Kitabı oku: «In Red and Gold», sayfa 15
“My boy, it is important that you and I have a talk. Suppose we sit down.” He indicated the steamer chair; but Rocky insisted that he take it, himself dropping heavily down on the step of the deck.
“How – how is she standing it?” he asked, his troubled eyes searching that strong face before him.
“As well as we could ask. It is bound to be very hard for her – especially during these next few days. But she has courage. And she knows he would wish her not to mourn… A matter has come up that concerns you, Rocky” – it was the first time he had used that familiar name; the boy’s moody eyes brightened momentarily, and a touch of color rose in his cheeks – “and I don’t feel I can delay telling you about it. First, you had better let me read you this.”
He had not thought, before this moment, of the necessity that he himself make the translation for the boy. It had to be difficult; he would have given much if the thing could have been managed in some less directly personal way; but for that matter, difficulties lay so thickly about him now that there was no good in so much as giving them a thought. And so – deliberately, with great care to find the nearly precise English equivalent of every obscure phrase – he read the letter through.
He dared not look at the boy’s face, but could not but become aware of the hands that twitched, clasping and unclasping, in his lap, and of the feet that at times nervously tapped the deck. When the task was done he quietly folded the paper and slipped it into a pocket.
The silence grew long and trying. Doane searched and searched his own still confused mind for the right, the clear word; but could not, during these earlier moments, find it. The boy, plainly, was crushed; but behind the clouded eyes and the knit brows an emotional storm was gathering. Doane felt that. It had to come, of course. And it would have to be handled.
But the first words were almost calm.
“So that” – thus the brooding youth – “so that’s how it is!”
Doane waited. After a little the boy sprang up. “But in God’s name, why didn’t you tell me!” he cried. “You’ve let me come and talk to you! You – This isn’t fair! You’ve made a fool of me! You – ” Doane rose too. They stood side by side among the heavily scented blossoms. Doane felt moved to put a kindly hand on the slender shoulder beside him; but a following thought cautioned him that even a touch would be resented at this moment.
“I didn’t tell you,” he said, “because until I read this paper I didn’t know.”
“But you must have known! You told – him. Told him you loved her! Probably you’ve been telling her, too – here under my eyes. Oh, God, what a fool I’ve been… If you’d only been square with me!”
“This is not fair,” said Doane, still very quiet. “We must talk this out, but not now – not while you are angry.”
“Angry! What in heaven’s name is the sense of talking it out! It’s settled, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“That’s not so!” The boy seemed to be recovering somewhat now from the first shock of unreason. He turned away to hide the tears in his eyes. “You’ve admitted to her father, if not to her, that you love her… Oh, why didn’t I see it! Why did I have to be such an awful fool!.. She knows it now. And you know as well as I what she’ll do. She’ll never go against her father’s last wish – never. You know that!”
“I recognize that she must be seeing it in that light now, but – ”
“Oh, what’s the use of talk. You know! For God’s sake, let me alone, can’t you!”
Doane’s brows drew slowly together; but this and a note of something near command in his voice, were the only outward indications of the storm within his breast.
“This is not a time for either you or me to be thinking of ourselves. You may be sure that Hui Fei will not be thinking so. And it may help you to realize that this situation is difficult for me, as it is for you. It is true that Hui Fei’s only thought, now, under the stress of this sorrow, will be to submit to her father’s every wish. But this stress will pass. There is only one course to take – ”
“But – ”
“Listen to me! And try to meet the thing like a man. We will wait until this sad business is over. We will at least try to give up thinking of ourselves. I will see that Hui Fei and her sister are cared for by friends.”
“But all the time you’ll be seeing her, and – ”
“I must still ask you to listen and try to think clearly. As soon as it seems wise I will lay the situation before Hui Fei. I will try to persuade her that her own life is, in the last analysis, more important than even her father’s dying wish. I believe that she – would – be happier with a young man like yourself than with an – older man. It is possible that she can be led to see that her own happiness must be a factor in her choice. Have you the patience and the courage to wait for that?”
He extended his hand. The boy looked at it, then up at the stem, but still kindly face; hesitated; then, with a quivering of the lip and an explosive – “Oh God!” – rushed away; walked very fast, almost ran, the length of the deck; made his way through the crowded waist and around the cook’s well; and stood, his bare head thrown proudly back, in the prow, beside the quietly wondering tai-kung, staring toward the long curving sweep of the tree-shaded bund of Shanghai as it came gradually into view around the bend just below the city.
