The Sand Pebbles (74 page)

That year spring came early to China Light. Flowers tinted the far slopes of the mountain and the dark, moist smell of turned earth blew off the fields. The farmers expected a fair and fruitful summer. Within the walls trees leafed out, early flowers colored beds and borders and the climbing roses around the small cemetery were forming a host of buds.

Since Mrs. Craddock’s death, Mr. Craddock had not liked to stay indoors. They had placed a bench for him against the whitewashed outer wall of his house, beside Ting’s caldron, and he would sit there on sunny days. He had turned wholly gray during the winter and the old, dark fire was burned out in him. The serenity that replaced it was curiously Chinese, Shirley thought. He would sit there in his dark Chinese gown and skull cap and make small, pleasant talk with old Ting and the people who came to buy hot water. He knew the domestic affairs of all the China Light households and he had become something like a beloved old grandfather whom they all had in common.

Shirley sat there with him one sunny day late in March, talking idly with several of the Chinese people, when Gillespie came up and
broke in. He spoke English rather than Chinese. That, and his troubled manner, seemed abruptly to draw a separating line.

“We’d best go inside,” he said. “There’s something we must talk about, at once.”

They sat in the small parlor and it seemed damp and chill and dark. Gillespie read the news from the flimsy news sheet he said Cho-jen had just brought from Paoshan. The Kuomintang had taken Nanking and British and American warships had shelled the city. Forty thousand were claimed killed. He looked up at their shocked exclamations.

“Cho-jen is certain that’s the wildest kind of exaggeration,” he assured them.

The rest of the sheet was a violent exhortation to stand to arms and prepare to resist treaty power aggression. The Nanking shelling was taken to be the first step toward open intervention on behalf of the northern warlords.

“Surely
the ships had provocation?” Shirley said.

“Of course they did. The troops at Nanking are Hunanese, Pan’s regiment among them,” Gillespie said. “Cho-jen is inclined to think the provocation was deliberate.”

Gillespie wanted to put off discussing what it meant to them personally, Shirley could see. Through Cho-jen he had become intensely interested in the revolution, particularly its development in the Chien Valley. He explained the Nanking episode in terms of the rear-area movement to capture the revolution for Bolshevism. That had gone a long way in Hunan; only Cho-jen and his China Light group were keeping the Bolshevik Chung faction from control of the Chien Valley. The provincial worker-peasant council in Changsha had decreed the treaties canceled in Hunan.

“Cho-jen has heard that they are trying to provoke trouble with the gunboats at Changsha,” Gillespie said grimly. “The trouble at Nanking is no doubt more of the same.”

The reason for it was the recurrent rumor that Chiang Kai-shek was about to lead the conservative wing of the Kuomintang in a counterrevolution against the entire worker-peasant movement, Gillespie went on. To do so successfully, he would have to bow to the unequal
treaties in order to get treaty power support, and the revolution would be lost. But if the radical wing could force a war with one or more of the treaty powers first, they would prevent that. They would make the revolution Bolshevik instead, because then all the support would have to come from Russia.

“We have it right here in miniature,” Gillespie said. “The Chung faction is already making this a very severe test for Cho-jen.”

He had come to their part in it. As he spoke, he kept folding and unfolding the flimsy news sheet and smoothing it on his knee. Mr. Craddock listened placidly. Chung street orators in Paoshan were clamoring for execution of Craddock’s death sentence. They were calling Cho-jen a running dog. By now Cho-jen had a stay of execution from the highest Kuomintang levels in Hankow. But the Chungs were saying that the Kuomintang itself would be a pack of running dogs if it did not take up the challenge of Nanking. They had called up the Chung-dominated part of the local militia and they were making threats of marching on China Light.

“Cho-jen is starting back to Paoshan within the hour, to forestall that by counter-intrigue,” Gillespie said. “He knows this is the first major crisis of his career.”

Gillespie paused. He and Shirley looked at Mr. Craddock. The old man looked sorrowful but unafraid.

“You two must do as your own hearts bid you,” he said.

“It may be war between America and the Kuomintang,” Gillespie said. He had almost worn the news sheet out by repeated foldings. “I wondered … have you thought …”

“Yes. Months ago,” Mr. Craddock said gravely. “I believe it is God’s will that China be freed of the unequal treaties. If my country makes war on China to reimpose the treaties, that will not change my belief. I no longer hold my God and my country to be identical.”

A hush fell. It did not really sound so monstrous, Shirley thought.

“I am an old man and my life is here,” Mr. Craddock resumed. “Yet that decision was not easy for me. I do not wish you two young people to be influenced by it.”

“I made it too. I am bound.” Gillespie stood up. “Only now—” he broke off and paced the length of the small room. “Why should it
seem so
different
, just because the killing has begun?” he asked in anguish

“Because it is not just words any more.”

“Mr. Craddock, it is
not
that I fear for my life! I have the utmost faith in Cho-jen. I know we are all safe here.”

Shirley wanted to comfort him. “It is because you are a man, Walter, and this is war and weapons,” she said. She stood up, suddenly angry. “Why should anyone feel
forced
to choose, in that way? Why can’t we just be citizens of the human race?”

“Legally, no such human category is permissible,” Gillespie said.

“But it exists. The war brought it into existence,” Mr. Craddock said. “I mean the people with League of Nations passports. The stateless persons.”

“The White Russians?” Shirley’s hand went to her lips.

“Yes. Anyone eligible for a Nansen passport.”

