The Bitter Tea of General Yen (11 page)

“Thank you, thank you,” he said.

There was no trace of irritation in his face. Looking at Miss Reed Megan saw in her eyes an empty look as if one feeling had evaporated too quickly for another immediately to take its place.

They stood about the table for a moment. Then Miss Reed crossed over to one of the windows and opened it. She stood there listening. Megan heard the rain falling more heavily now, spattering off the eaves, on to the sill, onto the tiles of the courtyard, a deliciously relaxing sound, a sound of abandonment, of dissolution. They all listened. Then a sudden crackle of rifle-shots burst through, stamped against the monotones of night, silence, and rain like rockets on a dark sky. Megan was vividly conscious once more of the terrors of the outside, terrors beyond this veil of rain streaming over them like a protective insulation. The thought of safety became suddenly so sweet that her mind clung to it for a moment with a piercing delight. Then she thought of how a few hours before she had lain in her bed and envied the workers at the orphanage, and a forced, heavily articulated courage crept over her. She heard without surprise Miss Reed’s voice:

“Perhaps it might be better to make a run for it. If you can wait a moment I’ll get the children ready.”

Miss Reed hurried into the next room followed by Miss Minton. The Doctor sat down again and closed his eyes. Megan sat down opposite him. He said nothing, and Megan could see in his face no sign of anger or triumph. She wondered if he had ever been aware of the curious adoration, forced into an unwilling antagonism, which Miss Reed so clearly felt for him. Poor Miss Reed! She did not believe he did. His skull-like face with closed, hollowed eyes was empty now of all feeling, only his lips moved slightly as if he were praying.

Very shortly the two women returned with five small children wrapped in coats and shawls, huddling together and staring at the light like little blinded animals. One little girl was crying,
but Miss Minton very expertly wound her woolen scarf across her mouth so that her sobs were muffled and she might use her scarf, if she wished, for a handkerchief. Miss Reed and Miss Minton carried two old suitcases and wore very worn coats of leopard cat and no hats. Miss Reed’s small face framed with short hair, in spite of its many lines, looked strangely childish above the frayed fur collar, especially as Megan saw on it the adolescent look of adoration which had become now faintly idiotic. She walked to Doctor Strike and laid her hand on his arm.

“We are in your hands now, Doctor,” she said.

But the Doctor made no reply. He took her bag abruptly from her, snatched Miss Minton’s and stalked out of the parlor. Miss Minton and Miss Reed gathered a child with each hand and followed. Megan came last with the smallest, she who had been crying.

At the street door they stopped for a moment and listened. No sound came from the street, but they heard once more at a little distance the crackle of rifle fire. The Doctor seemed satisfied. He opened the door slowly, then suddenly swung it wide. The street was empty, the eating-house across the way shuttered and closed, the dim light over their own door shone only on rain spattering in puddles on the rough road.

“We are fortunate,” said the Doctor. “Now keep close together but don’t walk too fast.”

They closed the door carefully and noiselessly behind them. They stood still while the Doctor looked cautiously up and down the street, but still they saw nothing and heard only the vast, diffused sound of rain.

“It seems almost too good to be true,” he murmured.

They started slowly down and quite suddenly Miss Minton slipped on the wet step and fell thudding her whole length to the sidewalk. She fell without a word, as completely as though she carried out a rehearsed part, and lay there with her head turned from them. They looked at her, unwilling to believe she had actually fallen. Doctor Strike stepped down and picked her up. He
held her for a moment, and her eyes were congested, astonished, her mouth half open.

“I’ve hurt my ankle,” she said hoarsely.

The smallest child began to cry once more, and Miss Minton was not able as before to muffle her sobs.

They stood and looked at Miss Minton, even Doctor Strike looked at her for a moment, as though she had deliberately betrayed them and they were aghast at her duplicity. The smallest child went on sobbing.

“Hush, darling, do hush,” whispered Megan. She wiped its streaming eyes and nose with her handkerchief.

“Oh, I’ve hurt my ankle!” Miss Minton’s voice had become a groan of anguish.

The Doctor bent and examined it while Miss Reed held her up.