CHAPTER XIV – THE WORLD OF FACT
THE yellow junk was now abreast the landing hulks of the great international shipping companies just below the city. Rocky left the bow and made his way to the after cabins without once lifting his somber gaze to the silent figures on the poop. Slowly – his eyes wild, his thoughts beyond control, bitterness in his heart – he moved along the dim corridor.
A puff of wind found its way through an open window; a blue curtain swung out, discovering, through a doorway, Miss Carmichael, seated in a chair beneath the window. It was lighter in her cabin. She had laid aside the familiar middy blouse and skirt, and appeared to be sewing something on her petticoat. For an instant she looked up, her eyes meeting those of the pale youth who stood motionless in the corridor. The curtain swung back then; but as it swung the youth stepped through the doorway and stood within the room.
“I don’t know that I asked you in,” said she coolly.
His eyes were intent on the amazing, glistening strings of pearls that were looped everywhere about her clothing.
Through narrowed lids she watched him, sitting very still, needle poised just as she had drawn it through. On his young face was an expression of firm decision that she had not before seen there. He looked oddly, now, like his father. There was, apparently, a trace of the Kane iron in him. The situation was of wholly accidental origin; he couldn’t have planned it; his first expression, out in the corridor, had been of startled surprise; the decision to step within must have been instant; yet now, suddenly, he meant business. She caught all that… Here, after all, was a young man who presented difficulties.
“Take off those pearls,” said he quietly.
“You are in my room,” said she as quietly.
“I shall take the pearls when I go.”
“You’ll have my life to answer for.”
“Your life is nothing to me.”
“Your own life is.”
“Never mind about that.”
“I’ve warned you fairly.”
“Stand up.”
“You propose to take them from me by force?”
“Yes. Unless you choose to give them to me.”
“And you expect me to trust you with them.”
“Yes.”
There was a silence.
“Of course you are stronger than I,” she observed musingly.
He offered no reply to this.
Her thin mouth curved into the faint smile that was as cold as her calculating brain. “So” – said she “we’re enemies, then?”
This evidently did not interest him.
“I think,” she went on, quietly desperate, “that I’ll try crying and screaming. I’m something of an actress.”
“Scream your head off,” said he, the slang phrase sounding almost courteous in this new quiet voice of his.
“There’s not a person – alive – that could prove these pearls aren’t my own.” Her voice dwelt on that one telling word, “alive,” with an almost caressing note of satisfaction.
He shook his head with a touch of impatience. And she was studying him, her quick thoughts darting sharply about – darting in every conceivable direction – for an avenue of escape. She knew, however, as the moments passed and the pale youth stood his ground that there was only one. She had supposed him weak. It hardly seemed that her judgment could have gone so far wrong.
“You’re cruel to me,” she said softly.
“Stand up.”
Now she obeyed. He drew near.
“I didn’t think you’d turn out this sort, Rocky. You liked me at first.” She moved a hand, hesitatingly, within reach of his own. But he ignored it. “Aren’t we going to see each other at Shanghai? Are you just going to be brutal with me – like this?.. I’d like to see you.”
“Will you take them off,” said he, “or must I?”
She turned to him, with curiously mixed passions coming to life in her face.
“Oh, my God, Rocky!” she cried very low, “haven’t you any human feelings? Can you just come in here – into my own room – and rob me, without a decent word?.. Haven’t I played fair with you? Haven’t I kept out of your way? Haven’t I?..” She moved close against him, slid her sensitively thin hands over his shoulders; looked straight up into his eyes, almost honestly. “Rocky, don’t tell me you’re this kind!”… She was clinging to him now.
He caught her hands, and, without roughness but with his young strength, removed them. She let them fall at her side.
“I’m not going to wait much longer on you,” he said.
“You’re hard as nails, Rocky.” Her underlip was quivering; her pale eyes were a little darker, and seemed full of feeling. She turned suddenly to the rough bed, and reached under the cover for her shopping bag. Hiding it from him with her body, she opened it and took out the triangular bottle; then lingered an instant to look at the clasps of the pearl cape that were set with large, perfectly cut diamonds. There were five of the clasps, and perhaps fifty of the sparkling, glittering stones. In value they would vary somewhat-: but in themselves, even without the pearls, they represented a fortune. She quietly closed the bag and replaced it under the covers.
With the rough-edged little bottle in her hand she faced him.
“I knew a girl,” she said, with a far-away look in her eyes, “who took five of these tablets and then lived two days. She suffered terribly, of…”
He caught the bottle from her hand and threw it against the wall, where it broke. The green pills rolled about the floor.
