Gods Men (17 page)

He looked back on the days in Peking as sweetness he had not known enough to taste while it was in his mouth. He remembered the pleasantness of Mr. Fong's shop, the coziness of the inner rooms where he had sat at the square table teaching Yusan. It had been a home rich in kindness and his eyelids smarted now when he thought of it. Of his own parents he would not think. He remembered them no more as they had been when they were living but only as he had seen them dead, and this memory he could not endure and he put it from him so far that it had become blankness. He could not remember even their faces. Mr. Fong's he saw clearly, and Mrs. Fong's face he saw always wreathed in smiles as it was when she brought in the cakes and meat rolls. He dreamed of that food.

Slowly, while his conscience burned, Clem made his plans. On Saturday, early, as soon as the man and woman had left the house, he would tell the children. He did not dare to prepare them earlier for they were too childish to be trusted. He would help them to gather their clothes together and tie them in bundles. They would take whatever food was left in the house.

Saturday morning dawned clear and cool. Hateful as his life was to him, Clem had fallen in love with the land. He woke early as usual, even before the heavy footsteps of the man shook the narrow stairs, and he put on his clothes and let himself out from the window upon the roof of a shed below and thence he dropped to the ground. At the stream he washed himself in a small pool below a shallow falls. The stream bed was of rock, slanted in layers so precise that when the falls rose after a rain, slabs came off like great Chinese tiles. He had taken a score or so of them and had laid them neatly at the bottom of the pool and when the sun shone through the water, as it did this morning, the stones shone in hues of wet amber and chestnut and gold.

The stream was out of sight of the house, hidden by a spinney of young sycamore trees, the children of a mighty old sycamore whose roots drove through the hillside to the sources of water. Behind this wall of tender green, Clem stripped himself and plunged into the water, this morning almost winter cold. Above him the hills rose gently, the woods green but flecked with the occasional gold of autumn. The sky was beautiful, a softer blue than Chinese skies and more often various with white and moving clouds.

Yet where, Clem often asked himself, were the people upon this land, and how could it be that a house full of children at the mercy of a man and woman, ignorant and brutish, remained unknown and unsought? In China it would not have been possible for an old man's house to have been unvisited, or to have been sold after his death in so summary a fashion. He had asked Pop Berger once who had sold the house and had been told that it went for unpaid taxes. But why were the taxes not paid by some kinsman? How had it come to pass that his old grandfather had been so solitary, even though his son had gone so far? And why, and why, and this was the supreme question, never to be answered, had his father left his home and the aging man to go across the sea to a country he had never seen, where the people spoke a tongue strange to him, and there try to tell of a god unwanted and unknown? None of these questions could be answered. What Pop had said was true. There was no one who knew of his existence.

Clem stepped out of the small cold pool and dried himself by stripping the water from his body with his hands and then by waving his arms and jumping up and down. In spite of poor food he was healthy and his blood rushed to his skin with heat and soon he put on his clothes and climbed the hill to the house. Pop Berger was already out at the barn, and Clem went in; without greeting he took a small stool and a pail and began to milk a brindled cow.

At first, accustomed by the Chinese to greeting anyone he met, he had tried to greet the man and the woman and the children when he first saw them in the morning. Then he perceived that this only surprised them and that it roused their contempt because they thought he was acting with some sort of pretense. He learned to keep his peace and to proceed in silence to work for food.

This morning there was none of the usual dawdling and shouting. Pop Berger harnessed the wagon early and began piling into it the few bags of grain he wanted to sell, and some baskets of apples. He left all the milking to Clem, and stamped away into the kitchen to eat and to dress himself. There the woman, too, made haste, eating and dressing, and within the hour the pair were ready to be gone, leaving the dishes and the house to the two girls.

“You, Clem!” Pop Berger shouted from the wagon seat. “You can git the manure cleaned out today. Don't forget the chickens. Tim can do whatever you tell him. I told him a'ready to lissen to what you sayed.”

“And I've left the food you're to eat in the pantry, and that's all anybody is to have. Don't open no jars or nothin'!” Mom shouted.