“It isn’t broken,” he said. “You will just have to walk on it somehow. I’ll help you.”

They redistributed the children and the baggage, the Doctor put his arm under Miss Minton’s arms.

“Try now,” he insisted. “You’ve got to do it.” She limped forward, her breath coming in explosive groans at every step. The youngest child began to cry more loudly.

“Hush, darling,” said Megan and, when she did not stop, shook her slightly. “You really must hush,” she said sharply.

They moved along the street with the slowness of a nightmare. But Megan knew they must reach the barricade, because there were always certain things that God would never permit and the slaughter of these children was one of them. They would certainly reach the barricade. The street was so cold, so dark, touched only by flickerings of distant fires, that it was impossible to imagine it as ever made aware of the infinitely remote warmth and beauty of the sun. Megan felt that she might be crawling over some dead planet, strayed outside the universe, moving blindly and remotely toward no possible end. And yet the barricade was only a few
hundred yards away. Doctor Strike had said the Chinese were never able to discover the existence of a God of love. It had not seemed so tragic when he said it as it did now. Now she could not conceive of how they had existed without it. Only to a God of love was everything possible, immortality, redemption, miracle. Miracle. These children were going to be got alive and unharmed to the barricade.

They reached the end of the street, turned to the right and walked slowly, the limping Miss Minton in their midst, past the smoldering, smoking ruins of the godowns to the North Station.

The station enclosure was crowded and steam from an engine gushed up from behind the roof of a platform. They kept on the far side of the street. Miss Minton was groaning and sobbing. She fell against Doctor Strike’s shoulder.

“I can’t do it,” she cried, “I just can’t do it.”

The Doctor looked over and saw inside the iron fence of the enclosure five or six rickshaws waiting, the coolies squatting between the shafts. There was a crowd around the entrance, which was a side one leading directly to the train platforms. They had not yet come to the main gate. They could see that the crowd was mostly soldiers but there were coolies among them. The Doctor seized Miss Minton more firmly about the waist and half carried her across the street to the side gate. Megan, Miss Reed and the children followed close behind. At the gate the Doctor called stridently:

“Wambotso!”

The rickshaws swooped down on them like pigeons to scattered grain. There were six of them jostling and tugging for place. The crowd in their curiosity pressed them against the iron fence. Megan’s shoulder was pressed against the iron. She pushed and kept as well as she could a clear space in front of her for the huddling children. A very tall coolie with a bronze aquiline face and a cue wound around his battered felt hat was looking at her across
several heads and shoulders. He held a long bamboo carrying-pole. He said something in a loud voice and some of the others laughed. Megan looked away from him. Doctor Strike had reached one of the rickshaws with Miss Minton and lifted her in. The rickshaw started. He put four children into the next and sent it following, Miss Reed he lifted by force into the next. Megan saw her protest, heard her say wildly, “Not till you come, Doctor!” but he set the youngest Russian on her lap and himself shoved the rickshaw forward.

The rickshaws swerved aside to make room for a big closed car which had come up to the side gate. The soldiers began shoving the crowd to make way and Megan was nearly pushed off her feet. She had a momentary glimpse of Doctor Strike’s face, rigid and white, and the blaze of his quicksilver eyes, as he turned to put her in the next rickshaw. Then the tall coolie with the carrying-pole struck him over the head. He staggered backward from her, crashing into the rickshaw he had intended for her. Megan caught him under the arms and, with an effort that seemed to tear her strength out by the roots, lifted him into it. The rickshaw lurched forward and she had time to see them all four wabbling drunkenly in their flight away from her down the street. Suddenly frantic, almost beyond consciousness, she clutched at the remaining one. But she felt herself torn from it, heard shouts, indistinguishable clamor, and through it, like a thin ray of light, like a small sudden pain, one scream that was her own.

The circles that whirled around Megan’s head came dangerously close, but there seemed to be no way to stop them because she floated on darkness unsupported. Then something else touched her, harsh and ugly even in darkness, and on consideration she found it was within her and it hurt. But that was exactly it, it was pain. And pain made her aware of a body that seemed to form sluggishly about her once more, out of uncertain elements.