“Oh, well,” she remarked – “I can take them after you’ve gone.”
“After I’ve gone you can do as you think best.”
“But something will have to be done about me. Rocky. You’ll have to get me ashore. And see about burying me… And you’ll have to explain me.”
This moved him not at all. Apparently he was to be one of the Kanes – strong, pitiless, destined for success and power. There would be weak moments; but all that her uncannily shrewd eyes saw in him. For that matter, Miss Carmichael had known many men of the sort that in America are termed “big” – certain of them with an unpleasant secret intimacy – and each had possessed and (at moments) been possessed by strong passions. It had never been wholly a matter of what is called brain; always there had been emotional force, with a dark side as well as a bright.
Overhead the great clumsy sails creaked. Soft feet pattered about the deck. The nasal voices of the crew broke into a chantey. A chain rattled.
“We must be there,” said she. “We’re anchoring, I think.” And she glanced out the window at one of the roofed-over opium hulks that lay in those days directly opposite the bund. Finally she looked again at him.
“Very well,” she said then; and raised her arms above her head. Swiftly, at once, he began stripping off the festoons of pearls. The only other thing said was her remark, in a casual tone: “It’s understood that you’re using force. And you’ll hear from it, of course.”
As soon as he had gone she slipped into her blouse and skirt. Once again she looked thoughtfully at the radiant gems that were left to her; then went, coolly swinging the little bag, up on deck, where certain of the crew were already drawing around to the ladder at the side the sampan that had been towing astern.
Rocky had gone directly, on tiptoe, to Doane’s cabin. The huge sad-faced man was there; quick, however, with a kindly smile.
Rocky said – “I beg your pardon, sir?” – stiffly, not unlike a proud young Briton – and from a tied-up handkerchief and bulging pockets – even from his shirt above his tightly drawn belt – produced enormous quantities of perfectly matched large pearls; laid them on the bed in a heap; helped Mr. Doane make a bundle of them in a square of blue cloth.
“They are yours, sir,” he explained.
He withdrew then, with a coldness of manner that to the older man was moving; and went out on deck to await his turn in the sampan.
Doane found a temporary home for Hui Fei and her sister at the mission compound of his friend, Doctor Henry Withery, in the Chinese city; himself lodging with other friends. Rocky went to the Astor House, across Soochow Creek, which was still, in 1911, a famous stopping place for the tourists, diplomats, military and commercial men, and all the other more prosperous among the white travelers that pour into Shanghai from everywhere else in the world by the great ships that plow unceasingly the Pacific and Indian Oceans and the Yellow and China Seas; to pour out again (in peaceful times) from Shanghai by rail and by lesser craft of the river and the coast to Hong Kong and Manila to Hankow, to Tientsin and Peking, to Nagasaki, Kobe, Yokohoma and Tokio… and Shanghai had never been so crowded as now, with its thousands of travelers detained, awaiting news from this or that revolutionary center; with the American Marines and the British and German sailors; with Manchu refugees swarming into the foreign settlements; with revolutionists, queueless, wearing unaccustomed European dress, parading everywhere.
Doane found time to call at the hotel and leave word regarding the burial of his excellency; but was not to know that Rocky, himself, immured in his room, gave the word that he was out and there awaited the friendly chit that Doane sent up by the blue-robed servant. Nor was he to know that the boy dressed carefully for the ceremony, only to find the ordeal too great for his overstrung emotions. It was as an afterthought, a day or two later that Doane sent him Hui Fei’s address.
It was after this sad experience that Doane, in accordance with his promise to the late Sun Shi-pi, called on Doctor Wu Ting Fang and offered his services to the revolutionary party. Another day and he was hard at work, bending his strong, finely trained and experienced mind to the great task of presenting the dreams and the activities of Young China fairly and sympathetically to the press and the governments of the Western World… And so Griggsbv Doane, concealing – at moments almost from his own inner eye – the ache in his heart, the unutterable loneliness of his solitary existence, found himself once more fitting into the scheme of organized human life. A grave man, with sad eyes but with a slow kindly smile, always courteously attentive to the person and problem of the moment, thinking always clearly and objectively out of a comprehensively tolerant background that seemed to include all nations and all men; a gently tactful man; a tireless, powerful figure of a man, who could work twenty hours on end without a trace of fatigue, going through masses of minor detail without for a moment losing his broad view of the major problems – such was the Griggsby Doane one saw at revolutionary headquarters during that late autumn of 1911… Life had caught him up. Whatever his private sorrow, the world needed him now. Rapidly, in all that confusion, he was formulating policies, helping to direct the current of one stream of destiny. In past years Griggsby Doane had been discussed and forgotten. He had even been laughed at as an unfrocked missionary by ribald, dominant, not infrequently drunken whites along the coast. It occurred to no one to laugh at him now.
