.”

“I can trust you. You are known to us, Mr. Doane. Wu Ting Fang trusts you – and Sun Yat Sen, our leader, he knows and trusts you.”

“I did know Sun Yat Sen, when he was a medical student.”

“He knows you well. He has mentioned your name to us. That is why I am speaking to you. America is with us. We can trust Americans.”

Doane’s mind was ranging swiftly about the situation. “You are running a risk,” he said.

Sun Shi-pi shrugged his shoulders. “I shall hardly survive the revolution. That is not expected among the ‘Dare-to-dies.’”

“If his excellency’s soldiers find you here they will kill you now.”

“The officers would, of course. Many of the soldiers are with us. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

“What is your errand?”

“I will tell you. The revolution, as you doubtless know, is fully planned.”

“I’ve assumed so. There has been so much talk. And then, of course, the outbreak in Szechuen.”

“That was premature. It was the plan to strike in the spring. This fighting in Szechuen has caused much confusion. Sun Yat Sen is in America. He is going to England, and can hardly reach China within two months. He will bring money enough for all our needs. He is the organizer, the directing genius of the new republic. But the Szechuen outbreak has set all the young hotheads afire.”

“I am told that the throne has sent Tuan Fang out there to put down the disturbance. But we have had no news lately.”

“That is because the wires are cut. Tuan Fang will never come back. We will pay five thousand taels, cash, to the bearer of his head, and ask no questions. We must exterminate the Manchus. It has finally come down to that. It is the only way out. But we must pull together. Did you know that the Wu Chang republicans plan to strike at once?”

“No.”

“I have been sent there to tell them to wait. That is our gravest danger now. If we pull together we shall win. If our emotions run away with our judgment – ”

“The throne will defeat your forces piecemeal and destroy your morale.”

“Exactly. My one fear is that I may not reach Wu Chang in time. But” – with a careless gesture – “that is as it may be. I will tell you now why I spoke to you. We need you. Our organization is incomplete as yet, naturally. One matter of the greatest importance is that our spirit be understood from the first by foreign countries. There is an enormous task – diplomatic publicity, you might call it – which you, Mr. Doane, are peculiarly fitted to undertake You know both China and the West. You are a philosopher of mature judgment. You would work in association with Doctor Wu Ting Fang at our Shanghai offices. There will be money. Will you consider this?”

“It is a wholly new thought,” Doane replied slowly. “I should have to give it very serious consideration.”

“But you are in sympathy with our aims?”

“In a general way, certainly. Even though I may not share your optimism.”

“On your return to Shanghai would you be willing to call at once on Doctor Wu and discuss the matter?”

“Yes… Yes, I will do that. I must leave you now. We are nearly at Kiu Kiang.”

Sun, glancing out the window, raised his hand. Doane looked; two small German cruisers, the kaiser’s flag at the taff, were steaming up-stream.

“They know,” murmured Sun, with meaning. “I wish to God I could find their means of information. They all know. From the Japanese in particular nothing seems to be hidden. Two or three of your American war-ships are already up there. And the English, naturally, in force.”

“They must be on hand to protect the foreign colony at Hankow. The Szechuen trouble would justify such a move.”

But Sun shook his head. “They know,” he repeated. Then he clasped Doane’s hand. “However… that is a detail. It is now war. You will find events marching fast – faster, I fear, than we republicans wish. Good-by now. You will call on Doctor Wu.”

The steamer moved slowly in toward the landing hulk. Doane, from the boat deck, by the after bell pull, gazed across at the park-like foreign bund, with its embankment of masonry and its trees. Behind lay, compactly, the walled city. Everything looked as it had always looked – the curious crowd along the railing, the water carriers passing down and up the steps, the eager shouting swarm of water beggars. Below, the coolies swung out from the hulk, ready to make their usual breakneck leap over green water to the approaching steamer. Now – they were jumping. The passengers were leaning out from the promenade deck to watch and applaud… Doane’s thoughts, as he went mechanically through his familiar duties, wandered off inland, past the battlements and towers of the ancient city to the thousands of other ancient cities and villages and farmsteads beyond; and he wondered if the scores of millions of lethargic minds in all those centers of population could really be awakened from their sleep of six hundred years and stirred into action.

Could a republic, he asked himself, possibly mean anything real to those minds? The habit of mere endurance, of bare existence, was so deep-seated, the struggle to live so intense, the opportunity so slight. Sun Shi-pi and his kind were a semi-Western product. They were, when all was said and done, an exotic breed. They were the ardent, adventurous young; and they were the few. There had always been a throne in China, always extortionate mandarins, always a popular acceptance of conditions.

The lines were out now. And suddenly a blue-clad soldier climbed over the rail, below, balanced along the stern hawser, leaped to the hulk, and was about to disappear among the coolies there when a rifle-shot cracked and he fell. He seemed to fall, if anything, slightly before the shot. Another soldier, following close, was caught by a second shot as he was balancing on the hawser, and spun headlong into the water where the propeller still churned.

A few moments later, when Doane moved among the passengers, it became clear that they knew nothing of the casual tragedy astern. They were all pressing ashore for a walk in the native city, eager to buy the worked silver that is traditionally sold there. The slim girl in the middy blouse had apparently captured young Rocky Kane; they strolled off across the bund together. But Dawley Kane remained aboard, stretched out comfortably in a deck chair, listening thoughtfully to the stocky little Japanese, one Kato, who was by now generally known to be his alter ego in the matter of buying objects of Oriental art.