The circles swung past, widening, they slewed off, whirled more remotely. But the pain became something that had to be handled. It was punctuated by a joggling movement, irritating, persistent. It was like tiny jets of flickering light.

The last of the circles throbbed dimly a long way off, vanished, and the joggling went on. Something must be done. An effort of some sort must be made. But where was the spring of action? In the arms, in the legs, in the eyelids? Push somehow. And it was easy after all. It was done.

Megan saw that it was raining again. Another rainy day. She seemed to be caught in one great, gray, endless spiderweb of a rainy day.

But the pain was only a pain in the head, over the eyes, making it difficult to keep them open.

The joggling went on, modified now and unimportant.

Directly ahead was a little half-moon shining agreeably in the grayness, a little half-moon of lime-green satin supporting another moon, full, round, traced with benevolent, surprised eyebrows.

“Do you feel better?”

Some one had said that.

“I believe I do,” said Megan and saw a train moving, rain streaming down a pane, a Chinese face over a collar of lime-green satin.

“Then I want you to drink some tea.”

A hand like a curled shell held a glass over which hung steam in a small fog, with an odor of aromatic flowers.

“I don’t think I can drink it.”

“Please try.”

“I think it will make me sick.”

The eyebrows lifted now with such a delicate insistence, not really eyebrows, only painted lines done with one stroke on a powdered forehead.

Some one came up from behind and held a hot, wet towel on her forehead. Surprisingly, it felt well, seemed to dissolve most of the pain and made her conscious of other lesser pains in the back, shoulders and arms. But the head was the real pain in spite of towels.

“You must not be frightened,” said the lady, “no one will hurt you.”

Suddenly a vista clicked open. She saw the face of the coolie with the cue wound round his hat, four rickshaws fleeing from her down a dark street, and she felt again the last draining of strength as she lifted Doctor Strike into the rickshaw, felt also the humiliation of her terror which had permitted her to shriek for help in the midst of a crowd. This last became physical.

“I’m afraid I’m going to be sick,” she said.

“Try to drink some tea.”

A cool hand slipped under her head. Megan looked into a glass and saw little tea flowers swimming in it upright like weeds on a river bottom. They moved up to her and a heat that was pungent flowed down her throat direct to some center of weakness which was instantly fortified. She was not sick.

“The General thinks it will do you good.”

“The General!”

In the corner of the carriage nearest the window sat a man in a gray uniform. His prominent eyes held the reflection of some incomprehensible amusement. As he saw her looking at him he rose out of his seat and bowed.

“I am so sorry for you,” he said. “I am not responsible for what has happened. But I am charging myself to take care of you and you will not be harmed.” He made a slight gesture with one hand, expressing an apology more delicate than his words. Megan stared at his hand. The beauty of it was strangely familiar.

The amah put another towel on her head, and the lady in the green satin coat at intervals held the tea to her lips. Megan sipped it slowly. There was a significance to all this which escaped her.

“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before, or am I imagining——”

“No,” said the General, and he smiled outright, “you do not imagine. You were kind enough to offer me a handkerchief.”

“But of course. You were going into the Concession. The wrecked car.”

He and the lady nodded.

To decide what she was doing in a train with the man of the wrecked car, with the lady of the green hat, was too much for her. To ask them did not occur to her. But she had seen them before. That made the situation reasonable enough that she was able to accept it for the time being.

“Oh, I guess it is all right,” she said vaguely.

They nodded again, both smiling to reassure her. Megan closed her eyes. She heard them murmur to each other in Chinese. When
she opened her eyes the lady was sitting across from her, over her knees the amah had spread an embroidered towel and she was feeding herself with chopsticks out of little bowls, held close to her mouth, which the amah handed her in turn. The General was not eating. He smoked a cigarette and, his head leaning back against the cushions, blew smoke rings toward the ceiling. Megan studied the amazing, wasteful beauty of the hand with the cigarette. She remembered its inefficiency when touching a bleeding forehead, when holding open a car door, yet it remained an exquisite instrument.