These were the days when in half the provincial capitals of China the Manchus that had ruled during nearly three centuries were hunted to their death, men and women alike, like vermin. Bloody heads decorated the lamp posts that had been erected in the Western fashion beside freshly macadamized streets. Slaughter, as in other dramatic moments in Oriental history, had become a pastime. Palaces and wealthy homes in a hundred cities were looted and burned, and a vast new traffic started up in the silks and paintings and pottery and objects of art suddenly thrown into the market… Hankow had been taken by the imperial troops, but was to be recaptured as a charred, gutted ruin. General Li Yuan-hung was now “president of the Republic of China,” up at Wu Chang, by right of military organization and popular acclaim. Admiral Sah, of the Imperial Navy, was about to witness the unanimous mutiny of his fleet. The great Yuan Shi-K’ai, himself a Chinese born, was in command of the imperial troops while negotiating on either hand with the frantic throne and the upsurging revolutionists. At Peking heads were falling and great princes were fleeing or hiding pitifully within the walls of the legations… Within a few weeks Sun Yat Sen was to leave London on his long journey eastward by way of Suez and Singapore, but without the enormous golden treasure so confidently expected by the revolutionists. Before his arrival, even, he was to be elected president of the new China, in the recently captured Nanking – where a National Assembly in cropped heads and frock coats already would be grinding out fresh tangles of legislation… The event was outrunning the mental capacity of man. What was now tragic confusion would grow through the swift-following years into tragic chaos, as the most numerous and most nearly inert of peoples struggled out of the sluggish habit of centuries toward the dubious light of modernity.
But through the chaos Griggsby Doane was never for a moment to lose the new vision that had finally cleared his long troubled mind. Behind the crumbling of the empire, underlying the torn and bleeding surface of Chinese life, lay a tradition finer, he was to believe until his dying day, than any so far developed in the truculent West – a delicate responsiveness to beauty in nature and art, a reflective quality, an instinct for peace – it was all these at once, and more; a blend of art in living and living in art; a finish that was exquisite in concept, a sensitiveness that lifted the soul of man above the ugly fact. Even the brittle perfection of Chinese etiquette – regulating every passing human contact, clothing in silken manner the naked thought – was like a fine lacquer over the knotted wood of life… America, he felt, with all its earnestly insistent young virtues, worshiped the fact. To the Americans must be preached the gospel of sensitive thought, of reflective enjoyment of the beautiful. Those old master painters of Tang and Sung breathed beauty; it was sweet air in their lungs; whereas in America beauty was too often like a garment to be bought in a shop and worn for show… Yes, this revolutionary work was a gratifying opportunity for service, of great momentary importance because the Chinese people must be rescued from Manchu conquerors and their eunuchs, from disease and famine, and from ignorance of the new world that had come amazingly, brutally, into being while the old Middle Kingdom slumbered; but it was not the main work. The aggressively greedy West, now, with its merchants and war-ships and armies, was destroying the soul of China even while teaching her a smattering of the materialistic new faith. There must be a counter-influence; as the East now so strongly felt the West, so must be the West made sensitively aware of the East. It was fair give and take. It might yet help the world to find a stable balance… This was what the difficult life of Griggsby Doane was coming to mean. The East had crept into his heart. So he must turn back to the West.
For three days Mr. Doane’s brief chit – with the address of Hui Fei in the native city – burned in Rocky Kane’s pocket; then, early in the third afternoon, he went down to the Japanese steamship offices (for the keen little brown people had already captured the Pacific traffic from the Americans) and bought the second officer’s room on a crowded liner leaving at the end of the week for San Francisco… On the fourth afternoon he called a rickshaw and rode out beyond the American post-office to the address the older man had given him.
But Mr. Doane, it appeared, was not in; already he was established at Doctor Wu’s revolutionary headquarters. Rocky considered driving there; even took the address and rode part of the way: but reconsidered, returned to the hotel, and sent a messenger to Hui Fei with this chit:
“I’m sailing Saturday. Do you feel that you could see me for a few moments?”