None of these folk knew or cared about China. Excepting this Kato. Him Doane was continually encountering below decks, chatting smilingly in Chinese with the good-natured soldiers. His work along the river, doubtless, ranged over a wider field than his present employer would ever learn. It would be interesting, now, to know what he was saying, talking so rapidly and always, of course, smiling… The rest of this upper-deck white man’s existence Doane dismissed from his mind as he went about his work. It was all too familiar. Though later he thought of Rocky Kane. The boy, wild though he might be, had attractive qualities. It was not pleasant to see that girl get her hands on him. Just one more evil influence.

He thought, at this juncture, of the – the word came – appalling change in himself. That he, once a fervid missionary, could stand back like a sophisticated European, and let the wandering and vicious and broken human creatures about him go their various ways, as might be, was disturbing, was even saddening. Something apparently had died in him. Sun had called him a philosopher. The Oriental, of course, even the blazing revolutionist, admired this passive quality, this fatalistic acceptance of the fact. He sighed. To be a philosopher was, then, to be emotionally dead. The church had been taken out of his life, leaving – nothing. A mate on a river steamer, in China. Life had gone quite topsy-turvey. Even the amazing courtesy of his excellency – it was that, when you considered – and this profound compliment from the revolutionary junta seemed but incidents. Too many promises had smiled at Doane, these years of his spiritual Odyssey – smiled and faded to nothing – to permit an easy hope of anything new and beautiful. He was beginning to believe that a man can not build and live two lives. And he had built and lived one.

Captain Benjamin found him; a dogged little captain with dull fright in his eyes. “It’s happened,” he said, trying desperately to attain an offhand manner. “Company wire. They’re fighting at Wu Chang. What do you know about that!”

Doane was silent. It was extraordinarily difficult, here by this calm old city, on a sunny afternoon, to believe that it was, as Sun had put it, war.

“We’re to tie up,” the captain went on, “until further orders. The foreign concessions at Hankow were safe enough this noon, but with an artillery battle just across the river, and an imperial army moving down from the north over the railway, they stand a lot of show, they do.”

“I wonder if they’ll send us on.”

“What difference will it make?” The captain’s voice was rising. “You know as well as I do that they’ll be fighting at Nanking before we could get back there. Here, too, for that matter. I tell you the whole river’ll be ablaze by to-morrow. This bloody old river! And us on a Manchu-owned boat! A lot o’ chance we stand.”

The sight-seers strolled across the shady bund, passed a stone residence or two and a warehouse, and made their way through the tunneled gateway in the massive city wall. Little Miss Andrews was escorted by young Mr. Braker. Miss Means walked with one of the customs men. Two or three others of the men wandered on ahead. Rocky Kane and the thin girl in the middy blouse brought up the rear.

As they entered the crowded city within the wall a babel of sound assailed their ears – the beating of drums and gongs, clanging cymbals, a musket shot or two, fire-crackers; and underlying these, rising even above them, never slackening, a continuous roar of voices. The teachers paused in alarm, but the customs man smilingly assured them that in a busy Chinese city the noise was to be taken for granted.

Nearly every shop along the way was open to the street, and at each opening men swarmed – bargaining, chaffering, quarreling. The only women to be seen were those in black trousers on a wheelbarrow that pushed briskly through the crowds, the barrow man shouting musically as he shuffled along. Beggars wailed from the niches between the buildings. Dogs snarled and barked – hundreds of dogs, fighting over scraps of offal among the hundreds of nearly naked children.

A mandarin came through in a chair of green lacquer and rich gold ornament, supercilious, fat, carried by four bearers and followed by imposing officials who wore robes of black and red and hats with red plumes. As the street was a scant ten feet in width and the crowds must flatten against the walls to make way the roar grew louder and higher in pitch.

There were shops with nothing but oils in huge jars of earthenware or in wicker baskets lined with stout paper. There were tea shops with high pyramids of the familiar red-and-gold parcels, and other pyramids of the brick tea that is carried on camel back to Russia. There were the shops of the idol makers, and others where were displayed the carven animals and the houses and carts and implements that are burned in ancestor worship, and the tinsel shoes. There were shops where remarkably large coffins were piled in square heaps, some of glistening lacquer with the ideograph characters carven or embossed in new gold. There were varnishers, lacquerers, tobacconists; open eating houses in which could be seen rows of pans set into brickwork. There were displays of bean cakes, melon seeds and curious drugs.

Two Manchu soldiers sauntered by, in uniforms of red and faded blue; fans stuck in their belts and painted paper umbrellas folded in their hands. One bore a hooded falcon on his wrist.

Miss Andrews sniffed the penetrating odor of all China, that was spiced just here with smells of garlic cooking and frying fish and pork and strong oil? and – like the perfume of a dainty lady amid the complex odors of a French theater – an unexpected whiff of burning incense. She looked up between the high walls, on which hung, close together, the long elaborate signs of the tradesmen, black and green and red with gold, always the gold. Across the narrow opening from roof to roof, extended a bamboo framework over which was drawn coarse yellow matting or blue cotton cloths; and through these the sunbeams, diffused, glowed in a warm twilight, with here and there a chance ray slanting down with dazzling brightness on a golden sign character.

“It’s all rather terrifying,” murmured Miss Andrews, at Braker’s ear, “but it’s beautiful – wonderful! I never dreamed of China being so human and real.”