Clem had come out of the barn and he nodded, standing very straight, his arms folded as he watched them drive off. He wondered that he did not hate them and yet he did not. They were what they were through no fault of their own, their ignorance was bestial but innocent and their cruelty was the fruit of ignorance. He had seen degenerate cruelty sometimes in the streets of Peking. There the people knew, there they had been taught what humanity was, and when they violated what they knew, the evil was immense. But these two, this man and this woman, had never been taught anything. They functioned as crudely as animals. Where had they come from, he often wondered, and were the others all like them? There were no neighbors near, and he had no one with whom to compare them.

He finished milking the cows and carried the milk into the springhouse, where it would be cool. Then he went into the kitchen to find food. There, as usual when the man and woman were gone, nothing was being done. The bare table was littered with dirty dishes. Mamie and Jen sat beside it, silent and motionless in dreadful weariness. Tim slumped in Pop Berger's ragged easy chair. Bump was still eating, walking softly about the table, picking crumbs.

“Got breakfast for me, Mamie?” Clem asked.

She nodded toward the stove and he opened the oven door, took out a bowl of hominy, and sat down at the end of the table.

He looked at them, one and the other. Tim's lack luster eyes, agate brown, held less expression than a dog's and his mouth, always open, showed a strange big tongue bulging against his teeth. His body, long and thin, a collection of ill-assorted bones, folded itself into ungainly shapes. Mamie was small, a colorless creature not to be remembered for anything. Jen might die. The springs of life were already dead in her. She did not grow.

“Come here,” he said to Bump. “I don't want all this. Finish it, if you like.”

He held out his bowl and Bump snatched it, went behind the stove on the woodpile, and sat down in his hiding place. Often the woman lifted the poker and drove him out of it, but today he could enjoy it.

“Listen to me, all of you,” Clem said, leaning on the table.

They turned their faces toward him.

“How would you like to go away from here?” He spoke clearly and definitely, for he had learned that only so did they heed him. Accustomed to the loud voices of the man and woman they seemed to hear nothing else.

“Where?” Tim asked after a pause.

“I don't know—run away, find something better.”

“Where would we sleep?” Mamie asked.

“We'd take a blanket apiece, sleep by a haystack somewhere until we got ourselves a house, or some rooms.”

“What would we eat?” she asked again.

“I'd work and get money and buy something. Tim could work, too. Maybe you could find a job helping in a house.”

He had expected some sort of excitement, even a little joy, but there was neither. They continued to stare at him, their eyes still dull. Jen said nothing, as though she had not heard. She seemed half asleep, or perhaps even ill.

“Jen, are you sick?” Clem asked.

She lifted her large, pale blue eyes to his face, looking not quite at his eyes, but perhaps at his mouth. She shook her head. “Awful tired,” she whispered.

“Too tired to come with us—out into the sunshine, Jen? We could stop and rest after we had got a few miles away.”

She shook her head again.

“If Jen don't go, I won't neither,” Mamie said.

“I ain't goin',” Tim said.

Clem started at them. “But you don't like it here,” he urged. “They're mean to you. You don't get enough to eat.”

“We're only Aid children,” Tim said. “If we went somewheres else it would be just like it is here.”

“You wouldn't be Aid children,” Clem declared. “I'd fix things.”

“We'll always be Aid children,” Tim repeated. “Once you're Aid you can't do nothin' about it.”

Clem was suddenly angry. “Then I'll leave you here. I've made up my mind to go and go I shall. You can tell them when they get home tonight. Say I've gone and I'm not coming back ever. They needn't look for me.”

They stared at him, Jen's eyes spilling with tears. “Where you goin'?” Tim asked in a weak voice.

“Back where I came from,” Clem said recklessly. He longed unutterably to get back somehow to Mr. Fong's house in the familiar streets of Peking, which he had not known he loved. That was impossible, but to leave this house was possible. For the moment anger quenched his conscience. He had given them their chance and they would not take it. He had said he would take the burden of them on his own back, though he was no kin of theirs, and they had refused him even this hard way to his own freedom. Now he would think only of himself.

He leaped up the crooked stairs and took his suitcase and crammed his clothes into it. He had a little money left from the store the sailors had given him and he had kept it with him always in the small leather bag one of the sailors had made. This bag he had kept tied about his waist, night and day, lest the woman or the man discover it and take it from him. He paused for a moment to decide the matter of a blanket and then revolted at the thought of taking anything from this house. He would not even take bread with him. Alone he would be free to starve if he must.