The reply, within the hour, bade him come. He found her in Western dress – a tailored suit, very simple; her glistening black hair parted smoothly – as he would always most vividly remember it – gently sad in manner, yet able to smile. She would be like that, come to think of it; not crushed by the tragedy, not sunken in the grief that, among Westerners, is so often a sort of histrionic egotism… They sat in a tiled courtyard among dahlias. More than ever like a proud young Briton was Rocky.
“It is good of you to see me.” Thus he began… “I couldn’t go without a word.”
She murmured then: “Of course not.”
“I want you to know, too, that I am coming to see” – he had to pause; in this new phase of sober young manhood he had not yet achieved steady self-control.
She broke the silence with a question about the revolution. It is to his credit that he talked, stumbling only at first, clearly. And as the strain of the meeting gradually relaxed, he became aware of her sobered but still intense absorption in the struggle; aware, too, increasingly, of her strong gift of what is called personality. Her mind was quick, bright, eager – better, it seemed (he had to fight bitterness here) than his own. And she was impersonal to a degree that he couldn’t yet attain – couldn’t, in fact, quite understand. He had to speak slowly and carefully; feeling his way with a dogged determination among uprushing emotions, moved as never before by the charm of appearance and manner and speech of which she was so prettily unconscious… He had come – perhaps with more than a touch in him of (again) that Western histrionism, the intense overstressing of the individual and his feelings – as a man who was effacing himself that the woman he loved might be happy with another man. Confused with this wholly unconscious call upon the sympathies, undoubtedly, was an unphrased incredulity that she – so strongly a person, fine and courageous and outstanding as he knew her to be – could accept this being almost casually left as part of a legacy to that other man. It was incredible. Unless she loved the other man… So he came around again to the personal; unaware, of course, that he was feeling inevitably with his strongly individualistic race. Even when she dwelt on race, a little later in their talk, he found no light. He couldn’t have; for the American seldom can see what lies outside himself.
“I don’ know yet what I can do,” she was saying, very honestly and simply (they hadn’t yet mentioned Mr. Doane). “Of course I’m a Manchu, after all. An’ blood does coun’. I feel that. A good many people to-day talk differen’ly, I know. We saw a good ‘eal of Socialism at college. The idealists to-day – the Jews an’ Russians an’ even some of our Chinese students – the younger men – talk as if race doesn’ matter. But of course it does. It will ta’ thousan’s of years, I suppose, to bring the races together. An’ maybe it’s impossible. Maybe it can’ be done at all. I think tha’s the tragedy of so much of this beautiful dreaming… An’ here you see I’m a Manchu, an’ yet I wan’ the Manchus put out of China. Because they won’ let China grow. An’ China mus’ grow, or die.”
He was moodily watching her; head bowed a little, gazing out under knit brows. “Do you know,” he said, “it’s a queer thing to say, of course, but sometimes you make me feel terribly young.”
She smiled faintly. “You are – rather young, Rocky.”
He closed his eyes and compressed his lips; his name, on her lips, was dangerously thrilling music to him. After a moment he went doggedly on.
“The crowds I’ve gone with at home haven’t talked about these things. They wouldn’t think it good form.”
“I know,” said she. “They woul’n’.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if we’re – well, intelligent, exactly. You know – just motors and horses and girls and bridge and ‘killings’ in Wall Street.”
“Killings?” Her brows were lifted.
“Oh – picking up a lot of money, quick.”
“That,” she mused, “is what I sometimes worry about. You know, I love America. I have foun’ happiness there. I love the books an’ the colleges and the freedom an’ all the goo’ times. But it is true, I think – money is God in America. Pipple don’ like to have you say it, of course. But I’m afraid it is true. Ever’-thing has to come to money – the gover’men’, the churches, ever’thing. I have seen that. That is the hard side of America. I don’ like that so well.” Finally – coming down, helplessly, on the personal, yet with a courageous light in Ins eyes – he said: “I do want you to know this – Hui. You won’t mind my speaking of my love for you – ”
Her hand moved a very little way upward. “Please! I can’t help that. It’s my life now. I’m full of you. And it has changed me. I’m – I’m going back… I’m going at things differently. I want you to know that. Because if I hadn’t met you it couldn’t possibly have happened. And if I hadn’t – well, learned what it means to love a wonderful girl like you. I want you to know how big the change is that you’ve made.”
“Rocky,” she said gently – “will you do something for me?” He waited…"I wan’ you to go back to college.”
“I’ve already made up my mind to that,” he replied, more quietly. “It’s the job for me now. It’s the next thing.”