Gillespie stopped his pacing. “Does any nation grant the valid existence of a Nansen passport?” he asked. “I’m pretty sure the U.S. does not. We hold the White Russians in China to be Chinese.”

“All I wish is to live out my days peaceably in China,” Mr. Craddock said mildly.

Gillespie snapped his fingers. “Let’s talk about that!” he said.

They talked quite a while. They decided to declare themselves stateless persons, in the event of war and for the duration of it. Gillespie said he would draft their statement and ask Mr. Lin to draft one in correct Chinese. They would mail a copy to the consul in Changsha and deposit another with the officials in Paoshan. The decision cleared away all their anxiety.

“Insofar as the state demands an absolute and unquestioning loyalty, those who put God ahead of country are all in a sense stateless persons,” Mr. Craddock said.

“Those who can still conceive of such a possibility,” Gillespie agreed. “This will be a great help to Cho-jen, too,” he added. “Now the Chungs can’t make our status here such an embarrassment to Cho-jen.”

“We belong here,” Shirley said. “Now let’s go back out in the sunshine, with the others.”

They signed their declaration just in time. The next day Tao-min took copies in to Paoshan and in late evening both he and Cho-jen returned with disturbing news. There had been fighting in Changsha. Telegraphic warning had reached Paoshan that the gunboat
San Pablo
was crossing Tungting Lake. At once the Chungs had tried to link it with the Americans at China Light. The declaration of statelessness had come just in time to counter that. The river boom was being closed and all the militia groups were being called to defend it. Cho-jen had come to muster the China Light militia.

Shouts and ragged bugling came through the open windows of the faculty office. Shirley watched the militia trying to form up on the street. Nearest the gate were the students, with their skimpy yellow-green uniforms and rifles. Behind them the farmers had only armbands and many were armed only with hand-forged spears, tridents and halberds. The weapons gleamed brightly, bobbing and jostling above the massed heads. On the lawns to either side the women and children and old people were standing. Mr. Craddock was sitting on the veranda of what had once been the Armstrong house.

“That’s it,” Gillespie said. He rattled the sheet out of his typewriter. “You might as well sign it too, Shirley,” he said.

Cho-jen waited for it, while they signed. It was an amplification of their statement and a plea for the gunboat to turn back. Cho-jen wrapped all the papers in a piece of oiled silk and put them into the leather pouch at his waist.

“I will go on hoping that there will be a chance to parley,” he said. “But I am afraid that the Chungs will make sure that there is not.”

He was quiet, almost somber, his tremendous energy more nearly in leash than Shirley had ever seen it. He
had
grown, her eyes insisted; he was tall as Gillespie, although slender and unformed with youth. But his face was as formed as Gillespie’s, almost graven, under the pressure of his time.

“I must go. It is a long march,” he said.

He shook hands with them and said good-bye. He smiled, and for that moment was a boy again. Then, abruptly, he was gone.

“Good luck!” Gillespie called after him.

“Be careful! Oh, Cho-jen, be
careful!”
Shirley cried.

She crossed to the window, to hide the tears that had started to her eyes. Gillespie came and stood behind her.

“You know he can’t be careful. The China Light boys will have to be in the forefront of it, to refute the lies the Chungs have spread.”

“Because of us.”

“We can at least be glad now that sailor did not come with us.”

“If he had, he’d be down there marching with them!”

“Do you mean you feel I should be?” Gillespie asked quietly.

“No. No, Walter.” She tried to control herself. “Cho-jen and all my boys are enough,” she said.

She could not stop the tears on her cheeks.
And Jake Holman will be on the other side
, she thought.
Isn’t that enough for the Lord God of Battles?

“I want to take arms and march with them. I do, Shirley!”

“You mustn’t. Not even think it,” she said. “I’m just being a foolish, instinctive woman. But don’t you be foolish.”

He moved up beside her. “It’s a mad game,” he said. “A wicked, hateful game.” His voice was bitter.

They stood in silence. Jake had used to call it a game, she was remembering.
You choose up sides and kill each other
, he had said once. As she had often before, she wished again that she could have helped him to escape from it. But it was too late now.

Cho-jen came in sight, striding along. As he passed, a wave of form and order seemed to pass with him along the chaotic ranks. The gleaming weapons steadied and aligned themselves. The students struck up their marching song.

They were pushing open the great wooden gates. Bugles sounded raggedly and the weapons bobbed and tossed once more as the ranks began to move. New tears started to her eyes and she wanted to rest her head on Gillespie’s shoulder, but she would not. From outside the gates she could still hear her students singing.

While the light lasted, the
San Pablo
groped her way westward between green marshy islands from which white flurries of water birds rose screaming like lost souls. All the men came down and took their turns at stoking. When they anchored at sunset and banked fires, they had hardly more than bunker scrapings left to burn. They knew there was a timber raft stranded at Ta An from which they would get wood the next day.

Half the sky was red with sunset. Farren had gotten the topside swept and washed down. Bone-weary as they were, the men squared away the living spaces as well as they could. Welbeck shared out the last of the soap and shaving cream. They all bathed and shaved and cleaned up. They were quiet and methodical about it.

It was a cool, crisp evening, sprinkled with stars. The Sand Pebbles were making up all their old feuds. A man would say something friendly and get a friendly response and drift along and repeat it with another man. They did not make apologies. They were all agreeing together without words that nothing had ever happened for which apologies were necessary. It was a matter of grins exchanged, small jokes and friendly slaps and nudges. One by one, they all made
peace with Holman that way. He saw Crosley and Red Dog, each still bearing marks of their fight, standing at the rail with their arms across each other’s shoulders.