Down the stairs he went again, carrying his suitcase. They were still in the kitchen as he had left them. None of them had moved. Their eyes met him as he came in, faintly aghast, and yet unspeaking.

“Good-by, all of you,” he said bravely. “Don't forget I wanted you to come with me.”

He drew his folded cap out of his pocket and put it on his head.

“Good-by,” he said again.

They stared at him, still unanswering, and upon the strength of his continuing anger he strode out of the room and across the weedy yard to the gate which hung crooked upon its hinges. He leaped over it and marched down the road, his head high, to meet a world he did not know.

Despair drove him and lent him courage, and then the beauty of the land lifted his heart. Surely somewhere there were kind people, someone like Mr. Fong, who would recognize him and give him shelter for a while. He would work and repay all that he received and some day he would, after all, come back and see the wretched children he had left in that kitchen.

He had gone perhaps a mile when he heard the sound of feet padding in the dusty road. He stopped and turning his head he saw Bump running doggedly along, and he waited.

“What do you want, Bump?” he asked the sandy-faced, sandy-haired child who blinked at him, panting. The signs of hominy were still about his mouth.

“I'm comin' with you,” he gasped.

Clem glared at him, for a moment resentful of the least of burdens. Then his conscience leaped into life again. Surely he could take this small creature with him, wherever he went, a younger brother.

“All right,” he said shortly. “Come along.”

I
N MID-AUGUST THE NEWSPAPER
headlines had announced the end of the siege in Peking, and a cablegram from Dr. Lane brought the news that he intended to stay. The Imperial Court had fled, and the Old Empress had wailed aloud her hardships. She had not even been given time to comb her hair, and her breakfast on the day of the flight had been only a hard-boiled egg.

“Serves her right,” Mrs. Lane said briskly. “Well, William, it looks as though I'd have to go back to your father. But you'll be able to manage by yourself if I get your clothes ready before I go.”

William went to Cambridge for his final examinations in September. He had missed the preliminaries but Mrs. Lane had herself gone to the dean with a certificate signed by the headmaster of the Chefoo Boys' School. She had so talked and persuaded and demanded that the dean was much impressed and granted her son a certain clemency, and William was admitted conditionally. He was confident that whatever promises his mother had made to the dean, he could in the course of four years fulfill. Indeed, he preferred not to know all that his mother had said and done for him. Thus he did not know, though he suspected, that the admirable arrangement he had made with Mr. Cameron to be Jeremy's roommate, and when necessary his tutor, had taken shape first in the active brain of his mother.

Mrs. Lane, before she went back to China, had chosen a final Sunday afternoon to call upon Mr. and Mrs. Cameron. She had grown friendly if not intimate with them during the summer when William had gone almost every afternoon to play tennis at the house on top of the cliff. He had asked her to call upon Mrs. Cameron, stipulating that neither of his sisters nor his grandmother was to go with her.

“The Camerons are the kind of people I belong with,” he had explained. “I want them to know I have a mother I need not be ashamed of. Nobody else matters.”

Mrs. Lane was touched. “Thank you, dear.”

The formal call had gone off well, and Mrs. Cameron had explained that she must be forgiven if she could not return it, since in the summer she made no calls. Mrs. Lane and William were, however, invited to dinner within the month. After the evening pleasantly spent by Mrs. Lane talking about the Empress Dowager and the magnificence of Peking, it had occurred to the indomitable mother that a problem which had been worrying her much could now be solved. In spite of all her efforts, it was clear that William would be compelled to earn money somehow during college, and she could not imagine how this was to be done. She had inquired of the dean, and he had suggested waiting on table or washing dishes. This suggestion she had accepted with seeming gratitude but she knew it was impossible. William would not wait upon anyone nor would he wash dishes. It would be impossible to make him. She remembered the delightful evening in the great seaside house. It was a pity, she had thought, that the heir to all the wealth was only a pale sickly boy. William would so have enjoyed it, would have been so able to spend it well, looking handsome and princely all the while. She had thought deeply for some weeks, and had at last decided to call one last time upon the Camerons. She wrote a short note to Mrs. Cameron, was grateful for all the kindnesses of the summer, mentioned her impending return to China and how she feared to leave her boy so new and friendless here, and asked permission to come and say good-by. When Mrs. Cameron telephoned her to say they would be at home on a certain Sunday, thither she went, at five o'clock.