“I’m glad,” said she. “An’ I’d love it if you’d write to me sometimes.”
He inclined his head.
Then, for a moment, his old turbulent inner self unexpectedly (even to himself), lifted its head.
“I tried to see Mr. Doane – that is, I thought perhaps I ought to tell him that I was coming out here.”
She seemed slightly puzzled at this. Her lips framed questioningly the words: “Tell him?”
“I – I perhaps can’t say much – but I’m sure you and he will be happy. I – oh, he’s a big man. He’s terribly busy now, of course – you know what he’s doing – at Wu Ting Fang’s headquarters?”
She inclined her head rather wearily, saying: “He wrote me a ver’ kin note – jus’ to say that he was busy.”
“They talk about him some at the hotel. All of a sudden he seems to be a power here.”
She went without a further word into the house, returning with a slip of paper. Into her manner had crept at the mention of Doane’s name, a gentler, more wistful quality that she seemed not to think of concealing; it was even a confiding quality, intimately friendly.
“I don’ quite un’erstand it,” she said. “A gen’leman called from the Hong Kong Bank an’ lef’ this.”
Rocky read the paper; a receipt for a sealed parcel of pearls and for other separate jewels and a sum of money.
“Oh – he put it all there in your name,” said he, while a sudden new hope rose into his drying throat and throbbed in his temples.
“Yes. It puzzle’ me – a little.”
He turned the paper over and over in his fingers, once again struggling to think… She sat motionless, gazing at the dahlias.
Blindly then he groped for her hands, found them and impulsively gripped them.
“Hui” – he whispered huskily – “tell me – if it’s like this – if you – if he… All this time I’ve supposed you and he were… I want you to come with me to America. We both do love it there. I’ll give up my life to making you happy. I’ll slave for you. I’ll make of my life what you say. just let us try it together…”
She silently heard him out – through this and much more, leaving her hands quietly in his. Finally then, when the emotional gust seemed in some measure to have spent itself, she said, gently:
“Rocky, I wan’ you to listen to what I’m going to tell you. You said I make you feel young. Well – can’ you see why? Can’ you see that I’m quite an ol’ lady?”
“But that’s nonsense! You – ” His eyes were feasting on her soft skin and on the exquisite curve of her cheek.
“No – you mus’ listen! First tel me how old you are.”
Unexpectedly on the defensive, Rocky had to compose himself, arrange his dignity, before he could reply. “I was twenty-one in the summer.”
“Ver’ good. An’ I was twenty-five in the spring.”
“But – ”
“Please! I don’ know what you coul’ have thought – how young you thought I was when I wen’ to college. But tha’s the way it is. I’m an ol’ lady. I have learn’ to like you ver’ much. I’m fond of you. I wan’ to feel always tha’ we’re frien’s. But we coul’n’ be happy together. Our interes’ aren’ the same – they coul’n’ be. Can’ you see, Rocky? If there is something abou’ me tha’ stirs you – that is ver’ won’erful. But we mus’n’ let it hurt you. An’ that isn’ the same as marriage. Marriage is differen’ – there mus’ be so much in common – if a man an’ woman are to live together an’ work together, they mus’ think an’ hope an’…”
Her voice died out. She was gazing again, mournfully at the dahlias. When he released her hands they lay limp in her lap.
With a great effort of will he wished her every happiness, promised to write, and got himself away.
This was on Thursday. Rocky walked at a feverish pace from the native city to the European settlement that was so quaintly not Chinese – more, with its Western-style buildings that were decorated with ornamental iron balconies and richly colored Chinese signs, like a “China-town” in an American city – and wandered for a time along Nanking Road; then out to Bubbling Well Road; away out, past the Country Club to the almost absurdly suburban quarter with its comfortably British villas; seeing, however, little of the busy life that moved about him, threading his way over cross-streets without a conscious glance at the motorcars and pony-drawn victorias (with turbanned mafoos cracking their whips) and bicycles and the creaking passenger wheelbarrow’s on which fat native women with tiny stumps of feet rode precariously. For those few hours were to be recalled in later years as the quietly darkest in the young man’s life. There was no question now of dissipation; he knew with the decisiveness of the Kanes that he had turned definitely away from the morbid oblivion of alcohol and opium, as from the unhealthy if exciting diversion of loveless women. But the bitterness would not down all at once. Indeed it was savagely powerful, still, to cloud his reason. The only evidence of victory over self of which he was aware was the fact that he could now look almost objectively at himself, and could fight.
